What's wrong with Ikea? - <AUTHOR> http://meganmcardle.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/whats_the_matter_with_ikea_a_d.php

<comment><USER2> I stopped reading after the author suggested that IKEA furniture be illegal.

I love IKEA. The furniture is designed to be really easy to put together; if you do something wrong, it simply doesn't fit. This shows that a lot of thought is put into each piece of furniture, and that makes me happy.

(Yes, sometimes I try to put something together incorrectly to make sure that I can't be misunderstanding the instructions. With cheap furniture, it will fit together fine and be wrong. With IKEA furniture, it becomes immediately obvious that you are doing it wrong. You simply can't continue until you do it right.)

Anyway, to me, IKEA furniture is kind of addictive. I love getting a box of particle board (+) and then, with just a little bit of instruction-following, having a solid piece of furniture. It's almost as fun as Lego! (I am almost disappointed when I am done putting it together. Yeah, now I have a functional piece of furniture that will make my life slightly more enjoyable. But ... putting it together was so fun, I'm upset that it's over.)

I also like how the styles and colors fit together, and how it is minimalist with just a touch of "design". I love IKEA.

(+) A lot of people whine about the quality. If you buy the super-cheap stuff, yeah, the quality is low. If you buy the mid-range or high-end stuff, though, the quality is great. There's a reason some of their furniture comes with a 25 year (!) warranty. They expect it to last for 25 years. From what I've seen, it does.

You can pry my allen wrench from my cold, dead hands.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you may have misread it. Megan McArdle more or less agrees with you because though she might not like Ikea furniture for herself she absolutely believes you should be able to buy cheap(er)/discount furniture and that it's good for everyone. McArdle's debating the author of Cheap (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/159420215X>) who believes otherwise.

<comment><USER2> I am saying that I like IKEA regardless of price. I think it's a place to get functional, well-designed, and pretty furniture. I like the design better than the "nice" stuff.

So "discount" doesn't factor into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> >life's ambition is never again to spend four hours messing around with an allen wrench

4 hours? So its still fashionable to pretend that you have no engineering or practical aptitude! Imagine reading the atlantic and claiming you didn't understand theatre or poetry

<comment><USER4> Usually when I hear this complaint (on putting things from IKEA together), it's not a problem with putting things together in general, but _allen wrench usage_ in particular that gets them. I'm not sure why—maybe the fact that the process is reversible and doesn't involve making holes in wood makes the constructor feel like they're playing with Lego rather than actually "building" something?

<comment><USER5> Allen wrenches are the least usable types of wrenches or screwdrivers I've ever used. I always end up skinning my knuckles.

IKEA should develop and sell a better allen wrench.

<comment><USER6> I recently put together some trestle leg table/desk supports from them. The included, sort-of-S-shaped allen wrench worked just fine. Actually, I was impressed at how well it worked combined with its minimalist design.

I'd be cautious using a drill/power driven allen bit. The wood in my trestles is not the hardest, and I can see where too much power too quickly could damage it before one's reaction time caught up with events. If you are cautious, things should be fine. If you just set a torque limit and fire away, you could end up unhappy.

<comment><USER5> I'd like an allen wrench bit for a traditional hand-powered screwdriver. Though one of those low-power electric screwdrivers we use at my work to install rack-mount equipment into racks might work OK too (if it had an allen wrench bit).

<comment><USER6> There are handheld / hand-driven screwdrivers that have replacable... bits, I guess one would call them. I have one that switched between large and small blade and Phillips heads. Now that I check, I also have an inexpensive Husky screwdriver/bit set that was a Secret Santa gift; it has hex bits, though I haven't used them.

I'd think before using it for IKEA assembly, though. For the trestles, the screws required significant torque to penetrate. Applying that repeatedly for these not too short screw, by using one's wrists and a screwdriver grip, I imagine would quickly become tiring. A nice thing about the IKEA "throw-away" wrench is that its S shape allows one to create significant torque with a finger grip, lessening strain on / torsion of the wrist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having owned a bunch of older and newer Ikea stuff, the real problem IMHO is Ikea knockoffs. If you're willing to buy actual wood, Ikea sells it and it works fine--it's not especially decorative but it is at least decent at being tables/beds/whatever.

However, if you're in the market for a bookcase, say, and decide $100 is too much to pay for one, your choices are all bad particle board with melamine poorly installed. If you're very lucky they last a year. Ikea makes this too, but I'm convinced it's because they felt they had to compete with the purveyors of this junk.

Older Ikea stuff tends to be made with wood and actually holds up pretty well --I have a pair of 30-40 year old Ikea end tables that are perfectly stable and usable, although not pretty.

</comment><comment><USER8> Believe it or not IKEA is probably the most ethical and hacker oriented large- scale company currently around. They don't scam people into buying stuff which breaks and needs to be replaced, they retain customers by offering something to everybody while at the same time introducing fashion and trends which makes people want to buy new stuff. Insider tip: use ordinary glue when you put together furniture. You know how solid all the furniture seems when you try out at IKEA and you don't really get the same feeling when you put it together yourself? Well, guess what.

<comment><USER9> Don't glue it up if you want to be able to take it apart to move however. Several of Megan's commenters said one of the particular things they liked about IKEA is that they could disassemble and reassemble it easily.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always found a little wood glue and some strategically placed screws can make cheap furniture pretty durable.

<comment><USER11> And a torque-adjustable drill with an allen bit can make the assembly pretty quick!

And pretty fun after a few beers!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Dunno if it's true, but a PR flak who worked with IKEA USA told me that their fall catalog (which is distributed worldwide more-or-less identically) is the second most-printed publication every year after the bible.

<comment><USER3> It's supposedly also the worlds biggest photo shoot and the worlds biggest studio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> All I really get from this is that the author doesn't like cheap furniture. Which is fine... she can buy her furniture somewhere else, or build it herself.

<comment><AUTHOR> Megan McArdle is saying there's nothing wrong with buying Ikea (or any discount) furniture despite what Ellen Ruppel Shell argues in her new book "Cheap" (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/159420215X>)

Shell argues that buying Ikea (and our "discount" society as a whole) is immoral and costly.</comment></comment>


Airbnb's AirPal: new ways to get answers from Hive and Hadoop - <AUTHOR> http://thenewstack.io/airbnbs-airpal-reflects-new-ways-to-query-and-get-answers-from-hive-and-hadoop

<comment><USER2> Demo: [http://airbnb.github.io/airpal/](http://airbnb.github.io/airpal/)</comment>


First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces - <AUTHOR> https://www.aristotlemetadata.com/blog/2020/08/first-impressions-github-codespaces.html <comment><USER2> While impressive technology, I still get that eerie feeling of my computer's ownership being slowly taken away from me. The problem is not Github codespaces offering us an alternative to traditional dev environments, the problem may be 10 years from now, when someone says: "All the coding is done on the web nowadays, why should we allow users to install compilers and dev tools on their machine? They may use those for _hacking_ and compromising the security of our systems. They may hurt themselves in the process and sue us! Better not take risks". I'm afraid to go into a future where this is normal...

<comment><USER3> >They may hurt themselves in the process and sue us!

has a hacker ever hurt themselves by hacking and sued the company whose computer they were using?

Anyway I guess people can also buy their own computers if they want to play outside the sandbox.

<comment><USER2> Fair enough. But that was not my rationale, it was just a made-up corporate rationale that is not too far from what I can observe in reality. Take, for example, lobbyists in right-to-repair hearings. They use arguments like this: "If we let users repair their smartphones, they might hurt themselves, so it must not be allowed and instead always performed by a skilled technician". The implication always being, that if users hurt themselves, they will sue.

> Anyway I guess people can also buy their own computers if they want to play > outside the sandbox.

My point was, precisely, that we might get to some point where this is no longer possible. Imagine they stopped selling what we today call "PC", and instead everything is closer to smartphones or tablets. There would be no way to setup a development environment on the machine. There's no sudo access, no compiler toolchain...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is also coder.com which provides more or less the same thing (running Visual Studio Code in the browser).

The code is actually open source and you can run it on your own machine: [https://github.com/cdr/code-server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)

Hint: Set the following environment variables before starting code-server to get access to the official Visual Studio Code extension marketplace. This is against the TOS of VSCode, but some extensions are missing/broken on the alternative marketplaces.

SERVICE_URL=[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery)

ITEM_URL=[https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items](https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items)

</comment><comment><USER5> I also just got access to the beta. It works very seamlessly. You can install all the VSCode extensions you want.

It came preinstalled with some Python 3.8 venv. The venv was put into the Git repo root directory, which is a bit strange, as I first needed to modify my gitignore to ignore that.

Git push directly from the VSCode menu directly worked and pushed the change back to GitHub, without further setup.

I did not expect that I get a full virtual machine, but it seems so. I edited some Latex project, and pdflatex was missing, so I did `sudo apt install texlive-full`, it installed 4GB of packages, and then all worked fine.

I also edited some TensorFlow stuff, and `pip3 install tensorflow` also just worked.

The side preview (eg. for markdown or Latex) somehow is broken. It stays blank. However, e.g. you can open the Latex PDF preview in a new browser window, which works.

The speed just felt native. There was no latency. It feels exactly like native VSCode.

I very much like it. I guess the side preview will get fixed soon. I will probably use it for a couple of smaller projects, of different kinds, like Latex, Markdown notes, smaller Python stuff, or other smaller code projects where VSCode is fine.

Otherwise, for e.g. Python, I still prefer PyCharm, which has far superior code browsing and auto-completion. Codespaces with PyCharm would be really nice! Or maybe VSCode can improve on that. Or maybe VSCode can even reuse the language server from VSCode. Or at least the inspections. I think this part is open source, right?

