Italy's Coronavirus Lockdown Upends the Most Basic Routines and Joys - <AUTHOR> https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Italy-s-coronavirus-lockdown-upends-the-most-15119948.php <comment><USER2> Italian here, north-west. Media are really exaggerating with the situation with daily life and routine, we are allowed to take a walk and go to bars or restaurants if there is one meter of distance between people.

The real problem is in the hospitals, and for some enterprises who will really have a loss in these weeks (everything about tourism, for example). One of the biggest downsides is that people are not allowed to visit relatives or families in other cities/villages, even if a few kilometers away.

We've been promised discounts, taxes, even free subscriptions for ebooks... this lockdown is not so bad, the important is that people really understand why it has been implemented (people here in Italy tend to overreact for _every_ news - it's always apocalyptic).

<comment><USER3> > One of the biggest downsides is that people are not allowed to visit > relatives or families in other cities/villages, even if a few kilometers > away.

How does this affect people who depend on personal care from relatives and friends to do daily activities like cooking, cleaning themselves and going to the toilet?

<comment><USER2> This is one of the very few reason for which you can move and assist relatives out of your town.

<comment><USER3> That's great to hear, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> A lockdown is obviously not an enjoyable thing, but it is necessary to flatten the curve [^1] and it's downsides are less severe then it's benefits if done correctly.

Keep this in mind as the situation continues to evolve. Stock things in your house which bring you joy (good food, games, good books) and do your best to spread confidence to others around you. If you have enough space to get in some exercise, even if it's just pushups and situps, do so. If you are working from home, do your best to have a clearly defined time for your work and separate your working space from your leisure space as much as practical. If you've been thinking about writing a book or starting a new blog, now is a good time to do so.

It may not be enjoyable but it is necessary. Make the best use of this time you can.

[^1]: [https://www.flattenthecurve.com/](https://www.flattenthecurve.com/)

<comment><USER5> Imagine if steam takes advantage of this to have a coronavirus sale. 50% off all zombie themed games for the coming month.

<comment><USER6> It would probably be in bad taste to theme it so...on the nose, but I'd believe that it's a good time to be releasing a fresh game right now. It's certainly a terrible time for games in development, with work collaboration maybe disrupted and with all the big publicity events getting cancelled, and it's a bad time for other media that bank a lot on physical releases (e.g. theatrical releases for movies getting pushed back), but the at-home media out now could find an audience with more time than they otherwise might have.

<comment><USER7> I don't think it would be in bad taste if it's clearly hyperbolic and perhaps it is coupled with informational messages. PornHub is famous for doing this.

There's also a funeral services company in Rome whose death-themed ads have become a meme ("don't worry antivaxers, we will always be ready to help if you die"), we love it. :-)

<comment><USER8> Antivaxxers are generally not liked very much; it's fairly "safe" to make fun of them. Doing so for coronavirus when people have family members who may have it is significantly less so.

<comment><USER7> Too late: [https://www.facebook.com/onoranzefunebritaffo/photos/a.79642...](https://www.facebook.com/onoranzefunebritaffo/photos/a.796425327129847/2581391841966511/?type=3&theater)

(translation: "stay at home or we will all end up in a box")

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As a side note, maybe the single restaurant manager interviewed does normally that, but it is highly unusual that a restaurant manager hugs and/or kisses (or even shakes hands) with a customer of the restaurant.

There is this sort of folklore about Italy that everyone kisses and hugs everyone else.

This is simply not accurate.

If you are introduced to someone (a stranger), it is normal courtesy to shake hands with him/her (and that's it, no hugs, no kisses), as well, unless the other person is an old friend the normal shaking of hands is the normal means of greeting.

It is extremely rare that you are touched (again let alone hugged or kissed) as a customer when you enter any shop or similar.

<comment><USER10> > If you are introduced to someone (a stranger), it is normal courtesy to > shake hands with him/her (and that's it, no hugs, no kisses)

Are you sure you aren't extending the culture of northern Italy to all of Italy?

When I lived in Rome/Naples, it seemed like with almost everyone I met we shook hands and did the "air kisses" (not a real kiss but you still lean in close and touch cheeks).

It didn't ever happen to me with restaurant owners, sure, but then again I never really interacted with anyone other than the waiter/waitress/cashier. I could see it happening in a super small hole-in-the-wall mom and pop type restaurant though.

<comment><USER11> I am from Rome, the cheek kiss is common amongst people who know each other, and sometimes it applies "transitively" (e.g. a friend's partner which you don't know), but it is definitely not done when meeting random people at work.

You could be kissing someone on the cheek coming in your restaurant if you are familiar with them, but it's not very common.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Another Italian here. The situation is far from dramatic. Yes, being forced at home unless necessary is an inconvenience, but damn worth the risk of catching the virus or worse infecting others. We can work from home, and this for many of us is a first and indeed something we can leverage when things go back to normal. We can still go to the doctor, or grocery shopping, bars and restaurants are still open.

</comment><comment><USER13> This kind of reporting seems counterproductive. A more helpful headline would be something like, "In locked down Italy, life is mostly normal." The body of the article is OK, but the tone seems intentionally negative when the same facts could easily have been presented hopefully.

One of my biggest concerns is that places in the United States, or other countries, will adopt aggressive social distancing policies early, while the number of cases is low, and then the backlash against those policies will be that "this is hell, and the virus isn't even affecting that many people." That can lead to pressure to drop the policies prematurely when the virus is nowhere near contained yet.

This is a great opportunity for responsible journalism to strike a tone of optimistic "we are all in this together, it is very serious, but if we all do the right thing we should be OK." Fear mongering on the one hand, or dismissal and backlash on the other, are both extremely harmful — But good for Clickbait and selling ads. We really need the media to resist that during this emergency.

</comment><comment><USER14> Well, what to expect? An uptick in pleasure and joy. No. This is serious measures for serious times.

<comment><USER15> Ok, but can you please not post unsubstantive comments here?</comment></comment>


Archaeologists Officially Declare Collective Sigh Over "Paleo Diet" - <AUTHOR> http://mumanu.wordpress.com/2013/11/06/archaeologists-officially-declare-collective-sigh-over-paleo-diet/ <comment><USER2> I find this article: "How to Eat Like a Chimpanzee" to be a bit more compelling:

[http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2012/08/02/ho...](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest- blog/2012/08/02/how-to-eat-like-a-chimpanzee/)

Diet is mostly figs, fruit, insects, and other monkeys.

</comment><comment><USER3> Comments suggest article is a spoof. Flagged.

<comment><USER4> Yeah I was kinda thinking the same thing, but it's just serious enough in tone that I thought (and hoped) that it might be legit. Oh well, point made anyway.

<comment><USER5> Just curious why you "hoped" it was real?</comment></comment></comment>


Where do I find beta testers / early adopters for our software tool? - <AUTHOR> We've launched our tool www.customerlabs.co what can we do to get early adopters? <comment><USER3> (Constructive criticism)

The video is really poor quality. Video quality and background noise - <USER2> your right next to a PC with the fans at full tilt or in a server room. The video also looks blown out - way to bright - almost like you were recording a screen from a video camera / phone / ???

I'm not seeing what the stats actually look like - either it's buried somewhere or it doesn't exist? That'll be important to anyone you want to pay money for this.

What do I actually need to install to use this? It's not magic. "some" code needs to go on the site. Is it just a JS include or ?

How long is the free trial? 1 week? 1 month?

How long is data retention for? Can I export a CSV report and give it to the boss / client?

Why not pass out some promo codes or something and post them here? Free 3 month trial for early adopters or such.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's a few websites match up beta users with products [https://www.quora.com/Which-beta-users-platform-would-you- re...](https://www.quora.com/Which-beta-users-platform-would-you-recommend)</comment>


IOS 7 Style Gaussian Blur Tray in CSS3 - <AUTHOR> http://codepen.io/natew/pen/vjEro

<comment><USER2> Could be reduced down to the important bit:

-webkit-filter: blur(8px);</comment>


The Firefox OS marketplace is brilliant - <AUTHOR> http://dendory.net/blog.php?id=50ff42f1 <comment><USER2> I'm still confused how a platform running only html5 + js applications can target low power devices. Performance on Android, which runs a highly optimized JVM, is only barely reaching acceptable levels in the last year with Project Butter. Ubuntu Phone, targeting the same use case except with native apps (albeit scripted in qml) comes out next year.

How is a device built on a browser engine supposed to provide good UX on low power devices? My Android tablet has Firefox stutter and wheeze through pages and loading, often freezing up on any reasonably sized amount of javascript, and it has a Tegra 3 (TF700) which many would call the high-end mobile device market.

<comment><USER3> Android's performance problems are more to do with architecture than anything else:

\- Prior to 4.x the "highly optimized JVM" was "highly interpreted".

\- Access to the display is gated via userspace (SurfaceFlinger) which must be invoked to composite every frame, and at least in 2.x (if not still true) unconditionally repainted the screen each frame.

\- Accelerated 2D did not exist in Android 2.x, I'm not sure if it exists yet.

\- None of the standard GUI widgets knew how to handle partial repaint. I think this was fixed in 4.x.

From the perspective of getting lag right, you only need to ensure there is some native code that can scroll around a bitmap efficiently. As for how that bitmap gets rendered, a few hundred thousand lines of C++ stands a much better chance of efficiency than an unoptimized, initially interpreted Java GUI framework that has no native way of expressing "allocate this temporary on the stack" ever did.

The choices made for Android might have been valid when painting a 160x200ish 16bit display (about 64kb per frame), which AFAIK was roughly the original target hardware prior to the Google purchase, but for 800x480 24bit this quickly turns into a need to generate 34mb/sec to render at 30fps, all done in software, chunks of it interpreted, on (what was initially) a 500mhz ARM11 CPU. Really helps frame the panic Google must have been in to get _something_ on the market and fast.

