The Case for the "Self-Driven Child" - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-for-the-ldquo-self-driven-child-rdquo/ <comment><USER2> There's a certain irony in this. By putting restrictions on kids (no screens, digital downtime, etc), we expect them to become self-driven. This is a great idea in theory, but it also seems pretty likely that a kid will go to their friends house to watch Youtube videos, when I would just as soon have them (and their friends, if necessary) at my house doing that where at least I have some sense of what they are watching.

<comment><USER3> I don't expect my kids to be "self-driven", in the sense of "productive" when I restrict screen time. They can literally do whatever they want... if that is mope around bored as hell, so be it. If that is digging a hole in the back yard, so be it. If that is getting into a little trouble somewhere down the street, so be it. If they want to read the latest "Diary of a wimpy kid", so be it.

The only thing I am after is some kind of interaction with the physical world where they are making the decisions. I have no idea if that is the right thing to do, but it feels like it is.

<comment><USER4> I deeply and thoroughly don't understand this mindset.

Whether you like it or not, technology is part of growing up in the 21st century. It's not just an "outlet" or a place to waste time on YouTube, it's interwoven into everything in their lives. Their ability to gather information depends on it. Their social lives depend on it. Just as yours does. If you restrict access, you're pretending like a very crucial part of living today doesn't exist -- or isn't as important as it actually is.

At the end of the day, I'd imagine your goal is for your child to have a happy and healthy life. As part of that, you probably want them to have a healthy relationship with technology. Restricting access instead of helping them build that healthy relationship just leads to them wanting to do things like go to the houses of friends to watch YouTube. I know this because I lived it and that's exactly what I did.

<comment><USER5> Most kids don't know how to self-regulate screen time. Saying "no screen time" for an arbitrarily large amount of time seems anathema to growing up today, but saying "no more than N hours a day" (where N depends on age and kid and what the kid does for the time) seems quite reasonable.

This isn't just about screen time imho, it's about ensuring balance when kids don't yet know what's best for them. A "healthy relationship" doesn't mean "free to do as much of it as they want to the detriment of other aspects of being a healthy human being."

Anecdote: My best friend growing up was super into soccer. So much so that other parts of his life were suffering and he had little life outside of it. So his parents set a weekly limit on the number of hours he could practice and play. He hated it at the time. But during his down time he found programming and now he's a programmer and soccer isn't nearly that important to him anymore.

<comment><USER6> The problem with this "no more than N hours a day" is that

\- For parents it is hard to implement N hours/day on long term basis ( parents may be able to do for a week or month)

\- The parental control tools are too narrow in scope, good ones cost $10/month

\- on top of all this, you do not know what they are doing in those N hours/day , using 50% time for FB/Snap etc..

\- It is ironic in this day and age of ML/Deeplearning software and open source github thousands of projects, we do not have a open source Parental control that really works.

\- The solution is to build an Open source Parental control on Iphone/Android/Mac/PC in an integrated way to enforce N hours/week screen time and smart enough to account all non-school work related screen time across devices.

\- To have a small regulation( to force device manufacturers ) stating above mentioned kind of "high quality" open source Integrated Parental control software pre-installed on all devices .

> Most kids don't know how to self-regulate screen time. Saying "no screen > time" for an arbitrarily large amount of time seems anathema to growing up > today, but saying "no more than N hours a day" (where N depends on age and > kid and what the kid does for the time) seems quite reasonable.

<comment><USER7> I've got kids in upper primary school now, and trying to think through all this carefully.

Our current rule is that you can have an hour of screen time for every hour of reading, music practice, etc, and after certain chores are done. Plus the screen time has to be at an appropriate time - for instance first thing in the morning and last thing at night are no-gos. They're currently on a ban until the end of the week because they went significantly over, but that's only happened twice in the year we've been doing this.

I'm thinking through what our approach to phones will be... at this stage I'm going with them getting phones for the start of high school and pondering what guidelines we'll use.

<comment><USER8> Here's my anecdote. My parents tried to limit video games (but not tv, they weren't very rational) to some amount of hours a day. Only result was that I hated it, it made me resent them at the time, and I'd do what I could to get around it. I don't think I'm an iota better off for it. They'd try to pull the same nonsense with the computer too which ended up being what got me a successful career. It was detrimental if anything and made me not respect them because I could tell all along it was unsubstantiated BS that somehow video games and computers were "bad" for you. I highly recommend just letting them sort out what they want to do with their time. A restriction of a half hour before bed maybe, to not disrupt sleep, fine, but what does the morning have to do with anything?

<comment><USER9> We have a morning restriction on school days because it's nigh on impossible to get the kids to school if they start playing games! (We also have an evening restriction so doesn't interfere with bedtime or disrupt sleep but are otherwise easy-going. Still not sure if we are doing the right thing or not)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> temp-dude-87844 I was self-driven by the book's description, enabled by unobtrusive parenting and a stable home life. But I also turned out really well by several objective metrics, and many of my peers in similar circumstances didn't.

As I think about how to parent, where you're supplying steady inputs into the system with many other inputs, I'm beginning to think we undervalue positive parenting contributions but overvalue its detrimental effects when the end result is unsatisfactory. We have vague ideas about what helps and what hurts, but every person is quite different, an any number of inputs, from genetics and inbuilt predispositions, to one random event or encounter or interaction can perturb one's mind and personality in complex ways. And all of these feed into the outcome: some judgmental, haphazard aggregate of metrics by which we -- and society -- judges new young adult's success.

This book seems to strike a tone of unobtrusive enablement much like what I received and avoids descending into the nihilistic spiral that I ponder a lot, but understandable most commercial works avoid.

<comment><USER10> _I was self-driven by the book 's description, enabled by unobtrusive parenting and a stable home life. But I also turned out really well by several objective metrics, and many of my peers in similar circumstances didn't._

In the 60's and 70's when I grew up, free-range kids were the norm. I turned out good, but some of my peers did not. I've felt for some time that for those that do well with free-range parenting, they turn out real well, but for those that don't they turn out really bad. The swings from good to bad with that method are really big.

With the current style of helicopter/over-scheduling parents, I feel the range of good-bad is much smaller. That is, the bad parts are more hidden and maybe even pushed off until sometime in adulthood; the good parts aren't very good, but because the bad parts _seem_ minimized, it seen as an overall win.

