Jacquard by Google transforms clothing - <AUTHOR> https://atap.google.com/jacquard/ <comment><USER2> This may be the worst, least informative technology website I've ever seen – and that is a high (low?) bar. It fails the "what is it?" test with spectacular aplomb. And never have I learned less from a "learn more" page. "Music should keep you moving, not make you look at your phone." Um, yeah, ok, thanks for that helpful information.

<comment><USER3> Have you thought that maybe you're not the target audience for that page, and that most people in the world are not interested in the technical details as you are?

<comment><USER4> But where are the non-technical details?

<comment><USER3> From the page:

 _Specifically tailored with the urban cyclist in mind, the Levi's Commuter Trucker Jacket was designed for getting around the city. The jacket features articulated shoulders to provide extra room to maneuver, reflectors, and a dropped hem to keep you covered as you ride. You can easily access your digital world because Jacquard technology is woven right into the sleeve._

 _Tiny electronics contained in the flexible snap tag connect the Jacquard Threads in the jacket's cuff to your mobile device.1 The snap tag lets you know about incoming information, like a phone call2, by giving you light and haptic feedback. Inspired by a strap that you would see on a cuff, it looks and feels like it's a part of the jacket. The tag also houses the battery which can last up to 2 weeks between USB charges.3_

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I feel like we are pushing this wearable tech thing too hard. Pushing all the cool ways we can put stuff into things (ordering pizza from your shoes, snapchatting from your glasses) but they ALWAYS boil down to "You can touch XYZ instead of your phone to pause your music".

When we will get some decent applications, instead of enhancing the form

<comment><USER6> One way to look at wearable tech is as an extension of the surface of your smartphone. If you can interact with your phone throughout your clothing, there could be a lot of room for (warning, buzzword!) innovation there.

<comment><USER7> Extension of the touch sensing aspect of the phone screen, not the display aspect. Extending one without the other leads to over-engineered pause buttons, is what the parent comment was saying I think. When the number of unlabeled buttons get much higher than 1, people start to get confused.

I agree in part, just think that the jacket needs to be paired with a HUD or maybe have control/button labels that can shine through the fabric in order to open up that innovation.

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure we need screens on our jackets, we just need two-way communication. Right now, Jacquard only allows one-way communication (human -> device), but perhaps there could be a touch-sensitive way for the device to communicate as well.

This would be huge for things like heart monitors and emergency phone calls. A lot of room for "cool social apps for teens", and almost definitely for gaming/VR.

<comment><USER7> Good point. The two paths on a phone are touch/mic/gyro input and screen/speakers/vibe output, but we don't need all three of those outputs for clothing-based touch input to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Watching the YT video, is this just a denim jacket with a touch sensor on the sleeve cuff?

<comment><USER9> Yeah I don't really get it either. Why not sell the sensor on its own so that I can wear it on anything I want? What's the added value of having it sewn to your jacket? It's not like it's particularly small or discreet.

<comment><USER10> This has been a few years in the making. The actual innovation here is the new gesture-sensitive fabric being woven into the denim, not whatever it's talking to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> C: That'll be $9.99

A: Sorry, I forgot my jacket

C: Oh, we have some convenience nike bio-gloves if you want ...

A: Not biosynced to me.

C: Oh. Uhmm ... face scan?

A: I'm not American, I'm not in your DB.

C: Bitcoin?

D: No jacket.

C: What do we do then?

D: Do you take cash young robot?

C: You mean like paper? No, it's 2040. Paper cash is unhygienic.

D: So no coffee?

C: I guess not. Sorry. Next.

<comment><USER12> 2040 startup idea: body-identity-based micro-credit. "You forgot your wallet, but you look fairly legit. For a 5% surcharge, we'll give you that coffee now. Pay this IOU online later. In case of nonpayment, you consent to nationwide tracking by our network of facial recognition drones."

<comment><USER13> ... which sounds pretty close to Amazon's idea. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/amazon-go-grocery- store_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/amazon-go-grocery- store_us_58459015e4b017f37fe5b133)

<comment><USER12> Cool, but the Amazon Go store relies on you authenticating yourself (and presumably paying) via an app.

Do you think they contemplated doing visual ID of the shopper, or would it just be too creepy to walk into the store and have it say "Hello Dave, I'll put it all on your tab!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Isn't cycling/driving with earphone plugged dangerous? I've tried it, and I couldn't hear the ambience sounds surrounding me.

<comment><USER15> Ironically, this mostly depends on you. If you lose the sense of vehicles and people around you, your music/navigation is up too high.

Even with the best isolating headphones (around 25db; most non-IEM models offer much less isolation), you can still hear ambiant noises (unless your hearing is damaged to the point where isolating headphones do make you deaf). And with the standard set of Apple style headphones, they won't dampen the outside world at all.

Losing the ambiant noises will only occur when you overwhelm them out with your music, podcast, or navigation.

<comment><USER16> > _Even with the best isolating headphones (25dB)_

Etymotic ER-4's are 35-42 dB; I've put mine in and not heard the bus zooming through the crossing I was about to stroll across…

<comment><USER15> Etymotics are fantastic, but I can hear regular road noise through them with my music turned down. Doesn't require much volume to drown it out, but it's still possible.

ER4-XR's for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I dig it. Ever since 'smart watches' started I've felt like grown men wearing digital watches is a bit awkward. I'd prefer more subtle things like Google Glass or tech woven into clothing fabrics.

We definitely need to get beyond smartphones and into more ubiquitous form factors so we don't evolve into creatures with our upper backs and necks contorted downwards.

I always liked this UI from Mission Impossible 5: [https://imgur.com/6H1dJ2n](https://imgur.com/6H1dJ2n)

<comment><USER18> With you on the subtlety, not so much on google glass being subtle!

<comment><USER17> True! Hopefully such interfaces can eventually fit into the contact lens form factor.

<comment><USER19> Overheating bug would be so bad...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why get this denim jacket when you can get an iPhone and an Apple Watch?

Jacquard only puts limits on you as it's stuck on that specific denim jacket. Apple Watch on the other hand works with any jacket. You don't even need a jacket with Apple watch, you can wear whatever you want, whenever you want, and it would still work compared to Jacquard which wouldn't.

<comment><USER21> The idea is that every piece of clothing one day will incorporate this.

<comment><USER20> But why not buy a single smart watch and keep your clothes normal? I mean, it's seems redundant to make every single piece have similar tech functionality when you can have one watch that works with all clothes. If you choose to have different tech in different clothes, I don't see why you don't want to combine everything into a watch. Though there are edge cases where you can want to split it up. But then your customer base gets much smaller.

<comment><USER18> In this case, it's possible you would actually wear one jacket whenever you were cycling, and the gestures might only be useful for that application. A cycling jacket also probably needs to be water and wind resistant, breathe well, and include reflective panels. The latter at least seems to be included in this design. The idea of clothing engineered to a particular purpose is a good one, in my opinion. For instance to use woven retroreflective material (which reflects back bright light, but looks normal in ordinary conditions) in a casual jacket you would use whenever you were cycling, but could also as a general purpose jacket, rather than having to carry around and put on a lot of separate and unwieldy reflective gear.

However, it does need to use a standard api for communication between the snap tag, phone and jacket, and use a standard physical connector. I'm not going to spend $350 for a jacket that can only be used with one company's proprietary technology, and which has to be replaced when the next generation snap tag / dongle comes out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> And Project Soli.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QNiZfSsPc0)

<comment><USER23> I don't think this was even mentioned at Google IO this year. Anyone know what's going on with Soli?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If you're listening to music on the go, you're probably wearing headphones or earbuds, right? Why not just build the controls into that and then you don't need an expensive jacket to handle input?

To answer my own question: because then you can't sell an expensive jacket that does what's already possible without it.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Jacquard enabled/You empowered

> Jacquard by Google transforms clothing. It's an entirely new take on > wearables that lets you do more than ever with the things that you love and > wear every day. With Jacquard technology woven into the very fabric of your > clothes, you can connect to your digital life instantly and effortlessly. > With a literal brush of your cuff, you can navigate your life while living > it.

I can't tell — is this some sort of late or early April Fool's joke? Or have I finally just become such an old fogey that I'm yelling at those goshdurn kids to quit sequencing their nanites on my lawn?

<comment><USER26> This had better detail: [https://www.blog.google/topics/atap/more-just-jacket- levis-c...](https://www.blog.google/topics/atap/more-just-jacket-levis- commuter-trucker-jacket-powered-jacquard-technology/)

Basically, you can make various gestures on the jacket cuff to control things like playing/pausing music, having an incoming sms read aloud to you, etc.

Maybe useful if you're riding a bike, or other situations where interaction with a screen isn't practical?

<comment><USER27> But as the "tag snap" is detachable (so you can wash the jacket) it seems you can use it on its own, or with any other piece of clothing. I have a hard time understanding what is the advantage of this over any smartwatch.

<comment><USER23> You can't use it on any other garment, because the touch sensor is woven into the fabric.

<comment><USER28> At this point it's getting ridiculous. They should have made a detachable touch sensor instead. Why on Earth should I need to buy a particular piece of clothing to get a feature that's encompassed in 1% of it?

