HTML5 Microdata: Why isn't anyone talking about it? - <AUTHOR> http://briancray.com/2010/09/08/html5-microdata/

<comment><USER3> Because it's boring. And no browser implements it. You're not doing anybody any favors by implementing it. That google rich data thing? It's done with html classes too, that works equally well, and we've had them for a while now.

Seriously, I like microdata, I think it's useful, but this kind of utopian, far-away 'we should use this because it might be better in the future' never got us anywhere. _That_ is the lesson we should learn from XHTML2, not 'adding more attributes is cool'.

<comment><USER4> Well put. I think there are _very_ few examples of when people actually implemented a spec that didn't provide an immediate, personal benefit.

<comment><USER5> There are interesting ties to game theory here. You might see it as a variant of the Prisoner's Dilemma (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoners_dilemma>).

On the other hand, you might argue that it's simply a coordination problem (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordination_game>).

In any case, it's somewhat shortsighted to look for immediate, personal benefits. Of course you need to look at the payoffs for implementing a spec, but I think it's wrong not to take longer-term possibilities into account.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Until recently, one of the biggest publishers of such microdata (in its earlier incarnation, microformats) was Upcoming.org, an events startup acquired by Yahoo.

Gordon Luk, the lead engineer, wrote an excellent post describing his frustrations with microformats:

        [...] my experience with being a microformat publisher
        has shown that things are exponentially more complex
        than they let on in the "sales pitch."

\-- [http://getluky.net/2009/01/08/a-warning-about-the-real- cost-...](http://getluky.net/2009/01/08/a-warning-about-the-real-cost-of- microformats/)

HTML5 Microdata seems slightly more rigorous and abstract, but still, commingling presentational HTML with an informal data API is just asking for trouble.

</comment><comment><USER7> The real reason for this, IMHO, is one of the last points of the article - <USER2> major browser has embraced it as a core feature. Getting this into say Mozilla or Safari would go a long way to make it standardized.

Also, I'm waiting for a usable "Receipt" microdata - imagine buying something, then when you get to the receipt page, it gives all the information about the transaction, ready to go into your financial management software, or into a program to keep track of the packages being shipped to you.

Then again, this may be because I hate Intuit with a passion...

</comment><comment><USER8> I've used <http://microformats.org/> in the past for marking up dates, addresses and the like.

Looking at the examples on the Google page ([http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=185417)) of marking-up breadcrumb links though there is a clear step away from clean functional markup. It looks like the sort of code people make (have made) to add styles to containers and what not. Couldn't semantic info be simply added in any tag available thus:

a</>b</> ...

Why would that be so hard?

Perhaps further detail could be added by having a typeof-sheet that references the id of a node and details the information it presents (like external CSS).

<comment><USER9> Microformats.org abuses  and title="", hurting usability and accessibility.

Microdata provides a less horrific way to express the data in question.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Arbitrary semantic data on the web at large is DOA, just like the semantic web.

If you think about it, a big part of the appeal of facebook is that, for many people, it solves all the actual problems semantic markup is supposed to be able to solve.

</comment><comment><USER11> The article dismisses XHTML with little explanation: "all the ideology surrounding XML that never came to fruition".

AFAIK the goal of XHTML was extensibility and interoperability with other data formats, by allowing arbitrary XML elements from other XML namespaces to be embedded. It seems to me that this solves exactly the same problem (as microdata) and more in a much cleaner way. Why invent yet another format?

<comment><USER12> Neither solves 'the problem', if one describes it as 'make all/most web content semantically richer'. Both just provide a mechanism, but nobody is going to invest in tagging their data without a good use case. so, it is sort of a chicken and egg problem.

Worse, marking up my data in the database from which I serve my web pages may benefit me, but currently, marking up my data in my web pages just costs bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From the article: "Unlike all the ideology surrounding XML that never came to fruition, Microdata is already being adopted by Google as part of their rich snippets to aid in providing richer search results"

O RLY: [http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en...](http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146898)

<comment><USER14> Huh? They support RDFa, Microformats and Microdata (relatively) equally.

<comment><USER13> Exactly - the author has a clear anti-XHTML, pro-HTML bias, even to the point of telling us that Google don't support any XML-born technology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "XHTML provided no actual benefit"

Yes it did provide great benefits that are now being destroyed. The benefit was that we actually had working, up-to-date XHTML parsers in each and every programming language. Message to web designers: Some people have to parse the crap you put in those pages and it's not just the browser makers! I know HTML parsing was never an exact science even with XHTML, but at least we were moving in the right direction.

<comment><USER16> XHTML1 depends on DTD for entities, which means that parser must fetch DTD from w3.org (from heavily-hammered server) or support DTD catalog and have one set up in the system (rarely available out of the box, not always possible to do). IMHO that breaks "works everywhere out-of-the-box" promise, and sometimes it makes it easier to just use HTML parser.

It's been _11 years_ since XHTML recommendation was published, and you _still_ can't rely on XML parser for reading content on the web. Even documents labelled as "XHTML" are often ill-formed (and almost all of them are sent as text/html). Even if we were moving in the right direction, we were moving too slowly. Now that HTML5 parser is specced, it may be quicker to add it to popular languages than turning whole web around.

<comment><USER15> I agree that the DTD issue is a nuisance but it's a nuisance that can be solved in a few hours. XHTML has not solved all parsing problems but the quality of parsing results is infinitely better than it used to be a few years back because most websites do actually use well-formed XML (at least most of the ones I'm parsing).

I don't understand why we need yet another slightly incompatible pointy bracket syntax. Adding that syntax to all languages and ironing out all the quirks will take years and it won't replace the existing mess. It will just add to it. I see no progress at all. It's a pointless waste of resources.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd say that being able to parse XHTML isn't any easier than parsing HTML in that both requires an author who writes strict code. There's HTML strict, too, ya know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Keep markup, style, script and data separated.

Microformats and microdata don't obey the first law.

<comment><USER18> How does one keep markup and data separated in XML/HTML?

<comment><USER17> <http://mylittlehacks.appspot.com/dataislands>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think this is what Facebook wants to be with OpenGraph!

<comment><USER9> That doesn't make sense. Care to elaborate?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why it matters: Dumb eBooks Must Die, Smart eBooks Must Live [http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/dumb-ebooks- must-d...](http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/07/21/dumb-ebooks-must-die- smart-ebooks-must-live/)

Why Publishers Fear Metadata <http://www.knowthyshelf.com/?p=30>

Stop thinking it's limited to web browsing.</comment>


The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn - <AUTHOR> http://paulgraham.com/startuplessons.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I submitted this to see the thread of whomever already did. Apparently I'm the first.

Another weird coincidence is that I'd never seen this before, and it's really good. Possibly one of the best essays I've read. Or at least one of the most informative.

"Startup founders are naturally optimistic. They wouldn't do it otherwise. But you should treat your optimism the way you'd treat the core of a nuclear reactor: as a source of power that's also very dangerous. You have to build a shield around it, or it will fry you."

<comment><USER2> It looks like it was submitted a long time ago, before this site was even announced.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13>

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the prefix www. isn't stemmed for the collision detection algorithm, then...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> > So I'm going to number these points, and maybe with future startups I'll be > able to pull off a form of Huffman coding. I'll make them all read this, and > then instead of nagging them in detail, I'll just be able to say: number > four!

I am curious as to how well this worked out.

<comment><USER4> But make sure your "tell it right" and occasionally refer to a number "they haven't heard before"

<comment><USER5> 17.</comment></comment></comment>


Microsoft's lousy Surface ad - <AUTHOR> http://52tiger.net/microsofts-lousy-surface-ad/ <comment><AUTHOR> I can't believe someone at MS thought this was a good idea. Looks like an episode from "Glee" -- not in a good way. Catholic school girls acting like cheerleaders?</comment>


Google reportedly dropping the Nexus brand name from its phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/30/12712722/google-new-nexus-phones-brand-name-change <comment><AUTHOR> If they really move away from a stock Android experience, then I honestly don't know what sort of smartphone I'll buy next. Maybe I won't even buy one.

Smartphones are rapidly becoming anti-fun for me. I just want a portable web browser, music player and phone.</comment>


Will online classes make professors extinct? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/25/opinion/wheeler-tenured-professors <comment><USER2> Does anyone have numbers indicating the extent to which tuition subsidizes research funding or vice versa? I (and most HNers, I'd assume) wouldn't shed many tears over seeing the extraordinarily exploitative and inefficient institution of college education go through disruption. My experience has been that online lectures, course material, and forum discussions are more than up to the task of replacing their physical counterparts (pause+rewind is a killer feature, and the discussions in online forums are miles above anything I experienced in section/recitation). Hands-on labs are about the only thing that ought to have a marginal cost in this day and age. But I hate to think what disruption could do to academia.

