Strange Beings #2 – Nate Kontny - <AUTHOR> http://www.strangebeings.co/episodes/4098-2-nate-kontny

<comment><USER2> Daniel, congrats on making this happen and on lining up some very cool guests. Loving your podcast so far. I say this as someone who's tried his hand at podcasting a couple of times, and who'd love to give it another shot at some point down the line. Listening to your podcast is inspiring me to get off my ass and get back to work. :)

Making interesting episodes every week is logistically challenging. Lining up a consistent roster of guests even more so. Sounds like you've been planning your roster for awhile, and that's definitely the way to go.

Technically speaking, not sure if you've done anything differently with your audio setup in Ep 2 vs. Ep 1, but I'm noticing a much more balanced sound with you and Nate than I did with you and Keith in the first episode. It's significantly improved. Is that something you're doing in the mix, or is that an improvement on the input side?

<comment><USER3> I believe Nate was in the same room as Daniel in ep 2, where Keith was over skype in ep 1.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that would be my guess. Even still, there are things you can do to equalize the sound of two different audio streams (as in a Skype call, where each side presumably records its own input channel). It sounded to my ear as if one person had recorded in mono and the other had recorded in stereo. I could be wrong about that, but if that had been the case, you can mix both streams to mono for a relatively decent fix.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Jon. I don't check HN comments very often. Keith was unable to record the audio on his side, plus he didn't have headphones or a microphone. On top of all that, we had to use Google Hangouts instead of Skype, which would have improved the audio at least a little bit. Overall, I think it turned out pretty good for how little I could control myself. Even Nate's episode was bad IMO because the room was so noisy and we were far from the mic. It's hopefully going to get a lot better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is a great episode. Daniel is still figuring things out, but there were so many great nuggets in there that I didn't care it wasn't the smoothest interview.

</comment><comment><USER4> Loving the aesthetic of this site - breaking away from the mould of the billion other business podcasts. Having Keith Rabois for your first episode is a strong vibe too.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nate Rocks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! He's so awesome. I really loved recording this episode with him.</comment></comment>


Our Unpopular Tech Stack for Building an API and SPA - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/scrumpy/a-lot-of-people-will-hate-our-tech-stack-but-here-it-is-e599f7300e1a <comment><AUTHOR> I'm developing stuff in the web for 20 years now and try to keep up constantly with all the new stuff. A year ago, when we started to work on a bigger project, we decided to use a modern (but not the newest) tech stack and we are really happy by now.

While developing all this stuff, we faced a lot of challenges these typical "this is how you build a todo list in angureactvuemberbone in 5 minutes" tutorials don't tackle.

We prepared a few articles with our experiences on a bigger project. If you're interested, leave a clap. :)</comment>


Will Automation Set Us Free? - <AUTHOR> http://bostonreview.net/philosophy-religion/david-moscrop-will-automation-set-us-free <comment><USER2> Basically people think they work in order to provide for themselves. Our basic needs are actually pretty modest. We need food, shelter, medical care and a few other things. Providing these things is not super expensive. Even before you factor in automation.

Farmers still exist but as a part of the working population, they are a tiny percentage. The medical sector is comparatively huge but also not that large. Automation is likely to cut employment in both sectors a lot. Likewise construction work seems to require a lot of manual labor today but is something that can probably be done by robots already.

However, what automation will do is complete the transition of most work being entirely unrelated to those basic needs. That is already the case if you think about it. I look at most government jobs as a form of UBI. We're basically paying for people to do unnecessary work very slowly and inefficiently and we're taxing everyone to do it. There is no logic in this other than UBI. There's going to be a lot more of that. UBI as such seems to go against the morality that dictates people have to work for a living. But mocking that by making people do completely pointless things seems entirely acceptable.

If you automate most governments, they'd be a lot more efficient and you'd end up with millions of unemployed bureaucrats. Here in Germany, where they are perpetual paper fetishists, that would probably raise unemployment to double digit percentages. These people do absolutely nothing that adds any value; rather the opposite it seems. Bureaucracy is actually holding back economic progress. It's gotten to the point where "digitization" is a big topic in the current government; though they tend to end up waffling a lot when explaining what that actually means.

<comment><USER3> > _I look at most government jobs as a form of UBI. We 're basically paying > for people to do unnecessary work very slowly and inefficiently and we're > taxing everyone to do it. There is no logic in this other than UBI._

This is a vicious slander against an enormous number of hard-working, underpaid, and extremely conscientious people who work in government. It's nonsense and you should stop it.

There is always a need to improve any system or organization and government agencies are no exception. We should constantly be learning how to make government systems work better to achieve policy aims. Because they are constrained to behave, for the most part, with moral and ethical concerns foremost rather than sociopath motivations celebrated in private business, they do operate under many constraints that can slow them down. But that's a feature, not a bug.

The big-L Libertarian dogma that government is theft is complete nonsense and should not be endorsed by any reasonable person.

<comment><USER2> I'm not a libertarian. If anything I'm an admirer of efficient governments in e.g. Estonia, Finland, or Sweden. Especially Estonia seems to really put other governments on the spot in terms of doing things swiftly, efficiently, and pragmatically while not compromising on quality of governance. Estonia is a well run country with an extensive social system. Most interaction with the government is digital.

I live in a country (Germany) where the government refuses to automate such jobs as handing out a paper with a number to people that come into the building for the privilege of waiting for their turn of having another person push a button to cause a piece of paper to roll out of a printer such that they can rubber stamp it an give it back to me. If you need such a piece of paper, which seems to be a regular thing, you need to pre-book an appointment for this around two months in advance and book a time-slot of roughly one hour. I'm not making this up, I've gone through this process several times. It's annoying, it eats up time, and it only serves to prove a fact that they are supposed to administer to themselves.

Sure, there are hard working people as well but they are outnumbered by people not doing a whole lot that are stuck in processes that actually don't make any sense other than to generate more work that also doesn't need doing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article makes the argument that all humans really strive to have more time for self-improvement. That's clearly not the case. The only kind of freedom we need is freedom from the existential fear of needing to be employed to live. We can already at least partly achieve that, simply by moving more of our lives to a DIY model - which, in turn, would leave less time for self- improvement.

</comment><comment><USER5> I keep looking for ways that automation's benefits can be shared more democratically, but this essay sheds no light. The concluding paragraph, in my view, restates a well-worn plaint:

> With automation, the plutocrats get the increased efficiency and returns of > new machinery and processes; the rest get stagnant wages, increasingly > precarious work, and cultural kipple. This brave new world is at once new > and yet the same as it ever was. Accordingly, it remains as true as ever > that the project of extending liberty to the many through the transformation > of work is only incidentally about changing the tools we use; it remains a > struggle to change the relations of production.

Maybe it _is_ just a matter of better tax policy.

<comment><USER6> If left unfettered the system would eat itself, if there is no means of consumption then there is no need means of production.

In reality the political pressure will increase and policy will change long before then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Flagged for being political and ideological drivel hiding behind and pretending to be concerns regarding automation.

What the fuck has Trump suddenly to do with the impact of automation?</comment>


CentOS 5.6 release - <AUTHOR> http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-announce/2011-April/017282.html

<comment><USER2> Release notes: <http://wiki.centos.org/Manuals/ReleaseNotes/CentOS5.6>

<comment><USER3> Also upstream release notes:

[http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5...](http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en- US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/5/html-single/5.6_Technical_Notes/index.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Heads up, 'yum update' should upgrade you, if you are on 5.5. If yum update is not working, do a clean: 'yum clean all' then update.

</comment><comment><USER5> Had my production servers upgraded from Redhat 5.5 to 5.6 a few days ago, no bugs or issues so far.</comment>


SuperTuxParty: open-source party game - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/SuperTuxParty/SuperTuxParty <comment><USER2> Great to see more open source Godot games :)</comment>


Is It Possible to Use the Internet Privately? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/is-it-really-possible-to-use-the-internet-privately-16dbbbcfee9?gi=8fd7e1127b5f <comment><USER2> I'm skeptical about using the web, even with privacy tools. It's difficult to accurately find the source of many of the privacy tools...so they may be tracking you just as much as the sites they "protect" you from.

<comment><USER3> I agree. However, people feel comfortable because they are online with billions of other people. They feel less threatened because their information is hidden within the info of the other billion people using the internet.</comment></comment>


Is Microsoft Excel an Adequate Statistics Package? - <AUTHOR> http://www.practicalstats.com/xlsstats/excelstats.html <comment><USER2> A couple notes from a heavy Excel and heavy R (and heavy several other similar products) user...

factories run on excel...terrifyingly so. I know semiconductor semiconductor fabs that basically run on queries in a many sheeted workbooks. The reason is because not everyone codes, especially not factory foreman, technicians, etc. They don't need a continuously running app (well they do but they don't know it) they just need formatted data.

That links to comment two. The issue that Excel solves over code goes back (IMHO) to two issues that come up with coders/noncoders. First, most users of excel are interested in the answer rather than the process. I get the value of being able to audit your steps visually, but the transition from Excel to R is a transition from the primary visual being data (i.e., results) to process. Depending on your perspective that can be highly meaningful.

