"Don't you dare waste your fucking time" - <AUTHOR> http://23moments.com/dont-you-dare-waste-your-fucking-time

<comment><USER2> Reminds me of "Instantes" by Jorge Luis Borges:

If I were able to live my life anew, In the next I would try to commit more errors. I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more. I would be more foolish than I've been, In fact, I would take few things seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would run more risks, take more vacations, contemplate more sunsets, climb more mountains, swim more rivers. I would go to more places where I've never been, I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans, I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones. I was one of those people that lived sensibly and prolifically each minute of his life; Of course I had moments of happiness. If I could go back I would try to have only good moments.

Because if you didn't know, of that is life made: only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never went anywhere without a thermometer, a hot-water bottle, an umbrella, and a parachute; If I could live again, I would travel lighter. If I could live again, I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends. I would take more cart rides, contemplate more dawns, and play with more children, If I had another life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85, and I know that I am dying.

<comment><USER3> Sorry to butt in all pedantic, but I was unable to confirm that Borges wrote this poem (it's usually presented as a poem), and found a few online conversations where it's claimed it has been attributed to several different writers and is of uncertain authorship.

<comment><USER4> For some reason this comment bothers me, mostly because it's something that _I_ do. I will often interrupt a beautiful moment with some irrelevant fact or correction. I notice that I always apologize for it, either politely like you did, or just in my head. Man to man, let's be honest, is it worth it?

<comment><USER5> I guess it depends how much of a Borges fan you are. For fans like myself, seeing "Instantes" attributed to Borges is like seeing "Twilight" attributed to Shakespeare.

Actually, "Instantes" started life as a Reader's Digest (prose) article in 1953. Over time, it was transcribed by several anonymous scribes, rendered in free verse, and attributed to different authors. I remember seeing it published in an Argentinian newspaper as a Borges poem (Clarin? if I remember correctly) sometime in the '80s, shortly after Borges' death. I think that was the first time it was attributed to Borges.

For more information:

<http://reelyredd.com/blog/2009/04/>

<http://www.borges.pitt.edu/bsol/iainst.php>

Last link is a hyper-pedantic article in Spanish by a Borges scholar, with quote by Borges himself on the subject: "[If I was to live this life again] I would do the same things. Because one is like one is, no?"

<comment><USER3> Thanks, this clears things up considerably.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A darker story: I was out of state, at a friend's house party, a few years ago and the discussion got non-superficial late in the night, as it sometimes does. His friends were talking about a friend who was not there.

Some time prior, this woman had an argument with her mother that escalated into all-out shouting, petty criticisms, damning accusations, anger. The last thing she yelled to her mother was "F __* y __!!"

The next morning her mother died suddenly. At the party, her friends were discussing how she regrets to the utmost of her life - that unfortunate and final send off. How she would give anything to undo what cannot be undone. How hard it is for this woman to try to forgive herself (the most important person of all to forgive).

I know it's a cliche but this is a true story. You may not see someone you love again - so don't part in anger. Don't curse out your parents or your significant other.

<comment><USER7> Or realize that these moments are just part of a relationship's ebb and flow. To have someone die during the low point doesn't erase all the previous positive experiences.

<comment><USER6> I understand where you are coming from. But I think it is quite another thing to actually experience.

<comment><USER8> I have a hard time believing that she won't get over it. But who knows, people are crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I apologize if I come across as snarky, it is not my intent, but I don't like being told what I should do. There's no 'right' way to go about using your time, and wasting it is completely subjective. If I'm about to die and all I want to do is watch TV, there's nothing wrong with that. I don't have to provide value, I don't have to travel, I don't have to take risks, I don't have to watch sunsets, I don't have to do anything, if I don't want to.

Her message is good, and I found it very moving like many of you, but I can't agree that 'doing' something is always the best thing for everyone. Do what you want, as long as you aren't hurting anyone else's ability to do what they want.

<comment><USER10> You missed the message. That's the whole message, to do what YOU want and not what someone else tells you or make you think you have to. Do more of what gives you pleasure and fulfilment. Be it watching a sunset or chasing storms or whatever unless pleasure is to hurt someone...

<comment><USER9> The message I heard was 'get up and do something before it's too late,' so I could have very well missed part of what was intended. All I'm saying, is doing nothing is perfectly acceptable as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Reminds me of "The Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch. That was one of the most inspiring talks I've ever heard. Check it out if you haven't yet - <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo>

<comment><USER12> I got the exact same thought. I still remember seeing above YouTube link on google homepage and clicked on it. I missed my dinner, my wife kept calling me, but I just got sucked into Randy's talk. It definitely changed me and how I look at my life. I think this is another powerful message. Thanks for sharing this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is not to be confused with "never work towards a long term goal" or "never invest in the future", which is the primary criticism I have of the "live for the day" moral.

It's rational to say "forget about 10 years from now" if you have two years to live. It's not rational if you're expecting to live 50 or 60 more years, even if there is some standard deviation to your expectation.

</comment><comment><USER14> The problem is, despite all good intentions (which famously pave the road to hell), I am still not sure how to live a meaningful life. It is easy to make decisions on the spot, but really hard to stick to something over the long time. I don't have any working system for staying on track.

What do you use to manage your life? I have at times put down my goals on paper, but those sheets of paper just got lost under the pile of other papers (bills, other plans and what not). Maybe daily checks would be the thing - just write a new plan every day, with adjustments from the daily experience?

<comment><USER15> This might sound lame but for me it's Twitter. I'm back on Weight Watchers try to drop the 20 pounds I put over the holidays and new year, so I'm tweeting my weigh ins every Friday. I slipped up a little yesterday; everybody at work brought in their superbowl leftovers. But you can bet that I'm back on today, because I'd really like to have something positive to tweet about Friday, and "the whole world" is watching :-)

I'm doing the same thing with one of my side projects (or trying to anyway). I'm tweeting about little updates, every step closer to a closed beta, and I plan on continuing to tweet about the ups and downs as they come. I have enough followers who I greatly respect that I'd feel pretty silly if I didn't follow through.

<comment><USER16> If you really want to understand why it's difficult to lose weight, and "hack" your body like you hack on computers, I highly recommend a book called Ultrametabolism by Dr. Mark Hyman.

In the last 3 months I've lost 20 pounds, just by doing mainly these 3 things:

1\. Eat breakfast every day, and make sure it has protein. 2\. Eat only whole grains and no refined flour, pasta, and avoid simple carbs. 3\. Eat plenty of fats, including nuts, avocadoes, olive oil, and other healthy fats.

I've done all of this while eating filling breakfast, lunch, and dinner, along with snacks in between meals and even dessert like chocolate brownies, dark chocolate, etc.

Not only have I lost 20 pounds, I can eat this diet for the rest of my life and be completely healthy. This is the diet that humans evolved on, whole grains, fresh vegetables, fruits, and lean meats. The diet is very similar to Mediterranean or Asian diets.

Some other benefits, since I switched to this diet, I have more energy, my cholesterol is perfect, and my blood sugar levels don't spike.

The entire secret to this diet is that by eating whole grains and avoiding simple carbs, you avoid foods that turn into sugar in the blood and cause your blood sugar to spike. These foods like breads/pastas/etc give you quick energy, but then cause a crash later, causing you to eat even more food. Also, your body can't deal with that much sugar in the blood so it stores it as fat. By eating whole grains, your body takes longer to digest them, releasing blood sugar at a slow, even rate. Thus, you have energy all day and don't crash, or get hungry between meals.

edit: I also want to point out that the author of the book has done considerable scientific medical research, and his diet is based on empirical research, not pseudo-science like many diets.

<comment><USER17> _This is the diet that humans evolved on, whole grains, fresh vegetables, fruits, and lean meats._

I don't think that humans could evolve on whole grains because these only became available with the invention of agriculture sometime between 10 and 20 K years ago.

Also, some studies link the spread of agriculture to the huge drop in human health. That's why I personally removed all grains from my diet completely.

As for the rest of the post, I completely agree.

Edit: found a couple of links

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology- at-origins-of.html) [http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...](http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/mistake_jared_diamond.pdf)

<comment><USER16> Very good point, but a lot of the whole grains I eat are things like organic lake wild rice, which is actually a wetlands grass plant that has probably been eaten since before modern agriculture was invented. Do you do a paleolithic diet? I heard about that, but to be honest, eating raw red meats sounds pretty scary, unless you're going to be eating grass-fed animals that are not grown in a "factory farm" like most meat is now.

edit: I read your links and found them very interesting. I think one of the problems that agricultural societies in general have is that they started milling their whole grains into flour. The articles mention tooth decay as a problem of modern agricultural societies. Flour is a huge problem because it is easily processed and turns into sugars quickly, growing bacteria that causes tooth decay.

As long as you stick to whole grains, and not "crushed" or milled grains, you should be ok. Brown rice instead of white rice, buckwheat, quinoa, wild rice, amaranth, and a host of others. The important part is not to break or remove the outer shell or husk of the grain. The husk has most of the vitamins and fiber in it anyway.

<comment><USER17> Actually, the author of the blog I linked mentions a few times that all non- industrial cultures were fermenting their grains before eating them, which is supposed to get rid of antinutrients such as lectins or phytic acid. But I did not go deep into the details of that.

And no, paleo does not mean eating raw red meet - cooked is fine according to most sources I came across. Some indeed do eat raw, but I think it's the 'hardcore' minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> People have pointed out in this discussion that its hard to actually live a meaningful life. Especially in the US it can be hard to learn how to lead one.

