Retrobatch – flexible batch image processing for Mac - <AUTHOR> https://flyingmeat.com/retrobatch/ <comment><USER2> This is from Gus Mueller, who writes my favorite image editor for macOS, Acorn ([https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/](https://flyingmeat.com/acorn/)). I've reported a bug to Gus and received a new build with a fix within minutes. I highly recommend his software, even his pizza-themed blog [http://maybepizza.com/](http://maybepizza.com/) which includes a nerdy pizza dough recipe generator.

I wonder if Retrobatch could have been made as a series of Automator plugins, allowing integration with more complicated workflows (e.g., upload the processed images or put them in a specific Photos app album or something).

<comment><USER3> I'm curious if you can make a recommendation for a good image viewer/organizer app. That's the main thing I was hoping for when I saw your Acorn recommendation.

<comment><USER2> I use Apple's Photos app which for me is pretty good: photos I snap on my phone appear automatically on my Mac; I can search by date, location, person, or object; I can share photos with family; the Memories feature is sometimes delightful; touch-ups can be reverted any time in the future.

But if you are asking for recommendations I'm guessing Photos doesn't fit your needs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I just used this to build a really neat little workflow. Wasn't sure if it would work but the results were amazing.

The workflow took company logos and turned them into squares, in a specified size, with the logo in black, the background in white, 20% padding around the edge, and png-crushed. They looked fantastic at the end.

Steps like flat background colour removal just worked. Transparency handled fine. Pretty intuitive.

Only minor gripes would be I found a few images that crashed it. Resaving them as other formats fixed that. And the UI for manipulating the workflow step connections is a bit fiddly.

<comment><USER5> Make sure to send me the images that crashed it (support at flyingmeat.com)! I'd love to get that fixed, as I'm not aware of any cases right now where this happens.

<comment><USER4> Hey! Thanks for reaching out in HN comments! Unfortunately I'm not sure I have them any more I'm afraid, I've been dealing with a lot of images.

I was very diligent about submitting the crash reports, so you should have 10-20 examples. Not sure if you can see who they come from, but if you can hopefully you find them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Could this FINALLY replace Graphic Converter? Probably not on the number of image formats covered, but it does look very promising otherwise.

[https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/](https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/)

</comment><comment><USER7> One feature that would get me interested would be good ML upscaling. Pixelmator Pro does a good job of it, but has no batch processing until I figure out how to drive it with Automator. And as far as I know ImageMagick still lacks such a feature.

<comment><USER8> Topaz's GigaPixel AI seems to do a decent job of it if you're happy to pay for it but iirc it doesn't do batch

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Fine software, fine company.</comment>


Free Web Tool for Entrepreneurs to Get Free Media by Helping Reporters - <AUTHOR> http://bizglue.wordpress.com/2008/04/09/unique-startup-building-reporter-rapport/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is one of example of how technology is leveling the playing field and allowing even little people to control the news.

It used to be that sources could be hand-selected by news-makers and large companies dominated. I think services and tools such as this will change that (along with blogs, youtube, Hacker News, and other new media outlets), and bring a measure of power back to the people.

I'm excited about the future!</comment>


Applying deep learning to Airbnb search - <AUTHOR> https://blog.acolyer.org/2019/10/09/applying-deep-learning-to-airbnb-search/ <comment><USER2> Slightly OT: I hope that effort helps with their search results big time. Because it's a pain. I was just looking for an apartment for some vacation and cool that it showed 300+ results but a totally random ordering in my opinion.

I can't _sort_ by price. The first couple of results weren't even close to the stuff I booked in the past. Plus even though I never booked anything but accommodation with them I still have to select manually that I want accommendation. Every single time, it's not even funny anymore. There are many many UX flaws when I book with them that this actually drove me to more traditional hotel comparison sites.

EDIT: removed some stronger language, but booking with Airbnb was great at one point and it degraded greatly IMHO. If anyone from Airbnb reads this, I am willing to get in contact directly. The feedback form is wasted time, I tried. ;-)

<comment><USER3> _but booking with Airbnb was great at one point and it degraded greatly IMHO._

I couldn't agree more. I'm traveling pretty often but in the last year I have to say that I ended up hating Airbnb for their high fees, lack of customer support,and the plenty flaws in their system. Lately, I'm using booking.com just because are more professional and they even offer discounts after various bookings. A big minus with booking would be the small hotel rooms with no kitchen (not so cozy).

<comment><USER4> booking.com has always worked very well for me in terms of service, but the user interface is extremely hostile to me with its nagging pop-ups and stressful text in general.

I know they're trying to get me to book by showing me an imagined or real shortage, but it stresses me out to the point I try to avoid them.

<comment><USER5> After reading your description I took a moment to analyze my thoughts and feelings toward booking and I think that first and easily distinguishable emotion that came to my mind was mild anxiety.

