My startup: Genetic testing for CCR5 delta 32 (HIV Resistance) - <AUTHOR> http://www.hivgene.com <comment><USER2> I think it's interesting and (if it were free) I'd want to know (even the me 10 years ago who wasn't married would).

But what problem does it solve? Why (besides curiosity) would I want that? Is it for HIV positive people to who might be hoping for a slow progression? For people who just want to feel a little more comfortable having lots of unprotected sex?

I guess I can see the former... Though I would think that the audience is relatively small (and hopefully getting smaller) and would be looking to their doctor for stuff like this.

<comment> daniel-cussen I could see you selling it to people who have been told they have AIDS, but want to see if they are actually immune and don't need the expensive (around 20,000 a year, last I've heard) medicine.

<comment><AUTHOR> The market for that is _incredibly_ small. I have only seen one case of a CCR5 delta 32 homozygous individual with HIV in the scientific literature. [http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T1B-45Y6RP9-H&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=65d83dbf8ba06d9a3b62902766559de4)

<comment><USER3> If I read that article right it says 1% not a single case (but then again I didn't read too hard)

<comment><AUTHOR> 1% of people are homozygous for the mutation. The study itself is of one individual with the homozygous mutation that persistently had measurable viral loads for HIV-1. Normally the homozygous CCR5 mutation means you don't get HIV, because HIV infects through the CCR5 receptors which CCR5 D32 homozygous positive individuals don't have. But you could get infected by a blood transfusion from a late stage HIV patient, because HIV eventually starts infecting via the CXCR4 receptor. You could also get infected via the less transmitted and geographically confined HIV-2.

But these scenarios are unlikely to happen, so they haven't happened very often. The study was notable because they found ONE GUY who couldn't fight off HIV with CCR5 delta 32 homozyous.

If we could magically take away the CCR5 receptors from HIV+ individuals, many would be able to fight HIV to the point where they tested negative on some HIV tests.

See this old thread for discussion of Josh's curing HIV idea. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks news.yc. What do you think?

This is our first site to be selling tests, we've got something of a business plan involving marketing different genetic tests to different audiences: men, women, b2b, etc. Send me an email if you'd like to see one of our other, flashier sites that isn't quite ready for launch.

<comment><USER4> * target audiences *

Craigslist m4m?

<comment><USER5> Despite your crudeness... that's actually not a bad idea...

<comment><USER4> I'm almost certain that that's what he meant (or something close to it). If not, then he hasn't looked into the relevant statistics, or doesn't understand marketing.

EDIT: Well, I guess he has looked in the relevant statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any guarantee of confidentiality? I looked in the FAQ and saw nothing. This seems like a very sensitive test; I would not submit anything to someone who did not _absolutely guarantee_ confidentiality. Even then, I would be a little wary of doing something like this over the web.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, privacy is of paramount importance. We would only disclose information if we were legally compelled to do so. I will add this to the FAQ.

<comment><USER7> Possible privacy hole:

What's to prevent someone from acquiring a sample of someone else's DNA and sending it off for you to test?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's physically impractical to buccal swab someone without their consent.

<comment><USER7> Ah, that's more like it. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> 1) What's to prevent someone else from selling a test for the same thing? Surely, you're not the first to consider a test for this mutation, right?

2) Also, I think you're going to have to be _very_ careful with your copy. You're selling an unapproved genetic test, for which the only real purpose is to give people confidence that they can't be infected by HIV (don't split hairs -- this is how 99% of the population is going to view your service). The medical establishment is going to denounce you without a second thought, and I wouldn't be surprised if an enterprising lawyer tries to make a case against you for encouraging unsafe sex.

3) What are your error rates?

4) Your email input box is overlapping with your bullets under firefox 2 for mac.

<comment><USER9> 1\. There is little to nothing preventing competitors, though I would be surprised if anyone can compete with us on price.

2\. I agree. A startup is inherently risky and we are taking every precaution we can.

3\. Error rates are effectively 0% as far as the technique goes. The only possibility of error is human error in handling. Our testing procedures are specifically designed to minimize the risk of human error. Furthermore, due to the nature of the testing procedure, any possible errors would result in false negatives, not false positives. In addition, we have a policy of retesting all positive results.

4\. Noted, thanks... it does the same thing in Safari also.

<comment><USER8> I'm suspicious of your claims in 3. What method are you using? Certainly not RFLP, right? Are you sequencing the gene? A labeled oligonucleotide, targeted toward the deletion?

I'm having a hard time conceiving of a method with _zero_ error rate (either type I or II).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> +1 It certainly beats that other junk you were trying to push:-)

<comment><USER11> You mean the memory stuff?...I forgot what it's called.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Leaving aside the doubtful utility of this test you really must provide some information about who is behind this company, what techniques will you use to perform the test? What expertise do you have in molecular diagnostics? How do potential customers know that you are not simply taking the money and sending out random results?

<comment><USER9> We've discussed putting how we do the test on the site, but concluded that we were best off not disclosing that information, seeing as no other genetic testing companies explain the techniques they use to do the testing. I guess you could call it a trade secret, even though anyone with experience in the field could figure it out pretty easily.

As for expertise in molecular diagnostics, I've been doing research at a hospital for a couple years now designing and developing tests such as this. Furthermore, most of these techniques are now taught in undergraduate level molecular biology labs.

For the last question, I suppose the same can be said for any company doing genetic testing. It would be unethical to simply take money and send out random results, though this could be a valid concern to some people. Do you have any suggestions on how we can prove the legitimacy of the results?

<comment><USER13> Disclosing who you are, qualifications and relevant experience would be good I think. If you don't feel comfortable putting them up then you'd have to understand customers might not feel comfortable using your service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a great idea. I think that you should work on the presentation of the site, though. In the Web 2.0 world it's considered stylish or at least excusable to have a very barebones site, but the average person needs a more reassuring presence in order to trust someone with sensitive medical information.

<comment><USER5> This is something that we've discussed.

Actually, we've left the site looking "barebones" as an explicit design decision. People can be put-off by something "too slick," especially when you position yourself as a simple, single-product company, and especially in the research/academic world.

But you are right, too.

We are working on other brands with more premium product which we will release soon. The designs of these sites will reflect the more premium brand.

Email rms for more information if you're interested, he's our news.yc baron.

<comment><USER15> Barebones is nice, but it looks like a spam site or a template of some sort. It actually reduces customer confidence in that case.

Are you trying to follow the 23andme model, but only testing for a single gene?

<comment><USER5> Hey, I absolutely agree with you. I also think that McDonald's tastes like puke, but they run one hell of a franchise business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Fix the "Huntingdon's disease" typo, for heaven's sake. You're asking people to view your company as an authority on the topic. Typos detract from that credibility.

</comment><comment><USER17> You should use Authorize.net to process your payments...so your customer can stay on your site...I wouldnt like having to go to google to pay if I was going to buy.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree, it's on our to-do list. Though Google's $.20 + 2% - adwords discount is anticompetitively good.

<comment><USER18> +1 for 'anticompetitively good' :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Old discussion on CCR5: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47751>

Includes Josh's idea for curing HIV

</comment><comment><USER19> This site doesn't look trustworthy at all. Sorry..but for all I know you guys are just making up the results. Without more information on who you are, or how you do the testing, or some sort of certification from a trusted source, I wouldn't use this service because I don't know if the testing is accurate.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen Is it possible to be diagnosed with HIV, not know you have CCR5, and mistakenly purchase the medicine?

<comment><AUTHOR> Very, very unlikely. And you would still want to see a doctor and have your viral loads regularly checked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Does 23andMe or anyone else in the space bundle testing for this gene in their larger/more-expensive packages?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, 23andMe only tests for SNPs (Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms) and this is a 32 base pair deletion.

<comment><USER16> I forgot to include explicitly in my anti-23andMe rant that deletions, repeat polymorphisms, and the like were not included in their product's results. Thanks for reminding me :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Introduction to Continuous Integration Tools - <AUTHOR> http://blog.scalyr.com/2017/10/introduction-continuous-integration-tools/ <comment><USER2> My small shop of engineers (mostly nuclear, not software) somehow cobbled together Jenkins with Phabricator and we now have this magical world of up-to- date documentation, unit test results showing up in code review before code goes live, up-to-date in-use test suites, test coverage results vs. time, Pylint scores vs. time, auto-builds of various distribution packages, Python2 and Python3 compatibility checks, long-running validation runs every weekend, the whole nine yards! The best part is the release process (i.e. pushing the develop branch to the master branch). We have this huge checklist and Jenkins just runs through it all when it detects a new push on the master branch, doing all appropriate checks and updates of expected test results and stuff. God I love it.

