Gig workers handed lifeline by $2T stimulus plan - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/03/gig-workers-handed-lifeline-by-2-trillion-stimulus-plan/ <comment><USER2> > Rideshare drivers, food deliverers, Airbnb hosts, and any other types of > freelance workers left out of work will be compensated thanks to the bill, > with the precise amount to be determined in accordance with state > unemployment laws.

I'm really curious how this will work. What qualifies you for this? Not receiving any income? Or only partial income? And how long must you go without income? Or is there some other way to qualify?

Does this extend to all freelancers? What about pass through companies?

<comment><USER3> Do we really need to be helping out Airbnb hosts? maybe im just being short- sighted

<comment><USER4> That was made up by the author, who was grasping for examples. An Airbnb owner is a landlord, not a worker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Washington has answered the increasingly desperate pleas of gig-economy executives by agreeing to include hard-up workers among the beneficiaries of the $2 trillion stimulus bill"

Are they employees or not? Does the gig-economy companies pay into the unemployment tax?

These people are hurting but I believe this sets a really bad precedent

<comment><USER6> oh no! who will think of the precedent!!!

<comment><USER5> I mean these gig-economy execs strive really hard to not pay contractors benefits or pay unemployment tax, etc... The employees are working a gig job, they get paid strictly off supply and demand, demand goes up they make more money, demand goes down or supply goes up and they make less (or no money). With the bailout were basically saying its OK to not pay taxes but expect a bailout, people that rent out their houses on airbnb as a job, etc....

Everyone needs help during the pandemic, but the execs from these companies should get zero say because these are not their employees. They are not laid off, not furloughed. There just isnt demand in their 'gig'.

<comment><USER6> >With the bailout were basically saying its OK to not pay taxes but expect a bailout

suppose this were true and this legislation set that precedent? let me ask you: how often do we have a need for a "bailout"? do a really quick cost/benefit analysis and you'll see that you're implying we should let these people struggle today to save some money in ~10 years. does that make sense to you?

<comment><USER5> Thats absolutely not what Im saying, Im saying that these company execs that want the government to help their contractors are being so selfishly hypocritical. If they want to help their contractors, these billion dollar companies can offer things like health insurance, PTO/sick leave, etc... It's insane they are asking the government to help these contractors so they can continue to make money as a business as cheap as possible when things are back in order.

Of course we should help these people. Everyone should help and paying taxes and providing benefits is the social agreement we've made in this country so we can help when issues like this arise.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Richard Stallman Resigns from Free Software Foundation and MIT - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/richard-m-stallman-resigns-from-free-software-foundation/ <comment><USER2> Does this mean we can stop saying, "GNU/Linux"?</comment>


Project Silk - <AUTHOR> https://hacks.mozilla.org/2015/01/project-silk/ <comment><USER3> Mainline Firefox still tears horribly on every platform where the WM doesn't transparently handle the draws. Will this be included for the entirety of the browser, or just B2G?

<comment> TD-Linux Syncing the compositor's page flips to vsync is already possible if you have hw layers on. Check about:support for GPU Accelerated Windows. It should also work in software if your display protocol supports explicit buffer flips - <USER2> example, the GTK3 version of Firefox.

edit: Firefox doesn't tear for me with GTK2 either, but I'm actually not sure why that is. Full screen videos tear with GTK2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this, but was Silk really the best name for a browser-related technology? Amazon got there a while back:

[https://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/](https://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/)

Why not.... FluidFox, or Sleekzilla, or Project Smooth?

[http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/smooth](http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/smooth)

<comment><USER5> This is the codename for a project, not a product feature name. It's not something that users will be exposed to in the long term, just a moniker to organize efforts around a goal.

Funnily enough, today I have been working on an android app at a small startup which is also called Silk internally.

Namespace collision isn't that bad in practice. The UI of Firefox has been called "chrome" in the source code since long before google chrome existed, for example. It looks like it still is:

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Glossary/Chrome](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Glossary/Chrome)

<comment><USER6> The word "chrome" had been used to describe window components long before Chrome the browser showed up. So it isn't an accidental collision, it is a shortened name of the upstream Chromium project (named after the element). I've never been a big fan of the crazy names Silicon Valley comes up with, but hijacking existing words is much worse. I can't wait to see how Microsoft's use of the word "hologram" causes similar confusion.

<comment><USER7> Actually, Chrome is named for the interface. It's meant to be ironic because the point of Chrome is reducing the browsers chrome making more room for the Web page.

The name Chromium was playing on the fact that it's the metal used in chrome plating. (Just as the Chromium Project is used in making the browser Chrome.)

<comment><USER8> I always saw the name as "now google is also making the chrome, and not just the content of your browser"</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Evoke 2013 is over and delivered some pretty impressive demos - <AUTHOR> http://www.evoke.eu/2013/party/after-party-roundup/

<comment><AUTHOR> Here are some links to recordings of the winners:

PC 4k: Wishful Twisting by Fnuque + Loonies + TBC [http://youtu.be/bPYWIAu24XQ](http://youtu.be/bPYWIAu24XQ)

PC 64k: 905509 by stroboholics [http://youtu.be/tpOQ72ZzKXA](http://youtu.be/tpOQ72ZzKXA)

PC demo: Calcifer by Still [http://youtu.be/QXGkfqmUgcw](http://youtu.be/QXGkfqmUgcw)

Alternative platforms: Overdrive by Titan (on Sega Mega Drive) [http://youtu.be/iQqJm14sHRY](http://youtu.be/iQqJm14sHRY)</comment>


Mavericks: Geniuses or Jerks? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/3001535/maverick-your-company-genius-or-jerk I believe "Steve Jobs" personality would not survive a typical corporate environment. To begin with, he's anti-authoritarian. This quality alone means that he will be in constant combat with his managers - not good for a new hire. Secondly, he's disrespectful of legacy paradigms and established corporate policies as it relates to product development and execution.<p>Mavericks who are geniuses cannot blossom in a corporate environment, despite their genius. It is an illusion if corporations believe they can tolerate mavericks without destroying morale. <comment><AUTHOR> I believe "Steve Jobs" personality would not survive a typical corporate environment. To begin with, he's anti-authoritarian. This quality alone means that he will be in constant combat with his managers - not good for a new hire. Secondly, he's disrespectful of legacy paradigms and established corporate policies as it relates to product development and execution.

</comment><comment><USER2> what a stupid title</comment>


How to Set Expectations with New Hires at a Startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.dave-bailey.com/the-unspoken-expectations-of-working-at-a-startup-ef2ac700a9ca?source=friends_link&sk=51f0ed4e7dadf426ef3ac111e772a019 <comment><USER2> > 21) Put in the hours

> 22) Take a low salary

Are founders actually expecting to find talented hires that'll burn all of their free time working overtime for low pay?</comment>


Philosopher AI – ask GPT3 questions - <AUTHOR> https://philosopherai.com/ <comment> dynamite-ready This thing is excellent.</comment>


The Tandberg Way [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34FLhwkrwoQ <comment><USER3> Fantastic talk! Key engineering takeaways from The TANDBERG Way - <USER2> for effective product development that built TANDBERG to be acquired by Cisco for $3.3bn:

      - Embrace chaos. Continuously observer and adapt, because you can't plan far ahead in a complex world.
      - Celebrate the whole organisation, not individuals or teams. Celebrate when things are tough (before launch), not after launch.
      - Engineering and sales focused. Aim for 90% "productives" vs 10% "non-productives".
      - Beware the Observer Effect: observing knowledge work disturbs it. Coders are more likely to add code than delete code while being observed, or to just think for 30 minutes.
      - Introduce slack (as in free time, not the chat app) to do things right. You can't be agile and responsive without slack.
      - Communication over documentation. Make the customer pay for documentation.
      - Beware the Sinclair Effect. Don't talk about upcoming products, or people won't buy what you have on offer.
      - Focus on execution. Ban innovation hackathons. When your ability to innovate exceeds your ability to execute, focus only on execution.
      - No time writing or detailed cost control. Specify working hours and holiday times and then let the employees take care of it.

Full list of principles @ 51:00. Book recommendations @ 18:58.

<comment><USER4> > Celebrate when things are tough (before launch), not after launch

This is contrarian advice, but I can imagine why it might work. Can anyone share more experience with celebrating before/after launches?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wow, this explains a thing or two … I happen to work for one of those spin- offs he didn't mention (Appear TV).

I've never seen it written as a list like this, but it made me nod a lot. We have changed in some ways, but I feel the basic spirit lives on at Lysaker.

