Show HN: Set NASA APOD as Ubuntu Desktop Background - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/randomdrake/nasa-apod-desktop

<comment><USER2> Looks nice. Just a small warning though, a couple of times per year they will do something fancy with video or JavaScript that will probably break this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the heads up, slyall. I'll be sure to check so nothing weird happens.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> ah, good to see the old regex for <a href="(image. _?)"

I wrote a little parser for this site a while back to display the daily photo as a desktop gadget, and had to resort to the same hack to get the image out. It's a shame there isn't a rss feed for this yet.. it is a bit hard to be believe that in this day and age, thousands of pieces of code around the world are relying on how one guy decided to write his html.

[Ninja Edit:] For what it is worth, here's the regex I actually ended up using:

        ^<a\s*?href\s*?=\s*?['"](image/.+?)\1\s*?>$

but obviously, this is equally fragile.

<comment><AUTHOR> I plan on using an actual DOM parser on my next pass as I fully stand by and believe that you should never parse markup with regex.

<http://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Congrats!

One quick suggestion: I think it would be more straightforward if you used the GSettings API through PyGObject rather than running the gsettings command.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, streptomycin!

I will definitely check out PyGObject. I didn't even know it existed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> First pull request!

<https://github.com/randomdrake/nasa-apod-desktop/pull/2>

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://cad.cx/blog/2008/03/27/howto-astronomy-picture-of- the...](http://cad.cx/blog/2008/03/27/howto-astronomy-picture-of-the-day-for- gnome/)

</comment><comment><USER7> So cool! I would really love if there was an OSX version

<comment><USER8> Hey, I'm just forking it right now to have that to you. I have it mostly working, I'm just installing PIL. But apart from resizing everything works. Check back in 15 minutes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome! I'd love to link to yours when/if you get it up and running. I would very much like to make this in OSX myself, but as I said in another comment: I still don't have a Macbook.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It doesn't need to be a ubuntu/gnome only script, for example to set the wallpaper on fluxbox:

      fbsetbg -c $the_file

</comment><comment><USER10> Do you have to resize it in the script? I think you can just set GNOME to scale it down by itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> The images are quite large (usually over 10MB, at least). Re-sizing them not only saves space, but ensures your desktop doesn't do anything weird when trying to scale by itself.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It works nicely but the image looks squashed vertically on my 1366x768 display.

<comment><USER12> The size of the image is statically defined in the script: RESOLUTION_X = 1680 RESOLUTION_Y = 1050

Change them to your screen's resolution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Working on Fedora 17 (GNOME) with two monitors. Very nice!

</comment><comment><USER14> Annnnnnd, today it's a youtube video, which fails. :(

</comment><comment><USER15> I would absolutely love this for osx. Good work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much, Jonanin!

Unfortunately, I'm still saving up for my first Macbook. Otherwise: I'd be all over this request for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> _I just wanted an image, no text as I live in a semi-transparent terminal most of the time_

This made me think of someone getting stuck living in an airport and writing this script because they miss the stars.

Which is in no way relevant or particularly useful, admittedly.

<comment><AUTHOR> Heh, you're not too far off. When I'm developing, I use Vim with a semi- transparent terminal. Any text on the background would be terribly distracting.

I wouldn't say I'm stuck. The images of stars are my own little gateways to the Universe. I can't ever be "stuck" when I'm looking at them. I have a fascination with the stars and all things to do with space & quantum physics, so it works perfectly for me. I guess it's just something I've always been drawn to. I even have a tattoo which represents these things.

I find the stars and all celestial bodies to be comforting, beautiful, and quite inspirational. Much more than just a plain background.

