Browserling goes viral with cheap phone users trying to use WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> http://www.catonmat.net/blog/incredible-events-at-browserling/ <comment><USER3> I feel like what he did at the end was the right thing to do (talk to Indian people, figure out a way to monetize it), but the initial antics are childish and distasteful. Those are real people man, not toys... don't play with them.

<comment><USER4> >Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? [...] And it worked!

>That was super hilarious. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing. TAIWAN NUMBER ONE! COMPETITORS NUMBER NINE!

Hahaha, people in dire financial situations who have to use my service are doing what I tell them to! Ain't that just hilarious?

Distasteful, really.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't quite understand how this works. WhatsApp web just lets you access your messages on a different device, it doesn't let you register an individual account or anything. Surely that means this people already have a phone that has WhatsApp? Why not just use that instead of this complex workaround to get it on the other phone?

<comment><USER6> WhatsApp native and WhatsApp web doesn't work on those phones.

<comment><USER7> WhatsApp has a J2ME version, no? Do those phones not run Java apps?

<comment><USER8> FirefoxOS

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Funny that those cheap phones dont run WhatsApp natively. Remember when WhatsApp was new, one narrative was that it was so successful because it had a client for absolutely every system, including Symbian and Java Mobile.

<comment><USER10> Apparently they run a fork of FirefoxOS under the hood:

[https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/reliance-jio- feature-p...](https://gadgets.ndtv.com/mobiles/news/reliance-jio-feature- phone-kaios-apps-games-battery-1727285)

<comment><USER11> There used to be a barely-working whatsapp client on FFOS while it was still alive. OpenWapp was the name. And you could register/authenticate via SMS. Stopped working at some point though because whatsapp api changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The author's attitude towards his users reminds me of the young Zuckerberg who called his users "Dumb f __ks " for giving him their emails, pictures, addresses, SNS because they "trust me".

He might also be successful if he plays his cards right.

<comment><USER13> He wasn't calling his users dumb. He was calling the attackers dumb (for not randomizing their useragent), and then he realized it wasn't an attack.

And while the way he herded the users to spam others was distasteful, I think his pivot in the end was a positive thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm completely happy to see this happen to ~pkrumins. He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow, who's stuck with his project in spite of the usual startup advice. (He submitted a YC application years ago that iirc didn't go very far.)

Hope this turns into some real success for him.

<comment><USER15> > He's always seemed like a genuinely nice, brilliant fellow

Really?

From TFA:

> "Then I got curious. Would these users tweet anything that I asked them? So > I decided to troll my competitors a little bit, and asked users to tweet a > popular meme Taiwan number one to them. And it worked! Suddenly Twitter was > full with my troll tweets"

He's also a bit of a prick.

<comment><USER16> How is he a prick? What harm has he caused to anyone?

<comment><USER7> You mean besides lying to them and making them do things for some reward and then not giving the reward and laughing about it?

<comment><USER17> Pretty sure he gave them the reward? Can you not use browserling from India now?

<comment><USER7> He says he didn't at the time, in the post.

<comment><USER13> I read it differently. It sounded to me like he was trying to keep momentum up while he figured out a way to serve people. Maybe I misread it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The maintainer of this software is a bit nutty, but actually this is pretty timely and captures two important truths that a lot of people might not appreciate:

1\. International payments are hard because every country has its own system, and the people there have their own payment methods. In the US, you take it for granted that anyone with money to spend has a credit card that can make payments in US Dollars. It isn't valid to assume that for users outside the US. People may not have credit cards at all, or if they do they can't necessarily (economically) pay in US Dollars as the currency.

2\. There are a LOT of potential users in international markets. Focusing on the First World (US, Europe, Japan, etc.) might be a great way to keep your project simple or speed up your launch, but you're leaving literally billions of potential users on the table if you don't even try to consider India, China, etc.

<comment><USER19> Back in the day as poor kid in India, my hardest stumbling block trying to apply to international universities was finding a credit card to pay for TOEFL. I had to move heaven and earth to find someone who had a credit card.

</comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 It's ironic that scores of users on phones, which are already capable of communicating, are milking a free service on the other side of the world to connect to a proprietary messaging service that subsumes the same population, to communicate there instead.

<comment><USER12> How is that ironic?

(Seems the battle over the correct usage of "ironic" has been lost long ago.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm amazed hn users are bashing Peter for wanting to monetize the trafic. This is not a cheap service to run. He has to raise entire virtual machines and he's getting ddosed by thousands if not millions of people.

The fact they are indian is totally irelevant here.

Maybe making them tweet stupid stuff was a mistake but hey, we all do mistakes, that doesn't make us assholes. You don't know the relationship he has with his competitors, maybe they are in good terms. Why are people judging him this easily?

<comment><USER7> We're not (I'm not) bashing him for wanting to monetize. We're bashing him for lying to his users and laughing about it. "Haha, I made those stupid idiots tweet about Browserling and then blocked them anyway! Isn't that funny! Interesting that they'll tweet what I tell them. Dance for me, puppets, dance!"

<comment><USER21> It seems to me he blocked them because he had no solution to offer. He tried to get rid of the traffic any way he could because he had no solution to offer.

<comment><USER7> Then he shouldn't have told them they could Tweet to get service and then said "hahaaaaa, suckers, there's no service for you anyway!".

<comment><USER21> I see that as a way to learn how humans work (social engineering. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't understand how you can use web.whatsapp.com w/o having a phone connected as well. The web version pipes everything over to the phone, at least for me. You cannot use it, if your phone is not connected. What am I missing?

<comment><USER23> A lot of users in the Indian market own two cellphones. One is a smartphone with (usually) a prepaid data plan, and a "dumber" feature phone with a cheaper data plan. This allows people to effectively use WhatsApp from both phones, making it convenient to leave one at home and still be able to access your messages.

<comment><USER22> I see. Sounds weird that having 2 phones is cheaper than just one. Esp. since the smart phone is powerful enough to run WhatsApp. Why would one want a second phone and pay for a second data plan? I don't understand how that works out.

<comment><USER24> It's weird but some carriers offer basic phones with free data everyday. They don't give that in smartphones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Here is an update on Africa/Cameroon: [http://www.catonmat.net/blog/browserling- cameroon/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/browserling-cameroon/)

</comment><comment><USER26> What a fun story! So happy for the dev. I hope he can pull together the influx of people / usage into a good paying platform. That would be the best ending :-)

</comment><comment><USER27> I am amazed at the backlash on Peter for a rather considerate response to a crippling attack.

He could have skipped the Twitter jokes but otherwise he did more than most businesses would do by providing a solution to these unexpected customers.

These users were (ab)using the free tier of Browserling beyond its intended use.

PS I highly recommend reading back issues of catonmat to see how much value to web and programming community Peter has provided over the years.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would love if WhatsApp made a commodity phone.

An Android, that wasn't even Google Android, and may even look like candy bar.

All it would do would be:

1\. Phone

2\. Contacts

3\. WhatsApp

4\. Brave Browser (or Firefox Focus)

Perhaps it would have a camera, but only sufficient for WhatsApp.

Perhaps GPS/Maps would be built in, but only accessible for WhatsApp "share my location".

The browser would open links and allow browsing, but would not integrate too deeply and would focus on security and battery life where updates may not be applied and signal is sometimes terrible.

Just the simplest phone, dirt cheap, durable, capable of communication in an age of WhatsApp.

It would also be a near perfect travel/emergency phone for people in the West, and would likely have a huge market amongst outdoor types.

<comment><USER29> Since Whatsapp joined Facebook, they are now only interested in ideas that have potential billion dollar upsides. The phone you are suggesting is more likely to be built by an entrepreneur who's eyeing a small but steady business.

<comment><USER30> Didn't know they'd "joined" FB -- wonder if they're going to federate messaging between their services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> i can't imagine he'll make money on cheap Indian users when he needs a server with terabytes of RAM to serve them but you never know.

i might get blowback for this but I had an Instagram paid service where Indian users were blowing up the free trials and never paying so I just blocked all Indian IPs. more trouble than they're worth

<comment><USER32> This is why advertising works as a good source of revenue.

<comment><USER33> And what happens when advertisers realize that they, too, are obviously not going to sell anything to these users ? I mean, isn't this exploiting the market ? (perhaps for a "good" cause but that's a matter of opinion)

<comment><USER32> These people buy a lot of stuff online, usually through 'cash on delivery'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is one of the areas where Telegram is way better than WhatsApp. Actually their web client is totally awesome.

<comment><USER35> Except every single person in India and their grandmother is on WhatsApp.

<comment><USER36> Except the ones using the Jio phone, evidently. They seem to have trouble using whatsapp.

<comment><USER35> Not if they can help it, apparently :/

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Well, that's an awesome story. Love the fact you found a way to commercialize your product and find a way to sustain and serve low-money customers.

</comment><comment><USER35> Just as a note: These cheap Jio phones are not old. They are also not your usual $20 phones. They only work on Reliance Jio. This is unusual because it means they must support LTE and must have a fully IPv6 network stack.

</comment><comment><USER38> I find it annoying that it's virtually impossible to get such a phone in "the west". I've been looking forever for a phone that enables usb tethering and is not a touch screen. Touch screens sucks when it's cold outside and you are waring gloves, so I need buttons, big buttons.

<comment><USER39> 5 mins on amazon will find you what you are looking for. There are a whole bunch of feature phone and basic carrier/prepaid phones out there. Some of them will also do usb tethering but its a bit difficult to actually set up since it needs obscure drivers. You can also go for the higher end blackberry which still keeps physical keys and runs full blown android.

