Offer HN: Free Use of Agricultural Land 30 miles Northwest of Chicago - <AUTHOR> We own 13 acres of ag-zoned land just outside of Chicago. We have access to an adjacent 70 acres. I am offering free use of the land for anyone who has an interesting project that requires land and proximity suburban/urban environment--and wifi network.
The land is located 35-miles from downtown Chicago and 25 miles from O'Hare airport. It's smack-dab in the middle of suburbia and there is a Menards within walking distance. http://goo.gl/6tjC8g
If the idea is interesting enough, I'll even build you a shed or a cabin (out of 2x4s; nothing fancy).
The land will include the following amenities, all of which is available at no cost (for really cool projects).
--well water (within reason) --septic field --electricity (within reason) --wifi --fenced and unfenced acreage
Starting next year, there will be bees, flowers, goats, chickens, dogs, and alpaca on the land. And very likely a mini-donkey, to keep the coyotes at bay.
Feel free to suggest anything you actually want to implement. Or just suggest ideas that others may want to run with. Other than providing power and internet, I don't have the time to help with anything else.
Some ideas my wife and I have come up with:
--real-life Farmville with wifi robots --tiny, automated combines --experimental wind turbine development --cubesat ground stations (not really ag-related, but still cool) --goat-milking bots
This is no strings attached. We just want to encourage really interesting technical-agricultural projects. Let a thousand flowers bloom. <comment><USER2> I've always had the idea of growing sugarbeet on a conveyor belt. It would take 100-120 days to get from one end to another. You plant a seed with dirt at the start and a sugarbeet rolls off the end after the grow time. You filter out the sugarbeet from the dirt when it falls off (sieve).

The conveyor would be fully solar powered and it's power requirements would not be very much due to the slow progression.

Once you have the sugarbeet, you turn it in to ethanol, hopefully with another automated process.

Economics of sugarbeet to ethanol: [http://www.isosugar.org/Egypt/GL2.2.pdf](http://www.isosugar.org/Egypt/GL2.2.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Check out this conveyor belt farm in Japan: [http://youtu.be/F_WuJ9P1u-k](http://youtu.be/F_WuJ9P1u-k)

<comment><USER4> Combine this technique with multiple layers like this: [http://www.gereports.com/post/91250246340/lettuce-see-the- fu...](http://www.gereports.com/post/91250246340/lettuce-see-the-future- japanese-farmer-builds)

edit: fixed link....

<comment><USER2> Did you mean to post the same youtube clip as above?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Fully automated aquaponics ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaponics)). I've been designing and building aquaponics systems in my kitchen and front yard for the past 3 years. Nothing grows like an well-designed AP system. It's incredible how hands-off and easy they can be once setup. I'd be willing to help design and setup said system.

<comment><USER6> Please give me a link to anything from your communities that can help me get into that! Wikipedia is very good at never letting me find the people Who Do Things.

<comment><USER5> There are lots of smaller communities springing up but Aquaponics is a relatively new technology. There is not a central, well-established community for AP growing. However, here are a few links to some projects:

[http://www.growingpower.org/](http://www.growingpower.org/) They have reported some insane yields off very small plots using AP technology. Also, as they grow in the midwest - the climate and conditions should be relevant.

[http://practicalaquaponics.com/blog/](http://practicalaquaponics.com/blog/) Murray has been a go to for my research as he has been using AP in Australia for years and has a solid, proven modular system.

I do my research on various forums, but have learned the most through my own experimentation. Feel free to hit me up with any questions.

<comment><USER7> Do you have pictures or a website set up by any chance? I'd love to take a look at your tinkerings.

<comment><USER5> No site available yet. I'm working on a github release of the plans, but it still needs work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Raising insects as a protein source for chickens would be an interesting and worthwhile project. (says the UN, even: [http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e07.pdf](http://www.fao.org/docrep/018/i3253e/i3253e07.pdf)) Caveat: it seems that in the US, using insects as a livestock feed is explicitly legal only in Ohio. Which is odd since pastured chickens certainly gobble their share of bugs, but understandable since we don't want insects that are raised on ... extremely disgusting things ... being fed to the animals we eat.)

OfBug is already working on this, selling larvae for farmers who want to start raising insects as a protein source for their animals. [http://www.ofbug.com/animalfeed](http://www.ofbug.com/animalfeed)

It would be fun to experiment with modular units that you raise insects in. You'd keep a pipeline of bugs in various stages of development. Then, when it's time to feed the chickens, take a module, open it up for the chickens, and watch the fun! Maybe the bug container could be made of heavy paper so it could be cheap and biodegrade quickly. Or it could be something reusable like a bucket. (That's so simple I don't think it counts as an idea. But if someone figures out a good system, they'll surely be able to turn it into a book/product line/service. Maybe they'll go to work for the UN trying to get everyone to do it.)

Of course, rotating the chickens across vast pastures a la Joel Salatin is probably the ideal way to provide fresh daily bugs as far as chicken nutrition and land management is concerned.

<comment><USER9> > using insects as a livestock feed is explicitly legal only in Ohio

Really ? That's very surprising. What's the officially allowed livestock feed? Only corporation made stuff?

<comment><USER10> I believe mad cow disease put a stop to commercial use of animal components in feed for animals that will be consumed. I don't know if this applies to insects. When I was a kid we fed burnt chicken feathers to cows.. I think that is outlawed now as well (commercially, I'm sure you could do it for home use).

I think insects to chickens is a great idea though. There are some people that grow mealworms for chickens and I've seen dried mealworms at the feed store as chicken treats.

I had some chickens this year (my first year with them). A weasel got in through a small hole smaller than my fist and killed every chicken at about 9 weeks old. He then took about half of them back out the same hole... in pieces and left the remainder for me to find in the morning. It was a pretty gruesome scene. I set some traps but was never able to catch him. But before the massacre, I would take the chickens out at night and hold them under the back porch light and they would happily stuff themselves on insects and moths landing on the wall.

I want to come up with an insect trap so as to avoid the trouble of raising insects. They are all over anyway... why cultivate them?

I'm building a better coop and am going to try again next spring.

<comment><USER11> I bet you could design a lighted tunnel that moths from the street would happily follow straight into the chicken coop! There might need to be some trickery involved, as I think tend to fly around the light and not directly at it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very clever nerd sniping. Until I read this I had no idea how badly I wanted to do something with agro-tech. All my ideas so far are just too silly to mention.

<comment><USER13> I'll mention:

Square-foot garden rental. Mail in the seeds and specify the area needed (in 1ft^2 increments), service plants/waters/weeds/harvests accordingly, providing webcam/etc updates, mailing the produce back.

<comment><USER14> Even better, you get an API that gives you a photo of your square, air and soil humidity, temperature, and a call to water the square for x seconds. Planting and harvesting is manual, everything else you automate!

<comment><USER15> That sounds probably stupid, and like a tremendous amount of fun.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > And very likely a mini-donkey, to keep the coyotes at bay.

City-boy here. How do mini-donkeys keep coyotes at bay??

<comment><USER17> They're territorial, mean, and not particularly scared.

Does depend on number of donkeys vs number of coyotes though. They're ornery, not magic.

<comment><USER18> ok - that last line is my new email sig for the next 6 months. replacing "there's no problem so bad that you can't make it worse"

<comment><USER19> I might borrow it for my signature too ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> South East side of Chicago / Northwest Indiana resident, recently MIT graduated software developer wanting to put some of my skills to work on something like this. Microcontroller Project Laboratory at the 'tute left me with a Cypress PSOC and crazy ideas. The extent of my gardening knowledge ends with basil, thyme and peppermint, but I had the freshest teas and tastiest pizzas in my frat. :)

Let's make drones that recognize the heat patterns of weeds and pull them for us, or laser weed spores right out of the sky...

Let's tap into the local food movement. People want to know where their food comes from. Let's make them hyperaware - live video feeds of the way the seed was planted, they watch their food grow before their eyes.

<comment><USER21> A fellow NWI resident, mobile app designer and dev in Valpo. I would love to brainstorm/help. If you're interested, let me know!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I worked with villagers in Peace Corps and Navajos in schools. What small farm tools do they need? Lighting at night and cooking during the day w/o firewood?

UAV for plant and animal monitoring. [https://code.google.com/p/uavplayground/](https://code.google.com/p/uavplayground/) [http://unfoldingmaps.org/](http://unfoldingmaps.org/)

We are using Arduino, GPS, Raspberry Pi. [http://playground.arduino.cc/Tutorials/GPS](http://playground.arduino.cc/Tutorials/GPS)

Biohacking would reduce animal agriculture. [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/real-vegan- cheese](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/real-vegan-cheese)

Biochar for farming? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar)

Amaranth and quinoa sprouting. We grow these well in Santa Fe, NM. But sprouting is too hard. How do we create a sprouting machine to produce sprouts without mold and endless sprout rinsing?

How can we use Ecat and Blacklight power systems for decentralized farms? Lighting and cooking? Distillation, food sterlization, fermentation, refrigeration, biochar? [http://ecat.org](http://ecat.org) [http://www.blacklightpower.com/](http://www.blacklightpower.com/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hi, I have several good ideas, some of which I've already implemented on my own property, and thousands of (possibly) less viable ideas in my wastebasket. I'm an automation programmer/sysadmin and so everything I do has to be automatable. I've found thought that often things can be automated naturally, without arduino or anything. Here are things I would look at doing: 1\. Grassland management. See Alan Savoury [http://vimeo.com/80518559](http://vimeo.com/80518559) Note: I would do this with a honeycomb structure of hedges with automatic gates. 2\. Aquaponics. I have just finished/am finishing a ~60,000L aquaponics system at my house. Naturally automated (other than planting and harvesting, which can be automated/made efficient. See my blog (posted below)

Also read up on Ben Falk's research. If you're honestly wanting me to put something in place, we'd have to discuss the details and we'd have to fly out and put things in place. I lived in Wisconsin for years but I'm working in London now and honestly I'd be VERY interested in trying some things specific to the mid-west. Good luck! Oh, to contact me, jump on #opensourceecology on freenode and shout for me I'm always on.

