Lab Notebook: Single Pixel Camera - <AUTHOR> http://www.gperco.com/2014/10/single-pixel-camera.html <comment><USER2> This vividly illustrates the evolutionary argument about how even a very primitive eye is a huge survival advantage.

<comment><USER3> Yes. Pretty much any kind of sensor, your brain can figure out how to make use of it. One big example I can think of is humans learning to use echolocation, similar to what bats do: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation)

Another interesting one is this bracelet which vibrates depending on which direction the wearer is facing. [http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/](http://sensebridge.net/projects/northpaw/) Research showed that people developed a natural feel for the sense over time.

I bet there are other examples, and this may become an important area of human-technology evolution in the future!

<comment><USER4> Check out BrainPort and Orpyx

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The digital camera on the Viking Mars lander didn't use a 2d sensor either... it's amazing what some people can do with engineering constraints! [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Camera.2FImaging...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viking_program#Camera.2FImaging_System)

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting introduction to the Radon transform. Before it went that direction, I was feeling certain it would involve a long tube with the sensor at the end of and an accelerometer to kind of "paint" the scene by hand or possibly use servos to scan it. That is a fairly stereotypical old deep space probe way of doing things.

<comment><USER7> (I'm the author) That's actually how this project started, it was basically a pinhole camera mounted on a pan/tilt mount.

<comment><USER8> I've never used this in any practical way, but would any of the techniques from Compressed Sensing help at all? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing)

<comment><USER9> I'm not the author, but it seems like you're certainly right. Here's an example from the wiki page about how a single-pixel camera utilized notions of compressed sensing: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing#Photography](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compressed_sensing#Photography)

I guess applying compressed sensing techniques would mean making assumptions about your image which allow you to fill in some of the blanks created by the incomplete angle and position coverage (i.e. the fact that the system is underdetermined). If you could somehow assume a certain redundancy, you could probably make guesses about what goes in the spots that didn't get well- covered.

<comment><USER10> I doubt that compressed sensing will be very effective for this problem. Many of the guarantees for compressive signal recovery require incoherence between measurements- meaning each measurement is sufficiently different from the others. In this case, each measurement is highly correlated with the others.

The Rice single pixel camera (discussed on the wiki page) effectively multiplies the image by a random mask before it is sensed by the photodiode. This is how they control the incoherence property.

<comment><USER11> You might technically correct in the limited sense that this isn't a 'compressive' sensing - but it's an absolutely classical example of sparse reconstruction. You can resample that radon transformed image randomly and reconstruct it as a sparse fourier image. There is matlab code out there if you google around a bit.

<comment><USER12> Compressive Sensing using the Radon transform associated with radar has extensive literature. Not sure about the OPs imager. The optimization techniques are applicable to most sparse signal reconstruction transforms. Formally you would look to show the Restricted Isometery Property. [http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~justin/ECE-8823a-Spring-2011/Re...](http://users.ece.gatech.edu/~justin/ECE-8823a-Spring-2011/Resources_files/RandomConvolution- final-Aug09.pdf)

<comment><USER11> It's a dense sensing of the radon transform - hence its not compressive. But you can resample that lots of ways and satisfy the RIP. Reconstruction of images from sparse radon transforms is one of the early examples that helped shape the field.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Having 50 GHz Wi-Fi arriving, the same technique could be applied to visualize the WiFi router signals: an antenna is the sensor, and a metal plate will serve as an arm.

</comment><comment><USER14> Incredibly inventive and well executed. Seeing your writeup go from this wacky hand-waving theory to a built camera to actual results is awfully rewarding.

<comment><USER15> A good first step to any potentially crazy idea is to simulate it on a computer. If it doesn't work there, either your simulation is crap or the idea is bad. If it does work, either your simulation is crap or the idea might work in the real world.

Cool writing style, too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I thought it was going to talk about implementing Compressed Sensing (Compressed Imaging). If you haven't heard about it, you should look it up. It's pretty neat.

<comment><USER17> I have spent the last year making a camera that implements exactly a single pixel camera that relies on compressed sensing.

The motivation behind this project is that a professor I am working with had snow melting on his roof. He looked into thermal cameras but found them prohibitively expensive at $4k-$40k. So, we decided to build a cheap camera that only used a single thermal sensor and take the picture as fast as possible.

This camera relies on the fact that many real world images are of the same color (e.g., the sky is mostly blue). It looks for the areas that contain the most detail, the edges, through something called the wavelet transform.

<comment><USER18> Trouble with single pixel thermal imaging is inertia - thermopiles have thermal mass, you cant take 1000 readings per second, you cant even take 100 readings per second. So while 1 pixel camera in visible light spectrum can work thanks to hi speed acquisition, thermal one will be beyond useless.

not to mention the wave of extremely cheap thermal imagers we got this year -Flir one, seek thermal, all in ~$200 price range.

<comment><USER17> I'm inclined to believe the FLIR One does not use "true" infrared. There's a portion of the visible spectrum that is nearly IR and it's possible to rely on some IR reflectivity phenomena. I looked at some other FLIR thermal cameras and found them to be much more expensive; thousands of dollars.

However, there's no doubt a small mobile platform is very usable. The primary goal behind this work was not to make a product: it was to provide a proof of concept. We were interested in the image processing and showing that some heavy lifting could be done on a small mobile platform (the Raspberry Pi).

You are correct about the acquisition rate. However, the acquisition rate was more limited by the motors to move the sensor into place.

<comment><USER18> Flir one is a proper uncooled microbolometer, Flir finally decided to innovate, use modern manufacturing processes/methods and build something cheap to make.

Btw their $4000 E8 thermal camera has VERY SAME components inside (from 320x240 bolometer down to firmware) as $950 E4, only difference is digitally signed config file (that used to be hackable)

Your platform might of been limited by motor speed, but once you reach 10-20 reads per second you will hit a brick wall of thermopile inertia and that will be the end.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Somewhat similar to the early work on televisions:

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

One of our undergrad elec courses had a lab where you built one of these. It's kind of a trip.

</comment><comment><USER20> From the images of the kit, it doesn't look like there's a lens hood or anything preventing stray light in at odd angles from hitting the sensor and washing out the image with the brightest object in the scene.

I wonder if adding a small black tube or similar optics to the sensor would reduce light bleed dramatically.

<comment><USER7> The sensitivity of the sensor vs angle was pretty close to cos(angle), so it was not very sensitive to light coming in from extreme angles. But the whole process relies on light from everywhere in the scene hitting the sensor all at once, except for the light being blocked by the arm.

<comment><USER21> Recognized the results of FBP from working on PET scanners and got far too excited. Very cool stuff!

I saw in the article that you used the mean to correct for brightness and clouds. Was scaling to correct for overlap not needed because you used the full sweep across the frame?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That looks like a lot of fun, I'm going to have to try it. I was thinking he would do it the other way (move a hole around) but I can see this has its benefits as well.

</comment><comment><USER23> This reminds me of a type of eye that occurs in plankton; it consists of a row of photosensitive cells that moves left and right rapidly.

</comment><comment><USER24> Here's an entirely different approach:

Take an old LCD screen (small). Take the back out of it. Put a (grayscale) single-pixel sensor in behind it.

Then repeatedly display random hash on the screen and take a measurement of the light intensity. My intuitive guess would be that you'd get the most info with half the pixels on fully and half of them off fully, randomly chosen, but I can't say why.

You should be able to get much the same result as this, without any moving parts. Although you'd have to use an entirely different transformation to get there - it'd reduce to a (massively) underspecified system of linear equations to solve, with noise added in to boot. Have fun with that.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious about a couple details of the delivered picture versus the reference: how long did the single picture camera take to expose and how much vibration was introduced by its arm's motion?

I suspect some of the sharpness of the one versus the other is related to different exposure times and vibration while imaging, so it's probably doing even better at its job than it seems.

</comment><comment><USER26> It'd be interesting to see what 12 or 24 frames of an animation look like, something like this: [http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Muybridge...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Muybridge_race_horse_gallop.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER27> [http://dsp.rice.edu/research/compressive-sensing/single- pixe...](http://dsp.rice.edu/research/compressive-sensing/single-pixel-camera) From 2007. Details on a different and more refined approach that I thought might be worth comparing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Excellent job, I like the thought process and the outcome. I think it's worth noting, that the results you're getting are great on their own merits. Like a hand-made pinhole or slit camera, the break from "reality" could be seen as the artifacts of the method.

</comment><comment><USER29> Very nice!

Cameras based on a single pixel, or a single-row array of pixels, have uses at wavelengths where two-dimensional pixel arrays are impractical.

<comment><USER30> Have any specific applications off the top of your head? Sounds interesting!

<comment><USER17> Take snow melting on your roof, meaning a heat leak and wasted cash. You want to buy a thermal camera, but they're expensive at $4k to $40k. A single pixel camera would be fine for you -- you wouldn't mind waiting a couple minutes for it to move the sensor around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very cool.</comment>


'W' Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> http://runningwithdata.com/post/3576752158/w <comment><USER2> Let's make a movement to call W "wub". It uses its own sound, it is one syllable, and it sounds like "dub" (as in "double U"). As a bonus side effect, "www" will sound like dubstep.

