Shutttr - A community for photographers - <AUTHOR> http://www.shutttr.com/welcome

<comment><USER2> Didn't see much of a hint at what to expect without registering, so I left. Is it ugly inside? Empty? I wouldn't register without having some idea of those things.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can we stop dropping the 'e' from all these site names? It was retarded when flickr did it, it's even more retarded now.

Be original people.

</comment><comment><USER4> I can't even count how many 't's there are.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I think "Shutttr" has one 't' too many. "Shuttr" would be better. They replaced an 'e' with a 't', but they should have just removed the letter instead. Similarly-named sites "Flicker"→"Flickr" and "Forest"→"Forrst" are still readable because a letter is repeated at most twice. "Shutttr" is harder to read because English has many words with twice-repeated letters, but few or no words with thrice-repeated letters.</comment></comment>


35 States allow cops to have sex with prisoners in their custody - <AUTHOR> https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertsamaha/this-teenager-accused-two-on-duty-cops-of-rape-she-had-no <comment><USER2> Another way of looking at this is, "35 states have not reported a scandal where cops had sex with prisoners in their custody." IOW, in 15 states, an incident surfaced that forced the state legislature into passing a law.</comment>


ReMarkable MicroSD Hack - <AUTHOR> http://www.davisr.me/projects/remarkable-microsd/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is my hack. I submitted it hoping that it will inspire a discussion about other cool hacks.</comment>


Show HN: How to get users for your website/app - <AUTHOR>

Hello HN!
I created BetaUsersNow.com with the goal of allowing startups get immediate access to a pool of Targeted users and immediate feedback during their beta phase. The goal is to come in handy especially for recently launched startup or app, which do not have a siginificant user-base yet but would like to have users from their target demographics interact with their site/app and give feedback. During our beta phase, we have been signing up users from all walks of life and have collected their detailed demographic information - including city, state, country, Gender,Birth Year, Yearly Household Income, marital Status, Web/Computer Expertise, Web Usage on a Typical Day, Areas of Interest and device ownership (iPhone, iPad) etc. This will allow a recently launched startup to directly go to a pool of its target demographics and test products out. In a nutshell, the site will provide you a pool of targeted users, that fall within your target demographics, who will signnup at your website, follow your instructions to use your website, app and give you actionable feedback.
I would like to invite founders and developers to try out the service and give me any feedback that would help it improve. Thanks! <comment><USER3> I think I would use this, depending on the quality of the tester. $9 per user is a little expensive. There are a lot of traditional marketing techniques that could get you users for less than a $9 CPA - especially since it's $9 + you're giving away the product for free.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have any suggestions? Currently the business model works like this:

1)A user from your target demographics signs up at your website (or install your app on her device) 2)Responds to a series of questions asked by you - <USER2> provides some actionable feedback 3)Gets paid $5/website or $10/app (we are charging $9 or $15 respectively).

If there is a way to create a better model, I would be happy to consider it. My goal is to cater to new startups and give them a number of users from their target audience so that they can get their initial testing done and get soem feedback at a comparatively lower cost.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am basically trying to find out if there is an actual need for a service like this. Thanks for your input.</comment>


Tesla Model S Can Be Hacked, and Fixed (Which Is the Real News) - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2015/08/06/429907506/tesla-model-s-can-be-hacked-and-fixed-which-is-the-real-news <comment><USER2> >Here's how Rogers explained the hack: Tesla cars have a cable inside, which maintenance people can access to fix things. That cable is hidden, in a secret panel, either to the left of the driver or under the touchscreen.

>Pop it open, find the cable and plug into it.

So you need physical access to the inside of the car to do this? That doesn't sound like a security problem at all. If someone malicious has physical access to a normal car they could cut the brake lines or drain the oil, without even needing to unlock the car.

</comment><comment><USER3> > Every three months or so, every car gets a free software upgrade. No need to > go to the mechanic for it.

Next step: Hacking the update mechanism.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd rather the safety critical systems were not connected to Tesla's central servers so a hack is radically less likely in the first place.

If however somehow something gets through, then I'd rather go to the mechanic for the update instead of receive an OTA update, and hopefully the mechanic is getting the update on a very secure machine.

If the NSA is targeting me for assassination in a "smart car" because I'm about to leak some info about their programs, I'm probably not going to care much that the bug will be fixed in an OTA update next month - am I?!

Or what happens when Tesla enters in a zero-day/cyber-threat sharing program with the DHS and NSA, like Apple and Microsoft did?

The OTA "fix" seems more like a much bigger convenience for the car vendor than it is for the car buyer, with most of the risk being handled by the car buyer.

I also worry such systems would _trivialize_ the digital security of cars, like it has already happened on the Internet and in the PC world. "You should expect to get hacked" shouldn't become a way of thinking in the auto-industry. An OTA system that fixes critical safety bugs de-incentivizes companies to build strong security from the beginning - "We can always fix it later with the push of a button" vs "Fuck - not another recall!"</comment>


IQ vs Occupation chart [jpg] - <AUTHOR> http://www.iqcomparisonsite.com/Images/OccsX.jpg <comment><USER2> This chart gets passed around a lot, and it doesn't really pass the smell test. Even in the typically knuckle-headed majors like Education and Sociology, I just can't see an appreciable number of professors with sub-100 IQs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I had always thought that IQ was an adjusted measure to see how well one does with abstract thought. The chart doesn't seem to say much, other than to separate professions where people physically labor vs people who mentally labor.

</comment><comment><USER4> My thought on this is that there is either something wrong with this chart or the IQ test that produced it. It is _possible_ that in a perfect world where everyone had an equal opportunity, that the high IQ ppl would tend toward high education and science in particular, and that low IQ ppl would tend toward manual labor... But I doubt it, and we don't even live in that would.

This chart is measuring something other than IQ, perhaps the amount of education in math...

It reminds me in an uneasy way of A Brave New World where ppl intended for menial work had their IQ lowered before birth by oxygen deprivation...

</comment><comment><USER5> Paper: <http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/cde/cdewp/98-07.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER6> That seems like a lame site. Look at their sample question. A cat could get that right.

<comment><USER7> Retrieved cat.

Conducted Experiment.

Cat -> Fail.

The cat did however recommend a down-mod on the account of your species-ist comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> All this shows is that College professors spend an absurd amount of time doing IQ tests compared to Truck drivers.

The scientists who came up with the baseline work to study IQ found that correlating it to intelligence was vehemently disgusting. It was used to test how well young children scored on a school cericulum, not intelligence but learning.

It doesn't surprise me that MD's are at the top of the list as they're basically glorified encylopedias. They're incompitent, they're poor at their job and I've rarely heard people speak well of them. My mum has intermittent hyperthyroidism, it took almost 3 years for them to figure out they had to take a test when it was acting up to get a result. It's an intermittent condition and the morons didn't know what to do. The ironic thing is that she's a nurse and the doctors she works with told her she had it, but they can't give out prescriptions because of ethics so she was stuck with morons who wouldn't listen to what she said.

I saw 3 doctors about 1 skin condition. One said excema, the next said psoriosis and the final said ringworm. Each one had me on different meds for it and none of them worked, the thing that did was going on vacation for two weeks; within the first five days it was gone and hasn't been back since, yet none of them reccomended it and they had me on steroids and antifungals and never even told me that UV would likely clear it up no problem. Not to mention I've had a doctor tell me I'm morbidally obese because of my Body Mass Index when I'm bradycardic, I have perfect blood pressure and low cholesterol; I spent last weekend lifting 120kg wooden beams 2 meters into a roof and didn't even break a sweat. I'd be surprised my MD could lift 10kg, because I've certainly never seen him lift his fat ass out of a chair in 3 years and he has the gall to say I need to lose weight.

It took my girlfriends' aunt over a decade to get her doctor to diagnose her with high blood pressure, because he said she was thin enough that she didn't need her blood pressure to be taken. When she finally found a doctor that would do it, she left with a prescription for strong blood pressure medication because the guy was worried she was going to have a stroke.