As for the _bad parts_ I'm talking about from my childhood, they included death much more frequently from random things. I knew kids that died from accidents ranging from getting hit by cars, to drowning at the reservoir that no one was supposed to swim at, etc. My son is 17 now, and I have never heard of anyone from his school dying. As for other bad parts, I didn't even mention some darker stuff, having to do with sex and drugs. Most of what I experienced, I should really say _survived_ , just doesn't happen anymore. And I'm not talking about kids getting drunk or high at parties. Yes, that still happens in high schools in the US.

<comment><USER11> Then what are you talking about? Reading your post makes the 60s and 70s sound like a pretty kickin' time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In my experience, the topic of parenting always elicits the worst case of "everyone in the room is immediately an expert". People are incredibly opinionated and judgmental about the subject, and often take a dismissive attitude rather than a learning attitude about it.

Part of the reason is as a population, we talk about parenting advice in a universal, context-independent way but the sheer amount of distinct situations in parenting makes it easy to poke holes in universal advice.

Another reason is that we each have our own experience of being parented (often not positive), and may subconsciously judge advice based on its potential to lead to a child experiencing the same bad experiences we had, rather than the overall objective merits of said parenting direction.

A third reason is that we underestimate the amount of negotiating, manipulating, and psychological back and forth that managing kids adds to parenting decisions. Even if the parenting direction is good, executing it properly is an entirely different matter.

Having said that - I agree with most of this article. Control or the illusion of it is a very strong ingredient for mental stability and confidence, especially in undesirable environments. Lack of control in a undesirable situation leads to a feeling of helplessness, which can have cascading effects on mental health.

That said, like most parenting advice, I don't think this qualifies as universal advice. It fits a large body of contexts, but there are several parenting situations I can imagine this having largely little to no effect in.

</comment><comment><USER13> I find it tough to get my kids to socialize more without scheduling them especially on weekends. Daycare is good because they exercise and run wild. But weekends are hard because the kids are just not out there anymore, so you have to coordinate with other parents.

<comment><USER14> That sounds like more of a factor of where you live and whatnot than anything; I was fortunate enough to grow up in a normal sized town (~6000 inhabitants) and had friends living within walking / cycling distance (not to mention streets you could actually walk on). Not nearly as sprawled out as some cities / suburbs are.

<comment><USER15> You're an adult... lots of us grew up in towns like that but those same towns/neighborhoods are not like that anymore in the US.

<comment><USER16> I don't think that things have significantly changed in most towns and neighbourhoods. Things are actually safer now, especially since it's now conveniently cheap for everyone to give their kids a phone, so not only can you child ring you, you can also keep an eye on their location.

For the past 20 years, the media has been pushing this narrative that your children are going to get kidnapped, raped, and/or murdered if you leave them out of your sight. Fear sells newspapers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Self-driven children are the next logical step after self-driving cars.

<comment><USER18> Haha, such is life XD.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's another irony in this. The authors say that children are stressed out, but most of this stress comes from anxiety exuded by people around them. And then they give us more things to be anxious about: screen time, lack of control, lack of independence.

</comment><comment><USER20> My computer logs out after 15 minutes, and I really like it. It makes me plan more. I've been thinking of getting a cel phone battery that only lasts for 15 minutes too. By "me" I really mean "kids".

</comment><comment><USER21> As a 18 year old starting my first year of college, this article has essentially pointed out every single fear and worry I have had in the last 5 months and given the direct cause of these thoughts. I had a hunch that the mindset of raising kids in the last decades where the cause of this, but it is quite releaving to see some facts behind it. I hope the upcoming generation of parents adapt these recommended parenting strategies, but I fear that the state of parenting is heading to more of an extreme in the opposite direction.

</comment><comment><USER22> I feel like I had a lot of control in my childhood, because I actively resisted structure. With that said, even that structure wouldn't have helped much - I'm still a failure compared to most of the HN crowd (no Harker/Exeter/Andover, no Stanford/Harvard/MIT/Cal, no Google/FB/Pinterest).

<comment><USER23> I think you've got a pretty high opinion of the HN crowd. What you described probably applies to <10%.

<comment><USER22> I probably do, but there's at least 1 Googler per thread it seems or 1 top school (at worst public ivy grad) talking about their tough coursework.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "And since the 1960's, we've seen a marked rise in stress-related mental health problems in children and adolescents, including anxiety, depression, and self-harm."

"this problem has been increasing since the 1960's because our culture has increasingly valued extrinsic and self-centered goals such as money, status, and physical attractiveness, and devalued community, affiliation, and the pursuit of meaning in life"

A great deal about the 60s was culturally disastrous.

<comment><USER25> Since the 1960's our ability to communicate with each other has significantly expanded. It's natural for everyone to end up a neurotic perfectionist when you can see every day what other people across the world are doing. Not so much when you only saw your friends and family in town and at home; your standards would be much lower then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children an object rather than the subject once again.

Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nuanced, kind of like a conversation, always taking different path, shaped by family circumstances and objectives of everyone involved and frequently taking unexpected turns.

<comment><USER26> As the first line says, it's about giving children more _sense of control_ over their lives. Not more control, but more sense of control - it's not about reality but about their perception of it.

<comment><USER19> That's one of the many nuances here. You have to think about other things. When is illusion of control going to be harmful? When is the illusion going to crack? When is the illusion going to stick and become reality? When is increased control equivalent to removal of boundaries? When does it turn into abdication of parental responsibility? When does it reach levels of neglect? When is withdrawal from child's life going to make the child feel deserted?

There is no way to resolve these ambiguities upfront. You have to listen and observe. That's why parenting resembles conversation that is unique for every parent-child relationship and that evolves over time.

Following advice in this book or any of the many similar books is going to result in crude, clumsy parenting. Particularly so when authors argue for a side in order to stand out or to keep the book focused. That's why these books feel so artificial and kind of extremist.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Also known as the Locus of Control[0].

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

</comment><comment><USER28> Recent HN thread on a similar topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16359049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16359049)

</comment><comment><USER29> Autonomy is the best motivator, not just for children.

</comment><comment><USER30> Look at reward signals. Elementary through high school is a little sliver of what a collapsed marxist society looks like - no positive rewards signals just negative arbitrary ones. I was programming at 8 but apparently to be "well rounded" I had to do all this other stuff that non-coders deemed important. Meanwhile there was no "safe base" for me or anyone else who grew up poor.