<comment><USER3> i love it. very easy transition from dub dub dub

<comment><USER4> Can this be like Soda vs Pop?

We can get the dubs and wubs together and have a rave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wait a minute, there are significant backward-compatibility concerns to be addressed before we shorten the pronunciation of "W". How will we fill the extra two syllables in the ABC song?

<comment><USER6> Maybe we can enunciate L-M-N-O-P instead of running them all together?

<comment><USER7> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0r8egBvWRM&feature=youtube_...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0r8egBvWRM&feature=youtube_gdata_player)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _the only letter whose name doesn't include the sound it makes_

I'm trying to figure out if the author pronounces H with a Tom Brokaw "haitch" or an Elvis Presley "aitchuhh".

<comment><USER9> And, of course, w's name _does_ contain one of the vowel sounds that w forms (the long u), just like y's does (the long i). Neither of those letters name contains their own consonant sound.

<comment><USER10> Wait, when does 'w' make the sound [u] (as opposed to [w] or [ʊ])?

<comment><USER11> If you allow it to be assisted by another letter (as we must in the case of Q), "few" rhymes with "you".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> _…the abbreviation_ www _requires_ nine _syllables to say…_

Not if you regroup the _u_ s to 'sextuple-u'.

<comment><USER13> 3 yew squared

<comment><USER14> That would be nine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It has always annoyed me that "world wide web" is significantly faster to say than "www".

<comment><USER16> Yes but is great fun seeing people say out web address's. Ah the early days when they spelt out the [http://](http://) part as well.

If it was realy a bother though somebody would of pulled a Prince and called it squiggle.

ALl this though is based upon English use of the letter W, sure other languages have there own quirks and idiosims.

<comment><USER17> * Would have pulled a Prince

<comment><USER14> Completely off topic here, but why is it that people some times write "would of" instead of "would have"? Is it something you would use in spoken language? And where?

<comment><USER18> Would have is abbreviated "would've", which is pronounced similarly. I expect people get it from hearing that before seeing it written.

<comment><USER16> You may very well be right. I use it without thinking and with that I suppose it is a form of slang variation in usage. Though my grammer and spelling are below par and I do find my native English language a fun feild of rules with so many exceptions that if it was code it would be the worst code ever. That and even today we still do not have a definitive grammer/spell checker that can understand all context and usage. Yet we can put a man on the moon and develop advanced AI that gets better every day.

Though I'm starting too feel that you may be right in how this permutation of words originated, given language accents and localisations pre internet days.

<comment><USER14> Thanks. If you also use it in speech, then it strongly suggests that it's simply because would've sounds similar to would of. To humour me, would you mind saying where you're from?

<comment><USER16> England, East Anglia

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The National Association Of W Lovers is not going to be happy about this.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkiCTDcV51k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkiCTDcV51k)

<comment><USER20> Well, aren't they always unhappy about _something_ , anyways?

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> thats why i just say dub dub dub for www. There couldnt be a worse standard subdomain. Also great article.. if you are interested in measuring words and speech, we should talk ;)

<comment><USER6> Save a syllable: trip-dub.

<comment><USER21> Which sounds like it could be a rather appealing genre of music.

Wub-wub-Wub-wub in the sky with diamonds.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This makes me wonder how confusing it must be for Bassant's Removals & Storage to explain their website URL over the phone...[1]

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

<comment><USER23> Or slashdot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Just give it a more efficient name. In German it's referred to as [veː].

<comment><USER25> We do this in Sweden too. WWW is pronounced VVV and the car manufacturer is pronounced BMV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "wubba wubba wubba dot google dot com"

Also, the Latin alphabet is used by many languages, in which other letters have more than one syllable: off the top of my head, Spanish has many (not to mention things they count as letters that we don't), and French has _i grec_ for _y_.

<comment><USER27> F, H, J, L, M, N, Ñ, R, S, V, W, X, Y, Z (and Y is also _i griega_ here). Those are the letters whose name has more than one syllable: more than half of them. In particular, W has _four_ syllables (U-ve do-ble). So please stop whining, English speakers all over the world :).

On a side note, the article's comments mention something very important: the "www" didn't originate in an English-speaking country, so it's not that is "harmful" because someone didn't think it properly; instead, it's "harmful" in English because it just wasn't thought with that language in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Who would worry with 'W'?

</comment><comment><USER29> What's more is that 'W' (and 'M') mess up every compact monospaced font.</comment>


Communication blackout is forcing young entrepreneurs out of Kashmir - <AUTHOR> https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/in-a-land-without-internet-how-the-communication-blackout-is-forcing-young-entrepreneurs-out-of-kashmir-valley/article30219792.ece <comment><AUTHOR> For some context on Internet Shutdown: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20701204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20701204)</comment>


Show HN: Multi-user Gist Powered Blog for AppEngine - <AUTHOR> http://www.stackgeek.com/blog/kordless/post/website-source-on-github

<comment><AUTHOR> The code is on Github (<https://github.com/stackgeek/stackgeek-gaeb>) and GAE- Boilerplate (<http://github.com/coto/gae-boilerplate>). I should mention we haven't gotten the blog code integrated into the parent project yet, but are working on it.</comment>


Donating 8 hours design time to any project  - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasonstrachan.com/

<comment><USER2> I'm pretty satisfied with my Hacker Newsletter page (<http://www.hackernewsletter.com>) and run A/B tests on it all the time, but would love to get some help & feedback on the actual email itself (last issue here - <http://bit.ly/mKaMq2>). It needs updating, but haven't figured out where to start yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone thats interested, I decided to donate time to Open Home Pro. Here's a quick outline of what I looked at:

\- Quick logo design and colour palette to establish a more credible brand \- Added related illustration to help sell the idea \- Moved the call to action up and made it more visible (download button) \- Restructured the content so the user understands why the app could be use before diving into more detail with the video

You can find the mockup here: <http://www.jasonstrachan.com/clients/openhomepro/>

Thanks, Jason

</comment><comment><USER3> Jason, If you could help, I definitely need design help on my completely bootstrapped project on a socializing site for Indians.

The application is at <http://www.koffeekya.com>

The magazine is at <http://www.koffeekya.com/pandora>

Our business plan is being put together in bits and pieces at: <http://www.koffeekya.com/pandora/category/business-plan>

</comment><comment><USER4> I could use some help <http://gamma.getvouched.com>

It is not intuitive, and I need to lead the users into doing what I want them to do (vouch for themselves, import contacts, vouch for others).

<comment><USER5> Some quick feedback:

Is this a job-listing site, or a resume/reputation site? Choose one and stick with it. Give me actual social proof (FB's Facepile or just generic testimonials by industry) on the front page. Don't use the words "get social proof" on the front page: nobody knows what that means. Move the Register button to the right. Give me a time estimate on how long the process takes. Reassure me there isn't any writing involved. Reel me in with promises of what your app does for me (show the process!), not descriptions of how it does them. Give me a reason to expect positive ROI. The animated screencaps are too small to read or make sense of - fix them or annotate them. Give users a portable widget or badge (digg button, like button) to embed elsewhere and lead people to your site. Visit howaboutwe.com, steal liberally.

The clip art isn't helping.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks everyone for the interest, I have narrowed it down to two and emailed you both.

Chances are I'll be doing this again in a month or two so lookout for that if you still need a hand.

Cheers, Jason

</comment><comment><USER6> You have a really impressive portfolio!

I would really appreciate some design time on skinnyo.com, the look I would like to go for would be a warm and friendly web app - not a feeling you currently get...

</comment><comment><USER7> I would love some help designing the site and UI for my startup autotax.me

Its a tax platform that will help automate taxes for small businesses. If your're interested my email is email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice work, I'm in the middle of redesigning my web app and I could use some input and an extra hand. <http://www.foodtrucksmap.com/la/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Why are you donating your time? By the looks of things, you're quite talented and can charge quite a bit. Unless money isn't your motivation, which is entirely plausible.

<comment><AUTHOR> The freelance design business is great right now, sometimes I get work on interesting projects, but rarely in the startup world. Thats probably the most interesting space to be doing UX right now hence the post.

I have also done this before for Simple Invoices: <http://www.jasonstrachan.com/?p=290>

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you're up for taking a look at my Android project's UI, please shoot me a message: matt_p_green (at) Microsoft's now-lukewarm-mail-service .com

Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER11> Wow Jason that's amazing :-)

I sure would need some help with my post reg screen at HTTP://kidous.com, if you need to get a brief I can write one too.

