The Octopus Is Smart as Heck, But Why? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/30/science/animal-intelligence-octopus-cephalopods.html <comment><USER3> One theory why primates evolved big brains is because they had hands. Big brains for an animal like a gazelle don't pay off because, without hands, there isn't much a gazelle can do with that big brain. Better it use that energy for bigger leg muscles. Primates evolves hands so they could better grasp branches, but, once they had hands, there was a lot more they could do with them, like make tools. A bigger brain for a creature with hands is an evolutionary advantage, because that bigger brain allows complex behaviors that can be carried out with hands. I bet octopuses are intelligent for a similar reason. Its body is like one big hand, and there are lots of complex behaviors it can carry out with those tentacles. Similar for its color changing skin. There are many complex and useful ways that skin can be used, so it pays to have a big brain. The important point is that the bodily appendages came first, and those appendages made it actually useful to have a big brain. I find it more surprising that dolphins became intelligent, but the article is right that living in groups capable of communication and cooperation can similarly make big brains pay off, because the animal can engage in complex group behaviors.

<comment><USER4> Well I think the bigger issue for gazelles is energy density period - <USER2> are calorie hogs and it doesn't take much cunning to track down grass. Grass eating is the opposite direction in a food strategy - going for abundant but low density food instead of chasing higher density.

A diverse diet is a bit of a hallmark of intelligence in itself in that they are able to use their brains to get more food to make it worth the investment - similarly to complex group behavior I guess.

Hermit crabs for instance are shockingly intelligent for crustaceans, especially for ones of their size. I know that improperly shut lids which while closed have enough play - they cold push from the inside causing them to rotate on their axis and let them escape. That isn't quite tool use but recognizing tools unlike anything in nature and how to manipulate them to get what they want.

Hermit crabs have both and live in large social groups and eat a diverse diet as well.

<comment><USER5> Speaking of Hermit Crabs, I was also blown away by their communal shell exchange process.

Many hermit crabs will come together and work as a team to change shells in hierarchy. If you've never seen it, you are in for a treat.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dnocPQXDQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1dnocPQXDQ)

<comment><USER6> I feel like there's something taboo, something indecent about seeing a hermit crab out of its shell.

That one crab was caught with its pants down for a moment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Octopuses are really incredible creatures. They diverged from humans in the evolutionary tree hundreds of millions of years ago. Our common ancestor would have been a very dumb animal. Their brain structure is so different: 8 semi- autonomous tentacles, with one sort of central coordinating body. What could it possibly be like to experience the world that way? They're probably the "peak" of intelligence with the most prominence, along with humans and intelligent swarming insects like bees and termites. I think it's really interesting. Is is it really possible to measure this kind of intelligence? Can we ever know just how smart they are?

And, of course, they're just interesting creatures regardless. Their bodies is flexible, yet strong, like one continuous muscle. Each tentacle has a slightly different "personality;" for a single octopus, some of its tentacles are more adventurous while others are more shy. They can change the color of their entire body, and do, for reasons we haven't figured out yet. They mate once, after which the female guards the egg cache without moving from the spot until she withers away.

Everything I read about them absolutely floors me. They're the closest thing we have to an intelligent alien species.

<comment><USER8> I don't understand what the peak of intelligence means if that is termites, bees, humans? What about dolphins, dogs, not to mention chimpanzees, other great apes are likely smarter then them, but it will take some clever tests and clever categorization of intelligence to understand their sense.

<comment><USER7> The prominence of the peak. Like how Denali is taller than the mountains around it, but Everest is still the tallest.

We're quite close to dolphins and killer whales, so the essence of their intelligence is easier for us to understand, because they are more like us.

Bees, termites, ants, etc. are really interesting because any individual is pretty stupid, but the entire swarm is complex and intelligent.

<comment><USER9> local maxima, in other words. Humans being the global maximum, on Earth at least.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't global maxima simply be local maxima per planet? :)

<comment><USER11> I mean, the planet is literally "global"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> In case you missed it, this out-of-the-water predatory behavior of an octopus is astounding to us mid-west folks:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fZu-1bt6Y](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5fZu-1bt6Y)

<comment><USER13> Another vicious attack:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZbLFXqhbQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZbLFXqhbQM)

<comment><USER14> Oh dear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is what a failed alien invasion / colonization attempt might look like.

A succesful splashdown, reasonable adaptation to the local conditions — and a fatal flaw speeds up development enormously, bodies replicate and die long before their brains mature. The culture is lost, the invaders turned into animals doing primitive hunting.

<comment><USER16> Maybe they came from a gas planet and they came to invade the deep sea because that's what home looks like. Unfortunately, these super intelligent beings failed to understand that, on Earth, most of the fun happens on land.

<comment><USER17> Does it? For us, certainly, but put all land-life on a scales and all sea-life on the other side and it'd most certainly tip to the sea-side.

<comment><USER18> This paper has some information: [http://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506](http://www.pnas.org/content/115/25/6506) (see " _The Distribution of Biomass Across Environments and Trophic Modes_ ").

They divide biomass up into three environments, with 6 Gt C in "marine", 70 Gt C in "deep subsurface" and 470 Gt C in "terrestrial". You can also see in their analysis that the huge biomass bias towards the land is due to plants and fungi, which overwhelmingly favour the land; among animals there is actually more biomass in the oceans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Octopi are interesting in that they evolved along their own path. The octopus eye has the wiring on the back, where it belongs, instead of on the front blocking some of the light, as most other animals with eyes do.

<comment><USER20> They apparently also don't require crossing wires connecting each eye with the _opposite_ brain hemisphere. Instead, the optic lobes are directly behind the eyes: [http://cephalove.blogspot.com/2010/06/view-of-octopus- brain....](http://cephalove.blogspot.com/2010/06/view-of-octopus-brain.html)

<comment><USER21> Also, their eye cells only detect black and white but they can probably "see" color by using non-circular pupils.

[https://news.berkeley.edu/2016/07/05/weird-pupils-let- octopu...](https://news.berkeley.edu/2016/07/05/weird-pupils-let-octopuses- see-their-colorful-gardens/)

<comment><USER22> The article you linked also speculates on the main topic of this thread:

> Intriguingly, using chromatic aberration to detect color is more > computationally intensive than other types of color vision, such as our own, > and likely requires a lot of brainpower, Stubbs said. This may explain, in > part, why cephalopods are the most intelligent invertebrates on Earth.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> How does an octopus know how to match its body with its background? All video I've seen have been with the octopus eyes up, it's not even looking at the background, so how does it know a) what the background color is, and 2) that its body is matching the background, since it's not looking at itself either.

<comment><USER24> They have photoreceptors on their skin too.

<comment><USER6> As if they don't have enough super powers already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Perhaps more interestingly than why is how. Smarts are always useful but how do they manage with such diferente and disperse nervouse system.

<comment><USER26> Yes, _that_ is interesting.

