Isdal Woman: A mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39369429 <comment><AUTHOR> Wearing my fiction writer hat - I found this fragment fascinating:

 _DNA analysis is now one of the key tools police use in forensic analysis and identification cases._

 _It didn 't exist back in 1970._

 _But it turns out several tissue samples from the woman 's organs, including from her lungs, heart, adrenal gland and ovaries, have been stored at Haukeland University Hospital._

Makes me wonder what kind of "perfect crime" may be committed today, where the criminal literally achieved technical perfection, only to be caught 40 years later by a forensic technique that doesn't even exist today.

<comment><USER2> This happened to Lance Armstrong. As one investigator put it, his 1999 urine was meant to pass the drugs tests available in 1999. But when subjected to tests developed 5 years later, it failed.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong#Tour_de_France...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lance_Armstrong#Tour_de_France_urine_tests:_2005)

<comment><USER3> This is quite common these days, e.g. many atheletes lost their 2008 Olympic medals due to retesting in late 2016.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The multiple passports are fascinating, and that's probably the best thing that limits the search space.

The number of white, brown-eyed, 164cm tall women between 25 and 40 with many fake passports is very small: almost certainly with a state-sponsored intelligence service. Add in the gold crowns, and you've got a pretty good profile of this woman.

You can rule out small countries and countries with bad intelligence services at the time. With her European ancestry you can probably rule out her working for African, South American, or Asian governments. That leaves European and North American governments.

The list then is pretty narrow: America, Canada, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain. Canada, Spain, Italy, and France almost certainly wouldn't be spying in Norway.

Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, and Denmark are all unlikely, as she seemed "foreign" to the Nordic region. Belgium and the Netherlands don't have much of an intelligence service to speak of, especially during the time, and almost definitely wouldn't be spying in Norway.

That gives the final list of America, USSR/East Germany, West Germany, and the UK.

"English with an accent" (probably) rules out the UK and America. So that leaves us with the USSR/East Germany or West Germany.

Anyone on HN want to solve a murder? My email's in my profile :) I feel like that'd be a really interesting group, even if none of us could put much time into it.

<comment><USER5> I don't think Israel can be ruled out due to 'European ancestry'. Israel did not exist until WW2 and in those post war years anyone in Europe with Jewish ancestry could migrate to Israel and get citizenship, complete with a passport. The 'English with an accent' would fit with Israel too.

Around twenty years ago I did have some friends where all kinds of unusual contraband items were exchanged, up to and including passports. I was not in the market for buying one myself, however, this just seemed to be standard capitalism as applied to the black market - you could get a good fake passport or pay more and get an even better fake passport, i.e. from a decent country. I doubt that the lady was an international cocaine dealer on the run and in need of lots of passports to get across Europe but stranger things have happened and you cannot just assume the lady was a spy.

I have not studied the story any more than the article, however, the travel pattern is that of someone on the run. If you are up against a police (or intel. service) that has proper resources to track you then you are obligated to move every day. This is the most expensive lifestyle to have, not a sustainable existence. In this existence you need to be totally unpredictable, so where you stay may not have much significance other than a need to hide. In this mode of existence you also run out of friends quite quickly so staying in hotels becomes how it is done until the money runs out or you get caught.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> NRK (the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation) have a web site about this case: [https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/gaten-i- isdalen-1.13182053](https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/gaten-i-isdalen-1.13182053) (English version: [https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/the-isdalen- mystery-1.13249...](https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/xl/the-isdalen- mystery-1.13249066)).

There are a few other mysterious cases of unidentified people, the most famous of which is the Somerton Man ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case)) (warning: contains mortuary photograph).

There's also Peter Bergmann ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergmann_Case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Bergmann_Case)) (warning: contains mortuary photograph) and Lyle Stevik ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Stevik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyle_Stevik)).

Two recent British cases have been solved, Emmanuel Caillet ([https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/jan/05/weekend7...](https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/jan/05/weekend7.weekend1)) and David Lytton ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lytton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Lytton)).

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a related HN discussion from earlier this year about a story published on nrk.no:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13309624](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13309624)

<comment><USER8> [https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/gaten-i- isdalen-1.13182053](https://www.nrk.no/dokumentar/gaten-i-isdalen-1.13182053)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Adelaide, Australia has a similar story "Somerton Man"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamam_Shud_case)

</comment><comment><USER10> I remember reading about this a few years ago when I somehow ended up on the Wikipedia "List of famous unsolved murders" or something like that, and went down the rabbit hole. It's an eerie, creepy story, one of the few that left me feeling genuinely creeped out.

<comment><USER11> This is a weird one: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_Masks_Case)

<comment><USER12> The explanation on that Wikipedia article sounds convincing for me. Brazil has a lot of spiritualism cults and movements that few foreigners hear about and which can seem pretty weird.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The thing that strikes me is that she used American date notation on the "coded" note -- AFAIK no Europeans put the month first. Probably a red herring though ;)

<comment><USER14> That's not the case here. The only way America differs from Europe in writing the date is when you include the year. She didn't do that on the note, so whether it's "October 22" or "22nd of October" carries little meaning. I'd go for the shorter O22 myself as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Disappointing end of the article, real cliffhanger. I wonder if there will be a part 2.

</comment><comment><USER16> SO many fake passports... I bet she was an East German spy. People in such a line of work usually don't have labels in clothes, because the labels might not match the rest of the story.

<comment><USER17> To be fair, I don't have labels in my clothes because they irritate me so much. Oddly, it never used to be a problem but it has become one in the last five or six years.

(I don't have any fake passports, though, and my medications do have their printed labels.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought gold teeth were so Soviet/Eastern European thing at the time, that it should be an immediate giveaway of woman's origin.

<comment><USER19> From the image, these are gold crowns with porcelain fronts, safe for the ones in the back. In countries were gold teeth are/were a status symbol, these would be made to be blatantly visible, so no porcelain fronts.

<comment><USER20> But if she was a spy, she would have a reason to not blatantly show the gold crowns.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Can anyone tell me what "ACI"[1] stood for back then? I wonder why Lafayette had/has an "ACI Liaison Officer".

[1] [https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/B443/production/...](https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/B443/production/_95974164_dsc_0607-copy.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER22> Aside: I find the pervasive use of the present tense throughout the article to be bewildering and quite inexplicably sinister.

<comment><USER23> I don't know about sinister, but I'll go with bewildering. I also find it rather distracting.

(I've seen narrators of history programmes on TV do this sometimes. It's annoying then too.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I read recently that by some DNA Samples you can trace your origin back to certain local groups- shouldnt that be possible with the sample taken here. How accurate would this be?

Example: [https://www.ancestry.com/dna/](https://www.ancestry.com/dna/)

</comment><comment><USER11> A question that occurred to me a few years ago: how many murderers get away with it, and are out there walking the streets like normal people? And bearing this in mind, how many murderers have I walked past on the street, blissfully unaware of their heinous crime(s)?! Creepy!

downvote?! wtf?!

<comment><USER25> Never mind murder. Murder's pretty uncommon. On the other hand, 1 in 5 American women report having been the victim of either rape or an attempted rape. Even more report some incident of domestic violence so I can assure you that you walk past some pretty awful people every day. You probably work with some of them too.

<comment><USER26> Yea, that's not true.

