I Knew Snowden. And He's Not The Story - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/surveillance-state/19c2494940d5 <comment><USER2> Everything in this sums up my feelings on the matter.

It is impossible to get freedoms back, too easy to give them up. And if all seems well now, you have to understand that decades from now and many leaders later there is too much trust not to be abused.

If there is question of unconstitutional natures for systems like this, the authority and agencies need to prove themselves beyond a reasonable doubt in the open not in secrecy well over anyone calling it into question. You don't side with authority when freedoms are at risk, those don't come back.

Individuals are innocent until proven guilty, authority has to be guilty until proven innocent due to the sensitive nature of freedoms going away. It seems people have this flipped.

People think that the law or the Constitution will always provide a failsafe, but that is only a piece of paper if the people have no backbone and don't push back. It can happen here and is well on the way if we don't watch out. There are lots of patriots and good people in the CIA/NSA/FBI but it is not their job to contain overreach, it is the people.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm not particularly interested in the Snowden play-by-play and backstory, but I think it's probably good for his cause.

The story would already be dead if he was extradited or simply disappeared quickly after the leak. Instead the US is getting daily "Where's Waldo" stories in the New York Times along with stories about the relationships between the US, China, and Russia. Having all of these angles from which to write about the story is giving it legs; and the longer it stays in the public's mind, the better.

<comment><USER4> Definitely.

The best thing about these leaks is the discussion it's making. Hopefully people will become more informed from it (but the number of "ARGHHHH MY FOURTH AMMENDMENT" style comments instead of more specific comments is disheartening).

This is actually so surreal. I don't think the US is ever going to try _that_ hard to get him back to try him, but the entire spectacle / Assange-style "THEYRE GOING TO KILL HIM FOR TREASON" around this guy, along with the supposed strain on relationships this is going to make is stranger than fiction. What is happening

<comment><USER5> Odd. I was actually somewhat relieved to see people actually caring about their fourth amendment rights in a way that they haven't in far too long.

In all honesty, I think that Snowden's continued media presence is actually hurting his cause. Between the smear campaign by the current administration (and press) and the casual comments he's made that has lost people on his cause, he might be keeping the story going, but the story is shifting more to one of _ad hominem_ , and less of one on the issue at hand.

The populace at large is terribly bad at keeping issues like this in pragmatic focus. Too few realize that even if Satan himself had been the one to leak this information, that we're all better off for having known it; and I'd hope that it would give some Americans pause enough to consider the actual implications of the Constitution; whether or not the government can govern through the consent of the governed, for example, if they have secret governings, or whether or not the non-delegation clause of the Constitution should actually allow for the NSA (staffed with officials we can't vote in or out) to write laws, when the Constitution specifically enumerates that law- making power resides in Congress alone.

So while ultimately, all that boils down to is ARGHHHHH MY FOURTH AMENDMENT, it's also an opportunity to have a larger discussion on what that fourth amendment actually means, and what other parts of the Constitution might come into play, and whether or not it's fair that the government has extended its power to such the degree that we can have 300 different "agencies" like the CPPABSD (Committee for Purchase From People who are Blind or Severely Disabled -- they regulate how many coke and vending machines _other_ government agencies should purchase from strictly blind or severely disabled sources), each of which is allowed to write laws that do not pass Congress, do not pass the house, and aren't subject to the oversight of the citizenry. The FTC, FDA, EPA, NTSB, etc., have all arguably affected each of our lives in some non- trivial ways, and those officials are just there, persisting, whether we like it or not.

<comment><USER6> Snowden's continued media presence is advancing his cause.

For common people to care, we need a victim. A victim creates a story that the media can report on. The moment we lose our victim, people stop caring. Discussions on what the fourth amendments mean will not capture the hearts of the people for a month or half a year to make changes possible.

For example: If you want to rally the gov to legislate a law to make people to seat belt on buses. Discussion of scientific reports or statistics of seat belts in the press will not go very far. In contrast, a story about a 5 year old that lost both her leg will go a long way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So far Snowden hasn't revealed much that wasn't already said by NSA whistleblowers Drake, Binney, et al. Yet most folks had never heard of them or much about the issues they were trying to raise.

Yet Snowden is an international superstar and the substance of his disclosures are, in fact, front page news on a regular basis. If it takes paying some attention to the fact that his girlfriend was a pole dancer, I guess that's OK with me.

<comment><USER8> ...this is the first I'd heard of the detail that his girlfriend was a pole dancer. I'm profoundly amused to discover it like this.

<comment><USER9> Not that kind of pole. As far as anyone has said publicly she was not a stripper. She was part of a dance troupe while living in Hawaii and the about page on her blog she described herself as "a world-traveling, pole-dancing super hero."

[http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_p...](http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/edward_snowdens_girlfriend_probably_wasnt_a_stripper/)

<comment><USER7> So more like artsy acrobatic dancing that just happened to involve the occasional pole.

Got it. Glad we got this sorted out. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally, I think he's playing his side of the story pretty well. It's hard to demonize the nice geek kid, a least with the tech community.

The espionage charges reveal how awful Obama, really all of Washington, is on the Bill of Rights. I think this whole thing is going to backfire on them.

<comment><USER11> It's already started. Tonight, on stage at the Verizon center in DC, Mick Jagger said "I'm not sure if President Obama is here tonight, but I'm sure he's listening in."

Maybe it's just me, but this comes across as far more damaging than garden- variety mockery. It's like the authority and mystique of the office are just evaporating. And forget about "repairing relations with the rest of the world." Unlike the cock-up in Iraq, this effects everyone, everywhere, directly.

Backfire squared.

<comment><USER12> Heh. In all fairness, it's arguable the UK does even more spying that the US. But your point is well taken. The US is supposed to be a model for a free society. Mass surveillance could be imagined as "un-American". But the president thinks it's an acceptable practice. Obama followers: You've been had.

<comment><USER11> Update: Apparently Jagger's jab drew boos. I suspect there were a lot of people in the room who are deeply invested in the politics that were being mocked from the stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It is so disheartening to see the media bicker all day about Snowden and Greenwald. What can be done to steer the story back to the travesty at hand?

<comment><USER14> More leaks, this time something _huge_ , which I certainly expect Greenwald and Snowden are sitting on

<comment><USER15> Agreed. The Snowden leaks to date have exposed programs whose outline we* guessed at years ago -- but details matter and written confirmation matters. The Patriot Act 215 order against Verizon is arguably illegal and unconstitutional; it exceeds the statutory authority and requires prospective data be divulged instead of merely retrospective. The FAA 702 orders, well, we'll see. Remember even the provider liability immunization is not unlimited.

But these are legal arguments. So far there has been no dramatic evidence that the NSA's sweeping surveillance powers have been abused in the way the IRS abused its authority -- examples would be snooping on politicians, blackmail, listening to sex chats, etc. We've learned more about abuses of this sort (politicians and sex chats, not blackmail) from scattered reports in the NYT half a decade ago then we have from Snowden so far.

* We == people who have been following these topics.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Snowden is a story too. As someone who considers him a hero, and one of the rare few who I can relate to, I'd like to know more about him views so that I can learn from him. That's not irrational, unless you think biographies are a waste.

In this regard, I wonder if any potential underhanded focus on character rather than message in the media might have the ironic effect of empowering more young people. "You can do good and be brave even if you play WoW".

<comment><USER17> The thing is, most of the stories are not him coming off as a a hero, but as a dropout, a weirdo, and generally someone who didnt fit in. They are not positive biographies but more subtle character assassinations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> A hierarchical organization that centralizes so much unchecked power as the NSA will attract a good share of sociopaths. Sociopaths seek power over others. Then it's a matter of time until a sociopath manages to climb to the top, and then you have a full-blown tyranny.

[http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization-...](http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2013/05/centralization- and-sociopathology.html)

<comment><USER18> [https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289](https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> "The technology that the NSA now wields far exceeds Senator Church's most excessive dreams of a surveillance state."

The author apparently thinks Senator Church didn't have much of an imagination or had never heard of the Soviet Union or China.

<comment><USER20> The Soviet Union, nor the notoriously efficient Stasi, had anything like our automation. You have to wonder if The Wall would have come down if they had our tools.

<comment><USER19> Surveillance has kept pace with technology. I doubt Mr. Church really imagined the Internet. Do you really think that China today has nothing like our automation? And do you actually think the way China acts on this information and the way we act on this information are comparable?

<comment><USER20> So the question is: Do we build an internet that is inherently private and secure and blinds the censors in the despotic regimes, or are we too afraid of that freedom now?

<comment><USER21> We've been able to build that Internet for years. The people didn't want it. They wanted GMail and Facebook and Flickr and Instagram and all the rest of the magic of the Cloud.

We could possibly start shifting to federated models but honestly I've quite enjoyed being able to easily talk with people from outside the U.S. and I worry it would be that much more difficult in such a scheme. We'd essentially all be going isolationist at the same time, building some digital Berlin Walls.

What I think would be most feasible is bilateral "Internet privacy" treaties that define what requirements are necessary to intercept traffic (which is something that every nation _wants_ to do but none are able to easily ask for). But at the same time I don't think European countries would be happy with the idea that the NSA could even theoretically obtain their citizens' info from cloud providers, and I don't think the USA would ever completely get rid of FISA while they still have the KICK ME target painted on their backs.

