Littlecosm Twitter game alpha release - <AUTHOR> http://www.littlecosm.com/ Been watching this idea for a little while, now yongfook just opened up some alpha space. <comment><USER2> I built a twitter game last year. It was a scrabble style word point game amongst friends. It got terrible reviews here and I abandoned it.

I still think there is a lot of opportunity to make twitter gaming a success.

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks interesting but it would be nice to understand what I can actually do? Do I attack the other sprites on the screen or just do quests? I'm sort of lost in the interface right now.

<comment><USER4> I've just worked out that the sprites represent recent tweets! Click the sprite to see the tweet. Tweets containing ":)" become white sprites.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a very nice project! After one, I have a couple of feedback:

\- First I think that a faster progression at the beginning could create more excitement:

> by moving to level 2-3 faster (most games gives you lv2 after the 1st fight)

> maybe some of the 1st quest should shorter (like 2-3 minutes) I didn't got > directly that I have to wait to achieve quests.

> create and encourage interaction with a @littlecosm account to gain xp (good > for shy ppl with nobody to "talk" with)

Progression and reward is the drug of gamers and if you don't feed a new user quickly, he might desappear..

\- What's about an "invite" system (like the dropbox one) if a new user come thru an existing one, you can reward the ref with xp/coins/cash

About the global understanding of the gameplay:

\- The @littlecosm account could send a dm or @reply when your quest is over, at least for the 1st ones, it's frustrating for a player when you fail the very first time you play a game.

\- More explainantions could help, maybe a small tutorial to start can be nice (lots of "what should I do" on twitter feedback, desho?)

That's my 2cents :), good work anyway :) I love that lil' world you created here!

A

<comment><USER6> that really is excellent feedback - thank you very much :)

pacing is super important and you're right, I need to make sure I reward those first few steps quite quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Alpha full :(

By the way, the intro screen is awesome and beautiful, it reminds me of "Ico" AND "Another World" ("Out of this World" for you Americans).

<comment><USER6> added more spaces now!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm really looking forward to where this will go. I can't wait for the FAQs just because I don't really know what to do with the items that I've collected so far. Is there a possible way to navigate through my followers' timeline other than what has been tweeted in that "5 minute update"? And are you going to add the @ reply feature where a drop menu will show?

</comment><comment><USER9> I would also appreciate if there was even a shortest FAQ somewhere, so I can at least know what to expect before I sign in.

<comment><USER6> I'll be writing a FAQ on my blog tonight.

(I'm the creator)

<comment><USER10> Another good way to do a tutorial is with mouseovers. A little info about each thing in the game would go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Littlecosm FAQ

<http://yongfook.com/littlecosm-faq>

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel generally dazed and confused. Have played many a MMORPG in my time but this one is ... it's a bit more confusing than even Ultima Online.

Which is to say, bravo, you've finally made a MMORPG for power players! Kudos for that.

Now, the thing that confuses me the most is that, I start a quest and by doing absolutely nothing, the percentage of its completeness goes up ...

Another thing that baffles me is that, ok I can tweet. But it doesn't seem to do anything more than act as a farming mechanism for my stats and a virality factor for you ... I dislike farming with a passion.

edit: and there are other players in the game who seem to be people I follow on twitter ... but I'm not sure they're actually _in_ the game or just randomly on twitter. Therefore I can't tell if I should interact with them or not ... or what that would even entail from a game point of view.

<comment><USER6> farming mechanism for your stats? please explain.

I'm just a dude who made a game - there's no evil corporation behind this...

<comment><USER11> Well next to my stats it says "Tweet to make your stats go up"

So does this mean that if I just start spamming like crazy my stats will go up like crazy? That feels like the general farming motto behind MMORPG's.

As in, "kill 5000 wolves and gain a level! yay!"

(don't worry, I'm not calling you evil, just trying to figure it all out, I generally like the idea)

<comment><USER12> I don't think this is really a power players type of game. I find myself wanting to be sometimes, because that's what I am used to. I find myself letting go of that mentality the more I play.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry the Littlecosm Alpha is now full.... :(

<comment><USER6> just added a few more spaces for you :)

<comment><USER7> What's the point of the game? Spamming twitter with random messages??? That'd be a rather idiotic thing.

Does it apply some language processing related to the quests at hand?

<comment><USER6> wow. I am quite blown away by unwarranted cynicism like this :/

Littlecosm is a twitter client in that, if you want to, you can tweet from it. Users only tweet from Littlecosm if they type in text and hit a "tweet" button, in exactly the same way they use any other client.

The game _encourages_ you to tweet _about_ it from time to time when you achieve something new in the game (of course, and so does every blog post and new web2.0 app out there!) but you are entirely, 100% free to not do that.

<comment><USER7> I didn't want to inject criticism.

The question is, how do you "solve" quests? Everybody on here seems to assume that this is done by tweeting about it. It even says on the page that the quest will be solved quicker if you do so.

<comment><USER6> where on earth does it say that? that is 100% incorrect.

quests are simply solved by waiting and coming back to collect your prize. that's it. it is perhaps the most casual form of item awarding there is.

if you wanted to, you could collect every single item in the game without tweeting once.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A curated list of resources dedicated to recurrent neural networks - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/kjw0612/awesome-rnn <comment><USER2> Almost daily something about Deep learning/ANN/RNN is on the front page.

I have only recently begun to learn this I do not find a nice starting point like we have for other fields like a bunch of books etc

I read a lot of books, a lot of video lists and finally settled down on Georgia Tech ML class ud262 which is awesome and just plain theory.

I want to build an AI to manage my day, any pointers as to where I shall start looking into when I am aware of theory concepts?

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for posting this. These are going to be really helpful for me. I've been trying to learn mostly from Karpathy's reference code for the past week, and these resources should give more reference material.

</comment><comment><USER4> can recurrent neural networks be successfully applied to stock market?

I don't seem to see a single paper in the finance area.

<comment><USER5> To your first question: yes, for some definitions of "successfully"[1][2][3][4]. It's difficult, and it isn't as though you train your algorithm and watch it make money. It's more that some functions of data analysis become incrementally easier or superior. It's fundamentally similar to applying RNNs to any other signal processing problem.

To your (implied) second question: tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft have a strong incentive to publish their researchers' work. It's good for recruiting and pushing progress forward overall. Financial companies have a strong incentive _not_ to do this, in fact they are incentivized to be secretive. In general this means the only quant finance papers you see are published by academics, not quants. This typically results in fewer papers with stunning results from the financial industry, whereas we're almost getting progress fatigue from the papers published by tech companies (where "stunning" means impressive and maybe immediately useful).

[1]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0304469.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond- mat/0304469.pdf)

[2]: [http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2012/BernalFokPidaparthi- Finan...](http://cs229.stanford.edu/proj2012/BernalFokPidaparthi- FinancialMarketTimeSeriesPredictionwithRecurrentNeural.pdf)

[3]: [https://clgiles.ist.psu.edu/papers/MLJ- finance.pdf](https://clgiles.ist.psu.edu/papers/MLJ-finance.pdf)

[4]: [http://www.kolegija.lt/dokumentai_img/Maknickiene-3-8-Pages-...](http://www.kolegija.lt/dokumentai_img/Maknickiene-3-8-Pages- from-IITSBE-2011-2-Nr11.pdf)

<comment><USER4> Thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Every time I read "curated list" I think to myself, "isn't every list curated?" Some lists are curated by humans, and others are curated by software algorithms.

<comment><USER7> Imagine a list of RNN resources curated by a RNN.

<comment><USER6> If you believe they're really effective, then you should believe in that list.</comment></comment></comment>


AWS Config - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/config/ <comment><USER2> I tried to enable Config but got the informative "Error {{errorMessage}}"

[http://i.imgur.com/fUT6ROI.png](http://i.imgur.com/fUT6ROI.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> Small print: currently only available in region US East.

<comment><USER2> US East typically gets the cool new toys first.

It would be interesting to look through the AWS service health reports for unrelated services to determine if it suffers more problems as a result of this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's pretty amazing how many products AWS is releasing at re:Invent.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can someone explain this to me in laymen's terms?

<comment><USER6> From what I can tell, it's a combination of a few useful tools:

1) Configuration monitoring – if an app is running on six identical servers, and all of the sudden one box has a different config file sitting on it, or somebody installs updates that they weren't supposed to, I'd like an email about that.

2) A "source of truth" for your cloud resources. Smarter people than I have articulated our need for this at my employer, but the simplest way I know of to describe it is that you can query the configuration of your boxes to figure things out. "Show me all the boxes running Nginx 1.6," for example, or "Show me all the boxes that haven't gotten the latest Bash update." Not sure how it does that, but it seems to be in there.

<comment><USER2> I don't think AWS Config handles either of your examples. It records the state of various AWS resources, not the state of the software/environment running within an EC2 instance.</comment></comment></comment>


A Note to My Younger Colleagues...Be Brave - <AUTHOR> http://circoutcomes.ahajournals.org/content/5/3/245.full <comment><USER2> This essay is much needed, especially considering the site that it's posted at. The American Heart Association has spent decades promoting bad advice.

The worst of this advice is telling us to use cooking oils which are predominately polyunsaturated, and to avoid as much saturated fat as possible [1]. But the latest science has acquitted butter of the crimes it was accused of. There was never any good evidence for the idea that naturally-saturated fats are harmful, industry just had a lot of seed oil that wasn't needed to make paints & stains anymore. We now know that the Omega-6's are the bad "essential" fatty acid, and that there seems to be little-to-no benefit to supplementing Omega-3's either.

