Mastercard investing in technology to identify commuters by gait, heartbeat - <AUTHOR> https://www.marketwatch.com/story/mastercard-is-pioneering-new-payment-technology-that-identifies-commuters-by-the-way-they-walk-2020-02-14 <comment><USER2> I believe that these kinds of applications are central goals of the 5G deployment project.

This can already be done with ordinary WiFI hardware. Here is one of multiple papers about it:

\- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/)

How much easier will "device free localization and identification" be with 5G's higher frequencies and beamforming antenna arrays?

Consider, why else would people be writing papers like these?

\- [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/)

\- [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_...](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_Multiresolution_Scalograms_for_Freezing_of_Gait_Detection_in_Parkinson%27s_Leveraging_5G_Spectrum_with_Deep_Learning)

\- [https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/5G-It...](https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp- content/uploads/2019/01/5G-Italy-White-eBook-5G-Localization.pdf)

\- [https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370)

\- [https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692)

I don't like the way 5G is pitched to the public. It feels icky. All the marketing is like "this will change the world and bring internet to rural areas plus you'll be able to watch netflix on your phone omg can you believe that!"

But in a few years they'll suddenly be saying "Awe golly shucks whaddya know, who knew 5G radios can also be used to spy on your aging parents breathing habits... how convenient! Now we can send an ambulance before you even call!" etc.

<comment><USER3> At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community. Predicting an emergency based on observed biometrics would be incredibly useful to many of them and these sorts of dismissals are exactly why the digital privacy movement has increasingly lost steam with regular people.

I'm not contesting that these technologies and services aren't also going to be used for dubious purposes but the idea that they have no social value is a meme for privileged people who earn enough to be dismissive of the potential savings.

<comment><USER4> > At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community.

A statement that requires qualification to be meaningful. Medicare, Medicare HMOs, and Medicare/Medicaid dual coverage add up to giving elders better healthcare coverage than any other demographic in the US.

<comment><USER5> Falling, and the injuries / changes in quality of life that falling brings, is a serious issue for seniors. [https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for- reporters/get-the-fa...](https://www.ncoa.org/news/resources-for- reporters/get-the-facts/falls-prevention-facts/)

A few years ago, I worked for a small startup looking to use wearable devices to detect early changes in gait as a means to effectively deliver early intervention techniques. The science around the topic is solid - there is good research backing which parameters of gait are most predictive and what therapies are most effective for any given scenario.

The problem we always encountered was compliance. Customers (senior living facilities, insurance agencies, etc) want to know that the devices are being used. Seniors are notoriously slow to adopt tech, and adding another device to daily life is the last thing most seniors that we spoke to wanted to deal with.

We got to interview with YC for this idea but were rejected. Skimming the companies from that batch I later found [https://www.totemic.com/](https://www.totemic.com/) They use back-skatter technologies to provide a compliance-free fall monitoring system. After spending two years in the problem space, I knew a superior solution when I saw it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I read a (just okay) near-future cyber dystopia novel called "Little Brother" once. It had this interesting segment where gait recognition was being used to track people instead of facial recognition because it was more reliable (I'm not sure whether this is true in reality, but regardless).

Anyway. The main character had an easy way of breaking it: toss some gravel in one of your shoes. It'll disrupt your natural walking pattern in a randomized way without you having to even think about it.

<comment> ISO-morphism I like to imagine a future where all pedestrians move about like they're from the ministry of silly walks to thwart gait analysis.

<comment><USER7> It would be humorous at least to know Monty Python was ahead of its time in more ways than one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> All this is heading towards a small fraction of the human population controlling and watching everything the rest of us do, with no way for us to do anything against them, and I cannot help but hate the engineers who are helping to make that dystopia happen.

Western developers who work for such surveillance tech (and that includes "mere advertisers" like Google and Facebook) should really go get an honest taste of life as an ordinary citizen in authoritarian countries like China or the rich Middle East.

<comment><USER9> I would like to opt out of this, but how? I don't think my life has improved in the least since my bus pass stopped being a piece of paper I replaced every month. Physical cash is a good concept, it works and it would continue to do so until the sun burns out. Even before we get to all the derived socio- political consequences of all of this, it's just not necessary at all.

<comment><USER10> > I don't think my life has improved in the least since my bus pass stopped > being a piece of paper I replaced every month.

Did you use the bus a lot when they only took cash? Hope you carry small change because the driver won't take a 20. Hope you like waiting whilst someone counts out coins. Hope you enjoy watching an argument when someone is 10pence short of fare etc etc etc.

Contactless payments are in general significantly easier and quicker. I reckon the time for 10 people to get on a bus now is less than half what it used to be on average.

<comment><USER11> Some places only took paper - prepaid tickets you (possibly) validated in machines and paper monthly passes. Other places would have a driver and a conductor for paying/checking tickets. Neither of those involved the bus waiting for people to pay, and many of these systems are still used today.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For those who wonder why Mastercard would look at biometric options when we already have things like NFC based payments, here's a reason:

Most payments require at least two factors, e.g. you must be in possession of a card AND know the PIN. Or you must be in possession of a phone AND have it unlocked with your passcode or FaceID, etc. It works well but it's not perfect.

Biometrics like unique vein patterns give you two factors in one. You must be physically present and alive, otherwise your veins would have no blood flowing and there was nothing to capture and secondly your vein pattern must match the "fingerprint" which is you. That's much stronger authentication than many other schemes and if it was linked to some sort of payment method and potential even identity service then you could not only pay with your biometric but you could also pay for age restricted goods such as alcohol since it would be physically impossible for someone else to use your hand to buy stuff.

It's possible for a kid to use your card and pin or phone and passcode though. So there's the case for biometrics in the future.

EDIT:

Also something like a vein driven biometric would also solve the problem of proving that the person was physically at the point of sale and could hugely reduce disputes and fraud.

There's loads of value in these new biometrics if they turn out to work well.

<comment><USER13> So passwords are also two factors because you must be physically present _and_ have a text input device?

Most people I know now access their phone with fingerprint and can transfer fairly significant amounts of money from a banking app on that phone by doing a second authorisation with the same fingerprint.

I'm honestly surprised that I've yet to read an account of this attack vector being exploited, but it doesn't seem safe to me.

<comment><USER12> > So passwords are also two factors because you must be physically present and > have a text input device?

No, password is 1 factor. An input device <> YOUR input device which you had to specifically configure/authorise to enable for NFC based payments or banking on your app. You cannot log in with your FaceID on any iphone which has your bank's app installed and then do payments. You must have the app on your device and initially authenticate with much stronger credentials before your phone is then permitted to use FaceID subsequently. This is only allowed on the premise/assumption that you would have never done it on a stranger's device and therefore your personal device or to say the possession of it is seen as an additional factor after initial setup.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is just so hilariously absurd. Transit ticketing is a solved problem. You don't need fuzzy gait recognition when a $2 NFC card works 100% of the time.

<comment><USER15> Data Science applications expand to fill the available labor pool, I guess.

<comment><USER16> Can we have ethics yet?

<comment><USER17> Who needs ethics when we've got big business?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Gait detection for payment is some ableist bullshit.

Sprain an ankle? Walk on it, because you can't use the subway. Tear some ligament in your knee? No bus for you. Pull a muscle in your lower back? Sorry, Quasimodo, you're out of luck. Sciatica? Stop trying to steal services, you fraud!

At the least, these systems have to be backed by some other system that would need to be kept in place. So maybe just use that for everyone.

<comment><USER19> This tech won't be used for payment processing. It will be used for governments to get a decent idea where people are going while being able to track them if they switch to a new card.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a fluff piece about some project MasterCard has thrown a bit of time and money into. The whole interview could be set up to validate the projects very existence. I remember one a while ago about Microsoft researching if it was possible to measure someone's level of frustration though their mouse and offer custom help/support wording based in that.

Of course gait recognition/biometrics isn't going to replace ubiquitous NFC payments for transit, just as windows isn't ever going to tailor its help messages depending on how hard you are gripping the mouse.

But sure, invest a bit of time into it, you never know. I believe the term is throw enough shit against a wall and see what sticks?

</comment><comment><USER21> I have no visual memory. I've spent a bit of time thinking about how I remember people and how they move is a big part of it. I know a man who is very still. Like abnormally still. He was married to a dear friend who passed away and use to regularly visit a place I use to work. I never remembered him. I knew I was supposed to know him but got it wrong every time, until u realized he was really still and when I saw someone who was still, I knew it was him. Not just walk, but breath. I thought it was pretty neat the first time I read about identifying people by their gait.

</comment><comment><USER22> What a bunch of nonsense. If they cared about fraud, they would have ditched magstripes in the US a long time ago.