I'm pretty sure that this hostile UI brings them money and that's why they are doing it but on the other hand I'm wondering if in the long run customers negative feelings/connotations toward service will eventually matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article is about the progress of implementing deep learning, it mentiones a few pitfalls and points of interest and that's it, no conclusions, no interesting insides.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's a really honest description of the attempts to move to neural networks.

At least the way it's written it feels like no 'data scientists' were involved, it was all done by data engineers (software developer rather than statistical/modelling knowledge)... Which is depressing, if even Airbnb are biased to hiring only good developers (rather than a mix)

<comment><USER8> Most companies don't need to hire data scientists.

They need to hire engineers who can take an algorithm implemented well by somebody else, and apply it to a business domain.

That's the future of deep learning, machine learning, and all other linear/logistic regression style technologies.

The mathematicians are going to have to wait for the age of quantum annealing to feel valuable again: reducing code into a function that works on a quantum setup actually needs those skills that developers struggle with.

Everything else though, outside of pure research and in the vast majority of companies, is already well on the road to commoditisation.

<comment><USER9> This is pure comedy. Want to waste a bunch of cloud resources operationalizing a garbage model? Have engineers do it.

The most successful workflow strategy I've seen in practice is where the deep learning researcher is also the person operationalizing the model. The same person who is grokking the latest paper in arxiv is also studying correlations in product data to perform feature engineering and also writing Dockerfiles to make the work reproducible and optimizing containers for production deployment, latency, failure tolerance, and evaluating performance in the specific context of the business application and creating well crafted software components with adequate testing along the way.

The commodity part is the cloud engineering, kubernetes pod setup, load testing tools, and general software engineering. Machine learning engineers are typically great at these things and they are easy to learn.

Meanwhile, learning about the nuance of hyperparameter tuning, how to evaluate overfitting, model complexity tradeoffs, when to use which kind of statistical modeling tool, how to improve models based on observing error cases, and a host of other statistical modeling concerns are wildly not commoditizable at this point of history. Knowing how to copy paste some Keras tutorials will not help you.

<comment><USER8> So I'll accept you might be right, except:

80% of real business problems are going to be solved by figuring out how to get XGBoost working with it. And you're done.

Research is valuable, and there are some problems where doing real thinking is useful, but pareto principle is at play here: a lot of people just aren't going to need to do that, for the same reason most developers don't need to know the difference between a merge sort and a quick sort: sorting was commoditised into most programming languages decades ago. Same deal, different tech with machine learning.

This is not a bad thing, and there will be a bumpy road, and there will always be a market for experts to help with the edge cases, but most firms will drop them like hot bricks within a decade.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Airbnb search is terrible. I also can't understand why they don't let you save filters e.g. if I'm always searching for an entire place with 1 bedroom then let me save and apply that filter to every search.

</comment><comment><USER11> You can't sort by price in search. I think that needs to be repeated anytime someone talks about airbnb's search, website, etc.

<comment><USER12> yeah it's a pretty bad and unintuitive (and in my mind, manipulative) feature reduction that pushes me away from Airbnb.</comment></comment>


Do We Have Victorians to Thank for Consumerism? - <AUTHOR> https://lithub.com/do-we-have-victorians-to-thank-for-consumerism/ <comment><USER2> Nice read. The easily-youtubeable documentary (4x 1hr eps) _Century of the Self_ also goes into the psychology of how America (and by extension 'Western' culture) became obsessed with materialism.

<comment><USER3> Adam Curtis is a brilliant film maker. "Hypernormalisation" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM)) and "Bitter Lake" ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84P4dzow1Bw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84P4dzow1Bw)) are well worth watching too.

<comment><USER4> Ooh yeah i found Hypernormalisation quiet een eye opener, my first thought was wtf for conspiracy movie did i just clicked on. But it kinda got me searching and made me end up becoming a casual consumer of geopolitical articles and think tank talks on youtube.

<comment><USER5> Not sure if this is true of Hypernormalisation, but it is worth pointing out that "It seemed weird but then I looked into it and saw more content along the same lines which convinced me" is the experience of _everyone_ who gets sucked into a conspiracy theory. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This piece manages to miss the memetic classism distinctions about consumption and strikes me as irrationally grating and perhaps unwittingly embodying it. Likely unfair but I can't help but see echoes of the sour grapes of reduced- to-irrelevance gentry with their posturing about how possessions aren't really that important anyway now that they aren't at top, and seeing the history the hypocrisy galls.

When it was confined to the elite such excess was to be called a virtue outside of times of open rebellion (which almost always lost and would return to the status quo). Having plenty of extra rooms and great halls in case of guests is befitting of your station but to have extra chairs stored away for guests and it is a vice! But when lower classes catch up in a luxury it becomes passe unless there is something to upsell! If 'nominally lower' mercantile classes end up moving beyond them then it is outright immorality.

