Show HN: Stressed and burned out, so I created my first app – Remember Win - <AUTHOR> http://rememberwinapp.com/ <comment><USER2> I love the concept. +1 for an android version.

One feature to add might be a view for one year ago today. There are journals that have 365 pages and you write a line for each year of the highlights of the day. As you write the new year's line you end up reviewing what you were doing in previous years. It seems like you have most of the pieces to do this.

<comment><USER3> I use Oh Life for daily email journaling. One feature I really like is the "Oh snap, remember this? X days ago you wrote..." prompt, where X doesn't always equal 365. The random retrospective glances are great. For example, when it's Christmas, I don't necessarily want to be prompted to compare it to the last one...

<comment><USER4> Didn't know about that one! What an absolutely great thing. I keep a log over the work I do and being able to look back at the work I have done and examine the thoughts I had say a year ago is incredibly valuable. I wouldn't be surprised if you can get the same benefits from this.

Thanks for sharing!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> 120 points in 1 hour is a nice start. I think you can add a self-referencing entry to your achievement list: "Launched _Remember Win_ App"

<comment><AUTHOR> !!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the sentiment and inspiration. I think this is great for fighting burnout and getting back in the game. The design of the app is really clean and it looks great.

That being said, I feel like the replies here are a bit of a hugbox. As far as the app's value itself goes, I don't see any benefit of this compared to an accomplished.txt file. In fact, a txt file is better because it covers more use cases and has a simpler interface(just start typing).

Why should I use this rather than a notepad? Look for features you can add that would be useful for manipulating data about accomplishments. Find ways to set the app apart.

Accomplishment ranking could be one useful feature. Then you could list even the tiny accomplishments, but if you want to just look at the big accomplishments you can always sort based on ranking to clear out the noise.

<comment><USER7> I don't know, keeping track of accomplishments in retrospect seems to be rather an additional burden. I'd rather change the app so it helps you to pursue current goals (todos for a goal, notes etc.) and reminds you of goals you have accomplished.

<comment><USER8> I'm working on a platform which does just that. Don't really want to detract from the thread (as I appreciate the simplicity of this app in just focusing on one aspect), but the link is in my profile if you're interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Entangld, this is a great app. I hope you will find some time for healing.

Stress burns the mind in the same way as physical activity burns the muscle. At some point you need to give your mind a rest. I suggest this book:

[http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom- Illness...](http://www.amazon.com/Full-Catastrophe-Living-Wisdom- Illness/dp/0739358588)

or this one:

[http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-Go-There- Are/dp/140130778...](http://www.amazon.com/Wherever-You-Go-There- Are/dp/1401307787)

This should help you keep your strengths intact regardless of your current situations ... who is to say that next endeavor will be better than the previous one.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks neat... do you plan to make an Android version?

</comment><comment><USER11> Is the information stored on the device or on your servers somewhere? I like the idea but I'd also like to keep this data for longer than a company may be around for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the feedback! I was nervous about posting to HN.

Info is saved on the device.

<comment><USER12> Haven't had the chance to use the app yet, but does this mean that it's locally stored/backed up on iCloud?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not backed up on iCloud yet. It's a very simple app right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Great job! I started writing down my daily "wins" after reading about Marc Andreeessen and his anti-todo list. [http://blog.idonethis.com/marc- andreessen-productivity-trick...](http://blog.idonethis.com/marc-andreessen- productivity-trick/)

</comment><comment><USER14> This is super rad! +1 for android as well. No pressure though. If anything I might just create a personal clone for myself.

<comment><USER15> If you do create and android version let us know. I would be interested in using this on android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like the concept, good job on getting it out there! However the choice of font (Lobster) pains me, there was a period where it was so overused that it's almost on the level of Comic Sans at this point. #sadface

<comment><USER17> Came here to say this. I see it everywhere, it's just overused at this point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This concept is powerful, wrote about it recently :)

[https://medium.com/@jasdev/small- moments-159df5db89a5](https://medium.com/@jasdev/small-moments-159df5db89a5)

</comment><comment><USER19> This looks awesome, another +1 for Android. Definitely an app to be proud of, and a really cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER20> Thanks for this. I do need to remind myself about victories, even small ones. Especially when it comes time for annual performance reviews. :D

</comment><comment><USER21> What went well today? got #1 on HN.

</comment><comment><USER22> I clicked through expecting an app that offered a nostalgic walk down memory lane with screenshots and features of the Windows operating system. I'm not sure why that is the first thing that came to mind, but it did.

While that would have been moderately amusing, the actual application is a much more useful and helpful concept.

Great job on launching something!

</comment><comment><USER23> Great concept and great name, good luck with it.

How about a Windows Phone version ( _Hey stop laughing! I am too being serious_ )

<comment><USER24> I'd love to see a Windows Phone version too! Definitely needed to see this link today. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> It's a great idea and I can see a lot of people using such an app. But I don't feel like it's really productive, or even healthy to look too much at the past. Reminds me a quote "if you spend your day thinking about yesterday, what will you do tomorrow?"

<comment><USER26> Good point. Just another way of looking at it though. Looking back in life from a perspective of 'hey things are actually pretty great in my life' is good for the mind. It actually gives you reason to look forward to the moment. There is of course the possibility one might look back and say I wish my life was more awesome like back then. But given that the wins would be like something from yesterday or the past week, I think the odds of the brain thinking that way might be microscopic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Just downloaded it, great app.

I find critique useful, I hope you do too. I do not like the notifications, how you set them. I would prefer to wake up to my morning alarm and see a random awesome thing I did the day or week before, along with a motivational 1-a-day quote.

<comment><AUTHOR> No offense taken whatsoever when it comes to criticism! My inner-perfectionist thrives on making things better.

Great idea on the alarm. I collect great quotes and I want to use them. I just thought I couldn't serve them well in this version of a small local app.

I'm hoping to eventually use the app to sprinkle a person's day with things more positive and substantial than a compliment or two. It might also make sense to have different features trigger after 25 or so entries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wonderful... another +1 for Android please.

</comment><comment><USER29> I have been thinking of making an app to help me do regular journaling. The idea is that it iss quick and easy enough to do in one minute per day and that it would help me remember notable events in my life. This fills that niche really well!

One thing I wanted in my app was a timeline view so that I could see an overview of the most notable events in my life, and drill into certain periods for more detail. I think you could do that with this app.

Lastly, provide a way to export data. I want to remember these things forever, even if you decide not to continue supporting the app.

</comment><comment><USER30> Neat concept. In my experience its helpful to reset the clock and remember the mindset you were in when you were happiest to help guide you towards where you should go next.

</comment><comment><USER31> The data here would be very useful for performance reviews for employees. For HR, it would also be helpful for looking at morale at a high level.

<comment><USER32> Self evaluation which is then evaluated by others is difficult to get right.

This is because everyone's internal lens is different, so comparing "results" is compounded even more than usual.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady Nice idea. I'm going to try it out over the next few days. One critique: you've used some non-retina graphics for bar button items.

</comment><comment><USER33> Great idea. It seems like something that would be incorporated in Facebook given it's ostensible goal of documenting your life. Perhaps they'll even hear about your idea and release a "new Achievements" feature in the coming months. Have you considered building your own on top of their api/platform to increase the "virality" of remember win?

<comment><USER34> Not being integrated with Facebook is a good thing too. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Great concept. I'm sat here, having been instructed by our investors to write up our achievements in the last two years, drawing a total blank. I know we've achieved lots of stuff, but I can't view anything as an achievement, so so far, I've managed "not totally failing" \- which I don't think is quite what they're after.

Ho hum.

</comment><comment><USER36> I like this. Last year I started writing down "one cool thing I've done" every day and it definitely helps me appreciate my life more. Recently I had a couple of days where I couldn't come up with anything to note, which reminded me to check if I'm still doing what I love and not spending too many days with only tedious work.

</comment><comment><USER37> Reminds me of a gift my father gave my daughter when she recently had her first child "The Happiness Project One-Sentence Journal for Mothers" [1]

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Project-One-Sentence- Journal...](http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Project-One-Sentence-Journal- Mothers/dp/0385348657/)

</comment><comment><USER38> I created a notepad document two weeks ago to track a.) each day that I do not move my car (bike everywhere instead) and b.) each meal that I prepare myself and eat in. I have ambitions to start tracking some more day-to-day goals like these.

I'm giving this app a shot to see if it has benefits over the .txt file. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER39> Had a similar idea. But where others give you badges because it means a little bit more if others give you someting.

Great start.

</comment><comment><USER40> Great idea. I've had something like this on the backburner as well. Congrats on making it a reality!

Looks nice too :)

</comment><comment><USER41> Nice app - I just downloaded it and added a few wins this year. Looking forward to using it.

</comment><comment><USER42> A Jobs quote, hmm... A Dostoevsky quote... That's impressive... Nice idea, be strong!

</comment><comment><USER43> very nice! I have a few ideas but have never done mobile development and frankly it seems a bit overwhelming for the 2-5 spare hours in a week. Is the best way to get started to create a reactive site and port it into an app?

