The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and the End of Code - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/05/the-end-of-code/ <comment><USER2> Amazing listening to all of the HN coder apologists here come up with excuses for why they aren't going to lose their jobs, too.

If anything, abstraction, ever-tighter vendor lock-in, and improvements in static analysis will kill off many coder jobs.

There aren't too many jobs out there for recreating basic UNIX tools like sed or grep -- soon, this will be true for higher level tools as well, until what you're doing now at your desk as a coder becomes a "tool" or already exists as a library.

It will eventually be like self-driving cars: Not totally automated, but enough to make the job of programming like a modern-day pilot's -- throw it in autopilot, and then step in whenever (rarely) necessary. Then people will realize fewer people are needed to keep watch and step in, and that one person is enough to do the same thing as many people.

<comment><USER3> Sigh. Apologists? Really?

Look, people have been declaring the end to programming since it became a profession. Heck, man, Visual Basic was supposed to put us all out of work.

Good grief, dude.

<comment><USER2> There's actually a great underlying point here, to make up for this comment's lackluster delivery thereof.

If anything, Visual Basic is a great example of something that ended (a significant part of) programming.

I don't know too many people these days writing WIN32 C GUIs any more, thanks to my above-described forces of abstraction.

Sure, VB wasn't the best abstraction for graphical user interfaces -- it looks like web was the real winner here, but GUI programming has been "abstracted out" or automated, if you will.

<comment><USER3> That didn't end because of VB. The web has taken over desktop GUI programs because of how lucrative your personal information has become.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The end of code seems like a title created by a sensationalist... I am excited for how these forms of pattern recognition and decision making can allow us to do more with software. There is still plenty of code to be written as we continue to apply software to every aspect of our world.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be surprised if wired kicked out an article like this once every few years, to be honest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Based on the user requirements I usually get (or lack thereof) I think it will be a few years yet until I am out of a job.

</comment><comment><USER6> Dogs can be made to learn things - doesn't mean we allow them do surgery.

Whoever wrote this article has negative knowledge about the state of AI.

edit:

Its also slightly insulting that this person thinks that the modern programmer spends all their time writing if/else/then statement.

<comment><USER7> I'm going to take the other side of this argument and suggest that we didn't create the dog and the limitations in the dogs abilities.

I suspect that this will be difficult for the HN community to hear, but we must face the upcoming realities.

Though I think the article may be assigning more abilities to AI than is actually feasible in our lifetimes, let us not forget that most back-end developers are doing basic I/O and data manipulation tasks. Put something into a database, get something out of a database. Front-enders are doing layout, animation, sizing and colouring.

The average modern programmer doesn't spend their time writing if/else/then statements, I believe the average programmer spends their time writing GET/SET/EDIT/DELETE flows.

I believe in the next 10 years, artificial intelligence will be able to model and create these basic systems based on human input. UX and possibly even UI can also be trained. A/B testing can certainly be trained.

Those who think programmers can't be replaced begin to sound like the Luddites who felt the loom could not match the quality of their craft.

Note: I am a full-stack developer, I believe 90% of my day job will be replaced by AI in the coming years. That final 10% often deciding what to do or the best how, will likely be the main task.

<comment><USER8> Replaceable or replaceable by AI?

Already today standard CRUD web development is largely automateable. I already have my own specialized scripts from years of experience, targeting backend, front end, design components, that generate most of what I want with some basic inputs. I imagine most experienced web developers have some internal tooling like this too.

This kind of approach already does replace programmers, and could do so a lot more. But what do you mean by replaceable by AI? How would that work?

<comment><USER9> >I imagine most experienced web developers have some internal tooling like this too.

I don't think that's true at all unless you're talking about 3rd party tools like rails scaffolding. What languages / frameworks are you using by the way?

The boilerplate stuff that can be replaced by scripts is maybe 10-15% of my time anyway. The rest of my time is spent at a much higher level either trying to interpret client requests, trying to help the client decide what they want, making high level design decisions, or adding features that require way to much customization to use automated code generators.

This is much different if we're talking about a language like C where a much higher percentage of my time is spent on boilerplate code. However with newer languages and frameworks I think we're reaching diminishing returns for what can be automated by either the language itself or generator scripts/frameworks.

There is a _huge_ productivity difference between using C and raw PHP when writing a CRUD app. There's less of a productivity boost (still huge though) when moving from raw PHP to something like Rails. And there's even less of a jump between Rails and something newer like Phoenix. I expect that the next 10 years will give us even smaller incremental improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If AIs replace programmers, why would they stop there? They could replace every job. Including AI researchers!

</comment><comment><USER11> This is mostly a futurist view on the topic. Not surprising given it's from wired.com.

</comment><comment><USER12> There will be a day when the last programmer writes the last program. Long after we are all dead. While some types of jobs may be automatable, most of what I have to do makes little sense to smart people much less a rigid AI. What AI can take almost random requirements, strange UI designs and animations and clueless VP driven features and turn it into something people want to use.

I think the VP's are more likely to be replaced by an AI.

<comment><USER13> VP may be replaced by a VP role that requires him to convert the random requirements to specifics or guide the AI on UI design etc. Instead of a VP and team of developers there would be devVp would could bridge this gap. And then in still further future, this friction could even be removed ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> articles with this identical thesis and conclusion have been published from time to time for the past 25 years.

i started coding in the early 1980's and began coding professionally just after graduating from MIT in 1992. The "guidance counselor" at my high school recommended that i major in something other than computer science because he has read several thoughtful pieces that suggested the job of professional programmer would become "extinct" not because programming wasn't important but because it was too important (to leave to programmers)--sort of like the way many companies 50 years ago had large "typing pools"; these are gone because everyone can type.

looking across the span of my career so far, it seems these predictions are correct, in a horizon sense--ie, we've reached this distance line we pointed to 20 years ago, but there's no horizon there, it's still far in the distance.

here's what i mean: in 1992, my first job involved writing small extensions to numerical libraries, in C and FORTRAN. Probably 90 percent (if anything it was higher) of my time was spent "managing memory"\--allocating it, deallocating it, pointing to it, etc.

now, the time i spend on those sorts of tasks is de minimis. So the march of technology never took away my job (the only job i have ever wanted to do) but it did take away 90% of it.

With 90% of my former tasks now handled elsewhere, far more interesting and challenging tasks have taken their place.

this is the trend i see--not the one-sided (or perhaps short-sited) trend described in the Wired post--but a continuous iteration of the programmer's work characterized by swapping well-characterized, routinized tasks for more challenging ones, most of which are would take some thought to foresee.

</comment><comment><USER15> AI techniques don't require acres of developers writing acres of if/thens (traditional software development is just that).

The Deepmind Atari player is only 1500 lines of code.

<comment><USER16> I think that software developers are going to become one of the few professions left and will be massively productive because they just have to hook up the AI training and they're basically done. Anyone who can hack this stuff is going to be able to be on the other end of the wealth divide real quick.

Transfer learning is a beautiful awesome thing. You can download ImageNet models trained on huge amounts of data by GPU farms and suddenly you've got a world class image recognizer running on your very own GPU.

Reinforcement learning is totally off the hook. You can make a bot for a random board game that you barely know how to play.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is exactly why i am apprenticing as an HVAC technician on the side. I dont believe there is longevity in this position over the next 10-20 years.

</comment><comment><USER18> why would AI program? Programming is a way to make hardware perform some task. Well, couldn't AI just go straight to performing the task, skipping the programming step, at least as we know it.

</comment><comment><USER19> If you have been following the recent advances in AI (and are not clueless) then it should be getting really REALLY obvious that _most_ coding and design tasks will be automated within three to five years.

AI will eat your career.

<comment><USER20> I must be clueless.

Please cite an example where a software design task has been done by machine learning. Something where you start with a specification or description and the automation produces a usable design.

Coding could possibly be replaced by something in a decade or so but I wouldn't hold my breath. We are just getting to compilers and JIT systems that do better than smart developers working at a lower level.

<comment><USER19> [http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5401](http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.5401)</comment></comment></comment>


Earth's mountains form in millions of years, Moon ones near instantaneously - <AUTHOR> https://jatan.space/exploring-moon-mountains/ <comment><USER2> Mountains on Earth are formed by tectonic shifts and volcanic eruptions, which, yes, take millions of years.

Mountains on the moon (aka: crater walls) form nearly instantaneously because of a violent impact.

You can make instant mountains on Earth too. Downside is, it'll probably kill off most life on the planet.

<comment><USER3> We have a few craters already, e.g. -

[https://www.meteorcrater.com/](https://www.meteorcrater.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A bit frustratingly, they mean "geologically instanteously" which is not the same as "instaneous as per human perception".

I'm not sure how long rock takes to cool after an asteroid impact, maybe days, maybe months or years depending on how large of an impact and how cold the surroundings (no atmosphere soooo....)

These mechanics are not discussed in the article and are instead just dismissed as "negligible"

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't molten rock simply flow and flatten? Even if not yet rigid, I'd assume the mountains do effectively form instantaneously (i.e. seconds or minutes), possibly flattening some as they slowly cool.

EDIT: The PBS NOVA special "The Day the Dinosaurs Died" describes the mechanics of the Chicxulub impact starting at about the 33 minute mark. It's as instantaneous as one would intuit, given the magnitudes involved:

> NARRATOR: The asteroid had punched a hole nearly 20 miles deep, gouging a > crater 124 miles wide. Over 40,000 cubic miles of rock were displaced, > rising into towering mountains.

