Please Discourage The Region Wise Fragmentation of Hackernews - <AUTHOR>

We saw an Indian version of Hackernews earlier today. And then there was a post about DC getting it's own Hackernews. If this fragmentation goes on we will end up killing this awesome Hackernews community and it's awesome visitors. <comment><USER3> Well hang on now - be clear that Hackernews and ycombinator are two different things. If this[1] is the DC post you're talking about, then that's a DC version of _ycombinator_ , and I fully support that kind of 'fragmentation'. A UK YC would be much welcomed (I'm sure there are startup incubators on the UK already, but more is better).

[1] [http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is- gettin...](http://codybrowntext.tumblr.com/post/1602181256/dc-is-getting-its- own-version-of-y-combinator)

I can see the relevance of regionalised hacker news sites, but I dislike the idea of a regionalised Hacker News site. Note the capitalisation and plurality.

</comment><comment><USER4> The point of Hacker News India is to discuss India-related news which doesn't get much attention over here. HNI doesn't compete with HN, it completes it.

<comment><USER5> 1) What is so different about startups and programming in India?

2) What makes you think the rest of us (non-Indian) folks wouldn't be interested in these topics?

note: I am not being a smart-ass here. I am genuinely curious. Personally, I think it would interesting to hear about how this stuff actually works over there. You know, a real perspective other than "they're stealing our jobs" or Outsourced.

<comment><USER6> news.yc is now really, really crowded. an avalanche of submissions means that only a few get to make it to the front page. as simply a numbers game, not very many of them are going to be indian-specific.

personally, i can very clearly see why they'd want to do something like this.

<comment><USER7> But if the Indian audience upvotes them they will rise to the top.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> But as the community is growing, this is kind of inevitable. And desirable.

What HN needs is enhanced search (and tagging) capabilities, precisely to allow user to select content from specfic regions (and in different languages).

For example, I think it'd be extremely useful to be able to bring up posts specifically about China, or Paris, or only in French or Russian.

<comment><USER9> I think it is desirable too. European version of Hacker News would be extremely useful for me - sure, there's lots of region-agnostic valuable content, but also many topics considering startups are irrelevant to people in my area (Central Europe) - for example 'whos hiring?' threads consist mostly of offers in US (and of course offers from Europe would be much more useful for european hackers)

<comment><USER10> I also think that it would be very interesting an European Version of HN. But, I'm not that sure that it will reach the critical mass of users that make a community vibrant.

<comment><USER11> Yes, you probably have a fragmentation of topics, i.e. the startup stuff will be posted on the European site, but the "hacker" articles of general interest will be posted and discussed here. Which seriously restricts the user base and thus the helpful answers on the Euro site.

I could imagine something that works, if you're willing to fragment even further and make language-specific sites, as this way you could post articles in languages other than English and you'd get discussions from those users who don't feel that comfortable in English. But that further restricts your user base. Might work for French and German, but beyond that? (Spanish, too, of course, but then you'll run into problems with the country/law specific stuff)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't mind the region wise fragmentation personally. I cannot be global - <USER2> can't keep track of every single world hacker-related event and, if it is forced on me, I will reject it (whether consciously or subconsciously).

I have the largest interest in my community and I mean "community" in both the sense of the hacker community, but also my regional community: Texas, United States, North America, Western Hemisphere, Europe, Australia, and then "The Rest of the World" in that order. If "The Rest of the World" begins to dominate the stories or even if Australia, for example, starts dominating the stories then I will head to somewhere where more of my interests are shown.

And I think that's just basic human nature. We can only read so many headlines, articles, posts in a day and it makes sense that we self-filter to select the sites that show us things that are the most interesting to us.

<comment><USER7> I have no regional community. I live in a certain place, but my servers are not here, my collaborators are not here, my customers are not here. What is "here?"

<comment><USER12> I don't buy that. You do have a regional community. You may choose not to participate in it or may not wish to but you do have a regional community. I would venture to guess that you are fairly young to make that comment as well and also have no children. Once you have a spouse, children, parents who need support of one kind or another, your idea of "community" becomes centered much more in the real world than in this virtual world.

<comment><USER7> I meant community in business, work. I am middle-aged, with children. I do not make money from the community in which I live, I make it globally. It is an accident, not a matter of choice initially. I choose to keep it that way because I find it liberating. My work environment is spread between clients, algorithms, infrastructure, all global. My network of family is thankfully centered around my physical home, and my network of friends is global.

Sry to go on at length, but I found your comment provocative and I wanted to paint a clear picture.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What about a tag system? You can tag posts about a location with the location's tag and for each location you can see all posts tagged with that location.

<comment><USER12> What's the proper protocol for disagreement again? I don't want a tag system so should I comment? or downvote?

Not trying to be a jerk - it's a serious question. "I see you" and appreciate your making the comment but I personally wouldn't want tags.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As the community's size grows the content will inevitably get more diverse. The solution is not separate sites where the content is forever fragmented but rather a hash tag solution (ugly but its something we can implement ourselves).

</comment><comment><USER15> What's with the weird assumption that you can only visit one website? I don't think that's how this Internet thing works. If there was a local version for me, I'd use it, but I wouldn't necessarily stop using this one.

<comment><USER16> People generally only frequent a small number of sites, this takes up one of those spots. Add 10 more and you've more than exhausted that number for most people.

<comment><USER15> When engaging in cultural protectionism, I think you should consider the opposite side of what you are telling people to do. In this case, sites cooler than HN-classic should not be made, and if they are made, people shouldn't visit them, because that might hurt HN-classic.

Is that really a sensible position to be taking? If HN can only survive by people purposely not visiting better sites, HN doesn't _deserve_ to survive.

This entire line of logic is silly when you actually translate it into concrete recommendations you are making to real people.

<comment><USER16> I'm not saying anything about coolness or quality of sites, or that some sites should exist and others shouldn't, I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment. I'm just saying that fragmentation of a community can be a very real problem, as with more subcommunities, people stop visiting the main one, and the main becomes less diverse. Your original comment trivializes that, because "you can visit more than one site".

If the designers of Hacker News want a community that's segmented, let them do it. I don't think it's right to use the HN name to do it for them, though.

<comment><USER15> "I'm not sure where you're getting that in my comment"

I explained it to you. If you want _non-_ fragmentation, that is exactly equivalent to telling people that they should stay where they are. "Not fragmenting the community" can't happen in the abstract, it can only happen in the concrete choices of others. Therefore, when you advocate against the fragmentation of a community even as it naturally tends to it by the natural result of people doing what they desire, you are advocating that other people should not follow their desires to go somewhere else. They're not even two sides of the same coin, they're just the same thing. But it sure sounds a lot less friendly, which in my opinion is the more accurate way of looking at it.

<comment><USER16> No, they aren't equivalent, and I'm not advocating those things. I said it could be a problem for HN.

There's a difference between fragmentation of a community because of site structure and people going elsewhere because they like it better. In building a community, the choices of the designer of the community's home influences the structure of the resulting community without needing to tell them explicitly to do one thing or another.

My original point was not to say I agreed or disagreed with the post's plea to stop fragmentation, though it seems that you took it that way. I was saying that your original point of adding more options being inconsequential because there are lots of sites out there was an oversimplified trivialization of the problem. Too many options on a site is frequently a real, important design problem, and you shouldn't dismiss it out of hand. Having HN1, HN2, HN3, etc is different from having HN, Digg, Reddit, etc.

I'm done. I didn't mean to get into an argument, I was just pointing out something you didn't seem to be considering when you made your comment. HN's existence as a single entity might be an intentional design decision, and it's not necessarily a bad one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Take a look at Hacker News "India" (<http://hackernews.in>) and you will see this isn't a problem or anything to be concerned with. Hacker News is what it is because of the traffic it gets. You can argue with more traffic you get worse results on the homepage, but with not enough traffic you will _never_ get that community feeling you do here. You will notice that this new site doesn't have a single new story in the last 6+ hours and the comments for any given article is weak at best. I'm sure with time it will improve, but it won't take anything away from what we have here.

<comment><USER18> Also it looks like they just want local content and not just a carbon copy: <http://hackernews.in/item?id=232>

</comment></comment><comment> space-monkey If you don't like it don't use it. If people are using it, it's addressing a need.

<comment><USER19> It could still qualify as a hack. It's a non-sustainable but low-cost way of addressing a need. The more hacks go into a system, as opposed to forward- looking real solutions, the less stable that system becomes. I think what the OP is saying is "bear with us for a little while and we'll try and find a real solution to this".

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think some kind of regional functionality is important - whether that takes place within on external to hacker news.

