A Meditation on the Art of Not Trying - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/16/science/a-meditation-on-the-art-of-not-trying.html

<comment><USER2> So about two months ago, on about my two-year anniversary with the company, I switched from "Software Engineer" to "Solution Architect" (aka "Biz Dev Engineer"). It means that I now go to a lot of meetings (frequently with clients), where people draw on my knowledge of how our things work, and build a few things on the side. Mostly marketing material.

It's a crazy different experience from actually writing the code, and some of what I've learned and noticed has to do with "just being yourself". Part of that learning process has definitely involved being placed in high-enough stress situations that I was put off internal balance: by gaining familiarity with _not_ being myself, I got a better idea of where myself _was_ and how to stay centered there.

The first realization was that I could label my activities as _reactive_ or _proactive_. As a software engineer, basically all my time was _proactive_. Now, most of my time is _reactive_. But... the original phrase I used to describe the _reactive_ activities, and the way I try to approach them, is "to go be myself at things". The desired outcome is secondary to the experimental juxtaposition.

Another way to put it is, I think: I (like everybody) am a unique snowflake. The _point_ of including me on anything and of sending me hither and yon is to have _that_ uniqueness present and available. Well, part of the point.

It seems to be working. I think (although it's a little early to tell) that I'm more successful at this job than the last. At the least, I'm happier. Your mileage may vary.

As a final note, when applied to personal growth, I think this attitude ends up something like this: Don't aim for results, aim for experiences. Your "higher-self" (whatever that means to you) can't just rewrite your "lower- self" (the thing you're being when you're being yourself), but the former can aim the latter at particular experiences. Go find out what it's like to be yourself at that thing, and you learn a little bit about who you are and who you are changes a little bit. It's an explorative act.

<comment><USER3> im a software engineer and looking to make the same switch do you have any advice on how you got there? another role im thinking of is sales.

<comment><USER2> I started by pursing "sales engineer", but then someone said the magic words "solutions architect" and it went from there.

Find the person who would be your boss if you switched, and start talking to them about it?

I don't think I have any other relevant anecdotes, my situation was pretty weird.

<comment><USER3> what is the actual range of experience required to do the job of a solutions engineer?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tl;dr There is no try. Only Do.

Practical advice from The way to approach this concept it to first understand your struggle. Beneath the need to struggle is a fear that the world is an unfriendly place and you are not supported. This view arises from the mind rather from the way, which teaches that the flow, the ever present essence of life, is the way. You can trust that the way will lead you. In truth, the mind-made view of the world, where struggle is necessary, is merely illusion. No matter how real it might appear. Wu Wei is the way.

To follow Wu Wei you must first let go of struggle. Stop fighting with life and trying to make things happen. You are struggling against the flow. You must first realize that you can give this up. Then it is the case that you act, you are not passive - merely waiting for things to happen, but you are no longer opposing the flow of events. Instead, you act, but let go into the uncertainty of life, and you see how life actually occurs. You become open to the mystery of which you are part. In a sense it is total acceptance of yourself and this moment. Of course, it is necessary to practice this. While the way is not of time, and we can be there in an instant, practice connects us to this place over time. Through practice the way reveals itself. Only through practice can this truth be revealed.

e.g.: Water may be directed and controlled by man-made dams, but it will always flow to its destination naturally. To be in accord with that nature, give up making dams for it only delays that flow.

Source : [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei#Practice](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_wei#Practice)

<comment><USER5> [edit: formatting]

Well, yes. But there are different levels of "doing." In particular, Vedantic metaphysics divides the human being into body, mind, intellect; corresponding with perceptions & actions, emotions & impulses, and rational thought, respectively.

The body finds its impetus to act from either the mind, the intellect, or a combination of both. For an action to be "perfect" (to the best of one's ability), one needs to focus the mind in the moment.

Most new-age analysis ends here, but Vedanta goes further to say that the mind naturally moves into the past (via worries) and the future (via anxieties), and that it is the intellect alone which may focus the mind in the present moment via a "higher" ideal.

"Higher", in this context, simply means that one should have a goal that goes beyond one's selfish, self-centred interest. For example, in the context of an employee, this might mean working for the sake of one's company and its betterment, rather than selfishly working solely for a paycheck.

When working thus, the set of conditions for one's own happiness become broader, and thus the mind is more easily able to focus on the present moment, rendering an action "perfect."

Of course, there's more to it than this. My guru has written entire books on the subject.

Source: Studied Vedanta for three years under A. Parthasarathy at the Vedanta Academy ([http://www.vedantaworld.org](http://www.vedantaworld.org))

<comment><USER6> Interesting to see mainstream news media carry such articles. Many people in ancient India tradition delved into nature of mind, intellect, memory, ego extensively. They considered delving into this "inner world" a worthy pursuit. Vedanta which literally means "end of knowledge or final knowledge" primarily are in the Upanishad texts. They are typically discussions between teacher and students on nature of mind, intellect, ego, meditation, samadhi etc. Very interesting but best learnt under a competent teacher. The tradition is to first experience (through meditation, silence etc.) and then understanding would dawn automatically. The Bhagavad Gita which is said to be over 5000 years old says that "wise sees inaction in action and action in inaction". Almost everyone experiences this sometimes in life. It also talks about the wise one being skilled in both pravritti and nivritti - which broadly means ability to act hundred percent and also the ability to totally let go at appropriate times. This is considered a precious skill.

There is a vast treasure house of wisdom in the Vedantic tradition. But needs a good teacher to correctly interpret it, complemented with regular meditation, reflection etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Don't use conscious effort to do whatever-it-is directly.

Instead, use that deliberate-brainpower to create patterns and habits that your _un /sub_-conscious will continue even when you aren't actively paying attention.

</comment><comment><USER8> Is this about Analysis paralysis vs. learning by doing?

From what I understand of asian philosophy, I think the dichotomy between he Confucean and Taoist value systems is a very good mental tool - the former stresses academic learning and analysis while the latter strives for simplicity and doing what you can, right now, with the knowledge and tools you have.

To draw a caricature: The confucean systems hold the bureaucracy that keeps systems going for decades in the highest regard while a taoist would value the spontaneity of an "agile and lean" system the most.

I think the "wu wei" concept is linked to a situation where a person has an intutive understanding of a system and it's practical degrees of freedom and constraints, and thus can let his subconscious to perform most of the heavy lifting, versus a situation where for one reason or another the person does not have a lucid mental model of the field where he tries to work and proceeds through constant conscious cognitive evaluation. I might completely off in my understanding, though.

<comment><USER9> I think you can actually unify both. That is, have both a system that lasts for decades and have people move with spontaneity. The key is to disentangle the system which dictates how things fit together from people's personal lives. The system needs specific roles filled, but the people filling them don't have to be the roles themselves and further, the system itself must evolve, driven by the changes in the people that are in it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> > _"I've been out in the fields helping the sprouts grow," he explained, > whereupon his worried sons rushed out to see the results. They found a bunch > of shriveled sprouts that he'd yanked to death._

There is a fair amount of sprout yanking going on in my little education world at present. I can use that quote.

<comment><USER11> rotor wash from tiger helicopters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm sorry, I do catch the idea, but it really sounds like fluff to me. As with many of these type of articles, I see some discussion and history, but no content or true insight whatsoever. Only some anekdotes and religion-style stories.

<comment><USER13> Went to isolated island for one month to finish project and decided to relax for few weeks. 10 days of relaxation was most fruitful, but in a sense that solutions just popped up in my mind during sunbathing and doing nothing. Anyway, in one moment i saw things from new perspective with clear vision on what has to be done, and at that point things were so simple and beautiful it was easier to just rewrite from scratch.

Conciousness is overrated, subconciousness is the key - works even after working hours. It only needs will, time and little bit of work ;-)

Funny fact, didn't know anything about wu wei back then.

<comment><USER14> This is how I program. Whenever I have a difficulty, I'll put it down for a few minutes and wait for the essential insight I need to keep going filter through my subconscious. Once i learned to trust the process, I just let go.

One thing I learned doing this is that projects all seem to take a fixed length of time to emerge from your mind to the machine. You can spend most of that time fighting it or you can spend it doing whatever else you want to do while your subconscious is working on it.

