Ask HN: What are you working on right now? - <AUTHOR>

What are you working on right now?
I'll start...  I am working for as a contractor for a company that sends messages (phone calls, text messages, and emails) for schools and businesses.  Currently I'm working on an android app that is a front end for they system.
in my spare time i work on a side project... search engine with integrated social bookmarking http://www.searchstream.co <comment><USER5> I'm selling the majority of my stuff and prepping my condo for sale. I expect my employer to go out of business soon and I have to leave the USA once that happens (my work permit is non-transferable and the green card application didn't work out).

<comment><USER6> Wow, that sounds like a bummer. I'm really sorry to hear that. May the future hold better luck for you.

<comment><USER5> Well, it would totally suck if we were carrying any unsecured debt. Luckily we live below our means so we have (some) money banked.

So I'm considering taking the family for a 6 month world tour (while I'm still young enough to handle it)... if we're frugal we might be able to stretch it out to a full year.

Guess I better put "get homeschool materials" on my todo list eh?

<comment><USER7> Do it. My parents took me (and my siblings) out of school at age 14 for four months in Asia (three months in China, rest of the time in Thailand, Malaysia, HK) and it was a great experience. Already had an appreciation of it but grew up with a massive appreciation of travelling to new places and seeing different parts of our planet. Will always be thankful for my parents having done that for us.

Have been back to China twice since, Thailand a few more times, etc.

<comment><USER8> My parents are totally opposite, I have only visited two states of my country (excluding the state where I live i.e. the awesomest gujarat). So now I totally lack any enthusiasm for traveling.

But I hadn't realized it till you pointed your enthusiasm out. Umm... don't know whether to thank you or hate you from my guts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Currently working on a Super Nintendo Emulator in Java for my senior project in college.

The intent is to make it easy to embed the emulator as an applet and link it to a ROM, save states, etc. so visitors to your site can play an SNES game at a point of your choosing (IE a blog post talking about the atmosphere of Zeal in Chrono Trigger with accompanying demo).

We're also hoping to allow Javascript to receive information about what is happening inside of the game, and possibly to interact with the emulator or respond to certain events (IE someone makes a monitor for a specific game that triggers events on, say, the player beating a level).

<comment><USER10> FYI, there's a project called JSNES where someone ported a NES emulator to JS / canvas, complete with audio!

<http://benfirshman.com/projects/jsnes/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The control system for the automated Heat Exchange Recirculating Mash System[1] my brother, my dad, and I are building. We're trying to introduce some repeatability into our home beer brewing experiments.

The biggest surprise so far has been just how time-consuming and expensive it is to source and buy food grade materials & equipment that can withstand up to 80 °C. Even with heat-resistent plastics instead of stainless steel, we're still spending over $1000 on this part of the set-up alone.

Code is very early stage, but what I have so far is here: <http://github.com/paulbaumgart/mash-lauter-control> (mostly I've been working on the electrical components up to this point).

[1] An example of the type of system (and a strong influence on our designs) can be found here: <http://powersbrewery.home.comcast.net/~powersbrewery/>

</comment><comment><USER12> Today was my last day at Microsoft. I'm taking time off to work on an XBOX indie game, and also the 3D engine I've been tinkering with on and off for 9 years.

</comment><comment><USER13> "What are you working on" was the standard conversation starter at the Startup School mixers. It's amazing how there are so many makers; makes me feel like the world's being improved every second.

<comment><USER14> I'm glad I'm not the only one who noted that! That's one of the things that struck me: in "regular" settings, the usual question is "what do you do?"; at Startup School, it was always "what are you working on?".

Subtle but telling difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Freshman CS.

"job": homework, trying to improve my grades. personal: implementation of MIDAS [1].

[1] <http://web.mit.edu/zacka/www/midas.html>

<comment><USER16> Looks like MIDAS has the party touch. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Creating public profile pages for Notifo.com services and projects. We are lucky to have an active developer community and unfortunately our current system of having to manually link up ( <http://notifo.com/services> ) cool projects and services we find is getting to be cumbersome. Service accounts will be able to provide screenshots/video and detailed description/setup info for their service. Developers that build projects (as we like to call them.. usually many notifo related things on github, cpan, etc) can setup a public project profile as well.

As for why I'm doing that, it's to address a common FAQ - "how do I subscribe to this service?" We want to give services a page to describe that and more. Kinda like your typical Add-on/Extension Gallery found at the likes of Mozilla, Chrome, et cetera.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm trying to get my side project launched for the November Startup Sprint thing. I'm building an app to help make life easier for people with Diabetes (my wife is a Type I): <http://diabeti.ca>

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm learning C++ so I can get a job. I've been programming since 1976, doing C since 1987 and embedded C since 2001 but there are more job ads for COBOL than C programmers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Working on my next Android game, hopefully it will come out this week - <USER2> Thursday ;)

Then going back to do some updates to my other games.

In my personal experiences in the Android market, the more polish I put on my games, the more they sell. Hoping to keep the ball rolling.

<comment><USER21> Awesome, could share your experiences regarding selling Android apps (Hours put in to sales made)?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Still:

<http://getmetricmail.com> \- An easy way to receive Google Analytics reports.

<comment><USER23> Very cool. I may have missed this but is there a way to share the links? It doesn't seem like I can add multiple recipient email addresses and the links only seem to work for my google account as far as I can tell. I guess I'd have to change the recipient to an inbox that forwards to multiple people?

<comment><USER22> You can just share the link. Also, the "multiple recipient" feature is nearly there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Working on startup <http://www.estate3d.com>, a place where anyone can have their physical building/premises created in 3D for the Google Earth 3D buildings layer and/or embedded on their site.

</comment><comment><USER25> Current fun project is an RPG played over the phone. You can try it by calling (415) 689-9751 (while my minutes last). It uses Twilio and static XML hosted on GitHub. Adding to the story is as easy as forking and making a pull request.

<http://github.com/abraham/audio-rpg/>

</comment><comment><USER26> Working on a new platform to crank out several new product prototypes.

Otto ( <http://github.com/mathgladiator/otto> ) = CouchDB replication to node.js

WIN ( <http://github.com/mathgladiator/win> ) = overly simple node.js web framework

Longbeard ( <http://longbeardstudios.com/> ) = simple UI framework for engineers/scientists/longbeards like myself.

</comment><comment><USER27> Djangy.com - Instant deployment and scaling for django apps. Currently in private beta.

<comment><USER28> sounds a lot like janky, which is slang for slipshod

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Currently working on synchronising information across a wide area network when the updates are streaming in to all machines from various sources. Application is soft real-time and semi-safety-critical.

Also working on an alternative to the (extended/unscented/whatever) Kalman Filter the better to detect and track fast moving objects in cluttered environments.

Also working on

\+ a web site for my local math association

\+ write-up of a 1800 dimensional optimisation problem

\+ write-up of a variant data structure

\+ write-up of P vs NP

\+ write-up of a real-world example of a fold catastrophe

\+ finishing the analysis of the routines people sent me ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1404347> )

I've also got a dozen other projects mothballed, ready to be re-started when the time is right.

But this week I'm mostly organising the MathsJam weekend. We've got 60 paid-up delegates and now 20 submitted talks. We can accommodate 120 people (and possibly stretch to 150) and need 30 to 40 talks. Money comes in, contracts to sign, people to cajole, all in the name of a weekend of fun.

Hope it works ...

</comment><comment><USER30> Document sorter, in perl, written with fuzzy searches, data extraction, and Baysean filtering, along with various other tricks that I haven't seen used in other document categorization systems. Should help with my paper load.

Also, and XML based (actively using namespaces/xpath/xslt, so json wouldn't cut it) network documentation and configfile creation system, as everything else I've seen out there sucks or is limited/nonextensible.

</comment><comment><USER31> Hacking on mrdoob's Three.js / WebGL:

<http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/three/three-obj-3.png>

[http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/three/examples/obj_convert_test...](http://alteredqualia.com/tmp/three/examples/obj_convert_test.html)

<http://github.com/alteredq/three.js>

</comment><comment><USER32> Improvements to my app <http://TheWikiGame.com>, making more "game types" like "Speed Race", "Least Clicks", "5 Clicks to Jesus", etc. After that, iPhone/Android apps for the game.

<comment><USER33> This is so great! My siblings and I invented "5 Clicks to Jesus" (as I'm sure many have) during some drunken family gatherings over the past two years. I had been vowing to sit down and code it when I got some free time, but you just saved me the trouble. Hats off!

PS Have you ever thought about analyzing the wikipedia graph to make the game more interactive? (I study combinatorics.) I thought it would be fun to have the game give you feedback ("Warmer! Colder!") as you muddle through.

<comment><USER32> Awesome, thanks! I love hearing about people who invented the game - <USER3> tell me all the time, "hey, I invented that!" :-) I certainly did not invent the game, but I'm determined to make something awesome out of it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I work for a telecom company as a web developer during the day. (PHP/MySQL/Joomla/XHTML/CSS/JS/jQuery).

Finishing up some work for a side job now. If any of you guys need some reasonably inexpensive web dev work, let me know, side work is my way of drumming up $ to launch a side project and provides my traveling/leisure budget as well :).

<comment><AUTHOR> can u give an idea what reasonably inexpensive means?

<comment><USER34> Send an email to firstname.lastname@example.com and I'd be happy to talk with you.

<comment><USER34> Any reason this was downvoted? Typically in the 40-60/per hour range depending upon the work, if your objection was to me not posting this.

