Boston's Seaport District may be a testing ground for climate change adaptation - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/boston-built-a-new-waterfront-just-in-time-for-the-apocalypse <comment><USER2> "We're proposing infrastructure that we believe will protect the city," says Richard McGuinness, a senior planning official working on Boston's response to climate change. "How do you retreat from billions of dollars of assets? It's not practical." [...] The city still needs to raise as much as $1 billion for Seaport defenses.

\-----

Having lived in the city during the Big Dig, I'd wager that's a lowball estimate.

<comment><USER3> bureaucrats tend to underestimate costs and durations of projects

<comment><USER4> Not just bureaucrats. People generally -- it's the Planning Fallacy.

If you ask someone how long something will take, they tend to give roughly the same answer as if you asked how long it will take in the best case scenario. Estimating project time is _hard_ , and people are bad at it in general.

The best method seems to be to instead ask "How long did the most similar project you've done take?" but that does require the estimator to have done a somewhat comparable project.

<comment><USER5> I typically double my estimate for how long something will take me both in personal and work-related projects. This allows for all manner of unknowns to happen and seems to be more realistic.

<comment><USER6> For me and with projects that I have worked on, I take the estimate, double it, and then move it up a time unit. So 1 day becomes 2 weeks. 3 weeks becomes 6 months. 1 hour becomes 2 days. 1 year becomes 2 decades.

Is this overkill? Oh heck yes. But it seems to really put a fire into me to make sure that these things run smoother.

<comment><USER7> This is not always overkill. In fact it's sometimes insufficient. Breaking down a project into tasks and doing the math is the only hope for any semblance of accuracy, and even that doesn't always work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't read the article, but last year I saw a presentation by a local Boston architect demonstrating how her firm uses 3D modeling software to simulate flooding scenarios not just for the client's building but the surrounding neighborhood. I think that's typical for most projects near sea level nowadays.

For photos and video of Seaport flooding: [https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_...](https://expo.masslive.com/erry-2018/06/b4cac6d9df3737/is_it_smart_to_invest_in_bosto.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> With water levels going up and climate change patterns, I find it counter intuitive that lot of luxury/premium properties are built close of water. This not only results into higher insurance rates on these properties but in-case of any natural disaster premiums of regular properties around the area would also take a hit because someone decided to construct a fancy build right next to waterfront.

<comment><USER10> Luxury/premium properties make the most sense actually: they are not expected to last. When someone spends 200k on a normal 4 bedroom house they expect to live in that house more or less as is for a long time (they often move sooner and may have plans for minor remodeling but no major changes are expected because they can't be afforded). When someone spends $3 million on a large mansion as soon as the ink is dry they call the bulldozer operator (who is already parked outside) to start knocking it down so they can build the mansion they want. In short they are buying location and the cost of the building is a rounding error.

If the ocean goes up - well they just build higher, it isn't a significant expense.

<comment><USER11> Some of these luxury properties are condos in already very tall buildings (see South Florida for this).

And what happens when the first floor of your building is now under water? Sure your 30th floor condo is safe but is it really practical to live there at that point?

<comment><USER12> Not an expert but I highly doubt they are building them so they can be used with them first level underwater. I am pretty sure such a building is a complete loss.

<comment><USER13> In my neighborhood (New England coast) there are a number of buildings that are built on pillars, with the area underneath used for parking. Sometimes there are nonloadbearing wall panels installed around them to give some weather protection, sometimes not. They're meant to survive storms, and I think at least some of them could be used if the water was permanently at today's storm surge levels.

Most of these buildings were built that way from the start, but at least one on my street was raised on jacks while pillars were put underneath. I wish I'd thought to take pictures of the process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Perhaps these cities should raise money to convince the US government that climate change is manmade and a real threat and urgent, massive action is needed to prevent it from becoming even worse. A few billion here and there for lobbying might in the end be cheaper than building ever higher berms.

<comment><USER15> I suspect this is an unpopular opinion but I think the idea that we'll stop climate change with global collective action is just wildly contrary to how human beings work at that scale.

Unless we get lucky with some natural carbon negative feedback loop, we're probably stuck engineering our way through it. Whether with climate engineering (unlikely), or just muddling through (very likely).

<comment><USER14> If, say, the US or the EU set up a proper carbon tax that is also levied on imports, the rest of the world would probably follow suit.

<comment><USER16> Broke: import tariffs motivated by short-termist trade war one-upmanship and bigotism.

Woke: import tarrifs motivated by long-termist climate change reduction.

We swear they're not the same thing so they can't have similar effects! This time it _will_ be different and those unenlightened non-Westerns will listen to our thought leadership!

<comment><USER14> When the US puts import tariffs on foreign cars for being foreign, there is nothing the other party can do other than putting up their own tariffs in retaliation. If the US puts import tariffs on the embodied carbon emissions of foreign cars, the foreign party can join the carbon tax scheme to get around the tariffs. That seems like an important difference to me, but I'm not an economist. Better economists than me seem to also support a carbon tax or other forms of carbon pricing like cap&trade.

<comment><USER17> Exactly - with a carbon tax, the importing country says "The carbon emissions embodied in this product are going to be taxed, we can collect the money or you can, it's up to you." Will that result in a general reduction in the consumption of carbon-intense goods? Of course! They're now more expensive, that's the whole point.

With an import tariff on foreign goods (for, as you described, being foreign), it makes foreign goods more expensive (with nothing the other country can do about it), so it will lead to a reduction in the consumption of foreign- produced goods (whether or not that is a benefit to you as an American is probably heavily dependent on what you consume and what you produce).

<comment><USER16> For the imported good buyer, there's a price increase. It does not matter to him who collects the tax that increased the price - an import tariff imposing government or an enlightened carbon-scheme participating foreign government. This will reduce demand like any other dead weight loss, and yes, depress economic activity, employement and thus wages.

BTW, most countries already have carbon taxes on fossil fuels, they _just don 't bother calling them that_. They call them fuel excise taxes. Around 60% of the price a consumer pays for fuel in the EU is fuel excise tax, in other words, a 150% tax. In the US, it's only about 20%. Here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#China](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax#China)

What's your estimated impact of this already huge tax ? Think about the demand elasticity of fuel and energy products.

<comment><USER14> If you read the literature about carbon taxes, virtually everybody recommends a scheme where the carbon tax is paid out again, so there is no effective price increase for the consumer if they have an average carbon consumption, but everybody still has an incentive to switch to less carbon intensive alternatives.

<comment><USER16> Right, that would be different, but I feel that's the kind of detail that gets lost in translation when it becomes government policy. Given the average EU government greatly enjoys the already 100%+ tax on fuel they have, why would they bother with this complicated, not even revenue raising scheme ? They can just crank that 100% lever to 200% or whatever.

Can any of the economists proposing this scheme ask for a guarantee of any kind that if they help push this scheme, details like this one won't get left out ? Of course not. They'll cheerlead it and then blame the government, forgetting their complicity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> These big cities will be fine. They can easily afford to protect from rising flood waters. Its the smaller cities and towns all down the coasts that can't afford to do anything or are literally built on sand. Cities in poor countries are going to have trouble too, but that is a different issue.

</comment><comment><USER19> Most of modern Boston is built on trash dumped into the harbor to make more land, so I can imagine that they are going to have some issues with any sea rises.

[https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston- landfill-...](https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/Boston-landfill- maps-history/)

One side-effect of all this land-filling is that it is really difficult to get a feel for what the place would have been like historically. For instance, the campaigns of 1775 don't make a lot of sense if you are reading about them and trying to look at a modern map.

</comment><comment><USER20> An amazing talk by Bud Ris about the challenges Boston faces from climate change: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MToNKd6RQhk)

<comment><USER21> Why does that video not have more views?

<comment><USER20> Sad but popular != quality. I found the talk very informative.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> that's one way to fuel economic growth :)</comment>


I am looking for feedback for my startup - <AUTHOR> http://scriptor.net.br

<comment><USER2> You'll have more success if you use the 'Show HN' format. See [https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html)</comment>


Hard to Believe: Film Explores Chinese Regime's Killing of Prisoners for Organs - <AUTHOR> https://www.theepochtimes.com/hard-to-believe-film-explores-chinese-regimes-on-demand-killing-of-prisoners-for-their-organs_2487266.html <comment><USER3> From what I have seen of Xi Jinping, he looks, acts, and speaks like a somewhat reasonable world leader. Certainly not the type of person capable of allowing a horrific atrocity like this. Now all I will be able to picture when I see him is Hitler, as this is the kind of thing that the Nazis did.

It does at least put the petty political squabbles we have in the US in perspective. Say what you will about Trump - he isn't killing people and cutting out their organs.

<comment><USER4> "Now all I will be able to picture when I see him is Hitler, as this is the kind of thing that the Nazis did."

You know how propaganda works?

If not, you should check it again, if you can change your view based on one article. I'd like to see hard evidence first, before judging like that and there is too much propaganda flying around at the moment, that I am hesistant to believe that China is really "Killing innocent people on demand for their organs on a mass scale".

No doubt, China _is_ doing horrible things, their whole fight against Falung Gong etc. shows many of its ugly faces - and it is not the first time, I heard from Organ-harvesting and selling in china - but hard evidence for that claim("Killing innocent people on demand for their organs on a mass scale") is something different.

