Transcribed police scanners in real-time - <AUTHOR> https://murph.live/ <comment><USER3> The speech-to-text transcription is so incredibly wrong that it's almost dangerous to publish it like this.

For instance:

> at the beach view new screen for assistance there is a needle in his hand > he's foaming from his mouth throwing off this item

What the officer actually said on the radio:

> He was going to Rainier Beach area. A request for assistance to approach two > people with needles. <operator>: Call was from a neighbor in the area.

<comment><USER4> I don't have familiarity with speech-to-text but wouldn't it be possible to weight words based on their probability in this application to help resolve this. For example, suspect is probably a low frequency word in normal speech but very high in radio chatter.

<comment><USER5> This needs care. Imagine if you accidentally trained a model that added racism when none was present in the audio.

<comment><USER3> Or used a weird model like this one which does some sort of Markov chaining to complete sentences that weren't even present in the original audio or transcription.

"foaming at the mouth" was never even close to being uttered on the radio. I'm guessing the (flawed) model inserted that part because of the proximity to the word "needle" and "assistance".

Maybe? No idea.. this website it totally fucked.

<comment><USER6> Hello!

The quality is currently limited by Google's API. I am working on getting some pre-trained models implemented, but voice processing is not my speciality as a software engineer.

I do NOT want to spread misinformation nor do we want to unjustly slander anyone. Tonight I will be adding a disclaimer mentioning the limitations of our service and will make sure it is forefront on the website.

Hopefully we can create a model which can deliver better results.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is very impressive.

I'm the owner of Broadcastify.com, where presumably these streams are being transcribed from. We've dabbled in this space and looked at real-world approaches to taking something like this to market, but transcribing 7000+ streams to text seems like an expensive (computational) and ($$) effort that needs a lot of investigation.

Note to mention that the individual lexicons between streams are drastically different.

I wonder how the developer has done the integration to our streams... because I never heard from them :)

<comment><USER8> I prototyped this concept too, at [https://feeds.talonvoice.com](https://feeds.talonvoice.com) with prohibitively expensive Google speech recognition, but also have a feature for users to listen and fix transcriptions. If murph was anything like me they probably paid for broadcastify and tailed a couple of the static mp3 feeds.

My plan was to collect user transcription corrections on my site then train my own inexpensive models on them. The open-source speech tech I work on can do passable transcription at close to 100x faster than realtime on a quad core desktop CPU (or 200 simultaneous streams per 4-core box at 50% activity). With higher quality transcription it's closer to 10-20x faster than realtime.

For your case you could also try to push some of the computation down to the uploading machine. These models can run on a raspberry pi.

I think the biggest work for a new effort here is going to be building local language models and collecting transcribed audio to train on. However, there have been a couple of incredible advances in the last year for semi-supervised speech recognition learning, where we can probably leverage your 1 year backlog as "unsupervised training data" while only having a small portion of it properly transcribed.

The current state-of-the-art paper uses around 100 hours of transcribed audio and 60,000 hours of unlabeled audio, and I bet you could push the 100h requirement down with a good language model and mixing in existing training data from non-radio sources.

<comment><USER7> Our new project, Broadcastify Calls, might be a better fit for this. Instead of 24x7 live streams, we capture and ingest every individual call as a compressed audio file from SDRs (software defined receivers) We can then ingest and present back to consumers playback, rewind, playlist, of those calls. We're now capturing over 100 systems and 800-900 calls a minute... as we solidify the architecture it will be our new direction for how we capture and disseminate public safety audio (Police Scanners)

[https://www.broadcastify.com/calls](https://www.broadcastify.com/calls)

<comment><USER9> Hey Blatoni, big fan, and software engineer here. Any way you could add Rochester, NY (Monroe County Sheriff, and RPD) to the list of supported calls? I have an RTL SDR, but haven't been able to spend the time figuring out how to decrypt the Phase II trunking.

<comment><USER7> You can get started as a calls ingest provider here:

[https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Broadcastify- Calls](https://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Broadcastify-Calls)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Example audio: [https://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/29351](https://www.broadcastify.com/webPlayer/29351)

This is close enough to the Seattle feed that you can do a compare & contrast.

Heard: "clear my first call ocean nora 470" On the site: "charlie my first call"

So, yeah, this still has a long long way to go. I considered and discarded this in 2011 because it was pure insanity, and as another comment suggests, it's highly context-sensitive.

"ECR" is El Camino Real. "Vets" is Veterans Blvd.

But...

"Code 99" is the emergency button... for one department... and it means something else entirely for another, just 20 miles apart.

I'd love to have it, but it still seems out of reach.

<comment><USER11> Your scanner project was a marvel to me at the time.

Until a system can train right down to the officer/dispatcher I don't see how this gets beyond 50-60% accurate. I can't even transcribe half the calls, not sure why I should expect a computer to (at this time anyway).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I really like this idea - it also has the side effect of making all of these streams easily searchable later on.

That being said, transcription still isn't at the point where it can understand radio garble.

> because I'm going to take that group that someone over the Willing. Can you > raise Lieutenant lady and having semi-open Buddhist month

> you know the carrot for you and Hudson no accident

Reminds me of the early days of Google Voice voicemail transcription.

<comment><USER13> Absolutely agree. I feel like the next step here would be to:

* Put the audio clip next to the transcribed text

* Flag transcribed text which fails some heuristics

* Allows users to suggest edits to the transcription

* Train the transcription models on contributed edits + police specific lingo

<comment><USER14> Cooperative community editing, genius-style, would be perfect. Big events would lead to incredibly accurate transcripts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I built something similar to this, open-source, here: [https://feeds.talonvoice.com](https://feeds.talonvoice.com)

It's not currently streaming any feeds because Google Speech is pretty expensive, but I have the expertise and plan to train my own speech models that would be less expensive to run and more accurate than Google at this task as well.

The main difference between this and murph is my `feeds` site has UI for users to listen to the audio and fix/vote on transcriptions, and corrections are propagated quickly to other users.

</comment><comment><USER6> Developer of murph.live here again - after reading this thread I have some ideas I'd like to vet with everyone here.

1\. We need to post links to the source of the stream. I neglected to do that for fear of cease and desist, but now I realize we need to create accountability on our own platform. I will be contacting broadcastify.com to ensure we can direct users to a source.

2\. We need a disclaimer on the site directly in your face. I agree with everyone here - this could potentially spread misinformation and do more harm than intended. These transcripts should be read with caution. Additional messaging from us is a must.

3\. We need a better acoustic model. Google is too much $$$ and although I'm an engineer, I'm not a linguistics machine learning expert. Can anyone help me with this please?

Our mission was to create transparency into our government - not cause harm. There is a lot of responsibility creating a tool like this and we want to get it right.

With that being said, this site blew up in a few hours. I'm overwhelmed. Please let me know if you'd like to help. Thank you to everyone for the feedback so far - it all helps immensely.

<comment><USER15> I have a generic English ASR model for ESPnet ([https://github.com/espnet/espnet](https://github.com/espnet/espnet)) trained on multiple various datasets and would be happy to provide it. If you send me few audio samples, I can give it a try. You can contact me email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> When I was studying photojournalism on the side, for a while I ran a vintage radio scanner over the various local police/fire/etc. public simulcast frequencies. It didn't pay off with any "breaking news" leads, but one of the surprise benefits was the strong impression of professionalism and good nature by many.

I should be clear that I know there's tragic racism and other injustices everywhere, and that problems tend to be worse than is visible to most people, and I think now is the time to finally right some wrongs that we should've a long time ago. Perhaps relevant to that, it was really reassuring to observe signs of _goodness_ in the institutions that many people never have occasion to. Problems need to be solved, but there's hope from multiple directions.

</comment><comment><USER17> Automatic recording, transcribing and publish. A recipe to force them to change equipment and start using encryption.

I don't know the law in the US, but here in Sweden any police investgiation is kept under strict secrecy until completed. When a crime occur and journalist ask for details the answer is always the same. While investigation is ongoing no details may be given. That would not work if there is a searchable transcription of the communication online.

So an nice technical achievement, but the more successful it is the faster it will be made obsolete in terms of getting information out of police scanners.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hello Hacker News!!!

I am the developer of murph.live - I just want to thank all of you for taking the time to check it out and give us excellent feedback. I stumbled upon this post and now have goosebumps.

This started by listening to police scanners throughout the night during recent protests in Seattle, WA. I wanted to help and I immediately put my credit card down for Google's Speech to Text API.

As for the inbound streams, @blantonl is spot on - we use the streams from a premium account on broadcastify.com (thank you for not sending a cease and desist yet!).

A few dockerized ffmpeg processes segment the streamed audio into 30 second wav files. Subsequently, sox removes silence from the audio files as police scanners have quite a bit of downtime between transmissions. The performance is very scalable using docker containers to record and trim.

Currently, we pipe these trimmed wav files to the Google Speech API - <USER2> others have mentioned this is $$$. We are receiving donations, but this dependency on Google will eventually need to be eliminated.

I have started looking into possible solutions using NLP and other acoustic models to bring the costs down. Honestly, speech processing is not my forte so I'm kind of shooting in the dark here. I am currently testing pre-trained models for wav2letter++, kaldi, vosk, and maybe deepspeech.

We can all agree the quality of the transcripts is something to be desired and improved upon. Potentially dangerous if transcribed incorrectly, but nonetheless we wanted to launch to give citizens a platform to provide transparency into our government. The idea is what counts right now.