<comment><USER4> _Prior to 4.x, the "highly optimized JVM" you speak of was fully interpreted._

Slight correction: JIT compiler was first introduced in Android 2.2

<comment><USER3> Thanks, pretty sure the remainder of the version numbers are messed up too.. pulled out of my old and foggy memory. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Basically, the main reason why an app store or marketplace is important, is > because the web suffers from a discoverability problem.

Isn't it the other way around? There's no effective way of publicising you app or helping people to find it in an app store short of hoping that the Apple/Google overlords will decide to stick it on the front page. It's remarkably hard to find apps that you're looking for unless you know the name of it (and it isn't a common name, etc), and there's no way of working around it.

In contrast, on the web, if one site doesn't work very well, you go to another one. If one discovery tool isn't working very well (e.g. Digg), you use a different one (e.g. Hacker News).

The web is very discoverable. It just doesn't force a particular discovery mechanism on people like app stores tend to do.

That said, this is a large part of why FirefoxOS is so promising.

<comment><USER6> The web has content discovery, the app stores provide function discovery.

They are subtly different I would say. Though I can't say entirely way.

I think we've been trained to go to google to search for content, but not to search for something to help us get a specific job done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've published an app to the Mozilla Marketplace and for the most part, it just work.

As for the manifest file, you can get by with as little as:

      {
        "name":"Example",
        "developer": {
          "name":"Developer",
          "url":"https://example.com"
        },
        "description":"My Description",
        "icons":{
          "128":"/img/icon.png"
        },
        "launch_path": "/",
        "installs_allowed_from": ["*"]
      }

With this, you can install your app from the Marketplace or from your own site (by serving it with the correct mime-type).

It is relatively easy to get the app installed from your own site, if you choose to ignore the Marketplace entirely (our code does it in ~80 lines of CoffeeScript) as seen here: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMxeK1_xY98>

One thing to keep in mind is that the window chrome which will house your application does not have back/forward buttons, does not have bookmarks, or an address bar. Remember this when designing your interface (you may been to provide in-app back/forward buttons, bookmarks, etc).

The only problems I ran into when developing this was that the API was unstable at the time (a few months ago) and that relative URLs for installation didn't work (<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=745928>) but the devs in the mozilla #webapps IRC channel were helpful.

The nice thing about the Marketplace is that you can specify which form factor you want your app available to - Desktop/Laptop, Phone, Tablet.

On the phone side, things are easy:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7uT3PPCyPD8/UP9RTN-392I/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-7uT3PPCyPD8/UP9RTN-392I/AAAAAAAAC0A/mh8tfq9BpLY/s668/Screenshot_2013-01-22-21-55-19.png)

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GB4Vt6YVTKA/UP9RSDzDy8I/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-GB4Vt6YVTKA/UP9RSDzDy8I/AAAAAAAACz4/_iURmFiVTLw/s668/Screenshot_2013-01-22-21-55-30.png)

[https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dXnc0iuIBdM/UP9RRW_UILI/A...](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-dXnc0iuIBdM/UP9RRW_UILI/AAAAAAAACzw/EZcLT6_xR1Q/s668/Screenshot_2013-01-22-21-55-40.png)

[https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-NReWzbudobw/UP9RnJEiHpI/A...](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-NReWzbudobw/UP9RnJEiHpI/AAAAAAAAC0I/4iH_q98qOVk/s668/Screenshot_2013-01-22-21-57-16.png)

<comment><USER8> How do you sell apps or IAPs?

<comment><USER7> The apps that I have experience with have all been no-cost.

I don't know what an IAP is, so I can't comment. :-)

 _edit:_ Thanks to Samuel for the explanation. No, I don't have experience with IAP.

<comment><USER9> In the context of the Mozilla Marketplace, 'IAP' stands for 'In-App Payment'.

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAPI/WebPayment#In-app_payment>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a mere mortal I find some aspects of "web apps" confusing. I never know whether I'm running an app locally in my browser, vs. what's happening on a remote server, etc. And I have a hard time knowing which apps are stored locally on my phone, vs merely bookmarked, and whether if they're stored locally they'll update.

My preference is for app stores that work more or less the way they do now. If under the covers you're rocking some standard web technology, hey great. As long as my app works offline and doesn't randomly change.

<comment><USER11> Normal apps are confusing in the same way.

Quick, answer this, does Facebook work when you are offline? How about Google Drive? Or the new GMail for iOS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This can't happen soon enough. I hope it supports a terminal and basic dev tools.

Mozilla, please create a decent cheapo phone and I'd pay 2x to ship another one to a poor country.

<comment><USER13> It doesn't yet have a terminal or dev tools on the phone, but this is something I would absolutely love to see in the long run. It's open source, so if you feel like helping out to add these, please do :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> My only complaint is that the Firefox app manifest and the chrome app manifest aren't the same thing. The Firefox and chrome developers seem like they work together pretty well, it's too bad they couldn't collaborate on this.

<comment><USER15> It's sad they aren't willing to allow for a central system with browser apps much like it is with cross-browser JavaScript for the web.

<comment><USER16> in the near future, you should be able to use the mozilla marketplace on android devices. apps there should (mostly) work on android (and even ios).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> "When you're on a mobile device, you don't have time to go search the web for an app that does a certain function that you happen to require. You want a central place that will list all of the apps that are compatible with your phone"

It seems we really need a curated site for mobile apps like the Yahoo of old for websites. Essentially, a more functional app store than the app store. Thoughtful reviews on par with those you see on Amazon. Algorithms equivalent to PageRank don't seem to apply to this space, so perhaps human experts like those seen on about.com might work.

<comment><USER2> Mozilla already has that covered: <https://marketplace.firefox.com/>

Chrome also has their web store. The major bridge is there needs to be a standard interface for web apps, in addition to some standard way to use them offline. Since most local storage limits itself to 5MB max, you don't really have the offline storage you need to run a game, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is the first mobile platform that I've been excited about and I've been doing work on mobile devices since Windows CE 2...

<comment><USER19> Why is that?

To a lot of us, Firefox OS sounds like a miserable platform with many serious problems.

1) There are basically no users at this point, of both the platform and the Firefox Marketplace.

2) Firefox OS is far back in line, behind Android, iOS, BlackBerry OS, several Windows variants, Symbian, MeeGo, and various other platforms that currently have actual users.

3) There's nothing really compelling about Firefox OS for customers. There's nothing that makes it more appealing that its competitors.

4) The emphasis on developing apps using HTML5 and JavaScript is not appealing to many good developers. Going from the power of languages like Java, C, C++, and Objective-C on other mobile platforms to HTML5 and JavaScript on Firefox OS is a pretty big step backward.

5) The Firefox Marketplace won't be publicly launched until later this year. Even if that was as early as tomorrow, that's still ages in the mobile world.

6) It looks like Mozilla is just playing catch-up with Apple, Google and others.

So it seems to be a pretty big dead end to a lot of us, that's destined to failure.

<comment><USER18> I've written software for all the main platforms apart from BB. My rationale is:

iOS is closed / walled garden.

Windows Phone is closed / walled garden

BB is closed / walled garden.

Android is a fragmented, buggy shit tip of an environment and is mostly closed and uncertain.

Symbian is pretty much dead.

MeeGo is dead.

Nokia S40 is still alive but I'll be fucked if I'm writing J2ME any more.

\---

Some positive indications of FireFox OS:

It's open.

It's easy to access it.

The environment requires little proprietary knowledge i.e. deep specialist APIs and languages (no obj-c, WPF, XAML, that awful XML thing Android uses).

License cost for hardware manufacturers will be very low if not free I imagine so uptake on carrier's own branded handsets might be high.

As for catch up, I remember everyone complaining about how the original iPhone and Android phones didn't stand a chance against BB and Symbian...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I'm very interested in Firefox OS as we skipped the native app route and just created a web app.

Though I am concerned about it's performance. Firefox has always been prone to crashing. Thus I wonder is this a brand new piece of software not built on the Mozilla (Firefox) engine?

<comment><USER21> FirefoxOS does indeed run on Gecko, the Firefox rendering engine.

I'm my experience, most crashes seem to be related to plugins and/or extensions, with that aside, I seem to get pretty comparable crash frequency from Firefox and chrome while developing code that relies on pretty state-of- the-art APIs (WebGL)

<comment><USER20> Cool .. also i wonder since our app is an audio app of sorts does Firefox OS's audio tag play .mp3s or still stuck with ogg vorbis?

We haven't been able to get our app working in regular Firefox because of this - unfortunately!

<comment><USER22> MP3 and H.264 should play fine on Firefox OS if the device vendor includes hardware support for it. The initial devices do support this as far as I know.

Firefox for Android for some devices also supports MP3 and H.264 now.

Desktop support is in progress with Windows and Linux being the furthest along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'd hold on with the 'brilliant' qualifier until we see the interface, but the concept certainly looks fitting to the OS model. Is this the entire JSON though? I'm missing at least a keywords child there.

<comment><USER24> You can see the early version at marketplace.firefox.com

<comment><USER23> Looks quite neat. I'd like someone to bring some fresh approaches into this however, instead of just basically the Appstore interface with a different skin. Especially for web-apps I'm still not that sure how important the appstore starting point for finding apps actually is. How about a unified search built into the OS with priority set like 'installed apps > other available apps > local data > Google Search' ? Of course, for those who want to search by category it's still good to have a curated list somewhere. But isn't the search for webapps basically the same as a Google search with some meta information sugar on top?

<comment><USER24> Well, the store has a search bar that returns web-apps of any category. But these web-apps are meant to be installed. Some web-apps will be the same as navigating to a mobile version of a site, but many web-apps are developed to work offline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would not mind to own a cheap phone like these ones but in US you have to pay $70/month for the voice and data plan so it is way more expensive than the phone itself.

