Ask HN: How do I find a local app developer? - <AUTHOR>

I've been working on a design for a more functional twitter over the last one year. I think I've nailed the design and feel like it has huge potential. I currently work as an SAP CRM functional consultant, so writing up the business requirements and project planning is a cake walk for me. What I lack is three things: 1. A good developer (I have started to talk to a Chinese developer who is asking for $5000 for IOS app) 2. A great UI/UX designer ( I have a friend ready to do the work for $1000 but I'm kind of a perfectionist and don't really see him do a good job) 3. And most importantly, TRUST in working with a person I don't know in China with the probability of my intellectual property being stolen. I am a very trusting person in life. Not in business.
I could potentially safe guard the core functionality from the developer in China, and have another developer complete it. However, I do foresee some issues with integration of both modules. I'd rather have one developer to work on it from the start. Maybe even partner.
Even if this idea of mine is stupid, I'd still want to give it a shot. I was looking for places that I could meet like-minded people around LA, but haven't found any lately.
What would you guys suggest? <comment><USER2> My friend, $5000 is _cheap_ for a good developer. It's practically bottom of the barrel if you're talking about an app that has very much customization in it at all. Pretty much the same goes for a good designer. A highly custom app, done right, could actually cost quite a bit more than that.

I think your biggest problem here is your expectation of how much good skilled work is going to cost you.

If all you need is to find people, then try local meetups: Android or iOS meetups are going to be happening in almost any major metro area. Look for non-technical meetups, too. In Dallas there's at least one startup happy hour each month, and I'd be shocked if LA didn't have something like that. One good source for this is meetup.com, but also...Google.

Once you find people, though, you need to be prepared to offer appropriate compensation. If you don't have cash, then you might need to offer equity (or a slice of whatever revenues you make) along with some cash. Almost nobody is going to do anything for you without at least some cash, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the input.

Those are the costing I have right now. But as you know, quality does not come cheap. I am prepared to compensate appropriately. As history is our testament, working with anybody has a risk of having the intellectual property stolen. From my perspective, I d rather work with someone who I know personally than someone sitting 10000 miles away without any physical connection/control. Even if I take the two module approach, I would still need someone here locally to integrate it.

I did look at meetup.com and tried googling without luck. I am going to try again now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am not local exactly but would be happy to talk and at least share some experiences. We are a small firm that does this work and are in The US, Florida and Colorado mainly.

We don't outsource anything but have taken over a ton of projects that started offshore.

Prices are obviously more expensive here in the US but they don't have to be excessive. If you want to chat my contact details are in my profile. If nothing else I can share our experiences so you can compare notes around.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, I'm not sure if you charge for consultation. But I do have one major question.

My app idea is just like twitter (But better, At least I think so). The developer in China has suggested that we build it on Parse. Good idea?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I missed this response. If you want to chat about the app I am happy to do so, no charge for that. My email is in my profile.

We don't work with Parse, but it seems like a viable solution. We generally write native apps for each platform without translators, although we have some shared libraries we generally use. This can be more expensive sometimes, but in the end the reduced number of issues and the app capability is vastly better being native. We have used xamarin a few times, but honestly we find a lot of times a hybrid application (like LinkedIn or Facebook) works better from our experience -- e.g. Native app with web services and html served from the server.</comment></comment></comment>


Computer-Designed Organisms - <AUTHOR> https://cdorgs.github.io <comment><USER2> From the article:

> The big question here is: how do cells cooperate to build complex, > functional bodies? How do they know what to build and what signals do they > exchange to enable them to build them? [...] Stem cell biology and genomic > editing do not, on their own, address this issue. [...] It is still unknown > what cells are capable of making besides their normal default body pattern, > and these synthetic living machines are a convenient sandbox platform [...]. > The long-term goal here is to figure out how living agents (cells) can be > motivated to build specific things, and how to exploit their plasticity and > competency to do things that are too hard to micromanage directly (like > build an eye, hand, etc.).

<comment><USER3> Current state-of-the-art in this realm is probably around areas like "self- assembly" and "complex systems". The idea that simple rules locally can eventually given long enough time scales organize into highly functional long range orders.

Can "artificial life" really shed insights into what may turn out to be a huge contradiction from this assumption? It's certainly worth exhausting the negative case. But that would leave us right back to where we are today. With nary a clue as to how biogenesis came to be ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Paper: A scalable pipeline for designing reconfigurable organisms

[https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910837117](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1910837117)

</comment><comment><USER4> Kinda reminds me of "spore"...

</comment><comment><USER5> Damnit. I misread the headline. Article is about orga _NI_ sms.

It was, otherwise, seriously confusing.</comment>


Ask HN: Am I getting old? - <AUTHOR> Yesterday, I've been at my bank to meet my new client manager. A 38 years old lady. Once we started to talk she pulled out her iPad and took minutes with the virtual keyboard.
At airports there're so many. Folks having iPads w/ and w/o physical keyboards typing stuff, seeming concentrated & busy. They seem to work.
On Reddit/MacRumors/other forums, people keep telling how productive they are with their iPads, how great they are and they prefer iPads over MBPs.
---
Yes, iOS is butter smooth, it's crisp, the virtual keyboard is usable. But isn't a real keyboard, a touch pad, a mounted screen paired with an appropriate OS still the state of the art of an user interface?
- A touch pad keeps finger and arm movement to the minimum; a track point (which is not popular) even more; whats so great about touching UI elements? Yes, scrolling content or pinching to zoom from time to time might be more intuitive but still you can do this on a good trackpad with less finger and arm movement and as intuitive
- Regarding the keyboard, tablets are catching up. There're keyboards, control + alt keys are available but is this not even more a proof that a keybaord is essential and they're reinventing the wheel?
- The software and the OS, every piece of software there's limited. An iPad Word can just open one document at a time and most UI is touch based. I know that most people do need just some browsing, Gmail and Facebook but once you want to do a bit more serious stuff you pull out your notebook?
- Media consumption, people write that iPads are so great for media consumption; my 10" notebook is way better for media consumption since it has its stand built-in and I don't have to hold it, I can even turn it by 90 degrees and it keeps standing rock-solid; and it plays torrents
So, is it me or them who don't get it? I am seriously thinking of getting an iPad to force myself to work with an iPad 2, 3 weeks to understand people's fascination. <comment><USER2> Depends on what people use their tablets for. Most of them, browsing, emailing, and some small texts or spreadsheets. For that, a tablet may be more than enough with lots of advantages over a laptop (more lightweight, easy to handle and carry, always on.)

If your work involves many hours of typing, or programming, a keyboard is better, period. I spent many hours programming in the virtual keyboard of the iPad, and it's not so productive.

Not having a proper multitask environment is also a big turndown for high productivity demands. (But again, most people just need to take care of the mail, not much more)

For media, I feel the form factor of a tablet is perfect. You can use it in more situations and positions than a laptop. Just borrow one and try..

</comment><comment><USER3> > Once we started to talk she pulled out her iPad and took minutes with the > virtual keyboard.