<comment><USER35> It was probably downvoted because people like numbers and formulas upfront versus having to email you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> <http://www.glancely.com/> Instant Etsy Search

Also: <http://www.bigcrumbs.com/> Cash Back Shopping

Oh, and I work at a bank. I don't sleep much.

<comment><USER37> I can't express how much I despise Etsy. Good luck.

<comment><USER38> Why?

<comment><USER37> There is a vast amount of discontent in the Etsy community, and this has been the case as long as I've been involved (2006). The complaints of their customers apply to nearly every area of the company and are well-founded.

<comment><USER39> Interesting. Etsy was the idea I had years before they actually did it, and always regretted not following it up.

Hmm...

<comment><USER37> A large number of Etsy imitators have sprung up (ArtFire, CraftIsArt, Cargoh, Bonanza, SilkFair, Zibbet, Folksy, etc.) but none of them seem to be particularly great to me.

Etsy is pissing off their best customers every month, and thousands have already left in disgust. They have a large lead in terms of size and funding, but they don't seem particularly capable of getting anything done. The market is definitely ready for a polished craft market with decent management and good marketing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Trying to get a bunch of features released for <http://verbapp.com/>. Just launched <http://hellohype.com/> and need to start getting the word out about it. Also need to release an iPhone app I made. Rebuilding my blog (using HTML5 and a whole bunch of fun new things). Getting the plans together with a co- founder for a secret new startup. Designing a whole new brand/site design for a current startup (and sorting out some founder issues with it). Oh and my day job (UI/UX designer). I think that's about it (apart from a bunch of tiny projects, like a font I'm halfway through creating).

<comment><USER41> Hey, I looked at <http://verbapp.com> and couldn't help but notice the text is generally a little small. I initially was struggling to read it. I opened up inspector and started fiddling. Would you ever consider doing it a bit more like this - <http://i.imgur.com/ic5F8.png> \- or is it intentionally neat?

<comment><USER40> I've been redesigning the homepage (one of the many new things that need to be deployed). As monitor resolutions get higher I think font sizes will go up (there's certainly a trend that way). I'll have a bit more of a think about what's acceptable. Thanks for bringing that up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am working on a CMS that is "data first, design next". There is a large number of people saying people hate filling up forms. They hate wizards. But existing apps compounded the problem instead of solving it. Applications like Squarespace and Weebly are design first. This is where my app differs. I make it mandatory to have a required minimum data like images and company profile ready before they dive in to create a simple website.

I will be releasing this app in a few weeks. Thank you for asking. Bookmark <http://getsetweb.in>

I am located in Mumbai, India.

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://Spojit.com> We're trying to make it easier to create and share your online business card/identity when you meet people at events. We want to make it more seamless than the two-handed exchanges of business cards that happen at events - and you gotta do it and repeat with so many people ! Spojit is about to go into alpha very soon. Do sign up for an invite if you wish to help us test out the alpha version.

</comment><comment><USER44> <http://profquotes.feedladder.com> \- funny prof quote app

Similar to an idea I showed earlier on HN (<http://laughlitmus.feedladder.com>), I'm basically trying to generalize this as a "Reddit for tweets" to create a collaboratively made twitter feeds. Idea being others could make a group-administered feed on a particular subject.

</comment><comment><USER45> I'm working on a series of tutorials that teach web designers how to take their skills to the iPhone and iPad and start building native iOS apps. Each tutorial will go through the full process of designing one screen of a fictional app in Photoshop and then taking that mockup and building the interface using UIKit. Both the PSD and Xcode projects will be included and each tutorial will cost less than most computer books.

</comment><comment><USER46> K&Rv2! Since I had issues with University (got admitted into one, but had visa constraints and missed the resumption date), I'm at home for a year (yet, again).

So, I'm going to spend this time (against my mother's better judgement, until she finds me some work or something when she's tired of me being in the house) learning C properly, learning assembly, and so on.

But, so far, just K&R :)

</comment><comment><USER7> Mostly doing client work but put up a personal site to summarise my side- projects and also built this one afternoon the other week:

<http://languagesplit.com/>

Had never built a bookmarklet before and not sure if it's too embarrassingly basic to try and promote, or worth doing more with. Would appreciate any suggestions/feedback.

<comment><USER47> While it looks nice, I'm not so sure about learning a language by using Google Translate.

The results produced are not always examples of good writing.

<comment><USER7> Oh, it wouldn't really be a primary method of learning a language, more like a supplement. e.g., take a course or online program at night, then at work you run this on some news articles for practice just to extend yourself on certain words.

I know very little Spanish but just by reading Cormac McCarthy books (which have some dialogue in Spanish only) I have picked up a few extra words and certainly enough to have a rough idea of what is being said in those books.

Thanks very much for taking the time to look at it though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Currently, I am working on homework: representing a sudoku puzzle instance in a knowledge representation description language. Next I will study for a midterm in another class until I can't manage to stay awake any more or 6 AM arrives, whichever comes first.

At 6 AM, I will shower and go to work as a software developer where I'm transitioning to building a Windows application in .NET after working in web development (PHP, JS) in all of my previous professional experience.

After I get off work, I will meet with a professor before going to class and taking the midterm.

The worst part is trying to cheer up and encourage a friend in a similar situation, because I don't feel like I am helping. :(

In my spare time, I am solving the Google AI Challenge (<http://www.ai- contest.com/>) and working with someone on a side project which helps groups collaborate. If the side project goes well, then we will be co-founders in a new venture.

</comment><comment><USER49> Work: sports-related startup. Perso: trying to _swim_ (not just float around) in open water every day all year round, essentially hacking my mind (meditation) & body (gasp reflex) to withstand the cold temperatures. Currently 12 deg C. [Edited to add: <http://www.coldwaterswimming.com>]

</comment><comment><USER50> 1\. Working on two content management systems, currently trying to reduce the code to the minimum possible, whilst still making it friendly towards new(ish) developers.

2\. Storyboarding a short stop-motion film for a client

3\. Writing a book (will be somewhere around 80k when all's done)

4\. Studying for a taekwondo grading

I like to keep busy...

</comment><comment><USER51> A WPF application desktop search engine/launcher. A little like Quicksilver/Ubiquity but with a new kind of interface and scope.

</comment><comment><USER52> <http://github.com/jdodds/voussoir> a node.js app for generating Arch linux livecds.

It'll sit behind a pylons app in the near future, most likely.

Making a website-as-service for making linux livecds is something I've wanted to do for a while, and the few projects out there that do it do it poorly, imo.

I had the start of something like this using Ubuntu a while ago, but frankly there's not much more room on the Ubuntu isos, and it's kinda a pain to make sure you're generating them correctly.

Arch is such a simple distro that it's easy to automate. The node.js app is pretty much just a wrapper over mkarchiso, but if that didn't exist it wouldn't be too hard to write.

Other than that, preparing for an interview at a sweet-looking company in Cleveland tomorrow, and finishing up some stuff at my current place of employment.

<comment><USER53> I've wanted to do this for so long, good luck, on the app and the interview

<comment><USER52> Thank you! The interview went well, just waiting on them to check my references and do a background check.

Patches welcome ;) The frontend to it may get open-sourced when I'm done with it, I'm not quite sure how I'm going to proceed with it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Just moved to Boulder, Colorado a few months ago to start working for an agency. Doing lot's of frontend work as well as some PHP using Cake.

In my spare time, working on an implementation of the classic mac game bolo using HTML5.

<http://hbolo.brianwigginton.com>

</comment><comment><USER55> Building / re-building in-house pages for a company, for which I'm making a lot of entertaining utility code with APIs as simple as I can manage, which I'm finding is woefully scarce in the .NET world. Studying AI for my capstone essay. Learning on the side. Trying to figure out where the f&#@^ money goes.

</comment><comment><USER56> I quit my job for PlayStation three weeks ago and now I'm working for the company I've founded <http://codeamplifier.com>

I'm going to be creating tools that make game developers happier. First up is a tool to help with localization woes.

</comment><comment><USER41> <http://safariextendr.com> Working on polishing a safari extension community site and attempting to draw traffic in between studying for my software engineering uni exams. It's tough (on both fronts!) but I'm getting there.

</comment><comment><USER57> Aside from the boring things like taking a full course load, preparing for the ACM ICPC in November, being the ACM President, being the IT Chair of Phi Psi, and having a social life, I am co-teaching Northwestern's "Network Security and Penetration" course this quarter. The project which I'm leading a couple groups on will be a generalized web attack framework written in Python that will focus on identification of vulnerabilities, easy presentation and analysis, and exploitation.

I'm hoping it will also operate using the event-based Twisted framework instead of the standard multithreading network applications. <https://bitbucket.org/agocke/attack.py>

</comment><comment><USER58> I work for Atlassian and I'm hacking away on Bamboo 2.7, a CI server. Previously we only offered a way to execute a single build but through our own dogfooding we thought a more powerful way of doing it would be to allow a developer to have a single build that runs many distributed parellel builds.

The cool part: functional test runs for some of our products have gone from about an hour to about 20 minutes because of this rewrite - so we are hoping to shorten build times for our customers too :)

[http://blogs.atlassian.com/devtools/2010/10/bamboo-27-beta-p...](http://blogs.atlassian.com/devtools/2010/10/bamboo-27-beta- parrallel-builds.html)

</comment><comment><USER59> I'm working on coza robot: <http://cozarobot.co.za>

It's like Dotster for co.za domains. The current way to register co.za domains is a real pain in the butt. Oh, and it has a DNS manager built-in.

<comment><USER60> +1. I always just register a .com. Even though they're harder to find, it's less hassle. Having an easier co.za registration service is a win.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I'm helping us build a common open cloud computing foundation so everyone can focus on building applications that solve business problems.

