Philosopher: Why we should ditch religion - CNN.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/03/25/ted.sam.harris/index.html?hpt=P1 <comment><USER2> Sam Harris is saying some important things, namely that there is an _objective morality_. (See his TED talk: "Science can answer moral questions.")

Sam Harris is not an Objectivist, and he most likely did not come to his conclusion about morality via Objectivism. However, if you agree with him, I think you'll find that Objectivism develops these ideas much more completely.

Objectivists are atheists - we know that the supernatural (God, werewolves, ghosts, gnomes, etc.) do not and cannot exist, and what is good for man stems from his physical and mental requirements for survival (therefore it is objective.)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I couldn't agree more! '"We should be talking about real problems, like nuclear proliferation and genocide and poverty and the crisis in education," Harris said in a recent interview at the TED Conference in Long Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit group dedicated to "ideas worth spreading."'

<comment><USER3> Serious question: why are "nuclear proliferation", genocide, poverty and bad education bad things?

On what basis do you declare them to be bad? (Vs., say, the inevitable state of nature?)

How is the whatever that brings you to these conclusions not a "religion" in function if not style?

<comment><USER4> A religion attempts to relate a human being to the Eternal, to the Highest Things, to God, whatever. If there is anything to be called the Eternal, The Highest, God, etc, then true religion will get you right with it.

An ethics, or the most important part of one, relates a human being to _other human beings._ If there are other human beings (there are!), then a true ethics will get you right with them.

This definition, which is more or less traditional, is broad enough to allow egoism, Hobbesianism, etc. as forms of ethics - so that it would be intelligible to say that one gets right with others by taking adequate advantage of them.

Your suggestion that ethics (or the part of it that relates people to each other) must be some form of religion is in fact a reductive claim about religion. But it also threatens to destroy the specific character of the ethical.

It entails, for example, that one person does not wrong another by, say, killing her or lying to him, but only ever wrongs God, or the Eternal or the Most High. Killing someone on your account (supposing Christianity as the background religion) would not be formally different from, say, not going to church on Sunday; they're all just cases of going wrong by God.

Every human experience of grievance and anger at someone is a rejection of this nonsensical idea. The content of these passions is "He done me wrong", not "He done God wrong". The distinction was always been maintained in classical theology. The reduction of ethics to religion is a specifically American phenomenon, though it has precursors and echoes elsewhere.</comment></comment></comment>


It isn't Easy to Remove the GIL (2007) - <AUTHOR> http://www.artima.com/weblogs/viewpost.jsp?thread=214235

<comment><USER2> The actual title is "It _isn 't_ Easy to Remove the GIL", and everybody who knows about the GIL knows this. Guido changing his mind and saying otherwise would be big news, so this title "Guido:Easy to remove GIL" is kind of misleading.

Also, this is from 2007.

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventhough the time flies the situation seems to be remain the same.

[http://www.snaplogic.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-guido-van- ro...](http://www.snaplogic.com/blog/an-open-letter-to-guido-van-rossum-mr- rossum-tear-down-that-gil/)</comment></comment>


You Don't Need a Master Plan – You Just Need to Start - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-grind/you-dont-need-a-master-plan-you-just-need-to-start-9a3ec0455866#.jbuoh9x2n <comment><USER2> I like the advice. Would be great if this post had some more real life examples to back it up.

</comment><comment><USER3> Dupplicate - discussion is here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12947739)</comment>


How I made Uber-like app in no time with JavaScript and secret sauce - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@romanpushkin/how-i-made-uber-like-app-in-no-time-with-javascript-and-secret-sauce-94ef9120c7f6 <comment><USER2> As it's bee said many time before:

\- the difference between 'x-like' and 'x-dropin-replacent' is huge. Everybody can make a twitter clone in an hour. However, if you want to build the search feature, handle the conversations corner cases, have the same pixel perfect ui and scale, it takes years. \- the value of uber is not in the app.

<comment><USER3> No, the value is not in the app, it's in the data, the network effects, and the ability to connect drivers and riders.

Unfortunately, none of that matters if you live in Siberia because that's also not where the "value" is.

This is a great little application that solves a specific problem that a company like Uber never will. Critiquing it because "it's not that hard" and "that's not where the value is" really misses the point, and illustrates something of the rottenness in the Silicon Valley / VC approach.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Finally. Good job! It's a great idea for adoption by existing taxi services in undeserved regions and self-organized networks. I remember Mexico made some sort of Taxi riding app to make it safer for riders. It would check against a database the driver's license plate and have their picture as well so you can verify that the taxi was legit. With your app governments and other organizations have something to build on top of.</comment>


Ask HN: Approach to building small SaaS products for people with min upkeep - <AUTHOR> So here's an example problem that you can solve many ways(different stacks, services, pros cons).
* You want a basic interface, that can generate custom emails and you save templates. (Existing services already). Possible this does not need to be a full blown editor that has to deal with HTML security eg. contenteditable/XSS.
* It has auth, SSL, storage. Pretty basic.
My potential approaches:
Goto email that delivers(not spam) is through Mailgun plus 10K/mo free emails that's not bad.
- WP as a base
In the past I worked at a place that used WP as a base, since it has a lot of things built into it. I'm against it because for example above it's pretty overkill, not to mention the vulnerabilities/too easy for a target(since so many people using it, seems like a bad reason) but particularly random plugins you can use and known vulnerabilities like xmlrpc. I also don't keep up with it anymore regarding what changed on it.
But it's an option, it works.
- MyERN stack(current preferred)
I personally would use React for this(why) well I use it daily/like it(separate components). Backend is Node/Express/MySQL, auth is not bad(JWT).
The SSL thing, can have that for free Let'sEncrypt. Assumes you automate the 90 day renewal.
Hosting... I personally use VPS's from OVH, which you could extend further if you containerized them.
- Basic LAMP
The main thing is after it's built, how long does it last for? I can also use regular plain LAMP as well.
And I think a lot of it is personal choice, do you care/how much time do you want to spend on it. Can use Firebase or other services where you don't have to do much "backend wise".
I don't know... it would be cool though to have random little services like this with monthly charges eg. for maintenance/hosting/etc... keep it running. What are your thoughts?
edit: you can also go super "overkill" too with regard to job queues, uptime guarantees, etc... <comment><AUTHOR> One problem for me is if I get a request like that(to build above). I'm like "can you draw me a picture" lol... serious response. I'm unfortunately a "give me a design I'll build it" sort of person at this time mostly. I mean usually with clear enough feature definition, I can come up with a UI/UX on my own. Other thing which I think makes sense is I ask them what exactly they want it to do, then I can scope out the work/get an estimate on how long/much to complete.

Anyway there are a few examples like this where I lost out on work because I'm not a business man where I'm like "sure I can build you a car" and it's not just a box with wheels. I gotta be like "what type of engine/motor does it use?" "What do you think it looks like?" etc

edit: the other thing I'm bad at is I try too hard, try to show everything, all my capabilities... that's like the feature thing, too many features.

In the past I didn't know what value is, until I had to pay taxes for being self-employed ha. And based on my w2 rate wow, I can charge quite a bit but it still seems too much... but I suppose it's not from an individual's perspective rather a business perspective which has more money presumably.</comment>


Secure Messaging Scorecard - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard <comment><USER3> CryptoCat, the very same client that had an abysmal MitM attack exposed in which the author said "don't worry, it's on a prototype debug version" when infact it was on the deployed real-world version?

Yeah, nah.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7518761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7518761)

EDIT: I get that they're choosing more "user-friendly" and "freely available" applications for featured, however this is really only going to get seen by people who don't mind a bit of fiddling around. ChatSecure + Orbot I see as the most reliable on there, yes you'd stick out like a sore thumb (why are you using Tor?) however privacy-wise, you'll be just fine.

<comment><USER4> For the record, we aren't endorsing CryptoCat or any of the other tools that got 7/7: ChatSecure, TextSecure, Signal/RedPhone, SilentText, SilentPhone, or the ones that are close like Pidgin+OTR, Subrosa, Surespot, Telegram, Threema or iMessage.

Getting those scores is a sign that those projects are taking the right approach. Lots of codebases have horrific bugs, including OpenSSL, older versions of the SSL and TLS protocol itself. We believe that focusing the community on the task of moving the best projects forward is more constructive than

Testing the tools that are scoring highest for usability, and doing deeper examinations of their designs and codebases, is going to be a future component of this campaign.

<comment><USER3> That sounds like a good start - but I still think the way you're presenting this data is somewhat misleading. I agree that many codebases have horrific bugs, and ultimately exploits will eventually come to light in existing applications.. However instead of listing many different available applications, why not just list what works for "right now"?

For instance: "Encrypted so the provider can't read it?" on Skype's messaging just isn't true. If a subpoena was issued to Microsoft for conversation data, it'd be available.

I think it'd be better to stand up what does things right, and for everything else say why you're not listing them as effective. Approach is all well and good, but to an anonymous journalist/source being pursued a groups - <USER2> over execution could be the difference between freedom and imprisonment (or worse).

<comment><USER4> Sorry, I tried to reply here yesterday but was rate-limited out of the conversation :/

Our aim with this project is to not give advice about what works "right now", because we aren't convinced there are any secure messaging options right now, especially when the usability dimensions of security are taken seriously.

Instead, what we're trying to do is articulate the things that both large companies and open source projects need to be doing to move in the right direction.

Since this is phase 1 of a multi-part campaign, we're going to take a closer look at the usability and further security properties of tools that are doing well on the Scorecard in subsequent phases.

On Skype, before launch it wasn't clear clear to us whether the NSA's reported Skype intercept capability came from breaking or having Microsoft backdoor the crypto (which would mean they loose the second checkmark) or by having Microsoft hand out a false public key for the other party (which is possible due to the lack of a check mark in the third column). We have an ongoing conversation with Microsoft about this and are reviewing Skype's ratings at the moment.