IQ is complete bull and the list looks to correlate more with people incapable of listening or understanding than intelligence. I work as an electrician, yet my first job was in the creative group so near 110 at 16 and IQ results grow exponentially on age till about 21 years. Yet I'm a lot more intelligent now I've been working as an electrician than before, and I know a hell of a lot more.

This is inherently useless as people change jobs. My dad went from a milkman to a welder, to an owner/manager of a garage, to a motorbike racer, to an electrical engineer programming the first fuel injection systems in cars, to computer programming when DOS was new and rode that through into .Net and now I'm working with him on property renovation and electrics.

So I would really love someone to prove to me that IQ measures intelligence, cause it just seems to prove stupidity to me. MD's are the dumbest people I've ever met, and I need to meet about 90 more to get proof that all the ones I've met so far are a statistical anomaly occuring in a general local area of the bottom 10th percentile.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for the genealogical, biological, and anecdotal rambling, but most poeple know IQ tests are bunk except for these people: <http://www.mensa.org></comment></comment>


Herman Cain Dies from Coronavirus - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/politics/herman-cain-dies-coronavirus/index.html <comment><USER2> My Dad is 80 and doesn't want to wear a mask. Wants to live his life and not require others to "protect" him. Maybe Cain was this way too.

<comment><USER3> Which is an attitude that i can totally understand, even though when you are at risk both with age and a comorbidity (cancer in the case of Cain), it is not such a great idea.</comment></comment>


Cross Origin Madness - <AUTHOR> http://homakov.blogspot.com/2013/02/cross-origin-madness-or-your-frames-are.html

<comment><USER2> I can't see how any of those 'vectors' lead to real-world exploits.

1) You can submit a form, ok, but where does CSRF comes in if you can't manipulate or send any data?

2) possible phishing target, but it still doesn't have access to the parent, and you have to be already visiting an iframed website (wrong URL displayed), and it has be using iframes to send sensitive data.

3) window.name was never safe.

4) postMessage without an origin check is not safe either, period.

<comment><AUTHOR> > lead to real-world exploits

not looking for real world exploits for free anymore

1) can be exploit for some flash callback things, isciurus will publish PoC later

2) yes

3) why it wasn't? i mean yes it's shitty but how it was broken?

4) I agree, but I demonstrated that even if you trust iframe you _must_ specify receiver origin, just to be sure

<comment><USER3> window.name was never safe because it was shared by all domains. (You could use it for cross-origin communicate, in a very lame way.)

<comment><AUTHOR> shared by all _origin1_ domains. I'm origin2 and now i can also read it. this is the hack :)

<comment><USER2> window.name can be read by _any_ domain, that's why it was used for cross- domain messaging before postMessage came along.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is way over my head but seems very problematic.

<comment><USER5> Unless I'm misunderstanding scenario is this:

1) Fancy app website uses iframes to send messages to itself/its server

2) attack website embeds app in an iframe

3) attack website changes the URLs of the apps iframes to point to attacker- controlled pages

4) app sends sensitive info to its iframes, which of course ends up going to the attacker

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, thats right</comment></comment></comment>


Weebly (YC W07) Debuts an iPad App for Building and Managing Websites - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/09/weebly-ipad-app/

<comment> steve-benjamins I've been writing about Weebly for a couple years now. They continue to impress me. I haven't had my hands on the iPad app yet, but my bet is that it'll be easy to use and thoughtfully made. They consistently ship excellent software.

What's funny to me is that Weebly generally flies under the radar of the tech press. And yet in terms of profitable YC companies, they have to be near the top. David Rusenko has even talked about going public with Weebly (not unprecedented for website builders: Wix did it earlier this year).

Weebly is a company worth taking a close look at.

</comment><comment><USER2> We started using Weebly for projects where clients neither had the budget or the technical requirement for anything beyond basic. We've done four in as many weeks, it really is proving itself to be a resourceful little tool.

Even though I kind of hate dragging those component around, the reality is that the little tool has made the company I work for upwards of £3k this month at a time where the team are between more technical projects. Win, win....for now!

<comment><USER3> What are you charging a client to build a site for them on Weebly?

<comment><USER2> Anything between £600 - £1200 (so far). We have the process nailed. I'm sure most will agree that the clients with lower budgets are generally more 'work'.

So what we do is have initial 2 hour project discovery meeting where we literally go through every page they want, how many pictures/ paragraphs are suitable for each page. We log all of this and send them the full content list of what is needed.

Wonderfully, we schedule the 'Platform Training' meeting (where we sign it over) exactly one week later and send them a content deadline for half-way through that week. No surprises that not a single client has yet to send any content through on time!, so (and we make this absolutely clear) we populate with lorum ipsum and stock imagery proofs to the exact discussed paragraph/image count per page.

We do the platform training with the dummy content, show them how to do everything (2 hours) and send them on their way. Monthly hosting (£12.00/month) to cover weebly fees.

We've found that with this 'package' we make no-bones about what they are getting (a template driven site, chosen by us - no design 'sign-off' etc..). They know the quality of our 'other work' (it's usually why they come to us) except we crucially figure out their budget VERY early on and can 'channel' into a specific category accordingly. It's nice having that other option.

It's going well so far, 4 clients that we would have turned away, £3.5k income that we would have lost and gone to a bedroom dev or smaller agency. The hours quoted have (amazingly) worked out to the hour for each of these projects (£60/hr rate) - except the latest, which is 2 hours under ATM. I can't ever remember a time where a £6,000+ site was ever on budget (we actually get our hourly rate on these small sites!!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Thanks for the positive feedback! For those who don't have an iPad here's a video that previews how the app works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuKRyuHQcc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAuKRyuHQcc)

<comment><USER5> When creating a new account on an ipad it took me three tries to pick a password that wasn't "too long". It would be helpful if the error message indicated the maximum allowable password length.

I enjoyed using the app. Easy to understand and super easy to get something published. I sent it to my mom, who was just this weekend asking how hard it would be to set up a website for her friend's small business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> People have been trying to build products to replace web developers for years, will we ever actually get to that point? Every time a new product comes to market it seems like it is a huge leap forward and yet web developers are still highly employable.

<comment><USER7> Weebly, Wix, and Square replace low-end 'web designers' who will usually build atop a WordPress core and stick it on a shared webhost, leaving it to be hacked due to security vulnerabilities. Sure, they leave you semi-dependent on a given web service. But, to the site owner, they're generally dependent on a single developer anyway since that dev doesn't usually give them the FTP credentials.

Weebly is pretty solid and the only major one that's free to use with your own domain. It just has a small 'powered by weebly' at the bottom. And it generates standard HTML and CSS that you can then move to another webhost later if you want. It also does an htaccess for redirects if you're moving from a previous host using different tech. The only downside is that you don't get full control over the URLs.

<comment> steve-benjamins One minor thing:

"the only major one that's free to use with your own domain". Nearly every website builder lets you do this. Squarespace, Wix, Yola, Virb etc.

<comment><USER7> Incorrect. Squarespace charges you $8/mo for their base package to use your domain. Wix requires their "Connect Domain" plan to use your own domain at $4.08/mo with ads displayed. Yola requires $5.95/mo for your own domain. Virb is $10/mo.

Weebly's base package is free and includes the ability to use your own domain. It's the only one.

<comment> steve-benjamins No, that's incorrect. Weebly does not include that in their free plan. Check 'compare plans' on their homepage.

<comment><USER7> Ah, they must have changed it recently. I have multiple friends with domains connected to free plans on Weebly at present.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Real Meaning of Trump's Withdrawal from Syria - <AUTHOR> https://crimethinc.com/2018/12/28/the-threat-to-rojava-an-anarchist-in-syria-speaks-on-the-real-meaning-of-trumps-withdrawal <comment><AUTHOR> I was excited to see all of the new forms of communes showing up in Rojava (see [https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model- in-s...](https://itsgoingdown.org/the-communes-of-rojava-a-model-in-societal- self-direction/)). Now it appears that the big governments aren't too happy to see them flourish.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you perform market research for your ideas? - <AUTHOR> In early stages of ideation, I like to do some basic market research to answer questions like:
1) what is the current size of this market?
2) what is the size of the total addressable market?
3) who are the main competitors in this market?
4) what are the product/service gaps in this market?
5) what are the known user metrics in this market?
I usually start by searching Google. This typically leads me to SEO optimized blog posts, where companies have cherry-picked specific market data to justify their own products. The data is usually from industry research reports (e.g Gartner, Forester) that cost thousands of dollars to access the full versions. In early stages of ideation, it doesn't always make sense to spend so much.
How do you perform market research for your ideas? <comment><USER2> I've found that generally you can extract the Gartner magic quadrant charts for particular product categories through a simple Google Image search. This in itself can give you a good "first blush" of the competitive profile of a market.