Their nervous systems are more like spiders than vertebrates.

<comment><USER27> Not that spiders sre necessarily unintelligent: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_(spider)#Intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portia_\(spider\)#Intelligence)

<comment><USER26> I didn't mean to imply that. Indeed, Portia!

So if you love Portia, I recommend Peter Watts' _Echopraxia_ and (for a full- length focus) Adrian Tchaikovsky's _Children of Time_.

<comment><USER28> Don't forget A Deepness In The Sky!

<comment><USER26> Wait. That has Portia?

[digs up his copy]

Edit: Doh. I last read that so long ago that I'd forgotten that they were large spider-like beings :)

... and yes, they hop, so maybe Portia. But I don't recall that Vinge ever says so.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting they say they are solo in this article yet we had articles posted here about nurseries found where hundreds were together [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18335536](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18335536)

<comment><USER30> There's been a couple reports of this happening (I think I've heard of exactly 2) and only in the last few years. They live very solitary lives, even if they're occasionally alone together.

<comment><USER31> A couple of reports in the past few years and then you extrapolate that backwards given that it's statistically unlikely to be a recent development and you've got a pretty remarkable situation of communal nurseries over millions of years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I would like to keep one for a pet but they only live a few years. Been through that with a rat, won't do it again; even kits and pups only last 15 years or so. too soon

<comment><USER27> If you want an intelligent pet that will likely outlive you, get a parrot.

<comment><USER33> Actually, please don't. If you want a pet, adopt a dog or cat from the local shelter. At least they have been domesticated long enough that they are better off under human care.

Don't keep an animal that had to be captured and removed from its natural habitat.

<comment><USER34> Don't get a wild-caught parrot. There are plenty of parrots that need new homes. Get one from a rescue. Or if that won't work (none close enough) get a captive bred bird.

Also be very, very sure you can take care of the bird for the rest of your life, and will have someone that can take over when you die who the bird will already know and be friendly with. Birds are more work than dogs, they need a whole room in your house (at least) to be made safe to fly around in / shred things in, etc. Don't leave a parrot alone with anything you want intact.

All that said they can be very friendly & great companions.

<comment><USER35> > Also be very, very sure you can take care of the bird for the rest of your > life, and will have someone that can take over when you die who the bird > will already know and be friendly with.

To be clear, the reason is that parrots bond (with their owner, if alone) for life.

(Don't know why you were downvoted.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Let me suggest a rather weird idea (I'm not really serious, but who knows...): perhaps they have evolved to this not from more primitive species but from less primitive actually. Even humans don't really need strong hardcover bodies and strong limbs any more as now we enclose our bodies in all kinds of environment suits, structures, and vehicles, all kinds of physical work can be automated, all we really need is a brain and perhaps we can evolve into some sort of cephalopods occasionally as some hundreds millions years (I'm not really sure about the order of magnitude) pass if we don't go extinct and we can also start loosing some intelligence once too. BTW this direction (to the point of a rather-primitive amphibia) of human evolution as been suggested in the 15th episode of the second season of the StarTrek:VoyagerTV show (an episode popularly named among the worst although I find it being one of the most intriguing). The Guild navigators from the David Lynch movie are another clue, who knows what this weirdly evolved kind of human species could evolve into to adapt when there is no spice any more...

<comment><USER37> For anyone looking for that movie, it is Dune. Worth the watch.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> There must be a lot of luck involved in getting the right DNA sequence to produce the right neural structures to get a smart creature. I mean lots of dedicated computer scientists are trying to hook up artificial neural networks to make them smart and are yet to get something with the general problem solving ability of an octopus I think. Maybe evolution only hits on a working sequence occasionally by chance and certain species get lucky such as octopuses, african greys and humans and others like cuttlefish, turkeys and cows were less lucky?

I sometimes think the account of evolution of man you tend to get in popular science writing may have things backwards - it tend to be our ancestors got good at hunting which allowed us to evolve larger brains but I'd imagine it was quite likely that a random mutation made our ancestors smarter first, then there were behaviour changes then we evolved some superficial changes such as changes in size and shape of some parts.

<comment><USER39> It's not luck, it's time. Evolution occurs so extraordinarily slowly, it's hard to comprehend. People are trying to create intelligence a million times faster than evolution did.

<comment><USER38> Well that's the usual view but it's based on random mutations so there must be some luck involved. A change of the make this muscle a bit bigger type may involve the equivalent of one bit flipping and so happen all the time but the mechanisms of intelligence may involve a much harder sequence to come up with. It's hard enough to program neural networks using code and tensor flow. Imagine having to do it by giving the DNA code to make some proteins that then have to construct an intricate 100bn neurone brain for you.

<comment><USER39> You're giving far too much weight to "luck" and far too little to extraordinary time-lengths.

Computers struggle to handle a single genome, let alone mix and match multiple. And even when they do, it's a single organism. In nature, there are thousand's of organisms mixing and matching, thriving and dying all the time, spread over hundreds of millions of years.

No computer's bandwidth could come close to that.

But I have a deeper discomfort with your question. It assumes that the neural network / tensor-flow model we use with computers approximates a human's. I'm not terribly convinced of that.

Sure, human neuron's have are individually approximated by neural network neurons. But concepts such as "instinct" are not captured well by that model.

It's weird that a newborn baby has seen far fewer colors, and patterns than a well trained neural network, yet seems to know far more. It signifies we're missing something pretty central to the model.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> This scientific journal article suggests that

"The evolution from squid to octopus is compatible with a suite of genes inserted by extraterrestrial viruses. An alternative extraterrestrial scenario discussed is that a population of cryopreserved octopus embryos soft-landed en mass from space 275 million years ago."

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S007961071...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0079610718300798)

</comment><comment><USER41> Another interesting ted talk on human brain vs others: [https://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so...](https://www.ted.com/talks/suzana_herculano_houzel_what_is_so_special_about_the_human_brain/transcript)

It talks about number of neuron and why cooked food helps us in giving the energy required for the large number of neurons. Also cooked food gives us free time to think. (edited for clarity)

</comment><comment><USER42> because how else they would pilot their flying saucers to earth?

[https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/octopus-aliens- sc...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/octopus-aliens-scientists- theory-meteors-space-earth-cambrian-explosion-a8358631.html)

<comment><USER43> What we see as an octopus is only a three dimensional slice of their true form, obviously. They are actually a physical manifestation of the monster group.

<comment><USER26> Yes, and that accounts for the apparently short lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> How much of an impediment to technological progress would not have being able to tame fire have been?

You probably don't need the warmth underwater, but cooking facilitates nutrient absorption ("exodigestion"?), wards off predators, post-sunset light, and (later) smithing, smelting, steam power etc.

<comment><USER45> I think the lack of thrown weapons would be more basic than fire.