You are conflating a university study with all women. And the 1 in 5 number comes from a study with a strong self selection bias, and also conflates drunken sex and unwanted kissing with rape. Better studies produced a 1 in 40 estimate.

<comment><USER25> Yea, my information's from the CDC (with a précis by the NYT)

[https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/index.html)

[https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-w...](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/12/15/health/nearly-1-in-5-women- in-us-survey-report-sexual-assault.html)

But by all means produce your better studies than a comprehensive one by the CDC.

The figures are accurate, but there's a lot of people with an emotional investment in not believing the numbers. This phenomenon is a symptom of patriarchy, btw. Ask your feminist friends about it, you'll be amazed.

<comment><USER26> Again you used the word "rape" which isn't what the CDC measured.

It was a telephone survey dependent upon what the respondent regards as rape. Nearly half of what they counted as "rape" were categorized "drunk/drug facilitated penetration". So they count anytime a man drugs a woman and has sex with her against her consent (which is clearly rape), as well as if a woman drinks too much, has sex, regrets it and later answers a survey that it was rape because that man should have known better.

Rape is a horrific crime. But trying to pump up the statistics by using vague and overly broad definitions isn't right either.

<comment><USER25> OK, so your source is not believing victims. I'd rather stick to science, thanks.

<comment><USER26> What is science without rigorous definitions? Imagine you ask 100 women if they were ever raped and 25 say yes. You ask each for details, and twenty describe horrific encounters that were clearly rape. Five say they had drunk sex against their better judgment with a persistent suitor who claimed he loved them, and then he never called again and they felt violated.

What would be the scientific measure of rape in this survey, 20 or 25? Do you let the victims decide what the definition of rape is, or does the scientist have a reasonable definition of rape that they apply to the victim's experience?

<comment><USER25> Except that isn't rape and only stupid men think women believe it is. However, what definite _is_ rape is sex without consent due to alcoholic incapacitation of the victim. This gives you victims who would have great difficulty proving a damn thing in court. Victims who get their attack consistently mischaracterised by men who prefer to believe a man's version of events over a woman's.

Now, if you're asking me how many women have been raped in a fashion that is likely to result in a conviction, I'll agree that the number is much smaller. But let's not confuse a failure in society with a society where this stuff doesn't happen.

You talk about a "scientist", only all these reports are stuck together by actual scientists, and all you've managed to produce is some flimsy MRA talking points.

TL;DR; Try believing women for once. It's surprisingly informative.

<comment><USER17> It's curious that you define rape as something that happens to a woman, whereas "sex without consent due to alcoholic incapacitation of the victim" can happen to a male, too. I've had male friends raped in that way, and the only one who tried to report it to the police was disgusted by the officer's response: "Score!" He outright refused to take a complaint from my friend.

Rape is also defined (by the Rape Crisis Centre in New Zealand) as sex where one party has pressured the (unwilling) other into it, pressured the other into sexual acts, used alcohol or drugs to generate compliance, or even simply used force. Each and every one of those can be applied to a sexual encounter between a male and a female, with a non-consenting male. Would you just believe the women in those cases, too?

Something that's quite interesting to note, I've seen a citation of "The Gender of Sexuality" by Rutter and Schwartz for a claim that lesbian women reported rape by their partners in 1 out of 3 relationships, double the rate claimed for heterosexual relationships. (I haven't read the book, and the citation was quite some years ago.)

<comment><USER25> You make some good points and you're right, men can be victims and women can be perpetrators. And yes, women can be liars. But liars to the extent that it invalidates the CDC's preferred methods? I'd need to see some hard proof of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Everything about this says dead spy caught by other spies. The interesting part won't be her real identity, even though that would be a critical window into the things that are actually interesting.

No theft, no sexual abuse, no emotional yarns, bloodless, no noise yelling or fighting, drugged and burned, and obscured identity, effective for decades. The murderers were professional state operators, so whoever did it, collects a paycheck for killing people like this woman, above all ordinary law and order. Some of the rival operators may have been women, staving off sexual transgression, since that doesn't always remain professional on its own.

What was she trying to do? How did her cover blow? Whoever killed her, they had clear understanding that she wasn't who she claimed to be, and no one knew who she really was. Once they discovered mystery girl, if they weren't ordered to take her out, all they had to do was phone home and ask if they were supposed to have peers in the vicintity, if not, she's the enemy.

Based on this, you can assume by geography that she was a cold war spy, attractive, with money heading into Eastern Europe, not westbound out of Europe. If she were sourced from Eastern Europe, she wouldn't have been caught and erased so quickly while still mainland. Closer into Eastern Europe, she'd have had more protection. Operating alone like this, she may have been a canary. Bait, doomed from the start, but unaware of her role in the operation she proved as hazardous.

<comment><USER28> Why all the pills in the stomach AND set her on fire?

<comment><USER27> Takes her out of the game. The pills don't produce a conclusive casualty in under an hour. She might survive by incidentally vomiting, recover and fly home. There might be others, undercover, tailing the kidnapping, and waiting to rescue. Rescue might simply be incidental first responders. Since she wasn't rescued we might assess there were more layers of interference in the murder. Lookouts, participating as accomplices.

The burning kills quickly (minutes or less of smoke inhalation), and even if ineffective in killing due to interruptions, certainly produces scars that won't be easily hidden in the future and puts someone on the sidelines.

It also sends an unpleasant message to everyone who didn't bring her home, and we still don't know who that is. Given that she wasn't even recovered, one might presume her original identity was marked deceased in a contrived accident, conincidentally, thousands of miles away. Maybe her family already knows the real story, and remains quiet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Good one but not as mysterious as Tamam Shud case.</comment>


How I Increased Product Growth Rate By 10% Last Month - <AUTHOR> http://planscope.io/blog/how-i-increased-growth-rate-by-10-last-month/

<comment><USER2> _So when turning my attention to onboarding, I replayed each of my current customers timelines looking for trends.

I won't get into the SQL behind what I did..._

Brennan, could you go into more detail here on how you did this? I understand not doing that on your product blog, but I suspect folks here might be interested in the details.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely.

I loaded all of my paid accounts and spit out some numbers that I was curious about:

* have they invited clients? how long into the trial did they do this?

* have they invited team members (only applied to certain accounts)? how long into the trial did they do this?

* how many projects have they created?

* how many tasks have they added?

* how many comments and other activities did they create?

* have they integrated with a 3rd party? when did they do this?

I realized that some accounts use all-encompassing tasks, and some are pretty granular. But almost all of them had at least a few - but truthfully, that's a no brainer. Planscope's only useful if you've loaded in some tasks.

What I quickly began to realize was the obvious: when you go out of your way to _bring your paying clients into some new software_ , you're probably going to stick with it. After all, no one wants to say to their client "Oh, yeah, so that Planscope app we've been using... well the trial ran out. Let's move on!"

The less obvious was how important having a 3rd party tool was. If someone is paying for Harvest or Freckle, they obviously spend money on their business. +1. Likewise, if they use one of these tools they specifically signed up to Planscope because they hate tracking time and want to log their time from within their task management product. Once someone sees the magic of working on a task in Planscope and having their time logs synced, they're likely going to convert.