<comment><USER6> From the blog post I understand that my vscode configuration is somehow stored within my browser, not connected to my github account. Is it also stored per project or globally?

Because either choice brings its own problems. I want the vim plugin to behave the same on all instances but language-specific plugins or similar only make sense in the context of a specific project. How does this work currently?

<comment><USER5> It stores settings just as usual in .vscode/settings.json in your project. (I usually have .vscode in my .gitignore, but maybe it make sense to include it in the repo.)

Additionally, there is some "Settings-Sync" feature, which I have not really explored yet. Maybe this is global for all instances.

Btw, the startup time of the codespace VM is a bit annoying. It takes approx 30-60 seconds when it was inactive. And it get automatically suspended after 30 minutes of inactivity.

<comment><USER7> In addition to project local .vscode/settings.json and the still Beta Settings Sync, it should also pick up your user settings if you set up a dotfiles repository.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The big draw for me is working on the iPad. If you attach the keyboard it becomes a pretty awesome 'do anything' device, now that you can code on it as well. Can't build native apps yet, but seems like a future opportunity. Web apps / PWA development works great, I can just have the app running in a hovering window / on a quarter of the screen.

<comment><USER9> It's such a contrast to see this and the post by setzer22 right next to each other

<comment><USER10> I'm in the process of switching a lot of my work onto iPad.

I don't see a conflict here - I'm still using a "compiler" api, its just somewhere else (i.e. not on my local device), its just in somebodies cloud. I can't see why that would go away in the future and I don't really care where the compiler actually is (if I did, I could self host).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > as a co-founder who is spending less time as a developer, and more time in > meetings, writing emails, strategy papers, [...] this is just amazing [...] > I've been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working

lol, just ssh into a $3 vps as dev machine, real Ubuntu, real tmux/(n)vim, no setup, no hassle

 _Edit: to be fair, Cloud9 was my entry drug into remote development bringing me to my setup above; the idea is awesome and Github Codespaces is too but there are just too many limitations and having a real, ever-running Linux vps everywhere, even on your phone is just magic and even when you write strategy papers..._

<comment><USER12> I respect developers who make that work, but the development experience over SSH (vim, etc) is never as good as local development. You can't use vs code. You have to deal with lag delaying keystrokes. If you download a file and want to copy it into your dev environment you need to SCP it over. If you want to test a network service its nontrivial to point your local browser at the remote machine. If you sleep your laptop and open it again, you need to reconnect your SSH sessions. Etc etc.

A lot of these issues can be solved with enough extra work setting everything up - but that completely defeats the point. "no setup, no hassle" is never my experience.

<comment><USER11> > vs code

check coc.vim, uses vsc's native LSP, 99% of LSP's features

> delaying keystrokes

I have 16ms latency as my 60hz screen does and def less latency than a local vscode

just use a vps close to where you are

<comment><USER13> Or use Mosh, which eliminates the keystroke lag.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What are the specs? How much memory, CPU, disk space?

Of course it's in beta so nothing's final, but it would be good to get a sense of order-of-magnitude.

MS Codespaces starts at 4 GB RAM, 2 cores, 64 GB storage.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised nobody mentioned GitPod[1] - it's in business since quite a while in my GitHub projects, powered by VSCode, with terminal, pretty much everything Codespaces does... Any thoughts on such a comparison? Is GitHub reinventing the wheel locally?

[1][https://www.gitpod.io/](https://www.gitpod.io/)

<comment><USER16> Gitpod is powered by eclipse theia

<comment><USER15> The GitPod own page says "Gitpod is an open-source Kubernetes application providing prebuilt, collaborative development environments in your browser - powered by VS Code."

Might be they mean that Eclipse Theia can run VSCode extensions?

<comment><USER17> Eclipse thea is a wrapper On Vscode for users who want to build upon it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The pieces are starting to fall in place for a decent virtual first development experience.

I don't expect my recent laptop purchase, which was a combination of form for comfort, form for clients to see, and perf for working to last more than 3 years. At a $2500 purchase (most expensive damn laptop I've ever got) I'm aware that half that price or less would get everything but the perf.

So if a cloud solution was good enough, I have about $400 a year to spend on it.

It's about $.5 an hour to match perf on EC2, but we should consider:

\- I only need the top perf for minutes at a time. A lot of work could be browser based, but browsers cant do the heavy lifting

\- I also have a desktop, which I use more than the laptop, is significantly cheaper and higher perf. Its most useful to me if both envs are the same.

</comment><comment><USER19> I still don't understand why people want their code dependent on the web.

I want to share my one true dev environment, but I want to be able to do this on my private premises setup without internet access.

I don't trust the internet and things like codespaces not to leak my company's code whether nominally in a private repository or not.

I don't trust using internet dependencies either.

Even something like pair programming etc with a shared view of a project is very appealing, but again, it needs to be appealing in a private context and not dependent on public access.

What might be OK for an open source project is unlikely to be true for a company's valuable IP, but people just seem to get carried away.

Secure first, managed dependencies first. Please.

<comment><USER20> "Most of my daily tools are Windows based, so I've been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working alongside the rest of my daily workflow, which comes with its own headaches. So being able to quickly checkout a branch, make changes and take some load of my local machine seems very promising."

Making it easier for more devs to use and stick with Microsoft tech, is, I think, a core driver behind this initiative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm pretty excited about what Codespaces is going to bring to the table. I can already see a lot of good use cases.

I've been using an iPad Pro as a laptop replacement for the past year and Codespaces makes it a pretty viable development machine. I'd been mulling over switching back to a laptop, but I'll probably stick to the iPad for now.

Before I was using Blink shell to ssh into my desktop and run Emacs. Not really ideal for me since I mainly use VS Code on my desktop (which is my main computer) and hardly touch Emacs anymore.

<comment><USER22> do you use codespaces in safari? doesn't work that well for me, scroll using a touchpad doesn't work, and I guess not having a real fullscreen mode is kinda annoying too

<comment><USER23> AFAIK This is a bug that was introduced earlier this year when WebKit changed how scroll events are handled [https://github.com/cdr/code- server/issues/1455](https://github.com/cdr/code-server/issues/1455)

If you can add a shortcut to the dev environment to your homescreen it'll load the app without safaris control elements which comes relatively close to fullscreen. (Not sure if this will work the way codespaces is built)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "Most of my daily tools are Windows based, so I've been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working alongside the rest of my daily workflow, which comes with its own headaches."

My work place is considering switching providing developers with a MacBook Pro to a Dell Windows machine. At one point we were all allowed Linux which was awesome.. Is WSL still painful to use? My prior experience came to a dead end when I had irreconcilable Docker issues, the fine details I don't quite remember now other than it had something to do with accessing the host network. All good now or still meh?

<comment><USER25> With the release of WSL2 and the new versions of Docker that take advantage of it, I would say that most of the pain around the WSL toolchain has been resolved.

Compared with trying to get anything working in powershell or dealing with the slowness of git bash or Cygwin, WSL2 is a breeze.

The only pain point I still have is running Linux GUI applications. It requires running an XWindow server on the Windows side and letting WSL talk to it over TCP. Apparently MS is working on that now and hopes to have a solution later this year on the slow ring of windows update. That'll make running things like Cypress a hell of a lot easier and (fingers crossed) prevent me from squinting on HiDPI displays.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> One of the things I hope to use Codespace for is a CMS editor directly hooked into source control and its permissions (given static sites already get generated by the CI), instead of hosting some admin UI on a thirdparty server that needs to deal with all the authentication flows, without sacrificing ease of use for non-devs.

If all goes well, it could even customize the Codespace with VSCode plugins to fit customer-specific needs (but I have yet to see what limitations there are, luckily by now I'm quite used to writing plugins for my local VSCode).

So I hope to be in the beta sooner or later.

<comment><USER9> My problem (so far) with github for CMS is no preview. Maybe preview could be added to Codespace as a VSC plugin. It needs to access all the media I'm adding as well. Hmmm, maybe I will look into this :)

<comment><USER9> AFAIK VSC is explicitly not iOS/Android friendly. Maybe Codespaces will end up changing that but they make a point of Monaco (The editor portion of VSCode) not being designed for tablets/mobile

[https://microsoft.github.io/monaco- editor/](https://microsoft.github.io/monaco-editor/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Actually, you can self-host VS Code on a server and access it via browser: [https://github.com/cdr/code-server](https://github.com/cdr/code-server)

</comment><comment><USER28> I'd bet this stuff is mostly popular because of really really broken platforms like iOS.

Also OT: Wow. That's an entirely new level of broken web design. The links don't even work! How can you mess up HTML this badly?

<comment><AUTHOR> Which ones - we're a pretty lean startup so if you've found some errors, I'd like to know.

<comment><USER28> (sorry for the long delay, I struggle with compulsive hacker news usage and have noprocrast on.)

On ios none of the links on that page appeard to work, coming back with firefox they all do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for coming back to clarify, glad to hear its not broken. I'll check the iOS compatibility anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> The pendulum swings again.

Remember mainframes? Remember PCs? Remember thin clients? Rememeber PCs again? Remember this i a couple of years as the pendulum starts to swing back.

<comment><USER30> It's not a pendulum, the industry is always moving towards two goals: miniaturization (for portability) and centralization (for efficiency).

Sometimes it appears to go "backwards" towards decentralization when there's a shift in form factor. This is just to avoid getting stuck at a local optimum.

Eventually we'll get to the global optimum where everything's centralized but available from everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> That is a very badly chosen name. Codespaces was a company that went under because they were (or claimed to have been) hacked.

