Introducing human.io - <AUTHOR> http://joshua.schachter.org/2012/08/introducing-humanio.html <comment><USER2> Joshua is brilliant and I want to love this!

But I wish there were a specific example of what it does.

Something that starts with, "Let's say you run a site and need [x]. Here's how human.io can help you with that..."

Otherwise it's too much work for me to try and figure out what it does, or how I'd use it. Even though I'm sure it's great - because Josh made it.

<comment><USER3> +1. I've spent 5x the amount of time trying to understand this than I would for anyone else-- because I think Joshua is brilliant. But I'm still flummoxed. Is it like mechanical turk? Tasty Labs could really benefit from a designer, methinks. Not just to make it pretty, but to empathize with/advocate for their audience.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. We are circling in on better explanations.

(FWIW it took a few YEARS before I was able to explain tagging and group behavior on delicious cogently. This process is not surprising.)

So, yes, it's a bit like mechanical turk. Hopefully some of the usage will be driven by participatory urges rather than getting 5c per transaction (though we will probably empower that sort of payment, and more. Offers etc.)

<comment><USER5> Suggested description:

"Human.io lets you to script with humans as easily as you would script with software. It does for the digital economy what the assembly line did for the industrial economy.

The software allows you to dynamically assemble ad hoc armies of virtual workers, who are then assigned to complete tasks in the real world using the sensors and input devices on their phones: GPS, camera, microphone, and so on.

Let's say you want to X. Human.io lets you..."

Still not perfect, but I think it's a little more clear than what you have.

<comment><USER6> Going along this, Human.io, "the Human API" enables you to recruit a virtual army's phones, GPS, camera, microphone, etc.

Sample human API tasks: 1\. photo scavenger hunt 2\. parking garage availability 3\. male to female ratio in a club 4\. collect blind auction bids

<comment><USER4> So do you think we should BUILD more examples or just talk about them?

<comment><USER7> Why not both?

<comment><USER8>
        (V)(°,,°)(V)

<comment><USER4> :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It seems like human.io solves a very rare problem: "I have a lot of people who will do whatever I ask them to, but organizing the result of their efforts is difficult".

This is a very real problem for the people that have it. Imagine you have a following of hundreds of thousands of people (like joshu actually does). You could do a lot to help yourself and others simply by posting one tweet. But then you have to deal with lots of replies from different people in different formats, keep track of it over time, set up consistent systems for recognition and reward, etc.

human.io turns all of that into an api like process. But you have to explain that idea to a very large number of people, when only a tiny percentage of people even understand what the problem is like. I can understand how this would be difficult to "explain". It seems like the problem isn't so much the message, but the fact that such a specific problem has to be explained to a wide audience.

<comment><USER4> There are lots of organizations that have a huge number of interested followers but relatively little organization. Examples that come to mind are newspapers, political parties, towns, schools, viewers of a sports event, etc.

That's why I keep using the word "audience" - it is the traditional word for this kind of relationship, I think.

Does that make sense?

<comment><USER9> I guess I was trying to say that someone already has to have a large audience before human.io is really valuable. I can definitely see how it would help organizations, even local organizations. The issue of how to organize and utilize that audience is a big deal. It's just something that the majority of people don't have to deal with. They might see the site from the perspective of "how is this useful to me?" and see it in the wrong context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a great idea, but I had to read the blog post, read the home page, then re-read the blog post to fully grasp why I'd want to use it, and now I have a great idea for how to utilize it for something I'm building. There has to be a better way to get the idea across, but I'm not sure what it is. The "Some things you can do" part of the homepage was the most useful part for me. Emphasize that more?

<comment><USER11> > The "Some things you can do" part of the homepage was the most useful part > for me. Emphasize that more?

That's a good idea, thanks. I'll move the section up higher.

We're trying to tell two stories on that page. The developer story: an easy way to write simple apps and target them at specific people via some criteria. The user story: join interesting activities by companies and developers you enjoy or want to help out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I am excited by this for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that it seems like a true joshu project--simple infrastructure that uses simple approaches to engage crowds in collaborative activities. With del.icio.us it was enabling structured discovery via folksonomy, with human.io it is enabling broadening the reach of crowdsourcing. (If only I could somehow coin the term turksonomy and have it make sense in this context.)

A couple of crazy ideas would be to use this to perhaps improve upon that niche that Flickr and Twitter are sometimes used for, which is crowd sourcing collection of digital media for some event (like a concert, conference or news event). Instead of showing live tweets as a screensaver at a conference, show images collected via human.io.

I also think there is a huge potential for creating interactive narratives and even games.

When I try to explain the idea to people, though, the question is always "what is in it for the worker?". With delicious, the creation of a good folksonomy that added value to the ecosystem was simply a side effect of the selfish benefit of keeping track of your own bookmarks. That's why I think for human.io to go viral to the point where you have a large and engaged workforce, you need to find its "win/win" proposition. It could simply be the game aspect (see games with a purpose) or maybe a give a little/get a little dynamic.

Great stuff...can't wait to see how this one evolves.

<comment><USER4> Credit where credit is due - Paul had the idea. I kept talking about labor pools and mturk etcetera being the future.

Your ideas (conference photos, narratives, etc) are really good ones. Want to prototype some?

I'm not sure that viral is necessary. Delicious was never viral in any way. Just useful.

("turksonomy" - hee)

<comment><USER12> Okay, not viral, but I think there has to be some psychological hook for the worker that gives them benefit for the small barter of time and effort. Novelty gets you in the door, maybe boredom, but then again if I am bored, I can always just start answering election year push polls.

Some way for workers to see value besides karma or a pay rate of $3/hour is what I haven't figured out yet.

Viral in the classic sense might not have described delicious, but I will say that I had a much richer and more interesting and more professionally useful social network of followers and followed people on delicious than any network since...Twitter is the heir for this kind of network-filtered firehouse of interesting stuff, and Quora almost could get there, but delicious had more impact per byte than either of those. I always considered it somewhat viral in the sense that I had maybe a dozen coworker colleagues I followed plus a smattering of random people who turned out to essentially be high-signal, curating SMEs for various interest areas I needed.

I am working on prototyping ideas as time allows, but still working though the examples so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This looks very intriguing but I have a bunch of questions.

Do all the end users, the "humans" have to have the human.io mobile app in order to run "apps"? Is there a way to embed the human.io app/task UI somewhere else?

Is the intention to mostly have lots of people use the human.io mobile apps? Or is this going to be more API based where developers can embed human.io apps into other places?

Is the photo scavenger hunt example an app or a task or is it an app with a single task?

<comment><USER4> Currently, the users must have the app to run the tasks. We don't currently have a way to embed the task UI. I worry that if we whitelabel it we won't see network effects.

For what it's worth, people coming in to do the photohunt app are doing other people's tasks, too.

We want to start with getting people to use the mobile apps. We are looking at other targets in the future (browsers already work. televisions? cars?)

The scavenger hunt is an app with a single task. Apps are really a developer notion - users don't see apps in the UI currently, only tasks.

This may change in the future; inside the one task are several subtasks: suggest a hunt, rate a photo, take a photo. and the "take a photo" part lets you mark a hunt as inappropriate.

In the future these could be four or five simple tasks once you have accepted the larger "task."

<comment><USER14> I think that you should consider white labeling. Or perhaps not necessarily white labeling, but releasing SDKs to allow to use the platform from third- party apps. Obviously many app developers and companies could benefit from having it available from their own apps. I can also see value for it in the academic world. Academia is starting to dip their toes in the crowd research and this could be very valuable. But again, I don't see a benefit to actual users to download the human.io app, it seems as an unnecessary hassle. Having it available from other apps allows third-parties to offer their own benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like the idea, but it isn't clear to me what motivates the users to participate. Can the developer offer some sort of financial incentive to the users?

<comment><USER16> I agree, I'm unsure of what the hook is for someone to download the mobile app and use it. Perhaps it would make sense if human.io came as a framework developers could import in their existing apps?

With this, they could potentially send out notifications to just their audience when participation would be useful. Completing tasks could also be a micropayment allowing the developer to give the user some sort of reward (like unlocking bonus features).

<comment><USER4> This is exactly correct. We expect publishers to talk about the task to be done and the motivation for doing so as the primary thing (and the fact that it happens to run on the human.io client or in a browser or whatever as secondary.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is really cool, and I'll definitely be checking it out, but "If Twitter is HTML, then Human.io is CGI." has to be the worst pitch line ever.

