Charles Stross YAPCA keynote: The world in 2034 - <AUTHOR> http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/yapcna-2014-keynote-programmin.html <comment><USER3> This is a very self-aware piece, and worth taking in. But here's the buried TL;DR:

* It's going to superficially resemble 2014.

* However, every object in the real world is going to be providing a constant stream of metadata about its environment — and I mean every object.

* The frameworks used for channeling this firehose of environment data are going to be insecure and ramshackle, with foundations built on decades-old design errors.

* The commercial internet funding model of 1994 — advertising — is still influential, and its blind-spots underpin the attitude of the internet of things to our privacy and security.

* How physical products are manufactured and distributed may be quite different from 2014. In particular, expect more 3D printing at end-points and less long-range shipment of centrally manufactured products. But in many cases, how we use the products may be the same.

* The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue.

<comment><USER4> What got me was advertising is still the monetisation of the internet / of things.

I would assume that because the next major product is going to be data (from pavement slabs !) that it is data that will be monetised - somehow. But I would assume that IP rights become DP - Data Property. And I charge people for use of my data (from my underpants) and they charge me for the analysis of the aggregated data - if we are sensible in a similar manner to internt exchanges now - mostly up balances down.

Hmm. Nice to have some new thoughts

<comment><USER5> A "data property" system that gives the majority of people rights over their personal data is never going to be built. We're far more likely to see "data feudalism" _, in which the systems you require to get by in the world extract your data as a toll for living in the modern world. In return, you get a certain limited amount of security against_ other*, nastier, agents trying to get at your data. See [https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.ht...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/12/feudal_sec.html)

(there's an excellent book called "Information Feudalism" on related IP issues)

<comment><USER4> I produce data, data is produced about me - data seems more like a crop - <USER2> crops tend to belong to the owner of the ground they grew in - in the modern case it will be the nation state not the feudal lord - it owns the roads that have the sensors that watch the cars and the underwear. We the taxpayer argue now that our tax money that goes to produce our maps should get our map data for free.

Why should the same open data ideal not apply to data produced from tax funded roads?

I am more optimistic that having achieved democracy we will not throw it away so easily.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The continuing trend towards fewer people being employed in manufacturing, and greater automation of service jobs, will continue: our current societal model, whereby we work to earn money with which to buy the goods and services we need may not be sustainable in the face of a continuing squeeze on employment. But since when has consistency or coherency or even humanity been a prerequisite of any human civilization in history? We'll muddle on, even when an objective observer might look at us and shake her head in despair."

He wrote very little about that subject, although there's decent likelihood that will be the issue(together with AI,VR and possibly medical innovation) that will make 2034 very different from out time.

<comment><USER7> I'd guess because Stross tends to be a very pragmatic / utilitarian sci-fi writer.

We suspect its going to be a thing, but nobody really knows what the death of human employment will mean, or if it will really happen. If it does, its probably much more of a black swan than "the internet of things", but as he noted with cars, sometimes things you discount end up revolutionizing the world, and stuff you thought was a killer, because of short range performance, ends up bland in the long run. Its kind of like stocks, everybody wants to buy FB or Google after they change the world, but its a whole nother story to figure that out beforehand.

You can guess that the death of employment for pay will be a huge event, but to say much more you have to start committing toward one of many possible paths beyond your event horizon. Maybe a revolution as robots steal our jobs, maybe boring and mostly like today, maybe endless freedom to create, or kind of pointless (cause we're all VR slaves or some other such thing)). The slope's there, but we can't see over the hill.

 _Aside_ : I dig that the later half reads like a love letter for one of my favourite, and one of the more durable languages out there. Almost 30 years and Perl's still quietly chuggin along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Half the shouting and social upheaval on the internet today comes from entrenched groups who are outraged to learn that their opinions and views are not universally agreed upon; the other half comes from those whose silence was previously mistaken for assent."

That seems to imply social media is going to quiet down a lot after things shake out.

I facebooked real hard in '09 or so. Was high traffic but it was an utter waste of time, like no positive effect on my life whatsoever despite a spectacular demand on my time, so I stopped and didn't miss it. Restarted this year because one of my kids is old enough to get an account and wanted to "friend" his dad, so how can I resist? I created a new account (had deleted the old one) and refriended a whole bunch of people and frankly FB is dying in terms of traffic compared to 5 yrs ago. I donno if its paranoia at being data mined or a lack of newness or its just had its time and is now done and over.

During Roman triumphs, a slave would whisper in the ear of the winner that he was only mortal. Someone needs to whisper in the ear of all the social media folks that in the late 70s, 10% of all cars on the road had a CB radio. The CB experience is coming to social media, eventually, like it or not... Or going back a few more decades at one time virtually 100% of home entertainment electronics was based on radio reception...

</comment><comment><USER9> I must say that I'm almost enjoying more Charlie's blog than Charlie's books :) If you scroll back a bit, there is also a very interesting piece about Scottish independence, with extensive comments: [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the- scot...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/06/the-scottish- political-singula.html)

<comment><USER10> I thought his piece on the role of the UK "independent" deterrent was particularly good:

[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on- the-u...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/04/on-the-uk-and- nuclear-disarmam.html)

Having been a child in the 70s and 18 in 1983, the year of Able Archer, I still have the same lurking existential horror (not helped, as Charlie also mentions, by having seen Threads more often than is wise from a peace of mind perspective).

<comment><USER11> Of course, we can look at North Korea, which has nukes and thumbs it's nose with impunity at the West. And we can look at Ukraine which gave up the nukes it inherited from the USSR in return for a treaty pledging that the West would secure its borders. How's that working out for them?

De Gaulle had it right, which is not something I often say...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "remain in production for decades because there is no prospect of a faster, cheaper better product coming along any time soon."

The future is already here, just unevenly distributed in tech.

My Dad did parallax "basic stamp" microcontroller dev work in the 90s, maybe 80s, that stuff is old... you can buy a pin compatible form today, admittedly for about twice the cost of a ras-pi. The arduino and pi will eventually wipe out the stamp, but people have been saying that for many years now, of course.

As an analog RF EE example, the ne602 chip has been around for decades (oh at least 2 or 3 now) and people today are still shipping new ham radio kits using it, despite its laughable IP3 large signal specs its still "good enough".

</comment><comment><USER12> Only an author of Lovecraftian horror could give a keynote at a perl conference.

</comment><comment><USER13> Awesome talk, but I think he got the language wrong (and not for bad reasons).

</comment><comment><USER14> I was with him until the perl bit. Otherwise, awesome piece.

<comment><USER15> Well, it is a Perl conf.

<comment><USER16> And according to Larry, Perl 6 will be along _any day now_.

And then all you skeptics will be sorry! Sorry I say!

Bwahahaha!

<comment><USER15> Hah. Well, Perl isn't a bad language, it's just past its prime and being outcompeted by other languages. It had a moment where it could have remained relevant but they missed it.

<comment><USER17> Sigh, here we go again. :-(

Better OO than the competing scripting languages, CPAN still beats any opposition (check CPAN testers), extensible syntax(!) etc.

And... you don't lose a hype war if you didn't really play it.

<comment><USER18> All you need is the following if you want to champion Perl.

[http://dheeb.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gbu.pdf](http://dheeb.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/gbu.pdf)

Perl does Unicode right. Look at page #3.

<comment><USER17> I'd settle for new subjects from the trolls, the present ones make tired reddit jokes look good.

Anyway, I thought Guido told 'em to stop, since they're getting a bad reputation?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Ok, guys. STOP TRYING TO PREDICT 20 YEARS AHEAD OF TIME.

You're only giving people ideas. By giving people ideas, you literally make your own predictions less true.</comment>


Home Affairs says encryption-busting laws now in use - <AUTHOR> https://www.itnews.com.au/news/home-affairs-says-encryption-busting-laws-now-in-use-518612 <comment><USER2> And already tech companies are talking about leaving Australia. This government is completely backwards, we have idiots legislating on things they don't even slightly comprehend and a senate full of old codgers who have no clue what the repercussions of this are. RIP Tech Australia</comment>


Mapping the Road Ahead for Autonomous Cars - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/autopia/2012/02/autonomous-vehicles-q-and-a/

<comment><USER2> I'm a big proponent of autonomous cars (did a lot of work on it in college, follow it closely now). I don't think all cars need to be autonomous, but I think overall it will make the roads a lot safer once the thing is worked out. The car will never get sleepy. It will never get drunk. It will never be talking on a cell phone. It will never be road raging.

The road block I see the most is the weather. In my experience designing cars, the cameras are falliable but the lasers are not. We trusted the lasers absolutely but the cameras were a lot less certain. That's fine for object avoidance on dry roads (or even wet roads with consistent slip), but on snow you really want to be driving based on the road surface itself. Is it loose snow? Ice? Packed snow? Slush? Is there a hump of slush between lanes? Is that a pothole or a bit of black ice? Can I get some pavement under me or not? I find it hard to believe that a camera will be able to distinguish all that perfectly (texture, snow depth, snow type, etc). I think they will punt and make the car just drive 15mph, but that is unacceptable for me. I have AWD & snow tires and routinely do 45-50 mph in snow. But there are other times in the exact same car that anything over 20 is unsafe. It is entirely dependent on the judgement of the snow surface that I don't think a computer will be able to do for a long time.