</comment><comment><USER12> You have a lot of options, but we would love some feedback on <http://grouptalent.com>

</comment><comment><USER13> Beautiful work. Any chance you'd help me out? <http://testplanmanagement.com>

</comment><comment><USER14> Would love some help redesigning CloudFab's site (www.cloudfab.com) - we know it certainly needs it. Email me, email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER15> hey guys

good luck to all those who enter, Jason made the same offer last year - and my project SimpleInvoices.org was choses

jason produced a great design

refer: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2659888>

thanks again jason!!

cheers

justin

</comment><comment><USER16> Would love it for help with openhomepro.com if you are interested? email me firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER17> This will get me downvoted, but I cannot resist: How about donating it to Google Wave?</comment>


Open letter to Mark Shuttleworth - <AUTHOR>

Dear Mark,
First, I want to thank you for all what you offered to the opensource community. Ubuntu is a huge success and millions of people are using it worldwide. You could, in few years, create a distribution that became the most popular linux operating system in the world. And I'm sure that hundreds or may be thousands of people do respect you as much as I do.
Second, I can't stop myself thinking of the latest release of Ubuntu and I want to share with you my thoughts.
I'm really disappointed that Canonical decided what the Ubuntu community should and should not use. I mean, despite the fact that Unity is a disaster (my own point of view), I don't think that obliging Ubuntu users to use it is a good idea. We're in Linux and it sticks in one world, Freedom. It's not right to think that you are right and the rest of people are wrong. Many users expressed their anger against Unity since it's first release, and Canonical still think that Unity should be the future of Ubuntu.
It's the Ubuntu community who decides what Ubuntu should have, not Canonical.
My father loves Ubuntu. He was a Windows user. Last summer I installed Ubuntu 10.04 in his computer and he liked it so much. He could do the upgrade to 10.10 by himself and could even install many softwares from the Ubuntu Software Center since Ubuntu was easy to use and almost perfect. Yesterday, he called me and told me this : "I think there is a virus in my computer, I don't know what to do". He upgraded to 11.04 and he got completely lost.
Dear Mark,
Ubuntu doesn't belong to Canonical. It belongs to you, to me, and all users who love open source. Canonical should not decide alone what's good and what's bad. (Python 3 vs Python 2)
Linux should be an example of democracy and freedom. Not a joke that mac/windows users tell each other.
How can I, as a Ubuntu user, change all my habits to understand/use 11.04? How will you explain to thousands of Ubuntu users in governments and schools all over the world, that the Linux that they spent hours trying to understand and use is now gone, and that they have to learn again from level 0. Do you think that governments will trust Canonical after this disaster (my own point of view)? It's a betrayal of trust of many Ubuntu users.
Why didn't you just hire the Docky/AWN developers to create an awesome dock ? Why didn't you hire the Gnome Do developers and use it natively in 11.04 instead of the search bar menu ? I'm not the only one who asks these questions.
I simply hope that Canonical knows what it's doing.
With all my sincere respects,
Nathaly. <comment><USER2> This open letter strike me as a bit naive. Communities, while important, do not decide what gets into or worked on in open source projects; in the end, it's the developers who do.

If you don't like where Ubuntu is headed, and it seems you don't, then it would seem that you have two options: move on or fork it.

</comment><comment><USER3> > It's the Ubuntu community who decides what Ubuntu should have, not > Canonical.

I think it's Canonical that decides. Ubuntu definitely belongs to Canonical. If you don't like it, don't use it.

Opinionated decision making is a great tool: mob rule can't achieve the same coherence a single decision making body can.

This "GNU/Linux = democracy" meme seems to be missing the point: the "democracy" lies in the various choices of distro. You don't necessarily need "democracy" at the distro level: if you don't like what a distro is doing, you're free to cast your "vote" by using another.</comment>


America is no less socially mobile than it was a generation ago - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21595437-america-no-less-socially-mobile-it-was-generation-ago-mobility-measured

<comment><USER2> One thing to be aware of is that the range of incomes in many countries is _much_ more compact than the US. If you define social mobility by the ability to move from the bottom segment to the top, it requires a much smaller change in income in most industrialized countries than in the US.

For example, for the average person in Denmark to go from the bottom 10% to the top 10% of income requires earning a mere $40k more income. In the US, you would have to earn $90k more income. Consequently, it takes considerably more effort in the US to increase one's income in the US to the point where it would count as "social mobility" than in many countries even though you would be much better off in the lesser quintiles in absolute terms.

In short, there are many countries where moving from $20k to $40k is considered "socially mobile" but also others where moving from $20k to $60k income is not because the top bracket is $80k. Most people would probably prefer to live in the latter country. It may be a little harder to reach the $80k than $40k to meet the definition of "socially mobile", but in absolute terms they are far better off with $60k of income regardless of the definition of social mobility.

<comment><USER3> > In short, there are many countries where moving from $20k to $40k is > considered "socially mobile" but also others where moving from $20k to $60k > income is not because the top bracket is $80k. Most people would probably > prefer to live in the latter country.

I don't think that's actually true. Having the rich be a lot richer has a lot of sociological impacts, particularly within a democracy.

<comment><USER4> Empirical evidence is not on your side here considering net immigration from Mexico to the US (or many other poor country / rich country pairs).

<comment><USER3> There is a big difference between the medians in those two places. I'm thinking more like the U.S. versus European countries.

<comment><USER4> Is there data on this? I'm having trouble finding it. Do we think that, say, more people move from US -> France than the opposite every year? I'd bet money on the reverse.

<comment><USER5> It sounds like you're looking to feed confirmation bias. Picking a country that most Americans love to hate isn't really going to give you accurate results. Try comparing the U.S. to Germany and Switzerland, or the U.S. to the Scandinavian countries.

Also, keep in mind that statistics on emigration only show you how many people moved between the countries. It doesn't show you whether people in Germany are more likely to be curious about the U.S. than vice versa, or whether the people are happier and have more freedom.

I am a European living in the U.S., and I agree the U.S. is a terrific country to be in _if_ you are making a lot of money. But most people don't. The poor here are far worse off (and the rich are far better off--indeed, that is the definition of inequality.)

<comment><USER4> I picked France at random from the set of rich Western European countries. It was just the first one that popped into my head. /shrug/

I would predict the same outcome for England, Germany, Switzerland or Sweden.

Too your second point we were talking about where people would prefer to live not how happy they were or how free they were. Perhaps people would prefer to live someplace where they are less happy or free if it came with other benefits. Who knows.

Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine where people prefer to live.

<comment><USER5> > Looking at net immigration rates is, I think, the best way to determine > where people prefer to live.

I don't think it is. I would prefer to live in the U.S. because my family lives here, but it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here, and has taken many years. Similarly, it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries.

<comment><USER4> Considering that it's generally harder (legally speaking) to migrate to a rich country than to a poor country only strengthens my point.

<comment><USER5> No it doesn't. And it's quite laughable that you seem to be calling Germany and Sweden poor countries.

<comment><USER4> I wasn't calling Sweden or Germany poor. That would quite obviously be a silly thing to say.

The US, Sweden & Germany are all pretty rich and they all fairly restrictive in terms of how difficult it is to legally migrate to them. I thought that was what you means when you said "it has been tremendously difficult for me to get here" and "it's quite hard to just move to Germany or Sweden if you have no connection to those countries."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big takeaway: the USA is about as socially mobile as it was a generation ago. But that's only because the USA has never been as socially mobile as it imagines itself: some or most European countries have exceeded it in mobility for a long period of time.

</comment><comment><USER7> "Most likely...The correlation between vast wealth accruing to a tiny elite and the ability of people to move between the rest of the rungs of the income ladder may be small—at least for now."

And there's the crux of the matter. Even if that correlation remains small, the top rung of that ladder is so far out of reach of everyone else, -and- incorporates an insanely disproportionate amount of money, power, and influence, that it will likely remain forever out of reach, while allowing for policies that markedly worsen the lives of those on lower rungs.

<comment><USER8> What proportion of the richest 1% (or 0.1%, or the top 1000 richest people) do you think came from families that were already in the top 1%?

How do you define "out of reach"?

<comment><USER8> Well, I got curious and found an answer:

"In 1982, 60 percent of the people on the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans came from wealthy families, compared with 32 percent in 2011."

[http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/joshua-rauh- what-f...](http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/news/research/joshua-rauh-what- forbes-400-list-says-about-american-wealth)

<comment><USER7> Which speaks nothing of policy changes today, and what effect it will have on the future. Nor what disruption will come about to ensure that that trend continues (we are given no data points in that post other than those two, and we had both the PC revolution and the internet in between 1982 and 2011 to massively shake up entire industries).

More to the point, it speaks nothing on how conditions for those not among the elite have changed in that time, and how they will change over time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "A generation ago" was gen x, which isn't the group that anyone thought was economically mobile.

If they're not going to include the boomers this is sort of a stupid waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Paper this article is based on:

[http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_trends.pdf](http://obs.rc.fas.harvard.edu/chetty/mobility_trends.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER11> From the paper: For example, if one defines mobility based on relative positions in the income distribution – e.g., a child's prospects of rising from the bottom to the top quintile – then intergenerational mobility has remained unchanged in recent decades. If instead one defines mobility based on the probability that a child from a low-income family (e.g., the bottom 20%) reaches a fixed upper income threshold (e.g., $100,000), then mobility has increased because of the increase in inequality. However, the increase in inequality has also magnified the difference in expected incomes between children born to low (e.g., bottom-quintile) vs. high (top-quintile) income families. In this sense, mobility has fallen because a child's income depends more heavily on her parents' position in the income distribution today than in the past.

</comment><comment> daniel-cussen If you've read past your limit and want to read this article anyway, delete your cookies.