Even sold by Amazon: Blackberry: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGYW83E](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DGYW83E) TracPhone: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3VI4Q6](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01M3VI4Q6) TracPhone: [https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01L2DE1G2](https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B01L2DE1G2)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Strange security implications he opens himself up to.

He offers an VPN Service / more or less without the proper knowledge.

I think he could be sued for distributing child porn and other things VPN companies take a lot of ressources to make sure they are protected by that stuff.

</comment><comment><USER41> It sounds like it's going to be difficult to monetize.

It's better to build apps for iOS because those users have the most money and spend the most on apps. Android is further behind but still reasonable... If you're targeting users of some cheap $20 phone, then obviously there won't be much money in it. Plus the cost of running a virtual environment for each of these users would be too high I suspect.

This could be used as a tool for mass social manipulation though. Browserling could transform Instagram feeds into whatever it wants... Could potentially be used to spread fake news and spark protests.

<comment><USER18> Sure, individually those users don't have a lot of money, but have you considered the population of India? It's pretty large.

Also, basically all those users were at some point able to cough up $20 for a phone. Messaging is pretty important (and WhatsApp is near or at the top of the list), so maybe a lot of those users could manage to cough up another $1 for something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Why the personal attacks on this CEO? I don't see anything in this article that merits them.

</comment><comment><USER43> When Jio Phone was announced, I was excited as there was a possibility that FireFox OS (KaiOS) had a chance of gaining significant user base in India. With millions of units sold, it actually has.

But as this article points out, the dependency on WhatsApp in India is too high to ignore; the last I heard was that the effort to bring WhatsApp to Jio Phone failed and the Jio Phone 2 would run on Android.

</comment><comment><USER44> Looks like it's okay to treat poor people as slaves and make fun of them, as long as they don't live in the first world.

Shame on you, "startup enterpreneurs".

</comment><comment><USER45> great story, hope Peter does something like an indiehackers.com interview to learn more details about browserling

</comment><comment><USER46> I wish there was a cheap phone that had huge battery life and ran Calls, SMS, WhatsApp and Signal and that was it. Both are now such an important part of how people communicate to me that it's impossible to ditch a smartphone.

How come no one was built a mobile app that locks down all apps other than those you select (e.g WhatsApp/Signal) for X amount of time until you put a code in or (even better) a partner/friend sends you a code. Would be great for enforce non device time.

<comment><USER47> > _How come no one was built a mobile app that locks down all apps other than > those you select (e.g WhatsApp /Signal) for X amount of time until you put a > code in or (even better) a partner/friend sends you a code. Would be great > for enforce non device time._

Isn't that exactly what the kid-friendly modes of the various mobile OSes do?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> this reminds me of what Snaptu was doing years ago to bring access to developing countries... worked out ok for them: [https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/facebook-reportedly- acquir...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/03/20/facebook-reportedly-acquires- snaptu-for-an-estimated-60-70-million/) Also, this is a great way to bring better comms to millions of people who are likely underserved today.

</comment><comment><USER49> This seems like a perfect use case for advertising. Need to watch/see ads every 15 minutes for continued use. As long as the ad revenue exceeds operations cost.

<comment><USER12> But as pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the people who purchase $20 are not likely the type of people who advertisers are interested in, since they don't have much disposable money.

Now if he finds another way to profit off of these users beyond advertising or just spamming twitter, then could be successful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> After reading this I was surprised to see that @browserling only has about 7,500 followers on Twitter. Why aren't there hundreds of thousands?

</comment><comment><USER51> i don't know if peter or substack reads this but whatever happened to testling? it seems to be down.

<comment><USER11> Testling's been down for years. It got discontinued. Nothing this convenient came from the competing services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> WhatsApp should invest in clients for feature phones on this markets. If not WhatsApp (with their really really big resources) which other company can make sure that everybody can communicate to eachother no matter if you have a smartphone or feature phone.

<comment><USER53> [http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build- a-j2me-...](http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a-$16b-exit-build-a-j2me-app)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> What really amazes me in this story is what a powerful force an army of desperate and somewhat ignorant users can be. If they were told to post some memes and fake news or write some troll comments, they would do it without a bat of an eye.

</comment><comment><USER55> The author's immaturity aside, the buried lede here is the Jio - crazy, I hadn't heard of it. $20 for a phone with LTE, FirefoxOS fork, WiFi and 5 day battery life. I'd buy one for 3x that price!

</comment><comment><USER21> Do they use a real smartphone to pass the qrcode screen in web whatsapp?

</comment><comment><USER56> How do I get a dumb phone (simple browser, Java) to access Google hangouts get/send messages? Prepared to make it a (java/rest?) side project. (Son has feature phone).

<comment><USER56> I am thinking Google Chrome headerless on a pc, and Java2ME rest calls or simple feature phone web browser front end on the phone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> > "It turns out users in India can't easily make online USD purchases with > credit or debit cards as it requires a special bank permission."

And people still think Cryptocurrency will not unbank the world. I am not talking only about Bitcoin, but there is a necessity for a new way to exchange value, store value and buy things without the limits that the place where you live decided to impose.

</comment><comment><USER58> I'm amazed how positive reaction this article gets on HN. This guy is an asshole!

It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent (while he himself is a fool for not using useragent correct way - to know what hardware/software accesses his service). Then he goes super happy "hah, great, let them crash competitor websites". Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!". He tries to sell his service for small amount of $1 per day for using free WhatsApp. "I had no idea how much money Indian users spent on online services." Quick google search reveals that daily wage labour gets 2-3 $/day.

What he does next? He sends his users to promote his website at social media. Follow and tweet about my service and I will allow you to use my service - <USER2> promises, except it is not a payment method - it's a lie. But free advertisment is not enough for this guy. It's "his biggest opportunity ever"! He sends his army to "troll my competitors". "That was super hilarious. I was literally rolling on the floor laughing."

"users would tweet, follow, like, and do anything I tell them to get access to Browserling" except he didn't let them access Browserling. They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do. And as a god, he doesn't care about his promises. Well, he could, but it's too much work and there are more interesting things to do for him.

His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors. "Increase your chances in lottery by promoting my service" \- chance does not change Depending on your luck, the same amount of money will give you day, week or month of a service.

This guy is an asshole, his behaviour is unethical and wrong. I can't believe it gets positive feedback here.

<comment><USER59> "It starts with author calling his users "fools" for not randomizing useragent"

He thought he was getting DDOS'd at first, and his attackers were using one useragent. In which case, they would have been fools.

"Then he realize "This is the biggest opportunity ever!"."

It __is__ a great opportunity! For the HN audience, a large influx of users is considered a great opportunity.

"They are just numbers for him, a viral mob that will do whatever their god tell them to do."

There seems to be a lot of negativity around this. I thought it was hilarious. Would there still be outrage if the users were American instead of Indian?

"His final solution - more lies and unethical behaviors"

I would hardly call it lies or unethical. 1\. he isn't obligated to do anything 2\. he ultimately delivered a usable product with a paid option to the service. Sounds like any other freemium app or in-app-purchase

<comment><USER60> Let's try another more illustrative question - what would the reaction be if he were an Indian in India doing that to Indians or doing it to Americans.

There would definitely be outrage.

As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich or well off.

In fairness to the person, he could just be clueless and doesn't really think of the people trying to use his service as people.

Hmm. That makes him sound worse.

I know a friend who thinks like that, And Is not a bad person....

I don't know - this guy comes across as if he doesn't realize that he is manipulating people less informed and weaker than him like someone orchestrating ants into following sugar.

<comment><USER61> > As other people have said, he comes across as lacking humanity. Especially > as the people using Jio phones would be the kind of people who are not rich > or well off.

But that doesn't make his server costs go away. And they must own at least another phone otherwise they wouldn't be able to use WhatsApp Web. So they are probably not as poor as you think.

<comment><USER7> If they own another phone why do they want to access WhatsApp on their cheapo ones so fervently?

<comment><USER62> That is what puzzles me most in the article. Unless one phone that can handle Whatsapp is used by several people I do not get what they are trying to achieve here. AFAIK Whatsapp Web needs to have a phone online and is not provided as a standalone web service.

<comment><USER7> Yeah, that's pretty perplexing to me as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Amazing read

<comment><USER64> I agree.

I can only think the negative components are ironically from the readers who lack the empathy to understand what OP was going through - both his limited understanding of what was happening and the implications.

Most importantly, I appreciated the honest writeup - something quite rare these days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> It interests me that the author treats his Indian users more like some sort of "human botnet" than like real people. I feel like it fits nicely with YC's favourite interview question, "When have you most successfully hacked a non- computer system to your advantage?", which in my mind neatly translates to "what's the most psychopathic thing you've ever done?". If that question is the success predictor YC says it is, Browserling probably has a great future.

<comment><USER66> I was surprised to see that at no point in the article does the author express any appreciation at the opportunity his service seems to have given its new users. There is no step between hating the situation because of its cost to accepting it because of its potential revenue. I get that the author is acting as an economically reasonable agent but the lack of humanity is jarring.

<comment><USER16> You're the one showing a lack of humanity by judging him based on a single blog post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> So entertaining on many levels

</comment><comment><USER68> This gets blocked on WhatsApp end in 3, 2, 1...

<comment><USER69> I never understand this 3, 2, 1 comments I see often on reddit ... and on HN ... what do they mean? Is something from the US television?

<comment><USER70> It's more like a countdown to tell how quickly something is going to happen. In this case whatsapp blocking browserling.

