PARCC testing in Colorado has disastrous first day - <AUTHOR> http://www.thecherrycreeknews.com/parcc-testing-colorado-disastrous-first-day-pearson/

<comment><USER2> Why do we pay The College Board to assess whether students can, say, make logical inferences when teachers are already doing this every day?

Trust.

We will move beyond this current paradigm once we develop a way to accredit (through national scale use/vetting) assessment materials on a much smaller scale. PARCC, ACT, et al. will maintain their current level of influence (functionally, not politically) so long as we can't assure that teachers are assessing their students against agreed upon benchmarks.

If these benchmarked assessment materials could be integrated into everyday instruction (which, as a teacher, they surely can be) AND we can accredit them as accurately assessing student ability on "competency X' then we will no longer need centralized, high-stakes assessment.

This accreditation will come from a decentralized exchange of classroom instructional materials/artifacts which will allow for the 'cream' (i.e. materials that accurately assess 'competency x") to be used, assessed, modified, re-used and finally accredited. Currently, teachers are silo'ed and rarely exchange learning materials beyond person-to-person contact or by physically gifting photocopies. Google docs facilitates exchange with real gains in productivity, but only within your immediate department (which could 4 people, could be 20 - but will hardly be >1000). We need the ability to fluidly exchange learning and assessment materials from all over the country/world that can be easily personalized for our classrooms.

The potential of such a platform could have far reaching benefits beyond assessment, but I'll cut it off now. I can work the ledger, guys - but what I want is Visicalc...

</comment><comment><USER3> PARCC, Common Core, and the heightened focus on (even more) standardized tests is an unmitigated educational disaster. My children have been wasting their time taking practice tests instead of actually learning. The school has to jump through the distict's hoops. The district has to jump through the state's hoops. Kids don't actually get educated because everyone's afraid of failing the tests so they're overpreparing. My kids are only learning how to game the system and take tests and not actually learning information analysis and synthesis.

<comment><USER4> Common Core doesn't really have much to do with the glut of standardized testing. Common Core is more about setting a guideline for lesson planning, allowing teachers across the country to share lessons and techniques to teach. It was developed by teachers for teachers.

Standardized testing is a completely different problem. There's this strange desire at the state and district level to boil everything down to a single metric that says "this kid was taught something" without looking at any of the data that can be provided by their day-to-day instructor.

<comment><USER3> I agree that there's no link between CC and standardized testing, I was just attempting to note that all of these things when taken together with how they're being implemented are a collective disaster.

<comment><USER4> Except that there's really nothing wrong with Common Core and if you talk to most teachers they're for it (disclaimer: my wife, sister, and sister-in-law are all teachers, and my parents are retired teachers).

Common Core is used as a political boogeyman against people who don't really understand what it's trying to accomplish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dead link.

<comment><AUTHOR> I can still see it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get a software developer job in Europe as an American? - <AUTHOR> I'm a US citizen but I've always wanted to live in Europe. It seems like the few times I've applied for a job in Europe I get dismissed just because I'm an American. Are there companies or countries that are more willing to hire someone from the United States. <comment><USER2> I've hired US citizens to the Netherlands frequently. Basically, only needs for work permit & visa are A) company is whitelisted by the immigration services and B) the pay for the job meets a certain threshold (which is the main proof it's a 'highly-skilled' job). This threshold is a bit different in different cases, but in most cases anything 60K and up is sufficient. If the netherlands/amsterdam would be an option, connect with me and I'm happy to help. (I know most companies that can & will hire from non-EU). [https://nl.linkedin.com/in/janbernhart](https://nl.linkedin.com/in/janbernhart)

</comment><comment><USER3> Just send me your CV on Linkedin and I could connect you with some companies/recruiters in northern Germany, if you want to :)

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan- lerner-301ba091/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephan-lerner-301ba091/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't think there is any discriminations against Americans, it's definately not unrare to work with > 3 nationalities.

I think the issue is most likely that you are not living here yet, remote isn't frequent for where i live.

Send me an invite in Linkedin and give me a PM with your cv. I'm pretty sure a lot of recruiters ( that tried to recruit me) would be happy to suggest you to their clients :)

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicosap/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicosap/) ( cfr. Belgium), recruiters are pitching me for Netherlands, Belgium and the UK fyi.

If you want a job in the Netherlands or Belgium, Tweakers is a popular dutch platform and for IT, most companies don't care about nationality: [https://elect.tweakers.net/](https://elect.tweakers.net/)

<comment><USER5> I've always wanted to visit Brugge after watching the movie In Bruges. Maybe this summer I'll get to it :)

<comment><USER4> Just give me a notice then, always happy to meet fellow HN'ers :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Definitely seen quite some folks from across the pond in Berlin. Happy to share your CV if that is of interest to you, contact details in profile.

In general, I'd recommend you check out platforms like [0] and [1], they are used quite often by companies and as a developer, you talk to companies directly, not recruiters.

I am by no means affiliated in any form with either of those companies and solely post them here as advice I think is relevant to OPs question.

[0]: [https://www.talent.io](https://www.talent.io)

[1]: [https://www.honeypot.io](https://www.honeypot.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I'll check out those sites!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Update your LinkedIn job preferences to list the cities that you're interested in. Use your network. That's how I received multiple offers, I'm not an engineer, should be even easier for an engineer. Be prepared to take a big pay cut and get a new appreciation for the USA ;), although some things are much better in Europe.

</comment><comment><USER8> Interesting. I've gotten two offers from two European tech cos, one in London and one in Amsterdam though did not end up accepting either. In both situations I felt they were pretty eager/open to hiring.

The biggest hurdle they face in hiring non-Europeans is that I believe they must somehow prove that you possess skills that are uncommon in the local talent pool in order to get you a work visa. I think SWE, other technical skill set, or having an advanced degree all would help there...

</comment><comment><USER9> Out of curiosity, would you be happy with anywhere in Europe or are you looking at certain countries / regions?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm conversational in Spanish and have visited it a few times, so I'd love to live there. I love the biking culture of the Netherlands. If not Spain, then a place that I could get by with English while I learn the local language.

<comment><USER9> Other than Spain, I think the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and most of the Scandinavian countries are ones where you could get by with English while you learn the local language. Oh and of course, the UK and Ireland (if you consider those as European). Though because of that, I think its likely you will never really learn the local language because you will have no need to. In most big cities in those countries people will probably talk back to you in English even if you try and speak the local language. But it really depends on what kind of experience you want.</comment></comment></comment>


Jesse Willms, the Dark Lord of the Internet (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/01/the-dark-lord-of-the-internet/355726/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I've been dabbling with a theory, and it goes something along the lines of "Evil thinks big, but Good thinks small".

There is a _ton_ of incentive for guys like this to scale big, and they can bootstrap it pretty easily once they have a profitable method. On the other hand, it's much tougher for a brand like Consumer Reports to do the same, because the effort is so much greater and the ROI is so much smaller. You simply don't make much money when you're un-selling stuff, and it's an eternal game of whack-a-mole fighting off scams.

So the "good guys" who would rage against these rip-offs end up thinking smaller, perhaps going after just one thing, like why this skin care offer is a scam. You get lost in the noise because you're stuck in a swamp of other evildoer affiliates who are more greatly incentivized to lie. Ultimately, there's very few _systematic_ tools out there that can encompass on the number of niches his network can, and visibly tell the truth about them all.

Further, once a doer of good who's scaling starts to see success, the power begins to corrupt, and aligning with profitable evils becomes difficult to resist.

I see this problem at all levels, especially in corrupt governments. It just feels like we are currently systematically broken as a species. Good people may or may not be outnumbered, but we're most definitely out- _powered_.

<comment><USER3> It could also be narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), coupled with survivor bias.

You don't see all the people with NPD who crashed because they burned all the bridges around them, but the ones who do make it last long enough to make reality match their ego's dreams, if even for a short while. To someone with NPD, they don't see themselves as evil, and can be oblivious to how they take advantage of those around them.

It's something I've been thinking more about with the recent elections.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, that guy.

If this guy had dialed back the scam level by about half, he'd probably still be in business. There are lots of people trying to be him. Visit Black Hat World to meet some.

His values aren't that far from those of many startup companies. Grow at any cost. Use "dark patterns" to trick users. Hide things in the EULA. Don't ask too many questions about "affiliates". Make it hard to cancel. Google was fined $500 million when they were caught in the FBI's "sportsdrugs.com" sting. (The FBI had a fake drug lord who was supposedly trying to take over the athletic steroid business. Google actively helped him advertise.)

<comment><USER5> _> If this guy had dialed back the scam level by about half, he'd probably still be in business._

He is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a piece of trash this guy is. Not only is he behind a lot of those garbage ads everywhere, but once they suckered someone in, he managed to scam them by signing them up for reoccurring billing on their credit cards.

</comment><comment><USER7> I often consider how much easier my life would be if I only had more 'flexible' morals.

<comment><USER8> Morals are not set in stone. Everybody has different morals. One might argue that people who fall for this kind of crap are very, very stupid. Being weak means that the predators eat you for lunch. In this case they just mooch off you. Humans are the apex predators and people like to forget that just because we slaughter the prey in an industrial complex and stab it with a fork.

