Amazon launches Prime Air, its own dedicated cargo planes to speed delivery - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/08/04/amazon-to-launch-prime-air-its-own-dedicated-cargo-planes-to-speed-delivery/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> I can't remember if a friend working at Amazon told me this, or if I read it online.

Supposedly, Amazon does tons of backend real world optimization on shipping.

Say you, a SF resident, look at a book today on Amazon.com. Based on your past actions, Amazon knows very well how likely you are to purchase right away, or tomorrow, etc.

Now imagine the book isn't in a warehouse close enough to you for prime, but Amazon's data tells them you are much more likely to buy it when you come back to Amazon tomorrow if Prime is offered.

They'll ship the book to the warehouse in case you come back tomorrow to look at that book. Of course there's tons more modeling behind it to make sure they have very accurate estimates of the cost to pre emptively ship vs the payoff of you buying it, but that's the gist of it.

That was a few years ago, and it blew my mind at the time to think of all the optimization you can do in shipping to individuals when you're working at scale.

Amazon is more and more essentially running a CDN, but for the real world.

<comment><USER3> I find this hard to believe.

But there a again, I don't collect patterns about my behaviour so it could be true.

Sometimes I look at Amazon and then buy the product elsewhere, say if I spent 3 occasions over a few days looking at a product, does that breach some threshold somewhere for them to say "we have one on the hook, lets start moving this to a warehouse near him just in case"

<comment><USER4> I have no actual knowledge on the topic, but I presume it's not calculated on a purely individual level. If 100 people live within the range of the local distribution warehouse are interested in this book, and they say "this one is 87% likely to buy, this one is 43% likely to but..." they can work out a model that results in very few over-shippings.

But again, I know nothing, other than thinking about it a bit when the patent app became known.

<comment><USER5> As a result a book about Computer Science would be pre-emptively shipped to a warehouse near SV and investment book about economy and shipped near NY.

<comment><USER6> The patterns in this would be very exciting to know for people who are looking for their "tribe". It's actually something very hard to find out before moving somewhere thats not the Valley, what is the main intellectual focus of the region, is there none?

I missed a lot in my own childhood and upbringing to have people in my environment that we're or we're in contact with people at the top of their field, having deeper understanding of something instead of just struggling at their level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > [Amazon] plans to launch its first ever branded cargo plane, the Amazon One, > at Seattle's SeaFair Air Show on Friday. The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 > operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for > Amazon.com.

Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the plane.

<comment><USER8> > Unless I'm missing something, the only new thing here is the paint on the > plane.

Amazon has committed to buy a 20% stake in Atlas with options to expand to 30%

[http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atlas-air-grants-amazon- war...](http://www.marketwatch.com/story/atlas-air-grants-amazon-warrants-to- buy-20-share-stake-as-part-of-air-cargo-services-deal-2016-05-05)

<comment><USER9> The ownership stake in Atlas with Amazon is interesting to me.

Amazon was contracting with Air Transport Services Group (Airborne Express/DHL US, for those keeping track at home) for flights into and out of Wilmington for an air sort program. Amazon must have crunched the numbers on what they were paying to FedEx and UPS and realized that they could lease planes for what they were paying for someone else to do the deliveries...

40 Aircraft pushing packages from one corner of the globe to another? This means that they can cut their logistics costs (or, alternatively, move them in house from an external vendor, giving them more control) and be able to fine- tune delivery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Only tangentially related, but a useful thing to know about Amazon, and not something it seems a lot of people are aware of:

If you have problems with a specific shipper Amazon uses, you can contact their customer support and request they deprioritize that carrier, which has the effect of weighting it to the bottom of the shipper selection algorithm. This does not guarantee they'll never be chosen, but it does make it very unlikely.

In my own case, I had a lot of problems with Amazon's in-house fulfillment, which here in Baltimore is kind of a trash fire. (Prime Now is great. Amazon Fulfillment is not.) After an unbroken streak of erroneously failed deliveries, I spent an hour and a half on the phone with Amazon's support department, culminating in the discovery that carrier deprioritization is a thing that exists. Since it's been applied, Amazon Fulfillment has not been selected to deliver me a package, in contrast to its former high likelihood of selection. So this appears to be more than just placebo. Others have reported similar results.

As far as I can tell, in order to obtain this benefit, you need to use the specific form of words: "carrier deprioritization", or something very close to it. The specific phrase I've heard them use is "carrier deprioritization", and it'll probably help if you call it that too; I had several representatives tell me there was nothing at all they could do, until I happened upon one who mentioned this phrase. Asking for it by name may save you a lot of time.

If you've had persistent difficulty with a specific carrier, you can do worse than to get in touch with Amazon customer support and make this kind of request. Hope this helps!

<comment><USER11> You do realize you can just select the carrier on the order page? That's kinda the point of it.

You get a bunch of radio buttons to select if you want to get stuff delivered via Hermes, DHL, DHL Express, Amazon Prime Now, UPS, etc. each with different prices.

EDIT: Turns out that feature got removed several years ago. I wonder why.

<comment><USER12> I suppose you talk about German Amazon? Because I don't get such a selection and never heard of anyone having one - only people complaining that Hermes lost their orders.

On my order page I get to choose between Prime speed (with a "guaranteed" delivery date[1]) and standard delivery. Depending on the item they also offer express, early-morning or same-day delivery but that's about it. Nowhere on the page are specific carriers mentioned and for the same option different carriers are chosen (though I usually only use the Prime one).

You can choose to have the package delivered to a drop-off location instead of your home. In that case you get to see the carrier before placing the order because they operate those shops.

The only place I have ever seen a carrier selection is the return page where you usually (but not always) can choose between a Hermes and a DHL label.

Just to satisfy my curiosity I'd like to see a screenshot of your order page.

[1]: Which often was missed until I complained. Now it works magically.

<comment><USER11> The last time I ordered from Amazon was a few years ago, so they might have changed it - but I know pretty sure they had such a selection.

<comment><USER12> I haven't seen that for the last 15+ years I use them, just people wishing that feature in online forums.

Sometimes there is a reason people don't seem to notice an obvious feature in a software you haven't used for years ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is Prime Air the Google Fiber of the shipping world?

A way to put a fire under the ass of UPS and FedEx to get cheaper shipping rates so they can offer lower prices?

<comment><USER14> I think it is more of an AWS, they'll replace most of UPS and FedEx with their own infrastructure that they'll open up to others later on.

<comment><USER15> That would be nice - an alternative to the UPS FedEx duopoly. Maybe they can push the shipping rates lower than the evil twins set it at now. The two are doing about 100 billion in business, so it is a large market to go after.

I have been shipping daily with both of them for a decade; it would be nice to have another choice with national coverage.

[http://www.diffen.com/difference/FedEx_vs_UPS](http://www.diffen.com/difference/FedEx_vs_UPS)

<comment><USER16> I would hope that Amazon is introducing competition to UPS and FedEx - but its also possible that they are paving the way for a Vertically integrated Monopoly. Time will tell, I suppose.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> My initial reaction was to question their growing levels of vertical integration, but their volume is so huge that they will probably rival UPS/Fedex if you included all of Amazons shipments across carriers.

It would cost Amazon 40-50b to buy Fedex, probably twice as much for UPS. If they really plan to run their own fleet they probably have a plan beyond just doing Prime deliveries.

<comment><USER18> The beauty of it for Amazon is they only need to compete in their best markets. Pure shipping companies have to go everywhere, but Amazon has the luxury of doing its own delivery only where it is easy and outsourcing it to legacy shippers where it's not. For example, I could easily see Amazon delivering directly to large condo/apartment buildings in urban areas.

<comment><USER19> Only USPS ships everywhere. If you go to UPS/FedEx/DHL, they will tell you they ship everywhere and take your package, but if they deem your package not profitable enough they will hand it over to USPS.

The shipping market is incredibly complex with USPS and FedEx actually being each other's largest customers.

<comment><USER11> DHL ships everywhere except for the US, where you're right, they do outsource shipping to the USPS.

DHL used to have its own delivery network everywhere in the US, too, but they found it hard to compete.

<comment><USER19> You're right. I should have prefaced my comment as talking only about shipping in the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The more they innovate on shipping the more I commit to a set of values that doesn't include instant gratification or equating consumer possessions with happiness.

A rule of thumb I use before buying something is, do I need it or want it so much that it's worth more effort to obtain than a few mouse clicks?

If it took a week to ship and I can do without it for that long, can't I do without it altogether? If I need it sooner, can't I just go get it? I used to be a huge online shopper but I've rediscovered that going out into the world is not a chore and it's good to have excuses to do so.

Freeing oneself from Amazon is even better than freeing oneself from Facebook.

