Show HN: Robot that copies artist's exact strokes to replicate a painting in 3D - <AUTHOR> http://www.instapainting.com/blog/research/2015/08/23/ai-painter/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm having a problem smoothing the stepper motors with real time motion data. I was hoping someone on HN could point me in the right direction.

<comment><USER2> You either need microstepping or servo motors with encoder feedback. Microstepping drives like [0] are buttery smooth.

[0] [http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion- controller...](http://www.geckodrive.com/gm215-step-motor-motion- controller.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> In the video it's being driven at 1/8th step. I'm considering switching to two servo motors and using a polar system.

The problem is I need it to also be fast enough to fee lag free for the artist.

<comment><USER3> You can get good 1/32 drivers like the DRV8825 ([https://www.pololu.com/product/2133](https://www.pololu.com/product/2133)) for not too much - I'm pretty confident they'll be able to do what you need (You can buy knockoffs for even cheaper). Even 1/16 is pretty dang smooth.

It also might be that you're supplying too much or too little current to the motors - both will result in jerkiness and noise. If your current drivers are current limiting, I'd look into tuning that. If they aren't, the ones I linked are.

<comment><AUTHOR> They are current limiting and can go down to 1/16 step I believe. However, even at the current settings the motors can't keep up if the artist whips their arm from one side to the other.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It doesn't do pressure, but this is along the same lines:

[http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/605](http://shop.evilmadscientist.com/productsmenu/605)

And if you've got an old serial plotter (or 3 or 7) that can emulate or do HPGL:

[http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/](http://music.columbia.edu/cmc/chiplotle/)

There's something absolutely magical about plotters...

<comment><USER5> The watercolor bot can do pressure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool project. Can you give us some more details about the hardware and software you're using?

<comment><AUTHOR> The hardware is [http://www.makeblock.cc/xy-plotter-robot- kit/](http://www.makeblock.cc/xy-plotter-robot-kit/) sans electronics. I ended up purchasing the electronics anyways because they have a modified Arduino that uses RJ25, which makes the wiring much more stable (as opposed to pins stuck into an Arduino).

If you got the individual pieces yourself or 3D printed it can be much cheaper.

The main electrical components are:

1 x Arduino Uno (I used the modified Uno called "Orion" that has RJ2 ports) 2 x Stepper motors 1 x Servo motor 4 x microswitches as limit switches 2 x stepper motor drivers (they handle the microstepping) 3 x RJ25 breakout boards (for connecting the limit switches to RJ25 ports)

This was a prototype to prove the concept. I'm going to experiment with 3D printed parts next in a new design.

If you're feeding in coordinates as Gcode I would recommend loading Grbl. Keep in mind Grbl has specific pin requirements that make it incompatible with the Orion's RJ25 ports, so you'd have to wire a normal Arduino. Makeblock supplies Gcode firmware that works with the Orion.

For the demo in the video, the firmware was custom to handle real-time input and recording of motion.

On the host computer side, it was just a python script that interfaced with the Wacom tablet. Specifically: [https://bitbucket.org/AnomalousUnderdog/pythonmactabletlib](https://bitbucket.org/AnomalousUnderdog/pythonmactabletlib)

I also hacked support for the Myo armband and mouse support.

<comment><USER7> thanks, this is very cool

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not sure from the video, does the artist look at the robot when painting or at a screen? I feel like it's going to be really hard to paint that slow, so it might be better to simulate the whole thing (which will be way closer to real time) and then reproduce it later on the robot (with some corrections if needed). But simulating might be difficult... or lead the artist to use brush strokes that are really hard to replicate. Cool project anyway! Let us know how it evolves :)

Also just a heads up on the Amanufactory website the font in the Plans section is really hard to read, you might want to check that out ( [http://i.imgur.com/Klvmorc.png](http://i.imgur.com/Klvmorc.png) ).

<comment><AUTHOR> The artist looks at the robot. They were going extra slow to be cautious, but it can mimic movement pretty fast as long as you're not going across the canvas in a single stroke.

Edit: Thanks, fixed the amanufactory.com bug.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now you're talking. I can't wait to print out nicely formed brushstrokes from a digital painting.

Something along the lines of embedding a bump map into the 2d image to give subtle depth information. Let me know if anyone needs an artist to do the art side of this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you email firstname.lastname@example.com? If you're in SF would love to have you come in to try the full colored version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool project. Also, I like how the sounds the robot makes would fit perfectly in just about any horror movie.

Example: [https://youtu.be/ip5Bt_-Yxsc?t=7m](https://youtu.be/ip5Bt_- Yxsc?t=7m)

</comment><comment><USER11> This is cool. It reminds me of 3D printers, but just in two dimensions and with a paintbrush and paint instead of a hot-end/nozzle/filament.

You could look at the firmware used to control the stepper motors/end stops that much of the reprap community is using at [https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin](https://github.com/MarlinFirmware/Marlin). This uses GCODE as well, and deals with acceleration around turns.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep looked into Grbl. Hadn't seen Marlin. I didn't use this for Live mode since they weren't really built for that, but they'll be used for the photo to painting part.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a kind I dreamed of a project like this, I got told "why would we need this when we have printers". It was fifteen years ago.

</comment><comment><USER13> Why not skip the tablet and draw directly with the plotter?

You could probably even use the generated electric pulses from the steppers as your input.

</comment><comment><USER14> Reminds me of a project by Patrick Tresset @ Goldsmiths, UoL...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdQbyff_Sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbdQbyff_Sk) [http://research.gold.ac.uk/9255/](http://research.gold.ac.uk/9255/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Since the strokes are recorded, is it translated into positional coordinates and movements? Is it possible to adjust the "code" post-recording to perfect a replicate or add changes? Cool project!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. You can fully manipulate the raw data afterwards to change it.

I actually truncated the recording to remove the test strokes at the beginning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Super cool project! And damn unexpected to see Jean. Interested to see how the colored versions will look. Good luck moving forward!

</comment><comment><USER5> This looks familiar!

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh. This is just the beginning. Finishing up something tonight to reply to one of your tweets with Cthulu.</comment></comment>


Microsoft REST API Guidelines - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Microsoft/api-guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md <comment><USER2> Every single person writing a REST api should have to memorize this table:

GET - Return the current value of an object, is idempotent;

PUT - Replace an object, or create a named object, when applicable, is idempotent;

DELETE - Delete an object, is idempotent;

POST - Create a new object based on the data provided, or submit a command, NOT idempotent;

HEAD - Return metadata of an object for a GET response. Resources that support the GET method MAY support the HEAD method as well, is idempotent;

PATCH - Apply a partial update to an object, NOT idempotent;

OPTIONS - Get information about a request, is idempotent.

Most importantly, that PUT is idempotent.

Credit to arkadiytehgraet for retyping the table to be readable. Please give them an upvote for the effort.

<comment><USER3> There should be an option for deleting many objects. For that, you have to do a POST request on AWS S3:

[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/API_DeleteOb...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonS3/latest/API/API_DeleteObjects.html)

Instead of polluting existing method names to mean new things, HTTP could offer more method names.

Having POST alternatively mean "send a command" makes it meaningless. The command could do anything.

<comment><USER4> What advantage is there to having a bulk operation vs many operations?

With HTTP2 you can send a ton of requests in parallel.

<comment><USER3> A lot of sites might have an HTTP/2 upstream server, but everything downstream is still communicating via HTTP/1.1. I would imagine you can only the benefits of HTTP/2 multiplexing if you fully utilize HTTP/2 end-to-end.

That means your CDN, your load balancers, and finally your actual applications-- any any other intermediaries -- all communicating via HTTP/2.

Not to say that HTTP/2 isn't the solution, but it's going to be slower than looking up "number of sites using HTTP/2", since you can't easily inspect the behavior of the intermediary servers.

<comment><USER4> Getting onto H2 is worth investing in then though, and drastically simplifies things that would otherwise need bulk operations everywhere.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean with downstream, but in my experience H2 is really well supported almost everywhere these days. Ymmv ofc

<comment><USER3> What I mean is, typically, there are many layers between an end user's network request and reaching the server where it will be fulfilled. For example, you might have your site fronted by Cloudflare. They provide DDOS protection, etc. That Cloudflare server might accept HTTP/2 requests, and then open a new request to your load balancer server. Then, your load balancer opens another network request to the server fulfilling the request. The connections between these servers may only support HTTP/1.1. So you lose the benefits of HTTP/2 since you can't multiplex the network request end-to-end.

<comment><USER4> In this particular example (S3), I don't think this is really a concern.

Anyway, I'm curious... what components do you run into that don't support this yet? At least in your examples I can't think of any major players that don't do HTTP/2 out of the box, except, well, old versions.

Is this more of a hypothetical? In my experience HTTP/2 is pretty much ubiquitous for anything current.