<comment><USER24> Where's your blog? I'm curious to read more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" tiny, automated combines"_

I've seriously wanted to explore this for a long time. When current combine technology can cost well into the half million dollar range, it seems ripe for disruption. Chicago is out of my way (and I already own farmland of my own anyway) – its capital costs that have held me back. But if anyone actually takes on this project, I'll be watching very closely.

<comment><USER14> One cool related topic is how much agricultural automation gear costs. For a robo project we used a trimble GPS with sub-meter resolution that cost around 2k, but honestly I feel like with a local radio base-station and a gps you could probably come up with something similarly accurate and cheap for way less money! I'm sure when it comes to controlling the combines automatically, it gets even more exorbitant.

<comment><USER26> [http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision- gp...](http://hackaday.com/2013/08/05/centimeter-level-precision-gps-for-500/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Have you thought about contacting opensourceecology.org and offering these guys/gals?

</comment><comment><USER26> I live 12 miles away from you. Want help? This is exactly what I've been looking to do!

<comment><USER28> I live not too far away myself. Anyone taking @syedkarim up on his offer, I would love to help out!

<comment><AUTHOR> I welcome all assistance. Feel free to reach out.

<comment><AUTHOR> My contact info: Twitter @syedkarim Gmail: syed.f.karim

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Supercool. I have no doubts you'll find lots of Chicago-area people looking to put that land to use. However, if you are looking for a good base of people to reach out to my suggestion is to tap into Northwestern University. It's a bit hard to reach for most people there, but I'm sure you could find some people who would desire land for some project or another.

<comment><USER30> I go to NU and find this opportunity extremely interesting. I am not involved in any kind of agro-tech, but I will put a word in with people in the university's sustainability committee, who probably know of projects that might find this useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is an awesome idea/project. Sadly, I do not have any project ideas that the brilliant minds at John Deere haven't already come up with because those guys are awesome (Google can't beat their driverless tractors). I would really like to see what comes of this, though. Would you mind requiring documentation, a blog perhaps?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure thing. Even if no one runs with their own plans, I'll be documenting the home construction and small farm process.

<comment><USER32> If it is already up, link? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Not yet, though it should be done in the spring. Our house will basically be a 2000 square foot concrete warehouse. I'll be sure to stop-motion the construction process.

<comment><USER32> Interesting choice. :)

Well try to post it on HN when you are done, I'm curious.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> If you haven't already, you should check out The Plant. I took the trip to Chicago all the way from LA just to check out this place. When I went a couple years ago it was in its early stages, but it was still a great experience to tour the facility.

[http://www.plantchicago.com/](http://www.plantchicago.com/)

<comment><USER34> that is an amazing project. surprised they have no software partners to help build open platforms that help run the place :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great idea and gesture to the community.

Does any of your land receive irrigation?

I'd like to send you several surface and subsoil sensors to deploy that will communicate back to me via GPRS. Just a couple of minutes is needed to deploy each sensor.

And it would be very helpful if you could send back a soil sample at my expense.

Does this sound practical?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is absolutely practical. I'm happy to do this. The land was previously used as a tree farm, so there is no irrigation system. But there is some marshland on the property.

My contact info is in my profile. Very much looking forward to this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> You probably already know this, but if you think there might be wind generation potential I'd highly recommend throwing up an anemometer just for the heck of it. When I was mucking around that industry back in Oregon (helped a friend launch a business refurbishing turbines), the universities gave out loaners.

Also, you've probably already done this as well, but if the property has wetlands, those have HUGE ecological value particularly given the location. Lots of ways to monetize that ecological value these days via wetland banking, conservation easements, etc. You'd save some critters, reduce some local flooding, AND have some extra mad cash for crazy experiments. Triple win!

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you provide more details about the ways to monetize wetlands? The property has some minor wetlands; no standing water, but soft ground (plants are used to determine wetlands, anyway).

<comment><USER36> Both wetland banking and conservation easements effectively do the same thing...you transfer/sell the ecological value to someone that values it, and lock it into being a wetland into perpetuity (or some agreed-to number of years).

In the case of wetland banking, a developer may purchase the "banking credits" produced by your wetland to offset the destruction of a wetland on their site. Google around for wetland banking or mitigation banking.

With easements, you find a local organization (usually a local land trust or nonprofit, but could be a park district or other quasi-governmental agency) that has a defined mission of maintaining wetlands, combating the urbanization of our farmlands, etc. You agree to lock up the wetland portion of your property, they give you cash.

I don't know anyone there, but a good start might be your local NRDC office: [http://www.nrdc.org/about/chicago.asp](http://www.nrdc.org/about/chicago.asp)

They might also be a good resource if you start playing with wind turbines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I know a lot is happening with FarmBot right now, and that they've talked about doing larger-area experiments. You might consider getting in touch with them: [http://go.farmbot.it/](http://go.farmbot.it/)

</comment><comment><USER38> This guy can populate all the land with cool projects which will eventually benefit research - [http://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/smayfield](http://biology.ucsd.edu/research/faculty/smayfield)

</comment><comment><USER39> Great idea, have you informed your local makerspaces? They might be able to set up a competition.

[http://pumpingstationone.org/](http://pumpingstationone.org/) <\-- Here's one, though I've never been there.

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm halfway across the globe so I can't quite put my code where my mouth (well, fingers) is, but this is awesome! I hope you manage to make something great!

If anyone needs any help with writing low-level software for a project here, or with anything requiring electricity, I'd be happy to help if we can release my code/schematics under a reasonable-ish open source license (BSD, GPL, MIT...). I just moved in to a new apartment so I'm kindda busy for the next two months or so, but I should be able to squeeze in at least _some_ time.

</comment><comment><USER41> I am a software engineer living in fox river valley, south west of the place. I work in the mapping industry. If someone is doing a project that may require mapping, ping me and I may be able to help out.

Gmail: mempko

</comment><comment><USER42> I have always had the idea that a cool pan-age engineering education institute should be founded on such a space. In fact your offered location sounds ideal: close enough to a city to capitalize on its resources but sufficiently removed to be free of unwanted distractions.

Kids of all ages are accepted into the program, and they don't pay any fees, but have to sustain and support themselves. They form a tight-knit community as follows.

\- home schooling to a new level: kids of all ages and experiences are here. Teach each other in organized classes what you know and is useful, from arts, engineering, math, physics, biology, anything. Basic supervision and occasional classes by the "founding adults".

\- self-sustaining: farm some food, raise some animals, with help from on-site professionals. Use technology to improve this and help out those professionals (see below)

\- BYOS: build your own school. Identify needs of the community (we need a toolshed. we need a water sprinkler system. we need air conditioning...). Learn to raise funds, some from the "founding adults", some from parents, some from neighboring city. Kids learn to work within a timeline, a budget, scoping projects, designing engineering systems, implementing, and overcoming roadblocks. As a team.

\- Bring back to the real world: to graduate the institute, they basically have to create something of value to bring back to the rest of the world. Evaluated by a community panel of students, "founding adults" and external visitors/evaluators. This makes them apply what they've learned outside of the bubble they've been living in.

\- alumni could obviously love this place so much they want to stay on, in which case they transition to becoming "founding adults"

Obviously, there are no exams, or mandatory lectures, or homework, or any of that shit. Kids have to learn to be good people to not get expelled, and they have to produce _some_ meaningful value for the community every month of the year. That's it. It's a bit idealistic, but I think doable, and is more in- line with what education should be like in today's world.

If I were allowed to stay in the US and had the capital in my pocket to cover everything your generous offer didn't, I would be on the next flight to O'hare.

<comment><USER43> Sounds like a cult to me...

Or quarians, to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This is a great idea, and very generous of you. I hope it works out.

I am working on a website for small farmers to make it easier to sell what they are growing through marketing and simplified sales. I would be interested in setting up a small test farm, or just providing early access to what we are working on for whomever does use the space.

Send me an email at brad.bdavis1 gmail (or anyone else interested). I would like to chat.

</comment><comment><USER45> I've always wanted to get into plant breeding. Unfortunately it's a bit late in the year. One crazy idea is to use robots to individually monitor hundreds or thousands of different plants. I actually looked into doing this and it's by no means trivial. Land to experiment with isn't the limiting factor.

</comment><comment><USER46> My startup builds specialized autonomous vehicles for warehouses & factories but would be interested in experimenting in outdoor systems for agriculture.

I understand that John Deere and other companies have some amazing systems they've developed. Our goal is to produce vehicles that are easy to install, deploy, and low-cost.

</comment><comment><USER47> This is a great offer! If someone is interested in using this land to build a high tech farm to supply the Chicago area then we'd love to work with you on ways we can push the availability, product and price information out to local buyers and distributors in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER48> Really generous and cool of you guys to do this! That's personally too far out for me, but I could see a bunch of people taking you up on this!

It'd be cool to have a site that lists current projects on the land so we can follow and see progress.

</comment><comment><USER49> This is a perfect opportunity to crowdfund something really cool.

