How can families afford children? - <AUTHOR> http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/03/can-families-afford-children.html <comment><USER3> "Jobs for women are higher-paying and more satisfying than ever before, and that raises the opportunity cost of having large families"

This is not true. Depending on the wife for income prevents her from focusing on having a large family. Without the assistance of a grandparent or some expensive nanny, this tends to limit the number of children in the family to 2 or 3.

Also, women working has driven the price of houses up, so it's difficult to get by with one working parent now. Women have less of a choice to work now, and more of an obligation.

This doubling of eligible workers also drives down the salary of everyone, making men pull in less money, further forcing women to work whether they want to or not.

Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them around.

<comment><USER4> "Not to mention how expensive large vans/suvs are to actually drive them around. "

Just driving is pretty expensive. Not owning a car saves loads. Unfortunately, it usually takes a lot of money to live somewhere that doesn't require one.

Also worth noting - my wife would be at home with the kid right now (I have a much higher income) except she has substantial student debt, so off to work she goes. This means paying for creche too.

We couldn't afford creche fees for two kids, and she can't afford not to work due to aforementioned debt.

Also we had a kid because we were approaching mid thirties and it was a now or never thing, but it would have been nice to get a home big enough for two kids (a 3 bed apartment, or a bigger 2 bedroom apartment, would suffice) but the numbers don't add up.

<comment><USER3> If you drive down my friend's neighborhood in North Virginia, you see house after house of moms with law-degrees, math degrees, engineering degrees, most with Masters, who said "fuck working" after 5-10 years and decided to become stay-at-home. All with substantial student debt that they didn't work long enough to justify.

The number of women who WANT to work is a lot lower than everyone wants to admit. And when they see the option to leave the working world, many of them take it. So much education that just gets wasted when they realize that having a career is not nearly as fulfilling as they have been led to believe.

If I won the lottery tomorrow, my first thought would be "sweet, we can afford a third kid!"

<comment><USER5> Why do you assume they are full filled now or that they decision to stay at home was not pragmatical? Or not sacrifice for what they believe is best for children?

Some are fullfilled, some are not.

<comment><USER6> He/she is saying that this is the case for most women. Most women like to lead more balanced lives, and a part of that is getting an education, then working for some time, traveling, then taking care of the kids and yet more traveling. Most men like to work for most of their lives.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> compiler-guy The standards we expect for childrearing are also dramatically higher today than ever before.

Previous generations just sent the kids off to play after school, without much attention; they expected kids to be 100% on their own after highschool (and even before); and on and on.

Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the US), this makes it comparatively more expensive to raise children now than in years past.

<comment><USER7> 'Today we expect far more parent involvement than ever before (at least in the US)...'

True also in the UK. As a kid, the normal after-school routine was to walk home, get changed and play out until it was dark. All achieved with minimal contact with parents.

Now kids seem to have very little independent time and this, in my opinion, is/will be very much to their detriment in later life.

<comment><USER8> Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children to the authorities? This has been a disturbing trend[1] in the US that makes it harder to provide kids with independent time, particularly when the person responding to the complaint is guaranteed to be heavily armed.

1: I say trend, though it's probably much less than 1% of the population, but kids are seen by more than 100 adults in a week, and the nosier adults self- select for being more likely to be looking for kids doing something wrong.

<comment><USER7> 'Is there a trend in the UK of nosy neighbors reporting unsupervised children to the authorities?'

I'm not sure it's so common but I wouldn't be surprised if it happens from time to time. I guess it depends what time of day and how far away from home they are?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Globally, the main thing is that married families have transitioned from small farm cooperatives (where the husband works the fields and the wife in the house) to market-based work for both of them. The problem with market based work is that it's usually incompatible with keeping one eye on small children, unlike the household chores of a farm. Also, kids are pure burdens until they can join the market themselves, whereas farm kids could help collect eggs and feed chickens starting pretty young.

In America at least the cost disease of education, housing, and healthcare all make it worse, but the first part is the primary culprit. And I'm not sure there's any fix for it besides long parental leaves and subsidized childcare.

<comment><USER10> As somebody who collected eggs and fed pigs at a very young age, it would have been much faster and more efficient for Dad to do it himself. :)

<comment><USER9> Buddy, may I introduce you to the concept of comparative advantage? :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> It used to be that having a large number of children was more important to your family's survival. Childhood mortality was higher, and children often contributed to the family business. My dad was one of 11 born to a farming family, and the kids were expected to help operate the farm.

I happen to know a bunch of large families (7+ kids), and I think the common thread among them is:

* The choice to be open to more children into the family, whether by birth, adoption, or fostering, is not primarily because they perceived themselves to have extra free time or extra resources, but because they had more love to give. Which is not to say that families who have fewer are less loving, or that material circumstances don't factor into the decision. But it seems like the families I know recognized that they could parent more children, and give them all sufficient love and care, and that was the motivating factor.

* They tend not to have highly scheduled, highly involved kids -- and the kids turn out just fine.

* There are increased costs as the number of children increases. But having, say, six children does not cost twice as much as having three.

<comment><USER12> I have 5 kids. As you say, there are a lot of things we don't do. There are not individual sports that we rush one kid to and then another for different kid. Often we pick full family activities, like swimming (or swim team) where 2-3 kids can all participate together, and the other kids can still have fun. We also don't live in a high cost-of-living area, so housing costs are [somewhat] low. Also child care, we made the decision early on that my wife would stay home with the kids. She couldn't earn enough for us to afford child care anyway. So this was the cheaper option. That also affords her more time to work on food prep as well, so we don't eat out much at all.

<comment><USER13> Curious why you wanted 5 kids. Seems like a large number these days.

<comment><USER14> I'm not the OP that you were asking, but I do want to chime in.

My wife and I make a pretty good team. Even the most tense arguments eventually get resolved with a laugh.

We have three boys, we're probably going to have a fourth. We feel we have a lot of love to give. And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward act of gratitude. My parents did it for me. If I can give a few children life and send them out into the world with a good grounding, my life is a win.

<comment><USER15> > And giving someone life is the ultimate pay-it-forward act of gratitude

Also likely the worst thing you can do for the environment

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There is another way to look at children, which is from the societal level.

New humans are still the most important inputs to human society. As societies become more specialized and productive, the powers and burdens of new humans go up. Thus, richer societies need fewer people, but each person needs to be more specialized and capable. And inversely, a society that is not producing new humans who are more specialized and capable, is a society that will have trouble advancing.

Evaluating public policy from this perspective produces some different conclusions than the more traditional family-oriented perspective which is often used to look at policies related to children.

Policies that empower women professionally and reproductively mean that only women who affirmatively choose to have children will have them--increasing the chance that they will have the means and will to invest heavily in each child.

And policies that give each child the chance to maximize their potential can be seen as long-term investments, not handouts.

Conversely, policies that permit or force children to develop sub-optimally are wastes that should be eliminated. Today many societies promote policies that encourage procreation (no access to sex education or contraception, incentives for more kids), but don't invest in children (no early childhood education, bad primary and secondary education, poor health care, poor food programs, etc.).

If someone bought a car but refused to pay for gas and oil changes, you would probably say they are making some damn bad decisions. Either maintain the car, or if you can't afford to do that, don't get one until you can.

Traditionally, the analogous kid blame game has fallen on the parents themselves. But parents are part of a larger society, and ultimately, given an ~80 year life span, will only manage about 25% of a new human life. Society will manage the other 75%, but in a lot of ways, our thinking about policy has not caught up to that reality.

<comment><USER17> I'm not going to disagree with your overall thesis, but there is something I find oppressive about the idea that society manages 75% of your life, rather than managing your own life during adulthood.

<comment><USER16> Yeah, the word "manage" is not great because of the supervisory overtones, which have oppressive connotations.

