My startup's private beta has just launched. 3D printing for the masses - <AUTHOR> http://www.solidsmack.com/couldfab-3d-printing-for-those-just-hankerin-for-distributed-manufacturing/2009-09-28/#more-6473

<comment><USER2> I work as a design engineer and regularly have parts I'm designing RPed so this looks really exciting and I look forward to something like this being available in the UK.

One of the things that we would usually do is have the RP firm finish our parts for us, painting and polishing, perhaps applying an overlay for the graphics on a screen or even vac casting to make a small batch of parts. I think it would be really important for you to allow people to request these services through the site as well.

I notice that you mentioned on the site that you will eventually supply laser and water-jet cutting as well. I think it would be good to also source machined components though the site.

We are increasingly finding that having parts prototyped in china is about half the price of having them produced here in the UK. For example a few months back I was looking to have a 400-300-200mm part prototyped that had been designed for injection molded. I cant remember the exact figures but our Chinese suppler quoted half the price for machining the component out of a solid block of plastic using a 5-axis milling machine than the local RP firm was quoting for an SLS. I hope you will allow oversees suppler to bid though the site as they are very competitive and very responsive!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sam. There's actually no reason that you couldn't use this in the UK if you wanted to; shipping costs would just end up being a bit higher. Eventually, I'm sure we'll have some international sellers on our system to help out with that as well, but baby steps!

We've talked to a few industrial design firms, and they agree with you on the finishing aspect. The issue is that unlike uploading a file, there are a _lot_ of ways that those kinds of things can be done. Imagine filling out a form on how you'd like finishing to go! So we've sort of come to a middle option. After you're quoted, but before you've accepted, there's a commenting feature that allows you to have a dialogue with the seller, so that you could ask for these kinds of things, and they could adjust their quote. We'll be looking into how to make that process easier in the future, to be sure. As you've said, it's pretty important.

I'm assuming by 'machined' components you mean subtractive processes like CNC? That'll be even farther down the support list, but yes, we'll get there at some point. The relative number of types of machines that do 3D printing and laser cutting are tiny compared to the number of CNC machines, so we figured that it would be a good beachead to start with.

We don't have any bias against having international sellers. As far as your 5x difference goes, there aren't that many SLS machines in the UK, but lots of milling machines in China. Add in the whole £ vs 元 thing, and I can certainly see how China'd come out cheaper. However, you have a lot of turn around time, and I've heard of some people having intellectual property concerns, unfounded or not.

The best thing about the Internet is that it levels the playing field for everyone!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Steve,

Will there be much discrepancy between the manufactured parts if they actually get fabricated in two separate machine shops? How precise is the equipment used in most of your participating shops?

I see you're working on the "How it Works" section and I'd love it if you had some pointers to books or frequently used applications (hopefully low cost??) for this industry.

The premise seems solid and I'm looking forward to using CloudFab!

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently, parts will only be manufactured in one shop. We're big proponents of the 'release early, release often' mentality. So we're starting small, getting feedback, and improving. Getting bigger jobs done across shops is one of those things that is on the to do list. For that to be efficient, we'd have to be producing a fairly large batch of parts, and so we'll tackle that problem once it happens.

Well, we're accepting sellers, as well, so we'll have a pretty wide range of equipment. As of right now, we have equipment of average precision. I'm not sure if that helps, so I just grabbed an average printer from Dimension to give you a ballpark figure, and it has a .010" layer thickness. We're trying to encourage those with MakerBots to sign up, and they have a .1mm resolution.

One of the greatest blessings of 3D printers is also the greatest weakness, right? You can basically make anything. So the problem with examples is that one can make total sense to someone, and be totally foreign to someone else. To give you some ideas, I'd say check out Thingaverse, or this interview with Bram Cohen, inventor of Bittorrent: [http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/268-Shapeways- Member-...](http://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/268-Shapeways-Member- Interviews-Bram-Cohen.html)

Thanks for the questions. We have some bigger things in the works as well. More on those later.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys. A few of you have asked about my startup, and I was keeping it under wraps, but no longer!

If you guys want to get in on stuff, use "hackernews" as a code so I know to give you dibs over random people.

Anybody have any questions?

<comment><USER4> Can you put up a page with examples of objects and how much it cost to produce them?

I think I'm like the vast majority of people you'll see -- vaguely aware of 3D printing, but with no sense of what it can produce or how much it costs. If I could look at a page and say "gee, I'd like to make something like that item there, and that price looks reasonable" then I'd be far more likely to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Education is actually a huge part of all of this, as I was in the same boat as you a year ago.

Short answer: anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars. It depends on how fine of quality you want in the part (which is also related to the particular process). If you can deal with some rough edges, it's much cheaper.

Longer answer: We're actually in the middle of making our "How it works" section much more in-depth. Something like this should be on there, especially for purposes of comparison between processes.</comment></comment></comment>


Swift syntax for Vim - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Keithbsmiley/swift.vim

<comment><USER2> It would be great to post an image of what this looks like in a couple code examples. I've been working on this as well, primarily because I haven't seen a syntax that gets it right, usually it's rushed or sloppy, and some just really get the syntax wrong. with off false positives appearing all over.

<comment><USER3> I think the problem is also vim which doesn't have a really great way to do syntax highlighting. At least not an easy way. Highlighting is all in a single thread and blocks which makes it slow on large files and the regular expressions seem fragile. I think a better way to do syntax highlighting would involve a lexer and bison instead of regular expression hell.

<comment><AUTHOR> Surprisingly this file is pretty simple. The learning curve for writing syntax files is definitely something though.</comment></comment></comment>


Five Things I Hated About Being an Intern at Facebook - <AUTHOR> http://www.toarca.com/blog/ihatefacebook

<comment><USER2> Engineer interns unite!

Most of these seem true about any well put together company that has set the boundaries between the code and breaking of said code. As a software engineer intern at Animoto in NYC, these were all completely true, and I know other interns at other startups in NYC that also had high expectations out of their SE interns.

Interns can't learn unless they build and break, and shouldn't be put out in an island so they don't have to worry about breaking. If your system is built out well enough, no intern would be able to push out code that breaks in production.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unlike Phillip Su's post, this is all just very thinly veiled sarcasm to make Facebook look like a good place to do an internship.

While I think Phillip also was being sarcastic, he actually gave good insight into why I wouldn't want to work for Facebook: too much code being shipped, not enough meetings (which results in disorganization, fragmented or duplicated effort), and too many decisions made by engineers (which means less consistent, less usable products).

</comment><comment><USER4> I love the sarcastic titles that end up being love articles about how great it is to work at Facebook. Why the passive aggressiveness? Why not just title this "Five Things I Love About Being an Intern at Facebook."

All these articles make me think this is how Facebook conducts their meetings and communications. "Hey Bob, I really hate your work." "Oh, you LOVE it, right?" "Yeah, that's what I said."

<comment><USER5> I believe it's referred to as "link bait"

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Viral Marketing 101.</comment>


Another Price Slash Suggests the Oculus Rift Is Dead in the Water - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608257/another-price-slash-suggests-the-oculus-rift-is-dead-in-the-water/ <comment><USER2> Kind of disappointed the article made no mention of the Vive.

Oculus is a PC product, PSVR is, well, obviously a PS4 product. I would think Oculus's primary competitor is the Vive, another PC product. A quick Google search leads to a lot of articles written in January claiming the Vive is outselling Oculus 2-to-1.