Sure, this sounds like "marketing speak" but it isn't about that. People write apps that solve problems and they want wide distribution of those apps.

The best way for that to happen is by having a common foundation layer for all of them to run on. Is the project I'm working on the answer, I sure hope so. If not I hope you help start a better project to do it.

Re-inventing the wheel is a waste of all of our time. Having to re-architect or re-code an app to deploy it in different places is reinventing the wheel.

<comment><USER62> Sounds fascinating to me. But that might be because I've already started that better project to do it. :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Job: C++ and Java developer working on development tools in the data warehouse and BI space.

Extra curricular: An AJAX site on a LAMPP stack for aiding in teaching Computer Science. Students can create exercises and answer other students exercises. Academic purposes only.

Also working on a start-up in the Rural/farming sector to help with the sharing, transparency and analysis of information.

And planning out my next venture.. something to do with a service providing templates, distribution and collection of vouchers/coupons for small and medium businesses

</comment><comment><USER64> Teaching people the essentials of business and entrepreneurship at <http://personalmba.com> \- an urgent need for many people, expensive alternatives, and a huge market. My first book hits shelves on 12/30: <http://book.personalmba.com>. Learning a lot about marketing and PR during the launch - it's a whole new world. Next step: live seminars.

That, and my wife and I are expecting our first child around the time the book comes out. Never a dull moment...

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm trying to plan a wedding (a lot harder than any project I've started to date!) and working on some new features for <http://onesentencereview.com>

</comment><comment><USER66> Most of my current spare time goes into making a Common Lisp bot for the current Google AI Challenge: Planet Wars. See <http://ai-contest.com>

</comment><comment><USER67> I am creating a business intelligence tool for franchises. Have some seed funding from a local YC / TechStars inspired program.

Also doing some work for a company that makes international e-commerce easier for US merchants (handles billing, shipping, and duties).

And wrapping up two mobile app projects for clients.

Also I am working on getting married. That part is pretty awesome :)

Edit: technically "right now" I am working on posting comments on HN. This is not what I should be doing.

</comment><comment><USER68> Improving some algorithms and calculations that predict future energy scenarios. The prediction engine is programmed in Ruby, so performance is low (we chose ruby because of inhouse knowledge and it makes it easy to discuss with domain experts). Now, fine-tuning/micro-optimising the computation to optimize speed, so that it's fast enough for a web-request (< 200ms).

<http://www.energytransitionmodel.com>

</comment><comment><USER69> Good post; very interesting to read these! I'm a mutual fund analyst by day, returned to programming a couple of months ago after a long time away to bang out an idea in Pylons. I've missed it! In hopes of getting out of my daily grind to put more time into it, I'm selling custom acrylic displays and cases, focusing on custom iPad display trees, because it's working! Will exit securities analysis next year- so unfulfilling and statistically pointless. Index your money.

</comment><comment><USER70> GazeHawk GazeHawk GazeHawk

Sometimes I sleep, but not often.

</comment><comment><USER71> I'm building a contact import script for a hip hop artist's newsletter. Essentially its what powers the "invite your friends" button on the newsletter.

I am dealing with yahoo's contacts api at the moment. It seems that althought yahoo! provides a php sdk, a direct fetch of email addresses from a user's address book still requires a restful get request.

The yahoo php sdk makes the oauth stuff really easy though.

</comment><comment><USER72> For my day job, I work on technical improvements for our infrastructure at Blue Box Group, and I help out in the support queue when there's especially weird problems to debug. Most things I write are shell/Perl scripts and Ruby code.

On the side, I'm always reading books on computer science and programming. One of the projects I'm working on is a toy compiler written in Ruby.

</comment><comment><USER73> Primarily awareness building and PR for my recently launched startup - <http://www.happybuy.com/>

One good lesson thats recently been reinforced as part of this is that launching is really only the start of the journey. Gaining traction and building a business once the product is available takes as much if not more work.

<comment><USER74> the <http://www.fortiguard.com/> network protection we have here in work has flagged your site as porn wont let me in. just FYI.

<comment><USER73> Thank you for letting me know. I have requested that fortiguard correctly reclassify my site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> Building a "DailyCandy/Thrillist"* for luxury travel (email newsletter focused on luxury resorts, aviation, etc).

<http://murphyonluxury.com> (it's free to sign up). website is very alpha right now.

Bootstrapping but thinking of raising money.

* not affiliated with either company -- just inspired by their success

</comment><comment><USER76> My employment isn't worth mentioning.

A minesweeper implementation for Emacs: <https://bitbucket.org/zck/minesweeper.el> . If anyone tries it, please let me know what you think.

Also, I'm working on learning unicycling, juggling, becoming ambidextrous, and finding a project to hack on next.

</comment><comment><USER77> Two side projects, one that delays RSS feeds in your inbox until 5 PM - <USER4> <http://rssafter5.appspot.com>, and one that only sends your email every 4 hours, which isn't online yet, as well as prepping for the ACM ICPC, where I'm improving rapidly but still really far behind most other people.

</comment><comment><USER78> I'm updating my CV so i can get a job for those days i am not in uni, also working on a small app made around someone elses work parsing Civilization 5 replay files into HTML5/JS in-browser replays. <http://github.com/flexd/civ5replays> \-- Too little time, so many ideas!

</comment><comment><USER79> Rewriting my old site, <http://www.timeline-x.com/VST> formerly <http://www.virtualstocktrading.com>

Make it Object Oriented. Follow a MVC pattern. Give it a new look and feel. Not necessarily in that order.

</comment><comment><USER80> At work: Trying to make our Google Search Appliance play nicely.

On the side: Email campaign analytics done right. There are already companies in this sector, but I feel I can do better.

For fun: I run <http://www.re-cycledair.com> (PHP & Wordpress Articles).

</comment><comment><USER75> Building a "DailyCandy/Thrillist"* for luxury travel (email newsletter focused on luxury resorts, aviation, etc).

<http://murphyonluxury.com> (it's free to sign up). website is very alpha right now.

* not affiliated with either company -- just inspired by their success

</comment><comment><USER81> I'm working on growing the customer base for my company, <http://dnsimple.com/> while at the same time servicing multiple development contracts that I have open and also maintaining the dotMP registry, registrar and chi.mp services. Sometimes I also get out of the house. :-)

</comment><comment><USER82> Job: SugarCRM customization for a client. Own: building a website for file administration and sharing, to learn Rails 3

<comment><USER83> Day job here is making Dynamics CRM awesome...have you tried Dynamics?

<comment><USER82> Nope, sorry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> I'm working on a logicless & valueless templating system in ruby that also has work going on for java and eventually python. In the process of using it to see how the idea shakes out and getting examples that people can learn from in the process.

Also working on a version of Smalltalk that runs on the jvm.

</comment><comment><USER85> I went back to grad school this fall, so I'm working on programming assignments, getting ready for midterms coming up, and making progress on an Eclipse plugin for my lab. It's a great mix of work in C++, Lisp, Java, Soar, and soon Prolog, but it's keeping me busy enough that I've put off side projects for now.

</comment><comment><USER86> <http://qwerly.com>, a people search for the social web. Currently works like a whois for Twitter: put in a Twitter username, get back a page with links to that person's other social web profiles.

(Tried to submit it as a Rate My Startup last week, but got nixed.)

</comment><comment><USER87> I'm working on the new <http://www.mcsquare.me> UI and features.

</comment><comment><USER88> Trying to see what I can do to get the iPad app my wife and I made to sustainable profitability (<http://www.bentomaster.com>). We did hit the front page New and Noteworthy section for iPad apps in Japan a couple days ago but I'm not retiring yet ;^).

</comment><comment><USER89> I'm playing around with nodejs, building <http://billable.co.za>

</comment><comment><USER90> For the lack of a better word: I'm building better forum software. It's something that teams and organizations will find useful for general communication, idea exchange, even light project management.

We're testing the app at the moment in–house, hoping to get to private beta before December.

</comment><comment><USER91> For work, I'm building websites with Drupal. My latest project is <http://dateunknown.com> . As a side project, I've started to build a Drupal wrapper for Phono, a jQuery front end for sip calling, sms and xmpp chat in a browser.

</comment><comment><USER92> I'm fixing the sorry state of Esperanto online dictionaries. My system allows the user to use any of the major writing systems, tolerates spelling errors and even does some stemming and morphology analysis. It's been interesting because this has never been done before (AFAIK).

</comment><comment><USER93> I'm building a results based website builder at <http://www.netmate.co> and iterating photography shopping cart software <http://www.photographyorders.com>

</comment><comment><USER94> I am working on taxonomy development, and building a rule base in a NLP framework in order to automatically identify taxonomy traits in raw text. Also working on defining/optimizing a matching engine sitting on top of the taxonomy extraction layer.

</comment><comment><USER95> I'm starting work on a few university projects, the main one being a multiplayer zombie game, turn based, online. see how it works out ;)

also a side project I want to have out before November, in rails. But I'm keeping it mostly-hush for now =)

</comment><comment><USER96> I'm working on changing the way people approach personal development, from the usual current approach of digesting a huge chunk of information via book/tapes/DVDs/etc to helping people make little tiny changes that add up over time to big changes.

</comment><comment><USER97> Trying to get a project launched that has been 80% completed for too long: <http://chatroulettespy.com>

Does anybody still use Chatroulette? It should work on all Adobe Stratus based apps.