I much appreciate this quote, at the bottom:

> And let it be noted that there is no more delicate matter to take in hand, > nor more dangerous to conduct, nor more doubtful in its success, than to set > up as a leader in the introduction of changes. For he who innovates will > have for his enemies all those who are well off under the existing order of > things, and only the lukewarm supporters in those who might be better off > under the new. This lukewarm temper arises partly from the fear of > adversaries who have the laws on their side and partly from the incredulity > of mankind, who will never admit the merit of anything new, until they have > seen it proved by the event. "—Machiavelli, 1532"

The other day i posted a link on slashdot to my site about the contamination of the food supply with "biodiesel" (vegetable oil), and the people with mod points didn't much care for my comment.

[1] [https://www.goredforwomen.org/live-healthy/first-steps-to- pr...](https://www.goredforwomen.org/live-healthy/first-steps-to-prevent- heart-disease-and-be-heart-healthy/good-fats-tips/)</comment>


Who Says Americans Spend Irresponsibly? - <AUTHOR> http://statspotting.com/who-says-americans-spend-irresponsibly/

<comment><USER2> "That is a very responsible and logical response from the American people, when faced with rising costs in areas where they are essentially powerless."

I think the core problem with the presumptive "conclusion" is that it leaves out the whole issue of one of the biggest parts of "miscellaneous" or "entertainment" expense. Many Americans spend over $100/month on media consumption, most of it cable bills. That's pretty much sending money to the government...not the fake elected one but the one that's really in charge, multinational corporations with absolute power and no term limits (which shape pretty much all of our policy on everything, including health care and education).

So are Americans really spending all that wisely? After all, these are the organizations directly responsible for the rising costs and dwindling quality of both those services.

<comment><AUTHOR> While I agree with your overall point, the details are a little off. The BLS data calls out Entertainment separately, and that number has been fairly constant at around 5.2 to 5.5 percent through these years.</comment></comment>


The People Who Read Airline Tweets - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2017/12/people-who-read-your-airline-tweets/144768/ <comment><USER2> I frequently tweet at airlines when I travel. They've never bent space and time to solve a problem, but they have followed up on several occasions to make a situation better when I'd otherwise just be frustrated and unhappy. I've also had them better explain a policy or process so I could better understand how to plan on the future.

I've found that including a photo or even a short video gets the quickest attention.

<comment><USER3> I've gotten a flight voucher from Southwest once tweeting at them - I want to say it was from having to suffer a 10+ hour delay, which was extremely frustrating since I had originally booked the flight the time I did so I could get one full day at the destination before running a marathon there.

Otherwise, the gate agents at the airport have been great to me in offering solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That sounds like a terrible experience. Please DM us with your confirmation number.

</comment><comment><USER5> Nice story, great to see what can happen when staff is empowered to focus on positive outcomes.

I should have had Always Look on the Bright Side of Life playing whilst reading that!</comment>


The Lawyer, the Addict. A High-Powered Silicon Valley Attorney Dies - <AUTHOR> https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/07/15/business/lawyers-addiction-mental-health.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&referer=http://m.facebook.com <comment><USER2> discussion started a few hours ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14776864)</comment>


We need a new name. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.corkboard.me/2011/09/03/whats-in-a-name/

<comment><USER2> If you switched it to whiteboard you could still use post-its and then you can add extra components like drawing and flow-charts

</comment><comment><USER3> how come?

<comment><AUTHOR> Corkboard.it, a similar product, owns the trademark on the phrase "Corkboard" in the state of NY, the state in which we're based. It's likely we could have lawsuits in the future if our name follows too closely.

<comment><USER3> Will you be changing the corkboard theme?

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps. We've thought of allowing multiple themes in the past, so this wouldn't be any new work.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


What is your current side project? - <AUTHOR> Hi All HN,
1) What is your Current Side Project?
2) How you got the idea?
3) What you want to achieve with your current project? (Learn something new/ Want to do earn / just for fun)
I think it is very inspirational and motivational for others if you share your experience.
Thanks <comment><USER2> 1\. Annex: [http://jathu.me/annex](http://jathu.me/annex)

2\. Being tired of how unproductive I was. My friend sending a spreadsheet of him tracking his time and finally watching this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexvTZ1sV8U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZexvTZ1sV8U)

3\. I just want to help myself in becoming productive and in the process help others. So far the app has helped me become more productive and I have received many emails/DMs thanking me for helping others achieve this too. The most important thing I want to learn is how to launch a product and keep updating it with the user's feedback. I received a negative feedback from a bug on my initial app, then I fixed it with an update (and added more features) and the user then changed his negative review to a 5-star positive reivew on the app store and was very happy. This alone sold me on the importance of listening to your customers. This is one of my first iOS apps, so I'm learning about iOS development and launching a product at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> I really appreciate your work and this app is really cool and great. I am really inspired with your work. Thanks a lot for answering. I just curious are you app(iOS) developer or what's your full time job(Just want to know). What is your monthly revenue of this(Nothing special just want to know if you can earn some money from an app). BTW thanks a lot for posting this. It really inspired me lot and very cool app. I may buy this.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the kind words!

I wouldn't call my self a "real" app developer just yet as I'm still learning app development (i.e. still don't know how to sync core data with iCloud). I used to focus mostly on web, but recently started iOS. I'm not working yet, I'm still in University studying CS.

I usually don't like to discuss the exact amount I'm making from my app, however I would say I'm "ramen profitable" for a student.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 1\. HelloAviva ([http://helloaviva.com/?ref=hn](http://helloaviva.com/?ref=hn)) - Niche app for new parents that helps them feel less isolated in their new context. Shows them the places they can go in town with stroller / small baby.

2\. Had a kid and discovered how hard it is to take a baby outside the home. We didn't know where to go or how to easily solve small problems like diaper changes.

3\. GF and I are doing this learn the whole lean startup / app / growth thing.

Currently in the Apple app store with an MVP and see a lot of room for growth and improvements. We've been live since the summer and have managed to get into Product Hunt as well as the newsletter for the editor of a major news publication in Sweden.

<comment><USER4> Great!! Looks you need to do lot of things to get these data. How big is your team?? How do you collecting this data (I assume you are not going single places). It's really great.

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Just two of us. I'm the only technical one. We do a lot of scraping and automation where possible which is how we scale the data side of things. However we are still doing things that don't scale. One of those things is still manually entering good spots as we find them. Feel free to reach out with feedback and suggestions.

GF is in New York this week taking meetings and showing the app to mama groups. Any intros are appreciated

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> A system which integrates git-hosting with Amazon's Route53 DNS infrastructure.

I've not touched it for a while, but it managed to handle around 20 million queries last month, and at least one DNS-update a day on average.

I need a prettier website, but the technology pretty much just works and hasn't been updated in a long time. I keep meaning to delegate the website- redsigne to my partner.

[https://dns-api.com/](https://dns-api.com/)

In open-source work I've spent the past few weeks restarting my console-mail client, with integrated Lua scripting. The rewrite gives a much more unified API, and a lot better implementation.

Delegating more work to the Lua side of the application makes it more flexible, more customizable, and more interesting to develop for:

[https://github.com/lumail/lumail2](https://github.com/lumail/lumail2)

Still early work - since you can neither compose a new email, or reply to existing ones, but the core is good for viewing things. (It is a modal email client, with a user-interface that is somewhat like mutt.)

</comment><comment><USER6> 1) My side project is [http://geocod.io](http://geocod.io)

2) It started out because I needed to geocode a large set of addresses for another side project. Ended up building a geocoder and realized that others might find it useful too

3) Making geocoding affordable to the masses and having built something to be proud of. Continuously learning new things because of it too.

<comment><USER7> That's a really good idea! I've had to deal with API limits countless times and it sucks.

For some projects I had to geocode with multiple providers. Bing seems to be better than Google at geocoding in some parts of the county. I esp. noticed it in the Midwest / Illinois.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1\. [http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/](http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/)

2\. I had no choice, traditional financial evaluation failed after the great recession (08). Federal Reserve interference in the market, prevented traditional stock analysis. I couldn't get a job in 09-10, even with an MBA. Taught myself how to code and write stock algorithms. Very dark days, I had to teach myself coding, or otherwise I was going to have to go back to the Marine Corps. (I loved Marines, going to back to the Marine Corps, would have been fun and paid the bills, but not a good career move, long term.)

It paid off in the end, I'm a programmer now and I don't seem to have a problem getting work now. However the bad news is that people keep playing me program there lame ideas and my bank account keeps getting bigger. But at the end of the day I want my side project to be only project.

Ugh..... Money doesn't solve everything.

3\. I want my side project to become my employment.

(P.S. Looking for some kind of marketing help.)

<comment><USER9> Monthly subscription to "stock tips" scream all sorts of shadiness. That and stating that there's the potential to make "103%" return when you're just cherry picking back tested data. There's a lot that could be improved, but if you really think you found a secret algo that works, I'd focus all my energy on gathering the evidence to convince others that it definitively works. From the information on the website, there seems to be no indication of live trading with this strategy. You may want to add details in how you have tested the different ways you can trick yourself, paper testing results, and at some point trying the ultimate test of live trading.

Good luck!

<comment><USER8> Some of your points are valid, others not so much.

