Show HN: Send yourself messages on WhatsApp - <AUTHOR> https://messageyourself.com <comment><USER2> It's a friendly advice: Please do not put many efforts on this project (unless you have some extraordinary plans for it)

Anyone can send himself WhatsApp msg without any website/app.

You should try: \- Save your WhatsApp number in the phonebook App \- Open phonebook app and look for your number \- Choose "Message +X-XXXXXXXXXX" option (with Whatsapp icon) \- It will create a new chat in your WhatsApp

Another way: \- Just create group with one contact and remove it later. Now you're all alone in the group and can use it as Notes app.

Good luck for your venture.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your message and no worries, I'm not trying to get rich off of it. The website is just there to make it easy for people to message themselves, without the hassle of creating a group and annoy other people with it. PS: messaging yourself from the phonebook, like you mention, doesn't seem to be possible on iOS..

<comment><USER2> >I'm not trying to get rich off of it

LOL.. I agree. It's always good to do something instead of sitting idle waiting for some great idea.

>doesn't seem to be possible on iOS

Haven't tried on iOS. They get more restrictions then Android people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just to make it easy for everybody to send messages to yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> It may sound rude, but what is the point of it ?

I mean, every smartphone has a note app, which do not require internet, so why people will use messageyourself instead of a basic app already existing ?

<comment><USER3> I have a little suspicion that you didn't try it. :-) Messageyourself is not a separate app, the website only activates a WhatsApp chat with yourself. I will make that clear on the website shortly. WhatsApp also doesn't need an internet connection to send yourself messages btw. What this method also allows it to forward messages from other chats to yourself as notes, instead of having to copy paste and switch between apps. Just a little example of how this could be a little bit more convenient for some people. There are probably other uses I didn't think of besides using it as a "notes" app.

<comment><USER4> > I have a little suspicion that you didn't try it. :-)

Indeed, because I didn't understand, as you imagine, how is works and why it more convenient than orther app. So I'll not give a try to something that is not clear.

> I will make that clear on the website shortly.

Yes it might be good :-D.

Thx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> [https://wa.me/your-phone-number](https://wa.me/your-phone-number)</comment>


Toutpost (YC S13) Wants To Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/16/toutpost-wants-to-turn-online-debates-into-shopping-advice/

<comment><USER2> >Turn Online Debates Into Shopping Advice

When I read the headline, I imagined a service that crawled forums and discussion boards and used NLP to determine useful shopping advice.

If that happened, all those non-slept nights spent battling people who were wrong on the Internet would finally pay off. ([http://xkcd.com/386/](http://xkcd.com/386/))

<comment><USER3> Arro does something similar (I'm a founder). Scan a product's barcode, it analyzes several million reviews and shows better choices: [http://arroapp.com](http://arroapp.com)

<comment><USER4> Love the idea. I found myself spending an hour at a target aisle rereading the reviews I compiled for a DSLR.

<comment><USER3> Awesome, thanks! That's our exact use case :) Any suggestions, please let me know, or send via the feedback tab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't know, I see this as potentially cool, but really very spammy.

Think about how trivial something like this is to manipulate, and if we're talking about the value of consumer electronics going into the hands of our nations youth; well that doesn't inspire me with confidence. If there's potential to gain, there will be potential for exploitation (see Cory Doctorow's excellent piece 'All Complex Ecosystems have Parasites'[0])

I don't think you can monetize uneducated commentary. This would be a lot more interesting, to me, if the conversations were between experts and the points were upvoted by the community. I see value in moderated debates with scoring provided by the community. I don't see value in anyone spouting their opinion and having upvotes on each side.

It's like reddit but with consumer sentiment at stake.

[0][http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt](http://craphound.com/complexecosystems.txt)

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely correct. Most review systems which are owned by the merchants are largely viewed as a mechanism for increasing conversion. We don't make money by selling things though.

So although attempts to game the system will abound we are expressly and only incentivized to create a pure community with a genuine dialog. If the users lose we lose. Given incentive that strong we will have to confront gaming head on rather than be complicit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had an idea a few years ago. Instead of getting people to come to a new site, why not harvest all the data on existing enthusiast sites out there? They have alllll the info on what model years are good and which to avoid, etc.

<comment><USER7> Also: [http://www.epinions.com](http://www.epinions.com).

<comment><USER6> Epinions has definitely got it's place but we are going for a community rather than a paid long-form review destination. We feel like human beings talking conversationally about the things they love is more accessible and interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> stackexchange for shopping. pure genius.

</comment><comment><USER9> That is so smart. Congrats, I hope it works out. I would personally use that all the time.</comment>


Why We Chose Keen IO. - <AUTHOR> https://blog.mover.io/2014/03/15/why-we-chose-keen-io/ <comment><USER2> I think the real power of Keen is the ability to gather analytics for your clients. If you're a platform (think Shopify), your customers probably want some sort of dashboard and reporting on their customers.

Keen makes this too easy with their embeddable JS visualizations: [https://keen.io/docs/data-visualization/](https://keen.io/docs/data- visualization/) and scoped keys for security: [https://keen.io/docs/security/#scoped- key](https://keen.io/docs/security/#scoped-key)

Also checkout this comparison of Mixpanel & Keen: [https://keen.io/blog/67519816958/mixpanel-vs-keen-io- whats-t...](https://keen.io/blog/67519816958/mixpanel-vs-keen-io-whats-the- difference-anyway)

<comment><USER3> [Disclosure - I work at Keen IO]

You're right that this is definitely one of our dominant use cases.

It's taken us by surprise to see just how much traction we've among B2B SaaS companies who just wanted to give reports their customers.

Glad the scoped keys are working out for you! If you could add one feature to our product, what would it be?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Advise on the mover.io landing page:

I scrolled down the entire page and still had no idea what mover.io is. You start with a tag line "The smarter way to move files"... I'm not sure what "move files" means exactly.

The next section is Why. I skimmed past this section because I want to know What before Why.

Then the next section is Testimonials. For what!

Then next is Services. Finally! The What! Although this needs to be laid out more cleanly, I shouldn't have to read about every product you offer before knowing what the "essence" of mover.io is.

<comment><USER5> Great advice, thank you. We'll definitely work on improving it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I recently tried Keen.io for a project I'm working on, and it didn't work out - the metrics I was looking for were too complex (eg. the average lag between signup and the third time a user does a particular action) to do natively, and the suggestions for how to get that working in Keen (doing some calculations on the event data before sending out) I wasn't interested in.

Having said that, the guys at Keen were great to work with as I was sorting this out. The email I sent to their generic "contact us" address with some data modelling questions was answered promptly by one of the founders with solutions which, while I didn't like them, were interesting and would have worked out. They were also generous in letting me crash through the initial free quota while I was figuring out if the thing worked out for my use.

So while I didn't sign up as a paying customer with them (and I've stopped sending them events), it was among the most pleasant interactions I've had with a prospective analytics vendor in a long while - well done guys!

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you had a pleasant experience -- it's too bad it didn't work out.

You may be interested in an upcoming feature we currently have in private beta, which does this:

        your events  ---->  Keen IO  ---->  your S3 bucket on AWS

We have a great, standard format for representing the events in files in S3. If you were using that feature, you could just write an Elastic MapReduce job to perform these sorts of custom calculations (we'll be open-sourcing a bunch of these sorts of scripts). Another option would be to pay one of our partners to write this analysis code for you.

I wonder: would that feature be interesting to you? Would it have perhaps allowed us to win your business?

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure it would have (without trying it), but it certainly would have kept you in the game for a bit longer since I'm a-OK with EMR jobs for my analysis (or presumably being able to download those files and load them into my own Hadoop cluster).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was hoping for a bit more insightful answer to the question "why choose Keen in particular".

Because I also chose Keen.io, but the primary reason was that I couldn't find any competing product that would allow us to provide customized analytics to clients of our SaaS platform.

Keen is nice though, but I'm surprised that I couldn't find much competition.

<comment><USER5> I suppose the answer to that question is that it enabled us to very quickly send our transfer logs into a system that a non-technical person could easily play with. Being somewhat technical helps as well because I can easily create little dashboards (and blog posts!) with great visualizations without having to dive into some nasty graphing code.

