What can a technologist do about climate change? - <AUTHOR> http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN - if you have similar resources, please comment and share.</comment>


How to Land an Autonomous Vehicle Job: Coursework - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/self-driving-cars/how-to-land-an-autonomous-vehicle-job-coursework-e7acc2bfe740 <comment><USER2> I took the AI for robots on Udacity, the Machine Learning at Coursera and the Control of mobile robots on Coursera. They are all very good in my opinion. Of those, I would start with the Machine Learning course. Not only is it an excellent course and has material found in the others, but if you are at all rusty on your Linear Algebra it will help with that, in addition to the programming of course all of these course make heavy use of linear algebra. The coursera course both use Matlab, the Udacity course uses Python.

Of the robotics course I would say the one on Courera is better in terms of the basics of a robot, like odometry, PID control, etc. The one on Udacity I found more informative in terms of higher level concepts like route planning and localization.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the reviews, that's quite helpful. I'm taking Andrew Ng's course again, and really enjoying it. I understood most of it the first time, but having linear algebra and calculus is a huge help this time around.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Excellent list! Can anyone with personal experience with these tell me which ones are most worthwhile?

Also I'd like to suggest cs231n over the udacity course for deep learning

</comment><comment><USER5> What are people's thoughts on the Udacity Machine Learning Nanodegree versus Coursera's Machine Learning?

ETA: Am flexible, but I'm particularly interested in strengthening my Linear Algebra, and prefer to use Python.</comment>


How a man accused of fraud uncovered the Stingray surveillance device - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/13/10758380/stingray-surveillance-device-daniel-rigmaiden-case <comment><USER2> I can't believe it's possible to waive your right to appeal. That seems unconscionable.

<comment><USER3> Also, every single day public defenders waive the right to a speedy trial on behalf of their clients before those people even know what is happening or what is being done.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=public+defenders+waive+right...](https://www.google.com/search?q=public+defenders+waive+right+to+speedy+trial)

You know, that pesky sixth amendment that was so important.

<comment><USER4> Because otherwise the client will be in jail before their lawyers know what's happening because the prosecution had all the time in the world to prepare their case before laying down charges, and overworked public defenders need time to build a case to defend an already built case?

<comment><USER3> The state often has near unlimited resources to prosecute a case, if given extended time they can come up with all sorts of things.

Speedy trials protect the defendant from rotting in jail without charge for years which is happening more and more now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So basically the journalist is amazed by the "weakness" of radio signal... which is it can be (either in reception or in emission) localized by triangulation ...

Wahou! A great re-discovery of how our two ears can localize the sound of anything.

(I will let people search by themselves a little bit on how a RADIO receptor can also be tracked with radio triangulation, emission is trivial. It implies you can create stingray detectors with a big enough budget... ouch)</comment>


Google Opensources Sawzall Language - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/p/szl

<comment><AUTHOR> For technically inclined, here is the link to the original paper by Rob Pike et al:

Title: Interpreting the Data: Parallel Analysis with Sawzall

Link: <http://labs.google.com/papers/sawzall-sciprog.pdf>

Lang spec: <http://szl.googlecode.com/svn/doc/sawzall-spec.html>

Movie (GIF) linked from paper showing how the distribution of requests to google.com around the world changed through the day on August 14, 2003 is at <http://labs.google.com/papers/sawzall-20030814.gif>

<comment><USER2> Rob Pike is behind this? He must be busy between this and Go.

<comment><USER3> Pike and Kernighan were also behind AMPL: THE language for large-scale mathematical programming and optimization. You don't hear much about it because it costs $6k per seat :-)</comment></comment></comment>


GoodRelations - The Web Ontology for E-Commerce - <AUTHOR> http://purl.org/goodrelations/

<comment><AUTHOR> Check out GoodRelations for E-Commerce on the Web of Linked Data!

Project Main Page: <http://purl.org/goodrelations/> Quickstart Guide for Developers: <http://bit.ly/quickstart4gr> Vocabulary Reference: <http://purl.org/goodrelations/v1> Developer's Wiki: <http://www.ebusiness- unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations> Examples: <http://bit.ly/cookbook4gr> Presentations: <http://bit.ly/grtalks> Videos: <http://bit.ly/grvideos>

<comment><USER2> know any large downloads of instance data?

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://www.ebusiness- unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations#Examples_i...](http://www.ebusiness- unibw.org/wiki/GoodRelations#Examples_in_the_Wild)</comment></comment></comment>


Stakeout: how the FBI tracked and busted a Chicago Anon - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2012/03/stakeout-how-the-fbi-tracked-and-busted-a-chicago-anon.ars?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+Featured+Content%29 <comment><USER3> These people were idiots:

       The document also claimed that more than $500,000 had
       been charged to credit cards and given to "charities
       and revolutionary organizations."

       Usernames and e-mail addresses were also released;
       people were exhorted to "use and abuse these password
       lists and credit card information to wreak unholy
       havoc upon the systems and personal e-mail accounts
       of these rich and powerful oppressors."

First, a lot of those credit cards belonged to ordinary people, not the "rich and powerful oppressors".

Second, when the credit card owners see the charges, they will dispute them. The credit card companies then will take the money back from the "charities and revolutionary organizations", and hit them with a $15-$30 chargeback fee per card.

<comment><USER4> To say that this guy was an idiot is an understatement.

He's better known to me and my online pals as "tylerknowsthis", a reference to Tyler Durden and his philosophy of destroying the capitalist system to "free the people." Say what you will about his ideals, his methods and actions are beyond retarded.

Here he is at Defcon in 2004 talking about how they need more "footsoldiers" to "fuck shit up in the streets" - to the point that Priest has to come on stage and denounce violent acts or acts that hurt people. <http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1269112265902193941> In general he defends the use of violence as the last act of a person who is desperate to defend freedoms for people who didn't ask to be helped. His website HackThisSite is a sort of propaganda and training tool used to entice young black hats to join his cause.

You can find a list of his previous run-ins with the law on his wikiepdia page: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeremy_Hammond> (My favorite is where he attacked a 70-year-old holocaust denier that was having dinner at a restaurant.... what productive direct action!)

He claims he steals his power, water and internet access and at times squats abandoned buildings and eats "freegan" so he isn't helping the capitalist system flourish. At the same time he kept a part-time computer programming job to make spare cash. So he can keep fighting the good fight against capitalism.

I think he may have still been on probation during the events of the Stratfor hack, so he may be royally fucked by the prosecution unless he too snitches - something he has repeatedly said is the worst thing any good hacktivist can do.

He's one of the longest-running jokes my online friends and I have. His rants against "the system" and hypocritical actions which seem to have little purpose serve to foster flame wars and is frequently banned when people get tired of his shit. He then comes back and threatens to "curbstomp" or "shiv" anyone who disliked or banned him. Basically, nobody but the LulzSec freaks like this guy.

Yet again the same people who try to get away with petty online crime get caught due to negligence, bragging and misplaced trust in other criminals. If only they'd learn that trusting a criminal is probably not a good idea they might not be arrested right now.

edit: In case anyone wants to verify this account (in a WikiLeaks-style full transparency way), here is a brief dump of a public chatroom on a public irc server of his comments. I don't have the entire log, just his comments. <http://pastebin.mozilla.org/?dl=1506078> <http://tinypaste.com/a104418f> (it's around 1.8MB)

<comment><USER5> I'm having a hard time with calling an obviously talented hacker an idiot just because you don't share his political ideology.

<comment><USER4> Whether or not he's talented is irrelevant. He's an idiot for the same reason the thread OP stated he's an idiot: their actions cause more damage to their supposedly good-natured charities than the victims they stole money from. Not to mention the braggadocio, carelessness, lack of regard for his fellow "footsoldiers", and the haphazard way he conducts his attacks (be they physical or virtual) as to not even be effective at achieving any real results.

You want to smash the state? You want to end the tyrrany of capitalism? You want "freedom" ? Running around the streets in bandannas disabling vehicles and "fucking shit up" ain't gonna get you there buddy. Neither is stealing money from the majority of the people who used a service as a better-filtered newswire in the name of some hokey idea that the "security state" needs to be brought down.

He's a bully and a closed-minded bigot and he's too radical to ever be able to introduce any real change other than making the police remove more of our rights in order to combat people like him. He's a terrorist. And an idiot.

But that's just my opinion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _On March 1, the agents obtained a court order allowing them to use a "pen register/trap and trace" device that could reveal only "addressing information" and not content. In other words, if it worked, agents could see what IP addresses Hammond was visiting, but they would see nothing else._

 _The FBI describes its device as a "wireless router monitoring device" that captures addressing and signaling information and transmits it wirelessly through the air to FBI agents watching the home. It was installed the same day and was soon showing agents what Hammond was up to online._

I'm curious about this device; it would have to be able to fully decrypt 802.11 frames just to be able to see the layer 3 IP information, so in theory it is able to see all of the traffic but the agents aren't allowed to look at (or use) anything beyond the IPs because that would be considered wiretapping. I have to imagine the guy arrested was technically competent enough to use WPA2 with a fairly strong non-dictionary-word key, yet this device was able to crack that key in a short enough amount of time for this sting operation.

