The Trucking Industry Needs More Drivers. Maybe It Needs to Pay More - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-industry-needs-more-drivers-it-should-try-paying-more.html?ref=business&_r=0 <comment><USER2> It is not a matter of paying "more" but changing how they pay

Most Truckers are paid by the mile... So if your sitting in traffic no pay (next time your stopped in traffic look around, how many semi's are sitting with you, most of those drivers are doing it for free)

Then there is load and unload time, which for some companies is non-paid, other is a nominal flat rate of like $35 that could take up hours of your day.

Then there is the "hours of service" which many companies require their drivers go "off duty" when they arrive at warehouse, but the warehouse required them to monitor the CB Radio to be called to pull into a dock, so their "sleep" time is taken up waiting to be unloaded, and they do this waiting for free.

Trucking companies need to end the practice of per mile pay, and start paying drivers Per Hour or a Salary (non-exempt) like every other company.

<comment><USER3> I disagree.

An hourly wage is a very special payment system which requires some kind of foreman to be sustainable. Otherwise, the labour industry tends to drift towards inefficiencies that allow them to claim money for less work. This is classic agency risk, where the incentives are not aligned, and heading down this path often entails major bureaucracies to try and keep everyone honest (like time clocks and punch cards, a "boss" looking over you, etc).

Simply paying more within the existing structure makes perfect sense. It will actually have a disproportionate effect on recruitment when some of the most efficient drivers start bragging about making $160,000 a year driving trucks (this is one of the big drivers of immigration by the way. Compared to poorer nations, the streets are paved in gold in the USA, and some lucky immigrants find shovels to dig it up. Unfortunately, most people who come never get a shovel so it remains but a dream...).

Paying more by the mile absorbs the costs of refuelling and traffic, without giving any driver an incentive to waste time when, for example refuelling the truck. So rational truckers will go to gas stations that are more efficient and will get out of there as soon as they can.

Where the trucker has no agency, however, it could make sense to pay by the hour. For example, since loading is in the hands of another group as soon as the truck docks in, and since it can vary quite a bit based on warehouse, better that the driver is paid for time sitting around. You could argue that the driver's incentive is to rush the loaders, but I doubt they have any coercion in that process. So better that the shipping company have an incentive to make loadings as fast possible through influence over choice of warehouse, penalties to warehouses for slow loadings, etc.

I've never really thought about this industry before, but thinking about it now makes it sound very interesting!

<comment><USER4> >This is classic agency risk, where the incentives are not aligned

Paying by the mile is even worse. How much incentive does the company have to make unloading and loading more efficient when they get it for free?

<comment><USER5> If drivers spend much time loading and unloading, and not getting paid, the amount paid per mile required to attract drivers will rise.

<comment><USER4> What seems more likely, actually, is that you will get Akerlof's classic lemon market - due to the information asymmetry of paying by the mile.

The _employer_ knows how much value the driver's gonna contribute for the money they pay, but the potential drivers aren't at all sure how much income they'll get paid for their time/effort. They basically only have hearsay from other drivers/ex-drivers to go on. Furthermore, some are getting burned and leaving the industry (I know personally of one; and there's another in this very thread), and telling others about their experiences.

The number of confounding variables and risks (including but not limited to loading/unloading) are simply too high for them to be able to make an accurate judgment about their potential income.

The natural effect of a lemon market is that the market dries up because the buyers/sellers simply stop transacting when the problems caused by the information asymmetry are too much.

That actually seems to be exactly the situation we're getting here. The wages don't seem to be _that_ bad actually, but the risk is all piled on to the driver, so new recruits are very reluctant to enter the industry after hearing a few horror stories.

Lots of startups have gone down for similar reasons - pricing that is too complex makes potential customers go 'fuck it' and go with the devil they know.

<comment><USER6> The market for lemons doesn't really apply here, because a lemon market requires a supply that is heavily weighted toward worthless goods, to drag the average down to 0 as the "best" opportunities are withdrawn from market.

<comment><USER7> Assume labor is the currency and the good is cash. If a majority of trucking employers give employees a mediocre or poor deal, then the supply of trucking jobs in the aggregate delivers poor value for the required labor input, in comparison to other lines of employment. Good firms either go out of business (due to being undercut) or retain their drivers, such that there are few openings at good firms.

In an ideal world good firms would increase their market share, but doing that requires satisfying trucking consumers and they want their goods shipped as cheaply and quickly as possible. So the interests of consumers and suppliers (of trucking services, ie drivers) are not very well aligned. I don't know what can be done about this; as a consumer I have absolutely no clue which hauling companies handle the goods I purchase, nor do I have any clue how much of a good's price consists of shipping costs. So I can't really vote with my dollars to let store owners know that I'm willing to pay a little more to support trucking companies that treat their employees well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sorry, Swift's stock price is more about the horror show that is Swift's corporate governance. Especially CEO Jerry Moyes. The very fact that he'll keep his job after this dismal lack of forecasting is an example of how much corruption there is there. Honestly, I would not be surprised if it was intentional.

He had to step down 10 years ago due to insider trading with Swift shares. Now he's back after a they brought it private and then to a second IPO.

The stock tanked, in my opinion, because investors know they can't trust Jerry Moyes and Swift's board.

More fun stuff.

[http://teamster.org/content/teamsters-warn-swift- transportat...](http://teamster.org/content/teamsters-warn-swift- transportation-board-lets-ceo-pledge-nearly-25-percent-outstanding) [http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/9796076/nhl-lawsuit- jerry-...](http://espn.go.com/nhl/story/_/id/9796076/nhl-lawsuit-jerry-moyes- former-phoenix-coyotes-owner-thrown-according-report)

</comment><comment><USER9> My semi-retired parents were lured in by the claims of making upwards of 80K a year if you worked hard enough. They did it for about three years and quit with more debt than when they started. You can only make decent money if you own your own rig, which costs as much as a house. Trucking is heavily regulated, but in ways that dump all the problems on the drivers. You are in competition with other drivers, which pretty much guarantees you're going to be cooking the books increasingly regulated-away ways, not to mention how dangerous it is.

There are exceptions to everything though, if you've been on the road long enough you make more money per mile as you build up a reputation, or you can make money money working for fedex or doing hazardous materials shipping, but it takes years of toiling in shit conditions for low pay to get to that point.

They also told me that they met a lot of people who clearly hadn't done the math, and were losing money instead of making it despite working very hard. The cost of the truck alone puts you in massive debt with no guarantee of work to pay it off.

As far as automating it, maybe in 20 years it will be viable. It's not useful to talk about that today.

<comment><USER10> I think automation will happen sooner than we expect. 5-8 years seems likely to me. There is a hurdle with interstate trucking, where some states will lag behind in allowing it and providing the required bureaucratic support. But it is already technologically possible, if not yet a fully developed product. It just takes one company to get it allowed in one state and start doing it, the others will follow. Self driving personal vehicles are 1-3 years away from being on the market, it seems natural that trucking will follow.

I think trained people might still handle the parking though for a while :P

<comment><USER9> My impression from riding along with my parents is that every day is filled with mostly improvisation. From dealing with bad, aggressive drivers who will get you and themselves killed, to rapidly changing road and weather conditions, to widely disparate entrances and loading docks, inaccurate GPS, etc. it just seems like the times that the self-driving would benefit are so infrequent with regular cross-country driving and delivery. This seems so different than a self-driving car that mostly is going to take you to and from work and the grocery store, etc.

There is also the liability issue, I mentioned that things are rigged to dump the hassles on the drivers and this is one of them. You're economically pressured to falsify log data, so when you nod off and accidentally kill some people, your employer is off the hook. A nice working self-driving truck would reduce fatalities caused by gross driver error, but I guess it would put the trucking company back on the hook in the cases where a catastrophe did happen. In the short term self-driving vehicles might be undesirable to some companies because it might eliminate their ability to shove negative externalities onto a third party (the drivers.)

self-driving commercial trucks will happen, I just think 5-8 years is not likely.

<comment><USER11> Maybe they will initially be used for long straight lines on highways and the human drivers will only be responsible for the "last mile" drive.

<comment><USER12> We call that a "train". Steel wheels on steel rails just works better over long distances. Then trucks to haul from station to individual loading docks. I also live about 25 miles from a small port that on rare occasion does get container freight traffic.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermodal_freight_transport)

Lots of existing infrastructure for this, cheaper to use than to put AI in each truck.

<comment><USER13> I'd love to agree because rail is beautiful. However rail is even more over regulated than trucking. Also it requires massive capital investments, both in the rail system and operators to get economies of scale, which causes problems with monopolistic pricing. Also the trucking industry has huge $$$ influence on politicians.

On the plus side for rail, high speed automated container systems could significantly reduce delays, automate shunting yards, etc. The difference between automated docks like Rotterdam and the manual way trains are loaded is stark: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXZQ7emHC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXZQ7emHC0) [http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/35955-extreme- engi...](http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/35955-extreme-engineering- loading-container-train-video.htm)

The use of driver-less trains is feasible, but the rail network (especially signalling) in America is so antiquated. Perhaps outsource it to the Netherlands...