Maybe even held weapons for striking enemies. You can't swing a club underwater due to water resistance, and spears are hard to use well because you don't have feet planted to transmit the force, so you just go backwards if you try to stab something. Not to mention the lack of trees and branches with straight poles.

Meanwhile stone tools and weapons are too heavy to carry. You'll sink.

In fact every tool would either sink or float, and incur huge drag. Which makes tool use much harder overall.

<comment><USER46> You could fire projectiles, like a blow gun. A poison-tipped dart could be made to work underwater.

<comment><USER45> Dart will stop within a few centimeters due to water resistance (unless it is very long and dense, like a metal harpoon, but you can't make such a thing).

Poison will dissolve and drift away within moments of applying to a projectile.

Nothing to make the tube out of.

You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything.

<comment><USER47> >You don't have lungs (water respiration doesn't work this way in any creature I know of), so you can't "blow" anything.

You might have heard about mantle, an organ that distinguishes mollusks. Many of them use it to circulate water around the gills and some are so good with it that they can create a water jet and shoot it with such a force that they swim in the opposite direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I've heard the same question asked about humans.

</comment><comment><USER49> The getting coconut shell part doesn't impress much. Even snails or hermit crabs know to find abandoned shells to hide in. Seems pretty natural for that class of animals.

<comment><USER50> I imagine the difference is that hermit crabs are exhibiting a rote, inborn behavior that is universal among the species. Cephalopods apparently figure this stuff out on the fly.

<comment><USER51> Not to take away from this point - but I was always curious - Anyone have a summary of how these "rote inbuilt behaviours" work Hardware-wise in living things? Is the research even far along on defining and demarcating behaviours easily based on this?

<comment><USER52> Instinctual responses are generally understood to be stored within the genetic material, though I imagine like most anything, there's a sort of continuous distribution between instinctual and learned behaviors rather than an analog black and white distinction.

<comment><USER51> That's truly amazing. So does this mean that .behaviour files are a common format, and that, .braingroove and .genememory are "compiled" into this format at "runtime"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 3 hearts...It sounds like cell from dragonball

</comment><comment><USER26> > But Why?

Arguably, there is no "why".

You could say that they're an evolutionary dead end. But that's just speculation.

<comment><USER54> Not sure why you got down voted. The 'why' does prejudice a creator :)

It also assumes free will in asking the quesiton.

<comment><USER26> I wasn't thinking about the question of a creator, _per se_.

I was thinking generally about the fallacy of seeking intentionality in evolution. There is a point to analyzing what happened, of course. It's just that too much "why" is dangerous.

<comment><USER55> > It's just that too much "why" is dangerous.

You're totally right. Asking questions and thinking about things might lead you to dangerous places. You might even (gasp) eventually start believing in God. That would be doubleplus ungood crimethink!

<comment><USER56> Ah, but which one? You might start believing in the wrong god.

<comment><USER26> I'm a fundamentalist. To the extent that I consider the possibility of deities, it's the fundamental active/aggressive and passive/receptive principles that appeal most. Plus some casual animism, I guess. Although I've always been agnostic, experience with psychedelics has affected me. Plus, of course, all the fantasy and SF.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Meeting Stats – Show your boss how much of your life is in meetings - <AUTHOR> https://execution.com/free-meeting-stats/ <comment><USER2> Side note, they could definitely enhance the tool by computing most of the data client side using a google calendar export. So nothing would ever go to their servers: [https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37111?hl=en](https://support.google.com/calendar/answer/37111?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER2> Very well done, I always wanted to build a similar product. But all of those tools are always missing the most important feature from my POV: company wide statistics on meetings:

\- % of meetings per employees in time (i.e. are we more and more spending time in meetings since we are growing)

\- automatic employees group diagram/relations computation based on meetings invites

\- who's never in meetings (who's being solo)

\- who's always in meetings

\- % meetings without a clear agenda

\- % of recurring meetings ("bad") vs one-offs (ok)

\- meeting duration statistics

\- external vs internal attendees

\- anything else?

All of those company wide metrics would be gold for any execs willing to understand why are we slowing down on delivery or just having a clear overview of the organisation and how they collaborate.

Even for sales organisation this could be beneficial for tracking performance and suggesting strategies.

If I want to know if I am spending too much time in meetings, I just have to look at my calendar and own gut feeling. But if I want to know it for the whole company, I have not easy data point.

This startup had some meeting analytics tooling: [https://medium.com/startup- grind/startup-mortality-what-end-...](https://medium.com/startup- grind/startup-mortality-what-end-of-life-care-teaches-us-about-startup- failure-7d568c736d90). But they stopped (maybe they should have focused ONLY on that).

If anyone would be interested to build ^, ping me at firstname.lastname@example.com

<comment><USER3> This is basically what OrgVue does.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for OrgVue, been searching for this kind of tool for long time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here, happy to answer your questions! Most importantly:

We take privacy very seriously, none of your calendar data is stored, just tabulated, and as soon as we finish we remove the token so we can't access anything in the future. The ONLY thing we store is the tabulation and your email address (which is not made public) tied to that tabulation.

<comment><USER4> If you really care about our privacy that much, please configure the GDPR popup in a way[0] that let your EU visitors to say that they are not allowing third party usage of their personal data.

[0] [https://www.leonpaternoster.com/posts/techradar- gdpr/](https://www.leonpaternoster.com/posts/techradar-gdpr/)

<comment><USER5> OP here, ya that shouldn't be. We used a GDPR service called ShareThis.com and I will check that as we do not share that with any 3rd party.

[Update] - We are only doing 1st party consent so I will email their support to find out what the heck is going on with it showing that.

<comment><USER6> FYI: the button has only I Accept and Customize options; that may violate the GDPR by not providing a No option.

When you click Customize, and manually turn off all options, the very next page you visit will show you the GDPR prompt again - and again. This definitely violates the consent statutes.

Please let your provider know so they can fix this bug, and on either their or your side, provide an option for a clear No button, or at the very least a quick way to disable all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very cool -- I love the focus and the amount of information you can glean from calendar analysis.

On this topic, since I joined Microsoft this summer, one of the off-the-shelf tools I've been most impressed with is the MyAnalytics dashboard ([https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace- analytics/myanaly...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/workplace- analytics/myanalytics/use/dashboard)) built into Office online. I like that in addition to meetings, it also summarizes time spent on email and time spent working outside of "business hours" \-- and decorates each stat with benchmarks to compare with company averages.

I also appreciate the claim that "Only you have access to your MyAnalytics dashboard. MyAnalytics does not provide your manager or anyone else in your organization access to your dashboard." (Of course if push comes to shove, this is all company data, but I like that it's only shown to me by policy.)

</comment><comment><USER8> This was (originally) exactly why we created RescueTime (YC08 - and still growing!). We'd sold a tiny/new startup that we'd created IN ALASKA to a large/overfunded startup (150ppl) in Seattle. We were convinced we were moving to the big leagues. Everyone would be so smart! We'd move 10x faster will the big league technology/processes!

