Show HN: I'm 14, I learned Objective-C, and this is my first iPhone game - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cheese-miners-lunar-supremacy/id570118272?mt=8 <comment><USER2> I was writing/learning HTML with FrontPage 2003 and Flash 5 _(6? 7? I thankfully don't remember anymore)_ when I was 14 - while knowing almost no English _(thus, not understanding even what the menu items and controls mean!)_ and without a manual or teacher and just clicking around and seeing what happens to the code :-( Hard, hard times it was. But I enjoyed it nevertheless.

But still, I'm jealous of you.

If you were to seek my advice, I'd tell you to watch some OCW (OpenCourse Ware).

<http://cs50.tv> <\-- _great_ for starting out. I am ready to bet $50,000 that you'll learn soooo much (while not being overwhelmed) that you can't believe it

<http://cs75.tv> <\- great for starting web development (php, mysql, javascript, css, ...)

<http://see.stanford.edu/see/courses.aspx> (CS106A is good for now or a little later, CS106B and CS107 are _way_ more advanced but you might find them very educating in a year or two)

[http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video- courses/#electrical-e...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/audio-video- courses/#electrical-engineering-and-computer-science) (I've heard good things about 6.00SC)

All in all, I'd suggest you start watching cs50.tv right now (if it's not a whim and you're really interested in programming as a career, or if you at least _enjoy_ programming right now).

Best of luck.

<comment><USER3> Get off my lawn. I first learned HTML and JavaScript using Notepad in 96 when I was 14.

<comment><USER4> When I was 14, you couldn't just go buy a "personal computer", as the minicomputer revolution was underway. So, I had to build my own computer... and I did. (I think I started at 13, and finished at 15).

When I say, I built my computer, I mean I designed a PCB, laid it out, etched it, assembled it, then needed to build a display board to output to a TV, which was another several months of design, etc. And when I had all that... then I had to start writing some sort of software for it! (EG: I had to write software, build an EPROM programmer (because they were expensive) burn EPROMS ..... all to get to the point where I could start working on making an implementation of BASIC!

So, when people complain that "kids can't hack on iPhones" ... well, I think its silly. You buy a Mac and you get a fantastic IDE and development platform for free, etc.

To the OP: Congrats on making your game! It looks very professional. Keep at it!

<comment><USER5> That is remarkable, yet the thread somehow more and more resembles this nice Monty Python's sketch: <http://youtu.be/Xe1a1wHxTyo>

<comment><USER6> Monty Python ? In _my_ days, we were happy watching 'At last the 1948 show !'

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Congrats!! Keep it up..

Why are so many HNers being dismissive of this young fella? He has done something cool and he is really proud of that. He learnt something that is considered very hard for the majority of population and put his work out there on app store for real test (by real users). Lets applaud him (like some of the posters).

EDIT: Don't forget to contact your users. They will give you feedback and it will help you improve your game and write newer games/apps.

<comment><USER8> > Why are so many HNers being dismissive of this young fella?

I feel like I should explain my reasons:

He acts as if his age is very important in his accomplishment. Why is it in the title? Why does it matter so much that he is 14? Maybe he has been programming for much longer than the 30 year old who released a website yesterday. Nowdays, anybody over the age of 12 can take online university classes, publish apps (especially when they get the art from sites like MakeGamesWithUs) and learn programming much more easily than 10 or even 2 years ago. 14 year old programmers aren't that uncommon anymore.

I've posted some of my projects to HN a few times. I only got to the frontpage once. I never mentioned my young age, because it's not relevant. I've probably sat in front of a computer many more hours than the Average Joe. If anything, I'm under accomplished. The success/experience ratio matters more than the success/age ratio in my opinion.

But the game is cool indeed, and it's always nice to see somebody complete their first project.

<comment><USER9> > I only got to the frontpage once. I never mentioned my young age, because > it's not relevant.

You didn't get to the front page. This person did. Why do you think the problem is with the way that he describes his project, and not with the way that you describe your project? Your marketing needs work.

<comment><USER8> > You didn't get to the front page.

I did, but that's not the point.

> Why do you think the problem is with the way that he describes his project, > and not with the way that you describe your project?

Because successful marketing isn't everything, and because he is not describing his project. The title doesn't say anything about the game. The developer's age doesn't describe a game. I think a community like HN should value the quality of the product over the age/gender/awesomeness of the developer. But obviously I'm in the minority, and I'm just stating my opinion.

If people are going to use something I make, I want it to be because they enjoy it, not because of the number of years I've lived on this planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Man to be your age and feel what you're feeling right now! I had grandiose plans as an 11 year old to write games on the Amiga. But without the Internet and relying only on books learning was a slow process. It ultimately never happened. I hope your parents support and recognize your achievement. 90% of success is just showing up and actually doing something. It's important to do things like this because you just never know where it will lead, who you will meet, what you will learn. Keep it up!

</comment><comment><USER11> Amazing work! I remember when I was about 15 I started selling my first software (a billing web app for shared hosting companies). I developed it in maybe one or two months during the summer, set up a website and started getting payments through Paypal. My English was so-so at that time and there were no Hacker News or StackOverflow. I remember one day suddenly realizing that "if"/"for"/"while" were actually English words.

Sales quickly averaged ~150$/day and despite that, my parents still wanted me to get a summer job (at McDonald's maybe) like "the other kids". I also had a computer usage quota and was often going over at my friend's house just to cheat the quota :). Looking back at those days, I think they just wanted me to spend more time with my peers. Anyways, I turned out fine!

To conclude, I truly hope your parents are supportive and if they are not, feel free to get in touch with me for advice (can't help with game development though, you are way more advanced than me).

PS: You have a bright future in front of you!

</comment><comment><USER12> Sometimes I'm a bit skeptical about these kinds of posts "I'm X age, I made this". I feel like, why would a 14 year old want to make sure his age is on the post title?. It's not that extraordinary I think, I mean it's great that his doing this, but it's not that un-ordinary, sometimes it seems like someone else is driving this for promo.

<comment><USER13> I agree. If you've made a good app, its merit will stand on its own. The fact that people believe their age to be the most remarkable aspect of the development of their product raises flags. If any things, it just seems like an attempt to artificially lower standards.

Your age doesn't matter. Your product does.

<comment><USER14> That's it. Discourage them right from the start. He (or she) is 14 for crying out loud.

<comment><USER13> I'm not discouraging them. I'm saying that age doesn't matter. Completing an app is a laudable accomplishment for anyone. Emphasizing their age, if anything, makes light of this accomplishment because it can come off as patronizing. I think that it's great that they made an app, but their age isn't important.

<comment><USER15> I think age is relevant for this post. Otherwise nobody would be really interested in reading a post about a new release, everytime a programmer in this website comes up with their new app. So I think the most important thing is that he is just 14 years old provided that the quality of his work is decently acceptable.

PS: don't be like that to your own kids, cuz you will be hated as a father, I can guarantee you that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> You're awesome.

If you aren't, the nicest gift you can give yourself in 10 years is a blog, even if it's private and you write all the crazy stuff you're learning and doing and how scary it felt at first and how great it felt after.

Some things I had someone said to me and I hope you'll say to someone at 14 one day:

As you get older you'll meet so many subtle doubt worshippers that spread their doubts because they can't get over their own self-doubt.

Be a man of action and launching. Haters and doubters are busy doing nothing.

Don't ever let anyone poison this ability to build, and launch.

Don't ever let anyone tell you you can't figure out anything and build something.

Do laugh, while you launch and ship often while everyones busy optimizing their stack.

</comment><comment><USER17> A very heartfelt congratulations, I would give up a lot to trade with you at the moment, you must be feeling on top of the world.

Games are a great area to work in, you get to learn a lot more about systems level programming from building a game than you'd get from building a web-app. Games are never finished either, you can always improve on them, add levels and so on so they're a great way to grow your skills in managing progressively larger codebases.

Once again, congratulations! And I hope to see much more of what you've made here.

</comment><comment><USER18> Great job. The world is your oyster. Keep learning and don't let anyone ever tell you something is impossible.

</comment><comment><USER19> Hey! Really cool stuff. I'm 15, and have been programming since I was 9, but I'm more focused in stuff like Systems Programming and Machine Learning, thus I have not really released anything interesting.

<comment><USER20> > Systems Programming and Machine Learning

Oh? What are you working on? Do you have any code available?

<comment><USER19> I'm currently working in a Revision Control software in Go (While learning the language), I'll push it to Github when I have a somewhat working prototype.

<comment><USER20> Interesting. What from those fields are you applying to revision control?

<comment><USER21> I'm curious too. Semantic diffs maybe? (This change affects control flow, this one doesn't; this change adds complexity, this one removes it.) Something like that would be useful for getting an overview of a project's evolution, instead of highlighting major commits only in terms of lines changed (often just a meaningless refactor.)

<comment><USER19> Basically I started with the things I like from Git, I simplified them and I ditched everything else: It's a personal project so I can learn Go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Nice, pretty good for a first game!

Now that you've started writing some code, you can start talking to users!

Here's some quick feedback I've got:

-It's a little hard to tell where on the screen I can touch to move the miner vs. where I can shoot. Perhaps but a line on the bottom demarcating where touches will move instead of shoot?

-Perhaps the game would be more fun if the movement was faster? If you sped it up, it would make it easier to grab 2 pieces of cheese on the same row. It's up to you to decide how to balance control responsiveness vs. difficulty, but it's worth testing it out.

At any rate, good job and congratulations!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Good to know, I'll try and put this in for the next version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> When I was 14, I walked uphill to school at 4 AM, in the snow, both ways, while carrying an IBM mainframe in my backpack!