Oculus's problem is that they buddied up with Facebook and then tried to create a walled garden. Meanwhile, HTC buddied up with Steam, the de facto home for PC gamers, to market the Vive. Oculus is also behind the curve. Vive is room-scale and had motion controls from day 1.

<comment><USER3> > Kind of disappointed the article made no mention of the Vive.

I'm always disappointed that no mention is ever made of Razer's OSVR HMD (HDK):

[http://www.osvr.org/](http://www.osvr.org/)

Open-Source. Virtual Reality.

Instead we get closed source, walled garden, proprietary APIs - and of course, virtually zero Linux support.

<comment><USER4> HTC frequently send out Vive kits or new controllers like their tracker free. (Though the full product is about $800).

Whereas Razer makes it difficult to find a price, but when you do, it's about $400 for their devkit.

That aside, the huge difference is Steam's backing. Steam is where customers go, and they only see Vive there. (Where Linux users are I'm afraid, quite a small percentage. But, the Vive has decent support for Vulkan on Linux, and as Vulkan becomes more and more the standard, it'll work better and better).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I honestly wonder how much of this has to do with the fact that it is associated with Facebook.

Purely anecdotal, but in my gamer circles, seeing Facebook mentioned anywhere near video games is met with repulsion. Blizzard's choice to have Facebook- only live streaming means we would never use it (Yes Mom, I didn't call you back because, as you can see, I played Overwatch for 8 hours). As soon as we saw the announcement for Facebook taking over Oculus, we knew we weren't going to purchase it solely for keeping Zuckerberg out of our video games.

<comment><USER6> This. All of my old hardcore MMO buddies were pumped up during the Kickstarter days and during the following development phase.

Once Oculus took FB's "dirty money" though, every single one of them saw the writing on the wall, lost interest, and those with dev kits sold them off.

Gamers don't want social garbage getting in their way and pimping their activity/habits/preferences out to advertisers. Oculus may not have had much of a choice with their burn rate, but taking FB's money certainly didn't win them any friends among the userbase they were targeting from day one.

<comment><USER7> Same for all of us who just hate Facebook. I got off Facebook back in college and now avoid it like the plague. When they bought Oculus my interest in it died. No way am I using any app or product tied to Facebook in any way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was really excited about VR but the price(and nausea/headaches) put me off it.

I'm sure the price will continue to drop, as is par for the course in technology, but the physical side effects..? I don't want to be like Richard Hendricks and hug the porcelain after 30mins of gameplay.

<comment><USER9> Physical symptoms in VR are a hardware (bad tracking) or software (too much forced motion) problem.

Most games on Vive don't make me motion sick in the slightest, but games where you're shooting around in a car or spaceship make me motion sick nearly immediately.

Similarly, bad tracking (like on PSVR, or a Vive if there's a mirror in the room) can make you motion sick just standing still.

<comment><USER10> Well, what an individual person can tolerate varies widely too. VR hardware and software can't fix every problem with motion sickness just as we've yet to fix every problem with motion sickness on moving vehicles (cars, planes, boats), outside of blunt drugs (and their side effects).

<comment><USER9> I guess what I meant is that with current technology VR should not make you sick doing something that doesn't make you sick in real life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> They should have done everything in their power to keep the Facebook brand away from the Oculus brand, Vive fits in with the gamer / early adopter culture, where as Oculus now fits in with..... mom and dad.... I guess?

</comment><comment><USER12> Bought the dev kit, they never full developed the linux dev kit, then they killed it. My dev kit is sitting collecting dust.

<comment><USER13> Similar. Bought the dev kit, then they killed OS X support.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> i bought the DK2 dev kit but never bothered with the 'consumer' version.

i genuinely believe that oculus never expected rift to be 'big' in any way, i think it was about building up a VR game library ready for the next gen of phone holders a-la samsung gear.

once phones are powerful enough to match a current mid-range gaming GPU and can use cameras for low latency and high accuracy "inside-out tracking" (their definition) without all the wires/lasers/sensorcameras facebook will be right there with a store and a big library.

give it 5 years and VR might finally take off!</comment>


Erlang: Using Supervisors to Keep Your Processes Running - <AUTHOR> http://spawnlink.com/articles/using-supervisors-to-keep-erlybank-afloat/

<comment><USER2> How is this not just a more verbose equivalent of a shell script watchdog? The idea is sound (if hardly mind-bending), but the implementation here seems overly complicated.

<comment><USER3> For starters, it is baked into the language and can handle things like dynamically adding or removing items from the supervisory tree; it works are a more fine-grained level than shell scripts. It can also provide both all-or- nothing (e.g. if one item dies then restart everything in my supervisory tree) or one-for-one (just restart the bit that died).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone but me find Erlang's syntax to be its main negative?

<comment><USER5> It's not pretty, but I think there are other things that are more serious problems.

<http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/09/22/erlang>

[http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/10/09/languages- wor...](http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/10/09/languages-worst-case- vs-average)</comment></comment>


'Power Over Wi-Fi' named one of the year's game-changing technologies - <AUTHOR> http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/11/18/popular-science-names-power-over-wi-fi-one-of-the-years-game-changing-technologies/ <comment><USER2> From the paper: "For instance at a distance of 2 feet the battery charging system has 100 µW available compared to 10 µW at 10 feet." The Popular Science and UW Today articles both completely avoid numbers. But the numbers are vital, and if you do a little fermi math, you'll discover that's not enough to compete with watch batteries.

(The first watch battery I found with numbers on it had 240mAh*3V=720mWh, so one such battery could in theory provide 10 µW for 7.2e4 hours or 8 years.)

<comment><USER3> That's not going to charge your notebook so fast, but that's plenty to power your thermostat, your tv remotes, your burglar alarm sensors, and some of the other lesser IoT bits floating around.

<comment><USER4> It's not enough to power a thermostat. µW is microwatts. WiFi radios need milliwatts. As jimrandomh mentioned, the levels of power here are the same as what a watch battery can provide for eight years. Watches don't even run off of a watch battery for eight years.

<comment><USER5> It is _more_ than enough to power a thermostat. Just not all the time. The trick is to wake up from deep sleep often enough to do the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's pretty interesting to me that while we simultaneously demand that companies build everything with power efficiency in mind and embrace environmental consciousness, we take all this power and use it in increasingly inefficient ways.

Seriously, wireless power has existed for over a century, we don't use it because 99% of the power you throw out goes to waste.

<comment><USER7> In the end, I'm happy with a "five steps forward, one step back" situation where we spend a bit to fight big inefficiencies and then allow some smaller ones for convenience's sake.

<comment><USER8> Right now it's one step forward, five steps back. Or, with this idea, a hundred steps back. We don't have spare power. Let's talk about it again after we get the planet off coal.

<comment><USER9> Isn't charging small watches a negligible amount of energy?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I talked to two of my friends who wanted to do some research into this. They told me, that in the end, power over WiFi was too inefficient, so in practicality (since they were working with phones), the technology wouldn't actually charge phones up per se, but rather make them lose charge more slowly.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, I noticed the article wouldn't mention how much power they actually captured.

<comment><USER12> I just skimmed the paper, they achieved 10 microwatts at 10 feet. Yes, micro: this is about a million times less power than a modern smartphone or laptop charges at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> We need encryption for Power over Wi-Fi or else my neighbors will steal my electricity.

<comment><USER14> They can't "steal" your electricity. The output from the Wi-Fi is constant, and range limited. If they are getting any power from your signal, its power that you'd be casting off outside your house anyways. Net change in power would be 0.