There ARE alternatives out there, but they're crazy expensive and usually designed to analyze things like Hadoop data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ok that second chart is kinda a mess due to too much data, and an only partially visible legend.

But it raises a question for me on the draw order used. Is that the default draw order? As while I could be wrong it appears to be alphabetical same as the legend order. If this is the default it seems like a poor default.

Now not considering that most people will want attention drawn based on the data itself some how. It seems that if you are going to do the legend in alphabetical order the draw order for the lines should be reverse alphabetical order to ensure that the lines which are most visible (drawn on top) are also most likely to be in the top part of the legend.

I just am curious if this is a poor default or just a quickly made example chart. Or maybe it is a great default and I am missing something.

</comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of parsing log files, pumping them into elasticsearch and analyzing them with kibana [0]

[0] [http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/](http://www.elasticsearch.org/overview/kibana/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Keen has actually has customers do something like this to add context to log files and make searching them more flexible.</comment></comment>


Chat app for use when your battery is less than 5% - <AUTHOR> http://diewithme.online <comment><USER2> Aw, I thought it would be some experimental Super Low Power Chat thing.

<comment><USER3> Yep. I'm surprised phone companies don't do this. Like a console based chat that only needs the kernel when the 'nominal' battery has run out.

<comment><USER4> I always thought a recovery image that could send and receive calls and sms would be awesome. No internet, not even 2g. Just phone and sms. Maybe some contacts (name / number tuple) that'd exist separate from the main systems contacts.

<comment><USER5> Having had my "Phone" crash due to software glitches, leaving me unable to dial 911, I 100% agree this would be a great boot-time switch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'd love to know if this had problems getting through Apple's App Store review because they couldn't use it during testing.

<comment><USER7> I'm sure testers can set whatever battery level is desired.

<comment><USER8> "Set" the level of a battery?

<comment><USER9> Yes, in the emulator.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's not an app that I'd use often enough to be worth the space on my phone, but I love the concept.

<comment><USER11> The apk is a paltry 18 MB. Hardly enough space to think about on most phones.

<comment><USER12> > The apk is a paltry 18 MB.

It's somewhat disturbing that this is considered paltry.

Most DOS games managed to fit into a single diskette, and that includes not only the logic bits, but also assets: images, music, sound, etc. Remember that they didn't have the benefit of being able to borrow a massive number of assets and libraries from the OS. You wanted a button? You had to draw it yourself.

Also, my Linux kernel - which is infinitely more complex than this app - weights in at 7MB. Ok, sure, the modules are another 30MB, but that's only because I took the shotgun approach when I configured my kernel. I'm lazy, sue me.

Anyway, this app seems absolutely trivial and it barely has any assets at all. It's frankly embarrassing that it consumes so many resources for such little functionality.

<comment><USER13> I think the developer was "lazy" too which is why he didn't spend days and weeks rewriting the wheel instead of using react.

As far as floppies, I think that's why we don't use them anymore.

<comment><USER14> Writing a native app isn't much harder than using React though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hilarious. You could even chat for as long as you wanted by plugging in a charger at 2% and taking it out at 4%.

<comment><USER16> With crap entry-level Android phones, you could just play music or use navigation in the background while you run it off a charger and it'll never go above 2% even while it's plugged in :)

<comment><USER17> That's a fault of the charger you're using, the phone has nothing to do with it.

<comment><USER16> No, it's not. It's a Qualcomm QuickCharge 3.0 capable charger that exceeds all charge requirements and has no problem with other devices.

<comment><USER17> Then maybe I misunderstood what you mean by entry level. Or maybe you own a model that is an exception. I deal with cheap (sub $200) chinese android phones a lot because we do development in React Native but it still has to run smoothly on these things, and I've never encountered these issues with phones newer than 2015.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Clearly this needs to be tiered,

90%+ battery: losers, cowards, amateurs

50-90% battery: casual, basic

10-50% battery: mlg, nerds

5-10% battery: outcasts, dangerous

5%- battery: heretics, supplicants

</comment><comment><USER18> Isn't this promoting bad charging practices since modern lithium ion batteries function best when charged early and often? My understanding is that the extremely low charge of the battery reduces the longevity of a battery's health. The confusing part is the older battery technology nickel-cadmium had the exact opposite recommendation of charging only after the battery was completely discharged.

</comment><comment><USER19> I love the "Hooli" network operator name in the screenshot, a nice touch.

</comment><comment><USER20> Where's the source code?

<comment><USER21> Looks like it's closed source .. and $1. .. I mean .. I've paid more for art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I don't get why this is $0.99 on the app store...

<comment><USER23> Tried checking the urls found in the Android store description, and one didn't resolve while another took me to a simple page bearing the name of the owner that contained a email link. Not really sure what to think.

Edit:

Ah, checked out what this IDFA Doclab was. And it seems to be some kind of experimental documentary project. So frankly this whole app reeks of being "performance art".

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It's cute—what's the goal in creating it?

<comment><USER25> [https://www.doclab.org/2018/die-with-me-by-dries- depoorter-d...](https://www.doclab.org/2018/die-with-me-by-dries-depoorter- david-surprenant/)

It's interactive art!

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> But my iPhone6 usually died at 30%! ... :(

</comment><comment><USER27> Love the domain. But the page isnt loading.

<comment><USER28> Server was at 3% battery when I loaded it... maybe it died?

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Costs $1 when the same can be accomplished with a native web app. Seems like a quick cash grab rather than "art" or anything.

<comment><USER30> Native web app is an oxymoron.</comment></comment>


Automating Web Performance data collection with BrowserMob Proxy and Selenium - <AUTHOR> http://www.theautomatedtester.co.uk/blog/2012/automating-web-performance-data-collection-with-browsermob-proxy-and-selenium.html

<comment><USER2> A _cross-browser_ solution for the same problem is to use the Fiddler2 Proxy/API to collect the performance Data. AlertFox uses this approach: [http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/upcoming-features-web- traff...](http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/upcoming-features-web-traffic- protocols.html)

<comment><USER3> The technique covered in this article is also cross-browser.</comment></comment>


Setting fairness goals with the TensorFlow constrained optimization library - <AUTHOR> http://ai.googleblog.com/2020/02/setting-fairness-goals-with-tensorflow.html <comment><USER2> Anyone looking into this stuff needs to read "The impossibility of "fairness": a generalized impossibility result for decisions"[0]

One type of fairness is always trading off against another, and any presentation suggesting you can just magically increase the fairness of your classifier is straight-up lying.

[0]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.01195.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1707.01195.pdf)

<comment><USER3> It's not surprising to me that it is impossible to minimize three different functions over the same parameters simultaneously. That would essentially imply their are the same function, right? But while that is a mathematical impossibility result, it doesn't imply that making things _more_ fair is impossible. An ML algorithm that doesn't consider fairness at all might be adjusted to improve on all three of the proposed metrics without violating the findings of that paper.

<comment><USER4> If the objective function was a separable function of the different parameters you could simultaneously optimize over them with ease, but that's obviously not the case very often in life.

In general optimizing multiple objectives (or one objective subject to additional constraints) would achieve a compromise between them. If you are trying to simultaneously maximize equality of opportunity and equality of outcome you would just achieve a trade-off where neither side is happy. On the other hand if you were starting out just trying to optimize for profit, then adding a constraint or additional objective will just mean you make less profit in achieving that other objective. I suppose that could be called more fair if you're trading off profit for fairness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Constrained optimization is great and probably helpful but calling it a path to fairness misses what makes something fair.

Fairness is not a result, it is a process. Any time people come with a model they made in a closed room that is going to make important decisions for or about other people fairness is impossible.

Fairness is the ability to appeal decisions, fairness is taking part in building the model, fairness is voting on whether the model is suitable and giving consent before your data can be fed to the model in development or production.

Optimization strategies can not achieve any of these things. We're not a little numerical tweak from fairness.

</comment><comment><USER6> Question : In the last chart, we can see the constrained model reduces the FPR for both categories, old and young. However the "old" category still has more than 2 times the FPR of the young category, how did it make the model fairer? (I would imagine an equal FPR between both categories for it to be fair)

<comment><USER7> As linked in the comments above, there are a lot of different ways to define fairness and it is impossible to satisfy them all at once.

One way you could argue this example is fairer: the gap used to be ~10%, now it is ~5%.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This probably won't solve all fairness problems but having such a library is a good step in the right direction, great they're making this available for free!

