Show HN: $200 Solar Self-Sufficiency  Without Your Landlord Noticing - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nikodunk/200-for-a-green-diy-self-sufficient-bedroom-that-your-landlord-wont-hate-b3b4cdcfb4f4 <comment><USER3> I built a very similar system into my Jeep-house.

I have two 100W panels on the pop-top roof, a charge controller and a dedicated solar battery (isolated from the engine-starting battery) that runs my fridge, water pump, UV treatment lamp, interior lights, air compressor and charges all my electronics (laptop, kindle, cameras, etc.) directly from 12V DC.

I can leave the Jeep parked without running the engine for days and easily have enough energy to meet my needs.

The system has been amazing, and it's fantastic to be electricity self- sufficient in remote West Africa, where grid power is often non-existent

More details and photos here: [http://theroadchoseme.com/jeep-build- complete](http://theroadchoseme.com/jeep-build-complete)

<comment><USER4> A question: How much did the solar aspects of your rig cost?

And a comment: You might want the ability to tap your solar battery to start the Jeep, if you're going to leave it parked that long.

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't tapping the other battery be a simple matter of a pair of jumper cables?

I mean, I guess it'd be nice to have wired in, but I can't imagine the time- savings would ever catch up to the initial amount of work.

<comment><USER6> On TJ and older Wrangler the tray on the opposite side battery tray is empty. People will run dual battery setups that way. There are even options for all Wrangler models to put dual batteries in the stock location. $100 to $200 on a TJ Wrangler.

The cost and amount of work to do it is minimal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool! The one thing I notice the author gets wrong is (out of modesty perhaps) claiming the system isn't very financially successful. But it actually is!

> 200W system payback period: $300 / $48 = 6.5 years until payback

> Either way you cut it, this is not a money saving machine. Energy prices are > just too low.

That represents like a 16% rate of return with little risk, which any investor would take in a second.

However, the $66 battery expires after about 8 years, you're saving more like $40, not $48, to amortize the cost of replacing the battery every 8 years. So the actual rate of return is more like 13%, which is still very attractive. You'll never find any investment/savings product that returns half that well at such a low risk and is so accessible to anyone with $300.

We've hit the point where solar is very economical! It's exciting!

<comment><USER8> Those calculations also assume he'll use all of the energy it produces, every day, with no loss; it's a back-of-envelope best-case calculation, at best.

<comment><USER9> If we're getting into the nitty-gritty, then let's also include energy cost inflation into the equation. These numbers are for PG&E which is roughly equivalent for SF:

        2001: 0.10c kw/h
        2017: 0.28c kw/h (as per my recent bill)

That's an average of 10% increase in energy cost _per year_!

[https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml](https://www.pge.com/tariffs/electric.shtml)

<comment><USER10> 2.8x increase over 16 years is a CAGR of 6.6%, not 10%.

(1.066 ^ 16 = 2.8)

<comment><USER9> Correction acknowledges!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I work in solar, and your panel really, really, REALLY needs to be secured from wind. Luckily, they make ballast mounts that don't require screwing into the roof[1][2].

[1]: [http://www.orionsolarracking.com/commercial-roof- mount/balla...](http://www.orionsolarracking.com/commercial-roof- mount/ballasted/) [2]: [https://www.civicsolar.com/products/racking- mounting/applica...](https://www.civicsolar.com/products/racking- mounting/application/Flat%20Roof%20-%20Ballast/manufacturer/orion-solar- racking-143/type/Ballast)

<comment><USER12> Funny that we live in a world where one renewable energy source is powerful enough to (literally) blow away another.

<comment><USER13> Right which is why I believe that after the coming consumer solar revolution there will be something similar with wind energy. Especially with newer VAWT designs and areas that have a lot of wind.

They compliment each other so wind can continue producing at night.

<comment><USER14> For anyone curious, a VAWT is a Vertical-axis wind turbine ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_axis_wind_turbine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_axis_wind_turbine)). I always thought these were less efficient than the conventional designs but they're clearly simpler.

<comment><USER15> Conventional designs struggle with low winds, gusty winds and winds coming from wrong direction. VAWT designs generally fare better with such non-ideal conditions, which are going to be common in residential sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fun stuff. I've built several systems just like this one for camping, they let you keep things like iPads or laptops charged and they aren't noisy like running a generator.

Something that my wife discovered was that an igloo "lunchmate" cooler was perfect to hold the battery and charge controller. Makes it easy to carry. I recommend using Anderson Powerpole connectors ([https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-sb- connectors](https://powerwerx.com/anderson-power-powerpole-sb-connectors)) to make it easy to set up and tear down. I typically use one pair of colors for the connections to the battery, and another pair of colors for the panel to charge controller.

<comment><USER17> During Iraq/Afg conflict, US army started investing in solar systems because they realized every fuel (alot used for generators) convoy that doesn't have to make runs to outposts means less exposure to attacks by enemy. Solar systems can help lower fuel consumption for generators.

I heard fairly high percentage of US veterans back at home are more interested in solar systems because they saw the high cost of moving fuel around.

Ironic. We supposedly went there to secure our energy source and we learned solar system is a viable solution...

<comment><USER18> I think an argument could be made that, going there to secure our energy sources forced us to LEARN how to make a better, viable option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > Unless you live on an RV or a boat it doesn't make financial sense yet

If you're curious about what a system for an RV does look like, I work remotely full time in an RV and built my own system: [https://therecklesschoice.com/2016/04/29/diy-rv- solar/](https://therecklesschoice.com/2016/04/29/diy-rv-solar/)

6.5 times the solar, 15 times the storage, 20 times the inverter (but mine is overkill for us honestly).

<comment><USER20> Are you stationary or do you move around? Four batteries + solar panels can get somewhat heavy and eat into your total capacity, so I'm curious if it's an issue.

<comment><USER19> We are very mobile, usually stay in one place for a week at a time and then move a couple hours away. You're right about weight though, we are right at our GVWR (11,000 pounds) when fully loaded. The batteries weigh 100 pounds each and the panels are another 15 pounds or so each. That said though, we get terrible gas mileage already so the extra 500 pounds for everything doesn't change it much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> A couple nice things about SF on this topic:

1\. Davis Stirling (Housing related laws) mandates that building associations cannot prohibit owners from installing solar panels. Basically, they have to work with you to find a way and can't just say no.

2\. As of this year, SF is the first city to require that all new buildings (10 stories or less) have solar installed.

<comment><USER22> Another excuse to raise rent...

<comment><USER23> It's been clearly shown that they don't need excuses to raise rent.

Solar on an apartment building wouldn't impact the cost too much. The real issue is whether construction/zoning is allergic to density.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Please bolt the panel down, if wind picks it up and blows it off the roof it could easily kill someone.

<comment><USER25> I really doubt the wind is going to pick up a 2'x4' ~20lb panel like that when it's flat on a roof. Now if he had lifted an edge to try and get a better angle with the sun that would IMO be a much larger issue.

<comment><USER26> >I really doubt the wind is going to pick up a 2'x4' ~20lb panel like that when it's flat on a roof.

thus the difference between the air speeds over the panel and under the panel in this case equals to the wind speed. To compare - Cessna wing loading is 15lb per square foot and it is generated at the minimum no-stall speed required by the FAA for general aviation of something around 70 miles/hour, and in that situation the speed difference between over the wing and under the wing is obviously significantly less than the 70 miles/per hour that wing moves through the air with. Thus it is pretty possible (to be sure one can just plug the numbers into any aerodynamics calculator on the web) that this panel at 8 square feet would generate multiple tens or even like 100lb+ lifting force at storm/hurricane winds of like 70 miles/hour and may pretty easy lift itself at the 30-40 miles per hour wind (which do happen on occasion in SF/BayArea). This is basically the same basic aerodynamics (Bernoulli speed difference) that tears buildings' roofs off in hurricanes.

<comment><USER25> That's not how wings work. [https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/wrong1.html](https://www.grc.nasa.gov/www/k-12/airplane/wrong1.html)

Most obvious problem aircraft can fly upside down.

<comment><USER26> you're trying to argue with the Bernoulli law. I wouldn't recommend it :) Even your link clearly states:

"{The upper flow is faster and from Bernoulli's equation the pressure is lower. The difference in pressure across the airfoil produces the lift.} As we have seen in Experiment #1, this part of the theory is correct."

Re-read my original comment - it is pretty much stating the same as the cited text above.

The link you posted refutes the "Equal Transit" Theory which is deriving the speed difference from the wing asymmetrical shape using very simple approach. Which has nothing to do with my original comment as i was applying the [correct according to Bernoulli law and your link] theory of pressure difference generated by airflow speed difference to airfoils without regard to whether they assymetrical (Cessna wing) or symmetrical (solar panel).

<comment><USER25> Read the full page.

"The symmetric airfoil in our experiment generates plenty of lift and its upper surface is the same length as the lower surface. Think of a paper airplane. Its airfoil is a flat plate --> top and bottom exactly the same length and shape and yet they fly just fine."

