Ask HN: How do you meet friends? - <AUTHOR> I'm in my early 20s. I do contract work as a programmer - from home. I've never been good at forming close relationships with people, so the people I met through school sort of drifted away after I left.
This has lead to an unfortunate situation whereby I have absolutely zero social interactions, save for talking to strangers on IRC. I don't trust my family.
How do you fix this? Where do you meet people? It seems like whenever you casually talk to people, the whole thing just falls apart like a house of cards when they ask you what you do in your spare time or such. Why, yes, I work and I discuss work stuff with strangers on the Internet. <comment><USER2> Your first problem you need to solve is that you have nothing else to talk about except your job / programming. To fix this, you need to pick an activity or hobby. The less "you" the activity is the better. Your current state of activity has been not satisfying your desire for social interaction. You can say your current way of choosing activities has given rise to your current state of activity. Therefore, change the way you choose an activity.

I was in the same boat a few years ago and I chose improv as my activity. Choose something that you do with other people live.

Once you choose your activity. Be the guy that's always down to do stuff. Be the guy that is always willing to host a get together or hang out after the activity.

I highly recommend improv just because it's so social and it's lots of fun. It also takes everyone out of their comfort zones and everyone starts off on the same foot which gives you a sense of family.

</comment><comment> non-entity Early 20s here as well. I struggled with this (and tbh still do) as I never went to school and my coworkers are mostly a decade or two older than me and have families in stuff.

I haven't made any friends like I did back when I was growing up, and tbh I dont think that's very possible anymore.

On the other hand, I do socialize a lot better than I used to and do have some acquaintances I hang out with on occasion. After I moved about four or five months ago, I started to go to a meetup. It wasnt about anything particular (tbh I find many tech meetups boring), and was mainly just about meeting up at a bar or restaurant with other people who lived in the area. From there a lot of people had other groups, interests, etc. and I was able to meet people that had at least some things in common with me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meetups! They're great and everyone is super welcoming. Depending on your city, there should be a few tech events happening. Use that as a launching pad to branch into areas outside of your craft. In September, I challenged myself to attend a meetup a day and I found myself going to movies, dinners, bars, parks, and so on meeting and talking to people I'd have never met otherwise. Now, I wouldn't recommend everyone do what I did but in my case, I needed something to force me out of my typical routine of spending all of my time in front of a computer.

You're fortunate in that you do spend time talking with strangers on IRC. I actually spend very little time talking to people except in person and I routinely find myself isolated if I'm not constantly pushing myself to reach out to my friends.

From the sound of it, small talk could be a challenge for you. It's definitely a skill and I'd recommend you take note of the points in conversations where you've had trouble and spend time coming up with responses you'll feel confident in using. This is a strategy I've used since my early 20s for everything from casual conversations to interviewing to sales/investor pitches. It takes time and at the end of the day you'll have to accept that we all have our fair share of blunders.

I'd recommend writing out your challenges and trying to break them down as much as possible. It makes it easier to then focus on one area at a time: \- Overcoming any shyness or social awkwardness you might feel when approaching someone you don't know. \- Becoming a better conversationalist to be able to keep the flow of a conversation going. \- Meeting new people who you share some common ground with. \- Building friendships with those acquaintances. \- And finally, over a longer period of time, deepening those relationships.

Some of these or all of these could be things you want to focus on. From there, switch into problem solving mode and Google your way to success. For me, this has been a lifelong challenge of mine. I love meeting and talking to new people but being a remote worker as well as a homebody can make for a lonely lifestyle if I'm not paying close attention.

I wish you the best of luck out there!

</comment><comment><USER4> Find a regular pickup game of soccer or ultimate frisbee. Not only does it get you social contact, it also gets you exercise.

The ultimate players I know are really pretty nice people. They are accepting of a fair amount of incompetence on the field (looking at myself here). They're not going to reject you because you're old, or female, or unskilled, or clumsy. (Your results may vary with any particular group, of course.)

</comment><comment><USER5> Where do you live?

Consider volunteer activities: for instance a soup kitchen, or a ham radio club that does comms for bike races.

<comment><AUTHOR> West Europe, which rules out a lot of these options. Software development scene is - to put it mildly - not very big here. So tech meetups are out of the question, unfortunately.</comment></comment>


Police search Uber offices in Hong Kong and arrest 5 drivers - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/12/police-search-uber-offices-in-hong-kong-and-arrest-5-drivers.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Brilliant:

> _" InvestHK quietly erased online evidence that it once gushed about the > car-hailing app... In May, InvestHK, a government department that aims to > "attract and retain foreign direct investment", published a piece proudly > talking about the company's decision to launch in Hong Kong."_

[http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2015/08/12/after-arrests-hong- ko...](http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2015/08/12/after-arrests-hong-kong- government-quietly-deletes-articles-gushing-about-uber)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best practices for submitting tech talks? - <AUTHOR> I want to get started doing talks at tech conferences. I have several (hopefully) decent topics which are a cross between security and AI/machine learning.  My plan is to build up experience with smaller, local opportunities like meetups and small regional conferences. (I am not a complete speaking noob -- I do internal corporate talks frequently and have done a bunch of college seminars).
I have a few questions, though:
1) Will doing the talk at a small conference/meetups disqualify me or hurt my chances to get accepted at a bigger talk?
My goal is to do talks at the 'big' conferences but, if I have a particularly good topic to talk about, I wouldn't want to "waste" it at a smaller venue.
2) Is it okay to submit multiple talks per conference?
3) Is earlier always better for submission, or does the submission time (early in the CFP period vs late) matter at all?
4) How 'complete' is your talk when you submit? Is it a vague outline that you don't start working on until accepted, or is it mostly ready-to-go when you submit?
Any other thoughts and advice for a beginning speaker greatly appreciated. <comment><USER2> Some great general advice for talks is given here if you're interested [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kayvonf/misc/cleartalktips.pdf](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~kayvonf/misc/cleartalktips.pdf) but doesn't answer any of your submissions questions. Each conference I would imagine has guidelines how to apply to be a speaker or if more than one talk is allowed, or if it must be previously unpresented/new, just email them and ask.

An example of a really good talk is [https://youtu.be/5c0BvOlR5gs](https://youtu.be/5c0BvOlR5gs) where Shriram Krishnamurthi explains creating computer science curriculum for highschool students. Notice he moves around the room (if this is possible and not a huge arena), is able to prevent people from hijacking the talk like the one audience guy who rants off topic about early arithmetic curriculum, yet still manages to give an acceptable answer to his question, and promises to hang around afterwards to discuss questions with audience members who have multiple questions as a way to keep the talk moving on topic. The slides are perfectly presented as well moving effortlessly instead of those talks where they pause for each slide.

</comment><comment><USER3> There are a number of trade groups that have conferences with short paper requirements and upon acceptance come with a 20 minute presentation. Try some of those first since acceptance bar is relatively low and does not require academic associations.

This will get you good practice, build a resume, get some good networking, and give you a chance to see both great and poor presentations.

For example, most of the subgroups from IEEE fall into this category.

</comment><comment><USER4> Practice makes perfect, smaller talks won't hurt your chances for larger venues but it may eat up your time. And a lot of time is needed in order to generate the material for a tech talk such that you have something interesting to convey and are able to back it up within the appropriate context.

In terms of presentation, some good advice I have heard is to present as if the audience are not native english speakers.</comment>


Skyrim's Modular Level Design - GDC 2013 Transcript - <AUTHOR> http://blog.joelburgess.com/2013/04/skyrims-modular-level-design-gdc-2013.html <comment><USER2> _Getting back to the topic at hand, we should also acknowledge the most self- evident drawback of using modular art: the fact that resused art can become repetitive. This leads to what we commonly refer to as "art fatigue". The median play time of Skyrim on Steam has peaked at well over 100 hours, which is a huge compliment . With that kind of time spent, however, players are bound to notice the same rock or farmhouse or tapestry used again and again. And another two dozen times after. Art fatigue sets in where this repetition becomes obvious and erodes the authenticity of the world._

It wasn't art fatigue that annoyed me. I don't care about seeing the same tapestry or window over and over.

What annoyed me was that after playing for ~10 hours, I started to recognize the entirety of sections (chunks) of levels that were reused. When you're in a cave, and the cave takes a turn to the right and immediately descends down to a rock bridge over a stream - _just like the ten caves before it_ \- it kills replayability. For a game that is supposed to reward exploration, designing levels in that manner seems like an odd design choice. It's probably why I played for ~40 hours and then gave up before even finishing the game.

I understand the challenges of scope and the need to find an efficient system to design the world and its levels. But they should have gone with a level randomization similar to Diablo 2. That game also reused art assets, but levels never became repetitive because, except for very specific parts, they were truly random all the time.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's that simple.

Diablo was designed to be repetitive (at least it seemed to me, it's a hack- and-slash game), and the levels are quite frankly bland in comparison to Skyrim, not to mention it's played on third-person view-from-above tiles.