<comment><USER12> Or open it in porn mode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle)</comment>


Amazon Go grocery store opened and we accidentally stole a yogurt - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/amazon-go-grocery-store-opened-and-we-accidentally-stole-a-yogurt.html <comment><USER2> I guess the risk of missing an item is about the same as the risk of theft in regular stores, if not lower. So they just calculate it in. At least one can now only steal everything (as in not being registered) or nothing; deliberately stealing one or two things seems to be a thing of the past with their concept.

</comment><comment><USER3> I suspect it's only a matter of time before there is a bunch of people that go in and empty the place out. Unfortunately, you can get rid of cashiers but you can never get rid of security.

BTW, if you ever wonder what jobs will survive the coming automation era then look into security. Jobs in security will never go away. They will change but they will never go away.

<comment><USER4> I think "emptying the place out" is probably unlikely. They still have people that work there. But I think it's probable that there will be times when someone finds a clever new way to lift items without paying. I can't imagine things like that will be difficult to quickly stop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It seems yogurt is a problem for Amazon. They also "sort of" stole a yogurt in the ArsTechnica article. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems like a planted story to me, something they planned for publicity. Or maybe I'm just too critical.</comment>


Tesla engineer lived in a van for 5 months and paid off his $14k student loans - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-lived-out-of-van-2015-11 <comment><USER2> _" At the same time as I was developing those thoughts, I met a guy who works at Tesla, who at the time was living in his Subaru Forester," he says. "He'd been doing it for a year."_

Not great job recruitment material for Tesla.

<comment><USER3> I think it says more about the employees of Tesla then Tesla itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Suppose you have a job like this and you are looking at saving $15k/yr plus 8% student loan interest by being intentionally homeless.

Looking at your 5yr career trajectory, is it worth it, financially? (besides the character builder aspect, which is cool)

I did a lot of stuff to save money when I was younger , and now I have enough assets that I wouldn't mind paying my past self rent to avoid some hellholes.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bay area home prices being what they are, I would do this in a heartbeat if I wasn't worried about safety.</comment>


TensorFlow 1.0 Released - <AUTHOR> https://developers.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing-tensorflow-10.html <comment><USER2> Been using Tensorflow embedded in a mobile app for a few months and honestly, I'm constantly surprised at how well thought-out the tooling is, and how quickly you can get results. Conversely, I think a few things are still unnecessarily dense (installing dependencies, optimizing hyper-parameters, and some of the embedded/XLA stuff is very raw). Kudos to the team though. It sounds like they're on the right track with TF overall, and focusing on performance (including the XLA stuff) + ease of use (high-level, Keras API) is absolutely what I want as a user right now. Keep up the great work, y'all.

<comment><USER3> Would you happen to know if it requires additional code to support the Hexagon digital signal processor (DS)from Qualcomm Or is it automatic (kinda like switching between Tensorflow-CPU and Tensorflow-GPU)? I mainly work with Tensorflow on a PC so I'm not too familiar with the embedded variants of Tensorflow. Thanks!

<comment><USER2> I don't have any experience with that unfortunately. I've seen a couple of talks/demos/announcements about it and it sounds like it's automatic, but I haven't been able to find the SDK or any tutorial for it, so I'm not 100% sure. The Qualcomm speaker this morning said there would be more details about it later today but I don't see anything on the Agenda [0]. Maybe Pete's session at 12:40 will cover it?

[0]: [https://events.withgoogle.com/tensorflow-dev- summit/agenda/#...](https://events.withgoogle.com/tensorflow-dev- summit/agenda/#content)

<comment><USER4> I'm not going to cover it in detail in my talk, but the code with some barebones documentation is available at [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorf...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/master/tensorflow/contrib/hvx)

One thing to note is that this isn't available on production phones yet, because we need a signed driver to run within Android. You should be able to run this on a Dragonboard 820 development board though, using the instructions in the README.

This is all very new though, so apologies in advance for any hiccups getting up and running. My email's petewarden at google.com if you are trying this and hit problems.

<comment><USER3> Thanks Tim and Pete!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amazing work; it makes using AI and Deep Learning accessible for everyone here really. If you haven't seen it check this out for an intro:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq2nnJ4g6N0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq2nnJ4g6N0)

I wish AMD graphics cards were supported fully. I really think AMD should find a way to work with the Tensor Flow team on this...

<comment><USER6> It's worth pointing out Tensorflow is basically Google's clone of Theano, including a lot of the same design decisions. They've improved some things but it's not like Google handed us the secret to fire here. It's just a good implementation of the same things a lot of people have been working on for years.

<comment><USER7> TensorFlow is not a clone of Theano. It's based on the earlier Google's platform DistBelief, mostly known outside of Google as the engine behind 2012 Youtube cat videos paper. Like DistBelief, TensorFlow was designed from the ground up to be scalable across multiple nodes.

Theano, on the other hand, seems to be focused on the optimizations for the single machine, single GPU code. It only recently got the ability to run each function on a different GPU.

<comment><USER5> To be truthfully honest it doesn't matter either way or even if there is something "better" out there (if Theranos was...).

TensorFlow has already become the winner from my reading around it so I'm going to continue learning it rather than another framework until I've become fairly proficient. By which time why change?

<comment><USER7> TensorFlow does not make AI or DL "more accessible". It's not easier to use than Theano. Both have good documentation, and both have lots of code examples/model implementations.

If you're looking for something that would make it easier for you to learn DL, you should try Keras - it's a higher level library, which can use both Theano and TF as a backend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For anyone updating to 1.0--

There are quite a few breaking changes but there is a very helpful conversion script here: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/r1.0/tensorflo...](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/tree/r1.0/tensorflow/tools/compatibility).

You can find the breaking changes in the 1.0 release here: [https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

<comment><USER6> This is good, the argument order and axis handling was inconsistent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Plus, soon Google will open-source code that will multiply the speed of > TensorFlow — specifically version three of Google's Inception neural network > model — by 58.

Uh, nope, that was speedup on 64 GPUs (or CPU cores, can't remember). i.e. it scales linearly, something that TF hasn't always been good at v other frameworks. I'm amazed a journalist with (I assume) basic technical competence could make this mistake.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TensorFlow 1.0 was just announced during the TensorFlow Dev Summit keynote.

[https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.0.0](https://github.com/tensorflow/tensorflow/releases/tag/v1.0.0)

You can follow the Summit live here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLyrl- agOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLyrl-agOw)

</comment><comment><USER9> How do I get started with machine learning?

I have a couple of applications in mind, mostly time series predictions. But the machine learning field seems to be vast and I don't know where to start.

<comment><USER3> [http://cs231n.github.io/](http://cs231n.github.io/) is a great site for beginners. I've been following the site along the Udacity Self Driving Car nanodegree. The CS231 material has helped me understand the concepts significantly.

Edit: I should mention that the class mainly focuses on neural networks and image recognition. However, once you have the foundation, you can apply your skillset to a vast range of applications.

<comment><USER10> The Udacity ML course is gradual enough to avoid overwhelming you, but really in-depth: [https://www.udacity.com/course/machine-learning-- ud262](https://www.udacity.com/course/machine-learning--ud262)

Definitely recommend that as a good starting point. Isbell and Littman can be a bit cheesy at points, but they're very clear and thorough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I am looking at the Martin Wicke talk. The Estimator API is very reminiscent of SparkML. Nice to see that the tensorflow crew are flexible enough to take good ideas from projects such as SparkML and Keras (now included natively in the TF stack). Other highlights include the hotspot compiler (I was not that impressed so far, but it's early days for them), and embedded visualizations (looked quite cool) for visually inspecting learnt manifolds.

</comment><comment><USER12> I stumbled across a three-chapter preview of the upcoming book Learning TensorFlow on Safari Books Online and went through them in a sitting. It was so accessible - both the book and TensorFlow itself - and inspired me to start learning math so that when the rest of the book comes out I will be better prepared to go deeper. I love learning in general, but haven't been this excited about learning something totally new (for me) in a long time.

<comment><USER13> Do you have a link to the said book?

<comment><USER14> Must be [https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/learning- tens...](https://www.safaribooksonline.com/library/view/learning- tensorflow/9781491978504/)

To be released in June.

<comment><USER12> Yes, that's the one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Does anyone use Tensorflow models in C++ applications? Is it possible to build Tensorflow as static or shared lib?

</comment><comment><USER16> Not necessarily about the article so may get downvoted, but is there a good book for TensorFlow/Machine Learning?

<comment><USER17> [http://www.deeplearningbook.org/](http://www.deeplearningbook.org/)

<comment><USER18> Good book to learn the deep learning concepts. The official tensorflow tutorials are also good to learn the programming part which is not covered in the book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Kudos to the team. Anybody know if we can we train in languages other than Python yet (or do I have that wrong)?

<comment><USER20> I'll discuss this a bit during my talk at the dev summit.

The short answer is no.

The long answer is yes, but only if you create the model in Python, export it, and then feed training data in other languages. There are some people doing exactly that.

Long term, I'd like to give all languages equal footing, but there's quite a bit of work left.

<comment><USER21> Forgive my ignorance, but why is it that it is Python-only?

Does Python have intrinsic qualities that other languages don't possess or is it that the huge initial investment in creating TensorFlow was based on Python and duplicating that effort somewhere else would require too much work?

