Save the CR100 - <AUTHOR> https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/save-the-cr100-6800510 <comment> amiga-workbench I'm getting really sick of appliances depending on smartphone apps, they're brittle as hell and have no longevity as OS updates kill them off (and eventually as mobile OS's die completely).

I had a right faff on finding a IP security cam that didn't use the bloody awful onVIF protocol and would connect to a network without a mobile app to configure it. I take care of remote access myself, so I don't need the "feature" of having my video streams routed through a server in china so I can view it on the go.

I had the same issue with RGB lighting controllers for my shelving and bookcase, in the end I had to settle on a ESP8266 based controller and figure out the protocol with wireshark, I now have some of my lighting operable from a webpage on my home server.

I really wish there were a decent, privacy respecting hub that could be used for controlling all of this kind of gear.

<comment><USER2> Do you mean something like [https://home-assistant.io](https://home- assistant.io)?

<comment> amiga-workbench Yeah, that's almost exactly what I'm after.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I bought my first Sonos elements in 2006, and used to love them.

I still use Sonos, for lack of a better option (?) but have come to hate it, the devices, the company, the whole "ecosystem", with the heat of a thousand suns.

It updates constantly, you can't ever refuse an update, updates stop the system just when you need to use it, change the UI for no reason, and every update breaks something. Every single iteration is a little slower; I used to keep an oldish ipod touch just to manage Sonos but now it's so slow it's almost unusable.

Since 2006 my use of Sonos HAS NOT CHANGED AT ALL: mp3s are stored on a Nas and they're played in various "rooms"; and sometimes I listen to radios; and THAT'S IT.

Of course Sonos as a company has to support new streaming services and whatnot, but why does it have to break everything in the process, or force all users to upgrade? Why can't it leave us alone??

Every 6 months I try to look for an open source alternative, maybe based on a Pi (+ relay to power up amps on demand) but have not been very lucky so far. Am very interested in any pointers to something simple to implement and that I would completely control.

<comment><USER4> I have exactly the same feeling. It feels like every time I go to cook in the kitchen and open the app on my phone, it brings the update process up. Numerous times, i've lost connectivity entirely, which seems to only be fixed by deleting the app from my phone, re-installing, signing back in, going back through the basic pairing process. It just makes me want to throw the whole thing out. It's beyond maddening!!

Why can't it support bluetooth without purchasing the stupid bridge? Sometimes I want to watch Netflix when cooking and have the audio come out the system. Somebody should bring out a decent competitor to fix these issues. I'd buy it in a heartbeat.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Context: the new firmware upgrade for Sonos speakers will drop support for the CR100 controller.

[http://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off- cr100-...](http://www.techradar.com/news/sonos-finally-kills-off- cr100-controller-and-long-time-fans-arent-happy)

\--

I have to wonder why. Planned obsolescence is an obvious answer, but if the new "standard" methods for controlling the speakers are smartphones or Alexa, it doesn't seem like they gain much from the switch. Is the protocol used by the CR100 that much of a pain to keep supporting? It makes me wonder about their software development practices.

<comment><USER6> They're also claiming in the forum thread it's because of battery issues (battery getting older, more at risk for device to malfunction, etc). Seems like a bad reason to brick a device (and was likely made up once it was decided not to support)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first effects of a world of end-to-end encrypted media streaming. You don't own the content, you don't own the hardware, you can't play whatever you want, you just pay and go with whatever happens to be there. You can change channels like a Radio, that's about it

<comment><USER8> Isn't that life anyway? We're only on earth for a short time. You can't take your music to the grave with you, so why not accept its never really yours anyway?

<comment><USER9> This isn't about accepting it's "not really yours". This is about accepting it's actually someone else's that then has control about what you can and can't do. That entity will often be on earth for even a smaller time than you before it goes bankrupt or loses interest in that product. So you get to spend your short time on earth dealing with product obsolescence instead of owning your stuff while you're alive and even being able to pass it on to your children. It's a terrible bargain.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, end users are now figuring out why it's bad to buy into such proprietary, closed systems. I can fully understand the outrage. Unfortunately I find that most people don't care if you warn them about such things beforehand.

Any product that relies on a manufacturer-only provided online service of any kind to provide its functionality, will simply stop functioning whenever the manufacturer feels like it (or goes out of business, etc). Oh, and it will also most likely not care about your privacy, but that's a given these days.

Also, any product relying on a closed-source smartphone app (using proprietary protocols to communicate with the product) will also become increasingly annoying as time passes. At some point, the app won't get updates anymore, and some time after that you'll have to keep a special old smartphone around just for the purpose of running that app. Sounds great, eh?

On the other hand, many 30, 40, 50 years old electronics products still work fine today, and can be used, as they were self-contained, and wholly owned (and fixable) by the user.

p.s. the fact that ageing batteries are cited as reason by Sonos also further shows what a stupid idea it is to put non-replaceable batteries into products. I really hope that regulation will finally end that practice soon.

</comment><comment><USER3> > _due the age of the battery in the controller, it has the potential to > overheat when left charging for extended periods of time_

This is some argument on Sonos' part! The reason why the battery in the CR100 is "old" is because Sonos chose to build a device with a non-replaceable battery!!

If they're so concerned about safety why don't they offer to replace the batteries (for a reasonable fee)??

<comment><USER11> According to some of the posters in that Sonos forum thread, aftermarket batteries are available for the CR100. What I'm not sure about is how easy they are to replace, but it's clearly possible for some users.

<comment><USER12> It's not hard to replace; probably the hardest part is separating the adhesived back rubber cover and then sealing it again after. The battery uses a modular connector.

[https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced- setups-229000/guide-...](https://en.community.sonos.com/advanced- setups-229000/guide-to-changing-the-cr100-battery-5216)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > due the age of the battery in the controller, it has the potential to > overheat when left charging for extended periods of time

...uh, what? I assume I'm missing something here, because this doesn't make any sense. Can someone explain?

<comment><USER14> It's pretty common. It never "finishes" charging, instead however many watts of the charger gets dumped as heat, indefinitely.

<comment><USER13> But this is why lithium ion batteries need special lithium ion charging circuitry in the first place... If you don't have this, the cells will happily take as much energy as you give them and then promptly catch fire.

It doesn't make sense to me that this would only now be a problem. Either the circuit was designed correctly, and this excuse is bullshit, or they should have issued a recall ten years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Their main concern sounds like a liability issue (they cite the aging Li-ion battery heavily). They're not selling it anymore, so why not bundle together some internal docs and release some sort of technical manual or detailed repair guide to give users the option of replacing the battery? Of course this would be a "you people are on your own if you screw it up" but that's to be expected.

<comment><USER16> > Their main concern sounds like a liability issue (they cite the aging Li-ion > battery heavily)

Gratuitous power autonomy is quite high on my "things I won't buy" list. I was once scouring Amazon et al for some cheap bluetooth speakers for stationary use as a "poor man's Sonos", but they all came with their own integrated power bank. Ended up buying a radio that had BT input just as a secondary feature. About three times as expensive as originally planned, only to avoid seeing one more 18650 (or pair thereof) idling into decay under my watch.

I'm not always that eco-aware, but when I get stuck on an issue I tend to get irrationally zeaolous (probably a quite common form of mild bigotry)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm against bricking devices arbitrarily, but this product was more than 12 years old and hadn't been sold since 2009 (I had one in 2006 when I was still in college and Sonos's killer feature for me was that it worked with the original streaming music service, Rhapsody). Frankly, giving customers $100 credit seems kind to me. Plus the CR200 still works and they don't have plans to brick it, so there is that.

I feel for some of the users, but reading some of these complaints makes me roll my eyes. I've owned lots and lots of electronic devices over my life — and many audio systems — I can't recall any other connected system having 13 years of support.

<comment><USER18> I think what we're trying to rail against here is that why should 13, or whatever, years be an _acceptable_ figure.

My car is older than that. My toaster over is old, I've had CRT TVs that were much older before they died.

I'm gonna go with a big fat juicy 'No!' here. We ought to be building for longevity and serviceability. Don't end support, just open it up. Publish the relevant source code, documentation etc.

We shouldn't accept that it's ok or _normal_ to dispose of a thing just because it is X years old.

<comment><USER17> It's an accessory. If we were talking about the speakers themselves, I wouldn be more sympathetic, but in this case I'm just not.

The reality is that the nature of connected devices makes things different. This isn't the same as a CRT TV (but also, look at how much it costs and how difficult it is get parts for a CRT in 2018). And like it or not, your next car won't be as repairable as your current 15 year old car, because it will require custom software and bench access and updates that most mechanics will not pay for or maintain.

At least these Sonos users have the option of not installing an update. This isn't like Revolv where it just stopped working.

The CR100 uses Flash IIRC...it is absolutely ancient. I'm not sure we should be realistically asking development teams to maintain separate code bases for old, obsolete software. Google and Amazon changed backends that made the CR100 stop working. Are you saying that that's a travesty too?

Legit question: how long should any company/service be required to add backward compatibility to old, obsolete products?

I fundamentally agree that we should be building for longevity and serviceability, but that isn't always possible. The platform and stack the CR100 was built on is not modern and cannot be easily maintained. And even if the software was open source (which would be great), that doesn't change the fact that if the endpoints on the services it relies on change, nothing can be done.

The only reasonable compromise I can see would be an update that would allow the CR100 to continue to work only with local files. Otherwise, at least users can opt not to update if they rely so heavily on a 13 year old controller.

