Homeless population doubles in Mountain View - <AUTHOR> http://mv-voice.com/news/2015/06/30/homeless-population-doubles-in-mountain-view <comment><USER2> _The city now has 271 people with no access to an emergency shelter or transitional housing who are stuck on the street, living in cars or living in encampments around the city._

Slight tangent, but when I walk down the street at night I see car after empty car and think, why can't it also be a bed? If all of the seats could fold down flat and the car's engine could idle in a fuel efficient way, providing heating/cooling/climate control, it'd be a comfortable double bed. If the windows could have opaque blinds that slide over the windows when the car is set to camp mode for privacy and additional security from delinquents.

It just seems like a wasted opportunity not to make cars that can become a bed when they're using all of this space already - it could reduce drink driving, make staying closer to work easier, provide shelter for people low on funds etc. Perhaps with the advent of driverless cars we could have this and be delivered to our destination upon getting out of bed. Perhaps a family of vehicles, one for each family member, could cart each individual to their destinations, pick them up, then at the end of the day merge the vehicles together to transform into the family home.

<comment> dev-da0 I live in a compact-width van conversion (which fits in the tightest parking garages) with absolute privacy (curtains) in Mountain View (illegal to sleep in a car on the street, so stay on private property like parking lots) & Palo Alto (where it's currently legal to sleep in a car on the street). It's very comfortable and sleeps 3 adults or 2 adults and 2 kids.

Living in a car (when it's obvioua) is unfortunately an invitation for continual police harassment. Been there, done that. Police in Mountain View bang on car windows if you were to sleep in any of the downtown municipal parking lots OR even on private property. They have zero tolerance for poor people and show no compassion whatsoever. There is even this one female officer whom enjoys Schadenfreude to such a degree that it is well past hubris; (she will tow your car even if it's on private property.)

Better to live in a car or van where it's _not obvious,_ (tint, curtains, etc.) because the junked-up cars and people obviously sleeping draw the most attention.

Also, ask me anything.

PS: During the day, it's impossible to tell that I live in my vehicle because it's very clean and everything's put away.

<comment><USER3> I know it's off topic but that it's illegal to sleep in a car appears to me to impose the most cynical incentive structure I encountered in a while.

I already did that several times in the past because I was seriously drunken.

Edit: Also as a follow up question on your further writing:

How do you handle very high or low temperature in a car? First I thought it's not a problem due to ACs, but as you pointed out that you've to hide your presence I can't really see that working. Very interesting post!

<comment> dev-da0 The Ninth Circuit effectively struck down Venice's enforcement of giving tickets to people whom appeared to be living in their vehicles. That case is why Palo Alto backed off on its towing and ticketing campaign. LA hates homeless people more so than Silicon Valley.

But it's part of larger issue of subtle, shameful discrimination based on economics and status akin but different how African Americans were treated in the 1950's South. The homeless and poor need a Civil Rights movement. Even if it won't change attitudes of snobs and bigots, there is room for additional protections and tighter limits on police harassment. (There should be federal protections to providing food for the poor because it is illegal to feed the homeless in parts of Florida. In other parts of Florida, it is also illegal to use blankets or any other materials to protect yourself from the elements. Basically, these laws make it illegal for some people to be alive, and those types of laws have no place in America.)

<comment><USER4> Where do you personally draw the line between harassment and police enforcing the law?

For example, if homeless folks cannot procreate without having sex in public locations, such as behind a bush in a public park, and we accept that banning procreation is unjust, does banning public sexual acts count as an unjust law?

<comment> dev-da0 Actually, since this is a pseudonym, I've had sex in public a several times and never had a problem. In fact, it was in one of (Saratoga, Los Gatos, Los Altos) wealthy communities of mostly residences that have little real crime, and locations were even suggested by the police (no they weren't filming). We even asked what they would do, they indicated there would generally not be a ticket unless it were somehow indecent (visible to others) and they just make sure it is consensual. It might've been the luxury sportscar at the time or the hot girl might've had something to do with police being extra helpful. (Btw the hot girl broached the questions, hilariously.)

It would be different, for say two shabby-looking folks going at it in Venice, CA in front of a street during the daytime. But a hot couple, at night, in some remote location in a safe area isn't going to raise eyebrows, especially if no one notices. It just goes to show there are layers of socioeconomic biases, plus not all homeless people are given feedback, care or are aware of what's considered acceptable by others.

Perhaps the core issue is should necessary biological functions (and common, strongly desired needs that others are able to fulfill) be disproportionally criminalized based on socioeconomic and other biases? (For most men, sex is a strong motivating drive... which is why the Netherlands includes it in public benefits.). There might be a "time and a place," but people whom have nothing need equal access to water, food, sanitation and whatever else can be afforded to make their lives a little more comfortable. (A society is judged on how it treats...)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> After visiting the USA in December 2014 I cannot help but wonder why the matter of homeless people is not one of the biggest issues in the country. While you see homeless people occasionally here in Europe, streets seemed to be flooded by the homeless. I really wonder why a country so wonderful in many areas can be so agnostic to the problem of homeless people. A developed society should not have that situation nowadays. And while taxes are not the highest in the US, they are not that low that problems like this can't be addressed.

<comment><USER6> Because all the money is spent on corruption of various sorts, which is mostly ignored--those folks like getting their money. The media make it clear that any such money spent on humanitarian grounds is not only unavailable but would be wasted even if it was.

Indeed, I don't believe in hand-outs, but some investment would be welcome. You can only walk by people shitting in the street or laying face-down on the sidewalk so long before wanting to kill.

<comment><USER5> yes... while I also rather like economy friendly governments, it is pure logic that if you ignore the poor, they will come knocking on your door in one way or the other... Some kind of welfare is good for the rich (they can enjoy their money more without fearing being robbed or kidnapped) and the poor (they can eat and have somewhere to live).

<comment><USER6> Yes agreed, I learned this lesson on a backpacking trip thru South America, cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm seeing a few more homeless people lately in Palo Alto and Redwood City. I'm also seeing a lot more "Help Wanted" signs for low end jobs. Housing has become so expensive, though, that there are now homeless people with day jobs.

There's one homeless guy with a long beard who's been panhandling on University Avenue since at least the 1990s.</comment>


RunAbove – French Cheapest S3-compatible Storage ($0.01/GB/month) - <AUTHOR> https://www.runabove.com/storage/object-storage.xml <comment><USER2> I really wanted to like this as it looked promising and I'm already using (or have used) other OVH-backed products like Kimsifi and So You Start, with great results. I set up an account to test it out and ended up cancelling and deleting the account after less than an hour of use.

What went wrong, in chronological order:-

1\. 30 character password limit. Not the worst thing ever but it indicates they may not be properly salting & hashing passwords.

2\. UK Postcodes fail if you type them normally, you must remove all spaces which you must learn through trial and error - the only feedback you get is 'Invalid zip code'.

3\. Credit card details must be entered before you can use anything, and a 'Memorize this card' is checked but disabled, which seems odd.

4\. No guaranteed minimum bandwidth for like on other OVH products. In my testing I saw about 19MB/s up and 26MB/s down, so not great but okay for the price.

