In the 'Juul room': E-cigarettes spawn a new form of teen addiction - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/helpless-to-the-draw-of-nicotine-doctors-parents-and-schools-grapple-with-teens-addicted-to-e-cigarettes/2019/07/25/e1e8ac9c-830a-11e9-933d-7501070ee669_story.html <comment><USER2> We should make sure teenagers are getting the right support and try to prevent exposure to addictive substances.

At the same time we should be skeptical of anecdotes like the ones in the article.

> But it was his demeanor that scared her most. Cade Beauparlant's anxiety and > mood swings worsened, his outbursts so sudden and so explosive that his > mother said she came to fear him.

I really think that might for the most part simply be due to this thing called puberty.

> "We kind of lost four years of Cade to this addiction," Kristin Beauparlant > said. Now that he has cut back, "He just seems like a different kid. You > can't help but say there's a correlation."

Yes, a correlation maybe, but who is to say of what nature.

When I was a teenager I also had a pretty rough time dealing with my family and in particular my overprotective mum. So did many of my mates to varying degrees.

Nicotine addiction certainly doesn't help, but at that age people are easily "addicted" to many things. I believe video game addiction was more common than tobacco in my peer group (, my point being that it might not matter too much whether that thing is vaping or some other activity that's addictive and, important, frowned upon by parents, unlike for instance sports). Also a time to engage in generally stupid and dangerous behavior. Nobody likes to get their favorite thing/toy/or freedom to go out get taken away. In puberty teenagers start to realize that they can actually try to stand up to their parents. Parents are scared when their precious child doesn't follow the rules, or speaks up, which ends up in a spiral of back and forth that sometimes escalates to the point where parents "don't recognize their kids anymore".

Then typically after a few years shit calms down again with stabilized hormones, everyone having pushed and explored their boundaries, and the prospect of only a short amount of time left under the parents' direct control before leaving for college.

<comment><USER3> I started smoking as a teen and quit smoking regularly over a decade ago. If I so much as smell a cigarette I immediately want one, if I see people smoking in a movie or real life I want one, and hell, if I'm just having a shit day I want one. Thinking about it _just now_ makes me want one.

So yes, puberty does things to you, but they tend to be temporary. The cognitive triggers of nicotine addiction stay long after you "quit".

<comment><USER2> Yeah, because you enjoyed smoking cigarettes and then decided to give it up. On it's own there's nothing bad or surprising about wanting to smoke again.

People who have given up eating meat for health reasons will also often lust for a steak when they see one being eaten in a movie.

But my intention is actually not to claim there's no such thing as nicotine addiction.

My claim is that I find it unlikely that it's vaping or smoking that turns teenagers into crazy impulsive, and moody people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> t-writescode Why aren't we stopping kids from getting them?

Changing the flavor sounds needlessly draconian, as adults like apple and bubblegum, too.

You can flood your system with caffeine using over the counter caffeine pills, or ultra-high caffeine drinks.

You can flood your system with alcohol with everclear or unconventional ingestion methods.

Neither of these behaviors are as common as this article is trying to push about nicotine, probably mostly due to education and possibly due to the relative addictive nature of caffeine and alcohol.

This whole article, though, talks about teens, presumably underage ones, vaping. Isn't that already illegal? Shouldn't we get better at that part before we add more things?

<comment><USER4> Because people are awfully good at getting around laws preventing the purchase of things, particularly when those things are legally purchasable by adults -- c.f., cigarettes, alcohol. It's not crazy to think that a multi-pronged approach would be more effective: Try to reduce sales both sales _and appeal_ to underage people. We do this with alcohol, for example, particularly high- alcohol malt liquor [1]. We ban or restrict advertising when it's likely to reach children. [2]

[1] [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5391327/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5391327/)

[2] [https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/who_ban_t...](https://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2013/who_ban_tobacco/en/)

<comment> t-writescode How is this different from flavored alcohol in appeal, though? You could buy bubble gum or chocolate or any other sort of flavor for alcohol, and primarily hard alcohol, at that! Or harder, at least (30 proof+)

<comment><USER5> It's a lot harder to consume alcohol in public as an underaged kid. A lot of it happens in private, after hours or on weekends.

A lot of the vaping done by underaged kids is happening in public - some of it during school hours right inside the building. As a parent of teenaged kids I hear a lot about their peers vaping right in the middle of a classroom.

<comment><USER6> Is it? Put your liquor in a thermos or a water bottle or a soda bottle and you look like any other innocent teen having a legitimate beverage. Hell, you can do it while talking to an authority figure. Vaping seems much harder to disguise than this.

<comment><USER7> Except the smell and puckered face every time they drink it. Vodka in a water bottle produces bubbles while water doesn't. School staff is super aware of this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If nicotine addiction is relatively harmless without conventional cigarettes, who cares? A lot of teens also have mild coffee addictions.

Is this as harmful as, say, Pringles? Or trampolines? I think the reason this stirs up outrage is because it's 'smoking' which is seen as an adult activity that children must be shielded from, whereas many other harmful behaviors are associated with children and thus 'okay'.

<comment><USER9> > _If nicotine addiction is relatively harmless without conventional > cigarettes, who cares?_

Because we aren't doing anybody any favors when we permit the industry to give teenagers a chemical addiction to their commercial product, even if their product were harmful in no ways other than financial.

(Yes, I also object in strong terms to other addictive substances in consumer products, don't even bother replying with whataboutism.)

<comment><USER10> Were nicotine harmless I'd be ok with teenagers getting hooked on it. After all many of them are hooked on excessive sugar consumption and that is _not_ harmless. Better to care about where the harm really lies than where it doesn't (again, _if_ nicotine is harmless).

Please don't say "aargh, drugs!" and lose your cool. We need a rational not emotional response or things will be made worse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Juul and other e-cigarette makers should be required to sell 0 nicotine versions of all of their flavors.

Like alcohol, it is impossible to totally prevent teens from getting ahold of them as long as it is legal for adults.

If you completely ban vaping devices, smokers lose an effective option to quit.

Mandatory 0 nicotine juices would allow the adults who buy these products for underage users to discreetly give underage users non addictive juice. I suspect that kids don't really want a nicotine addiction, they just vape because it's trendy. If 0 nicotine juice were the default kids wouldn't get addicted and would get bored of vaping just like any other fad.

<comment> tj-teej Not being snarky, but have you ever seen kids drinking 0% beer? I sympathize with your idea but I don't think that it would play out that way in real-life. I think taboo plays into the attraction of these kinds of drugs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm tired of the "harming our youth" angle. It's pointing out a needlessly specific example of our complete and systemic inability to control substances.

Educate people the best you can as a society, use legislation to support the distribution of truth, and allow natural selection to take care of the rest.

If your teen is addicted to vaping and it bothers you, then you have failed yourself as a parent; don't put that guilt on others. At least your son / daughter has one of the least hazardous addictions in human history.

</comment><comment><USER13> On reddit there is often talk about subtle corporate manipulation of front page content. Memes, "interesting facts", etc that are subtle references to some brand can be found quite often. Vaping memes were definitely big for awhile, and I would not be at all surprised if some of them were made by someone paid by an e-cigarette maker.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here. I am no corporate shill. My friend had some guests visiting who were grown adults and seemed totally addicted to their juul. It was kind of sad how they talked about the device and worried over its whereabouts.

Also, I'm not sure but I think that this post was hidden from display?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> AIUI nicotine is not especially addictive on its own; without a type of chemical known as an MAOI ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_inhibitor)) it is minimally addictive ([https://www.biopsychiatry.com/nicotine- mao.htm](https://www.biopsychiatry.com/nicotine-mao.htm))

" Although nicotine is generally considered to be the main compound responsible for the addictive properties of tobacco, experimental data indicate that nicotine does not exhibit all the characteristics of other abused substances, such as psychostimulants and opiates. [...] Because tobacco smoke contains monoamine oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs) and decreases MAO activity in smokers, we have combined MAOIs with nicotine to determine whether it is possible to obtain a locomotor response to nicotine in C57Bl6 mice. [...] Finally, it was found that, whereas naive rats did not readily self-administer nicotine (10 mug/kg/injection), a robust self-administration of nicotine occurred when animals were pretreated with tranylcypromine (3 mg/kg). Our data suggest that MAOIs contained in tobacco and tobacco smoke act in synergy with nicotine to enhance its rewarding effects. "

Tranylcypromine is an MAOI ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranylcypromine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tranylcypromine))

Does anyone know what a locomotor response is? I did a search but got nothing usefu.

Ciggies contain MAOIs, vapes don't (I believe, and they should never be allowed to, but...). Nicotine is seemingly much less addictive without it. This fits in with my own experience, I used nicotine tablets for smoking reduction as a recreational drug, and as an alternative to coffee to wake me up (it's a light buzz, no more). I don't find it addictive, meaning I don't use it much and it doesn't 'call to me' in the way chewing tobacco did when I tried that.

<comment> GuB-42 I didn't realize tobacco contains MAOIs.

I wonder what happens when mixed with DMT.

For information, DMT is a powerful psychedelic hallucinogen found in several plants. It isn't active orally because it is destroyed by MAOs. To make it active, it can be mixed with MAOIs, that's how Ayahuasca is made. A MAOI/DMT mix called Changa can also be smoked, but AFAIK, it doesn't contain tobacco as a main ingredient, Ayahuasca vine is used instead.

<comment><USER10> I'm aware of DMT and its need for MAOIs. If you don't have this [https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychedelics-Encyclopedia-Peter- Sta...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychedelics-Encyclopedia-Peter- Stafford/dp/0914171518/) may I recommend you race to the local bookstore and order it. It's a fantastic, thorough and scientific book.

