Ask HN: How has the Internet changed your life? - <AUTHOR>

I am just wondering about how the internet has advanced humanity as a whole by knowing about personal, individual experiences.
Im only 20, so most of my life has been with the internet, I can't imagine life without it. It is that profound and useful to me. I feel it adds a layer of consciousness to existence if used resourcefully and intelligently.
This is an open discussion. Just get involved. <comment><USER2> The amount of information at my fingertips (literally) is mind boggling.

I used to read Worldbook encyclopedias when I was a kid (mostly at school). A set costs hundreds of dollars... and is eclipsed by Wikipedia + google.

I used to collect cast-off databooks (National Instruments, TI, Motorola, Intel, etc.), now all that information and more is only a google search away.

I used to buy ARRL Handbooks to learn about electronics and circuits. Now I mostly don't bother (just kidding, I still dabble in electronics, but gave up my Ham license many years ago - just wasn't interested in talking to random strangers). Hmmm, now I type text to random strangers and browse random strangers' blogs.

I used to subscribe to magazines (e.g. Byte, Dr. Dobbs) to learn about computers and software, now I run, read, and contribute to Open Source projects.

You know how you always forget the bad stuff and only remember the good stuff? Looking back, I remember a lot of cool things I did, but I kind of blank out how much effort it was to find the necessary information.

On the dark side, I waste a _lot_ of time on the internet. One of our kids did a clay "diorama" of "this is my family." Someone else's kid had their family around a campfire. My kid had the family in the living room, me with a little clay laptop on my lap. Oh-oh.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are some lucky apes.

The internet is like buzz lightyear and books are like woody.

This generation needs LEGOs and camping trips.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I feel smarter and more knowledgeable. I've had access to the web in my house off and on since I was 11 (25 now) and even when things dragged along via dial-up, I always felt like I had all kinds of info at my fingertips. I'd go to class in high school armed with all kinds of facts and background info on topics that the teachers (especially in history classes, for example) never would have/could have covered.

My parents were always all for dropping me and my bro off at the library, but something about finding out about stuff by going from link to link is just more fluid than walking out with a ton of books (some of which may not even be all current).

During college, I picked up Rails and all this open source stuff--the databases, servers, etc.--that I really wouldn't have gotten to in classes until my senior year. 'twas all made possible by going from link to link, blog to blog.

Overall, I'm just happy that whatever I want to know is always going to just be right there as long as I have some kind of internet connection. It's always been an advantage in my book.

Socially, I'm glad I can stay connected to whomever despite not physically being within a convenient distance of any of my really good friends. Despite Facebook and Twitter, iChat and Skype keep me connected and able to _see_ friends from college who are allover the place. Seeing a friend react in real- time to some new shirt you bought, for example, really beats even just the telephone. It all makes the world smaller and a lot closer.

Gotta love the internet...!

<comment><AUTHOR> Long live the internet!

We are lucky to have had a taste of life without the internet and to be among the few who care to influence it's future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Here's my story... Growing up I was always very active. I spent a lot of time outdoors and really enjoyed it. I was planning on becoming a paramedic. I'd grown up with computers and our family had the internet from about 1995.

At the age of 17 (I'm 24 now) two things began to happen, I started to play with design and HTML and I also developed a continuous headache... it started one day and I haven't had a moment without it since.

So how has the internet changed my life? Since I could no longer be active and couldn't pursue becoming a paramedic I spent more and more time designing websites and very quickly friends started paying me to create websites for them and I realised that I could do it for a living.

Now I've spent over five years working in the industry and have worked with people all over the world. I have worked for myself and for a number of creative agencies. I'm currently employed full-time and work in an office, but I'm not sure how much longer I can do that (bright fluorescent lights and the routine can be difficult at times) and so I'm either going to start looking for a startup/work from home job or go back to freelancing. All of this has been made possible because of the internet and I will continue to be able to work full-time because of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing. The Internet is like our era's 'New World'. So much opportunity for anyone bold enough to 'figure it out.'

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I write a lot more and I read about more diverse subjects.</comment>


Why can't all "tech" journalism be like this? - <AUTHOR> http://kottke.org/11/01/why-is-schmidt-stepping-down-at-google <comment><USER2> Money.

Pretty much any sentence of that piece could be spun off into an individual post on techcrunch &c. Spread your insight over a dozen blog-posts, and you get far more ad revenue

The New Yorker, on the other hand, gets the very best writers and gives them massive amounts of time to write a very small amount of text. So when you read, say, an article by Seymour Hersh, you know he's spent anywhere up to 6 months working on it.

<comment><USER3> Let's keep it in perspective: each of those sentences does have a background story worthy of exploring further.

One may get the best of both worlds if one could, like, click on those pieces of text. That would be awesome. We could call it "hypertext"...

The bottomline is that we've been stuck with the same issue for the past 10+ years: bloggers don't have the writing/journalistic skills, and MSM refuses to take advantage of the technology. And we'll have to make do with two types of half-assed products, piecing them together ourselves (with the help of sites like HN) to get the whole picture.

No wonder no one is willing to pay for content.

<comment><USER4> There is some hope.

While I can't provide huge amounts of detail, some TV stations are seeing the writing on the wall. I've spoken with one in particular who realizes that a) NBC/CBS/ABC is going to become a cable / internet network at some point, leaving the local station that much more time to fill. Also b) most people aren't turning to TV news, except in extraordinary cases where it fills a real need. (TRUE breaking news, think 9/11, local standoffs, fires, earthquakes, etc.)

They're talking about giving reporters 2 days to do 1 story. Each story is double or triple the length, and hopefully even more times the quality of the traditional 1:30 package. They're hoping the quality of the story can be spread via Facebook / the internet, and then have people come back and watch the newscast because it's a place to find out about quality things happening in their community.

The current problem? The news staff doesn't want to do that. They want to stay on their current course.

These signs point to a new hybrid form of journalism that excites me. A longer, in-depth story where appropriate, but also the bite-sized chunks which blogs have somewhat perfected.

Will it work perfectly? Not tomorrow. I'm confident, however, that it will work at some point in the future.

Anyone else who reads HN and who's looking at solving the same problem should get in contact with me. I want to talk to smart folks about the future of journalism. My specific slant is the video part, but I'd love to hear from smart folks thinking about all angles.

<comment><USER5> Problem with your idea: "a place to find out about quality things happening in their community" is not something normal people actually want.

It's something HNers and a small subset of news consumers want, but not the general public. They want to be entertained, even while watching "the news."

Normal people never want something to be "longer" and more "in-depth." That's a niche.

<comment><USER4> Looks like we'll have some data to back up these assumptions. That's all they've been in the past.

Who says entertainment and quality have to be mutually exclusive? I don't. I think the counterpoint to this is what got us in this situation where people are turning off the tube en masse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Analysis reporting (making educated guesses and telling stories) has valuable functions. It "shakes trees" in the sense that sources sometimes come forward to confirm or deny an analysis. It promotes skepticism by providing alternative to controlled press releases and controlled leaks. It also is a dog in the fight to influence the "commonly accepted narrative" of events - the interpretations about the uncertain aspects of reality that dominate our collective response to the present and near future.

If you eliminate all of these functions and just let a few official sources fill the news-hole, it is not as though non-objective analysis will disappear. Far from it. Instead, all non-objective but authoritative-sounding analysis will come only from those with the greatest economic and political power. In short, you will have a fascist propaganda machine.

(There is constant rebellion against the tendency of the press to enrich its pockets by turning away from the wild speculation and radical analysis. Uh... Hunter Thompson was one symptom of that rebellion a few years back. More recently, I suppose that the "right wing talk radio" crowd is another symptom of the same tendency to rebel against simply receiving truths and their interpretation from the powers that be. Tech is a microcosm different in topic, not kind from the general field of national news reporting: people fight over which facts to highlight and how to interpret them. Some reporters are supposed to be in there slugging it out.)

</comment><comment><USER7> Techcrunch is what I imagine it would be like if Perez Hilton blogged about technology.

<comment><USER8> Nah, TechCrunch is newsweek - Valleywag was Perez Hilton

<comment><USER3> I suspect you haven't read TC in a while...