Perhaps she can't do the easiest thing needed when taking minutes: Take a picture of the agenda, print it out, and write on it with a pen. Then take another picture. Information security, etc. It sounds like she's trying to save time, not wanting to duplicate work for a sense of 'productivity'.

Why do microwaves, toasters and ovens go 'bing' when the timer's up? To give us feedback. Why does your TV have a small red light when on standby? To give feedback. Why does a light switch have an audible tick that differs when turned on and off? Feedback. We get feedback in many forms. And I use the laptop I use because I enjoy the feedback it gives. Apple and Lenovo, amongst others, win and lose sales based on feedback from users on the keyboard, and spend money making the experience better.

> At airports there're so many. Folks having iPads w/ and w/o physical > keyboards typing stuff, seeming concentrated & busy. They seem to work.

Being busy means not being able to reflect. And not reflecting on yourself and others is a sign you don't have time or inclination to think. It means being busy, and denying one's self the chance to work at a 'higher level'.

Don't buy an iPad to get busier. Sure, but one to explore. But is it better? No. It is a far inferior input interface.

</comment><comment><USER4> My wife recently transitioned from a five-year old MacBookPro to an iPad Air 2, on which she now does virtually all of her work. She uses a combination of Google Docs and MS Office for iOS. Seems to be working for her, although she occasionally needs to use my MBP for something she can't accomplish otherwise. And we're both in our mid-50s, so yeah, we're getting old!

</comment><comment><USER5> IMHO it doesn't matter which is objectively better, which is more efficient. If people would go ahead and use tablets then so should you, or you risk getting out of touch with your users and general society, much like my grandmother who has a hard time getting to the bank since she doesn't get e-banking and physical banks keep shutting down branches.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think there is one simple answer to this:::

Many people go their whole lives without questioning themselves "Maybe there is a better/different way/thing?"

Example: Php developers, sports, music, religion, mac (why is mac so popular in NL???) etc.</comment>


Tainted Leaks: Disinformation and Phishing with a Russian Nexus - <AUTHOR> https://citizenlab.org/2017/05/tainted-leaks-disinformation-phish/ <comment><USER2> > The phishing email is designed to trick the recipient into clicking on the > 'Change Password' button. Clicking on this link would direct the victim's > web browser to a link hosted on the URL shortening service Tiny.cc

Truly amazing hacking skills we see here.

<comment><USER3> Don't play dumb — it rarely works out in your favor. Why would you expect anybody to burn 0-days when all they want is access to an email account?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, my KGB handler told me to play dumb.</comment></comment></comment>


Open sourcing CloudFlare's UI framework - <AUTHOR> https://blog.cloudflare.com/cf-ui/ <comment><USER2> Hi HN, I'm one of the devs on the UI team at CloudFlare. I can't tell you how nice it feels to finally put this out there. I'm hoping to do more in the coming weeks to share how we've decided to build our applications.

Also, I can answer any questions that you might have.</comment>


Ask HN: Educational programming-related stuff to listen to? - <AUTHOR>

I spend 1.5+h a day cycling to/from work. In my workplace there's no such thing as time to read around the subject or explore new stuff, and work+lunch+commute leaves me little time in a day for self-education (I have a family, so weekends are a precious time, too). I know I can listen to some programming podcasts, possibly some lectures (any recommendations? I'm a Java dev, I'd like to broaden my horizons a bit but obviously I won't understand much of in-depth talk in embedded programming or similar). More importantly, has anyone had success with any text-to-speech for technical literature? Alternatively, some recommended reads that are not strictly technical but nevertheless useful for our proffession? <comment><USER2> Here are some that hackernews have already discussed:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=podcast+OR+audiobook+site%3An...](http://www.google.com/search?q=podcast+OR+audiobook+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not necessarily technical, but possibly still of interest:

Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner Podcasts:

<http://ecorner.stanford.edu/podcasts.html></comment>


Ask HN: Operational complexity of micro services? - <AUTHOR> If you have switched over to a micro services paradigm within your company, how and what do you use to manage the operational complexities?<p>For context, I am assuming you have hundreds or thousands of micro services that have to be wired up to talk to each other. <comment><USER2> One thing I would focus on is that it is a bad idea to write one Microservice in Python, another one in Node.js, another one in Rust, another one in Ruby, another one in Go, etc.

If there really is a special reason to do such a thing, go for it, but dealing with serialization/deserialization code in lots of languages as well as repeated logic is a big waste.

One answer to that would be to have as many microservices as possible depend on the same framework for as much as is possible/reasonable. The more things stay the same the easier it is for developers and admins.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am trying to look at it from a business perspective. Instead of having a handful of monoliths that are managed, how do you scale the operations side to handle hundreds or thousands of micro services.

See [http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/4/8/microservices- not-a...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2014/4/8/microservices-not-a-free- lunch.html)</comment></comment>


62% of 16-24s prefer books as physical products - <AUTHOR> http://www.voxburner.com/publications/347-62-of-16-24s-prefer-books-as-physical-products <comment><USER2> I recently switched to a job where I deal mainly in bound paper documents. I have to say, I forgot how much more awesome paper is than computers. For processing complex documents, there is no technology that matches a big desk strewn with printed documents. It's like having dozens of lightweight flexible high resolution 13" displays. Marking up a piece of paper with post it notes, pencil marks, and highlighter is a tactile experience that even the best styluses simply can't match. The lack of "UI" between you and the annotations helps tremendously with processing and retention.[1]

It's a shame that so few companies are exploring the synergies of paper and digital. I keep trying the livescribe, but the company can't write decent software to save their lives. I want to be able to print a document from my ipad onto dot paper, and have my markup automagically show up in the pdf copy. It can't be hard.

[1] In school, I found the low tech approach of carrying around heavy case books to be the most effective. My pop psychology explanation for this is that computers don't take advantage of our spatial memory. I can go back and visualize myself highlighting something in specific physical book, but on a screen it all just blends together in my memory.

<comment><USER3> I'm very pro-paper. Flipping back and forth in a book (is there any _other_ way to read a textbook?) is just a much better experience than swiping madly or spamming PgDwn. I feel trapped inside that little rectangle of a viewport, waiting for pixels to change.

> _computers don 't take advantage of our spatial memory. I can go back and > visualize_

I still remember the page of my linear algebra textbook that related rowspace, nullspace, transpose. It seemed terribly confusing at the time so I was staring more than reading. I remember the layout on the page, the red lines. I don't recall the exact formula, so it's not magic, but the memory is so unusually sticky I can't help but agree.

> _It 's a shame that so few companies are exploring the synergies of paper > and digital._

If there's a (cheap) way to use a whiteboard and not resort to _A)_ writing down the novel bits, _B)_ taking a picture, I am all ears. Putting the tech in the board is probably too expensive.. perhaps a marker attachment would be more realistic. Once it's digitized, OCR / vector drawings can be tried & improved. I like the idea of the Evernote/Moleskine duo, but I just don't use moleskines like that.

Random tidbit: in the Mad Men-styled issue of TIME (2012?), there was a very good full-page ad on the real benefits of reading/using paper. Might have it somewhere.