The reality was pretty terrible-- I felt like the entire company spent all day writing emails, going to meetings, and updating wikis... Which seemed pretty scary for a company that hadn't figured out its own product yet. We wanted a big chart showing the allocation of time spend so we could show it the exec team and say, "Is this on purpose?"

The company ended up raising $50M and selling for less than $1M. The founder went on to create Fab.com, which raised $300M+ and sold for $15M.

<comment><USER9> Sorry, I'm kind of confused by the timeline. Which company was which? You say RescueTime is still growing, but then said it was sold for $1M? I think I misunderstood.

<comment><USER10> I think he's saying that he created RescueTime as a reaction to the experience he's detailing in the comment (post Alaska startup).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> rob-d I like this a lot.

A similar thing which I'm interested in tracking is the impact of meetings on flow state. I wonder if it would be helpful to have a more nuanced way for "makers" to protect their flow state time than having to block out their calendar for hours / days at a time. I envisage a system where a meeting booker is able to make the decision - "Is the meeting important enough to curtail or split this person's flow state?".

<comment><USER11> Rob, I was so sick of this that I started a company around it! We're still early, but what Clockwise does is pretty magical: we rearrange meetings to protect flow state. If you ever want to share feedback or give product ideas, feel free to reach out: matt [] getclockwise.com

[https://www.getclockwise.com/product](https://www.getclockwise.com/product)

<comment><USER12> Just this morning I spent an hour reviewing my calendar and all my direct reports calendars. I then tried to manually optimize when we had meetings to allow them to have the most focus time. I did this by scheduling at the starts and end of the day as well as clustering meetings. Wish I knew about clockwise! I'll have to check it out.

<comment><USER11> Ha, yes; I've been there many times before!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is cool, but no way am I granting access to a years worth of calendar.

I like how they describe their usage and that they auto remove access. But even if I believe them, there are many errors that would expose hundreds of email, contact info, and docs.

I wish they had a scrubber utility I run and can remove unnecessary data. They should not need pii for their stats.

<comment><USER14> _This is cool, but no way am I granting access to a years worth of calendar._

I know everything has to be an online web "app" these days, but the privacy concerns could be completely eliminated by simply making this an actual computer program.

<comment><USER15> Because a computer program cannot send your private data elsewhere?

<comment><USER16> I don't think the fear is necessarily purposeful, malicious intent. I think it's more about _accidentally_ storing something you didn't mean to or _accidentally_ leaking something, with all of the best intents.

The OP seams sincere and honest, but leaks happen on projects with multi- million dollar security teams/budgets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Even with the promise that they'll delete the data after, it doesn't seem like a reasonable value exchange.

I would assume that meta-data and derived data is still going to be preserved. This looks like it's lead-gen for a future service they are building.

<comment><USER5> We do not keep any meta-data or derived data, we literally tabulate the numbers you see on that screen and just store that and the email it is run with. Plus we kill off the token afterwards. So the only place personal data would be is the memory until it is cleared.

We did this for fun, as a proof of concept for a paid saas idea, and because it might be a good lead gen source down the road. Our hope is people can use this to show their boss the pain meeting madness is causing, and what is preventing them from ___making_ __. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is awesome!

I can't really use it though, since I often schedule "heads-down" sessions for myself (ironically because of meeting overload). I hope a future version allows me to add a text filter rule of some kind to exclude them.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is something we've heard from a lot of people, and we account for it. Meetings that only include yourself aren't counted in the stats.

<comment><USER18> Oh, awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment> chase-seibert I've build a similar tool for a hackathon. What we found when we rolled this out to the whole company was that as soon as they saw the data for other people, they stopped worrying that we had a culture of too many meetings.

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice! Meeting hell is a fantastic problem to take on.

In the same vein, please consider generating stats for slack and other chat app usage as well. Would be very valuable to clearly see it's impact on roles primarily hired for building things.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very interesting. Despite thinking I knew how much time I spent in meetings, I was still surprised by the stats.

I like what was said by rob-d about flow state. There's a lot of ancillary "stuff" attached to meetings - anticipation, preparation, transportation, decompression, etc. Add the actual time in-meeting, and you have a proper interruption.

Creating some variety of "meeting gravity," which would pull in, combine, or group other meetings contiguously would be welcome, particularly amongst those who are sensitive to interruptions in flow.

</comment><comment><USER21> Very interesting. Any ideas on how to quantify productivity of the meetings? Insights into efficiency of a meeting would be helpful as well.

<comment><USER5> Yep, we are currently doing a ton of customer dev interviews for the paid version which is aimed at teams and/or the entire business. Part of what we are testing is spending 30 seconds at the end of each meeting to rate the meeting and using that to diagnose the specific dysfunction it had. We use that to learn about the specific dysfunctions inside teams, departments, and the entire organization. Then we fix that with software driven coaching, optional human coaching, and showing the damage to "makers" through analytics (and possibly peer pressure).

We also have some crazier ideas we are testing such as allowing teams/businesses to do things like: \- Block entire days or blocks of time from allowing meetings. \- Require an agenda/purpose to a meeting 24 hours ahead of time or killing the meeting. \- Setting a max time for meetings and if someone makes one for over a threshold we split it into two meetings to change the psychology and trying to finish it quickly. \- Emailing the creator of the meeting the real cost of inviting so many people and asking them to verify it has value to the organization. \- Tools to allow management/teams to kill off meetings that don't meet their criteria. Such as killing off all recurring meetings that are not 1v1, or setting hard limits on what % of your time is spent in meetings per job title.

Basically a lot of ways to hard enforce good meeting culture... it might sound a bit draconian but I think we have all had the pain of being in a culture that doesn't know it has a meeting problem.

<comment><USER22> A lot of these are pretty drastic... not sure I'd want to commit to them without really talking it over with the team and getting all the stakeholders involved

<comment><USER23> maybe we should set up a first session within the team to outline the problem, then a second session to plan who is going to reach out and meet with the various stakeholders in other teams, then another session to aggregate feedback from that first round of consultations has completed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This looks cool. Just wondering, how do you define a meeting? Is it any calendar entry with multiple attendees?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep! We throw out anything over 8 hours long as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We built something at a previous company's hack days that was somewhat similar. We were sick of being in meetings when we didn't need to be.

[http://gotclocked.com/](http://gotclocked.com/)

Angular.js Mandrill email API

<comment><USER26> The place I work just wrapped up a white label project for your previous company. Small world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It'd be nice to be able to change the average salary. This is HN, which means many of us are in tech jobs and the tech sector. Using 60k/year doesn't really do it justice.

I like it though. If nothing else, it's sad fun.

</comment><comment><USER28> I would have loved to have this in my previous job. I estimate I was in meetings about 20 hours per week, of which 8 hours were actually useful. Glad I'm not in that situation anymore! Nice project.

