Web MIDI API - <AUTHOR> http://webaudio.github.io/web-midi-api/

<comment><USER2> Super excited about this! I've been getting into synthesis lately and have been writing a sequencer in Ruby. It's just been tough getting a GUI going on top of it...Shoes is great, but I'd have a much easier/better time building it as a web app. Granted, I suppose I could just build the web UI and send data via websockets.

Anyways, awesome stuff! MIDI is fun to work with; it's dead simple and with the right synths you can get some crazy things going working with it programmatically!

<comment><USER3> I suggest you build the sequencer in Max[1] or Pure Data[2]. Their advantages are:

1\. You don't need to write any codes for UI objects

2\. Simple things are faster to accomplish in these software.

3\. For common complex tasks (fft etc.), Max or pd have built-in solutions that are likely better than the ones you build on your own.

4\. You can script Max using js/lua/java. Hence if you want to build something complex and unusual, you can still fall back to programming.

5\. You don't need to worry about timing in general. For example you can generate complex rhythm patterns in advance using lua/js/java and trigger them using Max/pd in real time. It will definitely perform better than some random web technology.

[1]: [https://cycling74.com/](https://cycling74.com/) [2]: [http://puredata.info/](http://puredata.info/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Latency would worry me with this. The browser VMs aren't real time systems.

</comment><comment><USER5> I guess my biggest question is why? There are better protocols out there, like RTP-MIDI, that exist to send MIDI events over networks, and aren't dependent on a single language's rather extensive baggage. Web MIDI just seems like it'll end up being a latency-ridden glitchfest as people try to debug webservers and web software for solutions that are better created elsewhere.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you find yourself with the need for arbitrarily timed events with arbitrary payload and arbitrary behavior in just JavaScript, I have a library called Barrel that might be of help: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/barrel](https://www.npmjs.com/package/barrel)

</comment><comment><USER7> I wonder why they didn't build on OSC.

<comment><USER8> The vast majority of controllers use MIDI. OSC is a neat idea and useful for networking actual computers together when MIDI is not enough, but the truth is that MIDI _is_ the industry standard, so if you want to build an API that can take advantage of all the MIDI control surfaces out there, you can't build it upon OSC.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Reminds me of an interesting project my friends worked on in 2003 that did something similar: [http://web.archive.org/web/20031203135012/http://www.midiweb...](http://web.archive.org/web/20031203135012/http://www.midiweb.org/)

Nice to see a spec for this!

</comment><comment><USER10> I can't seem to find a list of browsers that have implemented the API and to what extent. Anyone?

<comment><USER11> Just Chrome at the moment behind a flag. Currently being implemented in Firefox.

\- chrome://flags/#enable-web-midi

\- [https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=836897)

<comment><USER12> Hi. Person assigned WebMIDI for Firefox here. Hoping to get it happening in the next couple of months. We really need this is more browsers to push the spec to standard, it's been in Chrome Canary/flagged forever just waiting for more support.

<comment><USER13> Greetings! Is there anything a member of the public like me can do to help WebMIDI for Firefox along? e.g. testing or whatever? Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> did anyone ever found any realistic use of vanilla midi in the wild?

always had to deal with proprietary nonsense and bad drivers for most input devices.

<comment><USER5> My experience has been the opposite. Everything from the obvious keyboards and drum pads to controller boxes with LEDs, faders, dials, etc, tend to use usb midi, with drivers that Just Work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> are there ready-to-use soft synthesizers for specific instruments, e.g. piano?

<comment><USER16> On many OSes, yes.</comment></comment>


Online Labs Designed Its Own ARM Servers To Take On AWS, DigitalOcean - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/13/online-labs-designed-its-own-arm-servers-to-take-on-aws-digitalocean/ <comment><USER2> I'd like to see them create some zones outside of Europe. For me its a deal killer to have US-based traffic leave the continent.

<comment><USER3> there are plans for this ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I was confused for a long time trying to reconcile the claim of "912 computers per rack" with what I observed in the video: 18 servers per cartridge, 16 cartridges per case, so 288 servers per case. I finally realized they must have meant cores: so 4 cores x 18 servers x 16 cartridges = 912 cores per case is probably how I would have put it.

Ballparking the size of the case based on the comparison of a single server to a business card, it looks like they're using roughly a 7U case. Anybody know more about the specs of a case-load of servers? I'd love to know what the power consumption is. If you could put 6 of those cases in a cabinet, that would be some pretty incredible compute density.

I hope they consider selling the system externally. At first blush at least it seems like it would be an ideal setup for hosting colocated trading applications.

<comment><USER5> Each server has 4 cores. So a rack contains actually 3648 cores, not 912!

<comment><USER4> You're assuming that when they say "912 computers per rack" they mean 912 4-core servers per rack. It's a reasonable assumption, that's how I interpreted that statement when I read it the first time. Nonetheless, I'm quite sure that that interpretation is incorrect.

If you watch the video carefully, you'll notice that their rack/case contains 16 cartridges, and each cartridge has 18 servers on it. That indicates they have 288 servers per rack. 288x4=912, so I believe that when they said 912 computers per rack, they actually meant 912 cores per rack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I predict failure.

The first and main reason is, that when you have multiple containers/VMs on a single server, what really happens is that "peak" or "burst" CPU matters more, in terms of what the user (whether developer doing testing, or users of a website that are browsing it) sees as performance.

Only in very memory-intensive tasks would these servers outperform (because the memory bandwidth is dedicated to just your server and is not shared). Then again, being able to bump from 2GB to 4GB (provided the application can take advantage of it) of RAM might well minimize the issue due to caching or other optimizations.

Second, 2GB RAM is (sadly) just not enough. As an example, the Zimbra mail server barely runs in 2GB; and many other Java based programs are only fast once they have chewed up a couple hundred MBs of RAM.

<comment><USER7> I have a VM running my webserver, mumble VOIP, IRC server (inspircd), two IRC bouncers, OpenVPN, Xymon monitoring, bitlbee, and a few other things and it only has 768MB RAM.

last pid: 91361; load averages: 0.28, 0.28, 0.25 up 9+19:03:28 14:37:36 74 processes: 1 running, 73 sleeping CPU: 0.0% user, 0.0% nice, 0.0% system, 1.2% interrupt, 98.8% idle Mem: 38M Active, 512M Inact, 133M Wired, 8404K Cache, 87M Buf, 32M Free Swap: 2000M Total, 71M Used, 1929M Free, 3% Inuse

2GB is enough to run a LOT of things.

<comment><USER8> Definitely. I've got a centos 6.5 VM that is a master svn server for a multinational with a 22Gb repo and 190 users and does front end http and ssl for 45 requests/second (average with peaks of 200/sec) and it barely touches the CPU (single 3.2 GHz xeon e5 core) and has only 1Gb of RAM.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This looks lovely. Requested an invite. All signs are green for the race to the 1€/month server.

<comment><USER10> [https://www.atlantic.net/cloud-hosting/](https://www.atlantic.net/cloud- hosting/)

$0.99/month VPSs now. Not a dedi though of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, this is fantastic. I signed up for a trial and spun up a server. docker works well. A quick review: 1) they have the equivalent of ec2/digital ocean 2) can create volumes that can be attached to instances. 3) can create images and snapshots 4) s3 like storage. not sure about AZs and such. 5) I tried reserving an IP but they seem to be out of it.

Only downside - I would like to know the pricing before I start using this.

If anyone from Online Labs is reading this, please let us know about the pricing!

I will give the API a try tonight.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately I can't tell you about the pricing now. We'll tell you more very soon!

About the API, you can give a look to your Python SDK ([https://github.com/online-labs/ocs-sdk](https://github.com/online-labs/ocs- sdk)) or to the CLI one of our users developed ([https://community.cloud.online.net/t/getting-started- manage-...](https://community.cloud.online.net/t/getting-started-manage- online-labs-from-command-line/412))

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder how similar this is to their existing dediboxes; I have an €5.99/mo box with them which is some kind of VIA Nano-based Dell that is only sold in Europe:

[http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox- scg2](http://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/dedibox-scg2)

Nice little setup. It's slow, of course (certainly not fast enough to encode 720p H.264 in real time, for example), and the ARM architecture is bound to be faster.

</comment><comment><USER13> I wonder if this isn't a little late to market. At this point, the major cloud providers offer such a large array of products and services that add value to their VM capabilities that I find it hard to imagine someone architecting a substantial system on this platform anytime soon.

That said, they will make a juicy acquisition target for someone who wants their tech. So I am not saying they wasted their time either.

