I Was a Cable Guy. I Saw the Worst of America - <AUTHOR> https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cable-tech-dick-cheney-sex-dungeon_us_5c0ea571e4b06484c9fd4c21 <comment><USER2> Had a similar job in a different lifetime. Had more than a few "interesting" jobs at people's houses, on poles,terminals and the like as well.

To me,it wasn't the worst of america but just humans being humans. The angry customers,9/10 of them are not all that bad when you realize they're mad at either the problem or the crappy company you work for. Maybe my working in a different state has to do with it.

The cat piss,dog poop and nastiness was bad but not as bad as being chased by animals and having turn your back to a growling hungry dog the owner insists "oh,he doesn't bite"

The bad ones stand out but I've been in really nice mansions and houses too. Very respectful and kind people too. Most offered water on hot days,some even snacks.

Meh,people are people. It's not good to generalize. Most people are just sorry,life is rough on the 99%.

<comment><USER3> One of my favourites was quite innocent. I'm in a mobile home, and I had interacted with the family before (they owned a local restaurant). I'm in their home office getting their DSL set up, and slowly it dawns on me that something really smells like shit. Like... it's permeating the whole house. My eyes are starting to water up a bit.

Finally, I'm getting close to finishing up. Through the door I hear their 4-year-old girl yell "grandma!!! I think I stepped in dog poo outside!!!"

Followed by: "oh honey you got it all over the carpet!"

Sure enough, as I'm leaving I notice an epic trail of tiny dog shit shoe prints spanning from one end of the house to the other. 10/10!

When I went to the restaurant for breakfast the following Saturday, the mom apologized and told me all about how many times they had to run the carpet cleaner through the house to get it cleaned up.

<comment><USER4> Poor lady. She must have been super embarrassed .

<comment><USER3> Yeah, most definitely was. I did my best to communicate "I get that kids do stupid stuff". We carried on going there every Saturday for breakfast :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Irate," eh? Maybe if the cable companies weren't local monopolists that operate with the business ethics of a purse snatcher their employees wouldn't have to deal with angry people.

(Aka why I have slow DSL: because it was either that or sue Mediacom until they actually supplied the service I was paying for. Yeah, there's a grudge here.)

<comment><USER6> I agree that cable companies suck, but would like to add that taking it out on low level employees also sucks.

<comment><USER5> Oh, absolutely. And the author sounds like a great person---no surprise at all that these companies screw over their employees even worse than their customers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I was a cable guy in San Francisco. The stories in this article are very plausible and even tame compared to the shit that I've seen.

My first day on my own I went to a "hotel" run by an Indian that barely spoke English in the Tenderloin. He pounded on a door for ten minutes shouting something unintelligible and finally unlocked the door to reveal a tiny room with shit smeared on the walls and a naked transvestite covered in blood from a heroin needle writhing on blood-stained sheets.

"Shouldn't we help?" I asked. "No. Is OK. Fix TV." All the little metal fittings on the cables throughout the whole hotel had been cut off by guests for use as makeshift pipes. The hotel charged by the hour and didn't ask any questions.

I have many anecdotes if anyone is interested in hearing them.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised at the quality of the article. I didn't realize Huffington Post can publish things like this.

</comment><comment><USER9> My best memory working in "cable" (satellite) was when I learned how OTA antennas (the big ones) worked... It was... _shocking_...

<comment><USER10> I think you are being downvoted because of the pun at the end of your comment, but if you don't mind sharing, I would love to learn how OTA antennas work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am grateful for articles like this. Every time I need a tradesman or repair person to fix something at home, I will remind myself that my home..my personal space.. is a zoo and I am better off learning to fix things myself or go without inviting strangers into my home who may or may not get all judge'y and write about it for public consumption.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm usually not into these long narrative article, but this was an interesting perspective and a good read.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get why she says she refuses water when offered. I have offered bottled water to all the techs that came by our new home, no one rejected it.

<comment><USER14> I imagine that she, as a woman, could be afraid of customers spiking the water they serve to her.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, does anyone know what bar here in Austin can I go to, just to say "Thank you for your service"?

<comment><USER16> There are really only four or five official gay bars here, most of which are in pretty close proximity to each other. So I guess this person wouldn't be too hard to find if you barhopped over a few days based on the description in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wow. I posted a quote from Time Magazine and the quote was flagged within seconds.

<comment><USER18> It was off topic and trollish, so correctly flagged. Posting like that will get you banned on HN, so please don't do it again. Instead, if you'd review [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) and take the spirit of the site to heart, we'd appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm not sure what to make of this.

I'm sympathetic to the author, she seems to be struggling. This seems true in her article to the Guardian ([https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/27/family- relig...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/nov/27/family-religious- cult-former-member-recalls-experiences)) :

"How have you felt since coming out? Have you had a lot of therapy? Not so much and most of it wasn't so helpful. I've had therapists cry and hug me and it was really strange. They just don't really know what to do with it. I mean, I still hide things. I still have nightmares, I can't deal with crowds. I will always feel kind of separate. For a long time, I just didn't really have friends. In high school, I had no idea how to talk to people. I didn't understand cultural references. Ninety per cent of conversations are: "Hey, do you remember that episode of Seinfeld?" and shit. And I was weird, I was just awkward. I read everything I could get my hands on. It's just what I did, I hid in books."

I think she's a good writer, but her own comments suggest her perspectives might not match most people's.

I hope she keeps writing and finds more peace in things around her.

</comment><comment><USER20> "But I didn't ask him that. I just stood and glared at him until he looked away. I needed the job. I assumed his kid would grow up to hate him."

Or hope that things work out and his father finds ways to love him more. This author seems a little angry. The more I read, the more I wondered if this was a normal account, or the account of someone who always seems to find themselves in strife.

But I can't say no to a peek under the sheets of people's lives. It fascinates me. I don't think I could do her job but I've always wanted just an afternoon where time freezes and I can lightly snoop on how a random assortment of people live (though realistically impossible without hurting others). Being a cable technician seems like a fair, legal alternative.

<comment><USER21> Or maybe its a chance for you to wonder why a gay woman might find themselves constantly frustrated and angry when living in a patriarchal homophobic society?

<comment><USER22> Ever hear the saying "when the whole world stinks, you have shit on your nose"?

The world is unlikely to be how any one person likes it. Learning to live with it is a good skill.

<comment><USER23> Would the same comment be applicable to other classes/races/sexes who have been and/or still are discriminated against? Would you say "learning to live with it is a good skill" to a straight white woman? An African-American man? A Jewish person? If the answer is no, investigate more closely the location of the fecal matter.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Evil Ink: A Robot Impersonator Opens a Blog to Post Spam From the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=evil-ink-a-robot-imperson <comment><USER2> This is why Google has to spend so much time and effort on spam detection. Fortunately, spam bots are still so stupid that they can't write anything intelligent.

But after reading the recent xckd comment it makes me wonder if we'll reach a point when spam bots will be smart enough that it will be difficult to determine that they aren't legitimate.

Then online identity theft will be an even bigger problem.</comment>


Show HN: Pancake – a CLI/Emacs web/gopher/file browser - <AUTHOR> https://defanor.uberspace.net/projects/pancake/ <comment><USER2> Looks nice, what are people using gopher for these days? I've read about the protocol and I like it conceptually, but didn't know if it was being used very often.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I think that phlogs form a large part of active gopherspace, though it might be simply because I'm mostly reading through those myself (i.e., that's rather subjective). Then there are some mirrors (web comics, websites), which tend to be handy if you prefer cleaner and/or more accessible UIs, and just homepages with homepage-style materials, of course.

<comment><USER2> Looks like the native support for gopher in Firefox went away... I was just showing someone at work gopher earlier this month, so it must be recent. I am an Emacs user so I'll give Pancake a try.</comment></comment></comment>


Things I Love About You: San Francisco Edition - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/e3a07f716c27

<comment><USER2> Everything seems great when you compare it to some place worse. That's why you won't find many transplants from big cities in SF, but instead lots of people from tiny Midwestern and Southern towns that moved to SF for work. So of course everyone in SF thinks the city is amazing; for most people there, it's the best place they've ever lived.

Try living in New York or LA, or even a smaller city like Boston/Seattle/Portland/Austin, and suddenly SF seems like an over-hyped bubble full of insecure people.

Regarding the "maker culture," I feel like I heard this myth a lot. In my view, SF's culture is becoming the boring valley office park culture. SF is packed with 20-30 y.o. single white and Asian males. Not the cool, eclectic city it was once know for, SF now feels awkward and boring. And again the most frustrating part of that is everyone is convinced they're living in Paris, but better cause "we're all entrepreneurs!! Looks how smart we all are!"

The comments about public transportation are laughable. SF is a joke. Even if you include the whole Bay Area's mediocre train systems, SF is a poor example of public transportation, even for the US. The BART makes one pass through a single corridor of the city and stops running at midnight.