</comment><comment><USER29> I think anyone ever frustrated with their calendar has fantasized about building this, but I don't think it'll go well if you ever actually crunch these numbers and show them to your boss.

</comment><comment><USER30> This is the kind of tool I've been tossing up making myself. Such a great job! Quick, well presented.

But, I wish I could correct the statistics.

* I haven't had this email for a year (doesn't extrapolate)

* My salary is much higher than $60k

* I work a 37.5 hour week

Also a way to combine meetings across my multiple email addresses would be icing on the cake.

<comment><USER5> Thanks or the feedback! Do you mean you have other calendars shared on this account you want this to pick up? Let me know a little there and thanks once again for the feedback :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is hilarious. Maybe make a portal for this that just includes a live counter for value lost based on average salaries x people in the room = $$ being spent. That would be a great passive aggressive thing to throw up on your laptop and aim toward the room.

<comment><USER32> Once upon a time, I actually live-coded this during the time it took for people to set up a video call. I think it took about 30 minutes to get everyone online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Tried it out because this looks really useful however it hangs forever. >1hr I let it spin. Not sure exactly what happened.

</comment><comment><USER34> I would need something like that to measure life spend in Slack channels and DMs. At least with a real meeting, a call or an ad-hoc talk you could focus on the one only, but forget it on Slack.</comment>


Rate my Viral App: Fly Like a G6 - <AUTHOR> http://flylikeagsix.com/hackernews

<comment><AUTHOR> This was a fun little app that I built in 6 hours on a Sunday. Add your own text after the domain URL and it'll appear on the G6 Plane.

The App was built using rails and rmagick, the image manipulation actually took a lot longer than expected but I'm pretty happy with the results. I even added subtle things like having the windows overlay the text.

Anyway tell me what you think? And yes, I do realize the irony of posting a rate my viral app but I'm really curious for feedback. Thanks! :)

Edit: I'll also post my traffic results in a blog post later on if people are interested in the results.

</comment><comment><USER2> Not a big fan of the song starting when I hit the page. Probably should have noted that beforehand ...

It's an interesting campaign, but I'm not sure how this is supposed to benefit your site, do you expect everyone to embed it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Love the song, and it's an interesting campaign. I like the inspiration from TechCrunch. It would've been cool to add some paint colors to it as well. I'm quite interested to see the traffic charts. What would you consider viral?</comment>


Call your folks - <AUTHOR> The majority of people on HN are technically-inclined, in their 20s and live in places where Christmas is celebrated.
We get really busy and caught up in things. I get it. We move far away, we create our own life, and where you used to see these folks every day, now you might not see them for long periods of time.
Call your folks.
Those of us with grown children look forward to hearing from them. Even if you don't celebrate the holiday, it's a time of year where families think of each other. Yes, you might have had a spat and don't want to go through that again. Yes, talking to the folks can be tiresome. But it only takes a few minutes and I promise you that you'll live through it.
So pick up the phone already. <comment><USER2> Or, if you had abusive parents, look after yourself and try to ignore the relentless focus on "you must rebuild your family relationships" that comes with Christmas.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Always take care of yourself first.

Another thing is to remember to always be humble. Your judgment toady is not the same as it might be 20 years from now. There are a lot of kids that survived terrible conditions that must move on. There are also a lot of kids who feel that they had a terribly abusive situation -- but will not feel that way 20 years from now when their parents are gone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes, those of you that can should. I wish I could call my mother but I can only visit her grave.

<comment><AUTHOR> The problem with this situation, and the reason I offered the advice, is that many times we only realize what we should have done many years after it is physically possible.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Silicon Valley and being transgender - <AUTHOR> Hi everyone!
My name's Jessica, I'm transgender, and I'm seriously wanting to move to Silicon Valley. So I figured I would post here as a lot of people on this site hail from that area and have quite a bit of business acumen from what I've seen. I'm currently the CTO and lead software engineer at a small development agency in Australia, and my reason for wanting to move is to be somewhere I don't know anybody so I can be myself. With that, I have two questions:
1) Environment: I know San Francisco and Silicon Valley are generally regarded as some of the nicer and friendlier places towards the LGBT+ community, but with the rise of the alt-right and transgender being a hot button issue in America right now, how friendly and conflict-free towards people like me is it really nowadays? The Python community recently changed from "master" / "slave" terminology and the Linux kernel has adopted a code of conduct, and these have brought up some unaccepting characters in the community (particularly on reddit) some of which I imagine work in the area.
2) Risk: I have yet to undergo various surgeries that I need, which can put me out of action for weeks or months and overseas. Would companies, particularly startups or smaller ones want to hire me? If not, would anyone really want to hire me? I've worked at startups for most of my time since graduating university and love the close-knit and tight atmosphere, not to mention having to keep up to date, know and learn a _lot_ about different technologies and bizdev which I hear you miss out on in larger companies. An extension to this question: if my projects are sound, would VCs want to back a person like me if a) I have yet to undergo some medical procedures, and b) I am a public face of the company? I'm an entrepreneur and ideas girl at heart and would like to develop an idea or two in my spare time which I hope to grow and become successful.
Thank you all so much and I hope you all have a lovely day! Jess <comment><AUTHOR> Aand it's buried. That's okay, I'll try again later :-) I really want an answer for question 2.</comment>


The future of Blogs is Video? - <AUTHOR>

Video is sweeter than reading, especially on iPhone, iPad, droid.
Justin.Tv, Leo Laporte, Revision3, Dvorak, Adam Curry, Jason Calacanis (ThisWeekIn.com), are blazing the trail.
I'm watching more videos, than reading blogs lately. How about you? <comment><USER2> Nope. In a word. There are completely different production values between the two media.

Video can be very informative when it is instructional, and of course when it's entertaining.

Video is dull as dish water when it's talking heads, unless the talking heads are exceptionally interesting, informative, or entertaining. Talk show host s earn their crust. It's not as easy as it looks.

Producing good video is just as hard as producing good text. But you can scan less than stellar text to find the good stuff. It's hard to scan video for the good stuff.

So, on the whole, text beats video unless you _really_ know what you are doing and are critiquing hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> haha. "Video is dull as dish water when it's talking heads".

Works better for categories like eSports, Cooking, How To.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> No. I will never bother to watch video blogs. Sorry, I skip all video links on HN, or any other source I read from. It's less accessible 99% of the time.

This is true for Ipad and PC. I can't speak to the other platforms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm, I love watching videos on iPad

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Watching videos takes too long. With the written word you can skim and read what is interesting. Reading gives you more content in less time than the majority of VidBlogs.

If you want to succeed with a video blog, then you need to script it, deliver it with punch, include strong supporting material (not stock footage). The more it is like a good TV ad (most are plain awful) or a good MTV clip the more likely it will get watched. Oh, and forget long trailers, they are a turn-off.