<comment><USER11> Traditionally, most neural network architectures have been implemented in C/C++ - for performance reasons. But ML researchers are not hackers, for the most part, and Python has the lowest impedence mismatch for interfacing with C/C++ of all the major languages. Julia was popular for a bit, but now Python is dominant. Programs tend to be very small, and not modular - so static type checking is less important than it would be in picking up errors in larger systems.

<comment><USER22> It's not just the lowest impedance mismatch, but it's also a framework coming out of google, where python and Java were really the only two language choices for a high level interface, and of the two python is the clear winner in prototyping / scientific community acceptance. I think it's because of the ease in experimentation and expressiveness of the language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Could MacBook Pros (with Intel HD Graphics 3000 384 MB, to be more specific) train with GPU? I've always wanted to train algorithms but without using the GPU it is really slow.

<comment><USER24> I doubt the integrated Intel Card would be supported, even if it is, using the CPU would be just as good if not better. A lot of the high performance you see on GPUs are because of very highly optimized libraries available for Nvidia cards (like CuDNN) and so on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The tensorflow developer summit is being streamed live right now on youtube: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLyrl- agOw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqLyrl-agOw)

</comment><comment><USER25> Great news. I have several TensorFlow examples in a new book I am writing. I need to read up on the new higher level APIs, and can hopefully shorten the book example prob-grams.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wish so much for experimental APIs compatible with .Net stuff. Mostly because I want to use it with F#.

I really like Python, but F# <3

</comment><comment><USER27> Even if you don't care about machine learning, TensorFlow's XLA is amazing for farming code out to the GPU. GPGPU has never been easier.

</comment><comment><USER28> Ahh, so _that 's_ why the 1.0rc docs started to 404 an hour ago. Had me cursing under my breath :)

</comment><comment><USER29> For a complete beginner. What kind of applications I can work on using TensorFlow?

<comment><USER30> One of the "Hello, World" applications would be learning to classify MNIST digits. They have a tutorial on their site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there a good birds-eye overview of what people are creating with TF or ML in general?

<comment><USER32> [https://github.com/jtoy/awesome-tensorflow](https://github.com/jtoy/awesome- tensorflow)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> We changed the URL from [https://www.tensorflow.org/](https://www.tensorflow.org/), which doesn't say anything about 1.0, to an article which gives a bit of background. If someone suggests a better URL we can change it again.

<comment><USER34> The announcement post was just published: [https://research.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing- tensorflo...](https://research.googleblog.com/2017/02/announcing- tensorflow-10.html)

<comment><USER33> Changed from [http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/15/google-releases- tensorflow...](http://venturebeat.com/2017/02/15/google-releases- tensorflow-1-0-with-new-machine-learning-tools/). Thanks!</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Coderoulette, a pair programming game for developers - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
We just launched a side-project we have been building over the last couple of months -- Coderoulette is a pair programming game for developers, like a Chatroulette for hackers.
We match developers in real time and give them coding challenges they have to solve doing pair programming using a collaborative IDE and video conference.
You can check it out here: https://www.coderoulette.com/
We also published an article explaining how we built it. I'd love to hear your feedback.
https://medium.com/@miriammuros/how-we-built-coderoulette-a-collaborative-learning-experiment-cc023bbff88f <comment><AUTHOR> Coderoulette: [https://www.coderoulette.com/](https://www.coderoulette.com/)

How we built it: [https://medium.com/@miriammuros/how-we-built- coderoulette-a-...](https://medium.com/@miriammuros/how-we-built-coderoulette- a-collaborative-learning-experiment-cc023bbff88f)

</comment><comment><USER2> I just tried it out a bit some feedback.

\- I selected objective-c but got C++, not the worst thing but still.

\- It would be nice to have a warmup to read the instructions, reading something 'technical' like this is kinda hard when you've got a stranger looking at you in the webcam, waiting.

</comment><comment><USER3> The AJAX for users/ping could be benefited with a websocket and/or http2

<comment><USER4> What do you mean exactly? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't quite figure out if PHP is the only language that you can collaborate with and I don't want to start a session to let someone down. Maybe you could update the website or any of the blog posts with this info?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey wlamartin. PHP is not the only option, we support dozens of programming languages. When you sign up you pick which languages you already know. The other people will do the same. When you are matched we randomly pick one language from the a list that combines both of your languages. What this guarantees is that at least one person will know the language. If that's the case, one person will have to learn from another, and that's precisely what we want to happen.. collaborative and peer to peer learning!

It's super interesting to see how easy it is to learn the basics of a new programming language when you are coding with someone else that already knows it. It's like having a teacher just for you.

In any case, we have removed PHP from the list... everyone hates it haha.

<comment><USER6> This is a mistake. The list should be the set of languages both people already know. Letting syntax learning be a barrier to problem solving will not be fun and it will create an initial imbalance in the pairing.

You will eventually want to move to an ELO-ranking like system to make sure the pairs are roughly balanced. Otherwise, there's no way it would be fun for an expert-level C developer to pair with a newbie JavaScript programmer and have to spend the whole time explaining what pointers are, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are also asking people about their programming level to make sure we don't have anyone who knows nothing about programming. Our purpose with this project is precisely to explore peer-to-peer learning, so we want to force those types of interactions.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Python: How Guido Indented It - <AUTHOR> http://symbo1ics.com/blog/?p=1091

<comment><USER2> I actually read this all the way to the end, waiting for a "but it is a great language anyway" that never came, because I couldn't believe he was serious. It turned out he was and this article is nothing more than a misinformed and, more importantly, unsubstantiated, rant. When your argument boils down to "Python is slow because some GUI apps I tried on Ubuntu were" it is very easy to make an analogy to people that think Java is slow due to some encounter they've had with a Java GUI in the 90's.

Pointing at the GIL is old news and calling Guido van Rossum incompetent over a tweet is just weird. Sure, there is an interesting discussion to be had over object oriented programming versus functional programming, or what not, but Python is a fine language for most general purpose applications (and specifically for web apps). Even now I'm partly moving away from Python (in favor of Clojure, for now) I'm still very positive about the language.</comment>


Vevo founder warns Google: Sweeten deal or we'll go elsewhere - <AUTHOR> http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-doug-morris-vevo-google-20120710,0,3298354.story

<comment><USER2> I get that this site(HN) has a lot of google fans, to the point that often completely illogical arguments are painfully maintained by characters that would rather gush loyalty than have an honest discussion.

But to those that think youtube is holding all the cards here need to look at what has undone so many other sites.

This is youtube's largest channel, and it's a large source of referral traffic, especially social sites like facebook.

It's google's prerogative to keep this kind of referral traffic, not only to maintain relevance, but also to be perceived as the first choice in online video. If the average teenager begins to associate another site as the first choice in video that would have follow on consequences as google would not be able to control the user experience. (Or tout Google+) Users will hunt around for the right video, they're not so loyal as to abstain from watching a music video because it comes from vimeo etc.

Youtube has been effective at shutting outtheir competition with exclusivity deals like these, a competitor could do the same to youtube - and this is a pretty desirable catalog that appeals to a very active online demographic, it would instantly make a competitor relevant, elevating them above the pool of B-grade youtube competitors.

<comment><USER3> Your argument about Youtube's relative power in this relationship is fine, but your comment attacking HN "google fans" as arguing illogically and not willing to carrying out honest discussion is uncalled for. If you want to make such assertions, do it in response to a relevant comment, not as a random potshot.

<comment><USER2> Thank you for your opinion on my conduct.

However you should note that I did not make the argument that _all_ "google fans" were of this type of illogical character, rather that _some_ do and have already begun filing responses of this kind in this thread, making it futile to reply to each, especially when this kind of fanboyism is immune to any contradicting realities presented to them.

Finally my "potshot" makes up a relevant piece of my argument, more specifically the argument that "being a fan of google doesn't invalidate vevos importance or clout".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it just me, but threatining to pull all "Justin Bieber" video's from youtube as a threat is perhaps not the strongest point to win a argument. I'd pay Google to do that.

Also reading the article, Vevo in effect created this situation and to complain publicly does seem in bad taste as I see it as Vevo stole a opertunity from Universal, created a new monoply with the help of Googles youtube and then now that has been established are trying to bully more money from them. This is ontop of the aspect that Vevo said they would control/do the adverts and in that they are perhaps at fault for there own shortcommings and blaming Google for it in a way that is mearly showboating.

But again a youtube without Justin Bieber is one I realy have no issues with at all, were do I sign?

</comment><comment><USER5> Makes sense to me. Maybe Google should lower the rates a little. I'm sure Google would prefer to earn $10 with reduced fees from $15 than earn 0$ and create a competitor.

</comment><comment><USER6> I don't think they realise who has the real bargaining power in this negotiation. VEVO needs YouTube - YouTube no longer needs VEVO.

Google will be more than happy to let them walk away and allow remixes and user posted content to fill that hole (it's how YouTube started). VEVO will just come crawling back.

YouTube has a monopoly on online video and they may just turn out to be one of Google's most valuable acquisitions (along with DoubleClick/Android).