<comment><USER69> And is the countdown supposed to make the comment funnier or what? I was supposing a joke from a tv show or something else I don't get.

<comment><USER71> The countdown simply means "quickly", "in no time" or "very soon". You can read the comment as "This gets blocked on WhatsApp's end very soon."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Big Slew of Updates from SpaceX - <AUTHOR> http://www.spacex.com/updates.php <comment><AUTHOR> One thing they left out is that Elon has a cameo in the new Iron Man movie. :)</comment>


Botoform – Manage Infrastructure Running on AWS Using YAML Templates - <AUTHOR> http://botoform.com/ <comment><USER2> I didn't expect this to be submitted, I don't have many docs written, but ...

Here is a quickstart: [https://botoform.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guides/quickstart...](https://botoform.readthedocs.org/en/latest/guides/quickstart.html)

I'm going to work on documenting the YAML schema next, but for now you can look here: [https://github.com/russellballestrini/botoform/blob/master/t...](https://github.com/russellballestrini/botoform/blob/master/tests/fixtures/webapp.yaml)

</comment><comment><USER2> Hello. I'm one of the maintainers, if you are interested in working on botoform, message me, my team is hiring.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool project! What advantages does this have over using CloudFormation?

I think that's the #1 question people coming to the repo will have, so maybe the repo README should provide a detailed comparison :)

<comment><USER4> Include terraform if possible.

And I use github.com/lucidsoftware/cumulus .

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> See also: OpenStack Heat, which is not the same because it's a restful api, but I believe it's AWS-compatible.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can Heat be decoupled from the whole OpenStack infrastructure? I wish there was something fully-compatible with CloudFormation that can be run locally, but if I have to rebuild the entire OpenStack infrastructure to accomplish that, it's gonna be an overkill.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to Terraform, which allows you to manage infrastructure other than AWS (GCE, DO, bare metal, etc.)?

<comment><USER2> Its written in Python and uses YAML instead of whatever config markup Terraform uses.

My goal is to keep Botoform focused only on AWS and make it more intuitive and enjoyable to use then something like cloud formation.

Also I hope the project becomes an example of how to use Boto3.

<comment><USER7> Terraform uses HCL - Hashicorp Configuration Language -[https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl](https://github.com/hashicorp/hcl)

<comment><AUTHOR> Which is opinionated and pretty limited.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks like Terraform. [https://www.terraform.io](https://www.terraform.io)</comment>


Research sheds light on the origin of the baleen whale - <AUTHOR> https://www.monash.edu/news/articles/world-first-research-sheds-light-on-the-origin-of-the-baleen-whale#.WD4cJV1pttU.twitter <comment><USER2> I'm disappointed they went with "Alfred" and didn't try the more descriptive Baleeny McBaleenyface.

<comment><USER3> Alfred wasn't a Baleen whale though, he was a normal toothed whale that sucked in his food.

<comment><USER2> You are right. I saw "branch of baleen family" and was blinded by my own joke w/o reading the whole paragraph. I wonder if the suck-feeding method contributed to the evolution of the blowhole? Perhaps it originated as a release valve so they could breathe out without blowing their freshly-sucked- in meal right back out their mouth?

<comment><USER3> All Cetaceans have blowholes. I think it's one of the original evolutionary traits.

"The trachea only connects to the blowhole, and the animal cannot breathe through its mouth." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowhole_(anatomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowhole_\(anatomy\))

<comment><USER2> I can see where natural selection would lead to separation of the blowhole from the mouth. I'll bet proto-whales without that adaptation had frequent clogging of the blowhole with food from within. This would not only block the airway, but blowing the food out (if they could manage it before blacking out and sinking) would deprive them of nourishment.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: YC Startup School 2017 Virtual Demo Day - <AUTHOR> https://www.startupschool.org/presentations <comment><AUTHOR> After completing the course I can't recommend Startup School enough. For a free course the value I got out of it was amazing.

* Our group's mentor (James, co-Founder of Lista YC S09) was totally committed and freely giving of his time. We could set up individual office hours for 1-on-1 advice and he put a ton of effort into surveying us & adjusting his approach so we could get maximum value.

* Being part of a 25 startup cohort (the size of our group) was hugely motivating. Even when the conversation in our video chat office hours wasn't perfectly incisive it was still energizing to hear other founders pushing at the same things you're facing.

* The internal Startup School networking tools were decently effective and I don't think YC talked about them too much when inviting people to apply. Building a network of other founders when you're bootstrapping in Cape Town, South Africa can be a little tough. Now I've got around 30 different folks I'm emailing with - all of whom have resonating experiences due to the Tinder-style networking tool in the Startup School portal.

* I also got around $5000 in AWS, Azure and GCP credits. Apart from being able to spend this year's infrastructure money on other business things (awesome!) I can also experiment pretty freely with the different platforms and pick the most ideal setup for my app.

Finally a shameless plug for my startup: [https://watchdog443.com](https://watchdog443.com)

I'm building a tool for ongoing monitoring of your HTTPS state & configuration. Feel free to mail me (address in profile) to chat about it or Startup School!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It now looks like there were some technical issues with the demo day page and it's been taken down for now. The time limit for me to deleting my post has expired so maybe a mod who sees this can remove it?</comment>


Ask HN: What is the black bar on the top of HN? - <AUTHOR> There is a new 5px in height black bar on the top of hacker news right above our beloved orange bar. Inspecting the source reveals table cell element with an img element inside loading `s.gif`. The gif seems to be empty. Anyone know what this is or why it appeared? <comment><USER2> If you do a search for "black bar" you'll find lots and lots and lots and _lots_ of results, most of which answer your question.

<comment><USER3> Not a true statement. Where are you searching? I can find nothing to explain this other than the comment below about someone dying, but that doesn't explain anything either.

<comment><USER2> > _Not a true statement. Where are you searching?_

At the bottom of this page is a search box. Into it type "black bar" (without the quotation marks). It takes you to this link:

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=black%20bar&sort=byPopularity&...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=black%20bar&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Have you not seen the search box at the bottom of nearly every HN page? Perhaps that question sounds a bit brusque, but in effect, whether you meant it or not, you called me a liar, and I rather take exception to that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Because Paul Allen died...

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah thanks for this answer</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any official flights API? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I'm looking for integrating flights info inside an app. Any good aggregated API is out there? <comment><USER2> Which APIs have you looked at already? Google search for 'flight tracking api' gives plenty of results so I assume you did some research already.

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't crossed any free, open sourced flights API. The only relevant (not free though) I found was Skyscanner's API.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Check out Amadeus API

<comment><AUTHOR> Very nice, thanks!!</comment></comment>


Samsung Galaxy S8 Debuts Snapchat-Like Lenses - <AUTHOR> http://snapchatdaily.com/2017/03/30/samsung-galaxy-s8-snapchat-filters/ <comment><USER2> Kind of sad that stuff like this is interpreted as a device-feature (since it's really just a modified camera app, which shouldn't be very noteworthy or device-specific)</comment>


Ask HN: Top WFH Open Source Applications - <AUTHOR> Curious to know what peoples top 3 open source productivity tools have been recently when working from home and why. For me:
1. Video Conferencing - https://jitsi.org/- been great alternative to zoom for socials (not restricted to 45mins) and the video quality for me has been above all the others.
2. Virtual Whiteboard - https://excalidraw.com/ - responsive and fast method to share ideas and gain mutual understanding of concepts.
3. Collaborative writing - https://etherpad.org/ - takes a while to get used to working together on a single document but when you do its a very productivity way to produce short documents and emails - avoids back-and-forth editing between team members as this is done in real-time.
There are obviously enterprise offerings for the above but really impressed with these open source offerings and want to know if I am missing some. If you want to go beyond top 3 that's fine also :) keen to hear as I am sure others are. <comment><USER2> Big Blue Button (BBB) works for me for short collaborative meetings, it has integrated white board. There is time limit of-course.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - looks like time limit on their servers right. Will try to install on mine and see how it compares to Jitsi.</comment></comment>


Code to electrical signal - <AUTHOR>

how does a computer program that we write  eventually gets converted to electrical signals (after turning into zero's and one's)and flows along the bus to wherever it is destined to?what are the steps involved in this process? i couldn't find a very detailed information on this .i would be very glad if someone could explain this. <comment><USER2> Google "from nand to tetris", there are many versions around, text video etc. It starts with a "nand" gate - an electrical device that for all practical purposes has two binary inputs x,y and one output z with this mapping:

      x=0,y=0 => z=1
      x=1,y=0 => z=1
      x=0,y=1 => z=1
      x=1,y=1 => z=0

where usually "0" is represented by zero volts and "1" is represented by e.g. 5 volts.

(As for how a nand gate is actually built -- well, how much electronics/physics do you know? if not much, just assume it magically does. A lego version that works with levers instead of voltages can be found here <http://goldfish.ikaruga.co.uk/ornand.html> )

(edit: formatting)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you so much

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Welcome to Computer Engineering 101!

At the heart of it all are transistors. I'll talk about MOSFETs, Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors. The word semiconductor is important because it means that a MOSFET can be told to conduct or not, which means it can be used to open and close circuits. This is the heart of digital computing.

There are two kinds, created by putting different kinds of gas (doping) on to silicon. N and P type. Each transistor has 3 important points, the source, drain and gate. If you apply a "1" to the gate, the transistor will either open or close, based on whether it is N or P, and allow a signal to move between the source and the gate. You can pair these N and P type transistors to make CMOS or Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor circuits.