5\. The worst thing for me was really slow disk speed on their VPS's. My plan was to move one from DigitalOcean to RunAbove (very happy w/ DO, but want to mitigate risk by using multiple providers). Running 'dd if=/dev/zero of=iotest bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync' several times produced results showing disk speeds of barely 50MB/s. I can do this all day long on the cheapest DO VPS and see 5x those speeds. No comparison.

Still, like I said the other OVH projects I've used kick ass and I will probably try this again in six months or so. But for now, there is absolutely no comparison between RunAbove and DigitalOcean if you are looking for a VPS. For object storage only, you should test read and write speeds and make sure you are happy with the results after considering the slightly lower prices. Not quite there yet for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> Also cheapest OpenStack-based instances provider. With OVH's DDoS protection included on top.

<comment><USER3> Aaaaaand it's gone... They suffered a major network meltdown today: [https://status.runabove.com/](https://status.runabove.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is from OVH.

<comment><USER5> I believe they were independent to OVH, just utilising OVH's infrastructure then OVH invested in them. I think they are still separate but obviously have a close relationship with OVH.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Even cheaper than Amazon Glacier storage.

</comment><comment><USER6> looks promising!</comment>


Forbes article arguing tech is not biased removed for violation of TOS - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/brianhall/2015/10/05/there-is-no-diversity-crisis-in-silicon-valley/ <comment><AUTHOR> Article reposted here: [http://techraptor.net/content/there-is-no-diversity- crisis-i...](http://techraptor.net/content/there-is-no-diversity-crisis-in- tech-by-brian-hall)

</comment><comment><USER2> F __k censorship</comment>


Research shows the difference between emotional and informational support - <AUTHOR> https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/love-cycles-fear-cycles/201807/don-t-tell-me-what-do <comment><USER2> There's even more interesting research indicating that context of support is crucial. (Gable, et al, Safely Testing the Alarm: Close Others' Responses to Personal Positive Events, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2012, Vol. 103, No. 6, 963–981)

This interesting study provides strong evidence, it's much easier to support a partner in context of a positive event than in context of a negative event. Context appears to play an even more important role than responsiveness or sensitivity of the person giving support. In fact, even if a partner recognizes that he or she received helpful support for a negative event shortly after the event occurred, by several weeks later the support is not generally remembered as positive.

If you want to support your partner in a helpful way, make sure you're supporting them when good things happen, and don't count on rescuing someone when things go wrong.

</comment><comment><USER3> Celebrating a ten year anniversary with my wife next week. I'm happy to report I have learned to change my behavior in this respect over the years. I listen now rather than do what I did before: receive input, analyze, identify issues, formulate potential solutions and offer options and resolutions. It's actually so much more relaxing for me too.

<comment><USER4> What you described is offering informational support.

<comment><USER5> I the op missed a "than" in the sentence and what they mean is they only listen and do not do those other things.

i.e: "now rather <than> input"

<comment><USER4> Yep, and now my comment based on GP's comment before edit (done after my comment) dies in a fire. Such is the HN way.

<comment><USER6> Have some upvotes then ... btw. is a Upvote informational or emotional Support? I think, both?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I find it funny that the article's conclusion is "stop giving informational support when emotional support is asked for" rather than "stop asking for emotional support when only informational support is up for offer". It's possible -- I'd dare say likely -- that those giving informational support do so because they are not as capable to give emotional support and may feel drained by it. It's a bit of a harmful conclusion to low-EQ individuals, in the same way that "people who don't like parties should be more outgoing" is harmful to introverts.

People are different and relationships are give and take. There's no "right personality" that people should be fixing themselves to match. There's only mutual understanding and compromise. _Recognizing_ that your partner may be searching for a type of support which you are not giving is very important, but only in the greater context of also recognizing both your and your partner's abilities, and reaching a mutual understanding how to bridge that gap.

<comment><USER8> Fortunately it's quite easy to provide a compelling facsimile of emotional support. You just shut up and maybe hold the person while not obviously paying attention to something else.

<comment><USER9> How does one accomplish the same task via text message? I'm asking this sincerely. I've often found myself attempting to provide emotional support over a text conversation and it's really difficult not to feel helpless and drained by it.

There's only so much you can write "I understand. I support you. Etc." It starts to make you feel like a broken record. Trying to _just listen_ leads to them asking "are you still there? Are you mad at me?"

<comment><USER10> Right. A lot of emotional support comes from touch and tone of voice, things you can't transmit via text. In text, your tools are limited to choosing your words and maybe emoticons (if you normally don't use them). The former is more powerful than the latter, because it takes more effort, and what one needs to communicate primarily is proof that you care.

For example, if this person is expressing doubts about their ability to do something they must, maybe you can express to them why you think they are able by describing the positive qualities you've observed in them (you've taken notice because you care about them) that sets them up to achieving it. If you also think they're unable, maybe it's still a good idea to fail to learn from the experience. You can explain how this sets them up for growth. If it's really bad to fail, maybe you can somehow help them in the task. Even if it doesn't ensure success, increasing the chances a little is often great. Presence can also be very powerful, even if you don't do anything besides being there.

Another example, if they express regret over a difficult choice they made and later saw was wrong, you can remind them that it's not fair to judge their decision after seeing the results. After all, their past self couldn't see the future, and made the best decision they could with the information they had available at the time. The best they can do is learn from it and move forward from that point.

Anyway, originality is key. Otherwise, it seems like a generic copy-and-paste response, and that's not effort.

EDIT: added to the first example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The problem of offering solutions when what is wanted is emotional support is especially easy for engineers and other problem-solvers to fall into.

<comment><USER12> This "problem" goes both ways - many people get very stressed and depressed when listening to someone just "needing to vent" and who does not want/need solutions.

<comment><USER13> You're ignoring that the solution is to listen and absorb and not offer some way to 'fix' the issue.

It seems like a solution-oriented individual should feel comfortable offering that solution.

<comment><USER7> Or the "solution" is for people who have issues but don't want help fixing them not to vent to people who don't have the patience for that. Listening to woe -- especially woe stemming from problems with easy solutions -- is emotionally draining.

Like the GP said, it's a two-way street. Understand your friends and loved ones and compromise.

<comment><USER13> Again I think you're ignoring the actual solution.

Relationships are not 50/50 compromises. They're a dance of compromises in favor of one party or another at different times. You've got to decide as an individual if the balance is acceptable and I can't say that you seem very giving from your posts.

Again, that's a choice and your right but don't expect reality to conform to your desires because it rarely will.

<comment><USER7> And I could say the same for your posts, which posit a single problem and solution ("the actual solution" \-- lol!) as if that is what they are. I'm the one who pointed out the ridiculousness of favoring one personality by default and suggested that compromise and understanding your partner is the name of the game -- and you dare say _I 'm_ unaccommodating?

Exactly as you said, relationships are a complex negotiation. Claiming that inability to simply sit and listen to solvable troubles is "the problem" is unhelpful. It is _SOMETIMES_ the problem -- probably more often than not -- but sometimes people just whine too much and are too full of themselves to accept much needed help and it's unhelpful to blame the listener for not wanting to sit through that emotionally draining experience every day of their life.

