Photo check deposits - <AUTHOR> http://www.marco.org/2012/04/06/photo-check-deposits <comment><USER2> _Sometimes, new technology is not progress._

Well, the last contact with _checks_ was, IIRC, in the 80's when I saw my mother occasionally using them and they were being phased out at the time already. This was in Europe. So, I don't think any technology to have to do with _checks_ can ever be considered progress.

<comment><USER3> THIS.

As someone from Europe that clunky check-based system of the US is simply dumbfounding. What exactly is the purpose of it? Is there no e-banking available? Over here people rarely even use _banks_ , as in physical entities, anymore.

<comment><USER4> I had some friends in college that had a roommate on an exchange program from Norway, and when they explained to him that we used the moral equivalent of IOUs scribbled on sheets of paper to do a majority of our finance, he thought they must have been making fun of him (as in, telling him things about the US that are false so that he'll make a fool out of himself; to be clear: they did not do that to him).

<comment><USER5> We draw our names in functionally illegible ways on legal documents as authentication, even though we've known it's a broken system for hundreds of years.

Part of the problem is that checks became "free" some years ago but all other alternatives charge fees. Rent is one of the biggest demands for checks, as most landlords don't want to pay Visa or Mastercard (or Paypal or Square or Mint) a percentage of thousands of dollars a month.

<comment><USER4> I feel like this comment was missing the punchline; are you saying that in other countries (where, at least in Norway, apparently even rent is not paid with IOUs scribbled on sheets of paper) checks cost as much as bank transfers, or that bank transfers are free?

(Also, FWIW, in many countries in Europe two-factor authentication is incredibly common, if not expected or even legally required; it is my understanding from some business deals I was a part of that Germany, in particular, is quite the stickler on this front.)

<comment><USER6> In the UK you'd tend to pay rent using Direct Debit, which is an automatic payment from one bank account to another an a certain date each month.

Charges tend to happen if the payer doesn't have sufficient funds to make a payment.

(<http://www.thesmartwaytopay.co.uk/Pages/Home.aspx>)

Or the payer could just do a BACS bank transfer, which again tends to be free.

([http://www.bacs.co.uk/Bacs/Corporate/BacsServices/Pages/Bacs...](http://www.bacs.co.uk/Bacs/Corporate/BacsServices/Pages/BacsServices.aspx))

Cheques are not secure. One well known scam is to order something (imagine for £2000), then overpay by cheque (say £10000). You call the seller, and explain the mistake. You say "Wait for the cheque to clear. When you have the funds could you transfer the extra money (£8000) to our account / bank transfer / etc?". The victim assumes that once the cheque has cleared the money is theirs and it's legit, they don't realise that a bank can (and will) claw-back the money from forged cheques.

The victim is down the product, and £8000.

The scammer has the product, and £8000. And because they used other means of money tranfer there's no way of getting the money back.

<comment><USER4> This is now the second comment I have received on this thread that somehow seems to feel the need to point out that checks are insecure, when in fact a) that is obvious and b) I personally abhore checks (and thereby need no convincing of their ineptitude), and refuse to use them for anything I have control over (including paying contractors: if you require me to send you a check you will not be hired). I am highly confused by this, as my contribution to this thread was "funny anecdote that backs up someone else's comment about how people outside the US realize checks are stupid".

<comment><USER6> Sorry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like USAA's iPhone (or scanner) check deposit. You have to have a credit card or a loan with them, but when you submit a check, you instantly get the money. However, you also have to write a little note with your account number on the back of each check, which could be a pain if you had a stack of checks.

<comment><USER8> You can't get a credit card, loan, or insurance product (and by extension, remote deposit access) without a "military connection". I really wish the breathless USAA cheerleaders that come out of the woodwork all over the Internet every time there is a banking thread would remember to mention this.

<comment><USER9> I'm having trouble getting a reference to USAAs current eligibility information, because their website is a mess of badly named links and what Google finds redirects me to their homepage, but as I understand it pretty much everything under their banking umbrella is now available to everyone, including the credit card and loan stuff, and with it, remote deposit access. That said these breathless USAA cheerleaders should try having actual contentions with them sometime, it's a pretty poor experience reminiscent of news stories you hear about BoA and similar

<comment><USER10> I've been a USAA customer since 1999 and have always had great customer service from them. The most recent instance was about a year ago or so I had several charges I didn't recognize for a few hundred bucks each hit my checking account one morning. They were all for perfume and shoe stores in the UK (I was living in FL at the time). It took about 5 minutes on the phone to get the charges removed and a new card on the way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> On the other hand... I use an online-only bank (Ally) that hasn't enabled phone deposits yet. I've found the Chase app to be pretty lenient about what it accepts (except for the $2k/day limit). I tried to switch to USAA but found out only vets can use the phone deposit.

The Chase phone deposit app is so convenient for me, even given that I live in NYC where I pass 5 Chase ATMs per day, that I keep an account open with a minimum in it to avoid fees, just so I can use the phone deposit app.

Yes, the ATM deposit might be more convenient, when there are no lines, and the ATM isn't broken, and when I actually have a Chase ATM card, which I don't because I don't use them as my regular bank. If you're trying to min/max your banking experience then the Chase app is pretty nice to use as a funnel for money to other accounts.

<comment><USER12> Agreed. I keep a Chase account just for the convenience of phone deposits. I have an ATM right across the street and have never used it.

Phone deposit has only failed me a couple of times but these seemed like back end type issues, tried again the next day and it worked fine.

What other banks allow for phone deposits ?

<comment><USER7> Paypal has an iPhone app that can do mobile deposit, but it takes up to six days to process.

<comment><USER13> PayPal isn't a bank per-se.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you have the check, it's true, sometimes photo deposits are less convenient. But if all you have is an image of the check, it's awesome.

Say I wanted to send money to my sister. Before this I had to actually mail a check, or worse, pay for a wire transfer. Now I can just send an image of a check via email, and she'll have access to the money before a mailed check would have arrived.

No third party brokers the transaction, and nobody extorts any fees (be they for postage, sending the wire, or receiving the wire).

The trick is to use this to enable things that just aren't possible at the bank branch or ATM.

</comment><comment><USER15> I completely disagree. I absolutely love digital deposits. Unfortunately I have Bank of America who is incredibly slow at implementing this but I use the same feature on the PayPal app as a way to get around not having it with BOA. I've seriously considered switching to Chase just for this feature. I hate going to the bank. PayPal limits you to $1,000 a month which is pretty annoying but is still way better than nothing. It's nice to have when you get checks for a few hundred dollars and it's not worth going to the bank for. I've never had one check rejected. I just really wish BOA would implement this already.

</comment><comment><USER16> This experience sounds specific to the "PC Deposit" implementation by Chase and if it's how they have educated their customer like the author, I am worried:

1\. A check never "clears" the same day. The check may post the same day but they take at-least 3 business days to clear. This is because all checks I am aware of use the ACH in the U.S.

2\. You are _never_ supposed to "destroy the paper check". Most institutions recommend you hold onto it for at-least 90 days.

3\. It's really a challenge to OCR a check photographed by a iPhone unless the lighting conditions are absolutely perfect. Hence, it's better to ask the customer to use a scanner if that's available, but if not, _only_ then suggest using a phone camera.

I almost exclusively use Alliant and DCU for my check depositing needs and am yet to have any issues. They do require me to use a scanner for best results, but scanning a check takes me less than a minute and I am able to import it into GNUCash as well.

Neither do I have to obsessively check if my deposits cleared, I get emails automatically about the status.