Actual metrics:

93% of paid customers have invited at least one client, most did it within the first few days. This is a chick-and-egg situation - some people sign up to Planscope when they hear about it, but their trial will likely expire before they have a new client project to work on. I'm working on ways to improve this.

78% of accounts have linked to a 3rd party tool. Not really sure yet if the remaining 22% don't know they can, don't have a tool we support, or don't have a tool at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> nice post gl!</comment>


Ask HN: Whats your response to unconstructive comments by ignorant user? - <AUTHOR> I've few free projects, used by thousands of users. I understand its not 100% perfect, from survey, we found 80% people are happy. 15% are unhappy but provides useful/constructive comments/criticism.We agree with their view & try to improve or admit our faults/limitations. So far fine.
But from time to time, we come across some users (5%) bashing the project as 'junk,worthless,scam,joke etc'. These are one-liners (not constructive criticism) serves no purpose to us(dev) or fellow users.  How to respond to them in public forums. Often we tried to ask them for logs or error messages trying to solve their problem. But sometimes, I'm tempted to reply like "idiotic user found".
I'm pretty sure, some developers here might have came across such un-constructive comments, how did you handle those tiny-minority in public forums? <comment><USER2> You have not seen the beginning of it, my friend.

 _" Linux's '60s technology, open-sores ideology won't beat W2K, but what will?"_

[Bob Metcalfe, ethernet inventor; InfoWorld, June 21, 1999-06-21, P. 146]

 _" The idea that great developments in personal computing will be invented in some dismal student bedroom in Helsinki might make nice bedtime reading for people who dream in hexa-decimal. But if all you want is a computer that you can aspire to understand, chuck that blasted CD-Rom in the bin right now._"

[David Hewson, _Sunday Times_ , 1997-04-20]

Full text: [http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~north/moron-meets- linux.html](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~north/moron-meets-linux.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> I think just showing that your committed to offering to help shows that your committed to customer service and for the other people reading the forum I think that shows your not afraid to work to make things right.

<comment><AUTHOR> Most often those (5%) don't respond to replies like "Could you please share more details on the issue or error/logs message". Its sometimes frustrating to deal with this group of users.

<comment><USER3> It's not for 5%, IMHO. Its for the guy/gal on the fence thinking about using/buying your product/service that see you respond to comments in a professional way and think man if I have a problem these guys/gals aren't going to leave me high and dry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just say "thank you for your input" and move on.</comment>


How we gained $5000 in additional revenue with no advertising or signups - <AUTHOR> http://lesseverything.com/blog/archives/2012/08/16/how-we-gained-5000-in-additional-revenue-with-no-advertising-or-signups/

<comment><USER2> We use grasshopper for our business too, and love it.

Great tip on using the phone. So many people are afraid to call customers, but once you get over the first few it becomes easy. And in this case, since they don't answer anyway, it's perfect.

I can't remember, is the phone number field mandatory in your signup process?

</comment><comment><USER3> Oh yea!

</comment><comment><USER3> Word!</comment>


Google Prediction API helps apps to adapt and learn - <AUTHOR> http://googlecode.blogspot.com/2011/05/google-prediction-api-helps-all-apps-to.html

<comment><USER2> Can this API predict when it will be deprecated?

<comment><USER3> <http://code.google.com/apis/predict/docs/terms.html> ?

<comment><USER4> The section on deprecation appears to say that the service may be deprecated without a deprecation period "providing the Deprecated Version of the Service could create a substantial economic burden as determined by Google in its reasonable good faith judgment". This is the explanation they used for deprecating the translate API, "substantial economic burden". Nobody is going to be able to argue against Google's "good faith judgement" on this point, so it sounds to me like this service could effectively be deprecated at any time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it just me, or are Google's APIs becoming more farcical with every revision? I see these words before "API" that you just wouldn't think belong in that context. Now "Prediction API". It makes me really excited for the next batch.

Bacon API?

HFT API?

Physics API?

API API?</comment>


Tell Hn: One week after launch. - <AUTHOR> http://nameego.com/2010/one-week-after-launch.html

<comment><USER2> Some iterations to think about --

I think your site needs some serious design work. It seems almost too minimalist. It looks thrown together by someone just learning html.

The problem in this comes from you offering what a lot people might think of as a sophisticated service (finding all available domains by letter), yet your site looks very basic. How can you have the technical mastery needed to get all available domains but not to have any color other than black and white on your page?

Also, pay someone to design a logo and spruce up your email template. It looks... bad.

<comment><AUTHOR> Point noted.

The design of the website & the newsletter is definitely one thing I am getting quite a bit of feedback on. In fact, I already have the contact of a web designer, only problem is that it will set me back around $2K. (of course I could be over-quoted here.)

With zero revenue right now, I think it only make sense for me to juggle with a bit more color combinations. :(

<comment><USER2> Your header links to "NameeGo.com" -- Is it Name Ego or Namee Go ?

My suggestion for now would be to just find a decent photoshop tutorial for a cool font and text effect and using that in the upper left corner of your newsletter and website. That will be free and will make a huge difference.

I'd also suggest testing against a more standard font. The current font looks too cartoon-y to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's NameEgo.com ... my bad. Corrected the mistake.

Once I got my first subscriber, I will get myself a logo as reward. Lol. Want to be the first? :P</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Zynga Appoints New CEO - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zynga.com/2016/03/01/ceo-update-7/ <comment><USER2> Playing in clans in old FPSes (in my case the Jedi Knight games) was social gaming. What Zynga (and similar) calls social gaming is inviting your friends to avoid having to pay money to progress.

Edit: I'm probably being excessively snarky. If Zynga has a genuine mission beyond profit, i'd love to see it emerge under new leadership. But the current state of casual and mobile gaming really saddens me.

<comment><USER3> I worked for Zynga. It sucks. Pincus is a terrible leader and he screwed us all. All that said, why should a company have a "mission beyond profit"? Isn't profit the point of being in business? Should a company really need to do more than provide a service that customers find valuable and make money for investors.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate on why he was a terrible leader and how he screwed everyone? Genuinely curious.

<comment><USER5> Well, here's a start:

[http://www.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our- st...](http://www.cnet.com/news/zynga-to-employees-give-back-our-stock-or- youll-be-fired/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's a lot of slot and poker gaming you're doing there, Zynga.</comment>


Best roles or positions for strong speakers? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,<p>What are the best roles, positions or job opportunities for a person who is very good at speaking to groups of people (5 to 100, or even higher) and technically inclined? <comment><USER2> "Very good". I study professional speakers and, without seeing video of your talks, I can't assume that you are as good as you say you are. DHH is probably the best speaker who is technical and motivational that I've seen. Shaky video: [1]

I am going to assume that you are already on the technical 'speaker circuit'.

However, if you are not on the 'speaker circuit', consider getting on it. Start by submitting talks to various conferences that you could contribute to. High profile, at first, is not that important, you can work your way up there. Once you are accepted at one conference and give an excellent talk, that will make it easier to go to get in to other conferences. And, once you are at the talk, network with the other speakers, become friends. I see a core set of names repeated in the conference ecosystem.

If you are a very good at and _enjoy_ teaching/training, you can travel a lot and get paid reasonably well for one-week gigs.

If you want to go out of the box, consider network marketing as an exercise in building your skills. There are many companies out there. They all have the same basic model (e.g. you don't know many more people than you already know). As a way to improve your fear of rejection, improve your presentation and listening skills, not as a real secondary income stream.

