Inside the Million-Machine Clickfraud Botnet - <AUTHOR> https://labs.bitdefender.com/2016/05/inside-the-million-machine-clickfraud-botnet/ <comment><USER2> Seriously, I have spent some time in my career in the online advertising world. In the video ad world, we have actually done simple fraud test (stupid bots clicking on the same pixel all the f'ing time is a clear give-away). A good 50% or more of video ad views are fraudulent. Since video ads are paid on CPM basis, advertisers totally get f'ed. Ad agencies who manages the spend don't care bc they take a % of spend. So it's all a giant collusion.

</comment><comment><USER3> How do people cash out with these schemes? Google AdSense requires an identity, right?

<comment><USER4> You could have a legit site that you pad with bot traffic.

You could go via a bunch of brokers who have less stringent identity verification than Google. They will all take cuts, but you don't care, since that's just a cost of doing business.

Source: have been defrauded before by one of the major ad exchanges and been stonewalled when I asked for my money back.

<comment><USER5> I've also heard tell of paying to exhaust competitors advertising budgets. Pay $1 to cost them $20 kind of thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Would public key pinning stop the MITM of Google, even in this case?

<comment><USER7> In this specific implementaion, yes. But they had local code execution, so they could replace the executable with one that doesnt have the checks, or at least patch the code in-memory.

<comment><USER3> This is incorrect, at least for chrome:

[https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/security- faq...](https://www.chromium.org/Home/chromium-security/security-faq#TOC-How- does-key-pinning-interact-with-local-proxies-and-filters-)

Tl;Dr key pinning doesn't protect against local root certs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Surely Google detects all the anomalies and refuses to pay? The referrers would probably be suspicious and the fact it's apparently coming from the official google.com site/results page and not from wherever the bot masters are pretending the traffic is coming from.

<comment><USER9> Google claims they detect and filter bot traffic, but it's very difficult to determine how good they are at it from the outside.

<comment><USER10> A few years ago at least, they were regarded as better-than-most which is definitely not to say perfect.

A lot of mid-sized ad networks and ad buyers actually have a negative incentive when it comes to detecting fraud -- those fraudulent clickthroughs look great on the aggregate metrics, so if you're the only person flagging them, you look like you're getting your customers a lower CTR than the competition, unless your customers are sufficiently educated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> While interesting to read why do articles like this one fail to mention this only works on Windows and likely only certain versions of Windows and certain versions of browsers. It's not clear to everyone who might come across this who is impacted.

</comment><comment><USER12> Google analytics detects click rings and also having a high clickthrough rate, (e.g: over 3%) will immediately trigger a red flag. Of course these guys scaled the ring so large that it's impossible to detect.

</comment><comment><USER13> DO_NOT_TRUST_FiddlerRoot? why would they make their root cert say 'do not trust'?

<comment><USER14> Because they are extremely lazy. The Fiddler software (an http debugging proxy) allows you to MITM your own https traffic by creating a cert saying this.

They decided to use that cert directly, instead of creating their own cert with a more normal name.

[http://www.telerik.com/fiddler](http://www.telerik.com/fiddler)

<comment><USER13> Thanks</comment></comment></comment>


The Cell's Backup Genetic Instructions - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161028-the-cells-backup-genetic-instructions/ <comment><USER2> Original article with images and more details

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6306/aaf1420](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6306/aaf1420)</comment>


Ask HN: How long before we're profitable? - <AUTHOR>

One mistake that I, and I suspect a lot of first-time entrepreneurs building SaaS businesses make is just HOW LONG it will take before we will make a profit. Not 'first revenue' but actual profit - enough so that you can stop burning savings or other people's money to pay yourself or your employees. This means successfully and repeatably finding potential customers, and getting them all the way down the line to 'paying customer', and enough of them (say 2000) to be actually paying you money.
I think most of us follow DHH or Tom Preston-Werner and convince ourselves that we can build a real business overnight while consulting/juggling on the side. While clearly this has worked for them, it seems to me now that stories like this are the exception not the rule. The rule is closer to a long, slow grind to eventual success that can take years.
Obviously "How long before we're profitable" is a very subjective question, especially when we're talking about an idea which is sufficiently novel that the size of the market (and therefore the cost of reaching it) is unknown. It's almost pointless to even guess in the early stages.
But at the same time, getting the figure right is the difference between success and failure for most startups. Having some good idea of your distance to profit informs if you need to raise cash, and how much, and from whom (and on what terms).
Rather than try and build complicated models to try and predict profitability on essentially unknown quantities, I would much rather just see more data points from existing companies to help make an informed decision. Frustratingly, this is the one thing that already successful entrepreneurs seems reluctant to talk about.
My actual question then is a bit simpler - who can provide examples of how long it took for a number of SaaS businesses - such as those that frequently come out of HN - to become profitable? What was their revenue at that point (eg. did they have 2 staff or 200), and most importantly how long did it take?
Share examples, if you have 'em, here. <comment><USER2> Completely dependent on your market and product. As the other response noted, data points from other SaaS companies are useless unless said companies are identical to yours.

SaaS is just a type of business model, not a type of market or product.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, averages are meaningless for trying to figure out how long a startup will take. But it would be great to hear a few more case studies other than the "We hacked over the weekend, shipped on tuesday, were profitable in a month" hero-stories that seem to get bandied around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> For me: The basic marketing advice is, is anyone you don't know is willing to pay for it?

Try to do surveys with the targeted demographic not you or related people. You may have an idea how much you or coworkers would pay for it, but that is biased and anecdotal.

If you're selling to business, go to network functions and ask what they think they'll pay for to use it (Open q) or would they pay for this with $$$ (Closed q) [0][1].

When you have an idea of how many people will pay, determining profitability will become much easier. Asking for data points from successful entrepreneurs for comparison with an unknown market is pretty silly to me and shows lack of understanding of your own value [2].

An example of value would be a Ferrari. Although a Ferrari costs more to make then the average car, the sale price is far higher. Why? Because the average consumer associates high sale price with premium value. That's a pretty basic explanation.

Disclaimer: I'm not doing SaaS or experienced with it.

[0] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Closed- ended_...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Closed- ended_question)

[1] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Self- report_s...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Self-report_study)

[2] [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Value_%28econ...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Value_%28economics%29)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've seen an extremely wide range of timeframe depending on the business and market. Some as quick as a couple months to some being longer than a year. I don't think I can give an average that would be meaningful base on the number of companies I know of.

That said, it helps to work on a cashflow project first to sustain living before diving into a startup like project that may take awhile to bring in enough profits to do the same. This is why some people recommend working on your startup on the side even though I know most would prefer diving into their startup overtime from day one. The problem is this isn't realistic for many people and underestimating things doesn't just go for estimates of when profit or funding will come in. It's in all areas.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not all of the replies in this thread were SaaS, but some were. Interesting read regardless:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2646047></comment>


Scratch Has a Marketing Problem  -the problem with telling people coding is easy - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@stevekrouse/scratch-has-a-marketing-problem-f84626bd18ef <comment><USER2> That's an insightful point -- you're going to chase people away if you present something as easy and it turns out to be hard. But if you say, "there's a path up this mountain, it's a hard climb but the view from the top is great", you take the sting out of setbacks. Maybe the weather was bad and today wasn't the day for a climb. Maybe you need to work your way up to it by going partway a few times before attempting the final ascent.</comment>


Ask HN: Good incorporation service for startups that is not Stripe Atlas? - <AUTHOR> Looking for a startup (friendly|optimized) site/service to incorporate.
Interested in the best combination of these options:
- Delaware incorporation
- Integration with a payment solution (?)
- Bank account setup/integration. (?)
- Good customer service, small enough to care about me as a customer (at least during the registration process).
My customers will primarily be enterprise customers, typically paying >$10k per invoice.
(Why not Stripe Atlas? I recently tried to incorporate with them using Atlas, and had an extremely frustrating experience with their customer service. I believe their site pulled in an old company name from a previously abandoned registration (or perhaps it was an auto-complete problem on my side). Either way, the company name was wrong in the application. I did the DocuSign paperwork from my phone and didn't notice the erroneous name until a day later, and immediately contacted customer support in three different ways. The company had not yet been formed with the state of Delaware so I was optimistic the process could be halted. I had multiple people from Stripe Atlas support (via email and chat) indicate they would be in contact regarding the issue. Nothing happened and then a few days later I got the succession of emails indicating "Congratulations, your (erroneously named) company has been formed!" "Congratulations, another impossible to revert registration has happened!" "Congratulations, we billed you $500 to setup the wrong company!" I made a mistake in signing the DocuSign with the wrong name, but it seemed like their service is optimized for moving things through as quickly as possible (which is what I'm sure 99% of the people want) and has no tolerance for making corrections. All that is understandable, but the disconnect between their customer service who indicated they would do something, and then completely dropping out of the conversation really left me feeling frustrated.) <comment><USER2> Have you tried Clerky?

As some practical unsolicited advice, most prominent law firms in the bay area charge $2500k - $5k for full incorporation service and you can negotiate to defer typically $10k - $25k in fees until you do a first fundraise or have enough cash flow to start paying your bills. These firms are expensive, but paying a few thousand to make sure things are done right will go a long away as the cost of fixing this stuff later can exceed $10k. If you have a simple or low touch business, then maybe some of these automated services will work well for you. Otherwise, if you are considering raising venture money at some point, I'd suggest going with a traditional law firm or use these services as a starting point and have a lawyer give everything they are doing a quick scan to make sure they are doing things right.