I wish I had a good answer for this. :-/

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I was really digging the article until right near the end.

If you think all the NSA could do with extra information is add more "hay" you're not thinking creatively enough.

For example, if you had a system that could scour through essentially infinite amounts of hay and be able to spit out each brown needle that passed through (think keyword filters), then definitely you'd want all the hay you could find, and then even more hay. Of course, keyword filters are fairly easy to avoid if you know they're there, so perhaps we'd call that a wash or even negative overall, as all the false positives make it impossible to be selective to the actual needles.

But there's another use for hay, quite brilliantly demonstrated in Iraq (or maybe it was Afghanistan, or even both, I forget). The idea was that some roads were more likely to have IEDs emplaced than others. So what the Army eventually did was to blanket the area with drones and record along those roads, trails leading to the roads from the nearby cities, etc.

When an IED inevitably exploded, they would _go back to the tapes_ , rewind them until they found the bomber. Keep rewinding (tracking on different feeds if necessary) all the way back to the staging point. Rewind further, all the way back to the cell's meeting site, and the bomber's home.

Repeat this for enough IEDs and you have a picture of where the cell assembles, where they stage out of, who they visit for support, etc.

And then you send teams in all at once to detain that cell, get more intel to piece together what they can of the rest of the network.

The sad reality is that you cannot _prevent_ all terrorism from ever happening, but if you can "play back" a person's interaction with foreign agents you can use that to bootstrap intelligence seeding on that foreign agents other contacts within the U.S. to root out that terror network before they strike again.

Doing all of this requires a _lot_ of hay. Obviously there is a very large risk to civil liberties in the wrong hands if that system is simply left as- is, but it is at least possible to put procedural, legal, and technical safeguards if the people decide that kind of system is worthwhile.

The other part of the article I was disappointed about was the mention of how the _NSA_ (of all agencies) failed to prevent the Boston marathon bombing. Responsibility for _domestic antiterrorism_ would properly fall with the FBI. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a permanent resident, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was a naturalized citizen. All indications that I've heard were that Tamerlan essentially self-radicalized (possibly while abroad). Unless one thinks that the NSA is able to read minds of people in Chechnya I'm not sure what the author thinks could have been done.

Russia did warn the FBI (again, _not_ the NSA), that much is true. But in our land of the rule of law, we don't arrest people _just_ because Putin said that they are unreliables. It is unclear exactly how many people Russia have 'warned' the FBI about anyways, or what their criteria are for making those warnings.

But either way, blaming the NSA for missing an attack by domestic terrorists is almost completely missing the point of why we have the NSA, CIA, and FBI all as different agencies. As far as I'm aware no one from any of those agencies has ever claimed that systems as strong as PRISM or even 641A-type arrangements would 100% prevent terrorism, just like our police don't claim to be able to 100% prevent crime.

That doesn't mean that we should simply never try to prevent terrorist attacks from occurring, just as it doesn't mean it's a good idea to fire all the police. You have to evaluate the risk/reward and ROI of each program, keeping in mind that some things are hard to measure in dollars.

For instance, keeping terrorism from becoming so prevalent that the people act for the police state we all want to prevent is a pretty big motivator by itself.

<comment><USER22> Without answering whether the Iraq war is justified; justifiable tactics in a theatre of war != justifiable tactics at home.

The amount of intrusion and disappearing civil liberties is far too high a cost to pay to try prevent essentially unpreventable terrorist attacks.

I was surprised to read the other day that I have a better chance of dying from cancer caused by airport body scanners (1 in 60,000,000) than I do from dying in a terrorist attack (1 in 90,000,000). Lets "evaluate the risk/reward and ROI" of that program!

<comment><USER21> Where did 1/90,000,000 come from? Is that per-lifetime, per-person-yr, something else?

Going just from 9/11 a rough estimate give 1:75000 U.S. citizens died, which is significantly different.

But besides, you're looking only at body count... do you think that if major terrorist events were happening with regularity that people wouldn't eventually start to take matters into their own hands?

Even with _just 9 /11_ we in the U.S. saw a wave of anti-Muslim violence, which never really fully stopped. Just ask the Sikh worshippers in Wisconsin.

So part of that risk evaluation needs to include the propensity of the people themselves to lapse either to vigilantism, or to erect the police state _themselves_ , in response to high-frequency terror attacks. The problem being that such a thing will hopefully never have enough evidence to fully support one assumption or the other.

<comment><USER23> _Going just from 9 /11 a rough estimate give 1:75000 U.S. citizens died, which is significantly different._

This is cherry-picking. 1 in 75000 died on a given day, but there have been tens of thousands of days where no americans were killed.

<comment><USER21> That's why I asked for the units, especially as your example is itself a different form of cherry-picking. Most people aren't concerned about being killed by terrorists on each individual day, they're rather not be killed on _any_ of the days. If you include ten years' worth of days in your cohort then you could conceivably kill all Americans in the nation on one bloody day and still be able to say that it only happens 1 time out of 3650.

<comment><USER24> No, that's exactly what cherry-picking means, because you select the most significant data out of a small, irrelevant sample.

If you want units you should compare risks at least on a yearly basis per person, or on a lifetime basis per person. Then you will see how ridiculously low are the figures for terrorism. But we all know terrorism is not about killing many, it's about generating fear and inducing political effects. And it's used precisely for that by both parties (the aggressor and the victim).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I agree Snowden or Greenwald or whoever has the classified stuff needs to tell a compelling story, with a chronology.

Mr. Lee is absolutely spot on when he reminds us that the media and the White House are stealing the narrative. We're now totally focused on a random sysadmin trying to guess what makes him tick. Who cares? What about the criminal activity by the US government he's laid bare for all to see?

I kept hearing all this talk of "free speech" and the 1st Amendment today (thanks Carney), as it is supposed to exist in other countries, even when they lack anything like a US Constitution... good luck with that, and that Snowden's choice of destination is somehow symbolic of his motives. Maybe he's just trying to stay out of jail. Is that so hard to understand?

So I guess we're forgetting all about the 4th Amendment, which is the whole reason he's putting his life on the line in the first place. We need more details from those classified docs, we need a narrative and we need to bring the focus back to mass scale pen registers and warrantless searches. Snowden's case is boring. He's guilty. He committed a felony by disseminating redacted classified material to expose illegality on a much larger scale. Most Americans would be too frightened to do this. He's not the usual. Get over it.

On the other hand, the case of the US government, their conduct and whether it breaks US laws or the spirit of US law, is far more interesting.

Stop worrying about the rights of people in other countries and start worrying about the rights of Americans, who are extremely lucky to have an amazing Constitution, which used to be a model and the envy of the world.

</comment><comment><USER25> This reads like an essay from a freshman poli-sci class. The only unique thing about this post is the lame humblebrag or whatever about the author playing videogames with Snowden. But of course it's besides the point. It's so irrelevant that it has to go in the headline and link title.

A software dev speaking outside of his area of expertise to amplify the echo chamber while getting hits for his blog isn't enriching the debate.

<comment><USER25> Not that my own comment here is helping anything. I'm just weirded out by the fact that people aren't being critical of these empty echo-chamber posts that keep popping up. They make this place feel like it's just reddit's politics section being paraphrased by web developers trying to self-promote.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "I have learned that people decide what they think based upon narratives. A good story always has better results than merely listing out facts. Every good narrative has both characters and a plot."

I was listening to a podcast the other day where one of the people said that if people were solely interested in facts the phone book would be the most interesting book in the world.

<comment><USER27> Sorry, the phone book contains data (witch should also be facts), but I'd consider it more data, then facts.

<comment><USER28> Is "fact" not in some cases a synonym of "data"?

"Qantourisc; 144" might be read as data while "Qantourisc registered on HN 144 days ago" might be read as a fact.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I personally won't be happy until I see all fiber splitters installed by the NSA completely removed (such as the one at 611 Folsom Street in San Francisco). Move it back to San Luis Obispo.

I liked the reference to The Spy Factory ([http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyoeOM22WCc)) in this article, and I find it interesting that the NSA had been surveilling Al Qaeda for 3 years leading up to 9/11, and had more than enough data gathered on them. They were taking photographers and following two key hijackers--that's like the upper limit of surveillance, and they hit it. The mistake was not that they needed more, it was that they intentionally did not communicate any of those details to the FBI or CIA once two key hijackers were in the U.S. Fix the communication, not the collection.

</comment><comment><USER30> I see a lot of articles about who is or isn't Snowden, what he did, where he was and where he'll go. But I don't see anything about the NSA and what's going to change with PRISM. A lot of noise about him just to hide the fact that in the end nothing will really change?

</comment><comment><USER31> > I Knew Snowden. And He's Not The Story

And yet this article seems to add nothing new to the discussion other than some nice anecdotes about how Snowden played video games and was an everyday person like us. Not much substance here.

</comment><comment><USER32> I recalled the dialogue from the film The Watchmen.

> The Comedian: What happened to the American Dream? It came true! You're > looking at it!

