Ask HN: Simple tools/hack for small project management - <AUTHOR> I am looking for an equivalent of Google Keep for project management. Appreciate any help in advance.<p>thanks. <comment><USER3> I've used [https://trello.com/](https://trello.com/) for most of my projects even when I am working with a team. We love it. Here are some basics on how to manage a project with Trello: [https://trello.com/inspiration/project- management](https://trello.com/inspiration/project-management).

<comment><USER4> Absolutely, With Trello you can always scale from small beginnings to full fledged system with plugins. And if you have a DIY nature you can write your own plugins the same isnt true for say JIRA.

<comment><USER5> Is there somewhere a plugin to make shortcut buttons for filtering? I label my cards, but filtering by labels is real pain in the ass process.

I've had a look at their API but it does not seems too straightforward. :(

<comment><USER4> You can always program something if you want. Their client ibrary is excellent [https://trello.readme.io/v1.0/reference#client- library](https://trello.readme.io/v1.0/reference#client-library) There are assortment of ways to get data which you can filter and show the cards that you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Org mode. I put a Readme.org in every project I start, and it can help with most project management tasks. You can also hook these files up to your Org agenda, so that issues (i.e. TODO items) show up there.

Edit: I should also mention the Dired mode in Emacs, which is a directory browser. I use "% g" quite frequently, and it has useful extensions like wdired and dired-hacks.

<comment><USER7> Org-mode also offers tagging support.

If you add it to your agenda, you can filter things out by tags.

Org mode also has excellent mobile support. All your todo items, schedules etc. can also be viewed in your phone.

Another plus-side is that it is completely text based. You don't have to worry about internet access, operating system, age of the machine, the medium you want to use.

You can quickly export org-mode schedules as pdf/tex/html/txt etc.

If you cannot meet your schedules, you can make a note yourself on why you couldn't meet it and simply reschedule.

The core functionality of org-mode is actually simple. I'd suggest giving org- mode a chance.

1) Create an org document 2) Set some tasks as headlines 3) make them todo items by typing C-c C-t 4) schedule them to a certain date with C-c C-s 5) add the org-file to your agenda by C-c C-[

And you've got a working project schedule. M-x org-agenda to view your schedule.

<comment><USER8> Could you and GP share more about your project management setup (and ways you use it) in org-mode?

I do use org-mode quite a bit, but for project-specific notebooks, I usually quickly get mentally overwhelmed with the volume and mix of finished/unfinished tasks. I can feel the problem is in the way I use it. Somehow the same content, put in a crappy kanban-style web board, doesn't seem _as_ overwhelming (even though it's an order of magnitude less efficient to work on than it is with org).

<comment><USER9> I keep all paid work in a work.org file and clock in/out of headings there. The basic structure is

* Projects __Customer X __* TODO issue 42 breakage SCHEDULED: <2018-02-12> __Customer Y __* subproject foo __ __TODO fix slow frobnication SCHEDULED: <2018-02-09> * Ideas * Misc

When I get an e-mail or something about a new task, I use org-capture to turn it into a TODO with a link back to the e-mail and a default SCHEDULED value, and I hit C-c C-w to refile it directly into customers/subprojects (otherwise they end up under Misc and I'll refile later). I always clock into the task I'm doing, and I use the clocktable (limited to a time range) to figure out how long I've worked on what for my invoices. Since I switch tasks a lot, and didn't like how the recent-tasks-lists was emptied on restarting Emacs, I ended up writing a little helper package at [https://github.com/unhammer/org- mru-clock](https://github.com/unhammer/org-mru-clock) to let me quickly clock in to recent tasks (also lets you navigate to recent tasks if you use ivy).

I do something similar to user terminalcommand, where I schedule tasks in my agenda, so when I open my work-agenda, the stuff that needs doing is always there. I might leave "sometime-maybe" tasks/ideas unscheduled (like "try shiny new library"), but anything people are actually asking me fix will be scheduled. It's really easy to push things towards the future in the agenda, so it's not really overwhelming, even though my work.org file is now at 11677 lines (and I see my work.org_archive is at 6403 – maybe I should archive more things, but it's not like I notice the size).

For collaboration, I use whatever other people use (trello, wikis, meeting notes in etherpad checked into SVN).

<comment><USER9> ugh, my line breaks got lost. Trying again since I can't edit:

        * Projects

        ** Customer X
        *** TODO issue 42 breakage
            SCHEDULED: <2018-02-12>

        ** Customer Y
        *** Fooproject
        **** TODO fix slow frobnication
             SCHEDULED: <2018-02-09>

        * Ideas

        * Misc

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not Google Keep, but part of "Simple tools/hack for small project management".

I do a lot of work from the commandline, and have a few simple macros to do simple timestamped tags. Eg "ttag started on proj ABC", "ttag debugging this", "ttag stopped for today". The tags are stored in a text file. Some work when going back to sum up hours spent on project X, hours on Y etc, but very simple.

Here:

        alias ttag='/cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag.sh'
        alias ttagcat='cat /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag-logfile.txt'
        alias ttago='open /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag-logfile.txt'

and

        >cat /cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag.sh
        #!/bin/sh
        LOGFILE=/cygdrive/c/Dropbox/tools/ttag/ttag-logfile.txt
        TIMESTAMP_NICE=$(date +"%F %H.%M.%S - %s:")
        echo $TIMESTAMP_NICE "$@" >> $LOGFILE

works well enough for me.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wholeheartedly recommend WorkFlowy - [https://workflowy.com](https://workflowy.com)

For me, its focus on text and deep hierarchical breakdown, in combination with tagging is potent. You may need to figure out your own way to adapt to your PM style though. For example, some common tags I use are "#next", "#someday", "#2018-02-08" and such.

<comment><USER12> the landing page is horrible though. Literally no informations apart from "these guys use it"

<comment><USER13> I would not use it simply because of this

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I just keep a text file near the project and jot down notes / other things accordingly in free form.

This even includes recaps for freelance work. Like I would have an entry of:

2/7/2018: 3 hours

\- Did such and such

\- Implemented this and that

\- Fixed foobar to return foo

I keep to that exact date / hours worked format so when I invoice clients I just grep the file and cut / sum the total hours (if I'm not doing project based pricing).

It works really well for the solo developer / freelancer. No time is wasted on BS and there's a log of work rendered + notes + TODOs + etc..

I like it because I can do all of this from within my code editor which is where I'm doing the work. The efficiency level is very high.

<comment><USER15> I do this too, but I have 1 file for everything, with each project having a section. At the end of the day, I rotate the file and archive it in a directory. I can run a script and figure out how much time I spent on a project over several years.

<comment><USER16> hboon - that ability to run a script and see time spent from a text file sounds like a fantastic combo of simplicity to use and the ability to mine data. I'd love to see an example of your file format and script to see exactly how it all works together, if you are up for sharing.

<comment><USER17> I would love to see this as well. My workflow would benefit greatly from this.

<comment><USER15> Replied above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Here's my project: [https://www.contabulo.com](https://www.contabulo.com).

It hasn't gotten any love via Show HN, but it's relevant to the thread, so :)

Basically I wanted something sort of like Trello, but more geared toward Knowledge and Content management and collaboration. I was unaware of the existence of Google Keep at the time, but it does look vaguely similar, doesn't it?

Oh yea, example (read-only) board: [https://app.contabulo.com/boards/a5e413d1-8fe3-4b42-a8f1-b4f...](https://app.contabulo.com/boards/a5e413d1-8fe3-4b42-a8f1-b4f83cd1aff5)

<comment><USER19> Little bit of feedback: "Contabulo's flexibility enables a wide variety of uses" would be a lot stronger if it specifically named a use for a problem that I encounter.

<comment><USER18> Thanks for that. Yea, I need to work more on the landing page. Being too close to the product myself (having built it) of course _I_ think the utility is obvious (and I don't think it's an outlandishly new concept), but I definitely need to work on my marketing-speak and salesmanship (not my forte, apparently). :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I recommend Asana. It is simple when you get started, but can also grow with you as your project increases in complexity with numerous task organization options.

Useful features:

\- Browse tasks with keyboard like a text file.

\- Tasks can be in multiple projects.

\- Tasks can have sub tasks.

\- Big ecosystem - lots of integrations with other tools.

I use the following alongside it:

\- Everhour for time tracking.

\- Unito to sync my tasks to Github to track commits.

\- Github issues.

\- Instagantt for gantt charting the Asana tasks to see how reliable your time estimates were and plan ahead.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'm a fan of OneNote for this. It's not perfect but it checks all the boxes I need and it's free.

Rather than making a list of tasks I have a whole section of them, and so I can attach files or notes to each one. This makes context switching between tasks fairly efficient.

</comment><comment><USER22> [https://kanboard.org/](https://kanboard.org/) as self hosted trello alternative, very good and obviously completely private.

Org-mode or [https://github.com/jceb/vim-orgmode](https://github.com/jceb/vim- orgmode) if you are using vim (I do).

[http://tailordev.github.io/Watson/](http://tailordev.github.io/Watson/) for cli time tracking. Works beautifully.

</comment><comment><USER23> I use (and develop) Standard Notes ([https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org)). It's dead simple, but that's good enough for me. I use the task editor to keep track of todos for updates and other projects.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fossil is cool: [https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wi...](https://www.fossil- scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wiki)

<comment><USER25> Do you know whether its ticket management functionality is available from the CLI?

<comment><USER26> [https://fossil-scm.org/xfer/help?cmd=ticket](https://fossil- scm.org/xfer/help?cmd=ticket)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I open a Gdocs page and start writing a project diary. It serves the same purpose as the recording of transactions in accounting: rather than try to skip to a summary of tasks, bugs, or features, first I have to develop a "primary source of truth" about the project as a narrative - what I am developing, why I should prioritize something right now, and the feedback I hope to get from developing it.

