The Road to Virtual Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2014/02/the-road-to-vr.html <comment><USER3> Someone made a rough resolution simulator for the Oculus Rift (make sure you check low persistence, which has been available with the latest prototypes):

[http://vr.mkeblx.net/oculus-sim/](http://vr.mkeblx.net/oculus-sim/)

You can see there's a pretty huge difference between the 800p one and the 1440p one (~4x more pixels), which will probably be what the consumer version will have. With 1440p you will still notice the screen door, especially in the distance (the sky), and it looks like we'll only solve this with the 4k resolution, when the resolution seems to become "normal", and without easily noticeable pixel lines, but it will probably be at 8k when we'll have "retina"-like quality.

All of that being said, I think 95+ percent of consumers buying the 1440p version won't even notice the small pixel lines in the distance, because they'll be so "present" in those VR worlds. Most "normal" people trying it out quickly forget about the screen door even with the 800p developer kit, because they've never experienced something in VR before, and to them it feels very real already. Personally, I do hope they can use the 4k resolution in the second consumer version as soon as possible, but I think the 1440p one will do just fine with all the early adopters.

<comment><USER4> Yes, while the current dev kit would have a hard time being a consumer success for easy to point out reasons, knowing that the consumer version will be qualitatively 10x-100x better (~4x resolution, content availability & quality, better form factor, positional tracking, low persistence, and the real key: 'presence'-inducing) lets you understand how many of the potential things that would stop VR from going big very soon will basically be non-factors.

I'm hopeful 1440p will be fairly text friendly and prove good-enough for programming, etc. but even if not quite there, that merely means that threshold will be broken a year or two down the line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I helped found the VR lab at SAIC many years ago. We did 3D sound (via head related transfer functions), full on motion platforms, haptic feedback (e.g., a race car goes off the track a little, and you feel the chatter in the steering wheel), and SGI Reality Engine 3D graphics.

The problem? It was cost. We had a tentative agreement to put VR racing pods in a Las Vegas hotel, but after the prototypes where developed (and they were great fun!), we did better cost analysis and cancelled the project because the "ride" would have been way too expensive for end users. The custom motion platform was especially expensive, but added so much to the experience.

Later at a different company, I was lead programmer for a VR demo system for Disney. The demo was great, but when they deployed to production in Disney World they had to cut corners on the motion platform, etc.

edit: my point is that there is a lot more to VR than just 3D graphics - <USER2> you want to achieve what is called "suspension of disbelief."

<comment><USER6> Was that the Aladdin's carpet ride? I was one of the beta testers at Epcot as a child. I remember being terrible at flying the carpet around but not caring because it was so unique.

<comment><USER5> No, it was a river raft ride with lots of dinosaurs. In the demo/prototype system, the dinosaurs behaved differently depending on user actions. I never got to try the deployed system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Oculus Rift owner here. I think the biggest things to look for in the upcoming consumer version is how effective the new head tracking is at reducing the mismatch between your real-world head and virtual-head. Among all of the factors that contributed to nausea in the first development kit, latency, motion blur, pupillary distance, I believe a lack of head tracking has been the biggest as they did not have an effective solution and instead modeled it in software with a simulated 'neck crane'. Little variations in your head position that normally create a wealth of information for your eyes were not being picked up and were understandably creating discomfort or the user.

Based on the reviews I've seen of the Crystal Cove prototype, it looks like this new 1:1 head tracking, coupled with reduced motion blur, has eliminated a majority of the nausea from the experience (1).

So if Oculus holds up their end of the bargain, the next breakthrough is on the game developers. Who is going to create that 'killer app'? My bet is on Valve with something like Half Life 3 / LFD2 (2).

1 - [http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/new-oculus- prototype-f...](http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/01/new-oculus-prototype- features-positional-tracking-reduced-motion-blur/) 2 - [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131719-Leaked- Sour...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131719-Leaked-Source- Engine-2-Screenshot-Hints-At-Left-4-Dead-3)

<comment><USER8> I actually think Portal would be a better killer VR app than HL or LFD. It would appeal to a much larger base, including more casual game players.

If we're talking mainstream breakthrough.... If EA weren't so backwards, and assuming the hardware were ready, The Sims VR would cause an earthquake.

Also, a next generation incarnation of Minecraft would be a prime candidate. A world you can 'live' in, that is easy to randomize and wouldn't take five years for devs to build first (ala Skyrim).

<comment><USER9> Is Portal considered more mainstream than a straight-up shooter? I would think that most run-of-the-mill COD or Battlefield players would stay away from the quirky, puzzle-y nature of Portal.

<comment><USER10> Depends on what you mean by mainstream; women and children in the family room may be more likely to pick up Portal than COD

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm really surprised at the negative comments regarding VR. It just seems so obvious to me that VR is going to impact the world in a huge way.

Many of you are caught up in the small technical details. Forget about that and look at the big picture. We are finally going to replicate experiences and our brains will really think we're there.

This will have repercussions on things that may not be so obvious right now. Things such as traveling for meetings or entertainment. Why go through the hassle of getting ready, driving through traffic, looking for parking, etc when you can just put on VR equipment and experience the same thing instantly?

I can't say for sure that VR will be as big as I think it will be, but I'm pretty confident that it's an either/or thing. Either it's going to be the most impactful technology since the internet (perhaps greater), or it's going to be a flop. I don't think there will be a middle ground.

<comment><USER12> _I 'm really surprised at the negative comments regarding VR. It just seems so obvious to me that VR is going to impact the world in a huge way._

That seemed really obvious to me in the early 90s, too. I don't mean that to sound dismissive or get-off-my-lawn-ish, just to point out that there's a history of VR overhype which makes skepticism understandable.

<comment><USER11> I disagree. Back then, the hype was was just random people making those claims. Today, we have some of the most respected voices in the industry verifying that we've hit the magic threshold where you really feel you're in a virtual world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I recommend watching this video of an Oculus converted into an AR (augmented reality) headset:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc_TCLoH2CA)

<comment><USER14> I think that this idea of programs and files existing in AR space is going to cause another fundamental shift in the way we interact with computers. The idea's been explored before - but once HMD resolution hits that critical point, all previous implementations will be what PDAs were to the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Boy, it is really early days with this stuff.

Over the holidays, my brother-in-law brought over a set of the current Oculus. The 720p ones.

The experience reminded me a lot of the early days of 3D, i.e. the difficulty alone of setting up a 3D daughter card properly. You needed the right version of this driver, the right version of that app. The Oculus took about 45 minutes to set up properly - and I am a gamer with a gamer PC. We needed a particular game from Steam that had a development feature that you could turn on, etc. We had to fool around with the Windows video settings. You name it. This will obviously get better when they release a real version, but it was pretty bad.

Then I actually tried them. All of Jeff's observations are spot on. The current resolution sucks. The problem is that your eyes are so, so close to the screen. I thought that I was going to have problems as a user of reading glasses, but that turned out to not be a problem. I have no idea why, but I didn't need them, so that was good.

The other big issue is maybe health related. These things can make you (or at least some people) sick as a dog without a good deal of practice. I'm not sure if it's the lag, or whether it is a fundamental property of having your brain yanked from the visual environment that it evolved in for the last 100+ million years. It was really bad. Of course, the game we were playing, which was some sort of flight simulator, didn't help. I did not try another game. I didn't feel like I was going to be able to walk after 10 minutes of VR.

One other thing. These goggles invite new gameplay experiences that probably haven't been invented yet. And by that, I mean that just strapping these things on does not suddenly make current mediocre games great. Mediocre games still suck. In fact, they are worse, because you can see every flaw, due to the closeness of the screen. So there will need to be games that are made just for this device. Which, I guess means that you should not buy these hoping that your current set of games will now become "walk thru" or whatever.

It is going to take a compelling combination of hardware and software in order to make this device really shine.

I wish them the best. I am really on the fence as to whether or not this is a revolution at all. Time will tell. I hope it is and that they can overcome all of the hurdles, many of which seem kinda big.

<comment><USER16> Hmm, on Mac, my dev kit is plug and play. While DK1 has very low pixel density, these numbers increase fast as resolution scales. CV1 will be at least 1080p, and more likely 1440p, which increases PPI from ~14 w/ DK1 to 19 or 26, respectively. Samsung is scheduled to release 4K mobile panels in 2015 (and hence directly portable to the Oculus devices), which will gets you to regular monitor PPI. At that point, you can basically have infinite virtual screens, which is very interesting for developers.

Here's a little resolution/density chart I made that might be useful: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgAh7-k-pFfVdFZ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0AgAh7-k-pFfVdFZHbXNiNmRrdElxdnhhdXRNcjdQQ2c&output=html)

Farsightedness is fine - the Rift focuses at infinity. It's probably a lot healthier than staring at close screens in terms of eye stress/focusing.

Simulator sickness is mostly caused by excess latency and confusion of the vestibular system. The latest word is that these are taken care of with 1) accurate positional tracking (DK1 only has rotational tracking), 2) sub-20ms motion-to-photon display, and 3) low persistence.

Jeff links to Abrash's talks, which are well worth the time to go through if you have an interest.

I also have been keeping a doc that's a good resource and includes a fair amount of more technical references: [https://randomfoo.hackpad.com/Virtual- Reality-7LTycEgSyp9](https://randomfoo.hackpad.com/Virtual- Reality-7LTycEgSyp9)

I think to some degree, the most interesting thing about DK1 isn't how "rough" it is, but more as a data point showing just how far things will have come in such a short period of time.

