The weird criticism that Big Tech is too digital - <AUTHOR> https://theweek.com/articles-amp/885308/weird-criticism-that-big-tech-digital <comment><USER2> I think there are real improvements made by the tech industry. For example cellular and smart phones are brand new and overall have improved quality of life and productivity.

But on the whole I think most of the "gains" made through big tech are marginal. Marginal specifically because either:

A.) New tech companies create products primarily to make the tech industry more productive at building/maintaining/deploying systems

B.) New tech companies provide a small amount of value over a preexisting industry and transfer the industry into the tech sector (e.g. Uber/Lyft) through "disruption"

As a result, the industry has provided less overall growth and improvement to society than its raw potential, and at the same time has consolidated wealth as much as it has created it.

Uber was originally supposed to be a commute-sharing app that reduced heavy reliance on vehicles, making a dramatically more efficient use of resources and time. When it came around to executing on this, the real value-making proposition was to transfer and capture an existing market (ride-hailing/taxi services).

My prescription for a fix would be to emphasize computer literacy in the school system, encouraging the entire 12K public school system to introduce the idea of self-automation as a problem solving pattern for the general population.

In two generations, every sector of the economy will apply automation within their own ranks to eek out efficiency, rather than relying on software developers in California to understand their day-to-day and make an app to "disrupt" their industry.

<comment><USER3> I have a suspicion that most application of computing and Internet technology, even in business, has in fact been neutral or somewhat negative in terms of productivity and, for humans, also for happiness, but some minority of the applications yield such huge gains (on both fronts) that it's an improvement overall and one can be fooled into thinking it's _usually_ good, rather than usually bad but sometimes _very_ good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can't make an MVP of a cure for cancer.

You can't "crush code" and build a space elevator in a hackathon.

You can't hustle your way through a robot that collects, folds, and stores all your dirty laundry.

You can't build an O'Neill cylinder with a 2-year horizon of profitability.

Some problems are hard, expensive, and do not lead to fame or fortune in the short term. Startups are not structurally equipped to solve these problems, and perhaps public corporations aren't either. As it turns out, it is much easier to make money by solving (or inventing!) easy problems, and our culture currently views making money as a proxy for creating value for society. If you want a more exciting and ambitious future, we will all need to think further ahead than the next quarterly earnings report.

<comment><USER5> "You can't make an MVP of a cure for cancer"

That's linear thinking. Yes you can.

<comment><USER4> It is possible to tackle any of the engineering challenges I listed in an incremental fashion. That isn't the point.

The context of a "Minimum Viable Product" is a mental model of products, markets, and profitability. There is a fundamental difference between the goal "cure cancer" and the goal "make money from a cancer cure". The perverse incentives and loopholes of the latter are a serious impediment to the former.

<comment><USER5> You don't think you can make money from a cancer cure and cure cancer at the same time?

<comment><USER6> Not OP, but no - the profit motive is the main perverter of the pharmaceutical industry. By talking a profit you ensure that your cancer treatment will not cure cancer - too few people will have access to cure the disease and millions will still suffer and die needlessly. I guess a few rich, first worlders would live, so it's not all bad.

People celebrate Jonahs Salk because not only did he develop the polio vaccine but he rejected his opportunity to massively profit from it because it was more important that patients have access.

No company that develops a cancer cure these days would do that. Their shareholders would revolt, their boards would fire their exeutives, their stock prices would plunge, and their competitors would pile on.

<comment><USER7> What to do if you have a cure is an imaginary problem. Regulators set minimum standards for efficacy which involve a treatment being just _barely_ statistically significant. The problem is not burying cures, because playing the game of "make believe a treatment is better than placebo" is infinitely simpler than coming up with a cure. The cures people believe in are like the infamous 200 mpg carburetor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What even _is_ "Big Tech"? I feel like it's a buzzword coined by news outlets to vilify the tech industry. "Big Tech" companies like Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Facebook are in entirely different industries: Electronic hardware products, online retail, video media, and social platforms. The article mentions how "Big Tech" is centered on advertising but only 1 out of those three derive their main source of revenue from advertising. Heck, depending on how you define "Big Tech" arguably the majority of "Big Tech" does not rely on advertising: Facebook and Google do while Microsoft (bing is trivial), Apple, Netflix, and Amazon do not.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't think the article successfully argues against Thiel's criticism. Clearly there is an opportunity cost to putting highly trained individuals to work on some issue vs another. If you look for example at the number of PhD physicists in finance it seems obvious to me that if these people were working on biotech or materials or infrastructure or process optimisation there would at least be some more progress than there currently is.

Digital tech giants barely interact with other sectors of the economy in meaningful ways, the lack of economic or productivity growth after the computer era is well documented, and there would be tangible benefits from aiming resources and talent at sectors that interact with the material world and the economy at large.

The article also brings up Europe as an example that the lack of digital giants doesn't result in more progress, but that's actually not true. Infrastructure costs in Europe are significantly lower than in the US. One only needs to look at the transport sector in Germany or France and compare it to California's attempt to build high-speed rail. The US trails not only Europe but even countries like China in some key sectors.

Now building high-speed transport infrastructure for the masses might not make it into the next Pivot podcast or on the frontpage of techcrunch, but for the long term health of the economy and the general surplus for society is probably larger than more smartphone apps.

<comment><USER10> > One only needs to look at the transport sector in Germany or France and > compare it to California's attempt to build high-speed rail

California is about the same size as Germany and less than half the population. Germany has several existing, historical train systems. California, less so. There's a lot going on in that case beyond just California having a lot of digital tech folks.

<comment><USER11> > California is about the same size as Germany and less than half the > population.

California is about 20% larger than Germany, in terms of land area, much longer when you look at the longest dimension. Germany is both substantially smaller and more compact for it's land area.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The author may be right for the reason that, the criticism is based on linear extrapolations of what people wanted in the past decades. Perhaps they don't want flying cars, but instead the ability to tele-work and telecommunicate. Perhaps flying cars are the "faster horses" of our time , which will be overtaken by some yet-unknown tech in the future. Physical infrastructure is good, if there is going to be a lot of use for it. With industrial production shifting to china and then africa, there's little incentive to build new roads. There is a case to be made however about "weird" overregulation in biotech/medicine. As populations are aging we will be forced to remove barriers and move faster there.

The author's conclusion "Silicon Valley will almost certainly keep playing a big role in them" is not well justified imho. Silicon Valley has failed in most its major promises in 2010s: VR, IoT, blockchain, Selfdriving robots (and soon satellite internet). Instead, the advertising money that is fueling its economy, is being recycled through SaaS/Paas companies that make the developers job ever-so-slightly easier, creating a closed, inward looking economy. IMHO , the real failure is the lack of ambitious consumer-facing tech

</comment><comment><USER12> Working on a hardware startup, I'm seeing that hardware infrastructure is way behind software infrastructure. Figuring out to test a new iteration in a week feels like magic, when software companies can deploy iterations in an hour.

I think software infrastructure for hardware development is going to get better, but one of the biggest barriers is the small size of the open source hardware movement compared to open source software.

<comment><USER13> Hardware tooling is bad. Like really lifesuckingly bad. Download yourself some free Xilinx IDE and try to do some Verilog Hello World on a cheap demo board. Blink a LED or something. Its so bad you will want to scream: Dog slow sythesis (~compilation), useless IDE support, ten steps to run something, badly composed. Errors will land in some arbitrarily named logfile somewhere between the code. More expensive tools are hardly any better.

I started doing hardware but ran away, I feel it is a waste of developer time to even consider doing any custom hardware designs. People should be punished for even thinking about using FPGAs. Just don't do it.

Sorry for the rant, but I feel warning yall is my duty ;)</comment></comment>


What a new theory of attention says about consciousness - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/09/how-brain-helps-you-pay-attention/598846/ <comment><USER3> > The brain wasn't brightening the light on stimuli of interest; it was > lowering the lights on everything else.

An outstanding demonstration of this process is Apollo Robbins' "pick-pocket" act[1]. You can clearly see how he gives his subject a bunch of things to think about - his hand movements, what he's talking about, sounds, touch, etc - until it fills up the subjects attention capacity and they suddenly stop noticing everything else going on right in front of them. He basically performs a denial-of-service attack on someone's attention system until they cannot notice him take their wristwatch off. All done with a flourish for the camera, of course, which works because he's not DOSing the _audience 's_ attention.

A particularly good example is from his talk[2] at defcon (the entire talk is worth watching). Right when he asks "When you walked past me, did you check to see where your wallet was?" you can see the volunteer suddenly put all of his attention on that question and not his wristwatch.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ)

[2] (demo starts at 31:22) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4&feature=youtu.be...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kkOKvPrdZ4&feature=youtu.be&t=1882)

</comment><comment><USER4> If attention is achieved by tuning out other stimuli, could an attention deficit also come from an overeager filter tuning out also the target of the attention?