Wings are angled into the wind. The curved shape primarily minimizes drag rather than generating lift.

As to hurricanes most roofs are sloped. Yes, faster moving air has lower pressure, but if you run the equation it's a fairly weak effect. So, it has little to do with stall speed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The last place I worked we did this (though with some permission). One of the guys made friends with some people at a thin film solar plant down the street. He got a bundle of manufacturing rejects (300w panels that only made 280) for free. We strung them up on the roof and were raking in the kWh. Enough to charge 3 electric vehicles without paying the power company.

<comment><USER28> This makes me wonder why the panel manufacturer doesn't bin panels like they do with CPUs? Surely they could sell them for less than the 300W panels, but more than zero?

<comment><USER19> Most do. The panels you see on rooftops are all generally exactly the same size but could generate anywhere from 315w/panel to 250w/panel depending on binning. No idea why that company didn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Will the landlord notice? Maybe not. Will the wife notice all the wires all over the place? You bet!

<comment><USER30> Because men love electronics projects and women love keeping a tidy house and ruining their dreams, am I right?

<comment><USER31> > Because men love electronics projects and women love keeping a tidy house > and ruining their dreams, am I right?

I don't think this is accurate. Personally, I've had a lot of trouble finding people of either gender who are interested in electronics.

I might be overstepping here, but it sounds like maybe you should talk to you wife and see what can be done to minimize the negative externalities caused by your hobby? It's hard to imagine she would actually want to ruin your dreams. I don't have a wife, but I know my girlfriend became a lot more supportive once I started keeping half-finished projects in the spare bedroom, and started putting in an effort to clean up my projects a bit more before letting them out. Just my $0.02 obviously.

<comment><USER30> I'm a female electronics hobbyist. Definitely sarcasm. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have a similar setup at my apartment in India. It is functional since more than two years now. Its total 140Watt panels, popping out of my bedroom window [Photo: [https://photos.app.goo.gl/S4WR5gbrGu0z8IQB2](https://photos.app.goo.gl/S4WR5gbrGu0z8IQB2)]. It has a 12V battery and 10A solar charge controller. It produces good enough energy to power my room. I hate inverters, all my lights/fans in room are based on DC 12V. I use car chargers to charge mobile phones and to run a LED wall clock.

</comment><comment><USER33> > _Renters don't need permission from their landlords to place things on their > windowsill and rooftops if it's not altering the building_

This has never been the case in any apartment community I've lived in, ever. Every time I've looked into anything like this, the lease says I have to follow community rules, and those rules include stuff like pool hours and parking but also say I can't put foil in my windows, have a window AC unit, etc.

I'm sure there are _some_ landlords who won't notice or won't care if you do this, but it's just not true in general that renters only need permission for things that alter the building.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I'll clean up the language there. I've never lived in a non-ac unit and non-satellite dish place, but I probably have friends who do. How to work around that then? You could only use an ESCO (energy service company) on the east coast or cleanpowerSF for those scenarios.

<comment><USER34> > I'll clean up the language there. I've never lived in a non-ac unit and non- > satellite dish place

Well, satellite dishes are legally protected by an FCC order, but that doesn't apply to other things.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Quite a side note: If you're renting in SF, your landlord needs to provide you with heating ([http://sfrb.org/topic-no-257-minimum-heat- requirements](http://sfrb.org/topic-no-257-minimum-heat-requirements))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing this out! I think our main problem was with the non- insulation of the property. Though I haven't been here for a winter yet. There's also the landlord leverage problem though with cheap apartment gems in expensive places (like SF), as I'm sure you know: "Oh you want more insulation? Sure, I'll fix your insulation/heating. Woops! The rent just went up?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Obvious Problems:

1: You're not using a pure sine wave inverter so right off the back you are losing significant efficiency (Most the things you're charging use DC power anyways so it would be better to just get a nice DC charger).

2: If you are discharging your battery past 50%, you're going to significant reduce it's life span.

<comment><USER37> I asked this myself too.

Aren't most electric devices used today DC?

<comment><USER36> Everything that runs off a battery is DC.

However, for the past 4 months, I've been charging all my devices off solar/battery (working-travel vacation in a van). I have run into some issues with certain devices not accepting charge. I think it has more to do with the device charges themselves than the power source.

For example, my girlfriends Motorola Droid Turbo won't charge at all anymore off the 2.1 amp usb chargers. My S7 has no problems. Her cheap windows laptop will also sometimes refuse charge temporarily. Battery voltage is reliably between 12.3-13.0, which makes me think it's an issue with the chargers themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> For heating, you could bring in a small refrigerator rather than a resistive load. Get something besides heat for your power.

<comment><USER39> But then you would need to run the refrigerator even when it's hot...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> He mentions fridge/freezer - I'll just draw attention to this project[0] where the smart guy uses a chest freezer as a fridge with an external thermostat. It has better insulation and design (cool air stays in when open), so ends up much more efficient and can be run on minimal power. Just 90 seconds of run time per hour.

There are other ways to do this in mobile setups, or with inverters in any setup, using mini-freezers, simple electronics to turn the inverter on/off and a small panel. See /r/vandwellers[1].

[0] - [https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/man-retrofits- free...](https://www.treehugger.com/kitchen-design/man-retrofits-freezer-to- make-an-ultra-efficient-fridge.html)

[1] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/search?q=freezer&restri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/search?q=freezer&restrict_sr=on&sort=relevance&t=all)

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice hack. Can it power a fan for a night? That might save you some money in cooling, which would help with payback.

I won't be using it for my apartment but it has great potential for an off the grid light power use workshop. Good job, thanks for showing.

Just a note, the biggest expense these days in solar power installations, home, is the manpower and incidentals needed to install it. Reduce that and solar power replacement begins to look good. As we saw here, where there were no installation costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey! It can power a fan overnight no problem. A large box fan uses around 45W, so this could run it for 10hours on a day's charge. Good point!

To your point of expense – the installation cost is what bummed me out, too. That's exactly why the hack is so effective if someone in your family can self-install it! I agree. Similar to an AC unit or a satellite dish that most people just install themselves...

<comment><USER42> we have a table fan specially made for solar is 11.5W, costs about $14.7

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> It better be attached well. If there's a windy day, and that thing flies off and kills someone, you will not only be liable, you will have to live for the rest of your life with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very true. I've tested this thoroughly and it won't. Obviously there's always a residual risk, which I've mitigated by moving the panel to a window further back on the roof. Then I'm going to see if the panel's moved after a year. Another solution would be outdoor glue, but that messes with the ephemeral nature of the project. Thanks for the input!!

<comment><USER44> What's that puppy's wind loading in an 80mph gust?

<comment><USER24> It absolutely needs to bolted down.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> JFYI, the back of the envelope calculation is about energy "created", this assumes that you actually consume it, i.e. that on average you would use that energy (while it is within the battery capacity range), if you leave for - <USER2> - 1 month, it is 1/12 less.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! I think the next step in this project would be to hook it to some device with high constant consumption, like the fridge, to make sure the energy gets used up every day. Currently I find it difficult to use everything it's making, as you say. It's like having more tomatoes in your garden than you can eat -> sell the tomatoes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've been using rooftop solar for many years; I live in an RV (for a total of about 7 years, spread across two different RVs, both with solar on the roof). I currently have a 400W system. It makes extremely good economic sense in my case, because it enables me to live comfortably off-grid for weeks or months at a time; which can save hundreds of dollars a month in RV park fees, when I'm traveling.

But, the talk of powering water heater, heating, AC, etc. from a little DIY solar system is extremely optimistic. I've done the math, and I couldn't run my AC from the number of solar panels that I could fit on my roof. I can fit 900 watts worth, an additional couple hundred watts on the truck, if I _really_ wanted to get extreme and was willing to connect/disconnect them every time I drove the truck away from the RV. That's just not enough. It could power a small window unit as long as the sun is up, but overnights would kill a small battery bank dead (like dead dead, not just discharged, as repeatedly discharging below about 50% reduces the life of lead acid batteries by a huge amount) in short order.

With a big enough inverter and a bigger battery bank, you can run microwave or toaster oven for short periods of time (I do). But any big amperage device that runs for extended periods of time (like heating, AC, and water heater) is not in the cards for small solar systems.

Battery replacement also needs to be taken into account. In my experience, you get about 3 good years, and another year of limping along, from this kind of workload on this kind of battery. He's being more kind to his batteries than I am to my batteries (I usually end up running down to about 60% each day when off grid), so he might get another good year. But they probably won't even be limping along after five years.

But, the good news is that solar panels are _extremely_ durable. They're often warrantied for 25+ years! And, the expected output after that length of time is still pretty good. So, if batteries get better, our systems today will get better just by replacing one component, because everything else is gonna keep working forever (well, cheap charge controllers die sometimes, but the panels are practically forever parts).