<comment><USER16> I used to have a darkened version of the hubble deep field set as my terminal background and currently have a satellite photo of martian dunes and one of those absolutely mental long exposures from the ISS by Don Pettit as some of my desktop backgrounds. They are lovely, I keep meaning to find out about getting some prints. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_jsc_photo/sets/72157629726...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/nasa_jsc_photo/sets/72157629726792248/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Integrating early-days startup with giant CRMs – like SAP? - <AUTHOR> Hello everyone,
I'm a technical cofounder at a 6-ish months old startup. We do route planning and data collection for direct sales -- currently on a niche market.
We've been recently presented what seems like a potentially great opportunity from a big client. After some negotiation, we settled on an initial step that would be integrating our end-user app (for collecting data from the salesmen) to their CRM. This brings us to the present day.
I immediatelly started investigating ways to simply fetch data from their CRM (in this particular case, it was SAP), and right now I am completely overwhelmed by the amount of apparent complexity and how much locked-in and buzzwordy this ecossystem is. It worried me even more after reading Paul Graham's essay [0], on which he says he'd never worry about competing startups working with Oracle (I'd probably put SAP in the same bag).
So, my question is: Does anyone have related experiences or advice to share with us? Here's some added context:
- We're bootstraped;
- We don't pay rent;
- We don't have employees beside the founders;
- We have only two technical people (me +1);
- We have two clients so far;
Thanks a lot in advance.
[0] http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html <comment><USER2> Sounds like that can easily turn into a never-ending business developing and/or business intelligence project for the client you've mentioned. I assume this is not what you want to achieve, otherwise you would be a cofounder at CRM consultancy startup.

\- Be as specific as you can about the scope of data you will communicate between and what exactly will be a part of this integration (try not to get involved with anything other than that). \- Expect a lot of traffic as CRM's tend to be loaded with useful and useless data which just keeps growing. \- you can expect that your client will often want to increase the scope of data fetched or sent to CRM. \- you can expect that your client will often want to trash or change data fetched or sent to CRM.

All CRM's have out-of-the-box API which you will probably have to use, so look into that. Usually you can CRUD a record in CRM by providing ID and type values of that record.

Good luck!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight. It's a relatively fragile negotiation, since we're just little guys who received an opportunity to do business with a big corp.

As with the API, we implemented some integration with Salesforce and it was relatively easy. SAP, on the other hand, seems to be a different kind of beast. There's a huge amount of moving parts, which seems a little enterprise-y and complex for a tiny startup to work with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I am not totally clear on your question. But instead on integrating directly could you integrate your app with Zappier and use this? [https://support.sapanywhere.com/confluence/sapkb/improving-y...](https://support.sapanywhere.com/confluence/sapkb/improving- your-business/apps-integrations/sap-anywhere-app-store/zapier)

<comment><AUTHOR> It seems like Zapier is some sort of task automation service, which works with SAP Anywhere™ (which _seems_ to be yet another product from SAP). I'll look further into it. Thanks!</comment></comment>


MIT study concludes that humans do not over-trust Tesla Autopilot - <AUTHOR> https://hcai.mit.edu/human-side-of-tesla-autopilot/ <comment><USER2> The original title ("Human Side of Tesla Autopilot") is much better and less click-baity.

The paper's [1] findings are pretty similar to what I've experienced after a couple months of using Autopilot, though. Today's driver-assist systems don't really lower the cognitive load of driving. I spend a little less time keeping the speed correct and staying in my lane, but that means I just spend more time looking for hazards. If anything I find the need to keep wiggling the steering wheel makes it harder for me to stop paying attention than manual driving.

[1] [https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human- side.pdf](https://hcai.mit.edu/tesla-autopilot-human-side.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER3> The title is misleading. The website mentions all these -

We discuss the limitations and implications of this work in detail in the paper, however, it is important to re-state here that these findings:

1) Cannot be directly used to infer safety as a much larger dataset would be required for crash-based statistical analysis of risk,

2) May not be generalizable to a population of drivers nor Autopilot versions outside our dataset,

3) Do not include challenging scenarios that did not lead to Autopilot disengagement,

4) Are based on human-annotation of critical signals,

5) Do not imply that driver attention management systems are not potentially highly beneficial additions to the functional vigilance framework for the purpose of encouraging the driver to remain appropriately attentive to the road.</comment>


Ask HN: Could apparmor help as a solution for the Shellshock? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> A qualified no. If a remote process can issue local shell commands, then AppArmor has no protective role. If AppArmor prevents a process from running at all, then yes, but that's a completely different question.