</comment><comment><USER33> I am sorry, I know that it's not that important, but I just find Where Is Snowden Adventures so _exciting to watch_. It's like reading an adventure novel, only in real time, real life and with larger-than-life characters like Assange and that NSA general.

</comment><comment><USER34> Somewhat irrelevant but anyone else think Medium's URLs are really ugly? Why can't you just get a plain pretty subdomain? I'd use it if it were that.

<comment><USER35> Are you working for the government?</comment></comment>


Holobox: A CSS 3D cube that reacts to device orientation - <AUTHOR> http://hakim.se/experiments/css3-hologram

<comment><USER2> Very cool tech demo, however inversing the up/down transformation would make it feel proper 3d, as in that the box "remains the same" while you move your iPad, giving the illusion that it's in the iPad.

</comment><comment><USER3> Works perfectly on an iPad but doesn't feel intuitive at all.

</comment><comment><USER4> Sorry to sound negative but I never understand why if someone goes to the bother of making something like this. Why they can't provide a checkbox to allow users on a desktop (without gyroscopes) to interact via mouse and see the effect.

<comment><AUTHOR> There's no checkbox but it does use mouse events when visited on desktop browsers. Requires a webkit browser with support for CSS 3D transforms though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Since this works only on such a small subset of runtimes (it only manages to slow down my Android browser), you might as well write in ActiveX and slap a HTML5 doctype to it.

Kudos on the hackery, don't get me wrong, I'm all for taking devices where they weren't meant to go. My issue is with a world where this kind of fragmented support will again become common, just when we were starting to have a grip on actual standards.

<comment><USER6> I think the whole point of this experiment is to try out a new and cool piece of tech that might not be supported across the browser spectrum just yet but it doesn't mean that it won't be ever.

Just look at the many other CSS specs that were not supported across browsers only a few years ago but now are considered official standards by the W3C and all the major browser developers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Doesn't work on Android / Nexus One CM7.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's too bad. I should have mentioned that this has only been tested on iOS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> FYI, this doesn't appear to be working on my generation 1 iPhone.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice on desktop safari.</comment>


TSDL: Time Series Data Library - <AUTHOR> https://datamarket.com/data/list/?q=provider:tsdl <comment><USER2> If you'd like another source for time series data with a significant bias towards US financial data, check out what the St. Louis Fed FRED puts out at:

[https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/](https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/)

They do a decent job of updating the site and cleaning data.

The R library quantlib has made pulling this data easy. [http://www.quantmod.com/examples/intro/#data](http://www.quantmod.com/examples/intro/#data)

<comment><USER3> Great resource.</comment></comment>


Show HN: AcademyReady helps you finish online courses, punishes you if you don't - <AUTHOR> https://academyready.com/

<comment><USER2> I realize the 'profits' are donated to Teach for America, but doesn't using any part of the $10 warp your incentives?

If you have a list of improvements to make to the site and it turns out one of them indirectly helps students avoid the $10 charge without them realizing it, aren't you going to move it down on the priority list relative to something that doesn't make paying your expenses harder?

<comment><USER3> Fair point. To try and allay these kinds of concerns, we've also provided a completely free option with 100% of the scheduling/reminder functionality of the paid option. Wagering is completely voluntary. Though we think betting a bit of money will increase your motivation, our primary concern is helping people through their classes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I love this idea (with some reservations re: gibybo's comment), and it brings to mind an important quote from Thomas H. Huxley that has been with me for a while:

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned; and, however early a man's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that he learns thoroughly."

The issue of motivating people to learn is often neglected in online and/or self-directed education. This is an interesting take on the issue—and, at least, an acknowledgement that this disconnect exists between the "no degrees necessary" zeitgeist and socioeconomopolitical structure (or whatever) of university degrees: on some level, your degree is also "free" (or profitable, rather) if you finish your courses, and costly if you don't.

</comment><comment><USER5> Man, I need to set me up one of these. Step right up everybody, lose 20 lbs or pay me $100. Thanks for signing up, ma'am! Oh, how do you lose 20 lbs? Heck if I know lady!

<comment><USER6> It's already been done [1]. An interesting point someone brought up about this is if your money goes to a good cause, it may be less of a motivator, since even if you fail your personal goal, you still did some good.

Perhaps donating money to a charity or political party you don't agree with would be more motivating.

[1] <https://loseitorloseit.com/>

<comment><USER7> Radiolab ran a story about an older woman who was co Poetry addicted to smoking, and eventually she caved out of shame and flippantly told her friend she'd donate $5000 to the KKK if she caught her smoking again. It worked, apparently, and she claims she entirely intended to donate it if she started again, and that her hate and disgust of the thought overtook her will to smoke.

Can't say I condone the method, but interesting anyway.

<comment><USER8> _Can't say I condone the method, but interesting anyway._

I'm intrigued now. Why not? (Because of the risk of the KKK getting the donation?)

<comment><USER7> Yes, from her telling of it, it worked because she was absolutely ready to pay the consequences. At that point her smoking habit becomes other peoples problem (in addition to second-hand smoke etc).

<comment><USER8> I guess the reason I don't see the problem is because I believe the gambit was _so_ bold that she simply would _never_ start to smoke again. (A sort of personal "nuclear deterrent", if you will. But like a nuclear deterrent, dangerous if used!)

<comment><USER7> Maybe. I think it's dependent on how disposable your money is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Negative reinforcement might get the students to finish the course, but they will not enjoy what they're learning if they're doing it just so they avoid paying money for it. The best learning happens when you want to learn because you're curious and interested in the what you're learning, not because you'll have to pay money for not learning.

</comment><comment><USER10> I love this because I feel like one of the biggest problems that I can see in taking these online courses are that people think "Oh this looks cool - Let me try it out." Soon enough they forget to stay on top of the lectures and other course material because there's nobody there to force them, we just do not keep going. Out of general laziness. I'm sure these constant reminders and schedules would help many of keep on track - but adding the $10 charge really ups the motivation, nobody wants to lose money.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like the structure (schedule) it gives to Khan Academy classes. The reminders reminded me of an SAT prep site I used before (number2) that would remind me every other day for a month to come back after I started slacking off. Highly annoying but effective :)

Feature recommendation: use the Khan Academy API to allow users to mark videos they watched before as viewed on the website. I've watched a bunch of scattered videos already, so I guess I'll have to mark off as I go.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm not convinced that these type of commitment devices work unless the monetary fine is significant to the user. The problem is that 1) people have varying levels of what "significant" means, 2) if the fee is more than one can afford to spend, then one would not sign up for risk of losing the sum and 3) if the fee is easily affordable, it's not too difficult to justify in one's head losing the fee -- especially if it's donated to charity. It would take a lot of calibration to find the perfect amount to charge, if a general 'perfect amount' exists.

Personally, I think more companies should bring in more 'social' commitment devices, like setting up an e-mail that goes out to all my closest friends, my boss, and that girl I like -- when I fail to complete something. Social pressure, perhaps along with monetary incentives, are quite powerful and nuanced in a way that money could never be.

EDIT: Wanted to point out that qntmfred made the same point on social pressures 3 hours ago -- didn't see it until I posted.

</comment><comment> UK-AlasGou Well the website is down for me, can someone say what it actually does?

<comment><USER3> Sorry, we're experiencing the issue described here: <http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=4180339>

But basically, we schedule online courses and add email/text you when you should be watching your online course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've done customer development on things along these lines and I basically have the following to share with the class:

Any app that is at its core assisting people to hack their current behavior is inherently asking people to change their behavior beyond that point at which it would be reasonable given the difficulty of such a task to attempt this feat.

</comment><comment><USER14> The text could use some more contrast against the picture background, can be hard to read. Other than that, I like it.

</comment><comment><USER15> This is neat!

Can you implement a SuperMemo type quiz? I think that's a good killer feature for good performance from students for both udacity and coursera.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperMemo>

</comment><comment><USER16> Subjecting yourself to social pressure rather than financial pressure is another good approach to disciplined self-directed learning.

<comment><USER17> Or both. I admit that my primary motivation in completing my degrees was the huge amounts of money my parents have invested in me. Of course I liked (most) of the subjects I was studying and certainly that helped a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Umm...why does the delete account button links to /checkout, and asks me for my credit card info?</comment>


Digital Nomad Profiles: Transformations and Tranquility for a Mom on the Road - <AUTHOR> http://www.destinationdev.com/blog/2016/11/18/digital-nomad-profiles-transformations-and-tranquility-for-a-mom-on-the-road <comment><USER2> Awesome story, very honest and raw. It's definetely not easy to be a digital nomad, or any nomad for that matter - but it definetely changes you - and i think most of the time its for good.</comment>


Google Was Warned on Rogue Drug Ads  - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704083904576335483063623402.html?mod=djemalertTECH <comment><USER2> This article is a canonical example of regulatory capture. Large pharma companies and licensed pharmacists alike do not like the idea of overseas pharmacies selling into the US market. Each large pharma company was forced to pay about a billion dollars per drug for a license from the FDA, so they have an incentive to recoup costs. And the FDA also has an incentive to play policeman and thump its chest about "safety" to justify a budget increase.

In reality, removing the FDA from the equation would be much better than eliminating online pharmacies. Open it up and let the buyer beware, just like they already do about every other internet site they visit.