What I mean in more words is the process by which we create the logistics we need to thrive (food, clothing, shelter, power, comms, currency, etc), combined with the incentives to produce the society we want to live in (physical safety, freedom of expression, opportunity for work and love, etc.).

It's hard to talk about this without judgmental overtones. But essentially what I mean is, picture your best life--how do we make that possible for each and every person? It won't happen by accident. And it's to everyone's benefit it we can make it more likely.

And when that doesn't happen--when people don't have the skills to find work, when they commit crime, when they fall to addiction, when they're mentally or physically ill, etc... at that point we do sort of "take them under management." They go on unemployment or disability, they go under medical and mental care, they go into prison. Those are direct costs we all pay, and probably even greater is the opportunity cost of that human life. (And not just from a strictly economic perspective, but also art, emotion, love, etc.)

But people become part of society when they're born. And a lot of what makes each person who they are, is set during childhood. Letting a person go without investment for 20 years, then paying direct costs to manage them if it doesn't work out, doesn't seem smart to me.

If you take any life and trace it back to the beginning, early management is in the family. But there is a lot that society can do to help that process be more successful. And I would argue it's in all of our benefits.

And again, to make it clear, I'm not talking about authoritarianism. In modern democracies, in an ideal sense, we should be managing ourselves. To some extent we're discovering the society we want as we go along, so our management system need to be adaptable, and that's what democracy should give us. I'm advocating for certain policy choices we can make democratically--give women more power of their lives and reproduction. Invest fully in the health and education of all children. Provide support to families so that they can do a better job of raising their kids. Etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This is re. India, but might also apply to other developing countries - <USER2> school is not an option. Because the public school system is so abysmal, it is used mostly by the very poor who have no other choice. Sending your kids to private schools is a fundamental aspiration, one that is realized even with single mothers who work as maids / domestic help.

This point along puts a huge cost on having children, even for people below or just around the poverty line. When sex was the only recreation option available with no known birth control methods, lots of kids was the norm. That has changed now, though. People at all levels of society know that raising a child with an semblance of upward mobility is expensive, and logarithmically so - the good private schools are 10X more expensive than the regular ones, with the international schools going to 100X.

Breaking the norms is difficult, but it looks like the country is already tending towards a voluntary one child policy, at least for any parents that hope their children will live better than they did.

</comment><comment><USER19> The article focuses on very utilitarian ways of thinking of a family, which is a sad way to look at kids.

I know lots of large families - many who are extremely poor - who are the happiest people I know. The difference being that they've made their family their source of joy, and don't look somewhere else to find fulfillment.

I'm writing this in case someone reads this article and thinks "well, the math doesn't support having children, so I won't". There's a _lot_ more to kids than financial calculation.

<comment><USER13> I can only imagine that those couples with a lot of children find happiness in having many. It's not that large families make people the happiest. Just want to clarify in case some depressed person thinks they will cure their depression with many, many kids.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Maybe the Norwegian model/Canadian model is a good example (not that it's increasing fertility, but it's improving affordability). We have:

\- Subsidized daycare

\- Subsidized education

\- 1.5 year maternity leave

\- Subsidies for families with children under a certain income bracket

It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more children (just under 2 is the average)

<comment><USER20> > It's affordable, but couples in western countries don't really want more > children (just under 2 is the average)

I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for their newborn ranging from things related to feeding/sleeping/playing. And that's not including the highest expenses, namely shelter/transportation/food. I thought to myself, my goodness how did we ever raise children in previous millennia? Anecdotally it feels like it's becoming more and more expensive to have children. I'm fairly well-off myself, and I would probably be fine with just one child, if any.

<comment><USER21> > I was looking at how many contraceptions and items my friends bought for > their newborn

"Contraceptions" for a newborn seems a bit...premature.

<comment><USER22> Clearly meant to be "contraptions".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article claims a lot of things and assumes many more.

I think "affording" children has never been the primary goal of folks having children. Most folks aren't all that good at predicting what it will cost to raise a child or three. Some costs aren't as much with multiple children (used clothing, for example, or sharing rooms makes housing more affordable). Others are higher, such as child care and food costs. Some things are improved if one parent stays home. I think the main thing that drives folks to have smaller or larger families is desire to do so rather than costs themselves. Oddly enough, education can help as well, if you are in a country that thinks it needs more or less children in total.

I find it appalling that it is socially unacceptable in many places for the man to stay home while the woman works. If my immigration status didn't depend on my husband working and we were at all keen on having children at all, I'd work while he stayed home with children.

I'm not sure jobs are any more satisfying, as it is a difficult thing to compare. Many parts of the world simply didn't allow women the same sort of opportunities as men 100 or 150 years ago. Some didn't 40-50 years ago. I got turned down for a job 20 years ago because "females just couldn't do the work required".

We also don't actually need large families any longer, not like we did in the past. Between better infant mortality rates, better survival of giving birth, and birth control, and the financial reasons given earlier, it really isn't as necessary. It's OK to do, but it should be a choice. I think society should have laws allowing maternity and paternity leave and time to tend to the children. This should include a parent staying home... at least until the child is in school and/or mature enough to spend some time alone. In so many places, this is missing.

There are opportunity costs if someone has multiple children, though. What chances does a woman have to be CEO if she also wants 5 children in a 10-year time frame? If she takes the proper time off for both her pregnancy and infant care, it becomes difficult. This can be worked around with strong paternal leave policies: After all, once a woman is healed enough to do her job, she doesn't need to be the one staying at home. It also puts the opportunity costs on both sexes.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than women do, which explains a lot of why men work more after having children than women do. Plus, women obviously invest more in having children than men do.

<comment><USER21> > There's some evidence that when women start to out-earn their husbands they > divorce at higher rates. Whether biological or social (and probably a bit of > both), there is an expectation that men contribute more financially than > women do

Alternatively, women who aren't financially dependent on men don't put up with as much in terms of negative situations within marriage. If that's the reason, there's no pressure unless your intent is to keep a wife through material dependence.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's probably part of it, but they aren't mutually exclusive. The difference in wages between spouses is small anyways (but men usually earn more), so I don't think the marginal increase in a woman's income changes her ability to provide for herself all that much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Demographic decline seems almost inevitable given our economic system, sans immigration.

I'm a parent in SF. The cost of housing and availability of quality care (day care, nanny), and schools are definitely factors among the parent community here in deciding not to have more children. Many of the parents I know are doing well financially (they must be to be raising kids in SF), so I get to see the non-financial reasons for smaller families. One that's pretty important: quality of life. The opportunity cost of having children is about much more than money.

The options for doing things you enjoy are hugely greater today than in the past. Fancy restaurants, sports events, cruises, gaming, live music, Netflix, social media. World travel. Rewarding work. You name it. The world has become much better and better at providing things that people enjoy spending their time and money on.

Having children not only reduces the money you have to enjoy these things, it puts a huge damper on your time, and _freedom_ to do so. Sure, you could go to that cool new restaurant with your young children. But it's a completely different experience than going without them -- so much so that it veers into negative utility.

For some people enjoying family life and kids is more valuable than all of the other stuff combined. But as the world gets better and better at giving people alternatives to spend their time/money/freedom on that they enjoy, having more children will become less and less attractive for more and more people.

Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of their birthrates: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ageing_of_Europe).

<comment><USER21> > Policies will only do so much to reverse this. Many European countries have > much more family oriented policies than the US, yet look at the reality of > their birthrates

That's not paradoxical; strong social support networks have been known for a long time to produce reduced birthrates; the usual explanation for which is that it is because a significant reason people have children is as a form of do-it-yourself social insurance, especially for old-age support.