<comment><USER47> For water heating, you could skip the electricity step. I suppose that would gain you a factor two or three at least in the available wattage.

<comment><USER46> Yep, solar water heating is a time-tested way to get energy from the sun and put it to use. A lot of the earliest solar power deployments (like Carter's White House) were solar water heaters.

There are even a few cheap off-the-shelf solar water heaters on Amazon these days (when I first researched the problem a few years ago, it was strictly a DIY project if you wanted panels small enough for an RV). Getting water to the roof is usually a difficult problem in an RV (requires breaching the roof without introducing leaks, and finding a path through the walls from the existing water heater to get there), but my current RV has an easier path than my previous one, so I might give it a go next time I've got a free weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Can't imagine why OP has an inverter in the stack when everything connected to it is DC.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it's easier and I don't want to fry my $1500 laptop with some hair- brained project's DC-power spike. But I admit that's not really well thought through and an earlier version of this project was DC only. Also, the main inspiration for this project was DC only, as I mentioned in the article (but reposted here: [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/op-ed-how-i-gave- up-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/08/op-ed-how-i-gave-up- alternating-current/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> After Hurricane Ike (and 8 days without power) I built almost this exact setup to power my CPAP machine in case of another long-term power outage.

</comment><comment><USER50> I've been chatting a bit about thermal building design. This article reminds me that for most entertainment or work, we don't need much energy.

Cost comes from AC, heater, fridges. Other household appliances too but these are transient.

But with carefully dimensionned walls, you can slow the heat spread enough to avoid AC most of the time.

Surely we could keep our energy needs low if we wanted to.

</comment><comment><USER51> Have you talked to your landlord about adding solar panels to the roof? He/she could install them and connect them to your apartment's service, which means you would get the power and the savings -- though you might reasonably expect some of the savings to go towards higher rents in the future. With the tax advantages, it's almost a no-brainer.

It's even possible to apportion power between multiple units with PG&E in California. They even allow "neighborhood solar", where you can benefit from a larger system installed elsewhere, like over a parking lot.

I would also +1 the other comments about thinking really hard about whether your system is safe in the event of high winds. Solar panels are basically large sails, you'd be surprised what a 50 or 60 mph wind gust (likely to happen once or twice a year) can do. If you plan on doing this, check your lease - many landlords forbid putting things on the roof or hanging outside windows, or running wires on the exterior of the building.

<comment><USER52> Doesn't PG&E charge customers who have residential solar installs a higher rate, _because_ they have residential solar installs?

<comment><USER51> In a word, no. They do now tack on a monthly minimum fee that only applies if, over the course of a year, you use less than the sum of the monthly minimums. So, if you install a project so large that it zeros out your bill, you'll end up paying $100 or so per year to be tied to the grid. Otherwise, the rates are the same as you would pay without solar.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> I'm hoping to build a similar system in the next year or two. Biggest difference is I plan on building battery banks out of lithium-based 18650 cells. You can salvage them from old laptop batteries, even dead ones (one bad cell can bring the whole battery down, even if the other cells are fine). 18650s are also used in Tesla's car batteries [0] and Powerwall. They literally just cram thousands of them in there. There are some youtubers who have done tons of stuff with them [1][2].

[0] [https://youtu.be/NpSrHZnCi-A](https://youtu.be/NpSrHZnCi-A)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/user/jehugarcia](https://www.youtube.com/user/jehugarcia)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/user/nocrf50here](https://www.youtube.com/user/nocrf50here)

</comment><comment><USER54> I wonder if you can mount this over a roof rack for a plug-in hybrid car like he Chevy Volt/Bolt. It'd be an amazing way to charge your car.

Although, 200 W might be a bit too low for the Chevy Volt. It draws circa 100 W when charged via the slow charger that you plug in to an outlet.

<comment><USER55> > It draws circa 100 W when charged via the slow charger that you plug in to > an outlet.

1kW - 2kW, surely? 100W would take days to charge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> These already exist as self-contained kits: [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GV3XRDW/ref=asc_df_B00D5RVMAM50...](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GV3XRDW/ref=asc_df_B00D5RVMAM5086472/?tag=hyprod-20&creative=394997&creativeASIN=B00D5RVMAM&linkCode=df0&hvadid=167143550553&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=16267220506877723508&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9001821&hvtargid=pla-308511758090&th=1&psc=1)

What I think would be interesting is to use a relay to fall back to grid power once the battery dies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! 600 bucks though?! I guess I'd have to sell this package for 600 for any kind of profit margin... Reading the reviews on Amazon of the Yeti system though, I'm not sure they've solved all the issues for 3x the price.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> How safe is it to keep that battery indoors? Don't batteries need some ventilation?

<comment><USER58> It's a sealed lead acid(SLA) battery which is different from a wet/flooded battery, which do require periodic topping off with water and ventilation.

For a project like this, SLA is the way to go.

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/175649/are-s...](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/175649/are- sealed-lead-acid-batteries-safe-to-use-indoors)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is awesome. The one question on my mind is: is there really no barrier to doing this, like regulation of some kind? I would imagine there's an added fire risk with that kind of battery at home?

</comment><comment><USER60> > I wish I could run a water heater, heating or fridge off this system to use > the excess 270Wh of the daily energy production.

Or better yet, be able to sell the excess power. In the future power grid this will be possible.

<comment><USER51> It's possible today, almost everywhere in the USA. In fact, the power company will usually buy it from you at the same rate that they are charging. My house is turning the meter backwards as we speak.

To do this, you need extra components to protect your house, the power grid, and the electricians who work on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> If we are talking about being green, what is the carbon footprint of manufacturing all those things vs the equivilent carbon to geberate thr electricity the solar panels provide?

<comment><USER62> That's at the bottom of the article:

Production footprint PV multicristalline: 4200kWhee/kW [1] * 0.1kW = 420kWh embodied energy

Production footprint lead-acid battery: 321kWhee/kWh [1] * 0.5kWh = 161kWh embodied energy

Total Footprint: 581kWh

Annual energy production system: 155kWh/y

Payback period: 581kWh / 155kWh/y = 4+ year footprint payback

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Cool. One caveat in SF (and elsewhere, I'm sure): since I work from home my electricity usage is way higher than the PG&E norm (which itself seems aspirationally low). Of course, PG&E uses this to charge me huge "overage" charges so using a solar panel to offset some of those charges might actually make this economically viable.

<comment><USER64> One of the biggest cost/safety/longevity factors here is the usage of a storage battery. This is necessary because OP presumably uses most power at night, and is unable to use the grid as virtual storage due to all the complexity that brings.

If one's usage was mostly in the day or even constant, they could forgo the storage batteries and setup a system to supply specific loads, making up any shortfall from the grid. This would take a different type of "inverter" to avoid becoming grid-tied. I'm imagining a production circuit being based around a 170VDC bus (power factor? who cares!), but that's probably currently rare/custom/expensive. You could DIY the same type of thing with a nominal 12V bus (or 48V, depending on your loads) and DC distribution, from off the shelf components.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I find the title kind of click baity, "$200 solar self sufficiency for my bedroom" would be more accurate

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey. You're completely right :) My original title was was "Solar Self- Sufficiency for Renters", but my mates in marketing told me to clickbait it the f up. Would you have clicked on the former, though?

<comment><USER66> Personally, I would. What you wrote is very interesting, and interesting content can stand for itself. No need to clickbait things up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> You could save some energy by driving Led lights directly from the 12V battery. Not through an inverter.

Doeasn't matter in this case though since one of the things he's running is electric heater. When you are usin lights you are just getting bit more heating comming from inverter.

</comment><comment><USER68> Does the panel produce the same amount of energy every season? I know that in most of Europe the production during summer months is way higher than during winter and that needs to be taken into account

<comment><USER18> San Fransisco is at about the same latitude as Gibraltar, so while he will see seasonal fluctuations unless he changes its angle of incidence (but hes laying it flat, so...) However, he will not see as big a difference as, say, somebody in Germany.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Very cool project and great writeup! It seems like every week I learn about a new Google microservice (Google Sunroof here).

</comment><comment><USER70> The author's calculations for the capacity of the battery are very wrong and the battery will not last many years the way he's using it.

Deep cycle lead-acid batteries should not be discharged below 50% (known as Depth of Discharge, or DoD) unless you really want to kill them quickly. The author's calculations assume he can drain the battery 100% (35Ah), which while technically correct, will kill his battery very quickly.

Unfortunately the manufacturer doesn't provide any data on the capacity over discharge cycles at different DoD's [0], but I can guarantee the author will significantly shorten the battery's lifespan by discharging it so deeply.

If you want some idea of the effect of DoD on battery health, Hoppecke have a very good chart in their datasheet on page 43. [1] At 50% DoD, the battery will last for approximately 3000 cycles, or 8 years. At 90% DoD, the battery will only last for 1500 cycles or 4 years.

If you want to go for 100% DoD in solar, you're looking at Redox flow or Lithium battery technologies, both of which are more expensive than Lead-Acid.