G2 is another avenue, albeit at a less scientific level. It gives you a leader/loser chart similar to the magic quadrant.

For anything more detailed, you pretty much have to pay up to the usual suspects of market research firms. Maybe you could form a syndicate of other interested parties to contribute to the full cost?

<comment><USER3> Also, vendors that are mentioned in those Magic Quadrant reports sometimes get copies they can (and do) distribute gratis. They will often be linked on their website, but you may have to "sign up" and give them your email address to get the download.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks both! This was really helpful, found a few free reports already with this method

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Talk with potential customers

[https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom- test](https://www.slideshare.net/xamde/summary-of-the-mom-test)

<comment><AUTHOR> Definitely makes sense, but I'm also interested in broad market research that talking to customers doesn't always get you

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing that struck me was listening to a pitch to a VC, where the VC responded, "If there is no competition, there is no market."

So I figure the shortcut is to look for competition first. You want to see something in a large market, which makes you scratch your head why such a shitty app has so many users. Or if you think customer service agencies are doing such a horrible job that a robot can be more polite.

The next thing is ask yourself how you can make something 10x better than it is. This is where tech really comes in - if they have a long development roadmap and are slow, see if you can use tech to outpace them. If they're being held back by a middle man partner, see if you can use tech to automate the middle man (like taxi companies). Or if you're lucky, it's an app with hundreds of thousands of monthly users that crashes all the time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you looking to sell something to consumers, or to businesses?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm exploring ideas in both areas, most are for businesses

<comment><USER3> Gotcha. I won't even touch the consumer side, because I don't know much about it.

On the business side... it's not possible to do justice to this topic in a HN post. Books could be (and have been) written on this. But I can share a few thoughts.

If you're selling in the US (or really, North America) the following applies. If not, similar ideas probably apply in other countries.

1\. Look at the NAICS codes[1] as a possible starting point for how to segment your potential customers.

2\. There is Census Bureau data on how many companies there are and how big they are, in the various categories. Using this could give you the earliest "rough cut" of a total market size

3\. Read _The Four Steps to the Epiphany_ for more on how to drill in and learn more about specific customers / industries, and start finding prospective initial customers.

4\. Beyond the Gartner / Forrester / etc. reports, there are some generic industry survey / report things "out there". I can't remember the names off- hand, but several of those things are in the "would ordinarily cost big money" category, BUT can often times be accessed from your local library for free.

5\. Dun & Bradstreet bought out the company that used to be Hoovers, who offered a relatively cheap ($99 / month or so) subscription to their services which included all sorts of industry information, surveys, and the like, in addition to detailed contact info for (many) individuals. I think D&B killed off Hoovers and rebranded / repackaged it and I don't know how much the equivalent offering (if there even is one) costs now, but it might not hurt to call them up and say "What do you have now that's like the old Hoovers product, and how much does it cost?". If you can afford it, you might find that useful.

6\. There's a lot of additional data available from govt sources that you can probably use to help you get ideas about your market. Poke around the various sites like Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bureau of Economic Anlysis, the SUSB (Statistics of U.S. Businesses) stuff, etc. You'll have to be creative in terms of figuring out how to use this to infer things about the market(s) you want to sell to.

All of this will get you a rough idea of the approximate market size, but be wary of your assumptions. If you say, for example, to yourself "We will sell to companies in NAICS codes 14, 23, and 97, and that represents 398,244 companies that have an average spend for our product category of $100,000 / year" and you do the math and say "that's our market", then you will have problems. That's where the _Four Steps_ stuff comes in, and actually talking to people. "Get out of the building" as Steve Blank says. Why? Because it's almost inevitable that you will find that not all (or even most) "companies in NAICS code 14, that spend $100,000 / year on IT solutions" will be interested in what you are pitching.

Anyway, that's an extremely superficial overview of some ways you can get at least a ballpark idea of market size for some B2B scenarios. Consumer, again, is a different ballgame in many ways and I'll refrain from even trying to comment on that. I guess the only other thing I'd add is go to Amazon.com, look up a couple of books on "market research" that have cheap used copies available, and order a couple of run through them.

[1]: [https://www.census.gov/NAICS](https://www.census.gov/NAICS)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Web app to find available iPad 2 stock at Target - <AUTHOR> http://findanipad2.heroku.com/ A quick Sinatra app I made using HTML5, CSS3, Aristo, Heroku and based on a post by Garrett Murray. http://log.maniacalrage.net/post/4030658171/tip-how-to-get-an-ipad-2-at-target-today-i <comment><AUTHOR> A quick Sinatra app I made using HTML5, CSS3, Aristo, Heroku and based on a post by Garrett Murray. [http://log.maniacalrage.net/post/4030658171/tip-how- to-get-a...](http://log.maniacalrage.net/post/4030658171/tip-how-to-get-an- ipad-2-at-target-today-i)</comment>


Generative testing for JavaScript - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/graue/gentest <comment><USER2> I'm a bit torn here. On the one hand, this sounds like it has a high probability of doing exactly what unit tests shouldn't do: pass on one run and fail on another.

On the other hand, the fact that it would fail at all would help you see that you have a bug. Something you might not have caught before.

<comment><USER3> These aren't unit tests, they're generative tests. They're used for different things. Unit tests make assertions about how a program responds to a specific input. Generative tests make assertions about invariants in a program over a wide range of inputs.

The workflow for using them is very different. A unit test suite contains a finite number of assertions and, assuming no bugs, should run in a relatively small (or at least bounded) amount of time. A generative test, however, usually can run forever _by design_.

A typical workflow is to start a run overnight and see if it caught anything in the morning. If the generative suite finds any bugs, you turn the specific cases that caused the failures into unit tests and commit them.

<comment><USER4> See also: quickcheck[1], hypothesis[2], ScalaCheck[3], etc

[1]: [http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~rjmh/QuickCheck/manual.html](http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~rjmh/QuickCheck/manual.html)

[2]: [https://hypothesis.readthedocs.org](https://hypothesis.readthedocs.org)

[3]: [http://www.scalacheck.org/](http://www.scalacheck.org/)

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/clojure/test.check](https://github.com/clojure/test.check)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This doesn't seem to have been updated in a year. How does this compare to other projects such as [https://github.com/jsverify/jsverify](https://github.com/jsverify/jsverify) which are currently more active?</comment>


Higher Ed: Enough Already - <AUTHOR> https://www.profgalloway.com/higher-ed-enough-already <comment><USER2> This all makes sense to me as far as it goes, but any assessment of university finances, the future of remote versus in-person education, etc, should have a lot to say about the following:

Classes are only a fraction of the in-person university experience in the USA today. Schools are priced accordingly and they heavily invest in and compete on non-classroom factors. This includes facilities, support services, activities, athletics. Then there is just the socialization, dorm experience, meeting people, parties, on and on.

So it would be a totally reasonable and logical next step in history for schools to say, "Hey, we believe that a lot of the value we offer is the in- person experience. So we will offer remote classes for a lower cost, to many more online-education students." Like Ga Tech's masters program.

But, with COVID, the universities have backed themselves into a corner because they should probably make the next year remote, but they made all these expensive on-campus investments and to stay afloat they need the ridiculously high tuition money (including from out-of-state and international students as mentioned). So all of a sudden, they can't afford to admit that remote learning is a much less valuable product.

(One thing I am ignoring is the real difficulties and cost from professors to teach large remote classes in an actually effective way. I'm sure administrators will ignore it too.)