Personally, I divide it between Internet, high-level 10,000 foot view thinking, and socializing around the company. Doesn't matter. Projects still get done on time. And better than if I'd been fighting it, because there's no wasted time going down wrong paths.

<comment><USER13> > Once i learned to trust the process, I just let go.

Exactly. It was really hard to digest the fact that it works, because you know everybody think faster == better, but important part of process is to have clear picture -> distinguishing between important and irrelevant == slow. Anyway, in the end you make everything faster, because you go right way from the start.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Socially, many people are trained to react and fill the gaps created by others. We fill awkward pauses in conversations with chatter. We feel compelled to do work that some other leaves unfinished.

Wu Wei is a practice designed to short circuit this action through the pursuit of conscious non-action. The main effect on everyone else is to evoke a mild state of panic or at least some uncomfortable fidgeting.

You can test this pretty easily the next time you talk to someone by saying nothing. Just leave a gap on purpose. Take no action. The person across from you will feel the pause and will most likely fill it. Sometimes, if the pause is long enough, they will fill it with personal details they would otherwise never share.

One feels drawn to a person like this because their inaction creates a gap we feel compelled to fill. This is the "charismatic" effect the author mentions in the article. In reality, it's more or less a passive aggressive technique to get people to do your work for you through willful negligence.

<comment><USER16> The success of this tactic will depend on how much power you currently have in relation to others. If you are a wallflower or extremely shy, choosing to remain silent will only serve to disempower you further. If you do have a lot of social anxiety, your first priority should be to practice taking social initiative rather than remaining silent. Because unless you have some type of social status, people may rarely take initiative with you.

<comment><USER17> I agree. Ask any Apple's (high-rank) employees about Tim Cook's silences. They say they may even be worse than Steve's wraths.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think we all understand this at a simple, pragmatic level. For example, we all want to become so comfortable with the keyboard that when we think of the variable "bar" our hands automatically type it. I read the point of the article as saying that this applies at higher and higher levels of function as well: if we make things automatic we can spend more time thinking about and accomplishing the higher goals. And as the article mentions flow, again, I think we all know this to some degree.

And I was amused, if not surprised, to see that the confucianist writers had twisted this to support obedience to the power structure. We're lucky Plato had never heard of them!

</comment><comment><USER19> All narratives about enlightenment contain a form of letting go. Zazen, Koan. Siddartha and his quest etc. I read a book years ago from a French guy who suggested that this could be reached by writing meaningless sentences, which he made a long winding point is more difficult than it seems. I guess one can look at Azimov's A guy like that too. What it says, apparently, is that there is a reality behind all this. The human mind does have the ability to make qualitative jumps. We just need to get rid of the travail first...

</comment><comment><USER20> Easy is right.

Begin right

And you are easy.

Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy

Is to forget the right way

And forget that the going is easy.

\-- Chuang Tzu

</comment><comment><USER21> We as a society have forgotten, or not yet learned, that the thing we call "us" is but a part of the organism that is actually us

</comment><comment><USER22> This is also known in Italian as sprezzatura: it's the practiced skill of making everything you do appear effortless or natural.

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

<comment><USER23> As far as I understand, sprezzatura is a demonstrated skill that requires training and choosing good circumstances to demonstrate, like magic tricks in a circus. At least so it seems from its courtier-related usage. That it, sprezzatura is an ability to hide an effort, while the article says more about not exerting the effort, or at least not doing it consciously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Simpsons did it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73cxLiqc2U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j73cxLiqc2U)

</comment><comment><USER3> I have a great difficulty understanding this article. How can one accomplish anything without trying?

Believe me I spent years smoking weed, being myself and trying to build something. It didn't work.

Now I am told to not try? Or does this actually mean to just relax but not a be an idiot?

Paradoxes infuriate me.</comment>


SQLite: Small, Fast, Reliable – Choose any three - <AUTHOR> http://charlesleifer.com/blog/sqlite-small-fast-reliable-choose-any-three-/ <comment><USER3> We use SQLite as a file format for our desktop application (based on PySide) using SQLAlchemy. I decided to use SQLite after realizing I was slowly reimplementing many features of a database. I also read this [0] article entitled "SQLite As An Application File Format," which was the final straw for me to take the plunge.

Overall, the experience has been a joy. Our application is an engineering simulation application. Our core simulator is written in Matlab for historical reasons, and we can communicate data easily using the database. Writing GUI models and views over the database on the Python end of things is very straightforward, once you have your SQLAlchemy models set up.

I agree that migrations can be a pain, but thankfully our tables are usually small enough that we can alter tables simply be recreating them. I also found this [1] StackOverflow answer that explains how to easily change a column name in place.

Those looking for a GUI to view SQLite databases should check out sqlitebrowser [2]. It's the best I've seen, and the developers are very responsive to bug reports and pull requests. It is also cross platform, and is present in many Linux package repos.

[0] [http://www.sqlite.org/appfileformat.html](http://www.sqlite.org/appfileformat.html)

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/a/6684034/1333514](http://stackoverflow.com/a/6684034/1333514)

[2] [https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser](https://github.com/sqlitebrowser/sqlitebrowser)

<comment><USER4> That's exactly the use case for SQLite - as a part of a desktop application that is entirely local and needs features from relational databases. If you're running a web server, using Postgres is straightforward enough that you might as well start with that. Especially in a Rails environment.

<comment><USER5> I use SQLite for web apps and I don't think there's any reason not to, since my sites receive around 200/300 pageviews a day on average.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> From the less little known things I love is the sqlite backup api. Using it, I can "copy" the .db from the OS into the memory, work on it, and "copy" it back. This is done, since changes can be made in-memory which might not have to be written back. Off course if memory usage becomes a problem, simply switching from :memory: to some kind of temp file per process would do it.

Recently I've had some success with speeding up (up to 4 threads) on scaling reads - e.g. SELECT xx FROM yy LIMIT ll OFFSET oo ORDER BY zz - where it spreads on different threads "ll" and "oo". Now this ignores the fact that the db might be changed and wont get the same results for each thread (I can't get the same transaction number from different threads/procs as I can with PG) but still works for some tasks.

Recently introduced CTE's are killer feature, since we have a bit of parent/children derived column values, and we keep filling values from the parent into the children, while with CTE this could be evaluated everytime (at some cost, but then less data being filled overall).

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm a huge fan of SQLite. However one limitation I've run across is a good UI to admin it or develop for it. Right now I use something called "SQLite Administrator" (Orbmu2k) which is both really nice in some ways but super buggy...

Anyone found anything better? And, yes, I know it ships with command line tools but particularly for development it is nicer to have a GUI to quickly set up tables.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure if this is what you're looking for, but I can highly recommend Base by Menial:

[http://menial.co.uk/base/](http://menial.co.uk/base/)

(Mac only)

<comment><USER9> Gosh I adore using Base, to the point where I choose SQLite over Postgres/MySQL more times than not, because its interface makes working with a joy. Sequel Pro and PG Commander are good, but not _as_ good (well, the former is pretty close, but then you're using MySQL which I just find painful these days).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm using SQLite for most of my projects, in production and for hobby. When Python ORM is required, I'm using peewee. One of most important features of SQLite is that it's included in Python base libs. One very important factor is that it's also faster than many other databases out there. What? Faster? Yes, because it runs in the process, and doesn't require context change to proceed. So if I make 100k queries looking up information, it's probably fastest using SQLite than other databases, which run in their own process.

Timing 100k reads from database: MongoDB: 43.3 s SQLite: 19.4 s

Same test with 4 parallel threads MongoDB: 29.9 s SQLite: 25.1 s

So as we can see, SQLite is much faster for single thread batch processing that most of other databases. With 4 concurrent threads SQLite is still faster than MongoDB.

About web sites, when using WAL mode, I can handle easily over 200 write transactions / second using very light single core VPS server with SSD. This means that it should be trivial to handle at least a few million hits / day, each with a few write transctions. Basically other things start to block at least with that server, before the pure database lock, write, release cycle becomes the bottle neck.

</comment><comment><USER9> Whoah what? You can compile BerkleyDB to match the SQLite API? Has anyone here ever done that in production, and if so, how does it go? I can see that being amazing

Edit:

Hold on. As per Slashdot[0] and the license itself, BerkleyDB Open Source is licensed under AGPL, which means that it will be triggered even as part of a web service. That sort of rules it out for me personally, although I'm curious how much a commercial license would cost.