[1] [http://onrails.org/2008/05/31/railsconf-2008-david- heinemeie...](http://onrails.org/2008/05/31/railsconf-2008-david-heinemeier- hanssons-keynote-video)

</comment><comment><USER3> Technical Evangelist sounds like a good fit.

i.e. someone who loves the product, knows about the product, and is able to pitch the product in different ways to different audiences (techy users, developers, etc.). This person would also know how to demonstrate the best features of the product.</comment>


Abstract your code, and other bad advice (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AfayOVVLlE <comment><USER2> very true, in big project is good to program the requirements first and when everything is working well, then you can abstract the code and separate it in small pieces</comment>


Why Android Hates You - <AUTHOR> http://acko.net/blog/why-android-hates-you/

<comment><USER2> And you didn't even touch on how much Android hates its developers. ;)

<comment><USER2> To the Android fan-troll who voted this down, it is common knowledge that developing for Android is painful. If you haven't shipped a real world app on Android, links are easily found by people who have and complain like this one:

<http://darkdust.net/writings/whyihateandroid>

Or how about a video? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4w9hXRrU5E>

You can even read through Google/Android's bug reports like this relatively famous one (3434) <http://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=3434></comment></comment>


Hack: Typography - <AUTHOR> http://barryclark.co/hack-typography/

<comment><USER2> You should check out the Serif readability myth:

[http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-serif- readability...](http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-serif-readability- myth.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Personally, I don't really like that text is so big compared to the body width. I'd say you are getting a word-per-line average of 10 or so, way too low in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> 12 words per line is considered the ideal line width for readability.

[http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/7-page-design/6-page-width- lin...](http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/7-page-design/6-page-width-line- length.html)

<comment><USER3> Maybe it's just that the lines are massive because of the large font size, so you are moving your eyes way too much for just 10 words.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't think there's much actual science behind the purported aesthetic properties of the golden ratio.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for your feedback, guys! I'll drop it down a little.

</comment><comment><USER6> Perhaps just slightly too large, but I do like your typography ;)</comment>


Cory Doctorow: What I Do - <AUTHOR> http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2010/07/cory-doctorow-what-i-do/ <comment><USER2> Does anybody know what he is using for the coloring of the mails in Thunderbird?

Also the new Version of Thunderbird has vastly improved search, I think.

<comment><USER3> Let's say you want to color the messages you've read, like he says he's doing:

1 - Message -> Tag -> New Tag... call it 'Read' and choose a color

2 - Tools -> Message Filters.. click 'New' and give the filter a name (eg. color read messages)

3 - select 'Status' - 'is' - 'Read' from the first row of drop down menus ('For incoming messages...')

4 - select 'Tag Message' - 'Read' (under: 'Perform these actions:')

<comment><USER2> Thanks, but how to enter "sender is in my address book" in the filter?

Edit: ah sorry, just saw that it is now an built-in option for the Thunderbird message filters.

Edit2: even better, just saw that the spam filter now has an option for "don't mark as spam if sender is in address book" :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > I have a couple hundred sites in a folder that I open as a series of tabs a > couple times a day, quickly zipping through them after they've loaded to see > if anything new has been posted.

... how does this guy get anything accomplished?

</comment><comment><USER5> I <3 that Thinkpad X200 too. It's actually better than the new X201 since the latter is no longer available in hi-res.

</comment><comment><USER6> IPredator seems a nice idea, i didnt knew about it. Tks</comment>


Apple a/UX: The First Unix Mac OS - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwrTTXOg-KI <comment><USER2> At 06:30 in the video: "No one knew at that point how the Unix wars would shake out -- Spoiler alert, BSD ended up winning"

BSD won the Unix wars? what?

There were no winners. Unix remained fragmented and Microsoft stepped up.

<comment><USER3> Are there any commercial Unices left? No => BSD won.

<comment><USER4> IBM is still making and selling AIX, it's pretty popular in manufacturing environments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recent thread on the subject of A/UX: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21881271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21881271)</comment>


Ask HN: Which websites do you use to explain your open source project? - <AUTHOR> I am interested in knowing which websites or tools are commonly used by the open source developers to explain their open source projects apart from GitHub pages?
Or if someone wants to explain a piece of code where do they usually write about it?
If you are given a chance to build such a platform what would be it like? <comment><USER2> TL;DR: Some way of generating an manual alongside the normal docs of exposed functions (API bindings).

Depends on the project and what is needed, generally a README.md for the big picture and an /docs for the generated API docs, hosted on github pages & friends or an webserver hooked up to the CI.

Which is often enough for coders but we also have a lua-jit running on top of the C++ where we have a plugin/module system where people can create extra functionality but some of those are rather new to code. I've written the API docs in LDoc (the only functional lua doc generator that works with the same version as lua-jit's lua version) but there currently isn't a nice way to implement a more of an manual which would solve a lot of redundant questions.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your opinion. I am working on a platform which will allow developers to do the same. It will be a place where people will be able to explain their open source projects/code.</comment></comment>


The Fantastic Mr. Dahl (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fantastic-roald-dahl-BFG-180959487/ <comment><USER2> I like the stories in, "Over to You" \- especially about going to Cairo to pick up prostitutes!

But other than those young escapades, he doesn't come across as the most pleasant of people. He did basically make a living writing story after story of children in abusive relationships.

<comment><USER3> Probably because he had his own share of abuse as a kid:

"From 1929, when he was 13, Dahl attended Repton School in Derbyshire. Dahl disliked the hazing and described an environment of ritual cruelty and status domination, with younger boys having to act as personal servants for older boys, frequently subject to terrible beatings. His biographer Donald Sturrock described these violent experiences in Dahl's early life. Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment."

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl)

<comment><USER4> "Dahl expresses some of these darker experiences in his writings, which is also marked by his hatred of cruelty and corporal punishment."

It's interesting that in his children's books it seems he still believes in moral reformation through cruelty and corporal punishment, as he frequently has the underdog do cruel things under the guise of knocking the other person down a notch, or otherwise cowing them into improvement. He doesn't just present it as justice or revenge, but as a kind of education, and specifically it's okay if the victim doesn't understand why they are being punished or that it is punishment at all. (I'm thinking of Matilda, The Twits, George's Marvellous Medicine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the BFG, and probably others)

I suppose it's no surprise that even when you hate your upbringing, it still becomes part of you and your moral vision of the world.

<comment><USER5> Getting revenge is something that almost everyone in those situations wants to do; it satisfies deeply. What you describe is by many people called "hitting back," which is hard to see as something negative, and _definitely_ not equivalent to what he went through as a child.

"Bully beats victim," "Victim retaliates;" one is obviously less bad than the other. It's not like the victims in his story are hurting random, innocent people.

<comment><USER4> My point is that there's an underlying moral lesson to the bullying he received: the idea that the pain and abuse will lead to positive results in the child. And further that the abuse isn't just punishment, but that abuse itself can lead to virtue. That's why it's applied to every young boy systematically.

In his books Dahl doesn't just describe revenge, but describes it as a way to actually correct behavior, as a way for the universe to give the powerful a lesson. He's certainly turning around the power dynamic, but the moral justification for abuse remains intact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> After reading all the classic Ronald Dahl stories as a child I more recently discovered "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar". The titular tale is great entertainment, especially in light of the current trendiness of meditation. Another story in that book "The Hitch-hiker" is also good fun.

