Show HN: A search engine for your browsing history - <AUTHOR>

Fed up with not being able to find pages that I knew I had visited in the past I wrote a Chrome extension that automatically indexes the url, title & content of every page you visit - allowing you to search your entire browsing history.
Why is this useful? Imagine you know that last week you read a news article by author "X" but you can't remember where, or how you got to it; by searching your recawl history  for  "X" you can easily find the page you were looking for.
http://www.recawl.com <comment><USER2> I think you should emphasise that the browsing history is stored remotely. That looks to be the main advantage for me, because for Chrome users at least, the inbuilt history search is already very powerful. (As an example, I visited your site, then hit Cmd-Y and searched for 'italian restaurant' and it came up straight away.)

Google Account users can already activate Web History to get a similar service. Not everyone is a Google Account holder, of course. Does your service offer any additional features to Google's offering? What about a different privacy policy? For a service that will essentially store all my browsing history I found that section in particular a little sparse.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed that Chrome's history search provides similar functionality, although it is somewhat clunky to use. For example, you can not constrain results by time period.

In addition, unlike normal Google search results the history search seems to weight every word on the page equally, in recawl there is an attempt to prioritise body content whilst ignoring repeating menus & footers, and it is built on top of Lucene's excellent scoring function.

In addition for any gives search terms it learns to prefer the search results you click on, so that over time if you constantly search your history for the same or similar search terms then historical results you have already clicked on bubble up to the top.

This makes it quite a useful tool for recalling often used pages.

It also offers keywords related to your search to further help narrow down your query.

Finally, you can block certain sites that you know are not of interest from appearing in search results, again cutting down on noise.

Finally, being able to remotely search your history can come in really handy.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable links

Website: <http://www.recawl.com>

Extension: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pmoicpmjnblomdapfi...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/pmoicpmjnblomdapfifabebpdnkecblg)</comment>


Yammer CEO Calls The End Of Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/david-sacks-silicon-valley-as-we-know-it-may-be-over-2012-8

<comment><USER2> >"How many ideas like that are left?" he asks.

This, of course, is reminiscent of the famous quote from the US patent commissioner back in 1900:

>Everything that can be invented – has already been invented</comment>


High Expectations for Low Precision at Cern - <AUTHOR> https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/07/12/high-expectations-low-precision-cern/ <comment><USER2> This article is a non sequitur. Spends the first half taking about the rising usage of low precision work in ml and then talks about how CERN is still using high precision.

Seems like the missing bit is talking about how CERN could benefit from low precision? But it's certainly not in the article.

<comment><USER3> It mentions GPUs. GPUs generally only offer low-precision floating point arithmetic. GPUs can do many more 32-bit floating point operations per-second than CPUs.

There must be a huge demand for running numerical workloads on faster kit (GPUs), but the attendant loss in precision can make it very difficult to get good results in high-energy particle physics. The idea here might be to develop numerical methods that make up for low-precision arithmetic yet preserve the speed advantage of using GPUs. If so, TFA is very poor indeed.

<comment><USER4> Low precision ML is less than 8 bits. 32-bit floating point is the highest precision used.

<comment><USER5> The Titan and Tesla NVIDIA cards are still built with 64 bit/double precision in mind with "only" a 50% performance reduction compared to FP32 in most of those devices. It is the GeForce gaming cards and the ones being targeted now for ML that are gimping FP64, where it is 1/4th or even 1/16th the speed of FP32.

The vast majority of "real" HPC still requires FP64 (only large industry categorized under HPC that I know is perfectly fine with FP32 is geospatial oil & gas stuff)... a valid LINPACK has a hard FP64 requirement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This article confuses me. Machine learning needs less precision (for some reason), but the workloads that CERN performs are scientific computing, not ML. Or, are they doing ML and so need less precision?

<comment><USER7> > for some reason

When training a model you're typically following a gradient which may be very small so you want high precision. One a model is trained and you're just using it you can generally get by with very low precision, ultimately we're usually talking about placing some input vector in one or more binary categories and the affect of small signal variations higher up in the model generally don't amount to much w.r.t the final categorisations.

<comment><USER8> The folk theorem of statistical computing [1] says that when you have computational problems, often there's a problem with your model. So chances are that if your gradient vanishes with 32 bit floats, switching to 64 bit floats won't help much.

[1] [http://andrewgelman.com/2008/05/13/the_folk_theore/](http://andrewgelman.com/2008/05/13/the_folk_theore/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Most likely related:

John L. Gustafson presenting "Beyond Floating Point: Next Generation Computer Arithmetic" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0Y1uAA-2Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP0Y1uAA-2Y)

With papers here: \- UNUMS: [http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=3001758](http://ubiquity.acm.org/article.cfm?id=3001758) \- Posits: [http://johngustafson.net/pdfs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf](http://johngustafson.net/pdfs/BeatingFloatingPoint.pdf)

<comment><USER5> There has been a lot of talk about lower precision and approximate computing over the past couple of years, which I hope will be recognized as a fad with John's (and to a lesser extent mine/REX Computing's) work... Why sacrifice precision/accuracy if you don't have to? Posit's are a great solution for this for a vast number of problems, and the Stanford lecture is great.

The thing about Posits in particular is, depending on the environment (e.g. es=3 for 32 bit Posits as referenced in the Beating Floating Point paper), you can actually have greater accuracy/precision and dynamic range than 64 bit IEEE floats while using fewer bits. The OP article here about CERN is doing something significantly worse, which is just using lower precision and taking the accuracy loss. While this may be acceptable in some applications, I would not want to losing any accuracy in the original data from expensive scientific experiments and using potentially inaccurate results for future calculations and assumptions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "last month after running experiments in which particles within the LHC detectors collide about 1 billion times per second, with each collision generating a petabyte of data."

1 billion petabytes per second haha

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel like this article is confusing numerical precision with "precision measurements". The latter typically means that the focus has moved from discovery of a given process, to measuring its properties with high precision, where high precision at LHC is often an uncertainty below 1%.

</comment><comment><USER12> Also in NLP domain a precision reduction may be applied: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06363](https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.06363)</comment>


Project Springfield – Microsoft's service for finding security-critical bugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/springfield/ <comment><USER2> Dup (15 h): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12583795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12583795)

</comment><comment><USER3> How's this respectable? Especially with regards to efforts such as [https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.se/2016/06/a-year-of- wind...](https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.se/2016/06/a-year-of-windows- kernel-font-fuzzing-1_27.html)

It seems to me that either

        a) Microsoft can't possibly have fuzzed
        their code for the last 15 years

or

        b) their fuzzer is useless

<comment><USER4> Microsoft has been doing fuzzing for years. They claim to "run the largest fuzzing lab in the world". They incorporated their Z3 solver into their fuzzer, which itself is an awesome piece of technology. What they do sounds really cool and I'd say Microsoft Research is a big authority in the fuzzing field.

