Introducing SpotMini, a smaller version of the Spot robot [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng <comment><USER3> It's all electric, and check out the fancy white armor at [https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117](https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117)

Looks like they've taken the criticism from Google et al. to heart. It was hard to see how the huge, gas-powered robots louder than lawnmowers were going to work for anyone except maybe military applications. Put some state of the art Google AI into this thing and it's not far from a sellable product!

<comment><USER4> Even the military didn't want them, they were too loud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> These press releases from BD are certainly impressive and are always great fun to watch.

But they're mostly silent on the matter of how much autonomy the robots are operating with. I never know how much of their behavior is human directed, or how those directions are conveyed to the robots.

<comment><USER6> They say that robots are being remote controlled. So, there is an operator telling it to duck, grab, and where to go, but the robot does the actual balancing on itself.

I am a little bit disappointed that they are not using deep learning for robotics. Instead, they are simulating the robot based off a model, using Control Theory. It might be easier to get results from Control Theory but it doesn't offer a path towards more complex behavior, like Deep Learning.

<comment><USER7> Modern control theory is rather close to machine learning. Adaptive model- based feedforward control _is_ machine learning. The machine learning part builds a model of the dynamics of the system. Then that model is inverted (solved for control inputs) to make it a control system.

They're doing this right. They have a very good basic body control system. Now someone can build higher level strategies to get work done on top of that. That's how biological brains work, after all. Google/Alphabet could, for example, reuse much of their automatic driving software as high level control for this robot.

Google should have BD manufacture a few hundred of those machines, and try to get the cost down to $25K or less per unit for that production run.

<comment><USER8> Sure, the brain uses the concept of abstraction, but that is so far away from supporting the assertion that "that's how the brain works."

<comment><USER7> Mammal brains have multiple functional units. The cerebellum does most of the motor control. The cortex does most of the planning and deciding. The cortex acts through the cerebellum, not by driving muscles directly. Most of Boston Dynamics' control systems are doing cerebellum-level functions. As with the cerebellum, this involves fast control via feedback loops.

<comment><USER8> Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly solving control theory equations.

And also that other inconvenient fact that neuroscientists barely understand the brain at all.

<comment><USER7> _" Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly solving control theory equations."_

It might be. You can invert a model by training a neural net to compute its inverse.

<comment><USER8> It might be. It might not be. Hardly a compelling argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> gene-h If it really is using all electric actuators that's pretty big. This would be one of the first of Boston Dynamics' all electric robots.

What exactly does using electric actuators over hydraulics buy us? Less noise, greater efficiency, and reliability. Reliability is very important for both house hold and industrial robots. We typically measure reliability in terms of Mean Time Between Failures, aka, how long it typically last before breaking. For industrial robots this is important as the higher the reliability is the more money it makes. Industrial robots tend to have MTBFs of 100,000 hours or about 10 years.

Reliability is also important for household robots too, a big expensive robot that breaks down all the time appeals to few people.

<comment><USER7> The previous Spot robot was also all-electric. Hydraulic power was needed for the bigger machines. (Also, Raibert liked designing hydraulic systems; he has a patent on the valve/actuator combo used in BigDog.) Cube/square law - <USER2> increases with the cube of the size. This is why insects have tiny leg cross sections in comparison to their length.

Battery life will be a problem, but it's clearly agile enough to plug itself in for a recharge.

<comment><USER9> you could also have some kind of stand by packs waiting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Watching it wipe out on banana peels cracked me up! Does that make me a bad person?

<comment><USER11> Nope!

These robots are amazing in their realism of behavior that I find myself referring to them as creatures rather than robots.

Watching them get kicked makes me feel bad for them, just like I would for an animal, and watching them fall on a banana makes me laugh, just like I would if an animal or person did (so long as they weren't seriously injured, unless I didn't like them :P)

<comment><USER12> This might help:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv- _LqTeQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv-_LqTeQA)

<comment><USER13> Quite a few parodies around, here's another amusing one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP- qbTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-qbTE)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The skull-like face doesn't exactly scream "friendly" to me.

<comment><USER15> It doesn't look like it was designed to be a face but a gripping hand that they put googly eyes on for fun.

<comment><USER14> On closer inspection, you're right. I originally watched it on my phone, and it just screamed "skull" to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Google just said, "Wait! Did we say we are focusing on a 'household robot' and are therefore going to sell Boston Dynamics? Hehe. Just kidding about selling BD!" The cleaning up, stair climbing and fall recovery are seriously impressive.

<comment><AUTHOR> Easily the most impressive household robot ever built.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Feels like living in the future.

We could have right now a RoboDog, with some machine guns on it and let them patrol and secure a perimeter. Fire at anything it moves. I hope they solve the issue with the banana peel :), though.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean Rat Things, right?

[http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)](http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_\(Snow_Crash\))

<comment><USER17> Amazing, how the subconscious works. Of course, I re-read that not long ago!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Now that's a nice piece of machinery. Much closer to a salable product than the big machines they did for DoD. This is more in line with Google's business model. Maybe this is BD's effort to stay under the Alphabet umbrella. It will be good if it works.

They really have leg control and balance software figured out now. That machine is more agile than any of the previous BD machines.

</comment><comment><USER18> Its really amazing to see how functional this robot is. I cant wait for one to take over for some of the more monotonous tasks around the house...

That said, the way it moves around and can keeps its head steady is both really cool, but somewhat terrifying... It seems to conjure up scenes from movies where the antagonist robots are scanning a target before deciding to kill or not.

</comment><comment><USER19> It seems like if you also add googly eyes to any robot like the one in BD's video they begin to appear more friendly.

</comment><comment><USER20> They forgot to kick it to make it lose its balance !

<comment><USER16> They have an animated gif of playing tug of war with it! They are definitely trying to fix that whole "robot abuse" image that so many people got upset about last time!

[https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv- kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc...](https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv- kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox- cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6695725/giphy-_6_.0.gif)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Personally, I like how it all went downhill very quickly in the last 10s.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find them both equally fascinating and scary at the same time.

</comment><comment><USER23> Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston- dynamics-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston-dynamics- spotmini-alphabet-giraffe-spot-robot), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER24> What if one of these gets out of control/hacked/malfunctions? This is one more reason we need weapons to protect ourselves.

<comment><USER25> Then in the worst case you get out of the room and wait until the battery discharges.

If you are seriously worrying about such situation you should also worry that robot can pick up the weapon.

<comment><AUTHOR> I imagine this robot is only a few weeks/months away from being able to plug itself in to recharge from any household socket.

<comment><USER25> Then you go to the distribution board and turn off electricity in household sockets of that room/apartments/house/block/street/city/country/planet.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


MLton Compiler Overview - <AUTHOR> http://mlton.org/CompilerOverview <comment><USER2> This is a very nice wiki. I am implementing an ML dialect myself, and studying the implementation of MLkit, MosML, and Mlton has been very enlightening. I work with the maintainers of the former two, but my compiler has ended up being more like Mlton in its design.

<comment><USER3> So am I! What parser are you using? I'm using a recursive descent (ie hand written) parser and it has some troubles parsing ML completely.

<comment><USER4> Just out of interest (I worked on a table-driven parser for SML a couple of decades ago) - what bits of ML syntax is giving you trouble? I remember one bit that (theoretically) needed unbounded lookahead, and user-defined infix operators were fun.

<comment><USER3> There's a difficult problem with precedence and unary operators. For example:

        set_field !list_end 1 cons

cannot be parsed. Anyway since then I rewrote the lexer to work like the sibling comment and I'm still getting that working.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh wow, I had Professor Fluet in college, and taught me functional programming concepts in haskell and lisp. Cool to see his work on the front page of Hn.

In addition to being a smart guy he was a really good professor. I really enjoyed the class (survey of many different paradigms), even if I did come away jaded and thinking that all the standard languages I have used in my career since are poor approximations of what they could be!

<comment><USER6> +1 Professor Fluet was one of my favorite professors, it was his first year at RIT, and he did an awesome job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> With work-in-progress support for RISC-V: [https://github.com/agoode/mlton/commits/riscv- wip](https://github.com/agoode/mlton/commits/riscv-wip)

<comment><USER7> Now if we could only get better threading support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The highest-performing compiler for ML's is MLton. The highest-correctness compiler is CakeML. Anyone looking for an interesting project in compilers and verification should consider porting some MLton techniques to CakeML.

[https://cakeml.org](https://cakeml.org)

<comment><USER9> In what ways is it more correct?

<comment><USER10> It uses formal methods to verify that the generated machine code has the same behavior as the source program.

<comment><USER9> That's not at all helpful - I meant specific examples...

<comment><USER11> They mean 'correct' in the technical PL sense.

So they don't mean there are specific things that are incorrect in MLton - there may not be any examples anyone can give you - they mean that we don't know mathematically how correct MLton is or not, because nobody has done that work, and we do know to a better extent mathematically that CakeML is correct, because it has been mathematically proven to be correct to a certain degree.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't know compilers, but this seems like a lot more steps than I would have expected. Is it actually an unusually large number of transformations, or is that just how compilers are done?

<comment><AUTHOR> Compilers come in all shapes and sizes.

Some are single pass like Turbo Pascal. They directly generate machine code while parsing (no AST!). Niklaus Wirth (Pascal/Modula/Oberon guy) wrote a book following this approach [1].