<comment><USER24> Obligatory Monty Python: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAtSw3daGoo>

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Great stuff. How did you find MakeGamesWithUs? I know a few people your age who want to learn Objective-C etc. would you recommend this route for them?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks. I was referred to MakeGamesWithUs by my cousin. I certainly would recommend this route; It's great to not have to worry about art and promotion while you learn, and to have someone to fix your horrible mistakes.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, thanks for all of the great feedback. Honestly, I feel lucky to have the tools, technology, and support to build games like Cheese Miners. Sorry that I haven't responded to all of your comments yet, I will get caught- up later this weekend. My school has a camping trip and I have been prepping for the trip most of day and walking out the door now and will have no internet access while camping (no phones allowed, and I agree!). Such is the life of a 14 year old at boarding school. When I get back I would love to continue this discussion. Your comments have been very inspiring and there are some really good suggestions I need to follow-up on. Thanks for the great discussion. HN rocks!

</comment><comment><USER26> As a fellow fourteen-year-old programmer, congrats! The game looks great!

</comment><comment><USER27> As a fellow teenager who is also programming, this is great! I'm glad that there are sites like MakeGamesWithUs that are encouraging our generation to do this sort of thing. Really, great job!

</comment><comment><USER28> Congratulations on your first game. Keep up the hard work and you'll have some pretty competitive stuff on your resume for college applications!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the kind remarks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> How did you make game graphics?

<comment><AUTHOR> I got the art through MakeGamesWithUs.

<comment><USER30> That's great, art shouldn't be a bottleneck or discouraging when learning to program a game.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I was doing 68k asm at 14. Kids those days! :)

(now then again anyone who's done 68k asm would know this is extremely easy to code and understand, more than objective-c in fact. But then again, I had Codewarrior [which I won at metrowerks] and powerplant, and those, are hell.)

<comment><USER32> Amiga coders will remember Seka, Devpac and AsmOne... one wrong move and it was Guru Meditation!

<comment><USER31> Wished to have more machines.. Dad had a Mac tho, so, I used that;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm so unbelievably impressed with you Jonah.

</comment><comment><USER34> Don't stop now. I remember, when I was 11 I was also really nerdy and in many ways much smarter then now. My mistake was that I at some point dropped all this, because I couldn't find stuff that interested and excited me. It's really a flaw. As long as you are a teenager, you are able to find what excites you.

It's really hard to describe, but it is extremely bad to come out of practice and it happens so quickly. If you must find some kind of job or something that will make you practice every day.

P.S: Stuff that looks boring at the beginning usually isn't when you really get into it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Excellent job!

Keep your drive, motivation, and by all means keep launching your software! You will go much farther than most people.

I also started teaching myself programming at 14. 16 years later, I cannot imagine doing anything else.

</comment><comment><USER36> Good work, I'm jealous; I wish I was doing things like that when I was 14.

<comment><USER37> I know, right? Me too!

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Fantastic, it takes a lot of effort and motivation to get something like this out the door. Hope to see the next one on here soon.

Is it games that you're most interested in, or just programming in general?

</comment><comment><USER39> Great job! Parlay those skills into some lucrative consulting gigs. Earn early, and earn often. Compound interest, especially at your age, is the most powerful force in the universe.

</comment><comment><USER40> Every now and then here on HN someone is claiming that he's a teenager building an iPhone game. Is just a coincidence that the platform is always the same? MakeSpamWithUs :P

</comment><comment><USER41> Wow! Nice job! I haven't had a chance to download it, but just by looking at App Store page, the app looks fun and makes me want to download it!

How much time did you spend making it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! The game took me give or take 100 hours over about 4 months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Congrats on your first game. This is awesome work for an 14 year old. I have downloaded and played this game for some time. I feel movement needs to be little faster.

</comment><comment><USER43> Anyone that's had to submit an app will be impressed that you went through that process successfully, let alone made a cool little game for the iphone. Good job.

</comment><comment><USER44> I started using Internet when I was 10 and started to dabble in HTML and then PHP3 and later 4. Earned a decent amount of money (for a kid), but then I just stopped because of workload in highschool and college.

Man, my skills got rusty I can barely write something these days. So, dont you ever stop doing that because returning to programming can be hard - your brain wont function at this ultraspeed it is functioning now.

</comment><comment><USER45> Did you also do the artwork?

<comment><AUTHOR> I did the concept work, but the guys at makegamewith.us provided the artist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wish I had had this kind of drive to learn to code when I was 14. Amazing job Omicron3141, your parents must be blown away.

</comment><comment><USER47> Well, I'm 16 now, and I'm writing a chatroom/game thing in HTML5 with WebSocket (<http://ponyplace.ajf.me/>)

But when I was 14, I was programming a TCP Minecraft server. (<http://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/SchnitzelCraft0>)

<comment><USER48> Impressive, where did you find the information for your TCP server and why choose that as a project?

<comment><USER47> The folks on #mcdevs on Freenode had done the hard work for me, they had reverse-engineered and documented the Minecraft Classic protocol. It's a very simple binary TCP protocol with only 16 packet types.

And why as a project? Well, I saw the protocol was simple enough, and it seemed like a fun thing to do since I liked playing Minecraft Classic. There were already loads of other Classic servers, but I wanted to make my own so I could do things my way and add silly features. Yes, there's plugins, but sometimes I like reinventing the wheel.

I added some features, for example, "Zombies", imitating those in Minecraft Survival/Indev/Infdev/Alpha/Beta/Release. I sent packets as if another player had spawned, and I set up a minecraft account with the right skin, so that when a player with the same name as that account was spawned, they would look like a zombie. The AI was very, very stupid. It would always turn at right- angles, making them easy to trap. Still, it was fun. Also, at the time I did not understand recursion, so the "physics" for things like spreading water didn't work properly.

The code I ended up writing, in C using WinSock and zlib was... horrible. Ridiculous levels of nesting, and almost everything was in the main function. This was a result of getting it _working_ before getting it _right_. However, I never really refactored it much, and it became an unmaintainable mess. At various times I have refactored it a bit, as recently as a year ago, and it's the refactoring-in-progress version you can find on my GitHub page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> When I was 14 I was crying for a computer, but I had to wait until I was 17... I never had a commodore, although I wanted so much... I don't have stories about those days, like some talk about commodore disks and etc... were poor days... still luckily I am Software Engineer ...

Good job man! Keep going with your passion!

</comment><comment><USER50> Congratulations! A nice slap in the face too for those people who constantly rant about kids/young people being distracted too much and unable to learn much nowdays (by the Web/new technologies/gadgets). It's the adults who get distracted and become unproductive, kids' brains adapt more easily.

</comment><comment><USER51> Great job!

I was busy with homework and tests when I was 14. Kids in China are not as lucky :-(

I did play a bit with Visual Basic 6.0 at 11. It was a lot of fun for me. I also got a VC 6.0 on my family computer but never managed more than running an MFC window that does nothing. But it turns out not to be important anyway.

</comment><comment><USER52> When I was 14, I didn't have $99 to give to Apple. So I made games that no one ever knew about.

<comment><USER53> Shameless plug: if you publish through makegameswith.us, we cover the $99 fee. You do need a Mac though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Congrats... my first iPad game is about 14 years old now and still not released yet... sigh. Enjoy the piles of free time while it lasts, and be sure to take some time to explore different areas to find out what you're really interested in.

</comment><comment><USER55> Am I the only one who was playing gameboy and watching cartoons when I was 14.

</comment><comment><USER56> legos from the beginning .in elementary school they had a cool program in my neighborhood run by motorola engineers where you could take courses on logic design and build _simple_ cricuits (combination locks, tic tac toe...). when i was 12 i built and electric go kart, 13/14 - a minibike. 15/16/17 - a solar powered car (from scratch <http://www.sphssolarknights.org/>). Moved into more CE/CS type projects now but once you start building you will never stop! Keep it up. :)

<comment><USER56> also - as much as my fiance hates it. I still have all my legos! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The premise alone is enough! Brilliant whimsy. Congratulations on shipping!

</comment><comment><USER57> At 14, I was busy playing soccer. I didn't get to computers and coding till I was 17-18, when my brother bought a PC. So jealous of you guys who build such awesome stuff at this age ! Way to go..!

</comment><comment><USER58> Does it use Cocos2d or another game engine from makegameswithus.com ?

<comment><USER53> It was done in Kobold2D, a version of Cocos2D that's also free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Mh, something seems weird about this... Looked up his profile here at HN and checked out the domain of his email address... <http://innolution.com>

Huh?

</comment><comment><USER60> Very impressive! Keep at it! You have a great future ahead of you!

</comment><comment><USER61> Great job, keep it up! At 14 I didn't even have a computer yet.

</comment><comment><USER62> Congratulations.

I'm going to echo the more pleasant half of HN and say don't let anybody dismiss your accomplishment. Shipping is all that really matters and shipping is hard.

</comment><comment><USER63> Seriously, congrats on both learning Objective-C and publishing a videogame in a marketplace. I can't wait to see what other awesome stuff you do!

</comment><comment><USER64> Congrats! Keep working hard and releasing more games!

</comment><comment><USER65> thanks for sharing . I really didn't even thought about copying unix. Anyhow,i think if you're learning domain specific language then it is not good to implement unix . Consider php,it came up for web . so it would be nice if we solve challenges or do stuff which matters. I use to check stackoverflow question and try to learn it . Anyway i will mind your advise . thanks

</comment><comment><USER66> Brilliant work! Where did the sounds/artwork come from? It all fits together very nicely.

I'm looking forward to seeing what you make next!

</comment><comment><USER67> Well, now I feel old.

But more importantly, congratulations!

</comment><comment><USER68> Great job! Congratulations. It takes a lot of persistence and drive to see a project through to the end.

</comment><comment><USER69> Nice! Did you do the artwork yourself?