But at least now I can also now see scams a mile away.

For instance, every company doesn't know the exact amount of money they will make this year, but every employee has a good idea. It's the same system only a little better implementation.

Forcing all the kids into assembly lines and scalping their autonomy is breaking people. It's taking away their ability to think. Which is nice for politics and propaganda, but it's bad if we want a free market with innovation.

<comment><USER31> > I was programming at 8 but apparently to be "well rounded"

Well so was I (Turbo Pascal on DOS ftw), and _thanks god_ responsible adults didn't let me sit in front of the PC all day, and made me learn languages, history, literature, philosophy, mathematics, science, etc.

I'm also straining to see how the adjective "Marxist" found its way on your rant. I fail to see the applicability.

<comment><USER30> In regards to reward signals it seems similar when collapsed. No ownership. No way to succeed through creativity. No way to escape a degraded too-large-to- fail system. Maybe there's a better word for it?

<comment><USER32> >No ownership. No way to succeed through creativity. No way to escape a degraded too-large-to-fail system

Sounds like the kind of soul crushing job school is preparing most children for.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Upon first reading the title, I thought this was about putting unattended children in self-driving cars :)

</comment><comment><USER34> How do I make a 12 weeks old the next chloe kim/barack obama?

<comment><USER22> Spend a lot of time identifying early talents, do high school competitions related to those talents, get them into a top school and then just see what happens after that.

The "top school" thing seems pretty key to me, tbh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Are video games still considered an addiction by someone?

<comment><USER14> Yup, by me.

Source: I'm 32 and if I could I'd spend all my time playing video games. This hasn't changed much from back when I was a kid. Doesn't help that games are so much better nowadays either.

FACTORIO IS CRACK COCAINE. Just cheaper and with less withdrawal effects.

<comment><USER36> Same here. I always wonder in conversations about UBI... I'm a fairly productive person because I have to be, but given the option I would drop off the grid and crush candies ALL DAY.</comment></comment></comment>


You can now play Pacman anywhere in the world using Google maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.reviewdeeper.com/2017/04/google-maps-introduces-pacman-and-you.html <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who finds all these April fools from google a tad annoying and unprofessional?

<comment><USER3> It's unfortunate that you've been down voted because you do raise a valid point in terms of desktop policies in industries that dont the have the same lax attitudes to PC usage that us IT professionals enjoy.

In an previous job our company also supported call centres. The call centre agents wouldn't be allowed to use their PCs for anything other than work usage. Definitely no games. We would use web filtering to help enforce the web usage policies but Google Easter Eggs, April fools jokes and even the occasional Google Doodle would often prove to be a complete nightmare for us as many of the lesser motivated agents would just sit on them all morning (bare in mind we are talking about entry level jobs in an industry with limited career growth).

Some of us oldies will also remember the Easter Eggs in MS Office (eg the 3D flight simulator in Excel 98 and the pinball game in Word 95) and the problems that caused desktop administrators in the late 90s. It's essentially the same thing again from Google.

I think sometimes we on HN can forget that IT isn't just used by motivated engineers like ourselves. Many schools and businesses enforce stricter usage policies. So i completely agree with you that these kind of stunts from Google, while amusing for engineers like ourselves, are ultimately unprofessional for the wider business community.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It was a bit distracting when I accidentally turned this on in navigation mode. It made my commute much more fun, but I ended up driving all over the city and was very late for work.

</comment><comment><USER5> It takes me to a random location somewhere in the world (St Petersburg, Some place in China or Argentine etc.) Not sure if Google understands the idea behind April Fools.

</comment><comment><USER6> But why

<comment><USER7> Look at your calendar

<comment><USER8> they pulled the same 'gag' in 2015

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> i was pretty sure i had a malware when i saw it yesterday

</comment><comment><USER10> Playing this was deeply satisfying</comment>


Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon (Gen 8) Review: Terrific Typing, Super Slim - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/lenovo-thinkpad-x1-carbon-gen8 <comment><USER2> In case someone from Tom's sees this, I think you have the prices reversed in the table. The "low-end" model is priced higher than the "high-end"</comment>


Anyone else waiting for Layer to become a thing? - <AUTHOR>

Between a few companies I've worked at we've been waiting for Layer (http://layer.com) — Does anyone know of any alternatives to Layer and if Layer is coming out of closed Beta soon? Anyone using it in Beta? <comment><USER2> We're using it in Beta right now. We've had a lot of issues with the API & they don't support web atm (due to websockets) but I believe this is coming in a couple of months. Only iOS & Android right now.

Alternatives are Pusher & PubNub: [https://pusher.com/](https://pusher.com/) [http://www.pubnub.com/](http://www.pubnub.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> They have testimonials from people that have "access" to the platform, so haven't you gotten early access yourself?

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't, signed up but never heard back.</comment></comment>


Open Location Code - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/google/open-location-code <comment><USER2> Reinventing the wheel without any clear advantage.

Plus codes don't seem to have any advantage over widely used MGRS (Military Grid Reference System). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Grid_Reference_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Grid_Reference_System)

<comment><USER3> I find them a lot more human-friendly, but I guess that's subjective. The example from the wiki page you linked:

MGRS: 4QFJ12345678

Plus Code: 835M+Q7 Honolulu

<comment><USER4> That's only a partial plus-code, though, which relies on external positioning of Honolulu. The full plus-code is 4 digits longer, and with the plus itself, it's 11 chars vs. 12 for MGRS at 10m precision (14 for 1m, which is more than plus-codes can do).

If MGRS was too long, it could simply get a new encoding and be done with, or add the abbreviation system.

Also, that particular plus-code you used as example is not recommended. Reference points should be small features that will have low geocoding variance. Larger points like cities, or here whole islands, as there can be very large variance to the exact location derived from the name (i.e. the pinpoint location Google Maps finds you when you just search for Honolulu).

From the README:

> Rather than a large city size feature to generate the reference location, it > is better to use smaller, neighbourhood features, that will not have as much > variation in their geocode results.

<comment><USER3> > That's only a partial plus-code, though, which relies on external > positioning of Honolulu.

Yes, a concept that is very human-friendly.