I will never go back to an ATM, unless "I need money now" and there are no places around that will take plastic.

Photo deposits is part of the future I want to be part of: I want to be part of a future where regular banking is done online allowing me to focus my time on things I like better.

</comment><comment><USER17> PayPal will have this same photo check deposits soon. Also fun fact, your PayPal account is actually a Chase bank account. Read the back of your PayPal card. I frequently go to Chase to withdraw money from PayPal with no fee and no wait time.

</comment><comment><USER18> > _Sometimes, new technology is not progress_

You like ATM deposits? That's great. Other people prefer digital deposits. The cool thing about technology is that we have a _choice_.

<comment><USER19>
      > You like ATM deposits? That's great. Other people
      > prefer digital deposits.

I think that you're missing the point of the article. The point of the article is that it's supposed to be 'the future,' but the experience is horrible compared to the ATM. Just because it's 'on the iPhone' isn't enough to make it a better experience.

<comment><USER20> No, _his_ experience was horrible. I've used the exact sane app for small miscellaneous deposits and haven't had 1/10 the problems Marco had. The Chase app isn't perfect, but it works in a pinch. If only we had his problem of not being able to deposit more than 5k/day...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Seems like we all agree that USAA is awesome.

In regards to him having trouble scanning checks with Chase: that sounds like a problem with Chase's implementation, not the technology as a whole.

I have been using USAA's online service as my _only_ form of check deposit for 5 years (started with flatbed scanner, now iphone). I have _never_ had a check refused. Hundreds of them have gone through (have to re-take the photos sometimes, but they always eventually work). It works, and it works really well.

</comment><comment><USER22> Agree USAA is awesome.

FWIW, you should always endorse your checks.

</comment><comment> X-Istence I've used the Chase app for depositing a multitude of checks and after the first two or three times I got down exactly how it wanted me to take the picture and it was extremely easy and convenient. I haven't had a check that wasn't accepted.

After that I've kept the checks in an envelope after writing (cashed) on the back so that I know they were deposited.

The convenience and ease of use is fantastic. I really wish my other bank (ING Direct) would support something similar.

</comment><comment><USER23> Alternative experience: I've deposited about 60 checks lifetime through the app over the last year or so, and literally had it fail twice the first few times I used it, then they updated it and it has only failed once since. So I mean, ~57/60 successes on first try, and 100% overall success ain't bad. I LOVE this app (and generally hate Chase otherwise...)

</comment><comment><USER24> I think this is kind of a ridiculous claim. I have deposited checks twice with PNC Bank's app and both times it took only a minute or two to complete and I didn't even have to leave the house. Neither were rejected. Just because Marco's bank's iPhone app sucks doesn't mean that the technology isn't there. Marco better than anyone should know that it is.

> _Sometimes, new technology is not progress._

How about – _Sometimes, technology sucks._

</comment><comment><USER25> i have similar feature with smaller credit union. similar steps involved, but their tool is just more thought through and somehow their app able to recognize bad shot and ask to redo one. so far it was easiest way to deposit for me.

tl;dr; this is bad implementation, not idea/technology.

</comment><comment><USER26> E*Trade supports this now too. So far I've done a couple of checks and it worked fine.</comment>


Postmortem: Outage due to Elasticsearch's flexibility and our carelessness - <AUTHOR> http://lambda.grofers.com/2015/12/14/postmortem-of-our-app-downtime-elasticsearchs-flexibility-bites/ <comment><USER2> It's not the first time I read about service (near) outages and post mortem that involve ElasticSearch. It's marketed as NoSQL solution, but some devs don't read the details in the documentation like "Elasticsearch is _not_ schema-less".

Knowing Lucene and its index structure for years, I wouldn't advise to use a Lucene database as primary storage. Always keep the original data at least in a log-queue or in a separate database - so that you can rebuild the Lucene database.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. We don't use it as a primary database as well. In fact, all of our data persists in PostgreSQL. However, a smart thing for us to do would have been using PostgreSQL as a fallback (postgis for spatial queries, something that we heavily do with Elasticsearch).

Obviously incidents like such have made us cautious and we will be working on fixing these architectural issues quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very interesting article, and a few lessons learned. And very well written. I feel like I can feel the tenseness in the team when you are debugging and searching for a solution under stress :)

Just wanted to tip you off to what I assume is a typo:

      But lack of automated regression testing would have caught this issue.

I understand what you mean, but if you mean that literally then that is indeed a new and interesting paradigm in software testing :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I might be missing something. But to my understanding I think it is correct. I didn't quite get what you exactly mean by that? Educate me please.

To explain myself, I meant that tests that were succeeding previously would have failed due to this issue if we had tests written for it. Does my statement not convey this?

<comment><USER4> Original statement:

> But lack of automated regression testing would have caught this issue.

Your question:

> To explain myself, I meant that tests that were succeeding previously would > have failed due to this issue if we had tests written for it. Does my > statement not convey this?

No. The sentence says that the _lack_ (i.e. not having) tests would have caught the issue. If you remove 'But lack of', the sentence makes sense ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> Impatience at times is root of so many things going wrong. The thing I read again and again and again and failed to see.

Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Excellent write up! Would configuring ES to alert instead of silently default type on new fields have helped ?

"dynamic": "strict" [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/...](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/guide/current/dynamic- mapping.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes it would have. But as I said in one of the other comments, they are doing something about this in 2.x releases. And this reference is from 2.x release's documentation.

Wish we had it back then. We are currently on 1.4.

<comment><USER5> Got it. Thanks again for the write up and the time taken to respond to all comments!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is something we encountered at Snowplow with our real-time loading of events into Elasticsearch [1]. It's not an issue for us because we schema all our events, but it was interesting to observe. Here's a summary in one slide:

[http://www.slideshare.net/alexanderdean/snowplow- analytics-f...](http://www.slideshare.net/alexanderdean/snowplow-analytics- from-nosql-to-sql-and-back-again/27?src=clipshare)

[1] [https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/tree/master/4-storage/k...](https://github.com/snowplow/snowplow/tree/master/4-storage/kinesis- elasticsearch-sink)

</comment><comment><USER7> Really awesome to read such a nice writeup of an error. It got me tangentially thinking about why we do not read stuff like:

When the patient was brought in, he was barely breathing. Due to the spots on his face, we assumed it was X. Then we made an incision in his pelvis to fix Y. Suddenly, he died. Gosh, we _really_ should have kept an eye on the meter in the corner!

I understand things like litigation, but it makes me wonder to what extent we are being limited in medical achievements. From my outsider point of view, it seems that post mortems (ha!) are not used as much in the medical field other than for insurance / legal reasons.

<comment><USER8> Doctors absolutely do this:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morbidity_and_mortality_conf...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morbidity_and_mortality_conference)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You've got what appears to be a vestigial comment in your article. It reads:

        (add more details here)

But it looks like you've got plenty of details. Just thought I'd let you know ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Precisely why you need review processes ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > The values for field price in products mapping and the values for field > price in promotions mapping (in the same index) will essentially be added to > the same list at Lucene Segment level. And it will not fail or throw an > exception.

Probably a stupid question but why can't ElasticSearch translate both mappings into something like, "products_price", and "promotions_price" before adding to the 'list'?

<comment><AUTHOR> Something I wondered too. But I think in the 2.x versions, they are already planning something around it. Honestly, I have not looked at it much yet but even creating another mapping with the same field name but different type should perhaps throw a warning or not be allowed unless overridden as they lead to things like these.