There are other considerations both specific to this case, and in general, and I don't say I condone 100% of his actions, but don't be so quick to think that he is just rotten and you are superior.

<comment><USER7> I don't think he's 'rotten' and I don't think I'm 'superior', and I only claimed that he has more 'flexible' morals, and that having 'flexible' morals makes paying one's mortgage easier, which it does.

> Morals are not set in stone. Everybody has different morals.

Indeed. Some people make the personal choice to "evolve" above the dog-eat- dog-world mentality, for example. As another example, while some people stab their prey with their forks, others choose to be vegan.

> One might argue that people who fall for this kind of crap are very, very > stupid. Being weak means...

I'm not going to argue with you because we clearly have different morals, as you've pointed out. I don't think ripping people off is okay just because they are "stupid". Would it be even more okay if they were diagnosably mentally challenged?

But if you actually believe that the only people who fall this stuff are "stupid" people, and by that you mean that they are exceptional or abnormal, then you haven't spent very long in the affiliate marketing industry.

Pretty much everyone falls for 'scams'. My sister signed up to a cell phone rebill, her friend bought a diet pill rebill, my grandmother pays her 'financial manager' an obscene amount, and I just bought a book off amazon that claimed to be a "Thai translation" but was actually sold by a seller who has translated everything in the public domain into every language using Google translate and then prints them on-demand (Get your shit together, Bezos).

I know a lot of people like Jesse Wilms, and perhaps the saddest part of it to me is that they are extremely human and very normal. The potential for his moral flexibility exists in all of us, given the right circumstances and surroundings.

<comment><USER8> You say you don't think you are superior but you show the opposite. There is no moral "flexibility". You still imply that there is a moral code set in stone and those people deviated from it.

>Some people make the personal choice to "evolve" above the dog-eat-dog-world mentality, for example. As another example, while some people stab their prey with their forks, others choose to be vegan.

One might argue that those people simply don't want to face the reality so they pretend.

You and your sister got tricked, but your sister's friend is definitely stupid for believing magic pills will make her fit. Your grandmother can be either way, but if you did a good job explaining to her why a financial manager isn't a good proposition for somebody who is not a multi-millionaire, she is most probably stupid too. And I don't mean that they are abnormal. Plenty of people are stupid. Most even, one might say.

You can choose to pretend, just like the vegans, if that gives you solace.

<comment><USER7> Let's just agree to disagree. :)

On another note, do you have any books or readings you'd recommend on moral relativism (?) or whatever your worldview is called? I imagine you came to this conclusion after a lot of thought and life experience, but is there anyone or anything you read or listened to that you'd recommend?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of a guy that made millions selling from spammy looking single-page websites that would scroll on forever; aka long form sales letters. Believe the guy died racing a super car on a track; can't recall his name.

<comment><USER10> Corey Rudl

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Here's a real gem, from an FTC official:

> There's a fine line between shutting down the Internet and policing it

Straight out of a lobbyists mouth, I'd imagine. It has the classic "true, but only in certain contexts" thing going on - sure, it's a great argument against, say, SOPA, but as an argument against a simple legal requirement that big internet players do their part to reign obviously malicious advertising, it's pretty bogus.

</comment><comment><USER12> This was written in 2014, I wonder what scheme he is doing today.

<comment><USER6> Per the article.

His major ventures today provide consumers with driving records, criminal records, and vehicle-history reports (just as Carfax does) across dozens of different pages, notably carhistory.us.org, dmv.us.org, vehiclehistory.com, and vehiclehistoryrecord.com. In fact, anyone looking for these services would have a hard time avoiding him: as of November, if you searched vehicle history on Google, Yahoo, or Bing, ads for Willms's sites were among the first things you would see. By the looks of it, Willms offers a terrific deal—just $1 for a vehicle-history report, compared with $39.99 for one from Carfax. Because of this, Willms's lawyer claims that the sites have received "several hundred thousand positive comments related to the product."

So more of the same scams.

<comment><USER7> He almost definitely partly chose this niche so that he could respond to craigslist/classified ads of people selling their cars and say "I'm ready to pay [huge amount] in cash today but I need to see a vehicle history report from XYZ first."

For like a decade now, people have been posting fake job ads and then telling applicants to pay for their own "background check" in an identical scam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It's horrible to understand how much of the content we consume for free online is paid for by these scams. His açai ads were all over fairly major publishers' websites. The content industry relies on hugely regressive exploitation of the gullible and unsophisticated, and adblockers are only making it more regressive in the short term.

LyricFind which licenses lyrics from major publishers to websites is another example. They would license content to for free if you included their ads for "ringtone" subscriptions which were added to monthly phone bills in a process few consumers understood or expected.</comment>


Spotify have reached 40M paying subscribers - <AUTHOR> http://www.thenordicweb.com/dealflow/spotify-have-reached-40-million-paying-subscribers <comment><USER2> I wonder how many of these 40M users are like me and are searching for other options. I'm using Spotify because of an intro offer, and my Google Play account exists almost solely for the discount on other content. Both have enough annoying design quirks that I've also tried Tidal and Apple Music, but their recommendation engines left me wanting more. Based on my love of Rdio, I'm really hoping Pandora's rumored new streaming service becomes a viable alternative.

<comment><USER3> I know it's easy for me to be an armchair quarterback but I have to say it. Although I am currently and somewhat reluctantly paying for it (for now), Spotify's UI makes me want to strangle someone every time I use it. I can never remember exactly what ridiculous combination of screens I need to cycle through in order to get where I want to go. It feels like I'm trying to enter a fucking launch code for a nuclear submarine just to play a damn song. God forbid I'm running and hit the wrong screen, then I have to stop, fiddle for 3 minutes, and start again.

Also the stations are incredibly shallow. If you pick a station on Pandora, you will have 100+ songs that are generally well selected in my experience. If you pick one on Spotify, you get maybe 20-30 songs.

The one major benefit to Spotify is that you can pick any song you want, you're not forced into stations. However, if you pick a genre, you're likely to be inundated with shitty cover bands that you have to painfully sift through in order to find the actual playlist your looking for, because '70's hits' could be anything from Led Zepplin to your next door neighbours cover band.

TLDR - incredibly over complicated UI, shallow stations, too much spam music.

<comment><USER4> Google Play Music has the most frustrating UI as well. It takes 4 taps to start playing the playlist I want to every time (most recently added).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope they add lyrics again. They ended their partnership with musixmatch a few months ago and haven't offered an alternative yet.

<comment><USER6> They had Spotify apps, the two most popular were lyrics apps. Then they removed the apps and added lyrics inside Spotify, and now there is no more lyrics at all.

Obviously that's a very demanded feature so they must have a strong reason not to have it anymore (legal issues probably).

I personally used it all the times for improvised karaokes so I'm very upset to not have lyrics on demand anymore.

<comment><USER7> They still have Behind the Lyrics for some songs on the mobile app, which shows a mix of lyrics and info about the song and artist.

<comment><USER6> I can't make it appear on my app (iOS) and the help link [1] shows that's it's enabling comments from Genius about the lyrics, so not the actual lyrics synced.

[1]: [https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/beh...](https://support.spotify.com/us/using_spotify/search_play/behind- the-lyrics/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm happy their subscriber counts are up, but I've noticed a steep negative trend their library selection in the last month. I poked around a bit for more info. All I could find were complaints that they don't publish this information anymore.

Does anyone know how to see if my anectdote is a trend?

Perhaps they lost some contracts with major labels, or perhaps there is a way to probe their search API to estimate their library size.

<comment><USER9> Maybe the golden age* of music subscription services is ending, following in the footsteps of these services for video:

\- A startup negotiates contracts with most/all content providers

\- said startup becomes a sensation

\- Google, Apple & Amazon enter the market, signing similar deals

\- Content providers realize the value of their material and negotiations become more complicated

\- The services want need differentiation and it can't be price because they all have more or less the same lower bound of licensing costs

\- The startup's contracts are up for renewal. They don't have the financial background of Apple/Google/Amazon and loose a few contracts

\- There are now 5-10 services and each one has some exclusive content, overlap in the libraries keeps shrinking

\- I go back to bit torrent because 10$/mo is already more per year than I paid for music in the first 25 years of my life total.

* length: about 3 years or as it's commonly called "A good Netflix"

<comment><USER10> I would say the golden age never even started. I've stuck with torrenting over streaming with things like spotify because it's the only way I can guarantee that I will hear things that I like. Sure it takes a bit more planning, but for higher quality and customization I think it's more than worth it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good on them. Now can their stupid, over-zealous designers stop messing with the product by removing actually useful features such as "Most Played" filtering of your library, etc etc.

<comment><USER12> And can they sooner or later stop recommending vocal trance to me?

If there was any machine learning at all going on at that place it should have picked out that peculiarity by now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Spotify has achieved what no normal entity could. Go them for having a relatively decent free to play with, I'm assuming, a good pay to play model as well.