 _> Morris: If Justin Bieber and Adele are somewhere else, that will be where people will go. If you don't have the content, no one will come_

YouTube has the people now (daily standing subscriber audience + network effects) - the content comes to YouTube not the other way around. People pay/share video revenue on YouTube by posting via Machinma/IGN just to get exposure.

<comment><USER7> Are you sure about that? If facebook got the rights for the music videos and would integrate them tightly with the rest of their site, chances are that youtube would start becoming irrelevant. You're right that right now youtube has got the users, but facebook does, too, and they especially have the users who are interested in music videos. That makes them especially attractive for remixers etc. too.

<comment><USER8> _Are you sure about that? If facebook got the rights for the music videos and would integrate them tightly with the rest of their site, chances are that youtube would start becoming irrelevant._

Not even slightly. Music videos are _a_ market, but YouTube has hundreds of other reasons it is successful. It could lose music videos without breaking it's stride.

<comment><USER7> Yes. But I wonder if moving music videos to facebook would create a drain that eventually all other videos would follow.

<comment><USER8> I very much doubt it. 90% of YouTube users post under aliases, some of which are an important part of their video identity. Posting to Facebook would ruin that.

Simply put, Facebook is (in theory) for people you already know in real life. YouTube most definitely is not, and is an entirely different beast. Facebook is never going to have a 'VidCon' event.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Relativ – A VR headset that you can build yourself for $100 - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/relativty/Relativ <comment><USER2> I was expecting this to be another phone holder, much more interesting that you hacked together some hardware. Does this feature a low persistence display? Also, you mention "cheap tracking for next big update", is this just going to be an improvement over your current tracking or a full 6 DOF tracking? I don't think I've seen any hobbyist 6 DOF tracking for VR yet.

Oh, one note, in your read me, the part about Jonas convincing Chinese factories to sell you parts at premium prices should be changed. You probably meant he got really good prices, but premium pricing means basically the opposite.

<comment><USER3> > I don't think I've seen any hobbyist 6 DOF tracking for VR yet.

Webcam based hobbyist 6dof headtracking for use with desktop screens has been around for many years (freetrack, ftnoir/opentrack and so on), but the quality is rather dreadful. Still, people who don't mind glacial latency from very heavy smoothing have been very happy with those solutions.

But VR requires so much headmounted technology that tradeoffs between cost/weight and quality shift a lot. For desktop tracking, adding head mounted sensors to the existing single camera 6dof tracking solutions would at least double the amount of hardware involved. But when your baseline is a full VR headset, those sensors are an almost negligible extension. Gyro sensors and/or an "inside out" camera could easily add a lot of precision/speed (effectively the same metric, with filtering) to the rotary axes of single cam 6dof. Last time I looked at opentrack it already supported some sort of fusion between stationary camera and Android gyros. This would be a good starting point for a hobbyist VR rig (not room scale).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> We see DIY VR a lot within the STEAM educational programs.

Focusing this type of educational attention on children at an early age is critical for future personal and professional development.

This is what allows consumers to have a build yourself VR headset for $100.

I have covered a few early STEAM programs in the Los Angeles area.

[https://latechnews.org/raymond-ealy-founder- steamcoders/](https://latechnews.org/raymond-ealy-founder-steamcoders/) [https://latechnews.org/stem3-academy-open-house- november-4/](https://latechnews.org/stem3-academy-open-house-november-4/)

<comment><USER5> About early age children using VR, there was a warning of potential risk for children using VR, two/three years ago: [https://uploadvr.com/study-vr- children/](https://uploadvr.com/study-vr-children/)

it's not a big study nor does it comes to any concrete results, so I was wondering if you knew of more data on the subject, or knew of any real word feedback on the matter.

<comment><USER6> From what I've read (which isn't hard to find, but I'm mobile right now), the danger of VR for kids is not an issue, and in fact can actually more quickly bring to attention if they have a biological issue (like more quickly reveal if glasses would benefit them).

</comment></comment></comment><comment> 52-6F-62 Kids these days have all the fun. In school They taught us how to animate a 2d box across the screen.

This looks like a real fun project.

If you belong to it, then great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know them, I just found that project by chance and thought I would share it on HN since it looks cool!

<comment> maxime-coutte Hi, I'm Maxime. This is really nice to share it! Thanks.

<comment><USER7> Félicitations pour votre classement HN petits veinards ! :) C'est quoi la prochaine étape du projet pour vous ? Vous voulez transformer ça en job ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Motion-to-photon latency isn't mentioned. It's basically the most important characteristic of a good VR set. That's why all smartphone-based VR solutions suck and make you sick.

Carmack has long lectures about that issue.

<comment><USER9> A 16 year old and her classmates built this. I'm sure your comment has technical merit, but man, give these kids some props!

<comment><USER10> Agree with props! nit: Maxime is a boy's name, so _his_ mates.

<comment> maxime-coutte Are you sure that I'm a boy? ;)

<comment><USER10> en français on peut rester garçon toute le vie, non? en tout cas quand on parle entre copains.

<comment> maxime-coutte Ce que je voulais dire, c'est es-tu sure que je ne suis pas une fille ?

<comment><USER10> Bien sûr, le nom, la photo, sans la moindre hésitation...

Allez, développez votre création et votre histoire à long terme, c'est ça qui compte!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> >the chief architect at Oculus, Atman Brinstock... gave me a precious piece of advice: "open source it".

If only he followed his own advice.

<comment><USER12> What would you have him open source? His employers property?

<comment><USER13> As chief architect he probably has some sway to push FB to open source it.

Even if he can't its pretty hypocritical for him to ask these people to open source their work, allowing Occulus to benefit from it rather than worry about them as competition.

<comment><USER14> Is it hypocritical to encourage someone to open-source some IP that they own, while not being allowed to open-source some IP that you don't?

It seems like a chief architect would have a lot of pull in technical decisions, but a lot less in business or legal decisions. Open-sourcing the code would have to be considered from all three perspectives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is really cool -- also great to see a teacher having an impact in this manner. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's one teacher who doesn't have to doubt if his work is meaningful, awesome!

</comment><comment><USER17> This should carry a trigger warning for imposter syndrome.

<comment><USER18> We're all impostors, so what? I sometimes feel that this basic insecurity in IT really creates strife and abrasiveness between people instead of mutual respect. I find it better to embrace your own imperfections and in this way find your own strengths, which, sadly, are too often shadowed by the need to keep up appearances. There is no perfect IT person. We all suck. All tech sucks. People in general suck at things people do. This is life, and I am ok with it: I am content with who and where I am, and I am ok with other people having different goals, different life experiences and different achievements. My friend works at NASA; I've tried a lot of psychedelics; somebody has been backpacking around the world with 5$ in their pocket - and we're all deserving to be allowed (by ourselves) to be happy.

That having been said, these kids are really cool and I wish them the best of luck!

*edit: punct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Without knowing anything about the quality I can say, this is pretty amazing. I mean putting together a team which builds hardware and software for what they want to have.

Cool kids :-)

</comment><comment><USER20> Sometimes I would love to go through the black markets of Shenzen and pickup the parts for projects like these

</comment><comment><USER21> This is really cool.

Quick question for any experts reading this - do Oculus or VIVE use any sort of dead reckoning/movement prediction in their tracking? Also does anyone have any documentation on the APIs for this, or information on how the devices keep track of their latency and calibration information?

There are fundamental limits on latency, especially with spread-spectrum transmission when all of this goes wireless. As accurate as the tracking and pointing are for controllers, I feel like some additional extrapolation is happening. It would be great to have an open source library for this so we can give hand-built rigs the best tracking that's mathematically possible.

<comment><USER22> >Quick question for any experts reading this - do Oculus or VIVE use any sort of dead reckoning/movement prediction in their tracking? Also does anyone have any documentation on the APIs for this, or information on how the devices keep track of their latency and calibration information?

Absolutely. Vive uses a combination of IMU based dead reckoning combined with Lighthouse sensors to provide tracking. The dead reckoning is super important for maintaining tracking during sensor occlusion. The API it interfaces with is SteamVR, which is mostly open source, so you can even see how they're doing it. The new generation Vive Pro will combine this along with stereo camera CV based inside out tracking for even better precision.

<comment><USER23> Do you have a source on the stereo cameras of the Vive Pro being used for inside out tracking?

<comment><USER22> This is pure speculation on my part, but it's the only concievable use for the cameras. They are laid out in the exact same way as the Samsung Odyssey headset which does that. I cant imagine they have solved the compositing issues involved with doing pass through AR yet, although I'd be impressed if that's the case.

<comment> T-A > They are laid out in the exact same way as the Samsung Odyssey headset

Look again. The Odyssey's cameras sit below eye level and point down & sideways, which makes sense for tracking:

[https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/hmd/windows-mixed- reali...](https://www.samsung.com/us/computing/hmd/windows-mixed- reality/xe800zaa-hc1us-xe800zaa-hc1us/)

The Vive Pro cameras sit at eye level, at average interpupillary distance, and point straight ahead:

[http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads- prod/2018/01/h...](http://s3.amazonaws.com/digitaltrends-uploads- prod/2018/01/htc-vive-3-2.jpg)

That makes most sense for pass-through AR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> maxime-coutte You can chat with Fellowship of this project! [https://discord.gg/W9VKbjU](https://discord.gg/W9VKbjU)

</comment><comment><USER24> I wonder if you could replace the Arduino with a battery-powered Steam Link without the headset being too heavy.