Is anyone aware of randomized level design in a first-person game? It seems like a much more challenging task to get right. If you want to avoid repetitiveness at the scale of Skyrim I'd guess you would need reusable assets on the scale of pieces of a tapestry, and creating unique dungeon layouts would be extremely difficult, as they need to be designed to hold the attention of the player. I believe it's difficult to create artistically interesting and attractive layouts randomly without reuse of large pieces of dungeons (the main pain point in Bethesda's modular style).

<comment><USER4> I suppose the long-term solution to this problem will be to computer-generate the layouts based on basic level design theory, and then have artists glance at them to check for errors.

Minecraft can auto-generate some pretty interesting cave formations, maybe with a real budget, a team and the advantages of pregeneration you could do a lot better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is another story in this blog post:

"There are _90 people_ in the photograph below. With the exception of a small number of outsourced assets, _you're looking at the entirety of the dev team across all disciplines_. We've resisted the temptation to grow into a multi- studio team of hundreds, such as you often find behind games of similar scope to those we make."

I find it most astounding that Skyrim was made by a team of less than 100 people. It seems that these days it's not unheard of that hundreds or even more than 1,000 people work on a game. An example of the latter category is Grand Theft Auto IV.

<comment><USER6> There weren't 1000 _developers_ working on GTA IV, certainly not full-time. More like 1000 people who once had at least one small task related to the development, sales or promotion of the title.

Having said that, 8 level designers making 300+ dungeons is extremely impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Skyrim is a terrible example of good level design. We should be studying the level designers of games like Dark Souls.

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be good if they addressed load speed. Will the 8Gb of RAM in the PS4 make their next game load new areas immediately now?

<comment><USER9> Why would a talk about their creative process talk about the loading speed of a console that isn't released yet?

<comment><USER8> The post discusses assets and creating asset modules for constructing their virtual worlds. It would be interesting if they discussed hardware constraints, and how lifting those constraints effects the creative process. The release status of an unreleased console is inconsequential to the information. It has been announced that the new playstation console has 8gb's of ram. In my experience playing Bethesda's games on console and PC, consoles take a significantly longer time to load. Even if a current-generation console is more powerful than a PC, it will be much slower than a PC at loading assets. This has nothing to do with hard-disk speed, as running the game off of equally slow HDD's of a console and a PC, the PC will still significantly quicker. Someone voted me down for my comment. I was not expecting them to cover this in a post about an already-released game. I just said it would be interesting (in future).

We all have to be really careful when commenting on the internet, especially Hacker News, that we are clear. For that I apologise, even if I am quite a bit annoyed, though I realise it is my fault. I have been toying with the idea of building an online community, but I think I will pass on that idea as I don't like excluding people. What did I offer this discussion? = nothing. What did most other people? = nothing. Why are we even discussing this?</comment></comment></comment>


Open source is a life changer - <AUTHOR> http://piotrgankiewicz.com/2016/07/11/open-source-is-a-life-changer/ <comment><USER2> OK, the name-dropping and too frequent bolding of text makes for a bit of a grating style, but I enjoyed the enthusiasm of discovery that is at the core of the essay. Getting discovered on Github will seem just superficially cool to those who've been doing open-source development for awhile, but it's hard to comprehend how fun it is until you've "made" it. Kudos to the author.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, sir. As for the bolding, I use it because many people (including me) at first scan the text looking for important stuff and then decide if it's worth to read the whole article. I'll see what can be improved in that matter :).

<comment><USER2> _Note: take the following with all the grains of salt you take when reading any pedantry...just soapboxy but not meant to be too tone-policing._

I personally prefer headings for the purpose of signaling the main topics of an essay...the main headline, of course, but then the "deck" (usually what would go into the webpage's meta description), and then subsections. The headings do double-duty -- emphasizing key points and visually separating sections -- without adding too much gratuitous weight.

Keep in mind that you can use _physical priority_ to signal emphasis. The first few words of any paragraph are likely to be noticed by a skimmer, so adding extra weight to the type can be redundant. IMHO, this also applies to the closing words of a paragraph.

Also, in-paragraph hyperlinks also serve as a kind of emphasis (while providing useful outbound references). In your current style sheet, hyperlinks are underlined. Again, everyone sees things differently, but I personally notice hyperlinked text and mentally treat it as "kind of important", particularly for proper nouns and keywords (e.g. "New Relic" and "Nagios")

Here's a sample graf of yours with how you emphasized it:

> __I'd say that the most difficult ones were the first few weeks. __After > that period I've known pretty much everything in terms of the project > structure that I will be following. Once I've established my design patterns > it literally became a no-brainer to create new ____Watchers__ __or > ____Integrations__ __. I've also made it quite easy to create your own > extensions which is described ____here__ __and plug into the overall > pipeline seamlessly. __The key was to design the very simple interfaces and > let the other part of the framework do the heavy lifting. __

I don 't think anything in that graf needs to be emphasized (the hyperlinks are fine). The first sentence speaks for itself. The last sentence, if you feel it's important enough, could be its own standalone graf.

Again, treat these as the curmudgeony suggestions of someone who _still subscribes to a print newspaper_. But I felt your otherwise great essay was unfairly maligned by commenters...but I could sympathize with them. Your words speak well enough on their own, no need to add the CSS equivalent of exclamation marks so frequently :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for such a detailed answer, I'll keep that in mind when I'll be writing my next post!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >> what possibly could I create, so that other people would find it useful? It seemed like everything was already there

I do not understand the problem. Just look at the high-priority projects by FSF [0]. There is a plenty of work to do...

[0] [http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority- projects/](http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/)

<comment><USER4> There's a reason these projects have been on that page practically forever. They are all highly specialized, require a lot of domain knowledge and a significant effort.

<comment><USER5> I think Gnash could be kicked from that list. Let Flash die.

<comment><USER4> Shumway is far more promising and it's backed by Mozilla, which does have the domain knowledge. [https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/](https://mozilla.github.io/shumway/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A serious two word request from someone who's a huge fan of open source projects and uses a lot of them:

"Improve Descriptions"

A lot of tools have a similar generic description: e.g.: "This tool helps programmers do more." Please compare and contrast your tool with others with the same general idea. It'll help us decide whether to adopt it or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you refer to the phrase: "OPEN SOURCE & CROSS-PLATFORM TOOL FOR SIMPLIFIED MONITORING" or something else?

<comment><USER6> That phrase is not bad. But even this project can be better described via a table that compares it with alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good idea, I will think how to improve both, the landing page and the GitHub's readme file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Regarding issues: "just answer politely and let them know that you will at least try to resolve the issue at some point in the future."

If you're too busy, maybe a better approach would be to encourage the poster to submit a PR along with test cases.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'd love to see Warden integrate with Cachet [0] as they'd go really well together!

[0] [https://cachethq.io](https://cachethq.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will take a look at it, would you be so kind to open a new issue [https://github.com/warden-stack/Warden/issues](https://github.com/warden- stack/Warden/issues)?

<comment><USER8> Done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, currently I'm working on the MS SQL integration, so it will be my next task!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Open Source is a life changer because I got some peer recognition and attention...meh!

<comment><USER10> Of course! GitHub stars are the only intrinsic good.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed they are (ok I hope that you've realized I was partially joking about this). Anyway, getting attention is important to make your OS project more recognizable, so what's wrong with that? :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Open source doesn't work everywhere - [https://medium.com/@did_78238/what- happened-to-open-source-c...](https://medium.com/@did_78238/what-happened-to- open-source-crm-anyway-8612f564c5f0#.cwe0v8axt)

<comment><USER12> That article makes a gross misinterpretation of free software right off the bat:

> It's not about source code or idealistic world views or desire to customize > software, it's about not paying anything.

That's just patently false.

</comment></comment><comment> w0rd-driven I feel like there's 2 completely different paradigms to open source, or at least it felt that way for me. There's starting your own project and contributing to someone else's.

I initially started with my own projects, a few very minimalistic plugins or tools to scratch an itch. I put them on Github with no real advertising, save mentioning to the json resume folks that I was at least willing to help with LinkedIn importing since I was working rather extensively on converting my linkedin data to json resume. That project is pure garbage in terms of how brute force and un-developer-friendly it could be, but it still got a handful of stars in spite of that not really being the purpose anyway.

Fast forward to consuming open source plugins for work purposes and seeing projects almost there, needing a PR or two. In a couple of instances I'll fork a project and merge PRs manually because I see business value in circumventing waiting on the author. I may also need something they would otherwise reject. I feel like this is stage 2. I'm getting value for my own needs, I'm using the tools at my disposal not through direct PRs to my project but capturing the work of others.

It wasn't until I got to what feels like stage 3, getting my first PR merged into the core project I used. My very first PR was rejected and immediately feels like a loss but I was trying to tackle the problem using an admittedly 'hacky' way that while it solved the problem, smelled terrible. Getting that first accepted PR, even on the very low hanging fruit I've tackled up until now, is its own kind of high. Having done it on a few other projects spanning multiple languages and setups, I _feel_ stronger as a developer whether or not that equates to actual quantifiable results. If I can clone your project and contribute one of two things is happening, either it's drop-dead simple (in most cases it certainly is) or I'm showing my competency for being able to do what the maintainer says I can do. That said I have contributed to some projects that were unintuitive and yet I was still able to solve the problem at hand. While frustrating as hell in comparison, even those projects have a tendency to teach me quite a bit.