I've been delving into Buddhism over the last 5 months because of a family situation of mine that I have had to deal with and I think to be able to live a meaningful life all you have to do is help someone else who: 1\. Really needs your help. 2\. Can do nothing (by the nature of his/her predicament) for you in return at this very moment. 3\. needs help on a continual basis. Ie, a long term commitment which then implies that you going to work everyday is helping someone else. That would be living a meaningful life.

I think thats why having kids is living a meaningful life.

My recommendation: Put an underprivileged kid in India through college who wouldn't otherwise be able to afford it. <http://www.ffe.org> (100% of your money is given to the children as the administration fees are paid for by a separate fund).

It takes a long time to get to this thinking though. I mean think about it: If you had only $2000 in your bank, the only way you could give $2000 to charity is to be able to either give up all your dreams/aspirations or at least put them on hold. That is very hard to do ...

<comment><USER19> To have a kid is to _create_ such a person who really needs your help, can do nothing in return, and needs help on a continual basis. This is a horrible thing to do! Not to mention that those created will most likely do the same thing in turn, reinforcing the vicious cycle.

You don't quite seem to be _advising_ people to lead a meaningful life by having kids, but it's close. Your recommendation to help people in need who are already born, though, is sound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Wow that made me cry like a baby. That was intensely powerful on many levels. Thanks for sharing.

</comment><comment><USER21> But... but.. I have to go to school! And write essays no one will ever want to read, essays that don't even aspire to be something interesting!

<comment><USER22> Then write essays that matter. Every assignment is an opportunity for greatness. The same is true after school too; every project is an opportunity for greatness.

<comment><USER21> That's what I usually try to do. It's the ones on literature that get me. There's not much to be said about a play by Shakespeare.

<comment><USER23> <http://www.orwell.ru/library/reviews/tolstoy/english/e_tas>

<comment><USER21> (Briefly, it's an essay on someone who disparaged Shakespeare, but was ignored and forgotten.)

Why did you link this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I'm incredibly, ecstatically glad my only wake-up call has been a general "hey, do you realize you're going to get old?" rather than something life- threatening. But it has caused me to make this resolution:

Never pass the time.

If you want to waste some time, make the conscious decision to. Enjoy the restfulness of doing nothing for awhile. But never be _bored._ There is _always_ something worth doing, even if it's just driving to the library and checking out a book. There's so very much in this world to learn, to experience, to explore, and whether you're hopping on a jet to go find it yourself or just basking in the richly-woven words of a great book about it, you owe it to yourself to at least give it a look. The world is too interesting, the universe is too interesting, humans are too interesting to waste your time with throwaway things. I can't tell you what those throwaway things are for you, but you know them. They're not important. Use your time for the things that are.

</comment><comment><USER25> Have less; do more.

</comment><comment><USER26> What would you do if you found out, right now, that you have exactly 2 years left to live? Nothing more, nothing less. Exactly two years, and then you'll die in your sleep.

What would you do with those 2 years?

PS: "I'll train myself not to sleep" is not a good answer.

<comment><USER27> FWIW, I don't think I'd do much different than I currently do (Which I think is a reasonably good sign). Would you?

<comment><USER28> Not necessarily. As I commented elsewhere, I doubt any medical students would stay in school for the entirety of those 2 years, if they weren't going to be able to use that knowledge anyway.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As one of those that has lived (through a car accident) this resonates so strongly. There are elements of my life that I'm deeply unhappy about but I'm working on changing them.

These changes won't overnight but what scares me more than anything is that it won't happen quick enough. I've seen the end game and it isn't scheduled months in advance or decades away in our future...

...it might be that you kiss your pregnant wife goodbye in the morning and simply disappear.

<comment><USER18> Help someone out on a constant basis and then whatever your doing is meaningful ... www.ffe.org

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Surprised that HN likes this. I wrote a post on this topic too:

[http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/today-is-your- gold...](http://sidsavara.com/personal-development/today-is-your-golden- ticket)

Since people enjoyed this video, here's the HN link - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1112797>

</comment><comment><USER31> I didn't really learn to live until I spent a year at death's door. Since there is no cure for my disorder, even getting well doesn't remove the "death sentence" I am living under. I find it is a gift and very freeing.

</comment><comment><USER32> I wish I hadn't wasted my time clicking on that.

<comment><USER33> And yet you were perfectly willing to waste your time on a snarky reply.</comment></comment>


New Study on Customer Referral Marketing - <AUTHOR> http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/customer-referral-marketing-benchmark-report-2014/

<comment><AUTHOR> Why should you think about Customer Marketing?

It's an essential strategy for company growth and is used by high-growth companies like Airbnb, Uber and Dropbox.

So you're not alone if you are considering buying a customer marketing solution in 2014.

You can use customer marketing to build and strengthen your userbase.

Referral programs can drive a repeatable and scalable customer acquisition effort.

An essential strategy to consider as paid efforts like display and retargeting campaigns have steadily rising costs and inefficiencies.

Read more: [http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/customer-referral- marketin...](http://www.referralsaasquatch.com/customer-referral-marketing- benchmark-report-2014/)</comment>


Apple announces Apple News+ $9.99/mo. subscriptions with over 300 publications - <AUTHOR> https://www.macrumors.com/2019/03/25/apple-announces-apple-news-subscriptions/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm submitting m this because I noticed that among the several Apple launches today, nothing about News+ ended up on the front page.</comment>


Regulator Examines Bitcoin Practices - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323585604579006880143449754-lMyQjAxMTAzMDEwMTExNDEyWj.html <comment><USER2> I think the fears about black market Bitcoin/etc. use are unfounded. Criminals need to pay rent and buy food like anyone else; they even pay taxes. The black market adoption of Bitcoin should more or less track the legal adoption of Bitcoin.

People get hung up on The Silk Road. That is not even a blip on the radar of recreational drug trafficking or any other black market activity.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Foundation will have some comments out shortly on this.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seem kinda futile, no?

<comment><USER2> How is it futile? Bitcoin exchanges and related services do all their business in broad daylight, which makes their business much smoother. If Bitcoin exchanges were black market services they would be forced to charge much higher fees (due to the higher risk) and their business would suffer. There would also be substantial damage to Bitcoin's perceived legitimacy if exchanging Bitcoin money for USD involved dealing with criminals.

The truth is that Bitcoin would be a toy if there were no exchanges. Regulating Bitcoin can be reduced to regulating exchanges, and the government knows how to deal with that sort of business. You are talking about a couple dozen currency exchange businesses; this is not at all difficult for the government to regulate. Even offshore exchanges would have trouble doing business in the US if they failed to comply with regulations; many world governments cooperate with the US government on that sort of law.

<comment><USER4> The genie is out of the bottle as far as I'm concerned. Even if the US freaks out & kills all the exchanges over which it has jurisdiction BC will still continue.

Sure it would be better if they didn't shut it down, but BC is designed to circumvent exactly this type of interference.</comment></comment></comment>


Ethiopia's Government Has Shut Down the Internet in a State of Emergency - tefo-mohapi http://www.iafrikan.com/2016/10/17/following-a-series-of-violent-protests-ethiopias-government-has-shut-down-the-internet-in-a-state-of-emergency/ <comment><AUTHOR> I have taken on 2 guys in Addis to work on our startup. They have barely been online for 2 weeks and can't do their job. By the looks of things I might have to let them go. Sad for them and the country.

</comment><comment><USER2> I understand that global internet connectivity usually occurs through a large telecom in a lot of African countries and governments can shut down that connection, but I wonder if a focus on creating decentralized networks can help people continue to communicate directly with one another.

<comment><USER3> How would this work on mobile though? 802.11 mesh networks with P2P mobile? At some point you need to air interface on the tower to route anywhere beyond the local LAN no? And unfortunately as you've said these are government entity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anyone think this could happen on a larger scale? With the decentralization of DNS upon us, is it possible for a region to be cut off?

<comment><USER5> It's not only possible, but easy isn't it? Couldn't they just cut the cables leaving the country?

The article mentions they targeted primarily mobile communications. Well, a quick Google search for a map shows only a couple dozen cell phone towers in Ethiopia, so it's not hard to seize them all.

And China shows that it is perfectly capable of controlling internet access for a billion people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What a shock that Calais is packed with, among other nationalities, Ethiopian people. To be honest, it seems like internet cutoffs are the least of the bad news coming out of that region on a daily basis.

</comment><comment><USER7> They asked Trump who asked Bill Gates to "close up the internet".</comment>


What books should non-technical founder must read to manage a software company? - <AUTHOR>

Software/technology company only
I've been suggested The Mythical Man Month by Frederick Brooks.
Any other must reads ? <comment><USER2> Learn to program. Seriously. I know this isn't the answer you're expecting, but there is nothing you can do that will better prepare you to manage developers.

I managed one very technically complex product (VPS service like Slicehost/Rackspace, where the customers were also developers) and one consumer based product (micropayment provider for social games before I finally bit the bullet and learned to program (I'm now the hustler and one of the hackers at a startup I founded)

I would have been far far more effective at those previous two positions if I knew then what I know today.

My recommendation, especially if you work with any product where the interface and user experience matters, is to learn Javascript. Specifically, I would suggest Eloquent Javascript by M. Haverbeke.

