VSCodium – An Open Source Visual Studio Code Without Trackers - <AUTHOR> https://www.fossmint.com/vscodium-clone-of-visual-studio-code-for-linux/ <comment><USER2> There's already a comment here, and I've also personally experienced just from talking with others offline, that a lot of people _don 't even know_ VSCode had telemetry, despite it mentioned several times in the product itself and its documentation. They (and remember, these people are supposedly _developers_ ) either ignored it, or just didn't read the docs.

I guess a big WARNING banner might scare users away, but it's still a bit disturbing to see such a lax attitude towards tools which developers use to work with a software company's most valuable assets. A lot of people, developers included, don't really read EULAs, and it's the same reason (traditional) spyware could thrive: no doubt they all specify in their license agreements the fact that they all collect information, but approximately no one reads those.

Put it another way, would you want your compiler or other parts of your toolchain sending information about all the source files it processed? I wouldn't consider myself particularly paranoid when it comes to security, maybe even looser than the average on HN, and even then I wouldn't use such tools. I wonder how many companies have already banned their use...

<comment><USER3> Telemetry is all about how it's presented to the user. It should simply be presented at install/first start and users should be _shown_ the checkbox (it shouldn't be hidden away in settings) and asked nicely to leave it on in order to improve the product. Checked by default is a hot topic but I think it is OK so long as it's presented clearly to the user.

I mean obviously I wouldn't like any of the information I handle to be sent somewhere, but I also don't mind _statistics_ about that info (number of files, file sizes, feature use count) to be sent to Microsoft. If I found out that file contents was transmitted then obviously I'd be outraged - but I'm rational and assume Microsoft is too.

<comment><USER4> Precisely! Albeit I am a bit surprised our infosec team seemingly haven't cracked down or made a stance just yet on Kite and other telemetry software for developers. That day will come soon I am sure :)

<comment><USER5> Kite runs locally, why would infosec crack down on it?

<comment><USER4> maybe this is old information but I thought it sent information back to Kite? This article is old but for what it's worth: [https://qz.com/1043614/this- startup-learned-the-hard-way-tha...](https://qz.com/1043614/this-startup- learned-the-hard-way-that-you-do-not-piss-off-open-source-programmers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this needed? You can disable telemetry from the settings: [https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to- di...](https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/supporting/FAQ#_how-to-disable- telemetry-reporting)

<comment> false-mirror 1\. One less setting to configure, lest the Default monsters gets you

2\. VSCodium is just a FLOSS VSCode binary. You could build it yourself from the available VSCode source. However, the VSCode binary is not FLOSS so you cannot be sure what it is running.

It's not like VS code is the next PRISM-- I'm sure MS has better ways to spy on users ;). The real pull is whether you prefer FLOSS by default.

<comment><USER7> > However, the VSCode binary is not FLOSS so you cannot be sure what it is > running.

That's equally true of the VSCodium binary. It's not a reproducible build, I have no way of knowing from which source code the binary was generated.

Of course I could build from source, but VSCodium is just VSCode built from source with a build flag set. So in this regard it's not contributing anything notable (and doesn't claim so either).

<comment><USER8> Why is it not possible to build VSCodium in a reproducible way? Does it download packages while building?

<comment><USER9> I think this kind of reproducible:

* [https://reproducible-builds.org](https://reproducible-builds.org)

* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproducible_builds)

Sorry, but I don't think I am qualified to explain clearly

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I suspect the tracking in VSCode is mainly used to improve the product. It's probably in my best interest, and the interest of the community as a whole to leave tracking on. I mean, I get it, HN is usually a more skeptical and security-focused crowd. At the same time, it's likely MS will just take that information and tailor their bugfixes and features to the things I need most, so by all means I want them to have it.

<comment><USER11> It maybe starts with simple statistics. But then you want to know what features the user use, then you want to know what other programs they have installed. Then you want to know what the users search for on the web. etc. It's a slippery slope.

<comment><USER12> Every time I hear the phrase "it's a slippery slope" uttered by someone arguing against something, I am immediately suspicious of the argument that person is making.

There really isn't such a thing, in the way you've used that phrase.

Capturing telemetry on how I use a tool from within that tool is perfectly fine, to me. Collecting telemetry on my search history in the browser by that same tool isn't. THERE ARE NO INTERIM STEPS that makes the second of those ok. There is no slope. If there is, it isn't slippery. There is a series of discreet decisions and at some point (which is different for everyone) a line is crossed. There was no slope or slip that brought you there, only a series of mostly unrelated decisions.

To think that Microsoft's long-term goal is to install a keystroke logger via a multi-decade and multi-phase plan that begins with application usage telemetry in a free developer tool thanks to "a slippery slope" is just simply not realistic.

<comment><USER13> When you walk in the wrong direction the final step off the cliff is the last one. Better to get off of the slope because choices get fuzzier the closer you get to the sun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The process for making this yourself is basically as simple as:

git clone

gulp build

Consider doing that before running binaries from more or less unknown sources.

I don't remember the exact gulp command off hand, but if you check the gulpfile there are myriad build configs for full minified packaged builds.

</comment><comment><USER15> Discussion from 3 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19619956)

</comment><comment><USER16> This is great.

I think I would be okay with companies like Microsoft collecting data on me if they make it more clear what data they are collecting, what they're using the data for, having the ability to disable data collection (defaulted to disable preferably), and being able to download and have a guid to understand my own data.

As a dev myself I know all of that is difficult and sounds ridiculous, but I really do think we have a right to the data collected on us and on our behavior. Transparency, ownership, and access, that's all I ask.

</comment><comment><USER17> I had no idea VS Code even had tracking..

Does anyone know what exactly is being tracked?

<comment><USER18> Chris Dias offers up a suggestion for how to investigate further here: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-1...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-162411071)

But, speaking as a developer of an open source software product that includes telemetry[1], I expect they're tracking really basic stuff, like: DAU, MAU, edited file types, project size, crash reports, etc. Basically, information that helps to internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that lets them better prioritize resources on the project.

[1] [https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway- iphone](https://github.com/onebusaway/onebusaway-iphone)

<comment><USER19> > I expect they're tracking really basic stuff [...] information that helps to > internally justify the continued existence of the project, and data that > lets them better prioritize resources on the project.

This is my big issue with almost all analytics setups. Sure, you _expect_ that they're _probably_ tracking stuff like that, which is perfectly reasonable and benefits everyone. But when you look at the privacy policy inevitably you find that the data they "may" collect is incredibly vaguely defined, wide-ranging, and generally not actually limited (they use phrases like "we collect data such as..." and "some examples of data we collect are...").

And then what they _do_ with the data is also left unrestricted by phrases like "ways we use the data include..."

And then when you point this out, everyone tells you that you're being paranoid and they're just covering themselves and don't be silly.

And then when they do precisely what their policy legally enables them to do ( _cough_ Facebook _cough_ Cambridge Analytica _cough_ ) everyone is aghast.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't (unfortunately) ever bother with what terms say. They are written by a legal person who worries about future legal issues.

This is basically down to the reputation of the vendor and what information I can _guess_ they gather based on what sort of outrage they would face if they cross a line.

There are two messages here:

1\. Legal. Basically a catch all that says they might sample your blood in the future

2\. Non-legal e.g developers. Says they gather harmless statistics.

Obviously #1 smells. But that's how US corporate legal culture works. The judgement I have to do is whether the vendor can be trusted to do only what they say in message #2. I wouldn't trust all companies in this respect, especially not those that trade in information like Facebook, but I do give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I derive immense value from MSFT's VSCode. I don't think the telemetry in VSCode is similar to cookie tracking by Facebook et al. Frankly, I do not understand the fiscal benefit the Microsoft from VSCode, but I'd like to continue supporting Microsoft's version, as the telemetry from an IDE don't seem to be all encompassing privacy wise, like web tracking

</comment><comment><USER21> Meh. I just set the environment variable in my dotfiles which opts me out of telemetry. I can't recall a case where MS would outright lie about stuff like this. I.e. with Win 10 they flat out tell you you can't disable all telemetry, and in the case of VSCode they're targeting a real hard-ass demographic, so I trust them to not track me when I told them not to. I also don't use VSCode very often, though.