<comment><USER4> I'm not in love with it. It's hard to come up with a good line.

Hit me with some better ideas?

<comment><USER18> Human.io: The real-world interaction engine.

Human.io provides a robust platform for creating mobile activities for people to perform in real life. Quickly create interactive apps that take full advantage of mobile GPS, video, and photo capabilities, promoting rich responses to surveys, games, or contests. Plus, using our integral filtering API, you decide exactly who gets to see and run your app. Push out your app to people based on location, demographics, or your own custom filters.

<comment><USER4> This is pretty great. Thank you.

<comment><USER17> Yeah, nice, that is much better -- and joshu, hope the original comment didn't make it sound like that was the focus of what I got out of checking it out -- I really like the idea :).

<comment><USER4> It was good feedback. Don't apologize.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is awesome! As soon as I saw the photohunt I knew the massive implications of this. I feel like this could be one of those things 'cell phones were made for'. I'm curious about how people will use it.

The UI on the android app could use a little work though. I'm sure you'll get to that soon enough. Nice job!

<comment><USER4> Thanks!

What's specifically wrong with the android app, so I can make sure Paul & co see them?

<comment><USER19> Nothing specifically, just feels like it needs a little more UI loving. I felt like tapping the results on the survey widget was a little cumbersome. Maybe the buttons could be wider or more responsive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> super excited about this!

we run a small organization that picks fruit growing on trees all over atlanta and donates it to local homeless shelters. we have many fruit picking events that are logistically tough to organize as the trees are all over the city and in all different stages of ripening. if we had a way to break it down like: "you go check this one tree (here's the address), you go check that one, etc, and we'll build the pick around that" it'd be much much easier on us and way more engaging with folks (people love what we're doing, but we have a limited number of events and spaces within those events).

<comment><USER4> Yeah. If you have geocoded points you could have them check nearby trees. When one person does the task, you pull the task etc. do you want to try prototyping it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The more I look at what is happening with technology the more I am likely to declare Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End a prophetic book.

<comment><USER4> Yeah. I hope this is a good thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It'd be nice if you could pay users so you don't just become another bothersome mosquito in their pocket.

For example: Say I need something from the county records of some place far from me but I need them quickly. I place a human.io call to pay $50 to whomever takes a picture of a series of documents first. That could be huge.

<comment><USER23> Human.io's job is to sell the developers. The developer's job is to sell the humans. I think I have that right.

Imagine if the Chicago Tribune wanted to build data-driven apps from people on the streets downtown. Just like if they wanted to do telephony apps they'd have to spend $300k getting Asterix wired up properly and Twilio makes it work out of a Sinatra app; similarly, my sense is, Human.io is trying to do that for people-driven apps.

<comment><USER4> This is exactly correct. We need to make it easy for developers to sell the humans.

(In my parlance, publishers are the people with audience, developers are the people who code, and audience are the people that use the phone. In the wacky future, they may only be indirectly connected.)

<comment><USER23> It's like the question you're asking developers is, "what if your app could be on every block in Chicago, in real time, right now? What would you do with that?"

Also, I think the emphasis on "humans" in your messaging obscures the point a little. You're not so much programming humans are you are transforming them into sensors.

In that sense, a little surprised the words "eyes and ears" appear nowhere on your front page.

<comment><USER4> That's a good point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> My suggestion for human.io description: We provide brains.Scalable and real. Need data to prove something? Need feedback on your idea? Need an idea to work on? Human.io can help. You create a task we provide crowd. Don't need any of these? Join and help others.Fun is guaranteed!

</comment><comment><USER25> The same basic thing seems to exist as an open source platform as well: <http://pybossa.com/> \- if you're going to base it off the interest of people to participate, why not apply that to the full stack?

</comment><comment><USER26> I was hoping to see a more polished, more native UI in the iOS app. I was also hoping to see faster iteration of the app (more updates) early on.

The API sounds good but I may not actually try it until the UI is more compelling.

<comment><USER4> We've made a lot of progress in the app. Did you take a look? The UI is quite a bit more polished.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like a great idea. Completely off-topic, for curiosity sake - when I go to download it through the App Store, the language options are English, German, Spanish and Northern Sami??

<comment><USER4> The app uses PhoneGap, which has a wacky default build template. It will be fixed in the next release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Have you thought about making this a web-app (or Facebook app) too? Sure, you won't be able to get Geo-tagged photos but not all the tasks require mobile devices.

<comment><USER4> We can run in a browser already. We'll probably get to it, but we're mostly focusing on mobile for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> It seems to be Mechanical Turk for mobile users.

<comment><USER30> It's a great idea and I hope the term "publishers" isn't limited to businesses. I always wanted a little service like this I could ask questions to: "I parked my car at the corner of Housten and Orchard, can someone confirm I don't have any tickets." "I heard XYZ closed down, can someone tell me if they're still in business."

But in my opinion:

>> It allows you to script with humans as easily as you would script with software.

Is a disgusting phrase.

<comment><USER4> Publishers -> someone who publishes tasks or has an audience of some sort. Not necessarily businesses.

Hmm. It allows you to get people to do a sequence of actions (provided the right motivation.) What would express it better?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Script with humans" made me shiver a bit. Evocative copy to be sure, but perhaps a bit too Orwellian.

<comment><USER4> Totally happy to try something else. Any ideas?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Interesting project! What is the first idea which you realized this kind of app is really needed for?

</comment><comment><USER33> What inspired you to build this? It might help us understand it better.

<comment><USER4> Mechanical Turk + Twilio + Phones.

We built it first. Now we're figuring out what it can do, exactly :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Where'd you get that pretty header for the photo hunt page?

<comment><USER35> It's from Bootstrap's new header.</comment></comment>


Apple, Goldman Sachs Team Up on Credit Card Paired with iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-goldman-sachs-team-up-on-credit-card-paired-with-iphone-11550750400 <comment><USER2> This could obviously have a substantial impact on challenger banks like Monzo (which I use and love). Not least because it would get around the regulatory challenges they face in the US.</comment>


Conquering job hell and multiple app branches using Jenkins and Mercurial - <AUTHOR> http://zeroturnaround.com/rebellabs/conquering-job-hell-and-multiple-app-branches-using-jenkins-mercurial/

<comment><USER2> This is Jenkins Job Hell, not hating your actual job. But wait, you're coders! You love your jobs, right?</comment>


Sociopathy Is Running the US - Part Two - <AUTHOR> http://www.caseyresearch.com/articles/sociopathy-running-us-part-two

<comment><USER2> Sociopaths have always been in power. There is not much socially unique about our times. Scales have changed (there are so many people!) but not the principles.

<comment><AUTHOR> Up until recently, us non-sociopaths used to have a little more recourse, in the US anyway.

The past ten years have changed all that. Very little wiggle room to escape them conventionally anymore. We have to resort to more and more extreme means to be able to find some small escape from them. That's why I no longer use commercial airlines, for instance.</comment></comment>


What Linux Will Look Like In 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArticle.jhtml?articleID=210002129

<comment><USER2> This doesn't make me excited in the least. The author seems to be describing a potential 2009.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I'd really like to see an OS with capabilities based security with virtualized sandboxes (individual per app) for running legacy code. (You could expose specific objects or information channels between legacy apps, which would be controlled by the capability system.)

The author has a shallow understanding of OS and no clue about directions in research.</comment></comment>


Wordmove 2.4 introduces a hook based task runner - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/welaika/wordmove/releases/tag/v2.4.0 <comment><AUTHOR> Already being the most used command line tool to deploy WordPress sites, now Wordmove lets you run arbitrary commands locally and/or remotely before and/or after push and/or pull actions. Curious to see what developers will do and invent!

<comment><USER2> If it meets the guidelines, this might make a good 'Show HN'. Show HN guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment></comment>


What is the best way to learn to program/hack from scratch? - <AUTHOR>

What is the best language? What is the best book? What software is needed? <comment><USER2> 1\. Build an application

2\. Go to 1.

I'm not being a dick. That's actually the best way to learn. You can read books (and certainly will while doing number 1) but if you don't actually take the time to sit down and build something, you'll never get a good enough feel for how to program.

Once you've iterated that loop a couple of times, you'll realize you've done it all wrong. But that's what learning is all about.

</comment><comment><USER3> Step 1. Buy whichever 'Learn Python' book you like the look of. Read book, while hacking up little programs to amuse yourself and solve your problems

Step 2. Read some tutorials on the net to expand your knowledge. Investigate open source programs like BeautifulSoup. Use open source stuff to build toy programs with (e.g. RSS reader or screenscraper).