> JOANNA MORGAN: So, this is an absolutely amazing event, because that > happened in less than two minutes, and if you think of it, mountains the > size of the Himalayas were formed in seconds.

> NARRATOR: As the mountains collapsed, they formed what's known as a "peak > ring," found only in the largest of super craters. It's the only peak ring > left on Earth; the next nearest is on the moon.

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/day-the-dinosaurs- died/](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/day-the-dinosaurs-died/)

<comment><USER6> They want me to pay $25 to watch something my tax dollars already paid for?

Edit: Nevermind, there's a torrent.

<comment><USER7> US federal tax dollars no longer fund a significant portion of public broadcasting. Only about 1/7th is federally funded.

<comment><USER6> If 1/7th that doesn't entitle me to watch it, it should be 0.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This article is barely mentions formation of mountains on Earth. The article is almost entirely about lunar craters, lunar central peak craters, and lunar peak ring craters.

Interesting article, terrible headline.

<comment><USER9> > This article is barely mentions formation of mountains on Earth.

Isn't that pretty well understood already?

<comment><USER10> They both are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's interesting how my mind had some trouble processing some of those crater images, because I saw initially some of them as circular buttons, going up from the surface, instead of craters going down.

I had to stop looking, and look back several times before my mind could actually see some of those pictures correctly.

<comment><USER12> It has happened to me since I was a child, at the time of Apollo. My trick was turning the photo upside down so the light aligned with the room source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I can't imagine the size of object that formed the Valhalla crater on Callisto. The central region is 360km across, and the diameter of the entire basin is 3,800km. That's a distance on earth from LA to Arkansas!

<comment><USER14> And the whole equator of Callisto has a circumference of 15,100 km. Proportionately, that would be a basin the size of the Indian ocean!

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The second one is an amazing close up photo of a lunar mountain.

</comment><comment><USER16> There are mountains on earth that formed in a few years too, and in fact most mountain ranges form pretty quickly as far as geology goes.

</comment><comment><USER17> Now I want to hike a mountain on the Moon. My Instagram needs new content.</comment>


Show HN: Xtensor: C++14 tensor expression library with numpy-style broadcasting - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/QuantStack/xtensor <comment><USER2> How does the performance compare to say Eigen? Obviously you go Nd, while Eigen does 1 and 2d only. But would it make sense to benchmark it against other libraries like Eigen?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment, we don't have SIMD acceleration, but we are working on it. See the `xsimd` companion project which is at the foundation of the SIMD acceleration work.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you handle feature requests from your users? - <AUTHOR> How do you get and process feature suggestions from your users? <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of how Circa does it - [https://medium.com/circa/the-right-way- to-ask-users-to-revie...](https://medium.com/circa/the-right-way-to-ask-users- to-review-your-app-9a32fd604fca)

<comment><USER3> That looks like an awesome technique. Thanks for the share!

<comment><USER2> Welcome. We've rolled this out within Hootsuite labs with the Suggestions iOS app and are seeing phenomenal results.

\- [https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/suggestions-by-hootsuite- cur...](https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/suggestions-by-hootsuite- currently/id923457531?mt=8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I put a feedback form at the bottom of every page in the app.

[http://i.imgur.com/YIMNIEr.png](http://i.imgur.com/YIMNIEr.png)

I add the suggestions to Improvely's Trello board.

<comment><USER5> That reminds me of a window forms program I wrote for a customer, I added the ability to do a right click, add comment to pretty much anything on the forms and controls. Getting that input simplified a lot of things. For one the context of what the user was complaining about was usually utterly obvious.

Sometimes a comment was a bug report. Or a feature request. Or just fixing my poorly written help docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I use UserVoice [1]. They used to have a free tier, but it looks like they don't anymore. I must have a grandfathered account.

[1] [https://www.uservoice.com/](https://www.uservoice.com/)

</comment><comment><USER7> I have a subreddit[1] and the regular github[2] issue tracker. It works pretty well :)

Reddit has a much lower treshold for people to register themselves than 'big scary' github, leads more often to discussions with users and can be moderated by others from the team as well. Also, no spambots!

Brilliant platform imo :) The users usually come with a suggestion on Reddit, we discuss the pro's and con's right there, and if it's any good and will also benefit other users without introducing months and months of development work, we'll consider implementing the requested feature, create a Github ticket, and link to and from it from Github.

[1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/duckietv](http://www.reddit.com/r/duckietv) [2] [http://github.com/schizoduckie/DuckieTV/issues/](http://github.com/schizoduckie/DuckieTV/issues/)

</comment><comment><USER8> I added a 'Feedback' navigation menu entry in one of my Android apps that simply launches the the email client and I did see an increase in feedback from users.

If I think that the suggestion fits it with my vision of the app I add it to the backlog on Trello. When it gets implemented depends on how good I feel the feature is.

</comment><comment><USER9> How i get and process feature suggestions;

Support receives a suggestion of the customer, passes it on to R&D/me. I go over the idea and contact the customer, mostly attempt to simplify/combine it with other feedback/insights to help more users in one go. Then i update my issue tracker, and make sure that customer gets recognition, a workaround, and info on taken action. Closure given by support or initial contact person. Whenever the new release/update breaks ice, i reach out to the customer and welcome any further feedback.

Our customers (and most colleagues) dont (want to) know of an issuetracker, and any would do. (i use mantisbt) I'm surprised some here are shouting "software X" as the answer to this question..

</comment><comment><USER10> I stumbled across Doorbell.io recently and am using it on Pleasant.io quite successfully. It's free (with a paid plan that gives you additional users, etc) and very simple: first one I found that wasn't cluttered with fields and features.

<comment><USER11> Thanks for the endorsement Tim :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Most people opt for the worst-in-class and abuse phpbb as a public bug tracker. Especially in the game dev scene you'll see 99% of people doing this. It's a hilariously disgusting user experience for everyone involved, and by extension even for people who never touch it, because things easily get lost in there and never fixed/added.

Personally i use a combination of Uservoice and Github (if open) or otherwise find a way to make the internal bug tracker readable to the public.

<comment><USER13> Yeah please don't use phpBB. This is one reason I started the Discourse project.

One thing to consider here is the difference between "help us track our bugs" and "let's build a community around our product". In the long run, the community will be far more valuable than merely acknowledging a feature request or bug report.

There are a lot of bugs and even feature requests that require a fair bit of back and forth discussion, both internal and external, to decide what the best approach is. I like GitHub for straightforward bugs, but it is not great for discussion. And involving your active users / customers in the future of your product, including your own team, is a huge strategic advantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> You can track anywhere. JIRA is good. Google Docs works too. UserVoice if you want it public. Record customer contact information at all times so you can follow up.

The logout page is a good place to ask as well.

Most customers get frustrated when requests go into the trash can. It is important to show progress against requests. Simply referring to the request system in feature announcements is sufficient. "We had 18 requests for FizzBuzz. After talking further with customers, we designed..."

<comment><AUTHOR> But there is no software just for features tracking, right?

<comment><USER15> You can certainly use JIRA just for feature tracking if you like - it even lets you let your customers view progress/comment on the issues themselves

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, but you have to pay whole product JIRA to use it. Do they have option to embed it to my website? That's what I need.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I use a Trello board for tracking feature requests and my current roadmap. Support requests come in both via email and an in-app support form.

<comment><AUTHOR> How did you integrate trello with in-app support form? Using API?

<comment><USER16> It's not automatically integrated. I just transpose as needed from my help desk system into it as I doubt I'd find it as useful if the entries were not in my own terminology.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I ask them, tell them whether I'm going to do it and get back to them when done.

Everyone here seems so focused on tools, yet most companies don't ever actually respond to customers with anything more than 'we'll pass this onto developers' which normally means 'we'll throw this away and you will never hear from us again'.

</comment><comment><USER18> I get then through a email support button.

I respond to every request with a personal and habd written that amounts to "Thank you for the idea, it has been added to our to-do list."

</comment><comment><USER19> We have started using freshdesk. Not sure how good of a solution it will be but it seems really powerful.</comment>


Millennials are suffering from burnout at work - <AUTHOR> https://www.zdnet.com/article/millennials-stressed-from-tech-and-social-media-overload/ <comment><USER2> Does an acupuncture supply company really have enough scientific merit behind it to have a news article published on this hypothesis?

</comment><comment><USER3> Are we sure this is even correct? I didn't see any link to any actual data.

> Millennials experiencing burnout worked an average of 41 hours per week, > which is more than baby boomers.

Considering that "millennials" are turning 40 now, I'm not surprised that they are working more hours than the retiring age range.

[https://xkcd.com/2165/](https://xkcd.com/2165/)</comment>


Ask HN: SEO/SEM advise for a niche startup in a mature market? - <AUTHOR>

I am launching a niche product in mature market on a bootstrapped budget. I have been reading up on SEO and SEM and also subscribed to Moz , Spyfu and WordTracker. My research tells me that all the possible keywords in this space are already being used by the incumbents. And the PPC rates for those keyword and phrases are way too high for me to afford. So what are my options ? <comment><USER2> 1\. Content - depending on your product, create a blog. Don't necessarily focus on your product, focus on your market as a whole. Discuss trends, issues, etc... Don't bad mouth competitors and only plug your product occasionally or through links in the sidebar or footer. Publish content on a regular basis.

Same with social media accounts. Don't buy followers, but instead just work to continuously build your follower list. Look at your competitors and see who follows them and who they follow. Follow all you can. Post new content and different content to each account.

2\. Time - unfortunately you will not see results overnight. Don't get discouraged. Keep at it.