[0] [http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/07/05/1647215/oracle...](http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/07/05/1647215/oracle- quietly-switches-berkeleydb-to-agpl)

<comment><USER11> if you open the Sqlite source, the Vdbe engine, the engine that process the SQL queries to the backend, use a "simple" key value store, that is the on- disk btree backend of the sqlite.. so you can create a btree api-like using other key-value store as backend, and it would work the same..

This way you can give a full SQL engine to any key-value store out there..

Thats why the Sqlite4 are being designed to be more plugable.. with a shim key-value wrapper over the storage backend that can be changed, in compile time, or even in runtime given its use of C callbacks.. (but dont know any reason someone would want to to that.. to do a runtime switch anyway)

<comment><USER12> Replacing the btree engine in SQLite3 is far from easy. BerkeleyDB did it with major surgery to the SQLite3 source tree. LMDB did the same. [https://gitorious.org/mdb/sqlightning](https://gitorious.org/mdb/sqlightning)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Coincidentally I received a used SQLite textbook from Amazon today with this database design tucked inside. [https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsigXtOCcAAIGJh.jpg](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BsigXtOCcAAIGJh.jpg)

Discovering design notes in old textbooks is one of the joys of buying used books.

<comment><USER14> This is a delightful discovery. I wonder there exists a used book anthropology of sorts for these tidbits.

<comment><USER15> You might like: [http://foundmagazine.com/](http://foundmagazine.com/)

<comment><USER14> That's awesome! Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Good write up, especially the concurrency stuff. SQLite is great, I've used it in read heavy production environments for years.

<comment><USER17> It was a good write up. I've used SQLite to store small molecule structures for several research projects and it has never let me down.

One item I had hoped to read, which often is mentioned on SQLite reviews, occurs in the area of "When would SQLite not be a good choice?", specifically: "very large amount of traffic... Very large data-sets." I have always hoped for some (even wild) estimates of when that 'very large-ness' occurs. because in my hands, 17 million small molecule (inchi) structures don't even cause it to break a sweat. Will i hit a wall some day?

<comment><USER18> You are a long way from the practical limits. I have used SQLite databases with billions of rows that were still able to retrieve hundreds of arbitrary rows in less than second. We used it to store time-series performance data and generate charts. We had tens of thousands of these databases (not all with so many rows) and they performed their job admirably.

The one thing that SQLite cannot handle performantly is deleting large numbers of rows (millions) - so don't plan on deleting any data from your tables once they get that big. It appeared to me from a cursory examination of the code that B-tree rebalancing was happening after deleting each row which makes the big deletes very expensive. We got around this problem by sharding our data into a new table and a new database for each week and then mounting all of the databases necessary for a query. When we wanted to delete data we just deleted the database file with the corresponding shard. Obviously that only worked for our particular time series data.

Anyway, the bottom line is that SQLite is more scalable and has better performance than people give it credit for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I can still fondly remember 11 years ago when I joined a startup and I was tasked to look for a database to use for our anti-spam product (Outlook plugin). SQLite was still very new back then but compared to other existing free and embeddable database - SQLite was better, faster and works in Windows 2000/XP. So we used SQLite and the experience with SQLite was that good that we also used SQLite as the database for our anti-spyware product.

</comment><comment><USER20> For those that need a small, fast, embedded database, but don't need SQL, I'd strongly recommend looking at Google's LevelDB, which is under the New BSD License:

[https://code.google.com/p/leveldb/](https://code.google.com/p/leveldb/)

<comment><USER21> Why not redis?

<comment><USER22> redis is not embedded -- you need to run a server.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It is worth noting that recent vestions of BerkeleyDB are released under AGPLv3. This has significant legal implications, especially since the copyright holder is Oracle.

</comment><comment><USER24> I have a couple questions about a use case. In general is it a security concern for your app that SQLite doesn't care about user permissions the way client/server DBs do? What is the best you can do? Just make sure the file perms are appropriate so that just your app can read/write it?

Also, The project I'm working on is a multi-client thing, but the vast majority of what happens would be a silo'd situation on Postgres. The webapp itself and site structure would be shared, but clients would create projects for data processing and analytics. Would it be reasonable to just create a new SQLite db file per project? In some ways that would make backups easier by project, but dumping all data for a client would kind of be a pain. Are there other gotchas about a structure like this?

</comment><comment><USER25> The article says that SQLite may not be a good choice for large datasets. Assuming the other constraints (concurrent writes) are not a concern, why not? Assume a 750GB-1TB dataset of time series data, which fits on an SSD — what system would work better than SQLite?

<comment><USER26> Its not SQLite being slower, its a question of machine resources. When you use a Database cluster spanning across machines you are just throwing more resources at it, there no 'magic' per se going on in other tools. There is also likely better indexing which enables efficient querying.

Since the whole database is in one file though 140TB may be the filesize limit, searching through a index of 140TB data will still be a lot slower. That is the case even with client-server models or even with Hadoop.

Most people claiming to have a big data problem, actually don't have one. Its just bad understanding of SQL, coupled with NoSQL fashion which powers people to opt out of SQL. One more problem with SQL is, its a career path in itself. There is whole industry built around it, data base design, administration etc etc. And people who find this as high barrier to entry, take the easy way out and choose NoSQL based tools hoping it will act as a panacea- Only to re implement SQL badly at some point in their stack. But SQL has other advantages, it teaches you think about efficient representation of data. Which in turn leads to an overall better design of everything that connects it.

For most of your everyday so called 'Big data' problems, SQLite will work like charm. This covers most of the shops that claim to be doing big data work.

For the real big data problems, well then SQLite wasn't designed for it anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The article mentions that databases can be up to 140TB in size, and yet it also mentions that it may not be a good choice for very large datasets - <USER2> this mean that approaching the upper limit is not recommended, or are we talking about something even larger?

</comment><comment><USER28> I've been burnt by concurrent writes using Sqlite with Owncloud and multiple clients. Of course it may be the PHP connector and implementation, but if I remember correctly, it borked the database and Owncloud quit working. I had to re-set it up with Postgres.

But I really didn't know one could do concurrent writes with Python and Sqlite. I've always been very careful after getting burnt, so this is a good article. I love Sqlite and use it all the time and wish I could use it more. The single file format and lack of complex setup is pure joy.

<comment><USER29> In general, enabling WAL mode in sqlite tends to lead to happiness.

[https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html](https://www.sqlite.org/wal.html)

<comment><USER28> Interesting. I had not seen that before. Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> We are doing super fast online analytics, mixing with traditional SQL supported by SQLite. It's very easy to extend and modify. It's a programmer's dream.

</comment><comment><USER31> I've been using SQLite in production with a few dozen kiosk-style systems (mostly OSX Mac Minis w HDDs) for a few years and while it's generally been great to work with, with unexpected power loss, I've intermittently gotten corruption w partial/total table losses.

I looked into switching to Redis AOF or some other append-only system, but adding UPSs and switching to Linux-based systems w power loss protected SSDs seemed solve the problems.

<comment><USER32> Make sure you're using the right journal_mode for SQLite: [https://www.sqlite.org/draft/pragma.html#pragma_journal_mode](https://www.sqlite.org/draft/pragma.html#pragma_journal_mode)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> SQLite is great for its mobile crossplatform availability. We recently used for a crossplatform app (with Xamarin) on iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

However, we found the WP version of SQLite to be much much slower than SQLite on iOS and Android, where it is built-in. On WP, SQLite cost about 3 seconds extra on application start up. Eventually we replaced SQLite with custom json serialization to get the the same performance as iOS/Android.

<comment><USER34> That's strange, maybe the binary compile was not optimized for WP? Can't imagine why json serialization would end up being faster otherwise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> You clearly can use it but is there a good reason to use SQLite when you could use Postgres? I've just looked and it seems that Foreign Key constraints can now be enforced but I don't think that the type checking is as strong and there aren't the JSON capabilities.

SQLite is great and the obvious choice for structured data embedded in an application or on an embedded platform.

<comment><USER36> As you pointed out, really not the same use case. Firefox and Chrome use SQLite. Imagine if you had to download and install PostgreSQL just to browse the Internet.