Step 3. Implement a project of moderate complexity, while reading more advanced books, and browsing Python blogs to get a broader understanding of how things work.

I assume this process would work for Ruby or PHP, but I think Python is the perfect language for learners.

<comment><USER4> I actually get asked this question quite a bit, and I'd like to be able to offer a more informed answer. Depending on the specific interests of the person that asks, I usually always recommend Python or Scheme and the standard list of starting books.

I learned Scheme first, but I think Python is an equally great starting language. In fact, I would be very curious to hear everyone's opinions on Python vs. Scheme as a starting language...preferably without having your standard language flamewar. I know about the MIT switch to the Zelle book and their reasoning. What are some other pros and cons? I still lean towards Scheme a bit, because I think the functional approach to problem-solving can be more powerful...at least it was more eye-opening to me. (But, then, I'm not a person that was especially gifted at mathematics.) Ideas?

<comment><USER3> I've hardly looked at Scheme as I came to programming with an unacademic get- stuff-done attitude. Which probably explains why I find Python so appealing, and why I recommend it to others who want to learn a language to use as a tool: it is immediately useful, fairly user-friendly, teaches good mental habits, has abudant tutorials and soforth, a large helpful community, and lots of active hackers hacking away and sharing their ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm, thats a very difficult question to answer... I think it depends on what are you trying to create.

If it is a webapp I recommend learning JavaScript, for that you will have to learn HTML and CSS before you start writing JavaScript code.

What you really have to do is to pick a simple programming language and start coding with it. For me, the way to learn programming is by creating code, first pick your programming language, then start reading about it, be sure to start with a simple book or tutorial, don't look for advanced books.

What I'm saying is: Read a lot, code a lot, and have fun!

Good Luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Write code 2\. Read code

You should go with Python, the syntax is really easy and the code it produces is sexy.

To get you started right away, figure out what and how this does:

for i in range(5): print i

<comment><USER7> You're doing both deltapoint and Python a bit of a disservice by choosing this example as a starting point. I imagine if I had never seen python I would expect something like

      12345

It's quite arbitrary that what you see is different, and while there is some rationale to it, it's not very enlightening. Definitely not the kind of thing I'd have a newcomer focus on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> 1\. Write code 2\. Read code

You should go with Python, the syntax is really easy and the code it produces is sexy.

To get you started right away, figure out what and how this does:

for i in range(5):</comment>


Scott Adams: The Ultimate Food and Exercise App - <AUTHOR> http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/ultimate_food_and_exercise_app/

<comment><USER2> This is a bit impractical. Recognizing the food with few errors would be horribly hard. I think it is sometinhg like speech recognition or automatic translation: yes, it is easy to create some simple not very good speech recognizer or translator software, but it is incredibly hard to create a high quality one. The only remaining option is to create a user interface where the user can type-in his daily food intake very easily/intuitively. Maybe most users would want to do this on their computer's screen and not on a phone. Of course there are plenty of calory-tracker, 'diet organizer' software on the market like <http://www.dietorganizer.com/>. But I am not an expert in this market.

<comment><USER3> > Recognizing the food with few errors would be horribly hard.

I wonder if it would be possible to have some sort of a hybrid system, where automatic recognition is attempted, with a fall-back to manual input where this fails. (The manual input could be to select from several automatic "guesses") If the app stored all the data from all users, this could eventually lead to a _really_ big database, and the automatic recognition might get better and better.

EDIT: Also, automatic vegetable/fruit recognition is actually in production in some supermarkets, for weighing/pricing. (I saw this in France.)

<comment><USER4> How will you know when you should fall back to manual? There's really no measurement of accuracy that I can think of. If you've reached the point in the algorithm where you know you've incorrectly identified the food it seems like you've already solved the problem.

<comment><USER3> That is a pretty common problem in machine learning. There are tons of solutions, but they are usually classifier specific. For example, if using a decision tree, one can take test data and determine for each leaf node in the tree what fraction of instances are classified correctly. For leaf nodes with accuracy below X, change the output of that node to "give up".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I amuses me to no end how everybody assumes that the reason we eat unhealthy food is that we don't know any better.

In reality, it is because unhealthy food taste better (not always, but most of the time) and is a lot more convinient.

<comment><USER6> I disagree, I just yesterday showed someone than although they has switched from Coke to apple juice, the apple juice actually had more sugar. People don't all read labels.

<comment><USER7> Sure it may have more net carbohydrates, but the real difference is the density of those calories and the types of carbohydrates they are.

Eating fast food contains saturated fats (and trans fats) which are incredibly difficult for the body to break down. Olive oil, on the other hand, is almost all monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, which the body can break down much easier.

So yes, I think the GGP poster was more correct in that sometimes people just want a nice big fattening hamburger.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Is that white cream topping a low-fat yogurt or some kind of delicious artery clogging velouté sauce? That distinction alone could make a world a difference if you're calorie/fat counting; different methods of cooking food that ends up appearing the same can drastically change the healthiness of a food. In general, someone's time might be better spent learning the basis of maintaining a nutritional diet and everything that goes along with it, rather than snapping pictures of everything eaten, twice.

</comment><comment><USER9> I have a hack that makes this somewhat simpler — hook into people's online grocery shopping. Then, all the stuff you eat at home can be counted automatically. Obviously, it doesn't work so well if you throw food away (so you have to tell the app that, or allow for a small amount of wastage) or share food (so you have to say how many people live in the household and their consumption profiles), but the data is available now.

Also, you don't need to measure exercise to help with weight-loss; instead just work out how many calories the user is eating and then encourage them to restrict that until they start losing weight (basically we are building an eat-watch à la the hacker diet.)

<comment><USER4> Good idea, except roughly 40% of peoples' food budgets are spent on food outside of the home.

<comment><USER10> Supermarkets are cheaper than eating out.

<comment><USER9> I think what jeebusroxors was trying to say is that supermarkets still contribute a majority of your calories since you get more calories per dollar than you get eating out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >If it seems impossible that an app could recognize food types, consider that software can already recognize faces, voices, specific songs, and fingerprints. Recognizing broccoli can't be that much harder.

Assuming "broccoli" is a stand-in for "arbitrary food", that's one of the most wrong things I've ever seen Scott Adams say. Vision is a really hard problem, and there's far more variance in the appearance of food than there is in those of faces or fingerprints. (Recognizing songs is a non-sequitur.)

<comment><USER12> Well if we limit the visual input to the realms of visible light then maybe not, but what if your camera could recognize other frequencies, like infrared and the brocoli gave off a unique set of frequencies that allowed it to be identified. Also the app doesn't need to know about everything, just everything food related, and not even all of it just the major.

It would also need a way to measure weight. It's all fair enough saying it's broccoli but you also need to say how much.

<comment><USER11> There are tons of probably-unsolvable problems with the idea (how can you tell if something has cream filling from a picture?), but what I'm saying is that even the vision one, which Adams explicitly seems to think is solvable, isn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Meh. Just recording the weights I do along with my body weight (along with a graph of each) works fine, and it honestly couldn't be much easier [1].

[1] Shameless self-promotion: <http://daytaapp.com>

<comment><USER14> I love your app and wish I could find something similar for the Android platform.

EDIT: Or something similar on Windows/Linux/Web(not Daytum)

<comment><USER13> Maybe a web-based compliment to Dayta for iPhone? It may be a possibility (though don't bet on it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Ideally restaurants would upload the nutrition facts of their foods to an online database. (Maybe this should be legally required.)

Such a database would make this app more feasible, as the smart phone could use GPS to figure out what restaurant it is in. Maybe even better would be a numerical code next to each food item on the menu that could be input into a smart phone to provide full nutrition facts. That seems like more of an inevitability than a general picture scanner, offering superior ease of use and, let's face it, technical feasibility.

<comment><USER16> This mode of doing things is, for the most part, already available. There are apps that work around the same principle as CalorieKing, where common restaurants and foodstuffs are saved in a database with their respective nutrition details. This tends to be very convenient when eating at popular restaurants, or eating commonly purchased grocery items.

The GPS element is an interesting twist on the idea though. How cool would it be if you walked into a Qdoba (just as an example), and your phone vibrated and asked you what you were ordering?

