Predicting Next Recession - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/us-economic-recession-tracker/ <comment><USER3> During the height of the bitcoin bubble I had my gym coach leave job and become "crypto investor" ... Katy Perry changed her nails to each look like one of the popular coins. And yes I did have an uber driver talk to me about crypto. The mainstream media were shilling Ripple at its highest price ever.

Today, all the same people talk about coming recession.

I was lucky to have my first job in finance during the credit crunch crisis. Until it was over media we're adamant it's just a correction. We did not believe it either ... we all thought it's a good time to buy cheap before the next bull run. Only about 3 people actually predicted it (even though AFTER the recession media came up with a dozen people who claimed so - none of them ever made any bets on it)

It's hard to imagine recession come when everyone expects it.

<comment><USER4> It's hard to imagine a stock market crash coming when everyone already expects it, but it's quite easy to imagine a recession coming when everyone expects it.

If people expect stocks to crash, then the expected "crash" is probably already priced in. If people expect a recession, then the reduction in economic activity is something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

<comment><USER5> I think many who expect a recession have been expecting one for years. They have been watching from the sidelines as the market passed them by.

That's why the fear of losing out dominates everything else right now and every mini correction gets bought - until something unexpected happens.

<comment><USER6> "Far more money has been lost by investors preparing for corrections, or trying to anticipate corrections, than has been lost in corrections themselves." – Peter Lynch

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Around the last recession, I had this distinct feeling: that this exuberance is a little too irrational. The press was constantly talking about how great the economy was, and people I knew around me were splurging on things they could in no way afford.

I used to trade domain names at that time, mostly to fund my college. Everyone in my industry was talking about how the value of certain domains will 10x in the next 5 years and other irrational projections.

Maybe its that experience, but I've since maintained a personal theory that a serious recession hits when people least expect it. When there is too much easy credit in the system and business optimism isn't grounded in any fundamentals, that's when you should fear a recession.

Not when everyone is telling you that a recession is just around the corner. Because then you're already more careful in your decision making

Not sure how much of this is founded on economics of course

<comment><USER8> Yeah I think that too. Everyone else too! No way a recession is coming!!!

... ... Opps : recession. ;-) it's a paradox

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's not enough discussion about the eventual recovery in all these recession articles. I was looking at the last 2008 recession and found some interesting gems. For example, if you bought AIG, one of the main causes of the financial crisis, you would've made out like a bandit during the recovery period. Definitely too big to fail.

Here's all the data on how stocks performed during and after the last recession: [https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great- recess...](https://shan.io/writing/learnings-from-the-2008-great-recession/)

</comment><comment><USER10> What's in the author's portfolio will really tell you what they think about the next proximity of the next recession.

<comment><USER11> "Don't tell me what you think. tell me what's in your portfolio"

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm not gonna put out my own model, but this one seems strangely, suspiciously well fitted to the historical data.

How can you have a model that gives a 100% chance of something happening in the future? Yet that's what it says during the last recession. And it falls off a cliff when the actual recession ended in June 2009.

I was alive and trading during that time, and I reckon the business cycle would be quite easy to predict -as in, the model would be in a textbook- if you could be that confident of recession one day and the opposite the next.

<comment><USER13> I think the 100% is when the data shows the recession is occurring i.e. if a recession is occurring now, then the chances of one occurring in the next 3 months are clearly 1 (I get your point however...it is odd). There are other factors in the model aside from the ones with charts.

The model isn't in a textbook because predicting the economy is nothing to do with economics as it is taught at universities. Economists use complex structural models because they are fun to teach and create barriers to entry. This is why DSGE models are so popular in universities, govt, and central banks but barely used anywhere else.

If you want to forecast the business cycle, you just need linear regression. You can't ever be 100% (unless a recession is already occurring) because the economy is always changing but basic models are pretty accurate (the BIS has done quite a bit on this recently - [https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.htm](https://www.bis.org/publ/work818.htm) \- funnily enough, the term spread isn't the be all...but economists have a big problem with including things like credit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Most modern recessions are caused by investor fear and panic. In March 2020, if Elizabeth Warren gets the democratic nomination, you can expect a medium to deep recession caused by her high tax plan and business-hostile policies. You can gauge this by the high number of put option contracts with March expiration being purchased, compared to all other months.

<comment><USER15> Link?

<comment><USER16> [https://www.wsj.com/articles/bridgewater-bets-big-on- market-...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/bridgewater-bets-big-on-market- drop-11574418601)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Every crisis since 1929 has been manufactured. Just look at what the central bank(s) are doing and you get reliable results.

The current monetary system creates money in form of debt with interest which can only be paid by issuing even more debt.

As soon as the central banks pull the plug on liquidity (either by raising rates or fixing the balance sheet) you will have a cascade effect of bankruptcies which "clears out" all debt that could never be repaid in the first place.

Right now the central banks are increasing liquidity around the globe again hence the low probability of a recession.

</comment><comment><USER18> There's so much effort put into timing the next recession. It's not just that they can't even do that with meaningful certainty-- it's that they also can't tell you how significant the recession will be. I mean, with full employment right now, of course a recession is on the horizon (who knows when). But, going from full employment to 1% less doesn't mean the economy or its people is even worse off than they were 2 years ago. Same thing with virtually any thing else that plugs into GDP.

<comment><USER19> > There's so much effort

Because there is nothing else to do? Whatever happens to the market it keeps going up. There is little reason to search for an upturn (and you don't want to jinx it), so they are searching for a downturn.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Given how poorly most people are able to predict these things, I'm going to go out on a limb and say the next recession will happen when everyone is overly bullish on the economy. The amount of scepticism today combined with the actual economic data lead me to believe things will be OK for a while yet.

</comment><comment><USER21> These metrics are totally meaningless. If some metric claims that there is a 50% chance of recession in the next 12 months, I'd expect it to be right roughly half the time it makes that confident a claim. Similarly, I'd expect a recession one third of the time that the metric says 33%.

The year leading into the Great Recession was mostly around 36%. One year before the 2001 recession it was 24%. And then we have spikes around > 40% in 1999, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2016, and 2018, none of which "paid off".

So how are we supposed to interpret these numbers? That a 40% chance of a recession has a 15% chance of actually predicting a recession?

<comment><USER22> _> If some metric claims that there is a 50% chance of recession in the next 12 months, I'd expect it to be right roughly half the time it makes that confident a claim. Similarly, I'd expect a recession one third of the time that the metric says 33%._

What if the forecast is Bayesian rather than frequentist?

<comment><USER21> It's fine if the underlying model is Bayensian, but if you're going to present a time series graph then those past numbers don't mean a whole lot. Why not adjust the past data to be frequentist at that point?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> It's during these times when the monetary liquidity and economic growth tide go out that we find, again, who has been swimming naked.

The bubble will burst soon...

</comment><comment><USER24> The issue I have with historic based models is that today's "global economy" is not enough like the past. If the USA goes into a recession, chances are that's - more and more - the reflection of some other economy(s). And of course, vice versa.

The biggest impact on the econony - via the spending minds of the masses - <USER2> how the mainstream media plays the strenght of the economy in the context of the USA's 2020 election. The middle to the left will be pulling out the stops to look for bad Trump-sourced economic news. That could become self- fulfilling.

</comment><comment><USER25> I don't think it is as near or going to be as bad as some people think, but with caveats.

Listening to the guy who the big short was based on now, my main takeaway is that the banks deleveraged significantly since 07/08, down to ~11 vs ~30 then. Of course, part of the problem is they were using financial tricks to cover up bad assets... so I think they might be more leveraged than they are letting on.

Second, the legislation afterwards only really did one thing: make the "fix", aka fed bailout, automatic. This means there should be less time between drop and recovery. At the same time, it creates incentive for bankers to be more reckless.

Politically, midterms are always about the economy at heart. If Trump is serving Wall Street well enough they will try to keep him propped up for 2020, and would probably try to delay the big dip till either right after or till 2023/24.

[https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/06/recession- anxieties...](https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/06/recession-anxieties- june-2019)

[https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/rosenberg-on-lagged- effe...](https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/rosenberg-on-lagged-effects-of- fed-tightening-corporate-deleveraging/)

</comment><comment><USER26> There are so many tries to guess the exact date that somebody will hit the right day :D

</comment><comment><USER27> Bloomberg has successfully predicted 17 of the last 3 recessions.