<comment> k-mcgrady While I get your point here's a counter example. I needed a power adapter for a router urgently. I checked Amazon and they could deliver it by Prime the next day. I decided instead to go out into the real world and check first. I went to 3 different small electronics stores near my home - none of them had it. After an hour of searching/wasting my time I bought it on the Amazon app as I walked home. I think the point is - it depends where you live. These electronics stores were small places that doubled as internet cafés and were run by local people. I would have really had to go out of the way to find a Maplin/Radioshack/Best Buy kind of store. If I drove a car or lived near a mall I probably could have gotten the item easily but I live in a city and small locally run stores are much more common than chains which stock everything. It wasn't even that obscure an item but without wasting several hours and spending £6 on public transport Amazon was the only solution.

<comment><USER20> I still buy online sometimes when it makes the most sense to, as should anyone, but I think of it as an exception.

What Amazon is doing and I'm commenting on is clearly aimed at promoting instant gratification and maximizing consumerism.

<comment><USER21> > _aimed at promoting instant gratification and maximizing consumerism_

So it's a retail company. I feel like this statement applies to at least 99% of retail companies, likely including the ones you're shopping at instead of Amazon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Amazon impresses me in solving the problems typical stuffed shirt business people try to run from. AWS is a great example of tech execution, but courier services are probably a more impressive accomplishment objectively speaking.

Sustainability in business comes from being good at products and services you claim to provide. You can game your way up for a bit with good sales and marketing, but if you suck at execution of products and services, eventually you will suffer if someone else does marginally better.

Charlatans violating this simple principle is one of the most frustrating things I've had to deal with in my career.

</comment><comment><USER23> _" The plane is a a Boeing 767-300 operated by Atlas Air, an existing provider of air cargo services for Amazon.com."_

So it seems a bit like they are announcing a paint job on a vendor's plane. However, the underlying story reminds me a bit about Sears & Roebuck. That retailer came to dominate the scene by innovating in the logistics of getting material and goods "most of the way" there so that ordering out of the "Sear's Catalog" could be just as good as going to the store.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. I'd love to see Amazon detail how they plan to fuel hedge. It's a crazy market, to me, but totally fascinating so if they're that bonkers good with algos & tech, they might have statistically significant results! Well, in theory. I get the sense though they're not going to get to that point of direct-employment-purchase and keep things as a sub-contractor / flight supplier relationship (as noted elsewhere).

</comment><comment><USER25> In the meantime, Prime seems to get less and less available for me here in HI. You go to a product that says "Prime", but then when you attempt to check out it says "actually, this can't be shipped to your destination". This only used to happen with large shipments, but lately it's been happening with small parts as well. It really makes me wonder when it will no longer be worth it to have Prime.

</comment><comment><USER26> Amazon's long-term play in this area seems to get clearer everyday. It will build services to retail what it has done for compute. They are building an operating system for a retail company. They provide the IT, management services, logistic services, marketing and advertising services. Eventually if 3D printing catches on, you can even get your stuff manufactured and sold using Amazon's services.

</comment><comment><USER27> This article is pretty misleading. Amazon contracts a 3rd party logistics provider (who owns the aircraft). They've already been doing this for years. Only difference now is the plane is painted. A bit click-baity if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER28> A retired air mechanic told me this a while ago. We could not figure out why they need their own fleet (40 ish planes when they come off existing carriers) of so many planes

<comment><USER29> Hubris. Amazon thinks they can do every other industry better than the status quo. Let's see what happens when Amazon tries to assign pilot scores and account for fuel by the liter. Amazon is going to have to deal with real unions now too.

<comment><USER30> Hubris? I can name off a number of industries Amazon has, nearly singlehandedly, disrupted: online retail, shipment subscriptions, low cost electronics, VPS web hosting, scalable database storage, transactional emails apis. And this is just off the cuff. I suspect the actual list is far longer.

Amazon is not run by arrogant morons. You don't invest in Boeings with hubris. You invest after having crunched more numbers and built more models than we can realistically imagine.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, well maybe there is a lot of slack that could be taken up in those other industries. Air transportation does not seem like one that needs disrupted or should be disrupted. The fact that it works at all is amazing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> At what point does Amazon get into monopoly territory?

<comment><USER32> Not a monopoly but Amazon Basics products are copies of Amazon's best selling products at a much cheaper price. This makes third-party vendor competition pretty harsh. I can buy a Rain Design mStand Laptop Stand for $40 or buy the Amazon clone for $20.

<comment><USER33> The Amazon Basics items I've seen could be described as "the minimum acceptable". It's better than the typical Chinese junk, but anyone upmarket shouldn't have to worry.

<comment><USER34> Then it was a genius idea. There's tons of awful, broken stuff for really cheap on Amazon. With basics you get something you can at least know it works and if not can complain to someone.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Just imagine if packages could drop out the back and be guided by image recognition and GPS to land on your porch.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is great for consumers, but has anyone considered the environmental cost of this?

<comment><USER37> Have _you_ considered the environmental cost? If so, what was your result? How much more/less damaging to the environment do you believe this will be?

Sorry if I'm coming off a little harsh, but this is a pretty low-effort comment that doesn't actually add anything to the conversation.

<comment><USER38> Yeah it sounded a bit like "Won't anyone think of the children?"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Amazon really is like the amazon river, branching out in so many areas that are still related with it, all the while improving the found methods and technology.

</comment><comment><USER40> Maybe they could buy old B-52 bombers and convert them to drop laser-guided guided packages to their destinations.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow, what an abysmal failure by UPS (or whoever does most of Amazon's shipping). You had one job.

CEO should step down.

He should have kept Bezos happy. Lowered rates. Lowered own costs.

<comment><USER41> Just fucking delete me

<comment><USER40> They could do what, exactly? Slash their prices and run themselves into the ground? Who knows how much money Amazon is sinking into this venture and running it at a loss, hoping to make it up in other areas.

There's no way "free shipping" isn't costing them a mountain of money, but they can just blend it into other operational costs. Logistics companies make _all_ their money on this stuff, they can't afford to subsidize.

For FedEx to do Amazon a "favor" by matching prices is suicidal. It sucks they lost the business but there's nothing they can do.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: DailyTechVideo – curated conference talks for full-stack developers - <AUTHOR> http://dailytechvideo.com <comment><USER2> Nice looking site! I'm in a doctor's office so I can't watch any videos, but I noticed something a little jarring in the experience and thought I'd report it.

Environment:

\- iPhone 5c \- iOS 9.2 (fully up to date). \- Safari

Scenario:

\- Load the page in landscape mode. \- Turn to portrait mode.

Result:

In portrait mode, above the fold, I get the top bar, four videos and the bottom bar. In landscape mode, above the fold, I get the top bar, one very large video title and the bottom bar.

Personally, I'd do a bit of work on your style sheet as the landscape experience doesn't work terribly well for me. With attention spans being what they are, I worry that only one title will lose a huge number of your potential users.

Otherwise, nice work - you've got some great videos on there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the warm words!

I'll see what I can do in terms of the stylesheets, but I must admit that my oh-so-amazing design sense basically led me to use the default, built-in WordPress stylesheet. If someone here knows what tweaks I can/should make to improve the visibility in any direction or on any device, I'm more than open to suggestions.

<comment><USER3> The easiest way to do that would be to change your theme to some video blog wordpress theme, I am sure there are many good free ones available.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's a great resource, I often find out about interesting talks on youtube quite some time after they have been uploaded, the rss feed of this will bring all that to me without actively checking.

Edit: There are feeds for tags as well, which makes this even more valuable, e.g. [http://dailytechvideo.com/category/rust/feed/](http://dailytechvideo.com/category/rust/feed/)

</comment><comment><USER5> It's really cool. I have a suggestion/request, it would be very helpful if the videos are tagged with their length and be categorized to <30 mins, <1 hr and so on.

This will really help to quickly watch a vid with the time in hand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Someone contacted me on Twitter and asked if I could add a length, which I did (starting with the latest). A very smart idea from both of you!

The idea of categorizing by length is great, and I'll do it, because it's so easy (well, moving forward). However, most of these talks are conference talks, meaning that about 80-90% will be about 45-60 minutes long. So it'll probably be most useful for the outliers. But again, it's easy to do, so why not?

Thanks for your interest and suggestions!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting looking resource! I've just noticed that the latest two videos both have the same id of 410.

<comment><AUTHOR> Whoops! Thanks for noticing that; I've fixed it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> There is no such thing as a full-stack developer. Why does the title employ that stupid myth? Apart from that, the topics look interesting.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you can suggest a better summary and title, I'm open to it!

<comment><USER8> web developers?

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, except that I have a bunch of things about data science and programming languages. And things like Git. And sometimes computer-industry history. And sometimes legal issues.