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I've seen that kind of wiki-like functionality in the Livestrong Nutrition app, and let's face the facts: preparation styles vary wildly among different restaurants. If I type "slice of pizza" into that nutrition app, I get "large slice," "cheese slice," "small slice," and several tens of variations. It's okay, but not ideal. If I go to the local pizza joint, I want to know fairly certainly what I'm getting in terms of calories if I order one of their specialty pizzas. That's where I think a database would be useful.

As for the GPS, that would be very cool.

As has been said before, the biggest obstacle to food apps is mobilizing a sales force to convince all restaurants to embrace a product. And because many restaurants don't really have (or need) IT capabilities, it's actually costly for them to implement computers and train staff to learn the particular system. That's why OpenTable and others are having problems with adoption.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sort of already exists... only in the other direction.

[http://www.ideaconnection.com/blog/2009/04/japanesetoilet- an...](http://www.ideaconnection.com/blog/2009/04/japanesetoilet-analyzes- your-stool/)

</comment><comment><USER18> The biggest problem with a system like this is scale, how do you determine the size of the portion? Consider these two pictures of mash potatoes

[http://www.mccormick.com/~/media/Images/Recipes/Recipe%20Det...](http://www.mccormick.com/~/media/Images/Recipes/Recipe%20Details/Side%20Dish/Garlic_Cheddar_Mashed_Potatoes.ashx?w=380)

[http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6slcYXNa204/SwT183CdpjI/AAAAAAAABN...](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6slcYXNa204/SwT183CdpjI/AAAAAAAABN0/AWLXdX1sZxU/s320/GarlicMashedPotatoes_l.jpg)

We all know from years of experience that the first image is a larger bowl and probably contains 6-8 times the amount as the second picture, but image analysis would not.

</comment><comment><USER19> Health data could be a powerful next data layer, perhaps as location has become. There are some devices and apps in the space, but I haven't seen anything yet that focuses on _publishing_ the data, as Foursquare focuses on publishing location and tips and I think Adams has it right... it's got to be easy (and fun) or people will just give up.

<comment><USER20> Your figure publishes the data well enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm tired of calorie apps that think I only eat out at Chili's, McDonalds, and other chains or prepackaged foods such as Mac & Cheese, Sara Lee, and Oreos.

The ultimate food calorie app would know the calories in a Mission burrito.

<comment><USER22> It's so variable. I had a burrito last week at 24th and Shotwell that was more than half the size of my upper arm.

<comment><USER4> There are no apps that will save you from that kind of decision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I am pretty sure I have seen an app that does food recognition already. Not sure if it was for iPhone, or traditional desktop.

The one sad aspect of this idea is that in theory, humans should be able to determine their needs without external monitoring devices - certainly when it comes to food.

Perhaps instead of an external device, it would be better to invest in some self awareness? I realize, though, that it is not possible for everybody, in fact, I also don't know a good way to learn it.

<comment><USER24> Most humans are capable of eating healthy. As most humans are capable of recognizing faces. But not all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I almost always eat 100% of what I cook and put on my plate. After reading this article it struck me that some people, or even a majority of people, might not does the same. Do you throw away a significant amount of your food?

Of course I live alone and most of the time I cook what I bought in more than one meal... But what I put in my plate always goes in my stomach. How could it be otherwise? But if not, why bother with a picture of what have been left in the plate!

</comment><comment><USER26> It would be a pain to pull a smartphone out before each meal to snap a picture. To put some UX polish on this idea, it should be an embedded appliance fitted inside the stomach or other suitable organ. I'm not a doctor, but installing a device that "reads all input" would be more accurate, user- friendly, and not require food photography 3-6 times a day.

</comment><comment><USER27> This takes "feature X shouldn't be too hard to implement" to a whole new level: "Recognizing broccoli can't be that much harder."

</comment><comment><USER28> _Perhaps your watch could display both the current time and how many days you have left if you keep living the way you are._

I think walking around with a death clock ticking away on my wrist would stress me out to the point of significantly lowering my life expectancy. Does the app account for that?

</comment><comment><USER29> A lot of this is already available. DailyBurn with scanner app will fill in nutritional info from labels. Scales transmit your weight to online services. Fitbit will track your movement levels and sleep. Runkeeper will track how much you run. Not perfect yet, but a synthesis is inevitable.

</comment><comment><USER30> Someone just started working on Gourmet Goggles in their 20 percent time.

</comment><comment><USER31> If this ever becomes popular, I expect orthorexia rates to soar.</comment>


US carriers illegally sold 911 location data - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/02/att-t-mobile-sprint-reportedly-broke-us-law-by-selling-911-location-data/ <comment><USER2> I honestly don't understand the process by which someone at these carriers proposed this as a product and somehow it was all approved and the carriers decided this was a good thing to do. How much revenue did selling this data provide them? It surely can't be much.

(I get it could've been worth more if they provided it to ad networks somehow but that doesn't seem to be the case according to the articles.)

<comment><USER3> It got approved because the FCC, as a regulatory body, has no teeth. The largest-ever fine issued by the FCC was $120 million. Their attorneys probably put the total regulatory risk of non-compliance at around $1 million.

According to the article they were charging up to $1,100 per phone for the location data.

So if they sold data on 1,000 customers they're in the black on the program even after they deal with the regulatory "headache."

<comment><USER4> This is why there should be criminal charges. They can eat cash penalties but people generally prefer to stay out of prison.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe they should have GDPR-like fines (I am not saying that GDPR it self is good!): "In some cases, violators of the GDPR may be fined up to €20 million or up to 4% of the annual worldwide turnover of the preceding financial year in case of an enterprise, whichever is greater."

AT&T's revenue is 170.756 billion so the fine would be up to 6830 million dollars, or almost 7 billion dollars.

Maybe this kind of threat would stop them from selling this private data.

<comment><USER6> I think the best way to stop people from doing bad things is personal accountability.

If a company deliberately break the law, why not send those who decided to to that, the CEO and the chairman of the board to prison?

<comment><USER7> First and foremost I think it is a cultural problem. This behaviour is seen as "just what people do" and therefore we _must_ punish it otherwise it will _never_ go away. I don't disagree that punishment is something that is warranted, but I also think that maybe it is time to take a deep hard look at why this behaviour is so prevalent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> We are all up in arms about modern tech companies "selling data" by offering targeted ad placement. I propose that this outrage properly belongs with older and more traditional institutions, from your telco to your supermarket, who are _literally_ exchanging spreadsheets of personal data for money.

</comment><comment><USER9> How about prosecuting all those involved with illegal wiretapping?</comment>


The Mandalorian wouldn't be what it was without Mandalorian cosplay groups - <AUTHOR> https://www.polygon.com/star-wars/2020/4/23/21227476/star-wars-the-mandalorian-clone-wars-cosplay-timeline-boba-fett-mask-signet-costume <comment><USER2> Super cool. I never realized the extent of the feedback loop between SW canon and SW fan culture.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah! It's a really fascinating thing.</comment></comment>


What if SOPA, PIPA win? Let's be positive - <AUTHOR>

Let's be positive. If SOPA, PIPA win, Wikipedia could launch satellites and give rise to a new Internet, where knowledge is truly free.<p>What do you think :-)? <comment><USER2> I think you underestimate how difficult it is to create a network of satellites and the latency would be fucking terrible. :-)</comment>


Spotify's new ad format - <AUTHOR> New (first time I've seen one at least) ads are simply perfect.
* the ads autoplay right after program startup, even when the music is paused
* they are full volume and don't respond to Spotify's UI (mute, volume change, play/pause)
* they do have separate controls (pause/volume) - it's a small embed video hidden in a big ad, the controls only show on hover over that video
* BONUS: you can press play and music starts to play over the ad
Reproducible every time.
What drives company like Spotify to turn into annoying ad-ware-like model? This will drive customers away, not into subscription. Or is it advertisers' fault and Spotify simply let them too loose? Either way, it was an instant uninstall for me. <comment><USER2> You could pay the $10 a month. I don't understand why people are so hesitant to pay for stuff on the internet?

<comment><USER3> Simple! Because they don't want to take my money.

Let me explain: I'm living in a country where Spotify isn't present just yet. So I have to use a VPN every now and then to "trick" Spotify that I'm an US user traveling abroad.

I want to buy a subscription, I really want, but I can't use Paypal nor a credit card (because of the country restriction) so the only way of getting a valid subscription is to buy an overpriced gift card (i.e. $16+ for a $10 card).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's unlikely that they made such decisions "lightly". Most of the time the correct pricing decision is: make higher pricing (especially for a "startup" which had aggressive pricing to conquer the market). To raise the price of your ads, you need to make them more sticky/entangling, the outcome is straightforward!