<comment><USER4> [http://www.colourtime.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/Domtar-...](http://www.colourtime.com/wp- content/uploads/2013/03/Domtar-Newsweek-Ad.jpg)

This one?

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that's the one. It was an interesting issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's an important piece of demographic information for the survey:

> 45% of those surveyed don't own a device that can read ebooks – this > includes both e-readers and smartphones.

So almost half of those polled don't actually have steady access to ebooks. I wonder how the statistics change for a sample who have ready access to both.

<comment><USER6> Either many of those 45% don't realize they don't have access to devices that can read ebooks (may not know their iOS/Android device can run Kindle/iBooks/whatever) or this was a really weird sample.

> Twenty-somethings are the leading smartphone users in the U.S., with a full > 81% of Americans aged 25 to 34 using the devices. Teens aren't far behind, > with almost 70% of those aged 13 to 17 already using a smartphone.

via [http://www.webpronews.com/u-s-smartphone-penetration- hits-64...](http://www.webpronews.com/u-s-smartphone-penetration- hits-64-young-people-lead-the-way-2013-09)

<comment><USER7> I have never used my smartphone to try and read a book, I think most people around me would agree that it would not be a fun experience (most people around me have older smartphones with small screes).

I do own a Kindle, though, but my point is that I think many people don't consider their smartphone a "reading device".

<comment><USER8> I used to do this a few years ago when I was in London. When you have 5 minutes to wait for the next tube there wasn't much else to do as there was no wifi then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Imagine reading a book, and after a mention of a famous Italian structure, > press on the name and have a Wikipedia description of its history appear, > with an image.

I'm a great believer in ebooks. However, this is one feature I don't want. It's a distraction, it pulls me away from my book and I end up on a Wikipedia binge instead of finishing what I set out to do. It's not good for my attention span.

<comment><USER10> There are some novels (Gravity's Rainbow comes to mind) where I frequently had to look up various events and people that were mentioned in the text. I can see this being helpful, but I'd probably prefer an "annotated edition" where you could view notes written specifically for the book you were reading instead of generic Wikipedia links.

Unfortunately I haven't encountered any ebooks that handle annotations in a pleasant way that takes advantage of the technology. The few I've seen that had annotations just had hyperlinks to a different page in the ebook, which makes you lose the context. With ebooks, endnotes like these seem absurd to me; the annotation should be viewable inline on the original page.

<comment><USER11> iBooks/epub3 will do popup footnotes, if you mark up the document just right. For more info see: [http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2012/05/creating-pop-up- fo...](http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/2012/05/creating-pop-up-footnotes-in- epub-3-and.html)

The blog article doesn't mention it, but I've found that the footnotes have to be in the same XHTML file as the reference for this to work in iBooks. Also, iBooks for OSX doesn't display these popup footnotes yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I disagree for novels etc, but for textbooks and review papers it is really unbelievably better to have a printed copy. The ability to flick back and forward and quickly take notes is so, so useful. Nothing to do with the smell or cracked spine though. Fuck cracked spines.

<comment><USER13> I agree that currently this is the case. But why should it be any harder to flip between bookmarks in an ebook than switch tabs in a browser?

<comment><USER14> I find keeping track of "context" is much easier with a real book. For example, I know that I saw an equation 3 or 4 pages ago on the top left, so I can quickly flip back and find it, whereas on a digital form a would have to PGUP a couple of times and be presented with a "blur" of pixels and try to catch the same equation.

Then again, I'm not sure what UI modern eBook readers have for setting and going to bookmarks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Minus any (totally valid) concerns about DRM, I find eBooks to be completely superior to their dead tree versions. As a heavy reader the benefits are enormous:

My kindle weighs less than a pound making reading large books a snap I haven't purchased a paper book since I got the kindle and I'm always pairing down my collection, yet still moving my paper books to a new apartment is an incredibly heavy task A few people have pointed out that "eReaders can hold thousands of books" is silly, until your on a vacation and you finish your current book

I guess I lack the sentimentality of proudly displaying a full bookshelf of my "trophies" with their creased spines. No one seems to lament the sentimentality of the passing of the VHS...

<comment><USER16> When I was a child I felt odd when visiting a friend's house if there were no books on the shelves, as well as the books being missing I wondered if their education was missing. I felt much happier in places where the walls were lined with books. Particularly notable were the places where video cassettes adorned the walls, I never really knew what to make of that - did they just watch the TV screen all day?

Nowadays I don't have books on shelves at all, whatsoever, under any circumstances. The books I have to buy because they are not available in a digital format tend to be really good and I end up giving them away, for them to not need to be returned. I really do not see a long term future for printed books, there is no need for them, except in museum-libraries.

What would be cool is if you could buy books for people in a digital format on a 'sale or return basis'. They would get the book from you, then, if they actually read past the first few pages, your account get charged. In this way you could give out books to people for birthdays, Christmas and so on without them feeling obliged to read through whatever it is that you have sent them. Equally you could be more generous with gifting as there would be a fair likelihood that some of the books gifted would not be read.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm just outside of this age rage, but I strongly prefer physical books to ebooks, for one major reason: lending. I gave the Kindle app on my phone a solid effort for about a year, but shortly afterwards I realized I wanted to lend the book I had just finished to my friend. While I know some apps have limited "lending" features, even ignoring their limitations they are far, far more complicated than just taking a book off a shelf and handing it to your friend. No worries about compatibilities or email addresses or suspended accounts or any such nonsense.

In addition, I ride public transit to and from work every day, and having high end electronics does make you a target for thieves. Smartphone theft is very common, and flaunting a $50-200 ereader makes you stand out from the crowd. And, if someone yanks my bag, I'm out a $10 book instead of a $200 tablet and whatever personal information happens to be on it.

Then there's everything else the article mentions, including liking books with cracked spines filling the "trophy cases" (bookshelves) in my reading room.

All this adds up, and as a result I haven't bought an ebook in 2 years, and can't think of ever going back.

</comment><comment> WD-42 "E-book readers have the capacity to carry thousands of books while still being incredibly lightweight."

This is one argument I never understand. Why would you care if you can carry thousands of books at once? I rarely read more than one at a time.

I don't use ebooks. Physical books are still more attractive. You can abuse them without worrying about damaging them. And most importantly, when you have finished reading a spectacular book, you can give it to a friend to read.

<comment><USER18> I used to think this as well, until I moved across an ocean. I'm a big fan of packing light nowadays.

<comment><USER19> I was going to say exactly this. After two cross-city moves and one cross- country move, my wife and I converted our sizable (~100-150) book collection completely over to e-books before moving overseas. The most annoying thing about physical books is that they are so dense. Movers (especially long- distance movers) will charge on both weight _and_ space, so even though it may not seem like you have a lot of stuff, the added cost of moving a couple dozen books can quickly eclipse the expense of replacing them electronically.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As a parent, it's incredibly important to read physical books.

First, it shows your children you can be entertained without an electronic device. My oldest son is three and already an expert on the iPad and iPhone. It worries me how much he wants to use the device, and telling him he can't use it and the whole family is taking a timeout from electronics is important to his growth. He can draw while I read a book, for example.