<comment><USER3> Oh I see, so the intended outcome is to raise awareness with the general public and shed light on issues with existing software they use in hopes that the powers at be take notice?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Google Hangouts, iMessage, fb Chat "Audited"? Wish they could point readers to those audits..

Skype "encrypted so the provider can't read it" even though MS is a known NSA PRISM partner? Recent disclosures quite strongly suggest otherwise.

Also weird that they didn't sort these options by ranking. it took me a while to realize that they weren't displaying everything ranked by default (or the "winners"). to see that, choose 'all tools' from the drop-down.

<comment><USER6> Confirm: Skype doesn't deserve that second checkbox. It is now centralised, is a specific real-time PRISM source, including full chat logs, and does indeed read the messages going through it.

Try posting a URL on there and watching an anti-malware scanner ping it sometime. I don't know if they're still doing that, but they definitely were.

<comment><USER7> It deserves it as much as iMessage, doesn't it?

<comment><USER8> ?

My understanding of iMessage is end to end encryption. Where the endpoints are the separate certificates on each of your devices.

<comment><USER7> AFAIK, iMessage encrypts the message on your device. But Apple sends the list of keys to encrypt to. If that list is accurate and only includes the public keys of the target user, fine. But you've no way to verify this. I don't see how Skype is any worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is definitely a moment of weakness for EFF's credibility. They need experts to review these before going public. Many of these are demonstrably false.

<comment><USER4> We do have experts reviewing them. Which items are false?

<comment><USER10> Last I knew it was strongly suspected that Skype could look at your messages. imessage doesn't pass the mud puddle test indicating apple can look at your messages. Facetime should probably considered suspect but I don't know of any articles that demonstrate how the key exchange is handled. BlackBerry also modified their messaging app to be able to give info to LE. Telegram doesn't have open source server code and uses home rolled crypto. Was telegram even properly audited?

I would also recommend categories for what metadata is exposed; if messages are encrypted at rest on your device; cross platform ubiquity.

You should include bitmessage, and i2p-bote.

I am glad that this is only the first step but I do think that you shouldn't have done it alphabetically but rather by score and usability.

<comment><USER4> It wasn't clear to us whether the NSA intercepts Skype by breaking the crypto, or by compelling injection of false public keys in order to perform a man in the middle attack. In the latter case it's the third checkmark (lack of ability to verify keys) that's their users' undoing. We're talking to Microsoft about that at the moment, and may revise that entry.

There's a weird case around iMessage and any tool that is provided by an OS vendor. I think we need to add a note about this, but in those cases that company could inject malware or a backdoor either in the messaging system or somewhere else in the OS. Since we're trying to tackle one hard problem at a time (secure messaging but not secure operating systems and software distribution) there should be an extra caveat about offerings from OS vendors.

The only tool that gives strong metadata protection right now is Pond, and we aren't listing unusable tools that aren't out of beta yet. We considered but haven't yet included bitmessage for the same reason.

<comment><USER5> question asked in good faith: does it really matter to a given user exactly how adversaries are successfully attacking Skype? shouldn't some of the things that we've already seen disclosed--e.g. that NSA gained significant, at-scale capabilities against Skype right after it was acquired by Microsoft--be enough to invalidate essentially any crypto-related promises the company may assert, or even those that an audit might support? if not, i think it's at least worth making a distinction between products with known backdoors and products without them. today's TAO attack is tomorrow's phd thesis, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I didn't think the EFF were this… misguided.

> 2014-11-04 : Snapchat app has audits from an internal security team.

That being enough for the "yes the app is audited" tick, plus CryptoChat looking to any passer by of this site as being A-OK is really concerning.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some extra info for commenters in this thread:

This Scorecard is phase 1 of our multi-stage campaign for Secure and Usable Crypto. We believe these criteria are necessary for any strong security tool, though meeting them doesn't guarantee that a system is perfect.

Subsequent phases of the project will focus on usability (which is a huge problem for activists and journalists who try to use encryption), metadata protection, openness and federatability of protocols, and much deeper audits of the design and implementation security of the software that is scoring highest.

<comment><USER12> Who reviewed this scorecard for technical accuracy, and who reviewed the methodology?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> While verifying some of the claims of the EFF's scoreboard, I discovered a website which scores programs by their policy decisions and security [1].

I also find it interesting that mumble wasn't mentioned in this secure messaging scorecard, but since this is the first step of a multi-phase project, I imagine the EFF will be updating it.

[1]. [https://openintegrity.org](https://openintegrity.org)

</comment><comment><USER14> Was there a particular reason Tox ([https://tox.im/](https://tox.im/)) wasn't included?

<comment><USER15> I second that. First thing I looked for was how they rate tox. Hopefully it gets added :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I just want to mention a highly underrated/undervalued program in this arena: Murmur/Mumble.

It's open source, easily self-hostable, and both chat and VOIP are encrypted, vis TLS and OCB-AES respectively. The downside is that it is not end-to-end, and a compromised server would compromise communications, which is why I like to self host on something I've hardened myself as opposed to buying the service from somewhere else.

Also, it can also be pushed over TOR if you want...

I highly encourage anyone who uses teamspeak, ventrillo, etc, to switch to mumble. I use it to keep up with friends and family from all over the world.

</comment><comment><USER17> They really need a wiki with talk pages for each of these applications...

EDIT: As in, I'd like to know what the details on each analysis is. And I'd also like this to be more like a living document.

</comment><comment><USER18> Skype is definitely not safe since Microsoft purchased them and replaced the super-nodes with MS owned servers

</comment><comment><USER19> How good these are from a security point of view seems (roughly) inversely proportional to their popularity.

<comment><USER20> Which begs the question, in what direction is the causation? Are less secure apps more popular because they're a better user experience? Are popular apps less likely to be secure because they're owned by large companies less inclined to give up precious access to information? A bit of both? Or something else entirely? Answering this question is the first step to making truly secure communication actually USED in day to day life.

<comment><USER19> I think it's a question of focus. The more secure apps are a product of focus on security. The less secure ones are a product of focus on marketing and user experience.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Something that worries me is that while all the attributes the scorecard uses are good, there's at least one other I care about (in addition to those listed).

Uploading my contacts.

Even TextSecure does it. I'm still looking for something that gets a deserved perfect score and doesn't go near my contacts.

<comment><USER22> TextSecure does it in a nice way: [https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact- discovery/](https://whispersystems.org/blog/contact-discovery/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Thanks, I want to know about wechat. [http://www.wechat.com/en/](http://www.wechat.com/en/). Can any one provide the secure messaging score ?

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Skype still encrypted end-to-end? I thought that a few months ago, Microsoft started running all Skype calls through Microsoft servers, decrypted.

</comment><comment><USER25> I wonder why they didn't include telegram?

<comment><USER26> It's there if you select "All Tools" instead of "Featured Tools" in the dropdown.

<comment><USER27> Thanks!

(Why isn't Telegram featured?)

<comment><USER12> Telegram? They buried _PGP_.

<comment><USER3> A blog post on the protocol built by Telegram: [http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand- bac...](http://unhandledexpression.com/2013/12/17/telegram-stand-back-we-know- maths/)

 _sigh_

<comment><USER28> Side rant: I really hate that people conflate expertise in math with expertise in crypto. Dozens of completely useless cryptosystems are published every year by talented mathematicians.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Thanks to the EFF for doing this!

</comment><comment><USER30> The design of this page is so bad! ahaha

Anyway, helpful tip: you can chose "All Tools" instead of "Featured tools" on the top left of the beautiful table</comment>


SiFive open sources RISC-V chips - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sifive/freedom <comment><USER2> They're also doing silicon: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1)

Along with: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v](https://www.crowdsupply.com/onchip/open-v)

The fifth RISC-V workshop is on right now and being live blogged at: [http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2016/11/fifth-risc-v-workshop- da...](http://www.lowrisc.org/blog/2016/11/fifth-risc-v-workshop-day-one/)

<comment><USER3> Neat. Does that board run linux? Can I hook up a screen, mouse and keyboard?

<comment><USER4> No. The SiFive part is a microcontroller -- it has 16 KB of RAM.

<comment><USER3> Huh, I thought that was the cache. 320Mhz, but 16KB Ram. That seems like an odd combination.

Quake ran on a 75MHz cpu, but needed 8MB or ram.

<comment><USER5> Quake was targeted on a CISC-design general purpose CPU, on a very different process from modern ones. Those factors likely explain much of the difference in clock speed. They just couldn't make 320MHz parts as easily then. Even modern x86 CPUs are RISC inside and have microcode to execute the CISC instructions.

These particular RISC-V parts are targeting the microcontroller marketplace where there's little RAM required.

<comment><USER6> It's a bit silly to be talking RISC and CISC these days. The big idea behind RISC is to spend your transistor budget on minimizing the cycle time of a smaller core set of instructions.

However, transistor count has been doubling for quite some time, and clock frequency has gone up by a factor of 100.

The idea behind RISC no longer applies. This is observed in the numbers and the fact that every processor manufacturer has been adding video engines, crypto engines and vector units to their processors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One of the designs runs on a $99 evaluation FPGA board -- not so bad for something available today.

They have actual chips/boards shipping in December & February: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sifive/hifive1)

</comment><comment><USER5> Sounds like a super neat uC. Is anyone planning a generally available RISC-V with typical ARM or x86-sized caches and memory controllers?

RISC-V is open, but so is the SH-esque j-core. Why is RISC-V so much more popular?

<comment><USER8> That's what we're working towards with [http://www.lowrisc.org](http://www.lowrisc.org)

<comment><USER5> I can't seem to find what specs the SoC(s) might have on the site. We're 1yr+ away from being able to buy these parts, right?

Also, is anyone scaling the RISC-V up to compete with Xeon/Opteron?

