Designing a Bottle - <AUTHOR> http://blog.soylent.com/post/163186012757/how-to-design-a-bottle <comment><USER2> Wouldn't a Boxed Soylent (sealed bladder in a box like boxed wine) be most efficient for shipping to consumer, and most efficient for consumption? If they are really trying to optimize every aspect, that seems like the solution (from my armchair!). My first thought when seeing the headline was "oh boy, Silicon Valley has been shopping something in a bottle for 1 year now, and now they're experts in bottle packaging innovation, but I was pleasantly surprised by the write up. They identified problems unique to their product and addressed them. Nothing earth shattering glass, but also not settling for status quo. It's minor but non-trivial, and it speaks to the attitude of the overall product. I've been keeping Soylent around as a healthy meal-in-a-pinch option and I really enjoy it, plain flavor and all. Super filling, tastes like a plant-y pancake batter.

<comment><USER3> What kind of plastic is this? Actually, I don't care; I wish disposable plastic in general would go away.

Isn't part of their marketing greeness? But their model is keurig-for- calories? They _could_ refuse to do the plastic bottles and ship paper bags of powder...

<comment><USER4> A keurig type machine for soylent paper bags would be an interesting sight. Now I wonder how keurig even began convincing people to use their unconventional methods for coffee.

<comment><USER5> > Now I wonder how keurig even began convincing people to use their > unconventional methods for coffee.

It's a simple, self-contained way to freshly and quickly brew a single cup of coffee with no mess, and priced for consumers: Cutting a few annoying chores out of a rushed morning at a cost of a few tens of cents per cup.

In what world was that ever a hard sell?

<comment><USER4> One with coffee filters

<comment><USER6> Have you used a Keurig? Or Nespresso?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Dear (Soylent) designers, please stop comparing yourselves with big names like Kubrick or Rams. You designed a plastic bottle - no more, no less.

<comment><USER8> You are very condescending. These people are trying to do something, they share the process, they try to get some inspiration from people they like. What's the big deal ?

<comment><USER7> If I go to the supermarket, almost every smoothie bottle looks somewhat like the new Soylent bottle. I can't tell if they actually took inspiration from Dieter Rams, but it's really easy to refer to him since he is like the father of modern industrial (consumer) design.

Soylent is an enterprise and they want to make themselves to look as good as possible in order to generate more revenue. No reason not to criticize awkward marketing blog posts like this.

<comment><USER9> I envy you. Could we import that style to Europe sooner?

The juice bottles from "The Martian" movie are the epitome of consumer product design for me:

[https://media1.giphy.com/media/11bglU5OG7SJAk/giphy- facebook...](https://media1.giphy.com/media/11bglU5OG7SJAk/giphy- facebook_s.jpg?t=1)

(I apologize for the crappy image; I'm nowhere near a copy of the movie to make a decent screenshot)

No bullshit. Just the product name and necessary information about its content. No useless colors, no pictures of animals, smiling faces or other crap. There are days I dream of starting a food company just to make food in such packaging.

<comment><USER10> This already exists in Europe. In the UK lots of companies us sqround bottles, like Innocent Smoothies:

[http://www.wowfreestuff.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/Inn...](http://www.wowfreestuff.co.uk/wp- content/uploads/2014/12/Innocent-Smoothie-Free-300x300.png)

<comment><USER9> I didn't mean the shape but the label. But still, I didn't even realize "sqround" is a word. Thanks!

<comment><USER10> I think Vitamin Water is pretty good in terms of clean marketing, except they fail when you actually read the rubbish copy on the label.

[https://www.thewrendesign.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/vit...](https://www.thewrendesign.com/wp- content/uploads/2012/08/vitamin-water-label1.jpg)

Tesco's old Value range was also pretty good for telling you immediately what's in it: [http://www.s4rb.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/01/Old_Tesco_Val...](http://www.s4rb.com/wp- content/uploads/2017/01/Old_Tesco_Value_range.png)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Inacceptable! Unfortunately "designers" nowadays feel more like self-loving "artists" rather than problem-solving engineers - we need better education!

"Inventing a plastic bottle in 2017" \- this could be joke, but the ignorance behind it makes me angry.

[http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782/tab- pdf](http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/7/e1700782/tab-pdf)

[http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768](http://science.sciencemag.org/content/347/6223/768)

[http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/4/140317](http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/1/4/140317)

<comment><USER12> Design is about art though

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is a nice blog post - what's with all the hate? So it's basically a marketing tool, but isn't that what blogs are for? As a customer of Soylent, I appreciate that they are writing blog posts about their thought process. It feels nice to be communicated with. Also, I highly doubt a detailed blog post like this is going to convert many new customers - seems like it's mainly for existing ones.

FYI, the new bottles are a nice improvement. There's no wrapper at the top anymore, which is sometimes annoying to open and creates extra trash, and the shape of the bottle is more space efficient for packaging and storage.

<comment><USER14> > So it's basically a marketing tool, but isn't that what blogs are for

depressing thought

<comment><USER15> True for "corporate blogs" but remember there are still plenty of people (maybe more than ever?) maintaining personal blogs for their own less nefarious purposes as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> reminds me of possibly my favourite document of all time, the pepsi galaxy. [https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell...](https://www.goldennumber.net/wp-content/uploads/pepsi- arnell-021109.pdf)

> The Pepsi Ratio is created by two simple circles, that are in a set ratio to > each other: The Golden Ratio.

> The Pepsi Ratio is aesthetic geometry.

> The Golden Ratio establishes a proportion of one part (a) relative to > another (b). Playing by these rules produces an aestetic that is universally > accepted to be in balance and harmony. The Pepsi aesthetic respects these > rules: The brand identity can be derived from two circles, that have a set > relation to each other.

<comment><USER17> Note that while that document is absolutely hilarious and almost believable, I believe that it was shown to be a fake some time ago.

<comment><USER18> I think the majority of the document is real but some of the pages have been swapped out with fakes. I totally believe that some pretentious designer did a lot of the backlog of work to look at the history of the design and I have a hard time believing that someone would put in all that effort to find those images, trace them in a vector art program, and then wireframe them just for a laugh.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wish more companies put out there the rationale for their design choices. Not sure why a lot of comments here are so negative about them doing their job and communicating it.

<comment><USER19> Soylent pretends to be things it isn't. This is easily one more example. This post reeks of "hipster": name dropping of famous aesthetic designs, space references, black and white photos of milk bottles, some mathematical looking diagrams, talk of perfectionism (two years development)?

This is a marketing ad, nothing more.

"the same complete nutrition you have come to expect from Soylent"

</comment></comment><comment> d--b I wish they made a blog post about how they came about to think that Soylent was a good branding name. Having seen the movie, it makes me want to barf just looking at the bottle.

This is not a joke, I actually feel nauseous because of the name.

<comment><USER20> I quite liked the European competitor's original name, Joylent. To avoid legal issues they eventually changed the name and somehow ended up with "Jimmy Joy". That name was so intensely disliked that they renamed it again in about a month.

<comment><USER21> The company still seems to be named Jimmy Joy, and the product Plenny Shake. Both somehow strike me as really terrible brand names. Can't find anything about a subsequent rename.

That said, I'm a customer of theirs, and daft names aren't going to change that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is what happens when you overfund a company. Artisanal blog posts about the two-year journey to a flat-sided bottle of nerd purée.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are tons of bottles with that shape on the shelves of my local grocery store... It's quite common with any drink that isn't carbonated (and therefore doesn't have to contend with higher pressures). Juices, teas, etc...

<comment><USER24> Yeah, I'm left wanting. I thought maybe there was something interesting going on, but instead they seem to have discovered that rectangles pack more efficiently than circles. That's it? I learned that in geometry class as a teenager.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I normally really enjoy insight into product design, but this whole thing seems a little masturbatory. Braun's designs were great because _other people_ recognized that they were smart and simple. It seems like Soylent is squarely aiming for the hipster market (I'm not really sure what else to call it) where people praise an extraordinary effort regardless of if the end result is noticeably better.

I'm not saying the bottle design work wasn't better or that the product doesn't benefit from it, but the write-up about it has this sense of self- satisfaction that puts a bad taste in my mouth (completely disconnected from the taste of the actual product which I can't really comment on).

</comment><comment><USER25> Why not just go with a square carton design? Now the whole rectangle is full and they're mostly recyclable (I think?). It would probably also normalize Soylent into something _like_ milk.

<comment><USER26> The blog post cites visible damage from door delivery shipping as _the_ major design issue that they were trying to solve.

