U.S. Department of Labor sues Palantir for racial discrimination - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2016/09/26/u-s-department-of-labor-sues-palantir-for-racial-discrimination/ <comment><USER2> > In one example cited in the lawsuit, the Labor Department says Palantir > hired 14 non-Asian applicants and 11 Asian applicants from a pool of more > than 1,160 qualified people, 85% of whom were Asian. The likelihood of that > happening from chance is one in 3.4 million, according to the lawsuit.

Wow. What position were they applying for? I wonder how their application and selection process works.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they hired 85% of Asian people, wouldn't they be sued for racial discrimination and favoring Asian people?

oh right, you can't discriminate against white people.

</comment><comment><USER4> 1,160 qualified people? How do the Labor Department define qualified? Did Palantir interview all of them?</comment>


Bay Area Overcoming Bias / Less Wrong Meet Up: March 7th, 7PM - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/1un/meetup_bay_area_sunday_march_7th_7pm/

<comment><USER2> Wow, that's quite cool. Makes me wish I was in California right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Extremely cool!</comment></comment>


New YouTube iOS update brings stretched phone interface to the the iPad - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2015/10/05/youtube-app-redesign-update/ <comment><USER2> In theory I like the idea that developers can now push useful updates to all of their customers like never before.

In practice, though, we see too many versions that are garbage. Why is that?

Google is far from the first offender (plenty of unnecessary redesigns and feature-removing "upgrades" coming from Apple and Microsoft too, say) but it's becoming a fundamental software architecture issue.

It's getting to the point where I want a 3-tiered set of app-updating preferences that says "low-level security updates and fixes are automatically OK", "prompt me for any new-feature updates" and "hell no on any re-peanut- buttering-of-the-UI updates".

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just in case if you can't see the iPad screenshot, here : [http://m.imgur.com/Q6nPjaY](http://m.imgur.com/Q6nPjaY)

Their own guidelines: [http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/Screen...](http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp- content/uploads/2014/11/Screen-Shot-2014-11-14-at-10.29.53-PM.png)

It's like they decided that if their tablet apps are going to be bad stretched out phone UIs, the other platform can't have a dedicated tablet UI either.</comment>


Divide and Conquer: How Microsoft Researchers Used AI to Master Ms. Pac-Man - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.microsoft.com/next/2017/06/14/divide-conquer-microsoft-researchers-used-ai-master-ms-pac-man/ <comment><AUTHOR> The paper, "Hybrid Reward Architecture for Reinforcement Learning"[0], describes an evolution on DeepMind's Deep Q-Network (DQN) design[1] that was able to play many Atari games, presented in early 2015.

The HRA design requires more preprocessing (DQN worked on the raw pixels and on score alone), but the charts mapping how much faster HRA learns and how much stronger it plays is convincing.

[0]: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.04208.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1706.04208.pdf)

[1]: [https://deepmind.com/research/dqn/](https://deepmind.com/research/dqn/)</comment>


Kubernetes from the ground up: the scheduler - <AUTHOR> http://kamalmarhubi.com/blog/2015/11/17/kubernetes-from-the-ground-up-the-scheduler/ <comment><USER2> I just started using Kubernetes last week, and I have to say, it's pretty freaking awesome.

I've been running our infrastructure on CoreOS for almost 2 years now. I started implementing it when CoreOS was very young, so I had to deal with a lot of early adopter pains. It took me a long time to learn what Docker was, how it fit together, and how to get everything working with CoreOS's fleet and etcd. Eventually, I had a working cluster setup that would run our services in Docker containers spread across many machines. Some in the cloud, some on bare metal/VMware. It was a great learning experience.

However, I was never really happy with the setup. Despite it being a cluster, I still had to think about the individual nodes. Moreover, my integration with etcd was always a pain in terms of service discovery.

Last week, I decided to clean things up and move to Kubernetes. After watching some videos about how pods, replication controllers, services, and DNS lookups worked, I was convinced that it would greatly simplify our setup.

And it did. I could easily define our services in pods, and expose their ports via services. Then each service could discover one another via DNS lookups. Furthermore, I no longer had to worry about whether my containers were up; as long as the service is running, it "loadbalances" to the underlying pods & containers for me, automatically.

I was able to rip out my etcd integrations, and do away with my fleet unit files. I was even able to vastly simplify my Docker containers to remove some scripts like confd to deal with service hookups and watching etcd keys. And with volume mounting built-in, I'm going to be able to get rid of my overpriced-for-what-I-need PostgreSQL RDS and Redis ElastiCache instances.

And now being able to deploy rolling updates extremely simply means that I no longer have to think about how to push updates to our code. My next todo item is to set up a webhook to roll out new images across the cluster once they've been built on Quay.io and tested via some CI.

I really should blog about all of this, but suffice it to say, I'm extremely impressed with Kubernetes. I'm really glad I took the time this week to dive in.</comment>


Apple's new iPad boasts better colors – how did they do it? - <AUTHOR> http://dot-color.com/2012/03/22/apples-new-ipad-boasts-better-colors-how-did-they-do-it/ <comment><USER2> How did they do it? I assume they asked Samsung very nicely :-)</comment>


Ask HN: Should I begin a porn industry related startup? - <AUTHOR> I have a good tech background as a backend/frontend developer and I think I can make a decent service/app with deep understanding of how things work and what challenges can be.
I am looking for a niche to try and get a relatively quick feedback as what relates to perspectives and finding my passion for it. Being open-minded and impartial, I am looking for all possible industries that are legal and can be improved with my knowledge and experience as a sole entrepreneur (at least, initially, as I want to make it lean).
So, one of the interesting areas for me in this context could be porn-related services. My ideas are a webcam platform, automated pirated content hunting on tube sites, porn tube aggregator, to name a few.
Did anyone of you think of or try to run a porn-related startup? What are your thoughts about it? Please share your experience. Would be happy to discuss.
Thanks! <comment><USER2> Not to be the guy that told you so, but when you lay on your death-bed do you want your legacy to be "He made great porn sites" ?

With your skills there are lots of other areas you can work in, make an impact and make good money.

I looked through your profile. I have a couple of ideas I would like to pursue but my tech skills are not up to par yet. Drop me an email if you would like to work on some ideas.

<comment><USER3> Counter-argument: porn services are actually used by thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in a way that helps enrich their lives and solve a concrete immediate problem.

You'll be hard pressed to find some chatroom package or vision API or machine learning kit that is as deeply satisfying to a user as a solid wank.