If you're really interested, I imagine there should be some good tutorials on how to make a simple microprocessor using a hardware description language like Verilog.

<comment><AUTHOR> great..thank you very much .yes i'am really interested in knowing even further..

<comment><USER3> This will teach you everything you need to know about transistors.

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and- Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-012Fall2003/CourseHome/index.htm)

And this should give you some good background in digital logic and how to assemble stuff like counters and muxes into useful digital circuits.

[http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and- Compute...](http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/Electrical-Engineering-and-Computer- Science/6-111Introductory-Digital-Systems- LaboratoryFall2002/CourseHome/index.htm)</comment></comment></comment>


Bootstrapping Forth - <AUTHOR>

I am getting ready to author a series of tutorials on bootstrapping Forth starting with a "blank" microprocessor.
I am doing this as a microprocessor and programming fundamentals mini-course for my son's FRC [0] (FIRST Robotics Competition) club.
The intent is to teach basic digital logic and programming at the lowest possible level as a solid foundation for development at higher levels.  Almost any modern language becomes easier to understand once armed with an understanding of low level concepts.
I am looking for input on how to approach it.  I've done seminars for working engineers in the past.  In this case I have to assume no prior knowledge of any of the material to be presented.  At a basic level three approaches come to mind:

    - Text based.  You have to read it.  Slides.
    - Video lectures.  I present on video while showing relevant slides.
    - Interactive.  Like video lectures.  Uses a real-time recording of
      terminal window much more so than pure text slides.

 Of course, I'll design and build a little microprocessor board the students will use during the course.  Not decided on architecture/processor yet.  On simple 8 bit embedded projects I've tended to use various 8051 derivatives.  This is one option.  I've also used parts from Microchip, TI, Freescale, Cypress and others.
Thanks!
[0] http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/frc <comment><USER2> [https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCsQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.iecc.com%2Flinker%2F&ei=ehCkUo2zJOrlsATFgoD4DA&usg=AFQjCNFbET0lSowIUuJTqBCIucL3I4tA8A&sig2=SWAWJUJqvZpRnYzNFlBY5w&bvm=bv.57752919,d.cWc) or stack in HP 12c calculator

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting book. Not sure how it might apply to what I am trying to do though. While I haven't used Forth for quite some time I did use it extensively for a number of years. This included bootstrapping in a couple of small processors. The process is surprisingly simple. From memory, a significant portion of the work was having to write drivers for the various I/O devices needing support.

I have a number of ideas for the minimum I/O set to support initially. Of course, this could easily be enhanced through expansion ports.

I am trying hard to limit the scope of the project. It's far too easy to complicate the heck out of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'd favor video lectures. What you're proposing is pretty ambitious for teen learners, so (posted) videos will allow them to rewatch them, pause to take notes, etc. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> I tend to favor video as well. My kid is almost through with MIT 6.00.1x Intro to Computer Science with Python and he's done pretty well. I've helped him along the way but was happy to see him need less help as he progressed through the course.

Part of me thinks that starting at a much lower level might actually be easier in some ways. Not sure at this point.</comment></comment>


Ask HN - Should we flag blogspam? - <AUTHOR>

Fairly often we see stories that link to a piece of useless blogspam rather than the original article.  The guidelines say that these should never have been submitted.  But are silent on what we should do if we notice the guideline being violated.<p>Is it helpful for us to flag those as we notice them so that editors can more easily find and kill them?  Or would those flags just an annoyance for editors, and we should just ignore them in the belief that they will get deleted if they are a problem? <comment><USER2> Yes, what anigbrowl said. Flag them silently if you know for sure that they are blogspam. It is of course a courtesy to identify the original source, if you know that, or to identify the Hacker News thread where the original source was discussed (as Colin Wright and a few other users do from time to time), but in any event flag it if it violates the guidelines.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes, flag them.

</comment><comment><USER4> How do you check to see if an article you are sharing has been posted before? For example, if I have a guest blogger? How do I know that HN has not already seen the content?</comment>


Ask HN- Help: I need a technical advisor - <AUTHOR>

Do you know the difference between Ruby on Rails, C+ and PHP? I don't!
I have an idea for a website project that I would like to get started on. I can fund the project myself and I have a good handle on the concept, marketing, sales, industry contacts etc... However, I have absolutely no technical knowledge. I might be able to name 5 or 10 types of code, but I couldn't tell you the difference between any of them. It turns out that hiring a programmer is hard to do if you can't even describe what you need them to do!
I need someone who is a technical generalist to spend a few hours with me on the phone, hear my idea fleshed out, and advise me on what my technical requirements really are, so I can go about developing an RFP.
I would be happy to pay a reasonable consulting fee. If there is anyone who is interested and thinks they can help, please email me at dave.leder at gmail. <comment><USER2> I would just like to say thanks for being honest and up front. There are so many examples of non-technical people being demanding and unappreciative of programmers, that it's refreshing to see you have an open attitude about this. It's much more pleasant than hearing requests like "I need a programmer to build my social networking site for $100!"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> These are some great points and I left it out of my original message, but that is always something I have worried about, not knowing the value of advice that I do get.

Nevertheless, I have a real need for someone who can at least take the functionality concepts that I describe and tell me if they are technically possible, describe the level of difficulty, explain any problems etc...

I have built a number of websites using freelancers and in almost every case, I left some technical description off of my rfp because I did not understand the way the underlying technology had to be structured in order to get the desired functionality.

<comment><USER3> If you could post out the field or type of application/system you have in mind at least briefly, you might be able to get a much higher relevant response rate. Everyone has their own interests and areas their most fluent in...

Is it a content management system? does it involve crunching large quantities of data? is is mobile application? does it involve building something physical or making an electronic gadget? etc..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> @davidl: It'd be great if you could comment back - or maybe write a blog post, or whatever - on what you learned and on how you plan to go forward.

I for one, and I would guess many others, have the non-technical background but know little about programming.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is actually an interesting problem; If you can't evaluate technical people, how do you evaluate your technical advisor?

(I have the same problem in reverse; I don't know how to evaluate business people, so I don't have one.)

<comment><USER6> I've been thinking about this problem recently -- and it's a hard one -- because we've got a corporate client with a "decision maker" who's got no technical background, but keeps making technical decisions anyway. He does this by listening to advice from me and other technical consultants, and then ignoring that and doing whatever his old buddies at the DoD suggest.

The problem is further compounded by the fact that you can gather together four different technical generalists, ask them a specific question about your project, and get four different -- but equally correct -- answers.

For example, a good one might be: "Should I use Ruby on Rails, Python, WSGI, Java, or PHP for my project?" There's not really much in the way of technical reason to use any of those methods over the others; it comes down to a matter of personal preference on the part of the technologist.

Trying to resolve the matter through discussion is probably out, since the discussion is likely to devolve into arguments over minutiae between the different approaches.

So, I can't think of any way for a non-technologist to ask for technical advice from anyone, and get the answers they really want. It's too much a matter of dabbling in a field where you don't even know enough to know what you don't know.

You might try this instead: write up an RFP that _doesn't_ spell out the technologies that should be used. Instead, spell out your requirements, and be specific in terms that _make sense to you_ :

* The features listed must be N% complete in X days;

* Total development time and cost should be Y and Z;

* The project will be maintained at J rate over K months, meeting L, M, and N requirements...

...Then shop that around. If a technical person thinks they can meet those requirements using their favorite technology, then let them have at. What does it really matter to you if they use PHP or Java, so long as it works?

Set up a contract that gives both of you escape clauses early on in the development project, with minimal losses. e.g., "The developer must complete W feature by Q date, to project manager's satisfaction, or the project manager may choose to abort the project and pay the developer $ amount for their time so far."

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for all the replies here and for all of the emails. I have already corresponded with a few of you and plan to discuss this with several more. I have learned more today than in several years, about the development process!

</comment><comment><USER7> David,

I just shot you an email (from leleu at industrial interface). I'm willing to help out.

</comment><comment><USER8> Just wrote you an email.</comment>


Student internships at UK startups - <AUTHOR> http://workinstartups.com/jobs/interns/

<comment><USER2> These interns better be paid.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not clear from the site if they are although some of the roles do mention being paid. I'd hope so as well but I guess it's up to the individuals involved if they want to pay/work for free.</comment></comment>


Linkabit - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linkabit <comment><AUTHOR> "More than 75 direct or indirect Linkabit spinoff companies have been identified — a rate twice that of Fairchild Semiconductor, the legendary progenitor of Silicon Valley."

I didn't find the SDUT article but I did find this Linkabit genealogy: [https://libraries.ucsd.edu/sdta/_files/bios/docs/dennis- mart...](https://libraries.ucsd.edu/sdta/_files/bios/docs/dennis-martha- linkabit-tree.pdf)</comment>


Nearly 200 images released by US military depict Bush-era detainee abuse - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/05/us-military-bush-era-detainee-abuse-photos-released-pentagon-iraq-afghanistan-guantanamo-bay <comment><USER2> How much from injury prior? How much of this is detainees being treated like rental car pre-checkout inspection? How much is from abuse? When? Where? How?

With context is impossible to establish, difficult to see this as really helping prevent future abuses

<comment><AUTHOR> _How much of this is detainees being treated like rental car pre-checkout inspection?_

That would qualify as abuse.

 _How much is from abuse?_

The background text of the article indicates that the photos were of prisoners at least alleging abuse by US soldiers.

<comment><USER2> No, it would not. If the detainee is already injured this is a way of cataloging what their problems were on arrival. The photos were not used for propaganda nor do they appear (at least those I looked at) to be an effort to humiliate.