Some have multiple passes like Chez Scheme. They have many simple passes, which they call a "nanopass". Andrew Keep has a great talk on this approach [2].

In practice, most compilers today are multi-pass, though probably not as many Chez. If we look at Rust, they go from AST -> HIR -> MIR -> LLVM IR -> machine code [3]. There are probably more things going on from LLVM to machine code, but I'm not knowledgeable enough to comment on it.

I think the trade-off here is clear: less passes -> shorter compile times, more passes -> faster code generated, more modular compiler. Martin Odersky (Scala guy) has a paper attempting to get the best of both [4].

[1] [http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf](http://www.ethoberon.ethz.ch/WirthPubl/CBEAll.pdf)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7FE3J-U5Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Os7FE3J-U5Q)

[3] [https://blog.rust-lang.org/2016/04/19/MIR.html](https://blog.rust- lang.org/2016/04/19/MIR.html)

[4] [https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/228518/files/paper.pdf](https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/228518/files/paper.pdf)

<comment> le-mark The unmentioned history here is memory use. In ye olden days, machines had much less memory and required more passes, simply because there was no space for all the data. So one might see a pass for preprocessing, lexing, ast generation, optimizations, code generation, etc. Note some of this exist today, ie gcc integrates with gas and flags to dump the assembler.

<comment><USER13> Yep, implementing a compiler with systems having 512 KB maximum on average did not leave too much space for clever optimizations.

Using compilers on 8 bit systems was even worse (max 64KB).

Many game studios used UNIX/VMS systems, with cross compilers to upload data into ZX and C64 computers as development cycle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> i have seen some work regarding a real-time version of mlton. i would love to see this work done more because nothing would please me more to be able to do embedded systems with an ML language.</comment>


Working on JSON with lenses and prisms - <AUTHOR> https://www.fpcomplete.com/user/tel/lens-aeson-traversals-prisms

<comment><USER2> For the non-Haskeller audience, let me just copy the money quotes. This tutorial eventually shows how we can write the following Python

        > str = '[{"someObject" : { "version" : [1, 0, 0] }}]'
        > it = json.loads(str)
        > it[0]["someObject"]["version"][1]

as the following Haskell

        '[{"someObject" : { "version" : [1, 0, 0] }}]' ^?
            nth 0 . key "someObject" . key "version" . nth 1

while keeping type safety, composability, and purity. That's the wonderful part. The rest is explaining a lot of how the magic works via Maybe monad chaining and thinking about what Lenses and Prisms are.

<comment><USER3> I don't see how the Haskell example is more type safe than the Python example. In Haskell you will get None or Just a String. In Python you get an exception or a String. For me that is equivalent, but maybe you have a different definition of type safety?

I think without a schema for the json data we cannot make this any more type safe.

<comment><USER2> I agree completely that this example is not fully type safe---there is an implicit, partial schema where either Python exceptions or Haskell Nothings imply validation failure, but that's beside the point.

The example written has a lot of type resolution done implicitly by the typeclass mechanism. It ensures that only valid lens-like combinators are applied to the traversal chain... which is only an issue due to how far we can flex the lens library to do other things.

A better example is the somewhat more explicit version of this code

        it ^? _JSON   . _Array  . nth 0
                      . _Object . key "someObject"
                      . _Object . key "version"
                      . _Array  . nth 1

Where the _JSON, _Array, nth, _Object, and key declarations must match otherwise its a type error. Furthermore, the `nth` and `key` calls are both just type-restricted aliases for `ix` which help to convey via types what kinds of very general tools should be applied here.

We could also, for instance, throw another _JSON Prism into the chain to do a nested, schema-based validation for any types which have ToJSON/FromJSON instances.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love examples that show that with a little effort (at least when standing on the shoulders of giants), we can have our cake (nice abstractions) and eat it too (not lose type safety).</comment>


Ask HN: Where to learn browser device tools in depth - Maha-pudma As title says. Mostly interested in Firefox. I'm reading the MDN docs but I'm interesting in reverse engineering websites and things like that. Are the any resources like this? <comment><AUTHOR> Get an understanding how JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and network requests. Spend a few hours playing around on website in the developer console and just see how much you can recognize.

<comment> Maha-pudma Thanks. I'm in the process of reading a JavaScript book: [https://eloquentjavascript.net/](https://eloquentjavascript.net/)

I think I need to look at event handling and like you say network requests. I'm trying to capture JSON responses that are loaded when you scroll down a page. I intend to process these further but have no idea how to capture them in the first place. I can see them in the network tab and manually copy them and process them like that. I'm able to copy as fetch, run the request again, and display the JSON in the web console, but I'm a complete beginner at this sort of thing.</comment></comment>


Elon Musk says AI could lead to third world war - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/04/elon-musk-ai-third-world-war-vladimir-putin <comment><USER2> Does anybody else find Musk's concerns about AI wildly overblown? Just to pick one example, does anyone _really_ believe that autonomous weapons--most of which have yet to be developed--will be more dangerous than nuclear weapons are now?

<comment><USER3> I think that "AI" weapons can definitely be more dangerous if they can determine the difference between civilians and enemy soldiers. Imagine if there was an AI weapon which you could use without on a massive scale without worrying about civilian casualties, I would consider it much more dangerous because people would be more willing to use it than nukes. But in general I agree that, since the world is very safe right now even though we have nukes, AI weapons probably won't be the difference that gets us WW III.

<comment><USER2> That's how things work already without any artificial intelligence whatsoever. The US calculates risk of collateral damage for air strikes and has been quite willing to use them as well when the risk is low. They have done this for decades.

Also, it's hard to argue that the world is "very safe" with nukes. All one can say is they have not been used recently. That's unlikely to last forever--or even much longer--the way things are going. The US and USSR barely avoided using them [0] and some of the current owners are a lot less stable.

[0] See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Able_Archer_83) for one example.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've seen this movie!

It's called "Colossus, the Forbyn project"

Highly recommended

</comment><comment><USER5> if an AI figures out sending out an ICBM is the best solution it's more likely to use it than a human.

<comment><USER6> But the same could be said of any snippet of bug-ridden computer code if we let computers run our ICBMs (and to some extent we do). Doing really stupid and self-destructive stuff doesn't require a lot of intelligence. Doing semi- random stuff, well .. a lot of code that I write seems to behave that way until I get it somewhat debugged.</comment></comment>


Sprite: a different drone - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ascentaerosystems/sprite-the-portable-rugged-totally-different-small <comment><USER2> Adding SPRITE to the list of upcoming autonomous camera drones I made for the Lily announcement...

Prices/status for reference:

               Status       Release    Price
               </comment><comment>-----  </comment><comment>---  </comment><comment></comment><comment>
      AirDog*  Pre-Order    Q3 2015    $1,295
      HEXO+*   Pre-Order    Sept 2015  $1,299
      IRIS+*   Available    Now        $750
      Mind4*   Kickstarter  Failed     $900-$1,489
      Solo*    Pre-Order    May 2015   $1,399
      Ares HD  Kickstarter  Feb 2016   $999
      Lily     Pre-Order    Feb 2016   $519-$1,019
      SPRITE   Kickstarter  Dec 2015   $799

      *Note that all but Ares HD, Lily, & SPRITE require a $300 GoPro camera.

Price ranges are for Pre-Order vs. Post-Ship pricing.

EDIT: Added Ares HD & Solo.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Add a few things like top speed, range, flight time, tracking method, and you've got yourself a nice popular webpage/blog post.

<comment><USER2> Too many pre-production products now... I'm eagerly awaiting the day when Wirecutter just has a "Best Autonomous Selfie Drone" category though... :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> My one concern with all these new drones that keep popping up is the flight duration. This one is among the worst I've seen: "... flight endurance, which is currently around 12 minutes". Others in the market don't seem to be much better, clocking around 30mins - 1hr per flight.

Are any of these able to fly a preset, waypoint path for two or more hours? I don't want to be thinking about the landing just as soon as it gets up in the air.

<comment><USER4> Nope. We're pretty much limited by battery technology on that front; you need bigger batteries to provide more power, but those bigger batteries mean more weight, which means more power needed just to stay aloft. For a battery powered multicopter, I think an hour or so is about the highest you can get (I don't think I've seen any that claim over 40 minutes), and as you point out, most drones are closer to the 15 to 20 minute range.

Of course, there are other designs like fixed wing planes which can be a bit more efficient though more complicated to navigate in confined spaces and without the ability to hover, and you can use internal combustion engines which can get you much longer flight times due to the higher energy density of their power source. But I don't think you're going to find any of the affordable, battery powered multicopters that get you anything over an hour (and even then, I would set my expectations at more like a half-hour for anything affordable in realistic conditions).

<comment><USER5> I wonder why more remote-operated drones like this aren't being designed with gasoline motors rather than electric. I remember flying all kinds of tiny gas- powered RC planes as a kid, and it's not obvious to me that the benefits of electric out-weigh the multiple-orders-of-magnitude reduction in flight time. In fact, what _are_ the principal advantages of electric UAVs over gas- powered?

<comment><USER6> Most quadcopters aren't gas-powered because they rely on rapidly adjusting the speed of brushless motors attached to fixed-pitch props to control their attitude.

A few hobbyists have built gas quads with variable-pitch rotors, but the amount of mechanical complexity and hassle involved makes a similar nitro- powered single-rotor helicopter more appealing for most hobby applications (stunt flying etc).

