Apply HN: Zippy, self driving sidewalk meal delivery robots - <AUTHOR> At Zippy, we're building self driving delivery robots that navigate the sidewalk to deliver meals from restaurants to homes. They use self driving technology including 3D cameras to go from a pizza/burrito place to the customer's front door, avoiding pedestrians along the way.
The robot cart currently is driven via 3G connection remotely over the internet, so it can be in another suburb over, with it streaming live video back. We've driven it down to the end of the street & back remotely. And we're working with GPS, sensors etc for SLAM. (We'd love to work with Varden Labs to cross-pollinate our self driving tech, that golf cart looks rad. http://abc7.com/technology/driverless-shuttle-giving-students-rides-around-mt-sac/1229716/)
Dominos recently launched a self driving pizza delivery robot in Australia, and other startups are building similar things. The time seems right for this new thing in the world for the first time. https://au.news.yahoo.com/technology/a/31135451/dru-the-new-self-driving-robot-launched-by-dominos/ https://www.starship.xyz
Home delivery via air drones sounds neat, but flying drones are dangerous. Navigating streets and foot traffic seems trickier than "as the crow flies", but the big plus here is that it's safe for the public, which makes it possible to do.
Having small items delivered to homes by robots gives us near zero cost per delivery, and deliveries are able to be done at any time rather than just peak hours; robots don't mind waiting around doing nothing for two hours unpaid.

            _____
  ___      |     |
    _-_-  _/\____|__\\__
 _-_-__  / ,-. -|-  ,-.`-.
    _-_- `( o )----( o )-'
           `-'      `-'
 We're looking for skilled ROS and robotics engineers to help us make the future the present, help make startups like Sprig and SpoonRocket work out their unit economics, and help you get your delicious dinner at your front door with free delivery.
Video demos: http://meetzippy.com
Tom. <comment><USER2> One problem with Zippy would be it contending with a myriad of laws stemming from whether Zippy is a vehicle, especially a motorized vehicle on a sidewalk. Let's ignore the unmanned part for now.

"Having small items delivered to homes by robots gives us near zero cost per delivery, "

You would still have variable costs like fuel, which would be incurred on a delivery by delivery basis. Then how high is Zippy's fixed costs?

I suspect that Zippy could only work in certain very densely populated areas, where users are willing to make concessions. In a suburb, Zippy because it using a sidewalk, would be too slow, but could do front door delivery. For an apartment building, Zippy could only go to the lobby's front door, hence requiring a concession from the customer that they may not want to make. Also how far can Zippy operate from the restaurant in question (it has to travel back)? What is its payload?

When I come to think about it, Zippy would be analogous to a person in a wheelchair making deliveries.

I suspect one could use computer simulations and some what-ifs on a spreadsheet to figure out Zippy's feasibility. I would wager that a person in car is simply more flexible, cost-effective and provides a more satisfying experience to the customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, they're electric, so a depot with a solar array brings the cost down here.

Zippy hasn't worked out apartment buildings and the city, so is best suited at first to the suburbs. A few miles is that distance that seems silly to drive but too far to walk.

That's right, we already have manned wheelchairs roaming the streets, so it's not too different.

We bet there are cases where not having to wait on a human to be available will be a very good experience for the customer.

<comment><USER2> "That's right, we already have manned wheelchairs roaming the streets, so it's not too different."

However you probably don't want a person in a wheelchair delivering one's pizzas ....

Tom, again I would recommend you do some computer simulations and simple break-even cost analysis. Is the problem of pizza delivery really the human not being available, or being idle (is this really a capacity and demand management problem)? What stops a Zippy unit from not being available as it slowly heads back to base? From what I see, Zippy being a motorized land vehicle, suffers all the problems of a car, without any of its benefits. What makes drones appealing to say an Amazon, is the combination of flying that probably easier and safer than driving, and the value of the payload.

In general, last mile problems are tough. Also you have to ask yourself how does Zippy enhance the customer experience?

Cheers, Andrew

<comment><AUTHOR> Right, it starts off somewhere with a clear closed path, and a daily need for small item transport.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My suggestion find a university to sponsor an on-campus student-to-student delivery network. Get the Engineering department or a robotics club to help with it. Find some sponsors like NASCAR does for the first one. other early adopters golf course communities.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think something like this is going to happen fairly soon.

It seems like speed will be an issue if this is limited to sidewalks. Maybe what's needed is something partway between a car and say a bicycle. I think it needs to move faster than walking speed to be practical in most areas (you mention suburbs but delivery restaurants in suburbs aren't usually within walking distance of very many customers). I would think something more like the speed of a moped or bike would be needed. That means it probably would need to operate on the side of the road most of the time, not on the sidewalk. It would need to be quite narrow not to interfere with traffic. Maybe some sort of tricycle arrangement would be feasible.

As for actually building this you're going to need a team skilled in machine learning, computer vision and robotics and right now I don't think there are many of those around. You say you're looking for skilled engineers but what makes you think you'll be able to attract people with the right skills ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it seems like this will happen in some closed area for a practical purpose soon, and then slowly expand out to more public areas.

A team with machine learning, computer vision and robotics experience is indeed what we need. People like this are currently in high demand, but there are more people quick to learn who are learning in these areas now.

If speed is an issue and it needs to travel by bike lines and road, perhaps some design based around this this or this will work:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPP7StCMYJg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPP7StCMYJg) [http://cdn.ndtv.com/tech/xiaomi_ninebot_mini.jpg](http://cdn.ndtv.com/tech/xiaomi_ninebot_mini.jpg) [http://www.motherearthnews.com/~/media/Images/MEN/Editorial/...](http://www.motherearthnews.com/~/media/Images/MEN/Editorial/Articles/Magazine%20Articles/1983/05-01/A%20Cut- Rate%20DIY%20Recumbent%20Bike/recumbent%20bike%2001%20on%20the%20road%20jpg.jpg)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ultimately: This. With a cooler.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gehrAhflQ&nohtml5=False](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2gehrAhflQ&nohtml5=False)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyZE0psQsX0&nohtml5=False](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyZE0psQsX0&nohtml5=False)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see two problems with this:

\- not sure it is legal everywhere (in Europe for example bikes can't drive on sidewalk).

\- robbers could just take the robot and keep what it was carrying.

<comment><AUTHOR> Think of it like this: Don't steal people from the street; likewise, don't steal delivery robots who yell for help when you do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool! I think this is a simple, good application of self driving tech. The self driving thing is neat but people (both restaurants and consumers) won't bother to use your tech for coolness factor more than a few times -- ultimately, everyone's going to adopt this only if it becomes cheap enough. So that needs to be your focus.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah - cheap, reliable, and less problematic than humans. Then it crosses from novelty to practical daily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, how does this work in areas with shitty sidewalks? Or a lot of construction?

Also, how do you keep people from just mugging your delivery bot or trashing it?

Your videos are basically just cute little RC cars with sticks on them.

Also, what sort of equity are you offering your early engineers? Hopefully a lot, because it sounds like you really haven't thought this through.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let's start with closed off areas and known paths. Then we can expand out.

Indeed they are, next up, self navigating RC cars, ala [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfJHgSNx_vY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfJHgSNx_vY)

Still looking for cofounders; so a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What is keeping people on the streets from stealing food from your mobile delivery fleet? Or better, the tiny, cute robot car itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't steal people from the street.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Like you mentioned there are other startups doing this, and some of them are farther along eg. [http://dispatch.ai/](http://dispatch.ai/)

what will Zippy do to differentiate from those robots? Why will Sprig and SpoonRocket buy a Zippy rather than a Dominos or Dispatch robot?

<comment><USER4> Dispatch definitely looks farther along but are they even targeting food delivery ? I just saw a techcrunch article about them that doesn't mention food but packages and mail.

Food delivery may require a somewhat higher speed, more road based than sidewalk based approach, especially if they are targeting cities and suburbs rather than campus-like environments.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I don't see any of them targeting food specifically. Starship does groceries, which is close, and Dispatch as well.

I see more scooters on the road currently with meals in them than groceries.

DoorDash would never deliver you a single coffee from down the street. A robot would be happy to.

Bike lanes are the happy medium here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This sounds _really_ slow unless you can get it driving on streets. A reasonable maximum speed for a sidewalk is somewhere between 2 and 5mph.

What's to stop someone taking a delivery from the robot? Or from just taking the robot?

In what ways is this better than a human? How is this better than an airborne drone?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's best for short distances.

The items are locked in a cooler bin (not in videos), and the robot acts as a human would if it were being kidnapped.

The robot is happy to run back and forth along a route all day, humans usually get paid for this. If you've flown a drone, you'll know that you don't want that anywhere near people in public. Think flying weed-whacker. Times 4.

What's really new here is that it makes it possible for the first time to have something physically be somewhere else in the neighborhood at the push of a button, with no employee or friend taking it there. Skype isn't teleportation, but we're getting closer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Huh! How do i know the robot wont eat my meal?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of our top problems we're working on.

<comment><USER11> Good. Solve that and i'll invest.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Hi Tom,

I've done a lot of work with autonomous self driving robots. Specifically relating to your company is the research I've done on an autonomous wheelchair that can navigate a sidewalk between two locations.

I know it's blatant self promotion, but I would encourage you to take a look at some of my lab's papers [1], which specifically focus on building the kind of system you describe.

One question I have for you is about your business model. Do you plan on selling these to a restaurant directly? Or do you plan on building a fleet of these things and licensing them out to restaurants (or basically any delivery service)? The answer to this question really informs your value proposition and the technology you need to develop.