</comment><comment><USER98> Trying to build the best resource out there for learning organic chemistry. And tutoring online through Skype. Having a blast. <http://masterorganicchemistry.wordpress.com>

</comment><comment><USER99> Job: Improvements to the ORM in our framework.

Own: Crossword generator for latin words.

</comment><comment><USER100> <http://www.openpoll.us>

An electronic direct democracy that will allow Americans to vote on state and federals bills and elections. I'm shooting to have my MVP done beginning of next year.

</comment><comment><USER101> I'm working on an HTML5 video player. The special features that will differentiate it from others are a sharing widget in the video and a gallery that show up when the video ends pushing the user to watch more videos.

Any other ideas?

</comment><comment><USER102> I'm working iPhone and Android sports apps: <http://reflect7.com> I also blog about entrepreneurship and my experiences <http://techneur.com>

</comment><comment><USER103> Adding Python support to my programming test platform <http://codeboff.in>.

Last week I added random hints that show up during a test session to let people improve their code (and score).

</comment><comment><USER104> Work: A firefox addon which shows you latest horse racing odds on any website (<http://oddsanywhere.com>)

Personal: Tweaking ads on my blogs, trying to become the next patio11 ;0)

</comment><comment><USER105> Working on <http://bettermeans.com> Open, democratic, project management for social enterprises. Been coding for over 18 months now, launching November 1st

</comment><comment><USER106> Working on my startup project <http://inspection2.com>. This is my first project with Django and JQuery, so I'm mostly spending time learning things.

</comment><comment><USER107> Literally right now? I'm coaching a friend of mine (high school sophomore) in assisting another friend (college freshman) in his CS homework. I'm a college junior, never written Java before this :)

</comment><comment><USER108> I am working on learning Ruby/Rails to build a couple of projects I'm imagining.

I'm coming from C, Objective-C and iOS work. It's a little tough, since the framework is doing so much for me. It takes detective work and vigilance to keep track of what's happening.

Getting through it, though!

Day job is consumed with UI prototyping and other product-centric adventures at Aurora Feint.

</comment><comment><USER109> Full-time: Consultant to senior finance leadership @ Hitachi Global Storage in the Bay Area.

Side: Web Development Consultant

Past: Serial Entrepreneur

Next: Looking to join a new startup!

</comment><comment><USER110> I'm working on the new high score tool for <http://playtomic.com/> since I moved the leaderboards over to mongodb/mongohq.com the other day.

</comment><comment><USER111> My main thing: <http://jellly.com/>

Also, a real-time multi-player browser game built on node.js and socket.io, but this is just for fun.

</comment><comment><USER112> Lately I've been spending as much time as I can working on <http://milechaser.com> \- lots of really interesting problems to solve.

</comment><comment><USER113> Working on a security risk assessment application: <http://bit.ly/9jKMR9>

Login and subscribe still need a lot of work....

<comment><USER50> Privacy Policy, not Private :)

Nice design though

<comment><USER113> Thanks, spelling is not a strong point! :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Database migration. meh. But also some startup i freelance for, a webgame I've started Saturday and my own startup. I tend to switch between them all week long.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm working on a tool for journalists and researchers to help them archive all the information they read. Private beta coming up soon if anyone is interested.

<comment><USER95> Sounds like something I could use. Very interested

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> Illustration on an electric guitar and a few submissions for national / local art competitions. Also designing an org structure for a local Roller Derby team.

</comment><comment><USER116> A ruby framework for hosting your own url sharing / archiving site.

<http://github.com/mmb/murlsh>

</comment><comment><USER117> Integrating Buzz into PinkelStar, a free platform for mobile app developers. Its driving us nuts. Can't get the final redirect to hit our servers, aaargh

</comment><comment><USER118> I am working on <http://tradesalerts.com> \- email notifications of stocks to buy in Asian markets.

</comment><comment><USER119> I'm working for a robotic toy startup and on the side designing an efficient & flexible radiant floor heating distribution & control system.

<comment><USER120> Let me know when you have the rfhd&cs done. I'm designing a house that will use radiant floor heating and I'd be interested to see your system. My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> I'm working on a social caption application which creates the captions dynamically. There's no image manipulation, everything happens on the fly.

</comment><comment><USER122> Working on a logo (you can see it at the dragthelake.org coming soon page).

The site will be my take on curating interesting content.

</comment><comment><USER123> iPhone app design for a startup. They don't have a full time designer, so outsourcing it all to me has been working good for them.

</comment><comment><USER124> Day job with oil and gas company. Stupidly trying to build a double entry accounting app in spare time. Learning way too much.

<comment><USER125> try doing it on a dos machine using Lotus-123 macros..:)

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Remote admin web app for an multi-server "Enterprise" system. Unfortunately the client-side uses ExtJS, which makes me sad.

</comment><comment><USER127> Day Job: custom erp type system for manufacturing/aviation

Startup: personal finance/buget webapp... with a twist.

</comment><comment><USER128> Tonight: Upgrading MySQL server on AWS.

</comment><comment><USER129> <http://gokode.com> a tagging platform for conversations.

</comment><comment><USER37> Learning Scala, losing weight and wasting time. Oh, and avoiding emails and actual work.

</comment><comment><USER130> A complete translation of all the 'Spot does X' children's books.

Yes. I am a student.

</comment><comment><USER131> Currently working on cooperative game for programmers and a sophisticated web crawler.

</comment><comment><USER132> Wikipedia for ordinary people.

<comment><USER133> Sort of like <http://simple.wikipedia.org/> ?

<comment><USER132> Somewhat. We've been working on it for about a month, should have something to show by next week if all goes well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER134> Working on ShelfLuv - adding some features that were requested from the HN crowd

</comment><comment><USER135> contact.ly which will use twillio, dropbox, and other services to build a more modern contact, calendar, file storage system (and for marketing to ride on the hype of other companies).

<comment><AUTHOR> what makes it more modern?

<comment><USER135> Importing a csv list of contacts defines the contact mangers intial setup. You can then setup additional fields and group fields together into "sections" from an administrative interface. Each field can be further defined by purpose (email, text, phone number) so can group email's together by contact and soon you could do other things based upon type of field, you can also have sub- contacts and then the sub-contacts are further defined by contact types so you can group together emails of all contacts by a certain type.

It took me longer then expected to make (about a month) but now I have a totally customizable contact manger that is more like a database in itself, it is searchable and very flexible (no predefined fields).

On the contact list display where you see few fields from each contact you can define what fields are displayed on that list and each user can change that to there own preference. This way the data is out front and may save users an extra click to go see some piece of contact data they use the most.

I am working on building a billing system for the twillio api, keeping track of all of the sms messages sent, phone calls made, etc. Once I am done with that then I can add to the contact manager functionality, let's say you have a non-profit and you have 500 contacts that are going to be doing your charity "fun run" you can send them out a reminder via a phone call and sms to remember to show up, etc. Once you have your contact in the system, you can make "lists" and so your contacts here would be on the "fun run 2010" list for example. Then next year you can send them an email inviting them to do the 2011 fun run...

I feel this is more modern at least in what I am doing as this can be as big as or small as a person needs. If a company has 100 fields (like the cw tv network does they easily have 100 fields which is who I designed this for) then it will work for that and if a company only has a few fields they can grow out to the number of fields they need but without having that overhead right away.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER136> I'm working on a site that will be useful to all of you, hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER137> I'm writing a web application in coffeescript.

</comment><comment><USER138> Writing firmware for an RFID reader/writer

</comment><comment><USER139> this is interesting. I had a similar idea. How much is your pricing point for this send message site.

</comment><comment><USER140> google anlaytics for business phone calls. <http://contexium.com>

<comment><USER141> Is this built on the twilio platform? Or did you roll your own?

</comment></comment><comment><USER142> Tons of stuff around Hackety Hack. It's got a new blog, <http://blog.hackety- hack.com/> . I also started a blog for the Shoes project, <http://blog.shoesrb.com/> . I've been working on wrapping up the 1.0 release for Hackety, and tons of other bits that are currently a secret, but will be reported soon. :)

The last 90% is the hardest 90% in any project.

</comment><comment><USER143> working on my first web app to keep track of travel expenses.

</comment><comment><USER144> Hacker News Repository

</comment><comment><USER8> This is not your kind of start-up (I have found HN to mostly work on SaaS applications), its more manufacturing based.

Right now working with another guy to make cheap mobile chargers to export to the USA. So, any cheap charger you may purchase 4-6 months from now may be from my design. But that's just helping a friend, I do not have any monetary gain from it. Apart from that, whenever I will get time I a company is ready to hire me as employee # 1 in there education department (its a software dev + CS education startup).

But on my own home front I am finally starting to work towards my own idea which has been appreciated by some industry people and entrepreneurs I have met. Its a localized hobby kits shop. I provide them with hobby kits which are cheap and have manuals which are in the customer's native language (right now just english, hindi and gujarati as my target right now is gujarat). I know its not that fancy, but hey you people gave me the bug to at least try something before giving up on it (i.e. if its not obviously stupid). Anyways, working on MVP kits for electronics, computer programming, robotics and (if I can manage it) maths.

I have a few slides prepared if anyone wants to see.

EDIT: And btw, I am in second year of engineering

</comment><comment><USER145> Today I'm teaching for a few hours on DOM events (yesterday I taught for 4 hours on JS: The Language) for <http://jsmasterclass.com>

Finishing the launch & prep for my "build your own product, market and sell it" course - <http://unicornfree.com/30x500> (about 65% sold out already, I'd like to see 100% by Monday)

Working with an illustrator to create custom illustrations for my launch concepts, & a duo of marketeers/illustrators to create fun promo materials to help grow my profitable SaaS

Working with my biz partner (husband) and freelancers to create a system, priorities, and workflow so we can all work together on bug fixes & new features to grow that profitable SaaS - <http://letsfreckle.com>

(Delegating well is INCREDIBLY, INCREDIBLY hard.)