> Also, that particular plus-code you used as example is not recommended. > Reference points should be small features that will have low geocoding > variance. Larger points like cities, or here whole islands, as there can be > very large variance to the exact location derived from the name (i.e. the > pinpoint location Google Maps finds you when you just search for Honolulu).

You should take that up with the google devs I guess. The code I gave was generated by google maps.

<comment><USER4> > Yes, a concept that is very human-friendly.

It's also entirely broken, rendering the system unusable if you expect sub- kilometer positioning across different geocoding providers.

Whether something entirely defective is "human friendly" doesn't really matter.

> You should take that up with the google devs I guess. The code I gave was > generated by google maps.

Not my responsibility. That they cannot even use it correctly as per their own docs themselves doesn't make for a good sales pitch. In fact, Google Maps cannot process plus codes using arbitrary reference locations, making use per the plus-code documentation impossible with it.

To give an idea of why that plus code is borked:

Honolulu @ Google Maps: 21.3069444,-157.8583333

Honolulu @ Bing Maps: 21.30493,-157.85788

The difference is around 300 meters, which results in an absolutely awful error margin, and I'd argue that this is very much one of the best-case scenarios. That's worse than if they had added 2 more characters to the plus code, and just removed the Honolulu part.

<comment><USER3> I think you misunderstood the way these reference locations work. Both google maps and bing will resolve the given plus code to the exact same location – a margin of error of 0cm.

It's only important that the reference point doesn't leave the 40km square that it's supposed to be in. Google Maps might actually have a smarter implementation than the docs suggest. If the whole city is in the relevant 40km square, using it as a reference point is fine.

<comment><USER5> It would be nice for the code to have some kind of 'check digit', so that the code cannot resolve if the geocoding returns the wrong square, or if any letters are off-by-one or transposed.

Check digits don't work well with truncatable codes though :-(

<comment><USER6> Why not? Every letter could be a check digit. The drawback is that the same location will have many possible location codes, of course.

<comment><USER7> no, having check digits means that some code corresponds to no location and are syntactically wrong.

<comment><USER6> I realize now I meant some kind of error correcting code, combination. Like this:

1

1 can be followed by either odd numbers or even numbers. If followed by an even number, the next number must be odd.

127

Now if you truncate that to 12, crucially 12 has the same meaning as 11. 1 and 2 to have the same symbol meaning, but are using "sign" to hint at the next number.

This will greatly reduce the chance that a random number will pass for a position. This can be made more elaborate, with more or less advanced encodings. The problem is of course that you waste bits on redundancy and so addresses everything else being equal, will have more characters in them.

<comment><USER4> A much less expensive and much more normal solution would simply be to put a single CRC digit at the end.

Systems such as what you describe are too complex and non-standard.

<comment><USER6> But then you can not truncate the location.

<comment><USER4> I'd argue that this would never be done by hand anyway. The average user will not understand the encoding, and I doubt many will think "Hmm, I have this plus code, but I'd like to only have 1/20th of the precision."

Programmatic truncation would still be very easy, as it would just require a new checksum to be calculated post-truncation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not so sure 6GCRPR6C+24 is a great replacement for an address, but maybe I just don't know.

Although I could memorize my own address, I'd have a hard time memorizing my friends' addresses. Yes, nobody knows each other's phone numbers anymore, but those were a very temporary relic from a very short span of time (the telephone era). Humans have always known each other's addresses, and have always spent a lot of time telling each other their locations in the form of a spoken address.

On a more technical note, I am guessing this works super-well for auto- completion, but didn't see any example of that in the README...

All of the various geonaming systems seem very Esperanto at the moment. I think we (as in all of us, the global community) could build upon Google's effort to come up with a much more human-friendly system to provide easy global addressing. Yes, the address format system is way too localized and breaks down at both scale and small distances; whatever that code was at the beginning of my post (I've already forgotten it, and I'm too lazy to re-paste it) is just not nearly as easy to remember as "100 Ocean Drive" or whatever. I also have no clue how I might represent the building next door.

<comment><USER9> There's a feature that vastly improves the human usability for Plus Codes. The least-precision, first-four characters can be omitted and replaced with the City / Region name: e.g., "Nairobi PR6C+24". Considering that uniquely identifies just a few square meters of space on Earth that seems pretty good.

<comment><USER10> Does Melbourne resolve to Melbourne, Australia, or Melbourne, Florida?

<comment><USER11> Surely the point of truncated codes is that you would only use them in a context where things like this were already clear?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A shoutout to Rober Dam who built Xaddress, "Give 7 billion people an instant physical address": [http://xaddress.org/](http://xaddress.org/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Have people here heard of "what3words"? It's a similar encoding scheme that is much more human-memorable (for English speakers, at least).

The same spot, to +-1.5m is universe.renovated.upon as opposed to 6GCRPR6C+24

<comment><USER14> Proprietary. Charges for business use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have asked this question to a member of the Google maps team, and have not gotten a precise answer. Is there some scheme which can distinguish between floors of a building? This is very useful, for example, store locations inside malls. The LatLong scheme does not seem to be enough. I'm guessing that it will have to be 3D, but I have never heard of a standard location scheme which incorporates this information.

<comment><USER16> What's wrong with just using floor names, e.g. "First floor"?

<comment><USER17> Who determines what is the "first floor"? Last week I had a medical appointment. The doctor's office was on the 6th floor; but, it was 7th floor counting up, as the building's ground floor is the "Lobby."

<comment><USER18> This is normal in many countries but it's extremely uncommon in theUS, where as you implied the ground floor is typically the "first" (in the numerical sense) floor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, did they just reinvent the Maidenhead locator ( [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System) ) or any of the previous systems?

<comment><USER13> There's a pretty solid evaluation of the new system in terms of the old ones at: [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems)

Indeed maidenhead seems to be the strongest of the previous approaches, they rejected it because it can include words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Codes that are similar are located closer together than codes that are different."

I dug hoping to find out how they handle boundary effects, and gave up.

The numbers 0.999999 and 1.000000 are far apart in Hamming distance but close in position. What bounds are achievable for the maximum Hamming distance between two nearby locations, in any such system? Do they approach the theoretical limit here, or is "that are similar" a crock that only sometimes holds?