And at less than 30 quid, that's cheaper than 3 packs of cigs and a damn sight more interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's all part of the plan to keep the masses drugged and quiet. Along with marijuana legalization and weak regulation of prescription opiates. The drugs being encouraged are all ones that cause passivity. That's what we need to keep the useless part of the population passive.

<comment><USER15> If they're "useless" as you say, what's the problem with keeping them passive? Your arguments about marijuana legalization and weak regulation of prescription opiates also don't jive with your "keep the population passive" stance. Marijuana was made illegal with the intent of making it easier to incarcerate non-white populations and weak regulation of opiates was intended to keep people addicted so the big pharmaceutical companies could keep profiting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The biggest issue w/ vape pens like Juul is the discreteness factor - I have coworkers that use them constantly at work, even at client sites.

Older box-style vaporizers are not inconspicuous, chic, or sexy - but the sleek form factor of a Juul is easy to carry around and looks cool.

Maybe restricting their size/portability would help make them less attractive?

</comment><comment><USER17> Barrage of anecdotes ahead, in the absence of good data. I also have a pretty big interest in the company, despite not vaping. I have a small write up on designing my own Juul pods (delving into the chemistry) on my site [https://ethanmye.rs/fixed/projects/juulpods/](https://ethanmye.rs/fixed/projects/juulpods/)

I am a college student (probably Juul's main target audience) in the US. Juuling in unbelievably popular, for a couple of big reasons.

It's discrete -- no visible vapor, smell is noticeable, but not an obscene scent.

Widely available - pods can be bought anywhere, pawned off friends, etc

Crazy addictive -- there's someone else here talking about research into MAOI prompting nicotine, but it's important to note nicotine is available in two forms -- as a freebase, and as a salt. Previously, vapes were limited in concentration of freebase nicotine to a few mg/ml of nicotine, owing to the harshness of anything higher. Juul turned freebase nicotine into a salt, allowing them to push the concentration waaaaaaaaaay higher. IIRC, it's something like 60mg/ml. They use benzoic acid, but also have patents on basically every acid you could think of, even choices that would be terrible for you, like sulfuric acid. The patent info is a wealth of interesting tidbits -- vaping a salt pushes nicotine into the bloodstream way faster than basically any other method except IV.

Excellent marketing. They say they don't market to kids, but let's be honest -- that ad spend is getting in front of kids well under 18, and they know it. All the need is the plausible deniability to say they didn't target 18 years, and they're good.

I should also point out these guys are making money hand over fist. They're selling, for $4, a pod with 700uL of liquid in it -- this works out to about $15,000 a gallon, for maybe $10 in ingredients, $20 if they switch to synthetic nicotine, which would let them push concentrations even higher. It's a printer and ink model, except the printer is probably the most addictive chemical we know of, other than maybe meth.

I should mention that while I greatly respect Juul's business savy, I have nothing but disdain for them otherwise.

They could EASILY create a program to taper smokers off cigarettes or their own product. There's a fucking microcontroller in the Juul, just reduce the total dose by say, 2% a day and sell pods with decreasing nicotine concentration until people are free of nicotine.

Regardless of what they say in front of congressional panels, their marketing IS reaching large number of kids, something that is just too convenient.

Their pod design also sucks. Not refillable, complicated, and leaky. Offer a program to buy back old pods (or a discount on a new purchase), or design a new pods.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this post. See my other comment about noticing friend's adult guests who were addicted to their Juul. I'm deeply suspicious of this company and its products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Articles like this come dangerously close to insanity with respect to their reflection of the truth.

I hear people say: "They make such sweet, fruity flavors to appeal to kids." Uh; what? Have you tried Juul Mango pods? (No, you haven't. Yet you write about it.) They aren't sweet. They aren't fruity. They're basically just north enough of _disgusting_ to be palatable. They taste like what I imagine six year old freeze-dried astronaut food mangos steeped in embalming fluid would taste like.

I hear people say: "These nicotine addictions are so bad, they're so hard to quit." Uh; what? Have you ever _had_ a nicotine addiction? (No, you haven't. Yet you write about it.) Not cigarettes; tobacco has additional MAOI chemicals which make the addiction substantially worse. I'm talking about pure nicotine. I'd grade quitting it as 25% worse than a caffeine addiction. I'd imagine it's worse for developing brains (which is why all nicotine should be 21+ at least). But it's not like we're talking about meth here.

I hear people say: "Juul is to blame for this." Shut the fuck up. _Your_ kid _illegally_ obtained a nicotine delivery device and is somehow _illegally_ keeping it topped up with pods. The _audacity_ that you have to sue Juul for this is, quite frankly, astounding. He may be going through 3 or 4 pods a week, maybe more; how the hell is he getting these? That's on _you_ , first and foremost, as the parent. Secondly, and strictly secondly, there is an onus on society to make sure distribution of these chemicals is regulated and enforced. We've got some work to continue doing here, but let's be clear: getting rid of the "sweet" and "delicious" fruit flavors won't help even a little bit.</comment>


Ask HN: Simple, accessible straightforward book on accounting? - <AUTHOR> I'm looking for a recommendation for a good book on accounting. I'm trying to corral a bunch of data together into, say, an excel spreadsheet... trying to figure out the best way to account for revenues and expenses, fixed and variable costs.<p>Maybe it's not even a book I need, maybe someone did a blog post. <comment><USER2> "The Accounting Game: Basic Accounting Fresh from the Lemonade Stand"

It may look silly on the outset, but this is _the_ book. Accounting is very idiomatic. If you are not "in", things just look backwards or outright idiotic, especially if you have math or similar background. This book bridges the gap between the common sense and accounting.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is the recommendation i was looking for, thanks boris!</comment></comment>


This 8-year-old girl wrote to Clarks to complain about their sexist shoes - <AUTHOR> http://metro.co.uk/2015/03/05/this-8-year-old-girl-wrote-to-clarks-to-complain-about-their-sexist-shoes-5090507/

<comment><USER2> I started thinking that English was pretty weird after I started studying Mandarin. I would say something like "it was a sad situation" in Mandarin, and the other person would be like "how could the situation itself be sad? Do you mean that situation made people feel sad?"

Now I see it everywhere. The police officer's statement was racist, the shoes were sexist, etc. I think this kind of imprecision may actually muddy the waters a bit when we try to talk about these important issues.

The shoes were not actually sexist. They are not capable of being sexist. Buy them and wear them if you want. Good on you for letting the company know how to make the product more like what you consider ideal.</comment>


The Crypto Civil War - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rajathalex/the-crypto-civil-war-40ee1ee9314f <comment><USER2> I really dislike"crypto" referring to "crytocurrencies" and not "cryptography".

<comment><USER3> oooh thats gotta suck, my whole world uses crypto in the digital asset context

<comment><USER4> Then I'd say you need to broaden your horizons, because that's niche usage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "When Satoshi Nakamoto designed the system, he made the block size of each block in the bitcoin blockchain to be 1MB. There was a very technical reason for why he did this (I'm not going into the details, but it's to maintain a decentralized control of the system at a high level)"

There is no way to know why the size limit was reduced from 32 MB to 1MB. There was only a commit but not an explanation. Over the years people have come up with different theories including the one that says it was to stop attacks against the network - many of the early blocks are empty and given blockchain is essentially an empty book, people could fill it with garbage data and bloat the size of blocks to size limit of 32 MB.

I thought this part in the cancellation notice somehow pointed to this result -

"As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB upgrade."

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't agree that it is in the miners best interest to have big blocks allowing for more transactions. The argument is that more transactions means more fees, but that is not really the case. With a block limit just a little under what there is demand for, transaction fees will grow significantly for those that need to compete to be included in the next block. If the block limit is above demand, then there is space for any transaction and so every transaction just has to pay some symbolic minimum fee. The sum of this will be lower than the sum of fewer transactions but with higher paying fees.

<comment><USER6> The argument is also that one big miner did not wish for Segregated witness because he apparently had an "invisible" advantage allowing him to mine block more easy than the rest of the network. Therefore he is pushing for a solution that has bigger blocks, but not Segwit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Please, change the title as it is misleading and isn't about cryptography.

</comment><comment><USER8> This attack (BCH) to hijack btc has been outlined way before it happened. Motive is money and not support for a better btc as bmking states. This is widely researched and known. Also, the track records of jihan an public lier roger ver also speak for themselves.

#scammers

</comment><comment><USER9> The best site in my opinion to keep track of Bitcoin (BTC) vs Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is

[https://fork.lol/](https://fork.lol/)

Most profitability calculators only take the price/difficulty into consideration, but Fork also includes the fees. Fees being high now gives an edge to mining BTC over BCH.

Also note the BCH just yesterday moved from the BTC difficulty scheme of changing difficulty every 2016 blocks to one where each block gets a difficulty based on a 144 block rolling average. This will presumably dampen the difficulty oscillations somewhat.</comment>


Ultra High Level Programming Language - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=337

<comment><USER2> I already have a language like that, but instead of just text it takes in text and money and turns it into code. It's also pretty slow for a language, taking up to several months depending on the complexity of the problem.

<comment><USER3> Here's my algorithm:

1\. Parse the program input with a lexical analyzer that:

       i. Loops through each character.

       ii. Appends it to a buffer.

2\. Submit the lexed program to eLance with a 7-week bid.

       i. If someone with at least one project completed bids on it, continue.

      ii. If no one responds by the 7th day, return an error: "Syntax error in program. Please recode."

3\. Accept the bid.

4\. while(!checkIfIndianSentCompletedProjectFiles() && isTakingLessThanTwoMonths()) Sleep(1);

5\. if (!isTakingLessThanTwoMonths()) return a run-time error: "Temporal stack overflow."

