Jason Calacanis launches his new startup, Inside.com. - <AUTHOR> http://blog.inside.com/blog/2014/1/27/building-the-worlds-greatest-news-product

<comment><USER2> looks promising</comment>


On Design Approval and Intentional Flaws - <AUTHOR> http://nathanbarry.com/design-approval/

<comment><USER2> The one thing I left out of the article is tackling the problem head on. This may not make sense with every manager, but it could be worth trying:

Adding an intentional flaw is not addressing the core problem. Consider talking to them directly, pointing out their behavior, and try to get them to only make valid changes. Not just to leave their mark on the design.

Like I said, this may not always work, but it is better for your long term relationship with your manager.

<comment><USER3> _Like I said, this may not always work, but it is better for your long term relationship with your manager._

Is it? I think you're making a pretty big logical jump here. It's just as easy -- maybe easier! -- to argue that letting your manager retain his Feeling of Importance (a la Dale Carnegie) is the better way to maintain a good working relationship.

Only you can know whether your husband or wife would be happy if you answered "How does this make me look?" with "Fat." Same principal applies to telling your manager you're faking things to soothe his ego and need to tweak… regardless of how diplomatically you put it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I often find that a simple way to make a manager feel like they have control and have made a good decision, is to make one version of something that is obviously inferior and one that you like. The manager can then exert his creative vision by choosing the good one. It is a bit of a risky play since there is a chance the manager could choose the terrible one :P

</comment><comment><USER3> left this comment on the post:

Every problem is a people problem. Managing managers (stakeholders, whatever) is just the same. We "fixers" tend to think that what we're _really_ doing is fixing a problem or building a new thing, but that's rarely how the people hiring us look at it. They're the star of their own show (just like we're the star of ours), and they are doing it for their own reasons. Often those reasons have to do with feeling good about their contribution, looking good at work, leaving a mark, as you say, or CYA, etc.

If you don't understand that, and don't want to deal with it, then being a consultant or employee is a bad career choice!</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to find remote work offers? - <AUTHOR>

hey there , was wondering if any of you know some website that specializes in remote work , or maybe some recommendations on how to survive remote working. <comment><USER2> Check out [https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Elance, odesk, monthly "who's hiring?" threads here on HN:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring](https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring)

I've been working 100% remotely for more than two years now, feel free to ask questions: egor.ryabkov at gmail

<comment><USER4> How much of a "social security" package do you maintain for yourself (and your family if it exists)?

<comment><USER3> Not too much - close to minimum actually. I'm alone though, so that's less of a problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks to all of you :)</comment>


My Bathroom Mirror Is Smarter Than Yours - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@maxbraun/my-bathroom-mirror-is-smarter-than-yours-94b21c6671ba#.wy3ptge12 <comment><USER2> This is very cool. I like how clean this particular implementation is, it really adds to the "magic" effect. I wish the code was posted! The article links to HomeMirror[1] but I wonder if that's the code and if there were any customizations.

[1]: [https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror](https://github.com/HannahMitt/HomeMirror)

</comment><comment><USER3> Certainly has been posted a lot over the last several days :/</comment>


An "acoustic metamaterial" that can cancel 94 percent of sound - <AUTHOR> https://www.bu.edu/research/articles/researchers-develop-acoustic-metamaterial-noise-cancellation-device/ <comment><USER2> As far as deep bass goes, this won't hinder that - since bass waves have too high of a pressure to not pass through the object.

The most effective material is high mass and flexible, like cork or hemp crete.

Bass-traps also exist, they eat up the energy of sound pressure and are usually large tubes and many of them are needed to make a difference.

So there's a reason that this test is on high-frequencies, not low ones.

EDIT: Fine, down-vote me if you want but it doesn't make it less true [1]

[1] [https://www.acousticfields.com/how-do-you-stop-low- frequency...](https://www.acousticfields.com/how-do-you-stop-low-frequency- issues-in-a-small-room/)

<comment><USER3> You might be being downvoted because you've confused frequency with amplitude. Bass means low frequency / long wavelength. It doesn't say anything about amplitude / pressure.

<comment><USER4> Bass carries more energy, and the waves have higher pressure as well as a longer wavelength.

You can attenuate treble with a sheet of toilet paper, but you need a lot of mass to stop bass of equivalent nominal level.

<comment><USER5> Your result is correct but your explanation is all kinds of wrong. First, shorter wavelength waves have higher energy. Second, amplitude doesn't cause the difference here. Even if you needed 1000W of bass to get the same effect as 10W of treble, 50% attenuation of bass would sound the same as 50% attenuation of treble.

The real difference is that waves are attenuated much more by objects larger than their wavelength.

<comment><USER4> Sound isn't light. If you have source for your suggestion that shorter wavelengths of sound carry more energy, I'd be curious to see it.

And no, the real difference isn't that waves are attenuated much more by objects larger than their wavelengths. A 200m^2 sheet of paper will still attenuate treble and be completely transparent to bass.

The real difference is that bass damping requires a combination of size, raw mass, and permeability.

It's true that a tiny stick of a bass-damping material will do nothing to stop bass, but it's also true that giant bass traps - like the ones used in studios - will stop treble dead, but their effectiveness at bass frequencies depends entirely on size, thickness, and the material they're made of.

A concrete wall has plenty of mass but no permeability, so it's a good reflector at most frequencies. Bass traps use permeable materials like mineral fibre which have no effect in thin slices, but they're made thick enough to provide enough mass to damp the pressure oscillations.

<comment><USER6> I believe that, at a fixed amplitude, the power level increases with frequency for acoustic waves just like EM waves. Ultimately, this comes down to the area under the sin wave. The energy density under the curve increases as you cram more cycles into the same time interval.

Fixed amplitude is the important part here. Amplitude is not a perceptual loudness nor a sound pressure measurement. Sound pressure measurements are already a power scale and so two sounds with the same sound pressure carry the same energy per unit time. Perceptual loudness is even more confusing, as it applies a weighted curve to negate the non-uniform response of the human ear. A higher sound pressure level in bass or very high frequency is required to elicit the same perceived loudness as in our mid-frequency hearing.

Sound amplitude means the maximum particle displacement in one cycle, like the maximum throw of a speaker diaphram. It is a distance, much like amplitude of an electric signal is voltage. A woofer or tweeter with the same amplitude would have the same throw! Those objectionable bass noises from downstairs might involve a half inch or inch of displacement of a subwoofer. When is the last time you saw a tweeter with a half inch of throw? I don't think that would be blocked by tissue paper... it might melt your face off instead.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Cancel 94%" sounds like a lot, but that's just -12dB — significant, certainly, but nowhere near making audible sounds inaudible.

<comment><USER4> And it's very unlikely to be a broadband attenuator. Attenuating a single frequency is a neat trick, but most acoustic applications require require something that works a wide frequency range.

Given the breathless tone and the curious turns of phrase, I strongly suspect the author has no background in sound, acoustics, science, or journalism.

<comment><USER8> It could still be very useful without being wide-band!

Particularly with fan noise, there's often one or two stand-out annoying harmonics while the wide-band noise is less offensive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I feel like a lot of the comments here are missing the point because this isn't a magic noise-cancelling material.

The neat thing about this is that it works while still allowing air to flow through. Even if it's not blocking broad spectrum sound, it's still useful to block specific narrow frequency ranges. One immediate application mentioned in the article is for drones, which are very loud. Maybe if you put these devices below the fans of a drone, you could make it run much quieter.

It also establishes acoustic metamaterials as a new field of study, so we could soon see significant improvements in this technology - imagine a dynamic version of these rings which can change the frequencies which they block.

</comment><comment><USER10> Did... no one read the article before upvoting? This can reduce specific frequency sounds by -12db, NOT 94% of "sound". Can /u/dang or someone edit this clickbait title?

The wavelength of 100hz is 56.5 _feet_. While it may be possible that these rings can attenuate _specific high frequencies_ , they don't [and cannot] reduce all _sound_ in general. To say otherwise would be to defy physics. Assuming the rings aren't vaporware, they could work for specific, constant higher frequency sound sources, like machine hums as mentioned in the article. However, the rings' aesthetic would be useless inside of an MRI machine...

There is a reason existing sound barriers aren't open, because even regular walls block high frequencies. (And not just specific ones that match to a ring's size). The best way to kill frequencies are thick objects (like walls). For a room (like a editing studio or recording booth), it should have a non- symmetrical wall with various recessed spaces to function as sound baffles, at the least.

And lastly, these would be completely useless for low frequencies.

<comment><USER11> Minor pedantry: 10log(6/100) = -12.2, so you could sort of get the number stated if you assume they meant sound power.

These metamerial, interference based approaches, are not going to be broadband by the standards of physical acoustics.

This could be useful for helping cancel a particular harmonic of a helmholtz resonator.

The real question, to me, is does it still work at high transitional Reynolds numbers, or under full turbulent flow?

Source: End effects during transitional and turbulent flow for Helmholtz resonators (i.e. bass reflex ports) in high output pro-sound loudspeakers has been something I've played around with in the past.

<comment><USER12> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fletcher%E2%80%93Munson_curves)

If one attempts to figure out what the subjective, perceived numerical volume vs. actual dB SPL is for a large group of people, it roughly coincides with the dB SPL number.

