Mozilla rejects Google's WebP image format - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2011/05/mozilla-rejects-webp-image-format-google-adds-it-to-picasa.ars <comment><USER2> The one time that I've found a practical application for WebP was when a client needed to fit a roughly 1-megapixel photograph in less than 5 kbytes of storage space. JPEG starts falling off a cliff in terms of image quality once you push it to extreme compression factors (like down near quality-0), but WebP degrades very gracefully and relatively linearly.

The test images we put together turned into nearly unrecognizable blocky messes when compressed with JPEG, if they fit at all. The same test images, compressed with WebP, looked surprisingly decent and were quite usable.

That said, if our photo storage budget had been 10 kbytes instead of 5 kbytes, JPEG would have been fine for the project's purposes. It was that last little squeeze that really killed JPEG.

<comment><USER3> I remember a trick from the early web days of halving the resolution of a JPEG and then expanding the compressed result back to the original size. It'll be blocky, but much less blocky than just reducing the JPEG compression level for the same fize size reduction at the low end.

I believe WebM does (or at least the format can do) this automatically in low bitrate situations, without the external user needing to understand what's happening on the encode or decode end. I don't know if WebP inherits this trick and that explains it's low bitrate performance or if it's just better in other ways.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I find that Jeff Muizelaar's argument (not Arstechnica but what they talked about) very weak. He said WebP is not good because:

* Jpeg has some fancy features not seen in WebP (4:4:4 YCrCb, CMYK support, etc)

* Jpeg's compression is "good enough", and nobody cares about diskspace (cited Facebook 85%, Flickr 96% quality level)

* If WebP, why not Jpeg XR?

* WebP has no alpha channel support!

* There are "low hanging fruit" in Jpeg optimization such as progressive encoding.

Each of these points in isolation may be valid, but together they give me the feeling that he was arguing surgically. He said Jpeg is already very good, Jpeg is actually bad but there are low hanging fruit to improve it, and whether Jpeg is good or bad doesn't matter because nobody cares.

Personally I feel the "75% is already very good" argument to be the weakness. Facebook pictures are very poor compared to the original, and if diskspace is not a problem they would have increased it to 96% like Flickr.

I hope Mozilla supports the format and let the users decide.

<comment><USER5> I'd like to respond to your criticism of my argument but I'm having trouble understanding it.

As for my point about Facebook, I believe that they do care about the size of the images. However, the fact that they can be trivially and losslessly reduced in size suggests they just don't care enough to invest in optimizing them. Presumably, they have more important things to be working on. This suggests that they might also have more important things to work on than switching to webp.

<comment><USER4> My apology for not being clear. The five points are summary of what you said and I hope there is no confusion.

Right after the five points, I object to your "surgical arguments" which is along the line of "Jpeg is not too bad, and even if it is bad, there are ways to fix them". The truth is that Jpeg is actually a very poor format. Image artifact is very poor at low quality, and compression is very poor at high quality. While I don't know for sure whether WebP is really that much better at high quality (my limited experience showed that it is), I disagree with your arguments that there is "nothing wrong or unfixable about Jpeg". Our eyes are accustomed to poor web Jpeg quality but I think if something better comes along people will see it.

Also, given Opera and Chrome already support WebP, if Mozilla throws its weight behind it, I think Safari and IE will oblige in short order. The browser landscape is very different from the days of early PNG, and adoption _will_ be quick. Just look at how quickly Microsoft transforms into the "#1" advocate of HTML5.

<comment><USER5> My position isn't that there's "nothing wrong or unfixable about Jpeg" at all. There's lots wrong and fixable with JPEG. My problem with WebP is that it currently doesn't fix enough of the problems that JPEG has and that if we adopt it right now we might end up with another format that still has problems and will have to replace WebP with yet another format that fixes those problems later. JPEG took 6 years to standardize and has lasted for nearly 20, this suggests that we might not want to rush to commit to a 8 month old image format with a bitstream that was frozen the moment it became public.

As for support in other browsers, WebM is supported by Opera, Chrome and Firefox, plus it solves problem of being a royalty-free modern video codec and neither Safari nor IE have obliged in short order. What do you think that WebP brings that will make adoption happen faster than WebM?

<comment><USER4> I think let's just agree that Jpeg has a lot of problems and we'd like to seek the best replacement. Obviously high-compression rate is important or else everything should migrate to PNG, but the current Jpeg tradeoff between quality and size is not just not very good. Also interestingly, there seems to be a very wide spectrum of Jpeg lib quality from decent to very bad, and I found out about that while experimenting with WebP.

WebP is different from WebM in that there are IP issues. I think WebP is more like SVG/Canvas in that vendors don't see any "hurt" in supporting them once there is enough momentum behind. Of course, your point about making sure that we don't want to support any half-baked image format. I think WebP is beyond half-baked, and an initial pledge of experimental support -- instead of an outright rejection which seems to be tone -- doesn't hurt.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've yet to see a compelling argument for why I should want a browser with WebP support. Unless images start out lossless, and then are encoded into WebP directly, all I'll ever get out of WebP is smaller images that have more encoder artifacts - and I don't want that. I've got plenty of bandwidth; I'd rather download images in their original JPEG or PNG formats, especially if that means I can then open them up in any image editor or viewer on my computer, instead of having to install some special (and likely buggy) new WebP viewer/converter.

I think if WebP offered useful features JPEG doesn't, like alpha channel support or support for higher bit depths or useful new metadata, that'd at least justify it, and people would be creating new demos that showed off the technology. We saw this with the uptake of support for PNG after people started showing how PNG's support for alpha transparency made it possible to do interesting things that you couldn't with JPEG/GIF. WebP has no such compelling feature.

<comment><USER7> We don't have plenty of bandwidth with mobile applications. It's quite common for even basic sites to slow to a crawl on 3G. Even with LTE just around the corner, richer multimedia at higher resolutions will partially offset those gains.

Note that according to Nielsen's Law bandwidth growth rate, while sill exponential, is slower than Moore's Law (transistor count) and Kryder's Law (disk space), so we will be increasingly bandwidth limited as time continues [1]. For an example just look at SSD hard drives. To overcome bandwidth limitations the best SSDs now have whole ARM based computers in them to compress data on the fly, reorder operations on the fly, and run its own garbage collection programs just to save from going over the already very fast SATA bus which the latest drives fully saturate.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen%27s_Law#Contributions>

<comment><USER8> SATA is saturated because the increase in performance between platter disks and SSDs is a big discontinuity in what had been a relatively slow but steadily rising curve in the max sequential speed of a disk. Right now SATA is playing catchup, and has had two fairly major iterations in a much shorter cycle than what used to be the case. SATA 6gbps isn't saturated by even the Vertex 3.

Mobile bandwidth is a problem for completely different reasons - I wouldn't equate them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Google is essentially comparing WebP to JPEG right now like you would compare PDF to plain-text. They have a proof of concept ("look, the text appears on the screen!") that has a smaller file size but lacks any actual features. My concern is that once they implement all the features required of a mature image format (alpha, color modes, etc), size will be on par with another existing format.

<comment><USER10> My concern is that I don't see a roadmap for the missing features and there are existing next-gen codecs that already perform better than JPEG and do have those features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's important to note that this is a rejection of WebP, as it currently stands, not a forever rejection.

<comment><USER3> Google announced more features for WebP at Google I/O (including lossless and animation amongst others). I've not seen any Mozillan response to that as yet.

<comment><USER10> "Google said they'd give everyone ponies! Respond!!!"

Please point me to the roadmap document for WebP that shows which features Google intends to implement and the schedules (even rough guesses) for getting those features implemented. Without that, I don't see what there is to respond to.

<comment><USER3> This mailing list post (and the Google IO video linked within it) is probably the closest thing to a roadmap that exists, though it's vague on timelines:

[https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/group/webp- discu...](https://groups.google.com/a/webmproject.org/group/webp- discuss/msg/7e72105a4e1d582e)

I personally am relatively comfortable with Google's throw it at the wall and see what sticks approach. I understand that others aren't but hope that Mozilla engages constructively so that WebP improves in a measurable way even if you/they have no intention of adopting it.

The "we need it to sit in ISO committees for 10 years before we can even think about implementing it" approach reminds me too much of the bureaucratic process trolling that Microsoft are so good at. It's good trolling because it's also a natural response and vaguely professional sounding, while still probably being either non-productive or actively detrimental to the technical outcome.

Note that from my amateur readings (notably <http://sites.google.com/site/dlimagecomp/ms-ssim-results>) JPEG-XR seems to be suffering from the exact problems that WebP is alleged to have (i.e. being designed for PSNR to the point that it's actually worse than venerable JPEG in SSIM and subjective tests). JPEG-2000 seems to have the same issue to a lesser degree. If Mozilla can bring some automated metrics to bear on this (and any parallel JPEG improvements), and metrics seems to be one of your/their strengths, then I'd be very happy, since it seems the JPEG-XR and 2000 teams may have been misled by their own metrics. Having multiple eyes on the problem, particularly those looking to find fault from the outside, would be great regardless of whether the result is WebP being improved or scrapped.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> WebP should implement alpha transparency. That was in their promise but they never did it. That'd make it a jpeg-killer for me. A lossy image format that supports alpha transparency would be so great.