<comment><AUTHOR> We see disruption everyday in the tech community. I do not think that will change anytime soon. They have a compelling product that I personally would like to try.

<comment><USER3> you can ask @online_en to get an invite on twitter, it's free during beta

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Well, They are still going to have to figure out how to "Seamlessly" mirror nodes because it's going to suck when half of one of those boards dies. I do wish them the best as my inner nerd loves the idea.

</comment><comment><USER15> Very pretty. What is the power density of these? 288 nodes/enclosure is pretty dense. Did you design your own enclosure/backplane as well? What are the interconnects?

</comment><comment><USER16> _How much does it cost?

The preview is free! You should expect good prices as we designed our own hardware for the cloud._

Yes, but how much does it cost?

<comment><USER17> Yeah I am wondering. You can only run 2 machines on the preview as well.

<comment><USER3> if you have a valid test case, feel free to ask the support team for more, they can give you more easily

<comment><USER17> Thanks! Its ok for now...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The cards look really nice. Too bad they're not selling those and their shelf.

</comment><comment><USER19> What processor did they use in order to put ECC on an ARM board?

<comment><USER20> [http://i.imgur.com/oDMLLtM.png](http://i.imgur.com/oDMLLtM.png)

>The C1 server is a 4-cores ARMv7 CPU with 2GB of RAM and a 1 Gbit/s network card. It is designed for the cloud and horizontal scaling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Do they provide Load Balancers akin to what AWS does?

<comment><USER22> It is in the roadmap.

<comment><USER21> Front of the queue I hope :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Some immediate thoughts:

These would be very interesting for low-latency network-heavy applications if each machine had a 1gbps latency-optimized network connection to the core switch wherever they're hosted. Virtualization might be fine from a throughput POV but I've seen hypervisors impose a fair amount of latency "jitter" on heavily loaded hosts. It's one of the reasons why bare metal servers can be better. I'm thinking core network router functions, certain kinds of games, etc.

Another area where I can see this excelling is high security applications, like having a cloud node that is in charge of signing things with very protected secret keys like some kind of certificate authority. Virtualization has a pretty good security record, but for high-paranoia applications bare metal is better. If you offered the ability to upload your own pre-encrypted image this would be very interesting. Not quite as good as homomorphic encryption, but that's not quite "there" yet -- still too slow to be usable. At the very least you'd have to crack into the hardware and dump the RAM to break into a system and steal a key.

Finally, make stability a high priority. With low power, low heat dissipation, dedicated hardware, and solid state everything you should have an easier path to cheaper "many nines" high-reliability service. That kind of thing is kind of expensive right now in the hosting world so you'd have some pricing power there.

/shameless plug:

ZeroTier One, a network virtualization engine for inter-container and inter-VM networking as well as VPN access, supports 32-bit ARM/Linux as an officially supported platform:

[https://www.zerotier.com/download.html](https://www.zerotier.com/download.html)

It's also possible to use it with Docker very easily:

[https://github.com/davide/docker-zerotier](https://github.com/davide/docker- zerotier)

I decided to create an official ARM build and support that platform since there were so many users on Raspberry Pi and similar, but as far as I know these binaries will run on this architecture. I signed up for a preview of Online.Net so I will test once I have a "box." :)

EDIT:

Tested with your free trial via the web terminal, and the ARM build from the above download link works flawlessly as long as you "modprobe tun" first:

[http://i.imgur.com/FmB9ndK.png](http://i.imgur.com/FmB9ndK.png)

Then I pinged my laptop on the desk next to me, which also happens to be on the "Earth" virtual LAN. Fun stuff. :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Can this match Digital Ocean's pricing? At $5/month it's hard to beat.

<comment><USER25> This is the company that sold full dedicated servers for $1.99/month ex vat

<comment><USER24> I cannot find that price anywhere on their site. Where did you get that from?

<comment><USER3> the $1.99/month offer was just on the website for a few days ;) (it was a special/crazy offer with a limited stock of servers, something like ~2k servers iirc so it's no longer available, google for "dedibox kidechire")

<comment><USER24> rats...missed out on it

even the 5.99 euro /month offer seems much more generous than digitalocean.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Can Silicon Valley become a world leader in cheap and ubiquitous solar panels for the masses? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/business/17ping.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=slogin

<comment><USER2> Gated. Maybe the article covered this, but I suspect not.

The chemicals you use to make solar cells are _nasty_. Unless Californians change their labor and environmental laws, costs will probably stay prohibitive.

But hell, costs are prohibitive everywhere else, and likely to stay that way. There's only so much return from scale out there to collect.</comment>


'Give Away Your Legos' and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/review/give-away-your-legos-and-other-commandments-for-scaling-startups/ <comment><USER2> That is a great way to look at scaling. One of the most frustrating things can be people who can't see their role on the other side of scaling, so they subconsciously (or consciously) work against scaling the company. If you are one of the leaders in such a company you have to spend time helping people see that there is still a place for them in the larger company. That can be hard because as one of the leaders it seems "obvious" to you that they are a valued part of the team, but take a moment and help them see that too.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I've been on the side of coming into roles where people were reluctant to let go at first and feeling reluctant to let go of responsibilities. It feels weird. The lego analogy seems to fit really well from my experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > _If you've ever watched an extremely high performer go from killing it one > year to struggling the next, you know what I'm talking about_

That was me. I was killing it at my company when it was 700 people, but two and a half years later it was over 1600 people and the pace slowed way down. Long story short, yesterday was my last day and I'm moving to a 150-200 person company where I'll have more influence/impact.

</comment><comment><USER5> Money shot:

> That's one of the other counterintuitive things: Adding people doesn't mean > there's less work for the people that are already there. It means that the > entire company can do more. If one person was managing all of marketing > before and then you hire someone to manage your content channels — the > person who was doing marketing before is not going to have less to do. It > either means that she'll be able to do the rest of her job better, or that > she'll be able to take on new things.

You might say that people are thinking in terms of Amdahl's Law, while what happens in reality is Gustafson's Law. The task increases to fit the available processing power.

</comment><comment><USER6> Worth noting: Quip's story and practices are definitely a bit different from your typical new startup, given that they are owned by (and provided the resources of) Salesforce. I work at a different company that Salesforce acquired, and internally, it seems like Quip is almost mandated as the standard way of writing/sharing docs.

</comment><comment><USER3> LPT: You can still read the content without submitting your email by using your browser's "reader mode".

</comment><comment><USER7> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10200754)

Maybe it should have (2015) added to title.

</comment><comment><USER8> Can we not reward people who inject shit like "text-shadow: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.5) 0px 0px 6px; color: transparent; user-select: none;" into their content?

</comment><comment><USER9> I think this is a pretty good overview. In my last job I joined a team of 25 that grew to 250. In my current job I started on a team of 8, we just hit 35 and we're in that "30 to 50 employee" awkward zone. I'm much more comfortable with it now, having seen the same kind of chaos very recently, and I'm trying to help the younger employees understand that it's all normal!

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email.

It's probably so that they can spam you in the future with their newsletters that feature their portfolio companies and what not.

Not saying this is bad, but it shows how the priority has shifted. For the last couple of years it was trendy for VCs to blog. Basically VCs became marketers. They call it "inbound marketing". Basically they use content to gain mindshare so that founders will think of them when it's time for them to raise money.

But now that this channel has become commoditized--basically every VC firm has a blog and anyone can write analysis content on Medium--and people's average attention per publication has gone way down, they have shifted their focus from "inbound marketing" (basically a brand marketing) to "direct marketing" (A fancy term for spam email marketing).

What's interesting about this is that VCs are now more blatant about the fact that they're using content as marketing.

<comment><USER11> > I don't care so much about the content here, but it's interesting to note > that they've "paywalled" their content by making you submit your email.

The text link at the bottom "Continue without an email address" worked for me, as did Reader mode in Safari.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This site first nagged me to join their newsletter and then locked the second half of the article behind an email harvester.

This is toxic behavior from a content provider, please do not drive traffic to this site.

<comment><USER13> I don't understand this reasoning which I ultimately write off as entitlement.

They produced the content. They think it's valuable enough to put behind an (annoying) interaction that allows them to grow their newsletter. You don't think it's that valuable and you don't even want to find out if it is or not. That's 100% fine. Just don't read the article. It's not your content, and you're not entitled to an ad-free version of it just because you're on the internet.

 _It 's not your site_. _It 's not your content_.

But then you go and call the site "toxic" and call for a boycott? On what basis? If the content is actually good, then I personally would be inclined to support the site.