First off I don't "cherry pick" data. Stock recommendations are made on a daily basis via an algorithm (crontab / php) while I'm at my day job. Right now the algo tracks 500 stocks, so I don't have time to cherry pick data for those each flavor of the week stock. So on 1/28/15 I got a signal to buy Amazon, that signal hasn't changed so it is possible to gain 100% return. It's also doing wonders for [http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/chipotle- mexica...](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/stock/chipotle-mexican- grill-inc)

Where I do see your valid point, this could be perceived as a scam. Which ultimately becomes a marketing issue. I'm not really doing a good job of convincing an audience of the potential. I'm to much of programmer/data analysis, that I forget to market it to a general public. Jim Crammer on CNBC is a great marketer, but he is a pretty poor stock picker.

My newer strategy has been [http://www.strategic- options.com/trade/alerts](http://www.strategic-options.com/trade/alerts) at $9.99, seems like it's pretty difficult to scam someone at that low price point.

The end result is I'm in need of internet marketer / growth hacker / seo guru...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My current project is HelloBox - it's something I've been doing for awhile, but there's a plenty more to do.

[http://hellobox.co](http://hellobox.co)

I started it out as a "create your own hackernews clone" idea, but it's now evolved into a more of community management tool. I'm hoping that it'll soon be able to charge people for the service it's providing. Would love to hear your feedback!

<comment><USER4> I like the idea. Really great and neat. What is your business model?

<comment><USER10> Thanks. The business model is rather simple. I'll be charging a monthly fee for the service. Not sure exactly how much though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> 1\. My side project is a browser based snail simulation: [http://liza.io/category/snails/](http://liza.io/category/snails/)

2\. I think my fondness for snails was originally sparked by a game I made up at my grandparents' summerhouse in Ukraine when I was little - I collected a bunch of snails and taught them to race against each other. I got the idea for the project itself over 10 years ago during a move from the US to Australia with my family. It was summer and I was bored, so I had this idea for a snail racing game. At the time it was meant to be a game, but as the idea stayed in my head over the years it evolved into focusing on realism as much as possible and dropping "fun" from its main focus. I did not have the technical ability to build this at first in its full scope and it has gone through quite a few iterations over the years.

3\. Learn something new, have my snails surprise me.

</comment><comment><USER12> My side project is [http://replylater.adnanissadeen.com](http://replylater.adnanissadeen.com) . I'm building it as a way to beat myself when it comes to procrastination. I got the idea when using buffer and I wanted to buffer a reply on twitter so that I could check up on a friend later. Buffer doesn't have support yet for replying tweets such that the conversation thread is maintained on Twitter. There were a bunch of customers who wanted that, so I'm working on it now.

This project also taught me plenty about scheduling. I'll be adding in support for scheduling using a more stable tool later. For now it's using cron :D.

Oh. Source code is here [https://github.com/kiriappeee/reply- later](https://github.com/kiriappeee/reply-later)

</comment><comment><USER13> I have a very low-traffic blog that I'd like to see more visits to. If I can get enough traffic, I'd like to monetize it via affiliate ads- but at this point that's a long shot, due to it's apparent invisibility. Today I published its best content yet, written by an expert in his field. I hope to be able to publish high quality content such as this more often, but I don't know yet how I'll source exceptional writing.

Shameless plug:

The new article is here, for anyone interested: [https://christopherbartels.com/2015/11/02/navigating-the- col...](https://christopherbartels.com/2015/11/02/navigating-the-college- admissions-process-and-keeping-your-sanity-by-bill-indek/)

</comment><comment><USER14> 1\. Insightico: Helping Canadians find homes through neighbourhood insights ([http://getinsightico.com](http://getinsightico.com) \- we're pivoting away from location analysis for retailers)

2\. Had a terrible experience - rented a place only to find out that the neighbourhood isn't right for me. Thank goodness that I only had to endure for a year before finding another place that suits me better.

3\. Hoping to build an online residential real estate database for Canada so people can search for homes that fit their lifestyle. Hoping that people can search based on different lifestyle parameters (i.e. good schools, commuting time, neighbourhood amenities, favourite brands/restaurants, investment potential etc.)

</comment><comment><USER15> Mine is:

propertywizard.io

It's a tool that plugs into the leading UK property website and allows Estate Agents to share their properties, news and status updates automatically (or scheduled) to social media.

Currently making around £1000 per month, if anyone has any questions i'll be happy to answer :)

<comment><USER14> I really like your idea and had wanted to do something similar in Canada. Would love to have a chat with you more about how you got started working with real estate agents :)

<comment><USER15> Feel free to drop me an email (in my profile). I'm happy to share how I got started and offer any advice I can.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> My side project is [http://codingbrain.com](http://codingbrain.com). I want to make learning & coding more efficient. It's desktop app that integrates with existing markdown editor and browser and serves as a central hub that records what you do, helps to generate new content, enables to search/remember and tries to automate as much as possible to increase productivity.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just finished writing up my weekend project from a couple weeks back.

Thinking about potentially turning it into a plugin that would allow blog owners to build email newsletters that can more easily include their Wordpress posts.

[https://medium.com/@kkoppenhaver/a-digital-newspaper-with- gr...](https://medium.com/@kkoppenhaver/a-digital-newspaper-with-gridster-js- and-wp-api-2fea69807095)

</comment><comment><USER18> My side project is [http://beta.pollpk.com/](http://beta.pollpk.com/) its in beta, Idea is to poll on different social, political and almost any type of issues I got the idea even before Twitter polls but due to some reason couldn't launch it. Now after watching twitter poll failure I think this might be a failure as well so planning to stop working on it

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm working on a method to containerize standard shared hosting.

I got the idea because a bunch of my previous clients / colleagues from when I worked in the adult industry are still stuck on shared hosting environments because of cPanel and the like.

I want to achieve the simplicity of shared hosting, with the awesomeness of being able to deploy it anywhere and the beauty of Docker.

</comment><comment><USER20> My side project is 1\. [http://www.dealsmanager.net](http://www.dealsmanager.net) 2\. I got this idea when i am searching for good crm for lead management but i think why not create my own as my reuirement. 3.just started it hoping good success in future from it because going to make it huge crm for manage leads.

<comment><USER21> I would recommend you to improve your English and have someone proof-read the texts you write. The grammar in your post as well as on your website is very bad and full or errors. It makes the product look very unprofessional (even though the product itself looks great!).

<comment><USER20> Thanks for your suggestion,i will take care about it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1\. Autosleep: Autosleep inactive Docker Containers - [https://github.com/girishso/autosleep](https://github.com/girishso/autosleep)

2\. I wanted to implement the free tier Heroku feature, sleeping off the inactive apps and activate them whenever someone accesses them.

3\. Learn about Docker, Go and use it on my Raspberry Pi!

</comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.bitcoinway.com/](http://www.bitcoinway.com/) \- free wordpress plugin allowing anyone to build online store to sell anything and can accept payment in bitcoins without middleman and without risk of being hacked.

I.e. ZERO risk of losing bitcoins while having fully automated online store.

</comment><comment><USER24> Nice question. This is bound to get you good Karma on HN :) Anyways:

[http://homebuyinglist.com](http://homebuyinglist.com)

I just closed on a house and the process was really painful. So I decided to put a list of resources together in the hopes that they will have an easier time on what should be a joyful experience.

</comment><comment><USER25> 1) A dating app: [http://coffeefortwo.github.io/coffeefortwoapp/index.html](http://coffeefortwo.github.io/coffeefortwoapp/index.html)

2) Got the idea from wanting to create something more niche than current dating apps.

3) I'd like to get some side income from it at some point.

</comment><comment><USER26> 1 - Building a Raspberry Pi powered Smart Table 2 - Too much time on my hands 3 - Just for fun. It will basically be a coffee table that tells me the weather for the day, lets me read the news as I eat breakfast, and integrates with my Android phone so that I can reply to text messages.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am working on machine learning project

</comment><comment><USER27> Making a Scala project to continue the work of Carl Munck. Writing tools to automate his process of mathematical 'probing'. Creating new UI tools for visualizing his work.

Also doing some data mining on a roughly 2TB collection of esoteric texts.</comment>


MIT Fellow Says Facebook 'Lifted' His Ideas for Libra Cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://www.coindesk.com/mit-fellow-accuses-facebook-of-lifting-his-ideas-for-libra-cryptocurrency <comment><USER2> Oh come on, neither a basket of commodities nor a basket of currencies are original ideas. During the security token craze of 2017/2018 many similar ideas were proposed and we don't see those folks whining about Libra.

One example was a local currency based on a basket of goods such as real estate so that employers could pay a salary that adjusted as rents and other costs changed locally. Hundreds of these ideas were discussed freely in telegram groups.

The article is just outrage porn.

<comment><USER3> Hey that's actually a great idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please. Even I had this idea in 2012 and I got it from being a user of Chaum's digicash in the nineties and understanding parts of how the IMF works, etc. I even helped (not successfully) launch it in 2013. These ideas have been around for a good while by many people, it's just that crypto is mainstream enough and facebook has enough clout now to take it seriously. If facebook ripped off anyone it was John Maynard Keynes. That's not to say that it is even that good of an idea or that facebook will be successful with it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I know people who were working on, what is now called, Libra at FB more than a year ago though. The paper was published a year ago. This just looks like a case of multiple people having the same idea.

<comment><USER6> It may just be another case of the "adjacent possible" principle at work.

<comment><USER7> "Adjacent possible" is the case of one of the weirdest possible definition for a very simple concept. I see people quoting this:

"The adjacent possible is a kind of shadow future, hovering on the edges of the present state of things, a map of all the ways in which the present can reinvent itself."

(Whatever the hell that means.)