<comment><USER13> Alpha support is in the repo, marked as experimental: <http://review.webmproject.org/gitweb?p=libwebp.git>.

<comment><USER12> Thanks! I'll give it a try.

IMO the WebP project should focus more on this. It's a big thing, also on the web, to have a compact image format that supports partial transparency.

It blows away "simply using less bandwidth for photos" as an advantage, as it makes entirely new things possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Striving for a lower file size is inherently a good thing, but as disk space is becoming cheaper and cheaper and it's not as important anymore. Judging from the comparison gallery at <http://code.google.com/speed/webp/gallery.html>, it's not very impressing. The result is much more blocky and there is significant loss in detail in detail-concentrated areas.

Case in point: the first image of a landscape has two major noticeable artifacts: the shadow of the mountain (mid-right) reveals the blocky compression of WebP. Second, the compression algorithm tends to smooth out a lot of detail. Observe how the vegetation gets mushed out. The clouds as well (mostly on the top left).

Great for video, not so much for images (from the gallery above anyway). I would like to see a better comparison with WebP vs JPEG but compressed to about the same file size and with a RAW source (to remove any compression bias).

</comment><comment><USER15> Why not JPEG XR? It supports transparency, lossy and lossless compression, 16 bit channels, color management and has better compression.

Is it really just because it was made by Microsoft?

<comment><USER3> You mention that it has better compression, which Microsoft certainly claims for it, but can you find any comparison that shows XR as better than standard JPEG when measured with SSIM rather than PSNR? Or subjective human tests[1]? There's quite a few showing it losing to JPEG. Surely they can't all have messed up their testing methodology, though creating and standardising a purpose built photo codec in 2009 that's worse in quality at many common rates than JPEG seems somewhat unbelievable too.

1: "the visual performance of HDPhoto showed notable deficits, both in subjective and objective tests."

from _Visual Quality Improvement Techniques of HDPhoto/JPEG-XR_ by T Richter

<http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=04712398>

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is "WONFTIX" a quirky Mozilla thing, or a typo of "WONTFIX"?

<comment><USER17> A typo.</comment></comment>


Gh-ost: GitHub's online schema migration tool for MySQL - <AUTHOR> http://githubengineering.com/gh-ost-github-s-online-migration-tool-for-mysql/ <comment><USER2> This is neatly done. Thanks to Github for open sourcing this.

<comment><USER3> A very impressive (ab)use of MySQL binlogs.

There is a lot to criticize about MySQL, but the master/slave (binlog) architecture is incredibly flexible and with RBR it's even consistent ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So this is cool...

But if you aren't github-sized try pt-online-schema-change for any and all schema changes to production.

I suspect you'll love it as much as I do.

<comment><USER5> If you love pt-online-schema-change, you may want to check out Square's tooling around it: [https://github.com/square/shift](https://github.com/square/shift)

[https://corner.squareup.com/2016/04/shift.html](https://corner.squareup.com/2016/04/shift.html)

It provides a job running service, a UI for setting up and monitoring migrations, and an authorization/peer review flow for them.

Maybe it could add support for gh-ost in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The README on github has a better explanation of how it works, and as I suspected, this could also be achieved with Tungsten Replicator.

Good job though. Anything that helps people move away from Percona and their "tooling" is a plus to me.

<comment><USER7> Why do you think people should move away from Percona?

<comment><USER6> Percona are flogging a dead horse called "Oracle" while at the same time basically being an Oracle subsidiary without being Oracle, but it's basically Oracle wrapped in scary perl scripts with backported features from better forks.

If you were to meet me in person I would just say "Fuck Percona/Oracle and their shitty shit".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> does anyone know if this supports RBR with --binlog-row-image=minimal? I could only find mention of wanting RBR, no hints about whether it can handle minimal format

</comment><comment><USER9> given that this needs access to the binary log, am I out of luck if I want to use this with amazon rds? (I don't see a way to see/access the binlog at rds)

<comment><USER10> You can definitely access the binary log on RDS: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_L...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_LogAccess.Concepts.MySQL.html#USER_LogAccess.MySQL.Binarylog)

<comment><USER9> thank you - still not sure if this tool could use it as it needs (perhaps 'streaming' the binlog?). I'm wrestling with making changes on a large RDS table, but I also don't actually have total permission on the account as it belongs to a client so I have to keep trying things, then seeing what breaks, then asking for a change, then trying again.

<comment><USER10> Apparently gh-ost won't work, but there are other tools that work fine on RDS: I've been using [https://github.com/soundcloud/lhm](https://github.com/soundcloud/lhm) On some fairly large tables (30 million + rows) without any problems

<comment><USER9> thanks - will look at this if I can't get the pt stuff working (already have used that in the past, so would rather keep new tools to minimum). This particular table is ... 200 million rows, give or take, and is a bugger to deal with).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pretty surprised that Github is not using Ruby for this project.

<comment><USER12> They have been using Go for a few other projects such as \- git-lfs ( [https://github.com/github/git-lfs](https://github.com/github/git-lfs) ) \- hub ( [https://github.com/github/hub](https://github.com/github/hub) ) etc

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So much work where there are many other solutions out there that don't have that limitation : PostgreSQL, several NoSQL databases...

<comment><USER14> While MySQL isn't the best db, and does have many flaws, it's asinine to say that other solutions are wholly better. Everything has a set of limitations, so just because something like Postgres doesn't have this specific limitation doesn't mean it doesn't have others. It also may be more worth it to work around the limitations of MySQL than to migrate all data to another database.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly this.</comment></comment></comment>


Adobe CTO on MacBook Air, HTML5: Flash Battery Problems a "False Argument" - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/1700949/adobe-on-macbook-air-html5-flash-battery-problems-a-false-argument

<comment><USER2> Why do we never see any comments from Adobe on why the OS X Flash Player sucks such major ass?

And really, the CTO of Adobe is using online ads as part of his example? Who gives a shit about Flash ads? That's one of the most annoying uses of Flash ever, and has given rise to dozens of Flash-block style browser plugins.

I also rarely see concrete examples of highly valuable Flash apps (and there are some out there). Instead it's always this vague allusion to scores of web content, and the idea that Apple users are left weeping in the corner because they can't see a Flash ad from pizza hut, or shoot a zombie in an online game.

While I have no inside info, at this point I'd wager a pretty significant sum that all the whining in the world from Adobe isn't going to change Apple's course on this. How about Adobe steps up and publicly agrees to either:

A) Announce that a Flash player that doesn't eat batteries like Oprah eats bon-bons will be available for OS X in the next 2 months

      or

B) Provide definitive proof that some mistake Apple made with OS X prevents Adobe from releasing a well behaved Flash player.

In the mean time, I don't miss Flash on my iPhone, my iPad or my MBP. I've never once said "shit, I need to view this site on my HTC Incredible or my PC so I can bask in all the glorious Flash content".

<comment><USER3> Have you seen this one? <http://www.kaourantin.net/2010/02/core- animation.html>

<comment><USER2> No, I hadn't. Thanks for posting it.</comment></comment></comment>


In crisis-hit Venezuela young women seek sterilization - <AUTHOR> https://widerimage.reuters.com/story/in-crisis-hit-venezuela-young-women-seek-sterilization <comment><USER2> Sad to read that they don't really have any non-permanent options...

<comment><USER3> The article says that IUDs are more accessible in Venezuela than the pill or condoms...</comment></comment>


From PS4 to 1.44 MB Floppy: Porting Retro City Rampage to MS-DOS [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/275482/From_PS4_to_144_MB_floppy_Porting_Retro_City_Rampage_to_MSDOS.php <comment><USER2> There's also a fascinating video of him getting the core of the game to run on NES spec constraints (think 8-bit CPU, 10KB of RAM):

[https://youtu.be/Hvx4xXhZMrU](https://youtu.be/Hvx4xXhZMrU) (~11 mins)

It offers insight into how old-school game developers worked within the limitations of the hardware they designed for.

</comment><comment><USER3> Brian Provinciano is a coding machine. Addicted to running things on constrained environments.

<comment><USER4> Wow, there's a name I haven't seen for awhile. He made an entire suite of apps for editing or rolling your own Sierra adventure games about 15 years ago. He got quite mad at my "helpful" coding suggestions back in the day... sorry, I was 12 O_O

<comment><USER5> Please tell me you have the original suggestions :D

<comment><USER4> I just had a look and the mega-tokyo.com forum seems to be gone forever. Basically someone asked for help about a syntax error, and I said something like 'if you get a "no closing brace error" just insert right curly braces at the very end if your code until it compiles.'

I think I even included a "code sample" }}}}}}}}}}. Brian did not like that at all!!

Once my 12 year old hubris ran out, I gave up on trying to make "AAA" games by myself :-)

/edit here is my old shame. So much cringe, but I was a kid so whatever. [http://l-s-d_studios.tripod.com](http://l-s-d_studios.tripod.com)

<comment><USER6> Wow Tripod still exists _and_ they still have your website contents? Impressive.