</comment><comment><USER3> Some of the best:

\- The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master \- Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction \- Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity

</comment><comment><USER4> Four Steps to the Epiphany, Rework, Entrepreneurs Guide to Cust Dev, The Lean Startup

</comment><comment><USER5> Peopleware, absolutely.</comment>


Ask HN: Review our app, Gameplan - <AUTHOR>

Hi everyone - We've just come out of beta to launch our app Gameplan (http://gameplanapp.com) which lets you schedule and manage your amateur sports league/tournament.
We've been in beta for the last two months and our blog Naked Startup (http://nakedstartup.com) is pretty widely read.
Do try us out and let us know of any feedback that you have. Thanks in advance for your help!
P.S. The recent Startup Cup held in San Francisco (http://thestartupcup.com / http://techcrunch.com/2010/08/16/startup-soccer/) was scheduled and organised with the help of Gameplan. <comment><USER2> I like the concept and the site looks good. The images change a bit to fast for me. I was trying to get a feel for the app, but it was hard with the images changing as fast as they are.

I'd like to see a few more screen shots before I would sign up. I've never been involved with game scheduling, but I can see where the pain does exist.

I'd pull more information into a benefits page. You have details in the blog, but I didn't feel like reading a lot to get a feel for what the app offers. You need a bit more details on the website to sell me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback. Yup we're working on a 'Tour' page and like you said, it can't come soon enough :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Another piece of interesting feedback we received was to place the price plans in descending order so that we can achieve the "price anchoring" effect. Is this true? - to be honest I haven't seen many sites which do this.

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't worry about any of that pricing psychology stuff until you've nailed down explaining the value of the app.

Making the value clear and selling the benefits will net you more than tinkering with the pricing page, regardless of tidbits we read on HN. The fundamentals still apply.

So with respect to that, flesh out the content first. You need a product tour to explain what the app can do, or you need some case studies to show a real life use-case. I'm not talking about pages of extra content - it could go right there on the homepage... "Here's [Local Soccer League] with 5 reasons why they love our app".

<comment><AUTHOR> Great advice, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> clickable: <http://gameplanapp.com></comment>


What vertical farming and ag startups don't understand about agriculture, part 2 - <AUTHOR> http://thinkingagriculture.io/what-sv-doesnt-understand-about-agriculture-part-ii/ <comment><USER2> > Auto-steer systems that leverage machinery that already exists.

That links to a company selling a retrofit system for 7500 Euro and no annual fees. That's super cheap compared to buying a new tractor and I hope they are successful. But...

My brother-in-law hobby farms a few hundred acres of corn and soybeans and built an autosteering system for his 1950s tractor. The only thing he bought new was an Arduino board to tie it all together. Everything else was used farming equipment and his total cost was less than $1000 (USD). He's not even a programmer, just an engineering degree from Flyover State U. He cobbled together open source software to make it work.

The traditional farmer is very resourceful. They aren't going to allow your company much margin if they can do even part of it themselves. Good luck to VC-backed firms.

<comment><USER3> Do you mean to tell me that such a small operation just happened to have lying around some old lidar systems?

Or does the "steer" in "auto-steer" refer to a bovine?

<comment><USER2> [https://www.farmprogress.com/affordable-auto- steer](https://www.farmprogress.com/affordable-auto-steer)

You program your desired path into the system and it uses GPS to follow the path, using a device that turns the steering wheel as necessary.

The farmer is still required to avoid unexpected obstacles, usually by stopping and moving the obstacle.

Farmers have been using GPS since the 1980s, long before the rest of the general public.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've never been able to understand the excitement around vertical farming from VC. I assume the primary reason for VC interest in this boondoggle is just that sleeping at the Comfort Inn in Sedalia, MO is not nearly as fun as a champagne black tie at the media lab.

But, during COVID, I now think there actually _is_ a strong case for large- scale vertical farming: robustness. It's a backstop against famine in case of long-tail events: "locusts", plagues that wipe out key crops, once-in-a- millenia systemic flooding, a super-volcano eruption, etc.

But it's not going to be profitable. It's going to be horrendously unprofitable. And it's not something we should be doing now; it's just something that we should be able to quickly start doing immediately in case of a catastrophic event, and at a scale large enough to get 1200-1500 calories to everyone each day.

In other words, the primary customer for vertical farming is government, not the private sector. Unless you can mass produce morels, as the author notes :)

<comment><USER5> No one wants to start a career in Agriculture, it only makes sense when you are payed extremely well and currently that's the case when you can make the bare minimum but that minimum is a lot somewhere else.

In West Europe, Agriculture is done by Eastern Europeans who can work for few months and make some money that is uninspiring the West but life-changing in the East. Western youth would't touch it.

In Turkey it is done by people who escaped a war or tyranny : Syrians and Afghans. It makes sense for them because the alternative is worse but the Turkish youth would not touch it unless it's some kind of organic avocados hipster thing.

The Agriculture production is now cheap but unless everything gets robotised at the same pace(or faster) with the people leaving the business or the inequality in the world vanishes it can get real expensive real quick.

The vertical farming looks like an option before automatic drones produces us all the produce in a sense that no one ever seen a tomato field in life.

But as the author states, farming is massively automated and the efforts are still going on. So, maybe it's about lifestyle? Having a vertical farm in each garden could be desirable even if not efficient.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Poster makes a great point about what SV doesn't get about farmers, but there is a huge range of things farmers do get about SV that are not obvious to many people who don't know farms or farmers very well.

I used to be CEO of a venture backed agriculture startup, and we learned pretty quickly that the hacker mentality applies very well to supporting farmers. Internally, we talked about providing farmers something like an SDK for the automation tools we were selling, where they could mod it to their own situation. In most cases, skills from soldering to metal work to carpentry were not only realistic to expect, but complete shops with air tools, etc. were usually present and often complete machine shops with CNC and 3d printers.

<comment><USER6> OP would be glad to connect if you see this note.

twitter.com/sean_mcdonald

[https://agfundernews.com/inside-insect- farming.html](https://agfundernews.com/inside-insect-farming.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, perhaps I will reach out later today (going to fields ironically enough!)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think that the biggest problem with agriculture today is that it's utterly unsustainable. It is ran on fossil fuels and we need to mine minerals for the fertilizers. But still the most worrying issue is that the modern farming is consuming topsoil and we will run out of it in 60 years if we don't change our methods [1].

There are interesting things going on in regenerative agriculture scene where the main idea is to produce new topsoil and through that make farming sustainable. Here is a nice lecture by Richard Perkins - who is one of the most famous regenartive agriculture advocate - explaining the principles of it in a lecture he kept in a food hackaton. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knn7ZH4Tiw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Knn7ZH4Tiw)

(1) [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil- farm...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming- agriculture-food-toxic-america)

<comment><USER8> The kicker for me was reading the very consumable Dirt to Soil [1], written by a farmer who's applying regenerative ag techniques on a large scale, and very profitably. Transitioning from input-dependent, technology-sucking financially-overextended traditional monocropping IS POSSIBLE. This isn't just your backyard garden anymore. Something needs to change in mainstream ag. I'm moving onto a small farm to do something about it, in my small corner of the world.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The amount of economy of scale in agriculture is disconcerting to me. Surely finely-tuned, monoculture mega-farms in rigid supply chains have disadvantages?

I was hoping with improving technology, the minimum viable size of a farm can be brought down to something more culturally sensible. Even if existing technology in agriculture is as good as the author claims, access remains an issue.

Perhaps the real innovation we need right now is to make technology more affordable.

<comment><USER10> Can you think of products where mass-production makes things less efficient?

<comment><USER11> The apparent efficiency may depend on whether the manufacturers and the immediate customers pick up all of the costs, or whether negative externalities or other costs are picked up by third parties. E.g mass agriculture may make food cheaper at the cost of environmental damage due to use of pesticides, soil erosion, etc. These costs may be picked up by wider society or just ignored.

<comment><USER10> Yeah, in the big picture that's true - lots of industries suffer from this - but I meant from a "disrupt the market, make lots of money" frame of reference, which is where all these things seem to start from.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> After reading Part I yesterday I got to thinking about SpaceX.

In his biography, Ashlee Vance describes how Musk built a knowledge base about rocket construction after his exit from Paypal. Both the "how to" and a first principles approach to the economics of it.

Musk knew the calculus that he could _attempt_ to build rockets for far less than his competitors before he ever put a dime into SpaceX.

In contrast, vertical farming sounds more like the computer engineer equivalent of "I built a thing, isn't it shiny and cool" without understanding the industry, economics, or competitive landscape.

Vertical farming seems to be taking an ahistorical approach. With both both vertical farmers and VCs ignoring industry knowledge [0,1]

Sticking with Musk, he took an ahistorical appraoch to Tesla's Fremont factory with automation. He learned a very expensive and wasteful lesson that other auto manufacturers had known for decades.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23633298](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23633298) [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634030](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23634030)

<comment><USER13> The fundamental difference between SpaceX and Farming is that the latter actually provides direct utility to humans.

I still don't understand why we need to go to space. I know I'm going to get roasted here for saying this. And yes, I know that "space tech improves earth tech" \-- cool, so let's just make better earth tech in the first place. Better farms, schools, transportation. We only have one earth.

"I built a thing, isn't it shiny and cool" \-- sweet rocket Musk, what are you going to do with it? Study space worms? Let rich people travel in space? Build a mars colony (lolol). That's not going to happen on any meaningful scale. Put down the sci-fi and open your eyes. We need help, here, now.

<comment><USER14> Why go to other countries? Europe+Africa has all the space we need.

1\. There is an unimaginable number of resources in space. Asteroid mining, if we crack it, would make space a far better place for manufacturing.