<comment><USER2> Full disclaimer: I am a startup lawyer myself so there is some bias. I don't have experience with stripe atlas or clerky, so I would be curious to hear how your experience with stripe atlas turns out

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An update: Edwin from Stripe reached out to me and I'm much happier with the resolution he proposed. He also indicated this was an anomaly and unusual and explained why, and that they are putting things in place to prevent my situation from occurring again. I'm feeling much happier about using Stripe Atlas at this point. He did not ask me to write this but I felt it was important to note that Stripe as an organization worked hard to make this right with me.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm really sorry about this trouble. I'd like to dig into this mix-up and get it corrected. Could you email me at email@example.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I'll email you.</comment></comment>


The Sharing Economy Was Dead on Arrival - <AUTHOR> https://daily.jstor.org/the-sharing-economy-was-dead-on-arrival/ <comment><USER3> > Why didn't we see it coming? How did sharing economy companies manage to > evade scrutiny for so long?

Plenty of people saw it coming. As much as fellow members of my generation enthusiastically embraced the sharing/gig economy for survival, most of them acknowledged that the companies were in the end going to be worse. They were just less worse than having no income. Those that thought this were the future were just deluding themselves because of how fucking terrible the job market is.

<comment><USER4> The job market might have been terrible 5 years ago, but this is not the case today. 3.7% unemployment in the U.S. Lowest since 1969.

<comment><USER5> It's kind of funny that most of the people that recognized that the headline unemployment number wasn't a complete picture of the job market when Obama was President have somehow forgotten that since late January of 2017.

<comment><USER6> Every time the ruling party switches, followers of both parties warp into parallel universes with entirely different realities. Same thing happens for Democrats and their opinions of foreign military adventures. It's an unnecessary war when a Republican is in office, but it's a "peacekeeping mission" or a "humanitarian mission" when a Democrat is in office.

<comment><USER7> No they don't. You are just presenting false equivalence while ignoring the magnitude of the reality distortion field that republicans push with no close equivalent from democrats.

\- Name a 10 year war democrats have championed... \- Name a democrat that questions the legitimacy of employment numbers or the objectivity of the data being provided... \- Name an rejection of scientific consensus like Global Warming (and before you say anti-vaxxers, that is not a mainstream democrat policy like Global Warming denial is...again, no false equivalence please)... \- Name a democrat zombie policy like "trickle down economics" that keeps being proven wrong and yet they insist will work...

Should I go on?

<comment><USER8> I don't know if it is helpful to jump into political discussions, but I'll give it a try...

>...- Name a 10 year war democrats have championed...

I think the OP might have been referring to the seeming disappearance of the anti-war demonstrations once Obama took office. What changed, other than the POTUS? We ended up leaving Iraq at the same timetable that Bush had proposed.

>... Name a democrat that questions the legitimacy of employment numbers or the objectivity of the data being provided...

Well the unemployment numbers don't include the long term unemployed who would still like a job, etc so I would assume everyone should look beyond the simple number reported in the press.

>... - Name an rejection of scientific consensus like Global Warming

GMOs? Nuclear power?

>...- Name a democrat zombie policy like "trickle down economics" that keeps being proven wrong and yet they insist will work...

No economist has ever proposed a policy called "trickle down economics". The pejorative is simply used by people to attack someone else's economic polices. Using a perjorative is simply an attempt to poison the well and prevent discussion. In terms of policies that don't work. but still get support... A couple that come to mind:

\- wasting money to require registration for the draft

\- war on drugs

\- DARE program

\- three strikes (voted in CA, a heavy democratic state)

Conservatives also support many/all(?) programs, but that just means both sides are wrong.

<comment><USER9> > the seeming disappearance of the anti-war demonstrations once Obama took > office. What changed, other than the POTUS?

"Other than the POTUS" seems to brazenly ignore the significance. For example, it would be absurd to ask, 'When Trump took office, what changed from Obama other than the POTUS'?

When Obama took office, the new POTUS' policies aligned to a significant degree with the anti-war protestors. Obama had opposed the Iraq war from the start and promised to withdraw, which he did (though the withdrawal was also required by the agreement Bush made with Iraq). Obama also wanted out of Afghanistan and, after a policy review, set a timeline for it (a criticized decision that was later changed).

> both sides are wrong

This is true "political correctness" (a term that I think is almost always misused). The odds of both sides begin equivalent seem slim; it's not at all unlikely that of two parties, one would be significantly worse than the other. It's sort of like looking at two software programs and saying 'both have bugs'; sure, but that's meaningless - it's not at all surprising when one is much superior to the other.

But people like to be even-handed, out of some misguided (IMHO) view of fairness or not wanting to offend. But the stakes are too high; you wouldn't say that if you were choosing between airplane autopilot programs. In this case, if you make the worse choice then it can result in catastrophic climate change, nuclear proliferation, war, mass oppression, the undermining of democracy and liberty, and more.

<comment><USER4> I wish national politics were as simple and predictable as a computer program, but trying to paint an analogy there is quite troublesome, for the simple reason that there are hundreds, if not thousands of issues that government has to tangle with...and it often is the case that one party has a better approach to certain issues while the other party is better suited to deal with a completely different set of issues.

<comment><USER9> Joseph Stalin was probably better at dealing with _some_ issues than Winston Churchill, but that doesn't make them comparable. It's a false equivalency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's weird to spend so many words arguing against a word used as branding. There was never a sharing economy, because it is people paying money for things. What was created was a piecework economy, which was obviously going to be successful if it could figure out a way to skirt the laws that made piecework jobs illegal. Investors could see that, and added so much cash in anticipation of a monopoly (and with the understanding that it would take quick growth and a bunch of expensive legislative and marketing work to take this monopoly) that these companies could afford to sell dollars for $0.90.

I'm going to start a business utilizing children as hospital, hospice, and old age home laborers and call it "the childcare industry" just to see it debunked 10 years and 100 billion dollars later: "Revealed: The Childcare Industry Was Never About Caring For Children."

I'll then press release that it was shameful that slate dot com chose to diminish the experiences and character growth of millions of children, dismiss the importance of our elders and their health, shill for the interests of big healthcare, and denigrate the millions of relationships formed between the oldest generations and the youngest.

<comment><USER11> remarkable last sentence. love the parallels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The "Sharing Economy" was always a lie. It was always about illegal acts rebranded. Illegal rebranded taxis. Illegal rebranded hotels. etc

<comment><USER13> I mean, you get more than that, no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis". They looked at it and went "ooh I can use it from my phone with the push of a button and it's cheaper". The whole point of the "sharing economy" is to compete on efficiency, ease of use and price.

Ridiculous, anti-competitive laws were in place in these systems, I applaud their death.

<comment><USER14> > no one looked at Uber and went "ooh, illegal taxis"

I can disprove that all by myself, since that's _exactly_ how I reacted when I first heard of Uber.

<comment><USER15> Same here, I truly don't understand how they got away with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The basic premise of the article seems sound, that money corrupted an arrangement that might otherwise be innocent.

Uber / Lyft were upgrades to Craiglist ads for rides / carpools - <USER2> convenient for riders, and drivers make a few bucks taking someone somewhere they were going anyway.

AirBnB was a way for travelers to access a more "charming" experience, maybe a little more conveniently than booking a hotel/BnB or scanning CL ads for rooms for rent.

Where they went wrong was _professionalization_ , i.e. people driving full- time or renting for the income.

That's when it became obvious that Uber/Lyft was actually a taxi company and AirBnB a rental broker.

In fairness, if in certain cities (NYC) taxis weren't intentionally managed to scarcity, Uber/Lyft probably would have had more difficulty gaining traction.

Nor would I begrudge a homeowner making a little money boarding guests.

But of course the economic opportunity proved too much for too many to resist, which is why we have the problems mentioned in the article.

</comment><comment><USER17> The movie _Sorry to Bother You_ has a satirical look at the sharing economy gone awry. In the movie a controversial company called _WorryFree_ exists that promises lifelong security where people willingly become slaves to live in dorms and survive without worry but for free. The movie is excellent.

<comment><USER18> How is it a look at the sharing economy in particular? It was a satirical take on modern capitalism, sure, but I didn't see how WorryFree was supposed to remind you of a person working a contracting job such as an Uber driver. Quite the opposite in fact, the employees of WorryFree seemed to be signing up for lifelong, permanent and inflexible employment terms. Uber drivers may get a raw deal but surely one would acknowledge at least that they have more flexibility w.r.t. when and where they work than the other typical jobs in a capitalist economy.

<comment><USER17> It is more about modern sharecropper capitalism I agree but WorryFree is the endgame of the sharing/gig economy, basically people fed up with hustling in the gig economy or sharecropper systems can become slaves and have their worries handled for them (dorm, food etc) almost like a mix of prison mixed with dorms at work like Foxconn.

In the movie Cassius "Cash" Green, the main character, works as a telemarketer and all the telemarketers are looking to unionize but there is little control or solace in any work in their look at modern society.

Throughout the movie, when the work is a complete hustle, WorryFree draws these people in by marketing that they don't have to worry about the hustle anymore, just become a slave to make the hustle easier. In the future of _Sorry to Bother You_ , you can either be a sharecropper/hustler/sales or slave.