Also, love that "Sign my guestbook"/"View my guestbook", brings back old- internet memories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love writing code for old PCs. A couple of years ago i wrote a 3D maze engine in C that i wanted to run in the original IBM PC i was building (here is a video from running on a 286 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfbQIvRYph4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfbQIvRYph4) with turbo turned off, i also managed to make it run in the IBM PC but that was some months later after i built it and didn't took a video). The renderer basically rasterizes sideways trapezoids in a column edge (top bottom) array and then draws it (the height also acts as an one dimensional depth buffer). It took me a while to make it run in interactive speeds, originally needing several seconds to draw each frame. I tried a bunch of methods and i ended up generating machine code for drawing 4 columns (CGA packs 4 pixels in one byte) for different heights in one go with a small post step to fix (clear/draw) the few individual pixels for each column in the batch and keeping the height and colors for the previous frame so that only changed columns are being drawn. I wanted to make some sort of turn-based dungeon crawler, although it would be a sci-fi one set on the moon :-P. I moved since then and my IBM PC is still in boxes since i do not have much space available (and i might move again soon so i don't want to unbox it because i had some professionals package it to avoid any damages).

I also made a small "hunt the wumpus"-ish game for CGA too [http://runtimeterror.com/games/cgacave/](http://runtimeterror.com/games/cgacave/) \- this time the shots are from my IBM PC and not the 286. Also as a bonus a small program i wrote in Delphi 1.0 in Windows 3.1 to create the tiles :-). I've actually done a bunch of stuff in Delphi 1.0 because is a nice middle road between retro and modern (considering that i do a lot of "serious" stuff in Lazarus anyway). Last year i wrote a 3D editor for Windows 3.1 on it ([http://i.imgur.com/eG34QXV.png](http://i.imgur.com/eG34QXV.png) and [http://i.imgur.com/BZz6f9l.png](http://i.imgur.com/BZz6f9l.png) the second one took a 486 laptop i have here some hours to render :-P).

I have a bunch of other stuff on my YouTube channel, most are random things i'm working on but i also have a few retrocoding works like another 3D maze in VB1 [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxhXjkogahs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxhXjkogahs) (i extended that a bit later [http://imgur.com/gJXwCoj](http://imgur.com/gJXwCoj) but got bored after a while) and an ultima-like engine [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRjdbUjZX0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRjdbUjZX0) (this one has its own scripting language, image editor and map editor too - you can see them here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W70_G9LeByE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W70_G9LeByE)) which i've managed to run in my 286 too with an IBM CGA monitor (the 286 has an EGA compatible graphic card with a CGA compatibility mode... sadly it is 16bit ISA and it doesn't work on the IBM PC because i'd like to have an IBM EGA card - and an IBM EGA monitor, but those are _very_ rare and even more expensive).

Bonus photos from my IBM PC (without the monitor, i took those before i finished building it):

[http://i.imgur.com/506cuFP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/506cuFP.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/4tEvp24.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4tEvp24.jpg)

[http://i.imgur.com/8bz9IdR.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/8bz9IdR.jpg)

Also i have and collect a bunch of old development software (mainly from ebay), including Borland C++ 5, C++ Builder 1, Visual Basic 4, Visual Basic 5, Klik&Play (including the manual), Delphi 2, JBuilder and some other things i forget. I usually image those to play around in VMs and keep the disks on my shelf.

Interestingly enough i found a couple of those actually useful (specifically Borland C++ 5 and C++ Builder) and i'm now using for beyond just playing around (mainly Borland C++ 5 because the IDE is lightning fast for compiling C code). Also i wrote a few patches for old games with C++ Builder which made it deal because of the small executable size and being able to design the window visually :-).

<comment><USER8> Borland used to make some fantastic IDEs. For a long time I would always lean towards Borland over Microsoft.

You've inspired me to pick up Turbo Pascal again and write some DOS software just for fun.

<comment><USER9> > For a long time I would always lean towards Borland over Microsoft.

Me too, I only switched after they lost many of their key developers like Anders, sold their developer division and went enterprise.

Turbo Vision, Object Windows Library and Visual Components Library were all way better than MFC ever was.

And of course, Turbo Pascal 6.0 and 7 on MS-DOS were already great Pascal dialects. Oh well....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd love to see this rewritten in C++ using that transpiler written for that talk at the last CppCon.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkNBP00wJE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBkNBP00wJE)

<comment><USER11> I was trying to figure out which transpiler he was using, but I wasn't successful. I remember hearing about it on HN but can't remember the name!

</comment></comment><comment> panda-panda Really great to see someone doing this. Games developers often fail to consider performance constraints.

<comment><USER12> um.. thats like 50% of game programming? (esp on consoles)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Lots of knowledge on this video, amazing work! wish i had the time to pursue these kind of projects.

</comment><comment><USER14> From PS4 to PS/2

</comment><comment><USER15> If only the game was fun :P</comment>


Samsung vs. Apple – SCOTUS Oral Argument Transcript [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2016/15-777_1b82.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> There is also a good summary from NPR

[http://www.npr.org/2016/10/11/497195035/whats-in-a- design-a-...](http://www.npr.org/2016/10/11/497195035/whats-in-a-design-a- smartphone-battle-in-the-highest-court)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [https://www.cnet.com/news/supreme-court-grills-apple-v- samsu...](https://www.cnet.com/news/supreme-court-grills-apple-v-samsung-on- how-jurors-would-decide-damages/)

The layman version of the transcript</comment>


Ask HN: Critique this idea - <AUTHOR>

(first up your welcome to share or create this idea if you really want to :))
Anyway, I had this idea when talking about a scheme to "reward" people for contributions to an FOSS project. Actually paying people is a bit against the grain (and most FOSS has no financial backing anyway) but it seemed like a good suggestion to have a method to personally reward someone in a serious way. This was also prompted somewhat by a recent link to http://fairsoftware, who's model I quite like :)
So here's the idea. A combination of Twollars and Fairsoftware (and a bit of Tipjoy in there too).
You register your project and get X "shares". As people contribute to the project they can be awarded some of the shares (perhaps there could be SCM integration to give bit-y rewards to lines commited, or perhaps there could be a crowd sourced vote system to decide how much a contribution is "worth" plus, ofc, the ability just to gift shares as and when). These shares have NO money worth - until someone donates to the project.
At which point the owner can set aside a percentage (perhaps that he/she can limit to a certain total amount) for running costs (servers etc.). The rest gets spread out amongst the "share holders".
Instead of actually payiong out the money each holder can select a charity (from a list, or eventually maybe their own) to donate their share too. Their user page shows off how much they have "raised" for the charity.
The contributors get a meaningful reward for their work The FOSS project gets linked to charity work (always good for the image :)) The donators know their money went to worthwhile places (whilst still showing appreciation to the project) The project owner still gets running costs
Thoughts? Is this just an over complicated idea or does it have merit? Are there any FOSS contributors, donators or "owners" out there who might have interest in such a setup?
Go! <comment><USER2> People who previously had no problem working on the project without direct compensation will now feel undervalued if they don't get shares, but other people do.

<comment><USER3> So it could work for new projects?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think you'd need to define the value of contributions before you ever begin. Otherwise, time will be spent bickering of the value of work, and not actually doing the work.

<comment><USER5> True. Also, having quantified the value of each contribution might actually create a disincentive for joining the project: that 5-line patch that was going to be my very first contribution is now officially worth nothing, so why submit it? By laying a focus on the top contributors instead of the new/potential ones, this undermines the crucial ability of F/OSS projects to motivate people to _gradually_ extend their involvement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeh sold. :) The embryo for this grew out of wanting to try and make those 5 patch contributions worth something tangible and to encourage them... sadly it seems the idea just got lost along the way and does the opposite.

Back to the drawing board :D

<comment><USER6> Maybe you could weight contributions differently, depending on what kind of behavior you want to encourage? For example you could make first contributions worth double, or have first contributions gain a bonus of x shares, which they can cash in/withdraw after their 5th/nth contribution, or something?

<comment><USER7> That encourages new-account spam. Maybe you could make them wait, like a "signing bonus", for a month? or until their third contribution?

<comment><USER6> Yes, that's what I suggested, actually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The implication that F/OSS donations should go to charity might not sit too well with a lot of people. They're developing software in their own time and giving it away for free - why do they now have to channel money to charity to improve their 'image'? Having some donations every now and then might be a nice thing, especially if you're the Mozilla foundation.

The same thing might even happen to the user base: the software is still free, but now you get a guilt thing for not having donated to Oxfam.

Weird psychology at work here, I'd guess.