2\. It was originally rich people flying on planes and sailing on boats. If it's technically possible and valuable, economics will optimise the cost away.

<comment><USER15> People were traveling on boats already and traveling on boats wasn't as hazardous as sending people on a controlled exploding vehicle. Plus on earth, existing tech in europe/africa was going to work in most places of discovery on earth. Everything in space will have to be re-invented, without the thousands of years of iteration (like ag). Have people really even figured out how to farm on Mars? No because no one has farmed on mars. And farming on mars, that tech may likely not be useable on earth, because we've spent the last thousands of years optimizing for our planet. Utilizing the soil the sun and existing manufacturing. We'll build tech for mars, and then what next? What is the next uninhabitable planet we'll visit and rebuild entire infrastructure, while abbandoning the 1 good planet we have. I don't disagree that space travel is important and finding planets is important, but i think those things pale in comparison to the problems of our only guaranteed hospitable planet.

edit: I think pushing limits of human achievement is important, but understand that we haven't even solved stupid obvious problems like feeding every child in this world. Think about that. There are hundreds of millions of children who don't eat. You want to talk about scale and talk about solving problems, think about all the minds that could be the geniuses that get us to mars. There is so much lost potential just because of malnourishment. Yes going to space will get us better manufacturing, but the potential of having entire generations that are well fed and thinking optimally, we could be squandering countless einsteins, simply because we are spending money trying to get to mars. I think that's what gets me about the way we spend money. Human output is random, and the people who change the world, it is random where they are born and so is their upbringing. We should be taking care of every single new born that enters this world because one of them, could change the world in unimaginable ways. Sorry I don't htink you asked for this comment, but your comment about why people traveled to new countries just sparked a thought dump. Sorry :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://www.planttape.com/](https://www.planttape.com/) mentioned in the article is so cool. I wonder if they were inspired by pick and place machines with electronic parts on reels.

<comment><USER17> There have been similar systems for seed-sowing for decades. This is the first system I've seen anything like it for seedling transplanting, but the concept is not so far different from the seed-tapes that horticulture has used for quite a long time, so I'd be more inclined to think the inspiration came from closer by than electronics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Correct, its a horticulture driven innovation (makes it more cool IMO).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Presumably the submitter of this link is also the author?

Do you have any suggestions on what areas _are_ good for innovation?

I also find myself at a complete loss for what technologies are actually out there, how they're used and what a typical farm looks like and how it operates. Even the data of "90M acres of corn, 85M acres of soybean, and 30M acres of wheat" is complete news to me.

What are some sources to get at this data, to get a feel for what this system looks like?

I know that the "global village construction set" [1] was marketed as trying trying to solve some of these issues but I'm not sure it really developed into anything actionable.

Keep up the good work, I'd like to see more writing. Do you have any suggestions on other blogs that talk about similar subject matter?

[1] [https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/](https://www.opensourceecology.org/gvcs/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Umm...start with USDA NASS for agriculture statistics in the US. agfundernews.com for the startup scene. Just reseach in general. Deep Learning, Nanotechnology, Drones (UAVs), genetic engineering all have a home in agriculture. I'd be happy to PM you more resources.

<comment><USER19> Yeah USDA NASS is the spot for your ag statistics. even then NASS is not 100% accurate but pretty solid. Drones, meh. nobody wants pictures of their farm bud. What do you do with pictures of your farm? Nothing. I've been working with farmers for 6+ years and only a handful of them like the drones mostly because it's a fun toy. Sure tell me that you can get AI imagery and machine learning non-sense from your farm pictures.

The only thing i agree with you on is genetic engineering. And that is not startup space really. That is like giant bio-tech companies breeding corn seeds in a lab. You need a phD for that shit you dont just build a startup that 'disrupts' seed genetics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Free idea: There is MASSIVE distrust in the NASS right now in the farming community to the point of the data becoming questionable. It'd be nice if place like Indigo Ag (which acquired TellusLabs I believe) could assist/takeover some of the things remote sensing or satellites can do (like planted acres) so that USDA NASS doesn't need to rely on unpopular and time consuming surveys

<comment><USER20> Where can I find the communities that are upset/distrust NASS? Is this on twitter/forums/fb? I'd like to take a deeper look into the problems they're discussing but I'm an outsider, not sure where to begin looking.

<comment><USER21> One problem is that farmers often consider it a secret they don't want to share. For good reason, if you know how much crops will produce next fall you can go to commody markets and make a lot of money. That money comes out of the farmers potential profit in some cases as they are playing the other side of the trade and so the less you know compared to them, the better the deal they can get.

Farmers know what is in their fields, but prices are affected by fields on other continents which the farmer doesn't know. Any information the farmer can get but you cannot is to his advantage. (this applies to all farmers, they need to know what happens in Ukraine, Brazil, Australia... But they need you to not know)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I want to see the end of skim the top businesses that come out of SV. They pretty much set up a database, a front end and expect everyone to pay them a percentage of a business that already works. But because they capture a young crowd, it eventually takes over. I hope Ag is resistant to that.

I'd rather see SV help the industry keep its jobs and just create new machines. Like the drone that picks weeds (or just makes a map of all weeds in the field for someone to go pick). Perhaps a drone that scoops up bugs via vacuum attachment.

Whatever it is, I'm kinda just sick of SV starts that want to skim the top of some existing process.

</comment><comment><USER23> [https://farmersfriendllc.com/](https://farmersfriendllc.com/) good example of a thriving company in the space, though smaller scale and no VC funding

</comment><comment><USER24> The earlier thread is [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23630201](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23630201).

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone have an alternative link? My company relies on Cisco's reputation system[0] to decide if a domain should be blocked. Oddly, thinkingagriculture.io is "untrusted | poor".

[0] [https://talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/lookup?searc...](https://talosintelligence.com/reputation_center/lookup?search=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkingagriculture.io)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, brand new blog. Probably some security issue I lack knowledge of

<comment><USER26> This will happen anytime you put something new online. It's basically a whitelist and they wait until they see a few hits before you get added.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Modern mechanized agriculture is incredibly efficient and productive, but it degrades soil health over time and loses topsoil.

There are methods that increase soil and fertility over time (Permaculture, Syntropic farming, regenerative agriculture) but they are typically relatively labor intensive. China and India have made great strides in recent times.

India's Water Revolution #2: The Biggest Permaculture Project on Earth! with the Paani Foundation [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDMnbeW3F8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDMnbeW3F8A)

India's Water Revolution #3: From Poverty to Permaculture with DRCSC [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtHuIlfyJao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtHuIlfyJao)

Regreening the desert with John D. Liu [https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI?t=82](https://youtu.be/IDgDWbQtlKI?t=82)

> It all started in 1995 when Liu filmed the Loess-plateau in China. He > witnessed a local population who turned an area of almost the same size as > The Netherlands from a dry, exhausted wasteland into one green oasis. This > experience changed his life.

To me it seems that the two main areas to focus on to make a real contribution are:

1) Make modern agriculture ecologically harmonious.

2) Make ecologically harmonious agriculture more automated.

Obviously these converge.

(My feeling is that we would be happier with lots of little farms rather than a few large ones, but I'm not interested in debating that particular point. I care about ecological harmony. Future generations can work out the economic forms provided we don't crash the system before then.)

</comment><comment><USER28> That plant tape tech he links to at the end is incredible.

<comment><USER29> That idea has been around for a while. I'm aware of similar tools for small farms.

(0) [https://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools- supplies/transplanters/pap...](https://www.johnnyseeds.com/tools- supplies/transplanters/paperpot-transplanter-7601.html) (1) [https://paperpot.co/](https://paperpot.co/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Your statement that 'Vertical farming for non-vegetables (or fruits) is likely dead-on-pitch.' is true with current technology. But there have been significant developments in this space in the last few years. See this work done by Zach Lippman at CSHL. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31873217/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31873217/) Early flowering, dwarf varieties such as those described along with renewable energy (thinking of electricity rates going negative in Germany recently) may significantly shift the economic viability of growing fruits indoors.

</comment><comment><USER31> Really nothing to say about this article... but the "ag" abbreviation is strangely disturbing. Do people pronounce that in speech? If so, how?

<comment><USER32> What makes you say it's disturbing? Having grown up near several Ag colleges, I never questioned it.

<comment><USER31> I cannot avoid reading it as silver (the chemical element), especially when the first letter is uppercase. I had a hard time understanding some sentences of the article due to that. My mind just refuses to parse "ag" as "agriculture". It's just that I'm not used to it.

EDIT: In your case, I cannot help to think about your colleges as very shiny, kitsch buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm going to go out on a limb and say that SV tends not to understand most of the non-tech markets it aims to disrupt, and instead gets occasional success by either completely ignoring/sidestepping regulations and protections (ex. Airbnb for short-term rentals) or by throwing so much investor money at undercutting incumbents that the natural market dynamics are temporarily skewed (ex. WeWork for office leasing). Innovation in most industries tends to come from people with deep expertise and team skillsets that extend far beyond software.

<comment><USER34> Your comment helped me realize my alternate opinion - what I think is healthy about the SV ecosystem.

Changing the term, "natural market dynamics" to "regulatory captured markets", we get:

> or by throwing so much investor money at undercutting incumbents that the > [regulatory captured markets] are temporarily skewed

And, taking my sibling comment from @simonkafan, let's change his term "well- functioning industry" to "regulatory captured industry":

> I feel that SC startups are like a horde of locusts flying over a > [regulatory captured industry], pretending to improve it positively but all > they do is destroy the competition

Consider, for a second, Uber and Lyft. Was the taxi industry well functioning? Did it have natural market dynamics? Definitely, assuming you acknowledge the predicate that the industry players are effectively cartels who control regulations.