<comment><USER14> It sounds like you are talking about people who have significant issues regulating their emotions. I definitely agree those situations are much more difficult. Sometimes, if possible, the winning move is to not play.

Perhaps you could have explicitly stated your context in the beginning, as it seems most others were assuming two relatively well-adjusted individuals.

<comment><USER7> Yes, sorry, I should have made that clear. I'm the "informational" type and learned long ago to just listen to complaints, especially from casual acquaintances. But I've also met my fair share of people who willingly dump some pretty serious issues on me -- issues that are within their power, if not their will, to fix -- and my inability to be the emotional sponge these individuals seek is emphatically _not_ a problem with _me_ , or with anyone else in that situation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It really helped me understand this article to follow the link describing what the author means by "Emotional Support": [https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/basics/empathy](https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/basics/empathy)

Basically, emotional support is "understanding another person's thoughts, feelings, and condition from their point of view, rather than from your own"

<comment><USER16> That link is just a description of empathy. My problem-solving tendencies come from my understanding the other person's feelings, how does one demonstrate that understanding in only an "emotional support" way?

<comment><USER17> Try not to posite a solution.

Listen, don't speak over them.

Acknowledge, respond in a way which indicated that you empathise with their emotional state, often by mirroring language, tone, words, body language etc.

Guide, ask questions that indicate that you're open to hearing more about their issues, sometimes worth a "It's ok if you don't want to say but, what happened..."

Thank them for sharing with you.

Done.

<comment><USER16> > Try not to posite a solution. Listen, don't speak over them.

I got that, I can do that with conscious effort.

> often by mirroring language, tone, words, body language etc.

I can avoid using my words for things instead of theirs, especially minimizing ones like "hassle" or "inconvenience", I can avoid closed-off body language like crossing my arms and maybe keep my voice in a different register for a little while but beyond that it come off as an attempt at mimicking, not helpful.

> Guide, ask questions that indicate that you're open to hearing more about > their issues, sometimes worth a "It's ok if you don't want to say but, what > happened..." Thank them for sharing with you.

That sounds like an example for someone you don't actually know very well.

> Done.

Until tomorrow.

<comment><USER18> My two cents is to practice what was described in the post above, and then do a personal postmortem analysis after-the-fact of how you did.

Also to try and adopt an observational, almost anthropological attitude when interacting with other people. Observe their behavior, observe how it makes you feel, what your body language is, and then observe their responses to your own words and changes in behavior / body language.

Like any skill it takes practice. And just because a skill comes harder to some than others doesn't mean it can't be meaningfully improves through practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Remembers me what happens when I have patience to talk a minute with a beggar. Ask where he comes from, this kind of chit-chat. The initial money request is often forgotten. People really want to be noted, acknowledged they exist, and heard. Food for the soul is almost more important than physical food.

<comment><USER20> A guy who was homeless for 25 years in Australia (and who recently wrote a book about his experiences) agrees very strongly with what you're saying:

> I was recently asked by someone what they should do when they come across a > homeless person. My response to this question is quite simple. Maybe you > cannot make a difference to that person's circumstance, but you can make a > difference to how you see them. Many are hurting with the shame and stigma > of being homeless. Don't pretend they don't exist: they are people too. [1]

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/25/after-25-years...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/25/after-25-years- of-being-homeless-i-learned-theres-one-simple-thing-you-can-do-to-help- gregory-p-smith)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Every time this subject comes up I can't help but feel like society does a somewhat reasonable job of identifying and discouraging negative masculine behavior but doesn't do the same for negative feminine behavior. Why is the feminine personality position assumed to be the "correct" one that everyone must adjust to? Sure, everyone is entitled to a little whining time, and hopefully your partner is empathetic when the need arises, but perhaps it would be better if we discouraged whining in favor of solutioning.

<comment><USER22> I agree with this. Some amount of emotional venting is completely healthy but when it gets to the point where someone is unable to deal with any negative emotions on their own, and must rely on other people for support for even the smallest day-to-day mishap, that's their problem, not everyone else's.

And, like what you said, sometimes the solution really is more important than the emotions. This is especially true for the small things, which are the bulk of what we face every day anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Listening is like walking alongside someone, whereas informing is like walking in front of someone. Ultimately life itself is a "problem" that has no destination, it's just nicer to know we're in it together.

</comment><comment><USER24> It sounds stupid but I first learned this concept from the movie "White Men Can't Jump" in 1992 when I was just a kid. I don't accept the idea as a hard rule but I do think it's a valuable perspective to understand.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajBHZKoKYbU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajBHZKoKYbU)

</comment><comment><USER25> From my experience this is a foundational idea in a marriage / coupling. Took me many years to realise there were two forms of support and more importantly that my response was always solutional.

I am now able to sit and listen without offering answers.

<comment><USER26> Same here, also took years to understand that my wife just want to be listened to and not given solutions every 5 sec. Happy wife = happy life!

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Jason Headley made a very entertaining video on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg)

</comment><comment><USER28> I really failed at this in my relationship.

<comment><USER29> Yep, really learned it the hard way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Interesting, they found men also prefer emotional support. It's just that informational support is better than no support for them while not a subset of women who really dislike informational support.

</comment><comment><USER31> Isn't it principle instead of principal? Or does principal have somekind of meaning similar to priniciple?

Non-native English speaker here.

</comment><comment><USER32> this is one of the big ideas of dialectical behavior therapy. if anyone wants to dig more into this school of thought i recommend googling DBT.

<comment><USER23> I'd say it's a prevailing theme in most modern psychotherapeutic practices

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I feel like study lacks the overall effect on happiness in the long run. We all know short term effects from the personal experience.

</comment><comment><USER34> I'm very interested with the finding, but what is emotional support exactly? Can anyone give concrete example?

</comment><comment><USER35> This article is supporting me informationally and not emotionally. Hypocrites!

</comment><comment><USER36> My real world experience is that, if a person has had to wait for that article to get its lessons, then from lack of those lessons and many more that are much more subtle, they probably got divorced soon after marriage or never got married!!!!</comment>


Show HN: Ofelia – a simple job scheduler ready for Docker - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mcuadros/ofelia <comment><USER2> I get that this is not Vixie cron and has a little syntactic sugar for executing commands in Docker containers, but I'm not sure what else it offers, and I'm really going to need a very good reason to consider replacing a thoroughly battle-tested crond with _anything_ , new or otherwise.

I don't see that here. What am I missing?

<comment><AUTHOR> I created Ofelia, being getting Vixie crond inside of a container is a nightmare (at least when I started the project, 1 year ago), with Ofelia is simply tasks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What is the problem with cron? It's just too old for you guys?

<comment><USER4> The author tries to answer that question. From the README's "Why?" section:

> Vixie's cron works great but it's not extensible and it's hard to debug when > something goes wrong.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting. I would like to see something in the future with support for approximate times, like launching something about five minutes.