<comment><USER17> > such a short period of time.

I bought Howard Rheingold's "Virtual Reality" 22 years ago! :-P

<comment><USER16> Yes, compare the absolute stagnation of HMD development over the past 20 years to the leaps and bounds from the Carmack demo at E3 2012, DK1 in Q1 2013, Crystal Cove at CES 2014 and DK2/CV1 in Q4 2014. IMO, we're in for a wild ride.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It amazes, and bothers me, just how little discussion of the potential health impact of VR there is in the new hype cycle. My understanding from 10+ years ago was people would have invested in getting over the latency problems if they hadn't discovered it's actually really bad for you, not in the sense of being heavy, but messing with your depth perception when back in reality.

The technology has clearly improved, not least that a decent phone now has more graphics power than an SGI Onyx of the era of the experiments, but nothing has magically changed about the people.

<comment><USER19> Eventually we'll just jack our devices directly into our visual cortex instead of bothering with all the issues screens+optics brings. Then it won't matter that it's VR, given high-fidelity, accurate input. Current VR systems like the Oculus are "just" a stepping stone to something much greater.

That said, could you be more specific about the problems caused with our current VR technology, and the reason they happen?

<comment><USER20> > Eventually we'll just jack our devices directly into our visual cortex

This comes somewhere on the tech tree after "practical flying cars" and "solving world hunger." But eventually, sure, why not.

> That said, could you be more specific about the problems caused with our > current VR technology, and the reason they happen?

The most common and superficial health issue with VR (and AR) would be simulator sickness. The visual cues don't match what the brain expects via other sense data, so you get sick. It happens to some people much more easily than others.

More direct hazards:

Safety issues, e.g. tripping on stuff you can't see while operating a VR headset, or being distracted due to virtual stimuli.

Vision impairment, primarily in children younger than 6-10 years, but potentially also in older users with compromised vision systems.

Temporary visual impairment, typically after sessions longer than 20 minutes. Pronounced eyestrain due to unnatural focal behavior, object tracking, display quality, and optical alignment.

Nice papers to read:

Costello, "Health and Safety Issues associated with Virtual Reality - A Review of Current Literature" [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.6.3...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.6.3025&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

Viire, "Health and safety issues for VR". It gets cited around lots even though it's over 10 years old now, but I couldn't find a free copy. Look it up on ACM if you have access. You can preview the first page at the following URL. [http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing- machine...](http://www.deepdyve.com/lp/association-for-computing- machinery/health-and-safety-issues-for-vr-wOI06QQ7aE)

Stanney, "Realizing the full potential of virtual reality: human factors issues that could stand in the way." Starts on page 39 of the following PDF. [http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232654060_Pen- based_...](http://www.researchgate.net/publication/232654060_Pen- based_force_display_for_precision_manipulation_in_virtual_environments/file/72e7e51f1b1991a916.pdf#page=39)

You'll note that these are all late 90s. VR research was much better funded then. You can find more recent stuff though, at least with appropriate database access. More work did get done, but shoehorned under different keywords since "virtual reality" stopped being trendy.

> You are worried about supposed problems that came from 10+ year old tech. > (from sibling's child)

Nope. The main difference between 10 year old VR headsets and the ones you can buy today is that the use of bulky CRT eyepieces vs. LED-based eyepieces. The middle ground being LEDs with gradually improving dot pitch.

The human issues remain more or less the same, seeing as nobody has re- engineered the human body in the last 10 years.

My grad advisor had been involved in VR & AR research going back - I forget, 20 or 30 years. So I did a fair amount of reading on the topic. You can make slightly better headsets today, particularly if money is no object - but the core limitations are really the human factors, and the timing constraints necessary to accommodate human senses and rate of motion.

<comment><USER21> Unfortunately, the teams at Valve and Oculus seemed unaware that solving the problems you cited would require "re-engineering the human body", and naively set about solving these problems with more conventional engineering methodologies. Miraculously, they've succeeded in eliminating simulator sickness, taking advantage of the near-zero pixel switching time of OLED displays, as well as accurate, low-latency, 6DOF head tracking.

Current state-of-the-art VR tech is a huge advancement from late 90s VR tech, here's a few examples that run contrary to your curious assertion that the only significant VR tech advance of the last decade was the transition from CRT to LED displays:

-The usual inexorable orders-of-magnitude march toward greater processing power

-Commodification of smartphone hardware, which happens to be ideal for VR

-The ability to correct for distortion and chromatic aberration in software, rather than with bulky and complex optics

-Advancements in "sensor fusion", where multiple, complementary tracking sensor technologies are used in tandem, to compensate for deficiencies in any single tracking tech

-Low persistence technology that eliminates notoriously sim-sickness-inducing pixel smearing

You've clearly done your reading on this, but the VR landscape really has changed more in the last few months than the five years pre-Oculus.

<comment><USER22> > Miraculously, they've succeeded in eliminating simulator sickness…

Not true. While Abrash seems to makes this claim several times early in the PDF [1], near the end there's this:

> _In addition to the question of how games will interact with input, rules > about how players can move around a virtual space without getting motion > sick or losing presence have yet to be figured out. We've found that > traditional FPS movement is far from optimal and tends to cause motion > sickness, so VR may be best with slow movement and a lot of up-close > interaction, in which case we'll have to learn how to create fun games > around that._

Abrash admits that "traditional FPS movement" still makes people sick despite all the technical improvements touted earlier in the paper. His solution doesn't work for FPSs but instead proposes new types of games instead of the ones that people want to play. Flying fighter jets, the type of simulation that gives simulation sickness its name [2], does not involve the "slow movement and a lot of up-close interaction" that Abrash says is needed to prevent sickness.

Like you I was excited that Valve had solved the simulation sickness problem, but on closer reading found that it's just not true. Many people have the desire to use VR tech in virtual worlds doing things that involve normal-speed head movements without getting sick, but Valve has _not_ solved this problem.

[1] [http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%2...](http://media.steampowered.com/apps/abrashblog/Abrash%20Dev%20Days%202014.pdf)

[2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness#Simulation_sick...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_sickness#Simulation_sickness)

<comment><USER16> Simulator sickness is different from motion sickness. That is, there may be low simulator sickness, but it turns out that pulling 9G turns or rocket jumping while running backwards at 40MPH, while not a problem on regular computer screens will get most people motion sick in real life, and hence in VR.

From personal experience and in watching a number of people in my office try out the DK1, I can definitely confirm that there are a number of things that are quite different when strapping on the Rift - relative scale of objects becomes much more important, world detail (books in bookshelves etc) takes on a much more interesting quality, and movement speed is definitely something that seems to scale down - feeling comfortable moving at walking/realistic speeds vs getting sick at traditional video game character speeds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I personally think the CastAR glasses will be a much better solution, and above all - a very social one.

<comment><USER24> It's definitely different from Oculus/Valve but I think most people want to be immersed in a world rather than have a very sophisticated and gorgeous board game/D&D experience.

There is fighting a dragon with your D&D friends on a couch eating chips and what not, then there is fighting a dragon with your hands and body.

I'm not saying there isnt a place or this won't be popular, but I'd rather be in the OASIS somewhere with an immersion rig :)

<comment><USER25> I don't know - 3D TV has broken the ice of getting everyone together wearing glasses to view content. I think the CastAR at the right price point could be a next logical step there - especially if they take the QR code alignment concept and add a bit of social logic to it (i.e. look at this target and say, your phone downloads prompts to download the relevant game and connect (or hunts for the right wi-fi video stream).

There's a lot of potential there.

<comment><USER24> I'm not saying there isnt potential _there_ just that most people/gamers I talk to are looking for VR, not AR. Google glass and CastAR will bring a lot of nifty stuff to the table but that will be a different audience.

Like the blog post said, VR people are after Snow Crash/Ready Player One.

I'm sure LARP'rs will want AR

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have three questions (maybe not on-topic) -

1) How much harder and stranger will it be to do VR graphics programming?

2) Can we predict when we will be able to replicate real world in a graphics application?

3) AI has a end goal of achieving singularity. What is the ultimate goal of a graphics programmer? And how much closer are we to the goal?

<comment><USER27> Graphics programming for VR is only slightly more difficult than normal. Some screenspace techniques don't work as well, and everything is done in a stereo pipeline. The Oculus also requires some distortion and calibration of the distance between the eyes is very much preferred. Basically that's it.

Replicating the real world is still very far off, but there is an estimate where the resolution offered by the screen matches the average density of receptors in the eye. I don't recall exact numbers, but I seem to remember Michael Abrash having said something about it. Probably somewhere in the range of 8k displays per eye.

<comment><USER28> 8k may not be high enough for true "reality like" vision in an HMD. A good article on the matter can be found at [http://bit.ly/1bCyIcj](http://bit.ly/1bCyIcj) .

What's cool is that mobile manufacturers have already committed to creating screens capable of much higher-density screens than current technology. The VR space was a bit nervous regarding display technology due to the diminishing returns of higher-resolution screens but recent announcement makes hi- resolution VR not only possible but likely regardless of the success of individual VR companies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I'm as hopeful for Oculus as I would assume most HN readers are, but one hurdle Jeff mentions is I think a bigger deal than most people assume. Namely:

 _> It's a big commitment to strap a giant, heavy device on your face with 3+ cables to your PC. You don't just casually fire up a VR experience._

This is the exact same problem that just killed 3D HDTV -- the "everyone has to put their special pair of glasses on now for this to work" problem. It turned out that most people just weren't willing to go that extra step of putting special glasses on to watch TV. And 3D glasses don't even have to be strapped to your head! They're feather-light and super-simple compared to something like the Rift. But they were still too much to win over a broad general audience.