Besides: "Say what you will about Trump - he isn't killing people and cutting out their organs." Not that we know. But we do know, that your secret agencies spy all over the world and hack and blackmail and abduct and torture and assassinate and manipulate and also bomb whenever Pax America or some assets of an important member are at risk. Not for democracy, nor human rights - <USER2> plain material motivation.

So maybe resist the temptation to feel too righteous, living in "gods own country" because your politicans seem a bit nicer than others. (in general they are ... but also only if it suits them)

<comment><USER3> You're correct that I should have added the disclaimer "if this is true" to my comment. A quick Google search before I made my comment seems to indicate that it is true, although the government claims that they stopped this practice on January 1, 2015 (which could be a total lie). Regardless of whether it's still going on or not, they seem to admit that they at least used to do it. The people involved in either allowing or carrying it out are nothing more than monsters. The fact that they _may_ have bowed to public pressure to stop this does not change that.

 _> So maybe resist the temptation to feel too righteous, living in "gods own country" because your politicans seem a bit nicer than others._

I said nothing about god in my comment. I simply meant that I am grateful to live in a country where our biggest fears fall far short of worrying that we will be carved up for parts by our government.

<comment><USER4> " A quick Google search before I made my comment seems to indicate that it is true, although the government claims that they stopped this practice on January 1, 2015 "

for this claim?

"Killing innocent people on demand for their organs on a mass scale"

I doubt it.

"I said nothing about god in my comment. I simply meant that I am grateful to live in a country where our biggest fears fall far short of worrying that we will be carved up for parts by our government."

I know, that was a bit hyperbolic. But I am quite sure also the common chinese person is not "worrying that he will be carved up for parts by his government", because the common chinese person is not Falung Gong.

And the common US-Person is not muslim. Because they do sweat from time to time I suppose, especially when visiting relatives in Pakistan. Or living in a poor black neighborhood - and have your house mistakenly raided. Those things do happen in your country, despite you feeling quite safe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Epoch Times is founded by and run by Falun Gong members. Just keep in mind that anything they publish is extremely biased towards an anti-PRC stance. In the same way that you should keep in mind that consuming media from Voice of America or RT is respectively biased towards a pro-American and pro-Russian stance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Keep in mind sabalaba has an ongoing business interest in the PRC. The company they co-founded touts the CCP-aligned Tencent as one of it's customers. Per own bio, sabalaba has also co-founded a Beijing based incubator.

<comment><USER4> Oh I will, but he is nevertheless right, when he warns of propaganda, right?

I mean, he forgot to include the chinese media as possible biased towards china, but I read it like he is also very aware of that fact.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kind of. Likening Falun Gong v. China to USA v. Russia is misleading. Nation state conflicts are usually pretty mutli-dimensional. Economy, geopolitics, ideology, religion etc. The strife between the Falun Gong and China is limited to the issue of systematic murder and opression of their followers. Furthermore the characterization of Falun Gong as a well defined organization with concrete political or ideological goals is in-line with CCP propaganda.

Say somebody calls out a Jewish publication for having an anti-Nazi stance. Surely, it's likely to be true at face value. Yet it's hard not to notice the insidiousness.

Unless sabalaba is willing to damage their business interest, their only choice is to remain silent or take a stance the CCP doesn't mind.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I would hope this will shame western corporations that contribute to China's surveillance machine. China is a large and potentially lucrative market. How much profit is one life worth?

</comment><comment><USER7> I know this is really fucked up but this inspired me to come up with presale of human organ: ie, You sign to give up your organs when you decease, and get paid while you are alive.

<comment><USER8> The problem is that the company?/agency? paying for your organs can't know that they will be usable or even that you will die in a way that your organs can be retreived. I had a discussion with a medical student, where she explained that not all deaths results in a body that from which organs could be used. The discussion was prompted by a recent law that made citizens of our country organ donor by default (if you don't have a card stating you're not an organ donor or if you haven't registered as not an organ donor, you're considered one) and she said that death where the organs could be used where way less frequent.

Edit: yes, the family/relatives are consulted before

<comment><USER7> -> (if you don't have a card stating you're not an organ donor or if you haven't registered as not an organ donor, you're considered one).

That does not sounds right. (default is not donating here in JP) but I am sure relatives are consulted about this.

->she said that death where the organs could be used where way less frequent.

Interesting, though you need the numbers to find out whether you can make profit out of it.(How often do people need an organ transplant?)(I assume if this is to be real, you would "buy" organs from 3rd world countries(where a few hundred dollars mean a lot to them) and sell the organs at the states.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As to the moral quality of people that are exploited for their organs, please remember all that they have to do to escape their fate is to sign a renunciation of Falun Gong. A little different than common criminals.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Killing prisoner for organs" is click-bait.

Whether it is OK arresting and killing Falungon believers is a different story.

They are only harvesting from dead bodies here. Seems there are countries where you donate your organs automatically if you die in an accident.

Not to say executing for profit is not a possibility.

PS. In China donating organ is considered taboo traditionally.

<comment><USER9> That's the thing. I fully believe that the Chinese government might harvest organs after execution... But if they stopped that practice because of foreign pressure, they wouldn't necessarily stop executing members of Falun Gong because they consider any form of religion with a cult of personality to be a threat.

Pragmatically, if those people still get executed anyway because of their religion (and that's unlikely to stop), is the world a better place if they harvest organs and save some people with them or is it a better place if they throw away those organs and don't save anyone with them?

The only argument against that I can think of is that the profit made from organ reselling could cause more people to be executed than would normally be the case but I wonder how true that is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to deny the moral hazard of using prisoners for organs, but being a Falun Gong member in China is like being an active ISIS member in the US/UK. Whatever's right or wrong, you know you're committing a crime and you're taking a risk by participating. Keeping safe is a matter of following the law even if you don't believe in it.

<comment><USER11> Moral hazard? Moral Hazard puts one in the way of making an immoral choice. Surely killing people to take their body parts represents an actual immoral action? I didn't miss a memo or anything?

<comment><USER12> They don't kill people to take body parts. They execute convicted criminals, and those prisoners automatically become organ donors.

One example of the potential moral hazard is that maybe there's some corruption (maybe there's some profit being made, and judges could get kickbacks on the number of times they execute prisoners).

<comment><USER13> Who decided what constitutes a crime, and who gets convicted and executed? China isn't exactly known for the fairness of its justice system.

And the quantity, youth, and low latency of organs for transplant exclude every possibility except harvesting.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What Service Discovery and Cluster Management tools do you use? - <AUTHOR> <comment><AUTHOR> To start the discussion: I myself usually use Consul. I've tested Kubernetes, Swarm and Nomad and from those Swarm seems a little bit unpolished.

Anybody has experience comparing Swarm, Kubernetes and Nomad?</comment>


Ask HN: Is CLI pronounced C-L-I or "clee"? - <AUTHOR> When talking about a command-line interface (CLI), do you say "clee" or C-L-I? <comment><USER2> Unlike e.g. SQL (S-Q-L vs "Sequel"), I have only ever heard it referred to as a CLI. Would be confused at anything else.

</comment><comment><USER3> C-L-I.

But steering the sentence to say "command line" might be even more idiomatic. That is:

"It would be fastest to delete that directory tree from the command line"

would be preferred to:

"It would be fastest to use the C-L-I to delete that directory tree"

</comment><comment><USER4> In 20 years of professional software development I have never heard anyone say "clee".

</comment><comment><USER5> CLI or command-line interface. I've never heard anyone call it "clee."

</comment><comment><USER6> I just say command line if I have to verbally say it.</comment>


Ask HN: Could we restructure society so that people don't hate their jobs? - <AUTHOR> As it is we seem to have a lot of people doing jobs that are preventing them from living up to their full potential. Is it really true that if you gave people a universal basic income that they would devolve into couch potatoes? When you think of it how much free time do you really have in the day? After getting ready in the morning, your commute, work plus a lunch hour, a trip to the store, some time to decompress, dinner, and spending time with your kids how much time is left for yourself? Even if you had the will power left over at the end of the day to give 100% you're so overburdened that it's no wonder you can't get anywhere. And we have the gual to suggest that these same people would do nothing but sit on the couch all day if they were let off their leash. That's cognitive dissonance right there.
I have worked in a few industries that I had zero interest in at all. Yet every time I made contributions to those industries out of a sense of satisfaction that I never could have got sitting at home. Perhaps you might say people will get satisfaction from playing video games but I think that's a hollow argument. It's hollow in the same way that winning at video games makes you feel. Like you just wasted a bunch of time when you could have gotten something done. People will use video games to escape, for sure. But few will find real meaning in them.
We are forcing people to spend all of their waking hours drudging through a routine that leaves them exhausted before they are free to make any choices for themselves. But if we gave people time to live up to their potential we would see a net positive in both the health and financial security of our nation. <comment><USER2> Technology is deflationary. You get more done with less. Prices should be going down not up. The average steel worker now can produce thousands of times the amount of steel than their counterparts could a hundred years ago, yet they work more hours and receive less purchasing power for their time. Most all of this can be traced to regulations, like fiat currency and patent systems. If we had an honest society not based on grift the average person would be able to work a fraction of the time they have to now to make ends meet, which would let them have massively more free time to pursue what they wanted and may not hate doing some drudge work everyday. When I was a kid you could put yourself through college and rent an apartment delivering pizzas a few nights a week. In the 50's you could work a couple days a month to pay the rent. It is the attempts at social planning that drain the tech gains away from people. Ditch the fiat.