<comment><AUTHOR> It was an ad by/for Universal Music and their Spotify playlist. I was once told here at HN that these ads are not actually paid but are part of a licensing deal.

<comment><USER4> Interesting, thanks for sharing! I think it still applies in some ways, if I get it right that is probably used to lower the licenses fee. Raise the price or lower the costs, I think they need to show margin somehow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I use the web interface [http://play.spotify.com/](http://play.spotify.com/) . I have uBlock Origin installed. It appears to adblock Spotify by default.

</comment><comment><USER6> "This will drive customers away, not into subscription."

It probably will not, I'm pretty sure they have the statistics, however it will make some annoyed non-paying customers complain on the internet.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe it's targeted.

Increase level of unusability for long-time users because there's a better chance they will switch. And it's still better for Spotify if those users leave as Spotify can't sell ads for shit - haven't heard any real ad in months (it's only Spotify ads that are intentionally annoying or ads for playlists by major music labels which are supposedly subsidized by Spotify).

But be gentle to new users at the same time to not drive them away.

(As for being a non-paying customer, global pricing tells me it's expensive; I would use the freemium model, but apparently they are not capable of running it as a freeemium)

<comment><USER7> IIRC they pay artists the same whether a listen was free or paid.</comment></comment></comment>


Scale-Up Leadership Lessons I've Learned Over 9 Years - <AUTHOR> https://readthink.com/scale-up-leadership-lessons-i-ve-learned-over-9-years-as-hubspot-s-ceo-39521f5b7567#.l91ol166q <comment><USER2> Hmmm. This was a good guide to leadership in any non startup organization, not just those in scale up mode.

Especially enjoyed the net promoter score idea--great way to get employee feedback at scale.</comment>


Huawei's attempts to copycat a T-Mobile robot read like a comical spy movie - <AUTHOR> https://www.businessinsider.com/us-indictment-against-huawei-t-mobile-reads-spy-movie-2019-1 <comment><USER2> (Disclosure: I make robots for mobile testing.)

I wish more companies realized all the spying and stealing of information would be unnecessary if they started collaborating on making open source hardware testing equipment. A robot that taps a screen shouldn't be considered a super important trade secret.

<comment><USER3> There was a civil lawsuit and Huawei won.

This is probably just part of the general witch hunt the US is undertaking against Huawei.

<comment><USER4> Civil suits and criminal suits are separate. I'm not sure if settling a civil suit can be seen as exonerating for a criminal suit. Standard of proof is higher for a criminal suit, and civil suits can be settled easily with money.

I don't think witch hunt is the right term, as there was obvious unethical acts (possibly criminal). Although, it is definitely an escalation and I do wish there was more communicating through diplomats than through legal systems.

<comment><USER5> A classic example: OJ Simpson was found not guilty in his criminal trial, but was found liable in his civil trial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If this is factual, it shows a HQ-coordinated push to steal secrets about a single modified industrial robot. I don't understand why they put up so much effort for this one machine with questionable impact on their bottom line?

<comment><USER7> This is just the one they got caught for, probably.

<comment><USER8> Right. I've heard from friends in telco that Huawei techs would routinely open server racks during 3am service calls and photograph everything. This was years ago, but I'm guessing a company wide incentive program wouldn't get igored by many Huawei techs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is ridiculous. It's a SCARA arm with a touch probe, camera, etc. I have personally developed such systems to test touch screens for applications ranging from commercial to aerospace.

As a side thought, this is the kind of thing that is wrong with our patent system:

Implementation is confused with invention. The USPTO grants patents for things that any reasonable engineering team would implement given a problem to solve.

Engineering is about problem solving. Not all solutions are inventions. In fact, I would argue that there are very few true inventions these days and that the general rate of true inventions should naturally decline over time.

In other words, the threshold for what should constitute a true patentable invention, given accumulated knowledge, should increase with time.

<comment><USER10> I think its human nature for things to seem 'obvious' after the fact, but creating something novel doesn't require it to be technically challenging.

<comment><USER11> I had this reaction to a number of graduate computing courses, the feeling that given five minutes on the problem (parallelism comes to mind) anyone would have thought of that approach!

In retrospect, it's clear how much that mentality undervalues what was being taught in the course. Yeah, the initial approach might be obvious, but so are plenty more initial approaches. What made it through to the course and was put down in the textbook are the few initial approaches that actually worked.

/Textbooks should have a long list of attempted approaches that seemed great and weren't, but no one publishes failures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This raises so many questions:

1\. How many pictures do you need? It seems they keep sending out pictures and then they send more people to get more pictures. Is there a lot of additional value in additional pictures?

2\. How hard is it to reverse engineer tappy? Once you know how it works, I just assumed that Huawei has more than enough engineering talent to put together a tappy.

3\. Was there a particular component of tappy that was hard to copy?

4\. If I had to guess, the software that recognizes if the phone screen is on and working is the secret sauce. Not the mechanical tapping which, although sophisticated, is presumably copyable.

<comment><USER13> In answer to #1, I'd assume because Chinese PMs are much the same as PMs elsewhere.

PM: "Why aren't we done yet?"

Dev: "Umm, we need more photos."

{Cue never ending stream of request for photos}

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I raised this in the other thread... that article suggested this incident had already been litigated in civil courts with Huawei being found guilty.

What is different now and why wasn't it a bigger deal before?

<comment><USER15> Googling says they weren't found to be "willful and malicious" and only "breach of contract." I guess this new evidence suggest it was willful and malicious.

Also note that this story doesn't cover the other charges of wire fraud brought against them.

<comment><USER16> Also, IIRC, the new charges are criminal. The previous case was a civil one.

[https://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil- cases-...](https://litigation.findlaw.com/filing-a-lawsuit/civil-cases-vs- criminal-cases-key-differences.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why would T-Mobile still give one seat to Huawei US engineer for testing after knowing the company is trying to steal the trade secret...?

<comment><USER18> People elsewhere in the the comments pointed out that Tappy seems to be a derivative of the open source Tapster robot. So I suppose it's possible that T-Mobile (or at least the people overseeing the Tappy lab) simply didn't _care_ very much. They might have objected to photos and long lists of questions to avoid letting Huawei crib all the challenging parts of their upgrades, but not have been particularly concerned with whether people saw the basic functioning of the thing, even knowing they wanted to copy it.

Now, a _very_ cynical idea is that T-Mobile figured Tappy wasn't expensive to replicate regardless, so the maximum profit lay in indulging Huawei's decision to commit a trade secrets violation. That would explain giving Huawei continued access while refusing to answer questions and installing good-faith safeguards in the lab. There's some circumstantial evidence which could back this: T-Mobile apparently considered licensing out Tappy, which is what started the lab-access program at issue here. And TMO did sue Huawei for "reasonable royalties" on Tappy plus double that in punitive damages, though all they got were breach of contract damages. If they suspected that Huawei wouldn't buy an expensive license and could replicate Tappy without espionage cheaply, then a shot at triple royalties might have sounded like a winning outcome.

I don't believe that's true here. It'd require probably-illegal coordination to get T-Mobile staff on the same page, all in the interest of fighting a lengthy trial to maybe receive damages which would be tough to sustain on appeal and collect. But laches defenses exist for a reason, and a strategic delay to collect larger damages is at least an interesting possibility to consider.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Did they not have access to youtube?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv69ZxKOFSw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mv69ZxKOFSw)

<comment><USER20> Yep - in China they do not have access to youtube. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_C...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Websites_blocked_in_mainland_China)

<comment><USER16> Even so, I'm sure Huawei provides an uncensored VPN connection to its engineers to bypass such blocks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This reads like Benny Hill was in charge of the operation.

<comment><USER22> "China asked A.X for detailed measurements of Tappy's robot arm. On May 29, A.X allegedly walked into T-Mobile's lab, broke off Tappy's arm, and put it into his bag. When discovered again by T-Mobile, he gave the arm back, but the damage was done."

I can hear the theme music.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Reading this makes me want to play Shadowrun. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> This whole thing seems so tacky and cheap. It reminds me of a rich old person holding up the line so he can get his Senior discount and save $1.47. Is Huawei so poor and T-Mobile charging so much to use the robot?

</comment><comment><USER25> Yea this sounds like some random people back in huawei China were super curious about this robot and wanted to copy it so they didn't need to buy from some company rather than some kind of broad company effort to steal super high tech stuff. I hope if governments are going to go after huawei they have more than this pretty lame story..