Automated rail container system fails: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7I4wa1gpoc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7I4wa1gpoc)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > But corporate America has become so parsimonious about paying workers > outside the executive suite that meaningful wage increases may seem an > unacceptable affront. In this environment, it may be easier to say "There is > a shortage of skilled workers" than "We aren't paying our workers enough," > even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing.

<comment><USER15> And it's not like trucking is a good job. For that princely (!!!) $41k / year, you are often away from home. I'd bet you don't get comped for all the meals you eat on the road either, so there goes a bunch of money spent eating out, even if it is just at truck stop diners. If you have a family, and and your partner has a job -- as he or she must, given that shit salary -- knock $4-$10k/year off for daycare as well. I mean, I'm just _stunned_ people aren't begging for these jobs. Not to mention that from some reading, and I unfortunately forgot the link, it appears that truckers have to choose between keeping their jobs or obeying safety regulations. But never you worry, if they get caught violating sleep requirements only they get in trouble, not the companies.

It's funny; this story is a perfect analogy [1] for [2] something [3] but [4] I [5] just [6] can't [7] think [8] of [9] what [10]. Meanwhile, true story: a former employer not only completely lied to me about what I'd be doing, but then threw a fit when I quit two months in. And sent potential engineering recruits a python puzzle with a naked woman in it. It's a shock why employers have trouble hiring is all I'm saying...

[1] [http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB113210508287498432](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB113210508287498432)

[2] [http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/11/1201127/-Facebook-C...](http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/11/1201127/-Facebook- CEO-Wants-More-H-1B-Visas)

[3] [http://www.forbes.com/sites/ayoomojola/2013/07/15/the- shorta...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ayoomojola/2013/07/15/the-shortage-of- developer-talent-is-crushing-mobile/)

[4] [http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/11/technology/zuckerberg- tech-p...](http://money.cnn.com/2013/04/11/technology/zuckerberg-tech- pac/index.html)

[5] [http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/240163468/nice- work...](http://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/240163468/nice-work-if-you- can-get-it-the-it-talent-shortage-is-more-serious-than-you-think.htm)

[6] [http://www.infoworld.com/t/h-1b/silicon-valley-leaders- unite...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/h-1b/silicon-valley-leaders-unite-fwdus- in-push-more-h-1b-visas-216359)

[7] [http://thehill.com/policy/technology/258985-microsoft- lack-o...](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/258985-microsoft-lack-of-tech- workers-approaching-genuine-crisis)

[8] [http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Real- estate-...](http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/Real-estate-taxes- soar-along-with-home-prices-5673040.php)

[9] [http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/08/07/gasp_sfs_housing_ma...](http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2014/08/07/gasp_sfs_housing_market_is_not_that_overvalued_after_all.php)

[10] [http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real- estate/201...](http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real- estate/2014/06/bay-area-home-prices-san-francisco-case-shiller.html?page=all)

<comment><USER16> But then again it is rather interdependent. Why would they want to pay more if they get enough people knocking on their door.

In other words for everyone saying "hell no" there is another that say "ok, i have no choice, i'll take it" well the business moves on.

I have also heard some East Europeans (Polish for ex) drivers come here (not sure on what kind of visa) and they are willing to work for much less, then send money home. Same patterns as farm workers from Latin America working here.

<comment><USER17> Concur (with anecdotal data from observation); Tons of Eastern European drivers now hauling through the heartland. I bet it pays better than being a software developer back home.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Hmmm, why are we still talking about truck drivers exactly?

The trucking industry is about to tank hard. Mercedes demo'd its first driverless truck a couple of weeks ago (!). Yes, there will be specialists drivers sure and niche companies. But the day of the interstate road train will be done shortly.

The biggest new niche in my mind will be vehicle security. These trucks will be flying solo across the nation - unmanned. How will these trucks be fitted out against good ol' fashioned highway robbers in remote areas that are barely on the grid?

Fun times ahead.

(!). [http://www.caradvice.com.au/295713/self-driving-mercedes- ben...](http://www.caradvice.com.au/295713/self-driving-mercedes-benz-truck- demonstrated-in-germany/)

<comment><USER19> I like your optimism, but realistically self driving trucks on American highways are a long way off. How will the trucks refuel? How will they handle loading and unloading? How will they handle inclement weather? What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads? Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

Even Mercedes says in that article, "the Highway Pilot system could be launched into production trucks 'as early as 2025 if conditions permit'." Which is basically corporate speak for, "we have no idea if this will ever launch, but it will get investors excited now."

<comment><USER20> >How will the trucks refuel?

Full serve gas stations.

>How will they handle loading and unloading?

Do long haul drivers typically load/unload themselves these days? I would have thought that would have been the task of the warehouse staff on either end.

>How will they handle inclement weather?

Probably better than human driven trucks why would you think they couldn't?

>What is the insurance liability for putting them on public roads?

Probably less than human driven trucks since you don't have to worry about a lot of things that will cause problems for those such as tired/impared drivers.

>Who will be sued when a driverless truck crashes into another car (at fault or not)?

The trucks insurance company. Same as it would currently happen.

<comment><USER21> Going to disagree with you there on inclement weather. Getting a self-driving system to work on sunny days and clear nights when there's an otherwise clean view of the road and surroundings is one thing, and that's the challenge I see most people working on right now.

Now try the same thing in the middle of winter, the equivalent of visual noise is obstructing both the road and the surroundings. People are good at picking out patterns in this condition, especially if they've been driving for a while, computers notsomuch.

Sure, it's a matter of the tech advancing, but solving the second problem is harder than solving the first.

<comment><USER20> People are horrible at driving in any kind of bad weather. They speed through foggy conditions where they can't see 50 feet in front of them. They drive too fast or erratically on icy or snowy conditions, or they just flat out don't know how to handle the conditions and swerve/oversteer.

If people were any good at it there would be no increase in crashes during winter, foggy or wet weather conditions.

Self driving vehicles will have the same issues with seeing in the visual spectrum in bad weather as humans but they will also have the advantage of IR for example in knowing if something is in the fog/snow in front of them and how to react to that.

You also remove the emotional component. Humans in really bad weather tend to either ignore it(which is risky) or drive scared(which leads to over reactions which leads to accidents). For the second case things like over correcting, slamming on breaks, swerving, etc all lead to tons of accidents that are easily avoidable.

<comment><USER21> I said people were good at picking out patterns, not that they were necessarily good drivers.

<comment><USER20> Yup and I said with technology it doesn't really matter since computers aren't limited to our visual spectrum(they can use thermal imaging when needed for example) so they won't have the same difficulty seeing in those conditions as we do.

This is further compounded by the fact that even if humans can see the patterns they rarely act on them perfectly and often do the exact opposite of what they should do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Sounds like the same argument being used for more H1B visas. We cant find enough (cheap) resources locally so we need to import some from elsewhere willing to work for a pittance.

<comment><USER23> The strength of the argument changes with market elasticity.

If a single company has trouble hiring, they can raise salaries. However, if the pool of workers remains finite, all you are really doing is switching which company has the hiring problem. If two people need an all day plumbing job done today, and there's only one plumber in time, one of them is not going to get it done, regardless of how much they pay.

So when we look industry-wide, what the salary increases do is make people change professions. If it takes the same effort to become a truck driver than a cab driver, but the truck driver makes 4 times as much, everything else being equal, we'll have more trouble finding people to be cabbies, as long as there's an opportunity trucking. People then decide which training they get to choose. But the real demand problem is not solved until the workers are trained.

We don't even need workers for this. Imagine that we suddenly need 60 million gallons of 25 year old scotch every day. It doesn't matter how much we want to pay: There isn't enough scotch to meet demand today. If we paid a million dollars a bottle, it'd not make a difference: We'd only get an increase in supply as time goes by, and people just put more scotch on casks, and don't open the casks at 15 years, because 25 makes more money: But nothing is going to make this demand shock get fixed earlier, no matter how much you pay.

So the harder it is to actually perform the job, and the longer it takes to train, the stronger the immigration argument gets.

<comment><USER24> > if the pool of workers remains finite

You take an alternative. There may only be one plumber, but if he is bid up to a million I am going to spend a day doing it myself, buy an entirely new WHATEVER_WE_ARE_REPLACING or do without. If the price of scotchs go to 50 usd per centilitier I am going to buy rum. If programmers start charging 10000 usd/day I am going to continue doing my spreadsheets by hand.

Your analysis fails to take into account substitute goods. If a taxi gets too expensive I can rent a car (no driver cost), take public transportation (lot less driver cost) or stay the night and go home when I am sober.

<comment><USER25> _> If programmers start charging 10000 usd/day I am going to continue doing my spreadsheets by hand._

This is funny for two reasons:

1\. Programmers _do_ earn $1000 USD/day—it's only $125/hour. My rate is $225 and has been for years.