As a child I was a voracious reader, often reading a book a day. I remember many times when the situation would allow it turning on both the television and the radio, both with sound on, to create a 'distraction field' that let me 'cocoon' in the reading.

I always thought it could have been just masking distractions like 'strange noises' in the house that would cause one to have to pay attention, like some people use white noise, but could it be in this theory's model that I was putting load on the 'filters' so as to prevent them catching the desired attention target, the text I wanted to focus on?

<comment><USER5> I think this is a very important concept that needs to be better understood. As others have posted in this thread, I tend to work better - at least on certain tasks, when sitting in a busy cafe vs. at home where it's quiet. It's made me realize that certain people may have an optimal minimal amount of stimulus required, otherwise leading to restlessness - boredom. It would make sense that a system, body and mind, designed or optimized for a higher level of sensory input - when active and not sleeping - wouldn't just be able to "rev down" quickly, which perhaps would be more akin to a depressed state - <USER2> suppression/repression of where someone's systems naturally want to them to efficiency wise for the amount of stimulus they can process. A quiet classroom may be a terrible environment for some people to learn - yet is common practice for most school systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've often wondered why I can focus for a very long time when working in a coffee shop, yet when working alone at home I can easily go off on a tangent.

<comment><USER7> IMO those processes you describe are from classical conditioning, operabt conditioning and the fact that you have some social control.

<comment><USER6> Not to sound rude, but those phrases sound like cliches and don't mean anything. There really is something to trying to tune out distractions which converts to laser focus as a net effect.

<comment><USER7> Cool, let me go into detail with specific examples. Because those phrases are not cliche and they do mean something. Game-designers use social control (I suppose a better term is: social processes), classical and operant conditioning processes all the time! And it makes them money.

In all fairness, my comment is a bundle of hypotheses, but I tend to think they are true. In my previous comment I was less nuanced about it since I wanted to be brief. But to test that they are true requires a lot of experiments. And also note: these processes may be different to other people. I can't focus in coffeeshops, for example. I'd rather be alone.

Moreover, upon thinking about this more deeply, I forgot the imitation aspect of social control. I'm not going into that, this thing is long enough to write.

In any case to go back to my previous comment, there are 3 processes: (A) social control (a word that I invented on my own), (B) classical conditioning and (C) operant conditioning.

(A) Let's start with the easiest: how does social control play a role for you to focus a very long time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at home?

(1) When you're alone at home, nobody is watching you.

(2) You feel more free to do whatever you want because of it. Want to take a nap? Go for it! Want to work in your underpants? You can. Want to take a break and play video games/watch youtube/<insert favorite entertainment>? Yep, all possible.

These things are less possible in a coffee shop. Even when it comes to entertainment: you need wear headphones. You might be embarrassed on laughing out loud publicly. You don't feel as relaxed.

In other words, because other people being there in the room that are silently judging you on your behavior (i.e. social control), you won't feel as compelled to just chill in your own idiosyncratic way.

Yes, you can find ways around it. Yes, you can hack it and find counter examples. But it won't be as accessible compared to doing it at your own house. So one feels less compelled to do so.

(B) How does classical conditioning play a role for you to focus a very long time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at home?

Recap on classical conditioning: bell --> food --> salivation, the learning then became bell --> salivation.

In this case: a biological potent stimulus (e.g. coffee), is being paired with a previously neutral stimulus (e.g. the atmosphere). Which then results in learning: coffee shop atmoshpere is cofee high.

So: atmosphere --> coffee --> coffee high, therefore: atmosphere --> coffee high.

What does a coffee high do? It makes you feel more alert. Does that makes you feel more focused? Not necessarily, but it helps. Therefore, it plays a role.

(C) How does operant conditioning play a role for you to focus a very long time when working in a coffeeshop versus working alone at home?

Recap on operant conditioning: the strength of a behavior is modified by rewards (technical term: reinforcement) and punishment. Example: a child learns to open a box to get the sweets inside.

The social control that I described earlier is a form of operant conditioning as one might anticipate a punishment for acting out of line (e.g. lying on the couch to sleep, something you can do in your house, not in a coffeeshop).

You getting work done gives you a feeling of accomplishment. So if the first couple of times of working in a coffee shop went well for some reason, you tend to associate a coffee shop with a place where you get work done? Sounds obvious, I suppose, but that's what operant conditioning can mean.

Drinking coffee at a nice cafe can be seen as a reward in itself, and you only get to go there if you focus and work there.

\---

Obviously, there are more processes at play. But the article is about how our brain suppresses the information flow of certain stimuli. You happen to experience in coffee shops that you tend to focus better, in other words that your brain suppresses information flow better than at home.

I simply describe a couple of hypotheses of why this might be. The theories that I use have been validated by psychologists for decades and also by game- designers who actively use them in casual games. So their theoretical underpinning in that it works (and to some extent how it works) is quite strong.

Only in your second comment, below mine do you make clear what your implicit hypothesis in the first comment was "there really is something to trying to tune out distractions which converts to laser focus as a net effect." Putting your PFC in overdrive might indeed be a thing. I wouldn't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The interesting thing about this for me is that I've always assumed that the default state of an awake mind is a kind of inattentiveness where we take in an process no data at all. But this article makes it sound like, by default, our minds are constantly trying to process and take everything in, and the extra work goes in to filtering the input we get.

This seems to match with the phenomenal experience of being overwhelmed in noisy or crowded situations, and of the difficult part of meditation being teaching yourself not to suppress experiences as they arise and just take everything in.

<comment><USER9> > I've always assumed that the default state of an awake mind is a kind of > inattentiveness where we take in an process no data at all

Try a bit of meditation and you will realise this is far from the case.</comment></comment>


Happy and Ambitious? How to Be Both? - <AUTHOR> https://www.juandavidcampolargo.com/blog/jermaine <comment><USER2> As individuals we each have our specific needs, wants, and preferences in activities and hobbies. We also vary in how we react to events and behave in situations.

> Jermaine didn't wait for something to be happy. He appreciated what he had, > but wanted more in the future because he believes he could help people. He > didn't want more out of vanity.

Jermaine had the ability to realize where his emotions and perspective stemmed from. Your examples, Bill and Robin, did not have this ability and were both held back by some strong force (i.e. insecurity and ignorance).

If all people had the ability to look within and reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and choices—to be introspective—then more people would be like Jermaine.

However, I don't believe that people can suddenly _choose_ to act like Jermaine and choose both ambition and happiness.

There is a disconnection between people and their emotions which impedes their ability to know what they truly need and want to do with their lives.</comment>


Ask HN: Which algorithm do you use for hashing your users' password? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> [https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet](https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Password_Storage_Cheat_Sheet)</comment>


Human species-specific genetic mutation enhances atherosclerosis - <AUTHOR> https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2019/07/18/1902902116.short?rss=1&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Pnas-RssFeedOfEarlyEditionArticles+%28Early+Edition%29 <comment><USER2> To abstract the abstract:

2 to 3 million years ago, a gene in early humans was permanently inactivated (perhaps due to a malaria-like outbreak targeting a cell-surface molecule that the protein the gene coded for helped to build). That cell-surface molecule is found in most other mammals (excepting humans, ferrets, platypuses, and New World monkeys) so consumption of certain meats can cause it to be taken up and incorporated into human cell membranes, as the genes that allow for this are still functioning. But the immune system becomes sensitized to it, as a foreign antigen, and produces antibodies that subsequently cause chronic inflammation in the cells that took it up and exposed it on their surfaces.

<comment><USER3> So this is a causative link between meat consumption and atherosclerosis- causing inflammation

<comment><USER4> Specific gut bacteria have also been implicated as a link between red meat consumption and atherosclerosis: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3650111/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3650111/)

I'm curious how those findings relate to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'd be really curios to know who funded this research, and to understand the eating habits of the scientists involved.

There was a lot of research that showed smoking didn't cause cancer and we all know how that came about.

</comment><comment><USER6> Apparently, "enhances" means "worsens", here.</comment>


Deaf twist on Democrats' Voter Registration App on Github - <AUTHOR> http://pahvote.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Took this: <https://github.com/democrats/voter-registration>

And added some ASL videos and resource links for the deaf community. This is to encourage more of our people to become more involved in our country's direction. Just doing duty as a deaf American!</comment>


Github - "Experiencing Problems"  - <AUTHOR> https://status.github.com/?difficulties

<comment><USER2> Unrelated: I love those SVG-graphs that they have on their status-site.