<comment><USER3> I'm curious how do you do documentation?

<comment><USER4> As the OP is writing Python, they are probably using a tool called Sphinx, that formats a codebase's docstrings (inline comments for functions, classes and methods) into reST, html, and many others. A total life changer.

<comment><USER2> Yup. It's a bunch of docstrings and ReST docs and Jenkins fires off the Sphinx build to make beautiful HTML and PDF documentation every time anyone updates it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Jenkins is easy enough to abuse. So many places use it as a centralized job runner. I can't disagree with them; it's good at that!</comment>


Firebase expands to become a unified app platform - <AUTHOR> https://firebase.googleblog.com/2016/05/firebase-expands-to-become-unified-app-platform.html <comment><USER2> parse-server is open source, and you can plug anything back to it. Eg:for files, use s3, azure, google cloud...</comment>


Functional programming: A step backward - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=functional%20programming%3A%20a%20step%20backward&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CFAQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworld.com.au%2Farticle%2F429617%2Ffunctional_programming_step_backward%2F%3Ffp%3D4%26fpid%3D1398720840&ei=z_H1T_SbGqbs2QXm6IzPBg&usg=AFQjCNEKmSTrdDvKDFL0QXcMaJdmBxQtMQ

<comment><USER2> Blog spam?

Contains snippets from RWH mis-rendered...

<comment><AUTHOR> blog spam? HN gives us the ability to post interesting url's, I thought it was interesting so I posted it.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is anyone using Bitcoin here? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Yep, I'm behind <https://btc.sx>

I just launched beta and I'm bracing myself before I post a Show HN.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. HN is skewed with an audience that encompasses all the 'early adopter' characteristics that Bitcoin appeals to. Any data gathered here about Bitcoin wouldn't be a fair representation of a broader, more mainstream audience.

</comment><comment><USER4> I do :)

Here's bitcoin plugin I wrote:

[http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for- woocommerc...](http://wordpress.org/plugins/bitcoin-payments-for- woocommerce/stats/)

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah, we just launched our Bitcoin payment platform, Yumcoin.

<https://yumcoin.com>

</comment><comment><USER6> >Is anyone NOT using Bitcoin here?

FTFY. Seriously, this is Hacker News ;)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't know anyone in person using it...</comment>


Facebook's F8 Agenda: Deep linking for mobile apps - <AUTHOR> http://blog.tapfame.com/post/79010200283/facebooks-f8-agenda-deep-linking-for-mobile-apps <comment><USER2> From 2004:

x

<comment><USER3> mailto: is the same principle and has been around since the 90s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> @satjot - can "they" detect what's installed on your smartphone? If yes, I can see how deep-linking would be a great feature for apps that have high value repeat purchases.

<comment><AUTHOR> @allantyoung there are a few ways Facebook can compile this data : (1) They could make calls to app url schemes that are publicly known (i.e. [http://handleopenurl.com/](http://handleopenurl.com/)) to check for a response (2) Facebook will become the largest data set of app url schemes as more apps register their url schema with Facebook when enabling deep-linking (3) Facebook bought Parse, and over 100,000 apps use Parse and many of those apps use FB connect, so Facebook knows which apps those users have

<comment><USER5> On Android, though, app developers just have to register open intents for their urls, and Android takes care of the rest. No special schemes necessary, and falls back to the browser if the user doesn't have an app installed to handle it. What exactly is wrong with that setup that necessitates a whole new set of schemas that will result in urls that can only be handled if you already have the app installed?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is there any functional deeplinking comparable to:

        twitter://post?message=hello%world

in the current Facebook app? Lots of older posts indicate fb://publish/?text=helloworld once worked, but it doesn't seem to any longer.

</comment><comment><USER7> Related standard: [http://mobiledeeplinking.org/](http://mobiledeeplinking.org/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Why is this called "deep" linking? What makes it deep?

<comment><USER9> It is the reinvention of hyperlinking 'deep' into alternate views rather than just the native app's main page. I use it but the reason why it hasn't taken hold is largely because it isn't standardized across platforms.

Here's a routable handler that tries to standardize it: [https://github.com/usepropeller/routable- android](https://github.com/usepropeller/routable-android) and [https://github.com/usepropeller/routable- ios](https://github.com/usepropeller/routable-ios)</comment></comment>


Apply HN: Krewe- Help people make a group of close friends in their neighborhood - <AUTHOR> https://www.gokrewe.com/get_started <comment><USER2> Growing small groups is an interesting idea. How will you match them? Although the faq says not on interests, you still need to decide who to put into which group if there are too many people in an area, just random? If you just "fill groups" on after the other, you'd actually implicitly match on "early adopterness"

<comment><AUTHOR> When users sign up they enter their home address and pick an age group and a category (professional, creative, blue collar, none). It'll then search for a group within a half mile that matches all their two criteria (that isn't already full). If it doesn't find one, then it'll create a new one and the next person to sign up in the area with the same criteria will join.

So it is essentially random, but so is everything. The kids you were friends with in school were just the ones who lived in your school district. Mature adults are mostly able to get along with anyone.

Even if you don't like the people you're placed with at first, you do get to grow your group and meet more people. But some of my best friends are people I didn't really get along with at first. We became close because we spent a lot of time together. I influenced them and they influenced me. We discovered new common interests, and built a culture around it.

I think having a group of friends can be a situation where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. There are safeguards to remove people who really don't fit in, but I really hope that people will take the time and try to get along with those they're placed with. If it doesn't work, then implementing some sort of interest based system wouldn't be that hard.

<comment><AUTHOR> The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the system will work as is. Adults who _want_ to meet people and make friends are really easy to get along with. We needed interests to bind us together when we were young kids in school because we hadn't had any life experiences by that time. We had all essentially lived the same life up until we graduated college. But once you're an adult, you have so much more to talk about--so many stories to tell.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is interesting. I have definitely seen a similar idea before, even down to the "six people" setup.

A quick search turned up: [https://www.smeeters.com/](https://www.smeeters.com/) [http://www.sixr.com.au/](http://www.sixr.com.au/) [https://www.joingrouper.com/](https://www.joingrouper.com/)

It would be interesting to know how successful those services have been.

<comment><AUTHOR> Those are all dating apps/services. If you're a guy who wants to do it, you have to have two other single male friends who are willing to do it with you. If you're new in town and don't know anyone, you're sh __out of luck. You can use Krewe if you 're one of the 60 million people in the US who says they're lonely.

Groupers also a one time event, with people from all over town. Krewe is meant to get you to see the same group over and over again.

I do know people who have done Grouper and have loved it. Six seems like a pretty cozy number. You can fit into a booth at a bar, and hold a single group conversation pretty comfortably.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is cool. The small groups and geographic area are intriguing... Fun to think about knowing and being friends with lots of people in my immediate area

</comment><comment><USER5> Interesting idea. My wife and I joined something similar but specifically for new parents in Seattle called "PEPS" ([http://www.peps.org](http://www.peps.org)) when we had kids. We got together once a week for twelve weeks. We had a facilitator who loosely guided us in a discussion theme. Of course we all had one big thing in common (kids born within about 3 months of each other), but it was still surprising how well we got along. I've heard similar comments from people in other groups.

So, a few questions...

1\. Where are you right now in bringing this to life?

2\. What are you finding difficult about getting this launched, and what are you doing to address those challenges?

3\. Describe the person who really fits your target audience - what defines them as a group?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've soft launched it. You can sign up now. Still in the early days, so not a huge user base yet. But it's fully capable of doing what's promised.

I really think anyone who doesn't have a really great network or feels like their part of a community would benefit greatly from using it. It's not just about meeting a few people, or make a couple friends, it's about building a really powerful community.

However, the people I think would benefit most are the ones who have recently moved to a new city or even a new neighborhood in the same city and don't know many people nearby. Kids coming out of college would be an easy target, but middle and old age people also tend to be the most socially isolated.

<comment><USER6> As someone who is in the scenario you describe (new city - don't know many people), I really love this idea. I would definitely use it if it were a big thing, but it will be a less than ideal experience in the early stages (not many prospective friends/groups).