For instance, you have emphasized that you've done some teleoperation tests, but this requires a human in-the-loop, whereas the value proposition for this devices is in removing the need for a human. If I have a human operating this thing, I might as well have him go out and deliver the food. So this points to the need for an autonomous system.

To really build a scalable business I think the best route would be to focus heavily on building the robot system. Do you have someone on your founding team who is a roboticist? You say you're looking for engineers, but I would say you need someone on the founding team who knows their stuff.

Here are some technical challenges that are still active research areas that you'll need to solve to make this an attractive option:

\- Navigating without GPS. GPS is not accurate enough in cities or specifically on the sidewalk

\- Large scale mapping. How do you make and store maps? You also have an opportunity here to use the delivery robots to constantly update the map and inform other robots of changes.

\- Long-term autonomous operation. How do you recover from lost localization?

\- Autonomous operation in different environments. e.g. indoors vs. outdoors

\- Sensor calibration and characterization. You have an asus 3D camera on your demo car, but these fail in various lighting conditions and have limited range. You'll need better sensors.

\- Crowd navigation. How do you predict the behavior of humans? How do you route a path through a crowd, a seemingly impenetrable obstacle, but one humans can navigate easily.

\- Crowd localization. How do you figure out where you are in a crowd, when you have no reference to anything else?

And much much more. Anyway, best of luck! It's a problem I've put a lot of thought into, so feel free to drop me an email if you have any questions.

[1] [http://vader.cse.lehigh.edu/publications.php](http://vader.cse.lehigh.edu/publications.php)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Corey,

Yes indeed GPS sucks on the sidewalk. Outdoor feature-based SLAM is the way to go. Congrats on getting the robot to go navigate 12K by itself with no loss of localisation.

The human operator is the backup, similar to Starship.

A separate mapping operation needs to be done first to pre-learn routes.

Recovering from lost localisation is tough and will need people to go recover the unit.

The Zed 3D camera operates better outdoors than the Asus, and solid state lidar sensors like Quanergy's are coming to market at a rapid pace and lowering costs. [http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sens...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sensors/quanergy-solid-state-lidar)

Crowds are tough too. The robot would not want to move too much in a crowd, and perhaps is best for it to just stay still until the crowd passes and it can re-localise.

These solutions and technologies are only going to get better with time, not worse, so it'll be a much easier problem given some short time.</comment></comment>


Wikidata: The first new project from Wikimedia Foundation since 2006 - <AUTHOR> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata <comment><USER2> Like others here, it's something I've been thinking about for a number of years.

This is an important project, with the potential to eclipse wikipedia, maybe even growing to be the saviour of free software? My reasoning follows.

Currently we program computers by giving them a set of instructions on how to achieve a goal. As computers grow more powerful, we will stop giving detailed instructions. Instead, we will write a general purpose deduction/inference engine, feed in a volume of raw data and let the computer derive the instructions it must follow to achieve the given goal.

There are two parts to such a system: the engine and the data. The engine is something that free software is capable of producing. The missing component is the data. The wikidata project is this missing component.

I'm convinced that Wolfram Alpha is a glimpse of this future: an engine coupled to a growing body of structured data. Wolfram's end game isn't taking over search, but taking over computer programming and ultimately reasoning. It's just that search is currently a tractable problem for Alpha, one that can pay the bills until it becomes more capable. There will come a day when Alpha is powerful enough to automatically translate natural language into structured data, at which point it will spider the Internet and its database and capabilities will grow explosively.

Free software needs Wikidata, to arrive at this endpoint first and avoid being made largely irrelevant by Alpha (or Google?)

<comment><USER3> "Free software needs Wikidata, to [] avoid being made largely irrelevant by Alpha"

Wolfram Alpha is already completely worthless because it doesn't cite the sources for any of its results. It's basically just a fancy search engine built on top of a garbage dump.

<comment> mkr-hn <http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=how+heavy+is+earth>

Click "Source information."

<comment><USER3> That isn't a list of references, that's just a list of suggested reading. In fact it's not even guaranteed that the any of the facts on that page come from any of those sources. It's basically just showing a list of books that come up when you Google for the question.

<comment><USER4> Interesting... so they're making the calculations internally but not telling you how they got there then, right? So you really can't use wolfram alpha as a reliable source for anything?

<comment><USER3> Correct. It's conceivable that you could find a secondary source in their reading list that links to a primary source, but in practice going through their list of sources would be much slower than just doing the search yourself, meaning that site has zero utility in practice. (Assuming you care about the information you're getting being true, if you're writing a middle school paper about penguins then it probably gives you enough plausible deniability for having done the work, but for anything else there isn't much point.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For people interested in this subject, you might want to check out the DBPedia project: <http://dbpedia.org/About>. They have been extracting structured data from Wikipedia for quite some time already and allow you to query their database with SPARQL.

From their site: The DBpedia knowledge base currently describes more than 3.64 million things, out of which 1.83 million are classified in a consistent Ontology, including 416,000 persons, 526,000 places, 106,000 music albums, 60,000 films, 17,500 video games, 169,000 organisations, 183,000 species and 5,400 diseases.

</comment><comment><USER6> tl;dr: spin-off Wikipedia infoboxes into a seperate project with an API, and then use that data to bootstrap an open data project with broader goals.

In theory, it's a good idea. It takes an existing useful data source and puts in a form that encourages reuse, and since it solves the bootstrapping problem then it's not obviously doomed to failure like the Semantic Web.

I see two potential downsides.

My first concern is that, in practice, it will make editing Wikipedia more complex. There's no inherent reason why this should be the case, but there's no inherent reason why Wikimedia Commons should make editing Wikipedia more complex either, yet it undeniably does.

Secondly, it will prevent a similar source of data from appearing with broader terms of use. For example, OpenLibrary is public domain.

<comment><USER7> Is it even possible to have a database of factual content under CC-BY-SA? This is part of the reason OpenStreetMap is moving to ODbL.

Somewhat ironically , since part of the reason is that you can't copyright facts, they didn't just take the existing data under the same theory, but asked everyone to accept the new licence. I wonder what Wikipedia plan to do?

<comment><USER8> I don't see why you couldn't have a database of facts under CC-BY-SA. You can't copyright _individual_ facts, but you absolutely can copyright a _collection_ of facts as a collection. [1]

I would think the more-pressing problem would be the 'viral' nature of the 'share alike' restriction when it came to API use.

Attribution would also seem to be thorny and difficult to police, but not intractable.

[1] e.g. I can make a phone directory and copyright it. You could take all the data out of my phone directory to make your _own_ directory and that would be fine. But you could not simply make copies of my directory and sell those as your own.

<comment><USER7> But being able to legally take all the data out and making your own database (or other thing) with it (which you state is fine) is exactly what makes CC- BY-SA pointless/inapplicable to databases of open data.

See this discussion of why CC-BY-SA is unsuitable for OpenStreetMap (which mentions the case law on phone books you refer to):

[http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY- SA_is_Un...](http://www.osmfoundation.org/wiki/License/Why_CC_BY- SA_is_Unsuitable)

Wikipedia says this on Fiest vs Rural and collections of facts:

"In regard to collections of facts, O'Connor states that copyright can only apply to the creative aspects of collection: the creative choice of what data to include or exclude, the order and style in which the information is presented, etc., but not on the information itself. If Feist were to take the directory and rearrange them it would destroy the copyright owned in the data.

The court ruled that Rural's directory was nothing more than an alphabetic list of all subscribers to its service, which it was required to compile under law, and that no creative expression was involved. The fact that Rural spent considerable time and money collecting the data was irrelevant to copyright law, and Rural's copyright claim was dismissed."

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feist_v._Rural>

<comment><USER8> It seems to me the confusion is over what OpenStreetMap wants to control and what copyright allows them to control.

The 'shortcomings' of CC-BY-SA noted in your first link seem to boil down to use cases involving chunks of data that simply do not qualify for copyright. Thus, by definition, no copyright license could behave any differently than any other in determining what can and can't be done with those chunks of data.

A Terms of Use agreement (and enforcement) could do more, but the particular copyright license is simply moot.

<comment><USER7> The ODbL isn't (just) a copyright licence, for exactly those reasons.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is actually a startup idea I've had for a while now. It's a great idea in theory, but it's very tricky in practice. Facts have a mysterious way of vanishing if you look closely enough at them, and the raw numbers themselves don't actually tell you anything.

The part that's actually interesting is:

\- The methodology behind the numbers

\- What we think is most likely the case based on the evidence available

\- How each fact connects with other facts

\- What we think we should do based on the evidence available

Being able to embed facts is definitely a cool use case, but unless you have all the other stuff backing it up when you click the link back to the database then it's pretty much worthless. And curating these sorts of epistemological discussions and third party analyses isn't something that really fits within the Wikimedia mission, so I doubt they will even try.

Because of this I doubt their implementation of the project will be successful, although I do think it's a space that ultimately has potential.

<comment><USER9> You couldn't be more right, and I think the key here is: _How each fact connects with other facts_

If there were no operations, math would just be numbers on their own -- and what fun is that?

The problem is that the relations turn it into the Semantic Web, and after trying and failing to crack that nut for so long, everyone is turned off of it. Which is too bad, because what was failing was the approach. Trying several shipping routes to the New World and failing each time doesn't mean that the New World doesn't exist.

<comment><USER3> "The problem is that the relations turn it into the Semantic Web"

Not really. Assuming there are only four or five simple relationships like "Knowing fact X is necessary to understand fact Y", then the whole system isn't much more complicated than trackbacks for blog posts.

