Google Launches 'Live View' AR Walking Directions for Google Maps - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/08/08/google-launches-live-view-ar-walking-directions-for-google-maps/ <comment><USER3> Whenever I come out of an unfamiliar subway station in NYC and am trying to get my bearings, my iPhone's compass direction is often off by 45° or more -- the blue arrow in Google Maps can be useless to know which way I'm pointing, and I always have to verify with street names.

Curious if this will be a problem for AR.

(When I'm consistently above-ground, however, e.g. on a car trip, compass orientation remains perfect -- I'm assuming it calibrates itself to GPS movement or something.)

<comment><USER4> This is _exactly_ the scenario that AR is best suited for. Assuming that it works at all, the orientation data from the camera + gyro will be essentially perfect.

<comment><USER5> This is right, the information can be combined using the uncertainties given by each observation through a process known as sensor fusion. [1] An article that pops up sometimes on HN describes one way to combine such information known as a Kalman filter. [2]

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

[2] [https://www.bzarg.com/p/how-a-kalman-filter-works-in- picture...](https://www.bzarg.com/p/how-a-kalman-filter-works-in-pictures/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Frustratingly, they don't explain how it works, or why it useful.

1) its a visual search. This means that using streetview data, google has crunched a sparse 3d pointcloud. Each of these points are represent a globally unique has of a point. (a global descriptor)

2) This is better than GPS, because its possible to resolve a position to ~20cms and crucially where true north is. Crucially it doesn't need an unobstructed view of the sky to resolve a position.

In urban canyons, where sky is limited, there are loads of unique visual points that are more than enough to calculate an accurate position. It also works inside, in places like malls.

The drawback is that it requires constant updating to remain accurate, buildings and hoardings change. Now, there is a patent for self updating, but google doesn't own it.

Also, they don't appear to be offering this service to third parties, which is a shame.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is great for big cities. I live in a medium sized city and GPS works pretty good in most places. I was surprised just how bad it is in NYC (with much taller and denser buildings), unless you can orientate yourself manually with a business the location is not accurate.

This does the work for you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice that this is finally live. I was in the beta group for it for about a year and really liked the feature. Only shortcoming was at night it didn't do well at figuring out your direction as it uses visual clues to get the exact direction you are pointing. Was great for walking around cities as I travel a lot.

</comment><comment><USER9> There's a number of things that are alarming me about this, but I'll focus on one thing: the privacy implications. Not just for the user, but for those who will appear in the pictures that Google will be - for sure - ingesting for the purpose of crowdsourcing street view imagery. Suddenly we have this platform that will be capturing millions of faces and potentially know where people have been even if they don't use the app.

Not to mention that this type of app is treating people as incapable of following directions and it opens up the possibility of new avenues of advertising. Google already keeps an archive of your whereabouts and can even tell when you get in and out of a car. Just imagine wielding your phone around and getting "special offers" for that store you go by but never walk into.

<comment><USER10> > There's a number of things that are alarming me about this, but I'll focus > on one thing: the privacy implications. Not just for the user, but for those > who will appear in the pictures that Google will be - for sure - <USER2> > for the purpose of crowdsourcing street view imagery. Suddenly we have this > platform that will be capturing millions of faces and potentially know where > people have been even if they don't use the app.

Umm, the camera stream of AR isn't transmitted from your phone. The 3D objects are rendered on top of detected features on device.

<comment><USER11> How do you know? And even if it doesn't for starters, there's no telling it'll stay that way.

Very legitimate concern.

<comment><USER10> > How do you know? And even if it doesn't for starters, there's no telling > it'll stay that way.

Same way I know there's no pagan god hiding in my phone whispering my secrets to evil aliens: by actually working with the technology, observing the behaviour of my device and reading the privacy policies and activity log published by Google and not finding any proof.

Of course you can argue that Google might lie for whatever reason... but then you probably shouldn't be using Google Maps at all. Or any product built by a corporation.

<comment><USER12> Also by watching the upload bandwidth. If it streams the live video feed off the device at anywhere near being useful for facial recognition it would be very noticeable.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't have to be the entire video feed. it could be snapshots from a specific direction. If millions use it, there's a good chance even a handful of snapshots from each user at a location that thousands of people pass by could get it mapped better than how they currently do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are they comparing live data with Street view data to ensure accuracy or is it just simple direction overlays through GPS? What algorithm is best for comparing images in 3D space while taking into account of differences due to littering, vehicles, street signs etc.? Also this is a great way for automated outsourced Street view data gathering. Would need a strong image stabilization algorithm but nothing a big enough neural network can't handle, in theory at least.

<comment><USER14> It seems to use image recognition of buildings and other features. When I tried it a few days ago, it shows sparkly dots on surrounding things and even shows an image overlay of a building and suggests you line it up with surrounding buildings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Super cool. It even worked for me at night, although I was walking down a brightly lit major street.

I wonder if it could work in a dark alley or do indoor navigation in malls.

</comment><comment><USER16> Too bad the compass still doesn't know which way I'm facing 90% of the time.

<comment><USER17> Google uses AI along with the camera to correct the compass. If they could integrate this correction with their standard compass API it would be a game changer.

As a side note, the API docs in both Android and iOS fail to mention how unreliable the compass outputs are!

<comment><USER18> Or they don't don't know about it. It is pretty apparent that the google maps team have never tried to navigate via compass on an actual phone.

<comment><USER19> Compass operation is clearly dependant on the hardware and your physical surroundings. My phone compass ( LG V30+) works well in a suburban street or open bushland, showing high sensitivity. Inside my steel framed house or 5 metres from a 40 storey steel reinforcement sky scrapers not so much. ( And not much different from my 40 year old Silva compass) That's why Google is using the camera, Street view and AR to align the orientation

<comment><USER18> Yes. And why, for the love of everything that is holy, can you not disable compass navigation then?!?

Even gps direction is _vastly_ superior during walks - despite the obvious issues with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> A Friend of mine and I had attempted something similar but in an indoor setting. The key problem we faced is that the compass will in the phone and positioning system. The way we overcame the orientation was by using the camera to combine the visual odometer data with the compass measurements. We also faced issues with the localisation as being indoor meant we had to rely on wifi location which was not very good. Again, the way we got over this was to use the visual odometry, and rely on users turning. [https://github.com/chelseyong/Android-App-AR-Map- Navigation](https://github.com/chelseyong/Android-App-AR-Map-Navigation)

</comment><comment><USER21> Had this feature on my Google Maps a while back, thought it was already released and has some fun using it, but you need a constant internet connection

<comment><USER22> I think they beta tested on Pixel phones.

<comment><USER23> That must be it.

I rarely use walking directions due to the awful accuracy of GPS between buildings. AR walking directions are fantastic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> How much of a battery drain is current AR tech? I would imagine it's decently computationally expensive.

</comment><comment><USER25> Why is this a thing? Why would Google invest money to create this? To use it, you must hold your phone in front of your face, with camera on, while walking. It is a regression in my opinion, because it adds no value to their current walking navigation system, and also encumbers the user with having to hold their phone up at eye level. Is it a cool novelty? Yes. Is it useful or productive (other than creating a new surface for advertising)? No. I strongly advise against using this gimmick. Please don't feed the bear. That is all.

<comment><USER14> It actually does not allow you to walk and use it at the same time. It is meant for stopping, getting your bearings, and then putting your phone down and continuing on your way.

It definitely would be useful in unfamiliar, dense urban environments where maybe the streets are a bit too close together to easily distinguish on an overview map.

<comment> yoz-y It does allow you to walk and use it at the same time. But since it auto switches to normal view when you hold the phone flat it is easy to swap between both modes.</comment></comment></comment>


Facebook Takes Major Hit With Latest Funding Round - <AUTHOR> http://www.techstink.com/facebook-takes-major-hit-with-latest-funding-round/

<comment><USER2> I do not know how they do it.

It's a great site but they need some kind of business model. Every time I go there I feel like I'm visiting a special place on our planet where the law of gravity just doesn't apply.

So I'm quite baffled by facebook but at the same time I admire the people who are running it.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not real - don't get excited, haters.

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately, it's not really all that funny either.</comment></comment>


How a Boeing Sales Flop Became the World's Hottest Secondhand Jetliner - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-04/how-boeing-sales-flop-became-world-s-hottest-secondhand-jetliner <comment><USER2> The 717 is also one of the few large jets readily converted for gravel runways, giving it a long future in northern operations.

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

<comment><USER3> The upside is that the engines are up higher, making them less prone to ingest gravel.

The downside (for northern operations) is that they're perfectly positioned to ingest ice coming off the wings. I think there was at least one MD-80 crash caused by that.

<comment> iso8859-1 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines_Flight_7...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandinavian_Airlines_Flight_751)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 717 is actually not an original Boeing or McDonnell Douglas design; it's a refinement of a very old DC-9 airframe from the 60s massively upgraded with modern avionics and modern systems. The DC-9s (and later, the MD-80/90s) were very well-engineered aircraft, and the fact that their core airframe designs are still in operation some five decades later is a testament to how sound Douglas' original engineering and design methodology was.

<comment><USER5> You'd have to think though that a frame built long before CAD and long before you could stress test member components digitally would be much heavier for the same strength (or weaker for the same weight) than a modern airframe which could be min-maxed to high hell before a single sheet of aluminum was stamped.

<comment><USER6> The Mig-25 was mostly build from steel. Steel!

Good engineering can be done without the aid of a computer.

<comment><USER7> It was also built with the philosophy that it doesn't really matter what you build the aircraft from as long as the engine is big enough. Of course this hurt its fuel efficiency, but in some ways this was a good thing. The mission it was designed for (intercepting supersonic bombers) doesn't require the plane to loiter and the short range meant it would be difficult to defect with.