[https://threatpost.com/hacker-puts-hosting-service-code- spac...](https://threatpost.com/hacker-puts-hosting-service-code-spaces-out- of-business/106761/)

If you want to instill confidence this name is not the best start you could have picked.

<comment><USER32> Nobody (but you) remembers a minor company that went under six years ago. And those that do are unlikely to believe there's a connection.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Can I leave my home safely? - Weather Report - <AUTHOR> http://canileave.com/?place=new+york

<comment><USER2> Smart. I like these slew of super simple, quick sites with useful information. Reminds me of: <http://www.isitajewishholidaytoday.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you very much for the feedback. :)

I've added wind speed and humidity as well. Also, the source code is available on github. Always contributing to open source community!</comment></comment>


New Theory Cracks Open the Black Box of Deep Learning - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-theory-cracks-open-the-black-box-of-deep-learning-20170921/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to read this. I was a little confused at first because the information bottleneck paper wasn't new, and then as I read I realized they acknowledged that. It's interesting to see followup and new research coming out about it, because it struck me as promising when I first read about it.

The information bottleneck idea is very similar, basically the same, as how I've always thought about DL models, and statistical models more generally. The hidden variables at each layer are basically digitized codes, and there's a compression at each layer, which is equivalent to learning/inference as in an algorithmic complexity/MDL sense.

What was surprising to me was the relationships with renormalization groups, which I wasn't familiar with at all.

The quote from Lake was also interesting. I forgot about that Bayesian Program Learning paper, which was interesting. My guess is BPL and DL are not really all that different at some level.

</comment><comment><USER3> > certain very large deep neural networks don't seem to need a drawn-out > compression phase in order to generalize well. Instead, researchers program > in something called early stopping, which cuts training short to prevent the > network from encoding too many correlations in the first place.

This would explain the success of attention mechanisms quite well. If you are good in selecting the right input you don't need to discard a lot later.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting premise (the info bottleneck) and a well written (long) article.

I particularly enjoy attempts to understand basic black box mechanisms in the space of learning or cognition.</comment>


Why don't we see aliens? This Oxford prof suspects they're 'sleeping'. Heres why - <AUTHOR> https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/anders-sandberg-fermi-paradox/ <comment><USER2> Why would machine-based life feel the need to give up computing time now in order to attain faster computing later? Why not have both? This "aestivation hypothesis" feels like a stretch to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not faster, lower cost. It means they get more total computation. I don't understand the objection.</comment></comment>


90k Packages Disappear Daily in NYC - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/nyregion/online-shopping-package-theft.html <comment><USER2> Wait, are packages just left outside? And the recipient or sender are at fault? That seems pretty strange.

Here (Germany) if you aren't home (and haven't given special instructions which could include leaving the package outside) it's either given to a neighbor, a package-holding place or goes to the post office for you to get.

<comment><USER3> Here in the US, private services like UPS and FedEx can't deliver to the post office. You can ask for a package to be delivered with signature required, but what that means is that if you aren't home it will be held at a distribution center for you to go pick up.

Otherwise, yes, packages will just be left wherever in front of your door.

<comment><USER4> FedEx has partnered with lots of pharmacies and bodegas around the city who can ostensibly receive your packages. The problem is that these locations are allowed to decide that they just don't want to deal with any given package even if it's within the allowed size and weight requirements, and/or FedEx is allowed to decide they aren't going to bother actually delivering it and instead of just routing it to another nearby location or holding it at the distribution center, FedEx will instead just send it back to the sender. It's basically a scam that FedEx is running to make senders pay multiple times for shipping the same thing across the country.

I recently had to stake out a Walgreens and wait for the driver to show up to actually get a package before it was returned to the sender.

<comment><USER5> Walgreens did this to me, too. My package legally contained alcohol, with the right label, and they refused to accept it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> According to [0], there are 1.5m deliveries per day, so the 90k number here gives us a 6% failure rate. They cite 15% in the article [1], which is insane. I guess this goes to the security facade most buildings have, where saying "UPS" at the buzzer gets you near-unlimited access.

[0] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- deliv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- delivery.html)

[1] (pdf) [https://depts.washington.edu/sctlctr/sites/default/files/SCT...](https://depts.washington.edu/sctlctr/sites/default/files/SCTL_Muni_Tower_Test_Report_V4.pdf)

<comment><USER3> If it's 6% in NY, and averaging 15% elsewhere, there must be places where getting a package delivered is pretty high risk.

<comment><USER7> Lived near Yale for a little while. It is difficult to believe the theft rate in my area was <80%. We firmly gave up on deliveries to the home, and had to warn friends and relatives not to send us anything. Nearly everything got grabbed. It was beyond ridiculous.

I hear that area has improved now, but certainly back then...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Walking through Manhattan this Summer, I once saw several delivery people sorting dozens of Amazon packages directly on the sidewalk. I could not believe my eyes.

<comment><USER9> This is an every day sight here, especially during the holiday season. It's not uncommon to see entire carts stacked full of packages left unattended on the sidewalk as the employee is delivering packages inside a building.

<comment><USER10> Another NYTimes article on this phenomenon

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- deliv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- delivery.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Amazon lockers aren't even a perfect fix, received an opened and empty package the other day. Stolen by the driver or someone hacked the lockers.

<comment><USER12> How easily are Amazon Lockers hacked? I've not heard about that before.

<comment><USER11> No idea, the most plausible explanation is that the driver stole the item and left the empty envelope. Although what they thought they could do with replacement foam pads for a particular set of headphones I don't know.

But I'm sure it's possible to lockpick the door or do something else to the locker, as it was an outside 24/7 one. fairly unlikely though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I find it alarming that our policing (in)abilities are hurting the institutions that we trust, that have traditionally made us different from the less developed world (such as mailing something in Brazil)

<comment><USER14> Have you looked at America's infrastructure lately? It's really no better than the "less developed world".

<comment><USER15> Oh, I dunno. Major freeways are generally well-paved and easy to drive on at 70-80mph, pipes reliably deliver water which is usually safe to drink in most areas, blackouts/brownouts are very uncommon outside of extreme weather events, and there's been a lot of visible investment in stuff like solar/wind power recently. We even have reasonably-maintained primitive road networks running through most of the nation's forests and wilderness areas.

Sure there are some dim spots, like the huge number of bridges that badly need renovation and the frequent need to replace old lead pipes, but it's fairly uncommon to notice the infrastructure in most states. And that's pretty high praise for infrastructure.

IMO there are plenty of good arguments that our social institutions are in a worse state than most other nations, but our physical infrastructure doesn't seem to be going to ruin just yet.

<comment><USER14> Obviously you've never driven on the roads in the nation's capital.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Like a lot of apartment buildings in NYC, in my building, packages are left in the hallway instead the key-pad locked front door. There were some problems in the past with packages getting stolen, but not recently. However, there are a few packages that have been siting there for a few months that are at the wrong address. None of the carriers seem to give a shit to pick them up, even when people mark that they are at the wrong address.

<comment><USER17> Yeah I had more packages stolen when I lived in Cupertino than NYC.

But I've had quite a few packages delivered to the wrong address and our lobby constantly has wrong deliveries of both USPS mail and packages. Usually the Ave/Street are mixed up or off-by-one or a digit in the street number is different from ours.

We once had a huge box of pet food from China mostly blocking our main egress for a week until we found the person it was supposed to go to.

It's a nuisance that the city should fix.

<comment><USER14> >Usually the Ave/Street are mixed up

There should be a federal law against this kind of stupidity. It's unbelievable that many towns and cities actually thought it'd be a good idea to have two different streets with the exact same name, but one is an "Avenue" and one is a "street". I have a relative who lives on a "Second Ave" and has had all kinds of problems with mail because there's another address in that same small town with the same house number, but on "Second Street", and the person there is not cooperative when mis-addressed mail goes there.

<comment><USER18> Ok how do you solve the problem of annexing where two towns might have both been maintaining unique street names within their own systems but have overlap when they merge. Towns grow like that all the time.

<comment><USER14> Solution 1: keep the town names separate (this means separate post offices and zip codes). Solution 2: change the street names.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I have used FedEx for my business only 5 times this year in NYC to have important packages delivered (our vendors weren't flexible in these instances). 3 out of those 5 times, the driver slapped a "sorry we missed you sticker" and just left, or they delivered it to the wrong address (the next street over). The drivers are pretty careless and simply don't care enough. I even get deliveries that are clearly not the right address, yet they end up on my building doorstep. FedEx is simply frustrating to deal with.

Their "investigations" will reveal one story, but my security camera reveals another, and even management doesn't care that my building's deliveries are never made because the drivers just slap the sticker and move on.

<comment><USER20> The best part is that, at least in my FedEx delivery area, the drivers "own" the route. So, if you file a complaint about them, they typically just make your experience more frustrating out of spite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> So far this week I've had 2 packages left right in front of my front door ( actually blocking it ) with full visibility from the street with no knock or doorbell ring ( I work from home and my office is right next to the front door ). One package left right in front of my front door ( actually blocking it ) with a light knock on the door. Two packages delivered to my neighbors house 2 doors down the street ( thanks USPS )... it's no wonder packages disappear daily, I think either the delivery drivers are co-conspiritors with the actual package thieves, or these services are hiring/using people actually unfit to do the job... I mean in the USPS case, both packages were clearly marked with my address... it's a number, how do you get that wrong?

</comment><comment><USER22> I live in the suburbs and have long thought about building a small package shed in the front of my house. I use Amazon for most of my packages and was thinking about getting Amazon's smart lock and putting it on this shed.