</comment><comment><USER28> The 1929 crash and the 2008 crash that started the great recession were both caused by uncovering the bezzle. The "bezzle" is what Galbraith called fake monetary supply: money that doesn't exist because it has already been embezzled (but still shows up on accounting statements). Trump signaled that there would be very lax regulation, meaning "your bezzle is safe from us." The next crash will appear when major corporations believe that it is in their interest to lay off CEO's and take their big baths. That will be sometime when they are convinced that the next Executive Branch administration will be checking accounting statements.

<comment><USER29> If your hypothesis is correct, we have the signal:

"A total of 1,160 CEOs in the US have left their jobs in the first nine months of 2019, according to data from recruitment firm Challenger, Gray, & Christmas. That's up 13% from the same period in 2018, and the highest turnover at this point in the year since the company first began tracking CEO departures, in 2002."

[https://qz.com/work/1727662/why-ceo-turnover-in-2019-is- at-a...](https://qz.com/work/1727662/why-ceo-turnover-in-2019-is-at-a-record- high/)

<comment><USER28> Cool! I bet it needs to be fine-tuned: % of Fortune-50 companies with CEO departures and losses taken on financial statements > 5%. Or something like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Most recessions are easy to predict because they're intentionally triggered by central banks with the aim of controlling inflation by putting a lot of people out of work.

<comment><USER31> > _intentionally triggered by central banks with the aim of controlling > inflation by putting a lot of people out of work_

This is the top comment, while someone calling it a conspiracy theory is down- voted. That is sad.

The Fed was founded in 1913. The US had recessions in 1785, 1789, 1796, 1802, 1807, 1812, 1815, 1822, 1825, 1828, 1833, 1836, 1839, 1845, 1847, 1853, 1857, 1860, 1865, 1869, 1873, 1882, 1887, 1890, 1893, 1902, 1907, 1910.

Do you notice how frequent recessions were, pre-Fed? The average duration was also much longer. Blaming recessions on the Fed (who are trying to manipulate the business cycle) doesn't jibe with the data.

<comment><USER32> Also note how few of those made any real impact on the people of the time or were noteworthy enough that the average person has heard of them.

I think the current finance era may come to be viewed in the same light as the fire-fighting practices of the past century. Always working to prevent the little fires leaves the forest unhealthy and sets up an eventual inferno that no one can control.

<comment><USER31> > _Also note how few of those made any real impact on the people of the time > or were noteworthy enough that the average person has heard of them._

Indeed. That's the norm with recessions. It just so happens that the last one, the one we all remember (2008) was...really bad. It will affect people's perceptions for the rest of their lives, much like the Great Depression.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A multiplayer strategy shooting game set in space with planet gravities - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.FlyingSpaghetti.Slingshot&hl=en <comment><AUTHOR> I just released the game 2 weeks ago and thus there are very few users and you might not match with anyone to play with as of now :/. However, the game has a practice mode where you can experiment with randomly generated planets and gravitational fields, which is quite fun. You can also try the web version of the game here [http://www.playslingshot.com](http://www.playslingshot.com). (Play it in full screen. This is just a simple local 1v1 couch Co-Op version of the game).

Hope you guys like it. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for trying out my game.

<comment><USER2> Tried it out. Liked it.</comment></comment>


Testing Tools for Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://developer.okta.com/blog/2020/01/27/best-nodejs-testing-tools <comment><USER2> I think they missed an awesome new one called c8, "native V8 code-coverage".

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/c8](https://www.npmjs.com/package/c8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow, that's cool. I wasn't aware of that one!</comment></comment>


Video of Google All-Hands Meeting Circa 1999 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/26/amazing-video-of-google-all-hands-meeting-circa-1999-theres-silly-string-everywhere/

<comment><USER2> To this day; Googlers still find tiny bits of string tucked into the corners of their otherwise immaculate office space.

</comment><comment><USER3> I highly recommend anyone who likes this to get a hold of "In the Plex", which talks about Google's history. It's a very interesting read, and there's amazing random nuggets of company history on there that some of you might love.

</comment><comment><USER4> What an amazing corporate culture, dogs, toys, babies, moms, young and old.

</comment><comment><USER5> Great to see that they've had quite a few female employees. Especially because, for the early stages that the company was in, I suppose most (if not all) were engineers.

</comment><comment><USER6> Were we really wearing that much flannel back in the late '90s?</comment>


Show HN: MeetingBar – A menu bar macOS app for calendar meetings - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar <comment><USER2> Just want to mention bitbar[1]. Write anything to stdout, it'll make it show up in the menu bar.

[1] [https://github.com/matryer/bitbar](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar)

<comment><USER3> Oh, this is perfect! It's been annoying me for a while that the system menu bar clock in macOS doesn't allow me to format the current date in ISO 8601 format.

Bitbar will solve this for me! I'll change the system clock to only show the day of week and the time, and then I'll use Bitbar in order to give me the ISO 8601 date in my menu bar! :D

Edit: Neat! Someone already made a plug-in for BitBar to do this so I don't even have to spend any time writing anything at all. And look at that, they even thought about it one step further and made it so that you can copy the date to your clipboard by clicking on it! [https://getbitbar.com/plugins/Time/date- picker.1m.sh](https://getbitbar.com/plugins/Time/date-picker.1m.sh)

Edit 2: Initially copy to clipboard wasn't working but I modified the script a little bit, removing the space before each bash= and putting single quotes around each $0 and now it works.

Edit 3: I submitted a PR for the above-mentioned change [https://github.com/matryer/bitbar- plugins/pull/1471](https://github.com/matryer/bitbar-plugins/pull/1471)

<comment><USER4> Another good option for a fully customizable menubar clock is Itsycal, which as its name implies also serves as a small popup calendar that shows events from system calendar accounts.

[https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/](https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great - One thing Meeter does which is great (they are a commercial app that does something similar) is popup a notification with a 'join' button 2 minutes or so before the meeting starts. That reduces the interaction to one click rather than two.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meeter-for-zoom-teams- co/id151...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/meeter-for-zoom-teams- co/id1510445899)

<comment><USER6> Yeah, really enjoying the Meeter app that comes with the SetApp bundle/subscription :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> We changed the URL from [https://meetingbar.onrender.com/](https://meetingbar.onrender.com/) to the GitHub page because the latter has more explanation.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, but can you return previous URL? The site is more user-friendly than github interface.

<comment><USER7> Usually we switch _from_ Github URLs to the project's home page. But in this case there doesn't see to be any information, just a screenshot and links to download/install. HN readers tend to want more information than that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Seems similar to [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/next- meeting/id1017470484?mt=1...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/next- meeting/id1017470484?mt=12) which I love and use every day.

Allows you to click on the events and open meet, zoom, etc.

<comment><USER9> This is super handy as it also works on older versions of macOS. Thanks a lot for sharing this gem!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Site: [https://meetingbar.onrender.com/](https://meetingbar.onrender.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a similar "me ware" app for Windows that I completely rely on. Integrates with outlook. Plan to add google calendar. It floats on top and gives a tiny graph of your day, with different colors for each half hour, float over it to see what meeting, click to open meeting, and it flashes and dances when meetingS approach. It saves me every day over and over. I must release it.

<comment><USER11> Would love to check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This looks like a useful app that I've been looking for. That said, I replaced several individual applications I had been using with Hammerspoon Lua scripts, and had been planning on making my own for exactly this purpose as well. Perhaps it could be argued that Swift is more pleasant than Lua and that a calendar integration app is complex enough to warrant skipping Hammerspoon for this task?

</comment><comment><USER13> Super cool. Anyone know if there is an equivalent in windows?

<comment><USER14> If you're signed into the "Calendar" app on Windows 10, you can see upcoming meetings by clicking on the time in the taskbar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For anyone looking for more general menu bar calendar app that syncs with the macOS calendar, I can highly recommend Itsycal.

[https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/](https://www.mowglii.com/itsycal/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I just tried to install but it requires Catalina. As someone who is planning on staying on Mojave indefinitely to avoid the Catalina dumpster fire, would love MeetingBar to work with Mojave if it can be easily updated to do so!