There are a handful of big (sometimes existential!) problems lurking on the horizon which absolutely rely on academia because incremental progress isn't amenable to monetization. I'm most worried about the drug industry. It's imploding (google "inverse moore's law"), leaving the basic science required to get over the slump in the hands of academics, and I don't want to wait 50 years for high-efficiency gene therapy (or let China grab the market) just because the research is tied to an outdated educational system. I know there's very little anyone can do about it, but I need to know the extent to which college tuition subsidizes said research before I can form a solid opinion on disruption.

EDIT: Got off my ass and googled it. The NSF estimated in 1994 that 9.5% of research funding comes from tuition [1]. I would like to formally submit one internet-vote in favor of disruption, along with one internet vote to increase research funding to compensate :)

[1] [http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm](http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/issuebrf/sib97313.htm)

<comment><USER3> You mention pause+rewind as a killer feature. Another nice feature is the ability to watch at a faster or slower pace (I usually watch 1.5x). These conveniences have made it such that I strongly prefer watching taped lecture to physically attending class. Add to that the fact that you can almost always get a faster response from posting in an online forum (often Piazza for my Stanford CS classes) than attending overcrowded and understaffed office hours. Most of my education has already moved online.

Even if online class doesn't make professors extinct, I think it will certainly make physical class time a thing of the past.

<comment><USER2> Yes! 1.5x is fantastic! It solves the impedance mismatch inherent in human speech. 90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower. If you have to listen at 1x speed you are either bored and sleepy or falling further and further behind, sometimes both. The pause button solves the falling-behind problem and 1.5x speed solves the boredom problem.

<comment><USER4> "90% of what is being said takes 5% brainpower to process while the remaining 10% takes 300% of available brainpower."

I'd argue that's the result of poor communication, not any deficiency in human speech generally. Granted, it's very very hard to construct something with the right level of addressable information at every moment. But when it's done right it is glorious. I think one of the things people implicitly recognize in good communicators (not necessarily good orators, but good communicators) is their ability to tailor what they're saying in this way.

<comment><USER2> Variance in the backgrounds of your audience and variance in the physical state of your audience (tired, sick, etc) places a strict upper bound on how well you can communicate. If one student isn't experiencing an impedance mismatch, you can probably find another that is, unless the class is extremely small and homogeneous. Pause+rewind is robust to these problems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Betteridge's Law of Headlines says NO.

Katy Jordan did a study of MOOCs recently [0], and it was found that the completion rates are in fact quite abysmal. I suspect that the reason for this is because there isn't much incentive to continue studying.

So this is very much in line with the guy saying at the end of the article: Here's a library, now go get knowledge.

Learning, IMO doesn't happen like this. MOOCs will just perform the functions of a library, albeit far more efficiently. The function of a classroom (not necessarily a professor) is still quite necessary for structured learning. And of course, with a classroom comes TAs and professors... which makes the answer to the question, No

[0][http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html](http://www.katyjordan.com/MOOCproject.html)

<comment><USER6> It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost any topic under the sun.

Online makes that easier (you don't have to leave the house, or type up papers and mail them in) but fundamentally, online education still requires a lot of self-discipline.

If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built up institutions of education. The real problem with undergraduate university environments right now is that the perceived value has fallen dramatically as tuition rates have skyrocketed. The universities and providers of easy financial aid are to blame for that.

<comment><USER7> > It's my belief that the MOOC, and online education in general, are something > of a fad. It's new, and therefore interesting. But we've always had > correspondence courses, and libraries where you can go and self-study almost > any topic under the sun.

MOOCs differ from just reading a book on important aspects:

1\. You have a teacher break down the content for you

2\. You have graded assignments, which helps giving confidence you're absorbing the content

3\. Interactive media (video, software) can be a more effective media to explain certain concepts

4\. You have interaction with other students learning the same subject

> If most people were really good at self-study, we wouldn't have ever built > up institutions of education.

Back in the day, your only chance of having access to knowledge was at institutions, so I'm afraid this is more of a tradition than anything else. Remember that the church was once the source of knowledge too. Nowadays though, people aren't going to college for knowledge as much as for filling a pre-requisite to enter the job market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Online courses are cute. The stanford machine learning course is a watered down travesty that doesn't compare to Andrew's original material out there. There is a reason for that too. The harder the courses get, the more it is nice to have an actual person to talk to about this shit. My real analysis class made sense only because I was able to talk to the professor after class and understand why I should care about open balls or closed balls.

Similarly from a systems perspective, my OS class was the hardest C.S. class that I took. There was very little that I remember from the lectures but the most I took away was during designing shit and getting stuck and then going back and talking to the professor and brainstorming. This is stuff that inherently doesn't scale well to millions of people.

<comment><USER9> That course isn't representative. I don't know the thinking behind it, (it was one of their earlier MOOC courses) but there are many courses with much better and harder content.

Of course it is better to have a real person, but not everyone has that luxury, or their real professors are no good.

<comment><USER8> Sure. Learning from data (caltech) is a good course. But all I got from the course was to go pick up the book and learn this stuff by working through the problem set. And I have a pretty decent linear algebra and probability background. Imagine if you are getting into this stuff new (which is not an unreasonable assumption considering the diverse background of ML folks), this would be brutal. Math is a contact, no holds barred sport where some hand holding initially is pretty damn nice.

Also, I did some schooling in the third world and I am never going to come out and say that someone putting material for a course online is a bad thing. I am just annoyed by this idea that a bunch of online videos is a superior or equally effective replacement to an education at MIT or Stanford.

<comment><USER10> The online problem sets for the Caltech course aren't what you get in real life when the course is being actively offered, and also it was a pretty basic/easy course. That's not to say there aren't other hard classes online or that Yaser isn't great at teaching, but yeah...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've taken a couple Coursera and other self-led courses and it's not a good fit for me. I recognize my deficiency at self-directed learning, and I imagine many _many_ people share it. I just can't learn that way.

A good chunk of people will require social, interactive, and hands-on learning led by people to whom they can listen and converse. Until that experience is sufficiently reproduced online (and surely even after that), "professors" will not be out of a job.

Also the title is hyperbole.

<comment><USER12> I agree with you 100%.

I teach online and hybrid (part face to face, part online) courses. My students tell me they actively choose one or the other format. Some students cannot learn online and appreciate the ability to interact. I try to use the class time we have effectively, to demonstrate, to coach, to give feedback on their work. I save the "lectures" for their own time.

I've taken online courses from some pretty bright people and never felt that they were a good fit because they were simply lectures. I don't learn by lecture. I learn by doing and getting feedback. I do horribly in "traditional" instructor-focused courses, AKA "lecture/test" courses. I do very well in courses where I can apply things.

One thing I think is great about online education is the ability to reach a lot of people. But one thing that's terrible about it, in my humble opinion, is that it's harder to connect with students. My online classes have a cap of 27 students. I can manage a couple of courses like that. But in order to manage courses of 200-2000 people, I just would be putting up content and videos, and I'm sorry, but that's not teaching. That's nothing different than screencasts or books. If I get assessed, I want detailed feedback. I want to ask questions.

And if those questions are being answered by a support staff, then there goes the argument of "learning from the best and brightest" that MOOCs advocate.

I love teaching students hundreds or thousands of miles away. I don't think my role is going away any time soon, simply because I've evolved how I teach. The ones who should be worried are the ones who teach from the textbook and spend 64 hours per course lecturing from the front of the room.

[edit to clarify reply]

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. Even the greatest ideas of science are nothing more than working hypotheses, useful for purposes of special research but completely inapplicable to the conduct of our lives or the interpretation of the world. If, therefore, a man seeks education because he feels estranged and bewildered, because his life seems to him empty and meaningless, he cannot get what he is seeking by studying any of the natural sciences, i.e. by acquiring "know-how." That study has its own value which I am not inclined to belittle; it tells him a great deal about how things work in nature or in engineering: but it tells him nothing about the meaning of life and can in no way cure his estrangement and secret despair." \- E.F. Schumacher (from his essay The Greatest Resource - Education)

This quote is part a defense of the humanities and liberal arts as essential for presenting ideas of who, what, and why we are.

Schumacher makes a strong distinction between education and training and I lean towards categorizing MOOCs as the latter. While they may achieve wider credentialed status, they will not and should not replace traditional educational institutions. Pricing, degree structure, and allocation of resources (professor pay vs. recreational amenities) might all need to be looked at but the mentor-pupil dynamic is essential to the liberal arts.

</comment><comment><USER14> I've taken several coursera courses and maybe the good ones are hiding in there somewhere but I'm really unimpressed by the ones I've seen.

<comment><USER15> Which courses have you taken? I've completed the Machine Learning course and I'm currently taking Cryptography 1 from Coursera. They both have been great.

<comment><USER2> Machine Learning, Drug Development, Nuclear Energy, VLSI: Logic to Layout, Computer Architecture, and Analytical Chemistry were all somewhere between "good" and "great" in my book.