Thanks again and I will be responding to a bunch of comments on here! You all rock!

<comment><USER18> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322321](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322321) first comment might be of interest

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice but mostly incoherent - _" Google Launcher new job and I want to play better third-party colder or does the people from the vegetable okay"_

</comment><comment><USER20> > got another call from the zombie shelter for 24th Avenue got two males > waiting inside

Oh shit.

</comment><comment><USER21> Given the current global (and US) social situation of mistrust of the police, and of people running wild with information, it may be wise to shut down this website and fix technical issues first.

Otherwise, you do run the risk of "See the screenshots - the police transcriptions have been changed to become police friendly now!"

</comment><comment><USER22> I was reading a post yesterday about how someone found difficult to gauge the level of violence in the current protests. As media is so polarised that you either get shots of peaceful protests or complete mayhem, depending on the paper's bias.

This got me thinking: What if we get the police radio transcripts, and extract every mention of an address. Then have a central hub of drones that get dispatched automatically to any address of "interest" filming.

It's a bit crazy, most likely illegal. But definitely would be cool to see! Arguably truly unbiased "reporting". If you want to know the situation, just plug in to the feeds and get a decent overview of how it looks.

</comment><comment><USER23> Would be great to link to the real recording, so you can hear it for yourself.

</comment><comment><USER24> Neat! Wonder what service they are using for the transcription as some of the results are pretty rough probably from both poor quality audio and a unique lexicon. Custom speech models could probably go a long way here to clean it up and I would bet there's some public interest in contributing transcriptions for training if the site allowed user submitted corrections. Having this indexed and searchable could be powerful.

</comment><comment><USER25> I didn't see where anyone pointed this out but scanners are only one way emergency services communicate and they also know people are listening in. More often than not the important conversations are communicated over the phone. It is also important to note that since these agencies know that civilians listen in it can become a way to intentionally misinform the listeners.

</comment><comment><USER26> Thanks for the encouragement in continuing with my court reporting classes. It's still going to be a good career for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER27> This actually would solve one of my use cases that broadcastify itself does not. I don't listen to the scanner often, and often when I do it's in response to hearing sirens or seeing something. By then, the call has already gone out so tuning in to the scanner isn't all that helpful. Having transcripts of recent calls available would be quite useful.

</comment><comment><USER28> Very cool! Is this yours, OP? I built a text classifier platform ([https://www.taggit.io/](https://www.taggit.io/)) and I'd love to explore building something on top of this text stream to notify people of important happenings around the protests in real time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not mine, I've got the URL over IM few minutes before posting it here

<comment><USER28> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Is it legal to listen to these in the states?

I know OFCOM (UK FCC) state it's illegal to listen to certain frequencies without permission, which seems delightfully unenforceable (for legal reasons I most definitely do not possess a wideband software defined radio or a similarly sensitive antenna)

<comment><USER30> (not a lawyer, if one shows up, listen to them) Generally speaking, you can listen to anything, as long as it's not for commercial gain. The exception to this is mobile phones, because it was trivial to listen to them using children's toy radios.

There's apparently some uncertainty around handling of encrypted emergency services communications: [https://www.rtdna.org/content/scanners](https://www.rtdna.org/content/scanners)

[https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/interception-and- divulg...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/interception-and-divulgence- radio-communications)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Some of the text though are pretty weak. I have no idea if this is just garbled transcription, or dreamy cop talk...

"movie up and around pain and dreamy I'm not"

or

"happy person that you can just so may I help you"

<comment><USER8> It's the transcription, I think this kind of site should allow you to fall back to listening to the audio. Even with high accuracy, if there's no human curation, there will be pretty awkward mistakes every once in a while in the text.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Apart from the police and people listening out of interest/curiosity, who else taps into police scanners? It seems like a really narrow and competitive niche to be in for developers.

<comment><USER7> It is ridiculously competitive in the mobile app store market, because there is a lot of revenue out there. All of the apps source their streams from Broadcastify, and they license Broadcastify's API and content to do so. The apps are enormously popular, and the market generates hundreds of thousands of dollars _a month_ in revenue.

I deal constantly with nefarious developers who often feel like Broadcastify has an obligation to grant them a license. We had a terrible dust up this weekend with a developer that was upset we wouldn't grant him a license to develop "yet another police scanner app" and he went on a warpath with me personally.

The app store environment is a major pain and exhausting...

<comment><USER33> Seems like y'all are definitely positioned right in the market, though, if everyone's using you! Do you do any marketing aimed specifically at developers of these apps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> This is so wrong it needs to be taken offline. The Translations aren't even close and that's dangerous.

I seriously looked into doing this myself, but for this reason and costs I bailed.

</comment><comment><USER35> The emergency-service voice transmissions in the clear around me are fire and medical. I am presuming that the busy digital signals in the same VHF band are police.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is great. Is it open source? I would love to know more about how it works. Where do you get the source data? What is required in order to add more cities?

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER37> I would assume that its piping the audio output from a radio receiver to some live transcription API. Would also love to find out how it actually works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Very useful mapped version in NYC [https://scanmap.mobi/NY/](https://scanmap.mobi/NY/)

<comment><USER39> This is awesome! This should be crowdsourced like piaware...

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Speaking of which, does anyone know the _frequencies_ for police scanners in Seattle? I have an SDR box, but Googling yields nothing of value.

<comment><USER39> Radio reference [dot] com

Listed frequencies by federal/state/county/local departments

Searchable for all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Which channel though? In each of these cities there are several frequencies...

</comment><comment><USER42> Our local PD is going to be encrypting their communications soon I believe.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm so glad someone did this

</comment><comment><USER44> Looks like DNN speak.</comment>


Show HN: A Sales Tracking App Built For Freelancers and Small Businesses - <AUTHOR> http://strideapp.com/ <comment><USER2> Interesting. There's definitely a need for sales/pipeline tracking tools in small businesses, though I'm not sure the focus on freelancers is quite right.

We're currently using Pipedrive for this, and it's a more mature and slicker product, but that's not to say there isn't room for another player (in fact, there are many!). I'm just not 100% sure that the focus on freelancers is right. Has this been validated with actual freelancers? Are any freelancers on HN willing to come out and say that this is a hair-on-fire problem for them that they'd be willing to pay $7/m for this?

<comment><USER3> For me, it's something that would have served me (and I would have paid for) in my freelancing days, and it's something that has been working great for me as a small business owner as I've been using the early builds.

I'm obviously incredibly biased (I'm one of the creators), but I agree small business will be a large potential market in addition to freelancers. There will be some freelancers who won't want to put down $7/month, but most busy freelancers would certainly get $7/month of value out of the service.

Here's my blog post about how Stride came about, which has a bit more: <http://blog.strideapp.com/post/18976926872/origin-story>

<comment><USER2> Aha. Reading your blog post, I notice that you developed this for yourself while you were running a web design shop with 3 other people. That counts as small business rather than "freelancer", in my book. If I were you I'd go and furiously hunt down bona fide freelancers (who have no interest in hiring more people) and corner them as to whether they'd find something like this useful.

I don't think the price is an issue - in fact, $7 is too low, if anything - but whether or not this is worth paying for at all, for a _freelancer_. It's definitely worth it for a web design shop - but then you need to market to those rather than to freelancers, and make sure you build your product for the right market.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely--I think I was a bit unclear on that. I'm absolutely in the small biz bucket now, but I think my past freelancer self would have paid for it. But you're right, we have some work to do around finding whether our target is freelance and small biz or only one of those.

I really appreciate the thoughtful feedback.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We've just added the beta code hackernews to let all of you fine ladies and gentlemen in.

Give it a shot -- we're looking forward to your feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> This looks really promising from what I see in the screenshot.

Since you're in _private_ beta, why not add a mailing list signup? That way, those that don't get an invite code will still get reminders of this tool and a notification when they can finally get in.

<comment><AUTHOR> We just set up a beta invite for all the HN folks, go ahead and use hackernews when signing up.

<comment><USER4> Already did. Put some problems and suggestions up on getsatisfaction too. This looks like it could be quite a useful service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everyone pays the same price whether they're a 100 person firm or just two people? So you can have five clients per server or fifty? I think that you need to give some consideration to those using more resources paying more.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't look like it supports multiple users on one account. So a 100 person firm would need to use 100 individual accounts.

<comment><USER7> Correct - that's obviously something we need to support in the future, but we want to roll it in based on user feedback & demand. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Looks great. It seems to have the coarse level of detail that's great for my simple sales process. Anything more is just noise for me.

Not a deal-breaker, but does it support other currencies, namely GBP(£)?

<comment><USER7> There's no way to change the currency symbol right now. That's definitely something we should add to the list, I'll add it to our backlog! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Looks nice. Do you have a beta code for HN we could use to try it out?

<comment><USER3> Give the beta code hackernews a shot.

(Creative, I know.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks nice. Do you think lead generation and management is the sole problem of Freelancers? Or are you planning to move into the rest of the freelancing lifecycle?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nathan did a fine job of summing up why we built Stride in this post -- <http://blog.strideapp.com/post/18976926872/origin-story>

It's clear that the problem extends to small businesses and the like, we just want to make it clear that we didn't build Stride for salespeople. The app is too simple for their use, and that's what we wanted.

The idea is to tie in Freshbooks, Mailchimp, Rapportive and other integrations as we move forward, to help round out what small business and freelancers need.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Having tried it out for just a few moments, I certainly see the value. Good work.

That said, I do have a couple of _snap_ judgements that I hope you don't mind me sharing.

