Nest launches an outdoor security camera - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/20/nest-launches-a-new-349-smart-outdoor-security-camera/ <comment><USER2> I used to live in Tacoma, WA, which had a lot of petty crime. My neighbor was a cop and he told us that the biggest problem with security cameras was that they didn't capture faces and so the videos were useless to police and prosecutors. People typically place them up high and the burglars wear hoodies. He recommended putting them down low and hiding them, like in a bushy potted plant on your doorstep, in bushes, a hole in a fence, etc.

I don't get the point of expensive, tamper-resistant cameras for home use. I'd rather have more cameras.

<comment><USER3> Also, even if the camera captures a face, most local police departments won't be able to do anything with that image except put up "wanted posters" for a while. They don't necessarily have the authority/luxury to run it through a facial recognition system to find a stolen tv.

<comment><USER4> Even without the need for a facial recognition system, they rarely care.

I've sent them footage, along with the name of the guy who's face it was and they did fuck all. The guy's in jail now though a few years later for beating his wife.

<comment><USER5> My house got robbed and I found my DVD collection at a nearby used video store. Inside most of the DVD cases was my name in sharpie. The owner of the store had a photocopy of the guy's driver's license and the cops did nothing at all. I called them once a week for months, nothing.

<comment><USER6> I have good experience email police department and CC any public official email addresses you can find - Mayor, City Manager, Head of Police, local city council men/woman etc.

The elective public officials seems to response to these emails very fast and the head of police is CC.

The public official will put your email to their own email list - I don't mind that and support them if they act to provide solution to the community problems.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, that's good advice. This happened in 2004, and back then I just wasn't as up on this stuff. If it happened now, I'd definitely approach the situation much better.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> After a lot of consideration, and wanting to stay away from IOT horrors and complicated setup, I ended up just getting a game camera:

\- No wiring

\- Battery lasts up to a year depending on settings

\- Can be plugged into power

\- No internet, software, or 3rd party dependency

\- 10MP photos, HD video

\- One-time cost of $100 + $15 SD card

I don't need to view photos or videos remotely, I only need evidence if something were to happen, so this is an acceptable solution for me, especially considering the one-time costs.

Bonus: I also purchased an ADT sign + window stickers from ebay.

<comment><USER8> No one type of camera is going to cover every scenario.

A combination of both is recommended. Traditional IP cameras (Foscam etc.) are a pain to setup, but the new generation of "dropcams" are super easy.

Also, unless you hide the camera well, a thief can simply steal the camera, or disable it and remove the SD card.

<comment><USER7> I agree its not the perfect solution. But I have yet to find anything with a better price + feature/ease of setup ratio.

A lock box for the game camera is $30 and can be painted to match its surroundings.

<comment><USER9> Can you share what game camera you used? I am not familiar with that term

<comment><USER7> [https://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Cam-No-Glo-Camera- STC-G42NG/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Stealth-Cam-No-Glo-Camera- STC-G42NG/dp/B00HMN7H04/ref=sr_1_7?s=hunting- fishing&ie=UTF8&qid=1505929114&sr=1-7&keywords=game+camera)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For simple cameras, I'm a fan of the Hikvision DS-2CD2032-I CCTV POE 3MP Bullet IP HD Security Network Camera, 4mm camera for 1/3 of the price. They've done well in below -20F degree weather.

Also another vote for Blue Iris. It's not the most user friendly software but it's awesome for the price. It can be tricky to get configured just right though...

I would love to hear if anyone has any recommendations for getting Blue Iris to do some of the features of this camera, such as compare face images against a Google Photos API?

I would also be curious to know if the cameras that move & try to auto focus are actually better. That seems like a potential plus but I could see wind blowing trees or a squirrel running causing the camera to focus on the wrong things. Maybe the Nest is smarter & only goes for certain objects that it can recognize... Motion sensor recording is kind of a pain to get right on my Blue Iris. Windy trees & spiders cause me to get a lot more video than necessary.

<comment><USER11> Just be wary of Amazon vendors. I purchased a camera fulfilled through Amazon and it was a fake. Returning/Exchanging was simple but the difference in the label was clear when viewed side by side.

<comment><USER12> To be clear, Amazon sells a lot of fake cameras labelled as such for like $12. These, some alarm window stickers & a Beware of the Raccoon sign are my main security system.

[https://www.amazon.com/Security-Realistic-Surveillance- Busin...](https://www.amazon.com/Security-Realistic-Surveillance-Businesses- Armo/dp/B01HDZM6N8)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I should probably clarify that I mean __counterfeit __cameras.

They functioned for a day before nearly catching fire.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I work for a large alarm monitoring service. For years, I've been sending management notifications of new entries and updates in the 'personal monitoring' space.

Its actually humorous to see these old school guys who have enjoyed having a low churn subscription service cash cow for decades, be slowly disrupted.

Total denial at every turn LOL.

Why would anybody want to spend less than a 1/3rd the hardware cost, no installation cost, can be moved when you moved, and no monthly monitoring fee. They just don't get it.

I sent them links to Nests product announcements today. It'll be interesting to see their response.

<comment><USER14> One of my oldest friends now runs his dad's small alarm manufacturer and he is 100% not interested in any new sensors or applications, at least when I bring them up. Their main goal appears to be stability and maintaining distribution to -- and the happiness of -- their installer customers. It's one of the most 1970s "independent auto parts store" mentalities I've come across in any business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I guess it's totally unavoidable, but installing hard power lines (even if it's 12v PoE) for cameras is really a deal-breaker for DIY residential installations in countries with brick and mortar construction techniques.

Anecdotally, I've a Synology NAS and any* IP camera can be hooked up to it, and there are plenty with PoE, etc so what's stopping me having a camera system at home is figuring out how to drill through 60cm thick walls made of three layers of brick, insulation and render without compromising the weather seal of my house... not lack of smart features.

ps. does anyone trust _wifi_ cameras?

(* not _quite_ every camera is supported)

<comment><USER16> Ease of installation matters most. Your current setup is way beyond what most consumers would bother doing on their own

Plugging this camera into a standard AC outlet and connecting to wifi is easier than it's ever been! I'm guessing you can stick it on with a strong sticker, epoxy, or something similarly easy. ADT built a $7B-valued business predicated on how hard this used to be for consumers to do. Maybe in the future these cameras will be cellular connected so no wifi setup needed.

EDIT: I originally said: "Nest is clearly cloning: [https://ring.com/spotlight-cam-wired](https://ring.com/spotlight-cam-wired) " But Nest launched first, as commenters point out below. HN crowdsourced knowledge based and fact checking FTW :)

EDIT2: original Nest outdoor cameras had a magnetic attach option -- even easier than the sticker/epoxy/etc path I mentioned.

<comment><USER17> Most houses around here (EU) don't really have AC power plugs on the outside. Which is what the OP is probably talking about.

<comment><USER18> If you have a garden, then yes, you absolutely have an AC power on the outside for things like lawnmowers. "Most houses" seems widely inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was able to build my own security camera with an rpi: [https://blog.thekyel.com/?anchor=motion](https://blog.thekyel.com/?anchor=motion)

The motion software is not great, but it's nice to know that my data isn't being sent off to china or some other bullshit proprietary service.

My next one will be an outdoor camera, and if I can get it to work with a converter ([https://www.amazon.com/GE-54276-Polarized-Handy- Outlet/dp/B0...](https://www.amazon.com/GE-54276-Polarized-Handy- Outlet/dp/B002DN6QX2)), I think that will take out almost all of the wiring work.

<comment><USER20> You may be interested in this: [https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos](https://github.com/ccrisan/motioneyeos)

> motionEyeOS is a Linux distribution that turns your single board computer > into a video surveillance system.