3\. Sitemaps - Google/Microsoft Webmaster Tools. Create sitemaps for your product site and blog. Use these tools to track your rankings along with keywords that visitors are using to reach your sites. You will probably find keywords you had never thought of. Target those keywords.

4\. Google Adwords/Bing Ads/Facebook Ads - I know you said you didn't have a budget for any ads, but often times you can find ad credits for these networks. Google is infamous for offering spend $25 get $100 credit coupons for new customers. There is probably someone on here that has one they can get you.

5\. Look at your competitors and find their weaknesses. For example, I am by no means a SEO expert, and it is not my specialty, however, I worked with a client last year that was looking to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword. We found a competitor's blog that was not getting updated often (last update had been over a year earlier). By publishing fresh content, sharing that content, and getting clicks we were able to overtake that competitor on the first page within 1 month.

6\. Find "partners" or "cheerleaders". Reach out to sites that are in your market to have them write about your product. Look for reporters who have written about similar products previously. Reach out to them. If you are a good writer, or can afford a couple hundred bucks, you can write your own press release and put it on PRNewswire. While it may not get picked up by any reporters, that site tends to rank well by itself and will draw attention to your company/product.

7\. Depending on your product submit it to a site like Product Hunt or do a Show HN.

8\. Make sure the underlying code of your website is well written. Make sure the titles are clear, and that you take into account good SEO techniques (use of meta description, heading tags, anchor text, useful content on pages, etc...).

9\. Good luck and remember #2 above. If anything the most important thing to remember is that it will not happen overnight, so do not give up easily.</comment>


Are Hot U.S. Startups The New Bling For Rich Russians? - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/12/20/are-hot-u-s-startups-the-new-bling-for-rich-russians

<comment><USER2> Posted here, with active discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1006695></comment>


The Inside Story of 'Pokémon GO's' Evolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/07/26/monster-game/ <comment><USER2> Well looking at how things are going with Niantic and Pokemon Go. I feel Google missed an opportunity to get back into social. Pokemon team based google+ groups and internal chat system for pokemon go based on goolge+ groups could have really boosted the users numbers.</comment>


Our New Tool Finds Over £100m in New Cost Savings for the NHS - <AUTHOR> https://ebmdatalab.net/our-new-tool-finds-over-100m-in-new-cost-savings-for-the-nhs/ <comment><AUTHOR> This blog post is by the Ben Goldacre of _Bad Science_ and _Bad Medicine_ books.

Prescription data for the English NHS is now open. You can find that here: [https://openprescribing.net/](https://openprescribing.net/)

There's lots on patient safety, and also cost saving there. But it's been a bit trickier to get information to GPs about what they should actually do to save money. This tool helps them.</comment>


Another Xiaomi Shocker - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/07/25/xiaomi-flower <comment><USER2> Nowhere nearly as shocking as his first Xiaomi shocker, which was that in the actual product photos for the phone, the camera lenses _were the Apple Aperture logo_.

</comment><comment><USER3> Stealing and copying are part of the Xiami's DNA, you will be even more suprised when Xiami's CEO copy the way how Steve Jobs anounce new product: [http://cdn.unwire.hk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/xiaomi- one-m...](http://cdn.unwire.hk/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/xiaomi-one-more- thing.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> I dont think the slide or Photos were the shocker. ( May be that is what i expect them to be. ) The comment from Barra was the real shocker.

 _Barra is only a year into his job as leader of Mi's internationalization efforts, but he's already "sick and tired" of hearing his company derided as an Apple copycat. He sees Mi as "an incredibly innovative company" that never stops trying to improve and refine its designs, and the allegations of it copying Apple are "sweeping sensationalist statements because they have nothing better to talk about."_

</comment><comment><USER5> The marketing department apparently has no scruples or is incompetent.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why are we targeting Chinese here? Remember the Nokia episode where they were filming with professional cameras and showing that video as made by Nokia phones? Here is the link [http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias- pureview-ads...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads- are-fraudulent)

<comment><USER7> Nokia actually got those ads made. That was an original ad that was fraudulent.

Xiaomi is fraudulent and is a blatant copyright infringer. The Xiaomi CEO even copies the style of the late Steve Jobs. It's creepy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Is passing off photos taken with professional SLRs as shots from their > phone's camera.

To be fair, the photos are not used in a context where they could be expected to be representative of the camera quality, nor does the higher quality of the original photos make a difference in the small thumbnails.

</comment><comment><USER9> In Chinese culture copying and making it better is encouraged I think.

<comment><USER10> There's no "making it better" here.

<comment><USER11> Not yet :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "The phone didn't take those pictures!? Next you'll tell me Terry Crews doesn't even use Old Spice either!"

Does he really think anyone expects to get professionally retouched photos out of a phone?

As for licensing, I mainly wonder if the girl receives a cut of the income or if she's simply exploited either way.

<comment><USER13> People should be honest in advertising.

In the UK it is very common for a competitor to send complaints about adverts to the regulators. This is almost free to the people sending the complaints but potentially costly to the advertisers.

One example of this would be mascara ads, which had very many reports being sent to and fro. Now mascara ads in England either use real product on real eyelashes or they contain disclaimers about the use of fake lashes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Media folks have a lot of time in their hands.

</comment><comment><USER15> " Chinese " No offence but they copy everything

<comment><USER16> Exactly. The Chinese refuse to acknowledge intellectual property. It seems embedded in their culture.

<comment><USER17> Just as it used to be embedded in American culture: [http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva75.html](http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dickens/pva/pva75.html)

<comment><USER6> Just as it used to be embedded in Finnish companies: [http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview- ads...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/5/3294545/nokias-pureview-ads-are- fraudulent)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It appears to me, that you are jumping the gun too soon here. The photos, might have been ripped off by a good for nothing designer from the marketing dept. There are countless good photos out there, who has the time to check that some stupid-running-late guy/gal did something like this, specially when it is hard work to go and take such artistically/professional photos.</comment>


Ask HN: Is my Idea profitable? Hint: semantic web crawler for lyrics - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN!
I was recently exposed to CasperJS and PhantomJS and I'm fascinated with these tools.
Last night I didn't sleep because I built a web crawler that crawls lyrics websites, and matches the lyrics to user generated content in songmeanings.com and lyricinterpretation.com.
Why? Because let's say I want to look for songs about socialization of government, my program is able to say:
"AWOLNATION - Jump on my shoulders"
My question is... is this a profitable idea? <comment><USER2> Profitable? Yes. You could profit very well from it. But finding out how, exactly, is the bigger challenge.

</comment><comment><USER3> You'll get sued: [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/products/cnet/2007-08-17...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/tech/products/cnet/2007-08-17-lyrics- sites-copyright_N.htm)

<comment><AUTHOR> So if I crawl lyrics website, am I violating their copyright?

I'm not displaying the lyrics, I'm just matching lyrics with user generated content to come up with song recommendations.

<comment><USER4> I'm not a lawyer, but Google is doing the same and many other companies too. They never get sued, Google even caches your entire site without asking explicitly. The archive.org Project even copies to whole internet and luckily get's away with it.

Other than that, I'm avid when it comes to Ontologic, Semantic, Neurologic or Stochastic systems and would like to tell you that simply using Semantics wil not lead to a working solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Short answer, no. I would think it falls into that categoery of "cool ideas"</comment>


How Paper Batteries Charged by Bacteria Could Power the Internet of Things - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/paper-battery-that-could-power-the-internet-of-things <comment><USER2> Danish muniplacities are installing IoT devices in a long range of things, from monitoring when a trash can is full, keeping track of parking, creating rfid tours with bits of historic-info showing up in an app as you travel around the city to monitoring high-pressure wells for leaks.

Most devices have batteries that last 5-10 years though, and often it's the device that needs to get changed, not the battery. Like the trash can IoT devices, they'll never actually outlive their battery. Even if a devices manages to survive its battery, 10 years is a long time, so you'd probably want to replace it regardless.

This is still a really cool article though, and it'd be silly for me to say that we'd never use it, but battery life isn't actually a problem for us. Maybe it is in other places? And there is also the enviromental angle to consider, especially in political organizations.

<comment><USER3> Not trying to nitpick, but we live in our current house for 8 years. And when we moved in we "inherited" city-provided trashcan, which was probably there for another 8 years easily if not more. It is a plastic one. Why does trash can need to be replaced every 5-10 years?

<comment><USER4> In LA they pick up trash with trucks and a mechanical arm. This seems pretty hard on the trash cans. Mine tend to break in some way every 3-5 years.

<comment><USER3> In my case it is picked up either by mechanical arm, or by a guy bringing it to the end of the garbage truck and truck doing the rest (did not find why they run different trucks each time) Seems to last just fine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _…To activate the battery, the researchers added water or saliva, both of which revived the bacteria …_

 _…Choi says that his latest hybrid paper-polymer biobattery readily decomposes in water…._

A new world of biological pollution awaits us.

<comment><USER6> I think the general idea here is that these are biodegradable materials ....

<comment><USER7> That doesn't mean it can't be a pollutant. To take a simple example, fertilisers are biodegradable and yet run off + eutrophication is incredibly ecologically damaging.

<comment><USER6> Sure, but why would you assume it is? Also, you'd need a lot of this stuff to do any damage even if it was that much of a pollutant.

<comment><USER8> 2 words: contact lenses

<comment><USER6> At less than a gram per lens, there's only so much damage those are going to do. I looked it up, we're talking about 23 tons worth of lenses for the US. A lot, but it pales in comparison to other stuff we do to the environment. Like traditional batteries for example, which we're talking about replacing with something bio degradable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Guess what, we don't need an internet of things. It's not going to happen and you can tell that because it's been hyped for a decade now and has not produced any product that anyone buys.