1\. The interface is simple to use, but when I closed a deal it immediately disappeared from the list. While it makes sense for a non-active deal to leave the list, it is a hinderance to me using the platform. In my business, "closing" a deal means receiving a purchase order. But the deal isn't done until I've completed my end of things (bringing in the product, shipping it, receiving payment). It would be nice if closed deals didn't disappear from the list for a day or week or month or whatever. It's nice to see the team's successes as well as the stuff still open.

2\. It would be AWESOME if there were a way to add/edit the progress bar. In my business it would be useful to have "lead" "pitch/quotation", "negotiation", "closed", "processed" "shipped and invoiced" and "payment received." Tracking the whole process linearly from start to finish is something I would certainly pay for.

2\. Piggy backing #1, it would be super helpful to be able to attach files to deals. Most of my company's projects take place via quotes that come via XLS and PO's that come via PDF. Being able to attach the files along the way would mean my GMAIL account wouldn't have to be the repository for quotes and orders.

2a. Tagging deals would be super useful. If I could tag a deal with the salesperson's name or "new customer" or whatever and search/sort by tag, that would be a great feature.

3\. The reporting is nice, but I hope that a lot more filters come in the future. It would be nice to search/sort by customer, $ value, deal status, etc. and then run reports on that information as well. For example, it would be nice to pull all the deals we lost from customer XYZ between $5k and $10k and compare that number to the deals won in that range. Were are margins too high on the lost deals? Is there something else we could have done?

4\. I don't know if you guys are enabling multi-user accounts but I'd gladly pay 5x your current monthly cost (or more) if would allow my account to have 4 user logins where each user could modify/edit a deal. We have a salesperson, a quoter, a purchaser, and a processer. If each person could access the same dashboard and update their part of a deal that would be fantastic and would no doubt improve our work flow.

5\. I'd pay even more if I could add checkbox/lists to each piece of the status bar. So "Pitch" would have a checkbox for "emailed quote" and "2 day follow up" and 4 day follow up"...whereas Won might have a checkbox for "received PO" and "created invoice" and stuff like that. I realize that is sort of moving away from the simplicity that the app delivers on right now, but once again it is something I would pay a lot more $$ for. Aside from improving our current work, having checklists would help standardize our processes to make it easier to train new people.

My team of four is CONSTANTLY in the dark about where everyone else is on a certain project. Task lists and project managers don't work because they are either complicated to use or don't have a linear flow like your tool has.

Yes, a lot of these things can be addressed through other CRM systems and Quickbooks, but the opportunity I see here is for dead simple deal tracking and data extraction. Highrise, Salesforce, etc. are good tools in their own way, but a STRICT focus on pipeline, tracking, and highly/quickly customizable reporting would be great.

I realize that I've broken the cardinal rule by suggesting you add MORE stuff when the goal is simplicity. But the things I've posted are the things that occurred to me right away when I signed up, started using it, and started saying "would I pay for this? How much would I pay? And if it had x, y, and z, how much more would I pay?"

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback, super helpful -- it's exactly the reason why we wanted to roll out in a private beta.

The short of it is that we're sacrificing a lot of this to save simplicity right off the bat. Frankly, it's the main competitive advantage to all of the many other tools out there, we believe. That said, there are a few of your requests that we're actively working on.

In particular, points 2 (add/edit progress bar), 2 (we're working on file attachements now), and 3.

Stuff like multi-user accounts and deal checkboxes are unlikely. We are looking to add reminders, however.

Again, thanks for the awesome feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> need a code so that we can try.</comment>


California police to use drones to patrol coronavirus lockdown - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/c7d0dee1-6125-475c-9cc7-78f4671d7cea <comment><USER2> [https://archive.vn/1BenC](https://archive.vn/1BenC)

<comment><USER3> That link returns 403 forbidden.

<comment><USER4> Works for me

<comment><USER5> I'm getting a hard paywall.

Edit: if the referer is google it's open. Just search for the title. Also, after reading the article, the "night vision goggles" are probably actually thermal cameras (Zenmuse XT). Which, if properly calibrated, might be able to pick up people in the crowd with fevers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Elon Musk: I'll put human boots on Mars by 2026 - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/06/18/spacex_can_get_mankind_on_mars_in_10_or_12_years_claims_elon_musk/

<comment><USER2> Humans on Mars within 12 years?

They probably said the same thing in the 60's about the moon missions (and they were wrong), but let me repeat the phrase..... "I Highly Doubt It!".

I won't stop doubting it either until I see a lot more robots on mars first.

<comment><USER3> Actually, according to title, just the boots.

<comment><USER2> Good point. That I can believe.</comment></comment></comment>


Flask release 0.10 coming soon (greenlets) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mitsuhiko/flask/commit/097353695e3178a38403b204ae4889c8a32bf997

<comment><AUTHOR> Armin tweeted "Going to release Flask 0.10 this week. Among other things improved support for working with greenlets:"</comment>


The YotaPhone 2 has two faces, zero gimmicks - X-combinator http://www.theverge.com/2014/12/5/7338753/yotaphone-2-hands-on-preview

<comment><AUTHOR> This thing totally is awesome.</comment>


A consumer Clearview-clone allows anyone to be identified online with a photo - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1279983515472293888 <comment><USER2> HN thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23744613](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23744613)</comment>


Mozilla Thimble - <AUTHOR> https://thimble.webmaker.org/

<comment><USER2> To developers complaining that this is not an IDE they'd actually use: where did you get the idea that this tool is meant to be an IDE for professionals? This is clearly an educational tool, and I think it looks pretty good for that.

0\. pick text editor 1. install text editor 2. find some sample html 3. open file in your browser 4. find some resources for learning HTML & CSS (yep, w3schools) 5. learn that validators exist 6. learn that linters exist etc. etc.

With mozilla thimble: 1. click to start new project 2. try stuff (instant feedback), learn about code validation (instant feedback), share your page etc. 3. level up to more robust environment.

<comment><USER3> They are being hurt by their own branding. It shouldn't be positioned as a way to create web pages, just like Code Academy isn't positioned as a way to create javascript. They are both ways to learn with instant feedback and solid instructions. (The instructions are in the app for Code Academy and in the HTML comments for Thimble.)

<comment><USER4> For non-tech users it _is_ a tool to create web pages, though. They will go to that more easily.

For the tech users they _know_ it's not an IDE and not meant to be. Anyone claiming the opposite is a troll/likes to bash Mozilla (cause it's trendy in case you haven't noticed) and so on.

And in case you _dare_ to argue my point: if you're talking about an IDE guess what? Well, you already did. You're a tech user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The first thing I noticed was that the font of the editor is not monospaced... too bad.

<comment><USER6> Look's like its a CSS cascade issue. They're setting '.CodeMirror' to have a monospaced font, but it's getting overridden in (several) other palaces

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks like a fantastic tool to use for introduction to front end development. The inline tool tips / tag definitions are very useful if you aren't sure what a particular tag does.

</comment><comment><USER8> > Thimble makes it ridiculously simple to create your own web pages.

Ridiculously simple way would be to edit straight inside the page.

Why contentEditable-based in-place editing is still missing in so many blog and website engines?

Navigating between html editor and preview feels a bit wrong and old when targeting regular users.

I'm not saying that only Thimble is the "old and wrong". I've been wondering about the same issue also with wordpress, drupal, joomla etc.

<comment><USER2> The goal is not just to create web pages but to teach people about the technologies that drives the web (the tool many nonprogrammers use day in and day out). A straight wysiwyg wouldn't achieve that end.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Neat -- poking around in the console, it looks like Webmaker is using Backbone.js ... I was wondering if anyone from the Webmaker team could tell us what exactly it's using it for?

<comment><USER10> I haven't had a chance to dive into it, but the source is at <https://github.com/mozilla/webpagemaker>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This feels like they're a bit confused about which target audience and abstraction layer they're aiming to. This is like trying to get more kids to program by trying to show them how easy and fun assembly language is. Shouldn't your energy be better spent developing, promoting and educating the use of higher level tools? It's hard for me to think of an use case for this. What kind of people, exactly would this help?

Don't get me wrong. I'm all for teaching more people to code. More importantly, getting more people to build stuff. But trying to teach newcomers to something historically bloated like HTML, sounds discouraging. Many others said before, HTML, CSS, JavaScript are pretty much the Machine Language of the web. It made sense for us to learn those first when it was all we had. But moved forward, it seems more intelligent to get more people to build stuff by having them use higher abstraction layers first. Even more, try to develop even higher layers that'll enable even more people to contribute.

I love Mozilla and I love the initiative. But I don't honestly think this will help much.

<comment><USER12> Plain old HTML is a fundamental building block of the web. It was designed to be, and still succeeds in being, a simple to learn tool to create documents for consumption by web browsers.

Sure, it has added complexity over the years, but you don't need to know every tag & attribute or CSS & Javascript to get started and see results immediately.

<comment><USER13> > and still succeeds in being,

The BOK for HTML5 is larger than what professionals have time for, and is definitely a deeper delve than HTML4.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone else getting a 500 error? Looks like they are having some server issues at the moment

<comment><USER15> I received a javascript alert that an error has occurred. I'm using Chrome. I can see the editor but not the template/project I chose.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> am I the only one seeing this? <https://thimble.webmaker.org/en-US/editor>

Internal Server Error

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, email@example.com and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

<comment><USER17> Temporary glitch, sorry 'bout that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Ah, Netscape Composer, we hardly missed you.