Second, and probably more importantly, Excel lets you visualize your data as it progresses. For those with lower (or just different/less abstract) spatial and visual reasoning ability, seeing the progress of data from column to column can have a fairly profound effect. This extends to students who are trying to learn by seeing the progression as steps of a processing algorithm are applied. Doing so in code abstracts that process heavily. For some, especially those not used to treating data in the abstract/blind via code.

<comment><USER3> > factories run on excel...terrifyingly so

Chemical plants too. But that does not mean there is no code.

An Excel document can be programmed with VBA to make connections to network resources, read/write files, send emails, etc.

I might not be the most effective tool for every task but it's everywhere and allows workers to automate work without making a request to hire a developer or buy new software. Someone can gradually automate business tasks on their own initiative rather than go through multiple layers of corporate bureaucracy.

<comment><USER2> absolutely agreed. I mean terrifying more in the sense of the lack of controls that I have typically seen in place and the way 'pull request equivalents' are handled and modifications are made.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The other reason to not use Excel for stats? It's virtually impossible to reproduce your work unless you documented every step in some other format. Excel is easily one of the worst tools you can use if you ever need to refer back to/redo your original work at any point in the future or if you need to be able to validate your result with any confidence. Yea I know there are some people who are freaking magicians with VBA who can "fix" many of the problems listed, but that doesn't absolve excel of its statistical sins.

<comment><USER5> I think that's where R stats package (R Project) really shines, I love the command line console that displays every input / action so you have a track record of what you did. Used it for T-tests, linear regression, ANOVA, MANOVA. For those working in biological / environmental science fields, I would definitely recommend it.

<comment><USER6> There is a free R course on Codeschool if anyone wants to try it for an hour or two. It's fun.

[https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-r](https://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-r)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've spent a lot of time using Excel in ways it was never meant for.

If anyone is trapped using Excel to make a box plot, it is possible (disclamer please for the love of god never do this): Make a stacked column chart. The first series should be equal to Q1 minus the graph minimum. Format this to be invisible. Series two should be median - Q1, formatted as a black outline on a white bar. Series three should be Q3 - median, formatted like series two. Error bars can be added to give the whiskers. Here's an example: [https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucWmfmXb1kk/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ucWmfmXb1kk/maxresdefault.jpg)

Again, don't do this.

For a histogram, just make a min and max for each bin, and use countifs(range, ">=" & min, range, "<" & max) to get the amount in each bin.

<comment><USER8> Excel 2016 supports box and whisker plots.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I disagree. Where I work, we have one person that does all the hedging, price calculations and other financial modeling and he only uses Excel. The only practical downsides to his use of Excel it's that he doesn't have direct database access so we generally need to create the initial reports to give him the data and secondly Excel can only hold a little over 2M rows.

<comment><USER10> How do you verify that his calculations are correct?

<comment><USER11> Why do you think this can't be verified? You can see the formulas in cells, or you can see the macro code. Further, you could auto import older data inputs and outputs via data connections in Excel and set up some automated checks to flag if something is off.

Is there a use case where you think this wouldn't be possible?

<comment><USER10> You can verify it sure, but it is much harder to verify excel equations than code. There is no github for Excel (besides saving with different names). You generally don't see the equations when you look at Excel - this is one of the reasons Excel is so error prone.

<comment><USER11> Fully agree. My point was that it can indeed be verified though in many circumstances.

That said, I think there's always a balance between a quick down and dirty business solution that gets the job done, vs. something fully engineered. Additionally, it is much easier for business users to shoulder more of the workload while letting people with programming knowledge focus on other tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A point I have not seen mentioned is that Excel encourages bad practices for data visualization. No other statistics or data analysis software I am aware of gives you the option of 3D-ifying a 2D plot. This adds negative value to the plot for anyone who is actually interested in data over eye candy. Simple example is a pie chart. Give it depth and it becomes much more difficult to reason about, and one's reasoning could easily change if the chart was rotated.

<comment><USER13> Agreed for the most part, although there are rare valid uses for 3d graphs. I think most contemporary data vis people would say that Excel makes it possible to make pie charts at all means it may encourage bad practices.

<comment><USER14> What are those rare valid uses for 3D graphs?

<comment><USER13> I can think of one-- we had a 96-element datatable (12x8) and limited space in our biochemical journal article. We were looking to graphically show differences in orders of magnitude to help explain the assay. A 3d column chart fit the bill because we could show lots of data in a small space, and readers could quickly see the range of values.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Let's not forget the time Excel's bad UI contributed to a bombshell paper's faulty evidence in favor of fiscal austerity, probably prolonging the European recession: [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq- reinha...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-04-18/faq-reinhart- rogoff-and-the-excel-error-that-changed-history)

<comment><USER16> Yeah no, if people who were decided by this paper took it at face value without checking the numbers made sense, it's not an excel ui's fault. As for the others, they would have picked that policy choice with or without that paper.

<comment><USER15> Sure, we could argue over multiple possible sources of blame and maybe we will conclude that Excel is not the most important. It seems nearly impossible to have that debate in a rigorous way. In any case, "the evidence will be ignored anyway" is not a good argument to use a tool that will produce bad evidence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > "Changes in Excel 2010 have improved its use for statistics considerably. > For earlier versions of Excel, however, the answer is generally 'No'. The > following refers to versions prior to 2010 (2011 on the Mac)."

</comment><comment><USER18> Considering Microsoft recent involvment with R I have the crazy hope that future versions of Excel will be shipped with R as a scripting language.

<comment><USER19> IMO adding scripting to a spreadsheet is a waste of time when R can simply import a spreadsheet, perform whatever operations needed, then spit out another spreadsheet/database/whatever format you want.

<comment><USER20> Plus, if you use a tool like RStudio or Jupyter, it's pretty easy to see the data as you manipulate it, which is a commonly cited advantage of Excel, with none of the awkwardness of trying to look at cell formulas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Harper Reed gave a fireside chat at 1871 in Chicago a year back where he said that he's yet to see any meaningful data opportunity that can't be addressed by Excel. Most are just trying to build a solution where there isn't a problem.

<comment><USER12> He has apparently never worked with a dataset of more than 1,048,576 observations, Excel's row limit [0].

[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel- specification...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel- specifications-and-limits-ca36e2dc-1f09-4620-b726-67c00b05040f)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Never, ever use Excel for anything other than prototyping, spot-checking data, or as a makeshift GUI while you develop a proper one.

I've seen several financial shops where people were moving millions of dollars around using Excel. IMHO, it's always an indicator of deficient processes and lack of coding skill. Yes, I do know that some clever people use it. They are productive in spite of excel, not because of it.

Your main problem with excel is not that some statistical function is missing, or wrong, or misleading. Sure, that's an issue, but you can live with a few things being wrong if you can detect them and fix them yourself. I'll come back to stats later...

The problem with Excel is it's damn near undebuggable. There's simply nothing in the way of someone making a beast of a calculation, with the flow going all over several sheets. You can even make things circular if you want. The data and the code are all together, mixed up. Was a number in a given cell written there by the VB code, or was it an input? You can use the auditing functions, but chances are you will see a spaghetti of arrows.

It's also non trivial to find differences between different versions. Typically the dude who is using excel has also never heard of Git or SVN, so you will see a load of sheets like "portfolio1" and "portfolio2_new_old" and so on. I don't know if it's changed, but when I was using Excel, the files had code files within them, rather than separate files, like we do with most other languages.

Of course you aren't forced to write crappy spreadsheets, but there's simply a tendency for people who don't code to be a bit messy. But Excel is positively inviting trouble. It's so flexible that anyone under a little pressure will hack in some extra bell or whistle, building up tech debt for future generations. It basically lulls the novice into thinking they can build anything.

Amazingly I've met several people in finance who pride themselves on spreadsheets that stretch over thousands of lines. I remember a billion dollar merger where the analyst in charge of the "modelling" showed me how they reached the line limit (I think that's gone now, so good luck!). It's as if making things complicated justified their salaries, so maybe that's why excel is so popular.

Now, about statistics. If you're doing anything non-trivial, you absolutely do not have space to look at all the individual numbers in your matrices. Just like if you're solving equations on a piece of paper, you need your own symbolism. You need to be able to give things names and see short statements at the appropriate level of abstraction. You probably need to be able to verify the pieces independently, too. So unit tests for various operations, that aren't intruding into the business logic.

<comment><USER23> I could've sworn I've seen people who work in the financial and maybe data science industries who've praised Excel to the heavens on HN. Like on the same level as Python, R, etc.

I don't work in finance (or data science really) so I can't comment, but it seems merely a tool to me.

<comment><USER22> No way, not data science. How are you going to load in millions, possibly billions of individual numbers?

With finance there's a lot of things that seem like good fits, but only if you keep them small. Something like a personal budget is fine, where everything fits on a screen.

<comment><USER24> I have 2.4 billion data points loaded in Excel at the moment.

Not that it matters. "Data science" is not something that magically kicks in after you go beyond some "big data" threshold.