<comment><USER2> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Adopters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Adopters)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I'm convinced RISC-V has a strong future. Tons of momentum, and lots of well- managed projects are building on top of it. Exciting times!

<comment><USER3> Need arm Chromebook-like laptop that's risc-v + Linux

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A beautiful thing.

I can think of plenty of markets which would be glad to see this from their SoC vendor.

</comment><comment><USER10> Does someone use Chisel language for FPGA programming? I'm using Verilog for my Altera DE1-SoC because it used in "Computer Principles and Design in Verilog HDL".

</comment><comment><USER11> Super sweet! Gonna get one :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Where is the management engine (ME)?</comment>


The Apple Watch Is Time, Saved - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/06/the-apple-watch-is-time-saved/#tmhmdj:T7bO <comment><USER2> >There are a lot of interesting details, some of which we'll get into. But, by far, the biggest recurring theme is how little you use your iPhone once you have one.

Experienced the same thing with the pebble, i don't think this is anything particularly unique to the apple watch.

> One user told me that they nearly "stopped" using their phone during the > day; they used to have it out and now they don't, period. That's insane when > you think about how much the blue glow of smartphone screens has dominated > our social interactions over the past decade.

Whoa...a little too much hype.

> it takes your heart rate periodically ... which could offer major benefits > to health applications and other contextual processes.

I see similar lines like this a lot, are there any apps out or scheduled to help make this feature sound less like what i read in a pamphlet at the secretary of state.

> There will be no in-app dropdown notifications or constant pinging while > it's off your wrist. Push notifications also cease when the battery reaches > 10 percent. Those decisions speak to the care with which Apple is handling > notifications.

More like for battery life.

> People that have used the Watch extensively say that the touch targets are > actually very precise and sensitive.

wouldn't expect anything else from apple

> Pressing and holding the crown activates Siri, which sources have said works > incredibly well on the Watch

agent 99..agent 99, come in

> And that is the target market of the Apple Watch. Not "rich people" (though > there's a model specially for them), not "tech geeks" and not "Apple > fanatics." It's people who want more time, and that is a very large target.

wut?

</comment><comment><USER3> I heard rumours that appple watch would delegate all processing to your iphone, in order to preserve battery life, and thus only become a dumb interface. That leaves me with a question since my iphone itself only has a limited battery life.. Or maybe the watch will be completely unusable without an iphone anyway. Aka no network access, not even wifi, and no local app, or game or anything to be used without a phone.

But then, why the expensive price, just for an input/output dumb device ?

</comment><comment><USER4> If the Apple Watch is expected to make you use your iPhone less then why did Apple spend so much time making the iPhone larger?That doesn't make a lot of sense.

<comment><USER5> You can now have a big unwieldy phone. When you run around, you use your watch's small screen. When you get home, or on a train, or in a café, you can pull out your giant tablet-phone and watch HD content on it.</comment></comment>


The World of Modular Synthesizers (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr13/articles/modular-synths.htm <comment><USER3> The documentary I Dream of Wires (2014) [1, 2] provides both an extensive and entertaining summary of the history and state of the art in modular synthesisers.

There is some extremely cool stuff coming out today. Buchla is still making insane gear like this rhythm generator [3, 4]. Some smart friends in London have made a programmable guitar pedal / module that can run Pure Data patches, they also have an Emscripten + Web Audio API powered sharing platform for same patches [5].

[1] [http://www.idreamofwires.org/](http://www.idreamofwires.org/)

[2] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3636334/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3636334/)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7IVvYWT69g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7IVvYWT69g)

[4] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OE8qHrRx-g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OE8qHrRx-g)

[5] [http://hoxtonowl.com](http://hoxtonowl.com)

Edit: [5] is open source software, firmware and hardware

Edit re software vs. hardware: Besides as has been mentioned that comparing software and hardware is a bit silly, I think it's missing the point to argue in favour of one or the other. A few unordered reasons why:

> Learning through making and programming together complement each other in a > way only those who've experienced it truly understand.

> It's never been cheaper to buy synth hardware, esp. for the sake of learning > e.g. Arduino, MakeyMakey, littleBits. And, it's never been easier to go to a > hack space and get taught how to put a synth together (see workshops on > [http://musichackspace.org](http://musichackspace.org), more springing up in > Europe at least – where are you, US music hackers?)

> Just like in most fields, the boundaries between software and hardware are > becoming less distinguishable, as the Hoxton Owl project [5] clearly shows. > This makes it the most exciting time to be interested in both music software > and hardware!

</comment><comment><USER4> Over the past 3 years I've assembled a 21U eurorack modular (in addition to my otherwise relatively large synth collection) and it's been the best thing ever.

Freedom from traditional keyboards (I generally use a Makenoise Rene + Pressure Points, although occasionally will use a Moog Voyager as a controller) has really opened things up for me.

I know that I'll never get the same sound again, and everything feels very fresh and creative. While I don't think I ever made a 'original' sound on guitar, I think that many days I am hearing things that might actually be new, or at least relatively unexplored.

Its also overall slowed down my wants to buy additional synths, effects pedal, etc since I have nearly every possibility in this. The only significant purchase I've done in about a year aside from more modules has been an Eventide H3000.

Plus, it looks badass. I've even performed with it live a few times. I've wanted one since circa 2002, but only recently could afford it. Totally worth it.

Sounds at soundcloud.com/tibbon

<comment><USER5> > Eventide H3000.

What an absolutely legendary machine. This is a classic example of where the plugin version can't compete with hardware of what 30 years ago? Although the plugin is still good, it just doesn't come close to a real H3000.

I actually just bought UAD emulation of the first Eventide harmoizer (H910), and it's pretty amazing. But I haven't been able to compare it to the original like I have with the H3000, so can't say how close it is to the original.

<comment><USER6> A bit OT, but how are you liking the UAD stuff? I know a few folks who have made the leap and feel pretty happy with it. Been thinking of snagging one of the new Apollos.

<comment><USER5> I massively rate them. Had the Quad PCI for a few years now and it changed my productions overnight. What's good is you get all of the plugins installed and you can click demo to try any of them out immediately. Some emulations are exact (for example EMT250 reverb, Pultec EQ), some are close and have the correct tone but aren't the same as the originals (SSL channel strip for example), some are quite far away but are useful in their own right (mostly the tape plugins like the Ampex and Studer).

This is my full set:

Eventide H910 Harmonizer

AMS RMX16 (reverb)

Oxford Inflator

Oxford EQ

Ampex ATR-102

Lexicon 224

Studer A800

Precision Enhancer Hz

Precision Enhancer KHz

Precision Maximizer

Precision Multiband Compressor

Precision Limiter

EMT140 reverb

EMT250 reverb

Moog Filter

SPL Transient Designer

Roland RE-201 Space Delay

Roland Dimension D

Teletronix LA-2A Compressor

1176LN limiter

1176SE limiter

Pultec EQ

Cambridge EQ

DreamVerb

RealVerbPro

A good friend of mine has a lot of the real gear listed above, and even has a Series B SSL desk, so that guided me to the purchases, but also allowed me to do direct comparisons. I like the way they essentially re-build the machine's components in code (so they'll measure the input and outputs of all of the real components at various energy levels and then emulate them and 'plug' them together as code modules, pretty impressive.

Some plugins really take a lot of juice though, especially some of the newer ones where they're being more ambitious (Eventide, Studer, Ampex, AMX). I am considering getting an Octo to go alongside the Quad. That should last me a few years.

Offloading the plugin processing is very very handy as well, I rarely get the audio glitches because of a lack of CPU like I used to before.

So yeah, I recommend them highly.

<comment><USER6> Cheers, thanks for the insight! :)

<comment><USER5> No problem :) I forgot to say, that until yesterday I hadn't ever run out of juice with the Quad and thought 'that's too soon'. It's usually because I have a channel-strip plugin on every channel, got mastering plugins on the master, and tons of effects buses. The Eventide was the first plugin that pushed the DSP so much that half-way through a track I ran out of DSP - that's the only reason I'm considering upgrading.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you want to mess around with a software based modular synth that tries to replicate more expensive hardware ones in a cheap package I highly suggest the Caustic app. It's free for desktop OSs and cheap for mobile devices and has a great community.

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

<comment><USER8> +1 on the Caustic recommendation. The mobile version is perfect when you want to explore ideas without being chained to your workstation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Moog just released a relatively inexpensive semi-modular [http://www.moogmusic.com/products/semi- modular/mother-32](http://www.moogmusic.com/products/semi-modular/mother-32)

<comment><USER10> This guide is decent as well if you're interested in getting an analog synth: [http://thesynthesizersympathizer.blogspot.com/2015/03/buying...](http://thesynthesizersympathizer.blogspot.com/2015/03/buying- your-first-analog-synthesizer.html)

Not modular, but I've been really happy with my Sub 37. In retrospect I could have gone the fully digital route with a MIDI keyboard, it's a cheaper and safer way to start if you're not sure that's your cup of tea. Having an actual physical thingy to tweak can be pretty magical though, especially once you figure out what the dozens of knobs do and how things interact.

Would also recommend [http://www.syntorial.com/](http://www.syntorial.com/) to get started in synths.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is very cool. I'm just starting to get into synths myself. Anybody who wants to take a deep dive into synths should take a look at the Synth Secrets series [0] from Sound on sound. ~60 articles on what synth is and how it works in great detail.

[0]- [http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm](http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/allsynthsecrets.htm)

<comment><USER12> Seconding this. Gordon Reid's _synth Secrets_ tutorials are unsurpassed by any book or course that I know of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The way I got into synthesis was with Jeskola Buzz. [0] You can still use it today... Free and community-driven, it has lots of modules, some are unique and brilliant, just as many are dodgy and likely to crash.