<comment><USER5> There are environments that do not allow http2 or websocket traffic on the network. Most government/big enterprise have these restrictions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've designed quite some REST APIs, but I've come to the conclusion that all those semantic/HATEOS or other REST guidelines don't always apply or make sense, depending on the problem domain.

I worked in finance and designed a REST API, and besides the standard user/account object, basically ALL the data and operations were neither idempotent, cacheable, durable and often couldn't possible be designed using HATEOS et al.

Quotes, orders, offers and transactions carry lots of monetary amounts which are sent in user currency, which is auto-converted depending on the user requesting it (and currency conversion rates is part of the business). Most offers are only valid a limited amount of time (seconds to minutes) because of changing market rates. There is also no "changing" of object as in PATCH/DELETE, all you do is trigger operations via the API and every action you ever did is kept in a log (regulatory wise, but also to display for the end user).

There is some way to try to hammer this thing to fit with HATEOS et. al. and I put some effort in it, but I would have ended up splitting DTOs into idempotent/mutable and non-idempotent/mutable parts and spread them across different services, bloat the DTOs themselves (i.e. include all available currencies in a quote/offer) and have the validity/expiry of objects via HTTP caching (instead of the DTOs). That would have ended up in a complex and hard- to-read API, would have significantly worse performance (due to lot of unneeded data & calculations) and some insane design decisions (like keeping expired offers/quotes around just so they are still available at their service URL with an id, even though the business requirements would never store expired offers).

Sometimes you just need to use your own head, accept that the problem domain might not be covered by other "guidelines", and come up with a sane design yourself.

<comment><USER7> REST shines where there is a big path dependent interaction graph - ie. feature switches, permissions, plans/packages and other statefull stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> At MS, in our team no manager gave the slightest damn about being restful or any proper consistent API design. Everything was constantly rushed and just 'tacked on', random API versions were created, contracts were broken, nothing was consistent. It was a mess. That said, I believe most of these guidelines completely ignored in most teams.

<comment><USER9> It's almost as if there are different groups in Microsoft with different priorities. Why is it so hard to get 130k people in complete assignment across all areas? Seems like a simple problem.

<comment><USER10> > It's almost as if there are different groups in Microsoft with different > priorities. Why is it so hard to get 130k people in complete alignment > across all areas? Seems like a simple problem.

I feel like this could have been said without the sarcasm and it would have been a great discussion starter. Instead a potentially valid point/retort will be obscured by the tone and discussion surrounding it.

For example:

> Unfortunately large organizations often struggle to get groups into > alignment on issues like this, unless there's a strong mandate from the top > down (e.g. Amazon).

No sarcasm or snark, same basic substance.

<comment><USER11> And not correct either. As mentioned, if Satya said so it would happen within months.

<comment><USER9> There are a limited number of mandates that can come from the top. Upper management loses credibility when they issue endless mandates, even if all of the mandates are reasonable.

It's also unrealistic that everyone underneath can focus on many mandates at once. Which leads to the loss of credibility when mandates start getting ignored out of necessity.

<comment><USER11> Good thing then this isn't an endless mandate and only a single idea with a short list of requirements.

<comment><USER9> "Endless mandates" meaning an endless number of mandates, not that individual mandates are endless.

At Microsoft the number of simple mandates like this one are numbered _at least_ in the hundreds.

<comment><USER11> It could be done easily if deemed a priority. Defeatism is not a compelling argument.

<comment><USER9> Yes, for any specific mandate like this, it could easily be accomplished. The point is that _in aggregate_ there are too many of these to accomplish. Competent management will choose the highest value things to focus on. This isn't defeatism. This is realism. Focusing on everything is the same as focusing on nothing.

Realistically, mandating RESTful APIs at the exec level is unlikely to be a big win for Microsoft. The teams working on APIs at scale are largely already doing this (and you'll notice multiple groups represented by the authors). The teams that aren't doing this are largely not building APIs that benefit a great deal from RESTful APIs, because they're building internal APIs or similar and RESTfulness would be nice to have but not particularly impactful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The primary innovation in REST is HATEOAS (which isn't mentioned in the document at all.) JSON isn't a hypertext, it just isn't a good format for REST-ful services.

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing- rest.html](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/01/18/rescuing-rest.html)

[http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for- humans.ht...](http://intercoolerjs.org/2016/05/08/hatoeas-is-for-humans.html)

Doesn't anyone notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOK6mE7sdvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOK6mE7sdvs)

<comment><USER13> The trouble with HATEOAS is that it requires extra work on the client. The client is supposed to start at the root of the API, request URLs, and cache them. Getting the data one wants requires multiple HTTP calls, many of which are supposed to be cached.

I tried implementing this and found it toilsome. It was far easier to use versioned URLs that followed a documented pattern.

When I checked about three years ago there wasn't much in the open source community that I could build atop for clients. I also didn't want to maintain an SDK client in addition to the API itself.

<comment><USER14> "Toilsome" is probably the most kindly yet still accurate thing one could say about exposing HATEOAS to the real world, at this particular point in time.

<comment><USER12> Every 1.0 web app developer in the world implemented HATEOAS to a great extent without even thinking about it.

It's only toilsome when you try to shoe-horn it into a traditional data API, rather than accept it as a unique descriptive aspect of the early web architecture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Every time I see a discussion about REST guidelines, I get a little bit more happy about having switched to gRPC.

<comment><USER16> Man, I wanted to love gRPC. The disconnect between Protobufs and languages just felt too great though. You could do some weird things that just made every language feel, to some degree, non-idiomatic.

I switched to Twirp at one point to retain the simplicity of RPC + Protobuf, but avoid some of the complexity we didn't need via gRPC... but even that suffered, of course, from the Protobuf problem.

Finally I'm back to plain HTTP and JSON. We don't worry too much about REST fundamentals, and honestly we're more like an ad-hoc (JSON) RPC over HTTP, but it's simple.

The only problem is documentation. The _one thing_ that I found perfect with Protobuf. Seems really hard to have everything here.

<comment><USER17> How would you articulate "the protobuf problem" to a gRPC novice like me?

Also re http/rest docs -- check out my open source project -- it's sort of like Git but for Rest APIs [https://github.com/opticdev/optic](https://github.com/opticdev/optic)

<comment><USER16> I go over it in a bit more detail here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21621592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21621592)

But in short, Protobuf is inherently a language of its own. Like JSON or etc. But it's feature rich enough that it can cause a fair number of incompatibilities between a language's preferred style or usage of features.

Where the incompatibility shows up depends on the language. I found it to be very different between Rust and Go, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why isn't this called "HTTP API Guidelines"? It doesn't seem to have much to do with REST at all. For example, it says that people should be able to construct URLs, whereas the REST style uses the URLs found in resources.

To be clear, I'm not saying that there is anything wrong with the practices they propose here, just that they're not what they're claiming they are.

</comment><comment><USER19> Discussed in 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122828](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12122828)

</comment><comment><USER20> Ideally, they wouldn't re-invent the wheel again and just stick with the ODATA protocol. They already have the platform to do so - [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/odata/resources/roadmap](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/odata/resources/roadmap)

</comment><comment><USER21> What do other folks here think of how MS handles query params, specifically stuff like filtering?

[https://github.com/Microsoft/api- guidelines/blob/master/Guid...](https://github.com/Microsoft/api- guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md#97-filtering)

When working with the Graph API for 365 I thought it was really weird how you had to pass some params

       GET https://api.contoso.com/v1.0/products?$filter=name eq 'Milk'

<comment><USER22> At first look I think using spaces is a bad idea but maybe it's ok.

<comment><USER23> yeah seeing spaces is kinda weird IMO

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find that MS are often quite good at developing good APIs and documenting them.

In this new doc I particularly like the Delta Queries section [0]. It's something that's difficult to get right but with this you can pretty much copy and paste their guidelines for your project.

0: [https://github.com/Microsoft/api- guidelines/blob/master/Guid...](https://github.com/Microsoft/api- guidelines/blob/master/Guidelines.md#10-delta-queries)

</comment><comment><USER25> > An example URL that is not friendly is:

> > [https://api.contoso.com/EWS/OData/Users('email@example.com'...](https://api.contoso.com/EWS/OData/Users\('firstname.lastname@example.com'\)/Folders\('AAMkADdiYzI1MjUzLTk4MjQtNDQ1Yy05YjJkLWNlMzMzYmIzNTY0MwAuAAAAAACzMsPHYH6HQoSwfdpDx-2bAQCXhUk6PC1dS7AERFluCgBfAAABo58UAAA='\))

A well-deserved dig at the sharepoint API.

</comment><comment><USER26> This keeps bothering me:

>7.1 URL structure

>Humans SHOULD be able to easily read and construct URLs.

>This facilitates discovery and eases adoption on platforms >without a well- supported client library.

The URL is ephemeral on REST. That is because you create the documents on the fly. They can be linked or not to things that you store on the datastore. Allows you to easily change around as needed because the URL is not the API. The hyperlinks are the API. The URL is like a memory pointer. You shouldn't care about it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Too much emphasis on interfaces than on programmability. I don't even know if they follow their own rules too.