As more novel designs that don't rely on precise motor speed control (for example, this one) come into play, I think gas motors will make a minor resurgence as people rediscover the energy density (and therefore flight time) they can achieve.

However, for most hobbyists, electric just makes more sense. It's usually quieter, works indoors, is generally a lot less of a pain in the ass to deal with (no need for starters, glow plugs, choke, adjusting mixture, engine maintenance, etc.), and is usually less heavily regulated.

<comment><USER7> Why not hybrid? Have an onboard gas generator to recharge the batteries. As soon as the gas runs out, the drone has X min of battery flight time left to get back to solid ground. No need for mechanical complexity.

<comment><USER6> There's an MIT spinoff called Top Flight that was working on a hybrid quadcopter, IIRC. I think the main reason you don't see them in the hobbyist space is size floor (you need a pretty big machine to make the weight overhead of the motor, generator, and charge circuitry work out) and money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looking at this from an Aerospace Engineering perspective, the weight distribution / CG properties may significantly limit the lateral movement of this vehicle; looks as such in the videos as well. This is because in order for a helicopter to move laterally it must pitch the rotors (in this case meaning the entire body) and a cg far from the rotor location makes this difficult. Something to think about.

<comment><USER9> This application might not need that much lateral performance, and the cg as is gives you nice static stability margin where you can relax all sorts of other requirements (control loop can be slower, the nav sensors can be lower performance, it's less sensitive to wind gusts, etc).

<comment><USER8> Absolutely - I just wanted to point this out after seeing some discussion about this as a 'follow-me' type of sports filming drone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> That's a nice piece of mechanical engineering. They crammed two full helicopter blade pitch control heads into that cylinder and made it rugged.

</comment><comment><USER11> In the next 10 or so years, kids will have some pretty cool toys. My son would love to have this for his bike rides. 2025 these things will be as common as an iPad and will have things like environment-awareness.

This looks pretty cool. I cannot wait to see how this evolves.

<comment><USER12> I'm still waiting for the Perpetual Eclipse.

The Perpetual Eclipse is a quadcopter that calculates where the sun is, triangulates where your eyes are, and just floats in the direct path light travels when it gets in your eyes.

<comment><USER13> "Point-Defense Sunglasses"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Did they really trademark Sprite™? Doesn't Coca Cola own that?

<comment><USER15> > Did they really trademark Sprite™?

No, or they would have used the R symbol instead of the TM.

> Doesn't Coca Cola own that?

Yes, and under modern trademark law, Coca-Cola will be contacting/threatening them shortly, so you can expect a project name change.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trademark_Dilution_Act](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trademark_Dilution_Act)

<comment><USER16> As mentioned by others, that's not how trademark law works. Soda and drones are not likely to be confused in the marketplace. I'd bet you $1000 on longbets.org that KO do not cause this company to change the name of their toy drone company.

<comment><USER17> My understanding of law leaves lots to be desired, but wouldn't the trial, even if they won, be way too expensive? And there is always the risk of losing, Coca-Cola can certainly afford better lawyers.

<comment><USER18> If I would be a startup I would love that kind of publicity.

<comment><USER17> Sure, as long as you can convert said publicity into money faster than you the lawsuit drains you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So, it is a helicopter with variable pitch blades.

How does it compare, reliability-wise, with quads? Quads only have to change rotation speed. This one needs to change pitch, as helicopters do.

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone savvy here weigh in on how much having a two-axis rather than three-axis gimbal will affect the stability of the video, if at all?

<comment><USER2> The third axis would just provide the ability to pan the video without rotating the drone itself. With SPRITE's pod-style helicopter design, they may be able to use the counter-rotor to provide the third axis of rotation automatically.

<comment><USER21> Yes, the third axis is for yaw stability. While you certainly want that for professional aerial video, it's not at all necessary for these action sports products. Also, the aircraft can definitely yaw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> It looks like image stabilization will be difficult with this design. The camera seems to be at the bottom of a pendulum that swings as the drone moves about.

Perhaps that's why the promo video shows very little actual footage.

<comment><USER2> They're including a 2-axis gimbal that should (mostly) compensate for this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Why does it look like some sort of flying bomb? I'm much more terrified of that hitting me than a rectangular piece of plastic that doesn't look like a ballistic missile.

<comment><USER24> You're not alone. Actually every time I see similar products out there I see flying death but this one specifically looks like it could drop a bite-sized doom on me. :)

The fast pace of development and availability of these kind of flying machinery is bound to create security implications sooner or later. These things would be great for assassinations or with a fleet of them you can absolutely terrorize the hell of a sizable area.

<comment><USER25> Also great startup opportunities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Seems like a great thing. :) One question. Are those propellers safe? They are not covered with anything and may potentially hurt owner or other people (face, eyes).

</comment><comment><USER27> Nice design, makes more sense than the quads.

<comment><USER28> How does it make more sense? (Coming from someone with no clue and looking for insights)

<comment><USER29> It has a much better form factor for carrying in a backpack than a quad; it can fit in a water bottle pocket.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Seems like a market that goosoftple will soon be entering, or at least making some acquihires

</comment><comment><USER31> Am I the only one who just can stand these promotional videos?

 _guitar music_ What if there was a... _CLICK_

I don't know what it is, I just get a feeling of being treated like an idiot with a wallet.

<comment><USER32> Yeah, I muted the video as soon as I heard those first guitar chords.

<comment><USER31> Thanks, I'm just _amazed_ that someone upvoted my grumpy post :)

<comment><USER33> You're obviously new to HN!

<comment><USER34> Grumpy snark is engineer default half the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Also on product hunt: [http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite](http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sprite)

</comment><comment><USER36> I'm going to be the childish person and say what I'm sure other people are thinking. This is a very phallic looking drone.

<comment><USER37> No, this is a phallic-looking drone:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRslKeT0EmQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRslKeT0EmQ)

(arguably NSFW)

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I just wonder, are drones like these purchased by "enthusiasts" in the middle- east?

<comment><USER38> 3 patriots detected</comment></comment>


Judge orders police to stop collecting data from license plate readers - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/04/02/judge-orders-fairfax-police-stop-collecting-data-license-plate-readers <comment><USER2> What a pleasant surprise this ruling is. The DC area (of which Fairfax county is part) is probably one of the most government tracking heavy regions of the US. This is a curve-ball on par with the CA judge that overturned the mag ban recently. I would never have predicted this ruling.

>Nine states have passed laws limiting how long the police can maintain the data, ranging from three minutes (New Hampshire)

Now that I could have predicted. If any state is going to proactively curb law enforcement's capability to build a dragnet it's gonna be NH.

<comment><USER3> > If any state is going to proactively curb law enforcement's capability to > build a dragnet it's gonna be NH.

License plate collection used to be outright prohibited there (with toll both exception) before they caved on Real ID.

<comment><USER2> >before they caved on Real ID.

I blame that on two things (in no particular order).

1) There's been tons of money dangled in front of state legislators incentivizing them to break from what their constituents actually want because both the national parties want to make the state theirs. If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against you don't actually have to listen to your constituents that much.

2)The MA 5th column.

<comment><USER4> > If you have enough money (from voting how the people with the money want you > to vote) to steamroll whoever you're running against you don't actually have > to listen to your constituents that much.

Perhaps we need to reconsider the idea of running government on the basis of a popularity content. Perhaps we should give strange women lying in ponds dispensing swords a reconsideration.

<comment><USER5> > Perhaps we should give strange women lying in ponds dispensing swords a > reconsideration.

Bring back Monarchy and Manifest Destiny? How would that be any different than what we have now? Money can be used to influence Kings and Kingdoms just as easily as politicians.

If we could ever secure mobile devices and servers well enough, I think a direct democracy could be interesting. Mob rule, for all it's faults, still works better than having a ruling class.

> Perhaps we need to reconsider the idea of running government on the basis of > a popularity conte __s__ t.

Have I spotted a Dvorak user in the wild? :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Anyone have an open source license place reader software? I always thought this would be good for a neighbourhood watch kind of project.

<comment><USER7> This was a good read, along those lines:

[https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-replicated- an-86-milli...](https://medium.freecodecamp.org/how-i-replicated- an-86-million-project-in-57-lines-of-code-277031330ee9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I work in this space, building the tools to help LEAs seach their databases. I also have conflicting feelings about how this could be used. We built in access control down to the specific camera, auditing of every user action, requiring the reason you are performing an action, and mandating the user associate an open case in the same access group as the camera you are querying in order to view the data.

Its pretty locked down to help prevent abuse. I'm not saying abuse is impossible but LEOs or more likely, their administrators, but it is difficult to do it and get away.

I've heard from the higher ups, that abuse used to be rampant in other systems, but since switching to our software, only a handful of people have been found to abuse it.

<comment><USER9> Yes, until the government passes new laws which reduce those protections and allow the use of this data for other things. It's really great you built in decent protections, but that doesn't mean they'll always be in place. Us techies seem to think technology exists in a static environment, but it doesn't.

Always ask yourself before working on stuff, if the USA were to turn to fascism tomorrow, would your work be helping us fight it or helping it subjugate us?

<comment> 5874-4b22-a4e0 yeah no thanks, i'll just take the paycheck

<comment><USER10> "Fuck you", then, since that's what you're saying to all of us.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> We want to protect innocent people from snooping and harassment, but we also want law enforcement to have useful resources. These shouldn't be mutually exclusive requirements.