We need some means of generating stronger local communities.

</comment><comment><USER21> Hacker News could use Quora-like tagging and following to improve its utility.

#28 on PG's essay "Ideas We'd Like to Fund" is "Fixing Email Overload" <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> . For many of us, HN overload is as serious as HN overload. There is a front-page story daily for every new hack invented to manage it.

HNI fragments HN as does techstartu.ps

</comment><comment><USER22> Speaking of which, would someone here be willing to setup an arc forum on my Linode dedicated to health. Perhaps they can work with me to fill it with posts and comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> I agree that fragmentation will ruin the HN experience. I want MORE Indian news here, not less! DC, I don't know.

</comment><comment><USER23> Why not create a "Bay Area" HN? :P

<comment><USER24> I thought that's the one we are on right now.</comment></comment>


On the Design and Building of 1Password for Apple Watch - <AUTHOR> https://blog.agilebits.com/2015/05/14/on-the-design-and-building-of-1password-for-apple-watch/

<comment><USER2> Maybe its obvious in hindsight, but does seems strange they totally missed the use case at first. Seems simple that their app is an app to show passwords you've stored in there, so the Apple Watch should be no different.

<comment><USER3> [FYI: I work for AgileBits, maker's of 1Password]

Yea, hindsight is definitely 20/20\. I think the issue was that this is a whole new way to use 1Password. While the transition from Mac to iOS was a fair bit easier, it wasn't having to rethink the data itself. That was just the interface.

With the Watch we had to rethink what data was going to be visible. We certainly can't show users all of their data on the Watch, it would be too difficult to locate and view all of that data.

We had wanted to add OTP support for awhile and were pretty excited about it. We also thought the Watch was a great way to let users see their one time passwords, but this is also why we showed people the application behind the scenes so we could gauge interest. We were excited but it turns out not everyone was as excited as we were, so we had to rethink it.

Our use case for this is definitely going to be a bit more difficult than some other applications. They generally tend to display notifications or similar types of bite sized bits of data. We have to find bite sized data that also isn't a worry for security reasons to just have in the open potentially.

Designing for new products, screen sizes and then having to think about the security side of it is a tough combination.

We really just wanted to give our users some inside information. It's sort of like what Marco Arment did with his Apple Watch design and redesign of Overcast. While his focused a lot on interface, our's focused a lot on what we felt was the more complicated bits for us.

Thanks for reading!

Kyle</comment></comment>


Digital exchange loses $137M as founder takes passwords to the grave - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/02/digital-exchange-loses-137-million-as-founder-takes-passwords-to-the-grave/ <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19060985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19060985)

</comment><comment><USER3> Not your keys, not your coins.

Pretty irresponsible to not store the encryption key in something like a bank safety deposit box or sharded across multiple people that don't know each but come together like in the event of a death to reconstruct the key.

<comment><USER4> what happens if 2 of those people die at same time?

<comment><USER5> Scheme like Shamir's Secret Sharing [1] allow you to split a secret between multiple people, and also set how many people are needed to reconstruct the secret. For instance, you could share it with 5 people, and only require 3 to reconstruct the secret.

[1] [http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/](http://point-at-infinity.org/ssss/)

<comment><USER4> yeah, like they would be smart enough to pull that off, they couldn't even plan for the worst. Unless his plan was take it all to the grave.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First of all, I find this whole thing sad and hilarious -- I have been speaking up against calling it "investing in cryptocurrency" because a) it's gambling not investing b) it's not a currency. Nonetheless, this entire thing stinks.

1\. Sudden death from Chron's disease is not unheard of [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9780667](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9780667) but it's described as a "rare complication".

2\. Where is the address of this cold storage so people can see the coins not moving since the alleged death? I know people are trying to figure out the address based on transactions from the hot wallet but if there is some tumbling involved it'll be hard / impossible.

3\. In this 2015 article [https://archive.is/Gw2x9](https://archive.is/Gw2x9)

> Cotten, in turn, spoke to Quadriga's security strengths, noting that the > exchange uses multi-signature cold storage to secure bitcoin holdings.

This directly contradicts the claim only he had the key.

</comment><comment><USER7> I signed up for QuadrigaCX but never transferred any funds through it. The process involved exchanging quite a bit of personal information and considering how they handled 137M worth of coins, I doubt they're treating anyones personal information with even a single spec of security.

</comment><comment><USER8> On a long enough horizon, every Bitcoin will be lost.

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe you CAN take it with you.</comment>


Twitter's Ban on Russia Today Ads Is Dangerous to Free Expression - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/10/twitters-ban-russia-today-ads-dangerous-free-expression <comment><USER2> It seems to me that inaction against the spread of authoritarianism, which actively threatens to undermine the democratic foundations on which our right to freedom of speech is built upon, poses as a much bigger threat to free speech.

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

</comment><comment><USER3> Seems like every content platform starts out as free speech or at least more free reign (Facebook, Twitter, Reddit), and as they become popular the various minority groups they attract can become larger, more insular, and more vocal, which leads to a backlash against the groups. The companies are worried about that backlash extending to them, so they shut the groups down.

I don't think this is dangerous to free speech, though. There are enough alternative platforms for fringe groups to congregate on that they can't effectively be silenced. The danger is the pervasive lack of diversity, but there's no good solution to this. People _want_ to have their opinions validated and be around like-minded people, and we as a society have made this easier and easier to do, from increasing political homogeneity at a geographic level to users on specific content networks.</comment>


Show HN: FFT Demo Page in JavaScript - <AUTHOR> http://jonathanwatmough.com/fftDemo/

<comment><AUTHOR> I support a major commercial G&G app, and I was interested in how easy it would be to make a half complex transform, without the slow turnaround of messing with the guts of 5 million lines of C#, C++, C, Fortran etc.</comment>


Nextbit's Robin Is Another Pretty Phone–But with Infinite Storage - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2015/09/nextbit-robin/

<comment><USER2> I don't want more shit relying on a 1 GBps, sub millisecond latency internet connection. Even if bandwidth has gotten better in the past decade (although it's doing so logarithmically), latency is still there no matter what you do, and sadly the speed of light makes it that no matter what you do, you can't do NYC-Paris in less than 40 milliseconds. You can use tons of tricks to somewhat massage that fact, but at the end of the day the physical limit is there.

Not everyone is living in your Google Fiber bubble. If you're going to design the cellphone of the future, you probably don't want the base assumption of your design to be that the user will always be in an area with high bandwidth, low latency environment, because that represents a minuscule fraction of cellphone users.

Sadly, that's what happens when all of the startups are based in an echo chamber - they lose sight of the fact that not everyone has the same conditions as them. Well, tech has the nice habit of cyclically reinventing shit, so I'm glad we're going to spend a few years banging our heads against thin clients again.

Homework reading for the founders and employees of this company: [https://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html](https://rescomp.stanford.edu/~cheshire/rants/Latency.html)

<comment><USER3> The odd thing to me is that these guys live in San Francisco (I met most of them a few years ago). Wi-Fi is not ubiquitous here, Google Fiber will never be deployed here and most of the city only has Comcast as a real option. Their service is as good as their reputation would lead you to expect. Nextbit should know first hand that the world is not a well connected mesh of low latency, high bandwidth, and quota free connections.

The idea of loading what the phone thinks you'll need into its local storage is intriguing, and people keep trying to make it work to varying degrees. I don't think it has ever, or can ever, work simply because of the massive constraints it puts on usage. Even if the phone is right 99% of the time, the first time I need to use Google Maps and its been "uploaded" off of my phone, it's going in the trash. Just the thought that such a thing might happen and be beyond my control makes me disinclined to give it a shot (not that I would ever own an Android phone anyway, so no sale lost).

I think that devices that try to anticipate the user's wishes and plan ahead, but which may make decisions that have negative consequences, violate the user's trust. I expect technology to do what I have asked it to do -- in this case, I asked it to store something and it thought better of that.

I don't really understand their cloud storage model either. 100GB on S3 for 3 years is $99 -- not counting bandwidth and EC2 instances, which is what really racks up the bill. People aren't going to use their entire allotment all the time, but this ongoing cost is going to sink the company.

<comment><USER4> You average user doesn't have close to 100GB to store and when you dedupe the big media files that drops even more. Hell, Amazon is doing unlimited storage for consumers for $70/year already and that's not just for phones.

<comment><USER5> Your average user doesn't have close to 100GB, but your average user also has no use for an infinite storage service like this. So their average user will not be the average user.

