Free housing - for talented hackers in SF - <AUTHOR>

Hey everyone, we're offering free housing for talented hackers in the bay area that would be interested in helping out / getting involved with my project in exchange. A little about me: I'm a Thiel fellow - paid $100,000 by paypal founder / first Facebook investor peter thiel to drop out of college (http://www.thielfellowship.org/). Right now, we're looking for hackers preferably with experience in some combination of the following:
javascript nodejs html css iOS android phonegap
We have a beautiful house in a great location and an awesome startup atmosphere.
We need to make sure that you have the right qualifications of course, but if you're interested, please leave us with your email address and we'll get back to you with more info. <comment><USER2> Are you expecting full-time work for a bed in a house with roommates and a work-space?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hey I am totally interested ! You'll find my website and email on my HN profil!

</comment><comment><USER4> Hey, didn't you post in the Hackers@Berkeley Facebook group earlier today,

</comment><comment><USER5> there's no such thing as a free house?</comment>


Backbone.js On Rails Screencast - <AUTHOR> http://backbonescreencasts.com/backbone-on-rails-basics

<comment><USER2> Bummer how backbone is free, railscasts was free (and still is mostly free), backbone tutorials are free... where am I going with this I don't know. It is sound from a business perspective, but it goes against the grain of the community.

<comment><USER3> peepcode has been charging for screencasts for years now

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Screencast by some guy. Pay on $9 (usually $18) until November 8th. Maybe it's great, I'm not biting.</comment>


Ask HN: How can I estimate hosting costs for an app? - <AUTHOR>

I have a Ruby on Rails app hosted on Heroku. The project is fairly far along, to the point where we are in talks with investors. We have all our numbers down except when it comes to hosting costs. How can I estimate what my hosting costs will be as my user base grows? <comment><USER2> This is an awful oversimplification, but in my experience, there are two different kinds of applications:

\- User-centeric (think: an e-commerce site): your costs are going to grow somewhat linearly with your userbase/traffic. Do a load test to figure out how many concurrent users each dyno supports and then model your costs with that in mind.

\- Data-centric (think: an analytics platform): your costs are to going to grow linearly with the amount of data points each customer is going to be using. Figure out how many data points a single worker dyno (running 24x7) can process and then model your costs with that in mind.

<comment><USER3> You can also have a combination of both. But basically I second this post, you have to figure out what is going to increase as your product gain momentum. If you will be handling millions of requests because each client is going to do plenty of them, are they going to store data... Like if you were Netflix, you would have to consider the number of users growing, but also the size of your catalogue. Try to define what direction your business is going as it grows and then you will be able to narrow down the costs more accurately.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You need to determine the cost per User. Different Users might represent different Usage Patterns, so I'd be looking for averages. If the Product is already in production and you have an existing user-base, this is how I'd do it; Correlate your user-base statistics (number of Users) in relation to your hosting costs at different milestones and/or points in time. This metric will give you some insight into how much it costs per User at different stages of growth. This could include the growth of the user-base as well as the growth of your Product (in terms of features and/or infrastructure changes). You would want to identify any trends and/or variations with the resulting averages over time. This will give you some data to work with in terms of making projections.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Possible side question: What does hosting your app cost right now?

</comment><comment><USER5> Just a thought: Would it be worth it to run a test site and simulate some traffic? I think that would give you the best numbers for your app.

</comment><comment><USER6> It also depends on how much you'll able to cache.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm going on a road trip. I'll be driving on the interstate, and have already gone half way.

How much gas will I use?

<comment><AUTHOR> The same amount that it took to get you where you are right now? I also am sensing you are trying to make a joke. While I may be very ignorant in this area I'm not looking to made fun of, just for someone to educate me on what is wrong with the question.</comment></comment>


$13.4M in Ether lost by bug in Quadriga's smart contract - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6eruqb/if_your_exchange_is_related_to/ <comment><USER2> another hard fork coming? or maybe hard forks only allowed when founders of the coin are involved in the transaction?

<comment><AUTHOR> I doubt there will be another hard fork</comment></comment>


Git Server for Windows - <AUTHOR> http://www.chodounsky.net/bonobo-git-server/ Bonobo Git Server for Windows has been released. It is a web application you can install on your IIS and easily manage and connect to your git repositories. <comment> dav-id This could be incredible!

One thing that worries me is I was expecting to see a git repository - Preferably on GitHub where this is hosted so I can see what is going on inside the server itself.

I am excited to see where it goes because currently I have some flaky Gitorious setup but I develop .NET mainly so if I can have user based git hosting on my own windows server this would be absolutely amazing.

<comment> dav-id It's great and reassuring to see the author has since created a GitHub repository for this project. Can't wait to see this project improve!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good books on memory? - <AUTHOR>

Having suffered with a sub-par memory most of my life, I've always been amazed by people with precise, accurate, and expansive memories. I always wonder about the nature of memory, perhaps what causes the differences in memory abilities. Is my bad memory genetic? Is it the result of an education system that trivialized rote memory?<p>So, HN, can anyone recommend a good book on memory? I'm fine reading either a more academic book, like a textbook, or perhaps something more anecdotal, like a good non-fiction novel. Any book that illuminates the topic of human memory would be perfect. <comment><USER2> It's not sexy, but I've had great results with "The Memory Book":

[http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Book-Classic-Improving- School/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Memory-Book-Classic-Improving- School/dp/0345337581)

If you want to start working on it right now, then you should definitely read through the Mentat Wiki:

<http://www.ludism.org/mentat/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out spaced repetitive learning:

[http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_woznia...](http://www.wired.com/medtech/health/magazine/16-05/ff_wozniak?currentPage=all)

Some open source software:

<http://ichi2.net/anki/></comment>


Show HN: DotInfect – An infection simulator you can interact with - <AUTHOR> https://dotinfect.app <comment><USER2> Incubation time is the wrong name. Incubation time is the time until you get symptoms, not the time until you get cured.

Also tester don't test at random, they mostly test people with symptoms or the people that meet them. (This looks difficult to simulate.)

Why quarantined people can't move after they are cured? (I don't expect this to change the outcome.)

About the scenarios:

How do I get back to the initial scenario?

In the Quarantine scenario, each dot can move only in a invisible box that overlaps with nearby dots?

In the Mass Testing, remember to add some false positives to the quarantined people. (Mass testing around the detected cases is better, but it is more difficult to simulate.)

Superman only work in Metropolis?

Apocalypse is too apocalyptical. The worse estimations estimation is 20%, and that is very pessimistic. Probably 5% is a sensible worse case estimation. (Note that 5% is like 3500 million of death, that is really a lot, but it's much less than 100%.) I think this is misleading and can confuse people.

</comment><comment><USER3> Pretty cool, I like the lockdown simulation as it shows dots can only move within a certain region.

But, the "Mass Testing" simulation has tester dots randomly zooming around the screen, surely they would be seeking out dots that haven't been tested right?</comment>


H.265 Is Approved - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/25/h265-is-approved/ <comment><USER2> > The new video format is the successor to the H.264 codec, which nearly every > video publisher has standardized after the release of the iPad and several > other connected devices.

No. H.264 was already used by HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, DVB (since 2004) and AVCHD.

> It seems crazy now, but once upon a time, Apple's adoption of H.264 and > insistence on HTML5-based video players was controversial — especially since > most video before the iPad was encoded in VP6 to play through Adobe's > proprietary Flash player.

No. Most professional videos were using MPEG-2 and pirated movies were using Mpeg-4 part 2 (DivX, Xvid).

Seriously, Apple can do great things, but this TC sensationalism is boring and inaccurate.

Besides that, it is great to finally have H.265 ready. We'll see the fight with VP9 and Daala very soon.

<comment><USER3> I think when TechCruch says publisher they mean Web site. If you really think about it, the Web is the entire universe.

<comment><USER4> > If you really think about it, the Web is the entire universe

_their_ entire universe

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> H.265 sounds great...but the article doesn't mention the most important point: Is it patent-encumbered? Last time around patents proved a major barrier to adoption in free browsers, so why should this time be any different? A quick wiki check seems to indicate that MPEGLA has patents on H.265, so a GPL3-compliant decoder is probably a no-go, but we don't yet know whether they'll take a more enlightened approach to licensing this time around so that adoption will be cleaner than it was with H.264.

<comment><USER6> I doubt that MPEG-LA has any patents on H.265 (they don't have any on H.264). They offer a bulk licensing deal for many different patent owners which is much better than licensing from each individually.

You are right that it is highly doubtful that it would be GPLv3 compatible until the patents have expired. In practice I expect it will be included in FFMPEG and available to open source users even if impure and unavailable to strict Free software purists.

I'm not sure what isn't clean about the H.264 license except for Motorola/Google's legal action that attempts to make the FRAND commitment nearly meaningless. It would be much better for everyone else if they were part of the MPEG-LA offer.

<comment><USER7> Google signed the MPEG-LA license agreement which would put Motorola's patents into the MPEG-LA pool as well. Arguments are Monday, so one way or another, it will be clarified sooner or later.

<comment><USER6> Even if they lose that part they won't be signed up to H.265 licence unless they choose to so the FRAND status matters too so can potentially charge excessively. Also if the weak FRAND interpretations stand many other patent holders may stay outside the collective license to get as much as they can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm confident VP9 has a much better chance of succeeding this time around. h264 was already widely supported _before_ Apple decided to promote it against Flash. That's not the case with h.265 right now. It will have to start from scratch, which gives VP9 a much larger window of opportunity.