[PDF] [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/pg/public_psfi...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/people/pg/public_psfiles/SAGE-in-one-slide.pdf)

<comment><USER5> > Microsoft has been doing fuzzing for years.

Then why do we need to rely on Google to fuzz Windows' kernel?

<comment><USER4> Obviously only Microsoft could explain why they missed these bugs. Maybe they never fuzzed the font parsing parts of the Windows kernel (what a weird thing to say). What I know is that the Project Zero people put a lot of effort into this and they had a large font corpus and mutated inputs based on domain- specific knowledge, maybe that was their key to success.

<comment><USER6> Also, there is selection bias at work here: we don't hear about all the stuff that the Microsoft fuzzing team does find. And I bet it's a lot. There's no real benefit to them to share their internal findings - it would effectively just be handing 0-days to malware authors on a plate, after all, affecting all users running older versions - and so we get this very skewed view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very strange to me to see this codename reused: [http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=152&thread=20607...](http://www.artima.com/forums/flat.jsp?forum=152&thread=206079)

<comment><USER8> Should have called it Project Shelbyville instead.

BTW, title should perhaps indicate this is a security-centric fuzzing tool. Possibly a bigger deal than it might seem from the name.</comment></comment>


Python 3.9: New Changes Data Scientists Should Expect - <AUTHOR> https://analyticsindiamag.com/python-3-9-new-changes-data-scientists-should-expect/ <comment><USER2> This article is so imprecise that it reads as satire.</comment>


Telling people they would receive a tax rebate increased support for carbon tax - <AUTHOR> https://www.inverse.com/article/59381-carbon-tax-revenue-recycling-climate-crisis <comment><AUTHOR> Full title: _Simply telling people (n=7,250) they would receive a tax rebate increased their support for a carbon tax of $50-$70 per metric ton of carbon. This suggests that "revenue recycling" is the way to make carbon taxes popular._

Reddit thread: [https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/d66tn2/simply_tell...](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/d66tn2/simply_telling_people_n7250_they_would_receive_a/)</comment>


Tracking down a kernel bug with git bisect - <AUTHOR> http://blog.oddbit.com/2014/07/21/tracking-down-a-kernel-bug-wit/

<comment><USER2> The first time I used "git bisect run" I felt like I was cheating. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I don't have many opportunities to use it.

<comment><USER3> There is this LWN article (that I wrote about it):

[http://lwn.net/Articles/317154/](http://lwn.net/Articles/317154/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One thing that seems difficult with bisect are these series of steps:

      1. "Hey... this bug didn't use to happen.  Where'd that get introduced?"
      2. OK, this unit test will tell me when the bug is fixed.
      3. Now lets automate bisect to tell me where this
         test first failed even though I just wrote it.

How do you do that? I think as long as you DON'T commit your unit test, bisect will carry over to every commit check. But, you'll have to make sure you commit all your other changes or else they'll be carried around, too: Conflict-city.

Also, if you _do_ commit your unit test (a "bad" habit of mine) I have no idea how I'm supposed to work with this. I end up copying the unit test by hand to each commit it tries to test.

In summary, it seems like bisect was built with manual testing in mind. I know you can automate running a shell script, but I don't write my automated tests in shell script.

EDIT: Keep in mind, not all projects are interpreted. Some are compiled.

<comment><USER5> I've successfully used "git bisect" in situations in which, as part of every test, I had to "git stash pop" some local changes, then do the test, then remember to "git stash save" them before continuing to bisect. (Alternatively, "git apply" the stash, then "git reset --hard" to blow away the changes.) That's how you can handle situations where test code has to be added to the program to demonstrate the problem, and that test code doesn't exist in old versions.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, not a bad method. And I suppose if I've already commited my unit test, I could use a "git reset --soft" to put the test in a stash. Next time I use bisect, I'll try to do this. Thanks

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A lot of the time spent mucking around with QEMU can be avoided by using a tool like virtme:

[https://git.kernel.org/cgit/utils/kernel/virtme/virtme.git](https://git.kernel.org/cgit/utils/kernel/virtme/virtme.git)

</comment><comment><USER7> One tip for the module configuration: kbuild has "make localyesconfig" which looks at your currently-loaded modules and converts them to CONFIG_FOO=Y builtins.

See also "make help" for more available targets.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's a pity that while the bisect did point in the general direction of where the bug was in 3.15, it didn't actually find the right bug (the one it found had already been fixed and a different one introduced that led to the same errant behavior).

With something as complex as the kernel, I also wonder about automatic bisect being led astray by unrelated changes. The bisect script might fail for a different reason and zone in on the wrong commit.

<comment><USER3> The bisect pointed at the right patch series which is already very nice.

If the bisect script fails because of another problem, it is often possible to refine the script, or run bisect again on a fixed up branch.

<comment><USER8> If I'm not mistaken, it didn't find the right patch series. The article says the function changed in 3.15 and the underlying reason for his issue was different and not part of that series.

<comment><USER9> When you update the kernel and your program stops working, there are two possibilities:

1) it's a kernel bug; there is a regression in the kernel's documented behaviour

2) it's a bug in your tool because it took advantage of undefined or undocumented behaviour

The bisect found exactly the right patch series, but bisect can only answer the question 'when did it stop working', not 'why'.

You can read about many instances of 2) on Raymond Chen's blog The Old New Thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Good article. It might be worth considering doing _git bisect ignore_ if a build fails. I suspect (not sure it might just halt) at the moment it would result in a git bisect bad so might give you a wrong change commit.

<comment><USER3> You mean "git bisect skip". There is no "ignore" sub command.

<comment><USER10> Yes, faulty memory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Another article on bisecting which I bookmarked last year, but with physical hardware [1].

1: [http://rtg.in.ua/blog/kernel-bisect-pxe/](http://rtg.in.ua/blog/kernel- bisect-pxe/)

</comment><comment> torrent-of-ions > there were close to 15,000 commits, which seemed like a large space to > search by hand.

Does the author not understand binary search? It would take about 14 tries to find the failed commit.

<comment><USER12> I have no idea why people are downvoting you. Sigh.

A comment as to why you're wrong by the downvoter(s) would be infinitely more helpful.

<comment><USER13> I downvoted for tone, not because ve's wrong. I'm reasonably confident that someone who can write this blog post, understands binary search. I wouldn't have downvoted a post that simply said, for example:

> Binary search over 15,000 commits would take about 14 tries to find the > failed one.

although I don't think that's an important point to be making. (As erikb said, that's still a lot of commits, and that was only the first run.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting way to use to git to find a bug by process of elimination.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is part of why the Linux kernel needs a kernel debugger. I've worked with other kernels where we can actually observe what is going on using tools (DTrace on Illumos), and problems like this become something that can be tackled directly, without having to go through all this nonsense.

<comment><USER7> kgdb, kdb, systemtap, ktap, perf, ftrace, ...

<comment><USER16> I've even seen a Visual Studio plugin to debug the Linux kernel. No joke. Really looked to just be a layer over kgdb but still.

