Ask HN: Are you interested Q&A with the FPGA hackers of HN? - <AUTHOR> I thought it might be of interest to the community for those of us with fpga/asic experience here, professional or otherwise, to do a Q&A.
I do fpga and asic design, and verification, for a living; with a little clojure mixed in.
I've seen a number of others here that do the same or similar.  Hobbyists, pros, people that have picked it up by osmosis, what have you.   Please join in!
I haven't really thought this through beyond asking the question.  So maybe this thread will be both the gauge of interest and also be the Q&A itself.
I have a lot of experience but in a narrow field, so I'll answer what I can.
But I really hope other asic/fpga hackers will jump in. I have as much to learn as anyone.
Well, let's see what happens. <comment><USER2> Possible topic: open-source and FPGAs, [https://web.archive.org/web/20170401020525/https://www.blink...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170401020525/https://www.blinklight.io/blog/2017-03-31/)

 _> Open source projects die from diffusion. If there's not enough contributors concentrated in one place, code rots, bugs persist, and projects get abandoned. In contrast, where lots of traffic is concentrated in a relatively small bundle of code paths, the virtuous feedback loops kick in ... FPGA development has always been an industrial activity, dominated by brutalist, opaque, and proprietary tools. There are open source tools and communities, and I don't want to diminish their significant achievements, but there is simply no comparison between the ease of jumping into open source programming versus open source chip design. OSS needs FPGAs, and FPGAs need what programming had back in the 1980s: an on-ramp. A place where people can get up to speed in a friendly environment explicitly designed for that purpose._

There's an OSS FPGA workshop in March 2019 at DATE in Florence, [https://date- conference.com/conference/workshop-w10](https://date- conference.com/conference/workshop-w10)

<comment><USER3> It is good to hear that there is even an OSS FPGA workshop! They have even a panel discussion about how to run a sustainable business with open source hardware development. I would like attend!

Aside from open source on-ramp efforts the FPGAs should be easily usable by software developers. So more software developers would work with FPGAs instead of the electrical engineers mostly without the knowledge and appreciation of a convenient software development environment. For example, most of the time I try to utilize Makefiles, git, continuous integration in my FPGA projects. Some of my former FPGA developer colleagues are electrical engineers which became FPGA developers later. These colleagues were just happy when they could draw something on the GUI, and did not pay any attention to the garbage of files generated by the CAD tool during commit at all.

An idea to make the FPGAs more tasteful is the Pynq platform [1] that I discovered last year. The platform can leverage FPGA acceleration in Python environment, and the different bitstreams are loaded on-demand (in an app fashion). I am planning to give workshops about this platform.

[1] [http://www.pynq.io](http://www.pynq.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm just starting to learn the Project Icestorm tools as an FPGA beginner (using the Nandland Go board). I'm just a hobbyist, but I'm really interested in seeing how FPGAs can be used for custom hardware acceleration. These days you can't hear anything about the cloud without hearing about FPGAs being used for acceleration, but all the big companies are pretty tight lipped about the details of what they're actually doing with them. Realistically, could I take a frequently used C library, implement it as a hardware function in an FPGA, and integrate that with my computer via PCI Express, or USB 3 etc., and actually get a speed improvement?

<comment><USER5> No. It's not realistic to get an improvement that way. FPGAs can provide improvement in some important cases but the system design (software and hardware co-design) is radically different. You can't expect to iterate your way there when you're starting with a conventional software-only system running on a generic white-box server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I also work with FPGAs since 2010. I love especially the minimalism that an FPGA can offer despite the verification effort.

I would also like to meet FPGA developers with the hacking and open source culture in mind.

Even I had the luck of being involved mostly in FPGA-related projects in my career, I also see the trend of using more standardized hardware platforms for embedded systems. This means that Linux-based systems are preferred over bare- metal solutions, which can decrease development time but in the same time increase fault and attack surface. What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER6> An area of FPGA development and process that I generally don't full grasp is how to interact with FPGAs in a high bandwidth way with a computer. That is, say I want to use an FPGA to process output from a high bandwidth sensor, operate on it, then make that available to a process. What does that look like practically?

<comment><USER4> It might help to elaborate a little - are you asking about how your device would be connected to the computer (USB, Ethernet etc.) or how each end of those protocols is implemented, or something else? And what do you mean by "high bandwidth"? I'm not really qualified to answer you anyway, but I know you can implement things like USB and Ethernet in an FPGA, or you can use separate ICs that handle these things by exposing a serial or parallel interface to your FPGA (UART, SPI etc.).

<comment><USER6> Yeah I mean I guess I'm looking for what options there are for interfacing with computers in a standard way. I get needing to implement something like SPI or I2C or etc but I'm curious to know what the best options are, especially if you are wanting to interface with PCIe.

Is it best to interface directly with the PCIe bus from the FPGA? Is it better to abstract with some kind of IC? Is the board or the computer the master clock? Is there some kind of encoding scheme that needs to be adhered to?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Thank you! What kind of personal projects could a beginner (recent electronics graduate, with little knowledge of FPGA) hack with FPGA that would be valuable:

1- In terms of skills learned?

2- To increase her attractiveness in the job market?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what topics are covered by 'electronics graduate.' Did this cover things like digital design/logic design?

I should make a list of topics from the absolute basics like binary arithmetic through more complex things like sequential logic and state machines.

The job aspect is more complicated for me. In the areas I've worked, a 4 year bachelors in CS, CE or EE is a prerequisite. Sometimes a masters degree as well, although that has varied over the years.

Startups are, I think, more likely to bring someone in based on their public work. I don't have startup experience so I'm not the right person to answer that beyond speculating.

If I were founding a startup and needed FPGA talent, I'd be open to interviewing someone that could demonstrate understanding of clock domains, synchronization schemes, state machine design, pipelining, AMBA. If you had demonstrated board design/prototyping, even better.

One of the projects I would have liked to have done in the past personally would be to make an effects processor for an electric guitar/bass. Really, even without any signal processing, this would be an impressive project. Making use of analog-to-digital converter(s), bringing in the data to the FPGA, having a place holder block that just passed the data through, and an interface piping data to a digital-to-analog converter would be a useful platform for demonstrating digital design understanding.

And really this could apply to any sort of "signal." Guitar just happens to be a place where digital logic and signal processing intersects nicely. Microphone and voice would work too.

You could really go nuts with this though, use it as a platform to learn about filtering, frequency shifting. You could make a harmonizer. Come up with your own auto-tune. It would be fun with immediate feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Definitely! Would love to see some discussions about Open Source FPGA development (ex. TinyFPGA, iCEBreaker, FOMU)!

<comment><AUTHOR> iCEbreaker looks pretty great as a starter platform. I hope if it takes off that they offer a larger FPGA core module.

I need to spend some time looking this over.</comment></comment>


LucidScience – Electronic Projects and Tutorials - <AUTHOR> http://lucidscience.com/default.aspx <comment><USER2> [http://lucidscience.com/pro- basic%20spy%20transmitter-1.aspx](http://lucidscience.com/pro- basic%20spy%20transmitter-1.aspx)

That takes me back.. that looks very similar to something I built out of an article in an electronics magazine article in ~1987.

I do remember it had remarkably good sound quality from such a simple circuit - it basically sounded like "professional" broadcast talk radio. Lots of fun spying on siblings etc.

<comment><USER3> I was building and selling these things about 18 years ago. My favorite part about it was I could scavenge all required components from a broken cassette deck. Made a nice income for a school boy, upgraded my computer from i486 to Pentium II.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How do I get shutter speed from a cmos cam?</comment>


Ask Slashdot: Working As an IT Contractor In a War Zone? - <AUTHOR> http://ask.slashdot.org/story/11/12/13/1631221/ask-slashdot-working-as-an-it-contractor-in-a-war-zone

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't consider doing this -- nor could I easily get a job there, anyway, not being from the US and all -- but I still found the comments very interesting. Contains posts by people who worked as contractors in Iraq or Afghanistan. Lots of practical advice¹, as well as cautionary tales².

1: "Find the lightest, coolest shirts you can, cargo pants, good sturdy boots, and a good pair of sunglasses. I also found a large, floppy hat to be useful." 2: "I still jump when I hear a dumpster lid shut (it sounds spookily like a mortar hitting)"</comment>


Video: Recent Trends in Mobile Gaming from App Dev Conf - <AUTHOR> http://marakana.com/forums/android/general/540.html <comment> hello-trolls self-interest</comment>


What Bayesianism taught me - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/iat/what_bayesianism_taught_me/

<comment><USER2> Honestly this is where so much stuff falls flat on its face. People claiming they 'know' on either end of the nuts/pragmatic/scientifc spectrum.

'I think therefore I am' \- cliche ofc. Only thing I can prove.

BUT. Prove a damn thing after that. If you can, you're not logically correct, you have no proof of anything outside of your existence. It looks real to you - that's your 'proof'.

We've all thought this at least once: It could be a simulation, you can't prove it's not.

You are choosing to believe you're living on earth, and there's a universe, and you're in it, and it's made out of stuff.

You are choosing this (perhaps sensible) scenario, but it is a choice. Because you may well be here reading this to yourself, from yourself, by yourself in the vacuum of your own imagination - and you wouldn't know.

Anyways... once you pass all that, you get to pick and choose what you prefer, and life becomes easier, and kinder, and more fun.. in my little experience anyway. Because you know everything you see and do is half-bullshit, and it's alllllright.