<comment><USER8> I'm thinking you haven't read Newsweek lately....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One reason is, the New Yorker pays real editors.

<comment><USER10> Another reason is that it's written by a guy who has studied this company for years, interviewed Schmidt eleven times and links to his own Google book in the body of the article.

Freelance tech journalism, this ain't.

<comment><USER11> Indeed. Also, this is traditional journalism, done in a new medium.

TechCrunch is the new medium (Blogging) with a rough journalism slant.

There is a real life comparison too; TechCrunch is like the tabloid papers - they have all the content, plus the biases and the speculation and a bit of trash. The New Yorker content is like the Business dailys - curt, to the point, aimed at people who want to know the facts, plus sensible analysis from people who understand the context in detail (and are writing from academic interest as much as commercial).

<comment><USER12> > this is traditional journalism

The fact that this style of journalism is considered "traditional" is itself quite lamentable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Wait a minute. The TechCrunch coverage on Larry Page replacing Eric Schmidt is a simple 4 paragraphs of editorial. It also simply states facts and doesn't include conjecture or spun opinion. See for yourself: <http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/google-ceo-change/> It may not contain the same level of information potency, but it's not drawn out gossip either.

Also, the other post sort of on the topic simply includes the author's account of development of the story, about how he was going to break it beforehand. Similarly, it's pretty straightforward without a lot of unnecessary fluff. It's here: [http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/techcrunch-interview- with-e...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/20/techcrunch-interview-with-eric- schmidt-larry-page-and-sergey-brin/)

<comment><USER14> Thanks for noticing that Kottke's post is really an epic troll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a newbie in the blogging culture in Silicon Valley, I honestly can't agree more. I want to see more of this style of reporting and I try pretty hard to do it myself.

I guess I'm what you'd call a "classically trained" journalist. So maybe I'm just feeling a little pretentious or annoyed at the state of things out here. But 99 percent of the time it feels like people are too damn lazy to pick up the phone and call their sources — or even shoot them an email and ask for a quick comment. I _almost_ fell into that trap when I first joined the technorati out here but have since reverted to my own personal instincts of actually talking to people for stories (I know, what a concept, right?)

For a new face in silicon valley it's honestly extremely discouraging and frustrating — not only seeing it in other blogs but from my co-workers from time to time at VentureBeat as well. It's even more discouraging to be encouraged by my editors from time to time to simply bust out a story without any additional reporting. I feel pretty proud that I have not done a straight reblog without additional reporting in more than a month when it's merited.

Naturally, some stories don't demand that kind of additional reporting. So there's a place for analysis, commentary, and the like. I'll be damned if I end up as an MG Siegler-type reporter that injects opinion/praise/vitriol in every single article I write, though. I don't really see that opinion changing any time soon, either.

(Edit for quick background: former Reuters reporter, graduated in 2010.)

<comment><USER16> _I'll be damned if I end up as an MG Siegler-type reporter_

Turns out that guy isn't a reporter, he's a blogger. That's why TC is light on journalism, analysis, and cogent commentary.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Unfortunately, Internet journalism has become primarily about speed -- so the fastest to report or even speculate wins on aggregation services -- thus the lions share of the traffic.

<comment><USER18> Speed has its advantage, as in the case of this story posted here a mere four hours after what it reports about: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2128825>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "according to associates" and "According to close advisors" isn't the strongest I've seen in the "properly sourced" department.

<comment><USER20> It wouldn't be if it was Tech Crunch or Mashable, but it's The New Yorker and they have real reporters, editors, fact checkers and standards.

<comment><USER18> In other words, people are far more impressed with this article because of the newyorker.com in the URL than they would be if it appeared anywhere else.

<comment><USER20> Sure. But that's because the one with newyorker.com in the URL has a 85 years of credibility behind it. TechCrunch and similar are concerned with speed, not quality. The New Yorker would rather be a day (or week/month!) late and have the full story than be first and have the most re-tweets.

<comment><USER18> Credibility is important, but credulity is always a risk.

People would be cautious and skeptical if these exact words were posted on TechCrunch. Instead, we're hearing how awesome and correct this article _must_ be because it's posted on newyorker.com.

<comment><USER21> I think that in its length, this thread has attenuated reality a little bit. The reality is, the New Yorker piece _was_ more spare, less breathless, and better reported than a typical TechCrunch posting. The New Yorker byline is not the _only_ thing that makes Kottke think the article is awesome.

The other side to your argument is, yes, the New Yorker byline does make Kottke think it's "correct". It does the same thing for most people, probably including you. _It probably is correct_. You said it yourself: credibility is important. TechCrunch has done a lot of stuff to burn credibility instead of building it.

<comment><USER18> Or perhaps shorter: people should be reasonably skeptical in approaching articles like this. That they should be much _more_ wary of a tainted source like TechCrunch does not change that first fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The sad thing is that "tech" journalism is amongst the least biased out there. I have come to hate watching the news (blogs included). Journalism has become a relentless quest to instill emotions rather than just inform. Blogs originally appeared as an opportunity for journalists to throw in facts up top and let opinions brew down bottom, so that every one could find what they were looking for, but how many times have you found yourself infuriated by some idiotic speculations mingled with half truths posted by a "respectable" source in the blogosphere?

</comment><comment><USER23> Ken Auletta got outstanding sources at Google because he had already climbed his way to the top of the journalistic food chain. If he hadn't, his sources would not have spoken with him. See also: why can't all students with decent grades get into Harvard, why can't all soccer teams starting with my child's under-8 squad win the World Cup, why Warren Buffet returns Barack Obama's phone calls but not yours, etc. People at the top of one hierarchy want access to the tops of external hierarchies they deal with.

</comment><comment><USER24> "I would have written a shorter letter but didn't have time." - Blaise Pascal

</comment><comment><USER25> If "we" didn't click on the TC stories or vote them up, they'd probably get the idea pretty quickly. Just sayin'.

<comment><USER26> I don't. Unfortunately, TC's style sells, and they're quite popular. The loss of traffic from me and similar is less than the gain of traffic from others.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> That's awesome. The way it's described, that's something most of us have run into in our careers, and it makes Eric sound like a real person.

</comment><comment><USER18> Actually, the only difference here is a semi-clear narrative and decent writing. What indication is there that this is any less off-base than a thousand other speculations?

</comment><comment><USER28> The elephant in the room question is why Kottke never writes anything original? Every one of his posts (including the linked one) is a quote or an embed. Yet this hasn't prevented him or TC, etc. from having a widely read blogs. He is an aggregator or a curator. We need less curators and more writers.

<comment><USER29> There's no reason to see it as zero-sum between writers and curators. One of the reasons _The New Yorker_ has such good writing is that is has such good curators, or "editors" as they're called in publishing jargon. Kottke (assuming he's as good as he used to be – I haven't been keeping up) is a net benefit to the reading public because he exposes and encourages good writing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> One could say the same about journalism in any subject. It's cheaper and often as profitable to pump out shallow celebrity gossip and infotainment than to put out factual reporting and well thought out commentary.

If you're wondering at a higher level why this is so, the simple answer is that almost all modern journalism is ad supported. Attracting eyeballs matters for the bottom line, how much people value or even believe what you report is irrelevant as long as you can mantain viewership.

</comment><comment><USER31> The New Yorker is pretty much the standout print publication of our age (certainly in the US). Expecting everyone to be this good is understandable but unrealistic.

</comment><comment><USER32> Achieving zero bias is among the most difficult things to write in journalism, even in something as seemingly binary as technology. A bigger question might be "was the answer any different than what you imagined it would be?"

Even if journalism is far from objective, I think people are good at making inferences as to what really happened in the articles they read (at least in this crowd).

</comment><comment><USER33> This is so true! It happens to on nearly every tech article that the author just pushed the buttons and turned a three paragraphs info in a murder-tech- blog-murder-looking-article. The bad thing about it is that you can't more out of those articles as you could from those "original" three paragraphs.

It's not that article size or letter count matters to all of us. I just want to get informed the right things. No long history telling, cause mostly I know it cause I hang around in this area everyday and for more I have Wikipedia. No long opinions and suggestions, cause most time I don't care or I disagree. No long mambo-cambo which let's me ask "Wait. What did I just read".

More of those short, quality and informing articles please.