<comment><USER21> Yeahhh I know what I'm trying out this weekend. Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> _As Nest GM of security products Michele Turner noted during an event in San Francisco today, the number one way that burglars break into a house is simply through an unlocked door. But the most important thing that deters them is a security camera._

Interesting, I've read research that says the opposite - also based on interviews with convicted burglars. From "Protecting the Home: Exploring the Roles of Technology and Citizen Activism from a Burglar's Perspective":

 _Only two participants said they were deterred by cameras. The other thirteen participants stated that cameras did not concern them because they believed that most cameras were not constantly monitored, especially police cameras. Al- though a camera played a role in one participant's capture (P4), others believed that most cameras did not have a high enough resolution for them to be identified. P12 was the only one to describe how he disabled cameras, saying "I know how to disable [cameras]. I'd spray it and stand on the garbage and go through the window." Former burglars generally thought cameras did not increase their risk of being caught, which is consistent with prior work [15]._

<comment><USER23> At my old house I used to have a ton of amazon box thieves, even when I was at home downstairs. Put in some commercial grade dome cameras and crime stopped very fast. I'd see people walk up in the video, see the camera and just kinda walk away.

I think what you've pasted is more for businesses where thieves know there's high value goods or cash. In a home it's more smash and grab - whatever they can get quickly.

End of the day though an alarm system isn't going to stop anyone determined to get in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This article is a bit weird in that it doesn't mention that Nest already has an outdoor camera that has the features of the indoor camera -- and this outdoor camera is $199 (like $150 on Amazon).

[https://store.nest.com/products/NC2100ES](https://store.nest.com/products/NC2100ES)

This article doesn't really mention why I'd spend that much more money for what seems like a very similar camera to the outdoor one already on the market.

<comment><USER25> Yeah and the marketing beforehand made it pretty clear that they were introducing a product they don't already nearly offer.

<comment><USER26> We did. The Nest Secure alarm system is the all-new product area for us. The Nest Cam IQ Outdoor is an upgrade over the Nest Cam Outdoor.

<comment><USER24> I haven't seen the marketing, but the story didn't make it clear. Another poster noted the 4k and face detection, which makes sense as a differentiator.

But uploading 4k from multiple cameras... isn't that going to be a problem for most home users?

<comment><USER27> 4K sensor, uploads 1080p. 4K is used to do high-quality digital zoom (with some tricks like zooming in on person while simultaneously capturing the wide- field view).

<comment><USER24> Ok. That makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> > The camera will cost $349 and is now available for pre-order in the U.S. and > Canada.

Well criminals don't have to break in, just swipe the $350 expensive toy and walk away.

<comment><USER29> Yes, security cams are good for peace of mind, but they're not as useful as one might assume.

They're not going to stop an opportunistic crack-addled bottom-feeder from doing a "smash and grab" burglary.

Good for insurance, however, and check up on old-folks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Wow... that's quite a price tag. For ~$60 USD you can pick up a 1080p camera with quite good quality, nice Sony sensor and hardware H.264 with no mandated cloud connectivity - then hook it to Xeoma, Zone Minder, Blue Iris or similar software and automatically ship the latest motion detection results up to your favorite cloud storage platform or your own server.

I guess I'm probably not the target market for this though, but if you're a tinkerer there are some interesting options. And fun to be had in the firmware reverse engineering department too.

<comment><USER31> Can you link to a specific product which achieves all those things? The cheap cameras I've tried either don't support open protocols, or they want to stream your video to China, or both.

<comment><USER32> I have had good experience with an amcrest camera. It encourages you to set it up with their (terrible) service, but it also has an RTSP endpoint. It works pretty well with Zoneminder as well.

Edit: I also recommend checking out the Zoneminder wiki for suggestions. Here are some pages for Amcrest: [https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest](https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest) [https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest_QCam](https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Amcrest_QCam)

They also have a listing here: [https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Netw...](https://wiki.zoneminder.com/Hardware_Compatibility_List#Network_Cameras)

<comment><USER33> How is the security of Amcrest with where they stream and store your video? I can't find anything on their site on where the company is actually based out of. They just mention that sales in the US are sold out of the US. It's like they go out of their way to avoid answering the question of where they are headquartered.

<comment><USER32> They update it for security holes pretty regularly. I get the impression there are plenty of holes for them to fix, too.

AFAIK, you don't technically have to keep it connected to their service.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I have a few Nest Cameras. They are awesome, because the killer feature is the person-detection feature. It's very, very good and unlike other cameras or software packages like Blue Iris (which I bought), the person-detection and machine-learning stuff is fantastic and actually useful. I get almost zero false positives from shadows, etc.

I have gone through the entire gambit, having bought Arlo, Nest, Foscam, and trying Blue Iris, etc and can definitively say that Nest is the easiest and most reliable outdoor camera.

That said, I'm not going to buy this trumped up version of the camera mainly because I don't know what it buys me over the currect camera. The fact this has made the front page is kind of weird to me.

<comment><USER35> Hmm, I constantly get false person alerts when two of my tiny yorkies are in frame at the same time. Must see the eyes from one, and the hips from another? Not sure. It's not super annoying though, I enjoy getting alerted a few times a day with a picture of my pups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does it work off-cloud? Can I firewall it entirely behind my own LAN? If so, sold.

I've spent so much time screwing around with generic Chinese hardware that's, well, sometimes great (and sometimes truly worthless). Most generic brands (that exist for 6 months at a time) have software/firmware that leaves much to be desired, and is sometimes outright broken, but at least more often than not at least implement (most) of an open-source IP-cam standard ( _unlike_ the fancy expensive cameras).

But I have no interest in trading any sort of even theoretical access to video of my home for a fancy web interface: [http://shodan.io/](http://shodan.io/)

<comment><USER37> Yea, cloud-only was the deal-breaker for me for Dropcam (now Nest). It just seems so silly and wasteful. You have a camera on your home LAN, uploading video out to a server somewhere, just so you can... download the video back to your home LAN for viewing??? WTF? Why can't I even have the option to operate it LAN-only? Just seems like a bizarre limitation from a product point of view. Obviously their business model depends on upwelling you cloud services.

<comment><USER38> The idea is that you can get alerts and view the photos/videos remotely when you're not at home. For example, when you're at work or on vacation.

But for that, you might as well buy a cheaper camera and configure it yourself to upload to a cheaper service like CameraFTP [1]. It's run by some cloud storage provider, I forget which one.

[1] [https://www.cameraftp.com/](https://www.cameraftp.com/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hmmm, strange headline as Nest launched an outdoor security camera last year. This "IQ" model is a new version with higher definition picture and person- recognizing features. The original is still available.

</comment><comment><USER40> Is it me or the article's photos were taken at a weird moment?

<comment><USER41> There really isn't a good reason to have used the first 2 pictures. They just make the presenter look bad. It leaves me wondering what they were thinking: Did they only take 3 photos? Do they need a certain number of photos per an article?

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I was hopeful about this to replace my Ubiquiti cameras, but I really want something that is going to be PoE. Nest really seems to be all about WiFi, so I shouldn't be surprised, but am I the only one that doesn't want cameras on WiFi?

I put up some Ubiquiti cameras last year, we live on a pretty quiet street but we had some kids pulling shenanigans (a car window was shot out with a BB gun, our Little Free Library bench was drug out into the street, change being stolen from cars).

Since the cameras, nothing has happened, so that's a plus.

But the Ubiquity recorder device makes the system nearly unusable. For some reason, recordings usually stop while there is still motion going on, so I end up with a lot of little 15-30 second videos that show only the start of whatever is going on. I've fiddled with it a lot and had no luck.

<comment><USER43> This is disappointing to read. I just bought an outdoor Ubiquiti camera and their little VCR-cassette sized device and in my indoor evaluations it worked very nicely. I was going to put it up outdoors, but maybe I should just skip that plan and go with a traditional Nest. The indoor ones I have work very well, despite being on WiFi. I do have a solid WiFi at home, though, with two Ubiquiti AP-AC-HDs, unfortunately stuck to a DOCSIS 3.0 modem with only 20Mbps upstream (despite 300Mbps down).

<comment><USER44> My opinion:

We install Unifi camera systems for a living - the crazy amount tiny little files and MongoDB basically require that the Unifi Video Controller have an SSD for reliable usage - that precludes the Unifi branded Unifi Controller that has a spinning drive.

Our recommendation: A Intel (Intel Brand) Atom NUC with an SSD and 8GB of RAM. Installing Linux and the Unifi server on it takes about 20 minutes and you're left with a more manageable machine.

I would also admit that the Unifi Video Controller hasn't been rock-solid until about a year ago - current releases now go forever without issue.