Allegations are cheap to make and are common of all detainees, whether from a war zone or the 2nd precinct. That does not make them all true (or false).

Without any context for each photo (and subject of the photo) there is no way for you, me or anyone to determine what was abuse and what was not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> "Warning: Some readers may find these images disturbing"</comment>


Learning to forget: Why web companies need to archive data - <AUTHOR> http://www.reputationdefenderblog.com/2010/01/22/why-forgetting-data-matters/

<comment><USER2> The HN title is different enough from the actual title to mean almost completely the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER3> As a user I should be able to tell a website that I want it to forget something I'm putting on it after a while. Nothing complicated, say a default setting of one year. Not on sites like Posterous or Flickr, but on sites like Facebook, Twitter, even HN.

This isn't likely to happen though without legislation, which is a shame.

<comment><USER2> Why not on Posterous or Flickr? Not everyone wants every post or photo to persist.

Or, more practically: if this were convention or law, why would Posterous or Flickr be exempt?

BTW I like this idea.

<comment><USER4> Deleting information posted publicly isn't practical. Your posts are likely to be archived in numerous places (e.g. google cache or archive.org).

<comment><USER2> True, but still ...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Bruce Schneier's essay "Privacy in the Age of Persistence" goes deeper into the underlying issue.

<http://www.schneier.com/essay-261.html></comment>


Where have I been these past few years? - <AUTHOR> http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2017/01/07/status/ <comment><USER2> Can someone give me some context? Who is rachelbythebay? I gather she is probably someone well known for her writing on software, tech culture, etc in the HN community, but I am not that immersed in the community(hence my ignorance). Thanks!

<comment><USER3> If you think someone is a bit of a local celebrity on HN, you can click the domain name on a story like this and see what their blog was submitted for. Usually useful information.

<comment><USER4> I fat finger downvoted you. Here's my verbal upvote.

This was news to me, thanks.

<comment><USER5> These days there's an "unvote" text link added next to their name, or "undown" for the case of a downvote.

<comment><USER6> In addition, on my mobile, when I accidentally or intentionally hit the downvote, it doesn't take the first couple of times. This has saved me numerous unintentional downvotes. Thanks, HN!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In case Rachel's reading this: I've missed her posts. I'm getting out of the troubleshooting part of the industry because it sucks (or rather, it's not where I want to put my energy anymore), but her stuff has always been a real treat to read and a reminder that no matter what's in front of me, someone's probably got a much tougher problem in front of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Always sad to be reminded how many good people get their careers swallowed up by a corporation. The public sphere suffers.

I have a lot of anger towards Google in particular, who seems to relish in having private resources, secrets, learning and technology that only the annointed may access. I should probably talk to my therapist about that.

<comment><USER9> Honest question: how else do you pay the bills?

<comment><USER10> Work somewhere that public output is part of how you're compensated and promoted. See: [https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/07/how-much-should-you- pay-d...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2011/07/how-much-should-you-pay- developers/) "One important principle of Stack [Overflow] is that we do as much as we can publicly, and we try to leave public artifacts of all the work we do."

<comment><USER11> Offer her an interview!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what, the whole grenade metaphor? I don't need it. It's just a damn web site. People _do_ sometimes use it to communicate in critical situations... but none of us working there are ever in any risk of bodily harm because someone pushed a bad config.

Given that people are dealing with actual wars, I can lose it. It's easy to lose sight of such things when you're sheltered from them.

Updated.

<comment><USER12> I'm in a similar field (surprise surprise) and the most impactful thing someone has ever said to me is that we're making websites, not curing cancer. Respect for making the change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Misbehaving binary and no source?

xxd -> vi -> xxd -r

Fierce. Love it.

<comment><USER14> It isn't even that there is no source - the code is available (upstream is here: [https://people.freebsd.org/~abe/](https://people.freebsd.org/~abe/) ).

She figured that since it was a 1-bit bug, xxd -> vi -> xxd -r was going to be quicker and simpler than downloading, modifying and recompiling the source.

<comment><USER15> Was that the final solution or just for debugging purposes? It doesn't seem like you'd want to make binary patches the next time that software got updated

<comment><USER16> In the article she indicates it was for proving her hypothesis regarding the source of the problem. She then sent an actual patch upstream to fix it. It was faster this way because of the way the binary did bitwise flags for options. Flipping a single bit in the binary was quicker than recompiling bit twiddling code to for testing purposes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Where does she work now? I can't tell from the post

<comment><USER18> Google suggests it's Facebook

[https://facebook.com/wogrammer/posts/1748187012080407:0](https://facebook.com/wogrammer/posts/1748187012080407:0)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> you get less and less productive the more experiense, as you can think of more and more stuff that can go wrong. Im glad she found an employer that put use of her experience

</comment><comment><USER20> Ah, "heisenbugs". I'm glad there's another person on the planet using this term. :)

<comment><USER21> It's a reference to the principle right?

<comment><USER20> I guess you're referring to the uncertainty principle, but this one is more related to the observer effect[1] (also described by Heisenberg): Observing a system alters its state.

In terms of software, it describes bug that change their behaviour (usually vanish) when being investigated. The reason is often a racing condition that swaps to one side due to blocking one thread through a debugger or additional delay through print statements.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_\(physics\))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What was up with the non-sequitur bags of water link?

<comment><USER23> I haven't read the article, but I would assume any mention of 'bags of water' would be a reference to a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. Specifically, the episode where the crew of the Enterprise encounters a silicon-based life form capable of communication with humans. Humans are three quarters water, so the silicon lifeforms (rightly?) refer to the humans as 'ugly bags of mostly water'.

To put this into context, it's not uncommon to have the set of people who use and work with technology overlap with the set of people who are sci-fi fans. This is prevalent enough that the culture itself overlaps. Here, I would guess a non-sequitur referring to 'bags of water' is a form of signalling; 'I'm one of you', or something to that effect.

I would go so far to say that knowledge of certain sci-fi tropes, plot lines, and even quotes is a requirement for working on certain teams. At the very least, active displays of ignorance of sci-fi culture should be avoided.

But then again, I haven't read the article linked to by the OP. It's just a guess.

<comment><USER24> Another famous source of the "bags of water"/"bags of meat" phrase is the short story _They 're Made Out of Meat_ by Terry Bisson.

[http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html](http://www.terrybisson.com/page6/page6.html)

<comment><USER25> Officer: "Sir, Do you classify as human?"

Korbin: "Negative, I am a meat popsicle."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I know its a common phrase like "hair on fire", but seriously, "jumping on live grenades" is super gross. That probably happened last week in Syria.

I get it, its just an expression we use in the industry. Its all good to hear it, but lets maybe stop using it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I don't need it to make my point.

<comment><USER27> Though on the other hand, hair on fire is just as likely to have happened in a warzone. How will you run away from all the analogies which make random strangers on the internet queasy?

Perhaps somebody doesn't like hcf opcodes because they remind them of when their house burned down. Is the concept of running into a blaze owned solely by firefighters? Do soldiers own the concept of battle?

<comment><USER9> True, at some point you just stick to it and that's that.

That said, the grenade thing happened because, well, that's what some of us (internally) actually call that sort of outage situation sometimes -- you didn't make it happen, but you're there and are able to do something to fix it, so you do.

It doesn't work nearly as well on the outside, so I changed it and admitted my error. That's about the best you can do in a world where we're all speaking slightly different languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> i'd rather kill myself than work with c++

<comment><USER16> That seems rather extreme. Although I suppose refusing a job that offers C++ could in very rare circumstances result homelessness, hunger, and finally death.

You'll find that gratuitous hyperbole with no actual content in your post will get you down-voted pretty fast here. The community has developed a pretty aggressive immune system to the typical reddit post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Who is rachelbythebay?

(Don't expect an answer. This is a rhetorical question)

<comment><USER30> In this case you can literally type:

whois rachelbythebay.com

And get the answer :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Have you been by the bay?</comment>


Build cross-platform mobile apps with nothing but JSON markup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-build-cross-platform-mobile-apps-using-nothing-more-than-a-json-markup-f493abec1873#.2ubr8y1a3 <comment><USER2> Congrats! I discovered jasonette by coincidence. There's so much stuff to read. At first glance, it's amazing that it is possible to create a native mobile app with pure JSON.

This could also be perfectly suitable for a Lisp/JSON code generator due to the s-expressions. The code would even be more compact.</comment>


Amazon FSx for Windows File Server - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-fsx-for-windows-file-server-fast-fully-managed-and-secure/ <comment><USER2> Pricing link: [https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/windows/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/fsx/windows/pricing/)

Storage capacity: $0.130 per GB-month

Throughput capacity (configurable): $2.200 per MBps-month

Backup storage: $0.050 per GB-month

</comment><comment><USER3> Shame they didn't use Samba like they did for their simple directory service. Would have been great to have more eyes on the Samba code.

</comment><comment><USER4> SMB-Share-as-a-Service

<comment><USER5> It amazes me it took this long to make this happen and that Azure still doesn't have this as a feature

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> can't tell if the AWS mafia is going after HN or...

<comment><USER7> Yea, I currently count 10 articles about Amazon on the front page, with 8 of them being posted by the same user [1], who happens to be an Amazon employee. The keynote is happening, but it still seems excessive.

I've also noticed that a few other Amazon employees are popping up in the threads promoting AWS products, which seems a little shady as well.

1: [https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mcrute](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=mcrute)

<comment><USER8> [https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...](https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20big%20tech%20conference)

<comment><USER7> Does it make a difference if the person who is doing the posting of all of those articles is an Amazon employee? Seems like a clear case of attempted astroturfing at worst, and definitely a conflict of interest at best.