I could just define it as, "I'm interested in lots of cool programming languages, databases, and Web technologies, and the like." But that doesn't really help anyone. I figured that "full-stack developers" captured the majority of people who would be interested.

But hey, I'm open to suggestions...

<comment><USER9> "Full-stack developer" is fine and makes sense to your audience. Neckbeards just win pull with other neckbeards by saying otherwise.

It's like when you see people getting it on record that they would never use Javascript on the server.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


It takes psychological flexibility to thrive with chronic illness - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/essays/it-takes-psychological-flexibility-to-thrive-with-chronic-illness <comment><USER2> Oncall folks: All this advice can apply to you.</comment>


Fractal Lab - <AUTHOR> http://sub.blue/fractal-lab <comment><USER2> Impressive! The UI looks really user friendly and your video shows quite a nice panel of creative use cases, really keen on being able to play with that.

</comment><comment><USER3> You can create vivid unimaginable universes/superstructures with such detail just by changing some parameters. Planets, space stations, cities, forest, ocean, I can only say what else. The fractals I have seen in the video outnumber the unique sci-fi worlds in movies/games I have seen. I feel like a God who can create my own universe. Simply amazing. Just wow.

</comment><comment><USER4> There aren't enough positive comments here. Damn this is so cool, technically rendering-wise, UX-wise, a great showcase... I love the video! Really hope the author releases the app, even if it isn't open sourced.

</comment><comment><USER5> SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY

(His voice is wonderful though, so maybe KEEP TALKING AND TAKE MY MONEY.)

I would pay $199 for this in a .app bundle instantly.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I found this via @mrdoob on Twitter[1] and if he's impressed by this kind of stuff then, well... :-)

[1] [https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/595297811656286208](https://twitter.com/mrdoob/status/595297811656286208)

<comment><USER6> If Mr Doob is impressed, drop everything and go look at it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> First person to use this tool to find a BLIT wins!

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_(short_story)](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLIT_\(short_story\))

</comment><comment><USER8> First off, awesome work. This is absolutely insane. Can't wait for the previews. I want to design my next game with all fractal art, and this might just be the golden tool.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's so refreshing to hear someone speak in a calm and understated tone for a change.

<comment><USER10> He's the modern version of Bob Ross.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> If anybody is interested in how this stuff works, I highly recommend looking at: [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/menger/menger.htm](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/menger/menger.htm)

and many of the fractal examples at shadertoy.com

<comment><USER11> Also, before reading that you might want to read and study the associated shadertoy example in:

[http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfun...](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm)

which covers distance functions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Wonderful little demo, you can tell he's really explored the concept of fractal generation in great depth over the course of his development...it's incredible.

It's interesting how similar the stimulation I get from his voice is compared to the visuals I am seeing in his demo. Tingles, everywhere...

</comment><comment><USER13> "Bob Ross - The Joy Of Fractals"

</comment><comment><USER14> Oculus Rift plz?

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow this is really, really impressive. Every little detail of the app and the rendering is finely designed and well thought of. There are even god rays and camera aperture settings. I would love to try it!

</comment><comment><USER16> Incredible.

In the 90s we had rendering software that took about 10 minutes to general a single 2D fractal. I loved playing with it.

When I went to university, as part of a course, we watched a video where someone had created animations by adjusting a single parameter of the (2D) fractal over time. They'd spent untold hours of processing time to generate the frames. It was magical because it helped to offer insights into how the parameters are tied to the shape of the structure. I seem to recall fractals that looked like they were slapping each other's hands.

This is the first time I've really seen fractal software in the last 10-15 years. At university we talked about how it would exist one day, but damn, that's just incredible to see.

<comment><USER17> You might like to try out Mandelbrot Maps. It allows real-time interactive exploration of the relationship between the Mandelbrot set and associated Julia sets. (There is a corresponding Julia set for each point on the Mandelbrot set, and some striking structural similarities.) Also, the images it produces are beautiful. :-)

Disclaimer: I wrote the original version for my MSc project 7 years ago. Future students added further improvements in later years, including notably creating two Android apps. All versions are free and open source software.

\- [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ed.inf.m...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.ac.ed.inf.mandelbrotmaps) \- Android app port, by Alasdair Corbett

\- [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.bunnies.fra...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.bunnies.fractalmaps) \- Updated Android app (Fractal Maps), by Sky Welch

\- [http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/mandelbrot- maps/](http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/mandelbrot-maps/) \- Original Mandelbrot Maps (Java applet), by me

\- Wadler's blog: [http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/fractal- maps.html](http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/fractal-maps.html) | [http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/mandelbrot-and-julia- su...](http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/mandelbrot-and-julia- surprising.html) | [http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/mandelbrot- maps.html](http://wadler.blogspot.co.uk/2008/09/mandelbrot-maps.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The software looks awesome, the combination of your voice and the video was really soothing.

</comment><comment><USER19> Exploring these worlds via VR would be amazing. Exciting times ahead!

</comment><comment><USER20> I can't select text? Blah

</comment><comment><USER21> Dude I expect you could easily sell that to movie studios or game studios to develop levels/scenes. 7:11 looks like the inside of an industrial building, or you could use it to develop organic looking assets, mystical scenery/mandalas, etc.

I reckon you could definitely commercialise this.

</comment><comment><USER22> It boggles my mind to think that this guy knows more about fractals than I could ever know there is to know about fractals. It's really interesting to me how people gain such deep knowledge of fields that I'll never scratch the surface of. Makes me wish I had more time.

<comment><USER23> Not only that but this is _just_ his hobby.

<comment><USER24> More than both, he is _playing with it_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> great golf voice

</comment><comment><USER26> This is absolutely amazing. I wonder what it takes to create something so brilliant single handedly, and that too as a hobby!

</comment><comment><USER27> This is amazing.

The UI looks great, and of course the functionality is incredibly inspiring.

Really look forward to the day when I can play around with it !

</comment><comment><USER28> this is one of the most impressive demos i've watched in a while. can't wait for it to go live!

</comment><comment><USER3> This is awesome.

</comment><comment><USER29> I want to 3D print with this. yes!

</comment><comment><USER30> This is truly amazing. However, I can't help but wonder what the possible uses of this tool are (except for exploring fractals, and making fractal-art).

<comment><USER31> This tools makes inroads on GUIs for procedurally generating extraordinary physical complexity. Ask this again when we need design tools for molecular manufacturing (nanotech).

<comment><USER32> Not to mention, it's beautiful. Not everything needs to have a practical use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Oh great another site that ruins the OSX back gesture.

<comment><USER34> It also ruins scrolling for me. I have to click and drag the scrollbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Simply wow.

</comment><comment><USER36> Wow.

</comment><comment><USER37> So how does one learn to draw fractals? Any good resources I should check out?

<comment><USER38> Fractint was well respected software. It's very old but the source is available. I'm not sure what kind of licence the source is under - this was in the days when people called things "stone soup".

The math is going to be easily portable.

[http://www.nahee.com/spanky/www/fractint/getting.html](http://www.nahee.com/spanky/www/fractint/getting.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I know I'm dating myself by posting this. Tom, the creator is associated with Kai Krause, creator of some cool graphics software a long time ago...

[http://kai.subblue.com/en/contact.html](http://kai.subblue.com/en/contact.html)

<comment><USER40> I've never heard of any of these people, but I have a strange impulse to buy some iOS app called Frax.

...Wait! No. No, I don't.

<comment><USER23> You should, I've played with it and it's quite amazing!

Edit: Here is one of the other creators talking about it a bit more: [http://kai.subblue.com/en/frax.html](http://kai.subblue.com/en/frax.html)

<comment><USER40> I think you missed my point.

I don't like advertising, and that whole website is a particularly nefarious form of it.

"Buy FRAX! Douglas Adams would have!" Oh, ffs.

<comment><USER41> What?

I had to go back and see if we were looking at the same website. I don't think we were.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Was it really necessary to implement your own scrollbar? It's absurdly slow (and therefore annoying) on Firefox/Conkeror, and seems entirely redundant when the browser handles scrolling perfectly fine.

<comment><USER43> I have a weird issue in Chrome where setting the video volume causes the page to scroll down until only the lower half of the video was visible. I am unable to scroll back up and have to refresh the page.

<comment><USER44> Experiencing the same issue... But boy is that scroll bar _pretty_ /s

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> The speech in the video is hardly understandable (at least for me). Is there a transcript anywhere?

Edit: You seriously think a comment asking for a transcript because the voice seems hard to understand deserves being down voted?

<comment><USER46> It seems very clear to me. Perhaps there's a problem with your browser sound?

<comment><USER47> No, the narrator is definitely whispering.