</comment><comment><USER22> Would've been good if it detailed what its tracking. I assume its update notifications and usage telemetry, which is fine by me.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is nice and all but, from my perspective, the biggest issue with VSCode isn't the telemetry but the battery drain. Even though I prefer VSCode to Sublime the negative effect on battery life, particularly for sizeable projects, forced me back to Sublime for most use cases.

<comment><USER24> It uses Electron.. which is packaged Chromium. That's the hog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> If you are concerned with privacy and use _any_ Microsoft products (you're already making a mistake by doing so in the first place but) I would recommend, by default, blocking all Internet access to/from the host (edit: _by default_ ; make exceptions as needed, obviously).

I've got one Windows machine here, just so I can run one specific client that I have to use for an internally-hosted application. That machine doesn't have a default route, just a single static route that lets it communicate with the (internal) things it needs to and, just for good measure, there are firewall rules (on the router connected to my upstream) that block any traffic to/from this machine and the Internet. (Sadly, I would not be surprised to learn that it can "fallback" to using DNS queries or some such to report back to the mothership.)

I think we'll eventually get to the point where, in general, devices _won 't_ have a default route. It might take a while, though -- currently, way too many people are still completely okay with every device and application they use spying on them and reporting back on what they do.

So-called "default deny" firewall policies for incoming traffic are pretty common nowadays. I can't wait for "default deny" policies for outbound traffic to become standard as well.

</comment><comment><USER26> Is there any difference between this and the version in Arch's community repo?[0] Obviously VSCodium appears to target more distros.

From my experience _code_ (Arch) is entirely debranded, so I can't imagine telemetry was left in.

[0] [https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/x86_64/code/)

<comment><USER27> Is it? I honestly never had a closer look, but the upstream url just points to the regular MS github repo.

<comment><USER26> To answer my own question: no difference in terms of telemetry.

Both pull from MS source and are prebuilt, so there should be no telemetry in either. This explains it well:

[https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium#why)

In case anyone wants to compare the minutiae:

[https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh](https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium/blob/master/build.sh)

[https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/...](https://git.archlinux.org/svntogit/community.git/tree/trunk/PKGBUILD?h=packages/code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Everyone is focusing on telemetry being turned off by default, but I think the real benefit of VSCodium is that it doesn't force you to agree to the non-free license [https://code.visualstudio.com/License/](https://code.visualstudio.com/License/) that comes with standard VS Code (which is different from the MIT license in the repo, [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/blob/master/LICENSE.txt)). See the issue [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/17996) for discussion of the problems with that license.

</comment><comment><USER29> Some developers are a funny bunch, always chasing after the next cool thing: either a language, an editor, a stack or a methodology. I've watched the RoR hype, the Agile frenzy, the Sublime Text popularity, the Angular and React mania... The truth of the matter is that while a developer needs to keep up with new tech, often "new" doesn't mean better, just different. Choosing the right tools for the job at hand from all the available ones, not just the "cool" ones, is an often missed quality of a good developer.

</comment><comment><USER30> VSCode seems rather monolithic. Skimming it briefly, there seems code which might be usefully repackaged as npm packages for service elsewhere. (I didn't check whether npm packages exist providing similar functionality.)

This can certainly be the right call for a project. But maybe it's an untapped opportunity for the broader community?

Has anyone looked at running a tracking fork, say mechanically massaging vscode into a monorepo?

As I explore opportunities for coding inside VR, having a more integrated ecosystem for creating IDEs would be nice.

<comment><USER31> Check out theia

<comment><USER30> Thanks... [https://github.com/theia-ide/theia](https://github.com/theia- ide/theia)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmmm. Do I trust Microsoft or some unknown person on the internet?

<comment><USER33> Who has the better track record?

<comment><USER32> Who has more to lose and who has more scrutiny?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> The fossmint.com website is full with advertisement, social links and an annoying popup. Somehow funny to visit there to avoid trackers...

</comment><comment><USER35> Are you allowed to use .NET Core debugging with VSCodium?

[https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505](https://github.com/dotnet/core/issues/505)

</comment><comment><USER36> I shall still prefer to go with the usual editors like sublime, vim. At the very least I can be certain that vim is not reading the files I am editing.

</comment><comment><USER37> Isn't the use of the vscode store extensions proprietary?

<comment><USER14> It is, but people try to get away with it by using a mistakenly committed config file from a few years back to argue that the URL's are now MIT'd.

The commit was quickly reverted, but they didn't rewrite history to totally remove it, and now here we are.

<comment><USER7> That sounds like they legally released it under MIT. They legally can't just revoke a license grant, even completely unpublishing it by rewriting git history wouldn't solve that.

<comment><USER37> I want Microsoft to share the vscode extensions, but that reasoning seems weird to me. MS is hosting the extensions, they could decide what applications get access to them. But also saying anything published by mistake immediately makes it part of the current state of an open source project seems too violent. Software authors should decide the terms of their software, maybe past versions maintain the license included in them, but they are not eternal, should the author decide so.

If at some point I want to turn my application more commercial friendly by amending the license or changing it completely, and people tell me "No haha sorry you released as MIT at some point so it's now free forever mate" I would get pissed off and stray away from open source altogether. At least this is how the "you can't revoke a license" argument feels to me. But like I said, past versions that include a specific license should still be governed by that license.

<comment><USER7> > MS is hosting the extensions, they could decide what applications get access > to them.

A better way to do that would be to add some trivial access protection (like a password they didn't accidentially publish). No matter how weak, any attempt to circumvent it would violate anti-hacking laws in most jurisdictions.

> "No haha sorry you released as MIT at some point so it's now free forever > mate"

For you existing code that's exactly how it works. Otherwise the concept of licensing something becomes close to meaningless. Imagine Google releases Kubernetes as open source, you build your business on it, and suddenly Google turns around and says "just kidding, everyone who wants to use Kubernetes after next monday has to pay us absurd licensing fees". Using anything open source would be an insane risk if that was possible.

Instead what people usually do is to say "everything I do from now on is closed source. You can maintain a fork of the old version, but good luck keeping up with my version". Or alternatively "everything I do from now on is under [GPL/AGPL/similar restrictive license], if you want to use it beyond that contact me for a more permissive license deal". You can give people more permissions on things you own, or attach fewer permission to new things than you did in the past, but you can't take permissions you already gave away.

<comment><USER37> >Instead what people usually do is to say "everything I do from now on is closed source. You can maintain a fork of the old version, but good luck keeping up with my version". Or alternatively "everything I do from now on is under [GPL/AGPL/similar restrictive license], if you want to use it beyond that contact me for a more permissive license deal".

Yes this is what I was describing as reasonable. "Everything after this is governed by X terms" is reasonable. But the whole thing can sound like even if you change terms, previous licenses would still apply, which would be wrong.

<comment><USER7> To circle back to the specific case of the VSCode extension URLs, at the time they were "new stuff" they were published in a repository with an MIT license notice, effectively publishing them under MIT. For that version that license applies forever. If they change the URLs and keep the change proprietary that's fine, they just can't take back the past.

Though it should be added that I'm just expressing the common understanding, barely anything surrounding open source licenses was ever actually tested in court. There are also some obvious legal positions that would completely change this: does every change need to state the license, are open source licenses actually legally binding etc. However nobody would ever argue those positions because they are detrimental for everyone (ok, the latter one was once argued in a GPL trial, but the court decided not to decide on that)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> this is great. we could make it a proper fork and get rid of the constant nagging of notifications wanting to manage your git repo, install plugins, etc...