6\. else print resultant code.

It takes a long time to compile some projects, but it's reasonable, since it is after all a very, very high level programming language.

<comment><USER4> Nice. I notice that unlike most algorithms I've read, this one requires a credit card number as an input. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you can sell 2% of the company for $1,000, doesn't that imply a $50,000 pre-money valuation?

<comment><USER6> $1,000 for 2% implies a $49k pre-money valuation. Either way, Matt's math is off.

<comment><USER7> $1000 = $50000 * 2%

<comment><USER6> I know. That'd give a post-money valuation of $51k, though, giving you a little less than 2% of the company in the end.

<comment><USER7> If I pay $1 for 20% of your stock, I'm saying your company is worth $5. I now have 20% worth $1. You have 80% worth $4.

<comment><USER8> Suppose my company is worth $5 right now. If you give my company $1, it is now worth $6. ($5 assets before + $1 cash). $1 / $6 = 1/6th of the company; you have 1/6th and I have 5/6ths. If you pay $1 for 20% of the stock, that implies a $4 pre-money valuation--after adding the $1, the company is worth $5, so your share is worth 20% and mine is 80%.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is fluff. Insider fluff as Matt Maroon got funded by YC, but fluff nonetheless.

</comment><comment><USER10> Tcl already does this:

<http://www.tcl.tk/cgi-bin/tct/tip/131.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Give Charles Simonyi at Intentional Software a call, he should be in a position to bid for the elance job;-)

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

<comment><USER12> I actually know someone very well who knows him very well. Maybe I'll do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> this is funny, i read the other post and clicked through to see the last name maroon naming convention and I immediately thought of matt maroon, then he commented on it.

hope you take over the world. should have included cloning myspace.

      <!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">

              <title>Maroon Demo</title>

Let me know what your paypal address is so I can request money :)

<comment><USER12> themaroon hotmail.com. Send me $100 so that I know it's you and can reply.

<comment><USER13> check's in the mail... cheers!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> //My first Maroon program Make me a "Hello, World!" program, written in Maroon.

<comment><USER15> My first Maroon program:

"Make me a compiler for Maroon."

My second Maroon program:

"Make me a time machine to send the first Maroon program back to February 2008."

See? Nothing to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Offtopic: Suggestion to the tip guys: Can you take me to the tipxxx page on the second click. People might want to know how the button works. Or was that a conscious choice?

<comment><USER17> The star now links to <http://tipjoy.com>

We're debating making things more explicit. Hopefully the copy text is enough for most people "Like this? Leave a tip: [tip this]"

We're going to make that customizable soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> One word: brainz...</comment>


Living Wage Calculator - <AUTHOR> http://livingwage.mit.edu/ <comment> ainar-g Would it be better to ask the mods to change the title to something like "US Living Wage Calculator"? I clicked expecting a worldwide view, and was a bit disappointed.

<comment><USER2> I often find this with HN articles. Much like the .com domain, I continue to assume a likelihood of American-focus and allow myself to be pleasantly surprised when it is a global article, service or discussion.

Perhaps that's one of the best things about code/git submissions to HN - it's often so easy to apply them to any geographic region.

<comment><USER3> HN is SV first, US second, English Speaking third and world a distant fourth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is a living wage? I live in Tanzania and people get by on $50/month and live in mud houses. All of these people are alive and have been for some time.

Similarly, I know some bums in LA whos only expenses are $5/gram weed. They live on the beach, chill in a tent, and are happy and alive.

People in Western countries have such a distorted idea what is a living wage it's patently absurd. It includes a tv, netflix, a cell phone, a car, apartment, computer, etc.

Most people here in Tanzania would literally kill to make minimum wage in America. It would seem like paradise, a life of extreme luxury.

Americans are so myopic and don't seem to appreciate how lucky _all_ of them are. There's no 99% in America: we all are the 1%.

</comment><comment><USER5> 1\. US only 2\. It seems that "living" does not include almost nothing beyond the immediate living requirements and it does not take into account times you cannot work, can't find job, or simply the fact that a person is a little more than her capacity to be a machine for someone.

<comment><USER6> > _It seems that "living" does not include almost nothing beyond the immediate > living requirements and it does not take into account times you cannot work, > can't find job, or simply the fact that a person is a little more than her > capacity to be a machine for someone._

This is very much what the US mentality on social care is like, so at least it's consistent.

</comment></comment><comment> alok-g The following is much more useful, and covers many more cities across the world:

[https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of- living/)

<comment><USER7> I've found numbeo to be practically useless for most cities I've been to and stayed. MITs calculator is much more accurate, especially if you are someone who doesn't earn a high wage.

Most people aren't going to stay in Greenwich village/SOHO/UES if they are in NY, or similar elsewhere. Prices reflected in the MIT calculator seem to take all areas of living into account, that too by county.

Edit: Numbers on numbeo seem to have improved a lot since the last time I saw them. Taking back my previous opinion, but I find both to be useful resources.

<comment><USER8> > Most people aren't going to stay in Greenwich village/SOHO/UES if they are > in NY, or similar elsewhere.

You can change the assumptions in numbeo too, like for example if you plan to live outside the city center.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A "living wage" is somewhat of a misnomer because as other posters have stated it indicates zero surplus.

Really, people have a "cost of living". Their wage only has to be at least that if they have zero capital.

The idea of basically everyone having zero capital as a default state is really kind of saddening.

Not withstanding that, I find the 'living wage' discussion centres around what people get for the minimum wage e.g. can they afford a small room, a studio apartment, a small house, etc.

Really it makes more sense to look at the absolute minimum living conditions and whether they have any surplus that will give them future negotiating power, or the ability to take time off work, etc.

It doesn't have to be that much, if you can live on 15K then on 22.5K you can bank half a year's expenses per year.

</comment><comment><USER10> I agree this seems low. Both housing and additional expenses. How do I know if I'm the victim of an hedonic treadmill?

<comment><USER11> (Edited to add housing comment)

I agree the housing seems low. For my county, it worked out to ~$750 a month for a single childless household. I've never seen a rent that low around me. I assume shared living must be on the table for this.

As for the other living expenses, and whether you're on a hedonic treadmill:

* How many meals a month are from a restaurant of any kind?

* How many of the following do you have paid subscriptions for? Cable/satellite, HBO, Showtime, Netflix, Hulu, etc.

* Do you set your thermostat to lower than 75°F/23°C in the summer, or higher than 65°F/18°C in the winter?

* Do you buy cars new? Or almost always have a car payment?

* Any microwave meals or individually packaged snacks?

* Alcohol on any semi-regular basis?

* Coffee that's more than 25¢ a cup?

None of the above are (moral) value judgements, but they're really easy to get accustomed to and not consider as discretionary items.

<comment><USER12> > None of the above are (moral) value judgements, but they're really easy to > get accustomed to

Playing economic limbo with constantly updating 'how low can you go?' data as the stick may be possible to get accustomed to, but isn't necessarily very fun. Especially when gameplay becomes long-term and repetitive.

I'm not judging your list of examples in particular, but I think you may be a bit off the mark as to why threads like this appear at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "typical annual expenses" have a row for housing (as they should), in which the numbers are maybe interesting if you're interested in such things:

\- Unsurprisingly, a single, childless adult has the lowest housing costs.

\- A single adult with 1 child pays a lot more for housing, presumably because the child requires its own bedroom.

\- Adding a second child has no effect on the housing cost, presumably because the two children may share a bedroom. I understand this, but it is interesting that someone who is willing to make their kid share a room is unwilling to share a room with their kid.

\- 2 adults with no kids pay slightly more than a single adult (i guess they need a little more space, but can still share a bedroom?)

\- 2 adults with 2 children have EXACTLY the same cost as 1 adult with 1 child?

\- A third child seems to require its own bedroom.

<comment><USER14> > A single adult with 1 child pays a lot more for housing, presumably because > the child requires its own bedroom.

I find this funny, because it takes several years before a child will stop actively expressing its preference _not_ to have its own bedroom.

<comment><USER15> My 2.5yr old has never expressed a preference for sleeping in my room. He likes to come in first thing in a morning if that's what you mean?

<comment><USER14> No, I mean sleeping in your room.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I checked the stats for my current city and I have to question just how their calculating their housing costs... It's not even close to what's actually on the market at the moment.

<comment><USER17> I just checked, I live in Phoenix, in maricopa county, I'm pretty sure lumping together people living in Maricopa, Phoenix and the suburbs is not valid, you can't commute across the county, it's not a single market.

<comment><USER18> A bit ironic but Maricopa, AZ isn't actually part of Maricopa County; it's in Pinal County.

EDIT: Also worth noting that it's a ~45-60 minute commute from Maricopa to Boeing in Mesa. I make an equivalent commute every weekday--at interstate speeds for 60% of the route--and don't even leave my city proper. The commute isn't as unrealistic as you might think.

<comment><USER19> Maricopa to Boeing is basically 1/4 across the city. Try commuting from Maricopa to Discover at I-17 and the 202. That would be an hour and a half to two hours each way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Discussed in 2008: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363815](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=363815)

<comment><USER12> The discussion is probably more relevant now than it was in 2008 re: expansion in the ridiculous 'gig economy' sphere since then.

<comment><USER21> Not necessarily. 2007 was a financial crisis which resulted in another tech industry crash, so lots of people were searching for new jobs at the time and couldn't get anything good

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Since others have commented that they found the expense low, I decided to check mine. In my particular county in Maryland (don't want to give the exact one for privacy reasons), the total expanses for a single adult match my experience almost exactly. Excluding retirement and other savings, the reported total expenses was with 20$/month of my experience.

