The iPad will never have a USB port. - <AUTHOR> http://callumj.com/post/ipad-no-usb.html

<comment><USER2> Ugh, all this chatter about the iPad as some transcendental post-PC device is getting _really_ out of hand.

 _With Apple building this post-PC device the plan is to rid users of the relics which came with computers;_

 _filesystems_ \- because (with very few exceptions) you can't actually _create content_ on it, and you still have to manage your data through iTunes which is still very "shackled" to the filesystem. What happened when people started getting too many apps on their homescreens? Apple gave them folders, which...emulates a filesystem. What?

 _Windows update_ \- because you never have to update your apps? Sometimes multiple times per day? And hey, you never have to perform iOS upgrades, right? You remembered to back up your data, right?

 _setup installers_ \- Sure, given. Apple has streamlined the crap out of the user end of the "get new software on this device" process.

 _RAM upgrades_ \- Just buy a whole new iPad every year!

 _and USB_ \- This is just a really weird inclusion. USB isn't hard for people. USB is _really easy_ for people. Everyone knows what a USB plug is and where it goes. If it plugs in, then your host system can communicate with it. You don't have to go mess with your system configurations to get your system to see that there's a USB device plugged in.

The author is probably too young to really remember what computing was like pre-USB, but serial/parallel ports and COM/LPT port management was a pain in the ass. Conflating USB with crappy driver software is ridiculous, especially in the context of the iPad, where the software (and thus, any potential driver support) is already locked down airtight.

As others have pointed out, there are USB dongles available, as well. The reason Apple doesn't include a USB port on the iPad is simple: they don't control USB, the USB spec, or the manufacturers of USB devices. When you have custom ports and custom specs, you get to sell custom devices and retain absolute control over who and what interacts with your device.

It's worth noting that Android phones ship with a USB port, and I've yet to hear _anyone_ of my dozens of family and friends using them complain about it being too hard or confusing.

<comment><AUTHOR> -Not many people are going to have content on their PC that needs to get pushed down via iTunes.

-iOS updates are simple, you plug in your device and wait for the update to complete. You'll probably get an update once a month, how many do you get on Windows or OS X?

-Setup is pretty streamlined, press Install and you're done. Nothing asks you for a for a folder location, if the icons should be on the desktop. There's no next button, it's just a one click, type a password and install.

-Or maybe every two years, because right now the iPad 1 is pretty slow.

-USB is hard. You may think it's easy because you're used it it but people still have have trouble figuring out if this XXXX usb tuner will work with their "Windows".

-You're correct, I just started using computers when USB hit the scene. But just because it was harder back then doesn't make it easy now.

-They're not called USB dongles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> _USB use amongst users is just too hard._

Where exactly did he get this conclusion? USB is the easiest peripheral interface ever made, that's why it's popular.

He is correct that the iPad will never have a USB port. But not because of ease of use -- actually it's because of the opposite. Apple has a very long history of choosing interfaces that are incompatible with the PC. Does anyone still remember the first iPod was Firewire and Mac-only? Purposeful incompatibility is what Apple has always aimed for, and they continue to do it today on all their computers and devices.

</comment><comment><USER4> My kid's $69 DVD player has a USB port. I don't expect it to support a TV tuner, but it works with any FAT32 storage I've stuck in it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not many users know what "FAT32" is.

<comment><USER5> Users don't need to know what it is, the device does! The important thing is that most every USB mass-storage device uses FAT32 - memory sticks, camera cards, phones...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My iPad has a USB port.. it's a dongle, and everything from keyboards to headphones works.

</comment><comment><USER7> It won't have a USB port only so they can sell you one for $30

<http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC531ZM/A>

It's apple, duh of course it's going to cost more money.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Removing the relic USB means Apple can say to users, whatever you plug into this thing just works."

I think it is more about getting people used to what Apple thinks the future of personal computing should be like.

It's like the PADDs on Star Trek <http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/PADD>. You never see them plug their PADDs into anything. Or plug anything into their PADDs.

</comment><comment><USER9> Sometimes I assume that I am an archaeologist digging up some of these devices. Without the context of Steve jobs, brand apple etc, such decisions might look odd given that everything else at the time seemed to have USB ports etc.

</comment><comment><USER10> but when you buy the iPad, you have to sync it to the computer in order to use it right?!? I'll take the USB port any day over having to sync to iTunes...

and "if the package says Made for iPad buy it and it will work as soon as you plug it in" -> this is the whole concept behind having USB drivers for a certain platform/OS. _if_ I have the driver for OSX, it will work...

Apple might never add a USB port.. but they will surely come out with a dongle _sarcasm_

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not about a trade off between syncing or a USB port.

At least the Made for iPad is a program that places guarantees that it works, it's controlled and places confidence in the user that this product is pretty much worry free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> iOS devices have a USB port- it's called the dock connector. What is so hard to understand about this?</comment>


Building maps for a self-driving car - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/waymo/building-maps-for-a-self-driving-car-723b4d9cd3f4#.2k53gt5rl <comment><USER2> This is the fundamental weakness of Google's system. It expects every road it drives on to be precisely mapped ahead of time, to the detail of knowing how many centimeters high the curb is. This was the reason their cars were described as impractical on a nationwide scale two years ago, and today's article confirms that it remains so today.

<comment><USER3> Article is from nine months ago, actually. You have something negative to say on literally every Google-related article that appears on HN, but every one I've seen commits some factual or logical error. Why don't you give it a rest for a while?

<comment><USER4> He seems to be in a Crusade against Google.

<comment><USER2> Please refrain from personal attacks on HN. (cc: dang, if he gets magically tagged or something, I can't flag comments)

Feel free to attack me on Twitter or Reddit or something.

<comment><USER4> Which personal attacks?

It is just a logical conclusion reading your comment history.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


32% of all the positive cases in Italy are currently hospitalised with symptoms - <AUTHOR> http://www.covidgraph.com/hospitaly <comment><USER2> Title is extremely misleading: I read the graph as saying that 32% have been to hospital (which probably includes a large number of recovered and dead). Certainly need to back up title with more than just a bar in a report.</comment>


The real Gigabit Challenge is getting ISPs to think like tech firms - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2013/02/03/the-real-gigabit-challenge-is-getting-isps-to-think-like-tech-firms/ <comment><USER2> What a weird article. The reason Intel pushed faster and faster chips, cheaper and cheaper is because they're selling items, not service, and they have to keep selling chips year after year, while facing competition. They do it, because otherwise they'd go out of business.

Unlike US ISPs, which face almost no competition, and will remain in business as long as they provide some sort of service, charge just below exorbitant rates for it, and keep the service level just above the minimum needed to avoid consumer mutiny. It's not like people have a choice, and therefore they stay.

Asking major US ISPs to change their mindset is completely futile, they have no reason to do so, because their current strategy extracts the maximum amount of money from the market, and the minimum service upgrades they do keep them updated and not completely obsolete. The _only_ thing that can make them change is competition. Most of you are americans, you apply this principle ruthlessly in most areas of society, but why do you have a blind spot for telcos and cable companies?

Meanwhile, my city hooked up my apartment building to the municipal fiber network last year. I volunteered to do the project for our housing co-op, so I called up a bunch of local ISPs, some small, some big, and got offers for our building. Some of them were good, some were bad, some were cheap, some were expensive, some were flexible, some were rigid, and ultimately I picked one and recommended to our board. And a week from now I'll enjoy 100/100mbit for $30/month along with everyone else in my building, and the cost is fixed for five years. After that period, we're free to re-negotiate the contract and pick another ISP if we're unhappy, but you can bet your ass that the one we picked are gonna do all they can to keep us happy, so they keep us a customer.

Competition tends to force companies to do that.

<comment><USER3> Intel is only competing with AMD so it's not really an issue of competition it's a question of the quality of that competition.

<comment><USER4> Don't forget ARM.

With mobile device sales taking an ever increasing share of the market, Intel cannot afford to miss out on this front.

This is definitely driving Intel's recent push towards efficiency.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a dreadful article. The graph (which is used to underline the premise of the piece) is mislabled. The lines are the wrong way round. How do I know. I shall tell you.

WDM capacity world wide is rising as per the white line.

Cost per mbs-1 is falling as per the orange line.

These are facts. Labelled properly the graph is correct.

It is simply stupid to think that WDM capacity is falling, and the author needs to be - well, I will not be silly and intemperate!

<comment><USER6> I looked at that graph like four times before I could even start to understand how somebody could make that mistake...

The whole premise of the article is expanding capacity and falling costs and he describes the graph as exemplifying this and then when I look at it I feel foolish.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who noticed that.