</comment><comment><USER39> I do not trust Facebook with my personal data on their site, but I would absolutely trust them to turn off arbitrary telemetry data if in fact it said it was 'off'.

I just don't think there's a big evil conflict of interest or whatever for this stuff to get slippery.

No yet anyhow.

<comment><USER40> > Facebook [...] I would absolutely trust them

there is no hope for you then I suppose

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Are we still on with the FUD about telemetry?

It doesn't help anybody except probably the one guy who 'Showed Microsoft'.

Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out means the product company will miss out on the behavior of power users thereby not being able to optimize their software for their usage.

<comment><USER42> > Telemetry helps improve products and opt-out

Did you mean to write "opt-in", or are you suggesting it's OK for software to refuse the choice to opt out of data tracking? "Power users" simply do not use such software or block connections via firewall.

<comment><USER41> Please don't spread FUD. Tracking makes it sound like I'm being followed. This is collecting usage-data.

<comment><USER42> GPS-related telemetry, say in modern cars or smartphones, is akin to being followed. The latter isn't even anonymized, e.g. recently police identified suspects by issuing a warrant to Google for devices in the vicinity, or Tesla having all the car data in case of an accident. Web tracking such as analytics or canvas, things like "advertising tags" being assigned to your profile, is you being digitally followed across various sites you visit. "Usage-data" decided by developers, malicious or otherwise, may not be just usage data from the user's perspective.

You can hardly dismiss all telemetry concerns as invalid when "telemetry" is a catchall term for most any data collection. And the other side of it is the user and being in control of the software they run, which entails opt-in or at the minimum leaving the option to opt-out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This is awesome, it's a lot faster than VSCode. I can now use a low end machine to code finally haha. No need for 12GB Ram notebooks anymore.

<comment><USER44> Likely placebo. There's made no changes that would make it faster.

<comment><USER45> In the main version of Vscode it will give me micro stutters when I use WSR+ vocola. _So far_ there's been none of that with vscodium, however this could be because as with this fresh install there's no plugins.

<comment><USER43> Same here! I cannot understand why it's a lot faster than VSCode, it's weird. I know have to try the plugins to see.

<comment><USER46> Is it possible the "slowness" was DNS lookups possibly for the reporting?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Day Job - <AUTHOR> https://dayjob.work/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm sharing this because I love the idea, but feel there must be better executions of it out there. I couldn't find any that beat it though.</comment>


Show HN: I built a Blackjack basic strategy training app - <AUTHOR> https://blackjacktrainer.app <comment><AUTHOR> Hey all, I recently got into blackjack and built an app to teach myself basic strategy charts. I thought I'd release it to the public.

It lets you practice specific scenarios like soft hands or hands with unintuitive correct moves (e.g. 9/9 vs 7, stand). I'm working on adding analytics for things like which hands the user gets wrong most often.

If you're curious, the charts are all based on ones from Wizard of Odds. Also, it simulates a shoe behind the scenes so you can practice card counting (not randomized each hand).

There's no mobile support yet but I plan to add it if people find it useful.</comment>


I hate Honeydew or: Why you should always ask "Why?" - <AUTHOR> http://theycallmeswift.com/2012/10/03/I-hate-honeydew-or-why-why-matters-in-user-tests/ <comment><USER2> Honeydew melons are my favorite. They have an amazing texture with just the right amount of sweetness. Putting your terrible taste in fruits aside, you raise an excellent point. The waitress reached a conclusion that was the complete of the truth. Similar mistakes in product or software design would catastrophic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Despite our completely disjoint opinions of the devil's fruit, I tip my hat to you sir.</comment></comment>


Tim Wu: How Silicon Valley Lost Its Soul - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/how-silicon-valley-lost-its-soul-how-it-can-maybe-ncna878166 <comment><USER2> Jimmy Wales is a good example counterpoint, imo - who else comes to mind?</comment>


College Is A Waste. Replace It With Y Combinator - <AUTHOR> http://mixergy.com/college-waste-time-money-solution/ <comment><USER2> Preaching 'College is a waste of time' and dropping out of college makes you a Facebook founder, isn't healthy! If you are studying Computer Science, you need to learn Artificial Intelligence or Architecture design, you cannot say it has no relevance to the industry. It does, and it helps to shape up a young mind to look at the BIG picture. YCombi is great, but how can you replace that for College education? Its narrow in scope.

<comment><USER3> I'm a 4th year CS major. During the second year, I seriously reconsidered changing majors. I felt CS "wasn't enough programming", and therefore not relevant to my future.

However, I stuck to it. It's only recently that I've discovered that all that set theory, automata theory, and architecture theory has actually made me a much better programmer than I would have been otherwise.

On the other hand, a CS major alone will not make you a good programmer. You must also program in your spare time, continuously, constantly learning, whether it be work or personal projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The truth is that college is one big party

I believe 100% this is THE most important part of college/university level education. The education part is minor because if you have a subject interest it will come fairly naturally (I do think if you have to force knowledge in there is no point trying).

Partying is socialising, building a circle of friends/associates and generally learning how humanity interacts. Indeed the education is partly just a way to validate the lifestyle to later employees (4 years dossing vs. 4 years "at college", right? :)).

Were I to have gone straight from school into the real world I would have failed and had no support network to catch me.

Now yes I do see what he means about letting people loose on real projects. BUT there just isnt enough incubator work to go around - and at the end of the day you do need some mundane background classes to get you started. The higher education model is broken, I agree, but scrapping it would be bad. Let people develop their social construct and let off steam - then make them useful :)

<comment><USER5> As somebody who attended college off and on, and in my 20s instead of right out of high school, I missed out on this. I think you're on to something there, ErrantX.

I've been a fan of some required national service for some of these same reasons. I think not only you, but society as a whole benefits when young people are put together and form support groups as part of starting off. It should be encouraged more.

<comment><USER6> Required National Service is a horrible idea, for a myriad of reasons -- #1 of which is that it's slavery. Notice how whenever anyone talks about national service, it's always aimed at the politically naive (children, and young adults). We don't see required national service for 35 year olds, or 60 year olds.

Now supporting groups for young people to tackle is interesting problems (where they develop character and lasting relationships) is commendable, as long as its voluntary and not looking for a handout.

<comment><USER4> Is there a middle ground? So for example I would be a fan of young people who left school and stay on the dole for several years (say 2 years) being made to do some form of service (maybe not military). It would certainly give them a boost IMO.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand why you want young people to stay on the dole for 2 years? Shouldn't they being doing something productive? I think that the constant age segregation throughout school and college is actually a major hindrance to most people. I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve, there are already programs for people that want structure (college, peace corps, military, volunteer work, etc).. I'd personally prefer to have them do something that delivers value, than doing something that makes them feel good but is ultimately wasteful. I also think its wrong to take money from others to subsidize programs that aren't available to them; think of the minimum wage worker whose taxes help send others to college while they're stuck trying to scrape by.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> College is not a waste if you want a great education. Where else can you interact with and be taught from the world's best in nearly any course of study? In college you get a mind opening view of what any one subject has to offer, rather than a narrow view driven by a purpose for learning that material. That broad exposure translates to being a more effective thinker and problem solver.

And to counter a few more of his points: 1) The fundamentals don't change every four months. 2) Lectures can be dry, but it doesn't mean you don't learn from them. And you DO get to put it into practice when you have labs or personal projects (often inspired by the new material you learned).

When I read that "many students" would do better as entrepreneurs out of high school, I take that as some significant amount of high school graduates. The vast majority of entering freshman really need the time and environment a university offers to develop their skills and passions (ie. figure out what they want to do and what they're good at.).

