Amazon Echo Buds - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07F6VM1S3/ref=ods_gw_fnn_xpl_dt_atf_shov_pt_en_0925?pf_rd_p=d1850fba-bf7a-4b5c-8952-f505fad79e33&pf_rd_r=CE25W7EX405HCV5BKXA5 <comment><USER2> Does anyone here actually use voice control commands in public (at a coffee shop, on the sidewalk) like the ads for this are suggesting? If so, does it feel awkward?

Expecting people to speak their commands in public just seems intrusive and I don't understand companies trying to pretend it's a norm to sell their products. I really don't want to know what song the person next to me is listening to. That's the point of headphones.

People with visual disabilities often already have better tools to interact with their phones with privacy, and nobody minds people using voice for people with physical disabilities either (and these tools exist already too).

Related: it's about to be even more weird for everyone in the world named "Alexa".

<comment><USER3> Not exactly a public setting -- but in the lab, I use raise-to-activate Siri on Apple Watch for setting timers and doing basic arithmetic (e.g. "what's 3% of 42 ml?"). It's been really helpful, since I have to have gloves on at all times.

<comment><USER4> With others around or alone? I feel like talking to an inanimate object is weird when others are around (sometimes even alone).

<comment><USER3> Both. The watch doesn't require a normal speaking level voice, so it's less awkward than speaking to Siri on my phone. It still feels a little weird, but people in the lab are used to it at this point.

The most awkward time is when the raise-to-activate doesn't work for whatever reason and I have to say the same thing again.

<comment><USER5> This only shows that you have a high tolerance for awkwardness. We also need to interview your colleagues to see if they consider you a weirdo.

Only with these two pieces of info we can decide whether it's feasible to use voice assistants in a lab setting.

<comment><USER3> Ha, that's fair. I actually think I have a very low tolerance for awkwardness.

I think people quickly grasp the reason why I'm doing it -- we all wear gloves, so the benefits are obvious to my fellow labmates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait a minute -- this actually seems too good to be true.

It offers "Bose Active Noise Reduction Technology" in wireless earbuds, when even _Bose_ doesn't offer noise cancellation in wireless earbuds -- or anybody else as far as I can tell.

(AirPods, Bose SoundSport, Jabra Elite -- none do noise cancellation. Bose offers the larger QuietControl 30 buds [1], but the tech is still in a bulky "headband" connected by short wires.)

So... is "noise reduction" different from, or weaker than, the "noise cancelling" which Bose products already provide?

Or is Amazon actually somehow producing/licensing a product better than anything Bose itself sells, and for only half the price?

Something isn't adding up here... but I want it to be true, because I've been wanting a pair of genuine wireless noise-cancelling earbuds for _so long now_!

[1] [https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/earphones/qui...](https://www.bose.com/en_us/products/headphones/earphones/quietcontrol-30.html)

<comment><USER7> The Sony WF-1000XM3 sounds like what you're looking for.

<comment><USER8> I have a set, and they are amazing for noise cancelling. Can highly recommend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> dawg- I have been teetering on the edge of full blown luddism ever since the first iPhone came out. Then social media took over . I have never used social media, and only just recently used a smartphone. Even though I hate the form it has taken on in this particular decade, I'm still open to the possibility that smartphones and social media could one day be ethical and healthy ways to communicate with other people.

That being said, the colonization of the human body is a step too far for me. I will use a smartphone, I might even use Facebook/Instagram/Snapchat one day if they ever embraced more human-centered ethical design. But I will never, ever, ever allow a company to intervene between my physical senses and the physical world. That's the line I personally choose to draw, hopefully many others will draw it with me.

<comment><USER9> > But I will never, ever, ever allow a company to intervene between my > physical senses and the physical world

So no headphones in general? what about vision-correcting glasses? I'm very confused by this line you're drawing.

<comment><USER10> I admire your pedantry, but there's a clear distinction between these things and what dawg- referred too. One is a product with a behaviour that is clearly understood, and not proprietary (for the most part). More importantly, it's behaviour is not under the control of anyone else.

I can see why you might think this line is a little restrictive and arbitrary. Collectively we've already gotten used to running so much software that we have little to no oversight over, so this seems like such a small thing.

<comment><USER11> Maybe one day we'll have software-controlled corrective lenses, and then they can take over-the-air updates to subtly enlarge and sharpen certain logos...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there an advantage of keeping the port micro-usb? I am very surprised that in 2019 Amazon is still making devices that don't have usb-c. It's become a huge selling point for me personally.

<comment><USER13> It could be a matter of size, but it's since the charging port isn't on the earbuds itself it might not matter.

usb-c connectors are (8.4mm x 2.6mm) whereas micro-a is (6.85mm x 1.8mm) and micro-b is (6.85mm x 1.8mm)

It might just be a matter of simplicity, since USB-C seems to have a larger surface area for the spec, but I don't really know if that's the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> If I were a retailer I'd _love_ to know what my potential customers are talking about in their day-to-day so I can give them a great deal on exactly that.

<comment><USER15> This comment needs to be higher.

Some topics here talk about paranoia about government spying before and after the Snowden revelations. Some talk about privacy issues and there are people decrying companies for emphasizing ad revenue and ignoring privacy.

And yet after all that some people seem motivated to virtually sprint into an ecosystem where a company that doesn't care about you as anything more than a revenue stream is trying to sell you an always-on microphone.

<comment><USER16> People absolutely have to part of the in-group. Television advertisements work.

I know several people with listening devices in their home. Each time it's been demonstrated to me, you know what they do? They ask it to tell me the weather.

That said, the headphones do make sense. Seems everyone is trying to avoid any sense of being around other humans as often as possible. Better to isolate yourself from the outside world when you're forced to go about whatever rat- race life you live than be forced to interact with society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's like somebody dared amazon to put a mic into every new item they sell.

The TV remote has a mic. The outlet has a mic. The earbuds have mic(s).

and so on.

I mean, I get it, they want me to talk to Alexa, so it can figure out how to sell me more junk.

But seriously, I do not understand the desire to be listened to 24/7\. I do not want a live mic in my home, nor in my pocket when I run, nor anywhere else it's not necessary.

<comment><USER18> It actually seems really useful when running. "What's my pace per mile?" "How far have I gone?" "Reply to my spouse and say yes I'll get the milk."

It's hard to get my phone out while running. Not impossible but an annoyance. This removes an annoyance so that's a nice option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like this is basically a Bose product with Amazon branding so it should be pretty good.

That being said, as an owner of both the Bose QC35 and the Apple Airpods, I'm curious to see how this fits a use case. The over-ear Bose headphones have just enough comfort for its noise-canceling that I can use it for work and flights, and the Airpods I use for workouts - and intentionally don't want it to block out too much noise so when I'm running/biking I can be situationally aware. Am curious what upsides and downsides of these two niches it'll hit.

<comment><USER20> > Airpods I use for workouts

I just bought airpods yesterday, and tried running with them for the first time today. I couldn't run more than 30 seconds without them falling out of my ear. (Kind of disappointing after spending $200)

I also have a Bose over the ear headphone. Too clunky for running.

These Amazon buds actually look like they could be better than Airpods for running. Looks like they have the "suction cup" type of design, which usually do a much better job staying in the ear when moving around.

<comment><USER21> I'm in between you and the other person that replied to you. I can wear Airpods running no problem, but no way if anything like a helmet strap is touching them (knocks them out). I'd never get a motorcycle helmet on without knocking them out.

With that said, try some Powerbeats Pros. They're the Beats version of Airpods, and frankly, I like them better. At $250, they're pricey as hell, but they sound better and they stay in better. With ear hooks and a collection of different sized buds, it eliminates trying to make a "one size fits most". If you don't have "Airpods ears", the Powerbeats are probably quicker to insert once you know the "trick" to getting them in. I always to have to fiddle with Airpods a bit to get them to sit right. Powerbeats: stick 'em in with that little twist of the wrist, sorted. And the Powerbeats have physical volume buttons, the lack of such being my one annoyance with Airpods.

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the recommendation!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I want to, but the online requirement for seemingly basic commands like "next track" renders the feature useless when I need it the most: the London Tube. I often have no hands free when travelling in peak hour and connectivity at stations is patchy at best.

Looking forward to TfL finally rolling out cell coverage from 2020 though. Long time coming.

</comment><comment><USER23> Amazon needs a different look for their own products' pages. Something about an item with zero reviews, the same style of photos as the off-brands they sell, and a wall of plain text phrases like "immersive sound" makes them seem really cheap.

<comment><USER24> seriously, my immediate impression was that they're visually indistinguishable from $30 rebadged aliexpress crap

</comment></comment><comment> mh- These seem interesting. The biggest downside I see is that you have to use the Alexa app, which is hands-down the worst iOS app I have the displeasure of interacting with regularly.

 _[..] including the ability to mute the mics with the Alexa app._

</comment><comment><USER25> I think one reason some may protest is these just aren't hacker-friendly to most IMO. They're consumption devices, and aren't tweakable enough, a la:

\- Homebrew

\- Custom firmware

\- API's / SDK's

\- Custom services / frameworks to orchestrate in-out-around vendors ecosystem (IFTTT?)

Not really enough to get at the gears of it. Is Alexa, by itself, the kind of ecosystem a startups would want to devote to? I imagine to make a really good Alexa product, it tends to be very specialized, and it's risky to be stuck with just one market.

Not to say Amazon's future isn't looking prosperous, but they control the APIs, the commission/royalty fees, etc. Whose to say 10 years from now, they wake up and say, you know, Alexa isn't financially viable anymore, your hardware has no site to connect to, and Alexa just shows the red loop/line of doom?