For a Web server using CGI, AppArmor has no role. For an SSH login process, AppArmor has no role except to prevent the execution of certain programs. By the time AppArmor is choosing which applications may run, a remote login could have exploited the Shellshock bug and be past AppArmor's control.</comment>


A Better Default Colormap for Matplotlib - <AUTHOR> http://bids.github.io/colormap/ <comment><USER2> When it comes to plot colors in matplotlib, it's why I start with

import seaborn as sns

to get a nice plot theme, not "good old 90s" style. See: [https://speakerdeck.com/pmigdal/teaching-machine- learning?sl...](https://speakerdeck.com/pmigdal/teaching-machine- learning?slide=5)

<comment><USER3> This, changes everything.

The theme seaborn uses is actually a direct clone from ggplot2 from R

<comment><USER2> Yes. Though, I think that 'whitegrid' is a cleaner theme (if there were axes).

For ggplot theme, in matplotlib there is

plt.style.use('ggplot')

(see also: [http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas- docs/stable/visualization.ht...](http://pandas.pydata.org/pandas- docs/stable/visualization.html)).

<comment><USER4> 'ticks' plus sns.despine() is my favorite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This will be the default in Matplotlib 2.0, and a beta was just tagged: [http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.matplotlib.announ...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.python.matplotlib.announce/9)

</comment><comment><USER6> In the talk when he showed the 3 similar maps getting equal score, and then the green one getting a much higher score, that could easily be because people couldn't decide between the 3 similar maps, to they went with the one different map. To do a proper comparison the test should be 1-1 or 3-3, not 3-1.

<comment><USER7> They wanted green because it's a python library. He goes into the details in the talk

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> OP here: really worth watching the embedded video on this topic. Viridis is born out of an awesome, intense deep-dive into research on human vision and perception.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm mostly using seaborn ([https://web.stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/](https://web.stanford.edu/~mwaskom/software/seaborn/)) to wrap matplotlib graphs but great to see a direct alternative into the matplotlib library.

</comment><comment><USER9> If you're interested in colour maps, cubehelix [1] is a useful scheme to make intensity maps which display well when converted to greyscale.

[1] [https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/](https://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~dag/CUBEHELIX/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I ported these color scales to d3-scale and D3 4.0:

[https://github.com/d3/d3-scale/blob/master/README.md#sequent...](https://github.com/d3/d3-scale/blob/master/README.md#sequential- scales)

</comment><comment><USER11> I started using viridis a few weeks ago and I love it!

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it strange that I find the old "JET" the best? It uses the most hues (green, yellow, red and blue are all there), so things are the most distinguishable. The others are either only blue/green/yellow, or only purple/red/yellow.

<comment><USER13> Quick, which represents a larger value, green or red?

Having a gradient between two colors, from dark to light, makes it easier to determine the scale. Rainbow gradients look nice, but hue transitions are nowhere near as intuitive as luminance.

<comment><USER14> I think you're both correct, but your points respond to different needs. For some types of results (and audiences and modes of presentation) its more important that the reader be able to determine the approximate value that a color corresponds to than that the reader be able to quickly intuit the progression of values. For me, Jet is better at the former while Viridis et al are better at the latter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I dislike that the whole page, including the updates, do not contain any dates...