Excel is heavily used in managerial science type of positions and I can assure you those are rather heavy on the "data science" workflows.

<comment><USER12> The maximum number of rows in the most recent version is 1,048,576 [0]. I'm deducing then that your data is in wide format. What would happen if you wanted it in long format? It seems you would just be out of luck with Excel, which is not a problem in any other major statistics software.

[0] [https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel- specification...](https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Excel- specifications-and-limits-ca36e2dc-1f09-4620-b726-67c00b05040f)

<comment><USER24> Except that there is Power Pivot which is xVelocity - the same columnar store database use in SQL Server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been recommending to all the people I work with to use Excel add-in Power Query to connect to data and do all calculations and transformations. Then they can just replace/update data sources and refresh queries. It's somewhat more accessible for non technical people than Power Pivot/ DAX/MDX. it's easy to make tabular dimensional record sets ready for consumption by pivot tables, Tableau, etc. You can choose to keep data in model instead of showing in worksheet to bypass row limits and connect model to pivot table. Best of all it teaches people ETL, better data management, separation of data and report.

</comment><comment><USER26> there are a few unique issues i face with excel beyond the stats package.

1\. if you shift cells (ctrl c, ctrl v) around, delete or insert rows, you may mess up existing cell references in formulas without realizing it. your vlookups, hlookups will not change your column numbers just because you did. your vba code will not change your A1 cell references. things will blow up here in spectacular fashion.

2\. if you have a massive spreadsheet with a lot of lookups, UDFs, non-static cell values (like a Bloomberg real time feed), it's not so clear which UDFs in which cells get calculated in what order. sometimes it results in #value errors, which is a million times more desirable than if there was a iferr(..., 0) or iferr(..., "") and you can't tell if there was a failure.

3\. your macros will happily destroy your work if you let it by mistake (writing over formulas in the wrong sheet etc). python will generally not destroy the code it's running.

4\. AUTOFORMAT will destroy, without any honor or humanity, any data if it just barely looks like it should be something else. I've had strings get converted into dates, 0s get stripped off (I think geneticists also face that same issue), all kinds of nonsense.

some of the problems I see raised here in HN (such as errors in formulas, sanity checking) are also issues in other tools like scipy, matlab. common errors in these languages are off-by-one matrix references, terminating loops prematurely (esp for numerical solutions), formulas not written correctly, brackets in the wrong place or + instead of -, typos in variable names, nan versus 0 vs na, these are things that affect excel equally.

otherwise, excel is pretty good. it's quick to prototype, it gives passable charts if all you need are passable charts. it's very good at displaying intermediate results. it's pretty ok for WSYWIG presentation, formatting, especially if you have custom reports to produce every week rather than regular ones that tex can solve. the biggest thing about excel is that everyone uses excel and if you try to send over results in a non-excel format they'll (clients or whoever) ask you to send it back in xls.

oh also... mediocre workers can produce excel sheets of passable quality. mediocre works may not even produce a single scipy script of any quality. I have seen some horrific matlab code, written by people with engineering background. i've seen one guy, in his desire to make a programming language look just like excel, write a single line for each of the 50 charts he creates and calls them Chart1, chart2, chart3, rather than use a for loop even though it's just 2 lines. it's totally bizarre.

<comment><USER27> > your vlookups, hlookups will not change your column numbers

If you're not using tables yet, you should. They solve that problem easily, and make addressing more explicit (relative to the table name rather than the sheet)

<comment><USER26> you can still use table names in vlookups, and it will still not solve your problem because vlookups do not work by table headers but by column numbers

<comment><USER27> You can use either index/match as avs733 suggested, or alternatively:

        =VLOOKUP(value, Sometable, MATCH("Column2", Sometable[#Headers]))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Never, there are better alternatives and especially FOSS. For windows, PSPP is there to make your life easier. If you are a spreadsheet guy Libreoffice will make you never turn back to excel and can be programmed in StarBasic. R is amazing, but if you do not want to invest Scilab and Octave are there. if you are the freeware proprietary guy Google Sheets, WPS Office or FreeOffice are better alternatives than Excel. And if you have a good PC, why not give the FOSS giac/xcas a try, you may find your sanity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Related discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12370605](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12370605)

</comment><comment><USER29> "statistics don't lie quote but liars use statistics"

Well, the similar can be said about authors of that article (don't know about newer version of Excel though).

Basically they are saying "Of course, it all appears only to old versions of Excel but there were sooo much problems with them".

So, what?

</comment><comment><USER30> Excel can calculate whatever you need but the main issue is that it will modify your data to be helpful like converting number strings to floats unless you tell it not to and even then...

</comment><comment><USER31> When an article title poses a question like that... the answer is probably no.

</comment><comment><USER32> How does LibreOffice compare?

<comment><USER33> It's just as unsuitable. But there are plenty of open source packages that R the right tool for the job...

<comment><USER34> The article disagrees with you

""" Solution #2: Alternatives to Excel Yalta (ref 1) states that p-values [inverse probability distributions] reported by the free OpenOffice's Calc spreadsheet and the open-source Gnumeric spreadsheet do not have the same numerical problems as does Excel - their programmers used accurate algorithms."""

It is not surprising because with an open source program everyone who can program can fix such issues, while with Microsoft you are at the mercy of the likely overworked Excel team.

<comment><USER35> > It is not surprising because with an open source program everyone who can > program can fix such issues, while with Microsoft you are at the mercy of > the likely overworked Excel team.

Yep, that's the theory behind open source applications. The reality is that in a company, people will prefer Excel because Microsoft is a point of contact that can work with, blame, or yell at to fix because you're paying them. With OpenOffice or LibreOffice, sure, you could have your engineering department fix it, or they could work on the software you need for your business.

<comment><USER32> In the rather large Australian company I work for currently my manager asked himself out loud "how many tines did we ask Microsoft for support with Office"?

The answer was - "never". They wouldn't have listened and so it was not only pointless, but it was actively frowned upon!

You can purchase a rather less expensive support contract with Collabora. You don't have to build or fix the software yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Excel is the de facto standard for my STAT 301 class.</comment>


How APIs Are Eating the Product Stack - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/point-nine-news/how-apis-are-eating-the-product-stack-914a3d6e1216#.vm1cgfijo <comment><USER2> forgot about form entry like wufoo.com and tying stuff together with ifttt/zapier</comment>


Show HN: WhisperKey - Send & receive secure messages in the browser - <AUTHOR> https://www.whisperkey.io

<comment><USER2> Nice! A feature to auto decrypt/encrypt the messages would be nice, right now I have to manually click for that every time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed we want to improve the UX with encrypting/decrypting, but at the same time we didn't want to hide the entire process from the user because it might feel like nothing is actually happening.</comment></comment>


Terahertz radiation can disrupt proteins in living cells - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-06-terahertz-disrupt-proteins-cells.html <comment><USER2> There is so much FUD, conspiracy, and disinformation surrounding the topic of the hazards of EM radiation to human tissue that it's hard to separate what's relevant from the hyperbolic. Is there a good primer on which frequencies are actually harmful to humans? I seem to remember from studying for my amateur radio license (back in 1990) that the potential harm to a human was based one height and the frequency in question, that the body would act like an antenna and resonate with certain frequencies but in the 5G and Terahertz discussions we're talking about something rather different.

<comment><USER3> Human height ~ frequency. Power level and time are the other parameters.

A 6ft tall person's resonant frequency is 150MHz. 300,000,000 m/s (light) / height(wavelength) = frequency

From what I remember, the higher microwave frequencies have less affect unless they are directed at you or confined like a microwave oven. Then it's a matter of the resonant frequencies of water.

There is more to it but that's just an intro.

"The most dangerous frequencies of electromagnetic energy are X-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet light and microwaves. X-rays, gamma rays and UV light can damage living tissues, and microwaves can cook them." -[https://sciencing.com/wavelengths-frequencies- dangerous-7487...](https://sciencing.com/wavelengths-frequencies- dangerous-7487438.html)

<comment><USER4> Humans are not conductive enough for standing waves to form at that scale, so this analysis does not make sense. The human body, as a macro object, does not resonate with EM waves in any way.

Proteins in the body are a different story, obviously.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Deeper link: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65955-5](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-65955-5)

<comment><USER5> It's interesting to me because this same team published [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28245-9](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-018-28245-9)

which claims to show that THz radiation promotes actin filaments, but their new publication claims are that the THz radiation induces mechanical vibrations which remove or destroy actin filaments. It will be interesting to see where this all goes.

<comment><USER6> They could be doing both. Similar to how oxidants stimulate cellular regeneration. If the THz waves induce mechanical destruction, especially on already weakened or damaged actin filaments, it could induce cellular repair mechanisms to create new action. It might be something useful in certain cases. Say, deep cellular regeneration... or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What's the goal in posting this/having this phrasing?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_gap](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terahertz_gap) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum)

Please point to the spot on the EM-specrtum that you're scared of, and tell me what color it is.