(Paper) cartons are much weaker and less resilient than plastic bottles. Think about the number of times you've seen dented or folded chicken soup cartons on supermarket shelves... I've certainly seen plenty of Safeway soup boxes to avoid because of obvious exterior damage.

I don't think cartons would get them very far in that area.

<comment><USER25> I've never really seen milk cartons delivered towards schools or shops (think juices and milk) be damaged all that often, but I'm not watching their deliveries either! I just imagined it was a problem already solved for non- pressurized drinks.

<comment><USER27> Those are often transported in thick reusable crates rather than cardboard boxes.

<comment><USER28> Then maybe soylent were solving the wrong problem

<comment><USER29> Milk cartons delivered to a school can be in a crate of hundreds, Soylent is delivered to a single person in a box of 12 or so.

A few cartons being damaged in the school delivery is fine, but even one damaged in the Soylent delivery means an angry customer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Normally I would find this sort of thing quite interesting, but this is somehow... inauthentic. As is Soylent in general. Reading their blog posts, you are never quite sure if they are serious about the whole meal replacement concept or if it's actually a big joke.

</comment><comment><USER31> Next, they're going to announce they invented the 6-pack.

<comment><USER32> At least most things that come in a six pack taste good

<comment><USER33> Well, they could claim they invented the bad-tasting six pack!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Seems like a lot of effort to design an exact equivalent to an Odwalla bottle.

<comment><USER35> But isn't that exactly what design should do? Not mimic for the sake of mimicry, but attempt to better understand the rationale for any decision and ultimately designing with _intent_. The homework is the meat of the thing.

So what if the result is the same? At least the team behind the work now understands how they got there—and communicate as much to their current or potential fan base.

I wouldn't want to hire a babysitter to watch my child if their sales pitch was: "I've watched a lot of babysitters in movies, I know what I'm doing." It's a bit of a silly comparison of course, but the point remains: how you get to a result is just as important—if not more important—as the result itself. That's good design!

<comment><USER36> I guess it depends on how much time and money you want to waste.

A team of people spent two years supposedly working on this. That same team could probably have gotten samples from 4-5 manufacturers and selected an Odwalla bottle with a brand design in 2-3 weeks.

It just seems silly and wasteful to me. But hey, it's not my money!

<comment><USER37> A distinctive bottle makes the product stand out

<comment><USER38> How distinctive can it be when to the average consumer it's the same as Odawalla?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> The blog post doesn't make it very obvious which bottle is actually new, I assume the left-most on the first image? The second image have them flipped and the last image is not the most clear.

The first image, second bottle also look "more designed".

<comment><USER40> I suppose that's true if you only look at the pictures and don't bother actually reading the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> First time I had heard this:

 _a pressurized cylindrical container pushes outward with equal force in all directions. This is crucial for pressurized beverages._

My favorite bottle redesign ([http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2010/3/15/ecocoke.html](http://www.minimallyminimal.com/blog/2010/3/15/ecocoke.html)) was done on Coca-Cola and had a similar "sqround" shaped bottle, but I don't think he considered the pressure in the bottle.

<comment><USER42> I find it hard to believe that the asymmetric design has optimal strength:weight ratio, which means it's not 100% eco-friendly. It looks like it's deliberately wasting material so it can have a distinctive shape that can be design patented, instead of a fully optimized generic bottle.

<comment><USER43> That's the difference between a freshman design project and an actual design used in practice. It's unlikely he has the mathematics/engineering background to do a proper analysis of his design.

He's not thinking of the bottle as a pressure vessel (which it is).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> They had a lot of problems with mold in the past with the bottles. They don't mention that in the article - i guess they don't want to draw more attention to that disgusting issue. But the mold issue was probably an important factor in their bottle design as well.

<comment><USER45> Do you have a link to read more? Has it been solved? I sometimes buy these for road trips and I would like to avoid drinking mold.

<comment><USER46> They solved that problem a long time ago by making the caps sealed on the bottle. They originally were not, and some of the liquid would get lodged up along the rim of the cap during shipment. That was the part that got moldy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> Does anyone still drink this stuff?

<comment><USER48> Yes

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> What is with this trend of making all products look identical?

Surely a product's design is meant to give some indication of what is in the product and what the product does?

This just looks like a completely generic bottle and could as easily be for a foodstuff or a cleaning agent.

I saw something similar the other day, a 'brandless' supermarket where everything is designed in a similarly minimalist way. It's infuriating.

[http://designtaxi.com/news/394281/A-Fabulous-Brandless- Onlin...](http://designtaxi.com/news/394281/A-Fabulous-Brandless-Online- Grocery-Store-Where-Everything-Is-Priced-At-3/#)

</comment><comment><USER50> As someone that has a few commercially produced products (BBQ Rubs and Sauces) I never cease to be amazed by how much work the packaging piece of the puzzle is.

I easily spend as much time worrying about bottle, closures, labels, etc. as I do about the actual product.

</comment><comment><USER51> Pretty sure that Industrial Designers call this a "squarecle"

</comment><comment><USER52> Sqround is a great word which I will use now. Perfect for describing that weird ovoid square with fillets.

</comment><comment><USER53> Pleasantly surprised to see 2001 reference there. That movie was so ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER19> Same! Complete! Nutrition! More efficient!

Please, it's a bottle design. Is Soylent trying to create a following like Apple fans? At least Apple makes good products.

<comment><USER18> It does seem like they're trying to create a following like Apple. Instead of letting the work speak for itself, though, Soylent seems to think that they can incite that kind of appreciation.

<comment><USER54> Apple might have some good products, but a lot of bad ones as well with a whole lot of marketing and devoted fans that will wait in line all night for it, so really not that different.

<comment><USER15> I'm not an Apple person by a long shot (full-time Linux desktop / Android user) but I'm struggling to think of an outright _bad_ product that they've put out in the past 15 years or so... I guess the Watch had its shortcomings and the specs on their computers are falling behind the competition but everything they put out seems very well designed and engineered.

<comment><USER54> Watch, new computers lacking many peripherals unless you buy a bag of dongles, rehashing the same product over and over while software upgrades make them obsolete...just saying marketing is a huge part of what apple does.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Clever trick to host all their blog images on imgur. My only wonder is if they legally licensed those Dieter Rams and Kubrick images?

<comment><USER56> Not familiar with US law (esp. re: fair use), but in Germany this would likely count as a quotation and therefore be admissible.</comment></comment>


How have Europeans grown so tall?  - <AUTHOR> http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/6828

<comment><USER2> I'm surprised not even a mention of evolution, at least to note that it is only a minor influence (if such is the case).

<comment><USER3> Since he's only talking about the last century there is a maximum of 7 generations (assuming females become fertile at 13) so that's not really enough time for genes to have a major influence unless there is some weird cult in Europe that values height and early breeding above all other factors.

<comment><USER2> But there's decent research on how taller men fare better on reproductive fitness and attributes can change meaningfully even in just 7 generations. I'm not saying it's the main cause or even a significant contributor (although it could be; I just haven't done the research), I was just surprised it wasn't even touched upon.</comment></comment></comment>


Carmakers fret their industry is on the brink of huge disruption - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/business/21685459-carmakers-increasingly-fret-their-industry-brink-huge-disruption <comment><USER2> Does anyone have solid figures regarding automobile lifespan and what variables affect it. I've always been told that mileage--not time--is the main variable.

I wonder if driver-less automobiles will really reduce the need for cars. Sure, you can have a car run 3 different commutes a day instead of 1 typically done now. But that will produce 3X the wear and tear on the car.

In New York, taxis are used for 3-5 years.

Plus, with driveless cars we may end up driving much more and further. Instead of a bus, I may just have a car drive me to work. In fact, Uber already lets me commute by car instead of public transit 4/5 days a week.

Uber has already caused me to drive more, not less. I wonder what the end result is.

But they are right to be worried. Any major change in technology brings in winners and losers.

<comment><USER3> > I've always been told that mileage--not time--is the main variable.

And my experience is exactly the opposite. I have never had a car die from mileage. I've had several die from time.

In my experience cars last about 10 year, 15 if you are careful. How many miles you drive during that time is mostly irrelevant.

Personally I think cars should track hours when turned on, not miles.

<comment><USER4> >In my experience cars last about 10 year, 15 if you are careful.

Huh? How can 'time' kill a car?

My car celebrated her 30th birthday. Under 200K miles. Time does not kill cars, and neither does mileage.

It just gets to a point where it is cheaper to replace then to repair.