For example, for a base 12 location code one could overlay a dodecahedron onto the earth, then rotate it by a low-discrepancy sequence of quaternions for successive digits. This would have very nice bounds for the maximum Hamming distance between nearby locations, at the expensive of efficiency: each successive digit subdivides the location by far less than a factor of 12. As locations approach each other, vanishingly few rotations will distinguish them.

One can imagine easy fixes for this scheme, but what is the theory? Do they have a theory? Do they implement it?

</comment><comment><USER21> HAM radio locator grid does pretty much the same thing, with I would say roughly the same precision.

example: [http://k7fry.com/grid/?qth=JN17EB67UN](http://k7fry.com/grid/?qth=JN17EB67UN)

I only knew of the 6-character location code, which is typically used when identifying yourself, but it seems there's the expanded version of up to 10 characters.

What I don't understand is the usage scenario. Plus codes are not human- friendly like street addresses, so I'm assuming they're meant for machine processing. But there you have all these other systems like HAM location codes or MGRS, that I don't see added value.

</comment><comment><USER22> Why wouldn't they use 36 (Letters+digits) to break it down in a 6x6 area instead? Much more precise at the same length.

At 6 length, you're already down to the kilometer precision at the equator. At 9 length you're down to 4 meters.

And that's with a dumb grid division, which is very uneven on the globe, the cube projection is probably a better way to deal with it.

<comment><USER23> The larger the alphabet, the larger the risk of glyph confusion.

Here's the alphabet they chose:

      // The character set used to encode the values.
      var CODE_ALPHABET_ = '23456789CFGHJMPQRVWX';

It omits easily-confused glyphs like "0oOD", "1lLI" etc.

<comment><USER24> This is an interesting alphabet, even Base58 (Bitcoin addresses) have "o" and "1".

There's some information on how they generated it here in the spec[1].

 _The characters that are used in Open Location Codes were chosen by computing all possible 20 character combinations from 0-9A-Z and scoring them on how well they spell 10,000 words from over 30 languages. This was to avoid, as far as possible, Open Location Codes being generated that included recognisable words. The selected 20 character set is made up of "23456789CFGHJMPQRVWX"._

[1]: [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/blob/master/doc...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/blob/master/docs/olc_definition.adoc#open-location-code)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> For those wondering why they invented yet another grid coding system, here's their justification : [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems)

The XKCD on competing standards comes to mind…

</comment><comment><USER26> Perhaps there's an underlying psychological advantage to using Plus Codes. This past week I had to manually transfer coordinates of various locations from one handheld google machine to another google machine. It was less tedious to use the Plus Codes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I want an address that a drone can use to drop a package on my 3rd floor patio.

</comment><comment><USER28> I remember that there is another project that is similar to this. They divided the whole world in to grids and assign a code to each one.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, that's what3words ([https://what3words.com/](https://what3words.com/)), which (IMO) makes for easier to remember words. It's available in multiple languages too, for the non-english speaking world.

<comment><USER30> I do work in rural Kenya, and the big problem what 3 words has is that the words are totally randomly allocated around the world. A _REALLY_ important attribute of addresses is that they can be vague.

"He's on High and 23rd", "I live on Monroe", "Near Jomo Kenyatta Airport", etc.

The biggest mistake what 3 words made was not making the first two words be a geocoding of the approximate area and the last word could provide additional precision. It looks like google plus codes fixed this which is actually a huge improvement.

<comment><USER31> could you explain this a bit more ? not able to understand the implication of this design flaw

<comment><USER30> Knowing your neighbors address tells you nothing about your own address. To be able to get your address, you need a smart phone, and at that point you could just send me a pin with your exact latitude and longitude.

Approximate locations are dramatically more useful for navigating in much of the rural developing world. "How do I get to village X" will have an answer for 10 miles around. "How do I get to X lat/lng?" will be met with a shrug, both from google maps which will suggest you drive through a field and from anyone you ask.

If you can make something that works at the village level, you can bootstrap people getting their location. If the first word provided approximately "country" level information, the second provided approximately 1km bands (what you get if you evenly divide the three little words partitions), and the third gave you the 3m resolution grid, people without addresses could know their approximate address from others.

Basically, there's a bootstrapping problem and a usefulness problem. Right now, no one knows their 3 little words number. To become useful, most people need to know their 3 little words. How do you cross that gap? One way would be to have it be useful to know "2 words" or some approximate identifier for your region and then after locating you approximately, your service provider can tell you your last word.

<comment><USER32> This is a general problem with solutions in the space. Part of the niceness of say geohashes is that they telescope down.

The startup I'm involved with has developed what we call a geohash phrase. The core idea is to map English (or whatever language) words to the characters of a geohash. We usually map a word two-characters at a time, giving us 10-bits of precision for each additional word. So your location might be something like: "The big dog walks near the red house."

What is nice is that the phrase telescopes. So you can be vague when you want and only provide say the first three words of your location.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> In my first naïve thought this seems trivial. "Just" map WGS84 coordinates to a less clunky identifier. What am I missing?

<comment><USER34> Quite a bit, it seems. [https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation...](https://github.com/google/open-location- code/wiki/Evaluation-of-Location-Encoding-Systems)

<comment><USER33> This is all I found about it:

> Cheap GPS devices have existed for at least 14 years [etrex], and yet > latitude and longitude coordinates are still not widely used by people to > specify locations. We think that this shows latitude and longitude have too > many disadvantages to be adopted for a street addressing solution.

But still, isn't their solution just a "wrapper" around gps coordinates? How is it different than encoding 2 decimal numbers into a short text identifier?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wish delivery services (mainly food delivery) would accept directions using this, like "Appartment block entry at XXXX+XX with entry code YYYY, building entry XXXX+XX with door code ZZZZ" (with code parsing somehow).

They keep getting things wrong for my location, but things like that (= simple and integrated with maps) would make it easy.

</comment><comment><USER23> What's neat about this is its simplicity; its unencumbered nature; and its independence from any particular mapping or ontology beyond "a rectangularish portion of the surface of a sphere".

One neat application is for biologists recording locations of field samples.

</comment><comment><USER36> Aside, if you ever have to do location based matching, having an index on hashes for rough locations with neighboring locations in multiple passes will often be faster than geo indexing.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is really cool, but not really that much easier than coordinates. The good thing about coordinates is that you can choose the kind of granularity you want.

But kudos to Google for doing this.