Good luck using gait recognition on crowds of thousands of people per hour, many being partially occluded, in a reliable manner. I can't see it comparing to RFID cards anytime soon. Best I can tell, current state of the art is still limited to a single individual, in the centre of the frame, in a perfect profile shot.

This comes off as a puff piece devoid of any critical thinking.

<comment><USER23> Perhaps they just mean to use it at point-of-sale instances. Instead of entering your PIN, you now have to prance around in front of a camera for 10 seconds.

Deploy countermeasures: administer the silly walk!

</comment></comment><comment> a-wu I use an electric wheelchair. I'd like to see them try to identify me by gait. (yes, I'm likely more identifiable by other means)

</comment><comment><USER24> Future Supreme Court ruling: "You have no expectation of privacy in your gait or heartbeat while walking in public."

<comment><USER25> > "You have no expectation of privacy in your gait or heartbeat while walking > in public."

Well, yeah. What would gait privacy even mean? That the law would prohibit you from using your eyes to notice that someone is walking a particular way? That's absurd.

<comment><USER19> The way you use data is taken in to consideration by the law. If I take a photo outside and you happen to be in it then thats legal. If I follow you around every day with a camera pointed at you then its not legal anymore even though its the same data.

<comment><USER26> > If I take a photo outside and you happen to be in it then thats legal.

In the U.S. Other countries, however, have decided that private individuals should not be subjected to having their face stored in a permanent record without their consent. Thus the photographer is required to take the extra step of anonymizing the photo (e.g. by blurring faces) before publishing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hey, I bet this shit will be done exclusively for the good of us their customers!

</comment><comment><USER28> I was thinking in the context of SARS-CoV-2, in a world where data collectors were trustworthy, it would be useful to be able to track the movements of people. We already carry homing beacons, and technologically there's nothing restricting our phones to record their locations.

So a scenario where if someone is sick, everyone who was near them in the last 3-4 days could be notified. Or this traceback could also find the person who infected them and where they did it. Just to make it more accurate, the phones could also be able to scan (e.g. with Bluetooth) which devices are nearby, at any time.

It would be technologically awesome, but obviously it's not something I want in the hands of the authorities of today's world.

China uses CCTV instead: [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health- surveillance...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-surveillance- idUSKBN2011HO)

<comment><USER29> >It would be technologically awesome, but obviously it's not something I want in the hands of the authorities of today's world

not only do I not want it in the hands of authorities, I would want it even less in the hands of citizens who will go into paranoid neighbourhood watch mode. The ring doorbell is already the prelude to this. Ubiquitous surveillance by suburban soccermoms is an even more dystopian scenario than the Chinese Communist party

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Measures like this make me think that a lot of modern privacy advocacy is misguided. Each of us is unique in a huge variety of ways. We have unique fingerprints, unique iris patterns, unique genomes, unique gaits, unique writing styles, unique speech patterns, unique hair, unique teeth, unique sweat composition, and even unique _coding_ styles that survive compilation and optimization [1]. What are you going to do --- use a combination of social pressure and regulation to prevent people analyzing _any_ of these things? We're moving toward a world in which you can be identified if you go out of public. Instead of trying to plug an increasingly leaky dike, we should just learn to accept this new future and take advantage of the upsides.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.08546](https://arxiv.org/abs/1512.08546)

<comment><USER30> Personally, I can see several significant downsides (being manipulated by targeted propaganda, punished for socially unpopular behavior, taken advantage of, etc.) and virtually no meaningful upsides.

<comment><USER31> Personally I think the main issue sociologically is that the implementations are "half-mirror" society instead of fully transparent. The half mirror is inherently abusable.

Imagine a sci-fi world where anyone can view anywhere in the past at any time and any depth. It would be disconcerting but it would put people on equal footings and prevent many forms of deception and abuse as well as making criminal trials binary but fair. Corruption would be harder to get away with when every backroom meeting could be audited and verified by everyone. It would force some very uncomfortable questions about social norms and laws as a society in withdrawl from expected hypocrisy.

Compare that to one with it just in the hands of authorities to abuse.

Obviously not the same but the analogy should be clear how even if both are disliked they are quite different and one is worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Mastercard had an API from which you could get the full postcode of people likely to purchase a luxury item of more than $500 in the next month with 80% certainty. Never got out of alpha and required a deposit of $5000 to use.

There needs to be boundaries for companies pursuing profit with immoral activities.

</comment><comment><USER33> Was somewhat curious as to why a credit agency would want to track peoples commutes, though I can see the perspective as to why, it does feel like a solution that fits around privacy upto the point that it works and then becomes part of the privacy debate itself.

Though my main train of thought would be - if you sprain an ankle, hand, get a new larger phone etc - this would just compound your bad experiences in life. Though they do say trouble comes in threes, it's not something we should be enforcing by creating issues that would compound such common `edge cases`.

</comment><comment><USER34> Identify -> track. Which means things are going to get very Monty Python when some enterprising Hackernews implements a federated, cloud-based Registry of Silly Walks to help people thwart this system.

</comment><comment><USER35> I was looking into using gait for authenticating users. The false positive and false negative rates were extremely high compared to using fingerprints. Wasn't really viable.

</comment><comment><USER36> It seems like most credit unions issue MasterCard debit cards. Does anyone know how I can get rid of mine and still be able to use ATMs?

<comment><USER37> My ATM card from a major bank came with MasterCard/Visa attached, but I asked for one without it and they sent me one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Simple question: why is this not a crime?

<comment><USER39> Because the crooks are in charge.

<comment><USER40> If it's legal, then they aren't crooks.

<comment><USER39> What do you call people who rig the system to favor their own interests?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> The headline brought visions of a sillywalking John Cleese telling the camera "Identify this!":^)

</comment><comment><USER42> I was really disappointed Google glass was cancelled, I wanted a pair to have real life ad blocking...

<comment><USER43> I hope the irony of this isn't lost!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> do we need a ministry of funny walks to teach people how to avoid being tracked irl like they are on the web</comment>


What kind of things are easy in Haskell and hard in Scala, and vice versa? - <AUTHOR> http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/51245/what-kind-of-things-are-easy-in-haskell-and-hard-in-scala-and-vice-versa

<comment><USER2> If you want some exact tasks that seem to be easier in Scala or Haskell, I think that if you take a truly skilled and experienced programmer in each language most tasks can be accomplished quickly, easily and efficiently. For what it's worth, here are some less deep tasks that seem easier in one language than the other:

Pattern matching/data extraction: Both Haskell and Scala have powerful pattern matching capabilities for extracting data from complex types in a simple and clear fashion. However, do to some of Scala's OO features such as case classes and extractors, elaborate pattern matching can be set up quite elegantly. A good example of this in action is the lift-json library that allows users to query a large JSON object in a variety of ways (LINQ,Xpath,etc) and decompose it swiftly. Haskell's pattern matching is accomplished through it's data constructors. This leads to simpler pattern matching on small structures but can quickly devolve into spaghetti with increasingly complex structures.

2\. Laziness: Haskell wins this round as most of Haskell's types are lazy by default and you have to work hard to make them strict. In Scala, laziness is accomplished through either the Stream type of Collection views. Say for instance you have a 1000 item list, map 2 functions in succession that can't be composited and then return some arbitrary numbers of initial elements (perhaps a convoluted example) this is how you would do it in Haskell (this is not how you should ever write this but say, for the sake of argument you had to):

take 3 $ map (\a -> a * 10) $ map (\a -> a+1) [1..]

As you can see, this automatically had to happen lazily as it was performed against an infinite list. Compare the same thing in Scala:

List.range(1,1000000).view.map(_+1).map(_ * 10).take(3).force

For the sake of presentation, we just used a long list for the Scala example. If you want to check the laziness, try do this with the view and force and watch how long it takes. We could have also done this with Streams but we will look at this in the next point.

3\. Infinite lists. Once you work with infinite lists in Haskell, you will want to use them all the time. In Haskell you just write, say,

take 3 [1..]

to make an list of all positive integers and take the first 3.

In Scala:

def posints(a:Int): Stream[Int] = a #:: posints(a+1)

posints(1).take(3).force

Now, why these three examples of things easier in one or the other? I think that they exemplify the real difference between Haskell and Scala: In Scala, complex things are easier and easy things are more complex. In Haskell, easy things are easy and complex things are complex. This is, of course, a gross oversimplification and there are many caveats: Haskell does functional stuff easier, Scala does mixed paradigm stuff well, etc. Whatever. Every explanation is an oversimplifcation of something more organic.