There are other problems with this setup as well. At $17, the charge controller is very unlikely to support an equalization charge mode, which is required to periodically balance the cells within the battery to ensure a long lifespan. The author would be better off skipping AC entirely and charging their MacBook/iPad from a car charger which operates on 12V. DC lights can also be purchased quite inexpensively. The AC inverter is likely putting out something closer to a square wave than a sine wave, and the low voltage cut- off is far too low to avoid damaging the battery.

This is really a case of "you get what you pay for" and for such cheap components, the system will not perform well or last for very long.

If this sounds really negative, I'm sorry. I want more people to become energy independent, but if you follow the author's example, you're going to have a very bad time. If you are seriously interested in going off grid, you should invest in quality components like Victron, Outback, Studer, Hoppecke, etc. Something like the Victron EcoMulti would be a good choice for someone who wants an easy to use system that's been designed for longevity. [2]

[0] [http://www.expertpower.us/exp12350](http://www.expertpower.us/exp12350)

[1] [https://www.hoppecke.com/fileadmin/Redakteur/Hoppecke- Main/P...](https://www.hoppecke.com/fileadmin/Redakteur/Hoppecke- Main/Products/Downloads/Montagehandbuch_verschl_EN_final.pdf)

[2] [https://www.victronenergy.com/solar-pv- inverters/ecomulti](https://www.victronenergy.com/solar-pv-inverters/ecomulti)

<comment><USER64> To be fair, the DoD vs cycle numbers aren't as dire as they first look. Even an ideal deep-discharge battery would have a 1/x curve, as the real metric is total energy stored, which is proportional to DoD*ncycles vs DoD.

For instance, for the two datapoints you gave. At 50% DoD, the battery will have stored 1500 times its capacity over its life. At 90% DoD, the battery will have stored 1350 times its capacity over its life. This is only a 10% degradation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> How hard would it be to add regenerative braking to that ? if not already installed.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why not build a small super-capacitor or lithium ion bank that you'd charge at work?

Also, unless you have perfect weather (I.e. the Bay Area) and require no energy for HVAC this system is almost useless.

</comment><comment><USER71> Far more cost-effective would have been to skip the battery and just put a cheap chinese pure-sine-wave grid-tie inverter to bridge between the wall outlet and the panel.

It's simple- it has a 110V line cord and plugs into the outlet, sending current the opposite way of normal. Do a search on your favorite e-commerce site for "grid tie inverter" and you'll see what I mean.

These cheap inverters have most of the same safeties as the UL 1703 certified variety, and as long as you don't exceed current ratings (not likely with a little 200W panel) you're able to apply the power to your electric bill, without futzing with a lead-acid battery.

<comment><USER72> Does that work with a regular meter? My internet sluething says some people have been charged for the electricity the produce because they don't have a "compatible" meter.

<comment><USER73> If you hook up a ton of these and actually generate _more_ than you consume at any time, you will actually _pay_ the power company for the power you push back into the grid. You have to get a special meter that can measure the direction of the flow. I have bought two residential roof-mounted solar systems and this is what they told me. If you never generate more than you use, maybe you're ok.</comment></comment></comment>


Todo example in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://www.vandenoever.info/blog/2018/06/09/to-do-a-rust-gui.html <comment><USER2> I've read about this project in the past and although it definitely is interesting it's still a bit unclear to me if this is a way to use Qt through Rust or the other way around. Reading through this example it seems like you use QML to structure you UI which is straightforward enough but there are a couple of qml crates which do pretty much the same thing without including an extra binding generation step (or C++ at all).

Searching through the repo [0,1] it seems like you still need to write a certain amount of C++ especially if you're using QtWidgets instead of QML. So in my eyes this seems like a way to incorporate Rust code into a Qt project rather than build a Qt interface for use in Rust, as the end program is essentially a C++ program with some Rust bits.

From what I understand if you have a fair amount of existing Rust code to reuse in a Qt GUI application this is probably the best way to get them to talk together but it's a still a bit far from "Qt GUI for your Rust programs". I get that the distinction between the two is a bit blurry but in any case you still need to write a considerable amount of C++ especially if you opt for the QtWidgets way.

Of course it is entirely possible that I've completely missed the point so in that case please correct me.

[0] [https://github.com/KDE/rust-qt-binding- generator/tree/master...](https://github.com/KDE/rust-qt-binding- generator/tree/master/templates)

[1] [https://github.com/KDE/rust-qt-binding- generator/tree/master...](https://github.com/KDE/rust-qt-binding- generator/tree/master/examples)

<comment><USER3> Rust Qt Binding Generator is for projects that contain Rust and QML or Rust and Qt widgets. The GUI code will be in the native language for Qt: C++ or QML. The data model underneath and any non-UI parts can be written in Rust.

This approach was chosen because it's hard to wrap Qt Widgets (let alone QML) safely in a Rust API. Generating binding code is a very pragmatic approach that works now. You do not need external libraries, just generate some code, include it in your project and use qmake/cmake/... and cargo together.

I've explained this approach in a presentation at FOSDEM [0].

That being said, there might well come a better solution that manages to wrap Qt and the mechanisms of deriving from Qt model classes in a Rust API. It may even manage to require only Cargo as a build tool. In fact, only yesterday Olivier Goffart presented a prototype that does just that. [1] And that project has the exact same to-do application in its examples with only Rust and QML (no JSON or C++).

Switching between those approaches should be very simple though. Especially since Rust has static typing which makes refactoring a breeze.

[0] [https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/rust_qt_binding_gener...](https://fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/rust_qt_binding_generator/) [1] [https://woboq.com/blog/qmetaobject-from- rust.html](https://woboq.com/blog/qmetaobject-from-rust.html)

<comment><USER4> What makes Qt hard to bind? Is it just because it is a large C++ project or is there something particularly hard about Qt?

<comment><USER3> There are quite some challenges. Qt, like most C++ programs can exhibit undefined behavior. In Rust, no code is allowed to have undefined behavior [0]. For safe functions, the compiler checks this. For unsafe functions, the function documentation should state how to call the function to avoid undefined behavior.

Qt is enormous. There are projects that generate bindings automatically. But to know what is safe, you'd have to read the API docs and write the binding by hand. Some parts of Qt might never be safe. For example, loading QML with QQmlApplicationEngine::loadData is not safe because it runs possibly unsafe QML code. So a binding to QQmlApplicationEngine::loadData should be marked unsafe and its documentations should state: 'only load safe QML'.

Most current FFI examples in Rust go via C bindings. There's not a lot of work on wrapping C++ libraries yet (that I'm aware of). C++ is vastly more complex than C. So ensuring safety is harder.

In most Qt projects, there will be places in the code where you have to derive from a Qt class. So the binding should have a way to do that.

The Qt ownership models is hierarchical. If an object has a parent, it will be freed when the parent is freed. A Rust binding should translate that behavior in a safe API.

Signals and slots in Qt are tricky to wrap in a safe API too.

In short, wrapping Qt in a Rust API is a humongous task. Rust Qt Binding Generator takes a pragmatic approach and lets you combine Qt and Rust in one project. It does so by generating a binding around your data model instead of around the entire Qt API.

[0] [https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/behavior-considered- unde...](https://doc.rust-lang.org/reference/behavior-considered- undefined.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> note that a TodoMVC-like example can be reached in less than 150 lines of pure QML : [https://github.com/jcelerier/TodoMVC- QML/blob/master/Main.qm...](https://github.com/jcelerier/TodoMVC- QML/blob/master/Main.qml)

<comment><USER3> Nice! QML is really great for these things.

Author of the blog post here. I've started out the code in the post with a pure QML version of course and then replaced the model with a Rust model since the point of the blog is to show how to write the model in Rust.

I like your solution of using a DelegateModel to show All, Completed or Active items. I went for a different approach:

            RowLayout {
                property bool show: filter.currentIndex === 0
    	                || (filter.currentIndex === 1 && !completed)
    	                || (filter.currentIndex === 2 && completed)
    	    visible: show

<comment><USER5> cool :)

Are you aware of Olivier Goffart's take on QML in Rust ? [https://woboq.com/blog/qmetaobject-from- rust.html](https://woboq.com/blog/qmetaobject-from-rust.html) ; it seems that it could maybe be used instead of the custome code-gen you did.

That's a great time for Qt and Rust, no doubt :p

<comment><USER3> Yes, I proofread his blog post and tested the code. :-)

Olivier's approach is very clever. Especially the method of extending Qt classes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a good starter Rust project. I am learning Rust and every bit of such blog helps. Just curious to see a .. syntax here: (row..row + count). What does it mean?

<comment><USER7> Dot dot is range notation: [https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by- example/flow_control/for.h...](https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by- example/flow_control/for.html)

Here's the reference for the drain() method on vectors which takes the range argument: [https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by- example/flow_control/for.h...](https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by- example/flow_control/for.html)

Altogether, it sounds like (I haven't read the whole thing) it's supposed to drain from the current row until the end, including every row in between.

