Launch HN: Stacker (YC S20) – Create Apps from Airtable or Google Sheets - <AUTHOR> We're Michael and Sam, co-founders of Stacker (https://stacker.app/). We let anyone create custom software powered by data from Airtable or Google Sheets, with a nice UI, auth and rich permissions. Think Internal Tools, Custom CRMs, and Customer Portals.
We've been working for ages on building something that lets non-technical people create software without code. We spent about 2 years building a really powerful and complicated drag-and-drop no-code app builder. It was really awesome, it could create social networks, SaaS, marketplaces – the works. The only problem was: nobody could use it unless they were already a developer! It turned out that even though you weren't technically writing any code… you were still actually programming, still thinking like a developer. Just with a really inefficient set of no-code tools.
We (eventually!) realised that non-devs were already building systems anyway; but instead of code they were using spreadsheets.
Spreadsheets are basically the world's most used database/IDE. They're great for modelling and managing data. But, if you've ever used someone else's sheet you'll know that they're not the best way to interact with the data. Giving someone access to your spreadsheet is pretty much like giving someone access to your SQL database – they won't understand it, they might see more than they should, and they might break the whole thing.
Stacker is basically an app layer on top of spreadsheet. We let you set up a nice UI, add user login, and limit who can see/do what using permissions. We also handle abstracting away the limitations of the APIs of Airtable/Google Sheets so that the whole thing stays performant.
The main two cases where people find Stacker useful are:
1. they want to create internal tools that are easier to use/understand
2. they want to allow customers/partners access to some of the data in their sheet without giving the whole thing
We've been really excited that most of our early users have been non-technical people who hadn't ever thought they could create software for their business. People have been creating marketplaces, CRMs, resources centres, order-tracking portals, ERPs… lots of stuff. We're a monthly SaaS model starting at $39pcm – we handle all the hosting, infrastructure, and even SSL certs etc.
Right now we support Airtable and Google Sheets, but we'd like to expand out to include other data sources like SQL databases, APIs and even MS Excel(!).
Underneath the hood we've got a bunch of technology from our original web app builder – a python backend that creates on-the-fly endpoints depending on the user's data model, and react frontend that can flexibly layout the app. Then on top of that, we've got a service that analyses the schema from your sheet and automatically creates your initial Stacker app.
I'd love to hear what use cases you can think of for this, either internal or external, and what you'd like to see it do in the future! Check it out here: https://stacker.app
p.s.  History update – you might remember us from when we did a very early alpha launch as "Toga" a few months back (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22746663). Thanks to everyone who helped us iron out all the bugs from that! <comment><USER3> I've seen so many of these, and I think they should all be very successful but the only time I've seen them work is when they are wrapped in a service/consulting organization.

The reasons for this may be:

1\. Even when the coding is free, the problem understanding part is not

2\. The amount of work to be done to implement a new process or system is non- trivial, but temporary, so you need temporary help.

3\. Probably another 3-5 reasons I haven't thought of.

In any case, it seems you would have to pitch your solution to a consulting firm. If you get one of the top 5, you're golden. However, they might prefer the real expensive enterprisy solutions. You're better of pitching to larger but lightweight organizations.

One way to do that is have training around learning typical client processes, typical solutions, and how to implement them. Or how to recognize issues. (Making this up: look at the balance sheet, if inventory is building up, turnover is low. You want a process to push back the order time and link it to sales.)

<comment><USER4> Long ago I did Wordpress sites, and I learned that no matter how nice of an admin interface I made to let the client modify their own site, they would always call us to change even the tiniest things.

<comment><USER5> Interesting. I think because "no code" doesn't actually empower people.

Seems paradoxical but it's not. Belief empowers, without that you think, I might break it, and that will be terrible. You can't break a spreadsheet.

<comment><USER6> Clearly you've never tried to have multiple people work on a super important and also macro-ridden xls file.

Spreadsheets can _absolutely_ get broken

<comment><USER5> Clearly you didn't see what I mean. I mean you can't break the "app". A spreadsheet app like Excel runs and it's literally like a kid's sandbox where you can do stuff in the sheet and Excel will just keep chugging. And if Excel breaks hey it ain't your fault.

My point is people don't want the responsibility us devs have to build "apps" that they are afraid they will make broken.

I think we probably don't need no code tools to help people build "apps" we need a more expressive executable document the combine stuff from the web, Microsoft word documents and Excel into something that's a little more powerful and fits today's use cases.

Just my two cents. Feel free to _try_ to crucify me cuz my views differ to yours.

<comment><USER6> I'm confused.

Are we not talking about the psychology of day-to-day users, where _they_ are afraid to tinker too much?

That's the impression I got when you said "Belief empowers, without that you think, I might break it, and that will be terrible."

If that's the case, then I stand by my comment as I've seen first-hand the hesitation people have about accidentally breaking a mission-critical spreadsheet.

Now, let's be clear: I have not said anything about "no code", as to me there are a lot of compelling arguments both ways in this thread. I _am_ saying that "Excel" is not unbreakable nor does it free the user from fears about breaking something important (from a business perspective, breaking a vital xls document and breaking the Excel application itself are functionally equivalent, even though you and I know that Excel the program can be fixed essentially trivially by the right person with the right tools)

<comment><USER5> Sorry I should have seen what happened. I made a good point, and you took a tiny piece of it, found something to disagree with and held on for dear life, to prove "joshspankit is right", "browsergap is wrong". Yay! Congratulations! Good for you. Within the confines of your narrow misinterpretation, you have proved you're self right again, you advance to the next stage.

If I hadn't been so triggered by being unresolved about being criticized as a kid...I probably would have seen that what you're saying just backs up what I said: if people are scared of complex sheets, they're likely terrified of app makers.

I wish people like you would acknowledge the good points I make, and not take them out of context, and not define themselves by disagreement, but say something like, "Well you can break a spreadsheet. But I get what you're saying, it's less scary than apps in general."

And I wish I could not get triggered and just respond like: "Yes you can _break_ a spreadsheet. But they're still way safer than app makers. Which is what I mean."

And I wish HN was not such a fucking shit show of people acting out and abusing and being mean to each other...but then why do I keep coming back?

But I'm not the boss of HN and I'm not the boss of you. So all I can do is fix my own reactions. People like you gonna keep existing...finding disagreements, maybe you enjoy it...maybe you're unresolved about something and this is how maladaptively try to recapture your power.

Whatever it is, we're all fucked up. We all just gotta find our own way that's to live that's free and untormented by past traumas that we didn't deserve and that are not our fault.

Maybe that's why I keep coming back...because it pushes my buttons, and I know that's some opportunity...it gives me a chance to work it out...rather than just "act out" on automatic. :)

<comment><USER5> I guess it works to say "improve my reactions" not "fix" . fixed and inflexible is not what I'm going for. Creating improvements is :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Design your own database/no-code solutions ironically seem to appeal more to software developers than it does to end-users. Devs and tech-savvy-power-users are looking for ways to automate app development. End-users are more likely to try to find the exact solution that targets their specific niche--not a design my own database/no-code solution.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, there is still a problem here to solve. The approach is likely in who you market to and understanding who your market is. As much as you might think end-users are your market, they really aren't. Even if end-users are given the tools so they _can_ design their own apps, a lot of them don't _want_ to. They'd rather have IT do that for them. IT on the other hand, would love to have things that makes it easier for them to automate quick CRUD apps for all the internal business operations that have to be dealt with, especially at enterprise levels. This is why SalesForce and JIRA succeed and other too generic design your own database solutions targeted at end-users fail. As much as people love to hate SalesForce and JIRA for their enterprise-y ways they are making a lot of money doing what they're doing.

<comment><USER8> This is fairly accurate. The no code revolution is a great happenstance for most techies who want to test ideas and run experiments.

Bye bye boilerplate, until we meet again.

On that note, is there a business intelligence tool for the no-code (or low code) world that just works?

I want to visualise my database without having to type queries in terminal, and without using some clunky shit like metabase.

<comment><USER9> Have you tried Excel? Seriously, it can connect to DB really easily. [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-a-query-to- an...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/add-a-query-to-an-excel- worksheet-power-query-ca69e0f0-3db1-4493-900c-6279bef08df4)

PowerBI is good too, as is Quicksight, and pretty cheap.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I feel like these no-code companies are a bit ahead of their time and focusing on the wrong audience. Instead of focusing on end user/business user, they should focus on developers. Please create tools (code or not) that make it really easy and fast to create CRUD apps for developers. There hasn't been good ones available. Empower developers first. Last time I check, no business user would want to create an app no matter how easy it is.

<comment><USER11> The stone cold truth is that if something is capable of generating value it will inevitably afford a developer to extend, improve, or maintain it - <USER2> which point the developer will instead develop stomach ulcers trying to maintain complex logic that would be infinitiely easier had it been built with standard software practices. Finally, it will be refactored, rewritten, or outright replaced, at great cost with actual code at one point or another.

Zero code is most often a corner that should not be cut at any medium or large enterprise - and guess where all the money selling SaaS or IaaS products comes from?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've done some R&D during 4 months and I've chosen Stacker as our main CMS/Back-office for building a SaaS B2B product.

Here is our list of requirements:

\- Providing a backoffice to our customers, where each user can connect to its own tenant and access its tenant's data only.

\- The backoffice must be generated automatically from a data structure (db schema for instance)

\- An API must be generated automatically from the data structure (allows to consume the data from web apps, mobiles, etc.)