I understand MVPs, but if you're going to actually integrate stuff into fabric, make it something more advanced than _a single touchpad_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The video gives a lot more detail than the website: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ADVeNpypk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ADVeNpypk)

No clue how to pronouce Jacquard btw. :(

<comment><USER30> French guy here : "jakar".

<comment><USER31> When Anglicized, the 'd' is typically pronounced, also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Wondering about privacy issues though, seeing as google collects "location information", isn't this just another step to surveillance, etc.

I'm kind of more interested in clothing that doesn't collect my data.

<comment><USER33> Meh, it is going to be bluetooth connected to your smartphone so why do you care what the jacket does?

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> "The Jacket is designed to withstand up to 10 washes with the Jacquard snap tag removed but your experience may vary by usage and wash conditions"

"Note: You can wear the Jacket in the rain, but if the Jacket becomes too wet it may not reliably detect gestures. Allow the Jacket to dry and resume using. The snap tag is resistant to rain and splashing, but it is not fully waterproof"

Sure it's really "Specifically tailored with the urban cyclist in mind"...that's one wet, smelly, denim jacket after a few rides in the UK.

<comment><USER35> Yours is at least the second comment talking about it this way, but I am not seeing the word _cyclist_ on the site. I am seeing _Jacquard currently offers abilities designed for urban commuters._ and _Levi's® Commuter™ Trucker jacket._

Did I miss the part where they say cyclist?

<comment><USER36> You missed the youtube video at the "learn more" page. A third of the video is a guy riding a bike.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ADVeNpypk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9ADVeNpypk)

<comment><USER35> Ah, thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Joseph Marie Jacquard was a genius [1]. Google should not use his name and implicitly appropriate his invention _without proper acknowledgement._ It bothers me that Google hijacked Jacquard's name for their own project, especially with such emphasis on looming.

With decency, they could at a minimum have acknowledged his creations, influence, and inspiration. Their about page [2] does not acknowledge Jacquard's existence. Even worse, Google has trademarked the name "Jacquard", to appropriate that name in relation to tech-infused weaving [3].

Contrast with the Pascal programming language -- Blaise Pascal was honored explicitly when this language was named after him; the creator, Niklaus Wirth, never dreamed of using this name without explicit tribute, since the naming was _intended_ as a tribute.

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

[2] [https://atap.google.com/jacquard/about/](https://atap.google.com/jacquard/about/)

[3] [https://www.trademarkia.com/jacquard-86643715.html](https://www.trademarkia.com/jacquard-86643715.html)

<comment><USER38> Yeah, my initial thought was some sort of automated weaving that would shape panels with more threads for the different parts of my body. With a nice amount of thought put into bias and joints. Some techwear companies are doing things kind of like this, looser knit (but the same fit) around the armpits to help ventilation on t-shirts for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm not seeing the use case here, and that's probably why the marketing is so vague. There just isn't a solid one.

There's really no need for this to control music. AirPods now have touch and voice controls built in. Smart earbuds are a much better solution for audio control than smart clothing that controls dumb earbuds.

And if you're getting turn-by-turn directions you'll probably have your AirPods in as well, and you can just ask Siri for updates. That's so much more flexible -- you can ask for so much more than you could via preprogrammed swipes.

That pretty much just leaves the use case of haptic notifications for people who don't want to wear a watch / wristband. I think if you care about this you'll at least put on a fitbit during your commute. And that works with all clothing.

</comment><comment><USER40> I find the gesture choices interesting and suggestive of future directions for interaction with wearable devices. Their help article on gestures lists the four supported gestures with GIFs. One detail worth noting: "We recommend using four fingers when performing gestures. Note: To avoid unintentional activation, the jacket will not respond to gestures performed with a single finger."

[https://support.google.com/jacquard/answer/7537511?hl=en&ref...](https://support.google.com/jacquard/answer/7537511?hl=en&ref_topic=7516780)

</comment><comment><USER41> How disposable is this product?

Many products create a waste burden that is an after thought. Clothing has a good disposal path - reuse, recycle or just throw out.

But what about wearable clothing? Since it is fashion it will have a short life cycle.

<comment><USER18> The fabric is more or less just metal threads woven into the cotton, isn't it? Not so different from a bit of shiny styling. The tag is a normal bit of consumer electronics like a smartwatch or an activity tracker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> For some reason wrapping myself in google.. Doesn't make me feel secure.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'd be curious what the plan for recycling these fabrics is going to be. Microfibers from artificial fabrics are really a problem in watersupplies now. What will this bring?

</comment><comment><USER44> If they can't even make the product good enough for people to want to buy it without making the sensors stand out as a conversation piece, then what's the point?

</comment><comment><USER45> This is the definition of a gimmick. How is this superior to the various existing bluetooth-based solutions. Need to navigate without looking at a screen? Bluetooth headphones or a bluetooth connection to your car. Need to skip a track when listening to music? Bluetooth headphones or a bluetooth connection to.... Need to "handle a call"? Bluetooth head-

</comment><comment><USER46> Jacquard as the product name sounds like a Silicon Valley joke. I think they might be getting a little out of touch at Google. :o

<comment><USER47> A product that puts sensors in your clothes. And you feel that the NAME might be the out-of-touch bit?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So, this is a smart watch that is worn on your jacket. What happens when you step into a climate-'controlled' space, where its too warm to wear a jacket? Or when you go out in the summer, where it's too warm to wear a jacket? Or when you go out in the winter, where you wear a coat, instead of a jacket?

</comment><comment><USER49> A lot of hate going on in the comments here, but as somebody who doesn't really like wearing watches - I'd take the idea of "Subtly vibrate on text/notification received" being built into my jacket over it being built into a smartwatch. Would love to know how much this costs though.

<comment><USER50> It's not built into the jacket, per se. It's a vibrating Bluetooth dongle that snaps on the outside of the jacket wrist.

The jacket contribution is threads to act like a touch pad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> So, er, it's a coat, with some crap sewn into it, and that crap has something to do with telephones?

</comment><comment><USER52> When you can't tell the difference between a joke and reality it can't be good.

In this case, I guess this is a real thing, but reading the website it seems like it could just as easily be a joke.

Kinda like the Antifa spoof pages on Facebook, which were hilarious if you knew what they were spoofs.

</comment><comment><USER53> This comes to mind: [https://hackernoon.com/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell- me-wh...](https://hackernoon.com/for-the-love-of-god-please-tell-me-what-your- company-does-c2f0b835ab92)

</comment><comment><USER54> Looking at their video for the jacket, all the gesturing was done around the wrist area, where my Android wear watch already sits.

They need a "killer" use case for this, but everyday jacket wearing folks can pass on this without missing much

</comment><comment><USER55> If there is 1 high tech feature that I want from a clothing (I am willing to ignore everything else) is the ability to charge all of our gadgets wirelessly.

I don't care about controlling music player from my shirt, my phone already dies that.

</comment><comment><USER56> So basically after reading the comments I should make my own sensor people can hold in their hands or pin to their sleeves then market it? Who wears Jean jackets? Lol

</comment><comment><USER57> What problem is this solving?

</comment><comment><USER58> So the exact same haptics tricks that homebrew folks have been using for years, but with more micronization?

Okay. Sure. But they'd better not cut corners in the security of the handshaking and integration or someone's going to be able to hack your pants and make them buzz forever.

</comment><comment><USER59> Couple this with Nest style temperature control and I'm sold.

</comment><comment><USER60> Someone send one to Scoble.

</comment><comment><USER61> Does this mean I'm going to have to charge my clothing now too?

</comment><comment><USER62> Soy in a jacket.

Now you can wear google.

</comment><comment><USER63> 'Rainbows End' slowly coming to life!

</comment><comment><USER64> Can I put it in the water machine?

</comment><comment><USER65> Too forward thinking

<comment><USER11> Sideways thinking.

What we might want from clothing:

\+ Self cleaning \+ No need to iron but still feels like cotton, not plastic \+ Synthetics that are breathable like cotton \+ Cheaper \+ Can change colour/styles

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Price, anyone?

</comment><comment><USER66> [http://www.levi.com/US/en_US/category/men/collections/levi-c...](http://www.levi.com/US/en_US/category/men/collections/levi- collections-commuter) Why is this only in skinny hipster sizes like Slim Fit Levi's 511s.

Damn you malnourished SF hipsters (I guess you cant afford to eat with Bay Area prices, also you keep buying new phones instead of food).

<comment><USER67> You must be a bodybuilder.

<comment><USER68> You don't have to be a bodybuilder to have a normal constitution (as in non- slim).</comment></comment></comment>


Superfish's webpage is now dead - <AUTHOR> http://www.home.superfish.com/ <comment><USER2> Just give them a week or two to rename their company and start peddling their malware-addled spyware/adware again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's what it looked like: [https://archive.today/d7yxb/image](https://archive.today/d7yxb/image)

</comment><comment><USER4> Heh. The proxy at work blocks superfish.com as "Potentially Unwanted Software".

<comment><USER5> Same here. Blue Coat proxy? :)

<comment><USER4> Possibly. I'm not in the IT department, so I'm not sure. If the proxy is Blue Coat, the error page shows no such indication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And stay out!</comment>


Show HN: GitHub File Watcher – get notified when files change in a GitHub repo - <AUTHOR> http://github-file-watcher.com/ <comment><USER2> Using "github" in your domain name limits you to github (many other repository services exist) and makes you a potential target for trademark claims.