<comment><USER42> I've been thinking about just imaging the Unifi video box hard drive to an SSD and then putting that back in place, hoping the SSD would help improve performance and longevity enough to make it more reliable. I have thought about setting it up as a virtual instance inside a more general purpose "home server", but currently I don't have anything but laptops/chromebooks at home and kind of what to keep it that way. :-)

Thanks for the pointers. I haven't had the Unifi system for a year yet, so I must be running the more reliable software.

I did do an install of the Unifi software on a Ubuntu virtual machine for initial testing, and I agree that it was super easy.

So I assume that if you are installing these systems, that you are more or less happy with them? I was optimistic about it, like the cameras and the promise of the controller software, but wish it was more reliable.

Have you seen the thing where it stops recording in the middle of motion?

<comment><USER44> Yes - before the 3.x branch got stable - the controller would do all sorts of stupid things - like stop recording at all.

At the same time the controller has gotten more stable, we finally bit the bullet and jumped to SSDs for all our installs - I think that helps with long term reliability. I had a hunch that the controller doesn't deal with SATA timeouts while a spinning hard-drive reallocates sectors. But I really have no evidence of such a theory.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I'm really having a hard time understanding what their target market is here.

Most home users aren't going to pay full retail for cameras, hire a professional installer to put 1-4 cameras outside, then pay for cloud storage... or at least not without a huge amount of Support effort. Given their feature list, they aren't going to be able to compete with the business/enterprise market due to both having worse features AND being more expensive.

(shameless plug: I work for a company making enterprise IP cameras, and both our cloud storage AND cameras are cheaper, while having way more features)

<comment><USER43> I was very interested in seeing what made your cameras and plans cheaper... but was disappointed. VIAAS seems to charge $479/year for 30 days of 1080p video and $399 for the camera. I don't use Nest's new camera but I have two of their indoor cameras elsewhere, for which I pay $150/year for the first camera and $100/year for the second (I think) for 30 days video. They also have a $50/year plan for 7 days of video. It also sends me e-mail and APNS alerts when it senses motion or people. So, I don't really see how your parenthetical assertion is true - despite really wishing it were true.

I have evaluated and intend to use a UniFi camera system at my home when I can get around to running the PoE wires.

<comment><USER45> I'm an engineer, so I'm not the best at explaining how pricing works for larger companies, but most customers do not pay msrp.

Our 30-day plan is $20/month msrp whereas Nest is $30/month. (Your Nest pricing is not current - you're probably grandfathered on that rate)

Our main market is businesses with multiple locations who need role-based access and/or LDAP integration for cameras with cloud storage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Or you can spend $30, get this indoor camera:

[https://www.amazon.com/Wansview-Wireless-Security- Surveillan...](https://www.amazon.com/Wansview-Wireless-Security-Surveillance- Monitor/dp/B01JGBIFGO/)

Or spend $42 and get it's outdoor parent:

[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J0V6BWA/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01J0V6BWA/)

<comment><USER47> I bought one of those shitty $30 ones. They don't work. They freeze and then you have to reset them like twice a week. I'd much rather have something made by a company like Nest that I know won't get knocked out.

<comment><USER48> Nest has a history of shutting down product lines and rendering them unusable. One of which was just 49 days old at the time, as I recall. Revolv was the product line, though there may be more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> >> the number one way that burglars break into a house is simply through an unlocked door

Is this a statement about criminaity or about stupidity of home owners. As a Europian it is hard to make a difference...

</comment><comment><USER50> Is a security cam really the best deterrent? I figure my two pitbulls would beat out a security cam on their own merits, though I'd preferably combine the two.

<comment><USER51> Aren't home security dogs vulnerable to the "drop a piece of fresh, juicy meat on the ground" attack?

<comment><USER52> true! but the time delay of a dog eating meat is random. I would think most dogs can finish some meat before the attacker can unmount a tv, and some dogs would prefer to...play.. with an intruder over food.

<comment><USER53> So then you just switch to the tug-o-war chew toy attack.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> KISS might work best for security cameras. If someone is breaking into your house, maybe you just need a battery powered camera in the hallway. Like game cameras, battery powered and takes pictures /videos of the perp. No power problems, no internet connectivity issues etc.

That's all a camera does, evidence, after the fact, unless you're Scarface and monitors everything.

</comment><comment><USER55> What I want is an internal security camera that is smart enough to detect when someone is in distress. something that can record patterns and note deviations. this is all in the idea of monitoring the elderly. something that is simple to setup, where a handful of cameras and such don't break the bank all to give elderly relatives freedom and security

</comment><comment><USER56> > To find this out, the company actually brought in professional burglars and > talked to them about their "work" experience.

Ones that got caught.

</comment><comment><USER57> I recently researched outdoor security cameras for our home and discovered that the the outdoor security camera market is a _complete_ mess.

My requirements were, I thought, fairly simple. Good quality outdoor camera which uploaded motion off-site (cloud, FTP, whatever).

Apparently, that doesn't exist.

Most of the cameras fail the first requirement. Terrible video quality, tiny field of view, poor build quality that results in frequent failures, and/or bad track records with security bugs.

Some do okay on the first mark, but fail on the second. It's beyond me why most security cameras don't have at least _some_ ability to upload motion off- site. I have an Amcrest indoor camera, really terrible, but at least it will automatically upload motion to an FTP server. But it seems none of their outdoor cameras upload motion; only still images. !?

Hikvision cameras were frequently recommended as capable and good quality, but they were riddled with security bugs. Totally unacceptable for a _security_ camera.

Nest, from the article, has good build quality, and AFAIK no serious security issues. But no normal American can actually use them, because for all intents and purposes they require ~2 Mbps of constant upload bandwidth per camera. Google being Google requires the cameras upload all footage, 24/7 to their servers. For decent quality, that means 2Mbps of bandwidth. There's really no other way to use the cameras without doing that constant upload. Most Americans don't have much upload bandwidth. I only have 10 Mbps egress, which means each camera eats 20% of my bandwidth. Totally useless.

Not to mention uploading 24/7 live footage of your home to Google, and paying hundreds of dollars per year in subscription fees for the privilege.

Cleverloop sells a system similar to Nest, but they they do all their machine learning motion detection and such locally. So you don't have to burn upload bandwidth, and you don't have privacy issues. Plus no subscription fees. But their cameras are unreliable, 720p, limited FoV, and not standards compliant so you can't use them outside of Cleverloop's system.

There was another system, who's name I forgot, which was all around good and met all the requirements ... except that apparently all the cameras have a bug where they often delay recording after motion detection for 5 seconds or so. Wow...

All the other systems fall into either poor quality, buggy software, security issues, etc, etc.

Basically, for the average consumer there are _no_ good options. I'm an engineer so I have the advantage of getting my hands dirty customizing things but most people don't have that option. Most people need a system that just works. It's totally crazy that such a thing doesn't exist. And personally, I'd rather not spend my time building a custom camera system. I, too, want something that just works.

Well, after days of research the solution I landed on: I bought some plain ole PoE cameras from Costco. They have good specs (4MP, 90 FoV) and I trust Costco to vet for quality. Still fairly cheap (~$150 per camera). I bought an old small form factor Dell, Core i5, 2TB storage for $250 to act as the local recording station. I'll slap some software on there, ZoneMinder or Blue Iris or something, and hopefully get it to detect motion and upload those clips to the cloud. The cameras will also automatically upload snapshots over FTP (seriously why can't they just upload video!?) as at least a redundant system.

I'm just aghast at how difficult and cruddy all of this is.

<comment><USER58> What you're describing does not sound like the job of a camera but the jobs of a surveillance system.

Did you look into Synology at all?

<comment><USER57> You mean Synology Surveillance Station?

As far as I could tell, SS is some feature of Synology NASes. So you still need cameras, then you need to buy a Synology NAS, and then you need to license SS (which is a per camera cost after some number of cameras, IIRC). It didn't seem compelling versus just buying the Dell for $250 + software. And, again, it doesn't solve the problem of finding good PoE cameras.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> D-link makes reasonable wifi cameras that can be used for home security and they double as baby monitors. You can buy 5-7 of them for the price of a single Nest camera. They have motion/sound detection (lot can be improved though). Mobile app is slow but works ok. E-mail alerts with stills/videos are useful when you are away from home.