I would be happy to post more example of differences between Haskell and Scala. They are both so rad.</comment>


The poor neglected gifted child - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2014/03/15/the-poor-neglected-gifted-child/rJpv8G4oeawWBBvXVtZyFM/story.html

<comment><USER2> I have to say that the school districts in well-off areas spend a lot of time thinking about these kids, and have some pretty good programs for them. I am thinking in particular of the suburban counties around Washington, DC: Montgomery and Howard counties in Maryland, Fairfax and Loudoun in Virginia.

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe what this prototypical child needs is assistance with social skills, fitness, anxiety, etc. (the problems that we so frequently hear the smart ones struggle with).

</comment><comment><USER4> The government spend huge amounts of money on the bottom 1% for special education. The same amount of money should be spent on the top 1%.

</comment><comment><USER5> Seems nobody is interest in what happens to smart kids here - just like the rest of the world.</comment>


Ask HN: Would you use a review sentiment search engine? - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys, wanted to get some opinion about an idea I've had. Constructive and honest feedback will be really appreciated.
A sentiment search engine. Suppose you type the name of a restaurant/camera/hotels/protein supplement etc. - you will get a condensed graphical view of with "sentiment scores" in different categories based on what real customers have been saying around the internet. E.g for an iphone, entities might be battery, display etc.
Data is scraped from individual reviews, shopping sites etc. Additionally you get information about the original source of information so you can carry further research if you want to.
So in short, it can be the default go to place for any kind of reviews. <comment><USER2> This is a great idea. I would use it. In fact, I want to build it! I've been reading about sentiment analysis as part of my research, and I had this idea literally the other day: I was looking for laptop batteries and I did not have the patience to search through some N number of Amazon/eBay/other storefronts. The second issue was the fact reviews range from 1 star to 5 star on the same product BUT a crucial fact was that more recent reviews are more relevant (for instance, if everyone from the past 3 months is rating it 1 star, vs. only 5 star where all previous bad reviews were from 3+ years ago).

So how would you define sentiment? A single score on a range from "good" to "bad"? Multidimensional, like a range of emotions? A major problem I've found in sentiment analysis literature that some assumptions/models yield limited/poor results even if algorithms are good.

Have you started working on this? I'd be happy to discuss it or your ideas some more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback. I have been working on/off on this with a friend - the current algorithms are pretty rudimentary. Would be happy to create a email thread if you are interested in hearing more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This sounds very similar to what I do for web hosting reviews. For instance, take a look at Digital Ocean's reviews: [http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean/](http://reviewsignal.com/webhosting/company/101/digitalocean/)

It calculates an overall (based on all pos/neg things said) but breaks down into components relevant to web hosting: support, uptime, price. You can also figure out who competitors are and see trends.

If you can't tell, I like the idea. I also think it's an incredibly hard problem to solve. I've done it for a small niche. Scaling it to a general solution is something I haven't been able to figure out (yet).

</comment><comment><USER4> I agree with @manmeet that the algorithm for the sentiment analysis has to be great; the search algorithm also has to be tremendous to convince me to switch from Google or DuckDuckGo. To avoid the challenge of making a new search engine, maybe you could build a plugin?

Somewhat similar sentiment analysis, for terms rather than unique entities: [http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net](http://www.whatdoestheinternetthink.net)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi nateday, thanks for your comments. The idea here is not to build a new search engine per se. Suppose you are looking for reviews, what you normally do is go to google and type "something reviews".

Instead we want you to go to our page, search for the entity and then get a condensed view using reviews on the web for your search query.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think its a pretty good idea. All depends on how well u design your algorithm. I had a similar idea but wanted to use twitter to get sentiment regarding anything, from people to movies to devices or services.</comment>


Leaked document: Here's what Microsoft will reveal to police about you - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.computerworld.com/15655/leaked_microsoft_intelligence_document_heres_what_microsoft_will_reveal_to_police_about_you

<comment><USER2> Here's a direct link to the document on Wikileaks site:

<http://file.wikileaks.org/files/microsoft-spy.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER3> _IP history for the lifetime of the gamertag (only one gamertag at a time)_

Ouch. Every time you turn your XBox, it's logged.

<comment><USER4> Personally I'd have been surprised if it _hadn't_ been the case...

I recently got myself a server, and even though I'm really newbie at this, I already understand how crucial logging is. I have only a handful of users on my (niche) service and already I gained really valuable insights from scouring my logs, for example there are some concepts that I thought were self-obvious that some users obviously didn't understand so I'm updating the site to explain these simply and clearly so that there's no possibility for confusion. I'm planning on adding much more detailed logging, as long as it's not unnecessarily privacy-invading and as long as it doesn't degrade the user experience at all (ex: I wouldn't add tracking via extraneous GET parameters because it clutters the URL location bar).

Now, I just one newbie and already I want to log everything. Now scale this to a megacorporation. How can you be surprised?! If you start logging something at the moment that you realize it's good to know, it's probably already too late, you can't go back in time to log it.

<comment><USER3> Personally, I try not to log personally identifiable information. I don't log Referer, I don't log User-Agent, I definitely don't request a list of your fonts and log that, etc. I do log IPs, but I will stop doing that in the future; imagine a scenario where you are hacked by an oppressive regime, and the information in your logs is used to convict someone of a crime that is punishable by death. No thanks.

Basically, spying on your users is bad. Keeping data around forever is even worse. I would rather become an open relay for spammers than to compromise peoples' privacy. (Although I am pretty good at avoiding the first one, too.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any privacy mavens Google care to leak Google's Global Criminal Compliance Handbook? I would dearly love to see that.

</comment><comment><USER6> Who else got a full page Microsoft add before they could see the article? Microsoft is paying you to view this...

<comment><USER7> Would it not be more correct to say they are paying the publisher to tell us about this?</comment></comment>


Human Control of a Bicycle - <AUTHOR> http://moorepants.github.io/dissertation/ <comment><AUTHOR> A nicely readable dissertation, and thumbs up for reproducibility too (see his github).</comment>


Show HN: Skills.io, publish your work and archievements - <AUTHOR> http://www.skills.io

<comment><USER2> You might want to present a little more content before asking people to sign up.

</comment><comment><USER3> What is a "skill rating platform"?

</comment><comment><USER4> Why is missing part of the world?</comment>


I was wrong about the iPad Pro - <AUTHOR> https://char.gd/blog/2019/i-was-wrong-about-the-ipad-pro <comment><USER2> I just wish for:

1\. a desktop-grade web browser, e.g. chrome (actual chrome not an iOS chrome)

2\. better file system management

3\. better multitasking (e.g. multiple windows even from a single app)

4\. some way to actually code natively on the ipad, e.g. write and run python code, C code, etc., I guess have a *nix shell. I don't need to "take over the whole device" but I would like to be able to run code even if it's in a sort of sandboxed environment

<comment><USER3> You need a Pixelbook. I switched to a Pixelbook recently and haven't looked back. It's great for note-taking, email (way better keyboard than an iPad keyboard, Mac (eww)), etc. Has a terminal that runs whatever I want (<signaling>I get to continue using emacs</signaling>) and use it in tablet mode for reading (I read on the kindle a lot). I'm going to try out the pen soon. I'd kill for the ability to write down notes in cursive or draw boxes. Cons are keyboard getting dirty in tablet mode and Slack randomly crashing.

<comment><USER2> I thought pixelbook is being discontinued?

<comment><USER4> You're reasonable to assume so - after the news that Google was scaling back that team, there was rampant speculation and deafening silence from Google. They really ought to say something. I actually avoided buying a Pixelbook that same day despite a pressing need for that very reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> >I initially grabbed the smaller iPad without the keyboard case, but in doing so, I realized Apple actually made a mistake: the iPad Pro needs it to really make the most of the device.

I actually prefer a $20 bluetooth keyboard. It's easy to use away from the ipad if I'm doing video or audio editing, and I can also raise the ipad in a stand and use the keyboard detached. I find the keys better too, and it has media shortcuts.

$20 anker keyboard: [https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-Bluetooth-Keyboard- Rec...](https://www.amazon.com/Anker-Wireless-Bluetooth-Keyboard- Rechargeable/dp/B00PIMKN1Q/)

Viozon ipad stand: [https://www.amazon.com/Viozon-Rotatable-Aluminum-Desktop- Sur...](https://www.amazon.com/Viozon-Rotatable-Aluminum-Desktop- Surface/dp/B01ALPUFYO/)

The stand is nice too. Super easy to rotate, or remove it.

My experience with the ipad pro is much as the OP describes. I find it really helps focussed work, and in general is much more a joy to use than a computer. I think the 120hz screen helps.