<comment><USER44> if you can build a mobile-first website (eg w bootstrap or zurb foundation to do the css heavy lifting), then you can use trigger.io (or phonegap) to generate ios and android apps that wrap it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I run an online game, and I think I'm going to try this as a notice for players of positive achievements in the past. Perhaps it makes them all feel like they are doing better than they feel they are.

Great concept.

<comment><USER46> I think that's a great idea. Team Fortress 2 does things like this after a death (ex: That was the longest you've stayed alive as the Engineer, That was the most points you've ever captured with the Scout) and I find that they do motivate you to keep going even if you're being decimated, because hey at least you did _something_ better than before.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'd love to hear more about your actual story, how you came to realize you were burning out and what kind of changes you made in your life to fight it. Did you leave your job to develop this app?

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't leave my job, but I just worked on the design on th train ride to work.

Building something you think might help other people is good for your sanity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Just downloaded and loved it. Great app. Is there a way to include quotes?

</comment><comment><USER49> That's a great idea and good looking app. I had kind of a similar idea: an app that would preserve nice things said about you by others to counteract all the negativity.

</comment><comment><USER50> I'm really impressed by all these polished launch pages that Show HN folks design. Lack of such is an admittedly lame reason why I refrain from posting projects on HN.

<comment><USER51> hey! good point - I felt the same so amy trying to create a template website that would make polished app pages easy for mobile developers! hope to share the beta with you soon!

<comment><USER50> Sweet though I'm not a mobile dev.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Serious question: Knowing what it's like to feel burned out,I don't understand how you found the energy to create the app. Did you create it after recovering ?

</comment><comment><USER53> Was this influenced by Reddit's "Daily 3?[1]"

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/Mydaily3/](http://www.reddit.com/r/Mydaily3/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Influenced by book Flourish by Martin Seligman

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Can you tell us something about technologies used for the app?

</comment><comment><USER55> The quotes really humanize your app. Kudos and Godspeed.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is so great. I have a text file named "1000 Things" that I update weekly. The file has headings "I am an aspiring ____", and I list the things I did that week to move closer to that goal, counting down from 1000.

So my questions...Is it possible to load up a bunch of existing data in to the app? And would there be a way to implement a count of the achievements for each category?

</comment><comment><USER57> This app is great. I really need this.

I'm a recent graduate, in the weird transition of student life and real life.

</comment><comment><USER58> First I saw the domain and I thought someone was trying to bring back winamp... Nice job on the app!

</comment><comment><USER59> This is a great idea! Thank you for creating this. Looking forward to tracking my daily wins too!

</comment><comment><USER60> +1 for Android. Happy to part with $5 for such an application

</comment><comment><USER61> Really nice concept, trying it out right now.

</comment><comment><USER62> Excelent app +1 for one android version.

</comment><comment><USER63> damn. saw the url and for a second thought it was to celebrate and remember winamp =(

</comment><comment><USER64> except he used an iPhone4 for all the images on the home page.

</comment><comment><USER65> don't use this quote on your app

[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10328969/stayhungrystayf...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10328969/stayhungrystayfoolish.png)

<comment><USER66> Is there a specific reason why the author shouldn't? Like a trademark/copyright issue because of the speech or just because it annoys you?

<comment><USER67> Not speaking for AwesomeTogether, but it's the title of a book:

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

edit: And just to be clear, I don't see where it would be an issue using it in the app, as the title of that book was supposedly inspired by Jobs saying the phrase, who in turn got it from yet another book. Just wondering if the fact that it's a book title is what the issue is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> seems trendy, hn will love it for a day or two

</comment><comment><USER69> +1 for android

</comment><comment><USER70> Like it!!

</comment><comment><USER71> Please an API please.

</comment><comment><USER72> there is no blog link on the about page.

</comment><comment><USER73> Will check it out more, have had a similar idea on my back burner for a while too.

<comment><USER73> Comment was simply meant as idea validation.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How's Berlin as a start up / tech hub? - <AUTHOR> I'm an SF guy with a small start up who can live anywhere.
Really looking for a change, yet I'd still like to be around the start up energy to have the benefits of that ethos.
Is anyone able to shed a bit of light on the Berlin startup / tech scene and how it might stack up? Is somewhere like Amsterdam just as good or better? How about Talinn?
Really appreciate any info or ideas. Thanks! <comment><USER2> \- wannabe startups. half german mentality, rest us style.

\- salaries lower than US.

\- it has the Germany mentality on building stuff. so very risk aware, is you go down, you are a bad guy.

\- german market against technology. if it works don't change developers not have same status as doctor, engineers

\- a lot of wannabe startups, social thinking. like they get 20k, and think will change the world.

Tallinn and Amsterdam are smaller markets for startups in my personal opinion.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for your honest take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Go to Cologne. Smaller than Berlin, but the attitude is different (better). Salaries are usually higher than in Berlin, it's close to everywhere (Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, ...). It has nothing to do with the "German" mentality, it's a very warm and welcoming city. Everybody speaks English.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the recc

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Have you considered London or Stockholm?

If you want something affordable with high quality of life, Spain (e.g. Barcelona) or Lisbon might be worth considering as well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't know too much about Stockholm - although I loved Helsinki.

Do those have solid startup / tech communities in your experience? Any more details you can share?</comment></comment>


Access USB devices on the Web - <AUTHOR> https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2016/03/access-usb-devices-on-the-web <comment><USER2> I mean I am just reading about this on the front page [http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/meet-usbee-the- malwa...](http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/08/meet-usbee-the-malware-that- uses-usb-drives-to-covertly-jump-airgaps/)

and thinking that allowing usb devices to load specific websites is just the stupidest thing I've heard in a long time.

Here's an idea - if I want to get content onto a user's computer, give them a usb with a website set to be [http://www.example.org/uniqueid/Hello.html](http://www.example.org/uniqueid/Hello.html)

my site loads the same for everyone with hello.html but if the uniqueid path is used then we load some extra content maybe with a lower z-index. Now this stuff is cached on our target's computer and he doesn't know.

</comment><comment><USER2> "But most importantly this will make USB safer and easier to use by bringing it to the Web."

huh, I wonder how that will be safer...

        Buy a USB device.
        Plug it into your computer.
        A notification appears right away, with the right website to go to for this device.
        Simply click on it. Website is there and ready to use!

Hey, can this be made to work with autoplay enabled? I can scarcely think of anything in the world safer than plugging in a USB device and going to a website automatically!</comment>


Locating Books in the Medieval Library - <AUTHOR> http://medievalbooks.nl/2014/11/28/location-location-gps-in-the-medieval-library/

<comment><USER2> For those interested in old books, the earliest movable type printed books, printed before 1501, are known as incunables or incunabula ("Incunabula" is Latin for swaddling or cradle clothes). The British Library maintains an international database of 15th-century European printings called the "Incunabula Short Title Catalogue".

[http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html](http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/istc/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I always find submissions from that site to be fascinating. I should take the time to read through it on my own.

</comment><comment><USER4> I love medieval history, bookbinding, and #FlyleafFriday. If you do too be sure to subscribe to Erik Kwakkel's blog.

</comment><comment><USER5> This kind of reminds me of leveldb - in a good way.</comment>


XE.com launches new site in React - <AUTHOR> https://www.xe.com/ <comment><USER2> unfortunately nobody told the designer to expect ads as part of the design, given the unfortunate position of the first ad right above what looks like an otherwise really nice design.</comment>


Alias CD=":(){:|:& };:" - <AUTHOR> It's a fork bomb. It creates and calls a function called : that calls itself and pipes the output to itself in the background.
Properly indented and commented, it would look something like:

    :()           # create a function called ":" with no arguments
    {             # start the function
        : | : &   # call ":", pipe the output to another invocation of ":", and run in the background
    };            # end the function
    :

 P.S. Don't try this at home <comment><USER2> You might suggest folks make this a learning exercise in pam or systemd cgroup limits to protect against fork-bombs [1] Code bugs can accidentally introduce the same condition. A starting point for cgroup limits and pam limits would be ServerFault [2]

It is a common misconception that today people can just "shoot a vm / container in the head" to solve all problems, but if your problem is buggy code then the new VM / container will crash the moment the code executes. Diagnosing and resolving quickly gets harder without system limits in place.

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

[2] - [https://serverfault.com/search?q=cgroup+limits](https://serverfault.com/search?q=cgroup+limits)</comment>


Valve: an Outside Contender for the Future of "Console" Gaming? - <AUTHOR> http://chasingperfection.co.uk/post/2012/12/08/valve

<comment><USER2> If both this "Steam Box" and the PS4 would run on Linux (PS4 at least is rumored to use the full OpenGL), that would be a great push for Linux gaming.</comment>


Ursa Labs: an innovation lab for open source data science - <AUTHOR> http://wesmckinney.com/blog/announcing-ursalabs/ <comment><USER2> Just to be clear, the author is Python Pandas creator and main maintainer. He knows what he is talking about. These are great news.

Hope they get a lot of funding.

<comment><USER3> I'm not the main maintainer anymore (Jeff Reback has that honor), as I've moved on to work on the "greater pandas ecosystem" (of which my work on Apache Arrow is a part of this long development arc)

<comment><USER4> Super excited. Just reached out to the email on the site on how I can help technically in the future!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm a little confused about what the product is. They are using Apache Arrow to build...something. How would this stuff benefit me as an R programmer?