<comment><USER15> Technically, if you have the WiFi password you can have a modern luxury router beam form more signal to you than otherwise. Although my router has multiple 5GHz radios and one 2.4GHz, so it will just move me over to another radio if only one person is leeching. More clients does probably keep more radios on, using more power as well, since otherwise the router can probably sleep more hardware more often. Sort of like a Bluetooth device being discoverable keeps the radio on more, then making it connectable makes it keep the radio on more, etc..

<comment><USER14> Did not know this was a thing... Is that a common ability in a router?

<comment><USER16> many 802.11ac devices can do beam forming [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2061907/all-about- beamforming...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2061907/all-about-beamforming- the-faster-wi-fi-you-didnt-know-you-needed.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is it really "game-changing?" You can only use it for low power devices which could also be powered by a small lithium battery for a year. So preventing me from having to change a battery once a year is now game changing?

<comment><USER17> In a world where you have 100s of such devices, absolutely.

<comment><USER5> And not only that, some devices are very hard to reach once they are integrated and their mailfunctioning due to failed batteries would be a show- stopper if the expected lifetime of the device is a multiple of the expected battery life.

<comment><USER8> I guess we could beam power to them, using a _strongly directional_ signal. Boosting Wi-Fi power to charge devices seems like absolutely mind-boggling waste.

<comment><USER5> For that you'd need to know where they are.

<comment><USER8> Phased array antenna and some feedback system, so that I can track the device?

Anyway, you obviously have something particular in mind; could you give an example of a device, for which an omnidirectional wireless solution would make sense, factoring in inefficiencies?

The only similar-sounding problem I'm familiar with are long-lived devices mounted underwater or otherwise mounted inside a structure. I've seen wireless power via inductive coupling being used to power such devices, because both the device and battery pack can be sealed off from the environment during manufacturing, and replacing the latter doesn't require any disassembly.

<comment><USER5> Let's see: where is my 'x' (tools, keys, shoes, glasses etc), data acquisition (temp in any room in the house for instance), various scada applications that now require a large amount of wiring (alarm systems for instance) and so on. It'd be quite the wave of new technology. Imagine, nothing would ever be 'lost' again once you knew it was yours before.

The possibilities for use _and_ abuse are just about endless.

<comment><USER8> Uh, ok. I see my imagination isn't good today; now that I see them, those examples are pretty obvious. Though I admit I was thinking about devices that eat _much_ more power.

As for "where is my 'x'", I'm actually surprised this isn't a solved problem yet, but I attribute it to the fact that we're still in the early IoT era, when every company wants to lock us in into their bullshit ecosystem of beacons and beacon apps. Though maybe it's changing, now that (again) China is popping out cheap BLE tags.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Let's see

They claim 10uW at 3 meters.

A random Lithium Thionyl Chloride battery ([http://www.xenoenergy.com/eng/file/Xeno%20Catalog%20XL-050F_...](http://www.xenoenergy.com/eng/file/Xeno%20Catalog%20XL-050F_E.pdf)) for about 2$ can deliver 35uW for 10 years in a ridiculously small package. This well outlasts the lifetime/usefulness of anything which could be potentially connected to it. And even if not, changing a battery every 10 years is not exactly a huge problem.

(Disclaimer: I have only skimmed the paper very quickly)

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10593008](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10593008)

<comment><USER20> Hm, I'm curious why this wasn't caught by the HN anti-duplicate. Previously when I've (obliviously) posted an already posted URL, I've been redirected to the comments of the pre-existing URL. The URLs are literally exactly the same.

<comment><USER21> HN anti-duplicate allows resubmit for URLs which weren't well received at the first attempt.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Paper (linked in article) is here: [https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/Papers/powifi.pdf](https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~gshyam/Papers/powifi.pdf)

Disregarding the usual HN snark for media terms ("game-changing") and the usual criticism ("been done before", "won't be effective"), this is actually really cool. If we look at all the innovations in the past year, this is a pretty dang neat one.

They mention Tesla in the opening line of their paper. In short, the biggest innovation they came up with was solving the mismatch of Wifi operation and optimal power transmission. Read the paper; it's quite good stuff.

<comment><USER5> It is interesting and could be a game changer for the 'internet-of-things'. WiFi is everywhere and just to be able to run a device a couple of seconds per day without having wires attached to it could enable a huge number of applications.

<comment><USER23> This got me excited about the idea. Like many others my first thought was that it can't be nearly efficient enough to charge my phone, but I hadn't even considered all the little low power sensors I could place around the house that I wouldn't bother with if they all needed to be wired into mains power. Think window break and door lock sensors, etc.

<comment><USER8> > _Think window break and door lock sensors, etc._

A fun tech I had in my hands once that I haven't seen being use anywhere is turning kinetic energy into power. I've played with a light switch that can generate enough energy from you just pressing them, that they can boot up an internal uC, a radio, and then send a signal. The device had a typical home- automation range of several meters. I've been told that there are versions mounted into window handles, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> We already have it. It is called solar power. Please use it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I think a company at this summer's YC did something similar (using wifi): [http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/18/hardware-demo- day/](http://techcrunch.com/2015/08/18/hardware-demo-day/) ctl+f "supply"

</comment><comment><USER26> First tech needs to focus on small distance wireless power. I need to be able to easily and reliably charge my phone wirelessly. Plugging in wires is just straight up old fashioned. Qi is really getting mainstream now but having to position the phone perfectly is not that great. I know of A4WP with NXP as one of the main companies developing tech that can charge everything over the pad, no matter the placement. It also includes stacking. If we can build out this to also be integrated in laptops, lamps and other "put down" devices, I can believe this can evolve into something larger doing it over a bigger distance.

<comment><USER5> The one thing I can think of is to massively reduce the power consumption of phones. That would go a long way towards making various wireless charging methods (including solar, by the way) much more feasible. Todays phones are very power hungry.

<comment><USER8> That's because (smart)phones are portable general-purpose computers. I see two ways of reducing power use.

1) Go back to small, low-power screens and physical keypads for data input.

2) _Heavily_ optimize the stack. You could put less power-hungry parts in a smartphone, but then it wouldn't boot up. Even top phones have trouble keeping up with software bloat, being somewhat-usable when you buy them, and barely- usable after a year or two. And let's not talk about the cheap phones, which have barely enough power to run the OS.

<comment><USER5> I don't agree phones are 'general-purpose computers'. They're just end-points of very large eco-systems locked down in as many ways as possible.

Here is one thread about that:

[https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/](https://lwn.net/Articles/662147/)

<comment><USER8> I know. I tend to whine about it on HN every now and then :). But this time I meant it from an engineering point of view. Smartphones don't run on ASICs but on general-purpose microcontrollers, they have a general-purpose OS capable of running arbitrary code. And they run staggering amounts of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Won't this raise the noise floor considerably for any other networks nearby?

</comment><comment><USER28> Finally, something that might actually be available to consumers.

To everyone else that is talking about it not happening because of inefficiencies etc, wouldn't the fact that we are also working on ways to generate more renewable energy and working on improving efficiency factor into this equation?

If nothing, any extra improvement in energy efficiency can be considered the overhead needed for wireless power.

It might start of as a luxury more than a necessity.