Also, they define DELETE as idempotent, which is a little different from how some of us write APIs.

<comment><USER28> Note that idempotent in this context means "2 calls will end up with the same server state as one call".

It does not mean for example that the second call can't return a different response than the first.

<comment><USER29> The reason people like idempotency is because it is great for "at least once" systems (as opposed to "exactly once", which is hard to guarantee).

But REST's version of idempotency isn't good for this. If you retry your request multiple times (due to flaky connection or whatever), it only guarantees the same server state if your duplicate requests are bunched up.

For example if you do a DELETE then create it again with a POST, if there is a duplicate straggler DELETE floating around it will end up redeleting your new recreation.

<comment><USER30> You can make it idempotent again by requiring API users to use an If-Match header with the ETag of the state they're currently expecting.

Also allows you to implement optimistic concurrency. See: [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/If...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/HTTP/Headers/If-Match)

<comment><USER29> I said this in another comment and got downvoted too. Can the downvoters explain what they are downvoting for? What's wrong with if-match?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Also seems they never heard about versioning via content negotiation :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Versioning through HTTP Headers was the spark for why I was looking around for guidelines. I think it is the better way to go other than URL versioning.

<comment><USER31> I think so too, but even in case one disagrees, they should have mentioned it. Otherwise you'd think they never had heard of it :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ok, this may be a dumb question but is there any risk to using/enforcing PATCH in your APIs in this day and age? I still avoid it but that's probably just cargo culting now, right?

</comment><comment><USER33> Where's the section saying "so get rid of your SOAP WS already OK?" That would be lovely!

<comment><USER34> What's wrong with SOAP? SOAP is a lot more than REST, so you'd need to explain an additional technology beyond REST in order to recommend moving away from SOAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool guidelines!

</comment><comment><USER31> "Some services MAY add fields to responses without changing versions numbers. Services that do so MUST make this clear in their documentation"

WTF

<comment><USER36> Remember doing an integration with a finance company's API. I read their documentation,write the code,all works fine, we are moving towards go live date. A week later, my integration fails. I try hell knows how many things, eventually contact their lead dev asking what am doing wrong...The answer was "Oh,emm,yes,we've kind of changed the response format slightly, it's not in the documentation"... I got that fixed.. It's working again.Then, we suppose to go live next week.2 days before go live date I get told we are cancelling all business with the company...All the integration code goes into a bin.

<comment><USER31> Assuming you're working with JSON, it's very easy to ignore extra fields and no reason to deploy any fixes for that :)

<comment><USER37> Where did it say it was an extra field? It says format change which could make for problems for sure!

edit: ah you must be referring to the GP. But the anecdote just says format change.

<comment><USER38> Yes, I think BstBln was using a context aware parser to formulate his reply.

<comment><USER31> Indeed :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is more a opinionated design document for HTTP than it is for REST. There is not a single word about semantic formats and HATEOAS. I really expected more from Microsoft in this area.

Had I the time to write such a design document, I would start with ressources, versioning, URI and semantic documents. I would write about entity models, linking (links, link templates) and actions. I would write about representations and about how represenations can support optimizations, embedding of resources and entity expansion, which would otherwise be addressed by inventions like GraphQL. And only afterwards, I would write about HTTP as a transfer protocol. But that part can be brief, because there is already the HTTP specification out there.</comment>


Platforms Want To Be Free - <AUTHOR> http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/10/whats_a_platfor.php

<comment><USER2> I think his economics are off when he says that "The network effect is being repriced to zero." What's happening is that a strong competitor is emerging, and the network effects of eBay aren't _that_ strong that people won't migrate for a significantly better price on a network that sees a reasonable amount of business.

</comment><comment><USER3> He has one interesting point, though: will competition drive the seller's costs down so far that eBay becomes a glorified classifieds listing? If so, then it's also competing with free listings other places.</comment>


Ask HN: Rate of first-time applicants accepted? - <AUTHOR>

We all know that pitching and hustling is a daily routine for us - and each time we do it, we get better at it, and that multiple tries is almost a rule of thumb for 99% of us.
With that in mind, how many of YC alums were accepted first time they applied?
Does anyone have an insight into that? Personal experience? <comment><USER2> Sorry, didn't see your post when I posted mine: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4794444> ... darn :)Should've just upvoted.

I'll add your q's to mine as I've got more time before it falls off the new feed.

</comment><comment><USER3> I doubt even YC have that information.</comment>


Mapping the Retail Apocalypse - <AUTHOR> https://bettereveryday.vc/mapping-the-retail-apocalypse-9634a7510039 <comment><USER2> As for home depot etc ever tried fedexing a bag of mulch or riding lawnmower.</comment>


Cymbolism - quantifying association between colors and words - <AUTHOR> http://www.cymbolism.com/

<comment><USER2> This looks like an interesting site, something I've long been interested in, colors and their emotive inductions.

This site looks to have set up a nice data gathering method, they are not pioneers in the field though, as lots of work on the subject exists already, but more won't hurt.

Some things I recall -

red & yellow - can induce hunger (McDonalds)

blue - calming, trust

green - peace, calming (nature)

Another thing I recall reading is that people are more trusting of websites with white backgrounds. Though this could simply stem from the fact that the majority of 'major' websites people are familiar with have white backgrounds.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting idea, although my guess is that most words won't have any particular color associated with them for most people.

Except, of course, for synesthetes:

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

<comment><USER2> or

[http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14841-do-we-all- have-s...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14841-do-we-all-have-some- synaesthetic-ability.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news4_head_dn14841)

[http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/30/you-may-be- synaesthe.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2008/09/30/you-may-be- synaesthe.html)</comment></comment>


5M residents left Wuhan before lockdown, mayor reveals - <AUTHOR> https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3047720/chinese-premier-li-keqiang-head-coronavirus-crisis-team-outbreak <comment><USER2> It seems the Chinese central government is very good at acting in broad strokes, but that is mostly done in a reactionary way after local issues have gone on for a while.

The problem is the local governments aren't inclined to report bad news and their own choices are often questionable at best.

So for situations like this it is a game of whack a mole, where they swing hard a second too late.

<comment><USER3> This whole thing is a fascinating social experiment, rolling out in real time and online. This is unprecedented, and has never been done before in the modern world, with planes and high speed trains connecting everything.

You must at least give credit to the actions of the central China government, for implementing such a strict lockdown.

I suspect that this thing will blow over in a month. The infected will be quarantined, and allowed to recover. The mortality rate now stands at 3%.

For comparison, the Spanish Flu of 1918 killed 20%.

In the United States, last year's bird flu killed 8%.

The greatest fear about this virus, is the unknown. But this time, science came to the rescue. The Chinese scientists were able to sequence the genome in 3 weeks. That's an astonishing feat in itself.

The genome signature was quickly shared with the world, and everyone took up safety precautions.

Thus, the human race will survive this virus too. Individually, you may not be as lucky, if you're old and have other complications.

But more people know about it, and those that feel sick, will self-isolate (hopefully).

Maybe the best thing to come out of this, is that the central government will finally clamp down on wild life trade, and to force their society to adopt a more sterile and cleaner food procurement system. They now have the reason to mandate such a change to their society.

Normally, progress in society moves one slow step at a time. But sometimes, with an incident like this, you can give it the jolt it needs to change directions, and to take a new path.</comment></comment>


Weavi is ready to design a web programming language - <AUTHOR> https://weavi.com/@/2745/2XlVGepLHwIhRitHlCmfpg

<comment><USER2> Speed your own website up first before you do :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Holy Christ, how many seconds does it take?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> It will learn some ideas from Cweb and prolog.</comment>


What this apple-picking robot means for the future of farm workers - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/apple-picking-robot-means-future-farm-workers/ <comment><USER2> Changing the shape of fruit bearing crops may be one of the keys to automated "intelligent" harvesting.

For example, modern olive culture. Regular olives come from a full size tree, people used to (and maybe still do) beat the trees with sticks to get the olives off. But now many olives are grown in low rows that a machine can straddle.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0glTpuK8SY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0glTpuK8SY)

Guessing similar or else some type of espalier is the future of stone fruit culture.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a real prototype, but not ready for prime time.[1] Too much duct tape. Too slow. Not enough reach. Vision system isn't dynamic enough; it looks, targets, and then grabs, rather than looking while grabbing. Getting close, though. A few more years.

[1] [http://www.goodfruit.com/growers-get-peek-at-automatic- picki...](http://www.goodfruit.com/growers-get-peek-at-automatic-picking- machine-video/)

<comment><USER4> True, but it's just a matter of time.

<comment><USER5> Quite a difference between it being here in 5 years vs 25 years.