ML and NE were aimed at non-specialists and weren't rigorous. Maybe that's the objection?

<comment><USER14> That's part of it, yeah, lots of courses out there but they tend to be things like survey courses, etc. Some of this is that the video content turns out to be the equivalent of only a 1 or 2 credit course.

<comment><USER2> It's unfair to criticize Coursera for having survey courses if they also have deep courses, which they do. It would be nice if they had more, but that's not really a criticism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Schools aren't just going to disappear. It's natural for technology to take over a sizable chunk of the teaching process, handling inefficiencies as technology has always done best. It's probable that most of the world's population won't need to interact with professors, but a select few will always have the privilege of face to face learning. I believe there are too many niche studies for professors to be entirely replaceable. Not to mention the indirect benefits of attending a school campus.

</comment><comment><USER17> Will high quality textbooks and the printing press make the medieval university go extinct?

</comment><comment><USER18> No more than ebooks have wiped out printing.</comment>


A Trial Run for School Standards That Encourage Deeper Thought - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/25/nyregion/100-new-york-schools-try-common-core-approach.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> A teacher charting the heights of students in the class or showing a movie is not revolutionary. Insisting that it is both makes the author look stupid, and avoids the real issues troubling public education in America -- among the worst of which are sweeping national regulation and standardized testing.

<comment><AUTHOR> In such a troubled system, actually doing experiments or real-life examples is considered revolutionary. We've got a ways to go.</comment></comment>


Could we do without traffic lights? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-18072259

<comment><USER2> Interesting POV -- you can get away without traffic lights in the country or in places where other forms of transit (ie. public transit & walking) are more prevalent than cars. You can do so in the city as well, by installing expensive street features that have huge downsides in snowy climates. But, many of the arguments used by the advocate in the story are bunk.

An example re: Pedestrian accidents: "People think traffic lights are a guarantee of safety but the latest audit from Westminster City Council, for example, has shown that 44% of personal injury accidents occurred at traffic lights."

Sure. Pedestrians generally cross the street at the crosswalks, which are placed next to traffic control devices. And many of those accidents are at intersections that lack directional control -- the driver doesn't pay attention, turns right and hits someone crossing the street.

The guy is right about a few things -- the regime of controlling traffic and handling peak demand is very inefficient. That's a feature of urban sprawl.

The problem with cars is that you get the "network effect" with respect to road capacity. Unlike computer networks, expanding capacity is alot harder than pulling a cable. Plus, if you have a two lane freeway or bridge, and you expand it to three lanes, traffic patterns will adjust and congest that road again. The New York City metropolitan area is a great example of this -- the driving suburbs of NYC extend nearly 75 miles north of the city at this point. People on Long Island literally commute over 2 hours to get to Manhattan via car and train.

</comment><comment><USER3> If nothing else, please could we stop people putting traffic lights on roundabouts, as the one defeats the entire point of the other.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think in most cases yes, but some I come across the sheer weight of traffic on the roundabout (at peak times mainly) means that no traffic would be able to join (say at a junction immediately prior to a major one which has 99% of traffic on the roundabout passing it and making the traffic waiting, keep waiting)

<comment><USER4> Which leads back to: Why is there a roundabout in the first place?

Huuuge roundabouts with traffic lights should really be good old-fashioned crossroads. Those take less space and work fine. Roundabouts tend to be a better solution _if you don't have the constant flow of heavy traffic_.

I agree with the gp: Either a roundabout xor traffic lights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In Ann Arbor Michigan, they've been installing roundabouts in many junctions [1]. My next door neighbor is a landscape architect and is a huge fan of them -- they virtually eliminate fatal accidents. Roundabouts normalize traffic, creating a continuous flow of more evenly spaced cars with overall greater throughput. With islands in the middle, they are much safer for pedestrians.

There are two downsides. They really require much more space than a traditional intersection. They also remove "traffic gaps" between major streets that permit people to make a left hand turn out of a neighborhood.

He's not a huge fan of 2-lane roundabouts. They create an incentive for drivers to cheat by driving down middle of both lanes, staying at 35/40 rather than slowing down to 25 go around the round about. They also cause confusion when someone gets into the wrong lane (left/center lane must go straight through) and this reduces throughput. Perhaps there is a minimum/maximal traffic where they work effectively.

After using roundabouts at nearby intersections, I'd also add that they are much more attractive. Waiting at a light causes stress (and people tend to "text", causing more delays). Given the chance, I prefer to take routes that use roundabouts. I've timed them, and they are faster and more consistent then traditional 4-way-lights, especially at intersections where left/right hand turns normally cause traffic backups.

[1] [http://www.annarbor.com/news/roundabout-planned-for- geddes-a...](http://www.annarbor.com/news/roundabout-planned-for-geddes-and- ridge-roads-in-superior-township-as-part-of-new-charter-school-roa/)

<comment><USER2> Roundabouts are great in suburban or low-volume urban environments where speeds are low.

But they can be dangerous for pedestrians in areas where you have a high density of traffic and pedestrians.

The problem is, transit planners tend to think of terms of making things flow well for suburban commuters going to work in the city. They tend to forget about the folks who live in the city.

<comment><USER6> In my city, there is a roundabout with five junctions, although I find most roundabouts fine, I really don't like this one. During peakhour, you can have long wait times, much longer then a respective traffic light. Another interesting thing about this roundabout is gaps in traffics caused by other traffic lights determine which road is currently a main outlet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We'll be able to remove traffic lights, signs, yields, stop signs, and every other limitation... Once the Google Self-Driving car becomes universally adopted. As long as the car itself is able to perfectly judge for safety, and possibly communicate with other cars, then there's no need to stop when the car knows, for a fact, that there are no other obstacles around.

Of course, that's still very far off!

<comment><USER8> I used to argue that insurance companies would push for them, because self- driving cars would reduce accidents.

But the cynic in me wonders if they will be afraid that self-driving cars will push insurance costs down so much the insurance companies will lose out.

<comment><USER9> While the costs may go down and people's premiums will likely go down commensurately, accidents will still happen. So most people will carry insurance for that purpose. And besides, do you really think the insurance companies are going to let the state governments make casualty car insurance not required? Or do you think the car loan companies will really drop requiring comprehensive coverage as a requirement? I think not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't buy it. Especially this:

"Instinctively, we want to be kind to each other, especially out on the road. When you first meet a stranger, unless you're a mugger, you want to be nice to that stranger."

The author himself admitted a couple paragraphs before that he really wanted to speed up at a traffic light instead of stopping, thereby risking running a red light. This "Don't want to wait" is one of the many examples that come to my mind and contradict this "We're all nice, deep down in our hearts" idea.

You can remove traffic lights - if you reduce cars to a crawl/make them the least priority. Treating pedestrians and cars as equals won't work in my opinion. Betting safety on a hippie idea [1] doesn't sound compelling either.

1: To be fair: I _like_ the idea that we're all just totally trying to be nice to each other. It's just .. very much not true in my experience, especially among strangers.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sorry. That was one of the worst things I've read this week. The jumping to conclusions, the unstated assumptions. The gross misuse of statistics. I love the one about 44% of pedestrian accidents happen at traffic lights. I think it was Willie Sutton, the famous bank robber, who said he robbed banks because that's where the money was. If pedestrians cross in crosswalks that's where you're likely to hit them. Because that's where the pedestrians are. Oy! Don't get me started. It was seriously put forth a few years ago in Berkeley that all crosswalks in the city should be erased on the theory that pedestrians become "overconfident" in the crosswalks. The evidence given was that cars hit pedestrians mostly in the crosswalks. Luckily the traffic engineer who proposed this took a job in the suburbs.

</comment><comment><USER11> The author should visit the busy streets of north India - specifically the NCR region and see what happens when the red lights are not functioning. I have faced such situations and have been stuck for up to an hour for the jam to clear up. Per my own personal experience, traffic lights are a must.

<comment><USER12> There could be cultural differences at play here I suppose. The British seem to have a knack for queuing which may be missing in other cultures.

I live in South Africa, and I have definitely seen improvements in traffic when certain lights are out during rush hour (4-way stops on highways in particular).

<comment><USER13> I agree with the knack of queuing being missing in different cultures. In Malaysia, when the traffic lights go out, it's absolute deadlock.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "I knew it would be a long wait at this set of lights."

As an odd hobby of mine I like to watch the clock when I get to a traffic light to see how long I actually wait. I don't record it but I am amazed how often I only wait about 1 minute. I think the facts are much different then everyone's perception.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think 1 minute is probably about the average wait in off-peak traffic (I'm going to have to start timing how long I sit at lights now) but on my journey I pass through at least 10 sets of traffic lights - waiting for 1min at each of them adds 10mins to my journey (admittedly I don't wait that long or even at all at most of them) but the potential is there

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Spend a week driving in a college town and decide if lights are a good idea or not.

Everyone whipping around in 3-ton SUVs, texting and yammering away on the phone while they drive.