The best parts of this till-now unwritten culture is also something we strive for, in one way or another. Take communication: A colleague and I are going to hold a technical meetup … some time next month, but we won't reveal the theme yet.</comment>


Help: Ask HN: Bayes network  tutorial with  many examples. - <AUTHOR>

Help, i need to thoroughly understand bayes networks.....to  get grounded in ai. i have googled....but not found that material that  is shows enough examples.... .help with links.....or any stuff copyright will allow you share......Thanks.. <comment><USER2> Sadly, there is no KhanAcademy for BayesNet. I learned a lot about Bayesian network, using those three source above:

1\. book "Bayesian AI": <http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/bai/book/about.php>

2\. 3hour advanced videotutorial: <http://videolectures.net/kdd07_neapolitan_lbn/>

3\. finally Google scholar: [http://scholar.google.fi/scholar?hl=en&q=bayesian+networ...](http://scholar.google.fi/scholar?hl=en&q=bayesian+networks&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=&as_vis=1)

ps: Nice article: _"Bayesian Networks without tears"_ by Eugene Charniak: [http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/91...](http://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/aimagazine/article/view/918/836)

</comment><comment><USER3> To get grounded in AI buy Russell and Norvig's AI text <http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/> They also cover Bayes Nets - btw just remember that at its heart, the Bayes Net is just a compact way to write/represent a joint distribution. Good Luck

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> ?? Where has the 'edit' link gone? I wanted to edit some typos here...

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> timgluz, Thank you.</comment>


ITER: Make your own tokamak with 3D printing - <AUTHOR> https://www.iter.org/newsline/-/3477 <comment><USER2> "When will we finally each have our own residential 3D printed nuclear fusion reactor?"

I'll have to scratch the above as one of my passphrases :) .</comment>


The Motif of Employee Motivations (and how to leverage them). - <AUTHOR> http://foundread.com/2008/04/15/the-motif-of-employee-motivations-and-how-to-leverage-them/ <comment><USER2> I love this post. I even wrote a little mini-response to it on my own blog.

I liked it mostly because it made me think really hard about what motivated me, and I concluded that it's not programming, which is what I do for a living. I really enjoy being a business domain-expert and architect.

It really helped me realize why I've never been as happy at my current gig as I was in the past. And it made me realize a big part of why entrepreneurship is so appealing to me.

Wow - what a moment of clarity. Thank you for writing this, Carleen Hawn!

<comment><USER3> "Carleen Hawn" must be an error. That dude in the picture is no Carleen Hawn. (Actually, it's Chris Lyman, who's written some good posts before. Scroll to bottom.)

Thanks for the comment. I wouldn't have read the article based on the title alone, and I'm glad I did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow. Great post. Although the concept itself isn't too novel it's presented very well and makes this a very quick read.

The anecdote is interesting as well and helps prove the point.

</comment><comment><USER5> Instead of asking what motivates, which makes the interview awkward, why not just assume the candidate wants all three and just show them how he/she can obtain them?

Does anyone else hate questions about motivation, or is it just me? It feels too personal for a first time conversation with someone.

<comment><USER6> It's just you. I would love to be asked that during an interview. At this point in my life I want to "aggressively grow my skill set". I DON'T want to be a CEO. If that guy asked me the question, and we decide that he couldn't help me, we'd shake hands and part company. And we'd both be much happier for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I see the acquisition of skills as a side effect of building cool and useful applications (or platforms).

Therefore I would refine the second motivating factor to be: "I want to build something cool and useful that scales to meet the demands of millions of customers".

</comment><comment><USER8> I just loved this article. Its so rare to see such leaders in this industry. I have worked for so many startups and so far, i have rarely seen such leaders. Wish to see someone in future who can help me acheive my vision</comment>


Those maps at the beginning of books: a short essay on education - <AUTHOR> http://jsomers.net/blog/book-maps-teach

<comment><USER2> Submitted a year ago - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124035> \- although it garnered no comments, and only one upvote.</comment>


Gut Bacteria Divide People Into 3 Types, Scientists Say - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/21/science/21gut.html?hp&gwh=B3370770269FAE03C441A9D0FD531184 <comment><USER2> Interesting work, which ties in with the article "Neuroscience of the Gut" from Scientific American submitted yesterday.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2465085>

Two statements in the article caught my eye:

"He also notes that so far, all the subjects come from industrial nations, and thus eat similar foods. 'This is a shortcoming,' he said. 'We don't have remote villages.'" So the investigator would still like to know a lot more about how differences in diet might influence microbiomes.

Also, the article noted, "The scientists then searched for patterns. 'We didn't have any hypothesis,' Dr. Bork said. 'Anything that came out would be new.'" This, of course, could be referred to as data-mining,

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

(See Warning Sign D7: Lack of a Specific Hypothesis, or Overzealous Data Mining)

and what I think this scientist would himself acknowledge is that before this research can develop, scientists need to form testable hypotheses about microbiomes and then put those hypotheses to the test. Typological thinking is a frequent characteristic of early stages of developing theories in biology, and it may be that eventually a more nuanced form of population thinking will emerge in the study of human-hosted microbiomes.

<comment><USER3> I think it's perfectly valid to say "I don't know anything about this area". Would you prefer him to say "I will arbitrarily assume (because I have no information whatsoever) a hypothesis that every person has a unique set of bacteria and see if that is right"? That might actually lead to an experiment that misses what he found: you would probably take similar people. If you hypothesis that people have similar sets of bacteria, you'd want to pick wildly different people. Sometimes we don't even know enough to ask a useful question, but it is still scientific to examine the area with repeatable experiments and see what you find.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, they had patients with crohn's disease in the sample. Its hard not to see this as a decisions taken based on the hypothesis that people affected by crohn's disease have a different bacterial flora.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ha, reminds me of the three body types (vata,pitha,kaba) reported to be used in siddha of old times.... <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siddha_medicine>

wonder if there might have been a correlation noticed in those times too...

<comment><USER6> Or the three body types most bodybuilding + weight loss forums discuss: endomorph, ectomorph and mesomorph.</comment></comment>


RidePal to offer San Francisco-to-Palo Alto ridesharing service - <AUTHOR> http://paloaltoonline.com/news/show_story.php?id=30929

<comment><USER2> "We've sent people to the moon; we should be able to take people from home to work," she said.

If her firm can send people to the moon, why don't they keep doing that? Much cooler and probably more profitable than running a motor coach outfit.</comment>


History behind the Pirates: Jobs announcing MSFT collaboration - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY&mode=related&search= <comment><USER2> I think after the 3 hour Nerds documentary I posted, everybody's been watching it and nothing has been voted up since! I'm still watching that but I'll watch your link right after.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I thought this was good, especially if you watch The Pirates of Silicon Valley first: <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=15248>

<comment><USER3> For background on _that_ , watch Triumph of the Nerds -- it was on Google video; still available on torrents.</comment></comment>


5 advantages of custom software development - <AUTHOR> http://blog.psibertech.sg/2015/02/5-advantages-of-custom-software.html

<comment><USER2> custom development should never be the first choice. $500 off the shelf software could save you from spending $50000 on custom software plus added benefit of support and future upgrades (at a cost of course). Not to mention it would have been tested better.

If you do not find a software that addresses your needs, than it is a different story. Even than, custom developed part should be kept at minimum at possible by using ready commercial and free open source components.

<comment><USER3> If producer kills the product or goes out of business whatsoever, you're grounded. You may even be unable to migrate data to other system or migration could be very, very painful.

You most probably won't be able to integrate it with any of your systems except maybe for big, very expensive ones that happen to be popular.

> Not to mention it would have been tested better.

Except when it wouldn't. I've seen such cases, and they are not that rare when it comes to systems that are not general purpose.

To all this add the fact that by buying a system you totally loose the control over bugs in it. You may be hit by a subtle bug that is a show-stopper for you and the producer may refuse to fix it, claiming it to be low-impact.</comment></comment>


Suggestions for donations to tech  non-profits or organizations? - <AUTHOR> I already have a non-tech organization to which I will donate this year...But can anyone suggest tech-related non-profit groups, or open source project organizations, etc. that I could donate to? <comment><USER2> wikimedia foundation.

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

Without it, I would never would have passed ochem.

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, I use wikipedia so often, I guess i take it for granted; this is a good one, thanks!</comment></comment>


The API is Dead. Long Live the Protocol. - <AUTHOR> http://buddycloud.com/cms/content/api-dead-long-live-protocol-aka-avoid-being-screwed-closed-social-networks

<comment><USER2> One thing that I want from protocols is several reference implementations. And some of those libraries instead of full applications.

But indeed, XMPP (like BuddyCloud here uses) sounds like a good idea for a social aggregation protocol.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not sure. Sometimes, protocols just simply do not evolve fast enough to support really innovative user behavior. For example, IMAP is a great email protocol, but GMail demonstrated a very long time ago that labels are a lot more powerful than folders (especially when you have a wide array of filters to choose from). An API that relies only on a single party (i.e. a company) makes it easier to evolve and provide better functionality while protocols are much more stagnant. Who knows what we'll expect of "social" protocols in 5-10 years? And a better question to ask may be: what's easier to upgrade to with mass adoption -- a new version of an API, or a new protocol?

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm the author of the post)

I totally get where you are coming from. Of course protocols don't move fast. And sometimes we as implementors have to deal with people whose sole goal in life is upholding the sanctity of a protocol to the detriment of it's users.

The real point that I was trying to get across is that when you build your house on somebody else's API you have no guarantee. With a protocol, that company can go away and others will fill it's place.