The debate has never been about aggregate capacity (not since the 1900's), but rather about last-mile access, and will continue to be until last-mile access is liberated; which may never happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look at it from the ISP's perspective. Most are not doing metered billing (yet) so they have little to gain from customers having faster Internet connections. They certainly aren't getting a penny from the companies that are/will be making money using the fat pipes to customer's homes. What's in it for them? They will do it if they must to remain competitive but will wait as long as possible to see if new technologies will allow them to push the old infrastructure further. The technology to do 1Gbit/sec (download) speeds on 30 year old cable systems is on its way to market now.

</comment><comment><USER8> nitpick: Intel made 2.5Bn of profit in Q4 of last year. Annual profit was 11Bn.</comment>


NY antibody study estimates 13.9% of residents positive, Gov. Cuomo says - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/23/new-york-antibody-study-estimates-13point9percent-of-residents-have-had-the-coronavirus-cuomo-says.html <comment><USER2> And to clarify, that 13.9% of New York _state_ residents. In the city it's surely higher.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another datapoint implying the death rate is around 0.5%.</comment>


How My VP, Sales Doubled Our Sales in 90 Days - <AUTHOR> http://saastr.com/2013/10/23/how-my-vp-sales-doubled-our-sales-in-90-days-no-it-wasnt-magic/

<comment><USER2> Great post. Managers are undervalued in startup culture, but so crucial in certain instances, like sales.

I read a great study 10 years ago that talked about the ratio of entrepreneurial minds to management minds in companies. The interesting point was how tweaking the balance could influence growth, while another could influence profit. This leads so any companies, motivated to increase share prices, to tip the balance toward a managerial mindset to squeeze profit, creating friction on growth.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sales and biz dev are a tough nut to crack and a fundamental one for the large majority of startups.

It'd be interesting if these topics garnered some discussion at HN, I bet we'd all learn a lot from eachother on how to not let great products sink due to zero sales...</comment></comment>


Show HN: Splinch – the telepresence robot rental service - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesplinch.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> The rental price will be 400$ per day, but I think we might be able to bring it down to 300$. As per the model of telepresence robot, though we have not talked to anyone officially we are planning on the new Double Robotics model, and also in future on Beam Pro.

Thank you, added the favicon. If you like the idea and want to receive updates don't forget to signup.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Have you ever wanted to attend an event in a different country or on the other side of your country? But have been worried about travel, time, money and energy expenses to schedule the trip and attend the event.

Splinch comes to rescue. Splinch is a telepresence robot rental service that enables you to attend events at anyplace (currently only in US in Boston, Worcester, DC, NYC) in the world from the comfort of your home or office.

We would love to have your feedback, comments and opinions on your first impression of hearing about the service, things that can be added, concerns, 'would you pay for the service?', and any other query.

If you love the idea, don't forget to Get Splinched.

<comment><USER2> Do you guys deliver the robot to the event?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, we will deliver the robot to the event and perform the initial setup also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Pricing for telepresence robot on the market varies from @300 to $15,000.[http://telepresencerobots.com/comparison](http://telepresencerobots.com/comparison) It's good to have a rental service, but what would the rental price? What model of telepresence robot will you offer?

BTW, you should have a favicon for your website. It looks bad on the browser tab.</comment>


NASA Maps Surface Changes from California Quakes - <AUTHOR> https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7448 <comment><USER2> That is a very cool finding. Though I must say that visualizing the data with a jet colormap and no legend is a little disrespectful to anyone who is sober.

<comment><USER3> This was my initial reaction as well, but the article mentions that

> Each color cycle represents 4.8 inches (12 centimeters) of ground > displacement either toward or away from the satellite.

...so what we're actually interested in is counting the number of cycles through the color map between two points, for which jet actually seems like a perfectly good choice.

jofer explains in their comment why the data is shown this way: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20398703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20398703)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The aftershocks going on here (most small, but higher frequency than usual) is interesting to look at, if not a little disturbing :). A 4.0 in the last hour too (6:48 PM).

[http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/118-36.html](http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/118-36.html)

</comment><comment><USER5> > Each color cycle represents 4.8 inches (12 centimeters) of ground > displacement in the radar line-of-sight.

Is there a legend somewhere, or at least a max? I'm not sure what is meant by "color cycle".

<comment><USER6> You're looking at an interferogram.

The method used here can't measure displacement directly. It measures a phase difference between two radar images. Turning this into a map of displacement is non unique in the presence of noise and limited spatial resolution.

That's why you'll see this type of data displayed in this way. The rainbow palette is mostly convention, but either way, it's the most direct view of what actually measured.

It's also kinda pretty, i.m.o...

<comment><USER7> It is certainly pretty. But I'm still not clear what it means.

OK, so the radar is measuring distance between the satellite and reflecting surface. They're compairing data from July 8, 2019 and April 8, 2018. I'm guessing that the two images look pretty much the same. Especially given limited spatial resolution.

But ELI5, what does the interference pattern show? I mean, are there 12 cm amplitude waves of vertical surface displacement? Something like frozen S waves?

<comment><USER6> An earthquake is rocks sliding past each other. What you're looking at here is a measure of how much they moved. (It doesn't "slide back" afterwards -- the motion is permanent.) For an earthquake of this size, the motion will be on the order of a few meters.

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

In a bit more detail, the radar can't measure distance precisely enough to detect the movement. The distance measured before and after by radar is the same, within error. However, there's another part of the radar signal beyond just how long it takes to travel. That second part is the phase of the returned signal. Imagine the first time we imaged a small area, we got a return waveform that looked like this (zero phase):

        /\  /\  /\
          \/  \/  \/

but then the next time we got back a slightly different result (270 degree phase):

        \  /\  /\  /
         \/  \/  \/

The difference is shape of the returning signal is a phase shift. The radar wave is shifted slightly

We know that it moved at least three quarters wavelength in the ascii art example above. However, we'd get the same result if it moved ten and three quarters, though. We can measure part of the change very precisely, but the bulk of the motion looks the same to us. We're looking at that fined-grained part of the motion (phase difference) not the overall motion itself.

In programming terms, we're looking at the result of a modulo operator.

<comment><USER7> Thanks.

I see that the ALOS-2 SAR uses L band, which seems to mean 1-2 GHz (30-15 cm). So maybe the ALOS-2 actually uses 12 cm?

So does that mean that the pattern shows something like contour lines?

<comment><USER6> Yep! You can think of the bands as contour lines of deformation.

<comment><USER7> Hey, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Relatedly, InSAR images of the Kilauea volcano area:

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA13910](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA13910)

And land subsidence due to groundwater pumping in California's Central Valley, showing motion of up to 70 cm (!):

[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16293](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16293)

</comment><comment><USER9> At first glance, this looks very much like some Julia sets.</comment>


Ambilight for HML5's  tag, in Javascript. - <AUTHOR> http://chikuyonok.ru/ambilight/

<comment><USER2> This is based on a Philips invention for their TVs (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambilight>) however, the difference is that this HTML5 video doesn't occupy most of the users vision.

Since these TVs are high-end (and thus large) and are viewed at a distance the picture fills the majority of the screen. However ambilight as a fraction of the screen that's much closer to my face felt very distracting.

If the effect was more subtle it might be better, but especially bright colours like reds were pretty distracting.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is really impressive, but I found the effect really distracting and annoying. It's most probably the delay/lag that makes it look jarring.

<comment><AUTHOR> Runs pretty smoothly here - maybe it's your browser/system?

<comment><USER4> I'm on a pretty fast machine running latest Safari and you can tell the glow is behind the video because there's a half second or so lag between scene transitions and the glow changing to match.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure how to post code on HN but I found the default settings that explain the "half second" lag:

var default_settings = { brightness: 2.7, saturation: 1.4, lamps: 5, block_size: 40, update_interval: 500, fade_time: 400 };

<comment><USER5> Two spaces before a line of code does the trick:

      var default_settings = { brightness: 2.7, saturation: 1.4, lamps: 5, block_size: 40, update_interval: 500, fade_time: 400 };

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Explanation, in Russian: <http://chikuyonok.ru/2010/03/ambilight-video/>

Google translated: [http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&h...](http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http://chikuyonok.ru/2010/03/ambilight- video/&sl=ru&tl=en)

<comment><USER6> Thanks, that really helps a lot. I didn't realize that the glow's colors were based on the video.

Incidentally, I'm impressed with Google's Russian => English translation. I don't usually expect anything readable, but this article was fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't access this site, but this was one of the demos Dailymotion did last year before they implemented Theora for their video site:

<http://www.dailymotion.com/openvideodemo>

The demo only works on Firefox it seems, but does a few interesting things including blurring, colorizing, extracting thumbnails etc. from the live playing video.