It's because of stage 3 that I now actively try to evangelise my developer friends to make the same plunge, many of whom don't feel they have the time to contribute. I not only found that I have had the time, but it becomes a worthwhile pursuit and it shows my competency to others. Having said all of that I do feel I've gotten lucky. My first PR rejection was handled so amazingly well and when asking for clarity, I wasn't made to feel inferior. They clearly explained the problem, thanked me for spending the time on it at all (which is probably the most crucial thing), and proposed the more elegant solution of waiting for gulp 4. Getting something like "This is dumb. Why did you even submit this?" would've probably turned me off of contributing for another few years overall, much less to their project again. Even faced with that, I would still push myself to contribute because the benefit of even one accepted PR outweighs all the negatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was an interesting read, thanks for posting this. I guess that the moral of the story is to keep trying and don't give up with contributing whether it's submitting PR, opening new issues or running your own project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> A bit of attention whoring.

<comment><USER14>
        This is not going to be one of these catchy titles,
        so "what kind of bs am I going to read here" has
        little use in this place. Actually, this is 100%
        true that contributing to the open source community
        might greatly affect your life

How to say one thing and communicate the exact opposite.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, if you say that this post was all about bs then I won't disagree with your opinion, as you have a right to say so :).

<comment><USER15> I presume you are the author. Listen...

Free software has changed my life for the better. A LOT of people have had very similar experiences.

We dream and worry about and hope and fight for and code for and watch and love the future history of humanity as it blossoms and twists and writhes into everyone's lives.

Software is eating the world. Free software developers are influencing that event (a little?).

Just seeing it and knowing it changed my life. It changed the eyes with which I see the world. So I thought I knew what your post was going to be about.

Keep looking, spetz. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for this well-written answer :).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Database-agnostic querying is unavoidable at scale - <AUTHOR> https://blog.kensho.com/database-agnostic-querying-is-unavoidable-at-scale-18895f6df2f0 <comment><AUTHOR> OP/post author here -- happy to chat about this if anyone is curious to learn more or has questions.</comment>


Mixing colors with HTML5 (phaser.io game) - <AUTHOR> http://r2goo.com/xlab1

<comment><USER2> The game is cool! Hard to figure out all the colours not using the help :)))

</comment><comment><USER3> trying to get the timing right to hit the beakers was hard and not fun.

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry to hear that, this is the main idea behind, mix the colors inside the beakers, as you progress the tubes get faster and the drops as well...</comment></comment>


Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity or CO2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/antonyevans/glowing-plants-natural-lighting-with-no-electricit

<comment><USER2> This is one along the lines of 'wouldn't it be nice if'. Yes, it would be. You can get an idea of how effective this will be if you paint a good sized chunk of wall with <http://glonation.com/> glow in the dark paint. The paint will likely have a much higher density than any plant based set-up will be.

This may be useful as emergency lighting in a jungle but I highly doubt that we'll be replacing LEDs, fluorescent or even incandescents with this technique.

Apologies for being terribly pessimistic but even if the project gets funded _and_ the goal is successfully achieved I can't see the utility.

Has there been any work done on an estimate of efficiency, some sort of modelling about what reasonable expectations are with respect to output?

It's a super presentation complete with HN voting ring, congratulations on successfully gaming the system. If they are just as good at the execution then this can't fail.

edit: after reading the risks and challenges section:

"We hope to have a plant which you can visibly see in the dark (like glow in the dark paint) but don't expect to replace your light bulbs with version 1.0."

So that was pretty much spot on. Then:

"The more money we raise, the more we can refine our designs and the stronger the effect we will get so please tell all your friends about the project."

That's not very honest, there is no way there is a direct relationship between the money they raise and the effect produced, these things typically follow a saturation curve with the upper limit being pretty hard and rather low compared to other ways of generating light.

<comment><AUTHOR> There is an assessment of the energy efficiency here: <http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge/Tools/Lighting>

<comment><USER3> In this article they assume plants can use about 3% to 6% of the light, but actually they can use about 0.1% - 0.2%. So instead of 60 W/m^2 you have 1 W/m^2.

Meaning you need to dedicate 1% of the tree's energy to light, not 0.02%.

They also use a 210 lumen bulb to compare with - but 210 lumens is very very dim. Assuming each tree is planted 20 meters apart, each tree needs to illuminate 400 m^2 of area, which would be 0.5 lux.

For comparison that's about as much light as the full moon provides.

For normal street lighting you want about 18 lux, meaning you actually need a 7000 lumen bulb.

So, now we need 35% of the trees energy delivered as light. But of course half of the light will be emitted upward, so we really need 70% of the trees energy.

Good luck with that.

And we haven't even touched on the fact that the light is not created on the surface of the plant, but rather throughout the tissue, so a lot of it will be lost internally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why are there so many short-but-positive comments from new accounts?

Is HN being rather unsubtly gamed?

Doesn't give me much confidence if so.

<comment><USER5> At least 4 of the comments are by the same account: sinbal22. Looks like someone may be trying to game HN.

Edit: Maybe it's comment spam in an attempt to push this to the front page. As I understand it, stuff that hits the front page of HN isn't just a function upvotes. # of comments, and the time over which the upvotes and the comments accrued are also accounted for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi I'm one of the project creators and I posted the link on my facebook page asking for the discussion to happen here instead of there. I think the comments are from some of my more enthusiastic friends who are new here!

<comment><USER5> Maybe I should have put 'someone' in quotes, because I literally meant someone and not "someone with heavy implicit leanings towards the project creators."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not that this project isn't on the up and up but all these new shill accounts "praising" a project always make me suspicious. Nevertheless, I think this might be the first Kickstarter I actually invest in.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Inject 30 characters into the DNA of the plant" - what could possibly go wrong with that? :-)

(And no, its not subtle (the gaming), analytics show that Kickstarters that make the front page get more $$ so its part of the marketing campaign no doubt)

<comment><USER8> _what could possibly go wrong with that?_

Yes, what? If you think about it like a SciFy movie, it is guaranteed to result in a gigantic, walking plant, smarter than a human, which wants to destroy us all. Also ghosts some how.

If you _actually_ think about it, than the chances of those 30 characters, being something which will help the plant survive and thrive in the wild, are tiny. Virtually non existent.

Any one currently thriving wild plant has a better chance of mutating itself in that way. Any current wild plant could become an invasive species by sticking one of its seeds the the shoe of a human getting on a plane.

People way overestimate the chances of bio-engineering to create anything truly dangerous. And people way underestimate the chances of the regular old all natural flu to kill a huge percentage of humanity in any given year.

<comment><USER7> [Random note, I certainly hope the password for your HN account is something like "johnsmith" :-)]

I was joking of course, I love biot's comment about overwriting the call stack and taking over the genome. And no doubt these world class geneticists wouldn't actually insert what looks like a garbage string of characters if the DNA they coded matched up some sort of virus or something. Of course "Copyright CEM rights reserved" is 30 chars too :-) which would make for a weird legal thing where you argued the Kickstarter was a 'work for hire' and you've got the copyright to prove it yadda yadda.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I thought the video was pretty terrible - strange special effects and fairly vague - but the project sounds awesome. Backed.

edit: I'd sure like an explanation for the gaming, though.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've never seen a bright chemical reaction that wasn't really hot. Can a practical level of light even come out of a test tube?

Edit: Also, just hit me: How in the world would a potted plant in my living room absorb collect even 20 watts of energy? This would need you to seriously redesign almost everything about the modern house if you wanted to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out these guys glowing bacteria which were the inspiration for the project: <http://2010.igem.org/Team:Cambridge>

<comment><USER10> I understand that stuff can glow, but notice that those pictures don't even have things visible 5 feet away.

<comment><USER11> There are orders of magnitude power differences between "glow" and "illuminate".

First, your eye has a logarithmic response to light intensity, which is great, it gives you nice dynamic range. But if you are judging photons/second, you are going to do a terrible job. It doesn't take many photons for your to perceive dim light, particularly when you are dark adapted.

Looking from the other direction, say that plant has about a 10cm x 10cm total leaf area. It gets the equivalent of 4 hours a day of sunlight at 1000 watts/sq meter (typical of earth). So 40 watt hours of energy per day hits it. Wikipedia says 3-6% efficient for photosynthesis, that gets us down to 2 watt hours per day. That gives it 100mW to live on. If it put _all_ of that into glowing and were as efficient at making light as an LED it would make about the amount of light of an indicator LED that says something is on, but isn't silly bright. I think that is still orders of magnitude high. The plant still needs to use energy on growing, and the biological light making process is probably not as efficient as an LED.

<comment><USER12> > _and the biological light making process is probably not as efficient as an > LED_

Interestingly enough, the luciferase reaction is actually more efficient than LED.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferase#Mechanism_of_reacti...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luciferase#Mechanism_of_reaction)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love this!

