Twitter could be the next Mozilla - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@pauli/twitter-could-be-the-next-mozilla-e788e3bfd841 <comment><USER2> Author, Do you really think Twitter's investors will accept taking a haircut and allow that company to go non profit ? That's a stupid assumption. Twitter has value, it is just over valuated right now.</comment>


Brain stimulation technology being used in elite athletics - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/olympic-athletes-are-electrifying-their-brains-and-you-can-too <comment><USER2> Let's stretch the imagination and presume this hyperbole is true, if so, it would be nothing more than the moral equal of doping.

<comment> lloyd-christmas Towards the bottom, it mentions that the World Anti-Doping Agency is monitoring it:

 _if tDCS's benefits are verified, WADA will judge the technology on two other criteria: whether it risks the health of the athlete, and whether it violates "the spirit of sport." A positive finding in either category is grounds for a ban._

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This might be pseudoscience however what will happen when crispr/cas9 gets off the ground?

You can modify selected DNA segments in selected cells this is going to be pretty much untraceable.

One can inject them selves with some serum that improves lactic acid resistance or w/e and there will be no way to detect it.

<comment><USER4> You can theoretically test for the vectors and byproducts used to insert the DNA segments.

Also it seems like you could theoretically sequence an athlete as a baseline and then compare future segments to their original DNA.

<comment><USER3> There are virtually no byproducts to test. And there is nothing to sequence you can improve your lung tissue only, your artery or heart or a specific muscle. CRISPR is very selective just taking a swab or a blood sample and testing it would reveal nothing. Also doing a full sequence for each athlete is going to be very expensive not to mention that this only works when they start professionally competing you can dope your kid at a young age and there is no baseline to compare it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Musicians ought to be interested too.

</comment><comment><USER6> snake oil.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's obviously not working with Ryan Lochte</comment>


Morgan Stanley warns of 'catastrophic event' as ECB fights Federal Reserve - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/06/16/bcnecb116.xml <comment><USER2> The value of a currency is the trust people have in it, that the dollar, pound, franc, whatever you earned today will buy what you need tomorrow.

If you monkey with the currency for short term political gain, that trust is eroded. Sure someone may benefit from the meddling this time, but that person knows full well that if the rules are fluid they might be the one who suffers next time. It doesn't matter if the central banks put rates up or down; every change will reduce the currency's value. The way to restore value is to build confidence back up and the way to do that is to resist the urge to meddle.

None of this is rocket science.

<comment><USER3> Why should they not adjust the interest rates? If they state clearly that they want to fight inflation - nobody will be surprised and no trust will be lost.

<comment><USER2> Because there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. All you can do by changing interest rates is shift the benefit and the pain from some people to some other people - and back again the next time you tweak it.

<comment><USER3> So? Fixing inflation is at least as good a goal as fixing interest rates.

(It is probably better.)

Your argument reversed:

"All you can do by [letting rates of inflation change] is shift the benefit and the pain from some people to some other people - and back again the next time you tweak it."

<comment><USER2> Well, that's not quite true. If interest rates change only rarely, then you can plan. "If I save I will get this much interest", "if I get a mortgage, it will cost this much" and so on. There's value in that predictability. Once you take that away you force people to hedge their bets against uncertaintly and that increases the cost of every transaction. This manifests itself as "economic slowdown", e.g. "I won't do this thing I planned, because I need to put some aside in case my costs go up".

<comment><USER3> If you fix interest rates - you can make very good nominal predictions. But nobody knows how much those x dollars are really worth when inflation is allowed to float.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Desktop internet vs mobile internet: Where are you going? - <AUTHOR> http://www.taptu.com/blog/2007/08/23/desktop-internet-vs-mobile-internet-where-are-you-going/ <comment><USER2> I think a limiting factor for internet usage on mobile devices has been traditionally their restricted interface. The iPhone is a big improvement but there is still more to come.

A friend of mine at a TI is working on pico projectors for mobile devices. Devices equipped with these will allow you to project a high resolution image onto a wall for a desktop-like browsing experience. Really cool stuff.</comment>


Modular Dependency Management in jQuery - <AUTHOR>

What do you think about Modular Dependency Management / AMD in jQuery?
There's a discussion around the logistics of the actual implementation and architecture: https://gist.github.com/davearel/9254418 Migrated to: https://gist.github.com/tbranyen/9255362
This conversation spawned from this blog post: https://tech.bellycard.com/blog/the-future-of-jquery/
The more we talk about this, discuss the implementation, and rally support, the faster we'll see this in fruition. <comment><AUTHOR> Links: [https://gist.github.com/davearel/9254418](https://gist.github.com/davearel/9254418) [https://gist.github.com/tbranyen/9255362](https://gist.github.com/tbranyen/9255362) [https://tech.bellycard.com/blog/the-future-of- jquery/](https://tech.bellycard.com/blog/the-future-of-jquery/)</comment>


"Your Order Is Corona Safe" ECommerce Banner - <AUTHOR> https://utm.io/uuIx <comment><USER2> No one should make this claim because it is a scientific and medical claim, not a business claim.

All precautions can be taken, and then a shipment could still have active virus on it. The deliverer (e.g. UPS) could infect it, too.

Customers have to wipe down their packages or let them sit to disinfect. No precautions a shipper takes are enough to prevent that necessity.</comment>


Show HN: my weekend project, Pygmenter - <AUTHOR> http://www.pygmenter.com/ A light web frontend for the Pygments syntax highlighter. <comment><USER2> I got "oh no, looks like we're having a problem." Of course, I pasted some pretty nasty javascript. Cool idea--I've needed something like this in the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> if you send me the javascript I'd be happy to take a look. Thanks for trying it out.</comment></comment>


The Story of FireBreath (Cross-platform Browser Plugin Framework) - <AUTHOR> http://colonelpanic.net/2010/09/a-year-in-the-life-of-a-plugin-project/

<comment><USER2> Good article and a pretty interesting project.

It took me a while to realise that this was about _plugins_ not extensions. You don't hear much about people making browser plugins so my brain immediately translated plugins==extensions.

[http://colonelpanic.net/2010/08/browser-plugins-vs- extension...](http://colonelpanic.net/2010/08/browser-plugins-vs-extensions- the-difference/)

Still an interesting project but I think we definitely need a cross-browser extension framework right about now.</comment>


Show HN: Nirvana – Make project management disappear with 3 simple inputs - <AUTHOR> http://nirvana.work <comment><USER2> Hi, I am the other founder. We are trying to automate task scheduling(RCPSP), delay tracking, progress reports, one-click priority change to turn around the whole ship. The 3 inputs that we ask are - makers(who + how long), dependencies(optional), relative priority.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're one PM and one EM who didn't like to spend any time on Project Management. So we got rid of the usual UI/UX that Project Management apps use to try an automated approach with an opinionated UX.</comment>


A Solution For Graphene Production - <AUTHOR> http://cen.acs.org/articles/92/web/2014/04/Solution-Graphene-Production.html <comment><USER2> Some graphene facts that I've found after a few minutes of research:

\- One million times thinner than paper, one atom thick, it's considered a 2D material. [http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/4976821/Is_Graph...](http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/4976821/Is_Graphene_Really_a_2D_Material.html)

\- Strongest material, stronger than diamond. [http://engineering.columbia.edu/even-defects-graphene- strong...](http://engineering.columbia.edu/even-defects-graphene-strongest- material-world)

\- Scotch tape was used to create a piece of graphene only 10 layers thick (I'm guessing that means ~10 atoms thick? wow)

\- Moves electrons ~200 times faster than silicon: [http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2012/05/18/samsungblog- sa...](http://www.samsungvillage.com/blog/2012/05/18/samsungblog-samsung- electronics-presents-a-new-graphene-device-structure/)

\- Transparent, only absorbs 2.3% of light. [http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.3071.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1201.3071.pdf)

\- Can't switch flow of electricity off? [https://gigaom.com/2013/04/19/you- can-pluck-graphene-from-th...](https://gigaom.com/2013/04/19/you-can-pluck- graphene-from-thin-air-but-then-what/)

\- Can repair itself if you dump carbon atoms on the hole, they snap into place. [http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1487](http://arxiv.org/abs/1207.1487)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphene)

<comment><USER3> I don't understand how it can be described as '2D'.

If it were 2D you would be able to stack an infinite amount without the stack getting higher.

<comment><USER4> Loosely, it refers to the degrees of freedom an electron has in the material. For example, if you consider the 'density of states' – a quantity which can be thought of as the number of electrons at a given energy level – it has a different characteristic shape depending on whether the material is '1D', '2D', '3D' or even '0D':

[http://britneyspears.ac/physics/dos/images/Image441.gif](http://britneyspears.ac/physics/dos/images/Image441.gif)

[As an aside, britneyspears.ac is a surprisingly good resource for a lot of basic solid state physics. You can find a full derivation of the above graph on there.]