That's just my nit pick, but it is part of the larger problem. It is going to be super difficult to convince people to actually allow it. Most people are afraid of computers and don't trust them.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the point of autonomous driving if someone still has to pay attention? So it's expected that a driver pay full attention to the road while simultaneously doing nothing? That sounds unrealistic. I would think a person's attention would drift after ten minutes or so.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because they only ostensibly have to be paying attention. The reality is that they'll probably be eating, texting, fumbling with CDs, rubber-necking, etc. This is where partially-autonomous cars really pay off.

<comment><USER4> I would guess less "CDs" and more "consuming web content" :-) But other than that I agree. Moreover, partially-autonomous cars will be a stepping stone to adapt people's culture to accept fully autonomous cars easier. Just as we have "park assist" today, that will evolve into more driving assistance before autonomy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Autonomous cars don't drink, or text, or sleep, or get distracted, etc.

Any politician against autonomous cars should be attacked for being for more death on the roads thanks to alcohol, texting, sleep deprivation, old age, etc. Call them pro-murder in an attack ad during an election and we'll have legal autonomous cars everywhere in no time.

Speaking of autonomous cars don't drink and drive, why isn't MAD lobbying for autonomous cars as hard as they can? And where are the insurance companies on this? Don't the see dollar signs when the think of just how much mass autonomous car use could reduce accidents and injuries?

</comment><comment><USER6> Dang, this will be the end for _plausible_ car-based games, from NFS to GTA. :/

<comment><USER5> Yep, actually driving the car yourself becomes a purely vanity activity.

Except when you build shelves in your garage rather than buying cheap ones at the store, you could actually build better shelves than reasonable money can buy. But it's hard to imagine even the most talented and dedicated hobby driver outracing a computer.

Future car games will have to be set either in the past (horses are very important if cars have not been invented yet) or in some kind of special human drivers only scenario.

We still have equestrian events in the Olympics, so F1 as a human drivers only future equivalent of antiquated transportation based competition?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is not a good article. The panelists discuss problems that Google has already solved - pedestrians, literal interpretations of traffic laws, etc.

<comment><USER8> Last I heard these were still issues. Do you have a source about what Google has done because I'm rather interested to know more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Autonomous cars will cause traffic jams to worsen as the burden of driving becomes much less. More people will be playing xbox gladly sitting in traffic in a town with 50 million other people in a 50 mile radius. if we could get rid of traffic lights, that would be another story.</comment>


Ask HN: An alternative to TI EZ430-Chronos watch/dev board? - <AUTHOR> I just found out that the chronos will not be produced by texas instrument anymore. Is there an alternative? a freely programmable hackable watch<p>https://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/EZ430-Chronos#MetaWatch_by_Fossil.2FTI <comment><USER2> This looks good:

[https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/](https://www.pine64.org/pinetime/)

This I just stumbled across:

[https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/12/31/18-ttgo-t- wristband-...](https://www.cnx-software.com/2019/12/31/18-ttgo-t-wristband- diy-arduino-programmable-smart-bracelet-features-esp32-pico-d4-sip/)

<comment><AUTHOR> thank you</comment></comment>


2/3 of Americans Without Broadband Don't Want It - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20090122-two-thirds-of-americans-without-broadband-dont-want-it.html

<comment><USER2> Do consumers always know what they want ahead of time?

With all the focus around the "digital divide" (on top of class and income divides), this type of investment makes intuitive sense.

Whether people (who don't have it) really want it or not will be interesting. The rather crude analogy in response to this is that "learning infrastructure" (access to educational materials, great teachers, schools) is A Good Thing, even if most children probably wouldn't study/learn if given a choice.

</comment><comment><USER3> My point exactly when I commented on <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=446378></comment>


Minecraft Modding Software To Teach Kids Coding - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=1682

<comment><USER2> As a middle-schooler I tinkered with QBASIC and Pascal trying to teach myself programming. I never really accomplished much. I tried learning C, but it was way over my head at the time.

Then id Software released Quake and the modding engine used "QuakeC". It was basically just a stripped down, interpreted version of C, but it was enough motivation for me to finally wrap my head around C.

I can't imagine how many kids have taught themselves entry-level programming skills by futzing around creating Minecraft mods.

<comment><USER3> My first foray into programming was also QuakeC, though I didn't really think of it as programming at the time.

I lived in a rural area with very poor network access so I actually got most of the QuakeC tooling and mods from CDs purchased at the mall. Since Internet access was so spotty my primary hobby was to take bot mods and combine them with weapon mods I liked so I could play deathmatch against bots with a grappling hook or self-guided missiles, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I learned how to 'program' so I could write animation scripts for Total Annihilation mods when I was 13-14. I had always liked computers and my parents had tried to get me programming books for kids from the library, but I never made it far enough to do anything worthwhile for the time investment. Making my own 3d models and then getting them to walk, wings to open, turrets to track enemies, etc, was the motivation I needed.

This seems to be a similarly excellent gateway for today's Minecraft obsessed kids in a way that modding many modern games (with their much greater complexity and knowledge base required) can't offer. Kudos to all at UCSD, and hoping we see more similar initiatives in the future.

</comment><comment><USER5> I am not into gaming/modding/minecraft, but just wanted to share a project I came across:

[https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology](https://github.com/MovingBlocks/Terasology)

It's an open-source minecraft-clone designed in a very modular way; many game components are just modules and players can easily add their own. I haven't actually tried modding, so no idea how easy it is. But this seems like a better project to build upon, since it is explicitly designed that way.

</comment><comment><USER6> My son loves Minecraft, but why the price of $30/year - I won't mind paying $50 for a package that could be used forever.

<comment><USER7> I kind of lost interest at that point. I'm not interested in managing another subscription for this.

Edit: It looks like it includes a hosted server. That makes more sense, but I'd prefer an option without it.

<comment><USER8> It looks like it requires a special modded version of minecraft running on the server. I wonder if they have plans to release or sell the server code.

<comment><USER9> All of these third-parry mod systems require a modified version. Bukkit did, and so does CanaryMod. Right now there's no official way to do modding so I suspect that this is their issue. And not releasing it allows them to generate a little revenue. For $30 a year? Sure, why not.

<comment><USER10> I'd love to see Microsoft fix this, and create a well documented modding API.

<comment><USER9> I'd like to just see them fold in one of the existing ones myself :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Everyone has some good suggestions...

Scriptcraft is nice, it works along the lines of logo, teaching basic principals: [http://scriptcraftjs.org/](http://scriptcraftjs.org/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I see Minecraft modding as the gateway drug for my son, into coding. He loves Minecraft on his tablet, and with BlockLauncher we can code mods in JavaScript for his Android tablet.

The modding community seems a little impenetrable however, and trying to find any documentation for the Blocklauncher API has been a stumbling block. We'll persevere however, and make sure all the code we write is on GitHub and well commented.

<comment><USER12> Is this the documentation you were looking for? [https://github.com/Connor4898/ModPE-Scripts/wiki/ModPE- Scrip...](https://github.com/Connor4898/ModPE-Scripts/wiki/ModPE-Scripts- Functions-List)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Kids have it real nice these days...games that are fun and can teach you how to code concurrently (Hack 'n Slash is another example). I was able to pick up programming fairly easy as I got older though, because I learned how to be comfortable with text files and hack around the internals of an operating system...which is what I had to do to get Ultima VII to run via its awful Voodoo memory manager.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is cool because it's not just a mod of minecraft, but actually teaches you how to mod minecraft.

Another cool minecraft mod is ComputerCraft which lets you make simple robots and computers in the game, which you can program in Lua. A lot of people have been exposed to programming through that, and it's really fun.

</comment><comment><USER15> Are there some technical details?

The news article states that "Students can even create custom blocks and items within Minecraft by importing new textures" which would require a client side modification and can't be done by importing textures. The actual website says that you modify the server which doesn't allow as many modifications.

There are some bigger cuatomizable server mods around already (hMod, bukkit, spigot, glowstone, sponge, ...). Does this use any of these servers and their API?

If so, does this use one of the existing JavaScript plugins or are they using their own wrapper for the server's API?

<comment><USER16> Minecraft has "resource packs" that change the image and label of items. When the client joins, the server can specify a resource pack for it to download.

<comment><USER15> Exactly. You can change items labels and looks but you cannot "create" items.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Should it be better developed for Minetest? Seems more fitting for the educational effort, since it doesn't attach a price tag for entry.

</comment><comment><USER18> There is a feeling among the modding community of maintaining complexity hoops to keep newbies out. It could just be a lack of patience.

<comment><USER19> Where do you see this? I have done some modding for minecraft. There is defiantly some complexity hoops, but those seem to stem from the fact that the community is trying to make mutually compatible mods to a closed-source game under continuous development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This looks like something my kids would love. I've been trying to teach them Python over the last few weeks, with marginal success, sometimes to do with my time restrictions, but also their lack of motivation at the length of time it takes for them to see results. This looks like it could remedy that.