As aspects of the project turn into specific tasks and data I can consider making formal artifacts for them, but it's unwise to do it too early in a solo project because of the added overhead and distraction from overall priorities. Structurally, coding on your own is really different from having a team to communicate with and leads or managers to specialize time allocation. You have the freedom to automate everything you are working with, and that's your biggest advantage. Where formality is added, it should be done with the support of a script that takes care of the technical details and keeps your friction down - it is not hard to automate turning TODO or FIXME source comments into a report, for example.

</comment><comment><USER28> A simple GitHub or Gitlab repository is all that I need. Gitlab has the added advantage of a free CI (with 2k free build minutes per month), but for me git hosting + issues and boards + wiki pages are all I need for any project. I have used many, many project management solutions before, but if you use a sane methodology you don't really need anything else.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm using [https://www.paymoapp.com](https://www.paymoapp.com) for time- tracking and project management.

Next to that using [https://trello.com](https://trello.com) for setting up Agile boards.

<comment><USER30> If I am not wrong you can have Agile boards in Paymo as well, it's called Kanban boards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> For small/solo projects I prefer to use a notebook with the first few pages reserved for an index. I complement it with a kanban board on the wall (post- it notes).

What I like about it:

No procrastination in a management tool (over-planning, formatting, etc).

No illusion of order (technology/computers have a tendency to make you appear disciplined, or to pretend you will be more disciplined by using them… I think it's bullshit. Discipline is a core skill, not the ability to use a tool).

No software can provide the feel of moving a post-it note to the "Done" column. Physical data (pages) is also supposed to help memorization.

<comment><USER32> > For small/solo projects I prefer to use a notebook with the first few pages > reserved for an index.

You might consider starting your index on the back page, and let it grow "backwards" toward the content, sort of like stack and heap do in memory.

I think I first saw this suggested by the Humphrey/PMP people, where a notebook is (used to be?) a prominent tool. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Maturity_Model)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We have been using Teamwork for a couple of years. It offers kanban card based paradigm as well as PERT/CPM. Our PD teams like the former while we in Consulting services like the latter best. One can project delivery dates in a timeline and with that do more refined risk management. Currently there are 455 running projects and 1603 stakeholders using the system including internal, customer and partners teams.

</comment><comment><USER34> We built [https://usebx.com/app](https://usebx.com/app) for managing a small business. It includes a simple to do list type of project manager. Most of our users love the simplicity and the fact that it integrates with time tracking and invoicing. You may find it useful too.

<comment><USER34> Also, we're adding the ability to add files to tasks soon. If there's any particular functionality you're looking for but can't find, let us know - <USER2> we think it can make the app more useful, we'll build it. We're only at 30k active users, so are still small enough to be able cater to specific needs!

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If it was just me, I'd use plain text files like people are suggesting in this thread. In particular, if you want to be able to track and do retrospectives of what's been done, consider using jrnl[0] to log what you've done.

For small teams, I really like Dropbox Paper. It's better than text files here because it's real-time collaborative, but retains nearly all of the flexibility. It supports Markdown syntax, checkboxes, etc. You can tag members of your team, comment in the margins, and link to one doc quickly from another. For small teams that don't need a heavyweight process, Dropbox Paper fills fits my needs here rather well.

[0] [http://jrnl.sh](http://jrnl.sh)

</comment><comment><USER36> If you want a card-based planner, take a look at our Hyper Plan software: [http://www.hyperplan.com](http://www.hyperplan.com)

Where it differs from most other card-based planners is:

-any number of custom properties per card

-powerful visualization (layout and color your cards automatically by their properties or connectivity)

-powerful filtering

-supports dependencies between cards (including support for PERT type project scheduling)

-store different combinations of layout, coloring and filtering as 'views' you can swap between with a mouse click

-highly customizable appearance

-runs locally on Windows and Mac (which makes it very responsive) but plays nicely with DropBox

</comment><comment><USER37> Telegram's Saved Messages feature (which is basically a chat with oneself) helps me a lot - it loads in the web interface instantly and works like an ultra-light notes app, where you can also post files and images, search your notes, edit and delete items. Everything is instantly shared between web and mobile.

The drawback is that you can have only one Saved Messages chat and no way to tag messages by project - it becomes messy when you use it for several projects at once.

For a small team, per-project chats are also very helpful - you can easily recall what you were discussing or planning to do several months ago.

<comment><USER38> You can add a #hashtag or even a bunch of them to every post though.

Makes it easy to filter by topic.

Another quick tip: you can have multiple chats with the exact same recipients. Nice if you have a running chat with someone and you also have one or more shared projects.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I'm from a small remote team of 8 employees, we use Riter ([https://riter.co](https://riter.co)). It provides a basic set of necessary features for project management, time tracking, estimation and control. Here's an existing demo company for quick review [https://demo.riter.co/login](https://demo.riter.co/login)

<comment><USER40> Might want to disclose that your company creates this product.

<comment><USER39> Yes, it does, I had to mention that. However, it's free now. We tried to use some existing tools earlier, but the own one is always better suited for particular team needs. So Riter was developed primarily for personal use, not for sale. Maybe someone will also find it useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> VivifyScrum - [https://www.vivifyscrum.com](https://www.vivifyscrum.com). It's free for smaller projects (and very feature-complete) but robust enough for the largest of projects (and very affordable @ $8/user/mo.). They also have a native app for both desktop and mobile. I'm not affiliated with them in any way. I'm just a very satisfied user.

</comment><comment><USER42> I design the workflow first. Starting sparingly with Github and G-Suite.

You can build your own webrtc-enabled video chat room in under 100 lines of javascript with PeerJS or the Twilio API. Or use Talky, Cyclops, etc.

If you need invoices, time tracking, and reports. You can always jump into something like Avaza

[https://www.avaza.com/](https://www.avaza.com/)

Keep it simple. And don't be afraid to roll your own tools. Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER43> So what exactly are you looking for?

If Google Keep is what you're looking for, then use Google Keep.

If you want to share to-do lists, then use Asana or Trello.

If you want to manage tasks, I'd recommend [http://clubhouse.io](http://clubhouse.io)

It's hard to say what would fit your needs without saying what you need or want from a product other than "project management".

</comment><comment><USER44> Invite URL for my project: [https://ixberg.com/#/invite/2018-hn-1](https://ixberg.com/#/invite/2018-hn-1) (click sign in to do anything)

Make (sharable) projects. Add tasks. Break into subtasks (recursively). Defer anything you don't want to see yet. Focus on what you can do next and get things done.

</comment><comment><USER45> I am happy enough with Github's Project feature. I create a simple kanban board and keep the tasks updated.

</comment><comment><USER46> Not sure if you are working on a software related project or not. One of my favourite tool is GitHub Project Boards

[https://help.github.com/articles/about-project- boards/](https://help.github.com/articles/about-project-boards/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Use Quip for documenting features, ideas, check-listing, task tracking [https://quip.com/](https://quip.com/)

Having one place for chats, documents, tasks is great. Its fast, simple and real-time!

</comment><comment><USER48> [https://www.getflow.com/](https://www.getflow.com/) is pretty nice. But almost any kanban tool will do the job

</comment><comment><USER49> excel/LO as a list of @#@#-that-needs-to-get-done. next column over is a r/b/g traffic lights. move them around in rough order. highlight those that are fixed dates. scribble on post it notes. lots and lots of post it notes and physically screw them up and throw them away. you'd be surprised how robust this is for single owner projects. managing a team? need different tool. i've used basecamp and was v happy.

</comment><comment><USER50> If you're on a Mac, Things.app is great.

[https://culturedcode.com/things/](https://culturedcode.com/things/)

</comment><comment><USER51> How large is the team? Specifically, is it project management for 1 person or more than 1 person?

</comment><comment><USER52> Evernote is a lot like Google Keep. As you've mentioned GK I thought this was relevant.

</comment><comment><USER53> Also check out notion.so</comment>


Why a Developer Laptop? - <AUTHOR> http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/05/09/why-a-developer-laptop/

<comment><USER2> > developers couldn't resist the siren song of 'It Just Works' married to a > Unix kernel

For me, it's more than just a Unix kernel. It's the usability of the system as a whole, the application ecosystem I use, the tools that are preinstalled, the Unix kernel and a proper terminal, and the fact that all of this is bundled into a nice looking, well made laptop that combines all of the previous points seamlessly.

The last time I bought a Dell laptop it had great hardware, but didn't get close to approaching a Mac Book Pro in terms of build quality - has that changed?

Sidenote: Tynt blows, why use it?

</comment><comment><USER3> Who in the world would buy a $1000 laptop with Intel's 3000 series graphics chipset?

If this is supposed to compete with the MacBook Air, Dell completely missed the boat, especially with a $799 air coming out within the next 3 months (oops, beans spilled... sorry Apple).

Additionally, I'd rather have the MacBook Air so I can run Windows AND Mac OSX and write native iPhone apps, and I'd still spend the same $999.

Yes, Apple too missed the boat by using Intel's 3000 graphics chipset, and YES, Apple's hard drive is smaller, but NO, the Dell can't run OSX...

Why can't these folks just give us a 10-hour, 14" Air-like laptop with an nVidia 560Ti, 256GB solid state, and 8GB of DDR3-1600 RAM for $999? THAT's what we really want, right?

Right?

Beuller?

<comment><USER4> > Who in the world would buy a $1000 laptop with Intel's 3000 series graphics > chipset?

Someone who wants it to work in Linux with no issues, great battery life, and who doesn't play games?