Bit more detail: you play a 100dB SPL tone and tell the participant "this is a 100" and play a 0dB SPL tone and tell the participant "this is a 0" and play all kinds of other tones at various frequencies and sound pressures, you get that curve. The unit for this arbitrary scale is called phon.

<comment><USER11> I am aware :-)

See ISO 226:2003

<comment><USER12> Oh yeah, just putting it out there in case people wanted to know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The title of the article is incomplete. It should read

> An "acoustic metamaterial" that can cancel 94 percent of sound _at one > frequency_.

I don't see how that could counter the turbulence generated by a jet engine. Maybe that was just the journalist getting ahead of themselves.

</comment><comment><USER14> The article implies that the test stand was running at a fixed frequency. This makes me suspect that this has to be designed to interfere with transmission of sound at a specific frequency, and perhaps isn't capable of eliminating more complex sounds like voices or music.

<comment><USER13> Yes. If you click through to the paper you can see the frequency response dipping around 460 Hz. Which is the frequency they're using in the demo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As someone with disposable income working in an open office, I desperately want to know if this can be used to build something to cancel out human voices more completely than Bose QC-35s.

<comment><USER16> For voices you need passive sound isolation, not active noise cancelling. Try these: Howard Leight by Honeywell Sync Stereo MP3 Earmuff (1030110), Black [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004U4A5RU/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004U4A5RU/)

They also give off a very strong "I'm busy" vibe

If that's still somehow not enough, wear these concurrently (this is great for planes too): Etymotic High-Fidelity Earplugs, ER20XS Standard Fit, 1 pair, Polybag Packaging [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RM6Q9XW/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RM6Q9XW/)

Also recommend the above with these foam tips for longer wear, I've done up to 16 hours with only a little discomfort: Shure EABKF1-10M Medium Foam Sleeves (10 Included/5 Pair) for E3c, E4c, E5c, E500PTH, i3c, i4c & SE Earphones (Black) [https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015PN3W6/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015PN3W6/)

<comment><USER17> How about for lower frequencies: motorways, busy roads (no individual car noises; a solid background roar)? They make having the window open here a nightmare.

<comment><USER18> Isn't this exactly when active noise cancelling works the best?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Like others here, I wonder how well this really works, but I applaud the effort nonetheless and I hope to see progress in this area in the coming years!

Better sound blocking tech would really improve people's lives and stress levels, especially people who can only afford to live on busy streets in old apartments without proper sound proofing. No to mention people who want to do music in their apartments without bothering their neighbors.

<comment><USER20> I'm not sure how you could use it for that. Well, you could put a couple of those things over your ears, but earmuffs already exist. More likely it would be useful for building better mufflers onto noisy equipment. A muffler on musical instruments? I could imagine it fitted to a trumpet perhaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> If affordable, all I can think about is how much this could help musicians or bands that practice at home without disturbing the neighborhood.

<comment><USER13> If you want to feel the kick of your drum, your neighbours will hear it too. This gadget won't help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Too bad sound perception is logarithmic. 94% is nowhere near as much as one would be led to believe if one did not know what a "decibel" is. Which is just as well I suppose: makes for a very nice, clickbaity headline.

_Many_ people don't get this. People are surprised to discover that a 10W guitar amp is not that much quieter than a 100W one, and even 1W amp can be pretty darn loud, even though it's just 1% of the power.

<comment><USER23> -12dB on a drone could mean the difference between regulatory approval or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What does it mean to "cancel" or "block" "94% of sound"? From the paper's abstract: "Finally, the proposed unit-cell performance is validated experimentally, demonstrating a reduction in the transmitted acoustic energy of up to 94%."

Does this basically mean amplification by about −12 dB?

<comment><USER25> I guess so, but when you use energy instead of pressure, and a linear scale rather than logarithmic, it makes the results look more impressive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Just couple of points about the article. 1- the main focus of the study is to silence the sound while maintaining ventillation, i think comparison with the barrier is not relevant. 2- the structure is deep subwavelength compare to the mufflers size 3- low frequency can still be silenced with this design but need an stiffer material maybe metal 4- experiment is design considering both fabrication limitation ( 3D print size) and the tube material to be effectively work as a waveguide

</comment><comment><USER27> In physics we are learning about sound waves, and how noise cancelling headphones detect noise and produce waves which are destructive to those incoming sound waves, by matching the amplitude and sending them out at a different time interval. I think future noise cancelling materials will make use of some kind of tech like this.

I don't think materials that simply absorb sound are very efficient.

<comment><USER28> This, being an active process, would require energy would it not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> [https://journals.aps.org/prb/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.024302](https://journals.aps.org/prb/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevB.99.024302)

Anyone have access to this paper? This is driving me nuts and I want to know, damn it :P

</comment><comment><USER29> So what are the best, most creative ways to get rid of freeway/steeet noise from your yard?

</comment><comment><USER30> Is it possible to build this at home using a 3d printer ?

<comment><USER31> It appears that that's exactly how they made it.

What you end up with, though, is a pretty specific muffler.

Making a wall out of these blocks will take a while, and it'll only block a narrow range of frequencies, somewhat.

But hey, it's better than plywood because you can, like, stick your hand through it! And it's hi-tech!

<comment><USER32> Sign me up! I'd love to muffle my GPU miners. They need air and make plenty of fan noise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> It places the lotion in the basket...

</comment><comment><USER34> As a side note, I know that I am old (and grumpy) but was it really necessary for the actual engineers to pose for the leading article picture?

I mean if it was a journalist's or editor's choice to _mis-_ illustrate the invention creating a picture with models I would be fine with it, but the actual engineers/inventors posing for it?</comment>


He said/she said: Flash not coming to iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/02/02/he-saidshe-said-flash-not-coming-to-iphone/

<comment><USER2> I dont think I care about flash on my iPhone.</comment>


Linux and Seeds, Geeks and Farmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.a42.com/node/343 <comment><USER2> Community, sharing, and all of that? Blah, I write open source software because I found it in my interest to do so. I also happen to freelance open source games.

I also laugh manically because I know that I will win in the end.

Intellectual property is definitely not security when your true opponent don't even care about copying your "IP". In fact he love it when you sue your customers, chase down pirates, and other actions that alienate your market.

Your opponents will simply employ more attractive propositions and licensing agreement for his "IP", or better yet, set it public domain and poach your disgrunted customers.

Of course, his software will have to be equal or better than your. But all things being equal, most people will prefer software that they can copy without getting into a hailstorm of lawsuits.

<comment> loup-vaillant > Community, sharing, and all of that? Blah […]

You're right. Open Source isn't really about that. Free Software is. He just mixed up the terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Although there is reason to be concerned about Microsoft abusing patents, Microsoft really isn't the Big Bad Evil Transnational Bully this article makes it out to be.

<comment><AUTHOR> The article was written in 2003. You forget that was the widely-accepted perception back then.

<comment> loup-vaillant Not any more? What has changed, then? Our perception, Microsoft, or did someone just out-eviled them?

<comment><AUTHOR> They no longer have a stranglehold on the platform the majority of software is written on.

Apple is starting to out-evil them in terms of perception.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NProgress: slim, site-wide progress bars - <AUTHOR> http://ricostacruz.com/nprogress/ <comment><USER2> It's nice looking, but I'd like to see some actual user testing on whether this kind of progress bar performs its most important task.

"What?" I hear you asking, "Of course it does! It shows how much longer you'll have to wait."

In which case I must inform you that giving the user information is _not_ the most important function of a progress bar. The most important function of a progress bar is Time Travel.

That is to say, subjective time travel. Try this fiddle: [http://jsfiddle.net/gUkgX/1/embedded/result/](http://jsfiddle.net/gUkgX/1/embedded/result/)

First, click "No feedback". Wait for it. Feel how long it takes to run. Try not to count the seconds (you wouldn't usually do that on a real website) - just see how it feels. Next, click "Spinner", and then finally try "Progress bar".

Which one felt shortest?

Of course, they are all the same ten seconds. Yet the spinner feels faster than no feedback, and the progress bar feels faster still. Watching that bar fill up makes the time seem to pass faster.

And the progress bar is totally fake. In fact, it doesn't even take 10 seconds to fill. It fills in 9.2 seconds, starts out fast and slows down, and none of this has anything to do with what is really happening, which is that you're waiting for a 10 second timeout to fire.

My point with all of this is that in order for a progress bar to fulfill its duties as a time condenser, I suspect that it needs to be prominent. I get the idea of keeping the indicator out of the way and minimal, but I think this is misguided in this case.

<comment><USER3> This is 100% true. I shared this story in another comment yesterday, but I'll share it again here:

On one of my one-off side projects([http://gifmachine.xwl.me/](http://gifmachine.xwl.me/)), there's a rather silly example of the importance of loading bars.

In the first version, the design was quite bare. There were a couple of textinputs and a "make gif" button. The way the code happens to work, when you press the "make gif" button the web page would just sit there till you where re-directed to your finished gif.

The first bit of advice I got from anyone was "this is sooo slow, what's happening?" The problem was, I didn't actually have any way to understand how long/what was going on in the backend. So I decided to take the next best approach:

I fake it.