It always baffles me that nobody thinks to set up a best-of-both-worlds system whereby all the data is gathered, but stored in a secure database under the control of an independent government entity, possibly the courts themselves. If you're tracking a suspect, get a warrant and the court will supply the data.

The same should apply to all passive data gathering systems like body cams.

<comment><USER12> Somehow, law enforcement once managed to do its job reasonably well even in the absence of pervasive surveillance.

<comment><USER13> That's debatable. Try going to law enforcement with anything non-trivial, and see how that goes. People routinely get murdered by someone that's a known and reported threat to them personally.

You might be shocked what the police are unable or unwilling to go after someone for. Things like aggravated assault, stalking, and breaking / entering. If you have a known address and whereabouts for someone, and you've checked there once (or a few times), what else can you really do? These tools can be used to automate things that would be extremely costly for an officer(s) to do.

I don't agree with pervasive surveillance btw, and there are other factors that cause law enforcement to be ineffective. I strongly disagree with your premise, though.

<comment><USER12> By "reasonably well" I don't mean "solves every crime." I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury or death.

<comment><USER14> > I mean well enough to keep society running smoothly, with affordable > property insurance and the average person having low risk of violent injury > or death.

Well, that's a fairly heinous definition of law enforcement working well as it also covers, say, fascist secret police. Society running smoothly should not be prioritized over society running ethically. This is the core of why you could consider police primarily protecting the property rights of rich people: a disrupted rich person is enormously inefficient in terms of capital use, but a disrupted poor person is just another burden on society without much effect on the economic health signals to which people refer.

<comment><USER12> Mass surveillance is a favorite tool of secret police, most famously the Stasi of East Germany. If we want to avoid secret police, we should avoid mass surveillance, even if that means some criminals get away.

<comment><USER13> I agree, I just don't think you should be exaggerating the capabilities of the police.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/every-weekend-should-be-a-3-day-weekend.html <comment><USER2> I'm in the fourth decade of my career and I switched to a three day week almost a year ago, taking a proportional pay cut. I work Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday to get the largest contiguous block of time (Thursdays and Fridays) where the places I want to go to are family/child free. If work needs me to swap a day (e.g. to go to a Thursday meeting) I'll often do that and occasionally I'll work longer one week and then less the next. If I'm not doing anything on a non-working day I'll answer my work phone to keep things moving along but I avoid taking on tasks that mean firing up my laptop. So far, I haven't accidentally moved back to full time working by stealth. The precedent at work for me doing this is women on post-maternity three day weeks, for which all of whom said that the company had treated them fairly.

Here's my responses to the article's specific claims:

 _You'd be healthier._ Yes, I generally get more exercise. I'd already changed my eating habits to avoid snacking and this hasn't changed.

 _You'd sleep more._ Not sure. Seems about the same although I can vary my sleep time to suit my own activities.

 _You'd be less of a jerk, probably._ You'd have to ask my wife that.

 _All of that, plus, you'll be better at your job._ Not sure. I'm slightly less aware of what's going on in the office and wider industry but in general more relaxed.

On balance it's been a really good thing. I haven't managed to progress all of the side-projects I intended to but I have definitely achieved my primary goal of improving my life-work balance. The pay cut is tolerable and in any case my wife and I were planning to scale back some of our more expensive activities (such as going camping rather than staying in hotels).

It's also sent a clear message to my colleagues and management (all of whom have been supportive) about my work expectations. I still have responsibilities (e.g. for deliverables) so there is still pressure that doesn't go away. I also tend not be the first pick for activities that require long term full-time commitment, or for the company to make an investment in my personal development (e.g. training in new skills). To date this hasn't been a real problem – I'd made the decision to scale back because I'd gone as far up the corporate ladder as I'd wanted to. And I feel the same a year on.

The way I explain my mood to people is "Monday mornings are just as crappy as they ever were. But when I leave work on Wednesday, it's already Friday."

<comment><USER3> i think everyone would choose this for the most part. The problem is heath insurance (in the us). Even at full pay, if you're not on your company's policy it's almost unaffordable. And most companies will not allow you to be on their plan if you classify as "part time".

<comment><USER4> Health insurane is expensive, but eminently doable for most technical salaries. Ours is about $950/mo for a family of 5.

<comment><USER5> What kind of health plan is that, if you don't mind my asking (Context: I've been living abroad 10 years, had a family while down here, we are thinking of moving back but the cost of healthcare and its quality is a big issue for us).

<comment><USER4> That is the highest deductible plan (bronze in Obamacare parlance). Yearly visits are covered, as are milestone visits for children. Other than that we pay out of pocket. Our total amount per year that we are responsible for beyond premiums is capped at $6k per person and $13k for the entire family (I believe; the actual numbers might be a little different, but these are in the ballpark).

My take is that if your family is relatively healthy, then you should go for the lowest tier plan. Then you count on paying the premiums, plus some more for whatever doctor visits normally take place. Then, in the worst case scenario (something expensive happens to 2 family members), you would pay a (roughly) additional 100% of the cost of your premiums in a given year in medical costs. If you have pre-existing conditions or go to the doctor a lot, then a higher tier plan might make more sense for you.

Oh, forgot to mention, $950/mo for our family is the unsubsidized cost. Depending on your family's income, you could qualify for a subsidy from the government, which can be pretty significant. We qualified for a $400/mo subsidy this year (so total monthly cost is $550).

My big picture take on the U.S. vs. the rest of the world is that if you're a high earner, the U.S. is usually better, economically. The pay tends to be way higher here than in Canada or Europe (especially in the tech industry) and a social safety net can be purchased (in addition to health insurance, you can also buy yourself unemployment and life insurance, for example). I've done the math on moving to Canada (my wife is Canadian) and it ain't pretty. It would represent a huge reduction in our effective income.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

<comment><USER7> What I need is a weekly work day :). My workplace is so distracting that I barely ever get to do focused work. The background noise drives me crazy and then always somebody wants to have another meeting about something that has been discussed dozens of times before.

<comment><USER8> > What I need is a weekly work day :). My workplace is so distracting that I > barely ever get to do focused work. The background noise drives me crazy and > then always somebody wants to have another meeting about something that has > been discussed dozens of times before.

Sounds like bullpen office layouts are the problem. We really need to go back to private offices.

<comment><USER7> And let's have less people whose only job is to report to each other about work instead of doing work. Unfortunately managing is paid better than doing so I don't see that changing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Based on my personal observations, I don't know that any of those "benefits" are true. For about eight months of the year, I have a 3-day weekend every other weekend. (Nine hour days with every other Friday off and eight hour days on the other Fridays.) Around September, I burn vacation days taking the opposite Fridays off, so I have at least a 3-day weekend ever weekend for the remainder of this year. I've done this for a number of years now.

I don't find myself healthier. I eat the same and I'm a little more active; but, not much. Not enough to make a real difference. Increased physical activity on one day is not better than spreading it out over a week.

I don't get more sleep. Numerous studies say to keep the same sleep schedule every day and one day is not going to make a difference,

I'm not less of a jerk. Having Friday off does not do anything to my energy levels on Monday - Thursday. I try to sleep and eat right all week.

I don't think am better at my job. While there is some less stress because I have an additional day not to think about it; I am also not around for anything that might come up on a Friday.

<comment><USER10> Why do you do that then?

<comment><USER9> The work schedule with every other Friday off? Because I would end up working at least nine hours anyway. It's nice if I am going out of town for the weekend.

Taking the opposite Fridays off, from September/October through December? I haven't gone on a vacation and I can't carry those vacation days over to the next year.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Our society is such that we typically work 8 out of 24 hours(33%), 5 out of 7 days(71%) and 11 out of 12 months(91%), with exceptions ofcourse. All those aeons of evolution so as to come out of our caves and settle for this?

IMHO we should be working less and have more free time for activities that would be good for our spirits/souls/minds.

Where are the robots, AI and all the other technological wonders that we were expecting for the 21st century?

<comment><USER12> >Our society is such that we typically work 8 out of 24 hours(33%)

I always think you should look at the effective free time you have left. I can't do much in my sleep (-8h), I can't do much on my commute (-1.5h), I can't do much in my lunch break (I have to take a 45 minute lunch break by law, it's way too short to use it as actual free time, but takes another significant chunk out of your day.)

I get to 24h-8h-8h-1.5h-0.75h = 5.75h of E.F.T. that's only 24% of your day you actually have for yourself, assuming comparatively reasonable western working times and pretty average commute times.

76% of your day is not effectively free time.

<comment><USER13> In what city is 1.5h the average commute time, just to make sure I'll never go there.

<comment><USER14> Seattle. I work with people who have 2hr commutes, both ways.

<comment><USER12> That would be 4h in my calculation, because I counted the time per day you can't freely allocate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised we haven't seen more of the mixed compromise:

       Monday - Thursday: 10 hour days
       Friday - Monday: 4 day weekend
       Tuesday - Friday: 10 hour days
       Saturday - Sunday: 2 day weekend

and then it repeats. Same hours worked overall.

Work longer days, but get 4 day weekends every other week. The people I've known who've had this setup would generally work 6am-4pm.

<comment><USER16> My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity. If we want to give people an extra day off -- and I think we should! -- then we should just do it. You can't really make up the time somewhere else.