In designing an open social network, buddycloud (the company) should be able to go bust, have our servers fail, be raided by the police... whatever. buddycloud (the open social network) and anyone who uses the protocol for their servers or clients can just keep on doing social-network-things.

<comment><USER4> Most API-related problems are business related, not technical. Twitter could decide to use a protocol but that does little to prevent it from pulling or limiting access via the protocol when it wants and as it wants.

<comment><USER3> I think a good example is this: Google Talk may use the Jabber protocol, but most users don't care or know. The protocol itself isn't what matters -- Google's market proliferation matters more than the protocol. Similarly, even if Twitter or another company used open protocols, the alternatives would have to provide a better service on top of the open protocol to actually convert people or make the protocol a useful component of the service itself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 'Last week Twitter told 3rd party client developers to essentially fuck-off.'

Twitter's subtext being 'we don't want your clients using our API and diluting our ability to advertise'.

While neither of these statements are true, the concept of offering a protocol instead of an API is an interesting one. Though, the quote "open protocols are basically a gentleman's agreement" does indicate a similar issue to the one that's being projected onto Twitter.

As shantanubala says, upgrading a protocol with mass adoption could be very difficult, this can then cause issues when you want to offer new services, or deprecate certain calls as they may be too complex at scale.

Coordination definitely seems to be a huge issue when dealing with these open social networks. If a security issue is found in a server which can leak information, how long would it take for every server to be patched? I think a good example for this is to ask how many WordPress blogs get hacked because they're running on old copies of the code?

</comment><comment><USER6> "X is dead" is a sure-fire indicator of vapidity.

<comment><USER7> Now I'd like to see a response from 'protocol'!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to deal with patents? - <AUTHOR>

I got an idea for a product. Before I proceeded with any prototype, I found out that someone has already patented the idea. I don't know if the individual who patented it has started working on the idea. If I want to still pursue my idea, how should I proceed? Has anyone encountered this problem? <comment><USER2> I'd say go ahead and proceed with your idea (of course, I'm not a lawyer). People with patents, don't care about you until you have money (confirmed this with a patent troll I met recently at a convention). At that point you can either work around the patent or negotiate a license agreement.

Also (and this is mentioned everywhere in these circles), what you actually launch with may be entirely different than your idea right now anyway.

Don't worry about problems you don't have yet. Good to know about the up coming problems, but focus on making progress, otherwise it's just mental entertainment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Should I wait to contact the patent holder until I am successful or just contact him now and ask him if we can make a deal?

<comment><USER3> That's a bit like going up to a police officer and asking him for advice on the best way to rob someone without getting caught.

Remember: if a patent holder can show that you've _knowingly_ infringed on a patent, it's much worse than the alternative. Keep your mouth shut until you're absolutely _positive_ that you've got a problem. How do you know? You talk to an attorney.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Talk to a lawyer.

Generally speaking, the idea can't be patented, but the implementation can be. Get a copy of the existing patent, and document how your implementation diverges. Have your lawyer see what the potential exposure is.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's probably too late for you in this case, but in the future, it's probably a good idea never to read patents. (not legal advice) That's the policy I keep -- I don't follow links with 'patent' in the URL, because it's much worse for you if you knowingly infringe.

For that matter, I don't even read paper publications out of places like Microsoft Research because of patent-related issues. Take a look at this, warning about an IBM publication: [http://on-ruby.blogspot.com/2008/02/ip- police-line-do-not-cr...](http://on-ruby.blogspot.com/2008/02/ip-police-line- do-not-cross.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> Patents these days are so broad and so many that _whatever_ your idea is, there will be a patent covering it or someone ready to claim that the one they have covers it.

Make a good product, make money, then pay lawyers to sort it out for you. Its all mostly pretend now anyway. Patents really have about as much to do with ideas as Scientology has to do with science.

It also seems these days that the more a company blathers about patent-pending this and proprietary that, the less actual innovation they've done.

</comment><comment><USER7> Dont forget, triple damages if they can show you knew about their patent if they sue.

<comment><USER8> Knowledge of an existing patent is only 1 factor of 9 when determining whether to award treble damages. All 9 factors are:

1\. whether copying was deliberate

2\. whether upon notice infringer did good faith investigation (upon notice, did you see if you really were infringing)

3\. infringer's behavior as a party to the litigation (did your lawyers place nice in pleadings and motions)

4\. infringer's size and financial condition (big guy vs. little guy?)

5\. closeness of the case (if the case could go either way, no treble damages)

6\. duration of infringer's conduct

7\. remedial action by the infringer (when notified of infringement, did you develop a non-infringing work around)

8\. infringer's motivation for harm

9\. whether infringer attempted to conceal misconduct

The court weighs all of these to determine whether to enforce treble damages. They are not weighed equally, and you don't have to fail a certain number.

You have 2 ways you can go. First, you can just build the idea and see what happens. Don't research whether you are infringing, and just take it as you are working in the same area as someone else.

Or you can read the actual patent and see what is claimed. Engineer around that, and around extensions of that patent that a person of ordinary skill in the art would consider obvious.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> [http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/29/the-innovation-problem- no-o...](http://thenextweb.org/2008/05/29/the-innovation-problem-no-one-else- cares/)

In this article I talk about how patent's are effectively nonsense for all but a very few who know how to 'work' the law who also have the fat to do so.</comment>


VoiceRally: Live Twitter Stream of the Wisconsin Union Protests - <AUTHOR> http://voicerally.com <comment><USER2> Live updates every second make displaying each individual tweet almost useless. It's damn near impossible to read as it constantly updates and moves the tweet of focus.

Either 1) follow Twitter's example and display a link at the top (including count) to load new tweets or 2) pick some other visualization mechanism to capture the deluge of data.

<comment><USER3> It's actually using WebSockets, so the tweets are being pushed, not polled. The pause button isn't the best interface, but the idea is to show the ridiculous number of tweets coming out of Madison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Rather than saying something nasty about how public sector union benefits are bankrupting so many states and unions across this country, I'm just going to flag this and hope that the discussion moves to more appropriate venues.

<comment><USER5> Rather than replying that Wisconsin had a projected budget surplus until Governor Walker spent ~$140 million in January, I'll just point out that backhanded comments like this one are kind of annoying, and hope that you remember for next time.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This app is certainly not the first of its kind, but it's interesting to see a more localized example of social media uniting people in protest. When the protests in Iran were happening I don't think I was convinced of Twitter's effect on fueling social movements. When they happened in Egypt I began to come around. When it started happening outside of my window it became difficult to ignore.

There's no question in my mind that one of the driving forces behind this protest is social media, and in particular, Twitter.

Interesting times.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice way to showcase technology.</comment>


Franz: Unified messenger for Whatsapp ,Slack and many other services - <AUTHOR> http://meetfranz.com/ <comment><USER2> Saw the link early this morning under "new", expected it to be on the front page by the time I got to work. but it's buried. a quick search shows that franz has been submitted multiple times over the last year (and by different submitters, not some sort of sneaky PR by the company) and apparently never gotten any traction.

I've been looking for an app like this for ages. I can't understand why this hasn't gotten more votes?</comment>


Nulls Are Not the Problem - <AUTHOR> https://georgestocker.com/2017/01/03/nulls-are-not-the-problem/ <comment><USER2> The problem with null, i think, is that in some languages its harder than it should be to reason about when to expect a null.

tooling helps, but it still catches people by surprise, and handling it often feels cumbersome. This is possibly why people rant about it so often.

I don't know if there is a better solution, but it feels like there is room for improvement.</comment>


Source for Predator Object Tracking (OpenCV) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/abelsson/TLD/

<comment><USER2> IMHO, Zdenek Kalal has some short sighted view for business. Even if someone offered him a plane filled with money for his algorithm, or if he thought "hey, I can sell this shit! fuck the world! show me the money!", he fails at acknowledging that it doesn't really matter whether you created one of the best algorithms for image recognition: what matters is if you can do it again.

What I'm talking about is, what if instead of selling one of the golden eggs, you give that for free and create a reputation for yourself worldwide, so more people will be willing to hire the golden egg's goose?

Anyway.. Somewhere, Richard Stallman is smiling.. and I'm happy for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Some people make things just because they love to make things.

<comment><USER3> Well he got a PhD for this one, that's something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Follow-up on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2403290>

</comment><comment><USER4> Predator Object Tracking explanation: [http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/predator-takes-visual- obj...](http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/predator-takes-visual-object- tracking-to-new-heights-2011044/)

<comment><USER5> I'm not sure that counts as an explanation :) For details you could read his published papers on the subject:

[http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/20...](http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/2010_icip.pdf)

[http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/20...](http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/2010_icpr.pdf)

[http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/20...](http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/2010_cvpr.pdf)

[http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/20...](http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/Publications/2009_olcv.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> You will need at least the image processing toolbox and statistics toolbox for MATLAB to run the code.

<comment><USER7> And at least version R2009B, to get the new syntax for unused function arguments or return values ("~"). Otherwise, search and replace them with dummy variable names to get it to run. Should just take a couple minutes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought he wasn't releasing this... why is Henrik Abelsson releasing this and not Zdeneki Kalai?