</comment><comment><USER19> It complains about perfectly valid HTML, e.g.:

Item

Item

Why doesn't it know about optional end tags? :(

<comment><USER20> Even though I also enjoy not closing my li's, I don't think this is an egregious error. The app appears to be focused on helping novices interested in learning HTML. To those just beginning, it's probably most important to enforce the idea of most elements having opening and closing tags.

However, if their target audience is actual developers...well, they've got lots of other problems to deal with as well.

<comment><USER17> The target audience is very much _NOT_ real developers. Think of it as "lesson 2", where "lesson 1" is something like x-ray goggles: <https://webmaker.org/en-US/tools/x-ray-goggles/> for someone who _knows nothing_ to start with. Your average (not geeky) 12-year old or 70-year old, for example.

<comment><USER21> I'm a computer science graduate (aka, I hope I'm a geek) who did the whole html / css track at Code Academy in about 3 hours (aka, hopefully I'm past lesson 0, I haven't taken any web dev classes or some such ever) but trying to keep all the possible tags in my brain at once is still hard. I feel like this kind of tool does nothing if the newbie doesn't know the tags to match the ideas they have for the page.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Horrible. No code completion. No separation of css and js. I pretended I don't know anything and got to the point where I had no idea what to do next pretty quick and zoned out.

</comment><comment> the-come-ons I literally shudder at the thought of editing code from within a browser. That said, it does seem useful for introducing html.

</comment><comment><USER23> Any reason why this is using CodeMirror and not Ace, the successor to Mozilla's own in-browser code editor?

</comment><comment><USER24> IMO this sort of thing is primitive after seeing easel.io last week.

I suppose I would have liked this when I was first learning, if just for the error messages. But I think, like any programming, part of the learning is running/viewing your program and figuring out why the output isn't what you expected. Maybe each error pointing to w3schools for more information would benefit the user.

<comment><USER25> w3schools is not the place to point. are you a web developer? I haven't seen a legitimate developer, even an amateur, suggest w3schools is anything but crap in the last few years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "ridiculously simple" - Advertising copy like this just grates now. "Stunningly Beautiful". Meh.

</comment><comment><USER27> It seems to me more like a jsbin.com/jsfiddle.com clone than a real Web IDE.

The editor is helpful though, specially for novices. The syntax highlight is very different from what you're used to. Although I find it a little too much intrusive it makes it very easy to spot small typos.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is really good for coderdojo!

</comment><comment><USER29> anyone notice that the screenshot on the landing page is taken with firefox 2 on mac?

</comment><comment><USER30> looking for reasons to use this. Other than educational purposes? And where are the pages hosted? This is basically for one off displays of random content?

<comment><USER17> It's primarily for educational purposes, indeed. The pages are hosted on Mozilla servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Looks like javascript is not allowed here. If so - what is the purpose of all this? Does anyone still make pages which have zero javascript?

But the html editor is a really nice one :-)

<comment><USER32> Javascript is not an essential part of web development. This tool is geared towards web pages rather than applications, where client-side scripting might play a bigger role.

Unfortunately (and with some good reason) there are still many people who use NoScript et al to browse the web without javascript.

<comment><USER31> >> Javascript is not an essential part of web development.

This is a very strong statement and I probably disagree. I am not talking about client-side applications here, but all those Google Analytics snippets, Facebook Like buttons, Discus comments etc. The script block essentially became a standard way to include third party functionality into the web page. And without it this tool is less useful than it could be.</comment></comment></comment>


Security Bypass Vulnerability Exists in OpenSSL 1.1.x - <AUTHOR> https://coocoor.com/advisory/cve/CVE-2019-1543 <comment><USER2> Dupe of [1]

[1] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19325805)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info. Will remove it.</comment></comment>


Lua Coroutines vs. Python Generators - <AUTHOR> http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaCoroutinesVersusPythonGenerators

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems Lua is the better choice for writing an asynchronous web micro- framework. I spent a lot of time trying to write a super minimal WSGI website in Python using nested generators and then realized I was wasting my time if I couldn't yield back to the body content iterator from anywhere in the call stack. uWSGI has an nginx plugin and support for Lua wsapi if anyone is interested: <http://projects.unbit.it/uwsgi/wiki/Lua>

<comment><USER2> Would you be able to use Stackless Python instead?</comment></comment>


Dropbox will price IPO at $21 per share - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/22/dropbox-will-price-ipo-at-21-per-share-source-says.html <comment><USER2> The dollar number is a completely meaningless unit, it still boggles my mind that financial journalists report this like it matters. They should tell you what percentage of the company is being offered at what the total valuation would be at the expected price, the price itself is completely meaningless.

<comment><USER3> EXACTLY!

If you have a $20 billion company and sell half of it in the form of 10 billion shares for $1/share, it's not really any different than selling it in the form of 100 million shares for $100/share. The same amount of money will buy the same amount of the company. And since price changes are often given in percent change, it doesn't matter if you buy 100 shares at $1 or 1 share at $100. If the stock doubles, you'll have $200 either way.</comment></comment>


The average frontpage of the top 100 blogs is now 934k - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/11/07/blog_pages_too_big/

<comment><USER2> Ouch. At least images can be loaded after the text, and broadband (>1.5Mbps) speed would still load them in a couple of seconds.</comment>


Universal 'Rubik's Cube' Could Become Pentagon Shapeshifter - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2009/06/universal-rubiks-cube-could-become-pentagon-shapeshifter <comment><USER2> It's cool to see ideas like DNA Origami getting researchers' attention. But it might be better to get the information from further up the food chain.

Drexler collects some nice background papers here:

[http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in- dna-n...](http://metamodern.com/2009/05/22/a-third-revolution-in-dna- nanotechnology/)

</comment><comment><USER3> See when everyone tells me the USA is on the down trend I point to stories like these. Where else in the world are technologies being produced like this?

I understand Japan and India and Europe have great technological feats and strong science programs but nobody compares to the US when it comes to research and development.

<comment><USER4> I'm sure you like to believe that, but I doubt you have any data to back that up. You probably just think it obvious from everything you hear and read, but the slightest chauvinist tendency is enough to tilt the amount of perceived evidence strongly into the direction that confirms your bias.

<comment><USER3> I see that your only defense is that I am exhibiting a bias. And I agree its a bias, but do you have any data to say that I am wrong?

<comment><USER4> No, but neither do you and that was my point. I'm not saying you are wrong; I'm saying there is no reason to believe you are right.

It's pretty hard to quantify technological development. Other commenters provide some financial arguments, but is there a reason to believe that the number of innovative/creative/breakthrough technologies being developed depends on the amount of money spent on research? I don't think so: the way that money is distributed is all important and can turn the table entirely. The US may well be interested in spending a few billion on hardening the steel on their tanks a bit further. It's definitely R&D, but it's unlikely something groundbreaking will come of it.

The answer to the question 'where else are technologies being produced like this' is: everywhere. The question is: how much? We are interested in something like the aggregate 'technological improvement' times 'impact on society' or something. If anyone has numbers on that, I will gladly concede victory to whoever turns out to be at the top.

<comment><USER3> Then why such strong attacks? I've always thought it was common knowledge that the US government spends trillions more then any other nation in the Millitary and a large portion of that spending goes to R&D. I apologize and in the future I will present links.

<comment><USER5> > I've always thought it was common knowledge that the US government spends > trillions more then any other nation in the Military

The link presented above, [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federatio...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_federations_by_military_expenditures#Stockholm_International_Peace_Research_Institute_figures_.282007.29) says that the US spends a bit over $650B (650E9) on its military. That link also says that the world total is under $1.5T (1.5E12) and that the NATO total (including the US) is a bit over $1T.

So, if it's "common knowledge that the US government spends trillions more then any other nation in the Military", said common knowledge appears to be significantly wrong.

Note that most US military spending is not R&D.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you seen this boy?

<comment><USER7> No.</comment></comment>


More than 70 whale carcasses mysteriously washed ashore - <AUTHOR> http://www.newindianexpress.com/states/tamil_nadu/Carcasses-Pile-Up-as-Whales-Continue-to-Land-on-TN-Coast/2016/01/14/article3227197.ece <comment><AUTHOR> There have been no logical conclusions yet as to why so many whales would just wash ashore a beach and die because they got trapper. It is almost like a planned mass-suicide. It is said that some animals have a sixth sense that warns them of an oncoming natural disaster (unnatural increase in bird sounds a few minutes before an earthquake), but could this be attributed to that? Only time will tell.

There are other conspiracy theorists who suspect some underwater nuclear testing that may have led to this catastrophe.</comment>


New Feature On Facebook Groups Shows Who Has Seen The Latest Post - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/feature-facebook-groups-shows-latest-post-updates/

<comment><USER2> Sounds like the feature on Quora that's just been discussed here: <http://hackerne.ws/item?id=4377181></comment>


Show HN: I Made My Mom a Website For Mother's Day - <AUTHOR> http://codyromano.com/nymom/

<comment><USER2> At the risk of being downvoted, it's kinda sweet. Makes me wanna make one for mine

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks - appreciate your feedback! :) It was a fun excuse to play around with CSS transitions, too.</comment></comment>


S '07 YC startup launches: Disqus Joins The Battle For Your Blog's Comments - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/30/disqus-joins-the-battle-for-your-blogs-comments/

<comment><USER2> I've enjoyed reading the comments on Fred Wilson's blog much more since he implemented disqus. Maybe we can get Arrington to implement disqus as well so I don't have to read any more comments from Fake Steve Balmer.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting... IntenseDebate also launched today.