<comment><USER4> I doubt it's going to take that long. Time will tell.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _"It's no secret we're facing a serious labor shortage in agriculture so seeing companies devote time and funding to new technology is welcomed."_

I didn't realize there was a labor shortage. The way people talk (at least in the northwestern United States)—and our current president—it sounded like there were plenty of people doing this kind of work, many of which from Mexico.

<comment><USER7> When states have cracked down on migrant workers, entire farms have had to watch their crops rot because they couldn't find people to harvest them.

Hell trumps own hotels are still applying for immigrant visas to staff them.

<comment><USER8> Why do Trump-haters pretend to not know the difference between legal and illegal immigration?

Is there a labor shortage that can be filled by bringing in immigrant workers? Then push for new laws that makes bringing in foreign workers easy like many rich middle eastern countries and many European countries have done.

Why do you want people to break the laws instead? How is it better in any way?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussion of automated farming: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14821729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14821729)

</comment><comment><USER9> Wow, with a little more work this will be revolutionary.

Hopefully lower prices for consumers, but man will this put alot of immigrants out of jobs.

<comment><USER10> Lower consumer prices == more consumer spending on new product classes which creates new jobs and/or fewer labour hours needed per person to meet a standard of living they consider sufficient.

Automation is never a bad thing from a macroeconomic standpoint.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, the people who would be immigrants will probably stay in Mexico and make Carrier air conditioners...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Farm work, like other work, will get automated and people will be automated out of a job. I am unsure the pickers will be able to go to school to become higher value add workers. It's like the cotton picker, or the wheat reaper. Not ever coming back.

As the population ages and farmers' children seek out other non farm industries (US, Japan, Korea, Europe, Australia, etc. for example) this becomes a necessity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Needs more compute power to be faster.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'll be happy to get apples without fingernail dents in them.</comment>


Show/Ask HN: Anonymous Global Product Manager Salary List - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1miQZp0_ckiPgkxH5_PUTdkUgf6tCzKIzVYplNyAjkhM/edit#gid=0 <comment><USER2> Might as well add the non-anonymous PM salaries from Buffer. Not sure if they have that exact job title though (Product Creator? Operations Champion?): [https://open.buffer.com/transparent- salaries/](https://open.buffer.com/transparent-salaries/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm curious why this information is better than Glassdoor? Is their data suspect?

<comment><AUTHOR> sometimes old data, usually 30-40% below actual pay for most roles and has some funny algo's for normalisation..

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hello, use this form to feed in data if the sheet is locked: [https://goo.gl/forms/eu9NXb18EvolaizN2](https://goo.gl/forms/eu9NXb18EvolaizN2)

<comment><USER4> Might consider cribbing off of this: [https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a1Df6dg2Pby1UoNlZU2l0FEykKsQKttu7O6q7iQd2bU/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Besides tenure at the company, why not also include a column which is # of yrs PM experience?

</comment><comment><USER6> Slightly off topic, but I find it quite amusing that I can see what cell everyone looking at the spreadsheet has selected, and can see everything being edited in real time.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow those are much lower than expected.

<comment> m-j-fox Not Mr. BuzzFeed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> either contributor to this file are exclusively outliers or everyone I know is underpaid .

<comment><USER9> I too am skeptical of the usefuless of this data. along with the risks of self-reported information, there's also going to be some skew towards people who have high income since (a) they are proud to share it and (b) people who are lower paid might be reluctant to "admit" it

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is that similar to a marketing manager? The US Bureau of Labor Statistics has detailed information of many types of jobs. [https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/advertising-promotions- an...](https://www.bls.gov/ooh/management/advertising-promotions-and- marketing-managers.htm)

<comment><USER11> No, the initialism PM is usually the same job everywhere but stands for Program Manager, Product Manager, or Project Manager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is kind of sad that you need at least $200k/yr to comfortably live in the Bay.

<comment><USER13> You don't.

<comment><USER12> Explain?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> that buzzfeed salary... Someone should run a correlation of the "prefix" for Product Manager and how that correlates to stock/salary.

<comment><USER13> Looks like it is gone. What was it?</comment></comment>


How to modify a shared library (.so) in Linux? - <AUTHOR>

Is it possible to modify a shared library (.so) in Linux without getting its source code??? I know about LD_PRELOAD, but is that useful for functions that are used IN the shared library itself??? Is there a way to decompile/disassemble and then recompile/reassemble binary ELF files? <comment><USER2> Stackoverflow.com</comment>


Demystifying Poetic Meter - <AUTHOR> https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/09/24/you-too-can-have-a-viral-tweet-like-mine-demystifying-poetic-meter/ <comment><USER2> Anyone who finds this interesting might enjoy playing around with the meter analysis feature of my side project poetry text editor: [https://versepad.com](https://versepad.com)

(The meter analysis is the most complex part of the codebase, but that doesn't mean it's perfect. If you find a case that it's not handling well, please let me know so I can improve it!)

Fair warning: this project is very rough around the edges. But I'll be releasing some big improvements in the near future.

<comment><USER3> Hey this is cool! I tried Shakespeare's Sonnet 29 and it thinks only half the lines have the correct meter---which partly goes to show how flexible real poems can be but also could highlight places your tool could be refined. I think line 1 ends in a spondee. Also in sonnets starting a line with trochee- iamb is so common you might want to accept that as metrical too. Does it use punctuation as hints? In line 6 the comma at "Featured like him," seems important to the rythym.

For the ultimate challenge you should see if you can make any sense of Hopkins. :-)

When I was in Classics grad school I started a metrical search engine project. The idea was to give scholars a search box with a regex-like syntax for finding lines in a corpus matching metrical features. For example you could find all the lines in Homer with feminine endings. With Perseus it's easy to get lots of Greek & Latin texts. Then you just have to scan everything, but you can program that. I had an on-paper program to do dactylic hexameter. If anyone else thinks that might be a helpful tool, let me know. (Also if you work for Thesaurus Linguae Graecae and want to hire me to write this thing, I can make availability! ;-)

<comment><USER2> Wow, your search engine project sounds really neat! What a cool idea.

Thanks for the tips re: Shakespeare and Hopkins. I'll definitely dig in there. One of the tricky things with poets like Shakespeare is that many of his sonnets' lines I personally wouldn't consider to be iambic pentameter. Take the first line of Sonnet 29 for example: if I were reading that without affectation I'd put emphasis on "When" and "men's," while iambic requires that those be unstressed.

I don't know if speech patterns were different enough in Shakespeare's day that it sounded more natural with different stresses than we'd use today, but if I were evaluating that poem blind and didn't know it was Shakespeare I'd give it low marks for requiring a relatively forced inflection. Just my opinion, though!

<comment><USER3> I was an English major in college, so maybe I'm taking some background for granted here: no one expected that good poetry had 5x14 da-DUMs without relief. (Certainly you wouldn't want to force Shakespeare to sound that way when you read it aloud.) But the most common variations were well-known and tended to feel right, letting the poet vary things enough to avoid sing- songiness but still not stand out as wrong. So a trochee in the first foot is very common. Same with a spondee in the last foot. Other feet can flip to become trochees too, but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others. For example (IIRC but it's been a long time) I don't think the fourth foot flips very often, because it's hard to make it not sound bad. But those changes are "allowed" and so "it's still iambic pentameter." So it'd be cool if your algorithms could acknowledge those deviations, e.g. maybe give the line a purple-and-white shading instead of just white, or an asterisk.

EDIT: A quick Google turned up this article that has a lot of the patterns I remember: [https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic- pentamete...](https://versemeter.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/iambic-pentameter- the-principles-of-metrical-variation-part-1-feminine-endings-simple- variations/)

<comment><USER4> This thread take me back.

> but people have pointed out that it is more common in some feet than others

You might enjoy this: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149...](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.149.8792&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

And the follow-up, a longer examination of iambic pentameter: [http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf](http://linguistica.sns.it/RdL/9.1/Hanson.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Iambic pentameter never made any sense to me when I was in high school English, or really at any time since. My brain locks up trying to figure out what in the hell the difference actually is between the syllables in an iamb. It's probably not helpful that the dialect of English that I grew up with had some very parochial regional quirks, and most of the material that was trotted out as examples came from Elizabethan English, which would be somewhat incomprehensible spoken to most people today anyway. Long/short, stressed/unstressed, accented/unaccented, none of these descriptions illuminates much, at least for me.

When I had to write some sonnets in pentameter, I had to find some web pages that diagrammed out what the "proper" structure of words was, so I could pick out synonyms that might work...

<comment><USER2> I feel your pain! I think a big part of the problem is that most of the iambic pentameter examples taught in school are actually _not_ iambic pentameter (at least not with modern-day speech patterns). I expanded on this more in another comment, but I find it much easier to think about meter when not trying to fit Shakespeare into it.