<comment><USER15> > My strong impression is that this is a waste of time.

Have you done it or worked with people who have?

Worked really well for the people who I knew who did it. Highly productive and the two 4 day weekends a month seemed great.

My point wasn't that this was better than an additional day off and less work. My point is that this should be acceptable today, and I'm surprised there isn't more buy in for flexible schedules like this.

<comment><USER17> I worked somewhere that did 9 hour days with every other Friday off. It basically made Fridays unproductive because half the company was off every Friday and it seemed like you always ended up needing to talk to someone who was off that Friday in order to make progress.

I certainly liked the Fridays off. But, I'd say the 9 hours part was not optimal. Salaried employees typically already put in that much time so it didn't affect them. Hourly employees didn't seem to be that much more productive. They were just there longer and probably took slightly longer lunches...

I feel like just instilling a hard working culture and giving the whole company every other Friday off would have been better for productivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> village-idiot One of the great surprises in the 20th century is that per worker productivity has risen massively, but we still work an unnecessary 40 hours a week. Realistically 15-18 hours would probably be enough to maintain early to mid 20th century output, and 30 hours would actually increase output a bit.

In my opinion we as a society are addicted to work.

<comment><USER18> Some work doesn't happen any faster despite worker productivity. The 40 hour work week isn't determined by the output, but rather by the income the worker receives. People are free to work 15-18 hours a week, but they don't.

<comment><USER14> >People are free to work 15-18 hours a week, but they don't.

I'm forced to work 40 hours per week no matter what I'm getting paid or I get fired, not sure how this is a 'choice'.

<comment><USER18> Exactly my point. You make the choice to engage at a job that doesn't allow flexibility. There's more than one job out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I agree. I'm thinking of moving to that model when my current contract comes up for renegotiation early next year.

A 20% paycut is definitely liveable, and that extra day per week would make a lot of difference - either in terms of bootstrapping side projects, or just quality of life.

<comment><USER20> Other option without the paycut could be 4 10-hours a day week. Might save on gas and other thing and will still have the 3 days weekend, although day to day activities like exercise might prove more difficult to do with fewer hours every day.

Tangential question: when people in the US say 9-5 work, do you take into account the lunch break or that 1 hour is still counted as workable?

<comment><USER21> Purely anecdotal: I feel like it _used_ to mean 9-5, and somewhere in there you'd have lunch. These days I think it's more of a (misnomer) term for 8 hours of on-the-clock work, and most people are expected to go something like 8:30 - 5:30.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> One proposal has been to go to an 8-day week with a 3-day weekend. This only reduces worked days by 12%, instead of 20%.

<comment><USER23> I'd rather have every second weekend 3 days off instead. 8 days in a row sounds just awful

<comment><USER24> I think they meant 5 day work week and 3 day weekend = 8 day week

<comment><USER25> Unfortunately that doesn't divide too nicely into the approximate 365 days rotation around the sun.

A 6 day week, 4 days on, 2 days off would be much easier to devise a calendar for I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> If you work less, you'll be less stressed! Although this article superficially looks like it's full of facts, it's a bit thin on anything beyond what can be guessed through common sense.

The interesting questions are: what length of work-week best balances everything? "Every weekend should be a 7-day weekend, because studies show that workers will be less stressed." What length of week would be good for workers, good for the economy, etc., etc.?

One thing that I've realized, having become an adult, is that just because your job makes you work 40 hours, doesn't mean you only work 40 hours. There are many other things in your life that you have to do that are also work: running errands, parenting, cleaning, cooking, etc.

</comment><comment> a-saleh I did this when negotiating salary at my last job. I discussed this with my wife, and we agreed, that having +20% salary wouldn't improve our lives much. Working 20% less probably would. So far it seems that it worked out :-)

The extra day helps for us to actually get somewhere during the weekend, and I really appreciate both having more family-time with my wife and daughter, as well as posibility to get somewhere on my own without the guilt of "but I should have been with my family".

On the other hand, I sometimes feel that I am not working enough at work and it has been tricky to align some of meetings within the team I work in, i.e. we have a lot of meetings on monday or friday :-/

<comment><USER27> It's plus 25%, not 20, since you'd make 5/4 the pay.

<comment><USER28> They are correctly using the upper salary and hours as a reference point in both cases. Perhaps the language could be clearer, but it doesn't make sense to use different reference points for comparison.

<comment> a-saleh These are rough estimates :) while comparing offers of my previous and current employment, there was the thing of having less vacation when working part-time (only 16 days, no sick-days, compared to 25+5) but the 20% pay-rise vs 20% less work seemed like the simplest comparison to get across :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Those are all advantages for workers. What are the advantages for businesses?

<comment><USER29> It's interesting that people are not considering the business point of view...

I read some people mentioning about working 10-hours a day and work from Monday to Thursday. If I was a business owner I wouldn't allow that. I would rather offer 5~6 hours work per day than allow him to work more for 4 days.

In my field of work (engineering) as a regular worker, I see people working 8 hours but they are not 8 hours productive. Discussing this with some friends we concluded that usually an average developer can focus for around 5 to 6 hours, tops. Then, by adding two hours a day, he won't be 7~8-hours- productive.

My bet (and that's a my own point of view) is that an average developer will keep being 5~6 hours productive. That's because the development process leads to mental exhaustion. After some time people will be much more distracted, leading to mistakes, etc.

Of course there are some folks that will argue that they can do 10~12h work per day. While this is true, usually they don't do it for long without being burned out. A very few exceptions can do that without getting stressed.

So, If I'm a business man and I want my employees to have more free time without affecting my business, I would reduce the hours per day rather then do 10 hours x 4 days a week.

* btw, that's about software engineering only. I don't think the mechanics of other business would work that way.

<comment><USER30> It really depends on the profession I think. Sometimes you're forced to work really long hours just based on your business.

For example a dentist might choose to work 3-4 days a week, but be open to seeing patients from 9am to 8pm to compensate for people unable to go during normal business hours due to their own work schedules.

Then again I think that business is a lot different than software development. Technically we could sit there and work on 1 thing for 12 hours, where as a dentist is hopping between patients and has a bunch of small breaks through out the day in between patients. It might not be "goof off time" breaks, but it's something that breaks up the day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I just got a 20% raise to go with a promotion. I wished I had an opportunity to negotiate a 20% reduction in working hours instead- perhaps even along with a _slight_ reduction in pay.

<comment><USER32> Did/have you asked? I know a handful of people who have asked and successfully accomplished this. I know a lot more people who wish they could but don't want to ask for fear of being seen as a low performer or something.

<comment><USER31> Um, actually no I didn't think to ask. That's a good point. I'm traveling to meet my distributed team next month, maybe I'll delicately broach the subject.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> While I support this in theory, the news source looks less than credible. On another article they suggest that medical professionals as well as IT professionals were becoming "dead career fields" which is very odd.If you look at hiring statistics in the latter at the very least, you will see that this is somewhat alarmist.

<comment><USER34> Both "IT professionals" and "medical professionals" are incredibly vague terms.

If the author is referring to corporate IT I do agree this niche is dying. Business support isn't a great place to be. Operational roles in product typically pay better and give you a greater opportunity to make an impact.

<comment><USER33> That's a very valid point. I was more confused by the point he was trying to make when he suggested that front-line medical workers are being less in demand however. In that respect, I was being vague, not the author. They directly mentioned that primary care workers are dying, which is demonstrably false.

Front-line/primary care providers in Canada at least are among one of the most in demand members of the work force. Look at the nurse shortage for example. If you get yourself a degree in nursing, you are almost guaranteed a job. If I look at members of my generation that I know who are employed VS not, I struggle to find any who majored in a professional health program (excluding premedical programs which are non-professional programs) who were not working in their field almost immediately after graduation.

In comparison, I know of a handful of people who graduated from highly in demand engineering programs and are entirely unemployed. As in, no job what so ever. Many also are not employed in their area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> A few months ago I switched my time schedule from the standard "five eights" over to "four tens". I derived two benefits immediately.

First, it was far easier to avoid overtime because I was already working 9 or 10 hour days before anyways. It was just how the tasks worked out. Coming in early allowed me to help get the team spun up early in the morning, and staying a little late allowed me to help the team clear any roadblocks so they could end their day too. Obviously it's more complicated than that, but that's a decent high level abstraction.

Second, it allowed me to cut Mondays out of my life. According to my Automatic Labs sensor[0], my worst commuting days are Mondays with easily 25-30% longer drives each way. Additionally, Mondays are horrible as there's a higher likelihood of hangovers with colleagues, or residual homelife drama that absolutely must be described between 7 and 10am. All the worst meetings happen on Mondays. It just goes and goes.

But after only a couple weeks I started to realize some other benefits. I started walking my son to kindergarten in the morning, and picking up my daughter from school in the afternoons, which allowed me many more focused hours of "play time" with them. I got several hours in the middle of the day (like right now) to read the web at my leisure, work on personal creative projects that had nothing to do with work, take some MOOC courses, etc.

Now, the negatives.

First, my wife who works part time 5 days a week imagines I sit at home drinking beer and watching TV at 9am. It took a while to really establish that just because I work 4 days a week doesn't mean I'm not still working 40 hours a week. I also do end up "working" on Mondays anyways, but just on education, home renovations, even if I do spend the first couple hours on HN articles.