2\. Spreadsheets are a killer app precisely because you _don 't_ need to be a programmer to use them. Prior to spreadsheets, all computer-based accounting was done by hiring and paying programmers. Spreadsheets ended that which is why they are (and continue to be) so successful.

:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Automating a fleet of trucks has come up few times in these comments. Many commenters have raised concerns of difficult and special situations.

I have worked with machine vision and currently I'm doing my PhD in computational logistics (mainly working on automating the deployment of Vehicle Routing Systems). With this background in mind have given some tought to this: What would be needed, at least in the transition phase, is technology that would allow remote drive-by-wire of trucks in difficult situations (platforms, urban traffic) and wheater conditions.

Imagine a system not entirely unlike the unmanned UAVs the US is using but for civilian use of remote controlling trucks. One driver could probably handle dowzen or so trucks because they would drive under full automation at least 90% of the time. In addition the truck driver could have a normal 9 to 5 job.

Of course there are technical challenges like communications delay etc., but I'd like to hear your opinion on feasibility of such system.

<comment><USER27> Delay in the control loop is always critical to accurate control. But in the case of a large heavy truck, we already have to live with that (slow acceleration/braking/steering response built in).

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I've got a good friend with his Masters degree who quit teaching school to drive a truck because it paid so much more. He makes a great deal more than $41 K a year. It must depend on the particular company and the alternatives where you live.

<comment><USER29> I researched this a bunch at one point. Some of the primary variables are:

* Licensure (e.g. if you have a Hazmat endorsement) * Route type (Long haul pays a lot more) * Driver's safety record * Employment status - Independent contractors who own their own rig vs captive employees Etc.

<comment><USER28> My friend picks up high end foreign cars at the port and takes them to the different dealerships. They're very high priced vehicles and the company is extremely fussy about every step of the process. Most of his fellow drivers are college graduates by the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is way too far down the fold:

> For example, new safety requirements mean that individual truckers drive > fewer miles than a decade ago: An average long-haul truck can now cover > 8,000 miles a month, down from almost 11,000 in 2007, according to the trade > association.

So the maximum miles driven per month is 73% of what it was in 2007, whereas the inflation-adjusted salary is 97% (based on eyeballing the graph) of what it was.

Now, if despite the higher maximum drivers were going, say 9000 miles a month before 2007, the difference would be less stark. Nevertheless, viewing from that perspective makes the situation seem much different.

Of course, that doesn't account for the 03-07 downward trend.

And while I do agree in theory that they should "just" raise wages if they need more drivers, we should be careful jumping to conclusions as outsiders. After all, it is possible, for instance, that paying new (and probably many existing) drivers more could eat up the revenues gained from the customers they're currently turning away. And moreover, said prospective customers could adapt so that by the time the trucking companies have enough drivers, the orders are no longer there.

</comment><comment><USER31> Maybe transport & trucking needs to be automated. If there's a lack of labourers, why not fill in the gaps with self-driving semis?

<comment><USER32> I think we're quite a bit farther away from self-driving semis than from self- driving cars. Big trucks are much more dangerous vehicles than cars: their braking distances are much longer, their weight makes it possible for them to destroy any cars in their path, they can require multiple lanes to make a turn, many car drivers don't know how to drive safely near trucks, etc.

<comment><USER33> No kidding. I'll get downvoted for this but the Hacker News demographic hasn't spent much time on the road. Try driving down 710 toward Long Beach. Last time I lived down there, tons of trucks, tiny lanes, uneven pavement, completely insane. I want to see a self-driving car navigate Manhattan or Brooklyn during the day, normal driving rules do not apply there, New York drivers mean business ;-)

<comment><USER34> Sure, but the entire 710 just needs to be demolished. They should be moving those containers out of the port on trains, but they've got it backwards. They move the containers out of the port on trucks, to intermodal terminals inland where they get switched to trains. Completely backwards. If they just punched the railroads through all the way to Long Beach then they wouldn't need those trucks on 710 humping boxes to the Inland Empire.

<comment><USER35> > If they just punched the railroads through

Isn't that what the Alameda Corridor project did? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alameda_Corridor)

<comment><USER34> Yes, but they still don't have the capacity commensurate with the number of boats offloading at the ports.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Margins are VERY tight in transportation. In a solid company most of this should be going to pay drivers, and in decent companies it does they can make a pretty decent paycheck (none of that per mile crap) BUT with licensing points and experience being the biggest roadblocks getting decent drivers. Plus how many kids are growing up to be truck drivers these days... not many

<comment><USER37> Then trucking companies can maintain their margins by charging more to haul goods. If there really is excess demand, then the market should be able to absorb price increases.

<comment><USER36> Safety would be the largest cut into margins. Completely unplanned and everything from bumping into a yellow pole to an accident. Those all cost hundreds of thousands apprx 130k for a yellow pole...the market is not ready or willing for the risk that the companies traditionally absorb.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Is the real story that the overhead for trucking is too large and we should switch to more cost effective transport like rail?

</comment><comment><USER39> I've got family in the auto transport brokerage industry. Can confirm that there is a shortage of drivers.

<comment><USER40> I have some familiarity with the trucking industry in the midwest. I can also confirm that there's a shortage of drivers in the region.

The funny thing is that at some companies, working some overtime (although under the safety limit), drivers can make ~$80k including benefits, which is pretty good considering the cost of living there.

<comment><USER2> The only people I know that can make that level of money is Owner Operators, and while gross my be 80K most of that ends up back in the truck.

If you know of a company driver making 80K a year let me know the name of that company

<comment><USER40> They are all hazardous material tank drivers. Some are owner operators, some are not. And some were close to that as local drivers.

<comment><USER2> 1\. Hazardous drivers have a shit load more regulations on them, and I do not believe it would be worth 80K to haul some of that shit

2\. You have to be an experienced driver with spotless driving record for most companies, I would hope these companies are not hiring newly minted 6 week school drivers to haul HazMat.

3\. this specialize area of trucking should be used to gauge the wider industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> THis will be moot in a few years when automated cars are in place, truckers will be begging for jobs.

</comment><comment><USER42> More star journalism from the NY Times:

"In this environment, it may be easier to say 'There is a shortage of skilled workers' than 'We aren't paying our workers enough,' even if, in economic terms, those come down to the same thing."

No, those aren't necessarily the same thing. Even if there was a surplus of licensed truck drivers to meet the new demand, it does not mean that the sole reason trucking companies don't wish to hire more workers is because it will cost too much in wages. I suspect the reason they don't hire more truckers to fill existing empty truck seats is for the following reasons:

1) Every truck runs with a huge damage liability (life insurance, lost goods, rebates to customers). A string of truck crashes from the increased volume would rapidly eat into the profits of more business.

2) Operating costs: gas, computer systems, dispatchers, parts, labor. It may be cheaper to raise prices on existing routes, and leave a few trucks empty.

Here's another snippit:

"It's not an ideal job for everyone. There is no question that trucking is hard work, necessitating long hours and longer stretches away from family. But that's why it is well compensated, at least in comparison to other jobs not requiring college degrees."

Nobody is paid because the job is hard and lonely. Oil workers in North Dakota aren't paid 250k a year because it's "5 times" harder than a desk job of 50k. Companies pay workers based on what the company expects its customers will pay. No matter how hard the job is, if the market doesn't want to pay higher prices to move goods via truck (which is what would happen if you rose trucker's salaries to 50k instead of 40k, for example), then the companies employing the truckers won't want to take on those higher wage costs.

So TLDR, if you feel you can run a more cost-efficient trucking company, then go fucking do it.

</comment><comment><USER43> Or maybe they need to invest in self-driving trucks R&D.

</comment><comment><USER44> Aaaand just another reason with liberal economics is bullsh _t. Perfect market my_ ss.</comment>


Post a possibly good app idea that you have no intention of doing yourself. - <AUTHOR> At school we often had to draw class diagrams, basically boxes containing some text, with arrows pointing to other boxes. The free tool we were using for this was made with Java, and would often be very buggy and was generally hated. I couldn't really find anything I liked and ended up making the diagrams in Gimp, not fun. I was really pining for a small perhaps Flash-based web tool that would let me make diagrams and download as PDF. <comment><USER3> So, many cities have bus systems and those bus systems now-a-days are usually GPS equipped for several reasons (notably that a central office can monitor the system and that the busses can announce ADA-compliant stop messages based on location without the driver being involved).

I'd love to have something on my phone that would tell me where the next bus was on a cool Google Map (or other) and an estimated time to arrival (which could be calculated by Google Maps). Of course, you'd have to get your transit authority to give you access to their GPS results.

But this would probably be one of the most helpful things a transit authority could do. The problem most people have with public transit is that it can be inconvenient, but often it _is_ convenient if you have better/more complete knowledge of it. For example, when I get up in the morning, I have no idea whether a bus went by a minute ago and it'll be another 20+ minutes waiting or whether a bus is 2 minutes away.