<comment><USER14> In Canada, one of the major wireless providers offers Spotify premium accounts bundled in with mid and high tier data lines (i.e. 2 years of Spotify premium "for free"). So I wonder what other providers around the world do this, and how many of the 40mm are part of this group.

<comment><USER15> I have accounts on both Deezer and Spotify because of bundled accounts on wireless providers. So far I prefer Spotify but only because of the Discover Weekly feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Between March(they announced 30 million) and now - roughly 6 months later they added 10 million new paid subscribers? How is that even possible? That would average out to 1.6 million new subscribers a month.

Reference: [http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-3...](http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6875477/spotify-30-million- subscribers-apple-music-11-million-subscribers)

</comment><comment><USER17> They still haven't redownloaded their UMG library to fix the horrendous watermark issue. Everything from UMG before 2013 is very low quality due to a bug with their watermarking technology at the time. This includes all the best classical music labels.

</comment><comment><USER18> I pay for Spotify but it sucks because:

1) I can't play it on multiple devices at the same time like every other service I subscribe to (Netflix, Hbo, Hulu). If I ever upgrade to a"family" account, I have to make new accounts for each person (including my kids).

2) The UI sucks. I can never find the queue list, so I never know what is playing next. Adding items to a playlist is should be easier.

3) The web app is really broken. You have to install the Spotify software to use the service.

4) Offline playlists randomly decide they have not been downloaded yet.

5) Nothing by the Beatles. Like every other music service, the only way is to rip your old CDs or torrent them.

One feature I do like, listening to local music files on the Spotify software. Like, for example, the Beatles.

I really wish Grooveshark was still around!

[edit] Now that I read that Spotify (and similar companies) are actually losing money I realize that I shouldn't be so hard on them.

<comment><USER19> The Beatles are available on Spotify, have been for several months.

[https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles](https://open.spotify.com/special/thebeatles)

It make a lot of headlines when it happened. [http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are- co...](http://www.recode.net/2015/12/22/11621674/the-beatles-are-coming-to- apple-music-spotify-and-everywhere-else-on)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> How many of these were gained via discount promotions?

</comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone know what percentage 40 million is of their total subscribers? From what I know thats the number they need/want to see growing.

<comment><USER21> They have north of 100mi users in total.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> So that's like ~$400M of income per month? Their expenses are mostly royalties and those are probably spare change compared to that income. Not bad!

<comment><USER23> Maybe now they can start building basic quality of life features like offline Last.FM scrobbling that have been in demand for 4+ years!

<comment><USER24> They already have offline for anybody with premium. It's a slider on any playlist to download it to disk.

Though I may misunderstand what you're asking for, as I don't quite get the Last.FM comment.

<comment><USER25> He's asking to have offline plays saved and submitted to Last.FM when you go back online vs attempting to send them to Last.FM even when offline</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MyEdu launches Employer Platform for Hiring College Students, free trial - <AUTHOR> https://employer.myedu.com/

<comment><USER2> This was a fun app to build, once you login we are using Backbone.js + Marionette.js to handle almost everything. We've built Backbone apps before, but in this one it all came together. I hope people check it out.</comment>


Nirvana's Nevermind Swimming Baby - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jun/06/kirk-weddle-best-photograph-nirvana-nevermind-swimming-baby <comment><USER2> $1000 for everything including expenses?

That doesn't even buy you a hello in New York.</comment>


Web Experience Toolkit (WET) - reusable accessible HTML snippets - johnx123-up http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/index-eng.html

<comment> johnx123-up Working examples <http://wet-boew.github.com/wet-boew/demos/index-eng.html></comment>


Why it takes so long to get data back from New Horizons - <AUTHOR> http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2015/01300800-talking-to-pluto-is-hard.html <comment><USER2> >The Deep Space Network has only three 70-meter dishes, and there is a lot of competition for time on them;

It seems like I've heard this time and again, that certain data or measurements couldn't be returned from planetary spacecraft because of limitations in the DSN. I'd guess that a relatively modest investment could double or tripe the DSN availability and bandwidth simply through more antennas and the associated receivers. I'm guessing that the reasons are political (funding), are there technical issues I'm unaware of?

Off to read up on this.

edit: They are adding antennas!

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's just that building a 70-meter dish is freaking expensive?

<comment><USER4> There are plenty of very rich people who could spend money on 70 m dishes instead of soccer clubs or whatnot.

Adding 8 antennas and infrastructure to the VLA cost about $140m [http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/evla/](http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2000/evla/)

The Green Bank telescope (largest moving land object; 100 meter dish) costs a measly $10m per year to run. (That funding is at risk) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Bank_Telescope)

<comment><USER5> If Roman Abramovich (or anyone else) wants to sink vast amounts of money into football clubs that's their call.

For me a better comparison would be that $140m is slightly less than the unit cost of an F-35B.

<comment><USER6> This is absolutely the best comparison. You've really gotta wonder what the under-the-table purpose of that fighter is. As if our closer allies get told "Hey, the ante for participating in PRISM et al is buying 26 of these totally useless fighters that burn up on the runway." I am going to be totally interested in whatever gets declassified about this program in the future.

<comment><USER7> Why does it need to be under-the-table? It seems pretty clear to me:

— military industry wanting more money

— deterrence

— air superiority

— hi-tech jobs, research and manufacture capabilities

Probably even in this priority order. The bottom line is that there is a lot of good in this "useless fighters", even if it's not as sexy/obvious as DSN. There may be a corruption element, but it doesn't mean that the program is "useless" for general public.

After all, I'm writing this to you using the heir of DARPA's "stupid entanglement of number-crunching machines".

<comment><USER6> > deterrence, air superiority

You're implying these things can actually get off the ground. For what American taxpayers are spending on this project, you better believe there better be some bang for that buck. And so far it's amounted to essentially nothing but more of the same companies getting away with pillage.

<comment><USER7> According to Red Flag results, F22s are _extremely_ effective (e.g. [1]). In fact, even if you take an article that "criticize" F22 (like [2]) and pay an attention to what article really says, it's like "okay-okay, it's the best, BUT YOU KNOW IT CAN SUCK SOMETIMES".

I understand the appeal of blaming govt on excessive spending. Being Russian, I can't agree more (our govt is _way_ worse). However, I believe that blind and self-righteous critique like "it can't get off the ground" is destructive.

[1]: [http://manglermuldoon.blogspot.ru/2012/09/red- flag-2012-did-...](http://manglermuldoon.blogspot.ru/2012/09/red- flag-2012-did-raptor-seriously-just.html)

[2]: [http://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-wont-win-a-dogfight- thru...](http://www.businessinsider.com/f-22-wont-win-a-dogfight-thrust- vectoring-raptor-typhoon-eurofighter-2013-2)

<comment><USER8> F22 - good; F35 - bad.

<comment><USER6> Precisely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I just love the image of a spaceship hacked to do cartwheels in space while shunting power to its backup antenna to double the Tx rate. And that this was developed after it was already in space.

After this and watching Apollo 13 I now have the impression "hacking" is fundamental to space exploration.

<comment><USER10> You should read the book "The Martian" by Andy Weir if you haven't already. Doing things in space can require a lot of hacking!

<comment><USER11> Awesome book. And now this: [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388).

<comment><USER12> I like the cast, I hope it stays fairly true to the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about the Arecibo Observatory? It has a 1,000 ft (300 m) diameter dish. It is well know from the James Bond Golden Eye (1995) movie: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory) .

Are there physical limitations that would prevent a communication to Pluto?

The Parkes Observatory has _only_ a 230 ft (70 m) dish. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkes_Observatory) . It is well known from the first Apollo moon landing and The Dish (2000) movie [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205873/)

<comment><USER14> How long do you think communication session using Arecibo would last?

Edit: apparently some did not get the point I was making. Arecibo's dish is fixed, so there is practically no way to track the object. And earth is rotating. If you had a chance to see the stars through telescope, it rotates FAST. With Arecibo you can only catch a blip of communication.

<comment><USER15> Suppose like you say, all earth-bound telescopes have a small window of observation. How many hours a day would that be? Aside from watching Contact or Goldeneye, my only source of knowledge about dishes is a C-band. But, according to its wikipedia entry, Arecibo has a 40 degree range of 'motion'.

"To aim the device, the receiver is moved [by cables] to intercept signals reflected from different directions by the spherical dish surface." ... "A parabolic mirror would have varying astigmatism when the receiver is off the focal point, but the error of a spherical mirror is the same in every direction."

The limit: "This allows the Telescope to observe any region of the sky in a forty-degree cone of visibility about the local zenith (between −1 and 38 degrees of declination)".

From universe today, "Pluto's orbit is also highly inclined. This means that it doesn't orbit within the same plane as the rest of the Solar System. Instead, Pluto orbits at an angle of 17-degrees."

Arecibo is at latitude 18.3 or so. Not at the equator, but for half a year it's probably tilted more favorably to the middle. Does this make Arecibo even remotely practical for the application?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Argh, the idea that an autonomous spacecraft gather more interesting data than it can possibly transmit back to Earth.