Second, I had to institute a full communications embargo with colleagues on Mondays. It was just too easy for conversations about BS to slip back into work talk because that's how we roll in a normal workday anyways, mixing business and personal anecdotes. This could be hard for others to do.

Third, I find it nearly impossible to do any personal projects during the week now. Before, after an 8 or 9 hour day, I could come home and find some motivation for an hour or two of other stuff. Now, after a solid 10 hour day, I come home, decompress for about 30 mins, then it's time to start the bedtime ritual for the kids. There's no space or energy left for projects.

All in all, it was a great change. I've seen others who have completely flexible schedules (40 hours in a week however they want), or simply "five nines" where they get a day off every second week, and other variations. The moral of the story is: fuck Mondays.

0: [https://automatic.com](https://automatic.com) (not affiliated, just a customer)

<comment><USER7> I did 4/10 for a while but I found that during the four days I nothing but worth, commute and sleep. Maybe without the commute it would have viable but with an additional hour of driving I was completely shot in the evening. So for me it didn't work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I think we should switch to a six-day week (just drop Wednesday). Two day weekend, four day week:

[http://calendars.wikia.com/wiki/60-Week_Calendar](http://calendars.wikia.com/wiki/60-Week_Calendar)

<comment><USER37> We could go partial French Revolutionary, and have 36 10-day weeks at +3-1+3-3, plus an intercalary partial week at -5 or -6. Since we're not [all] French, the days of the week would be renamed as follows: Workday, Bluesday, Grindsday, Humpday, Schmerkday, Slogsday, Highday, Lazyday, Gamesday, and Chillsday. This would be referred to as the "Bactrian week", and the previous +5-2 week a "Dromedary week". The partial week shall be "Festivus Week".

For essential personnel, they cover all days of the week by working a rotating schedule of 9-day cycles (+3-1+3-2) plus one vacation week of 9 days off in a row, which adds to the previous 2-day weekend for a total of 11 consecutive days off. Festivus has staggered 3 on, 2 off, at double pay. Employees draw straws at 60% probability for working a leap day.

There's no need to rename the months. Years start on January 1st and follow Gregorian leap day rules.

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

~

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Even if you have a 3 day weekend, you still need to have proper long blocks off work. I used to take days off on Friday or Monday to get longer weekends in lieu of taking whole weeks. It's nice to have a long weekend but I found since taking more longer blocks (week or more) it's a lot better for you to fully switch off work (usually takes a few days to switch off completely).

<comment><USER39> It's sometimes nice to have 3, 4, or even just 2 1/2 day weekends if you want to go somewhere for a weekend trip. Which I do sometimes. But unless I have specific plans for the weekend, I'd rather have any days in excess of the usual two available for use for longer trips.

People obviously vary. I've worked with people who didn't have any particular trouble taking time off but they just didn't like travel and preferred just expanded weekends. For myself, I'd rather have most of the time for longer trips with just some longer weekends here and there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Three is too short. Try five?

<comment><USER40> I'm getting voted down but I'm serious... it is a cultural choice to feed people by paying them for work. And so work must be procured and time occupied by what is essentially walking a treadmill until the rent pops out.

<comment><USER18> In my business, if time is just occupied by a worker, they loose a job. Their job depends on them doing something that pays for their income.

<comment><USER40> Then they are probably doing a great if slightly panicked job of pretending to be "doing something" (as in "don't just sit there, do something!!") every hour of the workday. Because their rents and ramen depend on convincing some guy who grumps at people on news.ycombinator.com that a task which will naturally have surges and lulls consists of continuous machine-like effort.

<comment><USER18> They can't pretend to produce the final product in my shed manufacturing business. Their rents and ramen depends on them filling orders that customers paid for, not the grump who retorts to nitpickers on HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> As father of two: no, please no.

<comment><USER42> As father of five: yes, please yes.

<comment><USER43> I don't get this mentality at all. The number one thing I wish I had was more of in life was quality daytime hours to spend with my family. It's why I have kids. I've been spoiled by paternity leave for our new little one, and I don't know how I'll cope with having to go back to work.

<comment><USER44> People and their needs are different is that so difficult?

<comment><USER43> Nah. Having kids is a choice. If you're going to view/treat them as a burden, just don't do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The consequences would be terrible! We would have to wait 18 months between each iteration of Iphone instead of 12. Amazon would deliver at day+2. Uber Eats would answer: "No slave available. Sorry, you will have to cook".

Simply unacceptable !!!

Now go back to work 5 days a week!

<comment><USER46> Why cant things be more flexible, eg. you have a 7 day workweek but personally you only work 4 days?

This seems like a good idea especially given more automation and more higher level jobs.

<comment><USER47> Because most jobs require correlation of schedules between roles, or suppliers and vendors, a minimum viable number of staff, or deadlines which need to be met. A cashier, for instance, can't simply decide not to come in to work for half the week, or to only work overnight when it's easier. Everyone would do that, and the business would lose money.

>This seems like a good idea especially given more automation and more higher level jobs.

Automation means fewer jobs and less flexibility, not the opposite. The more work machines do, the less value human labor has, the harder employers have to squeeze their employees to even make a profit from them. One just has to look at a company like Amazon to see how that trend leads.

<comment><USER48> But many don't. Many things are planned on the scale of quarters, not hours. In that case, it doesn't actually matter what hours people work, as long as things are done by the deadline.

I've certainly worked for companies where other companies contracted out their software development tasks to us. They did not care what hours we worked; they spent their money and expected a result X months later. Whether we worked on their project from 9-5 was something they would not even know, much less care about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> There shouldn't be weekends. People should be allowed to take any 3 days off during the week. This will reduce unemployment and increase productivity.

<comment><USER50> Things like weekends and holidays are, in some cases, the only thing that let people who do certain types of work have any time off work to begin with.

Someone I know worked at a supermarket as a cashier at some point and she asked for a few days off on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. She asked for this a few months in advance. Her manager looked at here puzzled and sneered "What do you want off for?" as if it was strange to want to have a few days off on Christmas. Luckily for her it was just her student job and she quit before Christmas came around, but some people are not in a position to quit/negotiate and have to put up with asshole-bosses all the time.

Here in the Netherlands shops stay open longer and longer and on more days (they used to be closed on Sunday). This leaves people who don't have an education that gives them a lot of job security open to exposed to the whims of their bosses.

I think ideas like having the ability to choosing your weekends (2 or 3 days) leaves those 2 or 3 days open to discussion and gives some managers a chance to wiggle them out from under you. You see a similar effect with the 'unlimited holiday'-companies out there; the effect is that people feel pressured into taking less days off than they would have had with a more traditional number of days at other companies.

Also, schools are open during the week, not the weekend, so parents are pretty much stuck with the 'normal' weekend anyway.

<comment><USER18> > but some people are not in a position to quit/negotiate and have to put up > with asshole-bosses all the time.

Everyone is in a position to quit/negotiate. People who tell themselves they aren't are just living in a cage they keep themselves in. Have some initiative and make a positive lifestyle change!

<comment><USER51> You can negotiate yourself onto the street, I suppose the fresh air could be considered a positive life change.

<comment><USER18> A fresh perspective opens up opportunities.

<comment><USER51> Or gives you nothing to work with. If your only skill was "working at a gas station" and you got fired from a gas station, you better hope that there are more opportunities for working at another gas station, cause you aren't taking a "sabbatical" from minimum wage to enhance your skills to move up.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Essential Guide to Electronics in Shenzhen (2016) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://bunniefoo.com/bunnie/essential/essential-guide-shenzhen-web.pdf <comment><USER3> This is my friend's story. He owns a company that designs and manufactures various electro-mechanical things. So he went there to check quality of his order that was getting ready for shipping. All went nice and shiny and then as he was about to head back to an airport he mentioned that he now has to find where to buy 150,000 non standard size batteries for the things being made. So the the owner said wait a min. Dials his buddy with another factory that happen to manufacture batteries and explains the task. So they set up the line and in 3 hours he had the whole amount made and put in crates.

Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind stealing the design and doing it themselves.

<comment><USER4> > Friend says it is insane how advanced the whole manufacturing is in China. > It is engineer's paradise. Of course one has to be smart as they do not mind > stealing the design and doing it themselves.

It is possible that these things are related.

Everything is so efficient because rent-seeking on "intellectual property" is not an option. You have to execute well or somebody else will do it better.

<comment><USER5> it reminds me of the early / glory days of piracy. I've seen a lot of kids just torrenting software for their needs and just getting started with video game programming, music, or other fields. What I liked about it, is that you could just get started with something right away, with the right tools without having to think about the financial aspect of things.

Last time I check unreal engine works a bit like that, it is free to download and use as long as you don't make more than x amount of money per year, when you start making decent money you'll give a percentage to Epic. I wish more things would work this way.

<comment><USER6> Autodesk finally wisened up to this and has fully featured educational licenses for free

<comment> creative-coder Autodesk's actions are most probably a response to feeling the heat from stable, multi-faceted & open source Modelling, Animation and Sculpting tool, Blender which is completely free, receiving considerable attention from industry recently (after v2.8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even if the maps are outdated, I think the point-to-translate pages serve as a really nice, condensed English<->Chinese glossary of electronics.

This helps not only foreigners, but also native Chinese like myself who have received their higher education in English. You see, I usually can't hold a conversation about electronics or computer science in Chinese, even though my mother tongue is Cantonese and I'm generally fluent in Mandarin.