I think one of your biggest challenges would be getting enough users to start. Also, it seems like you'd run into problems that face online dating, where if the service is successful, your users will no longer need you. Have you thought at all about how to deal with that problem?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's true that there aren't many filled out groups yet. If it were an online dating type thing where you have to choose people from a list, then it would be a problem. But placing people into groups is handled automatically, choice is removed from the equation. That's definitely a feature, not a bug. No one in history has ever chosen who their friends from a big list. User's sign up and then forget about it. When they get a notification that people join their group, then they can become active on the platform. I can grow slowly and organically to get to the point where groups fill out and they start hanging out together. Once they do and they really start loving it, I hope it'll pick up a lot.

I think there is already a lot there for people to want to keep using it. First, expanding the group is kind of a slow process (so you're given enough time to become close to people). So if you want to have that expansive network, then you'll keep using it. A lot of the time on dating apps, you're looking for one person and then you're done. But you're allowed (expected) to have multiple friends. So it doesn't end with your first group. Second, I think the group messaging system is pretty solid. You're "born" into, so you don't have to go to Facebook messenger and set up a group there. Third, the activity creator is also really solid. It get's rid of all the back and forth involved in getting people to hang out, so it helps alleviate that pain point too.

I have a lot of other ideas for features to add in the future that will keep people engaged, but I won't get into them here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN,

Krewe places people into a group of six of their peers who all live within a half mile radius of each other. Since it starts with a small group dynamic, it's comfortable to meet up at first. And since everyone lives so close to each other, they can meet up often and become really close. Eventually, they can expand the group and build up a strong local community and a network they can rely on to succeed in their careers, find romantic partners, and enjoy an incredible social life.

</comment><comment><USER7> Interesting idea, and definitely different than any other social networking platform I've seen. If this is already active, have any "krewes" been matched together yet? If so, did you get feedback from the krewemembers on how they liked the experience? It seems to me like it wouldn't be easy to get six random strangers to actually commit to meeting up for something.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is active, but still a bit too early for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's your plan to reaching profitability? Have you run any "pilot groups" and how did they get along?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a lot of ideas for revenue and I don't want to get into all of them in public. The app includes an activity creator that suggests a few bars, restaurants, and coffee shops in the area to meet up at. I could have establishments sponsor it and they would be featured at the top. We could hold our own ticketed events or advertise local events. A freemium model could also be explored.

<comment><USER8> Good ideas!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why do you think proximity is the most important factor in friendships? Or does proximity and ease-of-hangout trump other factors for friendship like common interests?

How will you get people to use your platform? What's the advantage of this over meetup.com?

<comment><AUTHOR> Proximity is important because it promotes persistence. Having a group of people right in you neighborhood means you can get together everyday if you wanted to. If you've had a long day at work and you get home late, you can still walk down to a local pub and sip on a beer for 20 minutes with your friends, complain about your boss, and then head home. You don't have to make plans weeks in advance.

I'm hardly able to endure traffic to see my own friends who I already know I like. I think people aren't going to go see people they don't really know yet if they have to trek across the city to do it.

Meetups are ok for meeting people, but they're not great for making good friends. They can be really crowded and intimidating, or you have to awkwardly ask someone out on a friend date, and it's likely that they could live kind of far from you. Krewe starts you out with a small group, so you're singling someone out when you're trying to do something with them.

<comment><USER9> This is a really good point I was definitely undervaluing. Casual friendships are useful for eliminating loneliness and the feeling of not knowing anyone in your neighborhood.

I would definitely try this in a new city, but maybe not if I've lived somewhere for a while and have an established friend group.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can you talk about your team? How many people are working on this full time, what are their skill sets, how long have they been working together, and previous accomplishments and work experience?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's only me at this point. That's definitely my biggest disadvantage, I know.

<comment><USER11> It might not be the biggest disadvantage if you're building the right product for people. Yet, having good and right cofounder & team can help you a lot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Did I see this pitched on 4chan?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've never posted on 4chan, so I don't think so.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: With rise of Tesla motors, is traditional automobile engineering dying? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Elon Musk is what I call a "systems realitator". In order to bring his major dream, going to Mars, into reality the next big field (besides propulsion & rocket technologies which he is doing with SpaceX) is energy, and how to generate this in space.

Abundant energy in space is solar light, so SolarCity is the next puzzle block.

However this still not grabs people's attention really. What shakes emotions right now (and that hasn't gone lower in the last years) is cars in particular.

TESLA with all its connectivity, and "gadgets" around electric energy use on the road is the practical use (business) case on earth, that is pulling interest, competition, and as a consequence of that ever improving parameters of solar, and energy storage technologies.

TESLA is sort of a magnet for future technologies to emerge, and pulling present technologies to their very best.

TESLA is a catalyst!!

</comment><comment><USER3> Tesla is not "just" a car company but a technology one...the car is the way Elon transports it...by covering the US with high speed charging stations he almost "owns" the sector...and by now building the worlds largest battery factory he rounds it off...Elon has realized that he can only change people's attitudes if they are being offered something better than what they have/are used to....as people don't change...hence also Solar City...and eventually SpaceX and possibly the Hyperloop...my humble view</comment>


URL to PDF Microservice - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/alvarcarto/url-to-pdf-api <comment><USER3> Unfortunately, the "sensible defaults" don't seem to check input URLs correctly and allow file:// URLs.

Just try ?url=file:///etc/passwd on the demo instance.

That seems to be a quite common issue with services like this built on generic libraries.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow, that's a bit embarrassing :) The urls are now restricted to http and https only. Thanks for noticing!

<comment><USER4> I am not at a computer noe, so I can't test it, but do you take redirects into account? I hope you are not just whitelisting the initial URL, but also any URL's it redirects to. If you don't already, you should probably just disable redirects in whatever library you use.

<comment><AUTHOR> I gave this a thought for a moment. Since we're using a real browser, there are huge amount of different ways to get the browser display a file:// link. Redirect is one, window.location.href is another, etc. The service shouldn't be run publicly in the internet for real use cases. If you do, the server should be designed in a way that it's not dangerous if the web server user gets read access to file system. I added a warning about this in the top of the README.

<comment><USER5> You are using Chrome headless therefore you can use group policy to add "file://" to the URL blacklist; see [http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy- list-3#URLBlac...](http://www.chromium.org/administrators/policy- list-3#URLBlacklist)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW there's a lot of things Chrome won't do properly out of the box (fonts, emojis'... more). Most projects like this will work for _most_ of the web, but there's a lot of nuance in getting it working across the board. This is something I've been working on for quite some time: [https://browserless.io](https://browserless.io)

</comment><comment><USER7> I was playing around with Puppeteer the other day and was wondering if it was possible to render a web page to a single page PDF (a page with fixed width and variable height). Basically like creating screenshot without losing the text information. This would solve a lot problems such as sticky elements hiding text like in this example [1].

[1]: [https://url-to-pdf- api.herokuapp.com/api/render?url=https://...](https://url-to-pdf- api.herokuapp.com/api/render?url=https://hackernoon.com/why-isnt-agile- working-d7127af1c552)

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a good idea! You can achieve this by adding e.g. &pdf.width=1000px&pdf.height=10000px parameters.

Sometimes you can get rid of the sticky headers with &emulateScreenMedia=false parameter if the page has well implemented @media print rules in CSS. We decided to use page.emulateMedia('screen') with Puppeteer to make PDFs look more like the actual web page by default.

Pages which use lazy loading for images may look incorrect when rendered. &scrollPage=true parameter may help with this. It scrolls the page to the bottom before rendering the PDF.

Using these options make the PDF better: [https://url-to-pdf- api.herokuapp.com/api/render?url=https://...](https://url-to-pdf- api.herokuapp.com/api/render?url=https://hackernoon.com/why-isnt-agile- working-d7127af1c552&emulateScreenMedia=false&scrollPage=true)

<comment> sid- I bet that breaks on infinite scroll pages ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why use headless chrome instead of the PDF lib used by chrome directly? [https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/](https://pdfium.googlesource.com/pdfium/)

<comment><USER9> For starter, documentation: you can't even understand what pdfium IS from that page. After some search I see that it can do rasterization, from pdf to e.g. png, but I couldn't find any mention of it being capable to generate the pdf from an url. Can it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seems to be useful, as [https://github.com/arachnys/athenapdf](https://github.com/arachnys/athenapdf) done pretty similar thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how scalable the service is...