<comment><USER9> If it was that simple, it would already have been solved. The problem is that relations are for _any_ data point and they can be one-to-one, one-to-many, or many-to-many; and mixes metadata with data seamlessly. It's a hard problem, make no mistake, but completely solvable. I have an approach I'm working on that I'll email you, if you're interested.

<comment><USER3> Sure, send me an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice to see they're going to support SPARQL:

"O3.1. Develop and prepare a SPARQL endpoint to the data. Even though a full- fledged SPARQL endpoint to the data will likely be impossible, we can provide a SPARQL endpoints that allows certain patterns of queries depending on the expressivity supported by the back end."

I see the semantic web slowly realizing its actual purpose (which is not related to semantic natural language processing but rather linking data).

</comment><comment><USER10> Missing from the FAQ: What's the difference between Freebase and Wikidata?

<comment><USER11> It looks like the main difference is two-way integration: instead of just scraping data from Wikipedia dumps to produce a structured database (like Freebase and dbpedia do), it's going to store the _canonical_ version of some of the information there, and pull _from_ it to populate the infoboxes. One of the motivations seems to be to keep the data in sync across Wikipedia languages, so an addition or fix propagates to them all, which is currently done somewhat awkwardly by a mix of manual and bot measures.

<comment><USER12> So they are adding an extra layer?...Who said that CS is the science where everything is solved with an extra level of indirection?

<comment><USER13> _Who said that CS is the science where everything is solved with an extra level of indirection?_

Looks like David Wheeler made the statement that I think you're referring to:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2057503/does-anybody- know...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2057503/does-anybody-know-from- where-the-layer-of-abstraction-layer-of-indirection-q)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_%28computer_scien...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wheeler_%28computer_scientist%29)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Hats off to Wikimedia, a beacon of the true ideals of the free Internet; they've never tried to monetize their substantial achievements, really made a difference, and actually realized what for other companies have been merely lip service (i.e. freeing up information).

</comment><comment><USER4> Now this is interesting (from the page):

"Wikidata is a secondary database. Wikidata will not simply record statements, but __it will also record their sources, thus also allowing to reflect the diversity of knowledge available in reality __."

That sounds pretty cool to me, because you could potentially upload probabalistic data from statistical analysis. If they make this so that you can tell how reliable the source is, you could upload information that's accurate to a given degree of probability.

It would be very interesting if you could version data by reliability, so that less-reliable data could eventually be replaced by definitive data. This is an achilles heel of current data modeling systems.

</comment><comment><USER15> My concern for the potential for abuse in this project is much greater than that of wikipedia. How is wikimedia going to ensure that there are no malicious edits to this data? Any changes will almost certainly need stringent peer review.

Edit: As an afterthought, it would make a lot of sense to manage it like a git repository, where someone could submit a pull request for data changes, and then some subgroup or a trusted percentage of the population approves the request and it gets merged into the master dataset.

<comment><USER2> Given that the data is structured, to some extent it should be possible to automatically check its consistency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> One area I really want to see this take off in is Medicine.

As someone who had suffered from an unknown illness (no doctor could figure it out), I can rationalize how such a system would have been helpful. You see a bit of this with WebMD's Symptom Checker, but I feel tools like that aren't comprehensive enough and we end up with a lot of cyberchondria. You can't rely on co-relation to find absolute answers, but helping map out symptoms, lifestyle choices may be a tool to finding solutions faster.

It took about a year to resolve my illness. Going to the doctor 2-4 times a week for 10-20 minutes isn't enough to work with when you have no clear-cut diagnosis.

Now, to be clear, I am not talking about replacing doctors or devaluing doctors by allowing everyone to _be an expert_.

<comment><USER17> In the medical domain, there do exist large structured knowledge bases and "expert systems" for diagnosis. Read up on DXplain[1], MYCIN[2] and the UMLS[3]. Even in biology, there seems to be significant activity in formalizing knowledge. It literally took decades to develop and refine these knowledge bases.

Creating something general purpose like the Cyc or Semantic Web is very challenging, especially because different people have different notion of "meaning". Just look at the back and forth arguments over some controversial Wikipedia page. This is 100 times more conceptual and challenging.

1\. <http://dxplain.org/dxp/dxp.pl>

2\. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycin>

3\. <http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's hardly new... it's been a non starter for about 5 years: <http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikidata-l/>

</comment><comment><USER19> This might be very interesting if it's implemented in a sane way. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a very widely-adopted standard in the world of open data for now..

<comment><USER20> RDF has been adopted by some pretty big data websites, and apparently that's one of the formats they plan to support:

        The data will be exported in different formats, especially RDF, SKOS, and JSON.

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikidata/Technical_proposal>

<comment><USER21> Technically unsound: RDF is a relationship model and a meta-model (think XML Infoset), SKOS is a vocabulary (think XHTML) and JSON is a serialization format (think XML or RDF/N3).

The question is which schema, ontology or vocabulary will they use to express their data? Who will develop it? Or will they reuse other vocabularies? How do they intend to extend them? If they are RDF based, how will they project to JSON given that there are a dozen different conversion methods?

How can that document not cite DBpedia, a project that is extracting structured data from Wikipedia infoboxes and has years of experience in doing that?

The fact that their technical proposal document is quite confused about these ground technologies makes me fear that there is more wishful thinking than past experiences.

<comment><USER20> I found the mix of different kinds of technologies odd too, but I assumed it's just a draft, not the final spec.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This kind of reminds me of <http://dabanese.blogspot.com/2009/09/introduction.html></comment>


Let's build a circuit that displays an image on a VGA monitor [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7rce6IQDWs <comment><USER2> I can only recommend the "Veronica"-Series of Quinn Dunki, where she builds a complete graphics card for her 8-Bit-computer, as well as the computer itself

[http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?page_id=1761](http://quinndunki.com/blondihacks/?page_id=1761)

<comment><USER3> Not to take away from Quinn Dunki's accomplishments, one big difference is the Veronica used an ATmega 324PA - basically an 8 bit 20 MIPS RISC CPU.

Generating a VGA signal is trivial for this powerful chip. Entire retro game consoles have been built with similar ATmega chips alone

Ben Eater is building a VGA card from discrete components, a somewhat more difficult task. The first part covers building the H/V timing sync circuit (no programmable clock source here!). It's worth taking a look if you're into this kind of thing.

<comment><USER4> >Ben Eater is building a VGA card from discrete components

From 7400 series devices, which are very simple integrated circuits by modern standards, but still integrated circuits.

<comment><USER5> _" From 7400 series devices, which are very simple integrated circuits by modern standards"_

So it's clear, a 74xx is just a bunch of NAND gates. Nothing at all higher level than that.

<comment><USER6> Except they're not. He's using 74161 counters; that's a MSI device, not just primitive combinatorial logic and flip flops.

<comment><USER5> Ahh, good catch. I was distracted with the 7400 description. Though a 4 bit counter isn't terribly high level either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Depending on the definition of the word "image" in this context, I'd love to see people play the electronics component version of code golf to see what the fewest number of basic components would be required to put an "image" on a screen. No SOACs allowed.

<comment><USER8> Let's just cut out the middle and build the minimum required board to project an image onto a retina. Or a signal into optic nerve ))

<comment><USER9> Id try with a led illuminating the back of a pcb ? Still, nice project. The code golf fewest components to display a face is tempting ...

<comment><USER10> Laser, spinning mirror, and a mask to draw a mouth at the bottom and two eyelids at the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've been following ben eater for about 2 years now. I've learned so much from his well explained well illustrated videos. Right now it's kinda hard for me to get my hands on every component he uses, but soon I'll take a shot at building a 8 bit computer as well. I'll may start with a full adder built with transistors only.

<comment><USER12> Hi, I don't know your background, but why are you not building your 8 bit computer in FPGA? There are many nice cheap boards like MAX1000 from Arrow or Lattice. It's really cool learning project! Transistor only design will have many problems: transistors are bigger than you think and small ones in VML0806 package are almost impossible to solder by hand.

<comment><USER11> I'm a software engineer undergrad, I do most high level stuff. I took digital circuits on college, cause I like electronics. One day watching videos on YouTube I saw ben eater project and loved it. I thinker with Arduino and Raspberry pi, but never built anything cool like that. I just want to give it a try, I guess

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Somewhat related, here's a video card for a MAC SE done with a BeagleBone and it's microcontroller like PRU secondary processors: [https://trmm.net/Mac- SE_video](https://trmm.net/Mac-SE_video)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why isn't this titled "let's build a video card [youtube]"?

<comment><USER14> Because it's not a video card yet, it's a circuit that syncs the monitor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Designing a VGA card precursor on breadboards -- Brilliant!

Should be the very first video any would-be VGA card designer views... (I want to design one in the future...)

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one frustrated with how difficult YouTube makes it to find Part 2? Am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER17> Part 2 isn't out yet

<comment><USER16> Thanks. It took way too long for me to figure that out :-).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why not with an AVR? [https://youtu.be/sNCqrylNY-0](https://youtu.be/sNCqrylNY-0)</comment>


The Authority Principle - <AUTHOR> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/authority-principle/ <comment><USER2> This is unfortunately abused to hell and back by unscrupulous marketers.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is considered "UX"?

Although it's young terminology, I had the impression there is an actual field, even a domain of knowledge being entertained. I have not been able to put a finger on it so far, but this here is just propaganda. Good stuff for launching your next ICO scam.