Also, I think you are onto something. Git remotes are mostly passive, where you have to pull to see whether there are any updates. There is no subscription model to get notified of changes. You have to actively pull to find out what is new.

You should try to make this as a standalone service, which works with Git remotes, not just a Git hosting party. Then locally, you can pull the repo/commits and check what has updated (diff) and inform subscribers accordingly.

<comment><AUTHOR> These are great points; thanks for your feedback! :)

I'm trying to validate whether there's any interest in something this, so I definitely cut a lot of corners (e.g. the app doesn't maintain a copy of the repository — it just uses the GitHub API). _Also_ using GitHub in the name might not have been the best idea.. though! ;)

I agree with you regarding the usefulness of watching arbitrary repositories. There's already git-notifier [0] that does pretty much this, but you have to set it up for yourself and it has to be configured using a text file.

[0]: [http://www.icir.org/robin/git-notifier/](http://www.icir.org/robin/git- notifier/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very useful!

I write plugins for RpgMaker and a lot of the people who use them are regular users who don't know how to use GitHub. Some of them had asked for a way they could get notifications every time I update a plugin, this will be very useful for that.

Can I request a feature? Would be nice to have a way I could pass the repository and file names on the query string, so I can put a link where people only need to inform their email and submit to start receiving notifications for that.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, this is a great idea! I've added this now :). Just reload.

<comment><USER3> Thanks a lot!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Funny thing i almost did exactly this until i realized you can use rss which can also watch directories easily enough for example [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master/Documentati...](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master/Documentation.atom) . Also unfortunately i found that using the api is probably not going to scale if a lot of people want to use it and local clones are pretty expensive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, interesting trick! : )

The GitHub API allows up to 5,000 requests per hour. I currently poll once an hour, so there's a bit of headway. If that becomes a problem, I think I can always space out checks for less-active repositories (there's also the option of allowing users to authenticate with GitHub and use their own quota so they don't have to share it with anyone else).

Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wrote a more generic solution to this kind of problem recently, which I run as a service:

[https://github.com/ianmiell/alert-on- change/blob/master/READ...](https://github.com/ianmiell/alert-on- change/blob/master/README.md)

It's probably more suited for the programming types.

For example, you can do a 'raw' GitHub request to determine when a particular file has changed.

</comment><comment><USER6> Thanks! I've been looking for something like this for quite a while now, but without any success.

</comment><comment><USER7> Does not wok on private repo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, not yet! Private repo support would require authenticating with GitHub, which makes the project a bit more complex.

I definitely plan to add this if there's enough interest. There should be a link to a mailing list to be notified when that rolls around ([http://eepurl.com/bILhR1](http://eepurl.com/bILhR1)).

Thanks for checking it out anyway! : )

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You can also just subscribe to commits via RSS.

<comment> vive-la-liberte On GH itself or via OP link?

<comment><USER8> Oh GH. e.g. [https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master.atom](https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commits/master.atom)

<comment> vive-la-liberte Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What about you know… using Git?

<comment><AUTHOR> I made this mainly to scratch my own itch :).

It's slightly more convenient for me to get a notification than to periodically pull repositories and check them for changes, but I understand that might not be the case for everyone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was posted a day ago. Source: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690114)

<comment><USER11> Yes, on HN reposts do not count as a dupe if the story hasn't had significant attention yet. In fact we invited the submitter to repost this one, which we sometimes do when a story seems like it would interest the community and deserves a second chance at attention.

<comment><USER12> Hmm, so I guess there's some sort of manual curation going on for what's interesting and can be posted again? Is there a criteria for such curation? Karma? Past posts? Past comments? Social influence? Who the OP really is? Will the OP also be advised on a better timing to post the link again so that it would have a better chance of getting attention?

<comment><AUTHOR> Here's the email I got inviting me to re-post the story. That's all I know : )

      Hi there,

      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10690114 looks good, but didn't
      get much attention. Would you care to repost it? You can do so
      here: https://news.ycombinator.com/repost?id=10690114.

      Please use the same account (krallin), title, and URL. When these match,
      the software will give the repost an upvote from the mods, plus we'll
      help make sure it doesn't get flagged.

      This is part of an experiment in giving good HN submissions multiple
      chances at the front page. If you have any questions, let us know. And
      if you don't want these emails, sorry! Tell us and we won't do it again.

      Thanks for posting good things to Hacker News,
      Daniel</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Managing a Startup Isn't Different – Don't Reinvent Everything - <AUTHOR> http://startupmanagement.org/2013/12/22/managing-a-startup-isnt-different-dont-re-invent-everything/

<comment><USER2> Startups are different creatures and they require a different way to being managed. (as you write)

The aim of many startups can be totally different than a large company, or even a small ongoing company such as a lifestyle business, or local shop, etc.

Good sources for ideas about this are the Startup Owners Manual as well as customer development approaches. A startup is a short term way to search for a sustainable business model and its customers, as Steve Blank says.

Also see Compass.co for managing startup goals and benchmarks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Managing a startup is different. In a startup you want as many people as possible to be "self managing". In an enterprise often you hire "commodity" workers who should be able to do what you ask, and do it when you ask, but aren't supposed to find more things to work on.

In a startup you want "motivated self starters" who will build the feature you asked for, and then solve the six problems that spawn from that, or at least say "hey these things are all going to break or look ugly with that change"

Startups also have to manage their "brain burn" very differently. At MSFT I could push employees hard then send them on a 2 week vacation. I can't do that at a startup.

At MSFT I had 5 people who could do any one task and I could shift loads to manage brain burn. In a startup I am lucky to have 5 people total, and likely I tried to round out my team so I don't have much over lap.

In short, Startups are different. If you manage the same as you do in enterprise you will fail.

Don't reinvent, there are plenty of places to learn how to manage at a startup, just don't think that managing in a fortune 500 and a "we raised $500k" is the same.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good points, and I agree mostly during the early startup stages, but when you start to reach 25-30+ people and over, then people & company management can make a difference.</comment></comment>


Lessons Learned Earning a Master's Degree While Working Full-Time - <AUTHOR> https://stories.jotform.com/lessons-learned-earning-a-masters-degree-while-working-full-time-3afe2d27535a#.d3rwmplml <comment><USER2> I received my MS in CS a year ago this month and it took me 5 years to do it. I had to take pre-reqs and was taking one class a quarter as I was working full time. That being said, something that is very important is SO buy in. There were times I was spending 40+ hours a week on homework/lecture while working 40 hours a week. My wife was supporting and understood that I had to not spend as much time with her as she would have liked because I just didn't have time.</comment>


WebAssembly Isolation with Tyler McMullen, CTO of Fastly - <AUTHOR> https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/2019/09/25/webassembly-isolation-with-tyler-mcmullen/ <comment><USER2> It would be interesting to see how this is used in practice. Is lucid inside of a lxc container? Are there other policies used to lock this down further?</comment>


US Military Blimp Loose Over Pennsylvania, F-16s Scrambled - <AUTHOR> http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/breaking-us-military-blimp-loose-over-pennsylvania-f-16s-scrambled/123218/ <comment><USER2> [http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/aberdeen-h...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/aberdeen- havre-de-grace/bs-md-jlens-blimp-loose-20151028-story.html)

 _Bad weather has caused problems for JLENS in the past. In 2010 a blimp was completely destroyed when it collided with another blimp at a facility in North Carolina._

Does anybody else find this whole situation absolutely hilarious? I mean, not because it's funny per-se, but just the sheer absurdity of the whole thing?

</comment><comment><USER3> You'd hope they have a remotely controllable slow helium release valve. That way they can just wait for a safe area and start slowly lowering it.

The fact they let it get from 10K to 16K and are only "tracking it" might hint that they have no such procedure in place.

The thing is pretty dangerous because of the amount of cable it is dragging.

<comment><USER4> They do, they tried using it and it didn't work...

<comment><USER3> Oh. That's unfortunate. Do you have a better article than this one? I'd like more info on this, and this article is lacking a little.

<comment><USER4> Gizmodo article is actually decent: "While helium doesn't appear to be a problem at the moment, deflation is. ABC27 reports: "Authorities said it is equipped with a device to slowly deflate it, but it apparently is not working." Whoops. If you see the free-floating balloon on the loose, call 911. Do not attempt to engage."