</comment><comment><USER8> Was fortunate to meet and spend some time with Andrew (Bunnie) a couple years ago.

The guy is just a stellar nice person. Generally speaking he's usually the smartest guy in the room yet he's totally approachable and down-to-earth.

One of his gifts is a Feynman-like ability to explain complex topics in a down-to-earth manner.

If you get a chance to hear him speak/present, take it.

<comment><USER9> I remember him from the original Xbox hacking. I believe he was the one that originally figured out how to load custom software on it, and maybe even got sued?

<comment><USER10> The book he wrote about this is freely downloadable these days at [https://nostarch.com/xbox](https://nostarch.com/xbox) .

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Can anyone who has been to an electronics market in Shenzhen (or visited Shenzhen in general) comment on what their experience was like?

<comment><USER12> I spent a day at the Huaqiangbei market and honestly there's very little like it in the world. I didn't go in looking for anything in particular, but left with all sorts of tools and parts that I didn't even know I needed. A full USB power debugger with colour screen ($8), various LED module samples, a few Android tablets with a 9" screen, dual SIM and microSD ($30): my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)... as well as a whole number of little parts and cabling and components I didn't even know existed. Others have written more about it ([https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at- huaqia...](https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/13/what-50-buys-you-at-huaqiangbei- the-worlds-most-fascinating-electronic-market) is the classic article) but if you're even faintly interested in electronics I'd wholeheartedly recommend it.

<comment><USER13> _my friend had his iPhone upgraded from 16GB to 128GB storage (a student literally desoldered the flash with a hot air gun, transferred it over in a BGA reader and soldered a new chip on, in under an hour)_

One huge difference I've noticed between HQB (and other smaller electronics markets I've been to elsewhere in China) and whatever repair shops still exist in the West is how much more _interactive_ the whole experience is. I once went to HQB with a friend who wanted to get his laptop fixed, and the serviceperson (who also happened to be female --- another thing first-time visitors may be surprised by is the nearly 50/50 gender ratio) would take it apart and diagnose while talking to us, showing exactly what the problem was. They had run out of the part that needed replacement, but instead of telling us to come back later, she left her stall and lead us to another store in the same building to buy a reel of it, then went back and replaced it, showed us that it now worked, and asked a very reasonable price. The shop had several stalls of others doing the same thing, and a pretty long line of people waiting too.

It's a huge contrast to more "Western" repair experiences, where you're lucky to have it done on the same day, much less get to see the process or be told what the problem was.

<comment><USER14> I've got very similar experience in Akihabara, Tokyo.

Trivial thing happened to my headphones. The wire broke very close to the jack plug because of the frequent bending. There was a young guy there, I told him what happened using my broken Japanese, he patiently listened, took the headphones, made some basic check on them, took my phone number and told me to come in 30 minutes. In 20 minutes I got call that it's done. When it came to payment he asked me how much, I think, I should pay. I've been oblivious so he proposed 500 JPY, which is close to nothing, considering that I've had no tools and spare parts.

London, UK - the same situation happened. I've been told to throw it away.

<comment><USER15> UK spent over 50 years looking down on "doing" trades, the engineers, technicians, repairers etc, and been brainwashed that converting to a service economy is better for all. Industry and manufacturing was closed as a matter of policy, even in sectors we still competed well.

UK has destroyed the supply chains, the experience, or the ability to train or employ such people any more except in very exceptional cases. End result is few have even _seen_ a jack plug or mains plug that's not moulded or would know where to start.

So we have shops that have no idea how to fix a broken plug or cable, and jewellers that have to return a watch to the manufacturer for a battery change. I'd guess in 1980-1990 most shops on Tottenham Court Road could have soldered a new one, along with most similar shops around the country now they're all just box shifters.

<comment><USER16> This is not specific to UK, I'd hazard that the whole western world is like that.

You litteraly cannot find ANY electronics shop in Paris (there were still a few ones a few years ago), and no one apart from some non-profits initiative is willing to even open a piece of electronics to do some simple repairs that involve soldering (the only repair being done is changing a part on phones/tablets/computers).

It's really depressing, because a lot repairs are really simple (unsolder a capacitor that is visibly broken, solder a new one in, or even replace a fuse in audio equipment) and instead those objects are trashed, contributing to the growing ecological problems.

That state of affair comes from both an economic lens (manpower is too costly compared to buying a new one), and a skill shortage (people watch me like an alien when I do those simple repairs)

<comment><USER17> If you are in Versailles there is Vart Électronique. I once needed a cable or something and thought I would need to order it on AliExpress.

I gave them a call and 15 min of biking later I had what I needed for a few euros.

The shop is an inscriptible mess but the guys running it are ok.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Discussed before it existed: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11027369)

A bit more from 2016: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11166154)

</comment><comment><USER19> Actual hardware R&D focused business owner in the PRD here. 18 years China. IMHO the 'essential guide' is just buy stuff online: barely anyone actually physically visits stores anymore. Certain parties make money and cred by claiming being in physical proximity to a bunch of cables and parts in HQB is somehow awesome, and in a minority of cases walking around might save half a day, but really you can just order ahead or use your own stock if you have a clue which area you'll be working in, and you'll have saved 10x half a day in rent by not being there. Even if you buy stuff online many stores will give you their business card, WeChat or QQ account and you can just ask them to send stuff pronto on subsequent orders, cutting Taobao or whatever online platform out of the equation. Shenzhen is _very_ expensive for real estate and salaries. If you want to go scrappy, live somewhere cheap in China (Yunnan is awesome) and use Taobao. If you want to go scrappy and fast, live somewhere cheap in the PRD and use Taobao. (There are minor electronics ecosystems around Xi'an, Chengdu, Zhejiang and Beijing, too.) No need to even visit Shenzhen, although outer Shenzhen / Dongguan is still a great place to acquire lots of types of industrial equipment, IMHO inner Shenzhen / HQB really just isn't anymore. Hardware startups should go somewhere cheap to iterate. The cheapest and cleanest well connected major area of the PRD is Zhuhai, where we moved from Shenzhen 1.5 years ago. I go back about once a month for outlying factories.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there any way to visit Shenzhen without submitting your fingerprints to the Chinese government? I've heard that everyone gets their fingers scanned at entry these days even if you never had to submit fingerprints with your visa application. Is that correct?

<comment><USER21> I've been to China three time in the past three years; I've never had to be fingerprinted.

<comment><USER22> Anecdata but I got fingerprinted just passing through Shanghai airport in transit at the end of 2018.

I haven't visited the US or transited through a US airport but again anecdotally I've heard this happens there too (even in transit).

<comment><USER23> I'm not sure about transit but when I (EU citizen) have been to the US they took all ten of my fingerprints, and this has also been the experience of my friends.

(Incidentally, my own government doesn't even have any of my fingerprints...)

<comment><USER24> I wouldn't be so certain that your government does not have your fingerprint... if it's European you can bet that at least your secret services have it as part of "we spy on your citizens, you on ours" agreement.

<comment><USER25> Of course they do - at least in Germany. Your biometrics are part of your personal ID and passport. It is only thumb and index finger though plus facial scan / photo.

<comment><USER24> The prints are only stored on the passport/ID card and not indexed by the government (although there are plans to change this)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> In the introduction, they lightly recommend VPNs. I would recommend using a SOCKS5 proxy instead if you're in China and looking to get past the firewall. Shadowsocks is purpose built for this [1]. You can easily set it up on a droplet or vultr before you travel. If it gets blocked, changing the port number can usually suffice.

[1] [https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html](https://shadowsocks.org/en/index.html)

<comment><USER27> You can also just use a phone plan with roaming, as they aren't affected by the firewall. The guide says it's pricey, but Google Fi doesn't charge extra for roaming. I got around China last year with it, including some fairly remote parts.

<comment><USER28> Or stop by Hong Kong first and get your SIM there (from a mainland ISP.) _Because_ it's a mainland ISP, you'll have coverage anywhere in China without roaming; and since the SIM was issued for Hong Kong, it won't route through the Great Firewall, even when in the mainland.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> There's a game on steam called SHENZHEN I/O. I think that if you finish that game and study this document, you can implement anything you want really :)

</comment><comment><USER30> > (...) And then there are the pronunciation subtleties, such as 芯片号, "xīn > piàn hào" (which means an "IC's part number" (literally "core flat item's > number"), which with misplaced accents sounds like 性偏好, "xìng piān hào" > which means "sexual preference". No native speaker would ever mispronounce > or confuse the two, but a foreigner going up to a local asking "What's your > chip's part number?" could be heard as "What's your sexual preference?" if > mispronounced and taken out of context.

I love how every language out there is choke-full of these :) Though so far nothing beats the importance of punctuation in "Come on, people"[1]

[1]: As heard in one of John oliver's episodes

<comment><USER31> Choke-full sounds appropriate in this case (since it's about people choking on their words, more or less), but the usual phrase is chock-full, meaning "packed full".

<comment><USER30> Pun unintentionally intended, then :) Thanks for the note.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Oh, this is wonderful! I'm learning Chinese right now - <USER2> capable, but I have no grasp on jargon (especially electronics). This is a great guide.