<comment><USER48> I could easily understand him, but yes, the narrator sounds like he's almost falling asleep, or he is recording in a room with a sleeping baby and doesn't want to wake it. I assume your comment is receiving so much resistance because apparently a lot of people find his voice "soothing", and people don't realize that a soothing voice is not necessarily the best for communicating information.

<comment><USER45> But why - for everything good in this world - would they down-vote then?

<comment><USER46> I didn't down-vote, but I expect the comment comes across as antagonistic. Objectively, he isn't whispering. Whispering means sounds are not voiced, which is not the case here. So at best this is an exaggeration. Bluntly stated as it is, it likely seems unnecessarily negative in tone to some.

<comment><USER45> Tone is interpretation. I think we should prefer to error on the side of doubt before down-voting.

Let's assume they didn't down-vote because of interpreted tone but instead because they disagreed on the statement that the speaker whispered.

Why don't they put forth an perfectly good, objective criticism like you just did with

        Objectively, he isn't whispering. Whispering means sounds
        are not voiced, which is not the case here.

instead of down-voting?

I think down-voting should not be used for expressing disagreement.

Destructive behaviour is a good reason for down-voting.

Was his comment destructive? He used the word "whisper" non-conformant with the definition you brought. I don't think that was intentional and I think it was easy to get what he was trying to say. Other people also noted the "golf commentator voice". His behaviour was not destructive.

Down-voting is misused. I don't know how the community feels about this, but I see it as an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> So when can we try it for ourselves?

<comment><USER36> > Fractal Lab is my {NOT AZEIRAH'S} personal technical and creative canvas > where I can explore ideas freely in my own time without obligations and > support commitments, so for the moment it isn't available online or for > local installation. I have some project ideas I first want to fully explore > using Fractal Lab, after that I'll probably release the code.

This is on his site

soo... someday maybe

<comment><USER50> Failing that, his main page promotes the iOS app FRAX. Any opinions/experience about it?

<comment><USER51> Wow! The demo video[1] is really impressive. How are those effects created, I wonder? Do the fractals get their own depth maps? How do you arrive at algorithms that look so darn beautiful, especially those metal and plastic shaders? Is there prior art for this?

[1]: [http://fract.al](http://fract.al)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Scrolling is completely broken. :/ (But this looks awesome!!)

<comment><USER53> I keep reading these comments on HN, but for me, I have never experienced a 'broken' scrolling effect. I browse using Chrome on OSX using: 1. my laptop touchpad and two-finger dragging, 2. the up/down arrow keys, 3. the spacebar, or 4. the scroll-wheel on my mouse. On my phone I use Android Chrome and scroll by dragging up and down. Anyway, I can't remember ever having these techniques not work.

Is there some other way of scrolling that I haven't thought of, and therefore am not using day-to-day, that breaks for other people, or do I just put up with it unconciously, switching between methods 1-4 automatically on the laptop, and never notice? Or, are people using iPads or iPhones, which I do not own, and they are more susceptible? Or Browsers-other-than-Chrome, which I guess must exist ;)

Genuinely curious!

<comment><USER54> I'm using Firefox on OSX. It scrolls extremely slow using a mousewheel. It also won't scroll when the mouse pointer is over the Vimeo embed (with the mousewheel or touchpad)

<comment><USER55> Also, the pageup and pagedown keys don't move the page. Also, the arrow keys don't move the page. Also, I can't seem to scroll by clicking on the scrollbar thumb and dragging it.

Very frustrating indeed on FF on a desktop.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> In case the creator is reading this, please don't break scrolling. This page scrolls impossibly slowly for me. (Firefox 37.0.2, OSX 10.10.3)

<comment><USER36> Drag to scroll

<comment><USER42> I'm on a desktop. My mouse has a scrollwheel. My scrolling is perfectly fine on pretty much every other website. Why should I be expected to know to "drag to scroll" as if I'm doing all my web browsing on a smartphone emulator?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I can't but help to think there might be some commercial potential here-- it looks incredibly fun to play with. Perhaps a free web-app where you can pay to have animations rendered at high resolution server-side and then placed in a Dropbox folder for download. Or something that makes music videos by using audio information to control some of the fractal parameters during an animation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps you could seize the opportunity to train yourself not to look for a commercial value, or indeed, any value beyond it's inherent value.

To me it's obvious that this has _value in itself_ ; and frankly, I'm surprised you don't appreciate that.

<comment><USER57> You misunderstood me-- I think this is amazingly cool and has a ton of intrinsic value. I was only suggesting that in addition to this, there could be a possibility of making some kind of product that people would like enough to pay for. That would expose more people to creating advanced fractal art beyond a small circle of technologists.

<comment><AUTHOR> _You misunderstood me-- I think this is amazingly cool and has a ton of intrinsic value._

Cool! We're in agreement.

Here's my take: I think there always could be a possibility of making a product that (you could convince) people like enough to pay for. (Here in my country, people literally sell shit for money. Elk shit, to be exact. Apparently, many Germans want to have it in their homes.)

But let's say you come to this wonderful small gelateria in an Italian village. The ice cream is amazing. The setting is amazing. Your experience is breathtaking. Naturally, since we're all entrepreneurs here and all that jazz, you think "I wonder if there's not a commercial value in this". So you start making some kind of ice cream cones or whatever. You make advertising which creates a longing for that experience, that we all kind of know (perhaps even from my few faltering words) of Italian ice cream on a trattoria somewhere in Tuscany. You sell the ice cream to people.

Now, did you expose more people to that original gelateria? No, you didn't! You sold them on the idea, and they got some pretty boring ice cream to eat in their pretty boring home. And you got the money.

That's an approximation of what I'm afraid might happen if you succeeded in convincing the creator to "monetize". But it's ok, you won't do that; first off, he's not here and what's more he's obviously got enough talent to make whatever money he wants to, should he so decide.

Edit: In my original reply, I didn't mean "train". I rather meant "practice". It's a subtle but important difference and I see how it can shift the perception of my message quite a bit. Forgive me, I am not a native speaker.

<comment><USER58> You make an interesting point about the dangers of blindly "monetizing", but I don't think it's relevant to parent's comment for a few reasons (not the least of which that paying for software doesn't by itself reduce its utility, unlike the ice-cream + scenery example where the implicit scenery value is removed in the commercial "product").

Natural scenery doesn't cost money to make. Making profit off of it isn't intrinsically value-creating.

Software _does_ take effort to make, and being comfortable finding ways to monetize it means more programmers can afford to create things like this. Not everyone has as enough free time to make all the things we want to pro bono. Many people have jobs (often for other people who _did_ figure out how to monetize their own ideas).

So I'm all in favour of developers practicing asking/answering that question, because often finding the answer is what allows them to actually pursue those ideas. It's not wrong for people to sell the fruits of their labour—the world gets fruit that might not have existed otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> The author's voice makes me want to create some happy little fractal trees over here ... then some happy little fractal clouds over there ...

This is awesome. I want to play with this very badly.

<comment><USER60> On the topic of the voice and its effect, you may be interested in [http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr](http://www.reddit.com/r/asmr)

<comment><USER45> Strangely, the voice in the video makes me uncomfortable.

<comment><USER61> The lip smacking and semi-whispering is very annoying to me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


No-Ads: Millions of banner ads blocked since 1996 - <AUTHOR> http://www.schooner.com/~loverso/no-ads/ <comment><USER2> A related question for HN...

If I want a _network-wide_ ad blocking device that understands wildcard host names that's cheap & low-wattage, is a Raspberry Pi with Pi-hole[1] the best option?

The PAC proxy autoconfig in this article is fine for configuring individual browsers (especially when browsing on iPad/iPhone away from home such as airports) but I want a site-wide firewall at the DNS network level to block:

      - IoT like LG/Samsung tvs sending privacy data

      - MS Windows 10 telemetry data

      - smartphones/tablets ads where the proxy wasn't set

      - ...everything else I didn't think about

[1] [https://pi-hole.net/](https://pi-hole.net/)

<comment><USER3> Privoxy - [https://www.privoxy.org/](https://www.privoxy.org/) is a light- weight HTTP and HTTPs proxy that can be used as a network-wide ad blocking service, and is small and efficient enough to run fine on a Pi (it's available packaged with most linux distributions)

For HTTP requests, you can configure lists of URLs (or URL fragments) to block, allowing for full ad blocking. It can also do tricks like allowing URLs but blocking or discarding their cookies so the sites are usable but can't track you via their cookies.

For HTTPs requests, the proxy can't see the URLs so it can't block based on URL, but it falls back to blocking based on hostname, which is good enough for most situations.

Browser plugins like 'Proxy SwitchyOmega' (Firefox/Chrome) make it easy to switch between using the proxy or not if you really need to skip the blocking.