<comment><USER14> I'm not entitled to an ad-free version, but equally they're not entitled to my attention, or my email address. In an ideal world we give each other a bit of value and everyone comes out ahead, but if one side takes the piss it's entirely reasonable for the other side to call them out on it, refuse to participate, and highlight their behaviour for others.

<comment><USER15> Um, you give them your attention when you click their link. They aren't entitled, you gave it away.

<comment><USER16> The link did not say "we're going to waste a couple minutes of your time to trick you into becoming invested and not beable to finish the story unless you give us your email."

At least be honest about the situation up front. There was no hint that we would have some portion of the content locked without signing up until i got to the blurred out part. This is somewhat toxic.

At least it's not ad driven, too.

<comment><USER17> You don't have to give them your email. You can just click 'no', and read the rest. But I agree with your sentiment of not liking that style.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I agree djinnandtonic (dead comment). The site asked a question in a slightly insulting way, then went blurry for a reason I didn't feel inclined to scroll around to find.

<comment><USER19> Same. I find it so irritating to be bugged when halfway through reading an article, so I close the tab and never engage with their site again.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> pay-walled.

</comment><comment><USER21> I searched for a while to find what she was talking about with LEGOs and it turned out that it wasn't actual LEGOs she was talking about. I kind of lost interest at that point.

<comment><USER17> You get upset at the use of metaphors? I thought it was fairly apt:

> That's why her talk is about Legos. The emotions you feel when new people > are coming in and taking over pieces of your job — it's not that different > from how a kid feels when they have to share their Legos. There's a lot of > natural anxiety and insecurity that the new person won't build your Lego > tower in the right way, or that they'll get to take all the fun or important > Legos, or that if they take over the part of the Lego tower you were > building, then there won't be any Legos left for you.</comment></comment>


Fun on the Autobahn: Google Maps Navigation in 11 more Countries - <AUTHOR> http://googlemobile.blogspot.com/2010/06/fun-on-autobahn-google-maps-navigation.html

<comment><USER2> Will that forever be a Android exclusive thing?</comment>


Wanted urgently: People who know COBOL so states can process unemployment claims - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/08/business/coronavirus-cobol-programmers-new-jersey-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> I emailed them and they said that they were getting tons of offers for help and they gave me an interest form to give my details. The interest form even asked if you wanted to be compensated for your work, so it reads like they are not hurting for help all that much

</comment><comment><USER3> I wonder how many of these institutions will take modernization projects more seriously now that their leaders see the cost of immense technical debt starting in front of them.</comment>


Intel to invest $7B in factory in Arizona, employ 3,000 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/08/trump-meets-intel-ceo-brian-krzanich.html <comment><USER2> Just to clarify: This factory is about halfway complete. Intel halted completing the Fab around 2 years ago. I wonder if any deals were made w.r.t tax breaks to entice Intel to finish the project.

EDIT: Source: [http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088040/intel-puts-on-hold- fa...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088040/intel-puts-on-hold-fab-42-in- arizona-will-use-for-future-technology.html)

<comment><USER3> The threat of protectionism from the current administration has motivated a few companies in the auto sector already. Might be somewhat tied to that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Intel has always fabbed its high-IP parts in the USA or strongly allied countries (Israel, Ireland). They will never put a fab in China because the Chinese will rip off all their IP. The fact that Intel has resumed construction of a half-completed facility in the same town where they make almost everything else is not really news.

<comment><USER2> Intel opened a $ 2.5B fab in China in 2010. There's also an R/D office there.

<comment><USER4> Intel makes generic NAND memory on a 65nm process in that fab. That isn't the kind of IP anybody needs to steal.

<comment><USER2> Good point.

The organization that runs fabs (TMG) is also notoriously tight lipped in regards to corporate security, I would image they assessed leak risk before opening the fab.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't wait until every single company starts a PR campaign every single time they retool a factory or slightly expand production. "$1 billion investment, create or save 1,000 jobs!"

Whatever keeps you out of the Twitter crosshairs I guess.

<comment><USER6> Trump has already tweeted about it. It's like a new form of advertising. Trick the president into thinking he convinced you to re-invest, reap the benefits of his tweet.

<comment><USER7> But isn't that dangerous if he gets too much credit and gets reelected?

<comment><USER6> For sure, Intel and Ford (among others) shouldn't be pandering to him. However, I understand their position and reasoning, I'd likely do the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder if Intel considering it's third round of layouts in 18 months got as much coverage a couple months ago?

Probably indicative of how a lot of companies will operate. Lots of talk about new factories or what have you while really just continuing business as usual.

Gets me pretty worried about actually seeing wage growth during the Trump administration as a vague focus on building new factories and "keeping jobs here" won't drive wages up unless it's coupled with protections on labor groups and actual job creation leading to competition for labor...

[http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon- forest/index.ssf/2016/11/i...](http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon- forest/index.ssf/2016/11/intel_facing_more_layoffs_repo.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> I visited their fab in Israel. Amazing place and they are Israel's top high tech employee.

This is highly technical, high R&D stuff. Only their fabs in the US and a few other places (Israel, Ireland) can do that. But, in Israel they get preferential tax treatment (because otherwise they will leave and go to Ireland or the US).

So I wonder what would have happened had Trump not been president, or alternatively, what tax breaks he promised.

<comment><USER10> > So I wonder what would have happened had Trump not been president, or > alternatively, what tax breaks he promised.

Someone else in this thread noted the fab was announced in 2011 but Intel decided not to move forward with it's completion until a later date.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088040/intel-puts-on-hold- fa...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2088040/intel-puts-on-hold-fab-42-in- arizona-will-use-for-future-technology.html)

> It was announced by former Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini during a > visit by U.S. President Barack Obama to an Intel facility in Hillsboro, > Oregon, and was highlighted by Obama as an example of U.S. manufacturing > potential.

Intel doesn't seem to care who is President.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You don't have to like someone personally to appreciate the good they'll do for you and your family.

<comment><USER12> Don't these types of fabs lead to things like all the EPA superfund sites around Silicon Valley? I personally hope we don't do that anywhere in this country again. Visit Guangzhou sometime to see what a city / country looks like with lax environmental regulations and a bustling manufacturing industry. You can still see the skyline from most parts of the city most days when the "fog" isn't so bad. Sure you and everyone you care about will die of cancer, but at least it would be better than _damn socialism_ , right? And with all that money (just look at how rich they all are), surely everyone can afford hospital-grade whole-home air filtration systems like the rich there have.

Edit: s/fans/fabs

<comment><USER13> I don't know enough about the industry to know if superfund sites are a necessary thing for chip fabs.

That said, these chips have to be made somewhere. Is your solution to this to create superfund sites in other countries? To me, that isn't a solution. I would rather we make superfund sites here, so we have reasons to fix the problem, rather than create them elsewhere.

<comment><USER14> Are they still using TCE[1] to manufacture semiconductors? That stuff is the major pollutant in silicon valley left over from all the early semiconductor manufacturing. There are a lot of really expensive homes and offices in Palo Alto that are built over sites where this stuff has leaked.[2]

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

[2] [http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/05/palo-alto-stanford- can...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/07/05/palo-alto-stanford-can-move- homes-away-from-tce-contamination/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have been thinking that currently NAND fabs would be good, not to restore jobs but to restore the balance of trade. It is probably not a simple matter though.</comment>


Show HN: Teamarooo – Employee off-boarding made easy - <AUTHOR> https://teamarooo.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone, I am the creator of Teamarooo which allows you to easily revoke an employee's access to all your services within a single platform. The idea came to me from my personal experience in my own startup (see my Reddit post - [https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/7szms5/how_do_you...](https://www.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/7szms5/how_do_you_usually_deal_with_employees_offboarding/)). Long story short, I forgot to remove an ex-employee from our AWS account and for one whole year, he still had access to all our servers and that scared me as hell.

The idea of Teamarooo is giving you, as an Admin, a list of all your employees using all your services. You just need to connect your services to Teamarooo and we automatically give you the list of all your employees with the option to revoke their access to one/all your services. You can either search by employee or service. That simple. No need for "Single Sign On", 1Password or an Excel sheet to track your employees and services. You can start using Teamarooo without any change of your services, it is almost "plug-and-play" ;)

We are preparing to launch our Beta version and you can Sign Up now to be among the first to use Teamarooo. We will support many services such as Bitbucket, Github, AWS, Google Analytics, Microsoft Azure among many others. You can also propose other services you use so we can integrate them, the idea is to support as many services as possible.