There also seems to be general surprise that you can do this kind of thing with HTML5 video and javascript which makes me think this impressive demo hasn't been seen by enough people:

[http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjec...](http://people.mozilla.com/~prouget/demos/DynamicContentInjection/play.xhtml)

There's other similar mozilla demos showing greenscreen effects, tracking of objects, linking dynamic graphs to data embedded in videos.

</comment><comment><USER8> I was surprised the javascript code ran so fast it could change the lighting in what seemed real-time to me. I didn't expect to see video scripting inside a browser.

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know if there is a mirror for this site? Seems to be down for me.</comment>


Copyright troll suing over tattoos on celebrities in a video game - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yw37g7/a-lawyer-explains-who-really-owns-your-tattoos <comment><USER2> Does the game realistically represent other, non-tattooed skin of players? Such as skin tone or body hair? If so, I'd argue that the collection of tattoos was incidental in the complete lifelike recreation of players (like a photograph) and not a specific element which is painted on an otherwise default player model (like the Mike Tyson case).</comment>


Announcing flyio, an R package to interact with data in the cloud - <AUTHOR> https://blog.socialcops.com/inside-sc/announcements/flyio-r-package-interact-data-cloud/ <comment><USER2> The R ecosystem around cloud services and their APIs still seems immature, so it's great to see folks working on packages in the space.

I'm not 100% sure if this is providing any new functionality not provided by existing cloudyr projects or is just wrapping them in a new API. I think either is fine, but it would help to better understand why you'd want to use flyio vs, say aws.s3 or the like.

Also, there are some aspects of the API that make me a little itchy. If I'm reading the examples correctly, it seems like flyio_set_datasource sets a global variable and then there are generic functions like list_files that do different things based on that global state?

That seems risky to me, and a more idiomatic approach to this would be to have a function that returns a handle object representing a Google Cloud or AWS service, then have generic functions take that handle and dispatch to appropriate methods.

Even then, namespacing in R isn't really a thing, and I worry that really plain function names like list_files or export_file are likely to get clobbered by other packages using names like that. For packages like readr that are intended to actually replace large swaths of IO functions, that's fine. But I'm not sure it makes sense for a more specialized package like this.

Despite that, I do appreciate you all creating and open sourcing this. Like I mentioned, any work on cloud packages is welcome from my perspective! Interested to see how this develops.

<comment><USER3> Isn't the main USP of flyio the cloud agnostic part? You can play between local, google and amazon without changing the code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A dplyr abstraction for Elastic Search I tried to use this year turned out to be orphanware. I'm back scraping HTTP fetches directly with a canned JSON blob posted.

If this one works, I'd love some positive feedback signals from users, because I don't want to build hopes, or code, to an interface spec which turns out to wither and die.

</comment><comment><USER5> The name already seems to be used by a Node.JS module.

There's a bigrquery package on CRAN by Hadley Wickham that seems to have already covered this use case.

<comment><USER3> bigrquery is for a completely different use; a wrapper for Google Big Query. This seems to be a cloud agnostic read and write using aws/gcp. cloudyr packages seem to be the closest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> congratulations socialcops team !</comment>


Heroku or EngineYard? Which RoR hosting provider is better for a B2B app? - <AUTHOR>

We are working on a B2B application and need email processing in/out, sub-domain mapping for each customer account etc. etc. (basecamp type of app architecturally but for a completely different domain) We like the simplicity of Heroku but when we looked at their customer list - could not find any serious B2B apps listed. I've read nice things about Engine Yard and have setup a test account running but their documentation is not very clear. I have read almost every post on HN comparing these two but still unable to decide which way to go. Any suggestions ? Thanks. <comment><USER3> There is never a straight answer to these types of questions.

If you're just getting started then Heroku is probably the easiest and cheapest way to get started.

I seem to have the perception that many apps do something like Heroku --> EY --> Self-hosted/managed as the app grows

</comment><comment><USER4> Both are great platforms. Heroku has a lower bar of entry in terms of cost, however EY gives you much more control over your server. I feel like my hands are tied w/ Heroku always having to go thru the gem to do anything (i.e - <USER2> let me SSH into the instance...)</comment>


If I stopped buying a coffee everyday I could buy so much cool shit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.thisisbud.com/the-coffee-calculation/ <comment><USER2> _" So I googled what I could buy for that. It turns out, I could buy a 2002 Mercedes Benz..."_

So the author figured out that he could stop wasting a little bit of money on coffee every day, but then thought it might be a good idea to waste it all in one shot on a flashy car? Think of all the money he'd have left over if he got a 2002 Toyota Camry instead (assuming he needed a car in the first place).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thankfully living in London buying a car would be more hassle than its worth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Millennial discovers budgeting

Blog post at 11!!

I track all of my spending. I spend $0.088 per day on ground coffee, of which I drink 500ml every morning in the week and two extra on Weekend days.

That's over £2 per month !

Starbucks sells expensive boiled water.

<comment><USER4> True. But they actually sell a service, right? We all pay for services and like it. In fact America has been called a 'service economy'. Software folk could be said to be selling electrons or something.

<comment><USER3> My point being more that reflecting on your outgoings and measuring their value to you is important.

And these insights give you benchmarks for your daily life.

I can compare the $20 for a single meal eating out against the $9 I otherwise spend per day on home cooked meals.

"Is this meal experience worth more than a whole day's regular food?"

"Do I get value from the $10 per day I spend on my car?"

"Is $400 per month for a leased car reasonable?"

<comment><USER4> Great way to think of it! I was never a coffee-shop person until my Sister started one. Now I patronize her shop every day. But otherwise I wouldn't think of spending $5/day</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Learn Ruby - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blacktm/learn-ruby

<comment><USER2> There used to be a time where people created programming tutorials just for the heck of it: to learn the language better themselves, to do something good, to get some rep, to make a name for themselves. I wrote quite a few myself - enjoyed every minute of it - both the process of writing (writing stuff down forces you to be honest about knowing it well) and the feedback afterwards. Without asking for $10K on Kickstarter!! I see the direction this is going and I don't like it at all. I hope Kickstarter won't end up harming open source.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Kickstarter will harm open source. I think opporunists might. But do you really think people like us would fund something like this? I'm honestly asking the question. I don't think they would. As a programmer I know better than to fund something like this. There's no shortage of Ruby tutorials out there for free and a ton that cost money too. All great resources. I see this and I think to myself, "nice, someone decided to capitalize on the hipness of Ruby by duplicating what's out there for free with a twist - vaguely familiar games as lessons".

I have faith that this won't be funded.

<comment><USER4> The end result is going to be free, isn't it? He's just asking for money so he can devote more of his time to it.

<comment><USER5> The end result will be $100.

<comment><USER6> There are actually two components that the author is promising. The interactive learning environment and website will be free and open source, but the author is also planning on selling a premium, paid month-long course with extra content. The premium course is what's promised in the $50 tier, and what will cost $100 after the Kickstarter ends.

Edit: As the responses indicate, the premium course is probably against Kickstarter's rules. I didn't mean to imply otherwise.

<comment><USER5> The point is that people are trying to use Kickstarter to eliminate risk in a business venture. If you're good enough o charge $100 for membership for one of your website, do it. Take a risk. _Be entrepreneurial._ Don't be that guy trying to get other people to provide you back-door seed funding so you can just bolt if it all falls apart with an extra $10k to boot.

From the KS: "Launching a Kickstarter campaign is the best way I can think of to get the word out and see if there's real interest in this. I always try to focus my time and energy on things people want (easier said than done), and this campaign will help me figure that out. So if you want this to exist, cast your vote by pledging!"

I try to be civil and calm here but that is complete and utter bullshit. Kickstarter does not exist so people like this guy can get a few months rent while trying out his latest business venture.

<comment><USER7> Lol. Tell that to every SilVal wannabe startup begging for seed funding. Being entrepreneurial IS about gathering reasorces to make your idea happen.

Kickstarter shouldn't exist so some guy can raise money to sell 3d printers either, but that happens all the time.

<comment><USER5> You've got a point there, but let's be honest: that 3d pen was pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This violates Kickstarter rules.

See the $50 pledge: _The price will jump to $100 after the Kickstarter, so sign up now!"_

Kickstarter project guidelines: _Kickstarter cannot be used to fund e-commerce, business, and social networking websites or apps._ (<http://www.kickstarter.com/help/guidelines#prohibited>)

No matter if you throw the "education" label on it, it's still a paid membership site. A business website.

Even if it were allowed, it's miscategorized. The "Open Software" category is to fund open source projects, _not_ education efforts about open source software. I don't see that any of the software that would come out of this project would be released as open source.

<comment><USER6> The local learning environment gem is "Open source (license TBD)" according to the page.