<comment><USER8> > _wouldn 't the fact that we are also working on ways to generate more > renewable energy and working on improving efficiency factor into this > equation?_

One of the most important questions of the early XXI century is whether we'll manage to switch the world from coal to green energy before we cook the planet and without starving big parts of the population for power. One of the talking points is the observation that renewables may not be efficient enough yet and we may not be able to pull it off without going into nuclear ASAP. We have _barely enough energy_ , the third world is rising their living standards to the point they themselves will need a shit ton of power for things like fridges, washing machines and hot showers, and we're thinking of putting all our surplus into ridiculously inefficient things like wireless power?

I think if this idea gets into market now, I'll ask Copernicus to stop this planet and let me get off.

> _It might start of as a luxury more than a necessity._

Yes. The kind of luxury like using up $30 000 worth of water in the middle of a drought in California, just because you can. Rightfully pissing everyone else off.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I am a serious layman when it comes to this type of stuff, but I swear I remember reading about similar wireless power years ago. I even remember seeing a video of a lightbulb being illuminated without being attached to anything. What makes it this year's game-changing tech? Is it the WiFi aspect?

<comment><USER30> Yes, Tesla demonstrated wireless power in 1891

<comment><USER31> Wireless transmission has been demonstrated by others before Tesla e.g. Heinrich Hertz. And I mean induction is arguably a form of wireless transmission which has been verified by Faraday in the 1830s. The problem is now as it was then that wireless transmission is governed by the inverse square law and therefore inefficient to the point of being unusable in most real world application.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> What are the health implications of this?

<comment><USER33> It doesn't sound like they are talking about boosting the power output from access points, so I guess this is, WLOG, the same question as asking "what are the health implications of wi-fi?" I don't mean to imply that the answer is 'none,' but this new development doesn't seem to change any of the relevant primary factors (i.e., how much energy the human body absorbs from wi-fi transmitting antennas).

EDIT: Sort of nevermind? I re-read and see that they are telling the access points to send more data, but not to send them above or beyond the antennas' already-intended power output. So I guess the analogous question is, "what are the health implications of using your wi-fi a lot?"

<comment><USER32> I wonder if someone experimented in boosting the signal x1000 and see if it creates side-effects in organic matter (of varying conductivity, for example skin, brain neurons etc.)

Also "already-intended power output". If this available, there is motivation for buyers to hack the device and boost significantly the signal -- whereas there's little motivation to hack existing wifi devices

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Is this fundamentally different than how RFID works? I'm curious if anyone who knows could chime in.

<comment><USER5> A typical RFID chip has nearby a coil that is used to temporarily power up the chip using regular magnetic coupling using a (relatively) low frequency.

That same coil is then used as the antenna (at a much higher frequency) to transfer a little bit of data.

So yes, it's fundamentally different, the article describes energy transfer using radio frequency waves alone.

<comment><USER35> C'mon, is not _fundamentally_ different, since both techniques use EM energy. And guess what, where is the RF in RFID comes from??

In order to harvest power from EM (RF) you need a nantenna, a micro rectifying antenna, aka [1].

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

<comment><USER5> Wifi does not use _magnetic_ resonant coupling.

To expand on that, the difference is (in laymans terms) 'radio waves' versus 'magnetic fields'.

The difference being that in WiFi the magnetic field component is not relevant and in NFC technologies such as RFID it is the main component (the hint is whether the main active component is a coil or an antenna).

There is a close relationship between the two fields governed by Maxwells equations.

<comment><USER36> In fact they are the same - one is the derivative of the other. So the RFID scanner emits a radio wave; the RFID chip magnetically couples to it to provide a small charge; enough to run the RFID circuitry for a few milliseconds.

<comment><USER5> At the frequencies and distances at which WiFi normally operates the magnetic component is all but invisible, it's mostly a matter of electric fields.

At lower frequencies the electromagnetic field portion becomes dominant. This is one reason why the 'antenna' inside one of those old fashioned AM receivers is actually a coil with a ferrite core (and conveniently internal to the device), and an FM radio (the A/F have to do with the modulation, not specifically with the frequency but the bands are between 455 and 1600 KHz vs 88-108 MHz) typically uses a rod antenna.

Now you could make an FM radio with a coil for its antenna or an AM radio using a rod but neither would be very efficient.

So it's the small distance and low frequency of RFID technology that drive the choice for magnetic coupling, whereas the high frequency and longer distances of WiFi make the choice for antennas.

AM radio, with its low frequency and _enormous_ power output allows magnetic pick-up at very large distances from the point of origin, this is also why it is not 'line-of-sight' but WiFi _is_ line-of-sight (yes, you can bounce radio waves off objects (such as the moon or the Heavyside layer) but that's another subject entirely).

The higher the frequency of operation the more you'll be looking at properties resembling those of light (which is also a form of electromagnetic radiation).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Wont the efficiency be ridiculously low -- wifi signals are not really targeted.

<comment><USER38> I agree, it's ridiulouly low. From the article:

> _In their proof-of-concept experiments, the team demonstrated that the > PoWiFi system could wirelessly power a grayscale, low-power Omnivision VGA > camera from 17 feet away, allowing it to store enough energy to capture an > image every 35 minutes._

I made a back of the envelope calculations for a similar project ( see [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10323565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10323565) ) This other projet claim that they can harvest ~30µW, this is very little. For example, it can only blink a led a few times per minute, because a normal led use 30mW=30000µW. Read the complete comments for more details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> call me a fuddy-duddy but i want to be convinced that there are no adverse health affects -- or understand what the risks are, however minute.

after all, one can get cancer (and die from it) from something as 'harmless' as sunlight.

<comment><USER40> Sunlight is ionizing radiation -- the ultraviolet light is capable of knocking electrons off their atoms, damaging nearby biological systems. 2.4 GHz radio waves cannot do this; absorption just causes local heating (in this case, truly infinitesmal amounts).

I dont know whether that meets the standard of convincing you, but it is fantastically well established science.

<comment><USER39> thanks, i appreciate the response; that's a distinction i didn't know about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is that Tesla's dream coming true?

<comment><USER5> Not really. Tesla's dream was to set up a resonant field around the globe with a few giant base-stations that one could tap into at will to draw power. For many reasons that was an absolutely un-workable proposal, the major ones being that nature put up a roadblock or two on the way to getting that to work on anything but the smallest scale.

For one there is this thing called a power-law which required the voltages to be significantly higher than those needed to make a system like this work in a laboratory, the other is the breakdown voltage of the atmosphere, which causes any voltage in excess of this to return to ground, frying whatever it finds in its way (think lightning).

It would have made for a hell of a display piece.

Of course this does not stop Tesla groupies from claiming the government suppressed the design.

On another note: regular radio frequency transmitters put out enough power that so called 'crystal radios' can be powered by the transmitter directly. So in a way 'the system works' but the amounts of power that you can draw from it are minute. Tesla claimed that you could run regular industrial machinery from his technology. There is a funny parallel between the Tesla story and uBeam, the dreams are remarkably similar. 'Wouldn't it be a good thing if wireless power with substantial power transfer existed?'

<comment><USER42> I love that the context makes "power law" sounds like anti-competitive regulation, rather than a natural phenomenon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Url changed from [http://phys.org/news/2015-11-power-wi-fi-year-game- changing-...](http://phys.org/news/2015-11-power-wi-fi-year-game-changing- technologies.html), which points to this.

</comment><comment><USER44> Can we ban anything that mentions "game-changing" already?

Please? Pretty Please?</comment>


Ask HN: Is studying A.I. a good investment in mid/long term? - <AUTHOR>

Artificial intelligence and related fields (neural networks, bayesian decisors, etc) have been trending for the last decades, and more nowadays with the whole discussion with about its dangers.<p>Do you think its good investment to have a more detailed study into technical aspects of AI? <comment> T-A For what it's worth (hello, I am a random HN user): yes.