On the other hand I would not particularly recommend "Skin and other stories" which I also discovered recently but did not connect with.

<comment><USER7> You might enjoy this book about his pursuits during WWII, The Irregulars [1]

1\. [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FA0HXY](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001FA0HXY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I saw him speak at the Oxford Union. He told stories of his childhood and was both dark and funny. He answered questions afterwards. Almost all the answers he gave insulted or ridiculed the questioner.

</comment><comment><USER9> He was also a spy.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=roald+dahl+spy&oq=roald+dahl...](https://www.google.com/search?q=roald+dahl+spy&oq=roald+dahl+spy)

<comment><USER10> He also endorsed antisemitism:

[http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160912-the-dark-side- of-r...](http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20160912-the-dark-side-of-roald- dahl)

> "Hitler didn't just pick on them for no reason."

<comment><USER11> > If Dahl had been a nice man, I don't suppose he would have been able to > inflict such refreshingly transgressive views on his young readers. > Christopher Hitchens once wrote an essay examining the truth of the > accusation that Dahl was an adulterer, bully and anti-Semite. "Of course > it's bloody well true," he concluded. "How else could Dahl have kept > children enthralled and agreeably disgusted and pleasurably afraid? By being > Enid Blyton?"

From "Roald Dahl's troubling legacy - much-loved author stands accused of racism" \- [https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/roald- dahls-t...](https://www.independent.ie/entertainment/books/roald-dahls- troubling-legacy-much-loved-author-stands-accused-of-racism-37508035.html)

<comment><USER12> > By being Enid Blyton?

Who, interestingly, had her own issues, which are far more visible in the actual books (I think it'd be hard to find anti-semitic themes in most of Dahl's kids' books): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton#Racism,_xenophobia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enid_Blyton#Racism,_xenophobia_and_sexism)

(Blyton probably wasn't that much worse than was standard for her time, but largely lacked Dahl's redeeming qualities)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When U.S. publishers altered his spelling, he demanded: "Do they Americanize the Christmas Carol, or Jane Austen?"

Do they really?

</comment><comment><USER14> We need to remember that childrens books are mostly not bought by children, but by adults for children.

Dahl is often in the "most read" lists, because adults keep buying the books. But when we ask children what books they love he stops appearing. (Sadly, this info is buried in old reports from "What kids are reading", which is hard to find now). [https://web.archive.org/web/20140603135101/http://whatkidsar...](https://web.archive.org/web/20140603135101/http://whatkidsarereading.co.uk/the- books-children-love/)

If your child enjoys reading Dahl that's great, keep buying them. But there are so many books that are just better than Dahl and that don't come with all the baggage.

<comment><USER15> >If your child enjoys reading Dahl that's great, keep buying them. But there are so many books that are just better than Dahl and that don't come with all the baggage.

I agree there's a lot of baggage, but I'm interested in what books you think are "just better"?

<comment><USER14> Anything in the Carnegie Medal short lists (and probably the long list too). For younger children anything in the Greenaway short lists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I was thinking Ryan Dahl.

"Wow, first he did Node.js and then also Deno! How does he do it?!"

But, yes, the other Dahl is much more exciting! Thanks :)</comment>


Boeing Given Long List of Proposed Fixes for 737 Max Return - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-03/boeing-given-long-list-of-proposed-fixes-for-737-max-to-return <comment><USER2> IMHO: Boeing should give up on the 737, it's a lost cause. Write it off and repurpose the facilities and people to working on an electric plane. Smaller capacity, more personalized and environmentally friendly. It just seems like they are clinging to the past. Maybe they need to make a bold step into the future instead ?</comment>


Disney's $1B Bet on a Magical Wristband - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/03/disney-magicband/ <comment><USER2> Neal Stephenson wrote about Disney in "In the Beginning was the Command Line":

"Americans' preference for mediated experiences is obvious enough, and I'm not going to keep pounding it into the ground. I'm not even going to make snotty comments about it--after all, I was at Disney World as a paying customer. But it clearly relates to the colossal success of GUIs and so I have to talk about it some. _Disney does mediated experiences better than anyone. If they understood what OSes are, and why people use them, they could crush Microsoft in a year or two._ [...]

"As I've explained, selling OSes for money is a basically untenable position, and the only way Apple and Microsoft can get away with it is by pursuing technological advancements as aggressively as they can, and by getting people to believe in, and to pay for, a particular image: in the case of Apple, that of the creative free thinker, and in the case of Microsoft, that of the respectable techno-bourgeois. _Just like Disney, they 're making money from selling an interface, a magic mirror. It has to be polished and seamless or else the whole illusion is ruined and the business plan vanishes like a mirage._"

There's quite a bit more about Disney in the essay. If you haven't read it in a while, check it out, it's a pretty good read!

<comment><USER3> link: [http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html](http://www.cryptonomicon.com/beginning.html)

The metaphorical comparison between the operating systems is one I'll never forget.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I recently got back from my second trip to Disney World in which I had a Magic Band, the first time it was still test phase and had lots of kinks. This time around it worked flawlessly. To get into the park it requires you to scan your fingerprint as well, to buy anything with a credit card linked to your account or use your dining plan requires your pin number. Other than that it's pretty much tap and go.

The crazy part about the band that scares me is how much you are tracked because of it. After getting back we noticed we had Photo Pass photos, you know the photos after you get off the ride you used to buy. Now these photos are all digital and online, normally requiring you to tap your band at the end of the ride. Well they were just loaded onto our account, we never even scanned our bands for these rides or anything.

At the resorts you can buy a refillable mug, or you are given one on the dining plan. This refillable mug has an RFID chip in them, same with the paper cups. You must place your mug/cup on the sensor below your drink option in order for it to be read and dispense your drink. You can only get so much dispensed in a certain amount of time, or it will just stop dispensing. I also believe they had or used to have a limit per day on refills, I never hit it.

Not to mention their "free" Wi-Fi that they highly promote. I'm curious what all is going on behind the scene and how much is being used. Because they obviously now are tracking what I drink, where I stay, how much money I spend, where I am in the park, what rides I go on, etc.

<comment><USER6> The RFID refills bothered me. I didn't buy the dining plan/visit-long refillable cup, but when I got a soda at the Gasparilla in the Grand Floridian there was a refill count of either 2 or 3. I kind of fell that if I drop that much on a paper cup, and hundreds of dollars a night on a hotel, they shouldn't be limiting the number of refills I get on my cup of soda during lunch. I don't think I hit the limit to the point that I required buying a second soda, but that it was there bothered me. Though it didn't irk me so much that I won't go back, so they've clearly got it fine tuned.

<comment><USER7> They've been fine-tuning that for a while.

A lot of that was driven by the cups they sell at the resorts, which used to be something like $15 but as many fills as you wanted _for your entire stay_. Some people actually brought the mugs back trip after trip and abused the system. I suppose they could do that with the paper cups as well.

But once that was in place, now they needed the dispenser to work with paper cups as well. They couldn't be infinite either (or nobody would buy the mugs) so a limit needed to be set.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It reads kind of like a fluff/marketing piece but I'll be damned if it wasn't pretty seamless. I have no idea what it was like prior to the bands but the whole experience was clearly made a lot easier by them and the accompanying app (which is pretty solid). I needed my phone and my band, that was really it (well,...snacks, water bottles, strollers etc..)