<comment><USER7> I suppose that's sysprogs.com/VisualKernel/ ? I'm amazed that this exists, but more power to them! :)

<comment><USER16> That's the one. I'd be worried if there was more than one. Like you said, more power to them. Pretty cool it exists and honestly wouldn't mind trying it sometime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This was cool i will definitely try to use the bisect command sometime.

</comment><comment><USER18> So... technically a kernel bug was fixed and revealed a bug in Docker.</comment>


We discovered three poisonous books in our university library - <AUTHOR> https://theconversation.com/how-we-discovered-three-poisonous-books-in-our-university-library-98358 <comment><USER2> Paris green has an LD50 of 22 mg/kg, according to Wikipedia. That's one thousandth of the lethality of ricin, one fortieth of the lethality of sarin, half the lethality of sodium cyanide, one two-hundredth the lethality of alpha-amanitin, one fourth of the lethality of nicotine, roughly the same immediate lethality as hydrazine, methamphetamine, tetraethyllead, or aflatoxin B1, and only eight times as lethal as caffeine. It is very dangerous, and you should avoid getting it on you, but it seems unreasonable to describe it as one of the most toxic chemicals known. It is definitely not in the same category of nightmare chemicals as dimethylmercury, chlorine trifluoride, silane, or red fuming nitric acid. I'll admit that outgassing arsine if it gets moldy is pretty nasty, though.

<comment> semi-extrinsic > red fuming nitric acid

[https://m.imgur.com/QMjMw7F](https://m.imgur.com/QMjMw7F)

[RFNA leaking from truck, Ukraine, 2015]

<comment><USER3> More of that truck [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKzTy8OPZ6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKzTy8OPZ6Y)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> On a side point, handheld XRF readers are really cool. It's literally you point the device at a sample and it tells you what chemicals are in it. But why do they cost such a huge amount of money? Last I looked they were about $20,000-30,000 range.

example: [https://www.bruker.com/fileadmin/user_upload/8-PDF- Docs/X-ra...](https://www.bruker.com/fileadmin/user_upload/8-PDF- Docs/X-rayDiffraction_ElementalAnalysis/mXRF/Brochures/Bro_mxrf_elio_8p_en_lores.pdf)

<comment><USER5> Divide the cost of development by the number of devices expected to be sold within a reasonable payback period and add a percentage of profit required to make it worthwhile developing the thing in the first place and you'd probably come up with a pretty close approximation to the same price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Arsenic in museums is huge mess. Really common before 1960-70 to treat things with arsenic to kill pests.

<comment><USER7> Well, we used to have a radium paint in our watches! Not to forget the lead piping still widely spread in the US.

<comment><USER8> As long as you didn't grind the dial into dust and inhale it, it was pretty safe and an excellent solution compared to the weak glow of Super-Luminova pigment.

<comment><USER9> I don't think this is true. Army training taught that if the glass over radium glowing dials in a vehicle was compromised, to cover it with wood or cardboard (if that is all you had) and tape/secure it down.

<comment><USER10> A squad leader of my Army platoon once had a crate of about 30 compasses that had radium markings. Anyway, he had the box in his truck, left the gate at Fort Benning then when he returned later, he set off the radiation detectors at the entry gate. Caused a full base lockdown and needless to say, he didn't have a very pleasant time until they figured out that the compasses set off the detectors. This was in 2004 when we were on a high alert for dirty bombs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what the Paris Green of today is - the things that are killing us, but we just don't know it yet.

<comment><USER12> I often wonder the same thing. It seems likely that something we take for granted is possibly poisonous considering the number of chemicals we are exposed to in various ways.

<comment><USER13> The debate on cell phones and their effects is fun to watch. In another 30+ years we should have a solid body of evidence one way or another.

<comment><USER14> We have a solid body of evidence now. Cell phone radios do not disrupt biological systems.

<comment><USER15> Although observable physical effects on humans have not been proven, behavioral effects on insects have been documented. These are interesting pilot studies because insect behavior is relatively simple and deviations more easily measured when compared to humans. Any explanations as far as the physical mechanism would involve changes in brain chemistry/activity which can be too subtle to detect. I would hold out on a final verdict for now as far as humans go and I don't think further studies should be ridiculed as paranoid just yet. Given the global use of cellphones I think it's better to err on the side of caution.

It's an unpopular suggestion, especially at a time when tin foil hat conspiracies abound, but I don't think it's uneasonable. Emf is an observed physical phenomenon so there is nothing supernatural about the possibility of it's effects on human behavior.

I should also add that what we really have is not so much a solid body of evidence but a number of studies which show a lack of evidence. This could just as easily point to the harmlessness of cell phones as our inability to observe their effects.

<comment><USER16> Thoughtful and well made counterpoint to the sometimes overprotective stance tech industry people take to criticisms of cell phones. Seems to me like the issue is the dosage - there has never been any organism exposed to this sustained level of background EMF. Any longitudinal study started after widespread adoption.

Do you have any links for the references you made to effects on insect behavior?

<comment><USER14> I'm not coming from a basis in tech, but rather physics. I have a strong background in elecromagnetic theory and physical chemistry. What, may I ask, is the physical basis for the claim that cell phone radiation causes _______ in biological systems?

For the most part biology is applied chemistry of organic molecules. Due to something called the photoelectric effect, the thing for which Einstein won the Nobel prize (not relativity) and gave birth to quantum theory, we know that EM radiation below a certain material-dependent threshold is _incapable_ of causing chemical reactions. And this is a property of the frequency, not the intensity--it does not matter how bright or compact the source is, or how close you hold it to your ear! If the incoming EM radiation is below that threshold it will have zero measurable effect on chemistry, just some smaller frequency back-scattering and thermal agitation way below the noise threshold. Things above this threshold is what we call "ionizing radiation" because they create ions which affect chemical processes and is why UV light is so dangerous. Cell phone frequencies are 4-6 orders of magnitude below this threshold, depending on the band. Note also that cell phone frequencies are below the level of infrared and visible-light radiation -- all life is being constantly bathed in higher-frequency radiation than your cell phone gives off. And I remind you, it is only the frequency which matters.

And surprise, surprise, if you're not cherry picking studies[1] there is no measurable effect of cell phone radiation on biological systems. Except, perhaps, as quoted by the GP some insects and birds, which is hardly surprising and already known--these species have sensitive organs we lack that enable them to detect electromagnetic fields for navigation purposes. So a bit of a "duh" there since it is about as controversial a result as "sudden bright strobe lights on freeways at night cause traffic accidents".

The effect of EM radiation on biological systems was heavily studied long before the advent of cell phones. It was known to not cause any measurable effect in humans before mobile high-bandwidth data communications was anything more than a glint in the eye of some dreamy EE.