<comment><USER26> Probably lots of firms have committed similar goofiness at some point. Huawei is criticized for this particular episode because TPTB have approved Huawei as an acceptable target for our Two Minutes Hate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> How hard could it be to build? Actually the whole articulated arm thing seems quite unnecessary to me since you're dealing with interactions on a flat plane.

A simple XYZ platform driven by steppers would probably be far easier and more reliable/reproducible. Throw some OpenCV in with feature tracking and a database of phone screenshots and some shitty internal web app and...lol

<comment><USER28> These robot arms are off the shelf and very repeatable and reliable. They're used all over the place in automation and assembly every day. What's hard about using this either the controllers are very good and can be easily scripted for the whole sequence of test touches T Mobile's engineers wanted. They're also very fast moving so they can rapidly test across different parts of the screen.

<comment><USER29> If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the details? This is more irrefutable than the usual info. H might have done a great job developing their own tech in some areas totally on their own, but that's not what was happening here.

<comment><USER16> > If they are so easy why was Huawei trying so persistently to steal the > details?

As someone mentioned upthread, it could just be company culture around how they value stolen trade secrets vs internally developed know-how. Sort of like, once upon a time, "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM."

<comment><USER29> It's not okay to try to steal things (as we probably don't even need to mention). It's doesn't matter if that is the accepted way to do things in a company, you are making a moral mistake. I don't want to tar everyone in the company as being that way, but it would be a serious thing to consider if someone in Huawei in my town (they have offices in the Seattle area) was looking for a job.

If you work in a company that has standard cultural practices of stealing things, then you have to not do it. Of course many companies try to be aggressive and push the illegal envelope (like say Uber) but you have to be moral and honest, it's a crucial aspect of the professionalism that we should have. That's a difficult line that I feel fortunate never to have faced in my software engineering career. Think about those engineers and leaders at VW who lied about the 'defeat device'. I would guess they were in some kind of automotive or mechanical or other professional organization that had a code of ethics that you couldn't do those things.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zoom admits some calls were routed through China by mistake - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/03/zoom-calls-routed-china/ <comment><USER3> So everybody here doing the "mistake" thing as if there's the slightest sign that this was on purpose. Despite their explaination is 100% consistent - <USER2> only comment I'd expect from a technical knowledgable person is "yeah that's the kind of mistake that happens when you need to juggle a shitton of load in a global customer base."

Having geofencing in their routing algorithms is state of the art, and probably more advanced than most other services.

<comment><USER4> They accidentally whitelisted Chinese servers for non-Chinese users. What does that have to do with anything technical or scaling? It'd be a scaling mistake if the whitelists didn't exist because they thought Chinese servers would never be chosen because of the distance, but they already knew that could happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Why doesn't China's firewall block traffic like this?

<comment><USER6> Because the Great Firewall operates as a blacklist and is only intended to prevent commoners from learning censored information.

If Zoom meetings where anyone can join became a popular source of unfiltered news, they'd either ban Zoom or require that a two-class system is set up to prevent ordinary Chinese users from using Zoom to communicate internationally, similarly to how Douyin (within China) and Tiktok (everywhere else) are two separate silos.

But people from other countries connecting to servers in China is not something the Great Firewall tries to interfere with.

<comment><USER7> From my experience it's not just a blacklist, any non-blessed traffic is slowed down to a crawl (on the order of double digit kbps). This also applies to getting content from China.

(that said, it's pretty reasonable to assume Zoom is not throttled given how important it is in the buisness world)

<comment><USER8> So who's making a tunnel on Zoom calls then?

A network interface with WireGuard behind a fake camera interface on a relay node?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft divests from Israeli facial-recognition startup - <AUTHOR> https://techxplore.com/news/2020-03-microsoft-divests-israeli-facial-recognition-startup.html <comment><USER2> > Microsoft also said Friday it is still divesting its stake in the startup, > and will stop making minority investments in companies that sell facial- > recognition technology.

> The company based in Redmond, Washington, said that the audit underscored > the challenges of being a minority investor in a company selling sensitive > technology because it may not have enough oversight or control over how the > technology is used.

Well done, Microsoft. A principled stand and one worth applauding.

</comment><comment><USER3> iSentry is the one to keep your eye on.</comment>


Where the hell are the new MacBooks? - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/where-the-hell-are-the-new-macbooks-1781910047 <comment><USER2> This article, in my opinion, didn't raise above the level of a petty rant. For a more nuanced look at Apple's Mac pipeline (which also predicted that WWDC wouldn't have hardware announcements), there's this from MacRumors:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/08/new-macbook-air-pro- june...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/06/08/new-macbook-air-pro-june- unveiling-rumor/)

<comment><USER3> Honestly, when was the last time WWDC had HW announcements? Those almost always come in spring/fall now.

<comment><USER4> 2013

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you buy a laptop based only on raw specs, you are in a different market than the vast majority of laptop users.

Most people want their laptop to be reasonably fast, get solid battery life, and have a nice display and ergonomics. Also important is power saving technology (sleep, hibernate, etc.) and storage size/speed.

Most commodity laptops that are competing in the raw specs wars have major deficiencies in one or more of the above areas.

If you are a Windows user, you have taken on the task of dealing with a broken, polluted driver ecosystem and lots of malware, as well as an OS that shows you ads on the desktop.

If you are a Linux user you take on the task of making sure your bleeding edge hardware works with linux. This is no small task and in many cases it's over a year after release that linux support for new technology becomes anything approaching reliable.

A Macbook, on the other hand, just works, and works extremely well. It is a reliable work horse that does its job without complaining. The hardware and ergonomics fade into the background and you just focus on your work.

I suppose if you are a gamer there is a case to be made for running Windows on bleeding edge hardware, but such gamers are a very small percentage of laptop users.

<comment><USER6> > If you buy a laptop based only on raw specs, you are in a different market > than the vast majority of laptop users.

Yeah, I think they call those people developers.

> A Macbook, on the other hand, just works, and works extremely well. It is a > reliable work horse that does its job without complaining. The hardware and > ergonomics fade into the background and you just focus on your work.

Except MacBooks max out at 8GB of memory. At this point 16GB doesn't cut it anymore for my development, so MacBook Pros and iMacs are out too. I have entertained the idea of getting a Mac Pro, except they are even more woefully out of date at this point.

<comment><USER7> I'm having a hard time understanding the idea that a developer needs some kind of massive AV workhorse with 32 GB of RAM.

Do you mean animator, graphic artist, or video editor?

How much RAM does a compiler, debugger, IDE, and database need? If you are a web developer, are you running a clone of your whole server stack on your laptop, including databases?

I'm a developer, and what I want from a laptop is, mostly, a big clear screen and a port to connect another big, clear screen when I'm at my desk. Since my work products are largely text files, I don't even need a large hard drive. A fast CPU helps build large codebases but since I have incremental compilation in my C/C++ toolchain, it's not like these days I spend a large part of my time compiling.

Genuinely curious -- what kind of a developer needs more than 16 GB of RAM to make a machine viable for development?

I have a Mac Pro with four hard drives and a big screen too, but I use that for audio and video production where it is helpful.

<comment><USER6> I am building a next generation database product. With debugging symbols enabled, the running database can easily take up 8GB in some of our unit tests. Then there is a web services layer written in Java above that. And then there is my IDE. And a web browser that leaks abysmally on Google Apps. And a bloated chat application for communicating with all my remote colleagues. At that point the OS starts spending a lot of time trying to compress pages.

I have also experimented with doing building and testing on a remote server, but the overhead of having to synchronize local changes to the remote server, rebuild, etc. tends to overwhelm the cost of debugging and iterating on individual tests.

<comment><USER7> Ah, thanks for the explanation. That makes sense.

For what I do, which these days is mostly embedded programming, I've gotten used to the fact that even a wimpy laptop's CPU and RAM far outstrip what I had on my desktop a few years ago. I was just looking at some e-mails I sent in 1993 where I was talking about building a compressed trie structure for a database to go on CD-ROM, on a Pentium machine, and how it kept running overnight and crashing. These days it could easily fit in RAM without hitting VM and I'm not sure it would even make the fans speed up. (Hmmm, I think I might have the old data set and source; I should give it a try!)

Once in a while I have to do something horrific, like build an embedded Linux kernel with customizations on a VM... and that is punishing, so I do try to run that on a desktop box with some Xeons...