</comment><comment><USER3> AND IT'S BACK!

<comment><AUTHOR> That was quick!

<comment><USER3> ...and it's back down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> oh my god</comment>


Ghost trades - <AUTHOR> Does anyone care to actually get ownership of securities when executing a trade?<p>My understanding is that when you 'invest' in the stock market (long term play, to minimise risk, counteract inflation, etc.), you really do care to get ownership of the actual security you paid for. However, when you 'trade' on the stock market, expecting to sell off the security soon after buying it (likely within the same day), you do not really care to own it as such and that the 'security' might as well be just an entry in a database which grants you the right to 'sell' it again sometime in the future (hopefully getting back more that you initially paid for it). <comment> awinter-py I don't think there's a relevant distinction between a database entry and ownership of the company.

If the stock wasn't a guarantee of equity rights, the information that drives the market wouldn't have any financial meaning.

You can argue that market microstructure on a small enough scale isn't related to fundamental value. Ok, maybe, but one of the reasons market microstructure exists is that the exchanges nominate certain entities to be market makers in order to ensure liquidity in the ticker symbol.

I think you'll find that most phenomena in stock trading are related in some way to information about the stock's fundamentals. (Even if it's just sharks taking the other side of elephants).</comment>


Show HN: New Roundtable Homepage - <AUTHOR> http://www.rtabl.es

<comment><AUTHOR> any feedback?</comment>


Old-style Mac OS X Leopard Exposé in Snow Leopard - <AUTHOR> http://www.ofbrooklyn.com/2011/01/9/old-style-mac-os-x-leopard-expose-snow-leopard/

<comment><USER2> I don't understand why they changed Exposé to proportional windows. It's not as easy to find what you're looking for--relative window size was the easiest way (for me) to quickly understand which window is which.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, they took literally the most immediately identifiable property of a window--its size--and threw it out in favor of a grid with text labels that I never read. The only justifications I can conceive of are that they wanted to give each window an equal click target, or that somebody really wanted text labels. Neither really impresses me. The old layout was a better visual metaphor too, akin to spreading out everything on a table; the animation for the new layout gives me a headache.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The old expose has better keyboard support. Using the arrow keys I can almost always select the correct window with the first keydown.

Thanks for posting this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Visually, I think the old-style of exposé makes window discovery much easier. I find myself using exposé with hot corners almost every time I switch windows. I'm going to be using the mouse later to test something in a browser window, so I might as well use it for the hot corners, too.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is all kinds of awesome. The "old" exposé was The Right Way™ to do it.

<comment><USER6> Why would they have changed it if the new way weren't better?

<comment><USER3> In case you were serious, I would have you go down in flames trying to use that as a defense for all of the UX changes in Windows Vista. You have constructed a rhetorical question with no sane answer, kind of like the prosecutor asking the defendant, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" when he has never done such a thing.

<comment><USER6> > In case you were serious, I would have you go down in flames trying to use > that as a defense for all of the UX changes in Windows Vista.

Either way, that statement was meant to apply to Apple alone (maybe you'll understand my subtle jab now).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I prefer the new-style Exposé, I find it more visually appealing. I'd never used it before Snow Leopard, but the changes made it much more appealing to me.

(Meta: I'm always interested why blatant copyright infringement of developer- only software (seen multiple times on HN) is upvoted -- or posted in the first place.)

<comment><USER8> It is more aesthetically pleasing, you're right. But I find it far less usable. Each window is small enough that I can't see the contents as easily, and it lost the cue of relative proportions which was the easiest way to spot things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Note that you will have to repeat this process every time you upgrade your Mac OS to a new patch release (10.6.5 -> 10.6.6)."

</comment><comment><USER10> This is the first thing I do on any new Snow Leopard install. Not looking forward to it (likely) breaking permanently in Lion :/

</comment><comment><USER11> unfortunately this kills the "minimize windows into dock icon" option :(

why can't I have my cake and eat it too?

<comment><USER3> You mean the yellow buttons don't work, or command M, or something else? I haven't tried this hack yet.

Edit: tried it, and those two things do work.

<comment><USER8> No, there's a way to make them go into the existing app icon, rather than in a series on the right side.</comment></comment></comment>


Charlie Rose Face Plants To Save His MacBook Air - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/17/charlie-rose-face-plants-to-save-his-macbook-air/ <comment><USER2> Now that is press you can't buy.</comment>


Cracking open the CalDigit USB-C dock - <AUTHOR> http://usb-c.today/cracking-open-caldigit-usb-c-dock/ <comment><AUTHOR> We reviewed this dock, then opened it. We took some shots of the PCB, and had a look at the ICs they used.</comment>


St Louis meetup tech-vertising - <AUTHOR> http://www.tech-vertising.com

<comment><AUTHOR> Fusion Marketing (whom I work for) in St Louis is having a meetup to discuss marketing and technology and their intersection. Featuring St Louis startups Bonfyre and Pushup Social, and some of Fusion Marketing's projects such as an Oculus Rift experiential project we're working on. Free beer and food for attendees.

If you're interested in tech, marketing, or startups, we'd love to have you come by. Attendance is free.</comment>


Improving Your Discussions by Enforcing Linguistic Clarity - <AUTHOR> http://www.mrjordangoldstein.com/blog/2013/09/09/improving-your-discussions-by-enforcing-linguistic-clarity/

<comment><USER2> Should have been called "Winning Your Arguments By Defining the Terms."</comment>


A Storm Expert's View: Dorian's Damage Remains Impossible to Predict - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/us/hurricane-dorian-unpredictable-forecast.html <comment><AUTHOR> The _Times 's_ headline and story here are examples of what I see as frustratingly bad and non-actionable reporting of high-risk, but uncertain, events.

Dorian is a current major (category 5, 137 kt, 252 kph, 157 mph 1 minute sustained winds) hurricane. The damage is in fact _easy_ to predict: it will be devastating wherever it makes landfall, as is presently being evidenced in the Bahamas. The storm will all but certainly persist for several days -- longer if it remains over warm waters, which feed it, less so if it heads inland.

The uncertainty lies over _where_ it will make landfall on the US mainland. The storm _track_ is determined by steering winds and pressure systems, and can change suddenly as conditions change. The early projected tracks called for the storm to cross the Florida peninsula, possibly heading into the Gulf of Mexico. The current projected path is well to the north. The _actual_ track _history_ has not changed much from the early predition _yet_ , though it likely will.

The condition is not unlike that presented by a lunatic madman with a large cache of explosives. Clearly dangerous, but wildly unpredictable.

From the point of view of decisionmakers -- national, state, local, and city governments, as well as businesses and residents in the area -- the questions each should be asking is:

* What _can_ be done?

* What actions _maximise future capabilities_?

* What is the likely _affected zone_ of impacts?

* How can rescue, recovery, and repair capabilities be staged _where needed_ but also _out of harm 's way?_

* Which people and properties are at greatest risk _and might further impede quick-response activities_ , and which are more adaptive?

Committments of actions, materials, manpower, and transport capacity are limited and dictate future possible actions. As an example, ordering mass evacuations along the entire Atlantic seaboard from Palm Beach to Norfolk would commit fuel and highway capacity, and likely be unnecessary. _Strategic_ evacuations, especially of the infirm and elderly, could be useful and effective. _Knowing who and where those pesons are_ helps emergency and rescue services as well as planners. That's information which can be gathered well in advance of any particular storm threat.

Knowing specific damage mechanisms helps. Hurricanes present wind, rain, and storm surge. Flying debris, structural damage, especially to weak points (windows, roofs, signage, outdoor furnishings) are most likely. Flooding may be by rising ocean waters or flooding waterways and lakes. Onshore floods may carry debries and contaminants. Salt and fresh water damage in different ways.

Distance from shore, armouring of strucures, safe retreat zones, removal or securing of properties, planning of mass evacuation routes and locations, provisioning vehicles for group evacuations (busses and trains are far more effective people movers than private cars, though availability is limited).

An immediate response to any threatening situation is _hightened vigelance_. Be aware of the threat, potential near safe zones, risks, and opportunities. Those are all actionable options.

A _preparedness mindset_ shows awareness that _threats may occur_. This involves steps that can be taken _well in advance_ of risks, to reduce them.

Moving further from shore, rising structures to allow for flooding, building protective barriers, where effective (or knowing where, say, due to permeable geology, dikes and berms are ineffective as water will simply seep up through the ground), pre-stocking storm shutters or coverings, and being prepared for structural damage, all help. When taken well in advance of any given threat emergence, these _increase_ potential responses and options.