I want to know your opinion in such a service, all feedback is welcome ;)

Thanks!</comment>


Rithmomachy - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rithmomachy <comment><USER2> Holy cow. Seeing this here brings back a lot of memories.

The first serious coding I ever did was back in 1999 on a team that implemented parallelized, adaptive game-playing algorithms for this game on the Cray T3E.

[http://www-pgss.mcs.cmu.edu/Publications/Volume18/Rhythmomac...](http://www- pgss.mcs.cmu.edu/Publications/Volume18/Rhythmomachy.pdf)

Funny reading back through the paper:

 _The Cray T3E supercomputer is currently ranked the twenty-third fastest computer in the world. The Cray's speed does not come from just one processor, however. The T3E gains its speed from 512 450-megahertz networked processors._

</comment><comment><USER3> Wikipedia tends to be pretty poor on historical board games, as a lot of populist books have been written on the topic which focus more on entertainment rather than accuracy.

Here's an original source Fulke's period work on the topic: <http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/fulke.html>

And here's a reconstruction filling in gaps in Fulke using other primary sources: <http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/game-recon-rhythbasics.html>

<comment><USER4> thanks. if that's your page you may want to fix a small error - a "3" in the example on geomteric proportions should be "2".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Play it now. Here's a Java Web Applet (downloadable too): <http://symbolaris.com/applet/Rhythmomachia.html>

</comment><comment><USER6> The first thought I had on seeing the rectangular board is that this would make a fine iPhone application. Thanks for the interesting find.

<comment><USER7> If you like this kind of game..

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why did people stop playing it?

<comment><USER9> Because it is boring to play. I once was on a study week on historical mathematical games with several historians of mathematics, and even we got bored of the game after an evening. It is designed to teach a certain medieval conception of composed numbers and not to be playable, so there are for example several pieces that are very hard to take by normal rules, because the opposite players has no pieces that combine to the required number for taking it.</comment></comment>


An Introduction to WebAssembly with C++  - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@cchaconsartori/introduction-to-webassembly-with-c-part-i-64bcfad7ecb4 <comment><USER2> It's a special talent to wrap a simple GCD function in that much unnecessary boilerplate.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did update the code. thank you</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Research papers sources - <AUTHOR> What are your favorite sources of research papers for your side projects?
Have you any specific e-library/website or just Google certain keywords/topic?
Do you use patent letters as source of information and inspiration? <comment><USER2> I use ArXiv and PubMed if I'm looking for interesting stuff. If I have a specific goal I just google(or google scholar) keywords and then gain access using Sci-Hub. I often end up using patent letters (and applications) as a source of information in fields where there's a lot of industrial knowledge.</comment>


What tech will allow IoT things to be self-organizing? - <AUTHOR>

What technologies will let things in the Internet of Things discover each other, form groups, and work together in a decentralized fashion?
Our social media grew to enable these functions among people, still an imperfect and evolving process. It's only natural for things to do the same.
What will it take for self-organization sufficient for emergent properties? <comment><USER2> Viruses?</comment>


Finland is winning the war on fake news - <AUTHOR> https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2019/05/europe/finland-fake-news-intl/ <comment><USER2> Teaching critical thinking skills is the only way to combat fake news we don't want to do this in the US because the powers that be get their power from dumbing people down so they can use their own fake news tools to control them these tools go back to analog eras like TV and radio.</comment>


Apple Pursues New Search Features for a Crowded App Store - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-14/apple-said-to-pursue-new-search-features-for-crowded-app-store <comment><USER2> I suppose at this point any change is welcome, but after 8 years of the store and 7 years of "how Apple could/should fix the store" posts, I'm struggling to remember a single time I've heard anyone suggest that paid search would be a good thing.

While 'better discovery' has definitely been on most lists, trials and paid upgrades generally come higher up. Interesting that the one thing Apple trails to the press is something basically no one asked for.

</comment><comment><USER3> "App developers have for years urged the iPhone maker to add fresh discovery tools for users, arguing the crowded market makes it increasingly hard for people to discover new apps or build sustainable businesses."

I think what makes this newsworthy is mostly how long it took Apple to seriously work at implementing this feature.

<comment><USER4> I wouldn't confuse work being done with publicly talking about work being done.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Papers you read in 2016 - <AUTHOR> As the year comes to an end, would be interested to hear about any publications from hot field this year that are worth sharing.<p>Inspired by the similar thread from 2015 <comment><USER2> (Anti)Fragility and Convex Responses in Medicine by Taleb

[http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/medicine.pdf](http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/medicine.pdf)</comment>


Ask HN: Which cheap computing device would you get your 5 year old daughter? - <AUTHOR>

I have a 5 year old and she's been playing around with a Raspberry Pi. Writing in leaf pad. Done a few Scratches. I connected it online and doesn't give the best browsing experience, basically unusable.<p>She's been playing around with iDevices since year dot, but I think she likes the keyboard. Been toying around buying a cheap Windows Laptop but Windows 8 is a little confusing and such and am thinking about a Chrome Book. Has anyone else had any experience? <comment><USER2> I'd definitely not recommend getting her a non-laptop (eg. ipod touch, ipad, nexus 7, nexus 10, etc.).

Get her a cheap (<$300) netbook (acer still makes great ones), plop Linux on it, and here we go!

She'll have an environment she's familiar with, with a real keyboard, and plenty of room to grow.

In the meantime, have you tried overclocking the Pi? It may make browsing better.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've tried over-clocking but the SD card becomes corrupted after a while.

She's done iDevices but when she's typing on her Pi scrolling is totally new and alien to her and so are the menus. Like what's this "File" "Save" business all about.

<comment><USER2> Have you tried exposing her to something like etoys?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etoys_(programming_language)>

<comment><AUTHOR> Never seen this before. Will check it out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Maybe an OLPC XO - seem to be available on ebay.

<comment><AUTHOR> What would you see as an advantage going with a OLPC XO vs a Laptop with Ubuntu or a ChromeBook?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nexus 7?

<comment><USER5> yeah the nexus 7 is an awesome device for kids too.

<comment><AUTHOR> What do your kids do on it?</comment></comment></comment>


99Dresses (YC W12) wants to give women an infinite closet - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/26/99dresses-wants-to-give-women-an-infinite-closet/ <comment><USER3> For those of you who are confused about the 'button system' (virtual currency), here's what I think they're going for:

By introducing virtual currency, the money put into the 99dresses _stays_ in the 99dresses system. If real money were traded, a person could easily dump all of their unwanted clothes and be done with it. This isn't what 99dresses want. They want to build a community. They don't want to lose you after dumping your clothes - they want you to engage and interact by picking up secondhand clothes from other members of the community. They want to be your primary clothing provider - or close to it.

It's also worth noting that spending 'buttons' doesn't _feel_ like spending money (even though they are equivalent to real money), which leads to impulse decisions and less friction. For the users, it feels more like an exchange than pouring in your hard earned money. The obstacle, of course, is drawing in new users, but once they're in, they're in.

<comment><USER4> By using the buttons, 99dresses makes their system more fragile than necessary, and excludes people who could help build the community. Consider that most people won't need more than a few dresses worth of buttons. So someone who has 300 dresses has no incentive to upload them all to the site. Someone else has already pointed out that dresses need to be able to come _out_ of the pool. Again that doesn't happen if money can't come back out. I might not even get to choose a dress I want if I'm worried that I won't be able to trade it again. The flow of dresses in and out is restricted, and that's not a good thing for the company.

Why not allow people to exchange buttons back for money, just at a lower rate?

<comment><USER3> > _dresses need to be able to come out of the pool_

Why? When you receive a dress, it is set to a disabled state on the site (rendering it unavailable for others). I'm guessing a dress can be in this state indefinitely, if one desires to keep a dress forever.

> _I might not even get to choose a dress I want if I'm worried that I won't > be able to trade it again_

When would this happen? Why would you not be able to trade it again?

It sounds like you're confused about the logistics in play. The system is effectively the same as any other buying and selling marketplace, but virtual currency is used in place of dollars.

<comment><USER4> You're assuming that the supply and demand of dresses is balanced, and in particular that any particular dress will always be in demand.

You're right - you can keep a dress forever and it's not on the website. That's not really what I mean by "out of the system". Dresses need to be able to come out of the system because they go out of style, or get too used, and nobody wants them again. If I'm trading dresses and then get stuck with one, in a way it's still "in the system" and clogging it up. I can't participate until I buy back in again.

On the other hand, I already can't really remember why I blamed the virtual currency for this particular problem, so you're right about that, too. This problem exists when you use dollars, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is interesting. My wife has a closet full of literally ~300 dresses. Many she has worn only once. They range from forever 21 to Bebe, BCBG, Dolce and Gabana and the like.