Second, buying physical books at a bookstore is a great bonding experience. I love taking my little guys to the local Half Price Books which always has a great dedicated kids section.

These reasons aren't only for parents, of course, but as a parent I find having physical books present is important.

<comment><USER21> I'm a parent, too, but to me the fear of giving children too much "screen time" is anachronistic in this day and age. Not to say that screen time SHOULDN'T be limited, but the reasons for that are primarily because of the passive nature of, say, watching videos where images on screen change quickly. There is evidence that this sort of constant passive entertainment can erode attention spans. What we're concerned primarily about is !) instilling self control, which in and of itself has nothing to do with electronic devices, and 2) exposing our kids to a variety of stimuli and not just whatever appears on a screen. But again, this latter point is important irrespective of whether we're talking about electronic devices, legos, or barbie dolls.

As to buying physical books being a great bonding experience, I agree, but I think it's also beside the point.

<comment><USER22> > to me the fear of giving children too much "screen time" is anachronistic in > this day and age.

Given that there's overwhelming evidence that screen time is completely worthless for language aquisition in children, as one example, not worrying about screen time demonstrates ignorance around different modes of learning and interaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I prefer the paper version of my books, too. However, sometimes I like to have a digital copy, for example in order to search for content using a phrase.

When I buy a vinyl record nowadays, I often get a download-code for the mp3-version. Book publishers should do the same. Buy a printed book, get the digital for free.

Or just buy the digital, at a lower price.

But hey, I'm not holding my breath for that to happen soon.

<comment> mkr-hn That's what Kindle Matchbook is: [https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep- landing-page?ie=UTF8&*V...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/ep-landing- page?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0)

<comment><USER23> "For thousands of qualifying books, your past, present, and future print- edition purchases now allow you to buy the Kindle edition for $2.99, $1.99, $0.99, or free."

Nice, but it should be free.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I was beginning to like the Kindle when Amazon decided that they wanted to focus on producing full-fledged Android tablets instead. They still make e-ink Kindles, but the cheaper ones have annoying ads, and the entire e-ink lineup feels like they've been neglected for the last couple of years.

I don't like LCD/LED screens for reading books, especially at night when my eyes are tired. Even e-ink is inferior to good ol' paper books, with their crappy contrast, crappy resolution, and ugly fonts that make every book look like just another blog using the same WordPress theme. E-books have a long way to go before they can match the beauty, natural feeling, and personality of a physical book. After all, physical books have been around for centuries. They are a mature technology.

Do you know how much time a good publisher spends trying to find the perfect paper, color, layout, and typography for a book? Do you ever notice the small paragraph at the end of a book where the typographer explains his or her choice of typeface and gives you a brief history of it? The cover is not the only part of a book that needs a designer. I sorely miss that touch of humanity when I read an e-book.

Another commenter says that novels are suitable for digital delivery. I disagree. An e-book might give me the same content, but it certainly doesn't give me the same experience, and a work of literature is really about the experience as a whole, not just the literal content.

<comment><USER25> Amazon really hasn't abandoned the e-ink Kindles. They continue to release a new one every single year, and the Paperwhites are solid improvements. It is only $139 for the no ad version (the first Kindle launched at $399). There is only so much visible change they can make until there is some leap in the e-ink technology so the yearly changes may seem smaller, but they are definitely committed and improving the kindle!

<comment><USER26> i'll add that the most recent paperwhite has a really great display, much better than anything before it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> People liking physical books has less to do with nostalgia and more to do with the fact that physical books have much better and more refined formats in many cases. Ebooks are actually a lot better in some formats than other formats.

Digital magazines seem to not work as well because they are different formats and they try to either maintain their existing format and business model or they are basically websites. I have yet to see the digital magazine format really be awesome. Also, one could argue that a monthly curated collection of photos and articles doesn't make much sense when they could be delivered instantly for minimal cost.

Novels feel like they are way better in digital format. A 300-1000 page novel as a paperback is an ok reading experience, but on a e-ink device, you get an improved experience due to the easier storage, retrieval, lightness, etc. of the e-ink Kindle type devices. Even on a Kindle Fire or iPad, the ebook reading experience of reading a novel is pretty great.

The Bible as an ebook in standard epub or kindle format kind of sucks because it is often referenced in particular book/chapter/verse and it's a big enough book that navigation doesn't work super well on a kindle type device, but Bible apps are fantastic because they make it easy and fast to navigate, get multiple translations, etc. Same content, different formats/presentation.

Programming or bigger reference type books I don't think work as well in epub or kindle format yet, because you need something more like a full size iPad to really be close to the original format and a smaller kindle or kindle fire sized device loses enough formatting that it doesn't work as well. If those books were redone to be something formatted for specific device size, it could work really well potentially, but then the cost structure changes a lot from the traditional publishing model of do a book in one format and sell it in lots of places. Instead, you have something closer to video games where you might have the same game ported to various platforms specifically with varying formats/fidelity.

Comic books feel hit or miss on tablets because again it really depends on the format. Full size iPad is a lot closer to the original comic book size and format than something like a Kindle Fire or iPad Mini. To get around this you can zoom into panels and that can be decent, but that feels like a mixed bag.

I think books in various forms going digital is going to be really a work of figuring out what the right formats are and how to translate the books into those formats at a reasonable cost. Some formats are cheap and easy to go digital right away and provide a great experience, some formats are going to take a lot more work.

How much people like digital books is going to depend largely on the experience of reading them. If publishers can create a great experience, people will like that. If the experience sucks, people won't buy.

One reason Amazon is so successful is they have understood from the beginning that ebooks have to be better than physical books for people to care. It took a while, but they really made it work for novels on the kindle.

I think an approach similar to responsive design might help, but it's really going to come down to making great products for each device/format/platform.

<comment><USER28> The thing preventing me from buying an e-reader: Being able to scribble on it. It's very helpful when reading dense technical books. That and if I'm buying a book, I don't want to deal with battery power - so e-ink or nothing. The display size for paper textbooks is much larger too.

<comment> ezequiel-garzon Sony's Digital Paper looks promising... and pricey! [1]

[1] [http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sony-Digital-Paper- Has-13-3-I...](http://news.softpedia.com/news/Sony-Digital-Paper- Has-13-3-Inch-Touchscreen-E-Ink-Display-Will-Cost-1-000-746-398334.shtml)

<comment><USER28> That's really cool! Thanks for the tip. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When I got my ipad, I went crazy buying ebooks ... first epubs until then I realized that I really hated how those didn't match the actual book layout, fonts, etc ... then I started buying pdf versions of the books. I liked those a lot better because they looked exactly like the book and the page numbers matched. But after the excitement wore off, I realized that I wasn't finishing any of the books, I'd start reading one, get distracted, and never come back to finish it.

So now I'm back to buying the physical book, if I need to travel and want the books with me, the night before I leave, I just go online and purchase them, then load them on my ipad. I do the same thing with magazines (Amazon's newstand will usually give you access to the digital and physical copies of the magazine).