</comment><comment><USER9> An AI model is another word for a statistical model of reality, a small scientific theory, which actually works.

It is the most unbiased thing you can have. It's pure applied science/maths. You are only interested in the input that tell you something, and figure out which one to which degree.

You don't trust intuition or common knowledge. You don't trust anything that might introduce bias. You just look at the data and build the best decision mechanism that can be derived from it.

The degree to which you feel you need to "adjust" that is the degree to which you denounce science. You prefer your bias over science.

Today it's probably the cultural marxism / structural oppression narrative that inspires such manipulation. At other times it would have been infallibility of the papacy, or some other brain construct.

If you feel the need to adjust an ML model, be aware how strongly you feel that way. That's the degree to which you reject science.

Then proceed. Or reverse course. But be honest with yourself about what you're doing.

<comment><USER10> You are missing the point of the entire article here. Quite aside from the fact that you can obviously have biased models because of their design or because of their training data, the key misunderstanding in your comment is this:

> You just look at the data and build the best decision mechanism that can be > derived from it.

How do you define "best"? That's the issue. Not all errors are equal, not all distributions of errors are equivalent even if the total is the same.

<comment><USER9> > How do you define "best"? That's the issue.

That's very simple with the example in the article. Who can pay back the loan best? You just fear the answer and rather twist up your reasoning.

<comment><USER10> And that classifier is bad at determining who can pay the loan back when looking at the blue group.

Even using a very short term, entirely selfish view this can be bad for the loan company. It becomes clear that blue group people are being denied loans they could well afford, and so people in that group start moving over to other providers.

If the populations of blue groups are geographically clustered, this may mean losing large portions of business in certain areas, resulting in shutting down local offices if there's a physical presence (e.g. banks).

This is also entirely aside from legal concerns.

The best model is rarely found by simply optimising a basic measure with no context.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Mobile Application Development Has Been So Popular Now? - <AUTHOR> http://logicspice.weebly.com/blog/why-mobile-application-development-has-been-so-popular-now <comment><USER2> In other news water is wet.</comment>


Amazon Video vs. Netflix - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/amazon-video-vs-netflix-which-will-prevail/?hp NYT has an article about a study conducted by the The Catalyst Group on which service users prefer on a Roku box: the all-you-can-eat approach of Netflix or the $2-$3-a-pop one from Amazon. One key finding: Both of the TV interfaces are clunky. <comment><USER2> I use both, but predominantly Netflix, because it works from the XBOX. I don't like having to boot up a PC, and move cables around just to watch something. Irritatingly, the only way to stream to XBOX from Unbox is to also have a PC running Windows Media Center...which is a special breed of stupid.

Netflix also has the benefit of providing access (via mail) to those movies and TV shows, of which there are still a surprising number, that are not yet available online from any provider.

</comment><comment><USER3> ""The parties were unanimous in their wish that more of the experience be away from the computer," Mr. Gould said. "People are expecting and really preferring a simpler, more straightforward experience that doesn't involve the PC," he said."

This is great news for my next project ;)

<comment><USER4> Interesting market to be in, but very tough for a startup I think. Xbox 360 already has Netflix streaming support. TV companies are offering more sophisticated set-top boxes all the time. Amazon / Netflix could easily release their own set-top box.

Are you planning something which you think will be really disruptive?

<comment><USER3> My product is disruptive and goes beyond Netflix/Amazon streaming. It's most easily described as a web based evolution of XBMC. The goal is to make it dead simple to pull in and organize online video as well as locally stored video. As a user you shouldn't have to know what online site streams the show you want, or check different services to see who has the movie you want to see. It should all be presented in one easy to navigate interface.

My goal is to develop an online site along with a consumer device that integrate together. The best way to do this would be through a licensing deal with set-top box makers. Take the Netflix strategy of putting the service on every available device instead of solely focusing on selling a box a la Tivo.

<comment><USER5> You mean an aggregator? That's an idea which can support at least two big players in any segment (Reddit/Digg, Yahoo News/Google News). Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I have tried both of their interfaces on TiVo and they both suck. It takes about 10-20 seconds for TiVo to switch to NetFlix or Amazon list view. Navigating the lists and entering text is agony, even with TiVo's nice remote.

<comment><USER6> Navigating any of the Tivo on-demand menus seems painfully slow for me. Is this common?

I typically just give up. I really don't want to spend five minutes to see if _maybe_ there's something I might like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems like an iPhone/Android app could turn a smartphone into an effective remote for setting up the queues. It's not a holistic solution, but seems like it could be built relatively quickly.

<comment><USER8> There are already quite a few iPhone apps that do this for Netflix

<comment><USER9> Personally, I use Flixster, but there are indeed many apps that can interact with Netflix. Apparently Netflix also publishes an API to do precisely this, so the apps (hopefully) aren't doing any funky web-scraping in the background.</comment></comment></comment>


How self driving car accidents will be handled? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@eran_39947/how-self-driving-car-accidents-will-be-handled-68d3b80ed385 <comment><USER2> How is insurance handled for airlines/planes if there is a problem with autopilot?

</comment><comment><USER3> Insurance companies will hate this.</comment>


Ask HN: What service has affordable MySQL databases on demand? - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a SaaS where each account will have it's own database. I'm wondering if there are any services that provide MySQL databases created on the fly cheaply? <comment><USER2> Google Cloud SQL can do this [https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/client- libraries](https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/client-libraries)</comment>


A further W^X refinement (OpenBSD) - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/openbsd/status/1133133141537959938 <comment><USER2> Direct link: [https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=155899373514678&w=2](https://marc.info/?l=openbsd- tech&m=155899373514678&w=2).

The refinement is to reallow some pages to be writable and executable (to allow Chrome to run its JITter), but to disallow syscalls being made from writable memory. That should make it harder to take advantage of the W|X pages (attackers can't just download shell code into the writable page and execute it from there)

<comment><USER3> Good explanation since W^X says nothing really. BSD is interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX)</comment></comment></comment>


Google Has A Plan To Stop The Mass Exodus From Orkut: No Friend Exports For You - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/10/01/google-has-a-plan-to-stop-the-mass-exodus-from-orkut-no-friend-exports-for-you/ <comment><USER2> "For some people in India right now, sadly, it appears that they have no choice."

Of course they do. Google just isn't making it easy. Why misrepresent and sensationalize the situation? Anyone reading this article is going to quickly figure it out. All you really gain is 15 or 30 seconds of outrage from the reader until they realize that in fact any Orkut user in India is free to use competing services. In the end they will conclude you are stupid or a bad journalist for putting an obviously untrue spin on the situation.</comment>


Cloudant's Journey from Y Combinator to IBM Acquisition - <AUTHOR> http://www.heavybit.com/library/video/2014-05-20-mike-miller

<comment><USER2> So yesterday was YC demo day. Interested to hear if other YC founders and alum have learned similar things?</comment>


Embedding the ContextFreeArt language in Scheme - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/361543

<comment><USER2> For 3D context free art, check Structure Synth. Combine it with the Sunflow renderer, and you'll be in love with it - <http://structuresynth.sourceforge.net/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the pointer! Looks awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Some other ContextFreeArt implementations that I know of: <http://gist.github.com/358956></comment>


Bower, Browser package manager by Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/twitter/bower

<comment><USER2> Use <https://github.com/component/component> instead. Better modularity and interoperability.

<https://github.com/component/spec/wiki></comment>


Ask HN: Which online communities(besides HN) are you a part of? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Reddit: But I use it a lot less now due to all the bigotry and bullying (that infects all front page subs). Few subs still get my attention. But mostly I dislike the peole there now.

dpreview: Photography discussions. A lot of specialised sub-forums.

slickdeals: Yes, it is a deals site, but there is a bit of a community there I guess (a lot of discussion, but it is very consumerist as you'd imagine).

Stackoverflow: I've given up posting/asking questions. The community is pretty hostile and what was once the very best place to ask questions on the internet now thinks it is Wikipedia and downvotes almost every question that gets asked (even if nobody can answer, and even if there is no linked dupes). It now seems like a badge of honour on that site to mark something as "dup" but often they link to questions which are absolutely nothing like the original. The community is mostly toxic.