The housing category seems to assume that a single adult has a roomate though.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is this calculator assuming you're going to retire on Social Security? Just like having loose lending standards for college causes inflation, not requiring higher retirement savings simply drives up housing costs in regions with high demand.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm not following the logic behind the annual taxes row. It blows up with child #1, increases again but not nearly as much at #2, and blows up again at #3. Wouldn't having dependents reduce your tax liability? Is this some state tax mechanism? What am I missing?

<comment><USER23> I think the taxes are based more on the income, which they are suggesting has to be more to still be livable. So even though you have more dependents, you are making more money (in order to be livable) and therefore paying more taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Hmm. Same housing cost ($21,468/yr) in New York county, New York for:

\- 1 adult, 1 child

\- 1 adult, 2 children

\- 2 adults, 1 child

\- 2 adults, 2 children

<comment><USER18> What does $1,789/mo lease you in that area?

I suspect the data presumes 2 bedrooms: 1 room for parents, 1 room for children. The pattern is effectively the same regardless of state/county.

<comment><USER25> There are plenty of sub-$2k 2-BR apartments to be found in NYC. I'm not sure where you'd find one in Manhattan (New York County), though. They're mostly in the less desirable (whether because of crime or commute time to Manhattan) outer-borough neighborhoods.

<comment><USER26> I'd look around the last two stops on the 3.

<comment><USER25> Even if there are a few, it's weird to describe that as the cost of living in the borough if only 1% of the housing stock qualifies. You're definitely not guaranteed to be able to find an apartment at that price.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, agree that's off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> If possible, please add median annual salaries and median wage.

</comment><comment><USER28> Isn't this a lot like Socialism? It's akin to deciding on the price of a pair of gloves based on what kinds of people need it, how much they would use it, how long before they need a replacement, etc.

But instead of gloves, we're trying to decide on the cost of labor.

I know I'm dancing around a thorny issue, but I don't think this idea works, in general. Why not just let the market decide?

<comment><USER6> > _Why not just let the market decide?_

The market decides on wage stagnation while costs keep increasing and profit goes exclusively to the upper class. For the vast majority of people, the market doesn't do a very good job.</comment></comment>


The death of transit? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.apnic.net/2016/10/28/the-death-of-transit/ <comment><USER2> Well, no, transit isn't dead. But when your traffic volume rises to one of the top N -- let's say, N approximates 10 -- sources/destinations of the entire Internet, you discover it's cheaper to run your own global networks.

And that's what Google, Facebook, and Amazon, at the very least, have done: bought fiber, hired network engineers, and designed things that work efficiently for them. If YouTube is 90% of Google's traffic, it's not surprising that Google's network looks like a CDN. Amazon wants to interconnect their AWS datacenters to lower their internal traffic costs. Facebook wrote a new routing protocol (Open/R).

<comment><USER3> Not sure this is the case, amz data centres to other amz data centres in most cases you go across ntt, Tata etc. Google on the other hand is different e.g. Taiwan to Ireland all google network. Spin up vms and traceroute

<comment><USER4> Careful: lack of middle hops in a traceroute isn't necessarily sign that there are no transit providers. Many times a carrier/enterprise may rent overlay (i.e., MPLS) transport capacity which won't appear in your traceroute.

Although, in Google's specific case, you are probably right and this does not apply.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Scattering caches or CDN nodes around the internet has obvious value.

Its a pretty big jump though from caches to a world where the internet is structured like a cable tv service with a architecturally designated 'head end'.

Many internet architects seem to get very excited about losing end-to-end connectivity, and I can never figure out why. I guess it allows one to raise larger barriers to entry(?).

<comment><USER6> I'm one of those who values end-to-end connectivity, but I can remember when it was the rule instead of the exception.

There was a time -- before the rise of NAT -- when one could directly establish connections to others across the Internet without having to jump through hoops or implement other tools (port forwarding, UPNP, a third- party(!), etc.) to do it.

In general, as a network engineer, I dislike anything (especially NAT) that breaks end-to-end connectivity, simply because of the inherent problems that arise as a result.

In addition, some of the DDoS attacks we've seen recently would be a lot easier to prevent if NAT wasn't a thing (e.g., as an ISP, I could easily shut off a specific device; I can't just shut off a customer's entire access).

<comment><USER7> I hope that with IPv6 NAT disappears. But almost all devices comes with only one network interface, that assumes it's on the LAN, but still needs to access the Internet ... How can that be done without NAT ?

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if I'd want that, for reasons of privacy and security. At the moment, your device IP (phone, computer, laptop) is usually shared with other devices, due to the scarcity of IPv4. If this gets dropped, couldn't some providers could get the idea to statically assign IP addresses to each device?

Most people wouldn't know how to rotate IP addresses of their devices even if it was possible. Having one static address (or even a subnet) for each device seems like the worst thing that could happen to privacy.

I also could imagine that having all phones exposed directly could make vulnerabilities much worse. It's bad enough that the recent attacks were possible because cameras were exposed via UPNP, but as far as I know, it wouldn't easily be possible to build a large botnet of smartphones just because you know a vulnerability in their network communication.

<comment><USER9> AFAICT smartphones are mostly exposed already, they usually get an IPv6 address, along with some IPv4 connectivity behind the phone company's NAT.

OTOH I just tried to ping6 my phone, and got a 'no route to host'. I wonder if it's my wired connection's problem, or a security measure from the phone company's side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fascinating. The growth of architecture containerization will help facilitate this transition away from high latency centrally-located services. At a high level, this means users on a particular continent will see their continent's 'shard' of data much more quickly than off-continent shards. I wonder if we'll start to see prioritization of locally-available data in algorithmic content aggregators (Facebook, Reddit, G+) because of this.

Also wonder if different regions will impose restrictions on building these duplication services in hopes of promoting growth of their own content- producing industries. I mean, China is already doing this with their firewall. Maybe we'll see the WTO grow to prevent this kind of manipulation.

With the proliferation of PAAS providers (Firebase, for example) I wonder if there will be transparent ways to proactively structure access to data to prioritize latency.</comment>


Show HN: I've released Velocity for Windows- a docset viewer like Dash for Mac - <AUTHOR> http://velocity.silverlakesoftware.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

This is a new product that I built in response to Bogdan from Kapeli's blog post looking for someone to bring Dash to Windows. I hope you'll find it worthwhile and feedback is most welcome. There's an announcement blog post at [http://efficientbits.com/velocity-1-0/](http://efficientbits.com/velocity-1-0/), and in there is a link to a post with some backstory if anyone wants to dig a little deeper.

Thanks! Jamie</comment>


How FlightCaster Squeezes Predictions from Flight Data - <AUTHOR> http://www.datawrangling.com/how-flightcaster-squeezes-predictions-from-flight-data

<comment><USER2> These guys appear to be having a hell of a lot of fun. Their technique of wrapping a stack from Amazon EC2 through Hadoop all the way up into Clojure, was the kind of thing I wondered about being possible, so it's pretty awesome to hear it is being done and done well by someone. The idea of iterating with Clojure in a REPL on a small dataset to develop or refine an algorithm, then pressing a button and see how it does running on some large dataset on EC2, sounds sublime.

Even if they never release any of the glue code that makes all this happen, just knowing it is possible is very encouraging.

<comment><AUTHOR> The real world Lisp/Clojure + Hadoop approach is definitely fun to hear about. Also interesting to see a YCombinator team with 8+ people including a domain expert. Mashing up 4+ messy data sources is tough to do. Very unconventional on many fronts.

<comment><USER3> It's totally fun--we love it. Everyone has a role that they own and we trust each other to execute. Stay tuned--this is just a small slice of what's coming...

Jason (@FlightCaster)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> An "in the trenches" interview on building a machine learning application with Rails & Hadoop. During the interview on FlightCaster, Brad describes some of the challenges of working with flight data, statistical approaches for flight prediction, false negatives in FlightCaster, Clojure, Hadoop & Amazon EC2, YCombinator, and more. Was pleasantly surprised at how open Brad was about the model internals and data crunching pitfalls.

</comment><comment><USER4> In the article, it mentions Bradford's Amazon wishlist.

For the curious: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/3RB4REDIKE28I>

And those that have been purchased (a better list): [http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/3RB4REDIKE28I?rev...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/3RB4REDIKE28I?reveal=purchased)

<comment><USER5> FYI, the purchased books list is not very representative since I buy so many books directly without flowing them through the wish list.

My book lists are better than my wish lists, not just because there is stuff in the book lists that is not in the wish lists, but also because I take time to maintain the book lists and only include the really good stuff.

I'm planning to update my book lists soon with recommendations for statistics, AI, machine learning, and other treasures.

Here are my book lists as of now:

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A1JKHQFC...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/byauthor/A1JKHQFC9WMPN5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's great to see someone taking piles of data and pulling some meaning out of it. I think it's easy enough these days to be able to see the potential of data-mining a site like Facebook, but I expect a lot of value to come out of sites like FlightCaster that are getting value in domains that folks don't normally think of being data-intensive. Google was more or less data-mining, but it was a relatively easy set of data to access: public websites. Now, we're seeing the exploitation of more obscure, but not necessarily less valuable, data.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Hexis. The key for us was being able to combine deep domain expertise with Brad's data-mining capabilities. The model is a nice mix of statistical induction and domain-based logic. We're adding more data sources to it, so both the power of the algorithms and capabilities will only get better.

~Jason (@FlightCaster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Great interview. It's amazing that they built all of this during the past couple of months. Awesome work guys!

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> An informative interview providing better understanding of the amazing work this team has done. A well balanced team with great creativity, energy, dedication, perseverance not to mention their awesome talent. Great team work resulting in a quality product. You guys rock!

<comment><USER3> Much appreciated! Thanks for the kind words. We're really excited to push out a lot more stuff in the next few months...