<comment><USER3> What should replace the fiat?

<comment><USER2> The only thing legally allowed in this in country, a hard currency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I talk to a lot of retired people. And a lot of them mention they're bored and interested in finding some kind of fun job. of those that have tried it, it's gone badly. There's just so much nonsense in any job.

It seems like employers really take advantage of the fact that the employees need the money to live.

<comment><USER5> Very true. I retired early (around 50) and not having enough money to be a world globetrotter I found things boring around my town. So I started working again (2x) 4 times per week and that helped a lot.

I agree that older workers not in specific high needs businesses are seen as low wage cogs.

Funny but I live in a town with a lot of people who've retired and so even volunteering is difficult - there's a glut of volunteers. Now with Covid stay at home almost all volunteer opportunities have dried up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People don't hate their jobs so much as they dislike having a boss. That's why fishermen, farmers and other bossless occupations stay working way past 65.

</comment><comment><USER7> Any solution to this problem needs to consider that its not just about getting work done. It's getting the right work done to satisfy the needs of society. Money acts fairly well as a feedback mechanism, because if the work you're doing isn't useful to someone else (or at least believed by them to be useful), you won't get paid to do it.

For example, If I'm feeling generous I might be willing to cut the grass of an elderly neighbor or volunteer to repaint some rooms in a local school. On the other hand, I'm not going to spend thousands of hours learning a trade plus tens of thousands on equipment, licensing, etc so I can build a school or build my neighbor a house for free.

Jobs consist of some mix of fun work and drudge work. If I'm not getting compensated, even if I do need some small amount of work in my life, why wouldn't I focus on the fun work (e.g. writing new software) and skip the drudge work (e.g. software testing, maintenance, planning, work tracking, documentation)?

Also, I'd like to say I've always felt that my jobs took up too much of my time. Even if I decide that some work in my life is valuable, it might be at a much lower level than would benefit society (e.g. 8 hours per week vs. 40 hours per week). Average that over a whole society and that's a lot less getting done.

</comment><comment><USER8> Of course we could, but it would mean a sharp reduction in the values of most stocks, declines in economic output as measured by products and services bought and sold, and empowerment of regular people at the expense of elites. People would spend a lot more time creating art and spending time with friends and family and not converting raw materials into widgets.

For all those reasons, it can't happen without some kind of revolutionary break with our current economic system.

I mean on some level you have to see past the whole work/life balance paradigm and see that really, it's _all_ life, and is this really how you want to live it? If we were genuinely free to make choices and not forced to fight over positional assets we would make dramatically different choices.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've done unpleasant work throughout my life. Some of it blue collar, some of it white collar. It's almost never the work itself that made me unhappy and almost always management. In the vast majority of the cases, the management issues had little to nothing to do with productivity or increasing income for the company. It was about petty turf wars and ego stroking. A minority of the cases were due to death marches from poor management. Conflicts with co- workers have happened but those are almost always short lived and resolved quickly. The nasty jobs like getting burnt by hot exhaust pipes while changing oil all day or manually changing strings random enough to defy regex into something new in thousands of files are unpleasant but you do them and they're done. The petty middle management sociopaths on the other hand, they just keep going on and on and on. Glad I'm financially secure and wise enough now to quickly exit those situations.

</comment><comment><USER10> We don't need UBI to work less than 8-10 hours a day. We can work less by living with less, and learning to be more productive. It really is that simple.

We are not forced to work. Work is required to produce or acquire the things we consume. There are only two ways to reduce the need for work: Consume less, or produce more with the same amount of work.

<comment><USER11> The problem are the major costs that are out of your control when you have a family like the cost of an apartment in major cities with more than 1 bedroom or family health insurance etc. When you're single that makes things a lot simpler but people with families...

<comment><USER10> Costs are within a family's control. There's just more communication involved.

And costs are just one side of the equation. Income is the other side. People can learn new skills. People can change jobs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A universal basic income is not a cure for this particular problem.

The reason the idea is getting interest is the number of people who don't have and can't _get_ jobs.

Buckminster Fuller talked years ago about the need to abolish the notion of "making a living" because he was prescient as usual and foresaw a time when many people _couldn 't_.

You "make a living" doing a job. The job _exists_ because someone else is willing to _pay_ to have that job done. What happens when you don't know how to do anything someone else will pay for?

Work flows to where it can be done cheapest, and pretty much always has.

As the Internet Eats the World, and robotics become more sophisticated, whole classes of jobs are going away. They are either being automated, or are being done elsewhere because the job does not have to be done where you are and someone elsewhere will do it cheaper than you can. They can do it cheaper because it costs less to live where they do, and will accept a lower price than you can charge.

(Government efforts at protectionism at best slow the process. They _cannot_ eliminate the problem. And protectionist efforts raise costs for everyone else. How much _more_ are you willing to pay for things you buy to see that they are made by workers in your country? At some point you'll say "That's too expensive" and not pay it, which is why those jobs go elsewhere in they first place.)

Technology gets praised as creating jobs, and indeed, it does. But the new jobs created don't help those whose jobs were eliminated by technology. By definition, those new jobs are _new_ , and the folks idled don't know how to do them, and possibly can't learn because the job requires the equivalent of an advanced degree to be _able_ to do it. What do those folks do instead?

Work flowing to where it can be done cheapest has always been a factor. What is changing is the amount of work that _can_ be done elsewhere or by machine. Folks doing unskilled/low skilled labor have suffered the most, as no one will pay living wages for that sort of work in an industrialized nation like the US. Well meaning efforts like mandated minimum wage increases are a band aid. There must _be_ minimum wage jobs covered by those mandates, and the higher the minimum wage goes, the harder employers think about what the job is worth and whether they want to pay that much for it. If you _have_ a minimum wage job, you benefit (if you don't get laid off to cut costs.) If you don't have a job and are looking for a minimum wage job the bar just got raised.

But increasingly, it's not just unskilled/low skilled labor affected. I tell people, if it _can_ be done by machine, or elsewhere for less than you want to be paid, it _will_. We are still discovering how many that applies to.

Will a guaranteed basic income make everyone couch potatoes? Hardly. Aside from providing income needed to live, jobs structure _time_ , and give you something to do with your waking hours. The bigger question is just what sort of potential people have to unleash. What would you do with your time if you didn't have to work for a living?

This is ultimately a political and social pro0blem more than an economic one. The notion of "making a living" is embedded in our culture. Jobs are _status_ markers. What you do for a living and what sort of living you make doing it is a principal source of status. What happens to your status when you _can 't_ make a living?

I don't have good answers for any of this. I am simply convinced that we aer mostly not even asking the right _questions_.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think we humans rely on ourselves doing menial and unrewarding work too much for us to give ourselves the ability to refuse.

Slavery was abolished though, so I am hopeful.

</comment><comment><USER14> Check out Murray Bookchin.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are plenty of jobs which are meaningful yet worthless from a capitalistic respect. I've turned down plenty of jobs in the past that would provide much more benefit to the world at large because they couldn't pay me enough to save up comfortably for retirement. So instead I've just worn these golden handcuffs for the past few years while working in marketing tech (which if anything is a net detractor from society). I'm a fantastic teacher and enjoy getting the opportunity any chance I can, but I could never do that for a living because the wages wouldn't leave me with enough to be financially secure in this nation.

It's amazing how much of privilege there is attached to volunteer work. So much of it can make a significant difference in other people's lives. Yet such time commitments either require that you've made money elsewhere (normally through means not super productive to society) in your "real job" making business widgets/yet another spreadsheet, or that you also willfully give up on your own financial security.

Even if a significant portion of the population were to become couch potatoes I posit that society would be no worse off in the long run. Such people are not the people currently making the next cure for cancer, or rescuing people from burning buildings. Such people are those barely getting through the day as is, not giving a crap about their boring job, just going through the motions to make money for someone else. Sure the companies that currently pay an unfairly low rate for those people's limited time will suffer... GOOD, such predatory behaviors should not be supported, propped up, an even enforced as they currently are by our government.

By providing people with an alternative to meaningless work we not only free up those who would want to do truly beneficial work to do so, we also provide much greater market power to those who simply want something minimally productive during the day. So many people make minimum wage or less for amazingly demanding and unsafe work. Currently that is the only option for so many people, so those employers who are unscrupulous can wield so much power and demand so much while providing so little in return.

Even if a significant percentage of the population ends up just spending their time out hiking, watching tv, or generally spending more time with their friends family (horrible outcome right?!?), if the rest of us get to benefit from either of the two previous scenarios then the only humans who wouldn't be better off would either be 1) those who think they deserve all the riches of the world even if they must bury the rest of us, or 2) those who use insecurity to force people into laying down their lives to fight their battles for them because they can keep those "lowly" people from having anything of meaning in this life.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for a very insightful post

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I find the discussion in the comments very interesting.

Yes, we could restructure society. More than hate, what worries me is the many people that can't find a way forward in the current world and the immense amount of wasted human potential.