The best (short) explanation I can think of is: if you were to read the line like you were saying it in normal, fairly fast speech, which syllables would have ever so slightly more _oomph ?_ For example, the sentence "I want to go to the museum." to me sounds most natural as:

      i WANT to GO to the muSEum

then for iambic you just see if that follows a pattern of unstressed/stressed (it doesn't here). An example that _is_ iambic would be: "You'd rather eat than see the show?"

      you'd RAther EAT than SEE the SHOW

Hope that's more helpful than hurtful! :)

<comment><USER6> I'm pretty sure you were just trying to showcase the stresses, but your last example is in iambic tetrameter, not pentameter. Which is another frequent source of confusion.

For some reason, the fact that "penta" stands for "five" (like the Pentagon!) seems to get lost in a lot of these discussions. They must be teaching poetry these days without explaining the Greek/Latin origin of the terms they use.

Word roots are fascinating. Epics were written in dactylic hexameter. Dactyls mean fingers. You know, as in pterodactyls. They're called pterodactyls because their wings (ptero-) were supported by their long fingers. A dactyl has three syllables, DA-da-da, just like the sections of your fingers.

<comment><USER2> Yes, sorry! I was trying to just discuss the "iambic" part and ignore the "pentameter," which I'd assumed (maybe incorrectly) was not the source of confusion. Thanks for the clarification.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A fantastic resource on this is "The Ode Less Travelled" by Stephen Fry. He is very thorough on meter and rhyme schemes, and makes a compelling case for more people to write and read poetry.

</comment><comment><USER8> The author digresses in to casual misandry for no apparent reason fairly early in the piece.

It's a distraction from an otherwise interesting piece.

</comment><comment><USER9> I memorized this poem in high school and I refer to it whenever I need to remember the name of a meter: [https://www.bartleby.com/360/9/155.html](https://www.bartleby.com/360/9/155.html)

</comment><comment><USER10> For a nice overview of the _prosody_ that underlies poetic meter, music, and most other forms of speech, I recommend this[1] video by Kyle Kallgren, which includes a lot of practical examples from the Beatles and other well-known works.

[1] [https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x46rxnz](https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x46rxnz)

</comment><comment><USER11> How do I learn more about the techniques involved in poetry? Any classics or great books anyone can recommend?

<comment><USER12> I would recommend getting a good anthology like Palgrave's or the Arthur Quiller-Couch, or for Americans Robert Penn Warren and working through them.

<comment><USER11> Thank you so much, I didn't know about those.</comment></comment></comment>


Intersectionality Score Calculator - <AUTHOR> https://intersectionalityscore.com/ <comment><USER2> Brilliant parody. Reducing this to an exact number shows the folly.</comment>


Sharing 3D models via the browser - <AUTHOR> https://sharemy3d.com/ <comment> pierre-renaux Shameless plug: [https://talansoft.com](https://talansoft.com), something similar that I build & maintain somewhat as a hobby. Its free to use, you can share, embed tag and there's a disqus based comment section.

The major difference is that you have to use the desktop app to upload, but that app allows you to do a lot more, you can build interactions, do animations, day/night cycles, custom shaders, it does physics, audio, etc...

It's been used (desktop app & publish part) for a long time in production (5+ years) by me and various companies (including Alibaba which acquired my previous company) so its decently robust.

It does lack in term of documentation/tutorials and on boarding in general, but if you're interested feel free to join the slack channel, I'm happy to help getting you started.

Oh and you can also export to desktop, android, iOS, etc... and there's an alpha build for OSX (ask on Slack if you're interested).

</comment><comment><USER2> Kudos on the site!

Before leaving my last job, I had to do a similar tool for outsourcing, but nothing of the level of Bullet, or to what you've achieved. Mine was written in Qt5 and was desktop application, so they had to had certain machine to run it. Also exchange was done through some secure ftp.

But got couple of ideas from artists, technical people too while working on it (then left the company):

\- Wireframe is required. This way an artist can spot T-junctions, irregularly shaped model, too much density, too less (other things I don't get, but they do)

\- LOD (Level of detail). This usually comes at different stages - e.g. initially your outsource would do the highest (or lowest LOD), and then progress. But you need to be able to see them.

\- Annotations/Comments - ways to select, leave comments feedback what you like, or what the outsourcing artist may ask. Ability to share reference images would be good too.

\- Different lighting models - day/night/etc.

For a really awesome 3D diffing check - [http://3drepo.org/](http://3drepo.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> 300 bucks a month is kinda crazy for what is really just hosting a file. You could do the same with a dropbox account.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is the below content ownership language (from their site) fairly common?

By posting Content to the Service, you grant us the right and license to use, modify, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce, and distribute such Content on and through the Service. You retain any and all of your rights to any Content you submit, post or display on or through the Service and you are responsible for protecting those rights. You agree that this license includes the right for us to make your Content available to other users of the Service, who may also use your Content subject to these Terms.

Sounds like it is, but also sounds like kind of a sketchy deal for someone who makes their living creating 3D models -- granting a random company who's only hosting your file permissions to use/perform/etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thinking like "We are the first for this.." grants 250$/mo is really the wrong way to start imho.

<comment><USER6> I don't think they are the first ones. I had been using [http://sketchfab.com](http://sketchfab.com) since more than two years now.

<comment><USER5> just quoting: "We are the first company to offer a web based viewer to share complex 3D models of all sizes and platforms."</comment></comment></comment>


IWD vs ObjectiveC - iPhone HTML5 apps made easy - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXxzeue6Kco

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Za0FPkaMGrk> \- part two of the screencast.</comment>


In one single image, mainstream media show their utter ignorance of security - <AUTHOR> https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/blog/2016/03/one-single-image-mainstream-media-shows-utter-ignorance-security/ <comment><USER2> I don't think OP actually read the NYPost article he's complaining about. [http://nypost.com/2015/09/20/the-8-key-that-can-open-new- yor...](http://nypost.com/2015/09/20/the-8-key-that-can-open-new-york-city-to- terrorists/)

The keys are being sold so cheaply that it is easier to just buy them online than to turn the published key image into your own copy: "UltimateSecurityDevices offers 1620 keys at $7.40 each for up to nine, and $6.66 each for 10 or more. Any order over $249 comes with a 10 percent discount."

EDIT: My point is that the cat is way, way, way out of the bag. Publishing the key image reduces the security of this key from 0.2% to 0.1%. It's already utterly destroyed.

<comment><USER3> Another point missed is that the lock mechanism on something like an elevator fire-service switch is not exactly robust, and a person determined to access it could probably do so quite easily with standard locksmith tools or even a screwdriver or pry tool.

The keys make casual mischief easier, but would not stop anyone more serious.

<comment><USER4> The keys make tampering much less noticeable. If you take a crowbar to a panel, someone will eventually see it and investigate. With a key you lock up after yourself and no one will know.

<comment><USER5> Actually looking at that key any cheap pick set or a couple of bobby pins and in a matter of seconds I could open and reclose the lock (without having ever seen the key). Surely any self respecting terrorist could figure that out too. If a cheap little lock is all that protects us from terrorism the danger level hasn't changed too much.

<comment><USER6> A paper clip and a binder clip are usually sufficient to open any keyed furniture lock in the office where you found the clips. It actually takes longer to bend the paper clip into the proper pick shape than it does to open the lock. You can also pick them back into the locked position afterward.

That's a case where having an actual key is less useful than knowledge of how the locks work, because the key won't actually open every lock in the office, whereas the clips will.

This is why you make a distinction between privacy locks and security locks.

Most of the locks in daily use by humans on this planet are barely better than privacy locks. I once unlocked the car, got in, and started it up before the country music station on the radio made me realize that _my_ car was actually parked in the next space over in the parking lot. It was a different brand of GM car that coincidentally had exactly the same body style, paint color, and locks as mine.

After that, I thought about trying my key in every car in the parking lot, but I never quite overcame my fear of getting arrested for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article is not good. I, for one, applaud the NY Post for publishing the key. Back when we were all flipping out over electronic voting, I published a "how-to" on Ars for compromising various popular voting machines, complete with some codes and other instructions. It was so easy anyone could do it, and the piece was printed out and waved angrily at various hearings on CSPAN, and the end result was...

Well, actually, the end result was that some counties went back to mechanical, and some didn't, and today it's all still a mess and it's impossible to have any confidence that your vote was correctly recorded. And now, in the digital age, voting is probably just this cargo cult ritual that we all do to summon this "democracy" thing that our ancestors once encountered.

Anyway, my point is, just publish the key. That makes it harder for the people who are embarrassed by this and want to bury it to do so.

<comment><USER8> _And now, in the digital age, voting is probably just this cargo cult ritual that we all do to summon this "democracy" thing that our ancestors once encountered._

If the current situation is a farce, what description does more than half of the population being disenfranchised deserve?

States with paper ballots and electronic tabulators shouldn't have too much problems with election integrity, the electronic results may be tampered with, but the paper trail is much harder to mess with.

<comment><USER9> I think there's an important difference between outright prohibiting someone from voting, and allowing them to vote but not counting it. If you prohibit someone from voting, at least they know it happened.

Paper trails are great, but are they checked frequently?