Overall, "its too expensive to have kids" isn't the reason the US birthrate is lower than the past; if it was, birthrates would be higher in the upper income segments and lower among the poor, but it's exactly the opposite.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Affording kids is all about choices. My wife and I have 4 kids under 7, and she does not work. We lived in Seattle last year and moved to Dublin Ireland in August. We have zero debt, own a house in the states and rent in Ireland. We don't own cars in Ireland as they don't honor the US license and I don't want to do drivers ed again. Since moving here in August we went from zero in checking to an average daily balance of 10k last month; based only on my income here in Ireland of about 90k a year taxed at 42%. In that time we've paid for flights and trips for 6 to London ( we all got sick and had to ball none refundable lame), Barcelona ( 4 nights), Berlin ( 4 nights), London again ( booked 4 nights in May money already out of the account) and the big one back to the states this month @ 3k in tickets.

We don't eat out much, we don't owe anyone / pay interest, we don't spend money on things we don't need that don't a provide a good ROI. We'd rather walk around and explore a city then take a tour and pay to stand in line some where, we cut our own hair, shop at thrift stores or sales, Read we are frugal. Even in the states wife did not work. In the states our cars were paid for in cash, we had no credit card debit, and we built our own house with our own bare hands out of cash; it took 3+ years and we lived in a fifth wheel with 2-3 kids for part of it, but it was all paid for. We made the choices to have kids, and we worked out how to afford our choice and how to be happy.

Why four kids — We watched the intro to idiocracy a few too man times and decided we needed to have more vs fewer kids to combat Clevon. We'd have more kids but we hit 40 this year and that was our stop having kids cut off.

Spend 700$ a month on car payment, 500$ on month on eating out, 500$ a month on amazon, 2000$ on a house payment, buy alcohol and other vices for hundreds a month, ETC and shit adds up fast and you wonder how you can even afford yourself. Don't have a car payment, or house payment, eat out less, don't drink and smoke and the numbers are completely different. We have a huge rent payment in Ireland that was the biggest hit moving here. Going from paying property taxes to 2800 a month in rent hurt. But we rented a huge house and rent a room out for 600 a month; which helps off set costs. The house is walking distance to work, grocery, train, and kids school – the higher rent facilities the no care life style. We could live further out and pay half the rent but we would need 2 cars. We chose higher rent over cars.

</comment><comment><USER26> Actually, I recall reading or hearing somewhere that the negative correlation between income and number of kids mostly applies to consumerist societies, which is what much of the West has become. I can't find the source ATM, so if you know, please post.

</comment><comment><USER27> In the west, we need a lot more housing, roads, and trains. These could be doubled and it wouldn't be enough. We need a large government intervention on the scale of a Manhattan Project.</comment>


We need an injunction to keep Zuck from using FB data in 2020 run - <AUTHOR> http://noblackmirrorthanks.blogspot.com/2018/03/we-need-injunction-to-prevent-zuck-from.html <comment><USER2> Despite all his PR efforts, Zuck is still very non-charismatic and can't handle criticism well face to face.

Heh. Selling Zuck to the American people would be killer demo for computer aided propaganda. Everybody would be throwing money for FB to do it again in some other country.</comment>


Ask HN: What group budgeting app do you use? - <AUTHOR> I'm sharing a budget with my family and I'm looking for a simple app that me and my family members can collaborate and add expenses. <comment><USER2> YNAB. It works well, and they added in the ability to use Google accounts to log in. So I added my wife not by sharing the username/password, but by logging in on her computer once, and adding her Google account.

If you want simple, it is that. My only issue is the inability to have multiple currencies as my wife is from Argentina and I'd like to, more easily, track assets in both USD and ARS. Right now that requires a manual conversion (but the rate is unstable) or using two budgets (the approach I've used) which is tedious, but we don't do much with ARS so it's not a real hurdle.

<comment><USER3> I'm guessing that income and expenses are pretty separate between the currencies. So You could set up 2 budgets in Ynab, one for usd one for ars.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Me and my flatmates use SettleUp - [https://settleup.io/](https://settleup.io/)

Best thing is is that is simple to use while providing a lot of functionality if you want to get into it. If you want to get rid of ads it has a subscription model which I dislike, but the free version is really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER5> was using Buxfer, now transitioning to Splitwise. Splitwise seems to be nice app and overall ease and experience.</comment>


Show HN: HireHand Makes Hiring for Skilled Positions Easier - <AUTHOR> http://www.hirehand.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> The goal with HireHand is to help startups and small businesses hire people for skilled positions. It is difficult as a business owner to hire for jobs that you yourself are unfamiliar with the required skills. You search around and put all sorts of buzzwords in the job description, and you end up with a pile of resumes that have an equal amount of buzzwords and acronyms. Cut through that pile with HireHand. We can screen the candidates through phone interviews/online meetings and then present you with a much smaller pool of well qualified candidates. You are then able to concentrate on hiring a person that fits with your company and don't have to worry about whether the he or she has the skills to perform.

<comment><USER2> Is the screening process automated through some algorithm or it is manual? Just wondering because that is the toughest problem to crack.

<comment><AUTHOR> The screening process is manual. We are starting with a few specific skillsets (i.e. web development) and have screeners with matching skills. After the screeners have reviewed resumes and/or portfolios, they will conduct phone or video interviews to continue filtering out applicants that do not meet the required skills for the position.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> How is this better/different than using a recruiting service?

<comment><AUTHOR> HireHand is different is several ways. First, instead of taking the traditional recruiter compensation approach of a percentage of salary, HireHand charges a small fee based on the number of candidates we screen. It is in our best interest to find the best candidates so you will save time and money, and as a result we want you to use HireHand again and tell other business owners. We are also different in that we aren't stockpiling resumes to throw at 15 positions. You post the job and pass along applicants. We are able to charge much less than recruiters, because the first step of the hiring process is still your responsibility. However, HireHand's screeners have industry experience and specific skills to effectively identify which candidates match your needs.</comment></comment>


The Problem with Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.xconomy.com/boston/2013/01/17/the-problem-with-kickstarter/ <comment><USER3> Hardware is expensive. Plastic injection tooling, PCB fabrication, PCB assembly, component purchases, FCC and EU and UL testing and certifications. Something like Kickstarter makes it possible for an engineer, such as myself, who does not have $200K in the bank, to use the skills I use every day for large companies, and create something new in the world.

For somebody to suggest that the one endeavor that needs Kickstarter type pre- funding the most, be the one endeavor that should never be entitled to it, all because they're mad because their own attempt at funding was rejected, pisses me off.

Promoting some sort of system where I get money only after I'm ready to ship, leaves me scratching my head. If I have a warehouse full of product ready to ship, I can go get traditional purchase orders the old fashioned way. What problem would such a system be addressing?

<comment><USER4> A pledge to buy something can be converted into money. In traditional industries it's quite common to get bank loans against accounts receivable and/or outstanding purchase orders.

Without a history of delivering product, a bank won't give you a loan against pledges (aka PO's), but there certainly should be lots of people who would give you a loan or buy equity.

If you can say to a VC "I've got a million dollars worth of orders, I need $500K to build them", you've got a much stronger story when talking to VC's than most do.

<comment><USER5> You really think a bank would give loans against Kickstarter agreements to purchase something?

<comment><USER6> I think that's his point. A bank wouldn't do that if you did not have a history of delivering.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I would suggest respectfully engaging the Kickstarter folks in a discussion about your project. I had a hardware project rejected in the same manner, except I did not leave it at that. I engaged the KS staff, stated my case, qualifications, and had a general discussion about the project. A few days later they authorized it. In fact, I have more than one approved project in the pipeline. I have found them to be nothing but reasonable.

The project isn't up yet because my approach --having owned a hardware manufacturing business at one time-- is to have a fully engineered, DFM'd, production-ready product prior to launching the KS campaign.