I've come to realize that ebooks in their current form will complement but not replace physical books, until they find a better way to imitate the ui physical version much better than they do now

</comment><comment><USER30> >45% of those surveyed don't own a device that can read ebooks – this includes both e-readers and smartphones.

Completely anecdotal evidence here, but as someone who works at a university and sees a lot of people age 16-24, noses in their tablets/smartphones/laptops, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this number.

First of all, "a device that can read ebooks" could be anything from a desktop PC to a smartphone. I find it highly unlikely that in 2013, 45% of people ages 16-24 don't own ANY devices like this. Even if that number is accurate, it's misleading, as many teenagers perhaps don't OWN a device, but have access to a shared PC or the like.

Second, I'm curious about how the survey was conducted. Did they just ask a random sample of people in this group if they have a device that reads ebooks? How many of those people own a capable device and are simply unaware of it, I wonder?

</comment><comment><USER31> No, no, and no.

I think this depends on how much you read. If reading books is just a past- time, maybe those responses make sense? But if you're a heavy reader, there's just no competition.

\- The physical feeling of a book is nice until you need to carry it around. Or more than one, if you're reading more than one book at a time. I'll take my nexus 7 over a mid-sized paperback (or 4) any day of the week.

\- Bookstores in my home town were filled with "Network Marketing" people who just walked around there all day with paper planners, trying to get people into their pyramid schemes.

\- E-readers are getting better at note-taking. And you can search your notes, and search the text. I wish there was better math support, obviously, but I also don't get constrained by how much margin space there is in the book.

Still, my daughter's getting a bunch of paper Dr. Suess (&etc) books for some time :-)

<comment><USER32> It really seems to me it depends on the book and the circumstances. A nice, reasonably sized paperback or hardcover is great for reading; it's less great for carrying around with you or storing. On the other hand, a 1000+ page monster is much easier to read as an e-book. (Though it might look beautiful on your bookshelf.) And the convenience of having 5000+ pages of reading material on my phone is completely unbeatable.

The great thing is, there's absolutely no reason not to do both. Usually at any time I'm reading two or three physical books and two or three e-books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> sorry folks - too much focus on technology. The reason why is much simpler - if you are reading a dog-eared paperback book and a pretty girl glances over at you, you (think you) look erudite, quiet, self-possessed and cool. Reading a kindle you look like a nerd playing video games.

"How will your software help your users get laid"

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm calling bullshit. They are selling a product, namely the survey. Here's the Buy link if anyone is so inclined. [http://pul.ly/b/85744](http://pul.ly/b/85744)

If you want to make claims like this, perform a proper scientific study. Document your steps thoroughly, verify your questions aren't leading, use a control group, then publish somewhere appropriate (preferably an open access journal) and let other sociologists attempt to replicate your results.

I can't tell if that was done here because they want hundreds of pounds to find out.

</comment><comment><USER35> This statistic is not very useful in isolation. What percentage of people in this age group have tried using ebooks? They say that 45% of those surveyed don't have an ebook-ready device... what percent of the ebook naysayers have not even tried it?

It also seems odd to me that they treat 16-24 as one group. 24 year olds are adults who hopefully have college degrees, jobs, perhaps have a long commute, and nontrivial income. 16 year olds are most commonly living with parents and unemployed. It's not hard to imagine these differences being a factor in digital media habits.

<comment><USER36> Also, I can imagine differences between people who have had to move a few times on their own with limited funds (most adults), and those who haven't (most teenagers). That was what originally pushed me into ebooks, and since then I've become very glad to have it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> When asked if I prefer physical or digital books, I always want to say that I prefer paper. The truth is, while I switch back and forth pretty regularly, I find paper is pretty annoying.

I'm reading The Wheel of Time series right now, entirely on paperback, and I'm constantly aware of how it is physically more annoying to read. I have to constantly switch positions depending on lighting, or which side of the page I am on.

While reading on my kindle, I get to sit still in a comfortable position and not worry about flopping around to catch the light differently on a each side of the book.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wholly anecdotal: I find that a lot of people I've talked to who say they prefer physical books actually don't read very often at all.

They go to the library once or twice a year, possibly order a few books online - but that's it. Don't get me wrong, I love physical books, but ebooks are the only way I can keep up with the amount I read - which is usually one book every few weeks, possibly 30 books a year or more.

For anyone looking for a good ereader, I would highly recommend Readmill ([https://readmill.com/](https://readmill.com/)).

<comment><USER39> > but ebooks are the only way I can keep up with the amount I read - which is > usually one book every few weeks, possibly 30 books a year or more.

This was one of the reasons I've seriously contemplated getting a ebook.

Then I found the ireward card([http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/irewards/](http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/irewards/))... Now I save more than a kindle's price every year.

Okay, maybe I solved a wrong problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I have a Nook but I don't really use it that much and still buy lots of printed books. I don't know how to explain it, but every physical book has a sort of personality (size, color, font) that goes with it and with the nook all books are the same. I only ever buy books online if they are hard to obtain or are digital only.

Ebooks are also very expensive, often as expensive as a phyisical copy and until the publishers start to bundle every printed book with it's digital copy I don't see myself spending more money on them.

</comment><comment><USER41> Humans have been around for tens of thousands of years and we are still burning fossil fuels and exchanging information by the means of painting pieces of wood. Fascinating.

<comment><USER42> We're also using remote-controlled stealth fighter planes to bomb dissenting peoples out of existence. With pin-point accuracy through gps, gyroscopes, and million dollars worth of tech. I'd say there's more pressing priorities than using organic renewable paper to exchange information..E-ink looks like crap. I know a bunch of people who prefer to read without a backlight, and e-ink doesn't cut it either. I'm really surprised many HNers are saying they would read a book on an iPad..all I can say is good luck with their vision after 20+ books read. They might need an eye doctor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Two observations:

1\. As much as the reading on an electronic device is "convenient," there is also the problem that the same electronic device can be used to check your email, read hacker news, and do other procrastination activity. This availability of "other things to do" has a terrible effect on the attention span of the reader.

2\. Also, I don't like phrasing the debate print VS. eBook. A book is an informational product, distilled knowledge organized by an author for his/her readers. The _information_ is the product, not its physical(or digital) manifestations. As far as I'm concerned it should be print AND eBook, so that the readers can enjoy the same material as they find more convenient. This is the approach I follow with my math textbook ([http://minireference.com/#book_details](http://minireference.com/#book_details)): people who purchase the printed version get the PDF for free.

Okay, three things. This article reminded me of a previous study on digital books at the UC system of schools: [http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2922](http://www.roughtype.com/?p=2922) TL;DR students are not ready to switch to fully digital.

</comment><comment><USER43> As always, context is king. Sure, physical books are desirable in certain contexts. They don't need to be recharged, they smell nice, you can proudly display them in your bookshelf, and you feel like you actually _own something_ since you can hold it in your hands. But I'm guessing a percentage of 16-24 year olds much higher than 38% prefer ebooks when traveling long distances.