<comment><USER7> This paragraph really stood out as this:

> "The late seventeenth-century invention of shops and shopping by an urban > middle class who lived by trade was mirrored by the growth of a new type of > domestic space," Worsley writes. "What might be termed the 'middle-class' > living room was full of superfluous objects, chosen for ornament rather than > use yet cheap and not truly beautiful: a barricade of possessions intended > to stabilize a precarious position in the world."

It kind of reminds me of a famous watch Youtuber who berates anyone who wastes their money on a watch that costs more than a Casio, but less than a Rolex.

<comment><USER8> That reminds me of this SSC article: [https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new- left/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/04/22/right-is-the-new-left/)

Long story short, people want to distance themselves from the class below them, and mimic the class above them.

The strategy that emerges is to appropriate the culture of people two classes below them, because people one class below them can't.

If you're rich and do poor people things, you set yourself apart from middle class people, who doesn't want to be mistaken for poor people. No one will mistake you for a poor person anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The reason we have consumerism, is because we have a middle class. Once people have the necessities of life sorted out, they figure out that there's actually lots of other stuff they want too. From that point, the only ingredient you're missing to reach consumerism is the desire to stand in judgement of others for wanting more frivolous stuff than you do.

</comment><comment><USER10> Consumerism comes after basic needs are met, and time becomes available.

Consumerism is reading articles such as these, and reading comments afterwards. It's natural, as humans are curious and want to experience things.

Though I can't quote anything I have a suspicion that this is written somewhere in the bible or by aristotle. it's human nature but also animal nature to be consumers.

Consumption has many reasons. some buy unnecessary things to build on other things. People who buy a boat or vacation envision sharing it with their friends.

People who buy the latest too envision building amazing things of high quality for people, or they see themselves doing something in less time.

People who buy things also invent other things. The world gets more complex. it's not that mysterious and has little to do with the victorian age, other than maybe it was actually documented. It's a shame to lay blame on a particular people of an era, as the sole originator of something that's subjectively called "bad" just because those people happened to be the ones who actually wrote down what they did for the future to learn from.

Consumption. Think about it. The victorian age? Tryu harder. Why do you think throughout history, kings had huge feasts and dozens concubines. Because they had the time and the opportunity.

</comment><comment><USER11> Isn't it enough that we're in stage 4 lockdown, you have to blame us for this as we...

oh, you aren't talking about Melbourne. Carry on.

</comment><comment><USER12> Looking through the prism of the attribute/accomplishment/acquisition trichotomy, the industrial revolution made acquisitions absolutely much cheaper, accomplishments relatively more expensive, and left attributes (with the notable exception of certain phenotypic expressions) utterly unchanged.

With the internet, we should have some examples of production of accomplishable disciplines scaling in the same way that production of acquirable objects scaled. I can't think of examples off the top of my head, however. Arguably, modern languages?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23515204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23515204)

<comment><USER6> It isn't remotely my scene but influcers arguably along with photoshopped appearances to subsitute for "beauty" and that goes back to MySpace angles at the very least as it got more "real person non-academic orn work" vs "on the internet nobody knows you are a dog". Some "accomplishments" like travel or climbing Mtm Everest by ignored paid sherpa escort squad were made cheaper and more accessible with airline travel.

Accomplishments autoscaling with tech and precedent has been there for a while, transalatic or transpacific navigation going from heroic to routine.

</comment></comment><comment> heresie-dabord We have human industry to thank for learning how to make things at unsustainable scale, and social conditioning to thank for making driveling purchase-zombies out of citizens.

</comment><comment><USER13> Interesting read. Just recently stumbled across "Victorian Farms" on Amazon Prime video and it touched on some aspects of how industrialization changed farming during that period.

</comment><comment><USER14> In other news, "can we blame the past for the present?"</comment>


Google Screenwise: An Unwise Trade of All Your Privacy for Cash - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/02/google-screenwise-unwise-trade-all-your-privacy-cash <comment><USER2> Between this, ISPs charging more in exchange to not spy on you [0], insurance companies charging more if you don't run their spyware on your phone [1], and stores charging more unless you use their snooping/loyalty cards, it looks like there's an ongoing effort to make privacy _expensive_.