<comment><USER3> _The problems included failing to require a doctor's prescription, improperly selling controlled substances or peddling fake or tainted drugs. Many illicit pharmacies appear to be based in Canada but often ship drugs from places like India, Barbados or China, according to the FDA._

Regulatory capture. Right. That's what this is about. The ideological debate over whether any drugs should be regulated. Sure.

<comment><USER2> I was going to write a long post on this, but I sense that you're coming from a background of different premises. May I simply suggest that the FDA often cries wolf, and vastly exaggerates threat levels associated with things outside their supervision? I will cite two examples and leave it at that for now.

1) Here is the FDA's 2009 testimony on drugs imported from Canada. Note how they endorse a denunciation of imports in the harshest terms, stating that Canadian imports of "unapproved drugs" are a "violation" that "put Americans at serious risk".

      http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Testimony/ucm114735.htm

      On November 6, 2003, Federal District Court Judge Claire
      V. Eagan, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
      Oklahoma, issued a decision in United States v. RX Depot,
      Inc. and RX of Canada LLC, granting a preliminary
      injunction to immediately prevent these defendants who
      operate business that import prescription drugs from
      Canada, because such unapproved drugs were a clear
      violation of the FD&C Act. In addition to her unequivocal
      findings of law, the Judge concluded that these companies
      could not assure the safety of the drugs they have been
      importing and, as a result, in violating the law have put
      Americans at serious risk.

These are Canadian pharmacies we're talking about. It's not exactly Somalia up there.

2) Here is a sample FDA warning letter to UltraRad from May 2009. All of these letters always start out like a horror story:

      http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/EnforcementActions/WarningLetters/ucm173977.htm

      This inspection revealed that this device is adulterated
      within the meaning of section 501(h) of the Act, 21 U.S.C.
      § 351(h), in that the methods used in, or the facilities
      or controls used for, its manufacture, packing, storage,
      or installation are not in conformity with the Current
      Good Manufacturing Practice (CGMP) requirements of the
      Quality System (QS) regulation found at Title 21, Code of
      Federal Regulations (C.F.R.), Part 820. No written
      response was received from you concerning our
      investigator's observations noted on the Form FDA 483,
      List of Inspectional Observations that was issued to
      William J. Giunta, Vice President of Service, on March 5,
      2009. These violations include, but are not limited to,
      the following...

Wow, "adulterated", that sounds awful! What were these terrible violations? Let's read further down:

      4. Failure to validate computer software for its intended
      use according to an established protocol when computers or
      automated data processing systems are used as part of
      production or the quality system as required by 21 CFR §
      820.70(i). This was a repeat violation from a previous
      FDA-483 that was issued to your firm. For example:

      A) Your firm uses off-the-shelf software (HEAT Help Desk)
      to manage customer support service calls and to maintain
      customer site configuration information; however, your
      firm failed to adequately validate this software in order
      to ensure that it will perform as intended in its chosen
      application. Specifically. your firm's validation did not
      ensure that the details screen was functioning properly as
      intended. The details screen is used to capture complaint
      details and complaint follow-up information which would
      include corrective and preventative actions performed by
      your firm when service calls are determined to be CAPA
      issues.

      B) Off-the-shelf software (Microsoft SharePoint) is being
      used by your firm to manage your quality system documents
      for document control and approval. However, your firm has
      failed to adequately validate this software to ensure that
      it meets your needs and intended uses. Specifically. at
      the time of this inspection there were two different
      versions of your CAPA & Customer Complaint procedure, SOP-
      200-104; however, no revision history was provided on the
      SharePoint document history. Your firm has failed to
      validate the SharePoint software to meet your needs for
      maintaining document control and versioning.

I cite this particular example solely because you as a software engineer have the expertise to see how ludicrous this citation is. They are literally saying that a small business needs to do "software validation" of a multibillion dollar product like Microsoft Sharepoint to "ensure that it meets [their] needs and intended uses".

This was the grounds for claiming that UltraRad's product was "adulterated", trashing their reputation on the internet and exposing them to fines and penalties.

So: all I ask is that you read through a sample of FDA warning letters sometime with a more skeptical eye, keeping in mind that their form of writing is highly optimized for surface optics. Focus on the claimed software violations and try to translate them into plain English and you will see there is often not much there. This may shift the needle on your premises about whether the FDA is credible when it cries "catastrophe unless we regulate".</comment></comment></comment>


Google and Mattel will reveal a mystery product on February 13th - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/5/7988083/google-mattel-event-february-13 <comment><USER2> I am calling it now: self-driving Barbie cars.</comment>


Rule of Three (Computer Programming) - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_three_(computer_programming) <comment><USER2> To me, the real issue is that a design decision should ideally be expressed at only one place in the code. Then, if that decision is changed, you change that one place in the code. If the design decision is reflected in two or more places, chances are that when changes are made, one of those places will be missed. Some languages force you to write things twice (the prototype and the definition in C and C++), but at least the compiler helps find mismatches.

</comment><comment><USER3> More than just code duplication, what about functionality duplication? By functionality I mean code that does the same thing but is written significantly differently.

This is by far the most insidious problem as you can't just wrap duplicated code up into a function and move all the code to one place.

Usually this problem appears not just as functionality duplicated in many places but each time the functionality is also intertwined with other features and cannot be decomposed to get rid of the duplication.

In most styles of programming there is no way to get around this issue as it has to do with program "design." Unless you can make a design that anticipates the duplication, likely a duplication is inevitable.

However, if you make your variables immutable as much as possible you can get around this issue and solve what was seemingly a "design" problem but was in fact only a problem with mutable variables. It's too bad the majority of programmers don't know about this.

<comment><USER4> This is how Lisp gets you to think about code. Minimize side effects (essentially the same argument as immutable variables), and if you're likely to use something more than once, turn it into its own function. Then stick it into your private library if you're at all likely to see it again in the future.

Something that doesn't occur often enough, but should: then rewrite the function for various optimizations - speed, size, security, whatever, while ensuring the same input will always produce the same output.

<comment><USER3> I'm from the haskell universe.

It's more than just side effects. A common design issue people hit is that midway through a projects lifetime they hit a feature request that is basically a slight permutation of an existing feature.

They realize that they cannot reuse the code because of the way they "designed" the program. Ideally you want to reuse existing code, or if no function specifically supports this feature you can encapsulate a relevant line of code into some sort of container so that it can be reused in multiple places. This is a way of decomposing your code, or aka: dividing a function into multiple pieces so components can be deployed in multitudes of other location thereby maximizing code re-use.

What happens is that most people realize that no matter how much they plan out a design they cannot execute the decomposition procedure above. A design choice made at the inception of the project fixes the shape of the code and limits flexibility. Thus they do code duplication as a workaround hack.

I am saying that this problem is actually caused by mutability.

What is seemingly a structural problem only occurs because you have a mutable variable. You can cut your code and divide a primitive into a thousand possible pieces if you wanted too but the minute you have a mutable variable in your code the division cannot be done.

Think about it. To surgically remove a mutable variable out of a piece of code you must not just cut out the variable but you must also bring every function or procedure that mutates that variable along for the ride. If your function has an entire network of functions mutating procedures than that function cannot be divided into smaller functions.

An immutable function can be cut into a thousand pieces and rebuilt in a different way. This is the best known solution for program design and organization.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The real problem is when you get to scale. At a company like Facebook or Google, it seems like you end up spending half your time simply looking for similar code that other developers wrote to solve a similar problem so that you can avoid duplication in the codebase. When you have tens of thousands of developers that becomes VERY challenging.

Code duplication is one of the biggest mistakes I made as a new developer. As you became a better engineer, you learn how to simplify and extract common patterns into shared classes/libraries/components to avoid duplication. Code duplication is almost a cardinal sin due to the complexity and bugs that tend to result.

</comment><comment><USER6> I use a totally different rule, a rule of C: if you feel that a code block needs a comment, extract it into a function with descriptive name.

With this rule duplicates rarely happen anywhere but in utility functions that extend the standard library.

</comment><comment><USER7> Here's a discussion from last month about an encounter I had with this rule:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22024294](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22024294)

</comment><comment><USER3> I kind of hate stuff like this. Why three? Why not four? Is it three because the "rule of three" sounds quotable?

It's similar to KISS. Yes I get why simplicity is great but it doesn't mean it's universally great. Is this acronym telling me to follow some random principle because the acronym forms a word? Many Complex systems exist in the world as an antithesis to KISS, so this principle isn't universal at all.

Why not stop duplication in ALL cases? What is the statistical evidence or logical proof that justifies "three?"

<comment><USER8> The premise is that the second time you do the same thing, it's often unclear if it's _really_ the same thing, or if it's just the same thing at the moment.

I stick with the Rule of Three as a rule of thumb, and it seems that the repeated logic diverges about as often as it converges.