<comment><USER3> Whether I live in my imagination or in an external reality moderated by my senses, it would appear the same to me, and part of that appearing the same is that it seems to follow rules beyond my conscious will that I can guess at based on past experience.

I don't see how the fact that it might all be a dream makes the experience of pain any less painful or the experience of pleasure any easier to come by. I experience it all the same.

<comment><USER4> It obviously does not help when you hit you little toe on the leg of a table, but it helps with more abstract problems. Realizing that philosophy can neither be right or wrong (only illogical) makes for a more relaxed life because you don't have to worry about "the big questions". You can just pick the answers you like.

<comment><USER3> Do you have examples? Depending on what the Big Questions are I may or may not agree with that.

For example: It would be nice to believe in an omni-benevolent god that would take care of me after I die. But that's the sort of answer that I'd want to have confidence in - and I'd be aware that it's equally probable that there's an omni-malicious god waiting to torture me forever.

If I'd started off believing in evil-god then the knowledge that I had no information either way would be a comfort.

If I'd started off believing in good-god then it would be a burden.

Uncertainty in that respect neither comforts nor disturbs without reference to a baseline belief, it just is.

And when we start talking about things like morality, there is a sense in which there's a question as to what we're doing when we use moral language. However, most of the thought experiments concern real life examples anyway - outside of very specific areas of realist metaethics I don't think that's something that most people think about very much.

I'm... struggling to think of any big questions about reality that would affect my life. Ontology, epistemology - again most of the stuff I know is more about how people think about their experience - or can be converted directly into that talk with no loss of effect - than it is about esoteric metaphysics.

<comment><USER4> > If I'd started off believing in good-god then it would be a burden.

I disagree on that point. Even a good-god would have rules that are probably either complicated or vague, so trying to fulfill those will actually be a burden on your everyday life.

We are not talking about uncertainty here. Quite the contrary: we are talking about the clear certainty that there just is no true or false in these questions, not that we can't determine them.

At least for me, once I realized that, I stopped wondering about an afterlife and just assumed the most probable version: nothing. And It doesn't bother me in any way.

For morals it also helped me a lot, as I realized that is no universal good/bad. We (and especially I) create these notions ourselves and only by ourselves. That means if am faced with moral questions, I can freely think about what _I_ think is right or wrong and I don't have to wonder about those omnipresent values that kind of seem to be there.

But you referenced "most people" and I agree that they probably don't spend a lot of time thinking about these thinks. But that obviously doesn't change my perspective on the world.

But to give you more practical example: I guess everybody in the western world is at least in some way faced with the question of how they are going to handle the fact that their comfort and well-being is in a considerable degree made possible by the suffering of others. This of course not a situation that we created with our own hands, but we life in and by our everyday life support a system that works like this. I would say that if you believe in absolute morals, you either have to dedicate a significant part of your life to do something about that or you are probably a hypocrite.

The mentioned realization allows you to avoid this dilemma.

<comment><USER2> I believe there's an afterlife, because the system we live in is insanely complex. I won't discount that we may be simply living a temporary instance of a 'experience'. I won't discount that I may be completely wrong, and will vanish into a puff of nothingness. Either way I'm good.

However, regardless - I WISH there were more people like you on the planet, things would get a whole lot better if we just started discussions as thinking folk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is agnosticism actually a consequence of Bayesianism?

<comment> Tuna-Fish Depends on how you define agnosticism. To use a popular example, I am not agnostic about you having an invisible fire-breathing dragon in your garage despite not being able to put a flat 0% probability on it.

Bayesianism _redefines_ the concept of knowledge, which under Bayesianism is represented as a probability. I have very strong knowledge that there is no god. If given sufficiently strong proof against that, I will update my beliefs about the issue -- but this does not mean the same as being unsure about it now.

<comment><USER6> You shouldn't have any "knowledge" that there is no god.

The issue isn't that there is a small probability of god existing, but rather there is a vanishingly small probability of your particular brand of god being true versus all the other particular brands of god or gods being true.

The pudding in a Bayesian discussing is as so often in the normalizing factor...

<comment> Tuna-Fish No. I have done quite a lot of observations on the world. Each and every one of those observations has produced a result congruent with a world in which no gods exist, and so has very slightly nudged my P(god) towards zero. Under a Bayesian philosophy, this probability is called knowledge.

<comment><USER6> Then you have to assume that god fudges with the physics so you can catch him at it. Which means that all faiths on the world must assume a god would interfere in a situation that you utterly and completely observed and understood. Because otherwise there might be a true god from some religion who just doesn't care about you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please Don't Learn to Code from Stock Photos - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/chriscoyier/post/code-in-stock-photos <comment><USER2> > Better make damn sure the background color of the body is white because > otherwise who knows what it might end up.

You would be surprised. I believe it was xhtml, or if you didn't supply a document type, that IE and Firefox would have different default background colors. One was grey, the other white. This was a decade ago though, so I don't know if it still stands.

<comment><USER3> Do you remember Netscape? The default was definitely gray.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I am guilty of using stock code photography on my websites in the past, but thank goodness I've never copied and pasted blocks of code from them... I only exclusively do that from Stackoverflow...

</comment><comment><USER5> The css might be compiled scss. Using classes whenever possible is also a valid strategy.

</comment><comment><USER6> The code on the cover of the-cloud-book.com is Go from the bosun.org project</comment>


Airbnb Business Travel - <AUTHOR> https://www.airbnb.com/business/signup <comment><USER2> This program offers interesting features to a business but not s much for the traveler. Anyone who is spending 25+ nights a year in a hotel is going to be sure to be getting points for those stays. Points == status and status == more convenience when traveling. Beyond earning free nights, there's expedited check-in, private lounges with free food, gift baskets when you check in, etc. The caveat is that to get status most (or all) of your points need to be with the same company. This means most hardcore business travelers are very loyal to <program x>. This travel program doesn't have any kind of loyalty rewards which is a non-starter.

Other downsides of airbnb: booking isn't instantaneous as with a hotel (wait hours or days for confirmation from owner), checkin has to be pre-arranged and requires you get in touch with the owner (i.e. no 3am red-eye check-ins), each place you stay is slightly different amenities versus hotel chains which all have the same brand of pre-wrapped toothbrush when you forget yours. These might seem trivial but when you travel a bunch it's the little things that hurt the most.

Story: I once had to wait for 2 hours to check into an airbnb in SF since the owner was in Africa and his mother forgot to leave his key where he said it would be.

<comment><USER3> I completely agree. But to play devil's advocate: is there a percentage of business travelers that would prefer an AirBnB experience over the lure of elite status and hotel points?

Time will tell if this is a smart move or just AirBnB smashing together something that it already has anyway. But I'm curious if anyone has an insight.

<comment><USER4> > But to play devil's advocate: is there a percentage of business travelers > that would prefer an AirBnB experience over the lure of elite status and > hotel points?

Looking at the photos of the "business-ready homes" on [https://www.airbnb.com/business/signup](https://www.airbnb.com/business/signup), I can assure you that there is nothing that would make me prefer the "AirBnB experience" over, say, a stay at the Mandarin Oriental or St. Regis. Hotels generally might get a bad wrap, but the quality of the accommodations and conveniences offered at the higher end of the market are very hard to compete with, elite status and hotel points not even taken into consideration.

<comment><USER5> I used to go to four stars hotels in London at my previous job for business trips, costing like 100-200 pounds a night, and really I didn't like it so much. The rooms had a TV with some light on it that was disturbing my sleep, sometimes I could hear the ventilation noise, etc. Many small details that were making it, IMO, a not too good experience, and many times I was happy I was not paying for this expensive accommodation with my own money.

<comment><USER6> London hotels are very expensive compared to what you get. Having stayed there many times I was always jaded about the more expensive hotels, but visiting luxury hotels in Berlin or Vienna is a much nicer experience, Hyatt or Sofitel (and sure, Mandarin Oriental if you can afford it). E.g. you can go to Berlin and stay at the 5-star Sofitel which has a top 20 (out of 800) hotel rating at Tripadvisor and pay 110€/night for a 4om² room. I've paid the same at a hotel without a window in London once.

Lisabon is another city good for cheap luxury hotels. Trivago is a great hotel aggregator.

<comment><USER5> Good point about the quality and price of hotels varying according to the city. Guess Airbnb business will be more successful in places like London than Berlin or Lisabon (Lisboa?).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Seems weird.

"Hi John, attached is your itinerary. You'll be landing in Boston at 9PM. Once you arrive, text Billy at 617-XXX-XXXX, you'll be sleeping at his place."

<comment><USER8> That's true of some Airbnb hosts - it's their own home, and their letting it (or a room in it) out. But my experience of Airbnb is generally that the host has their own home elsewhere, and the Airbnb venue is a dedicated place to let. For example, someone who has moved in with their Significant Other, and is letting/sub-letting what used to be their own place.

Compared to a business hotel, it generally lacks in terms of concierge/information/predictability. But things like a full-size refrigerator, cooking facilities, and sofas can compensate (if that's what you're looking for).

Personally, when I travel on business, for a trip of a few days, I prefer a hotel. If it's longer, or if I expect to have to work from the rental site, I prefer an Airbnb.

<comment><USER9> > Compared to a business hotel, it generally lacks in terms of > concierge/information/predictability. But things like a full-size > refrigerator, cooking facilities, and sofas can compensate (if that's what > you're looking for).