I hate surprises. I've run into plenty of them in my design and manufacturing career. Things like sole-source components discontinued by the manufacturer a month before you go into production after THEY recommended we use that component and we spent eight months developing product using it.

Yes, hardware is different. That does not mean it is impossible.

<comment><USER8> How did you engage them? Do you know someone? When I got rejected I just got a form with a few characters to explain why I wasn't violating the rules (they did not say which rule I was violating).

<comment><USER7> I need to look through my email to reconstruct it. I'm in meetings most of the rest of the day. I'll try to get to it tonight.

<comment><USER7> OK, as best as I can tell I simply used the online form to state my case. I don't have any outgoing emails pleading my case, so it must have been an online submission. I do have an internal email address that I got after the fact but it would not be cool to post that here.

I'd suggest perhaps emailing firstname.lastname@example.com and respectfully stating your case. Remember, this ain't Google-bots, there are people just like you at the other end of that email. Talk to a person, not to a machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Kickstarter has taken a half-measure when it comes to hardware projects. It > should take a full measure—and remove hardware as a category.

Agreed. Hardware projects are too high-risk for a model like Kickstarter's, and it's difficult for crowdfunders to be fully informed about that risk when even the makers are often inexperienced.

Worse, they're all or nothing. If one of the major videogame projects runs out of funds, they can still release a beta version or even open source it. If someone is unable to finish a book, they can still send you the latest draft. When hardware projects fail, they probably can't ship anything.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is we like the selfstarter model. Backers don't get charged until the product is ready. And project creators are incentivised to use efficient techniques that get their product to market quickly.

There are flaws with this too, which I touched upon in the post. I think this is an opportunity.

<comment><USER10> s/Backers/"People who just pre-ordered something that doesn't exist yet"

I thought the whole point of Kickstarter was to "kickstart" your project with an infusion of cash allowing you to quit your job/outsource more work/whatever to get to market?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes - but it doesn't work for hardware. It leads to projects failing to deliver on their expectations. Failures hurt the Kickstarter brand. They know that. Which is why they're moving away from hardware.

The "kickstart" part is what's missing with the selfstarter approach. We're funded so we didn't have this problem.

Maybe a new model could be a hybrid of incubator and crowdfunding. You apply with an idea. The incubator provides some up-front capital to get you started. They have expertise in hardware mentoring. Logistics, manufacturing, customer support, IP, warranties etc.

The incubator could build a brand and network of supporters, but be purely focused on cultivating innovative consumer product ideas and getting them to market.

<comment><USER11> Hardware incubator sounds like a really good idea.

Many people are not interested in funding hardware projects at all - <USER2> just has a lousy reputation.

But having a hardware incubator means you concentrate expertise in all the stuff that's traditionally thought to be hard about hardware. Things like suppliers and distribution and stock control and sub-contracting etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I don't think it is a good idea that the backers are only charged when the product is ready to ship. After all, this is all about getting the resources so that you are able to ship. When the backers don't pay upfront, you don't have those resources. So to me it seems you are looking at Kickstarter as a distribution channel, not as a funding opportunity.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I believe there's an opening for a crowdfunding model focused purely on hardware startups. Perhaps some of you are already working on it.

App.net, Lockitron and most recently Lumawake helped kick this off, with selfstarter. We contributed some changes back to help push it along: <https://github.com/lockitron/selfstarter>

There are flaws with this approach (no third party payment verification, no established network of donors). Which leaves room for further improvement.

Kickstarter is clearly focused on creative (which they're doing incredibly well with). The 2012 Kickstarter summary didn't mention any of the massive hardware projects.

<comment><USER13> I'm curious, what made you go with Lockitron's model? We've been working very hard on our cf product - IgnitionDeck, and would love to get into your head about how/why you chose that over other solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Loved that article, it is an excellently crafted critique of Kickstarter (general interest) which is melded to a call to action for their rejected Kickstarter (Bytelight). So at one level it reads "Kickstarter rejected us, we're bummed we don't have all their eyeballs, we used the Lockitron example to try to fund our product design."

When I saw Kickstarter I had the same feeling I had about Ebay (although initially Ebay weathered its risk storm) which was given the larger audience for the product (Ebay occasional sales, Kickstarter small investment) you could get better results than the customer could on their own. And people abused EBay too (selling stolen or counterfeit goods, ripping off buyers when nothing was shipped).

Perhaps there is a 'Craigslist' model of funding referral service to achieve the wide reach but stay hands off enough to keep out of the lawsuits. Ebay's solution to monetizing that was both a listing fee and a selling fee, something Kickstarter could also do (assuming it isn't patented).

</comment><comment><USER15> Being rejected by Kickstarter doesn't make Kickstarter the problem.

<comment><USER16> Exactly. There are good points about the problem with kickstarter's hardware section, but when they keep pushing their own bytelight or whatever it sounds more like complaining cause they didn't get accepted. Comes off as, 'we didn't get accepted and we have a plan, so there must be a problem, and thus kickstarter should remove hardware projects entirely', as opposed to, 'based on the failure rates, kickstarter should reconsider if it needs to include hardware projects at all'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Can we talk about bytelight? What the heck does that thing do?

<comment><AUTHOR> Indoor positioning using LED lights. Our market is in enterprise (not the home).

We're using selfstarter to experiment if there's enough demand for individual developer/hacker kits. It's not economical for us to sell small orders unless they're batched together.

<comment><USER18> You've got a nice site but I think the product is not useful enough. You've got to install those bulbs and any enterprise I've been in uses fluorescent lights and not the classic fittings. I couldn't even use those in my home.

If you want a mobile device to locate itself indoors, why not use WiFi? Probably the entire place is flooded with access points already.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not correct to label this "The Problem with Kickstarter".

It's a rant about how complicated it is to finish hardware projects.

Kickstarter does movies (I didn't know that, I learned it here in the Kickstarter 2012 retrospective), lots of software, comics, publishing, etc.

So please rename to: "The problem with Kickstarter hardware projects" or something.

Kickstarter needs praise and applause because it is great and bringing joy to many backers and founders. Not criticism because one type of project have a 75% failure rate.

<comment><AUTHOR> Kickstarter has been responsible for funding Oscar nominations, museums, and countless creative projects. Their 2012 summary is full of stunning success stories.

The goal of this post is to kickoff a discussion about alternative crowdfunding models that work better for hardware startups. It's clear that Kickstarter is moving away from these and focusing on creative.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Velocity by Code Climate - <AUTHOR> https://codeclimate.com/velocity/ <comment><USER2> I like the UX, but too many metrics usually don't help for development teams. I have seen more false positives than true positives.</comment>


This Video Has X Views - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxV14h0kFs0 <comment><USER2> I was telling a friend recently about how there was this "golden age" when you could access all sorts of free APIs, and how I still long for this time.

I remember the public Netflix API, Twitter APIs and Flickr API with particular fondness. My personal site was a big mashup of all of my data.

I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for kicks.

My friend seemed very skeptical such a time ever existed.

<comment><USER3> > I also abused the hell out of Yahoo Pipes - I would run RSS feeds through > like 15 different languages with Babelfish before back to English, just for > kicks.

Yahoo Pipes was one of the greatest services I used, just when I started getting into programming. Maybe it was so cool because I was naive, but I really miss being able to pipe services together in the same way. Anyone know of any similar attempts that is open source + offers a hosted version with paid plans?

<comment><USER4> Not sure about open source and paid hosting, but there is node-red, [https://nodered.org/](https://nodered.org/), which is open source and easy to get started with. Combining stuff is something Zapier excels in, [https://zapier.com/](https://zapier.com/), and the free tier can suffice for some tasks (not open source). You could also try my attempt at a spiritual pipes successor, [https://www.pipes.digital/](https://www.pipes.digital/) (but it's also not open source). If there is something missing there to reproduce how you used Yahoo Pipes I'd definitely be interested in hearing from you, so I can restore it :)

<comment><USER3> So, the requirements of open-source + have entity with paid hosting are both equally important. First one to ensure I can continue using whatever I setup on the hosting, in case the entity behind it cannot. And the paid hosting is important because it gives better odds towards the service actually sticking around.