Edit: To illustrate, this next graph is the density of states for three different Carbon-based materials: graphite which is '3D', graphene which is '2D' and a nanotube which is '1D'.

[http://me3007.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/thermal- and-...](http://me3007.wdfiles.com/local--resized-images/thermal-and- electronic-properties-of-carbon-nanotubes/QuantDOS.jpg/medium.jpg) [Source: Hone, J., Quantized Phonon Spectrum of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes, Science, 289, 1730, 2000 via [http://me3007.wikidot.com/thermal-and-electronic- properties-...](http://me3007.wikidot.com/thermal-and-electronic-properties- of-carbon-nanotubes)]

You can see how these curves are similar to the theoretically-derived curves in the previous graph.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Graphene is pretty cool stuff but just flakes of it are not as useful as sheets are. That said, for experimental purposes this may be an excellent laboratory technique for acquiring samples. Not sure why the anode needs to be platinum though. It seems like any conductor would work there. Given that a common "D" sized Dry Cell (aka a non-alkaline battery) will give you a graphite rod (the center core is pure graphite) everything but the platinum should be available off the shelf. If it really _does_ need a platinum anode you'd have to raid a catalytic converter for that.

<comment><USER6> Platinum is one of the best conductors while being less reactive than most, while being tougher than gold and silver. Platinum (and platinized titanium or other cores) anodes are common in industry.

A home experimenter could just try copper, expecting a much faster consumption and reaction rate, and see what happens. I agree that it's not obvious that it would ruin basic experiments immediately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If anyone is interested in making graphene yourself, Robert Murray Smith, a chemist in the UK with an amazing Youtube channel, posts some tutorial videos on making graphene at home. He describes this specific method here: [http://youtu.be/QMp-RP8DcOc](http://youtu.be/QMp-RP8DcOc)

</comment><comment><USER8> How likely is to make graphene in your own house? Expensive? Dangerous? Requiere high skillset?

I'm very naive about this, so in my wild imagination: What will need to happend to have a "Rasperry/Arduino" set for graphene?

<comment><USER2> You can make it in your own house with a pencil and Scotch tape. (not exactly but use a big block of graphite)

[http://phys.org/news/2010-12-graphene-pencil-sticky-tape- vid...](http://phys.org/news/2010-12-graphene-pencil-sticky-tape-videos.html)

You can also follow the electrolysis method described in the original posts paper or the silicon method or Scotch tape method in the article above.

Don't breathe it though, I've heard that's not good for your lungs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is graphene a long term risk (like say plastic...or even asbestos)? The benefits are obvious and we'll clearly mass produce it sooner or later, but is this something we can safely throw at all kinds of problems?

<comment><USER10> Not really; or rather, I should say, the issue isn't nearly as clear-cut as some of the anti-nanotech groups that have been screaming about it would have you believe. They usually point to research by Ken Donaldson, showing similar pathogenic effects between asbestos and nanotubes longer than 20 μm, but fail to acknowledge that there's a difference between nanotubes (and graphene) in general and long nanotubes in particular, as Donaldson's study clearly points out. In brief:

> The basis of toxicity of asbestos and other fibrous materials is now > reasonably well understood; their toxicity is based on the physical nature > of the materials, rather than their chemical composition. In particular, > fibres are expected to be toxic if they are long – longer than about 20 µm – > and rigid. The mechanism of this pathogenicity is believed to be related to > frustrated phagocytosis. Phagocytes are the cells whose job it is to engulf > and destroy intruders – when they detect a foreign body like a fibre, they > attempt to engulf it, but are unable to complete this process if the fibre > is too long and rigid. Instead they release a burst of toxic products, which > have no effect on the fibre but instead cause damage to the surrounding > tissues. There is every reason to expect this mechanism to be active for > nanotubes which are sufficiently long and rigid. [1]

Donaldson's research doesn't somehow negate the benefits--or even the possibility--of nanotubes; on the contrary, he's rather upbeat:

> There is a silver lining to this research. According to Donaldson, "Short or > curly carbon nanotubes did not behave like asbestos, and by knowing the > possible dangers of long, thin carbon nanotubes, we can work to control > them. It's a good news story, not a bad one. It shows that carbon nanotubes > and their products could be made to be safe." [2]

[1] [http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=409](http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/?p=409) [2] [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520144004.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080520144004.htm) [3] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechno...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/nanoclast/semiconductors/nanotechnology/when- you-keep-nanotubes-short-theyre-not-like-asbestos) [4] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/devices/th...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/devices/the_long_and_short_of_carbon_n)</comment></comment>


How to Improve Concentration with 50-Minute Focus Sessions - mac-mac http://workawesome.com/productivity/how-to-improve-concentration/

<comment><AUTHOR> I think 50 minutes is too long. In any event, this has been well covered in other places:

<http://www.pomodorotechnique.com/>

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2004/10/timeboxing/>

[http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/category/timeboxin...](http://www.alljapaneseallthetime.com/blog/category/timeboxing-2)</comment>


HTML5 terminal - <AUTHOR> http://www.htmlfivewow.com/slide32

<comment><USER2> The unix console from jurassic park is finally brought to life!

3d works for me on chrome (Windows 7). It creates a 3 dimensional representation of the file structure.

<comment><USER3> Weirdly I mentioned the Jurassic Park interface in another HN thread.

(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3225701>)

Link to software and descriptions (<http://nooface.net/3dui.shtml>)

<comment><USER4> In case you're having an IRIX machine available, here is a page with a working link to the software : [http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file- system-tool...](http://www.siliconbunny.com/fsn-the-irix-3d-file-system-tool- from-jurassic-park/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> With each new HTML5 demo of something that comes up, I get the sneaking suspicion that HTML5 adoption is going to be slow.

It seems the capabilities of HTML5 and what you can do with it from an application basis are fine and dandy. It's just my observation and very- limited experience, but I've yet to see anything that really knocks it out of the park for me.

I'm currently working on a project that relies heavily on client-side javascript and flash (for media delivery). We have spent some time evaluating HTML5 and whether we should "cut the cord" and move to developing for that basis.

At this point, we've determined it makes no sense to do so for one simple reason -- it offers us no valued advantage over our current investment. While we hope to see the adoption improve, we're not holding our collective breath.

<comment><USER6> What exactly can't you do in html5 that you can do in flash?

<comment><USER7> Provide a working solution for all customers. Not just 25% of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One of my favorite things about the web:

I just learned three new CSS tricks from using the web inspector to figure out how he accomplished some things.

<comment><USER9> Which ones?

<comment><USER10> Yeah, which ones? I'm actually building a simple browser based text editor (think Writeroom/iaWriter/the other distraction-free editors) but in a browser with full-screen mode if I can figure that out.

I'm really interested in how he got the caret customized like a terminal caret or cursor, whatever you want to call it. I'm decently experienced with web programming but I'm e,harassed to say I don't know JavaScript which is a must these days.

This little project inspired me and let me know that what I'm thinking of is possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Terminal.js is good reading. According to his comments there, Eric plans to add tab suggest and html5 audio fallback. I wonder what the end game for this project is and if a text editor is coming - * crosses fingers for vim*.

Edit: The entire deck is impressive. Click the Chrome icon here: <http://www.htmlfivewow.com/slide52>.

<comment><USER11> This is awesome. I dragged an audio file, ran open to play it and a later slide showed the dir, let me adjust playback rate etc. May fork.

Project homepage: <https://code.google.com/p/html5wow/>

Edit: I am late to the game, just found html5rocks. Wow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> seems to only work in chrome...that's why I'm a bit weary of using this new stuff...since chances are that 90% of your users won't be able to get the full experience

<comment><USER13> If you don't test and fix things for multiple browsers this is true of any web standard, not just the latest versions of CSS, JS, and HTML.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> yay for web standards such as HTML5! (it doesnt work in my browser, in fact i guess it just works in chrome)

<comment><USER15> Then install Chrome. HTML5 isn't an official standard yet. If you want to play on the bleeding edge, you're gonna need Chrome. Chrome and Firefox get updated every 6 weeks so things are changing fast.

On another note, we need a suite so Opera, Webkit, Chrome, and Firefox can certify against. An Acid test for all the new technology.

<comment><USER16> Here is one such test suite: <http://html5test.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did anyone else you try using sudo and see the results?

Make sure to turn the volume nice and loud!