Here's a look at all the elements in the movie regarding modern economies and their drive for cheap labor and ultimately pliant slaves [1] Boots Riley, who created the movie and was previously a rapper, made one hell of a movie director/screenwriter debut, it is already a cult classic.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could- sorr...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffewing/2018/07/13/could-sorry-to- bother-you-really-happen-partial-spoilers/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It does seem that many of the business models were really just regulatory arbitrage, but were presented as some fundamental innovation.

It also seems that they fooled some investors into believing hyper growth that was fueled with negative unit economics would eventually lead to a monopoly market position, maybe some will...but I doubt it as the barrier of entry is to low an the "network effect" that was believed make the monopoly quasi- permanent doesn't seem to exist for most industries.

</comment><comment><USER19> The sharing economy works because of the American tendency to own/buy way more capacity that is usually required. People own cars but don't use them all the time or people buy extra rooms for their homes for the two times a year they have visitors. People saw this untapped capacity and exploited it. We should encourage better utilization of resources assuming the proper regulations are in place to do so.

</comment><comment><USER20> I don't understand how people can be tricked by the branding of the 'sharing economy.'

The average seven year old is capable of understanding the difference between actual sharing (A friend giving you a lift), and 'sharing' (An unmarked taxi.) They could also probably grasp the difference between CouchSurfing[1], and AirBnB.

[1] Couchsurfing was the actual sharing economy, but as it turns out, you can't make billions of dollars from people letting out their couches to strangers, for the cost of company, and a home-cooked meal.

<comment><USER21> I've found myself drinking someone's branding kool-aid before, and this is how it happened. You think to yourself what you've just laid out, that this is so obvious a seven year old should know better. So obvious, in fact, that it can't be real.

"This is just an unmarked taxi."

"No, we're way different."

You think to yourself how no one could be that blatant, and you notice other people are buying into it, so you start to question you own worldview. Then it reaches a critical mass, where there's enough self-perpetuation to make you throw skepticism to the wind. And after some time, after seeing a few cracks in the brand, you think to yourself, god damn it, should have stuck to my guns.

<comment><USER22> Or:

"This is just an unmarked taxi."

"Except hailing/billing isn't stuck in the past so you don't have to get lucky to find an empty one on the street or call a surly dispatcher and wait 45 minutes. You also get the bill up front so you know how much it will cost before you even say yes. You can always pay by credit card too, you'll never arrive at the destination and then only be informed that the credit card reader is 'broken' and the cabbie can only accept cash. Added bonus: it's about half the price of a regular taxi."

"Cool"

<comment><USER21> It's definitely better, no arguments here. My point is that Silicon Valley has branded everything it does as 'tech' when in reality, it's just a better taxi company, a better hotel company, etc. unencumbered by the old ways. Like, the reality would have been good enough, 'We're a taxi (or insert whatever industry you want) company doing things way better than before." Instead, it's 'We're using algorithms and this shit is out of this world!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

<comment><USER23> There is something about traditional engineering culture that sees marketing as big lie, but one of the reasons these companies have been so successful at transitioning public opinion is because they treat the whole business as iterative. Instead of thinking "boring finance dept" and "slimey marketing guys", they think "financial and social engineering".

<comment><USER24> > _Instead of thinking (...) "slimey marketing guys", they think "financial > and social engineering"._

That sounds even worse to me. "Turning lying and scamming people into an engineering discipline".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >Lessig's paradigmatic example of a hybrid is Red Hat, Inc.

Well, so much for that! Which I guess just further proves the article's point.

<comment><USER26> 25 years doesn't seem like a bad lifespan for an independent organization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is the article really about the sharing economy, or rather about discrediting Lessig and the people who believe publicly funded research should be public? Seems a little odd the way it relates Uber and AirBnB with Lessig.

<comment><USER28> Exactly. To me 'sharing' means barter and what happens in villages and Creative Commons. Not LSC dressed-up in 'sharing' clothes.

You can fool some of the people ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am more bothered by the fact that these companies establish a permanent record of your behavior across a large swathe of "businesses". So things cannot be forgotten. There is a legitimate need for that in some cases but in most cases is unnecessary. This is the capitalist equivalent of the coduct based credit imposed by China. Somehow feels too drastic and draconian to me.</comment>


Any CEO not wearing a smartwatch by year-end is behind the curve - <AUTHOR> http://www.information-age.com/technology/mobile-and-networking/123459154/any-ceo-not-wearing-smartwatch-year-end-behind-curve

<comment><USER2> I'm sure CEOs have more to worry about than what type of watch they wear to the office.

</comment><comment><USER3> what a shitty, borderline clickbaite, article title

</comment><comment><USER4> "Any CEO not wearing a smartwatch by year-end is behind the curve"

Anyone who writes insipid fodder like this should be behind a fist that has passed through their brainpan at high velocity, Voltron-style.</comment>


Configuration language (DSL) to assemble visualizations - <AUTHOR> http://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2ef08f32 <comment><USER2> Declarative data visualization is an active area of research, and there's a lot of cool projects in this space. Take a look at Vega-Lite [0] and Voyager [1].

[0] [https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/](https://vega.github.io/vega-lite/)

[1] [https://vega.github.io/voyager/](https://vega.github.io/voyager/)

<comment><USER3> Work on grammars for graphics go back to Leland Wilkinson [1]; Tableau's VizQL and Hadley Wickham's ggplot2 library for R are other notable examples [2].

[1]: [https://www.cs.uic.edu/~wilkinson/TheGrammarOfGraphics/GOG.h...](https://www.cs.uic.edu/~wilkinson/TheGrammarOfGraphics/GOG.html)

[2]: [http://ggplot2.org/](http://ggplot2.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the general idea, but when I look at this implementation is seems like it lacks basic facilities for abstraction. E.g. naming values. This reminds me of CSS, which similarly suffers from such a lack of abstraction and is slowly gaining such features. Cf Less, Sass, and other CSS preprocessors which provide more facilities for abstraction.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't work for me, console shows CORS errors. Anybody else see the same?

<comment><AUTHOR> Does https url work for you on the same browser?

[https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2ef08f32](https://apps.axibase.com/chartlab/2ef08f32)

We've seen this error on the plain-text url but couldn't pinpoint the exact reason.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that works, and looks quite impressive!

EDIT: The issue seems to be the links to css and js for from maxcdn.bootstrapcdn.com. If I change those in the HTTP version to HTTPS urls it works.</comment></comment></comment>


Fake News Is Not the Only Problem - <AUTHOR> https://points.datasociety.net/fake-news-is-not-the-problem-f00ec8cdfcb#.erbrc0d02 <comment><USER2> "What Is Real No. Clinton did not fund ISIS." Well, good to hear that from Gilad.

People not trusting big media corps will surely take this as a complete truth. And a good way to make this whole piece look a lot worse than what it was before that sentence.</comment>


The Atlas of Beauty: North Korea - <AUTHOR> https://maptia.com/mihaelanoroc/stories/the-atlas-of-beauty-north-korea <comment><USER2> The "Atlas of Beauty" really is an awesome project with beautiful photographs. Highly recommended for fans of portrait photography.</comment>


I'm still in love with Flash - <AUTHOR> http://nodejs2-appmars.rhcloud.com/?flsh <comment><USER2> Is the page all flash? I'm on a phone and have no idea what the author expects to show.

<comment><USER3> It is. Brings me back 15 years, but had to allow a bunch of browser and security alerts before seeing anything..</comment></comment>


NVM#: Effective Environment Variables Manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ratishphilip/nvmsharp <comment><USER2> This tool exemplifies all that baffles me about devs who prefer Windows.

You have to go download a third-party GUI tool to manage environment variables because the baked-in GUI tool sucks. And everyone trumpets this situation as just dandy because the difference in usability between the third-party tool and the baked-in tool is enough that obviously that means the third-party tool is awesome, and not just a passable workaround for a crappy system.

Y'know what the equivalent of this is in Unixes? A text editor and a shell- script, all easily doable over SSH without having to render any GUIs, and all trivial to automate.

<comment><USER3> Not to completely defend Windows, but I feel like everyone forgets that it also has a powerful, though verbose, shell available. This sort of thing is also trivial via Powershell:

[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("TestVariable", "Test value", "User")</comment></comment>


Cybersecurity as Realpolitik - <AUTHOR> http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt

<comment><USER2> [http://youtu.be/nT-TGvYOBpI](http://youtu.be/nT-TGvYOBpI) "Cybersecurity as Realpolitik by Dan Geer presented at Black Hat USA 2014"

</comment><comment><USER3> Contrast this with Anne Neuberger's Long Now talk: [http://longnow.org/seminars/02014/aug/06/inside- nsa/](http://longnow.org/seminars/02014/aug/06/inside-nsa/)

One of these two talks was written by a liar.</comment>


Ask HN: What are your day to day pain points as a customer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Too much choice and the feeling that I am about to miss a way better version that is coming around the corner - I need <http://thewirecutter.com/> combined with <http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/> for anything I buy.

<comment><USER3> As they say "too much choice kills the choice"

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any specific type of customer (retail, business, online, etc)?</comment>


WebGL Terrain experiment rendering the island Maui with fog and water - <AUTHOR> http://29a.ch/2012/7/19/webgl-terrain-rendering-water-fog

<comment><USER2> I think your map data is wrong.