<comment><USER8> Is a steel plane harder to shoot down than an aluminum plane?

Or it makes no difference because the fuselage has to be thin?

<comment><USER6> They would have built it from titanium but at titanium welding hadn't been figured out too well then. The Alfa sub hulls were done with plutonium rods if I remember right!

<comment><USER9> As I /really/ don't want to search those terms in order to confirm it... I'm just going to point out that it seems like meatysnapper is saying:

Alfa sub hulls were done (, welded using,) plutonium (welding) rods; according to their memory. Not, as another reply speculates, made out of plutonium rods (which sounds silly from all sorts of perspectives).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Back when I flew regularly the MD-80 and derivatives where my favorite planes to fly because of 5 across rows with wider seats than the 6 abreast 737 which is like flying in a cattle car. My least favorite for long haul trips was the 777. Twelve hours where the seat armrest would go up only part way was too much. It made it very difficult to take advantage of adjacent vacant seats or just cuddle with my wife.

<comment><USER11> Man, I HATE the MD-80 and the 717 and every other plane with body-mounted engines. There's always a beat frequency between the two engines and that's ok for the first couple hours but eventually it drives me crazy. Would be nice if they could somehow lock the engine speed perfectly.

<comment><USER12> This is also something I remember well. I thought they had some way of locking them to the same speed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> guard-of-terra No wonder turkmenian airlines failed to respond. Those are the sort of guys who have a form screenshot in place of ticket reservation form. An image.

<comment><USER13> One of the few two-star airlines in the world!

[http://www.airlinequality.com/ratings/2-star-airline- ratings...](http://www.airlinequality.com/ratings/2-star-airline-ratings/)

The only one-star is, unsurprisingly, North Korea's airline.

<comment><USER14> Well, it's got plenty of company, including First World ... Ryanair, about which I've heard little good, except of course the price (no at fault accidents, but they're cutting it fine with fuel).

<comment><USER13> I'll let you know on Monday - I'm flying with them for the first time, BRS- DUB.

I live in Australia and people like to complain about the low-cost airlines there but, really, until you've travelled on Europe's low-cost carriers you haven't seen anything.

<comment><USER14> So how was the experience?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "global demand has outstripped supply since Delta started assembling a large and growing fleet in 2012, taking advantage of favorable rental terms and a drop in jet-kerosene prices that makes older planes attractive.

"They're kind of the market-maker," said Robert Agnew, president and chief executive officer of aviation consultant Morten Beyer & Agnew Inc. "If Delta weren't there, the airplane might be struggling.""

That's the core of the story. It could have been some other model instead. It'd be interesting to know what the circumstances were behind Delta picking the 717.

<comment><USER16> It might have been a different model, but it is not obvious which one would it be That one segment has some contenders: fokker 100, MD80 (big with AA), even older 737 models in that seat range

But I guess Delta made that model work for them

<comment><USER17> AA is in the process of retiring its MD-80s. Between their fleet of 737s, the A320-family craft they got in the US Airways merger, and the A319s and A321s they have on order, the Mad Dog's days are (thankfully) numbered.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "The only one that's sitting idle and not earmarked for another carrier is a Turkmenistan Airlines plane in temporary storage" I don't get it. Why would you park an airplane idle?

<comment><USER19> It might make sense for a small airline to order a spare plane, just in case it's needed at some point. Especially if that plane model matches their flight profile really well, but also had a small production run so it would be difficult to lease a replacement. And if Boing really wants to get sales of the plane to make it look like a success, there might be a sweet price for that extra plane.

And since plane age is measured in takeoff/landing cycles, a plane that is sitting in storage isn't really aging.

<comment><USER20> Aeroplane age is generally measured in total hours flown.

Turbine engine life is measure in a combination of cycles and operating hours.

A piston engine aeroplane has nothing measured in takeoff/landing cycles, although it is good practice to record this information on the Maintenance Release.

<comment><USER21> There's no one measure for aircraft age. Flight hours, takeoff/landing cycles, and pressurization cycles are all measures that tell you different things.

The program I work on tracks flight hours, engine operating hours, and takeoffs/landings.

<comment><USER14> Many of us might remember the miraculous Aloha Airlines Flight 243, a 737 bought new by the airline in 1969, which in 1988 after 35,496 flight hours, but over 89,680 takeoff and landing cycles, lost 1/3 of its top fuselage and one flight attendant (it did a lot of short flights between the islands see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Airlines_Flight_243)). Per the Conclusion of the Wikipedia article:

 _Under current FAA regulations for the Boeing 737 (line number 291 and prior) established in the 2010s, this airframe would have had to be permanently withdrawn from service after 34,000 flight cycles or 34,000 hours, whichever came first (for production number 292 and higher, it was increased to 75,000 flight cycles and 100,000 hours). The nearly 90,000 flight cycles exceeded the design limit of the 737-100 /200 under either construction model._

<comment><USER21> Yes, this was the example in my mind, thank you for posting about it. Flight hours weren't informative enough in the case of this aircraft because it spent its time making short hops involving lots of pressurization cycles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > ... and a drop in jet-kerosene prices that makes older planes attractive

Based on that one comment, said in passing, the cost of jet fuel has dropped enough that airlines now are looking for less-efficient designs.

That seems dangerous. Is airline fuel subsidized like automotive fuel is? At least, I doubt the airlines pay for the massive externality of climate change.

<comment><USER23> I know gasoline is extremely cheap in some Middle-Eastern countries, but is gasoline subsidized in the U.S.?

<comment><USER22> > is gasoline subsidized in the U.S.?

That's a good question. My understanding always has been that it is, especially in many indirect ways. For example, tax breaks and other government benefits for the oil and gas industry, as well as for the automotive industry. But I can't cite any off the top of my head.

One way it's indirectly subsidized, at extremely high cost, is the use of the U.S. military to protect industry assets, especially in the Mideast where we maintain a large, active military presence. As just part of the cost, the Iraq war cost the U.S. over $1 trillion. I very much doubt we would have been involved if there wasn't so much oil in and around Iraq. On the other hand, every import or export business relies on the peace, stability, and secure sea lanes provided by the U.S.'s foreign operations (military and diplomatic).</comment></comment></comment>


Rock band Isis mistaken for ISIS terrorist group - <AUTHOR> http://abcnews.go.com/US/isis-rock-band-mistaken-reviled-terrorist-group/story?id=25088363

<comment><USER2> I keep mistaking the headlines for ISIS as being about the spy agency from the tv show Archer..</comment>


Web 2.0: Making Friends / Web 3.0: Making Money - <AUTHOR> http://whydoeseverythingsuck.com/2008/09/web-20-making-friends-web-30-making.html

<comment><USER2> For me the term 'Web 2.0' is more closely related to collective intelligence and social media/apps than AJAX or other UI inovations. But hey it's just a term.

By the time 'Web 3.0' could actually apply we'll probably have another term to use for the change.

<comment><USER3> That is one axis. But would you say that, for example, gmail is a web 1.0 app since it is not at all about social media or collective intelligence?

<comment><USER4> I would say it is a web-based email client. Is everything either "Web 1.0" or "Web 2.0"? That seems silly.

<comment><USER3> Well, perhaps, but really it is one of the apps that, when it came out, helped define the term. So one would have to call it retrospectively silly. In my mind any terms can be silly depending on how you look at things. But it seems to me no more silly to call digg web 2.0 than gmail. I will agree that most of the apps that have been called web 2.0 have been social, but most of the apps of any kind have been social, which is, as I see it, part of the problem. social != $$$$.

<comment><USER5> I'm going to say something unpopular and lose friends:

Who the hell CARES about the term?

Gmail is a good application. Digg was a good idea but it didn't scale. You can argue about Web 2.0 all you want, nobody cares. And you can go out and make money right now, and that's a fact regardless of whether you're 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever in between.

I never got the reason behind the "2.0" buzz. I never will. It's such a pathetic waste of time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Summary:

Web 3.0 is mashups, in an environment where more Web components have well defined interfaces and are, therefore, mashable.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow! Some guy finally invented Web 3.0..

</comment><comment><USER8> You would have thought after web 1.0, that web 2.0 would have been about making money.

</comment><comment><USER9> Seems a little light on content for such a provocative title.

</comment><comment><USER10> It is always about the money :) well, almost always</comment>


Pulse: Self-Supervised Photo Upsampling via Latent Space Exploration - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/adamian98/pulse/blob/master/README.md <comment><AUTHOR> This animation gives a good overview of what it is doing: [https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adamian98/pulse/master/rea...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/adamian98/pulse/master/readme_resources/transformation.gif)

Basically it generates an upsampled image using a generative network, then downsamples it again to see how different it is from the original. It then tweaks the upsampled image (by moving around in the latent space of the generative model) until the downsampled version matches the original as closely as possible.

Seems like it works really well, but only for faces. I wonder if the same technique could be applied to a broader domain of images?

The actual paper can be found at [https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03808](https://arxiv.org/abs/2003.03808)</comment>


How Much We Eat vs. How Much We Need - <AUTHOR> http://flowingdata.com/2016/06/07/calorie-needs-against-consumption/ <comment><USER2> shouldn't this be what do we eat vs. what we need to eat?</comment>


Secret DoJ al-Awlaki memo released by court - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/230975716/Awlaki-Memo

<comment><AUTHOR> Normally I wouldn't consider this HN-appropriate, but this particular case has been discussed so many times on HN over the last 4 years that the release of the original document seems like it would be of interest to a large number of community members.</comment>


Can a Video Game Make You Racist?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/03/21/can-a-video-game-make-you-racist-new-study-says-yes.html New study results on video games and social perception. <comment><USER2> Can your country make you Racist? A new study says yes!