I wonder if they considered lossless _video_ compression approaches, and combining an entire set of images into a single file.

<comment><USER17> Video compression (even lossless) leverages the fact that successive frames are very similar; that's not the case here, as photos can be taken hours apart, in various directions, and in various zoom levels. So you'll get basically the same compression either way...

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > But how can you point stably at Earth with your guidance system shut down?

Why doesn't it stay pointed at Earth - is there something destabilizing it? Solar wind, dust, power source, minutely inexact stabilization?

<comment><USER19> Any little destablisation will cause it to start to move, because there's nothing to react it. By spinning something around its axis of maximum or minimum moment of inertia, you stablise it - like a bullet being rifled.

The destablisation will come from any number of things - minor gravitational inconsistencies, solar wind, dust, heat radiation from the power source, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "between here and pluto there is a very large number of nanoseconds"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8)

</comment><comment><USER21> Funny how it's as slow as the first modems

Of course, the channel adds a lot of noise and attenuation

(I'm not sure the rate they mention is the effective ratio or before Error Correction Codes)

<comment><USER22> 110 or 300 baud were the "first" modems. My first 1200 baud modem just _screamed_. In comparison, of course.

An effective 2000 bits/second from Pluto is the stuff of science fiction. (Actually, even SF from the 50s was full of situations like being out of radio contact with Earth because of distances on the order of an AU or so. With available technology they were probably right).

<comment><USER23> It's mostly a question of power. The 1987 design for the TAU probe communication system would have handled 20 kb/s from 1000 AU... by using between 100 and 260 watts for the transmitter (and relatively big antennas):

[http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-89/89L.PDF](http://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-89/89L.PDF)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Very interesting overall. I like this small factoid, "They can be made even smaller with lossy JPEG compression, but for optical navigation, precision counts; the pictures have to be returned losslessly." I think this implies that the most distant JPEG software is currently in route to Pluto.

<comment><USER25> Use of lossy compression for science imagery is contentious. Because it's hard to characterize how the compression will affect as-yet-unseen science targets, it's hard to get scientists to accept lossy compression.

You _can_ sometimes get acceptance of prioritized downlink -- let automation decide what is most interesting, and downlink that first. Variations on that idea have been used for Mars rovers.

<comment><USER26> I once visited a crackpot aliens-on-the-moon conspiracy website. They were showing zoomed-in images of lunar craters purporting to show regular, artificial-looking features indicating alien activity.

Of course in context I'm sure you can guess what was going on. The images were heavily compressed jpegs and I soon realised the 'regular features' were compression artifacts.

Still, it goes to show why some scientists don't like lossy compression. When you're looking at fine detail it's hard to be sure whether what you're seeing is 'real' or not.

<comment><USER27> So we found a test to separate scientists from crackpots. Just ask what they think about JPEG!

<comment><USER28> [https://xkcd.com/331/](https://xkcd.com/331/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> All of the sudden I have no problem waiting for my town hall to finish upgrading in 2 weeks in clash of clans.

Looks like some people use that same 2 weeks time to do far more important things.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you prefer 'how to' articles to include command line output? - <AUTHOR>

When reading 'how to' articles that require commands to be run at the terminal, do you prefer to see that actual output of the command included in the article, or just the command itself (knowing that you'll see the output when you execute the command)? <comment><USER2> Yes, if the output is not so verbose as to obscure the next command(s). If the article is hypertext, then output could be hidden (in an alternate article version with output, behind a link for each command line to text output or a screenshot, in alt text, etc.)

For the experienced user, command output may be predictable (and for traditional Unix commands, may be of length 0), but for the user unfamiliar with the commands being used, example output can serve as a confirmation that the right command was used, the desired result ensued, etc.

For less-experienced readers, be sure to provide specific commands, rather than falling victim to a recent unfortunate trend to give only a vague text description of the needed commands:

vague: "then install Frobnicate and use it on the frammis."

clear:

        # yum install frobber-tool
    	<example output>

        # frob /dev/frammis
    	<example output>

Test: if a reasonable user would ask how, where, or what, the instructions could be more explicit.

</comment><comment><USER3> I want the output of the command available in the article. I've seen it in show/hide boxes before, but yes, if it's relevant at all, show it.</comment>


Why most people don't succeed – How you can be the exception - <AUTHOR> http://dontgetburnedblog.com/why-most-people-dont-succeed/ <comment><USER2> _Maintenance is boring._

Just a few things I _don't_ think are boring:

      - sinking my teeth into some fresh sweet melon
      - a late afternoon jog in the woods
      - hanging out with friends and family
      - an ice cold beer at the football game
      - an all-you-can-eat salad bar
      - curling up with SO (even if it is a chick flick)
      - a hot shower, freshly brushed teeth, and a warm bathrobe
      - a happy dance after a new program runs the first time

If you think of the things you need to do to live well as "maintenance", they would seem boring, and you won't want to do them.

But if you think of them as "living", you'll embrace them and never give the concept of "maintenance" a second thought.

<comment><USER3> What about these thing, can they be counted as 'living'? Would many people count these as living at all???

      - Periodic management of bank account and making sure you have enough to do
        whatever it is (survive, travel, have fun, etc)

      - Periodic visits to the dentist or doctor for checkups

      - If distance is an issue, periodically calling your mother.
        Not all hackers live in their parents' basement. ;)  This one is a weak example.

      - Mowing the lawn, doing laundry, wash dishes, refill toilet paper, etc...

In addition, there are always trade offs. How about all-you-can-eat mashed potatoes and gravy vs. all-you-can-eat salad? Or slouching on a couch vs. jogging in the woods?

Just wanted to play devil's advocate and point out that it takes a certain mindset and definitely a conscious effort to live well.

<comment><USER4> _"... What about these thing, can they be counted as 'living'? ... it takes a certain mindset and definitely a conscious effort to live well."_

If you have live a sheltered life, yes. The mindset comes from realising the _"living"_ bit and the circumstances you live for most is (often) taken for granted.

<comment><USER3> I was more pointing out that there are maintenance tasks that lean less towards something that would seem to be fun (for most people), such as keeping track of finances. These boring but necessary things are a part of life are simple things to do, but in the spirit with the article, the people who live well don't ignore these boring but necessary tasks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Get honest about your current situation. Rate the following areas of your life on a scale of 1-10: Physical Health, grades, job performance, personal happiness, relationships, financial situation, etc. Then follow up with the question: What would it take to make this area a 10?_

Steve Pavlina (another self-help guru which has gotten posted to HN a bunch) has a great post on why the 7's in your life are particularly pernicious:

 _What you'll find when you leave the comfort of your 7 and go chasing after that 10 is that your 7 was never a 7. It was only a 3.

If you think you're at a 7, you're really at a 3 maximum. The 10 is way, way out there. You think you can see it, but your definition of a 10 is based on your experience of a 7, and you can't even see a real 10 when you're standing at 7. It's beyond your ability to fathom.

If you were to go out and find someone who's actually at a 10 in your area and asked them how you were doing on a scale of 1 to 10, they'd be able to label your 7 accurately as a 3. How would an Olympic gymnast rate your current diet and exercise habits? Are you really at 70% of their level? Ask a couple that seems to be googly in love with each other how they'd rate your relationship? Ask the most motivated, successful person you know how they'd rate your career? Is your 7 really a 7? Or is it a 3?_

[http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get- from-a-7...](http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/07/how-to-get- from-a-7-to-a-10/)

(it's Derek Sivers approved! <http://sivers.org/hellyeah> )

</comment><comment><USER6> Not that the author is wrong -- everything he says meshes with lots of professional medical, health, and life advice. On the other hand, I'm constantly reminded of my grandfather, who ran his own business for something like 40 or 50 years, struggled a lot, raised a family, and never got caught gazing at his navel. He just _worked_.

So, I'm not 100% convinced that this sort of self-obsession is really all that helpful.

On the other hand, he did die pretty much on the job, and at several years younger than he ought to've ...

<comment><USER7> Self-awareness in general is a positive trait.

Surely you'd agree that it's especially helpful to those who, unlike your grandfather, are wondering why they have not yet achieved what they want.

<comment><USER6> Sure, self-awareness is good, usually. He might've been a lot more successful if he had stopped a time or two and really considered things like his strengths and his weaknesses, and figured out that it was good to get people that were good at his weaknesses, and that sort of thing.

But the tongue-in-cheek point is that I'm really beginning to _get_ that all that consideration is just consideration. You still have to do stuff, and the people that I think of as the greatest examples of getting lots of stuff done don't seem to spend too much time dwelling on what they can do different, or on whether it's healthy, or on whether people appreciate it or not.

I can't imagine him wondering anything about his achievements -- even though he probably did occasionally -- because he always seemed to not have the time to wonder about it. He was busy doing stuff instead.

<comment><USER8> So what you're saying is that rather than thinking about how you can be more efficient, it's better to be too busy to think.

<comment><USER6> No, I'm saying exactly what I said.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Super insightful, it's like the quote "you don't know what you've got till it's gone". Humans seem to have to feel pain/hit rock bottom before we can go back up, instead of visually processing what the future holds in store and proactively changing it. It's an interesting cognitive process.