<comment><USER21> You might like this book: [http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/11/adventures- in-minecraf...](http://www.stuffaboutcode.com/2014/11/adventures-in- minecraft.html)

<comment><USER22> Currently working through this with a couple of 7yr olds. It's pretty good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It would be even nicer if the mainline version of Minecraft would adopt the Python API they implemented for the Pi edition.

</comment><comment><USER24> Quite a few people I know started coding because of gaming. I started when modding and building forums for Halo.

</comment><comment><USER25> Terribly written and edited PRWeb article.

The real site is [http://www.learntomod.com/](http://www.learntomod.com/)

<comment><USER26> Yeah. They even use incorrect year: San Diego, Calif., December 17, 2004.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I am sorry but what is with the attempt to get everyone and their petfish to learn how to code? From everywhere and nowhere initiatives and organizations pop up to teach X demography or Y culture to learn how to code. For what purpose? Just because all the big investment money and SV hype everybody wants to get some piece of the cake? Because we are facing a massive lack in programmers? Or does it actually have a purpose?

I mean there are hundreds of professions and skills which are more life critical and/or meaningful than knowing how to write code and could actually improve society if the same effort and resources were put into it as that currently is being put in getting everyone to code.

Don't get me wrong, computers are more important than ever but does that mean everybody should be able to program one?

<comment><USER28> I tend to agree with this widespread statement of "coding is the new literacy".

I don't think that everybody should make programming their life's work, just like not everyone is earning their daily bread by writing. But given that quite about everything around us is programmable, someone who has no concept at all of how programming works could be left behind.

<comment><USER29> I don't see how they would be left behind, unless you mean being left out of the job market for software engineers. And that isn't enough reason to say everyone should code.

It doesn't seem to me like it's comparable to literacy at all. While I need to be literate to use anything that was written in English, I don't need to take CS101 to use anything that was written in code.

e: And while it's useful to produce written English all the time, we would have to be living in a crazy universe for it to be worth it for the average person to need to produce code.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Do we need more kids learning to create scripts on top of APIs without any fundamental understanding of computers in general?

<comment><USER31> Yes.

And some of those will go on to learn those fundamentals, and possibly discover new fundamentals.</comment></comment>


Is this is a related video? Please tell us Yahoo. - <AUTHOR> http://i.imgur.com/ZPfHH.png

<comment><USER2> it's not _that_ weird, you're just having a cognitive bias. it's probably pulling it from the keywords 'how to'.

also, I don't believe this belongs here on HN.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sometimes algorithm does gives weird results</comment>


Boeing 737-800 Passenger Jet Crashes in Iran Due to Technical Issue - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-08/boeing-737-passenger-jet-crashes-in-iran-due-to-technical-issue <comment><USER2> There's almost no information here—not nearly enough for a substantive discussion. We should wait until more becomes available.

On HN, there's no harm in waiting: [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20%22no%20harm%20in%20waiting%22&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment><comment><USER3> 737-800, not a MAX. ALJazeera has better detail than the linked story.

[https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ukrainian-airliner- cr...](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/01/ukrainian-airliner-crashes- tehran-iranian-media-200108032720868.html)

Here's the specific tail number / aircraft: [https://www.flightera.net/planes/UR-PSR](https://www.flightera.net/planes/UR- PSR)

Crash site photo: [https://twitter.com/isna_farsi/status/1214762556289667077](https://twitter.com/isna_farsi/status/1214762556289667077)

<comment><USER4> That makes it a 737 NG. The NG's structural components were mostly manufactured (badly) by a subcontractor, Ducommun, but Boeing insisted on installing them anyhow. In 2010, there was a cover-up and a whistleblower; Al Jazeera broke it in a long-form documentary that apparently no one watched.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Considering the current climate, be interesting to see who was on the plane and/ or what the fallout from this is.

Assuming this isn't some kind of political attack, you have to wonder how much this is due to Iran's inability to trade due to sanction would impact its airlines ability to get updates to their aircraft. (Update: Not an Iranian jet so likely not an issue)

Which suggests Russia might be at the heart of this. Back to the original question about who was on the plane.

<comment><USER6> Geez. The fire from wreckage is probably not even out yet and you've done dove headfirst off of "speculation" cliff!

In your defense, though, you certainly aren't the only one. There's nothing but rampant speculaion in this thread -- some from folks who should know better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> What a bingo card of an article. Iran, Ukraine, 737.

Synchronicity (or pareidolia?) makes me want to think there's intentionality here, when in reality it's probably just a tragedy.

<comment><USER8> No matter what happened, it is a tragedy.

<comment><USER9> Seriously.

180 people crashed in an airliner. Even for HN, have a little compassion.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely, it's easy to lose sight of it from such a vantage point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight- tracker/PS/752?year=20...](https://www.flightstats.com/v2/flight- tracker/PS/752?year=2020&month=1&date=8&flightId=1027215904)

Interesting it's showing as en-route.

n/m. Bloomberg updated it with better tracker. [https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ps752#23732569](https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/ps752#23732569)

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if the "technical" issue would have anything to do with measures we (the US) may currently be taking against Iran?

Could just be a Boeing related error, but that is definitely one of the hottest places in the world tonight.

Edit:

Just so this isn't misconstrued as me implying that the US shot down the plane or something, I meant some sort of passive signal scrambling type thing that would confuse instruments on the plane.

Not knowing a lot about the technical possibilities of all this, just wondering.

<comment><USER12> Navigation systems are built on very conservative assumptions. They fall back to autonomous inertial guidance, if satellite and ground-based navigation aids become unavailable. This reduces airspace throughput (airplanes need larger separation distances due to lower navigation accuracy), but is completely safe.

See: [https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/2276](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/a/2276)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting timing to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER14> Video and reports suggest it was accidentally shot down. It's not even a question when you see it.

There's no way state media could've concluded it was a "technical issue" so quickly. They are trying to pass blame on Boeing but they really messed this one up.

<comment><USER15> It's worth not trying to understand what happened in the first few hours, you'll rarely be correct.

The video could have been an old one that someone uploaded as misinformation.

The video can show you that the plane looks like it was shot down, but it can't show you that it was done accidentally by Iranian military.

The "reports" of it being accidentally shot down could just have been made up by someone, unsourced. Actually, it looks like they're coming from Al Hadath, which appears to be a Saudi-controlled news TV channel.

<comment><USER14> I'm pretty confident on this one. So much so I will buy some Boeing stock if it irrationally crashes tomorrow as futures are suggesting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As if things could not get even worse for Boeing. Double the attention from the press, and I'm sure it'll also be misreported to hell and back. They might even have to fire the bean counter CEO they've just appointed.

</comment><comment><USER17> it seems like every day there is a new 737/747 plane headline on hn. what gives? is it _that_ interesting??

<comment><USER4> No 747 has been used for mainstream commercial passenger service for almost a year because it's an old, uneconomical design that simply can't compete anywhere except in cargo.

<comment><USER18> Are you sure?

According to this [1,2,3] there are currently 99 747s in the air, a quick check [4,5,6,7] shows, that at least some are passenger planes.

[1] [https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/](https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/)

[2] [https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B744](https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B744)

[3] [https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B748](https://de.flightaware.com/live/aircrafttype/B748)

[4] [https://de.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW117/history/202001...](https://de.flightaware.com/live/flight/BAW117/history/20200108/0835Z/EGLL/KJFK)

[5] [https://british-airways.flight-status.info/ba-117](https://british- airways.flight-status.info/ba-117)

[6] [https://de.flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH462/history/202001...](https://de.flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH462/history/20200108/0910Z/EDDF/KMIA)

[7] [https://lufthansa.flight-status.info/lh-462](https://lufthansa.flight- status.info/lh-462)</comment></comment></comment>


Is it time to ditch the term "full-stack"? - <AUTHOR> https://engine.expert360.com/the-curly-thing-about-full-stack-ef3e32cbde6a <comment><USER2> Yes, please!

When I see full stack in job descriptions, it implies that management doesn't really know how to invest in order to develop the product that they're trying to develop. Looking for a full stack engineer, really means that the management is looking for a superhero who can magically solve all their problems.

A full stack developer makes sense for a very small web application that doesn't really do much, or as an overall architect when the plans include scaling a team to meet the diverse roles needed any more complicated application.

The thing is that, any application of sufficient complexity to solve a tangible need, has problems and details that are beyond the scope of what one engineer can do. Ultimately, modern economics comes from specialization, and that means that successful development requires team members to specialize in the various components of a complicated web application.

If an application can really be built by a full stack engineer, at this point is it truly unique enough compared to what's already on the market? Perhaps? If the founders are able to determine that such a market exists for such a simple application, then they are probably smart enough to write the application themselves!

<comment><USER2> But to add: Many of the "full stack" engineers on this site can probably write a clone of the early Craigslist or Facebook as a solo developer. They could even administer it through early growth. How many business are left that are that simple?

Back then, websites scaled more slowly, there were no mobile clients, and simple UI was fine. We could cut corners by mixing php, html, and SQL into a single file; but if you do that today you won't go much further than a hackathon.