</comment><comment><USER3> A video game can also make you open to all races. For example, when I was playing a popular role playing game I had people of all races in my party.

Role playing games in my opinion are a form of 'interactive fiction' whose outcome you can somewhat control. In short, they are also a stories.

The mode of storytelling is one of the most effective ways of communicating ideas to our mind, unconsciously, that is. By having meaningful interactions with virtual people of all races, it communicates to our mind that we are open to those type of experiences.</comment>


Highly circular objects spotted in deep space - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/circular-radio-objects-space.html <comment><USER2> Maybe better to just read the arxiv article, linked in OP. It's quite readable for a lay-person such as myself, and the meat is quite short. There are pictures starting page 23. [https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14805](https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.14805)</comment>


ECMAScript 5 released - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoq.com/news/2009/12/ecmascript5 <comment><USER3> This is a good summary of the delta.

However, the article author didn't really explain why strict mode is interesting. One of the core requirements of ECMAScript 3.1 (now 5) was to make the language more secure.

For example, in strict mode you can't declare new variables which are eval'd. This makes it harder to XSS. As does the reservation of eval (so it can't be overridden) and the denial of access to the global object.

This is really important because using strict will not only make your JavaScript better (more like "The Good Parts") but also more performant (less global scope) and more secure.

</comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know what the browsers' plans are for implementing this? Hopefully the next major version of Chrome, FF, and IE have it (properly) implemented. Until then, it is hard to get excited as it will likely be quite awhile before it's ubiquitous.

<comment><USER5> I don't know about the other browsers, but Mozilla's plans are here: [https://developer.mozilla.org/En/JavaScript/ECMAScript_5_sup...](https://developer.mozilla.org/En/JavaScript/ECMAScript_5_support_in_Mozilla)

In summary, some Mozilla JS extensions from Firefox 3.0 have been adopted into ECMAScript. Some ECMAScript 5 APIs have been added to Firefox 3.5, but not all of them. All the browser vendors have put a lot of effort into ECMAScript 5, so I'd expect they're willing to actually implement it, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, can anyone smarter than myself tell me if I'm justified in getting a little bit excited about the 'freeze' function on objects that makes properties read only? My first thought is that it sounds like a perfect first line of defence in terms of being able to get trustworthy data back from the client bundled up in a frozen object.

<comment><USER7> I'm a little unclear about what your proposing but, at first interpretation, I don't think so ... What exactly are you suggesting you should use 'freeze' to do?

As a rule of thumb, you can never trust anything the client sends you - <USER2> assume he's a skilled hacker who is manually manipulating bits to do what he wants.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Oooh neat. Maybe I should claim that the parts of the ES3.1 standard I didn't implement were actually presaging ES5. Neat.

</comment><comment><USER9> Finally! Javascript gets an "Option Explicit" ala "use strict;"</comment>


Show HN: Draftr – Share drafts of your work and gather anonymous feedback - <AUTHOR> http://www.draftr.xyz/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello fellow hacker(wo-)men.

Long time lurker here. I want to show you a tool I 've built that I would like to get feedback on. I've done all of the programming, design, copy, etc., myself. Pretty much everything and a lot of which I've learned how to do through reading articles and comments right here on HN.

This tool allows you to upload drafts of your creations, such as animations, designs, drawings, photos, reports, songs, and writings. You can then share these drafts with your peers, allowing them to post anonymous feedback on your drafts. Depending on the type of file you upload Draftr will display different interfaces. Try uploading an MP3 and then a TXT, for example.

Any suggestions, thoughts, improvements or just general comments on the tool are much appreciated.

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER2> I've noticed that when I hit play on the example mp3 and then go back to the homepage (via the icon in the upper left corner), the music still plays and I'm unable to stop it. I can even have the same track playing multiple times simultaneously. Great concept though... What stack are you using?

<comment><USER3> That's a Chrome for Android feature, you can stop it from your notifications. [http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.ca/2013/02/chrome- for-a...](http://googlechromereleases.blogspot.ca/2013/02/chrome-for-android- update.html)

<comment><USER2> I'm experiencing this behavior on desktop Chrome 49.0.2623.39 beta (64-bit). I just now tested it with Chrome for Android and I'm unable to play the music at all.</comment></comment></comment>


Mobile Radiation Standards to Be Relaxed Ahead of 5G Roll-Out - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/mobile-radiation-5g-uk/ <comment><USER2> This is insanity. It's not the first time we put profit and "innovation" before health and environment though.

We don't know what we're playing with, how long have we considered asbestos, pesticides, lead paint, &c. as safe before we finally stopped lying to ourselves ? years, decades even ... This thing should be studied for way longer before being implemented in our cities.</comment>


Tell HN: Virail – transport metasearch – from side project to company - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
I'm Dario, an 30yo IT (both Italian and Information Technology) developer.
I'm submitting my own story of moderate success, hoping to contribute to a community whose guidelines and ethics I appreciate and share, and to get in touch with people like me, expanding my very limited network of contacts.
Around 2013 I was broke because I used my savings to sustain myself while working for free for another, failing, project, and I was in a long distance relationship, my girlfriend at the time lived in Rome: I did whatever I could to save money, including comparing ticket prices for the 2 leading train companies who were running the Milan-Rome route.
As many IT guys, I'm a lazy ass, and as the task of comparing tickets was a recurring one, I decided to create a little script to fetch data from both sites to quickly check which one was the cheapest.
The idea was useful, so useful I decided to build a little web interface around it. Talking with an ex colleague, I also got some SEO advises.
In the following years, while being an employee for other random companies, I kept working on my project, because it made sense to expand the coverage to different routes and countries, as the problem was just the same everywhere.
As the traffic was naturally growing, it made sense to add also other transport means, like buses, planes and BlaBlaCar, as it was booming and perfectly fitting.
I met some business guys and together we founded a proper company, hired some people. Now it is a sustainable business with headquarters in Berlin and Milano.
I'm proud to say that virail is competing with big players such GoEuro, who is funded by 8zeros digits and counts 200+ employees. They are bigger, but it's flattering to think about the fact we are still comparable.
Also, if anyone is in need to suggestions on high scalable infrastructures, I'd be happy to share what costed me countless sleepless nights and save someone troubles.
virail.com <comment><USER2> Nice! Can you explain how your company makes money? Also, how did you fund the company's growth (did the partners invest capital or did you use the profit from operations, etc.?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi prokes,

the business model is just the same of other metasearch: affiliation and ads. We bring traffic to transport companies, we get paid for that, without affecting the final ticket price. And ads.

The company was initially funded by my stubbornness only, along with a few bucks of server hosting. So far, never raised money, always self sustainable.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: good strategy to parse all that information - <AUTHOR>

Greetings
I found myself not able to read everything I would like to read (books, blogs, whatever), I only add interesting stuff from good sources to my reading list but it is still overwhelming.
I figured I'd better design a strategy to tackle this and would like to get your input. What is your trick/strategy of parsing/absorbing this sea of knowledge available to us in this age?
Thanks <comment><USER2> First, deem things that have been in your reading list for a certain time to be unimportant and get rid of them. That's because they _are_ unimportant if you can't even be bothered to read them.

Second, stop procrastinating and actually set some time aside to read several of your items (or in the case of books, a few chapters). Put the time in and you'll find you don't have too much to read - just not the concentration to keep it up.

<comment><AUTHOR> appreciate your input.

you made some implicit assumptions about me which are wrong. I concentrate well and do spend a lot of time to read, it just so happen that there is a lot I would like to read.

I was hoping for some detailed strategies, the simplest example will be only read title/summary/first line of each paragraph.

<comment><USER2> You could learn to speed read if your speed isn't as high as you'd like. Initially this involves tricks like saying numbers or letters over and over while reading so that you don't "speak" the words (even internally) which slows you down. There's also a trick where you can use two fingers (at a third and two thirds into the column of text you'd reading) and you jump your eyes between them while moving down.

In terms of books, consider reading reviews or summaries that people make online. Quite a lot of books have reasonable only summaries. These can help you decide whether something is _worth_ reading. I'd say you need to be more picky if your reading list is so large - don't feel too upset you didn't get to read something, and focus on the awesome stuff you'll learn from the books that _are_ worth reading :)

A trick that works for me with non-fiction books is to read the first and last page of each chapter. This will give you enough info (if the book is written well) to decide whether to read that chapter or not. It might seem like a waste if you bought the book to be able to go through it in 15 minutes, but if you weren't going to read it in time anyway... :)

<comment><USER2> Just noticed this on the front page: <http://zapreader.com/reader/></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Build Muscle Memory for Your Editors and Languages - <AUTHOR> https://www.shortcutfoo.com/

<comment><USER2> Thanks. Been using this for a past few months and it's really changed the way I work. I'm a paying customer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Without a demo, not interesting enough to sign up.

<comment><AUTHOR> demo: [https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim/learn](https://www.shortcutfoo.com/app/dojos/vim/learn)</comment></comment>


Tesla Model 3 Effect – Chevy Dealers Discount 2019 Bolt by Almost $10k - <AUTHOR> https://www.torquenews.com/1083/tesla-model-3-effect-chevy-dealers-discount-2019-bolt-electric-vehicles-almost-10000-race-bottom-market <comment><USER2> The cause and effect here makes no sense. The authors say one reason for the discount is the Tesla Model 3 is selling at $36,200, but "Tesla hasn't actually delivered any yet at that price point" (article quote, not mine) and that's why Chevy needs to discount the Bolt to $18,995.