[1] [https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/api- ov...](https://developer.amazon.com/docs/alexa-voice-service/api- overview.html) I guess there's this.

<comment><USER26> > Whose to say 10 years from now, they wake up and say, you know, Alexa isn't > financially viable anymore, your hardware has no site to connect to...

Oh, you mean, whose to say that they won't pull a "Google", and kill off one of their products/services? ;-) (BTW, i fully agree with you!)

<comment><USER27> The number of people that keep headphones for 10 years don't matter to retailers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I only need one bud, how about $65 for the left ear bud?

<comment><USER29> I think you might have been joking. But, seriously, can you buy a pair and split them with a friend? Or do you have to pair both ear buds to the same device?

<comment><USER28> Not really joking. I would mostly use them to listen to podcasts while running. I like to keep one ear open to the world and don't need immersive audio to listen to speech. Old school Bluetooth earpieces work fine for this and are cheaper anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Be careful, these are the first step to being turned into a Cyberman.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQs3gVobcfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQs3gVobcfg)

<comment><USER31> Is that an improvement over an Amazon Basics toilet plunger that wants to exterminate you? [http://tardis.soup.io/post/393507531/1-The-Dalek-Plunger- Use...](http://tardis.soup.io/post/393507531/1-The-Dalek-Plunger-Used-By-The)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Now with Alexa in full force I really wish Amazon would try their hand at a phone again. Phones are just so blah lately. We need someone to shake it up.

<comment> seph-reed I really wish Amazon would just stop trying to take over every single industry on Earth and act like responsible adults in capitalist society (ie not in support of monopolies).

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Every time something new and exciting comes out from these guys (AMZN, GOOG, MSFT, etc.), it's like HN (as a whole) forgets about all privacy, etc.

So, Echo spies. We know that. And now we're (the at least 117 upvotes so far) OK with putting Echo directly into our ears? And barely anyone in the comments section seems to care either... what is going on in here?

<comment><USER34> There's some confirmation bias - there were more than a few comments on Facebook's purchase of CTRL-labs about privacy, Cloudflare's announcement of WARP going GA had more than a few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> At first glance, the design looks super similar to the Zolo Liberty earbuds, which I love. [https://zoloaudio.com/pages/liberty_series](https://zoloaudio.com/pages/liberty_series)

</comment><comment><USER36> The design is quite decent compared to the Apple Airpods which I love how they function but can't stand the dangly part. I have big ears so also like that the Echo buds offer different sizes.

</comment><comment><USER37> Got: _This item requires special handling and cannot be shipped to your selected location._ using a street address (not PO Box). Wonder what's up with that.

<comment><USER38> I had the same warning. My address is in a big city. Normal street address - no PO or even an apt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> >>Bose Active Noise Reduction Technology Interesting that Bose would license this out. Seems like Amazon would be a major threat to them.

<comment><USER40> It's just a white-label version. No IP licensing is necessary, or indeed at all likely; there'd just be a contract for the branding, and a post-final assembly step in which the branding is applied.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Am I the only one here seeing an uncanny resemblance to the Bragi Dash? (RIP)

</comment><comment><USER42> I am not sure about these. I think I would rather be plugged into my phone where I can do things like ask to make a phone call or ask for directions, plus everything Alexa can do too. Unless these can pair with your phone for that purpose?

<comment><USER43> Yes. In fact, I think it has to be connected to some other device with the Alexa app.

>Hands-free with Alexa – Echo Buds work with the Alexa app to stream music, play Audible audiobooks, make calls, or get directions—just ask.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Great design to optimize for gliomas. Probably not a problem for people in their 20's but I wouldn't recommend these for anyone past 40.

<comment><USER20> Can you elaborate?

<comment><USER44> While not "positively proven" sticking something that generates radio frequencies for long periods of time so close to your head can have potential negative effects, especially in those that are more prone to getting cancer. Oddly, the two groups I would say are most affected are the elderly, with poor DNA repair and poor immune response, and young people who are still actively growing (think under 21). At least with the iphone airpods, the damn thing still has a antennae that is positioned away from your head, but the use of bluetooth is supposedly several times more radiation over just normal cell phone use. These radiation levels, as far as I have read have not been studied for 10-40 years of constant exposure. I love my smart device and technology, but I generally try to turn my device wireless (and bluetooth) off when not using it. The convenience is not really worth getting cancer over.

[https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation- exposu...](https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/radiation- exposure/cellular-phones.html)

"A recent large study by the US National Toxicology Program (NTP) exposed large groups of lab rats and mice to RF energy over their entire bodies for about 9 hours a day, starting before birth and continuing for up to 2 years (which is the equivalent of about 70 years for humans, according to NTP scientists). The study found an increased risk of tumors called malignant schwannomas of the heart in male rats exposed to RF radiation, as well as possible increased risks of certain types of tumors in the brain and adrenal glands. But some aspects of this study make it hard to know just how well these results might be applied to cell phone use in people. For example, there was no clear increased risk among female rats or among male or female mice in the study. The doses of RF radiation in the study were also generally higher than those used in cell phones (ranging from 1.5 W/kg to 6 W/kg in rats, and 2.5 W/kg to 10 W/kg in mice), the animals' entire bodies were exposed, and the amount of time they were exposed was longer than most people typically spend on the phone each day. The male rats in the study exposed to RF waves also lived longer, on average, than the rats who were not exposed, for unclear reasons. Because of this, the NTP has noted that the study results cannot be directly applied to humans. Still, the results add to the evidence that cell phone signals might potentially impact human health."

And...

"The 13-country INTERPHONE study, the largest case-control study done to date, looked at cell phone use among more than 5,000 people who developed brain tumors (gliomas or meningiomas) and a similar group of people without tumors. Overall, the study found no link between brain tumor risk and the frequency of calls, longer call time, or cell phone use for 10 or more years. There was a suggestion of a possible increased risk of glioma, and a smaller suggestion of an increased risk of meningioma, in the 10% of people who used their cell phones the most. But this finding was hard to interpret because some people in the study reported implausibly high cell phone use, as well as other issues. The researchers noted that the shortcomings of the study prevented them from drawing any firm conclusions, and that more research was needed."

<comment><USER45> Aren't bluetooth headsets mostly receivers, not transmitters though?

<comment><USER46> I thought so too but my research and experience seem to indicate that one ear bud transmits to the other. Would love to see something definitive on this topic about airpods or other brands.

<comment><USER44> Also, the proximity of the smart phone transmitters to the body isn't doing you any favors. The fact that so many kids use smart phones and hold them so close to their heads when not yet fully developed is certainly a cause for concern.

Not sure if true, but I've read Apple has disclaimers about this for health.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> frequency, impedance, sensitivity? aac or aptx HD codecs? Where are the tech specs?

</comment><comment><USER48> Are bluetooth ear buds really worth the cancer risks?

</comment><comment><USER49> Bose is second only to Beats for sounding terrible yet somehow having a good brand image. What gives?

</comment><comment><USER50> We're on a slippery slope.

These buds have microphones, obviously.

I do not want my voice captured by random folks on the street without my consent and sent to Alexa.

How will opt-in looks like for such systems?

<comment><USER51> Same as for google glasses. Shame the person wearing them and refuse to hang out with them. All the glassholes seemed to get it pretty quickly.

<comment><USER52> Do you really thing "shaming people" is an appropriate, mature response?

<comment><USER51> In my opinion a lot of societal problems that we have exist because we don't shame people for bad decisions any more. 100 years ago the idiot in the village knew they were the idiot. Sure their life sucked. But now all of the idiots of all villages form their own little filter bubble and convince each other that they are the smart ones and that the rest of the world got it all wrong. Sounds like an improvement until you realize that this is the mechanism behind anti-vaxx, flat-earth, obama-birther, climate-change-denial and so on. Or in other words a lot of modern stupidit y that actually kills people.

So yes, I think clearly saying "I think you are stupid for wearing google glasses and I will not have a beer with you as long as you do" is a mature response. At that point they have to decide if they want to have google glasses or friends.

<comment><USER53> > "I think you are stupid for wearing google glasses and I will not have a > beer with you as long as you do" is a mature response

Disagree. If I had a friend who seriously called me stupid, I'd think they're an asshole, not mature. I'd say "I don't feel comfortable around that device, would you mind putting it away while we have a beer?" is mature.

Making something about someone else, or trying to control others' actions, is not mature. Communicating your needs and concerns is where it's at.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a mobile/touch-optimized version of HN? - <AUTHOR>

Just got my new Palm Pre, but upvoting on HN is kind of a pain. Is there a version that is optimized for touch? <comment><USER2> If you're on iPhone or iPod touch, this is better for reading. Voting & commenting is on the way very soon.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=993949>

<comment><AUTHOR> Link doesn't work for me.

<comment><USER2> try this guy. <http://michaelgrinich.com/hackernews></comment></comment></comment>


Silicon Valley Has an Asian-People Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.unz.com/gnxp/silicon-valley-has-an-asian-people-problem/ <comment><USER2> Instead of looking at race, we should be looking at culture. Is education stressed in the family?

The railroads were built on the backs of what is essentially Chinese slaves in America.

Chinese restaurants spread around mostly because of rampant racism that forced many families and businesses out of san fransico and into the midwest.

Many of the descendents of these same immigrants are now extremely successful. Why? Because they didn't pass on a victim mentality and instead pushed their kids to succeed at all costs.

I'm really tired of these articles that give us straight statistics and somehow equate this with racism.