<comment><USER19> > And like it or not, your next car won't be as repairable as your current 15 > year old car, because it will require custom software and bench access and > updates that most mechanics will not pay for or maintain.

Noting that the automotive market is increasingly opening itself up to the kind of obsolescence problems the software industry has never bothered to come to grips with (indeed, is to some extent _actively against solving_ , from incentives at the business level to personal disinclination on the part of most programmers) isn't exactly a resounding counterpoint to worries about how software problems are affecting less crucial hardware devices.

> Legit question: how long should any company/service be required to add > backward compatibility to old, obsolete products?

There's a point in here that's legit: perpetuity is a high bar, most products don't last forever. But there's also an extent to which this question is largely a dodge of the real question: what is "old"? Why do we accept or feel forced to accept a decade or shorter timeline?

> we should be building for longevity and serviceability, but that isn't > always possible. The platform and stack the CR100 was built on is not modern > and cannot be easily maintained.

You know how we talk about code smells? (Or maybe we don't anymore, it was always a weird term and maybe it's _so_ early 10s now). Pretty sure the word "modern" when it comes to software should be understood as a "thought smell."

 _Every_ platform/stack _any_ software is built on will be "not modern" by software standards in well under a decade, and is quite likely to grow more difficult to maintain over time. An acknowledgement of the value of longevity and serviceability doesn't mean much while implicitly accepting software- related value choices that mean longevity and serviceability remain not only difficult to attain but difficult to _conceive_ of.

> And even if the software was open source (which would be great), that > doesn't change the fact that if the endpoints on the services it relies on > change, nothing can be done.

If the software were open source, when endpoints change, the threshold for continuing utility is whether there's a developer out there somewhere who cares enough to work on it. Or could be made to care by consumers bearing cash.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As far as I understand, it all works in the local network. It shouldn't be too hard to create a server to translate its calls to the new api (that the smartphone app uses), no?

edit: I don't understand why you'd down-vote this. I'd love to correct it if I said something blatantly wrong, just tell me. Also, I wasn't dismissing this as a non-problem, but rather questioning if there'd be an easy solution. My parents are also affected BTW.

<comment><USER21> Yes, but i don't think this is an option for the people complaining.

<comment><USER20> I was asking to see if there's anything I'm missing. I was thinking about doing this myself. Sorry for not being clear - please see my edit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> ... and once again, Stallman (and the FSF) are proved right.

[https://xkcd.com/743/](https://xkcd.com/743/)

If you buy into a proprietary ecosystem, especially a DRM-encumbered one, and doubly-especially a streaming one, don't be surprised when the inevitable happens and your non-ownership of any part of the system bites you.

I speak from personal experience. I lost some of my small Kobo library when they dropped support for their Web reader, and I closed my account (no support for my everyday / work laptop).

<comment><USER5> I'm an FSF supporter (technically FSFE), but I think we should be careful about these claims. It's not like open source projects never drop features. You could say "yeah, but they wouldn't be forced to upgrade" \- but neither are the users in this case, as the reply says.

What the users here want is to continue getting the new features and fixes of the new versions of firmware, while keeping support for the CR100. Even with the source, that would require someone to integrate those two parts, which might be prohibitively expensive.

Don't get me wrong, I think they should have the right to do that if they wished, but it's not like it would just fix the problem; it would only allow them to fix it if they could afford it.

<comment><USER23> With free software no one can shut down a service like they are doing. A product will continue to function and it will continue to receive updates as long as there is enough interest by the open source community in that product.

Let's take for example Android smartphone, there are some old smartphone that thanks to the community are still updated to the latest version of the OS, on the other side when Apple say it's done you take your outdated iPhone and toss it in the bin, no one can continue to support it.

<comment><USER5> They aren't shutting down a service, they are updating a product. Specifically, they are releasing a new version of the speakers firmware that removes support for the protocol used by CR100.

All you wrote regarding Android is true, and that's why as I said I support the FSF and Free Software in general, all I'm saying is that you can't take that community for granted. Maybe someone would appear to re-add support for the CR100 to the new firmware - or maybe nobody would.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Death by redesign... [https://www.alexkras.com/death-by- redesign/](https://www.alexkras.com/death-by-redesign/)</comment>


Machine Learning and Computer Vision Resources - <AUTHOR> http://zhengrui.github.io/zerryland/ML-CV-Resource.html

<comment><USER2> In computer vision other section I would add:

OpenCV: [http://opencv.org/](http://opencv.org/)

Pointcloud Library: [http://pointclouds.org/](http://pointclouds.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah definitely :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your efforts. I retweeted this on Sina Weibo: [http://weibo.com/1642316384/C8ZE7mf0a](http://weibo.com/1642316384/C8ZE7mf0a)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a great list, and I've added it to my evernote database for future reference, thanks!

On a slightly different note, has anyone else noticed that people have gone back to making bookmark pages again? It used to be that everyone did that, and then Google came along and well you didn't _need_ a bookmark page because you could just search for what you were looking for and find it? But now people are going back to bookmark pages.

</comment><comment><USER5> This list is too personal and I personally don't find it beneficial. If you are looking for introduction to computer vision in general, get a good book such as "Computer Vision Models Learning and Inference" or start directly with OpenCV mentioned before.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, the cv part i haven't read too many things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Shameless plug: [http://michal.io/machine-learning- resources/](http://michal.io/machine-learning-resources/)

</comment><comment><USER7> lot of tools and skills but I think what I have most trouble with (if not the most important point) is I don't know what problems I want to solve with it because there is no connection between the tools available and the problem appropriate with it.

When it comes to building software it's simple (build accounting SaaS software or build a API for something) but for machine learning it's not clear as to what I'm trying to build or want to build.</comment>


Send an email to the future with time machiner - <AUTHOR> http://www.timemachiner.com/

<comment><USER2> What would be really cool is if you could make it send an email when something happens. Few examples:

\- Let me know when the weather forecast for Boston is above 18* C (so I could plan a picnic for tomorrow, for example)

\- Notify me when the next episode of my show is on/next time my team is playing

\- Notify me next time Paul Oakenfold is playing in Boston (which may be far away, but I sure don't want to miss it)

\- Let me know when the USD/GBP exchange rate drops under 2 GBP for 1 USD (again, far, far way:) )

I know each one of those would require extra programming, but that would be a VERY cool service. You could set up some kind of platform, so people can write their own conditions/event checks.

Plus, amassing all that interest data could be quite valuable if, for example, I'm Paul Oakenfold's agent.

<comment><USER2> More:

\- Notify me when this movie comes out in theatres/on DVD.

\- Notify me when somebody mentions me on Hacker News :)

\- etc., etc., etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Why can't I send them to the past? It seems like a really obvious and useful feature. And isn't it supposed to be spelled timemachinr?

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice! Dave Winer used to run one of these at <http://www.mailtothefuture.com/> but shut it down because the idea only "sort of worked". Here's hoping it sticks better this time.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just sent myself a future-mail telling myself to go to the driving range this weekend. I hope it works, because I'm totally gonna forget otherwise.

</comment><comment><USER6> The reply messages take too long to get back...

</comment><comment><USER7> I'll write my review of this on Dec 31 2030.

</comment><comment><USER8> I could see this as a handy web service.

</comment><comment><USER9> "send a message back if you can"

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I sent myself an email tomorrow. I'll let you know how it works out.

<comment><AUTHOR> It worked. Received my email at 6:02 a.m. Pacific Time. Now if only they could add time of day to the request.</comment></comment>


Show HN: BestSFBooks, Mashup of the Best SF/Fantasy Books - <AUTHOR> I'm releasing BestSFBooks today:
http://www.bestsfbooks.com
I was inspired by this HN post from a few weeks ago:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2978027
BestSFBooks ranks science fiction/fantasy books according to how many awards they've won or been nominated for. I included all the big ones (Hugo, Nebula, etc.) and also more obscure awards that I like such as SF Site Editor's choice. Once I had all the awards in there it was easy to start creating a New Book list based on award winning authors.
I could tell the app was working as soon as I saw the two book lists on the home page. They're excellent!
The stack is virtually identical to the stuff I used to build PickHealthInsurance. BestSFBooks is built with Rails 3.1.1 (HAML, Sass, CoffeeScript). It's hosted on Heroku and MongoHQ. I used the Twitter Bootstrap CSS toolkit, which I continue to find hugely innovative and useful. As always, data acquisition and cleanup was the hardest part.
I've wanted to build something like this for quite a while. As my time becomes more valuable, I'm becoming less tolerant of bad books. For a laugh, check out the "prototype" that I created ten years ago - http://www.gurge.com/amd/top100
Please send feedback! <comment><USER2> _"As always, data acquisition and cleanup was the hardest part."_

I'm most interested in this piece of the project. What were your particular tools and methodologies? How long did it take you, once you identified your data sources? Any interesting stumbling blocks or problems that were solved along the way?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've written a lot of data tools as part of Urbanspoon and subsequent startups. I like to collect publicly available data, clean it up, normalize it, and then release it in a more useful way.

Hot tips for crawling data:

      - Cache pages locally while you work on the indexing
      - Nokogiri is awesome
      - Don't be afraid to use regular expressions
      - Initially, put data into a spreadsheet (not the db).
        That way it can be checked in and diffed.

I also have a lot of subtle tricks for cleaning up messy data. For example, to see if two similar authors refer to the same person, I have a method that converts an author name to an author key. The key is just like the name, only it's been uppercased, apostrophes removed, etc. Plus weird stuff like this:

      # replace all vowels with the letter E
      s = s.gsub(/[AEIOUY]+/, "E")

It's little things like this hack that make a big difference in data quality.