<comment><USER8> A simpler example might be slicing a list:

        let strings = ["foo", "bar", "baz"];
        let slice = &strings[0..2];
        // prints "foo" and "bar"
        for s in slice {
            println!("{}", s);
        }

Or looping over numbers:

        // prints 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4
        for i in 0..5 {
            println!("{}", i);
        }

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I lack the knowledge to judge this on a technical level, although what do I know about Rust and Qt/KDE make me excited. But I can definitely say that's a great logo!

<comment><USER10> Can somebody tell Alessandro Longo to at least take the official Rust logo. The R is off.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: So, what must Muslims do? - <AUTHOR> I am a Muslim, from a multi-religion non-western country, studying for an grad degree in western Europe. I am very sad about the recent ISIS attacks.
Given these attacks, it is natural that Muslims get a bad name. The amount of generalized hatred directed towards us on social media makes me even more sad. It was depressing to see people on an intellectual platform like HN suggesting stuff like large scale surveillance of all Muslims, extermination, nuking the middle east etc.
Radicalization is one of the popular explanations of why so many Muslim youth are attracted towards the extreme violent ideology of ISIS (which is condemnable according to Islam itself). A lot of people have suggested, or even demanded (on HN threads, comments sections of other websites etc) that Muslims must do something about this. As educated Muslims, any ideas on what we could do? How could we help stop violent and extremist propaganda, and its influence on Muslim people? Should this be the sole responsibility of Muslims?
Note that Muslims are a culturally diverse bunch. A Muslim from Turkey is very different from one from Malaysia. They also speak completely different languages. I am culturally closer to people (regardless of religion) from my country than to Muslims from another country.
Further, how should we react to wholesale blaming of all Muslims for the violence, and to rising attitudes of suspicion towards Muslims? <comment><USER2> I've taken part in rallies against Racism. Maybe Muslims can organize rallies against Islamism? It would mean a lot more if Muslims defended the rights of cartoonists ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands- Posten_Muhammad_carto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jyllands- Posten_Muhammad_cartoons_controversy)) than when I, as a non-Muslim, do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't think you should do anything different than a person following any other religion, or no religion at all. And for those people blaming all Muslims, again, do the same the vast majority of the people do: Ignore them, carry on with your life.

I know it's easier said than done, but we all have to be strong in the face of adversity.

</comment><comment><USER4> Muslims need a leader who can project positive PR in the media. Buddhists have the Dalai Lama; everyone sees him as a man of peace, wisdom and unimpeachable integrity. Recently Catholics have had John Paul II and Mother Teresa as moral beacons. Benedict wasn't a PR success, but Francis has been well received recently. And the Anglicans have Desmond Tutu, who has great moral stature from the anti apartheid struggle. In the UK in recent years Rabbi Lionel Blue was a regular media presence, and was generally liked and respected, and so a big plus for British Judaism generally.

So, what media friendly nice guy Imam do Muslims have? You need to find a humorous, gentle, wise, grandfatherly Imam and get him on TV quick.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ayaan Hirsi Ali's answer to these questions is very interesting. She says that Islam itself must be reformed:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSVMaNVzO-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSVMaNVzO-w)

<comment><USER6> I don't understand the answer. We see Christian extremists, who "peddle a message of terror" (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_terrorism)). Why didn't the atrocities of, say, the Lord's Resistance Army end up with a call that all Christians had to reform their faith? Would it have made a difference?

We see plenty of people from other faiths, including Christians, who want the equivalent of sharia - where their own religious laws take precedence over secular laws. (Eg, anti-gay marriage justified by Biblical interpretations.) Many passages from the Bible are also full of views that don't really fit with our modern life. (Eg, is it okay to have slaves? can a women be ordained?) There's been centuries of schism and reform on those points, and still no consensus. (Eg, that whole Protestant thing.) Why expect more from Muslims than those of other religious faiths?

As the interviewer suggested, I find the Ali's views "absurd and offensive", including even the term 'reform'. What I understand is that the vast majority of Muslims want a _return_ to the more secularized world of the 1950s and 1960s. Back when ideals from communism and socialism had a bigger influence in middle eastern political practices, and where Islam was seen more as moral rather than a political influence within a secular state. (Eg, rather like the Christian state church of England.) Back when women could wear miniskirts in Kabul, and Abdus Salam, the first Muslim to win a Nobel Prize in science, was still considered Muslim by his nation.

That's hardly a reform, but a restoration.

<comment><USER5> None of the advances you speak of in this "restoration" are essential. And they are all impossible to sustain culturally without discarding fundamental religious beliefs, such as a focus on the afterlife, and the idea that morality has its basis in faith rather than reason.

<comment><USER5> Hey @dalke, what is your reply to the above?

<comment><USER6> I thought it was clear. I question the assertion for a special need for Muslim people to reform when basically all religions, under Ali's argument, are death cults.

Thus, it's irrelevant to the rather difficult question posed by the OP. Moreover, it stinks of victim blaming because the short version seems to be 'if you weren't Muslim you wouldn't have these problems.'</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: SmiteCamp.com - Smite fansite I made during the weekends. - <AUTHOR> http://smitecamp.com/?launched=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Stack: Ruby on Rails 4 / DigitalOcean / PostgreSQL / Golang backend scraper for streams, devtracker posts, etc.

I had a lot of fun building this website and learning new things along the way. Plus, it's 100% responsive! Oh yeah! :D</comment>


In 1996 AOL considered buying Apple. - <AUTHOR> http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2011/08/ted-leonsis-aol-considered-apple-buy.html

<comment><USER2> It's been a long time but at the time Apple had their own AOL-like community, eWorld.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld>

<comment><USER3> The story is a bit more complex.

What we know as America Online was based on AppleLink Personal Edition which was a joint project of Apple and Quantum Computer Services (which was run by Steve Case).

By the late 1980s, their relationship foundered and AppleLink Personal Edition was ported to Windows as PCLink and eventually the software and community was re-branded as America Online. Eventually, Quantum Computer Services changed their name to America Online.

America Online grew remarkably, so around 1994, Apple approached them to host eWorld which was to be a re-branded version of America Online with a custom UI and with billing handled by Apple.

eWorld failed due to a combination of high prices with little differentiation from AOL, poor marketing by Apple, and the Spindler era budget constraints, but even in the unlikely event that it had succeeded the Internet was beginning to gain in popularity so eWorld would have died off not long after it actually did.</comment></comment>


Remus: possible high availability of apps through replicating virtual machines - <AUTHOR> http://www.usenix.org/events/nsdi08/tech/full_papers/cully/cully_html/index.html

<comment><USER2> Brendan Cully's masters thesis has more detail [http://www.cs.ubc.ca/grads/resources/thesis/Nov07/Cully_Bren...](http://www.cs.ubc.ca/grads/resources/thesis/Nov07/Cully_Brendan.pdf)

This was also interesting: _"we believe that the high-frequency checkpointing mechanism we have engineered in support of Remus will have many other interesting applications, ranging from forensics and error recovery tools based on replayable history to software engineering applications such as concurrency-aware time-travelling debuggers."_

</comment><comment><USER2> The problem with these systems is they don't know what is significant state so they have to copy everything to the slave.

The way Remus gets round this is it bulk copies (upto 40 times a second) rather than on every change. So the master runs slightly ahead.

Terracotta is something similar for the JVM. I think they get round it by exploiting the fact the JVM knows what's going on so for example you could say I want only this field on a class to be replicated. (But I've never used terracotta so someone might have to correct me on that.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I imagine the performance hit is pretty substantial but for things like VOIP or messaging servers this will make real HA possible on commodity hardware. Pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER4> someone should combine this with openmosix!</comment>


Ask HN: Best Node.js static blog generator? - <AUTHOR> I'm interested in the various views for the best NodeJS static blog generator.
Which is the best?
Why are you giving your recommendation? <comment><USER2> I'm using metalsmith [1]. It's quite "Do it yourself", but very flexible on the result.

1: [http://metalsmith.io](http://metalsmith.io)

<comment><USER3> It's nice because simple, but the quality of the plugins and the documentation is not very good. You end up wasting a bit of time discovering how to do even simple stuff.

The nice thing is that you can easily knock together a plugin to do what you need

<comment><USER2> > The nice thing is that you can easily knock together a plugin to do what you > need

Precisely. I guess one of the reasons why metalsmith doesn't have any pre- installed plugins is that. Fortunately with a combination of metalsmith & gulp you can do wonders and it's quite flexible, compared to any other `blackbox`-utility on the market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I am also looking into this space and found [https://www.staticgen.com/](https://www.staticgen.com/) quite helpful.