It cannot do everything thought. So there's a certain category of stuff that's hard on ipad, and I do from an imac. This category is shrinking however.

I may switch to a USB keyboard with a dongle, as I do find a full fledged computer keyboard more comfortable. The one downside there is you can't remap keys, so you need one made for mac.

<comment><USER6> I use the Studio Neat Canopy case for the Apple Magic Keyboard with my iPad, mostly because 1) I use my iPad as pure tablet a lot of the time, and doing this with the keyboard attached, or removing the keyboard each time, is a pain in the ass, and 2) I like writing with the iPad in portrait mode, but the smart connector doesn't allow this. I have found that typing on a full-size software keyboard is not so bad (I have a 12.9" iPad, maybe it's much worse on the smaller ones).

I work most of the time from an iPad and when I can't, an iMac. My iMac at home though is now mostly just a glorified Plex server.

<comment><USER6> Oh, and the Canopy specifically is what allows me to write in portrait without needing a separate stand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really wish there was better pencil support in apps on the iPad. I'm working remotely from the rest of the team which means I can't sit with someone and draw out a diagram when I'm trying to explain things. If you're communicating with Slack there's pretty much no support at all for it. Is there any chat app that has first party support for pen? I don't want to crawl the web for some sketch webapp and go through hoops just to sketch a couple of boxes and send them.

<comment><USER8> This and native handwriting recognition support. Hoping for more closely integrated pencil experience along with the rumoured mouse support at wwdc

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Even a Surface Go beats a iPad Pro. I had one and changed it out, couldn't be happier. For more juice I'll get a Surface Pro. WSL beats anything but native linux.

<comment><USER10> I love my little Surface Go, using it to write this reply now! I hope they release a new one this year with a better CPU, and with WSL2 right around the corner, it'll be the perfect tool for coding on the go.

<comment><USER9> Not only that but VS Code can now run 'Remote' in WSL with the UI in Windows 10 and everything else in WSL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> If you want a simplified desktop experience for non-coding tasks, a Chromebook will coat about 1/5 of an iPad pro plus peripherals.

<comment><USER12> Can a user of a Chromebook completely opt out of sending any and all information to Google while still getting updates and internet access?

<comment><USER13> From Google? No. But you can get updates and internet access if you install Linux on the device.

<comment><USER14> If you install Linux, it's not exactly a "simplified desktop experience".

<comment><USER13> Depends. It's entirely possible to have a simplified Linux desktop experience (after all, that's what Chrome OS is…)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No 1 thing the iPad needs to do is coding. Its got such a long battery life, I would have loved to use it to make code edits on the go. That's pretty much my main grip with it at the moment.

<comment> j-pb I felt the same, until I realized that you don't WANT to code ON the iPad.

Just grab Blink, a really nice Mosh client for iOs, and rent a small linux box from whatever cloud provider you like (I use scaleway, because they are dirt cheap and super convenient).

Thanks to LTE you've now got an always on remote terminal, that can perform arbitrarily heavy compute tasks, without having any impact on portability or battery life.

It's even good for you as a dev, because you'll get better at your CLI Foo, and because you're SSH'd into a remote machine all day anyways, having to do it in production when something goes wrong is a lot less stressful.

Also if you wanna do pair programming, you can simply share your TMux session with somebody else, or give them access to whatever web frontent, notebook, whatever, port you're running.

It feels strange at first but it's amazing once you get aclimated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "It feels backwards to say it, but because the iPad doesn't have multiple floating windows, and no mouse, I'm able to focus on one thing at a time."

Uh, isn't that what tablet mode in win8/10 is for? It removes much of the distractions and with an appropriate WP/text editor just sort of behaves like a tablet, but with the option to flip back into desktop mode and run all those "desktop" apps the Op is complaining about.

As much as I despise some of the crap MS forced on people with W10, the convertible idea has a lot of merit. Particularly if your lugging a keyboard around with the tablet all the time anyway. What MS needs is for dell/hp/etc to start making little 7" tablets again, and then force some portion of their workforce to use them so they understand why it was a miserable experience. The result will be better for everyone.

<comment><USER17> You don't even need tablet mode. When working in Windows when I need to absolutely concentrate, I just maximize the window and mute notifications.

<comment><USER16> How old school! <chuckle>

There is even a key for it with win7+ win-uparrow.

There is also the option in the shortcut to automatically run any random application maximized by default. That has been around for ages (XP/2000 at least).

<comment><USER17> Hadn't thought of it as old school, but I guess you're right. I've been doing it for a long, long time. Predating tablets by quite a bit. Occasionally get funny looks, but it works for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I have a theory that the iPad Pro is the perfect college student device. I wish I could use one more for work but it doesn't fit my use cases well. But as a "college student" device it's perfect.

-it lasts all day -it's very light -quick to pull out/put away -no fan noise -it's cheaper than a MacBook -it's great for taking notes, recording your class -it's great for email and other simple tasks -easy to take a picture of a whiteboard/assignment etc

unfortunately my day is spent switching between lots of tasks the iPad doesn't do well. Like pulling multiple assets from different locations for a 1 minuet edit in photoshop, exporting and slotting into a landing page. The iPad Pro would be abysmal for stuff like that.

</comment><comment><USER19> It's funny to me that he needs such a complicated setup to just write some code. It feels like a crutch and in this case he has to wait for someone to come along and add support for something before he can even do any work at all. Crazy.

It makes me glad I'm an old school die hard vim user. Give me a basic SSH client and I can be productive in virtually any environment.

</comment><comment><USER20> I've been living off an iPad mini for a long while now (since the very first model, which still works), and it is still my "most personal" computer. I do SSH, drafts, Slack, e-mail, etc. from it, and am using it now. I even have a Citrix X1 mouse for RDP access to servers.

But of late I've been eyeing the Surface Go for development, simply because it can give me a local UNIX userland (and I'm already using Surface devices for work anyway), as well as a normal desktop browse with zero compromises.

Sure, the tablet app ecosystem on Windows is... sub-optimal. But most of what I actually need is available as web apps of some sort (I don't even use Teams, Slack or Outlook, I just use the web UIs in a browser 99% of the time these days...).

Give me a decent terminal, a full browser and a mouse pointer, and I'll move the Earth :)

</comment><comment><USER21> > There are a few other niggles that still bum me out, like just how poorly > the Apple Pencil is supported for any sort of writing task—even OneNote, > which is famous for transcribing handwriting, doesn't support it on iPad.

With all the (justifiable) complaints that macOS development lags iOS development, this is an area where the situation is reversed: there's a standard handwriting support, like dictation support, for every text widget. You have to plug a pen tablet in of course (boo -- the huge touchpad should work). But for some reason the handwriting support isn't automatic for iOS apps.

</comment><comment><USER22> As people are more experimenting with the iPad and other tables to do some real work I would like to share my findings as about how to use an iPad as an development machine. Therefore I create an youtube channel and twitter account. I try to keep it updated frequently. Feel free to have a look :D

[https://twitter.com/schreda](https://twitter.com/schreda) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXXtTYYwRKM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXXtTYYwRKM)

</comment><comment><USER23> It was a great device from the get go. the resolution on such a large device is a game changer. detail all the spec you want, but holding it physically in your hands you'd experience what I can't describe. The reading and stylus input is very close to natural paper. Thanks, but I didn't need another shill blogpost about how it works for their coding workflow especially when it was wrong in the first place.

</comment><comment><USER24> He mentioned Visual Studio Code; have people used Code Server on an iPad? It worked surprisingly well on Safari for Mac (not being Chrome) when I tried it.

I've considered getting an iPad for note taking. It seems a bit overkill for... note taking. And I'm not sure what the experience is like compared to pen and paper. But I hate keeping notebooks organized, have them not be searchable, etc.

<comment><USER25> It does not. Known issue with the rendering engine that Code uses. I was disappointed too. Apparently a fix is coming at some point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> the iPad's biggest weak point by far is Safari and its inability to do anything in the background (slow pages should load and render even if they're not in focus; I should be able to download things in the background). But it is pretty great for hobby coding.

I use Blink for mosh (ssh connections get closed if you leave the app in the background for too long) and Wireguard for VPN to my Linux VPC (it's so good!). I started using a code folding config in my remote vim so I can fit more stuff on my screen.

I recently started using Juno for Jupyter notebooks on my iPad. It's 15 bucks and requires a bit of work to get SSL certs set up on self-hosted instances, but it's actually usable unlike Safari.