<comment><USER11> In 2.x, all fields must adhere to the same data type or you will get a failure [1]. To quote:

      Fields with the same name, in the same index, in different types,
      must have the same mapping

So hopefully this isn't an issue anymore! I do strongly suggest (and we've done this from the beginning) that no one rely on elasticsearch's auto mapping and that you should explicitly map your fields.

[1] -- [https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/curr...](https://www.elastic.co/guide/en/elasticsearch/reference/current/breaking_20_mapping_changes.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes you are right. In fact, a simple work around, before Elasticsearch coming out with this feature in their 2.x releases, was to review mappings and what goes in Elasticsearch. And we got careless about that and shot ourselves in the foot. We learned it the hard way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is for this reason Elasticsearch 1.x advocates using 'copy_to' on mapping attributes that may encounter collision. Elasticsearch 2.x explicitly throws exception whenever it detects mapping collision.

</comment><comment><USER13> I ran into the same issue on one of our apps too. Nice to see it written down so thoroughly!

</comment><comment> mh- nice writeup.. it strikes a good balance between tech details and narrative.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure I understand the topic correctly, are you referring to carelessness in Elasticsearch or on your own behalf?

<comment><USER15> Their own

<comment><AUTHOR> Correctly pointed out. Perhaps calls for an edit.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: CrimeStream – Tulsa's police dispatch calls mapped out in realtime - <AUTHOR> http://tulsacrimestream.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice work.

I live in Stillwater, but come to Tulsa often. I'd like to buy you coffee if we're ever in the same town at the same time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I actually went to OSU! Get at me on twitter if you're ever in Tulsa and would like to meet up. @willem_jr

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice work! It'd be nice I think to be able to zoom out a bit for perspective.

<comment><AUTHOR> I suppose I can allow a couple more zoom levels. I'm just trying to limit my requests to mapbox as much as possible since this is all out of my pocket

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for putting the source up [0]. I need to work with leaflet.js and mapbox so this will be a useful reference.

[0][https://github.com/baudday/crimestream](https://github.com/baudday/crimestream)

</comment><comment><USER5> I assume "Alarm - Intrusion" is just a burglary alarm activation. Why is that considered "serious"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I get the descriptions from the police department's data and attempt to make general classifications based on those descriptions. An alarm, while not always serious, can be serious. Without knowing more about the incidents I have no way to determine if an alarm is false or not so I just display them all as serious. It may be worth creating a separate classification for alarms

<comment><USER5> The _vast_ majority of automatic alarm activations are false alarms (whether it's police or fire).

I don't know anyone in emergency services who would consider an automatic alarm activation a "serious" incident. They're more of an annoyance...</comment></comment></comment>


YC Result Announcement is Today OMG Moment - <AUTHOR>

I'm too tensed! After attending Startup School 2012, I believe this, YC is the perfect platform and stakes to get in are higher! :D
If I get in for the interview I am going to dance like crazy! Though the flight is 20 hours long from Pakistan but its worth it! :P
Best of Luck to everyone and Kudos! Remember, if you get rejected, just don't give up on your dreams. <comment><USER2> Same will be with me.. If i get in... I will dance like crazy.... and its a 22 hours flight from India.. But its worth it :P

<comment><AUTHOR> Best of Luck!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Has anyone heard anything yet?? I've been waiting like crazy, checking my email every 5 mins.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone gets to know about results getting announced, post here please. Thanks</comment>


Lost Pig - <AUTHOR> http://grunk.org/lostpig/

<comment><USER2> Quote: _Grunk think that pig probably go this way. It hard to tell at night time, because moon not bright as sun. There forest to east and north. It even darker there, and Grunk hear lots of strange animal. West of Grunk, there big field with little stone wall. Farm back to south._

Orc English really bad bad. Me prefers to spare me self that pain.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think I saw this played as a group at Fig Boston. The audience would shout out commands and someone at the front would type them it. They had people voicing the characters. Its worked out much better than expected, people were laughing.

Its amazing how much better these games (now known as interactive fiction) have gotten since Zork or Planetfall. Its much better at understanding what you type.

And google shows that the lost pig was the game played live: [http://bostonfig.com/interactive-fiction/](http://bostonfig.com/interactive- fiction/)

</comment><comment><USER4> In case anyone else overlooks it, this will take you directly to a playable- in-browser version of the game:

[http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if-a...](http://iplayif.com/?story=http%3A//mirror.ifarchive.org/if- archive/games/zcode/LostPig.zblorb)

(Driven by Parchment[1], which is truly awesome and let's you play tons of different IF games!)

[1]: [https://code.google.com/p/parchment/](https://code.google.com/p/parchment/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I used this game to intro kids to command-line usage in a recent Linux-for- kids class I taught. Worked wonders.

Once they were comfortable with the IF parser, moving to CLI was much easier.

<comment><USER6> That's a pretty cool idea! Perhaps I should try that out myself with my classes.

Maybe someone could make an IF game specifically around learning the CLI?

<comment><USER7> That be tried. Was advertised HN maybe last year.

I paid (and got money back no asking) one attempts. Cannot remember name.

edit: style match topic

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I played this months ago. It's a highly entertaining game that serves as a great introduction to text-based games (formally called Interactive Fiction).

<comment><USER9> Pretty sure formerly "text-based games" got relabeled "interactive fiction"

Lost Pig has one more than a couple of IF related awards.

IF is a great addition to tablets when traveling -- light weight, lots of options, a nice compliment to books (kindle app or otherwise).

<comment><USER10> > _Pretty sure formerly "text-based games" got relabeled "interactive > fiction"_

That's what GP said. He wrote "formally", not "formerly" ;).</comment></comment></comment>


Beyond the pixel plane: sensing and learning in 3D - <AUTHOR> https://thegradient.pub/beyond-the-pixel-plane-sensing-and-learning-in-3d/ <comment><USER2> This is an exciting time for those of us working on computational geometry to better understand 3D shapes across many industries.

In addition to the architectures mentioned in this great overview, I'm excited to see progress on spectral and geodesic CNNs for graphs and manifolds. Check out this other fantastic source for info on 3D ML: [http://geometricdeeplearning.com](http://geometricdeeplearning.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> This is a great overview. Also checkout CS 468 from Stanford, [http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs468-17-spring/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/courses/cs468-17-spring/) "Machine Learning for 3D Data"

Also, if you want to work on this stuff full time- [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17649726)

<comment><USER4> Super cool course! Thanks for the link!

Do you know what are the most precise programmable RGB-D cameras a non- professional can buy? I was trying to extract 3D information just from a single camera via 3D convolutions and RNNs (for a self-driving car project) and would like to play with real 3D a bit as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> (I wrote the original article)

I've been playing around with a few and I'd recommend the Orbbec Astra and the Intel RealSense (the new D435 is what I've been using) as decent but cheap cameras if you want to get started! The Asus Xtion PRO LIVE is also quite good but since it's been discontinued it's pretty hard to find.

The Stereolabs ZED relies on stereo vision but produces a similar output as traditional RGB-D cameras, and I've heard good things about it as well!

<comment><USER5> Any idea if the iPhone X surfaces RGBD from the TrueDepth camera?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes! Haven't had a chance to play around with it but I've been wanting to. See AVDepthData: docs at [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avdep...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avdepthdata) and reference implementation for streaming depth at [https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/camer...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/cameras_and_media_capture/streaming_depth_data_from_the_truedepth_camera)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What about pose estimation? e.g. Given a well defined coordinate system, like the origin is the nose on a face, determine the pose of the face. Is this still best done with classic optimization formulations like ransac/ICP and a supplied model, or have these been bested by learned models somehow?