There are some issues with the pinyin transliterations - they seem to be machine-generated rather than human-generated: there's some errors, like mixups between chang/zhang for 长, and weirdness like "yao yao ling" for 110 where we'd usually use "yi bai yi shi". But technically these wouldn't matter much in a point-and-translate context because neither party would be paying attention to the pinyin.

Anyway, aside from that nit - I suspect I will be using part of it as a study guide for my Mandarin learning. Thanks, Bunnie!

<comment><USER33> Yao yao ling is just what everyone says - it's a phone number. You don't read it as "one hundred and ten"

<comment><USER32> Ah, I'm sorry. I should have clarified further - I was referring to the transliteration of "110V" as "yao yao ling dian ya" - "one one zero volts". In that instance the transliteration is incorrect as one would usually use "one hundred and ten" (yi bai yi shi).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is extremely topical for me, as I'm visiting the Shenzhen electronics market for the first time today. :D

My Chinese is okay, although I don't know any of the technical terms. Thanks for the reference! Looking forward to experiencing this firsthand.

</comment><comment><USER35> I just went. It's really darn cool, but if I lived there I would still buy everything online, except the shipping would be faster!

I can't believe how many e-bikes were there. Also when you go the sound of shipping tape is everywhere.

</comment><comment><USER36> In Chicago, there are many many very talented Chinese engineering students. Having two hard copies of this guide in the office has helped me recover from some miscommunications very quickly.

<comment><USER37> Why two copies??

<comment><USER36> Prevents a bottleneck with access to information.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm not that interested in the place and electronics per se but I've found the intro really interesting in terms of culture and language. Great read.

</comment><comment><USER38> I'm currently reading "The Hardware Hacker" [1] by the same author. It touches on a lot of the same issues at a higher level. Highly recommended even for those just casually interested in the topic.

[1] [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the- hardware...](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/30804383-the-hardware- hacker)

</comment><comment><USER39> Great, thanks for the link :)

I was looking for exactly this book in german book stores, but local bookstores here do not have books from No Starch Press in their program: [https://nostarch.com/shenzhen](https://nostarch.com/shenzhen)

I never buy anything from amazon, just my personal decision

</comment><comment><USER40> Anybody got a Chinese to English dictionary where more frequent meaning comes first? Cdict has this problem that lots of times some random obscure meanings are mentioned before popular meanings.

(For example ,下去- go down is an irrelevant meaning and the first relevant meaning- continue is 3rd in the list)

<comment><USER41> Just googling "下去 continue" brought up [https://www.linguee.com/chinese- english/translation/%E4%B8%8...](https://www.linguee.com/chinese- english/translation/%E4%B8%8B%E5%8E%BB.html) . Googling "chinese english dictionary common usage" brought up someone with the same complaint as you: [http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english- dict...](http://laowaichinese.net/the-future-for-chinese-english- dictionaries.htm)

<comment><USER40> I appreciate your trying to figure out a solution to my problem. A sincere thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> A list of (pretty awesome) projects from the same author/team: [https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio- kosagi](https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi)

</comment><comment><USER43> > I also hesitantly recommend installing Baidu maps. It's basically malware, > so uninstall it upon leaving China

Anyone have more info about this? What does/can the app do with the permissions it has?

<comment><USER44> It agressively pushes all the other products Baidu has, like every other Chinese big app, but Baidu's reputation is especially bad, think about it as Baidu's Wechat super app. You can try Tencent Map.

If you are using Android, then get ready being asked for all kinds of permissions as it's Chinese apps' tradition, some apps even outright refuse to run if you decline it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> More information from the dedication:

[https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626](https://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=5626)

</comment><comment><USER46> Here is a nice video on the city: [https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0](https://youtu.be/Qu203JDnwq0)

</comment><comment><USER47> Will any of the vendors give you source code and specs for the hardware?

</comment><comment><USER48> Excerpt (from page 19):

Internet & Helpful Apps

"As a general rule, the Internet as you know it is blocked in China. There's no access to Google services, Facebook, Twitter, Imgur, YouTube, Vimeo, Dropbox, Telegram, etc. etc. As a consolation, there's Bing. Roaming data service will bypass the firewall since roaming phones are assigned an IP address from the home country of the subscriber's carrier, but it's an expensive option. Prices vary depending upon the carrier, but currently T-mobile offers one of the lowest cost international roaming data plans. A VPN is a cheaper way to get around the firewall, but depending upon the political climate even VPNs can be blocked. China's firewall routers have the ability to do deep packet inspection and thus can automatically discover VPN connections running on unconventional ports or with other small modifications intended to bypass less sophisticated firewalls."

</comment><comment> oneoff-acct I'm deeply unsettled by the economic relationship between China and the rest of the world, particularly with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. Since the end of the Cold War, nuclear nations have tried at all costs to avoid arms races and armed conflict. However, war still happens, but on more subtle fronts.

China is waging economic warfare in earnest:

\- Government subsidizes real estate investments in Western nations by Chinese investors, driving up real estate and turning a significant segment of the US population from homeowners to renters.

\- Severely undercutting manufacturing prices for decades, to the point that Western nations have lost the ability to manufacture many products.

\- Devaluing the Yuan and opening trade agreements around the world to protect itself from US sanctions and tariffs

\- Purchasing billions annually in US treasury bonds (they hold around 30% of outstanding treasury bonds - over $1.1T)

At the same time, China's might is costing its 1.4B citizens dearly: unsafe or abusive working conditions, severe human rights abuses, and an Orwellian surveillance state.

I know the choice to do business with China is complex and nuanced. But I suggest prioritizing the moral implications--both to the world and to China's citizens--of a Chinese government with ever-increasing power when considering to what extent one should do business with China.

<comment><USER49> It's kinda strange that these accounts are popping up all over the place to stoke fear on China. What's the agenda here I wonder?

Chinese are known to pay folks to post on foreign forums. I'm not sure who is behind these...fascinating stuff

<comment> oneoff-acct I'm a US citizen working at a tech company. I have a normal HN account with reputation above 2000. These are my own thoughts and opinions. I'm just honestly afraid of being targeted by Chinese hackers for posting sentiments like the above.

<comment><USER50> It is like to post something negative about LGBT and claim that you fear being attacked by their active members. China and Chinese don't give a XYZT about you. HN is full of anti-Chinese comments and this will only continue as the war with Eastasia is in progress.

<comment><USER51> . . . or as long as Chinese leadership continues to engage in human rights abuses, or as long as Chinese companies continue with rampant theft of intellectual property, manufacturing of unsafe/unethical products, etc.

Not all criticism is a sign of national- or racially-targeted abuse. No one is above criticism.

<comment><USER50> Your previous highly downvoted comment was about another war. It seems that you are bombed with hateful information, take a break.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Scientists Observe EM Drive Propulsion Again - <AUTHOR> https://hacked.com/scientists-confirm-impossible-em-drive-propulsion/

<comment><USER2> This is starting to get really exciting!</comment>


Show HN: Tracking Flu Outbreaks with Wikipedia - <AUTHOR>

I wrote a script to import Wikipedia traffic data for the Influenza page and graph it. (Updates daily)
Graph: http://www.additiveanalytics.com/solutions/flu_tracker
Inspired by this study published last week: http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003581#abstract1
The researchers found that Wikipedia page view data provided better real-time reporting on influenza outbreaks when compared to the CDC's data (which has a typical lag of 1-2 weeks) and Google Flu Trends (which had trouble with the 2012-2013 flu season and 2009 H1N1 panic.
Graph was done with d3.js. <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link: [http://www.additiveanalytics.com/solutions/flu_tracker](http://www.additiveanalytics.com/solutions/flu_tracker)

<comment><USER2> Posts without urls get penalized. You'd be better off posting this as a story using that link, then posting your text as a comment in the thread.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip, dang.

I resubmitted the story here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7641897](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7641897)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Can you teach me how to program, in return for…? - <AUTHOR>

Hello,
I'm really interested in learning the basics of general programming. I'm functional at a basic level with CSS and HTML, but I'd like to learn a language such as Ruby. I've had a lot of software developed over the years, and I understand the process, but I've never actually gotten involved in the nuts and bolts.
I'd like to change that. I find I learn best when I can work with someone, ask questions, and interact.
I live in Japan, so it's difficult to do an official course, so I'm hoping to find someone who can spend maybe, 1-2 hours every couple of days with me, to help me out and teach me the basics of say, source control, and general coding over Skype.
In return, I'm open to ideas. I'm happy to pay, provide mentorship (I've built a reasonably successful company from the ground up with no capital), or I'm open to ideas.
Please drop me a line if you're interested in discussing this, and thanks for your time in reading this post. <comment><USER2> Japanese lessons would be neat. Not sure how great a tutor I'd be though, you'd have to clearly outline your goals for me so I could figure out how (better yet, if) I can help you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, happy to help. I can't find your email address though... ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Do you speak Japanese, and if so, are you capable of tutoring?

Alternatively, I'd be interested if you have any contacts in Australia you could introduce me to. My family and I are planning to emigrate from the States in the next 4 years, and I'm trying to network ahead of time to set up a job, find some sort of community. I'd be FAR more interested in that than I am in Japanese lessons.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Sure, I speak fluent Japanese, and sure, I can teach what I know. I'm Australian, but I've been living in Japan for 10 years. I'd be happy to introduce you to anyone I know in Australia, but unfortunately I'm a bit out of touch with Australia these days, having lived overseas for so long.</comment>