In terms of making electronic music, it's far easier to stick to a simple sample-driven workflow than to actually dive into synth programming, but there's a special joy in dialing in exactly the timbre you want.

[0] [http://www.buzzmachines.com/](http://www.buzzmachines.com/)

</comment><comment><USER14> A fun alternative is to build everything yourself for free, from scratch, as an app! Shameless plug: [1]

Some resources for getting started down this path: [2] [3] [4]

If anybody wants to chat about audio synthesis on iOS, feel free to get in touch :)

[1] [https://github.com/aclissold/twyst](https://github.com/aclissold/twyst)

[2] [http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines- signals/](http://jackschaedler.github.io/circles-sines-signals/)

[3] [http://mkonrad.net/projects/ios_audio_synth.html](http://mkonrad.net/projects/ios_audio_synth.html)

[4] [https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MusicA...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/MusicAudio/Conceptual/CoreAudioOverview/Introduction/Introduction.html)

<comment><USER15> Wow, it's crazy to see just how little CoreAudio code you actually need to get up and running - I was always intimidated by this and have always resorted to frameworks (first TheAmazingAudioEngine [1], now AudioKit [2]) in the past.

Has it been easy working this way?

[1] [http://theamazingaudioengine.com/](http://theamazingaudioengine.com/)

[2] [http://audiokit.io/](http://audiokit.io/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Nice, I've got an Arrick 22 slot modular synth[1] which I keep thinking I'll expand to a 33 slot unit so that I can add his sequencer too it. I've always enjoyed reaching in and tweaking the sound mid-pipeline which seemed hard to do on the Korg M1.

[1] [http://www.synthesizers.com](http://www.synthesizers.com)

</comment><comment><USER17> This is pretty cool for rich people, for whom buying half a dozen US$300 synthesizer modules is no big deal — the kind of people who buy new mechanical Rolex watches every year; but it seems to me like anyone with an income under US$1M/year might be better served with SuperCollider or Pure Data (free) running on a netbook (US$300) and maybe a MIDI keyboard (like the Keystation 49, US$100) and a MIDI or USB knob box (like the nanoKONTROL2, US$60).

SuperCollider and Pure Data already come with an awful lot of the modules you can buy as analog hardware. You don't have to buy them. You can just use them.

Now, if we were talking about an electric guitar or something, this comment would be sort of out of order. But the whole point of modular synths is that you want to spend time fiddling around and plugging parts together. If you want to do that, come to the software side. We have _WAY BETTER PARTS_ to plug together. You can make them sound like _anything_ , including analog synth modules. _And_ you can get inspired by how _other people_ plugged them together because you can upload your patches to web sites. It's nothing less than a vastly improved substitute to analog modular synths.

Back in the 1970s, computers were too slow to do much in software. Even the famous Deep Note, from the 1980s, used hardware oscillators under computer control (although it's a fantastic example of the expressive power software gives you). A PC in the 1970s might be able to manage 300,000 instructions per second, and maybe 10,000 floating-point operations. Now you can do literally _ten billion_ floating-point operations per second on an off-the-shelf CPU, a _million_ times faster, or eight _trillion_ on an off-the-shelf GPU, almost a _billion_ times faster. This brings a lot of amazing stuff into reach that wasn't before, including even things like RF modulation and demodulation.

RF downconversion, though, still takes analog electronics. Computers still aren't fast enough.

I've done some work with Diego Alberti on real-time music synthesis on a microcontroller. Because the real-time audio synthesis wasn't taxing enough for the CPU, we decided to generate a composite video signal in software visualizing the waveform, too: [https://github.com/kragen/ar_bytebeat](https://github.com/kragen/ar_bytebeat)

He carried this work forward, and it is currently on exhibit at the +CODE exhibit at the Centro Cultural General San Martín until the end of this week, if you're in Buenos Aires.

With that kind of thing, hopefully you won't have to spend US$300 on a netbook to experiment with software synthesis. Check out jarmitage's comment at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10540209](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10540209), which mentions running Pure Data patches on a computer embedded in a guitar pedal!

<comment><USER18> For me, a really important part of the process is the tangibility. I'm not a analog purist but I do find that one knob per function and no menu diving works much better for me creatively. Unfortunately most digital/software synths cant resist the temptation to cram everything into menus.

As for the price. Modular isn't cheap but you hardly need to be a millionaire. You can get a fully functional starting setup for $500 and add from there as you can afford it.

<comment><USER19> Isn't it possible to just buy a set of knobs/buttons/etc and use that to control the software?

<comment><USER20> Not easily. The big problem - the one that has never been solved - is that software needs a programmable interface with fixed hardware controllers/knobs/sliders, but dynamic labelling. You can certainly imagine using modern controller and display technology to build such a thing - <USER2> mixers have had similar features for years - but the price is always going to be prohibitive.

And there's no standard display API for softsynths. (NI have tried to produce one called NKS, but it's early days.)

And softsynths can have hundreds of parameters. Showing them all at once is always going to be a challenge. So most controller products either show nothing at all, or show a handle of items - like eight or so. Which are different for every synth.

If a softsynth supports OSC you can fake the tactility on an iPad, but the small size is a problem; I expect the Pro will be better, but still limited.

Music certainly works better when it's tactile, but - as someone who used to design and build modular hardware, occasionally for cash - I now find modulars rather ridiculous, and certainly just as limiting in their own ways as any other technology.

They make great toys, but IMO the _spirit_ of modulars - build completely new things to make new music - is a lot more alive in software than hardware now.

<comment><USER17> I feel like it isn't that hard to hook something like the BCR2000 or nanoKONTROL2 up to Pd, and then you can make labels for the knobs using paper stickers and a pen. Then you get to choose which few dozen parameters you want to have at your fingertips. And then you get a lot more tactility than an iPad. I also know a guy who drove his synth from a Wacom tablet, giving him X, Y, and pressure axes with low-latency, high-precision control, but no haptic feedback like the BCR2000 gives you.

<comment><USER20> That's fine when you have a single patch/synth, but most projects have anywhere between a handful and tens of different synths.

Novation have made automap systems for about ten years now. NI have made them for a couple of years.

But aside from touch panel toys like the iPad and the Lemur, and some high-end mixers, I still haven't seen a system with more than eight knobs/digital labels.

It wouldn't be hard to design one. Unfortunately in a market where $200 is a lot for a controller, it's hard to make a project like that profitable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Take a look on Bast Instrument: [http://www.bastl- instruments.com/](http://www.bastl-instruments.com/)

Their stuff looks interesting and you can even buy DIY kits. They even have modules for servo motors, solenoids and other stuff that you can interact with real world.

They are also my office neighbours.

</comment><comment><USER22> More please! I have just been introducing my daughter to the old-school Moog synths. Some of these new modules are pretty crazy, all analog or digital/analog hybrids, doing everything the designers can think of to cram into a module. Pretty inspiring for tinkerers.

<comment><USER23> [http://wiard.com/](http://wiard.com/)

They have some pretty far-out stuff. Woggle Bug and Waveform City are outstandingly weird in a very creative way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The fact that music.razerzone.com exists means there is little hope for democratized electronic music-making being anything but a male money dump, much like video games. Razer will probably start making bike computers next.

<comment><USER25> Not sure what you're on about... but women spend the same or more on video games depending on the market as men [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]. There are so many free apps for making electronic music now, as well as tutorials, kits, schematics, discussion lists, workshops, vids on yt, it's out of control.

[ 1 ] [http://www.themarysue.com/women-gamers-spend-equal-on- games/](http://www.themarysue.com/women-gamers-spend-equal-on-games/)

[ 2 ] [http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/141/videoga...](http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/141/videogames.asp)

[ 3 ] [http://www.businessinsider.com/women-and-mobile- games-2014-8](http://www.businessinsider.com/women-and-mobile-games-2014-8)</comment></comment>


Meet the Meerkat - <AUTHOR> https://system76.com/desktops/meerkat <comment><USER2> I appreciate that you have a fair number of choices in building these systems, but they are about double the price of similar NUC boxes.

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh boy, a rebranded NUC. And not even one of the fancy new ones with i7 processors.

I can't really justify buying this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Jesus that's overpriced.</comment>


What voltage for the all-DC house? - <AUTHOR> http://hackaday.com/2017/03/06/what-voltage-for-the-all-dc-house/ <comment><USER2> You do not want to distribute low-voltage power through in-houe wiring like the ones normally used when connected to the network.

Low voltage wiring is perfectly viable, but it requires shorter paths, what require rethinking where it runs trough, where appliances are located, and where you have outlets. It means losing some freedom, so it is not something people opt-in, but a down-side of other choices people may want to make.

And if you did one of those choices, you will have the voltage forced onto you already, so no point asking.</comment>


New capabilities and entrepreneurialism are making space exciting again - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/technology-quarterly/2016-25-08/space-2016 <comment><USER2> I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the article. It contains a number of interesting details I had not heard before and I follow the industry to some degree.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Interesting times ahead for the entire industry.

In the grand scheme of things, according to the article, SpaceX may be getting the lion's share of the attention (at least on this site) but innovation in "smallsats" and small rockets is the more likely path to revolutionising and democratising space.

So many projects to keep an eye on: Blue Origin, Rocket Lab, Virgin Galactic, and the oh so cute Firefly (I want them to succeed based on their name alone!). [http://infographics.economist.com/TQ/images/scrollchart_bg.p...](http://infographics.economist.com/TQ/images/scrollchart_bg.png)

And so many satellite companies … OneWeb [http://oneweb.world/](http://oneweb.world/) being (perhaps) the most intriguing.

The next five years are going to be very very interesting.

edit: SpaceX caveat; Of course if it is the long term mission of Musk & co. to enable humanity to go multi-planetary then they are in a different ball-game to all but national operators really …

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Can someone say when ROI from space will happen?