</comment><comment><USER5> The great thing about blogging is anyone can write and even if they don't write well they can probably convey the idea they're trying to get across. So it's a lowest common denominator communication media.

Video is a skill in itself. Put your average blogger in front of a camera and it will more than likely turn out badly because most people aren't skilled orators with the ability to manipulate their own body language.

</comment><comment><USER6> Definitely, They say that "A picture tells a thousand words" But videos tells millions. For example in this one:

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

</comment><comment><USER7> I can read faster than bloggers can talk. Waste of time.</comment>


Ask HN: What do you use for to-do lists and note taking at work? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Currently Doom Emacs with org-mode [1]. I'm still very much a beginner but loving that it's plain text but also so powerful with org-mode. I sync to beorg [2] on my phone with Nextcloud which keep all my todos in plain txt but gives nice iOS integration.

I have Nextcloud configured with a versioned and encrypted S3 bucket as the data store so everything's "private", constantly backed, up and synced.

[1] [https://youtu.be/DxygfqLrFSU](https://youtu.be/DxygfqLrFSU) [2] [https://beorgapp.com](https://beorgapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> I use notepad on windows and on Linux text editor. It is fast and simple. It's really easy to use during meetings and it's extremely fast which is important for me. When task is finished I just delete the rows I don't need anymore.

I use one line for one task. If I need to write subtasks or some points I use tabs under that task. For different days I use visual separators like ---- or ===.

Example:

===Today===

First task

Second task

        More info about task
        Subtasks 1
        Subtasks 2

===Tommorow===

First task

Second task

</comment><comment><USER4> I use Sublime to edit text files and auto-sync to GitHub using my in-house go app ([https://github.com/tanin47/git-notes](https://github.com/tanin47/git- notes)).

The text files contain both notes and to-dos.

I like that this setting feels that my notes will live forever.

</comment><comment><USER5> Vim with auto save plugin. Always open and insert your todos for the day. Revisit and do some house keeping push them tomorrow and add few more.</comment>


Why Self Driving Cars Will Not Solve the Transportation Problem - <AUTHOR> http://penguindreams.org/blog/self-driving-cars-will-not-solve-the-transportation-problem/ <comment><USER2> I don't agree. Self driving cars could become crucial to solving the last- mile(s) problem of public transit in more rural areas. Public transit works perfect in cities but has problems in lesser populated areas. Self driving would connect the surrounding villages to bigger, frequently operated train stations. Waiting for a bus sucks.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you go from self taught coder to professional developer? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Lots of late night programming, then lots of late night paid programming. It all boils down to putting the time into learning. The difference from self- taught coder and professional developer is the paycheck. Though the self- taught coder might have experience writing code, it will not have experience developing software. Two different things altogether. That is why you need to put in the time in both scenarios.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of my biggest concerns: writing code vs. developing software. I'm trying my best to follow/learn best practices, but the contract job I'm at right now kind puts quality aside in favor of "JFGID right now!" And since I'm still fairly new, I feel like I'm taking shortcuts just to get things working in a timely manner sometimes.

<comment><USER2> Yes, that is quite common. People will start asking for 100% quality at 100% time. Then reduce time to 80%. Problem is quality is closely tied to time. As a result, code starts being written under the guise of it being a temporary solution. "It will be fixed on version 2." \- is what clients or managers often say to keep you at ease.

Solution? Do your best. No one is perfect. Make sure to document the code well (comments) for future revisions. But realize that this is how a lot of software is written. In all size companies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, I heard something like "it will be fixed on version 2" multiple times last week. The more I do this the more I realize I can only do what I can do (and try to get better where there are shortfalls in skill/knowledge). Like you said, no one's perfect. Thanks for the reminder and tips!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Work at one or more startups and build your skills. You'll find that at a startup you wear more than one hat(eg: You need to worry about front end, backend and database stuff), that in most cases you dont have to worry about in big organizations. Most early stage startups, since they dont have much to pay, will take anyone with experience and willing to learn. The only caveat is that, you will have to work crazy hours, at least for the initial few weeks/months. But you will find that the more you work/code, the more experienced you get and hence can finish tasks faster.

Thats pretty much how I started and why I still prefer startup jobs over jobs at bigger companies with more focused roles.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're right, especially for someone fairly new. It helps develop a solid foundation of overall skill, upon which one can eventually choose an area to specialize. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Find someone to pay you a professional rate.

You get there by working your but off. I recommend specializing and going deep in one area. Knowing a little about a lot if things with no real world experience is not a competitive position. Having experience with mongoDB and rails landed me a position over developers with significantly more general experience. At the time MongoDB was an up and coming technology with rapidly increasing demand. With out the specialty I had little chance competing against more experienced developers for general positions. Having a specialty I knew very well gave me the ability to compete.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points, thanks. Has this been anyone else's experience? Specialization makes sense to me (and I like the idea of deep focus), but I feel like most of the job postings I've looked at usually list a wide range of desired skills. Maybe I'm looking at the wrong postings though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Got a super low paid almost intern-type job at a very respected institution. Once that was on my resume, people didn't care (and I sure didn't go out of my way to tell them... I would if they asked, but they never asked) how low level the job was... they just saw the respected institution name and I was golden for the next step.

Also had published some software that got me the first couple jobs. Publishing some software (open source, or an app in an app store) is a great way to get the credibility you need.

If these are not an option, you could work for a friend, long enough to get something you can point to as yours.

<comment><USER6> Seconding the internship route. Internships are easier to get due to no or little pay and limited duration. There's no risk to the company to bring on an intern.

<comment><USER7> I can assure you, even if you offer "no pay" or zero subsidy, there is absolutely a risk on bringing on _anyone_ , intern or employee. Building a good company means bringing together the right people at the right time ..

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I learned this the hard/frustrating way when I tried to go this route with very little technical experience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Mine is more of a step by step story. Worked customer service for internet banking at a major world wide bank. While there, I got into VB 4/ 5\. Left that, took a contract job at a medical company doing visual foxpro. Left that for entry sys admin job and web development job. While there, I scored side work from a Canadian designer; did that 7 years on the side while at the day job. Was at the day job for 8 years; now I'm 100% freelance.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very cool. Part of my problem is that I'm impatient with myself as far as building my skills goes. But day after day I'm reminded that it takes time to become a "good" developer. I'm trying to take more of a long view now. Your story is a great reminder of all that, thank you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I started out by attending meetups and getting to know people locally where I was at while continuing to work on skills. Next, I started letting people know I was interested in freelance work and started taking small jobs. That eventually led to bigger and better things :)

<comment><AUTHOR> This was pretty much my plan for when my current contract ends. Glad to hear it worked for you, thanks! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Students/grads are not self taught coders? Who are they then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Aren't they taught by professors? Good point though - at the end of the day, we're all self taught. I should've been more specific: "self taught coders with no formal computer science education."