\- Ideally, this API would be a GraphQL server because that's what we use already.

\- Advanced permissions and roles for internal users, basically need to configure who can view which tables, or has update/delete permissions on which tables. It must be flexible and non-blocking for our business evolution/future needs

\- The backoffice needs to be flexible about UI components/views so that we can create our own workflows, views and components.

\- Theming capabilities of the backoffice, per tenant, would nice to have.

\- Also, my goal is to have as little to manage as possible, I'd prefer to use a managed cloud version over a custom "have-to-install-and-maintain" one if possible

I've tried many others, GraphCMS, Directus, Frappe, Django Jet, Strapi, and studied tons of other. Stacker is the only one who is flexible enough for our use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great to hear! Glad to be hitting those needs now, and hopefully you're gonna like what we've got in store for the next few months!

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I keep wanting to love Google Sheets as a building block for creating rich applications, but Apps Script is so painful to use and my complex sheets are almost always full of cells that are stuck at "Loading..."

If you can solve the former I would be grateful. Solving the latter is a much bigger challenge.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's an open-source attempt at something similar:

[https://github.com/ryxcommar/fullstackexcel](https://github.com/ryxcommar/fullstackexcel)

</comment><comment><USER15> I remember another Stacker [https://gunkies.org/wiki/Stacker](https://gunkies.org/wiki/Stacker)

<comment><USER16> My first thought too! The lawsuit was what I remembered the most:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Yikes, just noticed that your first two paid plans have branding. I find that objectionable. If I am a paying customer why am I being forced to advertise as well? I wonder if I am alone in that thinking. I have never priced a SaaS but as a customer that puts me off. Otherwise it looks pretty cool.

</comment><comment><USER18> When reading these comments, remember: these arent your target customers

<comment><USER17> Disagree. I am.

<comment><USER18> Sure you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This reminds me of a what I did for a friends app project to give them the tools they needed, allow them to iterate quickly, and minimize need for backend engineer involvement (use-case: frontend smartphone app, data admin of hierarchical data by non-technical team members):

Using Firestore as main datastore, exposed to app by stupid Cloud Function. Backend admin is done through Google Spreadsheets, using a custom script that syncs each spreadsheet to an entity type. The only required/static fields are the "relational" columns that maps parents/childs. Apart from that they can add/remove/rename columns as they want, which maps to JSON fields in the API output. All values are JSON serialized.

With Airtable, the JSON can be abstracted away from the user.

After the initial setup, they have been working and iterating on it for months now and the frontend app can do all the changes they want in terms of data and all it takes is editing the spreadsheet.

This is obviously not suitable for when/if the product takes off and starts scaling, but for the hack it is I found it ideal at the exploratory stage. No need for any kind of CRUD app, teaching new tools, or involving backend/db admin for schema/API changes.

</comment><comment><USER20> Interestingly, I had the need to make a spreadsheet available as an API and ended up using very simple appscript to archive this a few days ago. I shared it in my blog here, perhaps it might be useful for someone here.

[http://blog.ebfe.pw/posts/sheet2api.html](http://blog.ebfe.pw/posts/sheet2api.html)

</comment><comment><USER21> Hard to complete with the likes of Microsoft who offer PowerApps for 'free' in their 365 product catalog. I've seen previous selfproclaimed excel ninjas build whole (internal) business apps with PowerApps to get rid of the excel sheets. Upside for me is that since it's all in the 365 ecosystem it's all covered with our security policies.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah, the joys of competing with Microsoft ;) This is partly why right now we're focusing on Airtable and Google Sheets

Overall, though, we're pretty happy for the ecosystem of people creating their own apps is growing, and we're pretty sure we'll be able to offer some compelling benefits that PowerApps doesn't – and still stay on the right side of your security policies!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I'm thinking at some departments in my company which heavily rely on Google Sheet for their under-cover development needs - basically when they are not given any dedicated developer time - and this is both awesome (gives them freedom to tinkle/experiment) and scary (gives them freedom to mess it up) at the same time, so I feel a bit divided :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Love the idea of "under-cover development". Sneaking in at night to ship software to make your team more efficient.

<comment><USER23> I worked at a bank in IT, and we called this "shadow IT". When departments and teams have budget but the organizational friction to do anything with it is too much, you end up with a lot of excel, access DBs and stuff built on sharepoint, notes, whatever is available. Life, uh, finds a way.

IT groups like to rail against this, but they are also the ones setting up architecture review boards, CAB's and things like new activity committees, where good ideas go to die.

<comment><USER24> I work in a bank right now, and the "shadow IT" term seems pretty universal. We even use a direct translation in our native language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> So, what makes your system cooler than Glide, another YC company? Is the primary differentiator not relying on Google Sheets as much (which is good, since I think Excel is a lot more common in large enterprises), or..?

([https://www.glideapps.com/](https://www.glideapps.com/))

<comment><AUTHOR> So we really love what the folks over at Glide have built, and we're not looking for a fight on "coolness" ;)

Overall, we're used in a different way: Stacker let you make systems for your team to work from, or portals for your customers to self serve. We can be backed by either Google Sheets or Airtable, and we work on desktop and mobile.

We've got a real focus on creating something for daily use, and that gives you really fine-grained control of your business rules and data security.

Glide is, as you say, just GSheets, and just mobile. If you check out their examples, you'll see they're more focussed on small utility apps (e.g. Attendance Tracker) than larger systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wow, my first thought was "I love this idea." second thought was "holy crepe this is pricey."

I think we need to see more about the interface for building an app and such. Bubble and others in your space or even Glide your direct competitor are better about explaining how the build process works.

</comment><comment><USER27> Stacker is on my shortlist of no code services to try once I've finished scaffolding in Airtable. Others are Bubble ([https://bubble.io](https://bubble.io)), Boundless ([https://www.boundlesslabs.com](https://www.boundlesslabs.com)) and Webflow ([https://webflow.com/](https://webflow.com/)).

Stacker looks nice, but why is it better than the other options that have been around for a long time? At $349/app/mo (or $3480/app/yr) it seems more expensive than the others but perhaps the value is there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where we try to differentiate ourselves is that while Bubble etc. can theoretically let you create any app/product, in reality that means you're building all the small parts from scratch, and you end up having to basically think like a programmer.

We want to solve a much smaller set of problems really well – turning spreadsheets into Internal Apps and Customer Portals.

That means we've spent a bunch of time focussing on getting the things that everyone needs (User login, data security, lists, forms) really excellent so that you can build something really easily.

In fact, there's not really any "building", just "configuring" – you start with a working app as soon as you connect your data, and then customize it to look how you want.

Contrast that with tools like Bubble where you have to build out each screen, each form, the login page etc. manually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Really cool tool. A few reasons I'm excited about it:

\- Even though I'm a dev, I find myself hating the maintenance of internal tools

\- I looked through my GSuite and realize that I'm already using sheets to build micro apps. Each spreadsheet I create is a basic tool for collaborating around data. Adding a meta layer on top of it to enable things like permissions + better UI is a totally natural next step. I think there's a bit of an education piece to get spreadsheet users to realize that they're building micro apps, but once that aha moment happens, I think the value prop of stacker is really clear.

Excited to see where you all go :)

</comment><comment><USER29> FWIW we used Airtable to power one of our sites ([https://labs.codeday.org/](https://labs.codeday.org/)) and it was a huge mistake. Airtable has at least one hour-long downtime every month during the middle of the workday.

(The API was also really awful, e.g. bool is `true`/`undefined`, never false, you can't query table schemas, etc. But I imagine this app abstracts some of that away.)

Anyway I can't imagine building an app on top of Airtable, of the options I would 100% choose Google Sheets.

<comment><USER30> Google Sheets are changing their CORS header for their "Publish to Web" feature and _breaking_ a ton of apps as you write this: [https://support.google.com/docs/thread/56845119?hl=en](https://support.google.com/docs/thread/56845119?hl=en)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Personal opinion--I like the pre-cooked templates, and would love to see more of common trivial SaaS products. Things like timekeeping or inventory management for instance. That would make it feel easier to justify, since it essentially replaces one or more things we'd already be paying for, rather than the abstract notion of "we'll create new efficiencies, somewhere".

It could even go the third party marketplace route, similar to what you see with quite popular wordpress themes and plugins.

</comment><comment><USER32> Congrats on the launch.

How do you handle latency to google sheets or airtable APIs - these are not as responsive right ? Does it affect performance of stacker ?

<comment><AUTHOR> We've spent a lot of time building systems to keep Stacker responsive even if the underlying data source isn't.

And both of these fit that bill: the Gsheets API is generally quite sluggish, especially for large sheets, and the Airtable API only lets you fetch 100 records at a time, with no skipping pages!

We cache the responses from each API to keep reads as quick as they can be, and try our best to be smart for writes too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One thing I wonder -- Google Sheets has relatively restrictive limits on the amount of data you can have per sheet. I think something like 400k cells? What happens when a customer scales up to the point that their data doesn't fit anymore? I guess maybe users at that scale can afford to just buy a bespoke CRM solution / hire a dedicated programmer?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it's 5M cells, so there's a 10x lifetime boost for you.

We'd like to support SQL databases in the future, which would give the option to go forward without starting from scratch.

<comment><USER33> Ahh, seems you are correct, I believe the 400k number was old.

5M cells is indeed a lot.