<comment><USER9> Same, while I understand the comfort and appeal of writing for the latest stack, I can't imagine upgrading to Catalina any time soon. If anything, I find it more likely that I might upgrade to Big Sur once it stabilizes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice! I've been using a similar non-OSS tool called Up Next ([https://ellen.li/up-next/](https://ellen.li/up-next/)). It works great but is not open source.

</comment><comment><USER18> I have it installed but it doesn't tell me when the next meeting is. It's just showing a checkered flag icon. Is that because my next meeting is tomorrow?

<comment><USER19> A checkered flag is using in racing to indicate "Finished", which typically implies "done for the day" in calendaring contexts.

<comment><USER18> That makes a lot of sense! But I've never seen that metaphor in calendaring before. Thanks for the explanation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hey your app is included in the recommended set of apps for all the computers at my former place of employment.

</comment><comment><USER21> Great idea, great app. You should consider making it a proper osx app on the appstore and selling it for a 2$. If you are interested and would love some help, let me know ([https://sideproject-help.com](https://sideproject- help.com))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, evliz! My app is completely opensource and free. I don't plan to make it paid.

<comment><USER22> You can have both. Why people will pay for the app when you can download it for free ? We will see it as a donation. I always start by using FLOSS and if I stick with the software for more than one year I send a donation. Having the app on a store is a way to achieve that. Thank you for choosing to open source the application it matters a lot for some of us.

<comment><USER23> If s/he wants donation, giving Apple a 30 percent cut is not the most efficient way to do it.

<comment><USER22> 30%? Why Apple does even have a cut at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I can't seem to open it; I keep getting this message:

> "MeetingBar" can't be opened because Apple cannot check it for malicious > software.

> This software needs to be updated. Contact the developer for more > information.

Both if I use brew or manually download it.

<comment><USER19> This error occurs on default macOS when using software precompiled on another computer, when the person who compiled and released that software has not signed up for an Apple Developer account and submitted the precompiled bundle for notarization, one of Apple's anti-malware prevention mechanisms.

[https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_m...](https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode/notarizing_macos_software_before_distribution)

You can usually work around it by right-clicking the app and choosing Open, which usually triggers a special approval dialog. You should generally use caution when doing so, as you're granting an arbitrary binary whose contents you are unlikely to verify access to your private data.

ps. Developers, automating this process as part of your releasing is relatively easy, assuming you have a paid Developer account. The shell script at this link is accompanied by a clear walkthrough, and can be adapted to most workflows run locally on a machine containing your signing keypair. (And if your precompiled binary or bundle was not built with Xcode, you would skip the "xcodebuild" step.)

[https://scriptingosx.com/2019/09/notarize-a-command-line- too...](https://scriptingosx.com/2019/09/notarize-a-command-line-tool/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> There was site someone made that automatically redirects to your next meeting. Does anyone remember what it was called?

(Update) found it: [https://now.me/](https://now.me/)

</comment><comment><USER26> Looks nice. I wish I could use it, but IT has the calendar locked down, and most of the solutions have too much friction to make them viable

<comment><USER27> Sounds like a nightmare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I already using it.(from Product Hunt launch) Perfect fit for work-day routine especially on WFH.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for feedback, yarsanich!

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Looks Amazing, congrats. Can't install since I'm still using OSX Mojave :(

</comment><comment><USER30> Seems like this is meant for remote meetings, but it would be great for in office meetings too. I don't remember when so and so has scheduled anything unless it's really consistent, then I'm surprised in the middle of coding and look like a dick when I stay to finish my task before joining.

</comment><comment><USER31> very nice!!

</comment><comment><USER32> This is already in the notification pane on the rhs of the screen.</comment>


_why on teaching kids to code - <AUTHOR> http://vimeo.com/5047563

<comment><USER2> Wow. This is the first time I've seen a video of _why. Its good to know hes just as wacky and cool outside of the internet too!

<comment><USER3> You can also watch his presentation from RailsConf 2006. Wackiness and coolness are included. [http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7470881644241559852&...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7470881644241559852&ei=Ty9FSsabOpSWqQLaqqj4Bw)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the work this guy is doing to make programming more accessible for kids is just as refreshing as his odd ball sense of humour. He does remarkable work.

<comment><USER5> 50 years from now, programmers will probably be using people like _why as examples of people who are truly passionate about their craft and don't care about the personal "fame" that comes with their achievements...evidenced by the fact that no one knows his real name.

<comment><USER6> Fifty years from now all current languages will be depreciated and all but the most famous programmers will be forgotten.

I aspire to one day become one of the famous programmers. Real women will flock to me in droves and my every need will be satiated by my lines of code.

<comment><USER7> I think you might have meant deprecated?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _why is pretty awesome.

Even if you don't program in Ruby his book, Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is beneficial to read to get a feel for his natural, visual approach to programming (one example is the chute for Ruby block variable |a, b|) and it's plain entertaining and fun as well.

</comment><comment><USER9> His kaxxt card game at the end is kinda neat. It's like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon, but uses programming constructs to guide the game play.

</comment><comment><USER8> _why is pretty awesome.

Even if you don't program in Ruby his book, Why's (Poignant) Guide to Ruby is beneficial to read to get a feel for his natural, visual approach to programming (one example is the chute for Ruby block variable |a, b|) and it's plain entertaining and fun as well.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> via <http://project.ioni.st/post/2738#video_2738>

</comment><comment><USER10> Silly fashionable people. They're so fashionable. The kid was cool tho.

<comment><USER11> _why rocks so hard he can dress up any way he wants!</comment></comment>


Essential Medicine Rides Coke's Distribution Into Remote Villages - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/design/2013/03/colalife-piggybacks-on-coke/?cid=co6682024

<comment><USER2> Not sure if this is a marketing gimmick by a big corporate. And in a way is kind of sad state of affairs.

With that said we already have ice packs that are used for the transport of vaccines in developing countries. Not sure if we necessarily need to use cola bottles.</comment>


Anybody can write good bash (with a little effort) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.yossarian.net/2020/01/23/Anybody-can-write-good-bash-with-a-little-effort <comment><USER2> I have found the bashdb plugin for vscode to be invaluable. It can step through, watch variables, break points and some other things. BashIDE is another good vscode add on that can take you to var definitions and format code (but I don't trust the formatter).</comment>


Show HN: AI and News by AYLIEN - <AUTHOR> https://newsapi.aylien.com/demo#!/?published_at.start=NOW-30DAYS&published_at.end=NOW <comment><USER2> Tried the query "green room preview" (expecting articles about the new movie 'Green Room') - got a whole bunch of unrelated stuff.

[https://api.newsapi.aylien.com/api/v1/stories?text=green+roo...](https://api.newsapi.aylien.com/api/v1/stories?text=green+room+preview&published_at.start=NOW-7DAYS&published_at.end=NOW&language=en)

<comment><USER3> Hi, thanks for your feedback. In order to get relevant result, you need to change your sort parameter to `relevance`. Here is your new query [https://api.newsapi.aylien.com/api/v1/stories?text=green+roo...](https://api.newsapi.aylien.com/api/v1/stories?text=green+room+preview&published_at.start=NOW-7DAYS&published_at.end=NOW&language=en&sort_by=relevance)

There are plenty of parameters to refine your search, e.g. you can add categories to your query to get more relevant result. You can find more parameters here in our documentation: [https://newsapi.aylien.com/docs](https://newsapi.aylien.com/docs)</comment></comment>


CSHL to remove James Watson's name from graduate school - <AUTHOR> https://www.cshl.edu/cshl-trustees-vote-on-future-of-graduate-school/ <comment><USER2> "Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right."

<comment><USER3> What follows is what got him in trouble and these are untruths more Orwellian than what you accuse CSHL and the PC crowd of:

told a British journalist that he was "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, whereas all the testing says, not really."