<comment><USER9> He already released it, and once you release something under GPL you can't take it back. You can stop hosting it, but someone else is free to develop further on it.

<comment><USER5> Even so, I'm not sure this is a polite thing to do. I think it would be nice to respect the author's wishes for the moment:

 _We have received hundreds of emails asking for the source code ranging from practitioners, students, researchers up to top companies. The range of proposed projects is exciting and it shows that TLD is ready to push the current technology forward. This shows that we have created something "bigger" than originally expected and therefore we are going to postpone the release of our source code until announced otherwise. Thank you for understanding._

<http://info.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/Z.Kalal/tld.html>

However as most of the tracking code is in Matlab - i.e. you can't just port this to your phone - I don't think the author has a great deal to lose here. If someone wants to re-implement the algorithms they may well need his expertise. (Edit: Looking at the code in more detail SammoJ may well be right, and this paragraph may be wrong.)

In fact, Henrik Abelsson may have more to lose if this is seen as poor etiquette, but I'm speculating here.

<comment><USER6> Translating MATLAB -> C isn't too bad and could be done without any domain knowledge. Just remember the pesky 1 start for MATLAB arrays... Having a quick glance through the code I haven't seen any major reliance on MATLAB built-ins. Also "most of the tracking code is in MATLAB" is false. The tracking builds upon the Lucas-Kanade tracker in lk.cpp which uses OpenCVs implementation. I'd estimate a couple of full days of work tops to re-write in C.

Qualifications: I have had to speed up (i.e. rewrite in C) a lot of complex MATLAB code.

<comment><USER10> Is anyone seriously considering porting this to C? I'm thinking of doing this myself, as I'm really interested in applying the algorithm, but I don't have a lot of experience in this kind of thing.

<comment><USER11> I am thinking of porting his code to ccv (<http://github.com/liuliu/ccv>). Unfortunately, his code is released under GPLv2, and ccv is BSD licensed. I have sent email to him in order to obtain further permission.

<comment><USER12> Could you release a GPLv2 CCV library for the time being?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Official source: <https://github.com/zk00006/OpenTLD></comment>


In vivo CRISPR gene editing with no detectable genome-wide off-target mutations - <AUTHOR> https://doi.org/10.1101/272724 <comment><USER2> 404?

Title has no google hits.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, resubmitted with the right link</comment></comment>


Federal Judge Unseals New York Crime Lab's Software for Analyzing DNA Evidence - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/federal-judge-unseals-new-york-crime-labs-software-for-analyzing-dna-evidence <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15518364](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15518364)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading the expert opinion it appears that FST did not use (or that there was no evidence given for one) a source code repository, thus it is impossible to identify how the source code changed behavior between the original analysis and that done with the given source code. I wonder if they did this to avoid keeping a change log useful in discovery.

<comment><USER4> That's kind of like discovering that a building's blueprints consist of some doodles on a napkin.

If I were the plaintiff, I would argue that not using a VCS completely removes all credibility of that software and company.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Source on github: [https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna- software](https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna-software)

I wonder if the username/password listed here is still in production: [https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna- software/blob/master/F...](https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna- software/blob/master/FST.Web/FST_Production_Service/Connection.txt)

</comment><comment><USER6> This should be a good reminder that the only way we can have safe and just criminal courts is that the evidence, techniques and technology used by experts and prosecution are public and reviewable. Whether it's the software that a dui measuring blood alchohol system uses, how they analyze your dna, it all needs to be public so we can measure things. I keep reading cases about how poor people get accussed of a crime and the "evidence" against them can't be understood or defended against because it's coming from unassailable experts with mystical skills.

A recent example I read about is the police trained to detect people high on drugs, where there is no real evidence behind the training and many known cases of false accusation, [http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/12/georgia-pd-our- drug-recogn...](http://reason.com/blog/2017/05/12/georgia-pd-our-drug- recognition-experts). Most of us fortunate to work in the technology world have money and access to lawyers who can defend against such accusations, but poor people don't have that.

I am not a cop but I know it must be incredibly hard to be one, and frustrating to see people get off of on technicalities. But poor l.e. practices must be prevented so we can have trust in the system.

</comment><comment><USER7> I wouldn't bet my life or anyone elses on this code being correct [https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna- software/blob/master/F...](https://github.com/propublica/nyc-dna- software/blob/master/FST.Common/Comparison.cs)</comment>


Ask HN: Suggestions for fitness widget for personal website? - <AUTHOR> Hi, I would like to show aggregated fitness/activities data on my website. Ex: kms run, avg. pace, # of pushups, etc.<p>Is there such a widget/service with integration with Strava and/or Apple Health and/or Apple activities? <comment><USER2> I've been using Exist [0] to collect and analyse my fitness data for a number of years. Their API [1] is pretty good, I use it to generate my own daily stats page [2]

[0] [https://exist.io/](https://exist.io/) [1] [http://developer.exist.io/](http://developer.exist.io/) [2] [http://peterwallhead.com/stats/](http://peterwallhead.com/stats/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Peter, that was really helpful. Interestingly, I have checked Exist.io back in the day, but I couldn't find it searching on Google.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a designer-equivalent to HN? - <AUTHOR>

I know HN isn't solely dedicated to programmers, but general startup issues. However, there tends to be a hacking slant.
Is there the equivalent for designers/graphics people specifically for startups? If so, please provide URLs.
Thanks. <comment><USER2> We should keep this discussion here, as I (being more of a designer than hacker) have found the resources of this community to be more valuable than other other web destination. I'd like to see more designers or junior-hackers speak up and start some threads based on the issues that face those of us who can't (or don't want to) write code from scratch.

<comment><USER3> Yes, I would consider it a sad thing if designers felt that _design_ was off- topic for HN.

Presumably the principal coder of HN, a _painter_ who wrote a book called _Hackers and Painters_ , would not be inclined to chase designers away, either.

<comment><USER4> Actually, I'd love to find out how many designers of diciplines not directly connected with the web read HN?

<comment><USER5> I'm another one and have been following hn for a long time. it can be a little intimidating to post in a group that seems to be mostly programmers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love ffffound . It's not really like HN but i think from a designers view it's as useful as HN is for coding an enterpreneurship. It shows you the trends and whta's going on in the designing universe.

</comment><comment><USER7> <http://www.reddit.com/r/web_design/> is alright .. but its not specifically for startups..

<comment><USER8> It's woefully low on posts, too. I only see about 1-2 good submissions a day.

<comment><USER9> There is something going on with the moderation. About 2 months ago they began approving at most 3 posts a day. It completely ruined a decent community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> <http://www.undrln.com> is not too shabby.

<comment><USER11> I dig undrln. It's a very small and moldable community right now. It's done by Eric Karjaluoto of <http://SmashLab.com> and <http://ideasonideas.com>, the latter being a great blog for small design businesses.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Not to take away from HN, but HN seems to be programming + startup related.

Maybe there would be significant value add if there were something along the lines of startup + design.

Maybe someone should start one and post the link here.

I am not a designer, but I am curious about those types of stuff. I wonder if pg would be interested in 'white-labelling' HN like Stack Overflow has done for other sites. But with a more customizable UI, rather than have the design whored out to every idea.

Even if pg doesn't want to do it, someone else should plug that gap.

Opportunities are everywhere!

</comment><comment><USER4> My brother and I started <http://facesofdesign.com/> a while ago; not quite the same as HN, but we do try and cater especially to young designers starting out. The site is geared towards designers of all nationalities and disciplines... Integrating something like HN for designers would be something that could be a great part of what we're trying to do. Would love to continue the discussion!

</comment><comment><USER12> <http://www.qbn.com> and <http://www.yayhooray.com> are by far the most legit ones, you'll also find a bunch of them at <http://www.qonversation.com> now, but you need to get an invite (for both qonversation and yayhooray)

<comment><USER13> I have been an active member of YayHooray for the last six years, and although it bears mentioning here it's not necessarily a design orientated community anymore. Most discussions tend to be random and meaningless and the signal to noise ratio has gone off the charts over the last few years. That said, there are the occasional good design related discussions and there are certainly some talented people still there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm all for this. Let's see what we can setup. Reddit's /r/design and /r/webdesign aren't very compelling and usually completely packed up with "28 great lens flares" type spam.

Somewhere where we can have a real chat about all aspects of design would be amazing.

</comment><comment><USER15> Let's start one!

On a related note, is anyone interesting in starting a HN for philosophy/politics/sociology?

<comment><USER16> Count me in for that one

<comment><USER15> Awesome, the philosophy one or the designer one or both?

<comment><USER16> both

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> <http://doctype.com/>

<comment><USER15> That is a Stack Overflow clone for designers. Stack Overflow differs considerably from Hacker News.

<comment><USER18> It's also for WEB design, not design in general.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Smashingmagazine.com has a forum.

</comment><comment><USER20> <http://www.alistapart.com/>

<comment><USER21> Quite different from Hacker News, don't you think? We're not about articles, we're about community and discussion.