If you use Crowdtilt, you don't pay any fees since they are a YC company. Just use this promo code: hnfriends

[https://www.crowdtilt.com](https://www.crowdtilt.com)

</comment><comment><USER50> Even though it's ag-zoned, be sure you can add animals. Crops, sure, but adding animals to a farm surrounded by suburbia _when the animals weren 't there already_ may be against that specific zoning.

<comment><AUTHOR> In this case, we can go willy-nilly animal-crazy. Lake County fully supports the areas agricultural heritage, so as long as they are legitimately farm- related, animals are not a problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> hmmm. we're doing greenhouse climate control, irrigation and nutrient dosing for hydroponics. i'm gonna shoot my buddy an email to see if he's interested.

<comment><USER52> Cool! What's the state of the art in greenhouse climate control (preferably passive)? Is there a PassivHous equivalent standard for greenhouses? ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house))

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Great idea. Don't have an experiments in mind but would love to get involved with any projects that do get accepted. How can I drop you a mail?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Contact information is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Check out Www.edyn.com. We are a YC company making smart agricultural sensors. Would love to chat. Email us at firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER34> if you're excited about decentralized blockchain tech like Bitcoin and darkwallet, you should look up amir taaki and unsystem. they're looking for space:

[https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/UnSYSTEM/Opensource_c...](https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/UnSYSTEM/Opensource_city)

<comment><USER55> Why do people keep mentioning Dark Wallet? It looks like another wallet client to me.

<comment><USER34> I think the main draw is that the wallet is being built with first-class citizenship for many of the features that provide maximum anonymity. Most other wallets seem to be implementing those things slowly, without a real roadmap. Also, those building darkwallet are some of the folks who spec'd out the BIPs for those features (if i understand correctly).

"Features" being these: [1]

\- built-in implementation of COINJOIN protocol for mixing

\- STEALTH ADDRESSES for address re-use. As i understand it for darkwallet, the sender can take one recipient address (like a public donation address), and create a dummy transaction with data that only the receiver can decode, containing a private key with the funds. So the receiver scans the blockchain looking for the dummy data, and can claim it, but it looks like two separate transactions. Kinda like a drop-box with cryptic public note telling that the recipient will recognize as a clue to where the money is :) [2]

\- MULTISIG - being done elsewhere, but prioritized highly here.

\- various UX stuff like pockets and identities to help ensure that separate histories never mistakenly mix

Still investigating it all, so likely got some stuff a little mixed up

[1]: [https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/DarkWallet/Alpha#Intr...](https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/DarkWallet/Alpha#Introduction)

[2]: Really good reddit explanation [http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/24fy4v/dark_wallet_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/24fy4v/dark_wallet_try_it_out/ch6siqr)

<comment><USER55> Huh, that's a very nice list, thank you for the response!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> For the cabin, if I may suggest, [http://hexayurt.com](http://hexayurt.com)

</comment><comment><USER57> I live in Chicago and grow my own food in my yard. I'm highly interested in this.

How can we talk further?

<comment><AUTHOR> gmail: syed.f.karim

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Is all the land cleared or are there some wooded areas? Is any of the land sloped?

<comment><AUTHOR> Since it had previously been used as a tree farm, the land has few large clearings. Some portions are mildly wooded. It the midwest--no real slopes. But there is a gradient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> This is awesome idea. Hats off to syedkarim.

</comment><comment><USER60> This sounds like the perfect place to start building my giant mechanical kill bots

</comment><comment><USER61> Do you want some genetically engineered glowing plants? www.glowingplant.com</comment>


Evo, the First Prescription-Strength Video Game? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-22/project-evo-the-first-prescription-strength-video-game- <comment><USER2> I wrote a meditative slow game called Calmer (was iOS, sold terribly, no longer available). I was contacted by a US psychiatrist who said he prescribed it for anxiety patients.

It never occurred to me to try to raise tens of millions of dollars for medical trials and then charge a huge amount to insurers!

It does strike me as dubious that the investors are backing _this_ game. When surely any positive result would hold for any number of similar games. A branding play, presumably 'we're the game that did the trials'. But it does seem like that relies on ignorance of what games are available. It remains to be seen if and when they actually show the gameplay!

<comment><USER3> @sago There's a fair amount of this going on rightnow, that is, using mobile games to address anxiety. Partly because your phone is always there and having treatment options outside the hospital have historically been limited. Psychiatry is very different compared to other fields of medicine in that things tend to be difficult to measure objectively.

<comment><USER2> I'll respond to your email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> When a video game is backed by clinical trials, you could charge a ton of money for it. Like $100s per month that insurance plans will negotiate down to fewer $100s, but still 100s, per month. At least for a few years.

The difference is that games, unlike drugs, are not mechanistically patentable (correct me if wrong please). Someone could create a close-enough lookalike, and sell it for $1. And if it really works, which I sort of don't believe, then it would improve access to real therapy. A lookalike would not have some of their proprietary evaluation system based on ever-questionable psychology metrics, but I bet a few hours with the game would show the gist of it: "You're paying attention! High score!" "You're old and also can't rearrange the blocks like you used to," \-->poor executive function and memory, maybe dementia, etc

And yet given the ubiquity of the standard cognitive battery tests like MMSE and Minicog, I do question whether any therapist would ever recommend a substitute. The difference is these tests are often printed out on paper and royalties are not paid to the owners, whereas a tighly controlled Saas model would really cut down on illegal distribution and encourage alternatives.

<comment><USER5> Any thought on how a developer can adequately monetize a game so as to pay their own bills without charging ridiculous sums to begin with? I mean, say you know how to do something like this, you want to promote health, you loathe the way our current medical system bleeds patients for money. How do you find the sweet spot?

<comment><USER4> You could build a similar game, make no specific claims (or get a small focus- group to test it out), get a psychologist or two interested with a free trial, then transition to a respectable price later if it is adopted by the clinical community without FDA aproval. Or a modification of that ptocess, still without FDA approval. I don't think psychotherapy in general is FDA approved, as far as I can see, so I'm not even sure what the point of FDA approval is other than proving a principle of therapeutic effect to charge a high price and get access to the psychiatry market in addition to the psychology market.

<comment><USER5> Oh, I was thinking of a different condition. My question is more general than your answer seems to infer.

But thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've tried to find more information on what this game actually does, and how it treats ADHD / autism. I looked at a few articles and the Akili website, but details are pretty spare.

Does anyone have some additional information of how this video game plans to treat autism / ADHD?

</comment><comment><USER7> If they want to fight ADHD, I have a feeling meditation would be a better treatment. (Too bad you can't make money off it.) And this is coming from a HUGE fan of games (17 days till Fallout 4, OMG).

[http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri- stud...](http://www.feelguide.com/2014/11/19/harvard-unveils-mri-study- proving-meditation-literally-rebuilds-the-brains-gray-matter-in-8-weeks/)

<comment><USER8> 2010: not enough evidence, and any available evidence was low quality. [http://www.cochrane.org/CD006507/BEHAV_meditation- therapies-...](http://www.cochrane.org/CD006507/BEHAV_meditation-therapies- for-attention-deficithyperactivity-disorder-adhd)

It seems like it could be useful, so it's a shame either Cochrane haven't repeated their analysis or that other researchers aren't doing good quality research on meditation.

And you can make money off it. You give it a brand and sell DVDs. That brand then gets assessed, and promoted. Other people who come along and rip off the brand are not being recommended.

Current English advice for ADHD is here: [https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg72](https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/cg72)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I would love it if this turns out to be effective, but we've already seen something similar with Cogmed - bought by Pearson, can cost thousands of dollars, overhyped claims and highly dubious benefits

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

"Cogmed working memory training is sold as a tool for improving cognitive abilities, such as attention and reasoning. At present, this program is marketed to schools as a means of improving underperforming students' scholastic performance, and is also available at clinical practices as a treatment for ADHD. We review research conducted with Cogmed software and highlight several concerns regarding methodology and replicability of findings. We conclude that the claims made by Cogmed are largely unsubstantiated, and recommend that future research place greater emphasis on developing theoretically motivated accounts of working memory training."

[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368112...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211368112000629)

</comment><comment><USER10> Is someone trying to market mobile gaming as a therapeutic?

It looks like it does the same thing than other click-fest-attention-grabbing games on mobile OS. The claim that as you progress you need to "multitask" more, seems familiar. They maybe adding their on twist on it. So, Minion Rush with a metric based difficulty generator?

<comment><USER11> from the sound of it it is based off this[1] research about brain multitasking (where tasks require both hand eye coordination and higher reasoning functions)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlrOSbRzakE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlrOSbRzakE)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of my favorite Mac (anti-)games was a zen-like, music space platformer called Tranquility[1]. The relaxing "floating" gameplay was interesting enough, but the generated ambient music was the best part. I'd leave that running on the background like some rain loops I use nowadays. It was an online game, despite being single-player, and I paid $10 out of my allowance for a lifetime membership. I was pretty sad when it abruptly shut down some years afterward.

I've always hoped someone would remake it for mobile or VR. The music/synth engine alone would make a pretty neat app.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranquility_\(video_game\))

</comment><comment><USER8> There was Sparx in New Zealand, but that appears to be not available.

[https://www.sparx.org.nz/](https://www.sparx.org.nz/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20130511003457/http://sparx.org....](https://web.archive.org/web/20130511003457/http://sparx.org.nz/?Levelling- Up)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparx_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sparx_\(video_game\))

</comment><comment><USER13> Reminds me a little of some mobile games that are supposed to improve your vision by training your brain to be better at interpreting fuzzy input.

