Mother - <AUTHOR> https://sen.se/store/mother/?utm_expid=78993385-1.X-oIkUsIR8aRPG13DPrvIg.0 <comment><USER3> First I've heard of it, but I had the same reaction as Cringley. Maybe it's an age thing.

 _" Imagine v1 of Big Brother's -- or NSA director Keith Alexander's -- most inflamed fever dream: a sensorbot shaped like a Russian nesting doll wearing a Hindi-cow smile. Then terrifyingly name it "Mother" and build it specifically to monitor as many facets of your personal life as it can. Are you schvitzing yet?"_

[http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/sense-mother-may-i- the-m...](http://www.infoworld.com/t/cringely/sense-mother-may-i-the-most- disturbing-tech-of-ces-233998?page=0,1)

<comment><USER4> I can't dispute the age thing, given that I'm in the oldest 5 or 10% of the community according to the various age polls we've had over the years, but my reaction (not having read Cringley's review) was, "Can this thing get any creepier? Oh, look; it can."

<comment><USER3> I'm in the older age group and afaik so is Cringley since he's been around forever (if it's still him writing under that name.) I thought, well, maybe the kids will like it.

<comment><USER5> The writer is not Mark Stephens, the PBS Cringely whose name is the first Google hit, but a current InfoWorld staff writer. I suspect they would share this opinion, though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Wait, is this real? It seems like commentary on the current zeitgeist, not a real product.

> _Mother. Mother knows everything._

> She's like a mom, _only better._

> Sense: _the meaning of life®_

edit: I see they are based in France, so perhaps the branding didn't translate well.

<comment><USER7> Even allowing for a language barrier, this has to be the most overtly Huxleyan branding I've seen on a consumer product. It's unnerving.

<comment><USER8> _this has to be the most overtly Huxleyan branding I 've seen on a consumer product_

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing for the product they're selling, which is both cool and odd in a 1984 kind of way.

<comment><USER9> 1984 was Orwell. Huxley was Brave New World.

<comment><USER10> Also, it seemed to me that the dichotomy set up in BNW is that "natural is good and right, artificial or new is bad" \- one that has soured me on Huxley basically since when I first read it.

<comment><USER11> The author commented on that in his foreword of later editions of the book. He said something along the lines that if he was writing the novel later in his life, the dichotomy wouldn't be as pointed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I played with this at CES. The "mother" bot is basically just a router. The little things only sense motion, and when I asked the lady said they had no plans to add any other types of sensitivity - temperature, moisture, light, current, etc. Compared with the other 'internet of things' kits out there battling for visibility, this one doesn't seem original or more useful, only visually striking. The tags are also pretty big for what they do. A useful thing for $50 maybe to buy once, but really doesn't seem like a worthwhile 'ecosystem' to buy into in any big way.

Also, I was unhappy to learn upon close inspection that the face is a sticker.

<comment><USER13> weird. the webpage says the motion sensors also sense temperature.

<comment><USER12> Really? I asked specifically about temperature and the lady said nope. Maybe she wasn't aware. Well at any rate I take that bit back. But I still think these things are multiplying and buying into this one would be extremely premature.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure they debated adding light sensors, but perhaps they figure that adopters of this may have also adopted wifi connected lights which could be built into the software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> vertex-four As a young person who wants to remember to take her pills, to cut down on her soda consumption, to track how much she exercises (and maybe turn it into a game of walking further every week), and no doubt some more that I can't think of right now, this product sounds like it'd be amazing.

The video is a brilliant marketing asset. It showed me some very real problems of mine, and how it could help me solve them (by tracking things that I want to, and gamifying them).

The only issue is cost. As a young, single person, £166 is prohibitively expensive. It's likely not worth it for me. Is it worth it for people with families and kids? If they had £166 to spend, could they find something more pressing to spend it on?

<comment><USER15> I'll save you money. I'll be Dad. Stop drinking soda and walk more.

<comment><USER16> This comment is fantastic! The trend in pointless analytics is annoying and isn't solving any real problems. All the 'problems' Mother solves are not really problems and it doesn't seem to serve any truly useful purpose.

Wakeup times - Already solved by the alarm on your clock. Managing drink consumption - Drink more or less than you currently do. Staying fit/active - Go workout/exercise once a day. Step tracking - One of the more silly trends lately. Does it honestly matter how many steps you took today? No, not really. Pill taking - A weekly pill container solves this already for a few dollars and is old person friendly. Check-ins - Have your kid text/call you when they arrive home. Can't use a phone? Don't leave them alone. Brushing teeth - <USER2> anyone here not brush their teeth? Anyone at all? Guess that problem doesn't really exist. Temperature - Look at your thermostat. If you really care, go buy some nest products, they got you covered.

This product tries to make you feel like you have no idea what is going on in your everyday life (but don't worry, they can help!). You have your own daily pattern and I guarantee you know what happens in it already. Don't get me wrong, this thing has potential in other specialized areas but for its intended purpose and what most people will end up using it for, it' just more gadget bloat.

<comment><USER17> To summarise your comment: "Bah, Humbug."

More seriously, I think you're being way too dismissive. The same train of logic could apply to any tech advances we've had. Email? Use letters. Smartphones? Use a proper computer. Social networks? Use a paper address book. Do you feel the same about those?

Compliance is a big problem for medicine. Motivating people (nay, yourself) to be active is a problem. Keeping track of shopping/groceries is a problem in a busy or shared house. Whether they are _enough_ of a problem to build a business around is another question.

<comment><USER16> I disagree that the same train of logic could be applied to other big tech advances. The pieces of tech you stated are better than the alternative by leaps and bounds. They all reduce the time (and money) it takes to communicate by huge margins.

For medication, I can only speak from personal experience and I could be completely off base. As far as motivation, my active friends don't use/care about fitness apps and my inactive friends can't be bothered to use the bloody things anyway. Obviously this all comes back to personal experience and I would love to be proved wrong (always interesting seeing a product/service you think is crap get huge) but until it takes off I am skeptical of its actual value

<comment><USER18> It's for your inactive friends who want to become active.

One of the things that you'll notice if you go to /r/loseit is how obsessively weight losers will measure _everything_. It's a way to keep themselves focused and accountable.

I can see the uses for this, just, as many people are saying, very creepy branding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We all may be suffering from a case of Fortune 100 CEO syndrome. That is, we all wish our lives are so busy and important that we need personal assistants managing our lives.

So we buy these products that make us feel more important. It documents what we do, and it tells back our story through a dashboard, in an autobiographical way, as if we're some kind of celebrities.

But are we that important?

<comment><USER20> It's all about measurable goals and improvements, not about importance.

<comment><USER21> I think his point is that this doesn't provide much in the way of meaningful measurements or analytics. It's not actually a better way to, say, track soda consumption--it's just more self-aggrandizing.

<comment><USER22> I don't know if that's actually true, I would like a tool to keep track of this stuff for me but I don't at all feel some "desire to be a celebrity with assistants." Yes I suppose I could carry a notebook everywhere. I have failed doing that in the past though and I don't know anyone that keeps such detailed statistics. Especially on things like the exact time they wake up, come home, get coffee, etc. I imagine it would be a hassle to manually keep track of it all.

<comment><USER23> I try, and for periods have succeeded, in tracking my diet and weight in detail, partly to support my exercise and partly because I'm prone to over- eating... The biggest challenge is that it needs to be _extremely_ simple. A notebook sort-of works - it's easy to jot something down -, but with the caveat that taking the time to transfer notes and add up calories etc. to actually get any use of it is slow.

Smartphone works for me, but only with an app that is tailored to my workflow. Sensors that could capture lots of it semi-automatically would make a great deal of difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The way the thing is filmed with the smiley face and lighting up eyes, I could easily imagine a sci-fi horror film being based around it. :)

More seriously, the idea of using cheap motion trackers to track usage of things in the home is very interesting.

When Google acquires this, it'll make the Nest complaints pale in comparison. :)

<comment><USER25> > The way the thing is filmed with the smiley face and lighting up eyes, I > could easily imagine a sci-fi horror film being based around it. :)

Like this?

[http://i.imgur.com/W1s9crO.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/W1s9crO.jpg)

In all seriousness, I feel it is only a matter of time before someone dies as a result of their home automation being hacked.

<comment><USER26> my god this is an accurate depiction of chef

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> That was a _really_ poor choice of a name. It took me less than 10 seconds to start hearing Pink Floyd's "Mother" [1] in my head. Once that started happening, I just couldn't stay objective while looking at the pitch.

[1]: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HrrR9QDQU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0HrrR9QDQU)

<comment><USER4> Better Pink Floyd's "Mother" than Danzig's, which is where my poor brain went.

<comment><USER28> It's been 3 hours and I'm still singing Danzig.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Just yesterday I posted a quasi-luddite rant about how these smart devices and services are infantalizing.

And now they're naming one _Mother_? I can't tell if I should feel vindicated or offended.

<comment><USER3> "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace"

[http://allpoetry.com/poem/8508991-All-Watched-Over-By- Machin...](http://allpoetry.com/poem/8508991-All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of- Loving-Grace-by-Richard-Brautigan)

<comment><USER30> Which poem (as you may well know) provided the title for Adam Curtis's interesting documentary about what happened when this cybernetic pastoral utopianism began to interact with politics and industry: [http://vimeo.com/38724174](http://vimeo.com/38724174)

<comment><USER3> I'd love to see the series updated. This would be a good opportunity for a young filmmaker because the technology has advanced so much and the issues are more relevant now than ever.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Same French company that created the successful Nabaztag rabbit and then couldn't cope with the traffic. I had my wife buy me one of those for Valentines Day (stupid, I know) and after trying to do something useful with it and getting frustrated I tossed it somewhere in my cube where it remains to this date.