[0] [http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Says-It-Wants- to-...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Says-It-Wants-to-Charge- Broadband-Users-More-For-Privacy-137567)

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/new-kind-of-auto- insurance-c...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/05/new-kind-of-auto-insurance- can-be-cheaper-but-tracks-your-every-move.html)</comment>


Here is how to prevent disc encryption by Petya Ransomware - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/LukasStefanko/status/879964592264404992 <comment><USER2> Here is the blog post from Microsoft : [https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/27/new- rans...](https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/mmpc/2017/06/27/new-ransomware- old-techniques-petya-adds-worm-capabilities/)</comment>


CEO of Cambridge Analytica explains hyper-targeting political campaigns (2016) - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8Dd5aVXLCc <comment><AUTHOR> FYI, Cambridge Analytica was used extensively for both the Cruz and Trump campaigns</comment>


Canada Puts Housing Speculators on Notice as Toronto Prices Soar - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-04-18/canada-puts-housing-speculators-on-notice-as-toronto-prices-soar <comment><USER2> I just ask myself: when does London - and other European cities - will do the same?</comment>


Berkeley Logo - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/logo.html

<comment><USER2> This brings back fond memories of my 1 year at UC Berkeley back in 2005-2006 and getting my start learning about Computer Science fundamentals with Professor Harvey and CS61A.

Afterwards I always told myself I'd jump in at some point and play around with Logo (since the books were freely available on his page since forever it seems) but I had forgotten about those thoughts until seeing this post right now.

To Professor Harvey :-)!

<comment><USER3> "This project really excites me — sneaking the ideas of Scheme into the visual metaphor of Scratch!"

From [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/) Scratch section.

What was he like in person? I've used Logo quite a lot in teaching maths and I've always wondered how bh ran his classes.

<comment><USER4> You used to be able to find the "greatest hits" of his lectures (as well as the ones from 61B and C) at [http://wla.berkeley.edu](http://wla.berkeley.edu). Unfortunately, it looks like the site is down right now... or forever? (The lectures were in RealPlayer format, so maybe it's for the best.)

<comment><USER2> I think they moved off of the older Realplayer-based sites and onto Youtube...they pretty much have every version of CS61A online from the past few years...here's a playlist of one of the last ones taught by Professor Harvey: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28HAzKy0N8&list=PL3E89002AA...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28HAzKy0N8&list=PL3E89002AA9B9879E)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love Brian Harvey. He sits in on my compilers class and gives Prof Bodik a hard time. Seems like every other class you hear Harvey yell, "Nooo" from the back of the room. Its hilarious.

<comment><USER2> That's actually exactly what I'd imagine he'd do (it would be even funnier if he was chucking potstickers at him...for those that don't know that's an inside joke from his Simply Scheme book...I can't remember if it was also mentioned in CS61A too :-).

Thanks for sharing!

<comment><USER6> Brian ... likes potstickers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I blame LOGO for opening my programming mindset beyond the confines of BASIC on a VIC-20. In 1986, that was the only tool readily available to me until an after-school class introduced me and other interested kids a bunch of computer stuff, including LOGO.

It's a bit rough around some edges, but [http://turtleacademy.com/](http://turtleacademy.com/) is a decent site for introducing people of all ages to LOGO.

I love what a few minutes of casually messing around in LOGO can lead to: [http://turtleacademy.com/program/update/53767042f4585906683c...](http://turtleacademy.com/program/update/53767042f4585906683c9869/gldnspud/en)

</comment><comment><USER8> Chris Hancock designed and implemented languages called FLOGO I and FLOGO II in the early 00s; unfortunately you can only read about them in his dissertation:

[https://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/ch- phd.pdf](https://llk.media.mit.edu/papers/ch-phd.pdf)

This work has been very inspirational to my own research as it introduces a concept known as live programming. The dissertation is also very well written and interesting to read even without a deep PL/HCI background.

</comment><comment><USER9> The Lego Logo kit in school was my first introduction to robotics: [http://static.guim.co.uk/sys- images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/20...](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys- images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/1/25/1359115295417/Lego- Logic-21-09-1985-001.jpg)

Before that, I played around with BASIC, but was only moderately interested in programming. But as an 8 year-old seeing a set of lego blocks come to life with just a few simply commands was truly life-changing experience!

Looking at today's Mindstorm, it's just amazing how far things have come!

<comment><USER10> Reading the Mindstorms book made me want the Lego Logo kit for my kids. The things in the book seemed like mostly basic Lego constructions with a bit of automation added, which seems more accessible than the Technic based set, which requires more planning. I may just bite the bullet and get the Mindstorms set for myself this Christmas.

<comment><USER9> I don't think they sell the Lego Logo kit. I used it in early 90s :)

<comment><USER11> Lego Mindstorms (the current set EV3) has a graphical language (cf [http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/content/lego/ev3/preview...](http://www.education.rec.ri.cmu.edu/content/lego/ev3/preview/) ) with turtle-ish capability.

There are also alternative firmwares (e.g. [http://www.ev3dev.org/](http://www.ev3dev.org/) ) which let you use more or less the language you want, but you loose the IDE integration and the easy setup. And the original firmware is open-source too: [https://github.com/mindboards/ev3sources](https://github.com/mindboards/ev3sources)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Since some are reminiscing, I thought I'd throw in.