Even though the concept is much simpler: "adjacent possible" is the set of things within reach. Or: all the things on the border between what we have, and what we could have.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In science, the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not to whom the idea first occurs. \- Francis Darwin.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is just like when Google stole my idea to run fiber optic internet to people's houses. I totally had that idea a long time ago when I was trying to download a gif with a 28.8 modem. I'm not sure which of the neighborhood kids told Google about my idea but they sure screwed me over.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, I once had an idea for auto-scrolling based off tracking eye gaze through the webcam. I never told Microsoft or Samsung about it, but they totally stole my idea!!1eleventyone

<comment><USER11> Even worse: Google stole my idea for self driving cars. I was like " it would be cool if cars drove themselves" and sure enough, Google copies me. Do you think I have grounds for a lawsuit?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The idea of a market-basket currency goes back to at least 1976 and Hayek. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money)

<comment> m-i-l The idea of a supranational currency goes back to at least 1940 and Keynes - see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bancor) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> MIT is supposed to create ideas that are "lifted" by others. Produce your patent or shut up.

</comment><comment><USER14> cry me a river. It happens

Docker did the same thing to me.

Compare these two papers (published in 2010 and 2011 in conferences that docker and everyone else in the space are regular participants at, for reference Docker was announced in March 2013)

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/atc10/tech/full_papers/P...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/atc10/tech/full_papers/Potter.pdf)

[https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/lisa11/tech/full_papers...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/events/lisa11/tech/full_papers/Potter.pdf)

It was then patented (patent filed in 2011, issued in November 2013)

[https://patents.google.com/patent/US8589947B2/en](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8589947B2/en)

This was also my "job talk" to IBM Research and it got me a post doc, but didn't get much traction in support of continuing to pursue / refine the ideas within IBM Research (which I find sort of ironic in retrospect with their recent strategic moves)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's certainly not a novel idea. Arguably, it's "E-Gold 2.0".[1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold)

</comment><comment><USER16> > this paper was published as part of this free-for-all part of the Free > Science part of the Royal Society effort

But but ... can facebook not "lift for free" ?

</comment><comment><USER17> Nobody owns ideas.

<comment><USER18> If only more people understood this. Not only does nobody own an idea, but we really don't want to live in a world where the opposite is true.

<comment><USER19> Right to Read is a good piece on this topic: [https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to- read.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The paper was published 18 July 2018. The public inital commit of libra was on 18 June 2019 and had 1,063 changed files. That could be a coincidence or not. Fact is, only one has realized the idea.

</comment><comment><USER21> No sympathy for this guy at all. Think just because you're an "MIT fellow" your claims to an idea carry more weight than people from other institutions or organizations? Get out of here with this entitlement, tons of people come up with exactly the same ideas all the time.

<comment><USER22> Plus, 9 times out of 10, it's the MIT types who lift ideas from others and promote them with MIT's increasingly well-polished hype machine. Within MIT, Media Lab is central to this problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> mark zuckerberg stole something? call the Police! :3

</comment><comment><USER24> Facebook's faithful copying is the large tech corp _standard operating procedure_. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple will start product lines based on accurate rumors about what the others are doing, and then cancel them as soon as their competitors do. This form of "copy thy neighbor" just happened with something like three major R&D products/features, one of which was cancelled and another leaked in the tech press.

Sandy Pentland cares a lot about these things and it's too bad Facebook just ripped this stuff off.

But he will have the last laugh: People already don't want to work at Facebook. It didn't matter so much that all those supposedly smart people aren't really capable of meaningful innovation. There will be a lot fewer of those smart people now.

<comment><USER25> Which products/features do you mean?

<comment><USER26> Google+? Personal assistants? Self driving vehicles? Cargo drones?</comment></comment></comment>


The ancient world teemed with birds - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/the-ancient-world-teemed-with-birds-now-we-think-with-them <comment><USER2> This was a nice read, and I thought it would be more of a statement on our current planetary catastrophe. If you were worried it was another depressing (if accurate) "everything is dying" article, it's not.

Although, it is sad we don't notice the decline of birds, or anything else.

The book "Whittled Away" has a fantastic description of how ridiculous it is people where I live think the fisheries are abundant. They're a wasteland compared to what once was, but since humans have short lives and shorter memories we don't know what we're missing.

Same goes for light pollution (how many stars is a lot? I still can't quite make out the milky way in a field an hour from the city), or noise pollution (how many birds were driven from the city by the infernal noise of cars?) or just... sight pollution, I guess (how few leaves do you see in a day?)

[https://books.google.ie/books?id=XQiWDwAAQBAJ](https://books.google.ie/books?id=XQiWDwAAQBAJ) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shifting_baseline)

</comment><comment><USER3> Birds have been in significant and will probably continue to decline due to human activity.

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

The main drivers I think are plain habitat loss, pesticide use (associated decline in insect population), and large scale change in available food and climate.

I think the easiest to address would be pesticide and herbicide use -- widely known to have other negative side effects, such as effect on bees, possible human effects, biodiversity loss, etc. Hopefully it can be replaced by techniques like crop diversification and maybe robotic/biological pest control.

<comment><USER4> Cats, as cute as they are, are a major contributor as well.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/cat- bird...](https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/07/cat-birds- australia/595048/)

> Feral cats on islands are responsible for at least 14% global bird, mammal, > and reptile extinctions and are the principal threat to almost 8% of > critically endangered birds, mammals, and reptiles.

[https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x](https://www.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2486.2011.02464.x)

<comment><USER5> While that paper singles out cats, any introduced mammal species (rats, foxes, dogs etc.) on an island with ground-nesting and/or flightless birds is a huge problem...

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's a massive issue in New Zealand. We have a programme called Predator Free 2050 aiming to address it. There are some very interesting organisations working on solutions, such as the Cacophony Project ([https://cacophony.org.nz/](https://cacophony.org.nz/))

<comment><USER7> I added this up the thread, but here again so you don't miss it.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the- end...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/01/the-end-of-cats- an-interview-with-the-new-zealand-economist-calling-to-eliminate-all- kitties/272474/)

<comment><USER8> What a madman. Cats > birds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Are birds actually so scarce elsewhere in the world? My experience in a small city on the east coast of Australia is that birds are everywhere and in great variety. On a recent morning, I counted 10 different species of bird walking 500m to the shops and back. And it is hard to ignore the noise from the large flocks of sulfur crested cockatoos and rainbow lorakeets that frequent my town.

I understand that what I see is already a pale comparison compared to 200 or 10,000 years ago, but the numbers are still impressive. I am also aware of how little attention my fellow citizens pay to the variety of bird life around them. But it is still surprising to me that people can talk about cities having few birds and little diversity.

<comment><USER10> I've been in places in the USA and Europe that just feel devoid of birds or often insects. Lift a log in Australia and there are dozens of living things crawling around. In parts of the US, more often than not, there's nothing.

I have a pretty routine suburban backyard in South Australia and there are loads of birds, as with your experience - lorikeets, wattlebirds, etc.

<comment><USER11> Using Australia as the baseline measure for wildlife/insect levels and you're going to find the vast majority of places wouldn't keep up..

<comment><USER10> That reply got me thinking - thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sparrows were every where in Bangalore when I was growing up. After the city grew crazy, the pollution grew and so did the Mobile phone towers.

You won't be able to find a single sparrow today. Not one. There is a also a noticeable decline in other bird population and diversity. Mostly because Bangalore's lakes are gone. There was a lake called Hebbal Lake where migratory birds would visit from Australia every year. They've stopped coming.

Unmitigated disaster.

<comment><USER13> Vultures man, those are things that we nearly lead to extinction recently in India. I remember when I was a kid there used to be a road in Delhi with the dead tree and vultures sitting all over it. But by the time I was an adult there were no Vultures in most of India. The heavy use of antibiotics we realised too late was causing the decline. The Parsi people (zorastrians) were impacted badly because their religious practice is to let the body be eaten away by animals, and without vultures the bodies were just rotting very badly.

<comment><USER14> What nearly wiped out the vultures wasn't antibiotics... there may be other factors, but the main one was a specific anti-inflammatory drug (diclofenac) which was used liberally in treating any sign of illness in livestock and which turned out to be highly toxic to vultures. It is now banned in India. The thing about livestock medicine today is that diagnosis is generally too expensive for individual cases... if an animal looks sick you basically give an anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic and hope for the best, the former so that it'll feel well enough to eat so it won't get too weak, and the later to hopefully cure the illness. So both anti-inflammatory and antibiotics get used very liberally, to tragic consequences.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I was living in Chengdu for a year and I remember that I was surprised by the almost total lack of birds. In Hong Kong, where I am at the moment, there are more birds, but seems less than what we have back home in Northern Europe.

<comment><USER16> Mao had a policy of bird extermination [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign)

"birds are public animals of capitalism"

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Concerning passenger pigeons[0], which went 100% extinct in 1910 due to hunting: "in 1866, one flock in southern Ontario was described as being 1.5 km (0.93 mi) wide and 500 km (310 mi) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds."

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

</comment><comment><USER18> Bird populations are almost literally the canaries in the coal mine. And they are dropping rapidly.

The future does not look so good for us.

</comment><comment><USER19> If there exists better evidence of our tendency to read the comments before the article, I've yet to see it.

Might need a headline change back to its original "Birds are 'winged words'", though I probably wouldn't have read it then honestly.