Apart from the super bad naming and Branding, this is another reason for me to stay away from this mother rabbit.

<comment><USER32> I have one too and Mother definitely make me remember that. Shitty product that looks good but neither useful or worked properly. In the end, they filled bankruptcy throwing away their servers and I can't even turn it on to make it work again. Funny part, my mother bought it to me!

[edit] and yeah it's obviously creepier than the rabbit

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Cool product but very creepy branding. Might be ok to keep the name Mother but shouldn't be emphasizing it as a "mother" on the site at all.

<comment><USER34> I think the product is creepy too. Maybe Google or Facebook will buy them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Their tagline "Mother knows everything" is terrifying.

<comment><USER15> Like the computer named "Mother" in Alien.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is the single creepiest thing I have seen in the last month.

</comment><comment><USER37> I haven't been so creeped out by an ad for quite some time.

This looks like a solution desperately looking for a problem; that is, unless your problem is "I want to spy every single step of everyone in my family".

And seriously, "mother"? Do they even ever had one, to be that much off-mark? The very first quality of anything motherly is to be human; this is a wireless log collection system. Call it a "warden", or at best "coach", if you really need an anthropomorphic comparison.

<comment><USER29> I could totally get behind calling something like this "coach".

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Apart from the privacy issues, which the community already raised here, there's another fact that bothers me: _Applications do can not discipline yourself for you_.

I have tried many applications which should _increase_ by productivity, sleep quality, or you-name-name-it. I don't recall a single one that managed to do so in the long run (most not even in the short run...).

So either one is open to change and that has little to do with technology or... You're toasted anyway. But even when you _decide to change for yourself_ and not because a notification tells you to do so, these technologies become time consuming and troublesome to use. Of course they look nice on TV and ads, but in real life, most of them are frivolous IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER39> Mothers watch their sons out of love and genuine care for their wellbeing. Mine did a bad a job and that's why my next sentence will be bitter:

If a company wants to make me use a telescreen, they might as well make it a suppository.

</comment><comment><USER40> God, the future is so fucking weird.

<comment><USER41> And this is only the very, very beginning.

<comment><USER42> Does anyone, anywhere really want everything connected to everything all the time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I think this is really cool and definitely brings us closer to the Internet of Things. I don't think I would have anthropomorphized the system by calling it "Mother" and putting an eerie LED smiley face on the base station.

I can't seem to find any technical info on the "cookies". Are they similar to the technology in the Fitbit Flex, ie Bluetooth Smart coupled with some sort of accelerometer. If that's the case, do the cookies need to be charged every week. This remains the single massive downside to widespread adoption of such devices.

<comment><USER44> Apparently they capture movement and temperature, and they can detect when they are near their mother or not, they can store up to ten days worth of data, and they have a one year battery life, using cell batteries. Not rechargeable from what I gather.

<comment><USER45> What kind of processor and transmitter do they use to get such a long battery life without sleeping device?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> More technology where none is needed. How about just being responsible and accountable for our own actions?

      Want to improve ___ about yourself?
      Just do it(tm).
      Get it done(tm).
      Do what it takes.

I don't need devices and a dashboard to tell me I'm winning at life.

Fuck this arrogant and stupid product.

</comment><comment><USER47> They need the companion "Father - Common sense" to tell you not to waste your money on nonsense like this.

</comment><comment><USER48> They would have called this little sister, they would avoid so much of tastelessness surrounding their current branding...that put apart, what it's doing is already 50% doable by current smartphones + an arm band eventually (alarm , podometry, sleep control), and the other things it's trying to solve doesn't seem to be solved in a reliable enough fashion.

You'll have to update your coffee capsule count every time you buy them. Buying new packs when the opening the last set of capsule is ny far the easiest way to manage I think.

You'll have to put the sensor on every bottle you drink.

If you care that much about toothbrushing, buy an electric toothbrush. A timer will be integrated telling you when you pass the 2 pr 3 min mark.

Central temperature management would need a programmable device anyway, you'll basically need a Nest I guess.

At the end, It doesn't seem so easy to use in practice, it will forward every life information to an external server, and half of what it does is better solved an other way.

<comment><USER49> No kidding.

Sorry Nest, but programmable based-on-your-schedule thermostats have been around for a long time. Can't do it with your smartphone, but it's really not hard to use the settings.

Coffee? Buy beans when you're running low, what about any of these things are complicated?

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It may be an age thing, but it find it creepy and useless. I haven't needed a Mom since I left home at 18.

</comment><comment><USER50> This seems to be a herald to the situation described in the poem All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace (1967) by Richard Brautigan.

      I like to think (and
      the sooner the better!)
      of a cybernetic meadow
      where mammals and computers
      live together in mutually
      programming harmony
      like pure water
      touching clear sky.

      I like to think
      (right now, please!)
      of a cybernetic forest
      filled with pines and electronics
      where deer stroll peacefully
      past computers
      as if they were flowers
      with spinning blossoms.

      I like to think
      (it has to be!)
      of a cybernetic ecology
      where we are free of our labors
      and joined back to nature,
      returned to our mammal
      brothers and sisters,
      and all watched over
      by machines of loving grace.

And yes, incredibly creepy.

<comment><USER51> Also a British documentary from 2011, very good, imho:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_%28TV_series%29)

[http://vimeo.com/38724174](http://vimeo.com/38724174)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> I like how open-ended this thing is. I wonder if the market is actually ready to move beyond domain-specific sensor hardware and in to something broader. The aesthetic isn't quite my taste, but I'm very curious to see how their users react.

</comment><comment><USER53> I'm surprised it doesn't have wireless. Places I've lived always have the router tucked away in some inaccessible closet.

</comment><comment><USER54> This thread is a good example why name matters. If the same product was given any other name, perhaps it would not have been noticed that much. A set of motion sensors with a central comm hub.

The makers perhaps thought that the name 'Mother' would evoke care and love in the minds of their users. To their agony, it is revealing in the thread that though most people love their mom, they really do not want to be a 'watched over' kid.

I guess it gives all of us that creepy feeling of guilt as kids when we stole from the cookie jar and kept turning our heads with fear of being caught by mom :-)

Note to self: keep relationship names away from product names, too much friction ;-)

<comment><USER55> Actually, branding and marketing something like this without invoking fears of total surveillance seems almost impossible, especially right now.

<comment><USER56> Well, you could maybe do something open for tinkering, and that doesn't broadcast your whole life to a central server -- but is there any money in that?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > we reinvented mothers

> Mother knows everything (in red text at that)

> She's like a mom, only better

The branding of this is either creepy or crazy. Maybe it's a bit of both. But I'm certainly not going to forget it, and the idea itself seems pretty interesting.

<comment><USER57> If this gets popular, I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if Coca Cola sues them. That logo is a very similar red, and a similar "dynamic ribbon device".

<comment><USER58> Going through the website, I kept seeing "coca-cola" in the corner of my eye. Probably too far from the original for suing though?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER59> Apart from all the other emotions which this plastic big sister evokes, I wonder what it is that makes so many of these startups reach back to the crib when it comes to branding their products. From this bastardized matryoshka doll through Snapchat's Miffy-like ghost to Twitter's tweety to just about half the iconography on tablets and smartphones, they all have one thing in common: the more infantile the logo and/or branding, the better it is. Is this idiocracy at work or are they all following some celebrity psychomarketeer's edict about successful marketing to the attention-span deficient generation?

</comment><comment><USER60> This is fucking creepy. But like most creepy things, the idea is also kinda neat. :)

</comment><comment><USER61> I like the concept. Surprised so many here are bugged by the marketing and/or the technology. Maybe you don't have kids (yet)?

Above all, I like the neat interface of the apps (mockups?) and simplicity of the cookie sensors. No charging nonsense, because they measure and buffer stuff but don't transmit. 1yr battery life. 10 day memory.

Sure, I'd love to see additional, more advanced cookies that would require charging, e.g. with built-in LED or vibration (reminding me when I enter or leave, though my phone could serve that purpose), Data, GPS (though my phone could serve this purpose, need an app that intercepts an SMS after presence is detected to auto-upload GPS data), multi-mother stuff (one at work, one at home), integration with home automation systems (someone below mentioned frequencies indicate zigbee), Zapier/IFTT support and above all some sort of data input/output API so I can import my own data points.

By the way, $222 for a mother and 4 sensors seems quite affordable to me.

The only thing that prevents me from pre-ordering a set is that the NaBazTag history doesn't exactly instill much confidence in the makers' ability to support this thing in the long run; I also wonder where the data is stored and if it's remotely future-proof (data import/export/backup).

</comment><comment><USER62> Does anyone know how the signals are being sent from the cookie to Mother? The company mentioned in a CES video that they werent using the traditional bluetooth, wifi, etc.

<comment><USER63> The webpage mentions 915 MHz (America) / 868 MHz (Europe) radio. This is a part of ISM band and the most popular radio for low power internet of things. There are some microcontrollers with those radios integrated, for example TI CC430. As far as I recall, there is no standardised protocol stack on top of that.

<comment><USER64> It's almost certainly ZigBee then:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#Radio_hardware](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#Radio_hardware)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> If you scroll down far enough, you get to the 'technical details', where the device is described as 'a white mother'. I just found that funny, haha.

</comment><comment><USER66> I want everything Mother knows/finds out, to be stored locally (i.e. on my pc, not in the cloud), to be kept secure, private and I want to access it at any time from anywhere.... can Mother do that? I don't think so.