<comment><USER10> You must find a way to communicate that you have computer science knowledge in your resume or during interview. Someone will ask questions, which are supposed to be difficult for a "self taught" guy, you better know the answers, lack of formal education is not an excuse, it will only prove that you are lazy enough to read some books(or just wikipedia :P)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome point. Do you have any reading/strategy you'd suggest? One thing I'm doing is open courseware like CS50 from Harvard. Do you think that sort of work is worthwhile with regard to what you mentioned? Study algorithms? Do topcoder challenges? Project Euler? I'm open to whatever it takes :)

<comment><USER10> Top Coder challenges may work for you, reading some books will help in solving problems(like Cormen Introduction to Algorithms). That may help only about "theory".

In case of learning the more technical terms, open source projects are the way to go, no need to be active committer, try to understand the workflow and language they use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome man, thanks! I actually got Algorithms by Sedgewick and Wayne instead. The reviews on Cormen said it's the seminal resource on algorithms, but a little too advanced for the self-directed (non-genius) learner.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bridgewater: Principles for success in life and work - <AUTHOR> https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt <comment><AUTHOR> Great wisdom on life and business in general from the most successful hedge fund entrepreneur.

The 30 minute video is essentialized and excellent: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9XGUpQZY38)

The actual principles collected over 4 decades: [https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt](https://inside.bwater.com/publications/principles_excerpt)</comment>


Show HN: PHP PDO Query Builder v2 - <AUTHOR> https://www.github.com/ismail0234/pdodatabase/ <comment><USER2> How does this compare to NotORM?

<comment><AUTHOR> What do you mean by comparison?</comment></comment>


CrowdLobby Wants to Democratize Political Lobbying - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/30/crowdlobby-wants-to-democratize-political-lobbying/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a fascinating idea (and not just saying that because I wanted to build something similar); discussed super briefly here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19993517](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19993517)

I really think that the American political system is so influenced by money in politics that as an individual your vote is relatively unimportant but in a large bloc you can be influential, and pooling money towards hiring additional voices for causes you care about is an unfortunate but probably necessary step to take</comment>


Show HN: Play with your iOS app and debug API requests directly in browser - <AUTHOR> https://playground.waldo.io <comment><AUTHOR> We offer an iOS app player, which allows you to play live with your app straight from the browser, and see all the API requests as they happen. This is actually setting up a remote control session with an actual iOS simulator/device.

All you need to do is upload the `.app` file, and you can use this. It's as easy as dragging the app into a simulator except now you can: \- share a live debug session with somebody \- track all the network calls \- switch between different versions of your app \- take a high res screenshot

Let us know what you think!</comment>


Unreal Engine marketplace now open for early submissions - <AUTHOR> https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/marketplace-now-open-for-early-submissions

<comment><AUTHOR> The Unity Assets Store is often cited as the one feature devs that moved from Unity to UE4 miss, so I'm curious to see if Unreal will come up with a good competing service.

The timing (one week before Unity' big conference) is also interesting.</comment>


Show HN: I made a shader tool to save time for dev+design and to reduce pain - <AUTHOR> https://loklokshaderlab.firebaseapp.com/shader-svg <comment> javascript-this This looks useful, thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> you're very welcome :)</comment></comment>


Google's Quantum Dream May Be Just Around the Corner - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602283/googles-quantum-dream-may-be-just-around-the-corner/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what impact these will have on cryptography when it will be available to a few actors, but not the rest of the world yet...

<comment><USER3> when they really get there, all current public crypto is just broken. Symmetric is just weakened; basically you need to double the keysize. And there's prob a backlog of messages those actors can then decrypt.

Besides that, everyone needs to move to post-quantum public key cryptographic algorithms. Seems there's usable methods already now, except the signatures will be enormous untill some other, better post-quantum methods are proven safe.

~~Here's an overview of the SOTA there from 32c3 ; I was surprised how usable it already seems: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=424LHQQB2DE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=424LHQQB2DE) ~~ EDIT: shit, sry that's not the correct video; I'll find it in a sec, I hope..

Or, if you're a bank or a state or otherwise can have a direct 1hop link to your communication partner, you can just use quantum cryptography for extra, physical assurances.

<comment><USER3> I guess its quite obvious by now, but sadly I couldn't dig up the video anymore. apologies.</comment></comment></comment>


China to Build "Higgs Factory" Twice the Size of Cern's Large Hadron Collider - <AUTHOR> http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/trends/china-build-higgs-factory-twice-size-c8e8r8ns/ <comment><USER2> Linked press release from China's Institute of High Energy Physics: [http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/Rfo/201507/t20150702_149515.h...](http://english.ihep.cas.cn/prs/Rfo/201507/t20150702_149515.html)</comment>


Hello, I'm Mr. Null. My Name Makes Me Invisible to Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/11/null/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546717](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546717)

And

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10527860](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10527860)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Obligatory XKCD [https://xkcd.com/327/](https://xkcd.com/327/)</comment>


Show HN: Woye – Insert plain text, get information from YouTube and Wikipedia - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alxpez/woye <comment><USER2> BikeShedding: I have a large vertical monitor and spent a minute or two trying different combinations of enter and shift+enter before finally noticing the search icon on the opposite corner of the screen, this is one aspect of material design which I don't understand

<comment><AUTHOR> LOL... I know I mentioned it before in some other comment, the UI needs to improve. I thought of following a mobile-first strategy for the first concept.

Sorry about that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Could be useful. Have you thought of the use cases for this? Does it do anything more intelligent other than using the API to search for the keyword on Wiki and YT?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main idea for building this, I explain on the readme: [https://github.com/alxpez/woye/blob/master/README.md](https://github.com/alxpez/woye/blob/master/README.md)

In summary I wanted a way to go through an unorganized list of items (in my case music bands), without having to copy paste one by one (over 60 items, you can find the list here: [https://github.com/alxpez/parsist/blob/master/sample/index.j...](https://github.com/alxpez/parsist/blob/master/sample/index.js)).

This way I was able to listen to the bands that people recommended me whilst reading about them in Wikipedia (something I usually do when people tell some new music to listen to)

Obviously, that's my personal need, but I found out that this functionality could be used for any other thing you want to search... what do you search is up to you.

In a way, you could say is a multi-search-engine LOL. As for today WOYE is only a concept, so feel free to share your ideas or improvements.

Cheers

<comment><USER4> I would use one of this for Rotten Tomatoes and Netflix.

I know there is a chrome extension that inserts ratings on Netflix interface. But I use the Netflix app (to send to chromecast). So I spend a lot of time googling names of movies (extra steps when I have to find the original name of a movie that i showing to me in br_PT)

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't think of that, but it could be an interesting feature to be able to select other "info-providers", as you said Rotten Tomatoes for example.

I have in mind to implement some categories options (in case that everything you're searching is related), also localization (since certain things are very dependent on the language), and it could work to include a provider selection as well.