<comment><USER26> That's a pain. Here in Europe I've got a cheap voice/data plan for 6$/mth; if/when I start hitting the 2gig cap then I can switch to 10$/month for unlimited. I do have to pay full price for the phone(s), though.

You really need to get some functioning market competition in USA telecommunications, it seems nonexistant.

<comment><USER27> 10$/month for unlimited? Where do you live if I may ask?

<comment><USER28> I'm paying 9€/month in France for unlimited data and text messages, and 5h voice time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This really looks like an package manager with a name "market place"

</comment><comment><USER30> refreshing!</comment>


Mink Is A 3D Printer For Makeup - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/mink-is-a-3d-printer-for-makeup/ <comment><USER2> They don't appear to have a website. I tried to look them up after the techcrunch event here in NY and it seems that that was the first time anyone had ever heard of them.

That said, I actually disagree with hagbardgroup. If Choi can pull this off, I think it would open up the world of custom makeup to a huge market of people far beyond the "home-brew" makeup hobbyists. The idea of putting on a fall outfit and being able to print out the perfect shade of mauve without getting in my car and going to Walgreens and spending $12 is pretty incredible. I think a lot of women, even those outside the target age bracket, would find this product useful.

<comment><USER3> Website: [http://gracemink.com/](http://gracemink.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Original TechCrunch source: [http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/mink- is-a-3d-printer-for-ma...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/05/mink- is-a-3d-printer-for-makeup/)

The comments on that article are very interesting, as they assert that the product isn't finished and the demo was extremely hacked together.

<comment><USER5> Thanks. We switched to that url from [1] as a more original source.

1\. [http://www.elle.com/news/beauty-makeup/3d-makeup- printer](http://www.elle.com/news/beauty-makeup/3d-makeup-printer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dumb question: what's the matter with the home makeup brewing methods that have been used for centuries now?

If you know women in the home-brew makeup/perfume/beauty community, it seems like they're already well served without needing a printer. The same people who would know enough to buy a printer also know enough to buy pigment from a craft shop. The market that isn't that clued in reads Seventeen or Elle and overpays for Revlon at Walgreens because they're low-information consumers. The low-information consumers are already buying Revlon because they don't know any better and don't want to know any better.

I think what'd be more interesting is a machine that serves the small manufacturers better, which can make small batch runs more profitable and reduce reliance on larger manufacturers.

<comment><USER7> There is an interesting story with the UK company "Lush". They were an early commercial player in the create your own makeup scene, with a main appeal of creating the cosmetics in-store, to order and while customers watched. Sorta like a gourmet chef. Lush was never able to get FDA or whatever approval for that type of 'unsanitary and unsafe' business model, and their US based counterpart is a sad reseller of bath products in fancy packaging. I expect the larger cosmetics industry keeps a firm hold on any home brewing of makeup with a mixture of regulation, and FUD.

<comment><USER6> Yup. Lush is an amazing shop. I know lots of women who buy soaps and such almost exclusively from there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I really don't understand the attention Choi is getting with this. After watching her on stage at Techcrunch, and seeing how vague she is with the actual implementation, it's pretty clear to anyone paying attention that she simply painted a printer and pretended to print a makeup pod. My girlfriend even remarked how it looked exactly like a Bare Escentuals pod off the shelf. She basically got all this attention with an idea and no actual implementation.

To me, this would be the same as someone going up on stage and saying they've created a food printer, stuck a Subway sandwich in there and pretended to "print" it. If I were to do that, I'd be laughed off the stage instead of getting so much press and acclaim.

Her ability to convince the world was perhaps because this idea seems simple enough that we just might believe it (although I have to think printing a dye on a substrate you can apply to your face is a VERY hard problem.)

Not that I give much weight to Techcrunch as it is, but it saddens me to see so many other companies that worked so hard and actually built real things get overshadowed by an HBS MBA who built a weekend hack reminiscent of many high school science fairs efforts.

I really really hope she proves me wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why where makeup at all? The whole beauty-industrial-complex seems so ripe for destruction, and not disruption. My wife wears zero makeup, and I find she's ridiculously hot. Lets face facts: 1\. Most makeup is not good for your skin 2\. Makeup is deceitful (you're not showing your true self to the world = deceitful) 3\. It's an enormous financial burden (especially for single women).

<comment><USER10> Do you shave? I'm just going to assume you do and then ask you why you choose to deceive the world about your hair growth.

It's the same thing. It's not actually good for you (removes a natural defense for your skin), it's deceitful and it's a financial burden (you have to buy razors and supplies).

Human beautification is a many thousands of year old tradition -- it's as much a part of being a human as expressing oneself through language.

<comment><USER11> that's a pretty false analogy, if you care to compare the sexes there are men that wear makeup as well.

facial hair can be a potential fire hazard, and is often considered to be too unhygienic for food workers. Both are reasons for an employer to request your continual shaving.

Do similar problems arise for cosmetics and the people that wear them? I don't wear cosmetics, but I don't believe that there are any overlapping laws which restrict their use such as the rules that food handlers must abide by.

<comment><USER10> While you've brought up perfectly valid points, you didn't actually refute anything I said.

Yes, some people are required to shave for their job, but most are not and still do. Some women are required to wear makeup for their jobs, but most aren't and still do.

Regardless, my initial arguments still apply to all the cases where one is not required by one's job.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Hacker's Utility Belt: SSH - <AUTHOR> http://sigusr2.net/2009/May/07/hacker-utility-belt-ssh.html

<comment><USER2> Not to be overly critical but - why - is this in the TOP3 of HN? It's a totally^Wrather incomplete^Wnice `intro` to SSH, ok. Aside from this......

~/.ssh/config:

# This is maybe useful if you get dropped all the time

# due to stricter SSHd rules.

ServerAliveInterval 60

# Instead of tunneling always with the CLI directly why not

# make a entry in your ssh config to make it easy, e.g.

HostName your.companies.host

User username

LocalForward 9999 clients.oracle.server.name:1521

# You can also use "Port" if the SSHd is on a non 22 port

On the CLI:

# Does all the tunneling automatically

ssh your.companies.host

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree completely. The post is nothing more than a "hey, if you're not using ssh for these two things, maybe take a look." I went this route because there are so many other full fledged introductions to ssh, that I thought it'd almost be a waste of my time. I'm sorry that reading it wasted yours.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Another cool feature of SSH: Escape Characters

(The following is an excerpt from the manpage for ssh(1) with the same title)

~. Disconnect. ~? Display a list of escape characters.

The ~. escape character is useful for getting back to your prompt when your SSH session has hung or died.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm a big fan of the ForwardAgent option. It allows you to, based on destination, pass your SSH key forward and have it used as the private key on the destination server as well. This allows me to ssh into a remote server, but keep my key based access rights on other servers (or github).

<comment><USER5> The standard warning about agent-forwarding: ssh-agent works by exposing your private keys to any process running as you, or any process running with root permissions. You have to trust your laptop or workstation (if you didn't, you wouldn't be typing passwords at the keyboard) so ssh-agent is pretty safe locally, but you should be careful about extending that level of trust to other hosts.

For example, I use agent-forwarding all the time at $EMPLOYER, because the same sysad is responsible for my workstation and the production systems, so every host is equally trustworthy. I might use agent-forwarding when connecting to a shell-server run by a friend, I wouldn't use it while connecting to an anonymous service like github or gitorious.</comment></comment>


Python and the web - <AUTHOR>

Okay, so my question is that I want to create an application that will backup files that the user wants and then upload them to a web-based drive. I really am just a python guy; but I am open to new things. So is this going to be a pain in the ass on python? If not, what is the best way to do it and what will I need? Or, what about be the best language to use? I would love you forever if you gave some input. THANKS! <comment><AUTHOR> sorta but like I don't want to make it as complicated. Like check boxes for the folders they want to upload and then they can schedule when they want to upload it and then it goes, like one time or repeated.

</comment><comment><USER2> Kinda like DropBox (a partially Python app)?</comment>


Ask HN: What can possibly trigger an idling phone to start playing music? - <AUTHOR> A locked phone is laying on the table and suddenly, without any interaction with it, starts playing music through YouTube music app. It's kind of not a big deal but as an engineer, I'm very curious to know what could have possibly triggered such a buggy behavior. Also, can this "something" be used as a security hole?<p>More context: the phone is on wifi, no Bluetooth devices are paired <comment><USER2> Accidentally triggered voice assist which was parsed as play music?</comment>


48 hours inside Hawaii's startup ecosystem - <AUTHOR> https://www.techinasia.com/48-hours-east-meets-west-2017-hawaii <comment><USER2> Hawaii truly is a Startup Paradise. Follow #StartupParadise / @StartupParadise to keep up to date on all the cool startup events and stories going on there.

<comment><USER3> I checked on twitter, but there were no tweets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you can keep yourself from getting distracted, what a beautiful place to do startup work!</comment>


PornHub reports a 10% traffic drop the day 'Fallout 4' came out - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/insider/2015/11/13/pornhub-reports-a-10-traffic-drop-the-day-fallout-4-came-out/ <comment><USER2> The clear takeaway from this is that PH needs to enter the game market.

</comment><comment><USER3> Notice that this is a drop among registered users that have declared themselves as gamers. I'd like to see this against the general population for the same period.

Maybe there was a rise during the same time among non-gamers, as others weren't able to use the TV.</comment>


A Brief History of Gnome [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.gnome.org/jrb/files/2017/07/A-Brief-History-of-GNOME-1.pdf <comment><USER2> That's really interesting material, thanks!