(edit: formatting)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I've been doing some scraping projects lately and really like it a lot. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but it gets easier and easier as you go along, I think.

1\. Caching pages is definitely a great idea while debugging. Especially if the data source has a request limit :)

2\. I've never heard of Nokogiri, but it looks like BeautifulSoup for Ruby. I've found that Python has worked for everything I need so far, but thanks for the reference.

3\. I suck so bad at regex, but using it more will help me climb that mountain.

4\. One tip I've used is writing out the "INSERT INTO TABLE..." statements along with the scraped results. I definitely use CSV (and Google Refine) for general clean up and spot checking.

5\. You should write a 'Data Scraping One-liners Explained' ebook :)

<comment><USER3> I spent the first half of this year writing scrapers for every newspaper in the UK. My Top Regex Tip is <http://rubular.com/> \- this thing saved me HOURS of my life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> OK, I have to admit at first I thought there was something wrong with the site because I didn't recognize enough books... but after reading some excerpts of books off the lists, I'm psyched -- turns out I just haven't been finding the good books for a long time, so now I can.

Suggests:

* show me excerpts on-page (if possible from amzn?)

* allow community +1/-1 on books and generate lists based on top-rated by site users

* commenting, facebook or disquss, on each book

(little issue: Facebook "like" button on main page and book pages doesn't seem to be working -- dunno if that's facebook's problem not yours)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Nat - I fixed the like button. Turns out that you have to specify the href param when using the iframe, unlike twitter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This fairly reeks of awesome. If the ones I don't recognize are as great as the ones I do, I'd say you have a damn fine site there!

</comment><comment><USER6> A hook into Google book library reference 'available at your local library' would be awsome.

</comment><comment><USER7> looks awesome! I wrote a similar site that aggregates the general fiction and non-fiction based on how many awards and lists they are on. <http://thegreatestbooks.org>

I built it on Rails as well

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Update - GeekWire picked it up:

[http://www.geekwire.com/2011/hunger-science-fiction-books- sp...](http://www.geekwire.com/2011/hunger-science-fiction-books-sparks)

Also, thanks to webwright for the title suggestion.

</comment><comment><USER8> Cool! Very nice.

I'm sort of slowly working my way through the double winners of the Hugo and Nebula (kind of a lifetime goal, I guess).

It took me a while to find the "Hall of Fame" for books, but that is what immediately wanted from a site like this (I don't care so much about the year- by-year rankings). Maybe make it more prominent?

EDIT: also, I think there's a big difference between nominations and winning. Would be cool to sort based on actually won awards, not just nominations.

</comment><comment><USER9> This is awesome - I've been searching for somewhere to find _good_ new SF/Fantasy for a while that doesn't just entail blindly searching Amazon.

</comment><comment><USER10> I like it. One suggestion or request really however. Can you add a link to Audible in addition to amazon & the kindle for us audiobook fans?

</comment><comment><USER11> Awesome job. It is similar to existing <https://www.worldswithoutend.com/>

</comment><comment><USER12> This is really, really fantastic. Been a huge sf/f reader my whole life (collect 1sts of lots of favorite authors... hovering around 6000 now). I basically used to do this manually: end of the year check Locus, check SF Site lists, check Hugos... read them all.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is fantastic. I think you should follow natbro's lead on a few things - allow disquss commenting and show excerpts of the book.

Also I have a series to add: Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" series. It is like 5 books, if I remember correctly. I'm at work...

</comment><comment><USER14> Yay!

<http://www.bestsfbooks.com/b/3119/The-Children-of-the-Sky>

The Children of the Sky Series: Zones of Thought #3 by Vernor Vinge (Tor, Oct-2011)

</comment><comment><USER15> There seems to be a really heavy bias towards relatively new SF; is this because there are more awards now than there used to be, or because you only have data going so far back?

</comment><comment><USER16> This is fantastic! Perfectly simple and useful.

Only glitch I've run into so far is that the search function doesn't work. As far as I can tell, there's no type="submit" for the form.

<comment><USER17> Hello. That is because it is a auto-complete search field. If you search for something that does not exist, nothing will happen. If you type for example "Krak", you will get auto-complete suggestion for "Kraken".

Maybe it would be an idea to show a message like "No results..." if what the user types does not return any matches in this search function?

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> You're going to cause me to spend far too much money. Dang you.

</comment><comment><USER19> Well done, you! I like the site a lot, bookmarked.</comment>


Ask YC: Are You Guilty of Not Solving World's Problems? - <AUTHOR> http://www.paraschopra.com/blog/personal/are-you-guilty-of-not-solving-worlds-problems.htm

<comment><USER2> If only it would be more obvious HOW to solve the world's problems.

Some photographs I recently saw really touched me, for example that series about child marriage. How do you go about changing something like that, which is going on in a completely different culture, in countries far away?

Not saying it is impossible, just that I don't know where to start (yet).

Maybe building shiny happy web apps also helps to solve those problems, though, because it provides an incentive for "third world countries" to aspire to our way of life.

Also, those touching photographs are being spread over phot sharing apps and blogs...

Presumably poverty is also the root cause for child marriage? If the kids were not poor, their parents would not have to sell them away.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly! How I wish there was some HOWTO of solving the world's problems. But there is none. So, it is upto us only to go out and solve the world. Very little changes by sitting at the desk and making yet another new app.

I agree that indirectly we all are doing something to change the world. But don't you think we should be keen on solving something more directly?

<comment><USER2> I don't think that only solving the most basic problems is worthwhile. Like, is it OK to make music? It doesn't help against hunger in the 3rd world, so it is a useless activity? But maybe occasionally some guy who is working on solving the hunger problem finds the strength to go on by listening to your music. Or so I imagine...

Nevertheless sometimes I wish there was something more direct I could do. I just think the original article was a bit short on suggestions.

Hm, that reminds me of an idea of mine, that some people gave me good feedback about. Perhaps some people here like it and want to join in making it? Basically, I envisioned a bug tracker for the whole world: [http://www.cambrianhouse.com/idea/idea-promoter/ideas- id/NcJ...](http://www.cambrianhouse.com/idea/idea-promoter/ideas-id/NcJhLLF/) (I suggested this for the StartupWeekend in Hamburg, but unfortunately something else was selected...).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree with you that it is _worthwhile_ to help someone by making music. But that is a very indirect way. Wouldn't it be more helpful if a better percentage of entrepreneurs worked on projects that help the world _directly_ and _powerfully_?

Your idea is interesting. Maybe <http://www.suggestionbox.com/> is something like that?

<comment><USER3> >Wouldn't it be more helpful if a better percentage of entrepreneurs worked on projects that help the world directly and powerfully?

I think the world would be a better place if people in poor and starving countries could sustainably enjoy a standard of living similar to what we have in the west. Did the west get so rich because of people trying to help us, or was our wealth a by-product of the capitalist system that we never consciously strove for? I would say the second.

<comment><USER2> There were a couple of bloody wars in history, too, some of them might count as striving for something (freedom)?

I think most people in poor countries are also poor because they are being held hostage by their government.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The problems of the world are too big for me. I start trying to solve those with the people and communities I am involved in and know something about (i.e. _how_ to solve _their_ problems).

I hope, perhaps naively, the goodwill and network effect propagates and the sum of the whole is greater than that of its parts and certainly that of my initial action.

It's the best I can do and stay sane.

<comment><AUTHOR> _> The problems of the world are too big for me._ I would argue that the problems might be too big but they do have simple solutions. For example take microfinance. The problem this industry is attacking is lack of banking facilities for the poor. The problem is huge but the solution is simple and not too hard to scale. Similarly, don't you think that once we figure out the right model at the fundamental level, it shouldn't be hard to scale up rapidly?

 _> It's the best I can do and stay sane._ I don't know how attacking bigger problems prevents you from being sane. In fact, you become _saner_ as you get out of your comfort shell and experience what world has to offer.

<comment><USER2> I don't think setting up Microfinance is simple at all. I would rather have studied the stuff in depth before I tackle it (economics, that is).

So far, I am not even fully convinced that Microfinance really improves peoples lives. OK, the Nobel price for that one guy might be an indication, but it is not proof. It could still just be a scam.

Then, how do I deal with legal situation on location? There might be civil wars, communism, dictators and what not getting in the way. How do I estimate who is worthy of credit? I don't even speak any weird languages, so I probably couldn't even communicate with the poor..

<comment><AUTHOR> Honestly, I don't know about the country you live in. But here in India there are tons of problems needing to be solved. You name a problem - hunger, poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, etc. - and India has it. But despite that, it is surprising that many Indian entrepreneurs are focusing on web2.0 me too startups. Perhaps they can better utilize their time by learning things and doing stuff which helps the country _and_ makes money for them.

<comment><USER2> I live in Germany. I don't think we have the kind of problems you have in India, but of course there are plenty of problems to solve in Germany, too. We do have some homeless people, for example, but I think the cause is usually physical and mental illness, nothing I could help with (I think).

Another problem is that just because I have some money on the bank, doesn't mean I am not still struggling for survival myself. I have wanted for a while to dedicate part of my time to helping the needy, but atm I don't even find the time for my startup aspirations while I work to pay the bills.

Also, I think if an Indian entrepreneur is successful with a web 2.0 startup, it might still improve lots of people's lives, as it strengthens the economy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Wake me up when you have an _actionable plan_ to solve _a_ problem. _That_ would be interesting.