<comment><USER16> Good point. I'll ping authors to update page with dates.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Javascript version: [https://github.com/politiken-journalism/scale-color- perceptu...](https://github.com/politiken-journalism/scale-color-perceptual)

</comment><comment><USER18> If you use gnuplot, which I do exclusively, you may like this repository:

        https://github.com/Gnuplotting/gnuplot-palettes

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm pleased. They look extremely similar to the gnuplot and gnuplot2 color maps already present in matplotlib, my favorites.

</comment><comment><USER20> I also enjoy using Olga Botvinnik's prettyplotlib: github.com/olgabot/prettyplotlib

</comment><comment><USER21> That was an amusing talk. I had fun watching it.</comment>


Microsoft Said to Be Talking With News Corporation About Joint Yahoo Bid - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/technology/10google.html?ei=5065&en=d0335626b3163fd3&ex=1208404800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print <comment><USER3> Why in the hell is Yahoo, all of the sudden, so valuable to Microsoft? Why didn't they make this offer a year ago or six months ago? What prompted them to suddenly, out of the blue, give them an unsolicited offer? And now that they've essentially declined, why is Microsoft so eager to perform a hostile takeover?

Also, why can no one give a straight answer to these questions?

<comment><USER4> It's hard to answer your question. Yahoo gets a significant amount of traffic (around 500 million users) that it doesn't _monetize_ (it's biggest problem) as well as Google and Microsoft sees merging with Yahoo (combining pageviews and engineering talent) as sort of a Custer's Last Stand / Alamo against the inevitability of Google becoming the premier advertising service on the Internet and becoming the provider of whatever supplants CPM advertising in the future (potentially something that measures your direct influence on people to buy products - Facebook SocialAds just the beginning - <USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=119295>)

There are a lot of _If's_

If Google contextual ads weren't like The Blob and eating up the CPMs of its competitors

If a Microsoft merger with Yahoo managed to arithmetically combine their traffic (pageviews to properties and more importantly, search traffic)

If Yahoo didn't start showing signs of trouble (reorgs, Jerry Yang coming back)

If Microsoft managed to inject some of Yahoo's engineering talent (Yahoo pipes, for example) into its organization (notwithstanding some of the premier engineers + leaders have left/are leaving)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my Twitter recommendation engine - <AUTHOR> Mofollow
http://www.mofollow.com
This is my official public launch, just for you guys on HN. I have been developing this bad boy long before Twitter announced their user recommendation service but I've been hesitant to go public. There's a couple reasons behind my wariness:
1. It's currently only running on two linodes.
2. I wanted to ensure I had my MongoDB session handler working properly for scale out. If you notice any problems regarding sessions, please comment to let me know. I just enabled round-robin DNS and I had to fix a few hiccups along the way.
3. The number of API calls made to Twitter to generate a request is quite high, it's along the lines of ~105 requests if you have over 100 friends.  Due to the sheer amount of data and handshakes being transferred, I was wary of both my bandwidth and the server load.
Oh well, here we go.  It is quite likely you guys could get my servers to a crawl.  If anybody is going to stress test my server, I would prefer if it's my fellow hackers to give appropriate feedback (and snarky comments) before I go entirely public with this thing.
I do plan on some form of integration with the new twitter recommendation API calls as well in the near future, but for now this is my completely custom version.
As a side note: I would appreciate it if you didn't tweet or blog about this as the site hasn't been stress tested and I'm just looking for some preliminary feedback.
I enjoy any and all comments and criticism. <comment><AUTHOR> I just noticed from my access logs that some of you are viewing from a mobile phone. Let me know how that goes, I haven't gotten to the point of creating my mobile subdomain yet.</comment>


A DIY Astro Tracker in Two Nights - <AUTHOR> http://kukuruku.co/hub/diy/diy-an-astro-tracker-in-two-nights

<comment><USER2> There are many projects like this, but a lot of them are done wrong: they use a straight main bolt and they don't compensate for the error in the driver motor.

This one is done right - the main bolt is curved, so no error (or very little error) is introduced while tracking. Good job.