Edit: Since you responded to my other comment - I'm not claiming that what they're doing is allowed by the rules, just responding to that particular point.

<comment><USER8> Yes, but that's not the totality of the project. Had it been limited to that, it would probably be ok.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are lots of places to learn Ruby. At this point, you could Google just about any question that you had.

How about something more ambitious? Anyone want to crowd fund a small satellite or lunar rover for the Google Lunar Prize?

<http://www.googlelunarxprize.org/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I wouldn't pay $25 for this Kickstarter project.

Codeacademy and Udemy has Ruby classes to grasp enough knowledge and cost less than this.

<comment><USER8> I also have to give a +1 to CodeSchool.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is great, but there are already many sites that teach ruby through clean slides, animations and gamification. Most notably (with respect to ruby) is code school.

I'm all for more resources, but I don't see how this is filling a market gap.

<comment><USER12> Ruby is a part of hipster culture. You can't just say "There is enough hipster bands out there, we don't need more" can you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's probably not a good idea to use a "popular game character" in your example images, even if you don't name him. The sprite itself is copyrighted by Nintendo, and using it in your game like that is probably not going to fall under fair use.

</comment><comment><USER13> Around minute 1:01, in the kickstarter video, he says that ruby is used by facebook o_O. I don't think that it is, is it?

<comment><USER14> Remember that both Chef and Puppet are written in Ruby. Ruby is in a _lot_ of things by virtue of the fact that it's so prevalent in the DevOps world.

<comment><USER13> Yes, I also used Chef. But I don't think that is enough reason to market a language as beeing a "FB" one. Because in that way you can market that 80% of the companies use ruby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I wonder if this project will be as poignant as other ruby learning projects.

<comment><USER16> I think I see what you did there :)

 _Why's (poignant) Guide to Ruby_ : <http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant- guide/>

<comment><USER17> And don't forget his interactive course! <http://www.codeschool.com/courses/try-ruby>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I actually know and have worked with Tom Black extensively. He was an instructor with me at General Assembly in NYC and, after being in the Ruby education space, it's clear there is a market for great developer education courses. The target market isn't the typical hacker news reader, it's the job seeker looking to expand their marketability. There are plenty of 'free' resources to learn cooking, yet there is still a huge demand for cooking schools. Many of us don't think twice about paying for Railscasts or CodeSchool because they provide value to the user. I don't think there is anything wrong with selling a high quality instructional product to people who make be overwhelmed by the variety of free and occasionally dubious offerings. When I was getting started, the Rails Tutorial was a bargain at around $100. I can't speak for the quality of Tom's product (yet,) but there is certainly a demand and a need for quality programs for new developers. Given some of the utter nonsense I've seen on kickstarter, this is a worthy project.</comment>


Show HN: Sandbox – Reproducible dev and test environments for software teams - <AUTHOR> https://stack.foundation <comment><USER2> where is the about page ? The product looks interesting but how could I trust a site without any info about its authors ?

<comment><USER3> (Tiago, from StackFoundation) You are absolutely right. We spent a lot of energy on the app itself, and got blindsighted there. One should be up in the next day or two.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Software for creating my own Yahoo Directory or DMOZ - <AUTHOR>

Now that Yahoo! Directory is disappearing, I'd like to create my own directory of websites. Are there any open-source software solutions for creating these kind of directories? <comment><USER2> In my experience, directory scripts are similar to forums in that most of them are about a decade old, and very few of them have anything new or exciting to bring to the table.

That being said, my experience of directories is quite limited, so I'd be very interested in hearing about any newer directory scripts on the market.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, they all seem to be really old. Perhaps a simple thing like this would be possible to pull off with Jekyll.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://www.google.ca/search?q=php+directory+script&oq=php+d...](https://www.google.ca/search?q=php+directory+script&oq=php+directory+script&aqs=chrome..69i57.4053j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=91&ie=UTF-8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lot's of hits, but nothing that really does what I'm looking for. A "directory" can be a lot of things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No, but this isn't that difficult of a project. I could probably throw together some boilerplate in a day.</comment>


Why (or why not) nuclear energy? - <AUTHOR> http://articles.cnn.com/2011-03-26/us/nuclear.energy_1_nuclear-power-commercial-nuclear-reactors-nuclear-projects?_s=PM:US

<comment><USER2> Depends on the fuel used and cooling techniques. Looking at the predominant fuel mix currently used internationally, there is only 80-90 years of nuclear material left - perhaps worse than peak oil. That's why the new emphasis by the Chinese and a few other governments on Thorium Energy & Molen-Salt Technology Inc (iThEMS) is really, really interesting. The US should begin to invest in this technology too- we invented the concept in teh 1950s and 60s, but dropped Thorium because it didn't produce any useful Plutonium byproducts needed for Nuclear Bombs. Here's a good article about the Chinese use of this: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/02/01/china_thorium_bet/>

</comment><comment><USER3> What I dont understand is the way we build nuclear plants - why are they not built in very large pits, with huge silos that hold a concrete slurry mix that can be realeased to flood the pit and encase the whole thing in concrete should the need arise.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bingham_Canyon_Mine>

Put it in the base of this pit - and create a way to encase it if needed.</comment>


Media Temple launches VPS running Leopard Server - <AUTHOR> http://mediatemple.net/labs/xv/

<comment><USER2> I had the pleasure of visiting (mt) offices last month as I was in the area and have been a long-time vip program customer. They talked with me about this (xv) for quite a bit. Here's what it's about:

Targeted at smaller design firms/consultancies - the 37s crowd that likes productivity. They will be able to do iChat, iCal, use collaborative wiki/blog software built-in and back up with time machine, etc. The huge thing for me is the server admin application that makes it incredibly easy to administer/maintain/manage the box from any mac... just a great UI for those that don't necessarily want to always have a terminal open.

</comment><comment><USER3> So, why can Leopard server be virtualised, but the desktop version can't be?

I run VMware on XP so I can use whatever *nix I want at the time. I'd love to be able to use OSX that way, but Apple won't allow it. This drives me nuts. I'm fairly platform agnostic. But, people used to complain about Microsoft not being open. Why aren't more developers making noise about this?

<comment><USER4> Because the license for Server permits it, and the license for client does not.

<comment><USER3> It was more of a rhetorical question than technological.

<comment><USER5> Virtual Leopard -> VDI -> thin clients -> fewer Macs sold.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this mainly for people who want to run iCal or iChat servers? What advantage does this have over the standard Linux webserver?

<comment><USER7> One advantage is for people who already use Leopard on their primary computer, and don't want to bother with a subtly different flavor of *nix.

<comment><USER6> Do you mean the command line differences? Or will people who use this effectively screen-share the Leopard server and see it "as is." I know very few developers who demand that.

<comment><USER7> I mean command line differences.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> IMHO this is a PR stunt... there's no real benefit to using a OS X server instead of FreeBSD or even Linux... if I'm wrong, please enlighten me as to any tangible benefits to using Leopard purely as a webserver...

<comment><USER5> Who said anything about "purely as a webserver"? There's iCal, iChat, wikis, Open Directory, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Depending on the price, it could be a reasonable option for people who want a place to do some porting or qa work on OSX but otherwise do most their development on some other platform.

<comment><USER5> This service will probably be over $100/month; for development purposes a Mac mini would probably be a better option.

<comment><USER9> Their website says _During the Private Beta period we intend on splitting the server in 1/8th partitions. Each virtual machine will be guaranteed 2GB of memory and two cores of CPU resources._

That sounds close to a small ec2 instance _1.7 GB of memory, 1 EC2 Compute Unit (1 virtual core with 1 EC2 Compute Unit), 160 GB of instance storage, 32-bit platform_

So if you have to pay by the month a Mac mini could be better, but if you pay by the hour I could see using one for an hour or so a day as a build slave.

<comment><USER10> Unlike an EC2 instance, though, these are going to be running on expensive, single-vendor hardware, and won't be able to take advantage of much higher- density blade configurations to decrease space, power, and cooling requirements. There's also the matter of a non-trivial per-image OS license cost from Apple.

In other words, expect to pay a premium even over what you would for a normal full-time VPS, and don't count on hourly billing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> to me this only becomes attractive a few years from now, when Snow Leopard + ZFS is out</comment>


Rare 'Super Blood Wolf Moon' will be visible this weekend - <AUTHOR> https://mashable.com/video/blood-wolf-moon/ <comment><USER2> Parts of the name that sound cool: super, blood, wolf. Parts of the name that actually matter: moon. Parts missing but sound boring: eclipse.</comment>


Deep Learning on ROCm - <AUTHOR> https://rocm.github.io/dl.html <comment><USER2> I wonder if it will have a positive impact on the development of this library that the new Mac Pro will feature a dedicated AMD Vega GPU.