<comment><USER25> You still need a cable for the screen per and HDMI.

<comment><USER24> A cable between the screen's board and the Steam Link inside the headset.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Cool.

Can't wait for the day when we truly have modular VR.

It's going to take a few years and I know Oculus has the right idea with their eco system but it sort of bums me out that the Vive didn't end up being the hackers headset.

Today it feels like the Vive was built out of spite and HTC got lucky Valve went them first.

<comment><USER27> I think the less cynical answer is that HTC often has good ideas for physical devices but then often fails to follow through and iterate well. They're also just struggling as a company in general.

But damn, so I 1000% agree with being bummed about it not being the hackers headset. I preordered the Vive because of a VR video of a guy programming the environment he was in at the moment: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db-7J5OaSag)

I would love to use a VR IDE some day.

<comment><USER28> > I would love to use a VR IDE some day.

The LCD Windows MR HMDs seem pretty close to being a sufficient display. The useful visual area is something like 900^2 px. Big, visible pixels, that are ok with a 7 pt font. And one can do subpixel rendering, so ~3x the horizontal resolution. If you are ok with working on a small laptop screen, you might be ok with this.

Otherwise, there's Varjo[1] later this year. Similar resolution to looking at your laptop. ~55 px/deg. For "under $10k".

For gloves, that you can still type in... we'll see. I had hope for [https://senso.me/](https://senso.me/) , but they've gone quiet. If you don't mind spending $10k, there are existing trackers.

For software... sigh. Maybe if market size explodes this Xmas, things will improve. There's been a lot of "do something, then abandon it, because the area isn't ripe yet" over the last half decade. And software dev in VR hasn't been where people's attention is focused.

Oh, if one's interest is in-VR creation of VR, instead of in-VR general software dev, then there are a bunch of "authoring environments" being worked on.

[1] [https://www.anandtech.com/show/12102/varjo-announces- shippin...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/12102/varjo-announces-shipping-of- vr-high-res-headset-prototype)

<comment><USER29> I thought that their products were available to order now...

<comment><USER28> > I thought that their products were available to order now...

Senso.me? [https://senso.me/order](https://senso.me/order) has said "Estimated shipment date: December 2017" for long time, and blog hasn't been updated since Sept.

Varjo? Last I saw, Alpha version available to partners. Though Beta was expected Q1?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Imagine this with a 4k panel. Depending on the lenses, it could be the highest resolution HMD currently available.

Panelook seems down, but even if only 4K@30 5.5 panels are currently available/affordable... well, no gaming, but I use Vive and WMD at 30 fps as a desktop alternative.

<comment><USER30> I'd be interested in how your desktop alternative works with the VR displays.

Do you edit text, code, email and surf inside the helmet?

Do you have any issues with keyboard and mouse?

Do you sit in a desk chair?

<comment><USER28> > I'd be interested in how your desktop alternative works with the VR > displays.

"your desktop alternative" -> collection of crufty exploratory kludges. :)

I'm running custom stacks on linux and X. Browser as compositor, and three.js. React. Tracking from low-level Vive lighthouse driver[1], or laptop webcam optical, or none. Camera passthrough AR.

Most recently, I'd just plug a Lenovo WMR HMD with a duct-taped-on camera into an old laptop with integrated graphics; run a browser full screen on the HMD; run xpra to put emacs and xterm on laptop and HMD; with the camera AR in background; and sometimes track head motion using the laptop webcam and yellow duct-tape HMD marks. Boring and crufty. Though emacs looks kind of "hip" with text changing depth.

> Do you edit text, code, email and surf

Desktop is just xpra[2]. A remote desktop that pulls in individual X programs. No "plug in a null display device" Microsoft silliness. Text is ok. Video is low fps (though I've not tried to improve it). I'd not want to surf in a such small window - think a 900 px square.

Because of resolution (and budget) limits, the UI is more 2D on sphere than 3D. Just picture normal desktop windows. Vive resolution was unusably low and PenTile. LCD Windows MR resolution is tolerable with individual pixel control (thus the 2D). 3D might be ok with subpixel rendering, but I don't yet have a laptop with a dGPU, so I've been putting it off. Given 2D, I'm still just using xpra's kb/mouse handling. Bits of a React-and-three.js approach. For hand tracking, leapmotion is unusable, my finger tracking with fiducial markers is currently too slow, and gloves with IMU fingers are still like $4k+. So I'm basically just doing exploratory spikes, waiting on late-2018 hardware availability and prices.

> desk chair?

Desk chair, conference room, classroom, subway. All sitting with laptop keyboard. I've explored room-scale UI before, but for this, just emacs and xterm in space. Not even in space, just in your face. I'm tired of burning life fighting ephemeral display and input limits. I'd like to do software dev and collaborative compilation and category theoretic type systems in 3D. But I'm going to wait for the needed hardware, rather than struggling against the glacial pace of tech progress.

[1] [https://github.com/mncharity/node-webvr-alt- stack](https://github.com/mncharity/node-webvr-alt-stack) [2] [https://xpra.org/](https://xpra.org/)

<comment><USER30> Wow, thanks for this response. It sounds like you should go for a phd in VR/AR non-game HCI. I like that you added AR or something like it, do the passthrough cameras do edge detection with motion compensated infill (more pixels come through the closer/faster they move) so one doesn't feel cut off from the outside world?

Too bad the IMU finger gloves are so expensive, doesn't make sense since the sensors are only $9 each qty 1. Using gloves like these [0] along with a HMD that had integrated wide field cameras could have great finger tracking support.

[0] [http://news.mit.edu/2010/gesture- computing-0520](http://news.mit.edu/2010/gesture-computing-0520)

<comment><USER28> > AR or something like it

Just simple passthrough video for now - no vision. And mono, in a bid to reduce eye strain from long hours of use.

> do the passthrough cameras do edge detection with motion compensated infill > (more pixels come through the closer/faster they move) so one doesn't feel > cut off from the outside world?

Do you mean making "big vision-occluding windows" more transparent when the world behind them changes and/or head spins?

> expensive, doesn't make sense

Existing small high-end market; immature big low-end market; limited ability to do market segmentation; no HomebrewComputerClub-like market-bypass; lack of incentives to avoid collateral damage to rate of progress.

My hope is Xmas 2018 will see both finger and eye tracking get products priced for consumers.

> [color] glove

Yeah. Sigh. They did a startup... and were bought by Oculus. I don't know of an open source release. So here we are, literally a decade later, and you can't easily get one.

It's been interesting to watch VR's widespread innovate-startup-acquisition- unavailable dynamic, and contrast it with say the ferment of HCC. It attracts investment, but devastates the market ecosystem, and cripples research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is incredible - well done guys.

My immediate thought went to seeing if a VR headset could be created with a 200+ degree field of view similar to a Pimax or StarVR using two of these displays!

</comment><comment><USER32> Inspired by watching SAO? I wonder if they prefer Asuna or Lisbeth.

<comment> maxime-coutte Hi, how did you guess? Me and my friends were completely in love with SAO, and we decided to build a virtual world to go after (or instead) school. But we ended up building a VR headset.

<comment><USER33> It's pretty great (and unusual) that a TV show would result in doing something productive! They can be inspirational and give ideas. How did you go from watching the show to starting to build a VR headset? Was there any particular trigger at the start?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Strange to me this price point isn't being met by Alibaba/Banggood

<comment><USER30> Because there is no software platform for driving it? There should be a serial usb / xml interchange format for sending the device capabilities to the driving PC. Something HDMI device-id but for VR displays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Cool project by teenager kids shame that its useless in practice since thered be no sw support from major engines. So as a next project youd need to make an engine plugin for ue4 for example.

<comment><USER36> All the "useful" stuff you're thinking of very likely started out much less polished / refined than this project. It seems to have struck a chord with this audience, and it will only get better from here.

<comment><USER35> I dont think this particular project will go anywhere really. But these kids will probably gain something for this for their future careers.</comment></comment></comment>


Seeking expertise: how to fund MIT's virus cure - <AUTHOR>

There's been a recent surge of interesting activity on this post from 13 months ago (which hit 423 on HN back then): http://www.process.org/discept/2011/11/17/draco-death-to-the-virus/ -- now they're talking about registering a corporation and building a simple site to accept funds kickstarter-style, which they can (in turn) donate to the project.  I've seen several similar efforts collapse after a few months -- anyone have good advice for them to make this real, or want to lend a hand? <comment><AUTHOR> Clickable link to the post: [http://www.process.org/discept/2011/11/17/draco- death-to-the...](http://www.process.org/discept/2011/11/17/draco-death-to-the- virus/)

Original HN thread: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3771214></comment>


Windows Chrome, why do my fonts look so bad? - <AUTHOR> http://lee.greens.io/blog/2014/01/13/windows-chrome/ <comment><USER2> This is a years-old bug in Google Chrome on Windows which leaves designers/developers with a choice of using Google Fonts (saves you bandwidth and can save the user bandwdith and page load times since it's cached between sites) and just accepting that Google Chrome Windows users will have an inferior experience or self-hosting your fonts (you do the bandwidth, increased page load to users, making sure you get the font loads in the correct order, slightly longer load time for Safari users). It's kind of amazing that this is still unfixed given how poorly the font rendering makes pages look and the fact that every other Windows browser handles it with aplomb.