Just feel fortunate the do mostly stop at the lights when you are coming the other way.

</comment><comment><USER16> I wonder this every time a light goes out and I see people carefully and considerately coordinating to take turns at an intersection. But I really think if that weren't a special case that got everyone's attention, the result would be more collisions.

</comment><comment><USER17> They don't talk about pedestrians at all here. Lights might be annoying, but it's also seriously nerve wrecking for all involved when dealing with a pedestrian crossing without lights. As a pedestrian trying to cross, it's often difficult to judge the driver's intent, even if they are slowing down, so I'll end up staying off to the side until they stop completely. Needless to say, that's hilariously inefficient.

And when it gets dark, it just gets worse. It might be possible for the driver to see the pedestrian pretty well, but the reverse isn't always true.

</comment><comment><USER18> _"The fatal flaw at the heart of the system is priority. [...] The unseen spanner in the works is the idea of main road priority."_

He fiddles a bit with a story about a woman and a pram, but doesn't actually address why this is a bad idea. While access and crossings can be improved in places, letting traffic flow fast and freely on main roads seems like a fundamentally good idea to me?

</comment><comment><USER19> As a driver I can understand why removing traffic lights makes sense in some regards.

However, I spend less time driving than I do by my usual form of transport, walking, and frankly there's a minor subsection of drivers who are bad enough as it is (case in point, how many jump zebra crossings).

Maybe it's just in need of disruption, adaptive pattern systems and such.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard some Spanish traffic lights are quite "smart" for traffic control (these are mainly on highways rather than junctions/pedestrian crossings) where if you travel at or below the speed limit, the lights are green, speed and they go red thereby giving a positive association for not speeding (ie if you don't speed, you and everyone else travelling the same stretch probably get there faster - make everyone stop as you're speeding and most likely people won't be happy)

<comment><USER20> They have them in a lot of European countries, we call it "the green wave".

There's also another trend on the rise: cameras that take photographs of license plates at an interval of several miles. If the calculated speed (the average) is larger than what's permitted you get a ticket.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we have those in the UK called SPECS (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPECS_%28speed_camera%29>) although these are generally (only in my experience) used temporarily in roadworks etc. which have a temporary lower speed limit.

I believe France did this the low-tech way in the past with toll roads (get a ticket with the time when you enter a toll road, pass it to the booth when you get off, S=D/T and caclulate if you have a speeding fine to pay as well)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's bad enough with traffic lights [1]. If you take them away, then it's like an idiot free-for-all out there...

[1] <http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=854_1337054851>

<comment><USER18> Your logic is lacking. The car in that clip is driving without the least regard to reasonable behaviour and the law. He was not stopped be the presence of traffic lights. Are you suggesting that he would be less not stopped by the absence of traffic lights?

Or as the article puts it:

 _"You can't even legislate for maniacs, so why hobble the vast majority with "one size fits all" rules devised to catch the hypothetical deviant?"_

<comment><USER21> Fucking logical pedants.

Less not stopped is logical and correct if you consider the individual. If you read the comment again, it does not exclude other drivers so the logic is correct. The comment was not inclusive.

Perhaps I should clarify: "If you don't apply the one size fits all rules, you will increase the number of deviants."

Now there is a logical fallacy there for you to ponder...

Happy now?

 _bangs head on wall_

<comment><USER18> You seem to assume that the only reason people stop for red light is the law. Considering that plenty of non-lighted intersections exist and people behave reasonably in them, I don't think that's a reasonable assumption.

<comment><USER21> No the only reason people stop is that they read the highway code and therefore agreed a set of conventions to work with other people. The law (Road Traffic Act 1988+) is the enforcement of such a thing and is a separate problem.

With regards to other "intersections", in the UK where the They have give way lines across the front of the junction so they are "controlled" as well.

When they are not controlled, it is carnage as the numerous bits of missing car brushed to the side of the road demonstrate (look carefully).

<comment><USER18> The reason people read the highway code is because it's describing what the law is. It's meaningless to treat the highway code and the law separately.

I believe that the vast majority of people behave in traffic, not out of reverence to a book, but because they want to arrive at their destination safely and without having hurt other people.

Wrt. other intersections (not sure why that word needs scare quotes?), I live right next to a fairly busy one, and can see three others from my balcony, and I have so far failed to see any carnage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People aren't naturally nice to one another around these parts.

But what would make it work is people's desire to not deal with a crash and its fallout. That's a personal loss no matter who is at fault.

</comment><comment><USER23> Traffic lights in its current form will be obsolete by the time AI / computers start driving all our vehicles.

<comment><USER24> We (everyone reading this) will be dead before that happens. Not because the technology won't be there but because making auto-driving cars _mandatory_ won't fly culturally/politically, certainly not in the US.

We'll have optional self-driving Google-car style cars soonish (maybe 10-15 years out when you factor in all the regulation hurdles), but they won't be mandatory for a very long time, if ever, and if even a small percentage of people opt out of the automatic driving system we still need the current control systems and road rules in place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> imho, changing the habits of drivers would be extremely costly.</comment>


Making a Mark: Visual Identity with Tom Geismar - <AUTHOR> https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/making-mark-visual-identity-tom-geismar/ <comment><USER2> > A design for a sports team, for instance, needs to look different from a > design for a bank.

This is surprisingly profound, and an example shows this. I don't know much about sport, but san jose has a hockey team (don't laugh -- I know it doesn't snow there but apparently they are pretty good). Anyway, when they started they weren't very good, as new teams never are. But their logo was a shark biting a hockey stick around a 1990s-style triangle with late-1980s colors (they started around then). It was just the right combination of cute and aggressive that even I noticed it, and was shocked to see people around the US wearing clothing with the logo. It's like the "NY" or "B" baseball hats that are very popular outside their geographical areas. I believe this marketing made them quite a bit of money when they were starting up and more importantly made people around the country pay attention to a team.

(it helps if you are launching a new team to do it in a place like san jose which is a backwater overshadowed by its neighbor -- the locals were quite loyal to their only team which helped put them on the map).

I can't really imagine anyone wearing the chase logo on a T shirt except to a company event. Pretty certainly if you see a shirt with a Google or Facebook or Cisco logo the wearer is an employee or family member of one. Even Apple, with its amazing consumer brand doesn't end up with people wearing its logo on their clothing (instead they carry it :-)).

<comment> et-al > Even Apple, with its amazing consumer brand doesn't end up with people > wearing its logo on their clothing (instead they carry it :-)).

I agree with your other examples, but there were a number of folks, mainly of the Web 1.0 era, that have a _tattoo_ of Apple logo.

Apple has become more ubiquitous these days, but I think they've lost that cult-like following seen in the Jobs-era.</comment></comment>


Wework loses $5200/customer, lost $1.3B in H1/2019 - <AUTHOR> https://boingboing.net/2019/08/15/more-than-uber.html <comment><USER2> The pattern has been established clearly with Uber. All the investors need to get paid off, so force the IPO.

Doesn't matter if there is zero profit and no plans to make profit long or short term. Gotta have our exit! The exit is the only thing that matters anymore.

It's appalling that the IPO market has been subverted into a blatant open air scam that our government deems perfectly legal and acceptable.

It's despicable and makes me ashamed to work in tech. The whole shell game around who actually owns the shares and controls things through multiple complicated legal entities is just another huge red flag. When this all blows up the only winners will be armies of lawyers who untangle this mess.

<comment><USER3> The entire point of investment is to sell for more than you buy, so yes, the exit is, and always has been the only thing that matters. And your accusation that it is a scam is just not true. A scam requires deception and where is your evidence of that?

<comment><USER4> They're fraudulently exploiting a low interest rate environment by taking huge risks on behalf of other people and diverting responsibility away from themselves when things go belly up. Investors and executives take massive loans on behalf of the companies that they control, companies go out of business, investors and executives walk away with the money, creditors lose and value creators lose (because they can't compete in this unnatural zero- margin competitive environment which these fraudulent investors and executives have created).

Also, many big corporations and public companies sell their stock to 401K and Superanuation funds which hold the retirement funds of regular working people who have little control over these funds. People in many countries are forced to pay a percentage of their income into these funds which then essentially hand over the money to corporations to spend on fraudulent acquisitions.

<comment><USER3> Where is the fraud? Creditors are very aware of the interest rate environment and still chose to make the loans. Are you saying that Wework lied to creditors to obtain the loans? Because that would have to be true for it to be fraud. Investors and executives are allowed to take risks on behalf of the company because it is literally their company.

<comment><USER4> Just as one example, Wework is at least partially funded by Softbank which is a fund backed by the Saudi Public Investment fund. The Saudi Public Investment Fund is controlled by the Saudi government using regular Saudi people's retirement money, often without their explicit knowledge.