 _"(4) a McAfee logo in the footer, indicating that the site is secure."_

</comment><comment><USER4> What's interesting about this in terms of user interface is that as user interface evolves into natural language user interface a.k.a. things like Siri, is that I do wonder if voice first devices will eventually exude some authority over the user.

</comment><comment><USER5> This isn't user experience. It is Marketing 101. What a user feels about content is more concerned about persuasion than it is interactive behavior with the software. Your software shouldn't get in the way between the user and conversion. That's UX. This fluff is icing on the cake--if done correctly--and not in an obnoxious in-your-face dancing bunny kind of way.</comment>


I Dont't Think "That's Why Starbucks Spells Your Name Wrong" - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/7948439dd7aa

<comment><USER2> This is a dupe, hosted on a different site, of vrypan's earlier self-posting at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306864](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8306864) .

</comment><comment><USER3> "Content taken down by claim from BMC rights management"

Wouldn't it be great if we had some kind of distributed system for accessing all of humanity's creative content without having to go through gatekeepers?

Some kind of massive space-beyond-space, a hyperspace, of documents and media linked and referring to one another--hyperlinked documents if you will.

Man, that'd be a hell of a thing, wouldn't it?</comment>


The Road to GraphQL - <AUTHOR> https://www.robinwieruch.de/the-road-to-graphql-book/ <comment><USER2> Hello everyone. Author here :-) I released the book 48 hours ago and I am overwhelmed by the positive reactions. The last 10 months I put lots of work into it and finally released it as a top quality and up-to-date resource for people who want to learn GraphQL in JavaScript.

If you are interested in the content, checkout the release blog post that is used here on HN. The book comes with 4 applications, client- and server-side, that you will build along the way, 350 pages, 45+ exercises, 400+ code snippets.

I would be curious how you like the content, but also what other content you would have expected in this book. Thanks to all of you again!

<comment><USER3> Seems like a solid book to me. I wrote one myself in the last 3 months and now it seems like nothing compared to yours, haha.

I'll definitely read it. I like the fact that it focuses on Apollo and not Relay.

<comment><USER4> What's wrong with Relay ? (true question)

<comment><USER3> Nothing is wrong with it; it's just more opinionated than Apollo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The chapters reads like the Apollo documentation. Does the book contains real world experience of topics like caching, CDN's, REST integration, deduplication of requests? Thanks for sharing this with the community!

<comment><USER2> Hello, author here :)

There are 4 applications the readers of this book are going to build along the way. I think that's more pragmatic than other programming books.

Most, not all, of the other mentioned topics are too niche to address them in a beginners GraphQL book that should be read by a broader audience IMO. But I keep these topics in a list to write supplementary blog posts about them.

Thanks for your insights on this! Helps a lot to identify the pain points the community has on this topic :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it's great that you reduce the price for countries that are less wealthy.

<comment><USER7> Where does it say that?

Unless I'm mistaken, the actual book itself is free too, which is generous.

<comment><USER8> When signing up for an account there's a message about Purchasing Parity Power for your country

<comment><USER2> Yes. I have PPP via this [https://github.com/rwieruch/purchasing-power- parity](https://github.com/rwieruch/purchasing-power-parity) Unfortunately I hit the API limit for this month for the third-party APIs the library is using. Hacker News ... :D

<comment><USER9> Hey, as a Palestinian student in Siberia, you're a really cool guy. Thanks for doing this. It's painful how many people charge the equivalent of my rent for a digital product and then wonder why Russia has such a high piracy rate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I haven't read this yet, but I plan on purchasing it and working through it this weekend or next. Robin's "Road to React" really helped me cement my understanding of React and learn how to use it in a concrete way. The focus on refactoring in his previous book has been immensely helpful in my day job.

<comment><USER2> I think you will meet more refactoring in this book :) Great that you liked it!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Thanks for this, will be sharing with my team!

The "Graph" part is where this technology is interesting. I'm sure not everyone links together all their models, but if you do things right, you essentially can let the front end pull in very interesting relationships without having to set it all up yourself. Very cool stuff.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is there any benefits for using Apollo with React ? It seems that Relay provides higher level abstractions that Apollo is lacking (because it is framework agnostic). It seems that every Apollo user is going to rebuild the abstractions already provided by React.

<comment><USER12> Apollo Client contributor and user here - which abstractions are you referring to?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I haven't read your work but it is nice to see more instruction on GraphQL being published. I think Apollo is a great choice for beginners and an appropriate choice for many projects in general - largely due to its framework ambiguity. I look forward to looking into your section on other options. It's good to keep perspective on that sort of thing and hard to do so when it involves such a learning curve.

An e-book is a good choice of format as well. I learned GraphQL from a video resource until I was competent enough to proceed with the (admittedly very good) documentation. I wish there had been a resource like this available.

<comment><USER14> For django there is graphene, with Django migrations, it really makes for the easiest way to build a backend outside of serverless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This looks like a really good resource! Sadly at my work we are just finally getting most of our web stack on top of a REST API. So it may be a while before I get to work with something like this a production environment.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is really cool! We have been waiting for this for a long time ...

</comment><comment><USER17> Does anyone have a pdf copy of the book? I see that it is released for free, I just would prefer not to sign up for another service.

<comment><USER18> I don't like signing up for stuff either, but that is the price of the book: your email address.

<comment><USER3> Don't understand the down-votes here.

It's true!

Maybe it's not the best book on GraphQL, I don't know, but it is miles better than most paid tech-books out there.

The book is self-published and the author isn't well known, so he needs to something to build an audience. Giving them such a good book for an email is a nice way to do so.

I'm not well known either and my publisher only gives away one chapter for an email and then you have to buy it.</comment></comment></comment>


We are not in a post-PC era - <AUTHOR> http://www.techerator.com/2012/03/4-reasons-why-we-are-not-in-a-post-pc-age/

<comment><USER2> Since More's Law stalled there is no incentive to buy a new PC / Laptop these days. So the industry had to invent new form factors to sell new devices. It is not a Post PC age it is a Post PC growth age. That does not mean nobody is using real computers, only nobody is buying them because the old one is good enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sure, I guess we aren't in a post-PC era. Yet.

I don't even own a tablet of any kind, but the reasons the author gives for dismissing them are extremely short-sighted.

The reason people still use PCs for email, office applications, and graphics applications has absolutely nothing to do with how suited tablets are to those domains, and everything to do with market inertia. It takes time to convert to a new system of doing anything. As more and more people move to tablets, you can expect all of the author's points to change overnight.

There are plenty of office applications for iOS and Android. Off the top of my head, I know that much of the iWork suite and Google Docs both have native apps for their respective OSes, and I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to find Microsoft Office on WP7. As people start to use these more at home, they'll slowly start to creep into offices as well. I don't know if Photoshop (or anything like it) exists on a mobile OS, but the Photoshop interface seems like it would translate almost perfectly to a touchscreen. Again, as more people start to use it, more offices will start to use it.

Games like World of Warcraft and Skyrim are targeted towards the PCs because that's where the hardcore gamers are. But games like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope are on tablets because that's where everyone else is. But as hardcore gamers move to tablets, game studios will start building their games for mobile OSes. John Carmack has already moved Id in this direction, releasing their latest game on iOS, and it's only a matter of time before others follow suit.

Ergonomics are almost a non-issue. Almost every tablet owner I've ever seen has a stand of some sort or another, and many who do serious work also have a keyboard.

Which brings us to his last point that a tablet with a keyboard is "basically a desktop". This is about as useful as saying that a mobile phone with a bluetooth headset is just a phone. That hasn't stopped bluetooth headsets or mobile phones from selling like crazy, and the same can be said for tablets and keyboards.

I doubt the computer is going to leave wholesale, but I think it's crazy to believe that tablets won't start taking huge chunks out of their market share within just a few short years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jobs himself had a good analogy, cars vs. trucks:

<http://news.cnet.com/8301-13860_3-20006526-56.html>

"When we were an agrarian nation, all cars were trucks because that's what you needed on the farms." Cars became more popular as cities rose, and things like power steering and automatic transmission became popular. "PCs are going to be like trucks," Jobs said. "They are still going to be around." However, he said, only "one out of x people will need them."

For the office, and content-creation in general, you'll still need PCs, but for content consumption in the home, tablets are good enough for most purposes, just like a truck is overkill for say, a run to the grocery store or dropping the kids off at school.

</comment><comment><USER5> Post PC = Post Industrial. PCs, just like heavy industries, aren't going anywhere, but tablets, smartphones and (finally, yes!) wearable glasses, just like the service industry, are going to be the next thing to grow exponentially...

</comment><comment><USER6> "Microsoft trained consultant" the first question I would ask is for him to explain Windows 8 and the metro interface? It seems that even Microsoft sees where things are headed and is making changes to stay relevant post "PC". Let's be clear, no one thinks that PCs (desktops, laptops) are going to die overnight however the market will not see the growth it had in the past. For the time being there will be a place for traditional desktops and laptops however the need for them in the average users home is quickly fading.

Posted from my iPad.

</comment><comment><USER7> His gaming examples are pretty weak. Outside of World of Warcraft, all of the games he mentioned were played by more players on console than they were on PC. He even says "Phones and tablets now have power and graphical grunt to rival dedicated consoles." Then again, he might consider consoles to be PCs, or part of the "PC era."

I always assumed post PC meant there was also some kind of console or set top box in the house for things people want to experience in there living room, and it didn't mean only phones and tablets.