Other cities around the size of SF: Indianapolis, IN. Fort Worth, TX. Columbus, OH. Charlotte, NC. And a lot of these cities have comparable (i.e. not very good) public transit systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've never been to San Francisco and I wish I could eventually live there, but...

Saying that San Fracisco transportation are top notch compared to South America is not going to help make SF look good. How much you pay in taxes and for a Muni or BART ticket there? What are the expectations regarding transportation for some living and working in SF?

And I'll may be too used to Europe, but some place that it's three hours from my home is not "close". Hell, I drive 30 minutes each day to work and no everybody tells me I live too far away from the office...

In any case, SF looks like an amazing city to me.</comment>


Click-thru / Conversion Rates? - <AUTHOR>

We have just launched a site for a free download for a small biz app. I was wondering if anyone has some data in regards to what are good click thru or conversion rates.
To be a little clearer, the home page is currently the landing page, the user click a "download here" button to bring them to the registration page and then they click the "download now" button which bring up the start download page. If we have a 100 users hit the landing page we're seeing somewhere around 30% actuall download the app. Anyone got any comparison data they would be willing to share?
thanks ian <comment><USER2> That's about what I've been getting recently for my game. About 40% of the clicks from the ads result in downloads of the game, then about one out of 20 of the downloader's actually end up paying for a subscription. It seems getting people to click on ads and getting people to download (especially when it's a small download) are the relatively easy parts. Getting them to create an account once they've downloaded and getting them to pay once they've tried it are much harder.

</comment><comment><USER3> 30% is pretty amazing. I'm no expert, but if you google "click through rates" you get some good articles on the first page.

I think you're defiantly hitting your audience. You should try to get info on who's installing the app, and using it one week later, etc etc. if you can.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not actually getting 30% CTR in the google sense which is of 100 impressions of your ad, 30 clicked on it. That CTR is of the order of 1%. But of the 1% that reach our site 30% go on to download.</comment></comment>


Building Waze for the Boston subway: my first adventure in civic hacking - <AUTHOR> http://geoffreylitt.com/2015/02/28/mbta-ninja.html

<comment><USER2> "In a world where political systems are increasingly gridlocked every day, and much of Silicon Valley is focused on peddling ads, the civic innovation and open data movements are a bright and optimistic exception to the zeitgeist."

Amen to this! I'm excited by the trend of more hackers realizing that they have the skills to fix a lot of what is broken about politics and government.

<comment><USER3> Amen, x2!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea has a lot more potential. Once you have the data, you can obviously give the individual user the best alternative route if there is delay on the desired one. You can also use this proactively, similar to what "Google Now" does, to alert commuters in the morning how much longer their trip might take. You could even offer functionality to automatically adjust the phone's alarm clock.

But you can take this even further than individual users and dynamically re- route passenger flows if enough of them are using the service. Say there is an interruption on a main commuter route, but several alternatives exist. Most people are now likely to choose the second best route. Since that route is unlikely to be able to handle the additional passengers, it will probably be jammed very quickly. However, using the RT passenger and situation data, it would be possible to find the globally optimal solution for load balancing the passenger flow. You can then provide the passengers via smartphone with individualised information regarding which route to take to implement this routing.

I think this has a lot of potential for taking public transport to the next level by utilising existing capacities to the fullest extent and providing benefits to all passengers.

</comment><comment><USER5> Not actually Waze - title would be better along the lines of: "Building a Waze-like for the Boston subway"

<comment><USER6> I think the title was written in the spirit of "It's Uber for <X>". Agreed that it could be clearer though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, this was the intention. As cliche as "X for Y" has become these days, I can see why it's such a popular format. Most people instantly get what MBTA Ninja is, based on a four word tagline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This seems similar to is metro broke?

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/is-metro- broke/id849428357?m...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/is-metro- broke/id849428357?mt=8)

</comment><comment><USER8> I like the confirmation model. And mbta.ninja is a cool domain name, though why besmirch it with a needless www?

</comment><comment><USER9> This could be very interesting, and could even sit in the background and track user's movements without needing an explicit action to report problems.

Unless you're in New York where everything is underground of course. Sadly.

<comment><USER10> Most of the MBTA is underground too. However, at least the green and red lines have cell reception underground.

<comment><USER11> The Orange and Blue lines have it also. As far as I know the whole system is wired underground.

<comment><USER10> yeah, figured as much, but didn't want to make claims about lines I hadn't used enough to know for sure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Eastbound, Northbound, Southbound, Westbound?

I am not sure the authors have ever been to Boston. Here there is only _Inbound_ and _Outbound_. I went to www.mbta.ninja and then spent about 30 seconds trying to figure out if any of the alerts are related to me.

<comment><USER13> Inbound/Outbound changes at Park St, correct? So South/North/East/West seems to be more helpful here.

Of course, they could ask you to input a station first, then display the connecting lines as inbound/outbound.

<comment><USER14> The four stations where the directions change are the square made up of Park Street, State Street, DTX, and Government Center (or Haymarket since Gov Center is down? Not sure, haven't been to Haymarket in at least two years).

Directionality (for new folks) or terminus (for more seasoned riders) are infinitely better than Inbound/Outbound.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had a lackluster interview experience at the company the author works for and mentions. After completing a coding challenge, I got a generic:

      "After deliberating, we have decided not to proceed with your application."

I asked for more specific feedback, from two different people, and got no response.

<comment><USER16> This seems completely unrelated to the article and doesn't really add anything to the conversation.

<comment><USER15> I mentioned it because the company itself was plugged in the post.

Also there's a bit of irony involved, where they're extolling the virtues of data, but failing to provide proper interview feedback.</comment></comment></comment>


I want to teach my wife to code...where do I start? - <AUTHOR>

I just got the bright idea of trying to convince my wife to learn coding. Why not, eh?
Here is the rub, it's very foreign to her and she isn't particularly 'tech-savvy'.
I do mostly Ruby and Rails dev, so that's where I am going to start. I have a CS degree, but she doesn't.
Where do I start and how do I progress? There are many things I take for granted, like what an 'int' is, and words are called 'strings' - which are a series of letters, not an actual 'word'.
She has no experience with any of that stuff.
I am thinking of starting with something like TryRuby.org - where she can get immediate gratification, but then supplementing it with some 'theory'.
Thoughts? <comment><USER2> I don't think it is necessary to start her off w/ RoR. The web was founded without RoR so no need to start her off with RoR. How about teaching her very basic html first? Creating anchor text/hyperlinks and then having her ftp it online will be gratifying. Stick to the basics. It will probably keep you sane while you teach her. Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> No need to FTP it....can just run it locally.

<comment><USER2> Of course, but it probably would be more gratifying to her to FTP it, see the process and be able to go online to check it out. Or else she might be like, what do you mean locally? Then a bunch of questions will follow... How do I access it from my computer? What's the web address? I am on the phone with Judy, how can she see what I did?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So I have been teaching Computer technology to kids in schools and also to non-techies as a hobby for a while.

I urge you to NOT start with technology. From her interests, identify something that can be augmented with programming first. [for example, she wants to share her hobby via a blog]. Just show her what is possible in that instance with knowledge of coding. From there work backwards to show what she needs to learn to achieve this goal. You will find her lot more motivated.

I talked about this with Hack Education's Audrey just yesterday. Some more thoughts captured by her here: <http://www.hackeducation.com/2012/03/06/harry- shah/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like an interesting idea, the blog thing won't work - because she doesn't have the time/nor desire to blog about it.

But you may be on to something here.

Thanks for the link and idea!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is she really interested in learning? Or is she just being nice to you accepting this?

Anyway, I'd start with HTML and Javascript. More familiar territory for a complete beginner.

<comment><USER5> Honestly, HTML may not be a bad idea for a total beginner. It's not a programming language, but it allows you to introduce a number of ideas that are the building blocks of programming- the distinction between 'code' and rendered output, nesting, quotations and escapes...

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting ideas about HTML. Never thought about that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If she really is motivated to a degree to learn code. I would start first with theory, and explain it to her as if she was learning a new language.

With that said, IMO would start her off with logic and OOP. That's if she really wants to code.

If it's just a simple understanding of how the web works, the posters comments about HTML would suffice as a starting point.</comment>


Google's Invisibility Cloak - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/05/google-operating-system-tech-enter-cx_ew_1205google.html

<comment><USER2> linkbait?!

"Google employees not using the secret OS are employing various versions of Unix, such as Linux or Ubuntu, and some older operating systems, like X11, he says." _rolls eyes_

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree the author is probably an idiot (or, to be fair probably just not technical and lost it in translation from their tech consult), but i guess the thing that made me submit it to HN were the thoughts it triggered about a potential google OS. it's not impossible at this point, and there are some really cool things they could do with it.

imagine if the kernel had a low level "job manager," which could split up processes and dynamically run parts on their infrastructure; effectively a "map" operation. then, all parts of the process would be merged when results are returned from google and the components executed locally are completed; effectively a "reduce" operation. assuming a constant connection to google's infrastructure isn't insane for, say, fixed desktops (business users, anyone?). file storage could be run remotely, on GFS, which is highly available and highly redundant (and massive for cheap). you could run "big data" problems on individual employees' machines, since everything is partially "run in the cloud" as needed. and, if the data store is GFS, there would be basically no latency to the compute nodes.

there are just so many cool things google is set up to do for a future OS, and this article made me think.