<comment><USER6> Oh, I definitely recognize the absurdity of the amounts of memory modern software consumes. Twenty years ago I used Linux with 256MB RAM and had pretty much the same sorts of applications running.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The real question is where the hell are the new Mac Pro towers? There are people outside of Mom and Dad that require something more than a laptop integrated into a monitor.

<comment><USER9> It's crazy that they undertook such a radical redesign effort and then appeared to drop it. I'm typing this reply on one right now. I do love the machine, but the fact that there still isn't an official source for SSD upgrades is baffling. Apple has a helpful page on how to swap the SSD, but won't sell you one at any price. You can get OEM parts that "fell off a truck" on eBay, or you can get expensive OWC parts that lack TRIM support.

It seemed like the video cards would be upgradeable too, but nope. And no Crossfire support in macOS is really sad. Under Windows, these are actually fairly capable gaming machines.

<comment><USER8> Yeh a radical compact design, that no one asked for in that market space. I'll grant them the iMac crowd, but for everyone else, giving us the ability to easily swap some common components shouldn't have been effectively taken away. I'm not sure how much longer my 2008 MacPro is going to live, and it sucks because I don't have anything to replace it with. Hackintosh might be my ONLY option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm still breathing life into my 17" MBP from 2010 holding out for Apple to finally make another one.

<comment><USER11> same here. Mine is 2012 and if they don't offer something decent this fall, I will just add in an SSD to replace the HDD. That ought to hold the perf for a while longer.

<comment><USER10> I've done that twice (a 500GB then a 1TB). The 8GB of RAM wasn't getting it done without it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't just want new MacBooks. I want new MacBooks that I can fix myself, and have someone other than Apple to fix it. I'm hanging on to my 2012 Pro model as best I can, and see no reason to spend the money on a product that isn't really mine.

</comment><comment><USER13> > by omission it's made something startlingly clear: your next laptop won't be > an Apple one.

not if you're an attendee of WWDC or anyone else developing for iOS or macOS....

I agree with @morley... it's just a lame rant.

<comment><USER14> If the primary reason someone's next laptop is going to be an Apple one is that they're developing for iOS (or OS X for that matter), that reinforces the article's point rather than counters it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> kind of wild there was no mention in the article of the new macbook, which IMO is an objectively better overall machine than either the air or the pro.

<comment><USER16> Objectively better in what respect? It's thinner and lighter, yes, but it's also slower, has extremely limited connectivity to external devices (only one USB-C port and no Thunderbolt), and has a nontraditional low-travel keyboard design that would be most politely described as "polarizing".

Better for some use cases, yes-- it's a great machine if you need something small and light for travel and don't need to do particularly intensive computing on the road. But it (intentionally) makes enough compromises that you can't make a blanket statement that it's "objectively better" for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What a whiny article.

My 2013 MBP is still working great, and I'm in no hurry for new ones to come out. I use mine mostly for my photography (RAW editing, catalog management, etc.) and it handles the 36 megapixel images from my camera just fine - I drag sliders and the changes show up in real time. I keep all of my RAW files on an external HD, so if I really needed things faster my first step would be to buy a faster one (SSD).

I also occasionally use it for development, and I don't have any problems there, either.

The most true statement in the article is that my next laptop may not be an Apple, but that has a lot more to do with Apple's crappy software quality lately, and the fact the photo software I use also works on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER18> I just wonder if we're seeing Apple try to slowly move away from being a "devices" company and identify itself in terms of "general computing", so including software and services.

So yeah, everyone has this super-strong connotation of "Apple = awesome devices", and they still wait in anticipation for new, beautiful hardware. But it sure seems like Apple is trying to drive a different identity.

I'll truly believe this is happening when iMessage hits Android, which I didn't hear any mention of, despite the rumors.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you look at just how painful the Skylake launch was on Windows and Linux, I figure they're waiting on hardware/drivers that actually work as intended.

</comment><comment><USER20> Macbook air is somewhat in apple terms an old technology(it's the best value for money imo). So there is a great chance that we won't see a refresh for macbook air. Pro 13 gets thinner and lighter taking over the air.

</comment><comment><USER21> I stopped holding my breath after hearing that the function keys in a "Pro" laptop might be replaced by a touch sensitive strip like Lenovo tried on the X1 Carbon.

</comment><comment><USER22> They'll hold off on hardware announcements until they can ship them with macOS 12 already on them. Why would they announce new hardware that you'd have to do a full OS upgrade on in a few months?

<comment><USER23> They've done that numerous times in the past.

The truth is they had plenty to announce, so it's not too surprising that they didn't include hardware. I imagine there will be an update later, perhaps at the usual Back to Mac event.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fact that journalists still expect Apple to announce hardware at a software engineering conference amazes me.

<comment><USER25> That expectation might have something to do with the fact that apple almost always announces new hardware at their WWDC keynote. For both google and apple's developer conferences, the developer conference part of it happens in the sessions after the keynote, and the keynote is mostly just a press event.

<comment><USER26> No hardware announcements at 2014 or 2015. Perhaps a new trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Lol. Yesterday's event was a software event, a jam packed incredibly long one at that. It was so packed they didn't even have time to talk about all the changes to the app store, which is why Apple disclosed that info ahead of time. Not sure when you would expect them to all also announce new hardware.

Just download iOS10 and open the new Breathe app, and Breathe. New Macbooks, iPhones, Macbook Pros, and Apple Watches will all come in time in future events.

<comment><USER28> It was also incredibly boring as a software event. Extended discussion of emoji, but nothing about Apple's brand-new copy-on-write file system. At a "developers" conference!

<comment><USER29> Being able to link apps into iMessage is probably a lot more interesting to most developers than APFS is. Very few developers will make a dollar off APFS.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Workflow for Scientific Computing in the Cloud? - <AUTHOR>

I have recently come into the situation where I need to run cloud computing on demand for my research. Amazon's EC2 Spot Instances are an ideal platform for this as I can requisition an appropriate instance for the given experiment {high cpu, high memory, GPU instance} depending on its needs. However I currently spin up the instance manually, set it up, run the experiment, and then terminate manually. This gets tedious monitoring experiments for completion, and I incur unnecessary costs if a job finishes while I'm sleeping for example. The whole thing really should be automated. I'm looking for a workflow somewhat similar to this:
Manually create amazon machine image (AMI) for experiment.
Manually issue command to start AMI on specified spot instance type.
Automatically connect EBS to instance for result storage.
Automatically run specified experiment, bonus if this can be parameterized.
Automatically terminate spot instance on job completion.
Something like docker that spun up on demand spot instances of a specified type for each run and terminated said instance at run completion would be absolutely perfect. I also know HTCondor can back onto EC2 spot instances but I haven't really been able to find any concise information on how to setup a personal cloud — I also think managing an HTCondor installation may negate the savings of all the automation. Do any other HN users have similar problems? How did you solve it? What is your workflow? Thanks!
NOTE: I posted this to Slashdot as well, but reposted here as I don't think it'll get much attention there. <comment><USER2> I don't have a Scientific Computing Workflow/Background, but the AWS recommended tool for automated deployment to AWS is Cloudformation

[http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/](http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/)

Connecting Spot instances to EBS volumes isn't really possible via their APIs though. Amazon's API seems to regard Spot Instances as stateless compute entities, you need to push the results to a real on-demand instance (with attached EBS Volume) or something like ec2.

If you have massive compute requirements, companies like

[http://www.cyclecomputing.com/](http://www.cyclecomputing.com/)

will do the hard work for you, otherwise with a bit of configuration work you can spin up a master node with an ebs volume along with a set of spot instances (of any type) to perform the work.

Checkout the Cloudformation template examples. There's bound to be something that's pretty close to your use case (including software installs etc).</comment>


Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar <comment><USER2> From 2004.</comment>


Why do VCs pull term sheets? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Why-do-VCs-pull-term-sheets?srid=pg

<comment><USER2> You have to think of a term sheet as a marriage proposal. Money wired to your startup's bank account is the consummation.

A lot can happen during the engagement and after the wedding... the way the 5 lbs. of legal documents are written, an annulment is possible, and it will go really bad for the startup.