<comment><USER35> Also consider that Uber is unprofitable, has no real path to profitability, pays its drivers poorly and overcharges users. How is that healthy? It seemingly has failed in every possible way as a business yet people continuously prop it up as something to be envied or respected.

<comment><USER36> One thing that is so often left out of this conversation is that Uber was making a profit in rides when they only had the black car service and Lyft hadn't entered the market yet with regular people driving their private cars. It's hard to tell how much of this is inherently unprofitable as opposed to different companies trying to price each other out of the market.

This makes me wonder what even would be a natural or desired state of any market like this. I don't want companies to have agreements on bottom prices they aren't gonna go under. At the same time this dynamic clearly is fueled by the desire and promise to turn a profit once the competitor is gone. We don't want to set a monopoly in any market. On the other hand why aren't we seeing this in older industries? Why aren't airlines trying to drive each other out of business on price?

<comment><USER37> If Lyft _can_ enter the market easily, then the market is a commodity market. A commodity market has very few returns. In fact, you can predict that it is a commodity market because of the existence of taxi monopolies. There is no barrier to entry to the taxi market: just get a car. Since there's no natural barrier to entry, they had to create a regulatory barrier to get profitability. Uber making a profit pre-Lyft is indicative of nothing; they are in a commodity market, so their returns will be low single-digits.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: I created software for virtual standups - <AUTHOR> https://usefocus.co/ <comment><AUTHOR> Founder here. As a team leader, I spend a lot of time on meetings and understanding what's going on in the team. It's a demotivating thing. It takes time and lots of meetings. And most employees don't like it too.

So I tried to make this process without meetings — only virtual, asynchronous, and lightweight conversations. For the base, I got scrum standups with 3 simple questions: what did you do yesterday, what are you going to do today, and what's the biggest obstacle. Everyone in the team spends only 5 minutes per day to clarify current status and understands what's going on in the company.

I built a web platform with a bot that creates the meetings on the schedule. I used the MERN stack (Mongo, Express, React, Node.js) for it. I learned a lot in the process, especially, how to create meetings automatically on the schedule and how React works.

To be transparent, there are several standup bots exist on Slack. But initially, I wanted to use more staff for team alignment and engagement like weekly updates and employee recognition. It helps a team stay in sync without meetings and work together better.

I haven't created all the staff what I wanted, but even at this stage, I think this tool can help others as well, so please let me know if you have any questions.

[1] Request early access: [https://usefocus.co/](https://usefocus.co/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Looks like it's been... Repurposed?</comment>


Sell files for Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://onebtn.co <comment><USER2> "Our fees are just 10% per successful transaction in addition to Stripe's fees. These fees are deducted from sales automatically."

Please remove "just" word. Or replace it with "EXORBITANT" to reflect the true value.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hosting is not cheap and we don't have a ton of money right now to host stuff at a loss. We plan to drop this to 5% in the near future if we won't lose money by doing so.

<comment><USER3> I'm glad you're focused on a sustainable business model, but try to connect cost with value. If I sell an album on your site for $1000 or $10, it doesn't cost you any extra but my fees are 100x.

If hosting is an issue, create monthly plans based on usage or additional features. That's your value, that's where the business cost is, so that's what users are paying for. You aren't a payments company, so don't make your money on payments.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you're probably right. Going to do some thinking on better approaches to this. Thanks

<comment><USER4> Do you delete files after they are purchased and downloaded, or do they persist? How long?

Are you encrypting the files on your storage servers in case you're subpoenaed?

How can I verify the file is what is described, before I pay for it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> We're super excited to launch our 'sell files' feature!

We launched OneButton a couple weeks ago with only the ability to link externally with your button. Now you can sell digital files, build mailing lists, and more!

Here are a couple example pages:

[https://onebtn.co/i_make_music](https://onebtn.co/i_make_music) \-- this example is selling a dance beat I personally made (though I'm much better at coding than making music).

You can also use custom domains on your pages for free! [http://YouCanUseDomains.com](http://YouCanUseDomains.com)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for explaining it, I guess, because your web site sure doesn't. The about page is worse than useless.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right. This is one of the top priorities of ours to update.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In total there is a 13% fee (that includes Stripe fee). What is the real advantage of using your service? How do you handle the selling of pirated material?

<comment><AUTHOR> OneButton is a website generator, not just a product page. Users can add their own domain name, etc. We're like Squarespace meets Gumroad (and will soon have more features on the 'squarespace' side of things).

We plan on dropping the fee to around 5% soon, but we want to make sure that we won't lose money doing that. We decided to launch with a 10% fee to make sure we don't lose a bunch of money on hosting fees.

Our first target for marketing will be musicians as an alternative to Bandcamp (which charges a 15% fee + paypal fees).

Regarding pirated material, we'll remove anything we find that falls into that category. We'll soon have a reporting feature, etc.

That said, in order to sell users have to verify their identity with Stripe, so we don't expect to have a ton of illegal stuff going on.

<comment><USER7> So, all of the flakiness of Bitcoin with none of the anonymity.

I'm a little confused by this concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't have a use for it, but I like the simplicity.

Maybe this is a strange question, but why no pornographic material? I'm more curious about why you'd bother to single it more out than anything else. It seems to me that that particular type of thing (images and videos as opposed to games and apps) would be a much broader use case.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just worried about legal implications of hosting pornographic content. We may allow this in the future but don't want to do so without making sure everything is in the clear.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Could you add an examples page? I think it would be easier for potential clients to understand what you're offering, as well as gather inspiration, if you distinctly show a demo of how each page type works (without having to sign up).

</comment><comment><USER10> Gumroad lets you do this for PayPal & Credit Cards, and it charges 5% flat—not on top of payment processing fees.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're more focused on website creation as opposed to being a payments company. The fee will be dropped to 5% as soon as we make sure we won't lose money on hosting fees.

Soon we'll have more squarespace-like features on the website creation side of things and will likely charge for features along those lines ( monthly hosting plans ), while dropping our fees per sales to equal cost ( as suggested by another user in this thread ).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Not useful for me at this moment but I wish you luck.</comment>


Tiny 'metalens' could bring SLR camera quality to your phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2016/06/07/metalens-could-improve-phone-cameras/ <comment><USER2> Previously discussed but via a BBC article:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11830659](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11830659)</comment>


Show HN: Circle – Connect with people near you - <AUTHOR> https://circle.onl <comment><USER2> Not a great start for me: Uncaught ReferenceError: red is not defined at navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition (script.js:22)

<comment><AUTHOR> Bad developer error. Fixed it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is neat. What radius is used for viewing messages in a given area?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1 Kilometer (0.6 miles)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I received an application error.

<comment><AUTHOR> Can you try now.

<comment><USER4> It says I am off the grid.

<comment><AUTHOR> The app could not get your location. :p

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> i like the concept and minimalist touch and feel of it</comment>


'Most Beautiful Woman' By Day, Inventor By Night - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/2011/11/27/142664182/most-beautiful-woman-by-day-inventor-by-night

<comment><USER2> The article comes close but does not mention one interesting piece of trivia. The frequency hopping device was made using (and inspired by) a pianoroll for an autopiano. An instrument that Lamarr and her collaborator, composer Antheil would have been familiar with. In their scheme of things, the torpedo and the sub would play the same "song" and jump frequencies in sync. Their patent lay ignored till fairly recently

EDIT: here is an Atlantic article that has more detail:

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/celebr...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2010/09/celebrity- invention-hedy-lamarrs-secret-communications-system/62377/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Another piece of trivia about her that I remember and am surprised nobody else pointed out:

She was the woman on the cover of CorelDraw who sued Corel and won because they used her likeness:

[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fsDWp0rXAo8/TWyXPD4a_YI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-fsDWp0rXAo8/TWyXPD4a_YI/AAAAAAAACVU/Sh709RqZw3E/Corel+Draw+8+Hedy+Lamarr.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER4> Fun tidbit for gamers: in Half Life 2, the headcrab that causes the portal mixup is named Lamarr, after Hedy. Get it?

<comment><USER5> and it hops around randomly..

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Previous coverage on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1368176>.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm quite surprised that they ignored her past - she was married to Friedrich Mandl, an arms manufacturer. She learned about military technology from his friends.

So obvious option - that historians considers - is that she basically patented ideas she obtained/discussed during her marriage. Missing details are also behind the reason why she could not reproduce some of them.

</comment><comment><USER8> i can think of a few trolls who would love to snatch up that patent and sue everyone who ever had anything to do with a smartphone.

<comment><USER9> The patent is expired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> She also starred in the first erotic movie ever:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecstasy_(film)>

</comment><comment><USER11> That's Hedley.

<comment><USER12> Oh, come on.

I _sort of_ get the "quips that don't add materially to the discussion get all the downvotes" sentiment, but a well executed, topically relevant Mel Brooks joke in the gray? On a Sunday? _We're very puzzled._

<comment><USER13> It's just noise. If you want pop culture references and one liners go to Reddit.

<comment> iso8859-1 This whole thread is nothing but trivia. It seems there is double standard.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NEXT Browser: A NEXT Generation Extensible Lisp Browser - <AUTHOR> https://next-browser.github.io <comment><USER2> Previously: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418719](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15418719)

</comment><comment><USER3> But is it compatible with NeXTSTEP? I've been searching for a new browser for my NeXTcube.