Striking a dramatic pose, pointing a finger at your peers, and yelling "sellouts!" is not a plan, unless you're a punk musician. Perhaps you should start a band.

</comment><comment><USER6> My life plan has been to succeed in business, then spend my time and money trying to make the word better in innovative ways. Step one is just taking longer than I hoped...

<comment><USER7> Hey Bill Gates from twenty years ago, how's it going?

Seriously, though. This is not a bad approach. I don't know anything at all about bioengineering a more plague-resistant wheat crop. I don't know anything at all about how to calm two nations dead-set on the destruction of each other. And I sure don't know ANYTHING at all about how to practically and easily reduce our dependance on greenhouse-gas-producing oil.

That said, if I put my knowledge about how the web works into an application that people use and like and buy, then build up enough capital, I can fund the people who DO know those things, or at least know how to approach learning them. It's not a bad plan.

You're life's not wasted unless you waste it. I hardly consider what I do a waste. It's all building towards a larger goal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe, we are just deluding ourselves all the way when we should doing stuff that matters.

You know what the irony is. Even if some bioengineer makes a more plague resistant wheat crop, it wont solve world's hunger problem. India produces surplus crops. Even then it imports crops from outside. Even then people are dying here from hunger. So, part of the solution is to come up with right supply channels. This is just an example. We can always find ways where we could contribute more directly instead of waiting for things to get lucky so that we could fund other people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's something in our society that makes us feel obligated to save the world. But it's not as if our lives can be played like a video game where whoever does the most for others gets a high score. We just live in the world, and pursue our goals as best we can.

Put another way: In general, you are probably effecting a positive change if you are making money and are not in trouble for doing so.

</comment><comment><USER9> Not my responsibility. I'll just do what makes me content without getting in anyone else's way... Which coincidentally is creating products which benefit the world, for profit.

</comment><comment><USER10> Quite so.

Its actually quite easy for those of us in technology to make ourselves sound as if we're solving the world's problems, when doing nothing of the sort. For example, my full-time job is working at a company that provides forex for retail investors, yet I can say that (and this language is used in company PR) I am democratizing the forex market and empowering millions of people!

A lot of web 2.0 companies are especially guilty. They've the long-term importance and impact of a fashion house, yet their PR is all about revolutionizing this or that.

</comment><comment><USER11> The best we can really do is to live our lives in such a way as to minimize the impact on others. This means a lot of work on your part, much more than the average lazy American (including myself) wants to deal with.

Here is a short list of things you can do in your everyday life to help:

1) Research all brands before you buy in order to make sure they do not support sweat shops or other kinds of unethical behavior. Don't buy Nike shoes and stop drinking Coca-Cola.

2) Stay away from all big chain stores like walmart. They put huge economic stresses on companies which cause these sweat shops to pop up in the first place.

3) Make your carbon footprint as small as possible. This is not only for the sake of the environment. Petrol cartels cause a huge amount of suffering and damage to the countries they operate in.

4) Buy green. Not advertising fake green but as environmentally friendly as possible. This can only be done with brand and product research.

5) Talk about these issues. By bringing them up in your every day life you will help spread awareness. I know that you may not want to be "that guy". The only way to change things really will be through social pressure and cultural change.

6) Read. You have to be aware of what is really going on if you want to know the right thing to do. I suggest John Perkins' newish book: The Secret History of the American Empire. It really opened my eyes.

</comment><comment><USER12> yes.

but only because the flexibility to solve the world's problems usually comes from having a backbone of less useful or niche-driven apps to fund your world solving work. imo.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am guilty of not solving the world's problems.

On the other hand, the work that I _do_ do generates economic value, some of which is taxed, some of which _does_ go towards making the world a better place. Some more of that I donate myself directly. So I am not _completely_ useless... Just mostly :-/

<comment><USER3> >On the other hand, the work that I do do generates economic value, some of which is taxed, some of which does go towards making the world a better place.

When you weigh the negative effects of programs created from spending tax dollars against the positive effects, I suspect the net result is something close to zero or even below that. I wouldn't count on doing good for society by paying taxes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> As Umair in his original article suggests, how about an open source list of world's problems and then a wiki for their solutions so that people may collaborate. Any takers for this idea?

PS: I understand the irony here that Wiki is sort of web2.0 technology. But that's okay!

<comment><USER14> problepedia.com ?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, something like that. Or maybe, something like open source InnoCentive?</comment></comment></comment>


For Suzuki, Respect for Bats Is Key to Hitting - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/sports/baseball/for-ichiro-suzuki-respect-for-bats-is-key-to-hitting.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought this article interesting when looked through the lens of ensuring your developers have the best equipment available to them.

For Suzuki, taking care of his bats, gloves and spikes evidently pays off.</comment>


Visual breakdown of revenue streams of Big 5 - <AUTHOR> http://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-5-tech-giants-make-billions/ <comment><USER2> I find Microsoft's 18% Other category interesting. Anyone have an idea why almost 1/5 of their revenue is un-categorized?</comment>


Looks like Craigslist is testing out a new design - <AUTHOR> http://imgur.com/NY2Cj.png

<comment><USER2> What's different?

<comment><AUTHOR> sidebar

here is the old version: <http://newyork.craigslist.org/></comment></comment>


Japanese Newspaper for Recluses, by Recluses - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/japanese-men-who-dont-leave-home <comment><USER2> Missing from the title, it is also a publication _about_ recluses.

I thought this would be an ultra condensed version of news for people that kinda live under a rock. Like using Wikipedia's "in the news" section titles as your only source of information about the outside world.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have any of their articles been translated into English?

<comment><USER4> There are some: [http://www.hikikomori- news.com/?cat=38](http://www.hikikomori-news.com/?cat=38)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The original title may be a bit too clickbaity sure, but the new HN title does lose some signal. (current HN title: "A Newspaper by recluses for recluses", removing "The most interesting newspaper in japan..."

Giving you reason you should read the article is useful info, even if it's subjective. And it helps the reader know what to suspect. Is this a landing page for the newspaper? Or is it someone's opinion or review if it? That signal is all lost now.

Maybe instead of saying "The most interesting" it should say "An interesting". that way the signal is not lost.

<comment><USER6> The problem with "The most interesting..." or "An interesting..." is that it adds zero signal.

Everything is interesting to _someone_. So what?

It reminds me of the early days of Macintosh programming when we put "the" in front of all our variable names, like theResource, theWindow, theFile, and theCursor. It was just a lot of noise that added nothing.

Strunk and White got this right: Eschew needless words.

That said, I was glad to see this and read the article. Atlas Obscura has such a knack for finding the most _interesting_ topics!

<comment><USER7> Starting your variables with 'the' or 'my' is a huge red flag. It betrays a complete lack of understanding of why variable names even exist.</comment></comment></comment>


Emoji Apps No Longer Welcome in App Store Following Native iOS 6 Support - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2012/11/02/emoji-apps-no-longer-welcome-in-app-store-following-native-ios-6-support/

<comment><AUTHOR> Some of the top (grossing) apps in the Entertainment section are Emoji apps that have been around for a long time (dating back to before native iOS support). Those devs must be reeling from this.</comment>


'You Get Sexual Advances 24/7': What It's Really Like to Be a Female Engineer - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2018/02/06/brotopia-emily-chang-tech-sexual-harassment/ <comment><USER2> > In this exclusive excerpt from her new book, Brotopia, which comes out today

They've been spoon-feeding these excerpts for some time, in order to hype the book. Since it's actually out now, it would be better to just have post for a review of it, rather than for each artifact of its PR campaign.

At the very least the title should be updated to indicate it's from "Brotopia."

</comment><comment><USER3> I seriously don't doubt things are like this. Holy crap.

<comment><USER4> I'm old (almost 56) and retired so I'm perhaps out of touch. Have things changed this much?

I just asked my wife (who I met at Silicon Graphics) to read the article and asked her if things were like that at SGI. She said no, there was little to none of this. I'm sure, people being people, there was some but her memory matches mine, it wasn't rampant, there were no "24/7 sexual advances" that just wasn't a thing. Or if it was we both didn't notice it.

I made the comment that I didn't have enough game to harass anyone like what is described in the article and I didn't know any programmers that were like that. My wife thinks that maybe the programmers of today are really different than they were 20-30 years ago.

I dunno, I wonder if this is just normal life at every company now or if these are some companies with a worse culture than others. I sure hope these are not the norm. If these stories are the norm we're headed for a depressing world where men and women don't like each other very much. It's hard to start there and end up as partners.

It seems like a lot of the fun of flirting would be viewed as harassment, which is a shame, flirting is fun when both people are into it. You can do it without any sexual intent at all, I used flirt shamelessly with my admin at SGI. I got called on it when I stopped (I got busy with a project). My boss's boss called me in and asked me "why did you stop flirting with Kim?" I explained and he said "Kim is going through rough divorce, she could really use the attention, please find some time to give her some." So I did, but it was harmless fun, we both knew we were just playing, it wasn't going anywhere. Would that be OK in today's climate? Seems like no.

<comment><USER5> And yet you met your wife at work ;)

<comment><USER4> Yeah but dating coworkers was fine back then. And flirting was OK. Hell, I was seeing 3 other woman at the same company in the same building, they all knew about each other and were fine with it [1], when my wife swooped in and decided she was serious. She sent those other women packing :)

Articles like the one from OP make it sound like the women and men are at war, just doesn't seem like fun time to be dating. But I'm not in that mix so maybe all this is a bunch of outliers, who clearly aren't having fun. Maybe there are a bunch of men and women in their 20's and 30's getting along just fine. That article paints a pretty different picture. Maybe it's just that there are some asshole men who are making life miserable and they are finally getting some attention. The article made it sound like all the men are assholes, "sexual advances 24/7" etc.