<comment><USER18> Augh! How do you make it stop?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It would be great to see TermKit[1] implemented in a demo like this.

[1] <https://github.com/unconed/TermKit>

</comment><comment><USER20> Working on Ubuntu 10.04 with Chrome 15. It looks really good!

</comment><comment><USER21> Reading through it I see the code is available on google code:

<http://code.google.com/p/html5wow>

</comment><comment><USER22> Pretty cool to see HTML5 in action like this. It runs quite well and even though seemingly lacking in some functionality is one of the better terminal emulators I've seen in the browser. It'd be nice to see some additional utilities though, such as curl and lynx would be a nice meta-utility. ;)

<comment><USER23> There's wget.

<comment><USER24> `wget` returns an error with every URL I try.

<comment><USER25> It's because of cross-origin restrictions. Try <http://enable-cors.org/> or the site itself. I guess they could use a proxy if they want it to work for every URL.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Type in "sudo". Its funny.

</comment><comment><USER27> Seems to be another hidden (in addition to sudo, which is awesome btw) command called "init". Give it a whirl.

</comment><comment><USER18> The first thing I tried was `uname`, but it didn't work. I was kind of expecting it to do something clever.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hit Control+S to make the terminal look like a CRT+flicker.

(Found by looking through the js)

</comment><comment><USER29> 3D didn't crash on me (Chrome 15 latest), but nothing is happening?

</comment><comment><USER30> What is '3d' supposed to do? It crashes on my browser (Chrome 15)

<comment><USER31> 3d shows you a 3d visualization of the file/directory structure (which is empty by default), try mkdir or adding file from your computer with drag'n'drop (in the terminal, not the visualization).

<comment><USER32> or try 'init' - loades some random files.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I remember seeing it at some google presentation.

<comment><USER34> This website itself (that is, go to <http://htmlfivewow.com/>) is a (very nice) Google presentation on HTML5. I've learned about a few APIs I didn't know existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> No joy on FF7 Mac.

</comment><comment><USER36> Invisible font in Opera - amazing indeed ;)</comment>


Website Idea to Battle Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> It's just a posting site for people who need help with grocery (elderly or people with corona infected are not supposed to go to grocery stores).
They can just post their address, phone number & items needed. Whoever can help, contact via phone/text and make an arrangement.
I wanted to make one myself but I have a fever <comment><USER2> I think the best way to battle Coronavirus is to stay home and order all your stuff online.

Here in Denmark the NGO Red Cross has established a helping-hand network where you can either help or get help - that is an excellent way of helping each other, right?

All the best to you! Get well soon!

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh, that's great. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like local support networks would be a better place to manage this. There could be a place for software which helps those groups manage the local people they are helping (and those helping them).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I think there is a place for software to support local groups.</comment></comment>


Bill Gates Harvard Commencement Transcript - <AUTHOR> http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/06.14/99-gates.html <comment><USER2> One of the most valuable things he brings to the problem is a certain amount of attitude:

 _I remember going to Davos some years back and sitting on a global health panel that was discussing ways to save millions of lives. Millions! Think of the thrill of saving just one person's life-- then multiply that by millions. Yet this was the most boring panel I've ever been on-- ever. So boring even I couldn't bear it._

</comment><comment><USER3> I think young entrepreneurial types, such as those who prowl this site, need to read and re-read this article. Money, materialism and MTV all pail in comparison to the world's worst problems.

<comment><USER4> But money, materialism and MTV might be the cure...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "The barrier to change is not too little caring; it is too much complexity."

<comment><USER6> I want to touch on apathy.

That's so true. When I ran for Student Body President at 18, people said I couldn't do it. Then, when I did become Student Body President at 19 (it was a big two-year school my parents made me attend), everybody else in Student Government said there would be too much apathy in the student body to have a student-run newspaper. Also, students said a chess club wouldn't happen. Finally, administration said a smoking policy could not happen. Yet, not only did they happen, but all of those things exist 5 years later, each in even bigger form.

The newspaper is now in color and part of a class. The chess club is now run by the math advisor who loves doing it and there have been chess boards in his office and the engineering lab for the past 5 years, last I heard. And, the smoking policy is in the student handbook the exact way I planned it out and wrote it, so students wouldn't have to walk through smoky entrances.

Then, people said I couldn't get a congressional nomination to the Naval Academy because it is very difficult to do so. But I did, twice, and worked my butt off to succeed in the physical aptitude tests, and raised my SAT from 1170 to 1400, and started selling shareware at 20, though I was not appointed by the school itself; but with the cheating and rape scandals at that school over the past few years, I think their student body and alumni must also upset be upset about the disconnect between who they say they want and who they take. So I just continued to create software since then.

Compared to that, one just has to create some kind of a web application that helps people do something. You don't have to attend meetings, get signatures, drive for hours across the state, run for election, or wait for unions to respond in some cases. You could have a working prototype in one day.

Everybody tries to compare themselves to facebook or youtube or google, and they never realize that each of those was very simple in the beginning and had a purpose since day one.

The fact is that "apathy" is actually a good thing for those who create. It means once you do create something, people are going to be reluctant to switch away from it. So, apathy is actually a benefit to those who create things.

The only people who bring up apathy are those who weren't going to create something, anyway.

In other words, the people who pretend they are creators but say "there is no market" even though such a tool or idea would definitely benefit certain people--those people are not creators, they are talkers. The creators realize that apathy actually works with them, not against them, since whoever starts using their tool (if it benefits them in any way) will keep using it.

On a similar note, if somebody says something can't happen or won't happen, then you know they're just lazy and are reflecting their experiences on you, but not considering your own drive and motivation. Most everybody who says you can or can't do something, shares experiences based on their own life, that they can't even remember clearly, and in only a 2 minute conversation.

Apathy towards change is also why you have to read diverse opinions every day on many different subjects, just to find the few people whose stuff makes sense.

Most people write the best stuff before they are famous, and everything since is just garbage. So, apathy works to those people's advantage, but not necessarily to others.

If you started reading Steve Pavlina today, you would think of him as some kind of a nut job who tries to pimp as many affiliate programs to his readers as possible. If you learn about Paul Graham today, you will think of him as some rich dot com millionaire-turned-investor making kids work 60 hour weeks during the summer, as well as telling kids to drop out of school so they try to start businesses with his money. Both of those are true, because at some point, everybody deserves to make money, but if you look back, you can see it's their articles from many years ago that truly defined them, and that's the stuff you want to be reading.

This means that you have to not only find the companies and people who are reputable, but figure out WHY they became reputable. Don't look at facebook or myspace or PG right now; look back at what their options were, and what they did. That's the only thing that matters. Otherwise, you're laughing at Jerry Seinfeld or whoever it is because you're used to their delivery style.

To famous creators -- comedians, web apps, investors--apathy is great and they deserve it. But you have to realize it's a good thing that exists, not a bad thing. Otherwise, you wouldn't have any benefits either, as people would jump from your web app to another, or a comedian would be forgotten if he didn't do standup for one month.

YOU want to be the most agile developer ever, always helping people the fastest way you can, always researching the best ways to help people. But most users will stay with a tool that already helps them--so move on to something else.

So, don't hate apathy, and ignore those who bring it up as an excuse to avoid creating something. YES, apathy exists, but it benefits those who create, not those who think.

So, the next time somebody wants to create a Magazine, people will say, we already have a newspaper. Don't bother trying, because the school will never sponsor both. Let's create a Risk Club. No way, they already sponsor Chess, so let's not bother trying.

That's right, people will whine about the current state of affairs without realizing it's up to them to continue the improvement along, and without making an attempt themselves. That means that apathy carries your current creations way beyond any date you can imagine. The harder it is to start something, the longer it will fly, it seems. So, the more "apathy" there is towards helping people do a certain thing, the more likely whatever you create will fly longer. It will be weird to come back in 20 years and hear that those three things either exist in the same form or are even greater.

Plus, remember--even though you proved those people wrong, you are now in a different place, while the nay-sayers who are afraid to try to make a difference are still there. Therefore, they are slowing down whoever else is now there trying to make a change, therefore increasing the length of time your ideas continue to exist.

Therefore, apathy is NOT a deterrent to success, only YOU are. Because whether people TALK agreement or TALK disagreement, only YOU can make the change and do it. Whether or not somebody likes your idea or not, you're the one who has to create it, so you're the only criteria in whether it happens or not.

<comment><USER7> That was pretty good, but Steve Pavlina IS a nutjob with a bunch of affiliate programs. Just sayin'

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He's such a thoughtful guy it occurs to me that Microsoft wouldn't be where it is if he had known about this stuff earlier.