<comment><USER3> I have never seen a community that did not get ruined by assholes, whether physical or virtual.

<comment><USER4> I'd say I've never seen a community of substantial size where assholes did not try to ruin it. /r/askscience has fantastic mods and there are many smaller subreddits like /r/london and /r/unitedkingdom where it's too small to attract anything worse than a mouthy ukipper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I like stackoverflow quite a lot. I use quora on and off. I am also a member of gamefaqs. I have been lurking forever on rpgfan and rpgamer forums.

</comment><comment><USER6> Discoverboard ( [https://discoverboard.com](https://discoverboard.com) ):

An online community focused on quality, thought-provoking conversations about a broad range of interests. It's a significantly different experience from other online communities:

-Most members choose to use their real identities on the site, and this information is only available to other members.

-Each member pays a small subscription fee, which helps keep out trolls and spammers. The fee also pays for moderators and serves as our members' commitment to quality and respect.

-Discoverboard doesn't display ads to subscribers or sell their data.

Full disclosure: I work for discoverboard. We would be very interested in hearing your thoughts about it. I also just created an invite code for free trials for people on this thread: [https://discoverboard.com/code/HN](https://discoverboard.com/code/HN)

<comment><USER7> I've been wanting something like this for a while. But it looks like your implementation is not that great.

\- Using your real identity is an extremely bad idea. Write something stupid once and it will haunt you forever. People will speak their mind only when protected by anonymity.

\- The topics and replies seem pretentious. Most likely because of the real identity thing. Everybody just tries to sound smart, eloquent and philosophical.

\- Unless you have some truly smart people initiating ideas and discussions, it's just the topic of the day kind of thing. It gets boring pretty fast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I use Reddit quite a lot. You do have to spend quite a bit of time discovering sub-reddits that you're interested, because that's where the only good discussion ever happens.

</comment><comment><USER9> HN is the only one I participate in. I will likely start to participate in Reddit, but as with HN, I lurk _forever_ before I participate so that I understand what I am signing up for.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can Facebook be one ? I use the friend system for my personal shares but I am part of several closed groups with themed communities and shares

</comment><comment><USER11> Reddit and Quora. I tried Stackoverflow but didn't like it. I also participate on some niche low traffic forums.

</comment><comment><USER12> reddit, quora, stackoverflow.

</comment><comment><USER13> Reddit, Stackoverflow, App.net

</comment><comment><USER14> alt.tasteless</comment>


Ask HN: How to avoid inbox distraction when searching for an archived email? - <AUTHOR>

I noticed the following pattern of email distraction happens to me regularly. I'll be working on or thinking about something. I think of a specific archived email I need to search for to get some information related to what I'm working on or thinking about. So I go to GMail. But as soon as I log in, I get distracted by new email in my inbox, or even by existing mail in my inbox that I haven't read yet but feel like I should, since it's been sitting there for hours or days. (The truth is generally those emails are NOT urgent, which is why I skipped them in the first place.)  Before I know it, I'm dealing with inbox email, completely off track from my original focus which led me to search for a specific email.<p>Does this happen to you? Any tips on how to avoid this, e.g. is there a way to search GMail without seeing your inbox? <comment><USER2> When I search for "my search term" in GMail, I am taken to <https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/my+search+term>

So, try setting up a search engine in your browser that goes to <https://mail.google.com/mail/#search/%s></comment>


How to get massive traction and usage to your product? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/on-startups/5c67ec8ea4b1

<comment><USER2> Is this a question, or a statement?</comment>


Learning Python: day four. - <AUTHOR> http://sahillavingia.com/blog/2010/10/22/learning-python-day-four/

<comment><USER2> Hehehe:

Got a ton more material done with Reworder. I patterned out the API. I enforced a clump of common lyric (who truly inevitably a equivalent word for "the"?). I also enclosed a bit of Javascript, as I truly need to learn that in order to go the front-end animal I want to become. Check it out so far: Reworder linear on Google's App Engine. It still inevitably a ton of work. I'd say I'm a day or two from a minimal feasible product (it really paraphrase decently and I have permalink-able URLs).

<http://reworder.appspot.com/reworded/zheaji/>

( Nice job though. Simple UI. Could be cool )

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it was a bit premature to post this.

I understand this is a toy app to help you learn Python and GAE, but I would've found this more interesting if you had gone over your "rewording" algorithm and the whys of the implementation decisions you made.

There's not much information that's useful, here. Sorry.

I hope you do a more thorough writeup when you're finished.

Since this doesn't appear to be a tldr.it kind of app, it would be interesting to give the option of tweaking the rewording algorithm towards the end user's vocabulary (perhaps either by having the end user paraphrase some demo text, or analyzing copy-pasted text).

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, this is just for people who want to follow along - it worked well for One Week App - <http://oneweekapp.com/>.

I'll post a nice long write-up to "launch" the site when it's done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you thought about using the natural language toolkit for python?

<http://www.nltk.org/Home></comment>


Show HN: Video Game Gems - <AUTHOR> http://videogamegems.com

<comment><USER2> Exciting. Worked on 3 of those games :)

...but where is WarcraftIII? And Heroes of Might and Magic?</comment>


Is Computer Science the New Latin? - <AUTHOR> http://weblogs.java.net/blog/cayhorstmann/archive/2008/04/is_computer_sci.html

<comment><USER2> A more useful piece of data would perhaps be the ratio of entrants to the software industry to the demand for them and a projection of this number to 5,10 and 15 years. For instance, the percentage of freshmen majoring in physics is abysmally low, but the selectivity of graduate programs says that is not enough demand for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like College Board is dead set on guaranteeing that I should have a job for a long time.</comment>


Supercomputer Predicts Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://singularityhub.com/2011/09/25/supercomputer-predicts-revolution/ <comment><USER2> Heavily debunked when discussed two weeks ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978883></comment>


Sam Chang's Budget Hotel Empire in New York City  - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/nyregion/04chang.html?_r=1 <comment><USER2> One page: [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/nyregion/04chang.html?page...](http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/nyregion/04chang.html?pagewanted=print)

</comment><comment><USER3> $200 a night is "budget" in NYC? Jeez, that makes even _London_ look cheap!</comment>


Ask HN: Communities to learn about creating sensor/hardware products? - <AUTHOR> I want to create a back rest of a chair that is pressure sensitive (and then apply machine learning to identify medical issues).
What are good resources to learn about creating pressure sensitive chairs? I suppose I could join a hacker space? Any online communities one would recommend?
Two notes:
1. Pressure sensitive sensors can be replaced for <any sensor>.
2. Backrest of chair can be replaced for <any physical product that allows you to sow sensors in them such as pressure sensitive sensors>. <comment><USER2> You may find helpful people/info at one or more of:

[https://electronics.stackexchange.com/](https://electronics.stackexchange.com/)

[https://arduino.stackexchange.com/](https://arduino.stackexchange.com/)

[https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/](https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/](https://www.reddit.com/r/electronics/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/](http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/](http://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics/)

[https://hackaday.com/](https://hackaday.com/)

[https://forum.nutsvolts.com/](https://forum.nutsvolts.com/)

[https://circuitcellar.com/](https://circuitcellar.com/)

[https://www.eetimes.com/](https://www.eetimes.com/)

[https://makezine.com/](https://makezine.com/)

You might also find this book interesting:

[https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Hacker-Adventures-Making- Bre...](https://www.amazon.com/Hardware-Hacker-Adventures-Making- Breaking/dp/159327758X/)

<comment><AUTHOR> <edit> Also browsed all the other websites you recommended. I bookmarked a lot of them. They all look really interesting. </edit>

Thanks for that book! I read 25% of it (couldn't afford more time). It was _really_ interesting to see how the manufacturing process in China went, how he biohacked a virus [1], and how he hacked hardware through UV exposure. This book was actually tangentially related to my idea but not fully. I think that's for the better because with that book a new world opened up for me.

I think I developed a taste for electrical engineering. Life keeps getting more and more interesting, it is a pity that our lives are so short and that most obligatory education methods (e.g. high school) are so ineffective.

[1] Referring to DNA as bits and pairs of bits as functions and how 'function calls' were made with repeating sequences since they always(ish) encode to the same protein and ribosomes make that translation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You should start with market validation. Would ___% of people say, "I'd pay $___ for a chair that could measure my ___?" What would the answers to those blanks have to be for there to be a good business opportunity?