Moreover, he added, although he wished everyone were equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this not true."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/science/watson-dna- geneti...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/science/watson-dna-genetics- race.amp.html)

<comment><USER4> > untruths more Orwellian than what you accuse CSHL and the PC crowd of

Question-begging. Would you mind attempting to justify this claim?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> one day someone will remember what else Kary Mullis believes. (none of it good)

The irony of his prime achievement being in the spotlight right now for COVID-19 reasons will be a real head-spinner.</comment>


'eztv' shuts down after hostile takeover - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/eztv-shuts-down-after-hostile-takeover-150518/

<comment><USER2> The .se domain was linked to the mailbox of EZTV founder NovaKing, which allowed them to access the domain registrar account and various other services for which they quickly reset all passwords

\-- So thats why i use a gmail address for public services. I wouldnt know which to pick involving torrents. But i wouldnt use the domain mail.

They also tookover the .ch domain because of ownership of the .se domain and misleading the registrar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see it the other way. I wouldn't use gmail for anything important. You have no control over it, the account could be banned at any time without any warning. So for me having your own domain for email seems to make more sense. Even if you host it with Google.

<comment><USER2> You can setup a backup emailaddress just in case, some guys were hacked because they hosted it themselves.

But if you only use it for your own porposes, i don't see why you'd get banned... Nothing harmfull happens with that email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> eztv the site or the group? the site is just a front. It also ran zoink.it as torrent-file host, but files are spread on other hosts, as well. Hardly anyone relies on the site anyway. Not to mention, I suspect I once a got a virus from a shady advert on an affiliated tracker/torrent-host.

Now I wonder, is this the industry turning prevention up a notch since Netflix et al proved a viable modle, or an attempt to abuse the userbase with ads and drive-by downloads?</comment>


Rocket Engine - plugin-free browser game development - <AUTHOR> http://rocketpack.fi/engine/

<comment><USER2> It's not a product. It's a landing page.

Could we stop voting stuff like this onto the front page? I'm sure it'll be cool when they actually build it, but right now it's just an hour's worth of brainstorming and 20 minutes of somebody's time in photoshop. There's absolutely nothing to see, so it's not of any value to us now.

I know that everybody considers this as a Minimum Viable Product, and that you're supposed to launch something like this for every idea you have. That's cool. And I know you're supposed to get as much exposure to it as you can.

But please please please, don't spam up HackerNews with stuff like this. I want to think we're better than that.

Can we make a policy of only submitting things that exist?

<comment><USER3> Hi Jason, I'm the head of development at Rocket Pack.

The reason we did the video and the website is because the product exists, and we're now at the point where we'd like to get a few pilot projects with other game development companies going.

We've been working hard on this for half a year now. If you can accomplish the same in 20 minutes with Photoshop, more power to you.

<comment><USER2> By all means, put something out that we can play with then. I can't come up with any reason why you'd lock this away behind a landing page if it's even at alpha quality.

Let it out to the world. People will use it. People will tell you what you need to do before you can release it as a product. It's amazing how much good feedback you can get just by letting people try your thing out.

You're doing yourself a disservice by disguising your thing as vaporware if it actually exists.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ah, a feature chart... The source to Unity3D _is_ available, and it also has a very comprehensive iPhone deployment option. Apps made with Unity3D are still being approved. Unity also released version 2.1 a few months ago that added a ton of features for MMO games: <http://unity3d.com/unity/whats- new/unity-2.1.html>

<comment><USER5> Unity 3d is plugin based. It uses Silverlight or Moonlight or it's own plugin if they're installed and working. This doesn't have that dependency.

OTOH, I suspect Unity3D's performance is much better, as most browsers don't have GPU accelerated graphics yet.

<comment><USER4> I'm not saying that Unity3D is necessarily better, I'm just saying that their feature chart is fairly inaccurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wonder how will this runs once you have a half dozen independent objects running around the screen. The extra layer provided by the browser (especially on mobile devices) must cause an enormous hit.

From the movie, things look like they have serious lag.

I'm hoping this works, could be a great teaching tool.

<comment><USER7> This technology is actually pretty fast. Drawing images is so fundamental for browsers that it tends to be heavily optimized.

If your hardware runs well Google Maps, it will run well this engine (and also the other very similar one - Aves from Dextrose). Rendering wise, it's the same technology.

Most of heavy lifting is done by compiled code of the browser, JavaScript just sets few parameters (as opposed to canvas, where you "micromanage" rendering in relatively slow scripting language).

One screenful of map is about 80-100 images, though performance wise there is still quite a lot of breathing room.

I did some stress tests and my notebook can easily handle many hundreds individual image sprites (done as absolutely positioned DOM elements).

Now physics, this may be slow to do in JavaScript. But with a type of games that work well with image sprites (basically anything where building blocks are large), this will probably not make too big problems as you will not have that many interacting objects (at once together at screen) and also interaction will be optimizable.

The "killer app" will probably be tile based strategies or role-playing games (see current top Facebook apps), so physics / pathfinding / AI would only need to deal with discrete grids, not some costly pixel precise collision detection.

<comment><USER8> JS physics library: <http://box2d-js.sourceforge.net/index2.html>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be happy to see a good canvas JS gamedev middleware. Only one I kind of like, that I've seen, is Akihabara. Do you guys know more libraries worth looking at?

</comment><comment><USER10> For an engine that's supposed to support mobile, it's sad how I can't submit the "interested" form on my N900. Also odd that I need flash when it's plugin- free.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for letting us know. Will fix the N900 situation ASAP. Flash is for the embedded Youtube video, but I do appreciate the irony as well... -Jiri, Rocket Pack

<comment><USER11> If the user's browser agent is known to support HTML5 use <video>, else use <flash>.

<comment><USER12> Use <video> with an <embed> / <object> fallback inside.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This actually reminds me of the old Klik&Play software (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klik>). I wonder if it's easy enough to use to create a community of its own.

<comment><USER14> I used to love Games Factory and Klik&Play

<comment><USER15> the games factory is still underdevelopment, and you can download a demo of the current version:

<http://www.clickteam.com/eng/tgf2.php>

(i'm also a fan. an web games factory would be awesome.)

<comment><USER16> MMF (by the same people) exports to Flash, so it's a reality already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Plugin-free, yet it looks like I need Flash to see the whole page. Also, I don't see any demo/game.

<comment><USER18> Seems they embed a youtube video.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It seems the Aves Engine is more powerful at this point. At least the Video of the dextrose guys shows a lot more stuff going on and it runs much smoother on ipad from the video. Anyways, both seem to be commercial only products.

</comment><comment><USER3> FYI, we updated <http://rocketpack.fi/engine/> to use YouTube's HTML5 embed code, which will hopefully make it easier for everyone to see the introduction video.

</comment><comment><USER20> I wonder how they're going to handle sound effects and background music without any plugins?</comment>


Something Big Just Slammed into Jupiter - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/something-big-just-slammed-into-jupiter-1837095949 <comment> chupa-chups [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659097](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20659097)

</comment><comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20654682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20654682)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> It seems like there's been a lot of space debris floating around lately.</comment>


How to get your first 100 users as a SaaS startup founder? - <AUTHOR> https://blog.nat.app/how-to-get-your-first-100-users-as-a-saas-startup-founder-ckbnjyv6v00oajps1v7082imx <comment><USER2> The person who wrote this got my email from the pioneer virtual hackathon slack channel and sent me this unsolicited email:

Heya!

What a Hackathon :P I arrived on my own, found a team and went off hacking! Tbh, we were slightly too ambitious and 24h really isn't that much :) So, while we didn't make it to the finalists, it was tons of fun and I really enjoyed meeting new people!

And that's why I'm reaching out, I guess you also met cool people with whom you'd like to stay in touch.. but you know the story: You've exchanged emails, added them on Twitter, but.. unless your a social monster, it will be difficult to stay in touch.. just because we're busy and forgetful

I know about that because that's the problem my real startup (We're a Pioneer startup) is solving. We've built an algorithm that analyses your email interactions to figure out who you're losing touch with, that way you can always keep an eye on your gmail contacts and make sure to follow up with the people that matter.

You can try it out now if you want, happy to chat if you've got questions!!

Have a good one! (I'll get some rest now :P)

Cheers,

Not sure if they're the person you want to go to for acquisition advice.

<comment><USER3> What type of person would you trust with acquisition advice? This is a topic I've struggled with how do you inform target users about your product without being dismisssed

<comment><USER2> Someone who has managed to acquire customers in a way that does not make me lose all respect for them.