<comment><USER5> There are huge regional variations: someone who lives in an area where the roads are salted in the winter or near an ocean coast with salty air will have a very different experience with this than someone who lives in a desert. There's a reason why classic cars are so much more common in the Southwest than New England, Florida, etc..

<comment><USER4> That is absolutely correct. I did not account for rust. Rust can eat away a car in 10-15 years, at least at latitudes that use salt on the roads. My car is galvanized, which I think was unusual for the 1980s. So I have not had rust problems.

I remember seeing a lot more rusted-out cars on the roads back in 80s and 90s. But not so much anymore. I __think __most manufacturers started using galvanized steel by the 90s.

Ok, this is from the "Steel Market Development Institute":

"In the 1970s, automotive sheet steel was simply cold rolled, primed, painted, and put on the road. Corrosion resistance wasn't very good. By the early 1980s, however, carmakers decided it was time to eliminate rust failures in their vehicles. Ten years later, steelmakers had installed continuous electro and hot-dip galvanizing lines, and carmakers switched to two-sided galvanized steel for cars and light trucks. These steps improved the corrosion resistance of steel bodies so much that companies began offering corrosion-perforation warranties."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> @disruption @threat

The economist really likes to paint everything as a gloomy picture.

The way I see it - the modern internal combustion engine is a threat to civilization.

Car Makers especially americans ones have a lot of blood on their hand. Everything from helping redesign cities to make it impossible to not afford buying their product.

To making walking a crime ( jay walking ).

"Young city-dwellers are turning their backs on owning a costly asset that sits largely unused and loses value the moment it is first driven."

Good - we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars.

<comment><USER7> "we really cannot have 7 billion people drive cars" ... I think we will have to... for a while.

Education is the best way of reducing population. Cars (or any type of personal transport) is crucial, moving the effort from humans to machines, leaving the human with more time and options. This leads to education and caring about the environment, politics etc.

So for a while we'll have to have 7 billion people using cars (or at least that's what the goal should be) then this will drop to 6 billion, then 5 then 4 etc.

We can power cars using solar. Terrestrial or orbital.

<comment><USER8> > _Education is the best way of reducing population._

Going slightly off topic. Overpopulation can be solved in 2 ways: reducing population or expanding our habitat. Education contributes to both, but the second sounds like a more feasible path to take.

<comment><USER9> There are around ~400k people born every single day. If we expand our habitat to other planets, we'd need the capability to launch a million people a day to have even the remotest impact on population in the near future. Unless anti- gravity or some new weird physics is invented, this isn't ever going to happen.

<comment><USER8> Does that mean you assume reducing population to be easy/easier?

Increasing our habitat isn't simple. But it at least is likely to get more feasible over time. While reducing population seems to be the opposite of our 'nature' (not that we aren't able to go against that) and it requires the cooperation of basically everyone. Which isn't required by the former. Cooperation seems to get [insert mathematical function] harder when more people are involved.

Sidenote: expansion would of course not exclude taking care of existing habitats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Carmakers always fret. SUVs, the decline of suburbs, gas prices, hybrids, in- dash entertainment ... there is always something just around the corner that is to revolutionize everything. That's business.

</comment><comment><USER11> ...And consumers are licking their chops. Car buying and repair is a racket from top to bottom. This is in no small part the fault of the manufacturers from design to actively campaigning for policy that's bad for customers and good for car makers/sellers. I hope they rot.

<comment><USER9> I see this exact sentiment all the time. Even people who have a favorite brand will gripe angrily about getting ripped off on the purchase and how repairs are so needlessly expensive.

<comment><USER12> I think this is one reason why car makers (except that one that always shows up on the front page here) love having dealers. The maker gets all the love for a great machine, and the dealers get all the hate for dishonest sales practices and ripoff repairs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This article seems to overlook the obvious. Self driving cars are still cars. Someone has to make them. Car makers are not going out of business in that scenario.

<comment><USER14> Self-driving cars drastically reduce the total number of cars necessary, and, as the article notes, limit the ability of manufacturers to upsell features. If the fleet of cars on the road were largely self-driving, there is no way it would support the present variety of car manufacturers. I would hazard that most would go bankrupt.

<comment><USER13> >Self-driving cars drastically reduce the total number of cars necessary

The fact that the cars drive themselves really changes nothing. Car pooling reduces the total number of cars necessary. Public transportation reduces the total number of cars necessary. You might try to argue that car pooling will increase as a result of the change, but I don't think that is a given. You'd need to explain away surge pricing to convince me otherwise.

But certainly, if you'd like to sell me your Tesla shares now at half price and get to safety, I'll be a friend and take them off your hands for you :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disruption all around...1.8l gas engine that gets over 35mpg and produces 170hp on regular gas, cars that are reliable ten years later, fully electric cars, self driving cars...it's awesome.</comment>


Guess what happens to old trees in the Amazon - <AUTHOR> http://brazilandusbiz.com/hugo-franca/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Lucas , thanks for reading our article and commenting on it You are totally rigth, our mistake when writing the headline... Please keep coming back for more good news about brazilians that are making a difference. And if you do have a story that you would like to share, please feel free to contact us. Att BrazilUsBiz team [http://brazilandusbiz.com/](http://brazilandusbiz.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's not really in the Amazon, neither the forest, neither the state. The vegetation is called Cerrado and it is located in the state of Bahia. Nevertheless truly amazing work.</comment>


Ask : Please recommend a beginner's book for LAMP - <AUTHOR>

My girlfriend wants to start learning LAMP. The book should be simple to follow and keep her interested. <comment><USER2> Save your book money. Here are some links that will get anyone started on building a LAMP server.

1\. <http://dev.antoinesolutions.com/lamp>

2\. <http://www.howtoforge.com/howtos/linux/centos>

3\. <http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I remember this one fondly:

<http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596005436></comment>


Self-taught AI beats doctors at predicting heart attacks - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/04/self-taught-artificial-intelligence-beats-doctors-predicting-heart-attacks <comment><USER2> > _Using a statistic called AUC (in which a score of 1.0 signifies 100% > accuracy), the ACC /AHA guidelines hit 0.728. The four new [AI] methods > ranged from 0.745 to 0.764 ..._

So, a highly trained human, using the officially recommended guidelines, hits 0.728, but software, trained on cold hard data, achieves 0.745 and higher. Maybe cardiologists should be really worried.</comment>


Unlimited cloud storage for $39 a year? - <AUTHOR> http://www.onlinestoragesolution.com/

<comment><USER2> Stay away!: [http://online-storage.no1reviews.com/user- reviews/onlinestor...](http://online-storage.no1reviews.com/user- reviews/onlinestoragesolution.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link. I was suspecting this, but I wanted some feedback from other people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> there is no such thing as unlimited? when will they learn?</comment>


Ask HN: Brexit – Should I vote in or out? - <AUTHOR> There are just days to go to the referendum that decides whether the U.K. stays in the European Union.
I am trying to cast an informed ballot, and get more confused with every article I read, every debate I watch.
I can not find an objective way of deciding this. How would you decide? Please suggest ways in which I might perhaps quantify this? <comment><USER2> Too much about the UK's status in the EU is subjective and opinion-based for us, or anyone else, to give you an objective answer. I'm afraid that this is an answer that's going to have to come from you.

I can only recommend the following. No one on the Remain side is going to understate the benefits of remaining in the EU, and no one on the Brexit side is going to understate the costs. They may overstate these things, but for whatever reason, overstatement is generally easier to detect. So listen to the Remain folks about the benefits, listen to the Brexit folks about the costs, dismiss the BS from both sides as appropriate, and then decide for yourself: are the benefits worth the costs? If you believe they are, vote Remain. If you believe they are not, vote Brexit.

This is not a perfect process, but the perfect process does not exist. Do the best you can with what you have, and that will have to be enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> The best way to quantify something like this is a "wisdom of the crowds" method: basically let everybody vote and then aggregate the results.

For this to work, however, each of the people voting have to come to independent decisions. The crowd can be as dumb as the dumbest person in the crowd if the crowd falls victim to groupthink.

What I'm trying to say is that you shouldn't let anybody tell you how to vote. Just vote for what you want to happen. Make the decision based as much as possible in complete absence of being influenced by anybody else.

If everybody does that, chances are the result will be the right result.

<comment><AUTHOR> Public debate around this is an appeal to sentiment. The winner is whoever rouses more rhetoric.

I don't see how the crowd can help in this. My sense of the situation is that everyone is uninformed.