<comment><USER5> I suppose it will be when weather satellites can tell us when a hurricane is inbound, and when navigation satellites can tell us our location at any time, and when communications satellites can provide us with near-instantaneous bandwidth from anywhere in the world, and when imaging satellites provide us with mapping services that improve everything from agriculture to urban planning to national defence.

so... somewhere between 20-40 years ago, I'd reckon?</comment></comment>


Amazon sold smartplug uses mac address as remote password - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R2JVRCO8T1ON0R?ref_=glimp_1rv_cl <comment><AUTHOR> Meaty part from review: "This is a huge problem. If anybody knows the MAC address of one of your sockets, they can control it from anywhere in the world. You can't set a password to stop them, and a normal home router configuration won't block this. You need to explicitly firewall off the server (it's 184.108.40.206) in order to protect yourself. Again, this is completely unrealistic to expect for a home user, and if you do this then you'll also entirely lose the ability to control the device from outside your home."</comment>


Want to be a leader? Wash the Dishes When Nobody Else Will.  - <AUTHOR> http://thesash.me/wash-the-dishes-when-nobody-else-will <comment><USER2> Want to be a great leader? Work hard to develop extraordinary skills. Become an independent thinker and have the courage to follow your ideas. Show respect to others and never think more highly of yourself than you ought. Avoid bad habits of sloth, dissipation, dishonesty, and other qualities that would cause others to lose respect for you. Set goals that challenge you to do your best and follow diligently after them. Apply all this consistently to every part of your life, always striving to better yourself in even the smallest ways while maintaining integrity.

In my student days, I worked in restaurants. I worked with a guy who was a Mexican immigrant, who washed dishes with me for several years in a busy restaurant. He worked hard. He was always upbeat. He never complained. And he radiated a sense of joy all about him. Why? Because he was content with what he was doing while obviously striving to improve himself at the same time. He would often sing while he worked. And that was inspiring. That man might never make a mark in the broader society but I could see he would be a fine leader wherever his life circumstances took him.

These same qualities can be found in the startup world, as nicely reflected in this piece. But they are by no means limited to those who seek success in business. They are life qualities. It profits us all to follow them.

<comment><USER3> _"That man might never make a mark in the broader society but I could see he would be a fine leader wherever his life circumstances took him."_

Ah the leadership question...

Being a few years past high school, it's interesting to look at many people who _seemed_ like leaders but never made it.

Some times it was life-circumstances. But I think think there is also a too- great a willingness to _merely work hard at what presented itself_.

There much that has been said on this but it's worth mentioning that to reach a certain level of leadership, while you can continue leading a bit by example, you have to be mainly _willing to delegate_ a lot of the actual work. Essentially, you have to be able to _use_ people. It's more than positive vibes.

In software, in particular, inspiration has never been part of the equation for any good manager manager I've had. Instead, saying what mattered and _getting out of the way_ has always been key. Don't lead technical people by example. Don't clean our bathrooms or our code. "Mr. Energy" would not be welcome here. And I've had too many managers who were bad because they never learned the lesson that their job was no longer coding or even "inspiring" but organizing and bureaucracy-hacking.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not all leaders are managers. Some leaders lead quietly from behind their desks while their managers stay out of the way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> All these "now you're the dishwasher, gg idiot" comments I think are taking this too literally.

We've all probably been "the nice guy" in some situation that did some mundane/tedious task, ended up being that guy forever, and ended up resentful and vowed never to do it again. I don't think this is the point here though.

In my opinion, the easiest way to command respect is to not think about commanding respect. If there's a problem, just solve it, and your peers and subordinates will respect you an order of magnitude more than if you just tried to motivate them with some "problem-solving" Power Point slides.

One of my favorite examples I've seen of "washing the dishes:"

\- At a startup myself and four other engineers wanted attend a conference across town. Our cab was running late and we were in danger of missing the first sessions. The CEO chucked his keys at us (he drove a minivan) and his credit card and said, "take my car, it needs gas though so fill it up with my card on the way back."

Did we expect we now had unlimited use of this guy's car forever and abuse it? Of course not. Did we totally respect him for trusting five guys to drive his car and made sure we had enough gas? Yes. Did we notice that he didn't even use the corporate credit card because only about 10% of that full tank of gas would be used for work purposes? Yes.

<comment><USER5> _"In my opinion, the easiest way to command respect is to not think about commanding respect. If there's a problem, just solve it, and your peers and subordinates will respect you an order of magnitude more than if you just tried to motivate them with some "problem-solving" Power Point slides."_

It depends on the size of the organization you're in. Sad and irrational as it may seem, people are basically just monkeys, and we react most strongly to shiny, noisy things (which is part of the reason our society seems to tolerate 'social media experts' and celebrate certain bloggers...but I digress.) If there's too much background noise, it's hard to earn respect if you're quiet and industrious. Take a close look at any big company (including "engineering driven" companies), and you'll find that the upper echelons of the organization are dominated by people who ruthlessly self-promote. Don't misunderstand: at the good companies, those folks also "do the dishes" -- they're just very strategic about the timing and promotion of their dish- washing initiatives.

The problem with being the Guy Who Quietly Gets Things Done is that if you do your job too well, you don't get noticed. If you don't get noticed, you don't get rewarded, even if you're doing a kick-ass job. It's usually easier to get noticed for being quiet and reliable in a small group of people, but once you've got more than a few monkeys in the cage, it gets very noisy and it's hard to stand out, even amongst your small group of peers.

<comment><USER6> I suppose that we'll have a revival in the way we measure employees. Not everything can be put into neat metrics but there are probably lot of factors and outputs we haven't even begun to put together in a systematic way.

Knowing who your "Guys Who Quietly Gets Things Done" are would be invaluable for any enterprise. Would they pay for a tool to help them identify and retain these quiet superstars? I think so.

<comment><USER5> _"I suppose that we'll have a revival in the way we measure employees....would [people] pay for a tool to help them identify and retain these quiet superstars?"_

Perhaps, but I don't think it would help. The way things are isn't necessarily bad...it's just human nature. Give a cage full of monkeys a new incentive system, and the monkeys will learn to game the system in order to get more bananas. Give them a tool that lets the quiet monkeys make more noise, and the loud monkeys will use it to make themselves even louder.

Generally speaking, hyper-rational people (like most geeks) try to fight this trend at first, but they eventually come to the conclusion that it's easier and better to just play the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me about the story of Netflix CEO. From [http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/0...](http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/01/netflix- ceo-deflects-criticism-with-humor-in-form-of-albanian-army-dog-tags.html)

[... Huffington coaxed Hastings to talk about leadership -- and one early experience that informed his leadership style.

Hastings recalled how, as a 25-year-old software programmer, he would stay up all night, propelled by coffee. He'd leave an array of mugs on his desk. Once a week, he would discover the cups cleaned. One day, he arrived at work at 4 a.m. and walked into the bathroom to discover the company's CEO, sleeves rolled up, washing the collection of nasty cups.

"That whole time, I thought it was the janitor," said Hastings, who said this had been occurring for a year. He asked his boss why. "He said, 'You do so much for this company, this is the only thing I can do for you.' ]

<comment><USER8> 'You do so much for this company, this is the only thing I can do for you.'

Typical lie of a boss. He could have given him more options or a promotion for example.

<comment><USER7> I think it's a bit of a misquote. I've heard it as the CEO saying something like "since you're under a lot of time press to get the stuff out the door in a week, and I don't know how to code, this is the only thing I can do for you right now"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This reminds me of the litmus test my father had in his small business years ago. Every new employee, no matter where they worked, had the same first task: clean the bathroom. Lots of people never made it through the first day.

I guess he figured that the best way to have employees who would "wash the dishes when nobody else will" is to only hire those who would.

<comment><USER10> Maybe it's just my millenial entitlement, but that strikes me as a bad strategy. Unless the business was a cleaning or maintenance company, cleaning the bathroom seems far removed from anything relevant to my work and is in essence busywork. Questions that immediately spring into mind: is this some weird attempt at saving money by having employees do both their job and cleaning? Is this supposed to be some hazing ritual? Will this be representative of my time at the company?

Pitching in when it needs to be cleaned? Sure. Boss paying attention to who voluntarily cleans it? Sure. Making employees clean it on their first day? Not so much.

\- millenial who cleans up after himself in the company kitchen

<comment><USER9> Did you understand the grandparent?

This had nothing to do with relevance, busywork, hazing, saving money, or evaluating talent.

It had a single purpose: to determine willingness to do an undesirable job. That's it. Which, interestingly, is just as important in a software start-up as it was in my father's business so many years ago.

<comment><USER11> In this case the cleaning is _clearly_ an initiation ritual/test.

The psychological traits needed to submit to arbitrary _unnecessary_ labour (brownnosers good, independent thinkers bad) are entirely different from the psychological traits needed to spot problem areas and deviate from assigned tasks to fix them (independent thinkers good, bronnosers bad).

I hate litmus tests with a passion.

<comment><USER12> I think the purpose of these kinds of litmus tests (to find people who are willing to get the job done, even if it looks stupid, boring, or detestable) is more important than filtering for independent thinkers.

Quite frankly, a good manager would be able to determine whether someone's a brownnoser or an independent thinker through other means. Heck, just talking with people will be sufficient for managers who are experienced and talented. But a litmus test like this reveals a lot about the nature of a person that can't come out in a conversation. You see them talk the talk, now see them walk the walk; not in terms of their professional skills, but in terms of their human nature/personality/potential for leadership.

Because the thing is, this kind of litmus test has one other very positive goal. See how someone responds to stupid orders. It's a huge sign for how well they'd be able to handle conflict and politics, which exist in any organization, even startups. It's the unfortunate nature of the beast, but good conflict management also does much to foster amazing outcomes, productivity, and creativity.

You want that kind of independent thinker over a guy who's a prima donna, even if he is an undisputed talent. To think that litmus tests cause organizations to hire only brownnosers would say more about the quality of the managers than litmus tests themselves.