The risks aren't _impossible to predict_. It's that _the predictions have a large range of uncertainty_. That itself is a prediction.

There's a quote concerning seamanship I've found useful:

The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control to overcome the effect of forces not under control. \-- Charles H. Cotter

That is the crux of _all_ engineering and management domains.

The _Times_ could and should have done far better.</comment>


Hundreds of Chrome Extensions Secretly Uploaded Private Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/over-500-chrome-extensions-secretly-uploaded-private-data <comment><USER2> Wired version of an original piece from Arstechnica, based on this report[0] apparently.

[0] [https://duo.com/labs/research/crxcavator- malvertising-2020](https://duo.com/labs/research/crxcavator-malvertising-2020)</comment>


Let`s store your likes with us - <AUTHOR> https://www.producthunt.com/posts/likestorage <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I did a little social experiment, which will let you know what people will do if they need to pay for likes. Every day we do a lot of likes. We make it simple — poke on the screen. And that's all. But what will happen if you have to pay for like? It is easy to check by creating a special site where you need to pay only $0.10 per like. You can even like yourself, and type your nickname and your website. It is legal :) Let`s store your like!

Website link — [http://www.likestorage.space/](http://www.likestorage.space/) producthunt — [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/likestorage](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/likestorage) Mail — firstname.lastname@example.com Hope you will enjoy :)</comment>


Behind Every Great Woman - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/magazine/behind-every-great-woman-01042012.html <comment><USER2> Honestly Id rather be a stay at home Dad than a corporate shill at some big corp like Visa. Maybe others enjoy playing politics and all the other management crap but when they eventually send you packing, you'll realize you spent X years of your life at a place where everyone will forget your name by the end of next week - hopefully you at least came away with a decent chunk of money I guess.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm skeptical about/interested in seeing the numbers they're reporting on.

But, since they don't fucking link to any of their data, i just have to take their word for it or guess what studies they're referring to.

 _sigh_

<comment><USER4> [http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/behind-every-great- woma...](http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/behind-every-great- woman-01042012.html)

there is a related picture:

[http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2012-01-04/feature_husban...](http://images.businessweek.com/cms/2012-01-04/feature_husband02__01__popup.jpg)

Bureau of Labor Statistics; Catalyst; Pew Research Center

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The article is great, but the headline is just a fail. Why I say this? See what most internet people think when reading this headline: [http://www.myspaceantics.com/image-myspace-graphic/funny- pic...](http://www.myspaceantics.com/image-myspace-graphic/funny- pictures/behind-great-woman-man-checking-ass.jpg.html)

And I just say this for informational purposes!

<comment><USER6> I say it's a fail because I've always hated how the original line is just a "Me too!" Women should be satisfied that they're necessary for greatness without seeking greatness themselves? That's the message you want to send?

Flipping the genders on the quote doesn't fix that. The only thing that fixes it is "Behind every great person are other great people!" which is kinda boring.

This is kinda a tangential rant, but... too late, it's written.

<comment><USER7> Actually the most difficult job by far is raising a human being, but today more and more people want to live for themselves.</comment></comment></comment>


Healthcare tech ideas we'd like to fund - <AUTHOR> http://rockhealth.com/2013/02/ideas-wed-like-to-fund-2/ <comment><USER2> As someone both with a chronic disease, and who works in Health IT -- personal health tracking is something I'd very much like to see (and am working on in my spare time).

Part of the problem with chronic illness is that our (well, my!) dumb monkey- brains don't cope with it too well. I degraded, slowly, over the course of two years -- ending up in hospital very recently. On a day-to-day basis, over that course of time, you just don't notice you're getting worse -- what's an extra minute of cramping, introduced over the course of a month? Having a tool which tracked me, and would let me see (in a chart plotted over time) that I've crossed a line and need to seek help would probably have helped me avoid a week-long stay in hospital, and a commitment to take some (relatively) nasty drugs for the next couple of months.

When I got released, I went and bought a Fitbit Aria for weight-tracking (and am building something that'll query their API and expose my weight data, alongside other data I'll track via a mobile app), and it's excellent. The ease-of-use is the main thing; not needing to manually enter my weight after weighing myself means my data's always there. I'm not sure how I'll accomplish that for the other stuff I want to track, but it should be interesting figuring it out!

So, in short: this is an area I'm stoked to see investment in.

<comment><USER3> How would something track (to use your example) cramping? Short of having a device where you press an "I have cramps" button then press it again when they go away, I'm not sure how any type of software could support your specific example.

That being said, personal health tracking is definitely a area of interest, and Fitbit and others have proven that there's money to be had and good to be done.

<comment><USER2> Cramping's one of my symptoms; I'm being a bit coy. To be more blunt (the disease is Ulcerative Colitis), the main thing is bowel movements per day. At the moment, I've got an NFC tag sitting in the bathroom that I swipe to log a motion (as the path of least resistance)... but (as mucky as it sounds) I'd like to hack something together with an Arduino/Raspberry Pi and a weight sensor attached to the toilet, which could detect that I'm sitting down and log a movement for me automatically (in much the same way the Aria automatically logs my weight!).

This'd need to tie into a mobile app for manual logging anyway (I'm not exactly going to rig this up at work!) with a backing web service, but yeah. There's definitely room for something clever in this space :).

<comment><USER3> That's a really good idea. I could see a small Arduino board with wifi and a FlexiForce[0] (just the first thing that came up in Google for "Arduino weight sensor"), and like you said a mobile component that would either be a stopwatch to actually log or a time entry for past movements (or when you didn't have your phone, etc).

My sister has Crohn's and one of college roommates had UC so I'm somewhat familiar with it.

My contact info is in my profile if you want to talk about this more.

[0] <http://bildr.org/2012/11/flexiforce-arduino/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing. It would require them to play ball and large players, like Epic, probably won't. 2) Chronic disease management is important, but really challenging. People don't really spend their days thinking about their illness. They don't look forward to having their blood sugar assessed. Any kind of disease management program is going to require that the patient be minimally engaged, yet data still effectively collected and assessed. The only evidence of real consumer engagement in health has been with respect to personal fitness. 3) HIPAA in a box is going to require some involvement of the government. They've thrown these regulations out there with rather vague specifications as to how they would be applied to ehealth initiatives. If the government wants to enforce this, which they have begun doing, they have to provide better guidance.

Just a few thoughts. In general though, Rock Health has grown into a great program and anyone who is pursuing a health related startup should give it strong consideration.

<comment><USER5> >* A mega platform on top of existing EHR's won't be an easy thing*

I built something like this in 2009 and got pretty much noplace with it. Our app, Contineo, was an HL7 compliant, back-end agnostic, mobile front end that would work with any HL7 compliant backend.

We were stonewalled by Epic, lead along by Siemens (who had begun talks with us on licensing our technology), we embarrassed Eclipsys as they didnt have a fully HL7 compliant system....

It was really difficult. So we opensourced the tech and gave it to Medsphere to integrate into OpenVista.

I still think there is a significant opportunity in disrupting healthcare in the large hospital, but I don't believe its via the EHR at this time, but through the patient room and patient experience.

If there are any folks out there that want to collaborate on something - I'd love to meet up.

(I applied to Rockhealth's second class and got too interview - but we didn't get selected.)

<comment><USER6> hey, would love to talk with you a bit more as a fellow med/tech enthusiast.

<comment><USER7> Me too, 2nd year med student and tech enthusiast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> "...make everyone of us a doctor..."

That's a very, very bad idea. Should we educate people about their medical problems in a simple and smart way? Yes. Should we delude people into thinking they are doctors? Absolutely not.

"IANAL" is one thing but there aren't enough asterisks in your keyboard to save you from that bottomless pit of liability.

<comment><USER9> I tend to agree in general. And expecting advice over an internet forum is ridiculous in the best of all worlds.

But frankly, you don't need a high school diploma + a Bachelor's + med school + residency in order capture a huge fraction of a Real Doctor's value as a classifier. Machine-learning-derived classifiers can do even better. _This_ is where there are huge gains to be made.

Every time where cutting out the BS actually matters (pun intended), TPTB "discover" that you can churn out functionally-equivalent doctors with significantly less training. See: military training of doctors, WWII. If you suggested turning away people from doctor training back then because they didn't have a 4-year degree already, they'd laugh or have you committed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of their ideas is quite close to something I'm working on.

However, I wasn't exactly thinking about using an accelerator, and I haven't head about them. A quick search on HN doesn't give a lot of results.

Does anyone here has had some personal experience with them? Feel free to contact me by email if you do not want to post a reply.