SQLite is not meant to be a multi-user shared database. It's never going to replace a database server if that's what you need.

The reverse of your question is: is there a good reason to use PostgreSQL when you can use SQLite?

<comment><USER35> Yes but this article is about web services where you clearly can use SQLite but I wanted to understand if there were good reasons to give up Postgres' advantages to do so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Is SQLite a good choice for learning SQL? Most of the SQL books out there use MySQL as the primary vehicle but it seems like overkill to install on my laptop just to run through a few examples from a textbook.

On the other hand, if SQLite's flavor of SQL is missing some important stuff (I have no idea what) then maybe I should stick with MySQL.

<comment><USER38> I found it to be a great way to learn SQL.

As a rule of thumb, it should be fine if your goal is to learn the basics of SQL, and not-so-fine if you're looking to learn database administration.

I would not use it to learn how to alter tables, or even how to create and enforce a schema, as it doesn't do either quite like some of the other popular dbs out there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I think the author missed one downside in that there is no master/slave replication built in. That's not the biggest deal as it's relatively trivial to dump the DB elsewhere on some regular schedule, but if you want to minimize the effects of a server dying, it's hard to beat built in replication.

<comment><USER40> [http://www.sqlite.org/lang_attach.html](http://www.sqlite.org/lang_attach.html) can be used to live-attach one db to another and "cross-copy" tables from one -> another.

<comment><USER39> That's not quite the same as you'd still need to have some way of exposing the database on a different machine. You could use NFS or some other network storage, but that's kinda hacky and doesn't deal with network failures well. (In fact, that documentation doesn't specify what happens if one database file becomes unavailable while you're attached to it at all.)

There are work arounds, of course, but I think it's a pretty big downside that it's difficult to set up robust replication with sqlite. It's certainly one of the things that cause people to say that it's not a "real" database.

<comment><USER40> You can also just (eg) copy the backing file wholesale. It's portable and endian-agnostic. I guess it depends on exactly what you're trying to do and what guarantees you're requiring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Things I dislike about sqlite:

1\. Can not rename column, in a fast iteration project, renaming schema is quite common

2\. No easy way to upsert data. There should be an easy equivalent to MySQL's "INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE". If you use REPLACE you got PK changed.

<comment><USER24> Postgres still doesn't have upsert either. Neither does sql server or Oracle. I hardly see that as a knock against SQLite. All of the above have various levels of hackey workaround so for this though.

<comment><USER42> Oracle actually has upsert functionality. It is called Merge and has been available for quite a long time: [http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/statem...](http://docs.oracle.com/cd/B28359_01/server.111/b28286/statements_9016.htm)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Love SQLite. It was excellent for my first web app, as it had just enough features to be functional, but not completely overwhelm me.</comment>


"Show HN" Topvisor – explore, track and analyse - <AUTHOR> https://topvisor.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> An ultimate SEO toolset. It tracks rankings across multiple search engines and locations, can research keywords, grabs some analytics insights like search volume data, traffic, indexing. One can also get a comprehensive keyword structure for the website with the Keyword clustering tool, track changes on the site with Site Watcher or scan your site for possible errors and warnings with Site Auditor.</comment>


Thoughts – The forward thinking tool (iOS app) - <AUTHOR> http://thoughts.ink

<comment><AUTHOR> Thoughts is a sketching app that redefines the workflow of the whole category. We've removed all the noise so you can really get focused in thinking. How is that? Well, other apps give you an infinite set of tools for a limited canvas, Thoughts gives you a limited set of tools for an infinite vector canvas.</comment>


Show HN: A Platform For Self-Experimentation - <AUTHOR> http://doubleblinded.com/ <comment><USER3> It's hard to do a test like this when there's a significant chance you're buying nothing but powdered rice regardless of what the bottle says.

[http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in- th...](http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/sidebar-whats-in-those- supplements/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal- supplements...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/05/science/herbal-supplements- are-often-not-what-they-seem.html)

Want to do a double-blind study on whether St. John's Wort improves your mood? None of the bottles tested from Walmart, Target, GNC or Walgreens actually contained any St. John's Wort in 2015. That's despite all the reports years earlier about the same problem. There's little reason to believe things have improved or will improve so long as supplements remain largely unregulated.

<comment><USER4> I kinda wish the FDA had some certification to the effect that "this contains what it says it contains and its contents are no more likely to kill you than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich."

<comment><USER5> Peanut butter probably isn't the best example...

<comment><USER4> Why not? It is widely consumed, but there is a portion of the population that has a severe reaction to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Isn't there a huge potential for crowd sourced research platforms to take off and help advance the state of the art?

So far it seems like most studies are done by scientists / academics in a very closed off kind of way, but the true nature of science is open to everyone and with the right platform we might be able to use normal people to gather enough data to confirm or deny our hypotheses in a way that's much more open than the standard study.

Essentially, anyone would be able to test their hypotheses and either help advance scientific knowledge or at least provide extremely interesting markers that could be used as a basis to get funding for more rigorous / controlled studies. This approach obviously won't work well for every kind of question but just as the OP has highlighted: it's particularly well-suited for making self-experimentation more rigorous and I imagine it would work well for the social sciences.

Imagine if we gave independent researchers like Gwern the tools they needed to help answer more questions. If it was designed right: it would also be an incredible learning tool for the scientific method (since you could participate in the experiments + propose new ones.)

Are there any platforms like this in existence, I wonder? U-Uber for science?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are some in existence already:

\- quantifiedmind.com for self-testing your mind, which has a few group experiments as well. I'm looking into integrating with them as part of doubleblinded.com.

\- PACO (by Google) [https://www.pacoapp.com/](https://www.pacoapp.com/) Pretty cool and flexible platform, although not the most user friendly or easy to figure out. It is open source and has an app, which is cool.

\- A few sites like 23andme and ubiome have a lengthy list of survey questions they ask you, which I only imagine they would pass through pattern recognition algorthms to detect correlations between whatever information you give them and your Genome (or gut genome in the case of 23andme).

So yeah, there is stuff out there. We want to do this for nootropics and supplements (and eventually much more).

<comment><USER6> The "eventually much more" part is what most interests me.

You guys might actually be some of the first researchers in the world to experiment with this kind of model. I can see this being very big if its marketed right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This makes me wonder if there is a simple procedure for doing a pseudo-double- blind study on oneself (without a third party). That is, trying something that can be prepared in pill form in such a way that you don't know during any given day/week/month if it was a placebo, but that you can still determine that later to collate the data. I know a lot of people that swear by particular unregulated supplements or dietary choices and it would be really interesting to have an easy way to see if something they're taking is having the effect they think it does.

<comment><USER8> I, too, have thought about conducting a pseudo-double-blind experiment on myself. I think I could pull it off, but I'd also be willing to pay a third party to help me. For example, DoubleBlinded could partner with a respect supplement maker, and offer personal experiments in any supplement made by their partner. The consumer wouldn't have to worry about setting up the experiment correctly, and they would get their own results immediately upon completion. Aggregate studies can wait until enough customers have self- experimented on the same supplement, and DoubleBlinded can afford to wait that long, because the partnership model keeps their costs low.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is definitely one potential path we are considering. There's a question of whether we want to keep this specific to supplements/pills or try to broaden it to other things like exercise or diet (which are not exactly double-blindable)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> A very cool idea @ the high level, but one fatal flaw:

"At the end of each day you will fill out a short survey with a few questions evaluating the effects of the pills."

Self-reporting is an unsuitable mechanism to draw out scientific results.

There's an excellent detailed explanation available (1) but in TL;DR here are four of the most compelling factors at work:

1 - Honesty/Image management

2 - Introspective ability

3 - Understanding / Question Interpretation

4 - Response bias

Take Image Management & Response Bias - participants know that they will be able to see their results vs. the control group and it's not a leap to realize how easily our ego and even subconscious need for validation could dramatically skew the full study results.

(1) [http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self- report/](http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self-report/)

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I see that as a fatal flaw... ultimately, the user is sitting in front of a digital box that can guide and prompt them in all the same ways a researcher can--the only limit is in performing tests that require a medical professional to assess biomarkers. If the pace of medical device development continues, it's even reasonable to think something like a Theranos-that-works could commoditize the process while being intrinsically tamper-resistant.