If you pick any big startup which is losing a lot of money, it will likely be backed in a large part by public money; either through a national public fund or a superannuation or 401K fund. Money which was invested on behalf of regular people was taken from their retirement accounts which they were often legally obliged to contribute a percentage of their income to. For example, even in a progressive country like Australia, people are forced to contribute 12% of their income to a superannuation fund; the process is intentionally complicated to coerce people into choosing between a small number of large funds.

It's fraud on a massive scale because the responsibility for the crime is highly divided such that any single act on its own is not a crime; they are only criminal when taken together and if you assume that everyone involved knew what they were doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hate on WeWork all you like, but this is a shoddy article and a shoddy metric.

Their losses divided by their number of customers might equal $5,200, but that tells us roughly nothing. Maybe they have found a way to print money so they are growing aggressively?

I'd much rather meaningful metrics showing how awful WeWork actually is, than vanity metrics.

</comment><comment><USER6> > The company plans to lost $2.7b in 2019 overall.

This article is like 5 sentences. They couldn't bother to read it twice before posting?

<comment><USER7> > They lose more money per customer than any other, even world-beating-loser > Uber.

Any other _what_? It's like a poorly written tweet of an article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> With Uber tightening it's hires, the housing market slump and this... is the bubble beginning to pop?

All we need is for one big, big event to occur.

<comment><USER9> Add to that investor pessimism driving bond yields down or inverting them, a trade war, bad global growth numbers, and investors sucking every last penny out of the stock market while there is still time. That's all you need for a downturn.

That said I'm not predicting a huge downturn. As long as there is some political correction back towards the center or left, which there usually is after a downturn, they'll be driving the Dow to 35k+ in no time. History repeats itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The $5200 customer is somewhat meaningless, because WeWork customers spend a lot more with WeWork than Uber or Chewy custotmers do. Would be more interesting to see as a percentage.

</comment><comment><USER11> WeWork is a real estate investment company masquerading as a work space company. As long as real estate continues to provide big returns, I don't think Wework will ever care about losing money on customers.

Big money is investing in WeWork because its set up to swallow real estate all over the world. If you had buckets of cash and wanted to do this yourself, it would be really difficult and time consuming.

</comment><comment><USER12> Good. We don't need businesses like WeWork, we need non-for-profit collectives and incubators

<comment><USER13> Why not? What makes this particular use case not suitable for profit?

<comment><USER14> Maybe they are making not so smart decisions with their locations? I've seen two WeWork places close to each other in the heart of London's financial district.

They could rent a huge warehouse on the edge of the city centre, but that would attract probably a different audience they aim for.

If they generate $1.3B loss with those prices[0] then how they see a way to make a profit? It's not like self driving coffee machines will save them :)

I don't get it.

[0][https://www.wework.com/buildings/5-merchant-square-- london](https://www.wework.com/buildings/5-merchant-square--london)

<comment><USER13> Businesses make dumb decisions all the time, it doesn't mean their business model isn't suitable, in some moral sense, for profit.

Unless I am misreading the comment?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The We Company got inflated financial model.

However, the mentioned metric dollars lost per customer is a vanity metric. It does not mean much. E.g. Wework earns several times more than Uber per customer. It seems there are more upfront cost to fitout the new office vs. find a driver contractor.</comment>


Larry Page on TED - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/19/larry-pages-wish-to-make-all-health-data-public-has-big-benefits-and-big-risks/?utm_campaign=fb&ncid=fb

<comment><USER2> +1 for the basic idea that we need to find a way to share medical information. surely we can write some algorithms that preserve privacy while still keeping the data useful? the costs of not sharing data are quite bit. One research paper ([http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1080262](http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1080262)) finds that electronic medical records sharing _within_ hospitals (not to researchers or innovators mind you) means about 16 fewer infant deaths for every 100k births.</comment>


More on the so called "entire" data center seizure - <AUTHOR> http://cbs11tv.com/technology/Core.IP.Networks.2.975776.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Reposted from reddit. It looks like this was more about telecom fraud than anything else. Its highly possible also that all of the servers seized were involved somewhat in it. It's also highly possible that Verizon and AT&T are being bullies again.

</comment><comment><USER2> That's a very poorly written article. It seems to be following up from an earlier story, but gives absolutely no context or description of that story. What happened, who it happened to, and why? None of those are even touched on.

Down at the bottom of the story, quotes are attributed to people by their last name, with no previous mention of who those people are or how they are affiliated with the story. The only complete piece of information in the entire article is an account of a customer whose website is down.

All in all, just a terrible piece of writing.

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, this sounds like the virtual equivalent of evacuating a whole neighbourhood because of allegations that someone is doing something illegal there.

The people who have been force-evacuated should sue the pants off the FBI and Verizon/AT&T. If they can't, then the law in the US is really quite ill-suited for online businesses. Perhaps they should look for their hosting needs in other countries.</comment>


A book list for OS kernel developers and device driver writers (2006) - <AUTHOR> http://jdebp.eu./FGA/operating-system-books.html <comment><USER2> Great snapshot for the turn of millenium. Thanks for posting and triggering the trip down memory lane. Especially nostalgic for me personally as I was in the midst of coding early Windows and OS/2 kernel mode device drivers for scientific instruments, not to mention having written my own multi-tasking RTOS for the 186, at the peak of my career at that time. I remember most of these books, and had dog-eared copies of a few of them (particularly Baker's Device Driver book.) The only other book on Operating Systems that I see missing from this list, and probably would have included at the time, would be Donovan's.

<comment><USER3> Dekker's and Newcomer's book was missing. I've just added it. I used it regularly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> As I said at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439917](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18439917) , the list is out of date, my having gained some more books that I need to add to it in the intervening decade and a bit, and I have still to get around to writing the reviews. (-:

</comment><comment><USER4> "Linux Kernel in a Nutshell" was indispensable when hacking on the kernel in my Operating Systems class back when I was in college. It's really a shame it hasn't been updated since 2006.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here is my list, which is biased towards Linux. Almost all the books mentioned here are dated and primarily written for 2.6 based kernels. Although many concepts are still applicable and in certain subsystems, the code will be as is with minor changes. So, despite them being old they are still good references.

* Design and implementation of the FreeBSD operating system: Good and thorough deep dive in FreeBSD OS. Must have.

* FreeBSD Device Drivers: A Guide for the Intrepid: Didn't quite read it all but looks fine for FreeBSD.

* Mac OSX internals - a systems approach by Amit Singh: It was good back in days but now outdated.

* Linux Device Drivers, 3ed : Very dated but still good to grasp Linux device drivers in general. The code examples are bit silly but good enough. There are some GitHub repos which have updated code for latest kernels.

* Essential Linux Device Drivers by S Venkateswaran: It complements LDD3 book quite nicely. Has some real device examples and very exhaustive. Must have.

* Linux kernel development by Robert Love: Very good for short/quick intro. Best for preparing before interviews ;)

* Professional Linux kernel architecture by Wolfgang Mauerer: As other book, its dated but some of the explanations about interrupts, PCI, etc are good. His callgraph approach was very handy in understanding things.

* The Linux programming interface by Michael Kerrisk: Not really about OS but next thing close to it - system programming (the real system programming). Must have.

* Understanding Linux virtual memory manager by Mel Gorman: As other books, it's dated but still one of the best available to get a handle on memory management under Linux. Must have.

* Understanding the Linux kernel: Dated but still my go to book to refresh certain subsystems. Must have.

* Linux Kernel Programming by Michael Beck: Mentioned for historical reasons, else most out dated book here (2.4 based). Horrible editing and English but heck! I loved it back in the days :)

* Linux kernel networking by Rami Rosen: Never read it but quite dated.

* Understanding Linux network internals by Christian Benvenuti: A real bible of Linux networking. If nothing else, your jaw drops at the effort author made to write this book. Dated but unlike more generic Linux kernel things, network stack is still same in its core. Must have.

* The Linux kernel primer: A top-down approach for x86 and PowerPC Architecture: Very dated book but good to read from PPC perspective. Lot of things have changed since its publication.

* See MIPS Run by Dominic Sweetman: dated but gives good idea about MIPS internals and how Linux uses it.

* IA-64 Linux Kernel: Design and Implementation: Its dated not just w.r.t code but also w.r.t. hardware. Nonetheless, it gives a good insight into IA-64 architecture and Linux from non-x86 perspective.

* Definitive guide to Xen hypervisor: this is the only book on virtual machine which is not just from user perspective. While best way to learn VM is through reading architecture spec and code, this book still satisfied me w.r.t. virtual machine internals.

Every other book on amazon about Linux kernel is more or less useless. For more academic book, "Operating systems - three easy pieces" is good.

<comment><USER6> Impressive! Did you read all of them? It took me quite a while to finish "Understanding the Linux kernel" and "Linux kernel development".