<comment><USER3> Then save your money and buy this machine, like I did, for $377...

<http://bit.ly/KpJVM8>

Quad-core, 4GB (I upgraded it to 8GB for $50), 17"... Runs Linux quite nicely, even as a KVM host. Battery life is 3-4 hours. Don't be "hatin" on the games- a-playin ;-)</comment></comment></comment>


Why aren't (free) podcasts distributed via Bittorrent?  - <AUTHOR>

Why don't we distribute podcasts via Bittorrent? I started thinking about this after hearing Ira Glass' latest pledge solicitation on This American Life (which apparently costs WBEZ $170k/yr in bandwidth). I don't mean some tracker where powerusers go and download torrents and manage ratios and all that traditional "bittorrent" stuff. I mean WoW. WoW is a Bittorrent client. If you play WoW, you're automatically seeding the updates and patches you've downloaded to everyone else who plays WoW. That's how Blizzard can distribute large updates with maximal rapidity and minimal impact/downtime.
Imagine if iTunes (or podcast app du jour) did the same thing. If you download a podcast, you seed it. Instead of Chicago's public radio station eating the six figure cost of my listening to their free content from Portland, OR, we all just get to upload 70 or 100 MB without even knowing, no harm done.
So, uh, is this a good idea? I feel like it should have been attempted by now.... <comment><USER2> Miro is a good bitorrent + media player <http://www.getmiro.com/>

It solves podcasts and video.

But eventually creators and consumers need to agree on a platform

Possibly more people listen now their podcasts on iPods and iPhone and already have iTunes installed, which also satisfies their access to music

</comment><comment><USER3> Tracking = Advert dollars.

That is basically it</comment>


Jeff Bezos' 2014 Letter to Amazon Shareholders - <AUTHOR> http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MjgxMzIwfENoaWxkSUQ9LTF8VHlwZT0z&t=1

<comment><AUTHOR> Marketplace, Prime and AWS have been home runs, but their digital device track record has been pretty mixed. Bezos has been pretty stubborn about it since the Kindle - Fire tablets, Fire phone, Echo, and Dash. I wonder when the Amazon smart watch will be coming out.</comment>


Advancing electrolysis: Splitting water to store energy as hydrogen - <AUTHOR> https://inl.gov/article/advancing-high-temperature-electrolysis-splitting-water-to-store-energy-as-hydrogen/ <comment><USER2> "the cell was firstly operated at an electrolysis mode with a constant current density of 0.6 A cm−2 for three minutes to generate hydrogen, which was instantly consumed by switching to a fuel cell mode at 0.2 A cm−2 for two minutes"

So, 22% round trip efficiency

<comment><USER3> Shouldn't you take into account the voltage. From the graphs they don't look like they were symmetrical.

<comment><USER2> Doh!

Fig 6c[0] shows ~1.6 in and 0.4v out so... 5% round trip efficiency?

[0] [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15677-z/figures/6](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15677-z/figures/6)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Interesting:

I had no idea there was an Idaho National Lab.

The new electrode is a perovskite which is a crystal structure tangentially related to superconductors among other things.

The electrode allows for reversible operation in the 400-600 degC range.

<comment><USER4> Home of a deadly reactor explosion.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1)

<comment><USER3> I did know about the SL-1 which makes it an even more glaring oversight. Maybe I associated it more with Argonne? I dunno.

But that SL-1...dang.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Does anyone know if coal or nat gas power plants can burn hydrogen too? Or be retrofitted to burn it? Then you could store excess solar or wind energy generated during the day as hydrogen and burn it at night.

<comment><USER6> Sure, since the lab is running their perovskite at 600 C anyway, just add CO2 in a chamber with some nickel and get methane out via the Sabatier reaction. Send the methane to where ever its needed.

<comment><USER7> So many problems are solved so easily by "just" doing simple thing X. Maybe this really is a simple fix. It doesn't sound that way to me though.

<comment><USER6> It's not. The response is 'accurate' not 'easy' :-) The biggest challenge is getting a source of CO2 using less energy than you are going to get back by burning the methane.

Thermodynamics doesn't let you cheat sadly.

When evaluating these sorts of things you follow the energy consumption of each step and remove it from the initial pool of energy. Energy out over energy in will give you a way to compare methods for "goodness" regardless of complexity. Processes that have net negative energy are clearly in the "bad" category. Any positive is something.

Localized schemes like hydro pumping do quite well in this equation. It is distance schemes that suffer.

Distance schemes are hard because pushing electrons through a wire spends power just getting through the wire. Eventually its all gone. This is why you can't just cover 1/3 of Nevada with PV solar cells and power the grid from that one state.

So distance means transforming electricity into some other energy (chemical, potential, kinetic, thermal), moving it physically somewhere else (ideally without much loss) and then converting it back into electricity at the destination.

One of the more fanciful ideas I heard was train cars full of Tesla powerwall packs. If you've ever seen an operating coal fired power plant you may have seen the long line of coal cars in a train that pulls in each day. Once at the plant the cars are slowly pulled through the plant, dumping coal when they need to into the feed mechanism. Eventually a string of empty cars is on the other side to take back to be refilled. Imagine doing that with powerwalls. Cars pull up, connect electrically to the plant and start discharging. Once they are down to their "empty" level the car disconnects and moves on. I think it would be fascinating to watch.

<comment><USER8> > spends power just getting through the wire. Eventually its all gone.

No, transmission losses for such concentrated power generation could be kept acceptable single digit percent by building a proper power transmission system. Just use higher voltage, thicker wires. It would be expensive, but if Nevada was a great energy source, it could be worth it long term.

> This is why you can't just cover 1/3 of Nevada with PV solar cells and power > the grid from that one state.

I can think of more substantial problems with that - fragile panels exposed to harmful environment, manufacturing and maintaining panels generates too much waste per kWh, unreliable operation dependent on weather. If Nevada was to be used as a primary center for energy generation, I suggest uranium/thorium reactors. They are better in every possible way.

<comment><USER9> Better, except that they take too long to build, cost too much to operate, and have proven incompatible with sound public policy.

<comment><USER8> The median time to build a nuclear reactor is 7.5 years [1]. That is not too bad.

[1] [http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a- nucle...](http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear- power-plant/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Windows File Recovery is a new free tool from Microsoft - <AUTHOR> https://www.xda-developers.com/windows-file-recovery-microsoft-restore-deleted-files/ <comment><USER2> How do I download it without using the Microsoft Store?</comment>


You will be able order a Honda Urban EV from 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/geneva-motor-show/will-able-order-honda-urban-ev-2019/ <comment><USER2> Looks a lot like my old 1979 Honda Civic hatchback</comment>


Why Sales People Should Be The Highest Paid Employees - <AUTHOR> http://www.fistfuloftalent.com/2010/02/when-the-carrot-becomes-the-joke.html

<comment><USER2> As long as you don't have a system where they get compensated for selling stuff that actually loses money in the long term (easy enough ... IF you're honest and transparent), _absolutely_.

In the early '90s I worked for a company with a greedy nepotistic CEO who didn't keep faith with his salesmen (or anyone else for that matter), which regularly brought the company to near death and after I'd left killed it. Everyone I knew (including programmers) walked away from the company before then with 4-5 figures in bonuses or commissions in arrears.

<comment><USER3> _As long as you don't have a system where they get compensated for selling stuff that actually loses money in the long term_

Absolutely. Any fool can generate sales by selling for less than it costs to make the product... Especially if he can scarper as soon as he collects his commission but before the product is due to be delivered!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good sales people should be richly rewarded, absolutely... but it all comes down to the product.

I've seen salespeople that do only the "easy" sales (the ones where the customer is the one that drives the sale, and not the ones where the salesman hooks the buyer)... I'm not sure if the salesman should be rewarded for those.

OTOH, when the salesman takes the time to see where the product can fit and help the company, and is actively involved in demoing and smoothing out the sale.. those are worth every penny.

Also, those that find the way into companies, to look for the decision takers with a problem... that should also be a factor.

</comment><comment><USER5> At the end of the day, if a Sales person can bring in 100-120% of their salary, then they're worth every penny.

Sadly when I joined my current company there were two sales staff who seemed to run the place. Within about a month they were both gone. Probably because they weren't making any leads.

Furthermore, one of them couldn't do sales over the phone unless they were at home. At the time I was the only one to spot this as being a major flaw for a sales person but was shot down immediately.

</comment><comment><USER6> I knew it! This was written by a salesman! You could smell it all along.</comment>


Robot gripper looks like a wilted flower, but can lift 100 times its weight - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/14/18259883/soft-robot-origami-gripper-mit-csail-daniela-rus <comment><USER2> It looks somewhat similar to " _Balloon filled with ground coffee makes ideal robotic gripper_ " [http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/10/researchers- develop-...](http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2010/10/researchers-develop- universal-robotic-gripper) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86G9DLJEagw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86G9DLJEagw)

<comment><USER3> Here's Righthand robotics solution, which combines fingers and a sucker:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5i0dsQfPCY&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5i0dsQfPCY&feature=youtu.be)

<comment><USER4> Why does it even need fingers? It seems they don't add much value over just the sucker.

<comment><USER5> Their sales pitch seems to be roughly that the value is more in the machine learning software than the gripper itself. I assume having both means the software can choose how much of each (fingers/suction) to use for a particular item, after it identifies the item.

So perhaps it's supposed to work best when there's a variety of items versus a few predictable ones.

This article has some background: [https://xconomy.com/boston/2017/03/28/righthand-robotics- pic...](https://xconomy.com/boston/2017/03/28/righthand-robotics-picks- up-8m-to-automate-next-gen-warehouses/)

Also, they seem to have started with fingers only, so there's probably some bias to keep them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is pretty neat! I think we are so predisposed to assume that grasping and lifting things should look a certain way based on our own anatomy.