[1] Yeah, I know I said in the first reply that I had no game. And I didn't but around 32 I gave up on women, I sucked at it, so I stopped trying. Guess what? The Larry that put women on a pedestal was unattractive, but the Larry that ignored women was hugely attractive. I kinda wish I had gotten that memo a decade earlier :(

<comment><USER2> > just doesn't seem like fun time to be dating

That's an understatement: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/02/12/it...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/soloish/wp/2018/02/12/its- tough-for-me-to-know-where-the-line-is-the-metoo-era-is-making-dating-more- confusing/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The title sounded pretty objective, but the article itself is pure flamebait.

Preaching to a choir is divisive and counterproductive.

</comment><comment><USER7> I have never witnessed this kind of behavior first hand at any of the companies I've worked, and there are very few people I've worked with I can imagine perpetrating this kind of behavior. I really think there is a percentage of bad apples in tech that are really ruining it for the rest of us. And tech would be better for not just women, but also most men, if we could root them out.</comment>


Ask HN: Why can't I buy this .app domain? - <AUTHOR> I just had a weird experience on NameCheap. I found a .app domain that I really liked and wanted to buy it. Unfortunately, I got an error message after trying to add it to my cart.
As an example I'll be using `drive.app`. There is no whois record for this domain, but https://domains.google says it's unavailable:

    $ whois -h whois.nic.google drive.app
    Domain not found.
    >>> Last update of WHOIS database: 2018-12-29T10:51:11Z <<<
 Here is also a link to my screen capture of domains.google: https://i.imgur.com/an9Gp4M.gif
Thanks! <comment><USER2> You might be surprised to hear that Google has a product named "Drive".

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I used that as an example because I didn't want to share the domain name that I wanted. There are a bunch of single-word domains which are not available, but have no WHOIS record.

<comment><USER2> My guess stays the same: your word is either a Google trademark or a domain name Google is itself interested in and has reserved it for possibly future use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> .app is owned by Google. Google can make their own rules on this domain top level and block e.g. drive.app !

<comment><AUTHOR> They seem to have blocked a lot of single-word domains that do not have a WHOIS record. They mark some as premium, but even with that, there's no way to buy any of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I imagine it's not available. Namecheap does that sometimes. It says something is available when it's not.

Incidentally, I own a drive.* domain. Have no idea if it's worth anything. I've been meaning to point it at my personal nextcloud instance but been too lazy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah I figured it happens because they only check if there is a WHOIS record. At first I thought they registered it automatically after I showed interest (like people claim GoDaddy does sometimes), but that's why I started investigating. Looks like domains.google is the "source of truth" since Google owns .app after all. I've previously thought that if a domain is not available, there would be a WHOIS record, but I guess that's not the case here.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure whether public WHOIS records cover all TLDs or not. Perhaps the newer ones like .app are not available? In any case, running whois on drive.app in the terminal tells me "domain not found".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Funny enough, I did the same thing a few days ago and noticed the same thing.

Noticed it was available, then tried to register it and after a refresh it was unavailable.

Not sure if it was just a glitch or whether NameCheap was registering domains.

</comment><comment><USER6> I had a similar experience that a domain was shown as available, but when I check out, it said unavailable for purchasing or something.

</comment><comment><USER7> I bought a few hundred for a project, which one?

</comment><comment><USER8> Just for laughs why not email the Google domains team?

<comment><AUTHOR> I might just do that :)</comment></comment>


The Power of Photos - <AUTHOR> http://mittermayr.tumblr.com/post/26699540226/the-power-of-photos

<comment><USER2> Roman here has stumbled upon a _very_ powerful force in products. Emotions are the reason why we get up in the morning. It's what gives life color and variety and meaning. It's the reason why we have friends, why some of us might enjoy work, why we prefer to live "life" instead of lying in bed, waiting to die.

What Roman refers to in his photos is the fact that they are an incredibly efficient vehicle of emotions. In a small 480x320px package, you can reminisce about your unrequited crush, your first child just hours old, or your passed- away parents showing you how to use a computer. In that sudden surge, you take a sharp breath, close your eyes as your head begins to spin. You have just experienced a more-significant-than-average moment in life.

I would go as far as to say emotions is the primary metric of life. The "best" times of your life are when you are feeling a surge of emotions, indelibly marking it on your brain as a memorable time. The other times when you don't feel anything tend to fade away until its nothing but a bland grayness when you try to recall that period in time. To maximize life is to maximize the memories you can remember. You maximize the memories you can remember by experiencing more emotions.

Everyone wants to live meaningful, memorable lives. This is a _primal_ need.

.

If emotions give life value, what if we can inject more into ourselves? Somehow we "cheat" the system and get more emotions than what is naturally due to us. This exists. We know this technique as "going to the movies." The reason why people pay $12 to watch a 2-hour long movie is because of the emotion stimulation that we yearn and crave for. It represents a very dense serving of love, humor, coolness, loneliness, accomplishment, disappointment, schadenfreude that leaves reality that much more bland and gray.

But wait, you might argue. I'm a diciplined software engineer. I'm objective, diligent, and focused. I don't have any time to waste with sissy emotions. I'd argue that if anything, as engineers, we're even more addicted to emotions than anyone else. We chase after the pure bliss that comes from building something ourselves with our own hands. That emotion is so powerful that it overtakes what normal people regard as "fun" -- movies, fiction books, computer games.

.

So, what does this mean for our startups? It means that for people who _get_ it, it offers a powerful design mechanism that makes products that give _primal_ value. If you have an effective mechanism to trigger emotions, you have built something of value that people desperately desire.

This applies to any sort of startup -- not just social network / photo apps. Add a narrative to the workflow; make your user feel things. Let them feel a heightened sense of accomplishment. Let them laugh because of an industry inside joke you included. Letting your users feel more things while they use your product is the surest way to beat your competition. More emotions mean more perceived value. More perceived value means more profit.

<comment><USER3> great point of view.

<comment><AUTHOR> totally agree

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not too sure about the bit that says our brain stores everything. There's a school of thought in psychology that works on hypothesis that our brain only stores partial information, and the rest is reconstructed. Bit like a fantasy, where you imagine the most likely outcome and context for the bit that you remember. I can't find it right now (how ironic), but the example was, that if everyone close to you (parents, brothers, sisters) insisted and told stories about you that did not actually take place, you would eventually accept them as reality, and be 100% convinced that this is what actually happened to you. Anyone fancies an experiment?... :)

<comment><AUTHOR> i agree, this sounds much more reasonable ... and I think this explains why we quickly lose details of situations ... they are likely not deemed important enough (or possibly can be replaced with blurry bits and pieces and reconstructed). not a brain scientist. although this whole thing got me curious for sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Today, we know that our brain is capable of storying an insane amount of > data (estimates value it at around 2.5 petabytes, that's 2.5 million > gigabytes (more here).

It won't be long before this no longer seems like an insane amount of data. It's less than a thousand's of today's commodity hard drives.

<comment><AUTHOR> i know, insane! looking forward to that :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Can you imagine how Google Glasses will change this experience? You will be able to record everything you see, every day, every moment. Imagine wearing Google glasses all the time, for 15 years constantly recording everything. Then you will really be able to relive every moment of your life.

<comment><AUTHOR> i wear glasses and for a while, i was considering trying this as an experiment (there were various options available with a camera in the frame and such) ... just to take snapshots every few minutes and do that for a week or so. thing is, this most likely will top the point of redundancy, where a sequence of images might just not be relevant anymore after the first image in a particular scene...

<comment><USER7> it is going to be a great tool for monitoring employees. muahaha

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Great write up. My current startup is working on exactly this problem (pulling together all your photos from different devices and making it easy to find a specific moment). You might want to check it out, it should make the backup and explore process a little smoother; <http://shoeboxapp.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> i like the idea of separating free from paid through original full resolution and really-good resolution. it's rare that I need full-scale photos, and even in those rare cases, I often get by with a lesser quality shot that I can still print at a reasonable quality.

the only thing I hope you guys will figure out is the sheer amount of data. photos means videos for me, I own a DSLR which records beautiful, and I mean BEAUTIFUL CINEMATIC FULL HD video ... This is the most touching and pure recorded material of things I've ever created. And they start at 300MB up to 2-3 GB sometimes. It might be a great song at a concert, it might be an interview I did or a whole lot of other things contained in 1-10 minutes of video. And while everyone surely sees this happening in the future, transferring these massive amounts of data to an online (my photos alone exceed over 300GB) is really hard to imagine, especially with the fear of losing it all through a crash. Which, I also have at home, in terms of risk. And selecting/picking certain photos to upload is going to ruin my master- scheme of things, it'll lead to new disaster for me.

So, if there will/is a way to upload EVERYTHING, which my bandwidth probably supports in a 1-2 months time-frame, and all my data is super-secure for LIFE (my life-time at least), then well, then I'd be happy to hand over all my most emotional material.

I'll check out the service when I get to it, it might be a great way to collect all my mobile snapshots from various sources and use it as a collector of being on the move.

<comment><USER8> You've got the idea. We're focusing on great clients to make the upload painless and keep everything up to date. Videos are next, but as you point out a lot harder.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't understand this sentimental attachment to the past.