All of which is available in many 3* brand name hotels -- Hyatt House, Marriott's Residence Inn etc.

However, do you really need a full-size fridge and cookies facilities when out and about for a couple of days? Most business people don't even cook back home, and you're talking about having to cook for yourself when you're on a business trip that someone's already paying for.

The complementary breakfast (Hyatt House and Hyatt Place are the best) and the evening reception or nice lobby with pay-for food would seem like a better option than full-size fridge and a cooker.

<comment><USER10> I not infrequently stay at the suite places mostly for the sofa. I do wish more hotels would have a small fridge for guest use though; don't need the full-size one. Especially given that those who still have minibars are now often using these RFID-enabled things that will automatically charge you if you look at them crooked.

<comment><USER9> I don't recall the last time I've had a room without a fridge, or a 3* without a sofa when King, and I mostly only book opaque 2.5* to 3* !

You usually lose the fridge and the microwave if you upgrade to 3.5* +, and gain the RFID-enabled minibar at perhaps 4*.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been a business traveler (1-2 weeks/month) for a number of years and recently began shuffling in stints of airbnb.

I must admit Airbnb cannot beat the convenience and mental simplicity of business hotels. Flight cancelled, check-in at midnight, parking, need an ironing board, want to be left alone - no problem.

I typically Airbnb on travel where I expect the workload to be light or operating on reasonable hours (not coming in at 1am every night). It's really an experience thing for me (akin to going backpacking/camping) which often turn into great dinner conversation with customers - they're always amused. I've met a number of great people (I think most people can be, and Airbnb provides the venue) and I highly recommend it - just be prepared to deal with sometimes awkward/interesting situations, but such is life!

</comment><comment><USER9> "Lower your trip cost with amenities like WiFi, stocked kitchens, and free parking."

I'm LOL'ing! Airbnb is often several times more expensive than the opaque 3* hotel deals on Priceline! Whatever they do, lowering trip costs is not one of them!

Just to give you an example -- I was able to book several 3* hotels in Austin during SxSW for about $50 per night, all the while craigslist and such were at $200/ni for one person, or $300/ni for two. Heck, some guy was even renting out his trailer for 1.2k$/week, or something like that!

<comment><USER12> My experience has been the exact opposite. I'm not a heavy user, but I've stayed at an airbnb at least 5 times now and each one of those stays were significantly cheaper than a comparable hotel, but with a way better experience in almost every way.

Also, finding multi room hotel suites for a reasonable price is usually next to impossible.

<comment><USER9> > My experience has been the exact opposite. I'm not a heavy user, but I've > stayed at an airbnb at least 5 times now and each one of those stays were > significantly cheaper than a comparable hotel, but with a way better > experience in almost every way.

Are you comparing published list prices, or the opaque prices through priceline / hotwire? Because I was clearly talking about opaque, which is a better comparison with Airbnb anyways, since you never really know what you're getting.

> Also, finding multi room hotel suites for a reasonable price is usually next > to impossible.

You must be a novice hotel traveller, then. Pretty much all Hyatt House and Hyatt Place are suites that essential have two rooms (House would even have a door between them often), as well as Residence Inn and SpringHill Suites. Courtyard by Marriott has full suite rooms, too; surprisingly, very often the price difference between two-room suite and non-suite is like a symbolic $10 or $20, although you generally don't get any discounts if you require a suite, and can't use points for them, either. Hampton Inn (by Hilton) has two-room suites as an upgrade, too. I'm pretty sure other brands do, too.

Heck, you could even go opaque for two rooms, and ask for a connecting door, which most decent hotels always do have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To those who will point to the incompatibility of AirBnB and business travel..... This is almost certainly something they are doing because people are already using AirBnB for business travel.

So, a front desk, loyalty points, instant bookings, avoiding the check-in/key issues, etc. These are all real. AirBnB will be disadvantaged in these areas.

But, in some cases its advantages outweigh these. Prices & Airbnb's stock of properties. I don't expect your average VP of Sales to be too excited about this, but I think business travellers are pretty diverse these days.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, there's a market for this? (Such words come before something is canned, or blows up to make millions I guess.)

Can a business really save a lot of money by putting up their employees in "business-ready homes," like a twee Lower East Side room for $55/night that looks like a (very) young woman lives in it?

One would think that the lost productivity in dealing with a different landlord in addition to the often exciting/terrifying moments that come with an AirBnB stay seem to offset the cost of a business rate hotel. Productive employees, also receiving a salary and benefits while traveling, are worth more to me than saving $100-$200/night on a hotel stay.

The only place I've worked where something like this would fly was where "employees" could take some abuse: grad school. Maybe I am now an old soul, but I like boring, dependable hotels when I travel _for work_.

<comment><USER14> There is definitely a market for this, especially in a city like Manhattan where business rate hotels are hard to come by and can be inconveniently located compared to an AirBnB. When we have remote workers come visit us we put them up in an AirBnB that is a 5-minute walk from the office to get better, more spacious accommodations than a hotel for under $200 (which is for an entire apartment, not just a room). And who needs room service when you have Seamless, Postmates, Caviar, etc.

The only downside to AirBnB is the lack of daily housekeeping. Maybe there is room for a 3rd party service that caters exclusively to AirBnB hosts to provide regular housekeeping.

That all said, I'm not sure what this "Business Travel" service provides that you can't get from a regular booking. Is this just a shared AirBnB account for teams? Are there special business rates or liability insurance policies associated with it? This page does a fairly poor job of explaining the merits of creating a business account with them.

<comment><USER15> That's not the only downside. There's a freaking enormous downside for large corporations, and that's their inability to centrally manage vendor relationships with large chains. For example, my company spends about 2500 nights/yr here: [http://www.itchotels.in/hotels/itcgrandchola.aspx](http://www.itchotels.in/hotels/itcgrandchola.aspx)

As a result, we were able to negotiate a rate down from about 12,000INR/night to about 6500INR/night. The hotel is huge, has every amenity (in India, especially if you're flying solo, most business travelers are not likely to venture outside the hotel for dinner), is close to the office, and we're only paying about US$100/night.

I think Manhattan may be one of the few cities where this legitimately makes sense (due to general lack of hotels, or price gouging). SF, perhaps, but it depends where you're going to be for work and whether there are any huge conferences going on at the same time. One year at Dreamforce I booked late and ended up in a shared room at a craptastic rundown place near the Embarcadero. Perhaps not typical, but it does happen.

<comment><USER16> $100/night is astronomical compared to most Airbnb listings in India. You can get much nicer accommodations for half the price, and you don't need to be a large corporation to negotiate a package deal for it.

When I travel for work, I often add additional time onto my trip to explore where I visit. Sometimes people don't have a sense of adventure, and this may not be for them. For people like this I believe you are correct, they will not enjoy this program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Employees might prefer to stay at hotel brands of their own preference, for better service, loyalty programs, earning points, etc.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's a key mental difference between traveling for leisure and for business.

When you are holidaying, you are looking for those little experiences that make every trip unique, and living in someone's home definitely adds to that.

But when you are traveling for work, anything that's not work is distracting. So one seeks 'familiarity', and that's where the experience of just getting back to a hotel with no surprises waiting wins.

It's the same reason I chose Starbucks to work from whenever I am traveling. I know I'll get the same environment, same mediocre coffee and similar wifi. No surprises, so I can GSD.

<comment><USER10> For me that exaggerates the contrast. One of the things that makes at least some business travel worthwhile is that I have the opportunity to spend at least a little time on distractions in the local environment, whether taking a walk or eating a meal. I don't go out of my way to seek out Starbucks though I'll go there if that's what is convenient.

That said, I generally try to simplify with respect to the hotel stay. I may or may not stay with a familiar chain but I'll generally book with something that looks to be a reliable business hotel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I question the success of this from a loyalty/perks perspective. Not for the business traveller, but for the employer. Most people don't realize this, but when your company signs deals with airlines and hotels, they get big perks in return for pledging dollars to those businesses. You get to designate X number of people for platinum status, even if they only fly or stay a few times a year. Those perks translate into huge upside for the occasional business exec who has to pay for a business class ticket, but be at the top of the list for a free first upgrade.

It might sound trivial to most people here, but it's a big part of the sales pitch when you're managing a large corporate travel department.

</comment><comment><USER20> Many firms won't let employees share a double hotel room due to the risk of sexual harassment violations _(one employee stumbles in on the other having sex in the room, said employee may have grounds to sue the employer)_.

With that in mind, I assumed AirBnB Business Homes would be whole homes to avoid contact with an owner, other guests sharing the other rooms or situations that an employee might not be happy with - eg female employee staying alone in the home with a male landlord, etc.

But looking through it appears many are shared situations, which surprises me due to the potential for legal issues.

<comment><USER13> Which employee gets to sue in this case?

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Surprised Airbnb isn't worried about getting homejoyed out of the deal if a business traveler frequently uses the same place.

<comment><USER22> This definitely already happens, in the few cases where I've seen AirBnB be used for repeat business travel. A colleague of mine goes to Rome for 2-3 week stays and found the place he currently rents via AirBnB, but now he just books it directly. It's quite possible that they can make enough money on the other cases to not matter, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> What distinguishes business ready apartments from others? The page doesn't seem to be very specific.

<comment><USER24> Working Internet, for one. I've dealt with prospective hosts that don't have wifi, and not stayed at their places because of that - and that was for leisure travel.