-ss

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Curiously, neither of these is listed:

[https://illumos.org/books/wdd/eqbqn.html](https://illumos.org/books/wdd/eqbqn.html)

[https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Internals-OpenSolaris- Archite...](https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-Internals-OpenSolaris-Architecture- paperback/dp/0134185978)

<comment><USER8> Since the article is from 2006 (as is the Solaris book) it's not that curious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> i got my first software development job three years into my bachelor's - nearly all of the technologies i had learned in school were for web app or mobile app development, but my first job was writing kernel drivers for i2c peripherals on a proprietary embedded linux SoC. at first i was very lost, but right away i fell in love with embedded.

"linux device drivers"[1] was a godsend. this book is written with utter clarity and very well organized. my only wish is that corbet will update it -- i am convinced that there are many embedded devices in the wild still running the 2.6 kernel simply because this book is so damn helpful.

[1] available online for free! [https://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/](https://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Any suggestions of some more recent books for someone who wants to take a dip in this topic?

<comment><USER3> I have a whole load. (-:

Recent does not always equate to better, note. There are exercises in Bach that are still relevant today. Milenkovic's 1987 book has a fairly interesting angle on design that one does not find elsewhere.

And several comparative operating systems books do not have the wide range of case studies that such books used to have.

That said: There are some interesting books on Solaris and MacOS internals that I did not have (and indeed that did not exist) when that FGA was written. The Windows NT Internals book is now two books (parts 1 and 2) and on its 7th edition (with a slightly unfortunate cover design, per [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14321672)). And of course there is a FreeBSD D&I book.

I've also bought an interesting _old_ book on VMS internals, since then. It discusses ODS.

<comment> happy-dude I love this list, and would love to see an updated list so I can add the recommendations to my reading list :)

Have you ever checked out OSTEP: Three Easy Pieces? ([http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/](http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/)) I am finding that a much more accessible, organized, and easy-to-ready resource than Tanenbaum's Modern Operating Systems. What do you think of it?

Also, I've recently got my hands on "Practical Filesystem Design," written by the developer of the BeOS filesystem. A PDF is available here: [http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system- design.pdf](http://www.nobius.org/dbg/practical-file-system-design.pdf)

<comment><USER3> As you can see now, I bought a copy of the BeFS book.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Is California's SB 827 coming back? Scott Wiener's new transit density bill - <AUTHOR> https://la.curbed.com/2018/10/9/17943490/scott-wiener-interview-density-transit-sb-827 <comment><USER2> SB827 was derailed by Democrats on the committee, and that won't change unless their leadership changes.</comment>


A collection of resources and stories about startup fundraising - <AUTHOR> http://startupfundraising.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi there. I compiled this list of resources about startup fundraising. There are resources and articles for topics like crowdfunding, stories of successful angel rounds, advice from VC's on how to raise VC, equity crowdfunding, bootstrapping success stories, stories of raising successful venture rounds, tools to value your company, services to help with the legal aspect of fundraising, slide decks founders used to raise funding, and more. Please check it out and let me know what resources should be added to it!</comment>


Fabric.js 0.5 is out - <AUTHOR> http://perfectionkills.com/fabric-js-0-5-is-out/

<comment><USER2> First though was «they ported Fabric (<http://fabfile.org>) to node.js?! noway». And they didn't.</comment>


Show HN: Beautiful Real-Time Polling On Twitter With Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://gopollgo.com/what-do-you-think-of-gopollgo

<comment><USER2> the 'someone just joined this page. boom!' is so annoying and distracting. if that were to stay, i wouldn't ever use the site.

what it says to me is, 'we are more interested in eye candy then real features'.

why?

because you are constantly trying to distract me from the actual content.

the 'take another poll' button constantly gets covered by the noise.

the techie side feels the need to tell you that i had to get my cursor in just the right place ( using latest google chrome ) to even make the next poll button work, that is when an annoying 'someone just voted' message would let me. i tried. took me 2 minutes to manage to click it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great feedback. We just launched this today and honestly didn't expect it to be #1 on HackerNews. We're going to start grouping the messages together and less often so they aren't as distracting like:

"Bensign, Bob, Joe & 17 others just joined the page".

Our team will be rolling out fixes very soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm really tired of subjective words like "beautiful" in the title. What makes this particularly beautiful? It's a fake wood-grain background with a few buttons and randomly-indented gravitars.

Let's try and stay away from ad copy for showing off our projects on HN. "I made this" is enough reason to click the link.

<comment><USER4> In this particular case, while I happen to be biased and agree that it's beautiful, I think that it's added as a differentiator between something else.

If I'm looking for a lightweight Javascript framework for mobile platforms, then I really hope to see descriptors like 'small' and 'fast' in their descriptions.

In this case, I'd suggest that aesthetics are a feature, and certainly appropriate for the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have to say I didn't enjoy it. The pops on the side are pointless and annoying and the ad placement on the side just helps show how poor the flow of the page is setup. The next arrow on the side feels like it was just tacked on like a sticker on some random stall. Comments themselves have some weird padding between the headshot and the text etc... Maybe some people like it but it's not how I would have done it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Please don't force me to choose a political view. Just the fact that this field is not optional made me decide not to use the site at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was surprised that so many people were thrown off by this. We want to do more cool visualizations in the future with this sort of data.

We'll make a decline to disclose at one point. Sorry about that.

<comment><USER6> It's not the fact that I care that people know which political party I choose to affiliate myself with, it's the fact that there is no apparent way to _not_ choose. I'm not a Republican or a Democrat, don't force me to choose. A "decline" or "other" choice would solve this nicely.

<comment><AUTHOR> Fair enough. I apologize -- we didn't think about this enough and will change it this weekend. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER7> i'd suggest both an "other" and "decline to state" choice. or go crazy and include Libertarian, Tea Party, Green, and Working Families Party as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does this have to do with Twitter?

<comment><AUTHOR> Our goal was to make something where you can ask quick questions on Twitter and get quantitative responses back instead of sifting through @replies.

We want to have accounts with lots of followers start using our polls to quickly and easily get feedback from their followers and then be able to segment the votes accordingly.

Think of if CNN could ask a question about a current topic and instantly get feedback. Much better than thousands of @replies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> When I choose a poll option I immediately get taken to a page with just an ad on it. Perhaps one of your advertiser's use of document.write is to blame?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, this is a problem. We'll take a look at it. Thanks for the heads up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How's your node server holding up? How much memory does this kind of traffic consume in a real-world scenario?

<comment><AUTHOR> Node is holding up just fine. About 600KB of memory. It is a beast. It is our first go with it and it was great!

<comment><USER11> Is this using Socket.IO by any chance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup, we're using Socket.IO.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Realtime is so IN right now.

</comment><comment><USER13> do i really need to choose my political view?

</comment><comment><USER14> only us map? come on!

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll be adding support internationally soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I prefer the cleanliness and simplicity of Google's Spreadsheet functionality that enables polling, as well as the free real-time results, graphing options, API, etc.</comment>


The huge gap between geeks and business types - <AUTHOR> http://consultuning.blogspot.com/2010/06/huge-gap-between-geeks-and-business.html

<comment><USER2> It can take 5 minutes to explain a recommended solution to some technical problem.

But it can take anywhere from 5 hours to 5 weeks or even 5+ years (depending on the thing in question) to reach the point where you would know _which_ solution to recommend and with confidence.

That differential is what should, in part, drive higher pay rates. In addition to the impact of the scarcity of raw talent, independent of education and experience levels.

<comment><USER3> The problem is when you get people who don't understand the issue, hiring people who do. And setting the price.

Also, the problem with these jobs boards is that you are competing with people in poorer countries, where wages are not as high in developing countries. There is no way you can do the same work at their price.

On top of all this, the hirer might be starting out at an incredibly low price, since it is not a huge priority, then increasing the price, although even for a low price this seems very low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The job post referred to x.264, an open source video encoding/decoding library, while the commentary was directed at H.264, a proprietary video codec.

Yes, they are obviously related, but if you already know x.264, as the post asks, then it shouldn't be amazingly difficult to do. As in, the offer should have two more zeros on it, instead of four.

</comment><comment><USER5> This would have been better positioned as a post regarding the gap between the experience hiring mangers want, and the money they're willing to pay.

</comment><comment><USER6> As someone who's on the business and technical side, I'm not sure this post shows much about the gap, except that some people are either cheapskates or ignorant. You can find folks who fit that description in just about any sufficiently large population.

</comment><comment><USER7> The plural of anecdote is NOT statistic. One example of someone using a job bidding site to show their ignorance isn't indicative of anything. On the other hand, many non-programmers writing specs make the mistake of not asking/checking their assumptions. That mistake is not limited to any subset of humans, in my experience.