This is from November, where they posted they are about 7% behind h.265/HVEC:

[https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-videoco...](https://www.ietf.org/proceedings/85/slides/slides-85-videocodec-4.pdf)

I've also seen in another document I can't find right now them saying that work on h.265 started in 2005, while work on VP9 started in 2011...and they are already pretty close to matching it, and they are gaining 10% on it every quarter. If that's true it should be at least as efficient or more within a quarter or two, than h.265.

Then it will be just a question of adoption. Software adoption should be much easier. Many have already implemented VP8 (which is also slightly better than h.264 at this point - [1]), and I'm sure Google will use VP9 for HD Hangouts, and for Youtube. This time I hope they go through with their promise and make it the default codec for Youtube, with fallback to Flash for browsers not supporting it (only about 20% of the users are not supporting VP8 right now, for reference [2]).

That should encourage adoption by other video sites, and also chip makers. And that's I think the biggest hurdle - getting chip makers to support VP9. But now with Android's popularity and virtually every chip maker supporting Android, I think it will be much easier than it was to get support for VP8.

The nice part about VP9 is that it will also come integrated with the Opus codec inside WebM, and that should be a big factor in the adoption of WebM, too.

[1] [http://pacoup.com/2012/12/20/vp8-webm- vs-h-264-mp4-december-...](http://pacoup.com/2012/12/20/vp8-webm- vs-h-264-mp4-december-2012/)

[2] [http://downloads.webmproject.org/ngov2012/pdf/03-ngov- vp8-up...](http://downloads.webmproject.org/ngov2012/pdf/03-ngov- vp8-update.pdf)

<comment><USER9> Integrating Opus and/or VP9 into WebM removes one of the selling points they used to promote the format. WebM wasn't supposed to be a generic container format holding different codecs. It was specifically tied to Vorbis/VP8 to ensure everyone advertising WebM support would be able to play the files.

If they decide to add these additional codecs then there will be some players that can play some WebM files but not others. If that was the direction they wanted to head then they could have just stuck with Matroska for the container format.

<comment><USER10> webm is a defined subset of mkv. And it stays that way. Only a small, finite number of codecs have to be implemented (so far vp8, vp9, vorbis, opus).

<comment><USER9> The defined subset included the particular codecs that would only be supported. Implementers who got on the WebM train agreed to VP8 and Vorbis. They may not be keen to do VP9 or Opus. There's no "have to be implemented" for these two formats. This means there will be fragmentation which WebM was supposed to avoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> VP9 is also under development. VP9 decoding support was recently added to Chromium. [http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=...](http://src.chromium.org/viewvc/chrome?view=rev&revision=172738) <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VP9>

<comment><USER12> Unless VP9 decoding is implemented in hardware chips like H.264 is and H.265 is going to be, it'll likely fail.

It sucks, but I'd much rather have a "non-free" codec that plays smoothly on all my devices than a "free" codec with lag issues on everything but my computer.

Try playing 1080P H264 videos on your tablet/phone without using the H264 hardware decoder and you'll know what I mean.

Decoding H265 and VP9 will likely be even more resource intensive than decoding H264 already is

And really, does the closedness of H264/H265 really matter at all for the end users? x264 seems pretty free to me, what is the difference in reality?

<comment><USER11> Hardware support for VP8 exists, though it's not widespread as of yet. Tegra 3 has it. <http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-3-processor.html>

As with most software, the closedness of H.26X matters a lot more to developers than users.

<comment><USER3> I think the last developer who cared was Firefox and even they gave up.

<comment><USER13> Firefox has native vp8/webm support. I know as I use it when I visit Youtube pretty much everyday and watch webm (vp8) videos. I don't have flash installed.

<comment><USER14> Does YT default to this if you go there with a newer Firefox?

<comment><USER15> No, but you can opt-in at <https://youtube.com/html5>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I'm just waiting for DarkShikari [1] to post in this thread :)

Reading his codec-related comments on HN is always such a wonderful and humbling learning experience. I look forward to his take on the h265 spec and the changes (both advantages and disadvantages, as there are bound to be both) over h264.

1: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=DarkShikari>

<comment><USER3> And many of us are wondering if he's working on x265.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Few Points.

1\. To the Post above on VP8 better then x264. Comparing a single frame, single video, single....? isn't very detail. VP8 has improved A LOT!. That is true. But as far as i am concern and many other video encoder it is also true that it hasn't match x264 yet.

2\. VP9 is great! It has matched and in many case even exceed x264 quality. Although there would still be areas where x264 perform better simply because it is much more mature.

3\. So given more time VP9 will very likely beat x264 quality. It is only with 10% range of HEVC / h.265 JM, under benchmarks. So it will very likely beat that too.

4\. Do bare in mind JM is reference encoder. So it does not in anyway show the full potential of h.265 as a codec. While VP9 is itself the standard and the best encoder available. If you look at the difference between h.264 JM and x264. I will argue it is very likely x265 ( If DS decide to do it ) will still be better then VP9.

5\. Daala... as much as i love Mozilla, knowing their pace of work and Daala's current condition, expect it to compete with h.266 or VP10.

6\. Patents are not evil. Patents Trolls are.

</comment><comment><USER18> So how much better can video formats theoretically get? Are we anywhere near the absolute limit of compression, or are current solutions limited by what can be accomplished in real time on today's hardware?

<comment><USER19> We're a long, long, way from the theoretical limit - you can tell by comparing the size of programmatically generated videos (e.g. 3D renderings, or videogame videos) with their source material. A "perfect" video codec would mean they were the same size, but at the moment a 256kb SNES rom and a few hundred bytes of buttonpresses will generate you a video that's easily in the 10s of megabytes (granted video codecs aren't optimized with snes gameplay videos as their primary target).

<comment><USER20> These are two totally different things. Video codecs do not try to "discover" the equations that created the scene. They take the recorded data of the scene and then try to represent it "well enough" in a smaller number of bits.

By analogy: knowing the equation for conservation of momentum does not help you find the smallest way to record the results of 1 million experimental collisions.

<comment><USER19> >These are two totally different things. Video codecs do not try to "discover" the equations that created the scene. They take the recorded data of the scene and then try to represent it "well enough" in a smaller number of bits.

Think of it in information-theory terms (e.g. Kolmogorov complexity). If the scene was created from no more than n bits of data, then it is possible to represent it in n bits, and a "theoretically perfect" video codec would do so.

Video codecs really do try and "discover" the simplest representation of a scene (e.g. motion vectors are exactly that), and the things they can "understand" are getting more and more complex as video codecs advance (e.g. film grain).

<comment><USER20> Let's say you take an algorithm for generating the digits of pi, and run it on 2 computers. One you let run only a short time and it produces a string 100,000 digits long. The other you let run for a longer time and it produces a string one million digits long.

Would you argue that these two strings should compress to the same size because the source code that generated each of them is the same size?

edit: to clarify my question

<comment><USER19> Yes, very much so. You'll find that most compression algorithms will do this for a string of zeroes (i.e. 100,000 zeroes will compress to approximately the same size as 1,000,000 zeroes) or 1s, or simple repeating patterns. I don't know whether any common compression algorithm is "smart" enough to be able to compress the digits of pi, but a "perfect" compression algorithm certainly would be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> h.265 is exciting. It takes into account the vastly improved processing power of today's devices to create smaller files - I'm looking forward to integrating it with our service, which in turn will put h.265 in easy reach of broadcasters. Really great step forward for the industry, although, of course, I wish it was an open standard.

<comment><USER22> 1080p H.264 can just now be played back on modern processors without hardware acceleration. I shutter to think about playing back 2160p H.265 before anyone builds hardware support. I'm sure you don't get "twice as efficient" without making it about twice as difficult to decode. Or maybe 4 times...

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So when can we expect this to be supported in VLC?

<comment><USER2> As soon as there is a GPLv2 compatible decoder available?

See <https://github.com/smarter/libav/commits/hevc>

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> And... patents.

<comment><USER25> No different than h264 in that regard. I'd rather we discuss the technical merits of this technology than have another patent debate. Not that I wouldn't agree, just that if you want to talk patent reform, it might be better suited to do so in a dedicated HN posting.

As far as encoding technology goes, this is pretty exciting. Looking forward to the first wave of 4K TVs & cell phone cameras hitting the market.

(Disclaimer: I'm the cofounder of a startup specializing in high quality cellphone videos)

<comment><USER26> High quality cellphone videos? Tell us more.

<comment><USER25> We remove handshake by computing optimally smooth camera paths. Some example videos shot on a handheld iPhone using our app: <http://luma.io/v/Brl> <http://luma.io/v/BtN> <http://luma.io/v/Brm>

More info here: <http://luma.io>

<comment><USER26> I'd love to chat with you about luma. My cofounder and I worked on something substantially similar before YC. Ping me at the email in my profile?

<comment><USER25> Doesn't list your email in your profile. Ping me at alex (at) luma.io

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Path us now open for 4k streaming! Well, that and we need affordable 4k displays.

</comment><comment><USER28> It will be interesting when the scene groups will adopt H.265 or at all. I have always found fascinating how piracy and porn can be trendsetters in technology standards.

<comment><USER29> Scene groups are actually very conservative with codecs. They jumped onto mkv format because they didn't have an alternative for hi def rips, but it took them a long time to get off the avi format until enough devices supported h264 mp4 containers.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: As a startup, where do you find freelance developers these days? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I am a freelancer who uses upwork They take up to 20% of hourly and/or fixed price projects But the other services are filled with companies/people who never get back to me, so I gave up on them. IMO my experience, my actions

</comment><comment><USER3> If you want vetted developers who need to pass rigorous tests to get into the freelancer network, look at Toptal [https://www.toptal.com/#connect-unmatched- coders-now](https://www.toptal.com/#connect-unmatched-coders-now)

Freelancers too, if you want a network which screens startups and clients (not allowing bad/unrealistic ones) , try to apply to Toptal. It also allows you to have good rates compared to networks which are open to all.