<comment><USER20> HN is not about articles? A List Apart is all about community and discussions. Dig deeper. It started all out as a mailing list, the site came later because so many list-members wrote good stuff. The ral point though: the people. The design-equivalent to HN is ALA, peoplewise. You know, those who get it et al</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A detailed CDN pricing calculator - <AUTHOR> https://www.cdnperf.com/tools/cdn-calculator <comment><USER2> Verizon is listed as Azure reseller? What happen to their Edgecast?

I wish someone would resell Limestone.

I also wish someone in the industry could explain why transfer hasn't gotten cheaper over the years, especially from the big three. Why hasn't other challenged them? Or why lastly managed to gain more customers while being more expensive than those big three.

<comment><AUTHOR> Azure is reseller of Verizon, which is ex-Edgecast

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why isn't Cloudflare listed? They don't charge for bandwidth so I suppose they'd always be the cheapest.

<comment><USER4> If you use a lot of bandwidth a CF sales person contacts you and tells you it's time to pay.

And it's not cheap. More expensive than Fastly in our case (though we went with Google CDN and saved a bunch of money and got better performance).

<comment><USER5> This is not correct. While we'll reach out heavy users to see if they'd like to upgrade to get all the benefits of our Enterprise accounts, if you don't want to upgrade you can continue to use our base plans. If you ever hear otherwise from a person on our Sales team, please let me know directly because they are wrong and in violation of our explicit policies. My email: matthewatcloudflaredotcom.

<comment><USER6> This story plays out on HN like clockwork

1) Person A recommends CloudFlare as a CDN because it's really cheap

2) Person B warns that the were using CF in this manner and had their account closed

3) CF rep comes in to clarify that no such policy exists

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Akamai has different products, coming with different price tags/GB. Which product does this site take in to consideration?

Edit: ah, it's the azure resell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, its the only public pricing we could find for Akamai and some other providers

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fastly 1PB: $96,000 OVH 1PB: $6500 Google Cloud: $36,000

CDN pricing is insane.

<comment><USER9> Is it possible to replace Google Cloud Storage with a CDN? (in other words, find a CDN that lets you manage files - create/delete - and give you a URL to each file with an allowed origin of * to be able to pull it from anywhere?)

<comment><USER8> I think a lot of CDN's have cloud storage at the CDN site. [https://bunnycdn.com/features](https://bunnycdn.com/features) has multireplication storage coming soon. You could push to their CDN storage sites and then have that served to users. There are lots of CDN's with storage though.

Google CDN, Fastly, Cloudfront, they're selling you bandwidth as Soda. Buy the meal cheap then pay deeply for the refill.

<comment><USER9> That is great thanks!

I'm trying to see if there is one that lets you manage client uploads with a token, i.e. the server gives an "upload token" to the client so an "untrusted client" has permission to upload a file on behalf of the server, but without having to send the file to the server.

Do you know off the top of your head if any CDN provides this?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Exploiting CSRF against search with Lucene - <AUTHOR> https://www.idontplaydarts.com/2015/09/cross-domain-timing-attacks-against-lucene/ <comment><USER2> So the article suggests using a timkng attack on a Lucene searchbox to determine if an item exists or not (at least thats what I gather).

Considering most likely the searchbox will already tell youif something exists, whats the purpose?

I think I'm missing something here.

<comment><USER3> This is a csrf attack -- it allows a site B (malicious) to exploit the trust relationship that exists between site A (running some Lucerne index behind a web service -- perhaps elastic search?) and a user C's web browser. Suppose site A allows logged in users to search an index -- user C is logged into A and user C visits site B while logged into A. Site B sends down JavaScript telling C's browser to send requests to site A -- because the user is logged into A, A sends back responses containing sensitive data. The JavaScript from B has no access to the data that was sent from A due to the single origin policy however it does have the ability to time how long the response took -- hence the mechanics of this attack.

As mentioned in the article, A can protect against this by requiring a csrf token to be included in all the requests sent to it (this is on top of the authentication/session cookie which establishes the trust relationship between A and C's browser. A csrf token is a random unguessable token that the server sends to C's browser in a form that cannot be accessed by B -- the JavaScript from A is expected to retrieve this token and send it along with future requests to A. The server A then needs to validate that any request from browser C contains the csrf token -- this allows A to distinguish between requests from browser C which were generated on behalf of code from A (should be allowed) and requests which were generated by browser C on behalf of code from some other domain (potentially malicious)

<comment><USER2> Thank you, I missed that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Lucene has no HTTP interface of its own. This is not a Lucene security issue.

</comment><comment><USER5> Another excellent reason to write your own query parser instead of using Lucene's. Lucene's query parser is way too powerful to expose to end users.

<comment><USER6> One shall say that never expose your backend queries to the public. This goes for SQL, Lucene or any other database and search technology, as they will reveal much more than you'd like to.</comment></comment>


The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door - <AUTHOR> http://www.recode.net/2016/8/29/12663630/google-x-alphabet-moonshot <comment><USER3> I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self- driving_car](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car)

Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California.

I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior.

As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops.

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records- its-...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-first- autopilot-fatal-crash-nhtsa-opens-investigation)

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

<comment><USER4> Tesla's auto pilot isn't at all comparable to what Google are doing. It essentially the same as the adaptive cruse control (cruse control that adjusts to traffic in front) and lane assist (auto stearing to stay in lane) you can get from most other car manufactures as an option.

That's not to say that tesla isn't developing full automation it's just that what they sell now is just clever branding on something you can get elsewhere.

<comment><USER5> I believe that at some point in the future they will launch a joint-venture for a fully automated Uber competitor with Tesla handling designing and building the vehicles and Google providing cash, self-driving software and building the actual app.

Musk is literally too good friends with Sergey Brin and Larry Page for this not too happen.

[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page- ha...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/elon-musk-and-larry-page-have-the- worlds-weirdest-friendship)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment- elon...](http://www.businessinsider.com/googles-secret-apartment-elon- musk-2015-5)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?

<comment><USER7> Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions.

X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.

<comment><USER8> It may be true that it's harder now to make those kinds of leaps than it was in the 1970s though.

<comment><USER9> Why?

I mean, everything is obvious in retrospect. I'm sure there were some PARC guys bemoaning that all the fundamental discoveries were already made in the 1950s... Google today probably has bigger budgets than Xerox had then (tho' that's just a guess on my part)

<comment><USER8> A lot of discoveries get exponentially harder. Compare the LHC to experiments people were doing 100 years ago for an extreme example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a "moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can ship an MVP?

</comment><comment><USER11> One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between Google and people who works in those moonshot projects.

* Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it.

* The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.

</comment><comment><USER12> It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - <USER2> are "moonshots" after all.

Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.

<comment><USER13> Isn't a venture capital firm (even a good one) a business investing in mostly failed projects?

<comment><USER14> The difference is that those projects are spread out across different companies, as opposed to a single division in a single company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited funding.

<comment><USER16> I think the fact that a project would receive unlimited funding is a negative, not a positive.

Instead of getting lean startups that have to move quickly because of resource scarcity you have bloated startups that feel no pressure to move quickly because of the unlimited resources they are receiving.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Is not as bad as article suggests: [https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/](https://www.solveforx.com/graduated/)

It just operates on hype curve. GoogleX takes projects from "technological trigger" to "peak of inflated expectations": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle)

<comment><USER18> "Graduation" doesn't mean success. It seems to just mean "it moved out of X", even though usually that's just to somewhere else in Google it makes no money and sells no products.

\- Verify/Life Sciences is failing pretty hard and has failed to develop any actual products. [https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences- exo...](https://www.statnews.com/2016/03/28/google-life-sciences-exodus/)

\- Glass is an absolute failure. I own one, I loved mine. It's still a failure.

\- Gcam went to... Google Research? It went from moonshot R&D to normal R&D. That's not success.

\- Google Brain... went to Research as well. And really, it is likely just a rebranded version of whatever DeepMind was already doing when Google bought them.

\- Project Tango went from Google's moonshot R&D to Motorola's R&D (ATAP) which Google kept ownership of. That's also not success.

Android Wear, Flux, and Project Insight (Indoor Maps) probably all count as actual successes for X, but that's about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > They say the issues at X aren't technical hurdles, but a combination of red > tape and knotty internal politics

Unsurprising. The valley (and tech in general) is forgetting it's power doesn't come from management and politics.

</comment><comment><USER20> This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?

</comment><comment><USER21> This feels like the type of operation better suited for a tier-one educational institution like Stanford or MIT.

In a academic context, there is no subtext of creating products. Yeah, churning out papers is as contrived...but I still feel like the timelines in academia are more generous.

Google talks a good press event, highlighting their embrace of failure, their desire to take on crazy moonshots etc...but its all in the context of quarterly reports. Something has to give.

</comment><comment><USER22> > The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door

Isn't the whole idea of a "moonshot", in this context, a project that has both a long window before any payoff, and a high risk of failure. So isn't this a very much "water is wet" story?

</comment><comment><USER23> Meh.