Richard Dawkins says "Ignoramuses should have no say on our EU membership—and that includes me" [https://richarddawkins.net/2016/06/richard-dawkins- ignoramus...](https://richarddawkins.net/2016/06/richard-dawkins-ignoramuses- should-have-no-say-on-our-eu-membership-and-that-includes-me/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is the world better off when countries band together to in an imperfect, yet democratic framework, or is it better when every country seeks to be independent and abide mostly by their own short-term interests?

If the answer is the second, is this a good time to do it, will it confidently result in better outcomes?

I'm an EU citizen in the UK so I'm biased, I don't get a vote in this democratic exercise, despite being half English with grandparents who served in WWII, directly in the defense of Britain.

</comment><comment><USER5> As far as I can tell there is a lot of future predictions with basically no real evidence both for an exit and a remain. The main thing is you have some control over your local government and you have (almost) zero control over whatever the EU does. I think the question ins't what would happen but how far do you trust your career politicians in the UK and the rest of the EU.

Have fun with the choice, wouldn't know which one I would choose.

<comment><USER6> If you accept the premise that Britain dearly needs the Common Market, it has two choices:

Be a member of the EU, pay some money (but because of the "special British rebate" rather little money), accept all regulations and have a say in them.

Or exit the EU, negotiate an agreement (time frame unknown), pay a little less money (but not very much so, because the rebate is not going to carry over to these deals), accept most regulations and have no say in them.

To me it seems to be a no-brainer, but it's obviously mostly an emotional referendum.

From "the other side" I believe a Brexit would be bad for us, as well, but there's still an uncivilized, gleeful, action-craving part of me that hopes for the Brexit. :-|

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Swiss here. I think you guys will have a hard time to copy our economical model and the EU will surely not be as nice to you as they are to us.

But anyway, is Brexit now really realistic? Can it happen? I would be so proud about you guys!

</comment><comment><USER8> Politics and objective decisions:) these two work together only in delusions I think..

So just vote emotionally as everybody else ;)</comment>


10 types of programmers you'll encounter in the field - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/10things/?p=262 <comment><USER2> We all aspire to be Ninjas. However, i prefer the name "jedi".

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw Vince Neil at lunch the other day.</comment>


GM's Mary Barra Bets Big on an Electric, Self-Driving Future - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-09-19/before-gm-goes-electric-mary-barra-has-a-strike-to-settle <comment><USER2> Though I generally respect Cruise's efforts this quote from Dan Ammann who is now Cruise's adult minder from Detroit had me hysterically laughing:

"If you don't have thousands of engineers working on this, and billions of dollars of capital to spend, and deep integration with a car company, then your chances of success are very, very low," he says, speaking in one of Cruise's six offices around San Francisco.

You realize in the last forty years how often that thinking has been wrong? I agree it's the safe bet but coming so quickly after the smartest people in the room went bankrupt in 2008 you'd almost have to assume they didn't learn a thing from that.

If you want to make a counter bet go with George Hotz and his merry band of pranksters from comma.ai. I'm actually thinking quite seriously of installing one of his boxes when I buy a new car next year.

</comment><comment><USER2> Ford is making a risky alternative bet. Instead of putting all their resources towards electric vehicles instead they're hedging the bet and developing both a hybrid vehicle as well as an electric one.

Either they know why the Chevy Volt failed or they're condemning themselves to failure.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Tesla is having a hard time these days, but if Elon was at all serious a few years ago he can know he made all the major car makers start to retool.

I never would have thought GM, Ford, and etc. would so seriously commit to making EVs even in the face of all the obvious reasons Elon would publicly explain.</comment>


Why the Incumbent Hierarchy Hates Computers and the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@lenepp/why-the-incumbent-hierarchy-hates-computers-and-the-internet-98e4f436b424 <comment><USER2> the author claims that the real motivation of eu copyright regulation is jealousy and fear, because they don't know how computers work.

better to read this eff article instead: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/why-whole-world- should...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/why-whole-world-should-be- arms-about-eus-looming-internet-catastrophe)</comment>


Ask HN: German Digital Resources for Kids - <AUTHOR> My 8 years old daughter self-taught German, and she has progressed to the level to enjoy reading German children's books from her Kobo.
We are looking for digital resources to increase her exposure. With COVID-19 outbreak, I see a lot of digital resources made available/free, however with no-one speaking German around, we don't come by any in German.
Do you know any good German digital education/entertainment resources for kids? <comment><USER2> Kudos to your daughter for self-teaching German! She might have a look at [https://anton.app/de/](https://anton.app/de/) This App covers all major school topics, from class 1 to 10... and it is free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you so much, this is treasure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Is her native language English or German?

<comment><AUTHOR> She is not native in any of them. But, she learned English from 18 months on, via cartoons and apps (at the beginning), so she is close to native in English. Than she learned German basically from Duolingo (for English speakers), and DieMaus App.

<comment><USER3> Hi from Argentina!

A few yeas ago when my daughter was young, we teach her English using DVDs with subtitles in English. So she could choose to see the movie with the voices in Spanish/English/Portuguese and the subtitles in Spanish/English/Portuguese. The more sane configuration to learn English are the sound in English with Spanish subtitles or the sound in English with English subtitles, but sometimes she used other configurations for fun.

Can you get a few DVDs with English/German combination? They are probably difficult to find now, and the DVD zones are painful. But perhaps you can use the idea with another implementation.

PS: From the experience of a few friends that live abroad, the real native language is the language in the kindergarten, not the language of the parents.

<comment><AUTHOR> We don't have any DVD's, however there are some videos in the app I mentioned. She seems to follow very well, but I can't make sure to what extend (because I can't understand myself). Anyways I keep providing content with increasing complexity, because I'm sure she is progressing, and also entertaining. Thank you very much for your recommendation :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Oneko: The cat chasing the mouse (cursor) - <AUTHOR> http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/hardy/man6/oneko.6.html

<comment><USER2> ! I remember having this on early versions of Windows. Such fun memories. Glad I can have this on Linux :-)

<comment><USER3> It's pretty old and should have been on Linux a long time ago. Or is this just a flashback memory and inspiration about the availability not being just Win?

(ftp://ftp.connect.org.uk/hpux/X11/Demos/xneko-2.00/xneko-2.00.man.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> All I see (latest Chrome on Vista) is a man page on an Ubuntu website for the oneko software.

Should there be anything else?

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what CLAMP has to say about that CCS-mod.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wonder have long will they get to know this stuff.</comment></comment>


Implementing A Scripting Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.flipcode.com/archives/Implementing_A_Scripting_Engine-Part_1_Overview.shtml <comment><USER2> Blast from the past. Flipcode used to be my favorite site on the web. Note that this article is more then a decade old.

<comment><USER3> I found the site just recently, after getting interested in demoscene and 3D graphics. Excellent site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice article. It would make sense though, to talk a bit about using existing systems like Lua or Tcl that might meet people's needs better than some one- off system. Explain that it's only a learning exercise.

Also, people might find this interesting: <http://www.welton.it/articles/hecl_implementation>

Hecl is very simple in some ways, so it's easy to see what's going on.

<comment><USER5> Well, considering the article is from 1999 (hell, I didn't know FlipCode was still even _around_ these days), "back in the day" scripting game engines was an emerging idea. It was a very rare project that talked about scripting, in most cases they _were_ completely custom scripting languages, and often not Turing complete. Lua gained popularity, but it was slow, the game industry suffers from a lot of NIH.

<comment><USER4> Ousterhout's ideas and papers had already been out for a while, and Tcl itself had been around for 10 years at that point. So it's definitely a case of NIH.

<comment><USER6> It's not. General-purpose scripting isn't necessarily the best choice if the scripting is used only for designer tasks like directing cinematics, movement patterns, simple event-trigger relationships, etc. Between that, the soft real-time requirements, and the historically tiny memory space of consoles, something simplistic and custom is preferable..

<comment><USER4> Something simplistic: maybe, something custom... probably not. There's nearly always more value in using something that other people use too due to the positive network externalities. Granted, they may be weaker in cases like this where there is not a great deal of code sharing, but one-off languages tend to end up being a burden.