What I likes with Yahoo Pipes compared to NodeRED (at least as far as I looked at NodeRED, I might be wrong) is that Yahoo Pipes worked out-of-the-box with services out of the box. I seem to remember that you could use the Google Search API for example, with Yahoo Pipes and pipe that into other things. That's what Zapier does as well, but with less flexibility than NodeRED.

So I guess my dream would be something like the integrations provided by Zapier but with the UI and flexibility of NodeRED.

Haven't seen pipes.digital before, I'll take a look as it looks interesting, but for anything serious, open source is a hard requirement (gotta learn from the Yahoo Pipes history :) )

<comment> r-w I don't think those requirements will be met until people like us who miss it put our money where our mouth is ;)

<comment><USER3> I think people like us (at least me) miss a lot of things, some more important than others, and we have to carefully choose what we spend out time on :)

<comment><USER4> I'm about to open source it now. Which means I just did, but haven't announced it yet. [https://github.com/pipes-digital/pipes](https://github.com/pipes- digital/pipes) now contains a very new version you could run locally.

r-w is right though: More users paying for pipes would allow me to invest more time into it and have more requirements covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As the founder of one of the screen-scraping tools he alluded to in the video (Selenium), I just want to say the video has one of the best explanations for the difference between automating a process through a user interface vs an API. In the end, entropy always gets you, but you can push it off a little bit longer if there's an API.

<comment><USER6> Thank you for your work sir. I love Selenium.

<comment><USER5> It's a team effort! I'm more of a fan and advocate for the project these days.

<comment><USER7> Amazing work!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm reminded of this little gem: [https://hookrace.net/time.gif](https://hookrace.net/time.gif)

(Relevant post [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14996715))

But on the topic: is there actually a dearth of APIs "these days" vs peak Web-2.0, or have the major players just restricted theirs due to abuse, and thus it seems like the whole world of possibilities have veen restricted? One can easily find lists of public apis (e.g [https://github.com/n0shake/Public- APIs](https://github.com/n0shake/Public-APIs)), but perhaps the video was more about the facilitators, like Yahoo Pipes.

<comment><USER9> What the GitHub list doesn't show is the amount of APIs that require you to _enter a relationship with the API provider_.

APIs I can just point my script at to get data are fun and useful for mashups. APIs where I have to sign a contract with someone are only worth it in rare cases, or if I need them for a business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I really liked this video, it highlights that a lot of software we write is ephemeral and will one day either be retired or stop working.

The frequently updating title thing is cute, it'll be interesting to see what dies first - YouTube pulling the "title update API" or Tom's script running wherever he's put it

<comment><USER11> I can go find NES games and Gameboy games in my parents basement. If the NES worked I could play it or find a knock off on Amazon. Pretty sure I have a Doom floppy.

Kids these days will be lucky to remember their favorite mobile games. Let alone be able to play them.

Will they ever have an iOS or Android equivalent of ROMs?

<comment><USER12> > _Kids these days will be lucky to remember their favorite mobile games. Let > alone be able to play them._

I'm already feeling the pain of this. There was a game for iOS called GeoDefense (and a sister game, GeoDefense Swarm). To this day these were my favorite games on the phone. But iOS 10 ended support for one of them, then a later OS update bricked the other one.

The developer hasn't updated these games to work in new iOS, so they're lost to time.

If I had a time machine, I would go back and warn past-Me to reserve a 4S for just playing these games.

<comment><USER12> Sorry for self-reply , but hopefully someone out there can point me to some similar tower-defense games? Everything I see on the app store now is bloated with graphics or IAP and shitty gameplay. If you're familiar with the GeoDefense games[0], you know what I'm talking about.

[0] [http://www.criticalthoughtgames.com/geodefense.html](http://www.criticalthoughtgames.com/geodefense.html)

<comment><USER13> Mindustry and Infinitode are both lots of fun

<comment><USER14> +1 for Mindustry. Factorio with more tower defense emphasis. And FOSS!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _If it 's actually spot on, it's a miracle._

I got the counter and the title both showing 3,690,744 when I first opened the link - so how unlikely is this actually? Probably not really too unlikely. Or I got really lucky.

EDIT: Thinking about it, as YouTube probably updates the view count only every couple of seconds or minutes it might actually be spot on most of the time if the title gets updated at about the same frequency.

<comment><USER16> Same here. However I think that the way he is communicating information in this video is meant to capture your attention not just now, but when this video is visited months or years from now.

It will be very cool for viewers to stumble across this video when it doesn't work, effectively proving his point.

<comment><USER17> My guess is it's more likely some YouTube employees hacked around this as a show of "support" for YouTubers?

<comment><USER3> More likely they have a cache for the views with a longer expiration time set than the update interval of Scott's script.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This "open APIs" feeling where you can build and mash up all kinds of services together to build cool things is how writing apps on Ethereum feels right now. All of the data and functions of other people's contracts are on chain and available to you for use in whatever way you want to use it. It's very powerful and makes developing fun again for me.

As an example there is a project called Maker which produces a stablecoin called Dai which is pegged to $1. Another project called Compound took Dai and used it without asking anyone at Maker to create automatic loans where you can put in money and get interest automatically. A third project, Pool Together, started using Compound, again without asking, to pool everyone's funds together for a month and give the interest earned to one winner as a "no-loss lottery". I bet in a few months something will be built on top of Pool Together as well.

None of these teams needed to work together or ask permission. They just built cool things. An added bonus is that these projects can't be turned off by anyone which means Pool Together can trust that their app will work next year just fine, which isn't really something you can rely on in Web 2.0. It's a very exciting time for composability and neat experiments and I'm looking forward to what else will be built.

<comment><USER19> I guess one big difference is who is paying the fee. In an ethereum "app", the code stays dormant until a user interacts with it and pays a transaction fee.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, interaction with Ethereum APIs costs a little bit instead of being completely free, but that's what makes it sustainable, I think.

As a result Ethereum apps/platforms don't need to be centrally owned or become ad-supported and won't die when its maintainers vanish. This also serves to stop abuse like spam, which would become too expensive to perpetrate.

Free apps and APIs were a good way to bootstrap wide internet adoption, but I think users might now be comfortable paying fair nominal fees for interactions instead of dealing with free ad-filled, privacy-invading services.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Reminds me of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3742902) ("Show HN: This up votes itself") which I came across right after joining HN and really set the tone for what HN is really all about, for me. Thanks olalonde :)

<comment><USER21> > really set the tone for what HN is really all about, for me

Can't tell if you're referring to clever hacks or upvote farming, but I agree!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> The voice, oratorical flourishes, and narrative style really remind me of James Burke's Connections. "And that's why I chose to film this here..." Delightful!

<comment><USER23> You should watch his other videos. He often comes up as recommended for me. I think it's the accent and the cadence of his speech that is so appealing.

<comment><USER24> I don't know if it's accidental or learned but he's really nailed the speech style of typical BBC documentary programming. Either way, his videos are generally very good and entertaining

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> >If it's actually spot on, it's a miracle.

Not that it matters, but I think Tom may have gotten this wrong. If his code is invoked many times faster than google updates it's video count then the odds of seeing an exact match in the total is proportional to that difference.

Which, ironically, means it's using even more cycles than necessary to do his intentionally silly trick, further proving his point.

</comment><comment><USER26> Despite that the video starts with

 _" The title of this video won't be exactly right. [..] If it's actually a 100% spot on it's a miracle"_

the title _was_ exactly right when I saw it the first time. I even screenshotted it.