<comment><USER3> > (One thing I am ignoring is the real difficulties and cost from professors > to teach large remote classes in an actually effective way. I'm sure > administrators will ignore it too.)

One of my colleagues teaches intro physics to 1000+ students remotely. It seems to work quite well actually. His TAs screens the questions students have -- it's not like there are 1000 different ones, many a similar/same. He says the large audience is actually an advantage: If he explains something bad/wrong, at least some of them will pick up on it and ask.

<comment><USER2> Great! One thing I've heard that at that scale, a lot of the professor's time is taken by student logistics type issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Professor Galloway also said:

\--- We get a lot of ego gratification every time our deans stand up in front of the faculty and say, "This year, we didn't reject 85 percent of applicants; we rejected 87 percent!," [...] That is tantamount to the head of a homeless shelter bragging about turning away nine of ten people who showed up last night. \---

There's an opportunity here to scale education from institutions all over the world to a level never possible before. Well...it was possible for many years. But the incentives for the institutions commit to it never appeared until now.

<comment><USER5> I think the dissonance you're seeing here is between the signalling and human capital hypotheses of education. Spend some time around a lot of universities and you'll see it in action. Rampant cheating, "bird" courses, mass dropping of challenging courses. These are all signs that lend a lot of support to the signalling hypothesis: that the purpose of education is to signal one's desirable qualities to future employers, rather than to acquire those qualities in the first place.

Scaling access to bachelor's degrees all over the world will only increase the demand for masters and PhDs.

<comment><USER6> This is, of course, the employers' problem to solve. And many they're slowly (re-)realizing that they can hire inquisitive folks with a good work ethic but no bachelor's and get just as good results, that the signal doesn't have as much value as they thought.

What would be worthwhile is if employers identified what skills or knowledge or experience they actually wanted and figured out how to both test for those (and not just trust the degree-granting system) and train for those (because the degree-granting system doesn't reliably supply it).

<comment><USER7> >This is, of course, the employers' problem to solve.

This is difficult for them to do so, due to stupid laws. If they had a hiring exam, and it happened to show a certain race performing worse on it, they would get sued for racism and lose. So instead, they just do the safe thing, and let collages filter out the undesirables for them.

<comment><USER6> I believe this isn't true in the US at least for the following reasons:

\- Many employers do in fact have hiring exams: see Triplebyte, HackerRank, etc. in our own industry, but also civil service exams etc.

\- Colleges themselves rely on exams (like the SAT) with known racial disparities in scoring for admission.

\- Colleges completion rates vary by race.

So one would think that employers would already be sued for racism if that were possible.

(But, perhaps the argument is that employers _want_ to filter people by race, and they wouldn't be able to do so as easily with a hiring exam as via indirect means like recruiting from certain colleges.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> American universities don't deserve to survive in their current state. The United States already spends a greater %-age of GDP on _public funding_ for higher education than Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the U.K. (which together comprise 70% of the EU's population): [https://mises.org/wire/government-spending-colleges-us- highe...](https://mises.org/wire/government-spending-colleges-us-higher- countries-free-college). They're incredibly inefficient and broken institutions.

<comment><USER9> I'm confused how you arrived at that. So American Universities get 1.3% funding, which puts them about in the middle of the chart in your source, is at about the same level as Switzerland and the UK (who are both also 1.3%). Yet the US comprises more top universities than the rest of the world combined (according to pretty much university ranking site out there), and they are the ones doing it wrong?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Very true: [https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party- eliz...](https://jakeseliger.com/2014/04/27/paying-for-the-party-elizabeth- armstrong-and-laura-hamilton/)

Too many students or "students" wind up paying for the party for years or decades after they graduate. The incentive structures in academia are (mostly) not good and not properly aligned.

</comment><comment><USER11> As the parent of a college sophomore, I entirely share the article's fears and sentiment.

As a tangential nitpick, I was distracted by this statement: "The average age of a tenured professor is 55, meaning if you meet a 40-year-old tenured prof, there is someone at 70 teaching..."

I think it unwittingly supports another point from the article: "A combination of self-aggrandizement and elitism has convinced American universities that our services are worth indebting generations of young people, and now risking becoming agents of spread."

<comment><USER3> I think tenure at 40 is actually really early.

<comment><USER12> Seems about right for North America, 12th grade education (18 years old), 4 year college degree (22 years old), 6 year PhD (28 years old), ~5 (3-7) years postdoc (33 years old), 7 year tenure track (=40 yrs old). If I didn't run away to a biotech startup after my postdoc it probably would be roughly this timeline.

Pretty insane really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> One of the biggest, if not the biggest, problem of online courses is cheating on tests. And yes, students cheat.

I'm talking here about Physics, but I assume it's similar in other disciplines of the hard sciences.

This is less so a problem for higher classes -- you can write take-home problems which are hard and uncommon enough that you can't google-solve them. But even then, students will solve them in a team. Or in other words: The best students will solve it, and everybody will have the solution.

For lower classes, almost by definition, the problems are all textbook. Yes, you can change numbers around, and formulations, but with some google-fu, most problems are shallow :)

The situation gets even harder if you want to be fair to the students who are not on campus. How good is their internet? How do you handle "my internet went down"? Or: I'm in this other timezone, your test is in the middle of the night! What I did in the last semester is allow the students to take the test at any time of the day, and give ample time for the test itself. But of course, that gives them more chance to communicate, and help each other. Even randomized tests (i.e. with changing numbers) do not help here, because often the complication is finding the right formula. Putting in other numbers is then trivial.

There are only proctored exams, but they only help if you use a locked down browser. I'd rather not put what amounts to spyware onto my students computers. _AND_ they are pretty easy to fool anyway.

The only way around that are taking tests in testing centers. But there is an issue of scale here, especially in COVID times.

The second problem is lab classes. It's very hard to teach experimental setup techniques online. How do you use a scope? Can you find a bad connection? Why did this resistor just blow up? You let the students play with sometimes quite expensive equipment, you can not expect them to just have that at home.

Third, online teaching is a very bad experience for many students. Not so much of the class itself -- I think this can often be remedied. But things like the exchange with other students, the opportunity to ask the professor face to face, but also so basic things like having to get up and out of your room for class instead of watching it (or a recording) from your bed. Not all, but many students struggled hard to motivate themselves to study sitting at home.

I do believe that it's better to have no in-person classes, or maybe a bare minimum. Teachers will try to teach the students as best as possible, but make no mistake, the education of many students will suffer.

<comment><USER13> >There are only proctored exams, but they only help if you use a locked down browser. I'd rather not put what amounts to spyware onto my students computers. AND they are pretty easy to fool anyway.

Couldn't they also just use a second computer?

<comment><USER14> All of the proctored exams I've ever been aware of have either a human supervisor in the room at all times, and/or a video camera pointed at the student the whole time.

If you open a second computer they should know about it.

<comment><USER15> KVM switch with PIP?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Do universities actually make sense anymore? For me, I felt the majority of the benefit of college was not the classes but the social experience. But that is a hell of a price to pay for social experience. Most subjects also do not need expensive facilities or specialized equipment. More typically, the knowledge gained over the course of four years can be learned in a self-guided way. In fact I would say that most subjects are _better_ learned elsewhere, because you can pace yourself, you can choose to go deep or broad selectively, you can seek out multiple sources/perspectives, and so forth. I definitely am concerned that US universities are turning into a monoculture, and an especially dangerous one that is hostile (at times, physically!) to different viewpoints. Self-learning will lead to a diversification of admissible ideas. I also should mention that in big universities, professors are by and large not interested in teaching as much as their own research. The lectures can largely be replaced with a video that is recorded once and viewed by many.

The only real value a university confers is certification. Grades are really the result of a couple exams per class. The value of top universities' name on a degree is also largely built on the selectivity of their admissions process. But those students that they admit are not valuable because of the university - they're valuable regardless. So why not pivot to a world where companies administer certification tests for different subjects, at different degrees of difficulty/proficiency, at a low cost?

<comment><USER17> > " _Most subjects also do not need expensive facilities or specialized > equipment._ "

The sciences, medicine, and engineering disciplines do. Computer science is a rarity in being a high-paying field that doesn't.