<comment><USER6> It would change things primarily under the hood for table-like data structures ... imagine having a data.frame or tibble object but in memory it's stored in a very specific layout which allows it to a) make use of pre-created highly optimized library code to do complicated queries b) be interchanged with other programs with almost zero overhead, e.g. imagine doing a query on a massive database in spark and then loading it into R or pandas instantly without having to wait.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. Do you think there is a use case for traditional "small data" analysis in R, i.e. standard CSV->dplyr->output sort of transformations?

<comment><USER7> It should make things a bit faster, and a bit easier to collaborate with people using other languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If the author comes in here, let me say: thank you for Feather. I am currently using that for a project on very slow servers and it is helping me quite a bit.

My question here is this: like the creator of Vue.JS has done, could Ursa Labs go the way of Patreon, and have potential personal, academic, or corporate clients simply donate to ensure contributed support and production of great tools for data science?

</comment><comment><USER6> Very happy to see Apache Arrow gaining support! It'd be very cool to see modern columnar storage architecture gain widespread adoption: there's decades of research in it and massive improvements for analytical workloads.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm really happy to hear this. The vision for Arrow is solid, and I'm looking forward to a future where C++, Python, and other languages like Rust can interoperate more smoothly in an integrated analysis workflow. I hope Wes and Ursa Labs will be a major factor in developing the way we approach data science over the next 10+ years.

</comment><comment><USER10> This is very exciting, thanks Wes! A robust, high-performance, polyglot, in- memory runtime for data(frames) would be extremely useful.

The remarks about challenges related to OSS maintenance/innovation were spot on too.</comment>


Frugality won't make you rich, it makes it possible for you to get rich - <AUTHOR> http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2011/09/13/frugality-wont-make-you-rich/ <comment><USER2> Ah, simple, worthless advice from the internet.

Project not going well? _Work harder_.

Not enough money? _Save more_.

Not attractive enough? _Be more attractive_.

I know I'm enlightened. Sigh.

Median income in the U.S. is $40K. Which is about $110/day. Telling people to cut out some "small thing", a $5 daily expense, is telling them to magically save 5% of their total expenditures. Except he moves quickly to saving $250/month, which is now 10% of their total expenditures. Easy as pie! Just stop eating! Stop renting shelter! Stop purchasing clothes! And then you'll be free to have money to eat, rent shelter, and purchase clothes.

Utter brilliance.

<comment><USER3> Frugality helps me survive on what I make.

$40k salary a year actually comes out to ~$154/day. Assuming 2080 hours/year of workable time, this is 40k / 260 "work days".

I get less than this at the moment.

If you _can_ afford to invest 10% of your income for 2 years, then drop to 5% for the rest, in a mutual fund that averages 15%/year (they do exist) you'd have ~$813k after 30 years (at $250 the first two, then $125 the remaining years). At no further investment you'd have $323k after thirty years from the first $6k invested.

This ain't no drop in the bucket, but we post-modernist consumptive Americans aren't interested in self-sacrifice.

<comment><USER4>
      > Assuming 2080 hours/year of workable time, ...

I've had recruiters try to sell me on this figure for salary calculations, or even worse, use 2085.7 (=365 * 5/7 * 8). That only works if you don't want a vacation.

I use 2,000 hrs/yr both to factor in some vacation time and also to make the math easier to do in my head.

<comment><USER3> Sure, this is why the young kids with no family and no life outside work make buckets of money: they spend almost _all their time_ in the office.

A salaried position is nice, but even then some industries put the salary low and give bonuses to "dedicated" people like that.

I'm not going to sugar coat it for myself, or for anyone else either. It's really hard for everyone in this economy, but especially for young folks like me who don't already own (or at least partly own) houses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've found the interest rate on outstanding debt to be a tremendous motivation to try and limit the number of frivolous things I buy.

For example, our interest rate is 5.5% and we're not due to pay off our mortgage for 28 years. That means (more or less) that for every dollar I spend, I could have put that on my mortgage and saved 5.5% interest (compounded) over 28 years. Another way of looking at it is that I'm going to be paying 5.5% interest (tax-deductible) on anything I buy instead of putting the money in an extra payment on my mortgage.

Given the terms of my mortgage, that makes an $500 iPad actually cost about $500 now and another $481.06 in interest over the next 28 years. My $2300 MacBook Pro will actually end up costing me $4512.88.

The great thing about this approach is that it doesn't discourage me from buying _nice_ things that are actually worth their value. The MacBook Pro for example produces incredible value, much more than I paid for it.

However, knowing that for every $5 smoothie I buy now, I'll be paying another $4.81 for it in 28 years? I don't buy $5 smoothies 2-3 times a week anymore. Instead I go to Rita's when they're doing $1 kids cones on Monday and I go again on Wednesday for the $1 Italian Ice.

Anyways, I found this so helpful in curbing frivolous spending that I created a small iPhone app to help folks do the calculation on the fly. <http://whatll-it-cost.limelightapp.com/> . I'd be happy to give a promo code to anyone who thinks it'll be helpful. (After all, that $0.99 would actually be $1.94 after 28 years at 5.5%. :p)

</comment><comment><USER6> > _Joe Average has $80,000 in student loan debt, $25,000 in credit card debt, > and a $10,000 car loan. His total monthly debt payment is about $1,200 and > he's going to be making those payments for the next, say, ten years._

Okay, I'll just go ahead and ask: _why?_

Why are so many young people so heavily in debt? Is this an American thing? Or a Western thing in general?

I see people like this in every online community. They barely make enough money to pay for housing, food and utilities, yet they use credit cards to purchase Xboxes, e-readers, smartphones, expensive computers, Netflix, Pandora/Last.fm/GrooveShark/whatever, iPods, tablets, games off Steam and FSM knows what else[1]. And then they go eat at the local fast-food chain because it's cheaper than eating real food. Sometimes I have serious doubts about the sanity of these people.

Why are young people who don't make money being given credit cards? Why are they purchasing cars with money they don't have?

I'm curious. This cultural phenomenon of spending more than you make is completely foreign to me.

\---

[1] List not limited to technology, of course.

<comment><USER7> A big part of it (I think) is the student loan debt. 80,000 is huge, and can lead to just giving up and spiraling(I already owe 80k, what's another 2?)

The car loan is really low, 10k is just about as cheap as you can get a new car for, and you'll never get a loan for a used car (so if you don't have 2-5k in savings to buy it used...you're SOL) Biking/walking is only really feasible in certain cities.

And if you really want to know why young people are being given credit cards...it's because they don't make money! No, really. Not a conspiracy, but without a steady income they can only make the minimum payments for a while, which gives the card issuers more money than someone who has a job. Plus, they get to charge higher interest on it.

<comment><USER8> _and you'll never get a loan for a used car (so if you don't have 2-5k in savings to buy it used...you're SOL)_

This isn't true at all. You might not be able to get a car loan in the 2-5k range, but for a used car, especially a certified used car in the 10k range, those are almost always financed. One also makes a down payment on a car, so a 10K car loan may be for a car that's up to $15k. $15k is plenty for a decent used car.

<comment><USER7> Yes, that was my point. A decent car will put you at least 10k in the hole, unless you have the cash to buy used from someone who isn't a dealer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> For those that wrote negative comments about this article, imagine for a minute you weren't such a hotshot and couldn't negotiate a $10,000 increase in salary at your minimum wage job as a ticket taker at the movie theater. Imagine you were one of those mechanical turk workers that you use in your shiny web application being paid next to nothing for your time. Then shut the hell up. This article isn't for you.

</comment><comment><USER10> Taken within the context of HN audience, this is generally poor advice. I'm not sure why it is being upvoted other than for the discussion itself. Don't scrounge those $9 Netflix dollars, and don't skip your coffee. Don't even spend countless hours lurking on SlickDeals to save twenty bucks here and there. Your time would much, much better spent if you work on increasing your income stream. Work harder and ship your darn iPhone/Android/web/whatever app.

<comment><USER11> But it's also partly to do with the kinds of businesses that the HN crowd are setting up.

If your business is a plain old-style cash-flow business, rather than having a fast-growth trajectory, it does much sense to optimize for the cents, since they turn into dollars because of the repetition.

When first-mover advantage is important, don't let the small stuff get in the way of getting your product out ASAP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've seen a lot of people who are penny-wise pound-foolish, and I think that's actually a lot more damaging then not being frugal overall. Wasting $8/mo on Netflix doesn't matter that much, but having a habit of saying "screw it" and dropping $500 on a night out for no reason can be a much more damaging habit and much more cost-effective to stop.

Also it's hard to write an article about smart money and not point out that some people simply do not know when to negotiate. You could spend all year depriving yourself of coffee or decent food to save $10,000, or you could spend 5 minutes remembering to _make a counter offer_ on your salary or your next car purchase.

<comment><USER13> There was a deleted reply that said:

> On the other hand, a daily habit of frugality makes it easier to not > splurge.

My response: that might not be true based on the recent information about decision fatigue[1].