</comment><comment><USER34> We should look at ourselves when we ask why. Especially in tech, everyone just _loves_ to be opinionated. Look at at least half of all the blog posts that make it onto this site, for instance.

</comment><comment><USER35> I don't get it. What properly sourced facts? Since when does adding an occasional "according to a close advisor," or "according to associates" count as proper sourcing? Proper sourcing means that an independent third party could verify the claims. The article is very even handed, and may even be correct, but at face value it's nothing more than the author's opinion and unsubstantiated references to unknown people.

</comment><comment><USER36> Most tech journalism is purposefully dumbed down to appeal to a wider audience. Just like reports on government economic policies don't include references to specific economic theories and complex equations.

In this case, the article is purely factual, so it's also short. If the editor has some pages to fill, he wants it long, and to pad out the article, a journalist will fill it with fluff opinions and emotional statements.

</comment><comment><USER37> Hiring good writers and good editors is expensive. The New Yorker cares much more than most web publications about the quality of their output.

</comment><comment><USER38> After reading that I have no need for more details, where the sources came from, or what the latest "rumors" about Schmidt are.

</comment><comment><USER39> While in theory, I support the massive potential for new media to democratize journalism, right now we're at a point where the standards are simply not yet in place. Bloggers and online journalists are the cowboy coders of the early days of the web. A necessary transition, but sweet Jesus, can the results be ugly most of the time.

</comment><comment><USER40> Its pulp / fluff reporting, and it distracts a ton of people from doing something valuable

</comment><comment><USER41> i like techcrunch. they call it a blog, not a newspaper/journalism.

the cited article contains nothing to read, i think the same: google has issues, the leadership changes, nothing strange. sure i'm glad that people say (and print) the same, but sometimes it's interesting to read some contrary, longer or personalized blog post.

and, techcrunch lets me be closer to the Valley while being far overseas

<comment><USER42> TechCrunch allows one to view a microcosm of the Valley through colored lenses.

<comment><USER41> right. especially the comments (which are the part of TC, aren't they?).

for example, the comments to the posts of my beloved Alexia Tsotsis are of a certain colour! which says much about the microcosm

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> This phenomenon is hardly unique to tech journalism. Unfortunately, sensationalism sells in just about every form of journalism.

</comment><comment><USER44> There's a difference between writing with the sole aim of getting it out first (so that TechMeme gets you first or you get the most retweets) and writing a good analysis of a story.

That's why, imho, blogs can never replace real publications. Pick up The Economist or The New Yorker and you still get a lot of added value and insight, even if the events happened days earlier.</comment>


Google Is Pursuing Pentagon Cloud Contract Quietly, Fearing Employee Revolt - <AUTHOR> https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2018/04/google-pursuing-pentagons-giant-cloud-contract-quietly-fearing-employee-revolt/147407/ <comment><USER2> What's wrong with google? Are they that afraid of their internal perception?

Business is, so long as legal, business. This is not any worse than the personal info they collect on all google product users, but somehow this is more outrageous?

Can you imagine the people working at big co in S Korea, Japan, China, India, Russia, South Africa, etc., taking this kind of personal affront stand? No, don't provide services to your own government, they bad.

<comment><USER3> The issue is not really working for the government. Internally there is a strong culture around ethics. One day we had an interesting discussion between collegues at lunch: we imagined what would happen if Google got involved in a war and participated to the effort by using all its projects for nefarious purposes... Biological weapons, robots, AI weapons, infrastructure hacked all over, disinformation, ... I think no one wants a militarized Google.

<comment><USER2> I do believe many of the people there believe in some form of ethics, but are blind to others. We know that Google has more information on people than FB, but this is irrelevant to most googlers because they believe they are good custodians of the data.

Back to realpolitik. These capabilities will be developed by someone. Unilateral retrenchment is ineffective, so if they somehow want to stall the US gov't (because they think google would give the gov't a leg up) all they are doing is giving our competitors in whatever area a nice handicap.

It would have been like the people working on the Manhattan project saying, no, this is unethical, while Germany and Japan would continue the effort unencumbered --leaving the US at a tremendous disadvantage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First the Github/ICE scandal, now this.

When did it become disgraceful to be a part of your country?

<comment><AUTHOR> what scandal are you referring to?

<comment><USER4> There is very little officially published about this. It appears that Github invited a senior ICE official to speak at one of their events. This, however remote, affiliation was deemed inappropriate by many, forcing Github to rescind the invitation.

[https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/982655776614318080](https://twitter.com/_sagesharp_/status/982655776614318080)

<comment><USER5> What is the meaning of the ICE acronym?

<comment><USER6> I believe it's "immigration and customs enforcement".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As someone that helped construct killing machines(Nuclear submarines in my case) in the past, I will say that I believe I share responsibility for their destruction. My life will be more peaceful when they have retired from service.

<comment><USER8> At the same time, my life is more peaceful now knowing they're operational.

<comment><USER9> At the same time, people in the armed forces are probably sick of hearing "GOOD JAB!" and getting slapped on the back while their countrymen do nothing to prevent the need for the means of war.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully none of those employees read HN.</comment>


Hacking the Zsun WiFi SD Card Reader - <AUTHOR> https://wiki.hackerspace.pl/projects:zsun-wifi-card-reader <comment><USER2> There are also a lot of 'smart wifi plugs' which use the same chipset (although with less RAM), which can be bought for ~$20:

[http://www.anites.com/2015/01/hacking-kankun-smart-wifi- plug...](http://www.anites.com/2015/01/hacking-kankun-smart-wifi-plug.html)

<comment><USER3> Interesting. IS it wrong that my first thought was that they look benign and unobtrusive enough that they could be easily socially engineered into somewhere to start scanning for vulnerabilities... ?

When flashed with the appropriate firmware of course.

<comment><USER4> [https://xkcd.com/1494/](https://xkcd.com/1494/)

Seemed relevant.

<comment><USER3> LOL.

Not sure it's 100% applicable, but certainly my proposal would indeed by illegal black-hattery, unless done by a legit pen-tester.

I'd never do such a thing, but I might now be more aware that the little plastic block attached to the socket over there could easily be a cheap, full linux system running some sort of metasploit/neopwn variant...

<comment><USER5> We are now beyond assuming that you can "see" the tiny computer over there. You can pretty assume that for example that any electrical device could have one of these concealed in it. That includes electric cords and light bulbs.

Additionally these can be hidden in non-electrical objects with small batteries and run for weeks.

<comment><USER6> This is exactly why I dismantle and inspect all 'unimaginably cheap' pieces of tech before using them for their intended purpose. That, and curiosity. There are many clever cost-cutting hacks to be learned that way.

<comment><USER7> One of my favourite youtube channels is BigClivedotcom's, where he takes apart a bunch of cheap gadgets.

[https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom](https://www.youtube.com/user/bigclivedotcom)

<comment><USER6> Agreed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow it's only a $9 device (see below)

Definitely trying this out.

I wonder what the power draw is?

Shame they didn't use microusb connector.

No idea about the trustworthiness of this seller but use the page for general info and lots of photos:

[http://www.gearbest.com/memory- cards/pp_246125.html](http://www.gearbest.com/memory-cards/pp_246125.html)

 _update: only $9.13 with coupon code GBJANRT and use paypal checkout for safety_

There is also a source on aliexpress that is $1 cheaper if you are buying bulk.

I wonder if openWRT gives it wifi-N ability, factory firmware only does wifi-G

<comment><USER9> Another similar device is the gl.inet AR-150

$24 but you get 2xEthernet, USB host, stable openwrt, a button + 2 state switch (handy for triggering scripts) and the option of an external antenna.

[https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/gl-inet/gl- ar150](https://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/gl-inet/gl-ar150)

[http://www.aliexpress.com/item/GL-iNet-GL-AR150-150Mbps- WiFi...](http://www.aliexpress.com/item/GL-iNet-GL-AR150-150Mbps-WiFi-Router- OPENWRT-ENGLISH-Firmware-Wi-Fi-Repeater-Wifi-Signal-Booster/32518790497.html)

I'm so tempted to order this for $9 but I don't really have a use for it!

<comment><USER8> I have zero use for it also but playing with and learning this chipset for $9 is something I cannot passup.