See <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLhU1RGTHN4> and [http://downtownproject.com/2013/dr-omri-avirav-drory- democra...](http://downtownproject.com/2013/dr-omri-avirav-drory- democratizing-the-tools-creation/) to learn more about this amazing project!

<comment><USER14> This is where things are headed. DIY biology is going to explode as GATC printing comes down in price the way that DNA reading has.

Those of us who got started in the early hacking days of computers should see the parallels in this new wave. As cool as computer hacking has been, the potentials of biological hacking - particularly with respect to being able to hack our own DNA is mind boggling (and scary at the same time).

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As always, I'm a bit skeptical. Not that it can't be done, but how effective can these actually be? How many lumens will it produce? How long will the plants live? Will they produce more seeds? Is bioluminescence a dominant trait? Or will future generations of my night light glow dimmer? Oh the botany!

<comment><USER8> I do not believe this can be something which you could use to read by. Light takes a lot of energy and biology does not waste energy. And plants don't even have the metabolism of a fly. This is very neat. I'll probably donate enough to get seeds. But I do not believe it is a light bulb replacement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I would love to see what it looks like when its glowing? Have they not grown any yet?

<comment><AUTHOR> The kickstarter funds will be used to synthesize the DNA and make the actual glowing plant. We have a florescent prototype which glows under UV and will post pictures of that in a few weeks when it's bigger.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Dr. Ian Malcolm: Don't you see the danger, John, inherent in what you're doing here? Genetic power is the most awesome force the planet's ever seen, but you wield it like a kid that's found his dad's gun. Donald Gennaro: It's hardly appropriate to start hurling generalizations... Dr. Ian Malcolm: If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now [bangs on the table] Dr. Ian Malcolm: you're selling it, you wanna sell it. Well... John Hammond: I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before... Dr. Ian Malcolm: Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn't stop to think if they should.

</comment><comment><USER18> I backed this project. This is exactly the sort of blue-sky experimentation I think crowd-funding can enable, that otherwise likely wouldn't be economically feasible and/or fundable.

I think I backed it as much for its ambition and vision as for the actual reward!

<comment><USER3> I hope you backed it with your eyes open. It can't work. They might be able to make it glow i.e. you can see light if you look at it, but there is no way they could make it bright enough to illuminate anything even 1 foot away.

As long as you know you are making a decoration, not a lamp replacement then cool.

They really should be clearer to backers letting them know it can't work as a light replacement.

<comment><USER19> Granted the title "Glowing Plants: Natural Lighting with no Electricity or CO2" could potentially be misconstrued but anybody considering investing would be reading the rest of the materials, especially the risks and challenges section.

"We hope to have a plant which you can visibly see in the dark (like glow in the dark paint) but don't expect to replace your light bulbs with version 1.0."

<comment><USER3> That implies it will be possible with version 2. It won't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interresting project but i'm wondering how can we keep control of these plants and prevent them to reproduce themselves (or infect other plants) ? (Yes I don't know that much about biology)

<comment><USER21> Plants don't just "reproduce themselves". Nor do they "infect" other plants. This is not a "infectious" trait. If you cross pollinate (a.k.a. 'breeding plants'), the active genes responsible for glowing in the dark may or may not even be passed down.

Though your concerns are well noted--see Monsanto's 'terminator' crops cross pollinating with neighboring 'normal' crops and making their seeds also sterile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> But how can you turn it off?

<comment><USER23> Stop watering it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> the thing is, this is truly an incredibly feat of technology where we are at the point in history that we can actually control life, that is program cells to do what we want. It's incredibly innovative, and immensely powerful. Software ain't crap compared to biological programming.

Also the _reason_ it takes (relatively) longer than electronic computer circuits are because there are biological machines, enzymatic 'robots' if you will, of polymerase enzymes binding to DNA and RNA and so forth. And that, my friends, is the beauty and wonder of this campaign.

</comment><comment><USER25> Too bad they don't ship outside the US.

</comment><comment><USER26> This is kind of project for which KickStarter was invented for... unlike some others for small apps

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think Kickstarter is going to change the way so many things are funded, this project would never get off the ground without them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well...on the upside at least we're not making more mice glow in the dark

</comment><comment><USER28> Amazing!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is the first ever synthetic biology kickstarter campaign! A sign of things to come I hope

<comment><USER23> It won't be long until the first accident involving a genetically modified puppy that's so supernaturally cute it causes fatalities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Wow!! Synthetic biology is so cool!!</comment>


Show HN: We've Prelaunched - eFolio.me - <AUTHOR>

I'm developing an early start-up called eFolio. Not much information is available yet but, it's being developed to solve many problems pertaining to employment.
As this is my first prelaunch I'm still trying to find ways to gain exposure, if anyone has advice from a previous a experience, it'd be nice to share.
Any feedback is welcome. <comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://eFolio.me>.</comment>


Why does Larry still need all this paper? (did he wear a fake Google glasses?) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/22/larry-page-google-glasse/ <comment><USER2> It's possible glasses use paper (or any other large-enough white surface) as an info projection area, "inserting" information from the glasses directly into real life. This could be a more comfortable user interface for data-heavy interaction than trying to do gestures in the air (think of the paper as a quasi-touchscreen, except that the "touch" is interpreted visually).

<comment><USER3> While an intriguing theory, methinks Occam's Razor applies.

<comment><USER4> i.e. paper has higher resolution, and is more readable than a pair prototype glasses? I think so too. The title is needlessly incendiary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Glasses != a teleprompter</comment>


Show HN: Over Engineered Minesweeper Recreation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/noazark/minesweeper <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN! I started w/ this project a couple weeks ago, completing a rough version, to my satisfaction, in an hour or so. Then I realized something was missing: lots and lots of tests, CI, automated deployment, separation of logic from the UI, etc. I am admittedly very pleased with where I ended up, it was a blast to recreate this game.</comment>


Show HN: Bulk Image Quotes Generator - <AUTHOR> http://www.viralquotesonline.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello! I bootstrapped a year ago a micro-saas ideal for social marketing.

ViralQuotes ([http://www.viralquotesonline.com](http://www.viralquotesonline.com)) is a social media content generator. You can choose from a wide range of topics (english and spanish) and generate an original set of custom quotes, with backgrounds chosen from a quality set of royalty-free images. Ideal for boosting your online presence and helping you to never run out of content again.

It has been a long journey, and I really enjoyed it. I have 2 average buyers per month, which is enough to maintain it itself. I want to clarify that ViralQuotes is a side project, I am working on it with experimental purposes, I'm not hoping to become rich with it, just learn as much as I can about being a founder and ship my own product to the world.

It would be great to hear about other founder experiences, I appreciate any suggestions, critics, ideas, etc.

Thanks!</comment>


Would you be happier if you are richer? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.princeton.edu/~ceps/workingpapers/125krueger.pdf

<comment><AUTHOR> The author found that perhaps the best indicator of happiness was frequency of eating with friends and family.</comment>


Deciphering the genetic diversity of leaf shapes - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/deciphering-how-plant-genes-drive-weird-wonderful-diversity-leaf-shapes-180974067/ <comment><USER2> >The study, published this month in Science, brings together molecular genetic analysis and computer modeling to show how gene expression directs leaves to grow.

At first this seemed like gene profiling & modelling, however it was modeling the mechanism of leaf shapes based on existing theories rather than a map of gene mutations and outcomes, which I confess is more interesting itself than the specific implication of leaf cup shapes. If I want procedural generation I can find it already...

</comment><comment><USER3> Morphogenesis from DNA is thought to be a haaard problem.....</comment>


Y Combinator Command Line Search Utility Version 1.2 Released - <AUTHOR>

To keep your Y Combinator dataset of posts ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=182374 ) and users ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=183706 ) current and indexed, try our command line and web service search utilities. This 15KB archive is available by accessing http://www.rushy.com/shetland-pub20080508.tar.gz <comment><USER2> Having a look through the utilities, these seem to be pulling the data from here directly.

Would it not be more efficient to co-ordinate with pg on some kind of organised periodic data dump that could be mirrored efficiently?

I've got a decent amount of space on a decent box with a sufficiently fat connection. Mirroring pg's data dump on there wouldn't be a problem and would save this site being spidered by umpteen different people.

<comment><USER3> If pg can give us nightly snapshots that can be mirrored, it will be awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder, if anyone has put this data to some use.</comment>


Newsletter Awards 2020 - <AUTHOR> https://www.theemailschool.com/awards <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, all you beautiful people. There are many excellent newsletters. There are many brilliant people. Let's have a newsletter party.

Enter your brilliant newsletter to the Newsletter Awards 2020.</comment>


Are Stanford Students Just (Really Excellent) Sheep? - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/group/reichresearch/cgi-bin/site/2011/03/24/are-stanford-students-just-really-excellent-sheep/ <comment><USER2> I am getting quite tired of listening to people argue for or against conformity.

You don't become a shepherd by making yourself into a black sheep.

And there is nothing wrong with conforming.