[http://gizmodo.com/theres-a-runaway-defense-department- blimp...](http://gizmodo.com/theres-a-runaway-defense-department-blimp- floating-some-1739224198)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


UWSGI 0.9.7 is available - <AUTHOR> http://projects.unbit.it/uwsgi This is the first fully modular and truly language agnostic release. It adds support for threading and includes a shared caching (with persistent storage) and queuing subsystem. Clustering can be automated via multicast, broadcast or a simple subscription system. Erlang plugin has been improved and Rack/RubyOnRails support is available. The "Emperor" mode has been added for massive hosting. <comment><USER2> Thank you for your work! I have used UWSGI for several months and found it great.</comment>


Ask HN: Current state of cross-plattform native app developement - <AUTHOR> Hello HN,
I am currently leading a small team that is about to develop our first app, and we are checking out the landscape regarding frameworks. We would like to be present at on the web, Android, and iOS.
However, the choice of paths is quite overwhelming - to me, app development is in an even more fractured state then web development.
People are advocating PWAs, apps that use webview and native apps - purely based on "fanboyism."
As we have the "react-license-situation" right now I have already stumbled about a bunch of useful recommendations on HN - but all good posts are buried beneath the license specific stuff.
So I would like to gather the thoughts of HN-users in this thread.
In what direction is native app development heading? What tools/frameworks are currently state of the art? If you would develop a new app as a small team, to which platform would you use?
Something like
- basic progressive web app, - ionic, - flutter, - react native, - native script or - weex?
Or anything else? <comment><USER2> Resist the urge to be "pure", "perfect", and thus arrive at "beautiful" code. Instead code, ship, & sell. Be free from the burden of "best" practices. Then, when you can afford the inside coffee bar, by all means tell the rest of us what a beautiful framework you're "now" using.

So, start with what you know. Make something amazing _to use_ even with the inefficient and uncool tools of the trade.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd recommend starting with what you know best. PWA/Webview is a decent place to start for many as it's a quick learning curve.

If the application takes off, usually you'll drop the cross-platform approach and re-write in the native variants - IMHO obviously. In that lens you're better off iterating quickly and then diving into specific native builds. I'm sure there are many that will disagree.

If you know React really well, then React Native might make more sense. Weex is good if you're coming from Vue, but the technology is still relatively new (and documentation is light).

</comment><comment><USER4> I created an app in ionic, and I find it good for pretty simple app workflows (standard tabs, traversal, etc). You can check out the app here (download links in the middle of the page).

sdabulletin.com

If you have any questions about the dev experience, or otherwise, feel free to let me know.

</comment><comment><USER5> Since its a small team and its your first app just a PWA is gonna take you a long way while trying to understand product market fit and simply to see if users like your product. Case in point checkout out Missive email app, everything is html/css (no frameworks) and it performs really well on all platforms (sometimes even better than react native), i think they're a 2 person team

</comment><comment><USER6> Check out [https://reactiveui.net/about](https://reactiveui.net/about)

<comment><USER7> To be used with Xamarin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Since you mentioned Flutter, there is a new article about it -- [https://goo.gl/4BaSPx](https://goo.gl/4BaSPx)</comment>


Why OO Languages Need Tail Calls - <AUTHOR> http://www.eighty-twenty.org/index.cgi/tech/oo-tail-calls-20111001.html

<comment><USER2> Previous HN discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2640537>

IMHO, this is worth a repost, though. It takes some time to read through and understand. Those who didn't have the time for the last post, might have the time for this one.

P.S. I'm _still_ wishing I had gotten a proper response to my comment (#11) on the original article. <sigh>

</comment><comment><USER3> I have two issues with the article (notwithstanding that I had to look it up in google cache because the server wasn't responding).

First, while it's true that in this particular case iterating exposes gritty implementation details (because, to even define "iteration", you need to know about all the possible implementations and how they store items). However, that doesn't mean that the design of the interface can't be changed so that iteration is possible. The fastest I can come up with is adding a concept of inner set (that might or might not be null) and a method containsOuter, that by contract should not dig into the inner set. Then, for the adjoint set implementation you would have (in a more C-family style)

      bool contains(T item)
      {
        bool res = containsOuter(item);
        IntSet next = getInnerSet();
        while(!set && next != null)
        {
          res |= next.containsOuter(item);
          next = next.getInnerSet();
        }
      }

And we have iteration, without having to resort to implementation details. Barring any argument about aesthetic appeal of having this innerSet thingy, the code itself is simple enough to manage (heck, you could have that as a virtual method without any problems if you were in the frame of mind of class inheritance as opposed to interfaces).

Second, I don't see why we can't abstract this iteration business into an iterator. Fine, Java's iterators may or may not be a sprawling mess, but add lazy evaluation to the mix and you have a very, very powerful system. In particular, LINQ and Haskell handle collections quite nicely, and nothing stops you from implementing it in the OO language of your choice (if there aren't already some).

So how do lazy iterators help? Well, infinite sets become stupidly easy to handle. Heck, you can even self reference in C#:

      static IEnumerable<int> Nats()
      {
        yield return 1;
        foreach (var n in Nats().Select(x => x + 1))
          yield return n;
      }

Not that I recommend mapping your collection to itself, mind, but if you wished you could go all out with it. The point is, you can transform an infinite list, filter elements out of it, combine it with another infinite list and then take 10. It won't even take infinite time to compute.

So no, lack of tail recursion is not a detrimental problem to the OO abstraction. An annoying problem, yes, but no more than that.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some related material (in the order it should be read) for those interested:

On understanding types, data abstraction, and polymorphism: <http://lucacardelli.name/Papers/OnUnderstanding.A4.pdf>

On Understanding Data Abstraction, Revisited: <http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~wcook/Drafts/2009/essay.pdf>

LtU discussion: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3668>

LtU discussion of Steele's post: <http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/3702>

</comment><comment><USER5> One problem I have with tail calls in OO languages is that they're fragile. Simple things, like adding a print statement for debugging, can break your code. I think these things are more apparent in functional languages.

With that said, I'd love to see it implemented in OO languages, but I'd tell those to be wary where correctness relies upon it (and as blasphemous as this may sound -- use iteration in places where it doesn't destroy the code).

</comment><comment><USER6> Sigh. The server should be back now. That'll teach me a lesson about TSTTCPW.</comment>


Using Tribler and copyright infringement notices from ISP - <AUTHOR> http://forum.tribler.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=6906

<comment><AUTHOR> If you tried out Tribler you probably acted as an exit node for someone's downloads. Check if your ISP issued warnings to you as well.</comment>


How the Hunt Brothers Cornered the Silver Market and Then Lost It All - <AUTHOR> https://priceonomics.com/how-the-hunt-brothers-cornered-the-silver-market/ <comment><USER2> "The main factor that has caused corners to fail [throughout history] is that the manipulator has underestimated how much will be delivered to him if he succeeds [at] raising the price to artificial levels,"

Money quote. People seem to consistently underestimate how much supply may come online with an order-of-magnitude increase in price, and simultaneously, how much demand can come online with an order-of-magnitude reduction in price. This is the story of shale oil, dark fiber, and most stock market manipulation, and on the other side, mass production, personal computers, search advertising, digital music, web content, and cloud computing. It's also why savvy startup investors advise you to work on getting that order-of- magnitude improvement in price/performance/ease-of-use, and not worry so much about how big the market appears to be.

<comment><USER3> Exactly. Taken to its extreme, this is the argument in favor of the seeming paradox that we'll never run out of oil, despite the Earth having an obviously finite supply.

<comment><USER4> It's not that we'll never run out of oil, but if the price of oil rises to arbitrarily high levels then alternatives start to make economic sense. Those alternatives in the short term may be alternate sources of oil that were too difficult to extract earlier, but alternatives can also be completely difference sources of energy. And once economies of scale start to apply to those alternatives then their price starts to reduce, which further increases demand, etc. Not sure where the long term equilibrium price is for energy and it may very well be higher than in the era of cheap oil but I also don't think that it will rise to catastrophically high levels that were predicted by "peak oil".

<comment><USER5> None of "the alternatives" offer oil's tremendous positive energy (net current) surplus with a minimum of effort _or_ technological capability.

Colonel Drake punched through 69 feet of Pennsylvania bedrock using 1300 year old Chinese salt-drilling techniques (and early 19th century cast iron well casings). Well Number 1, Bahrain, still supplied 35,000 barrels of oil per day _eighty years_ after it was drilled.

[http://www.geoexpro.com/articles/2012/12/bahrain-80-years- an...](http://www.geoexpro.com/articles/2012/12/bahrain-80-years-and-still- producing)

Oil (and coal and gas) absolutely changed the world, and quite simply, _they 're not like other raw materials_. They're not _transformed_ by processing, they're _consumed_ , they dwarf all other material inputs to the modern economy other than air and water (both of which are readily available from the envrionment ... usually). And we're using them at rates of 1,000 to 5,000,000 times faster than they were initially produced.

Energy itself _enables_ complexity (though it's a, um, complex relationship). Bootstrapping the modern world happened only once, and under what appears to be a singular mix of conditions ranging from geological to philosophical, despite humans having walked over the very sources of our modern wealth in the Middle East, China, Britain, North America, and Australia for many thousands of years.

If you're curious about what equilibrium energy prices for energy alternatives -- fungible, storable, on-demand energy that modern civilisation requires -- might be, look to the best alternatives to oil and see what they run.

For biofuels, it's about $300 to $1,000 dollars per barrel. Keep in mind that the US presently returns slightly over $1,000 in GDP per barrel of oil consumed. In Europe it's typically higher -- $1,500 to $3,000 (in Switzerland). In much of the world it's far lower -- China and India are in the $400 - $500 GDP/bbl range. At $1,000/bbl, they would forego a tremendous amount of low-return (but vital to their burgeoning populations) economic activity.

Solar energy gives lower costs, but that's with tremendous fossil inputs to construction an absolutely enormous capital plant, dwarfing _anything_ we've built to date. Human's largest current technological artifact mostly involved pouring hot tar over prepared ground, and _that_ is a challenging expense and maintenance problem. Consider computer chips spanning tens of thousands of square kilometers, in wind, rain, dust, and hail.