Why? Because sometimes you don't want all your jobs to start at once. Just moving one job some miliseconds ahead of time will make a whole server to handle load better

<comment><AUTHOR> Could be a nice PR ;)

<comment><USER5> You are tempting me to learn a little bit of go !!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm currently doing scheduled Docker containerized tasks via Airflow. Though the setup is a bit more complex at first, working in DAGs also simplifies my code when one task depends on one or more before it. Is this intended to compete with a setup like that?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope I don't want to have any complex like a execution tree, this is just a small replacement of the kind of jobs you want to run with cron

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd be careful with that name/reference. Without implying any bad intent, naming your job scheduler after a female office assistant that being made fun of for being obese isn't a good idea. If the project gets attention, this will get attention.

<comment><AUTHOR> As explained in the README, is a character from Mortadelo and Filemon[1], she is a office manager and I though that was a good simile to a job scheduler, obviously the intent is not make fun of the fat that she is fat.

[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_%26_Phil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_%26_Phil)

<comment><USER7> I understand this and said that I'm not saying there was any bad intend. I'm just saying that some people will feel offended by this, so if this gets attention there will be people pointing this out.

This makes me wonder why I'm getting downvoted though.

Is it because people don't believe it's right that I point out that people might get offended by this? Or is it more because people don't like that other people get offended by this?

<comment><USER4> It's likely the combination of the two. And a third option: folks who didn't read what you wrote closely enough and assume that you espouse those views. But to be fair to the first group (who "don't believe it's right that I point out that people might get offended by this"), having a reflex towards censoring topics/names/conversations that might make others uncomfortable is itself problematic IMO. The domain of all-things-that-might-make-others- uncomfortable is vast, and we should have discussions about subjects as they come.

For the record: I think you were genuinely trying to be helpful and don't deserve downvotes.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


You don't keep searching after you found what you were looking for, right? - <AUTHOR> http://badcheese.com/node/120

<comment><USER2> Google has been doing this for years.

How is it interesting to add pre-existing Google functionality into a Firefox plugin that just duplicates what's already happening?

Sounds like a perfect example of "often 6 months in the lab can save you 10 minutes in the library".

<comment><USER3> Yep, they've been doing this for a while. I still remember when they changed the result URL's to be redirects instead of direct links because they wanted to track exactly this behavior.

It is a great idea, but uhm.. ya, a bit late to the party. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like this idea. However, my browsing habits would mess this up. When I run a search, I'll often open the first two or three results that look good. I do this before looking at any of them. Still, even knowing that a result "looked good" might be enough to improve results.

<comment><USER5> I do the same thing, which is why I have my doubts: I'll do a search and ctrl- click (or equivalent to open in a new tab) the top 4-5 that look promising. Last clicked in no way means it is the best result, especially considering that the last one I clicked will be further down in the search results and (theoretically) be the least applicable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> clicks-as-votes isn't new. There are many reasons for the last click though.

       1. found what you want
       2. got bored
       3. tried a new search term
       4. browser crashed
       5. continued your searching session through the site (ie going forward not back)
       6. tab based browsing

It's true that you wouldn't keep searching after you found what you want, but that does not necessarily imply that if you stop searching you have found what you were looking for.

Alternative search engines have tried and died.

<comment><USER7> And to add:

7\. Switched to Bing and/or Yahoo to compare results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's exactly how Google tracks your habits to personalize your search results. And recently they announced they're going to do it for everyone, not just logged in users.

</comment><comment><USER9> When I search I scan through the search page and pickup interesting links and get them opened in tabs. Then I read opened tabs and if they don't have stuff I need, I refine my search query. I think my search style would feed lots of false positives to the research the writer is doing, if I participate :).

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds interesting. I guess the more users you get the better search results your search will return.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm generally in favor of people doing little mashups over the Google interface. I'll bet there's a lot of potentially interesting work in that area -- though I'd hate to try to make money off it.

</comment><comment><USER12> This will bias results towards those that are already on the first few pages. New pages that are actually more relevant for a query(but haven't had time to get clicks) wouldn't stand a chance.

<comment><USER4> You could make it a fraction -- last-clicks/views

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> At a conference, Norvig once mentioned that you _not_ clicking on the number 1 link says a lot more than you clicking on the number 4 link. Just saying.</comment>


Max Levchin: How to successfully launch a social networking development platform. - <AUTHOR> http://maxlevchin.wordpress.com/2008/01/22/how-to-launch-a-successful-social-networking-development-platform/

<comment> daniel-cussen Is this the actually Max Levchin, or is this a "fake Steve Jobs" version? And if this was the case, would this constitute a milestone of startup celebrity?

<comment><AUTHOR> the link from james hong would appear to give it credibility

[http://james.hotornot.com/2008/01/secrets-of-running- social-...](http://james.hotornot.com/2008/01/secrets-of-running-social- network.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> I wonder how well slide.com is doing in terms of revenue and users.</comment>


Sitting May Be Bad for Your Heart - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/20/well/move/why-sitting-may-be-bad-for-your-heart.html?&moduleDetail=section-news-1&action=click&contentCollection=Well&region=Footer&module=MoreInSection&version=WhatsNext&contentID=WhatsNext&pgtype=article <comment><USER3> Taking a bigger picture view, this makes me wonder.. we took so much effort to move from the industrial age, where hands on work, always active all day work took its toll on workers, to the service or knowledge age, where we sit all day and that takes its toll.

Surely the answer lies somewhere in-between, that we must rest, and we must move, and the amount of each must be relative to each person and activity.

I would prefer to see studies not just trying to prove things bad (we have enough of those), but focuses on what can be proven to be a positive, for example, the optimal mixture of activity and rest for different people and situations.

For example, in addition to "sitting may be bad for your heart" (while necessary and important), I would like to see more of the studies that say "for age group <Y>, occupation <Z>, walking for <N> interval followed by resting for <M> interval increased <X> or <Y> positive benefits".

Since we automated a lot of manual labor, maybe the next big thing is automating sitting all day so we can get up and walk around.

<comment><USER4> Stick the computer on an exercise bike, set it up so its powered by a dynamo and get the programming, marketing and sales teams to cycle while working. Okay, that's not a good idea, but it's one I can see a executive coming up with to 'promote a healthy lifestyle' at one of those newfangled offices Apple and Google and the likes have.

<comment><USER5> Apple and Google already have walking treadmill desks, which serves the same purpose.

<comment><USER6> Do they get used much, or do they sit unused, somewhere out of the way?

<comment><USER7> There's approximately one per floor, and they often sit idle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Unfortunately while there is evidence that sitting all day is bad, we don't know if/what alternatives are good. Is standing better, or do you need to move? Maybe it is staring at something close (monitor, papers...) and sitting is only bad as a proxy (I know of no study that can actually say that hypothesis is wrong even though I just made it up). Modern life currently requires a lot of people to spend a lot of time at computers, so we need to know how to be healthy while at computers.

I like having a motorized desk, but I don't think I could actually stand all day long, (other than the same breaks someone sitting all day would take). I tried a treadmill desk a time or two, but I don't have the option of using it daily.