<comment><USER7> It wasn't clear to me that it was a device that was wireless. They said it was installed.. they called it a wireless router monitoring device, which suggests wireless, but it seems more plausible that they would have installed something physical to listen in on the cable connection (or something else north of the router)... the 'wireless' bit being the transmission of data back to them?

<comment><USER8> SSL would have solved that.

I'm perturbed by the number of hackers getting taken down who blather on about their personal lives, use a VPN with no encryption and think it's safe, and _still_ manage to break into these rather large systems. Either they're skilled but reckless and cavalier, they're idiots and security everywhere is a joke, or both.

Not sure which of those scenarios is more disturbing. Either way, I suspect that, in the wake of these latest arrests, we'll see both better opsec from Anon, as well as an increased focus on security from those who are likely to be targets. In the meantime, I'll get 15 messages on my facebook wall saying, "see who's visited your profile!"

 _sigh_

<comment><USER9> He did use Tor, which encrypts everything up to the exit node, so I don't get your point.

The only thing they had was the Tor IPs, and SSL doesn't hide IPs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Huh -- it certainly appears that the FBI had some advanced notice of the Stratfor hack.

I'd be a little irritated if my credit card number was released while the FBI sat back and watched it happen. I'd be a lot more than irritated if I owned Stratfor, and the FBI sat back and watched some people hack my business. (Yes, Stratfor's security was awful. But it's still a crime.)

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm curious -- why isn't the FBI liable for this sort of thing? Surely there has to be some precedent here one way or the other.

<comment><USER11> Given that Sabu is widely regarded as the de facto leader of lulzsec I'm very curious about how the Stratfor attack was planned and undertaken. If, as seems likely, the FBI knew about it before it happened that seems pretty serious. More so, if Sabu originated the idea for the attack and evangelized it to the group that raises the issue of entrapment.

<comment><USER12> I don't know much about the attack, but the data seem to be 100% legit and really hacked from the Stratfor database.

My wild guess is that Sabu was not responsible for the idea, but was instructed by his FBI supervisors to just play along and help people with the attack to build up credibility. Meaning - the feds didn't modify the data at all, they probably just used the server to track down the IPs.

Anyway, the fact that Sabu was an informer is surprising to me, a lot. Especially when he was still posting tweets, accusing OTHERS of being informers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> One interesting thing from this was that the FBI couldn't trace him via the Tor network until they had his physical location. Good for Tor, glad to see they are still anonymous.

If I had been him, I'd have put Tor on top of a couple of vpses in some select countries around the world.

That being said, he was reckless and too ideological without considering he wouldn't be furthering his ideals. Its one thing to dump company secrets, its another to dump personal CCs.

Now if I was the FBI, I'd be trying to combine the successful methods of having undercover agents pose as terrorists with a hacker bent. Its the same sort of system, albeit purely digital.

<comment><USER14> "...the FBI couldn't trace him via the Tor network..."

I honestly think they already knew who he was from his comments - by reviewing Sabu's chat logs they found he had slipped up and identified himself.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, we have no data either way. Tor may be secure, or it may not.

Take-aways seem to be:

1\. IRC logs do not contain identifying info - unless you reveal youself

2\. IRC active / away status leaks information about your schedule

3\. Using multiple identities online works pretty well

4\. Trusting criminals = fail

5\. Committing federal crimes = fail

The FBI had a pretty solid case against him. By the time they were doing the IP sniffing and identifying Tor nodes, they already had the guy under 24/7 surveillance. It sounds like they were solidifying their case.

If this were hollywood, I bet he would have sensed the surveillance somehow - and tried to make a run for it. But it didn't sound like he had many friends who would have hidden him.

<comment><USER15> _IRC logs do not contain identifying info - unless you reveal youself_

You'd be surprised. I was about six years old when I realized I could tell who was walking upstairs by the sound of their footsteps.

I can identify code that my co-workers have written by their individual styles. And that's after conforming to our coding standard.

It's common knowledge that individual (prose) writing style can be as identifiable as a fingerprint.

In short, pretty much every action you take has the potential of adding to a list of identifying information about you. If your actions are watched long enough, you _will_ be identified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Perhaps the official FBI press release on the arrests provides a supplement to the Ars Technica story, showing what is based on independent reporting and what comes straight from the release:

[http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2012/six- hackers-i...](http://www.fbi.gov/newyork/press-releases/2012/six-hackers-in- the-united-states-and-abroad-charged-for-crimes-affecting-over-one-million- victims)

</comment><comment><USER17> Wait, how secure is IRC anyway? The article states that he trusted Sabu, but didn't he also trust the people who ran the IRC servers plus anybody able to sniff their traffic?

<comment><USER18> He connected to IRC via Tor overlay. I don't know what IRC network is Anonymous using, but even Freenode offers native Onion gateway to their network[1].

[1] <http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml>

<comment><USER17> Ok, scratch "anybody able to sniff their traffic" (assuming both sides use the native gateway.) This still leaves the IRC server itself as a potential vulnerability.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Everyone of these guys should have been seriously alarmed after that leaked document on Lulzsec/anonymous on pastebin in Jul 2011.

Apparently some of the names published were real (including Sabu's - <USER2> though under different nickname).. and he was arrested just month later. If someone in the group would recognize any known real name references, they should have immediately ceased their activities and went undercover, as they should have expected raids!

FBi loves turning caught people to informants to catch the others. It's been that way 10 years ago, when one caught member worked half a year helping to betray the whole warez group, and it seems to be all the same.. FBI is still too lame to advance without informants.

</comment><comment><USER20> What always confuses me about stories like these is that the guy is always doing it from his basement apartment. Surprise, you got caught. And if you're an exit node for tor, you're going to be under the microscope for something somebody else did.

And if you're hanging out on IRC a little too much, your linguistic fingerprint is probably strong enough to match up to something somewhere else on the Internet with your name on it.

If he really wanted to fight 'the man', he could have gotten a nice cushy job and donated what he made to EFF.

</comment><comment><USER21> So it would seem that the best defense is to tunnel all traffic from ones home to an IP in another country, if they are tapping a line and checking which IPs you're talking to.

<comment><USER9> The best defense is probably to not blabber to people who might identify you. That's how they got most of the clues, according to the story.

<comment><USER22> Exactly, this is the lesson to learn from this story. There is no sense in using Tor, VPN and other technology to obfuscate the trace of information if the information itself can identify you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> [http://www.infowars.com/bust-reveals-government-runs- hacking...](http://www.infowars.com/bust-reveals-government-runs-hacking- groups/)</comment>


Mobile Web Apps Still Have Some Major Hurdles - <AUTHOR> http://reefpoints.dockyard.com/2011/11/10/mobile-web-apps.html

<comment><USER2> _Closing the performance gap on jQuery Mobile is going to be a watershed moment for mobile web application development._

I've worked with jQuery Mobile and I need to disagree. jQuery Mobile doesn't add much to mobile web app development. It's just a UI toolkit that offers boilerplate styling and page navigation/transitions.

I'm not trying to take away from the usefulness of jQuery Mobile for some people, but it doesn't bring a lot of excitement to mobile web.

You touched on the real watershed event in mobile web development though --- which will be hardware accelerated WebGL and hardware accelerated CSS3 animations. When that happens, it'll be a whole new world for mobile web apps.

<comment><USER3> "jQuery Mobile doesn't add much to mobile web app development."

Hmm, I think you've glossed over the rather large set of browser quirks that the library addresses for you. Here are few choice examples off the top of my head:

1\. Touch and Click events: Different platforms and hardware will fire different events. The vmouse additions unify the two possible event sources to make handling easier for developers

2\. (push|replace)State: iOS 4.x and some desktop browsers have critical bugs in their implementations that are handled for you where possible.

3\. Orientation values on orientationchange events: Different browser implementations fire this event at different times relative to the actual screen size. It doesn't solve the timing issue but it does provide the right orientation value for use regardless.

If you're only implementing for iOS you might be right, but if you have a large set of target devices it does provide a lot of value.

[EDIT] I should point out that I agree completely with the article. I'm actually rather tired of people selling html5 as the end-all solution for mobile app development right now. There are a lot of hurdles yet to overcome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I agree with most of your points. The one thing I would add is that Apple and Google will continue to innovate on their OS so they are always a few steps a head of web apps. For example, once Siri is open to developers, voice interaction with apps will be something that continues to make a native iOS app better than a web app.

It'll be a cat and mouse game for years to come.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is an excellent point that I forgot to mention in the article. The native APIs will always be ahead of the mobile web APIs. The MediaCapture stuff is still just a working draft whereas that functionality has been around on native since day 1.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Native apps will have an advantage for a while still, but I think the direction we're heading with this technology is pretty obvious.

This is the same battle we had on the desk tops in the 90s.

This time I don't think it's going to take the web a decade to catch up. Hopefully.

I really think that HTML5/Javascript is going to replace most native apps on mobile. It's not going to happen tomorrow or next year... but four years? Three? It seems like that could be possible.

<comment><USER4> the question for people like us developing for mobile is what is best for our users today - and the answer is native (in most cases). and as you mention, it's probably the right answer for a few years to come.

note: there are a bunch of apps that I've come across that are just 4 views of static content and no interactive functionality. those should definitely stay html5/javascript.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly, for many use cases a mobile web application fits perfectly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've always liked the idea of PhoneGap, especially because it lowers the difficulty of native (C++) development significantly. But, it's a dangerous tool. I've seen far too many unambitious companies produce PhoneGap apps that are just a wrapped up version of their mobile site. Even simple things like offline (possible in HTML5 if the developers cared) don't get implemented.