As soon as you click the "make a gif" button, the bar starts loading. However, that bar has no basis in reality. It takes exactly 40 seconds to fill up, no matter what's going on.

However, everyone loves it! All the comments I got said how much better it seemed to make the experience. Even though it's a fake loading bar.

<comment><USER4> I have an app that does some prediction based on values that a user enters. The prediction works pretty fast – unnoticably fast, like 50ms or so.

However, I had the idea to use a progress bar to achieve the opposite effect: To introduce an artifical waiting time together with a sense of progress (hence, progress bar). This should convey the feeling that the app is working hard to make _Your Personal Prediction_ and since the app appears to be calculating a lot of stuff, the prediction _Must Be Totally Accurate_.

Surely, the target users are not necessarily sophisticated technical people.

I haven't implemented it but I definitely want to try it out.

<comment><USER5> We had this issue on our website - our "Browse" is essentially an SPA that fetches results from an API upon any action being taken; such as sorting, pagination, adding filters etc. We had the fetching and rendering happening in an average of 30-50ms, which meant most users didn't even realise the page had refreshed apart from what appeared to be a faint blink on the whole page.

We actually had to put in a setTimeout() for 500ms with a loading gif, followed by an scrollTo() to the top of the results just so users would know something actually happened.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Is this a part of a (very slowly) building trend towards a chrome-less browser?

Long ago we used to "login" to a site using BasicAuth and the browser defined login box.... it wasn't flexible/pretty enough so we started using <form>s and integrated them into the page.

We had a path-like URL structure that we used to get to our documents, but our documents became more complex and the path-like structure became less human friendly and more like a unique id that should be under the hood.

We had back (and forward) buttons to navigate through our mainly hierarchical sites, but our sites became less linear so we used javascript to jump around.

Our complex non-linear documents became so complex that we didn't want to reload them all at once, so we started fetching parts of the page and needed to build our own progress indicators within the page.

Soon: Very little of the browser chrome will be relevant to the way we use the web.

<comment><USER7> Very interesting idea. I can definitely see the progression towards a more minimal browser that offloads functionality which used to be part of the browser into the page. However, I think we have reached a minimal point where browsers have already stripped down as far as they can.

Looking at a browser like Google Chrome basically all that is left is tabs, forward and back buttons, refresh button, search/url bar, HTTPS indicator, and right hand menu button.

We couldn't get rid of the back and forward buttons because while JavaScript navigation works inside the page, it doesn't work very well to go back from your site to the site that the user came from, because security is designed to prevent you from easily reading history.

Additionally the refresh button couldn't be replaced by an in page control because if the JavaScript in the page has an error and stops working the refresh also stops working, which would make people unable to refresh the page.

I wouldn't trust an HTTPS icon that was powered by JavaScript inside the page so that also has to be part of the chrome.

The only item on that list that could be removed is the right hand menu button. And since that does stuff like print, bookmark, and settings that also doesn't work as part of the webpage itself.

But who knows? Maybe I'm wrong and we'll find a way to strip the browser down even more, but I don't think that will happen until we develop voice, gesture, or thought controlled interface devices that are faster and more efficient than typing into a search bar or clicking a button. Then we can get rid of all the buttons and controls completely. But at that point the entire experience of browsing would be extremely different, not just the browser chrome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It looks great, but why should we start promoting this as a UI pattern? This seems like a step in the wrong direction, and just because Youtube does it doesn't mean that others should too.

If you need a visual cue that something is loading on your page, throw up some kind of spinner or other animation that doesn't have a fixed beginning and end. Unless you think you know how to accurately measure the time that http request/response cycle is going to take (you don't).

<comment><USER2> Compare the subjective wait for the spinner and progress ar in this demo: [http://jsfiddle.net/gUkgX/1/embedded/result/](http://jsfiddle.net/gUkgX/1/embedded/result/)

Notice how much longer you seem to wait with the spinner? Watching a progress bar fill up with a definite end feels way faster. I have often used progress bars that have no connection whatsoever with the process they're "measuring".

Here's the technique I've found works well:

1\. Estimate the time the operation will usually take. Call that W (it can be a constant, or you can use a heuristic to guess it specifically for the user).

2\. Pick a function that asymptotically approaches 1, e.g. the error function. Transform it it so that f(0.75*W) = 0.75.

3\. Now for elapsed time t, fill your progress bar to f(t).

The upshot is that the bar will start fast, and never completely fill. And for the first 75% of the estimated time, it will be accurate (as long as your estimate is). After that, it matters less, since it will take a while for the user's brain to adjust to the slower speed.

<comment><USER9> > since it will take a while for the user's brain to adjust to the slower > speed

Wait, what?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, that could have used more explanation, especially since I'm really hypothesizing after the fact about _why_ it works better to start fast and end slow, and that hypothesis involves a few steps of inference.

It's pretty clear that the human brain is good at simple integration over time to predict where an object will be in the future, or how long it will take to reach a destination. What it doesn't seem to be as adept at is estimating those things when something is changing speed. I would guess that the reason for this is a combination of the math being harder, the results being more noise-sensitive, and it being less crucial in our evolution to anticipate rapidly accelerating or decelerating targets.

So my first premise is that we estimate time-to-destination based on speed, and that we are slow to update the estimate when the object changes speed.

My second premise is that time perception is heavily influenced by expectation. If click something and then nothing happens for a moment, our wait-time expectation is essentially unbounded, since we aren't even reasonably sure that anything is happening.

If you add a spinner, we become more confident that the wait will end, but the time expectation is still high. If the spinner lingers for too long, our only way to update the expectation is something like "I will be waiting for some significant proportion of the amount of time I've been waiting so far". That's not good, because it actually causes your expectations to _invert_ with respect to reality; as time goes on, you feel further from the end, not closer.

So the idea is that a progress bar feels faster because it gives a decreasing expectation of time left. If the progress bar is accurate, then once it has moved half way, you will expect to wait exactly as long as you have already waited.

Now, the trick with the decelerating progress bar is that it lets you beat accurate expectations by causing the user to underestimate how long they will be waiting.

For example, suppose you accurately estimate that it will take 6 seconds. In the first two seconds, the progress bar will fill, about linearly, to 40%. The user will therefore expect the bar to be full after 5 seconds. After 4.5 seconds, it will be 75% full. If the user were to estimate based on there entire time so far, they'd correctly expect to wait another 1.5 seconds. But that doesn't seem to be what happens. Instead, the user continues to expect less. And so on. In the final moments before the progress bar disappears, the user simply doesn't have time to adjust their expectations.

What seems to lend additional credence to this hypothesis is that you can get even better results by adding random slowdowns and speed ups (while maintaining an average fill curve of erf(erf^-1(estimate)*t/estimate)). When the bar passes the 75% mark where it slows down for good, the user still expects another jump. You can even confirm this expectation by filling the bar at the end it disappears, since at expected completion it will only be 87% full.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I hit one of the buttons in the demo and sat waiting for a doc page to load. After 5 seconds or so I realized that I'm an idiot.

I suppose that says good things about the bars, though; they really do signal "loading"...

<comment><USER11> You're not the only one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one that remembers SWF load-progress indicators and how retarded they were?

<comment><USER13> This guy make fun of it in his flash games (progress bars go forward then backward) [http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/](http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/)

Brings lots of memories, I used to make flash games in school when I was 15. I always liked those little games. /nostalgia

<comment><USER14> Anddddd there goes my day. Winterbells.

<comment><USER15> Today I learned that Winterbells is now available on iPhone. What has the world come to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Not to denigrate the work done here, but I find it hard to see the excitment over this new UI pattern as anything more than a fad, and anticipate that will go through a highly predictable cycle of 'why you need a progress bar' through 'progress bars considered harmful' etc. etc.

I suggest rereading this insightful article from last year when the Pinterest layout was flavor of the month. [http://jfornear.co/the-pinterest-layout-will- not-save-you/](http://jfornear.co/the-pinterest-layout-will-not-save-you/)

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the insightful article. On a tangential note, that link's home page is easily the weirdest thing I've seen all week.

</comment></comment><comment> k-mcgrady This looks really nice. I think I've saw one of the browsers using that space at the top for it's loading bar which looks very similar (I'm not positive on this - it could have been a mobile browser).

Edit:

Readme says it was inspired by Medium and YouTube - [http://www.usabilitypost.com/2013/08/19/new-ui-pattern- websi...](http://www.usabilitypost.com/2013/08/19/new-ui-pattern-website- loading-bars/)

<comment> grey-area The iOS7 browser has an identical progress bar. I saw it in a leaked screenshot somewhere, I'm sure :)

<comment><USER18> So what's the story here would one just look a little different from the other depending on colour choice?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> A lot of negativity here, I find this quite beautiful and useful for some cases where the UI allows it.

<comment><USER20> Well, a wide adoption of this pattern would be quite a big change. And all the big changes are met with negativity/criticism, usually.

While negativity might be discouraging and sometimes might cross the line of a constructive discussion, at the same time it gives some food for thoughts. In this particular case, it gave me more to think about rather than 'looks nice'. So did this post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6143604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6143604)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This gives the pointer a blue beachball on Mac Safari. Is that intended? Have never been sure what the blue beachball's supposed to be.