I also wondered if it would work on HN. Is there a limit on the number of times you can edit a title on HN? Obviously there isn't on Youtube, which I find quite surprising.

<comment><USER27> It's apparently very common to see it be exactly right. My guess is that YouTube is doing enough batch/cache/snapshot magic to view counts, and applying the scheme equally to the web UI and API, such that it's not actually necessary for the script to poll super-frequently.

<comment><USER28> Or, someone at youtube saw the video and thought it was cool.

Like how this video will always have 301 views: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> In the opening snapshot of his code when the video starts, Tom's referencing a URL to YouTube which takes you to, you guessed it, a Rick Roll. :)

<comment><USER30> This was brilliant, and being in the trending youtube list, a majority of viewers will never have found that.

<comment><USER29> I can't take credit, I found this same comment on Reddit. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Reminds me of the CGP Grey video that shows how much the video made in ads ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KW0eUrUiyxo))

</comment><comment><USER32> Speaking of the YouTube view count, Tom Scott also did a great explanation on distributed computing and eventual consistency: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY_2gElt3SA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RY_2gElt3SA) "Why Computers Can't Count Sometimes"

And here's a video from Computerphile about overflow: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0Rl6Ne5C8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vA0Rl6Ne5C8) "How Gangnam Style Broke YouTube"

</comment><comment><USER33> My twitter bot, @fiveobot[0], lives on, within a `screen` session on my VPS. Its time zone and geographical data are both at least 2years out of date, but I'd have to adapt new tools, or hook into APIs that will eventually fail to access up-to-date data. I made it for an audience of one, and I'm still amused by it, today.

[0] [https://github.com/jachee/fiveobot](https://github.com/jachee/fiveobot)

</comment><comment><USER34> [https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

</comment><comment><USER35> If anyone is curious, I took a crack at building out a bot that does this with Node.js and the YouTube Data API! ([https://github.com/stursby/this-video-has- x-views](https://github.com/stursby/this-video-has-x-views))

</comment><comment><USER36> Does anyone know of some reading material on "entropy will get us all" perspective? What does entropy mean in this sense?

<comment><USER27> If you're into sci-fi short stories, Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question" [1] is more or less _the_ story about this, although it's heavier on the twist ending aspect and lighter on the solving-the-problem-in-reality aspect.

[1] [https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html](https://www.multivax.com/last_question.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I love Tom Scott's videos. He does a fantastic job of explaining complex things in a simple way.

</comment><comment><USER38> I want to make an Instagram that will only ever have 42 followers ;)

<comment><USER3> Instagram has one of the least interesting APIs of all popular services, with basically just 2 GET endpoints or something. So if you do want to build this, you're gonna have to do a lot of reverse-engineering of the smartphone application. Probably a fun project on just it's own.

<comment><USER39> You could automate something in their m.instagram.com site with selenium :)

<comment><USER3> Guessing they are redirecting to instagram.com based on user-agent or something, because I end up on the lame read-only desktop website. Does m.instagram.com allow you to post content and everything the mobile app allows you to do?

<comment><USER39> Sorry for the late answer. I can post content from m.instagram.com if I change the user-agent as you mention, but this is quite easy to do with the browser default dev-tools, just press F12 and change the device to any mobile. I think the only thing it does not work is the stories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Web 2.0 was a big heart of love.

:(

</comment><comment><USER41> The title was exactly correct

</comment><comment><USER42> This would be noteworthy if the counter was included _in the video_ (like the similar video that shows its own URL [0]). But as it is, it's just the title that changes to match the number of views, so... not much to see here.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20452013](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20452013)

<comment><USER43> > This would be noteworthy if the counter was included in the video

Pretty sure that would be impossible, unless I am missing something.

<comment><USER44> Yeah unfortunately Youtube doesn't let you edit videos, which sucks for creators who want to fix minor mistakes after a video has gone viral.

You can, however, add and edit "cards" on top of the video.

On another note, it would be noteworthy if the title on Hacker News also included the counter.

<comment><USER44> Uh, why the downvote? Can HN institute a policy that a reply is required if you downvote?

<comment><USER45> You're just farming more downvotes by clearly being affected by them and then complaining about them.

If this is how you respond to pointless vote counts, I would avoid revisiting comments after you leave them for the sake of your mental health.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Slouch Stoppah - <AUTHOR> https://slouchstoppah.com <comment><USER2> Good habit formation can't hurt, but don't neglect the fundamentals. The thing that's pulling your shoulders forward is not some mental weakness on your part, it's an imbalance in muscle tightness and weakness, like a tent pole with regular guy wires on one side and yarn on the other. You need exercises to strengthen the lower traps like floor Y's and chest supported dumbbell row, plus face pulls and scapular wall slide.

[https://1h6wllf3f4qfut1832zlo21e-wpengine.netdna- ssl.com/wp-...](https://1h6wllf3f4qfut1832zlo21e-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp- content/uploads/upper-body-cross-syndrome.jpeg) (upper cross syndrome diagram)

[https://www.t-nation.com/training/top-priority-for-lower- tra...](https://www.t-nation.com/training/top-priority-for-lower-traps) (prone Y)

[https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19521507/chest- supported...](https://www.menshealth.com/fitness/a19521507/chest-supported- dumbbell-row/) (chest supported dumbbell row)

[https://www.t-nation.com/training/whats-your-weak- link](https://www.t-nation.com/training/whats-your-weak-link) (scapular wall slide)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've made this for myself to help me slouch less, so I thought it might be useful to others. It uses face-api.js to get the user's face, and then tries to guess when you're slouching by capturing the state when you are sitting upright, and then using position and face size in relation to the captured state. All processing is done client side and no data is being sent anywhere.

The code is open sourced and can be seen here [https://github.com/lnenad/slouch-stoppah](https://github.com/lnenad/slouch- stoppah)

</comment><comment><USER3> Daily Mysore yoga and a standing desk will also completely fix posture without needing constant reminders or cyborg devices, but require more effort. There are other great benefits though, such as weight loss, core strength, and pain reduction.

<comment><USER4> And foot destruction (or at least that was my experience and I had to give up the standing desk) YMMV

<comment><USER5> One needs to be smart with transitioning to standing while working. Just going into it blind isn't smart. Deskbound by Kelly Starett has a good protocol for transitioning.

<comment><USER6> How about for people with fallen arches? No length "transition period" can be expected to work out, if standing for hours just isn't in the cards for you, physiologically.

<comment><USER7> My feet are fairly flat and doing basic deadlifts helped move my posture from knees rolling in, toes gripping the floor to my feet resting along the edges of the foot, up to the ball of the foot and my knees straightening out. It helps the lower back and the strain in neck muscles too.

Standing desks are a significant change. I got a small amount of swollen ankles the first day of standing for hours. But it works now.

<comment><USER8> This is really interesting. Why dead lifts?

<comment><USER7> It was just an idea floating around the circles I used to visit. I knew it improved posture so I tried it. I was also having lower back issues and general excessive computer use problems. Works well enough.

Deadlifts miss the muscles in the shoulder that tighten up from too much mouse + kb. I haven't found an excersize for that, which is as effective as deadlifts. Pushing your arms back in a door frame, holding your elbows above shoulder height, helps roll back each shoulder and stretch a tight muscle that goes from the top of your shoulder to the front of your chest that gets tight when hunched over a kb. That works in the short term, but it doesn't give the effective feeling of strengthening those muscles in such a way that the problem recurs much more slowly, like deadlifts do for your legs/back/neck.

I've tried hanging from a pullup bar and that certainly helps reset the shoulders/neck/head tension, but it's not a fix in the same way gaining strength is a fix.