It was 85% well done, when you're actually scanning it can be a bear to get it just right, took a few days to get used to flipping my wrist around awkwardly and had a panic moment when one came off.

2 other things:

1) We didn't experience any of the location oriented deliveries/notifications, maybe they stopped or maybe we aren't special

2) That restaurant is very cool

<comment><USER9> >when you're actually scanning it can be a bear to get it just right //

So it uses some sort of direct contact rather than NFC? [Perhaps to make it less easy to clone?]

<comment><USER8> I can't definitively say that you MUST touch but you have to get very close, if not always touching. It also has to be oriented correctly (mouse ears up), there's not too much wiggle room on any of the readers (turnstile, room, handheld). I did assume it'd be a simple swipe but it's more, touch and hold for a second. Sometimes it's almost instantaneous, sometimes I had to take it off to get it to work right.

<comment><USER10> I don't see how orientation would matter.

After the first day we realized if we wore the band a certain way then it was easier to flip the wrist to hold for a connection. The shape is kind of weird and hard to understand the proper way to wear it. I could have been wearing the wrong way from what was intended for all I know though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I always wanted my kids to have a wristband that's tied to my credit card - good thing there's nothing they'd want at Disney World!

Sarcasm aside, we always get a big wad of cash when we go on vacation (and especially to Disney World). It's almost impossible to track your spending if you follow the normal pattern of pulling out your credit card ... this wrist band (in my mind) is to make sure you don't realize what you're spending.

<comment><USER12> Hmm... there's a real need for a credit or debit card app that tracks real time charges. I know authorization holds go through immediately (while actual transfers may take a day) and aren't always the same as spending (i.e. car rentals typically issue an authorization hold at time of rental for more than cost), but, in principle, that should be enough to keep track of likely cash flow in realtime. I'd like to see a bank app that simply takes authorization holds as spending and updates a graph in real time.

<comment><USER13> Simple is kinda this.

<comment><USER14> Yup. My phone usually notifies be of a transaction before a teller even hands back my card.

This actually came in handy about a year ago when my number got stolen. I was sitting at my desk and heard my phone vibrate twice in quick succession. It showed 2 charges at a grocery store in Florida (I am in Chicago). I immediately put a block on my card through Simples app and notified Simple about the fraudulent charges. It made a very scary situation easy to handle.

<comment><USER15> I love that about Simple. It's what prompted me to stop getting receipts. I used to keep them, "just in case". But I never validated against my bank statement--it's just too much of a pain. This way I can instantly see it's correct and that I have a record of it. I quite like my Simple card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I went to Disneyland for the first time last year (so have no experience of it without bands) but the bands really are magical. They are so convenient and unobtrusive. There are several colours to choose from before you arrive at your hotel and you can even get your name engraved on them! As others have said, I never had to use my wallet once as the band is linked to your room which is linked to your credit card. It really is an ingenious piece of marketing tech. Kids love them too, as you can buy and collected little attachments which sit on the wristbands!

</comment><comment><USER17> Love this quote:

"It took one engineer six months to get the tear-away channel just right: It had to be easy to tear, but it couldn't inadvertently come apart. Meanwhile, the readers had to be intuitive enough for people to instantly know how to use them"

It's amazing the kind of effort true product excellence really takes.

</comment><comment><USER18> 1) You still can't see how many frickin days you have left in the parks when you're at home. Are you kidding me?

2) Joining groups, and saying who can reserve for whom is still a pain. It probably works GREAT for 98% of people, but we got screwed on three different trips.

3) The way they track photos is great for small parties, but it's a pain for groups that get together, split up, get together, split up, form with another group of people for a few days, split up, etc.

4) Doesn't work on the cruise ships yet. It'll be great when it does.

5) You can book three rides. When you're done with the third one, you can book another one. When you're done with that, you can book another, etc. They don't make this well-known, so we ended up with just 3 rides per day. Could have done more.

6) My wife and I have different reasons to be in the parks, at different times of the year. But we can't have a POOL of park tickets. Nope, you have to pre- allocate the tickets to each band. That sucks. Either that, or let me move tickets between our bands however we want.

<comment><USER19> The bands are nice for people who go casually, maybe once a year at most. People who are really into the parks or go more often feel the weak spots more.

The old FastPass system was far better for those who knew how to work it, we used to be able to do FastPass for most of the day and never be in a line for more than 20 minutes, though the new system makes the system more apparent to everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Inside the magic band are 3 radios: 13.56 MHz near field RFID (what's in your credit card's swipe to pay), 915 MHz passive UHF RFID (what's in your timing bib if you run a 5k race or what Walmart uses for inventory tracking), and a 2.4 GHz active radio.

The following are my conjectures on how it works. I do not work for Disney or any contractor, but I do work in the field of RFID.

The 13.56 MHz near field RFID is used for payment and entry to the park, and any other time Disney has you hold your band up to something for a transaction. It's near field, so the range is only a few centimeters, which is good for payments and when you want to ensure only one band is being interfaced with. This RFID consumes no battery power from within the band.

The 915 MHz UHF RFID is used for positioning with shorter ranges but near instantaneously. For example, when you sit at a table, my guess is they are using this UHF RFID to find your location (an antenna at each table gives very good indication of who's at that table). Generally range on UHF RFID is a few meters, plenty to detect who's walking up to the dining location if they funnel you through a specific path (called portals in the industry). This is also likely the technology used to detect which car/boat you are in when they take your pictures on the rides. UHF RFID can acquire hundreds of tags per second and consumes no battery power from within the band, which is perfect for quickly detecting who's in range of a given antenna if they are only a few meters away.

Finally, the 2.4 GHz radio. It's active so does consume battery power and the battery inside the bands are tiny, so it cannot be transmitting that often or the battery life would suck. Hence, I believe that the near field interactions reset a timer which runs for a few days to a week to enable the 2.4 GHz radio. Likely this radio transmits every minute or so. Disney do have receivers around the park for this 2.4 GHz radio system and I believe they only use it for detecting rough location of all visitors which is perfect to determine the lengths of lines at rides or to find where a lost kid is in the parks. Once the timer expires (if you've not interacted with any near field readers in a few days) then the 2.4 GHz radio stops until the next interaction. This is likely the only way to get such good battery life and how they can ship the thing to you weeks before you arrive.

EDIT to add: That 2.4 GHz radio probably has a range of somewhere around 30 to 50 meters (possibly more). Some of their receiver stations are in the lights around the park (some with wired Ethernet others with wifi or other backhaul RF networking), others are little black boxes with 100BaseFX (fiber Ethernet for long runs like 1km). This is perfect for knowing crowd density in an area and estimating line lengths for outdoor areas (the UHF RFID could also be used for line length estimation in controlled or indoor areas). Probably they also have some 2.4 GHz receivers installed in the parade floats and vending carts (along with GPS to know where those items are) to collect data for location tracking.