Once you start thinking about a third implementation, it's time to put the logic in one place.</comment></comment>


Does anyone deserve to have a billion dollars? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/politics/billionaires-democratic-candidates.html <comment><USER2> No one deserves anything but it's not up to a 3rd party to judge the validity of what one can generate when playing by the agreed upon rules of the system. Fix the foundation rather then boarding up the broken windows upstairs.</comment>


Seneca's 12 Rules for a Better Life - <AUTHOR> https://www.nuggetsofthought.com/2018/07/24/senecas-12-rules-for-a-better-life <comment><USER2> Here's the actual picture of Seneca [https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/wp- content/uploads/seneca-...](https://partiallyexaminedlife.com/wp- content/uploads/seneca-w-text.jpg)

Good read.</comment>


Bloomberg: Verizon Wireless Said to Start Offering IPhone in January - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-29/verizon-wireless-said-to-start-offering-iphone-ending-at-t-s-exclusivity.html

<comment><USER2> I'll believe it when I see it. Just a few bits quickly found in Google News archive search:

November 2008: [http://www.macworld.com/article/150187/2010/03/att_verizon_i...](http://www.macworld.com/article/150187/2010/03/att_verizon_iphone.html)

November 2009: [http://www.crn.com/mobile/221600785;jsessionid=WQM2VISJVVS4B...](http://www.crn.com/mobile/221600785;jsessionid=WQM2VISJVVS4BQE1GHPSKH4ATMY32JVN)

</comment><comment><USER3> Any media site still reporting or echoing unsubstantiated "Verizon iPhone" rumors should be embarrassed by now.

</comment><comment><USER4> The enhanced utility of a GSM phone still keeps me away, though I have to say, at least in my experience, Verizon seems to have their act together better than AT&T.

</comment><comment><USER5> Hasn't this been a continuous rumor for almost 3 yrs now?

</comment><comment><USER6> This article could very well be true, but I've become highly suspicious of these apple rumor articles over the years. Especially ones that randomly pop up after a 4.5% AAPL stock dip. The cynic inside me is telling me that someone's starting a rumor so they can dump some stock on its way down...

</comment><comment><USER7> Gruber Calls BS: [http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/29/bloomberg- verizo...](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/06/29/bloomberg-verizon- iphone)

<comment><USER8> It would be more accurate to say he expresses doubt. There's no denial based on his sources, or even reasoning against a VZW iPhone happening -- just reasoning against Apple leaking this info at this moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Yawn. Verizon is full-steam ahead on the Android front. Bringing in the iPhone would fragment their investments in Android and they'd be competing against themselves. Android devices are good enough to match the iPhone for most consumers. Verizon isn't going to do what it takes to court and share profits with Apple, because they don't need to.

</comment><comment><USER10> This makes my heart flutter with anxious optimism.

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, the exclusive contract with AT&T does end in 2011 ...

</comment><comment><USER12> I bought an iPhone today. Crap.</comment>


Believe in your idea because.... - <AUTHOR> http://planneddeparture.wordpress.com/2014/01/02/believe-in-your-idea-because/

<comment><AUTHOR> Believe in your idea because...if you will not believe in it nobody else will. It is you who could make it happen. Why would you believe in your idea? share your thoughts</comment>


Ask HN: GPL copyleft applies to ports? - <AUTHOR>

I'm hoping someone out there knows the answer, but I ported a library from one language to another (C++ to Java).
I was going to release it under a 3 clause BSD, but the original code was licensed under GPL v3. It probably won't ever make a difference, but does the GPL force me to license the port under GPL as well?
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> IANAL answer: if you want to release under a different license, you are urged to do a "clean room" implementation that could not possibly have derived anything from the original. If it's a mere translation from one language to another, your version of the library almost certainly falls under the "derivative work" category and needs to be GPL.

If your library implements a well-known algorithm, try to track down a text description of that algorithm (say, a research paper) and redo the code based on that original source. Looking at GPL code can contaminate your final product.

<comment><AUTHOR> An IANAL answer is perfect for me, it's a very low key project that I ported. I was just hoping to move it from GPL to a 3 clause BSD license.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Any work that counts as a "derived work" of GPL'd software must be licensed under the GPL. I would think a direct port is almost certainly a derived work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, that's what I was afraid of, I guess I'll release it as GPL then.

<comment><USER4> Or just ask the source.

Ask if you can have it under the license that you want. GPL3 may have been an arbitrary choice and the creators of the copyright work may be happy to either apply a dual license or allow you to apply BSD license to your derivation.</comment></comment></comment>


Errors vs. Bugs and the End of Stupidity - <AUTHOR> http://celandine13.livejournal.com/33599.html?nc=30 <comment><USER2> The lead is buried behind piano practice, but this is a great piece and worth reading.

There are causes behind why bugs are introduced, and the cause is never as simple as "that person is stupid / bad at their job".</comment>


Ask HN: How does a microwave work? - <AUTHOR> Does anyone know of a good (visual) explanation of how it actually works? I'm not satisfied with the Wikipedia explanation.<p>Is the heated food different (healthiness) from heating it with a regular oven? Is there robust scientific evidence? <comment><USER2> The healthiness of the water being heated by microwaves is unaffected, some of it is simply steam. The healthiness of the food being heated by the air in an oven is largely unaffected (singeing and bioavailability aside). The main difference is that the food will be cooked (tender) in a microwave without reaching a vitamin-destroying temperature that ovens are used at.

Can you be specific what you're missing out on/coming from, is it non-ionising radiation?

</comment><comment><USER3> Only the water is heated up because they frequency of the energy coming from the inside is 2,450 MHz. How? Torque. The light rubs the water molecules.

The science is rock solid. It's completely safe.

Here's some math:

[http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave_water.html](http://www1.lsbu.ac.uk/water/microwave_water.html)</comment>


Everything we know about Apple's smart glasses - <AUTHOR> https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/a33022469/apple-augmented-reality-smart-glasses/ <comment><USER2> In general, I find Karl Guttag's analysis far superior:

[https://www.kguttag.com/2020/05/20/analyzing-front-page- tech...](https://www.kguttag.com/2020/05/20/analyzing-front-page-techs-apple- glass-leak-and-asking-the-right-questions/)

<comment><USER3> That is a great analysis. But I'd put money down that he's wrong about the camera. It will have a "sensor package" which may actually include optics, but just like Face ID today, the raw data will be inaccessible to the user or applications.

I can't imagine privacy-focused Apple has any interest in selling a device that could be used to discreetly capture images. That caused no end of bad PR for Google Glass, and for the Apple of today it would be in service of a a marginally marketable feature at best.

I can certainly imagine Tim or Phil at the keynote: "When you want to take a picture, you have the best mobile camera in the world already in your pocket."

<comment><USER4> Which makes me sad. I would easily pay a lot of money for this feature alone:

My kid does something adorable. I click a button and the last x seconds are saved from my perspective.

Snap got close, even Google Clips tried. None of them nailed it.

I understand all the privacy implications, and all the dystopian hand- wringing, but to be honest, that one thing would be pretty awesome, and I can only imagine what it would be like to look back 30 years from now.

<comment><USER5> I think cameras will be the new guns, and some people will be ok with them and some will not.

The thing is, people with the cameras will wield power over their subject, and many will not like it.

I don't know if the answer will be laws, or polite norms, or further civilization of what people accept.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > The short version: nobody knows yet.

This is also the long version. The entire article is tantamount to Apple fanfic.

<comment><USER7> Better than slashfic? :)

But yeah this is bizarre "let's invent things that we want" level stories

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> For now, I just want some reading glasses. Somewhat-smart-glasses wired to my phone that allow me to read books and textual internet on the go. Basic text editor would be nice to have too. Doesn't even have to be full colour. I can wait for all singing and dancing immersive AR. Is there anything like this available or near to market?

<comment><USER9> Same here. Just the ability to overlay text in the corner of your vision would be life changing. Combined with a Bluetooth keyboard and an ssh app, this could easily become the most mobile development device ever made.

Google Glass made strides towards the "text in the corner of your vision," but they focused too much on developing a brand instead of roping in 3rd party devs. They released (limited) SDKs eventually, but by that point it was too late.

I think they would have had far greater success if they had set up a dev relations team before shipping.

<comment><USER8> Exactly this. Give me a simple but high res screen in each eye of my glasses and a split, flexible Bluetooth keyboard I can set down or strap to either leg (perhaps). I'm tired of being tethered to my laptop and would pay for the privilege of freedom to roam while remaining productive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Hopefully the make them look indistinguishable from normal glasses. I'm not gonna walk around in public looking like I have a video camera strapped to my forehead.

</comment><comment><USER11> Track down an old show called Denno Coil. Every character wears AR glasses, and there's practically a startup idea in every episode of the first season. It is so very Japanese that they used AR on a show from over 10 years ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennō_Coil](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennō_Coil)

</comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only who is _not_ looking forward to any smart glasses.

I have been looking for Smartphone before iPhone launch. It was something obvious and would make big difference. I am not so sure about Glasses. I for one dont want to wear glasses any more having gone through laser surgery.

<comment><USER13> In 2014 I was not interested in any type of Google Glasses. Partly because I didn't need glasses at the time. Now that I do it's interesting enough for me to try. Sunglasses would be cool. Luckily for me I only have slight astigmatism and don't qualify for contacts/surgery or glasses full time.

Apple products are abundant in my household but looking back the watch is easily my least favorite purchase. The glasses would need to be compelling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So how would the vision correction work? I'm not seeing that.