The big questions that come to mind are resilience or I guess you could call it MTBF, and also hygiene.

A human hand knows when a thing it picks up has gotten it dirty and can change a glove or go wash. This design in particular looks like it would hang on to particles from things it's picked up (thinking like bits of broccoli, but also on the microscopic level) and be very difficult to clean with all that surface area.

I think for picking groceries you would almost have to dedicate one arm for each SKU placing items into bags that were ferried by, you could not have one arm with a bag moving between SKUs and filling that bag.

I fully expect to see lights out grocery stores in the near future, I'm a bit surprised no one has tried it yet. Maybe the last mile delivery still dominates the cost too much.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it would be difficult to clean or change a rubber lining. It looks like it would be smooth when removed. Definitely it would need to be used carefully around difficult to remove allergens.

<comment><USER8> If it's a balloon + paper, at scale it'd probably be cheap enough to consider regularly disposable.

<comment><USER9> Which would be environmentaly disastrous

<comment><USER10> only if non-biodegradable

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is it just me or does this look like a real-world version of a Dalek's plunger?

</comment><comment><USER12> The title kind of misses the point for me.

A piece of string can lift 100 times its own weight. The interesting thing is that it can lift a reasonable variety of different things delicately, in a reasonably simple way.

</comment><comment><USER13> Is it just me who thinks there something very viscerally repulsive about how it looks when it "contracts"?

<comment><USER14> It reminds me of a certain kind of sheath. Don't want too come off as too vulgar, but latin roots reveal all:

[https://www.google.com/search?q=sheath+latin](https://www.google.com/search?q=sheath+latin)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Impressive, but I'm not sure there aren't some class of objects that will give it a hard time. From The videos it seems that it needs to engulf the object and to do so the object must small enough and be well oriented. I'm not sure it will pass the remote or smartphone on the table test.

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm going to crack up if the most effective general robot hand is a flap of rubber. One potential benefit is those handthings won't be able to fire a gun or wield a sharp weapon very well. I half joke but the robot maids are probably going to be quite hackable.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can it grab a pebble that lies on a flat surface?

Or would the gripper get stuck to the surface?

(Not sure if the suction is used only to deform the gripper or also to attach to the object)

</comment><comment><USER17> If I could only get one of these installed in the claw crane, I might finally be able to grab one of those elusive prizes.

</comment><comment><USER18> Woah! Just imagine like 5 of these all working together to grab something...

</comment><comment><USER19> Isn't it too costly to produce vacuum for every object pick ?

<comment><USER18> I imagine this could work hydraulically too?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why devs hate Hansoft, but managers love it? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> Presumes facts not in evidence.</comment>


Spotify to go public as direct listing on NYSE - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/us-spotify-ipo-idUSKBN18821T <comment><USER2> This article seems to do a much better job of explaining the trade offs of a direct listing:

[http://fortune.com/2017/04/07/spotify-ipo-direct- listing/](http://fortune.com/2017/04/07/spotify-ipo-direct-listing/)

Apparently the traditional underwritten approach is engineered fairly specifically to aim for that first day "pop" to build excitement about the new stock, and also seems with a lot of publicity which the banks can provide.

According to the article, direct listing does seem to be better for employees though:

* Spotify would likely issue no new shares (less dilution).

* No expensive underwriter necessary.

* Existing shareholders won't have pre-sell any of their shares to new investors, which could mean that they capture more of the upside given that the stock has been purposely underpriced for the pop (and so the new investors capture more).

* No lock-up periods for shareholders.</comment>


Ask HN: Tips for first time Mac buyer - <AUTHOR> Just ordered my very first Mac (Macbook Pro). I used to think that Macs are for hipsters but after repeated feedback from my friends/family that Mac have one of the best hardware etc, decided to give it a try.
But I am a Mac noob. What are some of the important tools that I should use specially for developer stuff ?
Any tutorials (I hope I don't need one though :) for some shortcuts etc will help. <comment><USER2> I made the switch to mac in 2014. It's definitely one of the things I wish I'd done sooner.

Using Vagrant, Node, Git etc . . . just work on OSX.

You're going to love it.

Working on windows I always seemed to run in to obscure bugs/issues when following a tutorial. I could run the same tutorial on my wife's macbook and it would work without a hitch. That's when I decided to move over.

OSX just works for development.

I use:

Terminal of course. Virtual Box (Laravel Homestead) Mamp sublime text for my editor. SourceTree for Git GUI Sequel Pro for MySQL GUI Filezille for FTP Adobe Photoshop

Mac App Store:

Magnet (resize app windows when you drag them over to the edge)

Frank DeLoupe (Color Picker)

Skitch (Screen Shots)

Magnet solved the only feature I was missing when first moving over. The Finder and everything else will feel pretty familiar. You'll be productive (maybe more productive the first day).

You can listen to this: [http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-185-m...](http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/episodes/episode-185-moving- from-windows-to-mac) It's starting to get a little dated but still good.

The trackpad is really good, you won't need a mouse.

Think about getting an external monitor and stand/trackpad/keyboard for a desktop setup:

On Amazon

ASUS VS247H-P 23.6" Full HD 1920x1080 2ms HDMI DVI-D VGA Back-lit LED Monitor(they have a few sizes/price points)

aLLreli® 6ft Mini DisplayPort to HDMI Cable | Mini DP to HDMI | Thunderbolt Compatible | Full HD 1080p | 24k Gold Plated Connectors | Video+Audio

mStand Laptop Stand

Apple Wireless Track Pad and Wireless Keyboard (new versions just came out)

The mStand is definitely worth it to elevate/line up the displays.

It feels like a desktop setup and it's nice to be able to grab the macbook and work in multiple locations.

Enjoy.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends what you do, and what type of workflow you're used to.

Can you tell us more about that, so we can do a better job of helping you?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thx. Primarily for web development including using Vagrant, PHP, Node, git etc. Also what about some gotchas compared to Windows ?

<comment><USER3> I cant think of many gotchas. Just don't fall into a trap of trying to customize everything right away. Also, take advantage of the best trackpad you can find, especially the multitouch shortcuts. :)

Software I use often: SublimeText, iTerm, Chrome & Chrome Canary, SourceTree, npm, FileZilla, Adoce CC, Keka (zip/archives), Airmail, Sequel Pro ( _Great_ GUI for browsing/managing MySQL databases), Sip (color picker).

Also, MS offers VirtualBox images with Windows and a bunch of IE versions, for testing. Here's a quick tool to get them up and running fast: [https://github.com/xdissent/ievms](https://github.com/xdissent/ievms)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Step 1) Install HomeBrew Step 2) Profit</comment>


Httpie: A CLI http client - astro- http://radek.io/2015/10/20/httpie/ <comment><AUTHOR> Nice. Ignore the haters, this is a wonderful _companion_ to curl.

As others noted, I'd revert to curl commands for sharing with others (or for performance-sensitive tasks like downloads or quick-and-dirty load generation) but this may become my go-to HTTP CLI for personal use -- if only because it looks like won't need to look at the man page every time I want to do much more than a basic curl -X <METHOD> <URL>. (But maybe that says more about me than curl/httpie.)

One neat feature to add would be a mode that accepts the curl syntax (or at least the common parts of it), that way all the curl examples and "Copy as curl" tools work with httpie as well.

Conversely, an option that accepts httpie syntax and outputs the corresponding curl command might be convenient as well. (But I guess at that point maybe httpie devolves into a command-line parser + pretty-printer that wraps around curl, but that may not be all bad either.)

<comment><USER2> I like using httpie for documentation, tutorials and blog posts because I feel it is more readable. I also really like how you can skip the whole "[http://localhost/"](http://localhost/") bit for local development. Just "http :9200" for elasticsearch, "http :6543" for pyramid etc.

Agreed that curl is good for things that should be copied and pasted directly or for matters of distribution because it is guaranteed to be installed everywhere.

Would also love a httpie2curl converter for those times when testing in httpie and needing to distribute the requests to places without it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> And yet, curl is always available, widely supported by various "Copy as curl" features in debuggers and proxies and it also makes zero assumptions about content-types of form data you might want to post, so it's always very clear what's going to be posted.

It also follows unix conventions in option placement and syntax, so there's never any cognitive hurdle to cross when the question arises where to put headers, where to put form data, where to put query string data, how to handle the case of query string data being supplied using overlapping methods and what the form data is encoded in.

It also doesn't force me to write json in yet another syntax that's command- line friendly. Instead I can just write json.

Yes. HTTPie looks nicer, but the wide availability of curl and the much more predictable syntax make it a better tool for my taste.

If I need formatted JSON output, I can always pipe the result in to jq.

<comment><USER4> I did not know about jq, thanks!

Without jq, you can still pipe to python json.tool module:

$ curl [http://domain.com](http://domain.com) | python -m json.tool

<comment><USER5> I used to do this, but now I use jq. The thing about the Python version is that Python doesn't have ordered dictionaries, so the output isn't in the same order as the raw JSON. jq doesn't have that issue which is nice.

<comment><USER6> Python does have ordered dictionaries, but the json decoder defaults to regular dictionaries. This is easily overridable with JSONDecoder.

<comment><USER5> Is there a one-liner you can use from the shell that preserves order?

<comment><USER7> Starting with 3.5[0] that's the standard behavior.