This could also help trip planning. Often in a mass transit system, there are multiple routes to get anywhere. The trip planners we have today are primitive in that they often don't take current information into account (such as speed at various times of day, location of the next bus/trolly/subway train in proximity, etc.). Using GPS information would greatly change that.

<comment><USER4> A live public transport map for Helsinki, Finland: <http://transport.wspgroup.fi/hklkartta/>

It's a trial, there are most (all?) trams and a few buses.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought that map is just interpolating from the schedules, not from GPS? Not that it makes much difference, the schedules in Finland being very accurate for buses afaik.

In Tampere on major stops we have information about when the next bus is coming in, some based on GPS and some on schedules, this distinction is indicated on the board.

<comment><USER5> This indication on the boards is common in most bigger German cities for busses, trams and so on. E.g. in Frankfurt you have it on any tram stop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A Pandora equivalent for pr0n. Enter/grade a few images you like or dislike, build a profile and "stations" to group similar kinds of content. Maybe these profiles could be condensed into some short-length string--say a Meyer-Briggs type of string (INTP, etc)--that you can then carry with you without having to actually give out personal info, but that says hey, according to this standard, these are my likes/dislikes when it comes to erotic imagery, now gimme the goods.

Just sayin'

<comment><USER7> I've wondered myself about the market for allowing people to drill down through multiple fetishes. the vast majority of sites organize by single fetishes. what if you could input a bunch of fetishes and it would automatically find the videos that have the most tags in common with your search? this would work best with something that supported user tags, so people could find and tag specific elements.

<comment><USER8> "what if you could input a bunch of fetishes and it would automatically find the videos that have the most tags in common with your search?"

Something like tiava.com?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A database of MAC addresses of stolen equipment. Participants install a client which listens for the MAC addresses of all computers in the local network, alerting the participant that the new possessor of a stolen MacBook Pro 15", 2006 edition, two deep scratches on the lid, seems to be nearby.

Of course, you'd have to find a way of guarding against malicious entries.

<comment><USER10> MAC address can be changed.

<comment><USER11> 99.999% of people who steal hardware aren't smart enough to do this. Also, 99.9999999% of people who use stolen hardware have bought it (off eBay for instance) and won't scrub it, but will plug it in somewhere that's monitoring.

I think this is a really good idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Ad exploder. An add-in for FF and IE that lets you "explode" ads by clicking on them, complete with sound effects and animation (or not). After you explode the ad, you'll never see any more material in that spot again.

I don't just want to not see ads, I want something with some visceral action, something to make the ads not want to come back! -- ie, something fun.

<comment><USER13> If you dropped the part about never seeing an ad there again, you could probably get display Ad companies to pay you for each explosion as a click, because if a user exploded it, then they saw the ad. Then, you'd LOVE ads!

<comment><USER14> Ad companies would probably like that anyway...they wouldn't be wasting their money advertising to people who were not interested in their ads.

<comment><USER15> Much of the point of advertising is to convince (or remind) those who are not already convinced (or aware). Advertising is not advertising if you are hitting people eager to see your message - that's _marketing_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Some kind of GPS-based app for a mobile device that works out how you get to and from work and tries and puts you in touch with others who work closeby and the hours that you do for the sake of carpooling.

Using your phone to reduce carbon emissions.

<comment><USER16> Hmm, didn't think I would have gotten as many upvotes as I did...

Anyway, I know this may seem like common sense, but if someone was going to build an app like this, I would suggest that the best platform for it is the iphone simply because Apple actively market their technology as more "green" than other manufacturers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Sell sunscreen in little packets (like ketchup packets) that can fit in your wallet. That way you'll never forget sunscreen. Should I patent* this?

* I hate patents.

<comment><USER18> But what do you do when you have sunscreen on your burger and mayo on your back? I think this might backfire.

<comment><USER19> You could invent some sunscreen mayonaise.

<comment><USER20> That would make it more compatible to the American metabolism.

<comment><USER21> Or make it so we sweat sunscreen when we eat the mayonnaise (on fries?).

<comment><USER20> Mayonnaise on fries is British. It's probably related but we'd have to market it differently.

(I've noted that the covers on the Harry Potter books in Britain seem to be drawn for intelligent people, whereas the books in the US are far more cartoony.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A first-aid application for e.g. iPhone which shouts at me what to do when finding an unconscious person. With clear voice and pictures that I can even understand if my head's in "omg omg he's dying what to do what to do" mode.

(Perhaps such an app exists; I'm too far away from an iTunes-capable computer right now to check.)

<comment><USER22> That's a pretty cool idea, but aren't you better off calling 911 or your local equivalent? What about liability issues? What about responsiveness? This thing needs to be fast and non-intrusive !

I was in a (non-life-threatening) accident last week and I can think of a couple of useful first-aid pointers lots of people overlook, like:

* so what _is_ the local emergency number? (based on GPS position) * "let's give him something to drink to comfort him ..." (Don't !)

Basically a decision tree to help people with basic first aid. These protocols exist in the first aid world.

<comment><USER9> Of course, the phone should also dial 911 (or 112 if you're in most parts of Europe).

I like the idea of a decision tree. Big readable decision screens: "Does the person answer when spoken to? [YES NO]" etc.

<comment><USER23> This could be useful in the case of a mass emergency where 911 can't respond to everyone in a timely way. Also, when you don't have a cell signal. Or after the zombie apocalypse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Custom video games (for non geeks). I doctored up a basic shooter game for my girlfriends birthday, replacing the backgrounds + all the characters with relevant images from her life. It makes a basic shooter game much more interesting when someone you know is attacking!

<comment><USER24> Hm, I pondered doing this for my memory game (pairs). You think there would be much interest for this? I could even automate it to create memory games from flickr.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> A SLIME* for Python, Perl or Ruby (<http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/>).

All of these languages have a powerful reflection/meta programming facility (yes, Perl included). So technically, something like could be implemented:

1) The server (using Twisted in Python or POE in Perl) listens for requests. Requests are for objects.

2) The server looks at the request, serializes it into a s-exp describing the state of the object sent to it.

3) Emacs then looks at the s-exp and decides what to do with the object initially looked at (suggest a method to complete/use on? highlights it red if it's wrong? bring up HTML formated documentation, etc...)

<comment><USER26> > SLIME* for Python, Perl or Ruby

I'm not entirely sure, but I think you might just have to implement a Swank server, and SLIME* would work without problems. It could be that you're forced to use s-expressions, but I doubt it.

<comment><USER25> I haven't looked at the client portion of SLIME in a while, but wouldn't there be some changes needed to deal with languages where statements and expression are different from each other?

Getting Perl _code_ into an s-exp would be fairly difficult actually (as opposed to getting an s-exp from a Perl complex hash -- which would be really easily) - generally (with Perl5) the consensus is anything that can parse Perl, _is_ Perl. Python, Ruby and Perl6 (which effectively is a Lisp, complete with macros in forms of first-order primitives for CFGs) would, I am sure, be easier a lot easier.

<comment><USER26> > I haven't looked at the client portion of SLIME in a while, but wouldn't > there be some changes needed to deal with languages where statements and > expression are different from each other?

Yeah, probably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've always thought about a system for teaching kids about programming by building AI players for online games. The system would consist of 3 components:

1\. A screen scraping/computer vision toolkit that would supply most of the AI primitives to interpret games 2\. An interpreter for each game that would provide an machine usable API to interact with the game 3\. An AI program that would then play the game

Component 1 would only need to be built once, Component 2 would need to be built once per game and then Component 3 is what the kids would get to build.

I always thought this would be an excellent, gentle introduction into the world of programming.

Take Fishy (<http://www.xgenstudios.com/game.php?keyword=fishy>) for example. It would be really simple to build a dumb AI that could do ok but to build a really great AI would involve some really sophisticated path planning and optimization algorithms.

What better way to get kids inspired and wanting to learn about programming than have them solve the games they're already playing?

<comment><USER28> Quite a different thing, but you may find this interesting: <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/kodu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> A Taxi service site and iPhone app. Lets you send your current location to the cab company with your iPhone and then track the cab as it arrives. Maybe even offer a prepay option so you can pay with your paypal account and just read off a confirmation number to the cab driver or something at the end of the trip for them to bill you with. Maybe in order to prevent confusion over more than one cab being called from the same location the app can light your phone screen up in a unique color for you to call the cab with as it approaches.

This wouldn't really be necessary in NYC where cabs are ubiquitous but in DC it would be useful.

EDIT: Crud, already sorta exists: <http://taximagic.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Why are you disappointed that it exists? My reaction is more like "great, that problem is solved, now I can make something else".

<comment><USER29> I just thought I was original but it turned out I wasn't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something that takes blog posts from a related cluster of blogs and presents them as a threaded newsgroup.

<comment><USER17> Sounds interesting, could you expand on that?

<comment><USER30> he probably wants news.google.com but in a format like mail.google.com's threads. kind of like techmeme, i imagine.

<comment><USER11> I want blogs to look like Usenet, so that best affordance for a response is another blog post, not a comment. Comments are evil.