You can filter by language and then, you get Hexo, GitBook and Gatsby as the front runners for Javscript ranked by Github stars.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice site! Has really helped me know what the "market" looks like. Thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does it have to be node.js? Are you looking to expand your JS skills, or do you just want a decent static site generator? (If B, then hugo is awesome, and awesome fast)

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to be able to understand and modify if needed. Although I do program in other languages, I want to focus in NodeJS for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just pick the most popular one. The differences will be minor enough that what matters is documentation and support.

</comment><comment><USER7> Try Gatsby. Pretty full featured and works well. Also very easy to get up and running quickly.

<comment><USER4> While Gatsby looks good, I remember that the last time I looked at it Gatsby was always loading all blog posts. This isn't a problem for a small blog but with a blog with hundreds of posts this wouldn't be efficient. Plus there are some SEO issues because of its SPA nature. Are this issues still valid or did Gatsby changed in these regards?

<comment><USER7> It's not SPA, it's static. You can load without any JS on the frontend if you want I believe.

Code splitting is an expected part of an upcoming 1.0 release I believe (may be misremembering)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hexo is by far the most popular. Easy to use, lot of themes, I really like it.

<comment><USER9> Yeah hexo is pretty good

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Try phronomic.io, the front end use react.</comment>


The Problem with Facebook Is Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://logicmag.io/05-the-problem-with-facebook-is-facebook/ <comment><USER2> "The world is so complex that we actually need better forms of analysis and better forums for deliberation than the ones we inherited from the 20th century. And instead of building those, we trusted Facebook and Google. Google said, "Hey we're going to build the library in the future! Let's defund the libraries of the present!" Facebook said, "We will build a public square that will liberate the world and spread democracy!" And everyone went, "Great!"

The very fact that these corporate leaders believe so deeply in their ability to improve our lives should have set off alarm bells. It's not that they're lying. It's that they actually believe it."</comment>


AMD Radeon Navi 20 Could Pack 5,120 Cores, 24GB of HBM2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/306569-amd-radeon-navi-20-could-pack-5120-cores-24gb-of-hbm2-report <comment><USER2> * [https://news.skhynix.com/official_statement_recent_media_rep...](https://news.skhynix.com/official_statement_recent_media_reports_regarding_sk_hynixs_hbm2e_and_amds_next-gen_gpu_are_misleading/)

</comment><comment><USER3> My only hope is that this will benefit me indirectly by making nvidia reduce their absurd prices, because I can't imagine buying one unless all the software that relies on CUDA can run almost as well with ROCm.

<comment><USER4> It all boils down to this. Their hardware has always been great. They need to get the software support; this should be their primary goal.</comment></comment>


Hire from your user base - <AUTHOR> http://blog.alinelerner.com/hire-from-your-user-base/ <comment><USER2> > One way to see if someone is an engineer is to ping GitHub directly.

This strikes me as slightly creepy. If I give you my email as a customer, I am not sure I want that information to be mined for this purpose.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I don't mind. I assume anything I give to a social networking site [e.g. GitHub] is public knowledge or might as well be.

I mainly value my privacy about non-public information [e.g. lovers, close friends, current location] and that isn't acquirable without violating the privacy of my phone/email/etc.

<comment><USER4> While you may consider user e-mail addresses to be public, some people take umbrage when their e-mail addresses are disclosed.

Personally I use a different e-mail address for almost every site, so searching by e-mail address wouldn't find my account, but I know many people use the same e-mail address for several things.

<comment><USER5> True, some people use a different address for each service (ie. email@example.com), and they tend to be the the kind of people one would want to hire as engineers! I wonder if Sourcing.io figured it out somehow, but at least compared to option 1 it seems better to look them up manually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "I chose to only consider people who have at least one [GitHub] repo. You can be more liberal and look at everyone, but empirically profiles with 0 repos have been pretty useless."

"You'll probably want to find the person's LinkedIn to see where they work and how long they've been there ..."

This is just lazy recruiting for people who don't actually have contacts and can't use those contacts to find good candidates, so instead they use social networking as a surrogate indicator of actual talent.

Bleh.

<comment><USER7> Um, no one has enough contacts to ping and hire the amount of candidates a start-up or any other company needs. This isn't lazy recruiting, this is just recruiting.

<comment><USER6> I beg to differ. Networks are transitive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Riot games is another company where a huge portion of their hires come from the user base.</comment>


Dropbox: The Linchpin - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/12/17/dropbox-linchpin <comment><USER2> I can't imagine anything worse than Apple buying Dropbox. Worst case scenario is within 3 months Linux and Android support would be dropped, and the whole app would be redesigned with faux leather and page turn animations. I think Apple would be incapable of allowing such an open user accessible system, it seems to go against their DNA. They just need to refine iCloud, make an app called 'iFiles' or some such so users can actually manage their files, and get some more servers and better sync tech.

</comment><comment><USER3> iCloud was doomed from inception. Apple simply cannot create a service like Dropbox due to strategy taxes:

<http://arstechnica.com/staff/2011/03/the-apple-strategy-tax/>

</comment><comment><USER4> Scary? If it's not owned by Apple, it's scary?</comment>


What You Want in a VP Eng from the Recruiters Behind Twitter and LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/What-You-Want-in-a-VP-Eng-from-the-Recruiters-Behind-Twitter-and-LinkedIn <comment><USER2> This is a fantastic interview, and highlights the most common mistakes that I see early stage companies making:

1.) Seeking someone in their own image who is willing to work 18 hour days, including an unwillingness to look at candidates who have a different (or non- startup) background or are a missing a few buzzwords from their resume.

It might work for your first few engineering hires, but scaling it becomes incredibly difficult and brings with it huge lost opportunity costs. The faster you move out of your comfort zone, the better.

I know one well known start-up who has been trying to fill a role for over 4 months, and has gone through two dozen candidates, simply because of a strongly held philosophy by the founder who mandates 80-hour work weeks which effectively eliminates anybody who is married or has kids.

2.) Using fizzbuzz technical coding challenges as a proxy for how effectively someone will contribute to the team & your company hitting its product roadmap goals.

3.) Accurately & honestly assessing where you stand, and realizing that if you're a 7, trying to hire a "10" can be a recipe for failure. This is especially true if you're trying to pay below market rates.

4.) Moving with a sense of urgency and speed. If hiring is really your #1 priority, being willing to skip lunch with your monthly lunch with mom in order to make time for a hot candidate. In general, working under the assumption that anybody good is going to have multiple paper offers in hand, is a good philosophy.

5.) Decisiveness. "Making the offer when you've found the right house" vs. changing your mind because the color of the window boxes is wrong. Avoiding decisions by committee.</comment>


Microsoft Offers Surface RT for Students Around the World at $199 for 32GB Model - <AUTHOR> http://www.windowsobserver.com/2013/06/17/microsoft-offers-surface-rt-for-students-around-the-world-at-199-for-32gb-model/

<comment><USER2> To schools, not students. You have to be the purchasing agent for a school board to make this purchase.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The school can coordinate the purchase as a whole but have the students buy them initially.

Then the school submits the purchase order to get the devices.

And of course the school could just purchase them outright for their students.

</comment><comment><USER3> The most important question: Can you buy it without windows?</comment>


What is a minimum YC application? - <AUTHOR>

A friend and I are submitting a YC application and are starting to discuss things like equity, governance and so on.
What is the minimum we need to figure out before applying?
If accepted, we'd like to get as much input as possible about those decisions from the mentors at YC.. but we don't want to get dismissed because our corporate structure is half-baked.
We're not hopeless to the point that we can't figure out things like founder equity, but we're interested about things like alternate advisory boards, and don't want to make a misstep.
As a bonus question, it's unclear if our startup would be best positioned as a for or non-profit company. Is this a decision we could delay until after acceptance? <comment><USER2> Corporate structure can be figured out later, but if there are 2 of you, agreeing on a 50/50 split is your best bet...

Deciding if you are for or non-profit can be decided later (add that to the application that you are deciding), but choosing non-profit might help your cause.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree 50/50 split is best, I agree with most of this [1] article (recently posted on HN) about founder equity.

I also agree that choosing non-profit will most likely help our cause, it would take the company in a different direction. This is something we'd prefer to discuss with smarter folks (hence the desire to delay some of these decisions).

[1] <[http://www.gravitycomputing.co.nz/joels-totally-fair- method-...](http://www.gravitycomputing.co.nz/joels-totally-fair-method-to- divide-up-the-ownership-of-any-startup/>)

<comment><USER3> I'll keep dissenting: 50/50 is usually not the right solution. Please google founder equity calculator, and use it to _start a conversation_ about who does what and who is committed.