</comment><comment> throwaway-1436 This was very good. Thanks for sharing.</comment>


Ask HN: I'm a beginner working a job I hate. What next? - <AUTHOR>

I went to school to be a classical musician. I spent about 15 years of my life (since I was 12) focused on my instrument, and I got to be pretty damn good. That being said, the life of a freelance musician is not a candyland of great music and concerts. It's teaching little kids who don't care, playing pops concerts for old folks, and occasionally managing to put together a concert of great music that is rehearsed enough to sound the way it deserves, but not getting paid.
I fell into coding by accident. I wanted a website to attract students, so I pirated a copy Dreamweaver, quickly realized it was useless if you don't know what's going on underneath, dropped wysiwyg for textmate, and started googling. After two years of that, with a couple of hand-coded websites under my belt, I got a job as a web developer at a small company. I pushed hard once I got that job, reading like crazy on my own time, playing around with ruby and rails, trying to get a handle on software architecture and best practices. The way I see it: I'm an excellent musician. If I'm going to leave that career, it will not be to become a mediocre programmer.
But I'm a beginner, really. And I'm old (29!) to really get started in this. I love digging into the computer to make it do what I want, I love fiddling with a layout until it looks perfect, and I love (probably most of all) that I'm doing something useful to others. But the better I get the more frustrated I am with where I am: a .NET shop (not even MVC), lots of legacy code and no hope of adding tests (I've been told off from trying to even dip my toes in those waters), appathetic coworkers, and a boss with no technical or aesthetic sense, but who insists on making fine-grained technical and design decisions. I was happy to get a job with salary and benefits when I had no "real" work experience, but it turns out this is a pretty frustrating place to be. So what do I do? I'm not to the point where my skills match my knowledge, and I really don't think I can get a job at a place where I would want to work. There's only so much I can learn in my off hours, expecially when what I'm doing during the day is contradicting rather than reinforcing it. The way I see it, my options are:
- Try to get another job, even though I don't feel like my skills are up to par
- Stay where I am, and keep trying to get better on my own time, although the longer I'm here the less energy I feel I have
- Go back to school to build up my chops. But I went to college for 8 years and have $60,000 in student loans. I really don't want to do this.
- Strike out on my own for a while and build up skills as a freelance developer. I think I'm pretty good at learning on my own, and if I paired with a good designer I think I could set up a kick ass web dev shop. But I'm not really sure how long it would take to get by this way. I don't have much (read: any) savings, but I can always pick up some freelance music gigs in the meantime.
TL;DR: How do I find the time and energy to get good at this while still making enough money to pay my bills? I'm not looking for a lot. 40-50k a year would feel like heaven. Working in an energetic environment where OSS isn't treated with derision and the boss doesn't use IE7 as his primary browser would be a breath of fresh air.
- edited for formatting <comment><USER2> _I was happy to get a job with salary and benefits when I had no "real" work experience, but it turns out this is a pretty frustrating place to be._

You know that old phrase "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member" well right now for you that applies for employment. Any place that is willing to hire you with 0 experience and 0 education, has something wrong with it enough to make them willing to take what they can get.

Basically I would recommend a two prong attack. Start looking for a new job, you are slightly more marketable now that you have some experience, and since you are currently employed you can be a little more picky about work conditions etc.

Second, improve what you can. They don't use automated testing at work? Build it anyway but keep it out of the repo. Don't have a repo? Set up mercurial on your box. Since those kind of places tend to not do rigorous code reviews you might be surprised what kind of freedom you have because of the poor work conditions. Find the places your boss doesn't pay attention and improve those, automate the build, automate deployment, write little tools that make your life better, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> You are right on the money -- I had that very quote in mind as I was writing (gotta love the Marx brothers). You're also right about the lack of code reviews. I've been able to sneak in a few things that would probably be frowned upon. But there's a limit to how much I can pad my timesheets to hide extra things (though I say this as I've wasted... how much time? ...here today), and the kind of refactoring that would make it possible to add tests to our mix of classic ASP spaghetti with a smattering of C#, webforms, etc., would definitely not go unnoticed.

But I offer excuses. You're totally right about this and it's what I need to do to stay sane while I look elsewhere. It's either that or compulsively read HN whenever I get the chance.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't pad the time sheet, I would just do it differently. Don't refactor the whole code base to add unit tests. Just try to write new code that is capable of being automatically tested don't worry about hitting 100% just try to get some of your tests automated. No one is expecting you to turn the house in to a lean mean modern development machine. Just trim a little fat here and there. Get a feel for what you are learning about modern development so you can see how it works for you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your post brought back some memories. I'm also an ex-classical musician (flutist) who made a similar transition, at a similar age. I was half-way through my master's degree, actually, when I decided to switch to CS. I think I got my first actual tech job when I was around... 30? And like you, my first real job was in an area I didn't like much (QA). I ended up doing QA for 7 or so years, made tolerable by some more interesting home grown bits of test automation infrastructure. There were times when it was hell, and I was seriously considering going back to school to get a Ph.D. in some other field (in retrospect a terrible idea.) Now I'm much happier, and more passionate about what I do than ever.

I don't have much specific advice, other than to note that a) if I wasn't too old, you're not and b) it never hurts to interview at other companies to get a feel for where you stand. Simply being interested in what you do counts for a lot, and will impress people. You don't have to be "kick-ass" before you're hirable. Yes, having a CS degree would be helpful, but it's unclear to me whether it's worth going into more debt for. Perhaps others could comment on that.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, it's good to know I'm following a path that others have been down before. I've gone back and forth about the age thing. On the one hand, I tell myself, van Gogh starting painting at 27! On the other hand, I am not the van Gogh of developers. I guess I worry that, if it takes ten years to achieve some kind of mastery, I'll be pretty frustrated for ten years.

But you're right, it wouldn't hurt to take some interviews. I've been a little too obsessed with employment listings the last few months. It may be that my view of what is necessary to get a job is a little skewed by looking at the 37signals jobs board. When I have to scroll in order to see the whole list of technologies I'm supposed to be familiar with, it's a bit intimidating.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is something about musicians and programing.. I've met a _lot_ of musicians turned programmers and most of them were _very_ good.

My recommendation: always be on "learn" mode, always be on "job search" mode, it is the best way to keep moving up (salary wise)

My comment: the industry is full of mediocre programmers, just the fact that you care to learn puts you in a good position.

good luck

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like you are channeling something I've been going through. I Had a rough time after College and took the easy way out through the military, and now employers see a 4 year gap and don't even pick up the phone. Luckily one did, but the work environment isn't very fulfilling, and after the daily commute I am not left with much time to relax and do some out of work projects. Luckily after some time of jumping at the chance to implement stuff here and there and improving my process, I notice people are at least calling me after they read my resume. My interviewing skills have gone up dramatically, and I think my passion and enthusiasm comes through to the people willing to give me a chance to show them.

Hopefully sometime soon someone will give me another chance. Keep interviewing if only to honing your skills, to see what people are asking for outside of job descriptions, and to get comfortable talking about yourself.

Now someone tell me how to get involved with the local tech scene, when the nearest meetings are hours away and you don't know anyone locally.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, commuting is a bitch, and having to drive ~1 hour each way definitely contributes to my hatred for my job, and is part of why I feel like I've hit a wall recently. There's nothing like getting home at 8, and then trying to convince my girlfriend that I need to be working more instead of spending time with her.

As for getting involved, if you're far away from meetups I'd say github is probably the way to go. I'm just starting to get to the point where I feel like I could maybe possibly try to contribute... I just have to figure out what I want to contribute to...

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I've taken the same approach, I've committed a few things here and there, nothing of note though. Seems people don't even get that far when evaluating me as a potential interviewee, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sounds like you're on the right track though... now I need to take my own advice. Good luck to you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I am 28 and have spent the last 9 months as a non-degree student taking courses in discrete math, computer architecture, and algorithms and data structures. My undergrad degrees were in finance/econ and I spent a few years in banking. I thought hard about going the DIY route, but I can honestly say that taking some of the foundational courses in computer science has really helped. Plus I know what I don't know, and perhaps more importantly, I know what CS grads are supposed to know. I am more interested in an entrepreneurial route and not really in being the best programmer I can be. But, I would still recommend this route to anyone who is serious. At the end of the day I think an employer is more interested in what you're able to do than what degree you have, especially in software development. Plus, to be frank, most of the CS kids I've met can't hack their way out of a box. So, if you know what they're supposed to know and have some real projects to show off, nobody cares about your degree.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm in essentially the same boat as you. I went to school for something non CS (Physics), found a job coding later on in life and discovered I really liked it, but now I'm withering away in a bad environment. It's pretty disheartening when you're trying to improve and really apply yourself to something, just to have bad management or coworker apathy destroy it.

All I can suggest (and it's what I'm doing) is to be constantly on the hunt. Spend a couple nights a week dedicated to the job search. Any other free time, try to hone your skills. If you're interested in something, whip up something in your free time. Portfolios are a good thing to have, even if it seems like interviewers never take a look at them. Just keep at it, you'll eventually get out.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you are looking for some of the background you could get from a college course, there are some good classes available online for free.

Example: [http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and- interpret...](http://academicearth.org/courses/the-structure-and- interpretation-of-computer-programs)

</comment><comment><USER9> Sounds like you've already answered your own question - you don't like where you are, so you should be looking for somewhere else.

If you can get a job somewhere else that you like better, take it. If you can't, stay with what you have now and keep learning on your own time.

Never hurts to interview.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd get involved in some open source projects to boost your cred/ knowledge in the skills not heavily utilized in your current job & start applying to jobs once you feel that you are more up to par.