<comment><AUTHOR> From your profile, I see you are a freelancer. Are you on Toptal yourself?

I'm pretty good at vetting developers myself. So I have the feeling that at Toptal I would pay a premium for something I don't need. They also seem to spend a lot on advertising.

Additionally, I get the impression that Toptal would get between me and the developers. I don't know why. It sounds a bit like that.

My feeling is that I would prefer a "slim" market place.

<comment><USER3> Yes, Im a freelancer and I am in the Toptal network. The first freelancer network that feels fair to both sides. Not saying that there are no others like that, but this is the first from my POV that feels like that to me as a freelancer.

As for the vetting the devs. I dont know 100% how the matching goes on Toptal from the side of the clients, but you will probably be assigned a recruiter who will help you in the process and suggest you developers. You could probably also search and pick some your self. Then you arrange interviews with the developers and pick the one(s) you like. After that you can start a week of trial period with them where you can more easily drop them if you are not sattisfied for valid reasons (that happens very rarely). After that you work directly with them.

Basically, Toptal is there to assist in finding a developer and later to assist if there is some problem with them, in other cases they stay aside. All the communication is direct with the devs without any unnecessary layers inbetween.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I have hired freelancer devs. from the following sources:

\- HN

\- Indiehackers

\- reddit (/r/forhire)

\- upwork/elance

I learned a lot of lessons the hard way. No matter which platform you use, some things to keep in mind:

0\. Do a good technical interview upfront and if needed, pay them for that time. Unless you are hiring a well known superstar freelancer, odds are that you have to really vet their knowledge and experience. Of course, I am assuming that you are a developer hiring another developer. If you are not technical, then you have a serious challenge in front of you and you ideally want someone technical to find that freelance developer for you if possible.

1\. No matter how good they seem, ask for 1-2 references and check them. If no reference, it is a huge risk.

2\. Be very very specific in your requirements. Don't be loose. The more specific you are, the better your chances of succeeding with the freelancer you hire. Most freelancers are not really interested in your business or helping you improve your business. That is the fact. They just want to get paid to write some code for you and hopefully do a good job at that but that is it.

3\. Keep expectations low. Until they show you otherwise. To be very honest, I have not found a freelance developer yet whom I loved. Some have been terrible while most have been ok. They got it done but you know that they could have done a little bit better (in terms of design/quality)

4\. Did I say don't be loose with requirements. If you hire a pay as you go type freelancer on an hourly rate, make sure you have already worked with them before and you can trust their delivery. If not, you will end up losing shit ton of money and probably piss off the freelancer as well. Expectations need to be clear.

5\. Treat them with respect but demand accountability. When hiring, look for signs of how they respond to you already even before getting your business.

6\. Make sure you are not talking to a middleman. A lot of agencies advertise as freelance developers but when you contact them, you will end up talking to a project manager with high margins. Make sure you talk to the developer who will actually be writing your code.

7\. Setup milestone based payments. But make sure milestones are agreed upon upfront. Again, the looser your requirements, the more you will suffer with freelancers.

8\. Setup a contract and SOW that they should deliver against.

Most importantly, you do get what you pay for but it doesn't mean that a more expensive freelancer will do a better job necessarily.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with being laid off? - <AUTHOR> I was recently laid off as a part of a mass layoff, and I'm having a hard time coping with it.
For context: I was at the company for a little over two years. It was my first job out of college, and it was my top choice. While I wasn't the smartest person in the room, I was promoted once and was on track for the next promotion. I was completely blindsided by the layoff.
I think there are two main things I'm having a hard time with:
1) Comparison: I keep comparing myself to every person on my team who wasn't laid off - especially those who joined the company much after I did. I know I'll never truly understand the reason I was picked over others, but I can't help fixating on it. It is a huge blow to my self esteem. I feel like I just went through a breakup without any chance for closure.
2) Disorientation: I realized how dependent I was on the ecosystem. In a matter of hours my whole world was upturned - I was suddenly kicked out from a place that basically provided 3 meals, all my social contact and most of my intellectual stimulation. While I do have hobbies outside of work, being removed from place that was more familiar than my apartment feels extremely disorienting.
How have you dealt with being laid off in the past? Also to managers who are willing to share: How are layoffs usually decided?
PS: I'm not worried about getting hired elsewhere. I'm more concerned with being 100% okay before starting my next adventure. <comment><USER2> Regarding 1, I think you should not obsess over it, maybe some other people were kept because they were less paid (That's usually quite an important metric during layoff..) not necessarily because they were better. It is also possible some people had a key skill on a specific tool or process that was thought important.

And in the end, it is totally possible that the wrong decision was taken by someone not really familiar with the situation (some HR people you have never seen in your life), but the good news is that you don't have to suffer the consequences of that mistake.

Regarding 2, we all suffer from that to some extent because of the time we spent at work, but it is a good reminder to not become only defined by work, because this is something more fleeting and unreliable that we'd like.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry you have to go through this. It can definitely be disorientating even for the people who stay on, as they loose colleagues.

But this is part of work life essentially, it's rare that you'll spend your whole career without being laid off. In my experience there was enough "political" movement in my company to tell why certain people were laid off.

Don't let work define who you are. Take this as the next chapter in your career where you develop and mature as a person and as an engineer.

</comment><comment><USER4> You're not unemployed, you're "a man of leisure". :-)

This is a normal part of the work experience. Don't let it get you down.

</comment><comment><USER5> First and foremost, do not take it personally. It would have been a business decision based upon all sorts of factors that you will never know.

Take the experience that you have gained and turn that into a positive. Do not slack off! Your new full time job is finding a new full time job.

Good luck!</comment>


Pixar's Library - <AUTHOR> http://graphics.pixar.com/library/ <comment><USER2> Hair rendering always blew my mind. I remember seeing Monster's Inc in the theater, and the first shot of Sully was when he was asleep in his bed breathing heavily, and you could see the individual strands of hair on his arm flowing back and forth. I felt the world of animation change right at that moment for me, and now I wait with great anticipation for every new Pixar film that comes out. For me, "Up" was the only real let-down.

<comment><USER3> I've noticed a kind of arms-race in most of the Pixar/Dreamworks movies I've seen (not nearly all), where in the first 5 or 10 minutes there will always be some new technique being foregrounded. Sully's hair is a great example, they lay the new tech out right away both as a "we're cool" (in a positive sense!) signal to other animators and as a far point of expectations for the animation to the rubes like me. "If this goes over, everything else falls into place." I'm a little sad to see you neg "Up," though, because I thought the technical gambit there was much more sophisticated: conveying emotion convincingly from what is basically a cartoon. I think they succeeded in spades on that one.

<comment><USER4> Early animated movies mostly did well, and resonated with people, because of excellent voice acting from recognizable actors. (Think Toy Story.) Up's gambit is to show that well-orchestrated music and animation can surpass that. It isn't technically superior, but it is far more important.

<comment><USER3> I think what "Up" succeeded was even more significant than that: they took animation into the affective territory of live-action movies. Frankly, I don't even really remember the voices.

Making cartoons (which I sincerely believe 3D has been) has been one-upmanship of technology that pretty much builds its own history in lockstep, but to combine that with writing and the animation choices for something that can bring a tear to the eye of an adult is truly great work. The first act of "Up" really is a landmark to me.

<comment><USER5> Up also made excellent use of 3D to add to the emotional feeling; the way they handled "depth" in the sad introduction was different to the way they did it in the fun scenese or action scenes.

It was subtle, but it was there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> this reminded me of pixar's "university" that teaches technical skills for all their employees (particularly see page 2): [http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/yourmoney/29pixar...](http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/yourmoney/29pixar.html?_r=2)

"Pixar University is at the center of Mr. Nelson's agenda. The operation has more than 110 courses: a complete filmmaking curriculum, classes on painting, drawing, sculpting and creative writing. "We offer the equivalent of an undergraduate education in fine arts and the art of filmmaking," he said. Every employee — whether an animator, technician, production assistant, accountant, marketer or security guard — is encouraged to devote up to four hours a week, every week, to his or her education."

sounds like an exciting place to work and grow

<comment><USER7> Back when I wanted to be an animator, I bookmarked that article for this quote:

>The skills we develop [at Pixar U] are skills we need everywhere in the organization," Mr. Nelson said. "Why teach drawing to accountants? Because drawing class doesn't just teach people to draw. It teaches them to be more observant. There's no company on earth that wouldn't benefit from having people become more observant.

That show how much they've got this "being an employer" thing down. Can you quantify "people becoming more observant"? Probably not, but they reap enormous benefits out of doing things that other companies wouldn't justify because of the costs. Seriously, at what other company can you essentially attend an undergraduate degree's worth of instruction _related to that company's industry?_ Seems like a no-brainer once you think about it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you like this you should check out Ron Fedkiw's research at Stanford and with ILM: <http://physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/> and <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Fedkiw>

The images on his page link to videos, publications list is about 3/4 of the way down.

<comment><USER9> Tried to code up one of the hair papers. Realized I need to math up.

<comment><USER10> Never been great at keeping correlation and causation separate, but maybe you should _muscle_ up instead?

[http://physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/photos/bodybuilding_arms...](http://physbam.stanford.edu/~fedkiw/photos/bodybuilding_arms_small.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Disney Animation also posts its papers online: <http://www.disneyanimation.com/library/list.html>

I can't find similar pages for PDI/Dreamworks or Blue Sky.