I'm conflicted about GNOME. I like it and it is my favorite desktop environment for Linux. They really did some novel things with the window management and the application launcher in GNOME Shell. I'm looking forward to trying all the work that went into containers, Nautilus, GNOME Builder, and so on. GNOME was always the "simpler" desktop. Some may say it is "dumbed down", but in general the choices made were pretty good and you could fall back to the command line if you needed to do something more involved. So this was never a big problem for me.

However, I really don't like that there is so much "churn" in the GNOME/Gtk world. To me, the height of the Linux Desktop was around ~2009 (I think), with the final years of Gtk2. Everything was crisp, polished, stable. Only recently has Gnome3 caught up in polishedness, IMO.

Also, they lost a lot of features over time. Just a few random ones:

\- Theming (in the core UI). This shouldn't be a second class citizen in gnome-tweak-tool, it should be in the main UI and the theming interface should be stable. Customization was always a major draw for Linux Desktops.

\- Little things like menu icons.

\- As a low-level example: Bonobo! I only learned of this when it was already deprecated. This was a component model very close to Windows' COM. You could create components in-process and in separate processes, or use it for IPC. It was used for the old GNOME panel applets for example. I perfectly understand why it was removed, it was quite complicated and badly documented, and had little concrete value for apps. But it was also misunderstood and parts were quite elegant.

If I had two wishes for GNOME, they would be:

\- A new, "crisper" and more compact theme. It's hard to define, but crisp UIs were the Windows Classic theme, the Shiki Gtk theme, macOS. Non-crisp ones are many Qt themes, Motif, most web apps. Its about looking consistent, professional, having depth, clear affordances, looking physical, and not wasting space.

\- Stable versions receiving feature updates. This was awesome in the Gtk2 era, you develop something with Gtk 2.14, and years later in 2.28 it still works, but with new themes and UI features. You have to keep a bit of ballast for a few releases, but it makes it a lot easier for both developers and users.

<comment><USER3> I'm also hoping fractional display scaling will ever be implemented in GNOME (displays can only be scaled 1x, 2x, 3x, etc. right now).

<comment><USER4> They are working on it: [http://blog.3v1n0.net/informatica/linux/gnome- fractional-and...](http://blog.3v1n0.net/informatica/linux/gnome-fractional- and-multi-monitor-scaling-hackfest-the-report/) . It might be included in the next release (maybe as experimental feature). I can't wait for fractional scaling. Currently, scaling on my 14 inch WQHD screen is a pain in the neck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have been using Xfce since the the Gnome 3 initial introduction. I only want:

* the main apps menu

* the widget to lock screen, log out, shutdown.

* tabs along the top (or bottom) showing open windows

* the widget with the workspace switcher, clock, and network/printing/whatever status indicator

Last time I looked at Gnome 3, it tried to be like MS's "Cortana" thing where it wanted me to search for everything I wanted, or else have me find things by "most recently used". I want none of that. Xfce has it right. The desktop doesn't need to be reinvented.

</comment><comment><USER6> Questions?

1) How do I configure my system to power down when I hit the power switch? (Hint: w/out patching and building Gnome.) A corollary of this question, I suppose, is why does a system function depend on a desktop which requires a login?

2) How does one run a CLI command on login or resume from suspend? The real question is why do I have to execute a `synclient` command to configure tap to click, two finger scrolling and three finger tap to insert?

3) How do I adjust the width of the borders around windows? What I really need is wider grab areas because grabbing the edge/corner of a window with the default theme is nearly impossible. I'm not sure if that is a result of crappy drivers or hardware. I wind up choosing a theme by trial and error to find one with larger grab areas.

I like, in general, Gnome3 but issues like these really bug me. They make me wonder if I should just bite the bullet and switch to something else.

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for this. I'd love to see a video with the full presentation but it appears there is none.

Gnome is going an interesting direction nowadays. The team managed to invent a desktop environment that is very easy to use, looks good, and is novel – that is to say, not a direct copy of Windows or OS X conventions.

It's very different from previous versions but there's always MATE and the likes for that.

One downside about current Gnome for me is that it seems to eat screen space. Looking at the old screenshots it strikes me how compact it is. I feel the same about classic Windows apps versus Windows Store apps. For example, compare Control Panel's Add/Remove Programs with the new Settings version.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the author the video should be posted soon.

[https://blogs.gnome.org/jrb/2017/07/29/gnome-populum- est/](https://blogs.gnome.org/jrb/2017/07/29/gnome-populum-est/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There are few things that truly exemplify quality; I count the simple but not minimalist visual aesthetic of GNOME 2 as one of them.

It is unfortunate that they changed the aesthetic so much with GNOME 3, particularly making it more minimalist. I prefer the prevailing toolbar aesthetic in GNOME 2 of icons with text, and the less integrated desktop management scheme at a high level in comparison respect to the Shell. Even if the old toolbar style wasted space and the new desktop scheme provides more power, they destroyed the configurable simplicity of GNOME 2 in favor of minimalism. In addition, you have to respect the history of a product's UI if you wish to retain users who want to stay comfortable in the software they use.

</comment><comment><USER9> After the KDE4/GNOME3 mess, I switched to Xfce and pretty much never looked back.

I honestly miss KDE 3.5</comment>


Fake wi-fi 'steals data and numbers from smartphones' [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11817567

<comment><USER2> Lol, I'm a friend of Rory's and so when they were scrolling through his hacked Facebook address book my profile pic and phone number flashed by at the end of the shot.

Of course, we know this is easy to do but it reminds you that _your_ data is at risk from a friend's insecurity.</comment>


Understanding user support systems in open source - <AUTHOR> https://nadiaeghbal.com/user-support <comment><USER2> I maintain a many projects which are not huge, but some are in the thousands of Github stars and often get an issue or two per day. Across all of my projects I probably see 10-20 new issues per week.

My approach is straightforward: help them help themselves. We have some easy things we can do to encourage people to find the information they need to sort out the problem, coaxing out of them debug logs, core dumps, and so on, and sometimes give them our suspicions about the problem. Then we tell them to start digging, and that we're around to answer questions if they need help finding their problem. This process ends with a patch _from that user_.

My projects also often have an IRC channel, where users often help each other with straightforward issues, and we never have to get involved. Sometimes a dev is paying attention and will give them the same rundown. If someone seems enthusiastic about digging and making a fix, they're invited to the dev IRC where they can receive more developer-oriented support in understanding the code and introducing them to the contribution workflow.

Sure, it's not the friendliest approach for anyone who isn't willing or able to figure it out themselves. But we're all volunteers and no one is going to volunteer their time to do something they dislike. We volunteered to write code because we like writing code. End-user support is not fun for us. If you like it, volunteering to do it is easy and has basically no onboarding time, you just show up in the support channels and start helping people.

<comment><USER3> I think it's a good approach and similarly it works for some projects I help out with.

But for some projects it's not working in my experience - especially if you have a lot of non-technical users, for example in a PHP web application.

I'm focusing on PHP because you don't just deploy a Python or Ruby web app without at least a bit of developer or *nix experience, whereas shared hosting with "follow these 3 steps and have an ftp client" still works in 2018.

In this case the bug reporters are probably not returning, the bug is often fixed in 10mins of developer time and just explaining what all the words mean takes longer than doing it yourself. Sadly these are often also the most ungrateful, so I'd be inclined to just ignore them - but at least we can improve the software after the bug report. Of course not all of them are bad, sometimes you literally have users that wouldn't know how to fix CSS, but they're testing all your new releases and provide feedback - awesome, but not technical.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For the "Issue Triage" analysis I would say lines_added,lines_remove,commits,number_issues_involved_in would be interesting to see as well.

For example caphrim007 is number 5 in commits over that period but added 5x as many lines of code as next closest committer. However, the code maybe against a new under-used feature so the actual end-user usage could be low.

It would also be interesting to juxtapose top committers commit graphs against issue assignment and resolution timeline. When does issue triage by top committers wax and wane? Do big commits (new features) overlap with issue assignment/resolution dates? Does high volume issue assignment/resolution follow big commits?

</comment><comment><USER5> Core developers that created and grew the project should shift over time to almost exclusively a role of only offering advice on the core implementation and spending their time introducing newbies, patiently answering support questions, and creating tutorials.

Most of the dysfunction I see in open source projects that take an ambivalent attitude towards the bug fixes and urgent feature needs of long-term users seems based in pure ego. Core devs want to keep being the leading edge designers and implementers of the project and are extremely stingy about letting new or intermediate contributors to the project bring fresh perspective and excitement into big new feature implementation or refactoring.

You can make a lot of disingenuous arguments that this is to protect the style and design approach of the original core, but it's not. It's just ego.

Look, people are obviously free to say if they are dedicating their free time to some open source project, then they only want to work on the aspects of it they like or the aspects that might seem glamorous in a blog post or conference presentation or whatever.

Being "allowed" to take that attitude is pretty much inconsequential though. If you do that, your project is entering one of two modes: death mode where new developers realize you will only permit them to work on gruntwork and you lose any capacity to actually fix things because nobody joins your project, or North Korea mode like the linux kernel where some crazed monarch or oligarchs use intimidation and public shaming as primary code review techniques.

If you are a really smart core dev of open source, stop working on the big new features. I know it hurts your ego to let your baby into the hands of newbies. Instead, do more code review, tutorials, answers on SO, and go way out of your way to make new contributors feel like you are impressed with their skill, that you want to pair with them through meaningful PRs right away, no "good first task" grunt work ego crap.

<comment><USER6> I think core developers should do whatever they want. Nobody is entitled to anything from a developer of an OSS project, unless there is a contract and/or money involved.

<comment><USER7> A perfect example is the TensorFlow project's support policy which the article references (i.e. they don't do support.) As long as a project is clear about what they will and won't do/provide, just about anything is workable. Far worse to claim to provide support and then be inconsistent about it... better to either say 'we don't provide support' or 'contact us for support options and pricing'.