<comment><USER9> I think the only real alternative is to get rid of the 8+ hour work day.

Correct me if there is evidence to the contrary, but I don't think humans were designed to sit or stand in one position for extended periods of time, habitually.

Unfortunately I don't see the 8 hour work day going away any time soon, so imo the best option is to alternate sitting/standing and take as many walking around breaks as possible.

<comment><USER10> > _Correct me if there is evidence to the contrary, but I don 't think humans > were designed to sit or stand in one position for extended periods of time, > habitually._

Hard evidence? I can't give you that. But look at all of the other mammals out there. Almost all of them spend substantial amounts of time sitting.

Traditional hunter-gatherer societies do almost of their work and food processing sitting down. Every hobbyist flint-knapper works sitting down.

The difference is they don't use _chairs._ Sitting in a chair is bad - <USER2> consider the risk of embolisms on long flights. It removes the need for your body to actively support itself and restricts motion. Anecdote of size one, but for me the biggest help was getting rid of the traditional "throne" chair and replacing it a very broad stool. I can comfortably sit cross legged on it all day. I'm constantly moving and shifting my weight forwards and back, leaning and reaching since I can't just roll a chair around.

It has required making some unusual furniture to use a computer comfortably. Like all of my keyboards are tilted the "wrong" way (away from me) with the front higher than the back. Much easier on my hands and wrists.

<comment><USER11> Got any pictures of this stool?

<comment><USER12> Yeah I'd be curious to see as well, if it's got some unique properties to it that would be useful to take example from :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Every time an article about the (very important!) dangers of sitting makes the rounds, it always brings in people with a bad case of switcheroo fever, who come in and say something to the effect of "well actually, standing can cause injuries too!"

But that's never followed up with any clear conclusions about the relative dangers of standing vs. sitting. The conversation is left with a dangling implication that _maybe_ standing is just as bad as sitting. Or worse, we're left with a vague, open ended exhortation about how the body is really complicated.

This always annoys the heck out of me. At a bare minimum, we should at least be able to come away from these articles with the conclusion that we shouldn't sit for substantial periods, and that we definitely should throw ourselves into some other alternative, whatever it's complications are.

The risk of injuries from standing should be mitigated however they have to be mitigated, but it we shouldn't let that complication muddy the waters on the more fundamental point about sedentary behavior still being bad even if the alternatives have problems too.

</comment><comment><USER14> I hope this study don't revive the trend of standing desks again. Look I know being sedentary will rob me a few years of life, but going full opposite and being stand 9 to 5 it's Dante inferno at work. Probably the best balance will be having a routine with exercise present, and small breaks to stand and walk a little bit at X minutes sitting.

<comment><USER15> It's almost as if it's lack of constant (even low-grade) activity that's the problem, rather than whether you're sitting or standing. Perhaps not moving all day is the cause.

<comment><USER16> I bought an Aeron chair a few years ago and although it's fantastically comfortable I feel a downside is sometimes I don't move for several hours if I get engrossed in work. Once they are set up right I've not sat in any work chair which comes close.

As I said, I'm not sure that's a good thing because of the length of time I can sit. I do wiggle a bit but often don't even stand up. I was toying with getting a sand timer or something similar to enforce getting up but not sure how those interruptions would affect my workflow.

<comment><USER17> Yes, I agree. See my other comment that is a sibling to yours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> TL;DR - We don't really know.

(but here's an observational study that says the more you sit around the higher your troponin levels are, and those are bad, so try to walk around more.)

<comment><USER15> > so try to walk around more

Even though we just said it's probably not going to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I dunno if sitting is bad or not -- but ever since I got a fitted desk and put a Deskcycle under it I've felt super great. It's a bit awkward always being a little bit sweaty though (I put in ~50 miles a day).

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

<comment><USER20> That picture at the top is such a hilariously bad photoshop. I can't imagine anyone using this with a rolly chair on a wooden floor. The scratches!

<comment><USER21> FYI: There are special rolls for hardwood flooring, that dont scratch the floor.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Went to an orthopedic doc for an achy leg/back/knee.

Gave me the usual prescription: strengthen some core muscles, physical therapy, anti inflammatory meds for a couple weeks, and should be good to go.

Also, however, he prescribed that I read the book Deskbound, by Kelly Starrett.

Reading that book will definitely give you an incentive to not sit for long periods of time.

<comment><USER23> Weasel words perhaps, but Kelly Starrett really divides physical therapist communities. Some love him, some hate him. Personally I think he's often "right for the wrong reasons". But if his approach gets you feeling better, that's what's important.

Ditto workouts for "core muscles".

<comment><USER24> Is there any readable book that's "right for the right reasons"? I'm interested in learning more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I would say during the 16 hours I'm awake, it's mixed between standing with a little bit of movement (75%), walking / running (10%) and sitting (15%). This has been going on for about 2 years.

You can put together a custom standing desk for about $50 nowadays and a $35ish chair is all you need to comfortably sit in an ergonomic way with your standing desk when you want to take a break (no complicated adjustable desk needed, just a standard 29" comfortable stool with a back).

I really like this set up and highly recommend it.

</comment><comment><USER26> When I started my fisærst and current job I got back pains after 2 months. I tried walking home every day, which helped, but that's not always possible in winter. What really helped was working out with weight exercises during lunch. No pain since then.

<comment><USER27> i had back pain for 2 years... which sows up 2 to 4 times a month, i tried many techniques, but with no great result.

But this one technique where you just lie down on the floor upside down fully flat for 20 mins... my back pain just disappeared and never came back for last 6 months...

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Seems closely connected with something I happened to submit recently:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15839654](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15839654)

</comment><comment><USER29> Do you think the author was sitting down when he typed this?

</comment><comment><USER30> i noticed in the past 3 years that my ability to stand still > 1hr becomes very very challenging. not sure if this is my age..but it truly was alarming.

so now i take it day by day and push myself a few min more each morning ( when my hormones are the highest ) to stand more. i mix it up during the day when i can..and use a fitball for sitting.

Let's all do more standing, drinking water, yoga, and eat more non-processed foods in 2018!!

</comment><comment><USER31> This article comes as I worked sitting down for 16 hours yesterday to hit a code deadline. I think Im going to get a standing desk ASAP...

<comment><USER12> Yeh, start bugging your employer (assuming you work for one) to get those awesome adjustable desks that can raise/lower to different heights. OK, they are a bit pricy, but if enough people speak up about it that should make things happen. Hopefully :)

<comment><USER31> I'm a independent contractor and work from home. So yeah, my employer is aware :) I definitely have this high on my list especially since I get the money spent right back in tax relief.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> "Not surprisingly, those men and women rarely exercised."

Perhaps a more controlled study is needed.

</comment><comment><USER33> Is it that sitting is bad, or that _not walking_ is bad? Is this clickbait?