<comment><USER3> Wow, you got all that from the article? I must have missed the subtext!

Seriously though, people have been speculating about a google OS for years and years, and there hasn't been a shred of credible evidence. A far more likely reason for concealing the User-Agent string would be that those computers are running development versions of Chrome, perhaps on Mac/Linux, don't you think?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're absolutely right, it's way more likely here, and that's probably what's going on. Whether there's credible evidence or not as to a Google OS wasn't my point -- it's that the _idea_ of Google doing that wouldn't strike you as crazy, and that just brings up the question "what could they do with it?"

Linus did a very, very good job for the single isolated box. A kernel that had very deep ties to a greater infrastructure, a true internet computer, though, would have a huge value proposition for a lot of users, especially in business. I guess this thread could have been better titled, "Challenge HN: Extend the Linux kernel to do low level process splitting and handle a remote file system natively, to have the computer run partially on a distributed infrastructure as needed." I'd be amazed if Google aren't the ones to do this. If they aren't, though, we'll be welcoming some new names to the computing billionaires' club in the next few years.

<comment><USER4> > Linus did a very, very good job for the single isolated box.

Actually, no. Linus solved a much harder problem, the social problem of "freeing" a platform. Technology - not so much, but that's okay because lots of other people had done that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Calling lack of useragents an "invisibility clack" seems a bit of a stretch.

</comment><comment><USER6> This article reads like sales pitch for "Net Applications" product. All of the articles content comes from an interview with "Vince Vizzacarro, Net Applications' executive vice president of marketing."

</comment><comment><USER7> Brilliant PR.</comment>


Quantified, localized health benefits of accelerated of CO2 emissions reductions - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0108-y.epdf?referrer_access_token=w_kP7OoPJvpf8sKGMrlvhNRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0PtiRxw-APMKhtvjSRa4EQZePCPOwErl0w2gcCqoNv03xDG1WZmxzAImQ6itr9Bb0k291SuCL9br8VqPw2-CeKmN9NfEVamF2GcQc1HuX_2uotiJCCBJ4CmIEWzFOa58yNc_UFq3btLhmeCsznTlBCUuIP2zCRXC4i3ClIaDgLlhXsM3TPNgvRhfQ46xJ49knWJEwV6MZ4ncZSFiRSaoNlYoEthWcE_TvTKYgsn1LMsZ0AWHmvXPj2OVK-4QdUyufk%3D&tracking_referrer=nymag.com <comment><AUTHOR> In this paper, the authors calculate that between 110 to 196 Million people will be saved from premature death by reducing temperature rise from 2°C to 1.5°C. From the abstract:

> _We therefore examine the human health benefits of increasing 21st-century > CO2 reductions by 180 GtC, an amount that would shift a 'standard' 2°C > scenario to 1.5°C or could achieve 2°C without negative emissions. The > decreased air pollution leads to 153±43 million fewer premature deaths > worldwide, with ∼40% occurring during the next 40 years, and minimal climate > disbenefits._</comment>


The hot new technology in Big Data is decades old: SQL - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/07/the-hot-new-technology-in-big-data-is-decades-old-sql/

<comment><USER2> In the last years many SQL alternatives where created, and I think that this is great. For a long time it was used as an almighty Hammer.

You want a live chat system for thousands of user? Use SQl! You want a Page for your Restaurant? Use SQL.

Some people got so feed up with SQL that we forgot how simple* and powefull it is.

*easy to learn hard to master</comment>


Ask HN: Organizations keep trying to give me money for a thing I made - <AUTHOR> tl;dr- How do you engage with VARs in a way that will get their attention?
In the last two years, several organizations has asked to license a medical spell check dictionary that I made years ago. After exchanging emails, I lost two of those, because I priced my product too high, and the third I landed (Indiana University School of Medicine), but I charged too little. (I'm OK with this, because it helps with credibility.)
I've got my pricing hammered out now, and I have a designer working on a home page, which should make it easy for individuals to buy. It comes with a real installer and works with Chrome, Firefox, and Windows & Office in a way that would be difficult to do by hand, and in a way that the competitors don't (despite their WAY higher prices).
- Much more competitive pricing
- Updates at a regular cadence with discounted yearly contract pricing. (= recurring revenue for me)
- Existing penetration is very high (tens of thousands of downloads), and most inquiries occur because their employees or students are asking for it
- Tooling geared for enterprises (deployable MSI)
- More features: works with all the major browsers, not just Windows/IE/Edge/Office
Well I got an email out of the blue the other day from a middleman in the UK who wants to license my product for use with computers that they distribute. (They're a distributors to other distributors, I believe.) They do quite a lot of disabled student allowance stuff, and they liked my pricing much better than the alternatives. I have a meeting with them next week.
They're VAR-ish, and it got me wondering how I could establish relationships with VARs here in the US as well. Do you have any advice on how to get the attention of a Staples or WB Mason or other VARs? <comment><USER2> Assuming that $5.99 is a license that you get for each user...

\- For outbound marketing and finding VARs, I'd do some research into the wide variety of software that hospitals and health care facilities use and then look into the channels they are purchased through. Follow the chain back to the devs and it is likely that one of those intermediate businesses would be interesting to talk to as a VAR candidate. Then it's a matter of phone, e-mail, tweet, or whatever works to get through and talk to them.

\- For inbound marketing, your web site and standard SEO practices should suffice.

\- Look for trade shows to attend both to identify software in the domain that could use your dictionary, and also identify VARs and distributors.

\- If you find a large enough variety of companies to target, focus on the ones that are 2-5 times larger than your largest to date. I.e., try to catch larger and larger fish until you're knocking on the doors of the biggest catches. And in any case, don't be surprised if you catch the eye of someone in the largest ones who is willing to sponsor you at that business.

Once you've found them and they are interested in signing up...

\- Be sure your VAR agreements give you solid protection and a clear way to terminate.

\- Ask for an annual unit estimate.

\- Require a minimum payment that represents an amount that is worth your time to support that VAR. Get that minimum payment at the beginning of the year. (sounds like you're getting recurring revenue for updates already, so maybe this is already handled)

\- Figure out what it would cost for them to make it themselves or have someone else to make it for them. If they do a lot of business with you, at some point, a VP or GM is going to look at the amount they are paying you and say 'why are we paying so much for this, we should build it ourselves and reduce cost'. For example, if your feature took you 1 man-year to develop and a customer is buying 20,000 license/year, they are paying $100,000/year. They may figure they can pay someone to build it for them for $100,000 and see an ROI beginning in only one year.

\- If getting 'designed out' is a realistic outcome, offer fixed annual pricing below that threshold (with payment at the beginning of the year), or, offer a buy-out where they pay a large amount one time and then a small annual fee for updates thereafter.

\- If the revenue amount is large, look into copyrights and other IP protection.

\- If there is a low barrier to entry, be alert for competitors. Bank a portion of the revenue. Be receptive to exiting.

Hope that is helpful.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'd do some research into the wide variety of software that hospitals and > health care facilities use and then look into the channels they are > purchased through

I've done a little of this, and it's surprisingly difficult. :)

> Follow the chain back to the devs and it is likely that one of those > intermediate businesses would be interesting to talk to as a VAR candidate.

Hmm, this is an interesting idea. I bet systems like EPIC have use third-party subcomponents. It's quite likely that it would be less expensive for them to use my product than maintain their own. (If indeed it's an in-house effort.)

> For inbound marketing, your web site and standard SEO practices should > suffice.

I'm already #1 on Google for most of the common search terms, using an anonymous browsing window. So I could do more of that, but I think partnerships is where the actual money is. I think selling to individuals will basically be small potatoes by comparison.

> focus on the ones that are 2-5 times larger than your largest to date.

Good idea. I have quite a few friends from pharmacy school that work for large pharmaceutical companies, and we're all old enough now that a lot of them have purchasing power. :)

> Be sure your VAR agreements give you solid protection and a clear way to > terminate

Another thing to learn about.

> Figure out what it would cost for them to make it themselves or have someone > else to make it for them. If they do a lot of business with you, at some > point, a VP or GM is going to look at the amount they are paying you and say > 'why are we paying so much for this, we should build it ourselves and reduce > cost'. For example, if your feature took you 1 man-year to develop and a > customer is buying 20,000 license/year, they are paying $100,000/year. They > may figure they can pay someone to build it for them for $100,000 and see an > ROI beginning in only one year.

This would be hard, because health care changes all the time and new words are quite literally invented daily. I have largely automated the ingestion and filtration of new words, but it does take a few hours of effort every week to keep on top of it. (At the end of the day, a human has to determine what's real and what isn't. There's a surprising number of typos and misspellings in peer-reviewed journals.) So it's not necessarily a set-and-forget, but the data gathering, normalization, and sorting basically is. It would make virtually no sense for even a very large company to develop this internally. In fact, most large companies don't pay for spell check software at all. (C.f.: lots of misspellings in peer-reviewed articles.) But there _is_ a market for it. An EMR company was the first to contact me; I suspect they don't have existing solutions, because the alternatives are $60/seat and up.