It's also possible to set up privoxy as a transparent proxy, meaning that everything on your network is forced to use it to communicate with the outside world, so it can work with any device, not just those that have proxy configuration options).

I definitely recommend it, it runs fine on my home network. My TV and PS4 work well with it, for instance. (it's a shame that I have to resort to ad-blocking my television in order to stop it spying on me...)

<comment><USER4> What about solutions for larger environments such as education / universities with 500+ users?

<comment><USER5> You are getting into dangerous territory if you want to MITM so many HTTPS connections. (You can do anything with HTTP you want. Starting with DNS blackholing is best)

Note that the software GP linked to doesn't (can't) strip ads off an HTTPS connection[1]. It can only completely block it. So for ads + content from a single origin, you can't do anything.

If you really want get into individual HTTPS connections, you'd have to install a root cert into every single once of the computers and MITM them by presenting your cert. This is only done in scenarios where one has to control everything the client machines do. Otherwise you're (much) better off preinstalling uBlock Origin on all the computers.

BlueCoat is a company which works in this space[2] (it acquired by Symantec last year). Even then, you risk breaking something sometime[3]

[1]: [https://www.privoxy.org/faq/misc.html#SSL](https://www.privoxy.org/faq/misc.html#SSL)

[2]: [https://www.bluecoat.com/support- services](https://www.bluecoat.com/support-services)

[3]: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750379)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have recently more problems with sites, that embedded a little Javascript, which tests if access to these ad farms are blocked and if so, then redirecting to a site on how to enable ads.

Currently, I set uBlock Origin to block inline Javascript. But it becomes really messy, as that blocks also valid Javascript for slides show and so on. Not even talking about those site, which essentially work only with Javascript enabled at all.

<comment><USER7> Is it possible to return an empty 200 response?

<comment><USER8> They're usually not testing if the file loaded, but if the JS responds as it should.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > This should work in any Gecko-based browser, such as Konqueror in KDE3.

Minor correction: Konqueror was KHTML-based (recent versions use WebKit (edit to make clear: originally a fork of KHTML) which has essentially become the mainline of KHTML).

<comment><USER10> At the time I wrote that comment, I thought it was correct. I'll just remove the Konqueror reference.

<comment><USER9> If it works in Konqueror that would be good to know. It's still my favourite browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Personally, I am really satisfied using it in 2017 as a supplementary solution for blocking ads on my all devices with internet connection, especially which can't have uBlock Origin.

<comment><USER10> I'm glad to hear. What devices do you use this on? FWIW, I've personally never used it on mobile devices, but I'm pretty sure it would work.

(I'm the author of no-ads)

<comment><USER11> I found your site when I was looking for some adblock my old BlackBerry Z10. Thanks to your great job I discovered PAC proxy, I get rid of ads in apps and in the built-in browser, which does not handle extensions. On mobile phones based on Symbian, BlackBerry 10, Android proxy is configured per network connection (i.e. single Wi-Fi AP) and it is system-wide configuration, which has been working flawlessly under all aforementioned platforms.

As developer, I'd like to thank you for discovery of PAC proxy, because it has helped me many times to mimic or redirect network traffic, i.e when I needed to connect my phone with laptop using DNS names in the same local network. It is worth noting PAC proxy is superb to investigate or block traffic to servers where are collected usage metrics / telemetry on android phones by setting redirect to your own server.

I would be grateful if you could answer on following question: How do you debug/test PAC proxy if given pattern works or not? Because I am using the method known by most of PHP developers - develop, refresh (reconnect) and check manually by sending request once again if new entry works or not.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Would it have any pros/cons compared to ublock origin ?

<comment><USER11> It is system-wide configuration, so also you block ads in apps.</comment></comment>


Sideproject Marketing - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/Entrepreneur/comments/6ztybx/how_i_attract_high_paying_clients_to_my_design/ <comment><USER3> I recently put a readme, not even the code, up for a github project. I just never got around to tidying up the code.

It's an extremely niche, very fast ARM SIMD implementation of a particular feature descriptor (ORB).

Anyway, someone, somehow, found this otherwise unpublicised github repo. Fast forward, they were willing to license the code, so I figured the easiest way to let them evaluate it was to release under GPL.

This lead to a few more people reaching out, and now I'm about to quit my job. All this happened in a week.

Shameless plug [https://github.com/0xfaded/pislam](https://github.com/0xfaded/pislam)

</comment><comment><USER4> I did this earlier this year and it went surprisingly well. About 20 percent of the traffic into my side project site clicks through to my startup's site — even though there's just one linked button. I was expecting low single digits.

Because the side project tapped into current events (filter bubbles and social media), it got great press coverage, including a mention in a front-page Sunday NYT story, and in top newspapers in France, Germany, and England. I've even been invited to speak at two conferences based on my side project (including international travel accommodations).

After an interview with a leading journalism foundation, I was approached by the WSJ to do a partnership, and my side project's app now includes free access to the WSJ (and is, to my knowledge, the only app that has this).

Best of all, I launched the side project on Kickstarter, and it was fully- funded there. This is typically really hard to do with software (esp free software), but I was able to tap into my startup's user base to get the ball rolling.

Seeing how successful the side project was, I paid cash to get a Chrome extension built (to complement the iOS app). We've got almost 1k users, with over 10k app downloads. And we're the #1 search result for "read WSJ free" :)

My side project is here: [http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com](http://www.readacrosstheaisle.com), and my main startup is: [http://www.beelinereader.com](http://www.beelinereader.com).

edit: why the downvotes? This is a thread about marketing with side projects and the potential benefits. I shared new information about things that might come your way if you do what the author suggests. Did I also give links? Yes because without them there's no way to know if this is true or made up. Is there a better way to do this? Or did you go through and downvote all of the comments that talked about experiences with side project marketing?

</comment><comment><USER5> Ton of examples of this stuff from the last 6 or 7 years, some onsite and some standalone, including:

\- Hubspot's website grader: [https://website.grader.com/](https://website.grader.com/)

\- Leadpages' landing page grader: [https://www.leadpages.net/landing-page- grader](https://www.leadpages.net/landing-page-grader)

\- Grammarly's plagiarism checker: [https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism- checker](https://www.grammarly.com/plagiarism-checker)

\- Coschedule's headline analyzer: [https://coschedule.com/headline- analyzer](https://coschedule.com/headline-analyzer)

\- UserTesting's "Peek": [https://peek.usertesting.com/](https://peek.usertesting.com/)

\- Berklee's online guitar tuner: [https://online.berklee.edu/guitar- tuner](https://online.berklee.edu/guitar-tuner)

<comment><USER6> Oh boy, the shit marketers do to get our emails…

<comment><USER5> "Oh boy, the shit consumers click on...."

At one of my old jobs we had this annoying offer that appeared all over the site; it was confusing, convoluted, and presented in obnoxious ways. We all (marketing folks) hated it. Every damn time we experimented with turning it off, revenue went down.

"If only users would stop clicking the damn thing and stop handing money over to us because of that click, we could finally turn it off!!"

(A bit of an oversimplification, as I know it did some damage to the brand. But the point still stands: Most marketers today live and die by testing -> measuring -> dumping money/effort into anything that catches fire. We're not going to continue using tactics that don't produce, which means that in many cases user behavior drives our decision making.)

<comment><USER6> Testing and measuring are no surrogate for integrity.

<comment><USER5> There live a whole lotta tactics and activities between "ah, we don't like this promotion" and "this is not ethical."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Recently I've read about a similar tactic - a guy wrote an ebook, and just shared it on forums and torrents. Because it was niche, valuable, and free, it "went viral", people kept sharing it with each other and downloading it. The book was(non-obnoxiously) sending people to his site, and he had a lot of success with it.

It all comes down to the same fundamental principle - exchanging something of value for attention. Most of the people do it with content marketing(articles and videos), but there's an unlimited number of applications. As long as there's something of value you can provide at a relatively low effort - <USER2> can use it as a marketing channel.

If you are in a technical niche, open source projects do extremely well. It doesn't even have to be a polished startup-like SaaS, it can just be a useful python script, or a boilerplate project for some tech stack, or a guide on how to install or deploy something.

Authors give away their books to bloggers before publishing, or share them with influential people in the industry - same idea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Loos like [http://logodust.com](http://logodust.com) is one of their side projects that sends traffic to their core [http://fairpixels.pro](http://fairpixels.pro) unlimited UI design service. Love the strategy

</comment><comment><USER9> It seems a bit like a chicken and egg problem to me. How do you market the side project?!

</comment><comment><USER10> We often refer to this practice as engineering-as-marketing.

It works, for all sorts of obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER11> This post feels like a draft for what could be a killer article. I don't mean this as disrespect, just that I'd be interested in reading a detailed post, OP. Something beyond just introducing a concept.