</comment><comment><USER3> IIRC Harvard at least has introduced measures which reduce the amount of Asians in their intake, without necessarily saying that was their goal.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a tie-in with education, and the technical skills that are required, and who has those skills?</comment>


Help HN: Dear Apple, why do you sell products in India? - <AUTHOR>

This March I bought a MacBook Pro (MD101HN/A), and without any doubt, I can say that it was the happiest day of my life.
Last week I noticed some performance issues, and suddenly my MacBook stopped booting. I tried safebooting, nvram reset, disk repair using disk utility, and finally I realized that my Macinotosh HD gave up on me.
I thought, so what, I got my MacBook covered under Apple 1 Year Warranty. What I didn't know a week ago was that, it was going to be a nightmare.
I live in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India. Even though it's a small town, but I checked up on Apple website, and Apple has listed a service center in Jodhpur. I tried to contact on the given number, but it said that number is invalid.
I still didn't gave up, I tried to contact on the service hotline number provided by Apple in India, but they never pick up the phone.
Finally, I checked my MacBook Packaging, to see if I can find any email id they provided, I was happy to see that they did (email@example.com), they also provided a telephone number.
I was shocked, when I came to know that it was an Invalid email id. On top of that the phone number they provided was not correct (the man who received the phone said to contact on another number).
I am helpless here in India, I don't know what to do, as Apple Service is total chaos here, there is no man responsible to contact for Apple Service in India.
I quoted above that "I bought a MacBook Pro (MD101HN/A), and without any doubt, I can say that it was the happiest day of my life". But today, as of this moment, I feel totally opposite.
If there is an Apple Employee reading this post, I want to know why is Apple even selling products in India, if they cant even provide after sales support.
I don't know where else to ask for help so, dear fellow hackers, I can't afford to lose my MacBook Pro, just because I am in India. Help Me. <comment><USER2> I contacted Apple while I was travelling for work in India about a busted macbook air. The trick is to grab some skype credit and call their international support numbers (listed on their website).

They shipped out a new one to me within two days, and the same delivery guy took my broken one back. Fantastic support experience.

[Edit] they charged me for the new one until they received the faulty one back and then did a charge back [/edit]

</comment><comment><USER3> Provide your feedback here - [https://ssl.apple.com/support/feedback/](https://ssl.apple.com/support/feedback/)

India Support number: (91) 1800 4250 744

Or try contacting sales SMS "SALES" to 54646 or email firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Already provided my feedback at: [https://ssl.apple.com/support/feedback/](https://ssl.apple.com/support/feedback/)

Called at (91) 1800 4250 744 like 100 times already, line always busy.

Already mailed at: email@example.com

Any of the above methods didn't work.

<comment><USER4> Try calling sales and ask to be transferred to support.

Apple sales enquiries For sales enquiries call 1800 425 4646 (toll free) or 080 2574 4646. Lines are open Monday-Saturday, 09:30-18:30.

Support line will probably still be busy, but it is worth a shot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will try this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few days back my iPhone's power button stopped working. I gave it for repair. After 4 days when I called to know the status, the local service center told me that warranty was rejected. I called Apple care to find out that my display was a fake one. Yeah, there is no connection between the two issues. After 2 hours with Apple Care, I finally got it replaced. But the experience was a nightmare.

Apple users never like to hear their Apple product is a fake one.

</comment><comment><USER6> I wouldn't rely on the service centers in the smaller towns here in India. Look for apple service centers in Delhi (closest to you). Also, don't bother with the apple stores. They are just resellers and they can't help you out. Find service centers.

</comment><comment><USER7> Customer service # 1-800-425-0744(All India), 080-4140-9000 (Local / national rate access)

<comment><AUTHOR> Tried already (as mentioned in post, Apple hotline numbers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Where did you buy the laptop from? Have you tried reaching out to them. Alternately, bigger cities have authorized service centers, that is likely your best bet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I bought it from eBay, I have mailed the seller regarding the issue, still waiting for reply.

<comment><AUTHOR> *Update: Bought from eBay (with VAT Paid Invoice).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are you ready to ship your laptop? I live in chennai and I know there is an apple store here.

</comment><comment><USER10> I am from Jaipur, and if I remember correctly, there's an Apple service center there.

</comment><comment><USER11> jalan, you can get in touch with Apple fairly easily by going to Apple.com and chatting with an online customer service rep. I did this several times over the past week. They are available 24x7 and I got the answer I needed every time.

</comment><comment><USER12> ex apple store employee here. I'm not sure of the full ramifications but the 1 year out of the box support only works in the country that you buy it in. If you get apple care for your laptop it extends it to global coverage.

</comment><comment><USER13> apple support seems to be much better in the usa than elsewhere. here in chile i've never had much success - slow and expensive. they never replace (for free) power bricks with frayed cables, for example.

</comment><comment><USER14> I may just be guessing, but indisales_support? Could it be a typo and be "indiasales_support"? (note the addition of an 'a')

<comment><AUTHOR> I too thought the same, so I mailed at following addresses: email@example.com email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com email@example.com

All four gave delivery failure notification.

I still can't believe that Apple doesn't even provide support mail id, not even in US (I just checked), only phone support, and that too doesn't work in India.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Why the hell you purchased an over-priced and over-hyped product. There are far better and cheaper options available.

<comment><USER16> Just wanted to let you know that I didn't down vote you because I don't agree with your opinion, I down voted you because your comment is of absolutely no use the OP, and brings nothing of value to the discussion.</comment></comment>


Why gamification works – process creation - <AUTHOR> https://getbadges.io/blog/gamification-works-part-1-process-creation <comment><AUTHOR> Programmers create software in a series of discrete steps called "commits". Each commit adds a small improvement to the software or fixes a mistake. Programming is a highly involved activity, so when programmers finish a commit, most of them take a break. It helps them recover from mental strain. However, when they're back from their break, it's not easy to get "in the flow" again. Which task should they deal with next? Can they get this commit done before lunch? This tea is so good, so why not have another one?

<comment><USER2> Yes, but I would prefer a coffee</comment></comment>


Windows 10 Console Host Enhancements - <AUTHOR> http://www.nivot.org/blog/post/2016/02/04/Windows-10-TH2-%28v1511%29-Console-Host-Enhancements <comment><USER2> I really would want to use Windows Server, especially with the upcoming nano version, but it is a full 50% more expensive on Azure. A D4 instance (8 cores Haswell Xeon, 28GB ram. 400GB local SSD) costs $458 with Oracle Linux and $833!!! with Windows. It just does not make any sense for me to chose Windows.

At this point, I wonder why Microsoft even bothers innovating on Windows Server when it is going to get chosen only by orgs who need to run MSFT software or C#. Those guys don't care about nano or containers or whatever.

<comment><USER3> Or any other applications that only run on Windows - which in the enterprise world is a _lot_ of applications, not just from Microsoft.

<comment><USER4> Still, forcing people to pay such a significant premium isn't exactly how you get people to use your product.

And I don't know about cloud pricing for Windows machines, but the price difference isn't nearly as crippling on regular VPS/physical hosting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> mark-r So great, they re-introduced the features they took out 20 years ago. Wake me up when they properly support UTF-8.

Too little, too late.

<comment><USER5> Just use ConEmu (or get off Windows) if you need a terminal. It's still far more fully-featured than the Console Host will ever be.

The stagnation in cmd.exe (and even PowerShell) appears to be a casualty of Microsoft assuming that point-and-click would take over the world completely, which clearly hasn't happened in development. I still shake my head at the ops nightmare that is RDPing into hosted Windows Servers.

As one of the sibling posts here notes, there's really no reason to use Windows Server for anything, unless you have legacy applications to support. They're going to have to do a lot, lot more to make this a competitor.

<comment><USER6> It's odd though that they lean so heavily on PowerShell now, and still don't have a good first-party terminal to run it in.

<comment><USER7> The powershell terminal is a little better than the normal CMD shell, but there's some weird stuff there... Why are they still using the block selection for copy-paste? Never has that been what I wanted

<comment><USER8> A Slashdot comment (to this link) provided good context why the current console sucks:

[http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=367...](http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3679326&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=2#post437323699)

That's from a ReactOS developer.

<comment><USER9> Whoa, that was a surprisingly interesting thread. (Not so much the console part, but the other questions he answered.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Bitvise has had a free ssh client that puts full terminal emulation into a cmd window for years. It's very well done.

But I don't like the cmd environment for ssh, unfortunately securecrt spoiled me but it is too expensive these days.

</comment><comment><USER11> Excellent! I couldn't get ansicon to work on W8, so it's great to see ANSI is built in in W10.</comment>


Ask HN: help debug mapme, noob map app - <AUTHOR> http://mapme.heroku.com Request for assist debugging simple map script: please test from your locale http://mapme.heroku.com <comment><AUTHOR> Request for assist debugging simple map script: please test from your locale <http://mapme.heroku.com>

source: <http://github.com/victusfate/mapme>

</comment><comment><USER2> Works for me.</comment>


How  The Obama Campaign Was Run Like A Lean Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3002973/5-ways-obama-campaign-was-run-lean-startup <comment><AUTHOR> This makes sense of alot of the moves we saw the Obama camp making, the reddit outreach was interesting and way beyond anything I'd seen done on other platforms, and the emails from multiple sources was smart and annoyingly effective. Even if they hit my spam, my friends and I would talk about how they were just emailed by Biden or someone else. Anyone know if they were using Amicus too? Also, what sectors would the lean startup model not work in? Sees almost universal at this point.</comment>


Ask HN: Standing desks – still using over the long term? - <AUTHOR> I'm finally thinking of getting a standing desk since I was last at Ikea and found one for a reasonable price.
What are peoples thoughts on standing desks after long term use?  First I have to consider the loss of desk real estate, but I should still be able to run my triple monitor setup.
Second is the fact that I do often take breaks for a quick run on the treadmill, lift some weights, etc. So maybe there is no benefit to a standing desk for me. <comment><USER2> Beware of the sit/stand Bekant desk, unless you live near an IKEA. The power supply in them goes bad, and it's not a standard power supply either. While they do give you a 10 year warranty on the desk, the replacement of the power supply proved to be difficult for me. My first lasted maybe ~6 months of light use, and took another 4-5 months to get a replacement.