EDIT: there is more discussion going on at /r/MachineLearning than here: [https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6kv3rs/mop...](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6kv3rs/mopen_10_released_by_amd_deep_learning_software/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Are there any benchmarks comparing performance with CuDNN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that I know of, but at their analyst day in May 2017 AMD showed slides in which they beat Nvidias GP100 in Baidus Deep Bench with their new GPU Vega. [0][1] Since AMD recently released the Vega Frontier Edition [3][4] I posted this here in the hopes to see some benchmarks from users here on HN.

[0] [http://i.imgur.com/twhTpcC.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/twhTpcC.jpg)

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/1peXVnq.png](http://i.imgur.com/1peXVnq.png)

[3] tldr: 16 GByte HBM2, 25 TFlop FP16, ~1000-1500 dollar.

[4] [https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1681410...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814105073)

<comment><USER4> When you take unknown code and datasets under OpenCL it isn't hard to make any delta you want.

Using OpenCL code with batch size which favors one or the the other is enough to cause this (and much) higher delta.

DeepBench isn't a benchmark, it's a benchmarking tool overall there is very little chance that given the current state of NVIDIAs BLAST libraries and the rest of their eco system that Vega is going to be beating it's hardware.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > the first open-source HPC/Hyperscale-class platform for GPU computing that's > also programming-language independent

Weird website, took me a while to classify its purpose. So, is this like an AMD version of NVIDIA's CuDNN? Can we run TensorFlow on AMD GPUs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Looks like the title was changed. Yesterday it was called "AMD deep learning library ROCm 1.6 released (Caffee support and more)"

It seems at the moment only Caffe is public and it's a port of the CUDA version to OpenCL [0][1] to allow it to run on AMD GPUs like the recently released AMD Vega Frontier Edition. From the wording on the page it looks like it could be an equivalent to CuDNN.

[0] through AMDs tool called HIP which can convert CUDA

[1] [http://gpgpu10.athoura.com/ROCM_GPGPU_Keynote.pdf](http://gpgpu10.athoura.com/ROCM_GPGPU_Keynote.pdf)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What software will you build if your financial needs were full covered? - <AUTHOR> While many of us have reasonably fulfilling professional lives, there is still the need to make mortgage payments and other financial needs that will keep us grinding away at a day job for years to come. And thus we find ourselves working on problems or industry sectors that we don't particularly care for.
So I wanted to try this thought experiment: Imagine that you are immediately freed of all financial obligations for the rest of your life (housing, taking care of family, saving for retirement etc).
What kind of software would you be bringing into existence then? <comment><USER3> I think we could be doing much more to enable the other 1/2 of humanity to join us online as equals, Stripe Atlas is like a tentative step 1 of many. People in developing countries face such stupid limitations that effectively restrict them to just being consumers of the internet. I have some ideas percolating that I hope will help democratize the internet a little bit more for when I finish with my current company.

There are also a lot of shitty practices I would like to help erode - <USER2> automatically converting abandoned free trials into paying customers, or not providing an online way to cancel online trials etc. "Dark patterns" rely on nobody calling them out.

Frivolous privacy violations and impediments are also an area of interest, especially as the least democratic countries join us online encumbered by hateful laws.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd create an alternative mobile OS from the ground up. I've become disillusioned with iOS and Android both. Neithor of them nor any of the alternatives make full use of the hardware. Phones are capable of doing so much, yet in practice they fail when you ask them to do much of anything.

Or, maybe I'd just build myself an electric motorcycle. There's a lot of interesting work in Battery management these days and a motorcycle is a good platform for experimentation.

<comment><USER5> > Or, maybe I'd just build myself an electric motorcycle...

If you do, and its well made and competitively priced, I guarantee you you will become a billionaire in less than a decade.

<comment><USER4> Doubtful. There are dozens if not hundreds of guys who have made their own electric motorcycles[0]. Getting it to production is a whole other ballgame, one that only two companies out of dozens have managed to pull off (Zero and Brammo).

[0]: [http://www.evalbum.com/type/MTCY](http://www.evalbum.com/type/MTCY)

<comment><USER5> You must be from the West. I repeat, a competitively priced motorcycle would upend the market and make you a very very rich.

The vast majority of motorbike users reside in Asia and Africa.

Imagine being able to charge your spare batteries using solar panels during the day and no longer paying for gas; an electric engine would be quieter and require less maintenance. In performance and ruggedness it would have to supersede current offerings and I guess that is quite difficult or else Yamaha, Honda, Sukam and the rest would have built one already.

If I were rich I would certainly consider funding such a project.

<comment><USER4> > I repeat, a competitively priced motorcycle would upend the market and make > you a very very rich.

There are dozens of cheap chinese knockoff electric scooters available in Asia. Upend the market? Please.

> Imagine being able to charge your spare batteries using solar panels during > the day and no longer paying for gas.

I don't have to imagine. Been there, done that, along with hundreds if not thousands of others. As I said before, you have no idea what it takes to go from a working prototype to a finished, mass produced shippable product. There's a reason only 2 companies have ever pulled it off and one of them went bankrupt. If you want a fun rabbit hole to dive down, google 'homologation' sometime.

I'm not saying somebody with access to billions in capital can't eventually break even and start making a profit, but we're talking a 10-20 year break even period. Longer, if you have to do what Tesla did and create an entire solar infrastructure in Asia and Africa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've gotten bored with software so, I'll take your question and extend it to my interests. Found a motor with pretty good torque(~2 ft/lbs):

[https://www.servocity.com/html/124_rpm_econ_gearmotor__63835...](https://www.servocity.com/html/124_rpm_econ_gearmotor__638352.html#.V3bIa_krJdg)

Want to turn it into a servo and eventually a robotic arm which could extend out 3 ft and lift about 1-1.5 lbs. for about $200.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would contribute to ReactOS — opensource reverse-engineered WindowsXP.

<comment><USER8> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Too many dreams: I would build a better Second Life. A programming language. Something to aid medical research. A low-cost, widely accessible medical imaging solution (MRI would be the start).

</comment><comment><USER10> I would jump into community education and helping find opportunities.

</comment><comment><USER11> I would build a better Soundcloud, and I would make a point of sales system targeted at the medical marijuana market.

I would also make a dating website for artists.

<comment><USER12> Wow, you are consistent.

<comment><USER11> LOL, I suppose you can parse out a lot about my hobbies and interests by what software I would make.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> An idea I have to encourage charitable giving, a SaaS. It would be for profit because that would be a worthwhile motivation for me.

</comment><comment><USER14> Would do farming, at the end world needs to eat

</comment><comment><USER15> Well if all that were true and I had the skills to: a Winamp v5 clone, a Firefox < v4 clone.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'd contribute to computer vision. It's a thorny field with lot's of opportunity

</comment><comment><USER17> I have wanted some solutions for learning for kids 2-4 years of age.

<comment><USER18> This one is good [http://readingeggs.com.au](http://readingeggs.com.au)</comment></comment>


A dose of perspective - <AUTHOR> http://exposure.watsi.org/a-dose-of-perspective

<comment><USER2> For those who don't know (like me, up until a few minutes ago), Watsi has a feature to allow monthly automatic donations: [https://watsi.org/monthly](https://watsi.org/monthly)

Currently only 84 people are signed up for it -- let's see how far up we can get that.

Edit: Up to 90 in an hour! That's just pure awesome.

<comment><USER3> Nice, I had stopped donating for a few months because apparently I'm _that_ lazy ;) Just signed up for monthly donations - I'm #87.

<comment><USER4> #89 here, let's keep it going!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome, gave me a great glimpse of something, I'm not sure what you guys are, but it looks cool.

Web usability suggestion: Click as I might, I could not find a link anywhere to the Watsi home page. Call me lazy, but I still have not visited it. If there was a link to it I might have clicked on it and gone there.

<comment><USER6> In the hopes that you'll get involved [https://watsi.org/](https://watsi.org/) :)

Watsi is a wonderful glimmer of hope. I don't particularly have the money for it, but I've made 4 donations over the last couple of weeks. It's easy, you just read the stories and think to yourself, "do I really need to buy that coffee this week?"

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This post does a great job of showing a simple truth that many people forget: when you genuinely help a person, you are also helping everyone in that person's "sphere". There is a kind of exponential echoing effect when you are good-to.

</comment><comment><USER8> This was absolutely beautiful.

Highlighting: FOOTNOTES: PS - We're hiring a senior full-stack engineer. Email firstname.lastname@example.com for more info.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sure that as a patient in one of these hospitals, I'd appreciate the (white) girl with a camera strapped to her forehead walking through the place.

Trading patient privacy for donations seems like a worse deal than needs to be made here.