<comment><USER8> Yeah, the stated election process and actual election outcome have to both be considered, but my point was more that there aren't any good ol' days to harken back to when it comes to evaluating how egalitarian US elections are in practice.

Personally, I'm more concerned that parties have easier access to the ballot and that people are prevented from voting than I am with records tampering.

<comment><USER9> Agreed on both points. The potential for shenanigans with electronic voting machines is worrying, but it seems to be a mostly theoretical problem right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, the idea that "obscurity is not security" is not exclusive to security professionals. It is the justification that investigative journalists use on a daily basis in pursuing and publishing their stories. Next time you read an exposé of a government function, consider that the government at some point pressured the journalist to back off for "the sake of national security|the children"...assuming that the journalist isn't a total sociopath, we can give some benefit of the doubt and assume the reporter believes it's more important to expose government incompetence completely so that there's no turning back. That is almost certainly what the NYPost thought here...images draw attention. They also cost money to print, especially in full color on the inside pages. This wasn't an accident and the author of the critique shows his utter ignorance of civic institutions and bureaucracy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe the media was forcing things to change by exposing the key, deliberately, rather than being ignorant of what their exposure was doing.

<comment><USER12> This is more along what I think they were doing with this article/picture.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not the newspaper's responsibility to keep secrets. That's actually pretty much the opposite of their responsibility. If the key was intended to be secret, then the organizations that use it should have done a better job keeping it that way.

Somewhat related, it wasn't that long ago that the TSA published their _own_ master keys:

[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_ke...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/09/tsa_master_keys.html)

And here's a case where a prison _put a picture of their master key on the cover of a booklet given to every prisoner_ :

[http://www.news.com.au/national/killer-escaped-prison- after-...](http://www.news.com.au/national/killer-escaped-prison-after-being- issued-picture-of-master-key-to-all-locks/story-fncynjr2-1226629878591)

Mainstream media isn't showing their utter ignorance of security so much as showing everybody else's.

<comment><USER13> I did some video work in a couple of prisons. We had to sit with the prison security team afterwards and watch all the tapes looking for images of keys - they had already been burned to the £m before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Related useful info - "Replication Prohibited", a talk at the recent 32C3 about 3D printing keys: [https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7435-replication_prohibited](https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7435-replication_prohibited)

</comment><comment><USER15> Personally I get more annoyed when reporters cover stories about "cyber attacks" but don't actually go into the details of what's going on -- because a DDoS is a completely different story from a SQL Injection.

<comment><USER16> Maybe they publish the report as early as possible and the "fix" is not in place yet?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This article could have been a tweet

</comment><comment><USER18> Promotional coverage of something much better covered here previously.</comment>


The Front End Engineering Spectrum: The Roles - <AUTHOR> http://htmlcssjavascript.com/web/the-front-end-engineering-spectrum-the-roles/

<comment><USER2> Overall this is one of the best top-down looks at the "roles" front-end developers can fit into. However, the point I'm so apt to obsess over is that people (who hire) can't _get it_ that these differences exist ... so I'm compelled to encourage everyone to push this on hiring managers, recruiters, cto's, whatever.

The "hybrids" and "full stack" folk are out there (and I always stress the need to overlap on either end of the spectrum) but the vast majority of talent has an overwhelming strength in one of those three core capabilities: Design, UI Development, Server-side Development.

That's not to say you can't be A+ in 2/3. Instead if your company looking to hire a "2/3" then you better get ready to pony up. OR, you can target the area whose needs you are most in need of and see if their interests or overlap into the other capabilities.

</ramble>

</comment><comment><USER3> With regard to converting Photoshop in to HTML templates, here's an interesting post from 37Signals on why they don't use photoshop:

<http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1061-why-we-skip-photoshop></comment>


Show HN: Subvim – Vim customized to be like SublimeText - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fatih/subvim <comment><USER2> The most awesome feature of SublimeText for me is multiple-cursor editing (Ctrl-D on a word). It only bothers me when I can't skip next occurrences easily (It's possible, but it's hard)

It surprises me how users of other major editors don't use multiple cursors in their day to day editing tasks. It'd be awesome if subvim included the best solution vim community has to offer in this regard.

<comment><USER3> Vim has block editing mode (ctrl v - select, shift i, write text, esc) and the ability to record macros. With those two features you can do everything multiple cursors does and more!

<comment><USER4> I love vim but I don't think that block editing mode does what they want to do quite as well. Do you have an example where they excluded a line or lines from block editing?

an example:

       class="item"
       class="item"
       class="item"
       class="item"

st2 would be able to select the second and fourth line item and be able to change those to "item odd" without touching the first and the third ones. similarly they could do the same and add even to the other two.

       class="item"
       class="item odd"
       class="item"
       class="item odd"

this blog post shows it in action:

[http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-2-0-re...](http://www.sublimetext.com/blog/articles/sublime- text-2-0-released)

<comment><USER5> I'm probably being very defensive but I use macros for this.

qa$i odd^[jjq

and then '4@a' to run it on all the lines. In a simple case like this is it a bit more complicated than something like multiword editing but I've used this technique in cases that are far more complex then what from my understanding, multiline editing can handle.

For example I turned a spreadsheet of data into a complicated dhcpd.conf file using a couple macros.

<comment><USER4> Oh I agree that macros are a daily use thing for me and I haven't used sublimetext more than a handful of times; I was merely playing devils advocate to see if vim had an interesting feature I was unaware of that I could use in my day to day editing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> slightly off topic, but I think a thing that is sorely needed is a kind of libvim that provides proper vim functionality, which can then be linke

<comment><USER7> yes agreed - JetBrains has IdeaVim, but it is so lame compared to the real thing.

<comment><USER8> How is the speed? Last time I tried it, about 6 months ago, there was a very noticeable lag when switching between modes. I ran into the maintainer of IdeaVim at PyCon and he said it should be better but my trial period expired and I never got a chance to try it again.

<comment><USER9> They just released an update a week ago that was supposed to have fixed the problem. It does seem better, but I haven't used it for long enough to properly verify that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is awesome. As a Sublime user I'm going to put this on my dev server for those times when I have to SSH in and make an emergency code change without my primary machine handy.

<comment><USER11> Did that too

Love this project. Sublime Text's awesomeness makes it hard to completely switch back to VIM, but this looks like a good approach to bring features we have grown to love back to VIM, without all the hazzle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonder how this compares to SPF13, which I've been using lately. <https://github.com/spf13/spf13-vim>

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. SPF13 itself is really nice. But the main difference here is first I try to emulate ST2, second I'm really picky which plugins are integrated. I also don't use vundle (because It should always have the same feature regardless of the state of plugin), instead of I'm using pathogen (which I like more). With time I will update the plugins myself, but only if they have bugfixes or features that are necessary to be added.

Some of plugins (like ctrlp) is modified in order to use the ctags binary I'm bundling and installing. There is also pre-compiled version of YCM in subvim. Together it means autocompletion and goto features are really working. You really don't install anything.

The plugins settings are modified in order to emulate ST2 like behavior, like accepting autocomplete entry via enter, creating a newline after braces,quotes,etc.., opening a new tabs whenever you call cmd+p (but not if you call cmd+r for using goto), closing the application and starting again brings all you tabs/files again and so on..

They are many things I'm trying to improve, like adding snippet system, more improved installation procedure, multiplatform support (linux and windows). SPF13 is much better on these terms.

I hope with time it will get better :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This seems rad, my only 2cents is that using modifier keys is not very vimmy. But altogether really cool. Nice work.

<comment><AUTHOR> The whole point is for people who want to switch from ST to Vim or for people who used to use VIM, but loves ST. There are still cases that should be handled trough. But I will add an entry to the FAQ, that explains the target user. This is IMO not for everybody.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Vim reminds me of this white powder my mother used to use to clean drains or something. Weird.

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks lovely!

Though I would appreciate non-Mac shortcuts too (I am guessing ctrl- can be used instead of cmd-)

<comment><USER15> Agreed. I got excited, because it looked like a way to get Sublime-friendly features in a remote terminal, but all the macvim-centric bindings look like a blocker. Still, it's a great reference for Vim plugins that can bring Vim closer to Sublime.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Seriously why do we need this?

<comment><USER17> Because we can do it.

I understand the saying "just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should", but really, we do anything because it can be done (or someone said it couldn't be and we had to prove them wrong). Within sane limits, it's amusing, without sane limits...

Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my life living away from a cave thanks to this same delightful aspect of human nature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have got to ask the obvious here, why not just switch?

<comment><AUTHOR> Because i love Vim :) Then there was Sublime that really changed the way of editing in some way. I first tried vintage and make it vim-like. However it was slow and not much was I wanted. Thus finally creates this project. For Vim users who like Sublime.

<comment><USER19> ST3 will be released soon and is supposedly going go fully support all vim commands in vintage mode with better performance.

<comment><USER20> You mean the vintage mode that comes with ST?