[http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-an-app-help-you-ditch- your-r...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/can-an-app-help-you-ditch-your-reading- glasses/)

</comment><comment><USER14> If a game is "prescribed" is it illegal to use without a perception?

<comment><USER15> You can be prescribed to take over-the-counter drugs, like "take two ibuprofen with each meal for 4 days; if symptoms persist, schedule another appointment". "Prescribed" doesn't necessarily mean "prescription-ONLY".

<comment><USER16> You can also be prescribed books.</comment></comment></comment>


Cheaper College Makes More Sense Than Free College - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-02-26/free-college-needs-to-help-poor-kids-and-avoid-tuition-inflation <comment><USER2> Hahaha. Their premise is that price controls might

>Forcing top public schools like the University of Texas or the University of Michigan to cut their budgets might weaken their ability to hire top professors and provide supportive living environments for students, thus reducing education quality.

Are they kidding? Luxury living environments don't make an education. And professors' salaries are the last thing universities spend money on these days.

Just to put it in context, a tenure track math professor could be getting $60K. They'd be the privileged elite, since most of the instructors are adjuncts who work for food.

(Source: ask people in academia, but really, public schools publish salary data, at least in TX)

Price controls are _exactly_ what we need. There's no way the universities will be paying their professors less than they already do. But perhaps some of those admin expenses would stop growing exponentially.

EDIT: some numbers for y'all:

[https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at- aus...](https://salaries.texastribune.org/university-of-texas-at-austin/)

Top guys make over $100K (still way less than a tech salary), but look at new hires and smallet schools. And TX is a relatively rich state.

<comment><USER3> "No state funds are used to pay for any salary in the UT athletic department, which is completely self-sufficient"

Source: [https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Texas- regents...](https://www.chron.com/sports/longhorns/article/Texas-regents- approve-Tom-Herman-s-five-year-10689744.php)

<comment><USER4> Who pays for facilities and player scholarships? It's not difficult to move numbers around.

<comment><USER3> Think of the athletic department as a self contained division within the enterprise known as UT. That division has its own P&L, and consistently makes a profit. [0]

[0] [https://www.hookem.com/story/texas-athletics-generates- recor...](https://www.hookem.com/story/texas-athletics-generates-record- breaking-214-8-million-2016-17-athletic-year/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've been surprised at the lack of good quantitative reporting on college costs over time. For state schools, yes, state funding has been cut, but I get the feeling that expenses have been skyrocketing. When I went to college in the late 90's, my dorm was from 1930. The building boom in dorms was only surpassed by the expansion of residence life administrators. These new buildings were quite opulent for college kids, attempting to lure out of state students paying higher tuition. While these out of state student bodies grew, the cost for in-state students exceeded inflation, even while being subsidized by out of state students. A simple analysis of dorm costs over time, broken down by administrator overhead would shed a substantial light on the problem. Unlike tuition, dorms likely weren't subsidized by tax payers and were designed to be cost neutral. I wouldn't even be surprised if now, dorm costs exceed what they're charging students, and constrained to raise prices by the external housing market, the excess administrators are funded by the general fund.

All the data exists and at public schools, is likely accessible by a reporter to validate these assumptions.

What I hear in the media is just simple politics - the left wants more funding for gender studies programs, and the right has cut the state funding of schools.

As the community college prices haven't increased anything like the university prices, while the teaching staff is paid similarly... I have to wonder what's going on with University expenses.

</comment><comment><USER3> Community college (at least in Texas) is already pretty damn cheap [0]. Even better, those credits transfer pretty easily to the large universities in the state.

I have no idea what other states look like, but going to community college for the first two years and then finishing at a University is hard to beat from a cost perspective. If you live at home and make $10/hour working at McDonald's this is affordable. More so if you spread the time out over more years.

[0] HCC, which is a huge community college with several campuses serving Houston, has a cost of $ 1075.50 for 15 hours, according to it's calculator : [https://www.hccs.edu/applying-and-paying/tuition- calculator/](https://www.hccs.edu/applying-and-paying/tuition-calculator/)</comment>


Corrupted Callings: Finding Your Life's Work vs Loving Your Life - <AUTHOR> http://calnewport.com/blog/2010/04/09/corrupted-callings-the-subtle-difference-between-finding-your-lifes-work-and-loving-your-life/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+StudyHacks+(Study+Hacks)&utm_content=Google+Reader

<comment><USER2> Excerpt:

 _As I've argued before, thirty years of research has identified the following three traits to be crucial if you want a rich life:_

      Autonomy — control over how you fill your time.
      Competence –  mastering unambiguously useful things.
      Relatedness — feeling of connection to others.

Given the theme, I am surprised this has not inspired any commentary. I would think it would resonate with the many folks here who are apparently looking to create the life of their dreams via entrepreneurship.

<comment><USER3> I'm not sure Entrepreneurship fits his model. I suppose it could but I don't think it has to.

<comment><USER2> Entrepreneurs generally need to be competent and being an entrepreneur generally gives one some degree of autonomy compared to a regular job. You also pretty much need to maintain decent relationships to people if you are going to thrive as an entrepreneur. I don't necessarily mean intimate relationships. I am sure plenty of entrepreneurs are basically workaholics and plenty of people here have indicated that a start-up typically leaves little time for dating. But there has to be some outreach to the community/large world and PG has compared cofounders to being like a spouse, but without the sex. So it seems to me that if you have a cofounder, you do need to have some basic relationship skills in order for the business to succeed.

Maybe I just have a different take on the article than you do? Not sure.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. I just have never really thought of entrepreneurship as a way to climb the ladders. I've always viewed entrepreneurship as a much purer meritocracy where the idea/product is more important than the degrees/employment history of the founders. Maybe I'm being a bit idealistic or naive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Web3Torrent – Adding Ethereum Micropayments to WebTorrent - <AUTHOR> https://blog.statechannels.org/introducing-web3torrent/ <comment><USER2> "Torrenting has an incentivization problem. There is sometimes a real lack of incentive to seed a file, especially for obscure files where you may only find a single digit number of people that have it. Adding monetary incentives to the existing torrenting structure should prove to be extremely interesting."

In my opinion, if torrenting meant one needs to pay for download, we would never have heard about torrents. This might give people more incentive to seed, but I'd never use it for what I use torrents - get stuff for free or reduce the load of FOSS servers.

To me it's the usual crypto thing - very cool from a technological perspective, not useful in real life.

edit: typos

<comment><USER3> People are already paying for downloading seeded torrents, they are just hidden behind private trackers, as the public torrent selection is quite small.

I'm also paying for youtube premium, at the same time the people I'm listening to have to be careful not to say ,,COVID-19'', because their revenue would drop to 0, even though it was the main meme of the last few months. I would happily pay them through lightning network instead.

<comment><USER4> Of the private trackers that I know of, only the ones that solicited donations were raided and taken down. I am unaware of any explicitly _paid_ private trackers, and such a business model seems like a great way to conjure the ire of the FBI.

<comment><USER5> They instead require seeding performance/behaviour that almost necessitates renting a seedbox.

<comment><USER6> I don't understand the sites that require a > 1.0 seed ratio... Like it's mathematically impossible for everyone to seed to > 1.0

<comment><USER7> It's possible because of freeleech downloads or finding the files elsewhere and seeding them, but > 1 ratio is very strict indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I honestly haven't spent much time looking into "virtual state channels", but I guess, as someone from Orchid, where we have been tackling this kind of problem in what I've always felt was a much simpler and "more straightforward" way than needing a full "layer 2" network--we are using "probabilistic nanopayments", which is a concept that goes back to the 90s and thereby doesn't have a lot of "crypto" context associated with it, but even that always felt like a feature ;P) that allows for amortized on-chain settlement in a fully peer-to-peer/distributed way (with no federated network of channel "hubs")--I'm really curious to know if anyone has tried to compare/contrast the techniques. (I'd then offer to help doing an integration of our system, which we've had in production for a bit now as part of an app that looks a bit like a pay-by-the-usage VPN market, into Web3Torrent, but I can't tell if the background goal here is to examine all solutions in an attempt to make Ethereum more usable, or if the effort is to narrowly focus on this specific vision of state channels, at which point that would clearly be an awkward interaction at best ;P.)

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm supprised no one has mentioned the fair exchange problem: if A, B engage in an exchange protocol, say A sends data to B while B paying to A, how to achieve fairness using an asynchornous protocol. Without a third party, either one of the two parties has to be in a position of advantage where it can choose to walk off without fulfilling his part of the contract.

The problem still exists under "micro-transaction" scheme, but in a less exploitable sense: because each transaction only involves a small amount of money or data, it's probably okay if you encountered with a cheater with one or two transactions. You can just block them after catching them cheating.

But the cheaters can still exploit this problem for their own gain: they just repeat this scheme with all other users on the network, until they received the whoe file without spending anything.

I don't see this protocol preventing such exploitable scenario. In fact it's a very difficult problem to solve efficiently and without a traditional trusted third party. It's even been proved [1] that strong fairness is impossible without a trusted third party. However relying on blockchain as a thrid party, it's possible to achieve this, and there are implementations [2] out there, but the challenge is throughput. Most of these solutions can only handle kilobytes/s of throughput. The computational barrier here is the vast amount of modular exponentiations.

[1] [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/courses/cs395t_fall04/pagni...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~shmat/courses/cs395t_fall04/pagnia.pdf) [2] [https://github.com/sec-bit/zkPoD-node](https://github.com/sec-bit/zkPoD- node)

<comment><USER10> Great point. Not sure about state channels, but there are proposals for the Lightning Network. You could reveal a packet of data inside the payment confirmation itself, so it becomes atomic [1]. However, there are still issues: throughput, obviously, but then there needs to be a way to check the packet of data for correctness.