I WAS thinking about an unlimited site license. Say you're an EMR company, and you have 300,000 licensed installations... you pay me I dunno $50K/yr max, and you can integrate it into as many instances of your software as you want. Exact figures would need to be thought about more.

> If there is a low barrier to entry, be alert for competitors. Bank a portion > of the revenue. Be receptive to exiting.

I've thought about the exit angle. I would consider offers. But this is actually just a hobby. I have no intentions of quitting my day job anytime soon, because this project is so low effort. I wrote software to automate most of the annoying bits, and I wrote more software to make the annoying-but-cant- be-automated bits less annoying.</comment></comment>


Bill passes to fight "Russian propaganda" - <AUTHOR> https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/114/hr6393/text/eh#link=1_b_~T1&nearest=HF879EFCAA86F43AA9B73F9516F1D7059 <comment><AUTHOR> Section 501: Committee to counter active measures by the Russian Federation to exert covert influence over peoples and governments.</comment>


Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) Release Candidate - <AUTHOR> http://releases.ubuntu.com/10.10/ <comment><USER2> The RC has not actually been released. Various news sites are reporting it prematurely to get extra traffic as usual, and the Ubuntu Release Team would like people to wait [1] for the official release announcement, which will be posted to the release blog [2] , and the ubuntu-announce mailing list [3].

[1] [http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/ubuntu-10-10-release- cand...](http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/09/ubuntu-10-10-release-candidate- available-for-download/#comment-82347882)

[2] <http://release-blog.ubuntu.com>

[3] <https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-announce>

<comment><USER3> It has now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Slightly more relevant link: [http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/beta#New%20features%2...](http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/maverick/beta#New%20features%20in%20Maverick)

<comment><USER2> That's slightly outdated, as it's the beta page. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/TechnicalOverview> reflects the latest state of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> On the other hand, I am getting tired of the way that Ubuntu is focusing so much on getting its fonts right, that critical aspects like suspend/resume are broken, but not fixed.

Bug 568711 ([https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/568711)...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/568711\)is) particularly nasty because it is a confirmed bug in suspend/resume that has a lot of people being affected by it - but has been relegated to medium severity and is currently unassigned.

<comment><USER6> It seems highly improbably that the people working on fonts and design would otherwise be working on suspend/resume.

Medium severity sounds right for a bug that only affects users with certain hardware. High severity should be reserved for things with a wider impact, or else it loses its meaning.

<comment><USER7> fwiw, all these laptop issues (especially this suspend/resume bug after I upgraded to Hardy) were what convinced me to get a mac. The only people I know with problem-free linux systems are desktop users.

<comment><USER8> That's not true.

I have a one year old Dell Inspiron 1525 with Ubuntu.

Not the best laptop ever but at least since Ubuntu 9.10 ... 3D graphics worked out of the box (open-source, Intel), Wifi worked out of the box (not so on OpenSuse or Debian), the built-in webcam worked out of the box, practically everything is up and running as soon as you install Ubuntu, no extra configuration required.

Not only that, but I also got an external 3G modem from Vodafone, that also worked out of the box.

As I've said before ... there are plenty of configurations that are running just fine with Ubuntu, but if you're going to shop at random of course you're going to have problems. Heck ... my external 3G modem wasn't compatible with Vista out of the box, you had to search for an updated driver on the Internet.

<comment><USER9> Apparently some people have laptops that worked great with earlier Ubuntu releases but don't work after an upgrade. That's scary to me -- I could do careful research and buy a laptop now, only to have an upgrade make my laptop unusable. Then at the very best I'd have to downgrade and be stuck on an earlier version of Ubuntu while they classify it as a medium-priority bug and leave it broken in subsequent releases.

P.S. To make this more specific, I've been thinking about buying a refurbished Thinkpad, and one of the commenters on the bug says suspend/resume stopped working on his T61p in Lucid and remains broken in Maverick.

<comment><USER10> I've had similar issues with Ubuntu upgrades in the past. I went to Debian (stable) instead, figuring the longer upgrade cycles would mean fewer problems. That was all well and good until I needed to enable backports to upgrade Firefox to >=3.5 for work. Now the package manager's broken due to some weird dependency issues.

I don't understand why there is no free software equivalent of Apple, selling (laptop) hardware and maintaining a GNU/Linux distro that's guaranteed to work on it. Surely there's a buck or two to made?

<comment><USER9> There are a couple such companies, I think. One is called Emperor Linux (if it's still in business) and offered reasonably late-model Vaio laptops among others.

<comment><USER11> And to my knowledge none of them do direct distro maintenance to keep the laptops they've sold supported -- they just resell OEM (Sager-style) laptops that they spec conservatively so that all the hardware is supported when sold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This release uses a new interface font, which is the first major OS (that I know of, anyways) to not use a Helvetica-like font for their GUI. Mark Shuttleworth talks about the decision and impact on his blog: <http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/537>

<comment><USER13> screenshots: [http://www.webupd8.org/2010/09/ubuntu-1010-maverick- meerkat-...](http://www.webupd8.org/2010/09/ubuntu-1010-maverick-meerkat-beta- has.html)

<comment><USER14> Oh, nice to see a light, pale theme, like in Mac OS. It's much easier on the eyes, at least for me.

<comment><USER15> Anybody else think this is the first ever professional looking Linux distro they've ever seen?

Congrats to the Ubuntu team.

<comment><USER9> You must be a graphic designer :-) I thought, "What does attractive have to do with professional?" and then realized you meant designed _by_ professionals, not designed _for_ professionals. Professionals' tools tend to look beautiful to them and ugly to everyone else. Maybe this is a step toward changing that, at least for Linux. (Except I'll still have emacs taking up at least half my screen space, with its functional but butt-ugly syntax colorization....)

<comment><USER15> Nope, I'm a programmer. I just don't like brightly colored notification icons all over my GNOME taskbar. They're distracting - looks (and discoverability, and other UI aspects) directly affect usability, I'm surprised you say you don't get that.

As a counterpoint to your argument, I'd say OS X has more professional UI designers than Windows or the Linux OSs and is generally regarded as being more usable too.

<comment><USER9> _I'm surprised you say you don't get that._

Thanks for reading my comment so charitably ;-)

What I'm saying is that beauty to the professional user and beauty to an innocent bystander are different things. A professional actually cares _more_ about usability and certainly cares about aesthetics as they apply to usability. The way a professional perceives a desktop will be very different from the way a casual user does. But some people are self-conscious about that; they don't want their professional exposure to change the way they perceive things, or at least they don't want anybody else to notice. So they want a plastic consumer case for their Hole Hawg[1].

Not that OS X doesn't have a lot going for it on the desktop, but a major part of the appeal for developers is that they can have a great desktop they love without non-geeks thinking they must be a little weird to love it.

[1] <http://www.team.net/mjb/hawg.html>

<comment><USER16> _but a major part of the appeal for developers is that they can have a great desktop they love without non-geeks thinking they must be a little weird to love it._

Most developers (and sysadmins) I know positively _delight_ in their reputation of being a little weird. I know that given two options I like as well otherwise, I'll usually pick the less common one. I still use OS X, though, having switched from Gentoo in 2003, and having tried Ubuntu and Arch for 6-7 months within the last year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is the first time I haven't found a human-readable summary anywhere of the new features and major changes of the upcoming Ubuntu version. They used to have this but now their release pages just point to a list of ~250 blueprints which doesn't constitute a "human-readable summary".

Can someone help, please?

<comment><USER2> <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MaverickMeerkat/TechnicalOverview>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Their power management is the only thing keeping me away at this moment. Right now Win7 is getting almost double the battery life on my laptop.

Ubuntu boot times are impeccable though.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is it possible to upgrade from 10.04 to 10.10 without reinstalling the whole OS?

<comment><USER20> It should be? What gives you reason to think it isn't possible?

<comment><USER19> Just asking since I've only been using Ubuntu for a few weeks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm glad that the Maverick Meerkat EC2 images(1) are working great. In the latest Lucid Lynx image (24.9.) as well as in the updates for the previous ones they introduced a nasty bug(2) causing a phantom load of 100% on one CPU. No fix in sight yet; this was really annoying. In my experiments so far, Maverick Meerkat works just great!

[1] <http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/server/releases/>

[2] <https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-on-ec2/+bug/574910>

</comment><comment><USER22> I also gave up on Ubuntu. I had Dell D800 and Ubuntu was working just fine including suspend/hibernate. Now I got a new ASUS, where suspend/hibernate does not work. I decided to stick with Windows 7, it is more reliable for me when it comes to that issue. Although, I miss Ubuntu, for me it is a much better OS. Hopefully on day, before I am dead, they will fix this issue.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can I dual boot ubuntu on my mac? I am looking to get a mac to replace my netbook.