I am sure I'll use it as a repeater or remote storage device at some point.

Now if I could justify the two dozen smartphones I have...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is strange - original blog post is not searchable through google. All I see is pages that point to wiki.hackerspace.pl.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, a few days ago we noticed that our wiki pages fell off Google and Bing search results. No idea why, and Google Webmaster Tools aren't helpful, either. :(

<comment><USER12> You have <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow"/> tag on your pages. See:

[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/93710?hl=en)

<comment><USER11> Ah, thanks. Apparently it was due to the indexdelay [1] option in dokuwiki, which I've now lowered.

[1] - [https://www.dokuwiki.org/config:indexdelay](https://www.dokuwiki.org/config:indexdelay)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Presumably, as this is running Busybox, one ought to be able to contact the manufacturer and request the source code?

I checked out their website but it's Chinese-only, so not of great help to me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Can you run other general Linux tasks on a DDWRT build?

<comment><USER15> This is OpenWRT, not the same thing as DD-WRT. It's basically a full embedded Linux distro with extra emphasis on networking and complete with its own package manager, so the answer is yes you can do quite a lot with it.

It's possible to do more general purpose stuff with DD-WRT as well, but it's not quite as flexible . IIRC you can install your own packages there too, but it is set up to be more streamlined as a SOHO router.</comment></comment>


The Age of Tech Superheroes Must End - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-age-of-tech-superheroes-must-end-1528387420 <comment><USER2> "They'll hail you, then nail you, no matter who you are"</comment>


MRI machine at the nanoscale breaks world records - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2016-07-mri-machine-nanoscale-world.html <comment><AUTHOR> The paper referenced is 'Probing the Nuclear Spin-Lattice Relaxation Time at the Nanoscale' [1] by researchers at the Leiden Institute of Physics.

One of the reasons this is interesting is the application to brain imaging - it is suggested it can be used to study the brains of Alzheimer's patients 'at a molecular level' which could pave the way for whole-brain scans and mapping.

[1] [http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.04238](http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.04238)</comment>


PSA: Lulu lets girls read and write reviews of guys in bed  - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlulu.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hooking up will never be the same!

</comment><comment><USER2> Now imagine one for boys.

<comment><AUTHOR> Helllll yeah</comment></comment>


The Useless Agony of Going Offline - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-useless-agony-of-going-offline <comment><USER3> I was overwhelmed just reading the initial description of the author's device/media usage. My personality doesn't allow me to be fully engaged with that much external input at the same time - it just shuts me down.

<comment><USER4> Couldn't agree more. Made me wince to imagine it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be curious if the OP really is "better informed" or just imagines he is. What value does knowing what year an obscure book was published provide for his life in general?

Or is it another method of entertainment, as ephemeral as the football game on the TV?

<comment><USER6> > What value does knowing what year an obscure book was published provide for > his life in general?

Agreed in general. In this specific case I should point out, however, that _Things Fall Apart_ (1958) may be the most widely read piece of African literature. It's regularly assigned in college literature courses and is selling better on Amazon than either _War and Peace_ or Neal Stephenson's _Seveneves_ (to pick two that people here may have heard of.)

<comment><USER5> I learn something new every day. Oh, the irony. :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this guy completely missed the point. He mixes distractions from real research work. "Being informed" is a vague phrase. Sometimes information consumption is like eating junk food - it can be too much. In case of author, it feels like a solid case. Unless he uses social networks for real work - <USER2> cannot see how reading Facebook can be productive or relevant to work.

In the end, this article felt like self defence, or even more like rationalization on the topic. But I must admit that it forced me to think about this topic a little.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think my experience would line up with the author's fairly well if I tried something similar. Honestly I know I spend too much time on social media and whatnot, but even before the Internet I spent a lot of time on my computers so if I were to unplug from everything completely I'd just be bored and miserable.

Maybe I'm not the most enlightened individual ever but I don't see how spending your free time idle or reading books instead of screens is somehow intrinsically better than using technology how you feel it benefits you the most.

To be blunt the whole concept to me reeks of "back in my day..."

<comment><USER9> I think the best take-home from the article is simply that your screen time is a problem only if it's distracting you from the things you'd rather be doing.

If you're spending the majority of your Internet time researching a specific topic, or interacting with others online about that topic, or something you're specifically interested in, then there's not really a problem. As you say, the alternative is spending time offline focused on something else, and neither online nor offline is inherently bad.

It's only bad if you're online and you want to be e.g. watching a Coursera video or having a language lesson over Skype, etc., and the incoming Facebook chat messages, tweets and Slack notifications are constantly pulling away from your intended purpose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> my biggest gripe is that social media makes human interaction shallow and mechanized. always reminds me South Park episode where Steve Jobs is unsuccessfully trying to teach his humancentipad to actually read.</comment>


Larry Page: Android isn't critical, it's a delivery vehicle for Google services - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/18/2957682/larry-page-android-isnt-critical-its-a-delivery-vehicle-for-google

<comment><USER2> I'm glad the original quote is also in the article:

"I believe Android was very important for Google. I wouldn't say it was critical"

The title makes it sound as if Page wouldn't consider Android that important.</comment>


How to Fix Everything: Spending a few days at iFixit - <AUTHOR> http://motherboard.vice.com/read/how-to-fix-everything <comment><USER2> The appliance industry has it figured out. The parts are so discrete and they control the finite supply. Not worth counterfeiting/cloning, because there are too many models/factors. In fact, they won't make replacement parts for pieces they know will last longer than the warranty.

Serviceman Jim can find a belt/board for your 1987 washing machine and have it delivered in 2 hours for $90.

Serviceman Jim says to scrap that 2015 washing machine and buy the 2016 model. The company knows about that recurring problem that every household with that model has, but they're not recalling it.

HVAC unit, fridges, dishwashers, washing machine, dryer, vacuums, etc. I recall there being small businesses with overflowing stock for repair parts for all of these items. Its so much easier to just throw away the item and replace it. Its the age of recyclable electronics, and I can't wait to get an 'iPhone7t multiplied.'

It just saddens me in the age of 'we need more STEM.'

</comment><comment><USER3> I understand where the author is coming from. It is traditional to repair your broken things somehow. It is a bit ingrained in our mentality. BUT.

What moral right does he have to claim that Apple SHOULD make their products fixable? Who are these people to tell Apple (or any other company) if they have to include a technical manual or not? I'm with him when he's against Apple attacking people who try to repair their devices but there is no real reason Apple has to support repairing beyond their own offering. From a moral point of view the technical manual and ease of repairing might just be features, that are arguably more or less valuable, and Apple owes nothing.

After all I don't ship my code together with a manual on how to fix bugs...

Note: I don't like Apple, just wanted to add some reasonableness.

<comment><USER4> Considering the massive environmental cost of making these electronic devices I think it is absolutely in the consumer, the manufacturer and society's interests to ensure the products are not made more difficult to repair than they need to be.

There are significant externalities behind every iPhone most of which are borne by manufacturing and recycling plants in India and China. The more a manufacturer can do to ensure their product stays out of landfill and in use the better off we all will be.

<comment><USER3> We are still required to give Apple the benefit of the doubt in case they made a trade-off between repairability and quality and not attack without proof.

Furthermore if we leave the realm of "moral" and "not moral" Apple is not required to keep in mind society's interests in mind by anything except law and any discussion in that direction should not refer to companies but to government (which, ok, may not be that effective). Even then, most complaints don't give much consideration to the environmental impact as a first-order issue and leave it as a two-liner before the conclusion.

<comment><AUTHOR> Apple is not required to keep society's interests in mind, that is true. But we are allowed to alert our fellow citizens about the fact that the company at best doesn't care and at worst is obstructing what may be in our best interests. I'm not suggesting in the piece that Apple is evil—I'm suggesting that the company is worth questioning on these arguably important issues it has either ignored or purposefully made worse.

<comment><USER5> "Apple is not required to keep society's interests in mind, that is true"

Maybe they should be?

<comment><USER6> Make sure you let the rest of the Global 500 and their shareholders know.

<comment><USER5> Apple certainly isn't alone in this.