<comment><USER15> Probably a bad communication. You have to assume that they will just be able to fabricate and install normal prescription lenses, like any other glasses.

<comment><USER14> It did mention a patent though.

<comment><USER15> Aside from the fact that companies often patent things they can't/won't/don't produce, it looks like even in the patent we have a system that allows for the insertion of a prescription lens into the glasses, creating a multi-lens or multi-surface display substrate.

I see an allusion to some other voltage-controlled liquid crystal technology that may be able to correct for vision issues as well, but in my opinion what we're probably seeing here is:

A) inside the HMD, there exists some form of micro-adjustment mechanism that can focus the content _that is being displayed_. For e.g. I may have good enough vision that I don't need glasses, but my IPD is such that the display is out of focus for me specifically. That's what I imagine is happening with the main glass. Remember, with something like "everyday glasses" there doesn't exist an IPD adjustment like you'd see in AR/VR headsets, and this setting can greatly affect the crispness of the display.

And then...

B) for customers that require more substantial vision correction, allow them to _also_ introduce their prescription lenses in front of that main display.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for following up on that! So nothing too magical.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> 47 pixels per inch resolution? Surely that's a typo?

<comment><USER17> It's 47 pixels per degree.

<comment><USER18> For comparison, the angular resolution of the fovea is about half an arc minute, or about three times as good.

It drops of fast with eccentricity, though.

So, you might be able to see individual pixels that size, but only in the center of your vision (might because I didn't bother thinking about the difference between angular resolution, acuity, and effect of line length, color, intensity, contrast, flicker, adaptation, etc)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Tl:Dr we don't know anything

</comment><comment><USER20> If these actually eliminate the need for prescription ground lenses, that's it: killer app that will eliminate the prescription eye glasses industry as we know it, immediately placing Apple at the revenue and control peak. With everything taking place in manufacturing, I'm surprised dynamic precision shaped lenses are not already here.

<comment><USER6> I've seen enough fascinating but impractical patents to be pretty skeptical of "big corp filed a patent, so their next product will definitely include it!"

<comment><USER21> Definitely. If dynamic prescription support adds $10 to the bill of materials vs. fixed, order ahead of time prescription support - then it ain't shipping. Patent is exciting, but making a popular consumer product isn't about cramming every patent into it.</comment></comment></comment>


Astranis emerges from stealth with new satellite tech for connecting the world - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/01/astranis-emerges-from-stealth-with-a-new-satellite-technology-for-connecting-the-world/ <comment><USER2> Meta-comment: I haven't seen this noted elsewhere, but there's been a very sudden and significant acceleration in the pace of space launch. So far there have been 22 launches this year, which is about double the pace of last year. And there are more than 180 launches planned -- again, double the pace of last year. The most launches ever to occur in a single year was 139 -- during the height of the space race in 1967. Although many of this year's planned launches will undoubtedly slip into next year, we're quite likely to set an all-time record:

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

Also notable is the fact that of the 22 launches this year, three have been the debuts of entirely new vehicles, two of which were entirely privately funded. There are likely to be several more private launch vehicle debuts this year.

This is a really significant shift for what had long been a moribund industry, and a lot of complementary innovations will be able to piggyback onto this momentum.

<comment><USER3> Really exciting, but have the regulations of what "stuff" we're putting up/leaving up there moved as fast?

<comment><USER2> For the most part, yes. Changes in the regulatory system have been one of the critical enablers for this during the last decade. The key area where the regulations _haven 't_ particularly kept pace is in extra-terrestrial property rights.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi everyone, I'm one of the cofounders of Astranis (YC W16). Thanks for taking the time to read about what we're doing and happy answer any questions.

<comment><USER5> Satellite earth station engineer view:

I'm interested in what the total system gain, EIRP and power looks like in an Astranis spot beam from geostationary, as compared to a current-generation 4000 to 6500 kilogram geostationary satellite with Ku and Ka band spot beams.

I am optimistic but also skeptical. The size and power of the satellite will influence what the size of VSAT terminals needs to be, and also the earth stations/major teleports. The example size of the satellite shown in the URL is so much smaller than current geostationary satellites that I don't see how the Tx power from each transponder will be anywhere near the power on a much bigger, costlier satellite.

Let's say for example I have put together from industry standard components, a 3.0 meter compact cassegrain Ku-band antenna in a remote part of Nepal, with a 40W BUC and a relatively recent Comtech EF Data modem. Are you planning on selling 1:1 dedicated capacity SCPC (and MCPC) type transponder kHz on a monthly basis? Or are you planning on standardizing on your own type of VSAT hardware terminal in bulk and selling contended access only?

Where do you see your value proposition for high capacity IP trunk links as compared to an ISP buying a 2 x 1.8m dish o3b terminal, and dedicated capacity through o3b? What will your $/Mbps rate look like compared to o3b with a monthly spend of 2500 or 3500 dollars?

<comment><USER4> Hey there, I think you got the gist of it in a different part of this thread (each of our spacecraft has a fraction of the number of transponders as a typical large GEO). But if you'd like to discuss further I'd be happy to chat offline. Do you have an email address or other way that I could contact you?

<comment><USER5> I understand you are probably at a very early stage of product design for the satellite capabilities, so you are cagey and don't want to make any definitive statements of technical specs... But I'd rather not move the discussion off forum into private email when the other people reading this thread could possibly benefit from answers to my specific questions.

I am kind of concerned that your answers to others' questions in this thread are vague and noncommittal.

One more question. Do you intend to:

(A) lease raw transponder kHz capacity to third party end users and ISPs (eg: the ku spot beams I can get on Russian satellites covering Afghanistan and a check for $4500 USD a month,

or (b) is your business plan to operate both the satellites and the earth stations, and resell fully packaged VSAT services directly to end users?

<comment><USER6> (C) Trust investors don't know enough physics to question the business plan.

See also: Theranos, uBeam, etc.

<comment><USER5> I just took a look at the currently frontpaged "Who's hiring" thread. Lots of software development, of course.

Hardware startups are costly and _hard_.

Now do it on super hard mode and build a thing that has to go 36,000+ km away, never to be seen or touched by a human, and make it super reliable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't see the novelty on this at all. Geostationary satellites are pretty much the standard for satellite internet for years. I had a broadband connection like that on my first job, 15 years ago.

It's off course very welcome if they can get higher transfer speeds, cleaner and lighter satellites and newer technologies to the mix, but that's it. The biggest problem with satellite internet: the latency, is not going to be solved.

Which is fine, I must say, since they are in the business of bringing Internet to where there's none. But these new Internet users will arrive without access to the Internet's most incredible features, such as real time voice and video communication, interactive website experiences and online gamming.

<comment><USER8> Funny how you say those are the most incredible features. For me (and obviously this is personal preference, so please don't take offence) these are "nice to have" features. What I'm really after are (and have been, since I kinda grew out of FPS games)

* google/$INFORMATION

* Wikipedia

* podcasts

* spotify/torrent/$MUSIC

* blogs/twitter

* youtube/netflix/torrent/$VIDEO

pretty much in that order. None of which would be a problem on satellite (albeit less convenient) but would make a day/night difference for me.

As for the "interactive website experiences", that's usually the part I like the least about a website, which is why I use uMatrix most of the time, making pages more readable (or, depending on the JS affinity of the people making them, completely unreadable)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Isn't latency a major issue for connectivity with satellites in geosynchronous orbit? I'm curious what their approach is here, either technically or what customer use cases they are targeting.

<comment><USER4> The distance to GEO does add some latency due to the distance, that's the main trade off. What we found in studying this problem for a long time was that 95% of internet traffic isn't latency sensitive— CDN traffic, video streaming, audio streaming, file downloads, social media posts, etc. The bandwidth crunch is a huge problem to solve but we realized there is low hanging fruit here that we can go after by putting satellites one at a time in GEO and putting a dent in it immediately. vs LEO constellations where you have to put up hundred of satellites (at a cost of billions of dollars) just to get started.

<comment><USER10> I am skeptical of that analysis.

I have worked over ssh over internet connections with satellite-class latency and I can say it is painful. (Emacs shell mode can help)

You probably think that 'the web' is a high latency application. It probably should be, and maybe it was in 2000. Since then, web developers have gotten into the habit of using AJAX indiscriminately, plus they feel pressured to add features such as customized fonts, advertising, third party tracking, etc. I am not sure if CDN is really a net positive when a web site might need to do 30 DNS lookups because it uses 30 CDNs. It just takes one of those lookups to be slow to obliterate the savings from the CDN. CDNs might help with the median, even the average load time, but I am not sure they help the 95% load time which is what causes customer pain.

Add up all those round trips and the overhead of access control (maybe those patents on slotted ALOHA for satellite applications have expired by now) and you are talking upwards of 0.5 sec and it doesn't take many round trips for that 0.5 sec to turn into 5 to 10 seconds.

Worst thing is that people who are developing locally or from places with fast connections to the data center will think these apps are really fast.

<comment><USER11> SSH is not a typical use case. He said 90-95% of traffic isn't latency sensitive, and yours isn't in the majority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How is 10Gb/s achieved and how reliable is that BW in the presence weather? What is the practical coverage area of the satellite and what would the typical user BW be on a clear day? How would the BW change on a rainy day?