<comment><AUTHOR> Offline mode is definitely something we're trying to be better with at DockYard. Backbone.js has made this much more easy. We can have the models persist to local storage or remote depending upon the state of the connection (which is easily determined with PhoneGap) Our background is working with web applications and working in offline mode is somewhat of a mind-warp right now. But a feature complete application should have it. You never want to lose data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I built a mobile site (<http://evocatus.com/m>) and lesson learned: JQuery Mobile while incredible easy to use is absolute performance crap.

I really really wish I used Sencha Touch.

<comment><AUTHOR> I started out with Sencha Touch. The performance is much better, but developing in Sencha Touch is a nightmare. Maybe if I was building the JOSN objects with CoffeeScript it would have made life easier. But tracking down the syntax errors for these super nested JSON objects is not something I recommend.

What I would like to see in jQueryMobile is a way to pre-enhance my multi-page applications. Then you can turn off dynamic page enhancements and everything should be fine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> i've been working recently on implementing "native" functionality on mobile web- scrollview, pull to refresh, native-style transitions, etc. jquery mobile falls disappointingly short in all these areas, and even others that it supposedly supports.

however, look at the google plus mobile site for a nearly flawless mobile experience. it's most certainly possible. to this end, i have a lot of faith in jquery mobile. if it is possible, they are one of the most qualified teams to deliver it.

that is of course, not to say that mobile web doesn't have it's hurdles.

<comment><USER3> Aside from the scrollview and transitions which are mostly a function of hardware acceleration or lack thereof, what other areas is the library falling short for you?

<comment><USER8> first i'd like to say i am perhaps being over critical, i think it's a fantastic library (framework). i just realize how intensely better it could be. my biggest pet peeve is that it is indeed a framework, not a library. i really wish they had taken a route similar to jquery ui- and not try to force so much on you. this is for another post though.... as far as your question goes:

i don't think it's true to say scrollview and transitions are a lack of hardware support. again, on my iphone 3gs and 4s the google+ app is flawless in both of these areas. jquery mobile is subpar. the scrollview is obviously forgivable since it is still experimental. for what it's worth, i still think it's a far superior choice to iscroll.

the first issue i'll bring up is their fixed header and footer support. i think it's a decent solution for the tools they have available, but i'd never use it myself with it's current behavior. i do realize this is probably a consequence of scrollview support though.

another problem they've yet to solve is url bars dropping down while navigation. i understand given the circumstances, this is a difficult problem to solve without going against jqm's principles.

i am also not particularly fond of how their active states trigger on scroll, this is obviously not desirable.

my argument is not that there is much that is missing from jquery mobile, like i said i have a lot of faith in the project. stuff like url bars, active states, and page transitions may only be the last 10%- but that last 10% is crucial for the final polish of a real release.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for your expanded response. Each of the items you've listed is important and all of your concerns are high on our priority list (I work on jqm full time for Adobe).

My original question was poorly formed. I only meant to imply that transition quality is mostly a function of hardware acceleratio. Scrolling isn't necessarily, though it can play a roll there through hacks like translate3d. Both the 3gs and 4s have hardware accelerated transforms, which is why transitions look so much better on an iPhone. Additionally if we could target _just_ the iPhone it would make our transitions nearly flawless, but getting them to work in as many places as possible makes this difficult.

Headers and footers are a pain point right now without a doubt, but there are specific reasons we don't use scrollviews (mostly due to the fact the returning false on touchstart in Android breaks inputs).

In any case, I'd just like to thank you again for taking the time to respond, and let you know that we are _acutely_ aware of all of these issues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Spine Mobile strives to give a native experience with web technologies (CoffeeScript, CommonJS, MVC & Spine). It's worth checking out if you're looking into jQuery Mobile: <http://spinejs.com/mobile>

(disclaimer - I'm the author)

<comment><USER10> Will check it out for sure. Your MVC framework rocks!

</comment></comment><comment> buff-a _Perhaps Adobe's announcement that they are abandoning Flash in favor of HTML5 for mobile will be seen as the turning point when mobile web application development begins to be a serious contender to native._

Adobe AIR works right now.

</comment><comment><USER11> I keep thinking of various Smalltalk implementations and how the non-native widgets and lack of hooks into the OS make it a hard sell. It seems like Web Apps are having quite a lot of the same issues.

</comment><comment><USER12> Native wins on the points in the post for sure. Native functionality, storage, and background processes are important but not always necessary.

I work in web development with most of my clients needing simple brochure sites with a small minority wanting a web application. From my experience I think that people really underestimate the power of a web app. Even my brochureware clients ask if they need a mobile app and there are tons more who are potentially flooding app stores with unnecessary app like that. My one web app client asked about a mobile app and I said he didn't need one. It's if all you want to do is CRUD it's not worth the time, money or energy. So yeah, the post is right but as usual, I worry about the people who read this who may believe they need a native app when really they need a few media queries.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wasn't discounting web apps, we believe and want to work towards this future. The point I was making is that mobile web apps won't completely replace native apps any time soon.

<comment><USER12> I know, and I totally agree. I honestly have no qualms with what you say. One point I wanted to make was just that inevitably there will be people who read this as something that endorses the idea that they personally need a native app even though that's just not anywhere in there. It's not your fault, its just something I notice. Tons of people come to me and say "I read this article about x and now I want x too" regardless of whether it makes sense or not.

<comment><AUTHOR> I sure hope not as we actually build mobile web apps :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best way to Tweet on behalf of a user - <AUTHOR>

I have a startup idea I'm working on which will make considerable use of Twitter.  At the moment, I'm trying to figure out the best way to post Tweets from my web application on behalf of a user when they perform a specific action.
These are the options:
* When the user performs the action, the application will display the content that will be Tweeted, allowing the user to edit it. When they click the 'Tweet' button the form will post back to my server which will send the Tweet using the Twitter API. This method will require read and write permissions for the application.
* The other option is to popup a pre-filled tweet form on Twitter using Twitter's "intent" functionality.
The first one seems cleaner from a user interaction POV and has the advantage that my application knows exactly what was Tweeted, however it does require write permissions for the application.
So what do you folk think?  Do you balk at authorising new, relatively unknown applications with read and write privileges on your Twitter account? Or do you feel that the ability to unauthorize an application if it misbehaves is enough?
Should an app offer clear assurances that it will be respectful of your Twitter account as part of the sign up process? <comment><USER2> I would definitely tell the user beforehand exactly what they can expect, whichever way you go. To be honest, I still appreciate seeing "we will never sell or use your email for any purposes than login information" (or the likes,) on sites.</comment>


World debt clock - <AUTHOR> http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html

<comment><USER2> Why doesn't anyone ever show the other side of the balance sheet? Who is holding all that debt?

</comment><comment><USER3> Where is Greece?</comment>


Boston Dynamics' Parkour Atlas [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LikxFZZO2sk <comment><USER2> I can honestly say that I never expected robotics to get to this level in my lifetime. Hopefully it is limited to minutes rather than hours of "run time"!

<comment><USER3> Since we've been following along, we've seen the noise of Big Dog largely disappear, the tethering cable gone, and some impressive increases in agility. Where will it be in five years?</comment></comment>


Uber's series of scandals has yet to put a dent in ridership - <AUTHOR> https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ubers-series-scandals-yet-put-dent-ridership-214058732.html <comment><USER2> There is an article on the front page right now that says exactly the opposite:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14581919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14581919)

With graphics!:

[https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt...](https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/http%3A%2F%2Fcom.ft.imagepublish.prod- us.s3.amazonaws.com%2F50d74d98-52d9-11e7-bfb8-997009366969?source=next&fit=scale- down&width=600)

<comment><USER3> > With graphics!:

A note: does not work in Firefox as it uses the WebP format. Works in Chrome though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Last year, I helped someone extensively who was dependent on Uber -- work, everything, and having no driver's license.

After observing their behavior and attitude over a period of months, I can say I really expect that they don't give a shit. It works for them, for now, and that's all they care about.

This is, by the way, someone who has stories of abuse and harassment in their -- ok, "her" \-- own past.

Regardless, there is no mental or moral "connection."

I've come to believe this generalizes. Most people simple don't give a shit, when it comes to what is most convenient for them.

Look at their actions, not their words. I have been, and this is the unfortunately conclusion I've come to. At least for this time and these circumstances, in the U.S.

P.S. This person also exhibited other behavior and expressions that reinforced my impression, deduction, and ultimate extrapolation. Including making extensive use of benefits and then supporting a candidate central to the political momentum that wants to take those very benefits away.

Many people don't think these things through. Or they just don't care. As long as they get what they need. It's not just the rich who can demonstrate a noxious sense and action of "entitlement". It seems to be a personality trait, as much if not more so than the result of one's material circumstances.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's not ridership that I would worry about. Talent hiring and retention is going to take a bit, forcing Uber to make bigger offers, which will disproportionately attract the cynical or toxic. Infrastructural failures will then start crippling the platform, which will lead to irrecoverable decongestion. Since this is a self reinforcing cycle everything will go down _fast_ , say, within 6 months or so.