I live ~4 hours away from the nearest IKEA. They completely acknowledged there was a power supply problem when I was able to chat with them on the phone, but only wanted me to bring the whole desk back in for replacement. It's easy to prove it's just the power supply that stops working because the green light goes out on it, and unplugging it a few hours makes it work again. I finally raised enough of a storm they sent me a new one and it's worked since.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IKEA/comments/3h92d6/bekant_sitstan...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IKEA/comments/3h92d6/bekant_sitstand_raising_problem/)

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/192585/fault...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/192585/faulty- relays-capacitor-or-power-source)

[http://www.workwhilewalking.com/ikea-bekant-standing-desk- re...](http://www.workwhilewalking.com/ikea-bekant-standing-desk- review#gsc.tab=0)

</comment><comment><USER3> How does a standing desk represent a loss of desk surface space? Unless you're talking about one of those tiny podium-style desks, which, yeah, you may find yourself resenting.

I've used a sit-stand setup for about 4 years now and will never go back. My neck, back, and wrist pain are significantly reduced. Note that a standing desk alone will NOT suffice. Neither sitting not standing for extended periods is particularly healthy or comfortable.

Always make sure that whatever height desk you use, you're rising your monitor to an appropriate height above the desk surface to allow you to look straight ahead at it instead of downwards. This is especially important with laptops, but even external monitors tend to be too low by default. With a laptop, use an external keyboard and mouse whenever you're at your own desk, and put the laptop itself on a riser.

Previously I used two risers on top of a normal height desk. When sitting I would put the laptop on the low riser and the keyboard and mouse on the desk. When standing, the laptop would go on the upper riser and the keyboard on the lower one.

I finally got a hydraulic desk, and love it. I never could find a riser quite tall enough to raise a laptop quite to eye level atop a normal height desk. And I'm not very tall.

There's more space to spread out the keyboard and mouse even when standing. It's also easier to set up an external monitor to work at both heights. Not cheap but totally worth the investment.

<comment><AUTHOR> I currently use a huge Ikea Galant wrap-around desk. So I can run my 3 24" displays and just swivel my chair to move to writing space. To get the equivalent standing space is beyond my budget, so at least for me, it impacts my current setup more than just being able to stand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I use an Ergotron adjustable standing desk and find it works well to hold MacBook, external monitor, Lenovo keyboard, and lab notebook. It is sturdy and switching between sitting and standing works well for me.

[https://www.ballicom.co.uk/33-397-062-ergotron-workfit-t- sit...](https://www.ballicom.co.uk/33-397-062-ergotron-workfit-t-sit-stand- desktop-.p1115593.html?ref=PLA&gclid=CjwKEAjw- uDABRDPz4-0tp6T6lMSJADNoyPbrIzEqlOPHd_z2Cql_vB_NrsEIT4CQw1fVnFA5RI7GRoCqfHw_wcB)

</comment><comment><USER5> I made the move to a standing-only desk about three years ago. I made a riser to go on my existing desk, so it cannot be lowered. I reserved an area for sitting if I need it.

It takes some getting used to, but I would not go back now. Invest in a good standing pad.

I primarily made the move to relieve back pain from sitting for long periods. I don't know if I buy all the sitting-will-kill-you talk, but I figure it can't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes! Using every day for ~3 years. Thinking of going even further with treadmill desk.

My story about it here: [https://www.fitnessblip.com/how-standing-desk-can- change-you...](https://www.fitnessblip.com/how-standing-desk-can-change-your- life)

</comment><comment><USER7> Rather than getting an expensive lift/drop standing desk, consider getting a tall desk and hi-chair. This was you get the best of both worlds and it's cheaper and quicker to transition between standing/siting

</comment><comment><USER8> is there any recent study about standing desk?</comment>


In 1975 a Kodak employee invented the digital camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.brw.com.au/p/tech-gadgets/made_this_kodak_employee_invented_QnYp4iCrFXYwagdCRzszeP <comment><USER2> I suppose this is meant to be presented like a record-label-who-turned-down- the-beatles kind of story, but I think they did the right thing. In 1975, digital cameras would not have succeeded like they eventually did. The timing was completely off and if they had started to pursue that, they would have been losing lots of money for many years.

<comment><USER3> In 1975, you are correct. But the key mistake wasn't in 1975. It was in the 2000s, as the digital market started to pick up.

Unfortunately, the attitude of "Every digital camera that was sold took away from a film camera and we knew how much money we made on film" is all too common in companies that dominate a given market - people pretending that as long as they don't cannibalize their current products then no one else will either.

There's a brilliant 60s article from Harvard Business Review, called "Marketing Myopia" that talked about this effect even back then.

<comment><USER4> Also known as the "Innovator's Dilemma" more recently:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator%27s_Dilemma)

Heck, Kodak is one of Christensen's main examples.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article perfectly exemplifies why startups are such a powerful idea. He made this on company time with company funds, and Kodak profited for years off the patents while keeping his work out of the market. He had all the ingenuity, knowledge, and marketing; all Kodak did was provide the money. If companies didn't have non-compete clauses and ownership of things made on company time he could've likely made an attempt into the market, or at least owned the patent. Startups equalize the playing field for the smaller guys by giving their ideas a chance to be funded, though of course the path is harder and fraught with its own risks. (I also find it interesting how one can own a patent on something that is just sat on)

</comment><comment><USER6> I have to point out the Motorola Exorciser M6800 development system used by this camera:

[http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/](http://blog.iso50.com/tag/kodak/)

This was the first system I used professionally and I wrote an emulator for it: [http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/](http://exorsim.sourceforge.net/)

</comment><comment><USER7> The opposite is illustrated by Apple - whatever you think of the company or their products, it's clear that the iPhone was a recognition that standalone music devices were not going to be viable in the future, and a movement to the replacement, and they timed that very well.

</comment><comment><USER8> I could have sworn I saw a Kodak digital camera in the National Museum of Film, Photography and Television in Bradford in about 1990. I think the signage said it was the first one on sale and was made in the early 80s.

</comment><comment><USER9> I didn't know they made a lot of money on patents. Imagine if they had filed later and were still collecting royalties from every digital camera decide sold.</comment>


25 years of BBC.co.uk web design history - <AUTHOR> https://www.versionmuseum.com/history-of/bbc-website <comment><USER2> Actually, the 1998 versions looked quite nice for the time. What a difference to the 1997 entertainment homepage!</comment>


Can You Be Too Perfect? - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-be-too-perfect

<comment><USER2> Have many HN'ers done the Myers-Briggs personality type test? According to this test, I'm an INTJ.I tend to set very high standards for myself, many times they're impossibly high. When I fail to achieve them, I feel horribly depressed and disappointed in myself. Worse yet, I tend to have very high expectations for the people around me.

I'm that guy who joins your project and reformats your code for consistency, and who relentless refactors your code into something readable and DRY.

I've spent a great deal of time learning how to set manageable goals for myself on a near daily basis. I'm also learning how to let my expectations for others be set by others (versus me setting very high standards for them). So, I can see a bit of myself in this article. I often wish I cared a little less. It seems like an easier life.

<comment><USER3> I took that test once when I was 14, at a party, and I was INTJ as well.

But the reaction I got from other people was a little weird. I sense they may have been judging me because of the J. Which stands for Judging.

So the successive times I've taken that test, I've been overly aware of my responses, and I'll consciously skew them to produce a result that represents a more outgoing, easygoing, emotional person.

Is that wrong?

<comment><USER4> why not just clarify? the 'judging' doesn't mean you judge other people -- it means you prefer action over learning. that's the real difference between J/P -- action v learning preference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Article is less so about being too perfect, more so about wanting to be perfect when you aren't. Titles that are more marketing than description annoy me.

</comment><comment><USER6> print [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you- be-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=can-you-be-too- perfect&print=true)

</comment><comment><USER7> _despite his accomplishments, Liu teeters on a mental precipice: "It feels shameful, like, hey, I'm in my early 30s, I should have had a Yahoo by now or I should at least have had a company I sold for tons of money."_

Sounds familiar.

</comment><comment><USER8> depends ..</comment>


Classical Computer Science Texts - <AUTHOR> http://e7l3.org/classics.html <comment><USER2> I'd definitely consider SICP a great classical comp sci text... not quite sure why it's not on that list.

<comment><USER3> SICP is a great book to learn some neat programming from, but it wasn't really a classic text in the same sense as the rest of the list, which is mostly original work or something close to it.

Personally, I think surveys of a field like Russel/Norvig's AI textbook, SICP, or CLRS are more worthwhile to spend time reading compared to original literature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Random observation: It's only extra-geeky links like these that lead to pages with a set of links:

 _RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE (Part I)

This paper appeared in Communications of the ACM in April 1960. It is the original paper on Lisp.

There are html, dvi, pdf and Postscript versions of the paper._

...