That's like saying wireless chargers on Amazon have to discount down to $13.99 because Apple promised to sell the AirPower someday. Those two things are just unrelated: it might be plain old supply and demand.

My guess: Chevy has to discount the Bolt because it's simply not selling that well. They already had to discontinue the Volt, their plug-in hybrid.

<comment><USER3> > My guess: Chevy has to discount the Bolt because it's simply not selling > that well. They already had to discontinue the Volt, their plug-in hybrid.

All auto-companies are showing declining sales. Ford, GM, Toyota, and Tesla.

I think your supposition here is most correct. The car market is declining, so the various car companies are now cutting prices and competing on price even more strongly. Some car models will be cut out and discontinued as a result.

<comment><USER4> I think one of the issues is that the average price of cars has risen so much. I was watching some financial podcast/guru person who had noted that the average car payment is now $550/month with a 69 month term for the loan.

<comment><USER3> > I think one of the issues is that the average price of cars has risen so > much.

IMO, what explains the higher price is because reliability is so much better than 20 years ago. 100k miles is so cake that no one brags about reaching 100k miles anymore. In fact, most people today are bragging about "oil-change + tire maintenance only for 100k miles".

Its completely reasonable to buy a car with 100k miles on it, and hope for it to last another 100k miles on top of it (or ~7 years or so, depending on driving habits).

In effect, a 5-year old car today is approximately worth the same a brand-new car from the 90s. You're gonna get +100k miles off of it and not have to worry too much about maintenance issues.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Is it a US thing that this is a recent development?

If you bought a used BMW or Volvo in the 90s with 150k km on it, you would definitely have a reasonable expectation that it would last another 7-8 years. The people I've known with extreme mileage have been like 400k or 500k km.

<comment><USER5> Yes, some of the 80's vehicles from Detroit were very poor quality. Eg it was well known the water pump on a Skylark would only last 30k miles but that's what we put up with.

The manufacturing quality lessons of Honda and Toyota started to hit US in the 90s. I toured a Ford engineering division around then, where they just starting to adopt ideas like empowered workers and continuous measurable improvement. Anyone could stop the line if they saw a problem.

<comment><USER6> That's very interesting to me to read. My father worked for Ford in the late 70s, and claimed they never stopped the line, even when someone literally had a heart attack on the job.

<comment><USER5> That may well have been a bogus claim - this was a tour for engineering students they were trying to woo. There was definitely a sense of "look how hip we are, totally not old dinosaurs! Quality is job 1" Either way, they had to change, and they did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Speaking personally, this is pretty straightforward.

Why would I buy a Chevy Bolt for the same price as a Model 3, even if I have to buy it "off menu"? (And deliveries have started, BTW: [https://electrek.co/2019/04/15/tesla- delivers-35000-model-3/](https://electrek.co/2019/04/15/tesla- delivers-35000-model-3/)) Or slightly more for the more available Standard Plus Model 3?

The Bolt is wonderful, but it's limited to 50kW charging and even more important it has no access to a consistent, strategically placed network of well-maintained chargers spanning the continent. Basically, the Bolt is still a city commuter which cannot feasibly take road trips of any significant length (outside of charging corridors in the Northeast and West coast), not too different from a Leaf, functionally.

At least with the Volt, you could still take road trips the same as any other car.

(And all of this ignores the panoramic glass roof, the autopilot features, the superior cosmetics, the improved per-mile efficiency, etc, etc.)

And yes, GM is in the same situation as Tesla, having the federal EV credit phased out. And that's a major shame. GM, with the Volt in particular, was a major pioneer in modern electric cars, along with Tesla. And now both are being almost punished for their foresight and initiative. Shows how very little the Congress/Administration/federal government currently values emissions reductions or even rational industrial policy... China very likely may end up owning the EV market.

<comment><USER8> >> no access to a consistent, strategically placed network of well-maintained chargers spanning the continent.

Isn't that called "Chargepoint"?

<comment><USER9> The Chargepoint network is woefully inadequate (both locations and charge speed, anything capable of less than 120kw-150kw might as well be a 120V outlet) compared to Tesla's Supercharger network. Electrify America's network is still in its infancy (and you can't charge a Tesla on it yet until CCS adapters are available).

I travel cross country in the US frequently on the Supercharger network (Model S), without any range anxiety or fear of getting to an inoperable station late at night with little battery range left. Many hotels also have destination chargers, so I can charge overnight at the hotel while I sleep and leave with a full charge. I could not do this with any other EV.

<comment><USER10> > anything capable of less than 120kw-150kw

Shouldn't that be enough to charge a mostly empty battery to mostly full over a 30 minute lunch break?

<comment><USER9> Indeed it is, but most of the ChargePoint network does not support such charge rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would argue that $10k Chevy Bolt discount wasn't originated from the pressure of Model 3's pricing and some low moving EV models have long been getting significant discounts off MSRP.

Back in 2017 when the first Bolt model year came out, I've got $4k cash offer mailer from GM and another stackable $5k off MSRP from a large regional GM volume dealership.

And Nissan Leaf have been having $10k off MSRP discounts that are subsidized by regional power utilities too.

This is a common trend way before $35k Model entered volume production.

<comment><USER12> Maybe you are in the KC area. KCP&L had $10k rebates in Leafs. I was going to buy a new one, but the dealers were total assholes, jacking up the prices to compensate for the rebate.

I ended up buying a used one. I'll buy a Tesla next, or another used, just to not deal with scumbag dealerships.

<comment><USER11> I live in Northern NJ. PSE&G did that $10k off MSRP for LEAF too a couple years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just bought a Model 3 yesterday. This is my second Tesla and I think it is actually better than my S and a whole 30K cheaper. This car cost me 37k after Fed tax credit, but still comes with Nav, premium audio, autopilot, tons of bells and whistles and safety feature. It is a no brainer - it is the best car in the market right now (yeah, I am biased)

<comment><USER14> did you even try the bolt? It would have been 10k less than yours, and based on the review not that far away in term of comfort//performance etc.

But I bet you didn't, because you don't really care. you wanted a Tesla because it's a hype car.

<comment><USER13> Bolt is tiny. I hate how it looks. It doesn't have Autopilot, nor does it have a Supercharging infrastructure. It certainly doesn't have the hundreds of bells and whistle that comes with Tesla.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I suspect this has more to do with losing the federal subsidy than competition from Tesla

<comment><USER16> I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is no particular surprise. The BMW i3 is being discounted about the same. The real takeaway of the article to me is that "Tesla hasn't actually delivered any yet at that price point" (the $35K Model 3). Tesla's cash starved, as has been discussed here, and that could easily push any such deliveries far down the road. The industry shakeouts will be interesting to watch.

<comment><USER18> Except they are selling the 35k model.

<comment><USER19> Delivery is prioritized by price paid. The only way to get delivery on a tesla model 3 is to add every option which can basically double the cost of the car.

<comment><USER20> That's not true at all. I ordered the SR+ as soon as it was announced, and they were ready to deliver before I was ready to receive it!

Got mine on March 30th, and love it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'd really like to give the Bolt a chance, but isn't the Chevy Bolt's design really unappealing? Especially compared to the Tesla model 3. I wonder why they made it this way. It's a matter of personal taste but I find it less appealing than even a Honda Civic.

<comment><USER22> There's a single Model 3 in my neighborhood and I don't understand the appeal aesthetically.

I'm glad there are so many adopters for EVs (Tesla or otherwise) willing to put up with all the downsides until the technology and infrastructure matures to a point where it is competitive (price, charge time, range, charging station at every gas station, etc.)

<comment><USER8> Where do you live? There's 1 or 2 in every driveway around here (South Bay)

<comment><USER23> Basically anywhere not unusually rich? They're no longer Maserati-uncommon around here like they were a few years ago (Maseratis: also rare most places) but they're still pretty uncommon. Might see one, maybe two a day on the road on a commute into the city and back. Some days a couple more, lots of days zero. I think I've seen one ever in my neighborhood of 100+ houses, and I'm not sure it belonged to anyone who lives here. And this is not an actually _poor_ neighborhood, or even close. Just not rich.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> And that's at the time when people in Europe want to buy the Bolt for a much, much higher price, and cannot.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm a big believer in electric vehicles, and it really frustrates me that the Bolt is unknown to the general public.

This car is a gem. Cheaper than a Tesla M3, and available before.

It shows once more that car buying is more about to be in a cult//group than really about the car itself. 90% of the attraction of the Model3 is that people will think you are somehow hype.

<comment><USER25> Can't really get Bolt in EU where EVs actually make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER26> I believe they are called Opel over in EU

<comment><USER25> Can't buy them in France whatever they're called.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Wait, locally discounted? Is that still how this works? Seriously, are cars still being sold where the price varies in those crazy ways? Because those things are sold for over $33,000 USD in Canada ($44,800 CAD). A quick check on car search shows dealers in Canada pricing the thing at $47,000 CAD ($35,000 USD)

<comment><USER28> Car makers and dealers learned a long time ago that consumers have wide access to the invoice price of a car (theoretically this is the price at "cost" which the car dealer pays) and have taken steps to obfuscate this with various fees, kickbacks, sales bonus programs and volume sales agreements such that you can't be sure how much margin is really in a car besides looking at the range of actual sales rates of the car.

This is the norm and always has been as far as I am aware. If you are buying a Toyota Camry or Honda Accord or other popular, value oriented (lower margin) car then there may be less wiggle room in the sticker, but for a car with an MSRP around 40k there's probably a fair amount of room to change the price.