<comment><AUTHOR> go on ... explain, would love to hear

<comment><USER10> What is there to explain? Why the heck would anyone want to remember all the details of their lives? Worse, have them around for anyone to see (e.g. Facebook and friends).

I am unable to imagine some motivation for people _wanting_ this.

<comment><AUTHOR> hm, I would see how you personally don't feel like wanting this, but being unable to imagine why somebody would want it seems like a pretty sad thing to say.

photos capture moments. and since many photos are taken in the middle of happy, memorable moments, they represent an anchor to that moment back in the past.

life is rarely a ride of joy 24/7 365. and going back to these memories, I find, is a very interesting and often out-of-the-moment experience hard to find elsewhere.

<comment><USER10> Photos capture pixels. You get attached to it, like some people get attached to other inanimate objects (trinkets, lockets, and so on). It seems hard to believe people need these things to summon memories, but to each his own, I guess.

<comment><USER11> Every single human I have ever met has a profound reaction to seeing photos of both their past life and those of others. The further the distance in time and the closer the relationship, the deeper the reaction in general too. In addition, no one has perfect memory or a means to access all memories. This includes some rather well known savants!

Perhaps you are asking if there is retrieval value from photos? Yes, very much so due to the context, flow of information (in time, space and relationships) and emotional content.

From an external perspective (which is perhaps the lowest value), imagine if we had access to photo and possibly other media streams throughout the lifetime of key historical figures like Einstein or Newton or even your parents?

So, maybe the question should be, pbsd, are you even human? I am only half- joking...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fliplingo – IFTTT for human translation - <AUTHOR> https://www.fliplingo.com/automation

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN! We've been working hard and we're very excited to announce Automations on Fliplingo made available across 9 social media and blogging platforms! We made it super easy for you to communicate with anyone across the web, by automatically human-translating all your posts on every platforms you already use: Facebook, Twitter, Buffer, Wordpress etc.

Translations take less 15 minutes on average and we have a network of over 12,000 translators waiting for content to be translated. I'd love to get your feedback as I've been working hard on this and I believe this could help people communicate around the world.</comment>


NPM packages: they ain't free, you know - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/npm-packages-they-aint-free-you-know-e3506278314c#.lp275ttn8 <comment><USER2> I enjoyed the article, but I really, really want to hear more about the Foxes

<comment><AUTHOR> Big Kev is asleep on the lounge next to me. Little Kev is under him somewhere. Toula, Foula and Agape are curled up in the clothes dryer, it's still warm because I had to wash all my linen today. Silkie is under the bed screaming again. I've given her some fox prozac and it seems to be helping. She is a troubled soul. Mr Smithers will be missed, but has gone to a better place.</comment></comment>


Expatriates Stack Exchange - <AUTHOR> http://expatriates.stackexchange.com/ <comment><USER2> Nice wealthy people from nice rich countries are "Expats". People from poor countries are "immigrants". It's an interesting language hack society developed.

<comment><USER3> Within the expat community I think there is a different distinction. Expats (to me, and to some of the people I know who use that term to describe themselves) are on a temporary assignment ("secondment") for work. People who move to another country on their own, without a company transfer, and/or who intend to stay there indefinitely, are not expats. There are also plenty of cases where an expat becomes "localized" and stays somewhere longer, but is no longer considered an expat by their company, and perhaps no longer by their local friends.

Different people use the term in different ways, unfortunately including what you said. But the above is how I look at it.

<comment><USER4> > People who move to another country on their own, without a company transfer, > and/or who intend to stay there indefinitely, are not expats.

That first part is a really strange criterion which I've never seen before.

As for staying indefinitely, that's why I don't necessarily consider myself an immigrant - I've been here for six years, but the future is always uncertain. I might have a different opinion if Germany allowed dual citizenship through naturalization, but they don't.

<comment> Dirty-flow It's allowed but not for all nationalities.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's hard to imagine how it could survive. Even the Startups site (supposedly) didn't meet the StackExchange criteria because it only averaged 4.9 questions/day:

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup- busin...](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/6243/startup-business)

StackExchange replaced Q&A sites that were completely backward in their approach (eg. requiring signups to see answers), but StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward. Questions that might involve some healthy discussion rather than a straightforward answer get shut down too easily, and they forfeit decent sites (eg. Startups, after 3 years!) just because they didn't meet some arbitrary minimum activity criteria. The data dump download doesn't even work, so now there's just a tonne of information that people contributed which is lost.

(edit: data dump download actually does work, but it's still such a waste to discard the momentum, Google indexing, etc.)

<comment><USER6> Your thesis is that "StackExchange itself is becoming a little bit backward", but the statements you use to back that up have been part of Stack Exchange from the beginning. Also, the things you point out that are 'broken' are part of the formula that makes the network succeed.

Stack Overflow was not built for discussion. The FAQ says: "Not all questions work well in our format. Avoid questions that are primarily opinion-based, or that are likely to generate discussion rather than answers." I understand that you may want those types of questions to exist there, but that's not the original purpose of Stack Overflow. (Sidenote: different sites, depending on their topic or maturity do allow more open ended questions, but I believe you may be referring to 'closing questions' on Stack Overflow). I sympathize with this point though because I believe that there are probably a class of questions that could exist on SO, that are currently closed, but may need to be treated in a different way than normal Q&A.

Your second point about closing sites that aren't working is also intentional. Some of your complaint was about the fact that the data dump was not available, which was actually not true. It's also intentional that the data dump exists so that if we decide the site is not a good fit for our goals, everyone else can still reuse that data ( i.e. [http://www.brightjourney.com/](http://www.brightjourney.com/) ) This might be related to your first complaint which boils down to 'It's not hurting anyone, why not just leave it there?' The answer to that is more complicated than I can summarize here, but there are many different things that go into making a successful community, and one of them is defining what 'successful' (and 'not successful') means. And there is a process for dealing with 'not successful' which is transparent. The criteria is not arbitrary. It's reasoned.

Joel Spolsky elaborates on this in the following talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpGA2fmAHvM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpGA2fmAHvM)

(I work for Stack Exchange.)

<comment><USER5> I understand that it's intentional and what StackExchange perceives as being necessary, appropriate, etc.

The problem is that this approach is under-serving the needs of StackExchange's users.

I don't think that SE needs to be transparent here. It's up to you guys to decide how you want to run your site. I just think the current approach will result in the success of competitors that are less trigger-happy on shutting down questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have been both an "expat" and an immigrant (UAE, Qatar, Libya). Here is the difference. As an "expat" I never intended to stay in the country for long. As a young immigrant I went to South Africa settled bought a house had kids and businesses and eventually became a citizen.

</comment><comment><USER8> I like to read /top/month or /top/year/ of many subreddits. With StackExchange there is only top, and I can't see a way to come back a long time later and see what's new in highly liked questions. Are there any third party sites that cater to this?

Relevant because I imagine I'll read the top questions now, and again in a year with many questions coming up both times.

</comment><comment><USER9> My instincts are that country->country specific forums are more valuable. Americans in Italy, like me, or Australians in Germany, or Canadians in Spain, or whatever. Because a lot of the value in these things is helping navigate the local bureaucracy, culture, and lifestyle for someone who is new to it.

<comment><USER10> tags should help, but after browsing the site, I am not sure they do.

Stackoverflow works well because it is really easy to scan only questions about the topics I am interested about. The tags are quite precise and there is general consensus on what they should be. I look at the "perl" tag, often, or at the "XML" one... voilà!

With a "soft" subject, like expats, it's harder to filter interesting questions. It doesn't naturally lead to accepted categories, and most of the info I would be interested in wouldn't fit in a single one.

So either the site stays low-volume, and I can scan all questions, and rarely find one that I am interested in. Or it becomes successful and chances are that I will miss the threads I would have liked to read.

Bother...

<comment><USER11> The site _just_ came out of private beta, so tags are a bit of a mess. We're cleaning them up now, and working on conventions for location / country tags, which do make narrowing questions much simpler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What's up with stackexchange menu bar? It is in unknown to me language (if language at all).

But if I view the source code or copy, I get plain English, what the hell?

Example: [http://i.imgur.com/Gcyrwpe.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Gcyrwpe.jpg)

<comment><USER11> You have any browser extensions that might be misbehaving? (I work for Stack Exchange). Nothing on our side could be sending that to you.

<comment><USER12> Using other stackexchange sites is fine.

I am no longer able to validate whether addon-less browser would work, as the issue is mysteriously resolved now.

<comment><USER11> I blame Cthulhu. Mystery solved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Very nice, like it. Already came across some helpful questions and answers.</comment>


Ask HN: Can reading SICP and doing its exercises get you hired? - <AUTHOR>

I'm reading SICP and want to complete most of its exercises. Seeing never got a chance to be in a functional programming type of course, I feel like it would be beneficial for to learn more about the paradigm along with compilers and interpreters -- the last two exercises in the book particularly have my interest in the long run. I worry that it could be a waste of time, and that I should be focusing on more practical projects before looking for a first job.
Every review I've read on the book has talked about how wonderful it is in really giving the reader a rigorous general foundation, and having a good foundation in a variety of topics is what makes a great programmer, right? I feel that most prospective employers don't really care about that, though.
So my question to you is if one doesn't have many OSS projects, but rather one or two on github along with having finished SICP's exercises and a blog for explanations to complement those, do you think said candidate would be a decent first job prospect? In otherwords, is SICP worthy of a CV bullet point? <comment><USER2> Unfortunately, it depends on what sort of job you're going for, and I would be surprised if there wasn't regional differences too. Plus some people have negative preconceptions about the sort of person that would go through SICP (happily, they are exactly the sorts of people you don't want to work for). If you're looking to join a larger company or looking to enter the job market in the next 12 months or so, then probably experimenting with more frameworks and getting some code up would be better bang for your time. Even better if you have contributed to existing OSS projects.