You might want to think some over just what it is "cost", "value", "price", and "wealth" mean, represent, interact, and how we got to where we are. Mainstream economic thought strikes me as strongly lacking in substance here, evidenced by much of the long debate over the meanings of those terms. Their current generally accepted values are by no means the only ones proposed, though the debate now is largely quashed.

<comment><USER6> >None of "the alternatives" offer oil's tremendous positive energy (net current) surplus with a minimum of effort or technological capability.

It took only 20 years for fracking to go from an experiment to full scale commercial roll out. It's not an 'alt-fuel', but it is a technological advancement. I think you're discounting the force of human ingenuity when faced with massive demand, kind of like the Hunt Brothers.

<comment><USER5> Fracking was deployed as early as 1949, with references to earlier work in 1945:

[https://www.onepetro.org/journal- paper/SPE-949001-G](https://www.onepetro.org/journal-paper/SPE-949001-G)

[http://sci-hub.bz/http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/949001-G](http://sci- hub.bz/http://dx.doi.org/10.2118/949001-G)

 _The "Hydrafrac" process, as it is now being used, consists of two steps: (l) injecting a viscous liquid containing a granular material, such as sand for a propping agent, under high hydraulic pressure to fracture the formation; (2) causing the viscous liquid to change from a high to a low viscosity so that it may be readily displaced from the formation. To date the process has been used in 32 jobs on 23 wells in 7 fields, resulting in a sustained increase in production in 11 wells._

The myth that hydrofracking was researched only in the 1990s and brought into play in the 2010s is a as false as the idea that God created Earth and Man in His Image 6,000 years ago.

There's also the slightly inconvenient truth that fracked oil is not a sustainable replacement for conventional oil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nobody is pretending that the concept of fracking didn't exist prior to the 1990s. That's a straw-man you set up and knocked down on your own. What changed is the process for fracking was made drastically more economical. Further, we had no idea exactly where the largest shale oil deposits were in 1950; over 3/4 of the currently known major Texas oil deposits were still unknown as of that date, to say nothing of the fact that our understanding of how much shale oil there was in the US, was next to non-existent. Even just 20 years ago our understanding of that was horrible. The Bakken as one example was only briefly described in 1953, and wasn't taken seriously for decades because so little was known about the reserves there.

The cost of using fracking to extract a barrel of oil has dropped by over 90% in 15 years. The cost in 1950 would have been so astronomical as to be silly. It's like pretending deep ocean drilling would have been viable in 1900, just because they had theories about how to do it.

<comment><USER7> What your comment misses is the significance of the combination of directional drilling (i.e. horizontal) and hydraulic fracturing. The process of fracturing shale rock formations in order to acquire crude oil has been refined for decades. It will only get more refined.

Your speculations about the future seem logical, but they are speculations nonetheless.

>Nobody is pretending that the concept of fracking didn't exist prior to the 1990s.

I do not think that is a fair statement. I'm a radio jukie (mostly NPR, but non-profit radio, in general). I certainly get the idea from these sources that fracing is something new. My father was fracing wells in Saudi Arabia in the '60s and my grandfather was drilling wells in OK in the 20s, so I have some background, FWIW.

<comment><USER8> there's a reference to using dynamite and a water column in the 1949 movie "Tulsa". I'd always heard that this was done in the '40s, maybe even in the 30s to "wake up" a dead well.

Is that fracking? It's mostly likely about breaking rock, but it's not hydraulic fracturing. It's more like what perforating is now. Or something.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was a biophysics grad student at the time of the Hunts' shenanigans. The lab I worked in used a lot of x-ray film for crystallography and electron microscopy. At that time x-ray film was basically silver halide stuck to plastic.

Our wizard lab tech cooked up a nice little electrolytic gizmo, involving a screen made of thin copper wire and a battery, and dropped one in each fixer bath we used to fix the x-ray film. The copper wire became coated with metallic silver.

The lab made thousands of dollars at the peak of the Hunt-induced silver bubble by selling that recovered silver. That was good, because the cost of film went completely nuts, and we were able to keep from blowing through our budget.

<comment><USER10> Hey, I was in that business, too! I walked around to all the photo labs and offered to take their used developer off their hands. Was still in high school at the time.

Meanwhile, my Dad bought $1000 worth of quarters. Then he had us sort out all the quarters that were dated 1964 and before into a separate pile, as those quarters were 100% silver. After that, we sold the all silver quarters by weight. Forgot what the price was, but was worth the time.

<comment><USER11> Not 100%, but 90%. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_(United_States_coin)#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter_\(United_States_coin\)#Silver_series)

I will occasionally see some pre-64 quarters and dimes, and I often notice them because they sound slightly different (on account of metal content/weight) than post-64 ones.

<comment><USER10> Cool! I stand corrected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> NPR's Planet Money had an interesting episode a while back about the successful cornering of the US onion market in 1955-56.

As a result, onion futures trading was banned, and still is today in the US.

[http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episo...](http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/10/14/448718171/episode-657-the- tale-of-the-onion-king)

<comment><USER13> Oddly, the same code prohibits dealing onion futures and movie ticket receipts:

> 7 U.S. Code § 13–1 - Violations, prohibition against dealings in motion > picture box office receipts or onion futures; punishment

> No contract for the sale of motion picture box office receipts (or any > index, measure, value, or data related to such receipts) or onions for > future delivery shall be made on or subject to the rules of any board of > trade in the United States.

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/13-1](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/7/13-1)

<comment><USER14> There was some talk a few years ago about trading futures on movie box-office returns, meaning betting if a future movie will be successful at box-office or not. This supposedly would have allowed movie studios to hedge in case of a potential dud.

But it was forbidden for some reason.

This might be related to that.

<comment><USER15> There is a movie I believe, about scammers trying to use futures market to have illegal profits by betting on failure of their theatrical piece, and then making a piece thqt praises Hitler, hoping it would bomb really hard.

<comment><USER16> That'll be "The Producers":

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_(1968_film)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Producers_\(1968_film\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Did you know that Warren Buffett also got in on this same silver trade in 1997?

> Our second non-traditional commitment is in silver. Last year, we purchased > 111.2 million ounces. Marked to market, that position produced a pre-tax > gain of $97.4 million for us in 1997. In a way, this is a return to the past > for me: Thirty years ago, I bought silver because I anticipated its > demonetization by the U.S. Government. Ever since, I have followed the > metal's fundamentals but not owned it. In recent years, bullion inventories > have fallen materially, and last summer Charlie and I concluded that a > higher price would be needed to establish equilibrium between supply and > demand. Inflation expectations, it should be noted, play no part in our > calculation of silver's value. [0]

[0]: [http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1997.html](http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/1997.html)

</comment><comment><USER18> I remember this clearly. Or at least, I remember going to the camera store for darkroom supplies, and being faced with almost weekly price changes. Of course, I don't recall the prices going down again very much after the market collapsed.

<comment><USER19> Me too. That visceral feeling of how much it cost to press that shutter release and instinctive balance of the dread of missing the moment and spending the money...

Even now, every time I empty an sd card, pick 5 images and trash 100, I feel as rich as a sultan. Some parts of the future really rock.

<comment><USER18> Fortunately, as a working adult, it is easier to indulge myself in such things now more than it was a student with no money. Hell, I've even got the Hasselblad I wanted then!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just because people are rich doesn't make them geniuses. But it takes a special kind of "genius" to turn $16B in $10M.

<comment><USER21> The kind of genius who builds a huge leveraged position in something and is then legally compelled to sell over 95% of it within one month?

I wonder what that sort of fire sale would do to the value of your holdings?

<comment><USER22> Well, yes, the kind of genius that would be apparently blindsided by financial regulation while he goes about causing massive disruptions in a crucial market.

Really, the whole story sounds like some guys from Texas got rich and started playing with finance without having lost the "hide everything under the mattress" mentality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Two brothers trying to corner the market on a commodity only to have it blow up in their face? Sounds like it must have inspired the movie _Trading Places_.

</comment><comment><USER24> "it is impossible to prove definitively that market manipulation was in their hearts. Maybe, as the Hunts always claimed, they just really believed in the enduring value of silver."

Sigh.. yah right. Just like they really believed in the enduring value of soya beans.

</comment><comment><USER25> I can't believe how many typos there were in this article, do editors exist anymore?

<comment><USER26> I didn't notice. I ran the article through spellcheck and the only typo that came up was "Jello-O" (which should have been Jell-O). What else was wrong?

<comment><USER27> How about,

       "I don't know really know anything," said Bunker,
       offering a synopsis of his horse trading strategy that
        could have just as easily applied to his entire career
        as an investor. "I am just trying to win a few races."

Should be, "I don't really know anything," [0] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/business/nelson-bunker- hun...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/22/business/nelson-bunker-hunt-texas- tycoon-dies-at-88.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER28> I assumed that the quotes were intended to point to a verbatim quote. I still think that's the most likely case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Did this make surviving silver coins more valuable for their rarity?

I remember my dad sold his collection for the metal value back then.

<comment><USER30> Collect coins if you enjoy it, but for an investment they are terrible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It is only a matter of time before someone attempts this without using too much leverage and credit to make the purchases.