<comment><USER3> "Wrong" is a strong word. There are compromises in every design. As pointed out by another poster, accurate pole alignment will be the dominant source of error for any reasonably accurate barn door. The short focal lengths, wide field of view, and relatively short "long" exposures of DSLRs (5 minute exposures will induce thermal distortion on my D60 vs >15 minute exposures for film) common in DSLRs don't require extreme accuracy, especially if stacking the final images.

Barn door trackers can have very low error without curving the rod. Modern microcontrollers also allow digital compensation compared to older barn doors that often used analog synchronous motors, and variations on this design (e.g., the double barn door [1]) can provide tracking accuracy at the limit of hobby applications.

[1] [http://davetrott.com/inventions/double-arm-barn-door- drive/](http://davetrott.com/inventions/double-arm-barn-door-drive/)

<comment><USER2> Well, curving the rod is a pretty simple way of eliminating one source of errors - why not do it when it's so easy. Of course you still have to do polar alignment and so on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The overly high tech methods used in the project amuse me: design it with a CAD system, use a laser cutter to cut the wood, design your own gears, write C program for microcontroller to driver stepper motor- (advantage: easily adjust for astrophotography from other planets). It's too much meta-work.

So here is my new challenge: make it using only parts and tools available from Home Depot.

(even so, I have to get one of these laser cutters..)

<comment><USER5> I made one a long time ago: two planks, a hinge, two nuts, a threaded rod, and a camera mount. Operation was by turning the threaded rod 1/4 turn every time my HP48SX beeped. :)

It's actually advantageous to be manual when you're doing this at -25C on a cold winter night in Sweden. Batteries tend to not work well at all at those temperatures.

(And no, you don't _need_ a curved threaded rod, you can just calculate what the correct rate is as a function of position.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Astro-know-nothing question: why wouldn't it be more directly 'tracking' to forget the constant clock drive (which we know will always be off by some amount) and set up a suitably long sight tube on some bright star with a photo sensor at the bottom of it. When the star's light moves out of the tube, a fine-stepped stepper tracks west until it re-appears ..?

<comment><USER5> That's how automatic guiders work, but they only provide extra signal above and beyond the normal tracking rate. Rather than pulsing on and off completely, you want to start with something you know is almost right and then just provide small perturbations on top of it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't wait to see the results of this, good job!</comment>


Ask HN: What's the most interesting thing in technology in 2015? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> I think Fintech is interesting from a P2P perspective. When regulation gets involved it gets hard so starting a sharing platform and moving it towards a bank seems a more likely.

</comment><comment><USER3> My top two are: Carbon3D printer and Microsoft Hololens

</comment><comment><USER4> Price drop on 3d printing.

</comment><comment><USER5> VR and machine learning

</comment><comment><USER6> 3d printing and VR.

</comment><comment><USER7> I would also say www.campusbulletinboard.com; let me know what you think?</comment>


Every Google Cloud Platform product described in 4 words or less - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@gregsramblings/gcp-products-described-in-4-words-or-less-f3056550e595 <comment><USER2> Is anyone finding medium.com to be unusable when not logged in? From a big banner at the tops and bottom and a huge popup on _every visit_ , I think it's time for people to move content elsewhere.

<comment><USER3> ublock origin + umatrix is your friend. Here's how it looks for me (zoomed way out to show the whole thing):

[https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/2017.10.26.15.03.1509055395.pn...](https://tmp.thekyel.com/month/2017.10.26.15.03.1509055395.png)

I do this to a lot of sites. It makes them much better

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Am I the only one who finds many of the descriptions less descriptive than the title of the service? I've always found GCP pretty on-point with their titles

</comment><comment><USER5> Slightly off topic, please forgive me.

What kind of cloud product should I get if I want something that's equivalent to a Raspberry Pi on my own home connection, to run small scripts and maybe some small server applications without any real traffic? The load could be considered insignificant, but I'd like it to be available 24/7, and I want to install my own programs and libraries.