Umm, yeah. I think I'll choose "html". Thanks for giving me the option, though.</comment>


Signs of neutrinos from less than a second after the Big Bang - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2015/09/signs-of-neutrinos-from-the-dawn-of-time-less-than-a-second-after-the-big-bang/

<comment><USER2> Recent discussion on the same result: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163641](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10163641)</comment>


Aerofex hoverbike could be yours by 2017 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnet.com/news/aerofex-hoverbike-headed-for-market-in-2017/

<comment><USER2> I realize there are all sorts of issues with regard to practicality, but I can't help but think, "I might just get my Star Wars hovercraft after all."</comment>


Free info on market size, demand etc. - <AUTHOR>

When writing a business plan or proposal it helps to have genuine information on the size of target market (and other statistics).
Is there any free web service that offers such data/info?
Some example questions: - size of digital photo printing market in USA - number of prints made every year...
Some info I can get through Google but would be great to know about a free service that offer the same (I know about few paid ones). <comment><USER2> The best method is using sec edgar filings. You find the largest public company in your market and download the most recent 10-k's (annual report). They are publically available, you do not need to pay (although some sites make it easy for a fee). They always contain good market research and predictions for the markets, and are legally obliged to provide correct information.

<comment><USER3> That's definitely a good idea when the company operates only in the market you are interested in. However, it doesn't work when the company has multiple revenue streams and doesn't break them out in their published accounts. In that case, if the company runs separate sites for each revenue stream, you can use Alexa (or similar) to get an idea of the traffic percentage to that sub- site and use it as a crude proxy for revenue.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: k-nearest neighbour search with circular dimensions - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to figure out how to do a k-nearest neighbour search where some of the dimensions are 'circular', e.g. closed loops. Is this possible? Anybody got any clues or want to get paid to implement it? <comment><USER2> Where's the problem? Just adjust your distance metric accordingly.

Or if you have a kNN kernel already available which takes inputs in Euclidean space, just map a dimension _t_ into two dimensions, _sin(t)_ and _cos(t)_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course, thanks.</comment></comment>


Stacked Borrows: an aliasing model for Rust - <AUTHOR> https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/08/07/stacked-borrows.html <comment><USER2> For some context, Ralf is one of the people who's been working on proving Rust code, and specifically unsafe Rust code. He's already had some really impressive results.

One of the weakest areas of Rust (in some sense) is unsafe; we don't have a proper understanding of what exactly is acceptable with unsafe code. Projects like these are working on proposing a model for what those rules should be.

So, if you're most Rust programmers, this doesn't affect you, really, other than making code you depend on a bit higher quality :). If you're an author of unsafe Rust code, this would tell you what you can and can't do, and if you work on a compiler, these rules would tell you what you can and can't optimize.

Additionally, this is pretty neat:

> I hope to explore this question further in the following weeks by > implementing a dynamic checker to test the model on real code.

If we accepted this model (which is, of course, a big if; it was just proposed!), then we could take this tool and instrument your unsafe, an "unsafegrind", if you will, that could tell you at runtime if your code trips UB.

This tooling is enabled by MIRI, which is also amazing, but I've gone on too long already. TL;DR: it's sort of a "rust interpreter" that we've invested in for compile-time function evaluation, but also pays off with things like this.

<comment><USER3> Huh, does MIRI mean that rust is actually doing some form of partial evaluation during compilation? What's the best way to learn more about that?

<comment><USER2> MIRI is short for "MIR Interpreter"; it can run basically any Rust code. But, in the compiler itself, its interface is restricted a bit; we haven't fully defined what "const fn" will be.

[https://github.com/solson/miri](https://github.com/solson/miri) is probably the best place to start poking around :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Beyond the technical aspect, the pedagogical side of this is huge.

An argument often made in favor of Rust's static analysis restrictions is that "worst case scenario, you just drop down to unsafe and you're back to C semantics".

However, this only holds true as long as the rules to uphold in unsafe code are easy to explain. Strict type aliasing in C is already considered as somewhat of a disaster by many, and is way simpler.

I hope they get this right.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's fascinating to see the problem being addressed. But it all seems to be about "raw pointers", which are mostly for talking to non-Rust code and probably ought to be on the way out as more low-level libraries are implemented in Rust.

The expressive problems with the ownership model mostly involve backpointers. It's hard to create doubly-linked lists or trees with backpointers in safe Rust, short of going to reference counts and weak pointers. This proposal doesn't seem to address that. Backlinks imply a consistency constraint between forward and back pointers, and Rust lacks the expressive power to talk about that.

The other big expressive issue involves partially initialized arrays. The underlying machinery for a vector involves getting uninitialized memory and initializing it one entry at a time as more of the vector's space is used. You can't talk about that within Rust. It's the sort of thing for which a simple inductive proof is needed, once you're able to say things like "Only elements 0..N of this array are valid".

These are places where you need unsafe Rust because you can't say what you mean in safe Rust. That's the first problem, insufficient expressive power. The second problem is proving that what you said is correct. That's a technical compiler/verifier issue.

<comment><USER6> After we have a formal understanding of exactly which invariants unsafe Rust code may rely on and must preserve, we may be able to integrate a proof assistant into Rust to allow all that functionality and more to be exposed safely—we could replace unsafe {} blocks with automatically checked proof annotations! That's a dream for the far future, but Ralf's work is an important step toward making that possible.

<comment><USER5> _That's a dream for the far future._

Which it has been for too long. I was doing automated program proving on basic validity stuff like this over 30 years ago.

In order to prove something, you first need a notation for talking about it. Few languages let you talk about uninitialized memory space properly. Constructors are too magic.

Un-initialized memory can be viewed as write-only. You want to show that no un-initialized byte is ever read. Memory comes from the allocator in blocks of un-initialized bytes.

A constructor is simply a function that takes a block of un-initialized memory and assigns every byte to something meaningful for that type. At the end of construction, the memory block becomes a valid instance of that type.

Once you can talk about construction as a non-magic operation, you can talk about partial construction of an array. Until you can talk about it, you can't prove anything about it.

Some types, such as "byte", are fully mapped - any bit pattern is valid. So they can be initialized by anything that fills them. That's how input buffers can be expressed.

<comment><USER7> > A constructor is simply a function that takes a block of un-initialized > memory and assigns every byte

In C++, the constructor doesn't initialise _every_ bytes (padding for example)..

<comment><USER5> Then you need to show that any un-initialized byte can either never be read or is of a fully mapped type where it doesn't matter.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure what you mean by 'a fully mapped type' but uninitialised padding bytes are read without problem in C++ when you do a memcpy of a structure..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's linked (with a broken link if the author's reading this) to in the article, but I would highly recommend reading [https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/08/07/2018-07-24/pointers- and...](https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/08/07/2018-07-24/pointers-and-bytes).

It was a really amazing read.

<comment><USER9> Link seems to be live here now: [https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/07/24/pointers-and- bytes.html](https://www.ralfj.de/blog/2018/07/24/pointers-and-bytes.html)</comment></comment>


Scientists Finally Figured Out Why Tardigrades Are So Indestructible - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/genes-hold-the-key-to-the-water-bears-indestructibility-1786814698 <comment><AUTHOR> I figured the Gizmodo article added value. Here's the academic article, referenced near the top, whose title is hard to shorten in any case:

[http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12808](http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12808) Extremotolerant tardigrade genome and improved radiotolerance of human cultured cells by tardigrade-unique protein</comment>


Running a startup - <AUTHOR> http://runningastartup.tumblr.com

<comment><USER2> Reddit has come to HN

<comment><USER3> The Guidelines[1] say it better than I can.

"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"

[1] <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

<comment><USER4> My account is more than a year old, and after viewing the submitted link I have to agree with his assessment. Frankly, those guidelines were written years before HN actually did turn into Reddit. In any case, in lieu of casca's seniority, please accept mine as a waiver for that particular anachronistic guideline.

<comment><USER5> Reddit is..Reddit. I used to think Reddit was dumb and I started going deeper, and quite frankly Reddit scares the shit out of me sometimes. The occasional meme is funny but HN isn't near what Reddit is.

<comment><USER6> Scary how?

<comment><USER5> Just some of the deep/dark/scary/nasty stuff that gets thrown around. Haha.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of <http://thisadvertisinglife.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> The "Reddit" comments stem from the fact that this was first posted to Reddit...and then downvoted to hell.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/svh6z/running_a_st...](http://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/svh6z/running_a_startup_tumblog_pics/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting - did someone just put this together today? I only just saw <http://thisadvertisinglife.tumblr.com/> today which seems to be along the same lines. I'm not sure if it's like a "meme" or which one came fast but themed, curated gifs could well be one of this season's favourite things.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think the Reddit comment was aimed at the content of the linked website. If only ruining a startup was that easy.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> @all, to be honest, i posted this link just to see what kind of response it gets. Expected to be flagged but got 81! Dont know what to say. :)

</comment><comment><USER11> This blog just made my day.</comment>


The Full Kindle Fire Presentation by Jeff Bezos - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rm92Tnp953c

<comment><USER2> "when we download a book to you..." ugh...</comment>


The flaws of thinking "Just use Unicode" - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/print/58558

<comment><USER2> My companies product supports about 35 languages and 25 countries. I think 'just use Unicode' is fairly accurate. The problem may be how you go about doing it. I'm reminded of a professor that used to tell his students to use libraries and code written by people with an expertise in the relevant area whenever possible.

We use the IBM ICU library for our product and it handles the vast majority of the issues presented in the article. There is no reason for me to be writing the code to handle the thousands of permutations of language, country, and culture when someone else has already done the heavy lifting here. ICU solves problems such as: sorting, number representation, etc.

The other problems should be things unrelated to Unicode - things your product / business already need.

1)Pick a target market - If you haven't picked a target market worrying about using Unicode to support some languages is putting the cart before the horse.

2)Get a translator(s) that know what they are doing - You already needed a translator - now you need to pick one competent enough to know the difference between Mexican Spanish and the Spanish spoken in Spain.