Don't hate the litmus test, hate the managers who don't have higher purposes. We shouldn't be petty about that kind of stuff, it says a lot about our ability (or lack thereof) to handle human interaction well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Early in my career, I asked a co-worker why he didn't complain about doing the shitty maintenance coding which no one wanted. His reply in essence: because someone has to do the crappy stuff.

My respect for him went up that day, but I discovered the leadership aspect of that attitude only years later when I applied it as a manager. Thank you, Paul!

<comment><USER14> Also, you the Mighty Developer of Mightiness, need to spend some time on the scut work so you can figure how to reduce the need for it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's funny, when I went to visit a friend at Etsy after work hours, we were chatting in the kitchen and their CEO, Rob Kalin was washing dishes. My friend said to him, "That's awesome that you're the CEO and you're washing the dishes, Rob." And he replied, "Oh, it's better than when I was cleaning the bathrooms."

</comment><comment><USER16> The article isn't "Want to be a CEO, Was the Dishes..."

Leadership is facilitation, and being a leader ain't the same as being the boss. If dirty dishes are dragging on the team, taking care of them is just being part of the team. People respect supervisors when they believe the supervisor won't ask anyone to do something they wouldn't do themselves.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nope, now you're the dishwasher. At least in my experience; if you do something that other people don't want to do, you're now the "that thing" guy for life.

<comment><USER18> Only if that's the _only_ thing you're known for.

I have a lot of respect for a CEO that runs the entire company and doesn't consider himself too high to do the grunt work too.

<comment><USER19> > doesn't consider himself too high to do the grunt work too

go read 'Up the Organization' by Robert Towsend (written many years ago when he was the CEO of Avis Rent-a-car). Everyone at Avis (janitor, receptionist, CEO, all the way down the line) was required to work 1 or 2 days a year at the counter, renting cars. Helped everyone what business they were in, and why they had a job.

<comment><USER17> Or, "this is why I don't know anyone smart that works at Avis".

No offense, but the day I have to work as a bank teller is the day I stop working for a bank.

<comment><USER20> And _that_ is why Bank Teller software sucks.

<comment><USER17> No, it sucks because banks will not pay for software for their tellers. You've never been a teller, but you know it sucks. So do the banks. But they don't care, because there is no money to be made in improving it.

(Wait until they realize that there is no money in etrading either. Then there will be a lot of people on the market that know how to micro-optimize memory allocators. But I digress...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Puzzling, the underlying arrogance of most people commenting against the article here. They really seem to have such a high view of themselves, their time, their value, the optimal use of all this by their employers, and a very low level of humility.

Sounds like most of them really never had to work (just work, do a job to get money in) hard for food, and are bathed in the comfort of having learned a bit of computer science or something modern that doesn't get you too dirty, being equipped with a well functioning brain, and with all that, theydo really seem to think that it makes them a marvel and a gift to mankind. Wonder how many of them will end up being good leaders.

Somehow they haven't motivated me to work for or with them. Guess that is a first clue.

(and _I_ am the first to know that _I_ don't have leadership quality. But I have had the chance to observe and work for amazing leaders. Humility always was a key point of their personality)

</comment><comment><USER22> I don't actually see washing the dishes as a "morale boosting" action. It's more about taking initiative. Dirty dishes is one of those public goods problems, where multiple people's dishes build up in the sink and no one washes them. The one who takes initiative and washes the whole sink as opposed to just his own is looked at as a leader, someone responsible and trustworthy, not necessarily a dishes bitch.

Being a real leader is recognizing that there is no glamour in being responsible for the lives and fates of many; that's only a perception that others project onto you. It's a humbling job.

<comment><USER8> >The one who takes initiative and washes the whole sink as opposed to just his own is looked at as a leader, someone responsible and trustworthy, not necessarily a dishes bitch

A leadership lesson for you :

The one who takes initiative and organizes those multiple people to wash the whole sink is looked at as a leader.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> ...once. Just show that even you aren't too good to do the hard stuff. Don't waste your time washing dishes when you actually need to be doing other things.

<comment><USER24> I think the point here isn't just that the CEO was performing a mundane task, but that he was doing work that had to get done, even though it wasn't a desirable task. There was a giant pile of dishes - he cleaned them. The dishes were the thing that needed to get done.

If he does it just once, I question his motives. This repeated behavior shows his true conviction.

<comment><USER23> CEO's need to lead; exceptional behavior creates a buzz. This is morale building advice, not socialism.

His motive? to show that no one is too good to do the hard stuff. Its a stunt, but its a lesson too. Everybody will get that.

<comment><USER18> Honest question: Is it still considered a stunt if nobody even knows that he's doing it? From the post, it seemed like he was just taking care of it with no fanfare or mention to the other employees.

<comment><USER25> Part of being a good boss is removing barriers so your staff can be productive. So I'd say it's not a stunt at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I used to run the student advisory board for our college. We had a new dean and we were hosting an event for the first time since he arrived. After the event, many people left including some of our members and we had 2 rooms to clean up. We all went into the first one cleaned it up and came to the second room to find our dean wiping all the tables. We hadn't asked or expected him (He's the fricking DEAN!!) but he took it on himself to help out.

The trust he built in the students carried on and we still have a great relationship. Washing the dishes indeed.

</comment><comment><USER27> I do believe humility is a seriously underrated trait. You do the thing that needs to be done, no fanfare necessary.

</comment><comment><USER28> I love to do the dishes. Does this make me a natural born leader?

In seriousness though I feel like the best way to manage in situations of ambiguously shared responsibility is not to be afraid of getting stuck with it because the slackers start to feel embarrassed around you and either pitch in or leave.

There's little more cathartic in life than actual physical toil and while doing the dishes isn't all that rough, it presents an opportunity to occupy the hands and let the mind wander.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wonder if this would have been perceived differently if the CEO was a woman.

<comment><USER30> I don't think it would be. That woman is the CEO for a reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> When I am a guest at someone's house I always stay and help clean up, and wash dishes. Love to do my share.

But it is foolish to be doing janitorial duties at work. A situation a few years ago will serve as an example. As an expert, my time was being billed out to clients at $150/hr and I was getting paid $50 of that. The company did not want to hire more engineers so I was working 60-100 billable hours every week, working massive overtime for which I was not paid since developers are "salary". I had not had a Saturday or Sunday off in over a year.

On top of all this, the company decided to save money by firing the janitorial service, which was being paid $15 an hour, and whose workers earned minimum wage. It was announced that engineers would take turns vacuuming, taking out the trash, and cleaning dishes and and even cleaning out the fridge.

I quit over that. Obviously because I wasn't a team player, right?

<comment><USER32> Wrong. Imagine the economy took a downturn and the company was having trouble finding placements for their consultants. Imagine that they decided to hang onto the employees even though they didn't have billable work for them (try hard: you may sprain your imagination). Imagine that the company's finances were in trouble over this, so they stopped the janitorial service. And _then_ they asked you to take out the trash and clean the fridge.

THAT is when it would be appropriate, and a team player would pitch in. Abusing employees is abuse whether it's excessive billable hours or excessive fridge-cleaning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I think people are getting too caught up with the dish washing element of the story. The point of the story is about taking ownership and doing whatever it takes to move the company forward.

Early on at Reddit, Alexis Ohanis did all the "bitch" work so that Steve Huffman could focus on coding.

But if we must analyze the dishwashing aspect of the story, I think there's an element of "caring for your coworkers / employees" there. If no one washed the dishes, the company wasn't going to go bankrupt, but it would make other people's lives more miserable.

As I'm working on my own startup, I can relate to that sentiment, because I not only care about growing the company, I also care about my cofounders' well being.

</comment><comment><USER34> It worked for Jesus...

<comment><USER8> Do you really wish Jesus's career/fate for yourself or anybody else whom you wish well?

<comment><USER35> Do you see a causation there?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It sounds like great advice, and it probably is in the right situation. I can tell you that at my current company I behaved in this way for years, and metaphorically, and sometimes literally, washed the dishes and went above and beyond to end up being pushed aside by office politics. When you treat the company as if it were yours or you were its CEO don't forget that it is not yours and you are not the CEO, otherwise you'll be in for a big wake up kick in the butt...

</comment><comment><USER37> In my first job at a startup, the bathroom was dirty on a rainy day & realised the janitor had not come into office. I knew customers were visiting office in the next hour, so I just cleaned it up and went back to work. Nobody ever knew about it. Similar such events like cleaning up our kitchen sink with lots of coffee cups has happened, but I never realised as if its not my 'job'. It was there to be done & when I realised the person responsible for that was not around I just did it.

But later on when I worked for a bigger organization it hit me, how I felt about the company, as if I was running it and was wondering if I would ever do the same in this 'BIG' organization.

</comment><comment><USER38> _"... Want to be a leader? ..."_

Don't do what I say, do as I do ~ <http://www.eduqna.com/Quotations/792-quotations-11.html>

</comment><comment><USER39> Great article. In a startup environment, you should always see people taking responsibility whenever there is a crisis. They inspire the people around them to come up with solutions for the pressing issues.

If you see someone who doesn't take responsibility and is always trying to run from it, or is always whining and never a part of the solution. Fire Them. Those who take responsibilities and are atleast willing to be part of the solution have the DNA to be in the startup culture.

</comment><comment><USER40> I think this sentiment applies to more than just startups, but really any organization where there's a tendency to say "that's not my job" or "oh, if I don't do it someone else will". I think a lot of organizations could be more successful if more of their members -- employees of a startup, volunteers at a nonprofit, members of a club -- were willing to pitch in above (and below!) and beyond their title, experience, or pay.

</comment><comment><USER41> Right on.