Perhaps along the lines of what IndieHackers.com/businesses would publish. They ask (and get answered) questions startups typically won't answer, post a plethora of stats, and go into detail on both what did and didn't work. (Heck, maybe even apply to get interviewed by them)

I think your business (and side business mentioned in the post) in particular would be interesting to read in a detailed format.

Cheers!

<comment><USER12> It's just a ripoff of this basically

[https://medium.com/swlh/side-product-marketing-is-the-new- ki...](https://medium.com/swlh/side-product-marketing-is-the-new- king-a75c4ed0c0c5)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was not aware of that tactic but I had some success with open source projects. For instance I created a Javascript wrapper library for Google Drive API v3 [https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js](https://github.com/vitogit/gDriveSync.js) so the publico are developers that read the code, like the library and then reach me to help them with some javascript project. I don´t create open source project for marketing purposes but I think is a good side effect.

</comment><comment><USER14> Also known as "freemium." Give something away for free (even at a loss), and convert some percentage into paying customers.

Only works if all of the below are true:

1\. You contain the costs (time + money) of the free product.

2\. Conversion (to paying customer) value or rate is high.

3\. The free product gets a large volume of users/visitors. The OP got a nice boost from HN, which certainly helped. Not all projects will get as lucky.

<comment><USER15> Yea, the costs there seem to be contained because the entire "side project" was basically giving away the discarded concepts.

The work had already been done, the primary result sold and this project was basically just a way of recycling instead of trashing.

Good concept though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Thanks for making jobs like mine even more relevant. When design turns into commodity that's based on zero data, user feedback or user analysis - my job just gets easier and easier.</comment>


Show HN: cashay.me – translating time at work to cost of items - <AUTHOR> http://www.cashay.me/ Just a toy I put together while learning AngularJS. <comment><AUTHOR> This is a toy I put together while learning AngularJS.

The idea: People struggle to associate the time spent behind their desk with the money that gets deposited in their account. Subsequently, they often make rash purchasing decisions.

In case it wasn't clear how to make it work:

      1. Enter your salary (don't worry - not tracked)

      2. Notice the counter has started

      3. When you reach $1, the boxes on the right will light up</comment>


Twitter Permissions & Security - <AUTHOR> http://oneforty.com/devblog/twitter-permissions-security/

<comment><USER2> Twitter's lack of real permissions system is really crazy, especially with the carte-blanche access all apps get to things like your Direct Messages. I doubt people are storing credit cards in there, but the article's right: it's similar to getting access to all text messages on a user's phone.

I run <http://preyfetcher.com> and signed up for read-only API access for that app because I wanted to let users know I wouldn't be messing with their account/data. Even so, more fine-grained permissions would be nice, ESPECIALLY for read/write apps. (Prey Fetcher actually DOES need access to DMs to check for new ones, but that's beside the point.)</comment>


Jailhouse 0.1 released - <AUTHOR> https://lkml.org/lkml/2014/8/29/223

<comment><USER2> From the initial release announcement:

"Jailhouse is a partitioning hypervisor that can create asymmetric multiprocessing (AMP) setups on Linux-based systems. That means it runs bare- metal applications or non-Linux OSes aside a standard Linux kernel on one multicore hardware platform. Jailhouse ensures isolation between these "cells", as we call them, via hardware-assisted virtualization. The typical workloads we expect to see in non-Linux cells are applications with highly demanding real-time, safety or security requirements. In contrast to comparable hypervisors, Jailhouse is loaded and configured via Linux, not the other way around."

LWN covered Jailhouse earlier this year. Part 1 ([http://lwn.net/Articles/578295/](http://lwn.net/Articles/578295/)) explains what Jailhouse is, has a look at its data structures, covers how it is enabled, and what it does to initialize CPUs. Part 2 ([http://lwn.net/Articles/578852/](http://lwn.net/Articles/578852/)) looks at how Jailhouse handles interrupts, what is done to create a cell, and how the hypervisor is disabled.

</comment><comment><USER3> To me this is very exciting. Anything that makes real-time control feasible in my mind is a very useful tool.</comment>


Learning: the Hacker Way - <AUTHOR> http://jclaes.blogspot.com/2012/03/learning-hacker-way.html

<comment><USER2> Much better than the alternative (all consumption, zero production), but still not quite ideal in my personal experience. A two-phase approach is better - first comes the dead-zone, which is getting from boot-camp to the front-line. Sad as it is, you can't just jump straight into everything. I tried that when I first started learning to code, and I hit the same experience as you with JS - constant fallback on StackOverflow. Extremely frustrating since progress was unnecessarily slow and I didn't understand the fundamental philosophies behind the coding process and structure.

My current approach which is presently proving fantastic (we'll see where it goes) is to 1. bust through the dead-zone with brute force (I nicknamed it the dead-zone because it's precisely that for me - I can't get passionate enough to crank through it without imposing a strict regimen of study because it's not a project I can own and challenge myself with) and 2. get to working on a concrete personal/work project asap. Once I'm on the project I become obsessive and learn rapidly how all the pieces fit together - but that initial phase of consumption is invaluable for broad grasp of the subject at hand and understanding how all the pieces integrate into a whole.

That said, the ideal circumstance is that you're able to produce piecemeal as you progress through the initial consumption phase as well - Learn Python the Hard Way is a great example that's worked very well personally as an intro to Python, precisely because of its piecemeal hands-on approach. The Django Book tutorial is a nice counterexample - had to rush through that one so I could begin a project and incorporate what I'd learned before I forgot it as there were significantly fewer opportunities for incremental imprinting of acquired knowledge. It wasn't a bad experience, as I did manage to get through it in time before I lost the majority of what I'd learn, but that kind of consumptive material is severely limited by time - if you find yourself forced to consume something like that, get through it as _fast_ as you can and start producing whenever you feel your knowledge slipping away.

TL;DR Consume a bit as fast as you can then produce</comment>


Non-blocking synchronization - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-blocking_synchronization

<comment><USER3> From experience: this is a lot harder than it may look. On a tangent: does anyone here know of techniques or algorithms for verifying that a lock-free or obstruction-free algorithm works? Ideally some that can actually be applied in practice. So far I've been manually trying out all possible scheduling combinations, which is very tedious and can be error prone on larger algorithms. It's also not clear if doing the analysis for 2 concurrent threads automatically extends to 3 or more (it clearly does for some algorithms).

I've been thinking along the lines of a DSL for such algorithms that can compile down to whatever language you need, but also easily lends itself to static analysis for verification, but I feel my lack of classical CompSci training is letting me down here a bit.

<comment><USER4> Cliff Click's presentation of his lock-free hash table is interesting in this respect. He used a different approach - based on state machines - <USER2> reasoning about correctness:

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2139967204534450862#>

(Cliff Click was architect and lead developer for the HotSpot server JIT compiler.)

<comment><USER3> I'll check it out, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm guessing this was added because of the reference in Asana's video of their new programming language: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1097235>

</comment><comment><USER6> STM just can't come fast enough for the languages I write code within at work.

<comment><USER7> Out of curiosity, what languages do you use at work? I was surprised recently to find that there are STM libraries of varying degrees of maturity for a lot more languages than I thought. Most of them feel bolted on, of course, but there might be something.

Personally, I think that _hardware_ transactional memory can't come fast enough. We're already seeing a basic form of it on Sun's to-be-released Rock processor, but there are much more advanced types of HTM that have been developed in the past few years. With hardware support, the performance penalty of using transactional memory pretty much evaporates. The hardware doesn't have to be too terribly elaborate, either.</comment></comment>


A Building Boom in Boston? - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-building-boom-in-boston-1466690740 <comment><USER2> What seems unsustainable to me, as someone who is from Boston and lives in Boston, is how the hell is the supply going to meet demand? It's all luxury and nothing else - and there aren't that many rich people in Boston. Plenty of condos are vacant near the seaport, because they are simply too expensive. I'm on the upper-middle class side of things and I had to buy an ugly, somewhat distressed property in order to enter the market. It's just insane and not sustainable, and yet I hear the mayor recently said there would be a housing shortage for at least the next decade, so it's just this odd combination of too much rich people housing, and not enough reasonably afforable housing, and yet rents and house prices are rising 10% a year in some places, which is just unthinkable.

It's something you can see from 10,000 ft and go "there's no way this is going to last, but I want to ride the wave while it's still good and get out before it gets bad."

<comment><USER3> Almost every unit was once luxury and priced accordingly. Adding supply at the top of the market reduces pressure other price segments.

And if they stay empty, eventually things will crash and prices will drop. It's happened in other cities.

<comment><USER4> Isn't this just trickle-down for housing?