</comment><comment><USER11> Where are you located? How long have you been at the current shop? Are you working on something in your free time?

</comment><comment><USER12> I may have a job offer for you, send me your email address (only, the receive inbox is effectively public): email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER13> Want to move to CO?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've heard great things about it, though I'm pretty happy with NYC right now. Are you hiring?</comment></comment>


A Tale of Two Cows - <AUTHOR> http://visual.ly/tale-two-cows?utm_campaign=website&utm_source=sendgrid.com&utm_medium=email

<comment><USER2> A nice update to a very old meme. I didn't realise that the original 'you have two cows' was from 1944 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_have_two_cows>

And after the NZ reference, I'm wondering if the author of this one was an Aussie.

</comment><comment><USER3> Meta-discussion:

The url has still the utm variables of sendgrid's newsletter. Therefore all these visits here (let's say 3-7k) will be attributed to sendgrid.com/email

Is there a way as site owner to avoid this? Would automatic redirect to the same url without utm params still add goals to that source?

<comment><USER4> I don't know sendgrid service details but if they can track email clicks, then preserving utm variables might actually be good.

You get number of email clicks from separate metric, plus you get total reach from Google Analytics - so that you know total impact of your mailing (or any other channel you're tracking), including reshares.

<comment><USER3> That's all obvious.

But people tend to copypaste and share this url to facebook, twitter or hackernews. Which completely skews your GA information.

Therefore my original question: is it possible to avoid this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Love the VC one. Even better would be if they eventually discover it was really two dogs all along.</comment>


Illusion of the Year 2019 Winner - <AUTHOR> http://illusionoftheyear.com/2019/12/dual-axis-illusion/ <comment><AUTHOR> the site is getting hugged to death unfortunately so here the relevant content:

 _> This spinning shape appears to defy logic by rotating around both the horizontal and vertical axis at the same time! To make things even more confusing, the direction of rotation is also ambiguous. Some visual cues in the video will help viewers change their perception.

[embedded video] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC0GGkNZPgs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC0GGkNZPgs)

Rating: 8.1/10 (77 votes cast)

Dual Axis Illusion, 8.1 out of 10 based on 77 ratings _

twitter thread: [https://twitter.com/InertialObservr/status/12060663974548520...](https://twitter.com/InertialObservr/status/1206066397454852098)

</comment><comment><USER2> I'm really not seeing fluid motion in any direction. I'm seeing a fish explode to disassembly and reassemble pointing the other way.

I see the rotation when there's the great big opaque cylinder in the middle of it, but it doesn't last after the cylinder is removed -- it reverts to explody fish.

</comment><comment><USER3> This one is also interesting!

illusionoftheyear.com/2019/12/bodiject-fingers/

<comment><USER4> Just a tip, include the [http://](http://) or [https://](https://) to make a link clickable in a comment here, like this:

[http://illusionoftheyear.com/2019/12/bodiject- fingers/](http://illusionoftheyear.com/2019/12/bodiject-fingers/)</comment></comment>


Russian Hackers Mod a Dilapidated Opel to Drive by iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/03/russian-ipad-opel/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Car firmware that controls all the servos, the camera and interfaces with the iPad over the WiFi is done in ... _drumroll_ ... node.js.

[1] <http://www.g0l.ru/blog/n3688/>

<comment><USER3> Works fine, except when on an unexpected collision course with a child and a garbage collector (or JIT) kicked in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Same thing done 3 years ago with an iPhone and some Waterloo/UT students: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5IziyOcAg>

</comment><comment><USER5> So theoretically you can install something like that on a helicopter and control it over the wireless.

<comment><USER6> Or practically get a Parrot AR.Drone [1], unless you already have the helicopter.

[1] <http://ardrone2.parrot.com/ar-drone-2/arfreeflight-20/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How long before mods like this show up on remotely driven car bombs in war zones like Syria?

</comment><comment><USER8> I shall be impressed when it can go and get me a pizza. :)

</comment><comment><USER9> In Soviet Russia iPad Drives You!

</comment><comment><USER10> Way to go Wired: the video refuses to play on a stock Chromium browser (no Flash).

Geez: is is _that_ hard to serve videos in a HTML5 format recognized by a Flash-less Chrome browser? I mean: many websites seems to be doing it perfectly fine...

(btw I didn't pay attention before clicking: when I see Wired, CNN or Fox, for example, I'm never opening these links : )

<comment><USER11> > Geez: is is that hard to serve videos in a HTML5 format recognized by a > Flash-less Chrome browser?

Yes, it's hard. HTML5 standardized nothing but the tag. Each browser chose to support a different codec.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video#Browser_support></comment></comment>


Physicist Uses Math to Beat Traffic Ticket - <AUTHOR> http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=4656335810518469535

<comment><USER2> Yeah, that took some dedication, and because we aren't all as dedicated or physicist here are some practical tips I've learned:

1\. When an officer asks how fast you were going, never say anything over the speed limit or that's automatic guilt. Just decline to know or tell. A lot of people say within a +5-10mph range over the speed limit because they think that is "ok", but in fact anything over the speed limit is speeding and is ticket worthy.

2\. Look up laws in your area about loopholes. I once had a friend who got pulled over for doing a burn out in his Cobra, the officer was so aggravated he forgot to wear his hat when he got out of his car and the case got dismissed because of it.

3\. Always be polite. Always, always, always. Even if they're real jerks, which has never happened to me, always be courteous and make things go as smoothly as possible. If you start being an ass they WILL remember it and will take that into consideration when writing the ticket and/or in front of the judge. You'll have a chance to give your side in court, so don't bother wasting your breath with the officer.

4\. I once got out of a reckless driving ticket ($400+, I was young and dumb) because I just happened to know the director of the area highway patrol. It turned out I was in the top 5 worst tickets the highway patrolman had ever given out in his 20+ years of duty. My director friend told him I was a good kid and my parents were going to kill me anyway, so he let me off.

5\. And really, the single most best way to not get a ticket, don't break the rules. Of course in this guys case the officer apparently was mistaken, but more times than not that's not the case.

This got large quickly. Just some things I've learned over a few years of driving.

<comment><USER3> Other Helpers:

\- Use the most official title: 'Yes Trooper', 'Thank you sheriff', etc.

\- Be honest, authentic and remorseful, but not apologetic. (I don't agree with #1)

\- Be well groomed. After I got my beard and hair cut, I stopped getting tickets. I've gotten 8 consecutive warnings, most verbal. Before getting 'cleaned up', I got 9 tickets and 1 warning.

\- Have a woman in the car. Doesn't have to say anything, just smile and reply to questions.

\- Pull over, turn on the dome light and leave your hands on the steering wheel. I lower my window when a flashlight hits me, and only get paper work in response to a command.

My streak of warnings still dumbfounds me. I even got pulled over twice after a superbowl for a tail light and got a verbal warning twice.

<comment><USER2> Yeah I didn't mean to be dishonest there. Honesty does help. But it also makes it an auto admission of guilt. Use discretion playing either card really in your situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The paper was submitted April 1st according to <http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.0162>

April fools perhaps?

<comment><USER5> Does look like so. No judge I know would spend even 5 minutes on a misdemeanor case such as this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you're in California, trial by written declaration[1] is a great way to deal with minor traffic violations. The way it works is that you fill out a form[2] giving your version of events, and submit a check for the amount of the ticket. The beauty of this is that the officer also has to fill out a form giving his version of events - and if he doesn't, you automatically win and your money is refunded. It's the equivalent of the officer not showing up to your court case. If he does submit the form you might still win if the judge sides with you. And if you lose, you can request _another_ trial by written declaration. I'm 2/2 using this strategy for minor violations, and I haven't had to waste any time in traffic court. In both cases I won because the officer did not submit his version of events - probably because it's boring work and they had better things to do.

[1] <http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40902.htm>

[2] <http://www.courts.ca.gov/documents/tr205.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER7> A friend of mine beat a speeding ticket once by demonstrating that it was physically impossible for him to have slowed down from the claimed speed and stopped in the location where the officer wrote the ticket.

<comment><USER8> A guy from my parents' church beat a speeding ticket by demonstrating that the motorcycle cop would have had to reach a speed of over 160 mph in order to clock him at the speed measured at location A and then catch him by location B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > or maybe he was simply impressed by the sheer dedication Krioukov put into > avoiding this ticket.

This seems more likely.

I beat a speeding ticket with GPS data once - except the judge didn't even ask to see the data. I just said I had it. (Yes, the officer was there in court too.) The judge said he'd take my word for it.

<comment><USER10> My friend always appears in court after getting speeding tickets because it is apparently more costly for the court to pay for the session and the officer's time than what they will get from a ticket, so they usually dismiss it to save money. Sometimes the officers don't even show up. He has told me it works every time.

<comment><USER11> If you lose in court, though, aren't you required to pay the cost of the session? (I have no idea, never done it before, just curious.)

<comment><USER9> Actually, you even have to pay a court fee in many districts if you WIN in court.

In the above case, I had to pay a $25 "court fee", even though the case against me was dismissed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haha, nice way to beat the system. But I doubt the symmetry of those two graphs.

Surely, there is no (ordinary) retail car on the planet which can accelerate as fast as it decelerates?

<comment><USER13> MechE here, the limiting factor for car accelerations is usually the static coefficient of friction between the car tires and the road, _not_ the power of the brakes or strength of the engine.

Without ABS braking, it is quite easy to "skid" while applying a harsh brake because you overcome the limit of force between the tires and the road. Similarly, it is quite easy to "burnout" as well with a strong engine for the same reason.