<comment><USER23> I've stayed somewhere with working wifi, but the host mailed me and said its not working right now and I had to plug in. On a Mac that doesn't have wired Ethernet.

Rant over, but for real I'd want to avoid airbnb surprises.

<comment><USER24> Even if you have a computer with wired Ethernet, who travels with an Ethernet cable these days?

<comment><USER25> I actually do, specifically for situations like this. A short (2ft) CAT5e cable lives in my backpack alongside a small 3-outlet surge protector, spare flash drives, spare battery pack for USB devices, etc when I'm on the road. I frequently work while traveling and don't want to gamble that a misconfigured access point near my gate, full power outlet, etc could cost me productivity. I've occasionally even stayed in hotels which didn't seem to provide wifi (or wanted to charge way too much for it), but, had an ethernet jack on the room's desk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Problem with AirBnb for business is the uncertainty: booking & checking. If you were able to have a confirmed booking and there were iPhone locks it would solve a lot of issues. AirBnb could underwrite the purchase of digital locks.

</comment><comment><USER27> How about airbnb business space. meeting rooms etc.</comment>


Mycroft – An open-source voice assistant - <AUTHOR> https://mycroft.ai/ <comment><USER2> As far as I know Mycroft does its speech recognition in the cloud, so your voice has to leave your network unfortunately. This is the reason why I don't have a voice assistant yet. There was snips.ai which tried to solve this problem locally but they were acquired by Sonos.

edit: spelling

<comment><USER3> Your voice is already compromised if you use a smartphone or windows/Mac with a mic.

<comment><USER2> If you are a target of the NSA or some other state actor, then perhaps. If not, and you take a bit of care to disable the voice assistant on your devices (Siri, Google. etc), then you should be fine.

<comment><USER4> That just disables the voice assistant. It does nothing to ensure that your mic isn't on, listening, and recording at any time. I've had too many targeted ads start popping up after conversations with people to be convinced otherwise.

<comment><USER5> it's observer bias, nothing more. test it out. pick a phrase, my spouse and i chose "snowmobile". For the next week, we had random conversations about how cool snowmobiles are, how badly we wanted one, what price we were willing to pay, financing, etc. we peppered our conversations with click bait, honestly. neither of us particularly ever had any interest whatsoever in snowmobiles, so we figured this would be a pretty ok test for anecdata.

at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.

<comment><USER4> > At the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our > targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles.

While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen. There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it.

It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into, yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an interest.

<comment><USER6> One thing i thought of and wanted to test: what if you yourself don't do any internet queries but someone on the same network as you does? I've had conversations with people, one time we were talking about a concert venue which i did not look up, but i did start to receive ads for that concert venue. It creeped me out initially, but I believe the other person on the same home network was googling or looking for information on that venue on their phone. I believe we were just associated together for advertisement purposes.

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure this happens. When I was doing work with NetSuite, my roommate (who has no interest in anything remotely related to enterprise software, and doesn't have any other devices that could have been listening in) started getting ads for them on his laptop.

It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Worth a mention they are fighting a patent troll right now [https://voicebot.ai/2020/03/04/mycroft-ais-legal-war- against...](https://voicebot.ai/2020/03/04/mycroft-ais-legal-war-against-a- patent-troll-heats-up/)

<comment><USER9> Wow. The patent is for "Using voice commands from a mobile device to remotely access and control a computer". That's so obvious it's laughable. How was this patent granted?

<comment><USER10> Once at a meeting to discuss the patent application the presenter mentioned how Jeff Bezos patented "one click buy" \- i.e. Buying something with a single click. I asked why we didn't patent "2-n click buy" to prevent any competitors from selling anything.

Everyone laughed but I meant it seriously. I still don't get how "1 click buy" is a thing you can patent but you can't patent "2 click buy". The patent process is incredibly stupid and arbitrary as far as I can tell - at least when it comes to software.

<comment><USER11> FWIW, there was a patent troll trying to get people for the idea of "online shopping carts" which is pretty much "two-click buy" imo.

[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg- crush...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crushed-the- shopping-cart-patent-and-saved-online-retail/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Mycroft as software is used by a small group of users and seems pretty stable. More features are continuously added and the design principles look promising (open source, as private as possible).

The biggest problem is their hardware: they have a Mycroft v1, (to me personally) a prototype alike piece of hardware. There have been successful campaigns for a v2 release, with new hardware and an improved design.

However, they fail to work with reliable partners and there's still no working device which resembles the final production level. I have been a backer of the indigogo campaign but it's frustrating they postpone their Mycroft v2 every time again. I really hope the can deliver the device at some point, but they keep rewriting software and _if_ they ship, the hardware is pretty outdated probably.

<comment><USER13> It's true v1 was more of a proof of concept device. The core hardware target has always been the raspberry pi family of devices since they are pretty well ubiquitous. 2-3 is the current set. Base software is linux so if your audio devices, mic and speaker, work with Linux then you're pretty well good to go. Most microphone hats for Pi are supported. I use the Google Voicekit AIY v1 with raspberry pi 3 b+. Works a treat.

As with most open source efforts(especially early on) there's a lot of tinkering and DIY at the get go and they've designed their product to be supportive of this. Their "retail" devices are, much like Googles intent with Nexus, intended to be a best possible target for other vendors to target including the DIY crowd. Whether that's the right way to come at it is open to debate but the premise that they don't have a set hardware target is at best misleading.

Edit: Link to hardware spec [https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft- ai/get-mycr...](https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/get- mycroft/picroft)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is already a step-up from Google Home devices in that you can trust it's not sending audio to Google outside of what you intend to, but I'll be properly excited when the Open-Source speech-to-text component is working[1] and I don't have to send my voice to Google at all.

[1]: [https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft- technologies/over...](https://mycroft-ai.gitbook.io/docs/mycroft- technologies/overview#speech-to-text-stt)

<comment><USER13> I might be wrong so grain of salt. The main website is down. I believe the open source STT was working and in. As with many community projects it relies on folks contributing time to update documentation and unfortunately Mycroft hasn't received the love of other projects so I believe, again I may be wrong, that this documentation is outdated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I get a Database Error on the homepage. Hug of death?

<comment><USER16> Error establishing a database connection. And it didn't say that in clear voice.

<comment><USER17> I mean, I would say that's consistent behaviour compared to other voice assistants I've tried.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Mycroft can also be used on Raspberry Pi-like developer hardware which is awesome :D

Check out this example with the MATRIX Creator and MATRIX Voice: [https://www.hackster.io/matrix-labs/matrix-devices- running-m...](https://www.hackster.io/matrix-labs/matrix-devices-running- mycroft-ai-ee9d4a)

<comment><USER19> I have used it! The MATRIX Devices are very good choices to deploy this kind of voice processing solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not really the first one though :p

[https://github.com/rcbyron/hey-athena- client/commit/50b37628...](https://github.com/rcbyron/hey-athena- client/commit/50b37628f8bec3aba20135ea1e590c2b3c5cb37f) (2015)

Vs

[https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft- core/commit/8e470ce7c15...](https://github.com/MycroftAI/mycroft- core/commit/8e470ce7c157ac7ec01d6559e580964f69408f07) (2016)

Jokes aside, it's a great work, I'll probably try it in my spare time.

<comment><USER21> Home assistant is a home automation tool, not a voice assistant. You can even hook up Mycroft to Home Assistant.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm getting "error establishing database connection"

</comment><comment><USER23> I made a fully offline voice assistant on a Raspberry Pi with Pocket Sphinx and Festival Lite glued together with Python. Performance wasn't great but it was a fun project nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER24> A thread from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256709](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13256709)

</comment><comment><USER25> Bummer their site is still down. Not sure why a marketing site needs to maintain connectivity to a database to render the homepage?

<comment><USER26> Most web pages need to be able to be updated. I think the two most popular options for that are a CMS or a static site generator. In general it is easier for "less technical" users to update the content in a CMS. Hence you get a database for rendering.

Alternate analysis: Personally it is not surprising to me at all that a marketing website would be run on Wordpress, Drupal, etc. And therefore it is quite clear that a database connection would be needed.

<comment><USER27> Even with wordpress you don't necessarily need the database connection. Either a colocated reverse proxy can cache the result, or you can configure cloudfront or some similar 3rd party service which will not hit the origin unless it has to. Or you can even use one of the wordpress plugins which caches the resources/pages as static files.

It requires extra half an hour of work, but... it's probably worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The website is down but a lot of work happens at the forums and the forums are still up. If you're interested in some insight in to the community around the project have a look over there. [https://community.mycroft.ai/](https://community.mycroft.ai/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Stupid question: has anyone hooked up a voice assistant sucessfully against upnp renderers and media servers? Would be willing to invest some effort if I could use them to browse music. Seems quite tricky particularly for non native speakers :)

<comment><USER29> Interesting you should mention this needs, as there's something that integrates Mycroft that just came up in one of my feeds:

Plasma Bigscreen from people involved with KDE:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/03/26/plasm...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2020/03/26/plasma- bigscreen-is-a-new-smart-tv-experience-powered-by-raspberry-pi-4-and-kde/amp/)

[https://youtu.be/yylFiE4QtUE](https://youtu.be/yylFiE4QtUE)

<comment><USER29> And it got posted here too: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693172](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693172) (which has a more authoritative link than my original one)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if you can change it's name now.