</comment><comment><USER2> Yes, AI's use will only increase in the future.</comment>


Ask HN: Developer & Designer on an iOS project, whats a good split? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> A formula I've used is to take yourselves out of the equation. Pretend that you are going to hire outsiders to do the design and dev work. Decide how you would split the _profit_ , given that you would be doing zero work yourselves.

Then bill your time back against the _revenue_ at realistic hourly rates for the qualifications and experience. Finally split the _profit_ as decided above.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well, it depends. I would assume 50:50 as starting point. If there are 30 completely different screens, with little logic behind them - well then the designer needs a higher split.

Why not simply count hours on both sides until 1.0 ships and then split by the ratio of used hours?

<comment><USER4> I like your second idea. This will vary so drastically from app to app. For some apps you might need the designer to make a logo and a few images (assuming you use out of the box icons). That could be a 95/5 split on effort. A game or super visual app COULD go 50/50 on time expenditure but that's probably rare. Also, depends on the skill levels. Should you assume that value per hour are equal?

For instance, if I were to bring a pro designer onto a project that he was only doing %25 of the time on, I'd probably give him 50% cut (because his time is worth double what mine is). Ultimately, kind of a complicated question.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Music Player for Dropbox, Mega, and Google Drive - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vibe-cloud-music-player-for/id877920397?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey all,

Creator here. The entire app is free this weekend. This includes in-app purchase to remove limits.

<comment><USER2> Would love if it allowed stream playing, no downloads. That is a feature that should be built in on the Google Drive app, but isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey the app is able to either stream or download songs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Very nice app. Lovely interface and easy to use. I think this will replace the app I've previously used. I would request a feature to browse music by folder structure as is in dropbox. I use dropbox/drive to store song collections, but not strictly albums.

Also I was looking for a nice app to browse dlna/mpd library on my network and something that works like this would be perfect. Although I acknowledge that would bring your project off in a totally different direction!

Good work and thanks for the special free offer!

</comment><comment><USER4> What is a typical situation for someone storing music in Dropbox/Mega/Google Drive? What is used to play the music on the Desktop.

Looking forward to trying this out though. I currently use iTunes Match but really enjoy Dropbox for photos. If this is as robust as it looks, and I could find a filesystem based music player that works as nicely as iTunes, then it'd be under consideration for longterm use

<comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of different use cases. For me personally i upload audio files that arent available on streaming services suchs as Spotify or rdio. Then i am able to stream/download them in the app. To play the songs on my laptop/desktop i just set the Dropbox/Drive folder as a music folder with Spotify.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Hi,

App looks really cool. I'm loading some music up in Dropbox to try it.

But first, I see music coming up that I don't believe I have anywhere -- John Lennon, Bob Marley, etc. It's not in my iTunes library or Dropbox. What's going on?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey first thanks so much for downloading the app. I really appreciate it! If the app is importing music that you didn't know you had then those songs must be in a hidden/obscure folder. Either that or some songs aren't tagged incorrectly. The app tries to read id3 tags for every song. If they are set incorrectly, then that could be your issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any plans of adding S3 support. Would be great for uploading a larger library. This paired with something like ArqBackup could auto upload your library to S3.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great app! I sent you a feature request in-app about adding another cloud service, hope you got it and consider it! Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER8> works great.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for downloading! There is a feedback feature where you can make requests suggestions.</comment></comment>


GPU-equipped Ryzen Pros give AMD what it needs to conquer the corporate desktop - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/05/gpu-equipped-ryzen-pros-give-amd-what-it-needs-to-conquer-the-corporate-desktop/ <comment><USER2> We recently started to purchase Ryzen 2700 for our office, and us used to be all Intel 4790K and Intel 7700K. These AMD CPUs are pretty great price for what you get and way faster than the similarly priced Intel CPUs for our needs.

We sort of make fun of the multi-colored CPU coolers that come with the CPU though. It seems weird to have these in business machines.

(We have also invested in another 16 AMD Threadrippers, they are just amazing power for the price. It is sort of weird that is less than 6 months, we have become an AMD shop after being Intel for as long as I can remember.)

<comment><USER3> Agreed, they're great. If only they weren't so unreliable with Linux. First the segfault bug and then there's still random freezes in idle state:

[https://community.amd.com/thread/225795](https://community.amd.com/thread/225795)

<comment><USER4> Just how common is this? Three ryzen/linux machines here and they've been rock solid.

<comment><USER5> I believe only very early silicon was affected. AMD replaced CPUs for people on request. If you google you can find the affected datecode visible on the CPU. I have an early Ryzen from the next date and it doesn't have any issues.

<comment><USER6> AMD tightened up manufacturing at Week 25 and the incidence rate is significantly reduced after that point, but there is no date range (or factory code) on the 1000-series processors that is _guaranteed_ to be unaffected and I recommend that everyone test their processor just to be sure.

I've seen about a dozen reports of faulty post-week-25 processors crop up in the AMD Community Forum and on Reddit from different users. Which is of course a lot better than pre-week-25 where the overwhelming majority of units are faulty. Of course, most users aren't testing for it in the first place, especially since the newer processors were widely (and incorrectly) reported to be "fixed", so it's hard to say.

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1635&tstart=0) (user jcoiner, 1726PGT)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1725&tstart=0) (user scorpio810, 2x 1728SUS)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1770&tstart=0) (user ryzlin, 1733PGT)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1785&tstart=0) (user flyinryzen1700, 1737SUS)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1830&tstart=0) (user skimba 1725PGT, user xtronom 1728PGT)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1860&tstart=0) (user jc_yang, 1742SUS)

[https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0](https://community.amd.com/thread/215773?start=1875&tstart=0) (user fedor_s 1726SUS, user karabojkov 1741SUS+1737SUS, user spiffy 1748PGS)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/76q7ne/got_a_defective_ryzen_7_1700_on_rma_process/dofye3u/) (user grosbof 1733SUS)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpc5iue/) (user triplesal, 1733PGS)

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_s...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/7ar15o/psa_amazon_is_still_selling_preweek_25_ryzens/dpcrkv0/) (user istockporno, 1726PGT)

I am guessing that this was finally squashed for good in the 2000-series stepping.

Incidentally, there have been reports of the latest patch of Battlefield One having strange random crashes on Ryzen 1000-series but not 2000-series or Intel processors, that is reportedly fixed by disabling SMT, and I'm wondering if that's another manifestation of the segfault bug. It's hard to say, and the reality is the first-gen silicon will never be 100% trustworthy. Buy 2000-series processors instead, it's worth it for the peace of mind.

<comment><USER7> _" I recommend that everyone test their processor just to be sure."_

How does one do the test?

<comment><USER6> The classic test needs to be run under Linux but you can use a USB stick.

[https://github.com/suaefar/ryzen-test](https://github.com/suaefar/ryzen-test)

There is also a Windows variant that may be more sensitive than the Linux variant but fewer people have used it so YMMV.

[https://github.com/corngood/kill-ryzen-win](https://github.com/corngood/kill- ryzen-win)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Tangentially related: Does anyone know if there is a NUC-style Ryzen 2700U-based machine, preferably with Thunderbolt 3? That would be a dream machine; one could use it for normal computing, development (4 cores, 32GB RAM), or even as a SteamBox (NVidia 650Ti-level of graphics performance), with the optional eGPU if that's not good enough. I couldn't find anything and I sincerely hope it won't end up as Kaveri, either unavailable or stuffed only into lowest-level notebooks.