(Although, given that the average developer doesn't really require a CS education, as many on HN say, I wouldn't count on CS remaining a high-paying field.)

<comment><USER16> Aren't these facilities replicable at a much lower cost? My university had meager equipment for physics and mechanical engineering for example. I'm less familiar with the chemical and biology side of things though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Remote learning is a ridiculously solvable problem with modern technology - the fact we seem likely to fail implementing it (due to the inability to imagine trying tools better than zoom) is both baffling and depressing. Send the kids VR headsets, get them in rooms on their PCs, phones, and laptops as avatars using screens and headsets as needed and start experimenting.

</comment><comment><USER19> The admissions year for the class of 2025 is going to be extremely competitive between deferrals and closed schools.

</comment><comment><USER20> Let me see if I understand this correctly (feel free to provide other perspectives):

Universities are afraid that by charging students $20,000 per year in tuition for an online degree, people will begin to question its value and possibly turn to other alternatives (perhaps, maybe also enrol in universities abroad that have low or no fees). Thereby pulling the curtains on the whole tuition fee charade, which is that the lion's share is used to find non-academic related expenses (I'm guessing: administration, outreach, marketing, a nice website) [1]

Universities that rely heavily on large sums of money from student fees are now faced with 2 choices: 1) Charge close to the same amount of tuition fees for an "online" university experience 2) Re-open and continue with business as usual, hoping the risks of Covid-19 transmission can be mitigated

Option 2 apparently seems like the more attractive version to maintain the status quo, which leads to attempts at convincing people that restarting face- to-face teaching is a reasonable way to go forward.

If this is what is going on, then this is yet another issue with universities that rely too heavily on income from tuition fees to survive.

The primary functions of (public) universities is to educate the population and conduct research. The ability to perform those functions must be prioritised and subsidised via public funds to guard against the influence of financial stability creeping into the decision making process on how to conduct activities for these primary functions.

I have studied in both the UK (9,000GBP/Year) and Germany (<€500 per year) and noticed a massive difference in the way both were run and my life as a student in each.

[1][https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/22/less- than-...](https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/nov/22/less-than-half-of- tuition-fees-spent-on-teaching-at-english-universities)

<comment><USER21> Given the infection curve in the US, scenario 2 defies the laws of nature, so I hope universities don't try it. I don't doubt that some will, but under no circumstances should it be considered a reasonable option.

<comment><USER22> From my understanding most Universities are currently planning on 2, but with going online after Thanksgiving.

<comment><USER21> Sure, but they'll either be forced to change course by states, insurance- related concerns, or when people start dying on their campuses. The reality of the pandemic has little to do with their performances of safety or viability.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The problem is that have a college degree is the pre-requisite for getting a professional job, rather than having the knowledge that a college degree is supposed to represent.

<comment> kube-system It is not uncommon for employers to accept equivalent experience in lieu of a formal degree.

<comment><USER23> True and I have a manager level IC job where people above me have repeatedly asked how I got the job when I don't have a degree and have to get people to rewrite job requirements every time I do a transfer here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wish I could have Professor Galloway as a board member, however I'm afraid that I would to often hear undeniable truths about my management tough to digest

</comment><comment><USER25> Title convinced me that this has something to do with a modern reincarnation of Unix ed editor.

</comment><comment><USER26> Farming foreigners doesn't work well when global travel is shut down. And Universities get so much more money from foreign students that they've become focused on bringing in these folks over the people from the states who started them for the benefit primarily of the state's residents.

This really ramped up in the mid to late 1990s when we were told that Universities should be run more like businesses.

</comment><comment><USER27> The modern university is not a true university. It's a scam that breeds savages that, at best, leave with some technical savvy and at worst inculcates in them toxic ideology.

"The Idea of a University" by John Henry Newman

[http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/index.html](http://www.newmanreader.org/works/idea/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER28> For a professor, the author does a terrible job presenting the complete picture, and like most in academia, select those data points which "support" their claims. You should not trust their opinions.

If you look at the stats, Covid is less deadly than the typical flu for those under 30. Time to stop destroying the youth by de-educating them. Stop being so scared. Let locals decided how to handle things. Stop picking isolated stories and applying blanket rules.

<comment><USER29> That's a serious assertion you are making. COVID-19 is 10 times deadlier than the flu across the population. Dropping to almost 0 for babies. But we can't let infants run the country while everyone > 30 stays home.

<comment><USER21> We initially thought it might be true for the young, but the deaths of infants and severe complications in children now suggests otherwise.

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200511142153.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/05/200511142153.htm)</comment></comment></comment>


Hidden Bias: When Algorithms Discriminate - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/10/upshot/when-algorithms-discriminate.html

<comment><AUTHOR> Here is nice TED talk by Kevin Slavin on the influence of algorithms: [http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_slavin_how_algorithms_shape_our_world?language=en)</comment>


Shareholders sue Facebook, Banks over IPO - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2012/05/23/shareholders-sue-facebook-banks-over-botched-ipo/

<comment><USER2> "It can't possibly be my fault that I way overpaid for FB stock. It must be someone else's fault." - The grand American way! Gotta love it.</comment>


Battery Guide - <AUTHOR> http://michaelbluejay.com/batteries/ <comment><USER2> I have been looking into batteries recently for an application where I need high capacity and roughly a 10 year lifespan. Oh and they have to work at extreme temperatures (-60 C to 50 C would be sweet), and be priced reasonably. Lithium SOCl2 is a cool chemistry which fits the bill, but is hazmat. I think Lithium Manganese ones are a decent compromise. Does anyone have any better ideas?

<comment><USER3> pretty much the gold standard in extremely long life batteries, non rechargable lithium, but they're not cheap:

[http://www.tadiran.com/](http://www.tadiran.com/)

<comment><USER2> Wow these seem cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bought 16 total Low Self-Sidcharge NiMh AAA/AA from amazon back to 2009.

That was the last time I buy batteries in that spec because they still work today.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm only aware of one real use for D batteries...

<comment><USER6> The local transit-cops seem to like them for adding weight to their billy- clubs. A secondary function seems to be to make one end of the clubs light up, but a pocket LED flashlight is usually way brighter.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I just lost more than 80 points for no apparent reason? - <AUTHOR>

Not that it has much importance, but still it feels a bit unkind. Is this happening to all profiles?<p>Don't know if it's related, but I noticed this just after a comment I made started being upvoted a lot. <comment><USER2> Try contacting the moderator dang by email to firstname.lastname@example.com . It's the preferred method and it's usually faster and more reliable because sometimes they don't find the thread.

</comment><comment><USER3> I can understand your feeling.

the voting system never works well. down voting should be about quality, not opinion. but people simply down vote opposite opinions.

One lesson I learnt is, never say anything negative about google here.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is I had not been downvoted on either a submitted article or comment! In fact right before the 80 points drop, I was actually being upvoted for a comment I had just posted.

So the strange thing is I can't understand where this drop came from, thus the "no apparent reason" in the title.</comment></comment>


The Saudi Cables - <AUTHOR> https://wikileaks.org/saudi-cables/ <comment><USER2> Note: These were published in 2015.

Here are a couple of articles from the time that discuss the content:

[https://shadowproof.com/2015/06/23/the-saudi-cables- revelati...](https://shadowproof.com/2015/06/23/the-saudi-cables-revelations- from-iraq-yemen-somalia-lebanon-sudan-egypt/)

[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/21/saudi- arabia-i...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/21/saudi-arabia- ignore-wikileaks-release)</comment>


World's tiniest FM transmitter made from graphene - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/semiconductors/devices/worlds-tiniest-fm-transmitter-made-from-graphene

<comment><USER2> Ok that is fun. Of course its pretty easy to make an FM transmitter, but doing it with Graphene seems pretty cool.