<comment><AUTHOR> The charity inspiration comes from 3 main things. Firstly that it makes the money distribution easier and would hopefully cut down a bit on arguments over who gets what. Secondly a lot of FOSS projects _do_ support a charity with donations - we might not be talking Oxfam here, what about software related ones, like a Linux PC for every child? etc. Thirdly it means people know where the donations go - rather than to all sorts of contributors it is going to a recognisable charity :)

That said perhaps there are other avenues: the main point is to not give cash out to contributors because that defeats the object somewhat (in my eyes :D). For example it could go into some sort of software related fund (perhaps like a google summer of code type fund) etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here is an idea for you, I won't go into criticizing your idea. If I knew what will work out, or for that matter ANY of the people here, we would be doing it. We can spend hours and hours talking about the idea, telling you the problems why it wouldn't work, but still be way off course of the reality. Recently I spoke with my ex boss who has been in IT for so long, now retired and he said, quoted "If someone asked me back then if Facebook would have worked out, I'd say no chance."

I think, we entrepreneurs shape the world around us to tune into new ideas. Persistence and continuous mutation/evolution showed to work for life, why not business too? Whenever someone asks a question here on HN, you get 90% of critiques and ways of discouraging. I say screw them. The spirit of real hackers and entrepreneurs is to just do it, be perseverant and have no fear of failing, but if it is to happen, fail fast and learn from it for the next iteration. No other can influence the success or failure than the entrepreneur himself, so I think you should hear the tone of only those that give you suggestions which way to go. I am sure you know what the problems are.

My suggestion. Build a prototype, use something that you can build it very quickly e.g. Rails and then hear out what the people are saying about it. Then modify it day by day from what you hear, and I guarantee you that you will eventually end up with something great. Your idea might be brilliant or stupid, but it is not on us to judge. Also, when you get discouraged, remember it is not on you either to judge.

I personally believe that is indeed needed and a great thing and has been going through my mind by reading a bunch of stuff. If I can somehow help, I'm in. I recommend you read this, that you would help solve:

[http://www.strategy- business.com/press/enewsarticle/enews053...](http://www.strategy- business.com/press/enewsarticle/enews053107?pg=all)

Cheers!

Dejan/Aleveo.com

</comment><comment><USER9> I'm one of the founders of FairSoftware and I have been thinking about the problem you describe for 3 years now...

You are on the right track, but I would suggest some tweaks.

1\. Why does FOSS have to be given away for free? The freedom that RMS talks about is in accessing the source code and improving it. In other words, if you made donations to FOSS mandatory, you'd still have "libre" software, but not "free" (beer) anymore. Is that too shocking a concept?

This could make the amount of money flowing in significant enough that developers could start abandoning their day job and actually work full-time on FOSS. Today, if you look at who significantly contributes to FOSS, apart from a few exceptions, they are all somehow on the payroll of IBM, Sun, Intel or Google. That's not freedom.

2\. In our implementation of FairSoftware, we used the paradigm of a corporation, where everyone is a shareholder and decides on future share allocation. To match better a FOSS implementation, I would recommend some sort of karma, where everyone can upvote contributions they like. In large, unstructured groups, it might work better. If I like what you do, I give you a +1. Think of it like HackerNews voting, if you will. This is somewhat subject to gaming, but nothing that can't be fixed.

It would provide a model for allocating the shares that is more in line, I think, with the FOSS community.

Finally, I disagree with the statements that if you start compensating people for contributions to FOSS in any way, you will pollute the well. If implemented improperly, it's true that you can alienate the volunteers. That's why I think the flexible karma approach would fit much better. You can receive karma without having to ask. A good leader will make sure that newcomers are welcome and give them some thank-you points as soon as they help.

</comment><comment><USER10> What happens to shares when people stop contributing? Are they recycled? If not then how do you deal with the possible eventuality that there will be no more shares to award? Printing more on the other hand means this would be a currency, not shares.

On a related note the Capitol Hill Baby-sitting Co-op paper is well worth reading. This has been posted before, but in case you missed it: <http://ideas.repec.org/p/kud/kuiedp/0335.html>

</comment><comment><USER11> Sounds complicated (transaction costs!) and people don't donate much to open source projects in any case.

I'll add: how to fund open source projects is a Difficult Problem. A while ago, there was a great mailing list called FSB (free software business), with a lot of illustrious folks. They never really came to any definite conclusions other than "it's difficult".

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking about that.

Transaction costs (I assume you mean payout to the charity) weould be easy because you just store up the charity donations from everywhere till it reaches a reasonable value ($15 perhaps, or more) then payout costs are minimised.

As to donations - I had a big discussion about that last night. In the end we figured 3 things. Firstly collecting donations is a pain to handle so a lot of people dont bother (especially as there is little worth to them). Secondly there is no culture to donate even though many people probably _would_ if it was easy and they could do it super cheap: a known central service to handle donations wold be recognisable and trusted. Thirdly as a portion of the beneficiary would go to charities and you could actually see that happening it might encourage more people to donate.

In terms of complexity: I think it just sounds more complex than it is. Really it IS just Twollars with a bit more on top.

Does that seem like a reasonable assessment?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you're at all familiar with how shares are traditionally divided in a business, then you'll realize this is no trivial matter. If you want to think of an individual operating agreement or charter as an "implementation," then the complex negotiations, armies of lawyers, rounds of iterations, and continuing amendments to these documents are a lot like a huge enterprise app.

What happens when we decide, like businesses, that we need new classes of shares? Who gets paid first? Who has "voting rights"? What's the process to to pursue remedies if you feel you've been cheated, or that the "board" (project owner and his lackeys) has operated in bad faith to defraud share holders?

This is a complex issue even before you hit the psychological problems that others have already raised.

What I'm saying is that shares can't really divided in a trivial, algorithmic way. I like the idea in theory, but I think it's impossible to correctly implement.

<comment><AUTHOR> Actually I wasnt thinking anything like as complicated :)

The divison would be based on awarded "shares" - so we're not talking stock exchange type shares (dont worry, I play the markets :) Im genned on realistic shares) but "share of the donation"

After I posted the original message I realised it was misworded. The project doesnt get X shares to divvy up. Rather share count is "infinite" and the project owner hands them out (either by automated means or manually) to others. So if 10 people contribute and each gets 1 share they recieve 1/10th of the donation pot (after costs etc.).

If the owner wants a "share" they must give themselves some ;)

<comment><USER12> What you were thinking and what the system would eventually become are two different things. I'm saying the inevitable consequence of a system like that would be the scenario I described.

Do you think company stocks started out that complex? No, they started out as an intuitive way to divide the profits of a business operated by multiple people, just like your intuitive way of dividing profits from a project built by multiple people.

Edge cases presented themselves, conflicts arose, opportunities for individuals to maximize profit came to light, and thus was our current system grown.

<comment><AUTHOR> ok fair points; I assumed you were pointing out flawqs based on the model I mis-represented.

Im not 100% sure I agree the problem would be as dramatic/bad as your presenting though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the money isn't the motivator (gets donated anyway) you could use a virtual currency. "karma" or something similar. You might monitor svn/git activity and create a community where people could rate each others commits and give each other some "karma" that way (hacker news with code submits instead of news, sort of).

</comment><comment><USER14> This proposal is not too dissimilar to the ideas behind P-BOS (<http://lmframework.com/page.php?id=pbos>)

P-BOS works best when the modules are small, and hence breaking down individual contributions within a given module does not get too messy.

As to the 'morality' of charging for FOSS, the issue can easily be sidestepped by giving developers complete control of the licensing and payment terms for their modules.

For example, a given module (component) could be free for everyone, or just non-commercial users. Developers should also be similarly free to route a certain percentage (0-100) to charity. The key point is to leave all the key decisions to individual developers.

If anybody wants to know more about P-BOS, feel free to drop me a line: david- lmframework-com

</comment><comment><USER15> I just wrote some code that the community recognizes as useful and that thousands of businesses incorporate into their product or process. Thanks for the twollar.

</comment><comment><USER16> Joel Spolsky talks about this over and over on the Stack Overflow podcast. People who are willing to do something for free !== People who are willing to do something for small bits of money or quantified reward.

It's possible that there is incentive to be had in the 'common goal'; "The Foo Project's Charity is the FSF; If we squash all the bugs by Labor Day, 80% of donations will go to the FSF. Otherwise, 50%"

<comment><AUTHOR> I happen to disagree with Joel on that one - in particular circumstances :) also the aim might be to encourage those who tend not to do "something for nothing" to contribute :)

(The common goal thing is quite good....)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think - like most ideas based around rewards the value will be seen in it's worth.

As a silly example; 1000 Twitter followers would not have been valuable in 2006, but in 2009 it holds a value. It's the same with HN ratings.

An issue there is that new users will feel "at the bottom of the pile", and possibly less likely to "rise up the ranks". At least once a project gets going.

</comment><comment><USER18> Once you put a dollar amount on work you have done, and then hand it over to someone else you run into a can of worms regarding taxes. Uncle Sam will want a share, and will eventually get it.

<comment><AUTHOR> hence the donations model :) the contributor gets no cash-in-hand, so taxes aren't a problem (just our taxes for donating to charities etc.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> may be you can use ohloh.net to see individual contributions on a project and derive some calculations based on that. or may be you can even link the "donor concept" into it. ?