<comment><USER9> Anecdote: Indoor rock climbing fixed my back & shoulder pain from computer work completely, as well as keep my wrists strong for typing and guitar.

<comment><USER7> Nice!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> [https://medium.com/@nchelluri/you-deserve-a-pull-up- bar-84ec...](https://medium.com/@nchelluri/you-deserve-a-pull-up- bar-84ec9aabdeb3) is my alternative

<comment><USER2> One of the bullpens at my new job pitched in and got a pull-up stand! It brings people to visit and makes the place feel like we own it a little. That's a good selling point that it causes you to rotate your shoulder blades back and up. Hanging leg lifts can also be done and are also a much more effective ab exercise than situps (since it only takes 10 reps to get tired, and you can bring your knees closer or farther away to adjust the resistance).

<comment><USER11> We had one, until a bean counter had it removed over liability risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Very nice work! Thanks for sharing.

I can personally recommend Upright Pose, [https://www.uprightpose.com/en- try/](https://www.uprightpose.com/en-try/)

<comment><USER13> What benefits did you get from it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If your posture is so bad that you literally can't or don't know how to stand up straight, your hamstrings might be super tight. Mine were, anyway.

<comment><USER14> I too have bad posture and super tight hamstrings. Any tips of improving one or both of those things?

<comment><USER15> I've found strength training with bodyweight exercises to help immensely with both. I'm following the "recommended routine" from the /r/bodyweightfitness subreddit. [1]

On hamstring tightness: often when muscles are tight, it's due to a strength imbalance. Runners tend to get tight hamstrings because they work their quads a lot and the hamstrings don't keep up. So while it's a bit of an oversimplification to say that if certain muscles are chronically tight, you can fix that just by making them stronger, it's not too far off. For me it was really that simple: strengthening my hamstrings with hip hinges [2] made them noticeably less tight within about a month.

For posture it's basically the same idea. I always thought posture was like a force of will/discipline/habit thing until I finally felt how much easier it is to have that "discipline" after moderately strengthening my back, chest, core, and legs. Standing or sitting up straight is actually a lot of work for our bodies. And if it's basically the hardest thing you regularly subject the relevant muscles to, it's not too surprising that they will get tired out quickly. But if you start doing things that are much harder for each muscle group (like planks, push ups, rows, squats, hinges, etc.), then simply holding yourself up straight gets much easier.

1 - [https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/](https://www.reddit.com/r/bodyweightfitness/)

2 - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11I-ZWWNGDI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11I-ZWWNGDI)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I can't get the initial overlay to close (Chrome on iPhone). Neither the close button nor the X do anything.

</comment><comment><USER17> Love it, already started using it. I was thinking of making something similar; now I don't have to! Thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, since you wanted to make something similar if you have any suggestions feel free to let me know :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> "slouching" in the other direction is supposed to be good.

'[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6187080.stm)

</comment><comment><USER19> Started up my own version of this ~10 seconds before I saw this story. It's amazing how a simple program ("yell at the user if face position < threshold") is enough to quickly train some better habits.

</comment><comment><USER20> Very cool. My camera is capturing, but the button for "capture current position" is never enabled. What am I doing wrong here?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hmm sorry to hear that, can you maybe open the browser console and see if there are any errors?

<comment><USER20> Works just fine in FF, but also a bit of a hog on resources? I think it'd be better if it maybe just started/stopped capturing every N minutes or even just used photos instead of video? Presumably, you can do the same analysis with just a photo?

<comment><AUTHOR> I know it takes a lot you can increase the interval to reduce it. Good idea though, although starting and stopping of the camera can maybe be buggy/suspicious behavior. I'll definitely add it as an option.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Bostonian?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, why?

<comment><USER22> "Stoppah"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> There are also electronic posture training devices to help with this.

<comment><USER24> Can you recommend any?</comment></comment>


AI Dungeon 2 is available for Android - <AUTHOR> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aidungeon <comment><AUTHOR> iOS here: [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai- dungeon/id1491268416](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/ai-dungeon/id1491268416)

</comment><comment><USER2> It's not available at all, it's just a preregistration</comment>


US GPS Outage impacting multiple airlines - <AUTHOR> https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1424363 <comment><AUTHOR> More information (and links to the FAA's phone bridge) here:

[https://hackaday.com/2019/06/09/gps-and-ads-b-problems- cause...](https://hackaday.com/2019/06/09/gps-and-ads-b-problems-cause- cancelled-flights/)</comment>


Some pragmatic notes on CSS3 matrix3d transforms - <AUTHOR> http://9elements.com/html5demos/matrix3d/

<comment><USER2> The CSS 2D [1] and 3D [2] Transforms Modules specify that browsers should expose an implementation of the CSSMatrix interface; unfortunately, only WebKit does this at the moment. However, since that's also the only browser in which the CSS 3D Transforms Module is implemented, it doesn't really matter too much yet. WebKitCSSMatrix [3] provides most of the low-level code you'll want to generate 3D transforms, including the fundamental multiply and inverse methods, along with convenience methods for scaling, translating, rotating elements around the x, y and z axes and rotating around arbitrary (three- dimensional) vectors.

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-2d-transforms/>

[2] <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-3d-transforms/>

[3] [http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/Audi...](http://developer.apple.com/safari/library/documentation/AudioVideo/Reference/WebKitCSSMatrixClassReference/WebKitCSSMatrix/WebKitCSSMatrix.html)

<comment><USER3> The CSS 2D transforms are frustratingly crippled in my opinion. Instead of allowing the specification of a full 3x3 matrix for doing homogeneous coordinate transformations (and thus general perspective transforms), only a 2x3 matrix can be specified. I'm really glad they actually give access to the whole 4x4 matrix in the 3D version.

<comment><USER2> Yes, it's a big improvement. The WebKitCSSMatrix implementation is actually compatible with both specifications: it provides getters and setters for elements a-f as well as m11-m44, and serialises to "matrix(a, b, c, d, e, f)" if the matrix is affine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The 3d transforms in webkit are pretty neat. In fact, I played about with generating 3d transforms using data from Blender a while back ( <http://github.com/jamesu/csstransformexport/> ), with some success.

Still, needs more browser support.

<comment><USER5> Really interesting idea,

i wonder when a company will release canvas/css3 visual design tools comparable to flash. I seem to remember Steve Jobs mentioning in a keynote that Adobe should be building tools for this exact purpose.

I havent tried out your code, but it is definitely an interesting prospect

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know... You don't need to be a math god at all. It's basic linear alg. I guess lin alg isn't required in CS?

<comment><USER7> It's basic university math, yes. But very few people are currently taking basic linear algebra, so it's nice to have better documentation.

<comment><USER3> It'd be nice to have better docs, but it's not especially in scope for browser docs. Instead, someone should point to some good basic resources about linear algebra: matrix math, homogeneous coordinates, eigenvectors and eigenvalues, etc.

This particular blog post doesn't really say much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cool shit..

</comment><comment><USER9> thanks for sharing the info

</comment><comment><USER10> like the style of it ;)

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't think it's such a great thing that the freshmen linear transforms for 3d manipulation are finding their way into the top-most level of the web stack(Javascript + CSS)

These transforms are already built into the the lowest level in the video hardware and accessed directly through specialized drivers.

While the imaginative side of me wants nothing more than to see web designers go buckwild with 3d, the engineer side of me want to congratulate everyone on slowing down the web even more.

<comment><USER3> No, no, a thousand times no to your whole outlook here. If powerful general APIs are provided, people will build the (hopefully open source even) abstractions on top which wrap those up in cute, easy-to-read, easy-to-use bundles of functionality. JavaScript should have access to some real binary data type, should have some general APIs for doing fast math on those types, should have direct-ish access to APIs like cryptography and data compression, &c.