3) Write software that can switch look and feel on the fly during run time - This has already be done and should be a good philosophy for companies writing GUI intensive applications anyway.

Really - The correct sentence should be, "Just use Unicode, with your pre- existing good business practices."

<comment><USER3> This may work well for 35 languages. Not 350 or 3500.

<comment><USER2> Why doesn't this scale to any number of languages? Assuming you are using the existing practice of not hard coding strings in your software but rather referring to them with some sort of IDs then I see no reason not to use 3000 languages with this approach.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using IDs on our website instead of hard-coded variables. It causes no end of problems. A non-exhaustive list:

1\. Using variables to put numbers in the string. Singular and plural are not always only two options. Rules in this regard can get quite complex. gettext has this solved by using rules: n%2 == 0? Use A. n==0? Use B. n%2 == 1? Use C. etc. That should give you an idea about complexity.

2\. Replacing words into the string is nearly impossible due to declensions.

3\. Names. When using a different script, will the name be transliterated? Do the names need to be inflected? Will they be handled correctly when changing writing direction?

3a. Names have a whole load of problems anyway. The "given name" isn't always the first name. The surname isn't always the most important one. Some people don't have family names, some people have two or more. Some people have double-barrelled given names. Etc.

4\. Ordinals differ greatly from language to language.

5\. String length can mess up your layout. A good translator can help by using different idiom, but sometimes it's just not possible.

6\. Layout expectations are different when the writing system is right-to- left. You also need to learn the details of Unicode's direction algorithm, because you _will_ encounter situations where it doesn't work properly without guidance.

These are just some problems we've actually encountered when using multiple languages.

<comment><USER4> You don't even need to go outside English for some of these to be a problem,

What letter does the name Van der Waals sort under?

What about D'Arcy

Does McKay come before MacKay ?

Is 7-4-09 an American holiday or a week after April fools?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use three languages commonly : French, English and Russian. I can set the language for non-Unicode programs only once, which means I can't display all programs written with a different encoding properly.

Please just use Unicode.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article doesn't say you _shouldn't_ use Unicode. But it explains that only using Unicode just isn't enough. You need more. You shouldn't stop thinking at Unicode. Don't JUST use Unicode, use Unicode _and more_.

<comment><USER6> A small example: many programs do not fold accents. So when I start typing "lo" in the to: field of most email apps, it suggests "Lorena Foo" but not "Fulanito López".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I stopped taking this post seriously after I read this:

> Further east we hit ideographics. The concept of a "letter" has just flew > out of the occidental window. Not only that but the text is laid out top to > bottom.

Chinese and Japanese are both read from left to right (although in the past characters were written top to bottom and right to left). The only language that I know of that is presently laid out from top to bottom is Mongolian. I'll be damned if I ever need to write software for people in Mongolia.

<comment><USER8> For me it was:

> Oh, and there are languages with unbounded sets of "characters" such as > Chinese which literally cannot be fully described in Unicode.

I read Chinese just fine in Unicode. Is there something I'm missing? You have 50,000 commonly used characters, 100,000 rare ones - this certainly doesn't bust any limitations within unicode. Makes fonts rather large, but that's another issue altogether.

The rest of the article seems to be confused about what unicode is - I don't think anybody seriously goes into unicode expecting it to practically _translate_ for them. It's an encoding, that's it. It won't convert "," to "." depending on locale, it certainly won't rephrase your messages for you to be sensitive to local cultures. That's _your responsibility_ , not the purview of _a form of encoding_.

I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh?

<comment><AUTHOR> _> I think the author's point at the end was: "Unicode" as a concept won't localize your programs for you. Well, duh?_

That's his point as I understand it. But I disagree with the "duh" part. It's rare to see software that goes beyond simple translation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _There is no such thing as a definitive list of languages_

This is true. But SIL has what is considered the "standard" for this list, and there are almost 7000 of them. Many of them are unwritten. See <http://www.ethnologue.com/> and ISO 639-3.

</comment><comment><USER9> >>What would our software need to do to operate in, say, Europe? Well, apart from selecting a subset of the myriad of languages (France alone has 30+ )...

Who said that you need to support every language in a region to have your software operate there? If someone living in France speaks an obscure dialect then its a pretty safe bet they ALSO speak French. And if they only speak a single obscure language they probably aren't going to be your customer anyway.

If you hit the top 15-20 most used languages in the world then you'll be fine.

Just use unicode.

<comment><USER10> I really agree with just supporting the top 15-20 most used languages, but the problem with "just" using unicode is that #1 on that list of languages isn't well served by some unicode formats.

In fact, the PRC requires that all language-related products introduced into the Chinese marketplace must be able to function in GB 18030.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole premise of the link is flawed. It's an article about "localization is hard". Well, duh.

I don't see anything in it, at all, about character set and encoding choice. And in that realm, yes: you should just be using UTF-8. Not even "unicode" -- you want to be in UTF-8, period. Convert at the edges of your system if you absolutely must handle other encodings. But wherever you can, you should just be using UTF-8.

<comment><AUTHOR> The premise of the article wasn't that you shouldn't use Unicode. It was that you need to care about more than _just_ Unicode. Thinking that the answer to localisation is to "just use Unicode" is a flaw in people's thinking that this article points out and corrects.

I'm curious as to why you believe UTF-8 is the only encoding you should use? I know of at least one person that says you should use UTF-16, because then it's immediately obvious when a certain piece of data is in the wrong encoding, whereas with UTF-8 you need to look for non-Latin characters (or accents) to distinguish it from, for example, ISO-8859-1. That line of thinking holds some value to me. Why do you believe otherwise?

<comment><USER11> UTF-16 can't be used with traditional tools. No grepping, no strings, no scanning quickly with a text editor. It locks you into whatever oddball toolchain you cooked up in development. Old code that passes the string to a strcat() will fail in mysterious ways. And your old libraries probably expect 1-byte characters anyway, which means you're going to be constantly converting

The inability to distinguish between UTF-8 and ASCII is a _feature_ , not a bug. If you want to know if it's a valid string, just validate it. UTF-8 has extraordinarily strong validation properties, it's almost impossible for strings in other encodings to parse successfully.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> Old code that passes the string to a strcat() will fail in mysterious ways. And your old libraries probably expect 1-byte characters anyway, which means you're going to be constantly converting_

But they will have that same problem with UTF-8, right? Just as soon as you start using non-Latin characters? And if you aren't, there's no point in going beyond ASCII.

<comment><USER11> Uh, no, not at all. The ANSI strXXX() functions work just fine with UTF-8, that was kind of the point. Anything treating strings with nul termination or counted byte length works without change. Any work involving only ASCII substrings (e.g. parsing of computer-readable data) works without change. No non-ASCII character is represented using ASCII bytes in the string. Everything Just Works. Which is why you should just use it.

The sole exception are algorithms that truly need random access to _characters_ within the string (e.g. "give me the 32nd character"), which can't interoperate with any variable-length encoding. But there are precious few of these. All anyone cares about is substrings.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google shutting down Picnik - <AUTHOR> http://blog.picnik.com/2012/01/official-announcement-picnik-is-closing/ <comment><USER2> Wow, if you look at the blog, it's immediately obvious that Picnik was really loved by a devoted fan base. I'm not endorsing the Picnik shutdown decision (I think it sucks), but you have to ask yourself, "If my service closed today, would there be this level of outcry?" If so, you're doing something really special.

Aviary recently pivoted to become an embedded photo editing service for web + phone apps. I wonder if this is an opportunity for them.

<comment><USER3> Not only do they have a devoted fan base, but nearly all of the comments are by women. There's got to be some interesting data there in how they ended up attracting that audience.

<comment><USER4> My wife uses it. She uses it because there is a button for it in picasa. Mainly to tweak photos for her blog and add text into them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A week ago Flickr announced that they'd be moving away from Picnik: [http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/13/start-the-new-year- fres...](http://blog.flickr.net/en/2012/01/13/start-the-new-year-fresh/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Wow! Amazing! So what's the _real_ alternative to online image editing for the mass? Of course there are Pixlr, Sumopaint, Aviary, Photoshop Express, but each targets a somewhat different audience than Picnik. I know the fact that Picnik is Flash-based is inconsistent with Google's strategy, and that with Flash going nowhere, Picnik is unlikely to help Google anywhere. But still... there are tons of moms and pops who use Picnik.

Question: Is there room for a new Picnik?

Edit: hmm, the Google+ version of Picnik (scaled down) is still Flash-based. So this is most likely part of the "Drive Traffic to Google+ At All Cost!" strategy.

<comment><USER7> Analytics still uses flash, as well as most of their charting tools. I believe the attachment uploader in gmail... they've also baked flash into chrome ( [http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/bringing-improved- support-f...](http://blog.chromium.org/2010/03/bringing-improved-support-for- adobe.html) ). Unlike iOS and Windows8 Metro apps, Android supports flash.

If anti-flash is the strategy for them, I'd question the execution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Google is becoming the new Yahoo. The place where great startups go to die.....

<comment><USER9> It would be _fabulous_ if I had this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Key thing to note is that Picnik functionality is moving to Google+.

<comment><USER11> The problem with Google+ is any large photo gets re-sized to 2048 x 2048. I did research and tested it. I haven't tried them, but some alternatives being mentioned are fotoflexer.com and advanced.aviary.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Bummer -- this was a great service. Seems like Google has been shutting down a lot of things recently. There was a passage in the Steve Jobs biography where he was telling Larry Page that google should focus on fewer products and not spread themselves so thin -- seems like since Larry took over from Eric Schmidt, that's what he's been doing (slowly but surely).

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i can't help but think that this was done by google to hurt flickr/yahoo, since flickr integrated picnik as their web-based photo editing tool. i used it quite a bit to do easy changes like cropping photos.

maybe yahoo should have bought them before google did.