</comment><comment><USER8> HN needs something like r/science's level of rigorous moderation when it comes to comments on scientific articles that are not math/CS/classical mechanics related.</comment>


Stellar: The future of banking is here - <AUTHOR> https://www.stellar.org/ <comment><USER2> Blockchain is the new gold rush. I wish I knew how to capitalize on it :(

<comment><USER3> good question, what is the shovel equivalent of the blockchain?

<comment><USER4> Probably a GPU</comment></comment></comment>


Check the Redesigned Google (With Always-Visible Sidebar) Yourself - <AUTHOR> http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-11-25-n78.html <comment><USER2> Personally I think that the logo itself looks more professional. However those bright blue buttons are too much. The old gray buttons were more attractive.

The sidebar, however, is impeccable. The instant and available filtering options are incredibly useful.

Edit:

I just noticed something fascinating. The old Google linked from the SERP through a proxy link which redirected to the actual result. The new Google links directly from the SERP to the result. In other words you can now copy a link from the SERP and have it be the actual address of the result, not just the address of a Google redirect to the result.

<comment><USER3> About 5 years ago, I noticed that links in my Google search results one day were being forwarded through Google before sending me off to the desired web site. I hypothesized that if I visited a search result, then clicked the back button very quickly, then visited another page in those same results, but this time didn't return to Google, that it would cause Google to think that page wasn't useful for that search query, while the second page was. Turns out I was right, because a few days later the first page moved down in the results, and the other one moved up (I had searched for an obscure mathematical concept, and my professor's page was the top result, and it had later swapped places with the second place result.) Thanks for letting me know Google still incorporates how much time a user spends visiting each search result into their formulas.

<comment><USER2> I had always theorized that they did this, but the point of what I said is that I don't think they are anymore, at least not unless they are reporting it via AJAX or something.

The links on the SERP now go directly to the source without going through the redirect. They are probably doing away with that previous system because it is too vulnerable to scamming, for example getting a bunch of people to click and then back out of the competitor's site so that way you can be on top in the search results.

<comment><USER3> Thanks. I hadn't seen this behavior for years so you have confirmed they still do it. Secondly, Google did not behave this way every time (in fact, rarely), so not noticing this in the new version doesn't mean Google no longer does this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I want searching Google Scholar to have its own button in the sidebar, enabled by default. Most people won't. The sidebar needs to be customizable.

</comment><comment><USER5> It looks like Bing.

<comment><USER2> In what way? Bing features pretty landscape photographs both on their main page and along the top of the SERP. Google is still fairly plain text in comparison. Not even the search sidebar operates or looks the same in Bing.

<comment><USER6> I think he's referring to the sidebar, which is what I noticed right off the bat as well.

I disagree -- the sidebar looks and operates in a similar manner to Bing's. At the very least, they separate the categories of content just like Bing does (All results, images, videos, etc.).

<comment><USER7> My first thought when I saw this was Bing.

My second thought was that it looks more like Facebook's search with the filter labels on the left: [http://www.insidefacebook.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/08/fac...](http://www.insidefacebook.com/wp- content/uploads/2009/08/facebook-search-friendfeed.png)

My third thought is that I should stop making comparisons. They're just trying to organize the types of search in a way that's usable, and my first assumption shouldn't be that they just ripped it off of another site.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I had to paste the code into the google search field to get this to work in Firefox. If anybody is having trouble getting this to work with the address field, try that.

\----

I kind of feel bad for google that they got stuck with a semi-crappy logo. That they'll always have to work with it.

<comment><USER9> In their print work, the artists remove the bevel and drop shadow from the logo and it looks 10x better:

<http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/flatgooglelogo>

<comment><USER2> The print logo looks decent but it is still flat and lifeless compared with the vibrant new logo. I think that the new logo (as enabled by turning on this cookie) pops out of the page more and looks more web 2.0 compared with both the original logo and the print logo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> 2 things:

1 - didn't work for me when (using firefox 3.5.5)

2 - I have to say that the screenshots look impressive with left-hand column, but in reality the interface will also have a right-hand column for advertisements, which will clutter the interface considerably.

<comment><USER8> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=967237>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's not working for me at all. Am on google.co.in (India) and I also tried switching the domain in the javascript path.. didn't work. I think it's just working in the US... annoying when the posts always fail to tell you about that.

<comment><USER12> Fully working here in Norway. Just press the "Google.com frontpage"-button on your main Google Search page, and then run the JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The new logo looks great. I've been using <http://go.infinise.com/> in place of Google for a while because it looks cleaner. Google has approximated this UI much better.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks like all of the other crap search engines by Yahoo, MSN, etc.

Why anyone would want to copy those other crap search engine layouts is beyond me. Too much clutter. KISS. (Keep it simple...)

<comment><USER15> No idea why you were downmodded. I agree. Perhaps an opportunity for a new startup to be the new 'simple search engine that just gives you uncluttered results'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is it secure to run this code?</comment>


Tiny HDMI streaming 'stick' - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2012/01/roku-plans-tiny-hdmi-streaming-stick-for-smart-tvs.ars

<comment><AUTHOR> So this is why I think the Rasberry Pi folks are waaaaaay under estimating their potential. This is exactly the kind of thing where a small processor with WiFi and HDMI and poof you've got a TV add-on.

An alternative version of this same gadget is a 'picture frame' type device where the your Picasa, Flickr, G+, or Facebook feed acts like a screen saver on your TV.

This 'class' of gizmo retails for $99. If you can build all the hardware for $35 you're done. (that is 42% gross margins while offering distribution channels 40 pts) It works like this, you buy them for $35, you sell them to the distributors for $60, they sell them for the MSRP of $99 and get $40 on every one sold, or if they want to put them on sale $10, $20, or $30 on each one sold. If you divide your gross into 1/3 for R&D, 1/3 marketing, and 1/3 for re-investing into the company, you get $14M for engineering, $14M for marketing/sales, and $14M in cash flow to offset tooling/depreciation/rent/etc. For every million units you sell.

Note its important to offer the distributors an attractive margin since they have a zillion things competing for their space, and at 40% they are strongly motivated to move your product. Six million units a year is not an unreasonable estimate (in my opinion of course) so that is a 360M$/yr business.</comment>


Ottawa vows to cut wait times for foreign workers joining tech firms - <AUTHOR> http://www.theglobeandmail.com//report-on-business/ottawa-vows-to-cut-wait-times-for-foreign-workers-joining-tech-firms/article30458187/?cmpid=rss1&click=sf_globe <comment><USER2> How about just making Canada competitive so Canadians want to stay?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It isn't like Canadian tech salaries are that great compared to US one already. Tech employers are the same all over.</comment>


Mini vMac: Early Macintosh Emulator - <AUTHOR> http://minivmac.sourceforge.net/ <comment><USER2> If you want to play around with classic Mac OS without downloading and installing anything, I made a browser port of PCE (a similar emulator): [http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/](http://jamesfriend.com.au/pce-js/)

<comment><USER3> Oh, that's so cool! Only sad thing is that is apparently the really-locked version of HyperCard Player.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have rather fond memories of using this while I was in high school (in the mid-to-late 90's). Considering that I didn't have a Mac at the time, it was one of the only ways I could play around with a real Mac (albeit a black and white one with an old version of the Mac OS).

The other options at the time were:

1) Shapeshifter, which ran on top of UAE (an Amiga emulator). It was basically unusable on a 486.

2) Executor, which was a clean room implementation of a 68K Mac. I probably spent the most time with this because it supported some reasonably recent programs and wasn't terribly slow.

<comment><USER5> Executor is now open source:

[https://github.com/ctm/executor](https://github.com/ctm/executor)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> _> Mini vMac requires a ROM image file to run, and so can be legally used only by those who own a 680x0 based Macintosh._

Dangit.

So is there any way to legally buy an old-timey ROM image, the way you can buy a legal Amiga Kickstarter ROM from Amiga Forever ([http://www.amigaforever.com/](http://www.amigaforever.com/))?

Knowing Apple I'm guessing the answer is "hahahahahahahahahahahahahaaaaaa o my sides", but hey, you never know...

<comment><USER7> The only legal way is to buy a old Mac and extract the rom. Of course this is the internet, so ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Disappointed. You ain't got the Talking Moose.

</comment><comment><USER7> So much nostalgia.</comment>


Please review our startup - <AUTHOR> http://go.adcore.com We are using the AdWords API to push new campaigns into adcore and change bid prices based on conversions that we channel directly from the user's AdWords account.<p>I'm here to answer any questions you may have. <comment><USER2> Your site looks nice.

I think you should define SEM on the front page - acronymns are fine if there is a clear definition available (unless you are aiming only for people who will know that term well).