</comment><comment><USER56> > And with its built-in speaker, the IQ Outdoor does, of course, allow you to > talk directly to those random people on your driveway.

Note that this may very well violate certain state wiretap laws that require two party consent.

<comment><USER60> How is it any different from an intercom system?

<comment><USER56> An intercom in theory makes a sound when it is listening in or starts to work when the party on the other end presses a button.

See this with regard to evesdropping:

"New York makes it a crime to record to record or eavesdrop on an in-person or telephone conversation unless one party to the conversation consents. "

[http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/new-york-recording- law](http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/new-york-recording-law)

Do I think anyone would be prosecuted? No but the way I read it it's a violation of the law.

<comment><USER61> I hope that means deliberate eavesdropping. The street that runs right outside my window is frequently used by people walking home from the bars, and drunk people don't notice how loud they're talking. I've overheard some strange (and sometimes very personal) conversations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Great.

Now burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside, _then_ rob your place.

<comment><USER63>
      burglars will cut your internet connection to the outside

How, exactly?

OK, so the question is a little facetious, but most burglars won't know (or even know to consider) that they should cut a particular cable before breaking in.

In many installations, that cable won't necessarily be visible/reachable: want to climb a telephone pole to cut what's hopefully an ADSL cable and not a mains electricity cable? Without anyone noticing you?

Some users may also use a backup 3G/4G data connection, hook the alarm up to a UPS, and in some cases of monitored alarm systems, a data outage is in itself an alertable/respondable alarm.

Your degree (and expenditure) of defense will very much depend on your perceived threat profile, but for the most part, a burglar cutting your internet connection isn't high on the threat list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm waiting for the "cheap and cheerful" version that runs pictures through your Facebook account for face identification.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

</comment><comment><USER65> I have a regular nest camera inside and another camera that does pan and tilt. The damn nest camera always thinks my cat is a person. Drives me mad.

</comment><comment><USER66> $349 -

No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER67> Here's an app idea.. scan your social network find the perp.

</comment><comment><USER68> The day after August made a product launch too, interesting

</comment><comment><USER69> can't someone just rip this off your door? _yoink_!

<comment><USER70> IIRC, the Nest cam streams to their cloud service, so you'd have a nice little video of someone committing that crime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> The creep and ick factor for this is my barrier.

<comment><USER58> Apparently it's wrong for me to feel icky with google monitoring who comes and goes from my house.</comment></comment>


A curl cheat sheet - <AUTHOR> http://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2015/09/16/a-curl-cheat-sheet <comment><USER2> Not strictly a curl hack, but you can quickly get your IP geolocation details with curl and [http://ipinfo.io](http://ipinfo.io) (full disclosure, it's my service):

      $ curl ipinfo.io
      {
        "ip": "18.104.22.168",
        "hostname": "mce2736d0.tmodns.net",
        "city": "Los Angeles",
        "region": "California",
        "country": "US",
        "loc": "34.0522,-118.2437",
        "org": "AS21928 T-Mobile USA, Inc.",
        "postal": "90013",
        "phone": 213
      }

Or just your IP

      $ curl ipinfo.io/ip
      184.108.40.206

Or any other field (eg. city)

      $ curl ipinfo.io/city
      Los Angeles

Or lookup another IP

      $ curl ipinfo.io/188.8.131.52
      {
        "ip": "184.108.40.206",
        "hostname": "google-public-dns-a.google.com",
        "city": "Mountain View",
        "region": "California",
        "country": "US",
        "loc": "37.3860,-122.0838",
        "org": "AS15169 Google Inc.",
        "postal": "94040",
        "phone": 650
      }

Or a specific field for that IP:

      $ curl ipinfo.io/184.108.40.206/org
      AS15169 Google Inc.

<comment><USER3> If you start a comment out with "not strictly [related to linked article]" and hijack the discussion by plugging a website it seems like the decent thing to do is mention that you are the developer behind said website. I think this is even more important when you include so much <pre> text that the other comments are pushed so far down the page.

 _Full-Disclosure: Some people still believe in it_

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the tip. I've updated the comment to add the disclosure. Definitely not my intention to hide it though, it's clearly listed in my profile.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly offtopic, but I highly recommend using httpie for command line http:

[https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie](https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie)

No cheatsheeet needed, the syntax is a lot friendler.

<comment><USER5> Found httpie sometime back. I still use curl but 80% of the time I use httpie now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> While great, I stopped using it for httpie instead, it has a much simpler interface.

<comment><USER7> Maybe I'm wrong, but httpie appears to be targetting http transactions only, while curl supports multiple protocols (ftp, etc.).

curl's syntax is also baked into various Web Browser network debuggers. Both Chrome and Firefox's network transactions display have a "output to curl" option to allow you to recreate the network transaction exactly.

Edit: on Firefox, the option is "Copy as curl"

<comment><USER6> That is true, curl has some additional protocol features and then of course it being a standard part of most *nix OSes makes it easy to understand why Chrome and Firefox both have the copy as curl option. I still use curl regularly but for any pure http(s) stuff I use httpie because of its improved user experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Confessions. I know I should use curl but I never do and just use wget and think curl is just a one year newer wget :(

curl is better tool than wget but I used wget first and never changed. I do use aria2c more now for downloading but I know curl is a great tool I don't use.

</comment><comment><USER9> May I suggest adding `--proxy URL` which is useful if using Charles/Fiddler to toggle between environments.

<comment><USER10> I use `HTTP_PROXY=[http://xxx](http://xxx) curl xxxx` all the way. Works for any program, without need to remember different option syntax.

<comment><USER11> In my experience the proxy environment variable (contrary to most other environment variables) must be _lower case_ , i.e. "http_proxy". Therefore:

      http_proxy=http://proxy-server.example:3128/ some_command

<comment><USER10> You are absolutely right. I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> curl -e "referer"</comment>


Google moves to mainstream RSS with a simple name - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_moves_to_mainstream_rss_with_a_simple_name_change.php

<comment><USER2> Lingo is so important.

I was at a lecture once given by a top Australian political PR/Lobbyist. He recounted running the battle over some environmental policy that the National Farmers Federation (NFF) was opposing.

Fascinating stuff.

One of the central components was 'owning' a handful key phrases. They wanted 'sustainable' (as in economically sustainable communities).'Custodianship' (the farmers as opposed to collective) to be associated with them. He showed the progression of the use of these in the media over the campaign period.

There was a 180 degree turn. All those words completely changed sides & completely changed meanings. The public attitudes (eg for/against sustainability) didn't.

I wonder what RSS adoption would have been if the it had a better lingo to begin with.

<comment><USER3> Firefox displays "subscribe to this page" when you hover over the orange feed icon on the right of the address bar. The terminology is already established.

Just like how it says "www" or "http", but people associate both of those with "web page".

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree that "RSS" is not an intuitive name, but the article is making this into a bigger issue than it is. After all they are only changing the link. :)

<comment><USER5> I wholeheartedly disagree - getting the terms right is SO important. For instance, I was about 2 yrs late to blogging because the word "blog" just confused me, but I jumped right into podcasts because I knew exactly what it was just from hearing the word.

<comment><USER4> Getting terms right is one thing, but _many_ sites already have such terminology. i.e.: Follow this post _link_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RSS and site feeds are the DVR of the internet.

Just thought I'd get that one in there. If you need to market it to someone, call it that.

Come to think of it, that is a smoking hot idea. There really is no TiVo of the internet feed reader.

You don't star your subscriptions. Your feed reader doesn't crawl out on the internet looking for more content like what you're already "recording". You can't set up a wish list... and there's no real clearinghouse of feeds (listings) or the semantic links between them (read Coding Horror? you may also like Joel on Software). I know the analogy is not perfect, but it sure seems like fertile ground...

</comment><comment><USER7> My impression when trying to explain Twitter to non-geeks was that "follow" is not really that great a choice of word. It sounds rather weird actually, like a cult. That's in Germany, though, might be because I am not a native speaker.

<comment><USER8> "Follow" seems natural to me now, but I remember thinking it sounded a bit stalkerish when I first saw it. And I'm not sure it's any more comprehensible than "subscribe" for casual users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do people who are arguably familiar with these things insist on using "RSS"? RSS is but one format, atom is growing rapidly and it is I believe already used by most Google services including Blogger. "Feeds" is the correct term and while not perfect surely better than some unpronounceable acronym.