[I'm not interested on the PR I can find with google, but by personal experiences, opinions]

<comment><USER11> This is helpful:

[http://www.quora.com/Rock-Health/Whats-it-like-at-Rock- Healt...](http://www.quora.com/Rock-Health/Whats-it-like-at-Rock-Health)

We moved from Wisconsin to be a part of the V4 class, and it was amazing. To be surrounded by great business and technical minds who all give a damn about trying to make healthcare a bit better sustainably is really cool. I'd recommend it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is well worth applying to -- amazing program

</comment><comment><USER13> wait. they want to invest in one of the most heavily regulated and friction filled business domains out there and the seed is 100k!?!?!?

this is a joke right, as in this is really the onion under the covers...

</comment><comment><USER14> Funny, I actually have an idea for their top listing. Funny to see that listed, I mean.

</comment><comment><USER15> "Your Black Swan idea"? I hope they realise that...

spoiler

...she dies at the end.

<comment><USER16> I think they're probably referring to Taleb's concept of black swan (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_swan_theory>)</comment></comment>


Apple to do payments? - <AUTHOR> http://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/001266.html <comment><USER2> For sure having millions of credit cards already tied to an iTunes account would make easier to Apple to do anything payments related.</comment>


According To Author's Guild, You Cannot Read Books Out Loud - <AUTHOR> http://techdirt.com/articles/20090210/1014293724.shtml <comment><USER2> The Author's Guild is a pathetically small and out dated organization. They have 8,000 members, yet there's approximately 170,000 books published in the US every year and most authors only manage a handful of books per year, which suggests they have an exceptionally small member group, this is if _all_ their members are authors, which they're not a lot of their members are agents and attorneys. Compare this with the SFWA and as a niche market, SF/F/H, you would expect them to have significantly less members, yet they have 1500, which is a comparatively large number. The other thing that lends credence to the SFWA over the Author's Guild, is that I actually _hear_ of the SFWA outside of stupid legal arguments. The last Author's Guild scheme was against the whole google book scanning thing, I believe Google paid them off and now no one has the legal right to sue google for it ever again.

</comment><comment><USER3> So the author's guild is upset that the Kindle has a read aloud feature that does text to voice using a computer generated voice. Amazon isn't buying the audio rights to these books like someone who does a book on tape.

Amazon's response:

"An Amazon spokesman noted the text-reading feature depends on text-to-speech technology, and that listeners won't confuse it with the audiobook experience. Amazon owns Audible, a leading audiobook provider."

This is hilariously disingenuous. Of course they won't CONFUSE it as an audiobook experience...Amazon's hoping they'll EMBRACE it as something cheaper and "good enough."

The Author's guild and the content creators they represent will get screwed some more and Amazon's market share will grow. It's like the newspapers letting Google "spider" their content (aka, copy it and use it for their own purposes for free).

<comment><USER4> There is no parallel universe in which computer-generated text-to-speech compares with a real audiobook. The Authors Guild should pick their battles more carefully, because nobody is going to care about this stupid feature.

<comment><USER3> I haven't heard this new computer-generated voice, but surely Amazon's going to iterate and iterate and iterate until it's "good enough" to disrupt the audio book market.

<comment><USER4> They'd stand just as good a chance taking sheet music and lyrics and iterating and iterating and iterating until it's good enough to disrupt Warner Music Group.

<comment><USER3> Well, consider bands and production houses that use MIDI recreations of well- known music instead of purchasing the rights to the actual recordings. It's not good enough for most uses, but for some, it certainly is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think this is an invalid argument, but it sure is stupid. Clearly, you can't read a book aloud, record that reading, and redistribute it --- even with the original book. The argument would be, the Kindle circumvents that restriction by not recording the actual voice, but instead an algorithm that reconstructs the voice.

On the other hand, it's hard to believe anyone gives a shit about this; text- to-speech readings are tolerable for minutes at a time, not 10 hours.

</comment><comment><USER5> Doesn't it need to be "fixed" - i.e. in this case recorded - to fall into this category? I doubt reading out loud would qualify as fixed.

This probably falls afoul of anti-discrimination laws - i.e. speech readers for the blind.

<comment><USER6> Instead of synthesizing speech, Amazon will have to employ it's mechanical turk to have actual humans read the text ;-)

Now everything falls into place - brilliant strategy...

<comment><USER7> Not really hacker news, but if you're interested in mass-amateur-read audio- books, <http://www.librivox.org> is a collaborative effort to read books outloud (as long as their copyright has expired) where there can be several contributors per book.

<comment><USER8> Librivox -- a distributed collaboration possible via the net, digitization, and open licensing -- is absolutely Hacker News!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, I guess Amazon will have to remove that feature from the Kindle then.</comment>


Why I'm sticking with GoDaddy... for now. - <AUTHOR> http://fredandrandall.com/blog/2011/12/23/why-im-sticking-with-godaddy-for-now/

<comment><USER2> I think the point is rather that the punishment of GoDaddy with serve as an example to future companies. It is forgone that they will see the errors of their ways, when it affects their cash flow. But I think the point is not to make them see their error, rather it serves as a broader example after the fact when someone reviews the history of how GoDaddy screwed up. Accepting that they have seen the light now that it has hit their bank account, will only serve to show future companies that it's OK so long as you say sorry after the screwing.</comment>


State of RSS Readers - <AUTHOR> http://blog.superfeedr.com/state-of-readers/

<comment><USER3> I don't really want a reader, I want a service that syncs state accross readers, and aggregates my feeds into one feed for easy downloads by devices.

Google reader was perfect for that, and it was only on occasion that I used their web interface. Most of the time I was on my iPad/iPhone/Android (using Reeder/Byline/Flipboard and the official android client)

<comment><USER4> You can do that with Yahoo Pipes (<http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/>). Here is an example with several pipes, and each pipe combines many RSS feeds into one (<http://pipes.yahoo.com/talentintelligence>). You can even then export the pipe as an RSS of its own.

<comment><USER3> That's one part, but it doesn't solve the central state control. Perhaps someone could extract the Google reader API and turn it into a standard for other products to implement?

<comment><USER5> Please, no. I'm using the the Google Reader API, and it is crappy, at best.

One of my biggest kvetches is that while I can rename feeds in the browser, the API exposes no way to get the name I give the feed, or to set it.

<comment><USER6> By rename feeds do you mean the title? For example, Craig Mod's feed (<https://feedreader.co/feeds/http://craigmod.com/rss/>) has a rather ungainly title ("...considering the future of ...") which would make sense to rename.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The death of Google Reader might actually be a good thing, in the long run.

Google giving away their product for free effectively prevented a working market - nobody could make money selling a feed-aggregator.

With Google out of the way, there will hopefully be money sloshing around, and users who now realise how much they want this kind of service (and are prepared to pay for it).

<comment><USER8> But how much were these services really offering? It is one thing to attempt to charge for a superior service, but for the most basic of services? That's a whole different story.

IMHO, feed reading should be integrated into the browser as a tab, not in the hands of commercial interests. But that's an aside.

<comment><USER9> >IMHO, feed reading should be integrated into the browser as a tab, not in the hands of commercial interests.

This is a really interesting idea. Has there been any talk in Chrome development about building a browser-side RSS reader? Google would still get all the information they get from Reader now but they'd be making the 'feature' exclusive to their browser. This coming not long after Apple _removed_ their feed managing ability in the web browser, meaning they could get a load of Chrome converts on OS X just from that.

It'd be really interesting to see what happened if browser-side RSS became "the thing" again. Although, as julien pointed out, doing it browser-side doesn't necessarily mean your RSS isn't in the hands of a commercial interest.

<comment><USER10> It was tried, IIRC, early in Firefox's development. It ended up being scrapped for some reason, and it didn't really work all that well.

Opera has a feed reader, too, but I never really found it to be as usable as Thunderbird or Akregator (neither of which I really like.)

<comment><USER11> I don't think it was completely scrapped. I know some people who use live bookmarks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I use Newsbeuter[1] in a Linux terminal.

It's not a GUI app or web-based, which are both plusses to me. It's also neither closed-source, nor spyware (like way too many web-based readers are).

Newsbeuter is relatively feature rich and has a decent enough interface. I'm pretty happy with it, and prefer it to the closest Linux terminal RSS reader competitor that I've found, Snownews.[2]

The main problems with it is that when feeds get large (1000+ articles), reading that feed gets to be pretty slow. This is a long-standing performance bug that has not been fixed in years. But, apart from that, if you're reading feeds with a reasonable number of article in them, it's great.