The Logitech smart keyboard is far better than the Apple keyboard IMO but I don't think they've made one for the newest model iPad Pro yet. (I have the 2017 model)

</comment><comment><USER27> I use my personal laptop 80% for coding and maybe 20% for writing, so I guess this isn't for me unfortunately. I definitely can see how the single-tasking and LTE would be beneficial.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would buy one if it had Bluetooth mouse support I think.

<comment><USER29> Likely to arrive in iOS 13, already present via "accessibility" interfaces and remote desktop (e.g. when using Windows remotely from iPad), [https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/05/ipad-mouse- support/](https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/05/ipad-mouse-support/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Multitasking on the iPad is a bit of a lie. Apple is so eager to kill background apps for the sake of thinner lighter devices.

As an example, try downloading a large file in a browser. You will quickly find that the download will stop if you switch apps or let the device go into standby.

</comment><comment><USER31> I have an iPad Pro 13" and I do love it for some tasks, most of all, as a portable photo album, as photography is a big hobby of mine. From the hardware perspective, it could be the portable dream laptop replacement. Perfect screen, great battery life, small device. Where it is completely held back is the software:

\- a lot of small things. Picture in picture is a great feature, but it works inconsitently between apps, with some not at all, and why can't I arbitrarily size the video and put it into the corners? While per default watching a video/tv program rather small, I would like to have the ability to enlarge the picture, if something interesting comes up.

\- multitasking: haven't really been able to use that. 50:50 works sometimes, 75:25 usually is too small for the 25 part, should allow at least 66:33, if not completely flexible. Same for the hover over app, should allow for larger sizes.

\- file management: this is really painful, so many limitations in that area. No ability to copy files from an attached USB stick or SD card into iCloud. No general ability to move files between apps, even if those in principle support the file type. No ability to add a video to the TV app from iCloud, none to add songs to the music app.

\- applications: if your productive use of the iPad fits to one app from the app store: congratulations, if not, you are basically out of luck. There does not seem to be even a MUD client available for iPads. "Blink" is a pretty great SSH client, the best I found so far, but based on html rendering...

Why isn't there a version of Termux for the iPad? It allows so many quick usages, it really adds a lot of productivity. If Apple doesn't trust app programmers with such a thing, why don't they offer a port themselves in a proper sandbox? I don't need to access the system files, a small chroot jail would be fine (perhaps with iCloud drive mounted?). Of course, given the power of the iPad, why not a small "Linux" app with a Wayland desktop? Apple, if you think that would be a big replacement for paid apps, that says a lot about the app universe :p

And of course: a development environment. If general software development is too "dangerous" for an iPad, why is there no App creation environment? A self hosted environment would rock. Anyone remembers what Visual Basic 1-6 did for Windows? Why isn't there an equivalent on the iPad? Anyone at Apple ever saw a SmallTalk system? Just give Alan Kay a call, if you can't google it :p

And of course: I like the smart keyboards, but how comes that at Apple no one understands the need for the ESC key and to a lesser extend the function keys, if you are advertising a "professional" device?

<comment><USER29> _> Picture in picture is a great feature, but it works inconsitently between apps, with some not at all, and why can't I arbitrarily size the video and put it into the corners?_

PiP video can be resized, up to a limit of about 1/4 of the screen.

 _> While per default watching a video/tv program rather small, I would like to have the ability to enlarge the picture, if something interesting comes up._

There's an icon (diagonal arrow) to exit PiP mode and return to full-screen in the original app.

 _> file management: this is really painful, so many limitations in that area. No ability to copy files from an attached USB stick_

iXpand USB drives are supported by some apps (e.g. nPlayer, LumaFusion). There's a rumor that external storage support will arrive in iOS13, hopefully without too many restrictions.

<comment><USER31> _PiP video can be resized, up to a limit of about 1 /4 of the screen._

Right, thats the problem. It is nice for keeping track of what happens, but e.g. when watching a football game, you want the ability to magnify, as I wrote, to an arbitrary video size. Also, why can't I put the video into the corner, why does it keep a significant distance to the screen edges, so covering more of my app than necessary for the video size.

 _There 's an icon (diagonal arrow) to exit PiP mode and return to full-screen in the original app._

Which can be slow, and not work at all. Also, it might be impossible to get back to the PIP (depending on the app) and also affects the app you were using with the PIP. Why can't I just enlarge the PIP to cover most of my screen, at least up to 75%?

<comment><USER29> Windowing will change in iOS13. Hopefully demos will appear at WWDC in a few weeks.

<comment><USER31> I sincerely hope so, assuming it changes into a really useful UI. The PIP is a prominent example of some iOS restrictions which don't seem to have any technical justifications. Someone seems to have decided it looks cute as it is, without any usability in mind. The macOS version of PIP has the same restrictions - a big reason why I haven't used this feature in years. At least you are allowed to freely position the PIP when pressing the CMD key.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> steve jobs was soo off with the stylus being out of fashion. totally wrong... the apple pencil is probably THE only strong differentiators for the ipad.

<comment><USER33> Steve Jobs was quite right that a stylus is not great for a small portable device with a touch screen. It's clunky, you can easily misplace the stylus and you can't have multi-touch gestures. There are lots of specialized tasks that are better with a stylus but there are a lot of specialized tasks that are better with a combine harvester.

<comment><USER34> The iPhone popularised capacitive touch.

His comments on styluses should be seen in light of the technology of the time (Newton/Maemo/Palm OS/WinCE etc) whose input was stabbing at a resistive screen.

(That's not to repudiate finger input being superior to pen for many interactions but styluses of 2019 use vastly different tech to those of 2007.)

<comment><USER35> I'd say Steve Jobs' public comments should be seen in light of his main role as a product pitchman. When the 9.7" iPad was the only model available, he criticized the ergonomics of smaller models by Samsung, claiming that "you'd need sand paper to sand down your finger" to use them [0].

Meanwhile, he was overseeing the development of the 7.9 inch iPad Mini, which wouldn't come out until late 2012.

[0]: [https://www.itproportal.com/2010/10/21/steve-jobs-wrong- abou...](https://www.itproportal.com/2010/10/21/steve-jobs-wrong-about-7-inch- ipad/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Please stop writing poor user stories - <AUTHOR> http://garmlucassen.nl/post/123571158691/poor-user-stories

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, if you enjoyed this post please take a moment to complete my survey. Your contribution is of incredible value for my research!

[http://garmlucassen.nl/survey](http://garmlucassen.nl/survey)</comment>


Priceonomics (YC W12) Tells You What Everything is Worth - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/12/22/priceonomics/

<comment><USER2> How do startups get around the Craigslist TOU against using "automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining tools, or the like to download data from the Service" (<http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use>)?

<comment><USER3> You don't crawl Craigslist; you tickle Google. Craigslist can't block them... But you'll still need an excellent lawyer...

<comment><USER4> I thought Google was heavily against automated searches and blocked bots on spot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Seems like premature publicity. Great idea that is far from being useful right now. If you actually want customers you need to prove you can provide value.

My first try was "iPhone 4" and it showed me the average price for all iPhones, from iPhone originals to broken iPhones to locked iPhones etc. That's useless. unless you can identify the specific product and give me a number, this is not useful and I'm better off googling it

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, that isn't quite as clear as it could be. Here's a link to the page you're looking for: <http://priceonomics.com/phones/apple/>

<comment><USER5> Ah, so it's your search feature that is broken.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just pushed a fix. Thanks for your patience.

<comment><USER6> Pushed a fix? He had a major critique of the way search works, not a minor bug report. What could you really have changed in such a short time?

<comment><USER7> I don't know but before criticizing, you could just give it a try. Now searching for "iPhone 4" suggests "Apple iPhone 4" and "Apple iPhone 4S".

If they fixed it in such a short time, it was probably a bug and they really pushed a fix...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Your sorting by price is broken: It's sorting strings, not numbers, and counts "$900" as being higher than "$2000".

</comment><comment><USER9> I went hunting for "macbook pro i7" and every item I clicked on (something like 4 or 5) had already been sold. It does look like something I would use otherwise(EDIT: as in if I had a better success rate when I clicked).

<comment><AUTHOR> Makes sense. We'll have fresher data up there in the very near term. Also, it's not super obvious, but you can use the left and right arrows in that lightbox to navigate the listings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I remember when SeatGeek presented at TechCrunch Disrupt(?) in 2009, pg took issue at the fact that they didn't use their ticket price data to arbitrage the secondary ticket market. Does Pricenomics use its data to arbitrage any markets, and if not, why should the same criticism not apply?

All that aside, Pricenomics looks compelling. Hopefully it will substantially increase the efficiency of second hand "stuff" markets.

<comment><USER11> We've been investigating arbitraging Aeron chairs. We're finding they're very hard to lug around. We'll keep you posted!