[1] [https://xkcd.com/882/](https://xkcd.com/882/)

<comment><USER14> EDIT: The obvious retort is "what about microwaves?" After all kitchen microwaves operate on the same frequency as your home WiFi. Your desktop microwave acts not by harmonics with the rotational frequency of water, a common myth, but by that that effect I mentioned of smaller frequency back- scattering and thermal agitation. Your counter-top microwave emits 1kW of power into the food put inside it, which is 100-1,000x as much as your cell phone antenna puts out. And it does so inside a closed cavity instead of an omnidirectional antenna. At that power and with full absorption, thermal effects are no longer negligible.

That's why, for example, technicians working with cell phone tower and microwave antenna installations turn off equipment before standing near the transmitter. They do take proper safety precautions. But the concern here is cooked meat, not some abstract radiation or bio-poisoning thing that will cause cancer 10 years down the line.

The concern over cell phone radio emissions started in part due to the large amount of anecdotal reports from those technicians of insects suffering die off near transmitter stations and migratory birds flying straight into the things, killing themselves. But we shouldn't be surprised -- these insects and birds have large organs meant to sense magnetic fields which operate as crude radio antennas, making them actually sensitive to the EM radiation being put out. But this really isn't any different than, say, deer getting trapped by bright headlights on a dark road, and we shouldn't take it as evidence that the same mechanism might be affecting human beings.

Then again, if you for whatever reason have a conductive surgical implant anywhere near your head or pocket, I wouln't suggest using a cell phone or laptop (on your lap). The concern is not great, but that does put you in the same situation as those insects and birds. I wouldn't be worried about the devices used by poeple around you though (1/R^2 laws and all that).

<comment><USER15> Thanks for the post, that's all really great information (I just have a stats background, not a physicist/chemist).

My immediate concern based on what you said, and not to go off on a tangent here, would actually be for the bees. You mentioned that it is the frequency and not intensity that matters for humans - is it the same case for the animals/insects that are sensitive to the frequencies?

If we are effectively shining flashlights in their faces, increasing the intensity with each successive generation of wireless, can it eventually affect their ability to pollinate? Birds pollinate as well, to a lesser extent, so it would be the same concern here, on top of the pest control and general ecosystem balance that they provide.

<comment><USER14> The short answer is I don't know, but if I read your question correctly I suspect the answer is "not much impact, if any." Cell transmission towers would be dangerous at close range, but cell phones themselves would be like flashlights as you say, but not bright ones, and probably not noticeable at all, except at very close range. They're not listening to these frequencies.

I would think it perhaps analogous to ultrasound. Our electronics are giving off all sorts of ultrasonic noise that we can't hear (but sometimes annoy dogs and millennials). We have ears capable of hearing, but not at those frequencies. But you could nevertheless expect hearing loss if you put a 1kW ultrasonic beacon right next to your ear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's an illustration of a sore-afflicted penis and testicles, in case anyone is at work and cares.

<comment><USER18> That's two cases out of nine in a photo of two pages of Gray's anatomy style illustrations - it takes a sharp eye to quickly identify the dongle, and it's clearly a medical book.</comment></comment>


Engineering and product can create a united front - <AUTHOR> https://linearb.io/blog/vp-engineering-vp-product-how-to-keep-a-united-front/ <comment><USER2> I like the thing about "dude and a half". It's very true. I can't tell you how many times I had a sales rep ask me when a feature that was supposedly on the roadmap was going to be ready and I had to be like "that task isn't even assigned to a human yet."

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Engineering and product teams need shared metrics and OKRs to stay aligned and encourage the teamwork you're looking for."

<comment><USER2> What's an example of a metric that engineering and product contribute to equally?</comment></comment>


At The Dawn Of Recorded Sound, No One Cared - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/05/22/529550254/at-the-dawn-of-recorded-sound-no-one-cared <comment><USER2> > He beat the more well-known inventor Thomas Edison by 20 years,

de Martinville was forgotten because his device had no use, could not play back sound, he did nothing to improve it and he had little idea what to do with it.

> There is no evidence that shows Edison knew about Scott's breakthrough when > he stumbled onto sound recording.

He did not "stumble" into it. Edison had a flash of inspiration and then designed a machine to implement it.

<comment><USER3> >de Martinville was forgotten because his device had no use, could not play back sound, he did nothing to improve it and he had little idea what to do with it

So it's like a seismograph for sound? Makes me wonder if there is a seismograph somewhere that can play back recordings :)

<comment><USER4> Of course there are... can't all of them do that?

<comment><USER5> I think that parent meant "recreate recorded earthquakes" ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The notion of not knowing why recording sound could be useful to me is hard to grasp as someone who has always been around it. It is extremely difficult to understand societies of the past.

<comment><USER7> Well keep in mind that most places had some kind of live musical venue.

I seem to recall that when the early recording studios were opened, musicians were not interested. This because they considered themselves entertainers, not assembly line workers.

And frankly i find that the best musicians are those that focus on the stage first and foremost even today. Those that gets remembered most fondly are those that can get up on stage and actually adapt to and interact with the audience rather than just go through a routine and bow out.

Never mind that early on the equipment was sensitive and fiddly. The Edison design involved either paper or solid cylinders wrapped around a rotating shaft. And the output was a mechanically driven membrane attached to a bullhorn.

The vacuum tube, and thus the amplifier, didn't show up for another 30 years.

<comment><USER8> Technically, Edison invented the vacuum tube - he just didn't completely understand it or its usefulness entirely.

That's why what was later termed "thermionic emission":

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

...is also known as the "Edison Effect" (though the effect was discovered by others much earlier, and re-discovered over time - Edison being just one in the chain).

His whole purpose was in trying to find out why his light bulbs filaments broke and burned out, and why there was darkening near the positive terminal of the bulb.

I won't go further with this, but I do often wonder if Tesla, while he worked with Edison, had any contact with this part of Edison's operations? In everything I've read on both inventors, it would seem like the answer is "no"; Tesla started working for Edison in June of 1884, and Edison took out a patent on the effect in 1883, and exhibited it in 1884.

The timeline is close, but for some reason Tesla either didn't have contact with the device, or dismissed it - as far as I can tell, though, it was likely the former, because I've never read anything from him where he discussed it.

Which is a pity. Had they not had the "breakup" of the century (which resulted in an insane rivalry ala "War of the Currents") - I am certain that Tesla would have both seen and understood the usefulness of the work, and would have been able to scientifically describe its workings most likely. Electronic technology would have been advanced by almost 30 years or so (whether or not that would have been a good thing we cannot know).

EDIT: years

<comment><USER9> ala -> aka "The War ...

Not sure of the specifics but by context I'm assuming that was the intent.

<comment><USER10> I think French "à la" was the intent.

<comment><USER11> Yes, and I think the intent of the correction was that "a la" is incorrect and AKA is correct in context. The rivalry described wasn't "along the lines of" The War of Currents, it _was_ (also known as) The War of Currents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Those of you flummoxed by this probably at some point have questioned why study the immune systems of bacteria (led to the biggest breakthrough of late, crispr) or number theory (led to all cryptography) or build an app to make photos disappear or other things that only later become obviously "useful".