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer- fro...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from- decision-fatigue.html?pagewanted=all)

<comment><USER8> From experience, that doesn't seem to be the case. If you worry about spending money at a certain level, you've defined the battle lines, and splurging desperately on the other side is utterly unthinkable.

If $10 for a day's worth of food seems lavish to you, something like even setting foot in a decent restaurant becomes unthinkable. You start to lose the ability to even imagine splurging, because to you spending $15-20 on pizza is splurging. You understand from an intellectual perspective that you can easily spend over $100 at a good restaurant ordering dinner for two, but you don't consider it as a possibility for your own life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The only people who are obsessed with food are the anorexic and the morbidly obese" - Stephen Fry

Likewise, it seems to me that misers and spendthrifts are both defined by their obsession with money. This sort of 'frugality' seems a particularly unpleasant fixation.

<comment><USER15> "This sort of 'frugality' seems a particularly unpleasant fixation."

To some people it is, and to others it's actually fun and rewarding to do more with less and figure out new ways to save money for something more important in the long-term.

If it's not for you, fine, but let's not generalize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not really. What is going to help you get rich is to focus on increasing your top-line income. Doubling and tripling and more of your income is going to make whatever bottom line improvements described in this article irrelevant.

Not to mention that you should be enjoying the money you make, not constantly worrying about whether you should brown bag it or eat $5 crappy street meat.

<comment><USER17> I don't think your idea and the OP's are at odds. Abundant wealth growth comes from reinvestment of capital- the more capital you have the more you can invest. And cost-cutting, naturally constrained by current top-line revenue, increases earnings to be reinvested.

Two sides of accounting, happening at the same time- cost and revenue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> That is nice in theory, but in practice it is a lot easier to double your income than to find that 25th hour a day.

And much of what he suggest takes so much more time that you still couldn't make a business.

<comment><USER19> There are positive frugal actions and negative frugal actions.

Negative actions include not spending as much money on the car, or the house, and skipping the starbucks. Negative actions are half the battle.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Real frugality starts when you've over with the fact that you don't really need most of that stuff you think you needed anyway. And, further, those things you do need you choose because you like them, not because what you think others will like--and thus, think they like you too.

However, there's an interesting issue there. Having little income but consuming even less approaches a certain point--a point that is the same point as consuming a lot but yet having even more income.

Either way, at this point you consume less than you earn. And this point happens to be the one that calls you to think what is it that you're here, in life, for. The "what would you do if you had a million dollars question", but just in reality. You don't need millions; to reach this point you just need more income than you spend.

This calling is always there but you really start hearing it louder as soon as you don't have to be so busy merely making a living. And that is a dreadful point for it takes away all excuses you're used to, and makes you either a weasel or someone who will begins to think hard, really hard.

</comment><comment><USER21> My effective income is $17,280, pre-tax. Even pared back to that, I've accumulated about $3,000 in savings over a year. It helps not to buy stuff. Like, at all. I have only 14 major physical possessions, including where I live and "clothing" and "tools" as single objects. I have much more software, most of it purchased at steep discounts through Steam or the App Store/Market. Spotify provides music.

Surplus monthly income is roughly $500. It's been a pretty successful experiment. So saving at low incomes is very possible. What I think bears mention is that this is mostly possible because of my age and disposition; I'm young and I'm picky, so I neither pile up expenses nor have a burning desire to possess most things.

<comment><USER22> Do you still live at home with your parents? If not where do you live? I saved a ton of money back when I had a low income but very little expenses because I lived with my parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure this is a smart advice. Of course, frugality is good thing. But it does not help you to become rich.

There is a saying which says: Don't waste your time thinking about how to spend money, think about how to make money.

</comment><comment><USER24> Author makes some good points but comes to an incorrect conclusion. It is very important to live within your means (income + some delta > expenses). I don't think anyone would disagree with that statement. There is some debate how big that delta should but that isn't the root of the issue.

But then concluding being frutal will provide opportunities is false. All frugality enables is the ability for one to take advantage of opportunities that someone that is in a lesser financial situation could not.

<comment><USER25> If you can't take advantage of it, it's not really an opportunity. Frugality turns "can't take advantage of" situations into actual opportunities.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> How does frugality help you when you have no debt?

<comment><USER27> There are three major and important reasons: for retirement, to provide a cushion, and to be able to capitalize on opportunity. If you save more now, you can retire earlier or maintain a higher quality of life. If you save enough to provide a nice cushion, you can ride out the bad times or worse (child sick, lose job, car falls apart...). Again, and perhaps most excitingly, being able to draw on a reserve lets you leverage opportunity.

This is not about debt. It's about making sure you have the ability and the freedom to live beyond the day to day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Frugality also makes you hungry.

When you start your business after being frugal it makes your business frugal which makes it lean, which means that you'll raise (if necessary) on much better terms.

      Caesar:
      Let me have men about me that are fat,
      Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
      Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
      He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.

<comment><USER13> I disagree with the general sentiment of the article, but this comment rings true. If you are aware of how to survive on a limited budget, that could give you the strength, knowledge, and confidence to power through a tough financial situation with your startup.</comment></comment>


Google Squared is an Exponential Improvement in Search - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/google-squared-is-an-exponenti.html <comment><USER2> If the exponent is negative, maybe.

But, let's not blame Google for that hype. They haven't claimed this is anything other than an interesting experiment.

At the moment pretty much all Squares are less useful than a straight web search. Perhaps that will change as they acquire more data, but I'm skeptical. As a way of accelerating a human's ability to organize data, maybe it has a brighter future.

<comment><USER3> Well, according to the name, it's actually a polynomial improvement on old- fashioned search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's a toy, no more, no less.

According to Google Squared, our Russian President has been dead for a couple of weeks by now (he's alive and well, just in case you're wondering), we have been also ruled by someone named "5 November 1996" and "Constitution" was our President too. The one guy left in the list is not a president at all (Viktor Chernomyrdin is Russia's embassador to Ukraine). [http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=presidents+of+russian...](http://www.google.com/squared/search?q=presidents+of+russian+federation)

Exponential improvement, eh?..

</comment><comment><USER5> "exponential" might be an attention-grabbing stretch, but it is clear that we will discover new uses for this.

I am wondering if anyone knows the relative size of the data behind wolfram alpha compared to google. I know that wolfram uses "trusted" sources for its data.

I am recalling a recently quoted paper by Norvig that seems to imply that having multiple of orders of magnitude of data available changes the knowledge engine game.

<comment><USER6> "Wolfram Alpha, the so-called "computational knowledge engine" that launched this week, claims to have access to a vast repository of information from trusted sources around the world: 10tn pieces of data filtered through 50,000 models and algorithms."

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/may/21/1>

> having multiple of orders of magnitude of data available changes the > knowledge engine game.

Maybe machine learning as well...

"The cloud also makes possible our approach to machine translation in which thousands of computers process billions of words of monolingual and bilingual text to build statistical language and translation models."

[http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/05/breaking- down-l...](http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/05/breaking-down- language-barrier.html)

<comment><USER5> I had previously missed the part at the end of the article where wolfram does suggest crowdsourcing as a way to tune, which is what google is all about, in some sense.

I am also intrigued with "50,000 models and algorithms". What would those be? Is this just something to impress the journalists?

<comment><USER7> Most of those are probably "models."

<comment><USER5> So I am wondering what is meant by a model by them--a row in a table listing constraints, a relation, a prolog rule?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's a great way to organize and display search results in certain situations, but I wouldn't call it an 'exponential improvement in search' just yet. Getting the actual data (i.e. the search) leaves a lot to be desired. It's the format itself that I think is a great idea.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's nowhere near useful.

<comment><USER10> Agreed - totally underwhelmed by Google Square.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's a nice tech demo, but nothing more. I doubt it will ever be usefull, because that would require real semantic data or real AI (and neither seems to be around soon).

</comment><comment><USER12> It's definitely not production ready, but I still hold out hope. Two things right off the bat to increase its functionality would be to make the columns sortable and to provide ability to set the column headers equal to a particular value.

For example, if I run a search on San Diego restaurants to get an idea of where to go for lunch, I'd like to be able to set cuisine and price and build from there. I could see other comparisons working similarly.

</comment><comment><USER13> Defiantly not anything useful at the moment, even there example searches seemed a bit sketchy.

I think it will probably be a company like Google that cracks this problem just because of the sheer data/ processing power you would need available to have a good crack at it, we are a fair way off that though.

</comment><comment><USER14> It's a neat thing, but wow, this would be over-hype even if it worked much better.

</comment><comment><USER15> RDFa, we need you now!

<comment><USER16> My thought, too. The current results are underwhelming, but as page authors become aware this presentation is possible, some will incrementally make their markup 'squared'-friendly. Iterate until the results are impressive.</comment></comment>


Will Covid-19 Kill the Open Office Design? - <AUTHOR> https://insights.dice.com/2020/04/29/will-covid-19-kill-open-office-design/ <comment><USER2> I'd love to see it that way! but open office design is preferred due to rising real estate prices which in turn come from loose monetary policy and bailouts. officials keep those prices high believing this would restart economy somehow (and government income!) so we might see - ironically - even more open offices if economic outfall from the lockdown is worse.</comment>


When Ian Fleming picked my grandfather to steal Nazi secrets - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21629270

<comment><USER2> But was his grandfather able to swim ashore in a drysuit and then quickly change to a tuxedo that he had donned underneath as Bond can do? And before you call fiction on that one: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_(2010_season)#Episo...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_\(2010_season\)#Episode_153_-_Mini_Myth_Madness) (I don't think they were able to do the perfect red carnation bit, though).