There's enough structure in blogs (blogrolls, tags, date, author, backlinks) --- especially if you mine comments --- to do take a stab at this.

<comment><USER31> I'm interested to hear why you think comments are evil.

Would there be any way to make that discussion-like structure accept input from anonymous, infrequent, or lazy users? Setting up a blog just to reply might leave out some decent responses.

<comment><USER11> They're second-class outlets. A blog author can say whatever they want; their posts are first-class elements in Google's corpus; the medium encourages stand-alone writing instead of meaningless squibs.

The original vision of the "blogosphere" rejected comments. "Write a blog post, instead." Here's an old, well-known example:

[http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr0401/Whyblogcommentsarebad.h...](http://www.markbernstein.org/Apr0401/Whyblogcommentsarebad.html)

The problem right now is that the affordances favor comments over posts. The first step is to adjust them; it just so happens that by making a threaded blog-group reader, you're also providing a lot of value to people who don't care that comments are evil, but do find it hard to follow 10 different blogs talking about the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> A cradle that updates the baby's facebook page based on decibels, activity, dampness.

<comment><USER33> Shouldn't the parent pay more attention to the baby than to facebook?

:-) Just Saying.

<comment><USER11> He's not saying that, he's saying that you should be living his parenthood vicariously through Facebook. I agree: you should.

<comment><USER34> +1

Vicarious parenthood is cheaper, cleaner, and you can take a break from it whenever you want.

But nieces and nephews have a higher payoff than Facebook.

<comment><USER11> My sister and brothers would disagree, since I pester them to babysit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> a bugmenot type service...except it would act as a proxy. The proxy will be used to hide the actual login info, and to prevent the users from screwing around with the actual account.(basically I see this as changing the username to XXXX, not letting users go to pages like usercp.php etc).

Right now bugmenot is pretty much useless, since all accounts are dead almost right away.

This way the passwords etc will remain private, and the accounts won't go dead right away

<comment><USER36> I assume the accounts go dead mostly because the content providers kill them, not because individual users kill them. There isn't much you can do to stop a content provider from figuring out which accounts are bugmenot accounts and killing them... It's an arms race to see who will give up first.

<comment><USER35> more reason to keep the login info secret. Sure they can figure out the account by multiple ips...but that takes a little bit more effort.

Honestly, I think the user side portion is a bigger problem. Its all the psychology, people change the login info so that noone else would be able to do the same thing and prevent their access.

<comment><USER36> In addition to Jerf's comment, I will also point out that you can't hide the login info from the content providers. All they have to do is steganographically encode the user name into the web page content. Then they can use your bugmenot-like service to retrieve the page, extract the user name, and cancel the account.

I still see no benefit to the users changing the account info. This is to access sites with free accounts, yes? In that case, isn't it actually just as much work to assert control over multiple bugmenot accounts as it is to sign up for the free accounts in the first place?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I would like a shopping list on my mobile phone.

The main inconvenience I have with my shopping list on paper is that the things I forget to buy are not automatically on next week's shopping list. And I might forget less things if I could easily delete the items I buy while I'm in the supermarket. This sounds like a small easy-to-write application.

The application should also have the advantages of my paper shopping list. My wife should be able to add things to the list using her phone. Adding items to the list should be extremely easy. I hate writing text messages.

<comment><USER38> Whoops, sorry. Meant to upvote and downvoted accidentally instead. Am upvoting two of your other comments to make up for it.

<comment><USER39> I upvoted to offset your downvote.

That said, I think there's an android app I saw recently on the market that does this. I'll install it later and see how closely it compares to the features mentioned.

<comment><USER37> I upvoted you both for being so nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Filter or customize your tv ads. I hate it when a horror movie ad comes on and I have to scramble to change the channel. Similarly, I may like watching John&Kate+8, but that doesn't mean I want to watch the typically associated feminine hygiene commercials.

<comment><USER41> How about at least filtering the online ads. Just put a little link in the corner of the ad that allows you to say "no thanks, I never want to see this ad again."

<comment><USER42> adpinion is doing this fairly well

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Site that let's teenagers list what kinds of odd jobs they would do for money, like lawn mowing, leaf raking, garage cleaning. Then people in their neighborhood can look for kids to do this work.

You would set a means of money exchange and the kids could publish what they are earning money for to draw the adults into picking them.

</comment><comment><USER44> For toll roads, some sort of in car item that will receive a short audio ad and play it. Thus using the ad money to pay my toll. I realize there are several issues immediately off the top of it, but it could be a viable alternative to having to pay tolls.

<comment><USER45> That is an interesting idea, however certain tolls (e.g. london city) have not the goal to earn money, but to keep people away. playing ads won't keep them away.

<comment><USER9> In that case, the device could output not an advertisement but a 45-second uninterruptible lecture about what too much car traffic does to the city.

(but who would voluntarily install that...)

<comment><USER46> Or perhaps just 45 seconds of a baby crying or nails on a chalk board?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Rescue-Time for Intranets (stand alone would do too).

Ideally it would be able to track not only what applications you are using or URL are looking at, but also which files you are working with. Then you can tag entire directories in order to keep track of projects.

Pretty reports is a must

Bonus points if you provide programmatic hooks to automate filling of damned time tracking, ticket trackig and TPS tracking 3rd party solutions.

</comment><comment><USER48> Global Tabbing - I have a lot of windows open (as do you all i'm sure) and i'd really to be able to bundle them into one tabbed window in a Firefox stylee.

Look at something like Coda (www.panic.com) and think instead of having all the apps built in to the app you just have a tabbed window container that you add app windows to that allows you to quickly switch from one to the other (eg. tabs for text editor,terminal,version control gui,ftp client, pdf viewer)

<comment><USER49> Try the tab feature of Fluxbox (www.fluxbox.org).

<comment><USER50> Yeah fluxbox is nice. I use (eight) virtual desktops to group things by what I'm doing logically. And then within each desktop tab things together when it works -- and automatically if it is the same program (very helpful for terminals etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's one I spent a month researching last year and couldn't find a partner -- a virtual commodities exchange. An online commodities market for WoW gold, HotOrNot flowers, anything else that only exists in virtual reality.

This would be complete with futures trading and derivatives.

(Lots of other details required to make it work. Email me if you'd like to hear more)

</comment><comment> old-gregg A botnet that 100% autonomously opens a bunch of honeypot email accounts, publishes them somewhere, reads every single spam message and organizes DOS- attacks on pharmacy sites that pay for spam advertising.

<comment><USER51> If it were legal it could be implemented as a collaboration system such as

<http://fold.it/portal/>

<http://galaxyzoo.org/>

<http://noisetube.net/>

<http://qcn.stanford.edu/>

<http://stardustathome.ssl.berkeley.edu/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I would love something that aggregated all your karma points into an exchange of some kind. I would use it, but I would never build it.

<comment><USER53> I have been coding a prototype of this in my free time over the past couple of weeks. It's fun, but I'm not sure it actually makes lots of sense.

Not only is it really hard come up with a model to convert currency from many places into a "standardized" format (or even to allow for OpenID-style distribution) - it'll also not be easy to provide data to other sites that allows them to do useful things easily. Tags might be as good as it gets.

One other thing Y-people might not like: this SHOULD NOT have a revenue model, I think. Freemium completely screws you and ads on a reputation site would just feel wrong. Besides, it's a platform.

That's why I keep thinking about open-sourcing what I have, especially in order to try to solve the distribution problem before an alpha site might go online. Being a hopeless idealist I really want to see a service-decoupled reputation service that is NOT facebook/google FC.

Please let me know if any of you'd be interested to join me in playing around with this.

<comment><USER24> I just don't see how it is technically feasible, as most sites don't provide a way to transfer karma? Or is the idea more that of an independent karma service that other sites could plug in to (like gravatar does for profile pictures)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> fwiw, perfectlygoodideas.com is available right now. perhaps someone could use the uclassify api to classify & cluster similar ideas & recommend partnerships. no idea how well it would work, but it might be worth a an hour or two on a weekend to find out. im just thinking out loud here :)

<comment><USER55> I really like that idea. domain name taken :) -- i presume you didn't want to do this since you didn't buy it yourself.

If I get to it this weekend, I'll submit to HN when I have something ready. Thanks for mentioning uclassify -- I hadn't heard of it.

<comment><USER54> awesome! put it to good use :)

ive pared down my list of "want to dos" to a single choice, but i definitely want to use uclassify. if i hadn't buckled down, i'd have a half-working django prototype in ~/src/ right now that i'd revisit to burn some time on every 3 months.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> A visual dictionary/wiki for finding the names of obscure things. Users could submit definitions and pictures. They could also tag pictures with the names of related things so you could search based on objects that are commonly found near or work with the thing you're looking for. The picture would help you confirm you found the right thing.