<comment><USER10> > Humans seem to have to feel pain/hit rock bottom before we can go back up,

Hence the value of a difficult childhood.

That's only half joking, most of the guys & girls that succeeded rather early in life had some luggage with them.

<comment><USER11> In my experience most people in general have some luggage with them, once you look past the surface. That's not to say all hardship is created equal, of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See I view "maintenance" as the key to a business. Nothing stands still. Everything is changing all the time. Except for those parts that you nailed once and for all, and that the rest of the world agrees you nailed, which is none of it.

Maintenance is king. Maintenance is the most interesting part of business. Maintenance is the only way that you'll stay in business.

So, you can call maintenance boring, and I love you for it. Because while you're standing still with your "perfect" initial system, I am eating you lunch, drinking your wine, taking your customers, and spending your cash.

</comment><comment><USER13> Lot of us are obsessed with success. It is probably a good idea to define what success is to yourself, and yourself only.

A good exercise is to take 5 minutes and write the things you want in life. I was surprised to find that my list was much smaller than I thought and to the exception of 1 or 2 items everything I could do/have within a short amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER14> My girlfriend just had a problem with her car, which she noticed when it wouldn't start. The oil light had gone on a couple of hundred miles before, and it was an old car. She panicked about how her engine was screwed,and it would cost her multiple thousands of dollars to fix, and I lost it saying how you need to check the oil regularly.

It turned out to be a $25 repair. They replaced a washer.

Sometimes things that look like they require some great, superhuman effort, but end up just involving basic day to day effort.

<comment><USER15> An engine will run a surprisingly long time with little or no oil pressure.

<comment><USER16> Yes it will. But it will have no power and will eventually take half of the car with it when it finally dies (draw your own parallels with life). Trust me, happened to me twice :(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In a talk last year at (I think) the business of software conference, PG said, among other things, that business schools are useless because successful business people don't waste their time teaching business in business schools, and instead either run their business or enjoy the fruits of their success (another song to the tune of "those who can't, teach").

His depiction of university professors accurately describes most bloggers.

<comment><USER18> Here's another take on this: those who are good at teaching, teach and those who are good at blogging, blog. In other words, some people are actually very good at teaching or communicating ideas, even though they may not 'do' them.

<comment><USER17> In reality, there are good teachers and there are bad teachers (and more bad than good).

 _Those who are good at teaching, teach_ implies that somehow teachers are selected by their ability to teach, which is not true. Teachers happen to be teachers for a variety of reasons; but their talent has little to do with the fact that they continue to be teachers.

The case of bloggers is arguably a little different; certainly lack of talent or experience does not prevent people from blogging, but traffic provides at least some objective (if imperfect) measure of success.

But I would expect people who describe the road to world dominance to first document what they really know about it: if they haven't traveled it themselves, have they at least interviewed many successful people? What books have they read before writing anything?

What do they _know_?

<comment><USER18> It also occurs to me that while 'bad' teachers can often still hang on to their jobs (I've had more than my fair share), very few bad entrepreneurs can still hang on to a business!

I guess the point I was trying to make was that some people are very good at teaching (or blogging) even though they may not have necessarily done what they teach about. For example, I've had great teachers - politics teachers, English teachers, professors in law school, etc - who didn't practice what they taught i.e. my high school politics teacher wasn't a politician, my university film studies professor didn't make movies, my law school professors were not practicing lawyers or judges (in fact my contract law professor was brilliant yet had only practised law for a year before turning to academia), etc. So it is conceivable that someone could teach or communicate something of value without having the personal experience of practising the profession they're teaching about.

Having said all that, when it comes to someone making grand statements about what constitute the keys to success, etc this may not be something that you can truly and credibly teach purely based on persoaln observations or academic study (as would seem to be possible regarding subjects such as politics, film and law to repeat the examples given above).

This seems more like someone attempting to teach or make statements about what it takes to successfully climb a mountain. Mountain climbing is one of those subjects - to which I would definitely add building a business - that can't really be taught by someone without personal experience. These are subjects where the 'lab' is the real world, so unless someone has been in the real world, they really don't have helpful lessons to offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Adopt the habits of those you admire the most" - this presumes that those with exceptional qualities are also better at optimizing what they have, and that this optimization is somewhat universally applicable.

I'd say: try to understand the habits of those you admire the most, and try them yourself if it makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER20> This whole process is too self-absorbed for me. There is this urge expressed to focus on things that cannot be measured. So the proffered solution is self- reflection. But just as it is easy for me to conflate reading technical stuff with working, it's also easy for me to find myself reflecting instead of doing.

The solution is measurement. If I want more of X, I need to understand the values of X at time Y such that delta X is always positive. That's where the author and I differ. Without a fuel gauge, I would not know whether or not my car needed attention. My life works like that too.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's not enough to simply decide to keep up with "maintenance" and then do it, because if you are the type of person who lacks the discipline to stick to things, you will unconsciously resist any attempt at change. You need the ability to hack your habits.

I've been trying Giles Bowkett's system for building habits based on the "calendar about nothing" for a couple weeks. It seems promising (for example, two weeks is longer than i usually stick to things), but it's too early to tell. I think the key is to change only one thing at a time, until the habit is locked in.

</comment><comment><USER22> I agree. Maintenance is crucial. Not always fun, but crucial. Really like the last line: "The difference between luck and skill is consistency." Well said.

</comment><comment><USER23> Love this. Well written too.

</comment><comment><USER24> how YOU can be the exception. Because you are. You snow-flake.

<comment><USER25> Sounds like a Fight Club reference.

You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake. You are the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, and we are all part of the same compost pile. ~Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, Chapter 17

Pretty bleak.

Related:

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world. ~Fight Club movie, screenplay by Jim Uhls, directed by David Fincher, novel by Chuck Palahniuk

<comment><USER26> I guess that kind of "screw the rat race" attitude doesn't play well on Hacker News.

<comment><USER27> That's really a good comment. It's not a true/false issue, so thank you for reminding that. Interest for tech doesn't mean screwing the rest of one's life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> There's no trick to it, it's just a simple trick!</comment>


Your life span is written in your DNA, and we're learning to read the code - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612256/want-to-know-when-youre-going-to-die/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Companies like Reinsurance Group of America are already looking into using the epigenetic clock to tweak and personalize risk assessments for life insurance."</comment>


Dan Shapiro: What you probably didn't know about non-disclosure agreements - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/02/15/what-you-probably-dont-know-about-non-disclosure-agreements/

<comment><USER2> Single page view:

[http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/02/15/what-you- probably-...](http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2011/02/15/what-you-probably- dont-know-about-non-disclosure-agreements/?single_page=true)</comment>


US Navy bombs Guam with frozen, dead mice - <AUTHOR> http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/10/01/navy-bombs-guam-dead-mice/?test=latestnews

<comment><USER2> "The solution was to drop the mice into the snakes' natural habitat, the branches of trees in the jungles of Guam. By outfitting the mice with cardboard wings and green party streams, the bait could float down to the jungle and catch on the branches. The result is a hanging, deadly snack for the snakes."

Who says good solutions can't be both low tech and hilarious?

</comment><comment><USER3> This is excellent. I would have preferred a title like "US Navy drops frozen, dead mice in Guam to feed Tylenol to snakes."

<comment><USER4> "Cardboard wings and green party streams" were attached to the mice. Classy.

Here's hoping that The Big Picture has a feature on the sky-party-drug-raver- mice-bait.

<comment><USER5> My hometown of Fort Collins, CO came up with that brilliant idea. GO TEAM!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What could possibly go wrong? These sort of eradication measures always seem to create more problems than they solve.

<comment><USER7> The rub is that apparently the presence of this snake is a result of a human slipup to begin with. Maybe it's just an attempt to clean up after yourself, or maybe it's an attempt to stuff the genie back in the bottle. I feel like it would take a non-trivial depth of understanding to know which way this situation leans.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It would be really interesting on an evolutionary level (though obviously detrimental to Guam's ecosystem) if this resulted in the snake population developing immunity to acetaminophen.

</comment><comment><USER9> Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1705461>

</comment><comment><USER10> I prefer to not give foxnews.com any traffic.

<comment><USER8> <http://i.imgur.com/YQbRH.png></comment></comment>


I bought rubysucks.com - <AUTHOR> Got frustrated with some gem dependency the other day (nokogiri (sp?)) and got fed up. Turns out the domain was open. Now, what to do with it. I have ideas, but they are mostly bad. Any thoughts out there? <comment><USER2> Since you're so opinionated, may I know for how long you worked with Ruby and could you tell a few projects you used it for? Also, what programming language is (or are) the one you feel is making you the most productive at the moment?