<comment><USER13> You had me until the bit about disappearing photos - that's not an innovation, anybody who has wanted to has always been able to make photos disappear after sending. It's a bit of a false equivalence to mention a twist on sending someone a photo in the same sentence as you mention such great research efforts as number theory and bacterial immunology.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The interesting issue to me isn't the particulars of this one case. It's that when you invent something very novel, nobody cares because they can't anchor it in the scheme of things they already care about. Effectively, they can't "see" what you've done. Communicating the value of your invention can be very challenging.

<comment><USER15> That's basically the Inventor's Curse summed up as well as could ever be.

"The inventor is always cursed to invent something that is just as difficult to explain as it is to invent."

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> We are getting back to that now.

At the saturation limit of recorded sound, few care, and not to the degree it made it once a major and inescapable cultural force.

Of course back then for a short window (50s to 70s and up to mid-nineties or so) music was expensive to buy, limited collection (needed mail order for exotic tastes and of course you could hardly sample them), the top 40 songs were heard by everyone and anyone because cars just had radio (some novelties aside), and there were few tv channels, no video, surely no YouTube, no internet, no social media, no mobile phones, no mobile apps, no (or very limited and primitive) video games, no VR, no cat videos, no memes, no reality style celebrities (you could get some gossip, but not 24/7 gossip), no Twitter, and so on. Popular music stood out as a unique way to have fun, escape, bond, etc then.

</comment><comment><USER17> Is going from recording to playback a trivial step? The article doesn't make this clear, but if this step is nontrivial, then Edison's contribution still seems like a big deal. The article even seems to imply that the format he recorded the sound in was not amenable to playback.

</comment><comment><USER18> I wonder if the poor quality of the recording made it hard to see how it could be useful for music.

<comment><USER19> I'm reminded of 3D printing. The output today is generally shitty but the progress will lead towards something very important.

Years ago I sent the first "3D fax" across the world. It felt remarkable, but it didnt pick up any attention.

<comment><USER20> 3D printing is a far cooler technology once you ignore the maker-community and the ridiculous claim that home 3D printing is going to completely revolutionise life for the majority of the population. Being able to 3D print a custom-patterned plastic cup is fun and all that, but the real game is stuff like 3D printing for industrial prototyping, medical applications, and so on.

<comment><USER11> How is the tech cooler when you _remove_ from consideration one of its potential niches (even if it's a lesser one)? I don't buy the spectacular claim as expressed above either, but it's not beyond to me to think of how it could have a non-revolutionary but solid impact for personal consumers' lives at some point.

<comment><USER20> Hmm, poor choice of words - I don't really mean removing that niche from consideration, but rather ignoring anyone who thinks that that niche is in fact the main way 3D printing is going to change the world.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> _He beat the more well-known inventor Thomas Edison by 20 years, though his accomplishments were only recognized over the last decade._

Just another example of how being first or early, even in groundbreaking things, means you will probably not find success.

<comment><USER22> _As strange as it seems, all the French inventor cared about was seeing what sound looked like._

>Just another example of how being first or early, even in groundbreaking things, means you will probably not find success.

Well no, in this case the inventor of sound recording just had an entirely different goal.

<comment><USER23> And neither he nor anyone exposed to this idea were able to make the connection to playback ability. I do find that a bit surprising.

<comment><USER24> Apparently Scott first had to convince people that sound came from vibrations.

> Scott proved that vibrations are truly how sounds came to our ears. But > Thompson says the scientific community had trouble accepting his > breakthrough.

So maybe it's not too surprising.

<comment><USER2> Any violin/piano player already knew that.

<comment><USER11> I'm skeptical that they knew that vibrating air was what our ears perceived as sound. If you know a little about the history of science, there are tons of theories that held up for some time that are no less "ridiculous" to our eyes than some special medium moving through air that our ears process as sound. The fact that the _source_ of sound was known to vibrate doesn't exclude this possibility, and _that's_ what violin/piano players knew about (Sources of visible light often give off heat, but saying that light and heat are the same thing is not implied by that).

<comment><USER2> See my other reply to this topic, which is directly to your point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "A sound separated from a sounding body was just sort of a conceptual leap," > she says. "I'm not sure people had the cultural context to invent this > stuff."

It makes one wonder what currently isn't being invented simply because it doesn't fit into our conceptual framework. We have a somewhat more rich framework now than people did in the 19th century, of course, but the number of things we have to play with- computers, genomes, brain scans, rockets- has also gotten much larger and more complicated.

<comment><USER26> > _It makes one wonder what currently isn 't being invented simply because it > doesn't fit into our conceptual framework._

It's fun to think up thought exercises to try and help break out of our conceptual framework. On a smaller scale, an approach I've played around with is taking attributes of existing technologies that have certain things in common, then diagramming them in different ways and looking for holes.

As a concrete example, let's go back to 2005. You might reason that e-mails and blog posts are both kinds of written messages, however blogs have an _open_ audience, while e-mails are sent to specific recipients, so a _closed_ audience. Separately, you might compare e-mails to text messages, and realize that they are very similar, but one is long form while the other is short form. You can draw this as a table:

            | short form | long form |
           -+</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>+</comment><comment>-----+
       open |     ???    | blogs     |
           -+</comment><comment></comment><comment>+</comment><comment>-----|
     closed |  SMS texts | e-mail    |
           -+</comment><comment></comment><comment>+</comment><comment>-----+

Now try to figure out what fits in the missing box (short form, open). It's Twitter! (Or even better, decentralized micro blogging.)

<comment><USER27> Hey I've got one of those:

                              | Short-term discussion | Ongoing discussion |
                             -+</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--+
      Admins create subforums | Digg/Old Reddit       | Forums             |
                             -+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--|
       Users create subforums | Reddit                | ???                |
                             -+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----+</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--+

<comment><USER26> Stack Overflow?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Scott proved that vibrations are truly how sounds came to our ears. But Thompson says the scientific community had trouble accepting his breakthrough"

Wat? How the hell did bell makers think bells worked?

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I don't believe that, either. Stringed instruments were commonplace, and the instrument makers pretty obviously knew how they worked.

<comment><USER29> Just guessing (I'd love to know the real reason):

Just because we know the object vibrates when making sound doesn't mean we know that sound travels through the air as a bunch of vibrations. Or that are ear is picking up vibrations. Maybe they thought the vibrations were something like the heat given off from friction. Not necessarily the main thing, just a side effect.

For all we knew maybe it could be some sort of "sound light" or magnetism like thing. Someone had to prove that it was vibrations all the way from the start to the end.

<comment><USER2> Loud sounds make nearby things vibrate, which is easily felt. Even louder sounds, like cannon fire, had obvious concussions and visible shock waves, and you could feel the thump in your chest.