This would be ideal for her - however I think the button thing where you get button credits, but when it says "the seller pays for shipping and handling" this seems a little like a disincentive.

Do you get button credits for the shipping costs?

Who determines the button value of a given dress? The site or the seller?

Whats the typical shipping cost - and are savvy selleres accounting for this in their set button price?

It would be a hell of a lot smoother if you would print out a shipping label from 99dresses which has the buyers address etc on it. The cost comes out of the buyers button credits etc..

When I buy something from Amazon, I pay the shipping cost as the buyer - <USER2> the heck is it good to make the seller pay this, get a box fill out the label etc...

This alone will prevent my wife from using this service. Even though she is an ideal candidate.

<comment><USER6> Shipping labels is something I would pay a subscription for, as well as early access to newly received clothes. Try as hard as I might to buy beautiful things that should last me a lifetime, I am excited to try this service out. What will be the killer for me is the fit of the clothes. The _real_ killer app that many are waiting for, is the ability to match an item to our figure and a get a real-time preview. I've seen suggestions of this at Siggraph but nothing consumer-ready.

<comment><USER7> _The real killer app that many are waiting for, is the ability to match an item to our figure and a get a real-time preview. I've seen suggestions of this at Siggraph but nothing consumer-ready._

I agree 100%, this is the killer app. My wife independently suggested this idea after buying some clothes online that technically were the right size but didnt provide a good fit for her body. I told her that it was a _very_ difficult problem from a computer science perspective. Have you got any links (to Siggraph or others) which have taken a look at this problem in detail?

Aside from the obvious technical challenges, I did wonder how a site like this would handle some of the delicate issues around uploading pictures and/or 3D models of a woman's figure. How would this work? Would women be standing in their underwear in front of a webcam and rotating the body as prompted? Even if the collected data is a single texture or point cloud, it still could be considered a little...invasive? Not to mention the privacy issues.

<comment><USER5> You'd need to be able to upload pics, convert to a 3d point cloud based on height and weight entries and not store the original pics.

Then use that information to construct a 3d model and apply clothing textures accurately to them

What would be really cool though, is an inflatable mannequin which could be inflated to near perfectly match that point cloud, which would then be clothed in the garment you want and you would receive a pic of your figure in that actual garment.

<comment><USER8> <http://fits.me/> does exactly hat. Not sure why it hasn't picked up yet, though...

<comment><USER5> HOLY SHIT

That is awesome!!!

<http://i.imgur.com/s47Z8.png>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love these business models that find ways to put unused inventory / capacity to good use and reduce overall consumption in the process. My most recent favorite is a "tools as a service" co-op in Seattle: <http://wstoollibrary.org/>

Cheers to fewer underutilized dresses and belt sanders ending up in landfills.

<comment><USER10> Well that link just got mailed to everyone I know in West Seattle. Definitely more useful to my demographic than the product being discussed. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "... Durkin decided to shut down the Australian site and give the US market a go — So she applied to Y Combinator, and got accepted. ..."

Doesn't it bother any of you that she abandoned her entire Australian userbase?

<comment><USER12> exactly what I came here to say.. What happened to all the virtual buttons? Whoever currently had a dress keeps it and those who didn't ended up with nothing? Or did she pay them out for their buttons?

'She says the site was so beloved in Australia that women still email her asking when it will be back up, "I've proven the model in Oz."' If it was proven in Australia, why shut it down? Did she need to shut it down for investors to take a look? Is there some YC criteria that wont let you have a successful product already?

<comment><USER6> She may not have been making a lot of money, and I'm sure she did the best she could for her customers (returned dresses or money). If it was her full-time job, Y-Combinator isn't going to work well for her if she has to also manage a company in Australia. I'm all for her giving it a good go in a bigger market and either a competitor will spring up in her place in Australia or she'll come back with better tools and support to her home country.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ok, so I went to the site expecting to get some "buttons" as part of onboarding new users, but instead I started out with 0 buttons and no idea how to get these buttons to actually get a dress. After digging around the FAQ section, it says that I can purchase the buttons for $1 or upload my own dress. I don't have a dress to upload, and buying a used dress for $40 - $110 just doesn't make sense - I can buy a brand new dress for that much. Also, even if I were to upload a dress, I wouldn't get any "buttons" until I actually sell the dress. Not coming back to this site again.

<comment><USER14> I agree! Those prices are nuts. The really weird thing about them is the range -- I see everything from 4 buttons to 160! That makes me really wonder how they're set.

Even with the variation, the bulk of them appear to be $40 or more, which seems like a lot to me. If one is shopping used, pretty dresses can be had for under $10 at a thrift store. It makes _no_ sense to pay so much for a dress I can't even try on first!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> _For example, with furniture you buy a new couch or a bed and then you have one, you don't need another one or a different one two weeks later. Not so with dresses or shoes._

'need' is an interesting word to use in this context.

<comment><USER16> No more weird than the use in your profile: "the moderation system on HN is in dire need of an overhaul". In reality, nothing globally catastrophic will happen if either does not come to pass. Both are really more like "strongly felt personal preferences". Hopefully the usage makes more sense now.

<comment><USER17> Only one of the two has a positional externality that cancels out all of the utility.

<comment><USER16> That depends entirely on what "utility" you're assigning to the things in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I didn't see anyone saying this yet, so I'll say it: this is an excellent idea. My wife literally (and I do mean literally) has a closet full (in fact, _stuffed_ ) with clothes and she constantly complains that she can't wear any of it, that they don't fit her any more, etc. And this is a walk-in closet.

I don't know if she would like this service or not (a lot of it would, like many web apps, come down to how easy it was for her to use) but if she did, man oh man, would you ever have a dedicated customer. And I bet that goes for thousands, if not millions, of other women. Great idea!!!

</comment><comment><USER19> Sizes are never standard--you really have to try something on to know if it fits. How have you solved this problem?

<comment><USER20> I don't know if it's something that needs to be addressed. People who are more lenient are the target demographic more than people who would otherwise not rely on an online service.

EDIT: On an unrealted note, the name "Forever 21" is incredibly sad.

<comment><USER21> I've always assumed that Forever 21 appealed most to the under-21 crowd.

<comment><USER22> Just as "Seventeen" magazine is typically read by girls under the age of seventeen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> _"... Durkin decided to shut down the Australian site and give the US market a go — So she applied to Y Combinator, and got accepted. ..."_

The idea that stands out most to me, is this is the sort of idea and company, few male hackers could make work.

</comment><comment><USER24> I started hacking on this idea a while ago but lost interest, and didn't really think I could execute being a male with no sense for what women want online or fashion. However, my idea was a bit different, and I hope 99dresses can read this and ponder it.

Basically, my killer feature was piggy backing on Facebook. Women love to upload photos, the photos are usually of them looking good in their dresses, the social network is already there to provide viral growth. So basically all a user would have to do is select from photos they've already uploaded, and describe the dress. Then their friends could see who has what dress available and see what it looked like actually being worn on a dress model they personally know.

My model really only worked with immediate friends, and was based on borrowing. Monetization I imagined would come from advertising shoes, accessories, and other dresses etc. But who knows, maybe women are willing to buy dresses from their friends?

<comment><USER25> I had the same exact idea as you but unfortunately could not find the right technical co-founder. As some of the comments mentioned, most technical males do not get very excited when it comes to fashion :)

I think it can still be done though, so the best of luck to Nikki and all the other sites that are trying to solve this problem. It is a big market and someone is bound to find the right solution that will work for the masses.

<comment><USER24> Who are the others? Got any links? Maybe we should talk.

<comment><USER25> Sure send me an email email@example.com. Got lots of links and info on this space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> But - if you create an infinitely large closet, it will collapse into a black hole of infinite mass and pull the rest of the universe in on itself! Not only that, if you start with a completely full closet with numbered hangers and reach in for a shirt, all of the shirts will move forward one place, creating a new empty hanger even though the closet contains the same number of shirts and hangers! Which violates Conservation of Energy! That's not just an arbitrary rule, it's implied by the form of the quantum Hamiltonian! Rejecting it destroys unitarity and then you get FTL signaling -

What? They're trying to create a large finite closet? The universe is in no danger? Curse you, TechCrunch! Fooled again!

</comment><comment><USER27> I am afraid of how this will actually turn out. I think the biggest problem is going to be sorting the signal to noise ratio: women's fashion is ephemeral as well as seasonal. Items people want will be in perennially short supply, and items that fall "out" are going to jam up search results. How do they plan on keeping the most relevant content in stock? If they know, tell them how to get F21/Zara/H&M to do it as well, because they sell out of a lot of things quickly.