(It could be argued that this is less of a problem for VR than it was for 3D, because TV content is more frequently consumed socially than computer/game console content is. But even if that's true, it seems like it puts an unnecessary cap on VR's ambitions; why _wouldn 't_ VR want to expand into the niche TV fills today?)

This is a big chasm for VR hardware, even very good VR hardware -- the more ceremony that is required to get from "hm, I'd like to have a VR experience now" to _actually having the VR experience_ , the less likely it is that it will ever make the leap from early adopters to the general public. "Casually" is a good way to describe the way people interact with most media -- and that's only becoming more true as things like smartphones and tablets become prevalent. So anything that pushes back and tries to make that casual experience more formal is swimming against the tide.

<comment><USER21> While it's incidentally true that "you don't just casually fire up a VR experience", it glosses over the more salient fact that you don't have casual VR experiences, full stop. VR is, definitionally, an immersive, exclusionary activity that places you in a virtual world and prevents you from interacting with your surroundings. Criticizing an activity like that for not being casual enough to "fire up" is like speculating air travel won't catch on because airplane doors are too narrow.

<comment><USER30> The 3D movies and TV technology is a pointless gimmick anyway. What it does most of the time is give you a couple of planes or layers of "depth" in the picture.

Games are actually made out of 3D geometry that you can freely walk around in and look anywhere so the 3D effect is on a ridiculously different level.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This just out:

Convergence: What happens when virtual realities take over? [http://pando.com/2014/02/16/convergence-what-happens-when- vi...](http://pando.com/2014/02/16/convergence-what-happens-when-virtual- realities-take-over/)

</comment><comment><USER32> I find it odd that he described Ready Player One as "excellent", yet is excited about VR. Maybe he wasn't paying attention, but Ready Player One is in part a critique of VR. Notice that the real world has decayed quite a bit because of neglect; most everyone avoids the real world and escapes to the OASIS (the VR). And the book ends with the protagonist being happy enough that for the first time in as long as he can remember, he has no desire to log back into the VR.

<comment><USER28> I had a different perspective on the book. To me the dystopian future had less to do with VR and more to do with oligarchy, the energy crisis, and our lack of planning for the future. In the book VR became the main character's only way to escape his harsh realities, a place where he actually had a best friend, and a place where he enjoyed experiences with his mother and was able to benefit from the automated education. The end of the book did not give me the impression that VR was bad, only that reality could be good even in a bad unforgiving world.

I know the author went to the Oculus Rift headquarters last year as they are big fans of his book.

[http://bit.ly/1gR4hfX](http://bit.ly/1gR4hfX)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> lol, from the comments - "locking yourself away from vision and sound in an apartment or house makes you ripe for burglary and rape."

Why do people jump to this worst case scenario for new tech ?

<comment><USER34> Just add a small cam to stream into corner of your vision on demand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> So based on this it does seem like using OR for your desktop (browsing, work, etc.) will not be viable. This is kind of sad as I was hoping that it will be a decent alternative to using multiple monitors.

<comment><USER3> Browsing is inherently a 2D experience. Maybe VR will finally make it possible to try out stuff like clothes before you buy them online, though. Create an avatar that has your dimensions and looks, and then "wear" the clothes and watch yourself in a 3d mirror. Obviously, the graphics will have to look pretty realistic.</comment></comment>


Learning to crochet as a 32 year old man - <AUTHOR> https://critter.blog/2019/07/01/learning-to-crochet-as-a-32-year-old-man/ <comment><USER2> I also have the problem of my mind wandering during meetings. This is a pretty cool solution. I tried several of the other toys you mentioned too and none of them worked. Maybe I'll try this for a change.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, give it a shot! It's cheap to get started and doesn't take long to learn how to make some basic things.</comment></comment>


Saddles again - <AUTHOR> http://benjamin-recht.github.io/2016/03/24/saddles-again/ <comment><USER2> The linked Rong Ge blog post explains the issue in a bit more detail: [http://www.offconvex.org/2016/03/22/saddlepoints/](http://www.offconvex.org/2016/03/22/saddlepoints/)</comment>


Filecoin 2017 Q4 Update - <AUTHOR> https://filecoin.io/blog/update-2017-q4/ <comment><USER2> They seem to have solved proof-of-storage, but the network can't guarantee the available of the files you pay to store! A profitable strategy:

1\. Set up a miner on AWS. You'll only need a small machine as you'll persist the data in S3.

2\. Accept bids for storage, and use your free ingress bandwidth to copy the data into S3

3\. Calculate and publish your proofs of storage so your Filecoin (held in escrow after your successful bid) is released.

4\. Refuse all bids to access the content - egress bandwidth costs money!

5\. Win! You'll always be able to undercut other miners when bidding for storage as they have to bake in bandwidth costs in their bids, and you strategy is easily scalable (as you can pump as much data into S3 as you need - you'll only need to get more machines to calculate more storage proofs).

<comment><USER3> I think you're assuming some kind of broken strawman version of Filecoin. (Edit: This wasn't really justified, see below.) The price of retrieving data needs to be agreed ahead of time and nodes that refuse to provide data need to lose collateral. Ultimately there's also replication/erasure coding so that one node can't hold your data hostage (but it would be worrying if evil was a dominant strategy because then all the nodes might hold your data hostage at the same time).

(Also, for step 3 I think proofs of storage are supposed to be calculated continuously, not once. So you'd be constantly reading data from S3.)

<comment><USER2> I'm not sure why you say it's a strawman? The whitepaper[1] says that an ask order on the storage market is just (space, price) -- no mention of the cost to retrieve the data. Similarly, the storage market protocol (Figure 11) doesn't mention losing stake for failing to provide the data on demand (it only mentions losing stake for failing to post proofs).

[1] [https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf](https://filecoin.io/filecoin.pdf)

<comment><USER3> I admit that the concept of retrieval miners makes no sense to me since it seems like they would have to be the same as the storage miners. It is worrying that the whitepaper says "we must assume that there is always one honest Retrieval Miner"; you can't assume honesty without incentives.

In general, I don't take the Filecoin whitepaper too literally. There are a lot of aspects of it that will probably have to be changed. I think the Filecoin ICO (which I didn't participate in BTW) is more of a vote of confidence on the team, not any specific protocol.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very interesting to contrast with competitor Sia's latest status update.

Sia quietly developed a fully functional network over the last 5 years, and has now stated they will begin big marketing efforts.

Also, no reason IPFS cannot integrate with Sia.

[https://blog.sia.tech/sia-triannual-update-september- decembe...](https://blog.sia.tech/sia-triannual-update-september- december-2017-8afdf9c10325)

<comment><USER5> I own some amount of Siacoin, but what I don't fully understand is how the value of Sia is supposed to work with the platform itself.

As the value of the currency increases, doesn't that make actually using the service prohibitively expensive?

Also, the Sia wallet has been completely inoperable for about a week, which is what has caused its latest price inflation. It went from .02 to .10 so I figured I'd get rid of it, but I can not send it from my personal Sia wallet to an exchange.

<comment><USER3> _As the value of the currency increases, doesn 't that make actually using the service prohibitively expensive?_

AFAIK this is an unsolved problem for all "app coins"/"utility tokens"/"fat protocols". The service could be dynamically repriced when the value of the currency changes, but that requires oracles and many cryptocurrency idealists are reluctant to admit that things should be priced in a stable currency.

<comment><USER6> Sia has cluster management software to let the hoster dynamically set prices with respect to the exchange rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Any update on what they did with the $257 million they raised[1]?

Did they convert it to fiat or keep it in crypto? Between Sep and now there's been some big shifts in value. Be nuts if they have over $1 billion to play with now.

[1]: [https://www.coindesk.com/257-million-filecoin-breaks-time- re...](https://www.coindesk.com/257-million-filecoin-breaks-time-record-ico- funding/)

<comment><USER8> \--- _Any update on what they did with the $257 million they raised_

They are paying people to write and release quarterly updates. Without any inside info, I can tell you that that costs money. Maybe they setup trust funds to issue such updates well into year 2087. What more do you want???

<comment><USER7> I'm specifically asking how they're holding on to the massive amount of funding they raised.

A traditional funding raise would be in USD and the startup may receive in a number of tranches tied to milestones. In the case of Filecoin I think they received a large chunk of it in crypto, specifically Ether, which has grown significantly since then. If they didn't convert it to fiat shortly after the funding round they could be sitting on a (paper) value of over $1 billion.

<comment><USER8> _I_ doubt they converted it all in USD. Maybe they invested in other crypto, and maybe somewhere between $257m and $1b might be their bank acct balance. Imagine having at least $250,000,000 and as much to hire employees! Of course they can keep 5 employees and pay "managers" xx $millions a year...no law against that, "that's how they decided their company should be run"

<comment><USER9> How is that different from embezzlement?