<comment><USER6> How much talent do you need to keep running the core taxi service? As much as we'd like to wave the innovation flag, even 100 engineers (to be very conservative) could easily maintain, and iterate on, such a service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> People use Walmart despite their business practices. Ultimately consumers will be drawn to the lowest price, which Uber has. Whether that's sustainable or not is another story.

(*Lowest price with acceptable performance, for your definition of 'acceptable'.)</comment>


The Slack Backlash Has Arrived, but It's Already Too Late - <AUTHOR> http://www.vocativ.com/320111/slack-backlash/ <comment><USER2> Our small team at work uses hipchat instead. But it is a matter of what we work on if we login at all on a given day. Getting close to going live with a release and we are on. Otherwise most are not logged in.

I have slack open all day for a non profit, a regional developers group and a product user group. The regional developer's group is 95% noise and after following it for 3 weeks zero value for me. Think I will quit that one.</comment>


Near and Far Field - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near_and_far_field <comment><AUTHOR> >"The near field and far field are regions of the electromagnetic field (EM) around an object, such as a transmitting antenna, or the result of radiation scattering off an object. Non-radiative 'near-field' behaviors dominate close to the antenna or scattering object, while electromagnetic radiation 'far- field' behaviors dominate at greater distances.

Far-field E (electric) and B (magnetic) field strength decreases as the distance from the source increases, resulting in an

 _inverse-square law_

for the radiated power intensity of electromagnetic radiation. By contrast, near-field E and B strength decrease more rapidly with distance: the radiative field decreases by the

 _inverse-distance squared_

, the reactive field by an

 _inverse cubed law_

, resulting in a diminished power in the parts of the electric field by an

 _inverse fourth-power and sixth-power_

, respectively. The rapid drop in power contained in the near-field ensures that effects due to the near-field essentially vanish a few wavelengths away from the radiating part of the antenna."

PDS: Boy, it sure seems that antennas and EM fields have all sorts of

 _inverse N power_

laws governing various properties/attributes/aspects of them.

I think that it would be an interesting future project to first enumerate all of the N power properties/attributes, and then see if there are any gaps in that table, for example, what field or fields are produced which decline relative to distance and the inverse fifth power?

Or, if there turns out to be none... then how would such a field or fields be created? And how would they be measured?

Oh, it might not have any applications!

But it would be tremendous for _understanding_...

Anyway, I think there might be a lot of room for research in this area...

Not all antennas, fields, power sources, frequency generators, mixers, and field calculaton math, are created equal, let's remember...</comment>


Darpa to Genetically Engineer Humans by Adding a 47th Chromosome - <AUTHOR> http://topinfopost.com/2013/07/31/darpa-to-genetically-engineer-humans-by-adding-a-47th-chromosome

<comment><USER2> What a terrible article - completely misunderstanding the intent of this project while hyperboling around the moon and back. Engineer humans to add a 47th chromosome? This is not about humans themselves at all.

What the actual project [1] wants to do:

HACs are used to introduce novel genes into populations of human _cells_ , not actual humans. For example, if you want to get a green fluorescent protein into cancer cells you currently have to use BACs (bacterial artificial chromosomes) which carry that gene into the cell. HACs are relatively novel and can carry much larger genes and are also stable over mitosis (that is, all offspring carries the gene).

Currently, HACs are not very feasible due to a couple of hurdles, all of which this project tries to overcome (which is why it sounds so generic - like all good project description it tries to catch all possible outcomes).

This has great implications in gene therapy! Of course, because DARPA is involved the author has to make it sound ohh so scary. This has no place on HN.

[1] [http://sbirsource.com/grantiq#/topics/88854](http://sbirsource.com/grantiq#/topics/88854)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is fear mongering with incomplete information.

There are huge problems with the current techniques we use to introduce DNA into cell lines of all kinds (human or other mammals). For instance, the _virus techniques he describes for inserting DNA cannot control where the DNA lands in the genome. Thus, you may end up with a cell that seems to have the properties you are after, but it acquired those traits through disrupting or activating a normal gene, thus confounding your results. Alternatively, you may be comparing cell lines with_ viral insertions and would ideally like the expression of the inserted genes to be similar (so that you can fairly compare their effects).

These and other problems would be solved by having cell lines with known insertion locations. Whether this is best achieved by adding a new chromosome to these lines or engineering a precise "landing spot" in an existing chromosome is up for debate.

</comment><comment><USER4> The article is misleading - this is a technique for use on human cell lines, not on humans.

</comment><comment><USER5> He uses "technocratic" as if it was a bad word.

"Web definitions (technocracy) a form of government in which scientists and technical experts are in control".

Surely he will not find any supporters here on HN :).

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not 48?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Six_&_2](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_Six_&_2) Just reading the article I couldn't help but think of this song.

<comment><USER2> Yes - if you'd actually bring this into humans, you'd probably have to add _two_ extra chromosomes since humans are diploid.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Look around, the author produced some stuff on 9/11 trutherism. Why share this drivel when it's objectivity is already circumspect from a misleading title?</comment>


Adobe to support Flex and Flash Builder on the iPhone and iPad - <AUTHOR> http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/mobile/faq.html#ios

<comment><USER2> I'm sick of seeing Adobe and iPad in the same sentence. It's become pointless headline mongering on their part.

Adobe: Make a version of mobile Flash, and OS X Flash, that doesn't suck balls. If you can't make Flash run elegantly on OS X and iOS then stop calling it a "key part of the web", since you lack the ability to make this so. If you CAN make Flash run on these platforms without eating batteries like a boxload of vibrators then do so.

Flash has mostly become an ad delivery platform anyways.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are they serious? Flex on the desktop is a _terrible_ , bloated framework built on top of an already slow runtime.

I can't imagine how it will run on a phone.</comment>


Show HN: It's so easy to manipulate parse trees with clojure.spec - <AUTHOR> http://blog.klipse.tech/clojure/2016/10/10/defn-args.html <comment><USER2> Superb!</comment>


"www.example.org" SSL certificate is expired - <AUTHOR> https://www.example.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Another sign the interweb as we know it is falling apart, [https://www.example.com](https://www.example.com) is not working anymore.</comment>


Another Tor is possible - <AUTHOR> http://eprint.iacr.org/2014/787

<comment><USER2> "[...] we introduced [...] maintaining the ability to _break the anonymity_ of a sender in case of _misconduct_. The revocation of the anonymity will require the use of _secret sharing schemes_ , [...] the lifting of the anonymity of _the dishonest user_ should not depend on a single entity, but on a _consensus_ within the network. [...] we propose [...] _introducing a honeypot_ in the network."

All this just sounds really really dangerous.</comment>


What's up with "Unknown or expired link."? - <AUTHOR>

For all this talk about cutting-edge webbery, why does HN have such funny URLs for paging? This makes it so that whenever I come back to an open HN tab I get this error message. <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3098756></comment>


Make3D Algorithm Turns 2-D Image into 3-D Fly-Around - <AUTHOR> http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2008/january23/make-012308.html <comment><USER2> news.YC readers might find it interesting that this is some of the View3 team (from the Winter Founders Program last year).</comment>


A short critique of the Khan Academy - <AUTHOR> http://www.tonybates.ca/2012/03/14/a-short-critique-of-the-khan-academy/

<comment><AUTHOR> There do not appear to be any instructional designers or learning scientists or faculty developers working with Khan Academy, Udacity, or Coursera. The closest is a 'course operations specialist' for Coursera: "As part of this multi-faceted role, you will train our teaching staff to produce video lectures". It's all just lecture videos.

As a contrast, here are a few free, self-paced non-lecture-based courses from the Open Learning Initiative (the downside is they take millions of dollars and years to make their courses) <https://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses></comment>


Machine Learning for Humans: A Beginner's Guide to AI/ML - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/machine-learning-for-humans/why-machine-learning-matters-6164faf1df12 <comment><USER2> A slightly-off topic note:

There's often complaints on posts like these that adding Machine Learning to any HN submission title will result in instant upvotes.

Yesterday, I built a deep learning model which can predict the optimal time to submit a post to Hacker News to maximize point score, and also predict the general probability of hitting the front page. In the context of this post, incidentally, the title is too verbose; both the point potential and and prob of hitting the front page is higher if only using the second half (w/o the explicit "Machine Learning" invocation): [http://i.imgur.com/5vOTTXo.png](http://i.imgur.com/5vOTTXo.png)

<comment><USER3> Is that Jupyter?

I'm kind of a python/ML newb, am curious to know: when doing ML stuff, do you guys usually do it interactively with Jupyter? The whole process of preprocessing, graphing, reducing dimensions, ML... do you prefer to do it one-by-one in Jupyter or Jupyter-like envrionment vs. just make one big python script? Just curious about common workflows.

<comment><USER2> Correct. For common workflows, see my post comparing Jupyter Notebooks and R Notebooks: [http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/](http://minimaxir.com/2017/06/r-notebooks/)

 _Never_ do data analysis in "one big Python script" if you value your sanity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This looks pretty nice on a brief skim. Would love if it was packaged as an ebook rather than a bunch of medium posts.

<comment><USER5> They have a link at the bottom of the page where you can send them an email to get a pdf. You might receive more than just the pdf...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> IMHO HN is getting saturated with these articles. It's all good, I know that's it's a popular subject. So, just and observation.