Because I didn't see anything being announced regarding vintage mode. Some guys forked the ST vintage package but that's 3rd party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Good work! Love the color scheme.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've made some hacks to the original molokai (like the background on the numbers).

</comment></comment><comment> bisu-shield too bad CtrlP is crap compared to sublime's fuzzy searching

<comment><AUTHOR> I tweaked the settings. It's a little better than with the default settings. Just give try :)</comment></comment>


Dear YC companies, I responded. You could do the same. - <AUTHOR> This should be self explanatory, but I'm going to put it out there anyway.  If you are going to spam all the freelancers in the "Freelancer" thread each month, asking for a very detailed quote, portfolio examples and an estimate, at least have the courtesy to respond.
My time is worth a lot, which is probably why you didn't respond. I don't forget which companies are rude and don't hesitate to tell others about my experience with you.  I'm sure the other freelancers feel the same.
Thanks <comment><USER3> I'm not sure at what point the Valley decided that it was okay to not respond back to applicants once they were no longer interested, but it's terribly unprofessional behavior. I had an interview with a very established dotcom in San Jose, and I went through 5 interviews and talked salary with the director of the group, and then they stopped responding to my emails for some unknown reason. I emailed him directly asking for feedback, as well as the recruiters, and it was radio silence.

I applied to a bunch of companies last year, and was in the middle of the process with many of them when I decided on the company I was going to work for. I wrote them _all_ an email notifying them, but thanking them for the opportunity to meet with them. A few startups didn't even bother responding back, but I did receive some nice emails back from some companies thanking me for letting them know, and wishing me luck at my job, and if things didn't work out, to contact them again.

I'm not saying I needed to be treated like royalty, but basic common courtesy goes a long way. As well, how you treat people that you don't need to treat well reflects on the type of company (and person) you really are.

<comment><USER4> >As well, how you treat people that you don't need to treat well reflects on the type of company (and person) you really are.

This is really an underappreciated bit of wisdom here. The true nature of a person is revealed by how they treat those that are "beneath" them (socially) or are otherwise not useful to them. Someone who is rude and demanding to waitstaff, or rude to a stranger passing by is someone who will eventually turn on you once you are no longer beneficial to them. Take these instances as warnings.

<comment><USER5> I think you took it too far by pandering to wait staff. Their jobs are to wait. I don't think they're below me. I think they should take as much pride in their job as I do in mine, and if they don't care to even try to do well at their job, I'm going to let them know. It's one thing to be rude or obnoxious, but it's another to let them know that their service is not up to snuff.

You say it's bad to treat people "below you" badly, but I think it's even worse to believe anyone's below you, and thus, beyond scrutiny.

<comment><USER6> You are defending a position he did not take. When did he say to pander to waitstaff? All he said is don't be rude and demanding. There are ways to address deficiencies without being rude or demanding.

> You say it's bad to treat people "below you" badly, but I think it's even > worse to believe anyone's below you

That's why he put it in quotes. _hackinthebochs_ never said he thinks they are below him, just that many people do, and treat them badly. You cannot deny that there are people who think this way or that there are not some standards that society in general uses to compare people.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I sent about half a dozen follow up or introduction emails emails out between April's two threads for contract work. Some were extremely detailed, offering portfolio samples, repository URLs, even contact information of former clients as references.

Not a single response, not even to say "no longer looking, but thanks!" I can't think of anything in a professional context that is more rude or disrespectful. If I spent half an hour writing a customized email and giving you 100% of the information you need and you can't spend 30 seconds to tell me you're not interested, you're just a bad person. That's all there is to it.

</comment><comment><USER8> My experience is similar:

From time to time I partake in the HN freelancer thread. Not that I _ever_ got _any_ business out of it. I still think in principle it would be nice to do business with fellow HNers, that's why I keep trying it.

Usually, I get about 2-3 inquiries per month from the Freelancer thread - <USER2> far most of these from people who apparently came through a search engine and aren't HN users at all. Of these, 2 are general carpet bombing mails, asking me for things that I didn't advertise and can't/won't provide ("would you like to move to Berlin and work as an entry-level tech support person?"). Sometimes, that leaves one real contact.

Here's where things start to get on my nerves: there will typically be an exchange of 3 to 4 emails back and forth. It starts with a project introduction (which is often excellently detailed), then we're moving on to references and code samples, then we're talking fees (even though I explicitly state them on my profile website), after which it's all "I'll totally do this project with you", and after that: nothing. In two cases, there were even 30+ minutes Skype conversations, all for nothing of course.

Last month I decided to do something different, be more proactive: I sent out emails to people looking for freelancers on HN. Same procedure (see above), same results. _But_ I got something very interesting out of it: a few of them told me they received upwards of 30 applicants! Holy crap, even for the lamer job postings!

It's now clear to me why the freelancer thread doesn't work, at least for "normal" HNers like me. As a freelancer, there is so much competition, the chances of success are exceedingly slim. Companies are drowning in applicants. Of course they're going to choose either the cheapest one, or if you're lucky enough to inhabit something of a niche, the most famous one.

So why are they not responding? Why are they just breaking off communication after a short exchange? Because they don't have any reason to value our time. There are just so many of us.

<comment><USER9> Reading this made me despair.

Getting contract work online should be a last resort.

<comment><USER8> I don't really need it, it's just a point of interest. But yeah, I feel bad for people who have to live on this. Especially those with decent skills, it's very hard to compete in an environment that is polluted to the brim.

It's the same with commercial freelancer sites, by the way. Tons of lame projects, many of them quite shady or illegal, with absolute rock-bottom budgets and dozens of "developers" fighting over scraps.

Experiences like this make me think our profession truly is in the toilet right now. A view weeks ago I chided a commenter on HN for saying the software employment situation is a buyer's market and thus he has trouble treating programmers with respect. I can see why that is, though.

<comment><USER9> This is what I'm doing to put food on the table until one of my business projects gets rolling.

Dipping your toe in the water and exclaiming how it's so awful isn't constructive and just unnerves other people.

<comment><USER8> _> Getting contract work online should be a last resort._

I obviously totally misunderstood this initial statement of yours somehow.

For what it's worth I just wanted to share my experiences. It's absolutely possible that I'm the only person who saw these problems and everybody else is having a positively marvelous time - that's why it's called anecdotal evidence. If that's true: sorry, I didn't want to give the wrong impression.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Frequently, people in a hiring position treat prospective candidates like cattle. They forget there is a human being behind that resume or portfolio.

All it takes is a reply like this:

        "Hello _______, We are very appreciative that you took the time to send us your _______. Once we get a chance to review your ______, we will contact if you we feel like you are a good fit.
        Best Regards,
        _____________"

<comment><USER11> Works both ways in my experience. Whenever I was hiring I always got spammed by many candidates who were obviously sending out their resumes to large numbers of jobs without even bothering to read the descriptions or application instructions.

<comment><USER12> This reminded me of the time I got a Resume from someone applying for a software-engineering job. The guy somehow thought that putting "Sandwich Artist" as part of his work experience was valuable for his application. This, on a 2-page resume which could have been easily reduced to 1-page.

I got the resume before the first phone screen... he did not do well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> My first thought was, "Isn't this sort of like job hunting? It's unrealistic to expect a company advertising a job to respond to each and every resume, regardless of how much time the user put into it. For the same reason, I would guess the "Freelancer" threads would be the same way." But the more I think about it, the more I agree with you. The difference here is that these people personally reached out _to you_ , rather than you just sending something to "email@example.com" or whatever. So yeah, makes sense to me.

<comment><USER14> Why is it unrealistic to expect a company to respond to each and every resume?

I can understand a "personalized" response to be unrealistic. But at least a simple automatic e-mail saying "Thank you for applying, regretfully the position is now filled" or anything indicating "don't wait for an answer" should be the norm. Especially with a lot of large companies indicating that an answer could take up to 2 months.

<comment><USER13> There are tons of reasons. I'm not trying to be rude but, IMO, not being able to see some of the reasons implies to me that you haven't done much interviewing/hiring.

The most likely reason is to stay "in charge" of your interviewing process. If Johnny sends in a resume and he is unqualified, what do you say? "Thanks, Johnny, but you are not a fit for our organization. Best of luck!" Form letter. Awesome - that makes someone feel better? Okay... Anyway, here's the problem: Johnny writes back and asks, "What is it that I could have done differently?" Do you respond? If you do, what do you say when he writes back yet again (and again and again)?

"Scott - this is the kind of guy you want to hire! He's persistent!" Oh really? So that's all it takes to get the job you are hiring for - persistence? Of course not.

"But you can take a guy like that and train him - he'll be great, I bet!" Will he? What's your proof? He's already shown you that he's trying to punch above his weight and that he's okay with that. He's already shown you that he's kind of a PIA. What makes you so optimistic about his ability to learn?