<comment><USER4> Selling it as infinite is great for people like us that want that, but is also one less thing to worry about for the gut who doesn't need that much space. Infinite is better than even 100TB to the average Joe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not infinite storage.

"Memory: 3GB RAM / 32 GB onboard / 100 GB online" [0]

And given that I can get a 128GB MicroSD for <$60 (and dropping) and static media (videos, photos, etc) can already be backed by cloud storage, I just don't see the need for such technology.

[0] [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nextbit/robin-the- smart...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/nextbit/robin-the-smarter- smartphone)

</comment><comment><USER7> This company needs to seriously get out of the SF Bobble. Guess what, a lot of people in US, and throughout the rest of the world, are on limited, slow, and expensive internet connections. For instance, here in the Palm Springs area many people are lucky to get 5Mbit connections. My connection is 15 Mbit, but capped at 15gb/month. LTE is ubiquitous here, but slow as hell. What's the point of fast LTE connection from your cell to the tower, if the tower is connected to the rest of the net with 40Mbit fiber line.

On the other hand, FLASH storage is dirt cheep now! You can get a 128GB SD card for $60 from Amazon. Make a phone with 3 SD Card slots, install 3 cards, run them in RAID 5 if you are paranoid, and you can have 256 (in RAID) to 384 GB on your phone. Setup your phone to auto backup at night to a NAS (this could also be a USP for a phone) and you are done.

I am sorry, but cloud is not the answer for everything.

<comment><USER8> A more charitable interpretation would be that they're not idiots and aren't targeting everyone in the world or even the US. There's nothing wrong with going after a niche, especially one that has more money to throw around.

<comment><USER7> That's true, they could be just targeting people in the major cities, and I suppose there is nothing wrong with that. But would you rather have a phone that has 300GB of storage and is backed up to a NAS in your house on the daily bases (or to the cloud), or would you rather have a phone that guesses what you may need, and constantly shuffles things around. Even if you have a gigabit connection in your house, are you really comfortable with all your data AND usage patterns, being uploaded to the cloud? Seriously, flash storage, especially the slow kind, is so cheep nowadays.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Under the ECPA, message data stored by the provider for more than 6 months can be accessed without a warrant. Permanent cloud storage reduces your privacy.[1]

[1] [http://leaksource.info/2014/08/10/loophole-in-electronic- com...](http://leaksource.info/2014/08/10/loophole-in-electronic- communications-privacy-act-ecpa-allows-warrantless-search-of-emails-older- than-6-months/)

</comment><comment><USER10> Seems that people use their "phones" the most when they might not have a solid internet connection or data connectivity at all, e.g. underground, trains, airplanes, on the toilet etc...

Why the hell would i want a phone which will apparently seamlessly move my data and application from and to the cloud and use it as an expanded near-line storage?

And that's without going into data caps, speed caps and latency issues as well as what the hell happens if you drop packets due to roaming or lose power or connectivity while it does it's nifty dance because either the speed will even be slower due to the additional overhead of verifying every bit and bit or you are getting into serious risk of losing data...

Oh and privacy?

P.S. Google Drive costs 1.99$ per month for 100GB so OnePlus/Moto X for 300(ish)$ + 4 years of 100GB Google drive come to about the costs of that phone.... If you get the new Moto G then you can get like a decade of cloud storage from Google so what's exactly is new here?

</comment><comment><USER11> Minus automatically deleting apps to make space, iCloud on iPhones already does pretty much everything the article says they plan to do. I'm sure something similar exists for Android (I'm not knowledgable).

Also, I enjoy the use of "hard drive". Good job, technology magazine writer + editor(s).

<comment><USER12> You can similarly configure your Google Account to sync apps and data to/from your Android devices.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Is running out of space actually a problem anymore? At least, if you have an SD card slot (which might be less often on Android than it used to be), you can have 64GB for $25, and several multiples of that higher for a bit more than proportional. But if I had to guess, this phone will emphatically not have an SD card slot, because it's a "cloud phone"! If you really want to focus on storage, it seems like multiple hot-swappable SD slots might be more interesting.

I recognize their vision is broader than that, but using cloud storage seemed like a big focus of the first product and of this article.

Also, it seems a bit premature to make new hardware. The article says they've got the software prototype running on Nexus 5, and they've already got some level of cloud sync publicly released on CyanogenMod (maybe CM11 only). I can understand not wanting to support every rooted Android device in the world, but it seems like they could get pretty far picking 3-5 existing devices they understand and feel are solid enough. If their vision is ""You should be able to really quickly authenticate to any piece of smart glass ... and really have your stuff available to you as you need it."" they're going to have to run on arbitrary devices at some point... unless they are defining "any piece of smart glass" as "only our hardware."

<comment><USER14> We've seen attempts at modular phones, but I think that's misguided.I'd rather have an iPhone that has hot-swappable storage (SD card, as you said) for tailoring a phone to a particular situation. Sometimes I want to maximise space for storing photos, sometimes I want to switch in a music collection, or movies to watch on a plane.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Commenters have seemed to miss that this phone isn't designed for the "90%" that don't have WiFi. This isn't designed for African villages where electricity is spotty and LTE is non-existent.

This is designed for tech-savvy parts of the world that care about having cloud-connected phones with "infinite" storage. Anyone that takes thousands of photos on their 15MP phone cameras & 1080p/4K video knows the pain of phones with limited storage.

It makes no sense to say a product sucks because it sucks for groups of people that it wasn't designed for in the first place.

<comment><USER16> > the pain of phones with limited storage.

I don't know that pain because SD cards are cheap.

> This is designed for tech-savvy parts of the world

Who never ever travel, apparently. I struggle to see why they're bothing to take thousands of photos, since they aren't doing anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Guys this is %100 an advertisement.

</comment><comment><USER18> "...infinitely extensible and expandable." and hackable...

</comment><comment><USER19> With everything synced to the cloud, apparently automatically and without user intervention (a valuable innovation), how is privacy handled?

<comment><USER16> For companies who want to loot your information for money, privacy is a bug, not a feature.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> What is pretty about it? It looks like an engineering prototype that hasn't had designers touch it yet.

<comment><USER21> That is the engineering prototype. See paragraph #2.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> This isn't going to be good for mobile networks that can't keep up with the usage now.

</comment><comment><USER23> Cool. My phone has Google Drive.</comment>


Udacity spins out its self-driving car business as Voyage - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/udacity-spin-out-voyage-aims-to-build-a-full-self-driving-taxi-business/ <comment><USER2> Hello all! CEO of Voyage and former YC founder here. Would love to answer any questions I can about autonomous taxis. I'm obviously very passionate about the area. It feels like dev time is only accelerating (vs. linear progression), so I believe we'll see self-driving cars much faster than the skeptics think.

We're also hiring. I don't care about your credential, just that you love robotics or machine learning. Ping me! firstname.lastname@example.com.

<comment><USER3> So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy positions.

The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the paid version of the course.

Especially Udacity and Coursera. Edx not so much even though their programs are more rigorous!

<comment><USER4> > So you guys literally milked ideas and and code in the guise of teaching the > students only to spin up another business. I loved the whole MOOC idea until > it was ambushed and hijacked by people running all manner of fluffy > positions.

As someone enrolled in the course, I don't think this is a very fair judgement. The TAs genuiunely seem there to help. I'm actually happy that Oliver decided to do this and wouldn't mind if more did it, more employment opportunities!

> The whole system is now bent on profiteering with marketing staff > fabricating fancy outcomes and guarantees to lure people to sign up for the > paid version of the course.

Oh, you mean like traditional universities? $2400 doesn't look so bad when you compare it to grad school somewhere that would teach this stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry, Udacity the MOOC company has a self-driving car business?

...news to me.

<comment><USER6> Surprising indeed, but not entirely. Udacity co-founder Sebastian Thrun competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge, and led the development of Google's self-driving car.

<comment><USER7> Thrun is also a luminary in the field of AI and the head of Carnegie Mellon's CS dept

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think this is really exciting news Oliver.

Will there be an employment link up between Voyager and the self-driving car nanodegree? And do you think it's likely that other spin offs will occur from Udacity related to other courses?

I work in higher education and I'm incredibly grateful for how Udacity are opening the eyes of my more traditional colleagues as to how learning can be different, relevant and exciting.

Thanks and Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER9> Should we be expecting some autonomous efforts from Snap Inc. at last in the near future?

</comment><comment><USER10> Congratulations with the company, Oliver! I wish an infinite success! (:

Is Voyage willing to sponsor visas for future employees? Are there junior positions available for new grads?

Thank you!