Which is why they seem to have ended up with Lua, which is probably the best fit for that problem domain. Cut down versions of Tcl probably would have been ok, and have been successfully used for things like embedded systems, but probably are more work than Lua, which is 'cut down' by default.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A big part of me feels that it's too bad that integrating a scripting engine todat means linking a library, whereas a decade ago it meant thinking op syntax and building an interpreter. More efficient, of course, but where's the soul? :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Anybody know how to compare two colors in JS? - <AUTHOR>

A feature in our system allows our customers to edit the background/foreground color of a page. But we need to have checks in place to make sure that the text is still readable.
Given two hex colors (eg: #ccc and #999), what is the best way to compare the colors in JS? Need to return an int 0...n (where 0 is exact match).
I have tried converting to decimal and checking the difference...but this isn't ideal. Couldn't find much on Google either. <comment><USER2> This js code for a color selector does a pretty good job of it - <http://jscolor.com>.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Got something that works well. Code available: <http://pastebin.com/MRxvi47L>

</comment><comment><USER3> [http://www.hgrebdes.com/colour/spectrum/colourvisibility.htm...](http://www.hgrebdes.com/colour/spectrum/colourvisibility.html)

Web Accessibility Guidelines from the W3C (and inadequate) Color visibility can be determined according to the following algorithm: (This is a suggested algorithm that is still open to change.) Two colors provide good color visibility if the brightness difference and the color difference between the two colors are greater than a set range. Color brightness is determined by the following formula: ((Red value X 299) + (Green value X 587) + (Blue value X 114)) / 1000 Note: This algorithm is taken from a formula for converting RGB values to YIQ values. This brightness value gives a perceived brightness for a color. Color difference is determined by the following formula: (maximum (Red value 1, Red value 2) - minimum (Red value 1, Red value 2)) + (maximum (Green value 1, Green value 2) - minimum (Green value 1, Green value 2)) + (maximum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2) - minimum (Blue value 1, Blue value 2)) The range for color brightness difference is 125. The range for color difference is 500.</comment>


Developing Multiplayer HTML5 Games with Node.js - <AUTHOR> http://smus.com/multiplayer-html5-games-with-node

<comment><USER2> I'd like to add that, in practice, socket.io doesn't work well for mobile HTML5 multiplayer games. We found that long-polling requests tend to get dropped without informing the mobile client.

Our solution so far has been to roll our own mobile networking layer, with redundancies and timeouts especially tuned for mobile.

<comment><USER3> isn't is nearly the whole point of socket.io to use the optimal available transport? so if it's using long-polling, it would seem sockets are not available on that platform.

if that's the case, what is the method of communication for your networking layer?

<comment><USER2> At its core, our networking layer uses long-polling, but we added several modifications to attempt to keep the requests alive. We also drastically changed the timeout values based on testing directly on the mobile devices.

We found that vanilla long-polling works sometimes on iPhone and some Android phones. But it often introduces huge latencies, and it often just fails for no apparent reason on some Android devices.

<comment><USER4> To add to this: I wrote a simple socket.io demo app for a class I was teaching that makes these issues apparent. Try opening <http://node.heyanderson.com/> on your mobile device and in a browser (Chrome or Safari, preferably) and you'll see the difference in latency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hey Boris. Your approach is exactly what my teammate and I did for Node Knockout also. We did end up using Browserify, it worked like a charm. It had only one flaw which is it had a noticeable delay in reloading pages, someone had pointed out that browserifying jQuery is likely the cause, haven't had a chance to move jQuery out of it into being regularly included.

We're going to clean up the code and split out the multiplayer aspect. Hoping to keep it really clean, would like to abstract it to have multiple multiplayer strategies: Turn based oriented, action oriented with lag compensation et. al, soft real time(RTS games with lock step style).

It'll be here: when it's ready. Just moved the code from our project there, we just broke the code but it should be fixed shortly. <http://github.com/francoislabe..>. and <http://multiplayerjs.com/>

<comment><USER6> Looks like the site is a broken GoDaddy site. :(

(multiplayerjs.com)

<comment><USER5> Yeah, it's not up yet. I just updated the Repo page to link to its temporary running demo. Once we have properly split the networking code into a lib I will create the site, it's on stand by for now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Something similar I did the other weekend. The box its running on is slow as anything. Sorry. bulbasaur.0xfaded.com:8001. Also should point out that all my networking is done over http. Its completely unsecure and anyone who can guess your session token can hijack your player, but it does what it says on the box.

</comment><comment><USER8> Thanks a lot for releasing the code to this Boris. Hopefully we'll see many more Canvas games in the future.

<comment><USER9> Is there a way around the 5MB local storage limit yet?

<comment><USER8> The spec pegs it to a "mostly arbitrary" 5MB but solicits suggestions for something better. I think some platforms now can prompt the user to ask if they want to use more space, but that might only be iOS, and its still limited to some amount.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hmm, didn't take long for the griefers to show up. Pick the largest NPC blob, spam it until you die, respawn, lather, rinse, repeat :/

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm on Chrome 14.0.835.109 beta-m and clicking doesn't do anything. Sounds cool, though.

<comment><USER12> Try in Chrome 13 and below (due to breaking Web Socket changes).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What is the best anti-virus? - <AUTHOR>

I need a reply ASAP, guys. What do you think is the best anti-virus for my laptop? OS: Windows 7 <comment><USER2> eset Nod32

<comment><USER3> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> debian.</comment>


Cable cuts, conspiracies, and lolsubs... - <AUTHOR> http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/02/cable_cuts_cons.html <comment><USER2> The ratio of noise to signal on community news sites alarms me more than the possibility of this kind of conspiracy. I'm getting more worried that it'll start to happen here.

</comment><comment><USER3> These lines don't have to be cut to be tapped. And if they did wouldn't the tappers reconnect them? It doesn't make sense that three are broken simultaneously. Are there three Jimmy Carter subs?

Plus, I'm pretty use that they can tell where these things are cut. Wouldn't a tap be found when they go to repair it?

<comment><AUTHOR> The idea was that while they sub is tapping the line, another ship actually breaks the line a distance away. That way, there isn't any reason to wonder why the line failed for period of time and when they go to fix it, they will be a ways away from where the actual tap is.

It's probably not true, but an interesting theory anyway.

<comment> a-priori They would be testing for the distance to the break from at least one end, probably both. Two separate breaks would be quickly discovered.

<comment><USER4> Presumably, they would be done with installing the bug before they started to repair the cable, so this wouldn't be an issue.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you work on, if money was of no concern? - <AUTHOR> I'm sure plenty of you work on projects with no motivation for financial returns, but suppose you could quit your job right now, and work on any project full time.  What would it be?  Why? <comment><USER2> I'd go after fixing the software deployment and packaging issue. Actually getting software on systems is still a PITA.

There's a huge gap between dev and ops here - I'm thinking that building tools that allows a developer to make an ops ready deployable package as easy as pushing to source control would be the ideal. Then tools, that work against source control and can generate packages off any revision/flavor would be great for both continuous testing and eventual distribution.

We've been stuck in the "download the tarball and compile it" mindset for far too long.

<comment><USER3> Yes, exactly, and most of all - something non-language-specific.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> >"Suppose you could quit your job right now, and work on any project full time."

Well, I just did the former though I can't really justify the latter. :) However, I mostly quit because my work was again taking over my personal life, so the intention now is the find something a bit more humdrum than yet another poorly managed startup so I have the energy at the end of the day to work on the side project.

Similar to Ivan, games. I want to make a Dwarf Fortress-like game for iPad, with a top-down 2.5D perspective, sprite graphics in a cel-shaded style, and culled down to the core elements I find to be most entertaining (with influences from other games I enjoy). It's a game I want to play, but I'm probably the only person on the planet willing to make it. However I'd also like to raise Dwarf Fortresses's visibility through my work, and get it some additional exposure to ensure DF development can continue. I've also a few concepts for iPhone games that scratch some other itches of mine, but the iPad game I at least have written a basic rendering and pathfinding engine already.

However I need to line up other work for the time being (should only take a few weeks). I'm a perfectionist that prefers the "when it's done" release cycle.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to create a sprite-based 2D rpg, also heavily influenced by Dwarf Fortress, where terrain, cities, forests, rivers, people, monsters, quests, dialogue, groups, and stories are all generated procedurally. Push a button and an interesting game comes out. That'd be cool.

<comment><USER4> Well, Dwarf Fortress's scope is... impossible to match. I struggle to think of any game with even similar complexity. Making a Dwarf Fortress clone would take many years, however culling down the feature set (and the depth of each features) to the actual "fun bits" at least makes it _possible_. So it's not even cutting the breadth of features, but also their depth. No need for complex climate or economy simulations, etc. No need for insane descriptiveness of objects (save for artifacts). It's a lot of complexity that reduces its appeal to a lot of folks (though caters very well to a specific targeted audience). Dwarf Fortress with a touch interface and cute graphics won't magically broaden it's appeal -- the core game needs to be streamlined and no longer be daunting to newcomers.