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't think it's exactly what you're talking about (I'm sure there are other works much closer to what you have in mind, just can't recall off the top of my head) — but you might find PoseNet ([https://www.cv- foundation.org/openaccess/content_iccv_2015/p...](https://www.cv- foundation.org/openaccess/content_iccv_2015/papers/Kendall_PoseNet_A_Convolutional_ICCV_2015_paper.pdf)) interesting. Not explicitly 3D, but estimates where in a large-scale scene a picture was taken using an end-to-end convolutional network.

With that said, I think there's still a ton of merit in classical geometric approaches like ICP — there's a real, geometric basis to why they work. Convolutional networks can demonstrate some pretty amazing results, but they're still mostly "black boxes" to us, and a consequence of this is that it's hard to understand why they work and predict when they'll fail. This blog post (by the PoseNet author, actually) articulates the viewpoint well: [https://alexgkendall.com/computer_vision/have_we_forgotten_a...](https://alexgkendall.com/computer_vision/have_we_forgotten_about_geometry_in_computer_vision). One recent research direction that I personally find really fascinating is designing deep learning architectures around real geometric properties, e.g. as in Skydio's deep stereo work: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04309.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.04309.pdf)

<comment><USER7> PoseNet on Tensorflow.js does nice head tracking. One can get rough head pose from nose/eyes/ears. but it's crufty.

[1] Web-browser demo: [https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs- models/demos/posenet/cam...](https://storage.googleapis.com/tfjs- models/demos/posenet/camera.html) [2] Github: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs- models/tree/master/posene...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tfjs- models/tree/master/posenet)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Has any progress been made towards single view 2D -> 3D inference?

<comment><USER9> yes, a ton! I think the latest exciting work is pixel2mesh: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01654](https://arxiv.org/abs/1804.01654) ; can follow citations in their for other relevant recent work.</comment></comment>


SEC Filings for Humans - <AUTHOR> http://rankandfiled.com/#/

<comment><USER2> Any thoughts on the difficulty / unreliability of the XBRL data used to generate the financials?</comment>


A team of researchers at MIT has developed self-shading windows - <AUTHOR> http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/4229.html <comment><USER2> Didn't know that electrons move fast but ions move slower, and that's the cause for more-than-minutes responses time from previous technology.</comment>


Lucky iron fish - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish

<comment><USER2> [http://www.luckyironfish.com/](http://www.luckyironfish.com/) lets you donate them if you're that way inclined.</comment>


Sea Pirates Hacked Shipping Company to Plan Attacks, Find Valuable Cargo - <AUTHOR> http://news.softpedia.com/news/sea-pirates-hacked-shipping-company-to-find-valuable-cargo-501268.shtml <comment><USER2> "The hacker lacked talent, was easily discovered Fortunately, the hacker wasn't that skilled. Verizon says that the attacker used a Web shell that didn't support SSL, meaning that all executed commands were recorded in the Web server's log."

Yeah, easily discovered AFTER they already got the loot...

<comment><AUTHOR> And punished ... by blocking his IP address.

I'd say the percentages are pretty good here.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> @dang: I just realised this is a 2016 story, title adjustment?</comment>


Google praises Microsoft's HTML 5 contribution  - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmica.info/2009/09/google-praises-microsoft.html

<comment><USER2> The actual feedback given by Microsoft: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2009Aug/0389...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2009Aug/0389.html)

Best part, the first piece of feedback was "It's not clear why these new elements in particular are necessary."

KISS, M$. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's amazing how many reprints this blog-item is getting, considering that the original source material was only a single ambiguous sentence: [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2009Sep/0049...](http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public- html/2009Sep/0049.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Original article on WHATWG blog: <http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in- html5-episode-35>

</comment><comment><USER5> To me, the most striking thing about this is that the HTML 5 spec is that 'no man or woman has given substantial feedback before' (to paraphrase). HTML is critically important to the infrastructure of the web and you'd expect an army of people publishing reasoned critical feedback.

<comment><USER6> Er, that's no man or woman _from Microsoft_ , no?

<comment><USER5> <http://blog.whatwg.org/this-week-in-html5-episode-35> states:

"Adrian Bateman did what no man or woman had ever done before: he gave substantive feedback on the current editor's draft of HTML5 on behalf of Microsoft."

OK, so apparently I misread that. Does that justify a -1 down mod?</comment></comment></comment>


Moscow Passenger Plane Makes 'Miraculous' Crash-Landing in Cornfield - <AUTHOR> https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/15/moscow-passenger-plane-makes-miraculous-crash-landing-in-cornfield-a66855 <comment><USER2> It was an Airbus, so at least it was at less risk from breaking-up on a hard landing and killing passengers.

[https://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/2010/12/16/al- jazeera-w...](https://blog.seattlepi.com/aerospace/2010/12/16/al-jazeera- whistleblowers-records-question-boeing-737-safety/)</comment>


California doctors see more deaths from suicide than coronavirus since lockdowns - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/california-doctors-say-theyve-seen-more-deaths-from-suicide-than-coronavirus-since-lockdowns <comment><USER2> This is incorrect. In fact, suicides are down for Contra Costa County compared to last year and there are fewer suicide deaths than Cornonavirus deaths[1].

[1] [https://twitter.com/SalHernandez/status/1264320286733697024?...](https://twitter.com/SalHernandez/status/1264320286733697024?s=20)</comment>


Scooter Brand Prix Revs Up in Race to Stay on Streets of Paris - sneeze-slayer https://www.wsj.com/articles/scooter-brand-prix-revs-up-in-race-to-stay-on-streets-of-paris-11565691638?mod=rsswn <comment><AUTHOR> As someone who frequently uses E - scooters in a major European city i can see both sides to the argument on rather or not the6y should be banned. While they are convenient, there is minimal supervision in terms of following regulations and they are dumped around the city. That being said, they are fun and make getting around a city a lot easier, especially if trams are delayed or busy.</comment>


Game Development: You Need $100,000 - <AUTHOR> http://whatgamesare.com/2011/04/you-need-100000-game-development.html#more

<comment><USER2> In addition to the fully-loaded cost of programmers being substantial, you also have huge budgets for asset creation: art/animation/music/etc. Asset creation is _expensive_. It also depreciates straight off a cliff: the core audience will see it as novel for a period measured in weeks, days, or even _hours_ in some pathological cases.

Many non-game applications have an adoption curve which looks something like the sales graph on BCC (100x now what it was at launch) or the famous YC "gradual adoption, spike, trough of sorrow, plateau, steady growth, traction" narrative. Games almost universally have a big spike at lunch, declining sales through the launch window, and then they fall off a cliff and _never recover_. The exceptions to this rule are so rare that even non-gamers know their names. My mom remembers Starcraft. You will not be Starcraft.

This greatly complicates post-launch marketing, iterating towards a game design which achieves fit with what customers will pay for, etc. (The ability to do that is one reason why social games work so well... that and fixing "our industry has no effing clue how to do customer acquisition" with copious helpings of spam spam spam your friends.)

<comment><USER3> It doesn't seem to apply to dwarf fortress or minecraft.

<comment><USER4> Obviously. But you will not be Starcraft, Dwarf Fortress, nor Minecraft. :)

<comment><USER5> I don't know what the GP was specifically referring to, but one of those things is not like the other. If the GP was talking about lo-fi or procedural assets, then Starcraft doesn't fit in there, as it required a significant investment in asset creation. If the GP was talking about the kind of slow growth and relying on a sort of "long tail" of fans, Starcraft also doesn't make sense since it was a big budget game following several other hits from an established studio.