I owe my interest in computers to, among other people, Mr. Wizard. It wasn't frequent, but when he pulled out the old (Apple IIe maybe?) and taught kids how to write Logo, I knew I had a new mission in life.

That, and the gratuitous use of fire around children appealed my reckless grade school brain.

</comment><comment><USER2> Here's a link to Professor Harvey's papers page (the link is a little hard to notice on his main page): [http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/papers.html](http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/papers.html) (it has a couple of neat Logo essays in there)

</comment><comment><USER13> I love that these books are still in print. One of the first things that I did when Mac OS X came out was download the Unix source and get UCB Logo running. There was a good discussion group at the time and Professor Harvey was incredibly gracious with his time answering all kinds of questions.

</comment><comment><USER14> I just started reading "Logo mindstorms". The book arrived this morning. I ordered it because Bret Victor _strongly_ recommends it. Hope to learn me some LOGO this weekend!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is this anyhow related to NetLogo? [https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/](https://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/)

<comment><USER16> Yes, but there are big differences too; see the "Compared to other Logos" section at [http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/programming.html#sy...](http://ccl.northwestern.edu/netlogo/docs/programming.html#syntax)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I remember learning this in 3rd grade in my school (back in 98) here in Pakistan. This might have been my first attempt at 'programming'.

<comment><USER18> Same here, somewhen back in primary school my father installed logo for me to play around with instead of paint. When I asked him how it works, he told me in fatherly affection:"RTFM". He later repeated the stunt by handing me a copy of K&R when I asked him whether he could teach me programming.

Now on the one hand, it taught me to RTFM, but on the other, i got stuck on something in either language and ended up quitting (drawing chairs in logo, bit shifts in C since I didn't know how binary really worked or what an exponent was). It makes me wonder what the better parenting approach is, letting your children learn to figure things out on their own, or helping them across whatever bumps they encounter, or some mix between the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's so insane it's great. I learned logo in 9th at Berkeley High in 86'.

</comment><comment><USER20> Are there any lexically-scoped, higher-order, lisp-1 Logo's out there?

<comment><USER21> I think NetLogo is lexically scoped, maybe StarLogo too? A really long time ago I wrote a translator from Logo to Scheme: [http://web.archive.org/web/20071231105705/http://www.colorst...](http://web.archive.org/web/20071231105705/http://www.colorstudy.com/static/ianb/old/logo- scheme/) – it translates fairly directly, and so it uses lexical scoping. The version is also lisp-2 by default, but has a lisp-1 option.

<comment><USER16> Yes, NetLogo is lexically scoped, and it has first-class functions (we call them "tasks") and higher-order functions. But it isn't homoiconic (unlike e.g. Berkeley Logo) so it doesn't really qualify as a Lisp IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The UCB Logo logo is adorable</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone interested in starting a modern, open-source EHR software? - <AUTHOR> I know there are already few similar projects out there but they all seem to be lacking in almost every aspect. This would be the Gitlab/Mattermost of EHR/PHR.<p>Would love to know your thoughts/suggestions. <comment><USER2> Welcome to requirements and data model hell.

Which target audience did you have in mind?

Primarily Doctor/Nurse/Practitioner centric?

Primarily Administrative (Practice-as-a-whole) centric?

Insurance centric/integrated with insurance systems/standards?

The trickiest part about it all that I've found, is that at the end of the day, practitioners tend to only need a few pages or so worth of notes, but most modern, proprietary alternatives tend to morph into gigantic, data vacuums actually intended for somebody's (generally an insurance company's) data analytics department.

Which don't get me wrong; I realize that was the point behind EHR; greater interoperability and communicability of health records between disparate systems.

For most proprietary offerings, I believe the value is that your vendor whips up and manages the data model and infrastructure for you (or offers a reasonable template); and will typically integrate some sort of rules engine because why not.

To be honest though, I'd absolutely love to figure out how to implement a suite of tools to make EHR easy for practitioners, plus maybe an application with sufficient and accessible enough documentation so that a sufficiently savvy practitioner would be able to out of the box basically have a good digital SOAP note-book, and could overtime build up the data they want to track in a logical, but user (not necessarily developer friendly) manner.

Basically, something as accessible as making a .dot template for printing out, or filling out blank SOAP notes forms for entry in a binder, but also having enough back-end where if need be, that data can have ETL's cobbled together for migration. Plus all the HIPAA goodness.

Unfortunately; I don't know as the market would see much uptake in the U.S. since the insurance industry kind of wags the rest of the medical industry's data collection practices due to how tightly integrated/dependent the healthcare industry is with the health insurance industry.