Having an exporter that could generate an SQL schema + API that replicates what the user's formulas did would be a cool feature, but probably very difficult. I could see building an 80% solution (for your internal use), then selling a consulting service to take your existing Stacker setup and turn it into a bespoke system built on top of a real DB. Presumably by the time the customer has enough records for that to make sense, they would have the money to pay for such a service.

Perhaps you could also offer an "archive your old data after $N years" feature. Maybe also sell snapshot storage, or allow the user to download the archive and save it themselves?

I don't know your tech stack or the business concerns in your space, but maybe that looks like generating a static site that bundles all the user's data, so it can later be viewed in a read-only format using a regular browser (allowing you to just scrape calculated formula values instead of having to implement the formulas yourself). I could see that being useful to a user wanting to pull up a record years down the line as it was displayed when it was created.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Just fyi: On Firefox Mobile, the menu text (white) disappears into the background (white).

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, will fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of Azuqua[1], which has its owning implementation of cloud table that could be used as persistence layer for custom build applications.

[1] [https://azuqua.com](https://azuqua.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> Huh, never heard of it. Seems like it's been folded into a different product:

> Azuqua is no longer available for purchase. If you are an existing Azuqua > customer looking for support, please email email@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone have a comprehensive list of all the services targeting this market? I've used Glide and find it "ok", and I'll try Stacker, but I'd love to see a "best" list...

</comment><comment><USER37> Looks good at first glance. What are the auth options? In an enterprisey context SSO can be quite important, and I feel like a lot of hosted apps could really benefit from some form of Active Directory integration.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, great question. Right now we support either username + password, or magic login links via email.

We've got login via SSO on the roadmap, both for social signon like Google Auth, and some of the more "enterprisey" options too!

<comment><USER38> If you're doing customer portals you should probably get SAML 2 setup. That should pretty much answer all the enterprise sso questions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Does this work with dynamic data and dynamic inputs in Sheets?

For example I have a sheet where users can enter in thing on custom inputs and it loads data from an API Into the spreadsheet.

I would like to replicate this functionality in an app.

<comment><AUTHOR> All the functionality etc. from your sheet works exactly the same – so for example once a user submits a New Record form in Stacker, we'll show them the record with all the formulas computed directly from GSheets.

Also, if you've got Zapier attached to your Airtable/Sheet, then that'll still work fine too. People have done some pretty amazing things with the Zapier + Stacker + Airtable combo

<comment><USER39> What about charts? Does that also show up?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point, should have been more specific: all the data functionality still works (e.g. formulas, pivot tables).

Display stuff (charts, conditional formatting) etc. doesn't, although we are working on our equivalents to these.

<comment><USER39> Thanks. If you have that, please just take my money.

This is such a huge huge need. And guess what? I am a software engineer. I just don't want to mess around with coding if I don't have to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> What happens to my work if my need outlives your company?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately, this is the risk of using any SaaS tool. You'll still have all your data, of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm more interested in the really powerful no-code app builder you spent 2 years building! What happened to that bad boy?

</comment><comment><USER41> Hi, how do you compare with appsheet or retool?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey –

So the big difference between us and Retool is who the users are and what for.

Retool is primarily bought by dev/product teams for building admin UIs on the side of their production DBs.

Most Stacker users are non-technical people in business roles, building operational tools on their spreadsheets. We've also got a much bigger focus on auth, login and making the experience work for external users.

We've not got much familiarity with using AppSheet, but I know a bunch of our customers moved to us from there. I believe they're pretty much mobile/tablet apps only.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hey, where is the data processed? Possible to select UK, EU? and is it possible to sign a DPA with you?

</comment><comment><USER43> Does it enable functionality where I register/signup for things ?

Like an Airbnb for example?

What about Stripe integration?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yep, that's one of the key use-cases. You can choose one of the tables in your base/sheet and that's the users who can log in.

<comment><USER43> Umm.. actually. The other way. I want a user to come up to my site, register themselves and then fill a form.

Not a pre-defined set of logins.

The Airbnb/ecommerce usecase - where a logged in user "books" something would be simply awesome

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah yes – we also support "Open Registration", so new users can register.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Why not use a foxglove in the logo for Digitalis? Sorry, bike shedding, I know.

</comment><comment><USER45> Just came here to point out the use of the Forrst logo in your demo app...

</comment><comment><USER46> and there's also this hatchling trying to do the same thing [https://pory.io](https://pory.io)

Looks like they launched in May this year.

<comment><USER47> I just feel like a got stuck in a metacircular sandtrap, did they use pory.io to make pory.io?

This is ffing wonderful, actually curious what the stack looks like, or is it just pories all the way down?

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> Your service looks really nice with a clean design. I will give it a try.

Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER49> Nice stuff.

Check also out openasapp.com

</comment><comment><USER50> Congrats on the launch!

</comment><comment><USER51> .

</comment><comment><USER52> I love spreadsheets, especially for crowdsourced information. One of my side project[1] is to gather informations from experiences expats to help new comers that set up in a new country/city. They are questions/answer you wished had known instead spending months/years figuring it out. The collaboration happens in google spreadsheet and it works wonderfully. We have 14+ cities now

If you have any experience in your city, feel free to fill the spreadsheet[2]

[1] [https://travelhustlers.co/cityfaq/](https://travelhustlers.co/cityfaq/)

[2] [http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-Lut4zmeDw9z-ikRJPH1n...](http://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-Lut4zmeDw9z-ikRJPH1nrmXGqt6rYDWGraFYUGnPUk/)

<comment><USER6> Really smart idea. Sometimes people think that there are no "standard questions", but really we're all human and need to /want to do a lot of the same stuff no matter where we are.

<comment><USER52> definitely! when we live in a city for 5+ years, we assume lot of basic questions are common knowledge.

but as someone who change country or city every few years, it would save me so much time, money and hassle to know all those "basics"</comment></comment></comment>


The Internet I've got — what I really need are more pockets - <AUTHOR> http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2008/04/the_internet_ive_got_--_what_i_really_need_are_more_pockets.html <comment><USER2> From the article: that elusive space between laptops and smart phones

Well, the laptops are getting smaller and the phones are getting bigger. It should be obvious that they'll meet in the middle.</comment>


In Which I Defend the C Standard for Interviews - <AUTHOR> http://thoughts.rockhymas.com/post/4580899270/in-which-i-defend-the-c-standard-for-interviews

<comment><USER2> I would look instead to for candidates that know many languages. C is really useful at understanding the underlying concepts (so is ASM for what its worth), but knowing Python or Perl is great too. Java would be a nice addition too as a" classical OOP" language. Then add a functional language of choice and you have a well-rounded dev.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't really get this C Standard infatuation all of a sudden ... do what works for you.

However, from the listing of languages used at their firm ... I would have thought that they'd be testing candidates more in C# and .NET since that's what they seem to mostly use ... and then also throw stuff in some of the other languages their way to see how the candidates cope ... but thats just me.

<comment><USER2> One case I can make for understanding C without using it is that many (most?) language implementations are written in C. CPython is written in C. PHP is written in C. JavaScript is written in C. Thus understanding what id(my_obj) does in CPython may be important. It allows you to reason about what is fast and what is slow.

But you are right. The original article talked about understanding _pointers_ , not the language and how that got transformed into understanding the language and how that intimidates people. You don't need to know the C syntax to understand pointers. Some programmers probably don't understand them now, and are able to get the job done, but there is nothing inherently difficult about them.

OTOH, after I learned what pointers were (funny enough from Straustup's book on _C++_ ), I have seen some really confusing ways to explain them. Instead, just talk about registers and memory, no drawing random boxes and pointing to the box or the number in the box.</comment></comment>


Mathematicians Predict the Future With Data From the Past - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/04/cliodynamics-peter-turchin/all/ <comment><USER2> In other news:

Man Crosses Atlantic by Expending Energy

Scientists Find that Virtually All Earth's Water is Wet

</comment><comment><USER3> I mean... where else is the data going to come from? The future?

<comment><USER4> Exactly! This would be news if they predicted the future _without_ data from the past.

<comment><USER5> I forget which comedian made this joke: "I hate it when people excuse a bad picture saying that it was taken when they were younger. _Every_ picture taken of you was taken when you were younger. 'Here's a picture of me when I was older.' Let me see that camera."

<comment><USER6> Mitch Hedberg :) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitch_Hedberg>

<comment><USER7> Here's a clip of that joke: <http://youtu.be/u6xaj2fC1jI?t=2m38s>

<comment><USER3> You guys nailed it - Mitch's joke was indeed what I was thinking of when I wrote the comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> By the way, if you want someone to make predictions for you from your data find a statistician, not mathematician.

<comment><USER9> I've yet to meet a good mathematician who didn't know more about probability and statistics than 90% of the folks who call themselves statisticians. Math is math.

This myth that math geeks can't tell you anything useful is rather irritating. Sure some of them speak very abstractly, and they might use a technique that you don't understand to draw their conclusion, by they can also save you a lot of time by identifying a fools errand early on. Proper grounding in maths not simply an academic exercise.

<comment><USER10> That seems a pretty strong generalisation. A doctorate in Model Theory doesn't give you the authority to talk stats.

<comment><USER9> Perhaps if one has a doctrate in model theory and has never strayed outside of the abstract algebra/group theory realm, they might not be qualified to speak on statistical problems. However, my experience has been that this is almost never the case. The mathematics people I've known have been, for the most part, extremely well versed in various forms of analysis, algebra, probability and, yes, statistics. You might be surprised how a lot of the deep mathematical concepts tie into statistical methods. There's more to it than performing t-tests.