Also, clean up the bathrooms when somebody's coming for an interview. Wipe the floor under the urinals and around the crappers. Why make a potential co- worker wonder whether working with you is worth living in filth?

But, it's also good leadership to put up a note saying "There's a rumor going around that this kitchen (or bathroom) is magic, and cleans itself. It's false! false! Please do your part!"

</comment><comment><USER42> Slightly off topic. But mundane tasks like dish washing help you unwind. I enjoy dish washing, pressing clothes or cutting vegetables at home because all those activities give me a lot of quite time without needing much effort from brain. The activity becomes even more enjoyable if I am taking a break from a programming task.

</comment><comment><USER43> Reminds me of this story - [http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/09/guest- post...](http://postcards.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/12/09/guest-post-lessons- in-leadership-from-a-failed-startup/)

</comment><comment><USER44> My source might stop at "Wash the Dishes" in this age. (Mark 9:35)

</comment><comment><USER8> such a motto is actually an easy trick that skillfull leaders utilize to make their reports wash the dishes. To maintain its magic, you actually need to promote only one of the 100 dishwashers into a leader once in a 100 years, and fanfare that fact for the rest of the time.

</comment><comment><USER45> I feel like leadership is a balance between two things:

1\. Protecting your subordinates from ugly work (like doing dishes, emptying the garbage, or doing laborious maintenance coding) so they can focus on fulfilling their responsibilities

2\. Delegating ugly work so you can focus on fulfilling your responsibilities

</comment><comment><USER46> I'm the dishwasher...bitch!

</comment><comment><USER47> Ha ha - compare and contrast with the Gervais Principle!

</comment><comment><USER48> #cheeseAlert That was a pretty profound lesson I just learned.

</comment><comment><USER49> The CEO only accomplishes 1 thing by doing the dishes: He shames everyone who sees him doing their job.

He doesn't get my respect for it, especially if he does it more than once. It means he failed as a leader to get people to do their job, or even to have someone to do that job.

Sometimes, it's necessary to roll up your sleeves and get some work done, but if you are doing other peoples' jobs, it means you aren't doing your own.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if it isn't anyone's job to do the dishes? Early on in a startup there are a million things that don't fit under anyone's job description, but simply have to get done.

<comment><USER49> Then it's -everyone's- job. And he still failed to get them to do it.

<comment><USER50> You must have stopped reading.

<comment><USER51> He's the CEO, he doesn't have _time_ to read :D

<comment><USER52> But he has time to comment? Sounds like a good plan.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Now you're the dishwasher. You failed 'wanting to be a leader' when you didn't convince anyone to wash the dishes, which is why now you have to do it.

<comment><USER54> Bonaparte had to clean artillery pieces in 1793 and 1796 on his way to Emperor.</comment></comment>


JQuery UK Conference site, uses no jQuery - <AUTHOR> http://events.jquery.org/2013/uk/index.html

<comment><USER2> Apparently jQuery is not the right tool for the job on this site, so kudos to developer(s) who didn't include it just for the sake of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> With the reliance on CSS for the animation and targeting browsers that support pushState then there was no need in the end to use jQuery.

<comment><USER3> Push state without onpopstate.. genius.

<comment><AUTHOR> We weren't recording the first visit to the page with History.js, for some reason we "got away" with this during testing or didn't press back!

Think we've fixed it now tho

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I got a free ticket to this last year and really liked it.

I was expecting a bunch of 'JQuery is Javascript' people and it wasn't like that at all: the most popular talk as Christian Heilman on now using JQuery (ie, using Elements / Nodelists and native DOM methods).

Tip: get a hotel room in Oxford for the night.

</comment><comment><USER5> Using the "back" and "forward" swipe motions on OS X 10.8 (Chrome 24.0.1312.57) broke the site for me.

EDIT: Scrap the swiping, just pressing back and forward on the site break it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah we have a bug! We're on it. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a cool site, I like it</comment>


Linux: It's being ignored - <AUTHOR> http://www.benbristow.co.uk/2013/08/linux-its-being-ignored/

<comment><USER2> Not sure why you want an Origin client. On Windows it's terrible...

<comment><AUTHOR> I always found Origin to be a really nice client on Windows. It's lightweight, fast, simple and the overlay has built-in broadcasting to Twitch.TV!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to proceed if you have a mind blowing idea - <AUTHOR>

I have an idea which I am implementing right now. It is taking advantage of a feature provided by a multi billion dollar company who hasn't realized that it can make huge sum of money by making it a paid feature or limiting its use. I have signed a contract with the company and the contract is currently has no regulations on what I am doing, but I am afraid that the company will change the contract as soon as it realizes that I am using the system. What kind of legal protection I should try to obtain? I cannot share the idea with anyone unless I have fully implemented it? I am an owner of a small startup and am afraid that I might get screwed over. I just want to make sure that whatever I have done before the company changes it policy remains mine as mentioned in the contract. Any suggestions? <comment><USER2> As a small startup you are not going to win against the big boyz. They can drop millions in the lawyers' pockets to win. And they will. Have you seen the lengths that Google went to appeal a $761 case > [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google- bot...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-google-bothered-to- ap_b_213176.html)

Erin Brockovich style success is very rare.

A game plan is as follows:

1\. Get it working

2\. Market your awesome idea, start making serious money

3\. Identify your billion dollar company's arch enemy / competitor or similar who can set lawyers upon your billion dollar company and win.

4\. Sell the running and growing business to them

5\. Send me 10% for this great piece of advice :-)

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately, without more specifics, it's really hard to give specific advice (besides the obvious, and necessary: get a lawyer).

What do you mean when you say "I want to make sure that whatever I have done [...] remains mine"? Are you writing code? If so, it is difficult to imagine a scenario where you wouldn't you retain the rights to your own code. (Naturally, that doesn't prevent anyone else from implementing the same idea).

Clearly, you need to make sure your business plan can survive changes from the big company-- if your idea is that dependent upon what sounds like a loophole in their TOS, you're odds of success are slim indeed. How do you know they don't have a team working on an identical system now, ready to launch next week?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thank you guys, I just talked to a lawyer (from a reference) and he is helping me out.

</comment><comment><USER4> The answer to this question depends almost completely on the specifics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Without sharing the idea, I can give you specifics of something very similar. Say, wikipedia is the big company I am talking about and they have a contract which states how to use their content. Now, if I figure out a way to use their content the way it is and commercialize it without breaking any contractual terms, what should I do to make sure that whatever efforts I have put in before they change the contract remains mine.

<comment><USER4> How can they change the contract? Is the existing one about to expire?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, its not going to expire anytime soon, but the contract states that they can change the terms whenever it needs to be.

<comment><USER4> Is whatever you need to do a one-time thing, or ongoing? If it's one-time and you're worried they'll change something retroactively, they probably can't but you should check with a lawyer just in case. If it's ongoing, you're probably screwed with that contract.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not sure. According to the contract I own it, but I need the company to sell it. At the same time the contract expires in less than an year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hire a lawyer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am going against a BIG company, how do I chose a lawyer for that? Moreover, the idea is highly replicable, but I am 100% sure that no one has figured it out yet. I am not doing anything illegal but I am very sure that the company will change it contractual terms or just might suspend my contract.

<comment><USER6> [url=[http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings.jsp?law2009=2&ch_id=...](http://www.vault.com/nr/lawrankings.jsp?law2009=2&ch_id=242&top100=1\]Contact) any one of those.[/url] I have a friend at Skadden and they do really good work. I can only imagine Cravath etc does even better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will look into these and make an appointment. Thanks.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Chile: How To Solve The European Economic Crisis - <AUTHOR> http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/11/24/lessons-from-chile-how-to-solve-the-european-economic-crisis/ <comment><USER2> Please don't joke.

Just look at the poverty in Chile and the non-public universities to balance any claim.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This post is written by one of the participants in the initial "round 0" of Start-Up Chile (<http://startupchile.org>) that started about a year ago.</comment>


Show HN: Turn Touch wooden smart home remote now shipping - <AUTHOR> https://turntouch.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN, I run NewsBlur and am launching my hardware project Turn Touch today. Launched last year as a Kickstarter campaign, it is now available for immediate shipping.

Turn Touch is a beautiful wooden smart home remote and pedestal. It's designed to fit both your home and your hand. Use it to instantly control Hue lights, smart devices, Mac and iOS apps, and more. Turn Touch connects to most smart devices in your home that speak WiFi, including Sonos speakers and Belkin Wemo smart plugs. Turn Touch works with your Mac, iPhone, or iPad to control apps like iTunes, Spotify, and Keynote.

Here's a few more reasons to buy it:

* Extraordinary design — This isn't yet another plastic remote. Turn Touch is carved from solid wood and worked to a show-stopping, textured finish.

* Well connected — Turn Touch is always on, always connected, and always ready to take your breath away. Once you connect your Turn Touch via Bluetooth it stays connected and always available, even without the Turn Touch app actively running. And there's no delay, when you press a button the result is instant.

* Built to last — Not only will Turn Touch stand up to drops and shock, its entire circuit board can be inexpensively replaced with newer, future wireless tech. You won't have to buy a new remote every time Apple comes out with a new phone. And instead of flimsy plastic clasps, a set of 8 strong magnets invisibly hold the remote together.

Plus it's entirely open source. And good open source projects benefit from good documentation. Here is a five part series on how Turn Touch was built: [https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to- build-...](https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-build-your- own-turn-touch-smart-remote-1689da664d62)

<comment><USER2> You should make sure to mention this on the Indigo forums ([http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/index.php](http://www.perceptiveautomation.com/userforum/index.php)) given that it looks like an Apple-centric smarthome device.

FWIW, the wood thing does not really seem like a selling point, and also most likely drives the price up more than a plastic case would.

I like the concept of it though and plan to research the APIs a bit more and then will likely order a couple.

<comment><USER3> Anecdatum, I wouldn't even consider this if it wasn't wood.