Still pretty good but as long as there isn't a privacy promise that would satisfy the basic security principles (Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability) I don't see it as a successful device.

</comment><comment><USER67> Seems like a pretty cool product. They have an amazing design and a beautifully done website too. Only thing I am a bit concerned about is the price. It costs 222 USD for a base unit and 4 cookies (sensors). Here's a video from CES2014 about it [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024OPHSgOqo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=024OPHSgOqo)

<comment><USER68> I could find almost nothing on this thread to agree with. None of the other comments here make sense. I have high respect for HN community but this page make me doubt it. Why should we discuss the name? Apple, Windows - aren't they funny product names? How does it matter? What matters is a new product is launching - our community's criticism should help the product owner. If there are things that we believe won't work - give reasons. Appreciate what's good about it. Name, too, can be criticized but don't make fun out of it. Somebody has worked so hard on making that product a reality; respect that hardwork.

What I like about the product is the very idea. And also the way they have explained it on the website, the graphics, text everything. Really appreciable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> The sync module reminds me of the Nabaztag ( [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabaztag) ) and I wondered whether Mother was going to have signals and indicators so that you didn't _have_ to use a mobile device for insight.

<comment><USER70> That's the first thing I thought about and when I saw above that Sense was a French company, I thought it might actually be related. Well, it is: [https://sen.se/about/who/](https://sen.se/about/who/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Will it send me a notification that says "don't disappoint mother" if I forget to do something?

</comment><comment><USER72> I was hoping for news about an Earthbound sequel, and instead I got this weird little smiling pod.

</comment><comment><USER73> As I saw it popping up, I thought "wow that looks like a sex toy." Freudian slip, whoops.

"Sense Mother is at the head of a family of small connected sensors that blend into your daily life to make it serene, healthy and __pleasurable __. "

You never know.

</comment><comment><USER74> This is horrible marketing. Seriously, who came up with this creepy design and name.

</comment><comment><USER75> I personally think that I don't need to spend $222 on something that seems to be minimally useful. I don't need to monitor how often I brush my teeth, how often I drink coffee, how often I water the plants, and how often I take medication.

For the things on the list that are somewhat useful (like sleep logs + a pedometer + temperature) I have a 1975 pedometer/calculator combo that's worked fine since the day I got it, a notepad, and an infrared thermometer that is a thousand times cooler.

I think the only people that will buy this are people that want Google Analytics for their life.

</comment><comment><USER76> What's going on in here? I don't get the negativity. I think the branding is great, and I realized the function of the product immediately. Also I think they presented it in a funny way (programmable mother). It's obvious that it doesn't 'know everything', that was a joke. It has simple sensors and you can collect data from those, there's nothing scary about that. The product is interesting, but however not useful at least for me.

<comment><USER55> I don't get not getting the negativity. This is straight out of the first part of a dystopian horror movie.

<comment><USER77> Sorry, which one? I'm not getting it. Mixed feelings on the branding, but my mind didn't go to dystopia until I read comments here.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Concept is stupid as F __K. Why you need sensors just to know some basic stuff such as taking pills, tracking health etc. You can use app also. All they are doing is using sensor( motion sensors in particular) and send message to your phone. So why would I spend $222 for something where I could just it with $10 reminder app ?

<comment><USER15> Exactly correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Happy to see the guys behind Violet are not giving up. I believe they're on to something but the branding / language choosing is indeed poor. Whatever they launch with now will surely be extended, I'm hopeful that they've learned a great deal with the Nabaztag (which I've owned one back in the days).

</comment><comment><USER22> I can't wait to have an AI virtual assistant that can keep track of and manage all these mundane statistics for me.

</comment><comment><USER80> Interesting concept. Simplify the sensors as much as possible and do all of the work in the software. I'm guessing they have profiles that allow you to determine how a sensor's data is interpreted. I wonder if they allow you to define custom profiles or at least have access to the raw data.

</comment><comment><USER81> Looks like this was done before in Green Goose project in 2011 [http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors- monit...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/23/green-goose-sensors-monitor-your- life-you-earn-experience-point/)

</comment><comment><USER82> So, Defcon last year had a talk where they hacked things (including a Bunny ostensibly for watching your baby in another room) like this. And it was super easy. I wouldn't out this anywhere _near_ my house or life.

</comment><comment><USER83> This looks really cool, though I had no idea what this product did based on their bloated landing/homepage.

Just a few picture examples with blurbs of text & a demo video would suffice rather then an infographic type of website.

</comment><comment><USER84> Like other people: it's an interesting idea, but the branding is dystopian.

</comment><comment><USER85> advertising slogan: "It's not enough to pipe every move, call, text and click you make from your smartphone? Mother's sensors are cute, small and funky. Collect more data for US spies today!"

</comment><comment><USER86> kill it. kill it with fire. this product collects the kind of personal data that should not be handed to third parties. too ripe for abuse. too much insight into your existence. a scary Orwellian nightmare.

</comment><comment><USER87> Did anyone notice this:

"Cookies immediately send everything they capture to the nearest Mother."

For me, that's a bit of a scary statement considering how intimate the product is meant to be in someone's life.

</comment><comment><USER88> This is one of the most horrendous brandings I've ever seen. Maybe, the horrible branding is intentional, but it's damn too creepy for sane users who dare using their product.

</comment><comment><USER89> Cheese.... wait for it... E!

And can I see the product without having to hunt down my country in a gigantic freaking select box first?? Isn't it fundamentally the same in every country?

</comment><comment><USER90> What does it do?

I scrolled to the bottom of the page expecting some kind of explanation of what it is and why I would want it or what need or want it solves. Nothing that I could find.

</comment><comment><USER91> To me, this is pretty awesome and not at all creepy (22). A friendly UI and ease of use for life tracking? Yes please. Attach it to barbells to track workouts.

</comment><comment><USER92> Beside the branding thing, i've lost my fitbit one in less than 2 weeks. How long till i lose one of the cookies? Dongles are not for me.

</comment><comment><USER93> I know I'm an unfortunate case but as someone with a recently deceased mother I do not like this one bit.

</comment><comment><USER94> Very nice, however unless all the hardware and software are open sourced. I will not use it in my real life.

<comment><USER94> FYI, check out

[http://openrtms.org](http://openrtms.org)

for more open source alternative for this. Many of these products are nothing innovating in technology.

However, I do think the maker should be rewarded for design, packing (meaning putting everything together).

</comment></comment><comment><USER95> I got confused for a second and thought I was still reading 'The Circle' while reading this page.

</comment><comment><USER96> I don't how I feel about this, right after watching the 'her' trailer. I am speechless.

</comment><comment><USER97> Hmm, Ireland doesn't exist. I guess they don't want me to get one, or find out about it.

</comment><comment><USER22> Can people please come up with better names for things, especially not common English words?

</comment><comment><USER98> So when I'm living in the Netherlands I cannot continue? (its not in the list)

</comment><comment><USER99> > Mother. Mother knows everything.

I guess it's "Big mother is watching you" then.

</comment><comment><USER100> Who knows you better than _your mom_?

From this marketing, I'd answer...Big Brother.

</comment><comment><USER101> Are they TRYING to scare me?

</comment><comment><USER102> Bad name - I hate the fact that mother knows everything.

</comment><comment><USER103> The son could have easily tricked the sensor.

</comment><comment><USER104> Have these people ever seen a mother before?

</comment><comment><USER105> ...creepy...

</comment><comment><USER106> Expected Pink Floyd link..

<comment><USER107> exactly my thought :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER108> What does this gadget do?

</comment><comment><USER109> Doesn't look ready.

</comment><comment><USER110> makes me want to go bowling

</comment><comment><USER111> ech, creepy.

</comment><comment><USER112> Watching the video. First I liked it..... Then I hated it. It's too much. I don't want that kind of life. I don't want Mother to watch at me everyday every moment.</comment>


Implementing the auto-buying bot from xkcd #576 - <AUTHOR> http://bieh.net/2010/11/08/xkcd-576/ <comment><USER2> I am tempted to write a bot to submit $1 items that his bot is likely to buy.

<comment><USER3> How about a $1 bill priced at $2 w/free shipping? From every angle, it would be an interesting experiment. From the consumer's standpoint, it challenges the notion of _free shipping_. From a seller's standpoint, it challenges the notion of _easy money_ (would you really want to stuff a thousand envelopes if the item sold well?). From the middleman's standpoint, it might help to identify bots (or possibly even money laundering).

<comment><USER4> Unfortunately you are not supposed to send money via the USPS.

<comment><USER5> You could send a check instead, payable to CASH. Although, your bank might get suspicious if hundreds of people start cashing small checks against your account.

<comment><USER6> That would be a pretty bad idea since checks include all the information someone needs to make hard to reverse withdrawals from your account. Knuth used to send checks but no longer does. See <http://sunburn.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html>.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> mike-cardwell A neat bot would be one which automatically buys and then resells things with a markup. It would figure out the usual price an item goes for on a website like Ebay, and purchase it if the price is set far enough below.

<comment><USER7> I have always wanted to try something like this with stocks or commodities. Make a bot watch the market, and buy and sell. I even got far enough to imagine some sort of genetic filtering, aka give the master bot 10k, then it distributes it to 10 bots, all which are slightly different, they spend it, the master takes any profit above 1k and invests it in another bot that is a combination of the best 2. Etc. That way your max loss would be 10k, and you might make some money.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, this is interesting, but there are some annoying realities:

1) If you make something like 3 intra-day trades (buy and sell on the same day) in some defined period (a week?) the SEC will classify you as a "pattern day trader". To be allowed to do that, you need an account with something like $25k USD min.