TechStars and YC are neck and neck in this space.

To the Disqus guys:

1\. On your home page, the logo should be clickable.

2\. The logo should always take me back to the home page... sometimes it dumps me in the Disqus forum.

3\. The paging links say "Next Next", instead of just "Next"

4\. It's probably just me, but the background puts me off a little.

<comment><USER4> According to Jakob Nielsen at <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20031110.html> (see #10), the home-page logo should not be clickable.

Even though the advice is 4 years old, I don't see a reason to violate it.

*Edited for better formatting.

<comment><USER5> As much as I am a Nielsen fanboy, I wouldn't hesitate violating that rule of his.

<comment><USER4> Why? What purpose does it serve to have a logo on a home page be a link back to the home page?

The only reason I can think of is consistency across the rest of the site.

<comment><USER5> I take that back. I thought this was about a clickable logo in general--not about the homepage specifically.

I guess it is ok to not have the logo linking to the homepage from the homepage itself. (Though there are certain sites that I like to have open and click on the logo to refresh the content.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's definitely very cool, and useful. Something I can't live without? Certainly not. Still, I think the idea was well-implemented and wonderfully executed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Last time I saw it, intensedebate seemed to be very well executed, but disqus is a way better name. Way, way better.

</comment><comment><USER8> I really like the name. Cool service!

looks like the homepage is down right now though :(

</comment><comment><USER9> Yeeeeeeeahhhhh. DISQUS!!! Go 1203...

</comment><comment><USER10> Great! Way to go Disqus.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thats pretty cool. Well done guys.

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome!</comment>


Running a database on EC2? Your clock could be slowing you down - <AUTHOR> https://heapanalytics.com/blog/engineering/clocksource-aws-ec2 <comment><USER2> Post author here, happy to answer any questions. Looking into this one was fun, especially actually looking at the vDSO source instead of just thinking of it as "the makes gettimeofday syscall fast thing".</comment>


Tweetdeck drops Facebook integration on May 7 - <AUTHOR> https://blog.twitter.com/2013/update-tweetdeck

<comment><USER2> The post was mostly about dropping the Tweetdeck apps and just a brief mention of dropping FB.</comment>


Microsoft to support IE6 till 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://topnews.us/content/26567-microsoft-support-ie6-till-2014

<comment><USER2> "Nevertheless, experts say that IE6's demise is sure and company is only delaying it."

I'm sure that Microsoft would love to stop supporting it, but there are still plenty of users that don't really have an alternative: Microsoft dumping the browser will not speed up the migration. To many companies moving away from IE is the same as moving away from XP. I'm guessing Microsoft did this to bring the date in-line with Windows XP-- not because they want people to switch to IE6.

</comment><comment><USER3> Honestly, I'm pleased to hear it. Nobody likes it when Microsoft (or any company) tells people how they ought to run their computer, or doesn't live up to its own obligations. I don't see why so many developers think it would be okay if Microsoft actively forced users to upgrade, regardless of what the developers themselves want.</comment>


Welcome, Ali - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ycombinator.com/welcome-ali <comment><USER2> > Though we've traditionally focused on helping very early-stage companies, > our successful companies have asked for help on topics like scaling > operations, managing hypergrowth, building out management teams, etc.

This makes a lot of sense given the blog post a few days ago from `sama [0] — the evolution of YC from incubator to "meta-company" or network facilitator could only be helped by having more late-stage expertise on hand, so nodes don't drop out of the network.

[0] [http://blog.samaltman.com/why-silicon-valley- works](http://blog.samaltman.com/why-silicon-valley-works)

<comment><USER3> Sounds like they're copying Rocket. Delicious irony. Nom nom nom.

<comment><USER4> I don't know anything about Rocket, but I think the reason that it might actually work in YC's case is the size and success of its alumni network.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Makes a lot of sense. YC is evolving into what I'd call, for lack of a pithier phrase, a company-development firm. It's no longer just about kickstarting your company; it's about ensuring your company's ongoing success.

A more hands-on, operational focus helps YC's portfolio companies. It also protects YC's investments when they reach their adolescent stages, where a lot of startups can ordinarily run into trouble.

<comment><USER6> Is there a similar trend in other incubators of adjusting to help ensure long(er)-term success of companies or is YC really the first to do this?

<comment><USER7> Other incubators/accelerators have focused on companies at different stages, but none that I know of are expanding, as YC is doing, from beginning to middle (to end?). This makes sense from YCs perspective because anything with network effects increases with more people/cos. Additionally to borrow a phrase from a16z, YC is becoming a full-stack or bundled company: Go to YC to get your start, your growth, and perhaps in the future, your IPO, who knows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> :D My name is also Ali, I opened the page and saw it says: "Welcome, Ali" I thought huh, they must have added a new feature that greets you or something!

<comment><USER9> I had the same reaction. at the time it was a top post and I had a double take.

<comment><USER10> My reaction: I thought I had just gotten into YC!

<comment><USER11> Congratulations man.

Edit: For gods sake, that was a joke.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is one step towards Altman's YC, which has only been pushing the envelope further and further on what an incubator is. Interested too see how this pans out :)

<comment><USER6> I don't always follow what is going on with YC that closely, what are some other ways that he has been pushing the envelope?

<comment><USER13> * teaching a Stanford class / MOOC on startups

* taking more "hard science" companies in YC (fusion, biotech, etc)

* taking later stage companies (Quora, others?)

* getting aggressive about scaling YC #s

I'm sure I'm missing some as well

<comment><USER14> Also, a push for more international teams. E.g. Startup School and office hours in Europe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Exciting times for YC and Alumni. I've always been much more excited in businesses "After the Startup Curve", although "scaling operations [and] managing hypergrowth" is an incredible specialty when compared to just moving the needle from the first million to the first fifty million.

</comment><comment><USER16> I think it's a macro. A company that builds companies.

</comment><comment><USER17> Read "Welcome, All" and thought "finally YC is opening up" :P

</comment><comment><USER18> Look guys, Ali was born and brought up in Iran. Good job Ali jan, keep going.

</comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if Ali found a next Twitter from the YC batch, does he allow to jump into that opportunity?

</comment><comment><USER20> Does YC publish a diversity report card of their partners?

<comment><USER13> You can calculate it yourself: [https://www.ycombinator.com/people/](https://www.ycombinator.com/people/)

<comment><USER21> Amazing reading that how we consider these people a success because they sold their companies but for many of them almost everything they built has been decommissioned. Would we still revere Brunell if his bridges were taken down after 3 years?

<comment><USER22> Success isn't the same as reverence. Making money makes you a success, becoming revered requires building something that lasts.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How you can control what happens in your dreams - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23331130-500-how-you-can-control-what-happens-in-your-dreams/ <comment><USER2> (paywalled premium content)</comment>


Becoming a Freelancer Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.sparklewise.com/becoming-a-freelancer-again/

<comment><USER2> Congrats and best of luck. It sounds like you'll be much happier and more productive in this role (and understandably!)

My $.02: differentiating yourself as a Python thought leader immediately limits your target client base to "people who know what Python is", which is a base with particularly high standards and relatively low budgets.

</comment><comment><USER3> Best of luck.

I think you'll find that becoming known for creative applications of code (e.g. Python) against certain niches will far outweigh trying to become a "Python thought leader."

Since you mentioned an interest in Internet marketing, you could quite literally write the book on, say, how law firms can attract new clients through their websites, and use that as lead generation for lawyers who want to understand the terrain (this Internet thing and how it can make the firm more money) but understandably don't have the time between lawyer-y things to actually do it themselves.

One things I'm REALLY big on is providing free educational seminars for a particular niche. You could call up a handful of local law firms, let them know you're an author who just wrote a book on how law firms like theirs can get more clients automagically through their website, and invite them to an in-person seminar where you'll dive further into the subject. You just might sell a few copies of your e-book this way, but more importantly, you'll be able to sell at scale and in a way that's not as intimidating (to the lawyer who realizes you're trying to close a deal) as a one-on-one meeting.

<comment><USER4> If OPer or anyone wants to get serious about going into a "websites for vertical" like law firms, let me know.

I have literally millions of qualified contacts that span over several dozen verticals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing freelancers should consider is how they present themselves to the market. I used to simply knock on doors as a sole freelancer. That would get me some work, but it was inconsistent. I would be booked for two months, then out of work for three. After reading patio11's blog, and some marketing books, I decided to stop marketing myself as a freelancer. From that point forward, I would lead a software/hardware development firm. It made a big difference. I now market more easily, and land better clients. Plus it allows for me to hire other developers and share the work between all. It also allows for me to launch products through the firm. Which improves our market presence, and increases our workload. Its a win-win.

<comment><USER6> Can you expand a bit more on the difference. What do you say exactly?

Why do you think it makes a difference?

<comment><USER3> It's all about risk.

It's risky for a business to hire someone to "write code", which is how the average freelancer positions themselves. The act of writing code doesn't necessarily translate to the hiring business being better off than they were before they hired you.

Consultants positions themselves to align with the underlying business problem and recognize themselves as an investment vessel, not an expense. "Ah, so your employees are wasting dozens of hours a week on dealing with this crazy Excel spreadsheet that runs your business? Let's find out how we can put together a solution together that will dramatically lower the time spent fiddling around in cells. A quick back of the napkin calculation... your employees dump about 30 hours into this spreadsheet a week. If you're paying $50 an hour to keep these people on payroll, that's close to $100k a year in spreadsheet overhead. Here's what I'm thinking..."