<comment><USER10> While I don't really see the use case for private individuals, IoT technology is very interesting on the factory floor. Tracking parts and getting sensor data from all kinds of machines is quite useful.

<comment><USER11> Why do you think that private individuals wouldn't also benefit from being able to track things? I'm quite forgetful so being able to track my possessions would be quite useful to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd love if my charger would tell me it wants to go into the backpack before I board the plane without it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why Don't You Do Some Work? - <AUTHOR> http://shankman.com/why-dont-you-do-some-work/

<comment><USER2> I wish there was a down vote button. At best this is bad writing. This also feels to me like the ramblings of an egomaniac.

Ten people up voted this. I wonder how many would have down voted.

</comment><comment><USER3> He doesn't have ADHD, he's just a bit of a penis.

Admittedly HARO is a good idea though.

</comment><comment><USER4> To me, this was an amazing post. I'm not sure I suffer from ADHD, but I get amazingly bored with a desk job.

It's good to know that it's okay "not to work" and not have to feel ashamed about not fitting in all the time.

A great post for anyone who's going out of their minds in their cubicles.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not sure why he needed to write this. If I wrote a blog post every time someone upset me or disagreed with me, I wouldn't have time for anything else.

General piece of advice: take other people's opinions with a grain of salt. You don't need to be concerned about something just because someone else says you need to be.

(In this case, the proper response to the IM would have been "lol yeah" or something. Just make them go away, and ignore their future input.)

</comment><comment><USER6> He didn't have to tell me he was ADHD. I could see it in 3 paragraphs.

</comment><comment><USER7> It is not the first article that I read on HN that makes me wonder if I suffer from ADHD. How can I know? Any advice?

<comment><USER8> The answer is probably "no" as _there is no such thing_.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone ACTUALLY landed freelance work via a "trusted" marketplace? - <AUTHOR> Something like https://www.toptal.com/ or https://crew.co/ or even https://hired.com/ for example.
I've been freelancing for a while, mostly referrals but you know it's nice to get something else to fill the project pipeline with. I'll bookmark sites like these and when I get some free time, fill out the 20-page application with my portfolio. It inevitably takes at least an hour...
One place took a few days to tell me that even though they advertised remote, they weren't hiring people "in my region" (aka not SF/NYC).
Another place did a Skype call with a "recruiter" who couldn't tell me anything about project sizes, timelines, or availability for my skillset. They wouldn't share the blanket legal agreements they described for me to review before continuing the "application" process. And they wanted me to do 90 minutes of silly coding challenges before even confirming they had work.
And the other place just sent me a generic rejection letter ("not the best fit for our community at this time") that must have taken 5 minutes to write. I have no idea if I'm too expensive for their projects, the wrong skillset, or just too senior.
The sad thing is, I have no problem being too senior. I don't want to be on every platform if I'm getting junior level work. But when you're asking for people to jump through all these hoops, claiming that your platform is where it's at... It's just getting ridiculous! <comment><USER2> I used Hired.com for my last job, and did some searching with it a couple years later. Hired was totally great the first time I used it. The companies "bid" on you as a (senior-level) tech worker, and I was able to land a few offers from a handful of great companies. The company I accepted an offer from was one of the best jobs I ever had. Hired sent me a bottle of Dom and a tiny little drone as kind of "early adopter" prizes.

Now, a couple years later... I didn't have such great luck. It seems to me that all the shitty companies are now officially on board at Hired. So I got a sea of bad offers, and I went through probably fifteen or twenty interviews, the vast majority of which were for companies with _clear_ silo management problems. Lowball offers, people with expectations that clearly did not read my resume or my cover letter with my own expectations, slimeball hiring managers that will say anything...

And here's the kicker: The last time I used Hired, my "talent coordinator" person (the individual working for Hired that helps you with job searching) very nearly sent my resume and profile information _to the company I was working for_. That was the last straw and I immediately stopped using Hired, and recommended to my friends to not use them.

I would recommend you give them a try, _but_ that you stay on your toes and you take everything with a grain of salt. Maybe I just had a string of bad luck with them last time.</comment>


Journalist says CBP withheld passport until he agreed he writes 'propaganda' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2019/10/04/journalist-says-cbp-officer-withheld-his-passport-until-he-agreed-he-writes-propaganda/ <comment><USER2> Is anyone else concerned about the changes to the CBP officer population over the last few years?

The priorities of the current administration have allowed the organization to rapidly balloon in size. Those of us who have worked at fast growing startups are aware of how quickly the character of an organization can change when it doubles or triples in size too quickly. And then the kind of person who wants to be a CBP officer in this political climate is... possibly worrying?

Will the next adminstration try to purge this organization? Will they even be able to? Are we going to be stuck with a dramatically more authoritarian customs organization for the next few decades?

I'm moderately concerned.

As a meta-addition to this comment, self-censorship is absolutely real here. I normally interact online using my real name, but obviously that seems a little more fraught when there's a real possibility that your comments will be thrown back at you when you interact with a customs officer at an airport. "You clearly don't like customs agents. That probably means you're hiding something" etc.

<comment><USER3> The concept of class warfare is a popular tool everyone knows of, but there is a nasty new war that is going on- personality warfare.

IE- Conservative aggressive males use police jobs, the DHS, and border protection to give jobs to their chums. It's like welfare for people who lack self control. You could say that the far left has taken over Silicon Valley, but it is not the same, skilled conservative tech people still get jobs, they just need to shut their mouths and blend in when people talk at lunch or whatever. For police departments taken over by assholes, I think they filter more heavily.

<comment><USER4> Arguing which side of the aisle filters more, is not a competition I want to see expanded by complaint. Can we instead reward blending with our mouths & hearts open?

<comment><USER3> I agree - I don't think I'm qualified to say which sides/groups filter more, nor should that be a main focus. It would be great if we could work together harmoniously and professionally without so much group identity bs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> CBP officers are some of the biggest idiots, it seems, not even knowing their own field let alone anything else about the world. I was once asked why my passport didn't have the stamp when returning from Europe. First, it did have a stamp but the idiot officer flipped over that page multiple times before giving up and asking if I have another passport. I told him I did but I did not use it on this trip. He proceeded to tell me that dual citizenship is illegal and told me to get rid of the second passport. Thankfully he did not force his idiotic, wrong position on me. Of course, I told him I would. If course I did not follow his stupid, incorrect demand. These are the types of morons our country puts on the front lines of our defense and as the first impression for foreigners. It's no wonder most of the world hates us although that hate mainly stems from much worse issues. It's ridiculous to hire such idiots in these positions.

<comment><USER6> Sadly, that "moron" and thousands like him have major power over millions of people; they can deny entry to non-citizens in a heartbeat. Of course you can complain...once you go back to your country. So it pays to say "yes sir, of course sir"

<comment><USER5> Yup that's what I did. I'm a citizen and I would never complain. I've lived in an authoritarian country before. I know the drill.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > He figured he could get stuck for hours if he tried to call in the officer's > supervisor. So he gave in.

This is the unfortunate reality of CBP (and the TSA): they can make your life miserable if they'd like to, so most people just accept it in the interest of being able to get out of it quickly and going wherever they need to.

<comment><USER8> I have been repeatedly locked in a room for double-digit hours of time (without food or water) at the US border for exercising my fifth amendment rights.

It's really time these people were held to account for their crimes.

<comment><USER9> Repeatedly? Wow. I'd be curious if there is something in particular about you or your behavior that triggers this issue? While I certainly have concerns about how CBP sometimes operates, many of us still manage to travel in and out of the US without encountering problems like this.

<comment><USER10> I'm pretty sure they keep files on everyone. If you cause trouble once, even if you're perfectly within your legal rights, they will put a note in your file.

Then you will be harassed every time. They know exactly how much they can inconvenience / intimidate you without breaking the law. The nail that sticks up gets hammered, unfortunately.

This is why I never travel outside the US.

<comment><USER8> They stopped stopping me as a matter of course 3-4 years after I stopped refusing to answer their questions. It must still be in my file. One of these days I should test it again to see if I will get another few years of harassment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently watched a video of an Argentine-Canadian telling his story of why and how his family left Argentina in 1970, during the military dictatorship. He described how the government employees would treat citizens like garbage, how they looked at you with contempt. The current behavior described in this article reminds me of that.

Here's the part of the video mentioned above (Spanish, the English subtitles are okay):

[https://youtu.be/b6r3wKax2NM?t=1302](https://youtu.be/b6r3wKax2NM?t=1302)

</comment><comment><USER12> The whole narrative that the media are the enemy of the people needs to die and soon or we will all regret it. The darkest ages of mankind started out with the governments of the day attacking the media and when that happens you know there is a bunch of stuff going on that can't see the light of day. Fish rots from the head, it's a repeating pattern and the border patrol feeling empowered to do this is a clear sign that should not go ignored.

<comment><USER13> I agree mostly, but which newspaper is still objective?

In any story I'm familiar with, the only newspapers that do unbiased reporting are the Financial Times and the Neue Zuercher Zeitung.

Especially in SJW stories these are the only ones that do not misquote the targets.

<comment><USER14> Objectivity isn't a mandatory requirement for journalism.

<comment><USER15> Objectivity is what separates Journalism from Propaganda.