<comment><USER44> Why? Even on longer train rides (3+ days) I've never wished that I was carrying more than a book or two at most. A novel or two of adequate length and complexity is more than enough, unless you plan to be reading literally the entire time.

Sure, maybe an e-reader is superior for those 14-day treks, but the vast majority of people don't make those kinds of trips anymore considering that most of the world is reachable within a day at most.

<comment><USER45> But what about when you're at the location you traveled to?

<comment><USER39> you pick up another book there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what percentage of that population actually reads books outside of school. Probably a depressingly low number.

<comment><USER45> [http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/part-2-the- gener...](http://libraries.pewinternet.org/2012/04/04/part-2-the-general- reading-habits-of-americans/)

<comment><USER47> That's a great site, with all the stats you might want about the subject :) . Thanks for sharing.

For book readership:

"22% who told us they had not read a book in the previous 12 months"

"72% of Americans age 16 and older read at least one book in the past year in print; 16% read at least one e-book; 11% listened to at least one audiobook."

That's a surprisingly high number for audiobooks, didn't know it was that big a market.

"Among those who had read a book in the past 12 months:

8% said they had read 1 book

17% had read 2-3 books

16% had read 4-5 books

19% had read 6-10 books

18% had read 11-20 books

22% had read more than 20 books"

Actually, I think that study is more interesting that the submitted article :) (less catchy headline and less processed data)

"In June 2010, 95% of the book readers "yesterday" were reading print books and 4% were reading e-books.

By December 2011 in our survey, 84% of the "yesterday" readers were reading print books and 15% were reading e-books.

The shift toward e-book reading on a typical day is being driven by those who are college educated, those living in higher-income households, and those ages 30-49.

Those groups disproportionately report they were reading e-books yesterday."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I prefer artificially unrestricted texts, the best so far is in epub format and to read it on a Kobo Aura or Aura HD reader.

The physical books I still want to own just as decoration for living space and a conversation starter. But to carry around a fat book - no thanks, thats what e-ink readers are for.

The ebook market is not mature yet, most ereaders are too small and offer shitty support for various formats and are too restricted.

The interface on the ereaders can also be improved a lot, for example the Aura HD is showing the book cover when it is sleeping - there should be a setting to let the last read page be shown instead. Flipping pages offers no animation - some people would like that. Fast flipping through a book is also not supported, it is still faster to flip through a physical book than one on ereader. But these are all technical issues that can be solved.

</comment><comment><USER49> Does anyone have any statistics or articles about the price differential between ebooks and print? I use my kindle for things like biographies and novels, and exclusively print for things like technical books, mostly due to the poor experience I've had with technical books on e-readers.

More and more though, I've been buying print books simply because, in my own experience, the last couple of books I've purchased have BARELY been cheaper in ebook format than in print. I don't have any data to support me, but I can't help but feel like over the last few years, the gap between prices of ebooks and print books has closed, and with it, one of the big selling points (for me at least) for ebooks.

I'm curious to see if this is actually the case, or just my own personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER50> Ebooks may just be like digital cameras were in the 1990s: full of promises, but some way off a compelling replacement for film cameras.

How long before iPads come with hundreds of 600dpi screens, each double sided, flexible, 0.1mm thick, and stacked in a hinged pile to form a truly digital book?

<comment><USER51> That'd be an incredibly wasteful and extravagant way to simulate the paper book UI, especially given that paper books have wildly different form factors. Do you really want to lug around a device the size of _The Structure of Evolutionary Theory_ † to read a comic book?

† 1464 pages, weighs more than 11 Kindle Paperwhites in hardcover

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I prefer paper to computers in most cases. I prefer reading fiction on an ereader because it's easier to pickup where I left off and switch between devices. Anything I'd read cover to cover I prefer ebooks for. Reference materials in the form of books I much prefer paper because I find it easier to reference back, but I buy them almost exclusively in ebook format because it's much cheaper. Notes I prefer paper, just because of the much more precise doodling/handwriting ability. If I could use a tablet with the same precision and feeling that I could get from paper, I'd switch notes too. But technologies not there yet.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd probably prefer ebooks if I could find a good e-reader. I don't want to stare at a backlight, so it'd have to be e-ink. However, the e-ink readers I've found are too small and lacking in resolution.

</comment><comment><USER54> The Guardian article includes a few more of the raw numbers.[1]

I particularly like 'The top-rated reasons for preferring physical to digital products were: ... "I am not restricted to a particular device" (20%)'. A good concept to be aware of, but physical books are by definition restricted to a single device.

[1] [http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult- rea...](http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/25/young-adult-readers- prefer-printed-ebooks)

</comment><comment><USER55> From [http://www.voxburner.com/publications/323-buying-digital- con...](http://www.voxburner.com/publications/323-buying-digital-content)

wrt the survey details in the OP

>Voxburner sourced 1,420 respondents and surveyed them between 25 September and 18 October 2013. Follow-up interviews were conducted and the report includes comment from marketing professionals.

>It is available for download only at £495.

</comment><comment><USER56> Let's also keep one advantage of physical books over e-books in mind:

If I take a book into the bathtub, and drop it, the book may very well be salvageable. At worst, I'm out the price of the book.

If I take an e-book into the bathtub, and drop it, I've likely just hosed a very expensive e-reader or tablet.

Has anyone designed an e-reader which properly handles the "reading in the bathtub" use case?

<comment><USER57> There are multiple waterproof cases for all sorts of phones (including the note) to I have a friend that takes his iPhone in the hot tub to play music.

All of these devices also have e-reader apps.

I'll just add to this that Amazon got me to buy a kindle @ a $9 price point.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I think another key factor is genre. Maintaining a large collection of technical books takes up a lot of space and many of the books become outdated quickly. Ebooks have the advantage of being "upgraded" at a lower price.

However, books with many illustrations, photos, or even novels, do seem to feel better in their physical form.

</comment><comment><USER59> I prefer reading novels in ebook format, but most other forms I prefer having the physical dead-tree version.

One thing I think holds some ebook formats back is the insistence on replicating the physical experience. I do not need page turn animations or things broken up into slices.

Though, once some startup figures it out, it will seem obvious at the time.

</comment><comment><USER60> 16-24 is college aged age group and most college textbooks are hard to format for ebooks. So nothing surprising here.

</comment><comment><USER61> I truly loathe physical books and have done so since before ebooks were practical. Not having spines is amazing, I can read with my hands relaxed, in any position I wish at any time. Not having to carry a book is great, especially since I can read on my phone for short periods too.

</comment><comment><USER62> This age group includes college students, but do we know whether the surveys filtered out textbooks when polling physical vs. ebook preferences? I didn't see that mentioned in the article, and it would have a significant impact on the results.

</comment><comment><USER63> Print books basically have two overwhelming disadvantages for me. (1) They mass a LOT. (2) Due to #1, they AREN'T HERE. My tablet is here, my phone is here. My ebooks are here. My squashed tree books are at home.

</comment><comment><USER64> A piece of processed wood should not be preferred over a notebook sized device capable of storing over 3000 books and capable of wireless connection basically removing the size limit.