A bell ringing will set up visible vibrations in a nearby cup of water.

Instrument makers shaped sound in air boxes in violins, and shaped it in horns. Sound has obvious propagation delays through air.

Maybe lay people had strange notions of sound, like flat earthers, but educated and observant people would know better. The evidence was all around, it did not need a lab experiment.

<comment><USER30> Also, human throats vibrate when speaking or humming. Drums, bells, triangles, and plucked string instruments have visible vibrations.

<comment><USER2> And the eardrum itself with a diaphragm is clearly set up to detect air vibrations, not some mystical force.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


You, Too, Can Soon Be Like Tom Cruise in 'Minority Report' - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/you-too-can-soon-be-like-tom-cruise-in-minority-report/?hp <comment><USER2> I've known the founders John and Kwin for a few years, so here's a few more details:

\- It really works. The key difference between this and other gestural interfaces is that it doesn't require any markers, just a couple of video cameras. The magic is in the processing, they're able to get millimeter- accurate positioning from your fingers. That means you can use your finger like a laser pointer, even for delicate work. I spent some time using it two years ago, and it just all works.

\- You don't have to get gorilla arm. One of my first concerns was holding my arms up, since I suffer from RSI. It works fine with your hands by your sides.

\- They self-funded for a couple of years getting a prototype working, then got VC from the Foundry Group, Brad Feld's firm.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, tired arms and contraband retinas?

<comment><USER4> I was more like, - "You mean like, short?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You mean detain people for crimes they haven't yet committed? I thought you just needed to join the US goverment to do that...

</comment><comment><USER6> Pfft.. Minority Report? Make me an interface like the one in Hackers.

<comment><USER7> Yeah those equations flying around seemed _real_ useful :)

<comment><USER8> It'd be great to have what you're looking for flash off and on like that garbage file, in purple, with an accompanying buzzing tone. But I still don't think it'd get me to wave my arms around like an evangelist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone else use the cooliris image viewer add-on? Looks similar to what he was using in the photos. 'Minority report' is exactly how I describe it.

</comment><comment><USER7> The technology looks very nice, if a bit slow to react at times (from the video). But maybe that's just a voluntary kind of "momentum" introduced in their software.

(And getting to make choices for a movie based on his research is one heck of an opportunity to imprint minds with the idea "this is the way of the future" if the technology ever does come out commercially)

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone have a video link to the TED presentation? All I can turn up is the original G-Speak demo from 18 months ago. From the TED stills, it looks like they've done a lot in the interim.

</comment><comment><USER11> Instead of Minority Report, I'm more interested in the "piece of paper" computer that is featured in the Caprica show.

From what I've seen, we have the technology already.

<comment><USER7> Well there's this MIT student's project which looks similar to that Caprica thing (from what I've seen of it):

<http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2009/02/ted-digital-six/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Problem is that, unlike in that movie, our computers aren't slick or fast. Gains in speed are quickly lost by the added load of new features.

</comment><comment><USER13> But... I don't _want_ to over act.</comment>


Project Fi Review: Cell Service from Google - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulkuehnel.com/full-google-project-fi-review-a-multiple-cell-phone-network/ <comment><USER2> The craziest part of Project Fi is that phone calls and network connections do not drop at all while it is switching carriers/WIFI underneath -- there is a lot of low-level networking magic happening here, and the crux of this tech. I hope some day Google will release some code or white paper on this.

\- I'd love to read a more indepth analysis about how /well/ this interface/service provider-switching works. \- I want to know if the signal/coverage is comparable or better than Verizon (which IMO has the best quality+coverage in the parts of the US that I've travelled; all over the west coast & hawaii).

<comment><USER3> You mean they've solved the problem where your phone is useless for 30 seconds after you walk out of your house and lose WiFi? I'd almost switch for that feature alone, if true.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, no. I have Project Fi and this is still an issue. They may only have this feature when actually on a call, since I imagine it uses a lot of power to constantly poll for the power of networks. I can still hope that they'll fix it though.

<comment><USER5> Could you go more in-depth on your experiences here? Your opinion seems to differ with the review, which refers to it as seamless. It is the main feature I am interested in as I get anywhere from two to zero bars in my apartment complex but have a fairly strong router and would love to have it transition without dropping as I am walking home.

<comment><USER4> If I am on a call, it's seamless - no issues there. However, it doesn't seem to work for data in general.

I commonly try to get Google Maps directions as I leave the house, and often it just fails since it's still trying to use my WiFi which is too far away to be useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Huh, the part where you can either keep your original handset phone number or your GV number on one account (but not both) is problematic. I've been trying to get people to call and text my GV number for ages, but some still use my legacy handset number. From the sounds of it, I'll have to do some juggling to keep the two numbers, or just let my old handset number lapse back into the pool, as I can't keep both on the same google account.

Not quite a deal-breaker, but a big enough deal that I will think carefully after my invite shows up (if it ever shows up). OTOH, the pricing model represents something like $30 or more a month cheaper than what I'm currently paying.

I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.

<comment><USER7> > I wonder if there are any phone number parking services - I'd pay a modest > monthly fee to hook my old number up to a personalized "this number has > changed, please call XYZ" and an SMS autoresponder with similar information.

ring.to does this for free for US numbers down to the SMS autoreply. They're actually run by the same company (Bandwidth.com) that Google uses for service in a lot of area codes.

<comment><USER8> What is the price of the ring.to service? They did every effort to advertise pricing or if it's a free service (which I doubt).

<comment><USER7> ring.to is free. I have five numbers parked there (but am otherwise unaffiliated). They make their money by, I assume, connection fees paid by other phone companies whose customers call numbers parked at ring.to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had been using Republic Wireless for the past year. It also tries to keep you in WiFi (at all costs). This is in return for a flat rate of $30/mo with unlimited text, talk, and data. (Data gets limited after 5 gigs though.)

This was a great service when I was in college. I stayed on one network the whole time. But after I left school and started The Commute things got hairy.

I switched to Google Fi about a week ago and the service is already much more incredible. But this is no surprise, I pay a lot more for it too.

If you are debating between services like Google Fi and Republic Wireless, I would suggest Republic Wireless is a better choice for someone who doesn't do a lot of daily travel. It's cheaper and definitely good enough, fairly seamless and whatnot. However, for anyone doing any nontrivial amount of daily travel, I highly recommend going with a provider not /hell-bent/ on getting you on WiFi. Google Fi seems to be a good alt.

<comment><USER10> > But after I left school and started The Commute things got hairy.

> I switched to Google Fi about a week ago and the service is already much > more incredible.

Do you mind explaining this further—you mean calls/texts were getting dropped while you were on the road with RW? I'm trying to decide between Republic Wireless and Project Fi myself, I've got about a 30 minute commute each way.