</comment><comment><USER8> Clueless.</comment>


Facebook's Slacktivism is Only Sexualizing Tragedy - <AUTHOR> http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/10/06/robyn-urback-facebooks-i-like-it-campaign-pointlessly-sexualizing-tragedy/

<comment><AUTHOR> Saliency: "The sexual innuendo clouding the news of where you "like it" only trivializes the issue, and creates confusion that is paradoxical to the goal of spreading awareness. And while participants may feel as though they're making a difference, they're likely just sublimating any real effort to do so. Next year, rather than a status update loosely related to cup size or bedroom positions, how about link to the Breast Cancer Foundation's donation page?"</comment>


Report: Malaysia Airlines Plane Crashes in Ukraine With 295 on Board - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/07/17/malaysia-airlines-ukraine/?utm_cid=mash-com-Tw-main-link

<comment><AUTHOR> Twitter reports are now saying it was shot down from 33,000 feet by a Buk missile.</comment>


Student lists his high school for sale on Craigslist, gets in trouble - <AUTHOR> http://fox4kc.com/2018/05/23/school-deems-craigslist-prank-a-threat-graduate-now-facing-punishment/ <comment><USER2> They're suspending and barring him from walking the stage on graduation day. He has a 3.9 GPA.

We're struggling with school gun violence and massive student debt, yet this school is concerned with a craigslist ad? What a bunch of self serious desk jockeys.

The correct response would be to giggle and move on.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd be in prison for life for all of the crap I pulled in high school. Is this moral panic _ever_ going to end?</comment>


Firefox will protect you from websites that mine cryptocurrency on your computer - <AUTHOR> https://www.techrepublic.com/google-amp/article/firefox-will-soon-protect-you-from-websites-that-mine-cryptocurrency-on-your-computer/ <comment><USER2> I think paying by mining is a good thing and I'm surprised how unpopular this view is. I don't particularly like ads and making a small payment or subscribing is a way too much hassle for a quick visit on a news site. I'd be totally ok with the site consuming up to 90% of my cpu while reading an article.

<comment><USER3> The problem is not mining to pay, IMO that's okay.

What is definitely not okay is doing so without consent or informing the user, this applies doubly on mobile devices with limited bandwidth and battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's great to hear that Mozilla continues to improve Firefox. I can only hope that they manage to avert a full Chrome-is-the-new-IE scenario, it's already pretty bad (can't even file taxes in FF only Chrome)</comment>


Want Dropbox in your Email? via SquadMail - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cqQAQNSykE

<comment><AUTHOR> Please drop your comments and also visit us at <https://www.squadmail.com></comment>


Examples of Lisp formatting through history - <AUTHOR> http://kazimirmajorinc.blogspot.com/2012/03/few-examples-of-lisp-code-typography.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Two trends I pick up on at glance: 1) increased use of indentation 2) abandoning commenting for self-documenting code (and the occasional header comment). I'm guessing these are pretty universal trends, no?

</comment><comment><USER3> Coding in Haskell changed the way I indent Lisp code. The way I intent now differs from most Lisp indentation styles in that

      (a (b (c (d (e
        (f (g (h xxx yyy (i uuu (vv ww qq) (j
          foo bar))))))))))

becomes allowed whereas

      (let ((a b)
            (c d))
        foo)

becomes not allowed -- you have to write it as

      (let
        ((a b)
          (c d))
        foo)

or (if you need the let clauses to line up) as

      (let
        (
          (a b)
          (c d))
        foo)

Well, the let form is such a unusual case that I will give a second example:

      (f (g xxx
            yyy)
         zzz)

becomes not allowed -- you have to write it as

      (f
        (g xxx
          yyy)
        zzz)

or (if you need g's arguments to line up) as

      (f
        (g
          xxx
          yyy)
        zzz)

Although I used two spaces for every new level of indentation above, the choice of the number 2 is of course not an essential element of the style.

<comment><USER4> i'm not sure think your personal take on lisp indentation has any compelling benefits to justify departing from consensus.

i recognize a lot of old school lispers follow a philosophy of "lisp empowers me so much that i don't need a team", so they do whatever they want and their productivity so godly that nobody says anything, but this isn't particularly helpful to increased lisp adoption, which benefits us all. maybe it isn't harmful either, but we who are already using it aren't in a position to judge this.

<comment><USER5> What are you talking about, he's using standard banner-style-indent with lisp- close-brackets (i.e. the closing brackets are on the last line of the body, not below the body)

I use banner style in all languages and it works well.

<comment><USER3> In that case, if you use Emacs, perhaps you'd like to see the Emacs Lisp that I have bound to my tab key (which however has not been made to work with non- Lisp-syntax languages).

If you write "(a (b (c (d (e (f" RET, TAB indents just as many spaces as it would if you had written just "(a" RET.

<comment><USER5> Sounds cool. I don't use emacs at all, but maybe you can post it anyways?

<comment><USER3> Now that I know you see replies to your comments, I will inform you that I disagree with your assertion that what I have been describing here is just banner style.

Lisp coders are accustomed to a certain pattern of indentation that would be analogous to the following in C, where xxx and yyy are typically many lines long:

      while(aa){if(bb){
                    xxx}
          yyy}

I am recommending for Lisp coders to avoid that pattern and to indent the above as follows:

      while(aa){
          if(bb){
              xxx}
          yyy}

which is of course familiar to a C programmer and which we will refer to as "formula A". However, what will be unfamiliar to a C programmer is the motive behind my recommendation: namely, to make it possible to introduce into Lisp a new pattern of indentation, unfamiliar to C programmers and Lisp programmer (but familiar to Haskell programmers) in which you are allowed to write,

      while(aa){if(bb){
          xxx}}

where again xxx is a place holder for many lines of code. However, it is important to note that the following would be a definite violation of the indentation style I recommend:

      while(aa){if(bb){
          xxx}
          yyy}

I recommend indenting that as formula A above. In other words, you can begin multiple multi-line s-expressions on the same line, but if you do, you have to close all of those multi-line s-expressions at the same time.

>maybe you can post it anyways?

It's a little too long: about 90 lines of code. I could make it shorter by taking out the code that warns the user of the stylistic violation described above, but most user would want that code.

<comment><USER4> i'm quite confused, I'd love to read a blog post with side-by-side examples in both C-style and lisp, in both styles, laying out the benefits.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote my own indenter in EMACS for clojure 'cause I don't like the standard indentation of modern lisps. My indenter uses the "primitive" syntax-level indentation exemplified by the "Dream of a lifetime" code example from 1979 on this page.

This is the ONE AND ONLY CORRECT INDENTATION STYLE for Lisp.

<comment><USER7> _This is the ONE AND ONLY CORRECT INDENTATION STYLE for Lisp._

Because the defining feature of Lisp is allowing only one way to do things?

<comment><USER8> I thought the defining feature of Lisp was the meta-programming. Or am I missing some sarcasm?

<comment><USER9> Yes, lemming's comment is sarcastic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Look at all the commas!

Clojure has been ahead of the curve on these commas, of course. Commas (and semicolons) are considered whitespace. They're available to pretty up your code's presentation however you like. It's like Clojure is committing in advance not to need many syntax characters.

<comment><USER11> Ahead of the curve? Other Lisps stopped using commas half a century ago.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Link to the last example, from "Introduction to Newlisp, wikibook, 2012":

[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_newLISP/Macros#...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Introduction_to_newLISP/Macros#Symbol_confusion)

</comment><comment><USER12> Is this the definite proof that Lisp in unreadable, no matter what?

<comment><USER13> The standard joke about how Lisp looks, which I believe comes from Perl's Larry Wall, is "oatmeal and toenail clippings".

It's interesting to see the old ones even if one is not a big lisp fan, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A very cool history of Lisp: while we see the changes in formatting styles over the years, we also see the personalities behind the progress of Lisp. Really nice!

</comment><comment><USER15> Not all samples have numbers in them, but I was somwhat disturbed that it was not until 2012 that the LISP publishers used a monospace font that clearly distinguished 0 "zero" and O "capital letter o".

</comment><comment><USER16> A number of the documents he excerpted are available via <http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/> .

</comment><comment><USER17> This is almost impossible to read on an iPhone. The text doesn't resize and whenever I try to scroll around it activates some blogger "next article" functionality

<comment><USER18> Likewise on an Android. Made for difficult reading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> That was fun, but he missed InterLisp D. I got an Xerox 1108 Lips Machine in 1982, and InterLisp D was amazing!

<comment><USER16> It's there: [http://instprog.com/blogposts/Few-Examples-of-Lisp-Code- Typo...](http://instprog.com/blogposts/Few-Examples-of-Lisp-Code- Typography/1985.png)</comment></comment>


The Epic Saga of the Well (1997) - <AUTHOR> http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.05/ff_well_pr.html?resubmit=hn

<comment><USER2> I wanted so much to be a part of that, but young broke me found other outlets for my desire to argue with people. I see that I can still buy a web forum membership for $100 per year but I can't imagine that it still holds the magic this article describes.

<comment><USER3> I've found myself facing the same dilemma. A membership to The Well is not a time machine, but I see notable folks with well.com e-mails and get jealous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The Well was always one of the fabulous things I read about on Wired. Some kind of nexus of creativity and tech, it seemed a bit like an intellectual promised land of sorts for young me - a modern salon where people openly talked about revolution. I think it's kind of great that we keep bringing it back up to remind ourselves of some of the pioneering talking spaces for the new digital world we're building.