We live in the world with most opportunities we have ever seen, and yet we are really poor on time and spaces to develop that potential. Maybe in the past we also didn't have that much time, but nowadays the dissonance in "what could be and what is" is definitely at an all time high.

But I believe the current crisis we are facing is a good opportunity to let everyone know how fragile capitalism is. I don't say everything is terrible with capitalism, but its need for an efficient market that needs to keep growing and becoming ever more efficient has some clear downsides. First, the consumism and the general stress it causes to the population with its relentless pace. Keep finding new ways to convince people that you are giving them something valuable. Otherwise you won't be competitive enough and you will fall. The second problem is the inflexibility during times of economic deceleration. So, if we have a pandemic and we must only provide essential services, what? Why does the world need to collapse? What kind of miserable system is this?

I think we could reach a social contract where we all contribute a bit on what we need to satisfy our basic needs, without having to work endless hours in miserable shifts, treated like production machines instead of what we are, which is humans.

But without a doubt, changing society seems extremely hard at this point. It's not like anyone owns the system. The monster has already grown under its own premises, and no one really holds a key or controls it.

From my perspective, the only thing we can do is try to find ways to free more time for people, and create spaces that exist outside the capitalist system, with as little relation to money as possible. You can't really convince everyone with an ideology. We need to slowly change the dynamics under which we live, and with that progressively shift the direction to which we walk. Sadly, this only tends to happen as enough people hit the wall, and that means an astounding and unnacceptable amount of suffering.

Still, I really wonder about people's potential. I'd like to live in a world like this just to see what would we be capable of. Would it be something extraordinary, or wouldn't it be that different from what we have now? I'd really want to see it.

Reducing the problems we currently have and giving everyone more space and time to pursue whatever they feel will fill their hearts is not such a big technological / technical problem as a problem of social organization, communication and consensus.

<comment><USER17> I'd argue that it's not capitalism that is fragile, markets are a natural phenomenon, what we are witnessing is government being very powerful and technology enabling people to communicate rapidly and effectively force the market into submission.</comment></comment>


Reducing Project Costs: Features as Business Objectives - <AUTHOR> http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2014/09/12/features-as-business-objectives.html

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely what we've been striving for</comment>


Can Africa Trade Its Way to Peace? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/16/opinion/16cohen.html <comment><USER2> Uhh . . . Maybe this writer is unfamiliar with how Africa works.

Rwanda last year exported 250 million USD worth of coltan. Unfamiliar with what coltan is? It's the African name for columbite-tantalite. Still not ringing a bell? Well you can extract niobium and, most importantly, tantalum from it. The same tantalum that facilitates the use of that nice shiny iPhone you probably own. Don't own an iPhone? You still use tantalum, it's in every other cell phone too! As well as your laptop, and DVD player but I digress.

I was talking about the 250 million USD worth of coltan that Rwanda sold on the global market last year. Yeah, a curious thing though, Rwanda does not have any natural deposits of coltan. The only deposits in the area are in DR Congo. Where Rwanda is supporting Tutsi militias to 'protect the people from discrimination'. Someone must have forgotten to tell the people though, because every time the Tutsi militias approach a city, the people flee in terror.

I recently spoke with a Swiss friend of mine who stayed with me for a while after returning from the Congo and before she went back to Lausanne. She works for the UN and had occasion to go meet Laurent NKunda before the rest of the world woke up to what Rwanda was up to. Laurent Nkunda is the leader of these Tutsi 'protectors'. At any rate, as she traveled up the road from the lines of the government troops to Nkunda's, she noticed something at the roadblock he had set up that told her all she needed to know about him. You see, his roadblock was composed of the bodies of his victims, topped with heads.

Now the Americans sail in, and say Rwanda and Congo should negotiate with this man. What?!?! And, if that was not bad enough, we now have people in the West saying we should allow Rwanda to continue to export coltan. Only now we'll make it legal under the guise of free-trade.

OK. Setting aside the crimes against humanity that this man has committed against literally millions of Congolese civilians. How can we reward the violation of another nation's sovereignty for the exploitation of their mineral wealth? What's to stop Nigeria from pulling the same crap in Cameroon for the oil riches? Or Angola from sweeping into Namibia for the diamonds? There are a million potential situations like this on a continent as rich in minerals as Africa. This idea would set a HORRIBLE precedent. I am shocked that the NYTimes would even entertain printing it.

I suppose I'm making too much of it though. This would never happen, the African Union would not support it for just the reasons I outlined above. Still, irks me that someone would present that as a 'solution'.

<comment><USER3> Every time I see some supposed solution to "the Africa problem" proposed by a European or North American, I have to think that this person has very clearly never _been_ to Africa, or he or she would realise very quickly that armchair economist's ideas are completely out of touch with reality.

I have tenuous family ties to southern Africa and have visited on numerous occasions; now, I gather that the south, on the whole, is in much better shape than central Africa, but even here, the problems seem clearly rooted in the cultural clash: the west (globalisation, technology, free markets, powerful invaders) collided with the old tribal system. Both survive to this day, and in some areas this results in a particularly toxic mixture.

I don't claim to have a good understanding of the situation, but I know that cultural change is _very_ slow, and I think that's the only thing that might end this mess. But then I only need to look a couple hundred km from here, where until recently Serbs and Albanians were slaughtering each other over Kosovo. We haven't even outgrown the tribal culture in Europe, how can these people seriously believe in macroeconomic solutions for Africa?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> An interesting article which ends on positive note, with the OP giving a scenario for how the countries in the vicinity of Congo could form a common market, similar to the early EU/EEC that would be a way out of poverty and conflict.

I'm afraid he's a bit too optimistic though about the ability of the US to influence the region in a positive manner through diplomatic efforts, while preserving quotas and tariffs on agricultural goods and minerals; the main export products of Sub-saharan Africa.

To enable any country to lift themselves out of poverty, first give them the ability to trade with the rich.</comment>


Why You Need a Co-Founder - <AUTHOR> http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/why_you_need_a_co-founder <comment><USER2> As a guy who very recently split-up with his cofounder, I can say that having a cofounder is awesome and much better than going it alone, but if they aren't also a partner and willing to pick up your slack when real life crap is going on next to the startup crap ... it isn't going to work out.

Also a word of advice: When crap starts going on, on either end, the proper solution isn't to stop talking to each other for a few weeks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally appreciate your take on the subject. Yeah, two weeks would constitute a major breakdown of communication. Do you think it's possible to have contingency plans in place for actual situations like that?

<comment><USER3> The best contingency plan is to have at least 3 co-founders. This can be an asymmetrical relationship at times. But I think you'll find a lot of successful companies usually quickly added a 3rd person to the mix early on. It's a matter of semantics whether you want to call them co-founders or not. The point is that they're in there early on before the major successes of the company which they help contribute to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Whether finding a co-founder is appropriate or not is completely dependent on your goals. For a relationship to work out between two or more people -- especially one as stressful and challenging as starting a business -- everybody involved has to be equally committed to the goals set in the beginning.

OK, so let's say that the only goal you set in the beginning is, "churn out social 2.0 web app, sell to megacorp inc., make lots of money". Yeah, you can probably find one or two other people that are willing to commit to that for a year or two.

But, let's say instead that your only goal is, "build a high-quality service in some niche, fill a customer need, money and popularity be damned". Are you as likely to find someone else willing to fully commit themselves to such a project? I doubt it.

For "crusaders" -- people who are willing to sacrifice a lot in order to change some aspect of the world they're in -- you're probably never going to meet anyone that will be as committed to your goal as you are. Holding yourself hostage to a co-founder search will just kill your project.

For everyone else: spend some effort on putting together "the team" -- the smallest possible group of people that can handle all of the roles of sales, engineering, direction, management, finance, etc. etc. -- apply to YC, build your thing, get money, cash out, have a great life.

To that end, I think startup speed dating is a pretty great idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think Steve says it best:

> My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each > other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the > total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are > not done by one person, they are done by a team of people.

I think this applies to co-founders too.

</comment><comment><USER6> Startup speed dating is a cool idea in my opinion. The single hardest thing I've ever done is trying to find a co-founder. Two years in I'm still looking for that partner. Anything to help alleviate that pain point would be tremendous.

Flying solo is convenient at times because you don't have interpersonal drama and the risk of a nasty split. But on the whole I would never recommend anyone go solo.

<comment><USER7> Would you happen to be located in San Jose?

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately not. Half my problem might be that I'm located in the anemic Midwest. St Louis to be exact. Are virtually connected co-founders very prevalent?

<comment><USER7> As long as there is a connection, things can happen. Do you have a facebook?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> When seeking funding, having a co-founder or team looks much better to an investor than a sole founder. If you take a look at YC, I believe Dropbox is the only (or one of the few) with just one founder. Having more than one demonstrates that there is less risk through complementing abilities and checks/balances. Also, it can get kinda lonely...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi,

I'm the author of this article. You should read it if you've been following the debate about whether you're better off with a co-founder or going it alone.

Max

<comment><USER9> I think we're all better off with the right co-founder, and worse off with a wrong one. Better off != need, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> So do you think that it's just a personal relationship, or do you think there are actual characteristics you could look for in a co-founder?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think the startup speed dating is a fantastic idea, especially for those cities outside of the valley where just finding people interested in startups is damn near impossible.