If you just mean that your game won't be a hit, that's a risk no matter what you invest in it, whether it's long nights in your free time or a 100 developers and artists and several years.

But I think Dwarf Fortress and Minecraft are examples of breaking out of the mold of big AAA titles laden with creative assets and a heavy script, which are closer to interactive movies than DF and Minecraft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> We run into this a few years ago. We spend around 25k euro (2 guys living in starved artist mode for over a year) and then released because we couldn't risk taking any further credit. We had a working game and it was even some fun - but everyone playing it immediately noticed the parts still missing. And it was pointless, people knew what to expect of that kind of game (a 3d-racer) and so it never had a chance to sell.

But there is one more thing - we would have gotten a lot further with a second game. That year was mostly spend on doing the base technology and also learning to do a complete large game on my own (I had done a bunch of trivial games before and worked a few years on big titles with teams in companies - but never did a big title completely on my own before). So not sure if that $100000 rule is still valid for the second title.

</comment><comment><USER7> I completely disagree with this article. Not too long ago, many in the game industry probably would have said you needed a million to make a game; now, mobile development and indie console development have changed people's perspective. That still doesn't mean that the cost for a studio like Rovio to make a game is the minimum.

Making a game for cheap requires realistic expectations and constraints. You're not going to hit every platform, you're not going to have AAA graphics, and you're not going to have 100 levels. That doesn't mean you can't have a compelling experience.

You can make a polished, successful game with two people and a couple weeks of work, if those people are experienced and you pick the right platform. Canabalt (<http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/>) is an excellent example of this. One developer did the coding, art, and sound. Another developer did the music. The Flash version only took a week to make. When that version was a wild success, a third developer ported it to iOS, which took a couple more weeks.

There are numerous examples of this throughout the indie games community. It takes a smart, experienced designer to make a successful game with such reduced scope, but it can be done.

</comment><comment><USER8> Non game developers consistently underestimate the cost of making a game but not all games cost $100,000. A better metric would be man hours or man months since not all areas of the world garner US/Europe scale wages. Fruit Ninja certainly cost less than Angry Birds and made a healthy profit (allegedly).

I agree with the article that the money/time gets you to the point where you can polish the game. Angry birds is not the most innovative game but it's level of polish and crucially it's approachability certainly took half of the budget to create.

As an indie it's hard to step back and fund that level of consistency but it needs to be done.

<comment><USER9> The guy who made Gratuitous space battles keeps a blog, and from what I remember he contracted out the art for less than 10 grand and sunk over a year into development. We could claim it took 100K or more to make but I definitely agree man hours is the more important metric.

<comment><USER10> A year of a dev's time is probably worth at least 90k.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm assuming that this article is catered towards ppl intending to be game developers, or ppl wanting to make a game by hiring a bunch of developers.

if you count in man-hours, then yes it's into the 100ks.

going from the single indie developer perspective,

assume you pay yourself $100/hour game takes 4 months to develop total cost is 100$ * 120 days * 10 hours/day = 120,000 $

the cost for game assets have not even been included!

but no indie developer I know take these costs into account. Who actually cares about sweat dollars? If two-three people sit in room, code+draw for 4 months straight taking ramen noodles, launch and make millions off the game on iOS, they're not going to tell you "We spent $120k of our own money+time". Instead they'll say "We spent 4 months furiously making the game, living off ramen noodles in mom's basement"

in summary, the development cost could be either be close to zero, or $100k.

if you're hiring a team, yes prepare to splash $100k, but if you go indie, get some good game dev friends, and absorb all costs!

<comment><USER12> _launch and make millions off the game on iOS_

Remember, making millions is not guaranteed at the end of the journey. Even if you put in the right amount of polish and you've got a great game, there's still no guarantee that you'll be a hit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> > _Some of my clients are surprised when I tell them that the development of > Angry Birds cost $140k... because they physically cannot see where the money > has gone... They can't see the dead ends, the prototypes and the endless > revisions that got Angry Birds to the point that it became brilliant._

This is not an Angry Bird specific problem. The exact same thing applies to any polished software that appears simple and intuitive. A good example is Things by Cultured Code and a permanent trickle of complaints in AppStore reviews that an app that simple must not be costing that much. People just fail to realize that simplicity does not come naturally, it's a fruit of a long, laborious and exhausting process.

</comment><comment><USER14> Just as a reference point, in this article [[http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders- product...](http://whatgamesare.com/2011/02/you-need-four-coders- production.html)] the argument is made that you need four coders to make a game.

I think formula being followed for these articles lends them to being a little...exaggerated. (You NEED X to make a game)

I successfully shipped an XBLA game with one other programmer on my team. It took us 14 months, and we delivered on time, in scope, and on budget.

We had two designers writing scripts, so I _guess_ you could say we had four coders, but there was a vast gap in programming talent there. I had to go back through near ship and rewrite most of the scripts to fix all the bugs.

What you need, is to be smart about how you work (make tools to make making the game easier) and be realistic about what you can accomplish in your given budget/time frame.

I'm not saying gamedev is easy, it's hard, and it takes nearly as long to polish the game as it does to get it up and running. But there are so many target markets out there at this point that saying something like you need 100k/4 coders/100 hours of gameplay is foolish.

</comment><comment><USER15> Braid (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braid_%28video_game%29>) is a great example: "During the game's three years of development, Blow put about US$200,000 of his own money into its development, most going towards hiring of David Hellman for artwork and for living expenses."

</comment><comment><USER16> Game design is really its own beast, I'd say separate (but overlapping) from typical customer development / MVP processes. Making something fun is incredibly hard, let alone marketing, distributing, and profiting from it.

</comment><comment><USER17> A few years ago I'd make an argument that the indie game market is slowly turning things around in this battle of attrition, but now I'd say they are not only encroaching on the lunacy but helping to fuel it.

Don't get me wrong, there will (knock on wood) always be cheaply made gems popping up every year, but it really seems like there are more and more wolves in indie game developer clothing trying to cash in on the robust and evolving indie market--look no further than what Xbox is doing with the Summer of Arcade, those are some very well polished/well oiled professional products (Should Bastion really be considered Indie?), and some even have that indie charm we all love.

</comment><comment><USER18> Games are a business with a very old model. They are sold the same way movies and music and books have been sold for decades, and the initial release provides instant feedback on the games success.

That being said, I wonder if games might be prepped for disruption. A big part of any polished game is user testing. How do we know its fun? We watch people play and see if they have fun.

Well, with the advances made in web analytics and the possibilities that graphics acceleration offers in modern (or maybe future) browsers, I could see studios and publishers selling games around a more iterative process.

An approach that finds the minimum fun experience and iterates from there could work very well on the web. Games like Asteroids and Missile Command do not need the polish others describe to be engaging, and then hosts of new features can be added over time to make such games more engaging. Add in the fact that web-based business models for games have proven recurring revenue through micro transactions can be very viable, and I think there could be a lean approach to game development.

<comment><USER19> You mean, some kind of closed beta approach?

<comment><USER18> The Minecraft example was a decent one. What I really mean is a game that is discovered more organically than through the hype process that most games go through when they launch. Sort of how like lean startups grow.

Some people will be turned off by the earliest form of the game, but there are always more clicks to be had and leans startups using MVPs have to deal with this too. The key is to be learning about how to improve the fun factor every release.

As the game continues to improve, the user base will continue to grow. I'm not totally convinced that this could only apply to mmorpg's, but I'm willing to concede that it seems like the best genre to attempt this and to apply the microtransactions model.