</comment><comment><USER13> There's a reason that no other company tries to use geosynchronous orbit.

Stationary orbit is at a distance of 35800 km above sea level, which implies a one way latency of 110 ms based off the speed of light. Since any request from a user requires a total of 2 round way trips (one for request, one for response), the minimum latency for a request is 440 ms.

Avg latency with fiber is something like 30-60 ms, so we can assume an average request with Astranis will have ~500 latency.

Most modern webpages will not be able to support such latency. Astranis _will_ need to essentially cache webpages on demand and deliver them to the end user as a fully rendered page, which will introduce security headaches.

I don't see why Astranis chose this vs a lower orbit.

<comment><USER14> No other company... like HughesNet, ViaSat, Inmarsat, Intelsat, etc. Maybe you were led astray by this terrible TechCrunch article.

<comment><USER15> Seriously. Ever used internet on an airplane? You're using one of those companies geostationary satellites. The article is ridiculous.

<comment><USER16> Not necessarily. GoGo Inflight uses ground links for domestic US flights.

<comment><USER17> And they're being dropped in favor of geosynchronous providers.

<comment><USER16> I don't know much about their market. A friend of mine works there though, and he said they are growing.

<comment><USER11> They're not. They lost American, and they're losing market share quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm excited for a (one day?) IPO!

</comment><comment><USER19> Article is completely unreadable on a phone, due to a giant junk-quality ad that elbows out the content. Anyone got a better link?</comment>


A tech NGO got sucked into a Covid-19 conspiracy theory - <AUTHOR> https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/news/2020/04/15/id2020-coronavirus-vaccine-misinformation <comment><USER2> > _In Bangladesh, it announced that the government would create a database of > children's immunisations linked to their parents' biometric information – > most likely a digital fingerprint._

What is meant by "[biometric] digital fingerprint"? Do they just mean a literal fingerprint, but digitized? When I think of "digital fingerprints" I think of things like canvas fingerprinting or maybe perceptual hashing, not anything to do with biometrics.

If they just mean taking prints of fingers and digitizing them, maybe just say "fingerprint" and drop the "digital" from the description. That's easier to understand. If people understand something, they'll fear it less.

<comment><USER3> Matching of fingerprints and other biometrics is typically not done by storing an actual image, but by storing feature information hash-like. "digital fingerprint" is a pretty good term for that.

<comment><USER2> I'm aware that comparison of fingerprints is done by extracting/storing/comparing features. But in 2020 the digitization of fingerprints can/should go without saying and the details of how fingerprints are compared are just a distraction at best for most of the general public.

As for 'digital fingerprint' being a good term for that, I disagree. I think that's a term that's very likely to confuse the layperson. If you search that term on wikipedia you'll find a disambiguation page that lists six options, none of which have anything to do with fingers: _Message digest, Device fingerprint, Digital video fingerprinting, Acoustic fingerprint, Canvas fingerprinting, Content ID (algorithm)_ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_fingerprint)

If you search the same on google in a private window, the first two or three pages of results are all about the same computer-related topics as that wikipedia page (the first result is that wikipedia page, and the second is a blog post from Mozilla about browser fingerprinting.) After a few pages I started to find pages about digitized prints of fingers, so I don't doubt that people in the fingerprinting industry use this terminology. Nevertheless I can _easily_ see laypeople being mislead.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated effort.

<comment><USER5> > Does anyone know where Alex Jones gets his ideas? Part of me thinks his team > just makes shit up, but sometimes he seems to be part of a coordinated > effort.

IIRC, a former InfoWars employee goes into that a bit in this article:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones- infow...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/05/magazine/alex-jones- infowars.html):

> I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It.

> I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist > because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people.

> ...

> Shortly after Jones began selling the supplements, someone posted a video on > YouTube holding a Geiger counter displaying high radiation readings on a > beach in Half Moon Bay, Calif. The video went viral, stoking fears that > radiation from Fukushima was drifting across the Pacific Ocean. Jones saw an > opportunity and sent me, along with a reporter, a writer and another > cameraman, to California. We had multiple Geiger counters shipped overnight, > unaware of how to read or work them, and drove up the West Coast, frequently > stopping to check radiation levels. Other than a small spike in Half Moon > Bay — which the California Department of Public Health said was from > naturally occurring radioactive materials, not Fukushima — we found nothing.

> Jones was furious. We started getting calls from the radio-show producers in > the office, warning us to stop posting videos to YouTube stating we weren't > finding elevated levels of radiation. We couldn't just stop, though; Jones > demanded constant real-time content. On some of these calls, I could hear > Jones screaming in the background. One of the producers told me they had > never seen him so angry.

<comment><USER6> Alex Jones seems to have a form of Steve Jobs' much maligned reality distortion field.

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

<comment><USER7> I don't believe AJ believes anything he says. That was clear in his divorce trial where he said his insane statements (being used against him in the trial) were not real.

Him and a bunch of others on radio and TV use these extreme views to get filthy rich. It is truly digusting.

<comment><USER8> I actually do think he 100% believes everything he says. If you read the transcript from the trial, it was just his lawyer trying to list that as one of many defenses. "It's just entertainment, it's not real", basically. Just a lawyer doing what they have to do for the sake of their client; kind of like how there were all those articles about Elon Musk saying some crazy thing in his defamation trial, when it was just his lawyers using a standard defense. He's never himself said what he's saying isn't real or isn't what he truly believes.

If you listen to Jones speak for hours (which may or may not be recommended, depending on what you're looking for), I think that sort of thing is hard to fake. The sad thing is probably millions of people organically believe the sorts of things he believes, including people who don't watch him. They read the same sources, they're part of the same circles, they have a rigid preconceived world view that's very different from everyone else's.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Wow, the ratio of [dead] to non-[dead] comments in this thread is the highest I've ever seen

</comment><comment><USER10> >Some of the "alt-right" commentary focuses on a "UN plan"

Can't tell what is more tragic that finding solutions is considered a conspiracy, or that COVID-19 causes more conspiracy by isolating people.

<comment><USER11> > In a matter of weeks, ID2020 – which advocates for digital ID for the > billion _undocumented people_ worldwide

Even that article that is 100% endorsing the initiative can't formulate in a non-creepy way what it is supposed to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there's a bunch of stuff which is possible, but hard, to provide if people don't have ID.

Giving people ID makes providing a lot of those human rights much easier.

For example, access to democracy is important, and ID is part of that.

<comment><USER12> ID is not a requirement for democracy. ID requirements are a convenience for the state, and it's possible to run a society without them without being overrun by fraud.

It's _useful_ for people to be able to present ID to receive entitlements, but it's only there because the state has imposed a requirement.

<comment><USER13> Nobody asks for an ID when you vote in the UK. You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book and give you the ballot. There's no check that you are who you say you are at all - you could be anyone.

Yet the UK is a functioning democracy. So ID certainly is not a requirement for democracy.

<comment><AUTHOR> > You show up, tell them your address and name, they look up up in the book > and give you the ballot.

When they talk about ID they don't mean a document you carry around with you.

They mean the processes that allow someone in England to register to vote, and then walk into a polling booth and give their name and address and get a ballot paper in return.

Using your example: you can't vote twice. You walking into your local station, and use your vote. If you return later in the day your identity is known to have already voted. If you walk to a different polling station your identity is not known there (even if you take your passport), so you can't vote there.

<comment><USER13> That is a good point, I hadn't thought about it like that. However the requirements to register to vote in the UK are pretty lax as well - to go on the electoral roll you tell the government your name and address, and you pinky promise that you're telling the truth. They then mail you polling cards for any election, which you don't need to use.

You don't need to give them any national insurance numbers or other ID to do this. It literally amounts to "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street". That seems like the bare minimum required to have a voting system to me.

<comment><USER14> > "I'm Joe Bloggs and I live at 20 Smith Street".

Also known as, an ID.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Creepy UN propaganda arm indignantly declares creepy "tech NGO" not guilty of anything untoward, tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes, despite his obviously not being involved at all beyond having mentioned them once a half a year ago.

I feel a little bad for Gates who probably means well, but then I see crap like this and don't blame the tinfoil helmet crew for mistrusting these creepazoids. Their every action seems designed to engender mistrust. Can't they afford a real PR firm? Maybe they should hire Wolfram's; they're doing something right.

<comment><USER3> > _tries to blame humble water filter merchant for their misfortunes_

?

<comment><USER16> "Humble water filter merchant" is a term that some people use to describe Alex Jones.

<comment><USER14> Wow. How did the 'humble' adjective can ever stick to that person? Is this used tongue in cheek?

<comment><USER16> The whole phrase is a multilayered meme. It's generally used by alt-right neo nazis with conflicted emotions who believe Alex Jones works for the Jews but also find his tantrums endearing. "Humble merchant" is a phrase often used by modern antisemites when they parody the speech of an imaginary Jew describing himself in a disarming way. Use of the meme also reveals how long a person has been immersed in alt-right neo nazi internet culture, because it likely originated when Alex Jones' primary product was water filters rather than supplements, so anyone using the meme has probably been an alt-right neo nazi for 4+ years, or at least reads what such people say fairly often.