<comment><USER10> Haha. I thought you were being facetious until I saw it on your about page. Now I'm not sure what to think :/

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note to self: data mining web app; few visual bugs; duplicates; I can see only "Bad News! This Item Already Sold."; no info where an ad comes from; they use jquery; actually <http://www.shopobot.com/> by nostromo looks better (but they just focuse on amazon price monitoring);

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it's a great idea and wish these guys success. But isn't eBay (and perhaps Craigslist) in a _much_ better position to provide this functionality? They have enormous historical databases on the prices of things.

<comment><USER14> wouldn't microsoft (bing), google, walmart, etc? I think this is why startups exist...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I searched 'iPod' and there were no results. Why would they launch a half- baked website 3 days before Christmas? They should have admitted they missed the holidays and polished things up before launching.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Ryan - that's my fault. I pushed some last minute fixes to handle the TC traffic. Apple iPod works but iPod doesn't. We'll have to graduate to a proper search tool at some point:

<http://priceonomics.com/search?s=apple+ipod>

Nonetheless, thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> At first glance I didn't see anything that searching ebay with "show only expired auctions" wouldn't also give me. But it is probably still early days...

</comment><comment><USER17> Congrats on the launch guys. We do something similar but for different online markets -- most commonly Amazon -- (e.g.: <http://www.shopobot.com/tv/>). One of our most common user requests is to provide this info for CraigsList and Ebay, so I'm sure you'll find success there.

</comment><comment><USER18> Cool! 'Macbook Air' did not return a result though :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! <http://priceonomics.com/search?s=macbook+air>

<comment><USER18> Cool - thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Price for EVERYTHING? But no commodities, oil, coffee, etc.

</comment><comment><USER20> I used to be "kind-of-a" used car dealer, and I always thought I could build this same product to help get a better idea of how much to bid on cars at the auction. Basically it would get current listings on CL in my city for model ZYX from YY to YY. Knowing how many similar rides are on the market and the average asking price is great insight.

</comment><comment><USER21> So it's yet another price comparison site. What's so special about it?

</comment><comment><USER22> Do you guys actually have any products available or is this just an email harvesting launch? I ask because I tried a lot of items and they were all sold out. :-)

I'm impressed by your courage to launch with a half-baked product like this. I wish I could do the same.</comment>


Ask HN: How does one go about finding a mentor? - <AUTHOR>

What criterion helps determine appropriate mentor candidates?  Even though I live (and breathe) in the high tech world, it seems I would not limit my choices that way...  A good business background?  And it seems that geographical location is no big deal/deal breaker? <comment><USER2> Talk about hubris - you sound like you are interviewing job candidates. Your mentor has to choose you just as much if not more than your choosing him or her, don't forget.

This seems like one of those, "If you have to ask, you aren't ready" type of questions to me.

<comment><USER3> I don't think he's 'interviewing job candidates', he is simply being selective because he realizes that such a relationship is time-consuming and you can only spend your time once so it makes sense to try to pick someone that will give what you need.

Of course it is a two way street, the mentor would have to want it as well, but in my experience (which is pretty limited) just asking someone to teach goes a long way. Lots of people love teaching a younger generation and would see such a request as a compliment, rather than being selected for a 'job' to perform.

And being selected out of the large number of available choices would only further increase the value of that compliment.

Think of it as a dating problem: You have to choose a mentor that is not so busy that they won't be able to teach you, and on the other hand of a sufficiently advanced level compared to your own in the fields that you feel that you are lacking in that you can be taught. And then there has to be a certain chemistry, without that it won't work either.

Asking about that problem is totally valid. I haven't a clue how to go about finding an answer but I don't think that the question needs to be placed in the 'if you have to ask you aren't ready' category, in fact there are very few such questions.

There are no stupid questions, there are only stupid answers, and questions that were never asked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Think about what areas of business/technology you need coaching on. You probably can use a little help in lots of areas and there isn't going to be one person to solve all those needs. Be open (I encourage) having lots of mentors.

</comment><comment><USER5> Write to the people you admire and ask them for help.</comment>


Idea HN: QR inside video for ad's - <AUTHOR>

USE CASES: 1. SOCIAL:you are watching tv with friends ad is shown,u might want to know more about product/buy it.You just need to click with qr app. 2. CROWD: You are at times square(or a place like that!) ad is shown u want to buy it.You can buy it/know it instantly. 3. NO_CABLE:You are watching ad in a medium which does not have two way connection. ADVANTAGE FOR AD COMPANIES: 1. They can catch/track you where they cannot in general track. 2. They have something measurable 3. They connect with you instantaneously. IDEA: Idea is to create a simple platform where ad companies will provide the link where they expect the user to land or create a page for their brand on the site and upload their video.QR would be generated based on the link and encoded in a video.All the traffic will go through our platform and would provide rich analytics. NEED UR INPUTS: 1.Is this a viable idea? 2. Are there already companies that do it(i googled it couldn't find anything substantial) 3. what do u think? should i try working on this criticisism is welcome :) <comment><USER2> <http://zeebox.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> QR codes are too small. The user would have to walk up to the TV.

Also Shazaam is doing it with their music fingerprinting.

<comment><USER4> Most TV's can display a QR code (as long as it's not too detailed), but the main issue is the dwell time. I've yet to meet an app that can go from off-in- pocket to scanned QR code in less than 5 seconds. Add in user reaction time and decision time and you've pretty much wasted a 30 second infomercial spot. Might not be such a bad idea for 60+-second infomercials though, as long as they keep reminding the viewer that the code is coming up.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Storing and Searching Volumes of Text - <AUTHOR> Many companies have a firehose of text they need to store and search. Even if it's just log files. From PostgreSQL/MySQL + Fulltext search to distributed filesystems + multinode grep instances, to TiDB + sphinx, to cassandra + elasticsearch, and many more in-between and mixed. There are a lot of options for both storage and search of text. Yet it's something we are all finding more need for as we store social network reactions, technical documents, forum posts, emails, company documents, error logs, and many other text-based data points.<p>Can you share your company's database design and why this design works for you (or why it was chosen)? <comment><USER2> This seems a bit of a 'I have an essay due' question, I don't want to break it down in to a full walkthrough, but if it's any to you, here's roughly what we do without revealing anything:

We have two big sources of logs, proxy logs (user browsing, tens of thousands of users), and firewall/network logs. This is for a network with an average transit of about 15Gbps to the internet during working hours.

Proxy logs appear at an alarming rate from a big network, every page calls 20 other URLs and so on. For this we have a piece of software (agent) on each proxy that aggregates and forwards logs on to a set of central processing servers. These servers do some processing, then hand them on to storage servers (replicated). Recent data is held on disk, older data is stored in an Azure data warehouse.

Firewall logs, you can set them to lots of levels, from only critical errors, all the way to a mind-boggling amount per second. Depends what you want. We send these to a clustered set of rsyslog forwarders, all logs are sent to disk storage (with tape backups) and selected logs are sent to graylog for analysis. You can do all sorts with graylog, from alerting when root logs in to a Linux box or watching for hardware/memory faults, to graphically displaying your firewall attacks using a geo-IP plugin.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing. If you look at my profile I think it will quell any fear you have about this being some kind of homework-related question.

While your storage of logs looks fine, the search for graylog ([http://docs.graylog.org/en/2.2/pages/queries.html](http://docs.graylog.org/en/2.2/pages/queries.html)) seems to simply be plain string searching which seems like it would be really slow if it wasn't for filtering by attributes before search.

<comment><USER2> Graylog is just an interface for ElasticSearch, and you can do all sorts with GROK filters etc to parse incoming data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Just use elasticsearch. It's easy to set up, fast, customizable, and has a lot of dev / community support.

At my last company, we used kafka as our log to handle the incoming messages and then we just forwarded everything to Elasticsearch with logstash (super easy to create and read from new topics).

For your storage, Elasticsearch can store the source of all documents and basically act as a persistent DB (with kafka as backup for replay). Use well- defined mappings for the data you know is structured (logs, forum posts, already schematized data etc) and dump the rest into their own indices and lets ES' implicit mappings do their work. You can use dynamic templates to drill down any specific things you want to transform, such as converting dates, not tokenizing certain strings and so on.

I've done a lot of search and text extraction work and this is my go to for the past three years.</comment>


US Supreme Court to Review CA Law Restricting Sale of Violent Video Games - <AUTHOR> http://pavlovskitchen.wordpress.com/2010/04/30/supreme-court-to-review-california-law-regarding-sale-of-violent-video%C2%A0games/

<comment><USER2> It would seem like this issue has been settled in previous cases. One would think they would at least try to tailor the statute to conform to established judicial precedent.</comment>


Why emojis are failing to evolve into a form of language - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rdas121/why-emojis-are-failing-to-evolve-into-a-form-of-language-7af656752bfd <comment><USER2> Emojis/emoticons shouldn't become a form of language, thats because they're meant to be something else closer to punctuation. They're really in-line annotation glyphs that add context, meaning and emotion to writing which enables clarity.