The centralization increases visibility of a lot of problems; however, everyone pays the price with requirements implication chain becoming longer than the amount of wire between you and the insurer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thorough comment!

It's definitely a hefty undertaking and that's why I was keen to know what HN thinks. Is there anyway we can get in touch (i.e. Email)?

<comment><USER2> Feel free to drop me a line at sal.aw4t At gmail dot com.

I'm in the process of recovering some orphaned personal projects at the moment, but I'd be happy to try to aid in requirements gathering, and architecting for testabilty.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Having worked on various sides of EHR, HIPAA is the biggest barrier. Every organization I've worked in had a compliance officer both on the client and customer side for this reason alone.

Even if you succeed in making past this barrier, the next barrier is finding clients as many are not willing to chance it on a new platform given unless they're a new practice themselves but often they want an organization that's already established. Though, given the overall satisfaction I've seen, it's ripe for the taking.

HIPAA and government regulatory compliance is the ghost that will next stop haunting you. That's why the business logic layer of so many applications is so obfuscated and runs extremely deep. Government compliance comes in waves of quarters with the first of the year being the biggest where everything has to be in place with a huge risk if there's a failure.

Though, it also goes without saying that healthcare IT is one of the largest targets. So there's that.

If your exit strategy is to get bought out, you're in luck as many of the big players readily consume any upcomers to maintain their death grip on the industry. They have virtually limitless capital to make it happen.

Despite having said this, it would be something worth contributing towards.

<comment><AUTHOR> Is it possible to reach out to you by email?</comment></comment>


Wireless lossless digital audio - <AUTHOR> http://www.latentlaboratories.com/blog/2014/10/11/12-wireless-lossless-digital-audio <comment><USER2> Awesome showcase of cross-technology signalling!

However, if you intend on getting one of these transmitter/receiver pairs, as one reviewer on Amazon noted[1], you'll likely run into WiFi interference problems.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/review/R13BSAFVTXO6H0/ref=cm_cr_rdp_pe...](http://www.amazon.com/review/R13BSAFVTXO6H0/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00ANYXY4W)

</comment><comment><USER3> So, I've recently been building DIY suitcase boomboxes (similar to [http://theboomcase.com](http://theboomcase.com)). This is a cool hack.

FYI you can also get bluetooth-to-RCA modules for not much more: [http://www.amazon.com/Fusion-MS-BT100-Bluetooth-Dongle- Marin...](http://www.amazon.com/Fusion-MS-BT100-Bluetooth-Dongle- Marine/dp/B00CUMQU50/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1421552046&sr=1-4&)

[http://www.parts-express.com/bluetooth-v40-audio-receiver- bo...](http://www.parts-express.com/bluetooth-v40-audio-receiver-board-aptx-- edr-12-vdc--320-351)

[http://www.parts-express.com/parts-express- bt-1a-bluetooth-r...](http://www.parts-express.com/parts-express- bt-1a-bluetooth-receiver-module-for-wireless-reception-of-bluetooth-audio-sig --320-353)

<comment><USER4> That doesn't solve the problems mentioned with Bluetooth though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm reminded of the RONJA project, which accomplishes something similar but on a much bigger scale (and level of expense), but which nevertheless proved quite promising:

[http://ronja.twibright.com/about.php](http://ronja.twibright.com/about.php)

As a side note, this project is interesting for another reason - its a textbook example of a failed open source project:

[http://p2pfoundation.net/Ronja](http://p2pfoundation.net/Ronja)

.. which didn't quite hit the sweet spot for mass adoption/production, because of a commercial fork of the project. Very interesting reading both from the perspective of transferring high-rate data over long distances on the cheap, technologically, and then not actually getting off the ground and doing it on a mass level, because: politics.

</comment><comment><USER6> Nice hack. Reminds me of the 1200-bps "modem" I built by hooking audio amps up to the Apple II's cassette port.

</comment><comment><USER7> S/PDIF has a parity bit, and the control messages use a CRC, but otherwise there is no error correction. I'm not really sure how "lossless" it is, but it's a pretty neat trick regardless.

<comment><USER8> 'Lossless' as used in the article refers to the audio compression scheme, not the integrity of the data link.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Well, if you're worried about transmitting lossless high quality audio, then that TV DAC is probably not the best. Yet it's probably just fine, where you won't notice any difference with those speakers, so you could achieve the same thing with a cheap FM transmitter and a cheap, used stereo.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure I'd agree with the comparison to the FM transmitter. That TV DAC claims to have a SNR of 90dB, which is well above the ~70 of FM radio, and comparable to "CD quality" (modulo marketing BS).

That being said, the benefits of 24 bits over 16 (which I'm not convinced of in any case) would certainly not survive that setup.