I learned of Fleming's interesting background last week while watching _Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007_ on Netflix Instant, much recommended.

EDIT: Wrote the above before reading the story all the way, it is very poignant indeed. The cruelty of war, especially being killed by an unseen, remote enemy, is something that cannot be wholly imagined. My grandfather's niece died in the bombing of Dardanelles in WW1, people still talk about how they could only find a bunch of blonde hair, that was all that remained of her in the rubble.

<comment><USER3> Why link to the mythbusters when you could point to the guy who actually did it:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7601...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7601274/The- secret-war-mission-that-inspired-Goldfinger-scene.html)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Tazelaar>

[http://www.cracked.com/article_19635_6-absurd-movie- scenes-t...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19635_6-absurd-movie-scenes-that- actually-happened_p2.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the intelligence/SOE component of WWII interests you, I cannot recommend enough the book "Bodyguard of Lies" by Anthony Cave Brown. Some of his conclusions and theories have been proven inconsistent in the light of new information (declassified since 1975) but it remains the most comprehensive work on the subject I'm aware of.

<comment><USER5> "Most Secret War" by Dr. R.V. Jones is also good -- it covers the role of British Scientific Intelligence during the war, and the "War of the Beams", which was the subverting/jamming of the German navigation radio beacon system.

<comment><USER6> Could you share the name of the author or the ISBN of the "War of the Beams" book? I guess the title is different but I could not find it anyways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Last summer the History Channel aired a silly documentary on the Dieppe raid which claimed the raid was an elaborate cover for Flemming and his commando group to pinch a U-boat code machine.

The reality is that Flemming and his group had nothing to do with the planning of the raid. They learned about afterwards and asked if they could tag along, drawing up their own targets, etc.

Also Dieppe was not used for U-boats so where they did get this idea they find an enigma machine?

<comment><USER5> There were a couple of versions of the Enigma. The German U-Boat command used it (4-rotors) as well as the Army (3-rotors). It's possible they hoped to pick up one being used by the Army, and even better, the keys for it.

Operationally, the Navy generally had better procedures, but both had weaknesses (cribs) that were able to be exploited by Bletchley Park. Both tended to have the phrase "Heil Hitler" in their messages, and the Navy would transmit identical weather info in both Enigma and weaker encryption systems.

<comment><USER7> If I remember the AU30 were targeting German Naval HQ at Dieppe.

Even if they did manage to pinch one of these machines the Germans would have noticed it and changed the codes.

I don't know if you saw the documentary which aired on Canadian History Channel last summer

The documentary was such a snow job, portraying Flemming as the master planner of British intelligence operations when he was just of one of many midstream officers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An intriguing story.

</comment><comment><USER9> Thank you, I can relate to that, as I lost my grandfather in similar circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER10> What a sad waste.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had no idea Ian Fleming had real life experience upon which to base his spy novels. I love how this story began to unravel based on a "chance meeting" and recognition of an unusual name. I have an unusual name. I could see running into that kind of social situation myself, though I imagine it would be more prosaic than this tale of intrigue.

Thank you for posting.</comment>


Never have to clear old *.pyc files again - <AUTHOR> https://coderwall.com/p/anlklq

<comment><USER2> Or ignore the .pyc files. They don't cause a problem.</comment>


Additively manufacturable micro-mechanical logic gates - <AUTHOR> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-08678-0 <comment><USER2> 3D printed mechanical logic gates 100um in size, compute speeds in Mhz, and power consumption that approaches 0. Pretty cool.

<comment><USER3> 0 consumption at idle. Have to put in some good old fashioned Work=Force*Distance when you perform an operation though.

Also, how many toggles can each gate go through before material fatigue causes the logic to get stuck? Some interesting questions which would need answering before it can be utilized by any industry.

<comment><USER4> Flexures can last forever if you stay within the plastic deformation range for that material. These can fail from other things though, e.g. mechanical shock, thermal extremes, stuff like that.

<comment><USER5> I'm skeptical of this claim. Can you expand on your answer that there are materials that can be cycled infinitely in the plastic regime, or point to some sources that explain further?

I did a PhD in a materials science lab, and my understanding is that at least for metals, you still eventually run into fatigue & failure, even if you stay within the elastic regime (which nominally appears reversible). I'm not sure why plastic deformation would be any better, given that you'll have atom positions shifting and (if crystalline) dislocations propagating. I'm not a fatigue expert by any means, so I'd love to learn more.

On the Wikipedia page for fatigue limit[1], I see a link to a reference that says there are no metallic materials that can be infinitely cycled[2]. Is the bonding somehow different in this 3D printed material that causes fatigue to work differently?

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

[2] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1460-2695....](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1046/j.1460-2695.1999.00183.x)

<comment><USER6> One of the graduate students I worked with studied the TI micro-mirrors used in DLP projectors. They were designed in the first round of micromachined devices so by EEs rather than MEs, and as a result they used aluminim.

So the question to answer is, "how does a multi-million pixel display unit array of doubly supported tortional Al hinges going through >1% strain survive for 1000s of hours (much longer than the bulbs) oscillating at 100s of kHz". That's ~10^12 cycles each with ppm defect rates!

Since you know that this far exceeds any reasonable fatigue strain and the defect density /dislocation propagation should be huge! The key is that the aluminum is <1um thick a few um wide and <100um long. The majority if the strain is concentrated at the supported ends, but it's so thin that the whole high strain region is single crystal!

TI didn't originally know why it worked... just that it did.

I won't say mechanical gates are a great idea... and at 1MHz they might start failing after a few continuous months. The truly unfortunate part is that the manufacturing processes aren't really designed to control for the grain structure... they're designed for etch repeatability and conduction stability so yield could fall apart while tour processes seem nominal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _A key benefit of the proposed approach is that such systems can be additively fabricated as embedded parts of microarchitected metamaterials that are capable of interacting mechanically with their surrounding environment while processing and storing digital data internally without requiring electric power._

The Diamond Age is upon us.

<comment><USER8> scifi reference ?

ps: indeed [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Diamond_Age)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mechanical circuits could be a low performance replacement for electronics in environments where the latter fail, e.g. because of high temperatures or radiation.

I think I remember something about an idea for a mechanical communications system for a Venus lander that worked by wheels that increased or decreased radar reflections so data could be read from orbit by bouncing a radar signal off it.

Maybe combine stuff like this?

 _Edit: adding link:[https://www.theengineer.co.uk/mechanical-rover-explore- venus...](https://www.theengineer.co.uk/mechanical-rover-explore-venus/) ._

</comment><comment><USER10> > As a result, such devices generate no electromagnetic signature and are > highly insensitive to radiation damage.

Sounds like this would be ideal for use in spacecraft.

<comment><USER11> Buy one now. After the Solar Flare Apocalypse, those of us rocking mechanical computers will be control the world!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is Young Lady's Illustrated Primer stuff. The future just became a slightly cooler place to be. I am so stoked.

</comment><comment><USER13> NEM relays have these beat in size, at least: [https://nems.stanford.edu/nem- relays](https://nems.stanford.edu/nem-relays)

<comment><USER14> Those are electromechanical - they use mechanical changes to open and close electrical pathways. These are purely mechanical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exactly why is it important that this particular structure can be additively manufactured? Typical additive processes can create essentially anything, exactly because there are no limitations steming from tooling geometry and workholding that are typical for traditional subtractive machining.

<comment><USER16> Speaking as Stephenson/Doctorow fan as well as a member of ever-growing sector of the population that have had their technological paranoia continually proven right for the last fifteen years, improvements in additive manufacturing of miniaturised computation technology assists in keeping a small section of power with the larger population, rather than being forced to rely on hyperlarge gated conglomerates to parcel out materials to us.

<comment><USER17> I don't know why this is being down-voted. Anyone care to elaborate? If we don't want to rely on centralised manufacturing we need to be able to make computers in the privacy of our own homes. Otherwise, whoever controls the entities that manufacture our computers can put in backdoors. The government has straight-up said that they want backdoors into all encryption. Worrying about this, and making progress towards decentralised manufacture, doesn't seem crazy to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does anyone on HN can explain this question to me: is there a real obstacle that prevents one to build a general-purpose digital computer using pure macroscopic mechanical components? Historically, we had several types of special-purpose mechanical computers, but a general-purpose mechanical computer was never built.

Was it because the mechanical parts are too prohibitively rigid/inflexible/heavy/expensive for a computer? Or, a real barrier for mechanical computers doesn't really exist, and we didn't have it simply because it was not economically worthwhile to build one after electronic computers were feasible?

<comment><USER19> You might want to read up on [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytical_Engine) There is good reason to believe that it can actually be built, and a simpler design that is not general-purpose is exhibited in the Science Museum in London.