<comment><USER14> I know differences in the semantics of "objectivity" come to play here, so I'll stick to the straightforward assertion that there are Pulitzer Prizes for editorial writing [0], editorial cartooning [1], commentary [2], and criticism [3]. Op-ed writers, such as Jamil Khashoggi, are considered to be journalists.

[0] [https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by- category/214](https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/214)

[1] [https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by- category/215](https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/215)

[2] [https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by- category/212](https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/212)

[3] [https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by- category/213](https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/213)

<comment><USER12> In the case of Jam _a_ l Khashoggi he _was_ considered to be a journalist, and it is very likely that it was his profession that got him murdered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://outline.com/ujBNtS](https://outline.com/ujBNtS)

For those who don't feel like consenting to tracking/ are using firefox incognito like me, and can't seem to get past consent page.

</comment><comment><USER17> This is crazy. Ben Watson writes/edits for DefenseOne, which has certainly published a fair bit critical of Trump & his team; but then if you are a member of the reality-based community, and a public writer about stories in the national interest, it would be hard to not do that. Calling him a propagandist harkens back to dark American behaviors of the past rather than aspirational American values. It's also not like he writes for one of the publications that would be considered a particular gadfly to the Trump community, like NYT or Washington Post, so it would be good to investigate how this CBP officer even specifically knew to "call out" Watson.

<comment><USER18> I don't think the CBP officer has any specific knowledge of Watson or DefenseOne, but instead believes that generally journalists are propagandists and "enemies of the people" as Trump would phrase it.

<comment><USER17> That's a fair point - I had taken it as a specific political targeting as opposed to part of the whole "the press is the enemy of the people" line of rhetoric. On the other hand, anyone pushing that line probably approves of Fox News, Washington Times, etc. - how would this CBP person have known to let such a person through? I guess maybe with some response back from the individual of "Naw, I work for Fox News - we fight the liberal propaganda!"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Somewhere something bad happened.

Orange man bad.

</comment><comment><USER20> A simple observation - I travel mostly under a US passport - I am treated with may more respect in the EU by their border control agents than I am entering the United States.

</comment><comment><USER21> I was watching some Trump press report and he made some completely outrageous claim like that unemployment was at 3.4% or something, the lowest in 10+ years. That is not the normal amount, the normal amount is 7-10%.

Since I read the liberal media, surely I would know if there were a historic level of low unemployment level. Maybe the true level is extremely high - 15-20% or something.

I have two tasks for you:

1\. Task 1. Find the true current unemployment level. This is closely tracked, should take you less than 15 seconds.

2\. Compare with the liberal media reporting. Is the tone appropriate?

Spoiler below:

Spoiler spoiler spoiler

The first article I found was "Hiring Slowed in September as Unemployment Rate Fell to a 50-Year Low", in the New York Times. If you did 1 and 2 you would find this is totally inappropriate reporting. I like this example as it's very natural and factual. The unbiased headline would be: unemployment hits 50-year low.

The facts are still there, but the actual headline is clearly biased and totally inappropriate.

There is no way that can be considered an appropriate headline.

It's like imagine if Iran agreed to denuclearize and stop seeking nuclear weapons, and the headline said: "Iran armies, planes and helicopters have the U.S. in sights, but won't be sending nuclear bombs for now". The greatest possible success could be misreported to an absurd level.

Or let's say Trump makes vaccines mandatory and signs legislation introducing fines for parents of unvaccinated children, due to child endangerment.

This would be an amazing win, but based on my research, the news would report it in an outrageously biased way. Like what's the most biased thing you can think of. Maybe:

"Trump still doubts vaccines, even as he makes some mandadory." Just something outrageously biased that takes everything away from the huge win.

Go ahead and do the exercise and you will get really clear results.

It's a really interesting exercise. If I had time I would look at a Republican (Trump) list of "wins", then do 1 and 2 for each one: find the actual facts or figures, usually quite straightforward. 2. Decide what would be appropriate reporting. See if they are reported appropriately or in an outragrously biased way. (Instead of man lands on moon, some outrageously negative version).

(I would assume if you do this exercise you will fine many Republican points are false or exaggerated, hence why it is a 2 part exercise for each point.)

</comment><comment><USER22> Presumably the CBP officer is wearing a body-cam documenting this admission of propagandist for future use by the administration, should this particular journalist come into the crosshairs of a "Fake News" accusation.

Collecting confessions for the future.</comment>


Corner Office: Dennis Crowley - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/29/business/dennis-crowley-of-foursquare-on-open-lines-of-communication.html?_r=1&ref=business <comment><USER2> I'm an engineering intern at Foursquare. The culture Dennis describes is accurate.

Dennis holds weekly office hours where anyone at the company can meet up with him and ask questions or voice concerns. In my first month, I met with him a couple times and asked him questions about how he raised capital, his relationships with investors, and his experience with startups. After our first meeting, he let me know that I could grab coffee with him anytime. Foursquare really seems like a small startup despite there being 120 employees.

In response to some questions below about how snippets work, it is not necessary to read the entire company's snippets. It is a Twitter model where you subscribe to people's feeds. I'm following the exec team, my manager and other guys on the web-client team, and a couple of my other friends.

I saw that some comments about wanting to work for Foursquare, and I just thought I'd leave a reminder that we're hiring =) <https://foursquare.com/jobs/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Q. Other things you've learned?

A. The importance of overcommunicating.

Funny... I've had a friend who's been marked down at multiple companies for 'overcommunicating' - things like reiterating the todo list from a meeting out to everyone, and including people who couldn't be there but would be impacted, emailing a group with a question and to make sure everyone understands what the impact of XYZ will be. Most people _hated_ it. Well, I was fine with it - I think there should be more of it, and I don't think most people really grok that in knowledge work, that's all you've got - communication. Making assumptions or ignoring/forgetting to notify some parties of XYZ have huge ramifications.

<comment><USER4> There is overcommunicating and then there is noise. Getting the difference right is what successful overcommunication is about

<comment><USER3> One can possibly indicate in this case it was 'noise', but constructive feedback on things like "we don't need to know about X, but we do need to know about Y" would be helpful.

"Quit sending so many emails!" is about all he'd generally get. In at least one case, I suspect it was more about control of information than anything else - when too much info gets to too many people, it's harder to claim plausible deniability.

<comment><USER5> "Quit sending so many emails!" means he was sending too many emails to people who didn't want them. If every message had value to everyone receiving them, nobody would complain. An unattainable standard. without erring on the side of not sending useful stuff, but you have a decent margin where people will ignore your noise because your signal is valuable. Nobody complains about spam for things they end up buying.

CC'ing a group "just to keep everyone in the loop" is overcommunication. Pulling out the details that are useful for the whole group, if any, and then sending followups with additional details to a subset of people is the effective way to do it. It's a lot of work and it's why so many people who effortlessly handle in-person communication have trouble with written/broadcast patterns, they just aren't used to putting the extra work in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it somewhat sloppy when journalists simply publish the Q&A transcript of an interview.

What I'm going to miss the most when real journalists aren't around anymore are the long-form articles and profiles that obviously took care and several interviews to craft. For example, the recently HN-featured profile of Jack Dorsey by Wired's Steven Levy[1]:

 _But our discussion is sidetracked when the proprietor, Vincent Fung, starts a long and complicated explanation of the various tea options. Dorsey—like Jobs—is interested in Eastern thought, and after listening to a detailed rundown of the exotic choices, he approves Fung's suggestion to try a dark and musty chunk of Pu-erh tea from China's Yunnan Province. A few minutes later, Fung appears at the booth with a deep wooden tray and begins a carefully choreographed ceremony, pouring a continuous stream of hot water over tiny cups. Then he pours water on top of a lid that partially covers the bowl containing densely packed cakes of tea. Dorsey watches the ritual and appreciatively touches his finger to a worn corner of the tray._

This is how an in-person interview is meant to be conveyed to the reader… not as a transcript.

1: <http://www.wired.com/business/2012/06/ff_dorsey/>

<comment><USER7> This is absolutely not a simple Q&A transcript being dumped online, I assure you.

You have no idea how much work goes into something like this.

See the disclaimer at the top where it says the interview was condensed? A lot of information is hiding behind that disclaimer.

That means that to get these 7 good questions, the writer might easily have asked 21 questions.

That means that where you are reading 1-3 paragraph answers, the original answer was easily 10 paragraphs, because people tend to ramble when you ask them about their jobs, even when they're NOT being interview by the NYT. (Here's an experiment for you: Ask a friend or colleague one of those questions, do not interrupt them, in fact appear very interested, and count how many minutes the answer takes to unspool.)

That means that when you're reading a nice orderly progression of thoughts, the writer probably had to take bits and pieces from different answers because the interviewee thought of something later to append to the original answer, or emailed a clarification later, or reminded himself of something.

That means when you don't see words like "uh" and "um" and "like" and "I mean" and "I think" and "you know?", and when you don't see sentences that trail off into nothingness, and when you don't see run-on sentences, and when you don't see non sequiturs, that's because the writer has carefully removed them.

That means the writer doesn't mention that it took three hours, easily, to transcribe a 45 minute sit down, and more time for the follow up to clarify and fact check words that were mumbled or inaudible and not in the notes.

You don't want to call something like this "sloppy" unless you know what actually goes into it. You know how non-programmers often assume that very simple, easy-to-use software was similarly easy to make? How they don't think about the edge conditions that turn something that SEEMS like an easy two-week project into a three month project (<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000356.html>)? You know how people around here are always saying that non technical people make bad tech CEOs because they don't understand the inherent and often hidden challenges of writing code? Well, other fields are like that too, including journalism.