</comment><comment><USER3> For now just redirect to python.org

<comment><USER4> Funny but mean.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So you're looking for something like: [https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#Ruby_sucks_because](https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks#Ruby_sucks_because)

This wiki is controversial to me, but sometimes useful.</comment>


Ask HN: Why have a robot to flip burgers? - <AUTHOR> Seems like a Rube Goldberg solution. Why not cook both sides at once like a George Foreman grill?<p>https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/15/miso-scores-10-million-to-bring-its-hamburger-flipping-robot-to-more-restaurants/ <comment><USER2> Better solution that already exists: the Nieco autonomous broiler (Burger King):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHU8kZ2l4Qg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHU8kZ2l4Qg)</comment>


Ohm: we've decided to cancel the campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ohm-a-car-battery-that-never-needs-to-be-jumped#/updates

<comment><USER2> Thank you for being honest about the challenges you have faced with this hardware goal. I'm a little disappointed I won't be getting my Ohm battery, but it is better than promising something you can't deliver or delivering something that wouldn't live up to your promises.

I might be in a different market though, since I specifically wanted an ultra light weight battery for a stripped down street legal race car. Any plans to continue pursuing this market segment? We obviously don't have any high electrical needs beyond simply starting the car and running the on board ECU.

</comment><comment><USER3> Any possibility we could get more details on what went wrong? I'm an EE and had some thoughts when I first heard about the campaign, but I suspended disbelief and gave you guys the benefit of the doubt.</comment>


Codeschool: Try jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://try.jquery.com/

<comment><USER2> Nice, always nice to see new (and free) codeschool courses. I wish Codeschool would do Android course since I found them a bit more entertaining then teamTreehouse.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks great! Congrats to the CodeSchool team. Hopefully this will be a great resource for years to come!</comment>


Show HN: ML Model Recognizes Sketch as you draw it - <AUTHOR> https://www.gradio.app/hub/hub-sketch-recognition <comment><USER2> Mostly everything multiple people have drawn is recognized as "rain".

\- about 10 attempts at drawing some human parts have all been detected as rain

\- a large X is detected 64% as rain

\- the sun is detected 47% as rain

\- the writing "Not Rain" is 95% rain

\- a radio is 18% beach and 8% rain

\- a light bulb is 31% ear, 9% strawberry and 3% cookie

I assure you that the lightbulb and radio are well drawn.

</comment><comment><USER3> Filling in the entire area results in 7% camouflage, 3% tractor, and 2% yoga. Does this reveal any explicit shaping or bias in the data?

</comment><comment><USER4> Hmm it doesn't seem to recognize numbers very well. If the first stroke of 7 is slightly upwards it thinks it is a 3. Example [https://imgur.com/a/Eshy2qm](https://imgur.com/a/Eshy2qm)

</comment><comment><USER5> It knows it's elbow. Not it's ass</comment>


Show HN: Simple Photo Gallery – pretty and simple photo stories - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/haltakov/simple-photo-gallery <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't like any of the existing ways to easily create photo galleries that can tell a story. Amazon Photos, Google Photos or iCloud are easy to use, but not flexible enough for me, when I want to create a photo story from a trip and share it with friends and family.

So, I build Simple Photo Gallery which is a Python tool to create static HTML pages that you can host yourself. The gallery is very customizable, but the defaults allow you to start very quickly.

Feedback is appreciated :)</comment>


RPKI – The required cryptographic upgrade to BGP routing - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki/ <comment><USER2> One of the things Cloudflare describes is their CT log for the RPKI, Cirrus.

I can see why they did that, CT was a huge benefit for the Web PKI and many of the things we did to the Web PKI are things they'd like to see happen for RPKI - more people using it, better technical compliance by issuers, more eyeballs on the problems, CT probably helped with some of those.

But the Web PKI is a vast sprawling mess. CT was necessary _because_ of that mess, we know we can't stop it being a mess, so we needed technology that could cope. The RPKI is neither vast, nor sprawling, nor especially messy.

A big part of what drove improvements to the Web PKI was the effort by people with the power to get things changed. In the case of the Web PKI that's Mozilla, the Mozilla community (since Mozilla is a charity) and to a lesser extent the big commercial vendors, Microsoft, Apple, Google, Oracle. CT was a _tool_ these players could use as part of that work, but on its own it didn't get the job done.

But in RPKI there isn't really an equivalent. Companies like Cloudflare don't have anywhere near the clout to get this done. Even the backbone providers don't. And if we're to expect the RIRs to fix it, they don't need any help getting insight on issuers when they themselves are the issuers.

So, Cirrus isn't hurting anything, but I hope its creators had very limited expectations and expended minimal resources getting it up, because I doubt it's a major part of the solution to our problems either.

<comment><USER3> Is Cirrus mentioned in the blog post? I can't find it.

Right now, the way key compromise might be detected in RPKI is that a human network operator notices a signed object which is obviously suspicious and posts it on a mailing list. This is the same way that CA compromise was detected in the Web PKI before CT.

CT was useful well before Chrome used their weight to make it required for all new certificates because it was no particular burden on a few people (CA or not) who saw a lot of certificates to add them to CT. This gave the people who might not see a lot of certificates but want to find something weird a corpus to dig into.

Same idea applies to RPKI. But yes, setting up Cirrus took very little of my time.

<comment><USER2> You're correct, it's mentioned in the next/ accompanying post [https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki-details/](https://blog.cloudflare.com/rpki- details/)

Some small corrections if I may

1\. I don't know of any issuer key compromises detected with CT. Such compromises are rare. DigiNotar is an obvious example, but can you think of any recent ones? Mostly CA incompetence is more subtle that "Oops we left the root keys on a train" and I'd hope the same is true for RIRs.

2\. Technically CT is still not required. You can choose to obtain certificates which aren't logged from a CA that will issue them without logging. Neither Google nor Mozilla require you to log all certificates as a condition of their root programmes and both recently confirmed they do not intend to make that a requirement. Chrome will mark your cert as untrustworthy if it hasn't got an SCT and so it would always make sense to log certificates for a site Chrome users will access on the public Web, but not every TLS certificate is for a web site accessed with Chrome.

[ Also, Google actually makes use of the fact that certs can exist without being logged for some systems. Suppose they're about to launch amazing.example.com, but even the Amazing name would give away what it is. They can order the cert for amazing.example.com with no logging and stockpile it, and when the brass signs off on actually announcing Amazing they log this cert, almost instantly getting back SCTs, and configure a suitably modern web server to send the SCTs separately alongside the certificate. Where ordering a certificate internally might take hours or days, these final steps can be done in a few minutes and need no special permission. Any subscriber whose CA is willing to issue unlogged certificates can do this, but just make sure you have all the steps correct or you'll look really dumb, even Google got this wrong at least once since they began doing it ]

[edited to fix typo that reversed my meaning]

<comment><USER3> > I don't know of any issuer key compromises detected with CT. Such > compromises are rare. DigiNotar is an obvious example, but can you think of > any recent ones?

Not key compromise, but general mis-issuance:

Facebook detected overreach by a vendor with CT: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-graph/early- impac...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the-graph/early-impacts-of- certificate-transparency/1709731569266987/)

AGL detected certs that were malformed in various ways: [https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/08/01/ctpilot.html](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2013/08/01/ctpilot.html)

> Technically CT is still not required.

It produces an interstitial, see: [https://invalid-expected- sct.badssl.com/](https://invalid-expected-sct.badssl.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We've known about BGP hijacking attacks for 20 years and they only seem to be an issue now. In my day, kids would inject routes using spoofed RIP UDP packets from dial-up pools that would get redistributed into the global routing tables. I haven't 'sho ip' anything'ed in more than a decade, but it appears that 20 years later, you can still just compromise a router and announce whatever you want.

The threat model has changed, where then you could send some spam or harvest passwords for shell logins, today we have things like millions of dollars in piles of electronic cash sitting around relatively unprotected and untraceable, a hyper-polarized political environment where people believe they need strong anonymity protections to participate, and the ability to scale the C&C functions for botnets to where they now resemble private darknets.

All the real action seems to be happening in software defined networks in the cloud these days, but it all still depends on this legacy internet infrastructure.

I'm glad CloudFlare is doing this. Someone needed to take the initiative. It was one of those things where it was everybody's problem, which meant it was nobody's problem.

<comment><USER5> It turns out that most upstream providers have route filters, so you can't just announce whatever you want...

I do remember those days in the 90's, though. I worked at a small ISP, and a coworker blackholed a few spammers by just announcing their route and sending all traffic to Null0. This was back in the Cisco 4000 days, when a full routing table could fit in 32 megs. If I recall, our upstream was Sprintlink and they didn't do any filtering at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The reason that the existing BGP setup is so barebones (that is, lacking in any meaningful security beyond simple route filtering) is because introducing more complexity is failure-prone... and not just from error or misconfiguration either. Outages, propagation, malice... there are a lot of ways in which this could break and make things less reliable than they are now.

My main concern is censorship. This would allow the RiRs, via revocations or failures-to-renew a cert for a given address space, to knock a network off of the internet without further human intervention on the part of the peers to which the censored party is directly connected.

Give them this tooling, and their national governments or militaries will demand its use when they are sufficiently angered, agitated, or threatened.

Can you really imagine the US military or DoJ not demanding RiRs use such a tool against e.g. an AS hosting Wikileaks or Snowden files or The Shadow Brokers?