This is what you render: <http://i.imgur.com/Qi2VI.jpg>

Here's what Maui really looks like: [https://maps.google.com/maps?q=maui&hl=en&ll=20.8047...](https://maps.google.com/maps?q=maui&hl=en&ll=20.804782,-156.309952&spn=0.709905,1.352692&sll=37.6,-95.665&sspn=38.186261,86.572266&t=v&hnear=Maui&z=10)

<comment><USER3> The footer states it: the sea levels and vertical extents are not to scale.</comment></comment>


Microsoft to forcibly install Bing extension in Chrome for Office 365 users - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-to-forcibly-install-bing-search-extension-in-chrome-for-office-365-proplus-users/ <comment><USER2> Office 365 ProPlus users only, not the basic Office 365 that comes preinstalled on so many pre-built PCs.</comment>


Dot Match – Android Game - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.purgified.dotmatch

<comment><AUTHOR> Our second game is finally released! You are the leader of five unique dots, and your goal is to lead the dots to victory by matching the big ring's color with the dots.

We learnt from our previous game and have improved our game based on the wonderful feedback we've gotten! We focused on simple yet stunning background graphics, sounds effects, and background music.

Do let us know what you think!

<comment><USER2> If you want avoid your game promotion submissions being flagged as spam, then you should do a "Show HN" post to indicate you want feedback on your project or startup. The "Show HN" submissions are listed under the "show" link in the top menu. The rules for doing "Show HN" submissions are here:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment></comment>


The first obesity epidemic - <AUTHOR> http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2011/04/the-first-obesity-epidemic.html <comment><USER2> Or they might have _eaten less_.

This whole insistence that the digestive system, alone and singular amongst all the systems in the human body across all scales, is not driven by feedback loops is utterly bizarre to me. That this position has became a sacred cow even moreso.

Things that don't respond to feedback _don't work_.

</comment><comment><USER3> As far as I know it works like this: The majority went obese and died out, A small group that did not went obese took over genetically.</comment>


Ask HN: Software Patent Best Practices - <AUTHOR>

As someone who is actively working on a software application I intend to market, I'm troubled by the increasing number of posts about patent trolls, lawsuits, etc.. I understand this risk cannot be mitigated entirely, but what steps can a developer take to protect themselves and their software? <comment><USER2> Against what? Is your concern that you will (hopefully inadvertently) infringe on someone else's patent or that someone will rip off your invention?</comment>


Chrome picks up bonus security features on Windows 10 - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/02/chrome-picks-up-bonus-security-features-on-windows-10/ <comment><USER2> Here is the relevant commit: [https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/441d852](https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src.git/+/441d852)

As far as I can tell, none of these new APIs are documented on MSDN. I wonder how Google found out about them.</comment>


William Shatner's $30B Kickstarter Campaign to Save California - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/tech/exclusive-william-shatners-30-billion-116672789084.html <comment><USER2> probably naive, but still honest idea here: what about a nationwide system to capture rain/snow and pipe it around where needed? A smart grid but for water. Rain/snow capture on every rooftop perhaps? It can be pumped into natural aquifers and existing artificial lakes all over the country. I couldn't help but think, as a California resident, that there should be some way to ship all that snow that was pouring on the east coast this past winter to where it was needed instead.

</comment><comment><USER3> Would love to hear an intelligent discussion of this idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, that's why I submitted it. I guess one issue is how many desalination plants could $30 billion buy? Perhaps that's a better solution?</comment></comment>


Show HN: We let you access your Quickbooks Windows from the Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.levion.com/

<comment><USER2> Jason and Jake, the design of the site looks great.

While the homepage makes it clear that users still have full control of their data, I would also address why users can count on you to keep their data secure. Since financial information is sensitive, you want to eliminate any concerns potential users may have about putting it online.

<comment><USER3> As far as technology goes, we are using the industry standards. Jason will be on later to describe it from a technical standpoint. We have several very large companies using it which to me is unusual. They were the first takers to tryout our software. You would think they would be the most protective over their data.

After speaking with the newer signals they see, to be tending towards the small business side. Any suggestions?

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the early traction. If any of the larger companies are comfortable with the idea, consider using a testimonial, profile or logo from them.

Also, since you mentioned it in the above discussion, I think it's worth adding the iPad accessibility to your homepage copy (and iPhone if that's also applicable).

<comment><AUTHOR> Tyler, thanks for the kind words! The original reason we built this software was to increase the security of the Quickbooks file at my last job. We had one guy creating an invoice for $3000, then giving the customer that copy, and then changing it $2000 thereby hiding the fact that he had skimmed $1000. Levion keeps a full audit trail and doesn't allow you to delete.

We hope to increase the security and reliability of Quickbooks data too. We had one customer who would Dropbox their Quickbooks file every week to the accountant. One time, they were working on the wrong Quickbooks file. They lost about a week's worth of data that had to be reentered. And we have plans to allow businesses to open only parts of their data instead of exposing all of it as they would with passing their Quickbooks file back and forth. All of this done securely through SSL. As with any system such as Github, Dropbox, Mint, or Xero trusted with sensitive data, our sysadmins are screened for their personal ethic. We do maintain strong security auditing, including bash histories of commands accessed on our production servers.

We have plans for an iPhone and iPad app--stay posted!

<comment><USER2> Very cool story. You'll have to share it when you inevitably start getting hounded by tech blogs for interviews ;)

Based on all the great information you shared, I would suggest adding a section like the following to your homepage:

Security and Peace of Mind

Levion uses SSL technology to keep your online Quickbooks data fully secure. Our audit trail ensures your entries are always 100% accurate, while our regular backups prevent you from ever losing the data you enter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My name is Jason Hung. I'm the founder of Levion. We're just getting started, let us know if you have any questions.

<comment><USER3> I am also with Levion. We welcome any feedback from fellow startups who currently use or are interested in getting started with Quickbooks. Levion requires the Windows version of Quickbooks. Since there is data parity between Levion and the Quickbooks file you can discontinue Levion at any time with all of your modified Quickbooks data intact.

We also created a video on YouTube at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIcs9aXuC1E>

We would like to know your honest opinion; we can handle it...Also the software is free for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER4> So why couldn't I just use Quickbooks on my remote desktop. I am perfectly happy accessing it from my iPad using the latter method. What's the big difference?

<comment><USER3> If you actually use Quickbooks on the go you would know how much of a pain in the ass it is to access it from remote desktop. For instance, on my iPad I have a hard time manipulating their terrible interface. Take a look at Levion and you will notice the difference as soon as you login.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


When cancel culture comes to newsrooms - <AUTHOR> https://world.wng.org/2020/06/when_cancel_culture_comes_to_newsrooms <comment><USER2> It's not cancel culture, it's accountability. A company is accountable to its workforce unless it wants to toss them out.

And really, come on, 1st amendment boloney has nothing to do with private companies, I'm not even American and know that.</comment>


GaugeView: an open source component for making Gauges in Swift - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/BelkaLab/GaugeView <comment><AUTHOR> We just released that so if you have any feedback it would be amazing. Thanks!</comment>


The Multiverse and you – Is there another version of you somewhere out there? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-73-the-multiverse-and-you-46c9e3c493e2

<comment><USER2> So if I get it right, there can't be another you because there are too much particles (and possible interactions between them) in the universe.

Perhaps there isn't a universe where every particle is the same as in ours, but we could be just concerned about the particles our galaxy for example. I might be wrong, but I think it might be theoretically possible to have the same earth in a totally different universe.

What I find somewhat counter intuitive is that, the more particles there are, the less our chances are that another version of us exist, I would have said it makes the chances bigger, or at least in our own universe.

<comment><USER3> > _What I find somewhat counter intuitive is that, the more particles there > are, the less our chances are that another version of us exist, I would have > said it makes the chances bigger_

Think of it like this:

If a human ("Joe") was just one particle, then the chances of the same human being recreated elsewhere would be 100%. As long as that particle is present, there's Joe.

If Joe was made of 100 particles, then the chances are less, because those 100 particles would have to be aligned/interact in the same way, which is much less probable.

Or maybe think of it like this: if you throw a dice, to get 6 is quite easy. You have 1 in 6 chances.

But if you throw 10 dice to get them all six is very very improbable (1/6 _1 /6_1/6*...).

Think of the particles like dice.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the more particles Joe has, the less it is likely that it will be recreated elsewhere. But here I'm talking about particles not being Joe, the rest of the universe.

I see it this way, it doesn't matter that I get 10 times a 6 when throwing a dice, I just want a 6, I'm not concerned about the whole process, just about the result. Aren't there many ways to get to a point where particles assemble to form a brain similar to our own?

Also, is it possible to ignore the vast majority of the universe, because is a dim light from a star so important, or do we have to, because of the butterfly effect?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting implication of the multiverse theory is that it provides an answer for how we ended up with a universe with just the right combinations of gravity, electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces. It's like the Goldilocks story -- tweak any of them to any other value and all matter would either repel into an nearly empty space or attract into one mass that would collapse under it's own density. There are other reasons for the multiverse theory, but under a theory of infinite multiverses, you would by definition create a universe where all the right combination of forces would come together to form our stars and planets -- including ones that can sustain life.