</comment><comment><USER34> We need recess at work.</comment>


Lenovo ThinkPad A485 (Ryzen 5 Pro) Laptop Review - <AUTHOR> https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-A485-Ryzen-5-Pro-Laptop-Review.334528.0.html <comment><USER2> Felt like a lot of clicks to be told we don't like AMD</comment>


Ask HN: What is your experience using webtask.io? - <AUTHOR> If you are using webtask.io in your project, I would like to hear what your experience was. References to projects/code would be useful too. <comment><USER2> My experience is I went to the web site, saw it wasn't open source and then looked at other stuff. Cool tech, but hard to see why I would use it when lambda, google cloud functions, azure functions exist. If I don't want one of those 3, I want something cross platform or that runs on prem and there are a growing number of options for that.</comment>


LinksOnHN[n].setAttribute('target',"_blank");  - <AUTHOR>

As of dec 21 ,2008 - clicking on stories in HN,open them in the same tab. An average visit to HN involves for me, 10 (right clicks + click ) combo's (on my laptop )
would it help to add a target="_blank" attributes for story links, so that they open in new tabs/windows ( edit: and the tab with HN links remains intact )
this also works out well for those who prefer using the keyboard to navigate links in a page. ( yup, vi/emacs does that to ppl ! )
~B
tags: [accessibility] <comment><USER2> Please don't make this change. My #1 pet peeve on the web is a page that opens new browser windows.

<comment><USER3> maybe it could be a preference. i personally run a greasemonkey script that not only opens links in a new tab, but inserts a topbar so i can vote and get to comments from the article page.

<comment><USER4> First thing I thought was "greasemonkey" when I read this. But the extra features of your script sound pretty sweet. Is it online somewhere?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _"this also works out well for those who prefer using the keyboard to navigate links in a page. ( yup, vi/emacs does that to ppl ! )"_

I am a keyboard junkie and I have no problem with Hacker News. I just use the _amazing_ Vimperator extension which adds vim keybindings to Firefox. So to open a link in a new tab I just press "F" to activate quickhints, which displays a number beside each link, then I type the number of the link I want. (Or I can type some text that is contained in the  tag). <http://vimperator.org>

Ultimately this is a browser UI issue, _not_ a Hacker News issue.

<comment><USER6> While I'm not a Vim user (or even an emacs user) that sounds useful without the knowledge of Vim keyboard shortcuts.

<comment><USER5> Knowledge of vim is not required but helps; the manual is pretty thorough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a problem YOU have, it's not a problem with the website. So fix it for yourself, there are many ways to do so.

</comment><comment><USER8> Now would be a great time to learn the joy of mouse gestures, configure your middle click button or install a greasemonkey/userscript.

</comment><comment><USER9> No. I can already do it with my mouse. I have no desire for site specific short cuts.

<comment><USER10> I agree. Site specific short cuts are worse thasn useless, because you'd have to use different ones for each site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> You complain about having to perform some arcane action to open a new tab, but in most operating systems, if you press left+right mouse buttons at the same time, it is interpreted as a middle-click.

Also, in firefox, ctrl+enter opens a highlighted link in a new tab while keeping the current tab open. ctrl+shift+enter to open and focus the new tab.

<comment><USER12> For the other three Opera users on HN, it's the same behavior but reversed: shift-click (or shift-enter if you use shift-arrow navigation) opens in a focused new tab; ctrl-shift-click opens the new tab but sends it to the background for later.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use ctrl+click, works for me and firefox :P

<comment><USER14> Same here

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Middle click FTW!

<comment><USER16> i'd love it if hn added a simple checkbox like techmeme to open links in a new tab. The middle click is pretty sweet though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Why not just write a GreaseMonkey script to do this? Simple enough...

</comment><comment><USER18> 1\. Ctrl-Click or the equivalent for your browser.

2\. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/36606> There are other Greasemonkey scripts like this.

3\. <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/379> There are other extensions like this.

4\. Write your own ff extension or gm script.

5\. Just use backspace or Alt-LeftArrow.

</comment><comment><USER19> Implementing this option (as an official HN feature) could be done entirely in Javascript (meaning no need to worry about building more shit into the server) and completed in under an hour.

It would be cool if there were an "HN Labs" that suggested feature submissions and allowed users to add them to their accounts as profile extensions.

Setting up HN links with _blank is also a trivial solution to implement on your own though.

</comment><comment><USER10> If I want to open a link in a new tab, I click it using the middle mouse button. This works on Firefox on Ubuntu. On your browser/OS combination there is probably something similar; if not, I suggest you upgrade the software you're using.

</comment><comment><USER20> Make it optional per user :)

<comment><USER11> This is such a niche feature that I think it would bloat the options pane. This is also a perfect job for greasemonkey :)

<comment><USER21> I dont think its niche, it seems like the core use case is opening the site and reading through a pick of the front page articles, in that case opening in a new window saves either half the clicks, or having to press back all the time (as long as the article isnt interesting enough to click through further)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Try clicking both of your mousekeys on your laptop at the same time (put your finger in the middle). With some drivers, this simulates a middle-key-click (opens in a new tab)

</comment><comment><USER23> Another way you can hack this yourself - get FluidApp, and make HN a site- specific web app. All off-site links will automatically spawn in new browsers.

</comment><comment><USER24> All hail the QuickDrag Firefox extension. Just grab the link and throw it; no keyboarding involved, or trying to press down on the scroll wheel.

</comment><comment><USER25> Well, since middle click has the same behavior even with @target="_blank", I couldn't care less if they enabled it or not.

</comment><comment><USER26> On Windows you can use control+click and on a Macintosh you can use command+click.

</comment><comment><USER27> No.

</comment><comment><USER28> In firefox, middle-click will open a new tab.

<comment><USER29> As will holding Control while you click.</comment></comment>


Kevin Rose's New Startup: Pownce - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/06/27/kevin-roses-new-startup-pownce/ <comment><USER2> Doesn't look earth shattering to me. Facebook can do all this stuff

<comment><USER3> True, but Kevin Rose hasn't given it his 100% disinterested, totally nonbiased, wildly positive appraisal yet: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1_YoG7lqI4>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Crazy. How one can manage 3 startup's at once is beyond me. I guess at this point Digg doesn't require much effort though.

</comment><comment><USER5> does anyone have an invite code so I can try this out?</comment>


Jack Kirby: The comic book artist finally gets the recognition he deserves - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/jack-kirby-new-gods-marvel-comic-book-artist-recognition-a8259236.html <comment><USER2> I understand this article is probably written for the general audience who may not understand how baffling it is to say Jack Kirby is "finally" getting the recognition he deserves (and probably don't even know who he _is_ to begin with), but it doesn't make it less perplexing to read a headline that intimate he wasn't before.

He was definitely short-changed by Marvel and article takes that up at surface level so,I can't complain that much.

Stan Lee was always the more memorable name and face of the pair, but Batman was also always the face of Batman and Robin, the boy wonder still had plenty of recognition (a couple became other super heroes...one, unfortunately lost his mind). Though I am glad to see the article at least acknowledges Kirby as the titan he was behind the proverbial panels.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I mean, the article literally uses his nickname ("the King") to refer to him. How could anyone who isn't being properly recognized have the well known nickname "King"?