At least with PhantomJS I felt like my system would begin to lockup if there were too many instances rendering at the same time (and it didn't appear to be an issue of too little memory).

Nonetheless, this looks promising.

<comment><USER12> You need to fire a new chrome headless process every time you create a PDF, its not scalable but it works.

I wonder if this part of chrome could be easily extracted as a C++ library.

<comment><USER6> You can actually reuse a running instance and create a new context with this: [https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools- protocol/tot/Targe...](https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools- protocol/tot/Target/#method-createBrowserContext). Issue is that most libraries don't have an API for this (not sure why), and that long-running Chrome instances can get to a quirky state + other issues. Certain parameters require you start Chrome with the right flags, so reusing a running Chrome process doesn't always work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Cool. Nice to learn of another option. What would be the advantages of using this over wkhtmltopdf ([https://wkhtmltopdf.org](https://wkhtmltopdf.org)) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment! I haven't personally used wkhtmltopdf much, but I like having Chrome as the rendering engine. In theory at least, debugging the PDFs can be done with desktop Chrome's print preview. I don't know about wkhtmltopdf, but url-to-pdf-api supports dynamic single-page apps, which can be beneficial depending on the use case.

Headless Chrome is quite new so it still has some bugs, but I have a hunch that it will in the end have most reliable and expected render results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Oddly enough I just implemented my own one of these in 34 sloc using flask and weasyprint. I chose to only have it accept html in a post rather than a url so that it could render non-publically accessible urls. You can also pass it a base_url (which it passes on to weasyprint) for resolving relative urls for static assets in the html, which are usually publicly accessible. Runs on heroku for simplicity.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am using PhantomJS for a similar project running on AWS Lambda - <USER2> into all sorts of rendering bugs / crashes. Wanted to make the switch to puppeteer, but as of now it requires a higher version of NodeJS than what Lambda supports. Was in the process of looking at Docker containers for my service, anyone have any thoughts on Heroku vs Docker?

<comment><USER6> Hey, I'd love to talk to you more about your issues with getting over to puppeteer. I'm working on a product that separates application infrastructure from Chrome as it's nightmare to try and scale with.

I've written somewhat extensively about the deployment approaches here: [https://hackernoon.com/more-than-you-want-to-know-about- head...](https://hackernoon.com/more-than-you-want-to-know-about-headless- chrome-31f6b3b06d82)

<comment><USER16> That was a great read!

<comment><USER6> Hey, thanks for the kind words, really appreciate hearing that!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Oh hey! I created something similar with Flask and Docker. Except you POST the html content and receive a PDF document back. It uses wkhtmltopdf, so it's pretty fast. [https://github.com/halfnibble/pdf_service](https://github.com/halfnibble/pdf_service)

<comment><USER18> Wkhtmltopdf is a dead-end, but very useful and relatively ligthweight if it still works for your use case.

Thanks for packaging this up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Took a quick skim of the README. I have a general question for these web-to- PDF services. Is the priority to honor the page styles as set forth in a print.css-type file? Or is it to be as close as a screenshot as possible of a webpage, which is what I think the majority of laypeople would expect.

One of the small things I've recently let myself be bothered by is how divergent _HTML /browser_ snapshots from web.archive.org, archive.is, and Google cache can be, even for relatively simple pages. I've already given up on trying to make (not even sure if it's a good idea) HTML look nice as PDFs.

<comment><USER20> This service seems to be targeted at producing controlled artefacts from your application (e.g. invoices) where you know what CSS is in use. If you wanted to capture the original design of the page you can use headless Chrome to capture screenshots automatically ([https://medium.com/@dschnr/using-headless- chrome-as-an-autom...](https://medium.com/@dschnr/using-headless-chrome-as-an- automated-screenshot-tool-4b07dffba79a)). Perhaps headless Chrome can also save the HTML plus assets, or some other archive format that would be interactive.

Edit: this seems to be a take on saving the HTML plus assets - [https://github.com/pirate/bookmark- archiver](https://github.com/pirate/bookmark-archiver).

<comment><USER21> I think phantomjs is another option. I'm personally looking for a way to screenshot charts produced on a site of mine so I can create thumbnails for a quick preview. I think phantomjs is what I will try first.

Edit: ahh someone else mentioned it too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Partially off topic: does anybody know of a hosted solution that turns a pdf into an html page, and hosts the output html (optionally, also hosts the pdf, with a downloadable link).

<comment><USER23> [https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/](https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/) would probably be what you would need to build your own. I think you can also use just Google drive to make something like this.

Not sure of more straight forward hosting options

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> OT (maybe) Question: I've gotten more and more annoyed over the years as links are deleted/decay etc. Even more so recently. Is there a plug-in that makes a 'personal archive' or potentially on-sends the page to the Archive. It would be useful to be able to search/go back in my time-line to webpages even if they were just static pdf's.

<comment><USER18> Wallabag: a self-hostable application for saving web pages | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14686882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14686882) (Jul 2017)

Show HN: Kozmos – A Personal Library | [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14980075](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14980075) (Aug 2017)

specifically: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/](https://addons.mozilla.org/en- US/firefox/addon/scrapbook-x/) and [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/worldbrain-the- res...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/worldbrain-the- research-e/abkfbakhjpmblaafnpgjppbmioombali)

<comment><USER18> Linked elswhere in this discussion:

[https://github.com/pirate/bookmark- archiver](https://github.com/pirate/bookmark-archiver) python script

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefile/mpiodij...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/singlefile/mpiodijhokgodhhofbcjdecpffjipkle) save as a single html file

> _uses "data URI" scheme to embed image and frame contents into the page : > the resulting format is not MHT/MHTML_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I've been working on a WYSIWYG PDF creator and API for a few months, mainly to solve a need at my day job: [https://fetchpdf.com](https://fetchpdf.com)

PDF generation is 'fun', and I've tried several of the different options out there for HTML to PDF generation, but settled on wkhtmltopdf.

</comment><comment><USER26> Ooooooh, there have been a couple projects where I wished I had something like this. Definitely bookmarking this.

</comment><comment><USER27> If you're interested in archiving/PDF'ing a large list of links (e.g. your browser bookmarks or Pocket list), check out [https://github.com/pirate/bookmark- archiver](https://github.com/pirate/bookmark-archiver)

</comment><comment><USER28> I would like to adopt something like this, but there are some pretty normal table functions in our current print solution that I don't know how to support in HTML.

E.g. on a multi-page invoice, show a sub-total row at the bottom of each page. Does anyone know how to create this kind of function?

<comment><USER29> IIRC you can solve that using CSS for print media.

The browser will display a different CSS to the printer, so to speak.

<comment><USER30> Yes, and instead of px or em, you can use mm for css units (positioning, size, etc.).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Can you get the PDF page to adjust its size based on the HTML page to be rendered?

</comment><comment><USER32> URL or HTML to PDF: [https://github.com/tecnospeed/pastor](https://github.com/tecnospeed/pastor)

</comment><comment> default-kramer It looks like chrome's javascript interface exposes options that the command line doesn't. Or else I'm overlooking something, because I couldn't find a way to to hide the header and footer (which shows the date, title, url, and page number) using the command line. But this project does hide the header and footer.

I can't use an externally hosted service like this because some of my URLs are non-public. So when the user requests a PDF, I render the HTML to a temp file on the server, invoke chrome via command line, and serve up the converted PDF.

<comment><USER33> Just in case you missed it, you can clone the git repo for this project and use it inside your network. I'm playing with it now that way.

Right now, I'm using wkhtmltopdf which supports custom headers and footers and I'm mulling over how to do the same with this solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> @kimmobru, would you happen to know how this would handle printing a multipage table to PDF? Specifically, I'm hoping for repeating headers per page, and not having any problems with rows printing half on one page, and half on the next page. I would love to replace a paid solution we use which handles this use cases with something based on headless chrome.

</comment><comment><USER35> We use urlbox.io and are really happy with it. Don't recommend building this yourself.

</comment><comment><USER36> See also: [http://any2web.io](http://any2web.io)

<comment><USER37> with no privacy policy link or info on how long the documents are stored on the server.

Stuff like receipts, etc to be converted to PDF will contain customers' information - not to be put on a site with no info on how it's used.