Last time I asked, the dev asked me back how much I'd be willing to pay for it...

<comment><USER21> Like change the trigger word? Looks like you can: [https://mycroft- ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customiz...](https://mycroft- ai.gitbook.io/docs/using-mycroft-ai/customizations/wake-word)

<comment><USER30> Awesome.

I'll have a loot at it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Site is down, any WordPress and php based stack will crash after 30-50 simultaneous requests ...

I am amazed that this doesn't seems to bother anyone ... And adding a cache layer is not a real solution ...

And in other parts of the internet there is few stacks delivering 5k to 150k rps per core without cache ...

But still everyone use WordPress ...

<comment><USER32> This is flat out false, WP is able to handle much more than this. I've scaled WordPress personally to 10M+ users per day

<comment><USER31> Because the way PHP work (1 process per request), it can't handle a lot of simultaneous requests and also anyone can crash ANY wordpress website with a single WRK command ... If you have all the content cached by your CDN it might be ok, but if you have a dynamic website with API/DB, not just static content ... wordpress is slow as hell from my experience

<comment><USER33> I've been using WordPress for 4 years with good scaling and no downtime. It's only "slow as hell" if you don't actually know WordPress (which most WordPress users don't). ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Would be very cool of them to at least alias the mycroft.xxx domain

</comment><comment><USER35> is there any good terminal assistant? something that accepts these kinds of queries but with in a cli, preferably without the need of constant internet connection

<comment><USER36> Mycroft has a curses CLI: `start-mycroft.sh cli` or `mycroft-start cli` if services are running, `start-mycroft.sh debug` or `mycroft-start debug` to start services and go straight into the CLI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> So maybe MyCroft and Mozilla should get together?

</comment><comment><USER38> Hug of death.

</comment><comment><USER39> their home page has gone all errory.

Error establishing a database connection

</comment><comment><USER40> Named after Alan ?

<comment><USER41> I'd guess it's named after the computer in Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

<comment><USER42> No, they're both named after Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock Holmes' equally brilliant brother from the series by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

<comment><USER41> I guess we'll find out once the website is up again.

[https://mycroft.ai/blog/why-name-it-mycroft/](https://mycroft.ai/blog/why- name-it-mycroft/)

Edit: Google cache has a copy[1]:

> Mycroft is named in honor of Mike, the supercomputer in Robert A. Heinlein's > classic novel "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress". Heinlein's Mycroft was a High- > Optional, Logical, Multi-Evaluating Supervisor, Mark IV, Mod. L" – a HOLMES > FOUR. Mycroft's friend Manuel named him "Mycroft" after Sherlock's elder > brother Mycroft Holmes. This was later shortened to Mike.

[1] [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ei=mwx- XrKxLauV...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?ei=mwx- XrKxLauVlwTNh4DgAw&q=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmycroft.ai%2Fblog%2Fwhy-name-it- mycroft%2F&oq=cache%3Ahttps%3A%2F%2Fmycroft.ai%2Fblog%2Fwhy-name-it- mycroft%2F&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz- serp.3..0i71l5.10095.10095..10404...0.1..0.0.0.......0....1.OJSin5nxASA)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> i see error establishing database connection.

</comment><comment><USER44> How does it work

</comment><comment><USER45> db error :p</comment>


Betsy DeVos Confirmed as Education Secretary - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/us/politics/betsy-devos-education-secretary-confirmed.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> Well, education as a public good had a nice run. Not that it has been in particularly good shape in this country, but we have blueprints from other countries on how to improve it.

Instead we have a completely inexperienced person in control of $60bil+ because she paid off Congress. Seems par for the course these days.

<comment><USER3> Fortunately, most public school policy funding occurs at the state and local levels as compared to the federal level.

DeVos is and remains exceedingly unqualified for the position. She's literally never been taught or been taught in a public school in the entirety of her life. Her B.S. is in poly sci.

Her brother founded what was once known as Blackwater, the same Blackwater that murdered civilians in Iraq. Her husband is heir to the Amway fortune, a name quite prominent in the multi-level marketing community. They also donated 200 million USD to Republican campaigns and causes.

Absolutely absurd.

<comment><USER4> > Fortunately, most public school policy is determined at the state and local > levels as compared to the federal level.

Quite a lot of it is influenced by incentives and conditions attached to federal funds, both those explicit in law and those resulting from the Department of Education's particular choices in applying the law.

DeVos will control the latter and (presumably, via influence within the Administration and controlling the DoE's interactions with Congress) substantially influence the former.

<comment><USER3> I apologize, I should have said funding mechanisms{[1]. Policy is heavily influenced at the federal level.

[1][https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite- chart....](https://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/fed/10facts/edlite-chart.html#2)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the public school system in this country is terrible. Personally excited to see some radical changes and ready to give this a chance.

Too much bureaucracy, institutionalization, unionization and inertia going on. Extremely strange and inconsistent funding/taxation patterns and complete lack of oversight or accountability has been the norm for 30+ years.

<comment><USER6> As with most events that have occurred since Trump took the presidency, I am concerned, but optimistic. She has my full support, I hope she makes great changes to a system that desperately needs it.

<comment><USER3> Is there anything that she has accomplished or done in her life that indicates that she will improve things? She had a lot of trouble answering absurdly basic questions during her confirmation hearing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So there was some press this morning on the democratic filibuster... It is not clear to me why it didn't last longer. Can anyone shed some light?

<comment><USER8> "Back in 2013, then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid changed the Senate's filibuster rules so presidential Cabinet nominees only required 51 votes, rather than 60, to be confirmed."

[http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/17/14251600/tr...](http://www.vox.com/policy-and- politics/2017/1/17/14251600/trump-cabinet-weeds)

<comment><USER9> > Republicans warned that it would not only tear apart cross-party > relationships in the Senate, but it will come back to haunt Democrats if > they return to the minority. "You will no doubt come to regret this, and you > may regret it a lot sooner than you think," Senate Minority Leader Mitch > McConnell, R-Ky., warned Democrats.

[http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/21/harry...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2013/11/21/harry- reid-nuclear-senate/3662445/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's good to be rich. Donate to a whole bunch of Senators, win a job despite having no qualifications for that role.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've also noticed that most of my Facebook friends quickly forget that the guy their hero Obama appointed did a terrible job and the teachers unions demanded he resign, which he later did.

They won't even give DeVos a chance, and most of them, it's because Obama didn't pick her.

</comment><comment><USER12> Bad news for grizzly bears across America.

</comment><comment><USER13> Let us pray.

</comment><comment><USER14> devOS?

<comment><USER15> Good humor seems to be counterproductive to the majority

<comment><USER16> Succinct and accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Glad to see this happening. The federal government needs to completely get out of education. A good first step would be to dismantle the Department of Education.

<comment><USER18> Further inequality between states in the union will only continue to benefit the current ruling bodies, unless the states can come up with some way to shelter their populations (shrink the federal government someway/how). Unfortunately, not all the states see it yet.

Eventually it will come to the point where some of them will question the union at all—as an outsider I look forward to the independent states movements gaining stronger footholds.</comment></comment>


Mango: Git completely decentralised - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@alexberegszaszi/mango-git-completely-decentralised-7aef8bcbcfe6#.8nh8fkn5o <comment><USER2> I was interested until he said Ethereum.

<comment><USER3> I was interested until he said "npm".

<comment><USER4> The premise that git needs to be "decentralized" makes no sense to me. What am I missing?</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Maildown – super simple email API - <AUTHOR> https://maildown.dev <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I just launched Maildown.

As a serial hacker, I've built a lot of small applications over the years and have always found email setup (whether transactional or marketing) to be a bit of a chore. I don't like the WYSIWYG editors or the process of manually uploading CSV contact lists that all the big email providers seem to use.

I've created Maildown to simplify this process - its just a single REST API that accepts emails in markdown syntax, and allows you to generate and send beautiful emails simply and quickly

Thanks for looking Chris

</comment><comment><USER2> Cool! Do you handle updating users' email addresses? That's a challenge we've had with sendgrid. A user updates their email address and now they're no longer unsubscribed if they unsubscribed previously.

<comment><AUTHOR> We currently don't support that either - but give me one day and I'll come up with a solution for this...

<comment><USER2> What works in other systems (intercom, for example) is allowing callers to pass a user ID with every call. Then you can match on that and unsubscribe the user rather than the email itself.

<comment><USER3> We can solve any problem by introducing an extra level of indirection

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious as to how you are sending the emails under the hood to make the best effort that the emails don't get flagged as spam.

<comment><AUTHOR> Emails are all sent by AWS. When you first sign up, you're sent a verification email from AWS to confirm your ownership of that address. I'm also hoping to improve this further in the near future by adding DKIM verification also.

Most of the complexity in building this app has been around preventing abuse of the service for the purpose of sending spam emails by closely monitoring what's being sent via AWS SNS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the idea. I had a similar idea but using some type of WYSIWYG templating, but never started. I was afraid of finding a sustainable marketing channel. There is a lot of competition and any type of paid ads for those keywords are extremely high. I hope you'll figure it out!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is actually my second attempt at launching this - I tried and gave up fairly quickly a year or so ago. But actually I've built a few side projects in total and I've always thought this sort of service would add more value to myself then any of the other things I've built.