Apparently it pays to be narrowminded; once you have a huge fortune, you can do something useful with it. Most activists become aware of "inequities" at a younger age but never have the $$$ to do anything about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> "Radcliffe was a great place to live. There were more women up there, and most of the guys were science-math types. That combination offered me the best odds, if you know what I mean. This is where I learned the sad lesson that improving your odds doesn't guarantee success."

A subtle jab at college graduates?

<comment><USER10> I thought he was referring to girls.

 _apparently I temporarily forgot the definition of subtle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> was I the only one a bit disappointed by this speech?

Steve Jobs and company set the bar pretty high I suppose, but this speech wasn't that great, and many people have made these same points much better. And I'm not sure that he justified his assumption that inequality is necessarily an evil. this isn't about exactly the same thing, i admit, but doesn't paul graham have an essay about inequality in a society being a good thing, a sign of a healthy economy, or something like that?

oh, and i could picture the audience shifting uncomfortably at his jokes about trying to score chicks at radcliffe.

<comment><USER12> Inequality, a sign of a good economy? Are you kidding me?

<comment><USER13> See <http://www.paulgraham.com/inequality.html>

<comment><USER12> The link is broken or it's not pointing to the essay.

<comment><USER2> I fixed it.

(The period was getting incorporated into the url; if you turn urls into links, it's not straightforward to say where they end.)

<comment><USER14> How about also supporting the <URL:[http://google.com/>](http://google.com/>) syntax that the RFCs use? It would let us submit the more tricky ones. It was invented because of the problem you're having; it's ambiguous whether the trailing dot is part of the URL or not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "...people a world away who have nothing in common with you but their humanity."

</comment><comment><USER16> Heh. I love the idea of Bill Gates going to Harvard to talk about activism -- I mean, how often does Ralph Nader deliver a commencement speech talking up risk arbitrage?</comment>


Nonprofit Community Stands Together to Protect .ORG - jonah-archive https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/11/nonprofit-community-stands-together-protect-org <comment> jonah-archive Here's the initial letter being sent from EFF & others to ICANN and the Internet Society: [https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public- in...](https://www.eff.org/document/coalition-letter-sale-public-interest- registry)

And here's the site for the campaign: [https://savedotorg.org](https://savedotorg.org)

(Disclaimer: I work for the Internet Archive, and we are one of the initial signatories to this letter.)</comment>


Russian tracking of Ukrainian Field Artillery Units via Android Malware - <AUTHOR> https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/danger-close-fancy-bear-tracking-ukrainian-field-artillery-units/ <comment><USER2> As one who is playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.[1] again lately, this reminds me of the way PDAs are used in that game to track people close by. It's the plot device that allows for a very short term radar-like map. I think it's interesting that this game from 2007, which takes place in the Ukraine and was developed by a Ukrainian developer, is so similar. I wonder if this idea was out there and incorporated into the game, or was in the game and that may have helped the idea along when it was later implemented.

1: An FPS/RPG where Chernobyl was a much larger event and caused weird anomalies and mutants, and people explore this area. The game is based on the 1979 book Roadside Picnic.

<comment><USER3> The idea of tracking people by phone was definitely out there in 2007; Heck I'm surprised people were surprised about "stingray" type devices in Cop cars which have been depicted in movies since the late 90's, especially since 'Training Day' they actually used a branded Stingray one....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> To what extent have others outside Crowdstrike confirmed their findings? They seem mainly based around commonalities in what is understood to be a propriety malware platform/toolset attributed to the Russians. Like a Metasploit-Stuxnet combo? I find these two statements from this vs. the DNC press release to be odd:

 _" X-Agent is a cross platform remote access toolkit, variants have been identified for various Windows operating systems, Apple's iOS, and likely the MacOS. Also known as Sofacy, X-Agent has been tracked ..."_ [1]

 _" FANCY BEAR (also known as Sofacy or APT 28) ... This adversary has a wide range of implants at their disposal, which have been developed over the course of many years and include Sofacy, X-Agent ... and even malware for Linux, OSX, IOS, Android and Windows Phones."_ [2]

So, is Sofacy the name of the group or their malware platform? Are Sofacy and X-Agent the same tool, or separate? Is X-Agent a metasploit-type tool or a platform-specific malware for various operating systems? Has the security community in general seen this evidence and agreed on these findings, or is this primarily Crowdstrike's own little expedition?

[1]: [https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/danger-close-fancy-bear- tra...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/danger-close-fancy-bear-tracking- ukrainian-field-artillery-units/)

[2]: [https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion- democ...](https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/bears-midst-intrusion-democratic- national-committee/)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not in the military but I think bringing a commercial smartphone on a military operation against a very electronically advanced adversary is probably the stupidest opsec fail a soldier can do.

Even petty criminals know better !

<comment><USER6> True enough, but on the other hand, how can you be a hero if you can't tweet about it? This particular conflict seems to be characterized by a rather unusual combination of (somewhat) irregular troops and heavy artillery, so creative use of consumer electronics for both morale and maths should not be too surprising.

Besides, troops making ends meet with old soviet weapons stockpiles are not alone in using consumer electronics to augment their military hardware: [http://disruptivethinkers.blogspot.de/2012/05/lessons-in- how...](http://disruptivethinkers.blogspot.de/2012/05/lessons-in-how-ipad- changed-close-air.html) I guess these guys had more than enough process in place to avoid the mistakes made by Ukrainian artillerists, but then the baseline technology from which improvisation starts is supposed to be much less outdated in the USMC than in Ukrainian forces (who in considerable parts are hardly more than post-fact legalized militias, including an international cast of "lifestyle warriors").

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> .. and that's what you get for allowing binary blobs (which are prime places to hide backdoors or to find 0days) into every possible level of your stack, because it both makes the system less secure and makes it a lot harder to verify the security properties of a system (as you can't formally verify a CPU whose specifications you don't have and whose microcode you can't know).

Let's look at the attack surface for a bit, the average Android phone has:

1\. a CPU for which no methods exist to verify the properties of its physical internals, which contains a signed microcode blob (only Intel & Co. knows what's in there)

2\. a blob in TrustZone (I haven't been able to find out if the secure world in TrustZone has DMA to the insecure world, but I'm sure there's more attack surface here)

3\. signed closed-source firmware blobs in multiple places in the phone, including in the baseband which handles all radio communications

4\. a monolithic kernel with 7 million lines of driver code running in supervisor mode (to be fair, a lot of that can potentially be excluded at compile time)

5\. closed-source userspace OS services (Play Services) required by most apps

6\. apps with a native GUI have to run on the closed-source Java Runtime

7\. apps are disseminated via the Play Store which has:

7a. no provisions for providing a license (e.g. "filter by license" in the search option, a dedicated spot in the app page if the license property is set, it's not rocket science)

7b. no provisions for providing the source code and validating the code you run matches the source (few people use F-Droid and that only solves the first problem)

7c. no provisions against Google serving backdoored apps

8\. all apps have the possibility to communicate with other apps without user intervention (if those apps chose to allow this) via Actions, and stock apps tend allow a bunch of things through this channel

It's rotten all the way down, unverifiable by users or security experts and just not secure against any kind of targeted attack.

The Ukranians shouldn't have been using smartphones at all, and they're just unlucky to be targeted by a state level adversary first (that we know of).

This could happen to any of us if we become a nuisance to a state (or when we anger one of the employees of the companies involved in producing this shitshow).

</comment><comment><USER8> I wonder why crowdstrike is putting out this information publicly. Could it be because fancy bear made a fool out of them with the DNC debacle and now they're trying to regain some respectability?</comment>


E Text Editor: Releasing the Source - <AUTHOR> http://e-texteditor.com/blog/2009/releasing-the-source <comment><USER2> I have had a lurid history with E:

Basically this was the only program I could find which was similar in workflow to TextMate and provided in-program FTP/SVN support (with a few hacks).

However, the program was so poorly designed and so buggy that it made working extremely tedious and dysfunctional. It made me start thinking about how somebody could release a program so ridiculously buggy and what were the underlying reasons. While the programmer is the first obvious target, I realized that the Windows framework was probably to blame. It's not the framework itself, but the way it makes you code. It was hard for me to justify continuing to use such a flawed system, as it scared me to think that potentially all these ill effects may be rubbing off on me. As a result, I switched to Mac the next day.

Therefore, E texteditor made me lose enough faith in Windows and Windows programs, which I had been using since 3.1 (even using 1.0 at one point in 1995), that I switched my entire operating system. I haven't looked back since. It may have been coming anyways, but it was a good decision.

<comment><USER3> _While the programmer is the first obvious target, I realized that the Windows framework was probably to blame._

It's not the _Windows_ framework, it's wxWidgets, an open-source cross- platform framework.