</comment><comment><USER70> Good job, I don't have an iDevice to test it but it looks more professional than what I managed at 14!

</comment><comment><USER71> Looks good, congrats and keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER72> Awesome concept, looks great, and you're in the app store. Congratulations, totally impressed.

</comment><comment><USER73> Impressive, keep it coming ;)

</comment><comment><USER74> The game looks very polished! Did you create the art as well?

</comment><comment><USER75> Well done, Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER76> Wow!!! Well done!

</comment><comment><USER77> Fantastic ... You are truly an inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER78> Great work! Can't wait to try it :)

</comment><comment><USER79> Seems good ;)

</comment><comment><USER80> Your father must be proud. /s

</comment><comment><USER81> when I was 14,I started learning pascal and c I think :p

</comment><comment><USER82> That is so awesome.

</comment><comment><USER83> pls release source and provide link on github.

</comment><comment><USER84> Nicely done.

</comment><comment><USER85> Congrats!

</comment><comment><USER86> cheese! and ObjC! and app store!

rock on!

</comment><comment><USER87> well done!

</comment><comment><USER88> congrats

</comment><comment><USER89> Congrats! Would you consider putting the source on github?

<comment><AUTHOR> I might, I'm not sure yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> The last kid getting overambitious with computers is now serving time in federal prison (Aaron Swartz). You might want to peace out on the hackz.

</comment><comment><USER20> This is the worst thread I've EVER seen on HN.</comment>


No 10 goes digital with a spot of Twitter - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/apr/18/internet.digitalmedia <comment><AUTHOR> I enjoy the downingstreet twitter account at those moments when they lapse, stopping regurgitating press releases and start discussing muffins It reminds me that governments are composed of nice people with the best intentions. Now if only the Prime Minister was to update his own twitter account.

<comment><USER2> I presume they mean english muffins? the type you toast?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe they were eating American Muffins on their visit to the States. Blueberry or Choc chip was unspecified</comment></comment></comment>


More Media attacks on Musk, this time fluffier than ever - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/05/elon-musk-should-know-better/561377/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> "Musk was indignant at comparisons to Donald Trump—another infamous journalist-hater of the moment—but he has clearly invited such comparisons through his behavior. Both men lack restraint in self-publishing. Both appear to be thin-skinned beyond reason. " This is a direct quote from the article. Need anyone say more?</comment>


Electromagnetic interference mapping - <AUTHOR> http://charleslabs.fr/en/project-Electromagnetic+interference+mapping <comment><USER2> This is the most awesome thing I have seen on HN for weeks.

It marries such distinct component disciplines together to come up with a simple, immediately graspable device.

Being able to see radio waves has long been a wish of mine - we walk through this invisible world suffused around us, and anything that steps towards revealing that world I am a fan of.

<comment><USER3> Agreed! And every component is highly complex, i.e. the design of the probe [1], or object tracking in videos. While the author is obviously standing on the shoulders of giants, he appears to be pretty tall himself.

[1] [https://interferencetechnology.com/diy-near-field-probes- pre...](https://interferencetechnology.com/diy-near-field-probes- preamplifiers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is excellent! EMI testing is one of the things I have to do with my projects, but there hasn't been an affordable way to visualize them. I've played with an RTL-SDR for ADS-B traffic so this is right up my alley. I'll be sharing this with coworkers for sure!

<comment><USER5> Got any resources on EMI testing on the cheap? Would be a great thing to share in our makerspace, as many do semi-professional electronics.

<comment><USER6> If you have a decent oscilloscope, you can actually get pretty far with that and some DIY probes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty neat! The next step: create an array of common-clocked RTL-SDRs connected to patch antennas, and mount them on a rail. Use beamforming techniques so you don't have to manually wand the device. Connect an antenna to a signal generator to roughly calibrate your array response. Slightly more expensive (the big cost would be a signal generator, but a lab should have one of these anyway), but a lot more potential for automation.

I actually built something similar to the above setup for work, years ago. RTL-SDR wasn't available back then, so it was a lot more expensive. It would be awesome to go back and do it over again, just to see how much it would cost today.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm doing EMC work at the moment. I've fantasized about putting a near-field probe on a 2-axis motion stage and building a 4-dimensional (X, Y, Frequency, Power) visualization with the data.

The place I work is pretty well outfitted, so I imagined it using a spectrum analyzer, a couple of Zaber motion stages we have sitting around, and a nice set of H- and E-field probes. Probably several thousand dollars worth of equipment.

Now, reading Charles' blog post, I'm blown away by how he's basically done the same thing in a very clever way using about $50 worth of parts.

</comment><comment><USER9> I remember doing something like this manually with a C-64 and oscilloscope in my high school physics lab.

<comment><USER10> Can you elaborate? Is this a project a freshmen can tackle?

<comment><USER9> Get a loop of wire, hook it up to the oscilloscope, read the amplitude of the oscilloscope.

Move the loop and repeat.

I did this in the late 1980s in my high school physics lab. We had a bunch of tube-type Textronix oscilloscopes that we inherited from the Raytheon factory where they made Patriot missiles. When they broke we shuffled parts around between them to keep them working, the way my physics teacher did when he was in the air force.

The preamp stage of the oscilloscopes were good enough that we didn't need any extra electronics to do the work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> While it's a nice hack, the problem with the EM certification world (and why it's so expensive) is not about the devices themselves but about calibration and measurement stability.

Most EE will be able to guess the patterns this setup generates just by looking at the boards themselves.

<comment><USER11> This is useful when you fail your EMC testing. You have a baseline measurement and you're looking at relative change. For example you may have be over the limit by 6dB at 430 MHz. You would take a reading using this setup, and normalize it against your lab plot.

You then try a number of fixes, and take readings using this setup. It is easy to determine if you're close to 6dB drop that you need.

<comment><USER6> The problem is that even with a professional setup you should expect about +/-3dB tolerances.

Since there's no expectation of that uncertainty being systematic, taking a relative change pushes your error bars +3dB.

That 6dB drop is under the error bars, so it's pretty meaningless, and that's with a professional setup.

In other words, there's no expectation that the numbers you'll get from these will translate into anything useful, at most you have a 'hotspot' detector.

<comment><USER11> Professional setup has much tighter tolerance than 3dB. I was using 6dB as an example. Usually you're trying to kill peaks that are 10-20dB over.

This kind of debugging is very routine. You do it manually with E/H field probes and a spectrum analyzer in between lab visits. This setup makes it more repeatable by automating it.

<comment><USER6> >Professional setup has much tighter tolerance than 3dB.

To comply with CISPR (as an example), a lab only has to validate <4.5dB (in the 30 MHz to 300 MHz range), and up to 5.2 dB (from 30 MHz to 1 GHz). See for instance [1].

By the way, if you are doing this kind of testing routinely, you need to check your PCB layout process. This fine grained tweeting should be a last resort option.

[1][http://ing.univaq.it/emc-chap- it/download/MUinEMC_Revision%2...](http://ing.univaq.it/emc-chap- it/download/MUinEMC_Revision%20of%20CISPR%2016-4-2%20doc.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't understand the need to build a video image out of the information.

Why not link the probe to a buzzer/led, so it tells you when the interference is high as you sweep the probe across the device?

<comment><USER13> It's fun, it's visual, it's a whole new dimension!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's the big antenna for?

</comment><comment><USER15> Url changed from [https://www.rtl-sdr.com/using-an-rtl-sdr-and-opencv-to- creat...](https://www.rtl-sdr.com/using-an-rtl-sdr-and-opencv-to-create-an- emi-heatmap-of-circuit-boards/), which points to this.</comment>


Rainforest Fungus Naturally Synthesizes Diesel - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/rainforest-fung.html <comment><USER2> This makes me wonder how many amazing species have been lost through deforestation without us ever knowing what benefits they could have had...

<comment><USER3> Can you come to my next party?

<comment><USER2> That probably depends on where it is. ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oil may no longer be a fossil fuel!

Now we can all stop feeling guilty.

At the same time though, carbon sequestration becomes crucial (assuming this organism's ability to make crude begins to be used commercially).

Oh, and don't forget about tighter emission standards, among other things.

<comment><USER5> Why are you worried about carbon sequestration?

If you are using plant matter to feed the fungus then the carbon source for the fuel is atmospheric carbon dioxide - "pre-sequestered" carbon, if you will.

As I understand it, the issue with fossil fuel carbon emissions is we are releasing ancient carbon dioxide.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article kinda is lacking technical depth, makes me wonder how sensationalist it is or if there really is something there.

<comment><USER7> The journal article is available: [http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/154/11/3319?view...](http://mic.sgmjournals.org/cgi/content/full/154/11/3319?view=long&pmid=18957585)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'd prefer we left the rainforests alone and focused on other energy sources.</comment>


On the Compatibility Between Physics and Intelligent Organisms - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0102024 <comment><AUTHOR> Abstract: It has been commonly argued, on the basis of Godel's theorem and related mathematical results, that true artificial intelligence cannot exist. Penrose has further deduced from the existence of human intelligence that fundamental changes in physical theories are needed. I provide an elementary demonstration that these deductions are mistaken.</comment>


Ajit Pai touted false broadband data despite clear signs it wasn't accurate - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/ajit-pai-touted-false-broadband-data-despite-clear-signs-it-wasnt-accurate/ <comment><USER2> i kind of hate this guy.</comment>


Show HN: Google Search from the terminal - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/victorbreder/g-search-cli <comment><USER2> To open URL's on Ubuntu, use `x-www-browser` instead of `start` in utils.py line 16.