</comment><comment><USER20> Seems like donations could be put to better use than just being tunneled into another organization under a different name.</comment>


Baidu v. Register.com suit claims registrar negligence allowed hacker access - <AUTHOR> http://www.law.com/jsp/lawtechnologynews/PubArticleLTN.jsp?id=1202463957587&NY_Federal_Court_to_Hear_Negligence_Suit_Against_Domain_Name_Service

<comment><USER2> I believe Baidu is on the right here. There was no easy way they could've prevented social engineering on tech support that isn't theirs.</comment>


1960s Kodachrome photos of London's East End - <AUTHOR> https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/pictures-london-east-end-1960s-color <comment><USER2> Cripes, that introduction is laying it on a bit thick:

> "…the photographer knows he's getting the last shots of those wharves, > steamers and warehouses before they are replaced by imagined hotels and > marinas, the proto-blueprint for the new world dominated by leisure, tourism > and heritage replicas. These post-dockland utopias are soon to be upgraded > into big business steel and glass, craven monuments of late capitalism. The > future was in a distant haze, just around the corner."

These photos should remind us that East London has always been changing, that progress is real but slow. Those "craven monuments of late capitalism" are every bit as utopian in their own way as the blocks being built in these photos, and in my experience much nicer places to live and work.

<comment><USER3> And large parts of those photos can be seen still today.

Biggest differences I noticed:

1\. You won't see those cars obviously 2\. Shop fronts have changed styles. More modern branding. More large chains

But if anything I was surprised by familiar they look. I grew up in London in the 70s and 80s and I remember scenes almost identical to those. And even still you can find large parts of London that resemble that.

<comment><USER4> Even the very same street on one of the photos: [https://goo.gl/maps/G3HRFX3SAgQ2](https://goo.gl/maps/G3HRFX3SAgQ2)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
      Kodachrome
      They give us those nice bright colors
      They give us the greens of summers
      Makes you think all the world's a sunny day
      I got a Nikon camera
      I love to take a photograph
      So mama don't take my Kodachrome away

Those are some nice pictures. I lack the geographical and cultural context to really appreciate them though. What I know about the East End comes third- hand.

<comment><USER6> Well, working in the City and the Wharf and a bit out onto the Isle of Dogs over the last ~15Y I think that I recognise some of those places at little! Goodness!

<comment><USER7> A 'then and now' side by side would a nice update to this set, if someone had the time to do it.

<comment><USER8> Not specifically 'then and now', but Chris Dorley-Brown has some great modern shots of the area:

[http://chris3.500px.com/](http://chris3.500px.com/)

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

<comment><USER9> lovely people details in those photos - always people going this way and that but then there's a guy carrying a kids bike, a guy riding a lawnmower etc....

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The Stifford estate photo is my favorite. The 'new' brutalist architecture of social housing marching in over the old pre war landscape. It's hard to imagine the utopia it was supposed to represent. Roll forwards 20 years those sorts of buildings represented drugs crime and poverty.

<comment><USER11> Brutalist developments in London are weirdly polarised. Either they've been torn down because of chronic social problems like the Heygate estate, or they're Grade II listed and massively desirable like Trellick Tower, the Barbican or Rowley Way.

<comment><USER12> The Heygate estate is an interesting point. I used to live in the foursquares, a smaller equally deprived estate just to the east.

At the time of the "regeneration" (2000s) it was a toss up between a number of estates and the heygate. However because of its size and location the heygate was chosen

My estate was turned around, and I was lucky enough to live _in_ the estate, not on it. I got to know some of the original residents(and still do).

There are two important things to note, Council housing is almost exclusively of a very high standard (bigger than new builds by ~10+ sqm) Compared to the slums described so vividly in the road to wigan pier, a paradise. (running toilets, windows, heating plaster, enough bedrooms for each kid)

Until a rule change in the late 70s, you had to have a job to be eligible for council housing. There were (and still are, more or less) residents associations that look after the running of the estate. Caretakers lived on site, towers had 24 hour concierges, and ne'dowells were evicted.

However, that was all taken away in favour of dumping problem families, outsourcing cleaning and upkeep (In some cases, one cleaner 2 hours a day costs something line £80k annually.)

In short, there is nothing wrong with the estate fabric (of the surviving estates) but how they are looked after, and who lives there. Grenfell is a shining example, a solid block that was subdivided and halfarsedly put in new gas mains.

<comment><USER13> _My estate was turned around, and I was lucky enough to live in the estate, not on it. I got to know some of the original residents(and still do)._

Asking as someone mostly ignorant of estate housing: what does this distinction imply/represent?

<comment><USER12> By living _in_ the estate, I mean I turned up to the residents meetings, and participated in the governence of the estate. Council housing has been sold off, and represents a cheap, profitable rental income. Because of the high rate of change, they are socially and funtionally seperated from either leaseholders or council tenants.

When it came to regeneration/improvements, we were the one consulted, not the private renters.

If I missunderstood your question, here is some waffle:

An estate is a logical collection of dwellings, normally flats (but can be houses) that were commissioned and built by local governement for the express purpose of housing the employed working classes.

for example my estate was made up of four blocks of about 180 flats. Each block encloses a shared garden, with childrens play equipment.

as to what they look like:

[https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/the- brandon...](https://municipaldreams.wordpress.com/2015/12/22/the-brandon- estate-southwark-part-two/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Kodachrome is stable as long as it's in darkness. Light fades them pretty quickly.

Back in the day originals would be on Kodachrome, from which copies would be made on Ektachrome for projection in slide displays or an inter-negative on Kodacolor for enlarging.

</comment><comment><USER15> There are a few additional photos in this article: [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13/east- end-in-colour-london-david-granick)

</comment><comment><USER16> I love looking at the street views with the little shops and taverns. Its an interesting reminder of the times when there wasn't an Amazon or Costco or a myriad number of cookie cutter bars and restaurants. Of course, these are the places that drove them out of business for good, if not for better.

<comment><USER17> In fact I find the most mundane pictures of street life to be the most interesting for anything older than 30y old. But those are the pictures taken today that people today would dismiss as uninteresting when it is really what will amuse them the most in 30 years.

<comment><USER18> I wonder how accessible all the photos on Instagram and Twitter will be in 30 years' time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I attempted to locate the photos in this set on streetview. Some were easier than others.

In the same order:

Whitechapel Road [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0668225,3a...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0668225,3a,75y,17.4h,87.7t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m4!1s74ir4lgSyHqvhdEMTMXSkw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x48761ccb0a8b7f6d:0x9684fb5c0030a5b7!8m2!3d51.5175392!4d-0.0667101)

Spitalsfield Market [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0773324,3a,75y,74....](https://email@example.com,-0.0773324,3a,75y,74.08h,65.17t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sjMBZS1VjhIBUX4pXsBCiJw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

Belhaven Street (no longer exists, got as close as I could) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0380893,3a,75y,27....](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0380893,3a,75y,27.65h,96.46t/data=!3m9!1e1!3m7!1sCOIexeZKAYrKE8J_BZHGHw!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i29)

Stifford Estate (demolished) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0497713,3a,75y,285...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0497713,3a,75y,285.91h,86.01t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sdtjHoFQt5HHuo4ufaEBfJg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

Mile End Road [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0367707,3a,7...](https://email@example.com,-0.0367707,3a,75y,6.77h,93.51t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sy2m8kAtBnzHdEU2Ge9Zb4g!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x48761d2fee6bccd7:0x3a3ec53002ba66a3!8m2!3d51.5245299!4d-0.0367119)

Three Colt Street (difficult to get the exact location so got one with visible landmark) [https://email@example.com,-0.03012,3a,75y...](https://email@example.com,-0.03012,3a,75y,359.02h,95.62t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3wPvNbqhxNhzS-9avdcFOA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656!4m5!3m4!1s0x487602cc1cb39bb5:0xe66febb5f8bac6bf!8m2!3d51.5099132!4d-0.0302586)

Watney Market (massively changed but pointing in the right direction over the area) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0581398,3a,75y,348...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0581398,3a,75y,348.49h,87.44t/data=!3m10!1e1!3m8!1su7WW-D6EeZqjzUOf4U3h9A!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo0.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Du7WW-D6EeZqjzUOf4U3h9A%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D306.88754%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i13312!8i6656!9m2!1b1!2i29)

Gardiner's Corner (nothing left, the department store burnt down in the seventies) [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0716539,3a,75y,289...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0716539,3a,75y,289.03h,91.32t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s3Z9Nm_G3Cm27V2cTNR- Tzg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER20> Brushfield Street is pretty cool - you can see the painted sign on one of the buildings is still there in street view.

Its the first picture on the Guardian's version of this: [https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13...](https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/feb/13/east- end-in-colour-london-david-granick)

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0760875,3a,75y,...](https://email@example.com,-0.0760875,3a,75y,228.25h,91.09t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s_mDz1fKdGJXgKiDnpECSdA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

<comment><USER21> If you look round the lorry in the street view, you can see the Donovan Brothers sign is still there (behind the scaffolding unfortunately!)

<comment><USER19> If you dial back the date in streetview, you can see it more clearly.