<comment><USER8> There are multiple gulfs of ignorance between geeks and business types, and they don't all go one way. Some of my coworkers and I spent ten minutes trying to decide how to answer a question in an RFI before it dawned on me (thanks to reading an article on HN) that the question was asking whether we would be willing to put source code in escrow. Until that realization, we thought they were asking how geographically distributed the backups of our CVS server were.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think they're counting on someone looking in the code and the spec to satisfy their curiosity about what the job posting is about and then realizing that, 1) now that they've seen the bug they want to fix it, and 2) they've just spent all day working for free, so they might as well fix the bug and pick up $120.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think he is pointing to an interesting phenomemon, which is the over- specialization of what we do:

Example:

CS degree --> compression/codec -> video or picture or sound (to me they are different worlds) -> H.264 -> specific standards of H.264 (no one knows everything)

</comment><comment><USER10> The sweet revenge in this all is that the job poster will likely spend $120 ten times over churning through under-qualified programmers who think they can get the job done based on his description :)

<comment><USER11> It should not be horribly difficult to build minimally conversational AI's, arm them with names and e-mail addresses and let them address the problem by themselves.

It will be educational for the guy who wanted to pay $120 ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Well DarkShikari, are you up to the task? ;)</comment>


Silk Road owner can't be guilty of money laundering if Bitcoin isn't money - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2014/4/1/5570984/alleged-silk-road-owner-says-he-cant-be-guilty-of-money-laundering

<comment><USER2> The whole point of money laundering is that you pass the value of the money through an intermediary currency, product, or service to obscure its origin. If Bitcoin is a product not a currency, it can still be used to launder money.</comment>


Soviet Cosmonauts Carried a Shotgun into Space - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/war-is-boring/soviet-cosmonauts-carried-a-shotgun-into-space-a9e7852c6da5 <comment><USER2> ...To ward off wild animals in case the re-entry vehicle lands in the wilderness and rescue takes awhile.

<comment> java-man exactly. soviet space craft always land on the ground. why is this news?

<comment><USER3> Because the expected reaction is supposed to be 'Oh, those silly Soviets. Look at all the weird things they did during the space race'.

I bet they also had lifejackets. Who needs lifejackets in space?!

<comment><USER4> Wow; I hope you don't mind if I steal that life jacket line.

The sheer volume of perfectly rational nonsense that is done flies in the face of what many consider common sense. It's nice to have a simple nonsequitor to jump to for when the need arises.

<comment><USER5> I like it. It's a shame the Apollo program got rid of the shark repellent from Mercury (at least, as far as I can tell) [1]. It would have been even better to say that NASA took shark repellent to the moon.

I guess taking a life raft to the moon is about as good.

1\. [http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the- moon/onl...](http://airandspace.si.edu/exhibitions/apollo-to-the- moon/online/astronaut-life/medical-survival.cfm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was particularly interested in the fact that the astronauts going on a mission vote whether or not to take a gun with them (apparently now a standard Russian sidearm), and increasingly vote not to.

A very interesting article.

<comment><USER7> Yup. It seems reasonable now as the tracking and rescue infrastructure is much better than it used to. The gun's utility starts to drop in this case. I never knew about the voting before, it's another interesting thing I learned today on HN ;).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> KLM ( Netherlands airline ) used to pack an Arctic survival kit that included an AR-10 rifle and .308 ammunition.

[http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-58AA26J4UnM/UEehaS7_-EI/AAAAAAAACG...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-58AA26J4UnM/UEehaS7_-EI/AAAAAAAACG4/wasT0Hy6v0g/s1600/5.+Polar+survival+kit.jpg)

And rations included copious chocolate for the passengers.

Modern kits sadly omit the rifle and carry high-calorie cookies instead of chocolate.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not to be confused with the 23mm cannon fired from Salyut 3 [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On- board_gun](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salyut_3#On-board_gun)

</comment><comment><USER10> I disagree with the notion that 5.45x39 out of a roughly 12-inch barrel would be that great against bears. I thought they would at least issue slugs for the shotgun barrel (which is somewhere in between the small 28-gauge and a .410 shotguns in American parlance) but apparently not . . . you need hardened cast projectiles to penetrate on bears, not soft points.

Compare the 5.45x39 stats [1] to a round more suited and used for defense against bears [2]

1 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.45%C3%9739mm](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.45%C3%9739mm) 2 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45-70](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.45-70)

Seems like a nice versatile platform for small game though.

<comment><USER11> Perhaps more surprising is that they now use a 9mm sidearm for that role, at least according to the article's speculation. Good luck doing anything other than making the bear mad with that.

<comment><USER12> I live in the Yukon, and I can confirm that when confronted with even a medium sized brown bear the last thing the world you'd want to do is shoot it with a 9mm sidearm.

<comment><USER13> While I wouldn't shoot one with a 9mm, just a warning shot is generally enough to get a bear to move on unless you've already deeply pissed it off some how.

<comment><USER12> Haha, such a common misnomer.

When you're dealing with a bear that has never seen people before, it has no idea that loud noises like rifles are dangerous. I've seen a friend fire a .375 right past a brown's head from 50 yards and it didn't even blink. The bear just kept eating berries sitting on his butt.

You can lay on your horn in the car, fire bear bangers and smash pots and pans together - they don't care.

I've also seen someone unload into one with 5 shots from a .303 - all shots hit home in the heart/lung area (later we found both lungs torn apart, though not the heart) and it kept running full speed for over 100 yards. If we had been closer than 100 yards, it would have had us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There was a story a while back about astronauts returning from the ISS in a Soyuz capsule. The guidance computer failed (can you imagine if all shuttle guidance computers failed!) and they entered a 9G "Ballistic Entry Mode" instead of the 3G "Guided Entry Mode". The capsule and astronauts survived, but they ended up in some far off field in Siberia. I'd want a shotgun with me then.

<comment><USER15> That was the Voskhod-2 mission, 1965, the first spacewalk.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voskhod_2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm sure I already posted this last time this subject came up, but the Soviets also prototyped a Moonraker-esque laser pistol for their cosmonauts: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_laser_pistol)

<comment><USER17> No picture :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am impressed by the amount of latent bear fighting knowledge around here. People chiming in from the Yukon and Alaska. Pretty awesome.

</comment><comment><USER19> US pilots carry a gun in survival kit as well. I have not found any mentions about astronauts, but Gemini crew had machete.

[http://www.answers.com/topic/nasa-project-gemini- familiariza...](http://www.answers.com/topic/nasa-project-gemini- familiarization-manual)

</comment><comment><USER20> I learned a new word 'cosmonaut' from this article. :-) (I am not a native english speaker.)

<comment><USER21> It's fun to say too!

<comment><USER22> Yes, and unlike astronauts, they are actually reaching their destination: [http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/astronaut](http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/astronaut)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Video?

</comment><comment><USER24> I think their program has always been more militarized than ours. For instance, prior to 1980 they launched space stations with attached machine guns; later they developed a space launch system that visually looks much like the space shuttle and planned to launch a prototype Deathstar with a 1-megawatt laser.

<comment><USER25> The Space Shuttle's cargo bay was the size it was so it could carry military satellites to orbit. Vandenberg Air Force Base was going to be a west coast launch site for the shuttle, and it seems as though every astronaut use to be a Navy pilot. Our program was plenty "militarized."

<comment><USER26> At least 11 space shuttle missions had classified payloads, it's reasonable to believe most of these were spy satellites.

[http://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space- shuttles-35318...](http://www.airspacemag.com/space/secret-space- shuttles-35318554/?no-ist)</comment></comment></comment>


Why Load Testing Ajax is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://ajaxian.com/archives/why-load-testing-ajax-is-hard

<comment><USER2> I don't see how you can scale the solution. To actually load test you'd need thousands of browser instances, which is not practical.

For example auto-complete has a built in delay of about half a second for each keystroke. So how do you load test that? The fastest you can go is two requests per second if you use a real browser.

<comment><USER3> Or hundreds of thousands of browser instances. The whole point of most load test tools is they can generate far more load per hardware unit (CPU, RAM, etc...) than browsers could due to being lighter-weight specialized programs.

I'm not sure why this is such an issue. Most commercial testing tools use proxy recorders which will happily record all the AJAX requests along with the normal requests, and will spit out test scripts that include the AJAX calls. If you don't want them all using "banana" then just record 10 different scripts (which you should be doing anyhow to cover the most common usage models/flows for your site).</comment></comment>


Global Impositioning Systems - Is GPS harming our sense of direction? - <AUTHOR> http://www.walrusmagazine.com/print/2009.11-health-global-impositioning-systems/ <comment><USER2> I find that it has greatly improved my sense of direction. I live in an area where the roads are not always a grid (to put it lightly... having lots of lakes is fun for everyone but the civil engineers), and the GPS device has helped me correct my mental map of my area (which I am also relatively new to) several times now where I was off by as much as 30 or 60 degrees in what direction I thought I was going. (Between trees, clouds, and the fact that you probably shouldn't be staring at the sun while driving, if it weren't out-of- view most of the time anyhow, I find most conventional absolute cues to be useless.)