Comments like yours are more or less exactly what I was speaking about. What makes you think that somebody with an advanced mathematics degree wouldn't know about statistics? Because it's not in the title? Go kick down the door of your local university math department and spring some statistics problems on them. You'll probably come out with the answers.

<comment><USER10> Perhaps your experience has been different from mine, maybe because I'm based in the UK - I know that US education tends to be more generalised. Among my friends with or pursuing postgraduate degrees in pure mathematical disciplines, none have any particular knowledge of stats above the undergraduate level. As a master's student, I wouldn't imagine I count for much - but what I know about statistics could be written on the back of an envelope. It's something I've been meaning to remedy for a while now. It's possible that tenured professors have a wider breadth of knowledge than the average PhD - and I admit that I wouldn't know if that were the case.

As for the depth of statistics as a field, and its reliance on other disciplines - I agree entirely. I think pure mathematicians are far more likely to be ignorant of statistics than statistical mathematicians are of, for example, analysis.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Love that term "elite overproduction". Never heard it before, but it makes sense to me. It definitely seems to describe a trend we see in this country. The political class, including lobbyists, consultants, pollsters and assorted hangers on, is so bloated it can only be fed by diverting resources through corruption and stagnation in the political process. This is something libertarians tend to warn about, while getting dismissed by partisans from both sides who only see it as a problem in any way when the other team is in power.

<comment><USER12> It's not just libertarians, people from both the right and the left are equally concerned about it [1]. The problem is more systemic than partisan.

[1]: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5507814>

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Please alert Hari Seldon.</comment>


Drones will be an inflection point in the "War on General Purpose Computing" - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I, for one, welcome our bot overlords!</comment>


Finding a Tech Cofounder – The Unanchor Story - <AUTHOR> http://blog.unanchor.com/2011/04/finding-a-tech-cofounder-the-unanchor-story/

<comment><USER2> Great points! I would also add funding to the list; both parties need to realize that they will have to either work for free for a long period of time or they will need to get out there and find angels or venture capitalists to fund their startup. Lots of dedication is required from all parties involved as funding is very hard to come across.

<comment><AUTHOR> well i guess thats a given - being a cofounder typically means you dont get paid in the initial stages - hopefully that wont last for too long ;)</comment></comment>


A Battery Revolution in Motion - <AUTHOR> https://news.cnrs.fr/articles/a-battery-revolution-in-motion <comment><USER2> This is great news (and from a trusted source, CNRS is one of the most prestigious research institute in France, state-owned).

As the article says, it's not about having the most performing batteries (they announce 90 Wh/kg which is below Li-ion batteries) but _cheaper_ batteries, made of salt instead of Lithium. And it matters for many use cases.

<comment><USER3> Re. the Wh/kg figure - If the sodium chemistry has properties comparable to lithium IRON (LiFePO4) in other respects, such as safety and robustness, then the 90Wh/kg figure is quite good in that comparison. The LiFePo4 chemistry is quite interesting and very stable and a drop-in-and-forget-about-it replacement for lead-acid battires, which is harder to do with the more sensitive and aggressive high-Wh Li-ion stuff. Afaik Tesla use LiFePo4.

<comment><USER4> PO, not Po, please. Po is Polonium, the real death metal.

<comment><USER3> haha! Thanks :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think this touches on an important point. According to the article, Earth's crust contains 0.06% lithium and 2.6% sodium. I think it will be critical for the future of manufacturing (and especially for things like storage of energy) to find workable solutions using abundant elements.

Without the most critical infrastructure (for example batteries for storage of energy) being built using abundant elements there's a strong risk of a lot of instability in markets in the future. Shortages, etc.

I think if a workable solution exists using abundant materials (regardless if it's the most perfect solution) it should be used. Otherwise I imagine there are plenty of hedge funds on Wall Street who will be more than happy to start stocking up on critical raw materials in short supply.

<comment><USER6> One possibility being investigated by Siemens is thermal stone storage.

Basically you dig up a gigantic hole in the ground, line it with insulation, put the dirt back in and send hot air through it (500-600 C). Then when you need the power, you connect a turbine to it and can use the heat to drive it.

I'm glossing over some details, but that's the basic operation. Last thing I heard about it they were going to build a demonstration project in Germany.

<comment><USER7> You can use a similar thermal mass trick under a house if you're looking to balance day/night energy consumption. This can have a very large impact on your bills, payback times are on the order of about a decade, much shorter than the projected lifetime of a house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems like these Sodium batteries would be well-suited to grid load-shifting, rather than anything mobile. They're likely to be cheaper than lithium batteries and cope with more charge cycles, but heavier. Pretty much exactly what you'd want for load-shifting for solar/wind power, but not ideal for vehicles (weight matters) or anything portable unless they were a lot cheaper, or cope with many more charge cycles.

<comment><USER9> It's going to be tough to beat pumped water and thermal storage: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/electricity-s...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2014/03/electricity- storage)

80% efficiency and they scale with the size of your water tank or gravel pit.

<comment><USER10> What I don't get is why there's so little work on open flow batteries. Those should also scale with the size of your tank, but you'll need much smaller tanks.

But well, last time I looked at plugging anything into the grid, the inverting hardware was the cost bottleneck, so maybe that's why. I just don't really know it anymore.

<comment><USER9> There seems to be plenty of research, but making them economical seems quite complicated, and they don't have the density for mobile applications.

The baseline for grid scale storage is pumping water up a hill. That's pretty tough to beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> For clarification, the CNRS is a French public organisation, whose name stands for National Center for Scientific Research. Their research and findinds usually bear weight in the scientific community.

<comment><USER12> Ah, yes, the Center National for Research Scientific.

<comment><USER13> French is little-endian. English is big-endian.

<comment><USER12> Haha, the French would claim it's the other way around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> In terms of mass energy storage from intermittent renewable sources, this seems like a winner - less cost means increased competitiveness for renewable energy.

However, it seems like energy density will be the winning factor in consumer battery tech which, as far as I can tell, appears to be a significant chunk of the EXISTING market. This is something that Na ion doesn't yet seem competitive at - which is not to say that it won't get better with time/investment/research.

Unless lithium gets crazy expensive, I don't see the battery being a big enough expense in a laptop or mobile phone for people to be willing to put up with more weight for an incremental price saving.

This is definitely great news for renewable energy though.

<comment><USER15> Sodium atoms have a much higher molecular weight (22.99 u) than Lithium atoms (6.94 u). This alone makes Lithium more competitive by weight in the long run.

The ideal battery consists of two electrodes where one consists purely of the alkali metal in the charged state and the other one is weightless at the charged state but then collects the metal oxide when discharging. The oxygen is ideally taken from the air.

Currently we are far from that ideal since the electrodes contain additional matrix materials, between the electrodes an electrolyte is present, the oxidizing agent is stored inside the battery requiring yet other chemicals to keep it stable. Then the battery needs a casing which adds more weight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> There seems to be a 'revolution' in battery tech every so often or so out of R&D labs. So far, the promised improvements have not yet made their way into mainstream, commercial batteries: higher production costs, lower capacity or lesser lifespan.

I hope this one sticks, although I would not bet on it.

<comment><USER17> It seems they're closer than the "breakthroughs" you usually hear about. My impression is that the prototype is a product prototype, i.e. something they're actually testing and trying to design products around, rather than just a lab prototype.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > Lithium's only disadvantage is its (relative) rareness, and the fact that it > is only found in a few specific locations (Columbia, Chile, China, etc.).

So no revolutionary performance advancements (except for no. of recharges), but mostly a way to address rare earths scarcity.

<comment><USER19> Just to note that Lithium is not a rare earth metal. It is a metal that is rare on earth. Hope that clarifies everything.

Rare earths are the much heavier lanthanides, as well as scandium and yttrium.

Also, doesn't it feel a little discordant for a French web site to be using the left-pondian spelling of centimetre?

<comment><USER20> 0.06% of the Earth's crust is hardly rare. What is rare is deposits having a significantly higher local concentration.

<comment><USER13> Dilbert: Rocket boosters will move an asteroid into the moon's orbit so we can mine its precious metals.

Dilbert's Boss: Why don't we mine for precious metals in Afghanistan? They have lots of them.

Dilbert: That only happens in science fiction.

[1] Edited to add:

[http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-06-20](http://dilbert.com/strip/2012-06-20)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > For the moment, its creators have not disclosed the composition of the > materials wrapped around the two electrodes of their sodium-ion battery—a > trade secret.

I wonder if it might make sense for Gates and the Breakthrough Energy Coalition to just outright buy certain proprietary technologies and put them in the public domain. If so, I wonder how they should best evaluate if this might be one such technology.

<comment><USER22> They don't keep it proprietary because they want money, but because they want the companies producing the batteries to be local ones.

<comment><USER21> Which I understand from a nationalist perspective, but it also harms deployment because manufacturing costs are probably higher in France than Japan or Korea

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > Its format, called "18650," indicates that it is presented in the form of a > cylinder, with a diameter of 1.8 centimeters and a height of 6.5 > centimeters.

What a strange way to say express it. Why not say 18 millimeters and 65 millimeters?

<comment><USER23> Never let it be said that HN nitpicks minor issues in articles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The advantages over lithium-ion are not clear to me. Is it just cost?

<comment><USER25> The main point is that lithium is hard to get for European companies. Sodium is abundant in saltwater, which is good for European companies and good for a more massive use of batteries (electric cars and home storage).