~Jason (@FlightCaster)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yes, but are their predictions correct? Anyone tried them out?

</comment><comment><USER10> Great interview. I'm more curious now as to each of your personal histories. Each of you seem like incredibly gifted domain experts.</comment>


Chromium Snap Starts Slowly - <AUTHOR> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/chromium-browser/+bug/1847069 <comment><USER2> I got so tired of issues with snaps and switched entirely to Debian for both servers/desktops.</comment>


DEC64 (2014) - <AUTHOR> http://dec64.com/ <comment><USER2> Am I the only one who saw DEC in the title and got excited (perhaps a revival of the DEC Alpha 64 platform)?!?

<comment><USER3> "If you're not playing with 36 bits, you're not playing with a full DEC!" -Doug "DIGEX" Humphrey

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16513717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16513717)

And that contains links to prior discussions

<comment><USER5> And especially the topmost comment by stephencanon (highlights):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16514962](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16514962)

"If you want a default decimal floating-point type, the only defensible choice is the decimal128 type standardized by IEEE 754. It has a fully-defined arithmetic, specified by experts who have spent their careers thinking about the issues involved, and is wide enough to exactly represent the US national debt in every currency used on earth.

There are situations where other decimal floating-point types are appropriate, but if you do not understand the tradeoffs you are making, you should be using decimal128."

and

"I would be remiss not to note that Intel has made available a well-tested complete implementation of IEEE 754 decimal64 and decimal128 under 3-clause BSD: [http://www.netlib.org/misc/intel/](http://www.netlib.org/misc/intel/) "

<comment><USER6> Dec64 is approachable to try to implement it on my own where it is needed the most (Java/JVM). decimal64/128 is most certainly not.

<comment><USER5> Can't you link the existing C code by Intel, linked above and BSD licensed? There's also GPL licensed one by IBM if you prefer that, linked in my other post.

No need to use the worse solution, which is dec64, unless you have some very specific goals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "A later revision of IEEE 754 attempted to remedy this, but the formats it recommended were so inefficient that it has not found much acceptance. DEC64 is a better alternative."

This is just plain wrong. The IEEE decimal float types are now in SQL as DECFLOAT, coming to C and C++, I could go on...

<comment><USER5> > coming to C and C++

[https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libdfp/libdfp/master/READM...](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/libdfp/libdfp/master/README.user)

"libdfp

The "Decimal Floating Point C Library" User's Guide for the GNU/Linux OS and GLIBC 2.10+

Contributed by IBM Corporation Copyright (C) 2010 - 2014 Free Software Foundation"

<comment><USER8> I know one of the authors who worked on this; he described it as "decimal floating" because he insisted "there's no point".

Seems he was right: even IBM didn't do a hardware implementation after Power 6 IIRC.

<comment><USER7> Seems useful to me. Fixed sized data is very convenient for computers (fits in a register, pass-by-value), and being able to represent 0.1 and 0.01 is very convenient for humans.

The hardware does seem to be of questionable value; I heard rumours that the POWER hardware didn't actually beat the Intel software implementation running on an x86. That doesn't mean that the datatype is worthless.

And it sure as hell doesn't mean that this DEC64 type, which has arbitrarily incompatible parameters but adds nothing, and is late to the game, is better!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks absolutely beautiful (from a computer scientist, mathematician's and aestheticist's perspective)... Future typed programming languages should include this type!

<comment><USER10> Unfortunately this website doesn't talk much about the shortcomings of DEC64. Just to start, numbers in DEC64 have multiple representations, meaning even a simple equality check can take tens of cycles. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool way to store numbers, and it does have purpose, but it is not suited for general use like IEEE754 is.

<comment><USER11> I checked out the reference implementation and although there are some heuristics to make comparing numbers faster, you're completely right that the worst case scenario is quite complicated: [https://github.com/douglascrockford/DEC64/blob/master/dec64....](https://github.com/douglascrockford/DEC64/blob/master/dec64.asm#L1284)

<comment><USER12> That code is certainly not written by someone with x86 optimization experience. Using high-byte registers (e.g. ah which he rewrites as r0_h) is an awful idea on any Pentium Pro or more recent processor.

<comment><USER13> Alternatively: it was written by someone with obsolete x86 optimization experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This seems similar to the c#/ .net decimal type (1), except the .net type is 128 bits. The c# decimal precedes the IEEE decimal types and isn't the same.

(1) [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/dotnet/csharp/language- refe...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-au/dotnet/csharp/language- reference/language-specification/types#the-decimal-type)

</comment><comment><USER15> Bad idea, better idea:

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

main advantages:

\- no multiple representations of the same number

\- multiplication/division with complexity of addition and subtraction

<comment><USER16> LNS doesn't seem to meet either of the goals of DEC64:

\- Drop-in replacement for signed integer types for loop iteration, array indexes, etc (Exact integer operations for 56 (55?) bit addition and subtraction with 1 cycle overhead; similar efficiency for multiplication)

-Drop in replacement for financial fixed point types (which need to be exact in base-10)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Essentially just a base-10 version of floating point. It will work better for accountants and others performing conventional math done with base 10, but no fundamental advantage. The problem stems from trying to represent an uncountably infinite set with a finite set -- at the end of the day you end of with a very sparse approximation.

<comment><USER18> Dismissing it as "better for accountants" feels trivializes the problem.

There's billions of lines of code in circulation dealing with fixed-decimal currency formats.

The choices have always been:

* Scale things up and down (do your math in cents and convert back to dollars at the last minute), which is an easy opportunity for off-by-2-orders-of-magnitude bugs * Use floating points and pray nobody notices the all but guaranteed errors * Use something like BCD and have to explain it to everyone * Deal with some custom format or language-specific type, kissing portability goodbye, and depending on implementation, possibly poor performance

A well-established decimal-friendly type, whether this, decimal128, or something else, provides a go-to solution to a very common problem.

<comment><USER17> BCD has been around since the earliest CPU's. I get the importance of using base 10 for finances, but there is nothing new offered here that I can see.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Coördinator, a visual interface for turning an SVG into XY coördinates - <AUTHOR> https://labs.spotify.com/2018/03/02/introducing-coordinator-a-new-open-source-project-made-at-spotify-to-inject-some-whimsy-into-data-visualizations/ <comment><AUTHOR> You can find the project itself here: [https://spotify.github.io/coordinator/](https://spotify.github.io/coordinator/)</comment>


Single Page Applications with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://blog.nodejitsu.com/single-page-apps-with-nodejs

<comment><USER2> That would be awsome a node.js framework which helped to make this kind of single page apps. I've been thinking about that since I discovered backbone.js.

I'd love to define models just once and that they would work server side (using a ODM like mongoose) and client side (using backbonejs).

Is there something like this out there? If not maybe I'll try to make it this summer (having final exams at the moment).</comment>


Ask HN: What are the best Arduino starter projects? - <AUTHOR>

My arduino Duemilanove arrived today, and now I'm on the hunt for things to build with it. I've seen a lot of things online, but I'm wondering... What are the best projects to start with? <comment><USER2> I would suggest it is whatever feeds your dreams. Many things are possible, the only caution is to make your first step doable. How about you tell us what you think would be _cool_ and we could suggest how big the first step should be?

(For reference if you need help getting started: things I've made from Arduinos...

      analog meter display for a bank for T1 network loads
      cylon pumpkin (laugh, but eventually everyone makes one)
      ambient light sensitive LED, using the same LED for sensing as making light
        (pretty nifty trick, makes me wonder my more electronics
         don't do it. No need for blinding indicators in a dark room)
      2d ultrasonic anemometer
      weather station
      wireless network from ISM band ASK radios
        (worked, but integrated solutions are probably better)
      DC power controller/rationer for solar powered unmanned remote telemetry system
      DC motor controller for http://8ball.lunarware.com
        (not online yet)
      Multichannel temperature monitor for a cranky air conditioner
        (lots of data, no idea how to interpret, a lesson there somehwere)
      Tiny LED xmas tree for my daughter,
        red LED ornament blinks secret message in morse code
      Multi channel servo controller from a PWM LED driver.
      USB low speed interface with just a couple pins and resistors.
    )

<comment><USER3> ambient light sensitive LED, using the same LED for sensing as making light (pretty nifty trick, makes me wonder my more electronics don't do it. No need for blinding indicators in a dark room)

I've recently bought an arduino and have been playing around with it. I'm definitely a novice when it comes to electronics but I would love to know how that works.

Do you have writeups online for any of these projects?

<comment><USER2> I think I wrote this: <http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/LEDSensor>

The key points are remembering that there is capacitance on the pins of the microcontroller, and that while forcing an electron across from P to N emits a photon, absorbing a photon lets an electron back from N to P if it wants to go.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Make_ has a whole directory of projects: <http://blog.makezine.com/archive/arduino/>

For quick prototypes using Ruby, check out RAD: <http://rad.rubyforge.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> The book "Making Things Talk" (O'Reilly) is a great way to start:

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510510/>

<comment><AUTHOR> I've seen that before, but I'd forgotten about it. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://www.ladyada.net/learn/arduino/>

I would also suggest browsing the rest of her site as it is a treasure trove of information related to electronics.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was very helpful - thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> That depends entirely on your skill level. If you're not skilled at building circuits, start my making various configurations of LEDs blink.

Making full RGB displays is pretty neat (and easy) to do with Arduino's pulse width modulation feature.