<comment><USER5> You're referring to the Anthropic principle[1] here, I believe? I tend to think this is not a very satisfying explanation, because it is not falsifiable[2]. More compelling/satisfying as an explanation to me, though controversial, is Lee Smolin's theory of cosmological natural selection[3], because though it may not be true, it at least makes some predictions that can be analyzed and modeled to study the correspondence to our universe, and so can be falsified or supported by improved accuracy and predictive utility of these models vs observations.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#Falsifiability.2Fpr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper#Falsifiability.2Fproblem_of_demarcation) [3] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Cosmological_natural...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Smolin#Cosmological_natural_selection)

<comment><USER4> This is interesting. I had heard of this theory previously (Smolin), but didn't appreciate the Darwinian nature of it. You still get multiverses that each adopt their own distinct rules of physics, but natural selection plays in to how the universes are created. Some amount of information is transferred from the source universe to the one newly created, but the information is not lost -- something Susskin put forth some years ago by comparing the event horizon of a black hole to a hologram.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Even though the universe is (probably) infinite, this does of course not mean that it is infinitely repetitive.

Take for example the function y=x: even though the x-axis is infinite, no value of y occurs twice.

Also note that the argument can be made in time also. If time is infinite, events may occur repetitively indefinitely. But they may also not (for example, if the universe "crunches" and stays that way).

<comment><USER7> >Even though the universe is (probably) infinite, this does of course not mean that it is infinitely repetitive.

If the universe is infinite and consists of matter, I think you can safely say every feasible combination of particles repeats, infinite number of times.

<comment><USER8> This isn't necessarily true. The article largely explains it. The interaction of particles trends to infinity faster than time.

Another way to think of it... Let's say that t is trending to infinity starting from 0. There are #s that will always be larger than t. Such as (t+1)^2.

One more way... Time is one dimension. The rest of space-time is 3 (at least). The size of possibilities is larger to 3 orders of magnitude.

And a last way... If it's feasible that matter can expand forever, then there's no way for the particles to repeat themselves. They just keep going and going...

<comment><USER7> Stop time right now. You now have an static, unchanging, universe. This universe is infinite in size, and roughly equally dense with matter and radiation across this infinity. You really want to make the argument that there isn't another Earth out there?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> To me it seems the article is completely mixing up two multiverse theories - one is that there are several essentially completely independent universes separated in space (or time) and the other is that there is no collapse of the wave function but all the possibilities encoded in the wave function are actually real and therefore many universes are kind of overlaid at the same time in the same space and in each universe you observe the wave function collapsed to a different state. Did I get it wrong or the article?

<comment><USER10> Max Tegmark, whose talk is summarized in this article if I understand correctly, describes four different types of Multiverse. This article presents three of them (levels I, II and III).

See Max Tegmark's webpage for more information and links on the subject:

[http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mathematical.html](http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/mathematical.html)

<comment><USER9> Thanks, that is what I suspected. Maybe I just read the article to quickly but I completely missed the clear distinction between the different types of multiverses in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I thought the whole implication of MWI is that every possibility does happen and universes are constantly splitting off. So there's an unlimited number of copies of you, some essentially identical, others experiencing inconceivable suffering or pleasure.

<comment><USER12> Many Worlds is one concept; this is another and quite different.

<comment><USER11> But if aiming at the "philosophical" impact and consequences, why focus on the one that doesn't have some potential for implications?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > we have every reason to believe there's plenty more, and perhaps even > infinitely more [Universe out there beyond the portion that's accessible to > us]

Which order of infinity do you mean when you say "infinitely more [space]" here? Aleph-One?

> we can extrapolate the Big Bang backwards to an arbitrarily hot, dense, > expanding state, and what we find is that it didn't get infinitely hot and > dense early on

And what order of infinity here for the energy?

> the Universe was filled with energy inherent to space itself: a state that > causes the Universe to expand at an exponential rate

If the infinity used to measure 2 different entities are of different orders, then there'd be at least an exponential differential between those entities. But what if the order of infinities is switched around between energy and space, could that then mean there's only one instance of inflated space in existence?

I've never read a discussion of multiverses, whether wrt inflation or quantum mechanics, where the order of infinity used is mentioned. Specifying what order of infinity is to be used for each measurement seems to be crucial to what result is infered.

</comment><comment><USER14> > _So realistically, we're talking about at least 10^10^50 Universes that > started off with initial conditions that might be very similar to our own._

Presumably, what follows from initial conditions is bound by determinism.

By the logic of that assumption, even if we assume an infinite set of initial conditions, can there really be alternate universes wherein everything is identical _except_ for one miniscule thing, billions of years after initial conditions have unfolded?

<comment><USER15> >Presumably, initial conditions are slave to determinism just like anything else.

Why is everything slave to determinism? Isn't true randomness introduced to the system via randomness at the quantum level?

<comment><USER14> Unless the quantum level itself stems from initial conditions, and therefore is deterministic as well.

Also, I rephrased the line you quoted almost immediately after I posted it. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought this clip [1] from a game was quite relevant.

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/G5hXQ4C.gifv](http://i.imgur.com/G5hXQ4C.gifv)

</comment><comment><USER17> A lot of more of the same 'Peek beyond the veil' of this reality type writing. Obviously a myopia exists on planet earth. Earth is a little bubble we have been floating in womb-like for aeons of years, and are aware, sometimes even at a very basic level that there's more out there. What I find awkward is that scale is seen as a scary thing. Space is often called a "final frontier", and the "last bastion of hope" and other scary things like that.

But you have to think of those first sailors who set out to discover the new worlds - they risked their lives - they were the original space monkeys. Sadly, ethical red tape won't allow a mass exodus to other stars - as the stock market would inevitably plunge, and there would be chaos.

The moment we get out of the tired economic model of scarcity, and start opting for abundance, is the moment we can leap towards other dimensions, and other worlds. But for now - we have an impotent attempt to understand the universe through a tired Hubble telescope, and a tired generation of rocket builders who read science fiction novels in secret and know there's another way out of this place.

<comment><USER18> > Sadly, ethical red tape won't allow a mass exodus to other stars - as the > stock market would inevitably plunge, and there would be chaos.

What ethical red tape are you referring too? Because I can't quite think of any. And do you mind elaborate on the stock market too?

On the topic of scarcity vs abundance, fundamentally, there might be physical constraints that will never allow us to really be "abundance": space is big, really really big.

<comment><USER19> > space is big, really really big.

And the corollary to that: space is empty, really really empty. The government could _encourage_ space exodus, even offer each citizen $1 million to leave. It's still just not possible right now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interesting that this article discusses the Big Bang as happening after Inflation. I always assumed Inflation was the initial stage of the Big Bang. Is that just assumed in casual descriptions, but technically not true?

<comment><USER21> It is theorized that for a tiny fraction of time before the big bang the laws of physics were not the same as they are now, and if they had been such an expansion would not have taken place. This is the distinction they are likely trying to make.

<comment><USER22> Correct me if I'm wrong, since I only got my information from non-academic sources, but if I recall correctly the problem was that with the inflation, you would have to apply both the theory of general relativity (the science of the really big), and quantum theory (the science of the really small). In which case they totally don't work together and you would get really weird numbers.

Would a more logical explanation not be that our current theories are likely to be flawed, just like Newton's theory about gravity was flawed (but nevertheless incredibly useful) ?

<comment><USER4> More at its core is that it means that the expansion exceeded the cosmic speed limit, the speed of light. Two of the competing theories have been a rapid expansion (inflation) and another that two branes collided and the big bang started in an expanded state. As of late, it appears there has been more confirmation of the former rather than the latter. From what I've read, it is as another commenter noted -- the universe in it's earliest state did not yet conform to the rules of physics as we know them today. This early state is something on the order of the first trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there? If you can't reach them, it doesn't matter. Articles that start with "is"..

</comment><comment><USER24> this is the kind of stuff where I want to live old enough to see super AI solve this for us ;-)

</comment><comment><USER25> if you want to meet another version of you, wait ten minutes. you'll be a different person thinking about something totally different. big deal.

<comment><USER16> This is true. Especially evident if a day, week, or a year passes.</comment></comment>


In Nigeria, what language do you teach a parrot? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-nigeria-what-language-do-you-teach-a-parrot-1449022435 <comment><USER2> This makes me so sad, not because of the language issue, but because these birds are not being cared for. :(

Those cages in the pictures are _way_ too small for an African Gray. Also, you need someone who is willing to spend hours _every day_ entertaining their bird.

The African Gray is like a three year old child that stop growing. You wouldn't put a three year old in a tiny cage and then ignore it. You shouldn't do that with the African Gray either. And their average lifespan is 70 years, so it will most likely outlive you if you take good care of it.

<comment><USER3> THIS.

Birds shouldn't be kept in round cages, specially not that small. They need to be able to fly and stretch. They are having a very depressing life. I have a couple of parrots and already feel bad about having them at all (they could be flying somewhere), and the only time they are in a cage is when nobody's at home (evil cats are evil).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Birds are neat.

My father had some sort of a mynah bird in a classroom where he taught middle school science.

(Mynahs can be phenomenal mimics, as this one was; it's also important to know that social birds both crave attention and love causing a scene.)

This particular bird learned that the sound of emergency vehicle sirens had the peculiar and interesting effect of causing the students to leap out of their seats in order to run to the windows to see what was happening outside… what the students never seemed to figure out was that the siren was in fact (almost always) the mynah bird mimicking a siren with perfect fidelity, down to the Doppler effect.