Now you need a web site, API, mobile apps on both Android and iPhone, and maybe a desktop app. Tolerance of bugs is lower, so developers need to spend more time writing automated tests. The "web site" might be a mix of an in- house app, crm, blog, Facebook page, ect. No "full stack" developer can do all that in any reasonable time.</comment></comment>


Best method to cancel human voices at work or public space? - <AUTHOR> I have tried silicone ear plugs and in-ear headphones with good plugs but can't find anything that completely stops human voices. I have read that the noise-canceling headphones are good for some type of frequencies, human voices <i>not</i> being one of them. What methods do you use to cope with it? If ear plugs or headphones, can you specify? <comment><USER2> Ultimately, technology is limited. What you need is a culture of "library voices". To wit: "Don't raise your voice unless you absolutely have to. Better, don't use your voice, period, if you can just do a chat session with the person. If you must use your voice -- just keep the volume down, and and the duration minimal. If you must have a full-volume conversation for any length of time -- get a room."

Basically, people in office environments get used to "yapping" for a whole lot of reasons not related to any actual need to exchange information (to vent and shoot the shit, basically) and to do so in rollicking, loud "party" voices without any regard to the downsides. Meanwhile, all it takes is a bit of introspection to realize that about 80% of this noise is just that. And a little bit of discipline to institute a culture of (relative) quiet and solitude -- even in an open plan office.

What, you say -- no time for introspection? No interest in discipline? No way to even bring up the idea of "library voices" in your culture?

Then your problems are much bigger than can what be helped by any advanced technology.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply. I agree with your "library voices" concept and I'm very respectful in regards to keeping volume down and minimal duration if there was a need for a chat. The issue is when others are not and you have no control over it, making it difficult to focus on the task at hand.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, that type of cultural change takes time, and is particularly difficult if you're a newcomer.

In the mean time, get some nice headphones. I second the recommendation of the HD-280s; they're great. Note that over-the-ear headphones come in both open- ear and closed-ear varieties; the former don't provide any isolation (they're designed to let you keep your situational awareness, which is often desirable).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've had great success over the last 10 years with a pair of Sennheiser 280 HD Pro over-the-ear headphones ([https://en- us.sennheiser.com/hd-280-pro](https://en-us.sennheiser.com/hd-280-pro)). They are great at passive noise attenuation across the spectrum (32 dB) and are extremely comfortable for long periods. It doesn't hurt that they sound great (if you like a flat frequency response) and since they are made for pro DJ and studio use, they're durable and the cord, ear pads, and headband pad are replaceable.

If I don't want the distraction of music, but still need to wipe out the sound of people talking nearby, I fire up [https://rain.simplynoise.com/](https://rain.simplynoise.com/).

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this list for best noise-isolation headphones: [http://headphonesaddict.com/best-noise-isolating- earbuds](http://headphonesaddict.com/best-noise-isolating-earbuds). There's a Sennheiser in the top 2. I may consider noise-isolation over noise-canceling. Would be great if there was a noise-canceling pair with amazing noise- isolation properties as well.

The simplenoise.com site is great. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> A few folks have mentioned white noise already. I used to work in an open- office layout with about 50 people, and I found it was much easier to mentally cancel out the chatter with consistent, light, inoffensive background noise than to try to create silence.

[http://mynoise.net](http://mynoise.net) was great, and I only had a $10 pair of in-ear earbuds. I haven't used the site since changing jobs, but I remember liking Rain On A Tent, Wooden Chimes, and mumbly-voice environments like Laundromat and Airport Terminal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Voices, especially high ones, are kryptonite for NC, but the very latest models do better with them than I've ever heard before. My Bose QC35s and QC20s both do a great job of making a voice six feet away sound at least 20 feet away, and voices over 10-15 feet away not sound at all. I think the QC25s and QC30s will be similarly good. The new Sony MDR-1000X are also supposedly showing next-gen NC performance, according to early reviews.

A set of one of those will probably do the job of _lessening_ voices to something acceptable--they do to the point that my very, very distractable self can work in an open office, whereas older NC headphones did not--but they won't completely remove it.

If you really want that, I'd suggest a set of 34dB+ reduction earplugs. If that doesn't work, put them underneath NC over-ear headphones. If that doesn't work, play white noise on the headphones. I'll be surprised if you heard anything external after that.

<comment><AUTHOR> I knew about the Bose models but did not know about the Sony MDR-1000X. As you mentioned, none seem to completely stop voices, although your experience is very good at least at lessening them.

I was actually thinking of wearing earplugs and headphones at once. Thanks for the info

<comment><USER6> The 1000X is bleeding new. It's been out in Europe for a few weeks, and is just now coming out in US I believe.

After having gone through a number of pretty expensive NC headphones, I can say confidently that up until now nothing matched late-model Bose for NC specifically (music sound quality is another discussion). Parrot came closest, but everything else was way behind and really only blocked airplane/subway/bus-type loud hum, nothing more random or higher-pitched.

However, the initial reviews for the 1000X have all been pretty adamant that the 1000X matches and possibly beats the QC35 for NC. That's an amazing accomplishment for Sony, no lie.

At any rate, you're welcome. I have really bad noise sensitivities that make productivity hard in shared spaces, so your question is near and dear to my heart.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have good experience with foam ear plugs. Silicone doesn't fill up your ear canal as these do.

[https://www.cvs.com/shop/personal-care/ear-care/ear- plugs/cv...](https://www.cvs.com/shop/personal-care/ear-care/ear-plugs/cvs- superior-soft-foam-earplugs-prodid-942245)

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I have used them in the past but did not have a great experience. Maybe I didn't rolled/tested them properly. Will try again. Thanks for the link.

<comment><USER8> There are also different sizes that may work better for different people's ears.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Whatever you do, don't go for an office that has a "noise suppression" system in it. A company that I used to work for has one, when I first joined I thought it was just a loud HVAC system (until I was informed what it really was). It took a lot of getting used to, or so I thought, then the headaches started coming. Headaches that would start at work and then dissipate an hour or two after leaving the office. After doing some reading and discussing with a relative who designs buildings for healthcare, I realized the connection between the two. I started working from home, no headaches. Apparently a not insignificant percentage of people have this reaction to a constant "barely audible" white noise. I'm not sure if I would have the same reaction to the headphones, but at this point I'm not trying it.

</comment><comment><USER10> For me it is the sharp spikes in sound curve that is annoying and distracting, like honking of vehicles, screaming kids etc in an otherwise quieter environment. Any uniform/sustained sound, for that matter even constant blaring of horns on busy roads or bunch of noisy kids playing, will quickly melt into the background. I suppose this is what happens to most people too. So I just have to tolerate a bit for the easing up to happen. Earplug like contraptions make me claustrophobic of sorts. Also, I like to do things "naturally" and condition myself in general, so this approach might be due to that as well.

</comment><comment><USER11> The best $50 I've ever spent has been on a pair of Audio-Technica ATH-ANC2 noise cancelling earbuds. Are they as good as Bose or other over-ear versions? No, but they are significantly better than non noise canceling and pretty cheap. Paired with a white noise generator (I use Spotify that has many), and the loud coffee shop chatter fades away and I can get work done.

</comment><comment><USER12> Just jam them: [http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120583-new-speech- jammi...](http://www.extremetech.com/computing/120583-new-speech-jamming-gun- hints-at-dystopian-big-brother-future)

</comment><comment><USER13> I used to listen to 7 hours of white noise with my earphones from YouTube for noise canceling. It kicks in in about 4-6 minutes.

Not doing it since I changed jobs and work remote.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't planning to add noise, but it may be a good option. I'll try this as well. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I do noisli with noise cancelling headphone, works the best

</comment><comment><USER15> A door.

<comment><USER3> Preferably with walls around it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Tell the people to STFU?

</comment><comment><USER17> headphones and music man! cant work without music

</comment><comment><USER18> You could surgically remove your eardrums.</comment>


How to design and manage bigger personal projects? - <AUTHOR> "Hey /dpt/
I'm working on something more complex than I usually do. I wrote the "architecture" on a piece of paper and what I thought my program should use, is this one good way to do it? Or are there any proven "methods" to sketch the basis of your program?"
http://boards.4chan.org/g/thread/59235789#p59239204
I saw this question on /g/, and was wondering what you HNers do if you're planning for a large personal project (spanning a few months, say). <comment><USER2> >implying you'll get any answers</comment>


Ask HN: Avoid Tax hit from vesting of shares? - <AUTHOR> Startup offered me shares (not options) with 3 years vesting (33.3% after each year).
Today shares worth nothing, but startup may accept funding and that may raise valuation.
My concern is whether I will be liable to pay taxes on vested shares each year even though it's not a publicly traded company and valuation can be calculated in many ways. <comment><USER2> First, a paid lawyer who has dealt with taxes on options is the best way to get a legitimate answer to your specific situation.

Speaking for US taxes - it depends on a lot of things. The first of which are they NSO or ISO's? Most likely they are ISO's.

If they are ISO's, them vesting has no tax implications until you exercise them. The company should have given you an exercise price. This is the per option price you would pay to own the shares after the vesting date. Let's say they gave you 1,000 options each year for 3 years at an exercise price of $1.00. Then after that first year it would cost you $1,000 to exercise those options. You would then be liable for AMT gains from the current fair market value of the options minus the exercise price. Let's say that when you exercises the 1,000 options, they were worth $2.50. Then you would have had a "gain" of ( 2.50 - 1.00 )* 1000 = $1,500 even though you haven't sold them or received any money. This gain is used to compute your AMT. The AMT has certain allowances so depending on how much that "gain" is and your salary you may or may not owe extra taxes on the gain for the current year.