<comment><USER17> That's morbidly interesting but I don't think it's fair to tar scottlocklin with that brush. That's a severe accusation, a smear if untrue, and I've not seen any evidence of it. In fact his comment upthread expresses a contradictory view, just in a 'pox on all your houses' way.

<comment><USER15> Thanks dang. I'm pretty sure this person is a troll I know IRL.

For the humor deprived, I'll spell it out.

1) I'm pretty sure Alex Jones would be mad if I called him that. That's one of the many things that makes it funny.

2) Alex Jones is a completely harmless kook, and it's shameful how he is demonized by powerful elements in our society with the acquiescence of people who should know better.

3) For example: this is a literal smear done by a UN propaganda agency done against ... Alex Jones, who, by the facts listed in their own accounts, had nothing to do with the problems of their creepy NGO. I'm pretty sure the UN is more powerful than Alex Jones. It's not a good look a literal UN propaganda agency flinging poo at some weirdo in Texas who ultimately hawks water filters for a living.

4) That NGO probably "means well" but is super creepy!

5) Bill Gates is also well meaning (I was once a subcontractor for his foundation), but is acting like a grade-A creep. He has arguably done some fairly evil things both in the past and in the present day. It is terribly ironic that the man who brought us Microsoft Windows is lecturing us about viruses. The reaction against him may be unfair and is probably ill informed, but he should really think about the figure he cuts in the world. Maybe touting a spooky vaccine global-ID regime isn't a good use of his time. Just a suggestion!

Oligarchs like Gates are powerful and involved in some incredibly shady stuff. They should expect no deference from ordinary people, and should work hard for the approval of the masses. The insane insular arrogance of people like this, and their hangers on, well, perhaps they should consider why people trust kooks like Alex Jones more than themselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Remote IT workers, are these practices frequent/legal? - <AUTHOR>

I mean what they demand on this page http://www.toptal.com/developers/requirements
I find it shocking that they expect remote workers on a 7 hour difference timezone to start working extremelly early in the morning and work through the night if needed.
I find it also strange to expect someone to be reachable outside their normal working hours without being on call and properly compensated for their availability.
It sounds like these companies are taking advantage of the desire these engineers have for better projects without leaving their countries to for them to work in less than human conditions.
Amanzingly they only mention european countries where the labour law is said to work better.
In you experience, are these practices common/ legal or is an isolated case ?
If they mention these things on their public web page, what else can be going on. <comment><USER2> No, of course not. No professional is going to work a graveyard shift as a matter of course just because his client is overseas. I work remotely for a U.S. Company and simply do my regular schedule regardless of what time that translates to over there.

I split my year between London and Paris time because, well, that's why we work remote in the first place, right? A couple months each winter might find me on a pleasant surfing beach that translates to 'Chicago time' or similar, so if you need to talk to me at four in the afternoon your time, that would be a good time to find me.

But again, no. I'm not going to check my email or respond to your Skype requests late an night. Just like I wouldn't expect them to answer their phone were I to call them at four in the morning.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the type of things that would make remote work attractive to me, but working at night would basically change everything.

And do you recommend other sites as alternative to them where these things don't happen? Or was it all via contacts.

Because this seems to be one of the top sites for remote software development work and they put this in their welcome page, so I wonder if your case is not the exception.

Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> They are not expecting to start working early and work through the night. They just want you to adapt to the client's work schedule. So if the client's workday starts at 7 pm in your timezone, you start working at 7 pm, and work normal work-hours (8 hours) through the night.

And they properly compensate for the availability, they pay top money for their developers.

I'm not affiliated with them in any war, nor worked for them, but only heard good things from developers working for them.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, and is the work at night all the time, or is it shift based only one week a month? Because that's what happens with people that work at hospitals, night guards etc. to avoid harming the workers health in the long-term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For remote jobs, these practices are quite common. They aren't making you work for long hours. Working during odd hours is not uncommon for even local jobs for jobs which need it (establishments which remain open during odd hours of the day for example), so I doubt there is any legal issue here.

There is nothing unethical or even shameful about this practice. It is perfectly legit. Personally, I start work in the afternoon and work till late night, because those are the hours my employer works.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hello, and is it work at night all the time, or shift based? How was you experience doing it. Today couldn't do it myself, maybe at an younger age.

I don't think its shameful, I might have done it myself. Its a first world problem clearly.

Still I wonder about the legality, because in most countries there are laws that prevent workers from working at night all the time.

At most you make shifts, and workers do it one week a month, and not all the time for years to prevent long term health consequences for the worker.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Is it also shocking and a less human conditions if somebody works in a supermarket or petrol station and the shift is early mornings or late evenings? I'd say it absolutely common in a lot of professions, maybe less with software engineering.

<comment><AUTHOR> I guess if someone is making a good living out of it and that avoids the person having to shift to another country its their choice and its OK. But I am surprised the law does not protect remote workers more from these things in european countries. I personally think that remote workers should be more protected.

One thing to bear in mind is that we humans beings have evolved to live during the day, and there are health implications for living most of the time at night. This is why petrol workers etc. can only work one week or so a month in the night, and are compensated accordingly.

But an employer can't just say that an employee will work all the time at night for years, its illegal AFIK due to the aforementioned health implications for the worker.

Shift works is one thing, working all the time at night because the employer is in a different timezone? sounds illegal to me and so the question of its it frequent.

There are other problems with working all the time at night: the impact on your social life, if you have kids they go to bed at 8h so if you start working at 6PM and work through the night basically you never see them etc.

This is why I found it very surprising, because this is apparently happening with engineers living in european countries, where the law is supposed to shield them against these things and there is a lack of software developers everywhere.</comment></comment>


Product-related online book discussions - <AUTHOR> https://www.productbookclub.com/ <comment><USER2> I really liked the book "Swipe to Unlock" by Agashe. It's delves deep into technology strategy of various companies. I suggest adding this book too in the voting list.

[https://www.amazon.com/Swipe-Unlock-Technology-Business- Stra...](https://www.amazon.com/Swipe-Unlock-Technology-Business-Strategy- ebook/dp/B0756MTX6K)

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice one, I haven't heard about this one before. I will add it!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Discuss product-related books once a month with new colleagues</comment>


Google Photos Now Has Stories - <AUTHOR> https://support.google.com/photos/thread/14212451?hl=en <comment><USER2> That's nice, but since they threw Google Reader and Google+ under the bus I refuse to use Google for anything other than search.

<comment> dawg- Surprise! They may have tanked Google+ on the face of things, but they are slowly morphing all of their services into a huge distributed version of the same thing. Combine Google Contacts, Messaging, Gmail, Hangouts, Duo, Photos, News, Maps, Shopping, Calendar, everything on Youtube...all unified by your contacts list. It all looks an awful lot like social networking, it's just slightly more distributed.

<comment><USER2> I might have cared back in 2012. Now I just want to see Google get the antitrust hammer good and hard. Same with Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, Disney, Comcast, Viacom, ConAgra, Cargill, and every other US megacorp.

<comment> dawg- They will get the hammer eventually. But I'm fine with how it has gone so far. Regulation goes in a cycle - someone finds a way to dominate a market with questionable behavior, then regulators crack down. Then it happens again and again and again. They have done some shitty things. But Google has also functioned as the 21st century Bell Labs, complete with the communications monopoly and everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Stories != Memories. The feature I tested it shows your past pictures. Not bad. Very Similar to Facebook.</comment>


Study the decisions, the brand doesn't really exist - <AUTHOR> http://www.samonsoftware.com/?p=508

<comment><USER2> Which is the marketing book that focuses too much on brand?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's called "Fast Marketing For Fast Growth". I couldn't find it on Amazon.

<http://www.newholland.com.au/product.php?isbn=9781921024306>

<comment><USER2> Wow. I would have expected a better book cover by someone in marketing, but maybe it appeals to students?</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to Validate an Idea for a Startup? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> First step is to validate the problem. Ask 20 people in your target market about their biggest problems. If they bring up the problem early in the conversation, you know you got a winner. If you gotta pull it out of them, you'll have trouble getting them to use whatever solution you come up with.

Then you brainstorm on a solution based on the notes from the interviews.

Then you interview another 20 people and pitch the idea to them. At least half of them should seem excited about it. If not, you gotta either rethink the solution or the problem.

And if you can't find 40 people to interview, that's another problem altogether.

Good luck!

<comment> ndusan-hn Would you say that by asking ppl to fill in a simple Monkey Survey be sufficient, in case you're looking for a World wide audience?

<comment><USER2> You won't get enough data if you ask them to fill out a survey. If you try a single interview you'll see why. You'll end up with pages of notes and venture into problems you had no idea about. If you had asked them to fill out a survey instead, you would've ended up with just a fraction of the information.

And world wide or not doesn't matter. I did all my interviews over Skype.

<comment> ndusan-hn Awesome! Just a question - how did you go about finding interested candidates who wanted to participate and take a Skype call?

<comment><USER2> Reach out to your network or email your friends to put you in contact with potential users. It should be moderately easy since you're just asking for a free Skype call, you're not asking for money yet.

If you're having problem finding people to get on a free Skype call then it's a big red flag. You'll need to reconsider your positioning or your market. Because eventually you'll (presumably) be asking for money and that's even harder.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>