[1] [https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning- dev/20...](https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/lightning- dev/2019-November/002313.html)

<comment><USER9> Yes, it's the basic idea of all the blockchain based implementations. The challenge here is you have to seal the data packet first, make a layer 2 commitment that has some kind of cryptographic binding to the data. Then you have to have a mechanism to atomically open the data while paying the contract. This can be done with some homomorphic properties of some cryptographic primitives but the computational cost is currently very high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like this approach to incentivize seeding, this could create a boom in torrenting if it works decently well and enough people hop on board. Too bad this is only running on test net, understandably.

<comment><USER12> Good luck trying to cash out any meaningful amount. You would need to declare source of funds and you really do not want write "piracy" to your bank.

<comment><USER13> Right but if you can get priority downloads on torrents, access to early releases or use the currency for other things (eg a VPN) Then you don't need to cash out at all

<comment><USER12> You are just shifting the anti-money laundering responsibility for merchants. It is not going to be a long term game.

<comment><USER13> Cash has been around for millennia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Web3Torrent FAQ: [https://www.notion.so/web3Torrent- FAQ-9f384d9dbadc4828aa81e1...](https://www.notion.so/web3Torrent- FAQ-9f384d9dbadc4828aa81e14fcc360466)

</comment><comment><USER15> How long until this is built into a decentralized PopcornTime-like service?

<comment><USER16> This would become the ultimate streaming service. All titles, from everywhere, available on one service. Add in a revenue sharing model for copyright holders and you've got the ultimate entertainment platform.

<comment><USER17> That was the original idea for Netflix, but the problem is that all the copyright holders decided that they wanted the profits that Netflix was pulling in and created their own streaming services.

Pretty soon some ISP is going to sell a bulk subscription to these streaming services alongside their internet package and we'll have truly come full circle.

<comment><USER16> Yep, all of the property owners want their rent seeking platforms.

The fun thing about this service is that the copyright holders don't get a choice. Their content will be on the platform regardless of what they want so they have an incentive to join the profit sharing in order to better control their metadata on the service and provide better support for their users. Or they can sit and complain and lose out on any of the profits.

<comment><USER18> Sounds kinda like the idea behind the Brave browser.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can routinely download any torrent in the world on top speed... What problem does it solve?

Torrents, as a poor choice for the "killer app", aside, state channels are a curious technology but most traditional implementations [fully pre- collateralized channels] have a design flaw where no one wants to put money to the end user, while happily accepting inward capacity from the senders. Haven't looked into this specific implementation, i wonder if it has a fix for this. "Virtual channels" sound relevant here.

<comment><USER20> Can you? What about these countless "0 seeders" rare materials which never start or stop forever at 90% mark?

<comment><USER19> Didn't experience this problem much.

If not found on any tracker, such a material is probably too rare for anyone to care about. Even with some monetization model in place, it would be unrealistic to keep all sorts of "rare" materials in the world to make $1 from a random stranger coming once a year.

Anyway, I would't pay $1

<comment><USER21> Rare materials are what made some trackers great. Remember what.cd? That was the most comprehensive music catalogue ever. And it worked.

Also, there's the issue of people finding rare source materials, but keeping them to themselves, because sharing is a hassle. Monetization would help incentivize these people.

<comment><USER19> Okay than just my two cents. I use torrents a lot and never had a problem finding what i needed, and i would certainly not pay a dime for some obscure per-bite streaming. Not in torrents.

<comment><USER22> Private trackers may have free entry but cost money in other ways. It's not easy to get buffer on a home connection. I have probably spent $200 on my seedbox over the years. Pay-per-bite sounds a lot cheaper in contrast.

<comment><USER19> In context of the US maybe it is different. Mine is 200mbit/s no caps $7/mo connection - common in Moscow - and I don't remember caring about traffic or speed ever. Any torrents with 5+ seeds is like whoooosh and it's done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there a BEP to make this work for native torrents too?

Also I don't understand the name "Web3torrent", is it intended to indicate a new version?

<comment><USER24> Web3 is basically distributed internet to my knowledge, things like hosting on IPFS etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > Users can upload files and begin seeding to earn small, incremental, amounts > of money from anyone that downloads from them.

How do you know that the user uploading the file actually owns the rights to distribute the file? Wouldn't this just incentivize those with the infrastructure (e.g., money/bandwidth) to take over the market and suddenly get paid for sharing others' content?

The idea of "let's combine a distributed filesharing system with a distributed currency" is completely sound, and one that I've worked on in the past. But this is a totally backwards way of approaching the problem. You have no way of actually paying the content creators, just the content hosts. It's just more of the same, and at least with Spotify I get some neat analytical tools. But this just seems like it's designed to help the people who run topsites, not the people who actually make the content and NEED the money.

Thumbs down until you figure out the problem of rights management through your protocol.

<comment><USER26> They're building a software, not a service. They can't control what their users do with their software, in the same way that Microsoft can't control if you use Word to re-publish Harry Potter under your name.

Evaluate them by the software they build, not by how potentially some people will use it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Can one state channel be used to pay multiple seeders? Or do I need to create a budget for each seeder I want to interact with?

<comment><USER28> The funds you deposit at the beginning can be used to pay multiple seeders. You have one "ledger channel", funded by that on-chain deposit, which is being used to open a "virtual channel" for each seeder you connect to.

There's a bit more about it in this post: [https://blog.statechannels.org/channels-funding- channels/](https://blog.statechannels.org/channels-funding-channels/).

<comment><USER27> Thank you for explanation. So this solves something I waited for very long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Could this be ported to bitcoin lightning ?

<comment><USER28> [Member of the statechannels.org team here.]

Not directly. State channels are similar to lightning, but there's a key difference:

* in lightning each payment is routed through the network independently, requiring participation from the intermediary nodes

* in a state channel the intermediary nodes are used to establish a channel and then the payments are direct

The upshot is that in state channels, once the connection is established, the payments are truly peer-to-peer, and don't need any interaction with a third party.

We use this property in Web3Torrent, as the payments are sent directly peer- to-peer on top of the webtorrent messaging layer. This wouldn't be possible with lightning, though you could probably find another way to accomplish something similar.

<comment><USER19> What happened to traditional definition of state channels?

It used to be just like payment channels, but with a bigger scope and more fancy state operations.

The trick with avoiding multiparties was called "virtual state channels" or something like that. When did it change?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Like other people here, I think it's technologically interesting. Also, like many others, I don't see any great practical use-cases for this right now.

However, "if you build it they will come". I'm excited to see what will the creative minds of the internet do with this technology once it exists.

</comment><comment><USER30> Im not sure this article understands why torrenting is popular.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is really cool! Will you be using it for other crypto as well?</comment>


Tim O'Reilly: Google Bets Big on HTML 5 - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/05/google-bets-big-on-html-5.html

<comment><USER2> How convenient for a web company to present a graph with no units or measure of "user experience" and, surprise, the web is almost as good as the desktop now. How... made up and fake.

How one earth did they measure "user experience"? What is responsible for the up and down fluctuations (note, on a logarithmic scale) in the relatively flat line for "native" user experience?

Finally, of course Google's own Chrome is the best.

<comment><USER3> Apparently Android 1.5 is twice as good as iPhone 2.2.

Can we get him to plot in emacs and vi and be done with it? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend anyone interested in Canvas to check out this exhibition of experiments. There are a lot of "I can't believe it's not Flash" projects collected here:

<http://processingjs.org/exhibition>

</comment><comment><USER5> HTML 5 sounds great, but until MS gets their act together and adds support for it... no dice.

<comment><USER5> C'mon, I understand this site is "Hacker News", but with IE having an installed base of 42+%, you can't down vote me for pointing out the truth...

(Source: <http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>)

<comment><USER6> Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are working together on HTML5.

That's consensus.

Pull that way if you want, progress goes the other way...

...with or without IE

<comment><USER7> If Tesla, Lamborghini, and Ferrari start making all electric cars, but Ford doesn't, that's consensus right?

Market share matters. Maybe for specialized hacker sites we can cater to only the good browsers, and graceful degradation is a must anyway, but it's a hard sell to build a successful mainstream site by eliminating 40% (or more) of users right off the bat.

<comment><USER8> That's... such a wonderful comparison. Because we've never seen an apparently dominant American car company lose serious ground to competitors because it refused to pay attention to what consumers actually wanted, have we?

<comment><USER7> And yet, how much have any of those companies changed the car industry? (Although I'll grant that Tesla has a chance).

My point is that the standards aren't set by the number of companies that support them, they're set by the market share. Talking about browser makers like IE doesn't exist is wishful thinking at this point, just like talking about car makers as if GM and Ford have already stopped producing cars is wishful thinking.

It doesn't mean that you shouldn't innovate around them, just that you can't call your work a 'standard' until at least a majority of the market is on board. (I mean standard in the market sense here, not standard in the W3C sense).

<comment><USER8> Just because the product still runs on gasoline, has a steering wheel, and puts four tires on the ground, that doesn't mean the industry around the product hasn't changed fairly dramatically. It's not a revolutionary change, sure, but honestly, neither is implementing web standards. You're still rendering html, applying css, and executing javascript.

As for the point about what constitutes a 'standard', you're just saying there's a difference between an official standard and a de facto standard. I won't dispute that. I don't think that's the story here, though. The story is that IE used to be the de facto standard through merit before growing lazy as hell and losing its technical lead, and that people are increasingly willing to think they can move forward without it. It's been steadily losing market share since 2004, while the web has absolutely exploded in that same time frame. Are you really saying that its a bad bet at this point to not particularly care about IE's attempts to bully the market by not playing nice with the standards the other browsers are agreeing to support?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, that was fast, I'm still sitting in the keynote.