<comment><USER4> Since NeXT came originally with Allegro Common Lisp, you only have to port the Webkit part to it. But maybe you can reuse parts of the original Mosaic browser...</comment></comment>


Is Object Oriented Programming Too Complicated? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.bishopuniverse.com/2011/02/is-object-oriented-programming-too.html

<comment><USER2> Inheritance isn't the only way to re-use code. Using inheritance won't solve your problems, and it tends to give you new ones: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fragile_base_class>

<comment><USER3> "But if you write code that doesn't change the existing system, you simply test the additions" boils down to the open/closed principle. It's much safer to create a new class (often by inheritance) than to modify the guts of an existing class that already has dependencies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think OOP is easy, so long as the system you are modelling can in fact be broken down sensibly into distinguishable objects. However, a lot of people try to use an OOP approach when this is not appropriate and end up getting into a bit of a mess.</comment>


Stanford "Programming Languages" course readings - <AUTHOR> http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/ <comment><USER2> A lot more diverse than that at my university. The professors basically had a four by four grid: strongly typed and object oriented (Java, covered in the introductory programming classes), strongly typed and functional (Standard ML or Haskell, depending on what quarter you sit the class), weakly typed and functional (Scheme), and weakly typed yet object oriented (Ruby).

Once recursion was sufficiently beaten into you, it was not particularly new material. The Stanford curriculum here seems a bit better designed: most people will not implement a language of their own or use more than one or two languages to any great extent (and a fairly small percentage will actually touch Standard ML or Scheme), and this class is better targeted to those two: it lets them see what the ideas were behind the language and how they can choose the right tool for a lot more jobs.

In other words, the Stanford course is a bit better at showing the range of ideas and higher level languages to people who were up to that point Blub programmers (see <http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html> , of course).

</comment><comment><USER3> FWIW this is actually the old course website, the new one is <https://courseware.stanford.edu/pg/courses/3524>, though I'm not sure if you can see it without being logged in and being off-campus. When I took the course last fall we didn't have any of these readings, we just used the professor's textbook (with the exception of 2 of the haskell readings)

<comment><USER4> <http://www2.research.att.com/~kfisher/teaching.html>

<http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs242/readings/index.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Pleased to see the classic "Smashing the stack for fun and profit." Absolutely essential for anyone in the security industry.

Looks like the link is dead; here is a mirror: [http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=49&id=14#article](http://www.phrack.com/issues.html?issue=49&id=14#article)

<comment><USER6> Came here to say the same. Some other links also require an ACM account, but can be found elsewhere:

Dijkstra on Goto: [http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/dijkstra68goto.pd...](http://www.ecn.purdue.edu/ParaMount/papers/dijkstra68goto.pdf)

Wirth on stepwise refinement: [http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/StepwiseRefinement...](http://www.cs.inf.ethz.ch/~wirth/Articles/StepwiseRefinement.pdf)

Parnas on decomposition into modules: [http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Design/crite...](http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2003/cmsc838p/Design/criteria.pdf)

Ingalls on design principles behind Smalltalk: <http://carlstrom.com/stanford/cs242/readings/10.pdf>

Cook on Smalltalk collection classes: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.24....](http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.24.7900&rep=rep1&type=pdf)

<comment><USER7> Here is the scan of the original typewritten EWD: <http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF>

The entire EWD archive can be read here: <http://userweb.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fairly surprised to see an STM article linked. I wonder how soon the days will be where people learn STM and Actors in their concurrency classes first and these become the norm in the real world. You know, sort of like a parallel to how many people don't understand pointers or manual memory handling in C.

</comment><comment><USER9> Way more comprehensive than my university's (I'm taking the course now) :/

Edit: For values of now that mean: this coming semester. This is unfortunate because I'm a massive programming language nerd (designing/implementing a language, plus contributing to VM implementations == fun).

<comment><USER10> If you think that reading list is comprehensive, wait til you see what the autodidact layman has to read ;-) Don't let your curiousity and learning potential be bounded by a formal curriculum.

PLs are immensely interesting and rewarding. Have fun!</comment></comment>


Chris Ziegler Is Leaving Engadget - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zieglerc.net/post/4221654972/and-away-i-go <comment><USER2> Joanna Stern left yesterday, apparently, as well: <https://twitter.com/#!/JoannaStern/status/52731217791041536>

I appreciate that each editor has written a big long blog post saying that they're not leaving because of AOL, but I think it's pretty apparent that something is going on (The sheer number of editors leaving at the same time is a little too convenient).

<comment><USER3> Wow, didn't know this. While there are still some good writers left, this probably completes the set of high profile editors on Engadget.

This looks suspiciously like a new site is about to hatch with a lot of ex- Engadget writers working.

<comment><USER4> Surely AOL had some sort of non-compete clause.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still looking for an Engadget alternative, if anyone knows one...

<comment><USER6> AnandTech is the best technology site I know of. However they are not a 20 post per day blog.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> so, who is going to turn off the lights?

</comment><comment><USER8> Another one bites the dust.</comment>


Simple and useful techniques to learn and perform better - <AUTHOR> https://docs.google.com/a/kevac.org/document/d/1icGV_gjFCO_AyCdEI5Y1fKYNyPKNSYfkolohehf2wTA/edit#heading=h.8gf8kcoefpne

<comment><USER2> Great summary of a course!</comment>


How this entrepreneur made $7M using social media marketing - <AUTHOR> http://mailchi.mp/mysocialgameplan.com/social-media-weekly-news-70117 <comment><USER2> What the hell is this spam.</comment>


Ask HN: How to use stimulus cash if job stability isn't assured? - <AUTHOR> I'm still employed and have a decent level of emergency savings, so right now the stimulus cash is not necessary to get by.  But my industry and job could definitely be affected down the line, at which point it would be nice to have that money.
If I knew that I absolutely would not lose my job, I would love to donate the money to help those who have lost their jobs.  But because of the uncertainty, I'm not sure if that's the best move.
I'm assuming there is no charity out there that will give you the money back if you lose your job within a given timeframe.
But is there any other creative way to help others with this money, but still maintain some protection for yourself? <comment><USER2> I can think of two things. You could divide the money and do both.

First you could save or invest the money and donate at a later time. This wouldn't really help people right now, but it would help someone in the future. Technically, investing it could help stimulate the economy, but it doesn't directly help someone.

Second, you could spend the money on something that you want or need that could be beneficial if you do become unemployed. An example could be training for another job or to keep your current one, buying home office equipment, etc. This could still be risky since you are spending the money, but it might not be as bad as spending the money on recreational stuff. The money is stimulus money, and to be effective in stimulating our consumer economy you would have to spend it (or put it to work, like investing).</comment>


Ask HN: Have affiliate commissions polluted reviews? - <AUTHOR> In general, are you losing trust in online reviews because of incentives, including Amazon's affiliate program? <comment><USER2> Ignoring Amazon's Affiliate program for a moment, there's already enough incentive for manufactured, astro-turfed reviews. And even when there's real, legitimate reviews left by purchasers of a product, the store page owner could change the quality of the product being sold - silently start shipping knock- off versions as opposed to the real thing - or even reuse a product for a wildly different product. (I know this has happened plenty in the past, I wonder if Amazon has cracked down on that behaviour? Even so, that it has happened so frequently in the past doesn't help since we're talking about 'losing trust'.) These practices have hurt much more than their affiliate program has, in my view.

My grandparents (in England) were longtime subscribers to a magazine named Which (which.co.uk). I have no idea if it's the same thing anymore, but at least 15 years ago it was a (very middle-class, quite expensive) magazine that would review family cars, vacuum cleaners, televisions and so on. The whole selling point of that magazine was 50 years of built-up trust, they'd lay out in detail how they'd do their blind testing and their rigor in testing, and very publicly owning when they made mistakes or got things wrong. Are there any online equivalents that have this sort of cache and trust associated with them? If you were to buy, say, a laptop, or a new washing machine... where would you go?

<comment><AUTHOR> > If you were to buy, say, a laptop, or a new washing machine... where would > you go?

The Which magazine sounds like Consumer Reports, who purports to have no interest outside of the consumer's: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports#Editorial_ind...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Reports#Editorial_independence) I wonder if the HN community has had positive / negative experiences with CR relating to this topic

<comment><USER3> I purchased a subscription to CR. I trust their reviews, but they're very limited. I want a new lawn mower, but their top rated mower isn't available any more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In general, the in-depth review sites that I tend to go to for reviews seem to be fairly trustworthy. One thing working in their favor, is that they tend to review many similar products and could collect referral commissions on most or all of the products they review, so there is reduced incentive to give a positive review of a bad product.

There are, however, two types of sites benefiting from referrals that I have a complete lack of trust in. The first is tech news sites (Gizmodo, for example) that feature posts about sales on specific items. Sometimes these are actually good deals on good products, but often a little research indicates that the price and/or the product are nothing special and they're just trying to drum up referral bucks. Often times these sites still post actual reviews worthy of reading, but I definitely will not depend solely on that one review.

The category of sites that I wish I could just erase from the internet is the SEO blogs that seem to exist for just about anything these days. Often times these purport to be review sites, but a little digging reveals they're likely just people regurgitating information from manufacturers and making recommendations for products they've never actually used. For popular product categories, I often have to sort through pages of search results to find a page that's not just some low-effort SEO blog. I shudder to think about how many consumers may be misled by these sites and make poor choices because of them.