A more concrete problem is that the porn industry is very hard to get into and has some real difficult technical challenges.

<comment><USER2> There is no doubt that some porn has value. However this could be easily met by just a few sites not thousands.

More to the point however is the seamy side(imagine that!) of the industry that rarely gets mentioned. The drugs, disease, depressions and suicides, social exclusion and the seedy characters at all levels with whom you must interact. These are best avoided imo.

<comment><USER3> > _The drugs, disease, depressions and suicides, social exclusion and the > seedy characters at all levels with whom you must interact._

Sounds not unlike the startup ecosystem. :|

At least in porn you know somebody's getting fucked.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a career perspective I don't think this is the best move ever. I am pretty sure a good amount of people won't like to see that in your resume (eg. next job, funding your next start-up, ..).

</comment><comment><USER5> I'd stay away from it, it's super competitive (I've tried a lot of things). The only thing that I can think of is VR porn - it might not be so crowded yet.</comment>


Polyphasic sleep. Has anyone tried it? - <AUTHOR>

It's extremely interesting topic. Has anyone tried? Tell your story if you have.<p>More info about it:
http://www.dustincurtis.com/sleep.html <comment><USER2> Everytime I read about polyphasic sleep I think it sounds appealing, probably for the reasons that I find Dvorak keyboard layouts appealing. It promises to marginally optimize an important part of my life after extraordinary effort in manner which results in incompatibility with said rest-of-the-world.

Ultimately, my own sleep schedule is the same as my coding schedule: long blocks of uninterrupted time.

I want to meet someone doing this kind of nap sleeping in person to see if they seem fully alert. Genuine curiosity. As long as it's not my bus driver.

</comment><comment><USER3> Did 6x23m for half a year 6 years ago until it was to cold outside (17 degrees celcius) and the pressure by society, work and friends was becoming to annoying:

* Some friends: "I'd rather not want you to nap when you are here, it's anti-social", "ok i'll do it outside" didn't go over very well. * People waking me when I'm outside napping. "Are you ill", "Is he alive?"... and on a beach party "have you done to much drugs?". * At work I had to leave the office each time - napping in a local park, in a sauna or car. * "Honey, why can't you just lie next to me the whole night instead of 23:00-23:30?", Me: "Does it matter, you're asleep anyway!"

Now I am doing 3-5 hours each night with 2 naps. A dutch interview with me here: [http://www.intermediair.nl/artikel//53439/kan-een-mens- toe-m...](http://www.intermediair.nl/artikel//53439/kan-een-mens-toe-met- hazenslaapjes.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> Only since the beginning of HN. A probably-incomplete sample: [http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=pol...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=polyphasic+sleep&sortby=create_ts+desc)

Super boring. Sssssssuuuuuuuuuuper boring.

</comment><comment><USER5> I had a friend in college who was on it and it worked for him, but he had the incredibly flexible schedule of a college student.

But if you did not have great flexibility and something unexpected comes up you could be caught with your polyphasic pants down and be nonfunctional.

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently on the everyman schedule and it works fine. It gets easier to get up in the middle of the night every day. Tiredness wears of very quick after naps. I'm in Germany though. I don't experience sleep walking or something. Just don't fuck with the schedule, it's critical to modify while in adaption phase. STICK TO THE SCHEDULE when u try it.

Positive effect: I don't have jet lag from the switch to wintertime I stick to the same hour.

I want to switch to the Uberman Schedule in december and I will do it together with a mate.

For more to read look for puredoxyk.

for contact: email@example.com

</comment><comment><USER7> I am using this with only one 20 min nap from when I can remember - this is something my grandpa told me about - the secret is that naps shouldn't be longer than 20 min, after that time you begin to dream and you have trouble coming back, but in the short time you gain some kind of meditative clarity.

Nikola Tesla was even more hardcore than the link you posted. Look at this: [http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2009/07/24/uberman-too- wu...](http://www.puredoxyk.com/index.php/2009/07/24/uberman-too-wussy-for- you-try-tesla/)

</comment><comment><USER8> It's something I've always been interested in although I don't have the flexibility in my schedule to make it work.

From what the accounts I've read, It provides some benefit in the short term however it doesn't seem sustainable in the long term (think months or years).

</comment><comment> saiko-chriskun I've tried but I always end up shutting off my alarm clocks subconsciously... something akin to sleepwalking or something :P. I've even bought one of those alarm clocks where you have to solve a geometric puzzle to turn it off and I STILL do it hahahah.

</comment><comment><USER9> Steve Pavlina has blogged extensively about polyphasic sleep:

<http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/>

<comment><USER10> Steve Pavlina is insane and it taints all of his advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I've tried and failed twice.

However, I did gain one lasting benefit. I taught myself how to reliably fall asleep within 2 minutes. That's a pretty awesome skill.

<comment><USER12> would you like to share - how you figured out to fall asleep in 2mins? I don't fall asleep for at least 20 mins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sleep well for 8hrs. You really need good sleep. All this hacks looks great but have a long term effect on health for sure.

<comment><USER13> Many animals have all sorts of odd sleeps, sharks most of all. There's been no real research into it, but it's something like REM sleep matters the most, and in polyphasic sleep you get to REM really quickly. Maybe 1.5-2h of an 8 hour sleep is REM, but 15 of 20 mins is REM, if you are used to 20 mins.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I tried but could not make it past the 3rd day. Don't know why it didn't work for me, I simply could not stay awake.

<comment><USER11> Same here, I've tried it twice and both times gave in about day 3. It's not that I couldn't physically stay awake, just that my resolve and willpower trended towards zero.</comment></comment>


Car crashes killed 37,133 people in the US in 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/10/car-crashes-killed-37133-people-in-the-us-in-2017/ <comment><USER2> To all self-driving companies testing on public road, even Waymo, which is the current leader: [1]

Why don't you develop/deploy a face and eye tracking system to detect if the test driver is dozing off or otherwise not paying enough attention and act accordingly? (Warn first, and if needed, take the car to a safe spot and stop.)

The system should be useful in real deployment with passenger/driver on board as well, since the self-driving car needs to know if it should obey human's manual command, which should also depend on the person's state of attention at the moment.

[1] Waymo's self-driving car crashed because its human driver fell asleep at the wheel [https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed- becau...](https://qz.com/1410928/waymos-self-driving-car-crashed-because-its- human-driver-fell-asleep/)

[2] In addition, we all heard about the case which the test driver was watching a movie and a pedestrian was killed.