For example, suppose you didn't know what the little plastic thing on the end of your shoelace was called and you wanted to buy more of them. You could search for "shoelace" or "end of shoelace" and find a picture of an aglet. Maybe even some ads to where you could buy a supply of aglets. Now, no more frayed shoelace ends for you, and life is a little better. :)

<comment><USER57> Visual dictionaries (including online ones) already exist, although according to one ( <http://visual.merriam-webster.com/> ), the aglet is actually called a "tag".

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> A 1-on-1 clone of GMail, but installable on any webserver. I love the GMail interface but I hate to have my mail on their servers for obvious reasons. Same goes for Reader, Calendar and Docs.

<comment><USER59> Ever tried Zimbra?

<http://www.zimbra.com/products/collaboration.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Have this idea/started web design, but busy with work. It's a crazy out there possibly good idea or bad.

<http://fornicatur.com> \- a new way to meet people for well...

Though tech could be white labeled for any topic - beyond theme of domain above (GPS locate hiking buddies in central park, people who like your favorite movie, tons of stuff... interesting new way to meet people).

<comment><USER61> _Though tech could be white labeled for any topic_ [...]

<http://www.loopt.com/> ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> An app that increases the number of hours a day has, e.g. makes time flow slower. That way I could accomplish more ;)

<comment><USER62> So far the closest thing to this would be to hire someone else.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> A twitter-like feed that sends text messages to cell phones that let first responders like police and ambulance folks recruit helpful bystanders to assist in managing emergencies.

For instance - I need an entrance ramp blocked so no more cars get on this highway - is there someone nearby who can park their car to block it and wave people around?

Or - how many people are stranded on the other side of this flooded road - <USER2> someone nearby give me an estimate?

There should be some well-known way to subscribe to the feed, and it should be able to recognize your physical location.

</comment><comment><USER64> Ha. We were required to use Poseidon for UML, but it was such a pain and crashed so often that we ended up making all our UML Diagrams in Dia (which is a nice enough and lightweight program, if slightly clunky; you might want to check it out). Yet instead of being pleased or even just ambivalent about the entire enterprise, our teacher got mad that we used a tool other than the prescribed one. I never really understood why people would get pissy about what tools you used instead of focusing on the actual output.

<comment><USER8> Maybe your teacher's goal was to encourage people in the class to learn Poseidon so he could hire them on a private project. Or maybe he/she was looking for a genius who would be able to figure out how to code Poseidon in such a way that it would not crash.

There are lots of other reasons why a teacher might set specific rules for an exercise such as this, too. Unfortunately you chose to ignore the instructions -- and you made the mistake of second-guessing him/her -- assuming that the teacher's goal was the end result and not the process of getting there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> This thread (with some excellent ideas in it) reminds me of the half bakery: <http://www.halfbakery.com/>

The half bakery has some good idea, some mediocre ideas, and some very entertaining bad ones.

Already submitted here it seems but evidently didn't get voted up at the time - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135677>

</comment><comment><USER66> Nappies (diapers) for babies that have a little pocket with a couple of wipes in it. Basically I want to be able to stuff a couple of nappies in by jacket pocket or bag and then when the baby needs changing I've got a fresh nappy and a couple of wipes.

<comment><USER42> i'd rather manufacture wipes into a sealed pocket, instead of making people do it by hand every time

<comment><USER67> Pre-sealed pocket of wipes; good idea!

The wipes would be warmed by the baby's body heat as well; babies don't like a cold wipe on their tushies.

<comment><USER66> That's basically my idea, I didn't describe it well enough. The wipes would be in a little tiny sealed packet attached to the outside of the nappy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Something that produces iPhone code out of Flex/Flash code and vice-versa? That sounds impossible (I don't know either one) but if it were, it could be cash cow, no?

<comment><USER69> There's a library called CoreAnimation that's similar in some ways to Flash, supporting keyframes and tweening and such. The iPhone also has (an unofficial) port of Rhino, to run the needed ActionScript. (Compiling that to native code would be a whole 'nother matter.)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes I've had the idea of making a sort of "fan page" for my university (Tampere University), because their own homepage is so horrible. On the surface it looks OK, but actually it is quite difficult to use in actually planning which classes to take. The fan page would be maintained by students who are actually taking those classes, combined with pressuring the teachers to take part. This is where I think it wouldn't really work, people couldn't be arsed to help, so I haven't attempted it.

I feel so embarrassed for our faculty. I mean they have classes on UI design and usability, yet it's beyond them to make their own pages usable. This is the home page of our logic programming class: <http://www.cs.uta.fi/~tn/LOGO_kotisivu_2009.htm> I wouldn't mind the yellow background and the all-caps text, if every other course would just have the same information in the same place in the same format so that some sort of study planning could be done.

<comment><USER70> I'm surprised no one has tried to sell your school a system like Blackboard. Is penetration of such systems low outside of the USA? Sounds like there is quite a marketing opportunity there, if you were to develop a competitor to Blackboard. Their software isn't great, it wouldn't be hard to do better, though integrating with the university's existing IT infrastructure could be tricky.

Be warned though, Blackboard basically has their whole system patented, though I think their patent for "using a CMS for school" was recently overturned. The patents may be less important outside of the USA.

<comment><USER38> If anyone wants to make a competitor to Blackboard, please do. My school uses it and it is terrible: the UI is awful, response time is slow, and professors across the board hate it and prefer to use their own websites to upload files. Shouldn't be too hard to make a better version.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Just a thought, have you tried www.dabbleboard.com? It might be what you're looking for to do your diagraming.

Otherwise, Viso has a steeper learning curve, but probably has more tools for what you're doing. I know it's expensive to buy, but with a Bizspark membership (get sponsored and only pay $100 after 3 years) it's free for the downloading along with your MSDN membership.

</comment><comment><USER72> <http://www.gliffy.com/>

<comment><USER73> <http://www.dabbleboard.com> :)

<comment><USER74> love dabbleboard. (Not that I use it much - but have always been impressed)

<comment><USER73> thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Video games for dogs?

<comment><USER75> Yes! Clearly: a harness with a slot for a Wii-mote. Implement for cats also, branded "MWii-ow."

<comment><USER76> On a related note:

Porn games for the Wii.

<comment><USER24> Hm, know of any interesting porn games? My own venture into erotic games wasn't a big hit: <http://3boobs.de>

It works on the Wii, btw (website in Opera).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER77> While listening to the (IMHO) uninspired Jaydiohead album, I thought it would be neat to create an automated system for creating and rating remixes.

1\. Upload a ton of music to serve as seed data

2\. Run a beat rate algorithm

3\. Mix the vocals from one song with the rest from the other.

4\. Present clips of two such mixes to users, who pick the better one.

5\. Repeat until you have a best selling album of remixes.

</comment><comment><USER78> a reverse of friendfeed.com that pushes updates to all of your services.

if someone changes their avatar picture, email address, name (marriage), location, etc., they should be able to do it on one site and have it pushed to all of the other sites that user is a member of.

authentication would be a big problem, but you're smart, figure it out.

<comment><USER79> <http://ping.fm/> is not there yet but you two are heading into the same direction I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER80> [http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from:amichail+reactions+O...](http://search.twitter.com/search?q=from:amichail+reactions+OR+expression)

</comment><comment><USER81> A remote control program like FogCreek Copilot designed for OMG-SLOW connections.

I want to be able to disable screen updates except for manually triggered refreshes of certain areas, or to block out areas I don't want to refresh until instructed otherwise. I want extremely low bandwidth low detail options that fill in like progressive JPG instead of line-by-line from the top. I want to be able to cancel data transfer and reset to nothing. I want the remote client to screen-scrape and send compressed text and outlines of windows and to be able to send it high level Windows support instructions like "open the control panel" and have it not refresh the screen until that's done.

I can orient myself in a Windows desktop with a small amount of information, but I can't stand hideously slow remote control connections.

</comment><comment><USER82> Free Cell phone usage and phone. Must use Advertisers ringtones and ringback tones or jingles. Same for text messages. Add embedded java advertising in background.

</comment><comment><USER83> on demand telephone opinion polling.

have a mechanical turk type group calling people over voip...

customers submit polls online, charge a few hundred $, promise really quick turnaround, have 'turks' make the calls for less than you charge.

</comment><comment><USER40> A device that twitpics from my dog's collar every X minutes. I'd like to take a glance at what my dog's day is filled with. He seems very busy. This may be more fun with a cat though. Especially one that goes outside (though you'd need an EVDO connection, probably).

<comment><USER84> <http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0017T7Q00/>

<http://www.mr-lee-catcam.de/index.htm>

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> 1\. A T-shirt recommendation system. I have been toying with this idea for the past, but never got the time to implement it.

2\. An aggregator of free lectures (video/audio/text) on the internet

</comment><comment><USER86> N-party barter settling platform.

<comment><USER87> I think currency.com is already taken.

<comment><USER88> Relevant point, but money was created to abstract before we had general- purpose abstracting machines like computers with their associated tools. If it wouldn't get you in trouble with the IRS (big "if"), I think it'd be fascinating to see the new tool applied to the old problem. It might create an entirely new kind of market.