<comment><USER22> Hi, I'm the author of NProgress. Yes! It's intentional.

You can disable this by removing the `cursor: wait` rule in the CSS file.

<comment><USER23> That cursor makes me think that the browser has crashed/hung/is not responding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm thinking on forking this to remove the jQuery dependency. Would somebody be interested in this?

<comment><USER25> Yes please

<comment><USER24> Follow this repo for more info: [https://github.com/mparramont/nprogress](https://github.com/mparramont/nprogress)

Also, I'll be documenting the process here: [http://developingandstuff.blogspot.fr/2013/08/nprogress- no-j...](http://developingandstuff.blogspot.fr/2013/08/nprogress-no-js.html)

As preparation for a talk: [https://twitter.com/mparramon/status/369945214494191616](https://twitter.com/mparramon/status/369945214494191616)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> More on website loading bar: [http://www.usabilitypost.com/2013/08/19/new-ui- pattern-websi...](http://www.usabilitypost.com/2013/08/19/new-ui-pattern- website-loading-bars/)

</comment><comment><USER27> I worked, for a brief instance in time, at a roadside produce stand. At first I got really hung up on whether or not I could give a customer an accurate, precise answer to their question. With time, I realized that 19/20 customers didn't want the correct answer; they simply wanted a confident answer to allay their concerns.

To wit: a customer asked for a tomato with qualities A, B, and C (anyone who thinks that such a conceptually complex interest in tomatoes is unnecessary needs google 'heirloom tomatoes'). I recommended a Black Krim tomato which, to the best of my knowledge, I believed would meet all of her needs.

She happily purchased six Black Krim tomatoes and went along her merry way. I then asked my manager if there was a better recommendation.

He promptly told me that 1) I was diametrically incorrect in my choice for meeting her needs, and 2) it didn't matter, even in the least.

Sure enough, later that week the same customer came back and specifically thanked me for my excellent recommendation.

I've been reading the comments on various progress bar threads here and elsewhere in the past few days, and I think many of those who dismiss this UI pattern are missing the forest for the trees.

It's not about accurately representing the loading of elements in the page. It's not about accurately predicting and displaying when the page will finish loading. It's not about supplanting browser features for the sake of establishing a site-wide or web-wide standard.

\---

It's about making the user feel like things that are out of their view and control are working properly.

\---

When I look back on my childhood experiences with computers in the 80s and 90s I distinctly remember my litmus test for "is it frozen" was "can I hear those clicky noises from the hard drive".

Those noises told me nothing directly actionable nor did they accurately describe what had been done or what was left to be done. If, hypothetically, I ran an app caught in some bizarre infinite I/O hard drive loop those noises would have been misleading, and I eventually would have given up and hard- rebooted the computer

Spinning wheels generally act consistently; a loading bar such as this juts and pauses without any noticeable pattern. It gives us the impression that something is happening behind the scenes that we can't directly observe. If it acted uniformly we might just as easily believe that a dumb loop was living out its repetition.

Actual representation of reality is _not_ the point. Perception is the point.

I'm sure that popularity could result in a harmful cliche-ification of this UI pattern, but I believe it has its place and its purpose. A browser cannot divine the amount of content that will be loaded on a dynamic site pre- execution.

At this point in time, at least, I don't mind encountering these loading bars. I can't really think of an example that irk me in any way. If I notice an in- site loading bar sticking around for a while there's probably something happening (or not happening) that would have pissed me off whether or not that loading bar were there.

<comment><USER28> > He promptly told me that 1) I was diametrically incorrect in my choice for > meeting her needs, and 2) it didn't matter, even in the least.

This is why I hate talking to sales people in brick-and-mortar stores. Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for the longer-term (ie, when you get home and realize you made the wrong choice).

<comment><USER27> > Appearing confident rather than actually being correct is probably good for > closing sales and for short-term customer happiness, but it's no good for > the longer-term

Well, that depends--and that's where my metaphor breaks down. The customers went home satisfied and remained satisfied (at least, that's what their consistent repeat business and smiling faces would suggest).

Tomatoes and website loading times matter to you in the here and now but don't have any lasting effect on your life. That's not the case for making a major purchase.

<comment><USER29> Yeah, it's definitely context-dependent. Buying the wrong kind of tomato may not matter if you're going to eat them for dinner that night. But if your plan is to grow tomatoes using the seeds from the ones you purchased, it suddenly becomes a bigger problem.

You can apply the same reasoning to this UI element. Sometimes - most of the time? - the user doesn't really care about the amount of progress made. They just need to know that something is happening. But at other times, they need to know how much time is actually left on the progress. If that's the case, you need to care about more than just perception.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I hope progress bars will not be an excuse to build bad slow-loading websites. I think if you are not GMail you should stay away.

<comment><USER31> Those that are predisposed to build slow sites despite all the evidence about how detrimental it is don't really need any excuses for some reason.

In all seriousness, given that there are a lot of use cases where an app might be fetching external resources without clearly informing the user as to (i) what's going on and (ii) the current progress, I'd wager the benefits of providing some sort of indication would be measurable even if it's rather fast. I don't really see the presence of an indicator, in any case, enabling an app to get away with slow/slower results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Question for people using these progress bars: Are you actually doing the computation to accurately estimate the time it takes to complete the action indicated by the progress bar, or are you simply showing a progress bar as a visual cue to any loading in the same way people have been using spinning AJAX loaders?

<comment><USER33> compu-what-tion? You mean accurately predict how long it'll take an ajax request to load? Pfft, an exercise in futility, easier to just fake it, and probably just as accurate :)

<comment><USER32> That's what confuses me. AJAX loaders are ubiquitous on the web. They're small, easy to use, and a great visual cue. I'm not sure why you would want a percent-based loading bar unless you actually knew how long something would take to load. (e.g. see loading bars for downloads)

Using these super thin bars as a "dumb" loader seems like it would only confuse your users. It's like using an icon other than the floppy disk to convey saving.

<comment><USER34> There are step functions that allow you to approximate it or increment it gradually. I might not know how long an individual step in a process will take, but if I know how many steps there are, I can know approximately how much to increment on the completion of each.

This doesn't suit all usage patterns (like file downloading where you don't know the file size), but I can think of at least a dozen scenarios in which this is perfectly suitable (even if I don't personally love the effect).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I find these fake progress bars a borderline-dark pattern: in general, the goal is to deceive users into waiting for progress that isn't truly happening, with the goal of holding their eyeballs.

<comment><USER36> How is this "fake"? I can set the exact percentage of the progress bar.

<comment><USER37> It's fake because even after you set the exact correct percentage of the progress bar, the progress bar still keeps moving forward on its own, even if your process hasn't made any progress. The page says it itself: NProgress has "realistic trickle animations to convince your users that something is happening" – even if nothing is actually happening. The stuttering-forward is all about looking like something is happening, when it that is not necessarily true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> the cycle, article about some thing -> post implementing it on HN is pretty damn awesome. I remember reading articles about this a few days back and here we have this. I remember reading articles about Await in JS and a link to a framework doing exactly that was posted a few days later.

</comment><comment><USER39> If this is going to become a pattern, it probably makes more sense to allow the browser chrome to be manipulated in a way so progress bars aren't redundant (i.e. 'pjax' style loading uses the same bar as if you did a real page load, just like pushState allows for history manipulation.)

It would be cooler to see some guys get together and make a de facto standard, and then implement this type of control into extensions for FF/Chrome.

</comment><comment><USER40> We decided to open source our loader @ Arthrex today, very similar but a different feel.

[http://jqueryajaxloadingbar.herokuapp.com/](http://jqueryajaxloadingbar.herokuapp.com/)

[https://github.com/arthrex/jquery.ajaxLoadingBar](https://github.com/arthrex/jquery.ajaxLoadingBar)

</comment><comment><USER41> A couple weeks ago I built something similar, except that my solution is even smaller (doesn't depend on jQuery, 1 single file, 1KB gzipped and minified). Check out: [http://buunguyen.github.io/rainbow.js/](http://buunguyen.github.io/rainbow.js/).

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm more interested in the code needed to establish how much data needs to be loaded. Is it dumb file counting? Are they sending some sort of informational "header" before the data? If they're counting bytes, how are they doing that?

This bar's UI takes all of 20 minutes to make.

</comment><comment><USER43> Relevant

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238482)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5761898](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5761898)

</comment><comment><USER33> a) AWESOME JOB -- spent last 10 hrs making eh?

b) Awesomely devious! I love the fake loading animations. Dude you are a fucking genius!

c) Did I mention awesome?

</comment><comment><USER44> I don't see any license specified. Is there a plan to license this software?

<comment><USER15> README on the GitHub repository says MIT at the very bottom, but agreed that it would be nice if this was more prominent.

<comment><USER44> Thanks for pointing that out. I see it now and the full text has been since added to the repository. I was looking at the source and only saw copyright!

<comment><USER15> Copyright forms the basis of F/OSS licenses; if you don't own the copyright, you can't put it under a F/OSS license in the first place.

Good to see that there's now a License.md file. (I would have called it LICENSE instead, but eh, bikeshedding.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> It diverts my attention and somehow I think that some activity goes on at the top of the screen. It actually makes me think a new tab was opened. I don't understand why we need this.