All in all, Disney are executing the wearables and RFID systems exactly as they are best envisioned. It's awesome! (if a bit scary)

<comment><USER20> Also, if you care to read the FCC documentation, take a look at FCC ID: Q3E-MB-R1G1

You can search for any FCC transmitter on the FCC website: [https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm](https://apps.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm)

This is very useful if you want to see how things with radios inside them work. Most companies do not restrict the internal photos and user manuals from being posted publicly by the FCC (although you can do so).

<comment><USER21> How is the grantee code and product name split up? I tried both Q3EMB R1G1 and Q3E MB-R1G1 without success. Thanks.

<comment><USER22> It's "Q3E" and "-MB-R1G1" The hyphen between Q3E and MB-R1G1 is required.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Quote: "If Disney decides to install those sensors throughout the park, a new world of data opens up. They could have Mickey and Snow White find you. They might use the park's myriad cameras to capture candid moments of your family—enjoying rides, meeting Snow White—and stitch them together into a personalized film."

The governments of the world would like this, no?

<comment><USER24> One of the joys of the internet economy is that citizens fund the development of the surveillance state (or at least the technology necessary for it) through their own private-sector consumer purchases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> > "If we can get out of the way, our guests can create more memories."

"If we can get out of the way, our guests can spend more money." - FTFY.

<comment><USER26> My first reaction to the magicbands was pretty cynical, like this.

But it's really astonishing how much more convenient and enjoyable it made the vacation. No need to slog a camera, wallet, etc. I was surprised that even the smallest out-of-the way Disney feature (Magic Express at the airport, entry into the resort pools, e.g.), they still had a way to scan the magic bands.

If we did end up spending more because of it, it wasn't much more. And it might just be worth it.

<comment><USER27> Wait, how does the Magic Band replace a camera?

<comment><USER28> It doesn't really. There are photographers throughout the park that will take your picture then scan your band. You can then buy said pictures.

<comment><USER10> Or as Wyldfire mentions elsewhere, you can get a prepay package that includes every single picture or video you happen to be in. Even the pictures for the rides are included and you don't even have to worry over it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I wrote on HN about patenting a "reusable RFID wristband" and attempting to work something out with Disney in ~2007.[1] The response on HN was fairly predictable...I am a patent troll. Though I think this sheds light on the reality that it takes a lot of money to bring certain products to market and this is why, in certain instances, patents can be useful to the little guys who in some instances can not practically bring a product to market (I don't own my own theme park, ski resort, ect...).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8838362](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8838362)

Edit: At the time of filing, the only existing patent was for a "single use RFID hospital bands" which was made to be disabled when removed and non- reusable (similar to existing non-RFID hospital bands).

<comment><USER30> The band is just the ID device, the real value is how & when that ID process happens and gets wrapped organically into many different processes in the park - and that's not something that a small inventor would likely have the context to correctly wrap around just the hardware. Nor does it seem like something the original patent would be general enough to exclude.

The article mentions a $1B investment. I would think the band and reader hardware are the smallest part of that investment with the bulk of it in the how to apply the information in developing new park-specific processes and retraining employees.

<comment><USER29> >the real value is how & when that ID process happens and gets wrapped organically into many different processes in the park

I think I agree with your point, but to rephrase I say the real value (for theme parks and resorts) would be easing the ability for patrons to make payments, purchasing data, the ability to track/locate patrons (lost kids, people injured in ski resorts, ect...), and the general logistical improvements of operations (being able to see what seats/rides are open, the exact number of people in line, redirecting people to other areas of the park, ect...). This is all very basic data available in most existing RFID software packages.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I remember that not too long ago, somone commented on HN that he basically pitched this idea to Disney but they declined and said the idea wasn't really good. I hope he shows up and tells us his story.

edit: found it [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839888](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8839888)

<comment><USER32> The idea has been around forever, probably from the moment someone figured out how to attach a unique ID to a radio transmitter. I pitched the idea myself (half-heartedly) fifteen years ago which puts me 7 years before this guy. And others commented with _their_ prior art.

[http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Theme_20Park_20Leash#10639908...](http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/Theme_20Park_20Leash#1063990800)

<comment><USER33> Yeah, here's a company saying an amusement park was using their RFID wristbands in 2006:

[http://www.wristband-rfid.com/en/amusement_parks.html](http://www.wristband- rfid.com/en/amusement_parks.html)

Here's a 2004 article about using them in Legoland:

[http://www.networkworld.com/article/2332669/network- security...](http://www.networkworld.com/article/2332669/network- security/legoland-uses-rfid-for-finding-lost-kids.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> So soon we forget about this last discussion "Ai Weiwei Is Living in Our Future" : [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8824691](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8824691)

</comment><comment><USER35> That's the one of coolest things in Disney World and worth the extra money you'll pay for that (about US$ 14). It's really impressive how does it work and how it gets connected to other services, like restaurant reservations, 'fast-pass' and memory maker management.

<comment><USER7> At the moment it's free if you stay on the property in one of the resorts. It also acts as your room key.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> The idea of a "magical wristband" isn't much different than Great Wolf Lodge using their magical wands. Kids love it and it gets deep into their parents pockets.

[http://www.greatwolf.com/](http://www.greatwolf.com/)

</comment><comment><USER37> As a doctor, the first thing that popped into my mind when reading this is how transformative this would be in the hospital for both patients and providers.

Hospitals are mazes for patients and there are so many obvious ways to improve the experience. But as a provider, moving from transactions to moments with patients would reinvigorate the practice.

"The goal was to create a system that would essentially replace the time spent fiddling with payments and tickets for moments of personal interactions with visitors. The MagicBands and MyMagicPlus allow employees to "move past transactions, into an interactive space, where they can personalize the experience,"

</comment><comment><USER38> One difficulty with the bands is that, unlike a regular hotel with a magnetic (or even RFID) wallet sized card, this needs to be placed on your wrist every morning. I've needed several replacement Magic Bands because I am used to walking out of my house/hotel room and just checking for my wallet, cell, keys and knowing I'm good. Usually a hotel card would be in my wallet and it is not an additional check.

They are free to replace so it's not too big of a deal.

<comment><USER39> I don't understand. You leave the magic band in your hotel room and need to have it replaced? Why not go back into the hotel room and retrieve the original?

<comment><USER38> The hotel room being far away is one issue. Also, only so many people are authorized to let you back into your room. If that person is not available it can be a long wait and even if you are at the front desk of the hotel the room might be a 10 minute walk from there so the front desk person can't leave to walk you over there. A new band is often faster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> None of the content is online, but in either the winter or fall 2600 there's a pretty decent tear down / analysis of the wristband.

<comment><USER41> Winter 2014, it's $6 on Amazon Kindle. [http://smile.amazon.com/2600-Magazine- Hacker-Quarterly-2014-...](http://smile.amazon.com/2600-Magazine-Hacker- Quarterly-2014-2015-ebook/dp/B00RTKOPZU/) The article is called "Recon on Disney's Magic Band."

<comment><USER40> Yep, thanks, that was it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> the magic bands combined with smart watches make paying for things with your phone seem far more feasable

you can pay for everything in the park with your magic band (I think you might have to stay in a disney resort for that to be the case)

I'll admit, its really nice, I never take out my wallet if I can just have them scan my wrist

<comment><USER9> It would be interesting to see how revenues have increased due to band usage - the act of taking out your wallet or handing over cash or using a card act as a good barrier to excessive spending, making this mindless (just hold your hand near here) strikes me as a big win for Disney.