I expect this is pretty directly applicable to small RFID tags that you can read at a distance. Basically beam a 2.4Ghz signal at them, have it rectify that for power and return signal at 900Mhz or so (if you wanted to keep it all in the unlicensed bands).</comment>


Elon Musk's Neuralink is neuroscience theater - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/08/30/1007786/elon-musks-neuralink-demo-update-neuroscience-theater/ <comment><USER2> Tesla and SpaceX are successful corporations - Elon has the ability to collect a selected group of very motivated nerds in a narrow area and then good things happen. There is a risk of charlatanism but I don't like to fault the results when there are 10 other billionaires trying to play at this level and it is not obvious they are succeeding.</comment>


Apple to Bonobo – Retina is trademarked, change your app name - <AUTHOR> http://bonobolabs.com/apple-to-bonobo-retina-is-trademarked-change-your-app-name/

<comment><USER2> Not so long ago, a certain fruitily named computer manufacturer decided to distribute music, and were sued by an older, and similarly fruitily named record company for not only violating their trademarks, but violating a specific agreement not to encroach on the record company's turf.

The fruitily named computer company won the case on the grounds that they were only selling, and not producing music.

Surely the same thing applies here - Bonobo's Unretina only modifies images, it does not provide hardware on which to display them.

</comment><comment><USER3> They got the trademark, even if it's ridiculous, Apple won't back down on that one. Rename or get removed. Even if I don't approve that "Retina" can be registered at all. But so did "Windows" ...

<comment><USER4> What's ridiculous about the trademark?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't take product's name and use that product's name in your product when your product is about the original product without the owner's consent, even if the word is common. I find it funny that Bonobo would wonder that Retina is trademarked, considering the parent company is known as Apple.

Bonobo might feel they are in the right, but Unretina is using Retina specifically _because_ of Apple's product, and it's directly related.

Just because a word is common doesn't mean you can't trademark it. I can't create a PC called the unApple and stand in shock when Apple comes calling.

<comment><USER6> I think you missed the point. It's a Mac app to downsize images. The trademark is for 'Electronic hand-held game units other than those adapted for use with an external display screen or monitor;'.

Also Apple were happy with the name for the first 6 weeks of the Mac App Store being open.

<comment><USER7> It is possible to have more than one trademark for a given word, and Apple has (at least) two for "retina":

[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4003:o8...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4003:o8la6.2.7) [http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4003:o8...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4003:o8la6.2.5)

The one not mentioned in the article is for "Computers; computer hardware; computer displays; computer software; handheld mobile digital electronic devices used as a telephone, handheld computer, personal digital assistant, electronic organizer, and electronic notepad, and used to access the Internet, electronic mail, and other digital data".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I believe most people who get notices like this knew what they were doing, and are using the event to get press to their product, esp since for this type they have to change the name.

I feel a great many "think it sucks" but knew it was a danger going in, and are fine complying.

</comment><comment><USER9> Free publicity for the price of a name change - for a free app. Everyone wins.

</comment><comment><USER10> Trademark search here... look for your favorite words! If you use the 2nd link you can search by company (search by "owner name"), you can see all the words that Apple/Facebook/Microsoft own

[http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4010:pa...](http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=tess&state=4010:pats06.1.1)

</comment><comment><USER11> I feel if Microsoft or Adobe had the same policies as Apple they would be riots in the street, but Apple mostly gets a free pass.

So my question to the fans of Apple, what is the limit? What would Apple have to do to turn you away from their platform?

<comment><USER12> You've picked a bad article to make this point - if someone tried to re-brand OpenOffice as "MS Office" you can be sure that Microsoft would defend its trademarks, and you'd never see it on HN. But when Apple does the same, it is front page "news". Hardly a free pass.

<comment><USER11> No it would be more like MS sues every software product with the word Office or Windows in it. Which they don't as evidenced by the existence of OpenOffice.

I am not trying to argue Microsoft is some white knight or anything else noble, just that Apple policies are worse but with better marketing.

<comment><USER13> I'm guessing that "Office" was already in use. "Word" certainly was (i.e. Word Perfect). So "OpenWord" would be probably be fine. On the other hand, don't try making an "OpenExcel" or an "OpenPowerpoint".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Interesting fact on the right-hand side - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/search?q=chuck+norris

<comment><AUTHOR> What's even more interesting is that the "fact" changes each time you load the page.</comment>


Google is ripping out Chrome's awful new bookmark manager - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2015/06/15/google-is-ripping-out-chromes-awful-new-bookmark-manager/

<comment><AUTHOR> WOW! Quite shocked that google rolled back one of its horrible UX 'improvements' and actually listened to its user base.

It seems like every single UX 'improvement' takes back the product at least 3 steps. Still hoping for google maps 'improvemnt' to return to a usable state (aka classic google maps).

Any ideas on why google gets UX/UI so incredibly wrong?

Google's UX team across the board should employ the George Constanza 'Opposite' philosophy: when your instincts tell you to do something, do the exact opposite of that.

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

</comment><comment><USER2> I never noticed there was a new one. I'm seeing the screenshots in the linked article, but my chrome has never worked like that.

<comment><USER3> I never saw it in mine either and it had been fully updated. Maybe it was only on a certain OS?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> God damn it! I just got used to the thing!

<comment><USER5> You can explicitly add it as an extension from the Chrome Store. (I actually did this, because I like the manager/link sharing functionality... even though it means putting up with the awful bookmark-adding dialogue).

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> thank god they removed it!</comment>


Mnesia and LevelDB: Liberating Mnesia from the limitations of DETS - <AUTHOR> http://www.erlang-factory.com/euc2015/mikael-pettersson <comment><AUTHOR> Klarna (the European payment processor) and WhatsApp architectures are built on Mnesia. Mnesia is Erlang's built-in distributed database. Due to its age it has a few bad corner cases, that could be fixed if it just had a better backend (the front-end API is nice, well designed, supports transactions, is built-in to the lanauge).

So this effort brought in the ability to have a better backend, and make Mnesia a better option as a general purpose distributed database.

Here is an talk on how WhatsApp uses Mnesia:

Erlang Factory 2014 - That's 'Billion' with a 'B': Scaling to the Next Level at WhatsApp

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c12cYAUTXXs)

Here is an example of using Mnesia:

[https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Erlang_Programming/Using_mnesi...](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Erlang_Programming/Using_mnesia)

<comment><USER2> Raise your hand if you're ever actually run mnesia on a busy server in a distributed system. OK, show of hands of how many people will do that again? Thought so.

mnesia should not be in the OTP. Not by a longshot.

I love Erlang. I hate mnesia.

<comment><USER3> I think people are trying to use mnesia for things it wasn't made for. mnesia basically has exactly one purpose:

• in a 1:1 master:hot-spare setup,

• where the nodes contain _their own_ data in process-memory-space rather than relying on a separate "database" node,

• and you need to be able to fail-over to the hot-spare and promote it to master, without business logic being aware of this,

• and your system has time tolerances allowing you to _manually fix the old master_ and bring it up as the new hot-spare,

then mnesia is perfect.

You know what system I'm describing?

Call switching!

You know what system I'm _not_ describing?

Most things!

<comment><USER4> _You know what system I 'm describing? Call switching!_

Exactly right!

The "distributed" part of Erlang (including mnesia) was designed to run in a blade-like system where the networking was provided by a physical common backplane among all the compute cards in the chassis.

So, a lot of distributed erlang and mnesia falls apart when dealing with network partitions and resyncs and real-world scenarios that wouldn't really happen on a common physical substrate.

That's why most sane erlang people won't run distributed erlang (gotta love that epmd), they'll run their own TCP servers connecting to external DBs.

<comment><USER5> Distributed Erlang on its own is fine to run in production (particularly as a control plane for metadata between nodes) because few assumptions about reliability of the network are baked in; most of them can be made by the application designer.