Nostalgia is great, but so is our environment.

<comment><USER65> Wood is a renewable resource. Environmentalists also tell me it traps carbon. The ereader still has to be made with parts from the environment.

Plus, when the dystopian future arrives, I'll have plenty of kindling with my growing collection of books. Plus entertainment after all the ereaders grow dark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Honestly, they are more 'information efficient'. Digital is more space & volume efficient. Both have their place, IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER67> One of the things I like about physical books, when you are done, you can just give it away to a friend or a local library.

</comment><comment><USER68> Before I got my Kindle Paperwhite, I had the same attitude. It changed dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER69> In my case, physical games/books because DRM.

<comment><USER70> It literally takes me about five seconds to strip the DRM off of an epub, and then I can have backup copies of my own library. No losing books because a pipe bursts or a trunk gets lost during a move.

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Meanwhile, 99% of those in the survey buy/download MP3s instead of buying CDs. Next!

</comment><comment><USER72> With many books and journal articles I have both the paper and the Kindle/pdf version. The hard copy is useful for initial comprehension of the material with underlining and notation and the electronic copy for lightweight, quick reference of that material once I basically understand it.

</comment><comment><USER73> Which means 38% prefer them electronically. And taking into account the historical trend, this is good for e-books business! Do you remember these days when Macs were only 9% of the US laptop market? And look at them now. Customers love convenience.

</comment><comment><USER74> is it possible to buy a physical title on amazon, and have access to the kindle version until the physical copy arrives?

if not, why not?

<comment><USER65> That's the ecclesiastical argument, my friend.

</comment></comment><comment><USER75> Coincidentally 62% don't have tablets.

</comment><comment><USER76> Hipsters wrote this article.</comment>


I Built Coronavirus Live Monitor – stats, news, and press releases in one place - <AUTHOR> https://xtrp.io/blog/2020/03/21/i-built-coronavirus-live-monitor-stats-news-and-who-press-releases-on-the-virus-all-in-one-place/ <comment><USER2> While I can appreciate the technical accomplishment of building this, I think most people should stick to official channels of news from their government or local authorities. I also don't think it's mentally healthy to keep tracking a live stream of COVID-19 news from around the globe.

<comment><USER3> It's not healthy to keep checking the news every hour or two on COVID stuff either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been quite happy with [https://covid19info.live/](https://covid19info.live/)

<comment><USER5> [https://talksub.com/covid19](https://talksub.com/covid19) is the best I've found for the US, breaking figures down I think to the county level, with sources. For the world, [https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) (if you just want the numbers, not a map), fairly detailed. Though following sites like these gets scary fast...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you seen [https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html)

</comment><comment><USER7> Excellent work. Thank you for sharing it!

</comment><comment><USER8> All the news for Belgium is in French, while 60% of the population speaks Dutch?

<comment><AUTHOR> For latest news, I'm working with NewsAPI (newsapi.org) to get latest headlines on the virus from different countries. I'll check what I can do, but this may just be a consequence of their API and data.

Thanks for checking it out!

— Fred</comment></comment>


AI-powered Lego sorting machine built with Lego bricks - <AUTHOR> https://www.brothers-brick.com/2019/12/06/this-fan-created-the-ultimate-lego-brick-sorting-machine-powered-by-ai-exclusive-feature/ <comment><USER2> First AI-powered Lego-sorting machine, eh? jacquesm@ would like to have a word with you.

[http://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of- lego/](http://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego/)

<comment><USER3> He mentions this in the video which is titled "World's first UNIVERSAL lego sorting machine" \- emphasis mine. It seems the emphasis was shifted to AI by someone else.

<comment><USER4> And mine is just as universal, and likely also not the first but the first one that got wide visibility.

This guy did a great job of addressing some of the shortcomings of my machine, specifically in the number of output bins (18 instead of 12), but it is a regression in other ways (built out of Lego so it will break frequently, mechanical part movement from the belts, which will lead to frequent jams and will wear as well as that it is slow and more timing sensitive).

All in all a nice effort and very nice video production but not nearly as much of an improvement that would make it reproducible/mass marketable.

To _properly_ build a machine like this will take a significant budget and a lot of hours behind cad software to make it out of industrial parts rather than Lego. I you want to make something mass marketable then you have a very long road ahead of you.

<comment><USER5> I believe what he means by "universal" is the ability for the machine to recognize parts it has never physically encountered before (since it's trained on 3d models).

It seems like increasing the number output bins shouldn't really matter much, since with either machine you could just reprogram it and run parts through multiple times, right?

<comment><USER4> You can train it on three D models but that's just a stand-in for the parts as though you have them. But - and this is quite important - if you want to achieve some efficiency with the 38000 or so parts that Lego has made over the years then you're going to have to cut a couple of corners and one of those is to give some more weight to the parts that you do encounter and to train your model to the point that it will come up with the right category even if it has never seen the part _at all_ , virtually or IRL.

That's roughly what I got it to with showing it samples of wheels but not all wheels and it detected wheels that it had never seen before just fine and so on. This is a lot easier than it might seem, you'll get a good match on a class but no good hit for any of the subclasses: that's a new part right there.

And yes, that's exactly how I did it, multiple passes. But more bins is certainly useful, I just ran out of room, the machine was already getting quite large, and the belt and frame I used was fixed in size and dictated a lot of the dimensions of the machine (it was a re-purposed running trainer).

<comment><USER6> Hey, Daniel West here, the creator.

First of all, as I mention in the video, this project is inspired by the machines built by akiyuky and jacquesm@. So I'm certainly not claiming this is the world's first LEGO sorting machine!

In the video I try and focus on the unique aspect of this machine, which is the _Universal_ part. Because the CNN is trained on synthetic data, the machine is able to recognize any LEGO part that has ever been produced. This is with the notable exception of ignoring printed parts, mold variations, and oversized parts, as well as parts that are not present in the LDraw part library. These restrictions bring the tens of thousands of part categories down to just under 3000. Accurately classifying 3000 categories is prohibitively difficult using manual labelling alone, simply because it's very hard to get physical access to all these different parts (not to mention the labelling process itself is quite laborious).

Is it overkill? Totally. But one goal of this project is to be a testbed for the use of synthetic data in a real-world classification system, and I'm quite happy with how well it ended up working.

I have produced another video explaining the AI system in detail: [https://youtu.be/-UGl0ZOCgwQ](https://youtu.be/-UGl0ZOCgwQ)

It has also been noted that the machine would not be mass marketable in its current state. That is totally accurate! This machine should be considered a proof-of-concept/prototype and I have no plans to try and create a mass- produced version.

<comment><USER4> Very neat project, congratulations on seeing it through. Note that being able to sort down to single parts is less useful than it may seem simply because of the number of passes required and that you'll likely reach your 'universal' stage a lot earlier simply because neural nets are good at classifying stuff they've never seen before as long as enough of the bits and pieces match.

How long does it run between fixes? How many kg of lego have you put through it?