I recently found a good partner after 2 years of going it solo (and searching) and it's made a world of a difference.</comment>


Changing Emotions - <AUTHOR> http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/changing-emotions.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there anyone at all writing about this kind of stuff other than Eliezer?

<comment><USER2> For this particular topic, there is a relevant classic philosophy essay by Thomas Nagel - "What Is it Like to Be a Bat?"

 _"To the extent that I could look and behave like a wasp or a bat without changing my fundamental structure, my experiences would not be anything like the experiences of those animals. On the other hand, it is doubtful that any meaning can be attached to the supposition that I should possess the internal neurophysiological constitution of a bat. Even if I could by gradual degrees be transformed into a bat, nothing in my present constitution enables me to imagine what the experiences of such a future stage of myself thus metamorphosed would be like."_

<http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/nagel_nice.html></comment></comment>


New lithium-ion battery design – 2,000x more powerful, recharges 1,000x faster - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/153614-new-lithium-ion-battery-design-thats-2000-times-more-powerful-recharges-1000-times-faster <comment><USER2> For people having trouble interpreting the graph, the legend from the actual paper says:

"The energy and power density of our microbattery cells (A–H) at low to high C rates, along with previous microbattery cells having 3D electrodes (MB1 through MB3). The plot also includes the performance range of conventional power technologies and commercial batteries from A123 (high power) and Sony (high energy)."

Where C rates stand for charge rates, with 1C being able to charge the full capacity of the battery in 1 hour.

The key take away for the new design's performance isn't the one quoted in the title (of the submission or the article), but rather "Compared with conventional supercapacitors, our microbattery delivers 10 × the power of a supercapacitor at comparable energy density, delivers 10 × the energy of a supercapacitor at comparable power density or has 10 × smaller volume than a supercapacitor at comparable performance".

Just by glancing at the graph, you can see that the design is orders of magnitudes less energy dense than today's lithium-ion batteries. This advancement will make high-power applications more feasible, but will probably not do very much to increase your phone/laptop's battery life.

<comment><USER3> Electric cars?

<comment><USER2> Well... it's tricky. If you assume that current electric cars have the performance of that A123 battery from the graph, and then pick something in the middle of the spread of the colourful dots, you get a roughly 1 order decrease in energy density, and a 1 order increase in power density. So, taking the Model S as an example, you have a 300 mile range, and a charge time of like 45 minutes at a super charger.

So... now you end up with like a 30-60 mile range range, and can charge up fully in like 3-5 minutes. So we've brought charge times into the realm of filly up gas, but you're doing it waaay more often.

If this is a useful advancement or not depends completely on what type of infrastructure we want to envision. I would certainly love a world where this was possible/feasible, but it's certainly not a grand slam.

<comment><USER4> Could electric car battery use a dual type battery pack to optimize charging and range?

<comment><USER5> The Tesla Model S already uses 7000 individual battery cells. This is how it's able to charge as quickly as it does with the supercharger. The main limitation of household charging is lack of power.

<comment><USER6> That isn't necessarily true. Them using small batteries to make a larger battery is what allows them to make their car sized batteries cheaper, since the smaller sized batteries are already mass produced for things like laptops. For charging time it depends on how those batteries are connected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a classic case of a submission title taking liberties with the meaning of the article it links.

This submission's title: "New lithium-ion battery 2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster"

The actual title: "New lithium-ion battery design that's 2,000 times more powerful, recharges 1,000 times faster"

The missing word is "design", a word that is crucial to the meaning of the article. The article discusses _a design for a battery_ , not a battery. How important is that? Here's the last sentence in the linked article:

"For this to occur, though, the University of Illinois will first have to prove that their technology scales to larger battery sizes, and that the production process isn't prohibitively expensive for commercial production."

It's a design, not a battery.

The solution to this problem, as I have pointed out many times before, is to _copy the article's title, do not invent your own_.

<comment> jack-r-abbit > So far, the researchers have used this tech to create a button-sized > microbattery, and you can see in the graph below how well their battery > compares to a conventional Sony CR1620 button cell.

That sounds like a battery to me. The new design has actually been built and tested. The quote you pulled out refers to scaling it up to things like lasers and F1 cars. A button-sized battery sounds fine for a lot of electronics today. Just not an F1 car.

<comment><USER8> Building one in the lab likely does not give you the ability to build a million of them at a decent price in a factory.

Yield probably is low, and the current process will likely be way too labour intensive.

<comment> jack-r-abbit True. But lutusp was shitting all over the submitter for dropping the almighty "design" word from the title and then claimed this is not an article about a battery but only about a design for one. That claim is wrong. It is more than a design... it is an actual battery. Maybe there is only one unit that exists. But that is still one more than a design. And if the tech proves sound but too labor intensive, your next thing to tackle is to make it easier to build. Isn't that how bleeding-edge innovation works?

<comment><USER9> Bleeding edge innovation usually occurs when researchers and engineers make progress using known or easily-modifiable processes. Most "breakthroughs" are dead-ends because process or scaling weren't considered in the initial research.

True technological innovation needs not just engineering feasibility but also economic feasibility. I'm not trying to say that the research that "dead ends" is pointless. Progress is progress. All I am trying to say is that it doesn't mean economic viability is right around the corner.

Often, researchers are well aware of scaling or manufacturing hurdles when they embark on the experiments. For the sake of academic careers and exposure, the research will get hyped regardless of the viability of implementing the research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> To be clear, this is the ExtremeTech blog, all of their commentary leans heavily toward wishful thinking.

For context a number of surface area improvements in Lithium-Ion anodes have failed at scale due to the creation of lithium dendrites (metal 'wires' that grow during recharge) which have either rendered large sections of the anode worthless and reduced the capacity of the battery, or created rapid exothermic reactions (aka fires) in the battery.

<comment><USER11> Its on the BBC New site as well which is actually much less clear in explaining that this research is applicable to the supercapacitor space as opposed to 'normal' Li* batteries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where's that xkcd chart when I need it for every announcement like this...

Ah here we go: <http://xkcd.com/678/>

</comment><comment><USER13> To be clear: high power density, but similar energy density to current batteries.

<comment><USER14> At some level, it doesn't make too much sense to go that much higher in the power (which I'm assuming is the same as discharge rate, since voltage is fixed). Current lipoly batteries are rated at 30C (Amps per watt*hour). Essentially this means that the battery can be fully discharged in a minimum of two minutes. It doesn't seem like there are that many applications that require higher power output.

<comment><USER15> cars, for one, especially if high power output correlates with high power input for charging.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. It's very rare to find an application where a rapid _discharge_ matters (battery powered guided missile maybe? A drone launcher that boosts a device to altitude and then comes back down on a parachute?), but a rapid charge speed is almost universally desired. At the numbers being quoted here, for example, it would become faster to simply charge your phone than swap the fiddly battery.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The title is completely misleading.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, it's literally correct if you understand the difference between power and energy but most people don't.

<comment><USER19> Including the author considering he is claiming that this would leed to smaller cell phone batteries...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Uh, let's combine this with the other 3 articles claiming a 10x more long lasting battery, and we'll have a 1000x longer lasting, 2000x more powerful, 1000x faster recharging battery.

I really love progress, but I've seen too many of these "N times better" articles and no actual consumption products by now.

Same with these memristors, MRAM and feRAM, and 1000x faster internet.

<comment><USER21> > 1000x faster internet.

I don't know about you, but my first internet connection was 56 kbps, now I can easily buy 100 Mbps one (I don't cause 10 Mbps is good enough for me) and it would be much cheaper than what I had to pay 15 years ago for that 56 kbps, even including inflation.

Progress is here, we just don't notice (also media and inventors overhype). But in the end the progress is still happening unbeliveably fast. It's decimal order of magnitude every 5 years!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The one thing they did not mention was the battery weight and size. The biggest barrier for electric cars and other battery uses is the ratio of energy to weight and size.

Today, this ratio enables about 70-100 miles travel for an electric car with a similar weight and size as a gasoline car.

will be interesting to follow this initiative.

</comment><comment><USER23> If a car battery can be made to charge to 50% capacity in about a minute with a total range greater than 60 miles or so, then a very novel solution to charging electric cars becomes possible -- induction coils at stop lights and along highways.

<comment><USER21> In the bigger cities and between them we could just connect electric cars to grid the whole time, and put energy meters in each car. Like trolleys. No need for big batteries inside the car, just supercapacitors for a few minutes worth of driving if there's some problem with the grid and you need to park safely.

I wonder if people could buy electric cars like they buy cellphones - you sign a contract with a provider, you pay X USD per month for the car and access to the grid, additionaly you have access to free regular car if you need to drive somehwere the grid doesn't exist yet(but you pay for the fuel by yourself).

The problem is infrastructure, I think.

<comment><USER24> Some busses have been running on this kind of wiring in cities for ages.

<comment><USER21> Yep, we have trolleys in my city and they work OK. Still less popular/more difficult routes are served by regular buses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> "2000 times more powerful, recharges 1000 times faster " - so it will still take twice as long to charge it fully then?