But you'd have to enumerate the OS first. Plus it'll be different for other OS's like MacOS etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will add support! :)</comment></comment>


NetLogo – A multi-agent programmable modeling environment - <AUTHOR> https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/ <comment><USER2> I used NetLogo and a example file that I modified to demonstrate to non-techie designers why the doors they were proposing for a theater were too few and too narrow. The scrambling arrows representing people colliding and changing directions and the traffic made it very apparent. Simply telling them code requires X and you have Y wasn't as poignant. We wound up using NetLogo for other types of presentations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Years ago I wrote an application which was essentially a neural circuit of a sea slug (they only eat and forage) with my now wife.

[https://austingwalters.com/modeling-and-building-robotic- sea...](https://austingwalters.com/modeling-and-building-robotic-sea-slug/)

We then showed how (using netlogo) how when another neural circuit for aggressive behavior was added (but the connections of the markov chain had yet to be trained) the sea slugs. After adding the aggressive circuit and letting generations live and die using a genetic algorithm - it appeared to observers like the animals became social. I.e. only the territorial sea slugs remained, and they wouldn't attack ones of the same species, this proved to be the best for "survival".

The goal of the work was to provide insight into what neural circuits can lead to social behavior. Specifically, what environmental conditions can lead to an evolutionary trait that triggers social like behaviors.

Honestly, idk if you can make any "claims", but it was a fun undergraduate project. The best part is we exported the trained models from the Netlogo program, then imported them into a lego robot. At which point our robot had learned to be aggressive - I.e. would "chase" people away from the food source.

<comment><USER4> > _Honestly, idk if you can make any "claims"_

Well, the results are reproducible, and the constraints of the model are clearly defined in the code.

So you might not be able to generalize claims, but in some sense it is also better than many papers out there because you can be more precise about discussing flaws in the model than with empirical data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I worked with a grad student in college who was building models in NetLogo for modeling drug overdoses. It was pretty janky and slow.

They had to run the model millions of times so I had to build NetLogo on our HPC cluster running Rocks OS and write some magic config in slurm to run it and it took for ever because about 1/3 of the jobs would fail because they ran out of ram and would need to be run again.

I'm not sure how much of it was the grad students fault or NetLogos fault but either way, the experience was quite painful

<comment><USER6> As for the performance aspect, these kinds of simulations (typically using fixed time steps and with per-agent decision-making) are a natural fit for many-core devices. We recently did a survey on that subject [1]. There is a lot of work being done along these lines right now.

Some groups are also trying to target sequential, parallel and, say, GPU execution from the same model specification language, which could actually help with the usability of running such simulations in practice.

[1] [https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01014](https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01014)

<comment><USER7> This is interesting. We've been thinking quite a bit about parallelising our model, but haven't managed it yet. The problem is that although our agents are mostly independent of each other, they all depend on the shared state of the world (and modify this, too).

Therefore, if we were to use a multiprocessing setup, we would have to be able to lock the world object when a process is writing to it; and furthermore, find a way to pass it around in memory so that all processes have read access to it. While we know that it should be technically doable, the latency overhead of the latter has proven prohibitively high.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, for some models, especially small-scale ones, it can be hard to get a performance gain. There are actually ways of avoiding the locking, e.g., by staging the desired actions and then carrying them out afterwards, resolving conflicts as needed. We actually have a paper on this as well, but I'm going to stop pushing my research at this point ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For anyone who'd like to try out NetLogo without installing it, you can run example models and play with the code online in NetLogo Web: [https://www.netlogoweb.org/launch#https://www.netlogoweb.org...](https://www.netlogoweb.org/launch#https://www.netlogoweb.org/assets/modelslib/Sample%20Models/Computer%20Science/Cellular%20Automata/Life.nlogo)

<comment><USER4> Ironically, if I click that link on mobile it downloads a file

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Oh, well beyond "very interesting". This type of modeling can yield results that are otherwise intractable. It is one of the primary reasons Thomas Schelling received a Nobel prize in economics. It should be in the toolkit of every applied mathematician or computer scientist.

<comment><USER10> I liked the tutorial #1, linked from here:

[https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/)

Is this only available for use within the GUI?

I can imagine how mathematicians would use it but what would be typical applications of a computer scientist?

<comment><USER10> Agent script looks like an amazing port:

[http://agentscript.org/](http://agentscript.org/)

Not in love with coffee script anymore but oh well.

The demos are great:

[http://agentscript.org/models/flock.html](http://agentscript.org/models/flock.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> During our graduation period we used Netlogo for projects of distributed networks. It was lots of fun to do different simulations. I remember writing Ant Colongy Optimization and Firefly Synchronization with it and being able to visually see and tweak parameters.

</comment><comment><USER10> What other languages provide this kind of model output? It's very interesting.

<comment> falls-to-bits There are more and more these days. If you want Java/scala-based, the two biggest ones are: \- MASON: [https://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/](https://cs.gmu.edu/~eclab/projects/mason/) \- Repast: [https://repast.github.io/index.html](https://repast.github.io/index.html)

For Python, someone else has already mentioned Mesa: [https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa/](https://github.com/projectmesa/mesa/)

You can find some more lists at [https://www.comses.net/](https://www.comses.net/) \-- sadly [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_agent- based_mode...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_agent- based_modeling_software) looks fairly sparse / a little outdated (though I have only passing familiarity with most of those).

Finally, I think a great technical source of theory about these models comes from Cosma Shalizi's notebook on ABM: [http://bactra.org/notebooks/agent- based-modeling.html](http://bactra.org/notebooks/agent-based-modeling.html) He's one of the single best sources I've seen for describing systems for formally estimating ABMs.

Netlogo is great for fast prototyping, but at least as of ...well a number of years ago now, there was a noticeable lack of scientific computing libraries. For example numerical optimization routines were _extremely_ basic. I had to use a user-contributed package to solve a root finding problem.

Honestly for this type of work I typically write my own from scratch in Python. Here's a great set of lectures and code from Blake LeBaron, "from sratch" in Python, for finance ABMs: [http://people.brandeis.edu/~blebaron/classes/agentfin/](http://people.brandeis.edu/~blebaron/classes/agentfin/) ...and here's a nice from scratch Schelling model in Python: [https://lectures.quantecon.org/py/schelling.html](https://lectures.quantecon.org/py/schelling.html)

<comment><USER10> Terrific summary, thanks so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > NetLogo is a multi-agent programmable modeling environment.

What does that even mean? That description fits nearly every commonly used programming language and runtime.

<comment><USER13> Most programming languages don't use the multi-agent paradigm. It's a different way of thinking about problems, in which you describe how each type of agent should interact with others, and then you let them run and play out the scenario.

It's true that you can implement multi-agent programming in other languages, but it's very natural and clear in NetLogo.

PS: I did my PhD in the group that produces NetLogo, and continue to be blown away from the language and what you can do with it, even though I don't use it on a daily basis any more.

<comment><USER7> I am in a research group that does ecological modelling, so I've heard a fair bit about NetLogo, though I haven't used it myself.

I quite like its approach - like you say, it's a very natural way to do agent- based modelling. I also think its a good beginners' language for modellers who know their field (e.g. ecology) but haven't yet learnt how to program. Lastly, I like it's GUI integration.

However, I am somewhat put off by its verbose "toy language" syntax; and I really can't afford its performance. (We are currently working on a model in Julia, and even that can take up to several weeks to compute a single run on our HPC...) So I guess my opinion is that its a fantastic language to learn about modelling, but not well suited to constructing large, complex and resource-intensive models.

<comment><USER14> Is there a language you would recommend as the next step for someone who has learned NetLogo? One with better syntax and performance? Maybe a Julia library?

<comment><USER7> We use Julia in our group and I really like it: the language design is pretty neat and it offers a very good performance. I don't know of any libraries targeted specifically at agent-based modelling, though. (But in the end, as an experienced programmer you don't really need that - plain object-orientation is enough.)

<comment><USER13> I would argue that for certain kinds of problems, agent-based modeling is easier to think about and work with than object-oriented programming. It's not a matter of your programming experience, but rather what you're trying to model and how.

I've heard great things about Julia, but haven't ever used it. Yet another thing that's on my list...</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


How do you make a reputation for yourself? - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2008/06/how_do_you_make_a_reputation.php

<comment><USER2> Interesting post:

The lessons i seem to take away from this are: 1\. Be yourself; show your true colours; Be honest 2\. Build 'true' networks (not just networks of acquaintances)</comment>


The heavy-lifting 'mule women' of Melilla - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24706863 <comment><USER2> Wow. Do they need to physically carry the loads all the way, or could they wheel them part of the way and pick them up when necessary? If so, someone should send over a bunch of hand trucks.</comment>


Show HN: FeedbackLoop – Live chat for your webapp, powered by slack - <AUTHOR> https://www.getfeedbackloop.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey Y'all, I made FeedbackLoop because i think livechat should be easier.

I hated the fact that our teams all use some chat service(slack, hipchat, etc.) but sales/customer-service have to jump in and out of other communication tools for reaching and being reached by customers.

Long term: We can be the powerful interface to your customers you've been waiting for. With a first-class chat interface that your employees are familiar with.</comment>


W^X enabled in OpenBSD Firefox port - <AUTHOR> http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20151021191401 <comment><USER2> I would _love_ to see this make it upstream. I use PaX/grsec under linux and one of my favorite things about them is that they try to enforce w^x.

Unfortunately, a ton of programs break this policy (seemingly for no benefit). Having upstream firefox respect w^x anyway would mean I could remove its exception under PaX and a whole class of possible security flaws just GoAway™.

Ideally, I'd love to see Linux embrace w^x generally, but the kernel devs do not seem terribly interested in that. Either way, keep up the rockin' work OpenBSD team!

Edit: Oh wait! The patch for this _is_ actually upstream! This bit of news is OpenBSD enabling it! That's awesome! /me tries to rebuild firefox with the patch enabled.