<comment><USER10> Because in that situation you're just paying with their own money for employees for their work. Usually, in a normal company, you will have a board of directors or ombudsman or somebody with some kind of incentive to prevent massive overpaying that essentially becomes a gift(unless, of course, we're talking about the CEO, then pay away until the cows come home) - I don't know, does FileCoin or the parent company have that kind of set up?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually very interested in setting aside some storage for this project but have legal concerns. Namely, if an encrypted shard of [illegal file X] is sitting on my IPFS node without my knowledge, could I be held responsible legally for holding/distributing that illegal file? As far as I've been able to ascertain from a few lawyers I've curbsided, the answer is "maybe," but if anyone knows of any clear legal precedent around this issue, I'd appreciate your input. Seems like this issue could preclude mainstream adoption, if not addressed (maybe it has been and I just haven't seen it).

<comment><USER11> Yes, you could be held legally responsible.

Do you have the funds to mount a reasonable defense if you were to be prosecuted? Would a negative outcome significantly impact your life?

If you can't afford to fight it don't risk it

<comment><USER12> IANAL, but from my understanding of the DMCA Safe Habor provisions it could be very tricky to hold a host responsible for data stored on their servers unknowingly. However, once they find out about the file's illegality, they must act or then they become liable. Amazon is not immediately liable if someone uploads illegal files to S3.

<comment><USER11> The GP just incriminated themselves now though I.e.

"The defendant installed software that they knew could be used to store illegal materials, proceeded to profit off it, and did not put any protections in place to try to limit this"

For some judges that's all they'd need to hear. Amazon have lawyers and essentially an endless budget, processes and teams to defend their position and support law enforcement, they have no trouble defending themselves, but an individual could find themselves in a really tough position.

<comment><USER13> There needs to be a point at which one can reasonably determine that someone has done everything they possibly can, short of not running the node, to keep illegal content off of their machines. I don't think the only solution need be to abstain from using the system. This is an age-old problem, almost as old as the Internet itself.

<comment><USER11> Completely agree

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Section 7 seems to be the kind of status update a doomed crowdfunding hardware project posts. Lots of buzzwords on all the incredibly complicated problems their awesome rockstar team is working all day to solve, nothing anyone can verify. Section 4 is an entirely transparent scheme to ride on the coattails of IPFS.

<comment><USER15> This style of providing updates seems to be standard amongst crypto / blockchain projects. Do you have any different examples? Thanks

<comment><USER14> Just look at the updates of some of those famous crowdfunding projects (or "ICO+whitepaper" if you want)

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano- autonomou...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/torquing/zano-autonomous- intelligent-swarming-nano-drone/posts/1245513)

"we have all been flat out working" "Getting a high speed shutter and minimal jitter from the video feed, testing the camera with the motors and all RF devices running at full power"

<comment><USER16> It's hard to tell if you're using a massive failure like that as an example of what to do or what not to do.

Or is it sarcasm?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pretty underwhelming to have the top challenges outsourced to bounty-based RFPs. With the money they got any kind of centralization because of overpromises is a huge failure in my book. Really disappointed by the greed that ICOs have brought out of people.

</comment><comment><USER18> Even assuming they meet all their product goals, who is going to choose this over AWS?

<comment><USER19> From what I understand, thats not what its about. AWS and all of the various centralized hosting providers are still valuable.

The idea of web 3.0 and the ethereum/ipfs structure is that you have a fat client and thin server. This means that all the business logic sits on the client and the server is just utility.

Filecoin and the ifps structure allows content like text or images to be stored in a place that the smart contract based client could access.

Some recent examples are:

\- Marketplace that uses ifps to store data: [https://demo.originprotocol.com](https://demo.originprotocol.com)

\- Game (not sure if this uses ifps) [http://cryptokitties.co](http://cryptokitties.co)

<comment><USER20> Why not just do this without the overhead of mining and maintaining a blockchain? Surely there's a more efficient way of maintaining a public distributed file system.

<comment><USER21> In the Dat world, we have [https://hashbase.io](https://hashbase.io), a self- deployable service for rehosting archives

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How many coins do you think will be given per token?

</comment><comment><USER23> Pied Piper Update, Q4 2017</comment>


Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 out - <AUTHOR> http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/3.1b3/releasenotes/

<comment><USER2> I'm waiting for Ubiquity to become a standard part of the FF release. I use it constantly.</comment>


How to get a job as a C++ developer? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I am a Java developer but currently found interest in C++ development. What should I do/learn first to land to get a job as a C++ developer ? <comment><USER2> <http://cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/> <http://www.horstmann.com/ccj2/ccjapp3.html> <http://www.4p8.com/eric.brasseur/cppcen.html>

I was in a similar situation just lately. The above are some very good introductory stuff I found very useful.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here are the key things you need to learn:

1\. Memory Management - Java takes care of it all for you, whereas in C++ you have to manually allocate and de-allocate memory, otherwise you will have memory leaks.

2\. Learn the Standard Template Library (STL). C++ has a much smaller library of pre-built code that Java. The STL is very good for some basic data structures like map, set, etc.

3\. Pointers - Java has references, C++ has pointers. You need to learn how to use them safely.

4\. Polymorphism - Similar to Java but syntax is a bit different

5\. Operator Overloading - You can redefine operators such as "+" or "-" to make your code look cleaner. This can be dangerous, but very useful if done correctly.

I think that is a good start. Overall the transition to C++ should be relatively easy once you master memory management and pointers.

<comment><USER4> I don't think he wanted an intro to CPP, he wants to know where to find work.

In fairness, if someone needs to know that c++ doesn't have a GC, then you'd have to be out of your mind to give them work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I agree that learning the Standard Template Library (STL) would give you a solid basis. Also, read up on how Facebook has made C++ a significant part of their process. This could spark some ideas in terms of applying the technical skills to a very relevant (and current) challenge. Maybe you'll be inspired to begin a project on Github?</comment>


Cursor preservation in collaborative editors - <AUTHOR> http://neil.fraser.name/writing/cursor/

<comment><USER3> This is a very interesting development, there was an article here a while ago about multiple cursors & keyboards in use on a single display using a hacked X server.

<comment><AUTHOR> > [...] there was an article here a while ago about multiple cursors & > keyboards in use on a single display using a hacked X server.

do you have the link perhaps?

<comment><USER3> let me go find it for you...

edit: here you go: <http://www.cs.princeton.edu/omnimedia/papers/multicursor.pdf>

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you:-) [I tried to find it, but my google-fu seems a bit rusty today...]

I just finished skimming the paper - interesting how many different approaches there are for collaboration - e.g. the server in the paper is very general (works for all X apps) but aimed at control rooms (low latency) - <USER2> specialized collaborative editing systems (which work by synching n copies) often can deal with higher latency while not sacrificing ease of use.

I wonder if it is possible to unite generality and latency-tolerance...

<comment><USER3> You're welcome. Google is not always good at finding stuff that you know exists if you don't use the right keywords, also, your queries could have the result but only on page 85 or so...

I think the latency issues can be solved, after all when you use X over a network or when you use something like VNC to have access to a remote machine you are the one to decide to do so, the latency is something you take for granted (and with a good dsl setup it is quite amazing how responsive a remove session can be).

I think this is mostly a transitional issue that will solve itself in due course, after all, networks get faster all the time and latency is fairly steadily going down.

RTT from where I'm sitting to Amsterdam is 21 ms, to the US eastcoast it is about 90. That's not so bad, it would have to be a pretty critical application if that sort of latency would give trouble.

And if the application is 'aware' of its circumstances (such as a web based collaboration tool) then I'm sure you could tune it to the situation to achieve even better performance by masking some of the effects the latency causes.

Every multi-player networked game effectively implements strategies like that in order to mask the fact that the players are not sharing the same environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> on thing that wasn't mentioned was using higher level information to infer cursor position. ie: instead of just saying text disappeared here, text appeared here, say a cut operation was performed here and a paste operation was performed here.

<comment><USER5> This is a difficult problem to deal with, due to the nature of HTML and XML. They both use embedded markup instead of annotations so when you're operating on things, you're not actually operating on text, you're operating on a _tree_.</comment></comment>


The Secret API of Banks - <AUTHOR> http://gduverger.com/secret-api-banks <comment><USER2> For those in the EU there's something interesting coming next year, banks need to provide open API to interact with each other:

[https://thenextweb.com/worldofbanking/2018/06/27/openbanking...](https://thenextweb.com/worldofbanking/2018/06/27/openbanking/)

Already right now in Germany there are a lot of banks that share a common API format which is why there are a lot of banking apps where you can just log into your bank and don't need bank specific apps. It's called HBCI / FinTS ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FinTS)) and it's great to have that possibility without doing some web-scraping to get your data out.

One example of another german bank API would be:

[https://api-docs.fidor.de/v1/introduction/welcome-text](https://api- docs.fidor.de/v1/introduction/welcome-text)

<comment><USER3> PSD2 and "open" banking is bullshit. I wish this myth would die - it is anything but "open".

If you want to gain access to API _s_ , you need to become an "AISP" (as they are called in the UK), this requires a certification and a load of other nonsense akin to PCI-DSS. This is for read-only access - for "write" access including the ability to edit payees or make payments you need to become a "PISP" which I assume requires even more paperwork.

I also said API _s_ because the regulation does not mandate any kind of API format, so every bank has their own with different capabilities as far as what data is returned and in which format. Some of them are truly awful.

And finally, "open" banking still does not allow _you_ to get a personal access token for _your own_ account.

<comment><USER4> > If you want to gain access to APIs, you need to become an "AISP"

It's more complicated than that.