I never got to be part of it, but I sometimes like to pretend that HN is kind of a Well 2.0.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a Well account in the mid and late 90s and it was great. Honestly I haven't found any online community that matches what it was back then.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've thought about joining a few times, but ultimately, the two publically readable conferences didn't interest me at all. And for some time they were broken and only returned some error message. So I assumed that probably it's only a shadow of its glorious self anymore. Or at least I didn't feel like buying the cat in the bag.</comment></comment>


When bills pile up, young people turn to strangers on Venmo - <AUTHOR> https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-venmo-cash-app-twitter-crowdfund-money-20190602-story.html <comment> temp-dude-87844 This is pretty common among the coming-of-age generation that has grown up on the Web. It's more likely to be tried in communities organized around shared attribute, circumstance, or interest, than just shouting into the ether. Typically, these are posted on sites where the person has followers in a similar situation, and are shared on that platform until it slowly propagates outward. Many people who share the same adverse circumstances can't donate, so they share the posting instead, spreading it further. Eventually, someone sees it who is in a position to donate. It's likely that those who donate the most are on the fringes of the original community, but feel a sense of solidarity or guilt.

The article mentions a few communities in particular. The unifying dimension seems to be that some people's real-life safety net is outweighed by their online one, even if they don't always receive the donations they ask. It's worth a try.

<comment><USER2> Waiting for help to find you probably isn't much of a plan, and you won't know if you'll get help unless you ask for it. Finding help is hard, as is swallowing your pride when the help that is offered isn't exactly what you were hoping for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What I don't understand is why people don't band together and simply refuse, collectively, to pay bills that are well known in the culture to be unreasonable. In particular, student loans. But also a few other things. My god, I know so many people who are struggling that it seems like everyone is struggling. I know people making six figures who are worried about losing their homes. In fact, I've known so many people who have either lost their home, almost lost their home, or are worried about losing their home that it makes up probably a majority of the people I know. Did we forget somewhere along the line that a home is just a patch of dirt with four walls and roof thrown on it? Should it really be that precarious of a thing? How many people do you think go to bed every night worrying about becoming a homeless person? We've turned into a culture that literally has a market that gambles on whether or not people will be able to keep their homes! For christ sake! What kind of sick shit is that? And the whole thing is predicated on people accepting the idea that they have to pay all their unreasonable bills and stressing themselves out willingly over the process of paying them. At what point do people throw their hands up and say "fuck it, this is unreasonable"?

<comment><USER4> > In particular, student loans

Only if we're also collectively telling people not to take them in the first place. The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges, then bitching that they're burdened with loans and not pay them, is pretty toxic.

Its should be a multi step thing. \- Tell people how bad student loans are and how they shouldn't take them if they don't have a plan to pay them back.

\- Educate people on alternative, like trade schools, apprenticeships, etc. Stop glorifying bachelor degrees beyond what they are (that should and often happens even in countries where education is paid by the gov!)

\- Then, yeah, start doing something to reduce debt burden on those who were affected before the previous two steps were in place.

Otherwise, if we keep pushing for school loans but then tell people not to pay them, or forgive them, it's basically free education (a good thing) without actually collectively agreeing on making education free (which is kind of sketchy)

<comment><USER5> >The current culture telling everyone to go to expensive private colleges

"Everyone" doesn't go to expensive private colleges. Of those who continue on from high-school at all, 75% attend a publicly owned institution, usually community college.

<comment><USER6> Are state colleges not also publicly owned? Those ain't nearly as affordable as community colleges.

When I was in high school, being railroaded into prioritizing CSU or UC admission requirements over graduation requirements was the norm even for students (like me) who had effectively zero chance of getting into one of those schools immediately after high school (let alone getting a scholarship or meaningful financial aid or any other way to avoid a predatory student loan).

<comment><USER5> >Are state colleges not also publicly owned? Those ain't nearly as affordable as community colleges.

They are publicly owned, and can be _made_ affordable by legislatures without interfering in private organizations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "millennial culture is just passing around the same $20 to whoever needs it at the time forever." I see this a lot on my Twitter feed. Recently, a guy with metabolic issues and chronic pain (whose own GoFundMe was "trending" for a while) is setting up a charity livestream for someone else's surgery. [https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695](https://twitter.com/docsquiddy/status/1148022827917938695)

<comment><USER8> I don't think there's such a thing as "millennial culture."

<comment><USER9> I'm sure people who fought in WW2 said that about the boomers, who in turn said it about the gen Xers. In 20 years time we'll be reminiscing about emoji and snap chat and hipsters and whatever the kids are doing now.

<comment><USER8> My point was about the usefulness of generational constructs as cultural boundaries, not "damn kids got no culture!". And according to sibling, I have "denouncements" to rebut. What a thread.

<comment><USER9> Well culture changes, someone from the 19th century has a different culture to someone from today. Yes I accept the fact that some arbitrary date isnt that useful, and some (most?) people wont fit the pattern, but I suppose you could say that about any stereotype.

Nevertheless it is a useful shorthand for people going through the same life experiences at the same time.

I say this as someone who's technically a millennial, but old enough to remember when we were generation Y, doesn't eat Avocado toast, didn't have particular problems affording a house and don't particularly like facebook/snapchat/grindr or whatever the kids are on now. So I'm not really a representative Millennial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "There's no shame in having to do it. Women of color, trans folks, queer folks — these institutions aren't built to love us and support us. These institutions don't care about our well-being,"

Does anyone else think that stereotyping is getting out of hand?

There are _so_ _so_ many reasons you might need or not need money outside of your race or sexual orientation and vic-versa. Maybe you have cancer. Maybe your house burned down. etc. Assuming that a person of a certain identity group needs financial support seems like a ridiculous assumption.

The amount of focus we put on identity groups these today seems unhealthy.

I understand their point, but it's just not even close to the first we should bring up when encouraging people to ask for help.

<comment><USER11> Why don't you address the second half of the text you quoted?

Do you think they are wrong about the institutions they are talking about?

<comment><USER12> No. But those institutions don't care about -anyone-. Prefacing it with <insert identity of the day here> only weakens their case in my eyes. If you want my support for a cause, don't exclude me specifically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's a less palatable side of this. It's now very common to see people openly offering to exchange money for sex, at least in the LGBT community.

On Grindr, it's an everyday occurrence to see people seeking Venmo "donations" with the implication or overt offer of a meeting in exchange.

I doubt if you asked many of the people who do it they would equate it with prostitution in the same way I'm guessing the legal system might. It's often younger people who are probably exposed to "Venmo culture" elsewhere and decide to apply it here.

<comment><USER14> Why is that less palatable? It's people deciding to sell something which they own.

<comment><USER15> Being _forced_ to sell sex for survival is less palatable. Not the same as flipping an unnecessary TV or lamp.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Their title is... ehhhh, I initially thought "oh a bunch of kids with heavy student loan debt for their liberal arts degrees are finding out adulating is hard" but in reality it is:

(paraphrasing) my step-father was arrested for a DUI, can't prove citizenship, and my mom needs money to drive to another state to visit him in custody (/)

This isn't novel, I've been hit up dozens of times on the street outside of shows, at gas pumps, in parking lots etc. This is just people hoping to hit a larger audience by soliciting twitter. You used to find Jains (or at least similarly dressed individuals) outside of airports begging for money.

And then this...

>Fans of "The Bachelor" sent contestant Becca Kufrin wine money on Venmo after she was dumped on national television, and more than 3,000 people sent a 23-year-old college student beer money after he held up a sign with his Venmo handle on the "College GameDay" telecast.

... one is just fans blurring the lines of what is appropriate and the other is just a guy hoping to get lucky and presumably making at least 3000 dollars for holding up a sign. What?!

Maybe I should walk around with a sign "Will likely have to work til I die, no one wants to give a GED holder a decent wage, only need 700k to retire, @ryancarlmercer", maybe I should stop maintaining an emergency fund and eating beans 10 meals a week to stretch funds.

<comment><USER17> Well, yea, this is why implementing social welfare and safety nets is far better done at the government level, where you have accountability and a justice system.

An attractive person holding a clever, written-in-English sign, at a football game that cost them 100$ (or whatever) to attend, garners 3000$ for beer. The ugly, dirty, illiterate homeless person that stands outside of a train station gets 5$ for food.

Unfairness can exist at the bureaucratic level (shit like judges being tired and being less lenient towards the evening, or just plain and simple sexism and racism in the justice system), but it's far better than "marketplace of begging for welfare."

<comment><USER18> These issues aren't solved with "social welfare and safety nets", that's just throwing good money after bad. I'm totally fine with a kick-ass safety net for people who are actually _in poverty_ , aka have trouble funding their basic needs despite very serious, sometimes strenuous efforts. But someone who is advertising their Venmo ID online is almost certainly _not_ poor in this legitimate sense. Spending more money than you earn, and then on vapid things like social media, etc. has nothing to do with poverty.

<comment><USER19> Social media costs $0. Venmo costs $0. Internet access costs under $50/month, and is one of the most valuable purchases anyone can make in modern society.

<comment><USER18> The social media account costs $0. If you actually want to play at being a social media "influencer" online and reaching strangers to a non-trivial extent, you'll definitely be looking at some real costs.

<comment><USER20> How do you figure?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is hardly unique to young people. People have been panhandling on the internet for decades. Here's an example from 10 years ago mentioning some of the sites that people used: [https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091101005717/http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/10/26/homeless_ex_cook_lets_his_fingers_do_the_panhandling_online/)

</comment><comment><USER22> >>> "Children grow up aspiring to be Youtubers. Teenagers rake in thousands of dollars selling slime,"

No. They are not selling slime. They are selling themselves. Just like any hollywood starlet, they are marketing their youth and sex appeal. Customers buy a fantasy, a perceived connection with the attractive or famous person. If that makes the customer happy then that's great, but don't pretend that just anyone can start a youtube channel and start getting paid. Being young and attractive is 99% of the game.