<comment><USER26> No, the energy _density_ is not all that unusual. Assuming the battery is 2000AH and is 100% efficient, the "2000 times more powerful" means you can (theoretically!) _discharge_ it 2000 times faster than the benchmark battery (e.g. 2000A over 1 hour vs. 1A over 2000 hours).

The 1000x recharge rate means you can put the energy back in 1000x faster than the benchmark battery (e.g. 1000A x 2 hours vs. 1A x 2000 hours).

Due to the energy density being comparable, I would expect the actual _size_ of a 2000AH New Improved[tm] lithium-ion battery would be comparable to the size of a traditional 2000AH "benchmark" battery.

Disclaimer: All the numbers made up out of thin air using values that were easy to do in my head.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It discharges/charges much faster, that is all about the new battery.

Discharging fast make it more possible to catch fire.

Overall, it seems not very useful for smartphones.

<comment><USER28> But nowhere does this article even talk about using this for smartphones or in any form of application.

<comment><USER29> "In real-world use, this tech will probably be used to equip consumer devices with batteries that are much smaller and lighter — imagine a smartphone with a battery the thickness of a credit card, which can be recharged in a few seconds."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Design != Build != Shipping

I love this research but have seen similar articles for the past decade. At scale production is hard, just ask A123.

<comment><USER7> The ideal: Design, build, sell.

The real: Sell, build, design.

:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I wonder if 2,000x more powerful means generates 2,000x more heat and the risk of exploding is increased by 2,000x as well?

</comment><comment><USER32> The most exciting application they can imagine for a super-battery is smaller cell phone batteries?

That doesn't seem very forward thinking.

<comment><USER33> Excellent surface area to volume ratio for cooling.

If you want to shove tens of amps into something tiny its gotta be nearly perfectly efficient and/or excellent cooling and/or be tiny to get a great surface area/volume ratio.

I bet this would rock for bluetooth earpieces.

Also people expect some apps like cars to last for 15 years, but if you're "nervous" about long life, your stereotypical disposable cellphone is a great app.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Great, my Android will be alive 6 hours longer

</comment><comment><USER35> Oh good, I can play Angry Birds longer.

</comment><comment><USER36> And it will be available in 10 years.</comment>


How I Quit My Job and Built My First App - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/how-i-quit-my-job-and-built-my-first-app-d2a2e1086f41 <comment><USER2> > As a side-note, creating external deadlines is also a great way to rally a > team

My experience with this is that external deadlines work for teams that are unfocused and whose own motivation is low. However, for a team that is already executing well, an imposition of an external deadline (especially for a reason as poorly-thought-out as "to rally the team"), if it's aggressive enough to see increased throughput, will lead to poor processes, cut corners and burnout.

Perhaps there is an element of rationalization here, where a poor manager, who failed to anticipate at a distance a goal that was then attainable, becomes aware of it once it is closer and in danger of passing by, and has to make huge efforts at re-prioritization and motivation to meet it. In hindsight, the manager rationalizes that the fire drill was a good thing for the company, because obviously, the deadline was achieved! Oh, and look, next week there's a customer coming on-site, wouldn't it be great if this other feature was added in time for that...?

I have not had to build and lead a team yet myself, but the process I would follow, and the advice I would give others, is to choose to work with a focused, motivated team, and reduce the importance given to external deadlines. They should influence the prioritization given to relative projects, but cannot be used to crank the throughput nozzle.

<comment><USER3> Once you do lead a team, which I'm sure you will do in the future if you're so inclined, It can be a bit harder than you would think! Even a team of all A players can flounder and never produce anything if you're not careful.

For me the thing is that you just have to constantly adapt your plan as things develop. I don't think deadlines are inherently bad. But if you do set deadlines, the team needs to be a part of that process and the goals need to be based on reality rather than just arbitrary. If you have hard external deadlines, then that may dictate the features you can deliver. I find that developers (myself included) appreciate being able to focus on their individual tasks, knowing that the manager is making sure the ship is heading in the right direction.

<comment><USER4> I've found that teams (and individuals) function best when tasks are either scope-delimited or time-delimited. Not both, and not neither. If the task is concrete enough that the desired outcome is crystal-clear and there's not much risk in completing it, then just say "It's done when it's done" and let someone work at it. If the task has fuzzy success criteria - "Make this UI better", for example, or "speed this up as much as you can", or "explore new approaches for this module" \- _put a deadline on it_. It's possible to spin your wheels forever if you don't have a clear destination and clear timeframe.

<comment><USER5> This. So obvious and so right.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And then there are 100s of other stories like this one where people catastrophically fail.

<comment><USER7> A lot of those aren't quite like this one, though. The author did some smart things:

* app received press before quitting job

* app started making revenue before quitting job

* author had time to watch the app's trajectory before quitting job

* author diversifies and helps other people make successful apps, across a variety of categories, rather than betting it all on games.

The point of reading success and failure stories is to contrast them as well as feel inspiration or schaudenfreude as indicated.

<comment><USER8> The diversification was really important.

Too many people think of "app" as "business;" he saw early on that he would need lots of apps (both his and others') to build a business.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I worked with Robleh on a memory game using images from Instagram back in the day called InstaMatch. I had made the simple game and published it, and he helped do all the marketing and design to make it quite successful. He was always great to work with and we made decent money until Instagram decided to stop having apps use any part of their name in the title.

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the shout out Jeremy! InstaMatch deserves it's own post. Learned a lot from those early days.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> In reality though, I'd like to know what the author did for health insurance when he quit his job weeks/months after having a baby. Medical risk is very high during this period.. looks like he is based in Canada (not US), so I guess that answers it.

<comment><USER12> Yes, in some countries the idea that if you don't have a job or are low income that your children's health should suffer is considered pretty inhuman.

<comment><USER13> I'm eternally bemused that the US considers itself entrepreneurial and pro- business when it doesn't get this.

Then again, if your cost of entry is much lower and more people can bootstrap from personal savings, they're all that much less likely to need investors just to stay alive, or to put up with demands for unicorn growth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In contrast to all the cynicism I see in other comments, this is awesome! Even if it doesn't happen to everyone, I find anyone who can manage to survive building and pursuing their passion to be inspirational. It reminds me that even if the odds aren't good, the journey can most certainly be worth quitting your job.

As I start bootstrapping my own idea off the ground it helps to see stories like this. Being able to stay motivated and optimistic looks to be a helpful component of success.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why would you quit your job to make an app? I have bootstrapped 3 apps and pushed them to the app store in my own time.

To be fair, every time I do it, it's hard. I have to prepare my family that I'm undertaking something that will take up a lot of my time. It's tough but, they know I love it.

<comment><USER16> Did you ever have trouble with keeping apart intellectual property created for your employer vs. for yourself on your own time? For example, did you use different computers and made sure to never do this at your work place? I'm always worried that this might become a problem if you create apps while still being employed somewhere.

<comment><USER15> I use my own machine. That and you have to keep in mind a few things. Does the company actually have the money to spend to go after a developer who made some simple app? Would doing so piss off their entire engineering department? Is it really worth it to them? Usually the answer is no.

Not that any of the above matters since I do this on my own time, with my own resources.

<comment><USER17> If you work for Apple (and I think the same for Google, Facebook or Microsoft), don't they own your output even if it's on your own machine in your own time? I seem to remember part of their contract is that they own all your intellectual output. Some other discussion of this here:

[http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app- store/47704...](http://iphonedevsdk.com/forum/business-legal-app- store/47704-apple-retail-employees-shut-from-developing.html) [https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_emp...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1phmkr/current_employer_owns_all_software_i_develop/)

On the other hand, in Queensland at least, it depends on the definition of your work role. If it's specific enough, you could even create a game using your employers equipment & keep ownership & copyright yourself (the Queensland government provides that as a specific software example here):

[https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools- grant...](https://www.business.qld.gov.au/business/support-tools- grants/tools/intellectual-property-info-kit/browse/employees- contractors/ownership)

<comment> steve-howard I work at Microsoft. I don't speak for the company but feel like sharing my experience.

We do have to comply with certain restrictions (e.g. don't do it on company time, company property, company equipment; don't compete with the company), and I'd definitely read the full legalese before trying to make a paid app. But it's not anywhere near as bad as "everything you write while you work here is ours."

<comment><USER18> Are you sure? It might be that bad, if they become motivated enough to go after you in court.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Articles like this always skip the most crucial point.

Author talks about "outreach" and press coverage and such. But how is that done exactly? I realize this might be dependent on the app but there has to be some general principles one can follow.

If I were to launch an app in the app store today, almost NO ONE would know.

How do you get from that - to real influencers writing about your app?

<comment><USER20> It's not app specific - but Alex Turnbull of the oft-linked groovehq did a detailed blog post about his outreach strategy: [https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers](https://www.groovehq.com/blog/1000-subscribers) .

Some of this advice transfers over to an app, some of not so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> really nice and inspiring. \- how did you reach out to so many customers ? \- i see the UX of your apps are good. did you do them or you got a design agency doing it for you ?

</comment><comment><USER22> Pocket Zoo? This is actually a really awesome idea!

</comment><comment><USER23> From T.O. <3

</comment><comment><USER24> This is interesting because until reading this I had the impression that nobody makes money from mobile apps (except games).

</comment><comment><USER25> Step 1: Develop app

Step 2: Fail at monetizing app

Step 3: Create app development studio

Step 4: Empower others to fail at monetizing apps

<comment><USER26> Please don't do this here.