</comment><comment><USER46> I just made something similar yesterday that shows a progress bar based on amount scrolled through targetted content: [https://github.com/RyanNielson/jquery- progress](https://github.com/RyanNielson/jquery-progress)

I whipped it up quickly so I'm sure there's room for improvement. Feel free to post any issues or enhancement ideas on Github.

</comment><comment><USER47> Nice, but looking at the code I don't think really needs a jQuery dependency. Manipulating CSS classes, $extend, and the very basic DOM jiggering in this library could be accomplished easily without it. More and more people are removing jQuery in favor of frameworks like Angular and lighter weight libraries. Just my two cents.

</comment><comment><USER48> Hey everyone!

I liked this idea but I didn't like the dependency on jQuery and I'm into AngularJS at the moment. So I've created a AngularJS Provider for basically the same thing. Check it out if you have time.

[http://victorbjelkholm.github.io/ngProgress/](http://victorbjelkholm.github.io/ngProgress/)

</comment><comment><USER49> Great job, i have done some months ago something similar in a project (it's a portuguese project sorry :p ) : [http://www.dizer.de/mografia/](http://www.dizer.de/mografia/) , you can check the loading bar on the top, in form page. Start typing..

</comment><comment><USER50> Always wondered why a trivial library like this one couldn't be dependency- free (jQuery mostly)

</comment><comment><USER51> This gives me a spinning 'loading' cursor in Chrome on Windows 7 - for the entirety of the time it takes to load.

I don't like that - feels like the system is going to hang, and it feels more like a drag on my system than a regular progress bar.

</comment><comment><USER52> looks really slick.. looking forward to build this as an AngularJS directive or such. :)

<comment><USER53> I want to build this as an angularjs directive too, but knowing me, it'll probably be not until winter when I finish. (So I hope you make it sooner!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> This looks similar to the one on Youtube, I was wondering though, why is youtube progress bar only compatible with Chrome ? does it rely on a new HTML5 feature that doesn't exist in firefox ?

<comment><USER55> I've looked into this a bit. I don't think it's just Chrome but rather YouTube has some sort of beta flag for enabling the pjax style page loads. Try Incognito in Chrome and see if you still get the bar.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> When I read site-wide I thought it would be progress bars reporting on time- demanding process initiated somewhere else on the site. Silly me - it is site wide as in across your screen...

</comment><comment><USER57> Very nice! Have you considered going by "Ricosta Cruz"? It sounds kind of cool that way. NProgress is perfect for something I'm just about to finish, thanks!

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure about that—"Rico Sta. Cruz" isn't some pseudonym I can restyle, it's my actual real name :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> I don't think nearly so many people would find this idea objectionable if the loading bar was placed at the bottom of the screen, not the top.

</comment><comment><USER59> So it just increments at random when you call Start, until Done is called (assuming setX isn't used)?

<comment><USER37> As far as I can tell, yes. Except that the bar stops incrementing at random right before it reaches the end, and doesn't move forward even if you call `.inc()`. This is so the bar can still move forward when you call `.done()`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Stripe used to do these and I always thought it was cool but there might be a good reason they stopped.

<comment><USER34> Similarly, there might be a good reason YouTube is still using them? As with all things, the pattern may or may not apply to any particular app or implementation.

That said, I'm not in love with them on YouTube. They always catch my eye for just a moment after they're done loading about halfway, and makes me crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I noticed YouTube had started using this (or at least the same idea), very subtle and sleek.

<comment><USER62> I was just going to say that I thought I'd seen that concept before recently, but couldn't remember where. Must have been Youtube.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Been looking for a good load spinner for my AJAX. This looks perfect. Thanks so much.

</comment><comment><USER64> Would I be correct in saying this is now used on YouTube?

</comment><comment><USER65> I think the concept itself is ridiculous. It's 2013 guys, UI response should be instant. If it's not, you need to rethink what you're doing and ponder your life in general.

<comment><USER66> But it is not instant. This is used when you are making an external HTTP request over the Internet, to a server that may or may not respond instantly (if at all), over a link that may be saturated at any point in time.

<comment><USER65> Good, you started rethinking it by describing the problem. It's a start.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> most people don't even notice this is there based on quick real world testing.

sorry...

</comment><comment><USER68> does this work well for mobile sites? like in jquery mobile?

</comment><comment><USER69> I like it, looks good.

</comment><comment><USER70> coould be good for mobile apps as well!!

</comment><comment><USER71> Quite some negativism in the comments below here!

This is a nice implementation of something that we had an exciting discussion about on HN recently: UI pattern observation from UsabilityPost: Website loading bar [1]

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238482](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6238482)</comment>


Paredit.js – structured navigation and editing of s-expressions - <AUTHOR> http://robert.kra.hn/projects/paredit-js <comment><USER2> Author here. The demo on the page is just meant to be an example. You would typically choose a mapping to your liking / kind of editor. In that sense paredit.js is meant more to be a "middleware" and the ace editor front-end is one way to make use of it. The project is used in cloxp [1,2] and atom-paredit [3]

[1] [http://cloxp.github.io/cloxp-intro.html](http://cloxp.github.io/cloxp- intro.html) [2] [http://cloxp.lively-web.org/cloxp.html](http://cloxp.lively- web.org/cloxp.html) [3] [https://github.com/MarcoPolo/atom- paredit](https://github.com/MarcoPolo/atom-paredit)

</comment><comment><USER3> The website disables Ctrl-W to close tab. Very annoying.

<comment><USER4> Works fine for me (Chrome, Windows 7).

<comment><USER5> It's somewhat disabled if the editor on the page has focus.</comment></comment></comment>


13 Glaring iPad Shortcomings - <AUTHOR> http://www.livescience.com/technology/13-glaring-ipad-shortcomings-100404.html

<comment><USER2> Huh; I was poised to flag this for being more stupid follow-the-leader anti-/pro-Apple BS, but this is actual study and criticism.</comment>


DVCSs and DAGs (part 2) - <AUTHOR> http://software.ericsink.com/entries/dvcs_dag_2.html

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the things I thought was interesting about this post was when he said "And what they find there is someone who doesn't seem to get it" (regarding Linus speaking on Subversion in his talk at google: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8> ).

When I watched the talk initially, I had the impression that what made Linus' talk tip from "I don't think this is the right way of doing things" to "I think SVN is a pile of crap" wasn't so much on the history model (DAG vs line), but SVN's implementation. Specifically, I was thinking about how the base revisions are stored locally (with the .svn folders in each versioned control folder, which git resolves much more efficiently), the poor rename support etc. It's been a while since I saw that talk though, so it may well be that he was indeed criticising the Line model in general (and I can see how the line model doesn't fit in with his workflow at all.)</comment>


WSJ: Fetchnotes wants to be the API to your brain - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/video/fetchnotes-wants-to-be-the-api-to-your-brain/DD498571-3E71-4099-BE53-310AF3C57B8F.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Scrappy little startup by two U of M students seems to be really succeeding at getting publicity for itself.

</comment><comment><USER2> We've opened access for 200 people in the Hacker News community at this link:

www.fetchnotes.com/invite/hackernewsrocks</comment>


Web devs battle new iPad's Retina display - <AUTHOR> http://www.netmagazine.com/news/web-devs-battle-new-ipad-s-retina-display-121859

<comment><USER2> This is what I seen from a mobile web apps. Mobile web app sometimes feel unfinished. I would suggest titanium mobile because things like sencha touch don't scale right for android now for ipad. It seems like screens are going to become etter not worst. For javascript developer titanium mobile gives you things native developers use plus you don't have to worry about problem cause by using a mobile browser which still a very primitive compared to app sdk. Until mobile web can give the feel of native apps I don't see android or apple making the mobile browsers better just to undercut there own profit so people can right html5 websites.</comment>


Aboard a Cargo Colossus: Maersk's New Container Ships - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/business/international/aboard-a-cargo-colossus-maersks-new-container-ships.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=HpSumSmallMediaHigh&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0 <comment><USER2> "Maersk, based in Copenhagen, ordered 20 Triple-E's from Daewoo of South Korea in 2011"

I got the rare opportunity to tour the DSME (Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering) yard in Okpo Bay, Geoje-Do South Korea a few years ago. I think it's the second largest shipyard in the world. It was really an unbelievable experience. Container ships are huge when they're in the water, but they're absolutely mind bogglingly _immense_ in drydock, where individual sections dwarf most apartment buildings.

The range of ships they produce there is also rather mindblowing, in my tour I saw (in various stages of assembly) container ships, LPG transport vessels, crude oil ships, various navy ships and a handful of submarines among others.

The engineering going on is also fairly cutting edge. Problems like accurately predicting weld strength are still unsolved and they had a large computational modelling R&D programs I got a glimpse of while I was there.

If you squinted a bit, it almost felt like huge starships were being assembled there.

[https://email@example.com,128.706339,6867m/dat...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,128.706339,6867m/data=!3m1!1e3)

Down the street (more or less), in Gohyeon, is another huge shipyard which I think Samsung Heavy Industries runs.

<comment><USER3> > If you squinted a bit, it almost felt like huge starships were being > assembled there.