2) There are a few items that people often forget in simplified models that will completely eat any theoretical profits: brokerage fees, taxes, and currency-exchange effects (e.g. if you're a Canadian trading US stocks).

3) After all that, you're competing with the big guys who have a deep knowledge of how trading works, and fast access to more information than you do. It's an insider's game.

<comment><USER7> I have no experience, and little intrest in stock trading. I was however interested in the AI and automation aspects of this challenge, with the stock market being a good source of data with a definite but "unknown" solution. However due to the obstructions you brought to my attention, it seems although the stock market would not be an ideal application for this.

<comment><USER8> Now I feel like a jerk for discouraging you. Motivation is fragile. :\

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Heh, cool - I was going to submit this myself after it bought a few more items, but I guess I was beaten to it.

Any questions, or suggestions for smarter ways to select items to buy, feel free :)

<comment><USER9> Of course the server would choose to die /right now/. I've fixed it, the link should work again now :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> XKCD has likely inspired more code than any other comic strip.

</comment><comment><USER11> This reminds me of the artwork by Caleb Larsen, _A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter_. It's a box that sells itself on eBay for a higher price. As a condition of buying it, you accept it can sell itself again, and so on.

Recursion, profit, AI - what's not to like? You can see its latest auction at <http://atooltodeceiveandslaughter.com> and more about the artwork at [http://caleblarsen.com/projects/a-tool-to-deceive-and- slaugh...](http://caleblarsen.com/projects/a-tool-to-deceive-and-slaughter/)

</comment><comment><USER12> There is clearly some confusion in this thread.

He didn't actually make the $1-buying ebay bot from xkcd.

He made a completely different buying bot for some new zealand auction site: trademe.

<comment><USER13> trademe is pretty much just the New Zealand version of ebay (albeit with a better reputation and more engaged community). They are also impressive because they cloned ebays business model early enough to prevent ebay from dominating the New Zealand online auction sector (as ebay did in Australia with ebay.com.au) and sold in 2006 for $700 million (NZD) ($550m in USD).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Just a small announce on HN, and the site is down.

Why does most blog software fail at simple tasks like delivering static content? Apart from comments and quick corrections, blog articles _are_ nothing more than static content. And I'd be happy to not see any comments due to high server load, as long as I can read the article.

<comment><USER15> Given the popularity of Wordpress on LAMP, it could be something like KeepAlive: [http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/19/running-apache-on-a- memo...](http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/19/running-apache-on-a-memory- constrained-vps/)

<comment><USER9> I tried this, the site seems much more responsive now. Thanks!

<comment><USER16> I did the same thing when searchforphp hit the front page. Before I disabled it the server died under the strain. Following it everything was smooth sailing again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very similar to some of the automated logic I needed to create for price tracking & prediction for my new startup www.happybuy.com.

What I found was that the biggest savings list:

<http://www.happybuy.com/search//by-savings/>

Needs to be quite intelligent to filter out a lot of product noise.

A lot of this is due to pricing manipulation whereby a price is low but the shipping is high. Also a lot of the products with the biggest savings aren't that useful :)

We've managed to improve the value of the list but are constantly tweaking it to get a good balance of savings and useful products listed.

Its especially important as we use a bot to auto-tweet the best saving of the day through twitter & facebook. Trying to get a bot to do this sometimes produces unintended (and often interesting) results.

</comment><comment><USER18> Why just restrict the search to buy-now items? In my experience more of the esoteric stuff seems to go on straight auctions and buy-now is used mainly by commerical retailers.

<comment><USER9> Yes, I plan to support things other than buy-now. This was just the simplest way to get something running.

My plan is to have it wake up every hour, check if it's won something in the last 24h, and if not then do a search for items to bid on that are closing in the next hour.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> In the book "Webbots, Spiders and Screen Scrapers" by Michael Schrenk, there's a topic that deals with automatic procurement and 'sniping' for those who are interested in reading further.

See #19 on the section list for a description:

<http://www.schrenk.com/nostarch/webbots/DSP_inside.php>

(Not affiliated in any way.)

</comment><comment><USER20> I would pay $20 to have this set up for two weeks for me. That would give you $6 you could keep for yourself. I'm sure I'm not the only one. Business here possibly?

<comment><USER21> The more people who sign up, the less interesting the results will be...

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> If the Apple App Store had an API, I would be tempted to write a bot to buy me a highly rated app every ~3 days.

Didn't try very hard, but I was unable to determine whether the Android Market has an API for purchasing paid apps. In that case, the Android phone could _be_ the bot! "Bzzzzztt. I bought this app for you. Hope you like it."

</comment><comment><USER23> Silent prayer for your soul, only $1, no shipping cost!

No, seriously, I like his crazy optimistic attitude. Probably get some fun stuff out of it. Non the less, there are really people selling this kind of enlightened service on eBay, not for $1 though.

</comment><comment><USER24> Considering the environmental impact of door to door shipping and the low chance the items will get any significant use, it's almost like the program is optimized to promote global warming over any other goals.

</comment><comment><USER25> Imports goods from China. Refurbish those goods and export them back to China.

</comment><comment><USER26> The script has 341 followers on Twitter. I love technology :)

</comment><comment><USER27> This would be much more interesting if he spent the money on auction items, instead of "Buy Now" stuff where the value is not much more than the price.

</comment><comment><USER28> Amazed it took so long for someone to do this! Start a blog with a post for each item that it buys!

<comment><USER29> The bot has a Twitter account: <http://twitter.com/trademe_xkcd576>

<comment><USER30> Wow!! Live already. That didn't take very long ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'd be (much) more impressed if he implemented this one: <http://xkcd.com/816/>

<comment><USER32> At least <http://xkcd.com/426/> has plenty of implementations, including <http://cannonerd.wordpress.com/the-tablet-of-adventure/></comment></comment>


Show HN: Morphological image processing - <AUTHOR> http://danielrapp.github.io/morph/?id=2 <comment><USER2> If you are interested in image processing I recommend Digital Image Processing by Gonzalez and Woods. Great introduction to image processing.

EDIT: Added title. I can't believe I googled the title to make sure I had the correct authors just to forget writing it here.

<comment><USER3> I actually have a copy right next to me at the moment of reading your comment. Very old copy thought, I got it on 2001 and was a 93's reprinted edition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > We'll only be working with pure black-and-white images here

They're actually black and transparent, which for me means black and dark grey :(

</comment><comment><USER5> AForge library includes a method to detect edges so that is essentially just an one liner. Please look up for CannyEdgeDetector</comment>


Sorry UX, the party's over - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rskrobe/sorry-ux-the-partys-over-ccff2e0b4d0 <comment><USER2> I've seen this pop up multiple times on multiple websites, and each time I read it I can't help but think that this person has had bad experiences with UX professionals in the past.

>To stay relevant, UX practitioners will need to reframe their engagement to understand the business, talk with other departments and learn what the market wants and demands.

If you're a UX person, you should be doing this anyways. If you don't understand the business, how can you design for it? If you don't talk to other departments (especially sales), how will you gather feedback from internal stakeholders as well as external customers? As for market needs and demands, this can be as simple as skimming a trade magazine/website or talking to potential users of your product.</comment>


Ask HN: Encrypted file drop for the masses? - <AUTHOR> I work with clinical collaborators on healthcare research projects and, although many solutions exist, we are still struggling to find a system that is dead-simple to share information in a secure way across institutions.
The requirements that we have are: - hosted solution that we can install on our servers - data encrypted at rest - possibility of sharing the files dropped into the system via a password protected system (possibly with 2FA)
The nice-to-have would be an open-source based solution.
Maybe we are asking too much? Any idea? <comment><USER2> SFTP?</comment>


China Sees U.S. as Competitor and Declining Power, Insider Says - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/03/world/asia/chinese-insider-offers-rare-glimpse-of-us-china-frictions.html

<comment><USER2> I tend to agree with China on this one, While I don't agree with a lot of what China does in America we have created this Disney World picture of America where everyone is a winner. At some point America translated equal opportunity to pursue ones dreams as equal abilities and almost everyone ignores the elephant in the room. Now I am not talking about racial or sexual identity issues I am talking about people in general. If a person does not get into college we all rally around them and demonize the big bad college to the extent that out of fear they lower their standard and inflate everyone's grades less someone be offended. This is just one example but this thinking has infected every area of public life. Now I am not a absolute meritocracy libertarian but at some level we have to judge people and their abilities on the merits, in start-ups this is self evident but as you move out to the big corporations millage varies widely.

I think given China's recent past with red communism the population is hungry and this creates a merit based system. They are outpacing us because they are simply rewarding individuals based on the merits, I understand that there is corruption and nepotism in China, but the reality is the way up in the working class is merit based, we need to return to the same thing in the US as well as figure out how to create a safety net of incentives to remove those that cannot, because they end up causing more problem than they solve when they are forced to do labor that they have no passion for. If we are going to compete we have to create a system where the competent excel and the incompetent are incentivised to get out of the way.</comment>


Why I Don't Do Unpaid Overtime and Neither Should You - <AUTHOR> http://thecodist.com/article/why_i_don_39_t_do_unpaid_overtime_and_neither_should_you <comment><USER2> I'm an "exempt" employee. That means that I'm exempt from the fair labor laws.

It means that, for example, I don't get docked in pay if I work a few _less_ hours this week. It means I don't punch a timeclock.