<comment><USER10> For the same reason that people still write with a Biro or Hoover the carpet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Basically, they want to turn Blogger into a Twitter-like social network that isn't limited to 140 characters.

<comment><USER12> Tumblr already uses this lingo, too, and I think it should make more sense to people. I thought that the "RSS is like email" metaphor would work, but I think this is going to help adoption quite a bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Because "subscribe" is a term not understood by anyone to mean receiving something regularly, of course.</comment>


Ask HN: Appsumo needs your help - <AUTHOR>

Appsumo has a killer Lean Startup Bundle coming next month and I need your help to get this right. I need a quip to print on a sticker that geeks worldwide will proudly sport on their laptops. It can be an image (Ries with the Che Guevara treatment?) or a would-be slogan.
It must be hilarious, speak to the lean startup "movement" and printable on a sticker
Here's a few to start you off:
"Pivot", "My MVP just facebooked your mom" and "Iterate or Die"
CAN YOU SEE WHY I NEED HELP?
What's in it for you? Seeing your words on the laptops of your cohort! A good word from me to the Masters of the Universe aka McClure and Ries!
Leave a comment that we can use on the stickers! Thanks! <comment><USER2> Well, I need help from AppSumo ;-)

I get emails about things I want to buy from AppSumo. I click through to your website on the same day I receive said emails. Your site confirms my email address. I'm then shown a DIFFERENT product/bundle than what I was emailed about. It has happened twice...and makes me less likely to click through in the future. I thought AppSumo usually only offered one bundle at a time, so I'm confused as to how this is happening...?

<comment><USER3> On the bottom left of the site you will see 'Previous Deals.' I suppose it is a bit of a misnomer since you can see current deals as well.

Click that and you should be able to see all of the current deals.

<comment><USER4> You mean "bottom right"? ;)

<comment><USER3> Haha. Yes. I mix those up way too often.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ohhh! I like these things.

1\. "Lean startups, disrupting your business from Day 1"

2\. i) launch a dipshit company ii) pivot iii) ???? iv) exit for $25m dollars

3\. if you mention the term lean startups again, im going to pivot my fist into your face

4\. lean startups - leaning over your competitors shoulder and copying

5\. more hacking, less hacker news

6\. be like water, pivot (picture of bruce lee in the background)

7\. only upstarts start startups

8\. imvu is pronounced im-vu not i-m-v-u

9\. lean startups - turning 1 year failures into 5 year deathmarches

</comment><comment><USER6> "Ramen rich" "Startup or shutup" "Powered by Caffeine" "I API, therefore I am" "Scale this" "Lean, mean and coding" "hack or be hacked" "sql injection happens" "fail fast"

<comment><AUTHOR> Ooooh: "Fail Early, Fail Fast"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Traction isn't everything, it's the only thing." "Getting customers ... you think you know, but you have no idea."

</comment><comment><USER8> My other car is a startup.

</comment><comment><USER4> "looking for a technical co-founder"

"fund this"

</comment><comment><USER9> "10x Ninja Bad Ass... Ya... You don't belong here" OR "10x Ninja Bad Ass... Ya... You definitely couldn't hack it"

</comment><comment><USER10> a few entries from kyle:

i got pregnant from customer development

i put the P in MVP

</comment><comment><USER10> Anyone like "iterate or die?"

</comment><comment><USER11> "I A/B Test My Girlfriends"

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody would believe that. Know your market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You down with MVP? Yeah you know me! (ok that sucked :P)

<comment><AUTHOR> Dude. You're worse than me! ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For skinny pitches

<comment><USER14> I love it

"No Fat Pitches"

<comment><USER3> That made me giggle way more than it should have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> You're my officemate and you don't even know it.

</comment><comment><USER15> "My MVP is lean and disruptive"

</comment><comment><USER4> "at least my startup is lean"

</comment><comment><USER4> "...heading off the Rails..."

</comment><comment><USER16> "Eric Ries has a posse"

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! That would make an awesome visual as well.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "Pivot" is so 2010.

</comment><comment><USER18> step 1: write code step 2: ??? step 3: big profit

</comment><comment><USER19> tl;dr - We pivoted

</comment><comment><USER16> Pivot or Die

</comment><comment><USER20> "Minimum Viable Product Factory" "getOrCreateMVP();" "while(true){getOrCreateMVP();}" "if(goodEnough){release();}"

<comment><AUTHOR> I love the code. That's t-shirt worthy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I got funded by a fucking pirate. My pitch made me his bitch.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it bad to have "fuck" on a sticker bound for a laptop? It's not really work-safe, right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "What's your fucking problem?" (no really, tell me, cause I don't know shit)</comment>


Build a Basic Golang HTTP Server - <AUTHOR> https://blog.ruanbekker.com/blog/2018/11/21/golang-building-a-basic-web-server-in-go/ <comment><USER2> When using Go's stdlib http.Server, there is no need to explicitly w.WriteHeader(http.StatusOK) if one simply uses the Write method on the given ResponseWriter — 200/Ok is the implicit default that is set if no status has previously been written.

e.g. Instead of:

io.WriteString(w, "Hello, World!" \+ "\n")

One can do:

w.Write([]byte("Hello, World!\n"))

And then the previous call to w.WriteHeader can be removed.

Additionally, one can also remove the explicit setting of the content type also, and it will be autodetected — although this detection comes with a minor cost, so one may consider this decision to be optional.

See [https://godoc.org/net/http#ResponseWriter](https://godoc.org/net/http#ResponseWriter) for more info.

HTH!</comment>


Dick Costolo makes sense of Snapchat - <AUTHOR> http://www.burningdoor.com/askthewizard/2008/01/start_up_business_models.html

<comment><USER2> This is a great, rational, well-informed article. I just can't help but feeling that the author could've added more value and started a discussion by adding his opinion as to which stage of his model Snapchat is in and how he might think of generating revenue streams in stage 3.</comment>


Astronomy Picture of the Day: 13 years and going strong - <AUTHOR> http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

<comment><USER2> Thank you for posting this on YC! This is _exactly_ the crowd to post this for! We're nerds so we must like space, right?</comment>


Hack the Fog, San Francisco's First High School Hackathon - Sam-Altman https://www.hackthefog.com/ <comment> Sam-Altman If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us at email@example.com !

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> nice!!!</comment>


996.icu, Chinese programmers against working overtime gathering on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/996icu/996.ICU <comment><USER2> 996 contributes to brain drain as well. I know several American-educated Chinese engineers whose primary motivation for working in America rather than back home is because they get a sane work-life balance.

<comment><USER3> It depends. Many top and ambitious talents did go back to China because they may get higher pay and have a higher chance of becoming billionaires. Average Joes like me tend to stay in the US because everything is much easier and less competitive.

<comment><USER2> >Many top and ambitious talents did go back to China because they may get higher pay and have a higher chance of becoming billionaires.

This is true. The people I know in this category are typically in leadership positions, e.g. scientists under the thousand talents program.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder why developers think they need special protections that other workers do not have. It is not uncommon for waiters to work 12 hour days, with 1 day off for wages far lower.

<comment><USER5> I guess it stems from the fact that developers are one of the few groups which CAN dictate some things.

We do forget that other jobs come with 14 hour shifts, no breaks, no health insurance, and constantly being on-call for a 5th of the salary.

That doesn't mean that devs shouldn't push for decent conditions though.

Also, while devs "have it good," it's nothing near what lawyers and doctors made, so before patting ourselves on the shoulder and thinking we made it, we should keep tht in mind.

<comment><USER6> The other part of the argument is programming doesn't scale the same way. A sleep deprived waiter can fulfill his tasks while a programmer cannot perform on the same acceptable par.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An English translation is now available on [https://996.icu/#/en_US](https://996.icu/#/en_US) as well as GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER8> For those curious: 996 stands for 9a-9p x 6 days a week.

<comment><USER9> And AFAIK for most of the companies actually do this -- they sort of enforce employees to work as 996. In the meantime do not pay for working overtime or pay very few.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a Chinese developers, 996 is an unspoken rule around in IT companies. When I got interviewed, HR would always ask whether I was OK with 996.