<comment><USER23> You are aware there are many slime instagram accounts and channels that involve nothing but footage of their hands manipulating slime? I'm not sure what part of that involves being young and attractive.

<comment><USER14> Presumably they have attractive and youthful looking hands.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> [http://archive.is/dM4pI](http://archive.is/dM4pI)

</comment><comment><USER25> From what I've read, they turn to their parents first.

<comment><USER26> Not everybody has parents with money. Plenty of people have parents who _ask_ for money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The way to engender sympathy for millennials is not to mention that they major in "comparative politics" in the opening sentence.

</comment><comment><USER28> Prostitution is certainly exploding. Anyone see appropriate reactions to this? How do we combat the loneliness epidemic that "social" media has caused? So many people raised on "social" media have no idea how to get to the kind of real, healthy relationship they want.

<comment><USER29> Don't really follow your logic here, you're conflating prostitution and a "loneliness epidemic"? Prostitution is as old as civilization itself. Older, probably. I don't see rising prostitution as indicative of anything other than 'poor people are low on options'

<comment><USER17> Almost certainly older than civilization itself - female chimpanzees will trade sex for food. Presumably proto-humans did the same.</comment></comment></comment>


Provding free wifi? Hardware help? - <AUTHOR>

I'm planning on helping a friend provide free Wifi to his customers in a large public house.<p>What would be the best hardware solution for a fast, secure and reliable network with around 100 simultaneous users. <comment><USER2> The Airport Extreme has a special guest functionality and is pretty simple to set up. You may need to get a couple to support 100 simultaneous users though.

[http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD031LL/A/AirPort- Extreme?...](http://store.apple.com/us/product/MD031LL/A/AirPort- Extreme?fnode=MTY1NDA0Mg)</comment>


The Cloud Computing World in Videos - <AUTHOR> http://www.getapp.com/blog/cloud-computing-world-in-videos/

<comment><USER2> This a quick and easy way to understand how ubiquitous cloud computing is. great videos!</comment>


Java 9 is scheduled to launch in July - <AUTHOR> https://www.freelancinggig.com/blog/2017/01/25/java-9-ready-launch-cool-features/ <comment><USER2> I'm fairly impressed with how Java has maintained relevance and steadily improved over the years. Java 8 was huge in tackling the Functional programming front. With REPL and more functional improvements in Java 9 its starting to feel fresh again. Go & Swift are great efforts and I hope they gain a larger community but JVM is here to stay and it's great that they're improving it while so many other languages have fizzled out over the years.

<comment><USER3> It seems like the JVM is here to stay in the same way that COBOL is here to stay. It has become a server-specialized system with a level of overhead that kills it in resource constrained environments. There is room for improvement, no doubt, but it's pretty hard to beat the resource demands of AOT compiled code with a good optimizer and potential PGO.

Go, Swift, Vala, Nim, and Rust are just the start of a trend...it seems most new languages are eschewing the VM model. And many existing VM/JIT languages are moving there: Dart, Julia, Scala, and even the .NET languages are all moving towards AOT capabilities.

<comment><USER4> Java is also AOT compiled and is becoming the favourite language besides C on many embedded platforms.

EDIT: To expand to that remark, although Sun was religiously against AOT, the majority of commercial JDK vendors have always supported AOT compilation to native code, specially the ones in the embedded space.

Also, for how cool all those languages are, there are lots of domains and OSes where Java code lives (AOT or JIT compiled), that they have yet to create backends for.

Examples, embedded controllers on factory plants, Cisco phones, Ricoh printers, Gemalto monitoring devices, Blu-Ray players, car infotainment systems, some GPS devices, military weapon control systems, shopping terminals, Android's fork,...

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

It is going to take a while to erase Java from the industry.

<comment><USER3> I was more claiming that the JVM is going obsolete, not Java. The whole idea behind the JVM is platform abstraction...and it worked perfectly fine insofar as the platform being abstracted had a CPU, at least X memory, a disk drive, and at least a basic OS. Which was fine for a while, but now we're seeing an explosion of different platforms with wildly different capabilities, and the JVM is just not up to the task. That isn't to say that _Java_ isn't, but it does mean that you need specialty compilers, libraries, tools, and infrastructure for specialty targets.

<comment><USER4> Well, actually what we are seeing with the CLR, LLVM, ART is an increase of adapting the mainframe model of JIT/AOT compilation with some form of bytecode as distribution model.

In that regard, what JVM is missing are new ways to adapt to said hardware.

Interesting enough, Java is ahead of Go, Swift, Vala, Nim, and Rust in supporting GPUs, for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I used to be a "Java hater" when I didn't understand the real purpose of the language or didn't even write in it. I was pretty young and it was cool to hate it.

but nowadays, I think having a common runtime plus a language that can exploit that is quite nice. having written some java lately, it was a refreshing break from the brutalism of C.

looking forward to whatever they bring to the table!

EDIT: java without any IDEs is also very usable. my workflow from small C projects didn't change. I don't bother with Eclipse, I just do all my work in my terminal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Headline: "Is Ready to Launch"

Body: "Instead of arriving in March 2017, it has delayed, and the new schedule mentions a date of 27th July 2017"

<comment><USER7> Ok, we changed the title to say that.

Is there a better source for this material? The submitted article looks cribbed from elsewhere but I don't see a link to the original source.

<comment><USER8> Not sure if it counts, but the jdk9 project page has the July release date and all the features scheduled for Java 9:

[http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "java" and "cool" in the same sentence doesn't compute for me. I die a little inside every time I'm forced to launch eclipse and work with The Old Stuff.

Actually after working with java from 97-07, I was so sick of it I started the process of changing careers and study medicine. Just imagine: solve people, not code!

Looking back, the main problem was probably Spring, Glassfish, IOC, XML, Maven and numerous other "EE" things that java-people assumed were a must 10 years ago.

I hear people these days do write fun, lightweight microservices that launches in seconds in java, but I'm scarred for life. Never again. Life is too short and there are _tons_ of fun programming languages that are commercially viable.

(I never started medicine, programming is amazingly creative, just not java)

<comment><USER10> > Looking back, the main problem was probably Spring, Glassfish, IOC, XML, > Maven and numerous other "EE" things that java-people assumed were a must 10 > years ago.

One of the most popular frameworks - Spring Boot - includes many of these now. It's fairly light, contained, works well in Docker. Maven is pretty straightforward for simple things, IOC is optional. I haven't exercised it heavily though, but what's wrong with those things?

> I die a little inside every time I'm forced to launch eclipse

Intellij's your healing potion then.

<comment><USER9> > One of the most popular frameworks - Spring Boot - includes many of these > now. It's fairly light, contained, works well in Docker. Maven is pretty > straightforward for simple things, IOC is optional. I haven't exercised it > heavily though, but what's wrong with those things?

It's hard to pinpoint one single thing that is the problem, but I suppose I can summarise it with that I don't think java is especially productive.

The language is rather verbose in modern terms (compare it to something with type inference like swift or rust).

The startup time of a spring-driven project used to take an age (used to be XML-parsing, then annotations), especially if housed in an app-server like jboss or glassfish, but also tomcat, jetty (compare it to how quickly an express-app in nodejs starts). This in turn affects development time.

Dealing with (somewhat) modern dataformats like JSON is is incredibly verbose (GSON, built-in, etc nothing compares to languages with what swift calls "subscribe", i.e user defined obj.blaha accessors instead of obj.getJsonValue("blaha")).

Dealing with older dataformats like XML is incredibly verbose (never mind the gazillion XML <-> Object mapping frameworks with source generation pre- compilation stages, insanely long namespaced method calls, etc).

The static type system is actually just making the code very verbose without helping much because pretty much anything can still be null (again compare with rust/swift where static types + optionals means compilation actually provides some level of security).

It had massive corporate backing (Sun/Oracle) to instill the idea that pretty much anyone can learn programming as a trade (I've worked extensively in India with outsourced java-programming, and the quality of code produced by some people labelled "senior" is absolutely shocking. This is not unique to India however).

Things like ORMs (Hibernate and EJB) meant most people just forgot how RDBMs work and threw crazy hardware at the persistence layer to compensate for lousy performance (ORMs are typically fine, users not understanding how they work are the problem).

It's owned by Oracle.

I could probably go on, but it's bed time.

<comment><USER11> > The language is rather verbose in modern terms (compare it to something with > type inference like swift or rust).

Maybe if you never have to work with anyone else, or maintain your code. Static typing is a plus, not a minus. Right now I'm working in a legacy codebase where everything is passed as Object or String within the main logic code, and let me tell you it's hell trying to figure out something as basic as what type of object you're working with.

> The startup time of a spring-driven project used to take an age (used to be > XML-parsing, then annotations), especially if housed in an app-server like > jboss or glassfish, but also tomcat, jetty (compare it to how quickly an > express-app in nodejs starts). This in turn affects development time.

Startup time for thin servers like Jetty is virtually zero. The fatter servers definitely do take more time to start up, but they also tend to be used with complex applications that have more stuff to configure, so that goes hand in hand.

For a point of reference here, I'm at about ten seconds from startup to page load with a 110 MB application that loads all kinds of redundant and useless code (which is why you let Maven do its thing instead of using fat jars everywhere).