<comment><USER3> > _Why don't you develop a face and eye tracking system to detect if the test > driver is dozing off or otherwise not paying enough attention and act > accordingly?_

At least in Waymo's case, because their explicit goal is to go directly to level 5. Unlike some companies who think intermediate steps are desirable, for Waymo test drivers are specifically that, for testing. The accident (which was just on HN) if anything supports the hypothesis that there should either be Level 1, maybe a little 2, or 5, and that's it.

So spending time and effort on developing more complex technology like that purely for the special limited time case of R&D is probably not worth it vs just plain having better and more professional driver practices. Waymo can and should be blamed for having shifts of more then say 4 hours, insufficiently rigorous selection/training, not having a 2 person requirement, online real time observation by a control center, etc. But it's still a one-off situation. Where technology comes into play is scaling and general usage by non- professionals, but for the specific, low volume case of testing it is absolutely possible to have low-tech or no-tech handled well.

For companies who claim level 3/4 are valuable stepping stones rather then a valley, yes driver attention is integral to their proposal in general deployment and thus requiring that also be part of their technology makes sense. But it's not just over engineered for a level 5 shift, it's to some extent making excuses for what is a direct and simple management failure. If managers overwork and badly train a fork lift operator or any other equipment operator and an accident results, we don't say the fork lift needs eyeball trackers, we say management failed at following best practices and is at fault.

<comment><USER2> Even IF a level 5 self-driving becomes practical soon (I doubt it based on the fact that AI still lacks commonsense), many human riders would still want an option of manual override.

In the linked article of my post above, the manual override went wrong because the driver fell asleep and that could occur to any rider as well.

Obviously, one could make it harder to override the autonomous system but it would result in slower activation which could result in an accident for any car that still lacks commonsense.

In fact, taking into account the commander/rider's state of attention should be part of commonsense needed for any level 5 self-driving system.

<comment><USER3> > _Even IF a level 5 self-driving becomes practical soon (I doubt it based on > the fact that AI still lacks commonsense), many human riders would still > want an option of manual override._

And they should be accommodated why exactly? If they want manual they can just buy a standard car with l1/l2.

> _In the linked article of my post above, the manual override went wrong > because the driver fell asleep and that could occur to any rider as well._

No, not just Waymo but even GM have explicit plans for final cars to not even have so much as a steering wheel at all, and pushing for Congress to allow an exception in that case from full FMVSS-compliance. The manual override and functions are just for the development process, the whole point of level 5 is that passenger involvement is eliminated. Anything less then that isn't level 5 and gets back into the problem of _almost_ not needing any attention, except when you suddenly do. I'm not commenting on how close they are, just on what the goal is and why developing drive attention technology purely for testing purposes makes no sense vs just having better test procedures (and paying for it).

> _In fact, taking into account the commander /rider's state of attention > should be part of commonsense needed for any level 5 self-driving system._

Are you sure you actually understand what the "levels" are here? It's certainly widely regarded as an imperfect classification system, particularly at 2, 3, and 4, but 1 and 5 are clear enough and 5 is "start to finish without even a human in the vehicle at all, or everyone sleeping".

<comment><USER2> > Are you sure you actually understand what the "levels" are here? It's > certainly widely regarded as an imperfect classification system, > particularly at 2, 3, and 4, but 1 and 5 are clear enough and 5 is "start to > finish without even a human in the vehicle at all, or everyone sleeping".

I understand 'Level 5' and I am an active AI researcher. Do you understand what kind of technology is required to get to Level 5?

Do you think level 5 can be achieved without understanding how humans behave in a vehicle? Commonsense is needed for Level 5.

For an example: What if someone sleepwalking or rather sleep kicking and break the windows open then leave a leg or an arm hanging out of it? Do you think a Level 5 car should not monitor how the passengers behave at all?

Do you have real information/references rather than speculation that Waymo and GM have plans to launch only after achieving Level 5 rather than Level 4 which most observers agree on?

Do you have a cost/benefit calculation of why the driver detection system is "not worth it" since it is better to wait for Level 5 before launching anyway? By the way, the driver detection system is something a team of competent AI researchers can do today (perhaps imperfectly but good enough) while no one even knows for sure how to achieve Level 5.

When do you expect Level 5 can be achieved? If your answer is less than 10 years, you appear to know more than most of the top AI researchers I have talked with or read their prognostications.

<comment><USER3> > _I understand 'Level 5' and I am an active AI researcher._

Then frankly your posts make even less sense, unless you've gotten so deep into AI research that you've lost sight of what humans can accomplish without technology.

> _Do you understand what kind of technology is required to get to Level 5?_

Utterly irrelevant to the discussion at hand, beyond that by definition L5 means zero human involvement is required.

> _Do you think level 5 can be achieved without understanding how humans > behave in a vehicle?_

Yeah, absolutely. If how humans behave in the vehicle mattered it wouldn't be L5. Active sabotage is out of scope since there is no difference there then a human driver. If you are a passenger and suddenly start hitting your driver in the head on the interstate what could possibly happen? Oh right, accident and everyone is badly injured or dies.

> _What if someone sleepwalking or rather sleep kicking and break the windows > open then leave a leg or an arm hanging out of it?_

Then they'll have shattered glass and bad cuts all over their leg or arm which would likely wake them up and also hurt a lot. They should probably tell their L5 car to go to the ER and also _are you fucking serious?_ It's not as if humans sleeping in vehicles including ones with glass windows is some new thing and somehow an epidemic of people kicking through windows has never come to my attention. Feel free to share your stats on that one.

> _Do you think a Level 5 car should not monitor how the passengers behave at > all?_

No. On the contrary, self driving cars monitoring their passengers at all times sounds terrifyingly dystopian. Exactly what country/agency do you do AI research for?

> _Do you have real information /references rather than speculation that Waymo > and GM have plans to launch only after achieving Level 5 rather than Level 4 > which most observers agree on?_

Amongst others: "GM Says Car With No Steering Wheel Or Pedals Ready For Streets In 2019", [https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/01/12/577688125...](https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo- way/2018/01/12/577688125/gm-says-car-with-no-steering-wheel-or-pedals-ready- for-streets-in-2019). A lot of mass publication stuff doesn't use "level 5" specifically because it's not terminology everyone will understand, but if it has zero manual controls and human involvement beyond high level orders ("Go here", "stop") that's what it is.