[https://email@example.com,-0.0763029,3a,75y,...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-0.0763029,3a,75y,229.16h,85.76t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sn-p6x3xJ8PZVV4qgkJFVpQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This is amazing. Having watched "Call the Midwife" and stayed in the docklands area in London, this puts into perspective some of the 'scars' in the landscape you can still see today

</comment><comment><USER23> I am absolutely a sucker for the look of Kodachrome, and I'm glad I managed to shoot one roll before processing of it ended.

The processing itself is rather convoluted and interesting: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-14_process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-14_process)

</comment><comment><USER24> Ratio between image sides is 1.25 meaning that it is likely the scans came either from 6x7 (cm) medium format slides or more probably from the 4x5 (inch, or larger) large format slides.

<comment><USER25> Unlikely, Kodachrome larger than 35mm was dead after the mid 1950's, there was a brief revival of medium format in the 1980's, but it didn't last long. I suspect the format might be more driven by the format of the book.

<comment><USER24> So more likely crops made from 35mm slides?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> These are lovely. The photographer who found and digitised these also has some great shots in a similar vein: [https://chris3.500px.com/](https://chris3.500px.com/)

<comment><USER27> And his Instagram account: [https://www.instagram.com/chrisdorleybrown](https://www.instagram.com/chrisdorleybrown)

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Does anyone with a photographic bent know what the modern equivalent of Kodachrome would be? (Stable, archival quality, rich color reproduction, and digitizes well)

<comment><USER29> In terms of current film stock I've shot Kodak Ektar probably comes the closest to the look of Kodachrome, but it's still pretty far off. I think the processing technique for Kodachrome is what really made it unique, and since that's gone nothing else quite compares.

<comment><USER30> I was just going to reply suggesting Kodak Ektar, but you beat me to it. - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ektar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ektar)

There are massive discussions with film photographers about the different kinds of films and their colour profiles, characteristics and so on.

<comment><USER29> While I do like the look of Ektar, when I shoot color film I personally lean more toward slide films like Velvia, but that's a whole different beast. I just love that punchy contrast.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> What's with the submission date? It currently says I submitted this 12 hours ago, but that's not true at all: I submitted it closer to 24 hours ago.</comment>


How to Choose the Best Mechanical Keyboard - <AUTHOR> https://www.extremetech.com/computing/241872-choose-right-mechanical-keyboard <comment><USER2> I've been considering building my own ErgoDox for quite a while. I enjoy the idea of being in control of switch selection, firmware, and general appearance. Not to mention the satisfaction of having assembled something which I use so much daily.

At the moment I'm using a generic 105 key Cherry MX Blue keyboard. Does anyone have experience with the ErgoDox, or have tips for someone looking at building their own?

<comment><USER3> I've been using an ErgoDox for 4 or 5 years & absolutely love it.

I went with a mix of switchs (the keys my pinky hit take less force than the other keys) and it's really nice.

It took me a day or 2 to get to typing most things without errors, took a couple weeks to get back up to speed (I type much faster now, though I imaging switching to any unlabeled keyboard would have done that).

It does take patience to build, or you can get pre-made ones like the ergodox- ez or from falbatech. I went from almost 0 experience soldering to making the ergodox, the guide on massdrop was very thorough, also watched a few youtube examples.</comment></comment>


I don't get the product manager hiring process - <AUTHOR> I started as a technical project manager over 10 years ago and slowly moved into product management in my last job almost 5 years ago. Cannot say it is a very successful product (due to the technology and market choices, both made without me at the very early stage of the product).
But the reason I'm writing this post is to say I don't get the hiring process for product managers. And before I go ahead, I accept that the problem can be with me and not the process. But the process feels entirely superficial and arbitrary to me. The typical problem given at the interview is like 'Design a solution to the problem X'. What exactly to do next is an entirely subjective choice. I've read the famous "Decode and Conquer", but even then it leaves a lot to be answered. In the end you are not really solving the problem, you need to please the interviewer instead. Do they want you to challenge the problem first? Do they want you to challenge the suggested technology to solve it (why do we want to build a bot and not a mobile app?) ? Do they want me to dive straight into making hypotheses? Design solutions?
It feels that the key to pass a product manager interview is to find an interviewer on the same wavelength with you. Probably I'm just venting, but not sure if anyone else feels the same or maybe you have any tips (including 'change your job!' haha) <comment><USER2> This is the paradox of interviewing for senior roles of all kinds: the real work is long term over years and needs careful decision making, but the interview is under an hour.

Well structured thought and the ability to communicate and adjust priorities are key skills for PMs, whereas the actual design of the solution, defined by input from experts across disciplines, is less important. Pleasing the interviewer as the main objective may actually be a good way to demonstrate capability for this role of PM (distinct from subject matter expert roles).

</comment><comment><USER3> > _Do they want you to challenge the problem first? Do they want you to > challenge the suggested technology to solve it (why do we want to build a > bot and not a mobile app?) ? Do they want me to dive straight into making > hypotheses? Design solutions?_

Not your interviewer, but all of the above. There are very few cases where one is looking for _the right answer_ when it exists, but for open questions like these, you're hiring for _thought process_ , _problem solving methodology_ , _nuance_ , an awareness for _tradeoffs_ , and the ability to make decisions while aware of the hypotheses that led to that decision. The answer to the question X is _it depends, [and then methodically giving the branches of reality and their assumptions and how the tradeoffs play with each other]_. That's valid for individual contributors. The last thing one wants to hear "Scala is the best, and I'll write the front with React because it solves everything". One might accept the "I'll write it in Scala because that is what _I_ know, unless the team uses something else which I'll have to pick up, but I'll need time to be proficient in."

This is elicited with questions to figure out: is this a problem? why is it a problem? what's the desired state? can we arrive at that state by not solving this problem [i.e: not swimming across the river, but simply taking the bridge]?

There may of course be people who'll ask you a question for which they figured out the answer the day before the interview after a year and a team iterating over it. There are people who'll ask you questions about some flag you must set when compiling a database from source for some obscure optimization problem they had hit developing the product, and we're not talking about these people.

You have a lot of experience in projects, and the interviewer wants you to demonstrate all that experience, the awareness of tradeoffs and _pitfalls_ , and walk them through the design process of a hypothetical or actual product. Similar to when you ask someone who spent a lot of time on the road "What's the best route from point A to point B"? and getting "It depends. If you're coming from X at 9, forget it because construction workers start at that time, but you can take an alley if the burger truck isn't there yet. Fridays it comes in a bit late.".

An interview could actually be implementing something for real. As in, chat with the candidate about things they find interesting or cool, or things they've workd on before, and then deciding "let's do it" on the spot and set up a repository and start working on it, as in create the issue, specifying it, and then implementing it. Sometimes you'll do different parts of it.

In other words, you seem you have the capability to zoom out and zoom in on details, and people want to see you do this.

> _It feels that the key to pass a product manager interview is to find an > interviewer on the same wavelength with you._

It doesn't hurt, but it's mostly "Can I trust this person to lead the team and product effort and be independent and figure out proper solutions at different times for different problems, and do whatever it takes to make this a success and groom people and encourage them and help them get back on track if they fall off, and listen to different objectsions and inform me of problems we might hit". Basically, can I hire this person and "sort of" forget about them. There is a kind of people that, when you know are on a problem, you can sleep well because they'll only come to you when you are really needed, and they can tell when you are and when you are not needed.

One book by Belkiov, entitled "General Methods for Solving Physics Problems", is really interesting, because one spends many years solving physics problems and beeing "zoomed in", and it is such a pleasure when one reads something from an author who has a big picture and shows you "Here's physics, and here's how to solve problems in physics". Just the way he formulates what a physics problem is amazed me.

Other books:

\- "The Complete Problem Solver" by John R. Hayes

\- "How to Solve It", George Polya</comment>


Apple's Netbook Silent Treatment Can't Last for Long - <AUTHOR> http://advice.cio.com/shane_oneill/apples_netbook_silent_treatment_cant_last_for_long

<comment><USER2> Why not? It seems PC notebook manufacturers are doing netbooks because they need a novel product to excite people. Apple doesn't need that, the quality of their entire product line (generally speaking) is enough.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd argue that netbooks of the future will look more like the iphone than the ASUS EEE or Dell Mini. As such, Apple is probably farther down this path than anyone (although by a more unconventional route).</comment>


Searching the Real-time Web - <AUTHOR> http://collecta.com/

<comment><USER2> Most of the data is twitter driven. The underlying question is whether or not live content is good content?

<comment><USER3> We actually have quite a bit of data in there besides Twitter, and we're adding more sources all the time. It does take some time as we must convince publishers of the value of pushing their data out. Some of the result set you get depends on your query. One of our initial prototypes was launched for the Obama inauguration, and the amount of photography going through that day was amazing; it was almost like watching a strange kind of television.

We don't think that real-time search is the best thing for every query. We estimate that about 20% of queries would be better served by time ranked data. Think about all the situations in which time is the most important factor: decision making (such as stock trading), weather, news, television, etc.

Sometimes a person just wants to know about earthquakes in general, and sometimes that person wants to know about the earthquake that just happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What problem/difficulty is this solving? (Over and above the twitter search itself?)