</comment><comment><USER10> Video of keynote here: [http://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/googleio2009/key...](http://sites.google.com/a/pressatgoogle.com/googleio2009/keynote- videos)

</comment><comment><USER11> So iPhone's Safari browser now fully supports HTML 5; audio and video?

<comment><USER12> Last time I checked Google Chrome didn't support audio or video either, nor had they made any announcement about codec support when they did.

Apple, Opera & Mozilla all support the HTML5 but Apple supports H.264 with AAC, the others support Ogg Theora and Vorbis.

It would be a major coup if the owners of Youtube came out for non-proprietary audio and video codecs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> HTML5 is the next wave, be prepared...</comment>


ML researcher replies to request to review paper for closed journal - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/104362980539466846301/posts/WStiQ38Hioy <comment><USER2> The earliest really large-scale instance of this occurred in 2001, when more than 30,000 researchers signed a letter boycotting any journal which didn't make articles open access within 6 months of publication. The boycott meant not reviewing for, editing for, or publishing in, any such journal. Signatories included many of the best-known scientists in the world. One of the authors of the boycott was Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, who had just completed a term as Director of the US National Institutes of Health.

It's unclear how many of those researchers followed through on the boycott. Some did -- I've met many scientists who say they send letters similar to LeCun's. I've also met some who signed, but who now admit (often sheepishly) that they didn't follow through.

Text of the letter is here:

<http://www.plos.org/about/what-is-plos/early-history/>

<comment><USER3> I feel that it's important enough to reiterate that PLOS is a non-profit organisation and relies on donations to keep it going:

[http://www.plos.org/support-us/individual- membership/#make-a...](http://www.plos.org/support-us/individual- membership/#make-a-donation)

<comment><USER4> Huh? They actually charge a hefty fee for publishing: <http://www.plos.org/publish/pricing-policy/publication-fees/>

The donations and open-access merchandise are a nice extra.

They are turning fabulous profits (almost $3 million in 2010; $4 million in 2011 -- these are _net profits_ ), but, being a non-profit, must invest them back in the organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The machine learning community has been pushing for open access for quite awhile.

In 2001, the 40 editors of _Machine Learning_ (some of whom I was quite proud to know), resigned to start the JMLR with this letter: <http://www.sigir.org/forum/F2001/sigirFall01Letters.html> . Note also their citation of the similar actions taken by the editors of _Logic Programming_ in 1999.

EDIT: btw, the JMLR is at <http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/papers/> . moar edit: <http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/mloss/> for relevant open source code.

<comment><USER2> JMLR is an amazing success -- a great example of a very high quality open access journal that doesn't ask authors to pay any article charges.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's worth noting that Cosma Shalizi has been doing this for about six years now, and it's becoming increasingly popular in certain areas of academia.

Background:

<http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/442.html>

<http://masi.cscs.lsa.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/864.html>

[http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part- in-i...](http://gowers.wordpress.com/2012/01/21/elsevier-my-part-in-its- downfall/)

</comment><comment><USER7> Terry Tao made a good point when he joined the boycott of Elsevier journals. He said he would stop submitting to their journals, and stop doing editorial work for them, but declined to stop reviewing papers.

The reason he gave is that while he is at a stage in his career where there is no pressure to publish in any particular set of journals and so can exercise discretion in where he publishes, he recognizes that some mathematicians, for reasons beyond their control, are unable to do so, and he does not wish to penalize them.

For fields where many of the high impact journals are not yet open access, I think Tao's approach makes sense. Publishing in high impact journals greatly helps the careers of young researchers.

<comment><USER8> Weird. Terry Tao posting a note on his Google+ feed saying "this is a good paper", with few relevant +1s, should be more of a resume booster than any journal publication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my opinion, Yann LeCun is one of the top celebrities in ML/Neural Net research. His voice really has weight.

<comment><USER10> Definitely. At work today we were watching a video on Machine Learning by Andrew Ng and he made a number of references to LeCun's involvement the field, and listed him in the acknowledgements section of his talk. It has encouraged me to look into more of his areas of work.

I signed up for Andrew's ML course (<https://class.coursera.org/ml/lecture/preview> , start date is not announced yet). Really looking forward to it.

<comment><USER11> I took the very first course when it was a Stanford experiment and I have to say that was a lot of fun! It feels a bit downgraded in terms of difficulty but quality wise was very good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did a course this semester at university about bioinformatics. I was very impressed by their attitude to knowledge sharing. Almost every paper referenced by our professor and any citations in those papers that I used were published online for no charge. But even better than that, the data and code used to generate their results was shared too. Our professor noted that in the bioinformatics field a paper is considered pretty much worthless if the data isn't made easily available in one of a few archives.

I really hope the rest of acadaemia can follow through. It seems to be we might make more progress in all of the sciences if results are easily replicable and research is published to all.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is a very forthright reply by the researcher asked to review the paper. Right now, reviewing submissions to scientific journals is anonymous, and not well rewarded. Jelte Wicherts, writing in Frontiers of Computational Neuroscience, (an open-access journal) suggests new procedures

Jelte M. Wicherts, Rogier A. Kievit, Marjan Bakker and Denny Borsboom. Letting the daylight in: reviewing the reviewers and other ways to maximize transparency in science. Front. Comput. Neurosci., 03 April 2012 doi: 10.3389/fncom.2012.00020

[http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.338...](http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/10.3389/fncom.2012.00020/full)

for making the peer-review process in scientific publishing more rewarding and more reliable too. Wicherts does a lot of research on this issue to try to reduce the number of dubious publications in his main discipline, the psychology of human intelligence.

"With the emergence of online publishing, opportunities to maximize transparency of scientific research have grown considerably. However, these possibilities are still only marginally used. We argue for the implementation of (1) peer-reviewed peer review, (2) transparent editorial hierarchies, and (3) online data publication. First, peer-reviewed peer review entails a community-wide review system in which reviews are published online and rated by peers. This ensures accountability of reviewers, thereby increasing academic quality of reviews. Second, reviewers who write many highly regarded reviews may move to higher editorial positions. Third, online publication of data ensures the possibility of independent verification of inferential claims in published papers. This counters statistical errors and overly positive reporting of statistical results. We illustrate the benefits of these strategies by discussing an example in which the classical publication system has gone awry, namely controversial IQ research. We argue that this case would have likely been avoided using more transparent publication practices. We argue that the proposed system leads to better reviews, meritocratic editorial hierarchies, and a higher degree of replicability of statistical analyses."

</comment><comment><USER14> > I have pledged to no longer do any volunteer work, including reviewing, for > non-open access publications, which unfortunately includes pretty much every > publication from [commercial-publisher].

The volunteer aspect of peer review is the worst part. How much is an expert's time worth? How much is a two-sentence review worth to an author? If it were paid on an hourly basis using an honor system, it would be fantastic for quality and consistency.

That closed journals ask for volunteer review makes it doubly bad. But I still believe paid review for open access journals would be a good thing. I know, it is an unrealistic fantasy.

<comment><USER15> Speaking as an author, paper reviews are very helpful (although the useful ones are generally much more than two sentences). Speaking as a reviewer, I don't mind doing reviews for free (I consider it part of the job) and if volunteer reviews are needed to make open access work I think it's a worthy tradeoff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Professors and researchers should start charging for time spent helping the closed journals at the very least.

If you think your reviews are valuable, charge accordingly. You provide value to the publishing process and should capture that value. You are providing the service of "expertise". If you provided that service to a lawyer, you would earn several hundred dollars an hour.

There's probably a business opportunity in creating a clearinghouse for reviewers, editors, etc. and managing the accounting.

Edit: Grammaring more goodly

<comment><USER17> Professors are the producers and consumers of these journals. So, a group of your peers invests time reviewing your work and giving you helpful feedback, and you pay them back by reviewing other people's work.

Basically, it's a zero sum game. So if everybody paid for the reviews they did and then got paid for doing reviews, a lot of money would change hands and everybody would end up with the same amount of money they had to start with.

Of course, the companies that _publish_ the journals take a cut. But that's what it is, a cut. There are really communities of professors participating in a zero sum game.

<comment><USER18> I beg to differ a little, Professors should be paid to do reviews, and not pay to have reviews done.

The companies that publish the journals don't take a cut, they take the lion's share basically, paying a professor to review would work better in having them take a share of the pie.

<comment><USER17> But if you pay professors, you either pay them enough to make it worth their time, or you pay them less than that.

In the former case, you are incentivizing people to do reviews who are not actually qualified to do them. Or, incentivizing people to do more reviews than they have time to do a good job on.

In the latter case, there's not really any point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a great first step. But for this to really make a difference to the current traditional publishers - every researcher would need to follow this example. The other problem is access to all the previously published papers. So my question is : Who owns the copyright to a paper published in a major academic journal? Is it the original authors / researchers? One would think so since they are the authors. Or do they grant exclusive rights to the journals. If the authors own the copyrights, what is to stop them from uploading their papers to one of these Open access sites?

<comment><USER20> Typically the publisher retains copyright, they make the author(s) sign it away as a condition of publication. There are some exceptions.