<comment><USER3> >and a whole class of possible security flaws just GoAway™.

Technically not true, they don't go away, they're just harder(and not that much harder) to exploit.

<comment><USER4> It changes a broad class of attack exploits to require return-oriented programming techniques to exploit. Are you seriously claiming that ROP isn't "that much harder" than injecting arbitrary code?

<comment><USER5> libc by itself provides a Turing-complete set of ROP gadgets: <[http://www.cs.ncsu.edu/faculty/jiang/pubs/RAID11.pdf>](http://www.cs.ncsu.edu/faculty/jiang/pubs/RAID11.pdf>).

<comment><USER2> First of all: thanks! I'm excited to read this!

Second of all: ugh! Dear HackerNews team, please fix your URL matching algorithm so it doesn't include <> in URLs; they're actually explicitly recommended by the URI RFC as delimiters.

Sincerely, <USER2>
</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was going to post something about how I wonder how useful this is since my understanding is that JIT engines need to be able to write executable code to memory, and if you can't protect that, which seems to be the largest attack vector for browsers currently.

Then I actually looked at the post, and it's about enabling W^X on JIT pages in memory. Very cool.

<comment><USER7> I think I remember reading old articles about how they're doing this. Once the code has been JIT'd they put it on a page (or pages) by itself, and then toggle the write bit so it can be executed. Once it's JIT'd anyway it won't ever be changed, other than to maybe be dropped in favor of some other code. This still can have some security issues if someone can manage to get the JIT engine to output arbitrary code directly but it prevents a huge class of attacks of overwriting the JIT pages and getting the browser to then execute them. Or the usual stack overflows and other things of course.

<comment><USER8> > Once it's JIT'd anyway it won't ever be changed,

That's not necessarily how it works. JITs often use inline caches that get populated at runtime. JITs usually implement W^X by mapping the same physical memory into two different address ranges. Once as RW for modification and once as RX for execution.

Having a single mapping is possible, but comes with performance penalties because execution needs to reach a safe/bailout point where that can happen instead of just atomically patching the code.

<comment><USER7> Doesn't mapping the same physical memory into two places actually end up defeating the W^X bit entirely? Since you can write to the RW mapped page and have it change the RX page?

<comment><USER8> Those pages would be mapped at a different, random address while the executing code has an instruction pointer pointing right at the RX page.

It's much more difficult getting access to the JIT's internal data structures, traversing them to find the correct RW page, then modify it, then jump to the same place in the RX page. If you already have that much control you're probably not far from getting the JIT to emit arbitrary code anyway.

Note that writing to ICs can happen from a different thread, so the current thread stack does not need to know much of the JIT's internal data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Firefox on iOS, eh?

<comment> TD-Linux It's buildable and works, but you obviously could never submit it to the App Store.

<comment><USER10> Firefox on iOS [https://appsto.re/ca/-LZ_6.i](https://appsto.re/ca/-LZ_6.i)

<comment><USER11> That one uses WebKit. I wonder if anybody actually got Gecko to run on iOS. As I understand, there are "only" two problems - Apple not allowing other HTML/JS implementations, and Apple not allowing writable, executable memory. I don't know what the status of the first is, but you can get around the latter by just using an interpreter instead of a JIT (which is of course terribly slow).

Or, you decide Apple is never going to let your engine on the App store, and then you just include the JIT. The enforcement is done at time of submission to the app store, not at runtime. IIRC, you can just call a certain function to mark a memory region as writable or executable, but Apple detects this call statically.

I further wonder if you could just distribute binaries, outside of the app store, and your users would have $99 developer accounts, and run a little script to "build their project with XCode", signing and installing it to their device?

<comment><USER12> Prototype builds of Gecko running on iOS do exist, but they are not officially developed or maintained by Mozilla. You can track the progress of merging iOS support into the main Firefox repository in this bug:

[https://bugzil.la/1163827](https://bugzil.la/1163827)

<comment><USER9> That looks pretty official to me.

<comment><USER12> Well, you certainly know more about Mozilla's iOS plans than I do :) but I thought Ted was just working on the patches on his own time, not in any official capacity.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Cheap cab ride? You must have missed Uber's true cost - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/31/cheap-cab-ride-uber-true-cost-google-wealth-taxation <comment><USER3> This was the most meandering anti-tech piece ever. "PE is subsidizing growth and Apple hoards cash overseas and some little University project in Iceland died RABBLE!"

There are LOTS of great reasons to be skeptical of Uber but come on.

<comment><USER4> I agree. I almost disagree with every point the author makes. It sounded like just whining to me.

I do see the risk of an Uber monopoly but that's highly unlikely and if it does happen there will be consequences from governments, customers and drivers. I think there is enough safety triggers in the system.

For now I enjoy uber's great service and excellent prices.

<comment><USER5> What would those consequences be? Perhaps some sort of regulation?

<comment><USER4> customers defecting to competitors. employees protesting/unionizing, lawsuits... and if all fails, eventually government regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry having trouble parsing this:

> rates so low that they didn't even cover the combined cost of fuel and > vehicle depreciation

> percentages from its drivers' fares ... 30%

So apparently Uber managed to find some drivers who are willing to drive people for less than fuel+depreciation, _and_ share 30% of that with Uber? Something must be off in these statements, since I doubt any driver is stupid enough to drive people at a loss. Do the drivers get paid a different amount for a ride than what I see on the screen?

I'm sure there is a potential threat of Uber wiping out the cabs and jacking up the prices, but this article is not very clear.

<comment><USER7> When Uber offers free and discounted rides to passengers, the drivers still collect their percentage as if it was the full fare. Often the discounts are transparent (there's no notice that you've received a discount). So yes, sometimes drivers do get paid a different amount than (a flat percentage of) what you see on the screen.

<comment><USER8> If Uber gives a discounted rate, they eat the cost, the driver doesn't get hit with the discounted rate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The article is terrible. It's conflating VC investing with taxation of global companies with global revenues, like Apple and Google. The reason why Apple has hundreds of billions offshore is because they earned it outside the US. That's simply how taxation works.

</comment><comment><USER9> This article has some good points. Most of the apologists for 'duper have no idea how the transportation industry is actually regulated. For example, somehow Uber and Lyft found a way to fully comply with New York State's transportation regulations, but ignored them everywhere else, until their lobbyists took care of those pesky, gutless state governments.

I drove for a taxi company in Arizona for a few years.It was a lot of fun, at the beginning. The company I drove for built its reputation/brand over 25+ years, and incorporated the latest technology as it became available. The arrival of the "super-duper-not-a-taxi-apps" ruined the economics of the business for the companies that were complying with Arizona's free-market approach to taxi regulation. The companies are adapting, but it's hard to compete with well-funded venture capitalists.

People who have a sense of self-preservation should not use the services of predatory _not-transportation_ companies. There are times when people really, really need a ride, and the smartphone app won't be able to send somebody to pick you up. (It's more than running out of battery power while at the bar - those people were whiners.)

<comment><USER10> Your screen name informs me that you're an unbiased source for thoughtful analysis.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's an implied assumption that revenues collected from federal taxes ("Look at Apple, which has recently announced that it sits on $200bn of potentially taxable overseas cash") will somehow materialize on municipalities' accounts (city of Cupertino and Santa Clara county, I suppose) as if there's some mysterious revenue-sharing program with the money flowing from the federal government to the municipalities that are lucky enough to host major corporate headquarters.

<comment><USER12> Corporate income tax is levied in 44 states. I'm not sure if any counties/cities have corporate income tax. Presumably if Apple et. al. have to pay federal corporate income tax they'll surely have to pay the state corporate income tax as well.

<comment><USER11> My understanding from reading this California FAQ [https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1083.pdf](https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/misc/1083.pdf) is that only "income from sources within California" is taxable (and in case of global corporations they resort to some formula to calculate their fair portion), so repatriated cash wouldn't matter for local coffers - <USER2> (or Santa Clara County, or California) would have as much claim on income earned somewhere in Zurich, as Trieste has on an income earned off a cup of fresh Illy espresso brewed in Cupertino.

Perhaps I'm wrong, or maybe California example is very different and not indicative of general picture.

In any case, it seems that companies either register their headquarters in some "cooperating" states like South Dakota [http://www.marketplace.org/2009/03/25/business/borrowers/sio...](http://www.marketplace.org/2009/03/25/business/borrowers/sioux- falls-town-credit-built), or approach the states directly about making a special exception to the tax rules in order to win their business (like Tesla and their Gigafactory in Nevada, or Toyota moving to Texas, or Nissan moving to Tennessee). The game is even easier at the city level - cities will introduce special tax breaks for a 99 Cent store or a new gas station, leave alone a major Fortune 500 employer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So what's Uber's long term game plan? Wiping out local taxi companies could be one, but people aren't going to disown their less-driven car anytime soon, nor is public transportation going to go away.

At some point I assume they're going to turn the corner and either need to raise profits or cut expenses. You can build a moat with cash for only so long.

<comment><USER14> Self driving cars according to their top execs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> but chicago cabbies are rude, stink, are talking on the phone in foreign language, demand cash( some even yell at passenger for not having cash), drive cars with no functional air conditioning, drive aggressively to out compete other cabs,demand tips, play annoying ads on the little screens attached to seats....

never again cabs. thank you uber for existing.

<comment><USER7> The point of the article isn't that Uber is hurting taxis, but that it's also hurting other forms of public transport, and other startups in that space (such as on-demand bus services.)

Just because Uber > taxis doesn't mean Uber > everything.</comment></comment>


Apple rejects iOS apps with Dropbox integration - <AUTHOR> http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=59350&replies=15

<comment><USER2> Dupe. Discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3916826></comment>


An Introduction To The Conjugate Gradient Method Without The Agonizing Pain - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~quake-papers/painless-conjugate-gradient.pdf

<comment><USER2> 64 pages seems agonizing enough... after a quick glance it still seems like an excellent reference, though.