[1] - <http://www.newsbeuter.org/index.html>

[2] - <http://snownews.kcore.de/>

<comment> __--__ I used to use Newsbeuter. The deal breaker for me was the inability to hook it up to a daemon on an external server. I wound up replacing it with rss2email instead. Now I read both my email and my news in mutt! :)

<comment><USER13> I'm a big fan of rss2email. Personally, I like doing as much as possible in a single application. Combining email and feeds feels natural to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> No one mentioned Gregarius yet : <https://sourceforge.net/projects/gregarius/> : it is a fine self-hosted web-based alternative to Google Reader. There has been no project activity lately but the software works just fine, I have been using it since 2006 - just keep it private for security's sake. It scales well with a lot of feeds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the developers of a couple of the biggest RSS readers should get together and decide on a standard file format to store "metadata" such as read items, starred items, etc.

This file could be stored on a server or in a user's Dropbox folder. It would allow users to pick an RSS reader freely (per platform), without losing and rebuilding all their data. It also keeps all this metadata in sync, one less worry for the developers.

<comment><USER16> What's in it for them, though? I'm guessing that most of the developers want you to use _their_ reader and I'm not sure there's an advantage (for them) in adding code that makes it easier for you to switch to another product.

Don't get me wrong. I totally agree w/ you and wish that switching is easier. That "cost of switching", though, is the primary reason I'm still using the reader that I am (and have been for years).

<comment><USER17> _What's in it for them, though?_

A rising tide lifts all boats. If something is developed that makes the _entire ecosystem_ more attractive, then everybody benefits.

 _I'm guessing that most of the developers want you to use their reader and I'm not sure there's an advantage (for them) in adding code that makes it easier for you to switch to another product._

Sure there is... because I'm more likely to try your product _in the first place_ if I know I'm not locked into it. "The best way to capture users is to make it easy for them to leave" and all that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> No mention of Newsbeuter "The Mutt of RSS readers". Feeds and podcasts all managed in your terminal: <http://www.newsbeuter.org>

<comment><AUTHOR> We explictly scoped only web based readers...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Since I'm one of those "weekend hackers who likes to use PHP like a newb"......

I use a self hosted and rather hacked up rnews install: <http://rnews.sourceforge.net/>

It uses magpierss to grab feeds: <http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/>

I also make heavy use of yahoo pipes to munge together a few rss feeds and do other regex'y type things to a feeds: <http://pipes.yahoo.com> (pls yahoo, never kill pipes!)

The reason I like rnews is the boxed layout (where each feed is seperated), rather than every other rss reader which jams everything into a single feed. With the boxed way I have the feeds I read daily up top and then progressively have boxes for sites which I only skim headlines for every week down lower.

I have a side question which I've been meaning to float on HN for some time: is there anything cool I could do with the fact that my self hosted rss aggregator receives roughly 2,000 hits a day from search bots? I mean I get scraped constantly all day, from ALL engines.

</comment><comment><USER20> Dude forgot <http://skimfeed.com>. Guess it's not 3.0 enough. Recommendation engine kicks in around 5 clicks, go easy on her.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not really a reader since I can't add my own subscriptions... merely and agregator!

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is also no mention of Tiny Tiny RSS or RSS Lounge, which are both good RSS readers that you can self-host pretty easily (FOSS webapps).

Pretty surprising.

<comment><USER7> If I wanted to host Tiny Tiny RSS what's a good place to buy some hosting from to run it?

<comment><USER22> * lowendbox.com (be prepared for "fun", you get what you pay for) * my new favourite digitalocean.com

* EC2

No referral links here, but I am on Gittip :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment> js-coder Sigh, I actually started building a RSS reader for fun five days ago. Now Google Reader is shutting down, and it seems like everyone is starting to build one.

<comment><USER23> That's five days head start, get back to work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Why is it that so many of these alternatives are hosted web apps? Isn't the lesson to learn from Google Reader going away that you might not want to trust hosted web apps for the long term? Why aren't there more client-side app alternatives?

<comment><USER25> Number of times google reader has a planned shut down, in which I still have plenty of time to grab my data: 1

Number of times something has happened to make an old desktop app stop working: numerous

for example (I haven't experienced all of these):

\- switching from Windows -> Mac \- having my hard drive fail and finding out my backups were broken \- OSX upgrades breaking backwards compatibility (ie, old binary format) \- having my laptop stolen \- switching jobs, requiring me to give my laptop back \- having multiple devices that I like to read news on (ie, phone, laptop, tablet)

I much prefer to have as little as possible tied to the hunk of metal my sweaty fingers type on. I haven't lost any data yet from using 'cloud services' and the GR replacement I pick will be well vetted.

<comment><USER12> I value my privacy far more than any feature or convenience a web app may offer. This is one of the main reasons why I stay away from web apps as much as possible, and use open-source client-side apps whenever I can. As a side- benefit, I also don't have to rely on the whims of the web app provider to keep their service running.

Unless you use web apps for absolutely everything, you're still going to have to make backups. And if you're making backups anyway, how hard is it to include a tiny little list of RSS feed URLs which can be used to pick up from where you left off with any RSS reader, should anything happen?

Anyway, if you screw up your backups, you've got far more serious problems than simply restoring an RSS feed list. Do a good job on backups, and the rest mostly falls in to place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I stopped using Google Reader and RSS feeds a long time ago without actually intending on doing so. I just started finding so much stuff to read through Facebook, Twitter and Hacker News that I totally forgot about RSS.

That being said, I did make a simple ruby script to email me articles when an RSS feed gets updated. I did this mainly to help me keep tabs on service availability RSS feeds, i.e. Twitter's status RSS, Facebook's status RSS, Amazon AWS stratus RSS, and my local weather advisory RSS. It comes in very handy. Maybe I'll put the script on GitHub.

</comment><comment><USER27> He forgot completly about Desktop RSS readers: Liferea, Thunderbird, Akregator, LightRead, etc. etc.

<comment><USER28> A general problem with desktop readers is that they don't really sync with each other, unless there is also a back-end service associated with them. (or they support many services).

My news reader is my go-to "I have a few minutes" thing, so I use it equally from desktop/laptop, phone, iPad and so on. I don't want to spend any effort clearing each source of articles I've read on another.

<comment><USER27> I agree, normally I just use my Desktop, but it's nice to have sync across devices and OS.

With Google Reader you could have that sync between RSS Readers because you were using Reader as backend, but now?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Most clientside newsreaders simply do not scale, several thousand feeds make them die. Also you want to have your rss catcher always online, so a server is a better choice - but many FOSS serverside readers are also poorly implemented, slow, missing features, bad design.

Also the extremely annoying variability of rss feeds is still not handled by many rss parsers, especially the php world misses on this. python ok with feed parser.

One more thing: waste of energy duplicating rss feeds a zillion times - <USER2> to be deleted in most cases.

Seems to be a good usecase for a cool pyramid app on a deduplicating filesystem - what are your plans for the weekend?

</comment><comment><USER30> Google Reader shutting down at least gives me a new hobby project to hack on. There are a few decent alternatives in this list, but nothing I'm particularly enthusiastic about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please, make sure you tell me (@julien51 or @superfeedr) about it!

<comment><USER30> I will indeed! Also a helpful reminder for me to try out Superfeedr as part of the backend :D

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone here primarily read their RSS feeds "river of news" style (e.g., <http://tabs.mediahackers.org/>) instead of "mailbox" style (with unread counts)? If so, what do you recommend?

So far I'm thinking of using a river for my "firehose" feeds while using newsblur (or something) to keep tabs on my "must read" feeds.

I played around with Dave Winer's OPML Editor/River2 but it just never clicked for me.

</comment><comment><USER32> Do you want a personalized RSS reader plus more? NOOWIT (<http://www.noowit.com>) enters private beta in a few days!

<comment><USER7> The text wasn't displaying properly (Firefox), and my email address scrolled off the side of the textbox you asked me to enter it into, with no way for me to make sure I'd typed the second half correctly...

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's early, but something we're working on with memamsa[1] is a way to keep up to date on your favorite topics using different types of sources: RSS/Atom, Twitter users/lists, and Hacker News. Combining the best of the traditonal (RSS) and modern sources of links.

[1] - <http://memamsa.com/start/gr>

</comment><comment><USER34> Are there any RSS aggregators that leverage Dropbox, GDrive/GDocs or Skydrive for cross-device synchronization ?

</comment><comment><USER35> it will be hard to beat google reader in terms of multiple platform support. I dearly love my android google reader app that lets me load items, view them offline, sync them when i get back online.

i'm really very sad right now.

</comment><comment><USER36> I have always use the Firefox Addon Sage <https://addons.mozilla.org/en- us/firefox/addon/sage/>

</comment><comment><USER37> Do any alternatives have the "Next" bookmarklet? That's the only way I ever use Google Reader.</comment>


Tag Clouds R.I.P? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/tag_clouds_rip.php <comment><AUTHOR> Personally, I don't even remember the last time I clicked on a tag in the tag cloud. What are some of the good, interactive tag clouds?