I think the right way to build this up is to target a niche, rather than attempt to compete with the big players, so that's what I'm hoping to do eventually

<comment><USER5> For me one of the pain points I had as a beginner was setting the DNS records. I couldn't figure out what I was doing and the propagation time was making me anxious because I never knew if I implemented it right. Also, I think SNS has a limit of 10000 domains, do you know what to do after that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Your branding is pointing to a tailwind CSS starter page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up, I'll get that updated ASAP

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> your style sheet is being blocked for me:

Refused to apply style from '[https://maildown.dev/'](https://maildown.dev/') because its MIME type ('text/html') is not a supported stylesheet MIME type, and strict MIME checking is enabled.

<comment><USER7> typo: "way to end beautiful"

Also, I'd get rid of the image or make it darker.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, updated the typo now, and will have a think about the image

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What does this mean - "Start Free Now" Where is the pricing page and why is it hidden ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've changed the copy on this button now - I agree it wasn't great. The pricing page was previously only visible to logged in users (purely because it highlights the current plan, and because its the starting point of the checkout process) but I've edited this now too to make it visible from the landing page.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Typo I presume?:

> Markdown syntax

> Maildown supports _mrkdown_ syntax</comment>


What could a geek in his forties learn in 1000 hours for a more exciting career? - <AUTHOR> This is my particular case, but I think this thread could be very valuable for a lot of people:
I'm a 42 year old computer engineer,  with a lovely family, a nice mortgage, a stable but boring job,...a common guy... but I've been presented a unique opportunity: I could take a paid break for some months, one thousand available hours I've calculated, so I've decided to do something really impactful for my professional career: I'm going to try to learn in deep a valuable technical skill I could use for a further job, as a freelancer or running a new exciting startup.
I'm really fascinated with everything about Internet, the startups world,  new technologies and I would like to re-think my professional future. But I feel like the ugliest model in a beauty contest, a computer engineer with +15 years of experience whose career has been gradually and inevitably oriented towards managing and planning competences instead of technical skills. I have some Java, SAP and PHP background, but nothing with an in deep knowledge.  I'm fully convinced that the world is for doers!, people able to make things instead of tie wearing planners.
In my spare time  I've been doing some experiments, even I have two little websites running: a subscription based form builder and a little social network for creatives, both using LAMP  but I don't fancy these technologies, I think there are already a lot of Java / Javascript / PHP / Python ... developers out there! and I think that amaizing new technologies help to build amaizing new things.
In my list there are things like:
- Learn a functional language like Erlang, Haskell, Scala... for the  highly-concurrent future world
- Learn a technology stack targeting towards  Big Data: Scala+Hadoop i.e.
- Learn Node.js
...
What should you do in my case? Are you in a similar situation?
Thank you in advance to this amazing community.
(Sorry for my English, I am not a native English speaker) <comment><USER2> If I were you, I would focus on business side of things. You are fast approaching to a point where ageism will start to bite. A purely technical skill set can be very limiting when it does.

</comment><comment><USER3> The truth is that you can learn everything covered by the new buzz words out there. However, unless you have a real use case for them or serious about finding ways to use them. You will just be wasting your time. Might as well spend more time with family and just enjoy life.

You can go ahead and learn something new. However, you need to set your expectations right. Unless you are a genius (which you may be. i just have never met you or know anything about you), the new language for you will just be a hobby. Making a career out of a hobby and compete with others who have being doing it for a while is hard unless you are dedicated. Or it could be that you just want to learn it and have fun. No one knows yourself better than other people. So you will know what your realistic expectations are and whether you are okay with it.

That being said, my approach would actually not be trying to start with picking a new language. Each language is good at certain contexts. For example, you use node if you want to do long polling because it's unreasonably low memory usage per connection. Each nosql database has its pros and cons towards what you are trying to do.

My advice will be try to build something and pick languages and backends based on what you are trying to build. You already have 2 side projects. Maybe start with a mobile project this time? Try to look into your day to day life and see if there some little and fun tasks you can solve using new technologies? I think you will learn in a much more relevant context this way.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some great suggestions on what would be interesting to study have already been made but - I suspect that this is about something more - it is about redirecting a career. Looking for some rigour and a new purpose.

If miriadis wants to stay in a management type role - what skills and experience should he be gaining to re-energise himself and make his future contribution in that role something special.

Perhaps miriadis wants to shift towards a developer role - if so - in what sort of company and thus what sort of skills should be acquired?

<comment><AUTHOR> That is!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think the question you might ask is a little different. Do you want to improve at your current job or do you want a better job (with the same generous employer)?

If you want a better job, you need to learn soft skills. Focus on marketing, managing & finance. I'd also get your english skills to 100%, even if that's not your homeland. Lots of companies place a higher value on bilingual employees.

If you want to focus on improving the skill set you currently use, I'd look for resume buzzwords. Find a current trend technology & make an impact in a open source project. E.g. Node.js (or one of the frameworks), Go, Hadoop, etc...Hit it hard and mean make an impact. Ask people involved in those areas what needs work. Find a weak spot and tackle it. Publish your work on Github.

I know that sounds cheap and dirty. However, nobody will notice that you read Kernigan & Richie or Code Complete. Anyhow, you'll get more from the fundamentals when you see it in practice.

Plus if you help an open source project, you will get to meet all kinds of smart people who will help you because that's how it works. And you might even get to help someone less far along than you.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm 30, and just entering the Planner phase of my career. I can see where a few years down the road I'd be in a similar position. My percentage of time coding has dropped to 5% or lower, and I'm already itching to learn something new. Looking ahead, I think I'd focus on functional languages, asynch patterns, scaleable architecture, i8n patterns, and hardware. I'd stay away from the "Web app" and desktop spaces; I think we've reached peak web app.

In fact, the hardware category makes me feel the best, what with the "Internet of things" coming in vogue. If I were in your shoes, I'd get a 3-d printer and some raspberry pis and come up with weird, creative things that may or may not serve a realistic purpose. It's never been easier to get involved in the maker culture, but I already feel like I don't have the time and expertise to capitalize on it properly. This is probably where I'd spend my time.

<comment><AUTHOR> "The internet of things" is one of my areas of interest and a clear candidate to become a new "Next Big Thing"... interesting suggestion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am 32 so it might be easy for me to give advice to you as a 42 year old but here it goes. You seem to have a good personal life and a decent professional life even though "boring" as you put it. It seems like the boredom and the desire to do something new/exciting has hit you which has already hit me by the way :). The real question is: Have you considered the risk factor ? You may not realize but you have a lot to lose if you do take the risk and try something new.I am in no way suggesting that you should not do it. I just want you to assess the following:

How bad do you want this ? Are you just bored and want to try something new for a change OR do you actually want to pursue a whole new career path/entrepreneurship etc. Big difference b/w the 2. A lot more at risk if you go for the second one but hopefully a lot more reward as well.

P.S: Your English seems pretty good to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> A very reasonable insight, but I'm not thinking of giving up my job and throw me into the unknown. A new position always has its risks but I think this can be calibrated. Thank you for your comment about my English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you are a computer engineer and have prior knowledge of programming, you should be able to pick up any new language or technology in a very short time. With 1000 hours (that is 5 months of 5 day weeks) you have more than enough time to: find an interesting startup idea, learn the necessary technologies, build it, test it, launch it and validate with potential customers. If it doesn't work you just go back to your old day job. There is nothing to lose.

</comment><comment><USER9> Could you go to a conference to add in some social events that are programming-related? Perhaps having self-imposed deadlines and social support would be helpful.

Do you know any programmers that could be a bit of a mentor?

I went through a career pivot going from mostly web development to mobile programming. The big thing for me was to release your own apps and to create good tech demos.

</comment><comment><USER10> Haskell. I'm still on the journey but it's changed the way I think about programming already (always worthwhile!). You might also consider clojure for the same kind of effect but likely more real world utility if you come from Java land.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm being seduced by Erlang. "High concurrency" seems to be a great space to dive in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Great topics. How about algorithms, networks, and design patterns? There's also a lot of in-depth computer science stuff you can learn from Coursera.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Any suggestion about a promising technology stack to be mainstream in five years?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments. This is really a great community.

<comment><USER12> I would develop a SaaS app idea over your time away from your day job.

Choosing a language or skill that's going to be the next big thing is tough.

Ruby on Rails would be a good choice to use to develop your app and Rails developers are in demand if it works out you go to work for someone as a developer in the future or freelance on projects.

Since you're around 40 I would work toward having your own business rather than programming for someone else with a new skill.

Check out <http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/>.

They have a lot of good information on their podcast.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Refactor.io – Share your code instantly for refactoring and code review - <AUTHOR> https://www.refactor.io <comment><USER2> Would be very useful if we could paste a github file url and refactor.io could just render the file (or a portion of it based on the github url) rather than pasting code manually.

Also, I was trying to comment on a code snippet I created. It would have been convenient to be able to refer to a specific line using shorthand (like #14, etc.) in a comment rather than pasting the entire snippet again with a diffed view.

Still a cool and super simple idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks Afaq! this is great feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe take a look at [http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/) for features relating to the social aspects of code review. Making code review a more pleasant if not enjoyable process for the reviewer and reviewee seems like the hard part of the process.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks Ben! yes we're working to make the code review experience as snappy and enjoyable as possible!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone!

Weiting from Codementor ([https://www.codementor.io](https://www.codementor.io)) here!

We're excited to launch Refactor.io - a simple tool for developers to share code instantly for refactoring and code review.