<comment><USER26> If they can demonstrate that this battery technology is viable for large grid storage uses, there is a potentially enormous market for it in Germany. The problem is that solar pv makes most sense in Southern Germany, where it's sunnier, but a lot of the power is required further north, so there is a requirement for major new powerlines to be built[1]. Also, there is wind power generated in the North Sea that is needed further south.

Providing massive, (relatively) cheap battery backup to these intermittent power sources could allow Germany to accelerate the transition away from coal, which they've been forced to use more of due to decommissioning nuclear plants. If the power companies are willing to invest heavily in infrastructure for renewables, it bodes well for them investing further in batteries to improve grid stability and prices.

[1] [http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/electrical- resis...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/electrical-resistance- nimby-protests-threaten-germany-s-energy-revolution-a-757658.html)

<comment> ju-st The problem in Germany is transporting power from wind to the south, and not transporting power from PV. And Germany didn't use more energy from coal since the shut down of nuclear. (renewables replaced nuclear)

Cheap batteries would allow every country to move to renewables.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> > Being three times lighter than sodium ions, lithium ions also make it > possible to produce very lightweight batteries, an undeniable asset when it > comes to portable electronics.

So what is the article about? It doesn't mention any real advantages of sodium ion batteries? Lithium is more rare than Sodium but that should be a minor disadvantage?

<comment><USER28> > It doesn't mention any real advantages of sodium ion batteries?

Price, ubiquity (no need to rely on a limited number of lithium providers) and lifecycle length (number of discharge cycles).

> Lithium is more rare than Sodium but that should be a minor disadvantage?

Rarer means more expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I see the point that it is smarter to use Sodium instead of Lithium. But where is the revolution, as the capacity is comparable? Lets see, if the number of recharging cycles will really be twice as large (2000 instead of 1000). That would eat into the revenue, unless the new batteries were sold for a higher price (which in turn would give them trouble to compete against Lithium).

The main revolution is not a technical one, it is the fact that a big market may move from Asia to Europe.

If a capacity increase or a weight decrease could be realised, I'd accept the term 'revolution'.

<comment><USER30> Sodium is cheaper, so the battery should be too. This and the technology will allow solar to replace fuel, here is the revolution.

<comment><USER29> Lithium allows solar already to replace fuel. Does it? Sodium is cheaper so the battery will be cheaper is certainly naive. The prices are not made from the costs of the components but from the market. Sodium batteries will have trouble to compete price wise in the beginning, because the production industry must be build in Europe and compete against an established industry in Asia. On the long run, you may be right. But for introduction, I have strong doubts. Needs a good marketing, as they have the same capacity, but are heavier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> here we go again with another amazing battery breakthrough! remember fuel cells and how they were going to power your cellphone _real_ soon now. exactly.

I can tell you now why there will never be a battery with a significantly greater energy density than we have now. It's because such a thing is also known as a "bomb".

There are solutions, of course, nature solves this problem with, for example, sugar. But what you need is a metabolic process for the release of energy.

Anything that's a solid lump of something won't work. don't invest in this.

<comment><USER32> Did you even take time to read the article? Using sodium instead of lithium isn't about making higher density batteries; it's about making cheaper batteries since sodium is much more abundant than lithium.

<comment><USER33> I thought I read somewhere that in terms of the percentage cost of a battery the raw materials are fairly insignificant. Don't remember off the top of my head, I'll have a hunt for some sources and edit this comment. Maybe we'll get a multi-material battery market, that'd be cool.

<comment><USER34> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTIH6ncIXYc&t=32m20s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTIH6ncIXYc&t=32m20s) (or 30m0s for the whole story)

According to Elon Musk currently lithium ion battery production steps are scattered all over the world and this creates enormous overheads and transportation costs. His plan is to consolidate everything to one place and get raw materials from the mines and produce batteries on site at his gigafactory.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Bakuman free for 100 hours (by Shonen Jump) - <AUTHOR> https://sp.shonenjump.com/jumppaint/e/ <comment><USER2> Nice. You can also change to the Japanese version by changing the /e/ to /j/. Let me know if anybody discovers any other languages. I tried everything I could think of for Chinese, but nothing.</comment>


Deep Exploration into Python: Let's Review the Dict Module - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkelleher/deep-exploration-into-python-lets-review-the-dict-module <comment><USER2> Nice! It's not just some detailss of how it works, but also the history and evolution of the dictionary API and implementation.</comment>


Why Netflix Changed It's Logo - <AUTHOR> http://www.androidpolice.com/2016/06/29/netflix-introduces-new-app-icon-ribbony-red-n/ <comment><USER2> This submission's title is misleading. The article (under a more accurate title) doesn't explain why it was changed, only that it has changed.

<comment><USER3> It also has a typo. The possessive form is "its."</comment></comment>


Kanye West's lawyer orders "Coinye" to cease-and-desist just before launch - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/01/kanye-wests-lawyer-orders-coinye-to-cease-and-desist-just-before-launch/ <comment><USER2> So the bet is 'Can we stay anonymous long enough to launch this thing, profit from the controversial publicity and cash out without being outed'.

Which one really is the gangster here?

<comment><USER3> Kanye West makes no claims about being a gangster. In fact, when his music first became popular, it ushered in an era of non-gangster "backpack" rap, at a time when "I've been shot 6 times" 50 Cent was on top of the charts.

<comment><USER4> Thank you for pointing this out, I often see rappers and particularly kanye being degraded by people who no little about the history of rap.( Not bashing your parent by the way. I mean in general.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great publicity stunt and does not look like this lawsuit has a leg to stand on. Good for them that Kanye took the bait.

<comment><USER6> I guess time will tell, but I think this is a pretty slam dunk trademark infringement case (like it or not). Also it isn't a function of them taking the bait or not, trademarks have to be actively defended if the owner wishes to retain them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Do people really look at Kanye West as a "gangsta" rapper? A small matter but I find it interesting that the makers of the coin who I assume are either fans or at the very least familiar with his music labeled him as such.

<comment><USER8> No, they don't. Gangsta rap as a style and thematic focus is a long way from what Kanye does.

Also, it doesn't look like anyone described him as such - the article contains the quote "like isn't he some big fuckin' gangster." The context is that he's making threats, albeit legal ones. So while the would-be creators of Coinye are certainly coming off looking like morons, they haven't made the particular mistake of labeling Kanye as "gangsta."

<comment><USER9> I dunno, he is closely associated with Dr Dre these days. But as you say it is neither here nor there.

<comment><USER3> He has virtually no association with Dr Dre.

<comment><USER9> Watch The Throne?

<comment><USER3> AFAIK Dr. Dre hasn't done a stitch of work for or with Kanye in any capacity.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_the_Throne#Personnel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watch_the_Throne#Personnel)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It is kind of a dick thing to do to someone. The creators are just profiteering off a celebrity's infamy.

</comment><comment><USER11> Lawyers really don't understand technology... they just added fuel to the fire.

<comment><USER12> How is "technology" implicated in a relevant way here? Kanye is entitled to control how his name and mark are used, and it's utterly irrelevant whether the folks misusing the mark are creating a cryptocurrency or a specialty doughnut shop. You can't just wave your hands and shout "technology!" and pretend all the existing rules don't apply to you as a result.

What's shocking to me is how immature the creator of Coinye is being. What possible technological purpose does it serve to make the Kanye reference to name a cryptocurrency? It smacks of a childish attempt to create publicity. If I were Kanye I'd be pissed if someone tried to use my image and my fame to peddle his ideology-based product.

<comment><USER13> I think the point is that the technology is designed to not have a central person or organization to sue or shutdown. So serving a cease and desist letter isn't just pointless, it is counterproductive.

<comment><USER14> Someone is writing the software and Web site; it didn't spontaneously evolve.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> cyberpiracy? All the other claims I could see but why throw cyberpiracy in there to make your argument weaker?

There is no "piracy" going on. Just a vague parody of a celebrity.

Personally I think we could all do with less celebrity worship so if this dies, all for the best.

Now dogecoin, that was fun and educational because you got to experience all the facinating things about crypto currency with low penalty and fast updates. Making a mistake with Bitcoin or Litecoin is an expensive learning curve by comparison.

</comment><comment><USER4> The insinuation that kanye is trying to take over a crypto currency is laughable to me. Although the anti corporation sentiment of it would fit the theme of yeezus.</comment>


Ask HN: How would you manage listening to music while reading books? - <AUTHOR> As the title saying, does listening to music while reading books or just taking any informational queues really affects one's mind in the process of skill acquisition? Does it have a tremendous negative return to one's mind and longterm memory? <comment><USER2> You have to distinguish instrumental music from vocal music and songs.

Listening instrumental music and reading should use different parts of the brain, is it should be compatible.

However, what will occur memory wise, is that that music will be associated with what you're reading. So you will remember that music when you'll remember or read that text again, and you'll remember that text when you'll listen to that music again.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not an expert on Cognition or anything.

This only works very well with novels. When i was younger, i made a quite terrible habit out of this. I read the entire Wheel of Times Series with "He lives in you(Diana Ross version). It got so bad, i couldn't read any Wheel of Time book without playing that. I read the initial Mistborn set with Viva Forever etc etc. I put a stop to it a few years ago.

What you have to realize is that, this works with only soft reading when you don't really need much "brain power" to process what you're reading. Playing epic music while reading Epic fantasy helps with the visualization process and scene buildup.

I don't see how anyone is going to retain long term memory playing Viva Forever while reading Donald Knuth's TAOCP but it's just MO. If you want a more indepth look at the topic, you should try out Barbara Oakley's "A mind for numbers". Touches briefly on these kinds of background distraction while reading/learning.