<comment><USER9> Not Ryzen but this would do. [https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E1685610...](https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102201)

<comment><USER10> You got downvoted, but you are actually quite right. The Hades Canon is not your normal Intel NUC, this packs exactly the gpu power parent is looking for - and the processor is strong as well.

<comment><USER8> It's 100W, very noisy and much larger than a NUC with typically 15W design. ZOTAC Magnus 1070 seems way better in every aspect comparing to this if you wanted to go more expensive route.

<comment><USER10> Why? [https://www.anandtech.com/show/10921/zotac-zbox-magnus- en108...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/10921/zotac-zbox-magnus-en1080-sff- pc-review-a-premium-gaming-powerhouse/8) is the 1080 version, but if I understand that correctly these builds use pretty much a normal gpu. They will eat a lot more power and be louder.

But right, OP was asking only for a 15W cpu and the gpu level of a 650 Ti, which is weaker than this.

<comment><USER8> Magnus EN1070K is a leaner build, like they did with the original Steam Box NEN (basically the Magnus EN970 on the charts you linked):

[https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus- en1070k-win...](https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus- en1070k-windows-10)

It's smaller than Mac Mini, yet you can do serious gaming, Deep Learning and cryptomining with it; that's not possible with Hades Canyon. It's quiet as well. Power consumption should be quite a bit lower than 1080 version as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would appreciate Intel NUC-style box with GPU equipped Ryzen Pro. I know about NUCs with Intel CPU and Vega M GPU but they seem to be too expensive.

<comment><USER2> This would be amazing. If it could handle >= 32GB of RAM and 2 SSDs and run two 4K monitors at once, this would be so amazing and replace most of our desktops.

<comment><USER12> And ECC too.

By breaking Intel's hold on the NUC form factor, it should bring prices down as well.

<comment><USER13> All Raven Ridge processors have ECC support[1], but it additionally requires motherboard support. Would be great if some laptop manufacturer would undercut prices of current ECC laptops by >1k$ by pairing Raven Ridge with ECC or we get at least a µATX or ITX board.

[1] [https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/amd-ama-starts- at-12pm-...](https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/amd-ama-starts-at-12pm-est- on-wednesday-may-9.2545291/page-3#post-39418197)

edit: As AMD is already throttling DRAM speed dynamically for Ryzen Mobile to conserve power, it would be an interesting experiment to see if they could throttle ECC DRAM even lower, so that it consumes less power than normal DRAM.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if these will be capable of working with ECC memory. I can't see OEM's pushing that as it's not supported by AMD but it could be a niche for custom builds.

<comment><USER13> It is supported by AMD, the OEMs just have to support it on the motherboard site too: [https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/amd-ama-starts- at-12pm-...](https://forums.anandtech.com/threads/amd-ama-starts-at-12pm-est- on-wednesday-may-9.2545291/page-3#post-39418197)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've had ~300 A8 7600(ish) APU desktops now and been very pleased. Mostly we've built them ourselves because nothing got into that price/performance bracket and no supplier would sell AMD. Great fit for the education market that's mostly office with some CAD.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm waiting for more Dell laptops with Ryzen APUs.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just how big is the corporate desktop market? I haven't seen desktop computers at work in at least 7 years.

<comment><USER17> Still very big, I would say. You are correct about startups, but just go to any enterprise and you will find desktops everywhere. Enterprises generally don't like the idea of company laptops with sensitive information being stolen, and - from what I can see - thin clients + datacenters is very popular there.

<comment><USER16> OK. For the record, I worked at a government agency, at a GSE (both as a contractor, my company and the client both provided laptops only), and at a Fortune 100 company in the timeframe I quoted.

The sensitive information leakage thing is protected via full disk encryption in all those cases.

<comment><USER18> Same for us, and we're just 100 heads.

At least once a year I have to explain to the auditors that no, we do not clamp our desktop boxes down. Every system is set up with full-disk encryption.

Auditor: "What happens if someone steals one of those boxes?"

Me: "We lose perhaps 1k worth of kit. An annoyance. Someone has to spend time reinstalling their setup. But the data on the disk is illegible garbage. Useless."

Auditor: "Have you documented that as an accepted risk?"</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tokyo's 2D Cafe - <AUTHOR> https://soranews24.com/2019/09/01/tokyos-amazing-2d-cafe-looks-like-an-illustration-but-its-an-actual-restaurant-you-can-eat-in/ <comment><USER3> I don't see any unusual tricks of perspective. A better name might be "paper cafe" rather than 2D cafe as it reminds me of paper dolls and paper dollhouses.

[https://www.amazon.com/Qaba-Folding-Cardboard-Coloring- Playh...](https://www.amazon.com/Qaba-Folding-Cardboard-Coloring- Playhouse/dp/B00GI29EKQ)

<comment><USER4> That thing is insanely expensive! Is there something special about it to justify the price tag?? I feel like I'd be cheap and buy some poster board and make kids build their own(?)

<comment><USER5> Could as well put up a proper IT version: [https://i.imgur.com/km9TGBh.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/km9TGBh.jpg)

<comment><USER6> In a world where most IT offices these days are as sterile and bland as possible I would applaud a coworker that went out and did this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's really interesting looking at the evolution and interplay between social network and real life trends around this topic:

1\. It's cool to take photos and apply filters (Instagram 1.0)

1a. It's not cool to take photos and apply filters (Cameras get better, filters are over-used)

2\. It's cool to take videos and use AR filters (Snapchat/Instagram evolved)

2a. It's not cool to take videos and use AR filters (filters are over-used)

3\. It's cool to decorate real world to look like a filter, take unfiltered photos (2d cafes)

<comment><USER8> There's also a [store/boutique/experience/outlet/place where you pay for a thing] in my town where they just have neat sets for you to take photos in. There's a room of ducks, a fake bridge through a magical forest, an upside down room, etc.

The entire business model is selling tickets so people can take photos and post to social media. And it's a great one.

<comment><USER9> I stumbled upon one of these walking around my city the other day. I thought it was either a new museum, or some pop-up museum exhibit, but it was instead exactly what you described: a photo studio with many preconfigured sets that are pretty inventive.

In hindsight it's so obvious: cameras are getting very good, sharing photos and video is now trivial for the majority of the population, and everyone has a camera in their pocket. What a money-making opportunity, even if someday people will eventually go, "meh, I don't need to visit that new photo studio place that opened up."

This reminds me of how Apple seems to (or at least used to) choose apps to promote on the iOS App Store when a new version of iOS came out: what new capability will now be widely available with the new iOS version? Make an app that highlights that capability, and not only will Apple feature you, but also a bunch of tastemakers will use your app and spread the word. It could be support for new camera features, adding AR capability, adding calendar integration, improved sharing capabilities, etc.

Go to what's new but ubiquitous, and there are probably people willing - <USER2> least in the short term - to pay with eyeballs or money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's also a cafe just like this in Seoul (Hongdae neighborhood). "Cartoon Cafe" I believe?

<comment><USER11> yep!

[https://mymodernmet.com/cartoon-world-coffee-shop- seoul/](https://mymodernmet.com/cartoon-world-coffee-shop-seoul/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess the real trick is getting incredibly uniform lighting over each square cm of all furniture.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would have liked to see a photo with people in it to help show the contrast. Although the food photos were pretty good in that regard.