Trust and respect will help in almost any relationship!</comment>


A New Report Raises Big Questions About Last Year's DNC Hack - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenation.com/article/a-new-report-raises-big-questions-about-last-years-dnc-hack/ <comment><USER2> I find it impossible to take this article seriously, given claims such as this (note the last sentence):

 _The metadata established several facts in this regard with granular precision: On the evening of July 5, 2016, 1,976 megabytes of data were downloaded from the DNC's server. The operation took 87 seconds. This yields a transfer rate of 22.7 megabytes per second._

 _These statistics are matters of record and essential to disproving the hack theory. No Internet service provider, such as a hacker would have had to use in mid-2016, was capable of downloading data at this speed._

<comment><USER3> Same reaction here - this is based on the premise that the data was transferred directly from the DNC server to somebody's home connection, and doesn't allow for the possibility that it was first transferred to some server in a data center.

[https://blog.serverdensity.com/network-performance-aws- googl...](https://blog.serverdensity.com/network-performance-aws-google- rackspace-softlayer/)

Just some random article from 2014, look at the data points for transfers between data centers where anybody can rent servers:

      Amazon "us-east" <-> "us-west" 210 mbit/s
      Google "us-central" <-> "europe-west" 189 mbit/s
      Rackspace "Dallas" <-> "North Virginia" 534 mbit/s
      Softlayer "Dallas" <-> "Amsterdam" 61 mbit/s</comment></comment>


37signals silently drops Basecamp basic plan.  - <AUTHOR> http://basecamphq.com/signup <comment><USER2> With all the celebrity attention Jason Fried and co get, they can't do anything "quiety".</comment>


Robots at Work and Play (photos) - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/07/robots-at-work-and-play/532695/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> Surprisingly diverse and real set of applications. Personal favorite "Robotic jockeys control camels".</comment>


Biggest web hosting sites were vulnerable to simple account takeover hacks - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/14/web-hosting-account-hacks/ <comment><USER2> Sites like [https://observatory.mozilla.org](https://observatory.mozilla.org) can tell you if your site is vulnerable to these sorts of attacks. I end up setting the correct headers and the warnings go away. I have never actually tried to simulate an attack on my own domain though.

One thing that is bugging me though.. let's say I am setting up a nextcloud instance behind a reverse proxy. The way I have been doing it I have had to manually set the right headers in my nginx conf. But this doesn't seem right. Nextcloud already has these headers... I think. Is there someway of telling nginx to pass along the backend's headers?

A lot of web applications should already have these issues figured out.</comment>


SociaLink (iOS App) Looks To Break World Download Records With Release 12/17/12 - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/SociaLinkApp SociaLink is a revolutionary iPhone app that allows you to connect with someone you meet instantly on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Now, when you are at bars or at business events, you will never lose a contact again!<p>www.Facebook.com/SociaLinkApp www.Twitter.com/SociaLinkApp <comment><AUTHOR> SociaLink is a revolutionary iPhone app that allows you to connect with someone you meet instantly on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Now, when you are at bars or at business events, you will never lose a contact again!

<http://www.Facebook.com/SociaLinkApp> <http://www.Twitter.com/SociaLinkApp></comment>


So Steve Jobs walked into a Mac team meeting with an iPad - <AUTHOR> http://posterous.mclov.in/so-steve-jobs-walks-into-a-mac-team-meeting-w

<comment><USER2> I don't get it. The iPad does not turn on instantaneously from being turned off. It does turn on instantaneously from sleep, as does my MacBook Pro (aside from some significant caveats, such as the time it takes to re-join a wireless network). The trick with the iPad is that sleep is the state you get when pressing the button that looks suspiciously like a power button. The iPad also does not have a Safe Sleep or Hibernate state like the MacBook does, so it will drain battery until turning itself completely off.

Is the solution to design a laptop that you never turn completely off except in rare circumstances?

<comment><USER3> The solution is to enforce the same "save everything, all the time, because someone might hit Home on that shit at any moment" philosophy that gets rid of the difference between close, quit, sleep, hibernate, and power-off for iPhone and iPad apps.

<comment><USER4> An alternate solution could be a timer that switches the MacBook from "ram- sleep" to "disk-sleep" automatically after 10 minutes or so.

Currently, when you close the lid, it will just ram-sleep until the battery is almost dry and only _then_ suspend to disk.

It's quite frustrating to pull the MacBook out of its sleeve in a meeting only to realize it has "slept itself to death" once again...

<comment><USER5> You might want to check up on that: does your MacBook keep playing music if it's "ram-sleeping"? If so, it might not really sleeping as hard as it should. I've kept my MBP's in "I shut it and put it away" mode for days without noticeably losing juice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In their defense, I really don't see how my MBP is any slower at waking up than my iPad. And you really only have to cold boot them when there are updates to the OS...

</comment><comment><USER6> Just a completely bogus story by someone who must not be a Mac user.

I put my MacBook to sleep and it wakes up instantly. I shut down my MacBook and it takes a min to boot.

I put my iPad to sleep and it wakes up instantly. I shut down my iPad and it takes a min to boot.

It's the exact same interaction. My MacBook will sleep for a day or more with no problem, come back and it's instant on. If it sleeps to the point of killing the battery it hibernates instead where the RAM is written to disk.

I think this guy doesn't understand how well Macs perform with sleep/hibernate/shutdown and he's imagining it works like his generic PC.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think this is one of those things people really underestimated as just 'being nice to have' (aka instant on). It's a feature of the iPhone that I think is easy to overlook and is really one of many consumer focused touches that set device apart.

If they can pull this off (really pull it off, not some sleep mode bs), I think this would be a huge selling point for Apple.

</comment><comment><USER8> I open up my Macbook and it's instantly on. You don't need to turn it off when you're finished using it - it really doesn't take that much power in standby.

\-- Ayjay on Fedang

</comment><comment><USER9> Fear: the solution will be proprietary memory DIMMS where each one comes with a flash backing store.

<comment><USER10> I don't care about this because I don't build my own computers anymore. Almost no one builds their own cars (hot rodders aside). Even fewer build their own laptops, and I've never heard of anyone building their own cell phone. So if a company can make the whole device that I buy smaller, faster, more reliable, easier to use, etc., that's going to be something I'll pay for. I honestly don't care at all _how_ they do it, as long as it makes the device better by the standard I just enumerated.

You can talk about how open something is until you're blue in the face, and that has nothing to do with whether most users will want it or not. Walk into an Apple store and count how many customers ask about what kind of RAM is in the white plastic MacBook they're about about to buy, or about Mac OS X's POSIX compliance, or even how to bring up a shell. The number you come up with will average close to zero. What's more, this isn't a bad thing!

<comment><USER9> Not many people build their own these days. But it's not uncommon to add RAM after purchase.

At the moment, you can buy RAM anywhere, so you're not limited to the vendor's overpriced offerings, if they even sell RAM upgrades.

But if Apple came up with RAM units that included on-board Flash backup, they'd be the only source for it, so adding RAM later would depend on Apple's inclination to sell upgrade packages, and would be priced higher than current RAM prices.

<comment><USER10> OK, but why is that important? If they did that well enough, their computers would be improved and have increased value for me. I'm more than happy to pay more for something that is better.

At any rate, I don't think that we'll have to worry about upgrading the memory in our computers. The RAM in my phone is soldered in place, and I've never thought once (until now) about adding more. This might seem shocking, but ask yourself: with the rise of the laptop, where have all the expansion slots gone? Why doesn't anyone miss them? They seemed like such a big deal twenty (and even ten) years ago, but now we all get along fine without any of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's worth noting that Man Utd also ended the 2008 season £699m in debt with operating losses for the year at £43m on £257m turnover.

</comment><comment><USER12> And who the fuck cares iSheep?</comment>


Is Borders the First Casualty in the E-Reader War? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/as_borders_struggles_to_pay_its_bills_will_it_be_t.php

<comment><USER2> IREX seems to have been the first. Borders would be a casualty of the ebook war perhaps, but not the E-reader war.

<http://www.irextechnologies.com/></comment>


Ignition Maker Edition - <AUTHOR> https://inductiveautomation.com/ignition/maker-edition <comment><USER2> Hi all, Perry here, from the Software Engineering team at Inductive Automation.

We were actually talking about posting a Show HN about this (and still may, since a proper introduction would probably help first-timers gain some context about why we're excited about this).

The Industrial/Operational space is generally not something I see mainstream consumer/enterprise developers talking or thinking much about. If there are general questions about the industry, the software, or this new release/announcement, ask away.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> (I'm not affiliated with Inductive Automation in any way, I just use their software in my day job and now in my own projects)</comment>


Is Risk Based Approach to Software Testing Better? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.99tests.com/is-risk-based-approach-to-software-testing-better/

<comment><AUTHOR> The first requirement of most development teams are to find out the features that work well. The second requirement is to then find bugs that are in the features.</comment>