<comment><AUTHOR> Somehow I've tried that with just one novel, but Im still curious how other personality manages to read while in autopilot listening to music in terms of deep learning.? Maybe, it really differs for everyone?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This only works for me in certain situations and I'm not sure why.

If I'm in a coffeeshop and there's a hum of noise I want to drown I'll listen to some music. AFAIK I have no problems focusing or collating the text while doing this.

But if I'm at home, where there's no noise other than occasional traffic, and try to listen to music, I tend to lose focus and seek to multitask with something else. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

I'm thinking it's because my mind is looking for a mellow state to get into while reading a book. The music in the coffeeshop example ends up just being whitenoise but becomes more of a conscious burden when I'm already in a quiet environment. This behaviour is also very different if I program, where listenin to music always seems to put me in a the right state.

<comment><AUTHOR> I kinda feel that state every once in awhile, maybe there are just particular moment in time where brain can interpret all those chunks of information together with active music playing on the side.</comment></comment>


Awesome Developer page. - <AUTHOR> http://developer.500px.com/

<comment><USER2> Wow, this is not a gif.

It takes a static image and rotates it with webkit animation. This is pretty awesome.</comment>


GraphQL/Relay Wins. Flux/Redux Considered Harmful - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/idibidiart/04e4cf24e5d2c7aba92c <comment><USER2> "Flux considered harmful" That is way too strong - GraphQL handles server/client data sync, we still need a pattern for client/ui state, they are mostly orthogonal concerns. UIs aren't stateless, there's more to it than just transacting every state change directly to the server. It is a very narrow class of UIs for which that could work.

<comment><USER3> > UIs aren't stateless

i would agree that this is the traditional perspective.

i'm not convinced this is necessarily the case; there may be other ways to look at it. it could be that the ui "value" is the output of a series of functions, and that what might look like a "state" change is really a "new" ui being rendered.

(maybe this is what "frp" gives us, or perhaps "immediate mode gui" that sometimes pops up in game development circles; but i'm not very familiar with either.)

<comment><USER2> It is always the case. Even if you model app state in a functional way, the state is still _somewhere_ , for example a haskell program may be pure but only because it pushed the unsafePerformIO call into the runtime. UIs _always_ have additonal state that is not modeled in the backend, we can only reduce the surface area of code that is stateful, but we can't outright remove it, it is essential complexity in all UIs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The title "GraphQL/Relay Wins. Flux/Redux Considered Harmful" is obviously clickbait. Relay is clearly superior to Redux/Flux for data fetching and object storage, and that isn't shocking to anyone who has looked into both of them. But Relay isn't there yet (Relay is soon going to bring time travel, has no way to manage local state, etc). With redux coming in at 2kb, there's no reason no to use both relay & redux. This isn't about winning, and Redux is by no means obsolete (yet).

</comment><comment><USER5> Be forewarned: this is the definition of Giant Wall of Text.

Why on earth would someone write this in a Github gist? Just use one of the billion blogging platforms out there or Github's own pages feature.

</comment><comment><USER6> GraphQL is great if you are primarily producing native apps with multiple versions coexisting simultaneously. For web applications, it is needlessly verbose.

Relay sounds interesting. I expect that a lot of its good ideas will be replicated by the community in more light-weight, less opinionated libraries.</comment>


Nicholas Kaldor on the Common Market (1971) - <AUTHOR> http://www.concertedaction.com/2012/08/16/nicholas-kaldor-on-the-common-market/

<comment><USER2> Kaldor wasn't the only one to say this, either then or later on. In fact, most proponents of the current Euro will freely admit that they were well aware of such possibilities. However, they were clearly hoping that the inevitable crisis would be resolved in what they believed was the most rational way: by accepting full federation as inevitable if Europe wants to maintain their wealth and status among the world superpowers.

Unfortunately, most federalists seem to have misjudged how much Germans would be tempted (and able) to reestablish their economic sphere of influence after the fall of the Iron Curtain. Now the European project finds itself in need of a magnanimous Germany, something that cannot be delivered by neither its elites nor their electorate. Unless an alternative bloc can emerge to balance out German influence, Western EU countries are basically sleepwalking towards their own economic (and hence political) doom.</comment>


Free Laracon Conf Tickets - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/danielpnorris/status/1296736685305233408 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm giving away free Laracon tickets for one lucky person. All you need to do is retweet and leave a comment. Share with a Developer you think could benefit!</comment>


Use an AWS Transit Gateway to Simplify Your Network Architecture - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-use-an-aws-transit-gateway-to-simplify-your-network-architecture <comment><USER2> Simply network architecture, yet in the post shows over 9 steps and takes 13 paragraphs to explain.

Does this solve the problem of referencing security groups ids across regions using VPC Peering?

</comment><comment><USER3> An issue that I've been dealing with lately is spinning up new test environments, and then whitelisting the public ip addresses in various 3rd party systems.

Will this allow me to setup a single elastic ip associated with the transit gateway, and route all external requests from my applications in various VPCs through it?

<comment><USER4> From what I can tell, yes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> There goes the bread and butter use case of Cisco (plugin any network vendor) in AWS. We had a complex setup involving Cisco CSR1000 series routers just because vpcs cannot do transit peering.

AWS is really eating into the business of its vendor ecosystem.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this what Zscaler does?

</comment><comment><USER7> Orrrr install zerotier :-)</comment>


Named Entity Recognition: Examining the Stanford NER Tagger - <AUTHOR> http://blog.urx.com/urx-blog/2015/7/28/named-entity-recognition-examining-the-stanford-ner-tagger

<comment><USER2> Next, try the taggers on a more realistic setting than the standard corpuses -- e.g. a product review that compares several products, and you'll instantly see how incredibly poor the current state of the art NER is.

Technology is really going to advance once we have anything that comes close to human level on NER and relation extraction. Kind of like self driving cars, the basic ideas have been around for decades, but performance in realistic adverse conditions remains awful for almost everywhere that it could theoretically be used.

<comment><USER3> That is because the taggers are not trained on the same data. You can't expect taggers trained on wikipedia data to do well in anything but other wikipedia articles. On the other hand, if one has access to Amazon review data, (with links to the product catalog), I am pretty sure a tagger that does well on Amazon data can be trained.

<comment><USER4> Well that depends, if you somehow manage to link well across different domains it can be done. Take a look at the Lowlands project from Copenhagen University ([http://lowlands.ku.dk](http://lowlands.ku.dk)), which deals specifically with cross domain adaptation.

You are right that reasonable domains are required though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's always nice to know that your masters programme requires more of you in just an exam (building a Relation Extraction pipeline including POS tagging and a NER system).

Having said that, it's been shown pretty well that CRF's outperform the Stanford Parser with simple features (it can get even better with better features - particularly for organisations), which also beat out HMM's but it could be interesting to see how neural networks would do.

<comment><USER5> Where did you see this was for a masters programme?

Also, it depends. When I was working on my masters (which I didn't finish :) ), there were three options:

* Thesis * Project * Extra Courses</comment></comment>


Japan's PM to ask all schools to temporarily close - <AUTHOR> https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20200227_49/ <comment><USER2> I think what Japan really needs to do is to run a campaign to change the culture. One of the problems is that they put too much confidence in face masks. What they need to do is run a message that if you show any symptoms then stay home and avoid contact altogether.

Most of these masks are just toys and not air tight at all. One experiment you can do with the mask is go outside in cold weather, so that you can see the steam when you breathe. You will notice that when you breathe, most of air is actually escaping through the edges of the mask and around the nose.

Also, there is a culture of not staying home when you're sick. It's normal to continue going to work with a cold / other infection, or school or shop. Sick leave is frowned upon. Just put on a mask and you're all sweet, right? That has to change.

<comment><USER3> Masks in Japan are based on the desire of Japaneses not to infect others and not to spread their own germs. They won't filter the air coming in or out, but they'll catch a sneeze and a cough. They also make it so you don't put your fingers in your mouth or nose. It's the sick that wear them. You barely see them elsewhere because the idea of "wear something uncomfortable for the sake of others" is a hard sell in the west.

<comment><USER4> Yet I see people grab their mask and pull it down to let a huge sneeze or cough out into the open, unprotected, all the time. I've even had convenience store workers pull down their mask to cough into their hands right before handing me something. Not to mention guys (not sure about women) pretty much never wash their hands with soap and water after using the toilet. Most train station bathrooms, excluding the Shinkansen stations, don't even have soap—and I've been to plenty of doctor's offices and restaurants that have no soap in or near their bathrooms.

Basic understand of disease spread and hygiene is lacking here. Changing into slippers when entering a building and wearing decorative masks are all about appearances, and that's what's most important in Japan. It's even more evident with that sham of a quarantine on the cruise ship before letting infected people off.

<comment><USER5> I don't think what you're describing is specific to Japan.

I regularly see all of the unhygienic behaviors you have described in public in Europe and in the US as well.

<comment><USER6> Idk about Europe, but in my 10+ years in the US, I haven't seen a single bathroom (whether public or in someone's home) that didn't have soap. And that's across both coasts and a bunch of different states.

<comment> eric-hu Check out a cash only gas station the next time you need to fill up and ask to use the restroom.

<comment><USER7> In what country? I can't remember the last time I saw such a thing, so I think it's at least been multiple decades. If I did, I would, you know, probably not even attempt to use the restroom.