<comment><AUTHOR> Grace from Watsi here. I totally understand where you're coming from based on how the post is written - our fault for being hyperbolic. Of course, we would never walk through a hospital and record people without their explicit permission.

Patient privacy is something we take really seriously. It is so important to us that Watsi funds cases regardless of whether or not the patient wants to publicly share their story with the world ([https://watsi.org/faq#how-does- watsi-handle-patient-privacy](https://watsi.org/faq#how-does-watsi-handle- patient-privacy)) so that patients are never trading privacy for access to healthcare. More info here: [http://blog.watsi.org/post/62445601517/patient- privacy](http://blog.watsi.org/post/62445601517/patient-privacy)

That said, what I've learned after talking with dozens of Watsi patients is that the overwhelming majority of them feel compelled to share their stories. They hope it will enable more people to access the healthcare they deserve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Maybe it's my browser but I only see a picture, no story.

Or is it the picture that's cool?

<comment><USER11> Had to allow javascript from d1dh4fomm3d62b.cloudfront.net for the page to work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's always amazing to see people travel the world and make an impact. It's easy to be hyper-focused on growth metrics and silicon valley that you can lose sight of the bigger picture.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why doesn't Watsi open source its code so developers can donate their time?

<comment><USER14> because the website is a trivial part of the operation, and coding it is easier than coordinating drop-in volunteers?

<comment><USER13> Is that a question or a statement?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Pretty slick storytelling design. Anyone know if this blog is built on top of something (medium/wordpress) or is it custom?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We used [https://exposure.so/](https://exposure.so/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> From Conkeror I cannot find any text, only a photogram.

</comment><comment><USER17> just got an error while trying to sign up for a monthly donation

<comment><AUTHOR> Yikes, sorry to hear that. What was the error message? Feel free to email me - grace at watsi dot org - and we'll sort it out.

Thanks for wanting to sign up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I immediately stopped reading upon the first sentence: "Our trip started with a RTY (Read This Yo) Level 1,000 text."

Look, I like RPGs as much as the next nerd, but there's no reason to purposefully obfuscate what you're trying to say by needlessly throwing in garbage like this.

And "Read This Yo"? Seriously?

<comment><USER19> I immediately stopped reading this post about a fucking medical charity serving poor people in Africa to nitpick on a tiny stylistic choice that mildly confused me for about a quarter of a second while sitting in my air conditioned SF office sipping a cappucino so that other well-to-do Western assholes would give me invisible Internet points...

Oh, no, I didn't. That was you (with some leeway to artistic representation). Out of everything there, this is what you wanted to talk about?

EDIT: The title of this post is "A dose of perspective". Think about that for a sec.

<comment><USER18> Never been to SF, I'm not sitting in an office, and I'm not drinking a cappuccino.

Nice try.

In all seriousness, though, I had no idea what Watsi is. This was their chance to tell me about themselves. They blew it.

<comment><USER19> Like I said, artistic license taken with the caricature. Hyperbole is the soul of wit, etc.

The benefit of HN over other similar sites that shall remain nameless is a very high signal-to-noise ratio - the community tends to have interesting, meaningful, detailed conversations about specific topics. Your post was precisely the opposite of that, and it's a perfect example of this community's biggest problem, one which those of us who enjoy the community here try to combat: a pervading, cynical, nitpicking negativity, often about things completely tangential to the actual topic of discussion, that adds nothing to the conversation and serves only as a way to smugly imply how much smarter/more cultured/less douchey (the irony!) than whoever put together the link.

That's noise, not signal. It contributes nothing. Feel free to make your snide comments to yourself, but please don't bring down the quality of discussion here by using this forum to show off your nitpicking skill. If you don't feel like reading the article, then don't take over the conversation about the article with your reasons for not reading it.

I apologize for my overly heated language in my initial - I don't have anything against you personally, and my caricature was more harsh than deserved.

<comment><USER18> Let's get one thing straight: I'll comment when I please and on whatever article I please, and there's nothing that you can do about it. Do I make myself clear?

Now, having said that, I did take a closer look at Watsi, and decided to be their 109th monthly donor. Of course, I'm just another well-to-do Western asshole, so I'm sure you'll downvote this post, too.

<comment><USER20> "when I please and on whatever article I please"

I don't think the grandparent was asking you to stay within a time or quantity constraint. His/her point was about the quality of your comment, which this forum has pretty hard-defined guidelines for [1].

I think you made a valid point in your first comment here (and I thought your feedback was valuable), but you added some unnecessary rudeness. Imagine if you met Grace at a party and she excitedly tells you what she does. Then she whips out her phone and shows you the posted page. You catch the issue you pointed out (which in my mind is a legitimate point of concern), how would you bring it to her attention? If you imagine that scenario and compare it to your original comment then it might make more sense. At least that is how I try to think about it. I hope you find it helpful and thanks for adding yourself to the list of monthly donors [2].

[1] [http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[2] I am not affiliated with Watsi in any way except I am starting to donate very small amounts.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Spliddit: Splitting rent, goods and services evenly - <AUTHOR> http://www.spliddit.org/

<comment><USER2> Very cool stuff. In the real world, I would expect this to work best in fresh situations where nobody has an entrenched stake in whatever portion of the split they already have. For example, I might be willing to pay more for a larger room, but would I really do so if I felt bad about taking that room away from my friend? Not sure if the model accounts for such non-financial considerations that bleed into the financial. Maybe the authors will correct my misconceptions if they're here.

This work deserves more visibility than it's getting imho. Still I'm not sure how to use it in my own life.</comment>


FPGA/DNN Co-Design: An Efficient Methodology for IoT Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1904.04421 <comment><USER2> This is a terrible paper and the authors didn't employ even the most basic scientific standards. They search over the shape of the network that works best on the FPGA to give them their target performance on the FPGA. But they don't search over the network that gives the best target performance on the GPU! Of course the FPGA wins.

We have known for years now that deep networks are extremely compressible when they're trained. You can drop the vast majority of the weights and still maintain almost all of the performance. Just like you can drop the accuracy from floats, to ints, to int8, and even to bool for the weights and you can still perform well.

This papers is a joke and it deserves to be rejected from anywhere it's submitted. They optimize the shape of the FPGA network but not the GPU network. They don't apply the standard methods to prune weights in networks and they don't compare to those methods. They also pick one GPU network at random, lots of object detectors are faster than Yolo. People have explored the speed-performance tradeoff closely.

About FPGAs in general: there are great reasons why FPGAs have been just over the horizon for a long time. The toolchains suck and they're mostly very closed down. Debugging is very hard. They cost 20x or so as much as GPUs. Your code becomes very specific to one particular FPGA so upgrading is a total pain. And more.. There are plenty of better solutions out there like TPUs.

<comment><USER3> Only FPGAs have deterministic behavior, so they still have bright future. Tools is other topic, but they are perfect for this particular task. It makes no sense compare my 2 favorite IDEs: Qt and Vivado. Their purpose is very different. FPGA debugging is easy when you can simulate all your code before going to hardware. Hardware debugging with integrated logic analyzer is really easy. For hardcore projects you can take 3rd part logic analyzer that spits every event of the system over 10G Ethernet interface. Portability is the code depends solely on the author.

Edit: GPUs are nice and powerful, but they are big, require separate computer and lots of power.

<comment><USER4> > Only FPGAs have deterministic behavior

What? Calculations on GPUs are deterministic.

<comment><USER3> You still have computer with operating system attached to GPU. FPGA can operate standalone.

Edit: There are attempts to have real-time Linux. I saw impressive demos from OSADL, but none deployed in the field with GPU.

<comment><USER4> But FPGAs are still much more expensive than using GPUs overall, even if you include the cost of the computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The question in 2019 is not whether it outperforms FPGA, but whether it outperforms the various TPU-like things, like Google Edge TPU, Apple Neural Engine, Huawei's NPU, Bitmain, etc. And the answer to that question is very likely "no".</comment>


Microsoft Joins Open Source Security Foundation - <AUTHOR> https://www.microsoft.com/security/blog/2020/08/03/microsoft-open-source-security-foundation-founding-member-securing-open-source-software/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft is joining industry partners to create the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a new cross-industry collaboration hosted at the Linux Foundation. Microsoft is proud to be a founding member alongside GitHub, Google, IBM, JPMC, NCC Group, OWASP Foundation, and Red Hat.</comment>


Tips to Overcome Ageism in Hiring as a Software Professional - <AUTHOR> http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2013/01/31/ageism/

<comment><USER2> I experienced agism on the lower scale when I was young and would just blow them away in the interview with my technical knowledge and examples how I applied it. But would still be descriminated upon salary wise in that if I was older with the same skill set I would be paid more and that was due to me being young.