There is nothing wrong with wearing fashionable status symbols. There is nothing wrong with climbing hierarchies, nothing wrong with pleading for a comfortable life, or listening to what your friends think is cool. There really isn't. These are all suitable ways of enjoying your life.

We all seem to want to be rare. But what does rare get you?

Solitude.

Maybe you truly want this? But think it through: are the grapes so sour? We are social animals.

I covet the courage to be and do whatever I wish to. I don't need to be scared to be seen along side others. This is a whim to will.

It is crazy to want to be more of an individual than others just for the sake of it, and it has nothing to do with living the way I just mentioned.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree as well, but to a point. Do we really want our most targeted education resources being directed towards conformists? I think these institutions should be (almost) reserved for those who are pursuing leadership and cutting edge thinking.

<comment><USER3> Why do you think the place for noncomforists is in an _institution_? Why would they want to attend an _institution_?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> William Deresiewicz's address to West Point, "Solitude and Leadership" (<http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership/>) remains the best piece on leadership I've read to date. Ironically, as pointed out by Deresiewicz, the address is given to newly minted officers in the US military.

The address was requisite reading in this year's Venture for America application process, and is more than just a guide in becoming a better leader, but a phenomenal exposition on why our educational system has calcified into "hoop" jumping.

<comment><USER5> I agree; that is an excellent speech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the reasons I think people err by reading too much into accounts from the 'Stanford Prison Experiment'.

The students then (as now) weren't a sample of all people, but a particular kind of privileged young male, especially deferential and trusting towards professors, and especially willing to role-play with confidence that some other authority was managing the consequences.

<comment><USER7> The participants in the Stanford Prison Experiment weren't Stanford students. I'm not sure any of them were. They were selected by Zimbardo from responses to an ad in Palo Alto. They were selected for their normal-ness, mentally and physiologically.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment>

<comment><USER6> You're right that they may not have been _exclusively_ Stanford students. But they were recruited through city and campus newspapers, limited to male college students who were in Palo Alto for the last two weeks of August 1971, and had to report to an on-campus location to sign up.

I've seen definitive references that some were Stanford students, and my guess under those conditions would be that _most_ were.

But even if most were not: a cohort of 24 male college students (23 white; 1 asian) in 1971 was not representative of society at large. Those in comfortable Palo Alto for the last 2 weeks of summer break, even less representative. And those who arrived on campus in response to a classified ad for paid volunteers "needed for psychological study of prison life", less representative again.

(As one of the followup studies footnoted in Wikipedia discovered, the mere presence of the "study of prison life" phrase in the recruitment ad changes what kind of people respond.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a member of generation Y, I think the original "Organisation Kid" article really got what is wrong with my generation. We're not lazy, entitled, or afraid of competition, despite hundreds of articles by gen X/boomers claiming the opposite. We compete and work hard _but never ask what it's all for_.

<comment><USER9> When you start to ask "What is it all for?" you stop competing and working hard, because you realize it's an old man's game.

It's 2012. You can get HD pornography on a phone. Are we still expected to worry about all of this menial shit from the 60s?

<comment><USER10> > _When you start to ask "What is it all for?" you stop competing and working > hard, because you realize it's an old man's game._

That's one possible result. There are others.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We've created a winner-take-all society where the cost of losing is a soul- sucking micro-managed job and the constant worry that getting sick could mean medical bills that can never be paid off. In this society you do not get points for asking big questions. You get points for getting the right degrees to serve the right signaling functions to get the right jobs which offer luxuries like health insurance and the flexibility to leave the office for 15 minutes during the day to take care of an errand.

Kids aren't stupid. They tailor their behavior to the incentives they are offered. All of the author's political science students from Stanford are going to keep their head down then head to boring corporate jobs in consulting, law, or finance because those jobs pay the bills and offer health insurance. They might go and live a life of asking big questions if we lived in a country where your baby can fall and hit its head and you can take it to the ER without weighing the benefit versus the staggering cost of the ER visit, but we don't live in that kind of country. And under those circumstances only irrational people are willing to take the risk of asking big questions.

<comment><USER12> Daniel Brook's book "The Trap: Selling Out to Stay Afloat in Winner-Take-All America" [1] does a great job showing how the rising costs of student loans, urban living, and health care drive students into corporate jobs.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F76G2Q/ref=as_li_tf_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003F76G2Q/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=explthedataun-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B003F76G2Q)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "problem" is that the problem that top tier education raises -- the one this topic is focused on -- is not really a problem for graduates of those institutions, namely:

Getting accepted is the biggest hurdle. Once you are in all you really need to do to secure an opportunity is graduate. It's in the institution's best interest to see that you graduate and carry on the good name of the institution after graduation in whatever position you decide to take in whatever sector of the economy.

People will listen to you merely based on the fact you graduated from a top tier institution. They will assume you are intelligent. There is no need to prove it.

Some people will even hire you solely based on those phenomena.

Why would any graduate be against this? There is very little incentive to think outside the box.

The sheep are not the graduates of top tier institutions. The sheep are the people who blindly follow them.

There is little need to be a good leader when you can be a leader "by default" thanks to "presumed competence" and the fear of questioning anyone who has graduated from a top tier institution.

.

</comment><comment><USER14> "It portrayed the average Princeton/Yale/Harvard/Stanford student as extremely bright and morally earnest but ultimately rather uninspired and herd-like conformists."

Colleges go out of their way to select 'herd-like conformists' during the admissions process, so why would they then try to change them once they got there? This Brooks article never made any sense to me.

<comment><USER15> The admissions people say they reject excellent-but-bland applications, but perhaps it's a matter of degree.

<comment><USER16> There's a school of thought in the UK that feels institutions like this reject applications from applicants who's family don't have deep pockets.

Similarly, there's the perception that Eton is capable of producing well- educated idiots.

Understand me here - this isn't my view. Just saying it's a view that's out there.

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure Eton is really applicable here, since the income of your parents matters a whole lot more than the application process (and Eton suffer for it in the league tables) — and whilst you may argue that Ivy League schools do just that, I doubt it's quite to the same extent.

<comment><USER18> Bear in mind that the ivy leagues get to grade their own students whereas the etonians sit national exams...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "We are slouching toward a glorified form of vocational training."

What's wrong with vocational training? Maybe the issue is that the market is demanding vocational skills yet schools are trying to find, or trying to artificially create, a market for liberal-arts skills.

<comment><USER20> Very good point. I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet but it also isn't feasible to have an entire society (or even just the population of people with undergraduate/graduate degrees) asking the big questions and shaking everything up. Society needs people to keep the cogs turning which involves a lot of "menial" jobs (I use menial not to imply that they do not require intelligence or skill, but instead to point out that they are simply not novel or unique)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I went to school, then dropped out, and then went back. I finished my BS last week with a 4.0 GPA. I dropped out because I wasn't learning anything, and it was an incredibly time consuming grind that wasn't any fun. I dropped out to start a company, and probably learned more every few weeks doing that, than it would be possible to learn in years of classes. There isn't a guide and every problem requires actual thought and understanding. Memorization will do nothing for you.

I started to think seriously about going back two years ago, as I observed friends that had graduated in soft subjects moving up in their careers, to the point where they were making hiring decisions. An overheard conversation that really stuck out, was when I heard someone relating their thought process in deciding not to hire a technically capable but degree-less candidate, "How could I hire them? That's a hard technical position. It's impossible to do something like that without college. I had to spend four years learning HRs, and that was really hard. That job is even tougher than HRs." It started to become obvious after a while that people that make hiring decisions in large companies many times are not very intelligent, and it would be basically impossible to get a job many places without a degree. Your resume will get bounced by HR before it ever gets to the technical people that should be doing the interviews. It would be OK if my company succeeded, since I could point at it and say it sold for $X, justifying the decision to drop out. But if it failed, these people would never understand. So I went back as a hedge, part time.

The only difference between the first and second time I went to school, is that the second time I was determined to get straight A's, and graduate as quickly as possible, so I could get into a good post-grad program. I was able to do a little over 30 credits one summer when I maxed out the number of Credit-By-Exam courses I transferred in. I found that if I studied anything that I had a general understanding of for about four hours (like Business Ethics), I could easily pass the exam by a large margin. The actual coursework was mostly very easy. Almost always, it was more a question of doing all the work, and turning it in on time, than anything else. I would take the syllabus, and check off everything that had to be done as I completed it. Getting an A is as easy as doing everything, it doesn't require any real intelligence or understanding. This is really what college is all about.

People hire college graduates because they have demonstrated that they can be given a list of work, and a criteria for how their work will be judged, and complete the work. That's it. From my experience many grads will require a lot of hand holding to actually complete their work the first time, because they don't really know how to do anything, and can't think for themselves. The degree indicates that they are trainable; once they are shown what to do, they can keep checking the boxes for at least 4 years. I wish I didn't have to go back to school, it cost time and money disproportionate to what I got out of it. Having said that, for now, a degree is difficult to avoid without seriously limiting prospects. It is the present reality, and if I could do it over again, I would have tried to go to a top-tier school right out of high school and ground out a BS with honors in 2.5 years.