If we back up for a bit and think why corporations exist in the first place, why society allows and facilitates rather than criminalizes corporate endeavors, it becomes clear the idea is that they fulfill a useful social function. And that function is the development, production and distribution of goods and services.

But they have to operate within a framework of rules which ensure (to some extent) they fulfill these functions without impacting society negatively (excessively so at least) and that their net benefit to society is a plus. These rules change from time to time.

There isn't a reason that long term externalized costs should be allowed to be pushed onto society as a whole in the interests of these entities realizing short term profits. That happens far too often and will be the death of capitalism as we know it if left unchecked. We as a society should demand better. Unfortunately, government all too often isn't the solution to the problem and the cures it provides are sometimes worse than what was attempting to be cured. But we need to keep the proper role of corporations in mind and demand a level of accountability. Not doing so leads to a very bad place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In contrast to the fancy Apple screws in the article, the Fairphone 2 is the first iFixit reviewed phone to get 10/10 for ease of repair.

[https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523](https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Fairphone+2+Teardown/52523)

<comment><USER8> I hadn't heard of it. But I looked it up: €529.38 and impressive specs. This thing looks downright competitive. And dual-SIM‽ That seems pretty uncommon, but probably nice to have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> On a related note, anyone have any personal experience with iFixit's tech repair kit? I'm looking to gift a set of electronic repair tools for the holidays.

<comment><USER10> No experience with the ifixit stuff, but my set of 'small weird bits' is from wiha, and it includes a bunch of tiny pentalobe bits, one of which fit the screws on the bottom of a friend's apple laptop. I personally really like Wera, xcelite and wiha for my screwdrivers/bit drivers.

Or, to be more specific, I like wiha for tiny bits, wera for regular 1/4" bits and ratchets, and xcelite for fixed screwdrivers. The Xcelite XPE102 is my favorite screwdriver, and the tool I use the most often.

I have an iphone 5 that needs repairing, so I will soon be able to report back on how well the wiha works for that.

Now, I personally like nice tools the way some people like nice watches, so if the difference in price between the cheap tools and the good tools is significant to you and you don't use the tools often, you probably want to ignore my advice.

<comment><USER11> I don't think I can recommend the Wiha 75999[1] toolset highly enough - excellent quality and not overly expensive.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H7MWEI](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000H7MWEI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi, I wrote this article. If you have any questions feel free to ask.

</comment><comment><USER12> The most troubling part of this is that Apple staff accompany ICE on raids.

It reminds me of the time the Gizmodo guy got a visit from the Feds after doing the article about the iPhone 4 prototype that they purchased from the bar (or the guy who found it at the bar, or whatever). Apple staff accompanied the cops then, too.

What other property owners get to ride along on federal investigations when there is a suspected case of theft?

It smacks of special privileges and private-government integration. This is not how competition is supposed to work.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't think that Apple makes a lot of money from repairs, as claimed by this (rather silly) article. It's more a case that iPhones, MacBooks, etc are designed and manufactured for thinness, irregular battery shapes, etc, so that they don't lend themselves well to end user repair. There are many other device options out there for people who don't like this approach.

<comment><USER14> Do you think that Apple routinely replaces factory defective iPhones with brand-new iPhones? Doubtful - generally most companies replace with B-stock, i.e. returns that passed all of their incoming quality checks.

Chances are, if your electronics were replaced by the original company, they went to someone else first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So, if repairability is important to you, stop using Apple. Vote with your feet. Thinkpads are a great alternative for laptops - similarly priced, specc'd, and robust, and they come with (downloadable and free) extensive hardware maintenance manuals with step-by-step guides and numerous exploded diagrams.

<comment><USER16> "ThinkPhone" isn't being used...

:D

I found these two: [http://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-think- phone-187548/](http://www.androidauthority.com/lenovo-think-phone-187548/) and [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=http%...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=zh- CN&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ftech.sina.com.cn%2Fit%2F2013-04-09%2F10188221355.shtml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> being in the auto parts industry this type of article strikes home. it is amazing the lengths manufacturers will go to prevent you from repairing stuff you own.

I am still waiting for the day the only way to obtain an iphone or similar will be lease. As in, you never buy it, you only lease it.

<comment><USER18> You can do that today... it's not the only way but I'd imagine it's pretty common: [http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade- program](http://www.apple.com/shop/iphone/iphone-upgrade-program)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "though it's mostly middle-aged white men" \- that wasn't necessary there

<comment><AUTHOR> I didnt dwell on this point but I think it's important to point out to the reader who was there. Very few women, almost no people of color. This is a tech culture piece. It matters. As I said, didn't dwell on it but worth mentioning.</comment></comment>


Artificial intelligence is changing SEO faster than you think - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/06/04/artificial-intelligence-is-changing-seo-faster-than-you-think/ <comment><USER2> 'As we can see from the previous discussion on the Law of Accelerating Returns, RankBrain and other forms of artificial intelligence will at some point surpass the human brain.'

I think its unlikely we will still be googling for answers ourselves ones AI becomes really smart. Because AI then becomes really helpful. I will just ask my device for a solution to me problem or even to solve my problem. It will search for itself and maybe explain later how it did it.

The internet will get optimized for AI and not for humans.</comment>


Seeking New Businesses and Better Lives, Investors on the Coasts Move Inland - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/15/business/smallbusiness/venture-capital-move-inland.html <comment><AUTHOR> _The Midwest could support a dozen more funds of the same size, he said. "If we had co-investors here, this place would be just going crazy."_

That's a $1.2 billion fund. $15 billion to light up the economy of half of the US (well, present circumstances notwithstanding). Intelligent political leadership should be (have been) pushing this. Is (was) it happening?</comment>


WTF is wrong with Americans? - <AUTHOR> http://www.shareable.net/blog/wtf-is-wrong-with-americans

<comment><USER3> As an American, I apologize. Like all of us, I am a mendacious and predatory economic sociopath. The United States contributes nothing positive at all to the global economy or culture. If only we could be like Norway -- which is, as I am told, perfect.

[Edit to counter a bit of my snark: I'm not saying these aren't problems, I'm just complaining about the stupidity of listing all of these more-or-less known issues and then grouping all Americans into a lump and asking us why we're all such idiots. The United States is a gigantic, complex nation of hundreds of millions of people whose voices need to be filtered into some kind of governmental consensus. It's not at all fair to compare the US to a Scandinavian country.]

<comment><USER4> The main point of the whole thing is not that Americans would be idiots, but rather that the way the United States is being governed is very suboptimal to the wellbeing of the average citizen and average inhabitant of this planet (yes, the way Americans live, how much they consume, has a great impact on every single human being on this planet).

Many points made are very clear, and well supported (e.g. income equality: [http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html](http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_wilkinson.html)).

As it happens, I have similar political views with author of the infographic, and I admire Northern European countries. But that doesn't mean that I have something to criticise about the USA. My home country is way behind in terms of government transparency, and liberal, free-thought of its population.

<comment><USER5> " _Very_ sub-optimal"???

You think it doesn't matter "to the wellbeing of the average citizen and average inhabitant of this planet" that we e.g. keep the sea lanes open and the price of oil lower than many producers would like it? Or prevent another hot world war?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Other than the insulting title, this isn't really making any points that haven't been made innumerable times. Education is getting far too expensive, too many people are thrown into prison for non-violent crimes, we spend way too much on military.

These observations aren't all that profound -- in fact I believe a majority of the younger generations agree with all of these points.

<comment><AUTHOR> well, it's an infographic, which usually don't introduce new findings, rather summarizes existing info in an easy to digest way, they provide perspective.

<comment><USER6> Maybe so, but this didn't come across as an infographic whose purpose was to summarize information. Rather, it seems like a lecture to Americans about certain well-known and thoroughly discussed problems -- a lecture whose points the majority of Americans who read HN undoubtedly already agree with.

<comment><USER7> While the way to change things as an engineer is often to make something better than the alternative, one way to change things in politics is to keep the issue actively in discussion until public perception reaches a tipping point that something must be done. There are posts on HN about a new version of Rails or an interesting architecture used by a startup not just because it's new but also because it's the state of the industry and we want to dissect it and respond to it. We hear the same arguments about American policy because it remains the state of the country and we want to respond to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The basic American cultural value is equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome, or predestination by social class. At least in theory, the American Dream means your success is the result of hard work and talent, not your birth or social class. And to a fair extent, this works - our current president is the mixed-race child of a teenage single mother, who grew up in obscurity and near-poverty. Barack Obama is the embodiment of the American Dream. Many of our political, business, and cultural leaders are entirely self-made.