<comment><USER20> I'd be very surprised if _ANY_ MMORPG didn't constantly iterate as you describe (all the current major ones do, at least), and virtually all multiplayer games allow for balancing at the very least.

The problem is that most single-player games are finite. Once people have completed them, they're done. Replayability is something comparatively few people can stand for any length of time, especially in a crowded market. Add the problem of an exceptionally short tail for most games (20-50% of total sales in the first month would not be atypical) and the value of updating the mechanics of your single-player game becomes much less valuable. Best to make another game in the series that improves all those flaws.

A few exceptions, all indie games: Minecraft, Eufloria and Darwinia. All of these have had major updates to gameplay over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If development cost is related to size, this 3D shooter game (a technology demonstrator, if you will) is about 100kB: <http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger>

100kB including graphics.

Uses procedural texture creation. The group also made available the tool they used for generating those textures.

<comment><USER22> It's not about the filesize, you have to polish/test/revamp/art/music/code.

I have only done 2d games small games and saw how hard it was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've created many games for a total dollar cost of $0. It can be done. Yes it requires using your time, but the opportunity cost is not necessarily in foregoing paid work hours, but rather less time spent watching TV, going to sporting events, going to movies, etc. all of which have their own cost and thus you in a sense save money by not doing them. Not all games have to be huge. Not all games require graphics, or fancy graphics. Or sound. Not all games have to be 3D. It only has to be a game. If you have the right skill set the whole thing can be made by a single passionate, driven person. Minecraft is the recent "mainstream fame" example but was not the first and likely not the last.

</comment><comment><USER24> Great post, I think the biggest problem with developing games is that it's very easy to have an idea and say "this would be a great game!", but very hard to actually execute. Many people get started only to see the long climb ahead and stop.

</comment><comment><USER25> I imagine if you're the programmer-designer and hire recent university grads, current students, or young people in underdeveloped countries for the assets, you could get away with a lot less than $100,000.

</comment><comment><USER26> At least this phrase is not true: "Most Facebook games of note cost at least $200k to get off the ground and many of the more famous ones cost $1m"

Some very popular (not the most popular) facebook games started with $0 budget yet have millions of users.

<comment><USER27> _Some very popular (not the most popular) facebook games started with $0 budget_

Someone had to make them. Just because they were bootstrapped does not mean they were free. You have to value your time at something.

That said, you are right, there are some success stories that don't have huge budgets. The article does attempt to address this though:

 _It's easy to look at outlier examples such as the early Facebook apps and think that those games are normal examples of where dedication can get you, but you're failing to take account of context if you do that. Very early adopters in a brand new market can afford to get away with appalling levels of production because the market is so new that there are no expectations. Most games are not developed for brand new markets._</comment></comment>


I'm learning to code at 56 - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/yes-im-56-and-learning-to-code-f33abea6fd4c#.lm9ed5lwg <comment><AUTHOR> I like the guys optimism and how at 56, he thinks he has enough runway in life to accomplish something via coding!</comment>


Lego sales topple as children turn away from the building bricks - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/09/05/lego-sales-crumble-children-turn-away-building-bricks/ <comment><USER3> I would argue that they don't really make Legos anymore anyway. Almost every piece is specialized for design you buy. So it may as well be an DYI action figure. There's no creativity in using the set to build your own things. No re-usability. That and the price.

<comment><USER4> After helping my 4 year old build dozens of kits over the past year or two I've noticed many patterns of use with those 'specialized' pieces. They're absolutely reusable, to the degree that by looking at a box I can pretty much know that it's going to have a couple of [whatever] because it has arm or leg joints, a turret, etc.

What I have seen is that the parts that come with typical kits are WAY more advanced than the race cars, castles and pirate ships I used to have. I'd say a good percentage of the bricks used to be bricks I'd only see in the advanced Technic kits from back in my day.

I will say though that I went and bought a bucket of generic bricks because a lot of the bricks that come with the standard kits today aren't super awesome for a four year old that wants to build simple buildings and stuff like that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My kids loved to play Minecraft too until they found out about mods and now they have no fun doing regular creative stuff in vanilla MC anymore.

I think that also goes hand-in-hand with the trend for kids to just stare at screens all day and not really _do_ things.

My oldest son just began his first year in public school at 8th grade (he was homeschooled until now) and they had a puzzle challenge and all the other kids took like 20 minutes to do a 50 piece puzzle.

My son told me how surprised he was and I had to explain to him that those other kids in class probably just sit and stare at a screen all day, just like he notices they do on their bus ride.

Kids these days don't go out and play nearly as much, they don't go exploring the neighborhood during summer or evenings, they don't play with LEGOs, they don't do puzzles, they don't just sit and read a good book, they aren't prepared to understand so many aspects of _life_ that us older generations take for granted.

I know the whole "kids these days" is a cliche, but in this case these are actually legitimately huge changes happening in society and culture, on the scale of electricity and trains: having the entire internet at your fingertips pretty much 24/7 even from a young age is going to change future generations in gigantic ways that I don't think society really understands, and which I definitely think the mass media and society in general is financially incentivized to keep quiet about or try to ignore.

<comment><USER5> I think good leadership is a very important key to solving this kind of issue. School administrators could make rules that you can't use screens on school grounds or on the bus rides. Instead you have to turn and actually _talk to_ the people sitting next to you.

Families especially need strong leaders, and I know this is controversial, because I grew up 100% indoctrinated into the belief that families should be a democracy and that parents should just let kids figure out everything on their own. But as a father of 5, I see their need for structure and rules even if they are unpopular or don't sound as fun.

For example, for a year or so we did 500 piece puzzles together as a family every other night, while one of us read a book to everyone else. We could pause the book and talk about what we were reading, and it was a generally good time.

Sure, they sometimes would complain and argue that they would rather watch Sonic Boom or play their 3DS or whatever, but enforcing the rule was good for them and now they look back on those days with nostalgia, and I really see many legitimate ways that it benefited them as people in general.

<comment><USER6> I hope they had a choice what to do in their spare time each night. That sounds painful and awful if they didn't.

<comment><USER5> I didn't mean the whole night. But a good solid 30 minutes of spending time like this together before their bed time (they were no older than 8) helped them unwind before bed from a fun day of doing schoolwork and playing outside and climbing trees and riding bikes and stuff. EDIT: also this was when I had a 3 hour roundtrip commute to Chicago and got home at 7pm every night, so I didn't get to see them. It was a good way to have us all spend time together every night relaxing and having opportunities to talk about our days and stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I always wondered how LEGO managed to grow so much - their products are too good! They spend an insane amount of work on quality and durability of their pieces. When I was a kid, I had pieces that were nearly 20 years old that still looked and acted brand new. There's now an entire secondary market of used pieces since they basically last forever. Why buy new unless you are looking for some new, gimmicky set?

When I was a kid, I also took a book and a small set of bricks everywhere I went. These days, all I ever see kids have are tablets. When I do see toys, they are cheaper, more gimmicky, and more likely to be designed to sit on a shelf than to play with.

<comment><USER8> Or families sets are currently 4 generations old (with each one adding some). In some cases they were stored terribly like in a garage.

Even with a mix of the newer set types it's not that bad since instructions rarely follow everything. So the kid doesn't know what they're missing, but can still find some interesting pieces to figure out how to use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My kids love LEGO, but the price of buying new sets seems very high and off putting to me. So instead only buy sets at xmas

<comment><USER10> Same. Lego is fantastic and a wonderful high-quality toy, but it's so darn expensive. Couple that with the heavy focus on kits that contain specialized parts and step-by-step instructions for how to put them together, and you're not really looking at a toy anymore. It's basically a Star Wars themed model car that you're going to put on display instead of actually play with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Lego is so versatile and fun, but I wish they weren't so expensive, which might or might not be justified by their high quality. I wanted to make a small PC Case (similar to Google's first server rack made out of Lego), but the cost was too prohibitive.