<comment> eric-hu Arco and Valero in California are two chains that are effectively cash only (they take debit cards but charge a fee that's high when pricing it into the cost off gas). I no longer live in the US, but still visit family every year and I've seen those on every visit.

<comment><USER7> Oh. But those are big chains, so I probably would expect the bathroom to be decent.

<comment> eric-hu I think these places are franchises so cleanliness and maintenance depends on the owner.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For those of you curious about the state of COVID-19 in Japan, I created an open source tracker that has gained a lot of momentum.

Source Code: [https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/](https://github.com/reustle/covid19japan/)

Tracker Itself: [https://covid19japan.com](https://covid19japan.com)

Twitter Thread: [https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257](https://twitter.com/reustle/status/1229313493808992257)

(copied from another thread)

<comment><USER9> Wow this is awesome, I would love for this to be a global thing. Are you aware of any ports for other countries?

<comment><USER10> There are many, but I personally follow this one:

[https://covid19info.live/](https://covid19info.live/) (formerly wuflu.live)

Here's a list of other similar websites/apps/telegram/whatsapp groups:

[https://github.com/abuuzayr/coronavirus- apps/](https://github.com/abuuzayr/coronavirus-apps/)

<comment><USER11> Glad they provide a log scale. Shows China growth slowing down but the rest of the world is exponential.

<comment><USER8> If you trust the reported numbers, and agree that the number of tests being performed is adequate. In Japan, for example, the number of tests is far too low (2,000 only so far).

Adding this metric to the tracker tonight, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Sorry to change the topic but I'm really struggling with a decision to fly from Tokyo (where I live) to the USA tomorrow for a wedding.

One of my closest friends is getting married. She says to come! Wedding is Saturday. Day after I'd fly to another state to see mom. A few days after that I'd fly to another state to see brother and dad. After that was supposed to be GDC. May still go to SF or just stay with dad but current flight back is after GDC.

I don't really want to miss my friends wedding and was really looking forward to seeing family as I only get to seem them once every other year or so and parents are healthy but ~80 so no so many chances left.

So, what do I do? Go and cross my fingers I don't catch it? Pray that I'm not a carrier? No symptoms ATM. I currently work from home so haven't been commuting in typical Tokyo rush hour trains but have been out at non-rush hour 2 out of 3 days a week.

Is it selfish to want to go? Is it selfish to not want to go? Is it irresponsible to go? Is it stupid to be worried?

<comment><USER13> If you're younger than 50. I'd go. Take basic precautions but don't worry.

If you're older than 50, still go but take extra precautions. And take any symptoms very seriously.

<comment><USER14> Not op but I've been wondering, if symptoms appear what can be done apart from go home with the flu and hope it'll pass and not kill me??

<comment><USER15> Right now they'll probably want to test and actively quarantine you, if you really are showing symptoms.

In a more mass-spread scenario, where they can't really handle all the cases with high attention - follow your symptoms each day closely and if you're getting noticeably worse from one day to the next after the early symptoms have appeared (after the first several days), go to the hospital and seek treatment. It doesn't appear to be much different than having the flu in this regard, it's that the mortality rate and virality appears to be far higher (and a far higher percentage of patients are requiring intensive care).

There was an excellent 'inside the hot zone' article posted here on HN a few weeks ago, that interviewed a doctor in China that had directly dealt with many early cases of Covid. His input was that the people that died turned hard south in the second week after symptoms presented, and would often die in the third week. That pattern tended to repeat for patients that died. Seeking treatment at a hospital as soon as possible if you see yourself turn for the worse in the second week, appears to be critical.

<comment><USER16> The pattern you describe should be everyone's standard practice already.

If symptoms are getting worse, particularly acutely, seek medical attention.

Importantly, if you think it might be something bad (like COVID-19 or another contagious disease) make sure to make that known to the first and primary medical contacts you make as you seek treatment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> n.b. This is being described domestically as 要請, which is "ask" in the sense of "The IRS asks that you not lie on your tax return."

<comment><USER18> The US IRS can and will jail you if you do lie, so that might not be the best analogy.

<comment><USER19> In terms of expressing the linguistic point being made, it seems like a fine analogy.

The point is, apparently, that "ask" is a euphemism for something that you are effectively obligated to do.

You're reading much too far into it.

<comment><USER20> As an English person I am finding this thread very confusing because I encounter very few situations where "ask" doesn't mean exactly what patio11 is describing.

This is especially true when the dialogue is between two people (or entities) of different social status or power, but it's also pretty rude to not oblige when you are close to the person.

The only time it is truly voluntary is when there is no relationship and nothing to lose by declining.

<comment><USER21> If the IRS would "ask" me about income in the same way that I "ask" my wife to pass me the peas when we're having dinner, you can be sure I wouldn't be paying any taxes...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Our county school system has a remote learning platform in place that is used for bad weather days. It keeps the schools from needing to do make up days. I wonder how long it could be effective. It seems like an ok way to handle lessons and coursework for a few days but I wonder if there would be a wide gap in student achievement if it needed to go beyond that limited scope.

<comment><USER23> Just curious, how extreme weather do you get where you live? We have some rough weather at times, but I've never heard of closed anything due to bad weather.

<comment><USER24> I can't speak for the op, but in Minnesota (in the northern part of the US), there are days in the winter when the temperature gets as low as -30F (~ -35C) with very high winds. This can make for very dangerous travel. Occasionally there are snow storms that make the roads impassable for part of the day.

On these sorts of days, the schools are sometimes closed to keep people off the roads.

<comment><USER25> I grew up in Montana, same latitude as MN. The entirety of my K-12 schooling was done there. We never once had our schools close for snow, but we did have 2 closures due to extreme cold. Once it was so cold, the school's boilers couldn't keep up heating the buildings. The other, the boilers were going so hard they actually managed to start a fire in the ceilings.

That said, there were days where snow prevented me from getting to school and days where the drive home was treacherous (the only way to tell where the road was the highway reflectors sticking out of the snow). I also learned how to chain up the first year I had my license. Nearly every day in December that year, I had to chain up to get home (water on ice and ~14% grade on the first hill up to the house).

<comment><USER26> Also in Montata. Our school has closed for one day in 30 years due to weather. This was due to busses not being able to travel the town roads. Our kids would have been at school since they don't ride the bus. They've failed to get to school one day when my plow truck ended up stuck sideways across our road.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I don't see comments on this yet but I'll says some of that is because of the Olympics based in Tokyo this summer. I heard the other day about how there's kind of a cutoff point in May determining if it needs to be postponed, pushed, or moved. The Olympics is still huge and if your country is hosting, I can see them wanting to close schools to try anything to stop the possible spread for people to trust and want to still go and compete.

<comment><USER28> Does the situation in Japan even really matter when you're making that call? If the virus is still rampant in the rest of the world, surely they're still going to cancel.

<comment><USER29> I wouldn't count on Japan acting logically after the way they handled the Diamond Princess quarantine.

e.g. letting people disembark because they tested negative and _then_ spent weeks in quarantine. [1]

[1]: [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/23/coronavirus- wo...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/23/coronavirus-woman-on- diamond-princess-cruise-ship-tested-positive-after-disembarking)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is surprising given this epidemic seems to mostly affect people over 30. Not saying it's wrong, I'm not a public health expert. Just surprised.

Is it because they might be likely to carry and spread it without ever showing any symptoms?

<comment><USER31> There's a good discussion on today's episode of the Daily podcast (Feb 27). Basically the theory is that children often get the 4x regular coronavirus strains and this provides a bit of protection against the new coronavirus strain. Therefore they tend to get subacute cases of coronavirus but can still spread.

Here's an unintended consequence of closing schools though. Who often takes care of children when schools are unexpectedly closed? Grandparents. So in a way, they could be making this worse.

<comment><USER32> Kids staying at home with grandparents means far smaller groups of people though.

When my daughter started preschool... boy did she ever bring home every type of disease known to science. We ended up pulling her out and just having her grandparents look after her, which worked out really well, because I kept getting sick and missing work myself.

<comment><USER31> >Kids staying at home with grandparents means far smaller groups of people though.

No, it means smaller groups of kids, but not for those seniors. They still go about their day, visiting with friends etc.

<comment><USER32> They can choose to not do that. Kids can't just take care of themselves on their own, they need an adult to take care of them. And seniors are a lot better about washing their hands and other things than young kids in big groups are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Vietnam, who has only had 19 cases (and very few new ones lately), closed their schools a few weeks back.

Last I heard that may be extended to the end of March.

<comment><USER34> It was a bit easier for Vietnam, since the schools were closed for Lunar New Year and we just kept it closed. However the government is discussing whether to open it again next week... Potentially bad timing to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Good luck with that in the US, where school is often used as an alternative to childcare.

<comment><USER36> I'd argue that US parents are so keen on schools staying open because often their jobs depend on it. I expect it would be similar in Japan as well.

Maybe it seems like daycare because, in a sense, it does serve the function of allowing parents to work. That doesn't mean it's an alternative to daycare. The parents want their kids to have an education, but they also count on school to be able to work.

Even here in Canada, if a school has a snow day and an employer doesn't, it can be a little tense if you don't have anywhere to put your kids. People with relaxed employers and good leave options are fine, but many people don't have that.

<comment><USER37> >I'd argue that US parents are so keen on schools staying open because often their jobs depend on it. I expect it would be similar in Japan as well.