If this was confusing - do some googling on ISO AMT and then contact a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't accept any advice from your company (I have been personally burned). Pay a pro to answer this question.

</comment><comment><USER4> A related -- and perhaps bigger -- question is what are your rights and obligations regarding selling the shares.

A smaller question is "is the company really a startup?" The granting of shares to employees rather than options is more typical for companies organized to produce cash flows to share holders rather than spending available cash in pursuit of growth.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a wonderful question for a lawyer.

</comment><comment><USER6> Google 83b election if you are in the US.</comment>


Show HN: Reddit like save feature on Hackernews - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mohitmun/HN-Save/ <comment><USER2> What does this do that's different from the existing "favorite" feature?</comment>


Can Silicon Valley Fix Women's Fashion? - <AUTHOR> http://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/can-silicon-valley-fix-womens-fashion

<comment><USER2> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0)

</comment><comment><USER3> Isn't stitch fix in Austin?

</comment><comment><USER4> No</comment>


Be Safe, Break the Law - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2011/09/be-safe-break-the-law.html <comment><USER5> One of the biggest problems with the war on drugs and with traffic fines is that they create perverse incentives for law enforcement and for local governments, because revenue generation then becomes coupled to the way laws are written and enforced. Everybody knows how this works with traffic "offenses", local governments use red light cameras, speed traps, and speeding ticket quotas as a source of income. This then converts a significant portion of the resources that should be used for keeping people safe into effective tax collection.

The same thing happens with the war on drugs due to asset forfeiture laws. On the one hand you have a police officer tasked with the hard and often thankless job of enforcing the law, investigating unsolved crimes, meticulously sorting through evidence, walking a beat, etc, etc. On the other hand you have a police officer tasked with the comparatively simple jobs of, say, pulling over "suspicious" looking drivers on the highway and looking for pot in their car, or executing exciting no-knock raids on, in the average case, un-armed drug dealer's houses. In the process generating enough revenue through the seizure and auction of vehicles and houses to pay for raises, more officers, new guns, helicopters, swat teams, armored personnel carriers, etc. The natural equilibrium is going to be that as many officers as possible spend as much time as possible in those typically easier and more glamorous and exciting jobs that generate revenue. This is hardly hypothetical, as over the course of the war on drugs we've seen a dramatic shift in the amount of effort the legal system puts forth in enforcing drug laws and prosecuting drug crimes and we've also seen a dramatic increase in the militarization of even small- town police departments. Assault rifles are more common. No-knock raids are more common. SWAT teams are more common. Use of APCs is more common. And this despite no significant increase in drug dealers becoming more heavily armed or more violent over that time period (except in Mexico which is in a drug-gang induced civil war).

The law should be pragmatic not dogmatic. The law should be molded to aid society not to mold society into some perfect, moral vision. Whenever the law tries to overstep those boundaries the result has always been strife and disaster.

<comment><USER6> Combating drugs is not _just_ about a perfect moral vision of society. Getting rid of meth, for example, would be a big aid to society. (As best I understand it)

If there is a problem with drug laws and enforcement, I would hazard that it is with classification of certain drugs and the incentives for pursuing different classifications. For example, as best I understand, marijuanna does not have nearly the negative social consequences of meth, yet marijuanna was schedule I for a time and meth is schedule II.

<comment><USER5> Getting everyone to learn algebra would be a big aid to society, should we throw everyone who fails algebra in prison until they start passing?

In the US alone there are over 70,000 alcohol related deaths per year. That's nearly a million people a decade, dead because of alcohol. And that doesn't even begin to account for the vastly greater incidence of lesser problems such as abusive, absent, or non-supportive husbands, fathers, mothers; or families in financial ruin due to having to support the expenses and consequences of a severe alcohol habit, etc.

Some people see an activity that causes problems and they think "I know how to solve this, I'll make that activity illegal", now they have two problems. We tried alcohol prohibition, it was far, far worse. We are currently living through the misery of prohibition of some drugs, and it's almost certainly not helping.

You can't get rid of meth by making it illegal, that should be obvious to anybody. And by making it, and so many other drugs, illegal you bring on a whole host of other problems. You weaken the criminal justice system by adding a huge burden to it. You increase corruption of law enforcement officials. You create an easy source of funding for the most ruthless criminals. You degrade respect in the rule of law by outlawing behaviors that a significant fraction of citizens don't believe should be illegal. You put a huge fraction of citizens outside the law by making them criminals, and thus less willing and able to cooperate with law enforcement (to report other crimes, for example). You degrade the justice system by creating these perverse incentives for law enforcement (e.g. due to asset forfeiture).

From a pragmatic standpoint prohibition of drugs makes no sense, it is not a big aid to society it is a huge, huge loss verging on a catastrophe. The problem is that there are a great many people who believe that a good use of the law is to prevent people from doing bad things to themselves. Whether or not that ideology is seated in the firmament of organized religion it works out to just another form of puritanism. And we've seen the problems that law founded in puritan values brings: repression, subjugation, corruption, abuse of power, witch trials, etc. We're already there today but it's harder to make out the shape of things because we are so thoroughly immersed in it.

<comment><USER7> Perhaps there is the notion that as a society you want to marginalize drug consumption - whatever the cost. You might want to send the message that doing drugs for entertainment purposes isn't a "normal" activity and you prefer to have citizens that look for something else than "having fun".

But there's more to the story...

It's over simplification to say that puritanism is behind entertainment drugs prohibition.

Endemic and widespread drug usage is a real possibility and generally results in a society coming to a halt. A contemporary example is Djibouti and its widespread Khat consumption problem. France, early XXth century had a major issue with Absinthe as well. Older example is China and Opium.

Most of the drugs that are illegal were legal at some point. In the early XXth century you could purchase heroin at the apothecary. This is no longer the case, and that's not just because "doing drugs is bad m'k".

Having drugs illegal makes sure it cannot go beyond a certain point, with counterproductive effects, that's true. But even if it were legal you would have a black market for cheaper/stronger drugs.

No silver bullet...

<comment><USER8> Treating drug users as criminals is definitely wrong. They should be treated like mental patients, but only if their drug use is causing a problem.

<comment><USER7> They're not treated as criminals, worst case scenario they are treated as felons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a daily MR reader, so I like them, but this is classic Libertarian exercise in manipulative framing. Gasoline consumption does, in fact, increase non-linearly with speed at highway speeds. Police departments do have to pay their officers salaries. He could just as easily have written it this way: \- the real cost of gasoline is about $10/G. when you count pollution, military expenditures to protect supply, etc. \- Big Government and lying politicians bring that down to $4 to curry favor with voters \- that means voters drive bigger cars faster than they otherwise would \- that leads to an ethos of unlimited speed \- all of the above leads to highway casualties \- drivers who try to drive responsibly risk being run over by maniacs driving 4K lb behemoths at 80 mph.

Note that the above does not represent my views, but it fits the evidence as well as Tabarrok's take.

<comment><USER10> _Police departments do have to pay their officers salaries_

Yes, but it isn't ethical or good for society to do so by making a law just so that people will break it and get fined. Tying police pay to enforcement actions at any level will result in overzealous enforcement instead of the objectivity we should want from our police.

You're also implying that raising the speed limit in the case being discussed would lead to a higher rate of crashes or injuries but you haven't provided any evidence for that claim. The author did provide evidence showing the opposite.

<comment><USER11> My biggest problem isn't with paying the fine (for example, associated with speeding), it's with the other penalties that come with it. If it was just a fine, I would pay it and be done. I fight every ticket I've gotten because of the increase of the cost of insurance that is associated with it. I got a ticket for 75 in a 70 on the freeway, ticket was $137 (the judge upheld the ticket...), no points but I still got an increase of $30/mo on my insurance for the next 2 years. That's much more than the cost of the ticket.

As for the other point you make, in my state (Michigan), the courts ruled that jurisdictions need to provide a good case for having the speed limit lower than the standard. As soon as that ruling went into effect, most all the streets in town raised their limit to 45mph.

<comment><USER10> It seems to me that jurisdictions should be able to provide a good reason for having the speed limit at all. "It's the 85th percentile speed" is a good reason but simply being "standard" doesn't seem like one to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My pet peeve is the inverse: it seems that police regularly ticket on the freeway where high speeds are safe, but rarely ticket in the city core where speeding is much more dangerous. The difference between a 25mph and a 35mph collision with a pedestrian is that the former probably isn't fatal and the latter probably is.

<comment><USER13> I totally agree. We have the opposite problem as well where I live - <USER2> schools there are zones that are 40km/h (25mph) at certain times in the day, and you see cops around there all the time, nabbing people going 45km/h at 2:02pm, an hour before any school kids will be in the area... If the periods were more sensible (say, spanning the 30 or 45 minutes when kids are being set down and picked up, not two hours on either side) it would make it a lot better, but as it is, it feels more like revenue raising than anything else.