<comment><USER23> There have been a couple startups that have attempted something similar with large cooler sized boxes and shared keycodes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> >Around the country, more than 1.7 million packages are stolen or go missing every day — adding up to more than $25 million in lost goods and services, according to an analysis for The Times by José Holguín-Veras, an engineering professor and director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Center of Excellence for Sustainable Urban Freight Systems.

1) the value of goods seems off. How can the average package only be 15 bucks? ( I wonder if they are keeping the costs down to deter people from stealing 2) What the heck is "Sustainable Urban Freight Systems?"

>Gabriel Cepeda, 23, came up with the idea for a start-up company built around collecting packages, called Pickups Technologies, after his own Amazon order of computer hard drives was stolen last year outside of his parents' home in New Jersey. He spent hours on the phone trying to get his order replaced. "It was bad enough to motivate me to brainstorm," he said.Now Mr. Cepeda's company connects online shoppers with a network of about 30 residents in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg who will accept packages at their homes at all hours, for fees ranging from $4.99 for a single delivery, to $9.99 for a monthly service. The company plans to expand to more neighborhoods.

Decent idea, but the liability has to be insane. I think he would need to grow rather large in order to cover insurance costs if God forbid a few of these people decided to sue if something valuable were damaged/stolen.

It literally sounds like finding people who are not working ( retired, elderly, stay at home, disabled, etc, ) who are home at x time per day. Sounds like a crazy optimization problem.

>In New York, the police do not break out stolen packages into a separate category. Instead, these cases generally fall under grand larceny if an item is valued at more than $1,000, or petit larceny if valued at less.

With all that budget, why cannot they keep statistics on package theft? Seems like the city is behind the times.

<comment><USER25> I checked my Amazon orders for the past two months: ~60% of the packages are $10 or less. However, there are a bunch of them that are $50+, and a few expensive packages can compensate for a large number of smaller ones.

If my buying pattern is typical for your average Prime user, $15 per package isn't completely outrageous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Does NYC not have parcel shops?

<comment><USER27> We do, but probably not with 90k capacity across the city

<comment><USER28> The capacity of parcel shops seems to be a lot more than 90k based on my unsubstantiated guesswork; more likely things aren't bad enough to merit a change [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- deliv...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/nyregion/nyc-amazon- delivery.html) say 1.5M total deliveries per day. This means 6% of packages are stolen. So 94% of the time, it works, and that's good enough for most. What can be done?

<comment><USER29> > What can be done?

Explosive decoy packages.

<comment><USER30> Just in case you haven't seen it yet...

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> $10-100M theft per year? Seems obvious to install drop boxes....

</comment><comment><USER32> I suppose we figured out where all those npm packages are coming from then...

;)

</comment><comment><USER33> I live in a much smaller city (~50k) in the US. The post office will leave anything, anywhere. Once in a while I need to go downtown to the main post office to pick stuff up. Takes them forever to find my packages, and there's always a big line. Terrible.

UPS/FedEx packages that need a signature are a pain, you can't do anything until they try to deliver at least once. Then you have to drive to the hub which is either by the airport or the next town over and pick it up, their hours suck.

FedEx lets you re-route your package to the local Walgreens, which I really find useful.

<comment><USER18> Sign up for MyChoice or the Fedex equivalent, they're free for basic stuff like this. If you really want to you can prerelease a package but it essentially indemnifies the company from any delivery problem unless you have proof it never made it to your door step. You can also redirect them to a store or partner location before they attempt delivery at all through UPS's service and I think Fedex has a similar option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> How do they handle this in East Asian cities, where densities and package volumes seem like they ought to be just as high?

<comment> et-al In Taiwan and Japan, they'll leave packages at the convenience store (konbini). Also, people are more respectful of others in those two countries, so property crime isn't as high as most American cities anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Well there was this thing called 'BufferBox' in Canada and a similar thing in the US, essentially semi-private boxes into which mail could be placed with a temp. combo.

The UW grads that sold it to Google were borderline arrogant about it, boldly assumptive about how they were going to change how packages were delivered in Canada. That was 10 years ago and of course nothing has happened.

I suggest there are some fairly simple technological solutions along those lines (i.e. a series of larger boxes in each building with a temp code) that could really work, but that the USPS etc. are fundamentally not interested in doing anything innovative. Private entities just aren't positioned to do this, as the pervasive nature of 'mail' is something that lends to socialised/government action.

I really wish UPS/FedEx/Amazon would get together in this because collectively they have enough power to lobby/influence enough cities to create a critical mass for this, and they have the incentive and operational capabilities to do it.

Making boxes available for purchase for homes, having everything standardised etc. and the legal issues sorted out around it would be so beneficial.

It's one area where we hardly need 'new tech' rather some 'operational innovation' at scale.

</comment><comment><USER36> This sounds like a massive class action lawsuit waiting to happen. I wonder who would be hit first, the shippers or the city? Surely they are both at fault.

</comment><comment><USER37> nyc is such a *hit show

</comment><comment><USER38> If you can't be bothered to at least shop in your neighborhood stores, could you at least be bothered to sign for your packages at the post? It's just the cost of living in civilised society: either you interact with the store clerk or the postman. Choose.

<comment><USER14> In a truly civilized society, people don't generally steal things from each other.

If theft is a big problem in your society, then it isn't really that civilized.

<comment><USER39> which is a sad statement on the what the US has become. Just look at the looting that comes during disasters here.

This is a cultural issue that needs correction starting in schools where it gets repeated day and day out to respect others and the property of others. Then top this off with not accepting politicians who incite negative behavior by telling people their situation was caused by others whose gains were unfairly acquired. It is far easier for people to reason theft if someone in authority gives them that scenario, that people who have more than them probably did it unfairly and it is not just that they lack the same.

<comment><USER40> > Then top this off with not accepting politicians who incite negative > behavior by telling people their situation was caused by others whose gains > were unfairly acquired.

Maybe you meant it exactly this way, but I can't tell if you were referring to Democrats or Republicans, because both have the same message about different groups.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Pinterest to get ads - <AUTHOR> http://blog.pinterest.com/post/61688351103/planning-for-the-future

<comment><USER2> Pinterest's monetization will do great. Seriously, Pinterest could and should IPO in coming years.

I'm bullish on Pinterest not only because my wife and I use Pinterest for everything from planning our wedding to finding outfits and meals, but because I market on Pinterest for a few clients all day long. It consistently brings in more traffic than other sources when you do it right, even for clients that are ranked in the top 5 in high-traffic Google SERPs.

The crazy thing about Pinterest traffic is that it never dies off. If you get a bunch of repins today, traffic will be showing up from those pins months later; it's kind of absurd, and very unlike Adsense or other discovery advertising platforms in that way.

The difficult aspect for Pinterest will be getting the worth of Pinterest ads down to a final cost per action since it is such a long wait before you see how much each pin is truly worth. And that really is the goal for any advertiser: If I know this click will bring me $2 I'll pay up to $1.99 for it. A lot of Pinterest users are in hardcore discovery mode, and as such Pinterest traffic doesn't convert as well as search traffic immediately, but in the long run it always seems to be worth it.

<comment><USER3> Your first sentence is ambiguous. I'm still not entirely sure you mean it in the startup world usage of "killing it" \- i.e. doing really well (though I think you do), or the more mainstream usage of "destroy it."

<comment><USER4> While I agree that the usage is unclear, "killing it" as "doing really well" is very mainstream.

It still means "destroy it", but "it"="the competition/obstacles".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pinterest, I'm not a direct user, but my wife is, and it's had a better impact on my life, even indirectly, than any of the other social networks. It's our cookbook, craftbook, and misc idea book. I am willing to give you money. Probably far more than you'll get from serving us ads.

Are you willing to take it?

<comment><USER6> I'm in a similar situation. I'd much prefer a subscription model to ads.

Or at the very least, a subscription with the single benefit of "no ads."

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think Pinterest is basically all ads already. Now they will just get money for them.

<comment><USER8> this is why they had to squash affiliate links.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pinterest's users are mostly women. Women click on ads far more often than men do. Combine that with the added appeal of pictures and you realize that the efficiency of ads on Pinterest could dwarf anything offered by Adsense and the likes.

Bottom line, for the next couple of years there are some serious bucks to be made from ads on Pinterest. After that, spam will take over.

<comment><USER10> _> Women click on ads far more often than men do._

Is this actually true?

<comment><USER11> I've also heard that women purchase over 85% of all goods sold in the USA. Let that sink in for a minute!

[http://www.inc.com/articles/2003/01/25019.html](http://www.inc.com/articles/2003/01/25019.html)

<comment><USER12> Your source is over 10 years old. I wonder how things have changed since then with the improvement of online shopping.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Pinterest should sell internal data on which items get pinned the most from which retailer in which time period.

IE: This necklace got pinned the most from Macys.com during the week before Valentine's Day. I'm sure JCPenny, BlueNile etc would find that data useful.

<comment><USER2> This info is already available for free (pinterest.com/source/yoursite.com then click on metrics). They would have to turn it off first.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Every social media site is turning into a customized personal advertising machine.

Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter...now Pinterest.

<comment><USER15> What's your idea on monetizing these websites?

<comment><USER16> Unless you can convince people to pay for your service, you can either openly use them as advertising platforms or you can be sneaky and sell your data to advertisers behind the scenes.

<comment><USER14> Haha, read my mind! Even if you sell behind the scenes, a profit focused company can't really say no to advertising.

<comment><USER17> "profit focused company" lol nice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Obiously this was going to happen sooner or later... can they make it work or will they flounder? TBD

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm happy for Pinterest to skimlink my pins. There's no option for me to give them that permission.

I guess they're nervous after the earlier backlash against skimlinking?