As I got older around the 30's I started to get a lot of `overqualified` after interviews which was down to the case of the manager worrying I'd take there job and presume as much OR was down to them not being able to pay me enough to what they thought they would have to pay me. Both silly as this was after interviews when they had seen my CV and skill set already and with that the shock of being that skilled should not be a reason to not offer the job. Secondly I had already seen the salary range offered and perks in the job description I applied for and for them to presume they would have to pay me more and not even try to make an offer is again just silly.

Maybe the best answear is when you get a lot of over qualified or other fob of excuses the law still allows to pass of as legaliesed descrimination then maybe you could look at working for yourself and with that charge companies 10x more than what they would pay you to do that task and one day employ somebody without putting them thru that whole bullshit.

But I did work with a chap who lied on his CV about his age and got a job, later on it came to light but the company was cool about it as they understood the reasons.

Sometimes it is best to not outshine there technical people too much initialy, get yoru foot in the door, but it is just as hard to dumb down than it is to smart up.

Bottom line you can be honest about yourself and they will lie about the reason for not hiring you or you can lie by ommision and blur that line a little. But in many ways there are good companies or parts of companies out there that are open to the full truth and are just after smebody who can do the job and that is improving compared to the older days on some levels. Though sadly the HR filtering mindset is mostly to blame for a lot of the issues we see today.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd never suggest lying on a resume, but I don't consider omission lying if the omission is for a reason. Should I include the job I had when I was 16 in a deli once I have 20 years of experience in another industry? I think most people would say it isn't lying to omit that, nor would it be lying to omit a help desk job that you took immediately after graduating college if you've been doing software development for the past 15 years. I think it's easy to rationalize why some jobs can be safely omitted without misrepresenting yourself.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to best release "Windows desktop software" in wild? - <AUTHOR> I am going to be releasing a windows desktop software for sportfist.com in wild soon and need HELP.
What steps did you take to maintain control over your software?
How often did you ping your server with what information? Which obfuscator did you use?
How did you make sure that software becomes useless on license expiry (given that most of the obfuscation can be reversed)?
Which software did you use to update your app (squirrel, clickonce etc)?
What's the cheapest way get certificate?
How did you get error log back to server (given that log files can be bulky & smaller log files might loose relevant info)?
How did you password protect your sqlite db (ilspy can be used to reverse any password protection strategy)?
How did you minimize support effort for your software?
Anything else I should keep in mind (release checklist, tips)? <comment><USER2> Rule of thumb do not put anything in the client that you do not want a user to see, any "protection" can and will be broken.

Obfuscation doesn't stop attacker nor does it even really slow them down it can hinder client side debugging and cause it's own set of issues (anti viruses for example tend to dislike obfuscated binaries even if they are signed).

Same thing with protecting the DB, what for? I'll assume you want to hide some business logic well either move it server side or have it exposed a password won't stop anyone, even if you super obfuscate it an attacker can just steal the connection string from memory ;)

Same goes for licensing, any scheme will be broken and unlike a game your software isn't time sensitive a copy protection mechanism that delays a crack even by a few days did its work as it's designed to give a window for the impulse buyers/easily frustrated that will buy the game if it's not cracked on release.

For commercial software a week or month won't matter so if it will be popular it will be craked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your points are valid, but I still want to make it as hard as possible for my software to be broken. First this will reduce number of counterfeit copies. Second this will give me peace of mind that I have done my part well.

<comment><USER2> Why? some basic licensing scheme might be required for some liability insurance and distribution channel deals.

Look at it this way, all software gets hacked within hours, if you delay the hacker by 30min is that worth investing your resources in?

If anything going the way of "begware" might be better since it takes little to no effort and provides just as much real world protection as virtually any other protection scheme.

If your customers are primarily businesses it doesn't matter, the liability of using counterfeit software is too large, if it's individuals then it's all about pricing and support.

It seems that you are aiming your product at a niche market which is good, but heck Siemens physical simulation software that doesn't have a large install base worldwide gets cracked, primarily because there are individuals and institutions in emerging markets that want to use it but cannot afford the 6 figures or so price tag.

But in all honesty a niche software aimed at a locked (racquet sports) western market with probably sufficiently high income isn't too much at risk of being pirated that much as long as the pricing isn't prohibitive.

Your efforts are better spent on pricing it right, marketing it well and having easy distribution channels to get the software distributed. You can sell digital software on Amazon these days (they email you the license key), you have the Windows App store, worry less about pirates and more about getting an easy way for people to get your software.

In all honesty a larger threat to your sales will be open source projects (if they exist) and existing software (again if it exists) and inaccessibility.

While I don't like to generalize too much I'm not sure how much overlap there is between racquet sports coaches, pros and semi-pros and TorrentLeech's user base.

Rule of thumb if the first thing someone googles after hearing about your software is "yoursoftware + crack" its going to be because you do not offer a proper evaluation version, or getting a legitimate copy is too difficult or price prohibitive for your targeted market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This isn't what you want to hear, but protecting desktop software from piracy isn't something you can bolt on at the end of a project.

If everything lives on the user's machine, there is no technology that can stop it from being pirated. That's why SaaS software exists and why just about every software company of any significance founded since 1995 (the dawn of the web and the dawn of ubiquitous piracy) is either a SaaS model, advertising model, or open-source-plus-support-or-hosting model.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started with SaaS and btw it's still supported. Specific section of users have requested some functionality to be available offline. Hence the need for desktop software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do not do ping backs without notifying and getting consent from the user. As most run a firewall or use a network with one which will more then likely block the request and data should not be sent to you without the user manual opt-in.

In terms of maintaining control over your software, it is not possible once you release it to the world. Most companies use a license key they generate on their server that works with the compiled version of the software the user downloads. As you will also need to support offline activations, just like Microsoft and other big companies do. You may also want to use a license file that the user can download. I would also recommend against having software stop working unless you insure the user knows up front that it is subscription based and has an explicit expiration date when they launch the program.

In terms of tracking registrations, I normally will allow the user to register the software on launch and if they do not want to, I have the option in a help menu but do not make it a requirement as some people need to work offline, and requiring an internet connection would cause some serious issues.

Obfuscation only deters the regular joe, the top of their game types can get what they are looking for very quickly so do not waste too much time and effort into code obfuscation. If you do want to many companies use Themida to handle their licensing and IP protection needs.

I normally use my own servers to host and distribute update code behind Akamai services so there is no direct connections back to my systems from non Akamai systems. This insure the servers are always available and I can scale easier and cheaper. In terms of updates I will ask the end user if they would like to automatically check for updates along with a preferred time interval. If they agree I will check for updates in the background matching their preference. If they select no, then I do not check for updates and will normally have a nice message appear 30 days later informing them there has not been a check for updates in 30 days with the option to never show the message again or check for updates.

I would stay away from cheapest way to get a certificate as those can be aligned with companies that do not follow the proper procedures at all times for being a certificate authority. Go with the trusted brand that shows up on most of the software you use and have a backup plan in case the CA gets revoked.

For errors, when one occurs I ask the user if they want to send the error message and logs to the developer. If they do not then I do not collect them, if they do then I will normally upload it the system and have them authenticate to validate the error/crash report. This allows them to see all of their reports and view the status of them.

I do not protect the sqlite databases in any way as if it is on their machine they should be able to read it. It really helps if there was an application issue and they are required to make manual updates in rare occasions.

For minimizing the support efforts I make highly detailed downloadable PDFs, CHM kits videos and customer FAQ pages. If they submit even the smallest how do I do ABC, I write a tutorial on how to do it, as if they asked someone else will do the same eventually. I also spend an extremely large amount of time on UI/UX to insure that it is dead simple to use. This also includes heavy automated GUI and CLI testing of the application, including how it acts on high/low end high/low bandwidth systems and different operating systems.

My biggest tip would be to make it dead easy for the end user to use your app, do not overly nag them, ask for permission before making any system changes or sending out or receiving any data. Also never send them promotional emails or mail unless they opt-in to receive them. One last thing, treat the user like someone you are trying to befriend face to face and treat them with respect and you will gain their loyalty and they will normally help you dramatically with word of mouth advertising without you having to ask them to do it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the detailed reply. I concur with most of your suggestions. Added creating detailed PDF manual for the software to list of my backlog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Did you consider distributing it through the Windows Store? It can, AFAIK,

\- accommodate desktop software (Win32) with the Desktop App Converter

\- deliver updates

\- take care of license stuff

<comment><AUTHOR> Is app store available on Windows 8/7? Not all of my clients are on Windows 10.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Zendesk is great for managing customer support.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I have used it for my previous project. One thing to keep in mind is that they have very steep pricing model.</comment></comment>


Does Mark Zuckerberg Really Deserve All That Money? - <AUTHOR> http://www.alternet.org/visions/154500/does_mark_zuckerberg_really_deserve_all_that_money/

<comment><USER2> I don't like the tone of this article. Does he really deserve the money? It's not for you to say.