Also, a car that never sells makes $0 in revenue. People tend to buy cars with their heart and the cool factor/brand value of a Tesla 3 is orders of magnitude higher than almost anything chevy makes.

<comment><USER27> Yes, but electrics don't stay on the lot either way. These cars all get waiting lists when they launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> $18,995 for a all-electric car is an amazing deal. It's got really incredible range (EPA rated 238 miles) for the price point. The other all-electric car at this price point, the VW e-Golf, has a mileage of 125 miles.

238 miles is close to the Tesla Model 3's EPA rated 250 miles. Here's an EPA comparison of the Bolt, Model 3, and Golf: [https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=39786&...](https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=39786&id=41056&id=39871)

</comment><comment><USER12> GM better have something up their sleeve. With the plant closings to divert $ to electric and driverless R&D, I have not read of any new EV models or AI progress.

<comment><USER30> GM owns a large piece of Cruise

<comment><USER31> They own all of cruise

<comment><USER30> that's a very large part</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hatpin Peril (2014) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/hatpin-peril-terrorized-men-who-couldnt-handle-20th-century-woman-180951219/ <comment><USER2> Reminds me of a comedian who said "if I have $1000 dollars in my pocket while walking home at night, I have something that another man wants to take from me and it makes me feel scared. This is how it must feel to be a woman all the time, always having something that another man wants to take from you."

I'm paraphrasing, but I thought this was an interesting perspective into a kind of vulnerability that a lot of men probably hadn't thought about.

<comment><USER3> Dave Chapelle - Bird Revelation.

I used to do shows for drug dealers that wanted to clean their money up. One time I did a real good set, and these motherf--kers called me into the back room. They gave me $25,000 in cash […] I jumped on the subway and started heading towards Brooklyn at one o'clock in the morning. Never been that terrified in my life. I'd never in my life had something that somebody else would want. I thought to myself, "Jesus Christ, if motherf--kers knew much money I had in this backpack, they'd kill me for it." Then I thought: "Holy s00t, what if I had a pu--y on me all the time? That's what women are dealing with." […] If those same drug dealers gave me a pu--y and said, "Put it in your backpack and take it to Brooklyn," I'd be like, "Ni--a, I can't accept this."

<comment><USER4> While a good metaphor it still misses out easy identification. Women are often easily identifiable as such. Take that $25000 and strap it to the front of your chest...

<comment><USER5> then you're in conversation with someone and have to continually remind them "hey buddy, my eyes are up here"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hat pins have some advantages, decent stats, light weight (don't need a special scabbard and you'll have one on you anyway to keep your hat on when flying) but they are of misc class, and your far better spending you EXP on another combat branch. [https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Hatpin](https://dwwiki.mooo.com/wiki/Hatpin)

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm sure than in almost all of these cases, the woman had already led the man know that she objected to his attacks (and groping a woman without permission is an attack), either verbally, nonverbally, or both, and the idiot persisted. I'm all for the "hatpin girls".

<comment><USER8> Are you all for this?

[https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi- bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19030822.2.48&e=-...](https://cdnc.ucr.edu/cgi- bin/cdnc?a=d&d=SFC19030822.2.48&e=</comment></comment><comment>-en--20--1--txt-txIN</comment><comment>--1)

</comment><comment><USER9> In response to some comments:

If someone breaks down your door and enters your house, I (and I think most others) see nothing wrong with you defending yourself.

Why is it different here? It doesn't matter if their intention is to rob you or not.

<comment><USER10> If an aggressive homeless person approaches me on the street and I'm not sure of his state of mind and intentions, should I be allowed to stab him?

<comment><USER11> If you had a serious reason to see his actions as an attack that puts your life or health at risk, serious enough for the jury to believe you — well, yes. It's self-defense, and it does not matter whether the attacker is homeless.

<comment><USER10> Nah. Relying on the stabber's self attestation "oh I felt really threatened" is always stupid. That's how you get situations like Trayvon Martin.

You never know whether someone will attack you. Giving people the right to stab any person who makes them feel threatened is de facto giving people the right to stab people at will.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. But if somebody were actively attacking you, having not yet inflicted any harm, I suppose any jury would see your self-defense as self-defense. You don't need to wait to be stabbed to fight back.

OTOH if you were to say "he just looked at me just so, and I felt really threatened, so I fought back", it's likely not going to fly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It was true, as social worker Jane Addams lamented, that "never before in > civilization have such numbers of young girls been suddenly released from > the protection of the home and permitted to walk unattended upon city > streets and to work under alien roofs."

Wow.

<comment><USER13> Maybe she was right

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Obviously that was a sign of the times, so people found a way (people moving amongst semi anonymous crowds and policing not having caught up).

I think we are missing something in that today this kind of action would lead to a case in favor of the "people" (ie the complainant). But there are so many things that can be better handled by people defending themselves without having to fear a case against them. Like a home invader suing homeowners for something)

Obviously in a civilized society we expect people to behave so we have these tools of justice available to us, but in some cases, like these, I think this kind of action would serve to better deter uncivil behavior.

</comment><comment><USER15> > "When he lifted his arm and draped it low across her back, Leoti had enough. > In a move that would thrill victim of modern-day subway harassment, she > reached for her hatpin—nearly a foot long—and plunged it into the meat of > the man's arm. He let out a terrible scream and left the coach at the next > stop."

Although what the man did is inappropriate, stabbing him seems excessive. She could've first asked him to stop.

> "A Chicago showgirl, bothered by a masher's "insulting questions," beat him > in the face with her umbrella until he staggered away."

Again, seems excessive. Why not just tell him off and walk away?

> "Such stories were notable not only for their frequency but also for their > laudatory tone; for the first time, women who fought back against harassers > were regarded as heroes rather than comic characters, as subjects rather > than objects. Society was transitioning, slowly but surely, from expecting > and advocating female dependence on men to recognizing their desire and > ability to defend themselves."

I would say this is more than self defense. The examples given are overreactions that would be prosecuted as crimes under most circumstances.

<comment><USER16> You're assuming that women and men are on equal footing, physically. When you politely ask someone to stop invading your space, it's backed by your ability to push them out of it.

If you're 6'2" and the other guy is 6'2" you're on pretty even footing. But if you're 5'1" and the guy is 6'2" you're not on even footing and shouldn't be expected to act like you are.

This is to say nothing of how physically intimidating it is for someone to just enter your personal space like that. And when you're in an enclosed space like a carriage, you have no escape route. So in my mind stabbing the guy in the arm was pretty mellow. There's no telling where things would have gone from there.

If you're at all concerned about getting stabbed in the arm, maybe get to know the other person before you invade their space.

<comment><USER15> I think stabbing someone has a very high chance of making the situation far more dangerous than just asking the person to stop.

Also, it has been true for centuries that a woman screaming "help!" would draw the attention of all the men in the area (for example the carriage driver in this case) who would be eager to beat the other man to a pulp if he didn't stop harassing her.

Women and children first into the lifeboats, remember? Most men do care about women as a class and even elevate their care for them above their concern for themselves.

Also, although people might give a 5'1" man some leeway regarding using a stick against a 6'2" man if the 6'2" man attacked him first, I don't think anyone would find it acceptable for the 5'1" man to INITIATE the violence using a weapon merely because of the POSSIBILITY that the larger man might attack him.

If you're in a bar and a large man says something insulting to you, do you just skip to attacking him because, if you say something insulting back he might attack you? If you do, I'm pretty sure you're the one who will be charged with a crime.

You know, sometimes people who ask for directions then demand your wallet. Should I just attack everyone who approaches me for directions, because they might be a thief?

<comment><USER17> > _Also, it has been true for centuries that a woman screaming "help!" would > draw the attention of all the men in the area (for example the carriage > driver in this case) who would be eager to beat the other man to a pulp if > he didn't stop harassing her._

Is that really true?

<comment><USER18> No, it's not. I just finished reading a book where the author talks about growing up in the late 70s, early 80s, and one night his father started beating his mom with the buckle end of his belt. She managed to hit the panic alarm at their house, and when the police showed up, they police didn't even talk to her, even though she was standing there with blood running down her face. The father just told them that she got out of line, and he had to teach her who's in charge, and the police nodded and chuckled, then left.

<comment><USER15> What book?

Also, while it is probably true that there were sometimes inappropriate police responses to domestic violence in the past, that is not the general case of a woman screaming for help in a public place from a strange man.

Even so, the story you're talking about sounds very unusual.

Also note that the honest research since the 1970s shows that domestic violence is two-way, and that women initiate the majority of violence.

Reference: Thirty Years Denying the Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence, Murray Strauss, University of New Hampshire. Summarizes results from 200 studies.

Around the same time, 1970s, Erin Pizzey, creator of the first womens' shelters in the UK, observed (as she wrote in her book) that many of the women that came to her for shelter were as violent or more violent than the men they were escaping from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This appears to be a topic that the HN community is unwilling to discuss neutrally.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you feel the ideal neutrality for this topic looks like on HN?

<comment><USER19> For example, engaging epicureanideal's post with arguments showing his opinion to be wrong, instead of just hiding it with hundreds of downvotes. That post and its replies was like 90% of the discussion when I first checked, and now it's one light gray row at the bottom. As is, there isn't much of a discussing left in here.

<comment><USER20> HN guidelines say:

Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.

\---

The "hundreds of downvotes" and how the UI reflects the downvotes are two facts of life. Indeed your initiative to change these facts is _not_ interesting to me.