If this stuff interests you, check out the SIGGRAPH 2011 papers: <http://kesen.realtimerendering.com/sig2011.html>

<comment><USER12> We've also been putting stuff up on github:

<https://github.com/wdas>

<http://ptex.us/>

<comment><USER11> Ptex is awesome! Any chance Disney's hair tools will get open sourced?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Ohh.... it's a library as in "read", not as in "include".

</comment><comment><USER14> The Pixar office tour is one of my all time favorites -

[http://www.flickr.com/photos/veerles- blog/461586084/in/photo...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/veerles- blog/461586084/in/photostream/)

</comment><comment><USER15> > <bound method Paper.GetName of <paper.Paper instance at 0x2aaaab9f12d8>>

Sounds like someone forgot their parentheses.

</comment><comment><USER16> Do they have a library for storytelling, characters, and creative writing?

</comment><comment><USER17> \- visiting pixar with my roommate who worked there at the time was a great experience; the environment they've created for their team is the best i've seen anywhere

</comment><comment><USER18> Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER19> I think Ratatouille may in fact be the most productive academic endeavor in 10 years. 7 papers from that film! Did Ratatouille produce more papers than the LHC? I hope so.

</comment><comment><USER20> Please use [PDF] when linking to paper oriented documents, so we can skip those links, tnx.

<comment><USER21> I'd always thought [PDF] was a warning about a direct link to a PDF--some people don't like having PDFs download or open without warning.</comment></comment>


Intellectual hipsters and meta-contrarians - <AUTHOR> http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metacontrarianism/ <comment><USER2> The underlying assumption of this article every step of the way is that one's underlying motivation for argument, debate, or discussion is _to signal social standing_

I would argue instead that the most intelligent people find it innately enjoyable to talk about ideas. They are motivated by a desire to decrease- uncertainty and clarify-understanding.... they realize social standing is often an illusion and not overly worth worrying about.

<comment><USER3> There's no contradiction to your argument. I innately enjoy looking at beautiful women and eat delicious food without (always) being aware that the ultimate cause for the enjoyment is increase in genetic fitness.

Or more to the point: I innately enjoy winning games or working creatively just as the male bower bird [1] finds innate desire to build richly colored bowers to attract females.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowerbird>

<comment><USER4> There is a contradiction, because the argument in the article assumes the signalling of social standing is THE reason for the behavior.

Opinions like

      A person who is somewhat intelligent will conspicuously
      signal eir intelligence by holding difficult-to-understand
      opinions. A person who is very intelligent will
      conspicuously signal that ey feels no need to
      conspicuously signal eir intelligence, by deliberately not
      holding difficult-to-understand opinions.

are incredibly annoying. It's one of those opinions that are almost impossible to defend against or disprove, because of the vague nature of 'conspicuously' and 'difficult-to-understand'. Actually, I think you can attack it as form a meta-contrarianism itself: anti-intellectuals will hold the above opinion, intellectuals will denounce that opinion and meta-contrarians will claim that 'people cannot help but be influenced by concern for their social standing, so there is some truth in the assertions of anti-intellectuals that intellectuals show behavior which seems to be intended solely to make it harder for non- intellectuals to enter their field', which polarizes into the quoted opinion.

<comment><USER5> Would someone explain the whole "eir" and "ey" thing to me? Is this an attempt at hipster spelling--demonstrating they are so smart they don't need to conspicuously spell correctly?

Did I miss something?

<comment><USER6> The words are genderless, singular pronouns.

<comment><USER5> So a commenter can go hipster meta in his or her writing with standard pronouns?

<comment><USER7> Yes, although I'd argue that it's not meta-hipster but meta-geek. If you wouldn't use 'grok', you probably wouldn't use 'eir'. In the same vein, putting your punctuation outside your quote can either be a simple mistake or meta-grammarian protest. Even the choice of single versus double quotes is signalling, consciously or not.

The problem is not correctness, but whether the signal is properly received by your audience. You chose 'his or her', but was this a conscious choice? And at what level? Was it because you fear being judged poorly for the grammatically correct but non-politically correct 'his'? Because you find 'eir' pretentious? Because you find substituting 'her' to be an affectation?

To me, 'His or her' is a signals that you are aware that language can be sexist, and want to show that you are not. I think it correlates with college- educated American liberal born after 1960, or one who has learned his English from such.

I fit these characteristics, but usually consciously choose 'his', hopefully signalling that I detest linguistic contortions for the sake of signalling political correctness, but more likely just being judged an unrepentant sexist. If I don't want to take this risk, I switch to an across-the-board 'her', as I feel this is more effective at actually combatting sexism.

Have you read Hofstadter's essay on "Purity in Language"? <http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~evans/cs655/readings/purity.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I remember this phenomenon from high school English class. The teacher would ask an obvious question, and inevitably someone would reflexively provide the non-obvious wrong answer.

I assumed the thought process was this: a teacher hardly ever asks questions with obvious answers, and I rarely understand what's going on, so when I give an answer I'm going to say the opposite of the obvious answer because that will probably be right.

It's similar to how under-educated people will use reflexive pronouns and words they don't understand in order to sound educated or important.

I know there is a better name for this than "meta-contrarian." Unfortunately my education is failing myself here. :-)

<comment><USER9> You might be thinking of hypercorrection, which does seem to intersect at points with meta-contrarianism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Meta-contrarianism" is a good phrase to capture this phenomenon. In computers, I associate it with the <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABA_problem> and in life, with the joke about <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down>

The part that misses for me is his (my pronoun choice is conscious signalling [double 'l' is too, I suppose {as are the parentheticals}]) emphasis on triads.

For me, the key concept is that one never knows which level one is at. There is no absolute "level 1", just the "level n" that you occupy, and "level not n", which is never clearly n - 1 or n + 1.

One frequently assumes that those who disagree with you are missing something, but every now and then you have to wonder if they actually one ahead. And it happens often enough that people I think I agree with are actually viewing the situation in a completely foreign way.

Are there philosophical movements that deal with these situations? What names would I search for? What should I read?

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder how conscious is this process?

Do people really tell themselves things like "aha, I'll show them that I am rich buying something I don't need that's expensive" or does the desire to buy something extravagant and expensive just pop into their head out of nowhere and they are just compelled to do it.

Also, what is the strength of the desire to signal among all groups? Perhaps a poor person has a stronger desire to signal that they are rich than a rich person to signal that they are not poor. I think that's the second axis -- how much one signals.

If it is conscious, where does the refusal to signal fall into? Like the author mentions, it would seem that an intellectually honest person should rationally analyze themselves, and steer clear of this kind of trap.

<comment><USER11> Well, my beliefs are pretty meta-contrarian, and I think it stems from a desire to be different. So those old-rich may look at the new rich, feel disgusted that they may possibly be put in the same "bucket" as them, and try to find some way to distinguish themselves from them.

That's how I went from Democrat to Libertarian. And then Libertarian to libertarian. And then libertarian to ?.

If I were going to be less self-effacing, I could also say that any time my beliefs are held by a large number of people, I start to question them, because it's not possible for a large number of people to both agree and be perfectly correct...

<comment><USER12> ++ to you for the self-awareness. Personally I saw how libertarian arguments were just so fun to make and just so unworkable in any real world situation and skipped the whole trap, stayed a democrat. But I've made my own meta contrarian points (trying to tell my liberal friends that the iraq war was a good idea) and almost always been borne out wrong by reality.

Turns out if your motivations veers from "truth" to "it feels good to make this argument", you're gonna steer yourself wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> To the extent that "contrarian", "meta-contrarian", "meta-meta-contrarian", etc. people spread themselves over the ideological map, it becomes difficult to win favor by adopting a particular viewpoint (e.g. you'll get the contrarians and the meta-meta-meta-contrarians, but you'll piss off the meta- contrarians and slightly alienate the uneducated and the meta-meta- contrarians), and in the proximate future, people will adopt viewpoints more for other reasons--hopefully, because they care about the issue and have given it serious thought.

Once the zero-sum game of winning relative favor becomes saturated with fierce competition, new people will be discouraged from entering it, and will spend their effort on more productive things.

Also, once you notice a bunch of similar people (meta^n-contrarians) who argue several different sides of an issue, you stop thinking of each side as being, e.g., "traditional country folk vs. college students"; the ideas become dissociated from groups of people, and your opinion of an idea becomes dissociated from your opinion of a group. All you have to go on is the shape of the idea itself, which, I think, is the best way to approach ideas if you're searching for truth.

A while ago, someone posted the story "Rent a White Guy", which demonstrated how some clever Japanese companies took advantage of their potential clients' or investors' prejudice towards white CEOs by "renting" a white guy to act like a top executive for the duration of the company's presentation. I thought this was a good thing, because prejudiced investors who found out about tricks like this would have to stop bothering about the issue with future companies, unless they put a fair amount of effort into investigating whether the real CEO was in fact white. This would make things better for naive Japanese companies who didn't even consider the issue and just had their (Japanese) CEO do the presentation; and it would reduce the advantage of companies who did have white CEOs. I think this is all to the good.

For people who do real work and just can't be bothered to think about putting on peacock feathers, hardcore hipster fakers are friends and protectors. They make it harder for civilians to tell the difference between a "hip" guy who deliberately dresses unfashionably and a guy who dresses unfashionably because he doesn't think about how he dresses, he thinks about other things. This makes it easier to be a nerd (defined as someone who can't be bothered to do things because they are fashionable). I, for one, thoroughly approve of these people.