<comment><USER9> To be honest I really don't recommend it. With RW, they will force you to join any nearby Wifi network - even if it requires you to accept its ToS and you haven't done this. So if you are waiting for Amtrak and the opposing train pulls up for 2 minutes, you are switched onto this network. Or if you are in a bus on the highway in traffic and you pass a Wifi hotspot, it will switch you onto it... Even if you turned off Wifi. It constantly turned on Wifi even when you explicitly tell it not to. Google Fi has not done this so far. And, if the public Wifi requires me to accept some ToS, Google Fi will keep me on 3G until I have accepted the ToS and am /actually/ on the internet via the public wifi. So, in the end, RW really pissed me off. Still, it is a cheaper service and as a college student it was all I needed. I stayed on one network 24/7 and had no complaints at the time.

Edit: One thing about being forced to switch to a network is that it is silent and you don't necessarily know if you are connected to the internet or not. So if you walk into a Starbucks that has public wifi and your wifi is turned off, your wifi will be turned on and you will have no internet connection until you accept Starbucks' ToS. This has left me very confused before missing messages, calls, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm confused. I've been a Republic Wireless customer for about a year now, and I've never noticed any pressure to use an open network. My home network is the only wireless network to which my phone will automatically switch. When I'm away from my house, I remain on 3G unless I explicitly choose to connect to another network. It will attempt to reconnect to a network that I've used in the past, but one can stop this by 'forgetting' the network in Android settings.

Maybe I have a different phone? I'm using a 3G Moto G. Maybe I turned off something in settings? I have not rooted the phone, but certainly may have changed something from the standard settings menus. Here's someone else agreeing that your Republic Wireless phone should never connect automatically to a new network: [https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/26466](https://community.republicwireless.com/thread/26466)

I think you were either experiencing a bug that has since been fixed, or you were running some other app that was automatically approving the connections (like Wifi+). I would not discourage anyone from using Republic Wireless due to this worry. At least currently, you are never forced to use any wireless network that you do not want to use.

<comment><USER9> As jerf mentioned in the sibling comment, it appears my experience is not representative. I also had the Moto G, first generation? I had it for about a year and a half. Maybe I screwed something up in my settings too. I definitely would love to have had a different experience! I can't comment on why the things happened as they did. But for whatever reason on my phone I definitely had a bunch of issues. Maybe there was an issue with the radio hardware on mine? Not sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I switched to Fi about a month ago and it has served me very well in the Bay area so far, and it made a trip to the east coast with good wifi and bad cell service much easier because I could just use wifi.

Also liking the Nexus 6. After playing with a coworkers a little I decided I was fine with the size and after a month I'm still very happy with it. I upgraded from a Galaxy Nexus.

Please who doesn't love being able to ditch Verizon.

</comment><comment><USER12> I got a Fi invite a few weeks ago, but right now the main reason why I don't use it is that the Nexus 6 appears to be too big (I still have a Nexus 5 and the size is perfect). Probably going to wait for this year's Nexus refresh before I make the switch.

<comment><USER3> I was happy with the Nexus 5 and initially didn't want a Nexus 6 because I didn't think it would fit in my pockets. I was wrong. The Nexus 6 fits in the pockets of every pair of pants I own. I actually appreciate the bigger battery even more than the bigger screen.

<comment><USER13> Well, Nexus 7 fits into every trouser pocket I own but I think the issue with Nexus 6 is using it with one hand where you cannot cover/access the whole screen with your thumb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hope Project Fi has a side effect of improving existing Google Voice / Hangouts integration. While it's been slowly getting better, some of my texts sent via GV in Hangouts never get delivered, some arrive out of order. In addition, I've been able to crash Hangouts reliably and reproducibly (in latest version, by picking a GV sms conversation, pulling up the other person's contact card (by tapping their avatar) and selecting "send hangouts message"). And we still have no group SMS integration in GV.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow $10 for 1GB of data? Is this normal pricing in the US? Here in India, I pay ~₹170 (~$3) for that.

<comment><USER16> Here in France I pay 20 EUR (<$25) per month for unlimited voice and SMS, + 20Go data.

This is way over my needs BTW, I never exceeded 5Go in any given month in two years, except one month when I bought a new laptop and left Dropbox sync it over phone tethering. I then discovered that there was no way to buy more data, which was a bit frustrating...

<comment><USER17> Is unlimited voice really that necessary? I see a lot of plans in European countries and US that mostly give unlimited calls for those amounts of money. And who uses SMS anyway when you have Whatsapp, Hangouts, iMessage, FB Messenger etc.

<comment><USER18> Good question, I guess there are still people that talk to each other, but I believe the unlimited sms/voice is just a sales pitch for the plan. They don't really expect you to use it.

In my current plan I have 5000 free SMS per month. That's just silly, I'm not sure if I have even sent that many SMS in total since I got my first GSM phone in the early 90s. :)

But as long as the price for the data plan is good, I don't really care what else they tack on to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> One needs an email address that ends with gmail.com to request access, that sucks. I have a google apps email address.

<comment><USER20> Yeah we get the short end of the stick for things in "Beta."

Still don't have package tracking inside Google Wallet.. but they did finally start showing up in Google Now! Exciting.

<comment><USER21> Inbox... That was a happy day when they turned on that tap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Any idea if they're layering any additional security onto the unsecured WiFi connections it seems to prefer? (attwifi, xfinitywifi, etc. are all unencrypted, and I personally only use them in very limited ways for that reason.)

<comment><USER23> VoLTE over IP implementations typically establish an IPSEC VPN back to the operator network, authenticated using the SIM with EAP:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Authentication_Prot...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Authentication_Protocol#EAP- SIM)

<comment><USER22> That makes sense. I'm also curious about data though. Unless they tunnel all your traffic through a VPN, you just have to hope your apps and web sites are using https correctly. (And if they did tunnel all traffic through Google servers, it would raise a different set of concerns...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I signed up for an invite, but honestly I don't see why I'd want this over my current service, Ting, which does basically the same thing (an pay-what-you- use MVNO with nice app integration) and is already available for any band- capable phone (I'm using a T-Mo iPhone 5S right now). And, there is a WiFi calling toggle in the app that was off by default for me.

In all honestly I'd rather use less Google-things than more.

The typical month costs me $26 before taxes, by the way.

</comment><comment><USER25> I was on this service for some time as a tester. Because I'm a dabbling minimalist and frugal enthusiast, I got my cellular data down below 250MB per month. As far as I can tell, there isn't a plan out there that can beat $22.50 per month.

Imo the big downfall is the requirement to use a Nexus 6. It's not a bad phone, but it also isn't terribly good. I recently went back to iPhone and joined another slightly higher but still low-cost carrier.

<comment><USER26> Do you mind sharing which carrier you have now? I've been looking at switching to one of the lower cost carriers, but haven't seen one that supports the iPhone.

<comment><USER25> Cricket and Ting both support iPhone. If you have an iPhone below 6, you need Ting if it's a T-Mobile iPhone and Cricket if it's an AT&T. I think you can use Ting with the CDMA iPhones. I'm on cricket personally.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > I am slowly working people back to my handset number on project Fi phone for > texting because it works in my primary Gmail account and I can continue to > match my text messages on the desktop with the Chrome extension.