<comment><USER5> To add:

If this is a new product project, a firm is simply positioned better than a sole freelancer. Business value stability, and a firm provides the perception of stability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think you're on the right track in determining what your "value add" is to a client beyond straight development, and that should definitely help you differentiate from the myriad of other freelance developers out there.

We have clients come to matchist ([http://matchist.com/talent](http://matchist.com/talent)) often looking for a solid developer with other areas of knowledge like marketing.

In my own past experience as a freelance web developer, clients always liked when I had additional knowledge and skills to add to their needs beyond just plain coding.

<comment><USER8> Marketing makes all the difference between being seen for a long time to come and just being another cog in the machine.

People who position themselves as something more than a person who writes code do better in the long run. I think developers forget that anyone outside of our bubble have no clue what the technologies are or what they do. They just want their problem solved.

<comment><USER7> Exactly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hey I have been considering the same thing, which was move to part-time work and focus on products. Right now I do full time work (mix of telecommute) with a focus on products (www.bandwave.fm) but obviously time is an issue. The other option is to freelance like you are doing, and I've run into the same kind of roadblock that you are seeing and that is... what do I really wish to offer and what is marketable at a good rate? Anyway, I'm actually leaving for Paris at the end of July if you want to meet up for a coffee that would be cool. I added you on twitter. Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Alex, sure thing, we can meet up in Paris for a coffee! Always good to talk shop with other people :-)

I hear you for your roadblock - I also find it hard to come up with a strategy that uses your skills, with things you love, and that meets a market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wish you the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Merci :-)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Do big companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft pay for Internet data? - <AUTHOR> I, and my company, have to pay for Internet data usage.<p>Do big companies also have to? <comment><USER2> Companies that own their own infrastructure; e.g. literally the fiber across town, may only need to pay the peering fees. Some of the peering sites in the US are non profit, and as such these companies that own their own infrastructure are able to connect at-cost, or even at no cost [1].

I have no doubt that large companies take advantage of the above fact to get their internet "free" [2].

Now, there are still very significant costs in getting fiber to the peering sites, whether they trench it or lease it, and there are also the costs of the higher end routers, engineers to maintain them, etc. So, probably it is more cost effective to buy "regular" internet services for many small to medium office locations.

There is a decent article in Wired [2009] that explains how Google likely leverages all this to significantly reduce their bandwidth costs for YouTube [2].

[1] - [http://www.phoenix-ix.net/aboutus.html](http://www.phoenix- ix.net/aboutus.html)

[2] - [http://www.wired.com/2009/10/youtube- bandwidth/](http://www.wired.com/2009/10/youtube-bandwidth/)

</comment><comment><USER3> See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tier_1_network)

Tier 1 means you're so central (at least in most of the world -- countries with local telco monopolies might be exceptions) that there is nobody upstream of you; everyone else is either a customer (who pays you) or a peer.

None of the companies you mention are Tier 1, so they're all paying someone upstream for at least some of their traffic. Every big company has people working to reduce that cost. For example, Apple and Microsoft might decide to peer with each other in some areas, and carry each other's traffic for free rather than paying someone else to carry it. And we know Google has invested significantly in their own fiber.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seperate the big companies into two groups. Those that provide content & those that don't.

The companies who provide content are more appealing to the end user and so Tier 1 IP providers will be interested in allowing them to host CDN platforms on the edge and connect into their networks so even if they do pay, it will be a very competitive rate. Then peering agreements will reduce the requirement for purchasing IP even more.

Companies who don't provide content but are huge, will have a department specifically for negotiating competitive rates & will again take advantage of peering in a big way.

Dark fibre is a different product to IP transit but again, negotiation teams will work to get huge discount.

</comment><comment><USER5> I don't know the details but those Wikipedia articles might help: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering) [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_exchange_point)

</comment><comment><USER6> Yes, they do. They purchase access from commercial telcos. Even in cases where they operate their own equipment, they will lease dark fiber from a telecom.

</comment><comment><USER7> Some companies will set up their own internal MPLS network, and it starts making sense when you grow to a certain size.

</comment><comment><USER8> Do you mean like the offices that they have, or the datacenters that they run?

In both cases, the answer is yes.</comment>


Isaac Asimov's predictions for what the world will be like in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/03/23/lifetimes/asi-v-fair.html <comment><USER2> Round-up:

✗ EL panels (not yet)

✗ Smart glass (unless you own a ferrari)

✓ Frozen meals + programmable microwave

✓ Lame robots

✓ 3D movies

✗ Fusion power plants

✗ Radioactive batteries

✓ Solar power

✓ Self-driving cars (in progress)

✗ Moving sidewalks (do airport conveyors count?)

✓ Video calls

✓ Mobile data, sharing, e-books

✓ Global mobile phone network

✗ Moon colonies (double fail since he just takes them for granted)

✓ Fiber-optics

✓ Unmanned mars missions, plans for a colony (mars one etc)

✓ Flat screen TVs

✓ 3D display tech demos

✓ Meat substitutes

✓ Digital teaching aids (kinda)

✓ Boredom and consumerism

<comment><USER3> On some of the missing ones:

1\. We have at least one fusion plant I know of, the UK Joint Torus, which I know have been operating for decades. It just consumes more power than it generates. But Asimov suggests one or two, which is strikingly accurate.

2\. We could probably make radio-decay batteries (maybe not AA size, but car batteries running on Thorium or some such, albeit an extremely expensive containment for something running so hot). We probably just don't do it because the radiation risks are too high.

And I'd count airport conveyors as moving sidewalks. Or just the complexity of baggage carrying systemes in those airports, lend that we easily have the technoloy to create weather resistant rotary motor systems as sidewalks, but like Asimovs suggestions of underground housing, cost is the bigger prohibitor than technology.

Also, I don't think the degree of boredom he touches on has occured. Consumerism and the wealth concentration in the US has kept people needing to maintain 40 hour work weeks where productivity is magnitudes higher. We produce vastly more, but work as much as ever. Back in the 60s the sentiment was that 21st century Americans might have 10 hour work weeks.

<comment><USER4> > We produce vastly more, but work as much as ever. Back in the 60s the > sentiment was that 21st century Americans might have 10 hour work weeks.

Isn't that because we now have a very large semi-parasitical managerial class that we need to support? It's almost a retreat into feudalism. Doubt anybody saw that coming.

<comment><USER5> That doesn't make a lot of sense. People don't work because they want to support someone else, they work because they want to support themselves.

<comment><USER6> That comment is at once so amazingly wrong and quintessentially American, it's almost a work of art.

<comment><USER5> Right because people obviously work for the sole purpose of supporting their manager. Not to feed themselves or anything, that's silly American stuff.

<comment> qu4z-2 What about building nice things, or making the world a better place? (Although that's probably truer of the hacker profession than some others)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Asimov's own biases shine through pretty clearly in the initial bit:

 _One thought that occurs to me is that men will continue to withdraw from nature in order to create an environment that will suit them better. By 2014, electroluminescent panels will be in common use. Ceilings and walls will glow softly, and in a variety of colors that will change at the touch of a push button._

 _Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it._

He was, rather famously, an acrophobe who disliked heights and open spaces and never flew when he could help it, so apparently he'd prefer a future without windows and sunlight.

 _There is an underground house at the fair which is a sign of the future. if its windows are not polarized, they can nevertheless alter the "scenery" by changes in lighting. Suburban houses underground, with easily controlled temperature, free from the vicissitudes of weather, with air cleaned and light controlled, should be fairly common. At the New York World's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens. The surface, G.M. will argue, will be given over to large-scale agriculture, grazing and parklands, with less space wasted on actual human occupancy._

This depiction of life pretty much exactly mirrors the completely walled-in life of _The Caves of Steel_ , which many readers found dystopian, but for him was more of a utopia.

[http://stason.org/TULARC/education-books/isaac- asimov/2-11-I...](http://stason.org/TULARC/education-books/isaac- asimov/2-11-Is-it-true-that-Isaac-Asimov-had-a-fear-of- flying.html#.Uh1qGqwecak)

<comment><USER8> Maybe it's because of biases like these, but we tend to vastly underestimate the timespans in which cities can be radically remade. 50 years? Commercial buildings being built in 1964 would have been expected to last 50+ years. Much of Chicago's lakefront is buildings from the turn of the 20th century or earlier. A skyscraper taller than 47 floors has never been demolished peacefully [1]

1 [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20535821](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20535821)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014."

It is a striking finding of cross-cultural studies of suicide that many of the places with especially high suicide rates, and many of the cultural subgroups with high suicide rates among groups who live in the same place, are the advantaged rather than the disadvantaged. While people have to struggle to survive, they stay alive to continue the struggle. When people's basic needs are all met, they sometimes doubt the meaningfulness of living.

"Why Suicides Are More Common in Richer Neighborhoods"

[http://business.time.com/2012/11/08/why-suicides-are-more- co...](http://business.time.com/2012/11/08/why-suicides-are-more-common-in- richer-neighborhoods/)

<comment><USER10> The suicidal in lower income situations could succumb to it in more subtle ways, for example heroin, crack, or meth overdose, suicide by gang, suicide by cop, etc.

<comment><USER11> That seems very different. That's more like exciting, risky behavior mixed in with a deathwish.