Banks can give unregulated entities access to their APIs, but they don't because IMO providing API access is directly opposed to their interests. If you want to be _statutorily entitled_ to API access you need to be a registered AISP or PISP.

Unfortunately what an AIS is is very specific, i.e. showing the account owner aggregated information, before or after processing, about one or more payment accounts. If your product doesn't do this, e.g. credit scoring using the user's bank transactions instead of credit bureaux, then you're not performing a regulated activity, therefore the regulator has nothing to authorise, and you can't enjoy the resulting entitlement of API access.

This means there are whole classes of (unregulated) applications that won't be allowed to exist by banks if they adopt the position of granting access only to regulated entities.

> this requires a certification and a load of other nonsense akin to PCI-DSS

AIS and PIS have become regulated activities as a result of PSD2. This is not the same as PCI-DSS. Becoming a (P|A)ISP means becoming supervised by the local regulator as an authorised financial institution. This involves a lot of paperwork, a £1,500 application fee, insurance, fees for any professional services you needed to complete the application (lawyer), and 3 months (longer if your application is incomplete or has other issues).

> for "write" access including the ability to edit payees or make payments you > need to become a "PISP" which I assume requires even more paperwork.

And €50,000 own capital requirements.

> I also said APIs because the regulation does not mandate any kind of API > format, so every bank has their own with different capabilities as far as > what data is returned and in which format. Some of them are truly awful.

This is true at the moment for Europe but notionally incorrect for the 9 largest banks in the UK, which are subject to parallel domestic measures ordered by the Competition and Markets Authority. There is a spec, but there are many problems with the governance, implementation, etc.

<comment><USER5> From what I've heard the main problem is banks are afraid popular API access would overload their mainframe-era systems that don't scale and can't scale.

<comment><USER6> Which is utter nonsense. They already have APIs, they're used in their mobile apps.

<comment><USER5> That's not an API, that's a private protocol for which they can easily anticipate and control load (e.g. by pushing changes to their apps).

<comment><USER6> All the banks I'm with use rest APIs in their apps (you can see this by MITMing the traffic), no "private protocol" whatever the hell that is.

As for controlling load, I'm not sure I follow. If you have 1m people with the mobile app installed and all of them decide to check their balance at the same time your systems are going to crumble if you've only provisioned for 10,000.

Web/Mobile banking doesn't talk to the mainframes directly, it's essentially a caching layer which gets committed later when the mainframe does it's job. Not much different from your average web app just with longer delays.

<comment><USER5> I think you aren't using the term API correctly. This discussion is about APIs _for third party developers to write apps_. The fact that banks own mobile apps often use REST to communicate with their backend does not make such a protocol an API. For one it's not documented, for another it may change without notice.

Of course if you define "API" to mean literally any form of communication between processes or devices then sure. But then you'd have to consider GSM or FTP or TCP/IP itself to be APIs and I never saw them described that way.

My main point is that an interface that's just being driven by human interaction has very predictable load characteristics. If you open up a true API to third party developers they may come up with new uses that aren't directly human driven or may even be batch jobs. You don't have much control over your inbound workloads anymore.

<comment><USER7> FTP TCP and IP are protocols, GSM is a european standard and REST is an easy method for building applications in which the backend is called the API (application programming interface) which typically use the http protocol. RESTful generally means using CRUD create, read, update and delete although it isn't a standard.

Some api's are private as in the one your bank's mobile app most likely uses. Some companies offer their API's to the public. They are both still APIs though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the UK the fintech (Financial Tech) scene is becoming more prevalent, for the better.

Recently I switched to a new online-only bank called Monzo. It's fully licensed and all accounts are insured up to a certain amount by the UK government. It's great. They're in the top charts for apps in the UK now on the iOS App Store. There's a few other alternatives like Starling Bank and Revolut too.

They're very good. They're open about their tech stack with developer blogs and it's a modern stack which lets them iterate in a quick and agile manner unlike the legacy banks.

You get push notifications on every payment (usually you get the notification before the payment has even processed on the vendor's end!). Tells you exactly how much you've been spending every day.

They've got RESTful JSON APIs you can integrate with if you want to and they also have the option in the app to easily export your data into CSV or Quickbooks format. They even have IFTTT integration.

Really makes you manage your money better.

<comment><USER9> Revolut are a nightmare. After using it for several months and fully verified I apparently entered a CVV incorrectly on one transaction. Revolut blocked the card but with no notification, and no inapp indicators, all showed normal in app, all toggled enabled for maximum flexibility. It took ages to figure out, but swiping the card or using online was now returning to the merchant 'FRAUD/STOLEN' marker rather than just insufficient funds, this lead to Ayden blocking me from merchants and other hell. Best of all support kept telling me my account was fine and all enabled, it was only after Twitter escalation I learnt about a backend block their support staff couldn't see. Ridiculous, weeks to sort, dozens of tickets, suggestion to train support staff or provide in app indicator of block was ignored.This shit still happens today, avoid Revolut. Fintech can be rough, it ain't all great, tread carefully. Oh and they delete feedback from forums if not positive lol

<comment><USER10> Thank you so much for posting this. Kept waiting for my Revolut invite, but now I know to steer clear.

<comment><USER11> Tbh I've been using Revolut for like 2 years now if not longer. Saved my ass whenever I was traveling, helps with geoblocked services, virtual cards are great and I can uses it with Google Pay. Never had a single problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The actual secret API of banks-and by the way this is the initial strategy Plaid pursed if rumor is to be believed (essentially without the consent of the banks)-is by reverse engineering mobile app APIs. Most of these bank APIs try to use cheesy secret token vending to prevent casual API traffic on their endpoints, but the reality is that a sufficiently instrumented Android kernel (or rooted iOS device) will let you reverse engineer those protocols and masquerade as legitimate users.

<comment><USER13> Why don't banks sell API access at a rate s/similar/lower than Google Maps API access? This is starting to feel like music and video piracy all over again.

<comment><USER10> Because the value is in not being commodified. Not giving API access is worth more than charging for it.

If all of your credit lines, checking, savings, and investment accounts were an API call away, the institutions providing those no longer build relationships that can be profitable; they're simply utilities you could swap out interchangeably. As such, they're not a fan of this idea.

<comment><USER14> > _they 're simply utilities you could swap out interchangeably. As such, > they're not a fan of this idea._

It's sad, because that's _exactly what they should be_. :/.

<comment><USER15> In crime we call it "organised" crime. I'm banking it's just "doing business". Maybe we should make this kind of invention of value out of thin air illegal?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is very clever but makes me sad. It's 2018 and the best, cleanest way of monitoring and storing my own transactions programmatically is by scraping an email.

<comment><USER17> *in America

Banks provide an API in Europe. In fact it's a legal requirement that's coming into force in 2019, and there are a lot of 'mobile-first' banks like Monzo and Revolut which make this entirely un-needed in the first place (providing spending exports, decent analytics, push notifications, etc etc).

Welcome to the future. Contact your local politician if you want to join us. Maybe also ask about chip and pin while you're at it!

<comment><USER18> With Monzo you can just use IFTTT[1] for simple stuff like this, and the API[2] for complicated stuff.

I personally use the API to automatically add flat bill directly to Splitwise.

[1] [https://monzo.com/features/ifttt/](https://monzo.com/features/ifttt/) [2] [https://docs.monzo.com](https://docs.monzo.com)

<comment><USER19> Have you opensourced that code? i'd be interested.. (i'm half the team that built IFTTT at Monzo)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I talk to (about) a person a week who wants to create a new US bank. Some are pursuing a de novo charter, some are buying a bank, and some are a quasi bank on top of another bank.

The real blocker here is the Fed won't grant new charters and often won't transfer charters. I'm hoping this will change in the next few years and we can get some real competition.

(Disclosure: my job is making APIs for US Banks.)

<comment><USER21> Any idea why this is the situation?

What about doing a state-by-state charter?

<comment><USER20> The fed is still living with the fear of the 2008 crash. And you still need FDIC insurance even if you have a state charter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I was expecting this to outline how you could actually use various APIs from different banks, but was still pleasantly happy with the actual content of the article. This is a clever idea I had never thought about doing. Kudos to OP!

</comment><comment><USER23> I hate sounding like a VC jerk, but the banking industry needs some serious disruption.

<comment><USER24> The american banking industry, maybe.

One of the ills of VC-mania is the ongoing assumption that a) problems that exist in the US exist everywhere and b) that there are no other problems.

(see also: Uber busting the "taxi monopoly")

<comment><USER25> And that nobody outside the US ever has solved problems in a way that may apply to the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I guess it's not popular or all that well-known anymore, but for quite a while there's been a Quicken-led banking interface for some banks. Known as OFX or Direct Connect, it provides at least one-way (download) access to banking transactions. I think there's a way to upload as well but have never used it nor had a bank that supports it for upload.

My bank has a separate enrollment - it was free - offering download-only access to my transactions. I haven't used it in awhile (just too much on my plate) but it worked well as recently as 2016.

[https://github.com/aqbanking/aqbanking](https://github.com/aqbanking/aqbanking) is one open implementation for the interface.

<comment><USER27> ^ This.

It's often called "Quicken Direct Connect" (NOT "web connect", that's a bastardization trying to push the login flow through the proprietary web interface), and often has to be specifically enabled for your account (Bank of Slum-merica is the only place I've heard charging for the functionality though).