If you're familiar with the internals of Google (or have ever worked there), then you wouldn't even be slightly surprised by the content of this article or the ever present stream of product failures from Google. In fact, if you're aware, then you know things are likely to remain this way until something is done about all the BS present internally.

You see the "difficult to work-- FOR" and almost (or all out) sociopathic leaders being outed to some extent in the last year or so: commonplace. That is, Google likes to position itself as being above such stupidity, but if you listen to what they say more carefully, you see this is their default/go-to strategy. That is, they explicitly seek out such personalities (similar to many VCs), as they believe (based on "data") that it's what's more likely to lead to success.

Also, while it would be easy to believe Google is all about the "moon shots" they like touting/hyping (especially given how much money they are dumping in that direction), if you look at who they are putting in key positions, and how everything is setup, you immediately realize that (regardless of what they are doing) it will all likely go nowhere.

Something is very strange about that place. It's like they have no brain. It's like they are just outright stupid. Which I suppose is hard to say (and have believed), especially after years of hype (and supporting anecdotes) about its exceptionally talented pool of employees.

Essentially, it often seems like a sea of INTJs who like to parade around as though they know what to do with data (and are above bias and feeding into their own BS, because they are "data-driven"), but that at the end of the day are just going based on whim/gut, one which is more self-centered and out of touch than "in tune with" and reflective of the world at large (or where it's going).

I suppose if you spin around in your own shht enough, and surround yourself with more of-- yourself-- then eventually, you'll fall into line believing your own BS and that you must be right.

I remember when I was at Google for a short time in 2010. The place was a source of endless annoyance and irritation. The field was wide open, and it was all there for the taking, but then they just consistently and continually kept making the dumbest decisions. And they'd defend those decisions as though they were God almighty and immune to being wrong. It was the greatest consistent stream of stupidity I had ever seen. And by the looks of it, nothing has really changed. It's just been shht, then more shht, then more BS trying to explain away the shht, as though shht isn't what it is.

It's not that they "fail often due to releasing more and sooner" or "see something beyond the field of view of many;" it's that they just plain failed and it was most likely due to stupidity/credentials (you heard what I said) being heard over repeated statements of what made more sense (or of what would be more likely to go somewhere). Also, that failure that looks like a half- assed piece of crap likely was likely 2 years (or more) in the making, rather than the 6-8 weeks it seems went into it.

It's just shht every time, and as soon as you step into realizing it, you'll see that it's always just more shht from them. Their only successes (even in their "main" business) have come from the competition "falling off" (F'ing themselves over), rather than from them releasing things that are worthwhile or better.

The place was extremely infuriating to me, and I couldn't wait to leave. I was in silent shock the majority of the time I was there, and it seems that even though 6+ years have gone by, not much has changed!

I'll say it outright and in plain English: the "almighty" Google-- the almighty enterprise of innovation-- the almighty force for pushing the web/world forward-- is completely full of shht! They couldn't put out an innovative (or even just quality) product to save their lives! If anything surfaces from them that's not more garbage, then it was likely from an acquisition. And even then, it seems they are F'ing even those avenues up more frequently as time goes by.

Google Photos: acquisition!

Google DeepMind: acquisition!

Google ATAP: acquisition!

Etc.

They've got nothing.

</comment><comment><USER24> why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or not?

<comment><USER25> Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales!

Who's to blame?!

Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.

We're adding a little something to this month's sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a _Cadillac Eldorado_. Anybody want to see second prize? (second prize is a set of steak knives.)

Third prize is you're fired.

These are _The New Leads_. These are the _Glengarry_ leads. And to you they're gold. And you don't get them. Why? Because to give them to you would be throwing them away. They're for closers.

<comment><USER26> I realize that this comment is tongue-in-cheek, but the reality is that Alphabet is a corporation, not a research university. Corporations by definition need to ship and make money.</comment></comment></comment>


Strangely fascinating live streams of MacBook motherboard repairs - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/user/rossmanngroup <comment><AUTHOR> I've been watching his recordings for the past week or so, it is extremely interesting to see how component level motherboard repairs are done. This YouTube channel gives behind the scenes info on how he troubleshoosts and ultimately fixes nonworking MacBook motherboards. It's surprisingly entertaining.</comment>


Cultural differences may leave their mark on DNA - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/9060.html <comment><USER3> I'll quote myself from a previous comment regarding epigenetics.

Epigenetics. It's the make-file for your genetic source code. Certain conditions can cause certain parts of your genetic code to be uncommented or commented-out. There are actually a number of different kinds of comments (histone modifications [1]) - each set of marks particular to a different compiler, in different contexts. And these comments/marks are copied with some fidelity to daughter-cells/children along with a high-fidelty copy of the underlying genetic code itself.

So the genes themselves are not being heritably altered, rather the recipe for which gene is where, when can be subtly changed. But again, the same mechanisms that permit the change in expression of those genes during a lifetime can be subsequently changed in the next just as easily.

In this way you can store the code for some trait or capability over many generations without having it always be running. It can manifest itself in individual organisms as having very different phenotypes even with the same underlying code.

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

<comment><USER4> What muscles do you have to flex that will eventually lead to methylation of histones?

<comment><USER3> LOTS of things affect epigenetics. It currently appears to be a messy, relatively non-deterministic process with lots of different pathways crossing wires with lots of other different pathways.

A snapshot of my mental model of epigenetics (warning: epigenetics/histone modifications are not my particular field of study): "The methylator slides along DNA to methylate histone tails at location 32 of histone 2 while in simultaneous competition the demethylator demethylates methyl groups of histone 1 at locations 4, 12 and 18 under most conditions, or location 32 of histone 2 IFF it is within three histones of an acetylated histone which itself has its acetylation competing with a deacetylator - constantly. And if a certain set of marks occur appropriately in combination, a set of neighboring histones wrap up and hide themselves and their DNA - <USER2> its hidden DNA from being used in that cell until some other mechanism can unwrap that section. Oh, and (most of) those marks are copied to children/daughter cells right along with the copying of DNA."

Because it's so fickle, non-deterministic, and tangled (unlike it's DNA counterpart) it's actually pretty hard to study and is currently (like this afternoon, down your street) a topic of a significant amount of cutting edge research. As the wikipedia article above shows, the 'Histone Code' is still a work in progress, and it now appears unlikely that there is a 1:1 relationship between this chemical mark and that effect, very much unlike the very nice deterministic relationship we found between DNA->RNA->Protein.

One common change I've read about that bubbles up to normal life is the capability of nicotine to affect histone acetylation. It seems to rapidly alter histone modifications so as to make other habits/actions more addictive [1] (precisely in a way that we now know THC does _not_ \- the original 'gateway drug' mis-extrapolation).

[1] [https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why- nic...](https://www.nih.gov/news-events/nih-research-matters/why-nicotine- gateway-drug)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing that I don't hear talked about in many of these discussions about the genetic components of race is how the mixed racial ancestry of many "black" people in Europe and the Americas impacts these studies.

MANY blacks in the Americas and Europe have significant European DNA. For example, even though my family identifies as black, my mother and her siblings are almost 50℅ European according to DNA tests.

How does this factor in when making medical decisions based on assumptions regarding race?

<comment><USER6> As I remember it, something like 80% of people who we identify as African Americans(or black) have significant amounts of European ancestry.

Outside of Africa, that's probably to be expected.

I too am "black", with two "black" parents but my mother had red hair and green eyes. My son has blonde hair and blue eyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" Scientists and clinicians have increasingly tried to move away from simplistic racial and ethnic categories in disease research, the authors say, and – with the rise of precision medicine – in clinical diagnosis and treatment as well. Studies by the Burchard group and others have found that using genetic ancestry rather than ethnic self-identification significantly improves diagnostic accuracy for certain diseases.

But the new data showing that a large fraction of epigenetic signatures of ethnicity reflect something other than ancestry suggests that abandoning the idea of race and ethnicity altogether could sacrifice a lot of valuable information about the drivers of differences in health and disease between different communities."_

The study shows that abandoning the idea of ethnicity could sacrifice information, but it still seems to indicate that genetic ancestry is more useful than race. Why does the article seem to conflate the two?

</comment><comment><USER8> if culture impacts DNA then the concept of DNA being subject to mutation as the primary driving factor is at last beginning to crumble.

Also if culture impacts genetics then the idea there are races is clearly not the case, but rather loosely organized behavioral groups that can change in whatever direction their common culture takes them next.

All of the conclusions being drawn about the implications of this for your hobby-grudges about politics are beyond inane

</comment><comment><USER9> In my understanding, the article was saying that who your ancestors are has less of an impact on DNA methylation (epigenetic markers) than where you grew up. It's not about race, it's about ethnicity---the cultural identity of the individuals, the environment they lived in. It's not about DNA, it's about how DNA is actually manifested, as represented by methylation markers.

<comment><USER10> The articles states that at least 76% of the observed differences in the population come from their raw DNA. Epigenetics may thus affect up to 24% of the observed differences. So DNA is still the predominant factor.