Why would it be similar in Japan? In Japan, children walk themselves to school (using public transit if necessary) as young as 6 years old. It's not like the US where parents can be thrown in jail for "child neglect" if their children don't have 24/7 adult supervision. I imagine that Japanese schoolkids can just stay at home if the schools are closed.

<comment><USER26> This is not the case everywhere in the US. E.g. in Montana there is no minimum age to leave a child unsupervised. In our town young kids walk and bike to school. Probably not aged 6 but certainly by 8-10.

<comment><USER37> Not everywhere, but Montana has a tiny, tiny fraction of the total population, and no large cities at all. In much of the country, for most of the population (which mostly lives in urban/suburban areas), it is as I described.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think next will be universities (we already cancelled a conference in mine). Japan has taken the issue too lightly since the beginning, it's good they finally start acting on it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not sure if the universities will close, unless things get much worse. The universities here are already on Spring Break -- the semester / year ended at the start of February and the new school year won't start until the beginning of April. So, it's most likely they universities will just stay as they are and wait and see.

IF things get worse, I'm not sure what the universities will do here.

<comment><USER38> It's spring vacation for undergrad students only, not researchers, grads students and administrative staff. Also contrary to Europe most service are running at least minimally (libraries, a cafeteria, etc.) so there is still some activity on campus.

So, if the virus keep spreading I hope they'll close or that we can chose to stay at home, which is OK for most of my job anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> In Japan who would typically take care of children in a situation like this? In the US, because of the difficulty for parents to get off of work, I would expect most of the children to be in large group settings anyway (day care, staying with friends, large extended families, etc). It might limit spread a little bit compared to school, but not a lot.

<comment><USER40> Mothers. Japan is actually known for having very poor child support options outside of family. The percent of married woman with children that work is quite low.

<comment><USER41> According to a government survey from 2017 or so, the number of single parent families was hovering around 1.2 million. This is almost exactly 1 percent of the population which doesn't seem much until you compare it to the number of children under the age of 14 which is 15.53 million people. Now their ratio gets closer to 8 percent.

That doesn't seem very low to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Seriously though. That guy who comes into work sick to show us all he is 100% committed is completely bonkers. WORK REMOTELY if you need to flex how big your dedication is. Maybe throw a Calvin and Hobbes sticker on your car windshield while you're being so insecure and putting peoples health at risk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually the pressure is a bit on the reverse... if you call off sick for anything less that super-ill, it looks like you're not committed, and your boss and co-workers will not think that favorably of you.

Even at the university I work at, as a teacher, there's a subtle pressure not to call in sick or miss meetings or take a day off. I can only imagine how much STRONGER that peer-pressure is in an office setting.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Announced just about an hour ago, taking the country here (Japan) by surprise. Most JHS and HS are in the middle of final exams, and public High School entrance exams are next week. (Most university entrance exams are just finishing, though).

A hopefully good move, but might have been nicer to have given teachers and students more time to prepare (i.e., announce it a week earlier, perhaps?).

 _shrug_ Just my $0.02

<comment><USER43> >Officials say 2 of the 15 new cases are children under 10 years of age.

>The latest cases bring the number of confirmed infections in Hokkaido to 54, the most in Japan.

How were they supposed to know last week that this would happen? Or are you proposing be can stop the spread of the virus for a week to give people chance to get ready??

<comment><AUTHOR> No, I simply mean it would have been nice last week to let the schools know he's considering cancelling schools. By making this a sudden announcement he's caught all the schools on the hop, you might say. Today (Friday) is the one and only day left to wrap up the school year (school years end in March and start in April here). So final exams will be cancelled, maybe graduation ceremonies will be cancelled, students have to empty out their desks (they don't have lockers here).

Basically, teachers and students have to finish up the school year TODAY, with no advanced warning or time to plan.

So, I completely agree with Abe-san's desire to curb the spread of the virus, but being in the education system myself (and having 3 kids affected by his decision), a bit of an advanced warning would have GREATLY helped the schools, the kids, and the parents.

 _shrug_ But as I said, it's just my thoughts and hopes and desires as a father being affected by it! :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Japanese Source: [https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.ht...](https://www3.nhk.or.jp/news/html/20200227/k10012304751000.html)

</comment><comment><USER44> They plan to close them until spring holidays late next month. We can expect much of the US to do the same if the virus comes in during the winter season.

This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping.

<comment><USER45> > This is a big reason why the stock market is dropping.

That's.. a gross over simplification. The market sees a lot of perceived risk, whether that's school closures or factories shuttering temporarily, disruption in travel or other effects.

The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary and indicates the market perceives a heightened risk of crash. Note that the market perceiving something doesn't make it true or inevitable, anymore than your aunt Jill perceiving she's allergic to bad chakras.

> We can expect much of the US to do the same...

Maybe. That depends heavily on how any given local body is willing to admit the problem exists, federal pressure on them one way or another, and general population beliefs. I'd expect California to close a few schools if they see more cases, but I wouldn't expect Alabama to.

<comment><USER7> "The move towards investing more in gold bullion is both reactionary"

The market seems to be moving towards US Treasuries too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> More than 900 cases of infection have been confirmed. Damn, that's alarming.

<comment><USER47> But, as the rest of the sentence mentions, more than 700 of those were from the cruise ship.

I think you really need to keep that in mind when considering the Japanese infection count.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> too late to do that now? it's already in the community

<comment><USER49> The point of epidemiological containment is to reduce the R value such that R<1\. Once this is done, eventually, inevitably, the epidemic will burn out.

Yes, more people will become infected, yes, some will die.

But the level of person-to-person transmission will have fallen below the level necessary for the epidemic to sustain itself, and it will slowly decline and fade out.

Perfect containment, 100% effective vaccines, 100% vaccination rates, (neither of which apply here: there is not yet a vaccine), 100% travel and contact curtailment, 100% sanitation, 100% filtration, are not required. Only sufficiently effective methods to reduce transmission.

Of which, strong, effective, and widespread gathering and travel restrictions _within or from epidemic zones_ are a very sensible tool.

<comment><USER50> I can't find any relevant data, but I wonder what effects previous quarantines (eg during Spanish flu) had on other infectious agents (eg common cold, norovirus, etc). Nobody was being quarantined for those other diseases, but I'd think a general quarantine would have had an effect on them as well. Maybe there ought to be a monthly quarantine every year, kinda like the Jewish year of jubilee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Somewhere, a demonic Japanese child's spell has finally succeeded.

<comment><USER52> This is Japan. Parallel schools would appear :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Feedback on design? - <AUTHOR> I am working on a new skin for my mobile website.  Are there any inexpensive services or communities that will review web designs and provide feedback? <comment><USER2> user testing</comment>


Google useful: Quora Vs. Reddit - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/r/TwoXChromosomes/comments/cg6zq/what_is_the_best_way_for_a_female_to_act_as_a/ Yesterday somebody posted the following thread about Quora. I posted the same question to a sensible subreddit. I would say that the answers are of comparable quality. Original link: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1439628 <comment><AUTHOR> I would say that the following comment is at least as good as the one provided by Quora:

"Here are some tips: Most guys have problems approaching strangers and seeming creepy. If you can strike up a conversation with girls, just drop a few comments that you're hanging out with "a really cool friend". It makes things easier when you introduce him later on.

When you do introduce him, drop a few conversation starters where there might be common interest or where he can demonstrate expertise. If he likes cooking, mention the mean casserole he whipped up for your Christmas party or something. Remember that this is an interaction, and you should stay until both he and the target female are comfortable in conversation. Participate in the interaction until then, and when they are warming up to each other THEN excuse yourself to get a drink, say hi to someone else or whatever. Encourage him to lead in the interaction. The more he does this, the easier it will be for him to seem attractive. Let him choose the way the conversation is going, when it ends, etc. It may take a bit of work to get both of you synced, but when it happens you'll be the best thing that happens to his social life."</comment>


Is a Perfect Storm Forming For Distributed Social Networking? - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/is_a_perfect_storm_forming_for_distributed_social_networking.php

<comment><USER2> Quite likely, though not for the exact reasons the author thinks. I have this theory that while some sites trade on content (this one for example), those that trade on specific functionality tend to be just incubators for technology that becomes widespread if its any good.

People inside the full-service site enjoy a more structured net experience that would be difficult to create otherwise, as well as a multiplicity of special features that are unique. But eventually, the overhead of maintaining existing features means change takes place slowly within the site compared to what's taking place outside, and those who relied heavily on it as a portal eventually discover that the benefits offered by the site are no longer unique and disperse.

Remember when CompuServe and AOL towered above all other virtual communities?

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting. Maybe there's a slight chance someone will be interested in my toy project at the moment, a distributed replacement for Twitter (as opposed to the other five hundred ones like it... But it's a fun exercise).

"Only" need to time the release with a particularly bad case of downtime for Twitter and have suitable connections to media. Did someone say that the better tech doesn't always win? ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Users experience a feeling of betrayal? Users know the service is going to be sold to someone at some point, and that's why the service was created in the first place. And investor knows that the only way to make a profit is to sell the service.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, but just because something is sold doesn't mean it has to die. In the case of FriendFeed, Facebook has all but said it's going to kill it; they bought FriendFeed because they wanted the people, not the product.

Not so in the case of Google with Writely (Docs) or Grand Central (Google Voice).

<comment><USER6> Or Dodgeba..oh wait, no, never mind. (What was the point of that again?)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> check out what google is doing with orkut: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JNgKNRSgm0>

this is comparable to the facebook "like" feature, but goes a step beyond.</comment>