You Pro price seems quite steep for a SAAS product. $15 per campaign per month is a high marginal cost when all you are offering over the free version is email support. If I was using your product and liked it I would be tempted to create multiple free accounts rather than upgrade to premium.</comment>


Ruby Exercise: checking credit cards - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bloc.io/ruby-exercise-checking-credit-cards

<comment><USER2> Is it just me or does the typography looks horrible on Firefox on Mac?</comment>


I'm sorry Cron, I've met AirBnB's Airflow - <AUTHOR> https://danidelvalle.me/2016/09/12/im-sorry-cron-ive-met-airbnbs-airflow/ <comment><USER2> While Airflow is better than cron, my experience with it was miserable. I much rather have a thin layer on top of each ETL task and have my upper level code do whatever needs to be done (run on schedule, run in sequence, run on demand), than have an airflow layer in between, doing trivial tasks (periodic scheduling, and linearizing a dag, really?) and impeding my access.

</comment><comment><USER3> seemed nice at first. then there was python</comment>


Is Chase bank good for startup - <AUTHOR>

I am incorporating LLC firm in USA from offshore. Since my business is start up, I'll have very minimum in my account.
I need business checking, online banking to wire money international destination, debit or credit card.
I heard bank in US is complex rule and lot of hidden fees e.e. monthly etc.
Currently, I am like to go with Chase. Is Chase good for offshore startup? <comment><USER2> Chase has solid online tools, and lots of branches in the U.S. If you keep at least $7500 in your account (check this figure...it has been changing, but I think this is right), there is no monthly fee. They also offer solid business credit cards and other services that will scale with your business.

I don't know about offshore. One of the advantages of using them in the U.S. is that there are lots of branches to cash checks and meet with your banker if you so desire. If I was offshore, I might go for something that has a local branch, but also is a big name (i.e. HSBC, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Did not like them. Opened up free checking with them. A year later, they started high fees for small balances per month. Nickel and dimed me for every little thing too.

Went to HSBC. Had problems with them (clerical BS). Don't really like them, but they have free checking when their computers don't screw me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to know this too. I recently contacted Wells Fargo, and they said it would be 12$ per month for a basic business account. Please do suggest what options are there for non-us residents to open up a bank account with minimum charges possible.

</comment><comment><USER5> Works great for me. No issues with Chase. You need to come to the US to set up the account.

Chase and Citibank both have good online wire transfers. Wells Fargo do not have online wire transfers.</comment>


Another IE fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2386087,00.asp

<comment><USER2> The title is "Cookiejacking Exploit Hits Internet Explorer, Targets Your Login Info".

</comment><comment><USER3> Likejacking is already a widespread plague, and this is even worse. Instead of tricking users into invisibly clicking a like button, they can trick users into invisibly giving away their login info. Expect to see a lot of Facebook spam from this in the coming months as the bad guys learn about this.

Especially since it sounds like Microsoft is not going to fix this anytime soon.

</comment><comment><USER4> > Cookiejacking Exploit Hits Internet Explorer, Targets Your Login Info

This makes it sound like they're going to be able to get your password... No major website will be storing your password in a cookie. At worst the attacker will have your session id meaning they can log in as you until you log out of the website in question.

</comment><comment><USER5> ""We encourage all customers to protect themselves against potential issues by avoiding clicking on suspicious links and e-mails, as well as adjusting Internet settings to higher security levels."

Let's clarify that ... "we suggest not using Internet Explorer to explore the internet."</comment>


Another Point of View (On Diversity) - <AUTHOR> https://status451.com/2017/08/04/another-point-of-view/ <comment><USER2> Fantastic writeup. Of course, it would be easy for me to put on the hat of the university indoctrinated and unpack your "invisible knapsack" of privileges that you never knew that you had; maybe someone else will save me the trouble (and do so earnestly, because that's much more fun to read).

> And then they get passed over, quite explicitly, with no explanation other > than that they don't deserve what they have.

Ahh, but there is an explanation; there are textbooks, courses, entire bodies of knowledge specifically created to define exactly why it is that you don't deserve anything that you've worked for, and further, why you should be compelled by force to give it away to those who have not earned it and may not even want it, to their detriment and yours.</comment>


WebGL on iOS8 confirmed - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/wildpeaks/status/473571400390029313

<comment><USER2> It's both in safari and in the webview:

[http://blog.ludei.com/webgl-ios-8-safari- webview/](http://blog.ludei.com/webgl-ios-8-safari-webview/)

Been waiting for this forever, seems like. Webgl's been in firefox since version 4!

<comment><AUTHOR> We definitely have been :)</comment></comment>


Google's evil policy on shutting down blogs - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2010/01/03/googles-evil-policy-on-shutting-down-blogs/

<comment><USER2> If it's important host it yourself. TANSTAAFL.</comment>


Tidalscale releases Hyperkernel - <AUTHOR> http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/tidalscale-releases-its-system-scaling-hyperkernel-300216105.html <comment><AUTHOR> I've been watching them for a bit, this technology is pretty interesting since it lets you build what the supercomputers of the 80s-90s were - simply and on commodity HW. Lots of CPUs, lots of ram available to an individual process/threadpool.

Not clear how network/disk IO is sorted out yet.

It looks like it could have promise for apps where people don't have the time to scale out into services. If its less latent than IP based APIs that could be pretty profound as well.

Could be entertaining with Docker as well.</comment>


Ask HN: What consumer products make you happier? - <AUTHOR> Hey there HN,
For the past few years, I've been thinking about products that improve our mental well being, and our overall happiness.
It seems like many of the popular products we use every day actively make us unhappy - e.g. Facebook, Instagram. Others products like Amazon and Uber make our lives more convenient, but not necessarily much happier.
What products out there make you happy and fulfilled? <comment><USER2> I don't think there are any products that make me _fulfilled_. Some make me happy in the short term -- but which ones depends on the context in the moment. The products that increase my short-term happiness are the ones that are solving a problem that is irritating me in the now.

If we're talking long-term happiness, I guess the closest I can come to is my bicycle, because it keeps me in reasonably good physical shape and being in reasonably good physical shape does increase my overall happiness.</comment>


Airports make the indignities inherent to air travel cohere with its fantasies - <AUTHOR> http://reallifemag.com/ground-control/ <comment><USER2> 1\. "Christopher Schaberg is an associate professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, and the author of The Textual Life of Airports (2011) and The End of Airports (2015). His next book, Airportness, will be published by Bloomsbury in fall 2017." \-- Airport fetish much?

2\. This drivel reads like an essay by a struggling humanities undergraduate. The whole piece could be replaced by two words, "airports suck", with no loss of information.

<comment><USER3> The "Siri which planes are above me" made the journey worth it for me. Really pretty neat.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't work for me. It just brings up a web search.

<comment><USER5> It should produce Wolfram Alpha results.

<comment><USER4> It's not

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one that likes airports? (Well, besides the annoying security theater.) Once you're in, you've got no other responsibilities besides showing up at a door at a specific time. You can't feel bad for not doing those other things you know you probably should be eventually doing, because you're busy in an airport! It's the one place I won't have any doubts at all about the way I'm spending my time when I sit around and read.

... Reading my post and considering my apparently-unique love for airports makes me wonder if I have some kind of anxiety issue.

<comment><USER7> I like them too for the same reasons (after I passed all the controls). And as a frequent flyer, I like to congratulate myself over my well-optimized routine!

<comment><USER8> Sitting on the plane sucks though if you're not first class.

I'm 6 feet tall and the lack of legroom and claustrophobia is tough to deal with, especially if the person in front of me inconsiderably leans their seat back.

The last three flights I was on had us sitting on the tarmac 40 minutes each time before take-off due to various maintenance/ATC issues. Of course, you couldn't open your laptop either (but I did anyway).

The flight attendants also have a habit of asking me to close my laptop when it isn't anywhere near time to land yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It struck me when I was traveling a lot for work that airports were not entirely unlike the debtors' prisons in Dickens: you couldn't wholly disclaim responsibility for being there, but the discomfort seemed out of proportion to the fault; and you could get some of the comforts of life, but at exorbitant prices.

</comment><comment><USER10> "It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport."

― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

<comment><USER11> Or how about this, from the introduction to Ursula K. Le Guin's collection _Changing Planes_ :

> If both you and your plane are on time, the airport is merely a diffuse, > short, miserable prelude to the intense, long, miserable plane trip. But > what if there's five hours between your arrival and your connecting flight, > or your plane is late arriving and you've missed your connection, or the > connecting flight is late, or the staff of another airline are striking for > a wage-benefit package and the government has not yet ordered out the > National Guard to control this threat to international capitalism so your > airline staff is trying to handle twice as many people as usual, or there > are tornadoes or thunderstorms or blizzards or little important bits of the > plane missing or any of the thousand other reasons (never under any > circumstances the fault of the airlines, and rarely explained at the time) > why those who go places on airplanes sit and sit and sit and sit in > airports, not going anywhere?

> In this, probably its true aspect, the airport is not a prelude to travel, > not a place of transition: it is a stop. A blockage. A constipation. The > airport is where you can't go anywhere else. A nonplace in which time does > not pass and there is no hope of meaningful existence. A terminus: the end. > The airport offers nothing to any human being except access to the interval > between planes.