So the modern failures of American society are the failures to provide equality of opportunity. Three stand out in particular for me - <USER2> primary education, crushing debt for secondary education, and a health care system that traps people into working for large corporations rather than small businesses or entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER9> I would contest that anyone claiming America has equality of opportunity must necessarily show a correlation between recognizable Life Choices and the divergence of outcomes, and a lack of a correlation between personal background and the divergence of outcomes. Or in other words, equality of opportunity is measurable as social mobility (How many people wind up somewhere different from where they started?) and sociological significance of achievements (How are outcomes different between people who did X and people who did Y instead?).

<comment><USER8> To be sure, it's an imperfect correlation - mostly in that those who start on second or third base have a much better chance at a home run. But the point is that anyone can, in theory, hit a home run. In most historic cultures, that was not true.

To put it in presidential terms, someone like George W Bush becoming president isn't outrageous - he started on third base. But for someone like Barack Obama to become the most politically powerful figure would require an actual revolution in most historical situations.

<comment><USER9> _In theory_ means absolutely _nothing_. Baseball metaphors tell us nothing about the real world.

Stop regurgitating badly digested Americana claptrap. Statistics on economic mobility: put up or shut up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I cannot possibly pour enough irony tags onto the following words.

DAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA, you think human development and well being are important to the ruling class! WHAT A NAIVE IDIOT!

If only!

Now for the more serious talk.

Firstly, Americans have been convinced that freedom is property, and property is freedom. Since every good American knows that Americans love freedom, this means Americans love not only capitalism (in the sense of an unplanned market economy with free entry/exit of markets) but _True Capitalism_ (this being the total elimination of all institutions that do not derive from private property). The process of this moral and political transformation of the American people has, ironically but quite predictably, started to make the predictions of Karl Marx come true. Ayn Rand, after all, was a Marxist in every detail except that she was _on the other side_.

In addition, a fundamental shift is happening in the world. It's going slowly enough that the general public aren't much noticing it, but it's certainly quick enough that by this time I think the entire intelligentsia everywhere is thinking about it. To cut to the point: _productivity_! It's rising so far, so quickly now that while we won't have a "robots do all the work" situation any time soon, the days are ending of most of the population having a productive job where their labor can out-compete sufficiently developed capital.

This shift goes much, much deeper than a _mere_ economic crisis. This is a _civilizational_ crisis. _What do you do when most of your population is unproductive excess?_ Well, what seems to be happening in most of the world is that the "productive" elite (that is, the remaining elite who either hold appreciating capital or whose labor can still out-compete capital, _this means us guys!_ ) has begun to disregard the mass of the population entirely. Most people no longer matter. In fact, even most holders of traditional capital (factories and such) are being out-competed now. It's coming down to holders of land, robots, fuel, and money being the only ones with any actual pull.

Turns out capitalism doesn't collapse and bring about an inevitable socialist revolution; that was a bit of wishful thinking on the part of the Left. No, it collapses into rentier-driven neo-feudalism because "without these hands, not a wheel shall" _stop_ turning.

None of which is to say that this is some inevitable process. It's not. We can change it tomorrow, _if we want to_. The problem is that this is the outcome of the _deeply-rooted moral choices_ our societies have made. Capitalism can only behave this way because despite having abolished all other Grand Narratives our societies still worship at the alter of Productivism.

So make yourself useful, stick up for the useless, or die.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ignorance is strength!</comment>


Silicon Valley Venture Capitalists Prepare for an I.P.O. Wave - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/15/technology/silicon-valley-venture-capitalists-ipo.html <comment><USER2> Cashing out before the crash while the markets will still support IPO's

<comment><USER3> The big question - how much will they get for the vaporco known as uber?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let's say the company you work for goes public and your stock is suddenly worth $1,000,000 (as an example). A wise investor, you normally put all of your other savings into broad market index funds. Now, do you sell your company's stock that was given to you and took you four years to vest into, or do you hold on to it and hope the valuation keeps rising? (This is a rhetorical question btw)

<comment><USER5> If you had $1MM in cash, how much of it would you use to buy the company's stock?

<comment><USER6> This exactly.

I work at Google and it astonishes me how surprised people are when I tell them I use autosale, the company program where your stocks are sold immediately as they vest.

They always ask "Don't you think Google stock is going to go up?" And I always reply that yes I do think it will go up but

1) that's not the right question to ask, you should ask whether it will go up more/less than anything else you could invest in with that money

2) My future compensation, both in terms of stock and salary, is already heavily tied to Google's future performance, so I have even more incentive to diversify compared with someone who doesn't work there.

<comment><USER2> Would you not want to sell stock you have held for some time to take advantage of lower capital gains - or do the US tax authorities assume you are selling older stock first?

<comment><USER7> It is taxed as income regardless at the point of vesting.

<comment><USER2> I think the op was saying that you already owned the stock - that now becomes worth 1,000,000 and presumably would have paid income tax for the FY when you vested.

You surly don't pay income tax on the gain of already owned stock but CGT.

Back in the day 2000's I did own stock that was worth over 1,000,000 certainly wouldn't have had to have paid income tax if we had been bought out at point - but that was in the UK

<comment><USER7> This subthread is about selling at point of vesting. Unless you are a founder with a 86(b) election, when you vest it is income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Will this result in appreciably more money flowing into the rest of the ecosystem from the people that are enriched turning into Angel investors? Or does that only happen with the massive IPOs like Microsoft, Google, et al?

</comment><comment><USER9> There are some good and some not so good among these companies. Uber is a taxi company with an app. Cars still cost the same as before to run, drivers still cost the same as before, all costs are the same as before. So once the subsidization by VCs stops, Uber rides will be as expensive as any other ride. Self-driving cars will not save Uber either. There is no network effect with self-driving cars, and once the technology is ready it will be commoditized, and Uber will have no advantage.

As a rider, it's great to use it while you can, but there is no actual business there.

Airbnb on the there hand has all the advantages people like to see in a business.

<comment><USER10> I disagree. Uber facilitates the process of becoming a driver, therefore there will be a larger supply of drivers. I believe the price of a fare will decrease due to the increased competition.

<comment><USER11> Amortization over say 20 fairs per day * 20 days a month * 12 months a year, reducing the cost by 1 cent per ride per ~50$ dollars in cost savings. Suggests it's just not a meaningful savings.

<comment><USER10> Where are you getting the 1 cent reduction quantity? My only point was that a greater supply of drivers could yield a lower price, but I never asserted to what degree the price would decrease.

<comment><USER11> Increasing costs to add a driver does not prevent company's from adding new drivers it just makes that more expensive. Thus, you need to consider it as another form of cost savings not a difference in the number of drivers.

A company that pays 50$ less to get an employee can reduce fairs on the order of 1 cent or make an extra 1 cent per ride. It's possible Uber might add a few cents per ride this way, but it's not particularly significant even assuming the average driver does not last that long.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So how do the "rest of us" profit from these IPOs?

<comment><USER13> Pick the right growth candidate, hold your nose at the valuations, buy and hold for a few years until the growth catches the fundamentals up. Or wait until (assuming) the market drops at some point and buy the growth at dramatically more reasonable valuations. I'd also say buy what you know; that is, if you have experience with a company and know that their products are particularly good, providing the company a likely advantage over time assuming they're well run. I don't know much about Zuora for example (so if I want to buy it, I'll spend a lot of time on research), but I plan to stalk DocuSign for a reasonable entry point as I know their products well and I like their position.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Smells like a bubble....

</comment><comment><USER15> something tells me all stars are aligning for a huge correction. real estate prices inflated beyond imaginable while wages bave been stagnant. almost a decade old tech companies not making any money valued in billions and an administration made up of moron wages war on issues that have no relation to the country. something tells me shit will collapse big time in Trump's last term and everything will be blamed on him and people who voted for him by the media and the elite. meanwhile the elite will have cashed in on all these ipos by having dumped overinflated stock of unicorns on middle class. 2020 will be a hell of a year

<comment><USER16> The only problem with the "something tells me" line of reasoning is that it's _always_ being espoused by someone. Literally at any point you can find people who feel the way you do. Good news is that if you keep it up you'll eventually be right for a little while.