<comment><USER7> I agree with this. If we're talking about the same thing, many of these are "Machine learning for hackers" type articles and only give a superficial exposure of machine learning with the implicit promise of quick and easy mastery. The problem is, there's really only one way to master this stuff and it's to open up a textbook and study hard. You really need to get a rigorous treatment of the theory to understand machine learning.

<comment><USER8> there are chapter endnotes and an appendix that looks very helpful.

meta-texts like this one are a must, because the subject is so broad. moreover, i find a lot of the oft-recommended books in this area very noisy on the theory side.

i imagine all of all of the available resources will improve in quality and become more standard over time.</comment></comment></comment>


My Kickstarter is going to end in failure today. What went wrong? - <AUTHOR>

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/samuelfine/newbee-central-command-for-new-parents
My Kickstarter for Newbee, an app I'm building for new parents, ends this afternoon, and it will fail. I've received nothing but positive feedback on both the concept itself, and on the Kickstarter project, from individuals ranging from 20-something techie dudes to 60-something mothers of 5. Everyone loves it, in theory.
I got a great write-up on Brit + Co, a weird one on Boston.com, tweeted about by people with 100k+ followers, and I even had the chance to pitch my app to Mark Cuban on Good Morning America this morning.
https://gma.yahoo.com/video/39-shark-tank-life-39-125534906.html
And yet. Finding backers has been like squeezing blood from a stone, even after nationwide exposure on the #1 morning show.
Positive feedback across the board, millions of eyes, near-zero response. What am I missing here? <comment><USER2> Seems like it just means it's not solving an urgent-enough pain point.

Marketing consumer apps is REALLY hard. I can't possibly overstate that. It's expensive as hell and requires a lot of hustle on your part.

The reason it's so hard is that consumers don't want to download apps and rarely do. So asking consumers to just download and try your app is hard enough, but you're actually asking them to pay for it ahead a time. That's a tall order.

I'll also give you some more honest feedback than others seem to have been. It's a great design and idea, but it's almost impossible to get people to create a new habit.

If people weren't already tracking their baby's every move, they're not going to start doing it now unless the benefit is really, really clear.

A good example is fitness/calorie tracking. That's something that a pretty large percentage of people bounce off of, and the reward is feeling better, living longer, and looking better. That's a pretty big reward, and it's still not an easy thing to get people to do. (Though I should note that people have actually been doing that activity for a long time.)

So this is a really steep hill for you to climb, and it may not be monetizable in the end. That's ok, though, because you're done a fantastic job so far and will always be able to point to this product to show that you can execute. That's really valuable for the rest of your career.

My suggestion, which a VC gave me years ago, is to choose metrics for success (number active users, dollars made, etc.) and choose a target date. If you don't hit a goal for those metrics by that date, walk away from the project. If you don't have a concrete way to cut yourself off, you'll allow hope to string you along forever. Trust me, I've been there more than once!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to write this, lots to think about here. I actually had the chance to talk to Mark Cuban after the GMA thing, and he had similar comments about changing habits/behavior. Even if Newbee is as useful as I think it could be, I'm starting to think I'll need a trojan horse to make it appropriately appealing to the people who could get the most out of it. "This will help you" isn't enough, it seems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Some critical feedback -- I have a baby coming in March and I collect data and do analytics professionally, so I should be your target market.

In your video, I didn't see one concrete thing I get from collecting the data. The most depressing thing about committing to collecting data is finding out you can't make meaning from it. There are tons of reasons why that can be, but you didn't put my mind at ease. Collecting data is too much work to do with no assurance of payoff.

In addition, I have experienced Kickstarters that are over a year late (others have been on time). If I'm trying to track a newborn, I'm not gambling on a Kickstarter. It's fine for a trinket, not a time sensitive thing.

I really hope you find your success recipe, but these two problems are deadly to me.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand what it does. Or I do undersrand what it does, I just don't understand _why_.

Being hyper-aware of everything happening with your infant adds stress but provides very little benefit. There are a few things people do need to track or at least be aware of: meconium; billirubin, vaccinations. Tracking temperatures when the child is ill.

If the app was linked to evidence based advice ("when should I call the doctor?"; "can my age X infant eat food Y?"; "what are the recommended sleeping temperatures") then I could understand it. But that would be a scary app to write because you're giving medical advice.

Why do I want to how many nappy changes my three-month old infant has had today?

Some people have weird ideas about forcing the infant into a routine - especially around sleeping. Tracking sleep patterns is probably going to raise anxiety around sleep, when what parents really need to know is to put the child down to sleep withput rocking it or cuddling it to sleep, and to respond to the infant when it cries. "Cry it out" techniques are abusive if they start before the child is six months old, and need to be done carefully if tried after then.

The only use I can think of for the app is specifically advised against in your faq:

> While Newbee is great for tracking daily events and statistics, it's not > really meant to be used as a digital journal or scrapbook.

</comment><comment><USER5> As the father of a 6 week old, I am curious about the app, but I'm not sure I would use it. Maybe the wife would. I'll put a link to your KS on my blog post today; which means nothing because I have 4 readers. Sorry. But maybe I'll get slashdotted :) (is that still a thing?)

<comment><USER2> I think it would be awesome/helpful if you and your wife explained exactly why you wouldn't use it (with brutal honesty) and what would have to change for you to want to use it.

<comment><USER5> OK...my wife and I discussed your app over the weekend and turns out she's a fan. She had never supported a KS campaign before, but said she would yours.

I am not a KS marketer, nor do I pretend to be one. What has been your marketing outside of KS? Did you try to promote within Kellymom or any of the "new mother" facebook groups? Is it bad form to purchase ad space for a KS campaign?

I did a blog post last spring where I asked several people I know about the campaigns they ran. Feel free to take a look: [http://michalsen.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/kickstarter-how- it...](http://michalsen.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/kickstarter-how-it-is-being- used-by-writers/)

I think it would be pretty cool to do a follow up blog article on re-imaging a campaign. Let me know if you are interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> FWIW, as a father of a 5-y.o. still remembering the early days, I believe your target audience (for a KS) is _really_ small.

Think of it like this:

My child is born and I come across your KS page. I'm not going to invest because by the time the KS ends and development completes I won't have a perceived need for your product. So, what I really needed was to come across your KS page when my wife was 3-4 months pregnant. Yet, as a would-be first time parent I really had no idea what I would or wouldn't want/need. And after the first child, I'm not feeling the pressure to get and use such an app without a specific concern (e.g. a genetic condition or predisposition to watch out for). There's definitely more fear with the first child.

So, for a KS, your paying audience is a couple (or person) that is 3-4 months pregnant with their first child. That's a _very_ limited audience.

Now, the audience for the app itself is potentially very large. I remember that _after_ my daughter was born going online to find all sorts of information and apps for all sorts of things related to her early days.

My gut says this is just an app that would be much better off ignoring crowdfunding all together. Just make it, list it, and market it. It has a lot of potential. Also, I'd pay attention to what vitovito stated about updates and keeping up momentum as it holds true after release as well.

</comment><comment><USER7> "I've received nothing but positive feedback..."

People are generally nice because it is considered polite.

<comment><AUTHOR> A valid point! I like to think that my bullshit detector is tuned well enough to tell the difference between "hey that's cool good for you" and "I am legitimately on board with this idea", and the positive feedback I've been hearing seems sincere. FWIW, I've also gone out of my way to request any— _any_ —negative feedback. I would love to have the nits picked out of the project and product, but no one seems to have any substantial complaints thus far.

<comment><USER8> There are a lot of ideas that are great and people will say they love them. There are very few ideas that are great and people will pay for.

The real test of these people you talked to is whether they will pay and not whether they like it. Is a Tesla a great car? Yes, but I won't pay that much for a car. Would it be great if someone made a documentary about me? Yes, but I won't pay for it. It's not a matter of bullshit, it's just the difference between whether someone likes something vs. willing to pay for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hi, designer here, and also someone whose friends have done a bunch of Kickstarters, and have written about their experiences.

I see two core issues, and neither are readily fixable.

First, "I've received nothing but positive feedback on both the concept itself, and on the Kickstarter project, from individuals ranging from 20-something techie dudes to 60-something mothers of 5. Everyone loves it, in theory."

Second, "Finding backers has been like squeezing blood from a stone, even after nationwide exposure on the #1 morning show."

I'll take them in reverse order.

"Kickstarter is not a store," and Kickstarter means this two ways. As a consumer, there's a chance you won't get your product, or it won't be high- quality, or won't be what you expected, etc. But as a project starter, it also means there aren't roving bands of consumers looking for something to buy.

Common metrics for Kickstarter projects say that if you don't have a large enough social network to get you 25-33% of the way to your goal in the first 24-48 hours, you won't succeed. That's not a factor of money; you don't want one wealthy aunt to contribute $3,000. It's a factor of social reach. This is because most of your funders are people who know you, and their friends, and their friends, and their friends. You get bumps from strangers with media coverage and social networking, but that's not a primary means of finding backers. Expectant parents are not stopping by Kickstarter to shop for baby- tracking apps between Target and Baby R Us.