To be fair, though, it's been designed to be like MFC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a very curious license.

So you have all the source, but if you build something based on it, only licensed owners of E can use it?

edit: I take it back, you do _not_ appear to get the source to ecore.lib, which appears to contain licensing code and perhaps other things.

<comment><USER5> Yet, there's nothing in the license keeping you from downloading it, removing the license code yourself, and running it registration-free. (Your personal sense of morality may differ, I suppose.)

For curiosity's sake, what would be the legality of a patch to remove said licensing code from the code?

<comment><USER4> I'd worry it might run afoul of the DMCA since it would be a tool for removing copyright protection

<comment><USER6> Normally I'd interpret it like you have, but the license specifically says that only redistributions must keep the licensing in tact. I don't know if that was an intentional thing on their part or just a mis-wording that they didn't mean, but it definitely says that you have to keep the licensing in tact _if_ you redistribute it.

I'm guessing that it was intentional. There are some people willing to go through the effort to remove the licensing from the source and compile. Who cares! The real issue (in terms of losing profits) is if one person is able to remove the licensing and redistribute that change.

<comment><USER4> A patch to remove a registration check is arguably a tool for copyright infringement no matter what the license says (the author is still the copyright holder after all). But I'm certainly not a lawyer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love E. In a way, with the split screen editing, it's even better than Textmate. For windows users, E is one of the best editors out there. Releasing E's source is an awesome move!

</comment><comment><USER8> Their "Open Company" concept is rather interesting too. Almost a sort of e-Kibbutz.

</comment><comment><USER4> Actual link to source: <http://github.com/etexteditor/e/tree/master>

</comment><comment><USER9> _Edit: I initially misidentified the project-specialized clause as the key new clause; my text below has been expanded and corrected. I thank_ almost _and_ artost _for their corrections below._

This project's eccentric worries don't justify the license proliferation.

The new elastic "do what I mean" clause -- "Any redistribution, in whole or in part, must retain full licensing functionality, without any attempt to change, obscure or in other ways circumvent its intent" -- just adds a new cognitive barrier to the easy participation and mixing with other projects that's usually the whole point of open source.

I also wonder if the new restriction is legally meaningful in any realistic situation. There was no right to arbitrarily relicense BSD code to circumvent its conditions before the addition.

Given that the essential conditions of the BSD license are attribution and non-endorsement, how does this new clause add anything but confusion?

Even in the absence of the updated wording, any marketing falsely implying a endorsement from the main project would be actionable under other principles. Even with the updated wording, is there cause of action against someone who, in their promotional materials, makes a factual statement about the origin of the code?

If so strictly enforced, the BSD license itself is almost self-contradictory: you _must_ include a "Copyright (c) 2009, Alexander Stigsen, e-texteditor.com" in distributions and documentation... but you must not use his name or product name to "promote" your derived product. Can you achieve both of those when the distribution and documentation are themselves the primary "promotional" materials of a free work? Adding the new 'anticircumvention' wording only makes this worse; I wonder if a lawyer was even consulted in the redrafting.

And, it's not like the name "e-texteditor" or the names of the current or future contributors are marketing gold, anyway.

<comment><USER10> That's not the new clause, that's from the BSD license.

The new clause is the last one in the list, the one about not removing the license enforcement code.

<comment><USER9> You're right; <strike>but they've even reworded that clause.</strike> I'm correcting my grandparent comment to reflect reality, with a note that it's been changed.

<comment><USER11> In what way have they reworded the clause? As far as I can see it is exactly the same as in <http://www.opensource.org/licenses/bsd-license.php>

<comment><USER9> You're right too. I mistakenly referred to a non-parameterized generic version of a "BSD style" license to make that statement, as here:

<http://www.debian.org/misc/bsd.license>

My initial writing was also confusing the 'simplified BSD license' used by FreeBSD (without the "no-endorsement" clause) with the full classic BSD.

And this is another reason to hate license proliferation. Remembering all the "BSD, except X" variations is an error-prone pain. Let's be coding and sharing, not lawyering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I remember trying this editor out when I was looking for something good on Windows before I switched to using Vim. It was well thought-out; very TextMate-like.

How does this not completely kill their business? Are they really expecting everyone to pay? Or is there only partial openness to the source?

edit: Just saw eli's comment that the core is in fact closed.</comment>


CS50 Lecture by Mark Zuckerberg (2005) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFFs9UgOAlE <comment><USER2> If anything Facebook represents, it's the fact that no amount of technical prominence matters in the general market. You can have a product built by a single person in PHP and if it catches itself in the wind it will become a multi-billion dollar entity.

No doubt nobody cared about Facebook. It was worthless, it was badly coded, it was a webpage. When that thing reached a valuation of $1m I couldn't believe he didn't sell it. What kind of idiot would offer a million dollars for such a thing. Then it went up from there. Now I think whoever stands to gain from a sale of Facebook is a moron. It's valued at hundreds of billions. Just retire. Make another website on the side in your spare time, take as much time as you like. Do whatever you like. Let whoever dropped that much cash on a website to their devices.

At the same time I'm blown away by how many people still use that thing. Regardless of how many scandals after scandals occur.

Facebook is one of those things that makes me not understand tech anymore.

<comment><USER3> > You can have a product built by a single person in PHP and if it catches > itself in the wind it will become a multi-billion dollar entity.

I think this is both true, and doesn't really convey the whole story of what's needed. If it catches in the wind it can be successful and make some money, maybe a few million if you're extremely lucky.

To make tens of millions, you have to be lucky _and aggressive_ , otherwise someone will copy your idea and add the aggression themselves.

To make it to billions, you need the luck, you need the aggression, and you need an extra level of luck to be at the right place _at the right time_ to capitalize on a major change.

Facebook did it with social media. Myspace and Friendster were around too, but Facebook provided a clean interface and hit critical mass sooner.

Apple did it with the smart phone. They weren't first, but their product was better enough to distinguish itself when smart phones started really being worthwhile for the average user (while already a low billion dollar company, they jumped an order of magnitude with the iPhone).

Google did it with the search engine. They weren't the first, but they were _enough better_ a the time that internet usage was really taking off that it catapulted them into a position of leadership in search engines, and internet starting pages.

Microsoft did it with operating systems, and was able to ride the wave of computer ownership and business needs to dominance.

In each case, I think it wasn't just the product, but also the time being _just right_ that caused the success. In each case there were competing products prior to the market leader that weren't that technically inferior, and in some cases might have had some superior features. In each case, it's not _just_ the timing that matter, but also that they aggressively capitalized on their fortune to expand and entrench.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some of that is very strong on the cringe.

<comment><USER5> When I was that age (I'm actually the same age as him) I would have been "strong on the cringe too"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "When you started Facebook did you think it would become a full-fledged business?"

"No."

<comment><USER7> It boggles my mind how many people try to replicate Mark Zuckerberg by dropping out of college, or wearing the same thing every day, or [insert cargo cult trend of the year here]. But everyone sits around writing business plans and designing logos and hiring freelancers without actually having a product yet.

<comment><USER8> People like the idea of starting a business. Be their own boss, do what they want, make a lot of money. So when they design logos or make business plans, they're indulging that dream. But starting a business is difficult, and people, even subconsciously, don't like that part.

The sad part is, they don't know that they're dreaming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This was posted just a couple weeks ago and made it fairly high up the front page. I usually don't complain about reposts, but this seems excessively soon.</comment>


"SpiderOak just revoked my Unlimited Storage account for using too much data" - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/a7sqkd/spideroak_just_revoked_my_unlimited_storage/ <comment><USER2> Never put your data (or any other valuables, for that matter) in danger by entrusting it to some 3rd-party organisation. If you don't have it in your actual possession, you don't own it at all.

I no longer use The Cloud as a storage medium. I have a personal server which stores all my data 'at home' where some other party can't make arbitrary decisions about it, or put it in a position where it can be easily lost.</comment>


The Daredevil Camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2016/06/29/the-daredevil-camera/ <comment><USER2> Beam-forming microphones are well known. Here's a fancy ceiling-mounted one for video conferencing.[1] Here's the theory in Matlab.[2] And, most impressive is the surveillance version, the Squarehead Audioscope Acoustic Camera.[3] This, a 1m disk with 384 microphones, can pick out a single conversation in a noisy arena.

There's a version which records all the audio channels in real time, using a big disk array. This allows the phased-array processing to be done during playback, so the "aiming" can take place later. The company now has its catalog of surveillance products password-protected, but in the past, there's been more info about that application. The DEA has purchased two.