<comment><USER3> It is eminently readable... Don't let the page count scare you -- the illustrations pad it out a lot. It's much more of a tutorial than a reference.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty excited to read about it. I learned like half a lecture on conjugate gradient stuffs, more just like, "its this optimisation thing..etc". It'll be nice to have a look through it and get a better idea as to what it is and how it works.</comment></comment></comment>


500px Co-Founder and Former CEO Ousted from the Startup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/09/15/500px-co-founder-and-former-ceo-ousted-from-the-startup/ <comment><USER2> Ex 500px employee here.

Oleg is a good guy, as in I'd love to be (and have been) his friend, but he really can't run a company. He's impossible to work for.

Investors put project management in place (more than once) which he systematically destroyed (firing, pushing so hard they quit, whatever). I'm not sure why he did this, I think he thought he was more effective in working with the team. The issue with this is that his measure of "effective" was seemingly hours spent in the office.

It was not uncommon to get a project (see: portfolios.500px.com, multiple versions of the IOS app) and have oleg set an impossible deadline. Because of his management style, just about every rails dev in Toronto has been through the company. They seem to go through waves of employees (40+ down to 15 and back again) every six months to a year.

It really sucks to see a founder be pushed out, but I think this can have a happy ending for 500px, and for Oleg, if he chooses to learn from this scenario.

<comment><USER3> > Because of his management style, just about every rails dev in Toronto has > been through the company. They seem to go through waves of employees (40+ > down to 15 and back again) every six months to a year.

I don't know and I wasn't there, but this sounds like the Steve Jobs wanna-be style of leadership. There is this myth of Steve Jobs leadership prowess and dictator style rule which probably has some element of truth, but everyone of these founders that try to emulate this myth thinking it will lead them to success.

You should nice to your employees, you should treat them with respect. You should give them reasonable working hours, reward them for their work, not fuck them and their families over for your vision of a how a silly picture site ought to be. Startup employees make dog shit for pay, and they get a good dog shit's worth of equity. A fraction of a percent is nothing unless the company sells for north of $50mil, maybe a nice bonus after that and not life changing until you're up in the hundreds of millions, a height few start ups ever reach. So just be nice. Startup employees are there for the experience, not for the money, unless they don't understand how startup equity works.

<comment><USER4> > unless they don't understand how startup equity works.

Which is, in my experience, most of them.

<comment><USER5> Really? This is definitely not true in my experience. Most startup employees I've talked to absolutely know that 1%, 10% 30%, whatever, of nothing (or practically nothing) is still nothing. They're not in it for the rare chance that their 0.5% or less earns them upwards of $1M.

<comment><USER6> I work in a startup, and I know that my equity is peanuts, but I have really no idea about how to use it. Someone should make a talk about it.

<comment><USER7> There's _a lot_ of material you can find and read about online. Please do it.

Your "equity" is most likely "options" which means as you vest them (usually on a vesting schedule, look at your contract) you have _the option to purchase_ (or exercise, because some types of equity can be rewarded without buying them) shares at a specified strike price.

 _In finance, an option is a contract which gives the buyer (the owner) the right, but not the obligation, to buy or sell an underlying asset or instrument at a specified strike price on or before a specified date._

I've been a founder, of multiple companies. You're most likely being screwed but the founders are most likely going to be screwed too; dilution sucks unless you've got low burn and high revenue (which gives you an upper-hand in dealing with investors). Generally as a founder too, the number one killer is running out of money, so when the funding ball starts to roll we (the founders) typically ride it hard as we can, which unless you're an established 10x-making-founder, means the founders get diluted hard.

One of these days I want to make enough from a venture to build one with an upper-hand on the investors, I definitely want to create an environment where people are having fun, working hard, and also are rewarded handsomely with ownership in the company. Igalia is an inspiring example I think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow. That must really suck. The 'people that he trusted the most' clearly points at some very hard feelings there.

If your co-founder and investors together have a controlling interest these things can and do happen. In a way this was in the cards when they appointed (presumably with his consent, otherwise there would have been a confrontation earlier) a new CEO, after that you're going to have to play ball or leave. Still, it's tough for this to happen to anybody, especially if you're the one that led the company to where it is today.

I really hope for the 500px investors and other co-founder that they don't make any major mistakes in the next year because an ex-CEO minority shareholder with a grudge is not going to be easy to placate if you mess up.

They will be walking on thin ice.

<comment><USER9> Disclosure: My company was bought by 500px, I left after only 9 months of vesting, and I'm still bound by an NDA.

Andreessen Horowitz is backing 500px, I'm sure (but I have no specific knowledge of) that whatever paperwork they argued over the months that Andy was the new CEO was properly vetted.

In my opinion, Oleg Gutsol was _incredibly_ talented in a wide array of things and has a good heart, but sometimes the CEO that's fantastic for the first 20 employees isn't the one that excels for the next 200. I'm sure this isn't the last we've heard of him. He'll start something new and succeed with it as well. He has an incredible ability to figure out how users will actually see and use your app and what motivates them.

<comment><USER8> I think the mistake was to try to stay on. Then you have the 'old captain' and the 'new captain' on the ship at the same time and that is a recipe for trouble if the desire for another CEO did not come from the old CEO.

That's a thing I've seen play out in two other spots and in both cases it ended more or less like it did here (only substantially quicker).

I fully agree with you on the 20/200 matter. I'm like that myself (and even the '20' is not my ambition but more along the lines of 'somebody has to do it').

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm sure he wasn't tossed out to the unemployment line. Startup founders don't always make good company CEO's. Steve Jobs sucked the first time around too in many ways; it took 10 years more time for him to learn how to lead and was a different person the second time around. Even he is an exception, not all people learn from their mistakes or even get a second chance. But startup founders are always able to start another company these days even if they got removed from the previous one.

</comment><comment><USER11> I remember meeting Andy on a plane to SFO. I've run into him before at Extreme Startups. He was on his way to a board meeting at A16Z, and I was on my way to leave Instagram. They needed an Android lead. After a few meetings, I ultimately decided to pursue my own startup.

I think one of those meetings was with Oleg over the phone. Intelligent guy from what I gathered. I'm sure he'll bounce back, though I'm not sure it's very wise to be so public about this so quickly, when emotions are raw and high.

500px is definitely one of the better known startups here in Toronto. They have a great product, they just need to settle on a product direction and execute. The comments about employee churn aren't surprising to me. And the unfortunate part about startups is that failure is typically the result of internal turmoil, so here's hoping they iron it all out quickly.

<comment><USER12> What's the startup that you'll be working on?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If he still has equity in the company, isn't he only hurting himself by interviews and keeping this in the media cycle?

</comment><comment><USER14> No matter how justified this decision was, this has to be rough for him. I wonder if it's harder in a smaller startup scene (Toronto) than it would be in a place like Silicon Valley.

(I love 500px; hopefully this will lead to a more successful company in the long run.)

</comment><comment><USER15> This is why you don't give up control of your company no matter how nice things seem. Founders should maintain absolute control over 3 out of 5 board seats. The Parker rule.

Whatever his flaws the company wouldn't exist without him. His investors knew who he was before they invested. They should be forced to negotiate. They should not be able to fire him.

A16Z is an investor in 500px. They claim to support founders so I'm sure they will make a public statement explaining how they tried to help this guy but were outvoted.

<comment><USER16> That's ridiculous. At some point, if you don't have majority share of the company, that means enough other people have taken large of stake in its success that it's no longer "yours" alone. I don't buy this idea that just because someone started a company, they deserve to be dictator for life.

<comment><USER15> Founders are dictators at day one. The question is whether they should give up control to an investor run committee. Remember that most investors no ability to run a company and have a portfolio of companies to fall back on.

<comment><USER17> I look forward to seeing your stats on that, because that's not my experience.

I guess if you're a solo founder who doesn't take much money, you can try to remain some sort of generalissimo. But almost every company of substance is controlled by an investor-run committee; it's called a board.

Being a dictator at day one is kinda boring: you're the admiral of a fleet that fits in your bathtub. Most interesting things take collaboration: shared ideas, shared labor, shared capital. And that generally means sharing control. Good people rarely want to work for dictators.

<comment><USER15> All being a dictator means is having absolute power. It says nothing about how the company is run. Zuckerberg would almost certainly have been replaced like Steve Jobs was if he hadn't maintained board control.

<comment><USER13> I think this distinction may have caused the disagreement in this thread. A dictator as a "call all the shots" is very different than "maintains board control". The latter can mean you don't even work on product at all, but have the assurance you can't be kicked out of your own company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Don't worry Oleg. Jobs got ousted from Apple at one point too...

<comment><USER19> Everyone loves the Steve Jobs example, but remember that Apple was a few quarters away from implosion, and he founded a second company that was highly successful. They took on massive investment from a company most considered their largest enemy.

<comment><USER4> > he founded a second company that was highly successful.

NeXT was a commercial failure.

> They took on massive investment from a company most considered their largest > enemy.

$150mm wasn't a very big investment for Microsoft. Just compare their market caps at the time for a sense of the different in scale between the companies: [http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+microsoft+mark...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=apple%2C+microsoft+market+cap+on+august+7+1998)

It also wasn't that much for Apple. Just five months earlier, they reported a $740mm quarterly loss, or 5x what Microsoft invested in them. The purpose of the investment was primarily to help bolster credibility in Apple as an ongoing concern. Microsoft's reason for doing this was to try and keep the DoJ at bay.

<comment><USER20> > NeXT was a commercial failure.

Pixar, however, was not.

<comment><USER4> Apologies, you caught me at a crabby, pedantic moment. Who cares if Pixar was a commercial success or not? It doesn't have anything to do with the topic at hand.