<comment><USER14> Your ideas about the white fake CEO's make sense, but I'm not so sure about the hipsters. The problem there is even though hipsters do dress "unfashionably", they always do it in a way thats different than those who aren't trying at all. In other words, most people don't have trouble distinguishing the two.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Meta-contrarians are just early-adopters of the synthesis stage of a dialectic:

"Hegelian dialectic... a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis." <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic>

Anyway, could these be programmer triads/dialectics?

      * Objects are superior/closures are superior/Scala?
      * Statically-typed/dynamically-typed/some combo of both
      * Optimize/generalize/do each as required
      * Waterfall/Agile/(TDD/BDD?)
      * Relational/NoSQL/???

<comment><USER16> Couldn't resist to complete the last one:

       * Relational/NoSQL/The tool for the job

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's with the weird misspellings/typos all over the place? Like 'ey' for 'he', or 'eir' for 'their'?

<comment><AUTHOR> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spivak_pronoun>

<comment><USER18> Isn't usage of Spivak pronouns itself a form of meta-contrarianism? (gender- biased / gender-neutral / Spivak)

<comment><USER19> The author isn't suggesting that something being meta-contrarian actually makes it wrong...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> "But why would being deliberately uncool be cooler than being cool?"

I think that's a wrong question to ask, because "hipsters" aren't being deliberately uncool.

A better question would be: "why is not following what the mainstream does cooler than following it?"

And the answer to that is simpler: because it shows a sense of leadership.

</comment><comment><USER21> It's an interesting problem, because there _is_ some benefit in intellectual areas to not over-signalling "intelligence", imo. Nobody likes the hipster, but nobody really likes the insecure mid-level intellectual who goes out of his way to speak like a thesaurus, either (the intellectual equivalent of buying too much jewelry). Seems tricky to find exactly the right balance!

<comment><USER22> I always think the best speakers are those who use clear, concise, and easily understood language. There is no sense in trying to confuse your audience or show off how obscure your vocabulary is. That is why I always preferred Hemingway or Steinbeck to Fitzgerald or Joyce.

<comment><USER23> I think that's good as a rule, but I'm not sure it holds for cases like Joyce. If you want to write a book that has to do with how experience is translated into language and vice-versa, transparent language might not be best. Sometimes confusion can be a very deliberate and controlled effect, like in David Foster Wallace (who's also on the front page today).

Just like Picasso could draw a realistic portrait when he wanted, Joyce sometimes used very simple and conservative prose. But I would agree that _most_ people who use long words (like most people who use more than one perspective per painting) shouldn't.

<comment><USER24> If we want to be a bit more precise with our thoughts, then we sometimes have to break out the longer words for instant clarity (given a dictionary, that is.) Technical fields need jargon in order to communicate a lot of metaphors / concepts in the least amount of paper and time as possible.

But I agree with lotusleaf1987: sometimes, I just want to yell, "JUST SPIT IT OUT IN PLAIN LANGUAGE." I think it's easy for someone to fall into the trap of getting too enthralled with the jargon and not understand the concept behind it, so they can reformulate the concept into a more understandable metaphor...

<comment><USER23> Sure. I wasn't really thinking about technical writing. It's good to remember that people like Einstein and Feynman could happily explain their work in _very_ simple terms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I found myself completely stymied once that article got to the section about death. I haven't read their other articles on the subject, but they seem to find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks that death is ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'. That seems insane to me. Does anybody think that a world without death—or even human death—would be less than hellish? Is it really false wisdom to be glad that living things, or living people, do not infinitely multiply, age, expand, consume resources? Or even false wisdom to try to see the good in the death of an individual?

Further, the author takes it as uncontroversial that it is 'wrong' to dwell on the problems of modern industrial society, and hypothesizes that one would only do it in order to signal one's intelligence. They don't think it would be useful—indeed, necessary—for many people to spend a lot of time thinking about the ills of A just because you can conclude that it is a greater good than not-A? Is that really the only way that it works? If I mention that industrial society destroys the environment and alienates the individual, then my argument must be, 'therefore, it is ultimately an evil, and we should scrap it for unelectrified villages.'

I like the way the author illustrates the signalling effect in terms of consumption, culture, and even cocktail party conversation; but I'm not sure the mechanism is quite as strong as they think.

Another way of putting it is: a lot of the intellectual arguments that the author likes to cast as counter signalling games can just as easily be characterized as successive philosophies and arguments that respond to the facts available to them and the values of the societies in which they arise. You COULD say that very intelligent people who don't want to give aid to Africa are motivated by a need to counter-signal the rather intelligent people who do; or you could say that they are motivated by their own understanding of the best way to increase the economic condition in Africa. If both of those could be said of any person, what value does this psychological model really have?

<comment><USER26> >they seem to find it rather uncontroversial to assert that anyone who thinks that death is ultimately good, and not bad, is 'pretending to be wise'.

Eliezer talked about this at at the Singularity Summit...I can't find the slides, but his subsequent update of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality (yes, really) pretty much said the same thing. The relevant part starts around halfway down this chapter: [http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_...](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/5782108/39/Harry_Potter_and_the_Methods_of_Rationality)

I think this is a pretty common position among the futurist/transhumanist/singularitarian community. The standard inductive argument is basically "I want to be alive tomorrow, and tomorrow I will feel the same way. Therefore, I will never want to die."

Edit: Oh, the other point that is often made is that if you grew up on a planet where everyone randomly got hit over the head with a baseball bat every few minutes, there would probably be people who talk about how this is a good thing, because it helps you greater appreciate the bat-free minutes and helps you stay on your toes, etc. But, other things being equal, as an Earthling you probably wouldn't want to go and live on that world. Likewise, if you came form a society where people didn't die, and someone offered you the opportunity to completely cease to exist one day, you probably wouldn't take it.

<comment><USER14> What if we argue, not from the good of the individual, but the good of society? Isn't there a saying that goes something like, "Society progresses one funeral at a time?"

<comment><USER27> Sure, but consider the cost: all those people, _dead!_

Doesn't that bother you? More to the point, does it bother you enough that you'll consider possible nonlethal ways for society to advance? If you're biasing your arguments in favor of the status quo, it's easy to forget to look for a third option.

<comment><USER25> In that case, it seems like what we're really trying to do is envision or bring about a world in which death ISN'T a good thing. If we can bring about an existence without overpopulation, decrepitude, destruction of the biosphere—and maybe with interplanetary colonization, to boot—then death won't be a good thing anymore. But death is not the evil there. Suffering is. I don't think anyone would argue that death is an ULTIMATE good, unless they worshiped Kali or were just hoping to get into heaven—but as long as we live in a world with suffering, decay, and limited resources, put me down in the death column. The cost might be 'all those people' but the alternative is horrible to contemplate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> At first I thought the author had inadvertently let some typos slip through, and that slightly annoyed me. Then I realized on further reading that the author was deliberately using third-person pronoun neologisms, and that seriously annoyed me.

<comment><USER29> I just started reading it in a Cockney accent and it turned out fine. ;)

<comment><USER27> I just figured that the author was winking while being partially serious, and it turned out fine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is some truth here, especially in regards to more intelligent people taking a mainstream view that lacks the illusion of nuanced thought. That said, I find it hard to read an article on "intellectual hipsterism" that claims the average IQ of their readers is 145. The page the author links to in support of that claim mentions two giant caveats: First, IQ is a notoriously difficult to measure metric of questionable validity, and second, _the scores are self-reported_. The reported values range from 120-180. Essentially, the survey suggests that the top half of their readership is in the top 1% of the national population. Even their bottom half is in the top 10%, by their statistics. This suggests a fatal flaw in the survey, and to mention the resulting statistic in such an offhand manner and with no warning to the reader of the problems with it suggests at best laziness, and at worst intellectual dishonesty on the part of the author. I find it hard, therefore, to take their argument at face value. That's not to say it's invalid, merely that the author's conduct does not support its validity.

<comment><USER7> I would take it at face value.

First, the author is taking for granted that his readers are intelligent enough to realize that self-reported IQ scores are inaccurate, that IQ as measured is not equivalent to any real world intelligence, and that the accuracy of IQ tests is limited once one gets out to the extremes. He links directly to the survey --- what more can he do?

Second, I'd guess that the numbers are about right. In the same way that one would be safe assuming that the posters to StackOverflow are probably mostly in the top 1% of programming ability out the entire population of the world, I think it's likely a site dedicated to debating 'meta-contrarianism' might select quite precisely for people who can score well on standardized tests.

I'm not a regular reader, but I know enough about the site to suggest a solution: come up with a means of testing your hypothesis, and put up some money to back it. The more direct the better: bet them $1000 that none of the regular posters can show a bona-fide IQ test result higher than 160 (or whatever cutoff you think fairly accounts for the limited accuracy of the test at the extreme).

And then report back to us if it was money well spent!

<comment><USER30> I'd rather not, thanks ;)

I'm sure if I challenged someone to come up with a result of 170, there'd be at least one person out there who could do it. My money is far better spent on tuition and beer.

Now, if I was a psych major, I might be able to get approval for a study comparing the congruency of self-reported IQ scores with measured, neutral ones in self-described intelligent communities. I'd apply for funding to set up testing for those who took the initial survey, and see what the results are.

<comment><USER7> That's a good plan too. They'd probably go for it. In the commentary on the survey, Eliezer (founder of the site, also present here) doubts the estimate too.

It's worth noting that one of the central tenets of LessWrong is that it can be just as bad to underestimate one's knowledge as to overestimate it. As a result, some things which look like boasting are really just attempts at accuracy, carried through to a level not normally seen in polite discourse.