<comment><USER4> A close relative of the low-effort SEO blog is the low-effort YouTube review. I'm not speaking of the dude unboxing something in their kitchen, but the videos that just feature screenshots from the product's website while somebody just reads the features from the same website. Thankfully these are typically pretty transparently useless, but I do wish they would disappear altogether.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My Chrome extension brings music to your Cyber Monday. - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cyber-monday-music/opohlfadhcjipolcljapbndoknbakeda

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a silly holiday hack, since I wanted to learn how to build and "ship" Chrome extensions. Code here: <https://github.com/davepeck/monday-music/></comment>


Ask HN: Quitting with no side income but a lot of savings? - <AUTHOR> I've been working as a developer for the past 5 years or so and starting to get really burnt out. I particularly dislike my current job and have been contemplating leaving for a while. I started trying to work on a portfolio while learning new stuff so I could try freelancing instead of another full time job, but I really just don't feel like programming outside of work anymore.
I want to just quit when my stocks vest in a few months and take a real break - traveling, learning a new (non-programming) language, seeing family and friends, getting back into my hobbies, and reflecting on what I really want to do in life. I'll be turning 27 soon, have enough savings to last a few years, no debts, and no family/dependents. It seems like this might be the last time I can take a risk like this before I have any real responsibilities to worry about. After a nice long summer vacation my plan is to work on my skills/portfolio for a year or two and try to get enough freelancing work so that I don't need to get another job. I figure I can always start interviewing again if my funds start running low, but I'm also not above driving for Uber or something if I need more money/time to get something going. Maybe I'll decide I don't even want to be a developer anymore and do something else entirely.
The few people I've told about this plan have been supportive and think its reasonable. I'm mostly really excited about it too, but sometimes I can't help but think I'm about to make the dumbest decision ever.  Not really sure what I'm looking to get out of posting this other than helping to clarify my thoughts writing about it. If anyone has gone through something similar I'd love to hear about what you did and how it worked out for you. <comment><USER2> If you are worried about not being able to find a dev job after, I took 2 separate year long breaks during my 20s, and I don't feel like it has really hurt my career or employability. When applying, if anyone asks why there's a gap, I just reply: "because I wanted to take time off, and was fortunate enough to be able to".

If anyone questions why you would want to take time off to live your life, perhaps it's not a place you want to work anyways :)

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently quit my job at 29, with a little savings which could let me stay afloat for a few months. So far, i haven't thought about taking up another "job".

I do not know the future, but what i was certain is that i didn't want to see myself in the future doing what i was doing "now". So change was inevitable for me.

If you feel, you need a break - you just need a break. Noone, but you can know when the time is right. Instead of wasting your precious time, just go with what you want to do. Take massive determined action. Let go, and find what you want from life.

In your position, you can take this decision easily. Set a timeline and commit to it, else you are bound to move around without any direction. Give yourself 6 months, and do some soul searching. When you set a timeframe, you create a constraint and your mind becomes active to find all means to move you into a position you want to be in.

If you do not have dependents, all the more better. Find real friends, talk to real people ( not online, meet in person ).

Make connections, feel alive, do something you have been dreaming of but put it off, exercise and feel better.

Good luck to you, and let us know how it turns out for you :-)

EDIT : i have done this twice, first was a short break ~ 3 months.

<comment><AUTHOR> Congrats on quitting! Its very reassuring to hear this kind of advice. People let fear of the unknown hold them back way to much, taking a calculated risk can be good for you. Maybe not necessarily for your career but for your development as a human. Glad to hear you've done it before too and the world didn't end :)

<comment><USER3> Exactly! :) You ought to become valuable in the present economic climate! And you become valuable by becoming a better human.

Follow your heart :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Right, I could probably tell you about this for the whole evening, but here's the summary.

I've done it (twice), it's worth it, do it.

A few things you need to know though:

\- Time goes fast, keep track of your money and start working again _before_ you run out. Best is actually to define a budget for this.

\- After 4-6 months of resting and travelling, it will have become the new normal, you'll be well rested and ready for something new.

\- Once you hit that point, make sure you have clearly defined goals as to what you want to achieve with the available time you have. Without those, time will pass and you'll probably have little to show for it (except a good time)

Enjoy !

</comment><comment><USER5> I would suggest you really enjoy your break for a month, maybe two, and then start doing some freelancer job, only on the projects you enjoy. I believe it's important not to follow out of the routine completely and to keep oneself disciplined, especially when it comes to work. Obviously, do what makes you happy, but take into account that at some point you are going to want to/have to come back to work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good advice, I think that's more or less my plan. Even during my break from programming I was planning on keeping a routine and getting better at my hobbies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> When I think about these types of decisions, I make a list of the possible outcomes.

Then I look at the very worst possible outcome and judge how bad it is.

It's never "dead." It's rarely "unemployable." It's often "basically the same, with less cash in the bank."

Making this list makes the decision easy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for this, some of the best advice I've heard so far. Makes it really hard to rationalize not quitting. Maybe I will have to get another job, maybe it will be lower paying and I'll have less savings in the bank, but at least I will have tried to live life on my own terms.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> From experience, here's a few things you need to know:

\- the job market is horrible in 2017, too many people are applying and the competition is crazy. Especially if you've been unemployed for a little while it'll be a red flag.

\- make sure to include annual expenses in your budget when you look at your savings as your only source of income. Taxes, registrations, potential health issues, unexpected bills, etc.

\- taking a break is amazing, being unemployed after your break is very stressful and can sometimes be humiliating. No one will take you seriously, unless you've spent your time trying to build a company or things like that.

\- make sure your professional network is very strong because you'll need referrals to get back on a W2. It's that bad right now...

<comment><AUTHOR> Maybe I'm not paying enough attention but seems programmers are very much in demand. I also live in a big tech hub and have very employable skills on my resume, so not too worried that I won't be able to find another job in a reasonable amount of time should I choose to. I suppose everything could collapse during my break and there truly won't be jobs when I'm looking again, but thats a risk I'm willing to take.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've done this before to work on my own projects. It turned out fine for me but obviously you won't be making money during this time so you may be set back on things like buying a house.

<comment><AUTHOR> Glad to hear it worked out for you. Not interested in buying a house any time soon, but I probably will be someday in which case I wouldn't be able to take a break like this and why I want to do it now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Try taking one of those breaks, where you don't quit, but can take 3-6 months off. I can't find the word right now.

<comment><AUTHOR> You mean take unpaid leave and then return? I definitely don't want to keep this job, and pretty sure I wouldn't get it if I asked anyway.</comment></comment>


Bebo founder pays $1m to buy back site sold for $850m - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jul/02/bebo-founder-buys-back-site

<comment><USER2> Sell high, buy low ;)</comment>


MapKnitter can make maps from any image source - <AUTHOR> https://mapknitter.org/ <comment><USER2> I wonder what the hosting costs of mapping is. The site says the average map has 24 cm/pixel resolution, assuming a 100 000 x 100 000 pixel average 'knitted' map that would be 10 gigapixels per map. With 100 000 maps that would be a petapixel of maps. If it's losslessly compressed, which I doubt, that could be as much as 1.5 petabytes. Probably less, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is cool because there's already a lot of tools to do this for images from drone/satellite which are georeferenced.

This just gives you a nice interface so you can position/stretch the image on a 2D map even without that metadata. Seems to be a manual process.

</comment><comment><USER4> Orthorectification was my second favourite geography "puzzle" in undergrad. I'm delighted to see some handy tooling to do it from the browser. It's so empowering to be able to register public participation remote sensing data to a map frame.

</comment><comment><USER5> Thought this was going to be a map of knit shops when I read the name. First thing I remembered was once stumbling upon [http://www.needletravel.com](http://www.needletravel.com)

This is far cooler.

</comment><comment><USER6> This has the potential to be very impactful.</comment>


French tobacco shops will sell Bitcoin and Ethereum starting January 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://venturebeat.com/2018/11/22/french-tobacco-shops-will-sell-bitcoin-and-ethereum-starting-january-2019/ <comment><USER2> already confirmed as fake news

[https://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2018/11/21/les-...](https://www.lemonde.fr/les- decodeurs/article/2018/11/21/les-bitcoins-dans-les-bureaux-de-tabac-une- information-fumeuse_5386538_4355770.html)

Enjoy your daily BTC scams.</comment>


Health effects of sit-stand desks at work are still unproven - <AUTHOR> http://www.cochrane.org/news/health-effects-sit-stand-desks-and-interventions-aimed-reduce-sitting-work-are-still-unproven <comment><AUTHOR> The original title is "Health effects of sit-stand desks and interventions aimed to reduce sitting at work are still unproven" which is 102 chars.

I have no idea what a better title for HN is. The title I've given it isn't great because this is about interventions to reduce sitting time at work, and not so much about sit-stand desks.</comment>


In Virtual Reality, How Much Body Do You Need? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/17/science/virtual-reality-body.html <comment><USER2> VR/AR is still in its "our users are completely untrained" skeuomorphic UI phase. There's been a tunnel-vision focus on gaming, Virtual _Reality_ , and immersion.

The design space for HMD and body tracking UIs is much larger than skeuomorphic VR. I've liked attaching eyeballs to my hand, to explore graphs without gymnastics or manipulation. Using aphysical kind-of-planar workspaces, to permit subpixel resolution on integrated graphics. Remapping motion, to permit fast ergonomic input from resting hands.

Non-skeuomorphic UIs aren't getting much attention yet. And even awareness of that is not yet widespread. But there's a lot of fun incoming.