<comment><USER13> These support truncation better than coordinates. With coordinates, truncation indicates a different location, with these it indicates a larger area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This doesn't seem to work in the UK. The closest box to my house partially covers three homes, and would be interpreted as my neighbour's.

<comment><USER39> If you then zoom in further you should be able to get a smaller box.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> How is this any different or better than current geo-hashing solutions?

</comment><comment><USER41> Small hack: You can Google a code, and it finds it on the map, already :-D

<comment><USER42> And it does it incorrectly according to their own spec.

It's supposed to be a square, not a point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I'm involved with a startup that I believe has a wonderful solution to this and other related problems. Our website: [http://qalocate.com/](http://qalocate.com/)

Our platform: [http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/QA- Lo...](http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/QA-Locate- Platform-Overview.pdf)

The biggest issue with solutions like this isn't that they aren't clever, or even that they aren't better than say a geohash or lat/lon, but that they have the wrong target. Computers don't really care since its just as easy to parse a geohash, a lat/lon, or an open location code. The tricky bit is when humans get involved.

Its humans that have way more limitations when it comes to using complex systems. And frankly, humans still use addresses because the system co-evolved with us and our needs. Addresses solve the problem well enough, and have "outs" for when they don't work. For a bit more in-depth discussion on this see: [http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/2018/04/04/addresses-are- complic...](http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/2018/04/04/addresses-are-complicated/)

So if we want to replace addresses, then we really have to think outside the box. Fortunately, the web has done a lot of the heavy pushing by introducing all kinds of new, useful, and exploitable semantics that we can apply in other domains.

Humans are pretty good at using names for things. When computers were first networked, we soon replaced IP addresses with names. Thus was DNS born. We then combined that with another id, and soon we had email.

We believe that a similar system can be used for locations. No one really cares about the exact geohash or lat/lon of a location, or the niftyness of your coordinate system. Instead, what we need are memorable names. So why not just use names?

That's what LNS ([http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/QA- Lo...](http://qalocate.bamsaas.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/QA-Locate- Location-Naming-System-LNS%E2%84%A2.pdf)) is. It works very similarly to DNS and allows one to link arbitrary names to exact coordinate locations, structures, or even regions.

For example, I can have "thelittlenag.frontdoor" if I want to point someone to the exact coordinate of my front door. If I want drone deliveries, then maybe I tell Amazon to use "thelittlenag.deliverydrone". The lawn guy can use "thelittlenag.propertyboundaries" to figure where my property lines start and end. And "thelittlenag.house" and "thelittlenag.gardenshed" can logically reference as entities(!) the two structures we have on our property.

PM me if you have any questions.

<comment><USER43> I too have developed and patented a location encoding system. Perhaps we could work together. i don't know how to PM you. If I make a contact request on your website, will that work.</comment></comment>


Why should we believe that Snowden is in the Moscow airport? - <AUTHOR>

If I can briefly remove my tinfoil hat...<p>As far as I can tell, no media outlet has been able to independently confirm that NSA leaker Edward Snowden is actually in Sheremetyevo airport. No one has seen him, and the Russian Government has not presented him to the media. Yet the New York Times, and other outlets, report on his location as if it were a verified fact. Why is this? <comment><USER2> Though Putin has said he is outside the control of Russia, there has to be some sort of Russian authority in that transit area and I imagine they would have detained Snowden right away. He has no valid passport and he can't get a visa. Russia also doesn't need for Snowden to be a traveling circus in their airport with his mug being beamed to the world from Russia on a daily basis until they get rid of him.

I would also think that given his situation, that they would have to put through some sort of request to the Russian government for asylum or a similar scheme for staying there without a visa (from what I have read, you can only stay at that airport for 24 hours without a visa.) That process will probably take a while.

Maybe Hong Kong and Russia have been dragging their feet a bit as an F.U. to the U.S. but it seems like they have been following their own laws. All the chatter about whisking Snowden away to some safe location seems to have come from people with no authority to do anything.

I think it's simple. Russia detained Snowden in the transit area (if for no other reason than to keep him away from the media frenzy) and that's why we haven't seen pictures of him.

<comment> brown9-2 Isn't it also likely that while detained, a parade of agents from Russia's special services would be attempting to talk to him? I have a hard time believing that any country, let alone the US or Russia or China, would not be at least attempting to talk to a person holed in your airport with thousands of classified documents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I don't necessarily believe anything about Snowden and I try not to pay attention to Snowden. Snowden reportedly asked that people focus on the issue and not him, and I'm taking that to heart.

What I _do_ try to pay attention to are the crimes my (the US) government is committing in violation of the US Constitution. And how they're using these criminal acts against friendly nations and its own citizens in order to violate additional Constitutional rights.

That's what I'm concerned with. The rest is Kardashian drama fluff disseminated to direct people's attentions from the real issue.

</comment><comment><USER4> They're using the same method when reporting on Russia government activities that they use when reporting on USA government activities: send a stenographer to the press conference, and be sure to get press releases in copy-and- pasteable electronic form. Whatever they do, they never exhibit any skepticism.

Perhaps it's easier to see how little the popular news media contributes when they're "working" in unfamiliar environs. In this case, we can't rely on RT as a check because Russia. I just checked, and unfortunately Al Jazeera don't seem to have anything either. (Well, they had a link to the entertaining "Whistleblower" reggae mix, but no positive indication that Snowden is in the transit section.)

</comment><comment><USER5> This is quite irrelevant to Hacker News. Please read the guidelines: [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

 _On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off- topic._

<comment><USER6> _anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._

This seems to. I've wondered variants of the same thing: there's a lot of authoritative commentary surrounding an issue which nobody talking has authority on (to wit: "those who know don't talk, those who talk don't know").

 _If they 'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic._

Poster's point was exactly that "how do they know he's there?" _isn 't_ being covered.

Obviously the overall topic is interesting (having completely taken over the HN front page at one point not long ago); "how do we know X?" is relevant thereto.

<comment><USER5> There is no point in discussing this, as this entire thread will be based on assumptions and not facts. The only 'fact' one could get would be a picture of Snowden in Russia or someplace else dated very recently, but if there was such picture, it would be in the news already.