By inserting themselves into the somewhat "broken" system of scientific publishing, the large publishers have been making a killing. (It's broken from an economic point of view because too much work is done for free.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I really don't want to derail the thread, but one of the people participating in that G+-thread (Mike Taylor) has written some very good articles at <http://reprog.wordpress.com/> (and I really can't remember if I picked up the subscription here or elsewhere)

</comment><comment><USER22> I would love it if somebody could register a domain and create a canned reply that we could copy paste when asked to review papers with appropriate links to all relevant open access projects.

</comment><comment><USER8> Who is that guy saying that publishing in arxiv is career suicide? Why are there ML people playing paper chase at universities when they can quickly make a fortune in industry and retire to a life of academic leisure. Of all people, ML researchers should have noticed that the 21st century has arrived.</comment>


SF Is One of the Worst-Paying Places in the US for Software Engineers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/wired-workplace/2017/02/san-francisco-actually-one-worst-paying-places-us-software-engineers/135283/ <comment><USER2> Disagree. I'm from the Midwest and live in SF now. Couldn't be happier with my change.

Data point of one:

\- $2200/mo 1BR apt in SF (Inner Sunset). Not trendy, but nice. I got it 3 years ago.

\- Working for a major tech co.

\- Roughly $275K/yr in total comp (salary/equity/bonuses). It goes up around $10-20k every year, as my equity bumps compound and I get raises.

\- Putting away $18k/yr in 401k + $9k company match.

\- Average bills of $1000/mo. Mostly leisure spending, but also includes the occasional Lyft, etc.

\- Mostly eat at work for free. Minimal food in the house for dinner, which I don't eat that often (I snack a lot at work and don't feel hungry). I think I eat out about 2x/week.

\- No car, though I occasionally ZipCar or mooch my GF's. CalTrain and Clipper card are paid by my company.

My net worth on Mint has increased roughly $50-100k/year since I began working here, due to cash savings and stock vesting. I take an international vacation every year, and visit my family 3x/year.

I previously worked in the Midwest and life wasn't nearly as fun, nor was I making as much money. More importantly, I didn't have job flexibility. The workplaces were terrible there (SV culture, silly as it can be, is much friendlier to employees), and there weren't as many jobs. They also didn't pay for public transport, give you equity bonuses, pay for your meals, or had office snacks. A spacious house couldn't make up for all of those differences.

I'm glad I came to SF, despite its downsides (like less space, commuting, etc). There is a big trend in bashing it, but if you're good at what you do and know how to manage your money, you can do pretty well here. Not to mention have a higher quality of life. And if I decide to move back (which is likely, so I can be closer to family) I'll go back with an amazing CV and probably better career options.

Stop listening to haters. Don't knock it till you try it.

<comment><USER3> As a San Franciscan for about 5 years, those costs sound realistic. However that total comp number is well above the norm for the area. Two points on that.

1\. If you're going to count equity, count it by the value at the time of the grant [minus strike price], not what it's worth now. In terms of comp, it was a gamble that paid off.

2\. It sounds like you work for one of the big 4? Not everybody gets this opportunity, in fact if your degree isn't in comp-sci they may not even want to talk to you (regardless of your IQ or what have you).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love seeing so many people re-package a news piece based on numbeo's cost of living model which is incredibly flawed and doesn't account for the wide variance of the cost of rent depending on whether one is single, is willing to live with roommates, is willing to deal with a longer commute, etc.

Trying to develop a salary + cost of living model that doesn't take into account one's personal priorities and preferences is foolhardy. And the piece Hired wrote did exactly that.

News flash: not everyone who lives in NYC or SF is paying $3000 a month in rent. Many of my friends in NYC are paying $800-1200 for a room in Brooklyn with a 25-35 minute commute on the subway. My friends in SF tell me that they pay more but certainly in the 1000-2000 range not the 2000-3000 range that's always quoted.

Get a significant other and move in together and you can split that in half.

But yes, if you want to live alone, 5 minutes walk from Mission Dolores park in SF or bring a family into Palo Alto then the bay is the worst paying place for you as a software engineer.

On the other hand, if you're willing to commute, or willing to have roommates, cook at home instead buying into the myth that you _have_ to go get brunch at some $12 avocado toast cafe, then you'll likely save more money in the long run in SF or NYC than in the Midwest, and yes, after cost of living and after tax. Unless during your job search you find yourself in the enviable position of finding salary offers in the midwest that are very close to the same salary offers you get in the high COL cities. If you do find that though then by all means live in the midwest. And those situations do exist but it's just that there are far fewer $100,000 jobs in Des Moines, IA than in Brooklyn, NY.

<comment><USER5> It's not SF/NY vs. Des Moines. It's SF/NY vs. Seattle/Austin/Denver/LA.

Your examples don't disprove the article's main point, which is that the cost of living in the Bay Area (and New York) erodes much of the salary bump you get by working in those places. Paying $1200 to rent a bedroom is normal in NY and SF, but that price will get you an entire apartment or more in many other places.

Look, to many of us, the Bay Area is worth its high cost - being in the center of the tech industry, surrounded by thousands of companies, and enjoying the beautiful weather of this region makes up for expensive housing. But as the tech industry grows in other cities and as their salaries increase, I'm beginning to seriously think about moving.

The kind of tradeoffs that I made when I was young, stuff like having roommates, living in a rundown place, longer commute, etc. increasingly don't make sense as I get older. I have a family, and looking for a house in the Bay Area is a sobering affair. Nothing can be had in the Peninsula for under $1.2 million, and even across the Bay homes are $800k plus.

Meanwhile my friends in Seattle and other cities are buying real family homes and living the American dream. I have to wonder, is it worth staying here?

<comment><USER6> The answer is no.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If I were a young software developer solely focused on saving as much money as possible, I would: move to SF in a heartbeat, work for Facebook, Google, or Amazon, pick a mission-critical team that exposed me to systems at massive scale, and live in a van a pleasant 5-10 minute bike ride from the office. After I felt comfortable I'd start to consult on the side on weekends for up to $53k of annual tax-free solo 401k sheltered income. Life doesn't present a ton of these "sell picks and shovels to gold miners" opportunities but this is definitely one of them.

<comment> et-al > After I felt comfortable I'd start to consult on the side on weekends for up > to $53k of annual tax-free solo 401k sheltered income.

May someone please explain this? I wasn't aware of a different 401k contribution limit for freelancing.

> Life doesn't present a ton of these "sell picks and shovels to gold miners" > opportunities but this is definitely one of them.

Feel like this is more akin to a goldminer working 24/7\. Selling "picks and shovels" is what landlords / AWS / food delivery / ride-shares are doing.

<comment><USER8> If the side business is profitable (and makes enough to enact this plan), it works like this for a solo 401(k): the employee's contribution (you) up to $18,000 and a profit sharing contribution up to 25% of the business earnings. For 2017, it maxes out at $54,000 if you're under 50 years old.

Keep in mind though that maximums are per person not per company; if you keep the day job 401(k) (and potential match) you'd have to reduce the contributions from your side business to not exceed the maximum.

[https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/one- participant-401k-pl...](https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/one- participant-401k-plans) [https://scs.fidelity.com/products/mobile/sepMobile.shtml](https://scs.fidelity.com/products/mobile/sepMobile.shtml)

<comment><USER7> The employee contribution maximum is limited per person, but the employer contribution maximum is per company (if the companies are unrelated, by ownership structure). Some illustrative answers here:

[https://www.quora.com/401-k-Is-it-possible-to-fund-both-a- So...](https://www.quora.com/401-k-Is-it-possible-to-fund-both-a- Solo-401k-and-a-regular-401k-at-the-same-time)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> They're ignoring equity compensation, which accounts for most of a senior engineer's income at a California tech company.

<comment><USER10> Uh, not until they're vested and exercise their options.

Grants are really not that common.

<comment><USER11> You're thinking of startups options. The OP is referring to stock compensation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> All these data on SF salaries missing the point that SF is not about high salary etc

You have some of the brightest and intelligent people of the world in one place. It is like Athens in Ancient Greece,

<comment><USER3> As an SF resident of 5 years, I'm not sure I'd compare this place to Athens. Not saying you haven't had that experience, but I haven't so your mileage may vary.</comment></comment>


Is Spotify spying on my Rdio activity? - <AUTHOR> http://creativaldo.tumblr.com/post/73662726109/is-spotify-spying-on-my-rdio-activity

<comment><USER2> The only thing I could think of is that Rdio or any ad-network is sharing information with a 3rd party and that 3rd party pushing the info to Spotify. The other way is through your social network like activity. Did you "like" the band on Rdio?

<comment><USER3> Rdio has public listening history built in: [http://www.rdio.com/people/[INSERT](http://www.rdio.com/people/\[INSERT) USERNAME]/history/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why would rdio make this information public? It seems like really valuable information that they are just freely allowing to get scraped

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Do you have Radio connected to Facebook? It posts stuff you listen to if you do; that could easily explain _how_ Spotify got the information...

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have Rdio connected to fb, however it isn't posting anything on my fb wall

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wouldn't be surprised at all if they were indeed spying. But it might been pure coincidence. Can anybody from Spotify or Rdio shed some light?</comment>


Ask HN: need advice for a friend who's just starting out - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone!
I have a fairly smart friend. He's not a programmer - he dabbled in it in high school, thought it was kinda cool, but didn't think of it as a future career. Having spent a good few years in other jobs (manual / small managerial) he's now quite keen on the idea of writing code for a living  :-) He's now in a position where he can allow himself some 4-5 months of uninterrupted studying. That's a reasonable amount of time to learn something, but far from enough to get to a graduate level.
He asked me something along the lines of, "what do I need to learn to get a job, and what can I learn on the job?" Thing is, I'm a fairly junior Java developer in a huge corporation. In a way such a company would be great - they are fairly tolerant towards juniors and give them time to learn. But they won't even look in your direction without a CS diploma and/or relevant experience.
I wonder if some startups/smaller companies would be willing to take on a junior developer (@junior salary), and if so, what deliverables would he have to show to get through the door? e.g. an end-to-end RoR|django app on github?
Otherwise, perhaps with some knowledge of M$ technologies he could get a job doing business reports or something similar. His degree was in business management, so that might help a little.
(He's in London, by the way).
So, fellow HN'ers, what advice would you give? All opinions welcome!
Thanks! <comment><USER2> I am in nearly exactly the same position as your friend, and I am attending Dev Bootcamp in the fall.