<comment><USER3> Attaching eyeballs to your hands sounds really fun actually, but we are already walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick. Not sure experiments like this would be comfortable for most people, so this is why i think everyone usually sticks to skeuomorphic UIs.

But i agree that, VR-design wise, we are very primitive right now.

<comment><USER2> > walking a pretty thin line just trying to not make people sick

Yes and no. There seems a lot of confusion about that. About which design constraints are coming from which goals. Yes, for the common style of immersive gaming. But when I'm working, I'm usually down around 30 fps with high variance, running on integrated graphics.

What constitutes a "horrible" "immersion-breaking" "visual artifact"? And how much will you pay to avoid it?

I'm looking at a laptop's desktop. It's obviously a display panel. And not my wooden desk. And that's fine. When looking at my HMD "desktop", it's also obviously a panel. And not my office. And that's also fine. Using emacs isn't fighting slimey zombies. Usually.

Paper novels can be immersive. Even if you sometimes notice turning a page.

The design goal "avoid reminding the user they're wearing an HMD" is a _very_ challenging one. It prunes the design space, discouraging many things. Camera passthrough AR. Lag. Different objects having different lag. Visible boundaries in display space. And so on.

For example. If you mostly care about text, then you want to see unblurred pixels, which means only the center half of the lens-blurred display is useful. Passthrough AR can provide balance even at low fps. So it can be shown beyond the center. Which creates a visible boundary in display space. And that's fine. And if when you turn your head, some graphical elements slowly chase others across the screen, that's fine too. So now you can run on old Intel integrated graphics. It's a different point in design space from fighting zombies in a warehouse. And it has different design constraints.

So when people say "VR requires X", that's worth translating as "SteamVR games require X". And it can be fun to consider other things you can do with a tracked head mounted display.

<comment><USER3> >The design goal "avoid reminding the user they're wearing an HMD"

There is a difference between design decisions based on "striving to achieve presence" and design decisions based on "not make people vomit". And high fps with good tracking is closer to "not make people vomit" group.

I agree that it's okay to break presence to do something (i would trade presence for fun for example) and let user push the limit if he can handle it, but you have to understand that VR is already a niche market, so devs usually are just playing it safe.

<comment><USER2> > There is a difference between design decisions based on "striving to achieve > presence" and design decisions based on "not make people vomit". And high > fps with good tracking is closer to "not make people vomit" group.

A goal of avoiding visible lag, requires a mechanism of predictive tracking, which has an undesired side-effect of judder, which can be far more sickening than the original lag, which motivates a mitigation of higher fps and lower variance, which requires a stronger GPU.

A goal of wide fov (absence of tunnel-vision "comfort mode"), increases user sensitivity, especially during rapid head and spatial motion, increasing needed performance and user discomfort risk.

A goal of avoiding visual artifacts, discourages introducing visual artifacts which increase user comfort. A goal of visual seamlessness, discourages segmenting the display to permit separately optimizing for task and comfort, compromising both, motivating mitigation.

With current hardware, "presence" and comfort are conflicting objectives. Optimizing for presence, is _why_ we're pushing the envelope on comfort. But there's been a lack of community awareness of just what tradeoffs are being made, and why, and of alternatives and opportunities. In part because of the niche economics you mentioned - if SteamVR doesn't support it, why think about it? But happily, improving hardware will make the issue mostly go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From a couple decades of gaming experience, you don't need much more than eyeballs, fingers and a little bit of forearm.

I am convinced people who talk about immersion in VR have never been addicted to any game. It doesn't take that much to lose yourself inside of one. After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same once you're fluent with the controls.

<comment><USER5> > After the first few minutes both VR and non-VR games are the same

Again proving the point that VR has no actual use case.

<comment><USER6> Sorry to break it to you but many games (like first person shooters) currently have no depth perception and would be greatly enhanced by it. Literally every 3D game you play today can and will be enhanced in VR because of this reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> In deep trance states, the body progressively fades away and you perceive what would ordinarily feel like body sensations as other things, as the mind loses its frame of reference to cause and effect. All experience thus gets created by mind.

I imagine with practice anything is possible regarding VR. The mind can make anything believable if you just relax and let it happen.

<comment><USER8> > I imagine with practice anything is possible regarding VR. The mind can make > anything believable if you just relax and let it happen.

That's generally good advice for journeying of any kind, whether we're talking about VR, psychedelics, drumming, meditation, lucid dreaming, or reading a really good book.

<comment><USER9> It's also exceptionally good advice for nights with your partner.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think its more important for the body parts that are there to move correctly than to have them visible and not match. I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring.

Having spent many hours in both vive and rift, while I prefer vive in general, the visible hands on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

<comment><USER11> I'm a little confused by your post.

> I remember trying a vive game that had arms but sometimes they would contort > into impossible poses and it was extremely jarring [.....] the visible hands > on the touch controllers on rift is just fantastic.

Neither of the things mentioned here are specific to Vive or Rift.

A Rift game can give you arms that contort into impossible poses, just like a Vive game can give you visible hands. It's just software and whatever the author of whatever game you're playing decided to do.

Did you play a game worked in both Vive and Rift, and the versions were different or something?

<comment><USER12> You're correct about the arms, but I believe the Rift has additional sensors on its touch controllers [1], allowing it to record your thumb position and update the hand model accordingly.

1: [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Oculus-R...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Oculus- Rift-Touch-Controllers-Pair.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> 100% IMO

First thing I did when I played a demo of Dark Secret, it shows your character in a mirror as a way to show you what your character looks like (there's the mask mirror from the Oculus Dreamdeck as well). Of course I see the character's head tilt to my head movement but most people when looking at a mirror make an expression (smile etc...) and the fact that it didn't show my actual facial expression reflect in the mirror was off putting.

Second experience was Job Simulator. I picked up something, dropped it on the floor. Tried to kick it away with my feet but of course no sensors on feet so that failed. Also tried to hip close drawers and file cabinets but of course no hip sensor.

If I was in a VR meetup I'd want to be able to express with my hands meaning I need all 5 fingers so I can point, give the middle finger, make the OK gesture, pick up a glass and stick my small finger out, make the shaka sign, etc.

</comment><comment><USER14> You only need pseudo hands [https://sean- bradley.github.io/GrabVR/](https://sean-bradley.github.io/GrabVR/)

And a teleporter [https://sean-bradley.github.io/TeleportVR/](https://sean- bradley.github.io/TeleportVR/)

</comment><comment><USER15> You really only need hands so you can see what you're interacting with and how you're interacting with them.

I think if we had some other way of controlling your avatar/viewpoint, such as some kind of direct mind interface I think you could put people into nearly any kind of body at all and they would adapt.

</comment><comment><USER16> I guess that all depends on -what you look forward to doing- in that virtual reality. And how many (and what kind of stimulating) sensor options are available.

</comment><comment><USER17> None.

</comment><comment><USER17> none</comment>


Wallace and Gromit – The Great Train Chase (1993) [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aardman.com/celebrating-40-years/the-great-train-chase/ <comment><USER2> Sad fact, all of the original Wallace and Gromit sets were destroyed in a fire in 2005. [1]

[1] [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/4326286.stm)

<comment><USER3> Especially sad as the highly elaborate museum set had several more visual gags than we actually get to see in the movie.

<comment><USER4> When I was a kid I persuaded the parents to take me to an exhibition of the sets. I think we ended up going a couple of times as it was so good. The amount of detail which had been put in, especially to the museum, was amazing.

What's impressive is that Nick Park started the first film by himself as a student graduation project, taking six years to complete.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "It's you!"

I always love how surprised Wallace is when Feathers removes his "disguise".

</comment><comment><USER6> Some earlier work. Morph that was part of a weekly children's art show [1]. Creature comforts [2]. Heat electric ads [3].

[1] [http://youtu.be/kCbPZhWGZhA](http://youtu.be/kCbPZhWGZhA) [2] [http://youtu.be/PCOWE0EiCyo](http://youtu.be/PCOWE0EiCyo) [3] [http://youtu.be/B9svHH6SCZ4](http://youtu.be/B9svHH6SCZ4)

</comment><comment><USER7> The attention to detail in this sequence is astonishing, and the timing is superb.

But my gosh, they appear to have a _really_ big house ...

<comment><USER8> ... and a TARDIS of a train track box.

<comment><USER9> So _that 's_ how they fit curved track into it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm guessing this submission was prompted by yesterdays reddit thread "The greatest chase sequence in history", which linked to the same video [1].

In the thread you'll find lots of links to more modern chase scenes that are apparently inspired by or modelled on Wallace and Gromit.

Other highlights from that thread includes a link to a video where Adam Savage (of Myth Busters fame) interviews some of the people who makes puppets and props for Aardman and they discuss the geeky details [2]

[1] [https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/50aupi/the_greatest...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/50aupi/the_greatest_chase_sequence_in_movie_history/)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3pPfq6hjLA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3pPfq6hjLA)

<comment><AUTHOR> No, it wasn't. I submitted it because it appeared on my social stream as part of Aardman's 40th Anniversary celebrations.

I wasn't aware of that Reddit thread as I seldom visit Reddit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It's amazing to see this and how Nick Park's work evolved into present-day Shaun the Sheep.

</comment><comment><USER12> One of very few movies that had me fall off my chair from laughing when I first saw it back then.

</comment><comment><USER13> Cracking stuff...!

</comment><comment><USER14> Cheese!!

</comment><comment><USER15> So, did the penguin represent Linux?

</comment><comment><USER16> Oldies but goldies.</comment>