We just had a bit of a big deal about this at work. Some of us were taking parts of days off, and marking them as such in our system: "I took two hours off today." HR told us to stop. Apparently, there's some kind of a legal/liability issue they were getting into, where exempt employees don't have to do that. We can just take a couple hours off, without using up vacation time to do it. (I don't know the details about it. I can't tell you how to make your HR department see it this way. To me, it was just one more of those random HR policy changes. But the point is, exempt is a different set of rules, and some of those rules are pretty nice.)

Exempt also means, once in a while, that I get called in after hours, or that I work unpaid overtime. I accept that, as long as it doesn't happen too often. I accept the bad part of the deal in order to also get the good part.

If you refuse to work unpaid overtime, are you also willing to let go of the good parts of the deal?

<comment><USER3> It would depend on company policy. If company policy requires you to take PTO for a doctor's or dentists appointment, then I'd only work 40 hours at that company. If the company doesn't account for exempt time, then they may get more than 40 hours of work out of me.

Regarding exempt employees having to take PTO, recent court challenges in California have come out in favor of the employer. See Rhea V. General Atomics. [http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of- appeal/1673316.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of- appeal/1673316.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I used to have difficulty explaining to people why I was unwilling to work unpaid overtime, but I've finally settled on just saying "It's a moral issue; I think it is wrong." This seems to shut people up, at least, though they probably think I'm some kind of nuts Marxist.

Asking for more labor in return for no more pay is _wrong_ and allowing this kind of immorality to happen by willingly participating in it is also wrong. Therefore, living a moral life is incompatible with unpaid overtime.

</comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting to note that, in california, even if you are salaried as a programmer, you may still be due overtime if you earn a little less then 86k a year.

[http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf](http://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/LC515-5.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> This article is spot on. American businesses are not hanging by a thread, they are beating a horse drawing an overloaded cart, and don't care if the horse drops dead. They think they can just get another.

In today's business environment, everything seems to be both urgent and important. I think that a lot of that is due to who is in charge and what they think is pressing at the time. Everything cannot be urgent and important, only some small percentage of what needs to be done should be labeled as such.

The only way to fix this in the short term is for everyone to start saying "No" to chronic overtime. I define chronic overtime to be a work week which exceeds 48 hours over a 6 week average. Maybe then, companies will decide which tasks are really worthwhile and only direct efforts to them, or if they are understaffed, hire enough staff to get the important stuff done.

In the longer term, we need to reform the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to eliminate unpaid overtime except in unusual situations. The European Working Time Directive is an excellent example of model legislation. We just have to keep nagging our congresspersons, and beat back the US Chamber of Commerce's lobbying efforts.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's especially due to the lack of desire to be contacted outside of work hours that I do not have my work email configured to forward to my personal emails or to alert me on my phone or any other damn fool thing.

You've got to train the bozos that, once you're off, you're _off_.

<comment><USER7> IMHO emails shouldn't be raising notifications no matter what time it is. If you need to reach me synchronously, that's what chat is for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For all the stories saying "I was forced to do 80-100 hour weeks for months", I wonder how often these employees say "I'll do it for one week because I want to support this team, but I'm sorry I have other obligations beyond that that limit me to working only a regular week with an occasional 2-3 hours overtime if needed". Maybe I'm biased but I have trouble envisioning an environment in which a manager would fire somebody for that.

<comment><USER8> I had an employer chide me for only working 40 hours a week. I was told "come on, there's programmers in Silicon Valley who sleep under their desks every night!".

At drinks after work, the co-founder of a startup complained about people leaving the co-working space at 5:00 every day. "What's the matter with them? Don't they like money?"

If you're having trouble envisioning that kind of environment, it means you're a good, empathetic person. And it means you've had the luck of only working for managers who believe in work/life balance and a healthy approach to the job. Hopefully their example sank in, because if you're not a manger already you're well on your way to being one of the good ones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The idea of unpaid overtime for salaried employees is you do the overtime then take the hours off later in the week, so work 3 extra hours monday, take thursday morning off.

If you're not taking the hours off later than you're just working for free. Which, yes, is silly.</comment>


Show HN: Gmail Add-on - <AUTHOR> https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/email_studio_for_gmail/60106804857 <comment><AUTHOR> Email Studio adds power tools to Gmail including Mail Merge, Email Scheduler for sending emails later, Auto Responder for sending smart auto-replies and Email Forwarder for auto-forwarding emails to another address.

Download: [https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/email_studio_for_g...](https://gsuite.google.com/marketplace/app/email_studio_for_gmail/60106804857)

Source code: [https://github.com/labnol/email-studio-gmail- addon](https://github.com/labnol/email-studio-gmail-addon)

Video Tour: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9-480xTEOc&list=PLIO7o3VwD0...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9-480xTEOc&list=PLIO7o3VwD0X9YzFBvnnWQ5C3LksjHeWwq)</comment>


Asian Americans are the least likely in the US to be promoted to management - <AUTHOR> https://hbr.org/2018/05/asian-americans-are-the-least-likely-group-in-the-u-s-to-be-promoted-to-management <comment><USER5> In my experience executives win their positions by...

(A) being a founding member of the company and accepting high amounts of risk

(B) founding and then selling a company to another company and winning the executive role that way

(C) (the standard way) grinding it out for a very long time in an internal role

(D) being recognized and promoted very soon by an illuminated management that rapidly understands they are very high potential

(E) perhaps to appease an investor, family member or some other politically driven choice to give that person some inflated title

The reason Silicon Valley imports so many Asian workers is that they are deliberately selecting for obedience, Visa / immigrant indentured servents or want mindless crank turners to do some job no one else wants (here, maintain this sharepoint server for the next ten years) and be not expected to go anywhere.

Let's say you are a hiring manager and you have the following two choices:

(A) independent, agressive and creative employee who may argue with you, leave if you piss them off and generally do only a mixture of what you want them to do and what they feel like doing

(B) Someone who will simply do what they are told and never, ever argue or leave

Many hiring managers select for B in my experience. These are weak managers but they are very common.

This may predispose the characteristics of Asian workers imported into the valley to be the non entrepreneurial ones.

To be an executive you have to take risks, you have to take stands, you have to be agressive. A visa worker cannot do these things out of fear.

<comment><USER6> Umm... the article refers to Asian Americans. Do they need a visa to work in their own country?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> The higher up you go the more you need connectiond and informal relationships to progress.what I have seen so far in corporate america tells me a lot of people(especially older ones) still make friends based on ethnicity and gender. Of course I am only stating my subjective perception.

They should audit application of meritocracy and use apparent lack of diversity only as a potential symptom not as the illness that needs curing (unless promotions shouldn't happen based on merit?). Like, "who applied for this internal position and who had the best objective merit?"

<comment><USER8> > _what I have seen so far in corporate america tells me a lot of > people(especially older ones) still make friends based on ethnicity and > gender_

Corporate America? This is in all kinds of America (and probably all over the world). From statistics I've read (don't have the link now), the average white person for example has much less black friends and acquaintances that would be representative by percentage of population in their area. And vice versa of course. Same for men having male vs female friends (and, again, vice versa).

We're social animals, but we prefer to associate with people similar to us -- and even when it comes to arts, and media preferences and hobbies and so on, gender and ethnicity play a role.

And of course there's the demographics: there are very clear white and black neighbourhoods for example -- this obviously extends to the social circle, e.g. neighbourhoods, other kids you know, etc. That said, severals programs to "fix" this, like busing and forced breakups of communities, didn't work.

[http://prospect.org/article/moving-hood-mixed-success- integr...](http://prospect.org/article/moving-hood-mixed-success-integrating- suburbia)

[https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/21/racial- segrega...](https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/21/racial-segregation- in-america-causes)

[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/welcome-neighbors-new- evi...](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/welcome-neighbors-new-evidence-on- the-possibility-of-stable-racial-integration/)

<comment><USER7> Not everyone is like that. Shared beliefs and common goals are a lot of times more important but people still see each other as different even though they were born in the same hospitals and went to the same schools and sports events all their lives due to appearances. People distrust different especially when the stakes are high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I love how, usually for "politically correct" reasons, the term Asian is used (usually as a cop out) to refer to several different cultures and ethnicities.

This is the biggest continent on Earth after all.

<comment><USER10> Yes I always thought this is weird. For me in the UK, "Asian" always referred to (for better or worse) Indian, Pakistani, and Bengali up until somewhere in the mid-2000s I think (??) when I was told by someone that "The O-word" is a racist term (I am starting to sound like my grandparents here!)

Sorry to anyone I offended up until then.

I'd prefer it if we just dumped this concept of needing to put everyone into a generalised named-group anyway. I am just me, regardless of my gender/ethnicity/age/favourite ice cream flavour/sexuality/politics. Articles pointing out how "my" group are failing at this or over-represented at that or that it is official "Named-Group Month" are not helpful in my opinion - <USER2> just serve to divide and highlight differences between people. We need to treat everyone equally by rooting out bias (conscious or otherwise) and I dont think this sort of thing helps us to reach that goal.

<comment><USER11> I'm genuinely curious - what's the "o-word"? Orient? How is that racist? English is not my first language and I have never came across Orient being used in a derogatory or offensive way - unless of course there's some other word I don't know about.

<comment><USER12> Referring to the region as the "Orient" isn't really a problematic term, even if it might be seen as a bit archaic. But using the term "oriental" to refer to the people from that region does have a disparaging and pejorative history in American English usage. Outside of the US the term is considered less disparaging and more just considered archaic.

<comment><USER10> In the UK it has been considered racist for a while I believe. At least that is what I have been led to believe.

I am not sure who "decides" (presumably the people who are called by that name) when this happens, but there was a distinct point for me (although I cant remember precisely when that was) where I was informed that I cant use that term any more.