The regulators and industries only tool is raising margin requirements (how big your down payment is), as well as position size limits per account

<comment><USER32> Cornering the market is outright illegal.

<comment><USER33> How is cornering the market outright illegal? And in which jurisdiction?

There are plenty of examples where one company has a strongly dominant share. Diamonds are an obvious example, search engines are another.

<comment><USER34> Commodity trading in the major markets (US, EU) has rules against cornering and other forms of obvious market manipulation. Obviously that only applies to _" commodities"_, whereas it's accepted that manufactured goods have a limited number of suppliers regulated by patent. The entire market for pharmaceuticals is "cornered" in that sense.

<comment><USER35> Yeah, i mean, it's not like silly things related to market manipulation in commodities happened for many years before anything was done about it:

[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-11-20/the- goldm...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2014-11-20/the-goldman- sachs-aluminum-conspiracy-was-pretty-silly)

etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This happened when I was a kid, and I took note of the wild swings commodities market could take. I like silver, so when it went down to five dollars in the late 1990s, I bought a couple of thousand ounces.starting at that level, it becomes logistically a little interesting to store it.</comment>


Soylent Manufacturing Update 2/11 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.me/post/76397380218/soylent-manufacturing-update-2-11 <comment><USER2> I still don't understand why Soylent matters. There are already meal replacement shakes on the market. Just walk into a Vitamin Shoppe.

<comment> mal-2 I think the difference is that is being marketed as a longer term generic food replacement, not just an occasional meal replacement.

<comment><USER2> So the difference is just marketing. People who diet for sport have been using them for a long time and use them over long periods of time.</comment></comment></comment>


Millitext – A subpixel text encoding font - <AUTHOR> https://advent.morr.cc/2018/17 <comment><USER2> Wow! What a surprise to see this here. I made this 10 years ago, when the display ecosystem was much different than it is today.

In 2008, if you were using a device with an LCD screen, it almost definitely had a rectilinear R-G-B subpixel arrangement. Nowadays devices have all kinds of exotic subpixel schemes (and are usable in many different orientations!) so its usefulness is a bit limited if you're on a mobile device.

<comment><USER3> I would imagine that the bigger problem is increased resolution. Less so on the desktop, but even there 4K displays are far more common than they used to be.

<comment><USER4> Resolution is not really the problem. When it comes to that, assuming the RGB horizontal rectilinear subpixel arrangement that dominated the lanscape, having higher resolution just means you could pack _more_ text onto a given screen.

But if you were to send militext to, say, a pentile display, it comes out as unrecognizible mess. It'd also not work with CRT displays, even vertical mask Trinitrons, because, albeit the phosphors may look like subpixels, they're actually "just" sampling points along image lines, traced out by an electron beam, and each digital image pixel would cover several phosphor pitches and not change apruptly.

<comment><USER3> My point is that it's packed so tight as to be unreadable with the naked eye on those displays.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _The Fellowship of the Ring_ as a 3500x3500 px image: [https://files.morr.cc/lotr1.png](https://files.morr.cc/lotr1.png) \- if you have a 4k screen, you only need to scroll once for the entire book. (via the authors twitter: [https://twitter.com/blinry/status/1074774555707797509](https://twitter.com/blinry/status/1074774555707797509))

<comment><USER6> Is that not some kind of copyright violation? Or does this count as a fair use derivative due to the transformative purpose of ... something?

<comment><USER7> Obviously one could decode it. The law cares about intent, so while you can probably get away with doing it once or twice, if it became a standard thing it would quickly stop being fair use and become just a distribution channel.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Makes me think of a related font, dotsies [1]. It's not necessarily meant to be displayed at 1px wide, but it would be possible. The intro/tutorial on that page is a pleasure to go through, in a mind-bending way.

[1]: [http://dotsies.org](http://dotsies.org)

<comment><USER9> Has anyone learned to actually read that . If so, how hard is it ? :)

<comment><USER10> I picked it up briefly to familiarity. You can learn to read it very quickly ("read" here meaning you no longer need to refer to the key so you can increase your reading speed just by reading more). If you're going to learn it consider learning dotsies v3[0] instead. All vowels plus y, and only the vowels, touch both edges which fixes the main issue, that you can't tell abcde apart.

0: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602163](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3602163) the bottom link is v3.

<comment><USER11> Since no one has presented a version of the dotsies bookmarklet, which is actually necessary to use them in practice, I'll go and make one with the proper mapping for v3.

If there is one already, let me know.

Actually, looks like all the permutations in the bookmarklet only allow you to use glyphs in Dotsies.tff, and there are some possible glyphs missing. I'll have to edit the font file.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Here's another subpixel font called The Flea's Knees: [http://www.typophile.com/node/61920](http://www.typophile.com/node/61920)

It's 3 pixels tall (not including ascenders and descenders, which are another two pixels each), and uses the full range of colors available instead of just black, white, and the 6 fully saturated colors. I think it's much more legible.

</comment><comment><USER13> This reminds me of a trick that was is used on Apple II computers to achieve 560 pixel resolution on a monochrome monitor, using the 280 pixel "high res" mode.

Why these strange numbers instead of 160 or 320?

The high res mode in these machines is funny. 280 is divisible by 7. Each scan line is encoded by 40 bytes, which provide 7 bits of resolution, so 280. On a monochrome CRT, these correspond to B&W pixels: on and off. What is the 8th bit of a byte used for? It will shift the group of 7 by half a pixel. Thus, sort of, you have 560 positions: you just can't use all 14 positions freely in any one byte slot.

On a color CRT, things look like this: the pixels alternate between two different colors, and the 8th bit shifts to a different set of two: purple- green versus orange-blue.

(The alternation between colors means that, since each byte contributes 7 places, successive bytes are coded opposite.) I.e. two successive bytes in "purple-green" mode coding 14 pixels: PGPGPGP GPGPGPG. If adjacent P and G are on, we get white.)

(As if that weren't bad enough, the scan lines are not consecutive in memory. If you start with a black screen and fill the memory with 1's, the screen will turn white in a kind of "venetian blind" effect consisting of a superposition of two interlacings of different period lengths.)

</comment><comment><USER14> Interesting! I hadn't found anybody else doing this back when I "typeset" my thesis in a subpixel font. I even build my own tool in Processing for designing the font. A part of my graduation was making an installation of our thesis for the exhibition so people could "read" my thesis. I build an installation with a LCD screen, a USB microscope and a projector. You can find it over here: [http://www.thomasjonas.nl/project/a-new-aesthetic-for- text](http://www.thomasjonas.nl/project/a-new-aesthetic-for-text) (sorry mobile users)

The thesis was about how the aesthetics of tools/technology can influence the aesthetic of art, so I thought this installation was a pretty fitting idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is melting my brain. On my main monitor, and on my laptop, the green and blue pixels seem to be deeper into the screen. The text looks like it's set in acrylic at a 30° angle off of the display. And they _move_ when I shift my head from left to right.

As cool as this is I couldn't look at this all day. I'd start making allusions to Elder Gods (fhtagn!) by 2 pm.

<comment><USER16> You rang?

<comment><USER15> He's... He's standing right behind me, isn't he?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> For those interested, here's what I was able to read from the twitter avatar:

        Pro Tip: You can add more
        than 140 characters into
        your twitter avatar. For
        example, here are 156 of
         them. Just make sure to
        include all links in the
        main text ;-) Also, hand
        out magnifying glasses!

<comment><USER18> Thanks! I was trying to decipher it on iMac with a 5k display (? 5120x2880) and an attached LED Cinema Display (2560x1440). MacOS does a good job dealing with the DPI so that they appear the same size (but one is clearer than the other). Using a magnifying glass, I could almost make out the text on the lower DPI screen, though blue was almost invisible, and I could not seen anything other than a colored bar on the high DPI screen :)

<comment><USER19> I tried using my native resolution on my MBP Retina and then taking a photo and zooming in. Nope. I could only decipher the ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly, neglecting the image encoding overhead, storing plain text like this is surprisingly efficient: One character is 1x5px in size, it seems that the colour palette is quite limited, at least less then 42 colours (I count like 5-10 colors, is there any reference?). This means an ASCII character can be stored in less then 7 bits of information.

<comment><USER21> Wouldn't it be 7 colors?

R, G, B, RG, GB, RB, RGB

<comment><USER22> \+ all off for space, so 2^3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Well, this seems certainly straight forward from an information theory angle of view:

\- Each pixel represents one bit.

\- Hence, we should try to increase information entropy.

That's all there is to it? Certainly not, since we are creating something for human consumption. There are a couple of other factors:

\- The way the eye processes patterns: lateral inhibition [1]

\- The way the eye processes colours: photopic vision [2]

\- The way the brain interprets patterns

\- The way the brain can actually interpret ingoing information.

I don't have an answer to all of these. But is pretty certain that maximizing entropy of a binary pattern is not equivalent to optimiziung reading speed.

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

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

</comment><comment><USER24> Sub-pixel rendering was often used on low-res monitors as a way of achieving smooth fonts. The idea was to anti-alias the edges of the glyphs by filling in individual R, G or B pixels to give a smoother edge, hence the font was more detailed than your screen resolution.