<comment><USER11> Don't think so, they didn't look at raw dna sequences. They appear to just look at ethnicities, within which there is a _lot_ of genetic variation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Looks like the TL;DR conclusion is that "race" is not just a social construct, but actually has genetic markers which are expressed beyond ethnic heritage. As the authors conclude, this could be extremely important in tailoring medical treatments for people for differences in their genetic makeup based on their race. In other words harder sciences are proving that social sciences obsession with identity politics has hindered medical advancements once again.

<comment><USER13> _Biological populations_ certainly do exist, it's just that they don't correlate well with prevailing concepts of "race". The average western African is more similar to the average European than to the average southern African.

<comment><USER14> Populations in Africa are also genetically more diverse than the rest of the world combined.

<comment><USER15> But people are ignorant of Africa in general. When they talk about an African race they're ignoring Ethiopians or khoisans or pygmies - they mean Bantu people.

I don't think there's more genetic diversity among Bantus than the rest of the world combined.

<comment><USER13> > But people are ignorant of Africa in general.

Not population geneticists. Africa in those cases == sub-Saharan African people, not just Bantu.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You know what's crazy? My cousin is months away from finishing his PhD in pharmacy. Over thanksgiving break, he revealed to me that he had never heard the term "epigenetics". I explained it to him. He works for a drug company modeling interactions for new animal antibiotics and he'd never heard the term "epigenetics"

My cousin is a bright, driven guy. There are reasons I distrust the western medical establishment.

<comment><USER17> The other way to look at it is epigenetics is much more important to pop- science than real science.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ugh, the alt-right supremacists are going to have a field day with mis- information around this o_o

</comment><comment><USER19> Cultural changes rate are too infinitesimal compared to the time which is required for any genetic change to get a chance to form and propagate through a population to attain a stable presence (forming a distinct trait).

The probability that a certain cultural difference induced mutation could be formed (given that there is no flow of information from a phenotype back to genotype) is something incalculable.

What might work for a bacteria does not work for humans due to, you see, fundamental differences in the reproductive system and development.

There are a few main principles from genetics 101 to consider before making any attempts of "doing science".

       1. all mutations are *random*
       2. there is no backward flow of information
       3. environment does not alter DNA. random mutations do
       4. propagating of a mutation is an extremely rare event
       5. it takes *many* generations.

To understand these principles think _why_ we do not have much mutations of, say, hemoglobin or glucose pathway enzimes.

There is another fundamental principle: way to many hipsters in what they call "modern science".

<comment><USER20> The article talks about gene expression, which is much more fluid. Another factor that influences gene expression whose effects are just starting to be measured is poverty.

<comment><USER19> Gene expression has nothing to do with altering DNA, leave alone any propagation of such "changes".

<comment><USER20> > The study examined DNA methylation—an "annotation" of DNA that alters gene > expression without changing the genomic sequence itself—in a group of > diverse Latino children. Methylation is one type of "epigenetic mark" that > previous research has shown can be either inherited or altered by life > experience.

What are you even arguing against?

<comment><USER19> I am arguing against ignoring the fundamental principle about one-way flow of information DNA->RNA->protein which makes life sustainable.

Anything which contradicts with this principle is plainly nonsense - a product of unconstrained imagination.

BTW, any changes which could be propagated through the mother's body, the way some deceases do, would not get into the DNA. This is another fundamental principle which contributes to sustainability of life - it is about isolation and washing out of pathogens.

<comment><USER3> See my comment above. DNA can be commented in/out during an organism's lifetime. And these comments/silencing capabilities are in fact transferable to a child with some fidelity. And in that way those changes are heritable and genetic, if not actually altering the DNA of the child in any way. This capability is called epigenetics.

You are correct that the code of the DNA itself is not being altered, but there are other heritable mechanisms that affect the structure, capability and accessability of that DNA - i.e. gene expression, beyond the code of DNA itself. This enables capabilities encoded in DNA to be passed down to children without actually using them - or conversely, to enable certain latent capabilities under certain environmental conditions.

Life is a bit more nuanced than the dogmatic one-way flow of information we teach as 'the central dogma'. It gains its complexity by _always_ having an exception to its own rules somewhere at some point if it physically possible so, as to hedge against some change in conditions where that exception becomes more powerful than the existing rule. The exception may be inconsequential and of little benefit - until such time as it is not.

<comment><USER19> With generational time of almost 20 years?

What you are taking about is an ordinary blood-borne sexually transmitted decease model (or a virus), and it has _nothing to do with genetics_ (gene expression is a developmental topic), so there will be no "marks on a DNA" in principle - it does not work that way.

There, however, could be some certain proteins bound to DNA, but it is a not a genetic but biochemical (pathogenic-like) change. Those proteins could be treated as markers.

The propagation rate of such proteins is still limited by the generation time, so any connection to cultural differences is nonsense.

So, it is _not genetic_ , there is _no marks on DNA_ , it is not cultural. Period.

<comment><USER16> Even the number of twists in a DNA molecule can impact its interaction with the environment.

[https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160105-supercoiled- dna/](https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160105-supercoiled-dna/)

Living DNA exists in complex coils, smothered in a jelly of inter-mediating molecules. It's quite messy and poorly understood! What _is_ understood is that inheritance and expression of DNA information are absolutely non-linear.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Unravelling Konami's Arcade DRM - <AUTHOR> http://mon.im/2017/12/konami-arcade-drm.html <comment><USER2> _After 15 minutes spent trying to decipher this, I simply translated the code into Python and iterated infinitely. Turns out, this is how you perform big- endian addition without actually converting the number to little-endian. An odd way of doing it, but perhaps a compiler optimisation. It turns out they're actually using AES_CTR, but instead of incrementing the entire counter IV, they're only using the last 4 bytes. A little strange, but if your encrypted file is 232_ 16 bytes long, you have other problems to worry about.*

Not all that strange. The "counter block" is normally split into a nonce, which allows you to reuse the same key on multiple messages without generating a duplicate keystream, and a counter; an AES block is 16 bytes wide, so a 64 bit counter is more typical, but I've seen 32.

Doing that can even make sense, if you have bounded message sizes (<64 gigs) --- the larger the space you allocate for the nonce, the safer it is to generate nonces randomly, rather than using a system to remember all previous nonces to avoid collisions.

</comment><comment><USER3> This stuff has been documented in private circles for over a decade now, and hasn't been made public because these games aren't available to play outside of owning a cabinet in Japan or acquiring the data via less-legit methods. While it's a fun exercise to explore, the real-world application is sadly limited to grey-market implementations that Konami frowns upon, which reinforces why the exposure has been limited.

<comment><USER4> Information wants to be free.

<comment><USER3> Not sure how releasing this information benefits anyone. The games are sold and distributed by Konami directly, and only to licensed arcades.

<comment><USER5> Well, the process itself regardless of the data is interesting. Likewise, surely for archival purposes once the games are decommissioned and people want to preserve them it will be useful to have, no?

I find your response just a bit weird; it's a nice break down of niche and likely easily lost technology once Konami et. al. are done with it. It's a nice read, well written, serves those looking to archive these games in the future, and also is a great high level overview of the reverse engineering process.

Is the issue that it has no immediate benefit to you?

<comment><USER6> There's a lot of politics in this particular scene regarding game and network services cracking.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is the company that continues to ship new games with Windows XP Embedded (they are allowed to due to a technicality in the licensing agreement with Microsoft). No one expects them to up their security game all of a sudden - and I sure hope they don't :D

Of course, thank you to all of those who have done this type of work over the years! You know who you are.

<comment><USER8> Well they're moving to WES7 for games now (museca/gitadora/nostalgia/maybe iidx 25), so they'll eventually move them all likely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love reading stuff like this.. thanks for sharing!

</comment><comment><USER10> MAME has long lacked support for certain Konami games. Is it because of this? Could MAME now support those Konami games, in jurisdictions with no anti- circumvention laws?

<comment><USER3> Konami didn't start using Windows for its games until IIDX 9th style, Pop'n 15, DDR X, and Drummania V...6 i think?. Before that, it was all custom hardware, based off of the PS1, PS2, or just an in-house creation. Older IIDX for instance uses a combination of a CD drive, a DVD drive, and an IDE drive for storing all its data, not to mention ROMs soldered onto the boards. The MAME team has actually just started to get the older games working, but require dumps which are hard to come by - thankfully the fans of these games have been collecting dumps for years and they are slowly being cataloged and added in.

DDR has been a thorn particularly because they used a custom chip for decoding encrypted MP3 streams in the System 573, something that MAME hasn't wanted to touch due to patents.

I highly doubt the newer games will go into MAME anytime soon - partly because they all run Windows XP embedded, and also because they are most likely considered "too new" for inclusion.

<comment><USER11> The major patents on MP3s are dead now and Fraunhofer shut down their licensing program. If that's the patents they're worried about, they're done.</comment></comment></comment>


Flat design, yada yada. Here's what I need from iOS 7 as a developer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/design-ux/b5dd7968753f

<comment><USER2> As a user, I am very against: "No More Push Notification Permissions"

As long as I can select, I'll allow Push Notification only for one or two applications that I really want to interrupt me (e.g. some messaging client that I want to depend on -- even other messaging clients should keep quiet until I want to "chat"). All other apps should be forbidden by default to notify me of anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand the problem of spam in notifications, but my question is, what's wrong with deleting an app that spams you, or not installing it in the first place if you don't trust their use of push notifications?