They can almost be thought of as parenthetical asides which are intended by the writer to aid the reader in understanding tone and emotion in a compact way.

For example, which form unambiguously conveys sarcasm the best?

"Oh, it's Sam, isn't that great!"

"Oh, it's Sam, isn't that great! (jerk)"

Now replace (jerk) with an appropriate glyph and we're at emojis.

What written language sorely lacks is a standardized update to the punctuation system we use. We're limited to single digit tone marks and a couple ways of modifying the text to try to convey a tremendous range of tones and emotions. We also need a system that does so without using cartoon characters. It's very hard to convey serious emotional tones with variations of a yellow smiley face.

Western musical notation has an entire series of annotation marks to inform style on top of the basic "sentence" structure of the notes. It seems that writing also could use something similar.

<comment><USER3> We already have a category for what emoji are: pictographs.

<comment><USER4> That's an orthographic category, not a functional category, for which "interjections" comes close. They are also similar to attitudinals in Lojban.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This isn't the first time I've heard someone throw out the idea of emojis as a possible language. It seems popular in certain circles, including a couple of different podcasts I listen to.

Why do people insist on trying to shoehorn emojis into the realm of being a whole languange? _Let emojis be emojis._ They're not a language. They're not punctuation. They are how we use them.

I'm not a huge fan, but they can be fun and are quite good at conveying certain emotions and empathy. Plus other uses. Why must they be pushed towards use as something that they're not?

<comment><USER6> Also, how can emojis evolve into a language when they are prescribed by big companies, which provide few updates? Perhaps the set of emojis should be crowdsourced, and we might see some interesting language phenomena.

<comment><USER4> Standardization by a small group can have a positive effect on a language's evolution. Look at what Webster's dictionary did for English spellings and common usages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If your base language is pictographic (ex. Chinese/Japanese) then emoji blend into language. The only problem, not as easy to type "emoji" as it is to type Chinese or Japanese.

For a European language, not so much.

</comment><comment><USER8> The idea was never that emoji evolve into their own language, but rather compliment our exiting ones -- which they're doing quite well IMHO.

<comment><USER9> Yeah this is a bit weird, emojis are closer to "new words" than a "new language"

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Aside from tongue-in-cheek projects like "translating" Moby Dick into emoji [1], did anyone really think they would become a standalone form of communication?

1: [http://emojidick.com/](http://emojidick.com/)

<comment><USER11> Wow, $200 for a bound copy of something translated by Mechanical Turk, without any preview at all to see if the content is the least bit interesting. Sounds like a wise use of money.

<comment><USER12> Author of Emoji Dick here. The $200 price tag is that high because its a one- off print-on-demand of an 800 page color laser hardcover book. I would LOVE to find a way to produce these cheaper (even do another edition) but haven't had the time to get a publisher / deal / etc. together.

<comment><USER11> Sure. But why can't I preview, say, the first chapter?

<comment><USER12> I never really seriously considered it. Made the book and the page before this was really all that common online. Maybe I'll A/B test it to see if it generates more sales :)

<comment><USER10> How about a digital copy for less?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Tom Scott talked about this when he and Matt Grey made Emojli, the Emoji-only messenger. You can find their talk about it at [https://youtube.com/watch?v=GsyhGHUEt-k](https://youtube.com/watch?v=GsyhGHUEt-k)

However, given that HN is startup central, note that if you are involved in startups and easily offended, you might want to give this video a miss.

</comment><comment><USER6> By the way, I'm still missing the "face-palm" emoji in Whatsapp. Also missing is an emoji for "not impressed".

<comment><USER8> [http://pastebin.com/BvHAx43i](http://pastebin.com/BvHAx43i) (couldn't paste it here)

Missing on your OS probably, since emojis are not Whatsapp-specific.

<comment><USER14> Whatsapp uses iOS emoji on all platforms

<comment><USER8> iOS has facepalm emoji (I actually copy-pasted the above from my iPhone's native emoji keyboard).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of my girlfriend's tale of her Chinese friend who married an Middle Eastern man. They communicate primarily through emojis, as they're not proficient enough with their shared language, English, to communicate.

I wouldn't take this as a counterpoint to the headline, as they don't seem to communicate very effectively.

XD

<comment><USER16> I wonder what's the thought process whereby you marry someone you can't communicate effectively with!

<comment><USER15> She had apparently dated a Chinese man for 10 years and wanted to change it up rather drastically by dating a foreigner.

I...don't know if there was a thought process involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> They are clearly used so they can't be a failure.

Perhaps it won't be long before we see emojis sprinkled throughout printed books (perhaps similar to TV shows popping up texting bubbles). If these icons have value as a way to express something in an interesting way, they probably belong in literature too.

</comment><comment><USER18> I really don't get this.

Why would emojis evolve into a form of language? It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

</comment><comment><USER19> I didn't read the article.

I came here to comment the fun tidbit that emoticons do follow Zipf's law. I know this from emoticons, because I mined some data from Twitter and plotted the frequencies.

My guess is that it's the same for emojis :)

</comment><comment><USER12> From the post:

 _Since emojis often bear graphic resemblances to our real faces, the understanding has often been that there would be no problems in interpreting them, and that the sender and the recipient would agree on such interpretation._

As someone fairly immersed in the emoji community, this is a strawman argument (i.e., no one really tries to argue this).

People love and use emoji not in spite of their ambiguity but rather because of it.

Even Unicode encourages emoji to have multiple meanings:

[http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html](http://unicode.org/emoji/selection.html)

 _Does the candidate emoji have notable metaphorical references or symbolism?_

And from their FAQ:

[http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html](http://www.unicode.org/faq/emoji_dingbats.html)

 _Do emoji characters have single semantics?

A: No. Because emoji characters are treated as pictographs, they are encoded in Unicode based primarily on their general appearance, not on an intended semantic._

Many people _want_ to think there are some folks out there like myself who are seriously arguing Emoji are a language, but this isn't really true. And I say that as the author of a book called "How to Speak Emoji". The thing is, it's a humor book designed to be sold in Urban Outfitters. It's not a real language guide.

If you're curious about more nuanced takes on how emoji are actually being used, here are some good resources:

Tyler Schnoebelen's talk at Emojicon: [http://www.slideshare.net/TylerSchnoebelen/emoji- linguistics](http://www.slideshare.net/TylerSchnoebelen/emoji-linguistics)

Gretchen McCulloch on how Emoji aren't really threatening English: [http://the-toast.net/2016/06/29/a-linguist-explains-emoji-an...](http://the- toast.net/2016/06/29/a-linguist-explains-emoji-and-what-language-death- actually-looks-like/)

The tl;dr: journalists / bloggers would love to get someone to argue that emoji are a language so they can "Well, actually" them, but the truth is this isn't really happening much.

However, some of us are deeply curious about whether our usage of emoji are evolving language-like characteristics and grammars. See this recent research on whether emoji have their own syntax:

[https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/12/07/do- emojis...](https://makingnoiseandhearingthings.com/2016/12/07/do-emojis-have- their-own-syntax/)

Note that a distinct syntax is probably necessary but not sufficient for emoji to be considered a language.

</comment><comment><USER20> Long live Wing Dings!

</comment><comment><USER21> Because NOBODY wants emojis to be a form of language?

</comment><comment><USER22> Because there is no emoji for "because"</comment>


The Linux desktop's last, best shot - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-linux-desktops-last-best-shot/ <comment><USER2> "Linux Desktop" must be on someone's list of "I'm bored, guess I'll write another listicle" articles. I'll never use a Linux desktop, because I have a FreeBSD desktop...

<comment><USER3> Which one? It probably runs on Linux too.

<comment><USER2> Which one what? I don't use Linux...

% uname -a

FreeBSD redacted 12.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE r341666 GENERIC amd64

<comment><USER3> Desktop environment. Which desktop? There's more than one and they all pretty much run on both BSD and Linux.

<comment><USER2> fvwm2 They're not talking about desktop environment, they're talking about "using linux as a desktop".