That means you needed $3k in expectant parent friends on day one, and you had $1200. Kickstarters aren't slow grinds to success, they're two big bumps: beginning and end. You have three reward tiers which don't require someone to actually be invested in your application, you didn't regularly post backer updates to keep engagement up, and you had no user comments for a month. You didn't have enough traction, because you didn't try to get enough traction _before you started._ Everything is marketing.

Sure, some of the lack of viral spread might be bad timing -- more babies are born in September than any other month, and once the baby's here, you're too busy to discover and use a new app. Maybe you need to be pitching this nine months ago, or again after the new year, to newly-pregnant parents.

Or, maybe everyone loves it in theory, but experienced parents know they would never, ever use it. And that's the first issue.

There's _one sentence_ in the entire video + text description that describes a benefit for a parent in using your app. "You can use the data you collect to identify patterns in your infant's life, useful for narrowing down the causes of sleep problems or watching for allergies or illness, and to track growth and development over time."

That's it. The rest of the video+text talks about the app itself, which doesn't tell me why I'd want to use it.

That tells me there isn't a use case for your app. You are one parent with one data point about how you raise your (first!) child. You emphasize personalization in the app because you don't know how other families work. Your experience is not universal, and neither is your desire to collect data.

There are baby tracking notebooks (the paper kind), and there are sites like Trixie Tracker, and they have very niche audiences, because people have been raising babies without apps for thousands of years. A parent has enough to do without figuring out correlations in data on their own from the data they laboriously log in your application.

If you don't basically live on sites like Trixie Tracker, talking with their users, discussing the shortfalls of it and related apps, how can your app be any better? How can it provide real value?

If you're not literally living with other new parents and collecting data for them, so you can figure out the correlations and provide advice to them, and see if the advice works, how can you be sure your app will provide enough actionable information once people start logging data in it?

This is an app you're building for yourself, not for other parents with newborns, and you don't know enough people who want to support you financially in doing that.

If I was hired tomorrow to fix this app, the first thing I'd do is a literature review of common problems new parents face, and common questions and concerns, and common patterns of sleep and sickness, etc., etc. The thing new parents want the most is reassurance everything is normal and okay. You could probably draft a new version of the app to start testing just from existing literature, instead of your own experience.

Then I'd make you decide if your market is obsessive-compulsive data nerd parents, the kind who already use trackers, or if you're trying to make something for a general audience.

For data nerd parents, I would then camp out on every baby-tracking stats site and app, and start spending days and weeks living with new parents, to figure out not just how to log data most effectively, but also, what are the things they're not getting out of their current trackers and why? And how do those things change as their experience as parents changes (second kid tracks different things than first kid) and as the kids age (older kids track different things than younger kids).

A general audience includes Android phones, and doesn't pay for apps, for starters. But a general audience also wants more immediately actionable data, "I have a specific problem, I want to put a bunch of data in, and I want the app to tell me what to do about it." That's a different app from what you've got going on right now.

The net effect of doing all that real-world legwork means when you're ready to restart your Kickstarter (in 18 months), you'll hit your 25-33% goal in 24-48 hours, because you have enough of a network of invested users now.

</comment><comment><USER10> @smt88 "Seems like it just means it's not solving an urgent-enough pain point."

I think this is your issue, and you are targeting the wrong market.

As i parent i have personally tried a few baby tracking apps. Good in theory, but not really solving a problem (IMHO)

While your app may have a better UI and be simpler than others out there, i think these class of apps all suffer from:

* You have to remember to enter in the information, open the app and capture it. With a newborn, who is quite demanding , having to nurse every 2-3 hours, sleep deprived etc. Just seems to be a bit more work than needed * What use or benefit do i get from the data? So i can monitor trends? Why? * Monitoring trends is easy for parents, especially when they are doing are caring for the kid themselves. My wife is at home.,She knows when my son is not nursing enough, or she knows when he has not pooed or has not had enough wet nappies.

You are currently marketing this at "Parents" in general, maybe if you target it Parents who have their kids in Daycare (i.e Remotely keep track of whats going on with your kids) it would be an easier sell.

I know i would want this data if my kids were in daycare.

</comment><comment><USER11> Mobile app kickstarters don't do well, because they aren't necessary.

Create the app on weekends and weeknights if you have a full-time job. Then release it and start making revenue.

Then, if you have ideas that need funding to improve the app, go for it.

Most people I talk to won't fund weekend project apps, no matter how good the concept seems. Get it out there and see how the market responds.

<comment><AUTHOR> Very interesting. Perhaps I could have framed this campaign better, less about the app itself and more about the underlying service?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Your target market is the intersection of quantified self adherents and new parents. So you're starting in a hole because I'm guessing that is small. From experience, the whirlwind of new parenthood is antithetical to feeding that quantified self need. (Recording--for sharing with relatives and others--is a notable exception.)

I get it--there are a lot of "first year diaries" that get sold as shower gifts but far more often than not remain untouched. My guess is that a lot of your positive feedback might come from these buyers--people who are buying this for someone else.

The premise might be to find some angle where the quantification can be done very passively (since it is really "quantified other") and put into a form suitable for years later when moms finally get around to scrapbooking the early years--when they finally have breathing room and are longing for the original new experience.

</comment><comment><USER13> Two things jumped out at me when I initially saw your kickstarter (prior to this HN post):

1) $16 for a year of app access is a lot. We could argue about whether that should be a lot or not, but in the current market it really is.

2) Timing is a bit difficult on this - with most Kickstarters, people are ok with getting it "whenever" \- sometime in the medium-term future is fine for a widget or a computer game. For your app, I'd want it ready the day by kid is born - no sooner (if it's subscription) and no later (I'd miss some events). So it's a tough thing to back in advance. You say it would launch "later this year" \- not helpful if I either have a newborn right now or aren't already expecting.

Edit: that said, it looks like a cool project, please continue with it. I fully expect to have a need for this app within 2 years, and would probably pay $10-$15 for a subscription.

</comment><comment><USER14> I guess I just don't see why Newbee is so much better than existing baby trackers, that I want to invest in seeing it made. Yes the UI looks nice, but the actual features don't seem any better than the dozens of trackers that are already on app stores.

If this was an existing product on the app store, and was also just a few dollars, I may have bought Newbee because it looks prettier. But $16 for a chance to use a 1 year subscription (if it's ever made, and I have another child around the same time), of a product that doesn't seem to have any advantage other than "prettier"... I'll pass.

</comment><comment><USER15> Tracking information is only useful if it allows you to DO something with that information. A simple list of play and poop times doesn't do you much good. A more useful thing would be to give parents information about what's happening that will help them. Is that a normal amount of activity? How does it compare to other babies that are being tracked? Can you discuss this information through a social network to get feedback? What do experts recommend at this stage? Etc.

</comment><comment><USER16> Not exactly a new parent here, but your app wouldn't have gained any traction in our houshold:

Looking after a newborn (and beyond) is often more than enough work on its own - the last thing you want to do is also record everything that's happening.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just some general video feedback, the music used in your video is too scattered for me. It seems like something more soothing and upbeat would be better.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why not try generating revenue from the app?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great question! Because the app isn't done yet, which is why I'm running the Kickstarter in the first place. ;) The funding I'm looking to raise ($10k) is to finish and ship it, and I have a few plans for revenue generation if/when that happens.

<comment><USER18> I mean if you have gotten this far without funding, I personally would add those revenue generating ideas now and use the funds to further develop and build features. People if they really like the app and really enjoy using it will put their money where their mouth is an pay for it.

My 2 cents of course.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> man, not a lot of dood care about a babby, maybe thats y.

<comment><AUTHOR> Please go back to Reddit.</comment></comment>


Interview with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/mohammed-bin-salman-iran-israel/557036/?single_page=true <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't use the article title in the submission because it seemed like click- bait.</comment>


Dizzying Ride May Be Ending for Tech Startups - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/business/dealbook/dizzying-ride-may-be-ending-for-start-ups.html?emc=edit_th_20151111&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=57133712&_r=1 <comment><USER2> Posted _eight_ times thus far today. Earliest I see is: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10544826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10544826)

</comment><comment><USER3> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10546640)</comment>


Linode Birthday Giveaway - <AUTHOR> http://blog.linode.com/2012/06/16/linode-birthday-giveaway/ <comment><USER2> Not nearly as good as the last two birthdays. :)

2010's brought a massive RAM increase: [http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram- inc...](http://blog.linode.com/2010/06/16/linode-turns-7-big-ram-increase/)

2011's bumped disk space up 25%: [http://blog.linode.com/2011/06/16/linode- turns-8-disk-space-...](http://blog.linode.com/2011/06/16/linode-turns-8-disk- space-25/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It requires you to pay for service until the end of July first. And then you _may_ get the credit (if you were fast enough). Seems like a so-so deal to me.

<comment><USER4> I signed up with linode when they did a similar promotion about a year and a half ago, and it clearly said that I was in before the promotion ended and would be getting the bonus before I actually paid for it. I assume it will be the same way this time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> OVH is giving 10 000 (every day 100-500 ) servers for free to test new USA datacenter. I thinks its more valuable then linoide VPS <http://www.ovh.co.uk/dedicated_servers/usa_order_beta.xml>

Just follow OVH twitter

<comment><USER6> Seems to be over for the day today--when does the "day" start for them? Midnight CET? EST?