</comment><comment><USER20> Anyone in here know who I can talk to to join as an early advertiser? I am a co-founder at a beauty startup. We wanna give Pintrest our money. - email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER21> I have always wondered, how do they generate revenue now? Or do they not?

<comment><USER22> They mostly don't. I recall they used to make some money off of affiliate links on products people posted. They abandoned it for various reasons. They've survived off of VC money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I love the very first comment:

AJay Hubbard: \- I'll allow it

</comment><comment><USER24> Why the hell is this news? Srsly guis.

They were going to become an advertising machine eventually. I think they would have been better off turning all those amazon links into referral links.

<comment><USER25> Fun fact: new thing, supposed by some, still news. "Apple brought out a new iPhone? How is that news? We knew it was going to happen!"</comment></comment>


Connected cities and unintended consequences - <AUTHOR> http://us12.campaign-archive2.com/?u=475676e92306092c075e1fbd5&id=1e0875935d&e=7ef49902bf <comment><AUTHOR> It sounds to me like people were mostly mad because they got caught rather than because they were against the data collection on principle.

I like the idea of tracking noise pollution - and I think it should affect property values (and probably does even when it isn't tracked - e.g. places next to a train are usually cheaper)</comment>


Ask HN: What's the best way to integrate a social layer to my app? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>I'm willing to add a social layer to my app : Kwit, which help people to quit smoking with use of gamification and was wondering which model would be the best : - forum - chat - question based (like stack overflow) - rooms - ? <comment><USER2> I think most people crave community and especially for something like kicking a tenacious habit, some social support could be really helpful. Of those options, probably a very simple forum would be best.

Chat is too dependent on having a critical mass of people online at the same time. (For a niche site I visit occasionally, online-go.com, there are several hundreds of thousands of users but it's not unusual to see only 30 or so in the chat at any given moment, and of those, only two or three will be active.)

Q&A has to have some kind of purpose behind it. SO became a hub for programmers and people in related fields who had to solve specific problems on a regular basis, often the same problems over and over. It kind of suffers as a community support thing and shines as a repository of knowledge.

"Rooms" are just a partitioning of your chat or forum, and probably shouldn't happen before they become necessary.

But be prepared to spend a significant amount of effort on whatever social layer you build. Whenever a bunch of people start to interact, there will be differences of opinion and then disagreements, malicious people, well-meaning but disruptive people -- handling all that can be a huge energy sink.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this complete answer, I must say that I agree with your points. Have you some example of well-done forum on mobile apps ?

<comment><USER2> I don't, sorry.

Maybe you'll build a good one. :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe a concept of badges that you unlock at various stages of your quitting process might make it interesting and once user completes the process can share that final stage!! So, in a nutshell, basic forum to post messages and a way to get motivation for the user should work!

</comment><comment><USER4> How about a photo stream w/ comments where users post 'what I'm doing instead of smoking'?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea ! Maybe a complement of the more "forum oriented" thread</comment></comment>


How do engineers working in open space without getting distracted? - <AUTHOR>

How do coders/engineers working in co-working/open space without getting distracted (mainly) by people/co-workers?<p>I am serious because it is now a big problem for us since our space was originally designed to be as open as possible. Thanks~ <comment><USER2> Noise cancelling headphones is something a lot of people use.

Angle your desk/screen away from other people's eyelines or things that distract you. One place I worked I was right in front of the kitchen area and that was very distracting. I moved towards a window and that was better because the seagulls didn't tend to distract me.

Another thing I love is a standing desk. I can work in my busy kitchen at home and grab enough focus while a million things are buzzing standing up at a laptop. Don't know when, but realized that and now I prefer to have a dual standing/non-standing desk in open offices as well.

Naturally, that can be a bit awkward in an open space so you have to make sure you're not then distracting everyone else.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!</comment></comment>


Nokia, ARM, Enea craft new TCP/IP stack for the cloud - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/08/nokia_arm_enea_craft_tcpip_stack_for_the_cloud/ <comment><USER2> There's a link to the actual project in the article; the technical overview page gives a reasonable summary of the components [1]. Looks like it relies on another, lower level API, called OpenDataPlane [2].

[1] [http://www.openfastpath.org/index.php/service/technicaloverv...](http://www.openfastpath.org/index.php/service/technicaloverview/)

[2] [http://www.opendataplane.org/about/](http://www.opendataplane.org/about/)

</comment><comment><USER3> _> They say the stack is optimised for OpenDataPlane (ODP) programming interfaces. This will let OpenFastPath take advantage of acceleration in systems-on-a-chip that support ODP, and make the protocol programmable via the ODP environment._

Are those SoCs optimised for line rate packet processing / DPI?

<comment><USER4> There are some, stuff like the Freescale LS2085A, Cavium ARM chips, etc. They have networking / ODP offload capabilities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hmm. Shouldn't the data packets arrive in kernel space at the beginning (in the HW driver, or if the driver is implemented in userspace, the PCIe-bus driver in the kernel) - thus making at least one context switch to userspace (with copying the packet, possibly) neccessary?

A full-kernel TCP/IP stack should not need to leave kernelspace or copy stuff around, except when passing control to the userland application.

<comment><USER6> The idea is to allow user space direct access to the necessary buffers, so there's no user/system copying or context switching.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Andrew Tenenbaum, thou art avenged!

Seeing a lot of this these days.

<comment><USER8> He is already avenged, as the majority of real time OS and embedded systems use micro-kernels.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does "for the cloud" even mean? Previous TCP/IP stacks were not able to connect to someone else's computer?

<comment><USER10> "Better suited for the cloud" would probably be better. It looks like it's meant to work with OpenDataPlane. In general, it's another piece in the puzzle of providing heterogenous compute resources without a reliance on a specific kernel or operating system.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good forum for hobbyish ARM(industrial) design discussions and advice? - <AUTHOR>

Have some embedded, board level integration experience, nothing really - getting simple boards masked for low density shit. Broadly interested in learning about the next level in ARM board level design (call it cubbie board esque). But I've zero luck finding such a place - it's either raspi/arduino folks (not a diss), folks mostly repurposing android mobile or net tops for software, or the people who are really on the supply side - either they are talking about building the newest open mobile designs with the cheapest bom in chinese i can only half follow, or they are the real deal talking about modular soc components and electronic interface issues with off soc component count vs oem ability to implement. And high cost IP.
I am hoping to for something in english (ha! I'll survive) or just anything that might be suitable.  An HN sorta thing where people often have a clue would rock, but the big missing piece is picking soc->minimal reference board revisions->build or source some custom stuff to give the arm some supervoisor like qualities on the x86.
To balance a zero content post, I provide my rough plan to amuse to reader. Basicially I want to combine a SFF server (think HP microserver or so slash less for mini. Most are essentially low end x76 roll your own nas that make do with 150w and 4 sata bays, 2 dimms and 1 eth.
I want to see what I can do if I meld that kind of platform together with a few low poer arm linux servers all in one case. I imagine the arm sections being able to utilize some kind of pci/pci or similar bridge as well as monitoring, reset, ipkvm etc that could leave them as super programmable debuggers more or less, that could always easily act as low power satndins for much of the traffic that wakes up your typical low use server - ntp, ping, mild file serving, ldap, etc. Anything harder and they could provide a superior holding pattern as the main box woke up from deep sleep. <comment><USER2> Actually, the idea of coupling together a ARM SoC, a Ethernet switch, a USB audio interface and a bit of power-monitoring circuitry (and some relais) to make a dead-cheap desktop remote management solution has hit me too. Maybe even add a battery to provide a buffer against +5VSB outages (due to "real" power out); after all, a tiny ARM doesn't suck really much power.

But I'm a software guy, not a hardware developer - I can get a basic circuit board done, but no BGA or SMD mounted stuff...

I think the market for such a card - especially if built in half-height to fit into existing servers - is very very great. Wake on LAN just isn't enough for managing thousands of desktop computers, and "true" IPKVM systems come at a hundreds-of-$ price tag, and they're an external box nonetheless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, glad to hear from a like minded soul. It's true they'd likely make quite good ipkvms as long as you're OK with having CVE's pop on your ipkvm gear. I guess they probably already do.

I think even just embracing it as an ipkvm++ opens up a lot of potential additions to the current approach. There's no reason why you wouldn't want to build in remote power and triggers to go into S3/S4 powersave. There are still plenty of shops that prevent sleep to make maintenance easier. And It'd be super easy to hook a usb port up as a usb client and software fake whatever dvdrom you happened to want to boot.

If you ever feel like shooting the shit, i'd be down to hear what parts of it does it for you or whatever else was on your mind. I have the same nick on github.

<comment><USER2> Actually all of the bigger SoC families bring USB gadget support with them... the Linux kernel has at least support for USB mass storage and networking (of course, networking is useless, because of low speed) - so it should be possible indeed to internally connect the USB jumpers to the ipkvm board to provide HID and storage.

The only thing is now to get a cheap way to adapt VGA (or better yet, DVI) to an SoC. Video encode is supplied with the chips, the real difficulty will be getting the signals to the CPU, though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe there are some guys at reddir: /r/electronics or /r/ece that do high density pcb's and arm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! I really appreciate the response. While they're probably not the spot, I'm pretty sure it's a way batter place to ask the same question. Cheers,</comment></comment>


Show HN: PySceneDetect – Video Scene Cut/Break Detection and Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://pyscenedetect.readthedocs.org <comment><AUTHOR> For the curious, here's a link to the Github repo:

[https://github.com/Breakthrough/PySceneDetect/](https://github.com/Breakthrough/PySceneDetect/)

Questions/comments/feedback are very welcome, and feel free to submit any issues or bug reports to the issue tracker on Github.</comment>


When intuition and math probably look wrong - <AUTHOR> http://sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/60598/title/When_intuition_and_math_probably_look_wrong

<comment><USER2> I know Gary, the person who presented this, and I was there when it happened. He fully intended this to ignite the argument it has.