Other things, of course, are just boasting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> There's more to Intellectual positioning than signalling one's intelligence, even if the underlying motives are assumed to be more-or-less base. Hipsterism in general is about being ahead of the curve, not necessarily being the smartest in the room. With Intellectual Hipsterism that means being conversant with the latest ideas, not the most complex ideas. To be up-to-date with the latest radical thinking gives one a privileged position in the discourse because the proportion of the group for whom your input seems novel and interesting becomes greater. This puts the Intellectual Hipster at odds with the mere 'meta-contrarian' because a conservative opinion conservatively argued will never be perceived as novel or interesting. The Intellectually hip[1] will therefore argue in favour of a passé or seemingly discredited position using novel (conbinations of) techniques and references, thereby making the retro idea cool again!

\--This post sponsored by the IH Institute, Salt Lake City--

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizek>

<comment><USER14> Last I heard the IH Institute was in Portland...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Hmm.. It is fun to come up with a different angle on a common argument, even if you don't seriously believe it. Could it be just nature encouraging us to signal intelligence? Maybe. Does it matter? I know sex is for making babies, but I still enjoy it. I didn't stop when I figured out that it was only enjoyable for the purposes of evolution.

</comment><comment><USER33> Lesswrong couldn't be more wrong.

Or rather, they missed the point entirely.

This article reminded me of somebody who is pissed because they lost an argument, so they desperately search around for some kind of label or dirt to throw at the people that beat them. I don't know the history here, but it sure feels that way.

To put it simply: people do not take positions simply to counter-signal. Yes, some do, but it's a dangerous game to start labeling huge swaths of your fellow men because of something _some_ may do. They use the example of the old rich and the new rich. The old rich didn't consume, looking down their noses at all the new money folks who spent like banshees.

Well maybe there is a certain type of person who just doesn't spend that much. Sam Walton was a billionaire, had a private jet, but he genuinely liked driving around in his pickup truck and flying his older prop airplane. Lots of folks get rich _because they don't spend so dang much._

That's the problem here: people who know what the hell they are talking about and disagree with you might not be counter-signaling, _they may actually be providing balance and some important things for you to consider to the discussion_. But you can ignore all of that if you put them all in a big bucket called "meta-contrarianism" and write their views off.

This is bullshit. In particular, it's a special form of elitist bullshit that seeks to categorize instead of understand.

I wish the lesswrong guys happiness, health, and success, but at some point -- how do I put this nicely? -- you run out of smart things to say. This however does not prevent you from taking up a lot of bytes saying it. (And I speak for myself as much as anybody else) If you're running a blog, sure, spam us with volume. Spray and pray. But if you're looking to provide some kind of consistent quality like with a branded name and multiple authors and such? More editing and reviewing and less self-serving pontificating. You need to be, well, less wrong. :)

<comment><USER34> I think you are simply unfamiliar with lesswrong.

They write articles like this _all the time_ , and they are usually targeted at biases which afflict lesswrong readers disproportionately. A quick look finds at least 3 articles of this nature in the past 2 weeks [1].

The article also does not advocate for lumping people into the meta-contrarian class and discounting their opinions. It explicitly says not to do that: "meta-contrarianism is a real tendency in over-intelligent people, it doesn't mean they should immediately abandon their beliefs; that would just be _meta- meta-contrarianism_ ".

[1] [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ql/error_detection_bias_in_research...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2ql/error_detection_bias_in_research/) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distrac...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2po/selfimprovement_or_shiny_distraction_why_less/) [http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pw/the_affect_heuristic_sentiment_a...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pw/the_affect_heuristic_sentiment_and_art/)

<comment><USER35> Also, the more recent articles on Less Wrong do have a tendency towards the esoteric and insular. The best postings on Less Wrong were done by Eliezer Yudkowsky a while ago, archived at <http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Sequences>.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Well if you want to be a uber-meta-contrarian you learn the art and do your own research. Otherwise you're just repeating what someone else said who either did their own research, or pretended to in order support some pre- determined conclusion.

</comment><comment><USER4> If there is any truth in what is argued, then this argument itself can be considered to be a display of intellectual hipster meta-contrarianism. Furthermore, _any_ balanced position/argument could be indicted as 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarianism'. In that case, this article adds absolutely nothing to your understanding of the world and people's behavior. It's just pretending to show some deep insight, by knitting together platitudes about peoples' behavior in a seemingly novel and intellectual way.

Or, to be somewhat less of an 'intellectual hipster meta-...-meta-contrarian' (ain't I (un)cool?): what is argued is _way_ to strong and _way_ to broadly applied. 'Lesswrong' usually worries about the practicality of matters and this, on the one hand, just not an important factor, and on the other hand, irrelevant, even if it was, because you still have to counter the actual arguments that are made. If being an 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian' means taking a balanced position, for instance on

      - KKK-style racist / politically correct liberal / "but there are scientifically proven
        genetic differences"
      - misogyny / women's rights movement / men's rights movement
      - conservative / liberal / libertarian
      - don't care about Africa / give aid to Africa / don't give aid to Africa

then, by God, let's have more 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian's. If it doesn't _in practice_ , _for most 'intellectual hipster meta-contrarian's_ mean 'taking a balanced position', _for whatever reason_ , then I think it's just an empty denomination.

</comment><comment><USER37> Or you stop defining your beliefs based on the beliefs of others.

Problem solved.

</comment><comment><USER38> Here's an "uneducated/contrarian/meta-contrarian divide" triad, about Facebook:

what's facebook? / facebook is great! / facebook is beneath me, and I rarely use it (Marco Arment: [http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/5-questions-with- tumbl...](http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/5-questions-with-tumblrs- marco-arment/) )

So, tech hipsters, you too can join in on the fun.

<comment><USER35> / Facebook is beneath me and I can't stop refreshing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> It's a good read but this contour-signalling only works when you have two or three levels at play. The question is whether his/her grouping of people into two or three tiers is realistic, useful, or arbitrary. Upper-middle-lower- upper-middle-middle class etc.

</comment><comment> m-photonic I can understand the article's placement of libertarianism at the top of the political triad, but at the same time it does seem like (in online arguments at least) people with nuanced positions more often make an effort to distinguish themselves from libertarians than from liberals or conservatives.

<comment><USER11> Yes, those would be the meta-meta-contrarians.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> >In all three examples, people at the top of the pyramid end up displaying characteristics similar to those at the bottom. Hipsters deliberately wear the same clothes uncool people wear.

Hipsters are at the top of the fashion now? This is why I wear suits.

<comment><USER21> But how do we know if you're wearing that suit ironically or not? ;-)

[http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-cant-anyone-tell-im- wea...](http://www.theonion.com/articles/why-cant-anyone-tell-im-wearing-this- business-suit,11185/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Conclusion: if you're part of the over-intelligent crowd, resist the temptation of signaling.

Let's see if some meta^x-contrarian is going to argue with this :)

</comment><comment><USER41> "the nouveau riche need to differentiate themselves from the poor, but the old money need to differentiate themselves from the nouveau riche."

This is true; but there is a more fundamental reason for the newly rich to spend money: it is freedom.

People who did not have the right to earn and spend money; when they gain their right to earn and spend money; spend money to assert their freedom.

This is why women made spending money a ritual under the name of "shopping." They celebrate their newly found freedom.

</comment><comment><USER42> This is what a lot of HN posts are about. Or is this exactly what HN posts are NOT about? I think so.

</comment><comment><USER43> So this is why I hate the idea of being expected to always put the toilet seat down. I'm a meta-contrarian. Or am I just a bit of a dick?

</comment><comment><USER44> When expressing in English my intelligence must be the half that when expression in my native language. And my IQ must be on average. So I will not read a post intended for a CI above 140, I only answer to the comment of drblast guy. If a teacher ask a question with an obvious answer like what is 3 + 3, then I can tell that it depends of the radix use are using, or if you are using 3 as a polynomial in some finite character field, or if you are using some computer language in which the symbols plus is concatenation of strings and the given operation is an error. In any case perhaps any of those answer should bother the teacher, so finally I should say excuse me ...

</comment><comment><USER45> Death actually _is_ great. It's not being meta-contrarian to see that. There was a great speech by Steve Jobs making just this point (and I don't think he was trying to signal his intelligence by saying so?)

My death is bad for me (somewhat -- I'm not sure I'd enjoy living forever) but great for the world.

I understand that the point of the article absolutely is not to argue about the goodness or badness of death, but isn't it regrettable that the main example they use is so flawed?

<comment><USER46> Nonsense. If people could live forever then they would have less children instinctively. How often is a new Einstein born (or Steve Jobs for that matter)? Was it _great_ that Einstein died?

Living forever, or even 10 times longer than we do now would change so many variables there is no way to know what all would be affected.

<comment><USER45> My point was not to argue about the goodness of death either -- I would have thought it was non-controversial.

It's a very good thing Einstein did die, since his most important work was done in the first third of his life, and at the end he was simply denying that quantum mechanics were real.

Besides, if death did not exist and "people had less children" (meaning probably zero), Einstein would never have been born!

Please (re-)read what Steve Jobs had to say about death: _No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new._

From: <http://news.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html>

<comment><USER46> Again, if death _weren't_ a destiny we all shared we can't know what that would change in our culture, our mind sets, etc. Just as one example, how would our views of war change if people no longer died of natural causes?