One liner-wise, you could create an alias

      echo '{"foo":12, "bar": 11}' | python -c 'import json as j, collections as c, sys as s; j.dump(j.load(s.stdin, object_pairs_hook=c.OrderedDict), s.stdout, indent=4)'

[0] [https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.5/Lib/json/tool.py#...](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/3.5/Lib/json/tool.py#L40-L41)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a highly repeated post on HN. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=httpie&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=httpie&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

That said, I use curl and httpie. I am a casual user of both and love them both. I first heard about httpie on HN.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's a nice tool to have, working in a hosting/managed services setting. I've aliased "get" to "http --headers get", just so I can fire that off quickly and take a look without even thinking about it.

<comment><USER10> Couldn't agree more. I have tools that generate a cURL and I'd love if I could transform them to httpie for personal use

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's also [https://github.com/astaxie/bat](https://github.com/astaxie/bat) which is heavily inspired by httpie but is written in Go so it's distributed as a single static binary.

<comment><USER12> Does it allow specifying indent spaces for json or html?

<comment><USER11> I've just checked the output of "bat --help" and currently it doesn't seem to have an option for that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use httpie all the time, and it's great.

One thing has always bugged me, maybe someone knows how to fix it.

This command works fine:

      $ http example.com

And http symlinks to the right binary:

      $ which http
      /usr/local/bin/http

      $ ls -l /usr/local/bin/
      ...
      lrwxr-xr-x  1 taylor  admin     31 Jun 25  2014 http -> ../Cellar/httpie/0.8.0/bin/http
      ...

But man shows a different executable:

      $ man http

      ...
      NAME
             http - Client-side implementation of the HTTP/1.1 protocol
      ...

<comment><USER14> Manpages are completely separate from executables. They reside in /usr/share/man (and perhaps /usr/local/share/man—not sure if that's used). Manpages for user commands are in the 1 category, so they'd be in /usr/share/man/man1.

If there is a manpage, it's possible that another manpage exists with the same name, but in a different category (such as a system call). In that case, running "man 1 http" will restrict man to only look for a user command manpage.

<comment><USER15> I usually do "man -a" when simple "man" doesn't hit the right man page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Jeebus cripes, that's awesome.

The article says pip, I used apt-get which is probably somewhat behind. Either way.

EDIT: yep, the version in my repo was 0.8.0. I uninstalled and used pip, it's now 0.9.2.

</comment><comment><USER17> I've been using Httpie as part of my daily development workflow for a couple of months now on multiple HTTP API projects and I have to say it's been tremendously helpful for iterating, testing, and debugging. I just setup a new machine at my work yesterday and I made sure to install this tool on it. Definitely recommended.

</comment><comment><USER18> Previously: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=httpie&sort=byPopularity&prefi...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=httpie&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

</comment><comment><USER19> Already made a PR for it... however, automated tools should _really_ include a URL for the tool as part of the User Agent string.

        AGENT/##.## (url)

where `AGENT` is the identifier for the user agent, ##.## is the major/minor version, and url is the url for the tool/project/bot.

In this case, one minor tweak might be...

        HTTPie/%s (https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie)

It's a minor nit, but trying to find something based on "foo/version" alone isn't always easy enough when looking at your logs.

</comment><comment><USER15> For querying HTTP APIs from the browser I use the postman[0] Chrome extension. It can import calls from a curl command and RAML/WADL/Swagger files. It also supports OAuth1/2 authentication, which is neat.

[0] [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbifli...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/postman/fhbjgbiflinjbdggehcddcbncdddomop)

</comment><comment><USER20> Probably worth trying it out again, but the last I checked it was "new and shiny" but absolutely useless and unreliable piece of software. I don't remember now what exactly was the problem, but it was something pretty basic: I guess it was improper handling of non utf-8 encodings. Or something as frustrating as that.

</comment><comment><USER21> I've been using this for quite some time and love it. My only minor complaint is that when redirecting to a file, it'd be nice if it defaulted to "\--pretty=format" instead of "\--pretty=none". (I always forget to specify "\--pretty=format" the first time...)

</comment><comment><USER22> i'm a pretty heavy curl user so i gave it a try. My humble verdict is that there is not enough benefit for the change in interface, to make it worth using. Now if it had a compatibility mode for curl cmd parameters and format, then that might be something i could use.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been using this for several months and it's now an indispensable tool for me. Maybe I just never learned enough Curl options, but I find HTTPie to be so much easier and more intuitive. Paired with jq, it makes my life much easier on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER24> +1 for this. I have been using it for more than a year. Even just as a "shortcut" for curl it's really good!

To be honest, I am a little surprised to see it here because I thought everyone already knows about it.

<comment><USER25> I've never seen it on HN before, and the Venn diagram intersection between "good ways to access a novel HTTP API" and "be on HN all day" is basically my only job at the moment.

<comment><USER23> I first discovered it on HN several months ago, so it's definitely been here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There are a number of docker containers with httpie in them (I maintain one) as well if you don't feel like doing a native install, AND you're already using docker for things.

</comment><comment><USER27> How is this supposed to be pronounced?

<comment><USER28> From the README.rst file at [https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie](https://github.com/jkbrzt/httpie) :

      HTTPie (pronounced aych-tee-tee-pie) is a command line HTTP client.

The name, as written on the repository, is "HTTPie", and not "Httpie" like in the title of this post.

H-T-T-Pie, which I'd relate to it being written in Python, where the file extension and several other names have "py" (pronounced as "pie") in some form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is a fantastic tool, I use it a ton to test REST apis and the like.

</comment><comment><USER30> Every download tool wants to become a browser.</comment>


Sacred scripture lives and evolves, is never fixed - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/sacred-scripture-lives-and-evolves-is-never-fixed/ <comment> Ar-Curunir This article is just wrong. First, there were no Aryans in the Steppes; only Proto-Indo-Europeans.

A branch of PIEs migrated south and southwest, and ended up in Iran and India. This branch is called the Proto-Indo-Iranians, or the Aryan branch of PIEs. This happened some time before 1500 BCE, because we have evidence of Vedic gods in things like the Mitanni treaties.

Regarding the point about Aryans not caring about the content of scripture, this is again wrong. First, the Iranian branch came up with Zoroastrianism, where this deep focus on sounds never happened, and in fact Zoroastrianism is thought to have been the progenitor of the monotheistic view of later Abrahamic religions.

Second, the "sounds" of the Vedas are accompanied with actual intricate ritual sacrifices. These ceremonies ran for multiple days, and involved a number of precise steps and timed incantations. Yes, there is a big focus on correct pronunciation of hymns, but these are only granted power by the actual execution of the ritual.

The rest of the article talks a lot about a Indo-Aryans constantly viewing life as a struggle between themselves and others. Yes, the scriptures contain a large amount of text on struggles between Arya and non-Arya, but it's not clear how much of this actually reflects the common person's reality vs the attempts of priestly composers trying to maintain their hierarchy at the top of the caste system. (The idea is that, priests, being the arbiters of religion, decided what was Aryan and what wasn't. It was thus in their interest to declare their own knowledge as Aryan, while declaring indigenous religion, or even religion of other PIEs in India, as non-Aryan)

<comment><USER2> There is no caste system in vedic system ! Caste is relatively very modern. It is a well established fact.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the most interesting parts of this excerpt to me is that it presents the idea that "scripture" \- sacred, inviolable, and written down - is only one of many possible forms.

That the Aryans considered the sound of the scripture to be more important than its content, and that writing it down was corrupt and even sacrilegious, is fascinating.

</comment><comment><USER4> > The earliest of these hymns had been disclosed to seven great rishis > ("seers") in the remote past and transmitted with impeccable accuracy by > their descendants. In seven priestly families, each generation had memorized > the hymns of their inspired ancestor and passed them on orally to their > children. Even today, when their ancient Sanskrit is well-nigh > incomprehensible, these hymns are still recited with the precise tonal > accents and inflections of the original, together with ritually prescribed > gestures of the arms and fingers.

Purely from an information-transmission POV this _feat_ is fascinating. Does anyone know where more information can be found about this?

<comment><USER5> I don't know much, and sorry for a terse repl (If I try to write out proper sentences and look up references this may take me more time):

\- You can search for comments by modern scholars about it; e.g. search for [witzel "tape recorder"] on the web / in Google Books to find some quotations of a memorable analogy.

\- You should find some material online in connection with "The Tradition of Vedic Chanting" being part of UNESCO's "intangible cultural heritage" lists / "Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity". I believe there were some documentaries produced. haven't looked closely but these sites look related: [https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/tradition-of-vedic- chanting-000...](https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/tradition-of-vedic- chanting-00062) / [http://vedicheritage.gov.in/vedic-chanting- unesco/](http://vedicheritage.gov.in/vedic-chanting-unesco/)

\- There's some good information on the Wikipedia article at [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vedic_chant&oldid...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Vedic_chant&oldid=904520330#Oral_transmission) e.g. for every string of the form "abcd..." one learns not just "abcd..." but also "ab bc cd..." and "abbaab bccbbc cddccd..." and some learn even more dizzying schemes.

\- There are some documentaries on these schools, e.g. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxYydNlrFk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FxYydNlrFk) (there are a few more longer ones).

<comment><USER4> Thank you very much, I really appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Never fixed" here, means changing in meaning, not failing to be repaired -- but which also happens.

Mistakes in written scriptures are common, often seeding weird cults. For example, the biblical proscription on "suffering a witch to live" is said to have referred, in the original, to poisoners, but inspired an Inquisition devoted, in large degree, to confiscating widows' inherited property.

"Life of Brian" noted the phenomenon.

</comment><comment><USER7> If you like this kind of thing, check out The Development of Doctrine (Newman). Snippet: "It is indeed sometimes said that the stream is clearest near the spring. Whatever use may fairly be made of this image, it does not apply to the history of a philosophy or belief, which on the contrary is more equable, and purer, and stronger, when its bed has become deep, and broad, and full."