<comment><USER17> > Good news is that if you keep it up you'll eventually be right for a little > while.

A broken clock...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Pay walled on mobile.

</comment><comment><USER19> A fine day for corporate. [http://www.connectnowbusinessnetwork.com/wp- content/uploads/...](http://www.connectnowbusinessnetwork.com/wp- content/uploads/5.jpg)</comment>


Vivo beats Apple to an under-display fingerprint scanner - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/06/28/vivo-qualcomm-under-display-fingerprint-reader/?sr_source=Facebook <comment><USER2> > The Vivo reps couldn't provide a timeline as to when we'll start seeing this > tech on their devices

I would question the use of the word "beats" in the headline then since this is just a one-off demo unit with a sensor that isn't even shipping to OEMs yet.</comment>


I Am Craig Wright, Inventor of Craig Wright - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/03/bitcoin_craig_wright/?mt=1462265605503 <comment><USER2> I thought this was real, then he went through the "verification" and I got a good chuckle out of that.</comment>


Saved stories limitation? - <AUTHOR>

It seems to me that you can't save more than 75 stories on a hacker news account.  Is anyone else experiencing this? <comment><USER2> I haven't hit a 75 story limit, but I can't seem to save stories anymore. The last one I saved was 26 days ago, everything I saved today didn't work.</comment>


Ask HN: Can we deserialize organisms from DNA yet? - <AUTHOR> Not a specific organism (with its synapses, memories, methylation, quantum state, soul etc), but an "instance" of the species from a "representative, accurate" copy of its DNA on a hard disk.<p>The question is not "is the DNA accurate enough" (tho maybe that is a thing, I don't know), but if we have "accurate" DNA, can we somehow create a living thing (not knowing how accurate this is, but to illustrate the meaning: print DNA into bases, put these in a cell, somehow grow that cell into the organism). Has it been done? <comment><USER2> We're still learning how to convert an amino acid sequence into a folded protein. We're still learning which parts of a DNA sequence are and are not active and under what circumstances and which other parts of the DNA control that and how.

We're as far from building an organism from scratch as a newborn is from solving Fermat's theorem.

As for building an organism from an existing DNA sequence _without_ understanding that sequence, were perhaps a little closer. We've created a human child from the body of one egg and the nucleus of another (plus a sperm).

But that won't work for an arbitrary DNA sequence, as there's much more to a cell than a nucleus. Each species has its own collection of organelles in its cells; its own signaling structures built into the cell walls.

Imagining that DNA is all you need to recreate an organism is a common misconception about biology. If you're interested in this field, I recommend picking up a textbook at the AP Biology level to start with.

</comment><comment><USER3> No. Not even close. I assume you're talking about organisms with the complexity of animals.

Maybe the Wooly Mammoth project can give you some insight on how far we are from having DNA to making it into an organism: [http://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly- mammoth/](http://reviverestore.org/projects/woolly-mammoth/)</comment>


Work from a virtual office...in space! - <AUTHOR> https://www.sococo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Enjoy the freedom of working remotely without losing the benefits of working from the same office. You can even change your office layout to be on a spaceship in space!</comment>


Placing documents into the public domain (2008) - <AUTHOR> https://cr.yp.to/publicdomain.html <comment><USER2> Why not use a CC0 license which is essentially the same?

<comment><USER3> If they are really the same then it doesn't matter of course. One advantage might be that everyone's heard of the public domain, I have never heard of CC0. I would not know what restrictions there are to that without reading the license carefully. But reading "public domain" tells me everything I need to know. In fact the web page explaining CC0 is kind of confusing, and links to an even longer FAQ.

And with the public domain, you don't even need a license, just write "Public Domain" where you would normally write "Copyright 2016", and it's done. Why use a license at all when the public domain exists?

<comment><USER4> Not all jurisdictions have a concept of public domain. To claim that "public domain is good enough" is to ignore the 80% of the world that doesn't have the same copyright system as you.

<comment><USER3> What countries? Has anyone in those countries ever been sued by using public domain works? And if they don't respect Public Domain, why would they respect the CC0 license? How is writing "CC0" on the bottom of the page any different than writing "Public Domain" on the bottom of the page?

<comment><USER4> > What countries? Has anyone in those countries ever been sued by using public > domain works?

It's a question of "can you willfully put your work in the public domain", not " is there an expiry on copyright". It's also possible that some company's lawyers might get unhappy if their company uses such a work.

> And if they don't respect Public Domain, why would they respect the CC0 > license?

Becuase they still have copyright law, they just don't have a concept of public donation.

>How is writing "CC0" on the bottom of the page any different than writing "Public Domain" on the bottom of the page?

In western countries there's essentially no difference. But because CC0 is an actual legal document that has provisions for jurisdictions that don't recognise public domain as a concept, it's a significant difference.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Debating the Signaling Model of Education - <AUTHOR> http://volokh.com/2010/09/06/debating-the-signaling-model-of-education/

<comment><USER2> I haven't read Caplan and Dickens' full exchange, but I doubt that the present article adds much to the discussion. The author emphasizes two points:

1\. A cheaper and shorter academic program will not attract a lower caliber of student as long as it is challenging enough.

2\. "Many blue collar and service jobs have extremely boring and unpleasant elements that are hard for workers to avoid. If your goal is to signal conscientiousness and conformity, a year of good performance at McDonald's is probably a better signal than a year of academic success at most colleges."

The first point relies on intelligence and short-term effort being the relevant criteria. But Caplan's assertion is that conscientiousness and conformity are the characteristics that employees seek to signal. Those characteristics may be better evidenced by sustained effort. In any case, at some point, a distance run of increasing intensity but decreasing length becomes a sprint, a completely different sport. As you shorten the length of your education, eventually you'll get something that is more like an IQ test or other standardized test than a 4-year degree.

The second point seems to be totally unsubstantiated. If you take (present and former) fast food workers as your hiring pool, you find you've eliminated practically none of the loafers. That a potential recruit has both a PhD and a previous career at McDonald's could well be a sign of something good, but I doubt it could be concluded that the recruit was particularly conscientious during the McDonald's stage of his career. Work at McDonald's is closely supervised, requires little concentration, and never demands any effort outside of scheduled work hours. The necessary work ethic is not at all the same as that for the high-autonomy jobs sought by university graduates. The babysitting example is even more specious. Responsible for an infant, behind the wheel of a car, operating power tools, most functional human beings manage to bring to bear the requisite level of care. It's harder to do when lives aren't imminently at risk.

But the biggest fallacy is that manual labour is strictly harder than mental labour. Mental labour doesn't usually make you physically uncomfortable or physically tired, but in some important way, thinking is the hardest kind of work there is. At the very least, physical laziness and mental laziness in a potential employee are statistically independent events.

</comment><comment><USER3> A good way to do a cheaper and better signal is to contribute something back to the community. In the good old days, people volunteered for various things in their city/state/country. These days, you can easily contribute code to an open source project, or run user groups. An engineer can hack together a cool DIY project and let the internet run with it. Are you a writer? Publish using on-demand services like Lulu.

The key part to this is marketing and raising awareness. Without harping too much: social media makes marketing for one-person projects doable.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the first thing a user sees? - <AUTHOR>

When someone goes onto a website, what do you think is the first thing he/she sees? Text? Images? Logo? <comment><USER2> I'm not an expert, but I suspect our eyes go from the micro to the macro.

Therefore, they are going to start with layout, then colors, then images, then text.

Don't ignore how text is a part of layout and visual. Font style and size are therefore important.

This is why (I suspect) something like bootstrap is so important, it gives you the right start on a layout which is simple and appealing.

You then customise that layout with your colors, and images are a collection of colors, so I suspect your website colors along with any images are absorbed by the user at mostly the same time.

Your logo is also an image, and compared to text, is often prominent. Therefore, logo should probably be considered slightly after images and colours.

You can also think of your question from a 'reptile brain' angle. At each step, a users mind is asking if what they are looking at is a threat or is appealing.