I'd be afraid that the students who would do the best without college are the students we need most to pursue educations in engineering and sciences. It would be unfortunate if they spent their resources starting a company which likely wouldn't succeed instead of getting an education that would bear better fruit down the road.

</comment><comment><USER8> Maybe rephrase "College Is a Waste for __fill_in_the_blank__ Majors"

Is college a waste for Doctors & Lawyers? Do you want a doctor to learn his trade on-the-job?

College is a big waste for a lot of majors, but certainly not in general...

<comment><USER9> Doctors learn medicine in medical school. College is just wasting time jumping through hoops.

As for law, a friend who recently graduated from law school said, "We would spend all semester paying to hear our professors who just liked to hear themselves talk. Then we would spend our summers interning and get paid to learn useful skills."

<comment><USER10> Doctors learn the prerequisites to the stuff they learn in Medical school: chemistry, biology, all that other science.

Lawyers learn the law in law school. We do not actually need to go to college for anything, since the law does not rely on any prerequisite knowledge, except maybe (American) political history and intro-level macroeconomics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would not advocate this myself. The advantages of college are not measured only in earnings. And even if they were, YC would only be suitable for a small percentage of students, because only a small percentage have the temperament to start a startup.

</comment><comment><USER12> "It creates corporate drones"

There are plenty of ways of going to college without assuming a lifetime of debt. But no one is going to bring you a bunch of money. It's up to you to find it. See, you learned something from college before you even matriculated.

"What it teaches is out of date by the time students graduate"

In Current Events class, maybe. In classics, sciences, history, etc., etc., etc., hardly.

"It doesn't teach the way people learn"

Maybe. Maybe not. What is _does_ do is present enough options so that someone who _wants_ to learn will find a way.

"Four years of information is too much to retain"

If you're going to college to learn "four years of information", maybe you shouldn't go. OTOH, if you're going to discover yourself, expand your horizons, learn how to learn, and build a foundation for a better life, who cares how much "information" you remember?

"Its promise is a hoax"

Anyone lazy enough to go to college and expect the world on a silver platter deserves whatever they get.

"The truth is that college is one big party"

Any your complaint is...?

<comment><USER13> "There are plenty of ways of going to college without assuming a lifetime of debt. But no one is going to bring you a bunch of money. It's up to you to find it."

I am, currently, going to college. I have quite a bit of debt ($8K) and expect to get about double that by the time I'm finished. If you can show me a way to pay for college without debt, and I actually get the money, I will pay you $25 for every $100 I receive. So, if you can show me a way to get $200,000 for college (which I would have to come up with, somehow, if I weren't fortunate enough to get some scholarship money), you would get $50,000. If you can show me a way to get $20,000 to pay off my current and future debt, you'll get $5,000.

I can predict in advance, with fairly high probability (although I would obviously be delighted to be proven wrong), that you won't be able to come up with any way for me to get that sort of money, even given that you probably have more experience than I do, and even given an immediate large financial incentive. The reason why is obvious: $200,000, or even $20,000, is a _crapton_ of money, especially when you're young, have no to little experience and are working hard as a full-time student. Most _adults_ \- people who have had full-time jobs for ten or twenty or thirty years- pay for items that cost that much on credit, because they _can't_ afford it otherwise, even though they get socked with finance charges when they borrow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> We are not the mixergy RSS feed. Everything created there doesn't have to show up here [make up your own comments about the community expanding and contentless articles appearing with high upvote counts here].

Also, you're not helping your point: "I bet you that a collage graduate learns more in her first year on the job than she does in all four years in college."

Interestingly though, a "collage graduate" is a good thing. A good university experience will give you exposure to a bunch of a different areas. Hopefully you'll become well-rounded. Then you can start connecting multiple disciplines together in unique ways not many people think to cross-pollinate.

<comment><USER15> I think the grandstanding fist pump should disqualify mixergy from Hacker News altogether.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm a student who is halfway done with a degree in Entrepreneurship. I often ask myself what the hell I'm doing, and the answer is simple--society says I have to. Now, I realize its all one big hoax, but I've stuck with it because of the relationships I have built thus far. With that having been said, I would happily give my $30,000/year in student loans to an incubator program that could actually get me started. Maybe Y Combinator needs to take a more "University" approach and allow students to pay for the education they provide.

<comment><USER17> Degree in Entrepreneurship? I've not heard of this, and (off the bat) it seems like it might be one huge contradiction, or a way for a school to bundle a bunch of pre-existing courses together into something "new and innovative" that they can advertise.

Can you discuss your program a bit?

<comment><USER16> Like jasonlbaptiste explained, it really is a hodge-podge of offerings with a heavy emphasis on management and administration. At Bradley University (my school), they have not completely just "bundled a bunch of pre-existing courses together." Most of my classes have been tailored to fit the needs of start-ups (ie. instead of Cost Accounting, I took Advanced Entrepreneurial Accounting).

All in all, I don't feel that the program is a total bust. Thanks to an endowment from an alumni, I have a free subscription to magazines such as Inc. and Small Business, an all-inclusive trip to an Entrepreneurship conference once a year, and access to a center for entrepreneurship that provides counseling and training from experienced professionals. If anything, my degree provides me resources similar to what is offered at YC (without the prestige, quality, and seed funding).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you're ambitious, motivated, and skilled technically, college might be a waste?

I've yet to meet anyone who wholly discounts their college experience, even if they're advocates of alternative, experiential learning (like YC.)

You don't go to college for academic credentials. You go to college to meet people and learn about yourself.

</comment><comment><USER19> Personally I'm getting tired of all this college bashing. Nowhere else can the most people build up the biggest contacts' network, greatest knowledge and the best personal development for the shortest amount of time. Sure thing, there's always the exceptions proving the rule. This is probably the most evident within comsci.

As a reply to the article, I'd say the best way to transform "waste" into "worth" is simply to get rid of the huge tuitions with maintained quality. Though, I realize this is probably next to impossible for the US. However, it works fine in other countries.

</comment><comment><USER20> College is a weird beast. I stopped out to work on Publictivity/move to the Valley and now I'm back in school finishing at night. It still has no value to me in the real world. I'm a CIS major, and even though the "formal education" is nice, it just complicates things. The way students are taught to do database design + code makes me fully understand why most software sucks.

I don't think we could ever just get rid of college, but I think we need alternatives that aren't looked upon as some "rogue option". People like doctors and lawyers need formal schooling. There will always be corporate drones, but hopefully less will emerge over time. I am glad to see more and more are pursuing things outside of what the normal college path might present.

There's also the social issue, which is an important part of college. It forces you to meet other people. That's great for spurring ideas or even starting a company. My first "company" was with a bunch of people I met while in college. Everyone is now off doing their own startup after learning some of the ropes together. So, whatever the alternatives are to college, make sure you find a way to keep yourself social. It could be meetups, super happy dev houses, coworking,etc. Just don't isolate yourself.

//End Rambling

</comment><comment><USER21> A lot of people are missing the point of the anti-college position.

Imagine a car which gets 8 MPG and breaks down every day. Now, you know this car sucks, so you criticize it constantly. But then the car manufacturer hits back: "Cars are necessary. Cars help you get places faster. Cars are comfortable and private."

Of course, you know all this. You're not opposed to the idea of using a vehicle for fast transportation; you're just opposed to what passes for a car today.

And so it is with college. I oppose the standard model for universities which prevails in today's world (largely due to state support): four years, classes, lectures, A-F grades, rigid structure, and so on.

I do NOT oppose learning, education, networking, socializing, relaxing, and having fun. In fact, I think all of those things can be done better with a radically different school system. So please don't keep telling me college provides all this. Some of us do think today's colleges do _such a bad job_ that you're better off not going even if you miss out on some things. But that doesn't mean we actually want everyone to miss out on these experiences _as an ideal_.

</comment><comment><USER22> These posts come up every few months, more often than not written by people that did not go to college.