<comment><USER24> I am, but it hasn't been particularly great. There are some hardware issues, mostly surrounding audio and multiple monitors, that I haven't experienced when running Ubuntu on other machines.

<comment><USER25> Strange, Lucid works great without any problems on my Macbook Pro 6,2.

What model are you running?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Works fine for me already.

</comment><comment><USER27> I hate Ubuntu, there is no support for it. Tried it twice already. They need to go back to the drawing board.

<comment><USER28> An overview of support options, which are mainly free:

<http://www.ubuntu.com/support>

If you need live human support for a consumer desktop system, you can purchase it on a yearly basis:

<http://www.canonical.com/consumer-services/support>

<comment><USER27> I wish to use Ubuntu because I have slightly older hardware, but if it renders youtube video in slow motion and if I see tons of similar complaints on the internet, than what good is an operating system competing with Microsoft which isn't even working well right out of the box?

Everyone seems to be getting greedy for updated hardware and operating systems. I don't really care to upgrade my hardware every two years. If Ubuntu cannot deliver without fastest processor and video memory, than they might as well just start selling to corporate and be done with the free stuff.

<comment><USER29> Youtube is rendered by Flash. Entirely. As in, Ubuntu did not write the software, has no control over it, and can't make it run any faster. Just like Apple and Microsoft can't.

There are also slimmed down Ubuntu versions for older hardware, e.g. Xubuntu and Lubuntu. Those run much faster on aging systems, allowing Ubuntu to support people with newer hardware.

Not to mention that nobody's forcing you to update if you don't want to. For example, 8.04 is still officially supported through April 2011 for desktops and 2013 for servers. Please feel free to continue using that if it works better for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Ok, my previous comment ("Who cares?") seemed to be thoughtless or even offensive (~15 downvotes in 5 minutes), and I have to acknowledge that it lacked quite some arguments.

So let me ask: why does this news deserve so much attention to stand in front of HN? What interesting innovation, except the GUI, has brought this new OS release? Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?

Generally speaking, I am just fed up with all this thoughtless media attention.

<comment><USER31> "Is an OS all about GUI and look & feel?"

Considering 95% of the world don't care about anything but how something looks and whether they can interact with it in a way that makes sense I would suggest that it is, to a large degree.

They also need a good foundation of course but too often do people in the OSS communities confuse having a solid foundation with having a winning product.</comment></comment>


How I Became a Member of the NY Tech Community - <AUTHOR> http://viniciusvacanti.com/2010/07/how-i-became-a-member-of-the-ny-tech-community/

<comment><USER2>
        After watching the demos a safe two seats away from the closest attendee,
        I approached someone and introduced myself.  They didn't seem interested
        in talking to me and walked away a few minutes later.  After standing around
        for a few more minutes acting like I was looking for someone, I just walked
        out.  Ouch.

Wow. That's messed up.

People, please if you're at some tech gathering, keep an eye out for newcomers and make them welcome. That's what makes a community.

<comment><USER3> This is what New York is like in all social aspects, not just tech meetups.

<comment><USER4> I have heard this often but I have to say that it has just not been my experience. One datapoint, I know, but still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So, how has being a member of the NY Tech community helped you? Is this something we should also aspire to do?

<comment><USER6> I didn't really address that in the post. But, in short, fundraising, hiring, product feedback and PR successes can be significantly attributed to a member of the community helping us out. I'll try to write a post that provides more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The only tech event that I have been to since I've lived in NYC is the Techcrunch Disrupt that just recently happened. I had fun but I am still adjusting to the world of tech. I was a hip hop DJ & club security guard in a former life and that was the main focus of my social interactions. I would come home from the club and then code Python or C# until 7am.

I plan on attending more tech events in the city and try to meet more people. I still have a lot to learn and I think going to more tech events would be a great teacher.

</comment><comment><USER8> Too much social life can ruin your business. Perhaps you must become a member of NYTC once you have built your product and are ready to launch it, otherwise you don't have time for being alert to your social environment.

<comment><USER4> I would say talk to many people while developing it - and before you start. I don't see how it could ruin anything unless you think that it's going to become some sort of addiction that you spend all your working hours doing?

<comment><USER6> I agree with Kristian. It's not that much time and you would be surprised how you can grab lunch with someone and, by the end, they will have completely changed how you thought of your idea.</comment></comment></comment>


Sewer-gas-induced suspended animation is rapid and reversible - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkgene.com/sewer-gas-induced-suspended-animation-is-rapid-and-reversible/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if they are able to test for this at sporting events like shooting.

</comment><comment><USER3> so it's like a pause button for meatspace?</comment>


Suggest HN: No April Fools this year - <AUTHOR> As you get near April Fools, and need to deploy your prank pages, perhaps reconsider doing it. As a general rule April Fools has become less popular on the web the more widespread it has become, and some people might take levity badly given the current world situation - I myself am among the party of people who think everything is open to mockery, but only if the jokes are good. Most April Fools pranks are tedious.<p>Obviously you may not have the ultimate say in what pranks are to be played at your company on the world, but perhaps you can push back on them and point out they might not be as well received as in years past. <comment><USER2> I find this a mean-spirited, depressing and (ironically) tone-deaf idea.

1\. People need humour in challenging moments 2\. Black comedy and gallows humour can lift the spirit at even the worst of times 3\. As much of the northern hemisphere enters spring we could collectively do with a fillip to jolt us into a more optimistic mindset

The only value in this proposal I see is that if you are working on a tedious April Fools prank then yes you should drop it, which is true whatever year we are in.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, but in agreement with OP, April Fool jokes just aren't funny. They're inherently mean. You can be funny without tricking someone, and everyone is already on an emotional knifepoint at the moment.

<comment><USER2> What about easter-egg style April Fools' like Google's 8-bit maps? Not an ounce of meanness [https://maps.googleblog.com/2012/03/begin-your-quest-with- go...](https://maps.googleblog.com/2012/03/begin-your-quest-with-google- maps-8-bit.html)

<comment><USER3> Fair enough, good ones can exist. But every year April 1st becomes such a barrage of PR stunts, mostly not of that quality, that I'd rather companies didn't waste the resource.

<comment><USER2> I definitely agree there is typically a lot of chaff to sort through.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > As a general rule April Fools has become less popular on the web the more > widespread it has become

Agree. Most are somewhere between tedious and boring. "Oh look, we changed our company name to [something amusing only to a pencil pusher]. Aren't we funny. Buy our products."

> some people might take levity badly given the current world situation

Disagree and fuck them. The last thing we need is doom and gloom [0]. Few situations ought to be handled with solemnity. Including funerals. We gain nothing and only make it worse. What we do need is levity. Some light- heartedness.

[0] Music genres of that name are encouraged though

 _edited for impact_

<comment><AUTHOR> As I said some people would take levity badly, I don't necessarily agree with them, but there are people who often say things are too serious to joke about or during.

on edit: submitted before your edit.

<comment><USER5> Why do you care what people like that say? Especially so if you say you don't agree with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I dislike April Fools days jokes, basically it makes everything worthless for the internet that day and some of it worthless the day after. So I would like to have people not do it.

In my experience from previous years lots of people on HN seem to feel the same way because there are always all these pranks, and people complaining that they're not very funny.

So I would like people not to put out these stupid jokes.

One thing that might help people to decide not to make the pranks is the observation that some people would find them offensive, given that the purpose of these pranks are essentially marketing exercises.

As for why I would care what people say, I care to a minimal extent and tolerate what I see as humorless behavior in the same way that while they might say that was inappropriate when I make a joke I would like them to tolerate my viewpoint. Thus if I think something might be offensive to some people in a context I consider if it is really funny before saying it.

And then I come on HN and laboriously explain my reasoning for every little bit of politeness I practice because that's just the kind of guy I am.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hard disagree. We need levity now more than ever as we stare into the abyss, and there has been a growing trend to be less whimsical and more serious in hackerdom/technology business in general over the last few decades (eg the MSFT blanket easter egg ban).

Hoist the jolly roger, and give me your best jokes ever this year.

PS: DEFCON is cancelled

<comment><USER7> Just avoid COVID-19 cure "jokes"

<comment><USER8> And no "quarantine is over" type stuff.

<comment><USER9> Serious question, how are people supposed to tell the difference for this one between a joke and a certain politician's utterings or the demands of ruthless big-corp leaders?

<comment><USER10> Critical thinking?

I know it's a foreign concept but I'm sure we can import someone to teach us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The best April Fools joke I can remember was an anti-joke, when Google announced Gmail on the 1st of April. They were promising what were then unbelievably generous allowances and no one could agree on whether they were serious or not.

<comment><USER12> For me, a former Perl hacker, the Parrot announcement represents the best April Fool's joke.