</comment><comment><USER8> Hasn't the Koran been static since it's inception?

<comment><USER9> Depending on what you mean by inception, maybe yes, maybe no. It was not initially written down exactly as we have it today, no. It was eventually canonized into its current form, yes, if that's what you mean, though exactly _when_ and _by whom_ is unclear.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> >The Aryans seem unlikely producers of a holy scripture, since their lives were not what we would call devout.

I wonder where this idea comes from that only devout people can be inspired. People are shocked when they pick up the Old Testament and read about (e.g.) Abraham pretending his wife is his sister so a rival king will take her into his harem. Jesus said: who would love you more, a man whom you forgave a $5 debt, or a man whom you forgave a $500 debt? Obviously the latter!

>Sound had always been sacred to the Aryans—it was far more important to them than the meaning of these hymns—so when they intoned and memorized them, the priests felt possessed by a sacred presence

If you went to a physical therapist and he told you to move your tongue/lips/lungs in certain specific motions, which happened to produce noises, you wouldn't judge the exercise by the semantic content of those noises. Maybe scripture should be thought of like that. Exercises to train certain parts in the brain. Some (like the Vedas) train neurons associated with low-level tongue movements. Others (like the Christian gospels) train neurons associated with higher-level abstract concepts.

<comment> dawg- >If you went to a physical therapist and he told you to move your tongue/lips/lungs in certain specific motions, which happened to produce noises, you wouldn't judge the exercise by the semantic content of those noises.

So the brain actually does have a special motor planning area for speech movements that is intermeshed with all the other parts of our language system, including semantics. As an example, when people have Apraxia (loss of coordination) they can have two different kinds, depending on where the lesion is: oral apraxia (loss of ability to move the jaw/tongue/cheeks/lips in NON speech tasks) or verbal apraxia (loss of coordination specifically for articulation movements). You are on to something interesting with your comment about "low-level tongue movements" vs. movements associated with communication.

I wonder what an fMRI would look like on someone reciting these Vedic hymns (in a language they do not fully possess) vs. someone reciting hymns in their native language? And what if you had an English-speaking Christian recite hymns in another language they don't know, like German or Latin or Greek?</comment></comment>


A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/robot-food-cost-jobs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below <comment><USER2> Why is the UI on these things so atrocious? It took him a number of key presses just to select from a list of 6 and many more to finalize the purchase. Why not have a bunch of large tactile buttons at the bottom of the screen like all normal vending machines do? I don't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some technophobe tries to figure out how to nagivate a pressure touchscreen with 12 menus deep. It's not his fault, it's the fault of the UI designers who think all they have to work with is a bunch of pixels and X/Y coordinates of presses. There's more to UI than that.

<comment><USER3> _I don 't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some old guy tries to figure out_

Please rewrite, this is borderline discriminatory and quite offensive. Some "old guys" can be as capable to handle such UI as some "young guys".

Disclaimer: half-old guy.

[EDIT] thanks for replacing "old guy" with "technophobe".

<comment><USER4> Not sure why you are being downvoted. Perhaps because ageism is still a borderline ok form of discrimination?

<comment><USER5> I believe he's being downvoted because some believe that there should be a balance between political correctness and skin thickness rather than just full on PC. (This includes me.)

<comment><USER6> It's a lot easier to have a thick skin when you're in a demographic nobody discriminates against.

<comment><USER5> I'm sure it is. I'm not trying to minimize discrimination.

<comment><USER4> Well, you did talk about "balance" so you are to some extent.

[Edit] Also, you called it "PC" so, yes you are minimizing it.

<comment><USER5> How dare I?

<comment><USER4> Well, you do you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> We should stop worrying whether AI will cost jobs, but instead think about who reaps the benefits of thousands of years of technological progress, and how those benefits can be distributed more fairly.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Comments about"costing jobs" always miss the point, partially or wholly. _Jobs are a cost._ They are what it takes to create _wealth_. At issue is how to best create and distribute wealth.

<comment><USER9> I disagree a little bit. We are all typing this from our comfy environments, able to pay for Internet, etc.

What about when jobs start to disappear and the economy as we know starts to change for the worse? Either by affecting us directly, or the markets which we are a part of, I don't think this will be a positive thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> My local coffee place has humans who operate an espresso machine, while Starbucks has baristas who push a button, and there are vending machines that produces espresso without having an operator. None of this excites a moral panic. Kitchen labor-saving devices have been being invented for hundreds of thousands of years. What's new?

Think about wheat. Wheat used to be ground in stone mills operated by oxen or wind or water, which is much more labor-intensive than today's mills. Before that, the grinding process was even more labor-intensive.

<comment><USER11> What's new? Well, if we keep replacing low-skill jobs by high-skills ones, we may have a little problem: are humans going to keep up with the training? Is the workforce going to adapt fast enough?

When job replacement happens over several generations, it's a pretty easy problem to solve. When it gets faster, turns out some human abilities are not scaling very well.

<comment><USER12> Horses used to be used for practically everything. The first commercial steam engine pumped water from mines and was measured in "horsepower", the the rate at which a horse could continuously pump water. Then steam engines replaced freight hauling. Then personal transport. Don't see many working horses now.

<comment><USER13> Don't see many horses at all. That is, the offspring of those working horses certainly doesn't roam about in pastures, to pursue happiness because there are no jobs that require them.

<comment><USER14> I've read here that the obsolete horses helped bootstrap the pet food industry...

<comment><USER15> That was not something I needed to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like what it is - a bunch of ingredients randomly dropped in a bowl. The lettuce hasn't even been tossed with the dressing!

I wouldn't pay for that, and IMO this robot has a long way to go before I'd agree it can make a "mean" salad.

<comment><USER17> I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better.

In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between a soulless dish and a good one.

(I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can assemble ingredients, that's for sure but there's no creativity (and believe me, the simplest dish, if infused with creativity, can taste so much better))

<comment><USER18> The creativity has to happen at the "design" stage. The best restaurants strive for perfect _repeatable_ dishes, and no cook has to improvise with spices or ingredients on a normal shift.

<comment><USER19> A good cook/chef can take a look at an ingredient or set of ingredients and vary their techniques to produce that 'repeatable' dish.

I think you're completely discounting what cooking involves when it's someone with skill and experience, and that's unfortunate.

<comment><USER18> I'm just saying that the creativity usually is separated from the actual act of preparing a dish in a professional kitchen, robots or not. It lies in the receipt, good techniques, ingredient selection and sourcing. The creative part will always stay in the domain of skilled and experienced humans, no doubt about it.

Mastering a technique might mean constant adoption to changing ingredients and parameters, temperatures, timing etc. That is not fundamentally impossible to teach to a robot.

Massive knowledge, excellent sensory inputs of all kinds, precision motor skills etc are not creativity. Certainly there is a long way for robots to improve before they can handle what a human is able to. But I have no doubt that they will get there sooner or later.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Robots making food will lower the cost of food, giving more people access to better nutrition. This will also free up labor and capital to do other things.

Machines helped make farming more productive so humans no longer have to live on farms, and dedicate their lives to the next meal on their table. If we were worried about jobs back then, we would've outlawed tractors and other machines. If we really want to create jobs, we would go back to manual labor to make produce our food.

<comment><USER21> I'm skeptical. This is painfully slow and handles 1 person at a time.

Any midtown/downtown NY salad bar can turnover 10 peoples' salads in the time this machine took to make 1. There's no way this machine's operating cost is better than that. Sure, you could scale up these machines, but then the human- staffed salad bars are winning on floor space (and rent). It looks like you could only fit 2-3 of these machines in the footprint of the average NY salad spot.

The only place this might win is where salad consumption is infrequent, in which case for food safety reasons, you probably don't want to be eating the salad there anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This does create the illusion of just in time salads, but how is it different from prepackaged salads? I assume such a machine in large sits in every salad factory.

<comment><USER23> Configurability? I want that sald with this topping

Freshness? If the buisiness is preparing the vegetables in the kitchen before providing them to the machine then the salads might taste fresher than factory packaged salads >1 day old.

<comment><USER24> I'd want to know the "refresh" schedule for the ingredients. If the machine gets new veg every Tuesday then that's the best day for a really fresh salad. I would hope the location is high enough traffic to justify daily ingredient changes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Yes. All the jobs. Drivers, luggage handlers. The salad cook is just another in the long line of manual jobs that can be done quicker, better, cheaper by a robot. So now what? What job do we guide our children into? What jobs are left as the fall through for kids who decline formal training? I don't know, but we need to answer that question quickly.

<comment><USER26> > The salad cook is just another in the long line of manual jobs that can be > done quicker, better, cheaper by a robot.

Allow me to be sentimental for a moment. I agree that some jobs, perhaps even most, can be done "better" by a robot. At least, if we're defining better as more cheaply or "to spec". However, when I go to a nice restaurant, I go because I enjoy the Chef's style, their ability to express their art through cooking. Sure, a robot could do something like that, especially at chains like Burger King, but for my personal incentive to dine at a restaurant, it's unlikely a robot could do a "better" job than a human chef.

That said, you're right, we need to avoid the foolishness of passing the buck when asking "what will our children do?" We can't agree on social issues now, how the hell will we agree when even more people are unable to contribute meaningfully?

<comment><USER27> People will prefer meals cooked by robots for the same reason they listen to recorded music. Everyone will have access to the best creations of the best chefs, instead of today where the closest you can get is watching them cook on tv. It will be a new media where artists can directly share their work with the world.

<comment><USER28> Most people enjoy recorded music, but most people also like to see their favorite artists live, when they can. I think it's the same thing.