(Disclaimer, I write these sorts of Q&As myself.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> In moments like that I really wish there was a comment from a throwaway account of someone working in Foursquare telling how it looks from the side of the employees.

<comment><USER9> i'm a site reliability engineer at foursquare sf, and i think it's very accurate. dennis travels to our office frequently and takes the time to meet with each of us individually, even those of us who work very far away from feature-land. when we're meeting i feel super comfortable saying "this sucks and we ought to fix it." mostly we discuss organizational issues; i generally air technical issues in similar meetings with harry (our eng lead, posted above,) because making engineering work is harry's whole job.

i've worked at high-profile startups with founders who are very media-visible before and dennis is pretty special in my opinion. he seems to genuinely believe that all of us employees are important to making foursquare the best product it can be.

<comment><USER10> If only "this sucks and we ought to fix it" were not so pervasively condemned in US business culture, it would be much more pleasant to work in; and there are a lot of things which wouldn't be so broken.

<comment><USER9> similarly, engineers who won't criticize or endure criticism of their own work are seriously poisonous for a company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Wow, I want to work at Foursquare!

These are such great ideas. I get jealous when I see articles like this as I have never had the privilege of working in such an environment. Of course as the company gets bigger it is going to be tough stopping fiefdoms and silos but they are surely on the right track.

<comment><USER12> Are you a programmer? Have a resume I can look at? harryh [at] foursquare.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> From my experience, his tips are very practical. In particular, if any of you end are founders / leaders or end up being founders / leaders, I can't overemphasize how important it is to communicate and repeat your message, strategy, goals, etc. As an organization gets larger, unless you're bored of your message yourself, it probably hasn't sunk in for others.

</comment><comment><USER14> Snippets are such a simple but powerful idea. Has anyone open sourced a project or created a SaaS tool for this idea? I would love to implement this within my organization.

<comment><USER12> Here's the code we use to run the snippets system at foursquare:

<https://github.com/kushal/snippets>

<comment><USER15> This is awesome. As an ex-Googler at a startup, I've been wanting to re- implement OSS snippets for a while now. Checking it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One of the smartest interview pieces I've read in a long time. I don't think you can ever over-estimate the benefit of forcing seemingly non-functionally aligned people to sit next to each other. Forcing your enterprise to build social connections is analogous to neurons forming new paths as a novel skill is mastered.

</comment><comment><USER17> Foursquare is not useful though. I don't know anyone who really uses it actively.

<comment><USER18> The core checkin functionality is "fun", but not useless, and has a really awesome side effect: Foursquare explore. Seeing where my friends have checked in is a better way to find new restaurants and other businesses than anything else right now. Yelp should be useful for this, but for a variety of reasons, is not.</comment></comment>


SEC declares war on Elon Musk after another misleading tweet - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/elon-musk-is-in-trouble-with-the-sec-over-his-tweets-again <comment><USER2> I see where the SEC is coming from and I actually agree with them. That said I'm having a hard time getting behind the government's approach/response to Twitter/tweets when we have the POTUS tweeting the things he is. I don't want to get into politics here, that's not what HN is for really but it's a fact that Trump's tweets have not always been... shall we say? "Based in reality" or more succinctly "factual" ...

Now, I'm not saying the SEC should stop what it is doing, it just leave a really bad taste in my mouth.

<comment> y-c-o-m-b Agreed. Musk's tweets may have negatively impacted Tesla's stock value, but POTUS has caused entire market exchanges to go negative with his tweets. My question is: does the SEC have jurisdiction and legal evidence to go after POTUS even if they wanted to?

<comment><USER3> I think it's a non-starter. Markets have always hung on the words of politicians and it would be terrible if a president had to police every word in relation to that. I think the burden of proof would be that one of his tangents was intended to swing the market in his favor, which would be hard to identify unless he had a huge presence in say, agriculture, before signing a massive subsidy to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I look forward to reading Matt Levine laughing through this (predictable) development.</comment>


Programming Languages and Type Systems - <AUTHOR> http://rethrick.com/#type-theory

<comment><USER2> Quite a surprise to see someone who on the one hand is educated enough to know about Bertrand Russell's contributions to set theory and at the same time be ignorant enough to imply that Javascript's weak typing can in some cases be a good thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't read that in it at all - I thought it was gentle in explaining some of the absurd things that happen in javascript. In fact the "quick, in-web browser development" statement looks to me like damning with faint praise.</comment></comment>


Cosmic Shovel Launches Best Buy Information Tool - <AUTHOR> http://blog.camelcamelcamel.com/100/best-buy-tracker-launched-at-camelbuycom.html <comment><AUTHOR> I am hoping to get some feedback about my site from all you Hackers. There was some good discussion about price trackers in a previous thread, but I think many comments and/or sites got lost in the noise.

So, what do you think? :)

(Feel free to kill this if it feels too spammy.)</comment>


How faking your feelings at work can be damaging - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180619-why-suppressing-anger-at-work-is-bad <comment><USER2> The classic book _Moral Mazes_ talks at length about emotional labor in organizational management.

One of its primary claims is that HR and marketing function essentially purely as emotional labor (the book would treat legal compliance as a distinct category), and has a whole chapter called, "Dexterity with Symbols" that is a breakdown of how management and executives need to communicate with vague, symbolic language that can never been pinned down to specific claims or specific requirements, so as to allow virtually anything that is said to be reinterpreted as-needed to retrospectively imply whatever is expedient for the executives, particularly from an emotional labor point of view.

I think this is a huge component of why software companies use open-plan offices, and in fact sometimes _pay higher prices_ just to have an open-plan office (not even talking about any of the arguments about lost productivity or reduced communication in open-plan spaces, just purely the real estate costs).

It's a form of emotional labor. The company gets to see who will express outward fealty to the management, like a dog rolling over to expose its tummy. Who will drink the Kool-Aid about "collaboration" and "entrepreneurial spirit" and give emotional labor outwardly praising the open plan office designs, despite inwardly knowing they are miserable, anti-productive and anti- ergonomic spaces.

<comment><USER3> HR I get, but Marketing is emotional labor? Not following that at all. All departments have their element of emotional labor, but in my mind it's something that will mostly be absorbed by management in a healthy organization.

Maybe I just don't understand the term though.

<comment><USER2> It is not referring to the external artifacts of a marketing strategy, like ad purchases or the design of packaging or something.

It's talking about the internal "PR" role that marketing plays in its interface between management and the employees. Think about the huge product launch events that big tech companies produce. It's as much about creating external publicity or buzz as it is about generating conformity among the staff in terms of what the company line is going to be. As a result, it also boils down to a lot of emotional labor on behalf of PR staff "selling" the vision of the management to the rest of the staff, despite the fact that management's "vision" will be represented with vague, imprecise symbols that allow management to later on morph things around in whatever way suits them.

Incidentally, I think it's also the biggest reason why internal prediction markets are not adopted. Despite evidence that they improve product delivery metrics and tangible financial metrics of project success, it makes the evaluation of project success so quantitative that managers lose their ability to manipulate, tell stories, argue for bonuses, argue that they were stopped by internal politics, etc. etc. Telling those stories is so valuable to middle and upper management that it is worth more than increased raw success of the company overall. Essentially, they want the company overall to be slightly worse off if it gives them manipulable tactics for entrenching their personal job security or bonus or whatever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not what the article is getting at, but I have seen displays of righteous anger cause positive changes. Sometimes you need to communicate that you aren't just griping and this is a red line.

Doesn't work if people already think your a hot head though.

<comment><USER5> I've never seen showing anger works. In American society, being Black and angry, conjures up the stereotype and gets you labeled as an "Angry Black Man". Also, if you are a female showing anger, gets you labelled negatively.

<comment><USER6> Yes, Americans don't understand disagreement, even legitimate disagreement. You are wondering if this is because they fear incurring liability if they admit there is a problem or due to the almost prison-like environment of high school in their formative years, or what. It's a great problem for foreigners.

<comment><USER7> Can confirm. Was recently informed I was "not a team player" for pointing out obvious facts that happened to be inconvenient. A German friend of mine told me that when she was immigrating here, she took a class that was supposed to help with integrating into American culture, she was told to always wrap any sort of criticism in a complement sandwich.

<comment><USER8> Being disagreeable is okay but being disrespectful is not. Sometimes people conflate the former with the latter though so you have to be careful.

<comment><USER9> >but being disrespectful is not

Nah. It's fine. You might find it advantageous to navigate the world by humoring the people too full of themselves to realize they don't deserve an ounce of respect. But they don't, and it's fine if you don't want to give it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I got burned out by trying to be the code hero. Then I realized there really isn't any point to this line of work. It is the epitome of "progress only for the sake of progress".

<comment><USER11> There is no right answer. I fake being happy for fear of being fired. I tried to contribute and help and was told to focus on my work, which is meaningless engineering with no purpose. I have resigned myself to get in on time and sit and stare at the screen. I try to get things done but it is a moving target. The people who thrive here engage in side channel communications, I am mostly unwilling to do that because I believe in public communication. I wish I did not believe in a free and open society as we are tending towards some form human/machine authoritarianism and my views are going to be punished. Keep your heads down and accumulate resources seems to be the best advice.

<comment><USER10> Sounds exactly like my experience at Useless Fintech aka Charles Schwab sorry to hear this.