An interesting note when you consider triple Es would just sit in the middle of the medium starship comparison chart[0], or at the very bottom of the large chart[1] next to borg scout vessels

[0] [http://www.st- minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium...](http://www.st- minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_medium.png)

[1] [http://www.st- minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_large....](http://www.st- minutiae.com/misc/comparison/comparison_large.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The media in this article is frustrating. The lead of this story is the incredible size of these container ships, but no photos, and no parts of the video, show the ship side-by-side anything which gives us a sense of scale.

It's all very well showing a diagram of the Empire State Building stood on its side, but I would have loved to see even a single photo or 1 second of video where it was moving slowly past a landmark. Or even a long-shot of the harbor as it came out of port. Nope. All artistic "through the porthole" or other strange angles which never capture the whole ship.

Anyone got a resource which actually shows the ship in a setting which gives it some sense of scale, instead of, like this article, leaving all of that to the imagination?

<comment><USER5> Maersk actually has a pretty solid instagram account where they post those kinds of pictures.

[http://instagram.com/maerskline](http://instagram.com/maerskline)

<comment><USER6> Heh, heh. Lego minifigure comparison (although probably not a TripleE): [http://instagram.com/p/q_yDmLiL1F/](http://instagram.com/p/q_yDmLiL1F/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There are some comments downthread about how new technologies (3d printing etc) might disrupt international shipping. I think that they are grossly underestimating just how cheap sea freight actually is.

Sending a 20ft container on a typical China to Western Europe route costs about $1400. The journey by sea adds less than one cent to the wholesale cost of a small plastic widget, or about $1.50 to the cost of a desktop PC. There isn't a particularly great environmental footprint either - fuel is the biggest single cost in shipping, so low costs depend on astonishing levels of fuel efficiency.

Shipping is so cheap that all sorts of superficially absurd business practices make economic sense. Some British companies send locally-caught seafood to Thailand for processing, then ship it back to the UK to be sold domestically. It takes only a relatively small difference in labour costs to offset the cost of shipping.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The Triple-E's were built for $190 million a ship"

The list price for the 777-300ER is $320.2 million [1].

Incredible! 1: [http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/30/why-...](http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/03/30/why- a-boeing-777-costs-320-million-dollars/7063805/)

<comment><USER9> Would that mean the primary costs for a 777 aren't materials?

<comment><USER10> pretty much. every single thing used to make a plane has to pass a shitload of tests, that is what adds the cost. I think it costs about a million dollars to test the wing of a plane like a 747, one wing.

<comment><USER11> One of the wing tests:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai2HmvAXcU0)

"This Boeing 777 wing was tested to destruction, finally breaking at one fifty four percent (154%) of the designed limit load."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> A fascinating book about the history of container shipping is [http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller- Economy...](http://www.amazon.com/Box-Shipping-Container-Smaller- Economy/dp/0691136408/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1412363433&sr=1-1&keywords=container+ships)

<comment><USER13> Great book and it also very much speaks to how, for example, processes and regulations/contracts may need to change in order for a new technology to be used effectively. Most people don't appreciate the degree to which containers underpin the globalization of manufacturing (for better or worse).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's amazing to think about the scale of these shipping operations. 70% of the world's freight is still moved by Ocean, you really take it for granted the journey products sometimes make before reaching your hands.

<comment><USER15> More concerningly, I'd venture 70% of _freight_ travels in a 5 seater SUV with a single person at the wheel.

<comment><USER16> Then let's just dig a canal and have the container ship deliver it to our houses, you would eliminate rail, truck and consumer transport costs!

I would estimate 100% of people buy and transport food, and I can guarantee almost 100% would kill you rather than stop.

Making asinine comments is asinine. You might find it concerning that people use automobiles to get "freight" to their homes, but I find it quite reassuring. I for one don't want to be around when they stop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> With today's commodity-scale solar panels, is there enough non-container surface area on a Triple-E to reduce the fuel usage by 1% with a solar electric drive that assists the fuel-based engines?

<comment><USER18> There is almost no non-container space deck space. Take a look at how they designed the superstructure where the crew lives, it is super narrow, full width, and obviously full height.

You might have better luck on an oil tanker or car carrier.

<comment><USER19> They could make special containers with solar panels integrated into their roofs (and place them carefully on top of course), and find a way to route cables cheaply. Given solars area power density, I'd guess completely uneconomical.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> And right now ports like Long Beach can't deal with the incoming container traffic. Currently, it's a struggle for a trucker to find a chassis now.

These huge ships can create huge variations in the total TEU (twenty foot equivalent units) coming in at any given time. Containers can get lost under incoming containers for days/weeks because the port is playing Jenga.

I guess my point is that someone has to figure out the destination side logistics that will arise with ever increasing amounts delivered all at once.

<comment><USER21> Check out Rotterdam. Ground container handling is done with robot vehicles.

<comment><USER22> And a mountain of software to route, reroute, stack and unstack all to ensure minimum time spent in the port for a full container.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Obligatory info for amalgamated AIS tracking for ships:

marinetraffic.com vesselfinder.com

Quite useful. Most ocean carriers, Maersk included, have horrible tracking of their shipments. No API, outdated and buggy IE4-ish sites, and inconsistent info. (I've used Selenium to web scrape data from ocean carriers before.)

Probably the most modern I've seen is Hapag-Lloyd, and they provide a email interface with a turnaround time of 5 minutes - then you can just scrape the results.

<comment><USER23> I worked at an investment bank for a while in a commodities department that dealt with physical commodities. Using those websites and Solarc/Openlink RightAngle [1] we could actually find one of our containers full of oil delivering into Singapore. Kind of cool.

[1] [http://www.olf.com/software/products/RightAngle.html](http://www.olf.com/software/products/RightAngle.html)

<comment><USER24> If you ever had a Bloomberg, we let you map all the worldwide shipping traffic in realtime and dive into ships/cargo in the BMAP function. Almost exclusively used by commodities desks like the one you were probably at :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> <CTRL+F> Baltic Dry -- No returns.

What depresses me about this forum is not one of you knows the relationship between the technology of the market (these wunderkind ships) and the market itself.

The Baltic Dry index crashed, hard, in 2008[1]. (There are many reasons for this apart from the global economic crash - a lot of over-production, a lot of ships coming off-line but with replacements that needed extended loans that were put into question by the crash, extremely dodgy business practices in Greece and so on). It had a terrible year in 2012[2]. And 2014 doesn't look much better[3].

I'd urge you to look at the figures, then work out just how well global trade is doing. Hint: paper over cracks.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_Dry_Index) [2][http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics- blog/2012/feb/...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/economics- blog/2012/feb/07/baltic-dry-shipping-index-25-year-low) [3][http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND](http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/BDIY:IND)

</comment><comment><USER26> For more information about container shipping I highly recommend this omega tau podcast episode: [http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container- shipping/](http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/)

</comment><comment><USER27> This time last year Lego announced a Triple E kit: [http://gcaptain.com/lego- unveils-maersk-line-triple-e-block-...](http://gcaptain.com/lego-unveils- maersk-line-triple-e-block-kit/)

</comment><comment><USER28> I once went to see Maersk's largest vessel in the Copenhagen harbor. After driving up and down the docks for some time without being able to find the ship, I realized I was driving next to it.

</comment><comment><USER29> How about a disposable combat drone launcher system built into a standard cargo container? The device could remain inert until needed, but be activated on request from the crew. If the movie Captain Phillips accurately portrayed the piracy threat, then several smaller drones might be able to act as a deterrent. (Particularly if a TrackingPoint like weapon were incorporated.)

<comment><USER30> Sounds more expensive than the ransom.

<comment><USER29> You could probably have these mass produced for 100's of thousands. You wouldn't even need to put them on all ships. Just put them on a large fraction of them. I think the stock could be operated for less expense than a few ransoms of a large ship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Being Polish and having been multiple times to Gdansk I'm pretty surprised such a huge ship can even dock there. Good to know Poland can actually receive goods straight from SE Asia without reloading. On the other hand it doesn't explain how the same electronic equipment (and other luxury goods) is nearly always cheaper in Germany and sometimes even in the UK.

<comment><USER32> Logistics is only part of the costs. All those electronics are even more expensive in China, where they are often actually made! Taxes, retail overhead, and competition play a much bigger role in the actual price you pay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder why US ports are too small? Anyone know?

Also curious that the Suez canal is wider than the Panama?

<comment><USER33> The Suez is sea level, so there are no locks.

Panama is working on a new set of locks and other expansions ([http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_projec...](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Canal_expansion_project)) that will allow for post-Panamax ships.

<comment><USER34> There's also going the be a new competing canal in Nicaragua to be started in December this year.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Do they have any issues with pirates sailing that close to Somalia?

<comment><USER2> If they go through the Straits of Hormuz, definitely.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/30/us-shipping- attack...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/30/us-shipping-attack- idUSBREA2T0AV20140330)

<comment><USER35> I think the question was more about whether this specific type of ship (triple E) better protects them against pirate attacks.

I was wondering the same thing (if they engineered the ship differently to better stop pirate attacks).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It appears from the pictures that the crew has access to every single cargo container during the voyage? I wonder why that would be necessary?