[http://video.aol.com/video-detail/arduino-pwm-rgb-led- mood-l...](http://video.aol.com/video-detail/arduino-pwm-rgb-led-mood- light/3708580823)

<comment><USER8> Getting an LED to blink is a great first step. You'll work through most of the technology stack to get there.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is in fact my first project, I'm looking for things beyond that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I'm working on something ambitious with the Arduino, and you may be interested in also working on the same project, but maybe as your second project. Anyone who is interested in getting into hardware hacking from a programmer perspective on something that I find pretty cool should send me an email at markessien at gmail com, and I'll send you a notification when I have the stuff online (3-4 weeks).

</comment><comment><USER10> Something simple. For my first project, I bought a ultrasonic sensor and a bar graph led and output the distance sensed on it. Focus on getting accustomed to the hardware you're working with before you try too challenging.

</comment><comment><USER11> The Arduino site itself has a ton of great examples that helped me get started: <http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/HomePage>

</comment><comment><USER12> You know how the Kitt car had the eyeball that looked right-and-left? Very straight-forward, terrific starter project. Grab 8 LEDs, some resistors and you are good to go.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea, and sure t amuse my kids as well. Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> What are the extents of your experiences with soldering/electronic components?

<comment><AUTHOR> My soldering skills are a bit rusty, but I know my way around electronics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd just like to clear the air and ask the question on everyone's mind.... wtf are you talking about sir?

<comment><USER15> _the question on everyone's mind_

Well, at least everyone who's never heard of either Arduino or Google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> any arduino starter kit with Ethernet ???

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think so. There is one with Bluetooth however.</comment></comment>


Windows 10 has alerts to encourage Firefox users to use IE - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/5our4n/windows_10_now_has_builtin_adds_targeting_firefox/ <comment><USER2> Edge demands attention till you disable it's popups.

Telemetry reactivates itself every time Windows updates. Also Edge forgets your ignore preference, and repins itself to the taskbar.

Ads can appear on the start menu, and lock screen.

Office asks to be activated every time you open it if you don't link an email. (Though it is activated).

You no longer have search without Cortana.

These are not small annoyances that happen sometimes. They happen frequently. Microsoft is dictating how you must use a computer.

It results in a lot of calls from less tech savvy friends wanting me to 'fix' their computers.

This seems to me, to be an unsustainable bad business practice. It could work if there was no competition in the market, but Apple certainly competes, and for many, Android is also an option.

That's ignoring the crapshow that tried to force everyone to adopt W10.

<comment><USER3> Turn it all off then. It took me about 20 minutes of configuring Windows to turn off every single thing you mentioned.

You do have search without Cortana. You are incorrect. I use it every day. Stop spreading false information.

Honestly, I would hate my Mac and Linux boxes too if I had no clue how to configure them the way that I want. Perhaps you should learn how to configure things properly. Then you can stop complaining.

<comment><USER2> It takes me less. But after every update, it's back.

How would you feel if every security update wiped your crontab?

To revert to legacy search functionality, you need to disable search indexing as well as Cortana's services and regkeys. So, possible, if difficult. Sorry I got it wrong.

Neither OSX nor any Linux distro I've used intentially bypasses my config by reactivating disabled services, or modifying my rc files any time I update.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like you did something wrong. All the things I configured did not come back.

Maybe you should just learn how to do it properly.

<comment><USER2> First, stating that others are doing wrong, is kinda a dick move. You're screwing over a large proportion of users who can't configure, even if it's in control panel. Ignoring them, is just bad practice.

Secondly, if there is such a great way of configuring things, where is it documented?

SysV, systemd, cron, and every other utility that arrives with a Linux distro has some decent documentation.

Apple hosts their own as well.

Where is Microsoft's guide to permanently disabling Cortana?

<comment><USER4> I've never seen anything I disabled turn itself back on after updates (major or minor) either, but in addition to turning things off during the initial Win10 install/upgrade, I also used ShutUp10 [0].

[0] [https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10](https://www.oo- software.com/en/shutup10)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Time and time again, Microsoft promises to change, to reinvent itself -- all they've been doing is taking existing issues customers had with them and making them worse.

Shame, such a shame. I've stopped believing in Nadella's aura of the saviour who reinvents the company when Windows 10 was released.

I've switched to Apple since and even with all of their mess-ups, it's a whole world of difference. I really hope that they're gonna turn it around soon, to.

Kind of a shame that Linux does not have the same application support macOS and Windows does, I'd switch to that, if it had.

<comment><USER6> "the next version will be better, promise"

I've heard that with Windows, Office, IE, and Sharepoint. I'd happily give up the esc key to avoid that hell.

<comment><USER5> I don't mind the touch bar, I find it pretty interesting, although I only own two 2015 models (I should've waited a bit, I admit). I mostly mind the battery life they're giving up for thinness and various design mess ups that are so un-Apple. (like newer features in iOS, such as Apple Music, etc.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The current title (Windows 10 has alerts to encourage Firefox users to use IE) is not the one from the link and it is actually a lie. I'm not sure if the Reddit title has been changed after or if Op here thought it was clever, witty or funny to write "IE" for drama purposes.

You just have to click the link to see it encourages to use Edge, not IE.

Still something we might (should, really) frown upon, but there's no need to lie about it.

<comment><USER8> Funny, I didn't even notice this and I imagine many others didn't either. If anything this shows how poorly MS markets Edge. Technically, its a fork of IE, but even then, MS still seems unable to separate its products. This must greatly be hurting adoption, thus the heavy handed tactics here.

Nadella needs to be dragged over the coals for this. The OS has now become hostile. The number of steps to change your default browser is inexcusable and the constant whining to switch back should be actionable. Sadly, with a GOP administration at the helm, I think further anti-trust efforts on MS, or any big company, are probably not politically practical.

<comment><USER9> The only way the situation is going to change is if people start voting with their feet. There's no indication they're going to do that, because it's not _convenient_ , so since they insist on continuing to use this product they complain about incessantly, they're going to continue to suffer with it. I for one have no sympathy for them at all.

Nadella doesn't need to be "dragged over the coals". He should be given a huge bonus if this is increasing MS's profits. And MS should jack up their prices even more so they can give him even bigger bonuses. If society is stupid enough to enable this, then society deserves to pay the price.

<comment><USER8> MS has been steadily losing desktop and server marketshare and is a complete non-player in mobile. Its xbox divsion is a money loser too. Its income is mostly enterprise licensing and even that is being eaten by the cloud.

Win10 was an opportunity to win back the OSX switchers and people who are happy with just Win7 and not looking to upgrade. If it wasn't free the marketshare for Win10 would be in the pits. MS is literally giving away its OS. Nadella doesn't know what he's doing.

>He should be given a huge bonus if this is increasing MS's profits.

In any sane company he would have been fired by now.

<comment><USER9> Marketshare is really irrelevant. The _only_ important measure of a company's performance is profit. If a company is making more profit now than last year, that's a success, regardless of everything else. The marketshare thing is really silly: if the market expands in size 10-fold, but your sales increase 2-fold (assuming pricing stays the same), meaning you're doubly profitable, and somehow that's a "loss" because marketshare is lower? That's just plain idiotic. Yes, MS is a loser in mobile devices; it doesn't matter because they were never very profitable there anyway. Desktop and server marketshare losses can be mitigated with higher pricing and other revenue opportunities (such as advertising).

I don't have the actual numbers handy, so I can't say whether MS is actually more or less profitable than before, but I suspect it's more. The point is, what are their actual profits? If they're making more money, then this focus on marketshare is pointless. Money is money.

>MS is literally giving away its OS. Nadella doesn't know what he's doing.

Giving away Win10 is the correct choice _IF_ it makes them more money (through advertising, selling collected data, etc.).

Furthermore, the competition is giving away their OSes. Perhaps MS sees that it can make more money by getting consumers to switch to Win10 with data collection and advertising than by trying to charge them for it and getting less uptake.

>In any sane company he would have been fired by now.

Why? Do you have any proof that his actions have actually decreased profits? If not, then your assertions are meaningless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't see this as substantially different from the ads that appear on google.com telling me to switch to Chrome when I have the temerity to access it from Safari.

<comment><USER11> Do you pay to use google.com ?

<comment><USER3> Yes. I had to pay my ISP. We all also paid Google with tax subsidies. Also we all pay with our private information that Google collects and sells.

Did I directly pay Google do use google.com? No. I never paid the full price for Windows either.

<comment><USER2> ... You mean apart from the private information they collect and the tax subsidies.

<comment><USER3> I already mentioned that about Google. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The title is wrong. The popup is about Edge, not IE.

</comment><comment><USER13> Can you really call these "ads"??

<comment><USER14> A message begging the use of a product? An unsolicited one at that? Yes, yes you can. Pretty sure that neatly fits the definition both in fact and in spirit.

<comment><USER3> The "ad" can easily be removed unlike on OS X.

Go ahead try to never open the App Store on OS X. You can't do it because you need it for updates. When you open it you will see _actual_ ads.

At least I can get rid of the tiny little "ad" on Windows. And I never use the Microsoft store. Ever. I have never been forced to use it and I've been using Windows 10 since release.

<comment><USER15> You can install OS X / "Core" updates (but not updates for apps that you've installed via the App Store) via the `softwareupdate` command line utility [0]. It's not at all ideal for an everyday user, but would work if you wanted to avoid the App Store entirely.

[0] [http://gotofritz.net/blog/geekery/os-x-software-update- from-...](http://gotofritz.net/blog/geekery/os-x-software-update-from-command- line/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Every time i am on battery i get an Edge popup telling me how much battery i could save by using edge instead of chrome.</comment>


How Frictionless Sharing Could Undermine Your Legal Right to Privacy - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/03/how-frictionless-sharing-could-undermine-your-legal-right-to-privacy/254277/ <comment><USER2> Given the fact that former CEO of Google Inc. and current CEO of Facebook have loudly and repeatedly conveyed that one does not have reasonable expectation of privacy when using their systems; and given the fact that EULA of your little digital helper effectively renders the device property of the vendor; per last month's SCOTUS relevant judgment it would appear that we no longer enjoy legal protection against unreasonable searches and seizures using the said services and devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think the article got Alito's position in Jones wrong. Alito was deeply worried about the rise of a surveillance state in areas where the 4th Amendment doesn't apply today. The thing si that a warrant is not required today in these areas anyway due to other doctrines. Statutes may impose such but that's not a Constitutional consideration.