</comment><comment><USER11> When I was in investment banking, it was more like 727 (7am-2am, 7 days/week).

<comment><USER12> I work in finance and all I can say is it's not sustainable and not definitely something anyone should be proud of. Literally no one benefits from such long work hour, not even the company itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Jesus - its now by stars the number 4 repo in all of GitHub after… 1 week

<comment><USER14> 2nd place now [https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=stars%3A%3E10000&type=Repo...](https://github.com/search?utf8=&q=stars%3A%3E10000&type=Repositories&ref=advsearch&l=&l=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> modern china is definitely odd as it proclaims to be socialist and capitalist, but its a lot like 1920s America. Off the rails capitalism that ate the peoples gubment.

</comment><comment><USER16> mainstream views of a small chinese forum are as follows:

The programers are textile women in the new era.

such a weak resisting.

other workers even work harder and receive less and they said nothing, why these programers so delicate?

and so on

<comment><USER12> long hours != work hard

so sad people in that forum even don't realize it and are so proud of their so-called "hard work" while getting exploited by their employers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What is this?</comment>


A Statistical Test Gets Its Closeup - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/a-statistical-test-gets-its-closeup-1050/

<comment><USER2> Great quote in the WSJ comment section:

[http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/a-statistical-test-gets- its-...](http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/a-statistical-test-gets-its- closeup-1050/tab/comments/)

      The agency will bend their statistical significance
      requirements when hypothesizing that a treatment has
      risks, but almost never does when considering the
      efficacy of a treatment.

That is the long and short of it. The FDA makes up the rules as they go along. As for the particular issue at stake, the Supreme Court's ruling in the Zicam case is horrifying:

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870371250457623...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703712504576235683249040812.html?mod=googlenews_wsj)

It is indeed true that statistical significance is not the be-all and end-all. It is also true that you need _some_ method of determining whether a result could be due to chance or not.

This is particularly true when you have trial lawyers and regulators who smell blood. Dow Corning was sued and had its reputation dragged through the mud because people thought breast implants were causing some kind of disease. Turns out that wasn't true at all:

[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&re...](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9B03E6D9103BF932A15755C0A96F958260&n=Top%2fReference%2fTimes%20Topics%2fOrganizations%2fI%2fInstitute%20of%20Medicine)

Now that statistical significance has been jettisoned as a defense, any group of anecdotal injuries of dubious provenance is in theory grounds for a class action lawsuit. And trial lawyers specialize in turning that particular kind of theory into practice. There's a reason that "mesothelioma" was the #1 Adword for a while -- ambulance chasers bid on it like crazy.

The Supreme Court has just made it a whole lot easier for them.

</comment><comment><USER3> For the non-Bayesians, here's a paper that explains in detail one of the strongest criticisms of null hypothesis testing, by bayesian John Kruschke:

[http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/articles/Kruschke2011PoPS.p...](http://www.indiana.edu/~kruschke/articles/Kruschke2011PoPS.pdf)

To summarize, an experimenter's internal mental state (intentions) can affect the t statistic. That is: not changing the experiment at all, but just thinking something different -- gives a different level of significance.

In Kruschke's words: voo-doo.</comment>


Results of the 2016 StackOverflow Developer Survey - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2016 <comment><USER2> [https://twitter.com/StackOverflow/status/707979252218507264](https://twitter.com/StackOverflow/status/707979252218507264)

Thanks for participating in our brief, possibly unintentional, pre-launch test of the 2016 Developer Survey. Real launch happens next week.</comment>


New ASLR-busting JavaScript is about to make drive-by exploits much nastier - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/security/2017/02/new-aslr-busting-javascript-is-about-to-make-drive-by-exploits-much-nastier/ <comment><USER2> Here is the actual research paper for those who want a more in depth read. [http://www.cs.vu.nl//~herbertb/download/papers/anc_ndss17.pd...](http://www.cs.vu.nl//~herbertb/download/papers/anc_ndss17.pdf)</comment>


Invest in books - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/invest-in-books-c945b59fd761 <comment><USER2> This may sound silly, but I've recently rediscovered just how amazing books are. I guess, compared to the internet, books are a bit obtuse - unlike reddit or youtube, you have to actively dig into them (sometimes it feels like the internet just washes over you.)

But books have huge information density - new lessons and ideas, and most importantly, new lenses to see your world through. Books have a great way of articulating things that you've always known about subconsciously but never really have thought about.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great way to describe books, "new lenses to see your world through". It's basically that, we can explore subjects through other people's eyes who care deeply enough to write a book about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kind of reminds me of when I picked up a copy of Ignition! ([https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-informal-history-liquid- prop...](https://www.amazon.com/Ignition-informal-history-liquid- propellants/dp/0813507251)) at a used bookstore for $5. I definitely got my money's worth out of the read, and I was quite surprised years later when I heard it was very rare. I still haven't sold it.

I love used bookstores.

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too. I always borrow my books, but I don't want to sell them. I will try to keep them. I'm always returning to books I've read when I need some advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you're tight on money, many good books can be had used. I recently got a copy of Tanenbaum's Distributed Systems book for a third of the cover price.

<comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to mention that most of the books I bought are used. They are a lot cheaper sometimes and are in perfect conditions. The last one I've bought, "It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be" by Paul Arden cost me only 0.01 pounds(without shipping). It is used but like new. Awesome purchase

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Get a library card. A bookshelf full of books that you aren't going to ever re-read or share is just decoration.

<comment><USER4> I guess that kind of decoration can have value too. I, for one, love seeing a good display of books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> My thoughts are similar to the author's. With books, the upside seems so high that even if a book is more expensive than usual I can always rationalize the purchase by postulating whether it will be a "game changer", in which case even $100 is a relatively small price to pay.

<comment><AUTHOR> Couldn't agree more with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Following the same train of thought, you should invest in Wikipedia!

<comment><AUTHOR> I've already done, and continue to support them at least once every year :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tips for highschool summer internship? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Understand the expectations and goals for both the intern & employer upfront.

Is this simply to gain work experience or is it intended as a true learning opportunity? Getting clear on that piece will make all the difference to everyone involved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Both - I'll have fun working if I'm learning and challenging myself at the same time (which is generally how it works for me).</comment></comment>


Microsoft's undersea data center now has a webcam with fish swimming past - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/tldr/2018/8/9/17669936/microsoft-undersea-datacenter-webcam <comment><AUTHOR> Article subtitle is "Any fin is possible"!</comment>


Ask HN: In the next 5 years which markets will grow the most and why? - <AUTHOR> The more specific you are the better. <comment><USER2> Most people are terrible at predicting the future in this way. Some of the most accurate predictions sound like (or are) jokes at the time, like when JK Rowling was writing her first book as basically a "welfare mom." She did a lot of the writing while her baby napped at some eatery owned by friends/relatives. She would make jokes to the effect of "When my book gets famous, it will put your place on the map!" That basically all came true, from the book being famous to it making the place she wrote it famous too.

But when you go back historically, predictions of what life would be like "now" all left out the world changing invention of computers and internet.

There is a scene in the movie "The Graduate" where he is at a party and everyone is telling him what he should go into as his career because it will be big in the future. One person tells him "Plastics!" This was a joke at the time, a ridiculous statement. Years later, the plastics industry used that bit in a TV commercial.

If you really, sincerely believe "The Future is all about X industry," you aren't telling people that on the internet. You are quietly behind the scenes buying more shares in X or getting training to work in X or otherwise trying to make sure you are the firstest with the mostest in X.

<comment><USER3> 5 years out is not that hard, since it is basically which technologies that are either just out, or coming out soon will be successful. 10 years is more challenging, 20 impossible.

<comment><USER2> Five years ago, tablets were basically cutting edge new tech. They were insanely expensive and crappy as hell. They often faced limitations in functionality because a lot of websites did not accommodate them. I know because I bought two of them 5.5 years ago and it was $2000 worth of computers and lots of stuff just did NOT work.

Today, you can get a tablet for under $50 and Google is (or has) split its search stuff into PC and mobile search and is actively optimizing stuff for mobile because mobile search is eating the world. I seriously doubt anyone expected mobile to take over like this when it was new tech.