<comment><USER29> > but most people also like to see their favorite artists live, when they can

Citation needed. Live music is a healthy economy, but I am not sure a majority of listeners of a given artist are particularly driven to go to that artist's concerts. I suspect only a passionate minority is interested.

<comment><USER28> It's still enough to support an extremely healthy global live-music industry. I don't see handmade food being different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> By definition, all labor-saving technology costs jobs. That is, unless you do something to compensate for it, like produce more total stuff than you used to. And, of course, more total stuff will only get made if people are willing to spend more money to buy the additional stuff.

There's only a problem if we're expecting people to get that money from... wait for it... jobs. So let's lower interest rates and make it easier for everyone to _borrow_ money. That will boost spending and create jobs! What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER31> I predict that once a machine is invented that can automatically make a coffee, anyone employed making coffee will lose their jobs too.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe this particular robot won't cost jobs (though I have doubts about that, but we'll grant it) but other robots will. I don't understand how there's even a sort-of discussion between the author and their audience about "Do robots cost jobs" of course they bloody do, that's the point, those robots are _sold_ to the businesses that buy them on the idea that they're going to reduce labor costs, _that 's the point._ Restaurants have been serving us filthy salads out of bars for decades, do you think they suddenly had an attack of conscience about it? Of course not, having that machine means a whole host of things the employees don't have to do, that's why they bought it. It may not cost anyone a job _right now_ , but it will be contributing to that down the line.

</comment><comment><USER33> Of course all of these robots will cost jobs. I'm reading "The Grapes of Wrath" right now, and it all happened before, except back then it was not robots, but tractors. Lots of people were flung into direst poverty imaginable, some died, some saw their kids die of malnutrition, which, IMO, is worse. It'll be the exact same shit this time around except a lot more people will be affected, but fewer will die.

</comment><comment><USER4> Ummmmm, that's not a "mean" caesar salad. It's competitive with a supermarket premade but doesn't compare to a restaurant or homemade caesar salad.

This isn't any different than a vending machine or those coke dispensers with a touch screen flavour picker.

The real job loss will be when this is a real robot that is fresh tearing the romaine and whisking the dressing after you press the buttons and delivering an actual caesar salad.

<comment><USER34> Not disagreeing on the perceived quality of this salad...but does that really change the issue at hand?

I would think that while it may be challenging, I don't see it as unthinkable that we could have a robot tear leaves of romaine and spinning a whisk.

<comment><USER4> Right. But this machine is functionally equivalent to a coffee vending machine: punch espresso drink, medium, cappuccino and put your cup under the nozzle. Those machines haven't replaced anybody at Starbucks -- they simply made the lives of the receptionist at my Toyota Dealership easier.

These examples need to be game changers to convince people, a fancy vending machine isn't going to scare anybody.

A replacement fry cook, sous chef or truck driver will.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Automation replaces manual labor. As labor becomes more expensive and automated processes become more affordable, you'll see a shift in the food industry from basic labor to skilled labor (those who will develop and maintain the automated processes).

<comment><USER36> Okay but that might be a little simplistic, because automation can also complement manual labor and create more demand for it.

The example that comes to mind is about ATMs and bank teller jobs: when ATMs were introduced it actually _increased_ the number of teller jobs because branch offices became cheaper and banks opened more of them.

Discussed in:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I feel like they took the salad bar and made it more complicated - the only real advantage I see is it might be more sanitary. It's certainly slower if there's a line of people waiting for their food.

<comment><USER38> How about instead of a robot to serve salads we make a robot that can probe for contamination?

E-coli, listeria, and other nasty bacteria and viruses like hepatitis are no joke, yet most places have zero tools to test for those things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Instead of the 1000s words, I wished there was a picture of the f* salad

</comment><comment><USER40> Until self check-out becomes faster and less obnoxious than having a skilled cashier do the job faster I don't think we need to worry at a large scale. We aren't going to be talking to robot waiters any time soon. If Carl's Jr. puts a glorified soda machine as my fast food interface I'll go to McDonald's where I can give my order in 10 seconds instead of fumbling with a machine for 2 minutes.

<comment><USER41> All the local McDonald's here have installed self-ordering kiosks. They're fast and seem very popular. I personally find it significantly easier and faster than waiting in line and talking to an actual human. (And this is coming from someone who hates self-checkout lines at grocery stores.)

> We aren't going to be talking to robot waiters any time soon.

Robot waiters? Probably not. But using our phones to order delivery, self- ordering kiosks, ipads on tables? The future is already here, and it's increasingly automated. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the latest employment numbers show a sharp dip in the employment among food service employees.)

<comment><USER42> > All the local McDonald's here have installed self-ordering kiosks. They're > fast and seem very popular. I personally find it significantly easier and > faster than waiting in line and talking to an actual human. (And this is > coming from someone who hates self-checkout lines at grocery stores.)

I have had fast-food workers mess up my order so many times that I'd rather just give it to a machine.

There are few things more annoying than taking my food to the table, seeing something on it that shouldn't be, walking back to the counter, saying "Excuse me, I asked for no lettuce or tomato", and waiting for them to re-make it.

<comment><USER43> I agree. It can also go the other way though. I sometimes order almond milk from Starbucks. If I give the order to a human I can make some judgement as to whether they have misunderstood and correct them, or outright ask them to confirm their understanding. If I give the order to the app then the app understands perfectly but I will have to sort out any subsequent human misunderstanding after it's been made. My local branch have got it wrong twice in 5 attempts via the app (they tend to assume I want coffee with almond milk because what crazy person just wants almond milk)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> i love automation. there is something to be said for automated food. not only can money and time be saved, but there are other benefits as well. for example, storing the raw ingredients in your home can allow you to stockpile food for much longer than you could if you only bought the finished product. i have several food grade buckets filled with whole wheat flour and i enjoy freshly baked bread almost every day. with a few gamma lids (screw-top lid accessory for standard 5 gallon food grade buckets), and about 10% of my (normal sized) freezer space, i am able to eat fresh bread every day for five months without ever going to the store. with a bread machine, making the bread only requires a few seconds of my time. and the savings are unreal. perhaps im a little odd, but i would very much like to have some kind of system in my home where i could buy non-perishable food stuffs and store them in mass quantity, and simply press a button to turn them into a meal ready to eat.

</comment><comment><USER45> A domestic robot is probably as big of a market as self driving cars. Not that this is close. But a robot that would clean, wash, iron, prepare food, do some basic plumbing and painting, replace bulbs, receive parcels, yell at the dog if it misbehaves, etc... I start to think that I will own one in my lifetime.

</comment><comment> King-Aaron This isn't so much a robot, as a motorised hopper that just dispenses the thing the operator asks for.

</comment><comment><USER38> Oh, great. Juicero but for salads.

</comment><comment><USER46> General robot job replacement related issues aside, this robot only holds enough for 50 salads and, based on the video, seems painfully slow. It doesn't seem ready for a lunchtime rush.

</comment><comment><USER47> Sometimes automation is about taking the difficult, time-consuming, manual parts of a process and making them faster and easier, which saves time and less time=less jobs=article in NYT.

And sometimes automation is about taking the easiest, lowest skill part of a process and making it slower and more difficult, which somehow still results in an NYT article.

I mean all it does is assemble the freaking salads from pre-chopped ingredients. That's it. That's the _easiest_ part of preparing a salad.

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone else think it's utterly annoying I can not pause the video (or gif) or whatever it is? I can't even skip forward. What is this, NYT?

<comment><USER49> That was painful. It is one of those things that you can't just stop watching (I was expecting Sally to spin the salad) and I waited..and waited...waited.

Horrible user experience.

      - Can't tell how long the clip/gif is
      - Can't skip ahead
      - Can't go fullscreen
      - No sound

WTF.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Is it just me or does reading what basically boils down to "Don't go outside, eat this premade salad and 'boost your productivity'" sound somewhat depressing? I don't think that being inside all day eating low quality food under fluorescent lights is going to boost my productivity at all. I would honestly want to go to a restaurant and get an actual salad at lunch.

</comment><comment><USER51> I don't think there is any easy fix for this. The capital is only interested in building robots if they save human labor costs. If they save human labor only to pay those same costs in taxes for basic income then they should have invested in something else.

For the most part, the deployment of capital into robots can only happen if it is going to displace people.

</comment><comment><USER52> If there is a tax (I believe there should be) on automation then my opinion is that it should be based on the profit and reduced by the percentage of 'traditional' (role specific) job hours that remain; counting service personnel the same as bus-boys/janitorial services.

If the profit is under a given percentage then there shouldn't be any tax assessed.

<comment><USER53> How much are you personally willing to pay in tax for your refrigerator/freezer, your dishwashing machine, and your laundry machines?

<comment><USER54> This is a good question, but I suspect it's disingenuously framed, so as to stymie your parent.

If she says "a lot", you reply "good luck to you, and you alone". If she replies "very little", you say "right, so your tax is going nowhere."

Feels like possibly you are defending a local maximum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'd bet my lease gets reviewed by an AI before I eat a robot-cooked meal.

Food is variable and dirty and the downside risk of not being clean is pretty bad, even acknowledging that robots will always wash their hands.

Maintenance, risk, and general exposure to meatspace, in every sense, means that knowledge workers will probably be the first to be automated out of a job.

<comment><USER38> What if the robot runs out of disinfectant and nobody notices or cares?

Robots are only as clean as the company that owns and inspects them permits them to be.

<comment><USER56> What if employees at a restaurant run out of disinfectant or doesn't wash their hands after visiting the restroom? What if no one notices or cares? :)

<comment><USER38> An employee might be so disgusted by this they blow the whistle on the place and get it inspected.