<comment><USER13> Don't forget Facebook. A lot of users would've used Picnik to edit and share their photos on Facebook. If it's all about Google+, then hurting FB is a bonus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Sad day. Picnik wasn't the best photo editing tool, but it was certainly handy to use away from home when you need to edit something quickly and painlessly.

</comment><comment><USER15> Too bad. It was very helpful for editing pics in Flickr.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oh man that's annoying. I loved Picnik, and recommended it to all my clients as great way for resizing photos.

Does anyone know an alternative?

<comment><USER6> For this particular simple task, I recommend Pixlr. It was no where as polished as Picnik, but it is fast to load.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Of all Google's shutdowns, this was the only one that make me scream out loud. I am gutted.

Picnik was a minimum viable photoshop. The resizing options were so useful and it was really simple.

This is just sad.

I am speaking as a selfish user though.

Are there other good options out there?</comment>


Facebook Messenger Platform: Introducing a 24 Hour Window for Standard Messaging - <AUTHOR> http://messengerblog.com/bots/updated-messenger-platform-policies-and-faster-review-times/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a new huge restriction on using the Facebook Messenger Platform.

We've integrated with Facebook Messenger Platform and our customers use our Bot to talk to their customers.

We can not opt in for the new Subscription Messaging & Customer Matching since 'support' is not eligible.

Which means if support agent can not reply within 24 hours (weekends) then only one "bonus message" can be send until customer replies.

I find this absolutely discouraging from using the Facebook Messenger Platform. I've never seen a company cripple their own product in such a way.

And using language like "bonus message" makes me feel like we're using a childish product.</comment>


How The Commodore 64 Memory Map Worked [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qibJpjJ0sdM <comment><USER3> The most frustrating, sincerely upsetting experience I ever had was when I was about 13 or 14, and encountered the following code: (roughly)

       10 for x = 53248 to 57343
       20 poke x, peek (x)
       30 next x

When I saw this code - it caused physical angst on my part, as it was _obvious_ that this code did nothing. I knew nothing about memory mapped ROM/RAM banks at the time, but I quickly learned....

I've never had as much fun programming as I did with that Commodore 64 and the Programmers reference manual (and all the Compute! secrets/tips books) - <USER2> was the youtube minecraft videos of our time.

<comment><USER4> That code you posted immediately struck me as wrong--not real C64 code. It took me a minute to realize why: it's in lowercase.

(The C64 defaulted to a character set with only capital letters, to leave more space for graphical characters. There was a mixed-case set available, but no one ever used it except for word processing and text adventures.)

<comment><USER5> Although if you did switch to the mixed-case set it would show source code in lowercase.

<comment><USER6> If only you had told me twenty years ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Did the video explain why poking one value, N, resulted in a peek of the value 240+N? Did I miss it? Is it just a property of the memory location on the VIC chip?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here, the are spec'd as unused bits returning 1: [http://www.antimon.org/code/vic2.html](http://www.antimon.org/code/vic2.html)

<comment><USER7> Ah, thank you. It appears it is only a 4 bit memory location and the spec says the unused bits always return 1's.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does your company handle SSH keys - <AUTHOR> Our team is reaching a size when we probably need to get serious about SSH key management.
I was wondering how different places handle how dev's get access to servers. A shared key? A gatekeeper? Public keys added to all servers?
What practices and tools do you use in order to manage this? <comment><USER2> We use puppet and add our public keys to all servers. IMHO a nice solution, but clearly a lot of work without something like puppet.

<comment><USER3> This.

We have a simple Puppet recipe that creates a user, group and home, sets the correct permissions/groups and installs the public key. It will also remove users if they leave the company.

The script reads all users' details from YAML so if there are any changes, we push the YAML to all servers and run the script. It's not as automated as Puppet-Agent, but it's fine for a small number of servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ansible pushes authorized_keys to all the boxes -- there's a different keys file for different "clusters" \-- dev/prod/staging. Most of the users's keys are the same between these files, but it gives you the ability to have users who have access to dev/staging but not prod pretty easily. All of this config lives in the main git repo.

Even if your initial solution is just to copy an authorized_keys file to each box, check that into git. You can just have a small shell script checked in as well that copies the relevant file to the relevant boxes...

Also, always have a backdoor account that uses a key you have and isn't updated this way so if someone biffs the key file you push, you don't lock yourself out.

</comment><comment><USER5> Recently learned of openssh's AuthorizedKeysCommand option, and I've been wondering if it could be used to set up a central "authorised keys" server.

<comment><USER6> There is pretty much a working solution for this using LDAP.

RedHat distros have a perl(i think?) script that can be used to do the key lookup, and you just need a small schema extension to allow the storage of the public keys in the directory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> My current company is small. Our servers are in AWS. You can ask AWS to pre- populate authorized_keys when launching servers.

In my old company my team maintained a bunch of microservices running on AWS. we used basically the same strategy, except there was one key for each service. Our application server ran on our own datacenter. Access to that was granted through LDAP, not SSH keys.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there a open source framework, which could be used for SSH keys management?

<comment><USER9> Did you checkout Hashicorp Vault for this? More here: [https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/ssh/index.html](https://www.vaultproject.io/docs/secrets/ssh/index.html)</comment></comment>


Facebook "one hundred percent" buying Plaxo - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2008/01/14/facebook-buying-plaxo/

<comment><USER2> "Facebook may be inching towards Plaxo's (and others') vision of letting users freely import and export their data from any site, including social networks like Facebook, we're told."

I wonder what that means for OpenID?</comment>


Show HN/PG: Our Startup, Philantro.   - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone, for quite some time we've been building a platform to enhance nonprofit visibility and making giving personal again. We've kept it in stealth mode from fear our equipment wouldn't stand traffic if this gets much attention during development but after this last pitch rejection letter - we're bitter and it's time to just do it.
The nonprofit industry needs major disruption. We're growing with nonprofits, now at 201 and our goal is 500 by Spring and 1000 by next Fall. We've added a few ourselves as demos. We're growing with users despite us still being in beta.
We would love the community to check it out and give us some feedback. We could also use leads for great nonprofit organizations or investors looking into that space that we can reach out to.
We'll lets do this.
Bootstrappers Unite :) <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, here's the link: [https://www.philantro.com](https://www.philantro.com)

</comment><comment><USER2> "The nonprofit industry needs major disruption" \- What specifically about the industry needs disruption?

<comment><AUTHOR> With Philantro, we've addressed close to 27 issues. We'll be glad to write a post on our Medium account to go into more detail but here's a few. We've also addressed one with detail. We didn't want to turn readers off with a huge post detailing everything.

User Data Portability, Cost Effective Means of Donation Processing, Privacy, Social Collaboration, Data validation and Retention, Content Cross Pollination and more.

Issue/Cause Discovery: Issues around the world are being reported in near real-time yet we don't know about it until it makes the front page. On Philantro there's trending topics. By aggregating all the content from these nonprofits across all their social networks, we see what issues are trending through repetition and commonality to help guide users.

Imagine a stock ticker but with issues from all the nonprofits in America who are on social networks. You're able to keep a pulse on issues instead of waiting for a tragedy.

<comment><USER2> To provide some context, many of my clients are nonprofits and foundations. My suggestion is to take those 27 issues and do one of them really, really well. You could build a business around any of the areas you mentioned, but not all of them.

If you choose issue/cause discovery, focus on disaster relief organizations. Create partnerships with companies that already provide these organizations with software and services. Become the vendor of the NPO's vendor.

Right now, it's not clear what problem you're solving and who you're solving it for.

<comment><AUTHOR> "Browse and Follow the Social Media of Countless Nonprofits - All in One Place." \- that's what Philantro provides. The issues we've accounted for are connected to this core.

Livestrong has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Flickr. They publicize all these networks because they want to raise awareness and grow followers. The core of Philantro stems from bringing these networks together so users can follow, contribute and interact with their favorite nonprofits in one place.

Now Livestrong on Philantro: [https://www.philantro.com/livestrong](https://www.philantro.com/livestrong)

While viewing Livestrong - you see other nonprofits related to Cancer so you can browse. You can also view public followers to see what nonprofits they follow.

Here's Cancer Nonprofits on Philantro: [http://bit.ly/1c31de0](http://bit.ly/1c31de0) In this view you see what all Cancer Related organizations are talking about on all their social networks in near real-time.

Here's Cancer Orgs in Texas Only: [http://bit.ly/1ausPpP](http://bit.ly/1ausPpP)

Hey bwh2, interested in connecting via email? Are you're in the nonprofit industry?

<comment><USER2> Good call; emailing you now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you working on this while doing a day job?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Work during the day. Code and building marketing agendas all night.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> ok,posted Philantro on impact4change.com

<comment><AUTHOR> We're grateful, thanks!</comment></comment>


Sony Claims They Own 47 Seconds of a Musicians Own Recording of Bach - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/JRhodesPianist/status/1039175886782783490/photo/1 <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923138](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17923138)

</comment><comment><USER3> And thus we see the problem with this "voluntary" enforcement that YouTube and FB do. While there are penalties for false DMCA claims, there are none for claims in these "voluntary compliance" systems.

<comment><USER4> The DMCA has no penalties for making a claim like this. Sony is claiming that he copied a recording that they actually own the copyright for. The DMCA's penalty for false claims only kicks in if they falsely claim to own the copyright, not if they falsely claim infringement.

EG: If I falsely claim to own the copyright to your post, that would be a violation of a statement made under penalty of perjury. If I falsely claim that your post infringes the copyright of some other post that I once made that would not be a violation punishable under the DMCA's false claims provisions.