The reason that the web is built on a giant pile of hacky taped-together spaghetti (to mangle some metaphors) is that instead of providing access to real low-ish level features, every browser has had its own special set of half-baked high-level APIs and leaky abstractions.

So, for example, I hope that WebSocket stays as simple as possible, the way it is now (the way Ian Hickson argues for it to stay), instead of sprouting complex authentication, encryption, specialized compression, various multiplexing and tricky framing features, &c. &c. on top (as the Java community and the IETF mailing list on the subject keep bickering about).

The worst thing that can happen for the language and its community of developers is to continue to be treated as second-class novices who need our hands held and must be guided through APIs providing the precise features envisioned by some enlightened browser vendor. If instead we're treated like adults, there are plenty of really really smart JavaScript coders who will be happy to experiment with abstractions on top of the language and give the high-level website developers awesome tools, which can evolve and grow over time. We should be making it possible in the language John Resig to build jQuery and processing.js, rather than making it easy for Joe Random Developer to access some specific high level thing in as few lines as possible.</comment></comment>


Sometimes Kill -9 Isn't Enough - <AUTHOR> http://www.bravenewgeek.com/sometimes-kill-9-isnt-enough/ <comment><USER3> Was going to make a pun on the title "... because uninterruptable sleep is a bitch", but it doesn't talk about that.

Going back to the topic there are great points there. Remember discovering "tc qdisc" and playing with it. Really nice tool.

But another thing to learn perhaps, is to try to avoid the gray zone by going to either the "black zone" = dead, or "white zone" = working fine. That is, if a node/process/VM/disk start showing signs of failure above a threshold, something else should kill/disable it or restart it.

Think of it as trying to go to stable known states. "Machine is up, running, serving data, etc", "Machine is taken offline". If you can try to avoid in- between "gray states" \-- "Some processes are working, some are not", "swap is full and running out of memory, oomkiller is going to town, some some services kinda work" and so on. There are just too many degrees of freedom and it is hard to test against all of them. Obviously somethings like network issues cannot be fixed with a simple restart so those have to be tested.

<comment><USER4> I totally thought this was going to talk about non-interruptible process states. Like the dreaded D. D is for "your reboot will fail, hope you have ILO".

<comment><USER5> Oh man, I hate that.

I've dreamed of patching the kernel and writing two utilities - <USER2> (terminate without mercy) and uwep (unmount with extreme prejudice) that simply remove a process along with all threads, or destroy a mountpoint and drop all associated resources (all filehandles become closed, etc.). Lack of time has mostly stopped me from attempting it, and I'm quite sure it won't be at all trivial.

<comment><USER4> Yeah.. Not sure if the root cause was ever determined but at my previous job we had issues with Xen guests shutting down but the blkback device would go D and never quit. This would prevent the VM from starting because the LV was busy. lvm commands would freeze. And of course the system would end up needing a hard reboot because the lvm teardown scripts would not complete on shutdown due to the busy device. Good times :|

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Comcast" is pretty hilarious. [https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast](https://github.com/tylertreat/Comcast)

<comment><USER7> Note that OSX has an apple-provided Network Link Conditioner to configure bandwidth/delay/drop. Even better, it's built into iOS devices set up for development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you'd like to simulate network crappiness on OS X, you can use the Network Link Conditioner from Apple themselves: [http://nshipster.com/network-link- conditioner/](http://nshipster.com/network-link-conditioner/)

I was very impressed with its feature-set (for what it is). On our team, we use it to see how our iOS app will react to severe network problems (via testing in the simulator, mostly, though it's also available on iOS devices themselves as explained in the above article).

</comment><comment><USER9> This is the "I don't know how my network works, so let's throw a wrench into the works and see what happens, fix it, rinse, repeat" form of network and systems engineering. It's certainly useful at various points in tuning performance, but it doesn't replace actually designing your system to resist these problems to begin with.

Even if you introduce these network performance issues, the results are meaningless if you don't have instrumentation ready to capture metrics on the results throughout the network/systems. Everyone wants to write about what happened when they partitioned their network. But you notice how nobody writes about the netflows, the taps, the service monitors, the interface stats, the app performance stats, the query run times, host connection state stats, miscellaneous network error stats, transaction benchmark stats, and hundreds of other data sources that are required to analyze the resulting network congestion.

To me it's much more vital that I can correlate events to track down an issue in real-time. You will never be able to identify all possible failure types by making random things fail, but you can improve the process by which you identify a random problem and fix it quickly.

</comment><comment><USER10> kill -9, no more CPU time

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4)

</comment><comment><USER11> You have to be careful using iptables dropping rules on the OUTPUT tables, as this manifests itself ( at least on our systems ) as failed send socket calls (which are often retried by the application), rather than true packetloss. Netem tends to work as expected.

</comment><comment><USER12> This focuses mostly on simulating unreliabable networking. Is there a tool, perhaps some LD_PRELOAD wrapper, that can simulate unreliable everything? I'm talking memory errors, disks going away, fake high I/O load, etc?

I once wrote a library for python that injected itself into the main modules (os, sys, etc) and generated random failures all over the place. It worked very well for writing reliable applications, but it only worked for pure python code. I don't own the code, so I can't open source it unfortunately.

<comment><USER13> [http://cwrap.org/](http://cwrap.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I recognise those commands ...

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate- delayed-a...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/614795/simulate-delayed-and- dropped-packets-on-linux)

I am still trying to work out how I not knobble my DB connection when trying to simulate client errors on a single dev machine.

<comment><USER15> You can specify rules for a single port, I believe, using ipfw or equivalent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Brings back horrible memories of writing tc scripts to simulate VSAT and rural dsl back in the bad old days. We bundled them up on a Soekris box and called it the "DSLow" (as in DSL-oh) box.

</comment><comment><USER17> I find this article offensive ;)</comment>


Twitter Employees Receive Death Threats Likely from ISIS - <AUTHOR> http://thesurge.net/twitter-investigating-death-threats-towards-its-employees/

<comment><USER2> The fucking barbaric idiots don't realise that this will actually make twitter more likely to block them. Anyway, the US will soon bomb the crap out of ISIS and we won't need to worry about them until the next bunch of psychotic religious nutbars appear.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Sand" Francisco... Freudian slip?</comment>


The EPA Caused a Huge Toxic Spill Now Streaming Toward Lake Powell - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericmack/2015/08/09/the-epa-caused-a-huge-toxic-spill-now-streaming-toward-lake-powell/

<comment><USER2> I take issue with the way this article's title. From all the other places including say NPR they said this was caused from a mining operation.... I don't see how the EPA could have "Caused" this. Generally isn't it their job to protect the environment?

<comment><USER3> Quote from the article:

 _" A toxic plume of one million gallons of untreated wastewater accidentally released by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) workers from a closed mine upriver in Silverton, Colorado last Wednesday is to blame for the Animas' dramatically different hue from its normal color."_

So, EPA workers released the wastewater. It was an accident, so presumably the water wouldn't have been released if the EPA workers had done something differently (or not done anything at all). Thus, why is it inaccurate to say that the problem was caused by the EPA?

 _" Generally isn't it their job to protect the environment?"_

Yes, but that doesn't mean that they can't do harm to the environment when they screw up.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Got to wonder how this will effect the ongoing water shortage in the west.</comment>


What Explainable AI fails to explain (and how we fix that) - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/what-explainable-ai-fails-to-explain-and-how-we-fix-that-1e35e37bee07 <comment><AUTHOR> tl;dr We made models as accurate as neural networks and as interpretable as decision trees. This work focuses on image classification for computer vision. You can also find out more on our project page [http://nbdt.alvinwan.com](http://nbdt.alvinwan.com) or arxiv submission [https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00221](https://arxiv.org/abs/2004.00221)</comment>