<comment><USER3> > _I 'll never use a Linux desktop, because I have a FreeBSD desktop_

I wasn't responding to them....</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Postion Independent Source Code - <AUTHOR> https://pisc.junglecoder.com/home/apps/fossil/PISC.fossil/index <comment><USER2> @maybnogy, how did you end up finding this (I wrote it, and haven't been advertising it like crazy, so I'm curious)

<comment><AUTHOR> Found it on /r/proglangdesign ;-)

I'm a big fan of stack-based languages and I like a lot the name of your language.

It reminds me this post too: [http://blog.hostilefork.com/location- parameterized-assertion...](http://blog.hostilefork.com/location- parameterized-assertions/)</comment></comment>


6 Awesome Apps Begging to Be Developed - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/six_awesome_apps_that_are_begging_to_be_developed.php <comment><USER2> The recipe is: take any x, and combine this with any of mobile, social, real time, touching etc. (I once thought that readwriteweb is more interesting but it seems to be TechCrunch without what makes TechCrunch)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Full-Length Movies on Mobiles"

David Lynch has commented on how wonderful this would be:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0>

<comment><USER4> Isn't this already possible with the iPhone?

<comment><USER5> yes it sure is - I think the slant they were going for, is a streaming/on- demand app linked in to a massive content provider, but other then that if you have a little bit of time and a little bit of handbrake, you can be that 'v for vendetta' guy (although your battery might not make it)

<comment><USER4> I can download TV shows and movies on my 3GS over the air.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We'd be into 3 and 6. (Some of the others are fine ideas, but depend on doing deals with other parties.)

</comment><comment><USER7> The Minority Report display/control is never going to work. At least not in generic situations. Unless you are Mr. Bodybuilder, you are going to get tired of holding your arms out all day.

</comment><comment><USER8> #1 is FanFeedr: <http://www.fanfeedr.com>

The guys who did it are friends of mine and I think they did an amazing job.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not sure if those 6 are up my alley, but YC RFS #2 sounds like the perfect fit for an idea I had in 1999. Maybe the technology has caught up by now!

</comment><comment><USER10> There are lower hanging fruits for the time being, imo.

<comment><USER11> I believe you, but do you have something(s) in mind?

<comment><USER10> Yes, but I won't have time to start something before October, so I am not ready to share.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm working on #3, but the technology for the AR part isn't quite there yet (or at least doesn't have a public API).</comment>


Ask HN: Why is Silicon Valley almost broke? - <AUTHOR>

No, not the companies in Silicon Valley but the region itself.  I'm reading articles about how CalTrain almost ran out of money, how VTA is underfunded, and articles upon articles about how the region can't build any new public projects anymore.<p>What's going on over there? <comment><USER2> Large companies[1] and well to do citizens[2] often pay shockingly low tax rates.

[1] [http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/2012/corporate- taxe...](http://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/2012/corporate-taxes- only-9-percent/#.UB-zQshYu9c) [2][http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling- the-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/stop-coddling-the-super- rich.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER3> Downvoted for agenda-driven comments that focus only on generalization and speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I found myself wondering, "Is OP a US citizen? I doubt it b/c every US citizen knows how foo-bar'ed the CA government is."

Here's a fairly politically-leaning article about how they "lost" almost $1b in tax revenue (projected):

[http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside- politics/2012/dec...](http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside- politics/2012/dec/8/california-state-revenue-misses-projection-almost-/)

"November's disappointing revenues stand in stark contrast to recent news that California is leading the nation in job growth, has significantly improved its cash liquidity to pay bills, and even long-distressed home values are starting to inch upward," Mr. Chiang said in a statement. "This serves as a sobering reminder that, while the economy is expanding, it is doing so at a slow and uneven pace that will require the state to exercise care and discipline in how its fiscal affairs are managed in the coming year."

</comment><comment><USER4> my understanding is the CA govt has been dysfunctional for a while especially with budgetary matters. I am not an expert in the details but I have heard it's hard to get anything past gridlock in the CA state legislature.

</comment><comment><USER5> Note: I've lived in the Valley since 1996.

One thing most people don't factor in is that everything is more expensive here and that to attract workers to skilled but not professional jobs the salaries are higher than elsewhere. My wife is a staffer (not a lawyer or in a position requiring certification) at a well-known law firm and I'd bet her salary is 40-60% higher than if the office were in, say, Portland or Austin.

And real estate, to put supporting buildings like train stations and repair yards, is similarly more expensive.

We do have some real doozies planning projects. For giggles look at the so- called high speed rail project being 'built' to link San Diego to San Francisco, with a price tag that has gone from $30 billion to north of $100 BILLION before a shovel's even gone in the ground. But only if you have an hour or so to roll around on the floor laughing.

On the plus side, Jerry Brown seems to have actually done some practical good since coming back into the governor's office. He's been very pragmatic and considering how much he's had to struggle against legislators, bureaucrats, unions and other entrenched interests, I think Brown has been the most effective governor CA's had since I got here in '96.

<comment><AUTHOR> Silicon Valley is known for having some very smart people solving very complex problems. Do you think there was any way for them to have limited the damage from California over the years?

<comment><USER5> Sadly because of gerrymandering and pandering to interest groups, SV hasn't had nearly the influence it might. Also, remember that Cali's issues have been building since the mid-'60s or so and the Valley has only been a significant force for maybe the past decade.

<comment><AUTHOR> How about Silicon Valley itself? How much influence does Silicon Valley have for it's own land?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For many large projects, it is very hard to separate Silicon Valley the region from the state as a whole. The state is highly dependent on realized capital gains from real estate (hasn't happened in a while) and tech equities (modest, but slower since the Facebook IPO). The cost side has many fixed components, so the state is nearly bankrupt, taking the region with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you think this will this have an effect on the technology companies there in the long run if things keep going the way they are?

<comment><USER6> Not really. The rest of the country is in bad shape too, and there is too much personal concentration there. Where would it go? Singapore? Still very expensive there. New York? Also expensive. Austin? Perhaps...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's all of California not just SV. It's a complete economic mess. They need to overhaul the CA government and make severe changes.

</comment><comment><USER8> no more public projects? lol someone needs to open their eyes - its non-stop construction around here.

<comment><USER9> There are lots of private construction projects going on because of the massive recent boom in real estate in the valley.</comment></comment>


Notifications, indicators and alerts (in Ubuntu) - <AUTHOR> http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/253

<comment><USER2> This seems to be more of the "distraction culture" of recent times. Everything seems to want to let you know. I'd rather be able to easily ask it to let me know. The majority of time, I don't need to know more than I knew when I set processes in motion in the first place.

That said, I like Mark's approach. But I'd like them to go one better in that direction. Instead of just ephemeral, I'd rather that they not be there at all, unless I ask something to "let me know when it happens."

</comment><comment><USER3> Want the same sort of effect on a Web page? Check out jGrowl: <http://stanlemon.net/projects/jgrowl.html> \- it's a jQuery plugin I saw recently that seems pretty slick.</comment>


Notes from an Emergency - <AUTHOR> http://idlewords.com/talks/notes_from_an_emergency.htm <comment><USER2> On the one hand he decries nationalism, on the other he worries that some other nation controls internet services. So nationalism is bad, until you start to lose independence?

I guess ethnic nationalism is also bad, until you find yourself in the position of the Kurds, at the mercy of the four countries you're divided between.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If this has been posted already and generated a solid discussion, can someone point me towards it? I found a few submissions, none with more than a handful of upvotes and none with any comments.

It strikes me as a really important read, and exactly the sort of thing I'd be keen to hear my peers discuss on HN.

<comment><USER3> How much searching did you do? What did you search for? Searching for the word "emergency" and setting the ordering to "By Date" I get (among a few other false positives) these:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390947](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14390947)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14383006](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14383006) (video, 43 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14381145](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14381145)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14380354) (6 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14378728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14378728)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362148)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14359787](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14359787)

<comment><AUTHOR> I searched for the two key words in the name, and also for "idlewords". I expected a discussion with 400+ comments, but found basically the same as you.

I'm really surprised - thought this could've been a really important moment/opportunity for the industry.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hobbies for RSI sufferers that don't use hands much? - <AUTHOR>

Due to some RSI problems, I need to limit my hand usage for a while. All of my current hobbies heavily involve hands, though: anything on the computer, writing, most musical instruments...<p>Any suggestions? I'm especially looking for creative hobbies, something where I can create things. <comment><USER2> It isn't that creative, but live poker can be played without moving your hands. I know a gentleman who plays every day without working fingers (although I've never bothered to ask why).

</comment><comment><USER3> hackysack? theremin?</comment>


Schemutt: An XML Schema Assistant - <AUTHOR> http://irskep.github.com/schemutt/

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this to help me figure out some poorly documented APIs I had to work with. I have no idea if it's useful to anyone else, but it seemed interesting, so here it is!</comment>