There are also "acoustic cameras" for locating noise sources.[4]

All this is a spinoff of submarine passive sonar technology from decades ago.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bepqav87D40](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bepqav87D40) [2] [http://www.mathworks.com/help/phased/examples/acoustic- beamf...](http://www.mathworks.com/help/phased/examples/acoustic-beamforming- using-a-microphone-array.html) [3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgz7Cx- qSFw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgz7Cx-qSFw) [4] [http://www.acoustic- camera.com/](http://www.acoustic-camera.com/)

<comment><USER3> My laptop has a beamforming microphone array. The interesting part of the linked project is that you can literally see objects using homemade stuff. Well homemade except for the printed circuit board :)

<comment><USER4> And the digital output microphones :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Artlav, this is an incredible project!

I have an idea for you. You mention that you want to use a webcam so that you can "overlay" this information on top of an image.

What if you could send it directly to your brain?

There is a technology called Brainport[0], which is effectively a 16x16 grid of electrodes small enough to place on your tongue. By feeding electrical impulses through these electrodes, you stimulate the nerves on your tongue. After two minutes of a "champagn bubbling" sensation, your brain rewires the senses from your tongue to your visual cortex and you can "sense" any input.

This technology has been used to give sight to the blind, balance to those with inner ear problems, and sonar to NAVY seals.

It would be amazing if you were the first person in the world to truly "see" sound.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainport)

<comment><USER6> BrainPort sounds extremely cool. How does the brain decide to interpret them as visual input, though?

<comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure that would be mechanically impossible - the brain is very plastic, but touch-into-sight seems a little far for adult learning. Instead, you could expect this to feel more like acquiring a new sense - the experience reported by those who have used pager vibrators to give their body a compass[1].

[1][http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f358/](http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/f358/) (sorry, I couldn't find a better source - but the product description explains it)

<comment><USER8> one of those projects is feelSpace[1] which is a belt with vibrators giving you either a new compass sense, or tells you where to go (as a navigation system).

[1] [https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feelspace-follow-your- gut...](https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/feelspace-follow-your-gut-feeling-- 3#/)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link. I have wanted one of these belts for years! But I can't believe how expensive it is.

<comment><USER9> Whilst a commercial offering is probably quite expensive, it strikes me as the sort of thing you could do quite cheaply and easily with an arduino.

I've actually been collecting the vibration motors from disposable electric toothbrushes to build my own belt; as they were designed to run form a single AA battery powering them should be easy.

<comment><USER5> Yes I've seen more open and DIY solutions. I was just hoping for a commercial version that I could buy off the shelf.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very very cool!

And it's about time someone did it! Yours is the first hobbyist project I've encountered since my own extremely crude ten-dollar version in 1981. No square array or processing, mine was a mechanical scanner-disk: eight LEDs glued in a spiral to an old vinyl record album, each with an electret microphone and and op amp. Spin the disk with a motor at about 6Hz. Wind noise, so add foam to the mics. It worked. A mechanical acoustic-phosphor raster sensor and display screen, where sound patterns caused light patterns. The best part was to hold some headphones near it while playing 10KHz sine wave. This produced interference stripes on the scanning disk! I hoped to build a huge version someday, but somebody beat me to it: Tom Zimmerman, an MIT student who patented the dataglove, then used the money to work at Exploratorium Museum for a year (as Artist in Residence), building a scanning-microphone LED disk about 6ft wide.

Since then we have companies selling DIDSON full-blown video for underwater (with sonic illumination,) also a euro company with a 3D phase-array microphone imager positioned on a ring or a wire sphere. See:

[http://www.soundmetrics.com/Image- Gallery/Fisheries/Habitat-...](http://www.soundmetrics.com/Image- Gallery/Fisheries/Habitat-Observations/Divers-during-Aquarius-ocean-research- expedition)

Heh, the divers appear to be skeletons wearing scuba tanks.

[http://www.acoustic-camera.com/en/products/microphone- arrays...](http://www.acoustic-camera.com/en/products/microphone- arrays/ring-72-ac-pro.html)

<comment><USER11> Wow, that's one heck of a sonar. This is the sort of images i'm after.

<comment><USER10> Put one on ROV for a trip to Loch Ness! That, or scavanging old outboard motors in muddy lakes.

Don't miss multi-pages video gallery:

[http://www.soundmetrics.com/Image-Gallery](http://www.soundmetrics.com/Image- Gallery)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is the definition of what a 'hacker' is, great read.

<comment><USER13> Right on. Reminds me of Richard Feynman or Steve Wozniak, the way they just casually talk about taking things apart and putting things together while following a curiosity on an adventure. This is representative of the sort of ethos that drew everyone here in the first place, I think.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately once you touch this sort of high, the normal day job starts to looking boring.

<comment><USER15> But you inch closer towards a reality where there are alternatives to the boring normal day job

<comment><USER11> Sadly, such things don't pay the bills.

(Unless i missed some sort of karma/like/wow monetization :) )

<comment><USER5> You seriously need to consider starting a Patreon[0] campaign. I'm sure many people would be interested to see more from you. There are individuals on there who are making significant salaries based purely on interest from the crowd.

[0] [https://www.patreon.com/](https://www.patreon.com/)

<comment><USER11> Don't that require making regular content? My posts are fairly random by time and quality, and most are just rants on various philosophical nonsense [0] or game design [1].

Wouldn't be fair to people who signed up for something like this camera.

[0] [http://orbides.org/random.php](http://orbides.org/random.php)

[1] [http://orbides.org/randg.php](http://orbides.org/randg.php)

<comment><USER16> Perhaps not as a regular income; but if funding for these projects is a limitation I bet crowdfunding would bring in funds to keep these posts coming :)

<comment><USER17> Random site idea.

Could there be a version of Patreon, where not the author themself but instead the fans start the pledges. The author could choose to take the money or not, and could prove their identity by putting their bitcoin address in a <meta> tag on their website.

So we could create a project on the site say "support sound camera posts from ribbonfarm.com" and money would be gathered for it, then when a new qualifying post would be made the site owner would be contacted "hey, you have $500 waiting for you, put this meta tag in your <head> to accept it".

This way modest authors wouldn't need to think "am I good enough for Patreon?" and people could support them. People could provide wallet addresses to which the money would be returned if not accepted.

<comment><USER18> This would almost certainly not work due to how easily most sites can be hacked by experienced and motivated hackers. That website would essentially just be a bounty list for hackers. The better option would be requiring an extra DNS entry meaning the hackers would be trying to hack into a registrar which is probably a fair bit harder on average.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Yay, a sound-field camera! I've been wondering if such things are made. Should I take the existence of this project as an indication that they aren't?

The use case I imagine is finding what part of a machine is emitting a noise, much like how you would use a thermal camera for finding what part of it is running hot.

<comment><USER11> Not exactly unheard of, but quite rare. I found a company that made large arrays like that, but they seem to operate in near field, measuring only the sound volume.

Imagine a wall of microphones next to a truck - you can tell which part of the wheel makes the sound. That sort of stuff.

As for an actual "camera" that turns sound into an image - i've never heard of one.

<comment><USER20> Isn't this exactly what sonar does?

SOund Navigation And Ranging: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonar)

<comment><USER11> Not exactly. A sonar maps a surface using sound, while my camera looks at the sound itself.

Think laser rangefinder on a scanner platform vs a camera.

<comment><USER21> Have you seen light field photography [1]? It would seem that your array is quite similar in concept. I'd imagine that getting images similar to those produced by various SONAR imaging technologies is a similar sort of deconvolution problem. If you're looking for textbooks or scientific papers to review, I think the field of tomography is also ripe with methods to explore here.

I'd challenge the notion however that this isn't 'just' a passive SONAR device. Keeping the camera analogy, active SONAR use spread spectrum pings, much like the white light of a camera's flash. Your camera lacks a flash function, and its lens is maybe not yet as in focus as it could be.

If you did want to add a flash, you're likely a $0.02 piezo device and maybe $20 in other various parts (and heaps of numerical processing on a PC) away from having the ability to produce a nice 3D reconstruction of the physical scene.

If you get direct data capture going, please do post some raw data online. I'm sure others would have heaps of fun playing around with it.

1: [http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/lightfield/](http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/lightfield/)

<comment><USER11> Hm, why not - here is the raw data (after PDM decoding) for the 16x16 video from the article: [http://orbides.org/etc/snd_16x16_raw.tar.gz](http://orbides.org/etc/snd_16x16_raw.tar.gz) (4 Mb)

One file per cell, 16bit integer samples. Stored row by row, 128 slices per frame.