Would love to hear your feedback! Thanks!</comment>


How to Start Using Social Media Effectively - <AUTHOR> http://vinaytrivedi.com/how-to-use-social-media-effectively

<comment><USER2> Great read, comprehensive & excellent mix of reflection on personal experience & extending advice / applicable actions</comment>


Show HN: Tech Life IO, a blog about how to get programming jobs - <AUTHOR> http://techlife.io

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting this, Neil.

I'm building an index of tech employers, with links directly to their Jobs or Careers pages:

[http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/](http://www.warplife.com/jobs/computer/)

It's easy to find companies that are paying to advertise their open positions, or that are located in well-known places like Silicon Valley or Boston.

I do list those, but my hope is to find the companies that don't advertise, or that are in out of the way places like Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. There are some.

A real good way to find jobs at startups, particularly, is to visit the websites of venture firms. Some of the VCs have their own job boards, Hummer- Winblad Venture Partners does this:

[http://www.ventureloop.com/hummerwinblad/careers_home.php](http://www.ventureloop.com/hummerwinblad/careers_home.php)

Even if they don't list open position, every VC site lists their portfolio companies. Most of them list their former portfolio firms, that is, after they've exited.

Please note that most open positions are never advertised, rather new hires come from the applications they already have on file when a new opening appears. If you'd like to work for a company, but they don't have a job listed that you'd qualify for, apply anyway.</comment>


Correctness on iterative and recursive processes - <AUTHOR> https://bor0.wordpress.com/2017/05/24/correctness-on-iterative-and-recursive-processes/ <comment><USER2> Have you tried SPARK Ada? It was first to be designed to automate proofs of common attributes such as immunity to lots of code injections or crashes that happen in C. They have both automated and interactive proving for other conditions you put in as preconditions, invariants, and postconditions. Need more people building reusable specs and code in such languages. Others from Microsoft are VCC compiler and Dafny language. From CompSci, Frama-C and Jave Modeling Language.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really. I've only done some Haskell and finishing "How to prove it". Doing proofs for hobby but I'll check those tools. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> If you do functional, check out Certified Programmjng with Dependent Types by Chlipala, Programming with Proofs by same, and Concrete Semantics. For tooling, QuickCheck and QuickSpec are interesting.</comment></comment></comment>


Columbus and the shape of the Earth, a "Holywood" story - <AUTHOR> http://mappingignorance.org/2017/01/16/columbus-shape-earth-holywood-story/ <comment><USER3> For anyone reading the comments before the article: this article is not principally about the banal fact that everyone knew that the Earth was round in Columbus' time, nor that Columbus underestimated the size of the Earth.

It's about why the elites of Europe thought that a landmass like the Americas was impossible. Which was new to me and quite interesting.

<comment><USER4> The main reason is not mentioned in the article but surely mentioned in the book: the models always tried to assume that whats written in the Bible is valid! As the Bible is "from God" and has "eternal truths" and it says nothing about the new continent, therefore it can't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> >It is well known that the great discoverer grossly underestimated the size of the earth: whereas most of the astronomers of his time accepted a figure very close to the real one, and based on Eratostenes measures in the 3rd century BC, Columbus thought it was much smaller, so that the distance from Spain to Japan crossing the Atlantic should be of around 3000 miles, instead of the approximately 12000 miles really separating them.

Standard underestimation to get a government contract, after which it's too expensive to switch contractors after the underestimation is discovered.

<comment><USER6> He should have believed he was right because if he were wrong he would have believed he was sending himself on a suicide mission. It was only blind luck on his part that there happened to be another continent in the way.

<comment><USER7> There is a theory that Columbus had information that there was indeed land at the distance of America which he possibly assumed to be Asia which led to his underestimate. Portuguese fishermen are the usually suggested source of this information. I don't know whether there is much evidence to support this theory, but there it is.

<comment><USER8> I would rule that theory unlikely.

The underlying idea of the theory is that fishermen discovered the Grand Banks off of Newfoundland and incidentally discovered Newfoundland itself. When the Grand Banks was discovered is unclear--it was definitely known in the early 1500s, but that postdates John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497. The usual claims of preemption seem to describe the date as "1400s".

The biggest hole in the theory as described is that the nonpublication of the discovery is attributed to "fishermen keeping their new grounds secret," so why would they confide their secrets in a (rival) navigator? It also makes somewhat less sense that his voyages would have traveled in a southwesterly direction rather than a northwesterly direction if he knew that the land were to be found more to the north.

There is no real evidence to substantiate that fishermen found the Grand Banks in the 1400s. The earliest claims seem to date to at best the 1580s or so and have a vein of "we totally knew about that place but somehow lost track of it until John Cabot found it again!" Given that the modern claims seem vague as to whose fisherman it was that actually found them (Bristol, Basque, and Portuguese have all been named), it seems more like an attempt to retroactively claim primacy. There's been no archaeological evidence on Newfoundland dating to the 15th century of any presence of cod fishermen--and given the knowledge that by the end of the 16th century the industry did produce a massive infrastructure on the coast, it seems unlikely that the lack of evidence is because we haven't looked hard enough.

<comment><USER7> While I am aware of what I'll call the "Grand Banks" theory, the one that I read years ago referred specifically to the Caribbean. As to how Columbus got the information, well, people talk when they are drunk, when they are incentivised with money, just because they want to brag, and so on. Do I think the theory is likely? Not really, but it does explain a few peculiarities about what Columbus claimed and did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The article made me think of a recent book "The Invention of Science" almost immediately - turns out the book is mentioned as one of the references - <USER2> is well worth reading if you found the article interesting. It discussed the story of the Earth in a lot more detail.

It is fascinating to read how amazing conclusions people inferred by following perfectly sensible reasoning from basic assumptions they believed. It makes you think about the perfectly sensible reasoning we are using today and what our current ideas will seem completely silly in a few hundreds years!

<comment><USER4> > It makes you think about the perfectly sensible reasoning we are using today > and what our current ideas will seem completely silly in a few hundreds > years!

No, not in a way it was in the old times, at least not for the natural sciences, and the book you mention very specifically argues why: the "completely wrong" beliefs were possible before the "real" science, the later always just limited by our measurements. Therefore, Newton formulas aren't "completely wrong" even after Einstein, only not precise enough for the measurements that were achieved shortly before Einstein.

The book in fact spends more chapters explaining exactly the difference between the really modern science and the status before.

<comment><USER10> But Ptolemy's formula's aren't completely wrong, either: they're actually very effective at predicting the movements of the planets and stars — just not good _enough_ , it turns out, and rather more complex than they need to be.

<comment><USER11> This is an interesting thought. Not everything pre-scientific method is completely wrong, but many things look like they were, e.g. :

* the idea that everything is made of (one of, or all) 4 elements

* humorist theory of disease

* belief in perpetual motion machines

* spontaneous generation

AFAICT all of these can be construed to be considered "good enough theories" but they generally fail to make accurate predictions, which "good science" doesn't.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that even before the "good science" really established itself broadly (that is, before the last few hundred years in Europe) there were the results that have all the rights to be called "good science" and Ptolemy's formulas actually have all the right to be recognized as "good science." Note, the formulas, not the models that people believed, the "firm spheres and stuff":

They made good prediction for where the planets are going to be. They covered all the known planets. They produced accurate results for all the observations of their time. It took the lifetime work of Brahe and his development of his own observatories to even collect enough data for Kepler to be able to recognize differences between the approximate circle paths of the planets.

In short, just like Newton's, Ptolemy's formulas are a "good enough" approximation when knowing their limits.

I've even read one scientist, and I tend to believe him, claiming that Ptolemy himself, during the development of his formulas, must have used the Sun- centric model, and then he produced the "projected" result which was more acceptable for everybody who just wanted to calculate where the planets are on the sky, as seen from the Earth.

<comment><USER11> you misunderstood me, I'd consider the Ptolemaic model "good science" (i.e. it makes appropriate predictions, and can be improved and falsified, which it was).

It's just that before the scientific method become common place a lot of theories weren't.

<comment><USER4> Then we think the same. I didn't reply to you out of the disagreement with what you wrote, but as the complement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Off topic ,but was Columbus really the discoverer of America?

Follow up article : "Why Christopher Columbus was the Perfect Icon for a New Nation looking for a Hero" [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why- christopher-columb...](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-christopher- columbus-was-perfect-icon-new-nation-looking-hero-180956887/)

<comment><USER13> Columbus travels changed the world. It is arguably the most important discovery in human history. Even if the Vickings were first you have to consider the historical significance.

<comment><USER14> > It is arguably the most important discovery in human history

Fire? Writing? Textiles?

There's a case to be made its the most important discovery of his era, but then, we do tend to be Eurocentric here and the Chinese were at the climax of a centuries long golden age when Colombus was doing his thing in America.

<comment><USER13> There is a reason we are Eurocentric. That is precisely because Europeans discovered America. It changed their mindset. They started looking outwards while the Chinese kept looking inwards. It launched an era of exploration.

Fire, writing and textiles are prehistoric discoveries/inventions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: AdaBound, an optimizer that trains as fast as Adam and as good as SGD - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Luolc/AdaBound <comment><USER2> Are algos like Adam being used besides deep learning? I always come across Levenberg-Marquardt and Gauss-Newton, but never Adam.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reddit thread by author : [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/auvj3q/r_a...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/auvj3q/r_adabound_an_optimizer_that_trains_as_fast_as/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there a nice resource where I can read about all these different optimizers, their details, as well as a comparison between them?