<comment><USER2> Yes! Definitely willing to sponsor. I wouldn't be in the US unless Udacity was willing to do so.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Google cache in case page is down:

[https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z7UZzB...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:z7UZzBDGLqMJ:https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/05/udacity- spin-out-voyage-aims-to-build-a-full-self-driving-taxi- business/+&cd=3&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

</comment><comment><USER12> Heh, good timing: I hear Uber might need to start their self-driving car project from square one soon. They might be willing to do a fast deal.

<comment><USER13> Udacity's founder also helped google's self driving car project so I don't think Uber would make the same mistake.

<comment><USER14> Just for the record, Udacity founder has said that he won't have anything to do with this company (per BI article)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> companies pay huge money to hire self-driving car engineers, or to train them to become one.

that's old skool.

Udacity provides nanodegree program to train you at your cost, $2,400 for the full program (9mo)! at least now you know you might get hired!

/s

EDIT: link [https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq](https://www.udacity.com/drive/faq)

</comment><comment><USER16> I'm currently enrolled in Udacity's self-driving car nanodegree, I can certainly say that the program thus far has been very fun and good at conveying knowledge. They've developed a curriculum that has a great cadence that keeps you moving forward, and the content is super interesting.

</comment><comment><USER17> Congratulations to the team involved! In particular Oliver, Eric and Mac.

As a CarND student who enrolled because of the Open Source aspect I'd love to know if Voyage is planning to contribute open source software like Comma.ai and Polysync.

<comment><USER2> Thanks Ariel! We will definitely be contributing open source. It may not be a total open source self-driving car, but we will be very active.

<comment><USER17> Awesome!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Does Udacity have any plan to expand outside USA and in other ventures? Like Bangalore maybe? I am an AIND student.

</comment><comment><USER19> Can the billions being invested in this space earn an economic profit? It seems to me that multiple companies will be able to bring this technology to market in roughly the same timespan and that number will increase rapidly with time, driving commodification.

</comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of the time when failing mattress companies had a dail-up ISP vertical.</comment>


In Defense of Static Typing - <AUTHOR> https://functional.works-hub.com/learn/defense-of-static-typing-8a70e <comment><USER2> Yeah, nice read!

</comment><comment><USER3> Great article</comment>


U.S. states could not set self-driving car rules under Republican plan - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-selfdriving-idUSKBN1962YV <comment><USER2> Republicans: States' rights, except when our corporate overlords don't like it!</comment>


Einstein's Fridge (audio) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z2x0j <comment><AUTHOR> > In the late 1920s Einstein was working on a grand unified theory of the > universe, having given us E=mc2, space-time and the fourth dimension. He was > also working on a fridge.

> Perhaps motivated by a story in the Berlin newspapers about a family who > died when toxic fumes leaked from their state-of the-art refrigerator, > Einstein teamed up with another physicist Leo Szilard and designed a new, > safer refrigerating technology. And so it was that in 1930, the man who had > once famously worked in the patent office in Bern was granted a patent of > his own. Number: 1, 781, 541. Title: refrigeration.

> Phillip Ball explores this little known period of Einstein's life to try and > find out why he turned his extraordinary mind to making fridges safer.

BBC radio puts out some great documentaries about scientists.</comment>


[Penguicon-General] Penguicon has lost its way (repost) - <AUTHOR> http://lists.penguicon.org/pipermail/penguicon-general-penguicon.org/2017-May/000135.html?foo <comment><AUTHOR> Last post was ironically enough censored =/

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276936](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276936)</comment>


The Internet in 2020 - What the Experts Predict - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/what_will_the_internet_look_like_in_2020_heres_wha.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+readwriteweb+%28ReadWriteWeb%29&utm_content=Google+Reader <comment><USER2> Experts? Experts at what? Predicting the future of the internet? There is no such thing as an expert opinion on the evolution of a technology like the internet, especially at a timescale of almost 100% its effective lifespan.

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't understand this at all:

 _"Anonymity online will gradually become a lot like anonymity in the real world. When we encounter it, we'll take a firm grip on our wallet and leave the neighborhood as soon as possible ‐‐ unless we're doing something we're ashamed of." - Stewart Baker_

The real world is largely anonymous. I can walk into a store and buy something with cash; nobody will know I was there, and there's no implication that I was doing anything wrong.

<comment><USER4> CCTV security aimed at the register will capture your face, perhaps a parking lot camera will grab your license plate...

While the chances of someone using that information to track you down is pretty slim, it is still possible.

<comment><USER5> The chances of someone using that information depends very critically on its nature and accessibility. Currently security cam footage tends to be localized, kept on-site only on physical media (tape or hd). It also tends to have a low shelf life (days) extremely low quality (think youtube at launch) and very little meta data (camera and date/time).

But one can imagine a near future where a lot of these aspects are different. Where year or multi-year long buffers of footage are archived in a network accessible manner. Where technological advances lead to massive increases in fidelity (from 200 lines of blurry interlaced video on an overused magnetic tape is replaced by 60fps 1080p). Where extensive pre-processing generates massive amounts of meta-data. Right now most CCTV footage is just raw video. But imagine a system that kept track of persons, and collated appearances on different camera feeds per store visit. It's easy to imagine how such a system might work by, for example, comparing physical location and perhaps clothing color to connect appearances on different cameras.

Then, when one reviews camera footage it's not merely a raw dump of video from different camera locations instead it's a list of visits to the store. Imagine a table listing the time of store entrance, the time of store exit, the departments visited and for how long, the time of checkout, the list of items purchased and method of payment, a high resolution headshot, and even perhaps the name (depending on method of purchase and whether they used a loyalty card). It's trivial to imagine how this technology could be expanded from one single visit to linking every visit to the store (using loyalty card, cc/debit card, or automated facial/body recognition as a means for correlation), and from there it's easy to imagine mining this data for further metadata (typical times and durations for visiting the store, typical items purchased, typical store sections visited, highlights on atypical purchasing or other activities, etc.) One can imagine a lot more metadata being extracted with more advanced techniques. Such as determination of ethnicity, income, job, friends and family, typical schedules, etc. based on sharing information from every business (e.g. not just the grocery store but also the parking garage, the restaurant, the hardware store, the DMV, google, etc.)

None of this is particularly technologically difficult, it's just expensive and there's no reason for most businesses to do it. But if you look at, say, the recent investigations in Dubai related to the Mahmoud al-Mabhouh killing it's easy to see that a lot of this technology is already in use in some places. The logical limits of the technology are frightening. One might imagine that such systems could automatically track such things as your mood, job status, and interpersonal relationships with a high degree of fidelity. It could roughly determine your mood and emotional state through your spending, travel, entertainment habits, and socializing. For example, are you uncharacteristically not socializing (online or offline) with your friends and instead watching a movie to cheer you up along with a pint of your favorite ice cream? Everyone has their habits and patterns, with enough surveillance and sophisticated enough processing it's possible to tease out these patterns in a completely automated fashion.

Now imagine if you happened to come under active, rather than merely passive, surveillance with such technology in place. Your phone and your internet connection could be tapped, and this information (your email, your text messaging, your voice conversations, your private irc messages, your personal credit card purchases) could be added to this database. It doesn't take much imagination to think about the amazing depth and breadth of information that could be extracted from this data given sufficient technological resources, a talented development team, and skilled investigators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> RT @FakeAPStylebook expert - 1. Person knowledgeable and well-known in a relevant field. 2. The first person you could get to call you back.

</comment><comment><USER7> I predict that by 2020 it will be very difficult to think of "The Internet" as something as opposed network connectedness being the nature of all things. However, I am not an expert.

<comment><USER5> I think you're right (more right than these "experts"). Increasingly we're moving toward a unified "data mesh" which every other form of communication (wired and wireless telephony, television, etc.) uses as infrastructure. In 2020 there may no longer be separate voice or television networks, everything will just use "the internet", but increasingly a lot of the traffic on the internet will be for specific applications.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Compare the internet of 2000 to the internet of today, while realizing that the rate of change is compounding. Ten years is a very long way off to be predicting things in technology.

<comment><USER9> If I compare to the internet of 2000 and extrapolate, I guess by 2020 we'll all be using 1 site where we all post a constant stream of "lol"; the rest of the Internet will consist of billions of useless HyperRails apps to interface with FaceTwitSpace.

<comment><USER10> Don't forget about the porn!

<comment><USER9> Believe me, sir, I will _never_ forget about the porn.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lessons from Fred Rogers - <AUTHOR> http://www.nextavenue.org/learn-from-mister-rogers-as-adults/ <comment><USER2> A nice article, although I feel like a bulleted list of curated advice from Mr. Rogers life is understating and downplaying the insightful life lessons he taught so regularly.