For example, no massive world at worldgen with full history and legends. Most people don't want to deal with complexity, they just want an embark site to start in and get to work on. It takes a lot of time to create those things that the majority of folks would never notice or appreciate.

There's a lot of satisfaction with gathering/growing food, building basic shops and homes, defending against threats, creating a trade industry, and a bit of dungeoneering. However one of Dwarf Fortress's strength is it presents a lot of competing interests -- where you need to weigh building defenses with industry, etc. Plus the occasional "oh shit" moment where the game attempts to stomp on your sand castle.

<comment><USER6> From reading about DF, and especially the NYT profile of DF and the creators, I get the strong impression that DF is very much being done the hard way, even ignoring the C++ aspects, and one could cut down the complexity tremendously with good abstractions and things like DSLs.

(Think the Viewpoints OS strategy - with good enough abstractions and DSLs, you can do an OS or languages in very small sourcebases; I'm still in awe of their TCP/IP strategy - parsing the RFC illustrations! [http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law- software...](http://www.moserware.com/2008/04/towards-moores-law-software- part-3-of-3.html) )

That would be a project worth doing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminds me a little of Dick Hamming's two questions:

1\. What are the most important problems in your field?

2\. Why aren't you working on them?

(See <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html>)

<comment><USER8> Of course, that hinges on the assumption that "your field" is what you're currently working in. For most people, it isn't and will never be.

<comment><USER9> A similar question then:

1\. What are the most important problems in your life.

2\. Why aren't you working on them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "What would it be? " \- Open source Federated P2P socnet.

"Why?" \- Software can be as closed as it wants 'cause we can always drop it for another option anytime we want since the data is still under our control, but imprisoning our digital lives into these walled gardens put up by "for- profit, maximize-shareholder-value-at-all-costs, turn-user-into-product, shove-ads-into-the-user's-stream-and-if-possible-download-a-few-into-their- throats-as-well" companies like Facebook, Twitter and Google, is a recipe for disaster as our data, our friends, our relationships, our entire digital lives, go out of our control in realtime. The situation is really, really bad and to make things worse, the people currently working on this problem are so geeky, so out of touch with the common man's mentality that their technically smart solutions will never ever go mainstream. I'm very passionate about improving the situation and I desire to make social, at minimum, a federated system like email so migration can get a little bit easier when better alternatives pop up down the line or if the user feels the service provider is starting to get a tad too "evil" for his taste.

</comment><comment><USER11> Games. More specifically: 3rd person RPG games for the iPad. Games are the reason I started programming, but somehow ended up being a web developer.

<comment><USER12> I specifically see "games" a lot from developers and I always wonder if they have all 5 or 6 talents necessary to pull it off.

I think _most_ developers are interested in the engine development (a known quantity) but when it comes to the art assets (3D models, animations, textures, level design) that seems like a giant unknown to me.

I would enjoy working on a rendering engine, but if I had to model characters and animate them, I think I'd release the game 6 weeks before my 97th birthday.

If you have talent in all the required spots to do this, I'd agree with the other poster... so 2 or 3 proof of concepts in the app store to hone your skills.

      1. Game 1, simple terrain traversal game. Get used to open-world rendering.
      2. Game 2, character-focused game with stats. Get used to modeling and animation.
      3. <some more stuff>
      4. Game 4, Skyrim for iOS

Step #3 is critical; don't skip that :)

<comment><USER11> Between coding OpenGL and jumping into web dev, I spent 2 years professionally working as a 3D artist. As a kid I worked a lot on video and audio editing, and as a front-end developer I've mastered Photoshop. I have the talent but need the money safety net before leaving everything behind and pursuing a "crazy" idea like this.

<comment><USER12> Keep in mind I don't know your situation or what idea for a game you have in your head, but are you coming at this from too much of a black-or-white angle?

No you can't create Skyrim iOS edition in your free time, but you could create something much much sillier and simpler right?

Get the ball rolling, the creative juices flowing and a few apps in the respective app stores before quitting and going full-force?

I realize there isn't anything prophetical here; if you are an all-or-nothing type, then that will just be a much harder decision to make and I am hoping you get a chance to make it at some point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'd hire a team of 8–10 sharp developers and write a better Photoshop. There's quite a bit of low hanging fruit in terms of (a) improved image processing that can be done on modern computers that wasn't possible when Photoshop's core features were designed 20 years ago, and (b) much more sophisticated, flexible, and intuitive user interfaces. The needs of those photographers who deeply care about bending images to their will have been sadly neglected by the whole industry for 15 years, with most of the recent improvements (e.g. in Lightroom, Aperture) coming on the workflow side, for photographers who need to worry about organizing tens of thousands of photos rather than getting any particular one just right.

<comment><USER9> "There's quite a bit of low hanging fruit in terms of (a) improved image processing that can be done on modern computers that wasn't possible when Photoshop's core features were designed 20 years ago,"

That's an interesting area of thought. What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way they were when the canonical instance was produced?

<comment><USER13> > _What things today are the way they are, merely because things were the way > they were when the canonical instance was produced?_

Almost everything we interact with is completely path-dependent: our mathematical notation and the organization of our mathematical abstractions, our weights and measures, our language, our cultural institutions, &c.

Or when you get down to it, everything about our bodies and ecosystems.

<comment><USER9> Yes, agreed. "Connections" was an extremely interesting discussion of exactly that.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connections_%28TV_series%29>

However, at some point conditions may emerge that allow you to leave the trodden path, which I think is where you're looking now. These are not our dad's computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had two non-profit ideas I've wanted to work on for a couple of years now but haven't had the opportunity to because of financial obligations:

\- Kickstarter for scholarships

\- A cheaper, more effective means of transportation for third world countries (essentially creating a better bicycle)

<comment><USER15> I expect you will have a very hard time outdoing the bicycle.

<comment><USER11> Give it better tires and suspension for dirt roads and you've got a winner!

<comment><USER15> Suspension is properly handled by using the right tires. Anything else adds significantly to weight and cost, and detracts from durability and pedaling efficiency. Also, the existing infrastructure for parts and manufacture has to be considered. I agree that it's a great goal, but those machines have been evolving for a long time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> At the risk of sounding cheesy, I would work on something that helps soothe or at least mitigate the destructive effects humanity has on the planet, ecosystems etc. This could be anything from renewable energy, self-sustaining houses, solar powered cars, arcologies, biodegradable or fully recyclable materials and so on. It's a far cry from the web stuff I am working on now. I would definitely need to acquire some new skills first (which would not be an issue if I don't need to worry about money).

Also, education. Things like Khan academy are amazing, but not yet accessible to everyone in the world. Thinking about that, working on internet access for all seems like a pretty noble cause too.

<comment><USER9> There is nothing cheesy about your list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Open government.

Being very political and very active, during my personal time, I'm working on tools that I need to be more effective.

Sunlight Foundation's stuff is a fair start. There are some other initiatives.

The day job is just for healthcare and rent. It's a huge distraction.

</comment><comment><USER18> This idea is sort of wild, but auto-generated scripted media. Auto-machinima? I think in the perhaps distant future, even if your favorite tv show is no longer being produced, you will be able to input a script and some source material and have the result be a decently rendered creation that looks and feels like the TV show you're used to.

Imagine downloading a script with very detailed stage and setting direction. A piece of software would exist that would take as input the script and as much source material as you have (seasons of a tv show or a movie) and create the setting, model the characters, synthesize the voices and output the finished product.

I think a lot of the tech to get started with this exists in the fields of game development, video editing, machinima, voice synthesis, etc. If money were no issue, I would work on putting it together. It would probably just be a toy for years before it could generate something watchable, but would be lots of fun.

</comment><comment><USER19> Education and Health.

I love electric cars and rocket ships. But my god there are some big ass problems I want to solve for my future children...

</comment><comment><USER20> I kind of hate this type question. I feel like I have been working on my top priority "full time" (every minute of every day) for over a decade and cannot for the life of me figure out a) how to monetize it when money is a huge personal obstacle and b) how to effectively spread the word.

I and my oldest son have a dread disease and are basically well at this point when that is supposed to be impossible. Is the public curious? No. It is incredulous -- as in "you are a teller of tall tales".

Having said that, I did recently quit my job and moved a thousand miles to live on the beach and support myself doing freelance work. When the income is a little less dicey I may try to finally pursue my dream of creating a web comic or similar entertainment. That might actually pay. I very much need the money and I am extremely burned out on getting kicked in the teeth for trying to help people.