Beware of _lots_ people that will bug you to give them all your work, to this day not a week goes by that someone contacts me with a thinly veiled request to get a copy of the hard parts 'just for their personal curiosity' and then when you search for a bit on Google you'll find them associated with large parts resellers.

Highly annoying.

Best of luck with your project, curious about what you'll do next with it.

<comment><USER6> Thank you Jacques! Indeed, for practical sorting purposes going down to individual parts is less useful. But there are intriguing possibilities, like for example using it to keep track of your collection, or extracting sets from a collection.

The machine is quite robust to jams so long as you're careful not to insert oversized parts. That being said, I'd say there's a problem every 30-60 minutes, so certainly not something you could leave overnight. Running for hours and hours means that it will eventually grind itself into dust anyway (I've already burned out a motor!)

I'll probably end up sharing everything one way or another. I'm sure you'll agree that any real commercial application of something like this is pretty far-fetched so I'm more than happy to just treat this as a contribution to the body of domain randomization application research.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Is it just me that would like this machine to be used to find parts for a specific model/box. We've tried to (re)build my sons police station a number of times and it would be perfect to have a machine that goes through the box of lego parts and spits out just the parts we need.

</comment><comment><USER8> I would love to work on something similar for sorting plastics for recycling. I wish there was an organization like Uber for organizing groups to do this in every city, along with finding funding to pay developers (> $100/developer_day). I would devote considerable effort to this full time if there are any angels out there or people who know anyone that could raise funds.

Also, does anyone know of a group working to improve the recycling symbol? It's too small/shallow to even be read by humans, much less machines, on many plastic containers. Short of that, we could break down the task into 1) isolating the symbol on the container and 2) reading the symbol maybe with extra wavelengths like infrared/ultraviolet or their combination with visible light.

Here in Boise, we have regular recycling that only accepts types 1 and 2, then they make participants sort 4, 5, 6, and 7 into an orange bag that gets sent to Nevada to be turned into diesel fuel. I see a ton of recycling in the trash because people aren't motivated to sort it manually:

EDIT: Added JPG: [https://imgur.com/a/puSmAzO](https://imgur.com/a/puSmAzO)

PDF (old): [https://www.cityofboise.org/media/1632/detailedplasticsguide...](https://www.cityofboise.org/media/1632/detailedplasticsguide-7-2018.pdf)

<comment><USER9> I have thought about this a bit. It would be awesome if there was a camera next to the recycling bin that could recognize the container and give advice on what to do with the material and any rules on it. Such as cardboard can be recycled if it's clean but composted if it has any grease. Some places don't have compost so there it'd say to put it in the trash.

It would be nice just to _know_ what to do with specific materials rather than guessing half the time.

<comment><USER8> Oh that's a good idea. I was thinking that there should be an open source object recognizer that can sort any material (kind of like a 3D printer). But having cameras on recycle bins would be great. Used cell phones could do it. There are probably unlimited amounts available for $5-10 each:

[https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lot+cell+phone](https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lot+cell+phone)

Also image recognition has been a solved problem since about 2010, so any roughly 1 GHz processor can do it in under a second for something like a plastics recycling symbol.

I just can't believe that there is no money available for projects like these. I was thinking about it just now at the gym and I'd like to see society move away from donating time at a personal level, and towards organizational donating where the workers involved are paid the going rate on their labor. So instead of working a full-time job and being expected to put in a couple nights and weekends per month on volunteering, we'd instead donate money to foundations that could go deep on problems with real backing. It seems to me that this would also be a good fit with open source in general. These problems are so much easier than the yak shaving we do at work that we could solve most of them in a matter of a year or two.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not bad! I'm curious what the accuracy is for parts. I'll look further than this short article. (edit: on follow up, not quite the level of detail I was hoping for, I'll keep an eye out)

I took a VERY similar approach for generalized universal lego sorter and got to about 120 classes of parts recognizing acceptably well for about 70 of the classes. I used Mathias' articles as a guide.

I was picking and choosing physically varied lego to find difficult pieces to sort. Beveled pieces tended to be the worst. Small pieces hid important information maybe? I suspect any solution will require mirrors to get better information.

I also got discouraged because I wanted to sort into about 2-300 different "buckets" and found the mechanical piece of that intimidating and got distracted by some other fun project. Maybe I'll return to it.

 _edit_ : I followed up by reading the longer linked article. I can't believe how similar the software the two of us wrote was. There are some labeling enhancements that I were probably the next step that I appreciate he took.

<comment><USER11> Just a though on the 200-300 buckets - perhaps you could create buckets in a grid and then just have the grid or dropper move around - once you know which bin is most appropriate for the part, the process of placing in the grid at that point seems relatively simple with just X and Y movement :)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, this type of setup is fairly reasonable but slow. I've considered droppers into banks of containers, but I haven't really gotten that far into it yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> When he was talking about the sim-to-real problem it reminded me of a talk I went to on neural networks. The presenter's company identifies retinopathy (diabetes damages the retina). When they first were training the CNN, they only jpg images. However a clinic used slightly different equipment and uploaded pngs and it caused it to not work at all (false positives and false negatives).

</comment><comment><USER13> Very cool project from a technical point of view, but I can't resist thinking how unnecessary this is in the real world. I remember a blog post of one of those first sorters, which ended with the guy owning a huge stack of sorted legos and no buyers.

Well done nonetheless, seems to work pretty smooth (though I see a lot of mixed materials in the buckets?).

<comment><USER14> IME, the ecosystem for buying Lego is not very mature.

I tried to buy a bunch of 44 specific lego pieces (the parts were listed from a book and fairly common) through Brickseek and couldn't do it.

Brickseek has a "Easy Buy" where you can add items to your list and have it find sellers, but it didn't work at all for me. Manually trying to find each piece is not worth the effort.

<comment><USER11> It would seem then that the real business opportunity here is probably in reselling used legos on an as needed basis.

You buy or just get donated legos from people that no longer use them and then you can sell custom sets for people by running through the semi sorted bins and creating the order. So you don't want to sell the machine but rather, sell Legos. Perhaps the main issue is whether resale rights are allowed but seems solvable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It must feel empowering to be able to turn of the shelf toys for children into state of the art sorting machine. Hardware is still much harder to do than software projects. Lego lowers the barrier for many people.

</comment><comment><USER16> just quit it with the "AI" adjective already.

<comment><USER4> Well, for once an ML label would be appropriate.

<comment><USER17> It's not real human-level AI until the machine can truly experience what it is to step on a lego with a bare foot.

<comment><USER4> Fancy meeting you here ;)

It's been a subject of some research and here is the most damning piece of evidence:

[https://9gag.com/gag/aBWA6LP/this-is-what-legos-do-when- were...](https://9gag.com/gag/aBWA6LP/this-is-what-legos-do-when-were-not- looking)

<comment><USER17> For safety, an AI Lego sorter should have a whole fleet of these:

[https://robots-blog.com/2018/03/21/finally-never-again- step-...](https://robots-blog.com/2018/03/21/finally-never-again-step- barefoot-on-a-lego-brick-in-the-night-leguino-is-now-on-kickstarter/)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>