> _Do you have a cost /benefit calculation of why the driver detection system > is "not worth it" since it is better to wait for Level 5 before launching > anyway?_

Why would I need to? You're the one making the assertion that this is something Waymo should do, so presumably _you_ have a cost/benefit analysis right? Waymo apparently doesn't though, and I'm just observing why that would be the case. There are plenty of actual for real jobs being done all the time worldwide that are of the "99% boredom, 1% HOLY SHIT WE'RE ABOUT TO DIE" sort, it's a tough but well known problem that can be worked on in a restricted setting with training, checklists, scheduling and support, no brand new tech required. You're asserting that they should develop a whole new untested complex technology, even if less complex, that will immediately become worthless (or even a negative for those worried about mass surveillance) in deployment. Why do you think this is better then just following decent professional best practices for R&D testing?

> _When do you expect Level 5 can be achieved? If your answer is less than 10 > years, you appear to know more than most of the top AI researchers I have > talked with or read their prognostications._

Irrelevant, and you should really rethink your logic here if you think otherwise. Whether it's 1 year, 5 years, 10 years, or 30 years it's not the public's problem, it's Waymo's and their investors. They can't deploy L5 until it's ready, the timeline for "ready" is just their issue. If they're satisfied that with how their development is going just with human testers and training and the results are what the public wants then how they get from A to B is up to them.

<comment><USER2> My assertion is that they will deploy Level 4 cars first. In fact, Waymo is deploying Level 4 cars to the public soon.

If you are so sure that Waymo and GM will deploy Level 5 and skip Level 4, based on your level of understanding of the technology and the economics involved, please publish a blog post or an Ask HN and see how many experts agree/disagree with you.

Otherwise, are you willing to bet with the people who disagree?

By the way, no steering wheel does not mean Level 5.

[https://www.techrepublic.com/article/autonomous-driving- leve...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/autonomous-driving- levels-0-to-5-understanding-the-differences/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think 50 years from now we're going to look at this fatality rate much like we look at 1930s-1950s era cigarette advertising, or pre-antiseptic era medieval medical practices like bloodletting.

</comment><comment><USER5> So, 10+ 9/11 equivalents (compared on number of deaths) in one year.

<comment><USER6> I wonder what a $2 trillion war on car crashes would look like.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The autonomous driving companies are aiming to change this headline to "People driving cars killed 37,133 other people", this is similar to the argument that "Guns kill people", isn't it?

<comment><USER8> "Guns kill people" is a straw man. The actual argument is that guns make it easier to kill people (and yourself) on a whim.

Autonomous vehicles have nothing to do with gun control because no one is trying to teach handguns to operate themselves.

Autonomous driving companies can and should be judged on how well their software lowers rates of collisions compared to human drivers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How does this compare to elsewhere in the world, in some comparable metric (e.g deaths per driven distance or hour)?

<comment> another-cuppa It's very bad. The US is an outlier when it comes to developed countries. It's closer to third world levels.

<comment><USER10> You should check the rate per number of motor vehicles.

Because if you're looking at car crashes, there's a direct correlation between number of cars and number of crashes.

Otherwise one can think that India is a much safer place, but it's way worse in reality.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wait until driverless cars hit the road.

<comment> andy-x Would you count car's AI "driver" as a fatality then?</comment></comment>


The Unexpected Places Where Artificial Intelligence Will Emerge - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/the-unexpected-ways-that-artificial-intelligence-might-1355337058@rtgonzalez <comment><USER2> These places don't strike me as very "surprising." If we wanted to talk "surprising," we should be looking at the more offbeat, but nevertheless plausible sources:

1) Logistics & transportation. Inventory/warehouse management, traffic management systems, shipping, autonomous cars and even roads, etc.

2) Intelligence. Both industrial and government-oriented. Heavy investment is being made in semantic/parsing algorithms, pattern matching, and analysis.

3) Medical research. New drugs are already being invented by combinatory programs. But there are still a lot of inefficiencies in the system, because it's basically the throw-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. There are billions of dollars to be made by the company who can develop a smarter combinatory program, and no doubt billions being invested in the effort to do so. Also: robotic surgery and medicine -- though that's more robotics than AI, per se.

4) Weather modeling and prediction. As the global climate and weather become less predictable, the challenge of prediction grows increasingly computationally complex (and more economically valuable). I would expect huge investment in this area in the future, if it's not happening already.

At the end of the day, AI seems most likely to emerge in the places where a) the difficulty of the problem at hand far surpasses humans' best efforts; b) the need for speed or scale cannot be accommodated by human effort; c) the economic upside is enormous (ergo, incentives for R&D expenditures); d) the nature of the problem is best solved by a "superhuman" intelligence model, i.e., a model of computation _resembling_ the way the human brain thinks about problems, but more robust -- something requiring creativity, problem solving, and working memory at enormous scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> > working on creating military robots that are as lifelike as possible

Ars wrote a while back about the linux-powered rifle,[1] it seems clear we still have some healthy reluctance for letting AI decide when to fire guns. So what could you use a battlefield infantryman for if no one wants to go down the road of arming AI?

Sure, the dog is one thing, to carry supplies or retrieve someone for medical assistance. Another though, might be behavioral camouflage.

A sniper has a group pinned down. What if you could have a bunch of humanoid AI trained to make furtive movements, pop a head out briefly, dart between cover, to make it more difficult for the sniper to tell when you were moving? What if self-driving humvees were going up and down every road with tinted windows, so that roadside bombers never know which convoy is worth blowing up? What if you have to escort an MVP to safety, but you have the option to do so in a crowd of other apparent people?

Wait, maybe that's the more interesting question. This humanoid AI is great and all, but how long until we have an AI crowd?

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/bullseye- from-1000-ya...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/03/bullseye- from-1000-yards-shooting-the-17000-linux-powered-rifle/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Also known as the places where everybody who thought five minutes about the topic would expect AI to come from.

</comment><comment><USER5> Why autonomous war machines shouldn't be allowed:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI)

</comment><comment><USER6> Not unexpected, nor futuristic. AI has already emerged in these fields. Only through the AI Effect can the author deny this.

</comment><comment><USER7> That headline is a contradiction.</comment>


News Sites Start Charging Readers to Comment on Articles - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-20/news-sites-start-charging-readers-to-comment-on-articles <comment><USER2> > Not everyone who wants to leave a comment has to pay. SolidOpinion leaves > the bulk of the comments section to operate as it always has, but it adds > three slots at the top for "promoted comments," which can be auctioned off > to the highest bidder.