I'm not sure that the current insecure BGP model is broken _enough_ to warrant introducing this new cryptographic fail-closed failure mode.

</comment><comment><USER7> So who gets the signing authority in this proposed/upcoming RPKI?

<comment><USER8> The five Regional Internet Registries (ARIN, APNIC, LACNIC, AFRINIC and RIPE NCC), who are responsible for registering IP addresses and AS Numbers in their respective regions. They have the authoritative information on who is the legitimate holder of a resource, so it fits the model.

<comment><USER6> So this means that the national governments/militaries of the countries in which those entities are located would then have the practical ability to force a revocation that causes someone's routes to become invalid? This seems like a giant legal SPoF for censorship.

<comment><USER9> ISTM if these entities were a threat of that sort, they would have already caused problems? Besides ARIN, none of them are really under the control of any one nation, are they?

<comment><USER6> Nothing the RiRs do right now immediately affects routing on the internet. There is a patchwork of systems, some automatic, some manual, that eventually converge their authority onto the routers that actually do the routing.

This proposal turns that system (which mostly works well) into a a system that has somewhat centralized algorithmic control. If routers enforce valid signed records for routing, suddenly the RiRs have an instant, practical power they did not have before.

<comment><USER8> First of all, BGP routing doesn't work that well at all. There's thousands of BGP hijacks per year [1]; the ones you read about in the news are just the most noteworthy. There are tons of smaller and larger outages because of fat fingering and misconfigurations RPKI can help protect against.

Secondly, the RIRs also have the ability to revoke IP address allocations and AS numbers, as well as whois database objects and IRR route objects. An RPKI resource certificate is just a different representation of an RIR resource registration, it's not going to make the difference you claim.

Then, it would also be fairly stupid of a government to abuse a system that is designed to protect the internet from hijacking of critical infrastructure for censorship purposes. The RIRs have done extensive outreach to make this clear to their respective governments. Still, as soon as a government would try a stunt like this, the networking community would simply walk away from this technology in an instant.

Most importantly though, a revoked or expired certificate would result in a BGP announcement with the status 'unknown', as if the operator doesn't participate in the system and the route were never signed in the first place. The route would never become invalid, and thus unreachable.

[1] [https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/01/14000-incidents...](https://www.internetsociety.org/blog/2018/01/14000-incidents-2017-routing- security-year-review/)

<comment><USER6> Revoking an IP or AS allocation doesn't actually immediately stop anyone from using it in practice, though, until their peers stop treating them as valid (which is not instantaneous upon RiR fiat).

The networking community would not walk away from abuse in a literal instant, though. It would take days at a minimum, while censorship _would_ occur instantly. It may be a single use weapon but it is still a weapon.

I am not sure that BGP is broken enough to warrant the signing of allocations (or, more specifically, to fail-closed on unsigned/expired allocations).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nothing will change until there is a significant attack on BGP resulting in widespread network outages.

<comment><USER11> Like these events?

[https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2010/11/how-c...](https://arstechnica.com/information- technology/2010/11/how-china-swallowed-15-of-net-traffic-for-18-minutes/)

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/13/suspicious_bgp_even...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/12/13/suspicious_bgp_event_routed_big_traffic_sites_through_russia/)

<comment><USER10> Never assume malice when incompetence suffices.</comment></comment></comment>


No Invitation [webgl demo] - <AUTHOR> http://arkt.is/no-invitation/ <comment> huy-nguyen Maybe add a warning message or something for the sound? It just came blaring out of nowhere when I pressed the demo button.

</comment><comment><USER2> Doesn't load on Vivaldi, slow as fuck on Firefox. It takes forever to load on my fibre connection .. didn't do a network inspect, but I suspect it's a huge payload. Seems kinda gimmicky, not really a good demo.</comment>


Ask HN: How much equity to give to a mentor? - <AUTHOR> I am boot-strapping a B2C company. This started as a pet project, but the prospects are very good. I can probably get a seed $100K-200K on my own.
I a senior developer, not a good net-worker, so basically a no-body.
I have connected with a very accomplished and friendly potential mentor,  post-CEO, post-acquisition, connected with VCs, similar sector.
We haven't really discussed anything, but i am wondering how much is a decent equity offer for his time.
It would be great for him to evangelize the company and connect me to VCs. He is not interested in any operational role. I also get a good mental boost every time I talk to him.
The company could potentially hit 9 figures. So its exciting. <comment><USER2> You might just consider asking them directly, see how much they want. My mentors refused to take equity; that might be the case with yours as well.

But once they give you a number, the formula is 1/(1 - n)

Meaning if they take 0.5%, they should increase the value of the company by 0.503%

If just the motivational value of talking to them can increase the value of the company by that much, then it's a good deal.

Also from personal experience, someone who has a little financial incentive will go out of their way to help you. Often they do anyway, but they do it for multiple people. If they have a little ownership, they'll prioritize it more.

</comment><comment><USER3> Good job on getting a product going! Having a solid advisory team that inspires you and motivates you through the ups and downs of a startup is very important. This individual will hopefully help you stay focused along the way.

A common custom would be to treat her as a strategic advisor, offering 0.1-1% equity, with vesting. Try to have some understanding of how much time they can commit to and on what frequency.

An example doc is [https://fi.co/fast](https://fi.co/fast), but if you google for "startup advisor agreements" you'll find a few similar standard docs.

<comment><USER4> I support the fi.co/fast, but I personally think it's a bit too in favor of the startup, and real world advisory agreements may require much less effort from the advisor.

For example the 1% is at idea stage and requires 20h/mo = avg 1h/day, which is an insane amount.

It's more realistic to have a consistent 30min call/mo, and maybe a few extra hours when the advisor is really needed, for example if you're brainstorming an idea, or executing on a launch. And maybe it's worth giving them a 0.5% even for this apparently small amount of time.

That's also more realistic for you, because you want to be prepared to talk to your advisors, and having too many interactions is just too distracting.

Vesting, I've seen it many time as 2y no cliff vs the classical 4y + 1y cliff for employees/founders. If you know the advisor already and she already provided value, you have no reason to require a cliff.

Again, I support the fi.co/fast, and I'm not saying to not go with that as a start, mine are just negotiation points to close a good advisor. Finding good advisors is hard, they might have little time, and they may refuse the engagement if it seems too heavy from the get go.

<comment><USER3> I mentioned fi.co/fast as an example of an advisor agreement, rather than endorsing its exact recommendations. I should've been more clear on that.

Many of the points you raise sound very reasonable. Thanks for sharing them!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The more you offer the more you need to tie it to deliverables.

There are limitations on what a person can do without a license to raise money on contingency but you can set goals of X number of introductions to venture capitalists as a criteria for earning equity.

I tend to like offering 1-3% to a really accomplished person if it's very early and they can commit time to the company.

If it's later stage 0.25 - 1% is more common.

You can also pay an Advisor with cash and lower the amount of equity.

What do you need this person for?

<comment><USER6> If you need to set your mentor performance-metrics, u should probably find yourself someone else (I am not the down-voter). Also, 1% for later-stage? post-VC? sounds very high.

I like this article, which describes 3 different scenarios

[https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/how-much-equity-should- you-...](https://www.inc.com/john-rampton/how-much-equity-should-you-give-to- a-mentor.html)</comment></comment>


PHP IteratorAggregate getIterator() should be static? (Seems sensible to me...) - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=63092

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course this being PHP maybe there's an equivalent interface I'm not aware of...</comment>


Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/09/08/dziuba_chrome/

<comment><USER2> it had to be said.</comment>


Ask HN: Learning a New Language Effectively - <AUTHOR> I'm trying to learn Esperanto, but I found that Duolingo jumps directly into translations and vocabulary. Is there a good way to learn a new language from a more theoretical point of view i.e. by understanding the foundational principles upon which it was designed?<p>I would also appreciate recommendations for experimental languages with interesting syntactic/semantic properties that I can explore. <comment><USER2> You need:

1\. A desire to learn it. Learn to shape that desire. Like I want to go to Colombia to talk to hot girls, etc. It can be a straight grind at times, so you want to feel like it's gonna be worth it.

2\. Start learning phrases you can use from day 1. Pimsleur is good because it teaches you almost perfect pronunciation from the beginning. Pronunciation is more important in some languages than others, but most importantly it gets you in the mindset/vibe of that language.

3\. Structured lessons. Duolingo is alright just to start. Assimil is good once you're around A2 or higher. It would be good, as another person mentioned, to learn the general grammatical structure. You don't need to be a wiz, but you will have enough to _infer_ the correct way to construct what you want to say.

4\. Natural exposure. Go to a language meetup, have a regular Skype tutoring session twice or 3 times a week. Or of course go live in the country. This makes speaking it part of your life.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Is there a good way to learn a new language from a more theoretical point > of view i.e. by understanding the foundational principles upon which it was > designed?_

No. Schools follow this method. I doubt anyone acquired a language in school.