<comment><USER4> Hmm, I'm not a huge comic fan (only recently started buying some, again) and I've never heard the nickname. I knew the name Jack Kirby, of course, but I have to agree that the names Lee and Kirby didn't _really_ tell me a lot before Wikipedia was around (and/or the MCU started).</comment></comment></comment>


$50 AWS Credit for Microsoft Windows Server Instances on EC2 - <AUTHOR> http://aws.amazon.com/solutions/global-solution-providers/microsoft/aprilcredit/

<comment><USER2> Does anyone have the details on how Amazon is licensing Windows Server / on what terms?

Is the OS licensed to Amazon, to the customer, is this a custom licensing term deal from Microsoft, am I supposed to provide the serial key, how is activation handled, etc?

Is Amazon "renting" the OS? How is this possible?

The only thing I've been able to locate is this...

> Q. When I import a VM of Windows Server 2003 or 2008, who is responsible for > supplying the operating system license?

> When you launch an imported VM using Microsoft Windows Server 2003 or 2008, > you will be charged standard instance hour rates for Amazon EC2 running the > appropriate Windows Server version, which includes the license to utilize > that operating system within Amazon EC2. You are responsible for ensuring > that all other installed software is properly licensed.

[http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#When_I_import_a_VM_of_Window...](http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/faqs/#When_I_import_a_VM_of_Windows_Server_2003_or_2008,_who_is_responsible_for_supplying_the_operating_system_license)

<comment><USER3> They do say "standard rates ... include the license". Amazon presumably gets Windows licenses through SPLA. [http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing- options/spla-pr...](http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/licensing-options/spla- program.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is awesome. It doesn't appear to require Windows though:

Amazon CloudFront, Elastic MapReduce, ElastiCache, Route 53, S3, EC2, SQS, Simple EDI, VPC, AWS Data Transfer, SNS, DynamoDB, RDS, SES, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, SimpleDB, and Simple Notification Service $50.00

<comment><USER5> _The $50 AWS Service Credit offer is limited to Amazon EC2 instances with Microsoft Windows._

Looks like it is limited to Windows to me.

<comment><USER4> It says that but when it hit our account it listed all those other services beside the credit...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> That ain't bad, even used as directed.

If you've got some reason to run a desktop app in the cloud, setting up Windows in EC2 and connecting to it with RDP is as easy as falling off a log -- for Windows, MacOS and Linux clients.

You certainly can connect to a Linux X desktop in EC2 from any of those platforms but it's much more trouble to set up, even on Linux.

</comment><comment><USER7> If Windows is not your game, you can use this credit to run FreeBSD on EC2: <http://www.daemonology.net/freebsd-on-ec2/>

</comment><comment><USER8> Anyone know how far $50 worth of credit will go on a typical Windows Server instance?

<comment><USER9> On demand small instance will cost you approx $83 per month on 100% usage. A micro instance is free for new users. You can calculate most of the costs using their calculator:

<http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the url says aprilcredit.. do they give out these credits every month :)

<comment><USER10> I haven't looked at the source details, but few months ago there was a promotion for the whole year worth of free EC2 (Windows, Linux).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> heh... you can't even pay me to use Windows. Nice.

<comment><USER12> I think you meant to go to slashdot instead of news.yc</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What features are essential in a "Chat" app? (Take 2) - <AUTHOR> (I asked this earlier, but submissions can fall off the front page quickly, and I'm submitted at a different time to try to hit a different HN demographic.)
For interest, I and some colleagues have written a "Chat" app. Think SMS, but with extra features that make it "interesting".
It's end-to-end encrypted, distributed, resists traffic analysis, decentralised, and generally we're finding it a useful alternative to existing alternatives.
We have our own ideas about what to add next, but it's probably the right time to get out of our fishbowl and get ideas from a wider potential audience. We're not looking for reactions from the world in general, this won't ever be used for sharing pictures of cats or videos of pratfalls, so I suggested to my colleagues that HN might be the place to ask for opinions on what might be regarded as essential. <comment><USER3> Could you explain why your app is useful compared to existing alternatives? To be more precise what does it do that Signal doesn't?

<comment><AUTHOR> The main difference is that Signal is susceptible to traffic analysis - <USER2> who can watch the messages can identify who is talking to whom. It's also tied to your phone number, and it's not at all clear to me that it's either decentralised or distributed.

The content of messages might be secure, but our app goes a lot further in hiding information, not just content.

It's already usable for us, that's why I'm asking what other people would want from a chat app. Is voice really necessary? If you want to resist traffic analysis then you probably can't have it. Do you want to send videos? Probably can't have that either - large volumes make it easy to track connections.

So what _do_ people want - are those deal breaking limitations?

<comment><USER3> For people who see privacy as the main concern, their biggest requirement will just be that the service is reliable and actually secure. Your job will be to convince them to trust you. Based on what you've written, I would say you have a decent chance of achieving this. If you can demonstrate that you are the most privacy-friendly service currently available, they'll be willing to tolerate a lot of inconvenience.

For those for whom it isn't, they will typically have a very different set of concerns. In this case the inability to send voice messages, videos or most things that the first group would see as non-essential will probably be a deal-breaker over time and will make them switch back to another service out of accumulated frustration. At the very least you will need support for image files, gifs, and generally making it easy to forward messages, links, and documents. However, this is the least of your problems as the main obstacle for you is that the network effect of actually having people they know on the service will be what they think of most and what will orient their choices. To get started, you then have to forget about asking what features are the necessary minimum and focus on what you bring to the table that is surprising enough to kickstart your own network effect. If you look at Whatsapp and then Snapchat and then Telegram, they all had that. In your case you'll most probably have to out-Telegram Telegram somehow.

I'm basing all this on what I've observed over the years in terms of what people tend to actually do with such apps. I'm firmly in the second camp. I even use WeChat, which is a horror show in terms of privacy, because that's what many of the people I've met use and since they live in China it's like trying to convince a Westerner to give up Facebook. Doable, but almost certainly an uphill battle requiring them to be predisposed to the idea in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's useful feedback - thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


[SaaS] Whatagraph.com – Infographic Reports for Google Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://whatagraph.com <comment><USER3> Very nice! Subscribed! First feedback, translations please! I'm from Brazil and this infographics would be nice tool for sell my product, B2B. I can help with translations. And, Is there any bonus for referrals?

<comment><AUTHOR> So far we are not able to translate it to any different language - <USER2> English.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Would be great to hear some feedback :)</comment>


Ask HN: What kind of scoring algorithms exist? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, in my project I need to sort apartments and there is a lot of data about each of them. I give each parameter score, f.e. to the size of the apartment I give some certain score, to location as well, but it doesn't really work well because I don't understand how to give the weight to each parameter. Question: Is there some sort of guideline on scoring/sorting things, some algorithms that might help? Or you might have some suggestions on where to look for information about such things. Thanks! <comment><USER2> It's tricky. Read up on Pareto Optimization.

You can't really trade off square footage vs commute length linearly because there is no objective criterion.

What you can do is prove that Apartment A has fewer square feet than Apartment B and a longer commute so A is dominated by B.

Out of your complete set of apartments you can that there is a small set that dominate all the others. When you are down to that you can make your personal choice from that set.