<comment><USER3> Trickle-down was that if the rich have more money, plenty will spill over to the poor. It fails because people who have more money will tend to keep it.

With housing, there's a very low ceiling on consumption. Almost nobody lives in two apartments just because they can afford to. So without sufficient supply, you get people who say "I had to buy an ugly, somewhat distressed property in order to enter the market".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Maybe they're building more than they used to, but the rents make it extremely obvious that in absolute terms, Boston isn't building enough to meet demand.

</comment><comment><USER6> Live in Boston, work in Boston, went to school in Boston, prices are already so high and its a cold climate city for the most part, I am thinking of moving to Oakland, the weather is nicer and I can take the train or uber pool to a higher paying tech job in SF

</comment><comment><USER7> > After a computer-simulated house tour, he recently paid $1.13 million for a > 24th-floor one-bedroom at Pierce Boston, a 30-story geometric glass tower > now rising near Fenway Park that will open in 2018.

> As a condo owner, he will have access to a private sky deck with an outdoor > kitchen and fireplace, and a glass-floored dining room. For an additional > $300,000 or so, he can buy one of the building's 12 private rooftop cabanas.

I'm not sure who this article is catering to. In the 10 years of working in the tech field I've only met a handful of people who could drop $1.13 million on a condo, not even a house (assuming this guy paid cash). How is this even affordable?

<comment><USER8> In Boston & Cambridge there are quite a lot of tech people making $200k, even as individual contributors. And there are many two-job couples with household income over $300k.

A million dollar mortgage will cost $6000 per month, which is only 36% of $200k or 25% of $300k.

So yes, plenty of people can afford it.

> assuming this guy paid cash

There's no reason to assume that, although there _are_ a surprising amount of cash buyers around here.

<comment><USER9> Where are you getting the $6k/mo on a $1M mortgage figure from?

<comment><USER8> If anything it is pessimistic. It amounts to 7.2% total annual costs, which would include a jumbo mortgage rate, real estate taxes, and condo fees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > "It's a 24-hour community within the confines of a building—you can choose > to stay in the entire weekend and be happy and engaged,"

Excuse my language, but who the fuck wants that?

<comment><USER10> Retirees, for one. Many retirement communities are structured in a way to allow that. It's appealing to that segment because walking (or using public transit) takes _forever_ as you age, but driving kind of loses its appeal as one gets older.

I'm not sure what the appeal is supposed to be for young people, but then, I know zero young people who could afford one of these units.

<comment><USER4> So on the one hand they talk about a growing, thriving, city, and on the other, they're talking about retirees shutting themselves up in their apartments? I would think a retiree would prefer the calm and silence of being nowhere near a city.

<comment><USER11> Depends. Some certainly prefer to retire far from the crowds if they can. Others prefer not to be dependent on cars and to be near good culture, hospitals, and doctors. I wouldn't read too much into that everything available without leaving the building quote in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Boston, I grew up here, went to school here, work here. The transformation taking place over the last 10 years has been incredible. Disregard people who want things to never change. At least Boston lets people build, unlike in SF. If you aren't a total pussy you can buy in JP or Roxbury and get an affordable place [0]. Everyone wants to live like their rich, and if they can't all they do is bitch. Yes, rich people have money and therefore buy nice things. There is still plenty to go around.

[0] [http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Roxbury-Boston- MA/54232...](http://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sale/Roxbury-Boston- MA/54232_rid/globalrelevanceex_sort/42.331757,-71.058261,42.310244,-71.103323_rect/14_zm/)

<comment><USER7> Not a total pussy because these areas are sketchy or because you'd be paying a high price?

<comment><USER13> "Not a total pussy" because you're willing to gentrify a formerly working- class, affordable area to get yourself on the property ladder.

I mean, I'm all in favor of new building. New building everywhere! For everyone! Yay! But calling someone a "pussy" because they'd rather not be taking formerly affordable rental housing off the market is pretty nasty.

<comment><USER12> pussy because people whine they can't live in the single most desirable part of the entire city, and are too afraid to live where they can afford</comment></comment></comment></comment>


George Orwell on writing: Those six little rules - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/07/george-orwell-writing?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/georgeorwellonwritingthosesixlittlerules <comment><USER2> While "The Economist" squabble over these pedantic style rules, a modest survey of various social media utterances proves a number of native English speakers can't figure out simple grammar: It's/its; there/they're/their; then/than; etc.

Those six—now seven updated—rules are on a higher intellectual plane than that of the average netizen.

I'd use a metaphor to summarize my observation, but I don't want to break the rules.

<comment><USER3> Some writers are more equal than others.</comment></comment>


How a Technical Co-Founder Spends His Time - <AUTHOR> http://jdlm.info/articles/2016/07/04/cto-time-minute-by-minute.html <comment><USER2> The biggest thing I learned when analyzing my time, which I wish I had recognized earlier, was that I can have two types of productive days:

I can have days where I do a million small things and hop quickly from task to task.

Or, I can have days where I work on big issues and should not be interrupted by small issues.

But, if I _think_ I'm going to have a day where I work on a big thing and it turns out I get interrupted by a million little things, I end up doing nothing well and end up very unproductive.

<comment><USER3> This is why I and most of my team work from home on Fridays (we never book meetings either). It's tempting to dismiss working from home as a way of skipping on work, but there's no other time I can get 4+ contiguous hours in front of my computer with no interruptions or meetings. It's probably my most productive dev time all week, largely because I can plan for it. I frequently and vocally encourage work from home on Fridays to become a standard (but optional) "perk" in tech.

<comment><USER4> I used to take the shuttle to Twitter for an hour each way. I think I wrote most of the code I wrote there on the bus because of the reliable time in front of the computer.

<comment><USER5> Yep. Mirrors my experience with shuttles. I, too, have banged out some real work on a shuttle with headphones on. I unexpectedly regretted moving closer to the office because I lost this time, despite that making not a lick of sense.

<comment><USER6> Offices are for managers to feel that people are productive, not for people to be productive. Look around most offices and there is absolutely no space laid out for concentration time, except social concentration time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The notion that a 130h work week is admirable, desirable, sustainable or useful is ridiculous and should be criticised every time it's raised.

Unless you're working for yourself or working in a job where your contract compensates you by the hour then investing such huge swathes of time I think is destructive.

There is a reason workers united, fought and were martyred for the 8 hour work week and the creeping clawback by industry is a problem.

That aside, very interesting to see such a consistent time keeping record.

<comment><USER8> While I agree with your statement for the most part, I also understand that there is some context to it. That specific context is Marissa Mayer and other early Google employees. I find it hard to convince myself that those people and especially Mayer, were not or are not compensated in some way that takes those huge swathes of time into consideration.

She was paid $36MM in 2015 and raised the market cap of Yahoo! by 151% in four years. Some of that compensation is based on success at Google, some of it may be based on her success at Yahoo!, but some of it is absolutely based on her brand. Her brand, in my own mind, is highly associated with her dedication to working long hours.

I work long hours but I'm conscious of a few things: I don't celebrate it. I don't plan to proselytize it like Mayer does. Part of those long hours are dedicated to operationalizing time-sinks so that I don't have to do it forever. I don't expect others around me, especially non-founders, to do the same and like you I believe that for them to do so would likely be a net- negative.

<comment><USER9> I was under the impression the majority of the change in stock price for Yahoo(if not all) was related to them owning a large share of Ali Baba stock which has skyrocketed in value. And this purchase was made before Marissa Mayer took over.

<comment><USER8> This could be the case. I wasn't able to quickly find market cap information for Ali Baba prior to it's US listing. Every since the Ali Baba IPO, Yahoo!'s stock has closely tracked BABA.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Thanks for sharing this. Is the metime code publicly available? I'm the CTO of another small tech company ([https://sourcegraph.com](https://sourcegraph.com)) and I'm also a bit obsessive about time tracking.

I wrote a small open-source CLI that gives you a CPU-profile-like view of time spent on your computer: [https://github.com/sourcegraph/thyme](https://github.com/sourcegraph/thyme). Thought I'd share since OP and others here might find it useful, and I'd love to hear any feedback.

<comment><USER11> Instead of using metime, I actually use rescuetime which is a fairly similar application if you also track your offline time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> (Author here.) It's great to see my write-up on HN, and I'm glad to see it generating good discussion here.

Since several people have asked, I have now made my 'metime' tracking app open source: [https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime](https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime)

Being in London, I have just woken up, so I will now be more able to answer any questions!

<comment><USER13> Hi author. Small nit: consider changing your title to "their" time rather than "he" since you talk about " _a_ technical co-founder". There's no need to use gendered language in the general case, and gendered language needlessly encourages gendered based identification. Imagine if you included your race and ethnicity and sexuality in the title - that'd feel silly, right? It would limit the audience who found the piece relevant, and it could be read as though those aspects were somehow relevant to being a technical co-founder. No doubt gender and race and ethnicity do effect one's experience and interactions, and that's a great piece to write, but that's not what you're trying to talk about in this piece so why put it in the title?