<comment><USER5> TensorFlow is a very bad example of exactly the failure mode I'm talking about. In professional deep learning, TensorFlow is very widely regarded as a mess, with hostile developers who make breaking changes without warning and refuse to fix huge usability problems, let alone add important enhancements or support-specific bug fixes.

Nobody seriously uses TensorFlow without Keras, except in situations when they have to make custom modifications precisely to support broken things that the core devs won't fix.

Contrast this with Keras and it's night and day. Keras actually has support guidelines and a GitHub project and, even if lacking capacity, actually cares about its users instead of being willfully hostile to users like TensorFlow is. The original creator of Keras, Francois Chollet, can even be found very often in GitHub issue threads assisting totally novice newcomers to Keras and explaining tips and tricks with custom layers, etc.

<comment><USER7> I don't disagree, I find support across the board for Google products dismal. But isn't it better that they say 'we don't do support' than hold out hope that they might or provide spotty support? That way developers and users of the products, including TensorFlow, know what they're getting into. For the free projects that actually do provide good support, that's excellent and kudos to the developer/community that do so... they seem to be the exception these days.

I compare it to the 'old days' of software: it used to be common to have a phone number to call. Then it became email only and people complained there should be a support phone number. Then it was $0.99 apps and maybe you got a support forum. Now in the era of freemium, you're lucky if you get an online community support forum... and people complain when nobody monitors it. When you move to free, the support budget goes to $0 which leaves developers to shoulder support in addition to everything else. Unsurprisingly, many don't want to do this. If you're willing to pay, sure you can still get anything you want (up to and including on-site support for enterprise stuff if you have deep enough pockets) but as long as the default support model is clear at least one can make an informed decision. Support is one of those things that the $300+ (phone support), $30+ (email support), $10- (forum?), $0 (good luck) pays/paid for after all...

<comment><USER5> I guess I do agree with you that it's better for a project to brazenly denounce support than to feign an effort.

In the case of TensorFlow in particular, it allows forward thinking people to realize it's not a safe project to bet the farm on at all, not even anywhere close, even without factoring in Google's tendency to sunset projects regardless of their relative success or community needs.

This is why nobody's using it. Keras gives you the option of other backends, and there's a large shift to PyTorch as well. Even being new and not as featureful, you simply just cannot stake the long term health of a project on the constant rug pull that is TensorFlow.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you using Docker as a build environment vs. deployment system and how? - <AUTHOR> I've been using Docker mainly to setup build environments to target and test bulids for multiple Linux distros and even for cross-compiling for Windows and macOS.  I believe that the biggest problem with software longevity is that the required build environment is often lost because it is not codified in any lasting way.  Docker somewhat solves this problem.  Is anyone else using Docker in this way? <comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I have been a regular dev for a few years and recently have worked the last 6 months in my new role as the "devops" guy. It's been interesting and quite a lot of learning.

Anyway, we are using it similarly. However we aren't necessarily targeting different Os's but rather different environments at the build level (ex. different versions of sencha CMD to build our frontend) as well as the deployment application server (ex. different version of tomcat or weblogic for our Java backend)

It really is hard to say what's the best or what's the worst but either way I think you are spot on in the problem you see with software longetivity. There was a recent post here (sorry can't find the link at the moment) about devops addressing that very issue and the proposed solution was to automate everything and think of the infrastructure as code itself that can be versioned just the same as your actual application code.

The techops at my job guys use Ansible to do specifically that. I think you can do it docker but it's not specifically for that.

Read this: [http://devopscube.com/devops-tools-for-infrastructure- automa...](http://devopscube.com/devops-tools-for-infrastructure-automation/)

I've heard good things about chef and would like to learn more when I have a chance.

More experienced guys: please refute any bullshit you see in my comment. I truly would like to learn how to be better at devops. A lot is objective but a lot is so psychological in how people work together which is fascinating.</comment>


San Francisco's VC Boom Is Over - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-07-16/san-francisco-s-vc-boom-is-over?utm_source=yahoo&utm_medium=bd&utm_campaign=headline&trackingId=yhoo.headline&yptr=yahoo <comment><USER2> Hard not to LOL at SF and Silicon Valley being treated as separate markets for funding. For extremely local services, sure (like dry cleaning or a coffeeshop), they're different markets. Maybe even for a daily-commute job (although that's debatable). For fund raising, I don't think there's anyone unwilling to Uber/drive/BART/caltrain an extra 20 miles for $1mm to $1b in funding. You meet investors monthly at most, and more likely quarterly or annually.

<comment><USER3> They work like separate markets. I'm in the Bay Area (from New York) with 5 to 6x the frequency with which I'm in San Francisco. I believe this boundary also applies to fund flows-- _Pitchbook_ had a study (having trouble finding it right now) tracking correlations between California VC firm HQs and companies invested within the HQ zip code or a tangential zip code.

San Francisco seems to have found its niche with B2C while the South Bay focussed on heavier stuff, _e.g._ satellites, ML, _et cetera_. Highly- correlated markets, but similarly distinct as New York and Long Island.

<comment><USER2> I'm just going based on seed/demo days and a smaller number of A/B rounds I've observed -- location of the investor leads between SF/SV never came up, and meetings with SV investors in SF, SF investors in SV both happened quite frequently. That's a subset (YC and other companies I know), and probably weighted on number-of-investments vs. total fund flows. This is for first/second meetings; perhaps they're more likely to actually close if local, but given that most financings happen in a small number of meetings now, that also seems unlikely. (Seed = 2-5; A = something like 5-10 total?)

Maybe outside of demo days ("organic" vc or whatever you'd call it), it becomes a factor due to people walking into offices or other lead generation efforts.

It's also hard to believe that late stage financings (which are larger but less frequent) care at all about location, given that so many of them are from outside the geography entirely, including international.

If you have stats from something more quantified that would be interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "The charts tell us that San Francisco's dominance of VC investment over the past five years was unprecedented (or at least, not seen since 1995) -- and also that it is fading, fast."

I think that's drawing a lot from one quarter? SF has a significant drop in %, but it's still an outsided leader (Almost 2x the next category) and has been for half a decade.

"But the San Francisco VC boom is also increasingly looking like it might be something else: a bubble that has begun to deflate"

Not sure invoking "bubble" is that useful in this context.

That said, living in SF and working in SoMa, I do feel the pressure of infrastructure needing to catch up. I often wonder if we've just hit a physical limit with the city as it is today.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, bubbles don't deflate, they pop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wow, such a click bait headline. The chart shows San Francisco still continues the lead the country in VC investment by a mile (remarkable for a city with only 900k residents) The down quarter is simply due to lack of mega rounds like Didi's 5bn raise in China

</comment><comment><USER7> This is a spectacularly bad headline. SF VC investment had a down quarter, but continues to completely dominate nationwide, and SF is separated out from Silicon Valley, which is in a very dominant second place.

<comment><USER8> The peak was in 2015 Q3. I was here for the 90s boom too, and this reversion to the mean doesn't surprise me at all. It'll be possible to ride the slope down for another year or two but thinking it's just 'a down quarter' is self- deception.

Also, we're into a period of big political uncertainty, both domestically and internationally, so the next big growth area is going to be hardware with defense applications.

<comment><USER3> Is total venture funding stalling? Or is San Francisco's relative position just shifting? I'd guess a rebalancing, away from San Francisco's toxic real estate market and political environment, is a better-substantiated narrative than that of impending doom.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maybe SF entrepreneurs have moved on to crowdsales/ICOs those that have been in SF in the recent spree would certainly give that graph a pop . . .

"In the first half of 2017, ICOs have outstripped traditional blockchain venture capital funding, raising $327m of funding."[1]

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/15/the-decentralization-of- st...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/15/the-decentralization-of-startup- building/)

</comment><comment><USER10> This makes sense, SF benefited a lot from the social/mobile/on demand boom. Silicon Valley is set to benefit more from the AI/ML hype as this as stronger ties to academia, and also older, more academic type engineers who don't get as much value from living in the denser city of SF (that the mobile/social/on demand startups did).

Long term both cities will dominate and I don't see this as a structural change, this just seems like a shift based off of what is popular in VC funding right now.

<comment><USER11> Yes, in themrealm of grand generalizations: the valley has been more tech oriented and "historically" (Las 20 years) SF more market oriented.

When I moved to the Bay Area in '84 there was no tech in SF at all, and around 1999 when Hummer Winblad opened their office at South Park people would write articles about them asking _why_ you would open an office way up there.

I have to say I was shocked by these figures

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'd like to see that graph with Uber removed. Regardless of what you think of Uber, they're the biggest consumer of venture capital of all time. That has to distort the SF numbers.

<comment><USER13> From some back-of-the-envelope subtraction, it'd make a dent in SF's boom but the overall story would be similar. The visible Q2 2016 mini-spike _is_ all Uber: they raised $3.5b that quarter, and without that, SF would be at $20b rather than $23.5b for the quarter. But that wouldn't really change the overall shape of the graph (apart from smoothing out the spike). And Uber's impact in other quarters would be less, around $1b in the next largest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Anyone calling a bubble in tech who isn't actively shorting SVB's stock is full of crap.

<comment><USER15> Haha I love this statement. So true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I always thought the dividing line wasn't 92 but rather the Ampex sign (which BTW could use some work). Anyways, I agree that today, this is just an artificial boundary. There's no difference vis a vis funding. Between SF and LA, yes. Between SF and PA, no.

</comment><comment><USER17> Too much money soaked up by Uber, AirBNB, Lyft, Blue Apron, etc.

Slightly off-topic… is Uber now "too big to fail" for the VCs invested in it?

<comment><USER18> No, it is destined to succeed (IMHO).

The massive-growth-model of startups dictates "YOY, double revenue on a 50% cost increase. Rinse and repeat until profitable". As long as the funding holds out, this model is mathematically sound.