Let's say you can't use promoted comments for advertising spam, as that would defeat the quality-control purpose of the system.

What incentive then would people actually bid for a promoted comment spot?

</comment><comment><USER3> Well when a company starts charging customers to get the right to comment on their articles, expect less people to comment on articles.

Not everyone wants to pay to use a website. Even if it means they can read or comment on articles.

Many websites are going to the subscription business plan that newspapers used to have before the World Wide Web became popular and offered free access in exchange for viewing advertising.</comment>


YouTube is reportedly introducing your kids to conspiracy theories, too - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/17/youtube-is-reportedly-introducing-your-kids-to-conspiracy-theories-too/ <comment><USER2> After the previous bizarre videos (e.g. "gorilla daddy finger" or more violent ones) I've delisted YT kids from our tablets due to the content curation issue.

I've been quite pleasantly surprised at how good Netflix is in comparison.

I let them watch YT on the computer when I'm in the same room and watching along - when more informative browsing is called for (ie, vids of animals or places they heard about and want to investigate).</comment>


Freeciv WebGL 3D - <AUTHOR> https://play.freeciv.org/ <comment><USER2> Hi everyone! I'm the developer of the Freeciv-web WebGL version. I'm very interested in hearing your feedback on this version, so I can improve it. I'm always interested in hearing what you think is the most important thing to improve in the game. (I'm so happy my side-project has reached the frontpage of HN again :)

It is using the Three.js 3D engine. Currently it works nicely on modern computers and laptops with decent 3D hardware, and there could be some issues on some mobile devices. For example, old iPhone devices have very poor 3D hardware.

This is an open source project, so we're always looking for developers to help improve the game: [https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv- web/](https://github.com/freeciv/freeciv-web/)

<comment><USER3> I don't know if this is a WebGL issue, a Mac issue, a Firefox issue (I use NoScript, but I've allowed scripts for the site and the rest of the game seems to work fine), or what, but I'm having absolutely no success in getting a middle click to do anything in the WebGL version of the game (like, say, show tile info). My mouse's middle click works fine in the 2D web version, but doesn't work here (nor does clicking right and left together). (Meanwhile, I have no idea what I'd do to get middle click info if I were just using the touchpad. Combining with cmd, ctrl, option, shift, etc. doesn't seem to do anything, apart from ctrl-click emulating a right click.) Am I the only one with this issue? Any thoughts on what might be going wrong?

<comment><USER4> If you have a recent enough mac you can make a two finger click he right click and then, with better touch tool, make a three finger click he middle click.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Nice! Some feedback from a Three.JS contributor:

\- I notice you are using Collada 3D model files inside of a zip file: [https://play.freeciv.org/3d-models/models.zip](https://play.freeciv.org/3d-models/models.zip) It may be better to store the models in glTF format. It would be smaller and faster loading. Although to be honest, the last time I checked converting to glTF with high fidelity was very difficult to do.

\- You should probably have cache forever on your game assets (3d models, textures, etc.) but have version numbers or hashes (my preference) associated with them -- it will load faster.

\- Even if you do not switch to glTF, it might be better to have each Collada 3D model as a separate resource, so that as you change things it doesn't have to redownload the whole zip file.

\- It is weird that you have *.zip file. You can likely just serve the collada assets using the built-in HTTP gzip encoding: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_compression) Thus it will be handled by a faster path in the browser than using a JS unzipper.

\- You may want a proxy scene of boxes to raycast against. Hit testing my simple scene takes 5ms and I have a top end computer. Ray casting against THREE.BufferGeometry in Three.JS is just unreasonably slow. And THREE.Geometry is just slow all around, even though raycasting is a bit faster than with THREE.BufferGeometry. Another approach is to render the scene a second time to the offscreen with unique colors per object. Then hit testing is just figuring out which color was at the pixel under the cursor. This is highly scalable and is a very commonly used technique in games.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the feedback! I'll try using the glTF format. I'm putting the Collada files in a zip file to save CPU resources on the server, since compression on the HTTP layer would use more server CPU. Also compressing all the models in a single zip file results in overall less bandwith usage, and bandwidth is limited on our server. Do you have more ideas about improvements?

<comment><USER5> \- You could also use Three.JS's binary format. It isn't half bad, especially served using HTTP compression. Blender can do conversions to it pretty well.

\- You can use Canvas to draw to and then convert those to textures, that can make it easy to create very interesting pop-up information in the 3D scene. You could have the Canvas cleared to transparent and then write non- transparent stuff to it. Then you will have text and graphics floating in the air. Could look cool.

\- You could use a DOF pass so that the 3D world could look tilt-shifted: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt%E2%80%93shift_photography) [https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_postprocessing_dof2.html](https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_postprocessing_dof2.html)

\- You could use a Bloom pass with HDR to get some nice shines: [https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_postprocessing_unreal_blo...](https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_postprocessing_unreal_bloom.html)

\- You should probably try to use the STandard material model (GGX + Metallic + Roughness) in Three.JS rather than Phong. Looks much better: [https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_materials_standard](https://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_materials_standard)

\- Use the static serving of gzipped assets as discussed elsewhere.

\- You should have hashes on your *.js files with caching for ever. This is pretty standard practice.

\- Think about using the HDR stuff I contributing to Three.JS -- it can lead to amazing looking materials. Here is an example that uses IBL and HDR and tonemapping: [https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_materials_envmaps_hdr.htm...](https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_materials_envmaps_hdr.html) [https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_tonemapping.html](https://threejs.org/examples/webgl_tonemapping.html) Given that you are in daylight, I think this would work amazingly. Would look way better than simple lights. But it only works on Standard/Physical materials and not Phong materials.

I didn't look into too much more as I only looked at the production minified code.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! Very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The announcement page for beta (December 11th) : [http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2016/12/freeciv-web- with-3d-web...](http://play.freeciv.org/blog/2016/12/freeciv-web- with-3d-webgl-version-in-early-beta-available/)

Interesting quote from this article (not to diminish the feat of a webgl version on classic screens, gg guys!) :

> Support for virtual reality using Google Cardboard is also under > development.

Flying around a world and manipulating armies sounds awesome, kind of like "google earth VR meets strategy games". I guess freeciv will need game controller support first to make this playable, though.

</comment><comment><USER7> _" Please Don't Use these characters in your password : % # & ?"_

Please don't enforce password restrictions like this.

<comment><USER8> Seriously.