<comment><USER18> Thanks, I confused Differential Engine and Analytical Engine, and believed the latter was a more much powerful version, but still not general-purpose. But apparently Analytical Engine is Turing-complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How do you program it? Would the programs have to be mechanically constructed as well?

<comment><USER21> Like all logic chips today, with a standalone programmer. You make program on your desk computer then send it to chip. Electronic-mechanical converter would setup your device.

Without computer you could do it old-way with a panel of switchable bits and clock signal. You enter required bits with user-switchable levers, then switch clock lever up and down, then enter another machine-word. Or make your program on punch cards.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I hope they build a Difference Engine or Analytical Engine as a proof of concept.

</comment><comment><USER23> These look a lot like the system proposed by Drexler back in the 80's!

<comment><USER24> More like Merkle's buckled-spring logic, at first glance. Merkle was building on Drexler, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Really interesting. Alas, the "Supplementary Movie 1" appears corrupted for me (tried two devices, two networks).

<comment><USER26> [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368063](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1368063)

soln: save movie file & open using video player

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like Ken Macleod's babbages. See The Cassini Division, etc.</comment>


Did scientists discover bacteria in meteorites? No. - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/03/did_scientists_discover_bacter.php

<comment><USER2> " _consists entirely of a crude and ugly website that looks like it was sucked through a wormhole from the 1990s_ "

Is it just me or is that comment just a tad childish? I'm finding it hard to take this guy seriously, let alone the other guy.

<comment><USER3> Making comments like that is part of the shtick

<http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/shtick>

of PZ Myers when he writes blog posts. Most of his conduct in writing posts on his blog would not be considered civil or decorous conduct here on HN, but he knows his biology, and his reply to the biological aspects of the recently reported claim should be taken seriously. PZ Myers also had one of the first good analyses on the Web of the claim that a different scientist affiliated with NASA had found an "arsenic-based" life form. Not so, as PZ aptly pointed out.

Anyway, PZ continues in his blog post to write, "So let's look at the paper, Fossils of Cyanobacteria in CI1 Carbonaceous Meteorites: Implications to Life on Comets, Europa, and Enceladus." He then comments that he can't even count on links to the website for the article staying valid, because of the way the website is administered, but he proceeds to analyze the content of the paper, and to find it below the usual standard of biology papers about newly discovered microorganisms.

In other words, it is not always valid in either direction to judge a message by its messenger or its medium. Sometimes good factual points are made with less than ideal decorum.

<comment><USER4> "In other words, it is not always valid in either direction to judge a message by its messenger or its medium."

Even though that's precisely one of the things the author does.

<comment><USER5> PZ Myers has a fair bit of credibility. After years of helping deal with torrents of nonsense, I'm prepared to cut the guy a little slack on the snark front.

Also I think the key word in "it is not always valid in either direction to judge" is "always". Would you feel wrong incorporating the fact that someone had submitted a resume in badly formatted handwriting as part of your assessment of their application?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author of the published paper in question is the Astrobiology Group Leader at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (<http://spie.org/x17397.xml>)

Why would he risk his career and put his reputation at stake?

<comment><USER7> He has made similar claims before that didn't pan out. Why is it risking his career if he truly believes it? It may just be a case of seeing what he wants to see.

We'll see!

<comment><USER6> My point is, why would NASA employ him as a Group Leader if he were, dare I say, delusional?

There's got to be _some_ truth in it.

<comment><USER8> Because NASA is a big government bureaucracy, and he's been working there since 1966.

Instead of thinking that there's got to be _some_ truth to it, think that when there's a whiff of BS and it looks like the work of a bunch of delusional cranks publishing in their own vanity journal, it's nonsense and should be ignored.

<comment><USER9> Strangely, it's not just him, though I agree it doesn't seem particularly likely to be true. The journal's editorial board seems to have people who do reasonably respectable work when it comes to their work that _doesn't_ involve panspermia. The journal's editor-in-chief, for example, is a well-respected director at Harvard's observatory, and his "normal" papers (reporting on finds via the telescope) get published in normal journals.

<comment><USER8> It is pretty strange that there are so many big names playing along. On the other hand, there's quite a long tradition of eminent, tenured, (and often aging) scientists going a little bit off the deep end, especially in areas outside of their actual expertise.

People say things for all kinds of weird reasons, which may range from pet theories to hawking books and getting speaking gigs.

<comment><USER10>
      > On the other hand, there's quite a long tradition of
      > eminent, tenured, (and often aging) scientists going a
      > little bit off the deep end, especially in areas outside
      > of their actual expertise.

Look no further than Watson _and_ Crick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> <http://journalofcosmology.com/>

Not to judge a book by its cover, but... seriously?

<comment><USER11> I thought, trying to be charitable - "it's [<http://journalofcosmology.com/>] not that bad, OK - not the worst, table based, outset borders, kinda minimalist maybe". Then \ _BAM\_ the background loaded and assaulted my visual cortex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> While it is strange that he would publish his paper in the Journal of Cosmology, it doesn't change the validity (or non-validity) of the facts. I'm looking forward to seeing some serious analysis of the paper instead of snarky ad hominem attacks like this article.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, it opens with snark. But then the article goes through the arguments and figures in the paper and refutes the hypothesis, so it's not empty snark.

Publishing a paper in a fake journal does damage the validity of the claims. Papers with sufficient evidence for their claims can get published in journals with strict peer review policies. By choosing such a crap journal the authors are essentially admitting that Nature or Science would never accept their arguments.

<comment><USER12> The only objective criticisms I saw in the article were about the SEMs not being to scale and the preservation state of the "organisms". Other than that, it seems like it was snark at the beginning, snark in the middle, and snark at the end.

<comment><USER13> He directly addresses their key evidence: the pictures of the supposed organisms. He interprets the images as inorganic and and calls the paper's claims pareidolia. If outside observers look at the same data and don't see what you're arguing for, you're not making your case successfully.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> At first while I was reading this article I was really REALLY bummed out. I was so excited when they discovered extra terrestrial life that, even though the initial link posted on HN came from Fox News and the second came from Yahoo!, I still believed it. I'm just that big an optimist.

This guy put me in my place, though. The Journal of Cosmology does look like a complete and utter joke of a website. Fox may as well just take to syndicating Nexus magazine.

It's not all bad news though! Just as I was beginning to get seriously down in the dumps I saw that, NO JOKE, I'm the 999,999th visitor to scienceblogs.com!

Not only that, but I have been RANDOMLY SELECTED to become the possible winner of an Apple product! That news really bouyed my spirits!

In all seriousness: if this dude wants to go round shitting on other people's websites he should reconsider his choice in 3rd party ad network.

</comment><comment><USER15> I read the paper in it's entirety today.

Hoover is a sharp scientist and he has authored a very compelling piece that on the surface appears to reinforce it's central tenant - that the structures documented are not indigenous to Earth.

If that is in fact validated, the remaining debate is about methods and interpretation of the ESEM, FSEM and EDS results. That portion of the paper appears to be very well thought out and presented.

What's also very good, there is a clear and concise method for reproducing the results and the invitation of so many others to do just that.

This thing has legs.

</comment><comment><USER16> It seems telling to me that NASA had a major build up and press conference to discuss findings of exobiotic-like life, yet quietly does nothing for evidence of actual exobiotic life.

<comment><USER2> do you mean xenobiotic?

<comment><USER16> No, I didn't, but that would be appropriate, too. <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/exobiology>

And I would love to know what I was down-voted for. Please tell me it wasn't because somebody thought it really should be xenobiology (and, no, xd, I don't think it was you :).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> But I want to believe :(

</comment><comment><USER18> By the way, why does everyone seem to be poo-pooing that arsenic discovery from a few months ago? Did something about it turn out to be fake?

<comment><USER3> Pretty much everything about the "arsenic-based life" claim turned out to be examples of poor scientific lab technique and poor thinking. There is NOT acceptance in the scientific community that arsenic-based life has been found.

[http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arseni...](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic- based_life.php)

[http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated- ba...](http://rrresearch.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-associated-bacteria- nasas.html)

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/arsenic-life- under...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/12/arsenic-life-under-fire/)

<http://www.slate.com/id/2276919/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Carl Sagan once fought for the right and asked that it be treated as an honor or duty that every scientist examine claims no matter how unrealistic in order to expose the greater amount of people to the scientific method and basic science. Carl Sagan's debunking of Velikovsky was just as snarky if not more so.

For those of ill-uniformed..Velikovsky had similar theories.

<comment><USER19> Both sides of the Carl Sagan and Velikovsky affair:

<http://www.jerrypournelle.com/science/velikovsky.htm>

Some interesting reading as Velikovsky also was a Hoyle believer..

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> P.Z. Meyers is a biology Shock Jock. Thats all. He says whatever will get traffic.

<comment><USER21> Is he wrong?

<comment><USER20> Should be, JOC has 5000 scientist reviewing, and 500 vetting.

<comment><USER22> Source?

<comment><USER20> Comment was derived from the below.

[http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding- mete...](http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/03/aliens-riding-meteorites- arsenic-redux-or-something-new/)

[http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology- going-o...](http://daviddobbs.posterous.com/journal-of-cosmology-going-out- with-big-bang)

Rosie Redfield has now voiced some valid concerns on processing.