For a significantly better read, refer to the following profile written for esquire by Tom Junod:

[http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a27134/ca...](http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/interviews/a27134/can- you-say-hero-esq1198/)

You will laugh, and cry, and ultimately remember why Fred Rogers was as important to you as a child, and why his lessons are still directly applicable today.

<comment><USER3> I agree that's a better read. Especially since it mentioned Mr. Roger's faith in God. Many either don't know, forget, or ignore that he was an ordained minister.

For example:

"I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred." \-- Fred Rogers

I believe Fred Rogers didn't believe in God because he was a great man. I believe he was who he was partly because of his belief in God.

<comment><USER4> Could you elaborate? For instance, which god did he have faith in?

<comment><USER3> He was a Presbyterian. A protestant Christian.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After reading this article I re-watched videos of Fred Rogers' speaking in front of the Senate committee (highly recommended watching), his lifetime emmy acceptance, and his brief appearance on Letterman.

While watching them I was trying to figure out, what is it about this gentle, soft-spoken person that is so utterly captivating? Had he been speaking in front of the Senate today, I can't imagine a single person stopping to check their phone.

I'm sure the answer is multi-faceted, but I think a huge aspect is his head- to-toe, 100% Authenticity. I think there's an important lesson to draw there, and its something I see repeated elsewhere (blogosphere, TV, etc.). There's something captivating about authenticity.

The interesting thing is that it doesn't have to be as pure as Rogers'. Sometimes it is just an undercurrent with lots of stylization on top, but that authenticity somehow resonates with humans.

It also reminds me of an old Charlie Rose interview with Quentin Tarantino (to jump to the other end of the spectrum). He is talking about the process of writing, and how he has this inner voice constantly reminding him, "tell the truth", and how he can't watch his movies with some family / friends because it's too embarrassing: he's put a bit of himself up on the screen.

Now obviously Pulp Fiction is not a true story, but I think what he means is that under the hyper-stylized veneer, there is an authentic voice, even in a bizarre made-up world, and that, as much as the shocking revival scene, or hilarious Walken monologue, struck a nerve with audiences.

So my takeaway from Fred Rogers is to be authentic. Even if not as completely as him, make sure in whatever you do, there is some aspect of your true self in it. It resonates with people, and it probably feels good for you, too.

<comment><USER6> _" So my takeaway from Fred Rogers is to be authentic. Even if not as completely as him, make sure in whatever you do, there is some aspect of your true self in it. It resonates with people, and it probably feels good for you, too."_

I think this is a fantastic point, especially at a time where it seems like just about _everybody_ has an angle and an agenda. When you're cynical and you're presented with somebody who seems authentic and genuine, you start looking for the "tells" and the weasel words...the cracks in the smiley-face veneer. The longer one has to look for them, the more astonishing the person seems to be (and, hopefully, turns out to be).

I think the other captivating aspect of Fred Rogers is that he seemed truly concerned about _individuals_ , and that was reflected in his ability to communicate. He didn't lump people into demographic groups, or political tribes, or any other types of social categorization that seems the standard nowadays. I'm sure he recognized such efforts, but they didn't matter when it came to making a simple human connection.

I think this interest and _drive_ to connect with people is equally as important as his authenticity. A Ron Swanson-type person could be _authentic_ and admirable, but nowhere near as empathetic. By the same token, someone could be as empathetic, but if they were inconsistent they wouldn't be as admirable.

Fred Rogers was a rare cat indeed, at least in terms of those who were/are in the media. As someone who feels nowhere near as consistent or empathetic, my respect for him has skyrocketed since having children.

<comment><USER7> Mr. Rogers was kind in a way that's almost painful -- but exactly not because it's in any way accusatory.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> He was as nice of a guy as he portrayed on TV

My mom met him. She worked PR for the United Way in Pittsburgh and did a favor for someone at PBS. They asked what they could do in return and she said she wanted to meet Mr Rogers.

They had a wonderful lunch a few days later

<comment><USER9> What a wonderful tidbit to share! So glad your mom was able to meet him and enjoy a meal together.</comment></comment>


QArt Codes (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://research.swtch.com/qart

<comment><USER2> Fantastic algo i used for an installation project.

Thanks Ross.

[http://www.medium.lu/index.php/works/untitled- labo/](http://www.medium.lu/index.php/works/untitled-labo/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny to see it here today. I had posted about this yesterday on the discussion on Allan Cox's Fuzix's.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8549744](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8549744)

I think most people did not catch on the reference and downvoted it.

Alan Cox's profile pic not only resembles him but is also the QR code for his website. Interestingly enough QArt is by another well known Cox.

</comment><comment><USER4> I only wish QR codes could catch on in the near future like they have in Japan today. Fantastic stuff nevertheless.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain in what form they have cought on in Japan? Because my experience so far is that they're only really good for things like train tickets, and pretty annoying in any other context.</comment></comment>


Ancient Humans Lived in China 2.1M Years Ago - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/early-humans-left-africa-250000-years-earlier-than-thought/564896/?single_page=true <comment><USER2> I legitimately believe it is wholly possible semi-advanced civilizations have come and gone from Earth and we've yet to find trace of them.

Without modern medicine an infectious disease could cripple a civilization to the point of becoming barbaric again, look at the Great Plague... 30-60% reduction in European populations in FOUR years, now imagine something similar happening in a moist tropical environment. Or even look at the Corrupted Blood Incident [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident) which shows (in a game though) how quickly infection could spread if you have a means of rapid travel. A civilization that lacked motorization but was an advanced sea-fairing society, again in a tropical region, could spread a disease at frightening pace.

When we find evidence like this it just reinforces my opinion that past civilizations were incredibly possible, even at a level advancement of up to the 16th or 17th century.

Look at the Islamic Golden Age, they were basically scienctists and explorers that worked on collecting all the world's knowledge and even churning out their own discoveries in philosophy, mathematics, natural sciences, medicine, engineering, then BAM! They went from this incredibly knowledgeable society to simple shepherds and the like within a century in places. Imagine if you tossed in a highly contagious outbreak in there...

Neat stuff.</comment>


WYSIWYG any webpage bookmarklet - <AUTHOR>

javascript:(function(){document.designMode = document.designMode === "on"? "off":"on"})();
Toggles between edit/non-edit mode.
This is good for quick iterating on wording while developing or responding to feedback. Also good for tripping people out with news headlines that have their name inserted into them. <comment><USER2> There is an alternate syntax that I'm not recalling at the moment; I used to have a bookmarklet at hand for it before I had to rebuild. I seem to recall that it was a bit more robust. Also, you don't want to reverse the selection in the ternary operator, as the value may read as... undefined, or empty string (I forget which) until it has been set to "on" (or actually set, to "off").

Really, what I wanted to mention is that this is a super-quick way to do a simple spell check against a live page. Flip on edit mode, and look for the squiggly underlines.</comment>


Ask HN: How to create a simple chat app in android using Google app engine? - <AUTHOR> Please is there a tutorial I can follow in order to create an app with chat features using Google app engine or any good alternative? <comment><USER2> Language?

<comment><AUTHOR> java or python , I know also the basis of php.

<comment><USER2> Dont use PHP for that ;) Python is always a good language for Networking (Java too, but Python is cuter)

This SO answer should have some directions for you: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30604192/creating-a- real...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30604192/creating-a-real-time- chat-with-python-and-websocket)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the answer, I can use this solution with Google app engine right? I really hate php I try to don't use it at all ! I really don't know if XMPP that is built in google app engine can help us create a chat app or no.

<comment><USER2> Afaik you could just use the Python implementation. That means you build your bot to a prototype and then look what wrappers you need for GWT. At first try to make your bot, deploying to google should be simple then (in Python at elast)

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand but really the problem is how I can integrate this webapp with my android app for example in : Google app engine and android=> I can use google endpoints to get data.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What exactly is DevOps? - <AUTHOR>

Curious as I've been seeing the title more recently <comment><USER2> It's essentially a mindset where the developers are also the operations staff and the operations staff are also the developers. This avoids the classical "throw it over the wall" mentality by making the developers live with the pain of their system (if you write shit, you get paged, etc.).

I'd check the wikipedia for more information: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DevOps></comment>


Web App Tutorial: Amazon EC2 Deployment with Boto - <AUTHOR> http://engineerwithoutacause.com/amazon-ec2-deployment-with-boto.html <comment><USER2> Depending on what you do, this could be not ideal:

        sudo('curl -O http://pypi.python.org/packages/source/p/pip/pip-1.0.tar.gz')

What happens when pypi is down? It may be rare, but it does happen.