Regardless, users can be prompted to perform any software action (knowingly or unknowingly, to affect bias) and that action can be measured by the system. It may so happen that every critical measurement occurs unbeknownst to the user, before they self-report anything (if at all). As we are currently undergoing a period of sensor-proliferation (fitness/health devices, wearables, internet of things, etc...) it's not unrealistic to think we will soon be able to instantly correlate data from a smartphone camera, blood/tissue, and the cloud.

Now there's always the problem of intentional fraud/deception, but I think the aggregate nature solves that problem. A small percentage will try to "break" the system, and that small percentage will never surpass a critical threshold with enough volume. In terms of ML/SVM's, we're now very good about filtering outliers or "misrepresented data"... while the responsibility is on you to develop a reliable classifier (for data-consistency more than arbitrary measurement), I imagine at scale you could infer trends with the same relative accuracy of traditional academia and research.

It's a really fascinating new direction--even if only an adjunct to traditional research--and I'll definitely be keeping an eye on the project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would not mess with Saint Johns wart. It will make you feel happy and cheery; but side effects are brutal. And if you participate in other drugs it might have harsh side effects.

<comment><USER12> And it's been banned in EU in 2011.

<comment><USER13> It's still available for sale from the biggest herbal supplement retailer in the UK [1]. That fact alone makes this claim seem unlikely.

[1] [http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/holland- barret...](http://www.hollandandbarrett.com/shop/product/holland-barrett- maximum-strength-st-johns-wort-capsules-60097281)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have done a lot of alternative med stuff. I know good protocols for how to test the waters, introduce new supplements, figure out what they are doing, etc. I would not use the service you are offering. It sounds to me like you are asking me to be a guinea pig.

To make this useful, I think you need to do the following things:

1) Educate people on good practices generally. Your current site looks to me to be an invitation to be someone's guinea pig and pay for the privilege instead of being paid.

2) Offer doubleblinded kits for a wide variety of supplements that people can choose from. The one supplement you are currently offering is one I never heard of. So I don't care. But I might care if you offered me the chance to pick and choose from a list of supplements.

I am no longer taking supplements, but I did take a lot of supplements at one time. I can see a service like this having a use for people, but not in its current format.

Also, I would remove the phrase "self experimentation." That sounds incredibly Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde to me. "Self testing" might be okay, but that's a terrible phrase and should be stricken from company vocabulary.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the feedback. I totally agree about educating people on good practices. This is a big part of what I want to do over the next few years - <USER2> think educating people on the scientific method, especially in regards to self experimentation is important. We want to work to create best practices and protocols in the self-experimentation/quantified self world. We are planning on putting together some content (videos and such) on the topic and incorporating that educational aspect in our platform.

As far as the supplements go, I agree with that as well. We're planning on adding more once the L-Theanine trial is sorted out. This is just our practice round to get the protocol right. What other supplements would you be curious to see?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Did you come up with this idea, or why was doubleblinded registered just after this Reddit post?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/3p0y2x/crowdfun...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Nootropics/comments/3p0y2x/crowdfund_crowdsource_trials_for_nootropics/)

[https://www.123-reg.co.uk/order/domain?X-CSRF- Token=45b50019...](https://www.123-reg.co.uk/order/domain?X-CSRF- Token=45b5001971906ca700fadd142a6f975d24dab8e6&domain=doubleblinded)

That doesn't seem very trustworthy

</comment><comment><USER16> This sounds like it could very easily be abused as a way to peddle supplements while skimping on the experimentation aspect. It's a good idea though. Do you have plans to include something other than supplements? For instance, common foods (to be consumed daily for long periods of time) or simple activities/exercises? You could still derive revenue by selling the equipment/ingredients through your platform but it would allow you to vary the product while maintaining the consumer base. Also, doing it with something other than supplements could be cheaper and more newsworthy if you do discover something. Very interesting!

<comment><USER17> Thank you for your informative and critical feedback - skepticism is at the heart of science! Very true, the system could potentially be used to promote a specific agenda. However, we very much want to avoid a system that allows something such as this as much as possible. Ideally through implementing open- source / 3rd party / community-input based protocols. If you have suggestions in this regard we'd love to hear them!

And yes, we plan on including food at a later date!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I just reported results from experimenting on myself at a bio-tech conference called "Basel Life Science Week 2015".

Cocoa seems to have made me two years younger.

The poster I presented is at

[http://morse.kiwi.nz/kingsley/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media...](http://morse.kiwi.nz/kingsley/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=science:screening_anti_aging_interventions_for_fun_and_profit.png)

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder why they picked L-Theanine for their first experiment - the effects are commonly known (caffeinated tea vs caffeinated coffee). Maybe this knowledge was used deliberately so people "feel" a drug the first time around, and want to keep going.

<comment><AUTHOR> We picked L-Theanine because of its safety profile and mild psychactive properties, meaning you can tell if you've taking it or not but it's not an overbearing feeling. We wanted the first experiment to be fairly predictable while we work through all the kinks of launching this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there motivation to cheat? If I want to sell this stuff what's to stop me from signing up a bunch of people, having the pills tested, then reporting what I want you to find so I that you'll tell the public my product is effective?

<comment><AUTHOR> This won't be an issue because we are supplying the supplements which are going to come from an established and reputable supplier. This is not a platform where anyone can sell their own supplements.

<comment><USER20> I think you missed my point. I sign 100-1000 people up for your study. You send the supplements to them. I quickly test the supplements to find out which is which. I then send you a report that makes the days my people took the supplements look positive for efficacy. You then report the supplements are effective. I can now point to your report to sell my supplements. It doesn't matter they are not your supplier. I still benefit from people thinking a supplement is effective.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> If this can somehow preempt experimentation on animals, I'm all for it.</comment>


When Founders Founder - <AUTHOR> http://diggingintwo.blogspot.com/2013/02/when-founders-founder.html <comment><USER2> With all the recent attention towards startups that aren't doing so well, it makes me wonder what motivates the founders to continue moving forward? Is it from a lack of choice? Or maybe pride?

<comment><AUTHOR> belief</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What are you working on right now? - <AUTHOR>

What's your side project right now? I love seeing peoples' projects, so link to it if you can! <comment><USER3> I do 2d side scrolling game in html5. It's supposed to be arcade rpg, with quests, dialogs, and upgrading your ship instead of leveling up (maybe later I'll add skills like hacking). Moving works like in asteorids, but there's huge flying city to fly through instead of asteroids. Theme is postapocalyptic.

I have working prototype using only canvas, and one using webgl, there's just tutorial and one simple quest and I need to develop better events system to write quests more easily.

Demo is here: [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/ma...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/main.html)

Quest system is using my [https://github.com/ajuc/pefjs](https://github.com/ajuc/pefjs) library - <USER2> similary to jbpm, but it's much simpler and has much less features (no subprocesses, no persistence, no transactions). I use slightly modified [https://code.google.com/p/jsdot/](https://code.google.com/p/jsdot/) graph editor to create quests (nodes are waiting states, edges are transitions between states with conditions on them).

The game works, but isn't fast enough, so now I work on using webgl for more stuff. For now I have nice way to draw huge tiled maps using webgl ( [https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/al...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/44884054/dema/current/allwebgl2d.html) ) - it's huge map of 4096x4096 tiles 64px x 64px each, and I only need to draw 2 triangles using 2 textures to do that.

Now I plan to keep objects data in another texture, redraw to it each frame calculating physics and collision detection in fragment shaders, and draw static vertex buffer with that texture to have moving objects.

I procrastinate heavily, should just make the game instead of all that tech.

And I certainly need better graphic.

</comment><comment><USER4> I am going through coursera's startup engineering course and can't decide what to focus on for my final project:

A medical startup, unsexy, but looks likes it could be very, very profitable. I have no domain knowledge for about half of this idea, but I have an experience Doc who can cover that part, and is excited about the possibilities.