<comment><USER3> There are a number of them:

* trend spotting, analysis * finance * brand management * entertainment * faster news information * weather, disasters

There are a lot of possibilities, and even more arise when you enable the feedback loop. You can think of real-time search in a number of contexts... chat is real-time search on a topic, FriendFeed is real-time search on your social graph, etc.</comment></comment>


Jeff Bezos Statement to Congress Is a Master Class in Emotional Intelligence - <AUTHOR> https://www.inc.com/justin-bariso/jeff-bezos-just-published-a-4000-word-statement-to-congress-its-a-master-class-in-emotional-intelligence.html <comment><USER2> This article is written by an author who is pushing a book on emotional intelligence, and has paid for numerous opinion pieces to Inc. This is one of a series of articles to that end: [https://www.inc.com/author/justin- bariso](https://www.inc.com/author/justin-bariso)

(The article, like his others, are marked "SPONSORED BUSINESS CONTENT")

</comment><comment><USER3> Aside from the content for a moment, and assuming it was written by Bezos himself (and I tend to believe it was, largely) I do enjoy reading his prose. His shareholder letters, his "No thank you, Mr. Pecker", and this - all very pleasant to read.</comment>


CIA hatched plan to make demon toy to counter Osama bin Laden's influence - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/cia-hatched-plan-to-make-demon-toy-to-counter-bin-laden-influence/2014/06/19/cb3d571c-f0d0-11e3-914c-1fbd0614e2d4_story.html

<comment><USER2> I'm guessing the CIA maintains a list of discontinued stupid plans to trot out when they need some good press.</comment>


Fighting Loneliness with Public Living Rooms - <AUTHOR> http://www.citylab.com/navigator/2016/11/fighting-loneliness-with-public-living-rooms/506360/ <comment><USER2> "What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured." \- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

While I sometimes understand the bemoaning of top engineers spending time on trivial apps, sometimes those apps aren't as trivial as you would think when you consider how they positively impact loneliness. Of course, there's plenty of garbage out there, but I do love to see efforts to connect people in ways that can be serendipitous and have the possibility of leading to more meaningful connection.

I can think of multiple long-time valuable real-life relationships I've had where our first connections were on some trivial platform. Sometimes it's hard to see past the glaring negatives that come with some of those platforms, but I'm hopeful that better options will evolve over time.

<comment><USER3> This is what universities, clubs and festivals are for.

<comment><USER4> These don't work for shy people and are ineffective for forming connections that are based on unpopular interests.

<comment><USER5> This. I attended student parties maybe once or twice in my life, and it was always awful. Meeting people with shared interests is much more effective for me at forming meaningful acquaintances and friendships.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In a similar spirit, it could be cool if some coffeeshops and restaurants explicitly designated one of their communal table as a 'talk table'. Where if you sit at it, it means you are open to chatting with your neighbors.

I know that many places already have communal tables but I find that unless there's some explicit display a place is meant for a certain purpose, many people who want to chat / meet new people won't initiate because they can't be sure their neighbours are open to it. If they purposefully decide to sit at a 'talk table', then you can be sure they are.

<comment><USER7> I like this idea but I can see the following challenges that would need to be overcome:

1) In the case of coffeeshops, many people go there to work. The noise of people gabbing could drive them away. This is a pet-peeve of mine; the local Starbucks seems to double as a daycare, making it really difficult to focus.

2) How likely is it that the people gathered share enough common interests that they want to talk to each other? E.g. in my case I'd want to be able to strike up a conversation about politics or philosophy or music-making or tech. If no one already-gathered shares any of those interests then I'm not staying very long.

These aren't insurmountable and there's probably others that haven't occurred to me. Again, I like the idea.

<comment><USER8> Yes, how dare other people socialize in a coffee shop, aka my personal office!

<comment><USER9> Depending on what you're drinking at the coffee shop it might be enough to just pay for an actual coworking space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Pubs and temples can be a bit similar spaces, but this seems great in that it is not connected to a religion or alcohol consumption.

I guess this is what cafes are could be like, but somehow they have turned out to be places where you are expected to keep to yourself.

<comment><USER11> I was raised going to church but stopped in college, and I really miss the community. There's absolutely nothing like it that I've found in the secular world. It almost makes me want to 'fake it' and join a church again, just to be around such kind and welcoming people so often.

And it's not just the social part of the community, or the moral lessons, although I liked both of those things - a church gives you an entire framework for your life. What's a secular wedding? A secular funeral? How do your kids get involved in the community outside of the public school system (Boy Scouts is hardly secular) and how do you celebrate their coming of age? What are your standing plans for Wednesday night and Sunday morning? We have to reinvent all these things from scratch when we're not involved with a church, and people do that, but I've never seen such an in-depth and positive out-of-the-box experience as what a church provides. They've been optimizing this stuff for literally millennia.

And I think that society is ripe for a group that will provide all of this, while not also trying to tell us about spirits doing magic tricks. And if you think about it that way, then the "this is where the world comes from" part of religion is almost a sideshow to the "here's a community and framework for your life" part, and yet it's what people focus on and what turns people away.

<comment><USER12> There was an atheist church in London but it fell apart over internal "more- atheist-than-thou" squabbles in a matter of weeks.

Meanwhile there are ordinary churches in London that are centuries old...

<comment><USER13> Plenty of religions have fallen apart due to internal squabbling too, often very violently. There's a lot of survivorship bias here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is an interesting concept because it's actually quite old. While traveling through the north of Holland playing shows we happened to play in a centuries-old historic public living room in a tiny township in the middle of nowhere. The place had been a home, but the occupants of the home historically (whomever they were) would open their living room most every day to travelers and neighbors, and serve small-fare food and drinks. The modern owners continue the tradition, and host house concerts occasionally.

It makes sense: it's a sparsely populated location. You could have called it a "cafe" and converted it, and maybe made a little extra money, but so much of the social aspect would be gone. The place actually adds more value to the community as a community living room than it would as a diner.

Edit: the place was also interesting in that it had the original "bedsteads" or box beds (example: [1]). These open (and latched!) from the outside: parents would basically lock their kids in these boxes overnight.

[1] [https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/236x/39/70/04/3970041ae...](https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/236x/39/70/04/3970041ae87e76aa981ce1ceba4d6bd8.jpg)

<comment><USER15> Yup. The English word "pub" has its origins in similar establishments; it's short for "public house." ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub#Origins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pub#Origins))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> "A street is the living room of the community."

[http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20161027.php](http://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20161027.php)

<comment><USER17> Nowhere is this more apparent than Amsterdam. Too much of America is built solely for cars. Thankfully millenials want walkable areas and streets first and foremost.

<comment><USER18> Really, the nerve of us crazy Americans, wanting to be able to live and work in different places depending on what we felt was best for our families. What were we thinking?

<comment><USER19> But that is crazy. If you look deeper, why would you want to work separately from where you live? Like, "wanting what's best for [your] families" /could/ be that you don't need a long commute, AND where you live is nice :) It's shallow thinking that the only way to have a safe living environment is to separate it from where you work.

<comment><USER20> >why would you want to work separately from where you live?

Because separately, $300,000 is a beautiful 3bd/2ba house with a finished basement and a backyard in a safe, pleasant neighborhood with excellent services and infrastructure.

Together, it is _maybe_ a "junior 1-bedroom" condo in a former industrial area _just_ starting its gentrification curve where you _really_ shouldn't let the 12-year-old walk the dog alone at night.

>It's shallow thinking

It's economics. High density apartments offer less space at higher cost.

<comment><USER21> The problem with this conversation (European 'let's walk everywhere' vs. American 'don't tell me how to live') is that it tends to rely on wrong assumptions from both sides, though obviously I can't read the minds of parent and GP. In the US we aggressively subsidize low-density living through school busing, infrastructure, the secondary market for federally insured single family home mortgages, and many other programs. So Europeans have a hard time recognizing that telling us to live in walkable places is like telling us to spit into the wind in so many parts of the country (after all, if a commute is bad for family, how about moving hundreds of miles from relatives?) Meanwhile, we Americans have a hard time recognizing that we're making choices on a severely biased playing field that discourages the living patterns that humans have used since the dawn of civilization.

We'll get back to the old way eventually, but it's going to hurt bad for a lot of people.

<comment><USER18> It's so generous of you to acknowledge how both sides are wrong: Americans are wrong to want to live the way they do, while Europeans are wrong to not realize how severely deluded, wasteful, and out of touch with humanity Americans are.

<comment><USER21> Sure, you could express it that way, but mine includes some empathy, whereas yours is so carefully protected against the possibility of anyone benefitting from it: not Americans, because you're pushing us away by calling us stupid; and not Europeans, because you don't attempt to help anyone understand why others are so determined to be wrong.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A recent post on the /r/campingandhiking subreddit [1] featured a photo of five young men, dressed in suits purchased at a thrift shop, at the northern terminus of the Pacific Crest Trail. The OP revealed that none of the men knew each other prior to the trip. Each just happened to start the trip at the same time, meeting the others during the _first day_ on the trail. Together, they backpacked for 5 months over 2,650 miles.

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/5aydxu/i_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/CampingandHiking/comments/5aydxu/i_also_hiked_2650_miles_to_the_northern_terminus/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Hmm... almost like a "public house"... maybe they should serve beer?