<comment><USER19> I was trying to comment about the lack of different opinions in the discussion. Because it's hardly a discussion if everyone agrees and/or if the people who don't agree are invisible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Blow to low carb diet as landmark study finds high fibre cuts heart disease risk - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/jan/10/high-fibre-diets-cut-heart-disease-risk-landmark-study-finds <comment><USER2> The answer: Low carb high diet food. [https://www.wholelifechallenge.com/10-healthy-and-high- fiber...](https://www.wholelifechallenge.com/10-healthy-and-high-fiber-foods- that-are-also-low-carb/)</comment>


360 degree video with 6 GoPro cameras - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonasginter.de/360-grad-video-mit-6-gopro-kameras/ <comment><USER2> I like this. I'd love to see more ventures in this direction.

Ever since trying out Google's photo sphere feature (yes, they weren't the first ones in the space - Microsoft and others actually beat them to market), I've been quite interested in the concept of 360° by 180° ways to explore places.

I've used the feature to document, especially, my hikes, and a trip to Peru ([https://www.google.com/maps/views/profile/111004183840840391...](https://www.google.com/maps/views/profile/111004183840840391992?gl=us)). I've experimented with using my DSLR to do the same ([https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/111004183840840391992...](https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/111004183840840391992/photo/i1bq- aBJKbQAAAQJMsb8rQ) and [https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/111004183840840391992...](https://www.google.com/maps/views/view/111004183840840391992/photo/eneGBekL_MUAAAGuvIR1CA)).

And, after all that, what would I love to be able to do? Take a video with a setup that is something like in the link and be able to put together a 360° by 180° video that would allow a viewer to follow along with me skiing down a slope in the not so snowy mountains of southern California, or enjoying a zip line through a cloud forest in Costa Rica, or descending on bike down a mountain road. Imagine being able to view such a video but being able to pan side to side, up and down, looking forward or backward - basically, allowing the viewer to pan to any angle at any point in time in the video.

I have to imagine this is not a novel idea, but I can't say I've seen any demos of such an experience. I'd love to see some if they exist.

Anyway, just some thoughts I had while enjoying the video in the link.

<comment><USER3> Here are a few 360 videos:

[http://www.360-degree-video.com/pages/360deg- video.php](http://www.360-degree-video.com/pages/360deg-video.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really liked the slow cycling and music at the beginning. I think it would be cool to do a music video like this, with an MC rapping as they walk/dance along, and all sorts of interesting people and scenery come and go over the horizon.

</comment><comment><USER5> Lots of information on this type of thing here, including information on stitching softwares and methods, and many sample videos and photos: [http://www.360heros.com](http://www.360heros.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> Hah thats pretty cool. Felt like I was watching a real life super mario galaxy a little.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think they mean 4π steradians (unit of solid angle covering the surface of a sphere), not 360° (unit of angle, covering the circumference of a circle).

<comment><USER8> Learn something everyday, I've wanted to express that concept before, and never even wondered if there was a word for it. Of course, If I use it I'll have to define it much like you just did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does he mention what software he used to stitch the views together? (I looked but don't see it, but I'm going through Google Translate)

<comment><USER10> I was wondering that as well. It wouldn't be too hard to pull individual frames out of synced movies, script panotools to assemble stitched frames into spherical or other panoramas, and then reassemble into movies.

I've seen commercial firms offering similar services. I also know that about 10 years ago there was an unfortunate bit of a patent minefield surrounding panorama software, I'm not sure of the current status of those patents or techniques like these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I feel like le petit prince.

[http://www.indigobridgebooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/...](http://www.indigobridgebooks.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/07/Le-Petit-Prince.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how you start all the camera's recording at the same time, and how much variation there is in their framerates.

I know the old gopro's used to have a connector for some sort of sync cable to make 3d stereo recording work better, It might be posible to slave many camera's together if someone reversed engineered the connection details.

Otherwise I imagine that aligning all the video's in time might be incredibly annoying, especially if the framerate isn't consistent from camera to camera.

<comment><USER12> the gopros since hero2 have builtin wifi and the wifi ability can be added to the hero1 with a backpac - then you get the remote controller to start/stop all of the cameras and record at the same time

<comment><USER13> Small correction: Hero2 doesn't have wifi built in, but can use wifi bacpac.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Surprised no one's mentioned Bublecam: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bublcam/bublcam-360o-ca...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/bublcam/bublcam-360o-camera- technology-for-everyone).

Instead of six Go Pros, you can just use one Bublecam to capture 360 degree video, and the software to stitch the photos / videos comes with it.

</comment><comment><USER15> The effect looks cool, however if the capture is loss-less it might be possible to create a shader to flatten it and make it natural looking 360-degree video.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder about the feasibility of using this idea to create Google street view equivalent with fluid movement between each point...

</comment><comment><USER17> Who ever said the earth was not round? Very cool effect, Looks like it would make a trippy video game.

</comment><comment><USER18> Aaah, my brain hurts.

</comment><comment><USER19> Woah, trippy.</comment>


Prototype PHP interpreter using the PyPy toolchain - Hippy VM  - <AUTHOR> http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2012/07/hello-everyone.html

<comment><USER2> There is also another project named HappyJIT doing much of what is described there. The corresponding paper was presented at last year's Dynamic Languages Symposium [<http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2047854>]

It would be nice if there were comparable benchmark results available, or a discussion of what is different between both approaches/implementations.

EDIT: bb link didn't work, replaced it with ACM portal link.

<comment><USER3> indeed, the happyjit is not included here in the comparison. I've read the paper (which I of course cannot access via ACM) and their benchmark results were not that good.

They were using an old version of PyPy and did not use some of the advanced features of the JIT generator.

<comment><USER4> As one of the authors of Happy, your post got me very interested. We wrote the paper over a year ago, we used a version of PyPy from back then. It's possible that we get a bigger speedup with a newer PyPy.

It's interesting that you mention the advanced features. I looked at Hippy and the most interesting JIT feature Hippy uses is _virtualizable2_, which virtualizes all function locals and unboxes them. We tried using it ourselves, but it forces each function to have a static list of variables and no dynamic variable accesses (like $$x). It looks like Hippy falls back to the regular implementation for dynamic variable accesses, where the entire list is stored in a dictionary. Now I'm wondering how much this happens in real-world code, we assumed it does happen enough times.

Also, I'm working on posting a publicly-available version of the paper. I'll post a link when I do that.

<comment><USER3> For dynamic variable access you do what PyPy (the python interpreter) does for globals. You indeed fall back to a dict, _but_ you keep a dict of cells, that is indexes in the list, not the dict of variables. That way you have extra indirection, but all accesses that are static are efficient, even if you have a dynamic access somewhere (which indeed need to do a lookup, but too bad). I fear this is not the best place to discuss further though, you have my mail.

<comment><USER4> Right, we can continue this by e-mail.

<comment><USER5> Please find that some of us find the technical aspects of this conversation very fascinating. It's nice to jump into the mind of another developer and see how they approach problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love this. It's always nice to see PHP being implemented on new platforms (we already have it to some degree running on C++, on JVM, on .NET, now on PyPy). Sadly most of those projects don't really make it to a production-ready state :/

In any case, keep up the work!

<comment><USER3> It's very different to use the PyPy toolchain that is to run on JVM or .NET. It does not reuse any bit of the Python VM, but uses RPython as the implementation language. You don't share bytecode, you don't share objectmodel. You share the garbage collector and you _generate_ the JIT for your language (unlike reusing the existing one).

<comment><USER7> This is one of the most fascinating things about PyPy, and one least understood (most likely because the primary output of the PyPy interpreter generator happens to be a Python interpreter written in a static language much like Python called RPython).

I've been toying with the idea of building a little language, just for fun. The mess of building an interpreter has always kept me from it, but as I've spent some time looking at PyPy, I think I might just have a go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that in the conventional PHP interpreter, everything is executed from scratch on each request, I wonder how the JIT behaves here, especially since most PHP programs live and die in less time than it seems to take the Pypy JIT to warm up. If/when a version with the web side of the stack is implemented, will JITed code survive across requests?

<comment><USER3> in short - yes. there is nothing stopping the JIT code from surviving across requests, as long as you keep the process alive.

<comment><USER9> php over fastcgi is a good example of how to reuse the same php process. I use <http://php-fpm.org/> and nginx and it's great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a good resource for learning how to implement languages using PyPy?

<comment><USER3> Linked in the blog post, but because reading is hard, I'll repost it. WARNING: those articles are long

[http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/04/tutorial-writing- interp...](http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/04/tutorial-writing-interpreter- with-pypy.html)

[http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/04/tutorial- part-2-adding-...](http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/04/tutorial- part-2-adding-jit.html)

[http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/fast_enough_v...](http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/fast_enough_vms_in_fast_enough_time)

<comment><USER10> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very cool. I never thought the improvements in something like PyPy could end up benefiting PHP in such a direct way.

<comment><USER12> From: <http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/faq.html#what-is-pypy> pypy is "a framework for implementing interpreters and virtual machines for programming languages, especially dynamic languages."

One of the big goals of the project is to create a general tool for people to implement interpreters and VMs. The intention isn't to just provide a JIT vm for python, but to allow all sorts of new or existing languages to be (re)implemented easily. Don't be surprised if you start hearing about other languages being implemented in RPython.

<comment><USER13> Seeing a speedy Ruby implementation in PyPy would be a tipping point, I think. :)

<comment><USER14> I started one as a toy project some months ago (in April, tells me the filesystem), just for kicks.

I used ply to write the parser (aiming at 1.9.3, which has a lex/yacc parser), and that was the first time I leveraged a LALR parser, so it's very experimental, and as such code quality is lacking to say the least. Also, since ply uses (at least) kwargs, it won't pass through pypy build step. Still, early performance between cpython and pypy gives a clear edge to pypy.