<comment><USER38> That's a good reminder, thanks. I'm working on a similar service, and need to be very clear about our data retention policy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is Stallman's wet dream.</comment>


Company Raises the Price of a Drug That Fights Infant Epilepsy by 85,000% - <AUTHOR> https://futurism.com/company-raises-the-price-of-a-drug-that-fights-infant-epilepsy-by-85000/ <comment><USER2> My line of thinking has always been that developing and selling drugs is very expensive. Without the possibility of being acquired and selling a vial for five figures, there's no way it would have existed in the first place.

Going off the numbers in the article, MNK sold $1B last year. At $34K/vial that's about almost 12 vials per infant (2,500/yr) per year. (Assuming the course of treatment is one year)

When the vials were selling for $40 each, they would have brought in $1.2MM - I'm no expert, but that doesn't even sound like enough to rent a lab and hire scientists/technicians.

The real headline of this article should be, "MNK settles $100MM lawsuit over anti-competitive drug pricing behavior" (or something more catchy) -- That, to me, is the real interesting bit.

How regulations work around drug pricing is where media focus should be, and there are just as many soundbites in that discussion for the media to latch on to as well.

<comment><USER3> Of course, we know from history that it existed for $40 a vial. Looking into it, it was identified in the 1930s and a synthetic analogue was developed in the 1960s.

I imagine the one weird trick they were using to bring down costs is only to devote a small number of days each year to producing the particular drug. It'd be interesting to see the current production costs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One way to deal with this problem is simply to take away the drug patent if a company is found to engage in this sort of behavior, make that law. Their drug becomes a generic to be manufactured by other companies if they are found to be profiteering off a drug. Then under threat of losing it all hanging over their heads, drug companies will behave themselves.

How do you decide what is profiteering, let the courts decide, just pass the law and then pass the judgment to the courts. They will use common law and all the other stuff they have under their belt to make that decision, economic theory and what not.

The point is to get business strategists to understand that there is a risk of bluntly increases prices to make a profit.

<comment><USER5> They also would simply refuse to research and develop any new drugs under that regulatory environment. Drug companies are. not benevolent entities, they are as cuththroat, or even moee so than Wall Street.

The real issue is the cost and length of clinical trials. I know this can be lowered somewhat by allowing computational models, but it is a difficult problem to solve unless biotech goes through the same garage Revolution as the PC

<comment><USER6> One way to address this is to create different standards of evaluation and to adjust the legal liabilities accordingly.

What I mean (very roughly) is something like:

Untested => you are on your own, don't imagine you can sue anyone if something goes wrong, this is the default Conditional => some basic efficacy/safety protocols have been evaluated, some limited liability for the drug companies, Approved => full suite of evaluation done, liability still capped but at a much higher level then Conditional

There would still be legal safeguards around fraudulent or negligent practices of course that wouldn't be constrained by the capped liability I suggested above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I couldn't see anything in the article (or the linked press release) to indicate whether the settlement included reducing the price to something less outrageous.</comment>


Author – create and publish documents to the web, instantly - <AUTHOR> http://authorapp.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> We created a Mac writing app with simple user experience, professional typography sets and integrated publishing platform. Author brings you a new creative and productive environment where you can focus on your writing and can publish instantly. Let us know what you think!</comment>


How to find your passion - <AUTHOR> http://being-manju.blogspot.com/2012/05/how-to-find-your-passion.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting read.</comment>


Why the economic fate of America's cities diverged: deregulation - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/cities-economic-fates-diverge/417372?single_page=true <comment><USER2> This article is worse than useless without taking into account the cost of living. Yeah, people in San Francisco + NYC make a lot more than people in Cedar Rapids - but it also costs a lot more. Take that into account, and then tell me if there's a big difference

It would be much worse if people in NYC made the same income per capita as people in the midwest - even though it would be more "equal"

<comment><USER3> I completely disagree.

I think your complaint is baseless and I'm glad I ignored your comment and went on to read the article.

It's a failing of mine, but I will sometimes skip an article if the comments here are like yours, because truly some useless articles do appear.

This isn't one of them. I'm confused by your dismissal, and more so by your reasoning.

<comment><USER2> Ha ok.. care to actually challenge any of my points?

<comment><USER3> I think the most confusing part for me is that wages and COL are correlated, obviously, but generally (and specifically in the cities mentioned in TFA), COL is driven by wages and not the other way around.

So your objection seems to be conflating a follow-on effect with a cause, and dismissing the article because the author didn't address that effect when he was really interested in the cause (of COL and many other effects).

Mostly I just wanted to encourage other people to go ahead and read the article. But since we have this thread to ourselves, there ya go. :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


App Store rejections may benefit indie iPhone developers  - <AUTHOR> http://jasongullickson.posterous.com/app-store-rejections-may-benefit-indie-iphone

<comment><USER3> I'm an indie, and I disagree. Big vendors can call Phil Schiller and ask what's going on. Small vendors can't.

Even putting that aside, companies like Google, etc., can afford to develop huge complex apps, and run the risk of them not getting in (look at their navigation app). I can't do that. At most, I'm willing to throw away maybe a week's worth of work.

After two recent pretty egregious (on Apple's part) rejections, I've got increasingly cynical about the platform. Needless to say, I'm not putting much effort into development anymore. Customers e-mail me and say "When is feature/app X coming?" And I have to tell them it's probably not coming, unless Apple gets their crap together.

<comment><USER4> I sympathize with you and I hope your customers complain loudly to Apple so that they may be prompted to get their crap together sooner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is true, but the scope is not really "indy developers" but "developers with a day job." I've got two apps I hack on on the weekends, and the review process has been frustrating and painful. (almost 2 months now.)

But, that's it. I don't worry about bills or lost funding or any of the highly stressful aspects of app development there'd be if this were my "real job."

As perverse as this is, this "review process endurance" stamina I have is a real competitive advantage, when you consider the fact that most iPhone apps that do well have a huge first-to-market advantage for whatever thing it is that they do. Ie, other folks who may have been building the same app as I have probably won't have the ability to endure the process, and hence my app will be the first to market with this capability, albeit much later than would have been possible without the review process.

<comment><USER4> "As perverse as this is, this "review process endurance" stamina I have is a real competitive advantage, when you consider the fact that most iPhone apps that do well have a huge first-to-market advantage for whatever thing it is that they do."

That is if you get your app first to market. Maybe the person developing the same app gets lucky and gets a more lenient or faster reviewer - bam there goes your first to market advantage. Or maybe there is already an app ahead of you that will get approved just a bit sooner.

<comment><USER5> Oh of course, I never said that the app review process wasn't a horrible mess. My only point was that the dynamic in the post is true: being able to survive two or three months before launching (after development stops) has become a necessary precondition for writing iPhone apps. This plays to hobbyist developers as an advantage, but the overall process is still a disaster and a crap shoot.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems like he means "hobbyist developer" not "indie developer."

The external forces on an indie developer -- someone trying to sell apps to make a living -- are _much_ worse compared to developers on payroll for a large software house.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wait, how is this "benefit"? Based on the above, App Store rejections are still bad for indie developers, but not as bad as for other people, so that for an indie developer the risk of getting rejected is supposedly more like a "pain in the ass" as opposed to a "prohibitive liability". But that's just saying you "benefit" because you're not being screwed as hard as that other guy.

</comment><comment><USER8> Indie developers probably don't have as much time or money to burn as do "real" developers. So the possibility of rejection probably encourages independent folks to not take the gamble; if the app is developed but rejected, the code and the time spent writing it becomes completely useless.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still don't see how any developer benefits from app store rejection. It's more that it hasn't been an issue for most developers because most apps get approved, but when it does hit it's still a pain in the ass to deal with - <USER2> a benefit from what I've experienced.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting take. This adds weight (but not proof) to the oft-repeated mantra that Apple doesn't know how to deal with businesses, just individuals.

(Edit: spellnig)</comment>


The Problem with Pre-Aggregated Metrics: Part 2, the "aggregated" - <AUTHOR> https://honeycomb.io/blog/2016/12/the-problem-with-pre-aggregated-metrics-part-2-the-aggregated/ <comment><USER2> This example is very straight forward, but it's probably an outlier.