<comment><USER36> Leakage, customs, national security issues, etc. If the government of a country says they need to inspect a specific cargo container or you can't come into port, it's easier to make that possible at sea rather than having to steam elsewhere and completely unload, especially since you'd likely have to refuel en route and it would be a very long trip due to the rareness of ports capable of handling such ships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are ships still required to have stand-alone radios (VHF/UHF/HF) at sea? I know most of them use satellite comms now.

<comment><USER38> Yes, every ship is required to keep a watch on VHF channel 16.

<comment><USER39> The captain of a boat I crew for says this is rarely enforced. Often requests are not responded to, or if they are, the crew member monitoring the radio doesn't speak English.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> another area ripe for disruption. Imagine in 100 years when 3d printing is a mature technology, and most goods are produced locally and delivered by drone. Maybe only raw materials will be transported this way?

<comment><USER41> Maybe.

It's extremely difficult to imagine a world in which distributed, unspecialized manufacturing is actually a reasonable way for most people to get their goods.

One argument many people have made is look at the personal computing revolution, shouldn't we see the same thing in physical manufacturing?

And the answer is: yes, we will the same thing. But look at what is actually happening: you have a brief 20-30 year period in which distributed personal computing actually happens, but then once the internet comes about things have slowly started migrating back to centralization and specialization (ie: Facebook instead of distributed social networking).

I expect the same will happen with 3d printing. Sure, 3d printing might be the best way to print that obscure part you need for an old car. But for every day items? Unlikely that the efficiency gain made by getting rid of shipping is actually offset by printing something in your house on demand.

<comment><USER42> I think the nature of everyday items would have to change for 3D printing to compete. For example, imagine a technology that scans your body in 3D and then makes that shirt you like, but with its dimensions customized to the dimensions of your body.

Clothing sizes today are a messy approximation of what people actually want. It's a compromise between the ROI possible in a mass-production, mass- transport world, and the perfect fit.

News and music used to be produced and distributed like clothes--centralized production of a limited number of product options, which are then shipped to lots of people. Today people can completely customize their news and music consumption through a wide variety of dynamically personalized channels.

Personal manufacturing can do the same thing for tangible goods. But the current "3D printing" technology, which is extremely limited in terms of materials, size, durability, etc.

<comment><USER41> The point is that it is unlikely that machine would exist in your house. You'll still get clothing from the same company, shipped or in store, they'll just manufacture it differently. This is a big deal, but again, it's unlikely that the means of production will distribute because of simple efficiency gains through specialization.

Even if you go full science fiction and have a machine that perfectly rearranges the atoms and you can buy specific atoms (a la Diamond Age), the guy who has a deal on bulk atoms needed to make a shirt will make it cheaper than you will make it in your kitchen on your maker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Anyone knows if people are studying things like elon musk's hyperloop to revolutionnize goods transport ?

<comment><USER13> Studying a hypothetical high-speed train given that no existing high-speed trains are used primarily for freight? (And that air freight is widely used.) I doubt it. High-value goods can already be delivered quickly and low-value goods can be delivered quite inexpensively. Container ships have, in fact, revolutionized goods transport.

<comment><USER43> i would have compared hyperloop more to something like pipelines than trains..

<comment><USER13> A pipeline is pretty much the complete opposite of what you'd want to ship discrete goods. Pipelines work well for fluids because they're a homogenous liquid that have to be loaded and unloaded in discrete chunks to ship by train. With discrete goods on the other hand, the whole virtue of containers is that their content don't need to be loaded or unloaded to be inserted into a transportation system. And if a "pipeline" could take an entire preloaded container in some form? Well, we're back to something that looks and acts basically like a high-speed train.

<comment><USER43> Except a train is using rails. Because hyperloop containers are in a sort of vacuum, they have extremely low friction.

Ships still consume oil, and whenever one of those super cargo crash in the ocean, it's an environmental nightmare. And even when they don't, they're still polluting a lot ( i know, not _that_ much compared to other means and the amount of goods they carry).

There's probably still a way to carry goods from china to europe in a more environment friendly way...

<comment><USER44> > There's probably still a way to carry goods from china to europe in a more > environment friendly way...

Maybe a modern unmanned sailing ship would fit.

<comment><USER13> There have been various attempts to reduce fuel consumption by using sails, e.g. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/earth/cargo- ship-d...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/28/science/earth/cargo-ship- designers-turn-to-wind-to-cut-cost-and-emissions.html)

It probably gets less useful as ships get bigger though and there's a long history of trying this sort of thing without a whole lot of success. Modern systems do have better automation however.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


High Battery Costs Curb Electric Cars - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703735804575536242934528502.html

<comment><USER2> Heh. In related wsj news high fossil fuel cost fail to curb gasoline car sales because you only pay one week at a time, not noticing the much higher cost in total over lifetime.</comment>


WordPress to App - <AUTHOR> https://wordpresstoapp.com <comment><AUTHOR> We convert your WordPress website into a native mobile app for Android and iOS. Supports all android & iOS versions. We don't display ads on your app. And most importantly it accepts Facebook and Google login.</comment>


Cloud-ssh – tiny wrapper for ssh which enchance work with cloud providers - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/buger/cloud-ssh In times of digital clouds, servers come and go, and you barely remember its names and addresses. This tiny tool provide fuzzy search (yeah like SublimeText) for your instances list, based on tags, security groups and names. Can act as ssh replacement. <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, in case if there are any questions.</comment>


I built a website to occupy people during quarantine that updates midnight UTC - <AUTHOR> http://fixmyquarantine.com/ <comment><USER2> I like the idea, but why is every suggestion about something to consume? I find that being at home is worse when all you do is mind numbing media consumption.. it would be awesome to include activities that can be done with common house hold items or your phone (photo challenge etc) to spark some creativity.

<comment><USER3> You might like the Shuffle My Life (available on Android/iOS). You can filter the type of activities you want it to suggest and there's a good variety.

<comment><USER4> Is it US-only? I don't see it in my local App Store.

<comment><USER3> Yeah it looks like it unfortunately. I haven't found a less cumbersome way to get around region locks, aside from creating a new Apple ID, but I'll keep searching.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Really nice work, I'll share this around.

One minor quibble..."Outbreak" is a terrible movie, bad enough that I'd say don't bother with it. Some good actors, but writing terrible enough that it doesn't help. "Contagion", on the other hand is very well researched, with better acting. It's also interesting how many of the sub-plots and terminology are happening in real life, right now.

<comment><USER6> I searched "criticism movie outbreak' but found nothing. Would you feel like sharing more about why you dislike it? assuming you have some key/potent and useful examples from scenes.

<comment><USER7> Are you really suggesting there's no criticism of the film on the internet? The film has a 59% on Rotten Tomatoes with plenty of criticism available there.

Personally, I watched it for the first time about a week ago, and was hoping for a movie that was primarily about a virus outbreak. Which it was, for the first hour or so. After that it became a generic (and comically over-dramatic) 90s action movie about the military being bad or something. I wouldn't say it's unwatchable, and it's definitely helped by its all-star cast, but I would agree that if you want to watch a movie about a virus outbreak, you're better off watching Contagion.

<comment><USER6> Perhaps my movie research skills are not too good. When looking for a movie I happily take on or look past the content built to appeal to a wide audience and enjoy the parts of it I find enjoyable. This is my explanation for thinking Outbreak is a great move, and perhaps a little fun and silly. Even ridiculous. But 'bad'?

Are we saying 'want to watch a movie about a virus outbreak'means needing near documentary accuracy with some components? I look at film as a total free for all artistic/author's thing. Cristicising with that in mind seems a bit.. I'm not even sure what to say. I would say yes lazy writing where gaping hard to follow plots or oddball scenes can be difficult but even those are sort of fun if you like experimenting with alternate mindsets. 'The Room' comes to mind. Not 'Room'.

To be clear I don't know anything about how to watch movies properly... so maybe I'm messing up.

Cheers

<comment><USER7> No one is saying you don't know how to watch movies! I could totally see how it would be possible to enjoy Outbreak as a fun action movie. Certainly there are plenty of movies I enjoy where the critical consensus is "meh".

I was just relaying my own personal experience with the film — it wasn't really what I expected, and as much as I love the silliness of 90s movies, it just fell a bit flat for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This is a great way to spend time for me and explore interesting stuff. I have a suggestion of having a link to previous days archives so i can re-visit and re-explore at a later date. Thanks!

</comment><comment><USER9> I just got legitimately Rick Rolled for the first time in many years.

That made my day. Thank you.

</comment><comment><USER10> While the concept is timely, I remember when much of my browsing used to consist of visiting blogs like this. (It still does, but it used to too.)

Even during the heyday of LiveJournal or whatever, I loved having bookmarks where I could look in on whatever fun/interesting/amusing links people had shared recently. While there are some still kicking, it seems like most of that content has either gone to aggregators or meta-forums like reddit/HN and to the trickle-feeds of Facebook and its spawn.

There's something to be said for a list or RSS feed of these kinds of sites and I think it's a shame they're not as prominent as they once were. I'm glad when anyone decides to put up a new one.

</comment><comment><USER11> A bit of a shameless plug, but sometime ago I built an aggregator for the videos posted on HN, which can be quite a time killer - [https://hackerpixels.com/](https://hackerpixels.com/). It's just for fun, ignore the newsletter popup, haven't found the time to remove it.