<comment><USER22> My question: how does a piece of paper that thousands of others hold distinguish you? It doesn't. Take those four years and $120k-$240k you would spend on an "education" and get a real education - build a company. Building a legit company (successful or not) is worth 1000 times what that piece of paper is. Your mind will be tempered in the fires of reality.

As I've said many times, a degree is just your ticket to being some else's bitch.

<comment><USER23> How many financial institutions are going to lend $120-140k to an 18 year old for any purpose other than going to college?

It's also worth bearing in mind that spending 3-4 years focused on learning stuff like math,econ and CS rigorously can help your abilities to build a business later.

You might be able to setup your web dev shop at 18 and make a nice living for a few years making CRUD apps or whatever but once the market starts to demand something else then you are likely to get stuck if you haven't put some study into higher level principles.

Besides there is nothing stopping you from running a simple business at the same time as going to college. Myself and a few others on my CS course used to build websites and fix PCs during the holidays and made more money for about half the hours as the people working at the supermarkets and pubs.

<comment><USER22> A good portion of students receive little or no financial aid. Even if you do get that money loaned, its still debt on your head that you would have to save up for / pay off.

A common mistake people make is that any given subject (math, econ, etc) is limited to your studies in college. I have studied biology, architecture, the classics, geology, meteorology, botany, and much more outside of college.

It does depend whether or not you are a self learner, but is paying 120k+ really worth it to have someone twist your arm? Everything you can learn in college, you can learn outside, for free -- the interent has democratized information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I absolutely hated my academics apart from the patches that involved doing projects and interesting 'real world' work.

My experience with academic education was something like this. It was always a blind race for scoring marks/grades. At the end of every day what comes are series of boring assignments and homework whose use no one knows of. Not doing the boring stuff gets punished. Exams are always about getting a seat in a nice institution. And the cumulative effect of that is to get a good interview call. People with higher grades and marks ultimately get placed in better places to repeat the same kind of boring stuff in big corporates.

Well I am from India. The best experience in my college days Ironically came from working at a Government Military organization called as GTRE([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Turbine_Research_Establishm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gas_Turbine_Research_Establishment)). I learned more in the 6 month apprenticeship than what I learned in years. We also did great work, I can't disclose the work as its defense stuff and I'm under NDA. Next best experience came during working for a start up during my semester holidays.

Every time I went back to college I felt pathetic.

Post college, I saw the so called toppers were all about two things. Do their MBA from a B-School and then join a Bank or some business role, Or work for a nice start package at a large corporate. The silliest thing I saw was even the job scenes were filled with interview procedures designed to hire top rote learners. Knowing algorithms by heart, memorizing arcane facts, learning puzzles from a particular book, stuff like that. Practially 0 importance for things like hardwork, productivity and getting things done.

Second bizarre things I noticed was large corporates required completing pointless certifications for hikes and promotions. This was college all over again for me.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well there is also a strong intelligence requirement for getting into Stanford. The real question is how many people of the same age as Stanford students are just as intelligent but less sheeplike? Personally, I would guess that elite university undergraduates make up a fairly large fraction of the people their age who are as smart as they are.

</comment><comment><USER26> That is why people who attended Rudolf Steiner's Waldorf school perform so well in College. It is a school that DOES NOT give grades to students. And the teach write feed back to the students based on whole aspects of their development including social interaction. When college get ride of tests and grade will be a good start.

<comment><USER27> If colleges get rid of grades, however will Peter Thiel know which hedge fund analysts to hire?

<comment><USER26> well, business school like wharton prohibits employers to ask about their graduate's grade anyway.

<comment><USER3> That's likely because they promote an image that all their students are perfect. It's also possible, but doubtful, thatthey believe class grades are personal development tools, not external qualifications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm so fucking glad I'm done school. Now I finally have time to learn things like Prolog :)

<comment><USER29> Datalog's where the action is at now ;) !

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a pretty discouraging thread to read. The vast majority of posters seem to be of a CS (or related) background, extremely smart (academically, at least), and hold their college experience in low regard. Consensus seems to be that the core CS coursework was pretty easy, forced conformity, and didn't have much interesting material to spark learning or creativity.

How many of the people complaining of this branched out to other subjects? Learned about political philosophy, geology or maybe tried some creative writing? True, those courses are 'easier' so won't be more challenging to get your coveted "A", and yes they might not help you graduate as quickly as humanly possible to get out of school or help you make millions in the marketplace. But there is a reason they are there, and it's not so less intelligent people can also get a Stanford degree. They tackle other questions, other problems, other ways of thinking. You might do very well in those classes without tons of work, but they undoubtedly would have provided another avenue to learn and experience a lot of things you don't get from CS.

The discussions around tuition cost, learning in the real world where you can make $10K/month, how easy 'soft' courses are, the dismissive idea that college is partially about having fun, making friends, romantic relationships, etc. probably does a lot to explain why the majority of this thread didn't feel like Stanford offered much to them besides a piece of paper that society demands. There is so much you didn't bother to do because it didn't fit into your specific and very narrow idea: learn CS to make money. Of course I'm generalizing here, and I doubt anybody actually thought 'learn CS to make money', but it really doesn't sound like many people who have posted had a ton of experience in school to develop their self, rather than just their career.

</comment><comment><USER31> I think it's far more likely that the faculty of elite schools are selected for being really excellent sheep.

They have jumped through many more hoops for a much longer period of time.

I could buy that the student body were largely using the elite schools for their own ultimately non-conformist ends, but it's much harder to convince myself that the faculty is doing so.

</comment><comment><USER32> It's a fair point. Doing well in my undergrad classes felt like a game, and I've developed many rules of playing the game to score many points. I think it's fair to say that good grades are some kind of a measure of combination of ambition, perseverance and determination to be the sheep you're asked to be.

The most interesting people I think are those who excel at that game because they realize that it's just the way society functions, but on a side maintain a soul-- interesting extracurricular interests, projects, etc. They use their knowledge not only to pass tests, but attempt to expand on it and apply it in their own creative ways.

That's why I think the article's title is not very appropriate. I'd call it "Is Stanford training just (really excellent) sheep?". There are some good arguments to be made for an affirmative answer, and yet that's not who I see when I look around me.

</comment><comment><USER4> Let's be clear, though – hoop jumping isn't relegated to the university/educational system today. It's ubiquitous in hiring, promotion, and general staffing practices in corporations. It's typical in society.

Rare are the people who constantly ask "why do we do what we do," and "how could we do this better."

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. But this is a virtue of human nature, and power. And in business (very generalised) you have the efficiency cycle and the efficacy cycle. Bosses generally only want advice on how the company can become more efficient, to question efficacy is to question his/her judgement and power.

But the ease by which people can now try, test, and launch an idea and business is tearing this model down. I think that very soon, the companies who fail will be those who do not recognise the leaders from within, with the ability to improve on enterprise efficacy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't think it's a Stanford problem, or a university problem, or even an academic problem. It's a people problem. I've seen just as many industry sheep as I have academic ones :-)

The sort of folk who are going to just jump through the academic hoops and nothing else are _exactly_ the same sort of people who jump through similar industry hoops. They do what they're supposed to do and not a lot else.

The people who see the degree certificate as the goal are the same sort of folk who see the promotion or the parking space or the corner office as the goal. They see the what, but not the why.

People seem bent towards that particular approach to life long before they get to work or university.

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't forget the exams. That is loop jumping par excellence and should you try to be a non-conformist over that, you will be out of college before you know it and unable to listen to these excellent lectures on how not to conform.

</comment><comment><USER5> What mentality is he pointing to when he derides "The idea that every activity they undertake be "a growth experience.""? Sounds like a damn fine idea to me.

<comment><USER35> I think he means that by framing an activity as a "growth experience", it loses a bit of it's soul. Ghandi, Lindbergh, Jobs - they all changed the world because they had a fire in their belly and couldn't sit still. They didn't pursue things because it would grow their character. They did things because they we're compelled to.

<comment><USER36> I don't think a world in which everyone is trying to be (or thinks they are) the next Steve Jobs would be so great.

<comment><USER37> There would be even more kids with no father in their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Are State School Students Just (Mediocre) Sheep?

</comment><comment><USER39> Two word summary: navel gazing.

</comment><comment><USER40> 95% of people are sheep, just look around you. Clothing fashions all change with eachother according to what the others are doing. Church: just tell me What to believe. Bars, drinking toxic liquids and smoking radioactive smoke because it's cool. Resumes which plead for others to make us worthy members of society.

It takes a special kind of defiance to say no thank you to What the world expects you to be.

<comment><USER41> I am always amused at this mentality. Have you ever noticed how Reddit is full of people who all think everyone _else_ are sheep?

Everyone is unique if you only count the things that make them different, and people are pretty similar if you look for things that make them alike.

<comment><USER42> Absolutely. You are always a sheep in some regard; non-conforming in _every_ regard is an exhausting and worthless endeavor. Not to mention, you almost have to pay _more_ attention to trends than the unconscious conformer, at which point... who is the slave to trends?

<comment><USER43> Nonconforming is not the same as anticonforming. And the fact that you observe and analyse trends doesn't mean you're a slave to them.