If the answers suggest that you could eventually sell millions of smart chairs, you still need to start with a small, local, initial market to refine the product. Assume the initial 100 prototype chairs you make will cost 10x more than the eventual price. Who would pay 10x more? They'd have to be fanatical about their posture. Such people probably exist: perhaps some kind of body-builder by night, accountant by day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, seems like I'd need to go to my university and deploy a simple survey. Not that it's necessarily geared at students but I see a subsection of them being in the target market.

Though, the market demand has been validated by the fact that there's an industry around it. My product idea merely differentiates it. Would it be possible to email you some questions about my actual idea? I'd really appreciate a bit of brainstorming with fellow HN'ers.

My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you are lucky, you can contact a manufacturer of pressure sensor and hope that 1) they will answer a small customer 2) the guy answering really knows his stuff. Big names in the space would be Honeywell or TE Connectivity.

As so happens I worked with pressure sensors before. My slightly above noob answer would be that most pressure sensors aren't suitable for you both in form factor and cost. Normally built to connect to some tube.

A load cell that goes into a scale might work, but that could get expensive if you need many data points.

If you need MANY data points and have low accuracy requirements (like if you want to draw a heat map) you could create a network of piezoelectric films. Piezoelectric materials generate a charge upon pressure. This would be trickier to make if there isn't one on market.

</comment><comment><USER5> Don't forget to make it IoT!

In all seriousness, particle.io has some very good forums. They are mostly product specific, but a great product to start with for novice embedded developers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Currently I have found that YouTube gave me the best resources! I am a bit surprised by that (it was better than Google), at least when it comes to getting me started.

What I am mostly impressed with [1].

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JBSHqUcaG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JBSHqUcaG4)

</comment><comment> tony-allan hackster.io is a great resource for projects.

For example: [https://www.hackster.io/user5175647213/prankchair-the- best-a...](https://www.hackster.io/user5175647213/prankchair-the-best-april- fool-s-prank-8f1a62)

This doesn't help with your exact needs but there are lots of idea's that are discussed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that looks awesome, will look around there. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Founders: Interested in earning extra cash? - <AUTHOR>

Hey HNers.  Need some feedback: How many founders / cofounders could use, or could have used, extra income while starting up your company?  The typical job/gig search thing just doesn't seem efficient or practical for entrepreneurs.  I'm thinking about starting a service that helps founders get recruited for extra remote work ---- and get paid very well for it.
I'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.
The issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.
For employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.
Is this of interest?  Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I'd be super interested in this. Been working on a startup full-time but might have to look for contract work soon. I think the value add of something like this is having you curate the job listings for entrepreneurs and you being able to convince companies the value of our unique skill set. Might be best done manually at first but I'd pay for a service like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice, glad to hear and thanks for the feedback. I agree clearly communicating the value of your unique skill set is key. Any other ideas please keep them coming

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I really want is an agent. I'd be willing to give up a small percentage if my hourly every month to an agent who brought me contracts I was really, really interested in. I've thought many times about how to pull this off, and I just don't know if the dynamic is right in the industry.

<comment><USER4> What is your hourly rate, and what qualifies you for such a high rate? I'm asking honestly, as a person who's actually interested in being an agent. Basically, help me help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool. So you'd be interested in being an agent. Can you expand on your ideal user experience?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> FWIW, I know of at least one member of the billion-plus exit club who was a core founder & did sidework during the early days....

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You have my attention. Now, what's the pitch?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm thinking something along the lines of a marketplace exclusively for entrepreneurs, where you'd create say offers or packages which employers can purchase, and on our end we'd go out and ultimately serve as your recruiter and find you work that fits in your schedule.

The issue is that founders don't have time to look for work and browse job descriptions, or interview --- so we'd need to make it clear that you have x amount of availability, you're being hired remotely, and at a rate you specify.

For employers, entrepreneurs typically have highly desirable skill sets --- even with limited availability and performing remote work.

Thoughts?

<comment><USER7> _packages which employers can purchase_

Have you validated the employer demand? Seems like that would be the tougher part of the equation.

Sure, employers need part-time, remote workers, but are they willing to pay a premium for entrepreneurs? I'm skeptical.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, working on that feedback/validation as well. Typically larger companies lack innovation and are encouraged to hire entrepreneurs. Especially if you've proven yourself, and can show what you've done --- it eliminates a lot of uncertainty and validates your worth. But even if you haven't, if you can show what you're working on, and your skill set --- it's a big plus. I'd personally like to hire from this pool.

Again though, do need to validate from the other end and working on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Is this of interest?_

Oh yeah, definitely.

 _Thoughts?_

Want. Now.

Seriously, I could see this being _really_ useful if it works. I'd be very interested in giving it a try.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, thanks!</comment></comment>


PonyDebugger: Chrome Developer Tools for Native iOS Apps - <AUTHOR> http://corner.squareup.com/2012/08/ponydebugger-remote-debugging.html

<comment><USER2> I saw a demo of this a couple months ago at a small gathering. I was blown away. Another feature demo'd at the time was the ability to make obj-c calls in the chrome javascript console and have it be interpreted in the app runtime. e.g.

UIApplication.sharedApplication.delegate.navigationController.navigationBar.tintColor = UIColor.redColor;

and the app's navbar changed color. Is this still possible with this release? I haven't been able to try it out at work yet. Thanks for this awesome tool.

<comment><USER3> Interactive console support is coming. We need to work out a few kinks before it is ready to go

<comment><USER4> Have you heard of Cycript? It's an open source JavaScript-ObjC bridge, maintained by Jay Freeman, the creator of Cydia. It currently supports this interactive console functionality (with tabbed autocomplete!), by injecting into a specified process.

It would be awesome if you integrated Cycript into this.

<http://cycript.org>

<comment><USER5> They apparently seem to be using JSCocoa (which I find kind of a surprising choice in comparison to Cycript, but hey: I'm biased ;P).

(edit:)

Looking into the debugger protocol some, it seems like it might be irritating to integrate Cycript and have it work with Chrome. (The problem being that it parses the JavaScript on the client and sends over an RPC, do you'd have to drop down to objc_msgSend semantics; one of the things I had disliked about JSCocoa then actually makes it easier to use in this environment: how it kind of munges all of the namespaces together into object properties.)

The entire idea of mapping the semantics of a native app into the HTML reality of that debugger, however, is somewhat awkward if you want to attack the parts that aren't networking and database (which is what PonyDebugger is currently nailing really well). I was working on something a little more general a while back as part of Cynoptica (mapping all processes to an HTML debugger interface); when I have something I'll hit you up on IRC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks like a really valuable tool to have in the iOS development arsenal.

It also underscores my loathing for cutesy, irreverent naming conventions.

<comment><USER3> The name came about because our internal HTTP library is named PonyExpress, and this tool was originally part of it. At least it is google-able, right?

<comment><USER7> Honestly it's better than another acronym. It's more identifiable and doesn't have other possible meanings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome, will definitely give this a shot. It's great to see iOS development tools pick up tricks from the web world.

Personally, I can't wait for a Firebug-like tool for live debugging and tweaking of UIView hierarchies.

<comment><USER9> Have you seen <https://github.com/glock45/iOS-Hierarchy-Viewer>?

<comment><USER8> Yes, and also DCIntrospect. They're encouraging, but don't currently compare to what you can do with, say, live-editing css or with a Javascript console.

Not that I've used it, but RubyMotion is making progress on a related front. A live REPL, styling apps with CSS, etc. Maybe we're not far off.

<comment><USER5> The live REPL is provided by Cycript (a program I wrote that lets you inject into running iOS/Mac applications: it has a blend of Objective-C and JavaScript syntax with runtime tab-completion; it is used by most of the people doing extension development for jailbroken devices as it lets you dig deeply into any running program quite quickly).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems that the state iOS development is improving at a very rapid pace. I can't wait to try this out.

</comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for this! The Core-Data Browser will be especially useful for me. Verifying data was correctly stored had been somewhat of a pain before.

</comment><comment><USER12> This looks fantastic. Does anyone know if there is a similar tool for Android?