There are many ways to approach this problem. Explicit deployment is one, others may be creating new hosts from a prepared snapshot, registering to puppet-master/chef-server/..., auto-configuration from init script, etc. The described way works though and it's a pretty good description.

</comment><comment><USER3> If you're using Chef Server, this is (almost) as easy as 'knife ec2 server create --run-list 'role[my_app]'

(ATTN Puppet Labs: You should seriously consider moving the equivalent functionality from your enterprise to your open source product)

</comment><comment><USER4> If your site is mostly static and can use just S3 for hosting check out Cactus I made for easy building and deployment.

<https://github.com/koenbok/Cactus></comment>


Are crowds really all that wise? - <AUTHOR> http://nonbovine-ruminations.blogspot.com/2009/08/are-crowds-really-all-that-wise.html <comment><USER2> You might try actually reading Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds". Once you get past all the hype and glosses on the book, and the book's introduction, you will find that the "wisdom" of crowds is restricted and only functions under particular conditions that rarely hold in the real world. But when they do hold "crowds" actually do function well.

Wikipedia does not satisfy those conditions. It seems to be mostly accurate for non-controversial technical information, but I wouldn't trust it much on anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> Probably not. Herd behaviour is not necessarily wise, mostly to the contrary. Buffett wasn't successful because he followed the crowd but the opposite.The "madness of crowds" is well documented. Wisdom of crowds? No thanks.</comment>


How to use Oracle JDK bundled tools to solve Java OutOfMemoryError - <AUTHOR> http://plumbr.eu/blog/solving-outofmemoryerror-jdk-tools

<comment> guard-of-terra I fail to see how it's interesting to general HN population, but if you insist: you better replace jhat with Eclipse's memory analysis tool.

jhat is a wonderful tool that introduced me to memory analysis, but it fails on large memory dumps and has long initialization times.

Anyway, memory analysis is a wonderful thing which I'll surely lack if I'd move into C/C++ or dynamic languages (non-JVM hosted). It makes you deeply understand your program's memory consumption.</comment>


Show HN: Golang Authentication Service: allows setup authentication in minutes - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/maximthomas/gortas <comment><AUTHOR> Hello hackers, I've just developed API-based authentication service. So, you can easily set up authentication and user registration against MongoDB or LDAP. I have plans to support PostgreSQL, 2FA, and authentication confirmation via a mobile app. Any feedback appreciated! Thanks!</comment>


AMD: what went wrong? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/372859/amd-what-went-wrong <comment><USER2> "In a bid to win new custom, AMD offered HP a million free chips – but it was only able to accept 160,000 because of its agreement with Intel."

Couldn't they reduce the price of their chips instead of giving them for free (and in very large quantities) to large corporations? I would be happy to buy a Bulldozer for half the prize, but at current prices i will choose an i7 hands down (hell, the fx-8150 is beaten to death even by the i5-2500k) .</comment>


Japanese Wine Meets Big Data - <AUTHOR> https://www.nippon.com/en/features/c04602/ <comment><USER2> This article is really a stretch to say Japanese wine is using big data. These environmental sensors have been available for a very long time and are no where near the cutting edge of precision winegrowing. Things like hue measurements and sap flow sensors in individual vines are much more advanced techniques for monitoring vineyards with the goal of increasing the quality potential.

</comment><comment><USER3> The _e-Kakashi_ system has a really unfortunate name if you happen to speak some French and Chinese. Unfortunately, if you are a winemaker you are quite likely to speak some basic French, at least, and the fastest growing wine consuming market in the world is China. This could be a true classic ass-in- mouth for the international marketing coursebooks.

<comment><USER4> Good point, but we're fine, people dealing with wine got past 5th grade hopefully.

(we had the same point on saying "bit", it was the funny to no end when I was a middle schooler and we got over it)

<comment><USER5> What's so funny about "bit"? The Urban Dictionary provides "short for bitch" \- is that it? (Non native speaker here.)

<comment><USER6> "bit" in French means "dick" (though the spelling is slightly different, being "bite"). Then again "god" is a shorthand for "godemichet" which means "dildo" (spelling again being slightly different: "gode").

<comment><USER7> And of course, _30 Rock_ demonstrates this in the episode where the characters brainstorm names for a pocket-sized microwave. Everyone agrees that "BiteNuker" is the perfect name... until somebody points out that it's vulgar in both French and Dutch.

For reference, _neuker_ is Dutch for "fucker".

(and of course, this episode teaches us a valuable lesson for marketing people in real life too... just ask the people who named the Mitsubishi Pajero, Honda Fit, and Buick LaCrosse)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Meet the hexaflexagon. It's about to blow your mind. - <AUTHOR> http://io9.com/5947852/this-is-a-hexaflexagon-its-about-to-blow-your-mind

<comment><USER2> Cool! I still have a 24-faced hexaflexagon I made in high school (we're talking 1974). I used onionskin paper, and drew the triangle pattern on it with an HP plotter attached to an HP 9830 programmable desktop calculator. (Drawing it by hand with a ruler didn't provide the requisite level of accuracy for such a high-order flexagon.)

</comment><comment><USER3> sometimes youtube is overkill -- here is a gif that explains their construction: [http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xgYi2-n1mgY/TButo7cH1kI/AAAAAAAAES...](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_xgYi2-n1mgY/TButo7cH1kI/AAAAAAAAESY/mqzLIzbhtp8/s1600/9.png)</comment>


Treesheets finally became open source - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/aardappel/treesheets

<comment><USER2> Is it common for a lot of the source code live in header files? E.g. [https://github.com/aardappel/treesheets/blob/master/src/cell...](https://github.com/aardappel/treesheets/blob/master/src/cell.h) I'm not being sarcastic, just curious if this is normally done these days.

<comment><USER3> It's not common. This is the inspiration: [http://strlen.com/java-style- classes-in-c](http://strlen.com/java-style-classes-in-c)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for that, good read.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I hope it'll boost the development of this awesome tool. Android port anyone?</comment>


SketchUp Goes Subscription-Only - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sketchup.com/home/same-sketchup-you-love-a-new-way-to-buy <comment><USER2> It is really hard to read through all that marketing nonsense. Not sure if I should cry or burst out in tears from laughing.

In any case I can't stand all that false statements. Let's take this one for example:

> Subscription demands constant improvement of our product and enables us to > make $Product better for you — faster.

In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe. Or maybe CAD/BIM products, like Revit from Autodesk. The only thing that was new in this years version was slanted walls (!). Something competitors have for ~20 years already.

So for me subscription basically is equivalent with the opposite. As soon companies decided to switch from the possibility to let me buy their software, as in "I own this thing and I can use it indefinitely." to "rent" their software, progress came to a grinding halt most times.

The reason why this doesn't work like in the PR statement above is the way things work in real life. First you lock them customers in: all their files are now in your proprietary format. The presumption from above is, that you won't renew you subscription when you don't like the new yearly version – but then you can no longer access your files you need, since you do business! So cancelling of subscriptions basically never happens, turning your company into a gold mine.

Yearly realases are bad btw and nobody likes them. Except shareholdes maybe.

<comment><USER3> > In fact, the opposite is the case! Just look at Adobe.

Well from some points of view, they're right - I had an Adobe CC subscription for a little while, and after six months of no improvements, I abandoned Adobe products entirely.

<comment><USER4> > after six months of no improvements

Historical Adobe releases were years apart but you're unhappy with a couple of months because it's a subscription? I can't follow this logic.

Below history is just Photoshop, and if anything it looks like change velocity has increased since it became subscription-based.

[https://adobe.fandom.com/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_histor...](https://adobe.fandom.com/wiki/Adobe_Photoshop_release_history)

<comment><USER5> > Historical Adobe releases were years apart

Because they were new versions and they had to sell you on the upgrade.

Presumably one of the advantages of subscriptions is they can make ongoing improvements regularly as opposed to big releases. They release updates now, they just don't have many new features.

<comment><USER6> Blender costs nothing and is used extensively throughout the digital media industry.

Presumably the advantages of a subscription is to cater to the meme "free == fascism".

<comment><USER4> Blender is great. I use it myself (3D resin printing). But I've also used similar software I had to pay for, which was _much_ better than Blender overall. Same way Photoshop is better than Gimp, and Windows UI is still better than Gnome/KDE. Sometimes to get great software and experience, you have to pay for it. And that's ok, it doesn't make the free software, like Blender, any less eff'ing awesome.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think all these companies rely on /captive audiences/. ie people who have invested in their product already, and they can somehow "up sell" them the subscribtion for a while and it sounds like a GREAT plan.