Now, you could make the same claim they are making about anything: We all use tools and technology created by people before us.

Does that mean we somehow don't deserve our success any less?

alternet.org should be giving all of the ad revenue to the people that really deserve it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure he does! But he should also be humble which reminds me of the quote, "we stand on the shoulder of giants."

</comment><comment><USER4> this could be said about most filthy rich people - they're all over rated.</comment>


Ask HN: Questions about wordpress business(freelancing + premium themes) - <AUTHOR>

Hi, HNers, I have few questions about running wordpress business.
I am sure that many hackers in here have pretty solid experience about wordpress business so any comments will be appreciated!
1. paid premium themes/plugins business
For my limited experience, premium theme business  seems a quite profitable business.
Although from some comments from HN, the profit for this business is decling now. (tasty theme and wpreviewsite plugin), personally I still think it is the way to go.
But anyone in here had experience about promoting/marketing the premium theme and plugin?
Correct me if I was wrong, in general, these premium themes doesn't seem hard to code, some plugins, for example, gravity forms, takes time to build but still, not the rocket science. so i guess the problem is down to how to promote, do marketing, and sell these theme/plugins, any ideas suggestions?
2. freelancing Wordpress theme development
Quite often I am asked about quoting projects for wordpress theming dev work, , mainly about convert the design into wordpress theme.
But at least 8 out of 10 quote request I have, the client doesn't have very clear idea about what they want to have or the scope of the project doesn't have very clear cut.
So  things bite me are:
* submitting quote takes my time, and I am not able to charge the time for quoting projects so I dont want to invest hours before I can secure the project. How do you guys handle this?
* for the vague project, if I put  defensive ballpark (i.e., good buffer for the margin), the client could go away. but if I ask too much details, the client could go away either and as I said,  I dont want to invest hours before I can secure the project.
* communications are expensive, i.e., if i have to confirm many details with the client during the project so not good profit in the end.
small things, for example, some clients don't have good knowledge of wordpress,  it could take me another 20-30 mins to help them  to setup. Do you guys charge for this kinda of tasks?
So for freelancing part, I am looking for the good process to streamline the job. So I can spend less time on crap part and focusing on deliver good service and keep the reasonable profit. <comment><USER2> Web development is a feedback process because clients don't know what they want and they ask you to build off of their feelings, not specifications. So constant communication with clients is required. If cost of this is high for you, then you may not find this service profitable.

The good thing about wordpress theming is that while not every client knows what they want, most clients will be happy with the same couple of things. For this, I recommend building a theme that could act as a starting point for all projects... I mean that has all the luxury features a client could want, so you just remove the parts you don't need later on.

Having your product set up ahead of time as I described above is one way to get around wasting time when you're working with clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks i think the main motivation to explore the "product alike" theme is due to the frustration of costly customer support.

i am happy to drop 90% of the price for the theme as long as it can be a passive business :)</comment></comment>


How to Conquest Your Competitors with Online Advertising - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitalsuccess.us/blog/conquest-competitors-with-online-advertising.html <comment><USER2> Step 1: choose a partner who knows the difference between a noun and a verb.</comment>


Show HN: Baja Buggy Live Data Interface (Press Play) - <AUTHOR> http://adam.teaches.engineering/ <comment><AUTHOR> Also, drag the big white bar on the right left and right and up and down.</comment>


Apache Arrow Flight (replacement for ODBC) - <AUTHOR> https://www.dremio.com/understanding-apache-arrow-flight/ <comment><USER3> Click bait title, this is not a replacement for ODBC at all. It's a different protocol to fetch data.

<comment><USER4> It's possible the author really does believe it is a replacement, having only personally used ODBC in a very limited way himself

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Having used ODBC in the past, I fail to understand how this is an ODBC replacement at all.

Even the request per cell justification doesn't make any sense to Windows developers that ever done any ODBC programming.

<comment><USER4> I am not sure about that either - is he talking about SQLBindCol()?

Anyway this is only a replacement for ODBC for cherry-picked use cases - <USER2> limited subset of languages, _and_ where the types don't require any marshalling. If you're operating in that kind of environment and you need absolute speed you would just use RDMA!</comment></comment>


Who Needs an API? - <AUTHOR> http://errtheblog.com/posts/90-who-needs-an-api <comment><USER2> University registrars do.

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/con-mans- night...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/con-mans-nightmare- unlock_b_101686.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> the article's title is misleading. it's not about reasoning of whether an API is needed or not. it's about getting around the lack of an API if you program in Ruby.</comment></comment>


Russian spies claim they can now collect crypto keys–but don't say how - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/russian-spies-say-they-are-able-to-collect-crypto-keys-but-dont-say-how/ <comment><USER2> > _Russia 's intelligence agency the FSB, successor to the KGB, has posted a > notice on its website claiming that it now has the ability to collect crypto > keys for Internet services that use encryption. This meets a two-week > deadline given by Vladimir Putin to the FSB to develop such a capability. > However, no details have been provided of how the FSB is able to do this._

This definitely sounds like one of those "Tell the boss it's done, and hope he doesn't ask for it too soon" type of situation.

<comment><USER3> I'm surprised that the FSB was actually called upon, Russian SIGINT efforts are directed by the GRU, they inherited the KGB's SIGINT network and personnel, and they are the one heading Russia's terrestrial and space based SIGINT operations and platforms. The FSB is more akin to the FBI+ICE+ATF, MI5 or the Israeli Internal Security Service (Shin-Bet) they are responsible for state and internal security, not intelligence collection on this scale, also so far all the high confidence attributed Russian cyber operations were also attributed to the GRU not the FSB.

<comment><USER2> Secondary hypothesis: Putin is ex-KGB, he's probably got closer contacts in the FSB than the GRU; easy to tell them to say "yes" to whatever deadline he gives them. Looks good all around.

<comment><USER3> Putin main KGB career was in the 1st Directorate (Foreign Intelligence Service) in which he served as an FIO, which turned into the SVR when the Russian Federation was established, the SVR and GRU are 2 sides of the same coin. He later did serve as the director of the FSB for a very short period but he's best known for reforming the organization which resulted in major "layoffs" (and being laid off in the intelligence world, especially in pseudo authoritarian regimes rarely ends well), but again this is an odd case, but as some others have mentioned it seems to be a legal framework to compel companies (or individuals) to hand off their keys rather than some technical solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The FSB's announcement doesn't speak of any new technical capability, it just says that they formalized the legal procedure by which everyone should share their crypto keys with the government.

Source: I'm a Russian.

<comment><USER5> Just curious, any company operating in Russia have to comply or only companies hosted in Russia ? Basically, does Facebook have to comply ?

<comment><USER4> Yes. Any social network, instant messenger or anything else which uses crypto will have to share keys so that government can decrypt "anything they like".

So, Facebook will either comply, or it'll have to pay the fine (800k-1m rubles ≈ $15000), or it will be banned.

The law also prescribes for all "organizers of information distribution" to store the voice call recordings for 6 months and to store metadata for 3 years. Nobody is sure what "organizers of information distribution" means, but at the very least it includes all phone calls and instant messages.

Yes, it's crazy.

<comment><USER6> >Yes, it's crazy.

I agree. There is an english idiom, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket." I assume this includes government keys as well. This seems like a juicy target for hackers. The damage it could do to Russia is almost unimaginable.

<comment><USER4> There's also a Russian saying, "The strictness of Russian laws is balanced out by the fact that they don't have to be enforced".

Precedent: a new Personal Data Protection Law was passed two years ago. It included the crazy clause that all personal data of Russian citizens must be stored and processed on servers located in Russia. Facebook didn't comply, and I'm sure many other websites didn't comply too, but nobody cares, AFAICT.

On the other hand, our government can decide at any moment that they don't like some website, person or other entity, and they'll quickly find a way to get rid of this entity without breaking the law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber- hose_cryptanalysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis)

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this just the 526-FZ law from last year?

[http://www.hldataprotection.com/2015/01/articles/internation...](http://www.hldataprotection.com/2015/01/articles/international- eu-privacy/russia-changes-effective-date-of-data-localization-law-to- september-2015/)

Or is this something else?

</comment><comment><USER9> Certification is only for messengers, which care state secrets:

[http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/science/single.htm%21id%3D10437738%40f...](http://www.fsb.ru/fsb/science/single.htm%21id%3D10437738%40fsbResearchart.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is it just me or does Putin also have tiny hands?</comment>