<comment><USER14> The saddest part about school zone enforcement is that the police almost never enforce the speed limit during pick-up and drop-off times because it'd cause traffic tie-ups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law- breakers – and then you cash in on guilt." --Ayn Rand

<comment><USER16> >you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt.

actual modern implementations aren't about guilt, they are more practical - <USER3> selectively enforcing these laws government can target anybody at any moment. There is a saying in Russia - "Given a man, it is always possible to find a law [he's broken]." ("Byl by chelovek, a statya naydettsya" :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another great example of money trumping public safety is red light cameras, it's well known that the best way to reduce intersection fatalities is to increase the time length of the amber light. However if you take the average amber length of a red light camera intersection it is below the average length of non-red light camera intersections.

<comment><USER18> I'd be hesitant to imply causality like that. Red light cameras could be very well placed at high accident intersections as an attempt to reduce accidents. (I'm not claiming their effective at it, but that could be one of many reasons they're placed there.)

<comment><USER19> Several studies show causation.

[http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red- li...](http://beta2.tbo.com/news/nation-world/2008/mar/12/na-red-light- cameras-increase-accidents-usf-study--ar-142340/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm behind this. I'm one of those people that believe an unjust law should be ignored. Its clear that in this instance there is a legitimate reason to ignore this law and a (bad) reason to enforce it (money). However, what baffles me is when there doesn't even seem to be any benefit, and in fact is major liabilities to keeping an unjust law for no real reason other than principle, the example i'm referring to being the "war on drugs".

Sadly, civil disobedience doesn't work any more, remember, if you break the law, hell even if you just disagree with it, you're not a patriot, you're a traitor.

</comment><comment><USER12> My biggest beef with poor speed limits is that we end up teaching our children that "breaking the law is OK." I will eventually teach my children that, but only when they're older and can understand the nuances. I DO NOT want to teach it to a six year old, but that's about the time that they notice that Daddy always breaks the law by driving above the speed limit.

<comment><USER21> "To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt." -Elizabeth Cady Stanton

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> ticket revenue does not go to the police department == solved problem

<comment><USER23> Ticket revenue does not, in general, go to the police department, it goes to the municipality (although the police department is a good chunk of the municipal budget).

There was one case a few years back where a police department stopped writing tickets because the town didn't approve their pay increase. When the town sued they said, "Nobody's speeding!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've argued for a long time now that, regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate at which traffic is flowing — particularly in an "inside lane" — should be a primary offense (that is, behavior that's probable cause for an officer to pull you over). While you may think you're making traffic "safer" by observing the posted speed limit, you're actually increasing the risk to yourself and everyone around you by causing eddies in the flow of traffic as people merge into normally slower- traveling lanes to pass you on the "wrong" side. Those local instabilities in traffic flow significantly increase the likelihood of an accident because they engender unpredictable (or at least less predictable) behavior in your fellow drivers. Yes, traffic probably would be safer if everyone drove at the posted limit, but so long as a significant enough number of people aren't, behavior that complicates traffic flow increases risk for everyone.

(Then again, some of the worst offenders in that regard tend to be the police, themselves, in my experience. I can't count the number of times I've been caught in some huge knot of traffic pacing a cop who's driving two or three MPH _under_ the posted limit, as if he's daring people to pass him...)

Of course, I've also argued for just as long if not longer that one should have to pass a university-level course in fluid dynamics in order to get a driver's license, and I don't see that happening any time soon, either.

<comment><USER25> > regardless of the posted speed limit, driving at a speed lower than the rate > at which traffic is flowing should be a primary offense

One gets tailgated often enough for driving "only" 10 mph over the speed limit. I can only begin to imagine the extremes to which such a short-sighted rule would lead.

<comment><USER24> I can't speak for anyone else, but I use the following rules of thumb to monitor my participation in traffic:

1\. If you have more car-lengths of empty lane in front of you than you do cars backed up behind you, you're impeding the flow of traffic.

2\. If you have no room in front of you and some asshole is tailgating you, he's an asshole.

Exceptions apply, of course — they're only rules of thumb, after all — but they've served me well enough.

<comment><USER26> _If you have more car-lengths of empty lane in front of you than you do cars backed up behind you, you're impeding the flow of traffic._

Bad rule. You're actually _smoothing_ traffic by creating anti-traffic in front of you to absorb minor slowdowns. Drivers who keep distance in front of them are essential to dissolving traffic jams. See <http://trafficwaves.org/trafexp.html> for more details.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for that link - besides potential mass transit solutions, waves are all I think about when stuck in traffic. One thing to note, though, the linked page is wrong on the point that outflow can't be changed from a jam - <USER4> everyone in the jam accelerated as quickly as possible with almost no lag between each other, the entire jam point could move and eventually disperse. This would probably take coordination from networked robot drivers to pull off, though :-) since one slow driver could ruin the whole thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Impersonating Indiana Jones - <AUTHOR> https://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/lamport/pubs/pubs.html#lamport-paxos

<comment><AUTHOR> In my side project of trying to understand Paxos (and variations thereof) on an intuitive level, I came across this piece which describes how Mr. Lamport tried to instill enthusiasm in his students by dressing up as Mr. Jones to describe the fictional Paxon protocol. Unfortunately, he thinks his efforts were in vain (I don't agree).

I don't think I've enjoyed reading any technical papers more than I've enjoyed reading the web of citations connected to The Part-Time Parliament.

I wish more papers used metaphor as a teaching tool -- a wall of dry and condensed text quickly drains my energy.</comment>


Ask HN: Designing Useful Dashboards - <AUTHOR>

I've set myself a side project to scrape and display car hire price data, to compare suppliers and trends.
I've never done this before and my original goal was to play & learn new skills - but the challenge has become displaying this information in a useful way (and storing it in a sensible format).
To make it useful, I'd want to see where the prices for one supplier stand in relation to the others for all cars (a table, easy). But then the change from yesterday/last week would be useful, and seeing trends. And perhaps some stats on how the suppliers differ - is one cheaper than the others in a specific sector?
What are good resources for choosing sensible ways to display and contrast data? I've come across Stephen Few and Edward Tufte, but nothing that gives me an 'Aha!' moment yet. <comment><USER2> Stephen Few's books are the right answer for designing practical, actionable visualizations that a user will learn and use literally all the time. Edward Tufte is the right answer for designing deep, data-filled visualizations in print, and learning the principles to design new things in digital.

Given that you've "come across" the two best resources in the field, I wonder if your lack of an "Aha!" moment is because you're not answering real questions with it.

Stephen Few lists several requirements for a dashboard to be a dashboard, and two of them are timely information and the need to look at it constantly.

Even were this not a side project, I can't imagine "car hire price data" changes minute to minute, nor that you would need to be looking at this data many times an hour and make split-second decisions based on it.

That means you're not designing a dashboard: you're designing a report. And since you don't have a real use case, you're imagining things that might be useful for an unknown user with unknown needs, and that's not how reports or dashboards work. You design a chart to answer a question, not come up with questions to ask based on a chart (we're not talking about ad-hoc visualization for exploration, here).

There isn't going to be one good way to represent all the data at once. Instead, take this to be a report, and produce a chart, graph, trend, etc. for each interesting combination. Start simple, with individual numbers, and work up to complicated contrasts. It's a side project; the only user is yourself. Let that be enough and just learn about data visualization generally.

<comment><USER3> Edward Tufte's web site, [http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/](http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/) is absolutely awful. So much information overload. How is this guy a visualization design expert?

<comment><USER4> Many who are experts in an area are eunuchs, "they know how to do it".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here are some resources I found useful (on top of Tufte):

1\. Work of Alberto Cairo: [http://www.thefunctionalart.com](http://www.thefunctionalart.com). 2\. Searching Pintrest for UI/UX, dashboard, information design related keywords. 3\. Work of Ben Fry and Fathom: [http://fathom.info](http://fathom.info). 4\. Work of Georgia Lupi and Accurat: [http://giorgialupi.net](http://giorgialupi.net) and [http://www.accurat.it](http://www.accurat.it). 5\. Infosthetics Blog: [http://infosthetics.com](http://infosthetics.com). 6\. Work of Gregor Aisch from New York Times: [http://driven-by-data.net](http://driven-by-data.net) 7\. Information Graphics book from Taschen: [http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/04984/f...](http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/design/all/04984/facts.information_graphics.htm)

The last one is a huge brick with many interesting and/or beautiful examples and it also exists as iBook for about $10!

The above resources contain another set of links to great many sources of inspiration...

</comment><comment><USER6> Before looking at arbitrary visualization patterns, have a look at some useful precedents. Truecar, for example, ([https://www.truecar.com/prices- new/honda/fit-pricing/](https://www.truecar.com/prices-new/honda/fit- pricing/)) visualizes similar data in a clean and readable way. Google Flights might be another ([https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=JFK;d=2015-03...](https://www.google.com/flights/#search;f=SFO;t=JFK;d=2015-03-24;r=2015-03-28;a=AA,UA;mc=p)).

There are some visualization patterns that might be useful to you for this exercise, like interactive small multiples ([http://projects.flowingdata.com/tut/linked_small_multiples_d...](http://projects.flowingdata.com/tut/linked_small_multiples_demo/)) to compare suppliers' prices over time. Think a bit about the trends in the data you tease out (as you say, thinks like prices over time and comparing alternatives) and go in search of examples that try to achieve similar goals.