An educational startup, something very close to my heart, where I have a lot of domain knowledge and experience. I also think I have struck upon a rock solid business model that can make me money (think lifestyle business, but a little higher) yet allows me to create a business that I would be very ethically proud of.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have worked on below side projects in last 4 years and made $0 seriously

1\. Intranet search engine - Shut down 2\. Followyours.com - You can follow topics and you would get updates on the topic - It would get it from different sources and analyse based on social signals based of retweets, likes etc.. - Shut down 3\. InstantExamResults ([http://www.instantexamresults.com/](http://www.instantexamresults.com/)) - to publish results of university students - Got interest from few universities but no one is willing to pay as there are sites which publish results for free. 4\. ConceptsA2 ([http://www.conceptsa2z.com/](http://www.conceptsa2z.com/)) - A site to teach math for school students in India - Going to shut down as there is no +ve response among students.

As they say, I think I have not worked on the problems that people are happy to pay to get it solved.

Now I am thinking of working in progress tracker application for online learners and teachers. Launched the landing page to verify the interest from online teachers. [http://unbouncepages.com/online- teachers/](http://unbouncepages.com/online-teachers/)

Sent mail to around Authors on Udemy(as Google adwords have become costly). Got interest from only 1 guy. Will be sending mails to online teachers for another month.Based on the interest, I would decide whether to continue on this project or not.

<comment><USER6> 2\. sounds interesting. Something similar has been fermenting in my notes for a while, so I'd be interested in your thoughts on why it didn't work for you.

<comment><USER5> I have got some 300 users signed up for this web app. But the engagement was very low. When I talked to people, they said that they can get the information of their interested topics from their favorite websites - If they like cricket they would see in cricinfo.com and so on.. And most of the news they want, they can get it from twitter,fb and other sites they regularly check. So followyours.com did not provide 'real' value for them, from their perspective..

<comment><USER6> It still sounds like a promising idea to me. Perhaps niching it down e.g. for people to follow only their favourite authors will be a useful exercise. That way you can also build in features specific to that niche. Anyway, thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An iOS app for the "Unibus" timetable at my University. It solves an itch I had about how long it takes to get the bus times plus how crap the apps look (i.e. [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bus-catcher-warwick- uni/id35...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/bus-catcher-warwick- uni/id358457624?mt=8)). Moreover I wanted to flesh out my portfolio of apps to hopefully delve into some freelance work soon.

I don't have a link, but here are some pictures: [https://i.freeih.com/7279/iphone_screenshot_3.png](https://i.freeih.com/7279/iphone_screenshot_3.png) [https://i.freeih.com/7278/iphone_screenshot.png](https://i.freeih.com/7278/iphone_screenshot.png)

The hosting website was made by a member of HN, as was the service that created the product placement of screenshots. Thanks HN! ;)

<comment><USER8> Great UI. What service did you use to create the product placement screenshots?

<comment><USER7> Thanks! The service is called PlaceIt by Breezi and can be found here: [http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/](http://placeit.breezi.com/productshots/)

<comment><USER8> Thanks! Awesome service. I haven't seen it earlier for some reason.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The 2 MVP's that I'm working on currently are :-

[http://www.postalcandy.co.uk](http://www.postalcandy.co.uk)

Was just using this to gauge interest but have shipped quite a few orders already through the MVP setup. Working on a much better branded site with some decent product photos. I would love it if this worked out!

[http://www.foundcamera.com](http://www.foundcamera.com)

This has exploded with popularity lately and I have a backlog of 100+ items to post! Considering implementing gravity forms to allow user generated content or completely rebuilding the site with better blog post section to encourage people to comment & discuss.

<comment><USER10> The foundcamera idea is awesome. Lovin it

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Open Source Enterprise Social Networking, Collaboration and Knowledge Management'ish stuff. Specifically, Quoddy[1] and Neddick[2].

[1]: [https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy](https://github.com/fogbeam/Quoddy)

[2]: [https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick](https://github.com/fogbeam/Neddick)

I'd link to the demo sites, but both are running fairly old versions of their respective codebases, and I'm not _quite_ ready to refresh them. Just a few more bugs to fix, then we're tagging releases of both projects, and updating the demo servers, etc. But it will probably be another week or two at this rate.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm working on a simplest-possible rss reader you can actually host yourself (locally, and trivially) with node:

[https://github.com/harold/rss-box](https://github.com/harold/rss-box)

I've been using it exclusively since the Google Reader shutdown, and really enjoying it.

I'm also working on a redesign of my website, where I'm building up some infrastructure around distributing some electronic music building blocks (soundpacks):

[http://danceliquid.com](http://danceliquid.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> An iPad app for speed-reading ePubs: [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/velocireader-ebook- reader/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/velocireader-ebook- reader/id635707909?ls=1&mt=8)

I made this because I wanted to speed-read on my iPad but I couldn't find any app that had even the bare bones of typographic practice in place. I just launched a minimal viable v1.0 a few days ago and am now polishing up some UI and interaction edge-cases.

</comment><comment><USER13> I started [http://lindavista.tv](http://lindavista.tv) a few day ago, New Music Television from Latin America. It's a real-time music video leaderboard and tv platform for latin american music, style, art, and culture.

The tech stack is all Node, so it's been pretty awesome. I'm getting a little traction, mostly from bands from Chile, got one sign-in a few hours ago, but I'm still finding the business model.

</comment><comment><USER14> A few days ago, I started working on a Rails based CMS:

[https://github.com/cmpolis/zencms](https://github.com/cmpolis/zencms)

I've been working with a design company for a while and haven't been satisfied with the CMS's that we have been using, mostly Wordpress. I feel like there's a better way to do it, so I'm hacking!

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm still working away on [http://des.sk](http://des.sk) which is my little project to bring contacts, tasks, documents, calendar and email all into a single place.

I love doing little experiments with all the features too, like sortable lists in documents or dynamic content in the calendar.

</comment><comment><USER16> Performance Analytics - [https://www.fueldeck.com](https://www.fueldeck.com)

Helps in understanding user behaviour (engagement, conversion) based on your app performance wrt different platforms, geography, browsers etc. Still in private beta. Feedback is welcome.

<comment><USER17> What's up with your font rendering?

<comment><USER16> I am not seeing any issues on chrome? Can you please share more details.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://ezsend.it](http://ezsend.it) \- the quickest, easiest way to print a stamp or shipping label. I'm using the easypost API and focusing on UX. highlights include reverse geocoding for less typing and showing the closest drop off location.

</comment><comment><USER19> This is the beta I am working on: [http://booky.quintopiso.com.ar](http://booky.quintopiso.com.ar)

Two friends and I are the only users. Before I release it publicly, I want to make it better an add a few more bookstores/sellers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Cloning Hacker News (or something like it) in Laravel 4.

All I can offer is a screenshot, which is objectively terrible because I just started more or less recently: [http://imgur.com/RI9GM5r](http://imgur.com/RI9GM5r)

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://www.feedsapi.org](http://www.feedsapi.org) \- It is a service to Get The Full Content of Your Favourite News , RSS Feeds And Blogs Delivered To Any Email, Apps or RSS Readers In Real Time

</comment><comment><USER22> I just started my first "real" job as a software engineer (did some freelancing and remote work in college) so I have had to put some of my side projects on hold. But I am working on the 2nd draft of my novel!

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! What's your novel on? Best of luck getting published!

<comment><USER22> It's speculative fiction in a Ballard / Pynchonian vein, focusing on a patch has been developed that replaces the biological need for sleep. So I'm exploring what it would be like to live in a world without sleep and dreaming, including economic, aesthetic, and political effects. I've structured the work in two parts: the lead up to the development of the patch and then 50 years after its introduction and subsidization by the government.

<comment><USER23> How can I get it once it comes out? It seems really interesting.

<comment><USER22> Heh, well I need to finish this draft and then have a professional editor go through it - and then of course I need to have a publisher house accept the manuscript. But thankfully I know a good amount of people from school who do publishing work in NYC so we'll see how that goes. If not, I'd be more than happen to send a manuscript over to you once I'm done!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Prototype for peer-to-peer auction classifieds in Phoenix Arizona.

[http://www.openvalleymarket.com](http://www.openvalleymarket.com)

</comment><comment><USER25> [http://phdtree.org/](http://phdtree.org/), a Wiki project to document the academic family tree of PhDs worldwide

</comment><comment><USER26> [http://github.com/Retsly](http://github.com/Retsly) \- A PaaS API for RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard).

</comment><comment><USER27> TextTeaser ([http://www.textteaser.com/](http://www.textteaser.com/)), an Automatic Summarization API.