<comment><USER6> Today there IS a very big point in discussing this. Snowden is either in that Russian airport, or he is on the President of Bolivia's plane which just had its diplomatic immunity violated. His provable whereabouts are now a big factor in world diplomatic relations.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Dynamic Models in Python - <AUTHOR> http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/10/11/programming-dynamic-models-in-python/ <comment><USER2> Hey, that's my site! Thanks!

p.s. you might like this one on visualizing dynamic networks with movies - [http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/08/08/visualizing-...](http://computationallegalstudies.com/2009/08/08/visualizing- dynamic-networks-with-python-igraph-and-sonia/)

<comment><AUTHOR> That post was actually how I found your blog in the first place. I play a lot with networks and network visualization: <http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/4895/resize364.png> :)

<comment><USER3> That looks amazing!

If you don't mind my asking, what visualization library are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! An earlier version made it into Science a few weeks ago: <http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/325/5939/425>

For this one we just use python matplotlib-basemap <http://www.scipy.org/Cookbook/Matplotlib/Maps> Other libraries tools are used for other things (like uuorld.com for geographical based animations <http://newsinfo.iu.edu/asset/page/normal/6919.html> ), etc...</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Farewell Kera - <AUTHOR> http://blog.kera.io/post/48285525794/farewell-kera

<comment><USER2> I actually tried Kera for our product (<https://codeable.io>) and even had a Skype conversation with one of the founders, but I knew having a walkthrough guide (their product) was just a band-aid for poor UX, and as such, just a temporary solution, not really worth paying for in the long term, especially when it was easy to use one of the open source solutions and adapt them (like Zurb Joyride) to our needs.

Nevertheless I wish the Kera team good luck on their next venture!

<comment><USER3> I'm at the opposite end of the spectrum ... I'd never heard of Kera and after reading the obituary, I wanted to know what it was. Unfortunately, they've simultaneously put a "black ribbon" on the project's web page, making it impossible to navigate to any meaningful description.

Would someone mind "clueing me in"?

<comment><USER4> I tried it out quite a few months ago, so I am only speaking to the initial version, but you created a timeline of JS events (tooltips, other tutorial/intro elements) with synced voiceovers (if you wanted) and it would show up on the user's end with a video player-esque UI so they could navigate the experience.

The front-end was clean & simple, and I really liked it in theory (I disagree with the notion that any app that needs a walkthrough is broken by design), but the version I tried's backend wasn't created for people who couldn't sink some time into the JS and would have benefitted greatly from a more user- friendly approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey folks. I'm a Kera cofounder.

We believe in the Lean Startup. Probably more than most. We launched three separate tutorial products trying to find something that people picked up easily while still giving great results. We basically ran out of time and had to scale our team back to just the three cofounders.

We are still kicking the can trying to get traction (albeit in a different direction).

If anyone wants more details about why we shut down the producg I'd be more than happy to share. It's fundamentally a CAC being higher than LTV type issue.

<comment><USER6> Hey Cameron, it's sad to see Kera shut down, there were some really neat ideas in there. On the other hand, I'm pleased to see that you guys have seen an idea through until it either succeeded or failed. There are too many long- running projects in Toronto, ideas on never ending life support, never allowed to succeed nor fail, kept alive by either consulting or government support. I think if we took bigger risks and cycled through a variety of ideas faster (even if they fail fast), we might have a better chance at attracting more money to this city. Getting clueful investors here is very difficult, as I'm sure you have learned.

I would love to see you guys write more about your story. Good luck with your next idea.

<comment><USER7> Curious, what are some Toronto startups you think are on never ending life support?

<comment><USER8> That's dangerous ground Rahil - you should post an "Ask HN" instead of turning this into a shit-talk-a-thon.

<comment><USER7> You're right, oversight on my part.

All the best with your next venture Max.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What did the service do?

<comment><USER10> They provided web site tutorials (like Zurb Joyride) with voiceover. IIRC they'd set it up based on your script for a fairly low fee, and then there was a subscription fee for keeping it going.

Sorry to hear that it didn't work out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I had the privilege of spending some time with Max and John, two of Kera.io's cofounders during SXSW this year. They are two of the most personable and generous founders I have ever met (must be the whole Canada thing!). These guys have both the technical chops and the hustle to be huge, and I am positive that this is merely a bump in the road for them. They are going to be unstoppable with one of their next ventures, fate just didn't have Kera.io in its cards.

Best of luck to the both of you, you guys are gonna kill it.

</comment><comment><USER12> The Demo link at the top of ptable.com is still powered by Kera's first generation demo software. It's a shame to lose it, but it seems their target demographic was more sales-oriented sites that would find high monetary value in people converting. That wasn't me.

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it's unfortunate. We had used the service for the Clickbank Powered platform and users loved it. I didn't see much value in the product they pivoted into, but the initial one was superb. Here's to hoping they open source it...

<comment><USER8> Hey Noel,

Thanks for the kind words - you were one of our earliest adopters, and I'm sorry we couldn't make it work out. There's a few people who have reached out that are interested in the technology, so we'll have to wait and see about open sourcing it.

Best of luck with Happy Tables and give my best to the folks over at ClickBank!

<comment><USER14> Another early adopter here, sad to see you go.

We got a little worried when you pivoted as we felt that it would be just as much work to embed the Kera solution as it would to roll your own goal tracking solution with much tighter integration with the base website.

We would Would love to see you open source the v1 product though, really felt that solved a much harder problem.

<comment><USER13> Even if it's not open, could sell the self-hosted for a yearly license, definitely a good way to continue getting revenue on it.

<comment><USER8> Yes, we've received a few inquiries about that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It is a pity. I didn't manage to try it out but Kera really stood out in terms of design.

<comment><USER16> I agree in design terms Kera was nicer than competitors. Wanted to test your service. Next time. Good luck with your next project!</comment></comment>


Discuss HN: Who works for the NSA and why? - <AUTHOR>

As the various Snowden related leaks have come to light I've begun to wonder who exactly is building this tech? The hackers that break into Google's data lines, the programmers building things like PRISM. Do these people really believe that they are doing the right thing? Are they mainly blackhat hackers that are in it for the money?<p>As a side note: One of the government's explanations for why they were unable to stop the September 11 attacks is that there was just too much information, too many signals. Won't all of this massive data collection make it worse? Regardless of the tools they have to sort and analyze it. Can anyone really sort that much information? <comment><USER2> I suspect it's people who: -enjoy the challenge -like the paycheque -either have trust in their superiors/government, or simply don't care

I don't understand the attitude of people who can't believe anyone would work on $SECRET_PROJECT. Not everyone shares your worldview. Try to pretend, for a second, that you really, genuinely, trust the people in charge, and they come to you and say "hey Zac, can you build this? It checks everyone's emails, and only spits out those that are really likely to be related to terrorism. We never look at the rest, even if they're juicy or about drug deals or whatever, because that's not within our purview". If you actually trust the person asking that, maybe that's an easy thing to say yes to.