</comment><comment><USER21> I'd write a novel, fiction. If I fail midway, I'd write a non-fiction book about a historic event.

Writing soothes me.

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd learn AI, machine learning, natural language processing, compilers, interpreters, drawing, playing guitar/violin/piano, snowboarding, martial arts, socializing better and effortless, programming/natural languages and whatever else I can come up with.

I'd love to come up with answers to questions others have not yet answered and discover questions no-one else has discovered, yet.

I'd also like to travel the world and get to know as much people as possible.

However I fear that even with unlimited amounts of money the real problem I will face is time which is why I hate procrastinating and even more the fact that I can't seem to stop it.

<comment><USER23> I'm extremely interested in machine learning and AI as well. Could you email me to discuss more?

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Inexpensive robotic aerial platforms for film-making and the attendant software that controls the platform as well as the various aspects of post- production, such as match-moving, involving footage shot from same.

<comment><USER25> I'm currently leading a small project where something like that would be extremely handy.

Copenhagen Suborbitals (copenhagensuborbitals.com) is doing five testlaunches of rockets this summer from the baltic sea. My job is to get live video from the launch to the Internet. There are several interesting problems in this, one is getting good footage of the launch and preparations.

The rockets will launch from a specially built self propelled vessel that sails from Copenhagen to The launch site aacompanied by a navy vessel that will act as support and crew ship. On launch the navy vessel will be around one mile from the launch platform, so getting good footage of the launch and preparations will be difficult.

I've thought that aerial remote robotics with cameras would be a good way of getting some really great shots. It's not easy though; you're operating over water, with one mile to the support vessel, and you'll need to steer the remotes via the Internet since there won't be available space for an operator on the navy ship (there will be a reasonable good internet connection available from the support ship)so you need remotes that can be operated over the Internet and send footage back.

If this sounds interesting, or if you have any ideas let me know, either here or by email. My mail is in my profile.

<comment><USER24> I just tried to find a link but have failed but, a few months ago, there was a video showing a camera-equipped quadcopter that autonomously tracked a water- skier. Not only was the flight path dictated by the course of the water-skier but the camera oriented continuously to frame the water-skier using a radio- beacon on the water-skier. The guy who built the rig had a tutorial site showing how he built the beacon and receiver.

Beyond that, I haven't much insight into how such a platform would be built but, figuring that out is what the no-worries-about-money time would be spent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I will work on the Global Villege construction set. [http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Constructio...](http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)

</comment><comment><USER27> This would take more money than just quit-my-job money, but it I had the money, I would ask around for suggestions (here on HN and in other places) on how to build a new crowdsourced general encyclopedia that would provide a competitive nudge to Wikipedia. (I'd probably try to hire away some of the existing Wikipedia team, depending on what kind of noncompete agreements they are subject to, and would look to bring in a new kind of staff for overall direction of the project.) I was an editor in a few earlier workplaces, so I'm interested in the challenge of how to manage a mostly-volunteer, world-facing general encyclopedia project. Wikipedia sets an amazingly high standard for a project that started out so haphazardly, but here on HN and elsewhere I've seen criticisms of Wikipedia that get me thinking about how to do a similar project better. Of course, different readers define "better" in different ways, and the first challenge would be figuring out what intentional differences from Wikipedia would help a competing project be successful over the long term. The reason I would do this is to enjoy the result of thousands of new, well written articles on a variety of subjects, a resource my children and grandchildren and people all over the world could use for decades to come. The reason I would ask other people for advice on the project is that it would be interesting to hear how to improve upon something that is already free.

<comment><USER28> Speaking as someone who worked for the Wikimedia Foundation: _noncompete agreements?_ That just doesn't exist in our culture, as far as I know. But your idea seems to overestimate the staff's importance when it comes to writing the encyclopedia.

The community does all the content and most of the policy decisions, by themselves. The staff is there for things like ops, fundraising, legal, bugfixes, research, PR, and projects that require a longer-term vision.

Ian Baker aka Raindrift recently did a cool project to expose how things _really_ work on Wikipedia. People usually underestimate the process.

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Raindrift/Workflows>

For example, here's the diagram for Articles:

<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Article_lifecycle.svg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Something to rival Facebook that puts more control into the hands of users. The "wordpress"/blogging phenomenon came shortly after low-cost hosting. Now VPSs are where web hosts were 10 years ago.

<comment><USER30> Seems like most people probably wouldn't need more than something like a TonidoPlug to serve content to people on their friend list and, complementing that, to pull content from their friends' TonidoPlugs to make a nice looking news feed. A dirt simple to use, one time $100 box that puts you on the new social network the users control would be nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Porn...it's got too commercialized and needs some fresh perspective

</comment><comment><USER32> Nice question, some answer are pretty sad though. Particularly the one of binarymax ("PhD in Computer Science"). Money shouldn't be an issue to learn.

If I have a lot of time (not only money). I would certainly work in Artificial Intelligence or Artificial Life. I believe this is where I would be the most efficient in discovering something useful for the rest of the Humanity.

Sadly, even with a PhD in Machine Learning, I lose most of time resolving trivial issues or making trivial softwares.

</comment><comment><USER33> Technology to enhance democracy through easier organization and participation.

<comment><USER34> It is possible here in Denmark. There is a very safe and unique ID for everyone, the kicker is that it costs $0.60 per user/year to utilize.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> An ambitious machine learning project that I was not sure would work out in the end. I think with a lot of machine learning projects it's the journey of discovering trends in data which is the most interesting. However, it's only after you start the project and learn what the actual challenges are that you know if the solution is even possible, much less accurate.

</comment><comment><USER36> I would continue to do what I already do on the side: teaching my girlfriend how to do qa/support/product/design/engineering while working on our side project (dynamic documentation). She gets to learn some marketable skills and understand what my job is like, and I get to spend more time with her.

</comment><comment><USER37> Personally, I would work on creating a school/open location that trains students to make fun things with code... games, simulations, or anything else that draws people in. I want it to be a place that is interesting so it may spark that fire that leads them to a life of programming.

</comment><comment><USER38> I would build my own computer. I'm reading 'The Elements of Computing Systems" and I started the exercices : it's really rewarding. Then I'll build a REAL computer with a VHDL programmable chip. Then I'll design my own VM, my own compiler..

</comment><comment><USER7> Help the greatest possible number of other people do that exact same thing.

(It's very tempting to reply with more multiple answers, in the form of a goal-subgoal tree. So for instance nodes in that tree might be "Help people think more effectively about their life situations", which in turn is connected to "Help people acquire better critical thinking skills", which, given my life history, has the greatest leverage when connected with the node "Help people become smarter about software development". But this kind of tree is dynamic; as you acquire new skills in the pursuit of intermediate nodes you often reprioritize nodes of the same level.)

</comment><comment><USER39> Probably most interesting Ask HN discussion I have ever seen.

I would work on new algorithms and application of high-performance computing to genetic sequencing, protein folding and, in general, modeling biological processes.

</comment><comment><USER40> Strong AI has always fascinated me so I'd probably do some research in the field (would likely take a few years of catching up before I can significantly contribute to the field though).

</comment><comment><USER41> PhD in computer science.

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, why? The prestige (completely legit answer) or are there topics you want to cover in depth that the PhD program will provide?

If so, which topics do you want to deep-dive on?

<comment><USER40> My thoughts as well, doing a PhD strikes me as a mean rather than an end.

<comment><USER42> I did a PhD (not in CS) because I wanted to understand a set of scientific problems in depth, do the research, understand setting up experiments, monitoring them, etc. There are other ways, but it takes 2-3 years of semi- structured work to wrap your head around some of these aspects. At the same time, it helps to understand what you like/don't like and try out new methodologies and areas of research.

Not the only way to get there, but a very fun one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> First, my idealistic and self-indulgent project, and second, the project that would assure me I was actually providing value to the world.

1\. My self-indulgent dream: an IDE built around text editor integration. Think Eclipse, but constructed as an exoskeleton that Emacs and Vim could slip into and become real IDEs.

Of course _my_ priorities would come to the fore. The core would be written in a concise but statically typed language, plugins could be written in the same language or in a clean, concise scripting language. It would be trivial to run code from within the editor. And it would be nice if one day it generalized into an application framework like Eclipse.

2\. My actually socially productive work: interactive educational software. I would construct interactive software specialized for very small units of learning. An app to teach French verb conjugations, an app to teach the concept of electron valence, an app students could use to interact with a writing coach, an app to teach basic programming, and so on. I would try to implement what had been learned from studies about learning, and it would be awesome if I could provide a research platform for education research.