In the world of early mobile phones and portable games consoles it was an important technique for getting smooth fonts on low-res LCD displays.

I remember reading this very good article by Joel Spolsky way back then: [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing- ant...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2007/06/12/font-smoothing-anti- aliasing-and-sub-pixel-rendering/)

</comment><comment><USER25> Do all monitors have subpixels ordered RGB, left to right?

<comment><USER26> I think the vast majority of them do, but not all. The other common ordering is BGR.

I think G is in the middle of the pixel because it is the color our eyes are most sensitive to?

<comment><USER27> Human eyes are in fact most sensitive to green light, but I haven't read anything to indicate that's why it's in the middle.</comment></comment></comment>


Feudalism and the "Algorithmic Economy" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ebonstorm/feudalism-and-the-algorithmic-economy-62d6c5d90646 <comment><USER2> While I enjoyed the article, something about labeling a group of people by their gender and race really irks me (White men, with a capital W).

I can't help but feel it betrays the original message, which is a small proportion of super wealthy are getting even wealthier at the expense of everyone else, but why feel the need to bring race and gender to it? It almost begs people to spring into action against "White men", which can be disparaging for those white men who are not on the wealthy side of the spectrum.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. This article has some good thoughts but the "White" thing is annoying. There are plenty of white people whose life is not golden. In the end it comes down to wealthy vs not wealthy. Race or gender doesn't matter.

<comment><USER4> Seems to me you're all irked by facts? Sure, plenty of white men aren't prospering. Irrelevant. A disproportionate amount of them are succeeding in the "algorithmic economy." I don't see why this is so taboo to point out.

If race or gender doesn't matter, why do 75% of investment dollars go to white men? I personally doubt 75% of people in the "algorithmic economy" are white men. But I'd love to be corrected about this.

<comment><USER5> Lets try this in a different context - is this truthful change still acceptable?

Seems to me you're all irked by facts? Sure, plenty of Jewish people aren't prospering. Irrelevant. A disproportionate amount of them are succeeding in the "algorithmic economy." I don't see why this is so taboo to point out.

If race or gender doesn't matter, why do 25% of Harvard places go to Jews? [1] I personally doubt 25% of people in the "algorithmic economy" are Jewish. But I'd love to be corrected about this.

[1] [http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views--- blog/new...](http://www.hillel.org/about/news-views/news-views---blog/news- and-views/2013/08/21/2013-top-schools-jews-choose)

<comment><USER4> You know, I honestly don't see it. From what I understand, you're implying that this is something that we can't/shouldn't talk about either?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> to this story I add the rent-seeking everything-aaS business-model concept.

All I'm waiting for is Google (or Facebook, or Amazon) to just algorithmic- ally assign my monthly income into different services and I never have to see a paycheck in my life or make any spending decisions.

</comment><comment><USER7> >Their goal is to create a workforce bound by their economic debt to the system, forced to take whatever work they can find, while being paid as little for that work as possible, understanding ultimately, the creation of an indentured workforce is not only the result but an expected one, keeping society enfeebled and unable to create opportunities for further development.

mmhmm. that's called capitalism. this mode of capitalism is all that many people of the millenial generation have ever known, which makes it ripe for some "disruption."

the good news is that because of burgeoning rage, our broken system probably can't continue much longer. my estimate is maybe 20 years, although i wouldn't be too shocked if it's more like 5 years or more like 30 years. hard to predict these things.

middle class people are no longer secure, and they're the most likely source of revolutions if we look at history. there have already been rumblings; first in 2011-2012, then later with the race riots, and more recently with acceptance of socialism edging into the mainstream-- not your grandma's mainstream, the mainstream of the young and healthy.

i'd expect this country to have a more violent and perhaps more productive repeat of the 1960s reformation before we settle on democratic socialism or some other equitable politicoeconomic system. or perhaps we'll flub it somehow and accelerate our meteoric descent into third-world poverty, corruption, and squalor.

i'm sure people will take issue with that statement for a lot of reasons, but realistically that's our near future. the current system is a house of cards waiting for a breeze.

<comment><USER8> I think it can't go on forever but these things need leaders in order to evolve. How quickly did Occupy last? What is the agenda? What is the solution? The women's march was great but... just a one time thing to say we don't like what's happening. Until you have these things everywhere and everyday, you don't have enough momentum.

Was everyone back on their couch watching Netflix the day after? The problem is that life could be better and it could be worse. I would argue that things would have to _significantly_ worse for people to stand up.

<comment><USER9> >I would argue that things would have to significantly worse for people to stand up.

I was watching an interesting lecture the other day where a professor contended this idea. (I _really_ wish I could find it again) Basically his point was that revolutions do not emerge from conditions of total despair but rather from an imaginative vision of what could be better. As an example he compared North Korea in the present and America in colonial times. North Korea has terrible suffering but no real uprisings because the people there don't believe they could win against their government and they're not sure what society would look like even if they did. In colonial America conditions were relatively good, a fair amount of colonists were actually wealthy. But these people were seperated from Britain and so had time to conjure up imaginations of what their country could be. Once that imagination had been set, they were willing to fight and die against the large English empire. I'm not so sure that we need a great man but we do need a coherent vision that people can coalesce behind.

<comment><USER8> It is an interesting point but I would say look at the civil rights movement. Lots of people thought it couldn't really change and didn't do anything, but eventually leaders appeared to be a focal point of the energy and thoughts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Truly cringeworthy. At a global scale, wages are increasing at their fastest rate in history [1]. Wage growth for the middle class _has_ stagnated in the US, but not nearly as much as some people (myself included, until recently) believe [2]. The primary cause of this slowdown in wage growth is slowing productivity growth [3], while the major secondary cause is growing income disparity. Growing income disparity can be traced [4] directly to _growth_ in exactly the type of regulatory restrictions that the author thinks are needed to prevent some dystopian neo-feudalistic future.

While the author is fixated on Uber and the rest of the sharing economy, he misses the bigger picture, which is that an increasing number of occupations and business activities are being placed behind regulatory barriers to entry [5], to protect incumbents from competition, so that they may better extract economic rent.

Even the sharing economy is under threat from these incumbents, who are funding a sophisticated PR campaign [6] (which I suspect involves a significant dose of astroturfing) to make ordinary people advocate for policies that go against their own interests, and support prohibitions on their right to compete.

In the author's world, anticompetitive organizations like unions are good for wages. This is no different than the ideology created to justify the medieval guild system, which created a set of haves and have nots, while massively inhibiting economic/wage growth. The more things change, the more ideologies to justify coercive control remain the same.

Another thing that strikes me about these kinds of missives for prohibition of services like Uber is what a paternalistic attitude it has toward the drivers, who are choosing to drive for Uber because they perceive it as being the best option available to them.

The author wants people who currently drive for Uber to no longer have that option, for their own good.

The author presumes he has more perfect knowledge of a potential Uber driver's best interests than they do. The author and their judgements are just as imperfect as the drivers', and more so on the matter of the drivers' own best interest, as the author doesn't have the benefit of knowing the driver's personal circumstances and options like the driver does.

[1] [http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the- glo...](http://www.csmonitor.com/World/2016/0207/Progress-in-the-global-war- on-poverty)

[2] [https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the- region/where...](https://www.minneapolisfed.org/publications/the-region/where- has-all-the-income-gone)

[3] [https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage- stag...](https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/sources-of-real-wage-stagnation/)

[4] [https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete- why-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why- the-1-earn-so-much-and-what-to-do-about-it/)

[5] [https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2015/01/27/nearly-30...](https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up- front/2015/01/27/nearly-30-percent-of-workers-in-the-u-s-need-a-license-to- perform-their-job-it-is-time-to-examine-occupational-licensing-practices/)

[6] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the- hot...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/technology/inside-the-hotel- industrys-plan-to-combat-airbnb.html)

<comment><USER11> Nah, I think the author is simply just not a fan of exploitation, voluntary or involuntary.

<comment><USER10> As I made an effort to demonstrate, you and the author's assumptions about these voluntary interactions being exploitive, and the cause of income disparity, are incorrect. What you and the author are advocating, which is prohibitions on voluntary interactions that you've concluded are exploitive, will in fact exacerbate income inequality, by artificially reducing competition, which allows incumbents to exploit the public by extracting economic rent.

<comment><USER12> More ideological "free-market fanboyism."

In a world where everyone has the money they want to (or must) spend, this is certainly true. But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them.

The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little. Any form of investment, monetary or otherwise, requires some upfront value to be presented. Usually this is capital. If you don't have this you are left in the dust by those who have the luxury to put that money up now.

The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out. This is, from my perspective, the driving force for the libertarianism of modern SV: policies and actions which help people with money make more money will be adopted because they have the upfront capital, etc. to enact it. This will breed inequality as those policies in general are not helpful or even directly hurt those with less money.

<comment><USER10> >More ideological "free-market fanboyism."

Comments like this are not at all constructive, and contribute to a poor intellectual environment. I made significant effort to provide objective evidence for my position, and provide arguments that don't rely on a person accepting any ideological beliefs.

That my argument concludes that the free market is economically more efficient doesn't automatically imply that it's blindly ideological. If anything, your blind dismissal of my argument, and use of the term "free-market fanboyism", is what demonstrates an overly ideological approach to a complex topic that requires open-mindedness.