The alternative might be too costly in terms of storage or computation...</comment>


The staggering rise of India's super-rich - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/jul/10/the-staggering-rise-of-indias-super-rich <comment><USER2> Over time I have started to dislike long read articles. Most of the time articles all over the place and inundated with useless fillers.Stuff about length of hair or type of earphones are just fluff.

And the article confuses the message as well. For example,

 _In the mid-1990s, just two Indians featured in the annual Forbes billionaire list, racking up around $3bn between them. But against a backdrop of the gradual economic re-opening that began in 1991, this has quickly changed. By 2016, India had 84 entries on the Forbes billionaire list. Its economy was then worth around $2.3tn, according to the World Bank. China reached that level of GDP in 2006, but with just 10 billionaires to show for it. At the same stage of development, India had created eight times as many._

What has number of billionaires have to do with anything? As per Forbes, 100 and 1 billion are the same.

On the Nirav Modi and Mallya saga, India's bankruptcy system was broken and many times banks were in doldrums trying to recover dues. There is a new bankruptcy law which should help to smooth things out. But then the article spends too much time talking about Mallya and reduces an important piece of legalisation to a mere mention.

So, while I agree to the premise that India's rise has been astounding and corruption/cronyism is a problem, this article is not worth anyone's time.

<comment><USER3> My least favourite approach to the "long form" article is where the journalist is intent on launching into a narrative without making clear in the leading paragraphs what the real subject is.

I'm not a great author by any means but it just seems so self indulgent when journalists do that.

<comment><USER4> Oh fuck, yes.

And then everytime it seems they're finally getting to the meat, they jumb back to describing someone's upbringing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> India isn't just rich in the general top 1% argument sense. India's upper middle class is quite rich. And more importantly invisible and hides everything. This has been possible largely due to a combination of real estate prices going up due to urbanization, conservative spending and a rich investment driven culture.

The other factor is gold savings. Most families have a large amount of it, and provide good insulation against inflation.

Pretty much bulk of India's middle class got rich in the post 1992 era, when the market were opened up making it easy to do business. The software riches came due to US money flowing in, the salaries were high. And most people got to travel abroad. And given foreign exchange factor most people made a killing till 2005. Back then it was easy to get US visas and work there. The dollar paid 35 rupees a piece and land prices in most Indian metros(especially Bangalore) were quite cheap. People who bought lands anywhere in peripheral Bangalore have seen their wealth increase by crazy factors.

The other factor is again opening up of mass private sector hiring, subsequent growth in economy and the stock market.

And lastly of course, corruption, nepotism and dowry market.

<comment><USER6> Is the real estate market still good? I have family abroad and want to invest.

<comment><USER7> Not good. I've been tracking the prices in Mumbai which has the most expensive market with the least supply in India and prices have not moved since 2014. There is potential for drastic fall as per the unsold inventory which may take over 7 years to sell based on current sales numbers. The Delhi-NCR market has seen drops of 20-25% as its a much bigger market and developers do not have the financial muscle compared to the ones in Mumbai.

<comment><USER8> > There is potential for drastic fall as per the unsold inventory which may > take over 7 years

I have been hearing that for the last 7 years.

<comment><USER7> Its not quite out in the open yet, but it is happening when you sit on the table and negotiate. A prime builder in the most prime location (BKC) is offering nearly 30% off on initial quote after a few rounds. There is humongous over supply in areas like Goregaon and Worli/Lower Parel. As per industry sources there is very little movement for properties north of INR50m which is essentially every apartment >=2br south from Bandra onwards. Builders like Oberoi have still not managed to sell flats which have been ready for 3-4 years in Goregaon, resulting in the recent 25% * 4 years scheme. It's a matter of time till they capitulate. Even otherwise, if they stay at old rates, they're effectively falling on account of inflation every year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Politicians spend the money to fund campaigns, but also on handing out > favours, jobs and cash to constituents. "It's sort of an unholy nexus," as > Raghuram Rajan put it to me during his tenure as head of India's central > bank. "Poor public services? Politician fills the gap; politician gets the > resources from the businessman; politician gets re-elected by the electorate > for whom he's filling the gap."

I know this will never be popular opinion, but as a citizen of a poor, developing country with widespread corruption, I sometimes have to wonder: is democracy really the best model for poor nations that don't have the foundations to foster it?

<comment><USER2> I hold an even more unpopular opinion - socialism doesn't help the poor which it actually tries to. Take a look at how China, Russia and even India's elite have amassed wealth. Purely through a socialistic system which is supposed to help everyone by giving too much power to a handful of people.

To paraphrase someone on HN - laws tend to made for David to fight Goliath. But with time Goliath comes to understand the rules and uses it to shut down the Davids.

<comment><USER10> I believe this is the comment you are referring to:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17480914](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17480914)

 _This is an evergreen story. Regulations sold as weapons for davids to defend against goliaths are instead used by goliaths to fend off davids. It turns out that Goliath can learn to use a sling too, and can hurl bigger stones with it. This is why goliaths like regulations so much, and why patents may be more disease than cure._

<comment><USER2> Yes, thank you. Tried to find the relevant article using algolia but couldn't remember the exact thread.

<comment><USER10> FYI: I used algolica and limited the search to comments in the past week and searched for the term "davids" (without quotes).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What makes England (London specifically) a desired locations for all the financial fugitives? I don't hear these kind of cases for any other country.

[https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and- natio...](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/list- of-14-fugitives-given-to-uk-again/articleshow/62516856.cms)

<comment><USER12> It's got remittance basis taxation which is very easy going on rich foreigners compared to say Paris or New York, and it's low crime so they don't get kidnaped and the like. And there's a large community of Indian, Russians and many other nationalities unlike say Monaco. Good for flights too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not surprising to see such an article in Guardian, known for its left of center leanings. Most of the billionaires in India have public listed companies, and have multiplied their wealth with the resultant growth in the stock markets, hence also contributing to wealth of investors. India's stock market is far superior and far open, to the ones in China, helping in faster monetization of their business. I do remember reading here about the crazy patterns in stocks in China last year, hitting the circuit every day for weeks and months, because they were allowed to list at a much lower value with very low circuit breakers, growing at 5% everyday like clockwork. The same happened in the opposite direction earlier this year and the Chinese market regulator actually stopped trading in many stocks trying to prevent their fall.

The much maligned demonetization exercise carried out in end 2016 had at least one major positive - people started putting their money into mutual funds rather than buying gold. The size of Indian funds has grown manifold since then, and their contribution has bypassed that of foreign funds. With growing number of people entering the middle class with disposable incomes, this is only going to go up.

As for the people like Nirav Modi and Vijay Mallya, an Insolvency and Bankruptcy code was introduced in 2016 which has started showing results. Previously banks would spend years trying to get loans back from defaulters with very little coming back. This law allows quick bankruptcy and sale of assets while they still hold value.

There is certainly no harm in rise of billionaires if there is reasonable trickle down effect. And comparing the numbers with China is a bit apples to oranges as its a far more closed society with potentially many more unknown billionaires in the ranks of the Communist Party.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wealth inequality is always the problem.

</comment><comment><USER14> There is no Inheritance Tax in India;

1% people in India cannot own 60% wealth unless they're running Pyramid schemes [https://qz.com/843902/1-of-indians-now-hold-nearly-60-of- the...](https://qz.com/843902/1-of-indians-now-hold-nearly-60-of-the-countrys- wealth/)

</comment><comment><USER14> When will the Brahmin-Bania hegemony end?

[https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When...](https://www.livemint.com/Leisure/3u2QUPuXBEFPaBQXU2R8mJ/When- will-the-BrahminBania-hegemony-end.html)</comment>


Twtxt.net – Attempting to respark the twtxt community - <AUTHOR> https://www.prologic.blog/2020/07/20/ann-announcing-twtxtnet.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is a longer post on twtxt.net and the software behind it. What it is and why I did it. Feel free to discuss here or ask me anything :)</comment>


Building a Mass Surveillance Infrastructure Out of Light Bulbs - <AUTHOR> https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-future/building-mass-surveillance-infrastructure-out-light-bulbs

<comment><USER2> Reading this reminded me of Fred Woodworth, publisher of The Match!, a journal of "ethical anarchism," and his writing about how many people seemingly have a "preference for evil." Who could be so alienated from life that the prospect of universal surveillance would appeal?