Wrapping up the last bits to get <http://charmde.sk> dogfood-ready

Sourcing the exact mid-century furnishings & art I want for our apartment - cuz I'm superficial like that

Hacking on a fairly revolutionary (if I do say so myself) decision-making & pm tool, with my husband & a friend

Suffice it to say: TOO. DAMN. MUCH. But that last project is just pure fun, and it's really making everything else less burnout-y.

</comment><comment><USER146> A craigslist reputations service <http://craigrep.com>. Although, I'm stuck trying to figure out how to make it secure and user-friendly after realizing that a referral URL was not enough to verify that a request from craigslist came from where it said it came from due to referer spoofing proxies. A browser plugin seems to be the only way to do this, and that won't reach critical mass.

<comment><USER62> Why can't it be done without a browser plugin?

<comment><USER146> Just because the only way I think it will take off is if the ratings are displayed on the actual craigslist posts.

<comment><USER147> I would totally use that as a plugin. Why do you think that couldn't/wouldn't take off?

<comment><USER146> Well, I was counting on the viral aspect where you saw a rating and said, I want one of those. My gut says that most people who do that will not want to install a browser plugin. Even if I made one for all possible browsers.

It's also hard for it to spread through the plugin directories because the people who download it would be too geographically fragmented.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER148> I'm working on a remote control for Google TV based on computer vision and gesture recognition.

This is my masters dissertation and I'm currently researching algorithms and techniques that enable real-time detection and tracking of hands or objects.

A prototype will be made for the Logitech revue if I succeed :)

</comment><comment><USER125> Hello, my real name is Fred Grott and I am an android developer with previous exp in enterprise java and lamp and mobile java.

I am building some android applications and some sever side applications to demo android integration via restlets and GoogleAppEngine.

Basically using this as a resume to obtain some development contracts so that I can fully launch my startup.

Failed Startups thus far: -Xspot-same as Google Latitude but I did not execute fast enough to get prototype out to obtain venture funding

Hopefully, I will have better luck this time.

</comment><comment><USER149> FrostWire for Android</comment>


The Department Store Guitar - <AUTHOR> https://tedium.co/2019/01/24/department-store-guitar-history/ <comment><USER2> My older brother's first electric guitar was a Christmas gift from my parents: a Sears Silvertone. He went on to own dozens of guitars through the years—including a one-of-a-kind Gibson now in the hands of Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson—but, today, after the dream of rock stardom has long since faded, he has only a 1956 Martin acoustic and that ol' Silvertone.

<comment><USER3> My dad's first guitar was a Silvertone, too. A black Silvertone 1446, to be exact. I looked up it's value recently and was shocked to find that it is worth about $1,300 today.

<comment><USER2> Wow. I'd guess that this one which is has dark-colored edges with an air- brushed lighter area in the middle solid-body is from about 1968.

<comment><USER3> Very nice. My dad's is a black hollow-body with a white trim, and was built in '61. Even though Silvertone was considered a "budget" brand, this was a $150+ guitar in its day, with Gibson humbuckers and a Bigsby bridge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Harmony brand has recently been revived.

[https://reverb.com/news/video-newly-re-launched-harmony- show...](https://reverb.com/news/video-newly-re-launched-harmony-shows-off- its-2018-lineup-from-namm)</comment>


What is it like to be a mathematician? - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/10/edward_frenkel_on_love_and_math_what_is_it_like_to_be_a_mathematician.html <comment><USER2> On a related note, there's a good in-depth answer to the question "What is it like to understand advanced mathematics?" here:

[http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/What-is-it-like-to- understa...](http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/What-is-it-like-to-understand- advanced-mathematics/answers/873950)

I'm not a mathematician, but was a theoretical physicist for more than a decade, and the Quora article accords well with my experience in understanding mathematics.

(Fairly) readable examples of some of the points made in the above article may be found in Terry Tao and Scott Aaronson's comments about how to think intuitively in high dimensions:

[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive- crutches-f...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/25983/intuitive-crutches-for- higher-dimensional-thinking)

<comment><USER3> That is definitely good and in-depth.

(I had to use the web dev inspector to remove the overlay trying to force me to enable scripts and sign in, but it was worth it.)

<comment><USER4> There's a link on that overlay to "close and continue reading" if you get out your microscope. ;)

<comment><USER5> For me that only shows the top answer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm an applied mathematician (PhD) working partially in software development, partially in research mathematics and statistics proper.

A mathematician is someone who works on things that honestly very few folks can understand completely (not due to complexity per se, just depth and lack of general familiarity). Publication peer-review aside, it's also unlikely that the few folks who can judge your work are in any position to fire you. It's a rewarding and pretty secure gig.

But I still think that the most interesting work is very multidisciplinary in nature, so a CS, engineering or physical sciences background really does enhance the work you can do. Like in any other career, don't let yourself become a one-trick pony.

<comment><USER7> My advisor in grad school put it this way: being a mathematician basically amounts to being the world's leading expert on something only about 5 people give a shit about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I did three years of Maths in University. Then, I swap to Computer Science because it was always 'my thing'. When I read this kind of posts I really miss Maths. It is beautiful.

If you never tried, if your only experience is high school, go for it. Learn some Math. You will be happier.

<comment><USER9> Where can I start learning math on my own? I always thought math books are arcane in the sense that perquisites math knowledge for one book are so vast that I couldn't wrap my head around one.

<comment><USER10> What math do you know, what math do you want to know?

<comment><USER9> When I did Project Euler, I couldn't come up with elegant solution that was derived from high enough abstraction using math, leaving me using brute force method that was not really efficient.

I was fascinated by how people come up with elegant math solution for the challenges in Project Euler. I am not sure how I can achieve such elegance, proving my math is insufficient for what can be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > When, later on in life, the subject of mathematics comes up, most people > wave their hands and say, "Oh no, I don't want to hear about this, I was so > bad at math."

I've noticed this happening a lot. It is interesting that nobody says that about the other two Rs: reading and writing. Have you ever heard anyone say "I don't like books and reading in general"?

As far as I can tell this is the reasoning used by most "math haters"

        Kids who are smart are good at math
        I was not good at math
        Therefore I am not smart

Because of this reasoning, "math haters" start to feel bad about themselves and thus prefer to avoid this subject of conversation. I guess we could call this a math complex.

The first fault with this reasoning is the premise---there are plenty of smart kids who are simply not drawn to math, especially since math is often presented as memorization and not understanding. So whether you liked math in high school or not has almost no bearing on how good you are at math. Chill.

The other fault with the reasoning is that of time-invariance. Math was "tough" for me when I was 8 years old, so it will still be tough for me even though I am an adult now. It takes some level of humbleness to go back to learning something that "kids should know," but it is totally worth doing. Whether you are a coder, an english major, or a designer, learning a bit of math will give you a lot of extra power to do whatever you do already, and other stuff. For example, learning math will suddenly make half a million more wikipedia pages accessible to you (all the ones with lots of equation blocks). That is a lot of knowledge, and knowledge is power...

<plug>What if there was a high school math textbook written for adults? A textbook with no BS, which gets directly to the power part right away. What if learning high school math opened the door for you to learn differential calculus (lim,ƒ'(x),max), and integral calculus (∫ƒdx,∑a_i) in the same sitting. Then knowing calculus, you would be able to pick up mechanics (F=ma, a(t)=x''(t), p=mv, ∑Ei=∑Ef, Acos(ωt+ϕ)) quite easily too. All of this in just 383 pages that you can read four weeks if properly caffeinated!</plug>

<comment><USER12> > Have you ever heard anyone say "I don't like books and reading in general"?

Well, I have heard engineery types saying they don't see the point of reading fiction ("it's just made up stories"), and more frequently have heard them disparaging subjects like philosophy and history. Maybe that's the equivalent response?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From Edward Frankel also comes this wonderful excerpt on antisemitism in Russian higher education (that doesn't sound exciting now, but you'll like the article):

[http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth- problem--...](http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-Fifth-problem--math ---anti-Semitism-in-the-Soviet-Union-7446)

</comment><comment><USER14> When you're a mathematician, everything is black or white, but you get to define what those two words mean.

<comment><USER15> I think that's another misunderstood thing about math.

By the time you get into higher mathematics, you get to a place where nearly everything is unknown. I remember reaching the level of ordinary differential equations and realizing that "most" non-linear equations had no exact solution at all.

In ways, math and programming have this in common - as the size of the systems being studied increases, a randomly chosen example becomes harder and harder to deal and thus the "art" consists in choosing important and tractable examples out of a world of huge but intractable systems.

<comment><USER16> > I remember reaching the level of ordinary differential equations and > realizing that "most" non-linear equations had no exact solution at all.

This may be a bit theoretical for most readers, but every ODE that has one and only one solution _has_ an exact solution. That the best definition for that function is "the solution to that ODE" does not mean that the function is any less exact than something you can construct out of _exp_ , _sin_ , _cos_ , etc. In fact it would be completely reasonable to define _exp_ as a solution to a differential equation and then to prove afterwards, that _exp_ is equivalent to the usual power series and accidentally also has some other nice properties :).

<comment><USER17> _every ODE that has one and only one solution has an exact solution_

Upvoted, but - is that a particular theorem, or are you just basically stating the definition of "having a solution"? Wouldn't your statement be true of any system of differential equations, not just ODEs?