I know there's not really a "solution" to it, and Amazon should definitely be allowed to announce their products on HN, but I think the readers have a right to know that the people promoting these products do benefit from said products being adopted.

<comment><USER8> I doubt that it makes a big difference. Someone's going to post these no matter what, and it's the upvotes that put them on the front page.

For me the issue is, of the dozen+ announcements, which are actually the interesting ones? I have no idea, but we're not going to leave a dozen of them on the front page to find out.

<comment><USER7> Does HN have the ability to merge threads? I hate to suggest more work for you, but it seems like a good situation for a "megathread" type of situation for all AWS reinvent-related announcements to all be grouped into. It doesn't _really_ matter, but it could help avoid the clutter, both from the posts themselves, and from the comments decrying them.

<comment><USER8> That runs into a different problem, which is that lists tend to make for lame discussion. Since it isn't clear which specific item to discuss, the topic ends up being the lowest common denominator, which in this case would be Amazon or AWS in general. We don't need another thread about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another Amazon Ad?</comment>


Why the Best Wireframe Style Is No Style - <AUTHOR> http://uxmovement.com/wireframes/why-the-best-wireframe-style-is-no-style/ <comment><USER2> I choose my wireframe strategy depending on my audience. Sometimes I'm only wireframing an idea for a designer, so I spend more time pointing out the primary, secondary and tertiary pieces that belong on the page -- instead of implying where they should be.

If I have no designer lined up yet and we're just looking to wireframe an idea for non-technical, non-designer people ("the client"), I may give it more form and layout. But always with the discussion of "This is NOT the design, only an example to show app workflow".

I find the best combo to be a flow chart (site map + "things on the page that aren't content"), and a mockup of what the UI could be like. I'll even do it for myself if I'm the full stack person on the job taking it from front-end to back-end. Gives me a basis to work from, that I scratch on and change as I go along if need be.

There is no one true way to do it I guess is what I'm saying.</comment>


China's Arthur C. Clarke - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/chinas-arthur-c-clarke?intcid=mod-latest

<comment><USER2> The language/alphabet barrier, as well as the censorship barrier, prevent us from knowing China's Clarke, China's Feynman, China's Tesla maybe.

And we've come to reflexively discount anything coming out of China as derivative.

Don't forget - China is almost 25% of the human race!

What might we in the West be missing out on?

<comment><USER3> I remember it being not _all_ that long ago, as China (and greater Asia) ramped up on the internet, that the West was deeply concerned about the mono- lingual Asians not being able to take advantage of all the wisdom, science and art the West had produced.

In some ways this is true, in some ways it's self-enforced, and in some ways the reverse is true as well.

Automatic machine translation, and query expansion was supposed to make these inter-lingual barriers go away. But it feels like in many ways, the effort has died. Sure you can still go to translate.google.com and put in a URL and get a reasonable translated page back for a large number of languages. But I can't go to google.com and put in a query for refrigerator and it brings back matches for 冰箱 or 电冰箱 and translates those automagically. That next step just never seemed to happen, and what were fast advances in East Asian language machine translation just seems to have died out (Korean/Japanese <-> English is virtually unusable).

Even within like-language groups, ones that have "good enough" translations, this next step didn't happen. If I want to search for réfrigérateur I still have to translate the word myself, then go back to google.com, paste the word in and then hit "translate page" next to the search results (and hope that chrome's automatic translation kicks in on the search results so I have some idea what I'm clicking).

<comment><USER4> > Automatic machine translation, and query expansion was supposed to make > these inter-lingual barriers go away. But it feels like in many ways, the > effort has died.

Machine translation is still very much an active area of research. It sucked for many years as people hand-crafted more and more complicated systems; the big breakthroughs of the past ten years or so have come from realizing that, given very large (internet-scale) training datasets, you can apply some simple statistical methods and do much better than the previous hard-coded methods that couldn't exploit this wealth of data. There's been lots of tuning of the shallow statistical approach, but my understanding is that significant further progress will involve models that capture a deeper understanding of semantics while still maintaining the ability to be trained from large datasets. Identifying such models is hard and is an active area of research. Neural networks have been receiving a lot of study recently as one possible approach (see e.g. this demo [http://22.214.171.124/](http://22.214.171.124/) from Yoshua Bengio's lab), but there are other avenues as well.

Basically I don't think it's accurate to say "the effort has died". Research takes time, the technology is improving, and it's quite possible that within another ten or fifteen years we'll be able do to the sort of seamless, accurate translation across the Internet that you'd like to see. (translation between European languages, which are fundamentally similar in many ways, is already close to that point, but bridging the gap to Asian languages has been much harder...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've just started reading The Three Body Problem (in a Traditional Chinese edition, since I'm more comfortable with that than Simplified). No spoilers please.

From my perspective, what little I've read of Chinese speculative fiction (such as a couple of Ni Kuang novels) seems to take a bit of what I call a "golly gee whiz" tone, making a big deal about ideas that would be old hat to most readers of Western SF. What I've read so far of Liu Cixin seems to have a bit of this, but perhaps not as bad; I'll see how I feel after I finish the trilogy.

<comment><USER6> I stopped reading Ni Kuang's work since 14. I'd consider comparing Ni Kuang with Liu a serious offence to Liu's readers.

In my opinion, the second and third instalments of _The Three Body Problem_ are as good as the Foundation series. The first one, really is just a trailer.

The second one, entitled _The Dark Forest_ is far more than Sci-fi. Personally, I interpret it as a serious international political question: could the West really tolerate any other forms of civilisation? the book gave a negative perspective.

Claim: I live in UK and I understand most of EU folks don't like to be simplified as _Westerners_. However, from a Chinese perspective, the cultural differences between FR/DE/UK/CA/US/AU are invisible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think Liu is more inline with Isaac Asimov than Arthur Clarke. Liu is clearly an atheist and intentionally avoid _cheap_ reading gratification achieved by science-religion association.

My complaint about Liu: he has a silly admiration towards Stephen Hawking probably due to his obsession with black hole. (but who doesn't?) 200 years later, people might only get to know Stephen Hawking when reading Liu's books.

</comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me of the wast difference in style, topics and tone between western and Eastern Bloc SCiFi writers.

I wonder if Chinese authors also try to criticise regime and socio-political system they live in under the veil of scifi, like Janusz Zajdel in Poland during Russian occupation.

</comment><comment><USER8> Looks like worth reading, although the themes of the novels covered in the article look pretty much rehashed from other authors like Arthur C. Clarke of course, but also Larry Niven comes to mind.

</comment><comment><USER9> Bought this book, "The Three-Body Problem"!</comment>


Ask HN: What is the main reason for using JavaScript for creating backend/APIs? - <AUTHOR> Never asked myself this so far, but I am very curious what are the reasons/advantages for using Javascript on the server? <comment><USER2> A few that come to mind..

\- Leveraging the skill set of existing team

\- Using the same language and shared code between client and server; for example, shared functions or data schema, and server-side rendering

</comment><comment><USER3> if you need a backend api and all you have is javascript developers, or you're proof of concepting something quick.. probably only reasons i can think of</comment>


What did Earth look like X million years ago? - <AUTHOR> http://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#50 <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770)

Has a bunch of comments by the author.

</comment><comment><USER3> That's pretty cool.

I have two suggestions, if the developer is seeing this:

\- Mark the North and South poles. For someone unfamiliar with the past continental layouts, it's easy to get a bit disoriented . I would find a location on the globe, jump back in time, rotate the globe a bit to look around, then jump further back in time and then start to get disoriented as to where on earth the details I'm looking at are. Yes, you can figure it out, but I think it could be made much easier to do.

\- Have a checkbox for overlaying the outlines of the present-day continents (in their present-day positions) over the globe. This would also help the user to orient what they're looking at.

<comment><USER4> It would also be really useful if night could be turned off, and if the gimbal lock rotation issues (I'm guessing) could be avoided (with quaternions?).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Last week I was in the field digging dinosaurs in Montana, when one of the dig leaders mentioned there was no grass back then, just lots of ferns, because grass hadn't evolved yet.

It kind of blew my mind that for most of dinosaurs, there was just a lot of leafs and ferns.

Here's some pictures for context ([https://imgur.com/a/rE5wwc4](https://imgur.com/a/rE5wwc4)), when you're out where most dino bones are found, you forget that it may have been a lush landscape of riverbeds approaching the ocean coastline, or that it may have been a dry arid desert landscape like in the land before time movies. Regardless, it's odd to imagine all of it, with _no grass_.

<comment><USER6> Lots of mosses though? I imagine more primitive vegetation filled that role.

<comment><USER5> Dunno! I think most larger dinosaurs then needed larger sources of energy. Look at the teeth of an ankylosaur or most ceratopsians - they're designed to chomp and scissor through large leafy kale.