<comment><USER12> Jesus, that's depressing. For me, the airport is a place that's always buzzing with human activity. The atmosphere is electric. Here, you find people from all walks of live, traveling for all sorts of reasons. Work. Family. Love. War. Weddings. Funerals. It's a goal-oriented sort of place, everyone has somewhere to be and a task to perform. There's common interest, we want to get to our destination safely. There are delights for the weary traveler - coffee, shops to browse in - Take the time to treat yourself! You're _travelling_.

<comment><USER13> But the coffee's bad, the shops, wifi, food, and drinks are overpriced and lack variety, the piano is off-limits, and nobody's rooted here long enough to invest energy in it as a place for community. What you describe would be great if it was good, but it's bad.

<comment><USER14> There are never any electric sockets either, so you can't use your screens for very long.

<comment><USER15> Some airports are relenting, but you must stand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was hoping this was about how airports /should/ work. The current system can't possibly be ideal.

Airports seem to be built with no concept of door to door travel time. For sample, SF to LA by plane. Use muni to get to BART, wait for BART, take it to the little airport train thing, then a line at checkin, security, and all the long walks in between.

Overnight self-driving sleeper Uber will be a vastly superior experience. It's a sign of how we're moving backwards despite all the technology.

<comment><USER17> European airports can be extraordinarily well connected. (Most of the German ones, for example, are connected directly to local rail lines, which are another thing entirely.)

<comment> semi-extrinsic London as well: Heathrow is directly connected to the tube (subway) and Gatwick is directly connected to local rail. With only hand luggage and a scannable passport, it takes about 50 min. from getting of the plane at Gatwick until you're in the middle of the city.

<comment><USER18> Should you ever be delayed at Gatwick, with pleasant weather, there's a public footpath that leads away from the airport along the river. It's amazing how quickly the airport disappears from view.

I spent some of a 4 hour delay walking this path.

The blue dotted line, go north then along the river: [http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.1581/-0.1632](http://www.openstreetmap.org/#map=15/51.1581/-0.1632)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I kinda like Airports -- mainly because I can have a beer at 10am.

<comment><USER20> Depending where in the world you are, there are bars open at 10am (at least in the US). Beer at 10am, in a family situation, for me while in Germany (inlaws house) took me aback. But I don't have a problem doing so at an airport.

<comment><USER21> Right. It's not that beer is _available_ at 10am -- obviously you can walk into any corner liquor store in the US at 10am, buy a beer, and drink it from a can hidden in a paper bag like your fellow sidewalk winos -- it's the fact that drinking at 10am in an airport is apparently perfectly respectable behavior, even for the most professional of travelers. Another facet of "airportness".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for the forward @jkuria!

Hi all, Agreed - from our vantage perspective, a majority of US airports still have a long way to go before they match best-in-class industry standards. We've been privileged to see (and contribute to) improvements across planning, traveler engagement, terminal design (cool stuff happening here) and much more. US airport leaders like PDX and CVG (recognized by travelers and Skytrax awards) are contributing to best practices that are slowly but widely being adopted.

From a personal perspective (as the founder of flightSpeak), I'm more optimistic about airports b/c of the human element that is largely untapped. The noise of wait times and lack of information has drowned out the fascination of discovery at airports, which we're working on changing.

If you'd like to find out more of what your local airport is doing, do a search for "<IATA> master plan" You'll be surprised there's a ton you can also contribute to as a traveler and resident (if you're in the area of the airport).

</comment><comment><USER23> Winogrand's "Arrivals and Departures"[1] adds a different dimension --I guess it's reminiscent of the "jet-age" optimism.

[1][https://fraenkelgallery.com/portfolios/airport](https://fraenkelgallery.com/portfolios/airport)</comment>


Uber reports Q2 losses of $404M, up 32 percent from Q1 - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/15/uber-reports-404-million-in-losses-up-32-percent-from-q1/ <comment><USER2> You mean their pizza delivery service with unicorns is not working?</comment>


Ask HN: What is your favorite poem? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Ozymandias. [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias](https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46565/ozymandias)

Stay humble.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám.

He was a medieval Persian astronomer, mathematician, and poet who wrote poetry extolling hedonism and criticizing religion.

</comment><comment><USER4> T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

Time, memory, history, mysticism; these poems are everything.</comment>


ELance merges with oDesk to launch a new platform called 'UpWork' - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2015/05/05/freelance-marketplace-elance-odesk-rebrands-as-upwork-launches-unified-site-for-finding-your-next-gig/

<comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9492556)</comment>


Show HN: Android Logcat app without root permissions - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/tananaev/rootless-logcat <comment><AUTHOR> The app gets stuck on connection stage quite often, but it seems to be a problem with adb daemon on the phone. After several retries it usually starts working. If you experience crashes, please wait for version 1.2 which is waiting for Google's "approval".</comment>


Ripple, Digital Currency, Surpasses Bitcoin Market Cap - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/05/ripple-is-now-tsunami.html

<comment><USER2> I cry hype. You can buy ripple on bitstamp, but not sell. What's the point of that? I received 2000XRP from an early adopter but have no idea how to cash them out or what a "trusted gateway" is.

Can anyone explain how you are supposed to use this?

(edit: started reading this <https://ripple.com/working-with-ripple/>)

From what I'm reading, the prices are incredibly misleading. People are buying ripples at the high price quoted in the article, but outstanding bid orders are generally 10x lower.

I get that it's a barter/IOU system, but I don't know how you justify that people can start with any amount of ripples they want just because they were there first. Where are they traded? How can I get rid of mine? Am I looking at it backwards?

<comment><USER2> I found this thread: [http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/05/ripple-is-now- tsunam...](http://www.thebitcointrader.com/2013/05/ripple-is-now- tsunami.html?showComment=1368083492272#c9049090278492728111)

Going to try what was suggested, but it looks like 'surely OP will deliver' to me.

<comment><USER2> I bought USD$2 with some of my ripples. I was indeed looking at it backwards. Lower prices are better, if you have a lot of ripples, because it's the price of USD/XRP. (Not the price of XRP/USD).

But now I have $2USD in my Ripple account, and it's just like the imaginary numbers in my bank ledger, without any insurance or other representation. And no obvious way to get it out. [Edit: I figured it out.]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Addition information about Ripple:

<https://ripple.com/wiki/Main_Page>

<comment><USER2> Hey, could you wait about 6 months and follow up my thread?

I have about 2000XRP and I believe you that the value will go up, but I just traded some for $2USD and I don't see any way to get it out. I don't want to ask anyone to get out of bed for 2000XRP. But maybe in 6 months.

<comment><USER2> Alright, 12 minutes later, I think I figured out how it works. Bitstamp has a ripple deposit option, where you can deposit, not ripples, but the dollars that you traded them for at the ripple website.

Ripples are only traded at ripple. There is just the one exchange, but folks who buy ripples can potentially do it other places.

I am waiting for my $2USD to clear to bitstamp. That was quick. (Bitstamp acknowledged the $2 deposit.)

<comment><USER2> Well I'm satisfied with the experience, and it sure seems like the trade fees are working. I can still sell 146XRP to get $2 (it cost me 157XRP earlier when I did it, same $2).

The $2.00 came to BitStamp without any loss/fee during Tx. But to buy ripple now, at BitStamp, $2.00 will only get me 100XRP, and that seems to be a precisely fixed price.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to save your side projects from your Employers? - <AUTHOR> Most people have the Side Projects and most often employers force the employee to take ownership if it is successful.<p>What steps you can take to save and make it a successful project assuming the nonsense contracts does not allow it etc. <comment><USER2> > Most people have the Side Projects and most often employers force the > employee to take ownership if it is successful.

Most people don't have side projects. Most companies have zero interest in taking ownership of your unrelated hobby project.

The exception is if your side project overlaps with your employer's core business. Example: If your employer makes database software and your side project is an iPhone game for kids, they have zero interest in your IP. It would be a waste of their time and money to seize it, and they aren't going to allocate resources to running it.

On the other hand, if you're employed develop database software and you also create a database side project while employed there, then yes, your employer will have valid claim to that IP.

The closer your side project is to your day job, the more interested they'll be in taking it. You can't collect a paycheck from a company, have access to their IP, while simultaneously working on a competing project in secret.

<comment><USER3> > Most people don't have side projects.

Do you have any citation to back this up?

My anecdata indicates otherwise. Most people I meet in IT do have side projects. They may not be popular or successful but they exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> See if your employer would be open to using GitHub's open source employee IP agreement: [https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip- agreement](https://github.com/github/balanced-employee-ip-agreement).

It's a bit more balanced than the standard IP Agreements most tech companies are using.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. Move to California and make sure you are payrolled in California under California law (not remote contractor to out of state company).

1a. When/If joining a new company, list your side projects in the "Pre- existing IP" paperwork, to be excluded from their ownership. Read carefully and make sure it's not mistakenly placed in the list of things that they get a free license to.

2\. Make sure your side project is not in the same line of business as your employer's.

3\. Make sure you use your own time and equipment for your side project.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are working for a company that is large enough to have a legal team you can ask them about it.

I asked a software company this about 2 years ago in the bay area and they gave me a form to sign stating it doesnt compete with the company's products and i explained what i was doing.