"Students today leave school with so much debt" I finished school debt-free. I saved up for school and applied for as many scholarships as I could. Many employers will even give you signing bonuses to help pay off student loans.

"What it teaches is out of date by the time students graduate" College is not a tech school. Going to college is more about learning how to learn and meeting people. If you really want to go places in your field of study you spend lots of time out of class exploring new ideas, and if this is the case you will likely be ahead of the curve through most of your life.

"People learn by doing, not by sitting in a class and being lectured to." Yeah. Most science and engineering classes are heavily lab and project based.

"Four years of information is too much to retain" Perhaps for some. However those same people can easily review and be back up to speed.

"The truth is that college is one big party" College is what you make of it.

</comment><comment><USER23> >What it teaches is out of date by the time students graduate

Subjects like math and algorithms (some of the most useful classes I took) do not go out of date by the time you graduate. I may have to learn a new algorithm later in life, but the building blocks that I got in the class are often necessary.

</comment><comment><USER24> I agree completely - every single one of his points is something I've experienced personally, causing no end of frustration. I felt like I needed a degree because the rest of the world puts so much emphasis on it, but I personally gained very little from it. I know this topic has been discussed a million and one times on here - but I wish this was a much more public issue than it already is.

</comment><comment><USER25> This article reminds me that I've never even been asked if I graduated high school. Not having a college education has never been a problem for me either.

</comment><comment><USER26> College experience is good and valuable but the mode of instruction could be improved for a lot of the classes by injecting a dose of practical, hands-on experience like the "y-combinator's incubator model", may be like 1 semester of class and the 1 semester of project work.

</comment><comment><USER27> Well, I'm still in school kinda and I'm still in the planning stages of my startup, but I feel that I learned a lot of stuff in college that I really wouldn't have touched otherwise. I dunno how practical it is in the "real world," but I thought my time/ money was worth it.

Compilers and languages -- Right now I've got ideas on how to create a new and better programming language (hopefully that will be the 100-year language =P) which will have stuff from lisp, prolog, C++, Java, and first order logic. honestly, there would be no way that I would try to learn lisp by myself, much less understand the elegance of lambda calculus. I wouldn't know where to start thinking about other complex things like knowledge representation and complexity related to it.

Linux / vim / eclipse / makefile -- I picked up how to use a lot of tools in college, when some other friends also used it. It would have really bad if I had to learn all of those without being able to call someone up and ask for help.

networking -- I've done some stuff outside of school for a year that had nothing to do with CS. I really haven't met so many "simple" people before... not that there's anything wrong with that, but I really do not think of them to do interesting projects with. Not all the people I knew from college was a CS major, but I can see myself working with a lot of them for various projects.

Machine learning -- This was one of those things that I was interested in, but I can't see myself learning about it all by myself. I took a class about it for audit, then took it again a few years later. It really makes a difference to be pushed to do the work. And even though I forgot about a lot of the details, I don't think it would be too hard to re-learn about random forest, bayesian networks, reinforcement learning, etc.

It seems to me that there are a lot of software companies out there that do some stuff that are pretty heavy on the theory side. Google's pagerank, spam filters, antivirus software, etc. I'll bet those kinda jobs are better than a "4-year-experience-with-java" job.

I'm also not too sure about the "replacing college with an incubator" thing... college is something you gotta do, doing a startup is supposed to be a risky thing. I've done a year long senior project that I just totally blew off because it was a "class project". People have done much more stuff in three months than what I did that year. If people see the startup incubator as something that's required, i don't think it would work out as well. But I think it would have been helpful if there were more incubators that were closely tied with the school, so that it wouldn't seem like such a far-fetched idea to do a startup.

btw, those humanity classes really are a total waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER28> Something you might learn in college: 'replace' has a 'p' in it.

<comment><USER29> I hate to chime in on an obvious troll, but I have to admit I laughed when I read the title.

The thing about college is that, for some of us, it teaches us to learn. Much like the IB program I attended in highschool, the Computer Science program in college forced me to learn how to learn.

It seems silly thinking about it, but looking back I remember a great deal of my peers in the lower level, general knowledge courses who complained about writing two page papers on something they'd just discussed in class. This should not be difficult. A 5-6 page paper was a single night ordeal for me, and a 2 pager just seemed like a silly thing to worry about. For me, it was a walk in the park because I had already learned to write from my time in IB, and before that in the honors middle-school program.

A trend? Yep.

So after college when I took a salaried job writing ColdFusion, a language I had barely even heard of, I picked it up quickly. Of course, that was thanks to having to learn a ton of languages, constructs, and their memory layouts in college. I had _learned_ how to _learn_ , just like highschool taught me to question things and middle school taught me to write (and enjoy writing).

That said, there is definitely nothing that will ever replace real-world experience. However, that coupled with a college education might just save you from picking up a bunch of bad habits and give you that much more of an edge in both life, and your career.

 _Disclaimer: All mispellings and terribly grammar are to be politely discarded lest the trolls be fed. ;)_

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> YCombinator is a waste; replace it with Vegas.

</comment><comment><USER31> Don't you guys ever get tired of jerking off about YC?</comment>


Ask HN: Tool like Google Analytics to track keyword search ranking over time - <AUTHOR>

Hi hackers,
We currently use Rank Checker toolbar (http://tools.seobook.com/firefox/rank-checker/) to track the search rankings for our site for certain keywords...
This works great, but is a manual process every time.  Is there free tool that does the same but over time, eg graphing rankings each day, ala Google Analytics?
This would help us tons see how our SEO efforts are paying off (or not)
Thx.. <comment><USER2> Use IBP (Sorry, Windows-only) to track rankings of of search rankings for keywords: <http://www.Axandra.com/go.to/kaiser/4> You can automate this, so it generates lists of rankings/keywords/searchengines regularly. No, it's not free, but it's worth the price as it saves _lots_ of time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oops, am on a Mac and have no budget. Any other solutions? Surprised if this isn't already done, if not it sounds like a great startup opportunity..

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I usually just check weekly. Progress is not always a straight line upwards. Add Google analytics to see how many people visited the keyword in question. This is probably most effective.</comment>


Pointscene.com: Explore Real World 3D Scenes from Lidar Data - <AUTHOR> https://pointscene.com/explore/ <comment><USER2> Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but I really dislike this style of website that requires you to poke around for ages trying to figure out what it's about, or what value it would bring me to use it.

Examples:

\+ The title of this HN post promises it uses Lidar data, but one of the three examples I looked at had nothing to do with Lidar, and the other two didn't mention Lidar at all.

\+ That first example shows a drone-based measurement system, but it wasn't clear the measurements were done by the website, as opposed to the data's originator.

\+ The second example I looked at purports to show a volumetric analysis of a concrete plant, but it has no description, and I don't see any actual analysis taking place. On the other hand, my laptop slows to a crawl whenever I'm on that page, so it must be doing something. The comments on that page did promise that I can "activate" a map, but gave no indication what that means, or why I should want to do so.

\+ The "upload" page states that in three steps I can start measuring my data, but it doesn't give me any reason I should upload my data to somebody else's website, rather than just take measurements myself. What's superior about the website's tools? What formats are supported? No indication, and apparently no way to find out unless I sign up and start trying to upload data.

\+ The "plans" page implies, without making explicit, that if I upload with a free account, I will automatically share my data with others, but not be able to measure it, nor be able to download somebody else's data. So let's say I get a free account. What can I do with my data? Conversely, let's say I pay for an account. What measurements can I make? How do I discover what data are available for me to download? And what indications do I have of the quality of the data (e.g., what's the spatial resolution, what are the errors in the measurements, and have the data been vetted in any way to ensure there were no processing errors)?

So where's the value?

Note I'm not saying there's no value here. Maybe there is. But the website doesn't do anything to make its value proposition clear -- unless I'm willing to poke around through enough of their examples, and the examples I looked at didn't show me anything useful.