Not sure where to post it, however - here it would be buried.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I made a smaller and smoother version of the final gif: [http://malea.lacerta.uberspace.de/up/128.gif](http://malea.lacerta.uberspace.de/up/128.gif)

(downsampled back to 16x16, than upsampled with photoshops more sophisticated resize and doubled speed for more fluent movement)

</comment><comment><USER13> This is insanely cool. I've often vaguely fantasized about stuff like this but this guy takes it all the way. He deserves a huge budget. Can we fund this somehow?

<comment><USER11> Everyone is welcome to donate a bitcoin or two. :)

The address is on my Orbital Designs site - [http://orbides.org/](http://orbides.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While the actual curiosity-following-adventure is amazing, i think one other aspect to all of this that deserves a lot of praise is his writing. He managed to take us on his adventure along with him. Not every blogger pulls that off successfully.

Kudos to that!

</comment><comment><USER24> This is pretty cool, and reminded me of the far-field microphone array in an Amazon Echo (which uses 7 spaced out microphones). Which also makes me wonder, taking something like this (which has way more than just 7 mics) and applying it to the problem of far field speech recognition, are there large gains to be had? Just thinking of what new applications become possible, when you have the ability to print hundreds or thousands of miniature mics on a single board that will fit in a small-ish device.

</comment><comment><USER25> >Unfortunately, we are still talking about a total of 64 Mbps of data. That needs a USB 2.0 sampling board that would pull the data out of the cells over the bulk interface

you mean a $10 EZ-USB FX2LP dongle?

You might be interested in this [https://sourceforge.net/p/manyears/wiki/Main_Page/](https://sourceforge.net/p/manyears/wiki/Main_Page/)

Im sure you know about SeeSV-S205, its basically the same thing, but polished and packaged neatly for FAT commercial customers ($30K).

posted on slashdot in 2013 about the same thing [https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3742015&cid=437167...](https://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3742015&cid=43716763)

<comment><USER11> Interesting. Can it take 16 simultaneous SPI-like channels of data going at 40-ish MHz, and pack it into a USB uplink?

<comment><USER25> not 16, but 8 '40-ish MHz' should be no problem as long as you sync them. FX2LP gives you raw 8/16bit wide datapump in GPIF Mode mode, or a nice FPGA friendly fifo in Slave FIFO mode, you can sort your 'spi like' data streams out on the pc side later/in real time. and since modern PCs have at least 2 usb hosts you could use two FX2LPs for all 16 streams.

Modern i7 cpu has surprising amount of flops and could handle this no problem (not to mention modern gpus). Consider modifying one of your boards, instead, or in addition to doing fft on fpga try pumping raw data over usb to a PC, 64 3MHz PDM streams should be 25MB/s? comfortably within usb 2.0 limits. FX2LP breaks no sweat while pumping ~40MB/s

top ebay link $6 [http://www.ebay.com/itm/CY7C68013A-56-EZ-USB-FX2LP- USB2-0-De...](http://www.ebay.com/itm/CY7C68013A-56-EZ-USB-FX2LP- USB2-0-Develope-Board-Module-Logic-Analyzer-EEPROM-/200910097384) application: [http://www.cypress.com/documentation/application- notes/an613...](http://www.cypress.com/documentation/application- notes/an61345-designing-ez-usb-fx2lp-slave-fifo-interface)

<comment><USER11> > 64 3MHz PDM

That's "64 3MHz PDM" per cell, of which there should be 16. And, they have to be synced to a sub-microsecond precision.

<comment><USER25> hence 'modifying one of your boards', as an experiment. if it works to your liking then you could move to FX3, that one can pump 400MB/s of raw bytes over usb 3.0. and that is for processing raw stream all on PC side.

If all you want is the current setup then above is valid with 2x $6 modules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The timing issue between the microphones doesn't surprise me. Multi channel soundcards require a single ADC that processes all of the channels in unison (same for the DAC).

This is also why you can't just plug four stereo cards into a PC and expect it to make an 8-channel system.

<comment><USER27> Strictly, multiple ADCs are fine, but what matters is that they are all locked to the same sample rate clock, connected to each card either via a digital audio input (e.g. SPDIF) or a dedicated clock input (e.g. word clock).

<comment><USER28> Most of these digital mems microphones take a clock input, so you can synchronize the internal ADCs (normally used for doing stereo).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is the resolution so much fixed to the number of mics?

Shouldn't 3 mics be somewhat sufficient for intermediate values as well? More mics => more redundancy => clearer image of the waves, but why do the pixels/blobs "snap" to a microphone?

edit: ah, he does not use timing (at 10fps obviously not) but needs continuous sound to see the wave pattern across the array...

edit 2: so do these gunfire locators¹ only time stamp impulses? Or do they do continuous analysis? With natural, irregular sound, it should be possible to match and measure the delay between mics, no?

edit 3: the gunfire locators would need to analyze for gunfire characteristics anyways, to weed out false positives, but that could be separated from the locating.

edit x: oh cool, if you zoom out of the final picture so it's smaller on screen, you can even see some parallax effect happening: [http://206hwf3fj4w52u3br03fi242.wpengine.netdna- cdn.com/wp-c...](http://206hwf3fj4w52u3br03fi242.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp- content/uploads/2016/06/4x4.gif)

¹ [http://wordpress.mrreid.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/boome...](http://wordpress.mrreid.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/06/boomerang-mounted.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER29> A Dutch startup called Sorama has been selling this commercially for a while. It's very cool actually, they sell mostly to companies who want to make their hardware less noisy.

It turns out that noisy machines are often mostly noisy because a relatively small number of parts are too flexible, not screwed on tightly enough, and so on. Track that down and you know where your low-hanging fruit is. A daredevil cam is exactly what you need for tracking that down.

Their site is a tad unimpressive sadly, but their tech is very cool: [http://www.sorama.eu](http://www.sorama.eu)

<comment><USER30> Pretty cool, here is a live demonstration of their 1024-microphone camera [https://youtu.be/dJ4NKq7trTA?t=210](https://youtu.be/dJ4NKq7trTA?t=210)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This would be pretty powerful if you combine it with speech recognition. If you put this array in the middle of a crowded room, can you better tease apart different audio sources?

<comment><USER11> Ironically, this thing can't record sound as we know it - it only have enough buffer space for a few hundreds of samples per mic, 30 times per second. They are to be FFT-ed rather than continuously recorded.

While such a contraption should, in theory, be able to distinguish between dozens of voices in a room, it would take much, much heavier signal processing to achieve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Excellent narrative on top of an incredible project!

</comment><comment><USER33> Brilliant project! I had a similar idea several years ago, when I was in a master's program in music technology at NYU. I had classes on acoustics and concert recording that really blew my mind as I started to understand how sound behaves within spaces. The idea of a soundfield camera occurred to me, and it seemed like it could potentially demystify a lot of phenomena sound workers have to deal with largely by intuition. Things like reverberation, acoustic modes, propagation patterns, wave effects, etc. I hope this project continues to mature!

<comment><USER11> Sounds rather interesting. Sadly, there is no way anyone would let me into an opera house with this thing...

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Almost, kinda related is this Invisbilia episode that's pretty interesting about a blind man that uses directed clicking in his mouth as a way of "seeing via echolocation". They talk about how it activates similar parts of the brain that vision does which I think is a cool parallel to what's been created here.

[http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to- bec...](http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become- batman)

</comment><comment><USER35> Awesome project!

Nitpick; Duga 3 was never built. The one near Chernobyl is Duga 1.

<comment><USER11> Facepalm. Yep, somehow it got stuck in my memory as Duga-3. Something about the third prototype/iteration of the project? No idea by now...

<comment><USER35> Only recently found out it isn't Duga 3 (as I also always thought it was), must be that wikipedia redirect.

But I didn't mean to detract, that's really a very cool project that you did!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> So impressive

If you get a x86 hooked up, doing some software cleanup might make the video look much better. Some ideas that you'll probably come up with on your anyway:

\- Assign colors based on frequency clustering, rather than a heatmap (so, red=first freq, green=second freq, and so on).

\- Persist colors if the frequency in a region shifts slowly enough (so every source stays mostly the same color).

\- Remove echoes by finding correlated pixels.

</comment><comment><USER37> This reminds me of the "acoustic vector sensor" developed by a Dutch acoustics firm that can pinpoint any conversation in a crowd.

[https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929364-400-matchsti...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21929364-400-matchstick- sized-sensor-can-record-your-private-chats/)

</comment><comment><USER38> [https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/pre...](https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/precise_3d_mapping_and_visualization_of_wifi/)

</comment><comment><USER39> One of the coolest and most expository posts I have seen in recent memory. Well done.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great post, Artlav! Great to hear from you after Exosphere in Chile last year. Eager for the next part of the project and hopefully you get some funds for your always interesting ideas.