<comment><USER11> I was in the cable industry for over 20 years and am well acquainted with NTSC ... I suspect the audio quality at 6 MHz to be far better than an FM signal which is nominally 100KHz wide. The FM system is more resistant to amplitude changes (due to distance, etc) but can't encode as much data as the VSB-AM signal used by NTSC.

There are a few caveats and I haven't looked at the transmitter/receiver pair he purchased. If it's simply 6MHz of bandwidth transmitted for some specified distance, it will probably work. SPDIF is a digital signal and while it runs at 6Mbps, there are significant harmonics that can be passed through the fiber. Since we can assume the first harmonic will pass through the link, you can expect a signal which has more sinusoid pulses coming back out of the receiver. With a PLL to recover the clock and a good data recovery circuit added to the receiver, I'm guessing he could easily push this link to 50 to 100 feet.

As an aside, the NTSC signal is actually sending far more information as a whole and while it uses an AGC to overcome amplitude changes during transmission (the sync pulse is adjusted to be -0.3V), it also uses a comb filter to recover chroma information and the luminense is AM modulated above at the pixel clock rate. Your eyes are actually pretty low resolution compared to your ears and there are lots of ways to fool the brain's image processing (e.g. interlace makes a 30FPS system look more like 60FPS).

In any case, a very creative build!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I did that about a decade ago and got around 20 ft if range through two walls. Of course the transmitters were a bit more expensive back then. It worked well enough and I was enormously pleased with myself :-) but occasional glitches were very annoying, I never tracked down the source, reducing the distance didn't help. It was likely some sort of EMF interference (refrigeration/microwave/wifi etc).

</comment><comment><USER13> Apple AirPlay while lossless, is limited to 16/44.1. It's really a great option for wireless transmission and it uses wifi not bt. It's not 24khz so it will never be considered a pro audio solution but wireless and very functional, it is.

<comment><USER14> "limited" to 16bit 44.1khz? that's the sample rate and bit-depth you get on CDs. and it has been A/B tested to death - higher bit rates and sample rates have (at absolute most) little to no discernible impact on sound quality - AirPlay is more than enough.

"pro audio" uses 24 bits for sample storage, so that the noise floor remains inaudible after processing has happened to each track. 16 bit output is more than adequate for monitoring.

<comment><USER15> Pro audio uses high bit depth throughout the signal chain to simplify gain staging. 16 bit is just barely adequate for normalised signals, but it is inadequate for signals of unpredictable level as it leaves no room for error. Set your gain too high and you get clipping; Set it too low and you raise the noise floor. You never need 120+dB of dynamic range, but it is incredibly useful to have 30dB of headroom to cope with sudden increases in level _and_ an inaudible noise floor.

This extra headroom is critical for digital systems, as they have no headroom above 0dBFS - most analogue devices distort progressively (and often rather pleasantly) when pushed too hard, but digital clipping sounds horrible. Once you've run out of bits, all hell breaks loose.

16 bit is absolutely fine for domestic audio, but it is totally inadequate in a production environment. Without the extra dynamic range provided by 24 bit, you're stuck with some kind of compromise - either you risk overs, you raise your noise floor, or you have to stick limiters in front of all your ADCs and put up with your peaks getting squashed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> $12 for the wireless transmitter but the total for the other things needed to make that $12 transmitter work is $164. cool none the less.

<comment><USER17> Anyone who does pro audio usually has one or more S/PDIF interfaces sitting around gathering dust, it's still the default standard for stereo digital transmission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great, I'm going to test that :-) The delay with a bluetooth setup is very annoying...

</comment><comment><USER19> love it.</comment>


University professor lets students choose own grades for 'stress reduction' - <AUTHOR> http://www.campusreform.org/?ID=9551 <comment><USER2> The course syllabus cited here currently lists no such policy.

The ultimate source appears to be an alt-right news site that likens this "student appeasement" to appeasement of Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia. It then goes on to insinuate that campus welfare programmes are triggering the downfall of society.

I'm suspicious.

<comment><USER3> It's on the Internet Archive, sources don't get much more credible than that: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170807163817/http:/people.terr...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170807163817/http:/people.terry.uga.edu/rwatson/mist4610/)

<comment><USER2> It seems the text was revoked as it was in violation of university policy.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, but which university policy? There's no chapter and verse in the statement: [https://twitter.com/universityofga/status/894964656007196672](https://twitter.com/universityofga/status/894964656007196672)

I suspect the policy discussion is all bullshit and the only real policy violation was the unwritten policy of "avoid negative media attention".

<comment><USER2> I cannot prove the contents of an internal university policy, but I think you are trying to make excuses for a story you find exciting.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about "exciting"; I'm mostly annoyed that my own university seems to have no policy on grading. I grade papers every week, and the only guidance they can give is "be fair".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Would this put the university at risk of losing accreditation? From [0]:

        The school provides students with learning outcomes for each course and publishes in its catalog a written policy for assessing satisfactory student progress through the program. The school measures grades, projects, portfolios, externships, or other assessments against stated educational objectives that the school explains clearly to students. This policy must address performance standards and grading and be applied consistently.