But for your own general longer term career development, SICP is a very good bet. But SICP wasn't really designed for home study so it will be hard going. Personally, I would be very impressed if an interviewee made it halfway through SICP by themselves. I have tried multiple times and never got very far before .. er ... reprioritising.

If you want to learn more functional programming, I highly recommend learning Haskell with Learn you a Haskell (<http://learnyouahaskell.com/>). This is a much easier start to functional programming and get you productive quickly. Haskell will force you to really learn functional programming as there isn't an easy imperative backdoor (not to say you can't write imperative code in Haskell - see ([http://www.haskellforall.com/2013/05/program-imperatively- us...](http://www.haskellforall.com/2013/05/program-imperatively-using- haskell.html)) for example, just its not particular easy how to get there). My current project is writing a web app in Haskell and its a very interesting experience.

If you want to learn functional programming, but still be attractive for jobs, then I would recommend learning Scala ideally with the 'Functional Programming in Scala' coursera course and then working through Odersky's "Programming in Scala" book. Scala is a JVM language so it can interoperate easily with Java code, and I've seen companies in London using knowledge of Scala as a signal of a good quality Java developer. It is also (successfully in my view) a multi-paradigm language which can be used both as a functional language, and as an imperative one without feeling too much like a compromise on either side. Though in my view, its harder to learn functional programming properly when you have an "easy out" back into the imperative world.

Also, check out communities you can join such as (<http://lambda-the- ultimate.org/>) or Haskell Cafe or local Meetups with others interested in functional programming.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> "I worry that it could be a waste of time"

It's education. If you want to stay 20 years in this industry, you have to invest in your education. Don't worry, just do it. Solving the problems would make you a better problem solver.

"I feel that most prospective employers don't really care about that, though."

That's right. Most prospective employers don't care. Don't work for them. If you have to, read my last answer.

"In otherwords, is SICP worthy of a CV bullet point."

Yes, really good developers would appreciate the effort. Employers won't care but the senior developer taking your technical interview may appreciate it.

"I should be focusing on more practical projects before looking for a first job." Yes, you must do that. Nothing beats showing a perfectly operational website. And depending on the profile you are targeting it can be a Android game or Web game or scraper or anything. Don't worry your github profile yet. Once you start building stuff it will come alive.

You can also check out <https://www.udacity.com/> for some practical courses. They are taught by awesome people and are free. All these courses focus on a project to teach you basics of computer science. And you get real world skills.

1\. Building a Search Engine - Introduction to Computer Science - <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs101>

2\. Building a HTML5 game - HTML5 Game Development - <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs255>

3\. Building a Blog - Web Development - <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253>

4\. Building a Browser - Programming Languages - <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs262>

5\. Building blocks of any non - trivial software project - Design of Computer Programs - <https://www.udacity.com/course/cs212> .

All the best learning CS, building things and contributing to the world.

</comment><comment><USER4> I work in embedded software, but I've always been a bit weak on the hardware side of things (I know quite a bit about hardware, but I always had to drag out an electrical engineer for problems they deemed trivial). I took the MITx Electronics and Circuits class, and so far it seems that I haven't found an employer who cares one bit. I hadn't put it on the resume/CV, but I have mentioned it in cover letters and such for employers that it seemed relevant.

I wouldn't let this point of pessimism stop you (it's not stopping me, I'm taking Machine Learning now). As others have indicated, this will probably let you pass job interviews others can't. But in my experience with regard to the job application process, it will likely be something they ignore, and I would try to get them to talk to you about it in another fashion (bring it up in the interview, cover letters, etc).

Note that this is from an US perspective, I know the ideals behind a CV and a resume are quite different so you may want local advice. However, if I were making a CV for an academic position in the US, I'd probably still leave it off.

</comment><comment><USER5> I used to conduct interviews at my previous company. We asked a programming question that nobody was able to fully answer in the first go, so seeing how far a candidate got and how well they explained their thought process was a gauge of their ability. My suspicion is that someone well versed in SICP's exercises would do very well on that exercise, as it involved parsing text into an appropriate data structure and subsequently performing operations on that data structure.

SICP will serve you well in interviewing, and don't worry so much about OSS projects, most people aren't involved with OS S when they are just out of school (I think older programmers make the best OSS contributors, but that is a personal opinion).

</comment><comment><USER6> This morning I listened to the latter part of Lecture 2B:

      (define (cons x y)
         (lambda (m)
            (cond
               ((= m 0) x)
               ((= m 1) y))))

      (define (car z) (z 0))
      (define (cdr z) (z 1))

As Ableson says, it's made of air.

SICP is not a functional programming course - changing values and creating state comes in Chapter 3 [2nd Edition]. It is a course in the creative use of wishful thinking.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would be more interested to read what you had to say about the exercises in your blog. If your posts were thoughtful and relevant to the job opening, that would have more weight than just a bullet point saying you had finished the book.</comment>


White House considering phone app for gun background checks - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/14/politics/trump-gun-legislation-background-checks-phone-app/index.html <comment><USER2> If that were available for private sales, then they could make it a crime for both buyer and seller to transfer a gun without application/registration.</comment>


Microsoft's Photoshop Blunder: Racist or Shortsighted? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsofts_photoshop_blunder_racist_or_shortsighte.php

<comment><USER2> This is a good example of what is wrong with the US these days.

In Poland people read the story, laughed, and moved on. Fact is, it is extremely improbable to meet a man in Poland that looks like the middle guy in the photo. There are black people, but they are African and look different.

But in the States people went ballistic over the story. Racism! No cultural diversity! Ethnic cleansing!

I think Americans need to decide whether they want to pay attention to race or not. You can't have it both ways. If race isn't important, laugh at this story and move on. Stop discussing it and making accusations. Also, stop asking for race in polls, stop doing selective university admissions, stop running special programs for ethnic minorities. Just forget about the whole race thing.

If race is important, by all means discuss, but then why pretend everyone is equal?

<comment><USER3> Oh please. Yes, some people in the US are hypersensitive to kinds of racism in a manner that tends to be less common in Europe. But Europe has its own issues and claiming it's some example of "what's wrong with the US these days" is just silly.

How sensitive are Poles to anti-semitism? There are almost no Jews in Poland because those that survived the Holocaust were driven out (sometimes violently) in the decades following WW2. This was the same time when Blacks in the US fought for and won their civil rights, incidentally. So the US has some thorny problems that aren't fully resolved that Poland doesn't have.

<comment><USER2> I didn't say Europe doesn't have its own issues -- my point was that the US seems to be trying to ignore race while being obsessed about it. That doesn't work.

<comment><USER3> When you are observing about 300 million people as a single abstract entity you are almost certain to find contradictory behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> People are just overreacting to a simple case of localization effort.

A multinational corporation would never be racist because when the main motivation is profit and you are serving across all demographics the last thing you can afford to be is been racist.

<comment><USER5> It rings true to me that big corporations tend to be not racist. That doesn't mean, however, that no one or no group of people working for Microsoft (or any other corporation for that matter) will ever be racist. And if they are doing PR or the ads it is very much possible that their racism becomes visible as something that "Microsoft" is or does.

I don't, however, think that this is the case here. But it was stupid to doctor with the picture. It's a generic enough photo, so why not just buy a new one for the Polish ad?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interestingly, neither the original image nor the manipulated one can be called racist. The trouble only comes from realizing we're looking at a before and after.

Microsoft generally goes to great lengths to ensure people are not offended. It has to, because of the sheer size and diversity of its markets. Raymond Chen has blogged about one apparently innocuous issue [[http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.a...](http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2003/08/22/54679.aspx)], and there must have been many, many more across Microsoft products.

Marketing works better if you reflect your audience's tastes. Doubtlessly someone calculated that the other image better suited Polish tastes, for which a racially diverse cast only serves as a vivid reminder that the image was marketed for an American audience. This doesn't make either the Poles or the marketing racist. The only thing "racist" was the mistake to clumsily manipulate an existing image instead of using a brand new one. Penny wise, pound foolish.

<comment><USER7> _Marketing works better if you reflect your audience's tastes. Doubtlessly someone calculated that the other image better suited Polish tastes, for which a racially diverse cast only serves as a vivid reminder that the image was marketed for an American audience._

Supplementary point of information: Poland's ethnic make-up diverges massively from that of the USA -- according to wikipedia the last census suggested there were a grand total of 4500-odd black people living in Poland (pop. 38 million). They have some Vietnamese, but they're still pretty rare; Poland's ethnic minorities are almost all eastern European. So the original ad would push "exotic foreign company" buttons, which is not what you want to do if you're trying to present yourself as a regular local business.

(On the other hand? "Mindlessly stupid" just about begins to sum up what they did with photoshop ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> And much outrage would there be if they had started with the Polish version, and changed it for the US to make it more culturally diverse, instead of the other way around?

<comment><USER9> Really. Does anyone think that the original was an actual picture from a corporate meeting room? I mean, it may be sad, but how many meetings are composed of a caucasian woman, a black man, and an asian (?) man? Clearly the original was a setup designed to pander to diversity.