Distributed OTP applications (with the automated takeover/failover mechanism) see very little use in the real world because of their set of assumptions that network failures are rarer than software or hardware failure, which result in perceiving all netsplits as nodes going down (a great way to get split brains!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Plumtree is an excellent alternative to Mnesia: [https://github.com/helium/plumtree](https://github.com/helium/plumtree)

</comment><comment><USER7> Thanks for sharing this. Mnesia is a little bit quirky at the first glance but it is a pretty cool system. LevelDB also battle tested lots of systems build on it. I am curious how good is combining the two.</comment>


Take the tedium out of building charts in Flash - <AUTHOR> http://extra.amcharts.com/editor/column/ <comment><USER2> Really nice charts. I prefer Flot, but I would seriously give these guys a second look if I was in the market. Not free, but very affordable.</comment>


Unit-testing embedded C applications with Ceedling - <AUTHOR> http://dmitryfrank.com/blog/2015/1005_unit-testing_embedded_c_applications_with_ceedling <comment><USER2> Another interesting read in this space is [http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/07/31/greatest-c- testing-e...](http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/07/31/greatest-c-testing- embedded/)

(his header-only unit testing library is at [https://github.com/silentbicycle/greatest](https://github.com/silentbicycle/greatest))

<comment><USER3> The self-aggrandizing name is a bit of a turn-off. But otherwise, it might be useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There's also quite a few other testing libs available in the clibs repo [0].

[0] [https://github.com/clibs/clib/wiki/Packages#testingquality-a...](https://github.com/clibs/clib/wiki/Packages#testingquality- assurance)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> By the way, as an author of the article, I'd like to ask the HN community to send me an invitation to Lobsters: I want to be able to share my publications there as well.

Before deciding whether to send an invitation, you might want to check other articles on my website ( [http://dmitryfrank.com](http://dmitryfrank.com) ).

Thanks.

<comment><USER5> Unfortunately I don't have access to Lobsters but I'm replying to you in case others don't know what Lobsters is [1].

[1]: [https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)</comment></comment>


Redback - a high-level Redis library for Node.JS - <AUTHOR> http://redbackjs.com

<comment><USER2> Why did you make this instead of using existing solutions? What were they lacking that this adds?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a higher-level abstraction. With most traditional clients you call commands like `hget(key)`, `zinterstore(key1, key2, key3)` or `mset(key1, value1, key2, value2)`

Redback gives you the same power/flexibility but hides the complexity. You call `hash = redback.createHash(hash_key)` and then call something like `hash.set({key1:value1, key2: value2});`

It's more than just convenience though. I had a few goals with the library:

\- Make Redis more accessible

\- Create some useful derivative/hybrid structures (SocialGraph, etc.)

\- Expose useful atomic constructs such as auto-incrementing keys

\- Make it as easy as possible for users to create their own structures (e.g. see the Queue example in the README)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cool. Have you thought about implementing any of these in lua to try out the experimental scripting support?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah definitely - I'm waiting patiently for the EVAL stuff to make it into the main branch. Very excited to see what's possible now that atomicity can be retained with higher-level structures</comment></comment>


My First Hand Experience With Sexism - <AUTHOR> http://becomingmedium.com/blog/2014/02/12/my-first-hand-experience-with-sexism/ <comment><USER2> > "Women are incapable of making the tough decisions necessary to run a > profitable company on low margins." - CEO of a Women's Product Retailer

Frankly, I think the CEO was pulling this guys leg and wanted to see how he reacted when his buttons are pushed. That is a situation that frequently occurs in customer meetings and you don't want your rep to blow up in the customer's face.

That said, did you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit? SOURCE: [http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...](http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=5804631)

> You should know this about me. I don't do well around alpha males.

Yeah, so the blogger can't deal with CEOs and other authority figures. Wouldn't hire him/her either.

<comment><USER3> > you see the recent Swedish study of 125.000 companies that proved

Just a minor nitpick, studies don't prove anything. Even experiments (in Physics) don't prove anything unless different people can reproduce them repeatedly. But (statistical) studies prove nothing at all, they merely hint at a correlation.

<comment><USER4> Minor nitpick of your minor nitpick:

Statistical studies do measure something. The parent comment didn't claim the study proved causation, just correlation.

<comment><USER5> > that proved women-run companies makes 15% less profit

If this quote doesn't claim causation to the common person, then I don't know what does...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> He says he doesn't like "alpha males" because he believes that code for "type of person is an inexcusable justification for being an asshole". Then he goes through with the rest of the interview and realizes "How could I just sit there and not say anything?".

An alpha male[1] would have stopped the interview right there. Expressed his displeasure that the CEO could even think such a thing, particularly since he was running a company with products for women, and further speculated on how appalled he is that the CEO would then utter such non-sense[2]. Get up and walk the heck away.

Defend your damn convictions, when the need defending. Not is some whiny blog post afterwards.

1) or an alpha female, although they wouldn't have got an interview and no one is that stupid to say those things if they did to them (right?!?)

2) my Dad's favorite saying when his sons did something foolish as youths was "I am amazed and appalled. Amazed you though up such a thing and appalled you did it."

</comment><comment><USER7> You did the right thing, IMO. Silence is tacitly condoning the status quo. Be the change you want to see, and when you're in a relative position of power (like being able to turn down a job), do something.

<comment><USER8> > You did the right thing, IMO. Silence is tacitly condoning the status quo.

But that is what the author did - he didn't confront the CEO, nor did he name the company.

<comment><USER7> He told the company it was a reason he wasn't accepting. After the fact, I think that's still laudable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm actually less surprised by the sexism than by the strange ranting behavior from a President during an interview. Even if the rant was about something less controversial, it's just bizarre. If that's normal behavior from the guy, I wonder how they ever recruit talent.

</comment><comment><USER10> I say name some names. If this really happened at a company that sells products to women, I say it's time for a boycott.

</comment><comment><USER11> Live the way you want the world to look, and then it has begun to look that way.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'd have cut the interview short to show them that this is unacceptable. They know what they've done and that it's wrong. After the fact, there really isn't much that one can do. Move on and try to find a place where the CEO isn't an asshole. As for it being a test, I doubt anyone is that stupid. He knew what he was saying.

<comment><USER13> > I doubt anyone is that stupid

Apparently you haven't met many CEOs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Am I sexist for assuming that the author was a woman right up until the point where he says "Surprisingly most of my women friends and my wife" ?

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm sure this article will spark a serious, reasoned, and very civil discussion on sexism, which will include verifiable citations for all claims and absolutely no hearsay or strawmen.

<comment><USER16> You could fit Steve Ballmer in this sarchasm.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Author ought to have mentioned the name of the company--otherwise, it's just more vapid hearsay. If we don't know _who_ was supposed to have done this, what does it matter?

Morever, this quote got under my skin:

 _" Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape. To me, this was equivalent to videoing an assault or rape, doing nothing to stop it and later claiming you didn't have a part in it."_

That sort of comparison cheapens the suffering of those people; it's hyperbole of the worst sort.

<comment><USER18> As someone who has been a victim of sexual assault (rape) I would like to up vote your comment about a hundred times. The author apparently hasn't had to deal with the years of healing needed on so many levels. And yeah, it happens to men, too. By women.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or > rape."

You interacted with a bad person or two and suddenly you're able to empathize with victims of assault and rape? What? Exactly how minimal is your understanding of those issues to equate them accordingly?

<comment><USER20> You're right, of course, but comments like these teach me only one thing: don't blog, write or talk about sexism. Someone will find one sentence that you wrote or said that's not OK and flame your ass about it.

<comment><USER21> And then you'll get super defensive about it and refuse to actually accept the useful feedback provided. Everyone loses!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> 1\. You should have confronted the CEO.

2\. Since you did not do that, you should have at least posted the names involved.

As it is, I don't see the point of your post.

</comment><comment><USER23> This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that:

>"Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. "

>"Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape."

Fucking really?

I've been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless conferences and meetups. Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment similar to what he is talking about. This is both infront of women and behind their backs.

The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups.

<comment><USER24> "The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups."

It's easy for this kind of thing to be completely invisible when this is your attitude. Sexism in the tech industry is alive and well, and there are a lot of good reasons to have meet-ups for both girls and women.

When you immediately start lashing out about "militant feminists" the second someone suggests that sexism exists, you're saying that our experiences are invalid and that you know better than us how welcome we are in the industry. It should be completely unsurprising that this does not make us feel welcome.