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank Heavens</comment>


Show HN: Clouddraw – draw cloud architecture diagrams with ease - <AUTHOR> https://clouddraw.app/ <comment><USER2> I checked it out and created a diagram, then I clicked the icon in the upper left corner thinking it was some sort of menu. But it just took me to the main home page -- but without saving anything at all or even prompting me. So I basically lost all the work I did without warning. Is that supposed to happen?

> Create as many diagrams as you want. Save your diagrams locally to pause and > continue later.

I found the save button, but it seems to just take a single snapshot and reload that automatically if I leave and return. So it seems like you can only have one diagram going at a time? But even if I want to start a new diagram, I can't figure out how to do that without manually clicking each individual icon and deleting them, one-by-one.

Maybe I need to signup for this additional functionality to work?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. The diagram is saved in the localstorage only when the save button (or Ctrl + S) is pressed. I think I should add a warning message when navigated away without saving.

2\. I am also adding a feature to export diagram and save in your computer and import later.

3\. I just realized that there is no way to start a new diagram without deleting the existing icons :). I will add this feature too.

Thanks for the feedback and trying out the app.

The signup feature (coming soon) will enable you to save diagrams in the cloud and edit anywhere. Right now everything happens in your browser.

<comment><USER3> It seems you did a nice job, from what I can see. (It wasn't working for me on Firefox 80. I couldn't draw anything.)

A small suggestion for #1 above: Don't have a save. Make it save to localstorage on Mouse-up and on a timer.

Also, the combo box is a bit slow. Maybe have an alternative view for the icons, such as tree view with buckets for AWS, Azure, etc.?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clouddraw allows you to create beautiful cloud architecture diagrams with ease.

I downloaded and organized more than 1000 official images from AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, Firebase and others like Digitalocean, Slack etc and built this tool. I use this to generate quick architecture diagrams for my personal projects.

Here are some of the features

Offline support - Save your diagram offline in browser local storage to continue later.

PNG - Export your diagrams to png to embed anywhere.

Keyboard shortcuts

Font Awesome support

Embed anywhere - You can embed your diagram anywhere and show up-to-date diagrams in your documentation (coming soon).

There is no signup required. You can start creating your diagrams right away.

<comment><USER4> Is there a good spot to suggest missing icons?

I know there's a Pro offering to upload custom icons, but I can think of a few crucial resources that are missing. Off the top of my head:

\- Cloudflare

\- Kubernetes (there's icons for a lot of its components, but the main logo is missing)

\- Resources that can be run on bare-metal/on-prem: nginx, ElasticSearch, RabbitMQ, ...

Or is the intention to only show commercial cloud logos?

Edit: also a few bugs I noticed in the search bar:

\- Can't Ctrl-A (select all)

\- The (x) button doesn't do anything

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi

I will add a page to report bugs and suggestions soon. I am adding more and more logos. I will add your suggestions too.

Did not expect a sudden surge of visitors from HN :) . I am fixing the bugs one by one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a cool project and I like to support developers that share their projects here and on Twitter.

Looks great, felt pretty snappy to use. Replace the demo on the home page with a good screen shot of a diagram. It's a bunch of random interactions so it just looks like a mess of icons and arrows.

That said, software diagramming is broken.

Pretty icons are great and all, but without common annotations and consistency; what's the point?

I've seen so many diagrams, with bidirectional arrows between an EC2 instance and an RDS instance.

ec2 <—-> rds

Great. The EC2 goes in and out of the RDS instance?

Using common annotations like making the arrow from the requestor and having some details of the request goes a long way.

ec2 —[r/w public]—> rds

Maybe even use the schema and roleARN to give some useful request auth context.

Using solid arrows for sync and dashed for async.

If both sides of an arrow make requests... don't use two sided arrows, draw an arrow for each and annotate appropriately.

And LucidCharts, Visio, etc? Instant docrot.

I'd love to see more diagrams as code, along side the code they represent so diagram changes and code changes can happen in the same PR. PlantUML, mermaid, and mingrammers's diagrams are great options here.

I really like Simon Brown's C4 modeling [1]. It really helps teach you to diagram systems by focusing on what the system does, not how pretty the diagram is.

C4 Builder is also great. [2]

[1]: [https://c4model.com/](https://c4model.com/)

[2]: [https://github.com/adrianvlupu/C4-Builder](https://github.com/adrianvlupu/C4-Builder)

<comment><USER6> > with bidirectional arrows between an EC2 instance and an RDS instance.

My problem is who made the diagram... a developer only sees EC2 connecting to RDS, a network guy sees a two-way data flow.

<comment><USER7> A network guy will understand TCP connections and the fact that reply packets are sent back by the other end.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I like the idea. I have tried a bunch but haven't found "the one" cloud architecture diagram that I truly love yet.

I would be more into it if the diagram could be exported / represented as code so I could keep an updateable source in my git repo.

I also think things like VPCs should be able to be represented as containers of other components vs just another icon.

<comment><USER9> The only thing I've really found that works for me has been ilograph[1] that allows you to draw your diagram and then create different "views" into it depending on what the focus of the diagram is. Here's a wonderful demo of what it would look like converting some AWS architecture diagrams into ilograph ones[2].

I'm not affiliated with this project at all - I just really love it.

[1] [https://www.ilograph.com/](https://www.ilograph.com/) [2] [https://blog.ilograph.com/posts/fixing-aws-architecture- diag...](https://blog.ilograph.com/posts/fixing-aws-architecture-diagrams- vod/)

<comment><USER8> Oh that is very interesting. First time seeing a cloud architecture diagram tool with support for different views.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The feature I want in all of these is images for every CloudFormation elements. I know that only a handful of them have their own icons and it makes it hard to draw the full extent of an architecture. Draw.io was a pain for this.

<comment><USER11> [https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/](https://aws.amazon.com/architecture/icons/) may interest OP, as it offer all the sanctioned graphics in PNG and SVG

Regrettably, there does not appear to be an Atom nor RSS feed, so I guess one of the IFTTT style web page watchers is the only way to know that new icons are available :-(

<comment><USER10> it only contains a small portion of every item in a AWS network sadly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is there a difference between this and [https://www.cloudskew.com/](https://www.cloudskew.com/) previously featured here?

<comment><USER13> Hey thanks I was actually looking for this one

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been using tools like this since visio and they're always helpful but never quite right. One of my dreams if I won a small lottery would be to make something like this but for VR. I think the spatial/3rd-dimesion factor would unlock a lot of possibility for visualizing these complex systems without being forced to collapse or slice it as much.

</comment><comment><USER15> I am sorry, I don't get the value add here. Can I not use power point, keynote or other applications and create a box and label it "slack" or "AWS"? Why should I use this?

<comment><USER16> One feature idea: it could be used to generate a Kubernetes configuration files. A visual configuration and management tool. I have worked with multiple clients (as a consultant) who would have used K8S if setting it up/configuring on the cloud was easier.

I was exploring it myself, but don't have time to pursue it now.

<comment><USER17> Or the opposite -- draw a diagram from a k8s config file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> i found [https://excalidraw.com/](https://excalidraw.com/) from HN awhile go and love it. This looks similar.

</comment><comment><USER19> Anyone have recommendations for making networking diagrams, specifically AWS VPC diagrams that show things like private/public subnets, security groups, load balancers, autoscaling groups, etc.

I tried a bunch of tools a few months ago, and none of the purpose-built diagraming tools worked well in creating that sort of visualization.

<comment><USER20> [http://draw.io](http://draw.io)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> A lot of negativity here, so here's some positive feedback:

The UI is very clean and easy to use. I like the minimalism and the _restrained_ scope of the project. A lot of diagram creators try to do _too much_ and end up being confusing and hard to pick up.

Looks like a great little tool!

</comment><comment><USER22> I was playing around a bit and it really looks promising! There's some key missing features (like, selecting multiple items) and bugs (ctrl + v not working for me at least), but as an MVP is remarkable. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I will take a look at the bugs :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> You can add 'Show HN' to the title for more visibility on the [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) page

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. I have changed the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Very nice. Quick feedback on UI (on an Android phone): the hamburger menu didn't work, the text has some alignment issues, the padding for the I'm interested button is gone.

Best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reporting it. I will fix it as soon as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an FYI, your Terms and Conditions page mentions the non-existing domain clouddraw.live

</comment><comment><USER24> draw.io does a decent job. Does clouddraw bring edge in anything specific?