<comment><USER16> I just stated the definition of having one and only one solution, yes :). That was kind of the point I was making.

I originally intended to write a statement specific to ODE, but was then to lazy to look the specifics up ^^.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great article. I think we lose the forrest and trees in math. Similar in computer science. Many times we get hung up on language syntax to miss the beauty underneath. (For example: Godel's incompleteness theorum or the implications of Turing machines)

On one tangents....

 _I think we mathematicians are a little bit behind the curve. We are not fully aware of the Frankenstein that we may have already created or could create. I think that 's another aspect of this responsibility of mathematicians to take a more public role—to educate the public by giving them access to the beauty and power of mathematics._

Interesting tie in to the importance of ethics for mathematics. It's not just a bunch of folks writing proofs about numbers in journals.

</comment><comment><USER19> Ed Frenkel made a film to convey the beauty of math - some nudity. [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1530994/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1530994/)

<comment><USER20> I am big fan of Ed Frenkel's lectures on youtube but this movie was one of the worst movies I've ever watched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd like to add a little to the puzzle analogy. Not only is doing research like putting together a puzzle without an idea what the picture is, but the puzzle is irregularly shaped.

</comment><comment><USER21> Same as to be a biologist, or a programmer or a doctor.

<comment><USER22> Not in my experience.

I've worked both as a research mathematician and as a programmer working on production software.

Even applied to the "same" types of problems, I've found them to be very different in day to day activities, goals, incentives ... really they are quite far apart.

<comment><USER23> Certainly not the same, but I do believe that when a computer model is having some kind of math root, it gets its own coherency and can be developed further. By math root it does not imply a math model. but the idea of creating a set of object with given rules and behaviors like for example a vectorial space. Very often it starts with real "computer tries" but the best part are always when there is an underlying model. I tend even to believe that the level of math knowledge in modern programming has grown up in regards to 15 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> i'm pretty sure that title should be "mathemagician", cuz that shit is freakin mysterious

</comment><comment><USER25> The article mentions how most of us are introducted to math and the reaction most of us have to math in later life: "Oh no, I don't want to hear about this, I was so bad at math." The article continues about how wonderful math is and what not.

The article is wasting our time.

Those of us who were force-fed useless mathematics since 1st grade have already closed our minds completely to any attempts at beautifying something that we normal people, after +- _/ , see as completely fucking useless, boring and hate-inducing. At least I feel that way, but I assume I'm not alone.

I was force fed not only simple +-_/ but several university level courses. Why? Because I wanted to get myself a programming degree and for that one, somehow, needed a whole bunch of weird-ass algebra and shit. I could see no reason for learning that at 15, when I was writing Pascal and PCBoard PPEs, no reason for learning that at 20 when I was writing C/C++ shit and no reason now at 30+ when I'm writing webapps in PHP/js/html5/etc. But time and time again I was told that without that complicated mathematics I wouldn't become shit.

Well, now I'm making a living programming, without a degree, and without being able to derive x2 from god-knows-what. My mind has PROVEN to me that I don't need complicated math and therefore cemented my previously belief that advanced math is necessary to program.

Not once during all my years of school and university was I ever shown a use for that advanced math, even though I _begged_ for at least some connection to reality, some proof that the math is going to be useful for anything else other than passing an exam. Do my SQL queries speed up if I use cosine? Will my code autoindent properly if the square root of x^y is used? No. Instead I was told to just learn it because I'd use it "some day".

My brain is now completely, 100% closed to advanced math. So what this Edward guy in the article should do is not try to change our minds, or even change the minds of the kids of today that are being force-fed math. Instead he should concentrate his efforts on bringing the teachers (and curriculum) down to earth. Change the way math is taught. Bring in real-world examples of why derivations are somehow important. After that is done then the NEXT generation won't fucking hate math, and mathematicians, as much as use older folk do.

Fuck I hate math.

<comment><USER26> That's pretty sad. Programming and mathematics are normally things that go together, like burgers and beer. I can't imagine loving one and not the other. I do sympathise with the wish to see a practical application. I have a distinct recollection of an ah-ha moment for me, at about 15 years of age. We were being taught basic calculus. The idea was introduced that a function f(x) could be used to represent the yield of some industrial process. You put in x, you get out y = f(x). So far, so obvious, so boring right? But then came the cute part; If you can calculate the derivative of f(x), you get another function f'(x) which is the slope of f(x) for any value of x. Then to find the maximum yield you seek the value of x where f'(x) = 0, because the slope of f(x) will be zero 'at the top of the hill'.

I guess it's a personal thing, but for me this fired my enthusiasm for both learning the various techniques for differentiation, and for equation solving. Then integration followed as simply reverse differentiation [amazing - one is the area under the graph - one is the slope of the graph - why should they be opposite ? Because maths is beautiful is the short answer - a universe of discovery is the long answer]. Around this point maths became fun, the work part evaporated. Later I got interested in computation because you can't always differentiate or solve equations analytically (with pure math), but you can do it numerically, to any desired degree of accuracy with a computer.</comment></comment>


Brain scanners can tell what you're thinking about - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427323.500-brain-scanners-can-tell-what-youre-thinking-about.html <comment><USER2> This will only increase the snake-oil efforts of companies trying to hawk brain-scans as the new "honesty test".</comment>


Dyson sphere - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere <comment><USER2> I learned what Dyson sphere is as by product of reading this by Bruce Scheiner, really great read:

" One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less than kT, where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the Boltzman constant. (Stick with me; the physics lesson is almost over.)

Given that k = 1.38×10-16 erg/°Kelvin, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2°Kelvin, an ideal computer running at 3.2°K would consume 4.4×10-16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump.

Now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 1.21×1041 ergs. This is enough to power about 2.7×1056 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough state changes to put a 187-bit counter through all its values. If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2192. Of course, it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter.

But that's just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 1051 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states.

These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be unfeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space."

<comment><USER3> Huh. I don't get it. A star powering a 219-bit counter? What?

<comment><USER4> It's about the feasibility of breaking 256-bit encryption keys with a naive brute force attack. The simplest component of a computer that performs this attack would be a 256-bit counter that iterates through all possible key values, however Schneier is saying that according to our current understanding of physics, even if you built the most efficient computer possible and powered it with the energy output of a supernova, it would only have enough energy to iterate through all the values of a 219-bit counter.

<comment><USER5> On average you only need to iterate half the values.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, that's still 255 bits worth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Wow, did nobody watch Star Trek TNG? I learned about them when I was about 10 watching the Relics episode ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relics_\(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation\)), or amazon prime: [https://www.amazon.com/Relics/dp/B00R143VHC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UT...](https://www.amazon.com/Relics/dp/B00R143VHC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470789546&sr=8-1&keywords=star+trek%2C+tng%2C+relics)). Very cool concept.

<comment><USER8> Yep, that was an awesome episode for what it was, and the novel that served as a sequel was great as well.

Unfortunately the version of a Dyson sphere depicted in both is completely untenable, according to Freeman Dyson himself. He reportedly enjoyed the episode as "a piece of cinema" but denounced the science involved as 100% fiction and not possible. As others have said, perhaps building something like that around a dwarf star would be within the realm of possibility, but you still have issues such as radiation, constant daylight, gravity, and drift (the sphere would eventually drift into the star since it's not actually orbiting and is much more massive than even a large planet).

Still, it's a really cool idea and a fun thought experiment.

<comment><USER7> Exactly, most science fiction representations fail on the engineering test. That' snot to say that some future change in our understanding of physics might not change what is in fact possible. One reason I love scifi is that the authors/readers/watchers are free to drop the need to be fully grounded and go for something truly cool. I suspect what we view as totally impossible today, might be within the realm of possible 2-3k years from now.

<comment><USER8> Yep, how does the saying go? Any sufficiently advanced technology will be indistinguishable from magic when presented to a less advanced society.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was obsessed with the idea of dyson spheres when I was younger. The are the alternate path of an advanced civilization besides exploring the stars.

You probably wouldn't want to build one around our Sun, since it will eventually expand, and cook anything inside the sphere. Building the sphere would likely take millennia, and there is no reason to invest in building around a start that will eat it. Instead you would build it around a red or white dwarf. These are stable for billions or trillions of years. Meaning you could build a dyson sphere, and live on it until the end of the universe as we know it (Stelliferous era).

Red dwarfs are much less massive than our star, so you could build a smaller sphere (still relatively huge), and material property requirements would be less. White dwarfs are a bit more massive on average, but will last much longer.

Dyson spheres, bubbles, rings, whatever would not experience a day/night cycle. So would either have to build it out of a material that passively radiates excess energy out the other side, while maintaining habitable temperature. Or you build a second set of smaller rings or disks that orbit closer to the star at a different rate. The inner set casts shadows on the outer set, simulating a day/night cycle.

Successfully building a dyson sphere would likely only be done to either power a FTL gate of some sort or a giant computer. If you built a computer to simulate a universe, and properly managed the inner star's output and lifecycle, you could feasibly escape the end of the universe by simulating a smaller one for yourself.

<comment><USER10> Freeman Dyson actually had another way to escape the heat death of the universe: by taking advantage of it.

As the universe cools, the noise of the background radiation will diminish. Dyson posits that this would allow us to build an analog computer which uses less and less energy as time goes on-- it could run forever on a finite store of energy.

So even if the universe "ends", we might be able to build a computer which doesn't.

<comment><USER11> Can you recommend any reading on this? Sounds interesting.