<comment><USER3> I have no affiliation with Pointscene but to me it was rather simple. You can upload your 3D point cloud data and share it with others to view. I figured this out within a few seconds of looking at the site.

Lidar comes in because that is a common method to capture this data.

With a higher level account you can measure, download, and have private data. I'm not sure how useful that would be, but that's the value proposition.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for your insight as well! If interested in further testing you can reach me at jonne @ pointscene.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Out of interest, I assume most of these are then mapped back to planar geometry for rendering. Does anyone have any links for the math / current frameworks for this?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pure pointcloud rendering. See [https://github.com/potree/potree](https://github.com/potree/potree)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Netherlands made available all the LIDAR points in the whole country and offered a point-cloud viewer of the data on [1]. The resolution is quite good, so you might want to have a look.

[1] [http://www.ahn.nl/pagina/apps-en-tools/3d-pointcloud- viewer....](http://www.ahn.nl/pagina/apps-en-tools/3d-pointcloud-viewer.html)

<comment><USER7> The UK has too from the Environment Agency, largely undertaken for flooding studies, (apologies for the longform URL):

[https://data.gov.uk/data/map- preview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fenviro...](https://data.gov.uk/data/map- preview?url=http%3A%2F%2Fenvironment.data.gov.uk%2Fds%2Fwms%3FSERVICE%3DWMS%26INTERFACE%3DENVIRONMENT -- 6f51a299-351f-4e30-a5a3-2511da9688f7%26request%3DGetCapabilities&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.geostore.com%2FOGC%2FOGCInterface%3FSERVICE%3DWMS%26UID%3DUDATAGOV2011%26PASSWORD%3Ddatagov2011%26INTERFACE%3DENVIRONMENT%26LC%3D800000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000&n=55.816&w=-6.236&e=2.072&s=49.943)</comment></comment>


Someone is making a multiplayer trash robot you steer through an actual river - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/14/17120664/robot-boat-chicago-river-trash-collection-environment <comment><USER2> That's kind neat.</comment>


Apply HN: 401L before 401K (Education loan) - <AUTHOR> Problem - Broken education loans http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-than-40-of-student-borrowers-arent-making-payments-1459971348?mod=e2fb
401L is a platform that enables employers to contribute certain agreed upon percentage towards its employee's(typically a new college hire) education loan repayment
How it works - Employer on boards the new employee into the system - Employee then choses a certain percentage of their salary to be paid towards their loan.
- Employer fills in their contribution details( 1%, 2%, etc)
- Every pay check date, the platform makes a timely payment to the loan. <comment><USER2> To evaluate this idea further, I'd want to know how fast (how much faster) the loan will be paid off given various salary percentages. Is this a good way to pay off a loan? (Do I even want to pay off the loan faster?)

As an employer, you have to convince me to offer it as a benefit, which means convincing me that my employees will love it, that it will help to attract and retain great people. This makes me worried because it is one of those "vitamin, not painkiller" problems - and it's a niche one at that - I am worried that people don't want it and it will be hard to get into people's hands.

</comment><comment><USER3> Why involve employers in the loop at all? If automation is the goal, you could (presumably, not sure if it's actually legally/technically possible) connect someone's bank account to loan repayment.

How much of a pain it is for people to make those payments. Is it manual process now?

What's in it for the employer? Taking a significant headache of managing such system on behalf of the employee. There are probably legal ramifications for this scheme.

Presumably this would have to integrate with payroll systems. Which systems can you already integrate with?

Wouldn't employee be reluctant to disclose his loan repayment status? That doesn't sound like something employer should know.

Did you study potential legal ramifications of being intermediary between a person and loan provider?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment, Employers will do a percentage match towards the repayment. Also pay for the SaaS platform.

Currently a lot of students do not automate it because of not having the minimum balance on the due date. One more problem that it does solve just like 401k is to mandate some financial discipline. Like 401k they can obviously skip few months given that they will be fined by their bank.

Regarding benefits for employers - One is a benefit to attract talent. Some companies like deloitte pay off your one semester fee if were an intern who got and accepted a full time offer. Other employers have plans to pay towards your continuing education. I dont think this will add much extra cost to employer but yes there will def be some friction to onboard first few companies. But if Google is in, Facebook will not miss it

Either zenefits or adp. Right now none.

Yes sharing repayment status might be tricky. Good point. But employer doesn't have to see the repayment status though. The platform can automatically stop or notify the employee once the repayment is done.

I sent an email to few people who manage education loans at banks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The first thing that came to my mind was that this would be a modified form a wage garnishing, but with employer contributions included.

Do you have plans to include lobbying as a budget item? Just searching around, it seems that "Make student-loan repayment pre-taxable" has been brought up in the US before.

I'm curious: Where would you expect to take your cut, and how? Would it be a flat fee per enrolled employee, or maybe a % of $ being contributed?

If something like this did become a reality, I would expect it to eventually be bought by a benefits-handling institution like Fidelity or CREF, something who already does tight interaction with corporate payroll platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> No cuts. Ethically I dont think it is great to eat commissions out of repayments towards loan. I think it would work more like how gusto or small improvements works for ex. Another enterprise SaaS tool with per employee charge.

Also there might be other revenue streams. For example refinancing options or getting into loan market itself and marketing a loan that is in terms with employers, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Also no plans on any lobbying :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> In the US, 401k's are enabled by legislation that provides tax deferred status for the income and its growth. Without enabling tax legislation wouldn't this sort of benefit be taxed as ordinary income? Is so, what advantage would this provide to employees and employers over cash and the standard student loan interest deductions?

</comment><comment><USER6> This could be cool if the "401L" would have the proper tax incentives around it as well. I think there is very small tax incentive to repay student loans now. How does that work exactly?

Now if Employers add matching as a benefit that could be a cool perk. It seems like Employers stopped doing 401K matching lately. Did they stop and why?

<comment><AUTHOR> In some countries it does. Just like how companies get tax credits on their spendings on free food, perks etc this might also be covered. Good point, I will research on it.

All my employers have had great 401k match(upto 6%) and it is a key factor to attract talent. This can be a a great way to not only attract talent but also retain them for the period of their repayment of loan. And then similar programs can be expanded to mortgage, auto, child related loans, etc.

I think 401 k makes sense when you are first out of your debts. Planning for future retirement funds while being in debt currently does not sound very right</comment></comment>


WISP: Battery-free computer that can be reprogrammed wirelessly - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcodesign.com/3059141/this-battery-free-computer-sucks-power-out-of-thin-air? <comment><USER2> It's important to understand the difference between UHF RFID (this technology) vs. others like BLE.

UHF RFID tags harvest all of their operating power from a reader's transmitted RF signal. Multi-access is handled at the protocol layer via probabilistic time-division multiplexing. The tag doesn't actually "transmit" \-- rather, it is a cooperative radar target that reflects RF power back to the reader (sort of like an SOS mirror) by intelligently, electronically changing its radar cross section. The tags contain a single IC, and the antennas (for commercial ID-only tags) are roll-to-roll printed... to the tune of Billions of tags per year. The net effect: Tags cost around $0.10 each in volume. The read range is practically limited to around 20 feet, as dictated by FCC limits on the reader's RF output power (1Watt). Nominally, gen2 UHF RFID tags operate at bitrates up to ~500kbps, but there are some specialized tags that can transmit at 100Mbps using just a few microwatts (we used them to transmit dragonfly neural signals during flight!).

Meanwhile, BLE technologies can do push notifications, mesh networking, and the like. The beacon (tag) may contain a full TX-RX transceiver. However, due to the tight spectral requirements of their transmissions, they generally require an external (off-IC) crystal oscillator. The net effect is that BLE beacons are more costly -- on the order of $2-3 ea. This means that they are much less likely to be used to tag everyday items (like a carton of milk) or deployed in the billions for outdoor monitoring.