<comment><USER3> While the bug is being fixed, why doesn't Google add the SVG workaround to the CSS being served for its fonts?

<comment><USER2> I have no idea. We've been suggesting that for years as well. But the web fonts team seems to have no interest in mitigating the Google Chrome Windows bug.

<comment><USER4> "ChromeOS" Chromebooks look so much nicer than Windows... if you want to browse the web like it's supposed to work, get a Chromebook. /sarcasm

Seriously, this has bugged me for a very long time myself. I don't get why it hasn't been fixed, it's been an issue as long as I can remember, and fortunately, other than at work or my desktop at home, I'm not on windows... My HTPC, which I use for reading more than anything is on Ubuntu, and I recently got a Chromebook as an interim replacement for my stolen MBP.

Though some of the comments mention (rightly) that SVG fonts are larger files than WOFF... they don't seem to take into consideration that SVG, being text/xml can be greatly compressed in transit. I also, REALLY don't get why Google's web fonts' css doesn't give the SVG first to chrome+windows users, so things at least look better there until they fix chrome.

<comment><USER2> It doesn't bug me much other than having to self-host font files and ensure they're in the hacky order to fix Chrome's issue. Then again, I don't use Chrome other than for testing web pages. I run Firefox on Windows and Android and sync them. When Firefox first started using DirectDraw, there were some issues with fonts, but Mozilla made it a priority and got it sorted relatively quickly (lightning fast compared to Chrome's font bugs).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Chrome Canary has experimental support for DirectWrite which should make your fonts, and text in general look much nicer.

See the issue here:

[https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=25541)

For details on how to enable DirectWrite in Chrome Canary. Might be worthwhile to see what your fonts look like using DirectWrite.

<comment><USER6> I have had that issue starred for years, as I assume most of the others have. The failure of Chromium to support DirectWrite in a reasonable timeframe has kept me pure in my unwavering support of Firefox, even when Chrome was considered the hipper browser. It's easier now to remain with Mozilla, what with anti-Google sentiment becoming mainstream.

Jokes aside, it's embarrassing how long that issue has been left to rot. All fonts in Chrome-Windows look awful once one is used to Firefox or Internet Explorer's rendering.

<comment><USER7> Similar type of deal with [going 64-bit]([https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=18323)) on Mac OS X. Has languished for multiple years. DirectWrite shipped in 2009, one month after Snow Leopard with 64-bit recommended for apps by default.

<comment><USER8> Plus ASLR is much less effective with only a 32 bit address space. (Firefox on OS X is a 64 bit application.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't think this is related to the issue this article talks about, but it may be relevant to Windows Chrome users whose fonts suddenly look bad...

I noticed in the past week that sites of mine that had imported a font from Google Web Fonts without _explicitly_ specifying to import bold/italics versions too were looking odd (e.g. weird text-shadow for no reason on what used to appear bold). In past versions of Chrome (or perhaps it's Google Web Fonts that has changed, I'm not sure), I've been able to use [b] and [i] HTML tags around text and my Google fonts have responded accordingly (without my needing to explicitly import bold/italic versions) -- but that's no longer the case. The fix is (obviously) to explicitly import the versions of the fonts you bold/italicize, but it actually took me a little while to figure out that that (and not some weird CSS issue) was the problem.

Hopefully this saves a few other people 15 minutes of poring over their CSS trying in vain to figure out what isn't working!

<comment><USER10> It's a bug and really annoying.[http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=332958](http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=332958)

<comment><USER11> Thank you (and ahugon) for confirming this! I noticed one of our sites was having this issue and wasn't sure what was causing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Just MAKE SURE NOT TO COPY FROM THE FONTSPRING POST linked to in the article. Their code samples have curly-quotes in the CSS which fails silently and you will go nuts trying to debug it. Um, hypothetically. Ahem.

Developers, man.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

<.< Double-checking my CSS in the article >.>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All browsers: why can't you display an intermediate font while downloading the custom font-faces?

It just sucks so badly. Most time I'm stuck on a 8 KByte/sec cellphone connection, and I have to wait YEARS just to read text - or press ESC to force display of system fonts.

<comment><USER14> I have just given up on using Google Webfonts. :)

I just use:

        font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

<comment><USER8> I've read that Windows' Helvetica font is uglier than Arial (perhaps a hinting issue) and, since few Windows'users have Helvetica Neue, that a recommended don't family is thus:

      font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif;

<comment><USER15> Unless the situation has changed, the Windows registry has an entry to show Arial when Helvetica is requested.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those of you who don't care about custom fonts, I made a quick extension[0] that disables use of all web-fonts (woff/ttf/otf) by blocking all requests made to these extensions. It does save me a lot of bandwidth when I do enable it. Plus, it saves you from FOUT. Its open source on GitHub as well[1].

I still have to add support for a whitelist, so that it can be actually useful (for instance, GitHub needs web-fonts for most of its interface).

[0]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web- fonts/...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/disable-web- fonts/olmabeadgbpmhllgdkemfdnmkngkbkeg/)

[1]: [https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web- fonts](https://github.com/captn3m0/disable-web-fonts)

<comment><USER17> What's "a lot"? Aren't font loads on the order of a few kilobytes a page? Seems like loading the front page of the New York Times once would use more bandwidth than all the web fonts you run into for a month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I found using the SVG version rather then tff helps a bit on windows. Its nasty looking but it does make it a bit more presentable. Only thing is that for some reason Google Web Font doesn't display the SVG so I have to use something like Font Squirrel to create my fonts and host locally. I only tend to do this if the client just so happens to tests on windows , most of the time they don't care since they are on macs so its not that much of an hassle when I have to go down this road.

Edit: Maybe I should of read the article before my comment, seems he does the same thing.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've noticed as well that Windows Chrome produces a bit of an ugly jagged look to even common fonts.

I use this to fix it:

-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0.15px; (some suggest 0.25px)

<comment><USER20> This. I use 0.1px for smaller type, and 0.25 for bigger. It also makes it look thicker.

Also, the same problem is also present in Safari for Windows, in case anyone actually uses it..

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Take a look at comment #123 on [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692#c...](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=137692#c123)

Its almost fixed, but then it needs to go through the "food chain" before it reaches every one of us. So, only in about 6 months that it might be finally fixed.

</comment><comment><USER22> So the article is suggesting that you could do this with Google Web Fonts by copying the CSS instead of linking to it, and then changing the order.

While that would work, I wonder if copying and modifying their CSS would technically be a TOS violation.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is, for the most part, a rehash of this article:

[http://www.dev-metal.com/fix-ugly-font-rendering-google- chro...](http://www.dev-metal.com/fix-ugly-font-rendering-google-chrome/)

</comment><comment><USER24> I presume this is simply that Chrome uses GDI rather than DirectWrite here. Perhaps they're prioritizing speed over beauty?

<comment><USER25> And also the ability to run on Windows XP, where DirectWrite doesn't exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> This has been a bug for so long, it feels like Groundhog day. Chrome developers couldn't care less about windows users.</comment>


The Lingering Legacy of Psychedelia - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-lingering-legacy-of-psychedelia <comment> rm_-rf_slash Anyone with a cursory understanding of LSD's history and effects can skip this read.

Woefully absent is a mention on how the Nixon Administration blatantly whipped the public into a frenzy about communist/Eco-terrorist hippies and riotous blacks by associating them with LSD and heroin, respectively, just so they could use "rule of law" to terrorize and arrest political enemies. This is the true catalyst of the war on drugs and it is a story that needs to be told again and again until it is done.

</comment><comment><USER2> Something that wasn't obvious at first glance is that this is a book review, it just starts with some back-story that I assume is covered in the book.

The review reminded me of stories of the WELL. I just looked it up for fun and noticed the book & review are discussing Stewart Brand who's one of the people that started the WELL.

</comment><comment><USER3> This article kind of reminds me of when a report was due in 7'th grade and I didn't really want to do it.

I'd just look up a bunch of stuff and reword it and jam it all together with no real thesis or point. It always passed.

<comment><USER4> Please don't post unsubstantive dismissals. If an article isn't good enough for HN you can always flag it, but contentless snark just lowers the signal/noise ratio for everyone.

<comment><USER5> Hmm. Suppose you personally don't think an article is very well written but don't want to deprive other people of the opportunity to read it; surely a single inoffensive post critical of it is better than losing the whole article? Posters on this site seem pretty mature and level headed so it's not like one person is going to start a riot.

<comment><USER6> > Suppose you personally don't think an article is very well written but don't > want to deprive other people of the opportunity to read it;

jqm's post is not constructive. Even a less snarky "I found this article badly written" probably doesn't help other people decide whether or not to read it. You can flag it or not as you see fit, but there's no value in posting a comment like that.

> Posters on this site seem pretty mature and level headed so it's not like > one person is going to start a riot.

Only constant enforcement keeps the site that way. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/](http://lesswrong.com/lw/c1/wellkept_gardens_die_by_pacifism/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>