Edit: ah, they're making it unpredictable such that you have to follow their Twitter (@OVH) to find out :)

<comment><USER7> All allocated in 6? minutes and requires following on twitter. This allocation mechanism seems about as classy as "punch the monkey" banner ads.

I've been waiting for a reasonably priced Canadian VPS. just let me pay for it and sign up ffs....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm a huge linode fan and I feel guilty for my reaction to this giveaway ... which just happens to be ... "meh". I guess they've gotten to a point where giving out free RAM increases is not a sustainable endeavor :\

</comment><comment><USER9> USD$250K is Linode services? Pfft. Linode should be giving away rebates in bitcoin.

</comment><comment><USER10> In case you missed it, giveaway starts Tuesday, 12PM EDT.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm still amazed how quick people are to forget what happened with Linode.

Massive security issue (i.e. Bitcoin incident) where hackers got root access to any Linode VPS at the click of a button. Loyal customers were the last to hear about it (through their website no less) and absolutely no proper explanation was or has been given as to what happened, what was done about it and whether it will happen again.

You look at how Cloudflare handled their issue and it's night and day. Linode are one of the least transparent providers going around IMHO.

<comment><USER12> > Loyal customers were the last to hear about it

I'm a Linode customer, your message is the first time I've heard anything about it.

<comment><USER13> I'm considering linode for my next launch, and heard nothing of this as well. Thanks?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Does anyone have a recommendation for a cheap but fast xen VPS either in Chicago or NYC? (Like under $7/month cheap)

<comment><USER11> Could be worth sifting through some of these:

<http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?f=104>

Otherwise I would definitely post in the main forum.

<comment><USER14> I was looking for specific recommendations that people have used. Thanks anyway.

<comment><USER15> Not in NYC or Chicago, but BuyVM is my go-to VPS. Super fast, nerdy support (know what you're doing and you're fine) and great services. Try their ping tests and see if that works for you. I'm in NYC and use it for most of my projects (so does my husband, who has 3x my geek cred).

Seriously I was paying 5x as much with another provider and getting shit performance in comparison.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Progressive Web App: A New Experience for Mobile - <AUTHOR> http://tech-blog.flipkart.net/2015/11/progressive-web-app/ <comment><USER2> I tried it out on my Android phone. It's surprisingly smooth, and feels pretty damn close to a native app. Good job!

Try it at [https://www.flipkart.com](https://www.flipkart.com) on your phone.

</comment><comment><USER3> The unspoken part of this: very little of it works on iOS. It's a huge shame. But I love seeing people use this stuff - the only way to get Apple to adopt it is going to use it and show iOS users that their platform is holding them back.

</comment><comment><USER4> Some people have pointed out that a lot of this doesn't work on iOS. I'd like to add that it also doesn't work for Firefox on Android. Instead you are re- directed to the App Store and get a pretty strange fallback page [1] if you don't use the App Store.

[1]: [https://www.dropbox.com/s/qr4e54ja8vnyoa8/Screenshot_2015-11...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/qr4e54ja8vnyoa8/Screenshot_2015-11-11-13-52-19.png?dl=0)

<comment><USER5> On reading the article,You realise how many of the features are heavily dependent on the __chromium __project.Considering Safari 's penchant for incorporating new features,I do not see this working on iOS anytime soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> very well done. even though native apps have the momentum, I'm still rooting for the web to win. examples like this show it's possible to have fully featured mobile product experiences with smooth performance on the web, given the right tech choices and attention to detail

</comment><comment><USER7> Nicely done! Would love to get a list of which libraries and techniques they use!

</comment><comment><USER8> Pretty cool stuff. I'll be really interested when it works for iOS as well.</comment>


Using Scala for Domain-Specific-Languages - <AUTHOR> http://suereth.blogspot.com/2008/09/using-scala-for-domain-specific.html

<comment><USER2> In my opinion, Scala is a little "type-y" (a significant fraction of all characters entered are type names), but it is a legitimate functional programming language and it is pragmatic. The libraries _are_ there, they're just a little ugly to use.</comment>


Ask HN: what has been the personal & financial cost of your failed ventures? - <AUTHOR>

I'm interested in hearing what has been the personal and financial cost to you of when your entrepreneurial venture failed.
How do these outcomes make you feel emotionally?
Edit: anyone been bankrupted or financially broken?  What do you intend to do about it? <comment><USER2> It depends on how everything plays out. My first sensei used to say that success was falling down 99 times and getting up 100. if I don't pick up a win and end up being a corporate monkey? Then it cost me my 20s and all the experiences most people enjoy during that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Why do you feel you have to trade off having happy "20-something" experiences for being an entrepreneur?

<comment><USER2> I'm 30, so my 20s are in the past. It's probably not fair to put everything on the excessive time I spent on algo/eng/coding/bizdev but there's a fucking lot of skills involved in startups. I picked a couple wrong projects, spent my time and money on them (I come from a far-from-rich background) and so that was that.

edit - that is to say to you guys in your 20s, be efficient and maybe you can do both

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I went through about 80K in savings. There was some extra stress on the marriage (wife, 2 kids, mortgage payments.) But I was working from home mostly except when pitching VC's. My wife was very supportive.

When the startup died, I moved into contracting. I was doing quite well contracting and then one of guys who was on our board of advisors needed some development work and that led to me having substantial equity in the company and still working from home.

So the start up was a total failure, but I learned a lot and it lead me to where I am today which is much better than where I started.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm out about $500K of my own money, but I haven't kept close track. It was the most enjoyable $500K I ever spent, all things considered.

Emotional/personal cost? None really, other than some slight stress imposed on my marriage at a couple of points, but nothing that would have ever come close to the "drugs and therapy" kind of personal costs, or lost friends kind of personal costs.

</comment><comment><USER5> Back in school I pumped about 10k into a venture that hasn't panned out.

Was incredibly stressful, and disappointing, but it helped me learn. Hopefully will push that forward and build upon it if I tried something like that again - for now I'm focusing on other areas.

</comment><comment><USER6> I lost over USD75K of personal financial resources in the failed start-ups I founded.</comment>


Dutch DPA: Uber fined for data breach - <AUTHOR> https://autoriteitpersoonsgegevens.nl/en/news/dutch-dpa-fine-data-breach-uber <comment><USER2> Nothing to do with GDPR, in fact the breach predates it (2016). The Netherlands already had regulations in place that mandate reporting data breaches, through the Dutch Data Protection Act.

<comment><USER3> imagine how high the fine could be if it was really under GDPR!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The Dutch Data Protection Authority (Dutch DPA) imposes a fine of €600.000

What a bargain! In the US, they settled for $148 million [1].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/technology/uber-data- brea...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/technology/uber-data-breach.html)

<comment><USER5> Hmm let's see with some back of the envelope calculation.

148 / 320 = 0.4625

0.6 / 17 = 0.035

Hmm, yea you're right.

<comment><USER6> It seems data of ~25,000,000 US users was leaked, and of ~174,000 Dutch users.

148 / 25 = 5.92

0.6 / 0.174 = 3.45

That's more proportionate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The article makes no mention of GDPR, and the fine was levied due to (in)action after a breach in 2016. Is this really GDPR related as the title says?

</comment><comment><USER8> It is not GDPR but a previous local law that has been used since GDPR was not applicable in 2016 when the breach did occur.

</comment><comment><USER9> Can a mod alter the title? Nothing to do with GDPR. OP is a bit confused it seems.

This was an independent action by the Dutch Data protection authority.</comment>


Deploying code with packages - <AUTHOR> https://synack.me/blog/deploying-code-with-packages

<comment><USER2> Packages are great because they simplify automation. Once you've got a package built and uploaded to a repository, you can install it across a large fleet of machines one-line of Chef or Puppet code.

There are some pitfalls, however:

* It can be time-consuming dealing with the arcane details of Debian package metadata or RPM spec files. If you're deploying your own application code, you're likely better off using fpm to generate a package from a directory tree:

[https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm](https://github.com/jordansissel/fpm)

* If you have a complex stack, e.g., a specific version of Ruby and a large number of gem dependencies, you should avoid trying to separate things into individual packages. Just create a single Omnibus-style package that installs everything into a directory in /opt:

[https://github.com/opscode/omnibus-ruby](https://github.com/opscode/omnibus- ruby)

* Maintaining build machines and repository servers takes ongoing effort. Shameless plug: This is why I created Package Lab---a hosted service for building packages and managing repositories. Currently in private beta and would love feedback:

[https://packagelab.com/](https://packagelab.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Yeah, sure. Because it is so easy to build packages, as the shortlyness of the article and the amount of the involved commands prove, it is surely a fast and good way to produce those packages to deploy your code.

For reference, it is not. Packages solve a different problem, and he even writes it: Well made packages with dependencies enable everyone to use the software, regardless of the involved system, given some constraints. They don't need to be fast and they don't need to be easy (as much as I would like them to), because they are used by specialists in a lengthy process.

But if one deploys code on a system, we know a bit more of the system than "it is a computer". Maybe it is a standardized production instance, maybe it is a vm - in any case, we have direct access. So it is possible to use easier and faster methods to deploy code directly, without having to resort to arcane voodoo.

If you really want to use debs for deployment, at least use checkinstall and handle the dependencies manually. Then you need at most 3 command (./configure, make, checkinstall).

</comment><comment><USER4> I've done this for a few years, and when it's all setup the integration with the underlying system is absolutely wonderful. In particular, your app is "just" another package - there's no magical special-casing you ever need to think of.