</comment><comment><USER13> there is a "restaurant with rooms" in Turin in which the rooms are designed by local artists and one of them is "2d"

The restaurant is also very good.

[https://r-cf.bstatic.com/images/hotel/max1280x900/187/187002...](https://r-cf.bstatic.com/images/hotel/max1280x900/187/187002741.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER14> I've seen pictures of this restaurant multiple times on the web. What I haven't seen, is a person in the picture. I wonder if having a person in it ruins the illusion?

<comment><USER15> A quick google image search results in people in the cafe.

<comment><USER16> which all look carefully curated to me. i cant find any with more than one person in it within first few pages of results

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is a fantastic novelty for once, but I personally find the setting jarring and unsettling for repeat visits.

<comment><USER18> I lived in tokyo for a bit and i always wondered if these theme cafes get repeat customers. I enjoyed going to like a Feudal Japan era cafe, but animal cafes aside, i never really had a desire for a repeat visit especially since the lines can be SUPER long.

<comment><USER19> Aren't many of the ones that are themed after IP's explicitly temporary?

I went to a bird café In a mostly residential area just north of Ueno park last year. It was a total blast. We only went in because my spouse didn't feel well and need to rest, but it ended up one of the highlights of our trip. Everyone was super happy. All guests were laughing at the birds that were in a huge cage; the caged birds were seemingly having a great time snuggling and humping each other; the birds you could visit with were clearly excited to get attention. One bird kept chirping at my wife every time she stopped petting it. The entire place liked like a room for kids, but there were no kids, just happy adults and birds. The music they played sounded like music from a happy scene in an anime. It was almost surreal. I would go back in a heartbeat!

We did go to a hedgehog cafe which was bad. Unhappy staff and the animals are nocturnal and just want to sleep. It felt just like animal abuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21322807)

EDIT: I was wrong, the previous discussion was for a similarly styled cafe in Korea, whereas this one is in Tokyo.

<comment><USER21> These are two different cafes that use these visual effects (one in Tokyo, Japan, and one in Seoul, Korea.)

<comment><USER20> Shoot, I didn't read the titles correctly enough; you're absolutely right, they're two completely different cafes. Thanks for the correction!

<comment><USER21> On the bright side, it's absolutely relevant to the discussion and useful for comparison.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is quite similar to a room in Meow Wolf ([https://santafe.meowwolf.com/](https://santafe.meowwolf.com/)). That one was quite well done, down to painted shadows in spots where real shadows were cast from the lighting.

</comment><comment><USER23> Looks cool. I'll have to go check it out.

Reminds me of the sets from "The Fabulous World Of Jules Verne"

[https://youtu.be/MSl2FekEuaE](https://youtu.be/MSl2FekEuaE)

go to 01:07:12

And of course more recently Sin City

</comment><comment><USER24> Is the quality of a place only dictated by instagrammability, today?

<comment><USER18> Eh, thats definitely something happening in the west but theme cafe culture has been a big thing in Tokyo for far longer than Instagram has existed. These places don't typically stay around for too many years but they are common places to take casual dates, or for groups of people with shared interests to go. C.f.: gundam themed cafes, cat cafes, feudal era cafes, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Reminds me a bit of Disney's Animators Palate dining room:

[https://youtu.be/ofwEF2yBR8Y?t=6](https://youtu.be/ofwEF2yBR8Y?t=6)

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks more like cel shading with outlines rather than 2d (though both terms are used interchangeably for anime and cartoons).

</comment><comment><USER27> If you like this you should check out Meow Wolf. It's in Santa Fe and has a very funky vibe.

</comment><comment><USER28> It would be cool to have a flashmob where everyone is wearing a skeleton onesie in there :)

</comment><comment><USER29> They should name it Borderlands cafe :P

</comment><comment><USER30> Don't these kind of places rely on perspective tricks, ideal POVs, lighting, and really good photographers (like those floating crosswalks)? I think if I saw it in real life, it wouldn't be as impressive since those conditions would break down quickly.

<comment><USER7> Yes - BUT the main reason people go isn't for the first-person experience, it's so they can take photos and post online. So none of those limitations really matter.

<comment><USER31> Reminds me of the quote I heard about 'experiential' businesses: "If you can't take a picture and brag about it online, then it's not experiential"

<comment><USER30> Kind of reminded me of how Starbucks used to disallow photography in their Chinese stores. It was to prevent copying, but it didn't go down well since it was mainly a lifestyle business in that country.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Just another cafe serving sugar junk food in single use plastic cups.

</comment><comment><USER33> At least show someone sitting in it.

</comment><comment><USER34> This is beyond trippy.

</comment><comment><USER35> So it's crap to visit IRL but it allows you to take good Instagram photos.

This is what we want now?

Fair enough if it's what people want, but say that.

Don't pretend like it's also a place you will enjoy as a cafe or find visually appealing to look at with eyes.

[https://www.google.com/maps/place/2D+Cafe+%E6%96%B0%E5%A4%A7...](https://email@example.com,139.6985482,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m7!3m6!1s0x0:0x32cef73eb90e513d!8m2!3d35.7001289!4d139.7007369!9m1!1b1)

</comment><comment><USER36> Does _every_ restaurant have to appeal to the Instagram generation now?

<comment><USER37> Taking pictures and sharing them with friends is not a generational thing. It has been a cornerstone of human culture since the concept of photography was invented.

Are we not allowed to enjoy what we see anymore?

<comment><USER38> However sometimes it feels like it is being _hijacked_. Sometimes it feel that the main experience is "sharing a picture", rather than having an experience (view, sound, smell, all senses plus emotions) and then trying to share it with pictures. Sometimes it feels that people are too focused on being the directors of their lives rather being the (ad-lib) actors. The _gamification_ and addiction-inducing practices of certain social media probably has something to do with this trend. This, I think, is the generational thing.

<comment><USER39> I doubt it; people have been going on vacation, and selecting places based on non-self-interest reasons for ages.

In my own family, every vacation turns into a question of how many tours and points-of-interest we can fit, and the whole thing is just stressful. And at those PoIs, the only real interest is getting a good picture with $thing in the background, and visiting the next thing.

And it's common enough behavior that whole industries revolve around it, which we call tourism.

And of course, those tourist hotspots are natural places for locals to avoid, because they cater very directly to those tourists.

Instagram is a very direct extension of the model, but with a much tighter feedback loop, and much more advanced strategies and competition. Boomer-style tourism is just as culturally dumb (and profitable) as instragram-tourism, but implementation-wise, instagram-tourism is simply on a different level of technical proficiency.

<comment><USER38> Well... You are unfortunately correct.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Grow Your Revenue Using In-App Purchases - <AUTHOR> https://habr.com/en/post/456006/ <comment><USER2> Is there a translation to plain English? I'm not trying to be snarky here, I genuinely don't understand what is meant by "administrations", "markdown", "versatile applications", or "abandoning trucks".</comment>


Zuckerberg won't give a straight answer on data downloads - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/11/zuckerberg-wont-give-a-straight-answer-on-data-downloads/ <comment><AUTHOR> Has anyone been able to figure out where the ad interests from web traffic are?

</comment><comment><USER2> That headline is 3 words too long.</comment>


Grubwithus (YC W11) is coming to Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.geekwire.com/2011/dine-grubwithus-brings-people-good-meal

<comment><USER2> I was just talking to [redacted] about this last night. He said that they've had plenty of requests and that this has been a long time coming. In fact, he mentioned when he interviewed with GWU, they honestly wondered why people had been requesting Seattle, as they felt there was nothing going on there.