For the YC application, just say that you are not incorporated yet and that you are thinking of splitting 50/50, that should be good enough for them to review.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Fantasy Cricket Lover Must Play in IPL Fantasy Leagues? - <AUTHOR> https://infeeds.com/u/fantasygames/why-fantasy-cricket-lover-must-play-ipl-49228 <comment><AUTHOR> Every year, many users win a lot of real cash in cricket series & tournaments, but IPL fantasy league has a vital role in the growth of fantasy cricket userbase in India. The Indian Premier League (IPL) is widely known as the cricket festival in India, and many cricket fanatics wait for this tournament throughout the year.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean real cash by playing a fantasy game? oh yes with the recent pandemic no one can afford to go in a stadium and watch the matches so it's fantasy cricket at home. Well Played.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do save/organize your readed articles? - <AUTHOR> How do you save and organize relevant stories/article you find on the web?<p>-Browser bookmarks dont save articles, only the link(some links will go down)<p>-Evernote web clipper is very good, but recent increase in the evernote subscription price, and it is not opensource .. i dont want to use it,, <comment><USER2> Wallabag ([https://www.wallabag.org/](https://www.wallabag.org/)) is a very nice open source alternative to Pocket.

<comment><AUTHOR> It look really good!But couldnt make it work with opera :(

<comment><USER2> What is it that doesn't work? I actually installed it on my own server and use it on Firefox mostly.

<comment><AUTHOR> The plugin for it,

<comment><USER2> Ok, I don't understand any Russian :) but it seems there is a plugin on the Opera addons store ([https://addons.opera.com/ru/extensions/details/wallabagger/?...](https://addons.opera.com/ru/extensions/details/wallabagger/?display=en)). This addon is mentioned on the following Wallabag page ([https://www.wallabag.org/blog_index.html](https://www.wallabag.org/blog_index.html)). Hope it works.

EDIT: you can also have a look at Respawn ([https://github.com/broncowdd/respawn](https://github.com/broncowdd/respawn)). It is not as advanced as Wallabag, but it also saves a copy of any webpage to your own server.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For saving links, I'm a hoarder on Facebook (saving) and Twitter (favourites). For articles, it's usually saving to PDF or using Pocket ([https://getpocket.com](https://getpocket.com)). For articles that I will actually read/share (i.e. not a "ooo, looks interesting!") I use [https://saved.io](https://saved.io).

Suffice to say...huge mess. But it kind of works.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've recently deleted 224 bookmarks, all very interesting and neatly organized... but there's only so much time available, it felt like I was just hoarding bookmarks.

Now everything that I haven't accessed in a week gets deleted, I finally have some free space in the bookmark toolbar.

Anyway, to answer your question: for really important stuff (rarely), I just "print to pdf" and upload to google drive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Print to PDF make you unable to search for content other than title right?

One of my motivation to change the way i keep information is hoarding bookmarks, If turtl have a browser plugin similar to evernote webclipper it would be my go!

As sync is not important for me, i think i will save in folders tree as Htlm,

<comment><USER5> > _Print to PDF make you unable to search for content other than title right?_

It shouldn't, since the PDFs should have the full text.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use Pinboard. Super simple with easy tagging and easy to find stuff. Their "archival account" (not free) does exactly what you're looking for: [https://pinboard.in/upgrade/](https://pinboard.in/upgrade/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I think saving to PDF is overkill and takes up extra storage. Unless it is necessary to save images and charts associated with an article. These days, most images associated with articles are just file images someone tossed in for drama's sake (i.e. "A woman despairs over her computer" in relation to an article about budgeting.

So, what about save to plain text? Of course, while you can cut/paste, that's time consuming. I've yet to see a Pocket-like tool to quickly just save to plain-text and copy the relevant title as the file name and maybe also put it and the byline and date at the footer. Would be nice.

</comment><comment><USER8> I generally use Pocket for my to-read list but anything I read goes into Pocket. Then if I want to keep a read article for future references I archive it in pocket and delete it otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use shaarli (with it's not quite so good UI) and just put every link I know into there.

It's written in PHP and easy enough to host on a cheap Shared Host or VPS.

</comment><comment><USER10> Pocket - [https://getpocket.com/](https://getpocket.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> I like using Google Keep for that</comment>


Extending Van Gogh's Starry Night with Inpainting - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfram.com/2014/12/01/extending-van-goghs-starry-night-with-inpainting/ <comment><USER2> Mathematica demos sure look pretty [0]. But I recently tried to get actual work done with Mathematica and found the experience utterly ridiculous.

The high level functions, while nice for demos, never quite do what you need. Want to display data vs. time with errorbars around the data? Sorry, no function for this completely exotic use case, please hack a DateListPlot on top of an ErrorListPlot [1].

The WolframAlpha integration "transparently" interprets code for you in the background. This interpretation can change any day [2] and leaves you guessing why your notebook doesn't run anymore.

The bugs I encountered were severe: One of the output function swallows the "-" sign if the result is between -1 and 0 [3]. Currently I am battling file corruption of notebooks that are saved on network drives and open while the drive is disattached/reattached.

Had it not been for the awesome support by the mathematica. stackexchange.com community, I would have quit Mathematica completely. Now I vowed to use it only for small hacks. And, if I want to impress someone, for demos.

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

[1] [http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/18962](http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/18962)

[2] The input

        Quantity[1, "Kelvins"]

is interpreted by Mathematica itself and yields an object equivalent to "1 Kelvins". The input

        Quantity[1, "Kelvin"]

however is interpreted "transparently" by Wolfram Alpha. A few weeks ago it evaluated to "1 KelvinsDifference", but now has changed to "1 Kelvins". Don't get me started on the KelvinsDifference vs. Kelvins thing, which are both represented by the same symbol to maximize your confusion when your unit conversions are failing...

[3] [http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600](http://mathematica.stackexchange.com/questions/65600)

<comment><USER3> Really interesting, detailed comment. The problem is not that Mathematica has bugs - all complex software has bugs (except TeX). The problem is that you can't fix it, or even see how it works, because the source is secret. Nothing will get fixed until the company decides to fix it. Access to source is not an ideological imperative, it's a practical necessity.

<comment><USER4> I'm not convinced open source would really help. I get the feeling that Mathematica's underlying philosophy just isn't a good fit for practical programming.

<comment><USER5> I disagree. If it was open source I think enough people would write libraries for it (or add-ons or whatever they would be called) that most if not everything could be done with functions found online. In the rare event that they could not be done you could just create your own. This is similar to my annoyance over Wolfram Alpha being server side when some sort of client side solution would be way better but would involve the source code being available.

<comment><USER4> Sure, some limitations could be mitigated this way. But being open source does not in itself make it a good language/platform.

<comment><USER6> This is a point that many people seem to skip when discussing Mathematica. I think it would be great if they open sourced all of the code but I doubt that that alone would bring a surge of new package developers. If anything, I would expect it to bring IPython, Sage, etc. people to pick around for useful bits to reimplement in other projects.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish that the Wolfram articles would describe a little more about what their algorithms do, rather than the mechanics of how to use their primitives. The articles remind me some of the era of web engines optimized for a specific task -- there were plenty of MVC frameworks that work really really well for writing a todo list in 25 lines, but doing anything more complicated than a todo list meant dissecting the guts of the framework.

It'd be great to hear how they did an efficient implementation of texture synthesis. But if you want to read at least about the basics, the dissertation they linked [1] gets into the details on page 18, anyway, in section 2.2 (and beyond).

[1] [http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh- files/thesis/dissertation.pdf](http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh- files/thesis/dissertation.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Wolfram has a habit of creating blog posts about the test cases for their algorithms.

<comment><USER9> He also has a habit of not talking about how things work. All the time. Source code, mathematical proofs, citations, all of these things are relatively unimportant in Wolfram's world. He even thinks _you_ should not try to find out how things work:

[http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/WhyYouDoNotUs...](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/WhyYouDoNotUsuallyNeedToKnowAboutInternals.html)

<comment><USER5> Its a They, not He. The post isn't written by Wolfram himself :)

<comment><USER10> The Principle of Computational Equivalence says that Wolfram and his employees are equivalent, right?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> andrey-p Worth checking out the rest of Yarin Gal (the PhD student whose work prompted this post)'s extrapolated works of art:

[http://extrapolated-art.com/](http://extrapolated-art.com/)

Some of these look so seamless it's staggering.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's really neat. This makes me think to image analogies[0], something that impressed me enough that I keep remembering it after 13 years!

[0]: [http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/](http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image-analogies/)

<comment><USER12> Thanks for sharing this. I was really impressed by this example: [http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/potomac.html](http://www.mrl.nyu.edu/projects/image- analogies/potomac.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> afaik this technique was first implemented in the early 90s: [http://draves.org/fuse/](http://draves.org/fuse/)

<comment><USER14> FTA: _The "TextureSynthesis" method is based on the algorithm described in "Image Texture Tools,"[1] a PhD thesis by P. Harrison. This algorithm is an enhanced best-fit approach introduced in 1981 by D. Garber in "Computational Models for Texture Analysis and Texture Synthesis."[2]_

[1] [http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh- files/thesis/dissertation.pdf](http://www.logarithmic.net/pfh- files/thesis/dissertation.pdf)

[2] [http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=910609](http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=910609)

<comment><USER13> is Garber's thesis (or better yet, a paper summarizing it) available online?