It could still be slander of title or some similar violation, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So Sony gets to control his facebook page, wow.</comment>


Teaching Devina to Code - <AUTHOR> http://lifewetravel.com/teaching-devina-to-code

<comment><USER2> I introduced both of my children to arduino at age 7. My son took to it instantly and in weeks was producing things that surprised me. My daughter could not have been less interested; struggled through to few things I showed her forgot it as soon as the lesson was over.

This is how it stayed until the day some random project of my son's involved placing a servo inside a small stuffed toy. The moment my daughter saw the little toy turn and "look" at her, there was nothing in the world that could stop her from trying to learn how to do this herself.

You can't teach your child to code, only present it in a way that will interest them. If you succeed you will not be able to stop them. No one else will be able to either.

 _"I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker."_ ― Stanley Kubrick

<comment><USER3> Or not. One of the things you learn as your kids grow up is that they are not carbon copies of you. They may be interested in the same things you are, or they may not be. I'm in no way trying to disuade anyone from trying to get their kids interested in programming or technology, but if they are not, at a point you have to be willing to admit that they are not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The key is a "hook," a goal, a source motivation. Seeing how a particular technology enables new capabilities and applications is a powerful encouragement to learning it, even for professional adult hackers.

"Make your own computer games" is a hook with many kids (not all). I suggest writing your own implementation of a few very simple games (Hangman, Yahtzee, Boggle, ...) as "lesson prep," this way you're familiar with the strategy and can identify stumbling blocks, needed libraries, etc. I suggest sticking with print / terminal at first (GUI / web stuff introduces a lot of baggage since the model is more complicated).

Then sit next to your daughter and tell her what to type. Of course you should explain what your code does as you go along, and you should ideally do this without looking at your earlier implementation. This helps emphasize the thought process -- you're not just copying magic words from somewhere else, you're using your mind to figure out the right magic words for what you want to do. You should also use an iterative development method -- frequently run it and see the product slowly taking shape.

The initial lessons are more about driving home the fact "You can type in these magic words and make the computer do anything you want" than about the precise details of what the magic words for your particular programming language are, or what they represent. Once the kids realize what sorts of things magic words can do, they are then motivated to learn the particular details. This makes it way easier to teach them, and also encourages them to seek resources on your own.

Source: This was how my dad introduced me to programming at age 5-6. It worked :)

Also, buy the book at [http://www.laurenipsum.org/](http://www.laurenipsum.org/) \-- it makes a great bedtime story. Hackers of any age will really enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER5> Demonstrate instant reward. If you want a child to be interested in anything, they have to see the reward in it, but it must revolve around something they consider fun. A child's curiosity is based around this one question: "What can I get out of this?"

Many people who started programming young didn't program for the sake of programming or for the aspiration to be a great computer scientist when they grow up. Instead, they programmed for a goal they considered fun. Programming was only an enabler. So, how can programming enable more fun in your child's life?

</comment><comment><USER6> Take a look at MIT Scratch:

[http://scratch.mit.edu/](http://scratch.mit.edu/)

My 7-year old son loves it.

</comment><comment><USER7> It might be fun to look at LOGO (maybe UCBLogo[1], free books included) for a first programming language. This has a first-person (turtle) view on a GUI that you move around to make shapes and do math/physics. The idea is that when programming it will be easier for the programmer to associate themselves with the turtle and interaction/exploration in the language will be natural.

The Logo way is pretty different from conventional programming models because it was tailored to be more intuitive than conventional languages like C, JavaScript, or VB. It still offers access to complex, higher order programming concepts like algorithms, AI, automata, etc. Harold Abelson from MIT (SICP) wrote a cool book that covers math/physics in Logo, too.[2]

The creator of the language has an awesome book[3] on how computers can enhance pedagogy and someone wrote a cool blog post on programming for children that mentioned it too[4].

[1] [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics- Artificial...](http://www.amazon.com/Turtle-Geometry-Mathematics-Artificial- Intelligence/dp/0262510375/)

[3] [http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers- Powerful...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful- Ideas/dp/0465046746)

[4] [http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/](http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool thread, I just started a thread about teaching my own daughter how to code a few hours ago :) First off, congrats on the intention. I believe code literacy is going to be a key educational principle in the 21st century so good for you on taking a step towards that so early.

For me teaching my kids (I've got 3) is not so much about getting their brains stuffed with algorithms and technical stuff, but it's more about giving them access to a world where they can create art. I personally believe coding is more like painting than it is building a bridge. It's a creative process , where things like inspiration make a world of difference.

So the first thing I'd recommend is getting your daughter used to creative activities like drawing, Legos, building stuff, number games, word games, stuff like that. See how she likes it. Then try more advanced things. I started teaching my daughter math early on, since she was about two. We started with counting, then moved up to counting by 2s then backwards, just to see how her mind worked and how she would respond to creative problem solving.

It turned out she loved it and to this day she loves solving problems like those games where you have to almost identical pictures and you have to spot the differences, etc. She also likes playing match-3 type games on the iPhone and playing word games.

So get her started with that. If she sees math as fun, I think that's the first and probably the biggest win.

</comment><comment><USER9> If I can sneak a shameless plug in here, I'm the developer behind Kodable - [http://www.kodable.com](http://www.kodable.com) \- an iPad app that introduces kids to programming before they can read.

I know the article said you'd like to keep Devina away from screens for awhile, but we've had kids as young as 18 months using it to learn all about functions, loops, and debugging. Even if she's too young for Kodable, or you'd like to go a different route, we've talked to tons of parents teaching young kids programming and I've learned a lot about the process. I'd love to help any way I can. You (or anyone else interested) can send me an email at jon-at- kodable dot com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, this is exactly what I'm looking for -- basically things I can introduce her to at as young an age as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I pity the poor little kid. At this stage in life, people (none other than her parents) are already concerned how she is going to contribute to the world. Let her live for a while. Let her explore, find a path that's interesting to her.

I know programming is the future, its the basic skill that will be necessary for all professionals. But let her learn to walk, see, smell, touch, taste the world around her. Sheesh.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wrote my first HTML when I was 7, it was some now-deprecated html like  and . I think I was around 9 or 10 when I learned some JavaScript. Back then I used w3schools because I didn't know any better.

I would recommend to show her what code can do, give her some resources, and allow her to explore and experiment.

</comment><comment><USER12> Once they get a little older, maybe try alice [0] [1]

0\. [http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_al...](http://www.alice.org/index.php?page=what_is_alice/what_is_alice)

1\. [https://www.facebook.com/AliceProgramming](https://www.facebook.com/AliceProgramming)

</comment><comment><USER13> Scratch ([http://scratch.mit.edu](http://scratch.mit.edu)) from MIT is the best tool I've found so far.

The focus is on creating scenes and stories, which I've found has really resonated with my kids.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a good Board game that has the concept of instructions and executing them: [http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally](http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/18/roborally)

</comment><comment><USER15> I am surprised no one has mentioned [http://www.codecombat.com/](http://www.codecombat.com/) yet. Or is that too complicated for kids? (i only did the tutorial. it seemed easy and fun)

</comment><comment><USER16> Making this visual does wonders for kids. I think that's why Alan Kay went with Scratch the way it is.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks everyone for your comments. Very, very helpful.

</comment><comment><USER17> 1) ask her if she has any interested in programming.

<comment><USER18> A huge barrier for many people is they have no understanding of what programming will enable, what it entails, and its varying difficulty levels.

I think there are so many "pre-med" college freshmen because everyone understands the role of a doctor. If programming were more tangible and widely understood, there would be far more people doing it (and luckily this is rapidly happening).</comment></comment>


Art of approximation in science and engineering - <AUTHOR> http://mit.edu/6.055/

<comment><USER2> Also check out Caltech's Ph 101, Order of Magnitude Physics:

<http://www.its.caltech.edu/~oom/index.html>

The course notes aren't nearly as good, but the homework sets have some really fun problems.

<comment><USER3> The similarity is no coincidence: Sanjoy Mahajan, the principal instructor of the MIT course, did his Ph.D. at Caltech under Sterl Phinney, the instructor for the course you linked. Moreover, half of Sanjoy's dissertation was an order-of-magnitude physics textbook based on Sterl's course (taught for many years with fellow astrophysicist Peter Goldreich, now a professor emeritus).

(N.B. I taught Physics 1 with Sanjoy when we overlapped at Caltech, and Sterl was my Ph.D. advisor as well.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This looks to be a good resource for back of the envelope style estimations

</comment><comment><USER4> I read [http://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds- Problems-...](http://www.amazon.com/Guesstimation-Solving-Worlds-Problems- Cocktail/dp/0691129495/ref=pd_sim_b_7) and the attached link delves into far greater theory than the book.

Thank you for sharing this with us :-)

</comment><comment><USER5> There are whole fields of theory & practice where approximations are all that are used. <http://www.wastedtalent.ca/index.php?view=341>

</comment><comment><USER6> Have the handouts been published together in book form yet?</comment>


Being a 19 Year Old VC. No I have not gone to the dark side. - <AUTHOR> http://www.timchae.com/2010/10/my-first-week-as-a-vc/

<comment><USER2> Interesting; what (or who) will you be looking for?

Separate from that particular post, nice to read the rest of your back blog posts and see your thinking there. Always good to see people excited and involved in the Boston tech / startup scene - my dream is still to help realize the Second Coming at home..., re the decline of RTE 128 area tech etc.

Keep it up and keep writing and sharing your thoughts as you go along.

<comment><AUTHOR> hey sabj, are you talking about what I will be looking for as a VC in a potential portfolio company?</comment></comment>