</comment><comment><USER28> A branch and bound algorithm for the Warehouse location problems in Coursera's Discrete Optimization class.

</comment><comment><USER29> Identity Management security product (who can access what, when, and how). No site yet to offer.

<comment><USER30> This is something that is difficult to do well. I wish you the best of luck and hope you present it when your done.

<comment><USER29> Thank you. I have loads of experience (used to implement the "best of" products for the fortune 500) - but taking a fairly different approach.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> just trying my hands with Django, jquery, Ajax etc and developing a clone to imdb site for learning purpose.

</comment><comment><USER32> I've been working on a scriptable window manager for Mac OS X called Zephyros - [https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros)

By scriptable I mean you can write your scripts in almost any language, and there are already built-in libraries in Ruby, Python, Clojure, Go, and JavaScript for doing it.

By "window manager" I mean you can move around windows and resize them and stuff using a programmatic API. And you can bind global hot-keys to your callbacks in whatever language you're using.

</comment><comment><USER33> (1) A very special woman. (2) Retracing the travels of my great grandfather from a set of 120 year old postcards around Europe as a sort of photography 'then and now' project, donating imagery to libraries and museums along the way. (3) Writing a history of the region of far southwest China. (4) Learning about construction and sustainable building in preparation for building a house. (5) Buying new test locks and practising lock picking after getting addicted to the sport at OHM2013.</comment>


Guaranteed Minimum Agriculture: Why Basic Jobs Might Fare Better Than UBI - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/guaranteed-minimum-agriculture-f93a5aa38c97 <comment><USER2> You're essentially paying people to dig holes and fill them back in again. Modern agriculture is a highly skilled job done with millions of dollars of capital equipment. Unskilled laborers are more hindrance than help, and will be sent off to the "back 40" to indulge in mindless busywork.

And you expect people to get "Social responsibility, sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time" from that?

Meaningless jobs invariably turn into that special sort of hell you get when your ability to do politics and to step on the guys below you are much more important than any actual skill or ability.

<comment><USER3> How about necessary and meaningful jobs, like taking care of the elderly who do need help in their household, or building accommodations for and helping the homeless?

The number of elders will only increase in most of the world over the next few decades and no automation could replace the human touch, or even physical dexterity, in the near term. Granted the people performing the job would need training and perhaps some supervision from professionals, but much of the work requires the skills like empathy and physical agility that most humans are endowed with (despite being left dormant from lack of practice by some).

The same sorts of skills are needed as part of a program that would be useful for mitigating the homeless problem as well.

<comment><USER4> _> How about necessary and meaningful jobs, like taking care of the elderly who do need help in their household, or building accommodations for and helping the homeless?_

I would prefer that families provide these services (and, therefore, the state focus on the formation of strong families). The market is too brutal for most of this work and the state, in addition to general incompetence, lacks the moral authority to do so, especially when hard decisions must be made (e.g. when homelessness is driven by mental illness.)

Pay a stable, living wage to build strong families, allowing one person to stay at home and provide for the domestic economy in a sphere they have natural authority in.

<comment><USER5> _I would prefer that families provide these services (and, therefore, the state focus on the formation of strong families)._ So, under your plan, I should dread getting old.

I have no children. I have never wanted them, and it is a relief that I shouldn't have any (medical wise). Besides, it'd be risky at my age anyway. I have a spouse, but otherwise have no family on this side of the Atlantic. My father died, my mother is getting older, and my siblings both have families that include children. I'm supposed to burden my family with my care? I'm not sure immigration would let them come over here and if I go there, I have no health coverage. Sure, my spouse would take care of me. But at what cost? Quit his job and actually make less money, right when medical expenses go up? What if he's already died or disabled? Well... I'm screwed.

I'll add this: I did a lot of care for my ex. It was mental illness, but still. And I felt freaking trapped, and it took longer to leave. My grandmother married a man who had a stroke a year later. He became abusive, but she was scared to leave due to getting in trouble for abandonment (this was in the late 90's). She was stuck for a while. Your plan does nothing to help the folks that are in bad situations. Sure, you might want strong families, but the reality is that not every family is going to be that way.

 _The market is too brutal for most of this work and the state, in addition to general incompetence, lacks the moral authority to do so, especially when hard decisions must be made (e.g. when homelessness is driven by mental illness.)_

Sorry you live in such a country, and glad I no longer do. The country I live in tries to do these things for folks, provides healthcare and elder care. It isn't perfect or anything, but they are doing more than the states did and they are trying to improve things slowly. The state doesn't have to be like that, and you can change it. Vote for different people. And if they don't do the stuff, vote them out of office.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What happens if you don't show up to your UBJ? Do you starve... or do you get... UBI anyway?

The point of the U in UBI is that you can discard the expensive bureaucracy. The article proposes keeping it as well as UBJs! Literally missing the entire point. But providing lots more jobs for bureaucrats to administer both...

<comment><USER7> There's an argument made by some psychologists that human satisfaction from earning a wage rather confers irreplaceable benefits and would result in better outcomes of self-sufficiency over living on handouts at an even higher monetary value. I'm not saying your point isn't valid, or that I even disagree with it, but the article does raise this issue, and claims there is data to back it up.

<comment><USER8> I've often seen that argument in articles about UBI, but the supporting examples are usually unconvincing. If "people suffer from lack of work, not lack of money," why are the examples offered e.g. communities full of impoverished people subsisting on disability, not luxury retirement communities? Surely the residents of the latter are deprived of weeding a field all day with hand tools, too. If not-having a boss directing you to perform tasks is what's ailing the unemployed, and money is secondary, then Jim Moneybags should be roughly as bad off as Joe Welfare, so long as neither Jim nor Joe go to work each weekday.

<comment><USER9> I don't think it's true that "people suffer from lack of work, not lack of money."

I do think it's true that "people suffer from lack of work AND lack of money." That is, if you just give people enough money to survive, and nothing to do, they still suffer.

It's not really valid to compare the experiences of old retired people and working age people (or younger). Age is a major complicating factor. And, at least in the U.S., we already give money to old people; it's called Social Security and Medicare.

The question is, what do we do with 22 year olds who can't find work? What will the rest of their life be like if they go on the equivalent of Social Security and Medicare at 22? Anecdotally I think we all have a sense of the potential for problems when young people are too idle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There might be a point to "basic jobs" involving people signing on for community service type things which are (i) usually chronically underfunded or entirely voluntary and (ii) often in areas where automation _can 't_ eliminate the need for humans even if it does in other areas. Agriculture, which hasn't really required large numbers of workers in the West for over a century now, is a strange choice of "basic job" when you've got millions of old people suffering from lack of human contact, museums, arts centres and libraries on the verge of closure and no shortage of proper registered charities that could use some _sort of_ volunteered time. Latter sectors probably also involve more in the way of personal development and satisfaction as unskilled, untrained casual work for subsistence income goes.

</comment><comment><USER11> I prefer "Guaranteed basic equity" \- everyone should own shares in the overall economy, particularly wrt. land and other natural resources and monopolies, and which pay a UBI-like dividend.

"Fake jobs" have been tried before, and usually end up costing more than the benefit they provide, and are often mandatory and stigmatized, so don't necessarily improve the prospects of participants.

<comment><USER12> I create a company, I issue shares expecting to get paid in return, but now I have to give them out for free. So I will not issue them.

I own shares that have already been issued. I've paid a certain price for them. I will not give my shares to someone else for free, and I will not tolerate more shares being issued for frre because that will devalue my own shares.

This idea of freely distributed shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since equity is only created when people pay for it.

<comment><USER13> _This idea of shared equity ownership is a nonstarter since equity is only created when people pay for it_

No, this is equity in real things: land, timber, minerals, clean water, road access, electricity etc. Your company wouldn't owe anybody any shares. Your land value taxes, however, would be distributed to everybody equally. As would the proceeds from your utility bills.

Ideally, you would pay back exactly your share of the net externalities your company benefits from. That may be very hard to calculate in practice, though.

<comment><USER14> You can't distribute most of the recurring revenue systems in question. The roads & infrastructure systems need that revenue to sustain themselves, to operate, upgrade, etc. The land/property taxes are a critical revenue source for most local governments.

This all just takes you right back to where we are today: you have to tax the top 1/3 heavily to pay for the money you're taking away from utility companies or infrastructure (and redistributing to everyone).