In contrast, "net books" seem to have gone extinct. I think that was supposed to be The Next Big thing -- until tablets came out and began eating their lunch.

<comment><USER4> 5 years ago, over 100 million tablets had been sold worldwide and the iPad was entering its 4th generation. Your description is more apt for 10 years ago.

<comment><USER2> Well, according to Wikipedia, the history of tablets goes back to the 1800s. But I know for a fact that I bought two tablets on December 31st, 2011 that were priced at $2000 (after getting a 2 year internet service contract plus a 20% employee discount to reduce the price, I paid $800 up front) and it was kind of the hot new item at the time. And I know for a fact that proliferation of apps we have now was not the norm back then. I had enormous difficulty getting things done on it and I noticed that painfully because I essentially had no other access to computers at the time. I can now do all kinds of things on a tablet bought for under $50 that I could only dream of and wish for 5 years ago.

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

Humorously:

 _" Mobile to overtake fixed Internet access by 2014" was the huge headline summarising the bold prediction from 2008 by Mary Meeker..._

[http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile- marketi...](http://www.smartinsights.com/mobile-marketing/mobile-marketing- analytics/mobile-marketing-statistics/)

<comment><USER5> The first generation iPad launched close to two years before your example in 2010 at $499.

I agree with the previous remarks - the tablet industry was pretty well established 5 years ago and hardly cutting edge tech - 10 years ago is definitely a better comparison at this point, with the crappy tablet devices Microsoft were pushing at much higher price points then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I personally think the market of add-on or web browser's extension.

Why? Because, web browser is second most software used after operating system by a normal computer users. If you are developer you use editor and web browser, if you are writer you use world processor and web browser, if you are market person you use trading software and web browser and so on. I mean web browser is something used by everyone.

We have written applications ( for computer and mobile device ) for most useful sotware - operating system to reach out our users. Now, it is time to target next software used by everyone. You might create a website but it will only be there until user do not close that tab. But, with extension, you will be in constant connection with user.

Currently thid market is uder estimate as many developer consider that it is not something that consider as programming. But, I think every website specific limit to connect users. and at that situation, add-ons will come to rescue.

<comment><USER7> I see the browser becoming the OS period. I didn't realize this until I got a ChromeBook and realized (with crouton) I can do everything I normally do on my Linux notebook.

<comment><USER8> Do you normally just watch Youtube and use Google Docs on Linux? Because that's about where the set of things you can do on both ends

<comment><USER7> All I need is a browser and a terminal since my development environment consists only of tmux/vim via Crouton chroots and Plex Web/Youtube/Google Music for entertainment.

<comment><USER8> Why use Chrome OS at all if you're just gonna virtualize Linux?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Blockchain and cryptocoin markets will probably grow the most in the next five years.

The total market cap for cryptocoins will grow from $50 billion today to $1+ trillion in the future.

<comment><USER10> Do you know how few people on HN even own any cryptocurrency? It's likely close to 1-2%. It's been like that for the past 5 years.

<comment><USER11> Major movie theaters and other retail stores in Phoenix, Arizona, accept bitcoin. It may not be 100% mainstream yet, but crypticurrency is going to explode in a big way

<comment><USER12> As a customer, why would I want to use Bitcoin (instead of, e.g., a credit card) at a movie theater (or at any other type of shop)?

<comment><USER13> For the of the thrill of not knowing how much actual spending power you have from one day to the next?

<comment><USER14> I can't say whether you're right or not, but your comment caused me to laugh out loudly enough that people at Starbucks looked over at me. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> India. Because it will go from 100mn internet users to 1200 mn, enabled by a massive 4G/fiber deployment currently underway.

<comment><USER16> Their economy has also been growing at about 7% per year. That's 40% over 5 years, which is around a trillion dollars (more in PPP).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> AI in all its guises, such as self driving cars, virtual assistants like Alexa, Siri, etc.

Augmented Reality, I would suspect in a year or two we will have the first successful product.

Services and entertainment for aging populations.

Real estate auction services, Trump is going to have to sell of a lot after going to prison.

<comment><USER3> Forgot solar power, batteries, roofs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Healthcare. Because a large portion of the population in the west (baby boomer generation) is getting older.

<comment><USER18> Look at healthcare cost going up - this is already happening in all markets. People getting old and fat cost an absolute fortune to keep alive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Timescales are hard but...Ai will do mostly all of it and humans are being factored out. Humans will need not apply for real work, fake work could proliferate. Automation vertically integrated into robotic systems will prevail in mostly all sectors... Embodied AGI will autonomously operate under duress, capable of or superior to humans at warfare. This is already normal today to a lesser extent, but not publicly claimed by anyone. I believe this is so because a soldier never reveals his position. Superior Industries could be: computer hacking using AI, computers being used in new ways on a mass scale, super computer quantum computing, nanotechnology, organ replacement, DNA therapies, automated field doctors, 3d PTSD therapy machines, data thievery & recovery using AI. AI will cause crime sprees as new exploits using AI trump non-AI systems. Also, People plugging their brains into computers makes sense bc then we achieve intelligence upgrades.3d printers that print anything fast. Lifelong AI Buddies/monitors. Nostalgia Industries as old people feel really out of touch with the modern world. Propaganda and fake news bc they will be more effectively convincing bc AI. As AI really starts to prove itself superior People will question everything. Maybe we will want to colonize Mars bc it will make humans feel not obsolete. Who knows.

</comment><comment><USER20> Low cost cloud providers. No idea why there's not a low cost competitor to AWS, GCE, and Azure. And I don't mean just a VPS. Full service cloud with equivalents for EC2, ELB, S3, Lambda, etc.

<comment><USER21> Outcompete Amazon (especially) on prices? Waiting to see who'll achieve that feat.

That aside, there's a cost threshold beyond which it wouldn't makes sense to offer cloud services at such ridiculous prices. If anything, I actually think compute prices might increase in future as demand for cloud services become globally outrageous, from Alaska to Zagreb.

<comment><USER22> I'd like to see the opposite of admining your own custom stack on vps or cloud instances. What I want is a really full featured walled guarden where compute storage and bandwidth are all metered and you just pay for what you use. Super cheap if you can live within the constraints. I'm talking mainframe style web app hosting, one giant server, you pay for a slice. No admining or provisioning of instances required.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Wrote a whole long response beginning with "my gut feeling is that markets are driven as much by politics as technology so Hacker News may not be the place to ask." Then said, man, that sucks.

I'm hoping for a market to end all markets, where the product is money. You sign up with a company, it pays you. All anyone wants is cheap, cheaper, free. Getting paid tops that.

So maybe solar panels are just getting competitive, but getting paid to put them on your roof, that's hot.

Turo is hot.

Universal basic income is hot. Maybe politicians don't have the imagination to make it happen, but we do. Secretly every employee in the world yearns to load the part of their job that even a monkey could do into a spreadsheet, go home, and still get paid. Given the permission to automate our own jobs, we'll do it gladly and in large numbers. The only thing stopping us is really really, ridiculously rich people, and people with no imagination. Somehow we have to find a way to pay them as well, and keep paying them, no matter how much they don't want to get paid.

</comment><comment><USER24> a reaction to technology overreach in ours lives. People are sick of their phones, laptops, sleep tracking, social media. We want to reclaim our mind back. There is place in LA that does Buddhist retreat where you sit in silence for 1 week, its booked 8 months in advance.

</comment><comment><USER25> Person tracking.

We're going through something similar to the industrial revolution, lots of people will lose their job to AI (or still be employed, but with significantly lower wages - even previously untouchable professions like lawyers, doctors and programmers).

To avoid riots, these people will be fed either through existing welfare programs or new basic-income style ones. But the old guard will want to make sure they don't blow their money on hookers and blow and booze, so anyone who peddles "here's how we can figure out which of the welfare recipients is non- compliant with their spending habits" is going to make a killing.

Sad, but inevitable in the current political climate.

<comment><USER26> Maybe in the next 50 years, but not the next 5. There's about a 10-1 marketing to actual breakthrough ratio for AI changing our economy. I agree it will eventually, and has made some inroads, but it won't anytime soon to the extent where we have to solve problems of demographic shifts.