Btw, saying things like (paraphrasing) "It's good that Einstein died because he really had nothing useful left to contribute" is extremely judgmental. We have no way of knowing how much the realities of our current existence affected his behavior, nor what he would have done by now if he were still alive.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Unofficial Hacker News FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/The+Unofficial+HN+FAQ

<comment><USER2> _There are several ways in which you can search HN, the first (and most obvious) is to click the search link at the bottom of the page, which will take you to a google site specific search_

I think that the search at the bottom is not google, but is octopart's provided search.

See [https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=hn+search+octo...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/all&q=hn+search+octopart) for some relevant info.</comment>


Ask HN: Best Micro Payment provider? - <AUTHOR> HN crew -
What is your advice for the best provider to accept micropayments? Ideally the economics work for products that are $0.99 - but anywhere from $0.99 - $9.99 would be ideal.
Obviously the transaction charge is what makes the small prices so difficult... any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! <comment><USER3> I have done a thorough analysis of this; I have a band website builder app that has a MP3 store.

You should look primarily at the fees. Paypal's standard account has is around $0.30 per transaction + 3%. If you Google "PayPal Micropayment" they have an account that is not advertised publicly with lower fees for small transactions. The downside is you have to make a new account to use it, including a different bank account. I spoke to our PayPal account manager, and he said there is no internal plans to change this or promote the micropayments plan.

<comment><USER4> btw, you have a URL for that band website builder that has an MP3 store? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think you're better off NOT taking micropayments, primarily because the cost of authorizing the transaction dominates the actual value of the transaction.

What do I mean? Well, suppose you had asked me to pay a nickel to read this comment thread. I value my own time at about a hundred dollars an hour. I've already spent more than a nickel of time reading this thread, so clearly I should have been willing to pay a nickel to read it. But the mental decision point on whether to cross the penny gap or not, plus the amount of friction it would take for me to authorize this transaction (fish out credit card, type in digits, sign in, click "Are you sure you want to pay $.05 to this merchant?", yadda yadda), is worth far more than a nickel of frustration to me. That increases the cost of the content to me but it is revenue that _you don't capture_.

Rather than selling things for micropayments, do what essentially everybody does in this space: sell a microcurrency in macro-units ($10, $20, etc), and then make authorizations to spend the microcurrency as friction free as possible. For getting over that penny gap on the first transaction, you probably want to give people a significant incentive to buy their first hit of microcurrency -- 100 dragon eggs for $5 instead of $10 like usual, whatever.

Clarifying edit: for non-Americans reading this comment, it might be useful to know that a nickel is .05 USD and a penny is .01 USD. They're the common names for two of our low-value coins.

<comment><USER6> This is one of the reasons I like PayPal and use it in preference to credit cards for online purchases. It has very low friction. To buy something online I normally need to get up, find my card (back when I used CC frequently, I had the numbers memorized, but no more), type in digits, go through the whole procedure.

Whereas, with PP, the site just takes me to PayPal's site where cookies know who I am, so I just enter my password, press OK, and I'm done.

It's gotten to the point where I often check if a vendor takes PayPal as soon as I even think of ordering.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the problem is there is no great answer to your question. Here are a few possibilities though:

TipJoy (<http://tipjoy.com/>) is making a play as a micropayment platform I believe. I think they're a YC company as well.

Amazon Flexible Payment Service (<http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>) is also one to scope out.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks much -

Has anyone used Amazon FPS vs. PayPal vs. Regular processor?

<comment><USER8> Shoot me an email if you have any questions about Tipjoy. We're working on something closer to what FPS provides: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> PayPal offers a micropayments fee model with $0.05 transaction fee + 5%. It beats their standard model on transaction amounts up through $11.90.

</comment><comment><USER10> well, depends on what you want to do. you could aggregate like tipjoy does, if that fits your model.

there's also <http://aws.amazon.com/fps/>

there's also one other good one out there, but i can't recall the name since i don't use it. will edit/reply later if i can remember or find it.

</comment><comment><USER11> A micropayment is less than $0.01 USD. Otherwise, it's just a "payment."

</comment><comment><USER12> This is a great question. I assume PayPal is not the answer in this space even though Apple uses them on the iTunes store.

<comment><USER13> I didn't know that iTunes uses PayPal for credit card charges. Do you have a source on this?

<comment><USER12> Take a look at your payment options in your user account preferences. You'll see a paypal option.

I assumed they only offer PayPal in hopes of bringing PayPal's customers even at the sake of margin.

<comment><USER13> I see, but it's possible that they accept PayPal but don't use them to process the credit card charges. I always wondered how big operations like iTunes do their credit card processing.

<comment><USER14> Yea definitely. I wouldn't think Apple would use PayPal to process the credit card charges. I was just explaining why they might accept it as a form of payment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> i wrote an article about this same subject, [http://newsolareclipse.com/2008/12/micropayment-systems- the-...](http://newsolareclipse.com/2008/12/micropayment-systems-the-next- killer-app/)

</comment><comment><USER16> Both Paypal and Amazon do micropayments with fees of $0.05 + 5%. So basically, your fees for a $0.99 cent MP3 is around 10 cents. It definitely makes micropayments feasible.

</comment><comment><USER17> We did the analysis about 2 years ago for a charity and went with paypal - <USER2> believe the reduced fees for smaller payments only applies if you open your account in the United States.

</comment><comment><USER18> check www.alertpay.com

</comment><comment><USER19> have a look at www.onetouchpurchasing.com

</comment><comment><USER4> if you want to go to Asia and willing through an HK LTD. we can help you in asiapay.com (full disclosure: I'm a director) :)</comment>


Show HN: iTunes for 3D printing - <AUTHOR> https://www.layerbylayer.com/

<comment><USER2> This seems a bit stupid. There are dozens, if not hundreds of different 3D printer varieties, each of which requires its own tuned slicer settings. Hell, I have to use different slicer settings depending on the filament manufacturer.

What advantage is there in delivering a presliced models? Everyone has standardized on STL files for a reason.

<comment><USER3> I agree they should offer STL models for people who want to do the slicing themselves, but I do like the idea of providing presliced models that are tuned/tested for popular printers.

EDIT: "We guarantee that if your print fails, you will be given as many opportunities as needed to re-print and get it perfect. L2L allows us to track the completion of every print."

So I guess the purpose of a proprietary format is to restrict the number of times you can print a file? That's not going to work very well when you're interfacing with open source printers. I imagine it's trivial to slurp the gcode off the serial connection to the printer.

<comment><USER4> I don't think they are providing a 'proprietary' format as such, it's just gcode tuned to different printers.

Reverse engineering the head paths to produce a mesh would be pretty difficult (though not impossible)

<comment><USER3> That language I quoted implies you're only allowed one successful print per purchase.

<comment><USER5> What you're buying is a single-print, so what you're saying is correct. If something's gone wrong, you can re-print as many times as needed, but once the product is complete, then your print is done.

<comment><USER4> But that's nothing to do with the file format though right? I mean, it's just the end user has to be honest no?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's an interesting approach. As a nerd my initial reaction to revolt at the idea of DRM'ed 3D printing. That said, I get it and it's a novel approach. As someone else in the comments pointed out it's also probably really easy to get around with open hardware / open source 3D printers. But maybe that's a problem you want to have at this point in the game?

Kudos on the launch

</comment><comment><USER7> _Somewhat off-topic:_ it would be cool there was an app to play "3D printer roulette". You would click a button and your printer would randomly print a 3D model fetched from the web. I bet I could spend hours playing that game.

<comment><USER4> If chat roulette were anything to go by, I'd imagine ending up with lots of rather rude objet ;)

<comment><USER4> Actually, that idea is genius. Isn't, erm, 'adult' material what's credited with getting VHS off the ground?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I started one of these 3D file sharing sites a couple of months ago now ([http://www.fabfabbers.com/](http://www.fabfabbers.com/))

But having done it, I'm not sure it's really the way to go. There's a proliferation of them now, and people are still preferring Thingiverse, because it still has that inertia.

I think perhaps the next step is really more tools to make it easier to design things in 3D - as I think that's really the hard part for most people.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I think a good idea would be a 99designs kind of service. Maybe not today, but as 3D printing matures, there's going to be more people who just want to print somehthing custom or some broken part, than there are people willing to learn 3D modeling.

<comment><USER4> Hmm yes that's a good idea too. The more I got into it though, the more I realised that really it's nothing about 3D printing as such - most people don't care any more about 3D printers than they care about injection moulding.

Right now it's much more about getting something either customized or unique in some way, and printed on a professional SLS (or similar) printer. It's also more about useful materials such as metals and ceramic - that's where Shapeways have got it right I think.

<comment><USER8> Your right, Shapeways has got it right. I think this idea is more like Bill Gates trying to sell his BASIC to the homebrew computer club.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Calling it the "iTunes of 3D printing" is going to have big problems for you.

iTunes means different things to different people. Some love it, some hate it. Some see it as a marketplace, others see it as a way to store their music.

iTunes is not an MVP or a starting point. Choose a better way to communicate your product.

</comment><comment><USER10> Probably a rookie question, but what is the difference between a print and a file? I assume people doing 3D printing will know, but the distinction is lost on me.

<comment><USER2> You start with a model: usually a STL file. People make these themselves or download them from Thingiverse.

You then slice the file. This creates a gcode file, which is a set of instructions telling the machine how to move and when to print. Gcode instructions are semi-standardized across printers. Depending on your material and your printer, you often need to change the settings in the slicer to get gcode that will create a good print on your printer.