Do Disney do the IAP trick of having their own "coins" to insulate from displaying proper prices too?

<comment><USER43> > Do Disney do the IAP trick of having their own "coins" to insulate from > displaying proper prices too?

Not when I was there last year. Lots of customers still don't use the bands, as they're for people staying on resort property only. So everyone else has to do things the Old Fashioned Way.

<comment><USER44> Annual pass holders get these too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> I wonder how aggressively they mine the tracking information in real time. It would not be hard to recognize both "child separated from parents" and "parent movement matches search-like behavior", for example.

How did they spend a billion dollars on this system, though?

</comment><comment><USER46> Isn't this really a bet on turning all of your data into streams and moving to do everything in real time? If it is, I whole heartedly agree!

</comment><comment><USER47> Nothing to hide, nothing to fear kids :-)

</comment><comment><USER48> so they could be modified to monitor the health of their customers and wouldn't that be amazing. If someone is experiencing a life threatening situation employees could move in and discretely do a visual check and if confirmed react so much faster.

</comment><comment><USER49> Oh man I want to be a kid five years from now.

</comment><comment><USER50> "Be Our Guest, here's your food tray". They spent all this time, effort and money on technology but give people a tray to eat off. Why not just put bowls on the floor FFS.

<comment><USER51> Ha! Well spotted. I think they're just rectangular lipped plates, though.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Manage Rental Properties Remotely? - <AUTHOR> As a condo/flat owner who rents his property, I find it difficult to manage the property (be it maintenance requests, rent tracking, post-rental cleanup, etc.) remotely. Two questions: 1. Are there other lessors that have and are experiencing the same issues? 2. What tools or services do you use currently? <comment><USER2> I think a combination of cozy.co and thumbtack.com could get you there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Appreciate the suggestion. :)</comment></comment>


Using Stripe to accept credit cards - <AUTHOR> http://collectiveidea.com/blog/archives/2011/11/01/changing-your-stripes/

<comment><USER2> I like that you used Stripe for finish weekend itself... we just leveraged Stripe in our project for a finish-weekend-esk hackathon in Boston: <http://www.vampirehackathon.com>

We created <http://hipay.me> \- a simple credit card invoicing system which lets you use your stripe token to collect payment from others, without being a developer. We are a finalist - awaiting word on the winner! <http://vampirehackathon.com/escapes/27?page=finalists>

Best of luck with Finish Weekend!

Edit: linkified

<comment><USER3> _a simple credit card invoicing system which lets you use your stripe token to collect payment from others, without being a developer_

I created <https://widgetpay.me/> with the same concept in mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> That's awesome! I was just recently one of the organizers for Startup Weekend Puerto Rico and we did not expect to have people paying at the door, even less having people paying with credit cards. Thankfully the venue had one of those terminals to process credit cards, took us a while to get it setup, unfortunately the person was too impatient and left. Didn't cross my mind to have had setup Stripe for that occasion, but that would have been great. We are using Stripe for our soon-to-launch startup, <http://getblimp.com>. After using things like Recurly, I didn't hesitate to use Stripe, its pretty awesome and simple, plus not having to worry about a Merchant account or additional monthly bills.

</comment><comment><USER5> I switched to Stripe for <https://www.remindlyo.com> a few days before launch and it's been working well so far. The integration was super easy and basically involved copy and pasting some javascript from their site into my payment form and adding a gem.

</comment><comment><USER6> If anyone uses .net, check out this library <https://github.com/jaymedavis/stripe.net>

</comment><comment><USER7> It's good to see that Stripe is as easy to use as they make it out to be.

I recently discovered that accepting credit card payments is a massive problem that I'll soon face, and soon after that, Stripe appeared and promised to solve all of my problems. It seems like the perfect solution to the problem. (Now I'm waiting for it to start working in Australia...)

<comment><USER8> If you're waiting for a financial service that is offered in one country to be offered in your country, you're very likely to be waiting for a very very very long time.

Stripe has ten people, their website says. Which of those ten people do you think is currently busy negotiating Australia's arcane financial rules[1] in order to service the tiny 22M population in Australia? The answer is "none of them".

[1] I can say that because all countries have arcane financial rules.

<comment><USER9> Actually, we're working on supporting Australia right now. We don't have an ETA, but we're not talking years.

If you like, you can sign up to be notified when Stripe is available in Australia at <https://stripe.com/global>.</comment></comment></comment>


The Bug in the Physical Building - <AUTHOR> http://two-wrongs.com/the-bug-in-the-physical-building <comment><USER2> The 1995 story in the _New Yorker_ : [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/05/29/the-fifty- nine-...](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1995/05/29/the-fifty-nine-story- crisis)

It is misleading to classify the original welded design as adequate for quartering winds by virtue of the safety factor incorporated into the design. The safety factor accounts for the gap between the design and its execution in the physical world. It takes into account reasonably likely implementation errors not possible design errors.

The safety factor is a try-catch for IO. It's not there for kernel panics.</comment>


European Parliament moves to block ACTA deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/public-sector/3242612/european-parliament-moves-to-block-acta-deal/?cmpid=sbycombinatorrplant <comment><USER2> I still can't understand why, if they truly believe it is the right thing to do, the countries involved in the ACTA treaty won't publish it? It's only fueling more speculation about how horrible it will be.

<comment><USER3> _MEPs angered by reports that secret anti-counterfeiting deal has concluded without them_

Looks like the people with any morals are the ones who don't have access to it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh, if only. As far as I read that, it is just a handful of delegates, and they are not even really concerned about the treaty itself, but about the secrecy around it.

Anyway, it is perhaps a start. The members of the european parliament now need encouragement to really look at it and vote against it, even if it is fully disclosed.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wow. I almost expected the worst. Go EU!</comment>


Show HN: Bookself – The Social Reading App - <AUTHOR> https://bookself.app <comment><AUTHOR> As almost everything about Goodreads is broken ([https://onezero.medium.com/almost-everything-about- goodreads...](https://onezero.medium.com/almost-everything-about-goodreads-is- broken-662e424244d5)), readers do not have a great platform to discover, recommend and discuss books while authors lack a good channel to interact with their readers.

Readers hack other social platforms like #bookstagram on Instagram, #booktube on YouTube, recommend books on Twitter or move the discussion to Reddit. But these platforms are not built for books.

This is why we built Bookself.app. Currently we are a drop in replacement for Goodreads and over the coming months we are launching premium audiobook and ebook content to the app with a new, more flexible pricing model for digital books.

In the meantime, join the book club and let us know all your feedback!</comment>


Broadcom Is Said to Explore Deal to Buy Qualcomm - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/broadcom-is-said-to-explore-deal-to-acquire-chipmaker-qualcomm-j9k6u92n <comment><USER2> If regulators won't approve Qualcomm's NXP purchase, I find it hard to believe they would approve this deal.

<comment><USER3> Man, I'd like to see that sale get spiked. I like NXP's parts, but I wouldn't cross the street to pee on the Qualcomm building if it were on fire.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15621071](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15621071)

</comment><comment><USER5> Broadcom just announced yesterday that they are moving their legal corporate HQ back to the US. I wonder if that has anything to do with this news.

</comment><comment><USER6> Will the combined entity be called Broadcomm or Qualcom?

<comment><USER7> Comcomm</comment></comment>