If you can't handle passwords with certain characters in them, you're probably doing something very wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Just tried it out and sharing my experiences. It is quite choppy for me, only getting a few frames per second, on 2K monitor, but I'm on a computer that will happily play Civ 6 on low quality. I wasn't expecting it to be fast, though.

<comment><USER10> Running the benchmark in the game settings, I got these results on my wholly- unsuitable-for-any-gaming 2012 Retina MacBook Pro (GeForce GT 650M).

Highest Gfx settings (default). 2800x1700px window. Best out of 2 runs:

Chrome 56: 33 fps

Safari 10.0.3: 29 fps

Firefox 51: 13 fps

<comment><USER11> aww, you think your GT650M is unsuitable for gaming? you should try my for- development-only first gen core i7 (920!) with a GEFORCE GTX 275 ;P

I can still play Team Fortress 2 at 1080p just fine on this tho ;)

<comment><USER12> Is the 275 actually slower than a 650M?

<comment><USER13> [http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu- hierarchy,4388.html](http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gpu- hierarchy,4388.html) puts the 275 in the same ballpark as the full 650, and the 650M has the same GK107 chip as the 650 but underclocked by 20-30%. So i think my money is on the 275 being faster.

<comment><USER12> That was my intuition, thanks.

<comment><USER11> Holy shit, seriously? this is a 6+ year old card!!!! Not bad....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Could we have this 3d in the downloadable binary?

<comment><USER2> This is not really possible at the moment. This 3D version is using WebGL in Javascript running as a web-application, while the downloadable binary is implemented in C.

<comment><USER15> Electron?

<comment><USER14> I think i'd prefer something native.

<comment><USER16> Electron apps can work great. I have noticed a general bias against all Electron apps and I think it is because of how poorly Atom performed when it was first released. Virtual Studio Code, and RStudio are shinning examples of a good Electron App.

<comment><USER17> I've run many other Electron apps - they all suffer from the same problems. Ugly non-native UI, DPI scaling that doesn't quite work right, poor platform integration and massive binaries.

Additionally, with something like this, I'd imagine it would be quite possible to port to a simple Node based system with OpenGL support without the need to embed a browser. Would probably improve performance too due to removed sandboxing.

<comment><USER18> there are no node based systems with opengl support.

<comment><USER17> There's a node-webgl package which provides all of the OpenGL ES features with no need for the web browser part, there's also SDL and GLFW bindings available. While it's not full OpenGL - I couldn't find any well maintained GL bindings at least - it should be completely sufficient to port a WebGL project.

<comment><USER18> I've searched a lot for such a package, most are five years old and doesn't work. Best I could find was the x11 package, but most examples doesn't work. And if you go with a wrapper you could as well use Electron or nw.js witch I'm using atm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is there a way to see it in action without starting a game? I don't want to end up with someone in a game with me I just plan to abandon since I only wanted to see it in motion.

<comment><USER6> There's a "single player 3d webgl" button on top of home page, you can use it to play against AIs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Very nice. I miss hotseat multiplayer so much.

I loved playing Age of Wonders with my friends on the same machine.

</comment><comment><USER21> is there a game engine that lets you create multiplayer browser based games like this?

I'm also wishing to see a Freetotalwar type of project. The map campaigns are turn based and highly entertaining.

</comment><comment><USER22> it shows up in chinese for me - anyone else?

<comment><USER2> Try changing your browser language to English.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Good job, HN! We've already killed it.

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I had to restart the server. Too much traffic! It is back now.

<comment><USER15> ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED

<comment><USER15> [https://play.freeciv.org/webclient/?action=new&renderer=webg...](https://play.freeciv.org/webclient/?action=new&renderer=webgl)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> >ReCAPTCHA couldn't find user-provided function: onloadCallback

The captcha is solved, but the page doesn't recognize it. Is signing up really necessary for such a game?

<comment><USER2> No, you don't have to sign up. Accounts is just for persistent savegames.</comment></comment>


Why is it taking U.S. airlines so long to offer in-flight Wi-Fi? - <AUTHOR> http://skift.com/2012/11/19/why-is-it-taking-u-s-airlines-so-long-to-offer-in-flight-wi-fi/

<comment><USER2> So let's get the question clarified: Why don't cash-strapped US carriers take their planes offline to add this expensive, FAA-certified equipment to their aircraft?

And, once the equipment in installed, how do carriers make back that expense? Do they give it away, hoping that customers will choose their airline over others because it has wifi and not just on the cost of the seat as usual? Every plane is already packed. Where do the gains come from?

The external antennas also add drag to the fuselage, which means more fuel to burn and more money lost there. Who pays for that? Who convinces the flight attendants to suddenly become tech support? They're busy rebooting the in- flight entertainment systems three times per trip as it is.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand why the consumer airline industry is in a perpetual state of bankruptcy. If the planes are "already packed", as you say, why don't they just increase airfares to boost their profits?

<comment><USER4> Because they are, for the most part, in a race to the bottom, and without price-collusion any single airline raising their prices would see them lose customers to their rivals.

<comment><USER5> ... to... their... already packed rivals?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I work at the largest IFE vendor in the world, and I can tell you that current satellite networking implementations would not be able to support a full aircraft. So if they did offer it, they would have to price it very high to keep an appropriate level of service.

I paid 30 Euros for 'net access on a lufthansa flight and only saw only 3 other people in the Economy cabin using it.

<comment><USER7> Would you happen to know how they keep the antenna aimed at the satellite? Or is it omnidirectional? I have no clue how it works.

<comment><USER8> I think phased arrays might be used.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This article is extremely misleading. Delta has 100% coverage for their own fleet.

They do have a significant number of short-haul flights offered by affiliates under the "Delta Connection" brand -- these are all very small planes where you might have 30 minutes to use your laptop between reaching altitude and starting descent. Even so, Delta is equipping these planes with wifi, too.

Someone isn't doing a good job of reading or understanding their data on Delta, and that makes me question the rest of the conclusions...

</comment><comment><USER10> The U.S. currently has better coverage than Europe. Only a handful of carriers are offering wifi in Europe. KLM, Air France are experimenting. Norwegian offers wifi. Lufthansa offers wifi on transatlantic flights. The reason for this is Gogo, who is providing nearly all the wifi in the U.S. Gogo has made wifi relatively easy for U.S. carriers to adopt. There is nothing yet equivalent to Gogo in Europe.