You can also make your app quite modular - you can build multiple binary packages from one source which is perfect for different server roles that share a lot of code or configuration.

The only drawbacks are the fair amount of knowledge you need to share within your team, as well as quite a bit of machinery needed to get everything up and running once you move beyond a single "dpkg -i"-able .deb (some sort of APT repo, signing keys, blah blah).

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this work with:

1) Clusters of application servers, where I will only want operations on shared resources to fire from one of the servers? E.g. database updates, shared file changes, etc.

2) When I want to deploy the code to a different location on the server so that I can have multiple versions of the application available? Do I have to spin up new servers for each version?

3) You mention roll back by just specifying an earlier package but I don't see how this would work with stuff like database changes either.

<comment><USER6> You're over thinking this... None of these are specific to this type of deployment. If you want to do any of the above, you'll have to work around whatever production deployment solution you have.

1) How would you do this for _any_ deployment method? You'd have to be able to ID one specific node in the cluster or make sure that your job could only run on one node with some sort of locking.

2) If you're deploying multiple versions of an application _in production_ , you have other issues.

3) How would you rollback database changes to begin with? Come to think of it, how are you going to deal with any DB schema changes? This isn't just an issue with .deb/.rpm deployments of code - you'll have to figure this out for any application deployment.

<comment><USER5> Well, I suppose I mention some of these as the article likens package deployment to Capistrano in the opening paragraph.

Using Capistrano, for (1) I can just mark a target server as the update server to run these commands. With packages, I assume I either have to have a different version of the package or rely on some sort of environmental variable which the package reacts to?

2) Yep that would be slightly ridiculous for production, but I was thinking more along the lines of UAT, staging and other shared testing/development environments. It's not ideal but I have been in the situation where this was required.

3) True, but with Cap I can just issue a rollback and it will revert to a database snapshot that was taken from the last version. I can't see how we could do something like this with packages alone.

Maybe you mean that these problems are outside the scope of packages and that I should be using packages with something like capistrano to solve them but then why wouldn't I just use Capistrano on its own?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> An (ex) colleague of mine blogged about the valid reasons behind this some time ago: [http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/deploy-package- not...](http://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/deploy-package-not-just-tag- branch-or-binary)

</comment><comment><USER8> "Just avoid Debian, and everything else related to .deb packages" seems a fitting solution to me.

(even more so after rewriting Erlang packages to get something that a) works and b) is not stale)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Very wordy but plenty of usefulness!

</comment><comment><USER9> open my mind on deployment</comment>


Weekend Project: Elegant bug tracking for hackers - <AUTHOR> http://buggrapp.com/bugs

<comment><USER2> You realise no British user can possibly take this app seriously? Anal sex. That's what bugger means. Happy hacking!

<comment><USER3> In Microsoft there's an internal tool called bugger. I think sizeable number of people are well aware of the multiple meanings.

Actually, it's a rare triple entendre - the anal sex reference, the "computer bug" official reference and the "someone bothersome" reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Snap! Signing up...

An Error Was Encountered

The action you have requested is not allowed.

:(

Do you have a bug tracker I can report a bug about your bug tracker in? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Womp, womp. No I don't but that's an excellent idea! I'm not sure what would have caused it to bork out on you. Do you have any other details?

Also maybe adding a feature where people or third parties in general could add bugs to your list wouldn't be a bad idea? Suppose an API could help accomplish this as well.

<comment><USER4> Chrome 19 on win7 x64. nothing else notable.

+1 for API if it doesn't crash ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks interesting, nice and simple, but citing yourself on your own product seems think it's quite lame.

<comment><USER6> I actually think it's genius. Mocking himself a little bit and other sites that display testimonials. It caught my eye and I signed up because of it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad someone picked up on my corny joke :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> When I add a tag to a bug and go back and view the same bug the tag I added has been replaced by:

music, Koala, Suche, test, thing, asd, dasd,asdasd ,asdasd ,asdasd, asdasd , Buggr, Buggrapp, Time, Start, one, one two

<comment><USER8> It seems to pull all available tags out of the database and line them up in the textarea...

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Pretty neat. I might use it some.

Little typo: When you select a bug and click the drop down list to make it high or normal priority, the first option is "Mark As High Hriority".

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call. Corrected :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is nice. I built an open source one awhile back <https://github.com/mikelbring/tinyissue>

</comment><comment><USER11> No, _this_ is an elegant bug tracker for hackers - <http://ditz.rubyforge.org/>

</comment><comment><USER12> I just added a bug and status says "about 3 hours ago". Can it be little precise?

<comment><USER13> timezone issue ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Nice project. Are you planning on open source it?

</comment><comment><USER15> Indeed very nice. What technologies did you use?

</comment><comment><USER16> Very interesting project. Simple and functional.</comment>


Teen Commits Suicide After Instagram Poll - <AUTHOR> https://digit.fyi/teen-commits-suicide-after-instagram-poll/ <comment><USER2> One thing I've noticed HN gets right is requiring a basic standard of civility, and it seems like that idea gets lost in the discussion around social media. It's understandable that Instagram et al want to get rid of hate speech, but "the grind of you suck, you're lying, you're stupid"* is a problem orders of magnitude larger because it encompasses users in general.

And, yeah, if you have an environment where it's normal to be civil and not take cheap shots at people, "you should kill yourself" may not be entirely prevented, but it would probably be unusual enough that she wouldn't have seen 70% of her peers telling her that.

* quoting Anita Sarkeesian from memory

</comment><comment><USER3> If I saw this poll I would assume it was a joke. Does the law have no understanding of irony? Serious question for those who might know (I know this is Malaysia so things are different).

<comment><USER4> Children are still figuring things out, and are extremely sensitive to feedback from peers. I wouldn't assume this was a joke, and, even if it was (or a ploy for attention, or playing with being dramatic, or whatever), negative peer feedback could turn it serious.

Also, it's not like certain social media companies don't know this about children, and they've published research on exploiting that for their own manipulative purposes.

<comment><USER3> Right, but presumably the people voting on this poll are kids too, so it's hard for them to bring the same attitude to the situation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is there any reason why answering to a question through a social network would be considered differently than if they were saying the same thing personally in a group?

I'm sad for the commenter that wrote that he considers it as a joke: I make sure whenever I read or hear about somebody being in depression I take it seriously.

</comment><comment><USER6> The statements from IG execs are pretty robotic, aren't they.

Safe and Supported (tm)

Thoughts and Prayers (tm)

If I were writing or talking with care and attention specifically about this incident (as opposed to regurgitating a talking point/slogan) I _might_ use the word supported, as in "we want our users to feel supported." (Better, I might actually eschew the weak and sniveling passive voice and say "we want to support our users" or even better yet, "we support our users." But obviously it's hard to be that direct and simple when you also _exploit_ users.) Anyway, I would probably not spontaneously say "safe and supported," since she herself was the one who rejected safety. Even if (long shot) I decided to include the tangential idea of safety, I might say "supported and safe."

So yeah, to me, the phrase was jarring enough the first time I read it, but then a different person says the exact same phrase? It's like an assembly line. This poor girl is being treated as a "case" and callously lumped in with who-knows what other "cases" that fall under what's starting to sound like a branded initiative.

"Thank you for your inquiry regarding

      girl commits suicide after Instagram poll

Our thoughts and prayers and so on. Press 1 for the Safe and Supported team."

<comment><USER2> In fairness, if I were an IG exec and this horrified me and I couldn't sleep and was digging into it and demanding answers from my people and all that drama...

I'd still give a safe, bland quote to the press.

<comment><USER6> Maybe so. It just seems sometimes like humans have become too good at remaking ourselves in the image of our machines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not to trivialize her tragic death but this is one hell of an object lesson in letting a study run to completion before interpreting your data (if IG is to be believed, I guess): "Police say, at the time of her death, 69% voted for her to die. However, Instagram insists that the poll, which lasted 24-hours, ended with 88% of her followers choosing 'L'."

<comment><USER8> What's funny is that Instagram have to defend themselves from this nonsense.

<comment><USER9> What's funny is denying that social media use by teenagers is more damaging to their health than, say, smoking cigarettes.

<comment><USER10> But less damaging than, say, keeping them socially isolated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As the article touches on, this seems symptomatic of two larger-scale issues - while the poll results almost certainly acted as a final straw, as it were, it is hard to imagine the same circumstances arising without the Internet's combination of dehumanization (due to pseudonymity) and echo/amplifying effects; it is far more difficult to escape a negative headspace when even on the best days you are subject to a barrage of topics you looked up on the worst - even if the topics themselves are mundane, mental associations are not to be underestimated, and it's all too easy to slip backwards.

I don't know if it's possible to fix these in current social network designs - even when linked to your actual identity, Facebook has shown a screen can still be barrier enough to encourage all sorts of awful, while the trend in tracking and topic repetition (echochamber) has only been increasing.

I hope we figure it out before the Internet gets too evil.

</comment><comment><USER12> >Police say, at the time of her death, 69% voted for her to die. However, Instagram insists that the poll, which lasted 24-hours, ended with 88% of her followers choosing 'L'.

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't see the context that explains that D = death and L = life. Maybe D could have stood for Dark and L for Light?</comment>