Uber is well on track for this from the (admitted dodgy) numbers I have seen - those being summarized here [http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/technology/uber- financials/i...](http://money.cnn.com/2017/04/14/technology/uber- financials/index.html). Uber is (again, rumoured) to have doubled revenue in 2016, with a reported $6.5B net revenue, and a loss of $2.8B for ~$9.3B in costs. Double and 50% those numbers, and you get $13B, and about $12.2B, or ~$1B in profit.

<comment><USER19> Agree, but it's also not purely linear predicted growth. There are sunk costs to assist greater than linear growth. Uber without drivers surely has to be a killer business. Radio controlled by GPS "ai" "driverless" taxi with near zero customer service. Throw in electric vehicles, again cost is rapidly approaching near zero. Throw in bulk purchasing, 247 service, almost zero fuel costs and you've upended logistics. It's worth a punt to see if it can happen. One mans opinion, your mileage may vary, objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> What's up with their graphs? The scale on the x-axis is a tick for every 5 quarters, I feel like it'd be easier to read if they'd drawn it out differently.

<comment><USER21> That's funny, but also sloppy as you note. I would bet the default tick labeling is every 5 in whatever plotting library they use.

<comment><USER8> That or auto-spacing for aesthetic considerations at the expense of semantic clarity, an all-too-common behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Somewhat off-topic: How is Seattle not in the VC investment list?

<comment><USER11> Seattle is part of an aggregated "Northwest" sector which last time I looked was a distant #6 or #7 in the rankings

<comment><USER23> I can confirm anecdotally that this ranking makes sense.

When I first started my career, I lived in Seattle and really struggled meeting fellow entrepreneurs and VCs. People just seemed to live there to work for the two massive tech companies that are there, but not to start their own.

When I moved to Silicon Valley a year later (having lived there ever since), the culture and affinity towards entrepreneurship was a night and day difference.

<comment><USER24> Was that 10+ years ago? Seattle is still dwarfed by the Bay Area but the startup community has been growing rapidly.

<comment><USER23> No, 2013. Entrepreneurship does seem to be gaining a foothold in many other cities now though. Pittsburgh has had a particularly impressive showing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> May be because people have started investing in Digital Currencies and ICOs?

</comment><comment><USER26> I'll believe it when the rents go down.

</comment><comment><USER27> Oh cool, _THIS_ article again.

</comment><comment><USER28> So Seattle is completely missing in the first graph. Is this accurate? I would think Seattle area is definitely at #3 behind SF and SV.

<comment><USER29> You would be wrong. Seattle is grouped in with "Northwest" in a distant 9th.

I'm not sure what would lead you to believe that Seattle would be ahead of New York.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What's up with the first page stories that have no votes? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> <http://ycombinator.com/newsnews.html></comment>


Build this HN: paper "subscription" to Facebook photos - <AUTHOR>

This idea has been eating at me for awhile, but since I'm busy with another project, and really would like to have this service, I figured I'd share it with the community.
Do you ever miss having paper photos? I do. Every once in awhile, I'll motivate myself enough to actually collect a few family and friend photos and print them out through Walgreens.com
I want a service that automatically sends me a bunch of photos every month.
You could select which people you want photos of, select a photo package, and every month, the service would grab the photos from your Facebook friends - of your friends - print them out, and send them to you in the mail. You can then keep your photo frames, refrigerator, etc. up-to-date.
If you build it, I'll be your first customer. <comment><USER2> Isn't there a YC funded company that does this? (but not with FB photos)</comment>


This one is for the users (Google Voice) - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/u/1/+AlexWiesen/posts/EEVjRbbKz65?sfc=false <comment><USER2> The title for the article is their hope for the product, not the reality. The comments tell a different story.</comment>


Intense debate privacy weakness - I know who you are  - <AUTHOR> http://indeb.apphb.com/ <comment><USER2> This refers to the comments service IntenseDebate: [http://intensedebate.com](http://intensedebate.com).

Changing the name in the title might make this less ambiguous.

<comment><USER3> I originally thought it was something about the NSA ('Intense debate about privacy')

<comment><USER4> I think they don't need our comments about something while they have access to all our e-mail, DM's etc...</comment></comment></comment>


Machine learning predictions for QM eMini Crude Oil - <AUTHOR> https://www.dutchess.ai/results/ <comment><USER2> If you glance over the whitepaper, it's obvious this is a completely ridiculous model. Trying to predict intraday price movements with previous day volume numbers and open interest as features? Please. Also, selling the "model" predictions for $365 a year is the real scam -- if he had any confidence in the model, he'd get a private backer and be trading size out of his own account rather than making $50 bets.

<comment><USER3> I mean it is possible that the model could work for someone with access to more capital and better fee structure than OP making $50 bets.

Still, this seems like a model that will likely work about 95% then fail on outliers ie "picking pennies in front of a bulldozer" model.

<comment><USER4> A strategy that goes long or short QM doesn't have an asymetrical return profile. I.e., it isn't "picking up pennies". An example of that is selling options.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks HockeyPlayer spot on.

<comment><USER2> I think you misunderstand, what you're doing is even worse than picking up pennies, your strategy just boils down to punting futures with no hedge or any form risk management to your open position. You're just gambling on coinflips. If you backtest your "model" you'll find that external macro event induced crude oil moves will completely wipe you out because you have no hedge against them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your are correct about no hedge agains outlying macro events. But I'm not suggesting using this without any other variables in your trading decision. It may help make a trading decision.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The OP says "I don't see why I can't trade it AND share it as well to get multiple streams of revenue?"

Maybe because the capacity of day hold futures (especially e-micro crude) is so small that there is almost no way that the revenues earned from your 365 a year subscribers is going to be greater than the decreased capacity of your strategy from having all those people trading it.

As someone who works at a quant fund, this kind of shit pisses me off to no end. It makes a legit industry look like Herbalife

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really have a strategy to copy. I just provide indicators that may affect how you decide to make a trade or not.

Also the point of this project is to get machine models that evaluate below baseline by improving the analysis of time-series data. I spent a lot of time improving the quality until they became better than baseline. Like I said I do not have a crystal ball or strategy for sale. Just insights from pattern recognition of historical time-series data that has helped me trade so I'm putting it out there.

</comment></comment><comment> d--b OP: how can you expect to be taken seriously if you don't publish backtests, and overfitting analysis?!

It is _extremely_ likely that your model's guesses are just as bad as coin flips.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will do this thank you for your feedback. I didn't release my results until my models were better than baseline in evaluation. Hence better than flipping a coin. I published the results of my evaluations so you can see that. Its not a crystal ball. Its an indicator to help in trading decisions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> That's how Simons did it at Renaissance. He sold his model for $365 a year.

<comment><AUTHOR> I did not know that. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is all a bit naive, OP is not up to speed with the state of the art. This looks like any number of student projects that are created every semester.

The best thing about this is that it looks like OP prototyped and released v1 for sale in under a month. That's respectable.

<comment><AUTHOR> It may be a bit naive. going to keep working on this and I have found my indicators to greatly increase my own trading results and making the models evaluation numbers improve is very exciting and interesting to me and maybe others.

Thanks for the one compliment :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also my models beat baseline in evaluations so I'm stoked on that. It took some doing to produce results with time-series data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It's been about a decade since I worked with machine learning, and even then I hardly scratched the surface. (I mostly wrote the data access and glue code for someone else's machine learning system.)

Given what I see, it's really hard (for me) to understand what's going on and what's novel. I'm not very active in the financial or machine learning area. All I can understand is that someone wrote an investment program that makes money.

Even with my limited knowledge of machine learning, I know that it's very easy to confuse luck and success. How do you know that you're not just lucky? How do you know that your computer program is really investing, and not just "good timing"?

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not trading purely on these numbers. They are indicators they help me make my trading decisions and I think they may help others too.

My models evaluations are performing better than baseline when trained with 70% of the data and evaluated against the remaining 30% so I take that as value. As someone else put it a potentially "favorable guess". At this point I'm using the predictions regularly. And I guess I'll know more the longer I keep track of daily results.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Updated White Paper. Generated more evaluations and back tests. [https://s3.amazonaws.com/karlcdn/Dutchess.ai+White+Paper.pdf](https://s3.amazonaws.com/karlcdn/Dutchess.ai+White+Paper.pdf)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I know a lot of you hate this but the model has correctly predicted the correct direction of movement at end of day 9 out of 11 days since my model was under baseline and I began publishing my results. I know I've said this a few times but its not a crystal ball, its a value that can assist in trading decisions.

<comment><USER8> 11 days is a very short time. Assume that you're lucky.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thats also what the evaluation of an ML model is for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I did another back test with a randomly selected 70%/30% training to evaluation ratio for evaluating time-series models. Adding results to whitepaper. The results are still under baseline.

</comment><comment><USER9> Couple questions:

1\. Why QM?

2\. Was this tried on any other future and if yes what was the outcome?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have been trading QM for a year or two now. It has low margin and good volatility for day trading. The tick value is 12.50. So movement of one tick will cover your trade costs. So it makes it possible for a beginner to start with ~$3-5000 and still be able to realistically make money.

<comment><USER10> Trading costs are more than just commission. Slippage for QM is higher than CL because of thinner volume and can easily be $10-25+ per order ($20-50 round trip). You might say that you don't worry about slippage because you use limit orders, but limit orders have their own problems, like not getting filled which can easily screw up your returns vs predicted returns. Be careful, there are far more ways to lose money trading than you seem to realize still.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also doing random not sequential training and evaluation. The proper way to eval time-series models.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am doing my training/evaluation with a data split of 70/30\. Doesn't that qualify as a proper backtest?

</comment><comment><USER11> What is this I don't even

<comment><AUTHOR> Working on a tutorial...