<comment><USER12> "The last 3 minutes" by Paul Davies[1] is a good popsci read on this topic.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Last-Three-Minutes-Conjectures- Ultima...](https://www.amazon.com/Last-Three-Minutes-Conjectures- Ultimate/dp/0465038514)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If all the dimming star headlines are piquing your interest, you must read Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained by Alexander Hamilton. It's about the same event being observed but a couple hundred years from now in a post FTL society, so naturally they have to wander out and see what's up. The pair is one of the best recent science fiction stories to come out in the past 15 years.

<comment><USER14> Came here to suggest this.

Pandora's Star is an excellent (albeit long) read.

Note however, the author is Peter F. Hamilton.

<comment><USER15> Just bought it on Audible, and apparently it's 37 hours long...

<comment><USER16> Yeah, Hamilton _really_ gets into world building. Often to the detriment of actual storytelling -- which on its day, is actually quite good.

I'd still recommend these books though.

Edit to add: Hamilton also wrote _The Void Trilogy_ , set in the same universe as _The Commonwealth Saga_. They're interesting, but less so than the Commonwealth books.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For an evolution of the Dyson sphere in fiction, read (Free online) Charles Stross's Accelerando, a novel of 9 connected Singularity-oriented stories. [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelera...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog- static/fiction/accelerando/accelerando-intro.html)

For those who don't know him, he used to be a professional programmer, and he's a very smart writer, lives and his blog is here. [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/)

<comment><USER18> He's also seen here occasionally as cstross.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> OT, but the Dyson Sphere was the first idea that gave me a deep sense of sadness knowing I'll never see it.

How can you feel fulfilled laying the groundwork when things like this lay in store? And I'm just a software developer, I can't imagine how people in more relevant roles feel about it.

<comment><USER20> The other option, which is what I generally feel, is a sense of purpose that we need to make sure we shepherd the human race in the small way we can to the eventual goal of something like this. That is, it's engendered a bit more thoughtfulness about not just what policies yield the best current outcome, but what if we took a path of advancement slightly less optimized for current ease and happiness and more for future gain?

We are of course _very_ far from being able to correctly plan and carry out anything like that if we really wanted to, given that our current advancement is almost entirely directed by market forces and psychology that we are just beginning to understand, but it's an interesting thought experiment.

Can you ethically deny X people currently for the betterment of n*x people in the future, assuming population growth and expansion? If so, what's to keep us from enslaving all the current people in pursuit of ultimate happiness of some theoretical future? If not, why are we saving anything for future generations rather than consuming it all for our benefit right now? The extremes are of course easy to answer, but the variables that go into it make it interesting to think about.

<comment><USER21> Interesting responses. If you haven't already, the Foundation trilogy is a must read. Essentially a bunch of really smart folks create a new field of science focused on predicting the geopolitical and technological advances of the future universe to ensure the human race is successful.

<comment><USER20> Yes, I'm very familiar, although it has been quite a while. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> There are other more plausible options for these civilizations then building absolutely gigantic structures around suns.

1\. Build devices/objects ([https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bQ7RaOMHb5I/maxresdefault.jpg](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/bQ7RaOMHb5I/maxresdefault.jpg)) that are able to get close to the stars, that would then absorb the emitted energy from the various coronal ejections, magnetic fluxes, etc.

2\. There is more energy in the fabric of empty space-time than anywhere else. An advanced civilization would likely be able to harvest this ZPE (zero point energy or field) using rather small devices.

</comment><comment><USER23> I can imagine a Dyson Swarm, although intuitively I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind of computational limit created by the fact that the bigger a swarm gets, the more computation is needed to keep it gravitationally stable

But I think a Dyson Sphere - something as solid as a planet, but with a radius the size of a planetary orbit - is physically impossible, even with unimagined magic alien super-materials.

The physical configuration of a Dyson sphere is inherently unstable. It's the astronomical equivalent of balancing a pencil on its tip. Any asymmetry at all - including proper motion and radiational asymmetry from the star - would need active correction. Without it, the entire structure will fall apart catastrophically. (It might take a while, but there's not much point building something that big unless it lasts.)

Active correction implies movement, which is not what you want on an inhabitable surface, or even on a computing machine.

And it probably wouldn't be much use as a computing machine. The bigger the system, the longer it takes information to propagate across it. A system with propagation delays on the order of minutes isn't going to run nearly as fast as its energy budget might suggest.

That's still true even if you imagine some kind of ultimate limit system where the computation happens directly on a spherical spacetime shell instead of on tangible hardware.

I suppose it's possible that if it turns out that KIC 8462852 is showing evidence of alien action, the aliens are somehow dimming the star directly instead of by building screens around it.

<comment><USER24> Seems to me that if you have the energy output of an entire star, you have quite enough energy to keep your shell balanced around the center of it.

Even with those magic reaction-less engines they are working on now you could keep the thing in place by just spacing engines on the outside at the correct distance.

I imagine the movement would have to be insanely slow to prevent the entire structure from collapsing though, and I wonder whether a solar flare wouldn't put out so much energy/movement that you'd spent years correcting it.

<comment><USER25> You don't need engines. You have a giant fusion reactor. You just need exhaust vents you can open asymmetrically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain)

<comment><USER20> Since this is apparently what we're doing now, here's my move. ;)

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

<comment><USER26> Nice. I named our company after the Matrioshka brain in a roundabout way ([http://1026labs.com](http://1026labs.com), 10^26 being the wattage of our sun) but we haven't called anything computronium yet.

Edit: We're on the way... [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/25/semiconductor_indust...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/25/semiconductor_industry_association_international_technology_roadmap_for_semiconductors/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> One issue of ring worlds is traction (and Dyson spheres are much more complicated than that). Nothing we can imagine and certainly nothing we can build can take it but what if instead of rotating it above orbital speed to create gravity inside the ring we rotate it below orbital speed, create gravity on the outer surface and rely on materials that can withstand the compression?

Sunlight could still be reflected by a fleet of orbiting mirrors that wouldn't orbit the star in sync with the ring and thus would not be subjected to the structural forces of the ring. In case the ring is built around a smaller star with a spectral emission very different from the one preferred by the ring builders, the mirrors could adjust that too.

<comment><USER27> > create gravity on the outer surface

That's a tricky one. Do you mean make the ring thick enough that it has enough mass to have its own gravity?

<comment><USER18> No.

When the ring rotates at orbital speed, there is no perceived gravity on either side. If the ring rotates faster than that, one would perceive a force pulling them away from the central star. If, however, the ring rotates below orbital speed its mass would be pulled toward the central star (along with anyone standing on its outer surface). The forces pulling it towards the star would compress its structure (the opposite of the traction forces a faster ring with positive gravity on the inner surface would experience).

I think (I haven't checked the numbers) the ring's mass can't be neglected, but, because of the shape, it'd act as an extra mass within the central star. The ring is, in fact, in its own orbit.

<comment><USER18> Good and bad news. A stationary ring around a star with one solar mass would be very close, about a tenth of the distance Mercury orbits the sun, to make its inhabitants experience one Earth gravity on its outer surface. The good news is the ring would be much smaller than 1AU and it'd be easier to do it around a large white dwarf and still get a lot of energy from it. Not sure how much pressure solar wind would be, but, if the star is active enough, we could use it to partly sustain the ring structure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> dysonspheres are cool, real cool, but how does the dyson sphere wikipedia page get to the front page of hacker news?

<comment><USER29> People are speculating about alien megastructures around Tabby's star. That's why.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> A variation on this and the first rung of he Dyson swarm would be a space station that follows the earth's orbit rather than orbits it. you could call it a dyson tile or fly or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why not a Dyson-like moon coverage which allows us to regulate the night and day illumination provided by our celestial satellite?

Solar operated mirrors whose focus and intensity can be regulated remotely.

</comment><comment><USER32> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS_fiyKkAno](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS_fiyKkAno)

</comment><comment><USER28> isnt a dyson ring good enough?

<comment><USER33> Good enough for what?

If we're talking about providing for the energy needs of the Earth, that'd be way way overkill too. See how much solar we'd need on Earth to power our needs: [http://www.techinsider.io/map-shows-solar-panels-to-power- th...](http://www.techinsider.io/map-shows-solar-panels-to-power-the- earth-2015-9)

If we're talking about powering some future hypothetical civilization.. Yeah it'd have to be ginormous and have huge energy requirements to warrant that much energy. Maybe if they wanted to channel that energy and blow up a few planets it could be useful..

<comment><USER34> Building the ring would be interesting engineering challenge. Once you build it with sun in its center of mass, it's in unstable equilibrium, so you only need to compensate for the drift. But until it is built, your components have to orbit the sun. So the finished ring would also keep this momentum and it would be rotating around its center.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Unlike other speheres it's made from transparent plastic and doesn't lose suction.

<comment><USER36> ...and it costs $500.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Can someone please build one of these around SF. We desperately need it. ;)</comment>


The Publisher of Newsweek Has Been Buying Traffic and Engaging in Ad Fraud - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/the-publisher-of-newsweek-and-the-international-business <comment><USER2> report itself (pdf)

[http://socialpuncher.com/media/files/CFPB-IBTimes-Case-by- So...](http://socialpuncher.com/media/files/CFPB-IBTimes-Case-by- Socialpuncher.pdf)</comment>


How to Crack a Master Lock Combination Lock - <AUTHOR> http://vdm3gd.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/masterlock-01.png

<comment><USER2> Something is incorrect in the last few steps. How did the guy get 0,6,10,14 in the example vs. what he says in the"what you do". Unless it should be "second row" instead of "second column", but I still don't see how it is done.</comment>


The technical pants that replaced my jeans - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/08/the-technical-pants-that-replaced-my-jeans/ <comment><USER2> I'm wearing the male version of those pants right now. They're called The Climbers - and they're the only pair of pants I own. You know those blogging technomads who have only one pair of jeans and a MacBook Air? Well I'm not a nomad but these pants dry fast, are tough, can be worn in semi-formal situations, and have crazy stretch. Jeans don't have any of those features, except maybe some toughness.