Bit of a shock to be politely told by someone, when up until that point you had no idea. You feel bad - you had no idea.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found this genuinely surprising and saddening. Genuinely, some of the most simultaneous competent, friendly and amusing colleagues I have had were Asian. One possible suggestion: do characteristics which signal confidence and competence vary across US and Asian management cultures? Do Asian managers downplay their strengths because of Asian cultural norms?

<comment><USER14> You're starting to touch the issue, but IMO, not quite. Allow me to present a somewhat controversial approach.

Considering the US only: at the risk of extreme and borderline stereotypical generalizations - if one looks at the history of immigration into the country - the Asian immigrants have largely consisted of Chinese laborers around the gold rush, Indian truck drivers and motel/cornershop owners in the early - <USER3> 1900's. They came to make a living in somewhat decent conditions. Both lines of work require you to be reasonably honest, keep your head down and do the job. It can be presumed these were the values these Asian parents inculcated into their children - who saw the pathway to their version of the American dream as a relatively low risk SME. The Asian immigrants since the 1960s have been largely STEM people - academic high performers, given the nature of university admissions and the visa process. STEM high performers - <USER4> individuals, and presumably as parents too, tend to be intelligent but sensible (risk-rational), belive in very hard work, tend not to oversocialize, to not brag a whole lot, and tend to prioritize knowledge/lifestyle over blind ambition and obscene wealth. None of those traits are directly conducive to being a top exec, but rather to a job like VP - engg.

An excellent case in point - as another commenter also mentioned, if you go to Asian cities, you'll find exactly the sort of "persona" you'd find in a typical Western exec, often exaggerated to an even higher level. But that persona hasn't made it to US shores, instead choosing to make it big in their own place.

In contrast, many of the earliest "white" immigrants came here first for ideological reasons, and later driven by ambitions of striking it big, and often by delusions of grandeur, and were significantly less risk-averse than either groups of Asian immigrants I mentioned earlier. Of course there were plenty of regular folks too.

So I would submit that instead of looking at just Asians/whites making it to top exec, one should look at 1) professional backgrounds of the parents of top execs, 2) fraction of those with highest academic/test scores making it to top exec. Of course, to be a successful top exec, the need for "top" academic scores is outweighed by a host of other qualifications. Asians in whom these "other" qualifications are found in ample measure often do make it big in their home countries, but might make terrible immigrants to the US.

<comment><USER15> This is the problem. You assume the situation is justified and try to find an explanation for it. Would you submit this kind of theories if the article is talking about any other groups?

<comment><USER14> You're conflating two different things - 1) justification and 2) explanation, and with that misinterpreting the gist of my post.

Just because it has a valid explanation doesn't mean it is just, nor that it should continue. I was trying to give one possible background for why things are they way they are - not the way they should be.

The situation is starting to change, but it simply cannot happen overnight, the best case scenario for sustainable change is a couple of generations of sustained effort from all sides. Look at how the Italian and Irish immigrants went from pariahs to normal. The Chinese have gone from manual labor to solid middle class in 2-3 generations.

And I'd be happy to submit whatever kind of explanation I think might fit the facts of any situation, regardless of group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The change in headline from the original article is misleading. The article gives data that Asian American are under-represented in management across a few professional fields, but do not (nor does it promise to) go into explaining why that's happening. :\

</comment><comment><USER17> More interesting, I believe, is the question: why do so many Indians advance to the executive level relative to East Asians, when both are similarly famous for academic excellence and strict upbringing?

</comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft CEO is Indian. As is Google and Adobe's. As are Nokia and Global Foundries and Pepsi and MasterCard and Deloitte and SanDisk and and and. Nvidia CEO and founder is Taiwanese. It's not like those are small players

<comment><USER19> You can find examples of executives of all races, religions and sexualities. The article points out that Asian Americans are less likely to rise to exec level, not that they literally don't do it at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> in other news engineers don't want to be promoted to management.

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

</comment><comment><USER21> There is a strange yet important issue with some people who will never advance to Exec level due to childhood experiences with abuse. Extremely serious trauma could be detected by Hogan tests that are used by many companies for Exec candidates. Such Trauma would make people break down in stressful situations.

</comment><comment><USER22> As long as someone finds it necessary to discriminate between any humans (for example "Afroamerican", "Asian", "Hispanic", "White"), instead of treating them all as humans, you will not get rid of discrimination, because by definition, to start naming groups is to discriminate. The very verb to discriminate is a synonym for distinguish.

<comment><USER23> Discriminate is used with multiple definitions; here it's being used as a synonym for "discriminate _against_ ".

<comment><USER24> Is it possible to only discriminate _in favor_ of some group without discriminating against some other group?

<comment><USER23> No, but it's possible to discriminate without being in favor or against, if you use the definition given by Annatar (ie, distinguish).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> And they didn't even mention how underrepresented they are in politics.

<comment><USER26> Also, why are African people underrepresented in Asian politics?

<comment><USER25> According to Google the percentage of the population that is African-American is 12.3%, whereas Asians make up only 5.6 percent of the population.

So I guess I didn't do my research.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well, someone has do do the hard work.

</comment><comment><USER28> Does Asian include Indians as well? Kind of amusing since Apple and Google are both lead by "asian" immigrant men.

<comment><USER29> India and China each have a billion people but the article can't find a politically correct way to distinguish between them.

Or a more serious explanation is that there is little data here because surveys lump "asians" together.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> How close are Harvard Business Review and Harvard, the university? Because timing of this article is odd with Harvard, the University is being sued for discriminating against Asian candidates.

And the article's conclusion calling out for more work towards inclusion of Asian Americans in management workforce seems a bit apologetic. But maybe I am wrong and reading this incorrectly.

<comment><USER31> You are absolutely correct, there have been lots of news reports[1] about the partiality against Asians in the university, and this is most likely a PR exercise to counter that.

[1] [http://www.newsweek.com/harvard- opinion-990958](http://www.newsweek.com/harvard-opinion-990958)

<comment><USER32> It seems highly unlikely that Harvard University would risk getting the entire organization involved in a lawsuit dealing specifically with Harvard College admissions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Another reason for Asians not advancing along the career ladder is that most of them are down-to-earth and not interested in flaunting money. Most are content with earning enough to make a livelihood with comforts, luxuries isn't what most of them care about. Again, I know this is probably the characteristic of most people in general, not just Asians. I just feel that Asians with this nature are more in number than westerners.

<comment><USER33> I'm not convinced. I mean, look at any of the big Asian cities and you'll find endless examples of flaunted wealth.

<comment><USER31> It appears that way because:

1\. Those who flaunt are in the minority, but make the most impact. You are looking at endless flaunted wealth in few cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, but not at the infinite villages in states like Maharashtra, MP, UP, Bihar, etc. where most people still struggle to make a livelihood.

2\. Its easy to flaunt wealth in India than more developed countries because of ills like corruption, illiteracy, lack of social media and awareness, etc. If an American flaunts wealth, probably he/she will easily catch the attention of social media and the FBI/IRS/etc. But in India, nobody cares and the institutions are quite corrupt and easily bend to the will of the rich and wealthy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> This is a harmful way of thinking, unfortunately on the rise lately. Ostensibly to promote fairness and diversity, it encourages us to think _more_ about arbitrary racial categories, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Those things about people we were starting to consider less and less significant, we are being encouraged instead to be hyper-aware of.

Whoever decides the categories has the power to decide whether your organization is compliant. For example, suppose by a miracle that your organization is "correctly diverse" with regard to some set of blessed ethnic groups, hereditary traits, disabilities, etc. Well, your organization is almost certainly not compliant with regard to the left-handed, those who can roll their tongues, those with connected earlobes, those with flat feet, etc. Maybe you have the "correct" number of black people, but do you have the correct number of gay black people? Do you have the correct number of gay black women? How do you feel about sexual orientation or autism being blessed categories, but not, say, albinism, hyperhidrosis, or Marfan syndrome?

As a practical matter, how do you suppose someone would show that they were, say, partly descended from Native Americans? Certificate from a genetics testing lab? Are we going to carry cards in our wallets?

That's not the future I want. Your body is not the important part of you. The important part of you is your mind. I won't help build a hyper-body-focused society.

In the future I envision, nobody cares about anybody's supposed ethnicity. Nobody keeps spreadsheets about it. Nobody specifically considers body attributes during college admissions, or hiring decisions, or really, ever, because it's just not important. Let's not support any efforts to make these things _more_ important.

<comment><USER34> Whilst you're correct that we shouldn't be worrying about body attributes at all, and I agree with your vision of the future, we still need a way to get from where we are _now_ to where we want to be.

In the meantime the best we've got is to try and make sure we've got some evidence of diversity.

<comment><USER24> > we still need a way to get from where we are now to where we want to be.

It has been happening already. It's as if we've been gradually smoking less and less, and then a movement comes along that tells us that in order to quit, we actually need to smoke _more_ for the foreseeable future.

<comment><USER35> >> we still need a way to get from where we are now to where we want to be.

>It has been happening already.

Citation needed. I think evidence suggests that we've been getting from where we have been to where we want to be precisely _because_ of these kinds of efforts, and the pushback against these efforts has been there at every step of the way.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Generating and executing x86 code at runtime - <AUTHOR> http://androidbutnotparanoid.blogspot.com/2009/05/dynamically-generating-and-executing.html

<comment><USER2> I am watching the revival of assembly --- a decade after everyone declared its death. This article would have been a meaningless hacker article 5 years ago. Now everyone feels they need to write a JIT for their DSL. Suddenly there is a new interest in assembly.