I have acquired 3~4 languages, having practically nothing in common, before ever going to school at age six. (Kabyle, French, Algerian, and Arabic. Algerian is a mix of Arabic, Kabyle, French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, and Arabic but with a structure closer to Hebrew than to Modern Standard Arabic, and is unintelligible in the "Arab world")

What has worked for me is content consumption. Reading/watching/listening to content in my target language about topics that interest me. I will read about whatever I usually read about, just in my target language.

Language acquisition can be tedious, doing it through topics that do not interest you is a sure way to give up.

</comment><comment><USER4> The scope of Duolingo is very limited. I think it's well established that most courses get you to somewhere around A2, B1 at best, which is just enough to be a bit challenging, but not enough to make you able to expand your knowledge on your own.

</comment><comment><USER5> >Is there a good way to learn a new language from a more theoretical point of view i.e. by understanding the foundational principles upon which it was designed?

Languages (apart maybe from Esperanto) are not designed but evolve organically.

</comment><comment><USER6> I can't really say this advice applies that well to Esperanto, but my experience which seems shared by Youtuber polyglots [1] [2] is as such:

1) Grammar tables. You don't have to memorize them, but getting "Pareto proficiency" with all the grammar concepts makes everything go so much easier. Tae Kim's guide for Japanese is the holy grail of this, despite having some minor issues. A good textbook serves the same purpose but you have to skip the fluff

2) Reading, news articles to books, social media, etc. The more personally interesting, the better. Look up every word.

3) Conversation, even if its just other learners, for me once I use a word in a conversation it never leaves me

Things that didn't seem effective for me: listening (sorry Pimsleur), Anki (never sticks), practice/review sections of textbooks

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3wiEHX8QdU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3wiEHX8QdU)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjZMomXs35Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjZMomXs35Q)

<comment><USER7> I wish more language textbooks were set up like classical language textbooks - I have Wheelock for Latin, Groton for Greek. Grammar and authentic texts. Both have companion volumes with more authentic texts.</comment></comment>


Unwrapping the Android 11 Beta, plus more developer updates - <AUTHOR> https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2020/06/unwrapping-android-11-beta-plus-more.html <comment><USER2> I understand where the permission settings and awareness comes from. But I hope they find a way of making the user not have to manage them so much. It's a pain in 10 to click on a link and being asked every time "one time or always?" And if you want to choose always then being taken to the settings screen to have to change it there. Why can't I choose that with one button tap where the question comes up? Like it used to be.

When less experienced users are taken away from what they are doing to choose an option they are not so sure what it means, they get lost.

I just want to use my phone in a fluid way, I don't want to have to be an Android Admin to click on a twitter link.</comment>


Windows 8 users can't employ their own images as Start Screen's background - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2012/01/26/microsoft-windows-8-users-cant-employ-their-own-images-as-start-screens-background/

<comment><USER2> I'm fine with that if it stops vendors customising windows too much. There's nothing worse than removing Acer or Dell branding from a new laptop.

<comment><USER3> It stops users from placing disproportionately stretched cellphone-made jpeg photos of their kids as a metro background.</comment></comment>


Networks of major Australian political parties affected by cyber attack - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2019/feb/18/morrison-shorten-coalition-labor-budget-politics-live <comment><USER2> Convenient timing considering the biggest state and federal election are coming within 2 months.

It's also a bit rich from a Parliament which only had recently voted to water down cybersecurity in Australia and throw the tech industry under a bus so they could pretend to be tough on crime when it's more about outing political leaks and whistleblowers.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you meant this link?: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/feb/18/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/feb/18/australia-political-parties-hacked-sophisticated-state-actor)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really wish they would name the 'sophisticated state actor', I don't understand why they don't make that part public. I'm guessing it's either Russia or China, but I still wish they would name the state actor.

<comment><USER5> you think thats frustrating?

We (the business I work for) had ASIO come around, indicate that they should be meeting with top level execs, then claim in that meeting that they are aware that an external sovereign actor has hacked our network and is inside stealing our data etc.

They then refused to answer _any_ questions about how they know this, when it happened, where it happened, how long they've known or anything AT ALL useful or precise or accurate about how we could protect ourselves.

All it did was cause rampant distrust in every direction.

I have a very low opinion of these bastards and deeply suspect them of sewing FUD deliberately in businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder if this is linked to the case of Huang Xiangmo, who spit the dummy after his residency visa was revoked:

[https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/feb/12/austr...](https://www.theguardian.com/australia- news/2019/feb/12/australia-is-a-giant-baby-banned-billionaire-huang-xiangmo- says)

</comment><comment><USER7> We'd hate to leave you unprotected over Christmas, so we're going to pass these crazy laws to secretly hack all your machines, for security! You can have complete trust in us, we're the government!

Ooops, our pants fell down again!

</comment><comment><USER8> Curious that the announcement came from the PM and not the Minister for Home Affairs.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, right?

Maybe they lost the specifics of that pesky Paladin contract as collateral damage from the hackers' actions.</comment></comment>


NYC Covid-19 cases now growing at cubic rate - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/OccupyWallSt/status/1243868244676448256/photo/1 <comment><USER2> Wrong. There is no explanation why a cubic function should be correct and better fitting than an exponential function to another basis, therefore I must assume this is incorrect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well cubic is at least much better than exponential.</comment>


Show HN: New Sub-Reddit for Hardware Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure what the needs of the Hardware startup community are but I'm not a fan of the super specific subreddits. /r/startups isn't really that subscribed or busy, why not just post articles there?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, this is fair point, but if you saw what we're seeing in HardwareLand, you'd see that we very underrepresented and feel VERY different from the standard startup crowd.

There's some similarities that HN does very well on - general lean startup stuff, etc., but HN will never be a community that up-votes "How to manufacture in China" type articles more than "How to Deploy X web stack in Y way" ones.

<comment><USER3> I agree 100%. Here are some other hardware related subreddits I follow.

ECE

\</comment></comment></comment><comment>-

<http://www.reddit.com/r/electronics>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/ECE>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/AskElectronics>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/DSP>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/ECEComponentExchange>

RF

\----

<http://www.reddit.com/r/RTLSDR>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/GNURadio>

<http://www.reddit.com/r/rfelectronics>

Maker

\</comment><comment>---

<http://www.reddit.com/r/maker>

<comment><USER4> My favorite: <http://www.reddit.com/BuildaPC>

Something that most folks can do, and get a better product for the same dollars. Not to mention gaining many of the advantages about learning hardware as programming gives you on software.

<comment><USER5> i subscribed for a while, but it's mostly about what's the fastest video card per dollar. blah.

the rest are talking about actually making things, this one is about buying stuff. not the same thing at all.

do you really think building a pc gives insight into programming!?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is a great idea. I grew up around fab-houses in China and I can say it definitely takes much more effort to even get a prototype down in the States. The cost of parts alone is ridiculous and probably off-putting to newcomers.

It's a real shame, since there's so much talent here that could be building amazing new hardware, but we end up just waiting for big companies like Google to tell us what the next platform will be.

I'll definitely be subscribing to this subr and coming to some meetups. Hell, we can organize bulk orders and get cheaper parts from China!

</comment><comment><USER7> Exciting! I'm glad you are trying to start something up. Maybe a more dedicated site would foster a stronger community later down the line. Are there any existing places that do this?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I'm with you. I'm actually an awful web developer, so I figured I'd gauge interest with a sub-Reddit. There's a ton of room for resources (see below).

On July 30th in SF I'm organizing an "Map-a-thon" to put together a hardware resources map (like where to buy electronics, metal, etc. locally) for the SF area using a simple gMaps embed and some KMLs.

There also needs to be a "CrunchBase for hardware" because no one tags things "hardware" - it's always "fitness", "maker" or whatever category they're targeting.

We're also doing a survey soon to get some case studies on how people are building these companies.

Finally, we're looking at putting together a knowledge base for how to make things like "How to Design for Injection Molding" - etc. It's easy to find "How to Build X in Rails" tutorials - we need the same for our community.

<comment><USER7> This is super interesting to me as an Industrial design student masquerading as a Web designer. Unfortunately I am on the East Coast, but if there is any way I can help with this idea let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool - where are you located? There's an NYC event this Thursday actually:

<http://www.meetup.com/NY-Hardware-Start-up>

DM me your info: twitter.com/nickpinkston)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're in San Francisco tonight it looks like there's a hardware meetup at 6:30pm:

"Special Hardware Event: A Night with OpenROV" <http://www.meetup.com/HardwareStartupSF/events/72306272/>

(via the link from @nickpinkston)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I'll be there! It's at TechShop San Francisco - so you can check that out as well. Great stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is a terrific idea! Consider me a subscriber already and hopefully a contributor soon too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome dude - please do contribute! I seeded it and will continue to, but of course it's all about the community we've got to build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> this is a fantastic idea. I've lived in hardware startup land for a while, and the needs are very specific there :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'd love to get any feedback you guys have on this!

</comment><comment><USER11> Score! Posted mine. [http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/comments/x3axm/heres_my_s...](http://www.reddit.com/r/hwstartups/comments/x3axm/heres_my_senior_design_project_im_trying_to_turn/)</comment>