<comment><USER14> There have been lots of advances since, under the term "content-aware fill". Lots of links from here [https://www.adobe.com/technology/projects/content- aware-fill...](https://www.adobe.com/technology/projects/content-aware- fill.html)

There's an oldish plugin for the GIMP called Resynthesizer, but there are better algorithms out now. G'MIC has one called "inpainting". [http://gmic.eu/repository.shtml](http://gmic.eu/repository.shtml)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the comments on the article: [http://imgur.com/a/BfcK4](http://imgur.com/a/BfcK4)

Some more tests of the algorithm with less impressive results (though still good looking)

</comment><comment><USER16> Extension algorithms are absolutely amazing - and incredibly useful if you're a practical working visual artist.

I've personally found Photoshop's Content-Aware Fill to be so useful on films and comics that it now gets its own credit, as:

"Matte extension: Content-Aware Phil".

</comment><comment><USER17> Such an approach might be useful to the print industry for generating seamless "bleed" around images, which is required to allow some margin for error when trimming the physical prints.

</comment><comment><USER18> Not to be totally grumpy here, but this is classic mathematicians-think-art- is-images-looking-like-famous-art. The expanded "starry night" isn't an interesting painting, of course. And it adds nothing to Mr. V. V. Gogh's work. It just mimics aspects of the extant work, in a spatially naive manner (e.g., what more do we learn except that the new rendition exists on a black mesa surrounded by more village-with-church?).

SIGGRAPH-style research shouldn't validate itself merely because it teaches the computer to adopt a cliched mode of image-making.

<comment><USER19> Have you looked at the other examples? [http://extrapolated- art.com/](http://extrapolated-art.com/)

Some of these are pretty impressive and do more than just pattern repetition.

<comment><USER20> I'm going to agree with the critics - I think you may be confusing technical problem-solving with artistic awareness.

They're all interesting as technology demonstrations, but none of them improve on the original compositions, and some of them are almost completely unsuccessful as visual art.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not to make this any less impressive, but doesn't the latest versions of Photoshop have these types of features built in?

</comment><comment><USER22> Only problem is, I've been to the village where Starry night was painted, it's not that big.

</comment><comment><USER23> Its tiling the painting seamlessly, which is cool. Not really Van Gogh; but Van-Gogh compatible?</comment>


Ask HN: Tesla was leading with Autopilot, how is it suddenly behind others? - <AUTHOR> Tesla seemed to be the only available option for (at least a bit) autonomous vehicle, yet recently I see more and more bad press, pointing that they are behind other "big players". Did I miss something? I haven't noticed any of the big car companies offering anything even remotely close to Tesla's Autopilot. <comment><USER2> They stopped using MobilEye's solution and they started developing their own. However, although their own may have more powerful Nvidia chips, their software is probably a few years behind and they are in a race against time to catch-up and surpass the other one.</comment>


I'm starting a startup: An apartment with a view finder - <AUTHOR> https://nothingless.github.io/ <comment><USER2> Programmatically finding whether or not a specific apartment has windows facing in the right direction would be an interesting challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is the direction important to you? Personally, I just want to be able to look over the city. And not have another house in front of me.

At first I will simply go through all listings for each city manually. Looking at the photos and the reviews. And make a list of the ones with a view.

<comment><USER3> The direction of the view determines when/if light enters the building. North facing views won't put sunbeams on a person's morning coffee (in Europe, Australia etc. are different), that's important to some people, not to others.

To put it another way, once a person cares about the view when picking a location, the person is likely to become picky. I might be fine looking out a cell tower five blocks away, another person isn't. They prefer trees 30m away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup. That's why I'll give them a list. So they can chose between the tower and the trees.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Most creative algorithms? - <AUTHOR> I recently stumbled upon Sleep Sort[1, 2], which is the most creative algorithmic idea I think I have ever seen in code.<p>I'd love to read about more creative algorithms and code snippets like this, what else is out there? And I don't mean obfuscated code (although they often do include very creative ideas too).<p>[1] https://rosettacode.org/wiki/Sorting_algorithms/Sleep_sort<p>[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2657277 <comment><USER2> I'm partial to

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjoint- set_data_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disjoint-set_data_structure)

It's a fairly simple algorithm to implement, but there is some wicked-cool analysis behind how fast it is.

It's a super good thing to have in your toolbox for any time you want to do any sort of "simultaneous flood-fill everywhere" or "partition everything" task.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another interesting sorting algo [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort)</comment>


Facebook previews journalism features like digests and subscription trials - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/11/facebook-journalism-project/ <comment><AUTHOR> "No, we are a tech company, not a media company[0]"

[0] - [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-zuckerberg- idUSKC...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-zuckerberg- idUSKCN1141WN)</comment>


The New Generation of Self-Created Utopias - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/t-magazine/intentional-communities.html <comment><USER2> The article did not mention how labor at the communes is taxed, if at all. People outside communes cannot legally exchange their labor without giving a large cut to the government in payroll and income taxes and are bound by labor regulations. Quoting the article:

"East Wind is what its 72 residents call an intentional community, a modern descendant of the utopian colonies and communes of centuries past where individuals share everything from meals, chores and living space to work, income, domestic responsibilities and the burden of self-governance."</comment>


The Best Questions For A First Date - <AUTHOR> http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/the-best-questions-for-first-dates/

<comment><USER2> Poll HN: Do you like the taste of beer?</comment>


Hush: The World's First Smart Earplugs - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hush/hush-the-worlds-first-smart-earplug

<comment><USER2> Love the radiation question in your FAQ. It is confusing that you say in the FAQ that you personally change the foam tips weekly, but the product only comes with 3 pairs. What happens after 3 weeks? Will it be economical to buy these en-masse, or will you effectively pay double the price after a year of paying for tips that you have to throw away? It also seems very wasteful to recommend throwing them away every week.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! We will make it economical to buy them en-masse. Also, you don't have to throw them away weekly - that's just our hygienic preference. There are people that use the same foam pieces for months. You can wash them under the sink as well. Good comment though, I'll modify the answer to that FAQ

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Developer here. Hoping to hear some feedback!</comment>


AppDevForum - The Unofficial App.net Developer Forum - <AUTHOR> http://appdevforum.com

<comment><AUTHOR> This is essentially an Ask HN. Looking for feedback on the idea. Thanks!</comment>


Folded Google Maps with 3D CSS transforms (webkit only) - <AUTHOR> http://experiments.bonnevoy.com/foldedmap/demo/

<comment><USER2> I really dig the cool things being done online these days, but it's really bringing me back to "Site works best in IE4.0" or "Please download Netscape to see this page!". I wish I didn't need 3 browsers to view the Internet anymore.

<comment><USER3> Lots of these new technologies are still in the tech demo phase, exploring the possibilities. Many of these demos, including this one, serve no practical purpose beyond saying "Hey, check out this cool new feature". When these technologies are actually used in applications, they will be used as progressive enhancements: if your browser supports them, you'll see some neat visual flair; if not, the app will still work and you'll never know you are missing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Works for me on OS X 10.7.2 and chrome. I can move around/zoom. Not very practical but a cool effect nonetheless.

edit: can even move it around when the map is opening

</comment><comment><USER5> It _sort of_ works for me. Grey spaces where map tiles haven't loaded though, and I'm not sure why. Also you can't move around etc., so there isn't much to look at.

Still, nice concept.

</comment><comment><USER6> Very broken on my Win7 EeePC with up-to-date Chrome.

<comment><USER7> Same on a desktop ubuntu 11.04 in chrome.

Also you should really change your root experiments.bonnevoy.com domain to something more interesting than the default centos apache page.

<comment><AUTHOR> There you go, I made a root with some links to other experiments (guess that's what you were aiming for). Disclaimer: code will be messy!</comment></comment></comment>


Ancient Chinese medicine could fight aging  - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21462-ancient-chinese-medicine-could-fight-aging.html

<comment><USER2> This is a press release about a very preliminary finding. I will wait for replication by other researchers in other labs and see what happens over the next several years. This is a long way from being verified as a safe and effective treatment in human medicine. As usual when I see press releases about preliminary findings here on Hacker News, I will post my all-time favorite link to put into Hacker News comments, "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation" by Peter Norvig, LISP hacker and Google's director of research.

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> It seems to me they are assuming they know why just adequate nutrition helps critters live longer. I doubt they really do.</comment>


Amazon Offers Cheap Prime to Government Aid Recipients - <AUTHOR> http://reason.com/blog/2017/06/06/amazon-offers-discounts-on-prime-to-peop <comment><USER2> Amazon now has Walmart and other discount brick and mortar stores in the crosshairs. In 2013 Americans spent $76 million in food stamps and something like 28% of that was spent at Walmart. It sounds like a pretty significant piece of pie that Amazon has its eyes on. [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/05/how_much_walm...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2014/08/05/how_much_walmart_gets_in_food_stamp_dollars_the_answer_may_be_forthcoming.html)</comment>