[https://web.archive.org/web/20100718195724/http://www.perl.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20100718195724/http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2001/04/01/parrot.htm)

The official Perl.com site announced Perl and Python were going to merge so you could run both languages in the same interpreter. In itself that was quite amusing, but the best part is that the Raku project actually adopted the name for their VM because it could actually do that, and became [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_virtual_machine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot_virtual_machine), so what started out as a proper joke turned out to be real.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Are we supposed to pause comedy until this virus is over? Potentially we could still be dealing with this till Christmas. Hell, give it another year for people to begin to come to terms with the misery surrounding the virus. When shall we start comedy again?

On the other hand, I want to see even more jokes. Yes, the situation is crap, so even more the need to raise everybody's spirits. If you don't want to see jokes, log off for a day, some insane Doctors said it won't actually kill you.

I would suggest that jokes that lessen the current virus or deaths surrounding it would be in poor taste, but each to their own. I personally won't be making morbid jokes, but I'm not going to fetch the pitch forks out of the garage to go seek revenge from anybody who does.

</comment><comment><USER14> Personally I feel I am desperate for some humour in the current climate. I'm going into my birthday tomorrow isolated and in a few days would greatly appreciate a chuckle. Go for it.

<comment><USER15> Happy birthday buddy! Here's a joke for you:

> Two elephants were skydiving

> and suddenly one gets a

> Cinnabon bun in the eye.

I have to admit this doesn't seem very funny at all, but someone told me this and I couldn't stop laughing. Then again, I was twelve at the time. :o)

Hope you have a great birthday, despite the times!

<comment><USER14> I really don't get it.... My three favourite jokes from when I was twelve

* What is E.T. short for? Because he has little legs * How do you titilate and ocelot? Oscillate it's tit a lot. * What is Batman's favourite food? Toast - still don't get why that is funny but even now I laugh.

Thanks for reaching out!

<comment><USER15> Haha I don't get it either. I also have no idea why but the Batman one cracked me up as well. Maybe I'm wired wrong.. :o)

Thanks for the laugh!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I agree. I think this comment sums up how I feel: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7609289)

> I agree with what people have already said, but I think there's one more > point to add: people usually over-estimate how funny their own comments are. > We have a tendency to think, "This idea of mine is hilarious! And different! > Surely this witticism is the exception." And we are usually wrong. When you > have N people all doing that, there's a lot of noise.

> I try to gently point this out to people who complain when their attempt at > humor has been downvoted by the community. It's not that we don't like > humor. We just don't like banal attempts at humor, which becomes noise. Or, > put in a less charitable fashion, "You're not as funny as you think you > are."

</comment><comment><USER17> Good rule of thumb, is April fools is funny, only if the recipient laughs with you afterwards.

Spreading misinformation is not funny. Making others miserable is not funny. Schadenfraude is not funny.

We need levity and laughter more than ever. Doing it well is where the dividing line is. I'd suggest do it well, or don't do it at all.

<comment><USER18> For me, what makes a good online April fool's joke is the gestalt switch, where I first believe it, then I read it with increasing incredulity, and then I remember that it's April 1st.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Kind of agree. No, fuck people who can't handle jokes, but April fool's is rarely jokes. They're just deliberate humiliations.

Iow: don't do jokes where the punchline is "look how fucking stupid you are for believing what I said", which is most April fool's jokes.

<comment><USER20> Isn't all of The Onion and what Colbert used to be about? In fact, isn't that all satire — bitingly critical mockery?

<comment><USER19> Still not humiliations.

<comment><USER20> That's true, it's not humiliating when you aren't being satirized or mocked by an Onion or Colbert report.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Cmon it's the most magnificent of corporate jokiness times. Always funny even when it's not a global disaster. How can you bring down such a rich tradition in which corporations aim only to bring some light to your day?

Organized, planned, workshopped humor on an industrial scale!! What Ho!

</comment><comment><USER22> Pranks are difficult to do right. They easily can be experienced as frustrating, aggressive or plain idiotic by the receiver while the giver thinks it's totally hilarious. It requires a lot of empathy to create a good prank that doesn't hurt anyone especially when it's experienced online, ie. without being able to interact with a "WTH man?! - Sorry, tried to prank you but it misfired. You OK?"

In the good pranks category, I'm especially fond of new product announcements when it's clear it's a joke like Amazon shipping authors directly or the Google's "Clean screen" app. They are often refreshing and witty and it's just what I want from a good joke. And it's free positive marketing if done right. (Just don't announce your company bankruptcy, like Elon Musk.)

I'm still holding to my idea of swapping a font with [https://hellveticafont.com/](https://hellveticafont.com/) for a day. I'll just make sure it's not obstructive and can easily be disabled.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://i.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/731/143/3e3...](https://i.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/731/143/3e3.jpg)

Come on! Just don't make distasteful or obviously bad jokes, otherwise it's fine, welcome even.

</comment><comment><USER24> It's almost like humor is subjective. Yes, many people suck at it and do it in wrong or counterproductive ways, especially with the rise of "prank" YouTube channels and the like which view embarrassing people as the end goal.

But there are other ones that I have found genuinely amusing and funny. The list of Google's April fools pranks/features has some real gems - [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_April_Fools](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_April_Fools)

Some of them even lead to products or other real features down the line (like the 2014 Pokemon google maps explorer, which went on to become Pokemon Go).

Yeah, some jokes miss the mark for me, but I get that my sense of humor isn't universal, and frankly I think a bit of levity is important for us right now as individual and as a culture.

</comment><comment><USER25> > _Most April Fools pranks are tedious._

Totally agree. Also the problem with most April Fools events online is that unless you spend 30 minutes scrutinising the page, it's _not apparent_ that it's a joke or fake. A bad joke is one that no-one gets. _It doesn 't make you clever to have outwitted your readers, just arrogant._

Let's face it, in these trying times, there's enough fools online and in the media trying to screw our lives up, lets not be part of that.

<comment><USER26> Most? That's a shame. The ones notable enough for me to remember are all ridiculous fake product launches, where it's really obvious that they're not serious (though sometimes it does exist in some form, which just makes it better).

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Repurpose the day for poking fun at King Donald, ordering the tide of Covid-19 to recede! You're fired!

[https://twitter.com/SatiriaNews/status/961271656705613824/ph...](https://twitter.com/SatiriaNews/status/961271656705613824/photo/1)

</comment><comment><USER28> April fools can be very fun. My mom convinced my two younger brothers once they were moving to Spain and would leave the house in our country to be run by them. They called friends and family, completely forgot it was April 1st.

On the other hand I have yet to encounter a coporate HR approved April Fools that have me a laugh.

</comment><comment><USER29> April Fools among people with a mutual understanding of each other is levity.

April Fools as practiced on the internet and directed at strangers is bullshit on a good day and a headache on a bad one.

I've got enough bullshit to deal with.

</comment><comment><USER30> I 100% agree with not doing April fools. Humor is important; jokes work with twisted semantics and surprise. April Fool's websites have neither and just render the web useless for a day.

</comment><comment><USER31> If anyone _is_ looking for some good humor during this time beyond an ice cream bar, please check out the latest edition of Techloaf and MASH THAT LIKE BATON.

[https://us17.campaign- archive.com/?u=14538d8f8591165977d9a9d...](https://us17.campaign- archive.com/?u=14538d8f8591165977d9a9d93&id=90727b99c4)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I didn't put this into the text field but this might be relevant [https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/31/15076050/april-fools- day-...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/31/15076050/april-fools-day-pranks- jokes-terrible)

</comment><comment><USER32> There are creative positive pranks though, that can give people a boost or atleast a smile.

I like the Michael Carbonaro/Just For Laugh Gags variety. That kind of positive humor and creativity is helpful during crisis. You can see the effect it has on people in the youtube comments.

</comment><comment><USER33> "I myself am among the party of people who think everything is open to mockery, but only if the jokes are good."

This is the entire issue, as with evil people, no people ever find themselves to be bad jokers, or evil.

</comment><comment><USER34> There's no such thing as an appropriate joke. That's why it's called a joke.

</comment><comment><USER35> > Most April Fools pranks are tedious.

Reddit usually nails it with their April Fools events. I would hate to see that lost because we are supposed to be dark and gloomy in times of crisis.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone else remember "too soon" when it comes to making jokes?

Maybe we are seeing "it's never going to not be soon, don't even think of it"

</comment><comment><USER8> HN doesn't do much in the way of humour anyway.

<comment><USER37> Yeah it is an instant recipe for being downvoted. :-(

<comment><USER38> As it should. Empty comments posted for the giggles of author (and maybe a few others) would just add too much spam. Look at what reddit grew into, you have templates of comments and meta comments everywhere, very low quality content.

<comment><USER39> Reddit still has plenty of high quality content, even with the jokes and meta- commentary. And much of the humorless content on HN isn't exactly high quality.

Indeed, the humorlessness of this place tends to encourage tedious pedantry and vindictive sniping.

<comment><USER38> Totally agree. I feel its too hard to strike a balance between the two.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > some people might take levity badly given the current world situation

Fuck this attitude. Just yesterday I joked in a comment on Youtube about the quality of James May's video for reminding people to stay at home. I wrote

"James May shamelessly reused the footage he recorded during the Spanish Flu pandemic".