<comment><USER4> Do you have any examples of outreach methods that you appreciate?

Obviously when something works it's not likely it will be noticed, but I'm curious if anything broke through without offending?

Also, do you pay for SaaS or are you not at all that demographic?

I personally detest every email marketing attempt that is not a curated newsletter I intentionally signed up for.

I also don't browse ad funded social media, so that's not reaching me.

And I use ad blockers.

So I guess my question is, how can someone with something that you or I would want to pay for let us know that it's available? In a way that leaves us saying "thanks for telling me"?

<comment><USER5> Hackathons and conferences are good venues for advertising this particular product, and an email/slack message is not a completely unreasonable mechanism for doing so.

However,

1\. Do it through official channels. If you want to advertise your product by mass emailing hackathon participants, then _sponsor the hackathon_.

2\. If are not sponsoring, then at least limit your outreach to people who you actually talked to during the event. Have genuine conversations, tell them about your product during the conversation, and ask if they'd like a "tree trial of the pro membership" or whatever. Only follow-up if they are actually interested.

3\. Most importantly, communicate professionally. That means a well- structured, concise, convincing, and error-free piece of text. It helps to list next steps. The message in the OP is, to be frank, a rambling mess of a narrative with middle school-level grammar errors. I would expect better written communication skills from a high schooler. Even if I met this person at the hackathon, and even if I solicited a followup, this email would probably still make me lose all interest.

<comment><USER4> Thanks, I think I understand your perspective better. It sounds like you care more about the lack of genuineness or professionalism than the act of reaching out and selling, if I'm understanding correctly.

I think the takeaway for me is to work in a space/field of genuine interest so that building relationships can be a genuine activity.

<comment><USER5> No, it's exclusively the lack of profesionalism. Business is business. I don't want a "genuine" sales/marketing person. Your product is not my baby.

The right way to do this is to 1) sponsor the event and then 2) send out a professional email/flyer/whatever pitching the product through the official mechanism.

<comment><USER2> I also want to add that he emailed me under false pretences. He conjured up an imaginary world in which we were close friends and I cared about what he did at the hackathon and what he's doing afterwards (I've never met the guy). He undoubtedly wanted me to believe that he handwrote this email for me alone when its a copy-paste marketing email that he'd reused many times.

Not only is it dishonest and wastes my time, the execution is so bad I feel embarrassed for the guy (really? You "arrived" at a virtual hackathon?)

Edit: Oh my god and I almost forgot. He sent this to me at 3:21 AM!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey bobbyz!

I'm really surprised that this is taking so much of your mental energy :/ I remember you wrote quite an aggressive message on the Hackathon Slack that had to be removed by admins..

It seems like you took my email so much more serious that you should have!

I definitely didn't want you to feel like I was faking a friendship, this was a cold outreach done because I believed that this could add value to you.

But it's just cold emailing. I didn't mass email people without a reason :) You met people, you might not want to lose touch, that's it.

But agreed - totally a grey area - I'm not complaining, I should of course expect such reactions!

<comment><USER2> Grey area? Don't you mean technically illegal in the sender, receiver, and slack's jurisdiction?

([https://www.fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00013.html](https://www.fightspam.gc.ca/eic/site/030.nsf/eng/00013.html))

([https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+spam+laws&oq=swi...](https://www.google.com/search?q=switzerland+spam+laws&oq=switzerland+spam+laws&aqs=chrome..69i57.3991j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8))

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm working on a B2B SaaS solution that lets you reuse your Postman and Selenium tests for load testing. I get stuck on the first 5 or 10, more than 100. How do you convince an enterprise to trust you when you are tiny and new?

<comment><USER7> I don't think you sell to the enterprise at this stage. You sell to a manager of a department, and keep the deal size small enough that approvals are contained at that level.

Then expand the account later when you've gained traction and can go through an enterprise sales process.

<comment><USER8> Exactly. Unless you already have an established connection to a potential enterprise customer with the influence to get you in, you're probably not going to be playing at that level for at least several years.

Fortunately, you also probably don't want to be, because it would mean investing many resources in a months-long sales process with no guarantee of getting anything out of it at the end. Unless you have huge amounts of funding to burn through, your money is probably better spent on activities that generate revenue more quickly and build up a sustainable cash flow in the early days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Some interesting links for new entrepreneurs who weren't already aware of them.

Definitely not a fan of buying and spamming an email list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, buying a 100k email list and sending a generic email about a great new IOS application is silly.

But that's not what I mean by buying and sending emails! The other way works like this: 1\. Buy a super targeted email list (lets say early businesses that generate revenue through ads, if you're an ad network company) 2\. Have a quick look at their website to double check they actually might be interested and gather some information to add to the email. 3\. Use a tool like Gmass to send them a personal email like: "Hey {name},

{personal message}

I'd love to show you a short demo.. book a slot here..we help ad-based business like yourself to... blabla"

I'd personally be ok to get such an email - what do you think?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Advertising

> It will cost you too much. Just don't think about it. In the early days, ads > are not the way to go.

This is downright self-mutilating!

If you are not considering things like targeted advertising as one of your GTM I doubt you are building a serious product here.

It just makes no sense to me if you are willing to miss all the valuable insights you can gain from advertising your product to an actual audience in the real world (vs in a bubble/hype community, etc) just because you want to save some bucks.

To find your PMF you need to try everything.

Also, I won't call getting your first 100 users a "growth hack", esp when they are not even paying customers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! I'm really basing this upon my own experience with ads.

Were you able to get ROI positive ads? Would love to hear your experience!

The closest we got to it was while targeting super niche keywords on Google Ads.

I found personalized cold emailing to be much more effective :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Depending on your product, you can setup premade demos and try to get and opportunity to show it to the potential customer.

<comment><AUTHOR> Loom.io is great for this!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > You've got to start somewhere right.

Am I starting somewhere wrong?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My first ever submission on HN :)

I'm part of Pioneer.app, a startup accelerator, and many founders ask about this. They have their first MVP but literally 0 visitors to their website.

Hope this can help! I'd really love it if other founders could suggest additional actions that early founders can take to get them over the 100 user mark! I'll add them to the article (with your permission).</comment>


Software Development is Hard - <AUTHOR> http://blog.projectlocker.com/software-development-is-hard-or-a-meditation-on-why-were-here

<comment><USER2> Software development is hard and that is why we need a remote storage solution? What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the point was software development is hard, so you need to give yourself the right tools for the job. Lots of developers don't use _any_ version control. Yes, in 2014. One reason they don't is the perceived time/overhead of managing a system. So outsourcing makes sense as a way to get a function that is critical to building software, which they otherwise would not have.</comment></comment>


On-off switches on Apple devices - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/116768967108862685383/posts/9WCSW5BCny7

<comment><USER2> I've had lots of macs, and every powermac/macbook/macbook pro/mac pro has a very obvious power button conspicuously placed. So.... huh?

Even the phones/ipads/ipod-touch have the sleep/power button on top. The only product I know of that doesn't have a power button at all is the classic ipod.

<comment><USER3> Well, he did only say that he "didn't like" putting on/off switches, not that he didn't allow it.</comment></comment>


Twitter Location Based Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://bumpin.com/?ref=hn&t=1

<comment><USER2> "By using this service, you agree to our Terms and Conditions" I click there and the link leads to nothing...

</comment><comment><USER3> I just set up my first campaign. This is working good and I can see people following back!</comment>


Bravo has commissioned a show on Silicon Valley. Geeks are "the new rock stars". - <AUTHOR> http://blog.untogether.co.uk/post/20480910989/silicon-valley-is-high-school-but-its-only-the

<comment><USER2> Geeks will not be "rock stars" until non-geeks start calling other non-geeks "the new geeks" as a compliment.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Worrying.</comment>


Show HN: Codedoc: Easily create beautiful docs/wiki for your software projects - <AUTHOR> https://codedoc.cc <comment><USER2> Clean and nice! Also shout out for your core project:

Usable visual coding, always interested: [https://connect- platform.com/](https://connect-platform.com/) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1UKAlwte8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sF1UKAlwte8)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot!</comment></comment>


Honolulu fines pedestrians for viewing phone while crossing street - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/23/business/honolulu-walking-and-texting-fine.html <comment><USER2> I wish something was done about drivers playing with their phones. I live in a city in the US, where cars are the main mode of transportation. I, however live relatively close to work and walk every day (I am European ;). Number of drivers using their phone is just ridiculous (looks like ~30-40% of them during afternoon rush hours). I have been in life-threatening situations many times (2-3 per month on average). All because of phone use and driver friendly (aka pedestrian unfriendly) design and polices.