The students fell for it _every_ time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why don't birdmongers setup a clearinghouse where they can trade parrots to fit the language profiles fit for their markets?

The premium should offset any transport costs as well as warehousing costs incurred by carrying inventory many months without moving it.

</comment><comment><USER6> The most interesting part of this article is actually the last few paragraphs, where the ornithologist explains that wild parrot actually "speak" different types of "parrot-languages".

<comment><USER7> Yup, the TIMTOWTDI effect...

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The same as anywhere else. The one the most people swear the most in.</comment>


Astro's Elroy Personal EVTOL in Flight Testing - <AUTHOR> https://www.flyingmag.com/astro-elroy-personal-vtol-flight-tests?enews100218 <comment><USER2> >The fully autonomous Elroy is and designed for densely populated areas

Where do they expect something like this to land? Densely populated areas are not known for having plenty of open/empty spaces for something with spinning blades to land. Existing heliports? Those are not typically near anything convenient, except maybe the pads on top of buildings. However, this has a max altitude of 60 feet, so it can't reach those.

<comment><USER3> Where did you see it has a max altitude of 60 feet?

The article just mentions that in a recent flight it flew up to 60 feet. It doesn't mean it's the max.

It also flew at around 30 mph, while its max speed is 44 mph.

The way I understand it is that they are reporting on recent test flights, not on projected abilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this could be a winning design: it's inefficient because it's really like a helicopter. IMHO, the ones with some sort of small wings and horizontal propellers have way more chance to succeed. Efficiency during horizontal travel is much better - and this is position where you spend most time - as well as increased max speed and lower noise during travel.

</comment><comment><USER5> No autorotation?

<comment><USER3> The pitch of the blades is fixed (if I believe the photos from their website), so the variations in lift is simply controlled by the variation in speed of the given rotor. This is just like any hobby quad/hex/octo/younameit-copters out there.

That means you can't reverse the pitch to gain angular momentum from a fall, and therefore, implement autorotation like a "traditional heli" can.

You do have multiple rotors for redundancy (in case one of them fails), but that's not going to protect you from a complete power failure of course if that power source is global.

You can increase safety by providing each rotor with its own independent power source.</comment></comment>


"Refresh your cache" manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://dontcache.me/

<comment><USER2> How can this be a manifesto without a rant (hehe). But the information on the "What Else Can I Do" page is great.</comment>


Solving the Wrong Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.azarask.in/blog/post/the-wrong-problem/

<comment><USER2> I find it interesting that this was considered an innovative approach considering the popular history of how the wright brothers succeeded the very same way: by basing their plane on a bicycle and testing rapidly.

We often frame this in terms of keeping the cost of failure low...but that failure isn't really failure is it? No more than running a round of unit tests. Keep the cost of learning low.

</comment><comment><USER3> _If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem._

This is trivially incorrect. If the problem is the creation of a magnum opus, then the solution is creating a magnum opus.

Failure doesn't have anything to do with it. It's not necessary to fail at all to improve your process; that this is the approach that's often most effective has nothing to do with the approach itself, it's a reflection of our poor models of the problem space.

If we had a thorough understanding of the problems surrounding human-powered flight, we'd be able (or much closer to being able) to create theoretical solutions that could be effective.

I don't know if Mr. Macready actually stated that "the process" was the problem, but if he did, I disagree with him as well. That the process many people use is sub-optimal and you find a better one does not mean their process was the problem. It means it was _one_ of _their_ problems. Further, that it can be much faster to iterate on experimental results without a solid model of the problem _does not_ mean iteration is somehow "the answer." It means it's one way of getting to a solution without an accurate fundamental understanding of the problem.

<comment><USER4> "This is trivially incorrect. If the problem is the creation of a magnum opus, then the solution is creating a magnum opus."

I would say you just proved the point. If the problem is the creation of a magnus opus then it is the wrong problem. Creation of a magnus opus with no further use is pointless and a waste of everyone's time, so don't solve that problem.

<comment><USER5> There is no such thing as a wrong problem. It is a subjective decision

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Keep the cost of failure low and the value of success high.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think Paul MacCready really solved a different problem. Earlier man powered aircraft (SUMPAC, Toucan, Puffin etc.) had been based on glider (sailplane) technology that emphasised the highest possible lift/drag ratio achieved by large span high aspect ratio wings and careful control of the aerofoil shape. The span and aspect ratio make the aircraft complex and comparatively heavy. MacCready realised that if the aircraft was made much simpler and lighter it could fly at a lower speed and although the L/D ratio was poorer (all those bracing wires!) the drag would be lower (V __2) and the power required (V __3) much lower, within human range. The quick to fail, quick to rebuild was a consequence of this simplicity.

Incidentally the photo showing the "speed ring" is nothing of the sort. Speed to fly rings are about 80mm in diameter to fit on an instrument face.

</comment><comment><USER8> A bit too generalized for my taste. If you're solving a problem of passing a well-defined benchmark (or closer to home, iterating on a kitten meme-sharing app), then yes, fail away. If you are solving a problem of putting a man on the moon in the 60s, then you get to coordinate hundreds of thousands of people from education to fundamental science to industry to alloys to god knows how many other things for years. And only then you can launch and really find out if you succeeded or failed - both outcomes have precedents.

<comment><USER9> Well maybe the lesson is to always think how you can verify your solution quicker. To take your example, that is the same line of reasoning Boeing is taking as a subcontractor for NASA, but where SpaceX has shown that they can verify their solution for half the cost that Boeing can[1].

[1] [http://qz.com/281619/what-it-took-for-elon-musks-spacex- to-d...](http://qz.com/281619/what-it-took-for-elon-musks-spacex-to-disrupt- boeing-leapfrog-nasa-and-become-a-serious-space-company/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Sometimes solving a hard problem is simply hard, and trying to treat it like an easy problem by shortcutting is the wrong approach, but you might not realize it until too late. Take building your own rocket technology vs. using old Soviet engines from the 1960's. Ask Orbital Sciences today which approach might have been better.

</comment><comment><USER11> The moral of the story should be a warning against analysis based on insufficient understanding. MacCready was working on exactly the same problem, in the same way, as everyone else. He just figured out a way to speed up the experimental phase.

</comment><comment><USER12> cf. John Boyd and the OODA Loop : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop)

</comment><comment><USER13> I might state it differently: set yourself up for iteration. Sounds a little like the "Lean" tenets.

</comment><comment><USER14> In a different context, Jack Sparrow said - The problem is no the the problem. The problem is your attitude towards the problem!</comment>


OkCupid's Analysis of Colleges by Habits - <AUTHOR> http://www.okcupid.com/best-colleges <comment><USER2> Overall not that interesting outside of the first one on writing skills.

The data sources that they are using are profiles, answers and messages of users on okcupid. Many people are partially or entirely unserious about their presence, and others confused by it.

This is why okcupid exists: data gathering of their users. Too bad their data is useless, and their app subpar.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty stupid. Forced statistics to support stereotypes.

Also entirely possible I'm just bitter that my alma maters are ranked in the bottom for attractiveness.</comment>


Show HN: Cliplingo – turns YouTube into spaced repetition language learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.cliplingo.com <comment><AUTHOR> What was originally a simple tool for my own learning and memorising, turned into a real project for everyone.

Youtube is full of great content for learning videos. But there hasn't been a way to organise them with spaced repetition. I love to learn the grammar or collocations from YT videos but then I fail to remember what I've just learned.

Cliplingo automatically prompts the video from the lesson that need to be revised, by the rules of spaced repetition. Each repetition will play a different video with the given topic, so you will not see the same video over and over again.

<comment><USER2> Currently working on my French - was super interested to use this but it's not working.

Looks like the request to:

[https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18](https://www.cliplingo.com/lesson/start?id=18)

Returns an empty video id: [https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3](https://pastebin.com/8JemA2T3)

Hopefully you can fix it soon - super excited to use it!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for heads up! It is fixed now.</comment></comment></comment>


Fatal A400M crash linked to data-wipe mistake - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-33078767 <comment><USER2> I'm assuming somewhere between plane and this article they details got muddy, otherwise I just have to ask: Why doesn't the system notice that it is missing critical configuration data BEFORE take-off?</comment>


Life is too short to RTFM: how users relate to documentation and excess features [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://eprints.qut.edu.au/80826/24/RTFM%20for%20eprints%202018.pdf <comment><USER2> Half off-topic, but it makes me think of the evolution I've observed in video games over the past decade or so. Back in the days, I remember buying games which were coming with a thick manual to learn what to do, the commands, etc. Nowadays, I feel like it doesn't exist anymore. All games come with a first level of "tutorial" were the player learns as they play.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'll link this next time somebody says to "RTFM". I'm pretty sure nobody means Read The "Field" Manual.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This paper is the winner of the 2018 Ig Noble for Literature.</comment>


America's First Offshore Wind Farm May Power Up a New Industry - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/science/americas-first-offshore-wind-farm-may-power-up-a-new-industry.html?referer= <comment><USER2> This project is a milestone in our transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy in the USA.

"Gulf Coast businesses that have long built offshore oil structures see wind power in the Northeast as a potential new market."