If he only wants to do development as an interesting way to make more money or have greater job security, some combination of self-learning and mentoring over a year's time I would think could get him into _a_ development position _somewhere_ , which I'm sure could lead to bigger and better things down the line.

However, if your friend thinks he might truly be passionate about coding, I highly recommend he (rigorously research and) attend one of the coding "bootcamps" that has sprung up over the past year. I'm sure that not all of these bootcamps are created equal, but the good ones seem to be run by passionate, skilled, and dedicated people that will do their part and more to give you the necessary tools to be a developer in a desirable segment of the industry. The job placement statistics at many of these schools would seem to bear that out. You can look up lots of info on them on Quora or at www.bootcamper.io (seems to be down at the moment).

The "highly selective" part of most of these schools is not based on a candidate's level of past experience (part of the point is to give opportunities to candidates with little CS experience). I'd say if your friend can present himself well-to-very-well in written communication, show that he has great desire and commitment to learn (assuming that he does), and show that he is already taking basic steps to learn on his own, he has a good shot at making it into one of these bootcamps.

Simply put, I think they're worth it (at least the top 3 or top 5 bootcamps -- can't speak for the others). The beginning of anybody's career is a time where investment of time and money can return outsize benefits. More investment yields exponentially larger results in terms of career trajectory.

And, to encourage you/him, if he doesn't think he's cut out for one of these programs, of course he can accomplish the same things on his own, if he wants to badly enough. I just happen to think that the programs are well worth it, and therefore he should consider them.

Hope that helps! I'll obviously know more when I've actually made it through Dev Bootcamp and hopefully find employment, but this is the best advice I could give your friend, knowing what I know so far.

</comment><comment><USER3> Timely post - I've just visited Makers Academy (<http://makersacademy.com>) this afternoon. They run a 12-week intensive web development course, teaching complete novices enough programming to land an entry level job. They have partnerships with many companies to place their students.

I was quite impressed with their approach. It's very hands-on and really teaches people to think from the fundamentals in terms of problem solving, rather than just copy pasting code.

It's an option worth looking at.

Disclaimer: I'm considering taking up a teaching role at Makers Academy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen that, but he couldn't afford the tuition fee. Plus, the "highly selective" is somewhat discouraging, as I'm not sure he has anything to offer that would make him stand out from the crowd, more the opposite.

<comment><USER3> If you say he's fairly smart, then the selection shouldn't be a problem. They do offer some scholarships, but the fees might still be too steep for him.

If you email me (see profile), I'll try and see if I can help in any way.

<comment><AUTHOR> emailed, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> >I wonder if some startups/smaller companies would be willing to take on a junior developer (@junior salary), and if so, what deliverables would he have to show to get through the door? e.g. an end-to-end RoR|django app on github?

Of course they would! Providing he has built some open source / portfolio work by the end of those 5 months, a lot of companies would be more than willing to take on a junior at that level. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> well, that's a good start. but reading HN is about as close as I ever get to startups, so I really don't know what technologies to recommend him to study, nor what scope his projects should reach before he can realistically expect to be employable. Any pointers? e.g. Is RoR as ubiquitous as I imagine it to be?

<comment><USER4> The technology (at least in my experience) isn't as important as the ability to code. If you can code perfect Ruby, chances are you can (with a bit of practice) do the same in Python.

However, in reality a lot of companies hire purely on a per language basis which sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I would have him start interviewing and I would not take time off to study.

Build a project on nights and weekends and use that as a talking point in an interview. Besides that, just keep interviewing.

I think there's enough of a demand that he may be able to slip through the cracks at one company even if not fully qualified.</comment>


Attending college right after high school is generally a bad idea - <AUTHOR> http://wesleyzhao.com/attending-college-right-after-high-school-is

<comment><USER2> I would have posted to your blog, but my fully legitimate credentials returned: "We think this might be spam. Sorry! To verify your identity, please log in and try your comment again".

Something that strikes me as ideal (for the target audience I imagine your article is written for), is enlisting in the Armed Forces (Any DoD branch or the Coast Guard) as the benefits are threefold:

1\. As soon as four years after highschool, you start college after getting some life experience and visiting new locations.

2\. You get some job experience to apply to your academic experience, with 6 years in you could graduate with more than 4 years of applicable industry experience with expensive (read "cutting edge") equipment.

3\. When you do go to college, it'll be paid for in full ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-9/11_Veterans_Educational_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-9/11_Veterans_Educational_Assistance_Act_of_2008)). Not to mention a possible sign-on bonus (often $5,000+) that you did remember to put into a Savings Account four years ago, right?</comment>


Nodemailer: Easy e-mail sending from your Node.js applications - <AUTHOR> http://www.nodemailer.com/

<comment><USER2> Is this really much easier than using [https://www.npmjs.org/package/mailer](https://www.npmjs.org/package/mailer)? Also, unless nodemailer is written by the same developer as mailer, it appears they copied the tagline, "simple as cake".

            email.send({
                host : "smtp.gmail.com",              // smtp server hostname
                port : "465",                     // smtp server port
                ssl: true,
                domain : "localhost",            // domain used by client to identify itself to server
                to : "firstname.lastname@example.com",
                from : 'email@example.com',
                subject : 'My Subject',
                body: 'Blah\nBlah\nBlah.,
                authentication : "login",        // auth login is supported; anything else is no auth
                username : '',
                password : ''
            },
            function (err, result) {
            });

<comment><USER3> "mailer" and its derivatives are deprecated in favor of "nodemailer". Besides, "mailer" uses "nodemailer" as its backend (it used to have its own SMTP client but it had a lot of shortcomings), so it doesn't really count. You could as well create your own wrapper areound "nodemailer" that would be even easier to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started using this in all my node projects a couple years ago. It has been my favorite email library in any language I've used. I love the pre-configured services for gmail and sendgrid, etc. Surprised to see it posted - I figured everyone already was using it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a module you can use on top of Nodemailer to send beautiful emails effortlessly.

[https://github.com/bevacqua/campaign](https://github.com/bevacqua/campaign)

[https://github.com/bevacqua/campaign#using- nodemailer](https://github.com/bevacqua/campaign#using-nodemailer)

<comment><USER6> That looks really nice. I'll give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Been using it for re than a year. Sent more than a million newsletters over SES and SendGrid. Never had a problem.

Website does not seem to have a link to repo though: [https://github.com/andris9/Nodemailer](https://github.com/andris9/Nodemailer)

<comment><USER8> Thanks, was wondering if it was on github!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice module. Logo is pretty nifty too. The default "well known" server list is particularly useful.

If you happen to use this with AWS watch out though. It's hard coded to US east. If you're not in that region then you should configure the server manually to a local end point so that you don't have to pay for bandwidth. Would be a tad faster too.

[1]: [https://github.com/andris9/Nodemailer/blob/master/lib/wellkn...](https://github.com/andris9/Nodemailer/blob/master/lib/wellknown.js#L46)

</comment><comment><USER10> This might be a minor comment, but I noticed you guys are using Node.js with Express.js to render nodemailer.com. You can (and maybe should) change the favicon from the default Express.js favicon.

You can do so by removing `app.use(express.favicon());` from the generated app.js file. At the very least, you could add your own favicon in your public/ folder to make the project page look (albeit in the most vain sense) more polished.

</comment><comment><USER11> Regardless of which package you use for delivering email, I can't recommend enough to put the email delivery code into an async job queue that automatically retries.

Even with major providers there are enough occasional blips that you don't want to impact delivery of your email. Additionally, it would allow you to decouple sending (popping from the queue) if you ever needed to delay it momentarily.

<comment><USER12> What async job queue do you recommend? Is it decoupled from your app server?

<comment><USER13> How about a mail server?

<comment><USER12> My use isn't specific to mail. Instead I would like something similar to Resque in functionality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Such a lovely logo. Compliments to the designer

</comment><comment><USER15> I used this in my product. Good work! :)

<comment><USER16> Same here, between Nodemailer and Haraka, SMTP relaying with node is a breeze

<comment><USER13> Thanks! (I wrote Haraka)

<comment><USER16> And node-phantom-simple :D (saved my bacon with that also)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This module is the main cog behind the email delivery service application in my organization, which I built over a year ago, and it has been supremely reliable while handling 40-50 million emails per month. Just my testimonial.

</comment><comment><USER18> The product itself looks great but am I missing something with the tagline? Surely it should be either "easy as pie" or "a piece of cake".

<comment><USER3> I'm the author of Nodemailer. I'm not a native english speaker and I "borrowed" the tagline from a Node.js module by Marak Squires and didn't realize that "easy as cake" is not a widely used expression but something he probably made up himself.

<comment><USER18> Fair enough, thanks for all your hard work btw!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm familiar with this as one of the dependencies of Ghost. It was great to see that it includes sending via SES.

</comment><comment><USER20> We've used Nodemailer in production at ClassDojo to send at least 100m emails - it's a great module.</comment>