<comment><USER12> If you have nothing to loose and a death wish, you go on a rampage. If you have a reputation to uphold postmortem, going that route seems to be out of question. One route would be death due to work exhaustion, which the Japanese actually have a word for: "Karoshi". The other, more direct, is suicide.

There's many ways in which a deathwish can manifest, they're not limited to suicide.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I guess he never anticipated that "the best minds of [our] generation are thinking about how to make people click ads."[1]

[1] [http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/why-this- tech-...](http://www.smh.com.au/business/world-business/why-this-tech-bubble- is-different-20110415-1dhbm.html#ixzz2dDwQHDql)

<comment><USER14> Catabolic Collapse and Rent Seeking are largely the same thing:

[http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf](http://www.ecoshock.org/transcripts/greer_on_collapse.pdf)

Ads, FIRE industries, intellectual property feudalism, and microcode: it's where the fiscal hoarding opportunities are. They're creating little if any real wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> "Even so, mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014. The lucky few who can be involved in creative work of any sort will be the true elite of mankind, for they alone will do more than serve a machine."

This bit is spot on.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _At the New York World 's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well > display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable > gardens._

Amazing prediction!

Well, he got the GM part wrong, but indeed, there was a series called "Futurama" and it DID display "vistas of underground cities" (New New York)!

<comment><USER17> Not complete underground cities, but there are plenty underground marijuana light-forced gardens out there... Even with panels that change colors (some growers use different wavelengths for vegetative and flowering stages). :-)

<comment><USER12> You seem to know an awful lot about growing marijuana. Past work experience?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think it's important to note here that Asimov was never a big proponent of the "science fiction author as Nostradamus" theory. He was always very clear that neither his nor any other writer's predictions should be given any more credibility than the average Joe off the street.

In fact, I'm pretty puzzled as to why this article was written at all.

<comment><USER19> Intentional or not, he has certainly predicted technology that has only recently come into existence. They may seem obvious now, but I wonder how inevitable they seemed during the 50s and 60s? Take for instance the Multivac: it is essentially Wolfram Alpha, even down to the pro-tier pricing he mentions in one short story.

<comment><USER20> I suspect Wolfram Alpha was explicitly designed with Multivac in mind, either directly or indirectly through the general idea of an oracular AI machine.

Google, on the other hand, is a bit more alien--though I have met plenty of people who try to address Google as if it was Multivac (or Siri, I suppose).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> In fact, the animatronic 1964 GE pavillion show that Asimov is talking about can still be seen today at Disney World. It's called the Carousel of Progress, kind of tucked away behind the Buzz Lightyear ride in tomorrowland and sadly (but understandably) not as popular as it used to be.

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney's_Carousel_of_Pro...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney's_Carousel_of_Progress)

</comment><comment><USER22> Cache: [http://www.readability.com/articles/woerybqt](http://www.readability.com/articles/woerybqt)

(New York Times seems to be down)

<comment><USER20> (Because of the _other_ news item today): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286374](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6286374)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I loved this "Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica (shown in chill splendor as part of the '64 General Motors exhibit)."

<comment><USER24> He was right about Antarctica. In 1998 and 2001 my dad did winter missions with the Australian Antarctic Division née ANARE.

Part of his job was keeping the satellite links functional. We got to talk to him on the phone once a week.

On the numbers, he had more bandwidth than I did at the time -- 155kbps. Latency was a bit rough though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> >"Windows need be no more than an archaic touch, and even when present will be polarized to block out the harsh sunlight. The degree of opacity of the glass may even be made to alter automatically in accordance with the intensity of the light falling upon it."

This actually makes me curious. Why don't we have photochromic windows? We use the technology in transition lenses.

<comment><USER26> I think the technology is just too expensive unless you want to show off: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smart_glass)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> What I don't think Mr. Asimov could have imagined is the rise of the Oligarchs, dominated primarily by the heads of the banking industry, though also by the petrochemical and a few other top-tier industries. These individuals have increasingly distorted the free-market system and corrupted the political systems to satisfy their own narrow ends. They are financial protectionists. And because of them a great deal of innovation that could have been has been stymied. I would argue that if it were not for their depressing effects on society, Mr. Asimov's predictions would now look rather underwhelming by comparison, as we would have achieved far more than he predicted. Alas, given our current state of affairs, I do not think it possible for society to advanced very far beyond were it currently stands. And in a matter of decades we are likely to start moving backwards rather then forwards. On that mark, with his concerns on population growth, I believe Mr. Asimov hit it squarely on the head.

</comment><comment><USER28> Why are moving sidewalks so incredibly popular in old SF novels ?!?! The concept is silly. The constant energy use is a showstopper, and even if you assume thorium reactors would handle it, there's material fatigue.

Another early SF prediction which which is baffling today: everything (houses, cars, highways) made of... plastic. Plastic being the material of the future. But perhaps it's not as naive, seeing as early plastic was really durable, some our plastic bowls are still in good shape after 20 years. LEGOs are very durable, too.

Hovercars - ordinary 2D cars are one of most common causes of mortal accidents today. Imagine the chaos with an extra dimension! Hoverbuses - perhaps, but cars ???

But the one that really cracks me up is by Strugatsky brothers: carbonated soured milk (Impossible according to one chemist).

<comment><USER29> The future from the 50s and 60s would also be pretty loud. With the recent discussions about the annoyance of leaf blowers, image the noise of a city where each car would have this:

 _" Jets of compressed air will also lift land vehicles off the highways, which, among other things, will minimize paving problems"_

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Very good Isaac. Except the robots are allowed to kill.

<comment><USER31> I'm sure the drone-bots' creators view it as a matter of preventing inaction which allows humans to come to harm (and not considering the vic's as human, alas)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> "...there will be increasing emphasis on transportation that makes the least possible contact with the surface. There will be aircraft, of course, but even ground travel will increasingly take to the air*a foot or two off the ground. Visitors to the 1964 fair can travel there in an "aquafoil," which lifts itself on four stilts and skims over the water with a minimum of friction. This is surely a stop-gap. By 2014 the four stilts will have been replaced by four jets of compressed air so that the vehicle will make no contact with either liquid or solid surfaces."

Sounds a little bit like the hyperloop, no?

<comment><USER33> The Hyperloop definitely comes to mind, but I think hovercraft are a well- established realization of what he predicted there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The most accurate prediction is to predict that most things will stay the same.

</comment><comment><USER16> > _And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014. > (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at > frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.)_

Anybody knows what happened to that G.E fusion thing he mentions?

<comment><USER35> It was probably a Fusor ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusor)). You can put one on your desk at home, if you care.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Pff, Asimov. I don't understand why people hold him in such high esteem, his imagination was flat and lacking.

Want to read some real futurology and prime-cut sci-fi? Check out Stanislaw Lem. (eg. Peace on Earth -- it will blow your mind).

</comment><comment><USER37> I'd be curious to know if anyone has ever written one of these types of predictions, at any period in history predicting another period 50+ years out, and not had a large percentage of big misses.

<comment><USER38> George Orwell, William Gibson, Star Trek writers.

<comment><USER39> Gibson, like everybody else, had completely missed cell phones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> <i>All high school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology, will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages that will have developed out of those like the contemporary "Fortran" (from "formula translation").</i>

We're still working on this one.

</comment><comment><USER41> _Robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence._

They're good but not common.

<comment><USER42> There are uncommon sort-of-good ones (by Asimov standards), but the semi- common ones are abysmal. Ever own a Roomba? I never will again.

<comment><USER41> I was thinking of semi-humanoid industrial robots, like this (prototype) model from ABB: [http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/fcfbdad9a72cfe08c1257862006...](http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/fcfbdad9a72cfe08c1257862006bcfbf.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> At the risk of sounding pedantic, should the title for this HN submission have (1964) at the end of it?

</comment><comment><USER44> Best: the subtle mis-prediction that there would be a 2014 World's Fair.

I think we have the Web today instead.

<comment><USER45> I think he was only off by a year - [http://www.milanworldsfair.com/](http://www.milanworldsfair.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Not bad, but had to laugh at his statement, "All earth will be a single choked Manhattan by A.D. 2450 and society will collapse long before that!"

Uh, a collapsed society could not support a growing population, Dr. A.

</comment><comment><USER14> Let's judge...

The piece is less optimistic and cornucopian than I'd expected. The first part is pretty light, but it turns a shade dark, especially for. The prediction record includes a few failures but surprisingly more hits than I expected.

 _men will continue to withdraw from nature_ Yes and no. Our environments are more artificial, but we're not living in hermetically sealed enclosures.

 _Electroluminescent panels .... Ceilings and walls will glow softly._ It's simply vastly less expensive and more flexible to have light fixtures than to change out your entire interior room skin when you want to change your lighting scheme. Though what's becoming possible with LED lighting is fairly distinctive. Most lamps are designe around traditional bulbs though.

 _Windows ... no more than an archaic touch._ Asimov highly underestimates the desire of people to see the outdoors. We _do_ have glasses with extensive coatings, though most are aimed at UV and thermal radiation. Again, the low- tech approach of blinds or curtains allows for more styling at lower cost than electronically dimmable windows, though these exist (for a price). Asimov fails to forsee photovoltaic cells integrated into window designs, another technology starting to emerge today. His future is apparently energy-abundant.

 _Suburban houses underground_ Again: costs, tradition, and views make this a very rare exception, though some high-efficiency homes are built partially below grade.