"Your ideas are stupid and your goals are meaningless" [https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/your-ideas-are-stupid- and-...](https://medium.com/@megamindbrian/your-ideas-are-stupid-and-your- goals-are-meaningless-3fca37d07cb9)

There is a shred of hope left. I have a friend that has not offered me work personally but he says he loves the "Google reject engineers". Meaning he loves to hire the people that are phenomenal and confident enough to compete in the big league but are defeated by some small technicality such as checking the wrong box on a web based job application or in your case failing at "side channel" communication. That's probably more of a good quality for you rather than a failure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Haven't read the article, but I know that faking your feelings is a great way to subtract from team morale, particularly in situations most susceptible to tension. Sure you may keep your job, but great workplaces don't get to be great workplaces by instilling fear in people so they don't speak up about issues or bother to understand the personalities of their colleagues. If all of your colleagues are sociopaths, you're going to have a bad time.

Edit: That's not to say that you shouldn't necessarily be principled about these things.

<comment><USER13> I was with you until the sociopath part. Faking emotions and sociopathy are two different things

<comment><USER12> You're right. Upon reconsideration, I think what I meant those as two independent examples of unhealthy company compositions in which lack of authentic emotion could lead to negative outcomes. Though I suppose it depends on the place.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When you bottle things up for months and months you eventually get your own Wikipedia page:

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

When people are forced to keep up that fake smile, the people they interact with start taking advantage. Then eventually the person behind the smile cracks, grabs "two beers and exited the plane by deploying the evacuation slide".

</comment><comment><USER15> Note that this article uses a somewhat older and more specific definition of emotional labor, casting it as something done in the course of paid work. These days, it is also commonly recognized to occur in _unpaid_ contexts. (Maybe it was in the 1960s as well, but [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_labor) doesn't seem to cover that.)

Having a friend lean on you during a breakup, and helping them process their feelings -- that's unpaid emotional labor. Which is fine! It's just good to recognize it, especially because there's a gender imbalance. Women are commonly expected to provide unpaid emotional labor in the domestic and social spheres, and in traditional labor contexts, women are commonly expected to provide emotional labor on top of their other job duties in ways that men are not.

</comment><comment><USER16> > having feelings at work

i go to work to complete an objective and get paid. feelings are personal and not something i care to share with workplace associates or strangers. of course, this means that i'm totally unsuited for any kind of non-technical, customer-facing work. except maybe a bar or restaurant that wants bitchy/sarcastic staff.

i'm sort of lucky that i work it tech, but i'd be pretty happy doing construction or anything that involves doing stuff other than talking to customers.

<comment><USER17> > feelings are personal and not something i care to share with workplace > associates or strangers

"xj9 you don't seem to share the enthusiasm for our exciting journey. We're a family here at SaaS.com and you seem to be treating it like just a job. You're fired. Please clear your desk"

<comment><USER18> Yeah, I used to think like xj9 in collage. But I have no idea how it's possible to survive as completely non-social programmer, now that I've seen what work life actually consists of.

<comment><USER5> You can be social and build professional relationships without sharing your feelings.

<comment><USER19> Not for long. People feel like they're really getting to know you if you're that caged off.

<comment><USER20> Most of the successful people I've seen in my career had a demeanor that ranged between "happy and pleasant" and "serious and stoic". Founders and top executives can get away with being passionate (e.g. Steve Jobs) but serious, reserved stoicism seems to be the norm (e.g. Tim Cook).

<comment><USER21> But not as good for motivating staff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why giving generalized advice without conditioning on context-dependence is bad.

Edit: Sorry, I now see that the real article has all the proper "can"'s, instead of "is"'s, I was missing.

</comment><comment><USER22> I mean, the whole enterprise is damaging. Workplaces are not humane, they're hostile (in a blithe, disavowed way of course) and overtly not designed for the interests of the people occupying them. Including whether it's considered appropriate to show your feelings (usually no).

<comment><USER23> How do you find work where this is not true? (assuming that you are working)

<comment><USER15> I've never worked customer service, but I know that some managers will 100% stand by their employees against abuse from customers, and don't demand smiles. I've heard of this specifically w.r.t. some coffee shops.

(Now I wonder if this has anything to do with France's reputation for surly customer service -- are the employees simply not expected to give "service with a smile", and Americans are horrified by the contrast?)</comment></comment></comment>


Hydroptere: A 60ft sailing hydrofoil - <AUTHOR> http://hydrofoilsailing.com/boats/hydroptere.html

<comment><AUTHOR> On a smaller and more accessible (hackable!) scale:

<http://hydrofoilsailing.com/boats/bladerider.html>

<comment><USER2> Although that is about $25k as a starting price, so not all that accessible. You can get a boat for $5k that is close and put in another $5k and get it to foil.

<comment><USER3> According to the website the RX version is listed at US$13,995 which is a bit closer anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wonder if these things could be made much larger and almost completely automated? If petroleum prices go through the roof, I could see such craft carrying perishable goods.

</comment><comment><USER5> reminds me of the hobie cat trifoiler, which has a bit of a different design

<http://www.hobiecat.com/sailing/models_trifoiler.html>

that speed is also pretty amazing considering they're running with the main reefed (it hasn't been fully deployed up the mast). that's usually done to make the boat more manageable in high winds

<comment><USER6> The hobie trifoiler is vey cool, however its impratical. It draws about 4 feet, which limits the bodies of water on which it can operate.

As a side not I wonder how many people here are into sailing? I have been actively sailing for about a year, and just started racing. I like all the thought that goes into seamanship and sailing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ubelievable the speed of that thing...

Someone should make a windsurfboard version of this!

<comment><USER8> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oyWMusaDTI>

<comment><USER9> Doesn't look faster than the regular surfer. Actually he looks slower. Is it because he's stuggling to balance the board?

<comment><USER10> The foil that's providing the lift is pretty big in terms of surface area, and so is the drag. On a normal board at speed on flat water, probably only about a foot of the board is in the water, and the fin is tiny by comparison. So the idea seems to be reduce drag by getting the hull out of the water, but the size of the foil required to do this seems to have more drag than the hull did.

It does look very smooth through the chop though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> Just broke 60 mph over the weekend, nice.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder what they use for forward looking sonar. The ocean is rather littered with logs, boards, containers (that fall off ships, floating a foot below the surface) and the occasional whale.

<comment><USER12> Maybe I am missing something obvious, but aren't logs and containers floating a foot below the surface also fatal for non-hydrofoil vessels?</comment></comment>


Canadian UFO sightings surged in 2012 - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/canadian-ufo-sightings-surged-in-2012-1.1283604

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if there is a "UFOnews" HN clone?</comment>


Ask HN: Net Promoter Score alternatives? - <AUTHOR> After checking that Toys R Us had a NPS of 47 and yet it failed spectacularly, I'd love to hear any alternatives about measuring your businesses effectively and if you still use NPS as well, given its prevalence.
thanks <comment><USER2> Don't acquire $400 million in annual debt payments. NPS wasn't the problem at Toys R Us.

<comment><AUTHOR> appreciated</comment></comment>


Why is Google Chrome's Math.random number generator not that random? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9550796/why-is-google-chromes-math-random-number-generator-not-that-random

<comment><USER2> Relevant answer from SO:

Apparently Math.random() in V8 only works with 32 bit values (and didn't even correctly randomize all of those in the past). And with 32 bits, the probability of a collision reaches 50% around 2^16 = 65k values...

Here is bug report: [https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=276886](https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=276886)

</comment><comment><USER3> 32bits of randomness seems like plenty for most applications, and if you need more than that you should really specify that explicitly. If it speeds up Math.Random() for 90% of uses that seems like a reasonable optimization to me.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, it wasn't enough randomness for me. I was seeing collisions in some trivial code in Chrome that worked fine in every single other browser. It's not like Chrome's Math.random performance is significantly better than other modern browsers.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Quantitative user research reveals useful UX observation on LinkedIn - <AUTHOR> http://canvasflip.com/blog/index.php/2016/04/02/ux-insights-linkedin-app-prototype-canvasflip/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey guys,

We have done a user research on LinkedIn App on 30 users across the globe, giving them a task to "Create and share an update on LinkedIn."

Can you guess how much time and interactions does it take on LinkedIn app?</comment>


Converting Flash to HTML5 (StrongBad Demo) - <AUTHOR> http://smokescreen.us/demos/sb45demo.html

<comment><USER2> I just de-minified the source code and this thing is a seriously impressive piece of work. It reads the SWF binary in JavaScript, decodes it (including extracting embedded JPEGs, sound files etc) and then renders the same content using dynamically generated SVG - if you fire up the Web Inspector in Chrome while it's running you can actually see the different SVG properties changing as it runs.

To pull that off, the JavaScript includes a base64 decoder, unzipping code, a ton of byte manipulation stuff for dealing with the SWF format and a full- blown ActionScript bytecode interpreter!

I've posted the de-minified version as a Gist if anyone wants a look: <http://gist.github.com/418177> \- for educational purposes only since the code hasn't officially been released yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Unlike Google's Pacman game, these guys aren't using Flash for sound. It's all HTML5.

Their site is here: <http://smokescreen.us/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I may get downvotted for this but anyways...

Why give out the source? Why not turn this into a service? I know that there are a few ad agencies out there that would pay to see some of their investments run on the iPhone OS. Or content providers guarantee their sponsors' flash ads get impressions on iPhone/iPad.

<comment><USER4> This looks a lot like Gordon (<http://github.com/tobeytailor/gordon>) — a JS implementation of Flash. In which case, the point is that _you don't need a service_ to convert your files — your SWF files would work as-is.

Ideally — provided JS performance catches up — you simply re-tool your templates to use the JS runtime (rather than embed tags) to run your SWF file.