<comment><USER5> [http://ruder.io/optimizing-gradient-descent/](http://ruder.io/optimizing- gradient-descent/)

<comment><USER4> Sebastian does not disappoint! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a nice incremental improvement. Still waiting on TensorFlow though.</comment>


Kinect sex game will not become reality, Microsoft says - <AUTHOR> http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/12/microsoft-kinect-sex-game-xbox-360.html <comment><USER3> This is a very big problem in the games industry right now, because all controlled platforms have committed to not selling adult only games. The consequences of which have filtered all the way down the chain, and the chilling effect is seen almost every single day in the games industry.

The problem is that if you get an ESRB AO rating, no one will publish it, because everyone believes that Adults Only means porn or gratuitous sex. And maybe it does. But it can also mean violence, or mature content, or things which are simply not appropriate for non-adults. I don't think the distinction should actually exist, honestly, but that's a separate discussion.

But the problem is if you consider a game of some sort that has extensive use of graphic violence, then you put yourself directly in line for a bit censorship banhammer.

NC-17 films can still be made. But effectively, AO games cannot, as the market space for it is artificially shrunk through censorship.

So any time you are working on a game, and the violence or sex or maturity of content starts reaching a potential AO level, it gets cut, or toned down.

There are game ideas right now which can never be made, thanks to platform censorship. It holds the industry back.

<comment><USER3> Also worse is the reason the platform companies do this -- because it is in their best monetary interests to keep the market images of the consoles as "kid friendly." They want that parents can randomly pick a game off a shelf without ever looking at it without fear of putting something inappropriate for a child in the console.

They don't want that a child could ever acquire something inappropriate for the console at all, in any channel, for fear that the reputation of the console would hurt sales in the sub-16 range.

The irony is that they want this so that they can continue selling M rated games to 13 year olds, as that's the most lucrative section of sales for M rated games, as they stand on gaming platforms.

Because really, if you sit back and look at it, the level of 'mature' content that ends up in actual M rated games is the exact kind that appeals to young teens, and everyone knows it.

<comment><USER4> Why is that inherently bad? The companies release a product with a target market; some content for the platform would be a deal-breaker for their positioning, so they disallow it. It's a free market and companies are allowed to make those kinds of decisions.

If there was huge pent-up demand for adult-themed games, wouldn't it stand to reason that some console manufacturer would buck the trend to collect the profits?

Incidentally, if the most lucrative part of the market is 13 year olds buying M-rated games, doesn't that sort of imply either that there isn't much money to be made from making AO games, or that the eventual audience for those games would be 13 year olds?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. The idea that this vacuum of hyper-violent or graphically-sexual video games is somehow a "problem" is more a treatise on what some people believe the market should be more than what the market actually is. It's absurd for precisely the reasons you state. If there was a market for it, however seedy or unorthodox, it would exist to service that market for a tidy profit. It doesn't exist, therefore no one believes it would be profitable.

<comment><USER3> It is not about hyper-violent or graphically sexual games. It is about games which can conceivably address that content, or use that content for effect, without fear of being marginalized or censored.

<comment><USER4> You answered his comment but not mine. My point doesn't depend on superficial adult content. If there's money in artistically-valid AO games, why doesn't someone capitalize on that? In reality, aren't we talking about AO developers being unhappy that they can't capitalize on the success of a platform that is successful _because it successfully targets 13 year olds_?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, I basically got you with reply to my other comment. Multiple threads FTL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If it weren't for sex, none of us would be here today. Yet we still hold some kind of Puritanical censor in our minds that tells us it's the worst possible thing in society.

How ironic that it should be banned on the Xbox, where you can encounter every form of violence and gore imaginable.

Would some 3D rendered boobs have been ok if they were zombie boobs?

<comment><USER7> Good point. Is a game that simulates sex somehow less ethically acceptable than one that simulates murder or warfare?

<comment><USER4> No. It is equally bad to put realistic violence in the hands of grade school kids; I won't let my 11 year old play Call of Duty, and am actually a little queasy about Halo.

I don't _like_ that AO does to gaming what NC-17 does to movies; adults should be free to play adult-themed games. But I also don't see it as a great loss to humanity. It sucks a little that Microsoft and Sony are catering to a lazy style of parenting, but you can write those games for an uncensored platform instead.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure that video games really make exposure to violence that much worse - certainly when I was in my youth in the '70s we didn't have video games but we did have imaginations that turned just about anything we could get our hands on into an imaginary weapon (being in the UK the Bad Guys were, of course, the Germans).

I let my 11 year old play CoD and Halo - sometimes with a twinge of concern but as all his friends do it would have to be more than a twinge to make me stop him.

I don't think this has impaired his view of violence in the real world - <USER2> watched a TV recreation of the events of Bloody Sunday and he was genuinely shocked by the behavior of British soldiers even though his school has an Army Cadet unit and he has friends with big brothers in the forces.

<comment><USER4> I don't think less of you for letting your 11 year old play CoD.

But: why do you have that twinge? And, what does "what all his friends do" really have to do with your own parenting decisions? All my son's friends drink bottomless cups of carbonated sugar syrup, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a really stupid article. Everybody knew that Microsoft would never approve a sex game for the Xbox 360, but this was never about that.

They're integrating Kinect support into their already existing Windows sex games using the thriXXX engine. They're using open source Kinect drivers and software to make it possible, they don't need (or want) Microsoft's approval. Microsoft can't do anything to stop this.

You can read the full press release at <http://kinecthacks.net/kinect-sex/> . It's pretty what they meant.

</comment><comment><USER10> I just remembered the article "Pornography Drives Technology: Why Not to Censor the Internet" while reading the article:

<http://www.law.indiana.edu/fclj/pubs/v49/no1/johnson.html>

<comment><USER11> Excerpt:

 _Pornography has several values beyond serving as a test-driver for new media. As suggested above in the Betamax-VHS battle, porn, with little cash to spare and its nose to the ground, is often first to sniff out the practical uses of new media, leading the way for profitable investment by the mainstream.

Furthermore, porn draws curiosity seekers, who stay to see what else the new media can do. There is a convenient dovetailing in the audience for computers and pornography: young, white males dominate both markets. Gadget-playing, girl-crazy young men will stay longer at a terminal that supplies both girls and gadgets.(48) Finally, several studies have suggested that, far from creating sexist, violent feelings in young men, pornography has a calming, cathartic effect, easing adolescent cares with a dose of mild erotica.(49)

Other values of pornography have been suggested. For one thing, the very fear that pornography arouses in parents may redound to society's advantage. In order to keep indecent messages from reaching their computer-literate children, parents themselves must become computer-literate and learn to use blocking and screening devices. If Congress is allowed to assume the parental role, parents will have less incentive to learn what their children already know.(50) Furthermore, far from fearing what computer sex may be teaching, parents can use the computer as an opportunity to discuss sex in a meaningful way with their children.(51)

Finally, sex on the computer is far better for children than another kind of sex that is drawing Congressional fire, that is, sex on television.(52) While sex and violence on television shoulder the blame for sex and violence in society, several studies have suggested that something else about television is the real culprit. That is, the passive, solitary nature of television- watching is an anti-social activity, which steals children's time away from more active, engaging kinds of play. Thus, when children erupt in violence after watching television, it is not because they have been watching too much sex or violence but because they have been watching too much television.(53) Computers, by contrast, are interactive and socializing, feeding the very skills that TV starves. Therefore, anything, including the risque, that entices children from the TV to the computer is a good thing.(54)_

I will add that porn has educational value in its own right. People who are all uptight and judgmental about porn are typically also all uptight and judgmental about sex generally. For many youth, these illicit forms of sexual materials are the best education they can pursue on a topic that is pretty vital to quality of life (for a variety of reasons). Asking uptight adults isn't going to get them useful, meaningful feedback (and may result in disinformation -- or even punishment) and asking other people their own age is likely to get them little or no information, mixed up with a lot of misinformation. Porn has the additional advantage that while it transmits information, it doesn't transmit disease or cause pregnancy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Like hell it won't. Microsoft's approval isn't the only way to get code running on a 360, and the Kinect is wide open. I give it a couple of months before everyone can happily thrust their hips at their televisions and rack up orgasm points.

<comment><USER13> Can Microsoft sue companies that release Kinect-based products that are not licensed (and specifically required to work on the xbox 360)?

<comment><USER14> I would think the DMCA 'reverse engineering for compatibility' exception would prevent that.

<comment><USER13> Wasn't someone selling unlocked xboxes fined and/or imprisoned recently?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> After watching the demo, it looks like it should be pretty simple to transform it into some sort of Tickle Me Elmo game though

</comment><comment><USER16> The perverts will win. Simply because there is too big of a market for this to be ignored.

<comment><USER17> Essentially you are saying that many people will win because too many people are perverts for this perverse demand to be ignored, right?

<comment><USER16> Essentially I'm saying that the developers/distributors that make these kind of products will find a way to reach their customers some way or another. Just because microsoft makes this statement may indeed hinder the market from developing in the early beginnings. But it will not stop the perverts in the long run. Not that I'm against this product in any particular way - as I think people are to be free to explore their sexual fantasies. I am saying however, that the market will be (probably) too big to be ignored.</comment></comment></comment>