You can then use the gcode to print if you printer is connected to a computer. Or you can put it on an SD card and put that in the printer if it's standalone. Some printers (like MakerBots) require further processing of the gcode file into their own formats.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I wrote a post back when they launched to help explain how they differ from markets like Shapeways and about some of the user experience problems in 3D printing that they are trying to solve. Check it out: [http://www.hackthings.com/layer-by-layer-launches-an- easier-...](http://www.hackthings.com/layer-by-layer-launches-an-easier- marketplace/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I forgot to add, quite like the name 'Layer By Layer' :)

</comment><comment><USER12> Why would anyone want an 'iTunes for 3D printing'?

<comment><USER8> I could see why sellers would want it, and by extension customers would want it if some really beautiful models were for sale. Ref Shapeways vs thingiverse. I'm not sure now is the right time for it though, just like iTunes would have been dead in the water before MP3 players became widespread.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The "iTunes for 3D printing"?

Are you trying to rank your app up with the importance of iTunes?

Or are you trying use iTunes to state your app is essential?

Weird.

<comment><USER14> It has nothing to do with the success of iTunes, just the digital storefront idea.

<comment><USER13> I dont read it that way. There are more digital store fronts besides iTunes. Why didn't OP choose one of those? The idea is interesting but the way the OP is comparing it to iTunes makes me feel like this is a toy idea.

<comment><USER8> I think the iTunes comparison is that it has DRM and you can only print one of each item. I think it's a little early for this kind of service though. The ones who like to tinker with 3D printers will be lukewarm to the DRM stuff, while the ones who just want to buy things will get superior prints through Shapeways.

<comment><USER8> I would like to add a big BUT though - if home or even in-store 3D printers take off and "just works" I believe there will be a huge opportunity for a marketplace like this. So maybe this will be a prime buy candidate for Makerbot/3D systems or Shapeways some time in the future.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Quick Cursor – use Android phones with one hand - <AUTHOR>
 Free app without ads that makes it easy to use big Android phones with one hand. The app can be found in Play Store with the name Quick Cursor: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quickcursor
It is an alternative to the already known Reachability Cursor app which, unfortunately, it is not maintained anymore (from 2018) and does not work on new Android versions.
I need help to collect any feedback on this early version. I'm interested in opinions about the idea, feedback on how it works on other devices, bugs, interesting features that might be helpful, etc. Anything you have to say about it!
Thanks HN! <comment><AUTHOR> Play Store link to install the app: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quickcurso...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.quickcursor)</comment>


Man released from prison after being given life without parole for $50 robbery - <AUTHOR> https://www.alabamaappleseed.org/alabama-prisons/a-new-job-a-christmas-party-his-first-ever-week-of-paid-leave-alvin-kennard-once-sentenced-to-die-in-prison-marks-his-first-year-of-freedom/ <comment><USER2> Link is hugged to death but I'm pretty sure this is the same story: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/29/alvin- kennar...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/29/alvin-kennard- sentenced-to-life-released-prison)

For more context, it's not as simple as just a life sentence for just a $50 robbery. It was a life sentence for a repeat offender following multiple strikes.

<comment><USER3> > "...for a repeat offender following multiple strikes."

from tfa:

> "Because of three minor non-violent convictions stemming from the same > arrest at age 18, he was labeled a habitual offender."

that's like calling 3 strikes on the same pitch. in an exhibition game, so that you end up banned from real games for life. it's a gross perversion of justice.

in no circumstance should robbery without harm be more than a few days/weeks of jail. and he could have worked off the $50 in restitution if need be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The $50 amount isn't really germane to a robbery. Robbery is considered a person crime. It's a crime of threatening violence to a person. I don't know the particulars of this case and I'm not a lawyer, but the reason robbery carries heavy criminal penalties is that you're terrifying another person.

PRO TIP: If you're shoplifting, absolutely do not in any way threaten violence or suggest that you have a weapon on your way out of the store! It's a great way to turn a misdemeanor into a serious felony.

</comment><comment><USER5> [https://web.archive.org/web/20200827220714/https://www.alaba...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200827220714/https://www.alabamaappleseed.org/alabama- prisons/a-new-job-a-christmas-party-his-first-ever-week-of-paid-leave-alvin- kennard-once-sentenced-to-die-in-prison-marks-his-first-year-of-freedom/)

Note the headline is completely different to the heavily editorialised link title here (he was sentenced under the three strikes law).

 _A New Job. A Christmas Party. His First-Ever Week of Paid Leave. Alvin Kennard, Once Sentenced to Die in Prison, Marks His First Year of Freedom._

<comment><USER6> Not better, unless the point you're trying to make is that three-atrikes laws are evil and destroy lives and communities. In which case, yes, absolutely.

<comment><USER5> The point I'm trying to make is editorialising is against HN guidelines.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

Cropping is inevitable with the original here, but the poster should not be pushing a point of view when doing so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems like society has a number of folks who aren't hardened criminals but also aren't quite suited for a free society. I often wonder if we need something between jail and freedom("halfway house"?) that lets folks live a somewhat free life where they are prevented from harming others and their property.

On the one hand it is creepy and somewhat Orwellian to suggest something like that. Once it exists, it would surely be used to house more and more classes of society. On the other hand, there are a number of problems caused by folks who chose to reject societies rules but not so severely that they are jailed(or the threshold for jailing them has changed due to overcrowding?).

Certainly the economic divide does not help, along with an economy that has less and less use for people of lesser skills. A UBI would be one way of addressing this I guess.

</comment><comment><USER8> Seems to be struggling with the load.

Archive.org link: [https://web.archive.org/web/20200827220714/https://www.alaba...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200827220714/https://www.alabamaappleseed.org/alabama- prisons/a-new-job-a-christmas-party-his-first-ever-week-of-paid-leave-alvin- kennard-once-sentenced-to-die-in-prison-marks-his-first-year-of-freedom/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Page won't load for me but based on the title and URL it's about Alvin Kennard, who was released last year (see e.g. [1])

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/29/alvin- kenna...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/08/29/alvin-kennard- theft-years-alabama/)

</comment><comment><USER10> We think of cultures that punish such crimes with torture or maiming as barbaric. But those are humane compared to 36 years in prison.

<comment><USER11> That's an excellent point.

$50 is was just the _yield_ from the robbery, because that's all the victim had.

If the victim happened to be carrying a suitcase with $150K in it, then it would have been a $150K robbery

<comment><USER12> You're right, since the intent was the same, the effect is irrelevant. After all, most bakeries tend to stock up half a million in their cash registers. And that's not even in the nice neighbourhoods. $150k is about a lifetime of earnings in some parts of the world. This is equivalent to robbing someone of their life's earnings.</comment></comment></comment>


Weekend Project: Designed Skype for iPad for fun - <AUTHOR> http://moeedm.com/skype-for-ipad/ Get a move on, Skype! What do you think? <comment><USER2> I've been scratching my head as to why Skype has really dropped the ball on their iOS client. The released Skype for iPhone. The most recent significant change they made was to allow it being used as a background app (one which kills your battery within hours).

Aside from that, they act like they didn't even know the iPad came out. Doing even the most basic "port" of Skype to the iPad couldn't take more than a day of developer time if they had the original Xcode project for the iPhone app.

As-is, Skype for iOS is really clunky and does some pretty stupid stuff (like taking 45 minutes as it tries to download every conversation I've had for the past 3 years and nearly crashing the phone). I can't fathom why Skype is ignoring it. Unless someone did something stupid, like loose the code/project.

<comment><USER3> I agree, I was pretty disappointed when i bought my iPad and found out there was not a specific iPad version of Skype. For a while I was sure that someone was going to come out with a data only phone that used Skype for voice, but i guess that was just wishful thinking...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> When I scroll down, the bar at the bottom of the screen stays in place in the middle of the image. So that's a bit irritating; it ends up covering up the middle of the image with a bunch of social media junk.

<comment><AUTHOR> Going to fix that up right away :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> really cool man. is there a landscape view? also i feel like it makes more sense for the current call to have other current convos in the margin instead of all online contacts. that way you can easily toggle through conversations. that would also require a "contacts" menu option, which could replace the "chats" menu option. awesome stuff though :)

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean a portrait view? Definitely room for lots of improvement (like current calls) but this was just a concept. I'd been using Skype for iPhone on iPad and just wanted to see what a Skype for iPad could look like. Thanks!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Gym Apps and Websites Made Easy - <AUTHOR> https://gymportals.com/

<comment><USER2> That is good. It is similar to what I have just build.

Mine is mostly dedicated to personal trainers, and offers a lot of functionality to them as well as a personal website with various information to there users.

All i need now is to start picking up the phone and contacting local trainers.

<comment><AUTHOR> That sounds great, Do you have a link?

<comment><USER2> Yes i do, [http://fitorganizer.com/](http://fitorganizer.com/)

The demo is where everything happens. My front page still needs some work. Currently working on what exercises they have done for each appointment.

<comment><USER3> As a heads up - on your frontpage you've used 'there' instead of 'their' in the features section.

"about there workout", "there paid packages", "check there progress" etc etc

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Cool idea,

If I wanted to sign up and get an app; Do my gym users have to download your app then search for my gym? Or do I get my own App that they search for in the app store?

<comment><AUTHOR> No, we provide a full branded and customised app for your gym which is searchable in the App Store. The mobile app is currently iOS only; however, we are working on providing an Android version shortly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> How do you plan to market this? Seems like a crowded space.

<comment><AUTHOR> In our initial phase we are looking at mainly using word of mouth to target local gyms as well as social media to broaden our market scope.

There are other fitness applications available; however, we are targeting the app for gym owners as a way to keep in contact with their members and keep their members up to date with what is happening in the gym.

We also plan to continue to roll out more features as quickly as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Products is listed twice under features.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for that,

Fixed.</comment></comment>