<comment><USER13> Remote debugging ( Chrome for Android ) has been around for a while : <https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/debugging>

<comment><USER14> Also, ADB runs over network easily as of ICS using the option in 'Developer options' in the system setting.

<comment><USER12> Hmmm..For some reason, I cannot seem to find any setting in "Developer Options" on my Jelly Bean based device. Can you tell me what it is called?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This will improve my life I think, installing now and thank you!

<comment><USER3> Glad to hear. If you run into any issues, please file it on the github page. We tried to simplify it a lot, but there are a lot of moving parts and we can improve even more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow, I never thought it would be possible to use the webkit developer tools for a completely different technology stack to such an extent.

Impressive to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is really cool for my projects, however, are there any other tools that can be used ananlyze other binaries without compiling?

</comment><comment><USER18> Impressive looking tool. I hope the intern is getting paid because he's adding a lot of value to Square and the dev community too. (Seems like a chance to plug <http://gittip.com/> now!)

<comment><USER19> I believe it wouldn't even be legal for an unpaid intern to be used for "actual work", as they're supposed to strictly be involved in mentoring/training activities. Hopefully Square knows that, and wouldn't try to treat its employees unfairly in the first place. They seem like a great company.

<comment><USER20> Programming internships are typically paid positions. I can't speak for Square, but every other programming internship I'm aware of (even at other startups like Path) were paid.

<comment><USER21> Yes, we _do_ pay our interns.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It's also possible to inspect HTML/JS on WebView based apps (phonegap)?

<comment><USER23> That's been possible since the release of iOS5 through a private API (which is sufficient for debugging): [http://atnan.com/blog/2011/11/17/enabling-remote- debugging-v...](http://atnan.com/blog/2011/11/17/enabling-remote-debugging- via-private-apis-in-mobile-safari/)

iOS6 makes the feature officially supported (though the API for webview-based apps is probably different, I haven't checked): [http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/24936855546/what- ios-6-mobile...](http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/24936855546/what-ios-6-mobile- safari-offers-front-end-devs)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting tool.

I've done something like this in the past using Charles or Fiddler and the proxy settings on my iOS device.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is the advantage of this tool over Charles?

<comment><USER20> Charles requires you to proxy your device's networking through your computer, which is annoying to set up, and doubly-so if you need to sniff https. PonyDebugger looks great because it doesn't interfere with the normal networking behavior.

<comment><USER26> Except requiring you to compile it into your app. Presumably you're not including it in every build configuration, but that means you can't run it against just any build.

I think it only does outgoing requests, but rvictl can also be handy for inspecting iOS network traffic. With a single command on your Mac, it directs device traffic through a network interface on the Mac. Wireshark works great on it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Very cool - but seems like more of a monitor than a debugger (titles are always over-sensationalized I suppose).</comment>


Anything is Possible (in a Startup) - <AUTHOR> http://www.thisisgoingtobebig.com/blog/2010/11/11/anything-is-possible-in-a-startup.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thisisgoingtobebig+%28%3A%3AThis+is+going+to+be+BIG%3A%3A%29&utm_content=Twitter <comment><USER2> This is great advice - instead of looking for a regular-old job by pushing resumes, look around for an interesting startup that you would love to work at, and try and get in to them.

I actually never even considered going to work for a startup. I always wanted to start my own company, and knew that if that option ever closed, I'd just go work for Google or some other company. It wasn't until I started reading more about the startup world that I realized there are literally _hundreds_ of companies I'd rather work for (not to knock Google of course, I just prefer smaller companies where I'd have more influence.)

</comment><comment> space-monkey I worked for startups right out of school in 99. I've also worked for a small/midsize company for the last 4 years. Both situations were great, and very different, learning experiences. I can't speak to the mega-corp option, but there are definitely non-startup jobs to be had that aren't soul-less.

</comment><comment><USER3> At least for me, pg's essays do a much better job at advocating working for a startup, or starting a company. The tone employed by this seems to be less rational and more sensational.

<comment><USER4> Practice makes perfect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The author glosses over the sacrifices that a non-engineer has to make in order to get employed at a startup. First off, there's the enormous pay cut. Expect to earn 1/2 of what you'd be earning in another job ASSUMING that you were able to land a job at a funded startup. Second, what jobs are available at funded startups for fresh college graduates? Sales, marketing, business develpment? Sales is a tough gig, and not necessarily an intellectually inspiring process. There simply aren't that many PAID marketing or business development jobs at startups for recent college grads, and the competition for those jobs is fierce.

Being at a startup can be an incredibly rewarding experience. But I hate to think that students (already idealistic) are getting into a startup without the proper understanding of what it's like.

</comment><comment><USER6> It is crazy how perfectly the Matrix script works for this essay. And it's just so true, do you want the red pill or the blue?</comment>


Apple Machine Learning Journal - <AUTHOR> https://machinelearning.apple.com/ <comment><USER2> For anyone curious about why Apple is allowing its researchers to (anonymously) publish papers like these on an Apple blog, it's because of this:

 _Apple's director of AI research Russ Salakhutdinov has announced at a conference that the company's machine-learning researchers will be free to publish their findings. This is an apparent reversal of Apple 's previous position._

 _Refusing permission to publish was said to be keeping the company out of the loop and meaning that the best people in the field didn't want to work for Apple._

From: [https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/06/apple-ai-researchers-can- publ...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/06/apple-ai-researchers-can-publish/)

We will see whether this move is sufficient to attract the top talent they're looking for.

<comment><USER3> I wonder - is there really any prestige to be had from publishing anonymously?

<comment><USER4> Who the hell publishes for prestige? Most people won't be able to understand, let alone care, about your research.

<comment><USER5> > _Most people won 't be able to understand, let alone care, about your > research?_

The intended audience is other researchers in your field, not the general public.

Your reputation as an academic or researcher rest on your publication record (plus your ability to land funding). If you publish highly-cited papers in prestigious journals or conference proceedings, you're considered among the best in your field. This opens the door to promotions, better job offers, etc.

Researchers at Apple have historically forgone the ability to publish. They have no reputation in the field. This significantly harms their ability to get a job elsewhere as a researcher.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is anyone else amused by the irony of using machine-learning-trained image generator in order to provide data to a machine-learning-trained image recognition program? I'm sure the researchers themselves and plenty of people here could come up with all sorts of logical reasons why this is fine, and very possibly given the right protocols it would be fine. But this sort of approach seems to lend itself toward increasing the risks of machine-learning. ie, you're doubling down on poor assumptions that are built-in to your training criteria or which creep into the neural net implicitly, because you are using the same potentially flawed assumptions on both ends of the process. Even if that's not the case, by using less real, accurately annotated data, you're far less likely to address true edge cases, and far more likely to overestimate the validity of the judgments of the final product compared to one with less synthetic training. And if there's one thing the machine learning community doesn't need any more of, it's overconfidence.

Edit: oops, turns out I mistakenly responded to the content of the paper instead of the fact that it exists and the form of its existence. Sorry.

<comment><USER7> I cannot disagree with you but the fact is and remains that the field is a budding one and this is but a building block towards better understanding the nature of using sets of geometric transformations for pattern recognition in A.I.

If this was to be directly implemented in the real world your arguments would need to be addressed, however I'm certain this research paper wouldn't be abused in that manner.

Disclaimer: I'm a graduate student studying Computer Vision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of academic papers actually aren't all that great, for a variety of reasons. Normally, you can use citations, journal, and author credentials to get a sense of whether a paper is even worth skimming. The only "paper" on the "journal" right now looks like it's just a watered-down, html-only version of [https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07828](https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07828)!

Seems like more of a PR stunt than anything useful, but who knows.

<comment><USER9> But in the sense that Apple is notoriously tight-lipped about research, it's a notable PR stunt. Unlike with Microsoft and Google, you don't see a lot of Apple in academic research circles despite them having a significant brain- share. Love them or hate them, Apple is a powerhouse and the (undoubtedly amazing) research happening behind the scenes could do a huge amount of good with just a bit more visibility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's interesting how much criticism they're getting because Apple formatted their blog to be anonymous and watered down, but they're clear in their first technical post that it is just an overview of work that the researchers are presenting at CVPR [1].

So the researchers at Apple are still getting credit for their work in the scientific community, but the PR-facing side of their work is anonymous, probably for some aesthetic reason (this _is_ Apple, of course)

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07828](https://arxiv.org/abs/1612.07828)

</comment><comment><USER11> The most Apple thing ever is that they called it a "journal" and not a "blog."