Firstly, as presented it is clearly ambiguous. It is intended to be ambiguous, but in such a way that people who are familiar with the original version will get suckered into believing that it's well formed.

Secondly, if presented precisely, the answer usually given is either 13/27 or 1/2, depending on which version.

Finally, this is like the Monty Hall problem all over again. There are people arguing vehemently and without listening at all, demonstrating clearly that they are excellent at missing the point.

In case you're wondering, here's one statement and answer.

Suppose on knock on people's doors and ask - Do you have exactly two children? If they answer no, I move on. If they answer yes I then ask - Is at least one of them a boy born on a Tuesday? If they say no, I move on.

If they look surprised and say "Yes," what is the probability that they have two boys?

Answer: 13/27.

Yes, it really is.

If you replace the second question with "Is at least one of them a boy with red hair, left-handed, plays piano, was born on Tuesday, and has a cracked left upper incisor" then if the answer is "Yes" then the probability of both children being boys is almost exactly 50%.

If, instead, you replace the second question with "Is at least one a boy" then the probability of two boys is 1/3.

Finally, suppose you see a parent that you know has two children in the park with a boy. Now the probability of two boys is 50%, because, assuming uniform probabilities, having two boys makes it more likely you see them with a boy.

tl;dr: It's hard, and depends precisely on the assumptions you make.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another riddle where the math is easy, but translating the riddle into math is hard. Which is to say, it's not really a math riddle at all. In fact, the riddle is complicated by the fact that it's posed as a riddle -- if you had to answer the question "in real life," you would probably know how you came about the information, so the problem would be straightforward.

</comment><comment><USER4> I had a math teacher that got mad when I used the word "intuitively". Probably because most people don't understand that when your intuition doesn't match the mathematical result you have to hit your intuition with a hammer until it does.

</comment><comment><USER5> Ok, I was about to rage about yet another article going on about the Two Children problem and getting it wrong by leaving out a whole host of children (i.e. children in families of more or less than two children). Then it surprised me by not only acknowledging it, but acknowledging that the the 50% answer is correct when we are selecting from an arbitrary family (as the original problem is usually presented).

It then goes on to acknowledge that the 33% answer would be correct if we specifically choose a two child family that fits the parameters of the problem beforehand.

It's all about why the information was selected.

<comment><USER6> > _But since the boy could be either the younger or the older child, the > analysis is more subtle. Devlin started by listing the children's sexes in > the order of their birth_

Personally, when I read that I could spot the error. For lazy people (tl;dr types) ... order doesn't matter as you're not given any info about that order.

So given 2 children, there are only 3 possibilities ...

      boy, boy
      girl, girl
      boy, girl

     So if you're told one of them is a boy ...

      boy, girl
      boy, boy

And that's it ... a 50% probability that both children are boys.

<comment><USER2> Actually, I'm going to stop now: <http://xkcd.com/386/>

It's pretty clear I won't convince you.

Let me leave you with these questions:

If I toss two coins until at least one shows a Head, what's the probability that both are Heads?

If I roll two dice until at least one shows a 6, what's the probability that both are 6's?

If I spin two roulette wheels until at least one shows a Red-23, what's the probability that both are red?

Are you sure?

<comment><USER6> It's been fun :-)

> _If I toss two coins until at least one shows a Head, what's the probability > that both are Heads?_

I answered in my last reply ...

      P(head_a AND head_b | head_b) = 1/3

The problem is that head_a and head_b are independent events, and that P(head_a) = 1 (you made sure of that).

       P(head_a AND head_b | head_a) =
       P(head_a AND head_b) / P(head_a) =
       P(head_a AND head_b) =
       P(head_a) = 1/2

QED :)

<comment><USER2> I have no idea what problem you think you're solving, but it's not the one I posed. I never said a specific coin was heads, I just said at least one of them was heads.

Given that I make money on these sorts of questions (doing it for real in a semi-military context where it's important to be right, and you get tested against reality) I feel pretty confident that I know what I'm talking about. You're clearly talking about something completely different, and I really don't understand what you're saying.

And that's the last I'll say.

<comment><USER6> Look, don't take this the wrong way ... probabilities are easy to get wrong ... I'm only having this conversation with you because my math skills are rusty.

> _I never said a specific coin was heads_

OK, so let's make it mathematically correct (let's say we're painting them) ... making an effort here :)

      P( blue_head AND red_head | blue_head OR red_head)
      P(blue_head OR red_head) = 1
          you said that you're retrying until this happens
          normally this would be 3/4

Making the problem ...

      P( blue AND red | blue OR red)
      = P( blue OR red | blue AND red ) * P( blue AND red ) / P(blue OR red)
          (applied bayes)
      = 1 * P(blue) * P(red) / 1

But ...

       P(blue OR red) = P(blue) + P(red) - P(blue) * P(red) = 1 =>
       P(blue) * P(red) = 1 - P(blue) - P(red) = 1 - 1/4 - 1/4 = 1/2

Show me the error.

[EDITED] ... modified the stuff as I've totally fucked up the previous version :) ... as I said, I'm rusty

<comment><USER7> multiplication and addition are not the same thing 1/4 * 1/4 = 1/16

<comment><USER6> Oh shit ... I'm tired :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> isn't this the same kind of "intuitive" reasoning that fails at simpson's paradox? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpsons_paradox>

conditioning upon more events can lead to a higher probability. p(boy = 2 | boy >= 1) < p(boy = 2 | boy >= 1, tuesday) (or more precisely, conditioning upon more events can yield a distribution with less entropy)

<comment><USER6> You know, the problem with that conditional probability is that the sex of the second child is in no way conditioned by the sex of the first child, so ...

      p(boy = 2 | boy >= 1) = p(any child = boy)

And this was the original problem that led them to the 33% probability.

<comment><USER8> in the sample space i was intending, that would not be the case. i was imagining boy as a random variable that counts instances in an order tuple of genders (the underlying sample space).

you're right, without this explicit construction, it's problematic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is why I'm glad I was a mathematics major :)

</comment><comment><USER10> The answer given is not even wrong.

The statement "I have two children, one of whom is a son born on a Tuesday" is semantically ambiguous. It can mean (1) "I have two children, and the quantity of them who are males born on a Tuesday is exactly one", (2) "I have two children, at least one of whom is a male born on a Tuesday", or even (3) "I have two children, and the maximum quantity of males born on the same Tuesday is one".

<comment><USER11> I agree with you that it's not even wrong, but I disagree with your reasoning. I think (2) is the natural intended meaning of the question.

The problem I have is attempting to assign a probability to something that isn't reasonably known to be based on randomness. Did the questioner arrive at this statement by picking an arbitrary child and then declaring his gender and day of birth? Or did he pick his favorite child and declare his gender and day of birth? Would he have used this same question if they had both been born on Tuesday, or would have have picked a different distinguishing feature?</comment></comment>


List of important publications in philosophy - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_publications_in_philosophy <comment><USER2> It is amusing to see them try to shoehorn "Continental" works into "Analytic" categories. The idea, for instance, that _Capitalism and Schizophrenia_ is a text about ethics in the same vein as _After Virtue_ borders on the absurd.

</comment><comment><USER3> No mention of Peter Singer?

Agree or disagree with his views, _Animal Liberation_ is an important philosophical work due to its impact on contemporary culture.

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia's philosophy sections are... okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This doesn't have any member of the Frankfurt School...

Bonus points for also having no Derrida, Althusser, Fichte, Bergson or Simmel. (Apart from others, like Schleiermacher, Schlegel etc.)

</comment><comment><USER6> This list seems to exemplify Alfred Whitehead's statement that "the safest general characterization of the philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." (With many of those footnotes by Aristotle.)

<comment><USER7> > is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato

It depends, really. As a Democritus fanboy I always take "offense" when hearing similar remarks, and I usually try (and fail) to make my point by offering a witty remark which might sound like Hobbes or Epicurus might have said it.

On a more serious note, this list is really bogus when it comes to "ancient Philosophy" because it ignores all the pre-Socratics. Ok, maybe some Sophists were not the most trust-worthy bunch of them all, but you cannot really omit Heraclitus or Democritus himself.

<comment><USER8> I completely agree on the pre-Socratic point. Where's my man Parmenides? But in fairness, many pre-Socratic works are so fragmentary that it's difficult to even consider them works, nevermind philosophical works. Thus they typically fall under the purview of Classics departments. It's unfortunate that they're not taught more broadly and in a context that's more appropriate to their subject, but Classicists are probably the best equipped to handle these authors, given how time has present them to us.

<comment><USER9> I'm not entirely sure about this, but don't most of what we know about pre- Socratic philosophers come from secondary texts reporting on these philosophers' views? If so, then it will be difficult to consider these texts that have informed us about these authors as philosophical texts themselves.

<comment><USER10> For the most part, yes. Some fragments survived, but the majority of what we know about the pre-Socratics has been filtered through later doxographical works. While it certainly isn't optimal, together there's certainly enough of an understanding of the majority of the pre-Socratics to discuss them in a philosophical context without relegating them to Classics departments. Particularly given their relation to later thinkers. If you're interested, this article is an interesting place to start:

[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxography- ancient/](http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/doxography-ancient/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Once you pick out something, head over the Standford's Philosophy department to read more: [http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html](http://plato.stanford.edu/contents.html)

<comment><USER12> Plato is an amazing resource.