<comment><USER87> Bartering doesn't get you in trouble with the IRS, as long as any income you earn from it (be that a cow, an hour-long massage, or sixteen clay beads) gets declared on your tax return at "fair market value". And then, obviously, you pay income tax on it. The IRS will accept just about anything to satisfy your tax obligations, as long as "anything" is US dollars.

 _The Internet has provided a medium for new growth in the bartering exchange industry. This growth prompts the following reminder: Barter exchanges are required to file Form 1099-B for all transactions unless certain exceptions are met._

See: <http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc420.html>

<comment><USER89> If people like the new bartering system enough, trying to enforce such onerous reporting requirements will incite a tax revolt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How about a proxy server I can use to block or partially block sites for myself? (Procrastination preventer) Since I'm not administering a corporate WAN, this should be lightweight and simple to use. It should let me set everything with a GUI. It should present the top 10 sites I visit as a list and let me block each with a click. The parital block feature can limit my use to 15 minute blocks or something like that.

<comment><USER88> I've been thinking about this one for a while, with half an eye to coding it up: Mousehole or some other lightweight proxy with a list of sites. When you go to one of those sites, it redirects you to your "to-do" list; google notebook or rememberTheMilk or something with similar capabilities. There's a button to continue to your intended site, but you've got the reminders right there of what you really intended to do instead of spending time on a site you have marked as a time waster.

Could have priority markings and due dates integrated if it were a customized task list instead of google or RTM, and pop up the interstitial less often or less obtrusively when there's no important deadlines approaching, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> something that takes my last.fm played feed and outputs a feed of new album releases I would like.

really last.fm should do this.

</comment><comment><USER91> A site dedicated to connecting Technical Business Analysts with Software Developers.

<comment><USER92> What kind of connection, like what purpose and what environment?

Edit: Cool name :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Room service robot for hotels. It could basically be a motorized cart. It would be easy for it to get around in big hotels with elevators.

<comment><USER93> Might it be easier to just build a dedicated sort of line for each room? Like a part of the wall that opens up and is connected to the kitchen/wherever, to deliver your food. Would be harder at first but it'd be much easier down the line, and more efficient.

<comment><USER94> It is WAY cheaper to use a human to deliver the orders.

<comment><USER95> I actually worked in a hospital where they paid for robots to deliver medical records to doctors/nurses. The nurse would request records, and then the medical records department would fill it up and send them out. I think that didnt last too long, not efficient enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Scan in ISBN of a book, have it posted for sale on Amazon and craigslist.

<comment><USER96> Amazon already does this. Actually, I think it's required to list an item on Amazon.

<comment><USER97> You need the ISBN, but it's not as simple as scan it and you're done.

Delicious Library might do what you want?

<comment><USER66> I have a hand scanner for barcodes that works fine with Amazon.com. It looks like a keyboard to my PC and so when I scan a barcode it simply 'types' the ISBN into the appropriate box on Amazon.

<comment><USER97> Delicious Library does it with the camera in the mac, you just hold up the book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> An app that tracks your forum activity and displays all your private messages, thread subscriptions, etc. all in one app.

<comment><USER68> Kind of like a mint.com of internet activities? I like the idea. I'm not sure how easy it would be to be exhaustive. I can see how you could add the regular places you hang out at. Casual comments would be harder to track but a bookmarklet could help there.

But isn't that kind of like a YC startup? I forgot the name though but I remember the website being a place where you could follow people's comments on blogs. Is your idea focused on forums?

I like the idea.

<comment><USER99> I think you mean <http://www.backtype.com/>.

<comment><USER68> Yes I was thinking about this one. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER100> Pandora/last.fm for Articles/News/RSS. Stations, skipping, shared traits, etc. More topic centered than FriendFeed.

<comment><USER101> I've thought of this too, but I can't get around my "moral" (not really, but that's the best description) qualms about this. We already self-select news to reinforce our bias. This idea would just reinforce the bias. Still I'm thinking about doing it. With the caveat that I would occasionally put in a "opposite opinion" article or piece of news.

<comment><USER100> But on Pandora I often hear music I never would have otherwise heard. Also, I think that news can be more related to topic over perspective...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> A way to replicate data over the copious amounts of spare disk space in a roomfull of standard office computers, including implicit duplication such that some machines being off or broken doesn't matter.

I saw a link here a while ago about encoding redundant copies of data with less duplication than you'd think...

</comment><comment><USER102> Service compare engine Service check - a cost comparison engine for various services with a mobile front end - average cost in your area. So when the mechanic says - it'll be $2000 for the break job - you know how many hours it should take and how much it should be

<comment><USER39> That's a good idea, and one I've actually kind of piddled around with, however, I have the nagging feeling that it isn't the costs themselves that are egregious, but the diagnosis.

Example: I take my car in for a squealing noise it makes. Obviously, I'm not going to pay $3000 for a belt replacement, but I have no assurance that the "Miscalibrated Magnetostat" isn't the correct diagnosis. I'm willing to pay $3000 for a magnetostat recalibration, and the going rate may well be $3k, but all the mechanic really does is replace a belt.

Though, saying it out loud, perhaps I should just implement some kind of rating system for mechanics as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> ff plugin/addon that saves the state of my browsing session online, so that i don't lose my open tabs when i move from one computer to another. it probably won't work for sites which require login but i don't mind.

<comment><USER61> Don't Google Browser Sync or Mozilla Weave do that?

<comment><USER103> weave probably does but it is in closed alpha now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER104> a simple iphone book/html reader that downloads my latest bookmarks on delicious tagged 'read' so I could read them offline.

This way I don't have to sync and stuff ;) does instapaper already do this? I tried it once before.. I forgot the reason why I got back to ruBooks and a custom python script to download websites from my delicious feed.

</comment><comment><USER105> A location aware twitter app, which will filter tweets based on where I am right now. It can figure out the location relevance of a tweet by scanning its content or by its origin(if the senders are using your client which will geo tag it?). In short, if I am in SFO, I want to hear only about tweets relevant to SFO.

</comment><comment><USER106> I've always wondered why social networks don't ally with music labels and promote/sell music. Small networks can contact indie labels, and huge networks can work with sony, etc ...

It just seems to me that music is the perfect social product...

<comment><AUTHOR> Isn't this basically what Myspace is doing?

<comment><USER106> Yeah but I think it has taken them a long time to realize. What I am getting at is a music advertising/sales marketplace where "any" social network could sign up and promote/sell music. This would be another possible solution to monetizing social networks. So if I maintained a 100k high school football network, There would be an easy way to integrate music ads. And when I say music I mean new acts in general, tours, specific shows, and of course actual product releases/merch sales. As I said, music is very social and everyone likes some kind of music.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> FF extension - Search within a textbox.

(I hope I'm not posting too many ideas)

<comment><USER107> page search searches in text boxes, too

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> It already exists. Try <http://www.gskinner.com/gmodeler/app/run.html>

</comment><comment><USER109> <http://astartupaday.wordpress.com>

</comment><comment><USER110> A magnifying glass with bluetooth to project the images on your pc, with a shutter to take snapshots of what you're looking at, with different zoom levels and as powerful as a microscope.

Imagine the kids running around the house taking shots of worms, spiders, ants, etc. and sharing them online.

<comment><USER111> You can buy a USB microscope at my local Maplins store.

<comment><USER110> I know, but I mean something more portable. You can't take the microscope around looking for stuff. Bring the lens to the bug, not the bug to the lens.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER112> Telenurse.com . Webnurse.com . Netnurse.com . Plentyofnurses.com

<http://news.google.com/news?q=aging+population+health>

</comment><comment><USER113> I want to do this one day, but have no plans of doing it any time soon: a playlist generator for different sized mp3 players. An app I install locally that will scan my music library and then I select a song and the app mashes up with last.fm and generates a playlist of the best similar songs that I currently have that is a maximum total size in MB so all I have to do is put that playlist into whatever I transfer my music to mp3 player with and everythings done. Easy way to fill up my mp3 player with fresh music every day.