I'm not too happy with the interface at the moment, but I'm looking forward to an UI update.

<comment><USER3> so a bit like 2 fold search. Interesting as we have taken a similar concept much further with an app we will be launching soon www.loomi.ai. We can take any topic/keyword and pull relevant/top information from any source. That and much more. alxpez, send me a message, can show you what we have...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very niche. And I love it.

</comment><comment><USER6> How does this compare to surfraw?

<comment><AUTHOR> Off the top of my research... (WOYE) is not a CLI. However I've never used surfraw, I may take a look.

Thanks</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Plug Computer or energy efficient server? - <AUTHOR>

I am looking for a high performance, low power, energy efficient computer to use as a server 24x7. I found fit-pc2 but then found PlugComputer such as the original SheevaPlug, TonidoPlug, PogoPlug, Ionics EMS, Marvell and GuruPlug.
I find GuruPlug Server Plus specially interesting, it's small, consumes less than 5W and costs less than $150, but I've read that it's got issues with overheating.
Do you know a good alternative? A PlugComputer or another low power, cheap computer to use as a 24x7 server? <comment><USER3> I use a dell mini 9 for my business. It sits in a closed ventless cabinet and hasn't overheated. It uses <7w with wifi and screen on, but mine are off. Also, there are no moving parts and it's got a built in UPS... I got it new for $199 last year.

<comment><USER4> I've also found the netbook route an excellent choice. <http://www.museum.zoo.cam.ac.uk/> runs beautifully on a Dell Mini 10v with Ubuntu Server.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a sheeva plug. It's been running my home phone system (based on Asterisk) for the last year or so. It was easy to set up and has worked well for me. Several services are running on it, including apache, which serves a webpage i use to get my voicemail. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by 'high performance', but it does the trick for me.

I know you're already aware of it, just thought I'd share my experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for sharing your experience!! Any issues with overheating?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I spent quite a few days tinkering with putting linux onto a nas device which was a lot of hassle and didn't perform well (music streaming).

In the end I just got an cheap fanless atom board and was done in a few hours. Obviously not as power efficient as a plug computer, but way more time efficient. There's a lot to be said for staying with the mainstream x86 distros etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've had positive results with the pcengines alix boards for routers: <http://www.pcengines.ch/alix.htm> . I suspect they'd work well for other server use.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you can afford an Core i7 server right now, you might consider a Mac Mini. When idle it consumes less than 10W(<http://www.apple.com/macmini/environment.html>). And when you need the power, you got it.

I'm using one at least and I'm very happy with it.

<comment><USER9> Reliability is a key factor for me with low-power being important, too. I've been running Mac Minis as servers since they first came out. Right now I have ~25 of them running at the MIT Museum, about half of those run exhibits and shut themselves off from 11PM to 8AM, a couple are used for desktops, the rest are running 24x7, some as servers, some as development machines. I've never had a Mac mini die. I'm in the process of moving our internal file server from a PowerMac G5 to a Mini.

We just got our first new, low-profile Mini and it's great. Not having to deal with the power brick is a huge win, and the power cord seats much more firmly than the old cords do.

I'm also experimenting with two Eee Box B202's running Ubuntu. One has been running 24x7 for the last 6 months without any problems.

Plug computers are interesting and for a while I thought they could make good controllers for touch-screen kiosks. But the iPad pretty much blows away anything we could put together with a plug, a USB display driver and a monitor (except in screen size).

<comment><AUTHOR> Mac Minis are great but in this case I think they are overkill. Starting at $699 and 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo, NVIDIA GeForce 320M it is more expensive that what I had in mind, and more powerful than what I need.

I could buy 3 GuruPlug Server at $129 to separate responsibilities and have one dedicated to http serving, another for file serving (using it like a NAS, scp/ftps server, smb/nfs) and another for firewall, and all of them would cost half than a Mac Mini.

<comment><USER9> You definitely can hit different sweet spots with plugs vs Minis. That's one reason I was playing with the Eee Box. They cost just under $300 with a decent amount of RAM and disk, plus HD DVI out. If you don't need a display then even that's overkill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Just a warning about the GuruPlug Server Plus, I ordered mine on 5/28/2010 and still have not received it. They identified an issue with overheating and have not shipped out any models in a couple of months. After finally getting in touch with them I was told it would ship in mid july and I'm still waiting for it.

<comment><USER10> Actually looks like they just made a statement a couple of days ago about the issue <https://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/news.aspx>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I like the Intel Atom's. I have a mini-atx case with MSI Intel Atom board with two gigabit ethernet ports. Still tempted to upgrade to newer Atom to be able to go completely passive system. Combine with SSD drive and totally silent server.

</comment><comment><USER12> "High performance" precludes the SheevaPlug/GuruPlug/etc, surely? What do you mean by "high performance"?

I am setting up a Fit-PC2i currently, which at least has the power of a netbook.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, it doesn't need to be able to perform advanced calculations for the LHC in Switzerland, but it must have enough CPU juice to be reliable as a server. Perhaps HTTP/FTP/POP3/DNS server, download server, Firewall, there are many possible uses and I think that GuruPlug and their kind provide enough CPU performance for such tasks.

I'm concerned about what I read about problems with overheating, though.

<comment><USER13> The "CPU juice" required of a server, per page sent, is fairly low compared to the "juice" a client uses to run the browser that page is rendered in. Run munin, awstats, and top to get a feel for your server load: you should get a sense of how much it takes to manage one user, and how many simultaneous users you have, etc. For development, assuming you have another machine for your GUI, a 400 MHz Apple G3 B&W with 256 MB RAM will run Debian Lenny with Apache and PHP just fine ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_G3_%28Blue_%26_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Macintosh_G3_%28Blue_%26_White%29)), so I would think any of the plugs would be fine. If you are deploying a service and marketing it to millions, you're going to need a bit more than a plug :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, of course it's not intended to run a service for millions of users, it is mainly http server for developing purposes, file serving (scp, ftp), perhaps dns server and firewall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The Excito Bubba Two looks promising. Has anyone here used one?

<comment><AUTHOR> Really nice, and it is linux (Debian) based, and provides ssh access with root privileges.

[https://www.excito.com/bubba/products/technical- specificatio...](https://www.excito.com/bubba/products/technical- specifications.html)

And is silent (even 0db with a SSD)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It looks like GuruPlug is closer to 15W (3A @ 5V).

<comment><USER16> Note that the power supply's rating is not indicative of the machine's usual consumption. When all else fails, you really should hook these things up to something like a Kill-A-Watt to measure it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What about an Acer Aspire Revo 1600 to use like a server and also as a mediacenter connected to the bigscreen tv? 16-20W idle.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not trying to build an HTPC/PVR, so I don't even need video out - <USER2> connection would be enough.

I'm looking for something minimalist: Minimal size, minimal prize, minimal power consumption.</comment></comment>