</comment><comment><USER7> Don't know if this post ([http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/data- visualization-mistake...](http://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/data- visualization-mistakes)) can help, but I enjoyed it a lot. I think I can be applied to Dashboards too.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for sharing this, I found this useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So we have been using Geckoboard for our dashboarding needs for almost 3 years now with great success. I think we spend $19 a month and we have enterprise wide visibility to things that matter to us. 80% of the widgets we just use internal pre-built widgets, they have a way to feed in highchart data if they aren't flexible enough.

One thing that I think is important for the dashboards isn't so much the look, but more so the ability to present actionable data that stakeholders can quickly understand and react to.

In a lot of ways we also use the dashboards to hold ourselves accountable. (engineering, media and demand sides of the business). We've built a lot of software to support our organization, but the dashboards have become the most critical.

disclaimer: I'm in the performance-marketing space, so we have a lot of campaigns and moving parts to keep track of. With that said, even being a product-oriented company, I'd still use Geckoboard.

Also I'm in no way affiliated with Geckoboard, just a happy customer.

</comment><comment><USER10> Check: [http://www.feltron.com/](http://www.feltron.com/)

</comment><comment><USER11> How easy is it to implement data into a template dashboard like - [http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0R5L90S](http://wrapbootstrap.com/preview/WB0R5L90S) ??

<comment><USER12> If you have coding experience it should be very easy. Most charts will simply need data in JSON format passed to them. Personally I use Keen.io for storing and querying analytics data. You can get a live URL of an query that can be directly connected to your code. They also have a dashboard template to get you started.

[https://keen.io/docs/data-visualization/](https://keen.io/docs/data- visualization/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not sure if it can be classified as a dashboard, but this one is gorgeous and interesting

[https://aprilzero.com/](https://aprilzero.com/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Which books did you look at exactly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Edward Tufte's whole set, and Stephen Few's online newsletters and articles.</comment></comment>


Valve's DotA2 Tournament Finals will be on ESPN - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2014/07/17/the-international-dota-2-championships-will-be-televised-on-espn-10-8-million-prize-biggest-in-gaming-history/

<comment><USER2> I take it Australians must have Foxtel in order to watch this?</comment>


An End-to-End AutoML Solution for Tabular Data at KaggleDays - <AUTHOR> https://ai.googleblog.com/2019/05/an-end-to-end-automl-solution-for.html <comment><USER2> > Erkut Aykutlug and Mark Peng used XGBoost with creative feature engineering > whereas AutoML uses both neural network and gradient boosting tree (TFBT) > with automatic feature engineering and hyperparameter tuning.

It's hilarious that gradient boosted descent tree beat Google's fancy AutoML- generated neural networks.

<comment><USER3> yes, and i bet they didn't use 2500 CPUs either

<comment><USER4> The first thing is, the Neural Networks are not golden ML algorithm that is working always the best. I'm not surprised to see GBDT methods working better than NN. The NNs are very powerful because they can accept the wide-range of data types (tabular, images, voice) which is not possible with GBDT (maybe not yet).

The second, I think architecture search fo NNs is very inefficient right now. Most of the methods are training new NN in every attempt. There is a lack for method that can start with any NN architecture and grow/prune it dynamically. Take a look at this poster, with dynamic topology adjustemnt for MLP [http://www.ire.pw.edu.pl/~rsulej/NetMaker/icaisc/icaisc_post...](http://www.ire.pw.edu.pl/~rsulej/NetMaker/icaisc/icaisc_poster.pdf)

<comment><USER5> You might like AdaNet that doe's architecture search in one TensorFlow session and seems efficient (at least my use of it).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's a bit of an overstatement to call this an end-to-end solution.

What they are starting with here is a single table of data with all the features already defined and an existing binary label column. Typically when this type of data is collected in the field it is much more fine grained (i.e many observations collected over time) and unlabeled (e.g how do we define a true example? How many false examples do we select?).

The competition description even goes as far to say "We have chosen a dataset that you can get started with easily".

So, yes, this is a cool demonstration of Google's product, but the success in the competition might not extend to the problems real business face when trying to apply ML to a problem like this.

That being said, I do think AutoML can help with these problems as it is extended to handle data that isn't in a single table already.

For example, I'm a developer of a open source library called Featuretools ([https://github.com/Featuretools/featuretools](https://github.com/Featuretools/featuretools)) that tries to automate feature engineering for temporal and relational datasets. Basically, it helps data scientists prepare real world data into the form this competition starts with.

</comment><comment><USER7> Slightly misleading as it wasn't a traditional competition. The same page shows it at about the 75th percentile in "real" ones.

<comment><USER3> still pretty good for almost zero effort on human side

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm interested to know how easy this for regular people (software engineers with just a little knowledge of data science) to use.

This part stands out:

"our team spent most of time monitoring jobs and and waiting for them to finish. Our solution for second place on the final leaderboard required 1 hour on 2500 CPUs"

Before I got to this part, I had assumed using AutoML would involve only reformatting the training/validation data, and then letting a single job run its course. Why does something that's 'automatic' need people to run multiple jobs?

Anyone know why they used CPUs instead of GPUs/TPUs? If they're distributing the computation over 100s of CPUs, then it's clear the computations can be done in parallel.

<comment><USER9> (I'm a researcher in ML/DL.)

> Anyone know why they used CPUs instead of GPUs/TPUs?

Cost and resource availability.

They're distributing each computation on a different CPU, not distributing each computation over multiple CPUs.

It would be faster to have each computation run on a CPU + GPU, but that would be very very expensive, and hard to schedule.

GPUs/TPUs are also only faster for sufficiently large networks and sufficiently large batch sizes. There's a large fixed cost to send data to/from the CPU, and for smaller networks, it's often not worth running it on a GPU. No idea if this was the case here.

<comment><USER10> DOes this 2500-cpu-hr cover the ENTIRE learning process?

Lets even your first run is crap, and you try again with RGB instead of YUV or whatever. So you do 4 runs.

So 10000-cpu-hours replace a week of work of a qualified ML engineer. This is pretty amazing. If i understand correctly.

<comment><USER9> I'm not sure about the exact details, but that's my understanding too. It is very exciting. This is directly replacing a week of work (if not more!) of a qualified ML engineer. Additionally, as all of the experiments are cheap (being run on a single CPU) you can run them on the cheap, interruptible, cloud instances, and it's not the end of the world if you need to restart some experiments.

This is also not mature science- there's still a lot of active research being done on AutoML- so there's still a lot of potential for improvement.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How does these auto ML-solutions (like h2o) work in practice, anyone willing to share their experience?

I wonder how automatic machine learning tools like these will shape the "data science" roles in the future. Obviously, the most cutting edge research will always be done by specialised human experts, but perhaps tools like these will lower the bar required for the bulk of mainstream ML work.

<comment><USER12> Auto ML is great as long as there is some rational on why a particular model is developed. However, in real world applications, there are so many constraints and considerations needed besides just having the most accurate model.

Furthermore, as a VP of data science, selling the business on the value and benefits of data science is non-trivial as many are not even aware of what's capable with data science so my personal opinion is that ML isn't quite suitable for mainstream work. Practitioners still need to have a strong grasp of the business context, data features and nuances, etc. which still is quite technical in nature. Asking a data analyst to build models with auto ML is something I consider to be a leap too far and is risky to put into production. The only way it could work is to have an experienced data scientist supervise.

<comment><USER13> Exactly this. The combination of selling a modeling strategy to higher ups, customizing a model for super weird deployment or resource limitations that exist for political or historical reasons, and all your standard trade-offs vs feature engineering and model selection just means that AutoML (and similar tools) has very little applicability in most product companies.

If you work in Google & you can remove the political blockers & guarantee the model's space of deployed resources is parametrizable with a clean set of parameters that AutoML can consider as part of the optimization, then by all means use it.

That's just decades away from being viable at any given product company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Anthony, can Kaggle make this dataset public or make competition public and enable post-competition submission? It will be beneficial for AutoML research.

</comment><comment><USER14> Does someone know what process they use for feature engineering?

<comment><USER3> from the diagram on that page it looks like it is automated [https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIut- J_oCmI/XNRSSXIyZ3I/AAAAAAAAE...](https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kIut- J_oCmI/XNRSSXIyZ3I/AAAAAAAAEHs/CiJIqr24OrY3srh_1FI2xlugEGvjjV06QCLcBGAs/s1600/image2.png)

<comment><USER14> Yes I would be curious to know more insights on that automated process

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Looks like H20 achieved a score of 0.61312 against Google's 0.61598, just training on a single machine:

[https://twitter.com/ledell/status/1116533416155963392](https://twitter.com/ledell/status/1116533416155963392)

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's just hope this does not become the 'Excel' of the ML space. Then anyone will start 'coding' some godawful models and use them in critical day to day infrastructure ...

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for democratizing ML, but sometime these tools become fully-automatic-high-caliber footguns.

<comment><USER17> Excel is an amazing tool, and if this becomes the Excel of the ML space then it will be a great success

<comment><USER16> The horrors I've seen made in Excel still give me nightmares to this day. It's low barrier to entry is both a blessing and it's curse. But at any level this can be said of any tool under the sun ...