I just wanted to say that use of phones by pedestrians in certain situations is unsafe and problematic. However, use of phones by drivers is a much bigger problem that has much more serious consequences and is not addressed in any way.

<comment><USER3> In the District of Columbia, one can get a large fine for holding one's cell phone while driving. But if you walk two blocks in Washington and don't see at least one driver doing this, you aren't paying attention. While out running, I have yelled to get the attention of drivers looking every way but mine, but mostly at their phones. While out the walking I am very wary. The threat of a fine is not working.

(As I recall, there are many signs in Manhattan announcing large fines for the unnecessary use of an automobile's horn. There is also a lot of noise from horns. It could be that the horns one hears are prudently warning other drivers or pedestrians, but I suspect that they indicate drivers' levels of frustration.)

As somebody says farther down, such a law cannot possibly be enforced uniformly, and is open to selective enforcement.

A neighbor's car was totaled in a rear-end collision. He's pretty sure that the person who hit him was looking at a phone.

<comment><USER2> I was also rear-ended once by a person using a phone. To make things more interesting I was in a rental car and I was on my way to return it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Jaywalking laws were enacted because cars were killing pedestrians. They trotted out a huge PR campaign to call people who crossed in the middle of the street country bumpkins, and made it a crime, so that cars would not have to think about pedestrians.

This is another law aimed at making pedestrians second-class citizens. Instead of protecting pedestrians, these laws protect drivers, because they put the onus of safety on the pedestrians, who are the actual victims of the drivers.

I like the other cities who actually put in signals to the pedestrians, like the lights on the floor, or signs in the way of the pedestrians who are crossing the street. But an even better protection would be bollards that emerge out of the street to prevent cars from running red lights and hitting pedestrians, or other cars when drunk driving. But that might shine a light on the actual cause of death - the vehicle - rather than the responsibility of a passenger to keep a seat belt on, or a pedestrian to not use their phone.

<comment><USER5> > Jaywalking laws were enacted because cars were killing pedestrians. They > trotted out a huge PR campaign to call people who crossed in the middle of > the street country bumpkins, and made it a crime, so that cars would not > have to think about pedestrians.

I wish more people knew about this. I've had a guy treat me like a tin-foil- hat wearer when I brought it up. It really pissed me off, "It's not a conspiracy theory you ignorant jerk."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Oh I miss the days when I could walk down the goddamn street without dodging hundreds of oblivious zombies who pay no attention to their surroundings then give you a dark look like it's your fault if they run into you.

I really wish NYC would have something like this.

I don't get it either. Either stop (and get out of the way) to look at your phone or walk. Don't walk an one-third pace. It's pointless and annoying.

Much like texting while driving I think the majority of offenders believe they can look at their phone without it impacting what they're doing. it's alsmot universally wrong.

<comment><USER7> It drives me insane the same way that tourists stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to look at a map does, or when people walk 4-people wide, stand on the left of an escalator, queue up for a bus by blocking the sidewalk, or holding everyone up to 'just take a quick photo.'

It's really annoying, but I don't think you can just ad-hoc legislate it. We have tons of things that were made illegal in NYC and a tiny amount of the laws actually get enforced. As others have said, this can lead to laws only being enforced on people the police already want to harass, and everyone else doing it on a regular basis.

In addition, with our Vision Zero goals, there are so many other things to focus enforcement and government bandwidth on. Hundreds of people are still being killed by reckless drivers every year. If we can solve that, then we can focus on getting people to be less annoying when walking around.

<comment><USER8> wow, or maybe people should not be expected to be always rushing in life? If you are busy to get to a workplace that do not allow coming late, tough on you, leave earlier. I'll keep enjoying life (and be a "tourist", even where I live) at my own pace, and stop to take a picture if I feel like it, thank you

<comment><USER9> You can walk slow and not be in peoples way. Walk to the side not the middle of the damn footpath for instance. If there's two (or more) of you walk single file OR pay attention and move to single file when someone wants to walk faster. Have some awareness and not stop suddenly when someone is right behind you. Just have some awareness in general.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I walk. I don't drive. I've noticed that traffic is getting crazy (I live in San Francisco.)

Phones are a large part of it, and they are affecting all kinds of things: At bus stops people now try to get on the bus without waiting for the people getting off to exit first. It doesn't make any sense but they do it. And on every single bus there's at least one person watching TV or listening to (invariable bad) music without headphones.

So it's not just cars but car traffic is bad too.

A huge factor is the Lyft/Uber drivers. You see a lot of weird maneuvers and crazy shit these days, and it's almost always one of them. Some one is driving slow and turning their turn signals on and off? It's an uber driver looking for their pickup. Car camped in a crosswalk with no signals or blinkers? Uber driver. Etc...

I believe there's a bleed-over effect where people see others doing stupid shit and then they start to think that's the way things are and do stupid shit themselves. It becomes the new norm. I was bummed out to see the other day a police officer roll through a stop sign looking at his phone. He glanced up as he entered the intersection, at least. ;-(

People don't want to drive well.

I hate when drivers "play chicken" with me at intersections. I've had drivers wave me forward to cross in front of them while they were still rolling. No thank you. You stop and I'll go, or you go and I'll wait (and to hell with right-of-way.)

More topically, anyone who crosses the street without paying attention has a bit of a death wish or something. I doubt a fine is going to help much.

<comment><USER9> > At bus stops people now try to get on the bus without waiting for the people > getting off to exit first. It doesn't make any sense but they do it

In Australia it's socially acceptable to barge into people doing this, same with people two abreast on the escalator. Not everyone has the build to do it, but there are enough to largely keep those people in check. The music thing doesn't seem to happen much, but sometimes the TV thing does with kids. There is a plague of people constantly having conversations on their phones though, I don't feel bad about any music leaking from my headphones because it's needed to drown out their conversations.

> I hate when drivers "play chicken" with me at intersections. I've had > drivers wave me forward to cross in front of them while they were still > rolling. No thank you. You stop and I'll go, or you go and I'll wait (and to > hell with right-of-way.)

I see this more on my push bike, I'm not waiting for them to stop, just to slow down a bit as an indication that they've seen me (a lesson learned the hard way). They're failure to do this slows both of us down.

<comment><USER5> > In Australia it's socially acceptable to barge into people doing this

I've been tempted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Outlawing something that large portions of the population already do can be a pretty worrying thing. It's the perfect breeding ground for selective enforcement.

<comment><USER11> >> Outlawing something that large portions of the population already do

That in and of itself should signal that we aren't quite as "democratic" as we are told. We are allowed to vote on people who vote on things on our behalf - we are never allowed to vote on laws such as this one(otherwise, it would likely fail).

<comment><USER10> Yes, we are a representative democracy. I thought that was well understood.

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

As opposed to the form where voters vote on laws and policies directly:

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I disagree with this regulation, but the big problem will be with how it's enforced. Won't be long until "the cop said I was looking at my phone, but I wasn't!"

<comment> WD-42 Isn't this the same argument that was used against seat belt laws?

<comment><USER13> This is how just about every traffic law works. Take speeding as an example. Cop gets you with a speed measuring device like LIDAR or RADAR. He writes down the measured speed, clears out his device. How do you know that's what the gun actually registered? They totally have the power to make up a speed, pull you over and ticket you. Good luck in court. It almost always comes down to your word vs the officer's.

<comment><USER11> I've fought one of these tickets, and it is very difficult as you say. I won, but in a way I consider sleazy. I plead non-guilty, and _used an attorney_ (this is so, so, so important) who had the radar device brought into court. Once the device was present, the attorney entered a litany of requests:

1) Proof of the officers initial training with the device

2) Proof of the officers required continued training with the device

3) Proof of device's regular scheduled maintenance

4) Proof of training(initial and continued) of the person(s) who performed said maintenance

They got as far as item #2, couldn't provide it, and folded. I paid my attorney roughly the same cost I would have paid the court. Any "savings" would be the increase in my insurance costs that never happened.