Warrants are not required right now. Alito was seeking to tighten these up.

</comment><comment><USER4> a plant from the drm lobby

</comment><comment><USER5> Just another one of the victories of the "Information wants to be free" movement!

<comment><USER6> I think you're conflating two things. I'm a proponent of abolishing copyright and other so-called intellectual property. I do believe that information, _once made public_ , should be unrestricted.

This is orthogonal to the notion that private communications should stay private. What this article is really about is the definition of public vs private, and has very little to do with intellectual property issues.

<comment><USER7> So your ideal legal system does not recognize ownership of information, just whether it is "public" or "private", and has legal protection for private information? I'm just curious how the no-IP theory goes. One thing that concerned me was protection for works in progress, where people need to send, say, manuscripts for a novel back and forth, or tracks for a CD.

<comment><USER6> We could have ownership of a sort without copyright. Copyright lets you tell other people what they can do with a copy of a work after it's released. I think the only right the law should protect is the right to release a work or not.

<comment><USER7> So if I get my hands on a copy of a work that's not released, and start handing out copies, what happens to me?

<comment><USER6> I dunno. Civil suit? Do I have to have all the answers? I just think that the system we have now is both broken and unethical.

<comment><USER7> No, I'm just curious. I find the idea of abolishing intellectual property both hard to understand and fascinating, so I want to see how other people see it working.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A degree is only as meaningful as its scarcity [2008] - <AUTHOR> http://weblog.raganwald.com/2008/01/no-disrespect.html

<comment><USER2> Degrees used to be useful for weeding out resumes. I have 10 jobs, 100applicants, just pick the dozen CVs with degrees. That fails when everyone has a degree, so then you start to pick only ivy league, or only 1st/2:1 class.

SO you can try and pick degrees based on scarcity, ie I only hire oxbridge maths grads, or MIT physics as programmers.

Opensource has changed a lot of that - when I went to college only universities had compilers. A machine capable of running a compiler took a room, now I talk to high school kids who have written kernel modules.

I now hire either people with no degrees based on projects they've done as well as smart graduates (ie maths/physics) - ironically both groups with no formal programming qualifications.

<comment><USER3> I think you view the degree incorrectly. A degree should be a minbar of what one knows. It shouldn't be a scarcity measure. If someone has a CS degree I should be able to talk about garbage collection, threads, the pumping lemma, Amdahl's Law, control flow, NP-Completeness, etc...

Scarcity really should have nothing to do with it. Either you've acquired the knowledge, in which case the degree signals that or you haven't.

Your job as someone who hires people is to determine which vectors you put the most weight on. CS knowledge certainly isn't the only thing you care about, but a degree in CS may signal sufficient CS knowledge. In some cases maybe it requires a PhD in a specific field. Or maybe you want someone who has worked in the Linux kernel. In any case these vector weights should be job specific.

About the actual article, I must admit I don't know what the writer is talking about. As a consultant I've see a wide range of enterprise development. Some is as sophisticated as what you're likely to see at Google. Others are basic just people doing HTML markup. The degree requirement is a very pragmatic signal that the applicant has the basic skills required to do the job. I'm sure there are other ways to demonstrate this, but there's probably considerable investment in determining what they provide.

The thing that is somewhat interesting is that while there are probably just as many programmers who don't have degrees in CS/Math as those that do, most of the major breakthroughs, academia or industry, are from people either with these degrees or in the process of getting them.

<comment><USER4> Based on my 10 years of interviewing people no one with or without a CS degree can discuss any of those things. I'm usually happy if they know what a hash table is and roughly how it works.

<comment><USER5> I find this surprising. Maybe because we covered some of those topics in first year, and, as a second-year student, they're still fresh in my mind, but I simply can't see how someone who completes a CS degree would be ignorant on all of them. For the same reason, I can't see how fizzbuzz is a useful test. It was the very first thing we learned to program in our intro CS class. I'm not from a top-ranked school, and while we tend to do fairly well in competitions, we certainly aren't renowned for our CSc program.

I don't know whether to feel encouraged or discouraged when reading articles and comments like this. Are there truly _that_ many incompetent CS grads and/or insufficient programs out there?

<comment><USER6> You would be amazed how many people apply for programming jobs who seem to have no ability whatsoever to write software.

<comment><USER7> All they need to do is drag controls on Visual Studio, right?

<comment><USER4> No many of them know nothing of Visual Studio. They know how to operate Google.

<comment><USER7> I think being able to google your way out of a problem is worth more than being able to grag a grid to a form, drag a query to a grid and call it a day...

<comment><USER3> Why should I have to spend Googling for how to write a H264 decoder when I can just drag one, written by people who know it really well, onto my surface?

I know that a lot of people like to argue that these people "don't understand what they're doing". Most Ruby developers don't understand much below a single level of abstraction presented by the language either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think the market for CS is part of the problem. The skill set required from graduates varies widely across the industry. Also, it depends a lot on where you want to live. For example, if you are going to use hardcore CS knowledge, you must be or move to an area where companies require it. This means Silicon Valley, and a few places where there is a demand for such knowledge.

99% of other companies will hire CS people to write glue-code in Java or similar. In that case, the important skills are team-working and project management, beyond being able to program in Java.

So, you cannot blame only universities for delivering grads that don't know more than the basics. This is what the market will pay for. It does no good to a State University to teach for example AI algorithms that will be useful only if they get a job on Google, or writing Haskell compiler that will be useful only if they work for Microsoft.

I think a sensible solution would be to limit the number of CS programs, and create a separate major, maybe business computing or something like this, to attend the need to of the large majority of businesses.

<comment><USER9> Some schools already have an Management Information Systems (MIS) major, which is basically business computing, and/or Software Engineering, which focuses more on teamwork and project management. We should be pressing more schools to offer those majors so that students who want to become software developers will have other options. Then the CS major would be able to focus more on theory and preparing students to do research (just like real scientists).

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was just talking to one of my coders about how nothing I have used in my career was learned from my computer science classes.

I guess I'm a "business programmer" - if I'm a programmer at all anymore - I'm not sure. I've definitely never delved into Scheme, Haskell, and OCaml.

I majored in CS, graduated from a California State University in 2002. I focused on getting A's, not learning or connecting w/ people or deciding what I wanted to do w/ my life. I figured I would graduate and a coding job would fall in my lap. Since graduating, I've worked at a real estate franchise, a hedge fund kind of investment place, and now ecommerce.

I don't know how a CS degree from a CSU looks vs UC or ivy league, definitely didn't think about it enough when graduating from high school. But I do know that my degree only _directly_ served to let me pass through a filter to get my first job. And I probably could have had that with a vocational school degree.

<comment><USER3> How much did you know about CS before going to college?

<comment><USER10> Depends what you mean by "know about." I had taken a couple of programming classes. I knew you could write code, compile it, and make a thing that does a thing. I started college as a Computer Engineering major, then realized that _really_ wasn't what I wanted. If I could go back, and if it existed at the time, I'd to informatics.

<comment><USER3> I ask because if knew nothing going in, you'd learn a fair bit in college.

With that said, I'd programmed since 3rd grade and still learned a fair bit in college that I use to this day. Of course, this was pre-internet, so I think it was generally hard to self-teach. But things I learned in college that I used professionally:

* Data structures. Before college I pretty much used primitives and arrays. In college I learned to make much better use of trees, graphs, sparse matrices.

* OOP. Although in fairness, OOP started to come to life when I was in college. There was no ANSI C at the time :-)

* Compilers. I've since built many compilers, but having taken the sequence certainly made it a lot easier.

* Databases. Never used a relational DB until college. I think it would be fair to say I've made millions off of them since. :-)

* Regular expressions and state machines. This is just ingrained now.

* Vi ... Used Vi exclusively for the first decade of my career.

* Unix ... Used various Unix variants in the first decade of my career as well. Learned most of it in college.

* Architecture and internals -- I've done a fair bit of work at the architectural level, and college is where I laid the foundation for understanding both the architecture (registers, cache, tlbs, pipelines, units, etc..) as well as basic EE. None of which I knew much about before college.

There are plenty more, but these are some examples. Probably my big weakness in going in to college is I did all game programming before college. I understood graphics really well and the game loop, But looking back at some of the code, and it was really horrible. You really shouldn't use arrays for everything :-)

<comment><USER10> I was exposed to all of that, but 1) haven't used much besides Unix/OOP/Databases since, and 2) feel like I only learned 1% of what I use even in those areas during college.

A lot of it comes back to not having specific goals in college, sliding by like I always did in school.

That, and the excessive my focus on the band I played in. Not that I regret it, but pretty impractical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Degrees may not be scarce - but the knowledge that should be _contained within_ an CS graduate indeed is. At least as my experience has led me to believe.

So to recap the article: Don't go to UNI to get a CS degree thinking you will make big bucks just due to the degree. However if you actually understand the knowledge you were _supposed_ to learn - then you should be able to make a buck.

Nothing to see here - move along.

<comment><USER12> That's the opinion often missing here. Just like ideas alone aren't valuable, neither is schooling. If you get something out of it though, formal education is valuable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My wife has said for a long time that the main reason for a position to require a degree, is to demonstrate that the candidate has subjected themselves to the process and bureaucracy of an educational institution, which is often designed to mimic the structure of your average corporate hierarchy.