I understand the sport in extracting the most uncharitable interpretation of a thing and distilling it into the most concentrated snark that you can, but amusing as that can be, you harm the community by posting it here.

Snark always gets many upvotes, perhaps because we enjoy the dopamine rush of briefly feeling superior to others. Such comments rise to the top, become emblematic, and pretty soon we're all in the habit of looking for clever ways to put others down instead of learning and asking questions together.

This is an existential risk to HN, since if we lose the open-minded exploratory quality of the threads (never secure to begin with, and always under pressure from stronger forces), successive waves of thoughtful users will exit, putting the community into a fatal feedback loop.

<comment><USER27> I think sanitizing the community possibly puts it at even greater risk. Look at stackoverflow whose contributors are dwindling due to overmodding. There is learning in this comment. You are the one layering on the interpretation of the need to feel superior. That wasn't how I read it.

<comment><USER28> I refuse to believe that encouraging people to not be assholes to each other, and to not shit on people sharing their stories is "sanitizing".

<comment><USER27> So how would have been an acceptable way for the commenter to make his point? Saying they sh*t on the other person is IMHO really dramatic.

<comment><USER26> > _So how would have been an acceptable way for the commenter to make his > point?_

If by "acceptable" you mean better for HN, it's not hard to imagine a thoughtful comment about the difference between making money from an app product vs. an app-building shop. Also it would be easy not to belittle the OP's achievement (as "empower others to fail", for example, does).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> sweet comp name</comment>


This Morning I Didn't Go To Work - <AUTHOR> http://blog.davejafari.com/this-morning-i-didnt-go-to-work <comment><USER2> Good luck man. I'm going through almost exactly the same thing. I am also 28, built up a big "runway" of savings, and my last day at work is next Friday. Hope your ideas work out for you!

<comment><USER3> Word of caution from a soon-to-be-30-year-old who had built up a runway at 28: Ignore the runway. Get to ramen profitable ASAP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. My (still employed) partner and I are actually taking on small consulting projects right now just to make sure we have money coming in. We vehemently do not want to get into services, but it's hard to have a strategy without resources! At the very least, it gives him something constructive to do coding-wise while I'm pounding the pavement.

<comment><USER4> Word of caution. If one person is still employed, but the other is not, it makes for a very difficult partnership. There's just a lot of risk that the work distribution will eventually become too imbalanced; either your partner will burn out way faster than you'd expect, or you'll be too annoyed with the lack of effort that your partner puts in.

Not saying this will happen to you guys. Just saying there's a risk. Speaking from personal experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Be careful not to let your long runway slow you down. It's long enough to make this a success, but not if you launch in 2 years time because you can. Push yourself to get to beta early and live launch not far after. This will give you plenty of time to pivot (although I hate the use of the word these days, it's appropriate) or even just listen to customer feedback and improve.

I guess I see a 2.5 year runway and think that's got to be enough to make something work as long as you still act like you have a 6 month one.

</comment><comment><USER6>
      Welcome to the desert of the real...

I've got a few yrs of runway, since costs are super low in India. Balanced by the lack of early adopter market access I guess.

We sold and launched first prod within 6m, and made some real revenue, trying to go full bootstrap.

We're going the small niche market route.. Let's see if that works, now trying a diff product which might be faster to sell...

May the force be with you!

</comment><comment><USER7> "You know what's cool? A trillion dollars". Awesome.

I hope niche idea does not mean small targeted marketed. It appears building a dude business takes as much time/effort as building a large business.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really hope he isn't paying for that office. That's suicide, waste of money. And it looks like it doesn't have any real windows. When you are depressed things aren't going the way you hoped, you want to be able to see the light of day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, just an unused bedroom in my home. There are two windows but the picture mostly clipped them.

I agree about sunlight. I've spent long hours working alone at night and you have to force yourself into human contact before quietly slipping into the blues.

<comment><USER8> Good luck. You're in for an exciting roller coaster ride. Try to create a exercise schedule, even if its once a week. When your sanity starts to slip, your health will soon follow.

I try to keep one of the two, though they are somewhat interchangeable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I left 2 months ago. Now following the big idea! I think it's a good start for you to gather some interest around you. It should help you control your time and become more efficient. I was thinking to do the same but never did...

</comment><comment><USER10> so what's your idea exactly?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm going to dive into it more as I go, but I'm not trying to hide anything either. I just don't feel like it's that important until I can speak with more potential customers.

The niche I find attractive right now is consignment stores. I like the ethics of reuse, the market size and niche-ness, and feel like I can have a real impact in relation to the other software vendors in the space. On a grander scheme, the challenge of helping retail compete in a digital world is fascinating to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My god that text is incredibly small. The content is fine, but the comments and titles under the images I could not read.

Off topic, I know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I tried to bump it. I wish the themes on Posterous were as plentiful as Tumblr. Is there no demand for better themes?

<comment><USER11> Hey thanks. It's now small enough to indicate it's not main content, but big enough to read without having to bump the font size of my browser. If you're this responsive in your business endeavors, I predict great success for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Best of luck to you and everyone trying to be an entrepreneur! Are you trying to get into any incubators/accelerators?

<comment><AUTHOR> There is a local incubator that I will apply for this summer if the time is right, but I am generally avoiding it until I think it makes sense. I know I wouldn't invest in anything without at least one paying customer, so I think it would be rude to try to hustle without one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Right! it may look stupid but it is the best thing to do. Take time compose yourself and your ideas

</comment><comment><USER14> Good luck.</comment>


Accidentally Deleting Everything - <AUTHOR> http://feld.com/archives/2016/01/accidentally-deleting-everything.html <comment><USER2> When I was fresh with Gluster, I was blindly following tutorials for how to fix a split-brain. Backstory: I inherited this, so I had to fix it as quickly as possible.

Basically, you can mount individual bricks in /tmp and run a 'forcefully fix this split brain.'

I left this running to let things get happy overnight in a screen. The following morning every single file was gone.

I had left a tmpwatch on /tmp to remove all files in /tmp after a certain point in time. We had a backup, but it was a few days old. That was a fun weekend.

It is the worst feeling in the world, and one that I'll never make again... at least like that.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mylio seems to have the same problem as iTunes (and a lot of OS X software frankly). Why does a cataloguing app feel the need to screw around with the source material? Every other media app I've ever used from Windows Media Player to Winamp to Amarok builds it's catalog in a local DB and links to the relevant files, yet iTunes (and I'm pretty sure iPhoto) move by default or copy if you make them to a new directory where they proceed to screw around with your files without making clear what they're doing.

Sod off the lot of you and leave my files where you found them.

<comment><USER4> For iTunes, you can stop this happening by unchecking "Keep iTunes Media folder organized" (In Preferences/Advanced).

<comment><USER3> That eliminates some of the behavior, but for someone like me who operates in both Windows and Mac and uses other programs to keep my large collection of mp3's up to date on all my machines, it doesn't work because iTunes won't simply use a directory as the basis for it's library and leave it at that, it feels the need to move everything AND as a bonus deletes it from the original location.

When I tried to set this up using BitTorrent Sync, iTunes kept removing the files BTS would copy. I had set it to read only so BTS would then copy the file over, and iTunes would add it a second time to the library. Then a third time. Then suddenly when I had 12 copies of everything and my half a terrabyte SSD was nearing capacity for no obvious reason, I finally figured out what the hell was going on and put a stop to it.

Appreciate the attempt at help though. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do backups, of course, but I also have rm aliased to

        echo "Bad! Use `trash` instead."; return 1

and use trash-cli [1] instead, which moves the target files and folders to the Linux equivalent of the Recycle Bin. If I mess up, my files are one restore- trash command from being recovered. Every so often I trash-empty to free up space.

[1] [https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash- cli](https://github.com/andreafrancia/trash-cli)

<comment><USER6> Man.. I'm always skeptical of doing things like this. It's one of those things that just comes to rear its ugly head in the future on a machine/user that doesn't have the alias configured.

Recent example - I wrote a bash script using many of the fancy parameters of lsof to map my work infrastructure's network. The code ran on my arch desktop, but as soon as it was run across the environment.. oh my god the stderr.

Eventually bit the bullet, logged onto the oldest centos4 machine and wrote the silly thing from there in sh. It ended up being significantly better than the bash version, too. :)

/tangent

<comment><USER7> Your problems were using GNU extensions, instead of writing in POSIX-standard subset, not knowing what the standard was, and not testing. None of which apply to the grandparent!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, should've been 10x more clear. What I meant to say was that by using aliased commands for something as widely used as rm, it's easier to forget the nuances and cause some serious issues.

A better example might've been rsync, where it's incredibly easy to wipe a directory if you forget a leading slash with the right flags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my main interview questions is: Tell me about a time you thought you were going to get fired.

I want to hear about the bug they deployed, the customer issue, dropping the database, etc. I want to hear about how they realized their mistake and what they do differently as a result now. Basically, "what did you learn from it?"

Mine:

I once dropped the article table for [major news organization] which handled [large number] of updates each day. It was something stupid like "delete from articles where id = ~" and when it took more than a second, I realized my issue.. damage done.