If you can't afford an attorney, you are screwed. The "system" is about generating municipal income, not keeping anyone safe on the roads.

<comment><USER14> > The "system" is about generating municipal income, not keeping anyone safe > on the roads.

But presumably you were actually speeding?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Shouldn't we be treating the root cause of the danger, and not an ancillary factor? Cars are the cause of the injuries that motivated this law. Cars can be built to reduce pedestrian injuries, and are required to be in some countries (not the US). Distracted Drivers are the most common cause of cars hitting pedestrians. Yet the article barely addressed what laws currently address this in Hawaii, if any.

<comment><USER16> You make good points regarding other things that can be done to reduce accidents. This article is addressing one in particular that is being tried in Hawaii.

> _"Yet the article barely addressed what laws currently address this in > Hawaii, if any."_

I think this is a bit unfair. Articles are not exhaustive dissertations on a topic. They have some scope that the writer and editor determines is appropriate for the context. That may or may not match the scope you expect. Then again, the article may just be poorly written. If you were to look into this more deeply yourself and put together a piece yourself, I'm sure there are others (even on HN), that would find it interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I always put my phone down to my side if I was looking at it before crossing a street. But I'm also one of those people who have to slow down if I look at my phone while walking; I can't really do both effectively at the same time just because I want to be aware of where I'm going.

However I don't think fines are the right way to go. Signs and advertising campaigns would be better. Fines just violate the social contract. You're also not really hurting anyone else but yourself. In the fight or car vs person, the car is going to win .. I mean, unless you get hit by a cyclist.

<comment><USER18> You are potentially hurting other cyclists, other pedestrians, and very much the future well-being of any motorist who happens to run you over while running a green light.

<comment><USER19> Why is the person in the car not looking where they are going? It's people driving cars who are responsible for not running people over. The green light is there to tell traffic it's OK to proceed if appropriate. It doesn't make it OK to just run people over.

<comment><USER20> The person in the car should be looking where they're going, but they expect a clear roadway, not random pedestrians stepping out without paying attention.

In several states, if you're above a certain age (to exempt children) and walk into the path of a moving vehicle outside of a crosswalk, fault will be assigned to you and the driver in equal amounts (unless the driver is speeding, in which case they accumulate more fault).

<comment><USER21> The driver should certainly not expect a clear roadway.

At least in Britain, roughly the first driving lesson begins with looking all around for other road users. Speed must be reduced if there's an increased risk of inattentive pedestrians, such as near parked cars around a school or houses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This sounds great, but then how do you enforce it.

\- I was just checking the time

\- Well check this ticket out

Joking aside. You have in your hand a device that is designed to be addictive, you have spent years nurturing that addiction, in fact society praises you for using the device. If you use it you get a ticket.

Yes I think it is super annoying when people are not looking where they are going, it can even be dangerous, but this rule does not solve the problem.

I think even a just in time reminder is more effective. We have these traffic lights that have audio:

"Please put away your phone while crossing"

<comment><USER23> How does fining people for looking at their phone while crossing the street not effectively curb that behavior? Regardless of whether it's addictive or not.

Smoking bans, seat belt laws, etc. all seem to work pretty well despite the fact that many people really don't like these things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Within the first few hours I was in Honolulu for the first time I went to cross a street with the "walk" signal and had a driver blow through the red, probably 5 seconds or more after I'd gotten the "walk" signal. I wouldn't walk around Honolulu staring at my phone if you paid me.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is unconstitutional. Same with the law requiring a seatbelt. Please tell me whos life you are endangering by crossing the street while viewing your phone? The answer is only your own. The state/government is basically saying we own your life (slavery) by instituting laws like these.

<comment><USER26> What part of the Constitution are you referring to?

Preventing you from looking at your phone while walking is not forced servitude.

If it were a federal law, perhaps it would violate the 10th amendment. But it's just a local thing.

<comment><USER25> This law violates the constitution by restricting a basic liberty (In this case walking across the street while viewing your phone) this action does not directly hurt or harm anyone other than potentially yourself. Under the constitution we have a right to our life. This law violates that principle

<comment><USER27> It does in fact endanger other people. You are creating a dangerous situation. A pedestrian in the street who is oblivious to their surroundings is a hazard to all drivers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Pickpockets or laws, both eventually "fix" this problem. The difference is who the money goes to.</comment>


Show HN: A Different (Code-First) Headless CMS for SPA's Like Vue.js and React - <AUTHOR> https://contentblocks.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hi I am the co-founder of ContentBlocks. I had this idea of a code-first CMS after building a Vue.js app with a headless CMS (Contentful). The process felt really heavy, because I had to design all the schema up front in their editor, instead of being able to put it right in my code and page. But of course there are a lot of benefits of the headless CMS

It got me thinking and I came up with this idea that it could be a lot simpler. I was hoping to get some feedback (idea, pricing, do you need it?) on the idea. There is a demo, you can try out the editor. Within the demo is a link to the source code.

Let me know what you think or if you have any questions.

</comment><comment><USER2> A bit off-topic, but your landing page is a blatant ripoff of Stripe. Even a bunch of the colors are the same. It is one thing to take inspiration, but this is a complete turnoff.

<comment><AUTHOR> darkhorse13 - Thank you for your feedback. I just took a look at them, and the Stripe site is way nicer than ours! :) I will keep your feedback in mind as we move forward. Thanks for taking the time to visit the site. FYI - We used the Argon theme from [https://www.creative-tim.com/](https://www.creative- tim.com/) if you are interested.

<comment><USER2> Ah I see. Seems like they were the ones who took "heavy inspiration".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, after you mentioned it, I put ours side by side with stipe, and yeah, they look alike. Not like we tried to do that or anything. We are way more focused on the editor and making sure that works well.

<comment><USER3> To be honest and having been there before you, it's not a good idea. You entered a crowded space with a product that do not yield blatant differentiation. Your marketing, brand image and storytelling are the only things that will lead users to your app.

I don't think web developers will elect a newborn CMS, trust that it doesn't fail for the 5 or more years, if you don't convince them your CMS and the company behind it is future proof. And on that matter, your landing page and your documentation matter more than everything else. Invest time and money in it.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


IPhone DST bug causing alarms to fail across Europe - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/11/01/iphone-dst-bug-causing-alarms-to-fail-across-europe/

<comment><USER2> For a company that survives on consumer confidence I find it incredible that Apple have not released a revision of iOS with an update to solve this issue.

This is how good brands start to erode - if you cant have confidence in a conceivably simple feature of the product then its only one step away from not having any confidence in the product at all.

<comment><USER3> It is incredibly difficult to get "time" features right, especially recurring alarm/timer features. Daylight savings time only makes it much, much harder. All 3 companies I've worked for have had relatively serious issues with time, time zone, and DST. The most serious being patient monitoring devices that did the "wrong thing" with timezones. All other devices on the network had to account for the problem because years and years of work had gone into validation on the code for this device. Instead of fixing it at the source, the company spent years of developer time working around it at the other end.

Time is hard, so I'm not surprised Apple got it wrong. Thankfully, it's a relatively small usecase.

<comment><USER4> Amazingly Linux and other Unixes (yeah, OSX too) "get" time quite well. Maybe Apple over-optimized iOS?

<comment><USER3> As difficult as it is to implement time correctly in the OS, I imagine the timer/alarm apps that Apple wrote don't use any OS features (beyond the "what time is it?" API) so all of the issues usually arise in application code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Yup, this happened to me too this morning.

I even checked specifically for this last night: I was figuring that Apple would internally store the time in UTC and that my alarm time would have changed to an hour later than the usual time. Wouldn't have been ideal but I could have understood that. But no, when I checked my alarm the (display) time was still 8:00 AM.

This morning, I awoke for other reasons a little past 8 and my alarm hadn't gone off. Then, at 9, it did.

For some reason, there is some mismatch between the display time and the actual time, although I couldn't imagine what it would be. I imagine there is some caching of information involved somewhere...