Who doesn't want to wear something that looks like pants, feels like sweatpants, and dry after a few hours after being laundered? I launder these about once a month. These are well worth the price.

<comment><USER3> For that price, I can buy 10 pairs of jeans on ebay, in a style that I like. Or I can go to the thrift store and get 50. I'll have wet ankles when I bike in the rain in a poncho, but whatever.

<comment><USER4> Obviously one can also make that same argument for electric cars like the tesla, or SSDs when they were first released. The intel X18-M 80GB SSD was $700 when it was first released in 2008. New tech always starts out with low demand and high price.

<comment><USER5> SSDs have the exception that they make me more effective at building product, which pays for the investment. I can't say the same for a pair of pants.

<comment><USER4> For hackers, pants are not so incredibly useful. However, I'm guessing this company is not targeting computer professionals as their target market. If you're doing long distance cycling or you're a backpack/hiking kind of person, I'm sure odor/water resistant pants would be highly useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it makes sense to find clothes that suit you and stick with them. Jobs and his turtlenecks is a well known example. Saves a lot of bother in the long run. Not to mention the benefit of being able to order something online with some certainty and avoid the crazy local markups.

I pretty much live in ultra light, quick drying nylon cargo pants. They roll down to almost nothing when travelling. I would probably step up to something heavier duty if I did more physical work but they are much cooler than jeans in a warm climate and have a much quicker wash/dry cycle.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a couple black pairs of these triple-stitched and water-repellent tactical cargos for $5 each [1]. I think they are worth the full price of $65, but since I am stingy, I buy on closeout when available. They have some stretch as well. Only con is that they are too hot for 80+ degree weather.

1\. [http://www.511tactical.com/5-11-tactical-pants-men-s- cotton....](http://www.511tactical.com/5-11-tactical-pants-men-s-cotton.html)

</comment><comment><USER8> Personally, I like all-cotton pants. Stretchy just feels weird to me and no way could I wear something that's got that much polyester and elastane.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well, there are plenty of much more affordable, more water repellant pants that companies for the climbing/hiking community have been producing. I own five pairs of these pants: [http://www.amazon.com/prAna-Stretch-32-Inch- Inseam-Charcoal/...](http://www.amazon.com/prAna-Stretch-32-Inch-Inseam- Charcoal/dp/B004GECC3O/)

<comment><USER10> I'm a huge fan of the Prana Brion ([http://www.prana.com/brion- pant.html](http://www.prana.com/brion-pant.html)) - very similar to the one you linked, except without the cargo pockets. After getting these I'm never going back to pants without stretch fabric or water resistance. They're great for travel and in charcoal they look reasonably dressy too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> #infomercial

<comment><USER12> yeah it seems quite spammy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wear pants that Toyota group factory workers wear. They are definitely not fashionable but are really performant. great in heat, cold, water resistant, usable for athletics, tear resistant, and cheap. I wish they were available readily, esp for the price I used to pay as an employee ($10/pair).

</comment><comment><USER14> What? $225 for a pant? No thanks, my 'normal' jeans is comfortable enough, fits good, and has pockets big enough to fit my Nexus 5. :).

</comment><comment><USER15> Intriguing, but unfortunately there's no way I can buy pants blind off the internet, without trying them on.

</comment><comment><USER16> $225 for pants and I can't choose the inseam...

</comment><comment><USER17> jesus christ the redirects

</comment><comment><USER5> All of the website's sample images show a man running up stairs and traffic in shoes that would destroy your foot if you attempted to seriously run in them.

This feels a lot like bringing a burrito to your keyboard. You're not doing anything useful while you slop food into your face, and now you have a mess on your keyboard.

I will never need to transition from just-got-out-of-a-formal-dinner to running a marathon. Won't happen. And if it was going to happen, I have specialized clothing that works better for both purposes.</comment>


High Phenolic Olive Oil Changes Gene Expression - <AUTHOR> http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/007296.html

<comment><USER2> I eat two tablespoons of this specially imported olive oil from Chile that has one of the highest contents of phenol (500 count). It has lowered my bad cholesterol and raised my good cholesterol significantly, although much of it also has to do with a better diet too.</comment>


Rice-led project aims to boost performance on every chip - <AUTHOR> http://www.rice.edu/nationalmedia/news2009-04-07-darpa.shtml

<comment><USER2> The results (especially any code) of this tax dollar funded research are going to go to the public domain...RIGHT?</comment>


Show HN: Decentralised Twitter – Microblogging on the Ethereum Blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/yep/eth-tweet <comment><USER3> See also something similar using Bitcoin: [http://eternitywall.it/](http://eternitywall.it/)

</comment><comment><USER4> How big will the blockchain become? I have not read much about Ethereum and not a deep understanding of every technical aspect regarding blockchains, however I understand that most applications just are not practical with endlessly growing blockchains. Does Ethereum a solution for that?

<comment><USER5> One needn't store the data on blockchains, just a hash to it, or even a hash of many data blocks' hashes, etc.

<comment><USER6> Well, _someone_ has to store and transmit the actual content at some point, and for real twitter there's a total volume of 400 million tweets a day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> besides payment how's this different than this [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.7152v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.7152v1.pdf) [https://github.com/miguelfreitas/twister- html](https://github.com/miguelfreitas/twister-html)

<comment><USER8> The payment aspect is what ensures that a big distributed network will actually store and serve your tweets.

Any single given application on Ethereum (except straight-up value transfer as seen in Bitcoin) isn't compelling enough to have its own network, but together they are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What language are the .sol files written in?

I have never seen that file extension before, but the language looks to be C-derived.

<comment> a-priori It's for Solidity, a language created by the Ethereum folks for writing smart contracts.

[https://ethereum.github.io/solidity/](https://ethereum.github.io/solidity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interesting concept, not sure I'd want to pay per tweet though, even 1/3rd of a cent..

<comment><USER11> I would love to see Twitter adopt this. Any tweet with an external link - <USER2> must pay 1/3 cent. Let's see which tweets you really deem important to tweet!

<comment><USER12> What about retweets?

<comment><USER13> It has a link. Pay the toll.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How big would be a standalone binary for this ?

<comment><USER15> Can't be too big! That could be a great project, perhaps an easy entrance for many into Ethereum technologies.</comment></comment>


Found a weird Reddit account which posts cryptic messages - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/user/54686520446576696c <comment> a-fried-egg Devil worshippers maybe

<comment><USER2> Some of their messages are rot13

        echo -en "Turl ner jngpuvat" | rot13
        Ghey are watching

<comment><AUTHOR> Their post titles are doubly encrypted hexa decimals. And the titles are

* BEWARE * DANGER DANGER * MESSAGE ONE * IT BEGINS</comment></comment></comment>


At DigitalOcean a Linux SysA needs to type 55+ WPM. Why? - <AUTHOR> https://careers.digitalocean.com/careers/linux-systems-administrator/

<comment><USER2> From the description, it looks like this may be a kind of glorified customer support tech. If that is the case, there is probably a lot of clerical work that goes along with this.</comment>


Ask HN: Is walking in the rain bad for your health? - <AUTHOR> This is a type of question, I wish the internet could answer. But it does not.
Everytime I walk in the rain (with a coat, so I don't get much wet) I am afraid that I will get sick.
Is there something to this? <comment><USER2> Actually "the internet" can answer:

[https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/ne3nym/we-asked-an- expe...](https://www.vice.com/en_asia/article/ne3nym/we-asked-an-expert-if- the-rain-can-really-make-you-sick)

>But really, rain isn't the reason anyone gets sick. A weak immune system is.

>"Cold temperatures weaken the immune system," Mahesa told VICE. "Plus, rainwater hits the ground and elevates bacteria and viruses from the ground up into the air. So people will be exposed to them during rain which might cause them to fall ill."

<comment><AUTHOR> I read this as a "Yes".

        But really, rain isn't the reason anyone
        gets sick. A weak immune system is.

That is like saying "Guns don't kill people. Not wearing bullet proof vests does."

<comment><USER2> Well, the actual relevant part is the rainwater that, hitting the ground, sprays bacteria and viruses into the air (according to "that expert" from "the internet") .

"Another expert" (also from "the internet") believes that it is actually good for your (mental) health:

[https://www.ianbanyard.com/home/the-benefits-of-walking- in-t...](https://www.ianbanyard.com/home/the-benefits-of-walking-in-the-rain/)

But not if you are the wicked witch of the West:

[https://www.quora.com/Is-it-healthy-to-walk-under- rain](https://www.quora.com/Is-it-healthy-to-walk-under-rain)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> When it rains I think the air quality improves so you breathe in a humid and clean air instead of a dry dirty air.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is there anything about this on the internet that supports this thesis? Any studies?

<comment><USER2> >Is there anything about this on the internet that supports this thesis? Any studies?

Not exactly, but near enough:

[http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120305-youll-catch-a- cold-...](http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120305-youll-catch-a-cold-with- wet-hair)

[http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/6/608.short](http://fampra.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/6/608.short)

>Conclusion. Acute chilling of the feet causes the onset of common cold symptoms in around 10% of subjects who are chilled. Further studies are needed to determine the relationship of symptom generation to any respiratory infection.</comment></comment></comment>