<comment><USER23> Huh? That link says they _invited_ 5,000 scientists to "review" the paper _after_ it was published as part of some kind of publicity stunt.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Censorship or Protectionism? Reassessing China's Regulation of Internet Industry [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.ijssh.org/vol7/790-MC26.pdf <comment><USER2> >...it is foreseeable that the protectionism by Internet censorship will be abolished after Baidu, Youku, Sina Weibo, and Renren mature enough.

No, it really isn't. This was an interesting read right up to this part of the conclusion, then they blew it.

Yes of course China's strict censorship of foreign services creates an opportunity fir domestic rival services, but the censorship came first and takes primacy over commercial considerations both for internal services and external ones. The Chinese government sees pervasive control of society as a primary political objective and their grip on the domestic internet gives them that. Every firm of internet communication is scanned, filtered and traced. All the major message broadcast services, equivalents of e.g. Twitter and Facebook, are astroturfed with pro-government propaganda. This is not going to stop just so that a few Chinese internet companies might possibly have a Chance of making a bit of money overseas. To think that's possible is astoundingly naive.

Anyway, why would they have to? They could just partition their foreign services to not include domestic filters.

<comment><USER3> >All the major message broadcast services, equivalents of e.g. Twitter and Facebook, are astroturfed with pro-government propaganda.

This is a conspiracy theory. Prove it.

>They could just partition their foreign services to not include domestic filters.

Already done with WeChat.

<comment><USER4> Its common knowledge. Even has a wikipedia page.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To my mind, we are not stick to one of two options "censorship or protectionism", they are not mutually exclusive. From epistemological point of view it is better to choose one, but I believe that this is not the case with China Internet regulation. China govenment is not so stupid to miss any of opportunities that banishment of foriegn services brings. Moreover China government is clever enough to make it hard to deduce his motives from his behaviour. Censorship and protectionism are both not very good and can be target of international blame, but it is hard to write some brilliant piece of critics of China government methods, while considering two possibilities. Unclear goals gives China some space to defend himself from critics.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's always been completely obvious to me that the firewall is about protectionism. It doesn't do much to actually censor anything but it definitely allows exclusion of foreign Internet services and creates a pretext for denying their ability to do business in China.

It's a way for China to comply with the letter of trade agreements while still refusing to open their markets. Getting a bit tougher with China on trade is one of the few things I actually agreed with Trump about and the main thing I disliked about Clinton.</comment>


Startup building the open-source "operating system" of the Metaverse - <AUTHOR> http://lucidscape.com <comment><USER2> My first thought was "Wow, somebody made that work!" After reading their site, it's clear they have a long, long way to go.

In the early days of There, Inc., I was recruited by them, and was in on some early design discussions. They wanted to build a planet-sized 3D virtual world with physical simulation, with all the scaling problems that implies. My comment was "Now let us all join hands around the world", which produced groans. (Doing physical simulation across a cell boundary is hard enough, but if the users can force you to have to do it across N cells, you have a real problem.)

For that system (and for Second Life) the assumption was that all the servers were in the same data center, with low inter-server lag. Trying to do this with home servers and lag in the 100ms and up range is going to suck. However, a distributed system where all sites are hosted in data centers on the same continent with low-latency connections might work.

Now they have to deal with the security problems, the delay problems, etc. They also need a really big MMORPG to exercise the system. Something like a planet-sized version of Minecraft would be a good test. The rules are simple and users create the content. A tougher test would be to create a simple, but huge, driving game, using Open Street Map, "seamless.gov", and topo data. Then load it up with automated traffic and let people drive in it.

<comment><USER3> Many years ago some friends and I kicked around an MMO on a post-apocalyptic version of the US, full-scale. The actual data involved worked out to less than a terabyte, including topo. Modern hardware has made that part tractable.

The problem is, how the fuck do you make it _fun_?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really do feel the need to ask, these days: am I the only technologist completely uninterested in transforming real life into _Snow Crash_? As far as massive-world 3D games go, I still see more artistry in the _Assassin 's Creed_ series (for all its flaws) or even something more fantastic like _Pokemon Snap_ (safari games are the idea that stay with me for VR implementation: make something that _does not already exist_ rather than copying meatspace) than in these weird attempts to create a "virtual reality" or even just large-scale game world modeled off... Times Square.

Not only can I already visit Times Square in real life, I _choose not to_. Ditto on the more branded, corporatized, ad-infested portions of the internet (ie: the "downtown internet" approved by official, polite society).

Many scifi novels (insofar as _Snow Crash_ can even be called "fiction" rather than "prediction" these days :-() are written to _make fun_ of wacky technologists and our just-somewhat-off-target ideas, you know.

Now, to end on a _zog_ note rather than zig or zag, here's an idea: someone figure out the massive-game or VR equivalent of 4chan. _There 's_ something people will actually want to use. (For all the official disapproval from all sectors, 4chan and 2chan are _massively_ popular and influential. They are offering something users want: anonymity, obscurity, simplicity, and freedom!) EDIT: [http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/96020280368/faceless- together](http://kazerad.tumblr.com/post/96020280368/faceless-together)

</comment><comment><USER5> The more important test is not the technological one, but if the idea is useful at all. So far 3D worlds haven't proven themselves as necessary or something that leaps forward communication. It provides all kinds of constraints with few upsides. Just because the world is in 3d for my normal life doesn't mean that constraint is natural or useful by extension -- when I read I absorb language and abstract thoughts mixed with imagination without any "real world" basis. 3D avatars might look cool but they also visually become the hero when that might be exactly what we want to get away from in a community context -- the potential for new forms of representation that dont resemble the physical world. Second life was predicted by some to have already taken over all of business world, and thus far it had the most uptick and chance of all of these systems. Yet am I reading HN via some dragon emitting nerdy fireballs? No I have a simple web page with the ability to hyperlink me straight to interesting content that is more text typically. And it's working way better in this form than a 3D world could because the concept doesn't make sense to add that extra graphical dimension and navigational constraint.

<comment><USER6> For a lot of purposes I agree. Hypertext is one.

But I think one reason 3D hasn't done much is that we're looking at it through a little 2D window. When VR really hits the market I think 3D worlds will be a lot more compelling.

<comment><USER5> The question then becomes what new applications will that enable, rather than how can we do what we already do in 3D. That's the problem I see with secondlife and as they're defining the metaverse...

If it's about simulation/training for doctors/firefighters/etc then I can see the uses because you're wanting to simulate a complex situation in the real world. But what purely virtual tasks will be better accomplished with VR than without? Is it more simulation of reality or something totally new? My guess is for whatever is new it mostly will be about navigating something inherently 3D such as DNA. If that's true, then do we really need a decentralized metaverse to populate it, or can whatever random DNA VR software be enough?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having been in on two previous attempts, let me state my wry amusement at this go-around :-)

<comment><USER8> Indeed. It would perhaps be easier to rephrase - _What problem is this actually solving?_

<comment><USER9> The problem, as I see it: VR and the web are too far apart.

This seems to be an attempt to build a... protocol? engine? both? for moving programmable entities between volumes of space that may be controlled by different hosts.

The "operating system" / Metaverse verbiage is a little grandiose, but I really like the idea. Or maybe I just miss Adobe Atmosphere :)

<comment><USER10> _This seems to be an attempt to build a... protocol? engine? both? for moving programmable entities between volumes of space that may be controlled by different hosts._

Okay, but why would I want to do that?

<comment><USER11> because it was surprisingly good in literature

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the back is gibberish explaining how he may be reached: a telephone number. A universal voice phone locator code. A P.O. box. His address on half a dozen electronic communications nets. And an address in the Metaverse.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds like High Fidelity: [https://highfidelity.io](https://highfidelity.io)

(No affiliation other than having tried it a couple months ago and written a little bit of code for it.)

<comment><USER14> Similar, but this one says they'll exert no centralized control at all. High Fidelity intends to control the analogues of the name servers, and some other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> If you try to go extreme on all possible requirements simultaneously, the chance of failure approaches one hundred percent. The key to success is to pick one or two areas where you want to go beyond state-of-the-art, while staying within it in other areas.

I strongly recommend deleting the requirement about seamless visualization _across_ servers. Of all the items on the list, that strikes me as adding the most difficulty for the least value.

<comment><USER16> Based on the videos, haven't they already implemented that?

<comment><USER15> They might have, for all I know. It's doable in a product that isn't trying to do much else at the same time, if you own all the servers in question and can make sure they are connected by a low latency network. The bad news will come when you try to keep the property of seamlessness between servers while scaling up to do other things as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Can someone explain what this is for? I watched the videos, and I still don't get it.

And no, I haven't read Snow Crash. I shouldn't have to read a novel to get excited about a project...

<comment><USER11> No, but you should read Snow Crash.

Everyone should read Snow Crash.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Calling this an "operating system" just seems like misdirection from the actually cool problem of visualizing distributed systems. I mean the whole thing about the Metaverse is that it's simply a vivid realization of what's _already happening_ on the internet --- it's not some extra layer on top.

This technology is pretty impressive, and I get the marketing speak that will appeal to certain folks, but I'd rather call it what it is --- an impressive, distributed, rendering engine.