<comment><USER12> I'm only 30 and yet I think I've become an old "get off my lawn" man. I hate the word "blog" and find "journal" to be a nice relief. No need to differentiate your log/journal from others because its on the web. It feels like a language artifact of the dot com era alongside "surfing" and "cyber".

<comment><USER13> This isn't a 'journal' in any sense of what the word implies when referring to published materials. There's no peer review, probably no editorial board. Blog is appropriate.

<comment><USER14> Nobody called it _scientific_ journal.

[http://www.dictionary.com/browse/journal](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/journal):

1\. a daily record, as of occurrences, experiences, or observations[...]

3\. a periodical or magazine, especially one published for a special group, learned society, or profession[...]

4\. a record, usually daily, of the proceedings and transactions of a legislative body, an organization, etc.

<comment><USER15> The phrase "machine learning journal" strongly implies academic journal to most machine learning researchers though, in part because that is actually in the name of several journals in the field. I don't think Apple is unaware of that either. This reads to me as quite deliberately playing on that association, to upgrade the prestige of the stuff published here vs. what it'd have if it were just a blog.

<comment><USER16> The first post is actually a summary of a CVPR paper by Apple employees. For those not familiar with it, CVPR is a top conference in computer vision.[0] Recall, of course, that "conference" for much of computer science implies the same length and degree of peer review as "journal" does in non-CS fields.

[0] [http://cvpr2017.thecvf.com/](http://cvpr2017.thecvf.com/)

<comment><USER17> I don't think that really matters. If I only post really worthy articles in my blog it doesn't become a scientific journal. I'm not saying that I believe peer-reviewed journals are the end-all-be-all for science but it does seem like Apple is being misleading with this.

edit</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>----

Although, a company publishing a peer-reviewed scientific journal like Nature would be surprising. So maybe that isn't the common interpretation when they see the title. Maybe it isn't totally misleading. I guess I'm split on it. :)

<comment><USER15> It's not _common_ , but also not unheard of for companies to organize properly peer-reviewed journals for their internal research. The two most famous are probably the _Bell System Technical Journal_ and the _IBM Journal of Research and Development_. From the title I was expecting Apple to be continuing in that tradition, but it seems they aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why no author names on the article?

<comment><USER19> This sort of thing has actually been dealt with in the past. In 1908, William Gosset working for Guinness brewery in Dublin, published his statistical work under the pen name of "Student." Which gave us the oddly named "Student's t-test," and related distributions.

<comment><USER20> I don't know how I never knew this fact, but this is pretty hilarious!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Going off on a bit of a tangent, but I feel like Apple's niche in AI will be with on-device processing. The iPhone 7 already has an FPGA onboard, and I would guess the next iPhone will have more/more powerful chips. Training would probably still have to happen on their servers though due to the dataset sizes needed. I might just be full of shit though, I'm not much of an AI developer.

</comment><comment><USER22> The top comment on Product Hunt from Ryan Hoover raised a good point about Apple's timing with this:

> This launch is particularly interesting because this isn't typical for > Apple, a fairly secretive and top down company (when it comes to external > communications). Timing makes a lot of sense with their upcoming launch of > ARkit, Apple Home, and the inevitable "Siri 2.0", among other things.

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/apple-machine-learning- jou...](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/apple-machine-learning-journal)

<comment><USER23> This blog is not Apple's first blog; they started a Swift blog shortly after the release of Swift: [https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/](https://developer.apple.com/swift/blog/)

<comment><USER24> And WebKit has has a blog for 11 years now [https://webkit.org/blog/4/welcome- to-the-webkit-blog/](https://webkit.org/blog/4/welcome-to-the-webkit-blog/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would really like to see the names of people who are working on the research. They reference other papers and give their authors credit, but was disappointed to not see the Apple employees get credit.

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll be keeping an eye out for acrostics with the author's name.

<comment><USER27> I'm not sure what you mean? Their names are Shrivastava, Pfister, Tuzel, Susskind, Wang, Webb. What are you expecting to find?

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's powering this site? Doesn't look like WebObjects.

<comment><USER29> Looks like it's Jekyll

[http://www.manton.org/2017/07/5463.html](http://www.manton.org/2017/07/5463.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I really wish this had an Atom or RSS feed

<comment><USER31> It does: [https://machinelearning.apple.com/feed.xml](https://machinelearning.apple.com/feed.xml)

It's "just" not referenced in the source.

I get that social networks are the tool of choice to prioritise articles from the major news outlets–if The Atlantic publishes something spectacular, it will find me.

But how on earth am I supposed to follow something like this, when I have to guess randomly to even find a feed? Are they expecting me to bookmark it and check for news once a week? There's no Twitter account, newsletter signup, Facebook link... nothing.

<comment><USER30> So I just got an email back from them and they're going to look into adding it. I really like that tone of interaction, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> So we're def getting some form of facial recognition in the new iPhone with stuff like this being published.

Feels like an early post to show they've done some advanced work in making sure you can't trick them.

<comment><USER33> There's already facial recognition in the iPhone - it's used in the photo app to let you sort through photos of different people.

Wouldn't be surprised to see it more in use, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I like the font. Is is possible/legal to use the SF Pro Text webfont?

PS I know the desktop font is available for download at the apple developer site ... but I'm talking about the web font

</comment><comment><USER35> No <title>?

</comment><comment><USER36> calling this a "journal" and making it anonymous is disingenuous.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm betting that sjobs would not have approved this

</comment><comment><USER38> Surprising. Hopefully we see more of this.</comment>


Invest or pay off debt, which one is better? - <AUTHOR> http://asset.plus/is-it-better-to-invest-or-pay-off-debt/ <comment><USER2> It depends on the price of debt. If the price is negative or if you feel you are protected from default on it (which is the same), get as much debt as you can. And invest, spend or just waste money. Never, never, ever pay off more debt then necessary minimum.

</comment><comment><USER3> TL;DR: Pay off the debt.

It seems like there is always a tug of war between these questions every decade or so, and I'm not really sure why. I guess in the US we make access to credit so dad blame easy that people can practically fall off a log into a credit card? Or perhaps its due to lack of useful financial education in elementary/middle/high school/college(!?) to inform new generations that saving money is a Good Thing.</comment>


Hauppauge to Sell CableCard Tuners by End of 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.gearlog.com/2009/09/hauppauge_to_sell_cablecard_tu.php

<comment><AUTHOR> More info on this, from a Microsoft press release:

[http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-09MSW...](http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2009/sep09/09-09MSWinMCCEDIAPR.mspx)</comment>


Ask HN: Is Sublime Text profitable? - <AUTHOR> I'm just curious whether sublime text is profitable for the creator.
Though sublime text states that
<QUOTE> "Sublime Text may be downloaded and evaluated for free, however a license must be purchased for continued use. There is currently no enforced time limit for the evaluation.", </QUOTE>
the editor is practically the same for paid and non-paid users in terms of features, save for the occasional popup that reminds the user to purchase the license. I for instance, am still using the free trial version for a long time and I don't feel annoyed or handicapped about the free trial version. In fact, I prefer it over other free text editors like Atom as I feel Sublime hands down beats them in terms of speed and features.
On the other hand, how hard it is for a software app to be profitable using sublime text's business model? <comment><USER2> The creator has been working on Sublime full time for over 8 years with only a couple of relatively short breaks, so whatever the return it is clearly enough.

The model seems much the same one a busker uses: no up front admission charge, no enforcement, the music is out there as you walk by, speaking for itself, and there is a hopeful hat on the ground.

Much though creators might like a bit more certainty than that, in a cynical market as reluctant to make purchases as you yourself are, sadly, it seems difficult for an independent to do much better.

Sublime is the best editor I have encountered, and I use it heavily, daily. The busker is a professional virtuoso. If I stand there, entranced, listening, day in day out, it seems churlish to walk away without putting some money in the hat. Therefore I have purchased a license, even though no-one is forcing me to and doing so unlocks no new features.

Apparently enough others also feel the same way.

</comment><comment><USER3> Most people who aren't going to pay for text editor are not going to pay for Sublime whether or not its free. These people would choose something else if Sublime was "paid only."