The user experience for this could get bad fast when a new user signs on to trade their month-old H&M+<insert expensive designer> collaboration and finds nothing but a bunch last summer's Forever 21 shirts with cheeky slogans. That doesn't look so good. It's like going to the video rental store ten years ago and having them say "Whoops, we're all out of that new release, but we've got a few copies of Groundhog Day!"

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm sure there is a market for this, but that saddens the non-consumer in me (that someone would feel as though they can't wear the same piece of clothing more than once).

<comment><USER29> True, but this site will actually help on that front. The site is a used clothing store that's trying to bypass the stigma attached to used clothes. They're harnessing consumers into a recycling program.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Isn't half the thrill in "not wearing anything twice" that you're always wearing something _new_? It'd be a bit drab to wear something another person has maybe stained or worn in. A good part of the appeal is the "new clothes" feeling, right?

<comment><USER31> Some of it, but it's offset by the cost. Women will lend each other dresses quite often. My sisters-in-law are regularly around at our place borrowing clothes and bags from my wife.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> I saw something like this on r/malefashionadvice but they would mail you a box of stuff every month and you would just keep what you liked and mail back what didn't fit or you didn't want. looks like a few sites are doing it now

[http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/gyg6z/i_g...](http://www.reddit.com/r/malefashionadvice/comments/gyg6z/i_got_my_first_trunk_from_trunk_club_what_are/)

<https://www.trunkclub.com/>

<http://www.frankandoak.com/>

<http://www.manpacks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER33> I love this idea. I am a poor, but fashion-conscious man. Is there a similar service for men out there?

<comment><USER34> I agree that this is a problem for men. However, I don't think a clothing exchange/rental is the way to go.

If I find a pair of pants or a shirt that fits me well and I enjoy, I will _keep_ it and wear it repeatedly until it is too worn or stretched out.

In a lot of ways, that's the opposite problem form what this site is trying to solve.

<comment><USER33> I think some men consume clothing this way. I think there are some who use the model of wearing lots of different clothes as well. I would if I could, but for now I stick to a small number of comfortable pants and shirts.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't understand the need for creating their own currency (the "buttons" system). I hope it's something very smart, because these "exchange used goods" enterprises often fall prey to the venerable Gresham's law:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greshams_law#Application>

I.e. in this case the danger would be that users have an incentive to glut the system with low quality items (defects, uncomfortable etc.).

<comment><USER36> It seems like if women really do have closets full of perfectly good clothing they don't like, there is value to be captured.

There's always stuff you can do like implementing user reputation systems, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I was toying with a similar idea though it's more akin to the Netflix model for clothes.

You'd basically pay an up front cost, say $XXX and then you would be able to order a week's worth of clothes. Then you'd mail the clothes back for laundering before being sent out again.

It is really a half-baked idea and requires a sizable amount of logistics, etc. But it was an interesting concept to toss around.

<comment><USER29> I think that you're onto something there. I need to wear a suit three times a year. Most of my friends are the same way. We all have a suit in our respective closets, but it's just taking up space for most of the year. Now, we're different enough sizes that we couldn't all just share one suit, but, if you had a few thousand clients, you could certainly send a fitting suit to the fellow who needs it, when he needs it.

There's also a huge boon to be found in having branches in both hemispheres. Instead of spending December paying the land tax on a warehouse full of shorts, just rent them out in Australia. Then, come July, send out the shorts in the US and the sweaters down under.

I'm not sure about the environmental impact. On the one hand, you have quite a bit of carbon footprint from shipping the clothes all around. On the other hand, the company would have a strong economic incentive to maintain the clothes. I'm betting a lot of clothes that are currently thrown away could be saved with proper cleaning and sewing skills. I'm now imagining reading the company's blog having less posts on Redis integration and far more on their new way to remove grass stains.

Honestly, given the sizing issues, this probably makes more sense for men's clothes, but that avoids competition with 99dresses.

Dammit. I'm going to be thinking about this all night.

<comment><USER36> If I'm a guy who occasionally has to wear a suit, it seems like it would be a lot cheaper for me to pay the fixed cost of acquiring it than the ongoing cost of having it shipped to me every so often when I want to wear it. And it's another thing to remember and worry about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I am thinking what if someone buys branded clothes from this website and sell it in other second-hand market, the cost of one button is only one dollar which I think is too cheap?

How about using the library system, having a certain amount of deposit on the account, if the user lost the clothes then the presumed value of the clothes will be deducted from her account?

</comment><comment><USER39> New startup naming trend: two digit number followed by a noun.

<comment><USER40> Well, they _are_ the only .com domains that are pretty much left.

<comment><USER41> Yeah. I'm thinking of starting a social cloud computing service called "127.0.0.1". It will use a sophisticated virtual currency and economic model to guarantee that users only get out what they contribute.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I would like to suggest an algorithmic alternative to the "buttons" virtual currency for the assignment of the dresses. It may not be monetizable in the same way, but it could be interesting none the less.

Let's say every user of the system has karma points. Karma points cannot be bought with real money. They are gained mostly putting unused dresses in the system, but also reddit-style, via comments, reviews, helping people and generally being a good citizen of the community.

1) Let every user list the dresses they would like in order of preference.

2) Suppose that every dress has a list of favourite users, based on karma.

3) Assign a dress via Gale-Shapley algorithm[1] or a variation, generally solving the stable marriage problem.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stable_marriage_problem>

</comment><comment><USER43> <http://www.renttherunway.com/> has been doing something similar (high-fashion dress rentals) for a few years now. Of course, Rent The Runway is more centralized - it's more analogous to a hotel, while 99 Dresses is more AirBnB.

<comment><USER44> Rent the Runway stocks the clothes themselves while this and My Dress Affair (another competitor) are a peer-to-peer marketplace.

<comment><USER40> RTR will also ship a second identical dress of a different size in case you find out you don't fit the original size chosen. RTR also sends the dresses using a premium shipping service with tracking (i.e UPS or FedEx).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> How do I make sure my wife never finds out about this?

<comment><USER46> Would you rather her buy new dresses? I definitely think this is a much better proposition

<comment><USER45> Not sure, I'd analyze the benefits of both options. I'd think that this service would eliminate the constraint of not having enough room for new clothes in the dresser at least.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> I'm not sure what the appeal of the virtual currency model is ('buttons').

There must be a scare for potential users in not receiving real money for sales, but something which can collapse or fluctuate in value at any time (also, it is potentially almost valueless if for instance you move somewhere the website doesnt operate).

Maybe not all people are as skeptical as me, but I'd imagine that this model will prevent users from 'leaping in' by selling large amounts of clothes, (and thus ending up with a huge store of 'buttons' that they may or may not ever find a use for).

I am very curious as to what the founders see as the upsides to this model which overcome said downsides.

<comment><USER48> The clothes people will be selling is probably stuff that has pretty close to zero value to the owner to begin with. Stuff they would have gotten rid of a while back if they'd just had the incentive to do so. For example I just packed up and donated two large bags of clothes charity, had this service been available to me I might very well have sent them some those items just to try it out. If it worked out well enough I think of a few more items I'd happily send off as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> It's hard to see how the linked TechCrunch article and this article:

[http://www.startupsmart.com.au/cash-flow/99dresses-shuts- dow...](http://www.startupsmart.com.au/cash-flow/99dresses-shuts-down-amid- financial-woes/201201235162.html)

... can both possibly refer to the same company. At the very least, the prior shut-down of 99dresses has been given a quite a thick layer of spin.

</comment><comment><USER50> My initial reaction is "I already have an infinite closet, it's called the thrift store four blocks away whose buyer's tastes match mine". On the other hand if I lived in the burbs, this might be more appealing.

It also reminds me that I've been meaning to clean out my closet, maybe I'll try putting whatever the thrift store won't take up here.

</comment><comment><USER36> The brick-and-mortar version of this business, clothing exchange stores, have lower transaction costs because they don't have to deal with shipping and also let customers try clothing on before buying it.

It's still a good business though, because an online store can have a bigger selection and serve people in areas without exchange stores.

</comment><comment><USER51> There's also threadflip.com

This market is probably all about getting the critical mass of users so you have supply.

</comment><comment><USER52> I prefer eBay for two reasons: (1) Selling. eBay gives me cash (minus fee). Buttons only have value if there's a dress I want. (2) Buying. Lots more inventory to choose from, both high end and low.