Source: I'm an expert on these systems as applied to robotics, healthcare, and remote sensing [1,2,3,4]. I'm giving a talk on them next week at IEEE RFID / RFID Live. Oh, and you can also buy WISP-like tags from a company called Farsens.

[1] [http://www.travisdeyle.com](http://www.travisdeyle.com)

[2] [http://www.travisdeyle.com/research.html](http://www.travisdeyle.com/research.html)

[3] [http://www.hizook.com/blog/2015/08/10/mobile-robots-and- long...](http://www.hizook.com/blog/2015/08/10/mobile-robots-and-long-range- uhf-rfid-sensor-tags-internet-things)

[4] [http://www.wired.com/2013/06/dragonfly-backpack- neuron/](http://www.wired.com/2013/06/dragonfly-backpack-neuron/)

<comment><USER3> I have been meaning to research this stuff for a crazy automotive application I have in mind. thanks for the pointers.

(Ps hello fellow TR35er!)

<comment><USER2> Hi Joshua -- wow, small world! Feel free to ping me (email in profile). I'm happy to chat about sensing or robotics...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I clicked through, what I was hoping for was an e-ink tablet without the battery, where you have to hold it close to an inductive charging surface each time you flip the page.

Such a thing sounds stupid at first blush, but in combination with ubiquitous inductive charging mats (imagine them on e.g. every desk in an office), it could make for _extremely_ cheap, thin and light e-ink devices—to the point that they start being more like documents than readers: flimsy laminated 'paper' sheets that happen to be able to update themselves.

Heck, if you didn't expect to use them outside of the installation (if they were for displaying internal manifests in a warehouse, or patient charts in a hospital, etc.) then you could externalize _all_ the "document reader" electronics, and just make the device into a dumb framebuffer that hardware in the mat can push images to. (Though you might not _need_ to do this; we can fit some pretty complex logic inside e.g. a credit card, so we might be able to fit all the storage+firmware chips for a full e-reader inside a piece of paper without that making it less piece-of-paper-y.)

<comment><USER2> You mean... like this: [http://www.alansonsample.com/research/NFC-WISP- Eink.html](http://www.alansonsample.com/research/NFC-WISP-Eink.html)

<comment><USER5> I just want someone to put e-ink displays on hard drives so I can stop labelling all my loose drives with sticky notes.

<comment><USER6> The closest I've seen to this is a thumb-drive with an e-ink "capacity meter" in the casing, made by Lexar starting back in 2006.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > "Imagine if your wallpaper could run apps"

Uh. No thanks.

I think the technology has some great potential, but why does every tech article have to dumb everything down into some iPhone analogy?

<comment><USER8> Probably more like, "Imagine if your wallpaper could listen to you"

Even the name of the device, Wireless _Identification_ and _Sensing_ Platform, sounds rather creepy.

<comment><USER9> But I want my house to listen and sense me. The advantages far outweigh worries. Besides what makes Big Brother isn't the existence of surveillance it is the lack of control over it, who uses it, and how. So fight for open source, transparency, end of advertising/marketing. Not against technology.

I want my house to know what room I'm in (for lights, environment, music following, to adjust temperture when I'm active or too hot, to answer alexa like queries, to announce alarms reminders, to tell me the kitchen is hot and smokey cause I forgot beans on stove, to give me alert someone pulled into my drive, stopped in front of my house, to call 911 if my heart stops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there any practical limit to how much energy a device like this can buffer before springing into action? I'm just curious if it would be possible to quickly leech enough to power a peripheral like a solenoid, or at least ensure enough energy is available to complete whatever computation the device is intended to perform

(Vaguely imagining a completely unpowered electronic lock, and a handheld 'key' that I guess would contain a fairly beefy battery)

<comment><USER11> > Vaguely imagining a completely unpowered electronic lock, and a handheld > 'key' that I guess would contain a fairly beefy battery

That's a good idea, actually. I dunno about this technology specifically, but there are wireless power standards that can transmit more power, e.g. Qi can provide 5W at a up to 4cm according to Wikipedia. That should be plenty suitable for a lock I'd think.

It'd be even cooler if cell phones could _transmit_ power wirelessly, but AFAIK phones with inductive charging hardware can only receive. If they added the ability to transmit, suddenly your phone's battery could become a sort of universal power source for talking to various passive devices like locks and stuff.

Though, this is slightly different from what's described in the article. If I'm understanding it correctly, this thing is harvesting its power from a standard RFID signal, so you don't need any special power transmission hardware. No way would you be able to get enough power out of it to power any kind of mechanical actuator for a lock.

<comment><USER12> Instead of battery, you could turn the key inside a mechanism that would produce the energy needed to open the lock ;-)

<comment><USER11> True, but an electronic lock has lots of advantages over a mechanical one. Especially for a business, you can trivially grant and revoke keys as well as track access. I feel like in principle they could be more secure too as all but the fanciest of locks are pretty trivial to pick, though that's predicated on somebody building an electronic lock without hardware/software/cryptographic flaws (good luck).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "battery-free computer" = fancy word for RFID tags with a programmable CPU

<comment><USER14> Like every contactless smartcard ever.

For that matter my iMac is a battery-free computer that can be programmed wirelessly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I worked with WISP in school. My contribution was demonstrating the platform providing sensor data from inside a chemical reaction vessel.

Also, this was the first hardware project I worked on where the community used a wiki as the primary communication and it worked! Kudos to Intel

</comment><comment><USER16> Is battery research stagnant? I thought it was a hot area of research with great potential profits for new ideas.

<comment><USER17> The linked article claims the current commercially available batteries have been stagnant, not the research, which is quite active but is only expected to bear fruit in the medium term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'd rather have one of these that has a tiny, lithium-ion battery that it barely uses. Makes much more sense with the same applications. When done, you either plug it into a charger or (more homebrew) take the battery out to plug _it_ into a charger. Regardless, I see a tiny battery getting better results than sacrifices made to be "powerless."

Now, what's the smallest PC you all know that can run for a long time and with some useful work on a tiny, lithium-ion battery? That would be interesting.

<comment><USER19> I was going to ask that, but for me it doesn't have to be a PC. We work on pretty low power electronics at work, but it is very hard to figure out what the best combination for practical hobby electronics would be. So like what kind of MCU, radio and display would consume the lowest power while still practical enough for me to have fun with. That would mean the MCU has to be 10+ mhz and the display needs to be at least file of a smaller smartphone. eInk would work.

It could be combined right? Very tiny low power lithium ion with inductive loading in some way that is efficient and easy enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The original project's page: [http://sensor.cs.washington.edu/WISP.html](http://sensor.cs.washington.edu/WISP.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> So I'll need a rfid coil aimed at my wallpaper? There's much better technology for this, it's not power source free

</comment><comment><USER21> Forget fitness taker, smart watch and tiny little things. I'm thinking thin smartphones. If one of these can be powered by multiple RFID signal sources. Do the math for required power signal strength and get working around the limitations.

<comment><USER22> That will not work out. Even ignoring the elephant in the room that is powering the display, a smartphone communicates wirelessly over hundreds of meters.

You will never get that much power from RFID readers in any practical setup (if you're McGyver, a setup with thousands of readers, if not way more, and a few square meters of antenna might 'work', for a loose definition of the word)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wow, they could not use a different acronym from WISP? I guess wireless ISPs are loosing business to Fiber etc, but still. From a quick google search, it would be better to call it WSIP.

</comment><comment><USER24> Pretty interesting, I'm assuming you have to be near the chip to access the data, considering it's based off RFID tags?

</comment><comment><USER25> Development unit can be purchased from the developers for ~300$ btw

</comment><comment><USER26> Click-bait.

</comment><comment><USER27> We changed the linkbait title to representative language taken from the article. If anyone suggests a better title we can change it again.