</comment><comment><USER6> I solve this by setting the TIMER to 8 hours as I go to bed. Then it doesn't matter what time the device "thinks" it is. As a bonus, I'm more likely to believe the value the next day.

I do this because so many of my devices auto-update, fail to audo-update or just don't update at all I don't trust them any more :P

<comment><USER7> I have no use for alarm clocks. Surprisingly, this work rather well.

I was never late yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It was quite funny to hear people's alarm clocks going off randomly this morning on the London Underground.

</comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, I guessed(evidently wrongly) that the alarms were working by "if set to every monday, when alarm is called, increment the time till next alarm by a week".

Good job that article pointed out that deleting and readding the alarm didn't fix anything.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm from the UK with an iPhone 4 and my alarm went off fine this morning.

I haven't upgraded to 4.1 yet though, perhaps this is where the bug manifests itself

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone know what model of iPhone this affects? My iPhone 3GS went off at the correct time this morning.

I use a radio alarm as well in anycase.

<comment><USER12> The problem only occurs if you have a repeating alarm that _doesn't_ repeat every day. If it's non-repeating, or repeats every day, things work fine. For the record, my iPhone 3GS on iOS4.1 exhibited the behaviour this morning (hey, who cares, it's a public holiday in France... of course, it'll still cause problems tomorrow morning)

<comment><USER11> I should have said, it is set on weekdays.</comment></comment></comment>


Verizon iPhone Shows You Can't Win: Carriers Hold the Cards - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/02/iphone-verizon-sucks/ <comment><USER2> Sorry, guys, but there really ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Eventually we'll all be paying metered fees, broadband or wireless. It's really the only fair way, the same as we pay for water or electricity. Data is just another pipe/wire.

<comment><USER3> Apples and oranges. No, data is not just another wire.

Using up 10x more electricity or water has very real, physical costs which are proportional to the amount consumed.

Using 10x more data has only very tiny additional costs to the bandwidth provider. A few seconds of research can easily confirm this. Asserting that the levels of bandwidth charges we're seeing right now are "fair" is hilariously wrong.

<comment><USER4> _Using 10x more data has only very tiny additional costs to the bandwidth provider._

Just out of curiosity, what sort of calculations went into your result of "tiny additional costs"?

The reason that I ask is that bandwidth is finite and shared by all of the provider's customers. If one person consumes a lot of bandwidth, it will be to the detriment of the provider's other customers if the sum of all requested bandwidth is greater than the finite available bandwidth. Customers will eventually notice this, and the provider will lose those customers.

How did you account for this in your estimate?

<comment><USER3> I'm talking about data caps kicking in at 200 MB per month, a cleverly chosen amount of data which just coincidentally happens to be hard to stay under with any serious usage of a smartphone, and then a big dollar jump to the next cap of (typically) a few GB a month, which most users who aren't uploading/downloading a lot of video can easily stay under.

You'd also be right if the typical overage fees were within an order of magnitude of what it actually costs the provider to ship those extra bits over the wire. Or even two orders of magnitude. But from the figures I read (costs to the provider of circa a penny per megabyte or well under that), we're getting jobbed.

Don't you find it a bit silly to constantly advertise "4G" networks and their supposedly blazing speeds, and in the same breath set up data plans which will only allow you to use your phone at full speed for circa 1 minute per month? Do the math yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm thinking of sticking around on AT&T long enough with my iPhone for a little while. Who knows, the mass iPhone user migration to Verizon might make AT&T's service halfway decent!

<comment><USER3> I'm pretty convinced this is the case, actually. AT&T's _data_ service has always been faster than Verizon's, even with the staggering traffic increase from iPhone. Move a few customers to another network, and AT&T will probably get even faster.

Color me extremely unimpressed that Verizon is already throttling "heavy" data users and imposing bandwidth limits before serving Customer #1 from the iPhone onslaught they are about to experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There are so many articles like this that miss the root cause: a lack of competition. Why is there a lack of competition? Government granted monopolies and regulation.

We shouldn't have to trust companies to do what's in the best interest customers. We should be able to trust the market to bankrupt these companies.

<comment><USER7> AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile doesn't count as competition? (Granted, the iPhone is only officially available on two of them.)

<comment><USER6> 4 choices isn't enough to result in better options for consumers when it's nearly impossible for new entrants.

Compare this with internet search where there is a clear leader (Google) but its possible to create your own search engine (DuckDuckGo) without fear of being arrested for violating some regulation designed by the incumbents and enforced by the government.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article seems overly biased.

> But above all, Verizon's data throttling is shady in areas where even AT&T > can't compete. Even when AT&T had unlimited data, the company did not > practice throttling, and an independent test showed its unlimited data was > truly unlimited.

So AT&T couldn't keep offering unlimited data and went to a 2GB/mo plan. Is the author really faulting Verizon for not keeping up with a plan that AT&T doesn't offer anymore?

<comment><USER3> AT&T actually could and _did_ keep offering unlimited data, if you had it originally. I know, cause I kept the unlimited service for quite a while.

Also, recently, they have re-instituted the unlimited option, if you ever had it before.

And you are blatantly ignoring the throttling, which is the really offensive part of what Verizon is doing. Why are you doing that?

<comment><USER8> I was actually going to add a second paragraph about the throttling but figured my point was uninteresting so I deleted it.

I think the throttling is expected. Consumer wireless data plans are intended to handle stuff one is likely to do on a phone. If you start pumping gigs of torrents or something over the network, I'd expect the carrier to throttle you.

My problem with the way Verizon handled this is their lack of transparency. They've said their top 5% data users will be throttled. They should really publish an expected amount of data transfer that would put a user in that segment, and indicate how they'll throttle you. I also don't like that they said loudly "our plans are unlimited!" and then in a footnote that had to be pointed out by someone else, "oh yeah but we'll throttle you if you use 'too much'".

<comment><USER8> One more thing in the interest of full disclosure. I actually forgot that AT&T grandfathered in their unlimited plans. They're still available now if you never went off that plan?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a way to use this to void my current verizon contract and get a new phone early? (I have a legacy unlimited plan that I wouldn't mind losing)

<comment><USER3> Yes, many carriers will allow you to re-up your contract if you are a good customer and ask nicely. I've done this about 3 times in the past, twice with AT&T for new iPhones, a full year early in each case, and once with Sprint.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Would you pay to see the resumes of successful candidates in your field? - <AUTHOR>

If you were job hunting and not having any luck. <comment><USER2> Nothing. There are lots of brilliant programmers out there with their CV on their website.

<comment><USER3> I agree with this. There are lots of talented developers out there with public resumes available for view. The problem isn't necessarily what's written on their resume alone. It's a combination of factors. That said, I think its more valuable for people to get advice on what things a potential employer would look for in a resume and among other things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> No. As a designer looking for work I've found that the people who truly want to work with me will ask for a portfolio and a friendly chat, maybe a link to my GitHub profile. Resume almost never comes into the discussion. I've also been on the recruitment side and understand why people looking for designers don't really care for them.

But like one of the replies below, someone in finance or even the education might pay for this.

</comment><comment><USER5> No. I don't think it would be helpful. It's hard to claim that successful developers got jobs in because of their great resumes, rather than from networking, or being a good interviewer, etc.

Now, if you had TONS of data and could say what sort of attributes in a resume are likely to get an interview, then that would be valuable.

</comment><comment><USER6> I could see this being successful in finance. While I personally don't want to work for a big bank, I bet those that do would pay to see successful resumes-- especially from "non-target" schools. However, I also think it would be unwise for the successful candidates to share their resumes so that might be something to consider.

<comment><AUTHOR> Brandon,

I found this answer very insightful. I'd ask to ask you one or two more questions via email.

I don't see one on your profile though. Can you post it here?

Or email me at firstname.lastname@example.com and i'll get right back to you.

<comment><USER6> firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be more likely to pay for substantive career coaching from someone who had done work I found impressive. The problem there is that people who have done work I'd like to emulate aren't likely to take money to be available for me to bounce career ?'s off of and give objective, meaningful advice.

</comment><comment><USER8> A large number of successful developers don't need a current resume, or even a resume at all, to get work.</comment>