There are few people I'm aware of who think to the contrary who are actually working at a technical level in the field of AI, and not founders of a startup riding buzzword funding or who have financial or PR interests to hype AI.

I'll add a caveat that the invention of general AI would accelerate this timeline. I think it will require paradigm shifts, not feature-augmented/ exotic ensembles of neural networks with RL layers, or other approaches possible with current techniques, but think it is still more possible, sooner than AI skeptics believe, but still beyond 5 years.

<comment><USER25> I think the nature of these revolutions is that they happen slowly but invisibly until one day all of a sudden everyone is aware of them. I wrote "AI", but it's not _just_ AI, it's a lot of things that are coming of age.

Some "Minimum wage jobs" are disappearing -- a local fast food joint now has about 1/3 of the employees it had a couple of years ago: they have better automated machines in the kitchen, and a smart ordering kiosk that most people use (though there's still a person at the register, for people who are uncomfortable with the kiosk or requests that are not available through it).

Translators, as a job, have almost disappeared (relegated to those needing "an official translation"). That happened in the last 10 years, starting with an awfully funny and weird altavista or google translate that would give you results that could only be meaningful if you had some familiarity with both languages - down to modern translation which, while not perfect, is readable and understandable.

Professional photohgraphers for newspapers used to command a $3,000/day salary just 10 years ago. Now it's closer to $300/day, if they can get it at all - because there's already someone on the scene, with a smart phone camera -- the pictures are horrible, but people are willing to give them for credit, so a photographer is unneeded.

The army of people working for Google/Facebook/Amazon to moderate user content, is being decimated.

It's started to happen to lawyers; It's not prevalent yet, but it is eating the more "mechanical" parts of a lawyer's job - finding relevant historical cases and summarizing them. Computers are now slightly better than the interns that used to be assigned to these jobs. In 5 years, they might be better than the experienced partners at these kinds of jobs.

It's closer than most people think in many, many jobs. Truck drivers will likely not be completely replaced in 5 years, but their jobs might change to "24 hour shifts" in which they are allowed to sleep until the automated truck wakes them up to deal with some condition.

You know, writing down what's in a picture, was almost sci-fi 10 years ago, and right now you have Google, Microsoft and ClariFi offering this as a cheap API.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The medical cannabis industry! \- Science: as we pass the obstacles of regulation, more studies will be able to confirm (hopefully) what we suspect so far. \- Zeitgeist of our times is "going green". \- Damaged image of big pharma.

</comment><comment><USER28> The atheist generation will have grown up and begin to look for someone to tell them everything will be okay. It's a good opportunity to start a new religion.

Also, some form of artificial companionship.

<comment><USER29> A new religion based around what? Is this religion supposed to actually be believed? This is one of my favorite videos which explains why new religions don't have as much credibility [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEg_Oys4NkA](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PEg_Oys4NkA) You have to watch the video to probably get the basic idea. I'm not Jewish despite the video focusing on Judaism.

<comment><USER28> Which direction is the zeitgeist blowing? From my perspective, it seems that there is a real and ongoing erosion of local communities (labor, religious, or otherwise) that are replaced, often times, by a shallow virtual existence. It does not have to be a religion in the conventional sense, just something that attempts to give meaning to the meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> my three guesses (my company is in 1 of these areas):

consumer internet privacy and security (think barracuda for the home market -- above and beyond a standard router/firewall possibly with active L7 features)

consumer and enterprise storage management (they literally can't even make enough ssd's right now, people and companies are hoarding data and can't manage it effectively or reliably)

rural and wilderness area wireless internet (people will start moving out of cities again and will want the same > 50 megabit low latency service).

<comment><USER31> Fascinating... I had a similar list, and The company I work for is on it. Drop a line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Cryptocurrency.

Have you sent someone money internationally before? How about across different banks? Typical transfers process at around 3-5 days. With the help of cryptocurrencies like Ripple, Steller and the like. Transfers happen in seconds. This will grow because now, banks will utilize this technology to get rid of the old one (Swift anyone?) and will save banks lots of time and money.

<comment><USER33> I send through transferwise. It's very fast and the exchange rates are very close to the forex rates - it was a lot easier and cheaper than using bitcoin.

The trick is to match flows of cash so they money isnt actually transferred internationally - my cash from the uk was sent to someone else in the uk and my US bank account was credited from some other US-based bank.

<comment><USER34> It's quite smart what Transferwise are doing.

When a transfer is made from country A to country B, the money gets first transferred from the sender in country A to local Transferwise account in country A (avoiding fees and conversions). Then they send the money from local Transferwise account in country B to the recipient in country B (again avoiding fees and conversions).

The magic is how they ensure that the local Transferwise accounts in each country have enough money to do the transfers. They own a bank account in every country they operate in, and the money flows between those bank accounts. They need to move money between their local accounts in each country while minimizing the amounts transferred, but also minimizing the fees and conversions. When they actually move the money is up to them, they just need to ensure they have enough on each account. I guess there's a lot of variables to optimize for, and it would be interesting to know more details of the process.

I've also seen a company called Azimo trying to do a similar thing, but I haven't tried them yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Some mode of online social interaction that seems ridiculous now but will seem obvious in retrospect. This will be milked for ads and acquired by a big player while me-toos nibble the ends in the aftermath.

The market will grow from zero to millions in this time, but it will be entirely consumed by one of the big five and everyone will just think of it as a Google feature or something.

<comment><USER36> You've just described 2nd and 3rd generation AR

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think food technology. As the worlds population grows, the demand for food and more productive ways to produce it will grow.

I think semi-automated systems will become more automated using some of the AI that is in the news today.

We may even see better automation on the programming front in terms of being able to create stuff.

I think we will see more software and automation in government at all levels. There is drive to automate everything, but governments tend to be even slower than enterprise to adopt things given the budgetary process.

Lastly, I think we will see some significant gains in genetic programming that come out of the CRISPR technique. If you recall the tech that allowed us to sequence the human genome was very slow at first. Eventually they developed faster techniques, and not you can sequence things an order of magnitude faster.

</comment><comment><USER38> There will be war. Anything that will protect us will do.

<comment><USER39> Will be? There _is_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Indexing. Who needs Google when you have your own index? And I don't know about you but I can't get passed 16 pages of search results on google even though it has billions of results for the search term "contact us" (have it set to 50 per page)

</comment><comment><USER41> I will go ahead and make this prediction for the amusement of myself (hopefully) and others in 5 years. Here it comes:

"AI will not become as big as people want to believe today."

</comment><comment><USER42> carpal tunnel syndrome specialists.

</comment><comment><USER43> 1) Weapon. Because of War. 2) Entertainment. Because of Pain.

</comment><comment><USER44> Support for trade schools and skilled vocational pathways (and vocational entrepreneurship) in place of four year university education for all.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think in the next 5 years desktop applications are going to be a thing again. Frameworks like Qt, electron, nw.js and others have made it very easy for developers to create desktop applications.

<comment><USER46> I struggle with that suggestion. Which probably means you are correct.

However we are seeing technologies like WebAssembly and WebGL which are directly addressing the benefits of desktop applications. What would a desktop application offer over browser based app?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> VR. People living in a place/time/body they physically aren't. When I'm old I'd like to VR to all the places I missed out on visiting because I was working too hard. I won't be alone.

<comment><USER48> People have been banging on about VR for years, I don't see it ever becoming more than a niche thing.

<comment><USER49> And people were banging on about personal mobile devices for years, then it all came together with the first iPhone. There are loads of these examples if you think about it. People expect these fast product deliveries form concepts but it takes time for hardware/software and execution to catch-up with potential.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Health care. The boomers are entering their prime health care spending years, and Obamacare will engender huge industry profits from "spend all you want - someone else will pay the bill!".

</comment><comment><USER48> Anything to do with mitigating climate change, clearly we aren't going to do anything significant to stop it.

</comment><comment><USER51> Not a market per se, but there seems to be a lot of low hanging fruits related to machine learning.

</comment><comment><USER52> im betting my pennies on real estate

</comment><comment><USER53> food automation, healthcare, learning/edu tech

</comment><comment><USER54> AI, because everything and their grandma needs to be smart.

<comment><USER55> That would be IoT.</comment></comment>