<comment><USER12> Thanks for the feedback on the title. I've changed it to "their", which still works fine for me.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do say in the article that:

> The CTO role is a very diverse one, and I don't expect that the results here > will be true in general. This is just my story. I hope it is an interesting > one, and it is uniquely backed by data!

So, the subject is me, and I am a male. I did not intend to exclude anyone by using "him".

(I can't change the title on HN myself, but if someone who can wants to do so, please feel free.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Off-topic: I really like Overleaf. It removes the barrier of installing all of the compiler, editor and dependencies and allows anyone to jump right in and and start typing manuscripts. That's why I always recommend Overleaf to anybody looking to learn Latex initially.

</comment><comment><USER15> It's interesting to note that the meetings time decreased as the management time increased, because often the two are strongly correlated.

In my experience meetings and management time grow proportionally, since meetings are a good way to talk with the team, set expectations and review the results. Or, in other words, some meetings == management.

<comment><USER16> "The meetings will continue until moral improves."

<comment><USER17> AKA the project productivity death spiral

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> In the 5 seconds of thinking what I'd wish I'd seen before I clicked the link:

Pre MVP: 80% dev, 20% biz dev

Pre Revenue: 20% dev, 80% biz dev

Pre Profit: 80% hiring, 20% dev

Profitable: 100% biz dev

<comment><USER19> Interesting. Would love to hear more about your thoughts around this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> > My app had some simple charting built in but no real analysis. It's only > now, six months later, that I've had a chance to really get into the dataset

I'm interested to find out if the data influenced the OP from week to week (month-to-month) during the collection phase? Did it influence his keeping up his development by shifting it to weekends? Or was there other catalysts to that? What were they? Were there planned development milestones? were they sized?

Fascinating article.

<comment><USER12> (Author here.) The shift to developing on the weekends wasn't really evident in the simple charts that I had --- I only found out about that after doing the detailed analysis, and it required doing some statistics to really pick out the trend from the noise.

I have now open sourced the app, if you'd like to dig deeper into what I was looking at during the (latter part of the) experiment: [https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime](https://github.com/jdleesmiller/metime)

We did have some large projects to complete on tight timescales that spilled into the weekend. We didn't really have a good system for sizing / pointing tasks (and we still don't) --- probably an area where we could improve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Awesome project! I'm a big fan of using econometric methods in Quantified Self -type analysis.

A couple of thoughts on your regressions:

Keeping holidays in the data seems counterintuitive. I'm fairly sure just from eyeing the graphs that the increase in your work week might reach statistical significance if you were to use a regression method more resistant to outliers, like Least Trimmed Squares.

Another idea - in microeconometrics it's standard to use some type of Poisson regression four count data, which this could potentially qualify as.

And furthermore, I would have loved to see some sort of distributed lag model of the timeseries (or at least a scatterplot of all activities against each other) to see which ones tend to co-occur.

<comment><USER12> (Author here.) I'm very pleased to finally receive some feedback on the technical side!

I will have to check out Least Trimmed Squares (and maybe other robust regression techniques). For this dataset, I did try to exclude holidays, but it was difficult to define this exactly, so a more robust technique might indeed work better.

And yes, it would be interesting to see what tags co-occur. Good ideas for a future post. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I work as a freelancer (Europe) and I think I work reasonably hard. But is really difficult for me to honestly log more than 10-15 dev-billable hours during the week. The rest of the time is spent in chat and learning / playing with a new things.

<comment><USER23> 10-15 hours per week is your max?

Do your clients understand that playing / trying out new things leads directly to you building the finished product? Or is your playing truly separate from any of your client work?

<comment><USER22> My max was 48 hours/week ( but this is an exception )

For living I build e-commerce solutions and backend stuff. And in free time I play more with a frontend. Recently with react/redux and in the long run with every possible new technology on the horizon. I guess I waste a lot of time doing this as most of these things isn't immediately related to client work. ( but over time It helps me to sell to them a few ideas for improvements )

Also, I track my time and habits in detail ( using rescuetime ). Probably without such careful loging I would overestimate how much time I am spending on actual coding.

<comment><USER24> But do you bill considerably more than the 10-15 hours you actually work? If so I would find that unethical

<comment><USER22> I don't need to.

I live in Warsaw and live here is a lot cheaper than in Western Part of Europe. My clients are Canada / UK based and I charge between $50-$70/h so even 10-15 hours a week is enough to make living over here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting article, pretty remarkable to be that committed to the time tracking -- I can barely stick with using the pomodoro technique for longer than a few days in a row...

I hope OP continues to grow the dataset. Will be interested in a follow up later on!

<comment><USER16> According to the HN front page, it takes 60 days for most people to form a habit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I recommend not only track your time, but also write down what you do, and have project-names. Using this I can give very accurate estimates by going back and see how long time things took. And it makes it easier to plan things. Also if you are in an early startup it's good to have this so your co-founders know how much you work and on what. And if you are employed you can use it to tell your boss exactly what you did (and why it took so long). There's a saying though, that you'll spend 50% of your time documenting what you do.

</comment><comment><USER27> *Or her time.

<comment><USER28> It's literally written by an individual that is male. Let's hope he knows what gender he is.

<comment><USER29> Then they should have used "How THIS technical co-founder spends HIS time" \-- by using "a" instead of "this" he implies a generality.

<comment><USER30> It doesn't imply anything, it's just an ambiguous construction.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Omega-3 pills and fish oil 'useless' for preventing disease - <AUTHOR> https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/omega-3-pills-and-fish-oil-useless-for-preventing-disease-vh6zjtwdf?CMP=Sprkr-_-Editorial-_-TheTimesandTheSundayTimes-_-Unspecified-_-FBPAGE <comment><USER2> I have found thousands of studies on nih.gov (pubmed) that suggest there are many benefits to omega-3. I have also found a few studies that suggest over- use can increase risk of a stroke.

Beyond that, I don't know why these terse articles with no scientific data keep getting submitted to HN recently.

<comment><USER3> Most of those studies you mention are not great quality. I've seen them, too.

This article is about an analysis of 79 gold-standard studies.

I have a close friend in public health who studies supplements and says the same thing: fish oil isn't likely to have much value to prevent or treat any illness.

<comment><USER2> What is a gold-standard study?

<comment><USER3> Generally, it just means "best available methodology". That obviously differs between disciplines. It's harder to study living brains or national economies, for example, than to study bacteria.

There's an entertaining, important book about this topic that is meant to help people understand what makes gold-standard science and how to recognize it.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_(book)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Science_\(book\))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> open-source-ux The linked article is behind a paywall, but you can read an excellent account of this research on the NHS website:

 _Minimal evidence to show omega-3 prevents heart disease:_

[https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/minimal-evidence- sho...](https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/minimal-evidence-show- omega-3-prevents-heart-disease/)</comment>


Penguin's Putting Books on Twitter and Google Maps - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/penguins_books_on_google_maps_twitter.php <comment><USER2> I am very interested in the maps-based story, because I have a similar pet project on my TODO list: the idea is to put Darwin's "Voyage of the Beagle" on Google maps or Google Earth, to get a better feel of the voyage. A friend of mine used to read "The Lord Of The Rings" with the "Middle Earth Atlas" on hand, in the right chronological order (read only the parts of the story that happen on a particular way). (Edit, just found this site with at least some map annotations to voyage of the beagle: <http://www.aboutdarwin.com/voyage/voyage01.html>)

Sidenote: Recently somebody posted a comment on news.YC about starting a blog with 4 authors, one of them gets exchanged every week by public vote. Can't find it anymore - does anybody know the URL?</comment>


Skype under investigation in Luxembourg over link to NSA - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/11/skype-ten-microsoft-nsa

<comment><USER2> _Luxembourg 's data protection commissioner Gérard Lommel on Friday afternoon confirmed an investigation into the activities of Skype in the Grand Duchy, following concerns over data protection._ _..Lommel said: "I confirm that we are conducting an investigation into the activities of Skype. I also confirm that the investigation into Skype 's activities concerns the supply of data of Skype users to secret services."_

 _he did reveal, however, that the probe was launched after the data protection commission had received a complaint._

 _"We received a complaint and are obliged by law to look into such complaints," he said. "Our mission is to ensure that Luxembourg law is followed."_

[http://www.wort.lu/en/view/luxembourg-data-protection- commis...](http://www.wort.lu/en/view/luxembourg-data-protection-commissioner- confirms-skype-probe-52582881e4b0127de7dda1b3)</comment>