Check say [https://ofx-prod- filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt](https://ofx-prod- filist.intuit.com/qb2600/data/fidir.txt) to see if your bank is listed (that contains both direct and web connect banks, you'll figure out what the flags mean).

Setup a cron or human cron to pull and save the raw OFX (QFX) query every day/week/month, and then run whatever reports/analytics you want from that. This way you'll have history to use with whatever program/scripts you move to, and can also straightforwardly integrate legacy banks that make you use the web interface (just at a much lower polling rate).

<comment><USER28> How does web connect actually work? I've never found any description of the method

<comment><USER27> I don't exactly know. But I'm under the impression that it performs the standard website login flow via headless browsing, then uses the website's "download transactions as OFX" functionality. So similar problems as "screen scraping" but less error prone because if it successfully downloads the data, it is in a well-defined format.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is an awesome alternative to scraping your own bank transactions. I'm considering using this technique to automatically add rows to my personal GnuCash MySQL database.

<comment><USER30> Is there a good existing framework that can turn emails into events? Some sort of IMAP client ?

<comment><USER31> Name your language of choice and I'll link you to a good one.

<comment><USER30> Java

<comment><USER31> JavaMail API ;)

<comment><USER30> Does that have the ability to call a specified callback function when an email arrives from a specified sender?

<comment><USER31> It's a full framework for handling almost everything a MUA would do (imap/pop, email parsing, mime parsing, sending email, etc), so yeah, it can do that. You'll have a bunch of boiler plate code you'll need, but a Google search will give you plenty of samples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Anyone use Firefly III? It uses the Spectre API to allow you to have a self- hosted Mint.

[https://firefly-iii.org/](https://firefly-iii.org/)

<comment><USER33> This seem like a great option!...thanks for sharing

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Posts like this make me pretty excited to be a customer of a "tech-y" online bank. (In my case, Simple, not shilling, I just like them)

Theoretically, these banks with great mobile apps are one step away from giving you API access once it's needed/wanted by enough consumers. Technically, your phone is doing it under the hood already.

Simple uses React for their web interface, so I imagine they have nice JSON APIs for all of the data already.

There was a site advertising developer managed bank accounts last year, [https://root.co.za/](https://root.co.za/), I think it's also a cool idea.

<comment><USER35> You can prod the network panel to reverse engineer simple's APIs. I've done it for some visualization tools in the past.

It's sloppy and undocumented, but their support staff are fantastic and surprisingly technical, so I had about a 100% success rate tweeting them things like "what's the new endpoint for what was previously /bank/transactions?"

A public version of this API was one of their stated goals in 2010 or so, but they're more interested in chasing non-technical product goals like couples accounts. I expect their most technical customers don't make up enough transaction volume to justify attention.

I love simple for being the least worst, but am still saddened by what they could have been if they had stripe's passion for technical execution. But hey, at least there's an API and they won't slap you with the CFAA for hitting it.

<comment><USER34> Sorry for the late reply here. I'm still new to HN and haven't figured out everything yet...

How are you doing authentication for the API? Is it session based or can you pass some sort of API token after logging in?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I tried doing something like this, but it didn't work for Bank of America, as their minimum alert level is $100.

When I lived in Slovenia, I could set SMS alerts from my bank there (UniCredit). I wrote an Android app [1] that intercepted those SMS messages and parsed out the relevant bits. Those were the days...

[1] [https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money- counter](https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money-counter)

<comment><USER37> > I wrote an Android app [1] that intercepted those SMS messages and parsed > out the relevant bits.

Sounds like a nice hack, but at a meta level, I find the idea that a mobile platform even allows an app to 'intercept' SMS messages to be a little troubling.

<comment><USER38> Well, it doesn't. You have to do a lot of things in order to allow it that it's impossible to not know exactly what you're doing. I think it's positive that I am in control of my device when I want to.

<comment><USER31> Actually there are quite a few popular Android apps that bulk harvested SMSes, so your point in defense of its security is rather weak.

<comment><USER38> But that was in the past, right? Current version shouldn't allow it unless user explicitly agrees.

<comment><USER31> It was permissioned before too. The general population mostly doesn't understand what they are giving up when they agree to that when an app asks.

<comment><USER36> A few things -

1\. In order to achieve this functionality, the app explicitly requires permission to receive SMS [1] [2]

2\. I agree that the general population likely isn't fully aware of the implications of granting permissions for such things. Having said that, I think that privacy/security/transparency is one of the things constantly being worked on with subsequent Android OS updates [3] [4], and I think that things are getting better.

Personally, I don't grant access to sensors like microphone/camera/location to apps that I don't want using them (most apps), and I think people should be aware of potential hazards here. Then again, people are openly inviting Amazon Alexa and Google Home into their homes ...

On the other hand, as a developer I like having the ability to build this, for me, and potentially for others who find use for what I wrote, with full transparency/visibility into the source.

[1] [https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money- counter/blob/...](https://github.com/loisaidasam/poor-mans-money- counter/blob/dc35e75c2ad57a658a849fba54e96f2d8a6af2d8/AndroidManifest.xml#L7)

[2] [https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.per...](https://developer.android.com/reference/android/Manifest.permission#RECEIVE_SMS)

[3] [https://www.android.com/security- center/](https://www.android.com/security-center/)

[4] [https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/](https://www.android.com/versions/pie-9-0/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> There's so much cool stuff you can do with this data. Think of all the creepy shit amazon does with your browsing data, but for your spending data, and you can browse it.

We're leaving a crazy amount of insight on the table.

Shameless plug: I built some personal finance viz tools based on similar data. they also just barely scratch the surface: [http://rick.xxx/orchid.html](http://rick.xxx/orchid.html)

If you're working on interesting things in the fintech space, I'd love to chat with you about strategy or execution, especially w/r/t product design. Email in profile.

</comment><comment><USER39> Forgive the shameless self-promotion, but we at Seed offer a customer facing API for read-only transaction data. We would happily build out more API features, but we've seen very little demand, despite the frequent HN threads about bank APIs.

We are a business focused bank, but we support sole proprietors and freelancers as well.

API docs are here: [http://docs.seed.co/v1.0.0/docs](http://docs.seed.co/v1.0.0/docs)

[https://seed.co](https://seed.co)

p.s. We are working on Android I promise please don't yell at us (again).

<comment><USER40> It's really unclear to me what your product is. I would have given up trying to figure out if you hadn't implied that it's somehow related to what this cool blog post accomplishes.

From the FAQ, my best guess is that you offer businesses bank accounts that come bundled with the reporting you'd get with something like Mint/Quickbooks?

It's OK to basically be two services glued together, but why are you _better_ than just the two existing services, were they to be glued together?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> You may want to try plaid. They've integrated every major US bank(and some CUs) either using bank api or scraping their web pages.

You can get not only transactions, but also account info, balances and enough info to perform charges/payments(e.g. ACH routing/account numbers). Api is no- nonsence and they got decent dashboard.

Its paid service, but they allow 100 accounts for free(you need to apply though). To check what are major banks they support, you can visit their status page: [https://status.plaid.com/](https://status.plaid.com/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Yeah, I've been doing this for a couple of months now. I just happen to use a combination of Gmail filters, IFTTT actions to post to a webhook of a custom app hosted for free at Heroku to parse and send to Google Spreadsheets. It's been serving me well, definitely better than my bank's app.

<comment><USER43> I'm sorry, I'm not sure I heard you right. Did you say you can build a custom app but still use IFTTT?

Here's a link to [http://Zapier.com](http://Zapier.com)

<comment><USER44> I downvoted you because you seem to be implying that programmers shouldn't use IFTTT. There's nothing wrong with IFTTT if it meets your needs.

<comment><USER45> Not original commenter, I used to use and like them, but at one point they changed all URLs to use their shortener (I was using it to archive all links I post on FB into an Evernote note). Great, they want to do more analytics and they're making sure all URLs in content they're supposed to be just plumbing will die with them, very customer friendly.

And then there's this: [https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/03/my_heroic_and_lazy_stand_ag...](https://blog.pinboard.in/2016/03/my_heroic_and_lazy_stand_against_ifttt/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I just spent 20 minutes reading about the fascinating case of Ellis vs. Grand Rapids, as linked from the poster's site ([http://gduverger.com/ellis-v- city](http://gduverger.com/ellis-v-city)). This was like a two-for-one deal, so thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Haha, thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> OP, could you share the code for this?

<comment><USER48> Agree, open sourcing the e-mail parsing and pandas code would be amazing!

<comment><USER49> Agree. Upvoting need for open sourcing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been getting a good amount of requests for open sourcing it. It would require a few hours of work but I might take the time one of those weekends. Please feel free to send me an email (firstname.lastname@example.com) if you'd like me to keep you updated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I've had to do something similar when a bank decided that CSV history was limited to a much shorter time period than PDF documents. Nothing a little python-driven OCR can't handle. But it was stupid I had to employ such measures in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER51> Many banks do not actually include any information in the notifications, because of the unencrypted nature of in-transit email. That is, "There has been a debit on your account" instead of "There has been a debit of X$ from merchant Y".

<comment><USER52> It'd be pretty neat to give a bank your public PGP key and then they could send you encrypted emails with more details.

<comment><USER31> For the 0.001% of Nanking customers who understand PGP, let alone who can set it up. Yes, I'd love it too, but until PGP is more user friendly for the masses, I wouldn't hold my breath on any bank bothering.