<comment><USER42> _the fact that you observe and analyse trends, doesn't mean you're a slave to them_

Even if you are making the opposite choice, if your every decision is predicated on the trends, I'd still call you a slave to them.

<comment><USER3> "To manipulate children, you simply say 'no'. " --The Fantasticks</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Movement to Stop the Covid-19 Pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://staythefuckhome.com <comment><USER2> Seems like focusing on blaming individuals rather than:

\- Employers don't allow telecommuting.

\- Employers with draconian sick leave policies.

\- No paid sick leave for the majority of jobs (and or strict limits).

\- Limited access to testing to know if you have Covid-19 (Vs. a common cold). Which is significant with e.g. Walmarts new policies which ONLY allow Covid-19 paid sick leave.

Ultimately we set up a system where most people lose by default, then we critique those people for their personal failings without a hint of irony.

<comment><USER3> > _Limited access to testing to know if you have Covid-19_

This is a huge one, at least in France. A friend recently tried to get tested because he was coughing heavily and had a fever. His doctor asked if he went to Italy or China recently, he said no, his doctor replied "Well then you don't have it." and that was the end of it.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand. How are doctors this stupid? We have obvious communal transmission in France (and other countries). And if nobody is fucking testing for it, the doctor can't fucking say that you can't have it. What happened to evidence-based medicine?

<comment><USER5> > How are doctors this stupid? ... the doctor can't fucking say that you can't > have it. What happened to evidence-based medicine?

You clearly have no idea what youre talking about. When something 100x less severe than the coronavirus happens, there is an ABSOLUTE AVALANCHE of people calling in on the full spectrum of sickness, from psychosomatic, to actually sick but with the wrong thing, to actually sick with the right thing but minor cases, to people that will actually die if not seen but cant make their case clear. The reality of the situation is that without instant, free, over-the- phone test results, this is a reasonable response from oversaturated medical systems.

<comment><USER4> Test, test, test. South Korea has tested 100.000 people. In Europe? Nobody is doing anything. You can't respond to something when you have zero idea what the scale is. We're literally seeing Europe stick its head in the sand.somebody comes in with flu-like symptoms, you fucking test. Psychosomatic doesn't matter, either you have the symptoms or you don't. And if you do, you test, test, fucking test. Not tell people to go home, you obviously can't have coronavirus.

The diagnostic is dead simple. Look at any health ministry of any country. It doesn't take a medical degree to understand that if you have flu-like symptoms, you need to be tested for the flu. And if you don't have any of the flu strains making the rounds, test for Coronavirus. You know, exactly what SK is able to do but somehow Europe isn't.

<comment><USER5> Tests are not free, not 100% accurate, and not 100% available. The doctor you called stupid is in control of exactly 0 of those factors, and has no effect on europes policy.

<comment><USER6> What I'd like to see doctors do differently is encourage people to treat their illness as if it were covid-19 regardless of the test result.

If my health care provider can try to sell me antibiotics despite a negative strep test, "just to be sure, because sometimes you get a false negative", then they're surely not ignorant of the phenomenon where tests are less than 100% accurate. (Perhaps they're just variably aware of it, depending on what the bean counters from the health care network's corporate office are telling them to do. But still.) And, if you take a "better safe than sorry" attitude regarding false negatives, then you're not too far off from realizing that not having the test is not _that_ big of a deal, because you'd be telling people to stay home when they're sick in either case.

<comment><USER7> What do you think "treating their illness as if it were covid-19" means?

This is a viral illness. There is simply no treatment. You go home, rest and eventually get through it in most cases. If you have annoying symptoms, you try to alleviate those in the usual ways (as if it was any other cold/flu). If you get life-threatening symptomps, you call for help and they'll take you to the hospital (at least while they aren't completely collapsed).

What would you like the doctor to say or do here?

<comment><USER6> Sorry, ambiguous language. "treat" in the general sense, not specifically in the sense of medical treatment.

Specifically, I would like the doctor to say, "Stay the eff home and keep your germs to yourself, sickie."

More doctors doing this would also help put pressure on employers to change their policies. Maybe (dare I dream?) we can even get restaurants to start giving their employees sick leave, and encouraging them to use it, instead of requiring them to show up and germ up all the food on pain of losing their jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For many years now, I have - 5 times a week - left a building with a computer and Internet access to travel for an hour or more to a building with a computer and Internet access to talk to my colleagues - almost exclusively over Slack and GitHub - for many hours, before traveling back to the same building I left earlier that day. Often, I carry the computer I used throughout the day with me.

Apparently working from home isn't going to be allowed...

Oh well.

<comment><USER9> Any day now, any day now, we shall be released.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Great advice, but the expletive will limit its reach. Consider adding another alternate domain so that this can be shared with friends/family whom might find this offensive.

<comment><USER11> People now take offense at the word 'fuck'? They must have a really hard life.

<comment><USER12> In the US they do. The US has a long history of censoring this and a couple of other words.

<comment><USER10> People aside, there are lots overly aggressive firewalls that will block any domain with the word "fuck" in it.

<comment><USER13> bad news for the church of uckerland

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The page lacks something about how to deal with kids. That's a huge point for those of us that have toddlers and kids at home.

<comment><USER15> As per news, coronavirus is more dangerous to elders compared children

<comment><USER16> I believe what he meant to say was that if you have a 2-year old at home, it will be difficult to work at home.

<comment><USER11> It's easy to stay home, just difficult to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Good idea. A bit unfortunate naming.

<comment><USER15> They wanted to put it blunt. And hence such a name...

<comment><USER18> "Blunt" just comes off as puerile. Why should I take you seriously when you talk like a teenager.

<comment><USER19> This is totally alien to me. I could understand - though not _relate_ \- if you were offended, or just thought the use of the word "fuck" here was awkward or tonally inconsistent. But "puerile" and "why should I take you seriously" and "you talk like a teenager" is an absolutely ridiculous reaction to me. I've honestly not met a single person in all my life who reacted like that to a superfluous curse word.

<comment><USER20> This isn't superfluous... it's in the domain name. Smh

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> We started to do this in Spain today and we're LATE.

Please stay at home if possible, the idea is to reduce the amount of infected and spread the infection over time so we do not saturate the hospitals.

Don't need to panic, just do it.

</comment><comment><USER22> a better resource: [https://www.flattenthecurve.com/](https://www.flattenthecurve.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm curious about the 2% death rate number. How can we rely on this number if test kits are in such limited supply and the rate of "Severe" symptoms is only 15%? Is the death rate only calculated out of known cases? do we only know about the severe cases?

<comment><USER13> They do not say death rate, but they do mention the case fatality rate, which is exactly what it sounds like, and as you have described.

It's the number of people who have died, of the known cases. Not everyone who is infected becomes a case, for one reason or another. Maybe their symptoms did not arouse enough concern, or maybe testing was refused to them since they didn't fit an erroneously narrow list of testing requirements.

Another thing to keep in mind is that people calculating the CFR from public data on a napkin typically don't distinguish between survivors and those who just haven't died yet. So the other side of the CFR (the people who haven't died) tends to include both the known survivors and will-be-survivors, as well as the people who are in the ICU hanging on for dear life and could be dead tomorrow.

For this reason, unless it explicitly states that it's only counting survivors and deaths, the CFR is more reliable once the spread has began to decline, when there are fewer new cases each day than the day before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What is the point of this?

The tone will not accomplish anything

the content is already known, albeit most of the points are good advice

no new ideas are proposed

stats (morbidity, % critical, etc) are still not stable or very helpful at this stage

second-order (let alone deeper) consequences are not discussed at all.

</comment><comment><USER12> My work (client rather than employer) has divided all teams in two, where team A is allowed to come to the office this week, but has to work from home next week, while team B telecommutes this week and can come to the office next week.

Despite being in team A, I'm not allowed to come to the office because my son has a cold that's already cured. But without a negative test, I still have to telecommute for two weeks.

They seem to be a bit more paranoid than your average health expert, but I guess it's better to be safe than sorry. I will definitely miss seeing the other half of my team, though.

</comment><comment><USER25> Probably 100K people max will see this website and the audience is probably skewed toward people who are already well educated on covid-19 precautions

</comment><comment><USER26> Anybody know if there is a safe for work version of this? I would like to share it with my colleagues but the choice of language means I can't.

<comment><USER27> Not the same, but maybe what you want:

[https://www.flattenthecurve.com/](https://www.flattenthecurve.com/)

To avoid TL;DR, search for boxes with green or red background centered text -- that's recommendations of behaviour.

<comment><USER26> Thanks, that is a really excellent link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Corona doesn't stop. Many of us will get infected and many of us [in a relative sense] will be fine after fighting the virus. The thing we need to focus on is making sure the contagion happens at a speed so it doesn't overload our hospitals. German counselor Merkel said that probably 70% will get infected, so we should focus on having too many people infected at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER29> Quick question ... wouldn't a more appropriate response be to self quarantine those age groups most at risk?