<comment><USER18> One man's horror is another man's only way to get anything done.

I used to be violently anti spreadsheet but have come around to being amazed what people can do with a very limited subset of tools. So instead of looking down upon them (not saying that you are) I admire what non technical people that just want to automate something can do.

Also I think spreadsheets are better than half of the code I've ever written as it is easier to extend without having to delve into the guts of some impossible to understand language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Can automl be replicated outside of google cloud?

<comment><USER19> There are many autoML libraries, however I'm not aware off any that do production-grade neural architecture search.

<comment><USER4> I'm working on AutoML solution, that is available in the cloud ([https://mljar.com](https://mljar.com)). What is more, the core of my AutoML is open source ([https://github.com/mljar/mljar- supervised](https://github.com/mljar/mljar-supervised)) - both are easy to use. The cloud version has user interface so you need just to upload data and do few clicks. You don't need to have programming knowledge. For python package, you need to know how to manipulate data in python (basic numpy and pandas).

I've made many tests of my AutoML solution and I observe that Neural Networks doesn't work the best on tabular dataset (maybe not training long enough, but I dont have 2500CPU hours). I really prefer gradient boosting methods (xgboost, catboost, lightgbm) on tabular data. They are much faster than NN and require less preprocessing (no feature scaling).</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How does my android device know my weather without location perms? - awinter-py I've disabled every location setting I can find on the device, both general location and the specific options to share with google, and it's still giving me weather.<p>Are they just ignoring the setting? <comment><AUTHOR> You are connecting your phone to a wifi spot or honeycomb network around your places, they all have IPs, so IP is enough to tell where u live, not very accurate but enough to figure out many things.

<comment><USER2> It's more accurate to use the MAC address of the Wifi spot. Google was triangulating the locations of Wifi spots and recording their MAC address while taking pictures for Google Maps Street View.

[https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2010/01/24/google-is- wardr...](https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2010/01/24/google-is-wardriving/)

[https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google- wardrivin...](https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-wardriving- how-engineering-trumped-privacy/d/d-id/1104126)

[https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-street- vi...](https://www.darkreading.com/risk-management/google-street-view-pursued- wardriving-by-design/d/d-id/1104110)

[http://transition.fcc.gov/DA-12-592A1.pdf](http://transition.fcc.gov/DA-12-592A1.pdf)

From the FCC report:

> Between May 2007 and May 2010, as part of its Street View project, Google > Inc. (Google or Company) collected data from Wi-Fi networks throughout the > United States and around the world. The purpose of Google's Wi-Fi data > collection initiative was to capture information about Wi-Fi networks that > the Company could use to help establish users' locations and provide > location-based services.

<comment> awinter-py at this point I assume they're collecting more hotspot information from smartphones running G maps vs from cars

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> IP geolocation using external databases that don't require permissions for the Location API.

<comment> awinter-py What does 'don't require permission' mean? I've assumed that when G says in a settings page that I've disabled location upload, that's more or less binding (regardless of whether the location info comes from GPS, wifi, LTE towers, or maxmind).

Have I misunderstood?

<comment><USER4> Yes I think you are misunderstanding what the poster means. When you make a request to an external server, you are giving that server your IP address. There is no way you can stop an external server from them taking your IP and looking up your IP in a geolocation database.

Therefore this kind of location lookup does not require permission.

<comment> awinter-py _I_ can't stop it from doing a location lookup against my IP, you're right. But this is a google service, they can choose to abide by the settings button that I flipped to off. I'm confused by why they aren't.

<comment><USER5> Does such a setting actually exist? I think you're misunderstanding.

<comment><USER6> I think awinter-py means that because they turned off location services, Google should not look up their location by IP and display the weather even if they can.

But yeah, that's not what the location API means.

<comment> awinter-py To be clear, this isn't a third-party weather app -- it's a feature built into android that just appeared one day. There doesn't seem to be a way to turn it off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Celltowers broadcast their location and that is enough to get a pretty good estimate of you location when GPS is disabled.

</comment><comment><USER8> Spying is a big business and paying for forgiveness is a small price to pay over asking for permission.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're running the Google Play Services/Google apps package, you've already lost.</comment>


Open Peeps, a hand-drawn illustration library - <AUTHOR> https://www.openpeeps.com/ <comment><USER2> Always happy to see more of these resources available for FOSS development. The problem with a lot of paid graphics is that they can't be open-sourced, which make them a non-starter for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pablo Stanley is a legend

</comment><comment><USER4> very cool idea!</comment>


McDonalds to use fresh beef - <AUTHOR> https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/something-completely-different-mcdonalds-fresh-beef-130110912--finance.html <comment><USER2> This is terrifying. I'd much rather they use frozen. As someone who heavily relies on freezing/thawing food, the difference in flavor between previously- frozen and never-frozen beef is non-existent (as long as it's not exposed to air or moisture in the freezer).

<comment><USER3> I agree with you. I couldn't tell you when I was eating a fresh hamburger vs one that was previously frozen.

There are potential public health benefits to freezing, but they're not as large as I had thought. For example, the sushi industry has been freezing raw fish for a while in order to get rid of parasitic worms[1]. So I assumed that also worked for bacteria. But the article says that Salmonella survives the freezing/thawing. Live and learn.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/02/436691493/why...](http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/09/02/436691493/why- freezing-didn-t-keep-that-sushi-tuna-safe-from-salmonella)</comment></comment>


Show HN: ForkJoy - Making online menus not suck - <AUTHOR> https://forkjoy.com/city/canada_bc_victoria

<comment><AUTHOR> A team of 4 (now 5) of us have been working on this project for just over a year now. We were able to acquire seed money back in May so that we could work on it full time. We launched in September with a website and iPhone app. We were accepted into an accelerator in Victoria, BC (<http://www.acceleratetectoria.com>) and since then we have launched in Vancouver, BC, hired a co-op student to develop our Android app and today we just launched our first revenue stream.

The premise behind our site is to help people find the best food in their city, not just the best restaurants. We know there have been different variations of this already, but we are making it more comprehensive. Every item on every menu is searchable. You can find exactly what you are craving and then take a look at photos, ratings and comments. From there you can go and check out what else the restaurant that serves that dish has to offer.

Our first revenue stream is "Time Sensitive Deals". We are aiming to help restaurants fill their empty seats during off-peak hours (for example, 2-4PM on a Tuesday). Verified restaurant accounts can post a deal instantly to our site and mobile apps. They can set the times it's valid between, their discount and any rules they might have (not valid on alcohol, 1 per table, etc). This is completely free for them. We make our money by charging our users to buy this deal. For example, a $5 savings would cost our user $0.99. A $10 savings would cost our user $1.99.

We developed ForkJoy in node.js with mongoDB. For search, we use elasticsearch. We will be launching in San Francisco in April with Portland and Seattle following soon after. We also hope to have our Android app in the marketplace close to our SF launch.

We would love to hear your comments, complaints and criticisms.</comment>


Should I Leave My Startup? - <AUTHOR> https://www.jobstart.com/posts/warning-signs-is-it-time-to-leave-your-startup <comment><USER2> Good article and warning signs to look out for when deciding what to do. It sucks being left in the dark.. my last company acted like everything was going great, we would be successful "if we made X amount of sales by X quarters"

Telling your employees one thing and doing another, like the CEO of my last company did, telling us that we were all safe, and then laying me off first, and then everyone soon followed. One thing that most companies don't realize: keeping secrets from your employees is never a good idea.

I get it: A company wants to retain its employees until it can no longer do it, so they are always after their own best interests. I would have rather known up front: "Hey, we aren't doing so well and some of you may be let go" would have been a lot better warning than calling me into an office on a regular day, a Wednesday, and telling me that they need to see me, and refusing to let me go back to my desk afterwards.

I'm lucky I was laid off first.. they even gave me a severance package, while all of my former co-workers had to take the company to court to get their few last paychecks. If they had warning, they all could have been looking for other jobs in advance, but the company only thought about its own interests.

But the article definitely sums up the last company that laid me off.. and then they went under themselves. Another thing to add to that list, however is this:

"Checking in on the competition" and "Keeping up with the latest technology"

IF a startup / company chooses to ignore or even check in on what their competition is doing and really take heed to what they discover ... they are giving their competition the edge and will ultimately fail.

IF a startup / company knows there is better technology that exists or there is an update to the current technology, but refuse to update and/or change it, they are giving other companies the edge and will ultimately fail.

What seemed obvious to me was not so obvious to the company I worked for... I tried to warn my supervisor who assured me he would discuss it with his higher ups... but I'm sure it never happened, is the reason why what otherwise would have been a great company to continue working for (I enjoyed my time there), went out of business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely agree, Matt!

We run our operations with transparency. It takes a lot of loyalty and trust in order to be transparent from a managerial perspective, but if people don't like real data they may not be a fit anyways for the company.

The competition point is more nuanced, I think. It's common among the founder groups to say that worrying about competition is silly. It's exceedingly rare for competition to be the death of a startup -- instead, it's because they often didn't focus on their users well enough or create a viable product/market/biz-model fit.

Thanks for sharing your story Matt. :)</comment></comment>