Given that I got kicked out of college because I simply was either too lazy to do the busywork, or too much of a rebel to please my professors, and she finished, but considers the net gain from the experience to be relatively worthless, I'd say she's pretty spot on. She also does better in your average 9 to 5 job than I do.

</comment><comment><USER14> I don't know much about the contents of CS degrees, but from observation over quite a length of time it does seem to be true that most software engineers in businesses are really clerks - and treated as such. It's a very lowly position in the corporate pecking order. There are the software engineers and then there are the cleaners and the part time vending machine attendant.

</comment><comment><USER15> This was kind of depressing to read. I have a CS degree, am currently working on a masters in IS, and am working as a web developer. I would like to think I am doing all right for myself so far. However, sometimes I feel as if there is a large gap in my CS knowledge.

This is one of those times.

</comment><comment><USER16> Yes, but the trick isn't in defining meaning; it's in defining what we mean by scarcity.</comment>


21 profiles of profitable businesses - <AUTHOR> http://nymag.com/news/features/2007/profit

<comment><USER2> This is a really fascinating sequence of articles discussing the ins and outs of businesses we see every day and always wonder about their market and profitability -- who knew that cabbies pay $18,000/yr on gas? Or that insurance for a yoga studio is only $90/mo? Or that the least profitable customers for a diner are the elderly, since they're more likely to return food?

<comment><USER3> I find it particularly interesting that most of the businesses covered here run at a profit margin of about 10%. I guess it is safe to say that many of us believe that the margins of successful software/Internet businesses can be much higher than that. At the same time, when seeing these examples, I wonder how realistic this is for the average profitable startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It would be interesting to see the numbers for 2009; this article is dated 2007.

<comment><USER5> Yes, a fact I didn't realize until the section on Goldman Sachs referred to the more favorable levels of risk carried by Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.</comment></comment>


New iPod touch delivers even greater performance - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2019/05/new-ipod-touch-delivers-even-greater-performance/ <comment><USER2> I've wondered if they plan to drop support for 4" screens in iOS 13 or 14 on account of the iPhone SE being discontinued now. With a new product launch in this form factor maybe that pushes it out a bit.

A10 is from the iPhone 7, previous iPod Touch was an A8 from the iPhone 6. So the other thing hanging over the iPhone SE is the A9 processor from the iPhone 6s. We'll see how long that part stays supported.

<comment><USER3> Apple seems to provide IOS updates, at least with the iPhones, for about 4-5 years. Assuming the trend holds with the SE, I would probably expect them to at least support it into mid 2020.

<comment><USER2> I suspect the SE's support is tied to the 6s's, being a small offshoot model released mid-cycle that Apple doesn't care too much about.

So based on that, the 6s was the 2015 phone launch, running iOS 9. Updates in 2016, 2017, 2018, probably 2019, hopefully 2020, probably not 2021.

Last phone they dropped support for was the iPhone 5 in iOS 11. Compatibility list was the same in iOS 12 (with nice performance fixes on older hardware), but 13 is probably the end of the line for the 5s and 6.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I sort of assumed that the vast number of hand-me-down (or second hand) iPhones would have pretty much eliminated the market for iPhone Touches. I guess there's still some demand but Apple has never been that big on creating products for niches.

<comment><USER5> It also feels like there are enterprisey uses case for it, stuff like museum tour guides etc [0]. But I can't imagine that market is so large.

[0]: [http://www.paratsolutions.com/museums- destinations/](http://www.paratsolutions.com/museums-destinations/)

<comment><USER6> Putting an iPod Touch in a rugged case with a barcode scanner is a really good way to approach warehouse inventory management and other scanner use cases.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a pity WhatsApp cannot be officially installed on iPods - they could replace phones for some people.

<comment><USER8> Privacy centric messaging apps like Signal don't work either and that's a real shame because the iPod touch is inherently more secure than the iPhone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Speaking of iPods, has anyone been able to find a modern replacement for a nano or shuffle? Ideally something with bluetooth. I'm guessing the best bet these days would be an apple watch.

<comment><USER5> Probably an Apple Watch, or if you are more of a Spotify person I've heard good things about [https://bemighty.com](https://bemighty.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When the first smartphones came out, they were prohibitively expensive, and for a few years I carried a very basic traditional cellphone and an iPod touch.

In 2019, when there are smartphones at any price point, each of those with the same funcions of the iPod touch, plus being a phone on top of that, the use- case for this device kind of escapes me.

<comment><USER11> I bought the previous gen last year when it was on sale and mainly use it for gym or jogging because my phone is too big to carry around. If only they had a up-to-date, small form factor phone (hoping a SE2) then yeah I would switch my phone altogether.

<comment><USER12> Why not use the watch for this?

<comment><USER11> I don't own an iPhone and the watch was 2x more expensive than the iPod.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is there any sign that Apple will eventually allow development tools on iOS itself? (there's ssh clients, but I mean locally)

What's their motivation for preventing it?

<comment><USER14> There's pythonista, which is perfect unless you want to publish in the app store.

<comment><USER13> TY, good to know! Now I think I recall Apple allowing "scripting" languages, since they're often used in apps/games (like lua).

Although py is pretty fast, esp if using opengl (or I guess metal now?) or even use JS with webGL (but Apple dropped openGL?), I'd like something faster, C or objective-C or even Java.

Is it known why Apple opposes non-"scripting" development on iOS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Very welcome news here, I was wondering if they would end-of-life this product and hoped for the best. It fills an important niche, sort of a micro iPad.

</comment><comment><USER16> An honest question — this or a mint condition iphone 7, they should be at comparable price points?

</comment><comment><USER17> Odd that there is sufficient demand for an updated iPod touch but not an updated iPhone SE.

</comment><comment><USER18> I will never understand why anyone would build an ipod (read:non-smartphone) without physical playback controls.

<comment><USER19> Why? I can't think of a use case where it would be more convenient to use controls on the device than the headphones or the Bluetooth controls in my car.</comment></comment>


[DSA 2949-1] linux security update (CVE-2014-3153) - <AUTHOR> https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2014/msg00130.html

<comment><USER2> "Pinkie Pie discovered an issue in the futex subsystem that allows a local user to gain ring 0 control via the futex syscall. An unprivileged user could use this flaw to crash the kernel (resulting in denial of service) or for privilege escalation."

Damnit, Pinkie.</comment>


Show HN: Zephyr – Collaboration for teams and freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER2> I'll be honest - I find the UI impenetrable. It's dark and full of fiddly icons and I'm not sure what I can click, what I can drag, etc.

If there's any way you can find someone amenable who has no personal attachment to this project (ie. hasn't used it before, doesn't really know what you're trying to achieve) _and_ has strong UI/UX sensibilities to take a look over this, I really think you should. Sometimes when you've built something and you're proud of it, it can be very hard to have an objective perspective on how usable something is.

<comment><USER3> The UI is quite jarring at first, and doesn't give any call to action or incentive to "try" anything. The "Join the Beta" window is overlaying the "Welcome to Zephyr" box, which is confusing.

The dark color scheme is nice for a workspace, but the font size is difficult to read with large quantities of text. This makes it harder to onboard a user.

Also, I took myself to the home page ([https://zephyrplatform.com/](https://zephyrplatform.com/)) in hopes of a nicer pitch....and was presented with a sparse version of the demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point on the overlapping cards, we're fixing that now. Thanks!

For our main website, soon as we release the full beta we will move that to a more detailed website. It's just a basic splash page for now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is our first release, built to showcase the card based UI and platform command system, come and try packing and flipping our cards. Also modules for chat, pinboard and storage for you to play with.

As we roll out beta there will be further modules added for productivity and a suite of core enhancements, new command functions to push faster usage, the Zephyr analytics engine and more.

Would very much love to have you onboard, also any feedback you have. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER4> Does this have anything in common with the Zephyr instant messaging protocol designed in the 80's created at MIT as part of Project Athena? A quick look at the link didn't seem like it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_(protocol)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zephyr_\(protocol\))

It's not the sexiest new protocol, but there are still pockets where it's still used, particularly SIPB.

No other product (save Zulip which used Zephyr on the back end anyway), has had the same notion of messages having both a class and instance which makes it hard to replace, so I'm stuck on screen + barnowl for the time being.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, no. It's just the same name.

<comment><USER5> Yeah there is also Zephir Language > [http://www.zephir- lang.com/](http://www.zephir-lang.com/) Same names is very confusing.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a different spelling. I see what you are saying though. Name's just a name at present, a working title, and everything is under test to produce the best product possible for launch.

<comment><USER5> Oh you're right sorry, I did not even see that until you mentioned it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for all the comments, massively appreciated! Just remember its a first demo release, we've still much more to do before we launch, especially on the UI.

Everything has to start somewhere, but you will see many improvements as each week rolls by, would very much love to see you all on our beta so we can show you what we can do and how Zephyr will be progressing.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm struggling to understand the purpose of this compared to other collaboration platforms. Could you elaborate why this should matter to a team above and beyond other collab platforms out there?

<comment><AUTHOR> We're only around 20% of our final build functionality on this demo. It's just a little taste of what Zephyr can do.

Tasks, events, screenshare, integration with mail and other 3rd party systems, analytics and a lot more besides will be rolling out.

Basically you and your team will be able to create your data, visualise it how you want, analyse it and store it on Zephyr. All on one platform, across all your devices, fully secured.

This isn't our final product but if you do want to come onboard and see what we can do and how we will benefit you and your business, sign up to the beta as I would very much love your help in making Zephyr (even more) awesome ☺

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Super cool, well done!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :-)</comment></comment>