<comment><USER12> Holy smokes I had no idea about that story. Thanks for getting me started down a rabbit hole of the lore around Google's origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lego is still fantastic toys . Unfortunately they are quite expensive compared to other options but they last a lifetime. My son plays with lego blocks I played as a kid.

</comment><comment><USER14> I think its a case of parents kinda seeing they're getting ripped off over some of their prices.

New Millennium Falcon is Lego's biggest set ever = $799.99

[https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/31/16234672/star-wars- millenn...](https://www.polygon.com/2017/8/31/16234672/star-wars-millennium- falcon-biggest-lego-set-ever-of-all-time)

And maybe games like Minecraft have a more cost effective block building experience.

<comment><USER15> Well, that's the biggest set ever, in # of pieces as well as price. So the set comes out to about 10.5¢ per piece, which is roughly the same price as their smaller sets, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you're interested in Lego, and what goes behind the scenes, I can recommend "The secret world of Lego"[0], a documentary that goes behind the scenes and more specifically how they handle Christmas sales.

[0]: [http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Secret_World_of_Lego](http://docuwiki.net/index.php?title=The_Secret_World_of_Lego)

</comment><comment><USER17> Do you want to buy 100 pieces of Lego, or infinity pieces of minecraft blocks?

<comment><USER18> Sorta off-topic, but the 20 bucks for Minecraft might have been one of my best investments _ever_ , considering the value per hour of gameplay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Speaking as the father of a 9-year old boy, LEGO sets feel very very expensive. (Even though realistically speaking I can afford them!) I can only imagine how expensive they must feel to someone with a lower income level.

Buying from a used LEGO shop doesn't seem to offer much of a discount either. I found cases where it was even more expensive, since they deal with collectible sets.

<comment><USER20> I would like to build some serious Technic stuff with kids, but I find it quite annoying that you can't get a good set of basic parts for a reasonable price.

<comment><USER15> This is one area where Lego is sorely lacking. I've started looking into the knock-off Lego brands to get affordable Technic pieces—sadly, they don't make sets of bulk technic pieces, either. But at least the sets are more affordable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It may have something to do with globalization. Legos are quite expensive, and the Chinese manage to sell them at 1/3 of the original price (while still getting reasonable net margin I believe). Their quality is comparable - <USER2> identical, but not too far off. Many Lego fans are buying these. I don't believe this is the main factor, but I wonder how much it influenced Lego's current financial result. I know people who buy Lego clones exclusively.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's all my fault. I've been eyeing a few sets but I haven't bought any of them... _yet_.</comment>


Protecting Private Information on Smart Phones - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2011/06/protecting_priv.html <comment> mike-cardwell Looks like a cut down version of LBE Privacy Guard - <https://market.android.com/details?id=com.lbe.security>

</comment><comment><USER2> Selective permissions sounds like a bad idea to me. I can just see users thinking, "Why does my music player need access to my call state?" Disallow. Waaaah, why does my music not stop when a call comes in? 1 star. For the most part, developers know what permissions their app needs, and they're not adding permissions without good reason. Maybe there should be a place to explain what they need them for to the users, but allowing users to turn them off will just lead to headaches.

<comment><USER3> _Selective Permissions For Android_

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2684449>

also

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=moxie>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Also WhisperCore <http://www.whispersys.com/whispercore.html>

</comment><comment><USER5> It could be ported to the iPhone and made available through Cydia, since Apple will NEVER agree to that (as the author noted).</comment>


Tell HN: SV Doublethink - <AUTHOR> Yesterday I posted an Ask HN, `Why does SV hate Trump?`, and a post, `Tech censorship: Instagram censors pro-Trump cartoonist Ben Garrison.` They were both flagged and removed.
Here's the first comment I got on my Ask HN:
> You would do a better job writing a less charged version of this question; I would happily articulate a reasonable response. For example, remove "delicate sensibilities" and "triggers the bejesus", then maybe we can have a reasonable discussion. Otherwise you're being insulting.
Taking as a starting point a response to that comment, I take the chance to expand upon some ideas about this.
So you want to make the discussion start form a more balanced viewpoint by removing insulting terms?
Sounds fair.
But at what point does avoiding charged terms, become avoiding the issues? At what point does that become political censorship and then shift over into imposing one ideological perspective on everybody?
If you're an individual, it probably doesn't matter. If you're a corporation, it probably does. If founders are imposing their politics on their business operations isn't that piercing the corporate veil, as it blurs the line between their characters? But more importantly, when a few SV companies control a lot of global social media, how is them imposing a political perspective ok?
If I were in their place, I would do the same thing. Don't get me wrong. I have a politics, and I would censor and suppress those who I disliked or disagreed with. But the difference is, I would own it. I wouldn't do it in secret and pretend I was this "tolerance loving" "progressive". I'd explain my reasons for it, and how shaping the narrative was a good thing.
[continued] <comment><USER2> HN's clearly stated and often-reiterated purpose is for content/discussion that "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" [1][2].

There are some politics topics that could be gratifying of intellectual curiosity in theory, but are not in practice because people with the strongest reactions/staunchest positions on either side of the topic will dominate the discussion.

In other cases, such topics are introduced when people have an axe to grind, so they bring a heavily partisan or charged-up tone to the topic, and thus an intellectually gratifying discussion of the topic never has a chance to get started.

There are plenty of other places on the internet for people who want to have impassioned debates about the political outrage du jour.

HN is still a place where interesting discussions can be had about some controversial topics, particularly when they're about new emerging phenomena.

But it's never going to solve the biggest problems of the world, or settle the most vexed arguments in the daily news cycle or the U.S. presidential cycle.

HN is just designed for different things, and it works well by keeping it that way.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

[2] [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gratifies%20intellectual%20cur...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=gratifies%20intellectual%20curiosity&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=comment)

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess the problem is I see hacker news as the tech community and this tech community now has a lot of social power that maybe they're not used to, not aware of and don't really understand. so I don't think it's good enough anymore to be such a culture shaping community through technology but to, in one of the biggest forums, say what we just can't discuss this stuff we can't handle the discussions.

I think you need to know how to handle the discussions. I think you have a responsibility to because your actions like it or not are shaping the culture and that has significant effects beyond yourselves so you're going to have to adapt your communities and you communication abilities to enlarged with that.

otherwise it's like trying to apply the BBS ethos of the 80s to the present, after software already ate the world. I don't think the tech community gets to take the benefits of that power without also shouldering the responsibility so you're going to have to start having these border discussions that are often by definition highly charged. they're going to have to start learning how to do that and to engage with differing viewpoints. instead of pushing away the blame for avoiding that on to something other than themselves. maybe hacker new can't evolve but something else needs to.

it's not enough for companies to have these discussions internally in private they need to do it in the full light of day. also finally it's a bit disingenuous for you to say that while we can't solve the world's biggest problems well silicon valley's often reiterated motto is well that's exactly what we're trying to do.

<comment><USER2> > we can't solve the world's biggest problems

I'm sure there are people who frequent HN who are capable of contributing to efforts to solve the world's biggest problems.

But they are unlikely to be the same people who want to obsess over the the biggest drama of the last 24 hours in the mainstream news cycle, or to bicker over the latest circus act relating to the U.S. presidency.