This brain has to view the entire page at once, therefore, layout. It then will pick out the next features it can, colours and images. Then it will drill in on text. But at that point, I'd suspect the brain has already selected that the site is appealing, and now your text needs do grab their interest.

</comment><comment><USER3> a blank page</comment>


Fastest web browser that blocks all ads and protects your privacy -Slimjet - <AUTHOR> http://www.slimjet.com/ <comment><USER2> "In Slimjet, you can share the link you visited, a paragraph of text or an image easily on facebook with a single click on the facebook toolbar button"

Does this mean Facebook has carte blanche over your info?</comment>


Ask HN: What framework is best for someone with a C++ background? - <AUTHOR>

So, for a person with a strong C++ background, what webapp development framework/language is likely to be the easiest to learn and use?  And then, what are the 3 best books to introduce that framework to someone who doesn't know the language, but does have a strong C++ background? <comment><USER2> If your C++ fu is really, really strong, you might wanna check out OKWS (<http://www.okws.org/>). The performance is sick, as you might expect, but I can tell you from experience that it's not for the faint of heart. The asychronous coding makes for some really tough debugging situations, among other things.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice! hm. and Python support means that even those without as much C++ foo can contribute. I will check it out.</comment></comment>


Delicious: Past, Present and Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.brentcsutoras.com/2010/02/22/delicious-present-future/ <comment><USER2> "Its popularity as a bookmarking tool continued to grow, but the social features of the site were generally ignored in the face of much more exciting progress elsewhere, like Digg, StumbleUpon's changes and the explosion of Twitter and Facebook."

I guess the trend nowadays is that every site evolves into Facebook or something... I liked Delicious the way it was: save bookmarks, access them from anywhere, look what other people are bookmarking. I didn't need it to become yet another social network type thing with lists of friends, Twitter integration, comments and whatever. There are already a gazillion sites that do that.

Anyway, just my $0.02.

<comment><USER3> The big next steps would have been: groups, comments, notes, more sophisticated organization, more sophisticated bookmarks.

Comments would have been good too. Friendfeed, when it first launched, was not far from what I wanted on the comments threads.</comment></comment>


In Spanish, It's Not Your Fault - <AUTHOR> http://www.erik-rasmussen.com/blog/2009/07/24/in-spanish-its-not-your-fault/

<comment><USER2> That's indeed very interesting. Linguistic relativity (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity>) is IMHO one of the most appealing approaches because it seeks to reveal the mysteries I'm interested about when it comes to linguistics. A very good reference for this topic, in this aspect, is Lakoff and Johnson's book on the 'domestic' metaphors: "Metaphors We Live By" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conceptual_metaphor>). They illustrate how the crystalized metaphors in each language show the underlying cultural ways of molding the reality that is presented equally to each culture. (BTW, I have a major in spanish linguistics, hence my interest, hence my poor english)

</comment><comment><USER3> As a native Spanish speaker from Colombia I also love the topic of linguistic relativity :)

Some of the Spanish examples sound uncommon to me, though. "Se han perdido las llaves" is grammatically correct, but I would not use it. Instead I would say "boté las llaves" if I lost them ("I lost the keys"), or "las llaves se perdieron" if somebody else lost them but I didn't want to accuse that person ("the keys got lost).

Also, I never think of things doing actions "for me" but, instead, "on me". For example, if say "La planta que me diste se me ha muerto" ("the plant you gave me has died on me") I would not be implying that the plant "died for me", but only that the plant died while on my possession.

P.S. Just in case, in real-life this is what I say: "¿Dónde están las putas llaves?"

<comment><USER4> I am a native Spanish speaker from the Canary Islands. It's is quite clear that the author is learning mainland Spain's Spanish, as he uses "patata" for potato, instead of "papa", which I believe is used everywhere else. There, those phrases are quite common ones to use for that situations.

<comment><USER5> So perhaps it should be "In Spain, it's not your fault"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Mirror of the article:

[http://www.erik-rasmussen.com.nyud.net/blog/2009/07/24/in- sp...](http://www.erik-rasmussen.com.nyud.net/blog/2009/07/24/in-spanish-its- not-your-fault/)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the author is taking Spanish too literally here. Just because the literal translation doesn't imply blame or seems to take it away for an English speaker doesn't mean that Spanish speakers don't see it there.

"Se han perdido las llaves" is not going to make you look less guilty than "I lost the keys" when used in context.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've always liked the correspondence between idioms in natural languages and idioms in programming languages, especially as it pertains to how we think about problems.

See <http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html> (May 2002) for a great explanation.

</comment><comment><USER8> As a native Spanish speaker I never thought that I was expressing something different when talking in English.

You would say "se me han perdido las llaves". The "me" implies that I am the one who lost them.

Probably the thoughts are universal and we just express them in different ways.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not sure how far you can take this line of reasoning without fooling yourself. But some words are not like the others.

"Gustar" is usually rendered as _to like_. That leads to weird mistakes, eg a Spanish speaker may say "you like me" when they mean "I like you". A more correct translation is _to please_ , eg "me gusta esto" -> "this pleases me". The constructions are not from an alien world, they are just more like Shakespearian English than modern.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome and I think it explains a lot about the warmth of Hispanic culture. As a default position, I don't assume people are 'guilty' of things but I frequently get feedback from folks who seem to feel I have attacked, criticized, accused, etc. It is hard in English to convey "x happened (but I am not blaming you)".

Excerpt:

 _Se han perdido las llaves

"The keys have lost themselves." I didn't lose the keys. They did it to themselves.

La planta que me diste se me ha muerto.

"The plant you gave me has died on me." I didn't kill it! And it didn't just die, it died for me._

I will add that in the last year or so, I have taken a cue from Spanish and French and started saying "No problem" most of the time when thanked. I think the phrase "You're welcome" reinforces a sense of social obligation that makes me uncomfortable -- a sense of indebtedness. "De rien" or "de nada" ("it's nothing") acknowledges the "thank you" without conveying a sense of "now you owe me". So I have begun trying to find an English version of conveying that idea/feeling/social paradigm. "No problem" is the reply I find myself using most often.

<comment><USER10> I spent some time in Puerto Rico and found that the third person reflexive is commonly used this way as a sort of passive voice. For example, a "for sale" sign will read "se vende" (loosely, "it is sold" moreso than "it sells itself").

Having worked in the service industry (restaurants, specifically) for many years, I have an inclination to avoid "no problem" as it may be construed that whatever isn't a problem might have been. I generally opt for "my pleasure," "anytime," "sure thing," etc. when I am interfacing with someone for whom I provide a service.

<comment><USER5> You know, I'm sort of a hippie-tree-hugger, make-love-not-war kind of personality and I find that when I say things like "my pleasure" or "anytime", it makes some of my social problems worse. Those are the types of phrases I am inclined to use, but for some reason it just makes people feel like I owe them, they can impose, I am never allowed to make a mistake or have a bad day or not be able to give 1000% or...something. I have never been able to quite put my finger on the cause of these strong emotional reactions I get from quite a lot of people where total strangers seem to think I am supposed to love them, to the ends of the earth. But I have found I need to actively tone down my tendency to be warm, effusive, emotionally generous and the like. It just causes me too many problems.

At the moment, much of the time when I am being thanked, it is for disseminating information at work -- tips and tricks that make my job easier. This is supposed to be part of the culture and something we are all encouraged to do. But I get these gushy responses that I think are just not work appropriate. I have found that a low key "no problem" seems to be the lesser evil of my available options. (Not replying seems to make people feel incredibly, phenomenally rejected by me.)

<comment><USER11> I usually say "my pleasure"; when that doesn't work for me I go with a simple "certainly". It has the feel of "that's my job and I'm doing it" to me.

<comment><USER5> I think one of the issues at work is that I have an entry level job and a great deal more formal education than my coworkers and both my immediate bosses (though one of them is actively pursuing more education, and that seems to help reduce my problems). So a lot of my tips and tricks are dramatically better answers. It causes problems. I try to deflect the uptick in perceived social status. I don't make any more money than these other people or have any more authority. It's important that I get treated as their equal.

I will have to keep "certainly" in mind and see if I can't find a good way to use that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>