To your side note: if your problem is "too much information" the appropriate solution is better methods for looking through it, not deciding to collect a tenth as much next year. As for whether they can sort that much...google does a decent job with the internet.</comment>


Anti-Social Networks? We're Just As Cliquey Online - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/02/03/133469245/anti-social-networks-were-just-as-cliquey-online

<comment><AUTHOR> Dean Eckles tweeted a likely bias: 25% of Twitter's [US] users are black. With N=105 and survey weighting error, I'd bet the 95% CI is around 14 - 37%</comment>


Matterport: create 3D models of spaces and objects in minutes - <AUTHOR> http://matterport.com

<comment><USER2> This could be the next big thing in the real-estate marketing - imagine being able to do a random walk-through of the inside of listed properties. Heck, I'd probably even pay some sort of fee for that as a buyer if I were actively looking for a place to live.

<comment><USER3> Heh, this was my start up plan for last year, yeah.

Except that this version is half-assed; as long as this requires dedicated hardware, it'll never have broad-based adoption. There's no reason you can't do this with a camera alone; take the imagery with your cell-phone cam, process on the cloud.

<http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk/PTAM/>

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Df9WhgibCQA>

<comment><USER4> Wow, very impressive! I did not know you could do AR like that without markers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like a Kinect controller with a gripper handle and some software to build the map in real time. I would have killed for this as an indie filmmaker and would certainly consider minor bodily injury just to play with it now :-)

<comment><USER6> There are Lidar scanners that can do entire cities driving down the road at 35mph.

Also useful for filmmakers. ;)

Great for previs, and the occasional 3D matte when the background is out of focus enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be curious to see what features this implementation has compared to the existing open source software that does this sort of thing. (<http://pointclouds.org/news/kinectfusion-open-source.html>) It seems to use the RGB data as a color texture for the model, in addition to the depth data, for one thing.

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if this would benefit from the Ceres Solver released a few days ago? ([http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing- ce...](http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2012/05/introducing-ceres-solver- nonlinear.html))

</comment><comment><USER9> Very slick, nice video, and nice rendering on the final product. This reminds me of videogame demo videos which don't show actual gameplay. The lack of extra info on their main page is annoying.

In what format will the data output?

Can you save in common CAD formats?

Will you easily be able to create the fly-throughs shown in the video?

Will you be able to record those fly-throughs and send them to others?

\----

For the record, digital measuring systems have been out for some time. Etemplate was featured on This Old House several years ago. <http://www.etemplatesystem.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> Here are some of the results we have in my lab:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-cuWmrQA0s>

</comment><comment><USER11> Took me a second to recognize the inside of YC. Fun stuff!

<comment><USER12> Is this a YC company?

<comment><USER13> It is [http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/27/yc-demo-day- winter-2012-ses...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/27/yc-demo-day- winter-2012-session-5/)</comment></comment></comment>


LambTracker: Open Source EID for the sheep industry - <AUTHOR> http://lambtracker.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I should probably just have written a blog post about this, but busy getting ready to move to SF ;)

I met the author of this software over the weekend -- she runs a single-breed sheep farm in the North Fork valley in Colorado, and gathers data for the USDA, tracks the genetic lines of all their sheep, and so on. She was telling me that the commercial alternatives for the electronic tag-reading hardware can cost $1000+, but they were able to build a reader that communicates via Bluetooth with an Android device for less than $100: [https://github.com/OogieM/sheep_eid_hw](https://github.com/OogieM/sheep_eid_hw)

Apparently a similar situation with the software to absorb and process that data, which is why she's writing LambTracker. Cool to see an entire market I didn't realize existed getting renovated from the inside.

</comment><comment><USER2> It's pretty common for software/hardware for relatively specialised applications to be extremely expensive in proportion to their functionality, but with the increasingly popularity of open-source hardware/software the ability to DIY solutions is enhanced and I think this is a great example of what can be done.

At first glance, from the name I thought it would be a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_(music_software)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_\(music_software\)) !</comment>


Intel's Survey: Half of Women Would Give Up Sex Over Internet - <AUTHOR> http://us.cnn.com/2008/TECH/12/15/internet.sex.survey/index.html

<comment><USER2> Probably because women can't live without their Hacker News.</comment>


Jack LaLanne dies at 96; spiritual father of U.S. fitness movement - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-jack-lalanne-20110124,0,5507436,full.story

<comment><USER2> RIP Jack.

If you want to see what he was like, Ross Enamait has collated some favourite clips: <http://rosstraining.com/blog/2011/01/24/rip-jack-lalanne/>

Absolute legend.

</comment><comment><USER3> This guy was ripped well into his late 80's. Haven't seen a photo of him in his 90's though - has anyone got any links of him in his final years?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkdYrAQJu6g>

Age 95, and still full of energy (as is his wife, in her 80s).</comment></comment>


Trying to find that gamification story link - <AUTHOR>

About a week ago I followed a HN link to a multi-page blog post on 'gamification' that read like a first person fictional narrative.  It had awesome insights into the mental reward systems that make social games addictive.  Now I can't find it.  Help? <comment><AUTHOR> Found it! [http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames- a-g...](http://insertcredit.com/2011/09/22/who-killed-videogames-a-ghost- story/)</comment>


Potato Diet - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2016/04/15/australian-potato-diet/#3VeIZPYYFPqk <comment><USER2> If you want a deeper, more serious view of the potato diet and its possible mechanism of action, check our Richard Nilokey's blog. A good starting point would be [1].

[1] [https://freetheanimal.com/2016/02/the-potato-diet- practicali...](https://freetheanimal.com/2016/02/the-potato-diet- practicalities-dropping-big-weight-fast-with-high-energy-and-without- hunger.html)</comment>