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I may not be reading this right, but does the white paper contain 5 days of result data?

<comment><AUTHOR> ya it contains the evaluation results of the model and 5 days of result data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The ever-relevant xkcd - [https://xkcd.com/1570/](https://xkcd.com/1570/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Lol.

<comment><AUTHOR> I love xkcd.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Now we're staying inside with Wi-Fi, have you changed your cell plan? - <AUTHOR> Some MVNOs are offering plans as low as $6/mo. The only reason I'm keeping my cell is to make calls. Now I think by switching to a cheaper plan, I can save at least $30/mo. Have you done this? If it's not too much to ask, can you say which plans work better for calls? <comment><USER2> Posts like this remind me of the differences between cell phone data markets relative to your country. I pay €15.99 a month for my cell plan (discounted from €19.99 because the same providor does my home internet/cable TV/home phone bundle) [0]. That gets me 100GB of data, unlimited texting, free calls and texts to much of the world, and the same deal should I roam in many countries, including those closest to home where I am most likely to travel pre- and post-COVID19.

I'm sure it has something to do with the competition, the density of the population and the impact of that on infrastructure, and the government financial support for communication infrastructure rollout. Probably more complex than that, but at €15 a month it's nowhere near the top of a list of expenses to cut right now.

[0]:[http://mobile.free.fr](http://mobile.free.fr)

<comment><USER3> Well, I had to leave for my hometown (post COVID19 lockdown in India) which is a Tier 2 city where I don't any copper/ fiber connectivity in my area apart from government backed BSNL which is a pain to get. To compensate, I have 2 provider plans which I shuffle for doing my work.

1) Vodafone : I pay around INR 588 (~USD 8) for an unlimited calling plan with 200 GB data per month, unused data is credited to next month. Speed varies around 4 Mbps - 32 Mbps, throttles some websites such as BBC/ NYTimes and torrents (no idea why). Streaming services work flawlessly.

2) JIO : I paid around INR 599 (~USD 8) for 84 days with unlimited calling + 168 GB high speed data (downgrades to 64Kbps post exhaustion). Speed varies around 3 Mbps - 24 Mbps. Also throttles some websites as per Department of Telecom (DOT) guidance.

I manage my servers, download abandonware games (which were cool in circa 2000s), code and use streaming services - so far so good. Other providers provide similar offerings as well. The only challenge so far has been to keep my cellphones constantly charged.

Edit : added country details.

<comment><USER4> India has strict net neutrality. ISPs cannot throttle some services and allow others. If you are talking about banning websites(torrent, porn) then that's a different issue. That is enforced due to a court order.

I have a Jio connection. Torrents work at same data speeds as other downloads. But the torrent websites are banned using DPI. So easy hacks like https upgrade don't work. Hopefully wide adoption of encrypted SNI will hinder their capability to ban websites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm in the UK, and have long been a "no contract" user. I've saved literally thousands from buying the phone outright and using pay as you go variants [2].

I currently use giffgaff, who offer "goodybags" [1] which are essentially sim- only deals that last a month for comparable or cheaper prices than contract phones.

When the lockdown was announced I dropped from £12/mo to £0/mo. I have roughly £8 credit on my phone and haven't used it.

[1] [https://www.giffgaff.com/sim-only-plans](https://www.giffgaff.com/sim- only-plans)

[2] most phones are cheaper to own this way, even factoring in all sorts of risk. The exceptions are phones specifically targetted to make the most of the loan setup; from experience the top of the line iPhones have always been cheaper on contract.

<comment> Maha-pudma UK too. And same as you buy my phone's outright. My partner and child are with me in a group plan with Smarty we pay (read I pay) £9 per month each for 30gb data and unlimited texts and calls.

Can't beat this. I'm a keyworker so am still using my data same as my partner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> In India, after Jio's success, all operators have now killed the old pricing structure or made it unviable. That structure provided us the ability to lower our plans to bare minimum (low talktime, long validity). Now everyone is on the subscription bandwagon which is atleast 6 times costly when comparing the cheapest plans. But that's still ok I guess, for 200rs (~3USD) per month we get 1.5GB 4G data per day, Unlimited calls and SMS. Sucks that they are selling our data though.

<comment><USER7> Those are some insanely cheap prices for 1.5GB a day! I pay $40 for 1GB a month here in the United States. How is this even possible? Are the service providers here really taking in such a fat margin?

<comment><USER8> Speaking for Pakistan with somewhat higher rates, I think there are a couple of reasons.

1\. Actual competition between providers, rather than implicit collusion.

2\. Much higher population density across most of the country.

3\. Interestingly, lack of rule of law, which means the whole subscribe-to-a- cell-phone-package that is actually out of your budget but the only option available doesn't work here. People will just run away with the phone. A vast majority of people buy a phone separately and pay upfront for it, and choose a connection provider of their choice. And jump providers whenever they see someone with a better price.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I like Ting [0] a lot it's only $6 per line and they only charge you for what you use. Even in months where I have heavy usage the total bill for two lines typically ends up in the $60 range. US based phone support. Easy to use and understand website. Can't say enough good things about it.

The also offer fiber Internet if you are lucky enough to live in one of the handful of cities where they offer it.

[0] [https://ting.com/](https://ting.com/)

<comment><USER10> Ting doesn't really look like a good deal except for extremely low usage, like for a secondary phone or if you do everything connected to wifi and not using mobile talk or text.

1 line = $6, 1-100 minutes = $3, 1-100 texts = $3, 101-500MB = $10.

Total, with that low usage, is $22/mo with Ting.

Compare against some cheap MVNO like Mint Mobile where you can get unlimited talk and text, 3GB 4G for $20/mo prepaid for 6 months, or $15/mo prepaid for 1 year. Which is very similar to T-Mobile Connect (their new prepaid thing). I don't know if "T-Mobile Connect" is technically a separate entity that's a MVNO running on T-Mobile's network, or whether it's a genuine 1st class service on T-Mobile's network. Even if T-Mobile Connect is a MVNO, I would probably choose it if I were reevaluating plans today, except... the last time I used T-Mobile's website it was horrible, and Mint's is very simple and clean.

Google Fi would be more, but if you go over 100 minutes or 100 texts, the Ting price goes up, while the Fi price is unchanged. More than some cheap MVNO, but Google Fi has some special features that might make that worthwhile for some people.

<comment><USER9> I don't like Mint because it is gimicky ie: introductory rates, and you have to remember to commit to a new X month contract every X months. Use Ting's billing estimator to look at what your real usage is and see what it would cost. The real sweet spot is if you have multiple lines with medium usage since they pool usage and you aren't paying for an "unlimited" plan for multiple lines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As part of the agreement with SEC(?) to be allowed to merge with Sprint, T-mobile agreed to offer low-priced plans, I suppose to help low-income or access-disadvantaged Americans get cheaper cellphone access.

$15/month (incl 2GB): [https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid- plans/connect](https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect) Not as cheap as some barebones MNVOs but seems attractive and by a reliable-enough carrier.

Personally, I have my parents on the Google Fi $20/month plan ($15 for 2nd line) which charges $10 per GB of data, so at this time they're not using almost any data. It's cheap enough to be not worth it to switch right now.

<comment><USER12> Switched to the Tmobile connect plan last week, in part with trying to keep bills low.

Despite being a longtime Tmobile customer they issued me a new number. Mild inconvenience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm from Romania and I pay €14 for 75 GB monthly data, 300 international minutes, unlimited national minutes/sms.

It's cheap enough that I don't mind paying for it while indoors.

I would've switched to Prepay actually, as here you get even better deals with Prepay, but I've got a older and easy to remember phone number that I don't want to lose. And technically I could recover a Prepay number in case I lost the SIM, but with no contract in place I would depend on the benevolence of the operator.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wrote a post about downgrading to T Mobile connect. [https://link.medium.com/kU4juJLIB6](https://link.medium.com/kU4juJLIB6)

</comment><comment><USER15> I've been using US MVNO's for years and buy lightly used smart phones. When you look at a 10 year time span, it is much cheaper than essentially leasing your phone and upgrading every 2 years.

Customer service is different with all the MVNO's we've used. They don't have sophisticated billing systems or the hated phone trees. Ting had the best customer service but also didn't have great coverage and when you go over data for your plan it was a little expensive.

Our current provider (Visible on Verizon network) doesn't even have a phone number to call, just text or social media for support. If you get 4 people together you can have "unlimited" data for $25/mo in US. On previous MVNO our usage never approached the level where "unlimited" became slower.

</comment><comment><USER16> Use Ting. Pay for what you use. [https://ting.com/](https://ting.com/)

<comment><USER11> What I dislike about Ting is that as soon as you rack up even 1 text message (which you are bound to, by annoying text message services who spam you), they charge you the next tier. The worry about hitting the next tier (voice, data, text) was very annoying and I abandoned them.

<comment><USER16> my bill is like $18/month. That's still a lot lower than $70 plans that people hardly use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If Xfinity Mobile is an option for you, and you're already an Xfinity customer (if not, there's a $10 fee I think), you can get service for $15, if you have a supported phone (iPhone, Galaxy, or Pixel; they also sell phones by standard lease plans, but I assume that would defeat the purpose). They only bill for data. They're on the Verizon network; I switched from Verizon to them for a while. The service was good, but I needed the unlimited data that Verizon provides, and apparently Verizon speed caps their MVNOs, as the speed on the same phone was substantially less. (I still have a backup phone on Xfinity: it (Galaxy Note 10) speed tested at around 4Mbps; my Verizon iPhone XS Max was 15-30Mbps.)