I particularly liked this description from the 2013 Reuters article referenced in the OP:

 _The answer to what you could do, according to Sensity, is a global network of smart lights jam-packed with sensors for moisture, ambient light, seismic activity, radiation, wind, temperature, air quality, audio, MAC address tracking to detect cellphones, and yes, audio and high-def video, all joined together via a 5 gig wireless system that supports both point-to-point and mesh networks, connects to intermittent Internet backbone, and uploads the largest trove of planetary data the world has ever known up to the cloud._

Nice how they snuck in the really juicy bits at the end.</comment>


Uber 2.0 doesn't need a Travis 2.0 – even if he does change - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-not-returning-to-uber-changed-man-2017-6 <comment><USER2> "The real question, of course, is whether he'll return to Uber a changed man, or whether Travis 2.0 will just be a modified version of Travis 1.0."

Of course, he's going to be a "modified version" of himself. While the fundamentals of people's personalities don't change (IMHO), they can consciously make different choices. Without a doubt, Travis will be hyper- sensitive to the treatment of Women at Uber. It's hard to know if the cause of these problems will just manifest themselves in some other undesirable way. Time will tell.</comment>


Someone Just Paid 2100 ETH for Transaction Fees - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/asapta/someone_just_paid_2100_eth_for_transaction_fees/ <comment><USER3> This is just some miner trolling everyone by paying a big fee to themself.

I don't see any way for them to benefit from it or to launder money as others have suggested.

<comment><USER4> There are several similar "erroneous" transactions mined by different miners: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/asapta/some...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/asapta/someone_just_paid_2100_eth_for_transaction_fees/egsxq2m/)

So it's at least a bit more complicated than just one miner trolling everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This really highlights an advantage of centralisation. If those hundreds of thousands were stored in a bank account and a mistake was made transferring them, the bank would be obligated to fix it.

Decentralisation is cool, but it's not the solution to every problem.

</comment><comment><USER6> It could also be someone trying to screw with the mining incentives to break the network. When this block appears other miners have a strong incentive to ignore the block and try to create their own forked chain with the weird transaction. And if someone succeeds then all the other miners are in the same situation again. I guess it doesn't happen either because miners care about the health of the chain or they have rational expectations about other miners.

</comment><comment><USER7> could it be, that the actual hack is the following:

A sends money to B

fee goes to C

you can aim the fee going to C by only sharing the transaction with C and just wait till C gets the block

So far just creative way to send money from A to C - but what if B says the cover the fee (or just implemented it that way) - then B would provide a service/money to A thinking it got the amount from the fee.

I'm however not aware of a B that is sensitive to this kind of attack - <USER2> there might be a smart contract out there...

<comment><AUTHOR> > you can aim the fee going to C by only sharing the transaction with C and > just wait till C gets the block

If that's technically possible then that seems to be an easy way to launder money. You should probably split up your transaction and send your coins in a circle to obfuscate it.

<comment><USER7> the money launder does not make sense to me - everybody knows who mined the block and everybody knows where the fee goes... So it is perhaps not tracked by current systems but it can be tracked.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm guessing someone crafted their own raw TX, and mixed up the transferred amount and the fee paid. It's not the first time.</comment>


COINBASE Crap Can you say you need to communicate? - <AUTHOR>

I am really confused and frustrated. I sent my first ever BUY through Coinbase. I got my checking all set up. Made my purchase on 12-16-2013(an earth shattering .12 coins $100 bucks) No biggie. On 12-17-2013 the US funds left my bank account and off to coinbase. Alas... All I need to do is wait now until the 20th to spend my now 30 dollar loss due to market. Well here it is. The 20th of December somewhere in the world so I go to look at my account and there are no coins. Further inspection of this I find my transaction was canceled. No explanation. Just a big red canceled. Wheres my money now? I really want to be an advocate and intend to move WAY more than $100.00 into the bitcoin market place but seriously? Just a hundred dollar transaction that made one of their customers slightly irritated? Im glad I DIDN'T trust them with serious cash like the person who this happened to with $35,000.00 last week! Come on... GUYS! Don't take the fun out of all this! Figure it out! (Because if its not fun... It certainly wont be VIABLE!) <comment><USER2> Just FYI, pg has stated his intent to kill any more submissions to HN about problems with coinbase [1] although I expect most of the mods are asleep right now.

You'll probably have better luck on /r/coinbase where people are talking about putting together a class action suit.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936629](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6936629)

</comment><comment><USER3> Help me understand... you read the recent stories on Coinbase and _you still sent them money_?</comment>


Show HN: Solo Founders Slack Group - <AUTHOR> I've been a member of a Slack group for Solo Founders for about a month now, and it's been great. I check it out every day and there's usually interesting articles or discussions. Plus, it's always nice to be able to talk to other Solo Founders and get support, design feedback, product ideas, etcetera.
Some recent examples of topics we talk about:
* feedback on a pitch deck
* feedback on a blog post
* which hosting provider to use for what
* the best places to launch your product (hint - it's everywhere!)
We also maintain a spreadsheet with the websites we're working, where we are based, etcetera, so hopefully people can meetup if they're in the same city or product niche! If you'd like to join, message me (kravinskylev at gmail) or comment here with your email. Alternatively, you can request an invite at solofoundersteam.slack.com <comment><USER2> Looks like you left out the URL to the Slack group.

In any case, why don't you use Slackin [1] to allow interested people to become members?

[1] [http://rauchg.com/slackin/](http://rauchg.com/slackin/)

<comment><AUTHOR> I added the URL, I hadn't included it because I had been doing manual invites in the past.

I will check out Slackin, thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Please also add my email spamatheist [at] gmail [dot] com

</comment><comment><USER4> I would like an invite. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER5> Can you please add me akku.soni at gmail.

Thanks.</comment>


Show HN: I just made my first JavaScript library - <AUTHOR> https://www.npmjs.com/package/typecheckjs <comment><AUTHOR> When me and my friends were participating in a contest, half of the program's chrashes were because of wrongly passing arguments to another function. Reversing their order for example. I know, that's just plain stupid, but it has happend multiple times ;)

So I set out to make a library that makes type checking just a little bit easier. I hope that next time we take part in that competition, this will save us some time

What do you think of it?

<comment><USER2> From a community building standpoint, a more extensive explanation such as a multi-paragraph readme would be helpful. A link to a repository such as Github would also allow people to read the code without downloading it.

It is probably more work to share something because other people need information that lives inside the programmer's head.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brudgers, I took your advice to heart: I have opened a Github repo and made a readme file.

Thank you for your constructive comment!</comment></comment></comment>


The harrowing world of a trauma cleaner - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/sep/28/i-started-dry-retching-the-compassion-of-a-trauma-cleaner?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Tweet <comment><USER2> Link to the actual essay: [http://narrative.ly/the-secret-life-of-a-crime- scene-cleaner...](http://narrative.ly/the-secret-life-of-a-crime-scene- cleaner/)

The Guardian link is an interview with the author of the essay who talks about a cleaner that the author shadowed for a few years.

<comment><USER3> Almost seems like the admins should link to the essay instead; it is far better, although also far longer.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's different. The article I linked has its own purpose and merits/demerits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The tweet that brought this item to my attention raised it as an example of how to report sensitively on trans issues, which while there and valid (and I thought reasonably and calmly done) didn't actually seem to be the main content of the piece.

Does that angle make anyone feel differently about the piece?

<comment><USER4> It seemed like a wierd add on to the side.

It's like the article was about trauma cleaners, and more about the houses and stuff they deal with.

Then it switches tact to 'And who is Sandra, who does this work every day?'

Which is cool, but seems like a different article. Had awful childhood, has had a difficult time once they had left home.

The stuff around trans issues doesn't change how I felt about the article at all - which was, it seemed interesting, and it would make for some good before and after photos.

<comment><USER5> It's because it's a poorly written summary of the original, which is more about the person Sandra than her job.</comment></comment></comment>


That No SQL Thing – Document Databases - <AUTHOR> http://ayende.com/Blog/archive/2010/04/11/that-no-sql-thing-ndash-document-databases.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AyendeRahien+%28Ayende+%40+Rahien%29 <comment><USER2> I built something similar for a report generating project and only halfway through realized I was doing it "the nosql way".

</comment><comment><USER3> What about arbitrary joins across a big (100M doc) database?

<comment><USER4> A document database doesn't support joins and it's generally not a good idea. If you really need massive joining on data you use a relational database.