<comment><USER4> I'm in the same boat. People's homes vary a lot, and any single wood is going to clash badly with at a large percentage of homes.

White (plastic or painted metal) is something that could probably blend in to almost any space.

(It also shows misplaced priorities, in my opinion, when the homepage mentions the Janka hardness of the wood. I don't care how hard the button is because I'm just pressing it with my finger...)

<comment><USER5> Sounds like you and the GP aren't in the same boat - they want wood, you don't...

<comment><USER4> You're right. I misread the comment. My mistake!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For those that have a bunch of home automation.. is it actually... good?

It strikes me as one of those things that is fun to set up, but probably breaks in weird ways every few months and you have to have a special kind of patience to deal with that. (not to mention a shared sense of patience from spouses etc..)

How reliable and stable is all this stuff? Can you really set this up and forget it and have it work reliably, ie, always? How often do these standards change? Am I going to have to reconfigure all my light switches after getting a new router for example? Or base my light purchasing decisions based on this?

Just curious, I'm intrigued, but having gone down this path in the past it feels more hobby than utility.

<comment><USER7> I setup my own "internet buttons", but I did it in a cheating way - my buttons are nothing more than dumb radio-transmitters. There is no bluetooth, no wifi, and no complexity.

The buttons are dumb, so they are cheap.

Because the aim of the button is to do something "internetty" there is a single receiver which is plugged into my desktop PC which recieves the radio- transmissions, decodes the button IDs, and completes tasks.

There is a brief overview here:

[https://blog.steve.fi/creating_an_iot_button__the_smart_way....](https://blog.steve.fi/creating_an_iot_button__the_smart_way.html)

I have two receivers, an ESP8266 based device, and a hacked copy of software which uses an SDR dongle. Both are reliable and stable.

In terms of functionality though, they're useful. Dotted around the flat they let me control music, disable lights, and similar.

<comment><USER8> Cool, that sounds like a reasonable approach. I like the idea of a series of cheap buttons that can connect to a central hub in the home. Couple of questions though:

1\. Do these buttons have their own power supply? If so how long does a battery last?

2\. Is their a secure radio channel of communication?

3\. Is their any feedback on the button that the computer received that button press. (To avoid multiple presses)

<comment><USER7> 1\. Yes, the buttons are powered by CR2032 batteries, and when the button is pressed an LED lights to let you know it worked. (i.e. You can detect when they're empty.) My batteries have lasted for several months so far, but I don't know how long to expect them to work.

2\. Not sure what you're getting at here; anybody "local" could probably overhear the transmission. And probably perform a replay attack.

3\. There is no feedback on the buttons, you press the button and they send a radio transmission (+ light the LED). There is no facility for two-way communication.

If I were building the buttons myself I'd probably have them both send and receive, such that you could use an ACK system. But the whole point is to use cheap & off-the-shelf parts so ..

<comment><USER8> Nice, wow those batteries are tiny!!

Replay attacks might be acceptable for insignificant tasks light lights and Air Conditioning I suppose. Also gives a much simpler architecture to the system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I have one of these, and love it. It's so much nicer than the plasticky remotes that come with anything else, and the system support out of the box is great. Sam is very responsive on the forums too.

I have written a raspberry pi server component[1] that can be extended to support any smart device (if you've got an API for it).

You can, if you wish, use the device completely without any supplied software, it operates via bluetooth only so does not phone home. If you want to class up your own hacked together/secure smart home setup, this is a great device.

1: [https://github.com/fredley/raspi- turntouch](https://github.com/fredley/raspi-turntouch)

<comment><USER10> This is wonderful, thanks. I hope to leverage this into a Home Assistant[0] component (assuming someone else doesn't do it first).

[0] [https://www.home-assistant.io/](https://www.home-assistant.io/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh yeah, I would love that! And if you do, email me and I'll add it to the open source list, where you can also find the API and my email: [https://turntouch.com/api](https://turntouch.com/api)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this an intuitive interface for anyone? It looks incredibly frustrating. If I want to turn on a lamp, I want to turn on a lamp, not spend hours configuring the optimal way to navigate to a lamp rpg style (north east north north south).

<comment><AUTHOR> It's pretty simple. Four buttons for four devices. Each button can toggle a device. You can also hold a button to switch to that button's app, giving you four apps with four buttons each. So music app has volume controls and play/pause and next track. Lighting controls has scenes and hue/brightness controls.

There's no multi-touch or sequences to memorize. Just the four buttons and the four apps.

<comment><USER11> That sounds simpler than what I was imagining, but you just described a sequence to memorize.

<comment><USER12> i would expect most folks to just use each one as a simple toggle. I know that's what i was intending when i pondered getting this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I knew this project sounded familiar! I was following your medium post[1] when I was setting up my old Shapeoko 2. It's a good read for anyone interested in how the parts are manufactured.

[1] [https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to- build-...](https://medium.com/@samuelclay/everything-you-need-to-build-your- own-turn-touch-smart-remote-1689da664d62)

</comment><comment><USER14> I like the design! Very comprehensive built descriptions too (mainly looked into the firmware part). At first I wasn't too sure about the BTLE choice, but it makes sense in a power consumption context.

Zigbee would have been nice for my usecase (I'm using a RaspBee module), but that's not for everyone (I like to try out a lot of different things, interfacing it myself and have everything meet in the middle via MQTT, from there it's up to my imagination, currently trying out Node-RED for instance).

Since my house is rather small, I could probably use the BLE on my Pi.

</comment><comment><USER15> Not a fan of the text baked into your image on the home page… this is pretty much a solved problem by now…

I did a cmd-F to search for certain technologies and didn't find them, before I realized they _were_ mentioned in the big grid image, just not as searchable text.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not baked in. I can select it just fine in Safari. Also, "Bluetooth" is mentioned in How It Works.

<comment><USER16> I think he meant the "Works With" image (grid of compatible technologies), that one does appear to have the text baked in, and is not searchable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations on shipping! Turn Touch looks beautiful. Do you plan on extending the platform to other control devices (a larger version that is fixed in place, or a wall control unit) with the same software backing and aesthetic?

<comment><AUTHOR> The pedestal (pictured on the site) is exactly that wall control. I built the pedestal because I wanted my remote to live somewhere. The pedestal holds the remote in place with 6 hidden magnets, leaving you free to pull the remote off the wall to use interactivity. The pedestal also works on a table top just as well, which is where I have a remote situated next to my bed on a nightstand.

<comment><USER17> Guess I should check the site and not ask questions based on year old recollections :P

Very cool

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ah I remember meeting Sam in 2015 at TechShop where he was milling one of the early TurnTouch protoypes. Damn, making good hardware takes time. Congrats on the launch Sam, and best of luck with the project. It looks gorgeous!

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to disagree and say I don't like the wood.

Personally, I think glass fiber reinforced nylon -- the kind of plastic you see in high end power tools -- would be a much better aesthetic, as well as being far more durable than any hardwood. It's also much easier to scale if you want to make 100,000 of these things.

Also not a huge fan of the square body. If it's dark, all I have to orient the remote is those two chevrons. Maybe that works, maybe it doesn't, but I'm still partial to the rectangle.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't knock it til you've tried it. It's easier than you think to orient the remote in your hand without looking. That north ridge (the chevron) is quite pronounced by feel and you can feel it through clothing.

As for the wood, I agree that different tastes are something I should strive to accommodate. Plastic is next and I also love the feel of glass filled nylon. I'll be looking into it as soon as the wood remotes do well enough.

<comment><USER19> Fair enough. Looking at an item is no substitute for feel in hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "Turn Touch is a perfect match with Philips Hue lights" - I must be missing something in this prominently highlighted scenario. Instead of walking over to the lamp and turning it on, you have to find the remote and press its button to turn on the same lamp. Where's the value in this?

I understand the advantage of voice control, but operating one physical object vs another sounds like a simple substitution.

<comment><USER21> I too get up to change the volume on the tv every time, why is there this redudant control hardware shipped with every television? So wasteful!

/s

Snark aside, the illision of leisure/luxury/laziness is often valued as the real thing, effective or not. Could an app for your already omnipresent phone do this? Sure, but this is a sleek tactile button, no apps to futz with. I wouldn't buy one, but I get the appeal.

<comment><USER22> What do we want? Change. When do we want it? As soon as we can be convinced we need it.

The next evolution will be "you know the integrated home is great, but everyone's wifi still goes out every once in a while. wouldn't it be great if we could make that more robust with CAT5? What if we could do ethernet over your existing electical wiring? Then we could do Lights over Voice over IP over ethernet over AC. The best part is, we soft launched at hardware stores about 100 years ago". Welcome to the future!!!!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I remember these other things we used to put on the wall and use to control the lights. We called them "light switches", and they didn't require secondary devices to have apps installed in the middle. They were also incredibly difficult to lose track of.

<comment><AUTHOR> And no light switch in the world is as versatile as this remote is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there any plan to support Android/Windows devices? From a quick glance over the website, it doesn't seem like they are currently supported. Hopefully I just missed it though, this device is beautifully made!

<comment><AUTHOR> Eventually I'd like to build an Android app. NewsBlur has a native Android app, so I would just divert my Android developers attention to the Turn Touch app. I'm waiting to see if there's sufficient demand for the iOS and macOS apps first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome, will there be a Gabon ebony version??

</comment><comment><USER13> Anyone else getting a HTTPS certificate error?

<comment><AUTHOR> I would hope not, that certificate is powered by Shopify. The other certificate on turntouch.com proper is a Let's Encrypt cert.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool, but its way cooler to run OpenHAB2 on a raspberry pi. True home automation system.

<comment><USER5> This is a nice button - openhab is an entire home automation platform. With no buttons.

Kinda like saying 'that's a nice keyboard, but Linux is cooler'</comment></comment>