A robot can't and won't do this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Automate all the things and free up time for humanity to finish making AI maybe we can leave this rock in some form or another.

<comment><USER13> Humanity isn't unfree because of there's too much work to do, but because too much wealth is going to those who already have it. Automation, as we employ it, will seal the deal and remove most people along with the need (from the perspective of exploitation) for them. It will transform police states into what will be like solid steel to cotton candy.

Also, leave this rock? It's the lushest place we know so far, by far, in a universe filled with millions of rocks. If we can't make it here, we can't make it anywhere else.

Not that AI has anything to do with that, or anything we do with AI. But the chorus of non-sequiturs will keep on rising, and as the emperor, now dancing seductive-esque, drops the last item of clothing, the buzzword singularity will have arrived. A way to murder billions and call it the lesser of two evils, carefully framed, will be found, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> There is a misconception that the list of tasks that we need humans to work on is roughly equal to the number of humans that we currently have available. Instead, I think if we eliminated many of the current tasks from our global priority queue (such as chopping salads) then we will soon discover new tasks.

</comment><comment><USER59> Robots can't taste. Something that no one really wants to take on for a number of reasons the first being that we haven't a clue how it works. Variables in a Caesar Salad occupy wide spreads. Blending taste is still an art that most Chefs have trouble achieving as will the machine intelligence that conquers taste. Wondering how machine intelligence will handle hunger pangs caused by the sudden thought of a Caesar Salad, ensconced with Pain au Levain Croutons, shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano and salted Anchovies on the side. Even the selection of the right sea salt affects the outcome of this wonderful concoction not to mention what mustard and Worcestershire Sauce is best used. The other problem stems from the camaraderie that such a meal requires (haven't even got to the wine pairing yet) to be wholly satisfying. Some people have problems with the origin of the language that really counts as in "companion" \- stems from "one whom with you break bread with"...,

<comment><USER60> I think you're romanticizing the concept of food preparation a bit much. You don't need to be able to taste, or feel hunger, to cook a good meal or choose a wine. I fully expect that a machine could not only do so, but ultimately do so more consistently than any but the most skilled of humans.

<comment><USER61> I fear such a thing would lead to Starbucksization of food and beverage production. As mentioned in plenty of other comments here, Starbucks baristas mostly just push a button to get a shot of espresso from one of their machines. They optimize for consistency and "good enough" \- and indeed the machine pulls the same shot, every time, from beans which are over-roasted for consistency and good enough for mass consumption and a predictable experience across thousands of stores.

But that isn't what makes food and drink interesting. I enjoy going to a place because they pull a particularly great espresso shot and use it to prepare a macchiato in a way that I like according to proportions of milk and espresso that I think taste best... or a bar which has a particularly great wine collection according to my tastes... or a restaurant which has a fun twist on on a french classic which I like more than the original. Of course, each of these establishments _could_ have a custom version of whatever algorithm you're envisioning which picks the perfect wines, pulls the perfect espresso shots, or prepares the perfect meal - but will they? Or will the platform that enables such extreme automation also enable such extreme commodification, like Starbucks vs a boutique coffee shop? I think it would.

<comment><USER60> A machine doesn't have to optimize only for "good enough" or "burnt"; it optimizes for whatever parameters it was given. If there's a trick to "pull a particularly great espresso shot", then you can build a machine to do that. It's not even particularly hard, compared to, say, keeping up an intelligent conversation, doing laundry, or any number of other harder-to-automate tasks.

<comment><USER61> Of course - but people are going to control those machines, and the people who control the machines probably aren't going to be the people who (in another version of history where automation didn't take over) would be operating them with care out of personal passion.

In our Starbucks example - they also own Clover, the boutique automatic single-serve coffee brewer. It's a brilliant machine and makes a great cup of coffee. But it's artificially only available in certain markets, with certain collections of their own branded roasts. The macinery could be programmed to allow me to get a great cup of coffee at any Starbucks in America, but business incentives don't allow that (presumably - because Clovers are rare machines reserved for special store in major markets). Comiditization entails more than just automating the product and making things consistent and widely available. It also typically changes the incentives of the game and the people who are overseeing implementing them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This might cost some jobs but not very many. There have been all kinds of automated food solutions in existence for many decades. They serve a niche in the market for people that just want to grab and eat something quickly. But most people prefer the experience of having humans create and serve their food when they go to a restaurant.

<comment><USER63> _most people prefer the experience of having humans create and serve their food when they go to a restaurant._

Serve sure, but how many people care about what goes on beyond the closed doors of the restaurant kitchen as long as food is up to standard. Would you really care if your steak was 'hand fried' by a line chef or fired by some kind of meat frying robot as long as it was of high quality done to your liking.

The 'problem' however (at least short term) is that line chefs are pretty cheap and advanced robots are pretty expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Interestingly, this breaks Betteridge's law by giving an indeterminate response instead of the negative.

<comment><USER65> To save others a seaerch: From Wikipedia -- Betteridge's law of headlines is one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British technology journalist, although the principle is much older. As with similar "laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended as a humorous adage rather than the literal truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> > is aimed at reducing the risk of food-borne illness

Given it's sell is solving a problem that doesn't need solving I'm guessing it was made to be cheaper but it's not hence the pivot.

</comment><comment><USER67> > _Salad bars are magnets for bacteria and viruses. Even if the sprouts and > ranch dressing aren't tainted, the serving utensils may be. The Silicon > Valley start-up Chowbotics has devised what it says is a partial solution._

A solution to what? What exactly is the problem? Just because bacteria (and "viruses"? really?) may or may not be found in salad bars doesn't make it an emergency. Exactly how many people get sick, or die, because they ate at a salad bar?

It seems the problem is invented to justify the product.

<comment><USER68> Let's replace "salad" with "burrito" and just look at Chipotle in isolation...

* In March and April 2008, 22 customers were infected with hepatitis A from a Chipotle restaurant in California.

* In April 2008, over 400 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio.

* In February 2009, an outbreak of campylobacteriosis was traced to a Chipotle restaurant in Minnesota.

* In July 2015, five people were infected with E. coli traced back to a Chipotle restaurant in Seattle, Washington.

* In August 2015 nearly 100 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Califorina.

* In August 2015, 64 people were infected with Salmonella traced back to Chipotle restaurants in the Minneapolis area.

* In October 2015, 52 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants, with 20 requiring hospitalization.

* In November 2015, 5 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants in Oklahoma and Kansas.

* In December 2015, ultimately 141 people (80 directly) in Massachusetts were infected with norovirus traced back to a Boston, Massachusetts area Chipotle restaurant.

* In July 2017, more than 130 people were infected with norovirus traced back to a Chiptole restaurant in Virginia.

<comment><USER42> A lot of this can be chalked up to Chipotle's insistence on using organic food, which is far more prone to disease than non-organic.

(adding to your list, a Chipotle in Downtown Dallas was found to be infested with rats a few months ago... it was discovered when the rats started falling through the ceiling)</comment></comment></comment>


Study: cookies used for ad targeting doesn't increase revenue for publishers - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/behavioral-ad-targeting-not-paying-off-for-publishers-study-suggests-11559167195 <comment><AUTHOR> This is the academic paper that is referenced in the article: [https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp- content/uploads/sites/6/...](https://weis2019.econinfosec.org/wp- content/uploads/sites/6/2019/05/WEIS_2019_paper_38.pdf)</comment>


On Cyber Monday, Amazon Sold 158 Items Per Second (13.7 Million In Total) - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/27/on-november-29-amazon-sold-158-items-per-second-13-7-million-in-total/ <comment><USER2> Should have bought this stock 2 years back, just dint have any money then. Cant even imagine what the Full Year (FY) earnings results are going to look like.

</comment><comment><USER3> that is a rather wow inducing stat. makes you wonder how many walmart does at peak across all its stores etc.</comment>


Ask HN: How do I retain my job? - <AUTHOR> With the pandemic wrecking havoc all over a lot of companies are being hit with layoffs, furloughs and retrenchments. Many are of the opinion it is still going to get a lot worse, economically.
Some of us have been through this before.
What is some general advice on how to retain your job for those that are still lucky enough to have jobs? <comment><USER2> Here's my $0.02 but most people won't like it.

1) Start by doing an extra 5-10 hours of work for your job. The good news is if you were already doing 60+ hours this is probably unnecessary. I don't have a reference to the study but people that work a lot tend to get paid more and are also usually last to go.

2) Start getting prepared for if were to lose your job. Start studying "Cracking the Code Interview", start running leet code exercises in the morning, and do some practice interviews with friends/family. Two things happen when you do this... 1) you just get sharper, which makes you more valuable (I can't tell you how many times I started prepping to leave and got a promotion from it) 2) you will be back on your feet faster.

3) Grab responsibilities that are available but aren't necessarily directly related to your position. Usually, but not always, when layoffs are required managers recognize the utility of someone that can cover work from someone that they would prefer to get rid of. I.E. if you can do some Devops, and dev, you're more useful than the person that can only do dev. This especially becomes a factor when people are overpaid. Axing 1 high salary, when theres someone that can cover the work makes good business sense

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) " _You don 't have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you._" Make sure you're continuing to finish your deliverables on time and visibly so. Make sure that you're helpful and useful in a way that your managers can see.

2) If you're on a project that isn't delivering a profit or isn't viewed as important by your leadership, heaven help you. Try to move to another team that is profitable/important, if you can.

3) Brace yourself for a layoff anyway. Look at your finances now, while you still have a steady income, and see what you'd have to do to survive if you were unexpectedly laid off, then start making any appropriate preparations or adjustments.</comment>