</comment><comment><USER114> a working email to sms app, a better wifi caller for the itouch</comment>


Ask HN: How to make Google notice me? - <AUTHOR>

I really want to work at Google, for various reasons. I'm writing software for many years, got a great job, managed people, and I can get any Sr. software engineer role I really want. But I really want to work there.
I got many other companies contact me, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Linked-In, Netflix and even a couple of YC companies.
Google contacted me only once, but for a "10% technical, mostly customer support around ad services"
What do I need to do to get on their radar for a software engineer position? :)
What do I need to do in addition to this:
- got a 5 digit stackoverflow reputation, 3% overall in various topics
- got tons of twitter followers on technical topics
- got many github repos in many languages, several pull requests merged into popular projects.
- My degree is from a top 10 US university in computer science.
- I have many years of software experience
- My company SOLD Google one of the products I worked on (instead of developing in house)
- got a pretty high HN karma on technical related comments in my "real" username
- Great linked in profile, tons of recommendations and endorsements
- People tell me I'm a really good software engineer
- I am a really full stack T-shaped guy, knows a little about a lot and a lot about a little.
- I can write fluently in Java, Scala, C++, C, JavaScript, ES6, HTML5, CSS3
- Have a relatively popular blog, with a couple of technical posts getting to HN front page.
- I'm REALLY prepared to take that Google interview, but I just need them to call!
So to all of you who keep getting Google recruiter spam. What are you doing that I'm not? Do I need to start speaking at conferences? Write books? Start a PhD at Stanford? (an MSc from a top 10 CS program is not enough?)
Google? why not you like me? :)
Hope to get some insights, really appreciate your help. <comment><USER2> Don't worry about that single time you've been (mis)contacted, recruiters are really a hit-and-miss even at Google. Your best shot is being referred by a Googler. You claim to have significant activity in the community and OSS projects so it shouldn't be hard to find Google engineers that have some familiarity with your skills. If you are a strong candidate, it's a win-win since whoever referred you gets a nice bonus if you get an offer and accept it. Once that happens you have the same challenge of resume/interviews as everyone else, the advantage of a good referral is mostly to get over the unintended barrier of recruiters' skills and time to find good candidates.

</comment><comment><USER3> You know you can apply for jobs at google, right? ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> :) I did, but they don't get back to me... it's one of the only companies I ever sent resumes to (maybe that's the problem, all the other companies contacted me unsolicited via linked in)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What city do you live in?</comment>


PSN Restoration Begins Now – PlayStation Blog - <AUTHOR> http://blog.us.playstation.com/2011/05/14/play-on-–-psn-restoration-begins-now/ <comment><USER2> Amazon must be so happy that this happened. It started right at the end of the AWS partial downtime, and has completely recontextualized how badly a service provider can screw things up.

<comment><USER3> Does PSN have _any_ nines at this stage?

<comment><USER4> 10% of one year is 36.5 days, so they still have time to be completely up before they're below one nine if you use a rolling one year window.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wonder what they have been doing, for a service of this size, seems to be one of the slowest responses I have ever seen. If a startup had similar downtime they would probably find themselves out of business. Luck Sony has network effects and the large outlay people have made on the console and games I guess.

</comment><comment><USER6> Anyone notice how all the comments, regardless of who posts them, are marked as from 'jitender'? The posters are riffing on it, it's hilarious.

<comment><USER7> They're going to have a really hard time getting anyone to trust them now.

I wonder if Sony will change their name or otherwise reorganize their corporate structure for a similar effect like Phillip Morris & Altria, or Blackwater & Xe, or Diebold & Premier Election Solutions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How are they able to break down the restoration by state? Are they doing it by IP? By account? (I never told them where I live)

</comment><comment><USER9> I realize this isn't an "adds a lot of value comment," but...

If you can't figure out how to make comments work properly on a blog, do you really think you're ready to roll out nationwide service for PSN again?

<comment><USER10> I doubt the same people handle both issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> That's good news if you live in that country ... when are you turning the rest of the world back on?

<comment><USER12> Huh? That _is_ the entire world. And Canada.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Any word on what they actually changed? Would be interesting to know what they did differently this time around.</comment>


Y Combinator S12 Demo Day Batch 3 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/21/y-combinator-s12-demo-day-batch-three-getgoing-bigcalc-tracksby-and-more/

<comment><USER2> Full list: [http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/29465655158/yc-s12-c...](http://startupframework.tumblr.com/post/29465655158/yc-s12-companies- demo-day)</comment>


Magic Leap, HoloLens, and Lumus Resolution "Shootout" - <AUTHOR> https://www.kguttag.com/2018/10/22/magic-leap-hololens-and-lumus-resolution-shootout-ml1-review-part-3/ <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr; According to his optical tests, _for reading text_ Lumus wins. It has x4 resolution over Magic Leap. Microsoft in the middle.</comment>


Data visualization service Reflect raises $2.5M seed round led by DFJ - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/26/data-visualization-service-reflect-raises-2-5m-seed-round-led-by-dfj/ <comment><USER2> Congrats on the funding. The product looks really appealing.

I'm curious about the typical (expected) use case for something like this. I would think a lot of large-scale data consumers would already be using an end- to-end solution that includes at least halfway decent visualization tools - whether it's Tableau or ELK/Elastic.

Will customers be more likely to be smaller businesses who right now have limited data viz tools? Or developers who need to make something quick and dirty and don't want to wade through d3? Or existing customers of major data platforms who aren't happy with the visualization they provide? Or something else entirely?

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

Great question! We're different than other tools because we're an ingredient component that developers add to their applications and services (Tableau + others are standalone tools).

We're working with larger companies, like Simply Measured, who are using Reflect to power their customer-facing products.

Most companies (large or small) don't have the core competency for data visualization in-house -- Reflect helps fill that gap.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How does it compare against Tableau/Qlik/infocaptor ?

Visualization has become commodity, it is what you do to simplify the path from data to viz is important. [http://infocaptor.com/visualization- gallery.php](http://infocaptor.com/visualization-gallery.php)

<comment><USER5> Hey njx! I'm Brad, one of the cofounders of Reflect. We totally agree that a lot of the front end for visualization has been commoditized (although I'd argue it still gets misused pretty badly). But building all the infrastructure to support visualization is still left as "an exercise for the reader" which is where we come in!

I think that Tableau and Qlik (and QuickSite to a degree!) are great tools and they've helped make visualization and the infrastructure to do it available to people who previously didn't have it. We're extending this to any developer on the planet by using tools we are all familiar with: REST and Javascript. And since the whole internet wants to interact with visualization we're doing it at a new level of scale.

Happy to talk through the details with you, my email address is in my profile --just ping me and we can schedule some time!

<comment><USER6> >building all the infrastructure

What infrastructure? Some cloud BI solutions let you drop an iframe to integrate and done. Same is true for the rest apis.

Still not seeing the differentiation, however I honestly wish you success. Congrats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats to this very talented team; I've had the privilege of seeing a few early demos and the product is _so easy_ to use without sacrificing power or richness.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your support!

<comment><USER8> This looks interesting. Would love to try it out..requested an invite.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to the reflect team, great to see the journey from TechStars to seed round.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. We're just getting started!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> honestly is this what passes for "data visualization" with these guys? A weekly stacked area chart?? You've been able to do this in Excel for 30 years. It worked fine on a 386. Where's the progress here..

Data visualization is about multi-gig, possibly streaming data sets, and crucially, parsing the data, probably in real time, for the crucial 1-2% of it that's actually interesting, and helping user find them. Not putting a thin SASS wrapper on stone age graphics whose underlying data size is probably measured in kilobytes

This thing looks like a charting service. Not "data visualization".

<comment><USER12> Do you have any suggestions for products/tools that can handle multi-gig streaming datasets?

<comment><USER11> [https://flink.apache.org/](https://flink.apache.org/)

<comment><USER12> Ah sorry I meant from a data viz perspective. But I guess a dataviz solution that handles multi-gig datasets would need to be integrated end-to-end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Seems kind of similar to [https://github.com/Polychart](https://github.com/Polychart) (which unfortunately went defunct)

<comment><USER14> That's interesting from the standpoint of their license says "free for non commercial use" and then "for commercial use see [https://polychart.com"](https://polychart.com") which errors as like you said they went out of business.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, you can see an archived version of the site here

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150908004847/https://www.polyc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150908004847/https://www.polychart.com/)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20150924213349/https://www.polyc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150924213349/https://www.polychart.com/demo)

(video still works! [http://play.vidyard.com/aDsHgEC9IPpqN52MfmpsCA.html](http://play.vidyard.com/aDsHgEC9IPpqN52MfmpsCA.html) ) and [https://web.archive.org/web/20150924213345/https://www.polyc...](https://web.archive.org/web/20150924213345/https://www.polychart.com/license)

and their blog is still up

[http://blog.polychart.com/](http://blog.polychart.com/)

Perhaps the founder would make it MIT/BSD at this point?

Anyone want to tweet at her? [https://twitter.com/lisaczhang](https://twitter.com/lisaczhang)

Also, for some history... [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519893](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5519893)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice to see another PDX company get funded, quite a big seed as well!

Curious if you guys use proprietary graphing libraries or wrap something like d3 in custom skins.

<comment><USER10> We do use D3 under the hood.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Feeling better about opting for a statistics and data analysis engineering degree instead of a software engineering one.

<comment><USER17> As someone who has 2 engineering degrees and just finished a code school, how can I sell myself _as though_ I had one of those?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Looks great. What DBs are supported? Can't find that anywhere in the docs.

</comment><comment><USER19> Whow, great to see a fellow Techstars company ranking on Hnews :)

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems like the UI borrows super heavily from Invision.

<comment><USER10> We're fans of Invision + elements of material design. Some inspiration there for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awesome! Congrats!

<comment><USER22> Thanks Josh!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nice work Reflect!

</comment><comment><USER24> Congrats guys.

<comment><USER5> Thanks Phuoc!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Congrats!</comment>