This reminds me of how San Francisco companies that funded and supplied 19th- century gold mining in California were able to "pivot" and find new markets after the gold rush faded.</comment>


The Spark Inspector is now available in Xcode, just like Instruments - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparkinspector.com/xcode_integration.html

<comment><USER2> I love Spark Inspector but they just don't respond to support requests. Because it uses Bonjour to connect your app to the Inspector, if you are on a corporate LAN, the Bonjour publish often fails. The only work-around is to disable your network completely while debugging and re-enabling your networking after establishing a connection just causes the established connection to be severed. Much sadface for an otherwise wonderful debugger.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! Author of the app here—sorry you've had trouble reaching me. I agree that Bonjour is a poor solution for corporate networks. I've always hoped that time would resolve those sort of issues (routers not supporting Bonjour's DNS packets, etc...) but it's been years and it's still a problem.

At the moment I'm not sure what other technology the Spark Inspector could use. I'd like to make it talk through LLDB entirely, and the latest update is a step in that direction, but there are many steps left to go.

Thanks for your post—feel free to reach out to me at my primary email firstname.lastname@example.com if you need anything.

<comment><USER2> Why not make the Inspector app listen on a predefined port? With no configuration (like if launched from Xcode) the client-app could try to connect to inspector at localhost on that port. Otherwise, do what PonyDebugger does and allow you specify a specific host/port via a singleton object.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Instead of this:

      lldb attach -p `ps x|grep MobileCal|grep -v grep|awk '{print $1}'`

You might want to try this:

      lldb attach -p `pgrep -x MobileCal`

</comment><comment><USER4> Does this work for C++ apps? Like Cocos2D-x.

</comment><comment><USER5> How well does this compare to Reveal?

<comment><USER6> I personally prefer Spark Inspector over Reveal after having tried both. I find the interface much easier to read, though I do like the overall darker appearance of Reveal better. One feature that SI has over Reveal is the notification inspector, which I've found useful at times. Aside from that there's no noticeable difference in the feature list that I've run into.

Reveal does do a better job of presenting views with pattern image background colors. In SI these are often not displayed at all.

Edit: It looks like one of the release note items in 1.1.1 is "Views are now rendered more correctly in the Spark Inspector. Additional support for UIColor pattern images, CAShapeLayer, and more."

I personally do not find the 3D view in either one useful at all. It's too noisy with something of any complexity to see the hierarchy, and particularly in SI's case with limited background support it can be harder to see certain elements.

My two biggest wish list items for either one would be:

1\. CALayer hierarchy inspection in the same manner as the UIView inspection works. I frequently use CALayer hierarchies when building custom controls rather than UIView ones because I find it easier.

2\. Constraint visualization. It would be very useful to be able to know when custom constraints have been overridden (e.g., in a UITableViewCell subclass) while trying to debug layout problems.

<comment><USER7> Hey, Sean here from Reveal. Thanks for the feedback.

Making the 3D view useful for large view hierarchies is exactly why we implemented drilldown so you can focus in on one section of the view hierarchy. Try double clicking a view in the outline or canvas. It may just be personal preference, but we've had many people comment that the 3D view is immensely useful, and we've found it useful in our own use of the product.

This presentation I did at Melbourne Cocoaheads might shed some light on how useful that feature (and others in Reveal) are. [https://vimeo.com/78441103](https://vimeo.com/78441103). Scratch the surface and I think you'll find a lot of other useful features.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Klassify – Redis Based Document Classification Service - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fatiherikli/klassify <comment><AUTHOR> I'm open for any feedback or code-review. I used Tornado and Tornado-Redis for non-blocking redis client. I'm using redis' pub/sub channels for real-time updates. In frontend side, I choose the React.js for building interface.

<comment><USER2> You have a few hardcodes that assume where the service is being run: [https://github.com/fatiherikli/klassify/search?utf8=%E2%9C%9...](https://github.com/fatiherikli/klassify/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=__BASE_ENDPOINT__)

<comment><AUTHOR> The first one is for development environment. But you're right, I should make it configurable with command line arguments. So user can give any hostname or api. Currently, only the server port is configurable.

Thank you for feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


Happy Birthday, Swift - <AUTHOR> https://www.weheartswift.com/happy-birthday-swift/

<comment><AUTHOR> One of my favorite things about swift is that map,filter and reduce are chained instead of nested like in objc. What's yours?</comment>


Do you know ruby and golang? Grubby needs coders - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/grubby/grubby/issues/5 <comment><AUTHOR> this is your chance open source heros! You've heard of jruby right? Make a name for yourself and commit today to Grubby.</comment>


Show HN: Track UK car price depreciation – get alerted when prices change - <AUTHOR> https://www.carpricetracker.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I really want to buy a Golf GTE, but was worried that they were still depreciating quite heavily. Looking around the web, I couldn't see a way of tracking the price of a used car over time.

I'd bookmarked the search page on AutoTrader, and regularly went back to it to see if they were any cheaper. Low and behold, the cars were depreciating, but it was a drag having to go back to the site each time. I was too lazy to put the prices and dates in a spreadsheet.

Writing this little app seemed like way less work (it wasn't, but whatever). I thought it might be useful to other people, so I bought a domain and here we are.

Would love feedback! Would this work in the US? What are the large car sites in the US?

<comment><USER2> Very cool tool. I work on similar stuff, and I wrote this blog post last year. [http://bytes.schibsted.com/price-car-data/](http://bytes.schibsted.com/price- car-data/)

With time most models will see an exponential decay, according to my analysis. But some will, of course, decay faster than others.

<comment><USER3> I wanna build a tool like this for my marketplace idea. [http://onlyusedtesla.com/](http://onlyusedtesla.com/) i have 47 listings and growing weekly. Would love to offer some useful metrics to my users.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm using this service for such things: [https://urlooker.com](https://urlooker.com) It allows to track any prices, not just cars.

<comment><USER5> That's a very inefficient way to track prices over a long period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to say the site has not been up long, and so I dont have a lot of price history, but an example of what I wrote it for is here:

[https://www.carpricetracker.com/search/2/Golf+GTE](https://www.carpricetracker.com/search/2/Golf+GTE)

I want to track how quickly the price of that model was dropping. Hopefully over time a nice curve will be produced.

<comment><USER6> Come on developpers. Stop showing amounts of money without a comma separator for thousands. Even in banking half of the developpers do that. Imagine when you are dealing with amounts in billions...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> PH user here - have you posted it on their forums?

 _If we spot that the lowest price has changed from the previous day, we 'll email you an alert right away._

Do you do anything about sellers listing cars at £0, £1 or some other below market value? What about excluding cat d cars, etc?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I did and it got removed. Some reason or other.

Haven't written a price cleaner etc or started looking at crash recoveries - quite a bit more tricky! Also PH allow e.h. 996 C4S to be advertised as 996 Turbos as they have "Turbo Bodykit" or somesuch which is really annoying. I blame Porsche drivers ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is not as specific as your tool, but similar I believe, if anyone is interested: [https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price- trends/](https://www.cargurus.com/Cars/price-trends/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It's got pretty bad when my automatic "it's deprecation, not depreciation" correction is applying to legitimate uses.</comment>


Local AZ Tech Darling Jawa & Jason Hope a Big Scam? - <AUTHOR> http://www.azdisruptors.com/blog/2011/3/18/local-tech-darling-jawa-jason-hope-a-big-scam.html

<comment><USER2> This hits close to home. It's unfortunately how PHX entrepreneurship seems to overlook scams like this.</comment>


Ask HN: What about the other type of "time machine"? - <AUTHOR> I'm talking about the type of machine that creates time. For instance, you get into a room and stay there for 30 days. When you get out only 30 min. (for instance) have passed in the real world. Of course, you'd be 30 days minus 30 min. older in the real world.<p>Any sci-fi stories about this (as far as I know, only [1]) ? Does real science have ever talked about it?<p>[1]: http://dragonball.wikia.com/wiki/Hyperbolic_Time_Chamber <comment> T-A Dexter, of Dexter's Laboratory fame, thought of it (of course). See "Morning Stretch": [https://youtu.be/DWU5U8NxeCA?t=33m32s](https://youtu.be/DWU5U8NxeCA?t=33m32s)

In view of all the complications he discovered, maybe a room (or house) which simply stops biological aging of those inside would be preferable... at least until the government starts taking notice: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Station_(novel)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Way_Station_\(novel\))

In stories connecting different worlds, time sometimes runs at different rates. A classic example would be the Chronicles of Narnia: [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/94204/how-much- tim...](https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/94204/how-much-time-passed- between-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe-and-prince-ca)

Of course, to somebody living in a world where time runs fast, venturing out into the "normal" universe would be equivalent to stepping into your imagined room. This happens in one of the better Star Trek Voyager episodes: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_(Star_Trek:_Vo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blink_of_an_Eye_\(Star_Trek:_Voyager\))</comment>


Tinkering vs. Reading Books - <AUTHOR> Hey everyone! Do you learn better when you tinker with a new tool or when you read the manual/textbook? Why and why not? Thanks! <comment><USER2> Tinkering wins most of the time. Honestly, unless it's a completely new concept or way of thinking (or for a lack of a better term, "academic" concept), tinkering and building stuff will be faster and more fun.

I only read books after I've tinkered enough to think "I can build something with X, but let's find out the best ways to do it".

There are some problems with books for X language or Y framework:

* A lot of books (especially free ones) have little to no exercises, giving you no chance to solidify your knowledge and instead copy and paste (or type along)

* People that love reading books instead of tinkering, in my experience, a) take too long to learn b) don't retain any material beyond two weeks or so because they don't do exercises (if there are any) c) think they learned the material because they have it in short term memory

The above also applies to a lot of "video courses" as well.