<comment><USER3> I think it's mainly due to the market having settled on two instruction sets: x86 and ARM. Ten years ago creating ISA-specific code was a much more risky decision because it would inhibit or complicate porting to one of the other architectures (PowerPC, SPARC, Itanium, Alpha and MIPS were still viable -- now only PowerPC remains as a distant third in the ISA contest, holding niches in game consoles and IBM's high-end servers).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Shellcode.</comment>


Velodyne Announces a Solid-State Lidar - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/sensors/velodyne-announces-a-solidstate-lidar <comment><USER2> Hm, this is not Velodyne's first announcement of a solid state lidar breakthrough.

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sens...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sensors/velodyne-announces-breakthrough-in-solid-state- lidar-design)

Several other companies are working on these (Quanergy, Blackmore) too, but so far they seem to be just press releases. Hopefully we'll see some real ones soon; the current state of the art for wide field lidar are many thousands of dollars and (imo) too fragile for use in production vehicles.

<comment><USER3> Not much info here from Velodyne. What's the range? Is this a flash or MEMS device? Resolution?

Advanced Scientific Concepts has had good flash LIDAR units for sale for years. They just cost too much. They sold them to DoD and Space-X. Continental, the German auto parts maker (a very big company, not a startup) has purchased the ASC technology and expects to ship in volume in 2020. Here's a Continental prototype mounted on a Mercedes.[1] This is mounted at bumper height and has a 120 degree field of view, and has only 30m range. So this is for city driving or slow driving in tight spots.

Continental says they intend to ship in volume in 2020. Nobody is yet interested in ordering enough units in the kind of volume a major auto parts manufacturer needs.

Google uses a high-mounted LIDAR with longer range as well as the bumper height sensors. This doesn't address that market.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqFX94zBPI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxqFX94zBPI)

<comment><USER4> From the image at the top of the article: "up to 200m range" and "35 degree vertical field of view".

<comment><USER3> In the video, the Continental rep says "120 degree field of view" and "reaching out as far as thirty meters".[1] This may be the short range model for bumper height applications. ASC has built units with much longer ranges.

For more range, you need bigger collecting optics, which means a bigger unit, or a narrower field of view. The tradeoffs are straightforward.

You also have to spread the laser output over a wider area to keep it eye- safe. The laser eye-safety requirement is on power through a 1/4" hole, corresponding to the pupil size of an eye. This protects people staring directly into the emitter. The power can be greater if the beam is wider. If you devoted the top inch of the windshield to sensors, and spread the laser output over a wide area of windshield, the power could be much higher.

[1] [https://youtu.be/pxqFX94zBPI?t=139](https://youtu.be/pxqFX94zBPI?t=139)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is mostly hype until they can actually deliver.

I ordered several of their current lidars 5 months ago and now it looks like the total delivery time will be about a year after the order. And they're mostly unresponsive about what is going on.

<comment><USER6> I was at SPAR 3D in Houston a couple weeks ago (trade show for laser scanning/ surveying industry), and there was some rumor-mill type chatter about what the hell was going on with Velodyne.

Apparently some folks have heard that they're having some sort of supplier issue that they're not doing a good job of working through/ finding a replacement for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Naïve question : why is Lidar so important for driverless cars? We human drive cars with only visual and audio information. We don't need lidars. Why couldn't cars do the same?

<comment><USER8> Since Tesla is not using Lidar and they have one of the most advanced self- driving systems, i wonder about this too.

<comment><USER9> _" Since Tesla is not using Lidar and they have one of the most advanced self- driving systems, i wonder about this too."_

Who says? The chattering masses on HN?

Tesla has certainly _deployed_ a lot of assisted driving systems, but then again, so have a lot of car companies. Lane-keeping and auto-braking are not new, and to date, that's all Tesla has actually shipped.

People who know better have serious doubts that you can do full autonomy with only video/radar input under real-world driving conditions (like darkness). That's why most of their competitors are using LIDAR.

<comment><USER10> Lidar makes a ton of things easy. Visually extracting 3d world from cameras is a very hard and computationally intensive problem.

I really hope velodyne delivers. Quanergy seems to have a nice site but seems vaporware in the sense you can't actually buy it.

A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving cars and drones.

<comment><USER11> > A $100 light weight Lidar is truly game changing for robots, self driving > cars and drones.

This is probably going to end up like the Oculus Rift; it won't be $100.00 - it will probably end up north of $500.00, possibly north of $1000.00.

If it were easy, SICK or Hokuyo would have done it already. The fact that neither have can mean many things, of course, but I bet one of the big ones is that it isn't easy to pack a 3D LIDAR into a small package and make it robust and cheap. Both of those companies 2D LIDAR solutions already hit the robust portion; Hokuyo's offerings hit the small package portion (SICK's 2D systems are mostly the size of a coffeemaker - I own a couple), but neither company hits the low price mark.

That could also mean that they have a niche market that's willing to pay those prices, but given the interest and want for fast 3D LIDAR for self-driving vehicles and other uses, the fact that they don't have anything out is telling.

Now doing it all solid-state? Well - there are companies that have these systems as well (supposedly at least) - called "flash LIDAR"; essentially firing a laser to "flash" the scene, then using a grid-array of CCD-like high- speed elements to gather a 3D delay-time between the flash and reception. From what I've seen, for even the low-resolution modules, they make the former two companies offerings look dirt-cheap in comparison...

<comment><USER12> $1000 is still game changing. $1000 is something that's downright cheap to throw a few of on a car if it allows for a true NHTSA level 4 self driving car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Finally! Anyone has a guess as to what those might cost?

(Edit: whoops, embarassing : totally missed the "hundreds of dollars." Sorry!)

</comment><comment><USER14> What does "solid state" here mean? If i am not blind the aryicle doesn't explain that, only that it is cheaper.

<comment><USER15> By 'lidar' they mean '2d depth imager using lasers', which has historically been done with a fixed laser and a physically moving galvanometer. Solid state is to get rid of the moving galvanometer.

<comment><USER16> Replacing it with what? It seems like something would have to be moving.

<comment><USER17> There are many techniques for optical beam steering. It some cases you can use MEMs devices (like DLPs) or you can apply a voltage across a optically clear material that changes its properties under the electric field. This is used to bend the light in certain directions (think of an electrically controllable prism.)

<comment><USER18> MEMs (as in a DLP tv) seems less than an ideal for the abuse a vehicle takes. Curious if the other option you mention is similar to a cathode ray tube?

<comment><USER19> It depends on the implementation, the concept seems fragile but they can be amazingly resilient. There are a bunch of MEMS accelerometers that support ranges in the 10s to 100s of Gs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The article mentions the angles (120 horizontal, 35 vertical), but not the distance covered. This might explain why the interviewee does not believe the solid-state lidar will replace the current tech.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's answered in the Velodyne press release [1] linked from the article: _" The new Velarray LiDAR sensor uses Velodyne's proprietary ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) to achieve superior performance metrics in a small package size of 125mm x 50mm x 55mm that can be embedded into the front, sides, and corners of vehicles. It provides up to a 120-degree horizontal and 35-degree vertical field-of-view, with a 200-meter range even for low- reflectivity objects. With an automotive integrity safety level rating of ASIL B, Velarray will not only ensure safe operation in L4 and L5 autonomous vehicles but also in ADAS-enabled cars. It has a target price in the hundreds of dollars when produced in mass volumes."_

[1] [ [http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170419005516/en/Velo...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20170419005516/en/Velodyne- LiDAR-Announces-%E2%80%9CVelarray%E2%80%9D-LiDAR-Sensor) ]

<comment><USER20> Then why do you think will the current technology still be useful, given an order of magnitude higher price?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not the writer of that piece. But my guess would be that automotive technology tends to change slowly and gets gradually replaced.

Car companies are getting used to reading data from standard Lidar. Getting them to suddenly dump it for Solid-State Lidar may be a step too fast and they would rather go through a transition period first (standard + solid-state) until they are happy with the performance of solid-state lidar.

You are referring to this in the article, right? _"I don't necessarily believe that [the solid-state lidar] will obviate or replace the 360-degree units—it will be a complement," Marty Neese, chief operating officer of Velodyne, told IEEE Spectrum earlier this month. "There's a lot of learning yet to go by carmakers to incorporate lidar in a thoughtful way."_

<comment><USER21> is it hard to put 3 x 120 degree units to get 360 coverage if the unit is only 55mm wide?

<comment><USER22> It's probably not hard to put the units in, but I imagine combining the data from them wouldn't be trivial.

<comment><USER21> are seams really that big a problem? you could go to 4 and have overlap, interleaving and soft rollover.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> MIT/DARPA also have a combined solid state steerable beam transmitter and sensor using phased arrays:

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/optoelectr...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/optoelectronics/mit-lidar-on-a-chip)

<comment><USER24> The MIT lidar has really bad resolution and range iirc

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Does anyone know if this or any lidars used for self-driving cars is capable of doing Doppler lidar?

</comment><comment><USER26> Is lidar still necessary if computer vision advances far enough? We drive just fine without radar.

<comment><USER27> Human eyes have depth perception, a camera doesn't.

<comment><USER28> Stereopsis and stereoblindness is actually a fascinating topic. Some humans don't have it, and still manage to drive, ride bicycles, or fly planes.

 _The Mind 's Eye_ by Oliver Sacks has an interesting chapter on a woman who managed to develop stereovision in her late 40s through vision therapy.

<comment><USER29> Humans have a huge amount of "common sense" knowledge that makes object recognition a lot easier, even without 3D information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Luminar has announced an interesting lidar as well, but no word on how the cost will come down since it's a 1500nm lidar, requiring indium gallium arsenide and other expensive and exotic metals.