</comment><comment><USER12> Your site doesn't appear to work in FireFox. I really like the concept though.

<comment><USER13> Only issue I'm having is the alignment (Firefox 75 on Linux). Which looking at the source they're using the align attribute on the body which only works on divs in firefox.

If it's helpful for the author I was able to do a quick fix for myself with Stylus by adding: body { text-align: center; }

Another option would be warping everything that needs to be centered in a div and putting the align attribute on that.

<comment><USER14> Flexbox!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good. We have recreated the first version of Digg/Reddit.

</comment><comment><USER16> <body align="center"> is not supported in my FireFox 75 on Mac

<comment><USER17> Came here to say the same... broken on Firefox. Nice idea though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> For the We've had a problem link, use this - [https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=055:55:18](https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=055:55:18)

[https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=055:52:58](https://apolloinrealtime.org/13/?t=055:52:58) is the order to stir the cryo tanks

</comment><comment><USER19> Sigh. You got me with that secret link :)

I've already seen the YouTube videos you recommend, but I like your music selection!

</comment><comment><USER20> I just want to throw a +1 on "today's Netflix binge" which is Ozark. What a fantastic show. Has a great Breaking Bad feel to it; and if you liked Arrested Development, Jason Bateman is basically playing the same character… a family- first business guy who did break bad :)

<comment><USER21> I sometimes like to think of Ozark as the darker prequel to Arrested Development. Michael finally got out of the cartel, but not without losing his wife and oldest daughter, and went in to witness protection running the family business. It's Arrested ... Development.

<comment><USER20> Haha that's excellent. Really great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thanks for the "Secret link of the day" ! I had a good laugh ! It's been a long time...

</comment><comment><USER23> The best thing about this is that you can play the Spotify songs at the same time. [https://imgur.com/a/cWkU2w2](https://imgur.com/a/cWkU2w2)

</comment><comment><USER24> > Tesseradecades, aftercataracts, and sweaterdresses are the longest words you > can type using only your left hand.

Not quite, to type the first cap you will need right shift :)

</comment><comment><USER25> This is pretty great. That 'TIMELAPSE OF THE FUTURE: A Journey to the End of Time' video is one of the most incredible, thought provoking and depressing things I have seen.

</comment><comment><USER26> @dang can you update the link to https? That seems to also work.

</comment><comment><USER27> I appreciate this. I'm going to give it a whirl tomorrow based on what I've seen. These are actual good sources compared to what I normally use.

</comment><comment><USER28> I only clicked on ONE link and ..

sigh.

</comment><comment><USER29> When sleep is a good way to boost the defences against infections [0], motivating people to stay up until midnight might not be the best idea. Perhaps change the update time to an earlier hour.

[0] [https://youtu.be/wlbM6VVkVZM](https://youtu.be/wlbM6VVkVZM)

<comment><USER30> How does 7pm sound?

That's what midnight UTC is in my timezone (US Central).

<comment><USER29> i guess there's always someone on the other side of the globe. So a reasonable time for where the majority of your audience is is the best. Unless you wanna go all out and make it timezones dependent.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> > Go For A Run

FYI This is going to trigger some people as they go nuts if they see someone on the street. I guess it's good that might trigger some discussions on the overzealous people.

PS: The secret link is the best

<comment><USER32> It also might be illegal in some places right now

<comment><USER33> Where is it illegal to go out for exercise? Every stay-at-home order I've seen, at least in the democracies, carves out an exception for that. (On the other hand, I've hardly made a survey of them, so this is an honest question.)

<comment><USER34> El Salvador, it is not exactly illegal, you get thrown into a quarantine center for 30 days if you're not outside for anything but essential needs or your job (if you are an essential worker), I do think it's for the best for now, most people would simply not understand how bad it could get otherwise, our country does not have the resources to handle this disease if it gets out of hand, it is a slippery slope though

[https://covid19.gob.sv](https://covid19.gob.sv)

The government has put up a site where they update stats daily, it's in Spanish though

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> nice. thanks. (also nice that no autoplaying videos or ads to dismiss popped up - so retro :-)

</comment><comment><USER36> you might also post that on [https://old.reddit.com/r/COVIDProjects/](https://old.reddit.com/r/COVIDProjects/)

</comment><comment><USER37> > Things to do while saving the human race.

We are not facing an existential threat.

<comment><USER38> Oh, we very much are, but it's not the coronovirus.

The next pandemic? That might be worse. But rising ocean levels are pretty bad.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Less well known opportunities for STEM PhDs in the technology industry? - <AUTHOR> It is that time of year again. A sizable proportion of graduating mathematics/science PhD students (including myself) didn't get that university position they were jockeying for and they are now wondering what to do after graduation in April.
If you spent your time in graduate school working on something popular like machine learning, programming languages or financial mathematics, getting a job is pretty easy. If instead, you worked on something more esoteric, things are harder. In my experience, employers don't care about research or manuscripts unless they are directly related to the job. This makes sense: if you are hiring someone to do a specific job, then who cares what else they know how to do.
Most of us know about the standard Data Science/Finance/Software careers paths and a lot has been said on this site and elsewhere about how to prepare for such jobs, but I am interested in what other opportunities exist. Maybe your company has some biologist or mathematician on staff doing something cool... I would be interested in hearing about it! <comment><USER2> Government agencies and national labs would hire Mathematics/Science PhDs. But without knowing what you consider esoteric it would be hard to put together a more detailed list.</comment>


Jumping into Web Development - <AUTHOR> I'm an Android developer and I need to jump into web development.
Mainly worked with Android Studio, competent in Java with very light experience in Spring Boot.
Need to ship a twofold product over the next few months which is my main motivation. First part is a simple stand alone web app targeted at a small audience, followed by a marketplace platform (mobile & web).
What stack & tools do you recommend? I'm trying to optimize for speed over any other factor.
A route that was suggested to me is a combination of React & Spring Boot, but I don't feel it's the quickest path and wanted to get some sound advice on this.
Recommended resources are greatly appreciated as well. <comment><USER2> Try dot net core (Language C#, IDE Visual Studio), comes with built-in templates to get you started. Integrates well with relational and non- relational dbs. Also can use Angular, React etc. for front-end logic.</comment>


IOCipher: Encrypted Virtual Disk for Android - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guardianproject/IOCipher <comment><AUTHOR> Write-up about the project at [1]

[1] IOCipher is the antidote to "Man-in-the-Disk" attack [ [https://guardianproject.info/2018/08/17/iocipher-is-the- anti...](https://guardianproject.info/2018/08/17/iocipher-is-the-antidote-to- man-in-the-disk-attack/) ]</comment>


Smartphones are now basic tools for humanitarian aid. Here's why - <AUTHOR> http://associationsnow.com/2015/10/refugee-crisis-technology-redefining-nonprofit-aid/ <comment><USER2> It seems to be interesting the hackathon : [http://refugeehackathon.de/](http://refugeehackathon.de/) Do you know other applications or related projects?</comment>


Neural Network Quine - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.05859 <comment><USER2> Quine, the descriptor in the actual article, is both more accurate, and more appropriate for a forum made of programmers.

The fact that they made it into a quine with non-trivial, useful side effects is actually really interesting, regardless of the language/paradigm.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the significance of this paper?

<comment><USER4> Sex sells.

<comment><USER5> Would be interesting to use this as a training algorithm -- have multiple self-replicating networks that mate and copy portions of their weights in random patterns... eerie.

<comment><USER6> We already have the mating part with NeatAI. Link: [http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/downloads/papers/stanley.ec02.pdf](http://nn.cs.utexas.edu/downloads/papers/stanley.ec02.pdf)

Essentially it's a neural network which is represented by a series of genes. Genetically, new genes come in by having new links form between neurons, disabled, or split (with an in between neuron). This, as you can see, allows for a wide range of network representations. Because these variations are tagged with id's sequentially, we can mate two neural networks by combining their genes in order. They never conflict, and will produce something similar to both parents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Isn't this essentially looking for a fixpoint?

<comment><USER8> > _In mathematics, a fixed point (sometimes shortened to fixpoint, also known > as an invariant point) of a function is an element of the function 's domain > that is mapped to itself by the function._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_(mathematics)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_\(mathematics\))

Looks like it. And they need to resort to some mathematical trickery to achieve this because as the explain in the paper:

> _A neural network is parametrized by a set of parameters Θ, and our goal is > to build a network that outputs Θ itself. This is difficult to do directly. > Suppose the last layer of a feed-forward network has A inputs and B outputs. > Already, the size of the weight matrix in a linear transformation is the > product AB which is greater than B for any A > 1._

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> So genetic programming, but for NN's? Hasn't that been done?

<comment><USER10> GP for NNs has, but this isn't GP; "self-reproduction" (as in the original title) here means that the neural network is learning to output a copy of itself. In other words, the NN is learning to be a quine (as indicated by the current title). This is a very different than just applying genetic programming to NNs. In GP, you're updating the NN (or whatever) by copying it with mutations/recombinations. Here, the NN itself is learning to create a copy of itself.

The fact that they manage to also train to the network to simultaneously perform somewhat complicated tasks is super crazy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a tautology.</comment>