Separately, Gogo is expanding its in-flight bandwidth. I'm looking forward to that. [http://thebat-sf.com/2012/11/13/gogo-to-upgrade-inflight- wi-...](http://thebat-sf.com/2012/11/13/gogo-to-upgrade-inflight-wi-fi- capacity)

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I'm quite surprised to hear people complain about the lack of inflight wifi in the US. American carriers are pretty far ahead of carriers in other countries on this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I can understand this being a priority on routes that take longer than 10 hours. But, whats wrong with working offline, or reading during that time? Its not like you're going to be able to pull down large amounts of data, or view realtime video.

<comment><USER13> That isn't true. I was on a Delta flight to JSConf in Portland in 2011 when Osama bin Laden was killed and was watching it live as it was unfolding. Just this week I was flying to/from LAX and was Citrix'd into work to deal with some issues. I was getting roughly 300kbit up/down on the last trip. The whole plane has about 3Mbps bandwidth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Because I fly Southwest so much, I get free WiFi when available. Of my ten or attempts at using it, I've had no connectivity at least three times. Of those, perhaps five attempts resulted in connectivity so slow that it was only useful for background email checking and painfully slow web browsing. The remaining two "successful" uses had a 128K-ish downstream at best. Ping times (to whatever www.google.com resolved to) were 500+ ms at best and multi-second at worst. Periods of flakiness lasting a few minutes at a time were common. So, unless I have some urgent usage requirement, I just stay offline to avoid the hassle and anger.

</comment><comment><USER15> Although I tend to check bags to not be a part of the "stuff the overheads bin" battle on most flights, Wi-Fi is the only extra I'll pay for on a plane. I've got no interest in stale food, alcohol, duty free, extra legroom or first class.

However, I don't plan my itinerary on it. In particular, Delta is much more likely to have Wi-Fi on the long hop from the hub to the west coast than Usair, but Usair is much more able to find me return flights that aren't a redeye... It took just one night looking at a Texas sky that was the color of television static to decide I'd rather skip Wi-Fi than fly the redeye home.

</comment><comment><USER16> Question:

What service can I use to find inexpensive flights with flexible travel dates (+-N days) and in-flight wifi?

kayak, my typical goto source for finding tickets, allows me to use flexible dates to minimize my travel costs. I then buy the ticket direct from the airline. It doesn't have wifi information, AFAIK.

routehappy, the site hyped by OP, allows you to sort by happiness and select on features like wifi. However, it doesn't appear to allow flexible travel dates, nor can you sort by price, or even see the price (!?).

What travel aggregator should I use?

<comment><USER17> Try hipmunk.com, flexible +-2 day search or monthly search with wifi icons next to flights offering it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> When airlines don't allow you to use a kindle during take-off, but you can use a read an actual book... it doesn't give much in terms of encouragement that they are going to start offering free wifi.

</comment><comment><USER19> Cat6 is cheap nowadays!

</comment><comment><USER20> This is Apple's opportunity to get involved. I love that I can iMessage from my laptop while on Southwest WiFi. They need to extend it to the phone.

Idea #1: Picture there being two WiFi networks on a plane: Internet Access and iMessage. Connect to iMessage from your iPhone/iPad, let Apple charge your iTunes account if necessary, then conveniently text from your phone. Great for the low-bandwidth situation they're limited by. [yes, you could pay using GoGo etc from your mobile phone and do this, but few know about it and the UX stinks]

Idea #2: Flight trackers as a landing page are nice, but get companies to pay a buck or two to put their product or commercial on your connection page to further subsidize the cost. Picture even a Google/Facebook ad model where you could target your ad to the person's demographic based on their gender and DOB from their frequent flier number.

Idea #3: For the love of God please do a better job throttling and/or blocking bandwidth hogs until the tech is better. Some guy sitting next to me trying to synch 20GB on Dropbox just doesn't seem good for the rest of the plane while my Southwest connection is too slow to load Gmail.</comment>


Spammers target iPhone users with iCal invites - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/iphone-users-complain-of-waves-of-ical-calendar-spam/article/480662 <comment><USER2> If you are smitten by this, first of all do not decline the invite to get it out of your calendar. It will notify the sender, telling them there is indeed a live human on the other end. For those looking for at least a temporary fix: [https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight- calendar...](https://www.macsparky.com/blog/2016/11/how-to-fight-calendar- spam)

I can't imagine that this isn't a hot issue for Apple right now. It breaks a lot of the trust in iCloud IMO.</comment>


Hiring a Cofounder - <AUTHOR>

I'm hiring a second co-founder who is knowledgeable in PHP/MYSQL and has worked for a top website company in the past. This is the 7th time I've posted this request on Hacker News just going to keep posting it until someone listens. I'm building a website and I have 104 lines of code I was thinking we could trade off the work until it is finished. Meaning that since I just wrote 104 lines of code you would go write 104 lines and pass it back to me and we would do that back and forth until the website is finished. I'm working to have the Beta out by August. If your interested email me @ firstname.lastname@example.com or tweet me @KeithClark_ thanks! <comment><USER2> First of all, who "hires" a co-founder? But that lexical issue aside, the biggest reason nobody will respond to this here is because nobody is interested working on a mystery project without anything to remotely pique our interest. You don't provide the slightest detail about the project, or even what industry or problem it might be relevant to. For all we know you are trying to get somebody to write a Wordpress theme. Please provide insight into your project or frame it in terms of how it is useful or important to this community. Or stop posting it again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't brag about writing 104 lines of code. If you don't have good technical skills yourself, just state that and explain what you can add to the partnership.

</comment><comment><USER4> Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)

<comment><USER5> Duplicates, but with no discussion :)

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166461>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2166456>

Related:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1192132>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1181208>

<comment><USER4> <grin></comment></comment></comment>


Jte 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://jte.gg <comment><AUTHOR> Hey everyone! Due to my frustration with JSP at work, I've written jte during lockdown - a small template engine that gets out of the way as much as possible. Frontend can write plain HTML to display stuff and use plain Java to receive data from the backend. At the same time the jte compiler understands HTML and does context-sensitive output escaping at compile time. jte also has full IntelliJ support for code suggestions, refactorings and highlighting. Unlike JSP, the jte plugin does not require the Ultimate Edition!