<comment><USER28> Reprogrammable RFID Tag...</comment></comment>


Under the Hood of Luminar's Long-Reach Lidar - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/under-the-hood-of-luminars-long-reach-lidar <comment><USER2> The article says Luminar's advantage comes largely from wavelength: the longer wavelength they use is absorbed more strongly by water, meaning it won't penetrate to the retina, even at higher power, which allows them to have much better range and resolution.

But what about the weather? The atmosphere often contains water. Does anyone know Luminar's performance in fog or rain?

I'm always worried self-driving cars will be set back by having so much of their development take place in sunny California.

<comment><USER3> Luminar's lidar beams will be absorbed by water rather than scattered so fog will effectively seem black to it rather than white and it will be just as unable to see through rain or fog as normal lidar or your eye.

Thankfully if it's going to be developed in SF they'll be getting a lot of experience with fog.

<comment><USER4> True. For details on relative absorption and scattering and performance on rangefinding at 905nm vs 1550nm see [https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/oere.2014.22.issue-3...](https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/oere.2014.22.issue-3/s11772-014-0190-2/s11772-014-0190-2.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 200m for a mechanically scanned LIDAR isn't a big deal. There are older flash LIDARs that can reach 400m with a 9 degree field of view.[1] Flash LIDARs have a field of view vs. range tradeoff, since they illuminate the entire field of view at one time. Range gated imagers, another form of flash LIDAR, have ranges out to kilometers.[2] (Those guys are using a lot of power, but it's spread over a wide area.)

The eye safety problem can be overcome by making the outgoing beam bigger. What matters is how much energy comes through a hole about 1/4" in diameter, the size of the pupil of the human eye. If you enlarge the outgoing beam, by running it through a collimator backwards, the energy per unit area decreases. Expand a beam to a 2" circle and you have reduced the power per unit area by about 50. The risk is to someone coming up to the thing and staring into the beam, not out at range where energy per unit area is much lower.

Cost remains a bigger issue than range. Give it 2-3 years.

[1] [http://www.advancedscientificconcepts.com/products/older- pro...](http://www.advancedscientificconcepts.com/products/older- products/tigereye.html) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLrAizlR4ry9Nu6A7BXBBdg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLrAizlR4ry9Nu6A7BXBBdg)

<comment><USER6> Are there any cumulative effects regarding eye safety?

As in: if 100's of cars in your field of view, say a traffic jam in the opposing lane are all firing LIDAR would it add up to trouble?

<comment><USER7> Excellent question. I foresee a booming market in lidar-blocking sunglasses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why use lasers at all? My brain doesn't need anything like a laser to figure out where objects are in relation to me. Is there something about a human eye that a camera can't reproduce for a machine?

<comment><USER7> Yes. The human eye is attached to the human brain, which we haven't yet been able to reproduce for the machine.

<comment><USER9> > _the human eye is attached to the human brain_

And those human brains are attached to human arms which navigate Americans into 32,000 motor vehicle deaths a year [1].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in_U.S._by_year)

<comment><USER7> Sure, but that's not what ianai asked. The question was what makes an eye better than a camera. You are comparing the human brain to a hypothetical future ideal machine brain. Replace every single driver on the road today with current state of the art machine brains operating under exactly the same conditions, and that 32k death toll will look good in comparison.

<comment><USER9> OP asked why we need more sophisticated hardware for self-driving cars than human drivers possess. My response is that the _status quo_ is not good enough for an emerging technology. Self-driving cars are not politically viable if they kill a hundred people a day. They may not be viable if they kill 1/10th that number. That's why we need better sensors for them than we possess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> How do Lidar devices deal with potentially dozens of other Lidars operating in the same area?

</comment><comment><USER11> You can have all the sensor-tech in the world, but self-driving cars aren't going to take off until you have standardized car-to-car communications and smart roadways designed for self-driving cars, such as pre-mapped lanes and surfaces as well as smart roads communicating road-condition and obstruction information.

<comment><USER5> Car-to-car communications are not necessary for automatic driving. They may even be undesirable, as a potential source of bad info. Google/Waymo doesn't need them. They make the point that there are lots of things in the environment, from bicyclists to moose, that aren't going to cooperate with the system.

The need for super-detailed maps is probably temporary. A reasonable goal is to have the ability to drive anything with a basic map (Google StreetView level) at slow speed, then retain info to do it again at faster speed. Some of that mapping info may later be uploaded for use by others.

<comment><USER7> I really hope they get self driving cars working with nothing more than current GPS maps, plus lots of sensors. Considering the drive I took this weekend, past actively changing construction zones, landslides, along infrequently traveled roads (and even a logging road), I wouldn't want to trust my life to stale data.

<comment><USER12> I'd love to see self-riding multileg robots, like an advanced version of Boston Dynamics alpha dog. You don't even need roads for them. With some kind of super-stability they could become more comfortable than vehicles. Perhaps we'll have human carying drones a bit soner, though. Still, in a bit more distant future, roads might become obsolete.

<comment><USER5> It's been tried a few times. Early versions were really clunky. Later versions were usually art projects.

* General Electric Walking Truck (1969) [1]

* Adaptive Suspension Vehicle (1984) [2]

* Korean giant mecha (2016) [3]

The BPG Motors Uno transforming motorcycle seemed a good idea, but they gave up on it.[4]

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGCFLEYakM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGCFLEYakM) [2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIiD1JimBXQ&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIiD1JimBXQ&feature=youtu.be&t=25) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZWNn5qZ7U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqZWNn5qZ7U) [4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI4WaYEcCU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI4WaYEcCU)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is it better to learn a new language or a new domain? - <AUTHOR> I've a week of time off in which I'm learning Erlang. Now the other things I can do are learn lisp, learn about the insurance industry or the shipping industry etc. So in short I'm asking is learning a different language a waste of time, considering a MVP can be built with a familiar language like python. <comment><USER2> a new domain will be worth more in terms of skill set than an new language, as long as you already know a modern language that companies actually use (IE: python, etc).

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks bobby_9x, that was the feeling I had but needed validation.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Basics of Markdown, in MDX - <AUTHOR> https://quiz-cms.now.sh/docs <comment><USER2> I received "An unexpected error occurred".

<comment><AUTHOR> Hm, it's strange. The website is just static html, so i think it's a problem at Now.sh.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why was the CNET interview with Brendan Eich taken down? - <AUTHOR>

I don't get this at all. He either embraces the inclusiveness Mozilla espouses or he steps down. Simple as that.
This is a human rights issue, there really is no other way around it. It's sad on all sides. Mozilla is doing work I support and believe in, but Eich has really tainted that. If Eich continues with his logical conclusion, then Mozilla will fall on the wrong side of history.
http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm-could-hurt-firefox-cause-q-a/ <comment><USER2> Why do you think it was taken down? I see two postings

[https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fnews%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fnews%2Fmozilla- ceo-gay-marriage-firestorm-could-hurt-firefox-cause- q-a%2F#!/story/forever/0/http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cnet.com%2Fnews%2Fmozilla-ceo-gay- marriage-firestorm-could-hurt-firefox-cause-q-a%2F)

<comment><AUTHOR> The original post was taken down pretty quickly with at least 10 comments, I tried to post the above that I wrote and it came back with an expired link...

I tried to search for it, but nothing came up. This looks like someone reposted it.

Edit: That actually looks like the original post, but it got owned by the HN ranking due to controversy (more comments than upvotes) And it has less comments than I thought... heh good though if gets enough upvotes. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It was not "taken down". It fell in rank. That may sound like nitpicking, but when it comes to inflammatory topics we all have a responsibility to be precise with our language.

The post fell in rank because of user flags and HN's flamewar detector.

Finally, this post is off-topic for HN (and always has been). When you have questions like this, please email email@example.com.</comment>