 _Gadgetry_ It turns out that the easiest way to automate meal preparation ... is to centralize the gadgetry at a food-preparation facility. We have TV dinners (which existed in 1964), as well as take-out and other options for food. Though microwaves can be convenient. I wonder how Asimov would have responded to the craze for restaurant-style kitchens in private homes.

 _Robots_ They're rather less common or good than Asimov supposed. As with cooking gadgets, it turns out that it's difficult to design something that can navigate a home (including stairs and uneven surfaces), perform tasks, usefully, and not cost a bundle. Especially when competing with low-cost maid services.

 _No electric cords_ Well, that was optimistic. Though the variety of cordless power tools now available is fairly impressive. I'm afraid, though, that my home is rather infested with current-feeding snakes of various descriptions.

 _Fusion power plants._ The power plant of the future. And it always will be. _Solar power_ Here I'd say we're exceeding Asimov slightly: we've got large plants, though not as many as I'd like to see, and distributed solar in the form of panels on houses and other extant structures is pretty commonplace, even in less favorable locations such as Germany. _models of power stations in space_ alas, are all I suspect we'll ever see. Perhaps several hundred years out.

 _The world of 50 years hence will have shrunk further._ We certainly do have a great deal _more_ transportation, though our basic modes haven't changed, nor have top travel speeds, from what was available in Asimov's day. The biggest change is the proliferation of high-speed rail systems. Slower than jet aviation of 1964, but more prevalent, at least along covered routes. Which exclude the United States. The first such line had already been in operation for a decade, however, in 1964: Japan's Tōkaidō Line.

Hovercraft: other than military applications, not used to any significant extent. Hoverspeed, operator of the English Channel hovercraft ferries, converted fully to catamaran operations in 2000. Along with land hovercraft, the energy required for lift is excessive, directional control a challenge, and the overall effort not worthwhile.

 _vehicles with "Robot-brains"_ In extensive field trials. I'd say we're actually roughly where Asimov predicted we'd be in this regard, not bad.

 _moving sidewalks_ Expensive and prone to breakdowns when used outdoors, but heavily relied on in airports and some other regions of high pedestrian traffic. Though without the benches he supposes. As with other predictions, Asimov goes for flair over practicality: it's vastly more convenient to put benches on a wheeled (or tracked) vehicle than it is to move an entire roadbed. Trolley cars are effectively providing the service he describes, and had been for nearly 100 years when he wrote his piece.

 _Communications_ Yes, we've got A/V communications, but more comms has actually moved to text for a simple reason: it's asynchronous. And easily storeable and searchable. Asimov is also spot-on for satellites, though that's a fundamental technology whose basic concept is largely unchanged from Arthur C. Clarke's first proposals. Direct-dialing weather stations in remote locations _is_ in fact something I've enjoyed, though generally via a Web browser.

 _Moon colonies_ Nope. That gravity toll is a real bitch, Ike.

 _laser beams_ Spot on here: communications are carried increasingly by light, not radio waves, though in fibers, not beamed through space or the air. Astronomical telemetry remains radio-based.

 _television wall screens_ Also spot on. Pity he didn't call for 3D to be a brief overhyped fad, or I'd have been truly impressed.

 _Population_ Well, he only fell short by half a billion, though his US estimate is high (actual is 313 million).

 _increasing penetration of desert and polar areas_ Somewhat, though mostly people are crowding into existing cities. Though the growth of cities such as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas counts as desert growth to me.

 _Underwater housing_ Yes. But not in the way he'd intended. Our continental shelves are still largely habitation-free, unless one has redefined New Orleans and certain boroughs of New York City as belonging to the shelf.... And other than the Costa Concordia, _bathyscaphe liners_ are few and far between.

 _Processed yeast and algae_ Vegemite and nori flakes aside, not so much. And I really don't see the cultured burger going very far.

 _Not all the world 's population will enjoy the gadgety world_ Correct. That part of the population will make the gadgets.

 _They will have moved backward, relatively._ That's rather stunningly prescient. Calls to mind the 99%.

 _Nor can technology continue to match population growth_ Part of the Zeitgeist. The first rumblings of limits were starting to echo about in the 1960s, though the Club of Rome's _Limits to Growth_ wasn't published until 1972.

 _Undoubtedly, the world of A.D. 2014 will have agreed on the [lowering the birth rate]._ Sadly, not.

 _lifted the life expectancy in some parts of the world to age 85._ Yes. Japan most notably.

 _birth control by rational and humane methods_ It exists. Birth control pills were already available by the late 1950s, though formal approval didn't arrive until 1960. And of course, the Catholic Church, GOP, and Tea Party are entirely on board. Sigh.

 _automation_ Yes and no. Great strides in manufacturing (really, we've got to come up with a better word than "hand made" to describe, well, other than hand made stuff), though there's still a great deal of manual processes. In other areas, humans are cheaper, more reliable, more adaptable to harsh or adverse conditions, and more easily instructed, than robots. Though automation and labor costs and rates are presenting challenges. _Machine tenders_ isn't a bad description for many of us, and Asimov's comments on teaching and the place of fundamentals of tech are pretty accurate.

And his comments on boredom may also be more accurate than many hear accept. We're seeing the world from a perspective of another 50 years of technological progress and divorce from direct physical labor -- labor which while it can be wearying, is also engaging. And there are certainly a wide range of psychological issues, particularly depression, present in our 2014.

<comment><USER47> > Robots They're rather less common or good than Asimov supposed. As with > cooking gadgets, it turns out that it's difficult to design something that > can navigate a home (including stairs and uneven surfaces), perform tasks, > usefully, and not cost a bundle. Especially when competing with low-cost > maid services.

He did say they'd be uncommon and not very good. What he didn't forsee is that they would not be humanoid robots.

Roombas are available, and can help clean your house. They aren't all that common, and aren't all that "good" by his metric of what a robot should be able to do, but they do exist, and people really do use them.

Furthermore, UAVs are increasingly common in the military. While some of them, like Predator drones, are remote controlled, some of them can operate fully autonomously for the vast majority of their flight.

And of course, industrial robots are so ubiquitous that they've faded into the background long ago.

So I would say that "uncommon and not very good" (according to his vision of humanoid robots that can replace most manual human tasks) is a fair assessment. He just figured that they would be clumsy humanoid robots, as opposed to more specialized robots that were fairly good at an individual task but can't do anything else.

<comment><USER14> Calling a Roomba a robot ... is somewhat on par with calling a blade of grass a tree. A Roomba randomly careers across a floor probabalistically providing sufficient coverage to fully vacuum or mop it.

Yes, we've got more intelligent robots, but they're a tad more expensive. Industrial manufacturing robots exist, but the reprogramming costs exceed the manufacture cost of the robots themselves. They make sense in very high-value, generally high-volume production. They're _not_ particularly adaptive, though they _can_ switch between different modes (programs) fairly well.

Flying through empty space is a reasonably simple problem. We've had ICBMs for ages. Navigating through complex terrain (ground-based robots, autonomous vehicles) is a markedly more complex domain space.

Most robots we've got at present are very, very highly specialized. Or incredibly stupid, though good enough for the task at hand.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> why do I keep getting a 'server not found' error ? you guys seem to be able to access this url.. however I had to google this heading and read the article @ [http://www.mydogear.com/articles/521d762aa97dca07b21805ea](http://www.mydogear.com/articles/521d762aa97dca07b21805ea)

</comment><comment><USER49> I wish he was right about the education part

</comment><comment><USER50> So it looks like NYTimes is down.

</comment><comment><USER51> It would be fun to write a 'Visit to the World's Fair of 2064'

</comment><comment><USER52> This was amazingly accurate!

</comment><comment><USER53> Couldn't wait for 2014 to post this, huh? :P

</comment><comment><USER54> We still have four months left!

</comment><comment><USER55> Just read Diamond Age.

</comment><comment><USER56> This is a good description of how much we've failed as a society. Since we haven't accomplished most of those things.

</comment><comment><USER57> Did he predict that the Syrian Electronic Army would take down the nytimes?

</comment><comment><USER58> Where's my flying car?!? I was promised a flying car and I want it right now!

<comment><USER59> Unless you are over 60, you weren't. You were promised an oppressive cyberpunk dystopia - and here it is #nsa

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> \- What will the World's Fair of 2014 be like?

\- At the New York World's Fair of 2014, General Motors' "Futurama" may well display vistas of underground cities complete with light- forced vegetable gardens.

\- In fact, one popular exhibit at the 2014 World's Fair will be such a 3-D TV, built life-size, in which ballet performances will be seen.

\- The 2014 World's Fair will have exhibits showing cities in the deep sea with bathyscaphe liners carrying men and supplies across and into the abyss.

\- One of the more serious exhibits at the 2014 World's Fair, accordingly, will be a series of lectures, movies and documentary material at the World Population Control Center (adults only; special showings for teen-agers).

Summary from [http://textteaser.com](http://textteaser.com)</comment>


Henrietta Lacks and Her Remarkable Cells Will Finally See Some Payback - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/henrietta-lacks-and-her-remarkable-cells-will-finally-see-some-payback-11596295285 <comment><AUTHOR> [https://archive.vn/Q88kp](https://archive.vn/Q88kp)</comment>


Preliminary Report: Hawaii False Ballistic Missile Alert [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2018/db0130/DOC-348923A1.pdf <comment><USER2> Assuming this is accurate, that only 1 minute elapsed between first response and Governor notification is impressive:

> Events After the False Alert

> • 0808 Day shift warning officer receives false WEA on mobile device

> • 0809 HI-EMA notifies Hawaii Governor of false alert</comment>