So although the strength of the two systems is not the same, the limiting factor for both of them is identical. Hence, symmetry.

<comment><USER14> This is true for the deceleration side of things (nearly any car can lock it's brakes at any speed), but on the acceleration side of the curve, this is typically only true in first, and perhaps second gear. It would take a truly obscene amount of power to smoke the tires while already in 5th gear (assuming you dont "cheat" by popping the clutch).

<comment><USER13> Obviously burning out in 5th is almost impossible, but I was considering the stop sign case where you are starting from rest in 1st gear.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > _I want to ask the readership to please find the flaw in the argument._

"The officer had special two-week training that qualifies him to estimate angular velocity whichever the fucking way he wants, even with a completely obstructed view."

Courtesy of Canadian reality. Plot me a graph to counter _that_.

<comment><USER16> Right, so I do not know about California, but in Canada if at stop sign the back of your car did not have a chance to come full way down on suspension, the stop is not considered to be performed properly. His charts assume instantaneous change in acceleration let alone any "settle down" period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had a similar story. I once sped through a traffic intersection and a cop car coming from the other way perpendicular to my heading. He turned immediately and chased me down. After stopping, he ordered me out and said I was doing 110mph. I was like there's no fucking way I was doing 110. The car felt very different going 110 than 60. He was saying I looked like going very fast. The only thing that ran through my mind was to get a lawyer. Amazingly he left me go after lectured me for a while. I guessed he wasn't sure exactly how fast I went.

I was wondering how can he misjudge the speed so far apart. This article explained the phonomena.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gets more love when it's a churched up article than when you just post directly to the PDF :(

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3830019>

<comment><USER19> I give you a point, because that's what you really want, not "love" for the paper, right?

<comment><USER18> yes, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I have a question about avg ticket costs. My first (and so far, only) ticket was in LA for crossing a solid HOV line. The ticket itself was 80-100. However, they added a ton of fees to it (the best one I remember was a fee for courthouse improvement but there were fees by the county of LA and the city of LA). All-in-all, the grand total was around 400. Is this just a California thing? I don't see how people can eat in that state when a ticket costs this much.

</comment><comment><USER21> A buddy of mine tried the same thing (math in court) using the weight of his SUV, the HP of the engine, and other things to show he couldn't have been speeding at the location the officer said he was.

Result: "Too bad. Pay me."

Like they say in the movies; with law it's what is the truth, and what you can prove. He failed the latter and got a hefty fine.

</comment><comment><USER22> > "A way to fight your traffic tickets. The paper was awarded a special prize > of $400 that the author did not have to pay to the state of California."

Good economics reasoning too - losing a loss is as good as gaining a gain.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why is it that most comments here are about ways to fool a policeman and avoid a speeding ticket ? I was expecting more advices on reducing your speed and driving safely.

</comment><comment><USER5> It is amazing that a judge would even listen to this in a non-criminal and minor offense case. Most places I know it'd just be dismissed and the fine upheld.

</comment><comment><USER24> His argument and charts imply a stopped duration of 0s. I was taught that a legal stop is >= 2 seconds duration. Guilty.

</comment><comment><USER25> Recreation of the courtroom, from my brain:

Physicist: "Pretty much cold feet and sneezes your honor, QED."

Judge: "Well seeing as how you're a member of the affluent class I shall not inconvenience you further."</comment>


UK Government is breaking the law by collecting everyone's internet data - <AUTHOR> https://www.liberty-human-rights.org.uk/news/press-releases-and-statements/government-breaking-law-collecting-everyones-internet-and-call <comment><USER2> There's a great talk, Haunted by Data, by Maciej Ceglowski about how tech companies are making a mistake by wanting to collect more and more data on their users, because governments are just going to want to come in and take it.

        I want you to go through
        a visualization exercise
        with me. Really imagine
        it.

        Nixon's in your datacenter.
        He's got his laptop open.

        He's logged in! He's got
        root! What does he find?

        If you didn't break into a
        cold sweat at the thought,
        congratulations. You are a
        good steward of data.

        But if Tricky Dick in your
        data center scares you,
        then consider what you're
        doing.

Slides: [http://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm](http://idlewords.com/talks/haunted_by_data.htm)

Video: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=GAXLHM-1Psk](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GAXLHM-1Psk)

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't that be the ideal place for companies? If a government is dependent on a company to collect data, wouldn't that government support the company in hard times? Sure, if it was a choice between surviving and throwing the company under the bus, the government would choose the later, but if given the choice, wouldn't the government try to keep one of it's most powerful tools?

<comment><USER4> It works in Russia, China, and less so (perhaps) America (e.g. telcos). It's similarly practical for a government to have unlimited intelligence on its populace.

That doesn't mean its good for anyone not working for the government, explicitly (as an employee or contractor) or implicitly (as a data collecting company which can be forced to share).

IMO a) collecting data on users and b) doing it in a way that does not preserve user privacy makes you complicit to mass surveillance.

Edit: directly -> explicitly

<comment><USER3> > That doesn't mean its good for anyone not working for the government > directly or indirectly.

I totally agree. I'd argue that it's objectively bad for anyone not working for the government. But I'm talking about from the company's point of view.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is very good news that this is being challenged; I was appalled when it passed through parliament almost unchallenged, and it's heartening to see that there is actually a plan by the opposition to do something about it.

<comment><USER6> Should be noted that opposition in this case is the Liberal Democrats, SNP and Greens and the people supporting Liberty, its not the political oppoosition (the Labour party) who voted for it.

<comment><USER7> I was going to write something snarky, but I will simply say:

Tom Watson, the MP who brought the case, is deputy leader of Labour.

<comment><USER8> Tom Watson actually voted FOR the recent mass surveillance law / snoopers charter. Do not praise him.

Davis, the Tory, didn't vote.

<comment><USER9> Who now (Davies) is our 'Brexit' minister. Oh, the irony.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be noted that this ruling is related to the predecessor (DRIPA) to the current Investigator Powers Act (IPA), however it sets a precedent for the IPA to be challenged.

The ECJ has agreed with the British High Court's previous ruling on DRIPA, so should still carry weight regardless of Britain's status within the EU (unless further legal amendments are made post departure, such as the replacement of the Human Rights Act).

</comment><comment><USER11> It's important to note that this ruling also invalidates all other customer traffic storage laws in the EU.

In Sweden Telenor immediately seized saving traffic data: [http://press.telenor.se/pressreleases/telenor-upphoer-med- la...](http://press.telenor.se/pressreleases/telenor-upphoer-med-lagring-av- trafikuppgifter-efter-att-eu-domstolen-underkaenner-svensk-lag-1703229)

</comment><comment><USER12> Interestingly one of the MPs who brought this to the European courts was David Davis, the cabinet minister who has the title 'Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union'

<comment><USER13> He has since withdrawn from the case.

<comment><USER14> Because he can't be seen to oppose it from cabinet.

I don't think his position makes it any more interesting though, this issue has little to do with the EU - other than it being the location of the appropriate court for as long as we remain in the Union.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _Under [the new Investigatory Powers Act], the state now also has access to > every person's internet use – every website visited or app used – which > service providers must generate and store for 12 months._

"App used"? How? I understand that "website visited" is clearly 'public' even if not recorded by ISPs for the state, but I don't understand how, technically, "app used" is known - unless it means "web application visited", which is of course exactly the same as "website visited".

I saw a very interesting hearing when the Bill was still at committee stage, discussing concerns raised by small and community-run ISPs that although they of course have every intention of complying with the law, it's so non- technical and under-specified that it's not at all clear to them what they need to actually do: precisely what to record, how to store it, what guarantees they need to be able to make (e.g. are they liable if data is corrupted? If they're hacked?) etc.

<comment><USER15> I would imaging they are simplifying slightly, by using the term app. They wouldn't know for completely offline apps.

They probably mean for instance the Gov would know when you use Instagram, Facebook etc on your phone.

As the iOS or Android app will be sending requests to Instagram, Facebook etc IP and the Gov will log this.

<comment><USER16> Indeed, the simplification is probably for reader: so they don't think they can avoid being monitored by simply using the facebook app rather than facebook in a browser.

<comment><USER17> However, this is a law, and laws must be written to be read very litterally.

They could have made the law more general by talking about 'messages' or 'accesses a server'.

They said app used. That genuinely could compel Google or Apple to hand over your usage metrics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> If you would like to support Liberty, donate here: [https://www.liberty-human- rights.org.uk/support-us/donate](https://www.liberty-human- rights.org.uk/support-us/donate)

</comment><comment><USER19> I can imagine Theresa May plotting to bring forward Brexit now, so she can get her surveillance bills passed within her term.

</comment><comment><USER20> Illegal according to EU law. Which the UK is trying so hard to break away from.

<comment><USER21> The Human Rights Act (1998) translates those rights into primary UK legislation.

Now the problem is that the current government is desperate to get rid of the HRA, because of a mixture of authoritarianism and ridiculous and often plain false tabloid stories about criminals supposedly getting away with crimes because of "human rights".

<comment><USER22> Thankfully, the current cabinet has at least one minister - David Davis, ironically in charge of Brexit, - that's been a firm defender of the HRA to the extent of in the past staking his position on it.

Now, if he's booted from or leaves cabinet, we should be worried as in that case it's a good sign May is about to take her authoritarianism one step further.