However, any 'new' customer will not let themselves be trapped. It's happening with Adobe Photoshop and stuff, where they've been skinning their customer base for years, but quite frankly who would _now_ as a new potiential customer decide to shackle themselves to that? I know quite a few people who will use inferior tools JUST so they don't have to hook up to Adobe blood-suck.

Say Adobe Lightroom. Super product, but updates started to slow down and slow down and WOW now look it's all ONLINE baby for a price. I bought all updates until LR6, but now I know it's a lot cheaper to archive my machine with LR6 in a corner and use it for my photo edit than switching to the 'super value online thingy' for $$$/year. I don't use it that much to want that, and next time I want to use it, it actually might be incompatible with /whatever is in my chain of hardware/ anyway.

I'm sad to say Sketchup is doing this, if they had a $100 upgrade price every year or so, I'd pay happily -- however here's lies the other main problem: these companies don't WANT to invest in R&D enough to have a 'valid' reason to have a new major version every 12-18 months, they actually think people will just keep paying.

Well guess what, perhaps some people will, but no NEW people will. In the case of sketchup, whatever the marketing blurbs have spattered about, NOTHING IS NEW for like 10 years, I mean, they try to add 'hooks' here and there, but the main program is exactly the same, same bugs for that long. I suspect the devs who know how to do matrix multiplication have long left after google dumped the product, and they are now left with a handful of webheads.

Do I want to pay for that?

Hmm wait until I clean the coffee off the front my t-shirt.

<comment><USER8> I'm still on Lightroom 5, I bought it years ago and that's where all my photos live. If I'd been forced into a subscription the total cost would have been many multiples of what I paid. I don't rent my camera for years on end- why would I rent the software that organizes all my photos?

<comment><USER9> I agree and there are pieces of software I've only purchased once and have used for decades. But that also creates a bit of an incentive not to worry to much about quality. After all, selling you a fixed progress bar in the next version gives people an incentive to upgrade.

Its really to bad, that paying for software isn't more about rewarding good behavior.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As one who has used SketchUp for many years (because it was free for Makers), and even bought a pro licence at one point, I can say with confidence that this product is NOT worth more than $25/yr. It's riddled with bugs and the resultant models are extremely unreliable in terms of precision. Even with Pro, you need to buy a ton of plugins to do things you would think would be pretty standard for a Pro license like rendering, animation, pipes from lines, etc (there isn't really a decent animation plugin either that isn't buggy).

This is for making quick rough concept models only. For any serious engineering or 3D printing, I recommend Blender, Autodesk Inventor, or Solidworks.

Do not waste your money on SkethUp. You will waste a lot of time working around bugs and you will need to buy extra pluggins to do basic tasks, many of which are barely supported by their owners (there are exceptions). It's a product that had great potential, but has simply devolved.

<comment><USER11> Onshape is made by former SW devs and is incredible. If you're used to professional CAD you'll feel right at home. Here's a stool I made (no login required): [https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3a4dd47b03e073e4d7848163/w...](https://cad.onshape.com/documents/3a4dd47b03e073e4d7848163/w/4f496fb0c629a412ccfa5798/e/aca72e289f2c6252dc7c010a)

<comment><USER10> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I guess for businesses the whole annual pricing is fine, if not preferred, but I wonder how many of these companies are killing any possibility of non- businesses buying their software. Maybe that's ok with them and they have some internal calculation that those people cost them more than they are worth.

I hate subscriptions, for a lot of the reason others have said (ex. getting locked into a piece of software that holds my data hostage), but I got a few others. Its been a royal pain in the butt to have a bunch of subscriptions during this time. I have a lot more outgoing cash and living closer to the paycheck since others need the savings. Companies are just lazy about subscription scheduling.

It must be paid on the first day of the month or a fixed day. For the most part, people pay rent on the first. I wonder how many creators on Paetron would make more money if the timing could be changed.

Let's say you have a product that is used by seniors in the USA. You might want to seriously consider doing a bit of work an allowing them to schedule to pay you on the third Wednesday of the month or the Thursday following the third Wednesday of the month.

The common refrain is that you shouldn't be buying product X if this is a problem for you. Well, maybe, but dips like this are a pain and not getting into a situation where accidents happen would be nice. Accidents resulting from a bank fee is just a pain.

The other problem is now you are a Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Utility, and Rent competitor. There is a big difference between a one-time purchase and signing up for a continuing cost along with all the others.

</comment><comment><USER13> For many people its likely that just learning some Blender is a good choice these days -

[https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=using+blender+2...](https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=using+blender+2.8+like+sketchup&page=&utm_source=opensearch)

Being able to work in 3d is like a superpower that is just laying there waiting for you :)

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm so tired of this bullshit. Fuck proprietary formats and fuck proprietary software.

The _only_ reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual access to software that you rely on is for you to own a copy of the source for that software.

We can have additional conversations about open source licenses and funding, but if you don't have the source, you will eventually be fucked.

<comment> ur-whale > The only reliable, long-term way to guarantee that you'll have perpetual > access to software

Wholeheartedly agree, but it's worse than that: it's not perpetual access to the software that matters, but perpetual access to your own damn work.

Anything you create with proprietary tools is on a guaranteed path to bitrot and not being readable at some point int the near future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So they are going from 700$ for perpetual license to 300$ per year subscription. How on earth are they framing it as a net benefit for their customers?

<comment><USER16> Probably the quality of their product will increase because they will not have the pressure to engage the yearly upgrade circus, adding dubious features just to justify upgrading and competing with themselves.

Also they will be more likely to stay in business due to the recurring business so you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because their demand dries up.

Subscription aligns objectives. They want your continued business and you want that a product that does something you need is not abandoned when you reach a point where upgrades do more harm than good.

<comment><USER15> > _you will not have to fear a mature yet useful product going away because > their demand dries up._

Now you have to fear it much more. With perpetual licenses, you never lose access to your work and your files. Maybe you have to keep a computer working with current version of Windows, because the software does not work with the next one. But you can continue using the software, well, in perpetuity. Many people are still using the last non-subscription version of Lightroom, Photoshop, etc. Some people are still using Lotus Agenda and WordPerfect.

In contrast, with subscription software, if the company does not do well and goes out of business, or does moderately well and gets acquhired, or if for any reason loses interest in continuing providing the software, you get an email about their incredible journey and how proud they are and oh yeah, the service will stop working in 20 days and your files and years of work locked in a proprietary format will become inaccessible.

<comment><USER16> Hopefully you will not have to reinstall your perpetual license application when the vendor activation server is long gone.

Since the long term survival chances of businesses based on permanent licenses are a lot lower, then your odds will be better with freeware, open source or pirated software.

<comment><USER15> Wouldn't virtual machines solve that issue?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> SketchUp died the day it was bought, I mean, it's awesome for its purpose and I've been using it for +12 years, but it lost the magical essence from when it was owned and made really great by Google.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is of course driven by the desire to have predictable and steady revenue. It's easier to plan and resource, but I would also say it's easier to coast for a mature product. If you need to push a release to generate a revenue influx, you would be more motivated to deliver. However, in the case of a mature product each feature will probably have diminishing returns. For the user this makes the incentive to skip an upgrade tempting, so locking them into a sub model while there's still leverage is a strategy.

</comment><comment><USER19> I've been using the free SketchUp (now SketchupMake) for many years, and it seems that no longer exists. I think it's been replaced with a new web-only free version. I found it to be pretty nice for simple woodworking and home projects, with a rather intuitive interface. My use was so casual and infrequent that I never really considered the paid version.

Is there a good alternative (free or reasonably priced paid) for very simple and casual 3D modeling?

<comment><USER20> Tinkercad is free. It's even simpler than sketchup. Might be what you're looking for. [https://tinkercad.com/](https://tinkercad.com/)

<comment><USER21> TinkerCad is owned by AutoDesk. So I would not be surprised if it ends up in a similar situation as Sketchup. If you want a totally free product that is also open source - your 2 options are

1\. Freecad [https://www.freecadweb.org/](https://www.freecadweb.org/)

2\. Blender [https://www.blender.org/](https://www.blender.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Serious question. Why would I learn Sketchup when I can invest the same time in learning Blender [1] and get much higher ROI?

[1]: [https://www.blender.org/](https://www.blender.org/)

</comment><comment><USER23> This is annoying. I recently got a 3D printer that actually works (as opposed to one that requires endless tinkering) and I've been using SketchUp a lot lately.

Just today I encountered an issue with some bad mesh and I was thinking "you know, I like this product, I might just give them money, at least I'll get a perpetual license out of it".