</comment><comment><USER24> The best part of traveling along was talking to people in the common areas of hostels. I wish there were more social spaces like that where you can just randomly talk to strangers without seeming weird.

<comment><USER25> It works in hostels because like you said, most people are traveling. This means they're only in the city for a night or two, so they want to socialize, meet local people or other travelers as part of their adventure, go out together, etc.

This doesn't work the same in other 'social' places. If you visit a coffee shop, 90% of people are meeting friends, doing work, or want to drink alone and browse the internet. I don't know how you'd start a place that only encourages visitors that want to meet new friends. What about a coffee shop that only has big round tables with 10 seats, so you need to share tables with a handful of strangers and face each other?

You could try local CouchSurfing meetups. I've been to some alone, and depending on the city they might have 5 or 100 people. They're typically at pubs, and some are better than others, but they're usually a mix of locals and travelers from around the world. Quite a few others go alone, so it's relatively easy to make some friends.

<comment><USER26> "If you visit a coffee shop, 90% of people are meeting friends, doing work, or want to drink alone and browse the internet."

This is true but if you frequent the same place each day at around the same time people will start acknowledging you and making conversation. It takes time but it's a fairly reliable way of meeting people, especially if making the first move is something you struggle with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> New condo developments in SF are trying this idea out.

Gentrification, etc, yadda aside, there are now big HOA club houses, sky decks, and other common areas designed to encourage mingling among neighbors. Now there will be undoubtedly those who will shut themselves in (just like in college), but I think it's bringing back a collegial atmosphere.

Our HOA is organizing a bring your own bottle and cheese event once a month on our sky deck.

<comment><USER28> I just moved into a sort of a co-op. It's run by residents and owned and maintained by a startup that's trying to create a lot of these kinda of spaces.

Beyond "bringing back a collegial atmosphere", it looks and feels like a straight up dorm.

My rent is $1700/mo. My room is tiny. The common areas are fun. Location is v central, 1040 Folsom St.

With the caveat that I've been here less than a week: so far it's great.

<comment><USER29> Whew, $1700/month to live in a dorm room?

My mortgage is $1800/month, for a 2400 sqft duplex and a two-car garage. I can rent out the downstairs unit for $1350/month. Location, location, location...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> One of the best things about living in a dorm in college was they had common areas, including a dining room. Most of the other students in the dorm became your friends that way.

<comment><USER11> After I left, they converted the dorm common areas into dorm rooms by pulling out the furniture and installing cheap wall dividers. I'm sad that students won't get that experience until they catch up on construction, but that's what happens when your university basically doubles in size in 8 years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> It's obviously have been noted elsewhere in the comments, but aren't those essentially cafes? Of course, in some countries, it became normal not to talk to strangers in cafes — but wouldn't the same in the end happen in the same public living rooms? After all, many cafes and restaurants now are using giant tables to bring people together, and we're still reluctant to talk to one another. May be the problem isn't with spaces, it's with us?

</comment><comment><USER32> If the social media of the past decades teaches us something, is that when given the chance, people tend to form cliques and tend to stay in their bubble when they find one. This persists in large cities where people have adequate and constant exposure to alternate cultures. Maybe people have gotten tired of trying to be tolerant to everyone, maybe they don't see enough value in having to resort to lowest-common-denominator communication and cultural memes. Maybe in the future the physical layout of cities will come to represent its ideological /cultural layout. As loneliness is a physical thing, maybe bringing compatible people closer together enhances communication.

</comment><comment><USER33> I liked the article and the overall concept. The main issue in my opinion is that the sort of people who would be attracted to such a place would also have had already a great many opportunities to connect with others throughout their life and they likely failed in all of those attempts to form positive, valuable relationships. So the likelihood that they will succeed in this venue is very small. In other words, the reason they are there is that they could not do what this place is asking them to do in any other setting that normal people find plenty of social opportunity to successfully make friends and build a support network. Such spaces would likely be undermined in the United States by the fact that it would end up being a magnet for homeless mentally ill people. If you live in Chicago, as I do, and you want to talk to such people then you can just go to the library downtown, which has ended up being basically a day program for the marginalized, who sit there all day using the free computers and taking bird baths in the bathroom sinks. They don't talk to each other a whole heck of a lot though.

But yeah the modern world is super alienating for most people. The loneliness problem is, in my opinion, sort of like the 21st century version of slums. In the past the existence of slums was a sign that economic progress was not working to include everyone. In our times the isolation and loneliness of vast swaths of our population signals that the system is not creating the opportunity to form effective personal relationships. I doubt there is much we can do about that. Nobody is a stakeholder in the success of the lonely other than the lonely person themselves, and they wouldn't be lonely if the knew how to build relationships. So it's a catch 22 that only gets worse over time.

</comment><comment><USER34> Isn't that why entrepreneurs have co-working spaces? Getting beaten down day after day surely drives you to loneliness.

</comment><comment><USER35> Not to diminish whats being done but it does feel like a band aid solution. This is such an important issue. I currently live in London, UK and loneliness is a big problem here. My parents were from India and it doesn't seem as bad there but may be I'm only seeing through my own lens and it is actually a problem there as well. I think the problems stem from a combination of culture, modern life style and tech.

</comment><comment><USER36> Easy patch: keep a security guard watching over physical machines, which should be the case anyway.

The same can be done with paper ballots. The trick with this article is that the perpetrator has full and unrestricted access to the building. If that were the case it wouldn't matter what the medium was, any of it can be hacked. They could throw cameras up in the booths, keyloggers, virii, etc.

<comment><USER37> I think you commented on the wrong submission..

<comment><USER38> Then again, election day can be a great social experience in my country where voting is mandatory. Always meet random old friends in the queue etc.

<comment><USER39> Aren't most people just listening to music? Especially if they are to stand for a long time in a government mandated queue?

<comment><USER38> In my area there are enough polling places that if you go to your local one you usually see several people you know. And it's not uncommon to have a social gathering (BBQ etc) at someone's house on that day since everyone has to go to the same place at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I just met a YC founder and I do think her startup fosters this type of community and builds deeper relationships beyond the typical "transactional" world.

[https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/simbi- ceo-11116-316-pm](https://soundcloud.com/user-925097294/simbi- ceo-11116-316-pm)

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if VR could play a part on this? My grandfather had a terrible brain tumor that didn't allow him to walk, although he was mentally fine. I could imagine virtual 'living rooms' where my grandfather could've interacted with other people etc.

</comment><comment><USER42> This sounds nice and all but how long will it take for these to turn in to a bar or cafe or whatever, designed exclusively to extract money from participants?

</comment><comment><USER43> I guess these have a similar function as playgrounds in schools, but for the elderly.

</comment><comment><USER44> if you do this in The Netherlands we all just sit there with our phones out doing our utmost best not to talk to others.

</comment><comment><USER45> Your average hacklab will do the job just fine.

<comment><USER46> Because, as long as the problem is solved for nerds, who cares if anyone else suffers from it.

<comment><USER18> Because, as long as the problem isn't solved for everyone, we shouldn't try to solve it for anyone.

<comment> vertex-four No, but when you solve a problem for yourself, you still need to go and ask people who aren't like yourself whether they consider it solved before you say "it's solved for everyone".

<comment><USER29> Or you can just be happy that your problem is solved, and move on to other problems.

<comment> vertex-four Yep, that's fine. But you don't get to say it's solved for everyone then.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Tell HN: Creators of Chef offering to help start-ups w/infrastructure - <AUTHOR>

I thought this was interesting. Opscode, the creators of Chef, are offering to help a start-up or two design and automate their infrastructure.
If your startup runs on Ruby or Java (their requirement), you should strongly consider applying.
It looks like they might be using applicants as guinea pigs on a not-yet-released tool. Cool. <comment><AUTHOR> (no affiliation w/the company)

<http://www.opscode.com/alpha></comment>


Show HN: A WebRTC/Material UI app that pairs users randomly - <AUTHOR> https://www.speakrandom.com <comment><USER2> I loved the idea. UI is a little bit confusing.

\- "Waiting" can be replaced with "Waiting for user"

\- "Next room" should be exited as a separate element not part of the list. It looks like its some action can be performed on list items.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. I'll definitely change the Waiting for the Waiting for user. Some other people have told me that it was a bit confusing before as well.

Next room I'll have to think a bit more to make it look nice and be separate as well. Thanks again for the tips!</comment></comment>


How To Hack Your Memory: 4 Tips to Achieve Perfect Memory - <AUTHOR> http://lettucebecereal.com/2011/10/08/4-tips-for-perfect-memory/

<comment><USER2> For my 'idea document' I've been using Gnote in Linux. Quick and easy to jot stuff down, and just add the ~/.gnote folder to Dropbox or SpiderOak for automatic backups of new and modified notes. Very seamless and effective.

</comment><comment><USER3> >Also, a boson is a force-carrier particle – like electrons – whereas a fermion is associated with being a matter particle.

I think he got that backwards. An electron _is_ a matter particle and not a force carrier.</comment>