Does this mean that GV will be using your old phone number that you posted over from a carrier? And that us Android folk can have iMessage-like functionality finally?

<comment><USER3> You've been able to port cell numbers to Google Voice for quite some time now, independent of Project Fi. It's a $20 one-time fee. You get all your SMS, MMS, and voicemail messages in Hangouts, both on phone and desktop. Replying to SMS and reading transcribed voicemail on a desktop is quite nice. You can also make and receive voice calls from your number on desktop as well.

Since GV is a cloud service and independent of your phone, you can do all of these things from a desktop even if your phone has no service or a dead battery. For example, if you are overseas and you don't have cell service you can use WiFi to send and receive calls and SMS, from your phone or your laptop, using your normal number. Of course you get all other Google Voice features like call recording, ringing multiple phones, sending specific numbers to voicemail, low international rates, etc.

You can also use Hangouts Dialer to make Google Voice calls over data from your phone, without using plan minutes. This is optional, but it has the advantage that you can use T-Mobile's $30 unlimited data plan as an unlimited everything plan and potentially save a ton of money. Data service is not as reliable as native voice, but cutting your bill in half is pretty compelling.

Downsides are few. The big one used to be that MMS didn't work, but it's finally fixed. There may still be some oddities with group MMS in Hangouts. The Hangouts Android app kinda sucks, but there's supposedly a redesign on the way. SMS happens over your data connection, which is less reliable in places with bad service like crowded stadiums. Porting your number will end your current carrier contract and you'll have to start a new one if you want to continue using your cell phone; depending on your contract this may cause early termination fees and/or your cell phone may be unusable for a few hours during the transfer.

<comment><USER28> I do this with T-Mobile. The downsides are once per year my phone number is literally banned and I cannot text or call for a few hours for absolutely no reason. It's supposedly due to anti-spam issues and obviously there is zero support on this, so you just have to suck it up while you are banned for an arbitrary amount of time for an unknown reason.

<comment><USER3> I've never had any issues like this on T-Mobile.

<comment><USER28> It was GV that banned me, not T-Mobile - sorry if that was not clear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I really wonder which network is the primary voice bearer, Sprint or T-Mobile

<comment><USER30> I have had a Fi phone for a few weeks, and it seems pretty agnostic between the two networks - it just takes the one with the strongest signal at any given point in time. I believe under the hood it is connected to both all the time, and selecting which one to use in software (and reevaluating this decision on the order of seconds).

<comment><USER31> The Google MVNO probably just has roaming contracts with both - this sort of thing is part of the GSM standard. In the UK Three and EE apparently share their networks, even though they are two completely separate companies [0].

[0] [http://m.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/04/three_and_ee_to_share_...](http://m.theregister.co.uk/2014/02/04/three_and_ee_to_share_networks/)

<comment><USER29> Except Sprint is CDMA, and T-Mobile is GSM - again, for data its easy to do, both networks can use the same APN, so handoff is seamless and transparent, for voice, its less so.

<comment><USER32> It's less of a problem if they're using voice over LTE. Although it would still be an issue in areas without LTE coverage on one or both networks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Got an invite, but don't know why I would switch from current $50 unlimited talk/text + 5GB data and my Galaxy Nexus still works fine.

</comment><comment><USER34> > rather than just cold cocking support

Heh, typo that might be worth fixing. :)

</comment><comment><USER35>
      The Nexus 6 is mostly like a very large Moto X, adding
      some very sweet front facing stereo speakers making the
      Netflix experience on a phone like a small theater.

Bullshit.</comment>


Flocker 1.0: Container Data Management for Docker - <AUTHOR> https://clusterhq.com/2015/06/17/flocker-1-0/

<comment><AUTHOR> hey, Luke here :)

if anyone is interested in trying out Flocker we have a really cool new online tutorial system where you can have root on a 3-node flocker cluster for 3 hours to kick the tyres for free.

there are 200 VMs lined up so hey hacker news here's a challenge, see if you can use them all up :D

[https://clusterhq.com/flocker/try- flocker/](https://clusterhq.com/flocker/try-flocker/)

cheers, Luke

<comment><USER2> Do you support Google Cloud Platform persistent disks?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet but Flocker itself has a plugin mechanism for block device backends so it should be fairly easy to do so: [https://docs.clusterhq.com/en/1.0.0/gettinginvolved/plugins....](https://docs.clusterhq.com/en/1.0.0/gettinginvolved/plugins.html)

What's your use case for this @crb? Do you run production container workloads on Google Cloud Platform? Which databases are you interested in?

<comment><USER2> I'm on the Google Cloud Platform team; I do have customers with production container workloads and want to see a wide range of open-source options to offer them.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Amazon tracks information of what you buy outside - <AUTHOR> So this happened today.
I bought a trouser this afternoon from high street (paid cash since it was a round figure) and then bought a meal in KFC which is also in high street just few metres away (this time I paid from card). And importantly, I don't carry a smart phone (so no amazon app, wifi triangulation, etc).
When I open amazon at home - suggested items are trousers!! I haven't made any search in amazon relating to trouser or men's wear.
How can Amazon make suggestions without tracking my payment on high street. Im guessing KFC payment data reached Amazon from which it has inferred I was in high street and so on or it can be cellular tower data ? )
Has anybody else noticed similar behaviour.
edit: minor correction to sentence. <comment><USER2> I feel like this is a ridiculous stretch.

Had you googled for or browsed trousers?

I think it's safe to guess that most people buy trousers; could be coincidental.</comment>


How the teaching of IT in the UK needs a complete overhaul - <AUTHOR> http://postdesk.com/blog/ict-gcse-edexcel-overhaul-national-curriculum-teaching

<comment><USER2> As a former IT teacher, the curriculum is incredibly boring and outdated. A lot of the teaching is simple word processing and spreadsheets. However, most of these students have grown up surrounded by technology. Half the time the students know more than the teachers. It also doesn't help when the teachers are desperately lacking in any real technology experience. I was the only teacher I'd met who'd ever done any programming or had even worked in a tech company.

The curriculum also contains some of the most boring subjects known to man. Do students really need to have an understanding of "Change Management". We should be educating them about technology, introducing them to the possibilities and allowing them to create. Some of the most fun lessons I ever taught were on Photoshop, even with knowledge of only a few tools students will create the most fantastic images.

Children are naturally inquisitive and want to know how things work, especially around the internet and games. Unfortunately, most of the time these questions go unanswered because the teachers can't answer them and it's most likely not on the curriculum.

Personally the curriculum is currently worthless, it was incredibly boring to teach and even more boring for students. It's incredibly frustrating when there are so many great things we could be teaching these students to expand their minds and skills.

It would great to hear how this compares to IT curriculums in other countries.</comment>