In fact, looking at the source of <http://smokescreen.us/demos/lyrisdemo.html> it's conceivable that you could use Flash if available, but fallback to Smokescreen/Gordon otherwise (likely testing for HTML5 support first). That link is also a great example of how easy it would be for an ad agency to continue to use their existing resources for Flashless, HTML5-ready devices.

Is there any relation between the Smokescreen and Gordon projects? I haven't heard of the latter in a while.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> For this demo CPU usage was about double the native Flash plug-in on Safari 4.0.5. Probably good enough for a good chunk of Flash content on the web?

<comment><USER6> Well, don't forget this is while reading and converting a swf in javascript commands. It's a lot faster when you don't have the abstraction layer. So for most things, yeah, javascript+canvas is more than enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "running sbemail45.swf" - wait... this runs off of the SWF and not source?

Definitely slow with weird audio blips but very impressive so far.

<comment><USER8> Yes! In fact, if you view source, you can see that there's just a call "new Smokescreen(url, element, width, height, name, params)" which loads the SWF and renders it. (Much like Gordon, mentioned in another comment.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's not perfect on my imac+ff system.

There are always easter eggs in these strong bad emails. At the end, after the line printer sheet comes down, click on the lower light switch and the easter egg appears. To make it go away, you're supposed to click on the easter egg but on mine, it just makes everything disappear and the music loops indefinitely.

I also notice Strongbad's "mouth hole" sort of didn't look right, either, like there was this nested circle of some kind.

All in and all, though, pretty good. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> This crashes my chromium tab on Linux every time I try to load it. :/

<comment><USER11> Works on Safari 4.0.4 for Mac. Actually indistinguishable from the plugin, as far as I could tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is Smokescreen different than Gordon? <http://wiki.github.com/tobeytailor/gordon/>

<comment><USER13> Well, Gordon only supports Flash 1 and 2; most actual Flash on the Internet probably uses _some_ features introduced in the following eight versions. I can't find any specs on which Flash versions Smokescreen supports, but I would bet that StrongBad Emails aren't old enough to work in Flash 1 or 2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What is the room for optimization? About one second per frame on my ipad defeats the whole point

<comment><USER15> That bad? Wow, I hope the rumors of much faster JavaScript in Mobile Safari for iPhone OS 4.0 are true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wow! It worked amazingly well on my old macbook/firefox. Actually, it worked better than flash, which drops the aby audio longer that 30seconds.

</comment><comment><USER17> slow and silent on my iphone3gs. otherwise well done.</comment>


Potential White House open-access edict could upend scientific publishers - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.2.20191219a/full/ <comment><USER2> The only meaningful service jornals provide is coordination of peer review. Reviewers are unpaid. Content is distributed electronically and there is already well established non-commercial infrastructure (like arXiv) in place for doing this. There are really two different issues at play here: The first is that professional societies like the APS who do lots of essential work like organizing conferences need to be funded more robustly than through membership dues alone. The second is that the commercial academic publishing industry is obsolete, and already had to be dragged kicking and screaming to reach the level of open access we have now.</comment>


Ask HN: NDAs? - <AUTHOR>

As a developer, I never sign NDAs when someone approaches me with an idea.
I'm trying to approach a potential advisor/investor with a business plan who happens to have founded a company that is pretty much a competitor. But our business plan is a much better solution. Should I ask him to sign an NDA? He has the required infrastructure, which could take us at least 6 months to build, so approaching him without an NDA is a little risky.
Any advice on what to do? <comment><USER2> Just a question... but why would you want a competitor to be your advisor? NDA for sure in this case.

Bringing him on board on as an investor, albeit that he is also as a competitor, creates a different relationship. If it is an investment arrangement then there is much to consider.

Best solution would probably be to discuss your business plan (and share any corresponding documents) which does not include overly-in-depth specs, proprietary code/algos, or aspects that differentiates your startup (that he could recreate with his current company, team, technology, etc.).

Inevitably, as the relationship progresses and becomes better defined, I would highly recommend some form of NDA/Noncompete (i.e., whether he takes on the role as either and adviser or investor).

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW:

1- No investor will sign an NDA on your pitch.

2- Its not just about Idea. You are a developer with an idea, go build it! and share it to the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not an "idea" really. It's a business that needs $400,000 initial investment :-)

I realised that if he was really interested, he'd probably rather invest in someone investing it. No NDA it is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Good luck getting him to sign it. If you need him more than he needs you, be prepared for him to decline.</comment>


Ask HN: Alternative to curl https://install.foo.com | /bin/sh? - <AUTHOR>

It's well known that curling a script from the internet and executing it directly like so,

    curl https://install.foo.com | /bin/sh
 seems to be frowned upon [0][1] for security reasons[2][3]. However, it's an incredibly effective way to help bootstrap a development environment. What are the best approaches to achieving the same goal without going through lots of the trouble with creating packages for every target system out there?
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4701745
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6008196
[2] http://blog.classicalcode.com/2012/11/curl-pipe-sh-exploit-proof-of-concept/
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3315461
real examples in the wild:

    ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

    curl https://install.meteor.com | /bin/sh

    bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.io/install/rvm)

    curl get.pow.cx | sh

    curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
 <comment><USER2> If you're bootstrapping an environment you created, checksum the download and verify the checksum before feeding it to the "unpacker".

Another thought would be to mutually authenticate the SSL session. The curl man page has good doco as to how to do this. It does involve mucking around with PKCS12 key material, but it's not bad.

Best...do both.</comment>


Lego Wants You to Unleash Your Inner Modernist - <AUTHOR> http://hyperallergic.com/79417/lego-wants-you-to-unleash-your-inner-modernist/ <comment><AUTHOR> The Amazon link in the article has an affiliate tag, if that matters to you.

What should matter more is that the price on Amazon, via resellers, is more than the price via the Lego online store.

Now, I think this is really sweet, but not so sweet I am going to shell out US$150.

But still sweet.</comment>


Generating Complex Procedural Terrains Using the GPU (2008) - <AUTHOR> http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems3/gpugems3_ch01.html

<comment><USER2> Tangentially related:

[http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/morenoise/morenoise.htm](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/morenoise/morenoise.htm)

[http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/fog/fog.htm](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/fog/fog.htm)

[http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/compilingsmall/compilings...](http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/compilingsmall/compilingsmall.htm)

and the finished product is "Elevated" on [http://iquilezles.org/prods/](http://iquilezles.org/prods/)

<comment><USER3> Somehow I do find that "Elevated" in 4 KB beats all these 50 bytes spreadsheet in JavaScript that have made it lately on HN! (4 KB, including the music)

<comment><USER2> There's difficulty in both but I've always had respect for the demoscene.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This demo drew attention a lot in the game industry. Also, there is no mention to it in the nvidia paper but another noteworthy voxel terrain demo was the cave demo (voxlap engine) from Ken Silverman (3D realms / Duke Nukem 3D 'Build' editor) [1].

[1] [http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap03.htm](http://advsys.net/ken/voxlap/voxlap03.htm)

</comment><comment><USER5> its also possible to achieve similar effects using whittaker iteration as a 'sloppy but fast' alternative to the sphere tracing/distance field approach

there is not much good reference on it though (which is why i am compelled to self link)

[http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/article/star- chart...](http://software.intel.com/sites/billboard/article/star-chart- developer-diary-part-2) [http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/whittakers- method-...](http://jheriko-rtw.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/whittakers-method-and- brief-history-of.html)

its less well known by far... Steven Wittens came across it, and I shamelessly nicked it, back when we were doing AVS presets for Winamp. Speaking of Winamp, back then Geiss (the author of this article) created Monkey - it used D3D and hardware acceleration iirc, but also rendered an isosurface similar to the method described in this article.

It was an interesting period of actual innovation in those days...

</comment><comment><USER6> Another take on the marching cubes algorithm is here:

[http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial/node130.html](http://www.cs.unc.edu/~marc/tutorial/node130.html)

It more clearly states that marching cubes is a method of converting volumetric data into a bounding surface.

</comment><comment><USER7> This looks super interesting. Does anyone know any other good resources for graphics programming?

<comment><USER8> [http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm](http://www.iquilezles.org/www/index.htm)

I come back to Inigo's site every few months to add to my appreciation of the demoscene. It isn't like stage magic, it's even more amazing when you see how the trick is done. He was hired by Pixar in 2009. I'm assuming they recruited him.

<comment><USER9> There's an article in Computer Graphics World about the procedural terrain and foliage generation in Pixar's Brave which apparently Inigo Quilez was behind:

[http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-J...](http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2012/Volume-35-Issue-4-June- July-2012/The-Royal-Treatment.aspx)

It's a bit light on technical details, but pretty cool to read about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> See also Eric Lengyel's take on this which he calls the Transvoxel Algorithm:

[http://www.terathon.com/voxels/](http://www.terathon.com/voxels/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Very nice, but is this practical for games? What about collision detection, AI players etc? Or would you use it mainly for backgrounds, skies and such?

</comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if this is now No Man's Sky works.

<comment><USER13> I don't know what tech No Man's Sky is using, but Voxel Farm[0] does something very similar (it's being used in Everquest Next and StarForge among other things). However, instead of marching cubes it uses dual contouring which produces nicer results. Also, it was made by one guy. His blog is amazing: [http://procworld.blogspot.com/](http://procworld.blogspot.com/)

[0][http://voxelfarm.com/vfweb/index.html](http://voxelfarm.com/vfweb/index.html)</comment></comment>