If you're properly configured, though, you can do "code hot-swapping" (call 1-800-TOMCAT for sexxxy singletons in your area!), which will just inject a new function body into the server, so you can avoid having to re-deploy the whole application over a single changed line.

> Dealing with (somewhat) modern dataformats like JSON is is incredibly > verbose (GSON, built-in, etc nothing compares to languages with what swift > calls "subscribe", i.e user defined obj.blaha accessors instead of > obj.getJsonValue("blaha")).

You're looking for Jackson. See the first example, "Full Data Binding". [http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonInFiveMinutes](http://wiki.fasterxml.com/JacksonInFiveMinutes)

If you need a little more flexibility than just "this object but serialized as JSON", you can control the binding with annotations or XML.

> Dealing with older dataformats like XML is incredibly verbose (never mind > the gazillion XML <-> Object mapping frameworks with source generation pre- > compilation stages, insanely long namespaced method calls, etc).

So you don't like writing it yourself (SAX parsers are verbose but fast and powerful), and you don't like the tradeoffs of letting tools do it for you, ok then...

JAXB isn't really as bad as you're making it sound though. And the rule of thumb is that virtually any awkward block of code can be stuck behind a convenient helper method and only touched directly if there is a very compelling reason.

> The static type system is actually just making the code very verbose without > helping much because pretty much anything can still be null (again compare > with rust/swift where static types + optionals means compilation actually > provides some level of security).

Sure, object references can be null. Get over it, that's like CS 101 stuff right there. What do you think happens if you use an undefined variable in Python or Javascript?

If you really want to be sure that an object isn't null, just use "assert myObj != null;".

Again, static typing actually is a huge plus when you're looking through unfamiliar code and trying to figure out what it does. "What type of objects am I working with" is a fundamental question that you always need to know.

> It had massive corporate backing (Sun/Oracle) to instill the idea that > pretty much anyone can learn programming as a trade (I've worked extensively > in India with outsourced java-programming, and the quality of code produced > by some people labelled "senior" is absolutely shocking. This is not unique > to India however).

> Things like ORMs (Hibernate and EJB) meant most people just forgot how RDBMs > work and threw crazy hardware at the persistence layer to compensate for > lousy performance (ORMs are typically fine, users not understanding how they > work are the problem).

These are personal problems (or actually, Personnel problems). No, Java doesn't somehow make chopshops able to magically turn out good code. No, it will not fix your co-worker who just doesn't understand how to write performant code. But he would be writing shitty code in Python or Ruby too, and you would have a whole set of extra problems on top of that.

> It's owned by Oracle.

Reminder: Google won their lawsuit. Oracle owns their Java implementation. They can't stop other people from reimplementing the Java API, however.

OpenJDK seems to be fine. I run it on Linux environments because Oracle JDK isn't in the repos, and it's pretty much a drop-in replacement in most cases.

<comment><USER12> > Sure, object references can be null. Get over it, that's like CS 101 stuff > right there. What do you think happens if you use an undefined variable in > Python or Javascript?

I think you missed the part where he's comparing against statically typed languages like Rust and Swift. He's not arguing against static typing. He's arguing that Java is both more verbose and less type-safe than languages like Rust and Swift, which both prevent null, and have type inference.

> Get over it

Why get over it when you can just use a language that doesn't let null leak into every reference?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Oh they add a REPL. I know the REPLs from other languages and I know Java. I doubt, that's going to be something I would ever have fun with.

<comment><USER14> Why would you think its not fun? Have never used the "immediate" window or expression evaluation in a debugger to run code?

Look it up, its nice.

<comment><USER13> I program in a lot of other languages and Java always looks like 120% boilerplate to me. I am not sure yet how well the REPL can handle that.

<comment><USER15> Defining a new class takes tons of boilerplate. Just calling some existing code looks pretty much like any other C-style language; it's fine.

Python has a pretty tedious class definition syntax too, and nobody ever accused Python of having a bad REPL!

<comment><USER16> You'll like what's coming after Java 9 then, maybe sooner than you expect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> In Java 9 if you create 8 layers of abstraction, you will get extra 2 layers created for free =]

<comment><USER8> Oh, like in JS where using one dependency gives me 5k dependencies for free? :)

<comment><USER18> You're confusing packages with classes. Arguably, the same number of package dependencies in Java could mean even more abstraction that's inherited for each.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > To avoid redundant code and more re-usability, Oracle Corp is going to > introduce private methods in Java 9 Interfaces. From Java 9 onwards, you can > write private and private static methods too in an interface using 'private' > keyword.

To me this seems sane only to be used with the `default` keyword. Am I right, or did I miss something?

The last time I used Java the Optional waas mostly usable, but had some rought edges, and I saw that all my painful usecases were waiting to be released in Java 9. When I last checked unfortunately the monadic types were still not sharing an interface for common operations (Optional and Stream), not even in Java9.

Overall: finally it is here! I miss some parts now from the .Net Core world.

<comment><USER16> Yes, private on interfaces is there to make using default easier.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> An official REPL is a good idea. There is an unofficial REPL for a long time (ten years or more?): BeanShell

[http://www.beanshell.org/](http://www.beanshell.org/)

Add bsh.jar and a little glue code and presto you have a shell into your application.

There was a Java-based editor, jEdit, which integrated with Beanshell. I could do search-and-replace with replacement programmed in Beanshell. Aah, these were good times.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's annoying that every time I see a reference to Jigsaw it is only in the most abstract terms. Never an example or anything concrete enough to explain what is involved. Couldn't they just say: "Jigsaw introduces a source level module construct.."

<comment><USER4> There are endless presentations at Java ONE, Jax, Devoxx, NDC, Java Zone, FOSDEM, Skills Matter.

They aren't that hard to find.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Compact Strings is listed as a "miscellaneous" feature but that is the most exciting feature as far as I am concerned. IIRC based on looking at a variety of heap dumps they found that decreases the average size by like 10%.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain why I should use Java? Over literally any other language? Why is the lobster still alive?

EDIT: on my phone and meant to write monster.

<comment><USER24> 1\. Massive ecosystem?

2\. Easy to find programmers?

3\. Great networking and concurrency libraries?

4\. Simple language with an amazing virtual machine?

5\. Ecosystem has several good other languages that interop from good to amazing with Java including Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Groovy, and Kotlin.

<comment><USER25> > from good to amazing with Java including Scala, Clojure, JRuby, Groovy, and > Kotlin

After writing "good to amazing", you put an ordered list which many readers will subliminally rank in the order you provided, with the "amazing" languages on the right. I've tried 4 of those 6 languages, and would rank them in a different order.

> Ecosystem has several good other languages that interop from good to amazing

The ecosystem also has several other languages that interop from bad to amazing, just like other ecosystems.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why would one define private methods on interfaces? Is it intended to be depended by abstract classes?

<comment><USER16> If you can define private methods on an interface then you can refactor common code out of default methods on that interface without exposing it to any other class.

<comment><USER26> Ah, that makes sense. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Somehow I had it in my head that value types were coming in Java 9. Was I wrong?

<comment><USER28> Project Valhalla:

[http://openjdk.java.net/projects/valhalla/](http://openjdk.java.net/projects/valhalla/)

No, it's not in 9. It may not even be in 10. Its current status is "Draft"

In the meantime, may I suggest alleviating the pain by using the great immutables library: [https://immutables.github.io/immutable.html](https://immutables.github.io/immutable.html) or Google's autoValue: [https://github.com/google/auto/tree/master/value](https://github.com/google/auto/tree/master/value)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Why does this article read like a bad attempt at SEO?

</comment><comment><USER30> If all they release is jigsaw it will be worth it

</comment><comment><USER31> woo hoo. GA is currently estimated to be July 2017.

i wonder when the Android ecosystem will support it.

<comment><USER4> Looking how well it does support Java 6, 7 and 8, probably never.

\- Java 6 and 7, not all of the APIs are supported

\- Java 8, on top of not supporting all of the APIs, it doesn't support the new bytecodes and 100% of the language changes. As Android team puts it at Google IO, "tell us which features you care about", apparently 100% isn't a goal.

Also the new compiler toolchain required for Java 8 support, Jake and Jill, still doesn't work properly.

Also there are several issues, where Android has implementation bugs versus what Java libraries actually do, e.g. String::split.

Have fun browsing through the issues, [https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/](https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/)

In a 5 years time, more or less when Java 10, hopefully gets released, the fun of writing portable Java code between Android Java and standard Java will be even better.

<comment><USER31> wow. it's even worse than i thought.

<comment><USER4> Yes, yet people praise Google for doing what Microsoft failed to do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Still no jigsaw?</comment>


Youtube search is down - <AUTHOR>

This is resulting in a 500 for me.<p>http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=parapente&sm=3 <comment><USER2> True, don't know why. It seems that only the search engine is down

"A team of highly trained monkeys has been dispatched to deal with this situation. If you see them, show them this information"

</comment><comment><USER3> How insightful. I hope there's also post when it starts working again.

</comment><comment><USER4> These "x is down" posts are my favorite on HN. Thank you for the useful and insightful post.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It only seems to blow up if you're logged in though.</comment>


Google programming languages failing to gain traction - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jelastic.com/2012/03/20/google-programming-languages-failing-to-gain-traction/

<comment><USER2> >>This story, "Google programming languages failing to gain traction," was originally published at InfoWorld.com.

Why the heck did someone repost it on their own blog? Was permission granted?</comment>