Now, I avoid running sql queries directly whenever possible in favor of migrations. But I test those migrations on smaller/test databases which are normally backups of production to have the same structure, etc. And I _always_ do a select first to make sure I get the results I expect.. then change it into a delete or update.

<comment><USER9> That is an amazing interview question. What's the average reaction like? If I heard that I'd laugh, because it's so unexpected, and then tell a tale of woe that of course in hindsight I've learned from. However I can also see how the interviewee might be offended by it, so I'm wondering how people have responded to it (before stealing it for myself).

<comment><USER8> Sometimes I set a little more context before I ask but it's gone over pretty well.

I think it acknowledges a simple truth:

We all make mistakes. Some of them stunningly big and we think - even for a moment - "my boss is going to fire me!" And then once we calm down, we stop to think about what happened, how to fix it, and how to prevent it from ever happening again.

And if you claim to have never made one, you're either a) lying, b) oblivious or c) so green that you'll make those mistakes with me. The first two reasons don't fly with me.

<comment><USER10> Or, d) so overly cautious that barely any work gets done at all, due to too many precautions slowing you down. But seriously, I can't think of any time in the past 25 years where I thought "This is going to get me fired"... with one exception. At a medical related company, I got in a blow-up shouting match with a director that was trying to get me to cut a three day procedure down to less than one day. The only way this could happen is if I rushed through everything and "hoping it was done right", vs. double checking not only my work, but everyone else's inputs also.

Long story short, I cornered that director some time after the meeting, apologized profusely, and explained that I'm overly sensitive to mistakes in this position since I witnessed first-hand what happened when a predecessor of mine made a "simple" error, which resulted in a major patient-impacting event (which resulted in an FDA investigation). The upshot is that this director, from that point on, trusted me more than anyone else on the team (even though I was "highly insubordinate" in the previous meeting).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It'd be kinda cool if there were a filesystem which were the unholy offspring of venti and git (with garbage collection) and the ability to roll back to any non-GCed point in time. Of course that'd only get one so far, and eventually one would still need backups. But it sure would be convenient.

<comment><USER12> ZFS?

<comment><USER13> ZFS has snapshots with no duplication and little overhead. You can for example have rolling snapshots, so that you can get the state of a special file say seven days ago, or one month ago, without saving "backups".

But of course you should also have backups, but on another system/offsite/offline.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Lost a bunch of files after switching to the Mac due to the ridiculous 'replace' (OSX) vs 'merge folder contents' (Windows) feature when dragging a folder. After upgrading my Mac with a bigger hard drive, I dragged a projects folder from the backup drive to the computer, interpreted the "...will replace..." prompt as "duplicate files will replace" which was fine. Lost a lot of work. Just confirmed this destructive behavior is true to this day.

Long live dropbox with rat-pack option.

</comment><comment><USER15> Relatedly, does anyone know of a UPS which accepts some sort of commodity battery and which has a USB/serial port to communicate to a computer when the main power is off? Everything I've seen has a proprietary battery design resulting in a battery that gets more and more expensive as the hardware gets older and fewer and fewer people have it. The batteries don't have to hold much energy after all. Just enough to flush to disk and power off safely.

<comment><USER16> I've never seen a UPS with truly proprietary batteries (not saying they don't exist, but I haven't ever seen one). Most of the time I've opened up dead UPSes, they're just commodity lead-acid SLA batteries slapped together into a 24V or 48V pack with a minimal wiring harness. Quite a few seem to use 12V 7AH SLA batteries frequently used in emergency lighting, which cost about $15-20 per online, if you're willing to fuss with getting them bundled up and shoved back in tightly.

Many of the bigger rackmount UPSes have a big plug on the back to attach extra battery cabinets. I wouldn't get a big UPS without this feature. They'll let you hang whatever batteries you want off of the charger/inverter, as long as you get the voltage and charge rates right. (Obviously we are in warranty- voiding territory here.)

I have a couple of old Tripp-Lites, bought basically at scrap value because the internal batteries were dead, and they use Anderson SB175 forklift-charger connectors on the back. It works fine with just external batteries, giving you the advantage of being able to buy whatever SLAs happen to be cheap on the local market. (Though I'd definitely want to make sure all 4 were purchased at the same time since you're wiring them up together in a set.)

<comment><USER15> You're probably right and thanks for the advice, but this is for on-site storage I'm considering for my parents. They live in a country that takes me about 24h to fly to, with daily power outages, and while I'm sure they could do it if they wanted to, they're rather averse to the idea of doing any wiring work.

A user-replaceable battery that can be replaced in the way that an older Thinkpad battery can would be nice.

I'm looking at the options suggested [here]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831796](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831796)) and [here]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831721](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10831721)), but I'm having a hard time finding APC battery availability in India.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ugh, I hate situations where multiple screwups turn into massive data loss. I'm glad this one worked out.

I remember the time when a sysadmin gave two weeks notice and left just before the Christmas holidays, before getting new backup system fully working.

During the holidays, when almost everybody was out of town, one of the disks in our main server's RAID array failed. Then when the RAID controller tried to rebuild the array using the hot spare, a second disk failed. Then, just because the situation wasn't already horrible enough, the ancient proprietary controller (the one which knew how all the data was actually spread across all the disks) decided that this would be a great time to give up for good.

We ended up paying about $7K to DriveSavers, who managed to salvage nearly all the data from the remnants of the RAID array. And while we were interviewing sysadmins, we replaced the hardware and set up a real backup system. Then we built an offsite mirror of the backup system, and we configured paranoid monitoring for all our RAID controllers.

It's easy to get 100% uptime and no data loss for several years, if you're lucky. But if you build sloppy systems, sooner or later everything will go wrong, and when it does, the chaos can be impressive.

</comment><comment><USER18> I was once asked to help a friend debug his server. Its mysql state was not loading properly, so I wrote an rsync line to back up all the mysql data as a safety step before debugging. A few seconds later, I realized I put a forward slash and a space in the wrong place and had managed to delete the entire directory.

I felt like such an idiot. At least I haven't messed up an rsync command since!

</comment><comment><USER19> "To err is human. To really fuck up requires root access."</comment>


Cost comparison between Cloud Datacenter and enterprise hosting (infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://www.getapp.com/blog/the-cloud-needs-massive-data-centers-a-cost-comparison-with-traditional-enterprise-hosting/

<comment><USER2> Okay, but there are actually TWO factors at play here, not just one.

The linked article intimates that efficiency and technology reduces costs in the "cloud" datacenter, to the point of costs being 1/5th of a "regular" datacenter. I don't doubt that if you have the latest, fanciest tech, you can save some money.

But the flip side is a reduced staffing ratio and hidden systemic risk. Amazon employs fewer sysadmins per server than your "regular" datacenter would. That saves money when things go well, and it means there aren't enough sysadmins to fix things quickly when the excrement hits the air circulation device. That's a hidden systemic risk factor that you should be taking into account - but you aren't. It's really exactly like finance. If the risk-free rate is 3%, and someone tells you that they can get you 6% with no risk, _they're lying_. There's risk being hidden somewhere that isn't apparent to you.</comment>


Running a scalable and reliable GraphQL endpoint with Serverless - <AUTHOR> https://serverless.com/blog/running-scalable-reliable-graphql-endpoint-with-serverless/ <comment><AUTHOR> Would you use this for production?</comment>


The new VA.gov shows what's possible for gov tech after Healthcare.gov disaster - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1464919/new-veterans-affairs-site-va-gov-avoids-healthcare-gov-disaster/ <comment><USER2> The site and content redesign may be great, but I'm not sure I'd take this week to praise the VA's technology transformation, since the department's backoffice systems are now failing to properly calculate and disburse veterans' benefits, while the replacement of VistA with Cerner has been so troubled that Cerner's president lashed out against "fake news" not long before he left the company.</comment>


EEG Brainwave-Controlled Pong Game - <AUTHOR> http://people.ece.cornell.edu/land/courses/ece4760/FinalProjects/s2012/cwm55/cwm55_mj294/index.html

<comment><USER2> Not to be a Debbie Downer, but I seriously question how much actual alpha wave activation they're getting if they're just measuring it from the frontal electrodes (Fp1/2 and G). Chances are they're just measuring muscle activity from the person wrinkling their forehead. The more reliable method would be to look at mu inhibition, since you'd actually be able to measure things other than muscle movements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, very good point. We did notice eye movement and blinking artifacts showing up as well, and we were initially skeptical for these very same reasons.

We also implemented an alternative control scheme using mu suppression which we tried measuring using C3, C4, and Cz. This worked by having the user imagine (or actually move) their hands or feet to control the paddle movement. The other thing was that we actually used back of the head (mastoid) and right ear lobe instead of G.

The last thing I'd like to mention is that frontal alpha measurement is all over the research literature -- commercial products exist that use headbands to measure alpha activity. We noticed increases in alpha wave spectral power when the subject was relaxing or meditating -- precisely when the subject would least likely be scrunching their forehead. This was noticed even in neurofeedback applications when the subjects were not playing the game.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> There's a YouTube video up at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYQfdA2tXbc>

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks really interesting, I want to try it out!

</comment><comment><USER4> Very cool!

</comment><comment><USER5> awesome!

</comment><comment><USER6> bump

</comment><comment><USER7> bump</comment>