I think the real evidence of racism here is that we're so _sensitive_ to color that we feel compelled to engineer any communications imagery to portray something aside from the real outlook. Pick any marketing slick, and you'll see something very much resembling this.

If you want to point a finger somewhere, point it at the dogma of false diversity.

<comment><USER10> _"how many meetings are composed of a caucasian woman, a black man, and an asian (?) man"_

I've never worked anywhere that this would be unusual at all. It's true that manufactured diversity is used in communications a lot, but workplaces tend to be pretty ethnically heterogeneous as long as they aren't in monocultural regions.

<comment><USER9> Yes, my workplace has representatives of many races and cultures as well. Heck, it's owned and run by an asian woman (who is darned good, by the way).

Really, it comes down to statistical sampling. For the canonical marketing slick, you must have a woman, a caucasian (might be that woman), a black person, and an asian and/or hispanic (probably) man. If you take any random set of people from your organization, what are the chances that you're going to get that mix of representation?

The sample size is so small that it's extremely unlikely that any random sample is going to bring in such a broad mix, no matter how broad the total population is. Thus, it's obviously contrived -- and more to the point, engineered to pander to "politically correct" sensitivities.

<comment><USER11> _Yes, my workplace has representatives of many races and cultures as well. Heck, it's owned and run by an asian woman (who is darned good, by the way)._

Was it really necessary to add the parenthetical comment? Is there anyone at HN that would judge a person's abilities by their gender and ethnic background?

<comment><USER9> Why would you think that the motivation for my parenthetical was the fact that she's asian and/or female? I'm actually defending against preconceptions of corporate executives, not of women or asians.

I'm in the habit of making such comments because of what I see as a fairly pervasive anti-corporate prejudiced across our society. It appears to me that many, even most, people assume that corporate executives are money-grubbing scum who care not a whit for their customers, employees, or society at large. I'm trying to say this this is not the case with my employer: she's socially conscious, sensitive to the needs of employees, and tries to do the right thing in business.

The comment may not have been necessary -- that was why it was in parentheses -- but I saw a hint of an implication that my workplace was overly homogeneous, a "good ole boys' club". If such a slight was unintended, I apologize.

<comment><USER11> In a sense, your motivation is beside the point--we only have your written word, and the comment can be read as some sort of qualifier (since your boss is a female and an Asian).

I'm not insulted, or even upset--I just thought it was odd comment.

And, FWIW, I agree with your parent comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> As a black man, I don't find it racist that the picture was cropped. But I do think it was naive of Microsoft to think that people wouldn't notice and cry foul. They should have just used a different picture altogether.

<comment><USER13> Out of curioisity, how do you feel when white people are photoshopped over for the appearance of diversity?

<comment><USER12> I feel the same as when the black person was edited out...it wouldn't bother me either way. But I think that companies should realize that not everyone feels the way I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's racist because it's so f'ing lazy. If they wanted to make the 'Polish' version of the ad they should have taken a new picture.

<comment><USER14> Not to mention they didn't even bother editing the hand! Lazy Microsoft strikes again.</comment></comment>


Quantum entropy source on an integrated circuit for random number generation - <AUTHOR> https://www.osapublishing.org/optica/abstract.cfm?uri=optica-3-9-989 <comment><USER2> I said it before in similar threads, I'll say it again: I believe hardware random generators don't solve any problem that we have.

We know how to build secure RNGs in software. The one and only problem we have is that not everyone is using them.

<comment><USER3> > We know how to build secure RNGs in software.

What secure RNGs do we have that don't require an entropy source?

<comment><USER2> We have plenty of entropy sources. The only situation where we have a problem with that is the so-called early-boot-time-entropy. However hardware RNGs don't solve that either, because, well, they need some kind of initialized OS to access the hardware in order to work.

<comment><USER3> Are you trying to make a point?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _a monolithically integrated QRNG, composed of a light emitting diode (LED) and a single-photon avalanche photodetector (SPAD), has been recently demonstrated at 1 Mb /s using silicon (Si) photonics technology_

For 32-bit integers, 1 million bits per second is equivalent to 31,250 random integer samples per second.

For comparison, a Mersenne Twister on GPU can generate 2.9 billion samples per second and on FPGA it can generate 26 billion samples per second [1]. One can only imagine what a custom ASIC would be able to do.

So the current quantum chip RNG is roughly 100,000 times slower than GPU and a million times slower than an FPGA.

I realize that the purpose of this QRNG is cryptographically secure RNG and Mersenne Twister is not for that purpose, but I was just curious about the performance.

[1] [http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/slig/papers/tian_AHS09.pdf](http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/slig/papers/tian_AHS09.pdf)

<comment><USER5> An mt requires reading only 400ish numbers to work out its internal state and exactly predict its output thereafter. its also biased, which puts bias into any simulation using it.

one of the best performance hwrngs atm comes in the raspberry pi.

one of the worse is that used by (old versions of)ms excel. which im still not sure if they fixed the high probability of creating extreme values.

if you need performance one of the best algorithmic pseudo rngs is in the rabbit stream cipher.

____ quantum random number generator would scare me. whats to stop the nsa from entangling it with their own hardware and controling its output (only half joking)

<comment><USER6> About the half serious part, I don't think that an entangled RNG could transmit any information.

<comment><USER5> ever since the Chinese published that they can now use entanglent to transmit information faster than light. following it up with that quantum comms satelite recently im not sure what to think anymore.

surely a better answer is "we dont actually know anymore"

[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601658/first- demonstratio...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601658/first- demonstration-of-10-photon-quantum-entanglement-sets-new-record/)

<comment><USER6> Your summation is not true; all they've claimed to have done is create a quantum encryption link, which means that if someone tries to eavesdrop on it, it will garble the message for both recipients.

There is no FTL communication.

<comment><USER5> thats isnt how the project was billed.

the first part of the project is quantum encryption. the second is ftl communication [https://www.rt.com/news/328988-china-quantum-info- teleport/](https://www.rt.com/news/328988-china-quantum-info-teleport/)

The satellite's first mission would involve establishing a cryptographic communication line between Beijing and Vienna by creating "[the encoding and sharing of a secret cryptographic key using the quantum properties of photons] between a ground station in Beijing and the satellite, and between the satellite and Vienna."

Scientists then plan to conduct satellite entangled photon quantum teleportation between stations located in the Chinese cities of Delingha and Lijiang or Nanshan, which are separated by more than 1,200 kilometers.

____

following the ftl publications in 2013 Spooky! Quantum Action Is 10,000 Times Faster Than Light [http://www.livescience.com/27920-quantum-action-faster- than-...](http://www.livescience.com/27920-quantum-action-faster-than- light.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It always makes me a little bit sad when people get excited about about fancy "quantum" things that don't use the full potential of quantum computation.

With classical computing, if you plug in a widget and that widget spits out a bunch of supposedly random numbers, then you have to take it on faith that the widget isn't cheating and generating highly biased output. (For example, a deterministic cryptographic RNG is almost maximally biased, but it's computationally infeasible to tell just by examining the output.)

With quantum techniques, if you are willing to plug in _two_ devices and process their outputs a bit, and if you're willing to trust that the devices aren't secretly communicating, then you can get provable randomness. You don't even need a real quantum computer to do this. [1] You still need to trust that the devices aren't actively malicious, but you do rule out accidental implementation issues that introduce subtle correlations between output bits.

If you are using an actual quantum computer, then you can go much farther and generate uniform random bits directly and even, under certain straightforward conditions, prove that those bits didn't leak out via a side channel. This is more or less the same principle as quantum key distribution: if Alice and Bob run a QKD algorithm to generate a key (n uniform, independent random bits), they are effectively running a protocol that verifies that no side channel leaked the bits. A malicious eavesdropper is a form of side channel, so those get ruled out as well.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.3427](https://arxiv.org/abs/0911.3427)

<comment><USER8> [1] turns out to be more subtle than people originally thought. Even assuming you can make loophole free bell tests (hey, it's been done!), the best anyone has been able to show this does -- even theoretically -- is randomness /amplification/ not true verifiable randomness. This boils down to the need for an initial random basis preparation of the qubits for which you have no true random seed.

I know some people have been working on solving that chicken and egg problem, but -- unless there's very new work I'm unaware of -- it's still unsolved.

<comment><USER7> Do you have a reference for that? I'm curious what the problem is.</comment></comment></comment>


IOS Apps: Identify when a user is driving easily and accurately with DriveGuard - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/benhonda/DriveGuard <comment><USER2> Interesting product. Small nit, but in the screen shots, "your" should be "you're" or "you are".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Will make those changes</comment></comment>


Envy/Jealousy Tendency - <AUTHOR> https://paste.ee/r/7CNL6 <comment><USER2> I'm quite curious if there is a relationship between sibling rivalry/jealousy in a child and, later in life, rivalry/jealousy with a romantic partner.

I find personally that all my romantic relationships tend to have a very competitive aspect -- who is more successful in a career, who needs the other partner less, who is better at arguments...

I've never studied psychology but I wonder if the envy that is so strong in children with their siblings trains us to treat our romantic partners with a similar envy...

<comment><AUTHOR> hm</comment></comment>


What are some of the most basic things every programmer should know? - <AUTHOR> http://brianknapp.me/most-basic-things-every-programmer-should-know/ <comment><USER2> Some good advice, but parts overreach into the realm of career advice working for a company that may not value employees as people but instead sees them as expendable assets.

<comment><USER3> Employees used to be personnel but now they're 'human resources'\--a pool from which value is extracted, then disposed of when exhausted.</comment></comment>