</comment><comment><USER53> Sharing this with the girlfriend. Go go brownie points. She loves new clothes and has tonnes. What a fantastic idea!

</comment><comment><USER54> Immediately compelling and fills an obvious need. Really liking this one and hope it succeeds.

</comment><comment><USER55> I really love this, but I think paying for shipping is the one problem you will have to solve. Shipping costs at minimum $15. Maybe could focus on listing designer clothes, hard-to-get items first, and then once you get a sizable user base you could negotiate a shipping rate for your users

</comment><comment><USER56> My favorite line from this demo day: "I've created crack for women"

</comment><comment><USER57> I don't understand why someone would use this system over ebay.

</comment><comment><USER58> Aren't most amateur hackers retirees in nursing homes with a lot of time on their hands? Nice to see an application aimed at a different audience (young women).

</comment><comment><USER59> I checked out the site. Look interesting, but I noticed one major issue: pagination is a mistake in e-commerce. "View all" or infinite scroll is a must.

<comment><USER60> There are infinitely many things that would improve the sales of an e-commerce site. First among all things is making sure the site is not on localhost.

Many sites do not implement view all or infinite scroll and, empirically, still manage to make quite a lot of money. One prominent example is Amazon.

More broadly, I would sincerely love it if HN did not try to play "Let's one- up the founders" on day 1 for every startup, with special attention paid to YC startups. All startups will have great big honking problems on day one. (They're more of the flavor "Nobody knows we exist" than "Our 100 products are paginated rather than on a single page.") The ones that succeed in solving those problems will, in the process, revisit almost every stupidly inconsequential implementation detail, in the same sort of painful, considered depth that all of us who have shipped software before know will eventually happen.

Wouldn't we be a happier, more productive community if the tone was less "I have found your flaw!" and more "That's a good start. You might consider adding X, Y, and Z to the roadmap. Those have previously had outcomes like X1, Y1, and Z1 when tried in circumstances X2, Y2, and Z2. X and Y can probably wait, but Z should be a fairly high priority because $EXPLANATION_OF_HOW_Z_PREVENTS_YOU_FROM_DYING."

<comment><USER59> I think you are reading something into my tone that I didn't intend.

More importantly, I think you are wrong to think "Nobody knows we exist" and getting the details right are somehow separate. I built a business by a thousand small fixes. I worked on getting the SEO, copy writing, UX, ads, etc. better every day. Then one day the conversion rate was high enough that buying ads became nicely profitable and word of mouth started to take effect. Details matter.

If a fashion site has an UX issue that makes it not fun to use, it is a real problem. There is no next button at the bottom of the list of items. It feels like the site is broken, but this such a trivial problem to fix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> BuyMyCloset.com

</comment><comment><USER62> "99 ties"?

</comment><comment><USER63> How can you possibly be so sexist to alienate the men who wish to have infinite closets? It's not just women who wear dresses, you know. It's sexist bullshit like this that keeps men from getting started in the fashion industry.

<comment><USER64> Is this sarcasm?

<comment><USER63> No.

<comment><USER64> You know there are probably more men in positions of power in the fashion industry than women, correct? Prada, Gucci, Calvin Klein, Kenneth Cole were all started by men, and there are quite a few male fashion designers.[0]

[0]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fashion_designers#Unite...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fashion_designers#United_States)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> I'm so glad they invented this website! It is so infuriating when women think it is OK to just wear the same thing twice!

all kidding aside, I bet women are going to love this.</comment>


Suicide rate at MIT higher than national average - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/03/16/suicide-rate-mit-higher-than-national-average/1aGWr7lRjiEyhoD1WIT78I/story.html

<comment><AUTHOR> I saw the story submitted here to open the thread mentioned in a comment to a current story, "After Suicides, MIT Works To Relieve Student Pressure"[1] published by National Public Radio on 14 May 2015. Having accurate figures on suicide rates, especially suicide rates over time, is helpful for teasing what might (or might not) be causing elevated rates of suicide in a particular place at a particular time.

A rather striking statement made by an MIT parent in the other online discussion today is that now MIT practices "hand-holding" MIT students. Older alumni sure didn't think that MIT used to do any hand-holding of students.

[1] [http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/14/406727576/after- su...](http://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/05/14/406727576/after-suicides-mit- works-to-relieve-student-pressure)</comment>


Huawei expected to surpass Apple to become world's No 2 phone maker - <AUTHOR> https://cntechpost.com/2019/12/20/huawei-smartphone-shipments-expected-to-reach-230-million-this-year/ <comment><USER3> According to Counterpoint Research Samsung is #1, Second is BBK Electronics with 20% of the global smartphone market and is close to becoming the largest manufacturer in the near future. Brand comparisons ignore BBK Electronics because they sell multiple brands: One Plus, Oppo, Vivo and Realme.

Huawei is ahead of Apple because Huawei sells also HONOR branded smartphones.

              2019Q3

        Samsung  21%
       (*BBK     20%)
        Huawei   18%
        Apple    12%
        *Oppo     9%
        Xiaomi    8%
        *vivo     8%
        *Realme   3%

[https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone- share...](https://www.counterpointresearch.com/global-smartphone-share/)

Chinese brands have almost 50% global market share.

<comment><USER4> Good info. Still I think that they're not making a lot of money and the market's contracting too. Looks a bit like the situation with laptops about 10 years ago. They were dirt cheap and abundant.

\--- edit ---

[https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/12/19/apple- earned-66-o...](https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/12/19/apple-earned-66-of- the-entire-smartphone-markets-profits-in-2019)

66% to Apple, 17% to Samsung and the rest is fighting for the scraps. Which is actually better than a while ago where Apple + Samsung > 100% because the rest was losing money. Already quite a few brands have left the market.

<comment><USER5> When people ask me if they should buy Apple, I tell them it's overpriced for the hardware you get. Your linked article proves my point quite nicely. But then I follow that up with the value is in the software, if you like/are familiar with Apple software, then buy Apple despite the cost.

I prefer Android and Linux, so I avoid Apple products for myself.

<comment><USER6> Some of it is the price premium, but Apple also enjoys some efficiencies that the Android clone makers don't. The more efficient iOS and smaller variation in hardware over their more limited number of models means they can lower costs while still putting out a top shelf product.

Tight control of the supply chain from top to bottom pays dividends over the years.

<comment><USER7> Are you living in the dream California? There are lots of places out of California they can't afford iPhone, or can't afford any phone more than $200, and that's the reality world. So, let Apple make money from those rich consumers, and let Chinese manufactures to make money from the other non-rich consumers.

<comment><USER8> I think the point is the Chinese manufacturers are making minuscule amounts from non-rich consumers. Most of the money is being made by Apple

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use a Huawei - it takes surprisingly great photos and is generally well made. Some annoying software pop-ups, though. I guess the worst part is that I feel the need to loudly state that "I support the actions of the Chinese government" on a regular basis, just to be safe.

<comment><USER10> Huawei is just like Apple in my mind. An overly expensive premium phone with bells and whistles I don't need. I had a ZTE for many years that is finally bricking. After this I will probably get some $100 phone from one of those millions of unknown Shenzhen OEMs, UMIDIGI or something.

<comment><USER11> Huawei have long done good phones in the roughly £100 to £200 range. They tend to be arguably the best hardware for their price. But as mentioned, the software isn't perfect so you'll either need to put up with some annoyances or be willing to hack around it.

<comment><USER6> How is the Cyanogen/LineageOS coverage on Huawei?

It seems like if you want updates after a couple of years you'd best make sure your phone isn't locked out from aftermarket ROMs.

<comment><USER12> LineageOS supports 5 different Huawei devices: [https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#huawei](https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#huawei)

The last time I bought a phone, I consulted that list first and compared all recent entries without fixating on a specific manufacturer. I ended up with a Xiaomi Mi A1 that's been holding up well so far and already went through one major Android update without problem.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So the US sanctions on Huawei, that were intended to be crippling and were fairly abrupt and harsh, had only a minor effect on Huawei. That should scare the shit out of the US government. It means that China is much more self- sufficient in technology than they figured.

The future of high technology at this time does seem to be in the hands of China with the rest of the world contributing a bit. I suspect OSes and architectural chip designs are one of the last things that China hasn't really developed home grown in a successful way, but it is likely next. Thus taking on directly Microsoft Windows, Android, ARM and Intel.

<comment><USER14> I thought the sanctions on Huawei were about stopping the penetration of Chinese devices into American networks and businesses for security reasons.