If they say otherwise you can take it from there!

</comment><comment><USER7> make them profitable, quit and have no employer. problem solved.

but oh wait. IT salaries are so high that it's impossible to match them nowadays

</comment><comment><USER8> use a computer, learn basic threat modeling</comment>


Aviary has slick HTML5 image editor. Add to your webapp now. Source code soon. - <AUTHOR> http://www.aviary.com/html5

<comment><USER2> We love their image editor widget but need something faster (it understandably lags when sending images to their server). Aviary has promised to offer the source code 'soon' but the problem is they said that last December.

Here is to hoping 'soon' has whittled down to a few weeks now. :)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great. My company deals with custom made clothing and sometimes we have to remake customers clothes. This will be awesome to have them upload a photo and then point out exactly what is wrong with the items right on our webpage.

Very cool!

<comment><USER4> Hey lem,

I'm nam and I work @ aviary. Can you send an email to nam(at)aviary.com about what you're interested in integrating? We have some new exciting features that you might like (IE compliant + custom skins)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So this is a thin client that interfaces with processes that run on the server? meaning the state of the image and what has been done with it has to be kept in sync between the client and the server - this isn't pure client 'html5' using canvas et al

What language/env is the server-side portion of this?

</comment><comment><USER6> This is close to what I've been looking for a long time, but still off the mark. The closest thing I've find to a dead-simple embeddable drawing program was an HTML5 MS Paint implementation..

does anybody have any recommendations for a good paint HTML5 widget with load/save?

<comment><AUTHOR> can you describe more about why it is off the mark? you might also try asking which would be a good program on one of the stack exchanges - possibly stack overflow.

<comment><USER6> It's is largely photo based (sharpen, etc) - I'm looking for something more drawing based - different brushes, a line and shape tool, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Would love to see examples of implementations when any of you guys make them public.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is already being used on production sites like shopify (the admin interface)

<comment><USER7> thx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Probably worth noting that this editor calls their service for the image transforms.

<comment><USER9> From trying the app, image transforms seem to happen locally.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, no network requests are made after the initial JavaScript and images have loaded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> it's ok. i'm excited that they are going to open the source up.</comment>


About the security content of iOS 8 - <AUTHOR> http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6441 <comment><USER2> > Bluetooth was enabled automatically after upgrading iOS. This was addressed > by only turning on Bluetooth for major or minor version updates.

What?</comment>


Your Samsung SmartTV Is Spying on You, Basically - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/05/your-samsung-smarttv-is-spying-on-you-basically.html <comment><USER2> Slightly more information here, with the name of the third party: [http://theweek.com/speedreads/538379/samsung-warns- customers...](http://theweek.com/speedreads/538379/samsung-warns-customers- not-discuss-personal-information-front-smart-tvs).

And part of the policy highlighted here: [https://twitter.com/xor/status/564356757007261696/photo/1](https://twitter.com/xor/status/564356757007261696/photo/1)</comment>


The White House is adding four 'Skype Seats' to its press briefings - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/23/skype-seats/ <comment><USER2> The White House's press room is actually a rather small room, and there are only 49 chairs in the room. You can see some of the pictures at Wikipedia and from links thereof ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Brady_Press_Briefing_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_S._Brady_Press_Briefing_Room)).

One thing that is worth pointing out is that the chairs are all assigned seating to specific news organizations. This assignment is NOT done by the White House but the White House Correspondents' Association. So the Trump administration can't decide to, say, replace the Christian Science Monitor's or Al Jazeera's seat with Breitbart News.

The linked article doesn't discuss who is going to be allocating these virtual seats--and I rather suspect that it's going to be decided by the White House and not the White House Correspondents' Association. It's disappointing that the article doesn't mention this, since knowing the answer to this question is what really sets the purpose of the move. If it is to be given to the White House Correspondents' Association, then it is likely an attempt to give voice to a wider range of media... but if it's White House-controlled, then it's more likely an attempt to guide press briefings to only considering questions from more compliant news organizations.

Edit: There are 49 seats, not the 42 that I originally stated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why use the "Skype" branding? Why not call them simply "video feed seats"?

<comment><USER4> People know what Skype is. It's almost generic, like referring to tissues as Kleenex.

<comment><USER5> Does this mean Skype won the video conf battle already?

<comment><USER6> His statement suggests they _lost_ a trademark war.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So basically, mainstream media is asking us annoying questions so we'll field them from people we like. Bets on how many of these Skype seats go to alt- right platforms and blogs? Bets on how often questions are fielded to these participants vs traditional media?

</comment><comment><USER8> Ok, so Breitbart has a seat now. Who else?

<comment><USER9> Several Internet-only sites are already members of the White House Press Corps, including hyper-conservative sites like Newsmax and the Daily Caller. Breitbart could have a seat in the briefing room if it wanted, and can certainly afford to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is the White House press briefing not televised/streamed already? Or is this just for the question asking aspect of it?

<comment><USER11> This gives people who are not from the major newspapers, magazines and TV stations access to ask questions at the briefing. Many of the majors don't even attend most briefings, so this could give more minor outlets much better access at low cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty cool news to be sure. About time we had an administration in line with modern tech reality.

<comment><USER9> White House reporters aren't in the room because they lack the tech-savvy to be there; the New York Times can throw down against any Y Combinator startup in building technology.

Reporters are in the room because they're trained, professional reporters who have dedicated their careers to reporting on the White House. Diluting their influence is not necessarily a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is another opportunity to hide the physicality of the room. The Skype members probably won't have the same viewpoint that reporters in the room will have. Easier to spin noises in the background.</comment>


The Challenges of Operating a Computing Cloud and Charging for Its Use (2017) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/docs/theimer.pdf <comment><USER2> [2017] A large part of the technical side overlaps with running servers and services in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is there a video for this? Is this from a talk?

<comment><USER4> [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/) and [http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/docs/](http://web.stanford.edu/class/cs349d/docs/)</comment></comment>


Your *New* Car Payment Will Delay Your Retirement by Years - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/camilomaldonado/2018/11/02/your-new-car-payment-might-delay-your-retirement-by-years/ <comment><USER2> Not to put anyone off, but there are two hypothesis:

1) investing at 5% return (over several decades)

2) having the time, once retired, to take advantage of the increased wealth

that might not reflect reality.

This said, it is rather obvious that buying new cars is a good way to waste money, and that buying used cars will allow to save a lot of money, and that _literally_ your mileage may vary:

>Is having an average payment really worth it to drive a new car or live in a bigger house?

>For some of you it might be, but for others it might not.

> Only you know the answer to that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Buying used is starting to look much better.</comment>


Engineers irrationally hate advertising tech - <AUTHOR> http://www.cogmap.com/blog/2012/03/15/engineers-irrationally-hate-advertising/

<comment><USER2> The dislike of advertising isn't so much that ads pay for free content on the internet. It has to do more with the slippery slope of qualities and techniques that advertisers have and use to be successful.

To be a really good advertiser, you normally need to do some of the following loathsome things (and others not listed):

1\. Outright spam. 2\. Force opt-out over opt-in notions of content distribution. 3\. Collect information on people that normally violates user notions of privacy. 4\. Abuse otherwise useful UI features like pop-up windows in order to force ads into user view. 5\. Be obnoxious to get your message heard, ie make the ad big, make the colors outlandish, add sound.

Engineers dislike advertising because we know details of how our privacy is being violated. We don't have the bliss of ignorance.

<comment><USER3> I work as an engineer for an advertising company (criteo) and call me naive but I believe we do none of these. I still understand the stereotyped view of advertising companies that we all hate.

Also, Google is (mostly) an advertising company.

<comment><USER4> I also work as an engineer for an ad related company (openx) and I similarly believe we do none of the above. On the engineering side we mostly write code that gets called billions of times a day and has to provide responses in a few hundred milliseconds. It's kinda fun.

Google is definitely an advertising company, but they do it well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a developer, I'll outline why I _rationally_ have great contempt for advertising.

Television, print and radio advertisements have irrevocably caused me to gag at most advertisements. I can see right though the lies and half-truths that marketers spin to fool people into buying their mediocre products. Take any McDonald's ad campaign over the past few years. Note that (at least in Canada) that no overweight person is ever featured. Somehow, perfectly healthy people are devouring Big Macs and we're expected to believe it.

Advertisements now often rely heavily on sexual overtones. Web advertisements are quite guilty as well. As an adult male with a functioning brain, I find ads that rely on sexuality disgusting. I wasn't compelled to purchase alcohol before the commercial came on, and now I'm thoroughly repulsed. Decrement another point of respect for marketers.

I'm also disturbed by ad companies tracking me whenever possible. I read a forum thread on a public computer which described a custom suit company. For the next week, I was inundated with ads for that company on the same computer. I do not seek "personalization" as I never intentionally click on ads. If I want something, I'll go out and look for it. On my own computer, I block as many ad servers as I can through my hosts file.