<comment><USER3> I don't understand his post the same way. He said that the only sexism _prevalent_ in this industry is the "girls code"-type sexism. Sure, sexism exists everywhere and always, as does racism and other -isms. Simply said, people will be jerks. However, it is unreasonable to draw conclusions for the whole industry based on the behaviour of one such jerk, that just happens to be a male sexist (I'm sure you'd find female sexists and black racists as well).

<comment><USER24> I don't need to base my opinion off of one guy's account of an incident in a blog post - I have a laundry list of my own very unpleasant experiences as a female developer to base my opinions on. I've also spoken to a great deal of other women who have a very similar list of very similar experiences. A lot of these experiences have aspects that are specific to the tech industry.

If you only have insight into industry sexism as far as one or two jerks, it's likely because you aren't a part of the affected demographic.

<comment><USER25> "A lot of these experiences have aspects that are specific to the tech industry."

Huh - how can the tech industry be more sexist than other industries? Please explain? I mean in what way can such an experience be tech specific? "Woman can't code" comments perhaps, but what else?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Jerks exist in the world. Frankly I don't see the big deal. It's clearly not a company he (or many other people) would like to work for. That happens a lot. Interviewing is a two sided process - the company has to like the candidate, and the candidate has to like the company. So it's a case of the candidate not liking the company. Surprisingly, even among men, not every man likes every other man.

While I don't agree with the CEOs statement, I think people should be allowed to hire whoever they want. If somebody doesn't want to hire women, so be it. There are companies that don't want to hire men, too.

<comment><USER26> _While I don 't agree with the CEOs statement, I think people should be allowed to hire whoever they want._

The trouble with this is that a set of biases can become near-universal.

I have the right to associate (or not) with whoever I choose. But if _everyone_ (or nearly everyone) choose not to associate with people from a particular group, that is harmful to society[1].

So, there are exceptions made to your freedom of association. IIRC these exceptions only apply to companies with more than 50 employees, which seems a decent balance between "we're all friends here" small/family businesses (individual rights win) vs "you are a cog in a wheel" megacorps (the good of society wins).

[1] For example, I understand that people refusing to hire ex-convicts is a significant contributor to recidivism.

<comment><USER25> I know there are such laws - not sure if I agree with them, but OK (literally not sure - maybe it is good, maybe not - to be sure I wouldn't like it if it were my own company). But how are they being enforced, with so many possible candidates? Disabled people, women, different ethnic backgrounds, different schools, ex-convicts... One you go over 50, you have to have at least one of each of them? Or if you hire employee 51 and the candidate is an ex-convict, you have to hire him?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> OK, bear with me for a moment, but why would a CEO who is so openly and blatantly sexist have accepted a women interviewee in the first place? I am inclined to thing that either he was either testing her, or this is fiction.

<comment><USER28> The interviewee appears to be a man.

<comment><USER27> Did anyone else think that this was a women? The title should not be _My First Hand Experience With Sexism_. Because first hand would have been if sexism was shown toward the author (because of his gender).

<comment><USER14> EXACTLY! I also read the blog on the assumption that the author was a woman up until he began mention of his wife etc. Does that make us sexist?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Do you think that speaking out to the CEO would have changed his mind? I think that if the author really wanted any chance at changing the CEO's mind about women - he should have accepted the job and planted some seeds of thought here and there directly or indirectly to the CEO.

Do you think that proceeding, he would be condoning sexism in some way? Perhaps in his own mind, but one person walking away from a job interview can hardly be considered a boycott.

If you are one person, your best bet to change something is to engage, not walk away.

</comment><comment><USER27> > _I then turned inward. I thought of the women in my life, my wife of almost > 18yrs and my little 4.5 year old daughters. What would they think of their > father for not saying anything and letting this jerk spew his sexist > beliefs?_

I am confused. Is she calling herself her child's father? Is she in a Female- Female marriage?

<comment><USER28> No, he is calling himself his child's father.</comment></comment>


The Coming Supremacy of AR - <AUTHOR> https://allenpike.com/2019/the-supremacy-of-ar <comment><USER2> I remember reading almost this exact argument about VRML back in the 90s.</comment>


Show HN: A.I assisted code generation for React - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iiKl0BB6ho <comment><AUTHOR> Here's the link to the plugin: You would need to download it using Atom editor tool from www.atom.io and then need to install the additional package: [https://atom.io/packages/image2react](https://atom.io/packages/image2react)

Feel free to open issues on github ( or even contribute :) ) : [https://github.com/ganarajpr/image2react](https://github.com/ganarajpr/image2react)</comment>


Reefer Madness at NASA - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/11/nasa-spacex-elon-musk-marijuana-boeing/576490/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if NASA uses Oracle software and is interested in investigating Oracle's leader habits.</comment>


Ask YC: Licensing your startup's code? - <AUTHOR>

[I'm a Hacker News regular using a throwaway account for the sake of anonymity.]
Does anyone have experience with licensing the code behind their startups to other companies?
I have been approached by several people recently which have expressed an interest in some of the code behind my startup.  They haven't shown any interest in buying the company; only in getting the code (I guess because they think it would be cheaper/faster to buy rather than build).  Right now none of them are competitors, but they might become competitors in the future.
I keep on going back and forth between "any money is good money" and "if they're going to end up competing with us, anything we have that they don't have is good".  If anyone has experience with this sort of thing and can say how it turned out, it would be a great help. <comment><USER2> It's not unheard of to have a moratorium based non-compete (specific markets/market types) in the license. Include support/availability for new features, etc. so they're likely to enjoy the license/throw more money your way and I'd go for it. It'd really depend on how core to the business model the software is. It'd be like anti-google, trying to start a business but end up making a business out of licensing your software.</comment>


Show HN: Chirpy – Realtime data audiolization - <AUTHOR> http://chirpy.io/

<comment><USER2> This is great! Ambient data can be really powerful. I'd never thought about it before, but having a little sense for how many users are on my sites and what they're doing would be hugely motivating.

I once wrote a command-line program that would take the first n bytes of every file in the new directory and pipe them to sox to create a sound unique to the directory contents. It was good enough for a while that I could recognise projects I was working on by the sound of their root directories, but of course required headphones and the glitch sound was quite hard on the ears…

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I've had it running in the background for a few days and it's REALLY motivating to hear peaks in app useage.

Interesting... I'll have to play around with way to manipulate the sounds based on the data. Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty fun. I think it would be better if the sounds were in some way related to the data. If you were using the web audio api you could do something nuts like hash any event text fields into synthesizer parameters so each event has a unique sound and scale the volume using numeric fields so it gets louder when your numbers get bigger.

Really cool idea though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

I really like the idea of connecting the sounds to the data. Need to get playing with the web audio api!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Weekend project? Tell more people about it. I just made something called glitch club that is sorta like "Show HN" on steroids. Show us Chirpy via video if you have the chance: [http://glitchclub.com](http://glitchclub.com)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A weekend project I created to monitor activity of an app we just launched. Chirpy generates audio melody from your realtime analytics data. You an quite literally listen to your users!

Chirpy is still in the early stages (especially the tracking modules) but really interested to see what you guys think!

</comment><comment><USER5> This is awesome, I love the simplicity of it as well. Agree with others that more sounds would be great as well. Give some basics away as a free tier and make a higher tier that includes more sounds.

Great job!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Glad you like it.

Yeah been thinking about a paid tier with more customisability. Do you think it's something you would pay (a small monthly amount) for?

<comment><USER5> For my personal hobbies I wouldn't want to pay, but I could definitely see using this for my team. Dashing is prevalent throughout my company (we have them on TV's throughout the office), so if you monetize toward that angle, perhaps as an already baked widget that would definitely be appealing as well.</comment></comment></comment>


Encouraging an I don't know culture - <AUTHOR> http://particular.net/blog/encouraging-an-i-dont-know-culture <comment><AUTHOR> I rather like the one quote that is used for this post:

> If you tell the truth, it becomes a part of your past. If you lie, it > becomes a part of your future.

Cultivating an "I don't know" environment is really just helping to encourage honesty and mentorship.

</comment><comment><USER2> Too many companies get stuck with expert beginners in lead positions. I wonder how many of those companies have actual hope for change.</comment>