To give you an idea of how much experimental it is, it's not even in my ~/Workspace (which is usually the step before github), but still in ~/Sandbox/pypy/pyby. I actually had a hard time finding it again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The concept is cool, but I think that once all the tokenization is done on the full construct of the language, it probably won't be substantially that much faster than hiphop C++ converter. This is only a 1.0 with benchmarks based on limited functionality. As the code-base grows, so will the pains to optimize the speed.

<comment><USER12> I disagree. Have you seen the benchmarks where they showed Python code in pypy running faster than C equivalents? Sure they were contrived, but they support the idea that theoretically any JIT runtime should be faster than ahead-of- time compilation. It makes sense to me, since the JIT runtime has more information with which to optimize the code - pypy knows what's going on with the code while it's executing, whereas the hiphop compiler only has information about the code itself.

In addition, an implementation in pypy should be able to support eval, which is impossible (or perhaps extremely difficult) with hiphop.

<comment><USER16> They were far from all contrived: many were taken from bottlenecks in real Python applications. Off-hand, at least the django, genshi, and html5lib benchmarks are very much real code, and none of the three benchmarks are optimized for PyPy in any way.

<comment><USER12> Yes, running Django in pypy gives you enormous speed boosts (I've seen it myself), but that's not what I was talking about.

I was referring to the benchmarks in which they measured Python code in pypy running against pure C code (see some examples below). While I'm not familiar with the benchmarks you're referring to, I doubt anybody implemented all (or even parts) of Django, genshi or html5lib in C.

[http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/02/pypy-faster-than-c- on-c...](http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/02/pypy-faster-than-c-on-carefully- crafted.html) [http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/08/pypy-is-faster-than- c-a...](http://morepypy.blogspot.com/2011/08/pypy-is-faster-than-c-again- string.html)

<comment><USER16> See <http://speed.pypy.org/> for the benchmarks I was referring to: that's the general collection of benchmarks used for PyPy (several, such as the html5lib one, imported from unladen-swallow), though obviously in specific cases comparisons are made otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wonder about the motives behind Facebook's (apparent) decision to continue investing in PHP.

If I understand it correctly, most of their backend services are implemented in some other language, and their PHP code is mostly used as a more flexible templating language. If that's the case, it shouldn't be all too hard to migrate away from PHP, if the chose to do so.

It seems like they spend a lot of engineering effort in optimizing PHP, and probably also a lot of CPU cycles in executing it. I assume there is a tipping point somewhere, when the investment in PHP stops making sense, even given effort to port legacy code.

There are a lot of arguably nicer alternatives to PHP, and I bet they are not benefiting from the one really superior feature of PHP (easy deployment on shared hosting).

<comment><USER18> I am honestly asking, is there a simple reason why, lets say python, can't be easily deployed on shared hosting. Let's take Heroku, probably the easiest way. It will take some persistance: <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/quickstart> \+ <https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python> and that's just the hello world. So my question is why is like that, can it be solved? What are the technical limitations for it? I know complicated things are complicated and if there would be some simple other way around it, it would already be like that, but then again what is the reason?

<comment><USER19> Do you mean like how erlang, haskell and ocaml can be run on bare Xen slices?

[http://corp.galois.com/blog/2010/11/30/galois-releases- the-h...](http://corp.galois.com/blog/2010/11/30/galois-releases-the-haskell- lightweight-virtual-machine-halv.html)

<http://halvm.org/wiki/>

<http://anil.recoil.org/papers/2010-hotcloud-lamp.pdf>

<http://erlangonxen.org/>

<comment><USER16> No: with PHP you can upload a bunch of files over FTP and you're done. With Python you pretty much always need to ssh into the server after pushing the files to the server. For someone who knows nothing, this makes PHP much easier.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does anyone have any idea what "problems" one "inherits", per the article, in building dynamic languages on bytecode VMs like Parrot and the JVM? It seems to be talking about the fact that the JVM was designed for Java _the language_ , and how that's induced some kind of drag on porting other kinds of languages to it, but I really don't see how that's relevant to Parrot, which was designed to be language agnostic (modulo its bias towards supporting the needs of dynamic languages) from the get-go.

<comment><USER17> To be fair, while there is invoke dynamic, he might be alluding to other aspects of the JVM (and referencing Parrot hints to that).

Eg. class loading in the JVM is (afaik) still static, classes once loaded cannot be modified, which is a problem for languages such as Ruby and JS, the basic data types of the JVM might not match your language, etc.

Not sure if that makes a big difference, in essence you'll have to implement those semantics in either case, be it in RPython for PyPy or Java for the JVM.

<comment><USER21> Classes can be changed after loading using HotSwap, it's just their method signature can't change:

[http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/jpda/enhancem...](http://docs.oracle.com/javase/1.4.2/docs/guide/jpda/enhancements.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It'd be pretty neat if there was an R[1] interpreter written in RPython, give any R scripts a free speed boost; that said, R has a pretty hairy grammar, so it might end up being easier to just switch to (for example) Julia.

[1]: <http://www.r-project.org/>

<comment><USER23> I dunno, the grammar you use in R is pretty weird, but it can all be expressed in simple function calls. For example "["(x, 2) is equivalent to the more typical x[2]. I've actually been thinking about re-implementing R, and PyPy does sound like the best way (I was also thinking of that Clojure implementation in C, given that R started out as a scheme interpreter. It would be a lot of work, but the rewards are massive. Reimplementing R the language is a lot less work than reimplementing the entire set of libraries.

<comment><USER22> The function call transformation is good, but one still has to parse the code to be able to do this. I remember reading an article a while ago that described the hoops the author had to go through to get a proper R parser working, though I can't find it now.

<comment><USER23> Please submit it if you ever do, I'd love to read it.

<comment><USER22> Found it: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4254598>

(Direct link: [http://shape-of-code.coding- guidelines.com/2012/02/29/parsin...](http://shape-of-code.coding- guidelines.com/2012/02/29/parsing-r-code-freedom-of-expression-is-not-always- a-good-idea/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'd love to see a Kickstarter project for this so that author can be funded and complete the implementation.

<comment><USER3> From Kickstarter FAQ:

To be eligible to start a Kickstarter project, you need to satisfy the requirements of Amazon Payments:

      —You are 18 years of age or older.
      —You are a permanent US resident with a Social Security Number (or EIN).
      —You have a US address, US bank account, and US state-issued ID (driver's license).
      —You have a major US credit or debit card.

So it's a big no-no for a lot of people who happen not to be residents of the US, like me.

<comment><USER22> I have no idea on the details; but is there a member of the PyPy project (or of the Hippy VM project) who does satisfy those requirements, and who you can arrange to proxy the funds through?

<comment><USER25> That sort of setup might be considered fraud by Kickstarter, or their financial services.

<comment><USER22> The "arrange" was meant to mean: arrange so that it is completely legal & not considered fraud (etc). I have literally no idea if this is possible though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It would be really nice to see a bigger comparison. Between not only different version of PHP but also include in there Python in PyPy, Ruby , and some Java alternatives for good measure. It seems If I am sticking with PHP this might be nice, but if i need to do some re factoring to get it to work I want to know how it compares to the speedup I might see from re factoring to a different platform.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this different from LLVM? Or does it use LLVM? Could someone explain?

<comment><USER3> It's very different. LLVM is a portable assembler. PyPy is a compiler generation toolchain. Using LLVM means you don't have to write your assembler backend, however, there is much more to the Just in Time compiler than that. LLVM is good at optimizing, but all the optimizations are low level. In order to provide a dynamic language VM, you need to provide optimizations like escape analysis, frame removal, etc. which are out of scope for the LLVM project. On the other hand PyPy gives you that level of optimizations for free (although for example it supports less assembler backends and low-level optimizations might be sub-par).

In short - LLVM is great if you want to write a language like C, PyPy is great if you want to create a dynamic language VM like Python or PHP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Would be interesting if someone implemented CoffeeScript using this.

<comment><USER29> I'm confused. Coffeescript compiles to JavaScript which usually runs in a vm with a jit.

<comment><USER28> That's why it would be interesting to see it as a language on it's own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Has anyone tried to write a scheme interpreter?

<comment><USER3> <https://bitbucket.org/pypy/lang-scheme> I think it predates the JIT days though, so a bit of work would be required to make it fast (not too much)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> <troll(?)> PLEASE, for the love of god, stop improving PHP and strictly PHP- related technologies! I know it's fun and you're doing cool stuff... but you're just like the scientists doing bio weapons research because it's cool stuff to them! Let's just bury this language once and for all! </troll(?)> ...but really, considering the amount of effort and man-hours the Facebook guys invested in improving PHP, with Hiphop and now this, it really saddens me ...so much wasted resources (and I mean HUMAN resources, like hours of people's lives!) almost wasted!

<comment><USER32> Have you seen any of Facebook's extensions to PHP?

<comment><USER31> I was just thinking of Hiphop and XHP, and they both seem like a huge amount of work and I've heard about improvements to the interpreter to optimize it for their servers... of course it might all be FUD for competitors, they might actually have everything coded in Common Lisp behind the scenes ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Ionic Marketplace - <AUTHOR> http://market.ionic.io/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused. I don't know what ionic is, so I go to ionic.io. I don't see a link for that, so I actually need to change the URL by hand.

Then I notice a light-gray on white "Ionic" link at the bottom. Here it is! but it brings me ionicframework.com which has similar message, but is not the same, as ionic.io.

Maybe a link to the main project and a simple explanation of what it is would have been better than that fancy animated text?