Yes, the world really does revolve around money. However, advertising is not the sole plausible revenue model for a web site. Wikipedia is a fine example of a web site that doesn't need third-party advertising to exist. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Wikimedia Foundation because it's funded so openly. GitHub seems to be chugging along without bombarding its users with advertisements because it has a premium content model.

As was mentioned earlier, "engineers" are smart enough to see through advertising. Disillusionment of web sites like Facebook and Google Analytics is more than enough to propagate disgust for advertising.

</comment><comment><USER6> Someone recently posted a similar observation, except it was not at all congratulatory: the best minds of today are all busy not curing cancer. The author of this post is right, none of the companies named are doing much that's interesting (except Google; search is incredible.) But I don't see that as a point in advertising's favor.

</comment><comment><USER7> They don't hate advertising tech, they hate spending time on something as useless as advertising.

An engineer wants to build something useful, and advertising is not useful. I mean really, who cares if 1% of a particular demographic switches from Tide to Wisk? Do you really want to put your talents to use in that way?

</comment><comment><USER8> Modern advertising is a parasite on people's evolved cooperation mechanisms. We naturally feel moved to do what those around us are doing, and advertising preys on that instinct by providing it false social cues to encourage behavior that is profitable for the advertiser.

</comment><comment><USER9> I dislike advertising itself as much as the next engineer. I won't even attempt to defend that position with logic, it's a visceral preference.

But I especially wouldn't want to work for advertisers. It seems natural that such companies would be structured to have engineering work for sales and marketing, with management acting as a funnel rather than an umbrella.

</comment><comment><USER10> First of all, how can you rationally hate something? Hate is inherently irrational. Anybody who hates anything hates it irrationally. The title should simply be, "Engineers hate advertising tech". The use of the word "irrationally" is simply a lame attempt to paint us as being objectively wrong, which doesn't even make sense.

Second, I think a lot of people have good reasons for disliking advertising tech. Beyond a certain point, advertising essentially becomes a zero-sum game. The people who see your ads are only going to spend so much money on stuff, and once you've saturated that, the best you can do is move the money around. It's unlikely that your product is vastly better than what people would otherwise find. Advertising can certainly help get the word out about truly excellent new products, but that use is vastly outweighed by simply trying to switch people from one brand to another mostly equivalent one.

Because of this zero-sum nature of much advertising, it becomes a race to the bottom. In most markets, if competing products A and B both improve an equal amount, everybody benefits. In advertising, if competing ads A and B both become more effective at selling, little changes. The better ad will continue to work better, but the absolute effect will not change much. (In reality, all ads compete against all other ads to an extent for people's money, but the point still holds as long as you look at all of them.) The trouble is that an ad's effectiveness is only loosely tied to its aesthetic value or utility to the viewer. In other markets, when competitors race to improve their products, the result is awesome products. In advertising, the result is ads that are continually larger, louder, brighter, stupider, more difficult to bypass, more insulting, and more annoying. Companies race to one-up each other's ads and the rest of us are just collateral damage in their war.

Ads are intruding on more and more of our lives, including _things we pay for_. Everybody I know hates sitting through ads after paying $BIGNUM at a movie theater, but somehow the practice has become universal anyway. I suppose it hurts sales less than it boosts revenues. This helps the theater, but it doesn't help _me_. Tickets didn't get any cheaper when ads went in. For an internet example, take Hulu Plus, which I understand is now showing ads to paid subscribers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, ads are probably the single greatest non-government mechanism for invading our privacy today. Ads work better when they're targeted based on personal information, and the result is private companies with vast amounts of information about everybody's browsing habits, held and used in a completely opaque and unaccountable fashion. Ad networks are becoming vast spy networks that just happen to be used for the relatively benign purpose of getting us to buy stuff. And you wonder why we don't like ad technology?

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm an engineer and I'm fascinated by the advertising space. In fact, one of the things on my side project list that's been there for the past four years is creating a mobile advertising network. I know its a big job and the technical challenges are one of the reasons I haven't done it.

If I were looking to work for other people, the primary reason I would likely not work for any of the advertising companies or startups I've looked at is not the engineering challenges they face, nor any irrational hatred of advertising, but the fact that ad companies are run by ad men.

Maybe a better word would be "MBA Types". There is a culture/group/whatever of people who are different from me, who in many ways I have trouble relating to and who seem to make decisions, in my experience, that are bad for engineering and bad for the product, but good for short term business wins.

I'm not saying they are wrong or bad or that I irrationally hate them, just that I long ago added to the list of things I look for in an employer a very senior person (CTO for instance) who is an engineer. And then I look to make sure that engineer is the one who has final say on engineering decisions.

Looking at most add startups "Team" pages, there are no engineers there at all.

Certainly there is a cultural segment of people who really seem to hate the idea of marketing, advertising, SEO, etc.

There's overlap with engineers, but I don't think this perspective is intrinsic to engineers.</comment>


A curated list of various freelancing websites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/prahladyeri/CuratedLists/blob/master/FreelancingSites.md <comment><USER2> A much larger list was just posted here yesterday:

[https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer](https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775983)

</comment><comment><USER3> As an irregular employer of 'talent' on freelancing websites I have come to the opinion that they are all terrible. You find amazing people who can solve incredibly hard problems, but there is no consistent way of doing this. No matter what the job, the pay, the communication, etc it is a total crap shoot if you get a faker who will waste your time or someone competent. I now just hire two or three people at the same time and hope one works out.

<comment><USER4> One of the tells that I have found:

1\. If they ask a lot of detailed questions, they are likely to be good. (What platform? Who is the customer? Anything working at present and so on)

2\. If they tell you not to worry, and that all your problems will be solved, run.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you on 2, but 1 is a bit more problematic. The worst offenders seem to be people who are fronts for hidden "teams". The front person is good, but the backend people are very often terrible.

<comment><USER4> That is a good point. That has happened too. And I hate getting on the phone frequently to make sure I am even talking to the same person.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In praise of Upwork [0]. Related discussion [1].

[0] [https://medium.com/@AdShadlabs/why-you-should-never-use- upwo...](https://medium.com/@AdShadlabs/why-you-should-never-use-upwork- ever-5c62848bdf46)

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12773282)

</comment><comment><USER6> These are generally the bottom of the barrel freelancing sites. I'm not sure why they seem to be presented as the crème de la crème.

<comment><USER7> Do you have any better recommendations?

<comment><USER6> There's many of them. These are some I've starred on GitHub:

[-1] [https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance- jobs](https://github.com/kaizensoze/remote-freelance-jobs)

[0] [https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer](https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer)

[1] [https://github.com/hugo53/awesome- RemoteWork](https://github.com/hugo53/awesome-RemoteWork)

[2] [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote- job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job)

<comment><USER7> Thanks. There is also this recent HN Post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795387](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12795387)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here are a few more websites: [https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer](https://github.com/engineerapart/TheRemoteFreelancer)</comment>


Python code to generate text using a pretrained character-based RNN - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/minimaxir/textgenrnn <comment><USER2> Very simple interface, but even the cherry-picked examples in the readme are quite poor in terms of meaning/grammatical correctness. It is even using pretty state-of-the-art techniques such as LSTMs and word embeddings, but the results just aren't there.

Can someone point me to some of the best examples of coherent and long (as in many words/sentences) automatic text generation? Or an explanation as to why we're so far from being able to tackle this problem? Because I haven't seen anything noteworthy in text generation to write home about.

<comment><USER3> Repo author here:

Unfortunately, a _lot_ of the examples people give for text generation in general are cherrypicked, which leads to a selection bias toward the robustness of text generation (see my previous rant: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14949220](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14949220))

In terms of size vs. performance (including retraining), the 128-cell LSTM was the best balance for a repo like this. (The 3-layer 512-cell networks used in the original Karpathy examples are hundreds of MB)

I recommend looking at the examples in the /output folder for more robust examples than the ones in the README.

<comment><USER4> You could make the bigger model available elsewhere, and allow the user to download the bigger model if they want to.

Why don't you have a priming ability? That is, generating starting from some context text. Might be useful for a lot of applications.

<comment><USER3> As noted in the README, supporting bigger models is an option for future development. (I still would need to train/optimize the model which does take time/money. Additionally, file hosting is not free and I am not making any revenue off of this project currently)

The generate() function does have priming with a `prefix` parameter; see the demo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Could this be used to generate place names in like this [https://medium.com/@hondanhon/i-trained-a-neural-net-to- gene...](https://medium.com/@hondanhon/i-trained-a-neural-net-to-generate- british-placenames-9460e907e4e9) but with a different language? Or would that need a different training set?

<comment><USER3> The pretrained network is calibrated for English, but if you trained it on non-English data it should still work fine since the entire network is retrained (assuming there is enough overlap with characters in the vocabulary; e.g. Spanish would work fine but CJK languages would not).

<comment><USER5> Thanks! I love the textgenrnn_vocab.json easter egg by the way :)</comment></comment></comment>


Using Rust to Make a Safer Interface for Yahoo's Fast MDBM Database - <AUTHOR> http://erickt.github.io/blog/2014/12/13/rust-and-mdbm/

<comment><USER2> Very excited to see rust progress.</comment>