>But these voluntary interactions are unfortunately only granted to those who, before the thought enters their minds, possess the means to engage in them.

You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline with the conventional definition. Someone being poor is certainly capable of engaging in voluntary economic interactions, and there's no evidence at all to suggest otherwise.

>The general trend that has become apparent for people who are not consistently able to engage in such interactions is that it's really easy to make more money when you have some, and very hard to make money when you have little.

How is this at all apparent? Where's the evidence that makes it apparent? Did you read the analysis I linked on the cause of growing income disparity, and how regulatory restrictions play into them? How is it apparent that the poor are unable to engage in such interactions when wages for the poor are growing at their fastest rate in history?

Did you actually bother reading the sources I provided?

>The end result is that those things which are valuable to those who can engage in voluntary interactions are supported while those that hold no value die from being crowded out.

Does the evidence bear this out? The evidence I collected suggests that the current market institutions are leading to the fastest wage growth in human history, and that the slowdown in wage growth in the US is due to exactly the type of regulatory restrictions against voluntary interactions that you're advocating.

Again, I suggest you look past the anecdotes, and look past what's in the media focus, like Airbnb and Uber, and look at the bigger picture, in terms of percentage of occupation and business activities requiring a license, and what the statistical evidence suggests is the cause of growing income disparity.

Theories that are light on evidence and heavy on speculation about ideological conspiracies by the wealthy are not conducive to coming to accurate conclusions about economics:

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2006/11/the_big_four_ec.html)

<comment><USER12> >the free market is economically more efficient

You never specified your definition of "efficient." I can only assume that "value-generating at a high rate" is your working definition. If so, there is no connection between a high efficiency and a lack of exploitation. Exploitation of people via coercion, exploitation of a lack of regulations leading to concentration of wealth, etc.

> You're using your own personal definition of "voluntary" which is not inline > with the conventional definition.

My definition of "voluntary" is equivalent to that of "non-coercive." I'm not sure that yours is the same. You speak about people choosing to use Uber as if they have a choice, and not as if they are coerced by the circumstances (lack of jobs in their field, outstanding debt, mouths to feed...). Your choice is to ignore these different scenarios and focus only on those who voluntarily take part in driving for Uber. This is a dishonest practice and does not reflect reality.

> Someone being poor is certainly capable of engaging in voluntary economic > interactions, and there's no evidence at all to suggest otherwise.

If you have no money, then you cannot spend money. You have no value to contribute to an economy, and can only participate by receiving value at no cost, which never happens. The evidence is not needed, and is in fact impossible to provide, because this is a clear-cut deduction. If you think differently, you need to clarify your standing.

> How is it apparent that the poor are unable to engage in such interactions > when wages for the poor are growing at their fastest rate in history?

Because poor people are poor... Having more than a tiny bit of something is still not very much. They can participate in _more_ , sure, but is that _enough_? Depends entirely on the context: where they live, what services are available there, etc. To put things a bit bluntly, most of the places in the world aren't very fun to live in for the reason that there's not a lot available and not a lot of earning potential to pay for what is there. Globalization still fails at the "last mile," with the exception of some supply chains such as Coca-Cola's.

I don't disagree that some regulatory restrictions are making things hard for your everyday Jane, but the solution would be instead to regulate those at the top more, rather than regulate those at the bottom less. Using your hedge fund example from Brookings, the problem is not that other types of funds are not allowed to do the same things as hedge funds, but instead that hedge funds are allowed to do things that others aren't, leading to a massive concentration of wealth that wouldn't be possible otherwise. This is an uneven playing field but deregulating it only gives power to those who use force, physical or otherwise, to get what they want while leaving those at the bottom with little more than crumbs.

I'm not sure why you are linking to those biases as I don't believe to have expressed any of them. Again, you will need to be clearer if your message is to be understood accurately.

<comment><USER10> >You never specified your definition of "efficient.

Being effective at using economic resources to generate more economic resources. Being efficient at utilizing economic resources at meeting people's material needs.

Unions, and industries walled off by licensing regimes, are not efficient, and contribute to growing income disparity. That's what decades of economic theory and raw statistical evidence suggests.

>Exploitation of people via coercion, exploitation of a lack of regulations leading to concentration of wealth, etc.

This is not an accurate definition for exploitation. It amounts to anything one doesn't like that conforms to some precept of social justice ideology.

'Exploitation' is nothing more than a buzzword in this context.

And like I said, there is no evidence that the free market leads to growing income disparity. The links I provided provide evidence for the opposite: that restrictions on the free market are the cause of growing income disparity.

>You speak about people choosing to use Uber as if they have a choice, and not as if they are coerced by the circumstances (lack of jobs in their field, outstanding debt, mouths to feed...).

That's not what "coercion" means. Needing to do something to avoid starvation is not the same thing as being coerced into doing something.

Both are terrible situations, but in one situation, a person is taking the best option available to them, while in the other, someone is threatening to rob them of their life or property in order to force them to do something that they otherwise would not choose to do.

>If you have no money, then you cannot spend money.

But almost everyone has money, especially in the developed world, and the vast majority have the capability to generate more money, especially in the developed world.

The victim theme is not justified by the facts.

>To put things a bit bluntly, most of the places in the world aren't very fun to live in for the reason that there's not a lot available and not a lot of earning potential to pay for what is there.

Wages are increasing in the developed world faster than ever before in history.

>but the solution would be instead to regulate those at the top more, rather than regulate those at the bottom less.

So those at the top just pay accountants more to hide their income and split it among their family members.

Why treat the successful as the enemy? Why treat them like villains that should be punished?

The statistical evidence suggests those with less money can indeed compete with the very rich when there is a free market, without regulatory barriers and corporate welfare helping the very rich.

Why abandon the idea of a society where everyone is free to engage in any mutually voluntary interaction they wish, and resort to strong-arming government interventions against people whose only crime is receiving too much currency in mutually voluntary trade?

What you're proposing is not conducive to justice and the principle of noninterference/nonviolence.

It also reduces the space for economic activity, leading to a less efficient economy where wages/prosperity increase more slowly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It should be noted that the author will delete your response if you are critical of his article.

</comment><comment><USER13> Self-promotion, but I recently wrote a blog post that deals with at least some of these issues: [https://insights.isg-one.com/lens360/from-each-according- to-...](https://insights.isg-one.com/lens360/from-each-according-to-their- ability---automating-worker-improvement)</comment>


Fix the license of Apple Swift - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/apple/swift/pull/17 <comment><AUTHOR> This seems next-level trolling (it was closed and locked 3 hours ago). Perhaps GitHub needs more effective ways of punishing those users who actively waste other people's time?</comment>


LEMNA: explaining deep learning based security applications - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/11/30/lemna-explaining-deep-learning-based-security-applications/ <comment><USER2> > While deep learning has shown a great potential to build security > applications...

Not in my experience. Essentially all attempts to apply deep learning to security that I am aware of have either been 1) toys, 2) abandoned as ineffective, or 3) snake oil.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed. Anyone interested in this might want to read "Outside the Closed World: On Using Machine Learning For Network Intrusion Detection" which goes into some of the reasons why all these ML security tools have remained toys. [https://www.icir.org/robin/papers/oakland10-ml.pdf](https://www.icir.org/robin/papers/oakland10-ml.pdf)

Abstract: In network intrusion detection research, one popular strategy for finding attacks is monitoring a network's activity for anomalies: deviations from profiles of normality previously learned from benign traffic, typically identified using tools borrowed from the machine learning community. However, despite extensive academic research one finds a striking gap in terms of actual deployments of such systems: compared with other intrusion detection approaches, machine learning is rarely employed in operational "real world" settings. We examine the differences between the network intrusion detection problem and other areas where machine learning regularly finds much more success. Our main claim is that the task of finding attacks is fundamentally different from these other applications, making it significantly harder for the intrusion detection community to employ machine learning effectively. We support this claim by identifying challenges particular to network intrusion detection, and provide a set of guidelines meant to strengthen future research on anomaly detection.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is there even a software to go with this, or is it all talk? Where is the code?

<comment><USER4> >Is there even a software to go with this

[https://english.stackexchange.com/a/52420](https://english.stackexchange.com/a/52420)

\</comment></comment><comment>----

But in general, I don't think there's a requirement to share code alongside a paper submission. There are arguments for [1] doing so, but it's definitely not a universal practice.

[1] - [https://faculty.washington.edu/rjl/pubs/topten/topten.pdf](https://faculty.washington.edu/rjl/pubs/topten/topten.pdf)

<comment><USER5> IMHO this has to become a universal practice. If you don't wanna share code with your publication, how are other researchers going to corroborate your findings?

Publishing your research and not the code is only like taking a step behind. Even Yoshua Bengio is a staunch proponent of code sharing with publication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> No repo like LIME? Would love to test this.</comment>


Wordpress Security Flaw: Reset Admin Password of Any Blog Without Confirmation - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmerfish.com/wordpress-security-flaw-reset-admin-password-of-any-blog-without-confirmation/

<comment><USER2> Hey, I found a security hole! Seems like the logical thing to do is go use it on a bunch of random websites.

<comment><USER3> And he documented his "success" for the whole world to see. I wonder what the legal implications are.</comment></comment>