I'm going to dissect what I was replying to:

        Everyone loves the Steve Jobs example,
        but remember that Apple was a few quarters
        away from implosion, and he founded a second
        company that was highly successful. They
        took on massive investment from a company
        most considered their largest enemy.

First:

        Apple was a few quarters away from implosion

puts you in the frame of mind that we're not discussing Steve Jobs' post-Apple entrepreneurial experiences in general, but, instead, examples from the computer industry, which would imply that we're talking about NeXT.

Furthermore, NeXT was founded in 1985. Pixar was founded in 1986. So, even if you set aside what I wrote above, and just take an entirely literal view of the following:

        he founded a second company that was highly successful

You still have to come to the conclusion that the GP was discussing NeXT, not Pixar.

<comment><USER21> What's your definition of successful?

Here's mine. NeXT and its technology were acquired by Apple for $429m and 1.5 million Apple shares. This technology was was used in the creation of OSX. The acquisition brought Job's back to Apple and into the CEO chair where he lead the company on the path to becoming the most cash rich in the world.

#winning

<comment><USER22> The _acquisition_ was successful, but was NeXT as a company successful? (The latter being the point that's being made).

<comment><USER23> Well, if the benchmark for success is "write a bullshit app and get acquired by megacorp" that is pretty common these days, then yes they were successful as a company.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Prisoners Pay Millions to Call Loved Ones Every Year And Company Wants More - <AUTHOR> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/10/prison-phone-profits_n_7552464.html?ir=Business

<comment><USER2> The cost of connecting these calls to any location in the US is ~1 cent a minute! The problem is who monitors the calls to ensure that nothing illicit goes down. Do we make prison staff monitor the calls, or do we outsource it to some fat-cat company who gouges the called parties for dollars per minute? Prisoners are a captive product. This is a rent-seeking industry which benefits only the owners of the businesses providing this service. It is high time this gravy train is ended.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It would be nice if Google entered this market. Providing free phone calls, free money transfers and even free tablets would be such a boon to prisoners and their families.</comment>


Looking for a software engineer to start a business with me in China? - <AUTHOR>

I'm seeking for a coding partner to start a project in China. If anyone wants to explore the commercial chances of pets social network, fell free to leave your e-mail. :D <comment><USER2> well check out my product qrunched.com. QR codes are much much popular in China. It also has a pet QR code. I can be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com</comment>


Graphene creates electricity when struck by light - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/98941-graphene-creates-electricity-when-struck-by-light

<comment><USER2> Original MIT description: [http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/graphene- thermoelectric-1...](http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/graphene- thermoelectric-1007.html)

Current had previously been seen in response to light, but was assumed to be a photovoltaic effect. This new work says it is a "hot-carrier" response.

 _"The material's electrons, which carry current, are heated by the light, but the lattice of carbon nuclei that forms graphene's backbone remains cool. It's this difference in temperature within the material that produces the flow of electricity."_

It is interesting because it is a response to temperature differences and responds to wide frequencies and power ranges of light.

Don't sell your coal mine stock yet, _"It is still unclear if it could be used for efficient energy generation. It's too early to tell."_

<comment><USER3> >Don't sell your coal mine stock yet, "It is still unclear if it could be used for efficient energy generation. It's too early to tell."

isn't graphene made from coal? maybe this discovery might even further increase coal demand?

<comment><USER4> Coal is made of carbon molecules, and so is graphene. But then again so is diamond, and graphite (pencil lead). So it's not easy to convert coal->graphene (though it's probably not as hard as graphite->diamond :)

[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allotropes_of...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Allotropes_of_carbon)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can anyone with an actual background in thermoelectrical effects tell us why this is not just a consequence of graphene's Seebeck coefficient?

As near as I can tell:

1\. They used 850nm to heat one side of the graphene pn junction

2\. Photons have an absorption depth, so the side facing the laser heats more than the side away from the laser.

3\. Seebeck effect manifests.

<comment><USER4> They didn't heat one side, they heated all of it. The electrons became mobile and moved from the n-side to the p-side. What's interesting is that the electrons got exited but the nuclei did not. So the nuclei stay in their pattern while the electrons flow.

Edit: all I know is what I read in the press release :) Here's the actual paper <http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3826>

<comment><USER5> > What's interesting is that the electrons got exited but the nuclei did not.

This statement can't be right. If the temperature of the material went up, then the nuclei became exited. And if they didn't, then the result is identical to the photoelectric effect.

Edit: By the way, what you've described corresponds to "freeze-out" in old- fashioned semiconductor terms. As you drop the temperature of a diode, the free electrons and holes fall back to their low energy state and it turns back into a vanilla semiconductor. Heating it up makes them mobile again.

Edit2: > Edit: all I know is what I read in the press release :)

Yeah, it was clear that the PR was not written by someone knowledgeable. I'm sure there are MIT folks on this board so I'm hoping one of them pokes the right colleague so that we get a clearer answer, because it sure sounds like there's something interesting going on there.

Thanks for the arxiv pointer, I'll try to look this weekend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Am I the only one who wishes we could give these folks a few billion dollars so they could stop issuing press releases and just _make_ something already?

<comment><USER7> The graphene researchers from yesterday got $2 mil at least! <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3080058>

But yeah, money going into graphene research will certainly be on the rise over the next few years :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This effect was seen before, but had been dismissed as a photoelectric effect. [http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/graphene- thermoelectric-1...](http://www.mit.edu/newsoffice/2011/graphene- thermoelectric-1007.html) And here's the actual paper: <http://arxiv.org/abs/1108.3826>

</comment><comment><USER8> "Since its discovery in 2004 (by pulling a thin layer off a piece of pencil graphite using sticky tape)"

So can I just do that and get a layer of graphene ? I mean is it really that simple ?

<comment><USER4> You'll get a bunch of graphite and some microscopic bits of graphene. But yeah, it's the easiest way to get some for experimenting. [https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Graphene#Draw...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Graphene#Drawing_method)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So could a space elevator in theory be self-powering from the cable?

I mean there is going to be 36,000km of it.

<comment><USER4> Maybe. But they'll have to deal with the fact that a space elevator would effectively "ground" the ionosphere first.

<comment><USER10> I guess you don't actually need to ground it. The Earth end of it could hover above the ground or it could be attached to some insulator.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Crypto Table – A Periodic Table of Cryptocurrencies - <AUTHOR> https://jes.al/crypto-table/ <comment><USER2> Kinda cute, but that's a giiiiant stretch of metaphor to enforce the exact shape of the periodic table on a domain whose first principles have little similarity to the principles that drive the patterns of behavior in the elements.

<comment><USER3> Agree.

People have visualized market data for years. Try a tree map. You can group them and size each block by their market size. [https://www.finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec](https://www.finviz.com/map.ashx?t=sec)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool, a lot of people don't understand that most of the top cryptocurrencies are not merely Bitcoin clones. This chart underscores that point and distinguishes the differences between them. I would expect the number of categories and the difficulty in creating classifications to increase over time, however, so I'm not sure how well these boxes will hold up in the long run.

</comment><comment><USER5> Related [https://vectorspace.ai/recommend/datasets](https://vectorspace.ai/recommend/datasets) and the periodic table of elements correlated to stocks [https://www.kaggle.com/biomimic/periodic-table-of- elements-m...](https://www.kaggle.com/biomimic/periodic-table-of-elements- mapped-to-stocks)

</comment><comment><USER6> Namecoin (NMC) is missing.

</comment><comment><USER7> Augur is fintech. If it takes off, Wall Street is really going to care.

</comment><comment><USER8> Blocknet is the first, and still leading, interoperability protocol yet it is not listed. Little disappointing to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER9> Tezos feels a little more worthy to be on here than many listed.

</comment><comment><USER10> So, I click on a random square to find out some more information: POLY.

That takes me here: [https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/poly/overview](https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/poly/overview). On this page, its listed as "PolyBit".

The description on that page: "Polybit is a proof of work scrypt based alternative crypto currency with a 10% premine and a block time target of 3 minutes, a hard cap of 150 million units and a difficulty retargetting every 24 hours. The website URL is inactive at the time of writing."

Inactive website, that seems concerning.

So, I click around there and find the Twitter account ([https://twitter.com/polybitco](https://twitter.com/polybitco)) that appears to be associated with that page. It was last active in June of 2015. It describes itself thusly: "Polybit is a next generation crypto currency that changes the game for digital currencies and the relationship between businesses and users forever" \- bold.

There is a link to a website there: [http://www.polybit.co/](http://www.polybit.co/) \- but, oh dear, that website now belongs to some company selling sealants.

Undeterred, I head to Google. Searching for "Polybit" brings up this result: [http://polybit.com/](http://polybit.com/) \- which seems unrelated - its some sort of backend API product.

So, I try the name listed on the Periodic Table - I search for "Polymath". That brings me here: [https://polymath.network/](https://polymath.network/) which appears also to be unrelated - its a website for some crypto platform that lists one of its benefits as: "Access to 2 Billion Unbanked - There is a trove of wealth that is untouched by Wall Street that can now be accessed through Polymath.". Maybe I'm a bit cynical, but I don't see how someone who can't get a bank account is likely to have the resources necessary to make good decisions regarding securities trading.

Going back to cryptocompare.com - the trading volume for the last 24h is allegedly 12.77 bitcoin - roughly $82,000. In the grand scheme of the entire investment world, $82k is nothing. But, this is $82k in trading volume on a coin that is either dead, or maybe its now a sealant company, or, maybe its a backend API, or, maybe its some company that seems to be designed to try to separate the already disadvantaged from whatever money they may have.