<comment><USER30> I would suspect any solid state lidar design at this point would be GaN (Galium Nitride) unless somebody has made a very secret breakthrough.

<comment><USER24> The current generation of solid state lidar uses silicon, because of the different wavelength.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Is there any chance Lidar could be used in consumer drones in the future?

<comment><USER32> Absolutely yes there is. Even the single point laser rangefinders like what are linked in the top comment here now are useful for consumer drones.

The hack people used to do (maybe still do?) was to combine a laser pointer and a webcam, and infer the distance based on where in the Y axis the laser appeared in the image that the webcam received.

This, which is many points in many directions, is much, much better, and it sounds like it will be cheap (at least much cheaper than these devices have been).

<comment><USER33> One counter objection: LiDAR on drone will be a whole lot less useful if they all 1) collect the same frequency of EM, and 2) have any way of picking up scattered signals from other drones (because it was pointed at other drones, or from scattered reflections).

Right now there's not much in the way of LiDAR on anything, but once there is, we will need to find ways to stop other active sensors from interfering with our own.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I wonder if we're going to start seeing 3D barcodes that robots use to read each other's ID and relative orientation.

<comment><USER34> A normal 2D QR code would give you orientation, see all the computer vision AR examples. What would 3D add to this?

<comment><USER32> Well you see a 3D one has more Ds in it, so more Ds = more better?

/s

Totally not my field at all, was just daydreaming a bit. Thanks for the info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Velodyne hopes to win the new phase of this game by being first to market. "The first mover sets the standard," Neese said. "Software is 60 percent of the effort, so if you show up [later] with a new piece of hardware, it may not fit in."

Garmin has one on the market for $150 [https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14032?gclid=CIzZ86-fs9MCFQ...](https://www.sparkfun.com/products/14032?gclid=CIzZ86-fs9MCFQ- HswodxFsLSA)

<comment><USER36> That thing is basically just a laser range finder, it doesn't produce a 2D "image" of distances (unless you pair it with something to spin it around, at which point you just have a bad version of existing lidars).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Anyone know what the deal is with Quanergy [1]?

[1] [http://quanergy.com](http://quanergy.com)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure what you mean by "what the deal is with Qaunergy". Does this article [1] answer your query?

[1] "Quanergy Announces $250 Solid-State LIDAR for Cars, Robots, and More" (Jan 2016) [ [http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sens...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that- think/transportation/sensors/quanergy-solid-state-lidar) ]

<comment><USER37> How does this news bode for Quanergy?

<comment><USER38> Quanergy gave me an early quote on a dev kit last year that was an order of magnitude higher than that. So unless they've reached that price point from their press release, probably not good...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Would these be able to be used on drones?

<comment><USER40> It mentions _" The Velodyne package measures 125 millimeters by 50 mm by 55 mm"_, so pretty small.

But, as I understand it, to do something useful with that, you need to be pulling in a lot of data in real time and processing it. So it may not be the Lidar unit itself that's the weight constraint.</comment></comment>


A parser-combinator approach to parsing JSON - <AUTHOR> http://hacks.catdancer.ws/parser-combinator-approach-to-json.html <comment><USER2> It looks like modeling your parser as fn(str) -> (list-of (pair-of value remaining-str)) might work out as a more compact (in terms of code) and powerful representation. I did something similar when writing a combinator library for querying xml-like trees and it ended up quite powerful. (you can replace "str" with any sequence type).

For one thing, you can write parsers that return more than one value - i.e. parsers that are ambiguous about how they parse the string they are given. That lets you express "longest" and "shortest" as parser combinators rather than some special operation for each parser.

<comment><USER3> I didn't quite follow, perhaps an example to help me? Is there a specific place where the code would become shorter?

<comment><USER2> Each element of the returned list represents one way that the parser can "succeed". For example, if your parser is for the regexp "a+" and you give the string "aaabc", then the parser can return (("a" . "aabc") ("aa" . "abc") ("aaa" . "bc")] to say that it can interpret "aaabc" in 3 ways. You can transform this into the "longest" parse by filtering this list for the shortest "remaining string".

If your parser returns [] it means it cannot parse the string, so it all fits together. I don't know if I can find the time to rewrite the code to show you explicitly how this could help, but looking at Parsec (in Haskell) will give you a good idea of what I'm talking about

<http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/download/parsec/parsec.html>

<comment><USER3> Very interesting! Would you use this for backtracking?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> A well documented effort, definitely!</comment>


Getters/Setters. Evil. Period - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2014/09/16/getters-and-setters-are-evil.html?2014-37 <comment><USER2> Interesting article.

But I see a problem -- or at least a _challenge_ :

> Dog dog = new Dog("23kg");

> int weight = dog.weight();

> The dog is an immutable living organism, which doesn't allow anyone from the > outside to change her weight, or size, or name, etc. She can tell, on > request, her weight or name.

See the inconsistency? We have code demonstrating the creation of a Dog with the weight property specified. Then there is a discussion of some of the properties a Dog has -- but the other properties are not specified in the code we just saw. The description of a Dog, and the code shown above it, are not based on the same design.

Of course, one can argue that this code is merely a sample; it is there for clarity, to get an idea across. We do not want to obscure that essential idea with zillions of extra parameters; this would only confuse the reader. However, _that same argument applies to "real" code, too_.

Ensuring that an object has all the properties it is supposed to have, is something that we need to be able to do. Some APIs give you a creation function with gobs of parameters. These irritate me. I find code to be easier both to write and to read if there is a short call to create, followed by several property-specifying calls, each handling a single property. Another name for such calls is _setters_.

The latter approach has other advantages, too. If the creation function gives me an object with sensible defaults, then I do not need to specify properties that I am not interested in. And new properties can be added without breaking existing code.

Now, actually, I think I am basically in sympathy with this article. In OO, the point of an object is not to be a bare tuple with some code hanging off of it. An object is the concrete expression of a collection of responsibilities; it exists in order to fulfil them. An interface with getters & setters generally does not mesh well with such thinking.

However, that does not mean that banning getters & setters entirely is a desirable design guideline.

So, yegor256a, how do you think all those properties that a Dog has -- or might have in a future revision -- ought to be specified?</comment>


How to name a StartUp - The story of AdEspresso - <AUTHOR> http://blog.adespresso.com/how-to-name-a-startup/

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Guys, we'd like a little help from HN :) this is basicly our first blog post after going live with the new website last week at TechCrunch Italy.

I'd really like to have your feedback on the communication tone and content ... is it righr, interesting ? Is it too informal ?

Being based in Italy finding the right balance when blogging in english is not very easy so any help and suggestion would be really appreciated !</comment>


Does it ever make sense to turn down a promotion? - <AUTHOR> TL;DR - Is accepting a senior engineer role with 2-3 years of experience wise?<p>After graduating two years ago, I took a job as a junior engineer at a top level engineering company in Silicon Valley. I worked my ass off and tried to elevate those around me, but felt like office politics were slow tracking me and keeping me from the position / pay I thought I was worth. Last week after an interview with another company which I did very well on, I got an offer as a senior developer with nearly double my current salary. I immediately said yes, but now I'm second guessing myself: am I setting myself up to fail miserably? I definitely feel like I am a 3-4x engineer and have the performance reviews to back it up, but I'm also worried that I simply don't have enough experience (2 years + 2 summer internships) to do what it takes to be a senior engineer. Is this just imposter syndrome? What makes an engineer "Senior" or not besides just saying "experience"? <comment><USER2> Dude you got this. Just break out the books, the videos and start brushing up on everything like you were back in school. Find out what technology stack they use and start building lots of side projects. No days off. You want the answer to the question on the tip of your tongue. Act like a senior engineer and you will be one. Give it 120%. Good Luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1\. If that company hired you for that job, they probably think that you have the skills they're looking for to be successful in that job. And it sounds like you're willing to work hard and learn new things. So I'd recommend that you go for it.

2\. The title of "senior developer" doesn't have a fixed or precise definition. For example, in one company a senior developer may be someone who has 15 years of experience, has shipped several big projects and has played the role of a lead developer. But in another company, someone with 15 years of experience may be considered to be to old (35+) or expensive to hire, and a "senior developer" is someone who has had 2-3 years of experience.

</comment><comment><USER4> Engineering firms often offer new hires more than recent(1-3 years) hires because inflation at the hire level is driven by scarcity but year by year inflation is governed by cost of living plus 2-3% and COLA has been on a very slow upramp due to the depression and aftermath. The new job company knows the newhire level of wages plus the wages you get (more or less) and they see in you some potential. As others have said, if you were properly assessed by the hiring interview, you need have no fear of the future. You just have a little fear of the unknown - do not hide under covers - go out, slay dragon(s)

</comment><comment><USER5> Even if you did fail, the experience gained may be worth it. Have you learned most of what you can learn in your current position? I would think you have within that two year span.

</comment><comment><USER6> > but now I'm second guessing myself: am I setting myself up to fail > miserably?

Give the managers at the new company some credit. They likely had a formal screening and scorecard for the interview process. You might imagine that they have interviewed hired several people in the past.

Assuming you were truthful in your discussing your skills, background, and experience-- they recognize your potential and believe you can be accretive to the team. Move onward and upward.

</comment><comment><USER7> Really depends on the position a lot of the time, sometimes a Senior Dev role can be very focused on experience over everything else, other times I have seen Senior Dev roles where it was more about mindset and attitude, which might well be the kind of role you're talking about here.

I'd say back yourself and go for it. Always better to dive in the deep end and be challenged than to stay static and not learn</comment>