<comment><USER15> No one has actually managed to find and actual security reasons not to accept Huawei devices. There were some really poorly informed stories that listed standard features (telnet support in routers) and tried to play them up as a sinister commie plot but they were all pretty laughable. Most countries (for instance here in the UK) assess infrastructure equipment, providers can only buy from the approved and have for decades. Huawei always passed those tests with flying colours.

But I guess "chinese spies eat telecoms babies" is a much more dramatic headline...

<comment><USER16> It's important not to shift the goalposts. Western security establishments are concerned that _once Huawei has overwhelming marketshare_ in systems like 5G networks, they will have the ability to use these against target nations. They (at least the credible agencies) are not claiming that current Huawei devices are backdoored now.

Even if you believe the worst about China and Huawei, it wouldn't make the slightest bit of strategic sense for them to implant backdoors into products _now_ , when marketshare is still small and growing rapidly. You'd add the backdoors once you had network dominance, like the US did.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The good things in Chinese smartphones are their price and that they sometimes have clean Android version without bloatware. Why do vendors like Samsung make their ugly buggy shells and pre-install software I don't need? Do they think they have better designers and developers that Google has? They are horribly wrong. Stop pretending that you are making something unique and maybe I will consider buying a non-chinese phone next time.

<comment><USER18> They do it do differentiate their phones. If all phones look the same and basically have the same hardware - why bother buying Samsung, when a cheap Oppo is the exact same phone?

Then Samsung won't make lots of money. This way you can have Samsung fanboys that'll swear that Samsung stuff is better and will keep buying it.

<comment><USER19> > If all phones look the same and basically have the same hardware - <USER2> > bother buying Samsung, when a cheap Oppo is the exact same phone?

Because Samsung is made outside of China and will not be tariffed.

<comment><USER18> Countries outside of the US exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> LA Time article on Huawei that came out this week with lots of background on the sanctions and issues with their technology: [https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fg-huawei- timeline/](https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fg-huawei-timeline/)

<comment><USER20> I work for Finite State, one of the companies mentioned in that article.

Here is more information on that report: [https://finitestate.io/2019/06/26/report-finds- cybersecurity...](https://finitestate.io/2019/06/26/report-finds- cybersecurity..).

And here is a video of our CEO talking more about it: [https://finitestate.io/2019/10/03/security-weekly- podcast](https://finitestate.io/2019/10/03/security-weekly-podcast)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Not surprising when phones coming from Chinese brands have on par/better specs for a quarter of the price.

<comment><USER22> Yes not surprising when Huawei and others have been accused of stealing trade secrets. Why invest in R&D when you can just steal the IP from others?

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is- litte...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/huaweis-yearslong-rise-is-littered- with-accusations-of-theft-and-dubious-ethics-11558756858)

<comment><USER23> Would you expect any developing country to not take advantage advantage in the same situation? At a state level, it would be stupid to attract manufacturing with cheap labor, materials, lax ambient laws and low taxes and not copy the technology.

Only an inept government would willingly stall the development of its own country to honorably respect those trade secrets. Everybody doing business with China knew, but the economical incentive was too great to pass.

<comment><USER24> "Developing". They are the #2 economy.

<comment><USER12> It doesn't make sense to look at the absolute size of an economy to determine development status. A country full of subsistence farmers can be #1 economy if they're numerous enough. China's GDP per capita (PPP) is still less than a third of that of the US, somewhere between Azerbaijan and the Dominican Republic.

<comment><USER24> I couldn't disagree more. We live on a finite planet with limited resources. It hardly matters what the PPP is if they destroy the oceans we all use. The planet is only capable of sustaining so much. Having more people doesn't give a nation some sort ethical imperative to have a higher GDP.

<comment><USER12> That you think China achieving a standard of living like current developed countries wouldn't be sustainable doesn't change anything about the fact that they're still developing.

FWIW, polluting water ecosystems is more common in developing countries (because they don't have the money to care about luxuries like environmental protection) and they've been slowly regenerating in developed countries, so from that perspective you should hope for China to become developed faster rather than slower.

<comment><USER24> I didn't say that, but thanks for putting words in my mouth that make this somehow about nationality. I said that achieving a target PPP before expecting some restraint on the environment is a ludicrous goal in the face of the impending environmental cliff. You basically aren't arguing, but telling me I'm just wrong and then making me out to really be on about keeping China down. Maybe try some intellectual honesty.

My point has everything to do with what the global ecosystem can take, and how much of an impact any nation has on it. As a species we need to figure out how to develop societies and countries without poisoning the planet.

The concept that because a country hasn't reached PPP with the US it's developing and can do what it pleases is patently insane. The Earth just doesn't have the environmental resources for that, it's already painfully apparent if you aren't covering your eyes and ears. The human race can't wait for countries to completely develop to play by the rules. Sucks.

Meanwhile China has demonstrably better infrastructure and more development in terms of cities than the US. I think by a lot of measures the US is still "developing", we certainly lack the rail infrastructure of other "developed" countries for example, and our cities lack the dense, efficient urban cores of highly developed old world.

To boil my argument down, if China can build an extensive high speed rail network and capture the global electronics and PV markets they've moved beyond a "developing" economy, regardless of how well off or not the majority of their populace is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Lego is the world's No 1 wheel maker. Michelin is far behind Lego in counts. But when you need a wheel for your car, you look for Michelin. Same here. Huawei phone and Apple phone are for different market. You shouldn't compare like that.

<comment><USER26> That's a very clever but insulting comparison. iPhone and Android (and etc) are both clearly smartphones with the same general features. I have to use an iPhone for work. I try to get the most out of it, but am constantly surprised how primitive and clunky it is compared to the Android experience.

<comment> saiya-jin Never had an Apple product so no personal experience - colleague recently bought an Apple flagship phone (I think previous gen before current gen came). After few days he was hugely disappointed how little he can tweak the device. What is there works fine, but that can be also said about phones for 20% of the price. For him, there was nothing more that would justify the price.

When he sees how much horsepower I have with my Xiaomi mi 9 for 1/3rd of the price, he wants to cry. It makes better photos too. His biggest regret in electronics shopping so far.

That comparison must obviously disregard privacy concerns, but I find it foolish to expect any kind of privacy, on any phone, Apple included. Hence no critical, single point of failure apps there.

<comment><USER27> >disappointed how little he can tweak the device. What is there works fine

So.... if it works fine why do you need to tweak it?

As someone who is moving from android to iphone shortly, I am highly excited to have a device that "just works" and will stay updated. The last thing I want in a phone is to have to manage it. I have my PC for that part of my life.

<comment><USER28> I guess (as someone else pointed out) it comes down to a difference in requirements and expectations.

I've mostly used Android for phones since they do the same general things as iPhones, they work fine out of the box, and stay updated since I only buy phones with good update policies.

The main difference isn't in how well they succeed, but in how they "fail". It's true that current iPhones have added most of the features I found lacking in the past, but there are still a few that have no real workaround. Changing default apps is still limited, browser restrictions are annoying, and there's no easy way I know of to enable system-wide ad blocking.

When a phone "just works" as I want 98% of the time, the difference to me is how able I am to get it working as I want the other 2% of the time. Obviously this is only based on _my_ needs and expectations so I don't expect anyone else to share them.

I just bought a new phone for my partner and she has always used iPhones so that's what I bought for her. She prefers them and that's fine. Only real annoyance there was paying $750 for a phone with a 828x1792 LCD and 64GB storage when I paid $550 for my phone a year ago and it has a 1080x2280 AMOLED display and 128GB storage.

I know "specs don't matter" but it was still surprising. Even with Apple's market cachet and whatnot, I expected the higher price but also expected a bit more parity with a year-old phone. It's no surprise that some buyers are looking toward Chinese and other OEMs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know about the HOPE conference this year? - <AUTHOR>

The HOPE conference in NYC is normally in July, but I haven't heard anything. The HOPE tab link on the 2600 website just goes to last year's website and the forums are down. Does anyone have any hacker news on this? Alternatively, are there other conferences in NYC later this year? I'd like an excuse to go to the city :) See friends and the taxi symphony... <comment><USER2> The HOPE conference is generally held every two years on the even years.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.</comment></comment>


Nice 5G Hype versus Reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.telirati.com/2019/08/5g-hype-vs-reality.html <comment><USER2> Author here. I turned the blog post into an explainer at: [https://www.5ggui.de](https://www.5ggui.de)</comment>


Hire Programmers Leaving Syria - <AUTHOR> http://www.hireprogrammersleavingsyria.org/

<comment><USER2> I really feel bad that programmers are considered a privileged breed. I think most people leaving Syria or whatever other conflict zone are looking for jobs.</comment>