<comment><USER3> Maybe I want to play that great game everyone recommends, and yet not receive their f*cking marketing push?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't agree Push shouldn't need access and _"– if a user doesn't like their notificaitons, they know they can delete the app"_. There is some apps that I like to use, but don't want to allow to wake me at 3AM because they think something is important. The app can still work without being allowed to send pushes.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, a lot of apps can't work without push, or work a lot worse without push, and I think users aren't well equipped to decide in a few seconds.

I think you can always find a case for more granular control. Say, if iOS enabled you to control the camera access or the microphone access for each app, we could find some class of users which might benefit from it. The question is, at what price?

<comment><USER5> False analogy. The camera and microphone aren't readily available to non- running apps, whereas push notifications are. Push notifications can also interrupt other running applications.

Allowing them globally is a far greater burden on users than asking once when the app opens the first time. If your app cannot work without push it needs to fail gracefully, end of story.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it's a false analogy. I didn't not try to argue that the burden is equal, just that granular control can always come with benefits. For some apps, "failing gracefully" means not delivering a large part of the app's value, and that's a shame.

I believe that there are better ways to solve this problem, and that educating users to delete apps, and thereby educating developers to be conservative with their notifications is part of the solution.

<comment><USER5> One man's "not delivering a large part of the app's value" is another's "not pestering me outside of the hour in the evening I want to use it".

Anecdotally, there is not one single app that I have which I would like to give me push notifications, although a few I use daily would like to. You would force me and others like me to delete them? I'd switch to Android immediately.

There's already a solution for the problem. It's to inform users that your app has more functionality with push notifications on. Not asking Apple to impose policy on their users that restricts their already limited freedom with the device. What we are discussing is a UI failure on your part, not an iOS failure.

"Educating developers to be conservative" is not going to happen. You're thinking of your own app delivering value but forgetting sociopathic actors like Path who feel free to send your entire contacts list to themselves.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> None of these will happen.

\- Push notifications the question is asked up front, good enough. Later on you can ask them to turn it on for benefits, that means notifications have to be worth it. This is the only way to control spammy abusers of notifications.

\- I agree 30% is high for physical goods but you'll have to raise prices on iOS. We are sharecroppers on a platform that we didn't build, they built it, it is the new normal. It's either feudal or sharecropping but that is what platforms can do and will. Smart competitors would lower their take (Play!, Amazon, Windows, BB) but they won't because it is greed and that is the new norm, just following the Apple script. Until there is competition here on the fees/take noone will budge.

\- Profile photos are available in plenty of places, gravatar, facebook, g+, etc. Maybe there is a startup that wants to aggregate all these and you can easily call that service. Doesn't need to be in the OS level. It would be great if profile photos had some common standard but everyone is building walled gardens and not sharing.

<comment><USER7> Yeap. No chance. I agree with most, these are three items that won't improve the experience at all for user/dev.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _But Apple – if a user doesn't like their notificaitons, they know they can > delete the app. Push notifications don't need a permissions process._

So it never occured to the author that a user might like an app and STILL don't want push notifications from it?

Jesus...

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. Of course it occurred to me, but the problem is that users often can't predict if they want notifications or not, or how critical notifications are to the product. I'll give you a real world example from another permissions process - location.

One of the apps I work on is a neighborhood market place. It's _all about_ seeing what people are selling around you, and requires location. The name of the app is roughly 'neighborhood', the marketing materials call it out in big letters, the permissions message clearly explains why the app needs location access. Still, people reflexively see a permissions dialogue and deny. Then the app doesn't work, and they contact support asking why.

<comment><USER8> > _Then the app doesn't work, and they contact support asking why._

Then the app, when loaded, should nag them to re-enable location permissions for it to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I did that. You need to tell users to navigate several levels of their settings app, which is a pain. Most people never touch their settings are and are put off by having to deal with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> One of the reasons Apple doesn't want to get involved in the whole physical product payments area is there are a number of additional regulatory and liability issues.

But I don't think you have to be lumbered with PayPal - there are lots of great options for taking payment for physical products through apps. Stripe even have an out of the box UI layer for iOS to handle credit card payments, and they'll only charge you 2.5%.

I admit some providers (like Stripe) are currently geographically restricted, but that's going to change in the short to mid-term. Going forward there's lots of potential outside of Apple.

<comment><USER8> > _But I don't think you have to be lumbered with PayPal - there are lots of > great options for taking payment for physical products through apps. Stripe > even have an out of the box UI layer for iOS to handle credit card payments, > and they'll only charge you 2.5%._

US only (and UK recently IIRC), so mostly useless for an international business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The only thing I want is great credential/auth handling, in the device. Maybe biometrics on the phone, too. 4-digit passcodes are a failure, since it's possible to try an unlimited number (bypassing the delete-on-10-failures), even with physical possession required.

If I got a bonus, it would be the ability to select overrides for internal apple apps (Mail sucks, Chrome > Safari, a phone client which supports SIP and crypto, a messages app which supports crypto) so other apps would use it, too.

Extra super bonus is iCloud inside the firewall/self hosted on OSX.

</comment><comment><USER11> >Push notifications don't need a permissions process.

Shouldn't happen and won't happen. You're arguing that you know better than the people who are actually using your app when chances are, you do not.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd wager to say that I do. I'll give you a concrete example. People order goods, and I want to send them a "Your order has shipped!" notification. People who paid for something want to know that it has shipped and is on route to them. When I give them a push notifications permissions dialogue, they assume I'm going to bomb them with promotional material. I'm not, and they're missing out on a better experience.

One workaround is to better explain what notifications are for, but I've thrown days of work at designing better notifications permissions funnels. Lovely graphics, succinct messages that explain exactly what you're going to get, and it helps a little, but not enough. People are so negatively impressed by notifications, they often almost reflexively deny permissions.

<comment><USER4> And you think allowing all pushes will fix this? I assume it will only make it worse. Not for your app, but by all the other apps that will send a million pushes.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand, and that's why it's tragic. I and my audience needs to suffer because other developers abuse the system. I'm calling into question whether there is not a better way.

<comment><USER5> It only does the popup after you try to activate them, yes? Why not allow the user to turn them on with a button and not use them until then? "Hey this app is a lot better with push notifications, tap this to turn them on. A dialog will appear, tap 'Allow' to get notices etc. etc."

You said elsewhere that ~40% of users assume your app will spam them, but you don't know it's not ~40% of users simply don't want push notifications even from "benevolent" applications.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jon-wood If you want people to approve notifications don't just throw up a permission dialog at startup, let them use your app for a bit, and when they make an action that will cause notifications to be needed ask them then after telling them why you want to use push.

Saying "you can just delete the app" seems to be missing the point somewhat. There are many games that I enjoy playing, but I don't want them sending me a message about having a free coin while I'm trying to sleep.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done all of that, and it solves some of the problem, but still falls short. Ultimately, my experience is that users just aren't well equipped to decide if notifications are worth it or not. My notifications are silent (no sound), and relevant ("Your order has shipped!"), but people wouldn't know it. When they see a request for push notifications, they assume they're going to get free coin promotions, which is a shame.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What about android-style permissions on install (versus making users jump through four "allow access to…" choices)

<comment><USER13> I disagree. As someone who's gone back and forth between platforms several times, I much prefer the iOS system. It's more button taps for me, yes, but I find it clearer and I'm more likely to check what it's asking for. It's also more granular... I can allow access to my camera, but not to contacts for example. Android, by contrast, gives me a long list of "stuff" to accept and I have to allow access to all of it. Admittedly it has got a bit easier to check that list in the latest version of the Play Store, but it's still not ideal.

My favourite system for requesting permissions is actually Facebook's, which lies somewhere between these two - give me the full list, but let me "turn off" certain items if I want.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think that most users aren't that well equipped to make these kind of decisions. How could they know how critical contacts or location permissions are to the product? I think users need to make a trust/don't trust call on each app, and Android does this well.

<comment><USER14> If they can't tell how critical it is to the app, what difference will being told it up front or when it's happening make?

The only justification for up front permissions I can come up with is the "I want my cat pictures" effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> The difference is that it enables your trust/don't trust decision. An app that requires access to your location and contacts has to be more trustworthy than an app that doesn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Categories" in Push notifications would help. The same as with most mailinglists. Let me check on/off what I'd like to receive and what I don't want so see. E.g. 'yes' for new functions, status and progress of the App and my order, 'no' for commercial offers and stuff.

</comment><comment><USER16> The problem with push notifications is that they drain a lot of battery. I enabled push notifications only for the applications that I really care about, like Mailbox or Facebook Messages. I just don't want other trivial applications to drain my battery.

<comment><USER4> That's just not true (on iOS). Your phone has one connection to the (apple) server, the amount of messages send has very little influence. Only apps that run in the background (mostly location and voice) can drain your battery when not running.</comment></comment>