Its articles strike the perfect balance between intellectual rigour and general accessibility. It combines the traditional encyclopedic format with the authorship of academic experts. And if that wasn't enticing enough, the articles are published for free and list the author's contact information at the bottom.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You're all right: this is a terrible article where a main descriptor is by definition subjective (important: to whom, for what, and for what reasons?). But why is it hacker news?

While we're at it, yes it needs a continental section, among many other improvements. This is a problem with tree taxonomy in fields of ideas. Anyone really feel like they really care about fixing this? Is that why someone posted it here?

</comment><comment><USER14> The irony: a page about philosophy displaying unabashed human subjectivity. Feminist philosophy has one entry, wonder why

<comment><USER15> You think there is a second article on feminist philosophy that is more notable than the average article on this short list?

<comment> alex-g "A Vindication of the Rights of Women" by Mary Wollstonecraft is already listed under "modern philosophy", as is "The Subjection of Women" by Mill, and Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion" is under "bioethics".

I would think that such works as "A Cyborg Manifesto" by Donna Haraway, "Anarchism" by Emma Goldman, or "Gyn/Ecology" by Mary Daly are at least as worthy of being listed here as "The Book of Five Rings" or Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy".

<comment><USER15> > ...are at least as worthy of being listed here as "The Book of Five Rings" > or Russell's "The Problems of Philosophy".

I said "average article" precisely because I didn't want people to just cherry pick a weak entry here and there. Any list of the top 100 whatever will be open to dispute. Saying "I think X was unfairly excluded because it's clearly more important than entry 97" is not good evidence of bias.

"A defense of abortion" is moral philosophy. If you classify it as feminism, the term is overly broad (and, of course, only weakens the case for bias).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The "Eastern Philosophy" section is a bad joke.</comment>


African Innovators - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/africa-innovators/welcome-to-the-quartz-africa-innovators-summit/ <comment><USER2> It might be just me, but this article doesn't do the trick for me.

The trick: "anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity".

It just lists people and their accomplishments. Nothing about how they accomplished cool stuff. No analysis why stuff they did is meaninful.

You could ofcourse follow the links to find out what they have really done. Frontpage of wikipedia let's you do that to cool people too.

</comment><comment><USER3> There may be interesting content here, but the website is so badly designed and difficult to use, so no-one will ever use it.

<comment><USER4> I thought it was unconventionally good-looking and pleasant to use.

<comment><USER5> At least on mobile, it was a delight to use. No scroll hijacking, and a different but nice way of displaying portraits of the people in the article.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'll have whatever that web designer was high on.</comment>


FBI pushes for 2 year ISP data retention of user browsing - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-9926803-38.html

<comment><USER2> This is from 2008?

</comment><comment><USER3> Why don't they exercise more competence with the powers they currently have, before asking for more? (For example, investigate and arrest a some of the crooks whose suspect activities derailed the U.S. economy.)

I'm sorry if this comment seems off topic, but I feel it's in line with some overarching observations. Law enforcement is hardly currently powerless. Where they fail is not in legal powers, but in execution and focus. The latter particularly suffers, further, when career timeframe work is continually jerked around and undermined by partisan politics.</comment>


Website that gives users insight to ads targeted to them? - <AUTHOR>

Does anybody know of any website that gives users insight to what kind of ads are being targeted to them? <comment><USER2> There's [https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/](https://www.google.com/ads/preferences/)</comment>


Versioning, Licensing, and Sketch 4.0 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sketchapp.com/versioning-licensing-and-sketch-4-0-8ad98783e9ba <comment> j-pb Sketch is probably the most bug-ridden piece of software I've ever used that still continues to grow and thrive. The first time I've tried it you couldn't set the size of shapes explicitly, and last time I tried it the undo-redo functionality was broken. I wonder if it's gotten better by now.

I blame the blindingly beautiful UX and website.</comment>


Calacanis: Collapsing Economy Will Kill 50%-80% Of Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/9/calacanis-collapsing-economy-will-kill-50-80-of-startups

<comment><USER8> As usual, the sensationalist title misses the important part of the argument: He's positing that 50-80% of _venture-backed_ start-ups will die before _making it to their next funding round or reaching profitability_. So, essentially, 50-80% of start-ups that require non-trivial amounts of money just to operate will possibly die before they would have otherwise.

On the other hand, if you have a real _business_ with _revenue_ and lacking _excessive costs_ I'm going to predict that you'll see a smaller bottom-line, but that's about it. Our company costs $3,000/mo to run, including living expenses for two people, and we technically have a staff as well -- we just pay them with kickbacks instead of ridiculous salaries.

Even given his actual prediction (which, again, the title fails to illustrate), I still think he's overreacting. VCs still have tons of investor money that they need to do _something_ with and given the fact that many previously "safe" investments are becoming unsafe, giving money to VCs actually, at least to me, starts to sound like a better bet than it did previously.

<comment><USER9> >> _He's positing that 50-80% of venture-backed start-ups will die before making it to their next funding round or reaching profitability._

I guess this is a semantic issue. But essentially, yes, he's defining sratups as those things dependant on investment of some kind.

>> _Our company costs $3,000/mo to run, including living expenses for two people, and we technically have a staff as well -- we just pay them with kickbacks instead of ridiculous salaries._

Is that an equilibrium? Without investment, exit or revenue increase in the mid-term future, are you still going to survive? Founders & employees living low in exchange for potential future earning are also investors. An they are also influenced by the same sort of things other investors are influenced by.

I'm not saying I agree with this piece, but would you admit that it might get difficult to hire someone with noodles & options if there hadn't been any exits in your vicinity for a while, little startups where going bust left & right, and a few big scares hit home (eg Facebook shuts down).

I agree with your basic premise. A business that makes more money then it spends is safer. If it's in the business of selling bread & butter, even better. But startups as a sector are less like that.

<comment><USER10> >> _"I'm not saying I agree with this piece, but would you admit that it might get difficult to hire someone with noodles & options if there hadn't been any exits in your vicinity for a while"_

If we chose to hire someone full-time we'd pay them an above market salary. Luckily, we probably won't need to do this for a while (at least a year).

>> _"Is that an equilibrium? Without investment, exit or revenue increase in the mid-term future, are you still going to survive?"_

It's only temporary as not only are we already profitable, but our sales & traffic are growing every day and we've been launched less than two months. We could last two years without revenue anyways (even though it doesn't apply).

The launching of concerts, improved crawler speed, SEOism (once Google updates their PRs) and some other non-public things we're working on should improve revenue & traffic significantly as well.

We're almost certainly not taking investment, and we're certainly not exiting anytime soon. We're going to issue dividends without balance sheet risk - <USER2> real companies do.

<comment><USER9> The idea I was trying to put forward is that employees taking a high stock/salary ratio & founders are investors. This is obvious on the theoretical level. But the point that I am making is that they are also subject to market 'whims.' In fact they constitute their own sort of a sub- market with it's own whims (as is the VC market, IPO market, etc).

A year or two of bad news & bad predictions could sour it. Employees & founders might start to favour corporate jobs.

Not saying it has to be drastic. VCs pulling purse strings a little tighter. Founders ready to bail a little earlier. Employees a little less willing to take stock. Angels preferring to take a year or two off. Most 'startups' would be affected by at least some of these.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This seems like most things Calacanis writes, there's about 3 lines of argument, and 200 lines of self-promotion. He manages to get Mahalo, Silicon Alley Insider, TechCrunch50 and his BA of Psychology into the piece. But my favorite part is how the Holocaust is used as a leadin to his experiences in the first bubble.

<comment><USER12> It's 5000 word treatise on name dropping.

<comment><USER13> So it's a typical arts/humanities paper. His GPA must be through the roof!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Add that to the 50%-80% that die of natural causes and we'll end up with a negative number of startups!!!!!11!! There'll be a startup void and we'll all be sucked in. This is terrible.

Or am I over-reacting?

<comment><USER15> Financial Market's collapsing? - <USER7>

Built a machine large enough to destroy the world? - <USER7>

Yahoo still #1 site in the world according to Alexa? - <USER7>

Created a negative business void? - <USER7>

Cyndi Lauper staging a comeback? - <USER7>

These are truly the end times my friend... be afraid, be very afraid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> The 50-80% is a safe bet because the failure rate is at least that anyway. But it would be remarkable if startups started to die of a bad economy instead of the usual cause: not making something people want.

<comment><USER10> Exactly. I can think of scores of mediocre startups that took too much money and failed, but I can't think of any great startups that failed because they didn't take enough money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you're a pre-ipo startup selling pricy products to high end financial firms, then you're probably in deep doo doo now.

However this looks to me like a huge opportunity now for new startups to displace established firms, particularly for those offering essential features at lower prices. I'd be very worried if I were Microsoft.

Also I think startups offering online services and games could possibly see a huge boost in their subscriber base if the doom scenarios play out and we have large numbers of formerly employed people with a lot of time on their hands.

</comment><comment> patrickg-zill Oh no! 100% of those running startups today will be dead in 95 years!

Wall Street != Main Street != Startup Street

<comment><USER15> I think it might end up worse than that before this is done sir.

In 95 years I predict Yahoo! will stage a comeback and become the supreme Internet superpower (after several more buyout attempts from Microsoft), being led by Jerry Yang's head in a jar (think futurama)

I also predict Google will change their name to Google!!!1!lol! in an attempt to stay relevant.

At least one thing will remain consistent, the general stupidity in comments on YouTube. Perhaps that's what the world should base their financial economy on instead of the gold standard. It would seem a safer bet if you ask me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Might kill off 50-80% - might also foster a bunch of new ones.. Maybe even ones that have better fundamentals than the ones that died.