This makes me reconsider that. I really think JetBrains went the right route here for their subscription/license and I was excited to see Trimble follow in their footsteps, until now.

And also this marketing copy is just a giant slap in the face. Give me the numbers!

<comment><USER24> In my experience, Sketchup consistently produces poor STL meshes. The only solutions I've found are to import the meshes into Blender and repair them manually, or redesign the project in a different CAD program. (I've settled on Solvespace for my personal use.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I didn't realize the Trimble GPS company made 3D modeling software. I am in the market for some since I got a 3D printer to go beyond TinkerCad, hopefully less overwhelming than Blender.

Subscription pricing is an absolute deal-breaker as far as I am concerned, so I am glad to learn this so I can avoid SketchUp. I have largely switched over from Adobe CS to Affinity (only Lightroom remains tricky to migrate from, even though I've done 4 DAM migrations before).

</comment><comment><USER26> > You can subscribe for a year, skip a year, renew every year — it's up to > you. Whatever you choose, you'll always have the latest version with the > newest features

They may want to rework those sentences to be less absurdist. Those lines are more akin to "Cancel your subscription? - we'll still always give you the latest version! All bits must go!!"

</comment><comment><USER27> Anyone know of any alternatives for Architectural Modeling? Preferably in the same price range with MacOS compatibility.

<comment><USER28> I don't do architectural modeling, I build furniture, but check out bricscad.[https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/](https://www.bricsys.com/en-intl/) I describe it to people as if AutoCAD and Sketchup had a baby. I bought it because it was a reasonable priced CAD with linux support, but it has gotten really amazing in the last few releases.

They even released a stripped down free version with a more sketchup like interface called BricsCAD shape.

<comment><USER27> Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, it looks more like an alternative to AutoCAD than Sketchup. It's only a side gig so it's not critical at the moment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> ur-whale My prediction: there will very soon be exactly two buckets for Desktop apps:

1) open-source 2) subscription

</comment><comment><USER29> First software ate the world. Then capitalism ate software, as it degenerated into rent-seeking.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent- seeking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking)

</comment><comment><USER30> Is anyone aware analyses of how this affects a company, their employees, their products? I find it very difficult to reason about value with subscription services, especially when the costs are even more divorced from labor than normal.

<comment><USER31> Subscription software is just a way to fleece gullible people, most software before mass internet penetration allowed stealing software (I refuse to call software as a subscription a rational thing for 99% of software).

Is just a way for companies to sell you the same shit repackaged with only minimal effort. You don't seem to grasp the fundamental principle of a corporation is to give you the LEAST possible service for the highest possible price. AKA it's fuck you I got mine.

99% of the time Software as a service preys on gullible people and flaws in your psychology you aren't aware of. Best to stay away.

Piracy actually put pressure on companies to innovate because you could get the complete version for free there was some incentive to improve the product to make it better than the pirate version, as strange as that sounds. Piracy is actually good for competition because most people are honest, if that wasn't the case Microsoft, EA, Valve, etc couldn't have become rich pre- internet where it was trivially easy to pirate everything by just copying the files.

Modern DRM is literally holding files hostage using the internet as a dongle and using encryption.

So no software as a service preys on gullible people to sell you last years with minor tweaks at inflated prices.

<comment><USER5> > fundamental principle of a corporation is to give you the LEAST possible > service for the highest possible price.

And as a consumer you want to get as many goods as possible for as little price as possible.

<comment><USER30> This is why I have 18 smart cars in my driveway.

<comment><USER5> Maximizing total number of goods is not the same as maximizing goods per dollar spent. You want 1 smart car, and you want to pay as little for it as they will let you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mistakes You Apparently Just Have to Make Yourself - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mcfunley/mistakes-you-apparently-just-have-to-make-yourself-cc2dd2bfc25c <comment><USER2> "like a straight jacket that you can wear to stop hitting yourself."

The best tag line ever...</comment>


Open Source Android SSH client sends your keys to Google - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/connectbot/connectbot/issues/146 <comment><USER2> I don't see this as a ConnectBot-specific issue. Instead, it'd be nice if I had the choice of where to send my Android system backups, along with the ability to specify a key. Please note that I said 'choice', so that if one didn't really care who had their data, it could operate as it does now and default to Google's storage.

</comment><comment><USER3> It would be nice if Google made adb backup more robust and offered an OFFLINE DESKTOP backup tool for ALL apps.

That's something I enjoyed on the iPhone using iTunes (well now you can't backup apps anymore because of app thinning). Connecting a device, then waiting on the magic cloud to finish restoring and not knowing which apps and what data will even get restored is just moronic.

It's not a coincidence that the most popular app on the Play Store since ages which uses root is Titanium Backup.

<comment><USER4> > OFFLINE DESKTOP backup tool for ALL apps

That would be soo unfashionable, like you know, that ancient Palm devices. Oh, and Google could not read all of your data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Both VXConnectBot and ConnectBot appear to be abandoned / unmaintained.

<comment><USER6> I don't believe this is true, ConnectBot has commits to master as recently as 21 days ago; it is just that development is slow and stable releases aren't coming out very often.

<comment><USER5> Right, sorry. VXConnectBot hasn't been updated for quite some time.

Either way, the lack of response on this issue in particular is a bit of a worry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> the excessively excited "omg how could you even be discussing this??" is a bit offputting

Isn't there APIs for safely storing passwords outside of config data?

<comment><USER8>
         the excessively excited "omg how could you even be discussing this??" is a bit offputting

I wrote that sentence minus the omg part, but I don't think I meant what you think I meant-- The "how could you even be discussing this" wasn't dismissive-- I meant this is TOO important an issue to leave to discussion-- that action by Google (namely extending the API so the user could opt-out of auto-backup) was needed, and that until that happened, Connectbot should shut it off. Unfortunately, neither occurred.

          Isn't there APIs for safely storing passwords outside of config data?

There are means of storing data that avoid the auto-backup to Google Drive, but unless they happened to have been done already (such as saving to the /cache directory, which isn't auto-backed up) it would typically require additional work, such as manifest changes by the Developer to opt specific directories in/out of the auto-backup.

This is not just a Connectbot-specific thing. It's my understanding that ALL apps that target Marshmallow or Nougat (that is, the current and last version of Android, API 23 and 24) will automatically get this 25MB backup "service". The end user can't opt out per app either, only system-wide.

Incidentally, Connectbot does explicitly enable the backup agent.

[https://github.com/connectbot/connectbot/blob/master/app/src...](https://github.com/connectbot/connectbot/blob/master/app/src/main/AndroidManifest.xml#L38-L39) & 190/191

          "The automatic backup feature preserves the data your app creates on a user device by uploading it to the user's Google Drive account and encrypting it."

For me at least, I don't want my private SSH keys and server info sent to Google, even if it's encrypted once/after it gets there. (and before someone says "use a good passphrase".. yeah, okay.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know if the FDroid version has a similar issue?</comment>


The Only Thing You Need To Do To Be Great At Networking (w Infographic) - <AUTHOR> http://blog.assetmap.com/2011/01/networking/the-only-thing-you-need-to-do-to-be-great-at-networking/ <comment><USER2> Link to infograph: [http://blog.assetmap.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/01/Secretof...](http://blog.assetmap.com/wp- content/uploads/2011/01/SecretofNetworking.png)

</comment><comment><USER3> Actually it's even simpler than that.

Express _interest_

That's all you need. Go up to a person and say Hi. Then express genuine interest in what they have to say, or at least fake it well enough.

Then don't make the mistake I usually make, _don't stop being interested_. Everything a deep and long-lasting networking connection is, is the fact you actively kept in touch.

Yes, we're engineers, no this isn't easy. But you just have to do it.

/me should really start making a habit of keeping in touch

<comment><USER4> When someone I've never met seems overly interested in me for no particularly obvious reason I'm suspicious.

<comment><USER3> I meant more along the lines of actually listening to what they're saying and responding in a proper manner.

Rather than the usual "Ahuh, ok great, here's what I do and what my startup is _talks for 10+ minutes without stopping_ "

I think you could also say it as "Be friendly"</comment></comment></comment>


Talk: Building High-Quality JavaScript Tools - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL37ZVnwpeshFmAPr65sU2O5WMs7_CGjs_&v=PvabBs_utr8 <comment><AUTHOR> This is a talk from the maintainer of Jest, a JS testing library. The Jest was rebuilt into a thriving open-source community-driven project with a multi- person core team which is always improving.

I'm a huge fan. It's one of my favourite JS tools.</comment>