<comment><USER7> Adapted, not designed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When I was a kid I had a wonderful collection of magazines called "Prehistoric Zoobooks." [https://www.google.com/search?q=prehistoric+zoobooks&client=...](https://www.google.com/search?q=prehistoric+zoobooks&client=ms- android- google&prmd=ivsn&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&fir=J_vsWDQeSzG1jM%253A%252CiYzcTvfpkeAyyM%252C_%253BUk7Y3VJCqCBx8M%253A%252C9GZcY3es-g0kpM%252C_%253BWf- _ANS- pgmVSM%253A%252C9CUdUGsNydlKoM%252C_%253BINn6S_YdCaMkLM%253A%252CesoYPDwRTvMRFM%252C_%253B1MahkDKA5BOixM%253A%252CZNG3x0ByNx6leM%252C_%253Bj1WUUTyPpOyCZM%253A%252C8Zu8tTB77gKSVM%252C_%253BvTHkWrPT5BUPrM%253A%252CaQx71Q4tvo6jeM%252C_%253B62gZAYdkJvNS_M%253A%252Cb84uf8bSyH1OHM%252C_%253BuRE- eMCu3huY3M%253A%252CUINZPn77l9LhlM%252C_%253B6r81mbOpeQkUhM%253A%252Ct6MqPGoNqB9ejM%252C_&usg=AFrqEzcu4rxaRK2euDnRSfJfVgyGLdhZXQ&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjP5fDwy9fcAhUDYKwKHUqBB- kQ7Al6BAgKEAI&biw=412&bih=660) Each one in the series described an era of life on Earth from the beginning to now, with fantastic illustrations. I used to read them from beginning to end over and over again. I really want to find something similar for my kids ideally with modern reconstructions, but can't find anything comparable. Any recommendations?

<comment><USER6> I recall this series as well (in a dark green plastic case?), and the closest experience I've come across as an adult has continuously been the Smithsonian Natural History museum. Every era is captured in a different exhibit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Somewhere outside the Schwarzschild radius of every black hole is a region in which the path of incoming photons is 'bent' 180 degrees and they are sent back roughly in the direction from which they came.

In my mind this means that some infinitesimally small portion of the photons that fall on the earth every day were reflected from the earth ~50K years ago and sent in the direction of the black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

I sometimes wonder if we could build a telescope large enough to resolve these photons into an image of the earth from that time. This would likely require 5,000 years of technological development and construction, but it does seem like it's physically possible. (Maybe there's too much dust or distortion or background noise to actually pick out the signal, dunno)

We couldn't go back XXX million years, but maybe XX thousand?

<comment><USER10> I have followed the same idea regarding radio waves. Would it be possible to travel far enough out to receive radio or TV broadcasts from WWII? Presumably all that information in the form of waves is still out there (assuming it hasn't been too distorted by inference, or far too small of an amplitude).

<comment><USER11> No, because you can't catch up with radio waves since they are going the speed of light.

<comment><USER12> But using OP's idea, they could be reflected back at the earth, such that 2018 - 1942 = 2 x numLightYears away from the scattering object. I agree, you wouldn't be able to go "in front of the waves" but you might be able to go to a point in space where they'd eventually arrive through scattering. I think it's very unlikely anyways since the solid angle for them to be reflected right back at a certain point is super small.

<comment><USER9> Very unlikely indeed. I wish I was smart enough to do the math but I'm sure it's more difficult than resolving a planet 50k light years away. Probably more like resolving a planet in another galaxy.

<comment><USER12> I fixed the typo, the factor of a half should have been on the other side of the equation. To actually calculate a realistic probability would require more work; farther objects would imply higher attenuation, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Previous discussion from 2 months ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770) (59 comments, some from the author)

</comment><comment><USER14> I had no idea flowers evolved so late. The first flowers were 100 million years _after_ the first dinosaurs!

<comment><USER15> The majority of flora we see now also evolved very late. The dinosaurs probably saw and fed on Conifers, Cycadophytes and Ferns. Grass and Modern leafed flora evolved much later.

<comment><USER16> You can see what forests might have looked like 100mm years ago by going to New Zealand, which split off from the Australian landmass about that long ago.

The native flora consists of a lot of ferns, and almost entirely evergreen plants. Flowers are uncommon and primitive, most plants are pollinated and spread by birds. The only native grasses are tussocks.

<comment><USER17> Head down to Curio Bay and see the remains of a forest from 180mya, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Awesome! It's great to see India move northward between 50m and 35m years ago, and smash into the Eurasian body, creating what is now the Himalayan range.

<comment><USER19> Here's a curious question, India merged into Eurasia ~40 million years ago, Dinosaurs became extinct around 66 million years ago. When dinosaurs were around India was still an island. We know for sure about the presence of Dinosaurs in ancient India through fossils records [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajasaurus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rajasaurus) . So how did the dinosaurs populate an isolated island? Or did they evolve independently of each other in different islands?

<comment><USER20> First dinosaurs appeared as early as 230 million years ago, when what later became India was a part of the huge continent:

[http://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient- earth#240](http://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#240)

India became "an island" continent only almost 100 million years later than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The creator himself had posted this earlier at HN. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17286770)

</comment><comment><USER22> I've always been fascinated by the animals from the era of megafauna, specifically the Pleistocene. Wikipedia is a great start, but details like paintings, behavior, etc are a bit more scarce.

Does anyone have any recommendations for good resources that are approachable for non-scientists?

Some megafauna examples:

Megaloceros, the giant deer who had antlers 12 feet wide- [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elk](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_elk)

Arctotherium, the largest bear and potentially the largest land carnivore, ever - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctotherium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctotherium)

Titanis, one of the largest carnivorous terror birds - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanis](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanis)

Megatherium, the giant, elephant sized sloth that dug gigantic burrows - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megatherium)

Thylacoleo carnifex, the marsupial lion, and largest carnivorous marsupial in Australia - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial_lion](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsupial_lion)

Camelops, a family of camels native to North America - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelops](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camelops)

Thylacosmilus, a Metatherian (similar to marsupial), Sabre toothed carnivore from South America - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacosmilus](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacosmilus)

</comment><comment><USER23> This actually answered a question I had wondered about - in the North West of Scotland there are mountains made of a distinct sandstone - Torridonian (named after the sea loch). I remember reading that the material that created this sandstone came from the erosion of mountains to the North West (where the Atlantic is now).

I looked up Scotland and 750 million years ago and there is a range of mountains to the North West. :-)

Incidentally, one of the cool things about the North West of Scotland is that the _original_ landscape that was buried by the sandstone has been exposed in places.

Edit: I also seen to remember reading that the Brownstone buildings of New York are actually made from the same stone deposited on areas that ended up on the other side of the Atlantic when it split.

</comment><comment><USER24> It would be cool if this could show what the Earth would look like in the future too.

</comment><comment><USER25> Topically, I see Britain had everything sorted 150 million years ago while the rest of Europe was in a right heap.

<comment><USER26> First thing I noticed as well. Joking aside: Any ideas why this is so? It's not that the British Islands elevation is so extreme.

<comment><USER27> The British Isles are away from the plate edges where most disruptive geologic activity occurs (earthquakes, volcanoes, subduction, etc). The rest of Europe is along the edges of the plate and was geologically active. If you look at North West Brazil you can see very little happens for over 240 million years (away from plate edge) while Oceania has been very active for the last 100+ million years (and is still very active).

If you look at the ocean while you go back in time you can see large swaths that have very little detail. This is because that rock has been geologically recycled and is no longer part of the geologic record.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Brilliant, although it would be excellent if the transitions between the times was animation.

Perhaps the time could be represented as a video. Draw a video frame to a canvas and use as a texture for the sphere. As the time is updated just play forward or backward to a video point and the texture would update.

</comment><comment><USER29> You have to love the giant black dot on the yucatan when you set it to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

<comment><USER30> The first time I read (in school) about an asteroid hitting the Gulf of Mexico and causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, I looked at a map and sure enough the Gulf of Mexico looked like a big round hole where the asteroid must have hit.

Later I realized that the dinosaur-killing crater is much smaller and buried and hidden at the edge of the Gulf of Mexico. I also learned that the Gulf of Mexico was formed to due plate tectonics, not due to an impact. What an odd coincidence that the dinosaur-killing asteroid hit a location on the Earth that looks just like a huge crater, but isn't a crater at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Are polar ice caps that rare of an event for the Earth? I only see them at 600 (N & S), 450 (S), 300 (S), 35 (S) and 20 (S) Mya.

</comment><comment><USER32> Has anyone made a large-format map (or better yet: globe) across which one can scroll to past geographic and political maps?

<comment><USER33> I think so! The "Magic Planet" is a digital projection globe that can display all sorts of different datasets. I've been more interested in its planetary science, astronomy, and geology applications, but I believe they've got lots of political, cultural, and economic visualizations as well.

[http://globalimagination.com/](http://globalimagination.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is it not possible to zoom? It becomes un-viewable when I do?

</comment><comment><USER35> Would be cool to have "snowball earth" pop up there around 700mya.

</comment><comment><USER36> Love the left-right arrow key shortcuts here.

</comment><comment><USER37> Africa 90m years before was splitted into two giant pieces, and then merged into one piece ??

</comment><comment><USER38> How do we know the geography of so long ago?

<comment><USER39> Magnetic striping on the sea floor [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Magnetic_strip...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plate_tectonics#Magnetic_striping)] is probably our best clue. It's the piece of evidence that sealed plate tectonic's place as the dominant theory.

Plates which are separating let molten rock from the mantle up, where it cools hardens. Any rock which can be magnetised (iron) is aligned with the Earth's magnetic field when molten, and gets fixed that way. The magnetic field swaps every 10,000 years or so [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geomagnetic_reversal)], so you get a stripey effect.

Working our more precised dates for the magnetic swaps is a matter of slow and painstaking correlation with other bits of evidence: dating of radioactive elements, tree rings, rock layers, the temperature of the Earth, composition of gas bubbles trapped in rock and ice.