</comment><comment><USER41> This is exactly what [http://www.sorama.eu/](http://www.sorama.eu/) does. They have created a large array of cheap microphones to do an otherwise expensive setup. They work, for example with Coolermaster to make their cases more silent: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLx9DsNcM6o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLx9DsNcM6o)

</comment><comment><USER42> Hey Artlav, when did you start posting on ribbonfarm? I used to subscribe to it, but unsubscribed a couple years back after Rao wrote a dumb post on information security.

<comment><USER11> About a year ago. He invited me in after seeing the "How do you make batteries that work on Venus" article ( [http://orbides.org/page.php?id=1005](http://orbides.org/page.php?id=1005) ) i wrote on my own semi-dead site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> Someone please give this guy $10m of funding to invent more cool stuff.

Regardless of commercial application, this guy can do #hardtech

</comment><comment><USER44> We can tell the location of a sound by timing of the wave hitting one ear than the other. Sound Localization.[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization)

</comment><comment><USER45> The math is how underwater imaging sonars work. But there the sonar emits the sound too.

[http://www.blueview.com/videos/2d-imaging- sonar/](http://www.blueview.com/videos/2d-imaging-sonar/)

</comment><comment><USER46> Extremely cool!

Now is the reverse (vision->sound) also possible? Perhaps using an array of laser sensors, so that we can reproduce the sounds in the environment.

Also, is it possible to turn the images/video back into sound? Could be a fun experiment!

<comment><USER11> I've seen a phone app that does this - turns the camera's video into sound. With a bit of training, deaf people can use it to "see" the surrounding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> "Daredevil" as in vision through sound. Very neat project! I wonder how much people can see in the dark through listening to sound sources by moving their heads for motion parallax.

<comment><USER48> > I wonder how much people can see in the dark through listening to sound > sources by moving their heads for motion parallax.

Listen to this with headphones: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUDTlvagjJA)

It's amazing how much you can geolocate just in even a recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Excellent project. I appreciate listing the insights along the way.

</comment><comment><USER50> I love it! Would love to see it extended to cover a distributed network of emitter/receivers to image an area like in _The Dark Knight_.

</comment><comment><USER51> Wow.

<comment><USER13> I wonder how many other cool-ass projects like this are going on that we have no idea about.

<comment><USER52> Or the pages that give tantalising hints about a project, but there doesn't seem to be a write-up anywhere.

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoopa_hs/sets/72157611107153...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoopa_hs/sets/72157611107153997/with/3636467040/)

[https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoopa_hs/4082464167/in/album...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/fotoopa_hs/4082464167/in/album-72157611107153997/)

<comment><USER53> I think those Flickr albums _are_ the write-up for how to make a Fotoopa.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> This is awesome! I'm sensing some Machine Learning applications here.

</comment><comment><USER55> This speaks to my heart.

</comment><comment><USER56> Nice

</comment><comment><USER57> I think the whole thing could be done pretty much all in software. Setup a bunch of phone numbers in Twilio, using a bunch of your friends iPhones, strategically located, call the numbers and process the data using Twilio API. Whatsapp or other real-time voice communication apps with an API may work too.

<comment><USER58> You'll never be able to collect phase shift info from such a setup. Not only will each phone's DSP algos delay the data, but the jitter in transmission and reception will just kill any chance of it working properly.

<comment><USER59> ... but I commend their optimism :-P</comment></comment></comment>


Khodynka Tragedy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khodynka_Tragedy <comment><AUTHOR> A bit of a submission statement: I've been thinking about this in relation to the political fallout from the Australian bushfires. A lot of people are blaming the current prime minister for the fires that have devestated Australia to an extent we have never seen before. I don't think the prime minister is to blame, but much like the last Tsar of Russia he has played a truly terrible PR campaign which has allowed people to pin the blame on him.

<comment><USER2> That kind of attitude had rather tough consequences for the Russian royals, a couple of decades later.

Thanks for sharing this. I had not heard of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In 1907, famous Russian poet Balmont wrote prophetic lines about the tzar [0] (roughly translated by me):

"Who started reign with Khodynka,

Will end up stepping on the block"

[0]: [https://ru.m.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%88_%D1%86%D...](https://ru.m.wikisource.org/wiki/%D0%9D%D0%B0%D1%88_%D1%86%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8C_\(%D0%91%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8C%D0%BC%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%82\)/1907_\(%D0%A1%D0%9E\))</comment>


First he was very famous, now he's very rich. But Nassim Taleb is still wrong. - <AUTHOR> http://www.thebigmoney.com/articles/money-trail/2009/06/15/swan-song?page=full <comment><USER2> I like this comment from the submitted article:

"You're right to be embarassed to be arguing against Nasim Taleb. His primary argument is that unexpected/catastrophic events (like the 1987 crash, the Dot- com crash and the 2008 crash) are far more common that most people think. A cool $10M to $30M every decade or so? Not bad in my book. How is your portfolio looking these days? Similar? I didn't think so."

An investment strategy, like that described in Taleb's first book, Fooled by Randomness, that costs real money year by year for several years but then pays off hugely at a sudden moment, has just the characteristics of an insurance policy with generous policy benefits. That's a smart way to invest. By contrast, investing to gain small amounts of real money year by year followed by a catastrophic loss larger than the original investment is a bad way to invest. But that's what a lot of leveraged "hedge fund" (wrong name, really) investors were doing before the recent crash.

<comment><USER3> "costs real money year by year for several years but then pays off hugely at a sudden moment, has just the characteristics of an insurance policy with generous policy benefits."

Sounds more like playing the lottery to me. It could work reasonably well provided:1) the small losses don't add up to more than the payoffs, and 2) the payoffs aren't so far a part you go broke waiting for them. By Taleb's own arguments (in Fooled by Randomness, I haven't read The Black Swan), the unexpected events are too unpredictable to count on even that much. Most likely he's just been lucky with the timing.</comment></comment>


That's why Trust is not a spendable Currency (and we need a new one) - <AUTHOR> http://dropis.tumblr.com/post/35263500230/dropiscurrency

<comment><USER2> Bitcoin does not have the problems described in the article. Why not use that?</comment>


Fake testimonials go to next level with IP locator - <AUTHOR>

Remember the discussion about the Indian fellow posing as an American parrot lover to sell ebooks?
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215
Mom's Teeth Story has taken it to the next level: your IP address is used to place the mom ("Cathy Anderson") in or near your very own town! Even more depressingly, they don't even insert the city and state very well; it stands out like a sore thumb in bold with incorrect spacing:
http://www.momsteethstory.com/m4m.php
Does this violate some sort of truth in advertising law? Gimmicks like this are likely to turn customers off to a given product or service immediately (provided they notice). <comment><USER3> What you're looking at is a fake blog or "flog" and the FTC in the US is starting to zero in on this type of testimonial.

[http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/03/26/bullshit-acai-berry- weig...](http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/03/26/bullshit-acai-berry-weightloss- blogs-under-fire-from-ftc/)

Not to mention the lawsuit and Oprah and "Dr. Oz" have taken against diet supplement makers for using their names without permission.

The Obama Administration has also targeted flogs that used the president's name to hook people into "stimulus" check scams.

[http://www.financialreflections.com/beware-of-economic- stimu...](http://www.financialreflections.com/beware-of-economic-stimulus- scams/847)

The flogs may go away eventually, but these sort of scams all rely on one thing: the ability to hook a consumer into a regular billing agreement while making it look like they are making a one time purchase+. Ringtones, diet pills, teeth whitening, government grant searches and more rely on that to make huge profits.

\+ or enough consumers learning how to spot that type of scam (i.e. reading the fine print).

</comment><comment><USER4> I've seen that kind of IP-location in ads. Personally I find it hilarious - <USER2> is a huge flag that they are scamming me because I live in a small town, so my first reaction is not "wow they are just like me", it's "that can't be true".

I guess it might work better for the folks that live in NYC or LA.</comment>


A history of sugar – the food nobody needs, but everyone craves - <AUTHOR> http://theconversation.com/a-history-of-sugar-the-food-nobody-needs-but-everyone-craves-49823 <comment><USER2> In economics there is the concept of sin taxes. With the rise of sugar-related illnesses like diabetes, there has started a movement to tax it as well. Mexico was the first country to tax sugary drinks and many more countries started to follow suit. The key thing is to have a general sugar tax to help pay for the negative externalities like obesity.

[https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda- suga...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/nov/03/obese-soda-sugar-tax- mexico)</comment>