6600 people liked the comment, it was by far the most liked comment on that video, until suddenly Youtube decided it was inappropriate and the comment was no longer displayed. Who are they to decide what people are allowed to find funny?

<comment><USER18> That's bizarre. It seems like a completely harmless joke.

<comment><USER40> Yes, and I still think this is hilariously funny. My guess is that Youtube currently filters all comments that contains coronavirus and related subjects. And to be honest, there are some truly stupid, awful and potentially harmful comments. I cannot imagine the comments are filtered manually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> But you put us also in contsant mourn mode where nobody can even relax a bit with this situation.

</comment><comment><USER42> I'd rather have April fools than virtue signalling

<comment><USER43> Dude look how virtuous we are, we avoid making a joke because there's a virus around. We take everything very seriously. Please buy our products</comment></comment>


It's a criminal offence to loan your lawnmower to a neighbour - <AUTHOR> http://quandyfactory.com/blog/78/tenn_passes_controversial_lawnmower_theft_bill

<comment><USER2> How is this enforceable at all? I'm amused.

<comment><USER3> It's satire. s/lawnmower/Netflix login/.

<comment><USER2> I can't believe I didn't catch that. /dumb

<comment><USER3> I only realised when I got to the bit about barbecue manufacturers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Quick Look at PostgreSQL Source Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerobugsandprogramfaster.net/essays/3.html <comment><USER2> Not a _deep_ dive into pgsql source, but it does show some of the informative comments in the code. The author points out how well organized the source is, and the naming consistency in the sections shown makes it easy to follow the programmers' intentions.

I've used pgsql for a long time, since 1998, and while far from a SQL expert, the database has always worked well for me. I attribute that to the extremely high quality of documentation, not only in the source, but also for users. It's rare to find comprehensive documentation suitable for both neophytes and experts, serving as both beginner's guide and technical reference manual. The project deserves high accolades for this accomplishment.

I wish other projects would follow PostgresQL's example. Some team out there should research the hypothesis that there's a correlation between software success/performance and the quality of its user/developer documentation. For a long time it's been my hunch there's a strong effect of this nature.

Measuring the parameters is probably the hard part. As it is I use the idea as a guide in selecting tools, libraries, etc. As a rule, if the documentation is a mess or non-existent, the software will be incomplete, full of bugs or soon abandoned. IOW, the better the documentation, the more valuable the software.

<comment><USER3> Excellent remark. You might want to install `ponysay` and wander around `info ponysay` as a data point.

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/erkin/ponysay/blob/master/ponysay.pdf](https://github.com/erkin/ponysay/blob/master/ponysay.pdf)

I've never quite understood the My Little Pony craze, but that's some high quality documentation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thank you, that was amazing. I work in oracle and PG SQL a lot at work, but I never would have dared enter the source code. Mental barrier, broken through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! Next thing you know, you'll be adding debug statements, fine-tuning, and fixing bugs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> About select vs scan: sql's select is functionally a map - it's a transform, it has no searching semantics. Select and scanning are not strongly related, except that selection can influence how wide a data stream you need to scan is.

</comment><comment><USER7> Loved this -- more please :)

</comment><comment><USER8> small typo though: ./configure && make, not ./Configure&&Make</comment>


Ask HN: Is it useful an informative&actionable 3D earth on all the governments? - <AUTHOR> In scope it would be similar to Wikipedia but focused on making it easy to understand how governments are structured(in 3D, both organizationally and the responsible people behind), how they work and, when possible, provide actionable informations for any citizen on how to act collectively(or individually) to make their concerns or objections heard by the people representing them.
It might evolve into a decentralized discussion platform if done well and if there's demand.
I found that this kind of information is mostly disorganized and scattered all over internet (or offline) and there's no common format to represent it, making it not easy to understand many times. <comment><USER2> For finding out how government entities work, go to their web sites - most of the publish their ordinances, regulations, and policies. In the US, if they do not, you can get them via FOIA.

As far as how to make your concerns and objections known, it depends on the scale of government. For small local entities, go to their board meetings and have your say in the public comment times. For state-level concerns, talk to your representative. For federal concerns, again talk to your representatives, respond when requests for public comments are sent out.

For all levels of government, vote.

If you want to put together a new site that compiles that all into one place and lets people know what their options are, that would be a powerful tool for change. But trying to make it into a decentralized discussion platform may run up against sunshine laws - you cannot open a dialogue with city council members on some topics, for example - they are not legally allowed to have private discussions about public matters, as it excludes the public. This is why board/council meetings are public and people are invited to attend and speak up - to make sure private discussions don't impact public decision making.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I meant public discussions, not behind a login page just to read those.

I kind of already knew that engagement info, even though I'm not American, and I'm looking at a bigger picture and a solution to apply to any government for the ease of engagement for the citizens.

Thanks for the appreciation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Are you looking for something like this?

[https://github.com/canonical-debate- lab/paper/blob/master/RE...](https://github.com/canonical-debate- lab/paper/blob/master/README.mediawiki)</comment>


The Unix Haters Handbook - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/weise/uhh-download.html

<comment><USER2> A classic and great book.

For those of us like the primary editor (Simson Garfinkle, a few years younger than me and also a member of MIT's "computer club"), who were not entirely pleased to see UNIX win while too many of the critical concepts behind Multics, ITS, Lisp Machines, NeWS, etc. were lost (well, at least we got job control from ITS), it still has significant value.

And it provides plenty of implicit suggestions on how to make our current systems better.

</comment><comment><USER3> JWZ and the Powershell designers also make a good point that Unix doesn't separate content from presentation: having to look for text patterns to identify a piece of data isn't good.

<comment><USER4> Can you summarize Powershell for someone to doesn't get it?

<comment><USER3> Sure.

       ps <processname> | kill

You piped the object to kill, not the text, so you didn't need a regex. Kill takes an process object as input and kills it. You could probably do that with a subshell on a nix box, which is only a little more ugly, but what about getting processes that have an RSS above a certain size?:

        ps | where-object { $_.WS -gt 500MB } | kill

where-object is a filter, WS is the Windows equivalent of RSS. You've just picked only the objects with an RSS greater than 500MB. No regexs turning text into numbers, no math to turn KB into MB. Just filtering the content based it's properties, not its presentation.

I actually don't use Windows for development as I don't like the languages or the lockin (I've never been able to find something as good as Python on Linux, including IronPython) but I quite like Powershell.

<comment><USER4> That's very Lispy, actually.

      (defun ps (process-name)
        (labels ((find-proc (name)
      	     (remove-if-not
      	      (lambda (x)
      		(string= (bt:thread-name x) name))
      	      (bt:all-threads))))
          (first (find-proc process-name))))

      (defun kill (process)
        (bt:destroy-thread process))

      ;; usage
      (kill (ps "init"))

And if you remake PS into a generic function you can dispatch on various input types, not just find process by name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> While I was learning Linux, I partly used this book.

Some of issues have been solved, some will never be, but for me it was important to know the other side of the medal. I still use linux. (I know that Linux is not, or it was not last time I checked, 100% POSIX)

</comment><comment><USER6> "This book is ten years old. I started work on it in 1992..."

I remember 1992. I feel old.

<comment><USER7> I've noticed that the phrase "1990 was twenty years ago" reliably stops people in their tracks with a chilled look on their face.

<comment><USER8> It certainly does for me.

Now I wonder whether that always works, or whether there's something special about the last twenty years that makes 1990 seem surprisingly recent. To me it seems that culturally not much has changed since the 1990s; the fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties all have distinct cultural vibes, whereas the 1990s, the 200xs and now our new decade have all sort of blurred together. You wouldn't look _that_ silly today wearing clothes that were fashionable in 1990, and as for 1999... well actually some of my clothes are from 1999.

<comment><USER9> I think we can blame the internet for that. Before, time created a huge gulf between each stylistic period as they receded into the past. It was very difficult for someone in the 70's to experience much at all of 50's culture except through the nostalgic ramblings of old folks (which idealized these times heavily).

Now the net has created for us a "long now" where cultural elements are basically assimilated and never forgotten (to emerge later as idealized nostalgia). I think its the fist little nibble of the singularity at our heels.

<comment><USER8> Perhaps, or perhaps it's just a return to a more normal pace of cultural evolution after the rather unusual 1940-1990 period where an awful lot of stuff changed rapidly.

After all, I can't see much difference between the fashion and culture of 1910 and 1890, though perhaps they'd seem larger to someone living through them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Much of the book is still valid, unixes still uses X, which sucks. Plan9 tried to address some of the shortcoming pointed by JWZ, sadly it failed. 10 Things I Hate About (U)NIX[1] and 10 Things I Hate About U(NIX) Revisited[2] are also good reads.

[1]: [http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=4244...](http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=424451)

[2]: [http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=4568...](http://www.informit.com/articles/printerfriendly.aspx?p=456824)

</comment><comment><USER11> My uni had a copy, complete with the "barfbag".