<comment><USER52> Oh I agree. I think it will never happen. But as a data point, Facebook has the option to add it: [https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the- graph/securing-em...](https://www.facebook.com/notes/protect-the- graph/securing-email-communications-from-facebook/1611941762379302)

So, it's not too far fetched.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> So, he does not trust third-parties with his banking details, but uses a third-party to send emails with a complete detail of his account to an email- server (which might or might not be run by a third party). The logic is lost on me.

<comment><USER54> Furthermore, the e-mails are sent in clear-text and readable by any endpoint on the way transporting the e-mail to its destination. It's akin to sending your information back to yourself by post card rather than stored in a file with a third-party.

<comment><AUTHOR> The alert emails do not contain "detail of [my] account," only the last 4 digits of my account (for Chase). Even if someone were to intercept those emails, they couldn't do much with them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Can you expand on unwanted transactions?

TBH, the only "unwanted" transactions I've found were indeed fradulent, and these have been immediately caught by BoFA, VISA, and other financiers. I have had problems with false positives, however.

<comment><USER56> People would normally call out fraud if that were the case, but it's certainly possible that it's something the bank isn't aware of yet so their systems did not catch.

In general I just assumed he meant things like "signed up for that trial and forgot to cancel", "accidentally got charged twice", "tip amount was clearly wrong"... Innocent things that happen from time to time, but clearly need to be resolved.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. By "unwanted," I meant things like subscriptions I forgot I was paying or (innocent?) merchant mistakes but that rarely happened.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Are the bar charts generated with the pandas library? The ones in the report received by mail... Took a peek at the documentation but all I see is graphic based ones with plot functions. Thanks

<comment><AUTHOR> The bar charts are my own, not part of pandas. I wrote a little thing for it. It's not very sophisticated right now but I've been thinking of packaging it a little bit better and maybe sharing it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I'm so happy to be a bunq user (which is a Dutch bank), they provide a fully featured and easy to work with API to do and build anything you want. Other banks should follow.

</comment><comment><USER59> Email notification is a fantastic event notification tool for services that don't / won't emit events or submit to callbacks.

It's the one pixel gif of systems integration.

</comment><comment><USER60> Bank Millennium is a normal Polish bank, with branches everywhere. Their mobile app gives me an instant notification when transactions occur. They even have an Android Wear app.

Irrelevant but also impressive: their app uses fingerprint login and whenever I phone them they talk to me in English without me having to ask.

</comment><comment><USER61> Look into OFX for pulling down account and transaction data It's the api that TurboTax, Quicken, and others have used for years and you can use it too. It's a little outdated in its design and implementations are hit or miss on the banking side. But for most large banks it works.

</comment><comment> a-b [https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settin...](https://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/OFX_Direct_Connect_Bank_Settings)

</comment><comment><USER62> My bank allows me to export my account statements in SWIFT MT 940 format, which is pretty convenient. Sadly there's no easy/free way to automate this process.

</comment><comment><USER63> I'm definitely going to check this out for my credit union.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is cool. Will OP open source this so others can use it?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been getting a good amount of requests for open sourcing it. It would require a few hours of work but I might take the time one of those weekends. Please feel free to send me an email (email@example.com) if you'd like me to keep you updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm not sure I'd feel better about having every single transaction in email. That doesn't seem any more secure to me.

<comment><USER66> Concerning, but still much better than giving a third party your username and password which could be used to initiate a transfer or something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> Capital One just added oauth with mint and before that they had read only passwords

</comment><comment><USER68> AmEx sends notifications for any use of my card. It is really a great thing.

</comment><comment><USER69> "please enter a value greater than 0" lol oh well

<comment><USER70> 0.01 will work in most cases. I use this at Chase to push alert on every transaction.

I suppose if my # is lifted and $0.01 is used as the test transaction it would sneak by, but oh well.</comment></comment>


Vera Rubin: Super telescope's giant camera spies broccoli - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-54066586 <comment><USER2> Here is the SLAC news article [1] and the zoomable picture of the romanesco [2]. The picture itself is quite underwhelming - certainly an artifact of how it was created using a pinhole but your phone can capture a better picture of a romanesco.

Besides that, where do the different kind of artifacts - interference fringes, dark and bright vertical lines, white specks - come from? Why are the interference fringes distributed pretty randomly? Dust on the sensor despite everyone wearing bunny suits?

[1] [https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2020-09-08-sensors- world...](https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2020-09-08-sensors-world- largest-digital-camera-snap-first-3200-megapixel-images-slac.aspx)

[2] [https://www.slac.stanford.edu/~tonyj/osd/public/romanesco.ht...](https://www.slac.stanford.edu/~tonyj/osd/public/romanesco.html)

<comment><USER3> Fun fact: the guy who made [2] is also the co-author of the first web page hosted in North America.

<comment><USER4> That explains a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone else feel like BBC writing has gone into the loo lately? Popular science reporting doesn't need to sound like sixth grade book report filler.

> Who knows? It might even get us closer to understanding those cosmic head- > scratchers "dark energy" and "dark matter" which appear to be controlling > the evolution of so much of what we see when we look up.

Gah, really?

<comment><USER6> The man who wrote this has been working for the BBC in this capacity since 1994 at least

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> is it me, or does the photo of broccoli look decidedly unimpressive in the article!

<comment><USER8> It was made just to test the camera sensor without any lenses, just a pinhole. That means that the photo blurs relative to the size of the pinhole, which probably wasn't that small.

<comment><USER9> To me the issue is all of the artifacts in the sensors. Obviously most of the time this is corrected in software but they look pretty rough.</comment></comment></comment>


Bad Career Advice: Do Something You Love  - <AUTHOR> http://www.careerealism.com/do-something-you-love/

<comment><USER2> Funny enough the subtitle of this blog is "Because EVERY Job is Temporary". I'd ignore the advice of the blog, just try jobs I might love, and quit for something else if it doesn't work out.

Seems a better bet than to skip every job that might not sound as good in real as on paper.</comment>


Nominate your top technology woman - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/careers/3293436/nominate-your-top-technology-woman/

<comment><USER2> Marissa Mayer, Google. Scary smart, out of the box thinker. Find a YouTube video of one of her talks, you'll be impressed.</comment>


If Linux was the most used system in the world… - <AUTHOR> http://www.beli.ws/blog/?p=202

<comment><USER2> ...then there was the incessant demand to download and install drivers.

First, the display would not go above 800x600. Talk about ugly! He called his friend and his friend said he had to download and install the correct video driver. After googling and following a lot of bogus links, he finally figured out who made his video chipset, found the manufacturer's web site and installed the proper driver. Whew, proper resolution for his LCD screen! Why wasn't the driver included on the CD? His friend said that XP was originally released 10 years ago and the hardware didn't exist back then. If he weren't so cheap and paid the 599 euros for the latest version, Win7, it would have included the driver. Probably.

Then he plugged in his printer. Nothing. Call the "friend" again. Sigh, another driver needed. His friend asked about the CD that came with the printer, said the driver was on it. Oops, didn't need it to make the printer work with linux, threw it away. More googling, found the driver. What the??!! Why is a _driver_ a 347 Mbyte download?!!! Oh well, install the driver and the printer works again. Hmmm, now it is popping up prompts to buy more ink from the manufacturer. Bloody annoying, that.

...

</comment><comment><USER3> I rather not have a world where there is one most used implementation?

I think it would be better is the world would get to the point where unix (as an informal platform) with many implementations became the norm?

Some kind of low-level virtual machine layer could then be used to support binary-only distribution for commercial software?</comment>


James Cameron: BP Oil Spill Is Just Like 'Avatar' - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/26/james-cameron-bp-oil-spil_n_695556.html

<comment><USER2> Incredibly expensive, something everyone talks about, obnoxious, and it just won't go away?

Oh, wait no. Apparently BP, Halliburton, et al. are just like the US Military harvesting Unobtanium. OK, got it.</comment>


100 must read books. What would you add?? - <AUTHOR> http://artofmanliness.com/2008/05/14/100-must-read-books-the-essential-mans-library/

<comment><USER2> Of course, the problem is not to know which books you must read, there are aplenty o' those, but how to stop reading books that are not must reads.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes that may be a problem but the question was what books would you add. I would love to hear any suggestions you may have.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> List of titles and authors: [http://www.docstoc.com/docs/8641676/100-Must- Read-Books-The-...](http://www.docstoc.com/docs/8641676/100-Must-Read-Books- The-Mans-Essential-Library)</comment>


In Mozambique, a Living Laboratory for Nature's Renewal - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/science/gorongosa-animals-environment.html <comment><USER2> I went to Gorongosa for a field biology course in 2016, and it was absolutely amazing. Greg Carr gave a talk to us about the park and it's mission, and it seems like they're really working hard to incorporate the park into the surrounding communities so that the locals have a sense of ownership over their park.

The megafauna are recovering at a good clip, and there's thriving bird and bug biodiversity if you're into that kind of thing (seeing Oecophylla nests was a particular highlight for me, but I'm probably in the minority there.) National Geographic did a video series about the park's recovery that I highly recommend[1], and last I heard they're working on a sequel.

[1] [http://www.pbs.org/gorongosa/home/](http://www.pbs.org/gorongosa/home/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading that made me look up "tuskless elephants", and I found this: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/elephants-africa-tusks- iv...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/elephants-africa-tusks-ivory- poaching-born-without-a7440706.html)</comment>


10 Lessons I Learned as a Software Engineering Interviewer - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@kt_seagull/10-lessons-i-learned-as-a-software-engineering-interviewer-87cf1d6f884c <comment><USER2> Better article than I expected, thanks.