The only good book I've read in the past years is [http://haskellbook.com/](http://haskellbook.com/) because it explains things well, is well structured, and most importantly it is full of exercises.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. Skim the book in 3 or 4 hours to get idea of high level concepts and how they relate, and where to read in more detail when I hit something I don't understand.

2\. Start coding.

3\. Refer back to book when I get stuck, and read that section more in depth.

</comment><comment><USER4> Tinkering.

However I believe that 40 weekly hours are already enough time to spend in front of a computer so reading wins most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER5> My entire life "tinkering" has always won out. However, right now I am doing the exact opposite in my attempts to learn math - working through a textbook from cover to cover.

Math seems like a difficult thing for a beginner to "tinker" with. You can go into Visual Studio and tinker with C#; you can open Chrome Dev Tools and tinker with CSS; you can go to Sublime and tinker with JS or python; and you can sit down and tinker with sketching or painting or building a wooden box. But how do you tinker with a tool which has so many rules and concepts and no compiler or runtime log to let you know when you've done something wrong?

So far my extent of "tinkering" with math has been completing the exercises at the end of each textbook section and Googling answers to various equations or examples of proofs I want to try out based on an assumption I've made from the things I've just learned. I guess that is a form of tinkering also, but it comes after the entire reading part.

</comment><comment><USER6> My experience is different than most people apparently: Books put you on the fast lane IMO. Of course it takes practice to master something, anything. Books represent a form of compressed, structured knowledge that is very difficult for someone to find on his own.

It is really nice to play around with mentos and coca-cola but without reading something like the McMurry (Chemistry 8th/7th/6th or 9th Edition) you'll never understand organic chemistry's basics. You might get a long way on your own if you're Ramanujan-level, but otherwise I think you'll learn, but way more slowly and in a possibly unstructured way.

</comment><comment><USER7> There's something to be said for just reading manuals. Like, I can mess around with Gimp and get basic stuff done, but I bet if I read a book or manual I would pick on fundamental things that would help me really learn to master the tool.

I like to just read man files of utilities too, even when I have no specific need. It's like broadening my background knowledge to call on later when an opportunity comes up.

</comment><comment><USER8> Tinkering with the book open.

</comment><comment><USER9> I always tinker then refer to manual/docs as I need to. Having some project that I can keep adding to gets me to keep learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'll read a tutorial/blog post or the official docs to quickly get up to speed on something, and read textbooks for learning a topic in depth. The problem is I get too caught up in reading a dense textbook but forget a lot of it because I don't apply that knowledge. I'm trying to find a middle ground between reading and application.

</comment><comment><USER11> Tinkering (especially for programming) most of the time. I have ADHD, so it is a bit tough for me to stay fully focused when reading as I tend to skip paragraphs etc :)

<comment><USER12> That makes me think I have ADHD too . Mind you I'd imagine all of us here have wizard level skimming abilities by now.

<comment><USER11> Well, the best way to know for sure is to get diagnosed :), although I believe this problem is waaaay overdiagnosed today because of the pharmaceutical lobby. So many people especially kids now take these unnecessary pills which make their heads even more messy. I decided not to take this route, and instead make an advantage from my ADD. For example hyperfocus is one of the common traits people with ADD have ,and allows you to be extremely focused on things you like for many hours and don't get tired at all. On the other side when there is something you don't enjoy - like reading a book in this case :) it is sometimes very hard to stay focused. In my case a diet has a big impact as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Prestel, the Computer Misuse Act, and Prince Philip - <AUTHOR> http://www.micromart.co.uk/features/article/default.aspx?id=22625

<comment><USER2> The real question is - what the hell was so special about France - that made their version of what were called "videotext services" - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minitel> catch on where all the others failed?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, according to the wikipedia article you cite, they gave away millions of minitel terminals.

<comment><USER2> I'm reasonably sure they did that elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


Mission Control: A History of the Urban Dashboard - <AUTHOR> https://placesjournal.org/article/mission-control-a-history-of-the-urban-dashboard/ <comment><USER2> There's a distinction between operational control rooms, where there are people with controls connected to real things, and situation rooms, where the outputs are mostly talk. Combining the two sometimes results in an ego trip rather than a useful work environment. An extreme case is the Moscow area electric power control room.[1] It looks like a set from a Bond movie. That was actually built, although the conference room that descends from the ceiling was omitted. The setup makes little sense; the main job of a citywide power distribution control room is coordinating the field workers who are out there fixing things.

For comparison, here's the electric power control room for the entire northeastern US.[2] This has two main jobs - controlling the transmission network, and monitoring and controlling the power market. You can look at most of the same data they are seeing.[3] (It's a slow-loading Flash page. Once you get it loaded, select "Big Picture" to get an overview. To understand it, read "PJM 101"[4])

For a clear distinction between operational and situation rooms, here's NYC's emergency call center, which answers 911.[5] It's a big call center room of cubicles. Each station has three screens and a phone system, but the few big screens around are just showing overall statistics. NYC also has their COMPSTAT room.[6] It's just a conference room with a big screen. There are no controls at the seats.

The first real control centers were railroad signal towers. There's a whole history of those, and it's worth understanding how they managed safety. Early ones had big levers, and early on, those were interlocked. The Bluebell Railway, a heritage railway in England, is big enough to need a full signal system, and it's all antique equipment. Watch this video.[7] About 5 minutes in, you can see someone operating the huge levers to set signals and switches in a signal tower. At 5:18, they pull a big lever, and it moves about an inch and won't move further. They've tried to throw a track switch, and the mechanical interlocking won't let them throw that switch until the track is clear and the related signals have been set to stop. When you design "Internet of things" systems, try to do as well as that 1880s technology.

Military and NASA control rooms usually have a feature rarely seen elsewhere - anyone can view, read-only, anyone else's screen. In the original NASA and NORAD control centers, which used the same Philco hardware, all the screens were analog TVs, and they had a channel selector, so you could view any console's main feed. This is done so that when important stuff is happening on one screen, others can look at it without crowding around the person controlling that screen. Once you have that feature, the need for multiple big screens decreases. A military tactical operations center today is often one modest size big screen and a bunch of laptops.

[1] [http://www.archdaily.com/29186/moesk-control-center-arch- gro...](http://www.archdaily.com/29186/moesk-control-center-arch-group- abtb/9_variant-3d/) [2] [http://www.elliottlewis.com/casestudy- pjm.html](http://www.elliottlewis.com/casestudy-pjm.html) [3] [https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html](https://edata.pjm.com/eData/index.html) [4] [http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol- pjm-101.aspx](http://pjm.com/Globals/Training/Courses/ol-pjm-101.aspx) [5] [http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/images/pr/pr_2012_01_05_psac_91...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/images/pr/pr_2012_01_05_psac_911_call_takers.jpg) [6] [http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/23/nypd-dedicates- compst...](http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/09/23/nypd-dedicates-compstat- room-to-creator-jack-maple/) [7] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWNtrvcEVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijWNtrvcEVA)

<comment><USER3> Just a layman, but the thing about train track controls made me think about parallel computing and the semaphore concept.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fascinating and insightful article. I would still consider some cases where information is useful.

(a) There are some really interesting community-based initiatives where urban dashboards add value albeit still data-driven. Instead of using Baltimore's CityStats I would consider the Neighborhood Vital Signs indicators [1] as a good example of quality of life indicators.

(b) The dashboard performs a huge role, when considering that information in city governments exist in silos. There was a time when one transport department didn't know what another was doing. It still happens (e.g. Fire agencies not knowing that the metro power was turn off for a good 40 minutes [2]).

[1][http://bniajfi.org](http://bniajfi.org) [2] [http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/pub...](http://mayor.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/mayormb/publication/attachments/HSEMAInitialReportonWMATAIncident.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> All of the numbers, none of the information.

<comment><USER5> All of the information, none of the knowledge or wisdom.

"Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?" T.S. Eliot</comment></comment>


US 'gets ass handed to it' in WW3 simulations with China, Russia - <AUTHOR> https://americanmilitarynews.com/2019/03/us-gets-ass-handed-to-it-in-ww3-simulations-with-china-russia-analysts/ <comment><USER2> This a low quality article. There is no real analysis of why the US loses so badly, how the US's immense superiority in nukes factors into these simulations, the comparitive battle readiness of each nations common solder (US get lots more experience than Russia or China), etc.

<comment><USER3> So tell me, which US cities are you going to swap for that "immense superiority in nukes"?

It always amazes me that US commenters never seem to think that nukes can go in both directions at once. Certainly the US has lots of nukes. But so do the adversaries.

China, so it appears, has only about 300 nukes. I once did the exercise of using only those 300 nukes on the US's largest 300 cities. By the time I got down to city number 300, I found that that city was only a quite smallish town of roughly 10,000 people. In other words, a mere 300 nukes would completely destroy the US. Russia has 10 times that many.

<comment><USER4>
      never seem to think that nukes can go in both directions at once

Actually, the USA's strategic defense has been predicated on this concept for over two generations, hence the Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident programs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We lost every simulation Japan ran in the 1930s, too. That's why we lost the war and all speak Japanese now.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's a book about this as well [https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain- Defending-America-High-Tec...](https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending- America-High-Tech/dp/031653353X)</comment>