[0]: [http://www.accsc.org/UploadedDocuments/1971/ACCSC%20Standard...](http://www.accsc.org/UploadedDocuments/1971/ACCSC%20Standards%20of%20Accreditation%20and%20Bylaws%20-%20070117%20final.pdf)

<comment><USER5> The Evergreen State College has been accredited for something close to half a century by the NWCCU.

<comment><USER6> If I understand correctly, Evergreen uses written evaluations rather than grades, and this has evidently worked well for students and faculty for a long time. But are students allowed to petition for changes in these evaluations?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Personally I don't care how a professor evaluates students. If the student feels like they are getting the experience necessary to learn something or perform in the real world then by all means chose your own grades and continue paying tuition.

What I suspect would happen though is that the student would not be prepared for the real world and any company would quickly realize this. This would lower the economic value of a degree from the institution and as such even students who do not chose their own grades (within the institution) could be negatively affected.

<comment><USER8> > even students who do not chose their own grades (within the institution) > could be negatively affected

That's right. Since there's no way to tell which ones chose their own grades, all the grades become worthless.

One of my high school teachers decided that everyone taking his class should get an A. The result was the students simply didn't respect him or the class.

<comment><USER9> > One of my high school teachers decided that everyone taking his class should > get an A. The result was the students simply didn't respect him or the > class.

How could anyone respect such class? To know that all your hard work means bupkis?

Sure, you could argue that learning is its own reward but really becomes meaningless when you and all the rest of the jack off losers who got an A (who didn't earn them) as well are considered the same by a post secondary institution considering you both for admission.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > Similarly, when it comes to "tests and exams" for Watson's "Data Management" > and "Energy Informatics" courses, all will be "open book and open notes"

This part I actually see as a good idea.

In the real world, you have access to Google, to books, to notes, to everything. I'd much rather see difficult tests that allow access to all the needed material than tests designed around the normal distribution of human memory, favoring those who can recall everything they've ever read.

<comment><USER11> Yes. Unless your future job or other expected application of the knowledge will require you to memorize and instantaneously recall the information, it makes no sense to test that way. An open book test still tests your general familiarity with and understanding of the material (without those things you won't be able to perform adequately within the time limit, due to not knowing where to start/what to look up/how to look it up).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men." -Phillip Brooks, echoed by JFK

<comment><USER13> See also:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nothing to see here. Just the US college system in a nutshell and an honest professor.

</comment><comment><USER15> This feels like fake news.

<comment><USER16> Archetypal indeed

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I had hoped this would be for a philosophy course where this kind of policy could be a discussion.

</comment><comment><USER18> Being a graduate of Georgia Southern University, which many UGA people view as a second tier school, I find it funny. Because if I learned anything at Georgia Southern, it was Relational Database Management systems do not care about my stress level.

</comment><comment><USER9> Gee, that's gonna motivate the people who genuinely work hard to earn good grades.

I'd be so crushed if I were attending this institution because the value of the degree I'm earning just plummeted.

</comment><comment><USER8> I just awarded myself a 4.0 from his class!

Edit: make that a 4.1!

</comment><comment><USER19> I agree with the comment suggesting this might not be real. But still, choosing my own grades sounds as stressful as hell.</comment>


Will AWS Lose Its Monopoly to Azure and Google Cloud? - <AUTHOR> https://analyticsdrift.com/will-aws-lose-its-monopoly-to-azure-and-google-cloud/ <comment><USER2> A company I am consulting for is currently solely on AWS. Google Cloud is getting them to switch solely to Google Cloud in exchange for free credits. Huge amount of time because of all the services they depend on.

<comment><USER3> Yes, GCP provides more credits. But, according to experts AWS has superior services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you think AWS is a monopoly you're seven years behind the game.

<comment><USER3> AWS still has the monoply if you go by the numbers. But, it might change in the coming years.</comment></comment>


Why Developers Shouldn't Abandon Microsoft Yet - <AUTHOR> http://www.programmableweb.com/news/why-developers-shouldnt-abandon-microsoft-yet/2015/07/08 <comment><USER2> Judging by the comments we get on ProgrammableWeb and that I get in inbox, it seems like a toss up with developers that were once loyal to Microsoft. Some are so die hard that if you even suggest the idea of a future whereby Microsoft has challenges, they'd just as soon slit your throat. Others are clearly spotting greener pastures elsewhere and have decided its time to move on. But, while Satya Nadella has the challenge of competing forces to reconcile (budget vs. the long game), he seems to be keeping the best interests of developers in mind, or at least trying to.</comment>