This is just an anecdote, but, it really does not help convince me that the vast majority of cryptocurrencies are anything but a fancy way to take your money, put it in a pile, and burn it. (Or, maybe useful if you are trying to launder it)

(All that being said, a pretty fun website concept and great execution!)

<comment><USER11> The issue is that CryptoCompare maps "POLY" to PolyBit, and not to Polymath, which is the generally accepted mapping (there is no authority to officially define such mappings). So you were in fact looking at some ancient mostly dead project.

As for the $82k in volume, a large chunk of that is wash trading, which is rampant in crypto, and I wouldn't read much into it.

<comment><USER10> Isn't a big chunk of wash trading om a dead asset an issue? Doesn't that indicate something unsavory going on? Ianal, but, my understanding is that wash trading us illegal on normal markets - and for good reason.

<comment><USER11> Yes, wash trading is bad. But crypto was created to escape regulation, which comes with the good and the bad. "Go back to fiat if you want regulation" is a common mindset, though the idealists are being displaced by new entrants into the sphere, who mostly support regulation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The periodic table of pseudo investment vehicles that will lose your money.

</comment><comment><USER13> Another way to show [https://dailycoinprice.com/](https://dailycoinprice.com/)</comment>


Show HN: Day and Night Map for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.genewarrior.daynightmap <comment><AUTHOR> The aim was to create a simple and lightweight (<5MB) app that displays which parts of the world are in the night, in the day and in the twilight (look at the help section to get an explanation what the different types of twilights mean).

The app includes a widget for your homescreen that's designed to be very battery-friendly (only updates when necessary).

Check it out here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.genewarrio...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.genewarrior.daynightmap)

Disclaimer: the app is currently supported by ads, with an option to remove the ad. If people think the ads are too annoying, please tell me. It's the first time I'm putting any ads in my apps.

Of course: any feedback is appreciated!</comment>


Most Kids Who Died of Flu Weren't Vaccinated, Study Finds - <AUTHOR> http://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/most-kids-who-died-flu-weren-t-vaccinated-study-finds-n742046 <comment><USER2> "They found that at least three-quarters of kids who died from influenza between 2010 and 2014 had not been vaccinated in the months before they got sick."

So, nearly 25% _were_ vaccinated and died of flu anyway? I'd like to see a breakdown of how many died because of mismatched strains, and how many died because the vaccine for the specific strain just plain did not work.

<comment><USER3> It also matters what their pre-existing status was before they came down with the flu. The article throws around these percentages and groups, but doesn't comment at all on the relations between the groups - and it could very well be non-trivial. Better info from the following:

[https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0403-flu- vaccine.ht...](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2017/p0403-flu-vaccine.html)

[http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/03/...](http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2017/03/30/peds.2016-4244)</comment></comment>


New Features of C# 4.0 - <AUTHOR> http://coliveira.net/2009/05/new-features-of-c-40/

<comment><USER2> Default parameter values is a great addition I think, and optional parameters!

Please don't provide examples of languages with these features in response :) Some of us do use C# for a living

</comment><comment><USER3> > access to code created on non-typed programming languages such as Python and > Ruby

For me, that killed it.</comment>


Cash and Covid-19 - <AUTHOR> http://jpkoning.blogspot.com/2020/04/cash-and-covid-19.html <comment><USER2> I think that one thing took away the other, that is, third world countries seek to subsidize but in the end everything will be counterproductive for the common good</comment>


Steve Jobs was working on Apple's "next product"  on the day before he died  - <AUTHOR> http://www.edibleapple.com/2011/10/19/steve-jobs-was-working-on-apples-next-product-up-until-the-day-before-he-died/

<comment><USER2> It seems odd to me that we, as a society, look up to or hold this in high esteem. It's not my life and the decision is entirely Steve's -- but it's sad that spending your last day of life working gets more cheers than spending it with friends and family.

I do hope that it's at least universal that relationships do trump work. If not, then I give up on life.</comment>


The first Google Offer. - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/offers/home#!details//E7DW64L4O7TRL62W <comment><USER2> it's all about priorities:

unimportant at google: google translate api

important at google: $3 for $10 worth of drinks, pastries and treats at Floyd's Coffee Shop</comment>


Google removes options to always show www in the Chrome browser's address bar - <AUTHOR> https://www.ghacks.net/2019/12/13/google-removes-options-to-always-show-www-in-the-chrome-browsers-address-bar/ <comment><USER2> That might be Google's dream: Remove URLs completely from the user's awareness. Let them use Google search to navigate the web. And make Web site owner pay to Google Adwords to make their site addressable. Of course the www is just a minor step into that direction, but still a step into a worrying direction.

<comment><USER3> URLs are already removed from search in some locations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't know if it's related.. but Twitter removes www. from tweets. Seeing as I don't have a wildcard SSL cert, I can't post my website URL on twitter as it leads to [http://website.x](http://website.x)

</comment><comment><USER5> Not the brightest move on Google's part.</comment>


Ask HN: What company do you wish existed? - <AUTHOR> What is a product or service that would save you time and/or money if it existed? It could be something you would work on, but don't have the time. Or it might be something you don't have the expertise to build. <comment><USER2> A service that could look up every online account I've ever created, probably by email address, and allow me to completely delete it and all associated data. Like Unroll.me, but for user accounts. Oh yeah and without the sketchy data re-selling practices.

</comment><comment><USER3> A way to purchase pre-cut lumber in small quantities.

For instance, I need an 18-24" piece of 2x4 to prop up an air conditioner, and a couple 30" lengths of 1x10 to convert steam radiators into makeshift shelving. Oh, and four 36" lengths of 1/4" dowel to sew into the bottoms of curtains.

Obstacles to my acquiring these:

1) The small corner hardware stores I can get to on foot or by transit don't sell lumber, period.

2) I don't own a car, and hate driving (I do have a license, but many of my neighbors don't, and I can get about my daily life 99% of the time without one).

3) OK, let's say I take a cab to a big box store. They'll only sell me full 8' lengths of lumber.

4) Fine, I rent a car or get a cab home, or maybe Home Depot has finally worked out that New Yorkers will buy more if they provide delivery even for small sales.

5) At this point, I've already spent $100 on taxis or more on car rental just getting to and from the store.

6) I finally get the lumber home, and I can't cut it. I live in a New York apartment, with no outdoor space for projects like this. I own a screw gun because it's useful for assembling Ikea furniture and attaching stuff to walls, but for obvious reasons I don't own a hand saw let alone a circular saw or table saw. Neither do any of my neighbors. And even if I had a saw, no way it's getting anywhere near my apartment's hardwood floors (do you have any idea how much the security deposit was?)

7) By some miracle, I find someone to lend me a saw AND a space to cut the lumber in (where??) -- I have nowhere to put the scraps and no sensible way to get rid of them.

<comment><USER4> You'd probably be surprised how fast a hand saw can cut through a board.

Buy a handsaw at the big box store when you buy your wood, cut it in the parking lot before loading it into a cab/uber/rental car. Only do rough cuts (e.g. a little longer than you need) unless you have 100% certain dimensions. Buy sandpaper and sand your way to perfect fit at home, if needed.

The 4 36" dowel rods should be purchase-able in that size. You could ask the big box store to cut larger boards, they do this in the lumber area for plywood.

If this is too much to take on - hire a handyman to do the prop for the AC and ask for them to get the other supplies.

<comment><USER5> There's a saw at home depot (and probably Lowe's) and they'll cut your lumber for you. I think it's one cut per piece of lumber for free.

Home depot lumber is super expensive to begin with, so it's kind of baked in to the cost.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Long-term rentals without the phone calls, in-person visits and dealing with shady brokers. Airbnb was almost there but decided to focus on the mostly illegal hotel-like short-terms.

<comment><USER7> In Europe we have Spotahome which i've used a few times and found to be excellent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Capsule Corporation (from Dragon Ball): "a company that creates special small capsules that shrink and hold objects of various sizes for easy storage".

</comment><comment><USER9> Some service which can take in my golang project from github and build static executable for every possible target and upload it to github releases.

It will be using karalabe/xgo for building these static executables.

So it can build these for all operating systems

\- web servers

\- cli applications

</comment><comment><USER10> A service to match people with jobs based on their Signature Strengths[1]

1\. [https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Research/What-the- Research-...](https://www.viacharacter.org/www/Research/What-the-Research- Says-About-Character-Strengths-Signature-Strengths)

<comment><USER10> Then I learned career matching is not a great fit for that[1]. Rather, doing whatever job you're good at and applying the strengths is more useful. So maybe a service that automates helping you use your signature strengths in your current position. That would be a hard problem, but seems like it would benefit society an incredible amount.

1\. [http://www.viacharacter.org/blog/use-your-strengths-to- furth...](http://www.viacharacter.org/blog/use-your-strengths-to-further-your- career/)

<comment><USER11> A service that helps you use your strengths to excel at your job is called a manager (good ones anyway).

<comment><USER10> True, but for the other x% of the population it could be great ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A company I can share a github repo and a description of a webpack config, and will get back the github repo with a working webpack config.

"Here's this new middlemanapp project running scss through sprockets. Set it up to process scss through webpack, make sprite-based icons from images in this folder, compile es6 and vue modules or coffee script and cue modules, include lodash, set up the hot reload to work with middleman's, and prep production and Dev environments."

I'd pay for something like this.

</comment><comment><USER13> Folding laundry.

<comment><USER14> You just need hired help. Probably find a cleaner on gumtree or similar, and ask them if they will do this for you.

If you want the laundry ironed as well then a dry cleaner will do it for you. Some of them pickup and drop off.

<comment><USER13> On the same line, you just need a taxi or a limo service, you don't need uber & lyft. You can also call/book and have them pick you up.

I don't think the problem is solved yet in a way that's satisfying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> weyland-yutani</comment>