</comment><comment><USER3> Love how Grubwithus is slowly launching into cities. I think it's a great marketing strategy -- even though it leaves some space for competitors...

I can't wait 'till Grubwithus comes to Austin.</comment>


Ask HN: Good computer architecture books? - <AUTHOR> This question has been asked 9 years ago and couldn't find anything else.
I've read Structured Computer Organization by Andrew Tanenbaum and Todd Austin. While it was a good book I wonder what do you guys think are good books?
I've noticed I need to look for a good book because my knowledge on caching is just a bit too low (e.g. thinking that the tag, index and offset were stored in the 64 bytes in Intel caches -- this is false). <comment><USER2> Not a single book. But Onur Mutlu's CMU course is a great start

[https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ece740/f15/doku.php](https://www.archive.ece.cmu.edu/~ece740/f15/doku.php)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hennessy & Patterson is the standard text:

[https://www.elsevier.com/books/computer- architecture/henness...](https://www.elsevier.com/books/computer- architecture/hennessy/978-0-12-383872-8)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks nonEUCitizen and ArtWomb. I will check it out.</comment>


Science confirms it: People are not pets - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/sunday/science-rewards-behavior.html <comment><USER2> This is one of those findings in psychology that's always seemed suspect to me.

What is salary if not a reward for work done on an ongoing basis? The vast majority of people would not do their jobs for free; they need that reward for them to keep doing it.

Similarly, I've tried harder at my current job than at previous jobs because the performance review, promotion process, and merit bonus/raise programs are much more rigorous. My employer hasn't gotten more and better work out of me as a result, and I've gotten better promotions and raises as a result too. Is this not a "reward"? I've seen, with my own eyes, coworkers putting in long hours at crunch time for a shot at a better annual bonus or higher chances of promotion (at companies where effort is fairly evaluated and rewarded).

What possible levers does a business have to pull to entice performance from its employees if not monetary compensation? Every other reward in lieu of money is (correctly) perceived to deeply cynical. Businesses exists to make money, and if you make them more money but instead of sharing that with you they just give you something intangible like praise, then they're ripping you off.

If effort can't be rewarded with money, then shouldn't the entire economy collapse? That is the basis of capitalism after all. Something seems to be deeply off with these studies.

<comment><USER2> > My employer hasn't gotten more and better work out of me as a result

s/hasn't/has/

I can't edit this post anymore, but I need to correct this huge typo as it greatly affects the meaning of the post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, well thanks for stating the obvious...

When you have kids you come very quickly to the realization that rewards aren't a mean to efficiently motivate. However intrisic motivation is exaclty this: intrinsic.

So what? Unless you can do Inception in your kids dreams to push them to realise that what you ask them is not what you want but what's actually good for them, you're bond to use rewards because that's the only thing that actually works.

Intrinsic motivation comes from the realization that you must do something for good (your own or others, but in the end it's only for you... but that's another ethical topic).

</comment><comment><USER4> So If I didn't misread, as long as you continously give the incentive, everythings fine and still works as intended? For teaching this is ofc dumb and explicitly not the outcome you want, but for eg sales incentives, it works as expected (and probably much easier to do than convince your marketers that they really do want to sell that product at the highest price for the benefit of everyone and everything)

<comment><USER5> As long as you don't remove it, you haven't made performance worse, but you may not have made it better either, and you have probably done damage to intrinsic motivation.

For sales, this may be fine, to the extent that no one has intrinsic motivation for sales, and the countervailing forces of how sales folks are usually compensated, but fixed salaries are probably better for motivation, but maybe not for your hiring/cash flow.</comment></comment>


Qualcomm to power high school robotics with Snapdragon - <AUTHOR> http://robohub.org/qualcomm-to-power-high-school-robotics-with-snapdragon/

<comment><USER2> It's a lot of fun at robot comp with amazing teen teams!</comment>


I'm An iOS Engineer. I Want To Leave My Failing Startup. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/p/78f585103130

<comment><USER2> If it's a startup, doesn't that give you a good deal of leverage to sway the direction of the product? Why not communicate with them about the issues you see?</comment>


Uber to Offer Helicopter Rides in New York City Starting in July - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-05/uber-to-offer-helicopter-rides-in-new-york-city-starting-in-july <comment><USER2> Interesting. Might need to ride lyft to go to helipad place :).</comment>


How airplanes counteract St. Elmo's Fire during thunderstorms - <AUTHOR> https://phys.org/news/2020-08-airplanes-counteract-st-elmo-thunderstorms.html <comment><USER2> I was on a plane that was struck by lightning once. It sounded like a bomb had just gone off. For about 10 seconds nobody on the plane made a sound as we all tried to figure out if we were screwed or not. After a couple minutes the captain came on doing his best Chuck Yeager impression, as is tradition, and explained to us what had happened and that there was really no reason to worry because it happens all the time and the planes are designed for it.

<comment><USER3> It's actually getting more and more of a problem with the amount of composites going into modern airliners. They have to build in elaborate foils and meshes to conduct any discharge around the airframe.

<comment> _-___________-_ "more and more of a problem" is maybe a bit dramatic. It's a design constraint of composite structures exposed to lightning that you need to provide electrical pathways, which is what the designers do, and composite aircraft regularly get struck by lightning with no damage caused.

<comment><USER3> I don't think it's particularly dramatic. The Boeing 787 is the first airliner to really use composites to a high degree in its structure. There was and is plenty of controversy around it's lightening protection design. For example [https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/faa-e...](https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing- aerospace/faa-engineers-objected-to-boeings-removal-of-some-787-lightning- protection-measures/)

It's also been controversial in small aircraft like the Cirrus SR22, for example complete failure of the radios and / or electric systems due to static buildup on the airframe.

I'd say it's far from a solved problem.

<comment> _-___________-_ It is literally a solved problem at this point. You solve it by providing electrical pathways within the structure, which is what is done in the 787 and other composite-hulled aircraft, and these aircraft regularly get struck by lightning with no issues.

I am not deeply familiar with the SR22, but if they are having those issues I guess they didn't implement the well-known solutions, or didn't implement them properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great article. It's funny to me that, after decades of presumably a decently well-read academic life, I'm finally able to put into context the actual meaning of "St. Elmo's Fire."

I had only been tangentially aware of the pop culture references in music (e.g. Brian Eno [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKch8dZ61w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZKch8dZ61w)) and film (I have not seen the film with Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, and Demi Moore, although it looks interesting, e.g. [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090060/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090060/))

Here's more reading on the actual Erasmus of Formia, or St. Elmo: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_of_Formia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erasmus_of_Formia)

<comment><USER5> The film is the origin of the "brat pack" and the John Parr/David Foster song that the lite FM stations play every other day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is a little thin on the finding being useful to _do something_ with it. Because if what they describe is the case, then planes flying around have been self-protecting against coronal discharge already.

</comment><comment><USER7> Isn't it strange. I was just reading about St Elmo's Fire last night after watching a documentary about Air France Flight 447, and now today this.

<comment><USER8> Absolutely. When I was doing Hydroponics/Aeroponics, I keep seeing all of those pretty much everywhere. That didn't work out so I'm now on to Satellite Imagery for Agriculture and I see that everywhere. The world works its own stories but directed for you.

<comment><USER9> It's the so-called Baader–Meinhof phenomenon, or frequency illusion more formally speaking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The answer is: By going fast.

<comment><USER11> And not touching the ground! :)</comment></comment>