<comment><USER23> David Davis is also one man with basically no power-base in the party. It's not a coincidence that he was handed the hottest seat in cabinet this time around, the one most likely to fail no matter what he does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I am totally opposed to the idea of complete state surveillance but I would like to share an alternative point of view. Perhaps DRIPA and IPA will push technology forward so that encryption becomes widely adopted to the point where it is no longer practical to collect and process data at mass. While the state will still be able to target (not good but happens anyway) privacy will simply shift in another realm through adoption of better hardware and software encryption technologies, P2P networks, Bitcoin, etc. In such environment the security industry will flourish.

<comment><USER25> Untill unlicensed encryption becomes illegal.

Seeking a technological solution to a political problem is not going to end well.

<comment><USER24> History has shown that the only solution to political problems was technology.

<comment><USER23> I'm curious to learn what the technological solution was to the XVI century religious wars across Europe.

<comment> wu-ikkyu Not sure about a technological solution, but the technological cause of the 16th religious wars was arguably the printing press.

<comment><USER23> Yup, _the cause_. The solutions were _all_ political.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> All I hear from British co-workers is "I don't have anything to hid", "it's ok, I am not doing anything wrong".

:(

<comment><USER27> Show them John Oliver's segment on government surveillance, privacy and dick pics? [1]

[1]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What I would like to know is: how does it help fellow EU states? I live in Finland, would these new changes be carried over to stop UK from targeting Finns or must EU courts pursue to restrain UK in similar fashion as its citizens attempting now?

I guess for now EU members can still use VPNs and the like.

<comment><USER29> If banned they damage the economy. VPNs are required for many jobs and systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> So the emergency ruling has been classed as illegal, but the 'Investigatory Powers' act has not.

<comment><USER31> They can only rule on the matter before them, Snoopers Charter isn't law yet but will likely end up in front of the same court.

<comment><USER32> The new law received royal assent at the end of November and is now a done deal, though it hasn't actually come into effect yet and there will inevitably be legal challenges.

<comment> k-mcgrady >> "it hasn't actually come into effect yet"

I believe some of it has already come into effect. According to s. 272[1] several sections come into effect on the day the Act is passed and another few after a period of two months.

[1] [http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/272/enac...](http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2016/25/section/272/enacted)

<comment><USER32> Fair point, though IIRC those sections are the technicalities about definitions and the like. The real substance isn't due to start doing anything until some next year, as I understand it.

<comment> k-mcgrady I just looked through it and you're right, it's mainly definitions and technicalities. Nothing substantial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Looks like the government will have to get this through parliament again.

We've got a second chance to fight this. Give em both barrels everyone!

</comment><comment><USER34> What I'm curious about is why the people of UK don't challenge this more themselves through revolts. It's a very serious issue. Couldn't people easily mobilize through social media?

<comment><USER35> No one cares. Why should they care? There's far worse stuff happening. For example, the massive TV licence database; the massive police DNA database; the huge numbers of poorly regulated CCTV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Alexa...tell GCHQ to sod off

<comment><USER37> Request rejected. Your voice, command, location and all digital history were logged and sent to authorities. Please calm down and stay on place. Thank you for cooperation Jim.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Have they actually begun collecting it? Maybe this non-sense could be stopped in its tracks.

<comment><USER39> They actually did collect the information in question before it became a law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Oppressing UK citizenry hasn't really ever had great success

<comment><USER41> Correct, but in this case they haven't even figured out that they are being oppressed yet. Or that terrorism isn't then reason such policy was implemented,for that matter.</comment></comment>


Keyhotee - Take back control of your digital life - <AUTHOR> http://invictus.io/keyhotee.php

<comment><USER2> 'Keyhotee - move everything into this platform that we created, with absolutely no technical details provided.'

> connects you directly to the person you are addressing ... > without > revealing the relationship or contents to anyone.

So... directly connect to the other host, whilst apparently not revealing the relationship between the two of you?

Posts like this (from the link at the bottom of the page) are also not promising:

[https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1962.msg22546#msg2...](https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=1962.msg22546#msg22546)

</comment><comment><USER3> I find it weird that a company providing a security/privacy tool isn't even using https on the website and providing a checksum for the binary.

</comment><comment><USER4> People keep telling me that research I'm doing with some friends overlaps with what these people are proposing, so I've spent a little time trying to figure out what they do and how they do it from their website. I haven't yet played with their client or anything like that.

I really can't see any substance here. The name is also sort of darkly humorous: they've clearly poured a lot of effort into (at least marketing) what they're doing, but have yet to realize that they're just tilting at windmills.

</comment><comment><USER5> The OP's username pretty much reflects my reaction to this website.

Here's a question asking for a white paper: [https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=979.0](https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=979.0)

It links to a video: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZaTdEtK-8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pZaTdEtK-8)

There's a lot of hand waving.

Not to mention that I wasn't aware Amazon, eBay, FedEx, et al accepted Bitcoin and integrated with the Keyhotee network...

</comment><comment><USER6> Looks like a very promising concept, at least from a technical perspective. I don't rate its chances of success all that highly, since it needs a lot of buy-in before it gets enough network effects, but it's nice to see someone genuinely trying to find workable solutions to what we can no longer deny are serious privacy and security problems with the current setup.

Something I'm not clear on is the licencing of the code. Is it open-source? For trust reasons I'd want to be able to read it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Windows download page not found [http://www.invictus.dev/bin/keyhotee_0.5.0.zip](http://www.invictus.dev/bin/keyhotee_0.5.0.zip)

edit: OK, some of the download links are broken. This one works: [http://invictus.io/bin/keyhotee_0.5.0.zip](http://invictus.io/bin/keyhotee_0.5.0.zip)

<comment><USER8> .dev? is that a real thing already?

<comment><USER9> It's a common convention for running domains locally. You can set up a stub resolver and point *.dev to loopback.

Most commonly found in the wild through [http://pow.cx/](http://pow.cx/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Finally! I have always wanted to connect all my social media accounts to one freaking server, which is 100% hacker-proof ! How are they doing this? Probably some IT-ish complicated encryption algorithm! (Just like the Titanic) Isn't this a cliche?

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like the source is here: [https://github.com/InvictusInnovations/keyhotee](https://github.com/InvictusInnovations/keyhotee)

</comment><comment><USER12> Windows only -- really? It's 2013. If you're trying to get traction with a highly technical identity platform, windows probably shouldn't be your top pick.

<comment><USER13> s/3/4

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'll never figure out how it is possible that periodically, someone tries to convince us that putting all the eggs in the same basket has become a good idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> So I will connect to Facebook without a password and that will prevent ID thieves to impersonate me?

</comment><comment><USER16> The download button says Windows, but the screenshot has a distinctive Aqua (OS X) look.

</comment><comment><USER17> Shouldn't it be Keehotay?

</comment><comment><USER18> If you were interested in this news, perhaps this might interest you as well - [http://bit.ly/blibonline](http://bit.ly/blibonline)</comment>


The Healthy Programmer: Get Fit, Feel Better, and Keep Coding - <AUTHOR> http://pragprog.com/book/jkthp/the-healthy-programmer

<comment><USER2> Looks good, as someone who sits in front of monitor all day and worries about how to refactor my software maybe I need to refactor my health.</comment>


Our experience with advertising on Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://bunkat.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/advertising-on-reddit/

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a recent post about advertising on Reddit, so I thought I would share our results as another example. So far we've been happy with the CPC we've been able to achieve (much better than attempts with Google or Facebook) and plan on more advertising with Reddit in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: How to differentiate your product if it's not the first in its niche - <AUTHOR> I've noticed that a lot of new SaaS products are usually iterations on previous businesses. I think this is a good thing since it proves that the market is there etc... but having built a couple of "similar but not exactly" products myself I'm often stuck on how to market the business so that it's exciting and press worthy. So I'm asking those of you with product that improve on but didn't invent the wheel, how do you differentiate yourself and make yourself "press worthy"? <comment><USER2> The assumption is that you're getting into the space because you're interested and have some sort of knowledge/know-how/tech that the preexisting competitors don't in order to you an edge/differentiator, however incremental. Otherwise, you're right, you're just another version of a different company.</comment>


Dissecting Coin's Massively Successful Product Launch - <AUTHOR> http://danielodio.com/dissecting-coins-massively-successful-product-launch

<comment><USER2> "Product Launch"

They have launched no product.

They've successfully generated buzz because it's an incredible idea, but as we know from the infinite submissions to HN, "it's all about the execution," and the folks at Coin, Inc. haven't executed on anything yet.

They can make one helluva pitch, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I don't disagree! AND they've convinced Google to return them as the #1 result for a search on "coin" \-- again for an un launched product with lots of buzz.

Makes me think Google's search algorithm is more heavily influenced by social signals than might be readily apparent.

AND an analysis by ShareThis showed only 2% of the social traffic happening on G+, which makes me wonder if Google's search results are being influenced by other social platforms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "ShareThis has 30 day cookies on 95% of the US Internet population, so I was able to easily run an Insight Report of a couple of hundred social actions around relevant terms like "coin," "coin wallet" and "credit card"" Ok, first, yikes! I figured AdBlock would block 3rd party scripts like ShareThis. And second, how do these cookies enable you to run Insight Reports - what data source are they using - just interactions done via ShareaThis, common public social Apis (open-graph), or is there other data these cookies give you access to?</comment>


What Termites Can Teach Us About Cooling Our Buildings - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/26/science/termite-nest-ventilation.html <comment><AUTHOR> See also [https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/13/garden/in-africa- making-o...](https://www.nytimes.com/1997/02/13/garden/in-africa-making- offices-out-of-an-anthill.html) (1997).</comment>