IDK, maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong.

<comment><USER18> A minor amount of Snow Crash (the book in which the term is coined) is dedicated to descriptions of the team that built the Metaverse "protocol." It actually was software purpose-built to drive this kind of distributed VR experience, rather than a simple visualization of the Internet as it existed.

William Gibson's "Matrix" from Neuromancer was more of a visualization of data as it flew about a virtual world, doing whatever it is data does when you watch it. Certain servers are protected by layers of "ice," which you have to "drill" through in order to gain access, etc.

There are a few working groups that appear to also still be working on standards for the Metaverse: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Anyone know if the source code is available? Their post says it's an open source project -- would be cool to explore.

<comment><USER20> Nothing on their GitHub yet.

Their Facebook page header has what looks like some F# on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This looks like it would be very good tech for MMO games.

</comment><comment><USER22> Well, there is are several metric tons of examples out there.. Hard to resist coming up with my own ideas though since this is such an interesting topic.

Maybe we don't have to have the most advanced open source 3d networking game engine out there as a protocol.

Maybe we can start by building off of Named Data Networking (NDN) [http://named-data.net/doc/NDN-TLV/current/](http://named-data.net/doc/NDN- TLV/current/)

Would be nice to have everything including content represented in Manchester OWL syntax but that's probably not realistic.

So perhaps use the NDN protocol with TLV encoding, NDN name format/URI scheme, order. Use the interest packets for subscribing to rooms in the metaverse. Then exchange NDN Data Packets with updates to object positions etc.

Maybe for data contents use something with YAML for a change from XML.

        name/smith/john50/homeworld

        base: org/sim
        libs: dim/1, objs/1, phys/1
          dimension: real
            - terrain:
                heightmap: maps/hills.png
            - objects:
              - house:
                windows: 5
                type: simple
                bedrooms: 3
              - avatar:
                model: models/man.dae
                name: name/smith/john50/me
                pose: walk 2
                position: [50, 50, 2]
                velocity: [0.5, 1.0, 0.1]
                owner: name/smith/john50
              - portal:
                  world: name/wallace/liz10/homeworld
                  type: simplecircle
                  position: [123, 435, 123]
                  dimension: real
              - webview:
                  name: John's Smart TV
                  url: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaverse

        org/sim/objs/1

        base: org/sim
        dimension: real
          - procedures:
            room:
              - for: [1, walls]
                  - makegeom: [cube, 1.0, 0.5, 1.0, 0.0, 0.0, 0.0]
            house:
              - for: [b, 1, bedrooms]
                  - room:
                      walls: 4
              - for: [b, 1, windows]
                  - cutgeom: [quad, 0.25, 0.25, 0.25, b, 0, 0]

        name/smith/john50/update102
        timestamp: xxxxxxxxxxxx
        which: name/smith/john50/me
        update:
          operation: impulse
          vector: [ 0.25, 1.0, 0.0 ]
          startstate:
            velocity: [ 0.5, 0.0, 0.0 ]

The idea with the "procedures:" thing is to take advantage of YAML's flexibility in order to create a language independent representation of an algorithm for doing simple procedural generation. It would be designed in such a way as to make it easy to generate code from the data tree in different languages like C, C++, Nim(rod), Java, Python, whatever. That would be compiled on the fly and loaded as a sort of plugin.

Then rather than doing simple state updates, it uses operational transformations like saying "at time A force B was applied to this object and its velocity before that was C".

So my idea uses an emerging standard (NDN) for efficiently distributing information and updates about the metaverse, an easy to read standard in YAML for describing the details, includes the concept of portals linking between worlds (you gotta have portals, they are one of the coolest things about the metaverse), includes the idea of embedded webviews (too much awesome stuff on the web to leave that out of the metaverse browser), a YAML-format for encoding algorithms that can be easily translated to common languages and compiled on the fly, and operational transformations for informing other clients about operations on the world state.

<comment><USER3> I despise your use of YAML instead of JSON, but I applaud your suggestion of a flexible procedural markup language.

It allows (theoretically) for us to be sharing the same space, but I see a modern office while you see a Japanese dojo. Effectively, Spatial Style Sheets, right?

The big problem (one we still run in to everywhere else) is that people are going to want to be guaranteed that the dragon dildo they proudly display in their 'verse is seen the same by every visitor, and that's only accomplished by low-level data such as triangle meshes, UVs, and images.

Still, a very intriguing thought.

<comment><USER22> My idea was that there would be one specific set of code for each procedure loaded in when you say what libs: you want. So 'house' and 'room' are the same for everyone. It would be possible though to come up with a way to allow different definitions of those things which would be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Again? :)

It does look quite cool though.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's another CLR monstrosity (see the code on their Facebook page)?

Why!!!???

<comment><USER21> CLR not hipster enough for you?

<comment><USER20> F# is pretty hipster.</comment></comment></comment>


Prototype blood scanner can detect cancer in less than 1 hour - <AUTHOR> http://www.thestandard.com/news/2008/12/03/blood-scanner-detects-cancer-faster-and-sooner

<comment><USER2> I'd test that in a heartbeat. It shouldn't be too hard to get it by the FDA. Sounds like a great idea, I already get my blood sugar, cholesterol, white blood cell count, and a few other stats tested by my physician, why not put another drop of blood on this device while I'm there and call me if there's bad news given?

<comment><USER3> Because you might get a false positive.

<comment><USER4> The cost of false positives is another, better test.

The cost of false negatives is grim.

<comment><USER2> That's why most of these tests are made so that they give more false positives than false negatives. Something about the alpha value that I learned a long time ago in statistics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is one of those items that should be fast-tracked by the FDA.

There's zero risk of physically hurting the patient, and the false positives can be checked by other methods. As far as I can see, the only thing we're waiting on is the accuracy numbers.</comment>


Ask HN: So do these companies make actual money or they just have revenue? - <AUTHOR>

A lot of web companies raise loads of money and you often read claims of profit or at least enormous revenue.
But do they actually make a profit? I have searched and tried to figure this out and there doesn't seem to be a clear answer.
Now if 1 in 20 people in the whole world use your product and you're backed by the heaviest VCs then perhaps you don't need to makemoney right away but still...
So I'm thinking about first and foremost: The giants: * Skype * Facebook * Youtube Smaller ones: * Digg * Reddit * Delicious
Secondly: * All HN-startups and similar kind of startups.Why a lot of them perhaps are useful it just seems like stuff people would stop using as soon as it costs money. <comment><USER3> skype - got acquired. users buy service

facebook - advertising revenue

youtube - got acquired. primarily advertising revenue

digg - advertising revenue, sells stuff.

reddit - got acquired. displays some ads, but mostly for its parent company.

delicious - got acquired.

most startups have a plan that consists of one or more of the major 4 plans - sell something, ad revenue, license out your product, cross your fingers and hope to be bought out.

a good business relies on one or more of the first 3. the more of the first 3, the better.

<comment><USER4> More specifically: skype-profitable, but hemorrhaging money for ebay, ebay $1B in the hole facebook-not profitable, needs new investment youtube - <USER2> profitable, hemorrhaging money for google digg - not profitable, can't find a buyer reddit- acquired for a pittance, can't find advertisers delicious- don't know

See a pattern here? Other than the big search engines, I can't think of very many startups that are cash flow positive. Unless you're selling something or licensing, simple mathematics will tell you it's very hard to make millions from ad revenue alone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't mean nitpick your title, but "revenue" _is_ "making money" (actual money, even).

When the company is public (or acquired by a public company) you can usually find out if they're profitable.

For example, YouTube is not profitable. It generates revenue via advertising but not enough to cover its costs. [http://rochakchauhan.com/blog/2008/08/09/youtube-not- profita...](http://rochakchauhan.com/blog/2008/08/09/youtube-not-profitable- google/)

Skype, it appears, is a profitable venture for eBay. Search "skype profitable" and you'll find that it has been since '07.

Because Facebook is a private company, you'll find less specifics about their revenue and profit. My understanding, however, is that they're not profitable yet. IIRC Marc Andreessen told Charlie Rose that they _could be_ profitable if they put ads on the home page.

I don't know enough about the other ...</comment>


GitHub cofounder's next startup is a non-profit that helps kids learn to code - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2014/06/05/github-cofounders-next-startup-is-a-non-profit-that-helps-kids-learn-to-code/

<comment><USER2> God... I hope he doesn't teach them to code as horribly as show the in construction of Git...</comment>


The Missing Link: Explaining ELF Static Linking, Semantically [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~pes20/rems/papers/oopsla-elf-linking-2016.pdf <comment><USER2> Pretty nice work incrementally getting where we need. Here's a few links for those following such work on safe linking.

SPIN OS - Modula-3 with safe extensions [https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~savage/papers/Sosp95.pdf](https://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~savage/papers/Sosp95.pdf)

CMOD - Sound module system for C that caught errors in OSS programs [https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/cmod- journal.pdf](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~mwh/papers/cmod-journal.pdf)

One I stumbled on looking for the others that supports dynamic linking:

[http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.28....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.28.3959&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> A surprisingly enjoyable read.</comment>