\- e.g. market analytics, risk reporting, compliance... Or startups that drive efficiency and productivity gains - companies will be desperate for these kinds of ideas in the coming 6-24 months.

</comment><comment><USER19> Businesses fail for one of 3 reasons:

1\. Bad idea 2\. Bad execution 3\. Outside forces.

Astonishing! what a revelation!

</comment><comment><USER20> Something ignored here is that lots of people will decide not to start startups because they become more risk averse in a downturn. That will kill many more, I suspect.

</comment><comment><USER21> LOL - reality kills 90% of all startups anyway.

</comment><comment><USER22> "This post has been deleted at the request of its author."

Was it really that bad? Calacanis can come across as a bit full of himself, but I've often gained an insight or two from his posts.

</comment><comment><USER23> 2001 saw the crash of a startup and technology bubble, so it was brutal for startup companies moreso than for the economy as a whole. Although the 2000s saw an increasing number of technology startups, this change was based on fundamentals rather than a bubble, per se.

The 2008 crash is worse than 2001 from a broad-based, whole-economy perspective, but since the bubble's been in real estate and finance, it's the people in those industries who are going to get hurt the worst, not startup entrepreneurs. It's going to be like 2001 for investment bankers and real estate agents, but not as bad for technology.

</comment><comment><USER24> he is absolutely correct, and it will take out more than just startups

we were told that reflating the dot-com bubble on the back of real estate as opposed to letting a recession clean out malinvestments would be bad. we didn't listen

we were told that low interest rates at the fed wouldn't help, just make commodities more expensive. we didn't listen

we were told that $100 billion in stimulus checks would not have a measurable impact on the economy. we didn't listen

now the kicker is that the $700 billion dollar near-nationalization of mortgage lending won't help either. in six months people will wonder how $700 billion could seemingly vanish with no positive results

people are really bent on this idea that things will be fine by mid 09

next to go is whatever is left of the dollar. at some point people will realize the dollar has become a black hole and they will evacuate it. i would suggest that the dollar is already dead, no fiscal restraint can save it now

US dollar gone by 2025 -> USA gone by 2025

<comment><USER25> > US dollar gone by 2025 -> USA gone by 2025

I was with you right till the end. The thing about property is that it doesn't go anywhere. It is all still here. While credit will be hard to get, it was similiarly hard to get in the past. Other countries are not in a perfect position to take the "superpower" status away from the United States. China is too closed (currency, politics, etc), Russia is turning back to communism, France can't keep there own people happy, Iran might start an arms race, the EuroZone has there own problems, etc. Considering everyone else, the US for the most part is pretty stable.

<comment><USER26> Well the dollar seriously could go, when the world stops trading oil in it. That's already starting to happening.

Also the chinese and other large sovereign banks don't need to necessarily dump their dollars. That would be shooting themselves in the foot. Kind of like Gates selling all his MS stock. All they need do is change the mix and slow down their purchases of dollars, replacing those with euros.

That's also happening, started several months ago now.

I'm not sure credit will be so hard to get. There's plenty of money around, just a lot less stupid money. For folks who are credit worthy there will be credit. This will be a new concept to many people.

<comment><USER15> > _This will be a new concept to many people._

Here's a little anecdote about your point as it is unbelievably true.

I have a cousin, she's not too bright. Her first credit card was maxed out at about $10,000 so she applied for a second credit card to help pay off the first. It didn't quite dawn on her that she might have to stop the luxury spending.

<comment><USER27> Not unlike eating a popsicle, reading this made my brain hurt. +1, but ouch.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Need feedback on my personal site - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone,<p>I was wondering if could get some feedback on my personal site and blog (http://www.augustinba.com) in terms of design, content, etc. I'm not really a strong writer so I decided to start blogging informally to get the hang of it. Let me know what you guys think and any constructive suggestions would be very appreciated. Thanks! <comment><USER2> I also agree that the transition between each stage is too slow, both vertically and horizontally.

A personal opinion. I would not have used a color scheme that sombre colors, I would recommend something that is has a little more excitement, blue or orange, in case you haven't thought about it in the past, heres an interesting link

[http://www.usabilitypost.com/2008/09/29/a-guide-to- choosing-...](http://www.usabilitypost.com/2008/09/29/a-guide-to-choosing- colors-for-your-brand/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Your portfolio is already on the homepage. Either have it in one place or make the other one richer. The transition of the portfolio slides is too slow, makes me impatient. Also it will be neat to make it start sliding only when the user has scroll to it. Like check scrollTop on scroll event then start the slideshow.</comment>


Microsoft Teams overtakes Slack with 13M daily users - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/11/20689143/microsoft-teams-active-daily-users-stats-slack-competition <comment><USER2> Is Microsoft mopping up the enterprise users who don't want to use Slack or is it actually taking away users from Slack?

The article seems to imply that Slack has its place among smaller groups/businesses while Teams appeals to larger organizations, especially those with Office 365 (due to bundling). But I think it would be a lot more interesting if Slack was losing users as opposed to just not picking up enterprise users (which is still somewhat interesting).

Has anyone worked with an organization that switched to Teams from Slack? What was the reason?</comment>


Ask HN: Please critique my idea/non-profit startup - <AUTHOR>

So just a little bit of background - I'm the co-founder of Founder-School.org along with one of my friends who I met at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in High school. I've worked as Lead Engineer/Developer at two other startups (Previously LearnShark, Currently TalkSession), and co-founded my own Software Consultancy startup in my sophomore year of high school. At Founder-School, we have a VERY talented development team - and a steadily growing Advisory board of seasoned entrepreneurs (some gray hair, others who have "been there, done that"). Our long term goal is to disrupt the education platform space, while simultaneously providing aid to destitute areas in the third world.<p>Short term: We're building a learning platform that learns while you learn (insert xzibit reference here) <comment><AUTHOR> The platform will constantly curate the list of courses "suggested" for you, as you rate courses you take. Courses will be built to be fully interactive and all encompassing (not just coding/development oriented. Ideally, you will be able to take an interactive course on anything). The courses will also be built in a similar fashion to that of Codecademy - where they're short and highly addictive. To populate our course list, we'll be developing a "course builder" of sorts - where any user can easily build a course. Course curation will be taken care of by the platform.

In the future, we would like to be able to launch programs at high schools in the form of "clubs". The goal would be to teach high school students how to take an idea, flesh it out, and build it into a small cashflow positive startup. Fundraising dates would be set throughout the school year for these "micro startups" to contribute towards a club-wide minimum goal of $x,xxx raised by date z. All funds raised from these clubs would then go towards charity work in a third world country. All financials will be 100% transparent, and individual clubs would have the ability to see (visually) where their money is going and who its impacting. All micro-startups that donate over the minimum would compete for a spot on our leaderboard. Students in this program would get: A line on their resume stating they built a cashflow positive startup, went through a rigorous company-building program, and (if they made it to the leaderboard) a $10k scholarship recognizing them for their venture.

Any sort of direction, feature suggestion, etc. is greatly appreciated!

<http://www.founder-school.org/>

<comment><USER2> I love the idea, and the website looks nice.

Two suggestions: 1. ) Since the top of the page looks like a landing page any way, it would be great if you had a way to enter your email immediately without scrolling down to the bottom or clicking (as the sign-up link is very understated). 2.) Even though the website isn't too long vertically, it can be a bit disorienting when you've scrolled down half-way. I know each section is titled, but it would be a great touch if you highlighted the tab which you are currently scrolled over.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent suggestions! I'm going to go ahead and add them to the next iteration which I'll deploy in about an hour. I'll re-comment here when they're ready.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Good luck with this nice project. Great lading page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Awesome idea! Good luck!</comment>


My favorite underused Python idiom - <AUTHOR> http://migrateup.com/favorite-underused-python-idiom/

<comment><USER2> I would not call this underused. Every Python tutorial I've ever read teaches this as the proper way to handle file IO, and explains what context managers are.

<comment><USER3> Yeah and then you go to a company, where guys doing Python only programming for 3.5, 10, 15 years (really!) and never heard of context managers, or decorators...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Notice data is defined inside the with block, but remains accessible once > that block is exited (and the file object is auto-closed). This is the > normal Python scoping rules at work. If you create (initially define) a > variable in a block, it's also defined in the parent blocks - up until the > function boundary.

The with statement doesn't create a new scope and as such it's the same as variables defined outside a with statement.

<comment><USER5> Maybe he's coming from Perl or something with narrow scoping.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's with the forced email signup form?

<comment><USER7> Couldn't get rid of it, closed tab, didn't read article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Context managers are quite powerful, you can use them for more than resource closing. They're handy to make instrumentation easier too, for example by allowing you put the code you want to count exceptions in in a with block as shown in [http://www.slideshare.net/brianbrazil/python-ireland- monitor...](http://www.slideshare.net/brianbrazil/python-ireland-monitoring- your-python-with-prometheus/25)

<comment><USER9> I've had success implementing context managers with page object models when testing with selenium. All page objects assume the same base page (e.g. the home page of the web app) and will return the browser to that page upon exiting the with block. It works really well.</comment></comment>


Capitalism, Privacy and the 'Only Bad People' Fallacy - <AUTHOR> https://artplusmarketing.com/capitalism-copyright-privacy-and-the-only-bad-people-fallacy-286abcf374b3 <comment><AUTHOR> On a related note, is there a proper name for that mistake?

Because I've looked on a lot of fallacy lists, but can't find one that in essence says:

> Someone assumes a concept is bad because they can only see people they > dislike using it for reasons they consider 'immoral'. Without realising how > it affects them at the same time.

Because I can't quite find the term for this, and I'm 100% sure someone has come up with a decent name for it in the past.</comment>