</comment><comment><USER18> Not really covid-related, but switched to Mint Mobile last fall and have been pretty happy with it. $20/month for 8GB I think (I've never run against the limit so I'm not sure off the top of my head). I'm in NYC and rarely leave the city, so I can't speak to consistency of coverage in other areas, but I've never had any problems. The only real complaint I have is that their international coverage is unusably bad. It's pre-paid, and pay by the MB So manages to be prohibitively expensive and also unreliable. I normally just pick up a cheap temp SIM card when I arrive in a country, but I understand that some people this is too big an inconvenience, or not a possibility.

</comment><comment><USER19> I cut down on my cell phone plan a long time ago. I used to pay about $70 a month, then I went to the AT&T prepaid service. It's $35/month ($30 if you do recurring billing) and you get unlimited calls and texts, and 2 GB of data per month, which is more than enough for me. Tethering also works great. I've also heard a lot of people like ting, but then you're paying by the minute, although the base price is much cheaper.

(I also got a really great deal on an iPhone SE for signing up for $149. 6 months you have to keep the plan and then you can unlock the phone. If you're looking to upgrade your phone, try to swing that too!)

<comment><USER20> You should look at their plans next time you top up because I have the 2gb data plan unlimited calls and texts and it's $15 a month for me with a promo. No auto pay needed.

I used to use the unlimited data $65 a month plan then I downgraded since being quarentined

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm using Visible with three strangers ([https://www.reddit.com/r/VisiblePartyPay/](https://www.reddit.com/r/VisiblePartyPay/)) to get unlimited everything (including one device tethering) on the Verizon network for $25/mo. I downgraded from regular Verizon which was like $90/mo and other than some setup hiccups haven't noticed a difference.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use google fi so it's just automatically cheaper. Previously I could pay up to 80/mo for unlimited data, 20 base, 10 bucks per gig, free thereafter up to 15 gigs, throttled after 15 gigs.

I've been paying between 20 and 30/mo for it.

</comment><comment><USER23> Mint Mobile (a T-Mobile MVNO) has unlimited talk & text with 3GB data (and unlimited throttled data after that) for $15/mo. (I'm not affilliated, just a happy user -- if you want a $15 credit, DM me for a referral code.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey man, how could I dm you?!

<comment><USER23> My bad. I've updated my HN profile with my email address.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm using Google Fi for the international coverage & traveling indefinitely, albeit not so much since March. I could get cheaper local plans, but buying local sims is not always easy or convenient.

</comment><comment><USER25> I use Tello and love it! I've been working from home for a while and switched a few years ago. I also use Google Voice for my home phone number and connect it to an ObiTalk box, which connects to my modem, so almost all my calls are over WiFi too. I could probably get away with their cheapest plan, which I believe is $6 (for the same network as T-Mobile or Sprint), but even without going the cheapest, my bill is always under $10.

</comment><comment><USER26> Yes, I switched from a bill to a prepay option. I only really used my phone for internet anyway, so will only need to top it up if I'm not home (which currently is only to go to the shops or for exercise, where I don't need internet/phone). My current prepay option gives me unlimited download for 30 days for less than the monthly cost of my previous bill, so it's quite reasonable if I do find I need it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I am not paying for my cellphone, I see everyone is on WhatsApp already and I call them on WhatsApp.

That said I live in India. I already pay for fiber gigabit connection at home, so spending extra on mobile is not worth it for me.

That said, most of job is done on email/WhatsApp and I rarely need to call anyone.

And if need comes, I'll just recharge my mobile through internet and get it going within 5 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER28> I still prefer having a solid secondary option in case my home network has an outage. (One occurred a few weeks ago) I'm currently paying 18.90€/mo for 50/50mbit/s 4G + texts and calls that I never use. My home connection is a complementary 100/100mbit/s, but as I mentioned, it does go down sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER29> I pay $26 on a T-mobile family plan. That's after the AutoPay and KickBack discounts. (The KickBack discount applies if you use less than 2GB of data.) I find it cheap enough not to care much; it's less than half an hour's worth of wages. It's supposedly unlimited data, but throttling may happen after 50GB.

</comment><comment><USER30> My whole family is on TracFone. They're 15 bucks a month. I suppose we could get it cheaper, but it's worked for us, for a long time. When the lockdown began, I ordered new Internet-only service for the family, and we're going to finally ditch our land line.

</comment><comment><USER31> Not an option in rural Australia. My home internet connection (ADSL2 over copper) gets between 1 and 1.5Mbps down on a good day!

I plug a 4G USB dongle into a WiFi router. This gets me to about 4 or 5Mbps if the weather is good and I put the router on the roof. _sighs_

</comment><comment><USER32> I pay around $15/month for something like 40 gb of data and free calls and texts. It's so cheap I didn't bother lowering it, and it so happens that my WiFi is shit enough that using 4g is sometimes better in some places of my apt.

</comment><comment><USER33> Even though I am 99% using the WiFi, I have to stay on a plan in my mobile just to receive and make calls. As people still prefer normal calling than using internet based calling features.

</comment><comment><USER34> Thought of this today. I pay a huge bill. Time to downgrade.

</comment><comment><USER35> My cell plans are crowded as I have every provider in our country. From 100GB data only for 10€ to full fledged plan for more than 60€. COVID changed nothing.

</comment><comment><USER36> Yes. I dropped from unlimited family plan to 4Gb/mo across three devices. It saved a good bit. It's nice that it's easy to switch plans these days.

</comment><comment><USER37> I am on T-Mobile and Magenta plan at $70/mo. Honestly I don't even think there is a cheaper plan.

<comment><USER38> Not sure how easy it is to switch from postpaid to prepaid plans, but there's T-Mobile Connect[1]. Unlimited talk and text, plus 2GB of data for $15/month.

[1] [https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid- plans/connect](https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/prepaid-plans/connect)

<comment><USER39> That's actually a great deal for most people, and I'm really glad to see them finally matching their better MVNO prices.

However, it's worth noting that at least from what I can tell it doesn't include Canada/Mexico coverage, as well as the limited free data in most other countries, that most of their other plans include. That has often proved beneficial to my family (who travels internationally with some regularity), especially as buying a SIM card in most countries is increasingly difficult.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I've used Mint for years. 20/mo for more data than I'll ever use. Not one complaint.

</comment><comment><USER41> Sure, use "pay as you go". Can't even remember when paid for cell last time.

</comment><comment><USER42> No, but I have given my microwave a tin foil hat.

If the wife makes tea, it fries my wifi connection.

<comment><USER43> I don't think it's safe that your microwave is emitting radiation strong enough to disrupt your Wifi signal. The shielding may be compromised, and substituting aluminum foil introduces the potential of scattering toward people and animals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I had the cheapest plan available, so I had nothing to change.

</comment><comment><USER45> Yes, I've changed to a plan with a lower internet cap, at €3/month.

</comment><comment><USER46> I was already on the cheapest plan so I'm good :)</comment>


Boeing's new '797' could be built to fly with just one pilot on board - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/20/boeings-new-797-could-be-built-to-fly-with-just-one-pilot-on-board.html <comment><USER2> Another misleading title. The article says that some airlines would like it, but Boeing has no intention of doing this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Even a business class jet requires two pilots.</comment>


Show HN: Lens Battle – Make comparing lenses easier (with leaflet.js) - <AUTHOR> https://www.polarr.co/lens/50mm <comment><AUTHOR> OP here: some of the misalignments are caused by distortions and slight camera movement. Those are the hardest to control and require repeated try. The Sigma lens is also overly heavy that pointed the camera down-ward a little. Will try to do better in the next round of lenses.

<comment><USER2> Pretty good start i'd say. Nice to see leaflet.js getting used outside of maps. A couple comments: 1. the choice of the subjects is questionable. Couldn't you have chosen a better scene? Perhaps a landscape/portrait where extra detail can be more easily compared between the photos. Let's be honest, who's ever gonna take a photo with these lenses on a doll. For crying out loud, get some models and I guarantee this will take off! 2. would like to see more lenses to be added, along with different zoom settings

<comment><USER3> I'm no lens expert but I'd imagine that the differences in lighting and motion in landscapes and portraiture between takes might obscure the subtle differences between the lenses themselves. The static subjects probably give a more fair comparison.

<comment><USER4> Difference lenses have very different MTF (resolution vs how far away to the center of the lens) in theory and because of the different lens internal structure, they also have different fringing, distortion performances as well. The bokeh look different depending on the shape and the number of aperture blades. Sometimes it is not clear whether spending 2x or more is worth it so this is I believe very helpful to help buyers to see what's the actual differences of lenses are without all those fancy ads.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That's very, very nice! Thank you!

I noticed that on the most expensive lens, in the "car" scene, the focus seems to be very different than with other lenses. Which makes the comparison difficult. Your DLSR most likely records autofocus points: it might be a good idea to actually display them in the JPEGs, because at such high apertures you really want to look at what's in focus.

<comment><AUTHOR> OP here, we sort of screw up on that one.

Should have done at least two groups of auto focusing and manual focusing.

The car scene was done in a a little rush because the sun is moving. Not sure what's going on with the sigma but we made sure the camera beeps when it reports in focus at the medal Jaguar logo.

If people like this idea, we will get more lenses in the next series and add Canon and other brands if possible.

Right now the original JPEG is around 14MP and very slow to load, so we had to slide them into tiles thus using leaflet.js.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When you switch photos I might pull all the way back out. It looks like you stay focused in.

Meaning whatever I was focused into on the picture I was just on is not important to the new picture. So pull back out. Ha hopefully that made sense.

Super cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER7> Want to see more comparison between lenses for Canon.

<comment><USER8> The Digital Picture does a fantastic job with center, corner and mid-frame crops: [http://www.the-digital- picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-...](http://www.the-digital- picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx)

Highly recommended, their reviews are also fantastic.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great resources. These are almost always qualitatively correct but it's hard to see the lens performances in real settings (out of paper) and to get an overall holistic view of the differences in "looks" . Both approaches have their merits.</comment></comment></comment>