It might pay to think about the most significant inventors/leaders/humanitarians in history, and try and imagine how they would spend their days in the current era.

If they were spending any of it on HN, would it have been posting flame-bait over U.S. political drama, or would it rather have been spent trying to have more thoughtful discussions, seeking to understand the world at a deeper level?

This is really what it comes down to for me.

I personally do want to help solve some of the world's biggest problems, to whatever extent that a modestly capable person as myself can do so.

I've been on HN for a long time, and have paid attention to public/global affairs for a long time, and I've come to learn quite a bit about the kinds of discussion topics that move me closer to being able to have an impact on the important problems in the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> You make good points, and I don't immediately see there's a conflict between our positions. But I do think you fail to realize, or just ignore, the validity of the points I make. And I think that deliberate evasion of tricky to acknowledge points is the problem. I acknowledge both our approaches are required, but I'm seeing you only acknowledge your way. Troubling for you perhaps but not for me.

Your cyclops perspective is emblematic of SV doublethink: it wants to save the world, but not introspect its own methods. It's become a cult, immune to learning from the outside.

Everything you do comes from the idea you have. If you've only debated those ideas in private, with your self, or only dared dive into public forums on easy topics, then you don't know enough about your own triggers and biases, and frankly, your arguments, to have good ideas.

This is what troubles me about SV's closed atmosphere of discussion.

The tactic deployed, by you and others, is dismissal, redirection, judo-like re-channeling of the topic into more abstract, less threatening terms. It's face saving and I appreciate that. It feels good. But I'm not going for feels good here. I'm going for "where's the weakness in what I'm saying", or "where's the weakness in the zeitgeist".

So while you're busy dismissing these issues, I'm just trying to understand myself and the issues better, because I believe that, when I actually do make choices that matter for others, I will have thought things through in a robust way, rather than just closing off my thinking because the topic is too triggering, and then hoping for the best.

So the things you want to minimize as "outrage du jour" or the latest spike in a ad-driven news cycle, are not in fact that. That they may be triggering outrages does not bound their importance. It is important to ask why. Tech's encroaching censorship and political bias is well-established, if unpopular, particularly in vain SV. (For the record, I am biased, I much prefer LA as a city).

If you forbid even the discussion of these facts, you curtail discussion that leads to adjudication of the second order consequences. Not thinking ahead, or actively forbidding it, is dangerous, particularly in a "democracy" where informed populations are supposed to exist and be responsible.

You also frame this an issue too big to take on, but that's disingenuous too, I fear. How a handful of paper billionaires are pretending to be liberals while actually creating a cryptofascist surveillance and censorship apparatus that mirrors, not the will, nor free the freedom, nor the benefit of the people, but their own fragilities and biases, is hardly the biggest dish on the table, and it's hopefully one we can start nibbling away at.

Anyway, I agree that I may be having more impact were I running an impactful technology business that was saving the world. Right now, I'm just feeling and thinking my way through that world, before I start trying to save it.

I guess that's one difference between us, I can afford to spend time on this, but you're too busy saving the world. I can stop and think and debate and take the risk to make a fool of myself, but you're too busy emulating the great ones to roll the dice on something so unglamorous as working out how you feel about something, except when replying to me, of course, which greatly flatters me, thanks for descending into the mess of the everyday to grant me the great honor of your rarefied attention.

I suppose I'm in the enviable position of having the great freedom to be unburdened by emulating the great ones from before, I can just focus on being me.

<comment><USER2> I do intend to reply to this but there's a lot to reply to and it's late at night on a holiday weekend where I live (in Australia). So please check back again in the next 1-2 days.

FWIW, you've made quite a few assumptions about me and what I believe/defend/represent. Though maybe by "you", you don't mean me personally but what you think I represent - though like I said, I think you're way off the mark on that.

There are also quite a few sneers/snarks mixed in there, again, based on wrong assumptions about who I am and what I represent. Perhaps re-read your answer and make an effort to withdraw those if you're committed to good-faith discussion.

You also seem to vastly overestimate how much of the audience here is U.S.-based (and thus, how much U.S. politics should dominate the discussion), and how many of HN's active participants are part of Silicon Valley's elite. If you toned down those assumptions to a more realistic level, your comments above might turn out quite different.

For what it's worth I think you're well intentioned and I think we probably agree on a lot more than you realise, but I think you're going about things the wrong way - that is, in a way that's damaging to your own cause.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Avoiding charged terms doesn't have to mean avoiding the discussion. If you're trying to teach a 3 year old about their body you'll probably be using the anatomically correct words rather than the filthiest slang that exists in your area.

Addition: Imposing a political agenda online is fine (ish) as long as people don't have any illusions otherwise. HN exists "to gratify one's intellectual curiosity" and unfortunately most discussions about this sort of thing aren't very popular or have a tendency to flamewar.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [continued]

What I don't like is seeing these so-called liberals (actually fake leftists) in SV, pretending they're so morally grande, and then acting like fascists, with forbidden speech, forbidden thoughts and even their own little band of foot-soldier thugs (antifa). You don't get to cash in twice. They don't get the "moral righteousness" protection of pretending you're good and associated with classical liberalism when you act like this. You don't get to hide it.

And to make it more concrete, it's not just big companies doing it at an abstract level, it's a hubris that leaked in everywhere. I'm not against the censorship and narrative shaping, I'm against the deceptiveness, the "this is about tolerance and inclusiveness" when it's clearly not. At that point, they've become hilarious caricatures of themselves projected in an firmware- updated Orwell's 1984 futurescape.

Case in point, the other day I posted some very tech and hacker related news, how instagram censored pro-Trump cartoonist Ben Garrison. And the organic interest from HN was strong, it was upvoted and got to the front page. And then, the tolerant liberal overlords, acting to protect their delicate sensibilities or narratives, flagged it and it was gone. That's not a fair and balanced discussion. Pretending it is, is doublethink. SV doublethink.

That the biggest tech forum, in the biggest tech city in the "freest country" in the world, can not even talk about their country's President and acknowledge and own how their own tech giants are censoring narratives that support him, reveals the problem.

Maybe in the privileged and rarefied world of SV tech elites and their legions of privileged slaves this is an abstract problem. But these companies and the fascist-fake-leftist attitudes of their people are powerful.

I think people need to see the situation clearly, and ask, what does this mean for the world? What are the second order effects of this doublethink about SV's goodness progressiveness and tolerance?

<comment><USER4> > That the biggest tech forum, in the biggest tech city in the "freest > country" in the world, can not even talk about their country's President and > [...]

Not everything has to be about politics.

Also, this point doesn't seem especially coherent to me. A country is generally considered tyrannical if one cannot criticize its leaders, not the other way around.

Also, you don't have to use the word "doublethink" when you just mean hypocrisy. It doesn't help your point any.

Also, tl;dr.

(For context, I generally considered myself to be somewhat right wing.

Though I've never actually voted yet. Haven't had many opportunities, and didn't feel great about any of the candidates.)</comment></comment>


10 Beautiful Sketches for Website Prototypes - <AUTHOR> http://woorkup.com/2009/12/28/10-beautiful-sketches-for-website-prototypes/

<comment><USER2> What's beautiful about them? Many of them look overly complicated.</comment>


The Nobel Prize in Literature 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2019/press-release/ <comment><AUTHOR> The NobelPrize in Literature for 2019 is awarded to

\- the Austrian author Peter Handke "for an influential work that with linguistic ingenuity has explored the periphery and the specificity of human experience."

\- the Polish author Olga Tokarczuk "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life."</comment>