<comment><USER5> Document databases _could_ support joins, and occasionally I wish MongoDB would handle them for me. All the plumbing's there, they just need a query engine that can take advantage of it.

The great thing about document databases is that you don't have to normalize them to keep your data structured, but you can normalize if it makes sense. When you normalize, joins become really handy.</comment></comment></comment>


Zilliqa mainnet launch tomorrow: innovative use of sharding in a blockchain - <AUTHOR> https://decryptmedia.com/4854/zilliqa-mainnet-launch-blockchain <comment><USER2> Can't wait to see how it goes. Hopefully better than how Grin and Beam have done for their recent launches; nobody seems to care about those. The team behind Zilliqa is extremely knowledgeable, and the platform comes with a few interesting innovations.</comment>


DIY thermal vision shoots 360° panoramas - <AUTHOR> http://kurokesu.com/main/2017/04/18/diy-thermal-vision-shoots-360-panoramas/ <comment><USER3> An alternative is the 8x8 Grid-EYE from Panasonic, costs around £30. The Melexis equivalent is a 16x4 which costs about the same. Note you'll need to fill in a fairly lengthy export/release form to get hold of the Grid-EYE sensors. I haven't had any problems ordering them from Farnell, just tell them what your project is.

Both are fairly easy to talk to over I2C. You can make a passable wireless (low-res) thermal camera using something like a Particle Photon.

The MLX90640 isn't out until September unfortunately.

NB: Actually Farnell have the Grid-EYE for only £16, but the full range ( -20 to 100) model is backordered. You can still get the 0 to 80 version easily.

<comment><USER4> I used the Melexis MLX90260/MLX90261 back in December 2014 for some sensors research at work, and they were not very helpful and the documentation was appallingly ambiguous for important parts of the programming; plus, it offloads all the mathematics (not insignificant amounts of floating point and statistics) to your processor (not a good deal for embedded work). The output, once processed, though, was very accurate and provided for additional processing to make more use of the information than similar offerings.

The Panasonic Grid-Eye offering was much easier to use, and did not require additional processing power just to make use of the information.

<comment><USER3> I've used their single point IR sensor before, just had a look at the documentation for the 16x4 - holy hell that's a lot of steps just to get a calibrated sensor reading! Do they provide a C library for it, or are you expected to write and test your own?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice project! This reminds me of a beautiful series of blog posts of a guy who built a single pixel pinhole thermal camera:

First post: [http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=making1](http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=making1)

Sample image: [http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=pic](http://orbides.org/photobot.php?lng=eng&mode=pic)

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome project! Have to pimp it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> HN hug of death strikes again.

Cached version:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VQlpQWh...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VQlpQWhZ6OIJ:kurokesu.com/main/2017/04/18/diy- thermal-vision-shoots-360-panoramas/)

<comment><USER7> I already contacted the site owner. He is doing what he can right now ;-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Stress test! Seems like my web page needs some optimizations :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I built a similar, although much less sophisticated prototype at a hackathon a few months ago: [https://github.com/fauria/thermoman-360](https://github.com/fauria/thermoman-360)

In case someone finds it useful, I published a Seeed Studio recipe: [http://www.seeed.cc/Grove-MLX90614-p-1157.html](http://www.seeed.cc/Grove- MLX90614-p-1157.html) and adapted an Arduino library: [https://github.com/fauria/bildr-mlx90614](https://github.com/fauria/bildr- mlx90614) for the MLX90614.

<comment><USER9> Did Endesa / Opinno provided you with the hardware? Congrats for the prize, btw !

<comment><USER8> Thank you very much! No, I brought my own stuff, they provided the space, food, etc but no HW.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I read IR in the post, I thought, "well that's not thermal, is it?" and the thought was incorrect. FLIR's page [1] has a more understandable to me summary than StackExchange [2]. Also interesting is how lensing works with radiation in the IR spectrum [3].

 _Thermal cameras cannot use regular glass lenses, as glass will reflect thermal radiation rather than allowing the radiation to pass through the lenses. Commonly used materials for thermal lenses are Germanium (Ge), Chalcogenide glass, Zinc Selenide (ZnSe) and Zinc Sulfide (ZnS)._

1\. [http://www.flir.com/cvs/americas/en/view/?id=30052](http://www.flir.com/cvs/americas/en/view/?id=30052) 2\. [https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6869/what-is- the...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/6869/what-is-the- difference-between-thermal-and-infrared-imaging) 3\. [https://www.axis.com/fi/en/learning/web- articles/technical-g...](https://www.axis.com/fi/en/learning/web- articles/technical-guide-to-network-video/lenses-for-thermal-cameras)

</comment><comment><USER11> This guy did a hackier- and probably even cheaper - DIY camera a few month ago [http://www.niklasroy.com/project/195/DIY_thermal_imaging](http://www.niklasroy.com/project/195/DIY_thermal_imaging)

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really cool, given how expensive thermal cams can be. The main sensor used by the author (Melexis MLX90614) costs only ~14$ at my local retailer, you can probably get it a bit cheaper if you order online.

<comment><USER13> Flir and Seek have pretty good usb thermal cameras that attach to your smartphone for about $250 if you want something ready made

<comment><USER14> "Flir and Seek" sounds like the modern high-tech version of "Hide and Seek"... played using thermal cameras, of course.

<comment><USER13> ready or not, here I scan

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Not as much DIY, but for $260, Sparkfun has a nice looking 80 x 60 FLiR thermal imager: [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13233](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13233)

<comment><AUTHOR> Good camera candidate to build FAST thermal panorama rig!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Holy moly! Two axis stepper motor controller for $67?! (You should check out the store connected with that site.) This reminds me I really need to finish my single-scanline CdS cell camera project...

<comment><USER17> Yeah it's a puny Arduino based one though. Look at the heat sinks. Don't waste your money - unless you really need the space the best ones are the ones that look like this:

[http://www.leadshine.com/series.aspx?type=products&category=...](http://www.leadshine.com/series.aspx?type=products&category=stepper- products&producttype=stepper-drives&series=DM)

100 times better and they're not even any more expensive - $31 on aliexpress.

<comment><USER18> Wouldn't something like this be sufficient in many cases? [https://www.pololu.com/product/1182](https://www.pololu.com/product/1182)

<comment><USER19> It would depend on the amperage of the steppers involved, but sure - <USER2> I'm partial to the DRV8825 - it's considered a better driver in the 3d printer realm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always wonder: how do you find the parts you need to build such things, and how do you make sure they fit together without spending enormous amounts of time in various online parts shops?

<comment><USER21> In my experience, either you get exposed to various parts at your workplace/college, or you stand on shoulders of similar projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I always wanted to try to do this with RF wavelengths like 2.4 GHz.

<comment><USER23> Mapping WiFi Signals in 3 Dimensions: [http://hackaday.com/2015/02/17/mapping- wifi-signals-in-3-dim...](http://hackaday.com/2015/02/17/mapping-wifi-signals- in-3-dimensions/)

<comment><USER24> I'd forgotten about this project, really loved this!!</comment></comment></comment>


Are you a zombie? - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128221.700-existence-am-i-a-zombie.html?DCMP=NLC-nletter&nsref=mg21128221.700

<comment><USER2> >Or, he says, if the operators transported you to their reality (which, of course, may itself be a simulation).

This is what probably happens when hackers die and go to paradise, they are transported to another computer system. Except of course teleportation would have been much more interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also check out Robin Hansons blog: <http://www.overcomingbias.com/></comment>


Anatomy of the Digg Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://startupmeme.com/2007/05/02/anatomy-of-the-digg-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Screwed if they ban (community leaves, crisis, etc). Screwed if they don't (DMCA). They made the right choice: It's better to be taken down by the MPAA than to take yourself down by antagonizing your users.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agreed, I think Kevin Rose made the right choice. Banning the stories at this juncture would have been a suicide.

The users threatened to move on to Reddit, but this does not mean Reddit would have been a beneficiary, it would have to either allow this or show the users door once again.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Check out techmeme <http://www.techmeme.com/070502/p5#a070502p5>

cant help imagining how much press coverage Digg has got on this issue

<comment><USER3> So far, mainstream coverage has been sparse. Forbes has an article, and some of the British papers do, but the Washington Post and NYT don't have stories. If I had to guess, I'd say that this is huge news to people who know what Digg is, and that it won't attract the attention of anyone else.</comment></comment>