> If a candidate cannot come up with an algorithm that your team needed to > implement, they do not have the algorithmic ability to excel at the company.

This part seemed a bit ambiguous. Believe you meant recognize an algorithm, but could also mean derive? Derivation of something complex might be too much to ask in an interview, when nervous. Creativity and calm go hand in hand.</comment>


Ask HN: How does cardpool make money? - <AUTHOR>

They claim they are getting 8 figure revenue, so let's call that $1M/month revenue to keep the math easy.
By their Alexa rank, we would assume they have on the order of 38K visitors a month at 152K pageviews.
So they're making an average of $26/visitor, and I don't see them actually charging for anything on the site.  Obviously their actual users will be substantially less, which makes this even more perplexing.
Please help me understand how this is working. <comment><USER2> When you sell a gift card you don't want on Cardpool you get up to 92% of the value. The difference is their margin on resale. That's probably the bulk of revenues.

Also they almost definitely make an affiliate commission on the sale of any new gift cards (maybe around 2% based on payouts from other gift card aff programs on commission junction)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The 8 figure revenue is from the title of their jobs ad.

        Cardpool (W10, 8-figure revenues and rapidly growing) looking for SW Engineer #3

Clickable link to their site: <http://cardpool.com>

</comment><comment><USER3> > I don't see them actually charging for anything on the site.

I don't know what you mean. Its a straight up ecommerce site where you can buy cards. <http://www.cardpool.com/buy-gift-cards></comment>


Ask PG: Why not AI in place of (or in addition to) comment voting? - <AUTHOR>

So, in the time I've been here, it's been my understanding that there was a gentlemen's agreement of sorts that upvotes go to comments which "add to the discussion", even if the specific point of view is something the voter disagrees with. Here's the thing though: we shouldn't need to vote in order to determine what adds to the discussion. Certainly some fairly straightforward heuristics like Flesch-Kincaid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch%E2%80%93Kincaid_readability_test) Grade Level times number of replies (possibly adding in a factor for the F-K Grade Level of the replies to weed out long chains of drivel) should be relatively good at picking the best comments in a thread.
I'm not saying that voting should be eliminated entirely, but maybe it becomes just part of the heuristic. Imagine something like BCS standings, but for comments. Even vote tallies could become smarter, with votes from "trusted" users counting more heavily than those from "noobs" or well known rabble-rousers.
Finally, I think it would be really neat (assuming you like my proposal of a combined heuristic in place of voting) if the algorithm was open source. Take the Google view of "if you don't like the results, don't special case the outcomes, improve the algorithm!" This would have the added benefit of giving the world a first-class comment value sorting algorithm vetted by some of the top talent in the world, and dog-food-ed on a site where they care deeply about the quality of the discussion. <comment><USER2> _Certainly some X should be good at Y._

What exactly is stopping you from doing an experiment, instead of asking us to imagine the results of an imaginary test of an imaginary algorithm?

Scrape up a few weeks' worth of comments (perhaps via RSS, if that works; I wouldn't know) and see what you can do with them. Show us side-by-side article pages with the actual order and the Whizbang Algorithm's redisplayed version.

<comment><USER3> Not a bad idea...in fact, I'd wage there's a market for this sort of technology. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of all, pg, rtm, jl, tlb and the rest of the ycombinator crew are in the midst of interviews and deciding which startups to fund. In other words, they are probably very busy so your suggestion is poorly timed.

Secondly, there is a place for feature suggestions and discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363>

I feel algorithmically defining the comments adding to a discussion might turn out to be overly optimistic, but none the less, it is still a fascinating idea.

</comment><comment><USER5> > _"Imagine something like BCS standings"_

Ok, now that I have spit out the vomit and brushed my teeth...

Some new accounts are used as throw-aways and contain great information. Other new accounts are created by intelligent thoughtful people who just discovered HN or who have been lurking and finally feel like they have something to contribute.

Rabble rousing often furthers discussion.

That's not to say that AI moderating isn't an interesting idea. The BCS is just a really poor example because it's purpose is to generate a made for television event and then dole out the revenue to the major [American] football conferences.

</comment><comment><USER6> As cool as that would be, it would also take away from the community aspect of this place.

Plus I'd always be trying to beat it</comment>


You Can Only Fund Your Tortoise's  Surgery Once - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/best-thing-i-found-online-today/1aae54688874

<comment><USER2> Crowdfunding isn't just about one-time projects. Platforms like Kickstarter and IndieGoGo are designed to fund one-time projects, but one key service this article didn't mention is Patreon: [http://www.patreon.com/](http://www.patreon.com/) . It's designed to provide continuous crowdfunding based on a patronage model: having seen existing work from a given person, you choose to provide them with a given amount of funding per month or per creative work produced, and you get some ongoing benefit based on your level of patronage.</comment>


A Robot's Guide to Dealing with Humans - <AUTHOR> https://uxstudioteam.com/ux-blog/robots-guide-dealing-humans/ <comment><AUTHOR> [BUILDING A TEAM] David Pasztor from UXstudio put together his experiences about building a successful team. It's full of useful tips if you build or manage teams. He says: "...I started with the hardest challenge, firing someone."

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for sharing :)</comment>


The Rate of Progress of Deep Learning Is the Slowest in 5 Years - <AUTHOR> Today more people are working on deep learning than ever before -- around two orders of magnitude more than in 2014.<p>Time for something new! <comment><USER2> I don't think your post makes any sense.

It's on AskHN and you don't have a question. Also...

\- How did you define and measure progress?

\- How did you measure the number of people working in the field?

\- If true, why would any of this be a problem?

\- Why does a field need to constantly progress? For example, you could say that there's been even less progress in linear regression or random forest methods over the past five years - this doesn't take away from their usefulness in certain applications.

\- Why would the assumed slow rate of progress mean that DL needs to be replaced?

\- If you find more suitable solutions, you're always free to implement them in place of DL.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm confused about a few things:

1\. What is slowest based on?

2\. Is the comment about people working in the field meant to demonstrate something about slowness or some other point?

</comment><comment><USER4> "The slowest" by which measure?

</comment><comment><USER5> _Time for something new!_

What do you suggest?</comment>


Stellar Sonata - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_Sonata <comment><USER2> I have a Lithuanian friend and colleague who produced a wonderful VR piece based on the work of Čiurlionis:

[https://www.crossmotion.org/trail-of- angels/](https://www.crossmotion.org/trail-of-angels/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I am Lithuanian, so most likely biased, but I think Čiurlionis deserves to be better known and some of his works are on par or better than many famous paintings. So it is nice to see if featured on HN.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting. In the wikipedia page it has a word I didn't know, synæstesis, and it has the interesting and rarely seen by me combined ae symbol. The internet told me this word is basically [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesthesia). Having a sensation in one form gives rise to a sensation in another sense (seeing a number makes me think of a color associated with it). Exposure to art and ideas like this makes life so rich, love hacker news.

<comment><USER5> You should read Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks. He writes about some of his patients experiencing synesthesia. [http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1297985.Musicophilia](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1297985.Musicophilia)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, incredibly beautiful. I think I'll buy a good quality print of these soon.

</comment><comment><USER7> I was thinking of a song of Zelda by the word of Sonata, just to discover it has nothing to do with that

</comment><comment><USER8> It would be interesting to decode the visuals into sound.</comment>


Reinventing the Book in the Age of the Web - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/04/reinventing-the-book-age-of-web.html <comment><USER2> I have found that I have more trouble remembering things I read on-screen. I'm not sure why. I have no trouble reading them, in fact I tend to read slightly faster from the screen, mostly because scrolling is faster than turning the page and re-acquiring the text. So I mostly restrict my on-screen reading to browsing and fiction (Baen).</comment>


Zoom-Bashing: How Low Can We Go? - <AUTHOR> https://thriveglobal.com/stories/zoom-bashing-how-low-can-we-go/ <comment><USER2> Ah, yes, when we look back at the pandemic of 2019-2020, with a pandemic claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, a doctor silenced by the Chinese state who tried to warn people and then died of the disease, the overwhelmed Italian hospitals, the US government stealing supplies from other countries by threat of military force and US states flying their own planes in secret to avoid the federal government, the mass graves in Central Park, St. Peter's Square empty on Easter but the megachurches full, the fights over toilet paper, and everything else... the thing that will be remembered as "the lowest point of our humanity" is going to be... some people criticizing a video chat app.

Also, yes, Pharaoh represents the ego and the struggle in Exodus is really an allegory for how we should all just get along. That's absolutely what the story means. When we tell the story of how our ancestors were slaves in Egypt, it's not at all about oppression and violence, it's about how our ancestors, ordered to make bricks without straw, thought too much of themselves and criticized things that, you know, maybe weren't great but definitely shouldn't have been criticized.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately there's no downvote button. This is not the kind of thing I come to hn to read.

</comment><comment><USER4> Frankly, what the fuck did I just read?

</comment><comment><USER5> Hahahahahahaha this ain't it

</comment><comment><USER6> AstroTurf PR.</comment>


Y Combinator bets solving boring business problems will mint next great fortune - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1060088/y-combinator-is-investing-in-more-startups-that-sell-to-businesses-instead-of-consumer-startups-to-mint-its-next-great-fortune/ <comment><AUTHOR> NB: Title edited for space.</comment>