<comment><AUTHOR> At this moment how I do it: The initial score is 0, based on year of construction (newer is better ofc) I add 0-36 points, amount of square meters I multiply by 0.5 and add it as extra points, based on how prestigious is the district I add extra 0-4 points and there are many other things.

So why it's not possible like that to give score to each apartment? I mean if I find right weight for each parameter? How f.e. google rates websites, I guess it gives some kind of score to each of them? Or not?

<comment><USER2> An obvious problem is that the linear score doesn't represent the value I feel I get from the attribute.

For instance, I live in a 2000 sq ft. space, I will have to store things if I move into a 1500 sq ft. space, and have to sell them or throw them out if I move to a 500 sq ft. space.

A 3000 sq ft space would feel spacious to me but I would not get 10x the utility if I had a 30,000 sq ft space because I don't have enough stuff to fill it.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> That's why I'm wondering how to score it. If I give too much weight to the surface it won't make sense definitely. So at the beginning surface and price were the most important so then I had a lot of really big and cheap apartments from suburbs as first results, which didn't make sense, then I introduced rating based on district and few other parameters and it improved rating a lot but still, it's not good enough. I will check this Utility, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> For real estate, a quick and dirty solution that comes to mind is asking price per square foot, assuming that the market itself has taken into account all the common relevant factors. Unless price is something you intend to test against, of course.

<comment><AUTHOR> But even in the same neighborhood super well-furnished apartment and shell apartment will have very different prices per square foot. Also depending on construction year price per square can greatly differ.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hopefully I understand your problem correctly...

You can use window functions to do things like dense rank, rank, percentiles, etc on each parameter in order to normalize the data. E.g., this one is at the 63rd percentile in size, 20th in distance, etc. This doesn't work so well if you have lots of 0s in your data.

Or you can find the min and max of each and divide by the max. This one is 42% of max, etc.

In each case you're trying to normalize diff parameters to represent something comparable (x/max, percentile, etc) so you can combine them. You can also do intermediate operations like take the logs or take the z score if you're trying to muffle the effects of outliers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, I will try it and test how well it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The problem you describe is known as "multi objective optimization".

Normalizing the input data to similar ranges usually helps, but there is no single golden rule how to weight. It depends on what you want to accomplish.

But regardless of any weighting in multi objective optimization problems there is a subset of all items (apartments in your case) that is better then all the items not in this set. This set is called the "pareto front". There are methods to compute this set.

You can't decide which item of the pareto front is better than another; it is a rock, scissors, paper situation. But the pareto front can exclude a lot of items, that you then don't need to consider. These items are worse in every aspect (optimization objective) than any item from the pareto front.

As a computer science student we often used population based optimization methods for dealing with multi objective optimization. For example ant colony optimization or evolutionary algorithms.

</comment><comment><USER6> In these kind of things I usually start by multiplying (or dividing) the parameters to get a score (weight=1). Then I sort them, see if they look "good" and add weights as needed. My thinking is that the first result should match my preferences and the last result should not. I know it's a kind of confirmation bias, but..

When I bought my car years ago, I had some parameters, but comparing the price was harder because of devaluation. I remember that I assumed a 15% yearly devaluation so that I could compare prices. For instance, a 2000's car valued 1000€ was almost similar in price to a 1999's car valued 850€..

I make sure to always include a "Preference" (aka bias) parameter and give it more or less weight the more it harms my results.

</comment><comment><USER7> if i were you i would look to PCA analysis and cluster analysis. PCA can help find what are the key (reduced) set of drivers/dimensions that provide you with the ability to explain the majority of your variability. Cluster analysis could help you group the data you have in meaninful reduced set of groups and then you can measure dimensions within clusters and between clusters to help you come up with a strong score system. Again assuming you have a relative high dimensional problem with many data

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, there are several thousand apartments. Based on what to cluster them?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well, rank based on what? You need a metric to optimise for.

Maybe that's price, or maybe that's user clicks or bookings if you're Airbnb.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rank based on apartment data, like surface, district, price, year of construction, number of rooms, etc. So based on it to rate apartment, in the end, to sort it from the best to worst :)

<comment><USER8> Again, you don't have a metric to optimize.

You could, for a simple example, label a number of these properties yourself, with values. Say you could go rate 1000 of them with a rating out of 10.

Then you could learn the importance for each of these parameters by trying to approximate your rating (regression of some kind).

Alternatively, because labeling a lot of these, and doing so accurately is a non-trivial task, you can look into generating these ratings.

In learning to rank for search for example, you can extract this information from interactions the users have with your items.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Cosign similarity is a standard method of searching multi-dimensional data. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosine_similarity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosine_similarity)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I will check it out!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> 37% rule in algorithms to live by book's

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, sounds interesting, I will check it.</comment></comment>


How do I start a programming project? - <AUTHOR> I've been in software development for about 10 years, but I rarely work on my own coding projects.  I've done small projects here and there but that's it.  I never seem to like my ideas enough to stick with them.  How do I find something I'm really interested in to work on? <comment><USER2> I'd start by asking yourself what your honest goals for doing a project are; something for fun, something to up your skills, something to show/help you find new jobs, etc.

I personally favor a "pull" approach to doing things that are "good for me". I don't "exercise", I "play" (biking/kayaking/skiing). I don't force myself to learn "X", I do something fun that happens to use "X" and learn it that way.

Of course, if you're not lazy like me, there are probably better approaches that require self discipline and such but that's not much fun. ;-)</comment>


American Colonists made a little ice age - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47063973 <comment><USER2> Actual title is "America colonisation 'cooled Earth's climate'," which is a better summary of TFA.

</comment><comment><USER3> I thought the Little Ice Age actually began several centuries before this. Maybe they lengthened it, or deepened it. But something else was happening as well. Perhaps it was part of an going process... the plague in Europe and the near east etc.

</comment><comment><USER4> link to paper: _" Earth system impacts of the European arrival and Great Dying in the Americas after 1492"_

[https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0277379118307261?...](https://reader.elsevier.com/reader/sd/pii/S0277379118307261?token=91E1BE714D6F7CC5468CA4927ED98DC165BBB529A3D01AE1E8F279D2F9754C1434D7BDE773872BEE6FCB678135459175)</comment>


Show HN: JavaScript template literals as viewing engine in Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/DJviolin/template-literals-demo <comment><AUTHOR> In the past I used Handlebars, Nunjucks for viewing engine. So far I happy with Nunjucks, but yesterday I thought maybe it's possible to use pure template literals (why not?) for backend rendering in Node.js.

I created this little Koa v2 demo app, where I made similar view file structure like if it was a Handlebars or Nunjucks templates. So far the biggest difficulty for me was to pass down a value from a router to a sub- component, without referencing that file in the router or another sub-views more than once in the entire app. Now I passing "down" the variables from the router file to the deepest referenced sub-component with an object in the function arguments.

Any Koa v2 or Express templating best practices are broken (ctx.state also), because not just the viewing engine, but also not in use any template rendering middleware, like koa-views.

Any suggestions are highly welcome!</comment>