Any Java folks around? I'd love to hear what you think about it :-)</comment>


Show HN: Philip2 – an Elm-to-OCaml compiler - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@paulbiggar/philip2-an-elm-to-reasonml-compiler-a210aaa6cd04 <comment><AUTHOR> Would love to get feedback!</comment>


On the road to fully self-driving – Waymo Safety Report [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://storage.googleapis.com/sdc-prod/v1/safety-report/waymo-safety-report-2017-10.pdf <comment><USER2> For all its flaws (and I haven't seen many: I really like that report) that is a dramatic change in how we understand road safety: private actors now feel the responsibility to publish their understanding of all-encompassing safety.

Compared to historical car manufacturers who consider that they responsibility stops at the paint layer, this is a welcome change. I'm always concerned browsing through reports that reads, paraphrased "Our cars are f-cking tanks, we will mow through any obstacle and you'll barely even notice."

I'm always hesitant to give more reporting power to private actors (they tend to get their PR team spin it hard) but in that case, that report informs effective internal decision: Do we put more aggressive thresholds to break when a cyclist appears nearby to our radars? Do we use a more accusing beeping sound when driving too close to the curb, tailgating?

Distributed actors have proven they have very little concern for human lives. Centralised systems, when they are ubiquitous, will have to take that terrifying number of 1.2 million as their own key performance indicator and act differently.

</comment><comment><USER3> This report is not enough to convince me their cars are safe, but it's a good start. Haven't seen anything like this from their competitors.

At it's best, the article suggests google is being methodical and responsible with its rollout. At it's worst, it's a PR blitz to give the appearance of safety, but even that is a good start as it acknowledges that people care about autonomous vehicle safety.

</comment><comment><USER4> What are the views on ISO 26262 functional safety compliance in the US self driving companies? This report is very light on details and only mentions ISO 26262 in the passing.

Here in Europe it seems to me that functional safety is high on the self driving agenda ... (maybe too high?)</comment>


That eternal debate: native app vs mobile website - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mygola.com/2013/08/native-app-vs-mobile-website-a-founders-perspective/

<comment><AUTHOR> As a travel planning startup, we've always thought that travel and mobile were long-lost twins. We had natural strength in building web apps but wanted to experiment rapidly on the app stores too. I just did a blog post on how we threaded the proverbial needle on this issue.

Would love to hear your thoughts. What do you think of the tradeoffs we made?</comment>


Tinderoid – Godmode for Tinder (iOS) - <AUTHOR>

Check out Tinderoid in the Apple App Store.
Or visit here: Http://www.Tinderoid.com<p>-like everyone in your area in ONE TAP -search all profiles around you for keywords -view all profiles on one screen -etc. Just try it. <comment><USER2> Literally 100 potential matches in one second! [http://bit.ly/1qwBoMh](http://bit.ly/1qwBoMh)</comment>


It's time to make front-end faster than ever before - <AUTHOR> http://gluecodes-demo.s3-website.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/ide-conditionalNCommandAssistant.html?appId=1&edit=page&id=index <comment><USER2> Is this going to be used for the AWS console?

A refresh with global perspective would be nice</comment>


How to Rands - <AUTHOR> http://randsinrepose.com/archives/how-to-rands/ <comment><USER2> The title doesn't really explain, but this is basically an introduction an engineer-turned-manager (Rands, aka Michael Lopp [1] - currently VP Engineering at Slack) is giving to a new employee.

It's what you wish your manager sent you the first day you started working, and if you have people that report to you, should inspire you to at least think about what you would say to and how you currently act with them.

Worth a read.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rands)</comment>


Revenue & Expenses 2 Years After Starting My Web Business: UniversityTutor.com - <AUTHOR> http://www.startbreakingfree.com/1423/behind-the-scenes-numbers-from-universitytutor-com-revenue-expenses/

<comment><USER2> I'm broadly supportive of things like this, but have some constructive criticism.

1) Don't graph dissimilar things on the same graph. If you absolutely must, to make a point of how they correlate with each other, do not re-use the same axis. There is no reason Revenue ($) should ever reuse an axis with Contacts (number of).

2) Don't graph anything you can't get actionable data out of. For example, revenue per day in a subscription business is going to be dominated by the anniversary dates for existing accounts. Is that useful to know? No, that is noise. Condense it into revenue per month and then you have a useful top-level overview of whether your efforts are bearing fruit or not.

3) One line on one graph. At most, two. Anything more turns into a solid wall of noise. (You may find it occasionally useful to have a solid wall of noise in presentations to other people. Don't put it on your dashboard! Then you're only fooling yourself!)

Separate strategic commentary: Mass profusion of subdomains is not a good idea for SEO purposes. (I assume this happened because it was in fashion two years ago. This is one of the dangers of chasing the new hotness in SEO techniques... though I don't remember that one ever being a good idea at less than black-hat scales.)

I'd put the blog on the same domain and, if not interested in maintaining it, hire somebody to continue writing content for me. (I need to take my own advice here, come to think of it, as the BCC-specific blog doesn't get content updates nearly frequently enough.)

Start A/B testing. (You knew I was going to say that, right?) One obvious candidate would be adding a featured flag to the subscribing tutors, with the goal of seeing whether it increased a) contacts to them and b) subscription rates. (As soon as you have an answer to Question A it becomes a marketing point: people who pay us $10 a month get 63% more contacts and more than $200 of extra revenue! Dude, its a total no brainer!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Great comments thanks for posting this. You bring up some good points on the graphs. This was mostly quick and dirty stuff I hacked together and could certainly be improved. The 'noise' doesn't seem to bother me though and helps me compare them visually, could be a personal preference thing.

On the SEO use of subdomains, do you have any links I could read more on that? Anecdotally, my experience seems to be otherwise but I could be wrong.

Agreed that the blog needs better maintaining. I'm more focused on my personal blog to do much with it. I've tried getting some tutors to contribute with mixed results. I haven't had much luck with the quality of articles when hiring someone to write, so not sure of the ROI on that. If anyone has ideas would love to hear it.

On that A/B test, funny you mention that because I tried almost that exact thing you suggested when 37Signals came out with Haystack.com (now Sortfolio.com), where I made the free tutor account permanent and the paid account got you top placement in search results, highlighted listing, and a 'PRO' badge next to your name. I didn't run it long enough to have 100% confidence but the conversion rate dropped compared to what I have now (first 3 job requests are free, then you must upgrade if you want to continue). I still feel like the biz model could be improved though. If you have other ideas on this would love to hear it. Thanks again! Brian

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> It's great to see posts like this to help us remember: not only do you have to build it but you have to run it. Running it and managing it to ultimate success may very well be the hard part.</comment>