In the end, I hope that the software work on teaching individual subjects would generalize to a set of templates for interactive learning that would let people construct reasonably effective interactive learning tools for many different subjects, with a reasonable investment of effort. Just as a software engineer would look at a problem and construct a solution out of well-known systems, an educator could look at the material and skills they want to teach in a class and construct an interactive course from different parts: spaced repetition to teach certain information, an interactive coaching module and a drill module for medium-complexity skills involving several steps, a submit/teacher review/revision module for writing tasks, and a portfolio module for the semester project. Those are the kinds of general modules that come to mind now, but the aim of constructing completely ad hoc software for a variety of subjects would be to discover novel design patterns for interactive learning.

Custom modules created by teachers, researchers, and hackers could be trivially published, for free or for sale, and incorporated into course- specific modules or explored by self-guiding students. Utopia! (Whew.)

P.S. If I had to show ads to cover support and operations costs, I would only show them to adults, and I would let people pay to turn them off. (Nobody should have to feel guilty for running AdBlock, so I think it's important to let AdBlock users pay extra to turn off the ads they would see.)

<comment><USER36> I've been working on a variant of the latter idea on and off for about 4 years now. We got some funding (through an NSF grant) but I couldn't maintain full- time development on it. I'm presently working on a project that sprang up after I identified problems in the original design.

I'd love to hear more about your ideas; ping me @gmail if you want to chat.

<comment><USER43> Ah, but this is if money doesn't matter :-) My job is very challenging, and after eight hours at work, I can't sling code anymore, much less tackle an entirely different set of technologies than I use at work. Also, I don't think I could do justice to the idea without being face-to-face with teachers and students, which would be a full time commitment. I can't put myself in a position where I'll end up disappointing either my employer or a classroom full of kids.

My current job pays well, though, and I plan on retiring at least fifteen years before I'm too old to program, so the "money doesn't matter anymore" scenario is a realistic one. I have a feeling that whenever I retire, educational software will still feel like the right thing to work on.

<comment><USER15> Bless you a thousand times for realizing that interaction with real teachers and students is necessary for the creation of educational software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd teach high school Latin.

<comment><USER44> Teacher: "Decline _agricola_."

Student: "No, thank you."

<comment><USER8> Bene factum.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Robots. Program their navigation and computer vision capabilities. Develop a base station with some fancy augmented reality overlays.

<comment><USER30> That is similar to my more radical answer, moon-bots. A small army of tele- operated digging and construction oriented robots sent on a cheap trajectory to the moon. We have the technology to start construction on a colony. At least, I think we do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Something for the cycling/racing industry.

Event registration, chip timing software, live/historical race results. The whole package. Right now the pieces exist but they're usually separate pieces and they look and function like 90's software.

I'd try and bring modern look, feel, and technology to these areas.

Strava is a great example of bringing modern web to the cycling/running world if you ask me.

</comment><comment><USER47> Build a better "Distributed Proofreader" system for Gutenberg like crowd- sourced book digitization projects which can use real-time feedback to reduce the human effort required for the task. I hope that this will make it easier to build PG like repositories for more countries and for more languages. Even those where good OCRs are not available.

</comment><comment><USER48> How could an entrepreneur possibly answer this question?? You've already quit your job and work on a "project" full time.

<comment><USER49> "What I'm working on now."

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Space exploration and Mars terraforming.

<comment><USER51> How about moon terraforming? Just a couple of days for an out of this world getaway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Something educationy, like khan academy.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'd paint all day and play the blues on my Les Paul! A really creative and joyful way of spending time.

</comment><comment><USER44> The problem of applying machine learning techniques to search problems (I mean "search" in the traditional AI sense that includes theorem proving and planning, not in the Google sense). To me this is the most exciting area of AI research, and it's still very much wide open.

<comment><USER54> Scott, my jaw is dropping -- I am super interested in this too! Let's follow up on this soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> I would keep doing what I already do. I care deeply for the organization I work for, and I have many friends there. But I would engage only in what seems fun and meaningful, and avoid all things that I don't care about. Hey, I seems so fun I would do it for free :)

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm probably cheating myself here, because what I want to do should be possible right now. If 'money was no concern' I'd finally lose all arguments against

.. learning system level C (embedded kernel/driver stuff)

.. commit full-time on open-source projects that I love

I know, I know.. I should just start!

<comment><USER12> What I have found helps me get over these "I know what I SHOULD do..." humps? If I pick up a book or find a good source of information on the subject and start reading it, I find that it lowers the barrier to entry for me just enough and starts filling my head with enough good ideas that I _have_ to move forward.

You might pick up a good Kernel beginners book (do you know C? If not, start there.) and just start reading it... thumb through it... start seeing some of the API calls and comitting them to memory so the next time you see them you think "Oh yea, I remember that from Chapter 1..."

Don't worry about coding, which IDE to use, which build system to use, installing Ubuntu on your laptop or moving in with Linus... just get that book and start reading before you go to bed at night.

It'll either break down the barrier to entry for you, or make you realize it isn't what you thought and you can focus on something else.

Absolute worse case scenario? You learn a few cool tricks and put the book on your shelf to collect dust. No biggie.

Might I suggest starting here? <http://goo.gl/YBoJ0>

<comment><USER57> Great advice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Low-level UNIX system utilities, Exploits/RevEngineering/VXing and a homebrew CPU!

</comment><comment><USER59> Open source projects, stuff that's fun and creative. I had a great time with Hecl ( <http://www.hecl.org> ) for instance, but don't have a lot of time for it these days.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'd get my PhD in anthropology.

(Another "PhD" response begged the question of "to what end" - in my case, artifact preservation and restoration museum work would be the ultimate dream job. It's totally impractical, though.)

</comment><comment><USER61> I'd start a foundation that funds research on medical 'open secrets'-- treatments that show great potential but can't be patented and hence do not get funding consistent with that potential.

</comment><comment><USER62> The advancement of artificial intelligence, not sure where to start, but I guess that's the point of this. If I had no concerns about money I would devote most of my free time to it.

</comment><comment><USER63> Without thinking twice, I would commit myself to working on projects that tackle the main sociopolitical issues that humanity faces today and will face in the long-term future.

<comment><USER9> You probably want to be Secretary of State.

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Contribute to open source projects. I think they're making a huge difference in the world and deserve more than just a few dollars from my account each month.

</comment><comment><USER65> I would definitely still work on my coming SAAS product (see profile) because I know it will make a better life for other freelancers and SBO.

</comment><comment><USER66> I would make videos that fused extreme sports with special effects. Think Downhill Mountain Biker vs Dire wolf. Or Snow Boarder vs Dragon.

</comment><comment><USER67> I'd go back to school and get a BFA in Graphic Design and an MS in Human- Computer Interaction. (I have a BSBA in Information Systems.)

</comment><comment><USER68> Algorithmically-generated music. I think you could get some interesting results applying markov chains etc to music generation.

</comment><comment><USER69> I did this and ended up working on CouchDB. Turned out that following my passion eventually led to a job (as a cofounder).

</comment><comment><USER42> Work full time on data platforms for science

</comment><comment><USER70> Even if I could quit my job, I would not.

</comment><comment><USER9> How could you possibly do that is as interesting a question.

You want something. How do you make it happen?

</comment><comment><USER71> Nuclear propulsion, what else

</comment><comment><USER72> Most expensive very fancy restaurant in the heart of Manhattan.

If only money was of no concern!

</comment><comment><USER73> Beethoven's Appassionata

</comment><comment><USER51> Out of my field:

1\. A new political system

2\. Fight corruption

3\. Fight poverty

4\. Education

5\. Medicine

In my field:

1\. New internet

2\. New programming language

3\. Open books

4\. Open encyclopedias by field

5\. No intellectual property, patents, or licenses

</comment><comment><USER74> learning math

</comment><comment><USER75> Protecting animals from animal cruelty. Especially elephants,that are brutalized while alive for their tusks. The cruelty is beyond shocking.

Anyway, I would try and stop that, via a non profit organization.

<comment><USER76> World population of elephants: ~700000 Number of humans without access to clean drinking water: ~800000000

<comment><USER77> You should work on helping those without access to clean drinking water instead of wasting your time criticizing what someone else would like to do.</comment></comment></comment>


Website predicts HQ answers Live - <AUTHOR> http://hquack.com <comment><USER2> First publicly available HQ bot with ~80% accuracy using rather naive approaches</comment>