The point is that there are lots of reasons that employers don't continue the dialog, but this is a major one. No company wants to pay someone $25,000-$100,000 a year to reply to the Johnnys of the world ad infinitum. And as for companies getting interns to reply, that's just ridiculous IMO. What CEO wants interns to be in charge of replying to job applicants? That's awful. At BEST you can train them not to *#$& up a form letter.

<comment><USER15> > The most likely reason is to stay "in charge" of your interviewing process. > If Johnny sends in a resume and he is unqualified, what do you say?

When I'm hiring, I respond to each and every resume. 99% of them get a canned "Thanks for applying. Unfortunately, it's not a match, but we wish you the best of luck."

Is that so hard?

My personal answer? No. It's not.

You're programmers. Write a macro. Then tap the key.

> No company wants to pay someone $25,000-$100,000 a year to reply to the > Johnnys of the world ad infinitum.

First, this is ludicrous; even if you're sending thousands or tens of thousands of these letters, you can have a process that doesn't cost but a penny or two more than REVIEWING the email in the first place does.

Second, any company that can't design good processes that work well and cheaply isn't a place where I want to work.

<comment><USER13> > Is that so hard?

Yes, actually. To say that it isn't implies that either (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get is very small. For an admin position, we might get 150 applications. Of those, less than 50% will have met the stated job requirements/pre-reqs. Even if I were to automate it, how much time have I spent automating it? Maintaining it? And for each person, there's certainly a few seconds/minutes of "Let me make sure I get the name right..." And that's just one position. It _is_ hard to do what you're saying, unless (a) you aren't doing much hiring, or (b) that the number of applicants you get are very small.

<comment><USER16> So in other words you're saying that your time is so incredibly valuable that you should be made exempt from the generally acceptable standards of behavior?

(I've spent 20+ years in the tech biz. I've probably hired a few hundred people myself. I've never been "too busy" to live up to the bare minimum professional standards of behavior. To me this smells less like being too busy - and more like being too arrogant.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think some people are confusing people who "apply" for jobs vs. startups actually going after a freelancer to help them. If someone applies for a job it would certainly be good business practice to give a personalized or automated response acknowledging receipt of a resume or portfolio. If a startup specifically reaches out to a freelancer, by spamming all the freelancers as OP puts it, then the startups better respond to the people who respond to them!

<comment><USER10> I don't feel like people are confusing anything. The issue is being generalized from a specific problem. In either case, it is rude not to respond.

<comment><USER17> I agree in both cases it is rude not to respond. But in one case the potential employer is the one who reached out first. For example, when I got out of college I brushed off the fact that an employer didn't respond to my resume at all. That didn't make me angry. What did make me confused was someone who specifically reached out to me to try to hire me through email and a phone call and then fell off the face of the earth when I followed up via email with a resume and more details. Sure that person might have been busy and had more important hires to make than a post-grad, but it was still rude and I probably won't forget it.

<comment><USER18> Yup. I had a similar experience in college when I applied for an internship at Facebook, got back an enthusiastic-sounding response asking me for my availability for a phone screen, and then the recruiter dropped off the face of the earth and never responded to me again.

<comment><USER19> I agreed to a job offer from a company, and by the Friday before I was to start, I hadn't heard from them on where exactly I was supposed to show up on Monday morning. I emailed them about it, and they replied, "Oh, oops, we neglected to inform you that we restructured our existing staff and don't need you any more."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why is it so difficult to comprehend that if you contact me first and I write you back, you _should_ write back again even if you don't want me anymore. If I contacted you first, it will still be _nice_ to hear back but I will not lose my sleep over it.

<comment><USER21> I agree this is pretty clear. Why is it so difficult?

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> > I don't forget which companies are rude and don't hesitate to tell others > about my experience with you

Well, do tell others. Where are the names?

</comment><comment><USER23> You are seeing this with an employee mindset. As a freelancer, you are a one man business. Thus, you get treated as such. Businesses don't usually have the common courtesy you described. Let me ask you a question? Have you ever stopped ignoring a sales person? Even after they gave you their time in order to try and close the sale? Did you say "Hmm, I should be courteous and let them know how much I appreciate it"? No, you did not. Because you know that's part of their job. Getting rejected. Getting ignored. Part of being a freelancer is being rejected, and being ignored. No one owes you anything. This is business. Rather than making a fool out of yourself publicly (and reducing any potential client you might have had here), why don't you decide to polish up your sales skills? Maybe improve your marketing?

<comment><USER24> I've never ignored a sales person that I initiated contact with, which I believe is the topic of this discussion. If it gets to the point that you're not interested, you tell them as such. It's corteous, and if you want to look at it in the self-serving point of view, you stop the repeat phone calls and emails because you just fell off the face of the earth after asking for information.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Asking for a detailed quote (where the one time effort taken to create the quote is significant compared to the value of the contract) probably isn't reasonable.

If you ask 500 freelancers to spend a day making a quote for a months work, you just cost many times your contract value.

A suggestion:

A better way is to describe the contract, and provide a brief 'pre- qualification questionnaire' where a candidate proves that it is worth both your time proceeding.

After that, you invite bids from the top say 6 applicants, and work with them to get the best bid possible.

</comment><comment><USER26> As a freelancer, you can put a great deal of time into carefully considering the needs of a new/prospective client, developing a preliminary plan for the project and preparing a carefully considered estimate. This is typically done gratis. It is in one's best interest to spend this prospecting time on the highest likelihood/value prospective clients. Behavior like the spam-and- ignore on behalf of some of these companies reflects poorly on the group and will make the best freelancers reluctant to participate.

As an aside for freelancers, I recommend following Brennan Dunn's work:

<http://brennandunn.com/> <http://brennandunn.com/category/podcast/> <http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/> <http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/build-a-consultancy> <http://doubleyourfreelancingrate.com/the-blueprint>

He does _so_ much for the freelancer community.

</comment><comment><USER27> As a freelancer I understand where you're coming from. On the other hand, we're a business. How many times have we gone into a store, and are "just looking"? Went to a lot, test drove a car, and said we needed to leave and "think about it"? Called prospective businesses for pricing and never followed up with them?

Part of doing business is servicing those who may not be paying customers. You must have that time margin built in. Is it rude for potential customers to not follow up, even to let us know nothing's happening? Maybe. I'd never call a lot back to let them know I was just prospecting, either.

If your freelance practice can't bear to lose time like this, you need to rethink your pricing or your chosen profession.

<comment><USER28> I think the analogies you make to other types of sales aren't terribly strong. Walking through a brick and mortar store without buying anything takes effectively no time from the business - they can handle many customers in parallel. By contrast, calling prospective business or test driving a car does involve at least acknowledging the seller. You might not tell them you've bought a different car, but you also don't hear the proposed price and hang up the phone without a word, which is a closer analogy to getting an offer and replying with nothing, not even a form letter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Relationships with potential contractors, or anyone, really require the same two things: respect and communication. Replying--even a short message--in this case would satisfy this; you respect them enough to recognize their effort on your behalf, and communicate that this (for the time being) will be the end of your interest.

</comment><comment><USER30> I started doing a litmus test with a 1-3 liner where I give them points for professionalism/courteousness. The ones that pass are amazing people to get to know, not just work with. Though I might be generalizing too much, I found it separates the ones with sincerity.

It's not just YC, it's founders all over.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is why I used to ask some upfront payment for price estimation. Not much but enough to find if someone is serious and targeting me or if it's just a mass email to hundreds of people. In latter case I stood zero chance against students who would quote $100 for virtually anything.

</comment><comment><USER32> Just to clarify a detail: There are like ~500 official YC backed startups, but many also independent companies read the freelance/hiring thread. You are complaining that many of the YC-startups didn't answer or there were generic companies?

<comment><USER33> I think it's apparent from the post that it's about companies responding to posts in a news.yc thread. It's not a VC thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Anyone interested in putting something together so that we can start aggregating the worst violators? I know I'd use that list not just to filter out the time-wasters but also to apply pain-pricing.

<comment><USER34> May I humbly suggest my site <http://www.oncontracting.com> I'm still testing it in Seattle but would happily work on adding new content from elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is the single most frustrating thing I experience when I freelance from time to time. It is also the reason I don't use that thread.

I am often willing to give decent sized discounts for people who communicate well. I'll take the cut in pay for someone who is courteous and responds in a somewhat quickly manner. I should NOT be more excited and engaged about your project than you are. It has gotten to the point lately I will turn down sizable jobs because of their lack of communication. It isn't worth the hassle.

</comment><comment><USER36> There's no excuse for ANY company to totally fail to respond to applicants in the present day. There are so many automated HR and recruitment platforms out there now, it's poor on the part of non-responding companies and illustrates what kind of people are running the ship. This, 'we're a startup and too busy to eat' crap is nothing short of a lame excuse.</comment>


Yahoo Acquires Aviate - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/07/yahoo-announces-that-it-has-acquired-intelligent-homescreen-startup-aviate/

<comment><USER2> So she's going to try to port over google now except she's trying to do it through aqui-hiring.</comment>