I suspect that rather than being an absolute problem, it has more to do with how you use it. Using it exclusively in turn-by-turn mode, such that it never displays any context beyond the next turn, is probably a bad idea. Using it zoomed out so it shows the surrounding half-mile or so (or more on highways) is what I find helpful. I never wanted to find alternate routes to things before because you just never know what on earth a road is going to do without a map (dead end? immediately shoot off in the wrong direction? who knows?), and the GPS unit is a map convenient enough to actually use. Even when I use it to travel to areas I've never been to, it helps me strongly orient myself and learn the 'lay of the land' in a way that simply driving once through an area, following your host to some specific place, really can't. It's like having psychic knowledge of the area you're in.

</comment><comment><USER3> GPS is eliminating our sense of direction, not just harming it.

Now if you view GPS as a tool like fire or clothes, that's progress. If you view it as a crutch that prevents skill acquisition like googling for papers or Cliff's Notes, that's worrying.

Either claim seems extreme. But I know that any future war will include attacks on GPS. And I'm really fascinated at how society will respond to that. After all, it's not like in the past a missile could take out "fire" "language" or "clothes" Those were ideas. GPS is a computer system.

</comment><comment><USER4> Absolutely. I have to really pay attention when driving with the navigator on if I want to find my way on foot later in the town that I'm visiting, _especially_ find the car again.

This never was a problem before, but then again, then I would get lost while still in the car.

Amazing how quickly you can get dependent on a piece of technology. The movie 'the knowledge' deals, amongst other things with knowing every nook and cranny of London, that's no longer part of the course I guess. Miss TomTom will take care of that one for you.

Sometimes scary stuff happens: Once I was driving in Budapest and the navigator told me to turn right at the end of the street, right into about 6 lanes of oncoming traffic. Amazing how fast you can back up if you have to!

</comment><comment> Tuna-Fish Yes. In the same way as the invention of fire harmed our digestive system and the invention of clothes made us less resistant to cold.

<comment><USER5> Short comment: Only really relevant if you think navigation is an irrelevant skill, and replacing it doesn't matter.

Longer comment ...

Nice, neat, glib, clever, and completely ignoring the research that's starting to come out in response to the plethora of anecdotes.

People used to be able to add columns of figures without difficulty, and now they generally can't add two 2-digit numbers. People used to be able to make change, and now they rely on the till to tell them how much change to give.

Maybe these are skills people don't need, but they are skills that have declined at the same time technology was introduced. Furthermore, places where the technology has not been introduced, the skills remain. I won't argue cause and effect, I'll leave you to speculate.

People now buy gadgets for "brain training" and guess what - they make you do sums! Wow! Calculators that make _you_ do the work!

It's true that fire gave us more and better food, and it's true that better clothes have made it possible to live and work in harsher climates, but the point remains. Research is starting to show that people's abilities to navigate are declining.

Maybe it doesn't matter, maybe it's a good thing, but dismissing it as glibly as you have simply seems to miss the point.

I'm not pining for the old days. I reach for a calculator as easily as the next person. But when someone today said they'd bought 400 Christmas cards for ukp95, then couldn't decide if that meant they'd been 24p each or 2.40 each, that's a concern. I'm equally concerned when someone tried to find my house recently and turned up three hours late. We're not on his SatNav map, and he couldn't read the map.

Maybe it doesn't matter, but it's not in the same class as fire or clothes or glasses or pottery to keep food or sewerage to take waste away or any of the other technological marvels we take for granted.

<comment><USER6> They're actually 0.24p each :P

<comment><USER5> No, they're ukp0.24, or 24p. Your comment is like saying that you've added your 0.02c. Two cents is $0.02.

In case it is the souce of your confusion, UKP is "UK pounds sterling" and "p" is "pence". There are 100p in 1 UKP.

<comment><USER6> Ah ok that makes sense :-)

The general market standard seems to be to use GBP for pounds and GBX (sometimes GBp) for pence, so the ukp threw me

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I noticed that I stopped learning my way to new places a couple weeks after I bought a GPS.

To fix that, I only use the GPS for the first trip to someplace new. It feels much more like a tool than a crutch now.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's like with any skill obsoleted by technology: as long as everything works now and the uptime of the social system keeps growing, nobody has to suffer. But if, or when, the illusion breaks, there will be many people taking the hit big time.

Albeit a bit far-fetched, navigation with only GPS might be one. Somebody suggested the irrelevance of basic arithmetics in these times of calculators and cash registers. Most of us haven't had their life depend on hunting skills for decades, not to mention the art of keeping lambs and turning them into warm clothes. So there are all kinds of things that just might save us in the event of technological or cultural failure if we still knew how to do it.

But then there's the thing that we can't know what's going to happen. It might be that I will never need to navigate myself anymore, or calculate change. But I can't know. And on the other hand, holding on to old skills just for the sake of security sounds stupid as well. Exaggerating, we might learn to live like cavemen in order to drop any dependence on current culture and technological advances, and then something else happens that we can't handle, and then us cavemen die.

If something happens and humans need to take the hit, there are a few points to consider:

* humans are damn imaginative and very much capable of learning when they have to;

* on the other hand, some of us would just die because they aren't. I wouldn't say survival of the fittest but survival of the most flexible;

* then again, life isn't a right per se -- in the end it's more like a struggle and has always been.

If somebody can't run his life without GPS, he might not do well if his living environment changes. Then again, it might be a good time to learn to do that.

Nobody has guaranteed us that everything's always going to work out for us unless we actually invest time and effort in learning new things and constantly changing ourselves to match the actuality.

</comment><comment><USER5> Here's another report, this time from July 2009.

<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8133890.stm></comment>


Amazon Offers Millions of Songs in High-Quality Audio. Even Neil Young Approves - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/17/business/amazon-music-hd.html <comment><USER2> Oh Neil, I love you, but really? Still selling that snake oil?[1]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/pono-player- review-a...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/02/pono-player-review-a- tall-refreshing-drink-of-snake-oil/2/)</comment>


Ask HN: What are the biggest scams in AI? - <AUTHOR> I believe that (almost) whole AGI community is a scam. <comment><USER2> Probably claiming to do AI!

[http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2017/06/07/ai- inside/](http://www.commitstrip.com/en/2017/06/07/ai-inside/)

</comment><comment><USER3> In their defense, I believe a large portion of the "AGI community" are just stupid, not scammers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Scam in the sense that just providing a lot of word salad, especially in their mailing list and interviews, rather than an actual demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> IBM</comment>


VIVE X: HTC's Accelerator for VR Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.htcvive.com/us/vivex/index.php <comment><USER2> Hmm. I'm a solo developer with kind of a hobby business right now (mostly mobile games/apps now), but not in any way a "real" studio. I've been playing around with Vive VR stuff and have a couple of side projects I'd like to work on. I wonder if I should apply for something like this or if I'm too "small potatoes" for it. It would be cool to be able to work on these more than just evenings and weekends.

</comment><comment><USER3> They also spelled San Francisco incorrectly (San Fransisco)

<comment><USER4> In an email I got from HTC after ordering my Vive there were also multiple spelling errors. Then, after using their support website to tell them, there was a promt that asked me to wait while my support ticket is transmitted, and that prompt contained obvious spelling errors as well! I'm talking about the german email and german prompt, not the english ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> San Francisco and China only? That's disappointing.

<comment><USER6> Uh, the three countries are the USA, China, and Taiwan. How is that disappointing? Taiwan is HTC's home country and the other two are the two largest economies and countries with direct links to VR: the American companies who are making VR a reality (Valve, Oculus, AMD, Nvidia, etc) and the Chinese and Taiwanese companies making the hardware. The USA also has all the gaming and media companies who make the content.

Considering this is a tiny, tiny industry (less than 50k HMD's shipped this year), its a fairly big step. Give it time and lets see how the market reacts to VR.

<comment><USER7> I think OP isn't questioning the choice to start with USA/Asia (for the reasons you have stated), but that it is disappointing for devs that are not located in those regions.</comment></comment></comment>


A 3D modeler that will fit in your pocket - <AUTHOR> https://www.facebook.com/Polygonify

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi :-)

First of all, it makes me so happy to visit this part of the internet, and see you all create so much great things. To work hard and create something, and then share it to inspire others, is something I really find beautiful.

I really really hope that this post doesn't come off like I'm trying to sell you something. I really really just want to show you what I have done, and hopefully get some feedback from the ones who are interested.

For the last couple of years, I have been working on a minimalistic 3D modeler for iPhone and iPad, called Polygonify, which I released yesterday on the App Store. The philosophy behind it is that an artist should be able to start the 3D modeling process anytime, any where. And then export it for further processing or 3D printing.

I'm a programmer. That's my art. What I'm trying to do now is to find 3D artists who can create something cool with Polygonify :-) If you are interested or know some one who might be. Please take a look at the provided URL.

If this is the wrong forum for these kind of things I truly apologize. I have read the guide lines and I hope I'm doing it right now...

Have a really nice day, and thanks for reading!

Kind regards, Patrik Stenberg</comment>