<comment><USER30> People who are less at risk of complications have the same / more (because they survive and are more active) risk of spreading the illness.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> While people in tech can easily do all this, not everyone can. Eg: supermarket employees can. Much like pretty much anyone who works on-site.

> Do not use public transportation if not absolutely necessary.

Yeah, cause everyone lives within walking distance of their jobs.

</comment><comment><USER32> My wife and I are perfectly situated to simply stay at home. We live in a small town in the mountains (which unfortunately gets 1.5 million tourist visitors a year, many international visitors).

We always talked about staying at home and just talking with friends and family via FaceTime or phone during a pandemic. The problem is that I volunteer at the local food bank and my wife teaches in a reading program, so for us, STFH means that we are walking away from obligations.

</comment><comment><USER33> What is the path for rebooting society after all this? In the absence of a vaccine, what would be the "all clear" signal?

</comment><comment><USER34> If you see any tech tools or data please add them here:

Coronavirustechhandbook.com

</comment><comment><USER15> Very pleased to see developers trying to contribute to the community to their capacity. But, I am curious to know the impact of this #StayTheFuckHome movement.

</comment><comment><USER35> total nonsense opinion

<comment><USER33> Please expand on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> >Disclaimer: The content of this website does not constitute medical advice. The information provided above is meant to be a suggestion for concerned individuals to follow a loose set of guidelines based on best practices and anecdotal evidence to protect themselves and their loved ones. There is no guarantee or scientific evidence that following the mentioned guidelines will lead to a reduction in new infections or even stop the COVID-19 epidemic. There is also no guarantee that following these guidelines will reduce the risk of getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 or any other viral or bacterial contagion. All information provided on this website is given with the best intent and will to provide factual information. In no event shall the website operators be held liable for any claim, damages or other liabilities. If you have concerns or comments about the information provided on this website, please write to firstname.lastname@example.com.

Here's a guy who's an expert on COVID-19 because he reads the internet. If you have symptoms that feel like death I am telling you to discount this persons' advice, get yourself to the doctor because you may very well be dying.

Also a site that's just better:

[https://www.zocdoc.com/about/coronavirus- covid-19-2/](https://www.zocdoc.com/about/coronavirus-covid-19-2/)

Here's the advice from this site:

>Contact your primary care provider before going to their office. Be sure to let them know if you've been in close contact with someone who has coronavirus, or if you've recently traveled to an area where the virus is spreading, whether or not you have symptoms. If you don't have a doctor to contact, you can also reach out to your local board of health.

^^that up there is proper advice.

<comment><USER37> > ...get yourself to the doctor...

Every single bit of advice we have been handed out the last few weeks is trying to get the message out - _Do not_ physically go to your doctor if you suspect you have this illness. Do not turn up at hospital. Stay at home and telephone the doctors to inform them of what you think you have, and to get advice on what to do next. If you are feeling OK, telephone the non-emergency numbers. If you are feeling like you're about to die, telephone the emergency numbers.

<comment><USER36> Where on the site does it say telephone your doctor to determine whether or not you should go? Nothing. Horrible site.</comment></comment></comment>


Batteries that "drink" seawater could power long-range underwater vehicles - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2017/batteries-drink-seawater-long-range-autonomous-underwater-vehicles-0615 <comment><USER2> My chemistry's weak, but isn't this basically a way to extract the energy put in when aluminum is refined? A quick internet search suggests that's 75 KWh/kilo. Lithium Ion batteries are apparently 0.2 KWh/kilo, so even assuming a lot of loss in refining and then "burning" the aluminum, it seems plausible.

<comment><USER3> Well, it's absolutely the case that seawater isn't fueling it.

Edit: Removed incorrect speculation. Sorry, HN.

It turns out that they actually are using the water - in the same way that an IC engine would breathe air.

If fuel cells aren't batteries, I wonder if this is still one?

<comment><USER4> Based on the article's description, the water is a part of the main chemical reaction. It sounds like the reaction (essentially) H20 + Al -> H2 + Al(OH3), with an unspecified alloy of alluminum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Aluminium batteries are interesting and may be promising. According to Wikipedia, in 2002 Yang and Knickle concluded:

 _The Al /air battery system can generate enough energy and power for driving ranges and acceleration similar to gasoline powered cars...the cost of aluminium as an anode can be as low as US$ 1.1/kg as long as the reaction product is recycled. The total fuel efficiency during the cycle process in Al/air electric vehicles (EVs) can be 15% (present stage) or 20% (projected), comparable to that of internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEs) (13%). The design battery energy density is 1300 Wh/kg (present) or 2000 Wh/kg (projected). The cost of battery system chosen to evaluate is US$ 30/kW (present) or US$ 29/kW (projected). Al/air EVs life-cycle analysis was conducted and compared to lead/acid and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) EVs. Only the Al/air EVs can be projected to have a travel range comparable to ICEs. From this analysis, Al/air EVs are the most promising candidates compared to ICEs in terms of travel range, purchase price, fuel cost, and life-cycle cost._

Interestingly, Al batteries are missing from the MIT battery primer [0].

[0] [http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/resources/mediaAndArticles/batt...](http://web.mit.edu/2.009/www/resources/mediaAndArticles/batteriesPrimer.pdf)

<comment><USER6> I think there's a pretty big difference between an aluminum air battery and this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> They will need a way to cope with: sand grains, lime, phytoplancton, gelatinous zooplancton, marine snow, sharks atracted by electric fields... will need a microporous filter and a way to force the saltwater into the device.

The problem with this concept is that this batteries could fail suddenly. Will the oceanographers want to use it and take the risk? Even a small cube full of Salinity and temperature sensors etc, can be valued in several millions.

A way to solve it could be to design a saltwater circuit totally closed and autonomous. Like a gas deposit. Could even act as a shield for the machine. A hole on this deposit and water entering on it? no harm done. Could be even an automatic activation method for several types of rescue systems (Water entering in the machine/ship after a crash, seawater-batteries activating automatically)

</comment><comment> gene-h I recently saw a presentation by some college students that investigated the feasibility of running ocean gliders on nuclear power. The proposal was to use a nice sized chunk of strontium 90 for a radioisotopic thermal generator. This would provide 45 watts electrical power for about 10 years.

The interesting part was not the technical feasibility, but how they were going to make a case to the NRC to make such a use of radioisotopes legal. Apparently there is a precedent for this, some scientific ice monitoring equipment has used strontium 90 RTGs.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perhaps this is something Liquid Robotics should (or already are) looking into. That's the company James Gosling works for and they're doing fascinating stuff with ocean robots.

[https://www.liquid-robotics.com/](https://www.liquid-robotics.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't see any performance metrics.

<comment><USER10> My thoughts exactly. Tough to make any sort of evaluation of this technology when the article doesn't provide any performance data or discuss the tradeoffs of this solution (first thing that comes to mind is how heavy are these batteries?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I really don't like that the hydrogen made in process is considered waste and is escaping. We sure have a lot of water on planet but if the technology will become mainstream and we will just throw the hydrogen away it will become a huge problem.

<comment><USER12> It seems like we're a very long way away from it being a practical problem. And if it ever becomes an issue it doesn't sound like it will be very hard to overcome. After all burning this hydrogen would release even more energy and some water, although it would require a source of oxygen.

If anything I'd be more worried about the large scale effects of massive amounts of aluminum hydroxide being released in the environment.

<comment><USER11> At least aluminum hydroxide is solid, so it's easy to collect. Hydrogen is gas though.

<comment><USER13> Hydrogen in low concentrations isn't dangerous and it's gonna be slowly bonded into water again whenever there is a flame or lightning strike.

<comment><USER14> Sunlight is also important for these reactions. There is quite a bit of ozone which combines with hydrogen to become oxygen + water.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Platform companies have to learn to share - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/0caed8aa-a208-11e8-85da-eeb7a9ce36e4 <comment><AUTHOR> And a weaker NYT piece on the same topic 'It's Not Technology That's Disrupting Our Jobs The insecure nature of work is a result of decisions by corporations and policymakers' [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/opinion/technology/techno...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/18/opinion/technology/technology- gig-economy.html)</comment>


Social Network For Gamers - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamervision.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm curious how this stands a chance in light of XBOX Live and popular gaming sites like Gamespot. Facebook has an ongoing petition for a "Favorite Games" profile category, but I know that Gamespot has had a tough time getting people to interact outside of commenting on news articles and previews.

Sort of bothered by the site's cluttered design -- the blog posts on the left hand side are colored to look like cheesy, forgettable advertising.

<comment><USER2> Of course the advertising is forgettable there is no advertising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Aren't the biggest social networks for gamers the games themselves? (at least for MMOG)

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely hear what you're saying (my background is in interactive games)...aside from MMOs, this is another compelling reason why a unified online framework like XBOX Live works so well.

Things like Gamervision are more focused on networks for gamer interests ("life outside of the game"), i.e. discussing things that matter to gamers. There's another one specific to WOW called Rupture that is VC-backed and founded by Shawn Fanning of Napster fame.

Again, I'm not defending things like Gamervision. I'm more keen about Raph Koster's work.</comment></comment>