On the other hand, people and their circumstances change. A person who is using the free version of Sublime is a strong sales lead for the paid version. If the free version produces more sales of Sublime than it cannibalizes, then it's a profitable strategy.

The free version works because the nominal cost of producing and maintaining it is approximately zero.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> I bought it a long time ago because I loved it and used it everywhere. Also the license allows me to use it everywhere I need it. As I am a professional developer myself, and would also like to be paid for my work, I pay for software that I use and like. Best $70 I spent for any piece of software ever.

</comment><comment><USER5> If you like it and use it, why don't you pay for it?

<comment><USER6> In that case, I would rather use a free editor.

<comment><USER7> To add context: An hour later in a different thread wtf_is_frp wrote he/she is a jobless student.

<comment><USER6> There are plenty of other free editors. Why would I pay for sublime?

Sublime has a great opportunity to exploit: adding new features for a price. There are plenty of areas open for improvement and the user base is already there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are lots of companies in the world, especially startups, that have very generous "get-what-you-want" IT budget for every employee. Sublime Text for a long time has been favourite text editor for developers and $60 will only make a minute dent in that allocated budget.

I don't have the numbers but I can imagine lots of licenses being purchased that way, even if the normal user would balk at spending on something that is mostly free.

</comment><comment><USER9> I wander what's special about Sublime Text, compared to other fast (i.e. not electron/js based monsters) editors? There are many fast, native editors, sharewares or freewares. One feature that comes to mind - ST targeted TextMate userbase by out of the box supporting its add-ons. What else?

<comment><USER10> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11884152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11884152)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I haven't used Sublime in a long time, not since Atom released v1.0 and I switched. But I paid for a license and feel that despite not using it anymore, that license was well worth the cost. Sublime is a great tool and I'm sure it's profitable.

</comment><comment><USER12> I bet the guy is loaded on money. I've paid for it from my own pocket because it is amazing. And now I am using atom but I don't regret having paid for it. $70 for something that you use 8h/day for ever? That's basically free.

</comment><comment><USER13> Development of sublime text stopped last year, during which time version 3 beta is made into permanent evaluation. But it's under active development again from march onwards and the version 4 is coming soon, which will not be a free update.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unless the creator released the figures nobody will know however it must be bringing in enough money to keep him interested.

Personally if you're using the software to make money then dropping a one off payment of $70 is nothing in the long term.

</comment><comment><USER15> You also forget that you have to own a license for business.

</comment><comment><USER16> free version is enough to use.</comment>


6 Tired Web Elements to Stop Using in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://www.thee404.com/6-tired-web-elements-to-stop-using-in-2017/ <comment><USER2> i wish we could add the sudden popup that dims the page to the list already</comment>


Ask HN: Where next to take my startup, Junto - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone! I'm looking for feedback on Junto – http://thejun.to
We're an online environment for the validation & production of startup ideas (for nontechnical founding teams.) The end result of a Junto startup is what I call an MVPU (minimum viable product for users) so basically a public beta.
Constructive feedback would mean the world to me. If you need to ask about our roadmap or revenue model, they're open for discussion too. HN's transparency was one of our inspirations for Junto in the first place.
Tl;dr:  My primary concerns are how do we build an adequately-sized community so that the sample size for validation is substantial; Is there anything we need to be wary of, moving forward; What else can we do to be helpful for our nontechnical customer-base? <comment><USER2> As others have said, you need to more clearly define and say what exactly you do.

From a quick look at the projects and ideas you currently have, it appears to me that this is a really slow way to go about building products and may even lead people down the wrong path. Couple of things stood out for me:

Spending days on logo design and "testing" - you really can't afford to do that. It is better instead to build something and put it out. You can get 10 people to use a bad product, but literally no one will use your logo. This must be against lean, no?

Testing assumptions such as "People are comfortable dating within their extended friend group" - that's taking things too far. It's good to be skeptical of one's beliefs but you can't completely throw gut feeling and common sense out the window.

Doing such things may give one the illusion of progress but it is a waste of time.

I'm also wondering who the project founders test their assumptions with. If it's not with the intended users of the final product, then it's worthless.

Everyone loves giving product advice (hi!), but you can safely ignore most of it if their answer to the question, "Will you use this?" is No.

Making new products is hard. But you can't change that by asking everything to the users. You do have to trust your gut and build stuff. Regardless of what people say, their actions don't follow.

 _Making decisions with more than 75% of the information is by definition hesitation._ \- Josh James

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback, first of all!

\- ISSUE: Our process actually being slow. It's true that spending a week and a half on something like a logo design is not exactly lean production. But we're actually going above and beyond that. Junto is as much about bringing in feedback on all aspect of production as it is about providing entertainment and developing relationships with potential users – not to mention education about startup process. We want to create advocates earlier and give them reason to feel connected to the startups. Allowing their feedback on things like logo design is easy, inviting and fun for a lot of people. The amount of time it takes is simply a by-product of leaving enough time for people to respond.

 __And more importantly, behind the scenes, we are bustling with back-end development, wireframing, putting together the business plan and doing a lot of things that don't really make for good public updates... until they are completed. So there's definitely a constant-feedback aspect but it only publicly appears slow when many hours are being spent behind closed doors, iterating away.

\- ISSUE: General assumption testing and not going with gut. We'd also agree that saying something like "people are willing to date within their friend group" is pretty general and kind of a 'duh' statement, but our assumption tests are actually more geared towards allowing viewers to share their experiences and gain insight from their stories. We've gleaned a nugget of helpful insight from every test we've done so far. And again, all of this kind of goes back to building a dedicated audience well before product launch.

So in many ways, we agree with you! And will try to be more conscious of such as we move forward. The order in which we do things and what we show publicly will surely change a lot in the coming months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool project & a good concept I think works well for the people you are targeting.

Notes:

\- Front page is tough to understand. Feel like you need a block clearly outlining the concept right at the top, and then jumping to the current projects. You've done great work with other illustrations on the site, why not a visual flow of the junto process (unless I missed it)?

\- When I first saw the funding amount, it felt like kickstarter (not sure if that's a good or bad thing for you? :) )

\- Project pages are really nice and clear, well done.

\- I like seeing faces for projects, gives it more credibility, but what about your team?

\- Recent commenters, gravatar?

As for the primary concern, tough one. Don't think there's any easy/cheap way to acquire a ton of users so early on. Think you'll just need to bridge the gap with your gut feeling till it gains more traction.

Good luck, really like the idea!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Noel!

Yeah, our front page has come a long way but if it's still unclear what our mission is (it's a complicated one, I admit), that's a problem. There used to be a visual sequence on the About page but perhaps we need to bring that back in.

Re: funding... yup, we have had a problem where people think we provide funding as a solo feature, or that funding is our primary feature... and not true. Troy from Excelerate Labs was great to point that out and work with us on it, but if it still appears to be a primary feature then that's a problem. Eventually crowdfunding might have more of our spotlight but not until our community is of a certain size/interaction level.

Team info is at <http://thejun.to/about> (tab on right says Meet Junto Team) but could be easier to find (other than that, it's only in the footer.)

Everything else – noted! thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a clever idea and I like the concept of getting feedback "early and often."

I do have some questions though. It is unclear whether I can take advantage of your service without hiring Polymathic. Is it just an environment for companies you are building? Also, I couldn't register (<http://thejun.to/registration> ends as a 404) so I'm unsure, other than offering feedback on logos and such, what I could do on the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, working to fix that now.

Basically, for the immediate moment there's no reason to register as you can comment on updates using Livefyre (Twitter, FB, etc.) Once these first projects go into alphas and betas (and need testing/feedback), registration will come back into play and we'll also sync it with the commenting system.

Thanks so much for your feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey, I just started a thread [1] offering detailed feedback on projects. If it's helpful I can write up some thoughts on Junto & mail them across to you.

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3568752>

<comment><AUTHOR> that would be amazing! I can email you if you'd like, too. otherwise I'm marcy at polymathic.me – thanks so much!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally I don't like your choice of name! As an early adopter I have a collector like penchant for the moniker.

</comment><comment><USER7> Clickable: <http://thejun.to>

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks, B!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry I went on your website and couldn't understand it is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> But if you can be more specific that'd be great too. thanks!</comment></comment>