<comment><USER25> I also like draw.io - I found out recently that it's open source and has a 'desktop' (ie electron) version [https://github.com/jgraph/drawio- desktop/releases/tag/v13.6....](https://github.com/jgraph/drawio- desktop/releases/tag/v13.6.2)

<comment><USER26> It's also fully embeddable - there's a version that runs inside VSCode!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Any thoughts on this versus draw.io? Like new or missing features, etc?

</comment><comment><USER28> No love for OpenShift?

It's nice though.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will add OpenShift icons soon. Let me know if any other icons family is missing.

<comment><USER29> +1 for OpenShift icons. I do a lot of OpenShift and could really use a tool that makes the diagrams look great. I'll try it out and if it's good, I'll probably pay you money :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Confirmed not working on Firefox.

It's 2020, just for the record.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi

I tested it in Chrome and Edge and did not give much thought of FF in the final stages. Just realized not all icons are displayed. I will take a look at it soon.</comment></comment>


Primary German email providers will start to encrypt all email transmissions - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=&sl=de&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sueddeutsche.de%2Fdigital%2Fdatenschutz-allianz-aus-telekom-gmx-und-webde-digitaler-briefumschlag-fuer-e-mails-1.1742663

<comment><AUTHOR> Summary: In the wake of the NSA spying scandal, the biggest German email providers, GMX.de, Web.de and Deutsche Telekom have agreed to encrypt all email communication, (I.e transport) by default.

Although your email content still isn't encrypted on their servers, at least the transport encryption is a good start.</comment>


Do you like TDD?, what if you can test your urls just using bash? by @app_config - <AUTHOR> http://showterm.io/e27a4995cb89fa3756e8f#fast

<comment><USER2> nice!!</comment>


Ask HN: Could Auto Correct prevent killers from gaining infamy from their deeds? - <AUTHOR> All we need to do is add the monster's name to a dictionary and have social media platforms change the name to "The monster that..." sort of a white/black list of bad people that commit despicable acts. Maybe? <comment><USER2> As long as culture treats celebrities and other self-serving persons like heroes, I think not. It's like taking down Confederate monuments. Obviously they inspire the wrong people, but ideally many more can be reminded to learn from the mistakes of history. Sweeping everything _bad_ under the rug just makes a rug begging to be tripped over.

</comment><comment><USER3> I like the idea, certainly.

The trick is going to be getting news organisations to adopt it.</comment>


Anonymous Threatens Massive WikiLeaks-Style Exposure - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/26/anonymous-threatens-massive-wikileaks-style-exposure-announced-on-hacked-gov-site/ <comment><USER2> Article contains blatantly false statements that Swartz "released" JSTOR documents. He did not. Claims that he did are pervading the media and all are false. TechCrunch and other sites making such false claims can not be considered reputable news sources because of their propensity to intentionally misrepresent such matters.

<comment><USER3> Techcrunch cannot be considered a reputable news source for far more reasons than that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Well, I can't think of anything which will convince people to moderate their opinions about computer "hackers" better than website defacements and threats.

<comment><USER5> Agreed. They're not needed here. We don't need a legitimate grass roots movement dragged through the mud by having Anonymous involved.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the Anonymous brand is so tainted and awful that subversive forces might be using it to undermine legitimate protest by associating it with a hostile, criminal group.

<comment><USER6> Anonymous means well, maybe, but they drag Aaron's legitimate causes so far down into their muck. We have a chance to have some good come from this, but not with wankers in it for the lulz.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Hacked site from google cache, some of the files can still be downloaded: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXf...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:sV8dPXftnTcJ:www.ussc.gov/)

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't be so quick to copy and paste the command they provided for reassembling the file.

<comment><USER9> At least not the last part. In any case, I wouldn't be handling these files as root.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> From the video, the thing I found oddest is that they say they will not unlock the contents of the file made available to download unless their demands are met. I found this odd because their demands to reform the DoJ is unlikely to occur except via an act of Congress, something I see as unlikely since it means getting a couple of hundred people on both sides of the aisle to agree to do this.

I would imagine that it'd be far more effective to release two files, one with information/dirt on as many members of the house of representatives and the senate and put that in one file. Then put all the dirt on the DoJ in another file. With files on Congress, they could force Congress' hand in investigating the DoJ and reforming it.

</comment><comment><USER11> > Any media outlets wishing to be eligible for this program must include > within their reporting a means of secure communications

How would a journalist securely communicate with anonymous? Some type of TOR network chat? How would they initiate the conversation?

<comment><USER12> Encrypted messages sent via Tor is reasonable. Also reasonable is posting encrypted messages to alt.anonymous.messages via some anonymity system (like remailers, or Tor again).

Unfortunately, many journalists still think that we are living in the 1970s, and don't understand what secure communication means in this day and age.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Names of the files prefix posted

Scalia - Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Kennedy - Anthony McLeod Kennedy, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Thomas - Clarence Thomas, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Ginsburg - Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Breyer - Stephen Gerald Breyer, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Roberts - John Glover Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States

Alito - Samuel Anthony Alito, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Sotomayor - Sonia Maria Sotomayor, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

Kagan - Elena Kagan, Associate Justice of Supreme Court

</comment><comment><USER14> >anonymous

why?

releasing confidential government information is probably going to be bad for everyone involved, and does it really serve a real purpose?

<comment><USER10> Forced transparency. It becomes much more difficult to collude if you can't trust your communications to keep your corruptions a secret long enough to establish an entire career upon those corruptions and keeping them a secret.

I imagine corruption plays out across a social network of people in power. If it becomes more difficult to collude because of the risk of being found out, you've created a legitimate moral hazard governing the behavior of those doing the governing.</comment></comment>


Why Oracle bought Sun: to control the systems business - <AUTHOR> http://willprice.blogspot.com/2009/09/living-history-larry-ellison.html?different_take

<comment><USER3> The author refers to the company Oracle by its name exactly zero time -- instead he uses the stock-ticker symbol ORCL. Why? This habit strikes me as an exceedingly arrogant attitude: "I'm so much of an market insider, my pieces must read like a finance website" -- _especially_ given how he fails to refer to Sun, IBM, SAP, Motorola, Apple and also indirectly to Microsoft and Dell, without mentioning their ticker symbols. He's surely going to have some unpleasant conversations with investor relations.

<comment><USER4> OTOH, it's a good signal that people who care about silly things like technical innovation and pleasing customers can safely ignore such articles.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> FTA:

> [Larry Ellison's] goal is to leverage Sun to create systems - <USER2> > systems, airline reservations systems....where engineers optimize the > integration not customers and service providers. He envisions building the > successor to Tom Watson Jr's IBM, which he views as the most successful > enterprise company of all time.

In other words, it's all about vertical control. Oracle wants to be the IBM of the 1960s ... the IBM that was eventually sued for anti-competitive practices, incidentally, because customers were locked into their closed, top-down computer systems.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why Oracle bought Sun: to control the threat from MySQL

<comment><USER6> MySQL is hardly a threat to Oracle's RDBMS. If you need Oracle enough to pay their asking price, MySQL is not a substitute.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> _...IBM, which he views as the most successful enterprise company of all time..._

Hmmm, sounds a little like closing the barn door after the cows left.

Just like IBM missed the microcomputer in their rear view mirror, many enterprises are doing the same thing today.

The days of enterprise practices like best of breed, best practices, six sigma, work flow optimization, economies of scale, and consolodation are numbered. To be surpassed by nimble competitiors with great software, deployed and leveraged quickly.

These days you can launch a profitable startup faster than many enterprises can approve a capital expenditure request for toilet paper. Which way would you want to steer your ocean liner?

<comment><USER8> I was talking to the director of IT risk at one of the top 5 banks in the US yesterday, and they seem to be moving in the direction Oracle is talking about away from multi-vendor systems. Based on SAP, Oracle, and IBM succeeding in this space it is hard to argue there ISN'T lots of money to be made. With most people in the small business area either on some kind of Microsoft stack or FOSS based stuff, the big blue chips are the only ones buying from these companies and it is best to cater to their needs.

<comment><USER6> I was thinking about this today, wondering if it's the start of one of those market pendulum direction changes. We had the vertical "systems" provider in IBM. You bought everything from them, hardware, 3270 terminals, printers, networks, software, everything.

Then we moved into the era where you bought everything from different vendors. Servers from one vendor, networking gear from another, software from everyone and anyone, and people start to realize "gee this is a f-ing mess, can't I just get one company to do all this for me" and that's where Oracle wants to step in and be able to say "yes".</comment></comment></comment>


Announcing Google Code Jam 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/codejam#

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry to append the # sign, but the same URL was posted for the 2008 contest last year.</comment>