You could allocate shared ownership into currently non-utilized land, mineral rights, spectrum, etc. That also simply takes revenue away from government that would otherwise receive that money, which you then have to tax back away from the population afterward to replace it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article seems to assume a particular archetype of unemployed person, a sort of romanticized peasant who's good at working with dirt but unsuited to industry. Most writings about UBI seem to fall into similar traps, where they pick some particular type of people (struggling musicians, say) and design a perfect system for them.

But there are lots of different types of people. The system has to work for all of them. That's why you need large-scale studies, to figure out whom a given system works for and whom it doesn't. Nobody can do this in a thought experiment, because nobody can conjure up every type of person and predict how they will interact with the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a good criticism, but this is also why I started with "piloting" and the ability to try something else if it doesn't work as big plusses over UBI.

It's true some people are unsuited to industry, and some people are unsuited to child care or elder care. These still are not getting done nearly at the levels we'd like, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I imagine this is probably much like what the initial propaganda for the Khmer Rouge must have sounded like.

"Let's just send all these people to work on farms!" \- TFA literally says that this would be an attempt to solve a lack of "Social responsibility, sense of purpose, community, meaningful ways to spend their time"

</comment><comment><USER17> If anyone isn't familiar with the WPA (mentioned in the article), it is worth reading about it: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Works_Progress_Administration)

</comment><comment><USER18> It doesn't have to be agriculture. I support having the government act as an employer of last resort for people who have exhausted their unemployment benefits and can't find a job. But doing productive agricultural work requires specific skills, there is no shortage of agricultural workers in most areas, and there are few farms where most unemployed people actually live.

Instead of agriculture we can create part-time minimum wage jobs doing other productive things like cleaning up litter and graffiti, trail maintenance, coaching youth activities, etc. This will help to maintain basic employment skills until they can find something better, and give them a stake in the community.

</comment><comment><USER19> The thing about these ideas is they seem to presuppose starting from a blank canvas as opposed to starting from the current system of corrupt governments and corporate influence. Any implementations of Basic Jobs/Basic Income would be as rotten as the foundations they're built on, it's not going to go all rainbows and pixie-dust all of a sudden. Lobbying, self-interest, need of a hierarchy to rise up in and look down from...

Apologies for my cynicism. Workfare in the UK hasn't been very fluffy.

[https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare- sch...](https://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/jul/06/workfare-scheme-must- end)

[http://www.boycottworkfare.org](http://www.boycottworkfare.org) "Workfare provides free labour for businesses and charities, enforced by benefit sanctions."

[http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare- scandal](http://www.solfed.org.uk/catalyst/the-great-workfare-scandal) "What boss would want to employ a worker they have to pay, when the government will give them someone off the dole to do it for free? The aim of workfare is simply to drive down wages."

</comment><comment><USER4> Distributism, protectionism on the local level to ensure widely distributed ownership of capital by labor, advocates for this sort of thinking across the entire economy:

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

It's also worth noting that there is a narrative (as with most historical narratives, difficult to prove or disprove) that the national socialists created an economic miracle in Germany by guaranteeing pay for any and all labor.

</comment><comment><USER20> Is there a massive difference between this and having a large public sector? I guess the guaranteed jobs would need to have low to zero skill requirements..

</comment><comment><USER21> Was actually watching this last night on Deep Winter Greenhouses:

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

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ6s0mwm2ec)

Some interesting findings. What happens if its just a matter of putting the technology together to make local produce actually cost competitive for the consumer, profitable for the producer and more sustainable and secure for society.

The key is to focus on high value winter crops for high end restaurants (micro greens, asian greens, arugula, beets etc.).

Some more links:

[https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter- gre...](https://www.extension.umn.edu/rsdp/statewide/deep-winter-greenhouse/)

[https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/doc...](https://www.extension.umn.edu/community/research/reports/docs/Deep- Winter-greenhouse-enterprise-analysis.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER22> How is this different from advocating for feudalism? The wealthy get to continue with unchecked power and advantage, while the poor are now serfs?

<comment><AUTHOR> This is identical to a person's "present day" options plus one additional option: New jobs supported by the state.

How is adding one more option feudalism?

<comment><USER22> Because the modern American economy with its tenuousness and inequality is already pretty close to feudalism? Without structurally changing anything, you're just compounding this problem.

You can get yourself thrown in prison and have guaranteed housing, healthcare, and a job. That option doesn't make the dynamics of power in the system any less feudal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My city is full of trash and graffiti and blight. I think urban renewal is another huge opportunity for basic jobs.

</comment><comment><USER24> China tried something similar in the 1950's. It sent all the people it considered surplus out to farm. But they didn't know how to farm. Guess what happened.

It's the reason parents until recently would tell their fussy kids, "Eat your food, there are children starving in China."

</comment><comment><USER25> Having the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US has no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that presence before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a lot of obstruction.

<comment><USER26> > Having the UBI conversation in the context of the US is frivolous. The US > has no populist or labor presence. We'd need 5-10 years of building that > presence before we could even begin to talk UBI, and even then there'd be a > lot of obstruction.

(1) You are strategically wrong, in that having policy goals (e.g., UBI) and talking about them front and center has always been instrumental in _building_ labor/populist movements.

(2) You are factually wrong about the current context, in that the US has substantially and political relevant populist factions (both the energization of the one on the right and the alienation of the one on the left were key factors in the 2016 election.)

<comment><USER27> There may be populist factions on both sides, but the one on the left is not very powerful, and the one on the right gave rise to Trumpism, which very clearly would not be in favor of this at all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> If somebody's going to do anything like this, I'd think it should be "guaranteed minimum education." As long as you're in school and getting good grades, you get a basic living stipend.

</comment><comment><USER29> _Paying people to create value_

You dont _just_ make people create value. Creating value is the hard part - and the problem is, it becomes harder for humans than for machines.

</comment><comment><USER30> Workfare and "bullshit jobs" are not solutions.

</comment><comment><USER31> UBJ requires a huge bureaucracy that UBI does not. The real basic jobs will be the people administering the program, rather than the poor who were initially targeted.

</comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this just a variant of the broken window fallacy?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a variant of protectionist policy. At least farm subsidies mimicking the European way of doing things are.

> like Switzerland, where 55% of farmer income comes from the state

<comment><USER32> Farm subsidies often have a national security origin.

Norwegian farming subsidies for example to date still is based on a principle of food security that first gained widespread support in Norway as a result of the British naval blockade of Denmark-Norway during the Napoleonic wars that caused occasional famines.

The importance of this was driven home again during World War 2.

So protectionist, yes, but widespread support has largely boiled down to food security rather than caring particularly much about farmers.

<comment><USER33> Except that security is total bullshit the way the economy works today. You don't just need agriculture, you need every other industry that agriculture depends on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Government should have less power, not more. This is a terrible idea, just like UBI always was.</comment>


Why NASA Called the Northwest Indian College Space Center - <AUTHOR> http://kuow.org/post/why-nasa-called-northwest-indian-college-space-center

<comment><USER2> I initially had the thought: _" Now everyone will be calling themselves XYZ Space Center"_ , but that is just cynical. The real story is that it just shows that a bit of self belief can achieve wonders.

A more subtle point and one that ties up with my personal experience is that a good teacher can dramatically change lives for the better. I often wonder why teaching is not a more respected and well remunerated profession.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's a great feeling to solve problems and build a $thing that works. For all values of $thing.

When I did my high-altitude balloon flight it felt great. Sure it had been done before, the electronics weren't that hard, etc. etc. But it worked and now photos taken from the stratosphere by my $thing adorn the living room.

[http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html](http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> It took me half way through the article to realize Indian == Native American, not from India.

</comment><comment><USER5> Amazing story! It is a great feeling when people take your work seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> The NASA PR engine remains the most effective part of the organization.

<comment><USER7> Actually, as a NASA employee I think the public affairs/communication office is pretty awful. Everything is highly disjoint, where a single project may have 4-5 official websites run by different org units, most of the time with different information and update schedules. NASA's overall strategic vision for both aero and space is very poorly communicated.</comment></comment>


Why do you like your desk job? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> They give me money. They give me food. Not directly, but through the money.

<comment><AUTHOR> That was simple. Thank you!</comment></comment>