<comment><USER3> \- Ionic Framework ([http://ionicframework.com](http://ionicframework.com)): FOSS for building mobile hybrid apps on top of cordova & angular... Quite popular on Github with ~19k stars: [https://github.com/driftyco/ionic](https://github.com/driftyco/ionic)

\- Ionic Platform ([http://ionic.io](http://ionic.io)): Commercial platform from the ionic devs for providing mBaaS, PUSH, Dev Tools, etc for the Ionic community/users

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For anyone else who had to dig around to figure out what Ionic was:

> Ionic is a powerful HTML5 SDK that helps you build native-feeling mobile > apps using web technologies like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. [0]

[0]: [http://ionicframework.com/docs/overview/](http://ionicframework.com/docs/overview/)

<comment><USER5> Almost looks promising... has anybody used it?

<comment><USER3> Building right now with it several apps (even with webrtc). If you're a webdev (js/angular, css/sass, etc), it's a god-sent solution... The key is adding chromium (crosswalk) in order to get a consistent experience across android devices. iOS does ok...

[https://crosswalk-project.org/](https://crosswalk-project.org/)

<comment><USER6> Are you using Crosswalk for both iOS and Android, or just for Android? We've been using Ionic + Cordova with pretty good results on iOS so far, but we're starting to shift focus onto the Android offering.

<comment><USER3> Only for Android. iOS' webview is powerful enough for our use cases, and if you need webrtc there are a couple of good cordova plugins.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm considering Ionic for a simple web-based music recommendation app that I'm doing as a side project.

For now I am using vanilla Cordova and it has been working fine... Except for iOS notifications, which are a bit of a nightmare to set up. H

as anyone had good success doing push notifications via Ionic? I fear that by choosing it I would still have to go through the same complicated process for getting the APNS certificates to work properly, in which case I don't really see the benefit

<comment><USER8> [http://ngcordova.com/docs/plugins/pushNotifications/](http://ngcordova.com/docs/plugins/pushNotifications/)

I didn't have any issues using the above.

You still need some sort of server (i've used rails, ex: [https://github.com/rpush/rpush](https://github.com/rpush/rpush)) to send the push notifications (and setup the apns certs), but the above will capture them on your ionic app itself.</comment></comment>


Caliper: Hire the Best in Artificial Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://caliper.ai/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

I am Deshraj, a co-founder at Caliper, a platform for recruiting AI talent.

As ML/AI roles grow, we need scalable ways to test candidates' practical ML skills at the screening stage (before they come for an onsite interview).

This exists for testing CS algorithms/data structures in the usual coding interviews, but performance on those isn't necessarily correlated with practical ML / AI skills.

It would be nice if recruiters or hiring managers could create a challenge around some (say toy) data, invite candidates to participate in the challenge, see how they compare on a leaderboard, look at their code if they'd like, and then decide if they'd like to interview (and eventually hire!) the candidates.

Caliper provides exactly this. Would this be of interest?

<comment><USER2> As someone who's had a lot of trouble finding data science jobs/internships, I think a product like this would help a lot! However, I don't know the challenges of getting companies/hiring managers on such a platform would be, and I suspect that might be your main difficulty.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Touch Tone Tanks, a phone controlled game built with Canvas and Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.touchtonetanks.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

My friends and I made this the other day. It is 100% javascript using node.js and canvas.

When you call in, you connect to Twilio's server, which does a request to our server, which then sends a message down to the browser using socket.io, and then your tanks shoots.

That means your signal is going from your phone, to the cell tower, INTO SPACE, back down to california, and then travels over the internet to reach you at your computer.

The latency should be less than 1s, which is pretty impressive considering how far the signal travels.

I hope you guys enjoy, make sure to have a friend play with you.

Also, it uses an 888 number so it should be toll free :)

Cheers,

David, Paul, and Justin

<comment><USER2> I'd love to have a try but I am unable to figure out how to call from the UK.

<comment><USER3> <http://www.ehow.com/how_18159_call-united-states.html>

      Dial 00.
      Dial 1.
      888-whatevertherestis

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Loved the presentation. When I saw the team, the first thought I had was "oh god, this is going to be awkward". I'm happy to be wrong.

A few questions:

\- how do you know your character? I see there are letters on them, but how is this related to the phone number?

\- what is the process to show a room over a projector?

\- what happens if you button-mash?

</comment><comment><USER5> Awesome, one of my fav Twilio apps. Great job guys!</comment>


Dilbert and Bogart On "F#(& You" Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.mymoneyblog.com/dilbert-and-bogart-on-f-you-money.html <comment><USER2> I love the mindset behind the advice of having a little saved up. I currently have about $15k saved up. I fully intend to one day have real FU money. In the meantime though, having a small emergency fund that I'm adding to each month makes me feel like I don't have to take shit from my day job. I truly am not worried that if some day I was asked to do something completely unreasonable, I could essentially say FU and quit and work on my side business.

This is only one small reason why people should have a small fund saved up.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's just one kind of money. There are other kinds.

Like Fat Money. Money that drags you down and makes you slower. This is money from that investor that refuses to change.

Or Sweat Money. This is money you've worked hard for to earn. This is the best kind. You value sweat money much higher than any other kind of money.

And of course Ramen Money. The minimum amount of money you need to survive each month.

More kinds of money here: [http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2010/06/30/different- kinds-...](http://blog.opportunitycloud.com/2010/06/30/different-kinds-of- money/)

<comment><USER4> Nice post! I especially like the concept of Lazy Money. It describes what a _stable_ situation is like. (Having a position which inspires true confidence would be a _healthy_ situation.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I thought this was going to have something to do with F# the language. Like if you save up enough money, you can afford to program exclusively in a functional language without going bankrupt. 'F# money.'

<comment><USER6> Alan Perlis once said "LISP programmers know the value of everything but the cost of nothing". It applies very nicely to other functional languages (much more than to Lisp)

edit: BTW, there is a whole lot to discuss over this subject: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2265349>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always liked this list of money metaphors. The difference between "renewable resource" and "fuel" or "building material" really hit home with my own bad perceptions of money.

[http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/03/02/fools-and-their- money-m...](http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/03/02/fools-and-their-money- metaphors/)

<comment><USER8> Nice read, you should submit it on its own.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm curious what the opinion of people here is as far as how much F-U-Money is "enough". Obviously it probably depends on your goals, but is there a reliable way of calculating the amount needed?

<comment><USER10> In the context of this article, $50k was my level where I stopped doing work I didn't necessarily "want" to do. Once I had that amount of money, I stopped hunting out for work and let work hunt me out while working on things that mattered to me.

In terms of the larger "for life" FU money, that's one helluva calculation but it's been attempted in several posts on HN I believe. Paying off the mortgage and $50k p.a. for life would do it for me because I'd keep doing things that earned more money anyway. That'd just be enough to live reasonably comfortably if I got ill or whatever.

<comment><USER9> For those curious on where those calculations are (like I was), some of them are here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=295822>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Well said. Personally, I make a point of never letting my liquid savings drop below $10k. That's a full year's travelling money, so it keeps me perpetually in a state of "I can drop everything and go", thus protecting me from toxic consulting clients.

If a relationship starts going downhill, I can simply retract my last invoice and wish them luck.

</comment><comment><USER12> droz asks a good question. Who else has calculated their "fuck you money" threshold to the last penny, such that if they received that much cash from one or more jobs in a given period they can spend the rest of the year just going to expos and networking, or just sitting on some beach somewhere, knowing that all their bills and living expenses are covered?

Considering where I live, my threshold's surprisingly low. If I double it, I'd put aside that surplus for my retirement. It's good to have the ambition of living without ambitions.

</comment><comment><USER13> This also featured in the Soul of a New Machine.

</comment><comment><USER14> what amount would you guys consider to be FU money? How long could you live off of that amount?

</comment><comment><USER15> Awesome, just really awesome! =]

</comment><comment><USER16> You guys all have your own definitions of 'fuck you' money, but for me this one has the best ring:

<http://www.violentacres.com/archives/41/fuck-you-money/>

Some kind of collector is trying to extort money from her, so she, well, I don't wanna ruin it. But she uses the money in a very creative way.

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm surprised $100 in 1920 translates to only $1000 today!

<comment><USER18> I'm surprised it's that much. 1000% inflation over 91 years is almost 11% per year. That's pretty serious inflation.

<comment><USER10> 11% inflation p.a. over 91 years on $100 would be $1331653. Calculation: 100 * pow(1.11, 91) - where ^

$100 to $1000 over 91 years is 2.56% inflation p.a. Calculation: pow(1000 / 100, 1 / 91)

Please correct me where necessary math whizzes!

<comment><USER19> This is correct. Average annual returns are not as simple as taking an arithmetic average of returns over the time period. This is because your first year's 2.56% return is not the same amount as your next year's - because the second year's return is 2.56% of the original capital PLUS the 2.56% you earned the year before... And so on and so forth. Hence your correct derivation of the "compound annual growth rate".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Like "Quick and Dirty", "Moral Majority", "Jumbo Shrimp", and "Military Intelligence", there is no such thing as "Fuck You Money".

By definition, everyone I know who claims to have "Fuck You Money" doesn't have enough money to buy themselves class, humility, kindness, or inner peace. They're never happy because everyone else either:

\- has more "Fuck You Money" than they do, or

\- doesn't know how much "Fuck You Money" they really have

If you really want more money so that you can say, "Fuck you" to others, you may want to consider an attitude adjustment before going after any more money.

<comment><USER21> You're misunderstanding what "Fuck You Money" is. It's not so you can say "Fuck You" to everyone they meet. The purpose is to be able to decline or quit jobs you don't like.</comment></comment>