This classic book is worth a look. Funny and well-written, including the anti- preface by Dennis Ritchie.

I'm a UNIX lover, btw :-)

</comment><comment><USER12> "I post, therefore I am"

That made me laugh, esp in today's context.

</comment><comment><USER13> I feel so liberated. All this time, I thought the problem was me.

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't there an online HTML version or text version of this book.

<comment><USER14> There is, and also a wonderful "unixux" unix server simulator. Really very funny.

Here is the original html handbook: <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix- haters/handbook.html>

and UNIXUX: <http://www.art.net/~hopkins/Don/unix-haters/login.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "nice" book</comment>


Why do people still buy books? - <AUTHOR> http://jmtame.posterous.com/why-do-people-still-buy-books

<comment><USER2> I can't stand reading literature electronically, there's just something about the experience of reading an actual book. Even with technical books, I like to read through sections before even trying any of the examples or exercises. I spend way too much time in front of a computer screen, and reading physical books is a nice break.

</comment><comment><USER3> I buy paper books because I actually want to own them and keep them. The electronic stuff are tech books and pulp I would eventually trash when they are out of date or have been read.

Also, for the love of god capitalize your sentences!</comment>


A Constructive Look at TempleOS (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://www.codersnotes.com/notes/a-constructive-look-at-templeos/ <comment><USER2> Excellent article.

I think TempleOS migrated most of the interesting parts of the c64 over to the pc quite well and updated as the developer saw fit. Deliberate limitations, eg screen resolution, remove a massive amount of work which is necessary if you're a lone developer. Priorities are important.

That said, a lack of networking and decent sound support are the missing items I'd add. A web browser would be nice but the layers of complexity required makes that much less feasible. Networked versions of TempleOS would raise a lot of interesting design decisions that are still worth exploring.

I like the thinking behind the shell, the hyperlinking etc and other os are quite backwards in comparison with the integrated approach to the shell. There's a lot to be gained from grabbing some of these and bringing them into linux etc. Curses could easily be used to do this, or something like Electron or node.js. The thought of all that javascript to do the equivalent... the mind boggles.

These alternative operating systems show that the mainstream doesn't have all the answers.

If assembly language doesn't scare you, have a look at [http://menuetos.net/](http://menuetos.net/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I've been following the recent death/hoax of Terry Davis very closely.

As far as I can tell it is so far unconfirmed by any reliable sources. But from what I've gathered it unfortunately seems likely that Terry has passed away. The prominent theory is that he was a victim of an accident involving a train in the Dalles, Oregon.

[http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2018/jan/03/local- man...](http://www.thedalleschronicle.com/news/2018/jan/03/local-man-killed- train-dec-30/)

[https://i.imgur.com/b1EEp2T.png](https://i.imgur.com/b1EEp2T.png)

This has supposedly been confirmed by family members but everything I've heard is from unscrupulous sources.

</comment><comment><USER4> The more I read about TempleOS, the more fascinated I am. I read articles like this one and have trouble imagining how it can possibly work, but I know that's just my Windows/Unix-centric mindset limiting my thinking.

I should really spark up a VM and try it out. It sounds like some quality time with this would expand my view of how a computing environment can work.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm reading this thing nodding my head all the way down. Clean code practicioners would balk at this but I thought this was cool:

> It's not every IDE that lets you embed images and flowcharts directly into > your source code, that kinda makes you sit up and take notice. And yes, > those flowchart boxes are hotlinked, so you can click on them to go directly > to the source code that implements them.

Also the system-wide native autocomplete is cool. My old Palm Pre had that and it was very handy.

So many cool bits of technology will remain in the shadows of history. So sad.

</comment><comment><USER6> One thing that stands out to me is that... TempleOS could have been even MORE complex, but the author, for reasons he can best express, decided to limit himself to 256 color VGA, no networking (if memory serves). It really serves as an inspiration to not give up when people tell you "it's too much work".

<comment><USER7> Per Terry:

>God said 640x480 16 color was a covenant like circumcision. You can be uncircumcised.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3mhxc9/templeo...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/3mhxc9/templeos_at_1024x512_resolution/cvf7ctv/)

<comment><USER8> That's interesting to me because even seen as a pure negative, circumcision was originally a minor trade-off in a covenant wherein God agreed to make Abraham a "father of nations." And here, essentially, Terry makes a little graphics sacrifice and, according to Terry, gets help from God himself in building the rest of this remarkable TempleOS. Seen from that perspective it makes the graphics seem like a minor deal.

This will probably cause the downvotes to rain down, but to continue the Abraham analogy, who knows what Terry's work will go on to influence in the future; maybe Terry becomes a "father" in a long chain of Temple-influenced OS projects.

<comment><USER9> I think you're right there. TempleOS is full of Bible metaphors - the root task is Adam, HolyC is a pun, etc. The circumcision metaphor fits.

..I wonder how much more of Terry's seemingly nonsensical musings are actually lucid metaphors. The man needed a translator (or the "holy spirit", metaphorically speaking)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I guess this in response to the passing / maybe passing of it's author, Terry Davis. It's still not fully clear to me if that's a rumor or if it's real.

Regardless, it's clear that Terry is both a tremendously talented and deeply troubled person. But, his personal troubles have nothing to do with the technical merits of what he created - it's impressive, to say the least. These accomplishments, however, don't in any way excuse his egregious behavior. He's a complicated figure.

<comment><USER11> _These accomplishments, however, don 't in any way excuse his egregious behavior._

Every time TempleOS comes up, someone chimes in with a remark like this. Can't we just focus on the technical aspects?

<comment><USER12> Agreed. He wrote an operating system, a compiler and a whole lot more. That kind of achievement deserves respect.

<comment><USER13> Can we separate the cause for what drove him to do that from what caused his other, less acceptable, behavior? There's been a lot of looking purely at the technical merits of stuff in the past few decades, with quite little attention paid to the causes or effects of the technology in question, to my mind. I'm not sure it's left us in a particularly good position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The video linked at "[this" point is unavailable:

>In [this video] Terry gives a brief tour of some of the more interesting features of TempleOS. At 5:50, he shows how to build a small graphical application from scratch.

However, I was able to find it here:

[http://web.archive.org/web/20170313160408/https://www.youtub...](http://web.archive.org/web/20170313160408/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-dVp542XGk)

</comment><comment><USER15> Gone to sleep for the final time.

Ash to ... And dust to dust.

</comment><comment><USER16> From 2015 and previouslies: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Constructive%20Look%20at%2...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=A%20Constructive%20Look%20at%20TempleOS&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment><comment><USER17> I don't know if I could use this as an everyday OS, but I can see so much good coming from it. Stop thinking about the newest, latest, and greatest. Stop taking control away from the user. These things, and more, we should learn from this project.

</comment><comment><USER18> This was a really thoughtful and interesting read. Thank you for posting it!

</comment><comment><USER19> Didn't Terry just die recently?

<comment><USER20> "Thou cannot kill God" \- Ecclesiastes 640, verse 480

It sadly seems so, but it has not been confirmed.

What is weird is that his site used to have a donations button - [https://archive.fo/ltjBH](https://archive.fo/ltjBH) Then someone changed it to suggest donations to charities in honor of his passing - [https://archive.fo/M8Iut](https://archive.fo/M8Iut) And now it's completely removed - [https://www.templeos.org/](https://www.templeos.org/)

<comment><USER21> Might just be the slashdot effect, but his site is currently down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Did Terry die or is it a very elaborate hoax? I've even seen screencaps of his brother's facebook posting memorials of him.</comment>


Build a Phased-Array Radar in Your Garage That Sees Through Walls (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2015/04/07/build-a-phased-array-radar-in-your-garage-that-sees-through-walls/ <comment><USER2> This is cool.

Radar's ability to steer the beam without moving always seems almost magical to me.

Fun fact: Radars control/ signal processing are now software.

Some caution is in order when playing with these things, remember, microwaves aren't just for radar they're for cooking too (one of the original microwave oven was called "radarrange")

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

I implemented/updated code that analyzed a radars output and made sure that the side lobes weren't cooking people if they happened to be standing around the radar (or in the control house which was shielded). Even if you aren't in the path of the radar (eg its pointed up) there is some rf being spilled down by side lobes. work radar was significantly larger than this one, but on this one you can stand right in its beam path.

<comment><USER3> What happens if you get in the path of a microwave beam at this kind of power? I'd imagine you notice your skin getting hot. What's the biggest risk? (I'm not saying I'm OK having my eyeballs heated, I'm just curious about what the biggest dangers are.)

<comment><USER4> Eye lenses and testicals are the the things that are effected most quickly if I remember correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Not too many people can build such a thing in their garage...

</comment><comment><USER6> Has anyone considered "phased array" optics?

<comment><USER7> Yes. Phased array optics is a thing.

You can build lens from dielectric material with a refractive index > 1, or metal lens from metal plates if you need refractive index < 1.

You can also build a lens from beam-forming network. Rotman lens is part of many AESA radar elements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Needs a 2015 perhaps?</comment>