<comment><USER40> Paleomagnetism measurement of the magnetic field direction in a rock gives the latitude of a the rock when it formed. The magnetic fields are horizontal at the equator and vertical at the poles, thereby giving latitude of the rock when is cooled from volcanic hardening or the last metamorphic squeeze. And there is a magnetic imprint when sediments settle too.

Latitude when combined with geometric constraints of seafloor strips and correlated trans-ocean rock formations build the overall picture.

In addition the oldest seafloor is 220 million years old or 5% of Earths lifetime. Paleomag measurements go back ten times longer.

<comment><USER39> Those are fun and interesting corrections, thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why is clockwise Clockwise? (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://homepages.sover.net/~donnl/Clockwise/clockwise.html

<comment><USER2> That's a lot of words for what can be summarized in a short sentence: clockwise is clockwise because that's how a sundial moves in the Northern Hemisphere.

<comment><USER3> That was my guess, but stopped reading after the third paragraph, as there was no substance in the article by that point.

<comment><USER4> Wow. I did not expect this from HN. It's an interesting, well written account that covers a variety of things in human history that move in such a pattern, yet here are these two belittling it for its lack of brevity.

<comment><USER5> I think part of it is that the article sounds incredibly speculative and "just so". It doesn't, in other words, appear to be researched, and it is about something (the _causality_ of our directional associations) which would be really hard to know even if you were to stare at all the known historical facts without uncertainty about them.

So if it's all conjecture, and you wipe the conjectures away, you really do have "I think it's either because shadows in the Northern hemisphere go from left to right when you're facing North, or because when you track the Sun across the sky from that hemisphere, you have to face South and then the Sun describes an arc from left to right."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > the Semites---a people speaking similar languages, from which both Jews and > Muslims descend

s/Muslims/Arabs/

</comment><comment><USER7> > It seems to be a peculiarity of our human nature that if we are watching the > movement of a stick's shadow, that we face north to do so.

No, it just logic. If you're standing south of the stick (facing north), the stick's shadow will move in (roughly) a half-circle throughout the day, starting at the left of the stick, moving right and up (while contracting) to vertical (pointing north), and then extending further to the right until it reaches (almost) east. It will be shorter in the summer and longer in the winter. You could also watch this "from above" (north of the stick, facing south), but if you're south of the stick, looking at the movement of the shadow in the half circle is quite similar to looking at the movement of the sun in the sky (except in the opposite direction).

Most things are reversed if you're in the southern hemisphere.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. When I saw the title of the post, my immediate thought was that the answer was simple: "because sundials were invented in the Northern Hemisphere." (Or at least they spread primarily from and in the north).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is it just me, or does it make no sense to call clockwise "left to right?"

After all, when the (end of the) hand of a clock goes around the circle, it goes just as much right to left as it goes left to right, while going clockwise all the time ...

<comment><USER10> I agree. It reminds me of the beltline around Raleigh. It's a circle.... I always envision it and explain it using clockwise or counterclockwise. However, when you get on at the eastern most point (3:00 on a clock), you are given options to get on the west beltline or the east beltline. You're going west either way. It's infuriating.

<comment><USER11> I wonder why they didn't decide to name the loops "Inner" and "Outer" like they did for 485 in Charlotte. It makes a lot more sense.

NC has all sorts of crazy road names and designs though. My favorite is 240/26 in Asheville as you'll end up driving West and East simultaneously (26 East is 240 West and 240 East is 26 West).

That and the bridge over the French Broad which is I-240, I-26, Route 74, Route 70, Route 19, Route 23, and Patton Avenue all at the same time across 4 lanes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sundial. Northern hemisphere. Done.

<comment><USER13> You could have written the same article in four words.

<comment><USER14> And even at that a quarter of the words aren't needed.

<comment><USER15> I think "sundial" alone is probably enough for most people to understand.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I assume the answer to his baseball question (why do baserunner go counter- clockwise?) is that most players bat right-handed. When the idea of running around the bases developed it made sense for batters to run to a base in front of them, which for a right-handed better meant a counter-clockwise trip around the bases.

</comment><comment><USER17> Regarding the questions at the bottom, much of this is believed to do with one leg being more dominant than the other.

The stronger leg may take longer strides. This manifests in surprising emergent phenomena. Grocery stores for instance tend to be laid out so you enter on the right by the veggies and circle around the back to the meats and dairies and come around the left to check out.

This isn't just limited to humans. Bees will spiral CCW when climbing. Wounded deer tend to drift left after being shot.

Simone Kosig's conclusion is even more surprising: "The basic driver behind this phenomenon seems to be the fact that all cells in nature are composed of amino acids which have a left spin. Chemists can manufacture amino acids with a right spin, yet we can't use them. Apparently both types of amino acids existed in the primordial soup at the beginning of life hundreds of million years ago. Yet life developed only from those with a left spin. The favorite theory is that at that time - when the earth did not yet have the protective ozone shield - radioactive rays from the cosmos did more harm to the amino acids with a right spin. Yet why those with a left spin would be more protected - if at all - is still a mystery."[1]

[1] [http://www.somatics.de/artikel/for- professionals/2-article/2...](http://www.somatics.de/artikel/for- professionals/2-article/29-the-dominant-leg)

<comment><USER18> I'm skeptical of the grocery store claim. Do you have anything to support the claim that one layout is more common than the other (and that would further suggest it's for this reason)?

If I think of all the grocery stores I've been in, I can think of many examples of clockwise layouts. Much more so than counter-clockwise, but that's likely because of my personal brand preferences. The factors in the layout seem to be dominated by:

1\. The position of the entrance (if the store is part of a mall, the entrance is often predetermined, and only one layout will be feasible).

2\. The brand of the store. Thinking of Canada (and in my experience) Loblaws brand tend to be clockwise, and Sobey's counter-clockwise.

<comment><USER17> I don't think you're going to get a concrete answer here. I've heard anecdotes justifying both layouts but in all major instances it's by design and not an arbitrary choice. In theory, forcing people to walk in an unnatural direction (clockwise) will make them go slower but be more on edge.

This[1] paper suggests clockwise layouts result in higher sales in _discount_ stores. If you want to put your customers at ease it may not be a good idea to go with a clockwise layout. This[2] article interviews a few retail strategists that describe their intent. This[3] article contends that 'legged- ness' does not matter at all (albeit with a very small pool).

The science is soft enough that I wouldn't put too much weight in the grocery store example specifically. As I recall the trend in the '80's was initially pushing for CW stores to make customers browse slowly but shifted to CCW in the late '90's to make them feel more comfortable. I've heard other stores about shifting the grocery store layout from aisles to the "ring." This roughly coincides with Target stores pre-95 that were competing with Kmart for the blue collar and post '95 that focused on curated, upmarket design for the middle class.

From personal experience, products on end caps absolutely do sell better by 30-60% than those in aisle.

[1] [http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/eacr/vol8/eacr_vol8_153.pd...](http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/eacr/vol8/eacr_vol8_153.pdf) [2] [http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223808](http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223808) [3] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/do-people- really...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post/do-people-really-walk- in-circles-2009-08-20/?id=do-people-really-walk-in-circles-2009-08-20) & [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1207918/Find-...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1207918/Find- walking-circles-Scientists-reveal-struggle-walk-straight-line.html)

<comment><USER18> I totally believe that the choice of layout can cause those symptoms. But for me, I get them in a CCW layout, despite being right-footed. I think it has more to do with disorientation because I'm simply used to a CW layout. That's why I'm curious about if/how a study would eliminate that bias. Thanks for the paper, I'll take a look.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It sounds like a really reasonable explanation.

Until you mount the sundial on the wall.

On a wall-mounted sundial, the shadow moves counter-clockwise (in the Northern hemisphere, the hemisphere referred to throughout this article).

Yes, the idea of mapping the horizontal sundial to a vertically-oriented image in our minds seems to hold a certain sense...

...but the question of the vertically mounted sundial should not be so quickly dismissed.

</comment><comment><USER20> Completely irrelevant to the topic at hand, but does anyone know what generated that page? I really enjoyed the page separators and how that was done to pace the reading, even if it is completely useless in a webpage- format. Thank you.

<comment><USER21> I expect they are not generated but hand written, like so many pages from the 90s. There are more examples with a similar but different format¹, and the whole site structure looks antique.

I also enjoyed it, as well as the cleanliness of the whole page. And I found that URW Palladio L is a quite pleasant font.

¹ [http://homepages.sover.net/~donnl/iiiivsiv.html](http://homepages.sover.net/~donnl/iiiivsiv.html)

<comment><USER20> Thank you for that link.

Upon further snooping in the directories, I found a HQX file which decompressed to a file without any extensions. Looking up the first four bytes of the file, I found that it is actually a WordPerfect file.

        FF 57 50 43

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> We had a book called "Why do clocks run clockwise?" when I was a kid that answered this question and many others. It really helped develop curiosity in me.

[http://www.amazon.com/Why-Clocks-Run-Clockwise- Imponderables...](http://www.amazon.com/Why-Clocks-Run-Clockwise- Imponderables/dp/0060740922)

</comment><comment><USER23> This can also be seen as an expression of this fascinating "chirality" problem, whereby things, from living things to particles seem to prefer one direction over the other. Right, dextro-, or clock-wise: most sea-shells, most plants, DNA. most atoms but not neutrinos(!?)

</comment><comment><USER24> Bolivia turns back the clock in bid to rediscover identity and 'southernness'

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/bolivia- clocks-...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/25/bolivia-clocks-time- run-different)

</comment><comment><USER25> half the motion of the clock is right to left...the bottom half.

</comment><comment><USER26> Movement of the Sun?</comment>