Is it as simple as a VM? What's a good place to get one, Digital Ocean? Being able to use my own domain name for access would be a plus.

<comment><USER6> Google Cloud gives you a f1-micro VM for free without a time limit. This about equal to a RPi.

<comment><USER5> That's not available in Europe for some reason, at least not for personal projects without potential economic benefit.

> In the European Union and Russia, Google Cloud Platform services can be used > only for business purposes. If the sole purpose for which you want to use > Google Cloud Platform services has no potential economic benefit you should > discontinue your use of the service.

[https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/6090602](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/6090602)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic! Would anyone happen to know if there is one for AWS as well?

<comment><USER8> [https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain- english](https://www.expeditedssl.com/aws-in-plain-english)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why isn't the description the name of the product?

<comment><USER10> Why isn't your biography your name? Because a name is way more valuable when referring to specific things. It doesn't draw out conversations, lets you distinguish between multiple similar items, and serves great in making sentences easier to parse by making its parts more distinct. I'd much rather have a conversation that goes like

> Have we considered Cloud Vision yet? I think Cloud Vision has the best image > recognition results out there.

instead of

> Have we considered Image Recognition and Classification? I think Image > Recognition and Classification has the best image recognition results out > there.

<comment><USER11> "Why isn't your biography your name? " because the name come before the biography.

In a products case you hope that google has a vision about what the product is before naming it..

The list is very useful..thanks..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Um it sorta didn't work by the second example Cloud Job Discovery -- ML Job Search and Discovery That's either five or six words depending on whether you count machine learning or machine-learning as one or two words

<comment><USER13> Don't count the "and" and you hit the target of 4 (if you accept that ML is one word).</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you keep checklists? - <AUTHOR> Like the title says,do you use any software or methodology to keep up with checklists? <comment><USER2> Org-mode[0] is the best merge I've found between plain text and more powerful workflow/scheduling features.

I synchronize to android using Orgzly[1].

If I wasn't on Emacs as my main editor, I would just use plain text. There have been efforts to get Org-mode working in other editors, but I don't know how good they are.

The benefits of plain text are more important to me than the benefits of the special features. I've used a lot of todo apps, and some of them are very good for specific tasks, but most aren't adaptable enough for my needs. Eventually I gave up and went to plain text, and was happy. Org-mode is just a better version of plain text.

[0]: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzA2YODtgK4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzA2YODtgK4)

[1]: [http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/)

</comment><comment><USER3> It's interesting to note that there are very few repeated answers or "me too" type posts, which suggests that what works best is highly idiosyncratic and depends on a lot of factors (what you need to organize, with whom, and in what ecosystem).

I just use a [ ] in a plaintext. When I complete something I add an x, e.g. [x]. I haven't found any shortcomings of this system yet.

<comment><USER4> Indeed! I keep my to-do lists in vim and have added a few lines to my syntax file to recognize/color a couple extra checkmarks like

\- [?] question \- [o] blocked by someone else \- [~] in progress \- [H] on hold \- [Y] Is X true? (yes) \- [N] Is Y true? (no)

<comment><USER5> The vimwiki plugin more or less incorporates this idea and gives you some hot keys to change state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> wh-uws Trello.

I organize literally my entire life between Trello, Google Docs and Google Calendar.

Trello handles strategic planning and todos i.e. "Learn Spanish , Get new job" and a separate board handles smaller more operations stuff like "buy an electric toothbrush" or "finish reading system design books"

I even designed a system with trello custom fields, webhooks and an aws lambda that will automatically sort the task buy some weights I can assign. (Just numbers for urgency, impact, and effort)

I use Google Calendar for time sensitive todos. Stuff that is or needs to happen on a specific day.

And if the calendar event description gets too long i make a trello card for it.

Google Docs I use for long form content like keeping track of my own understanding and research of modern software architecture, techincal interviewing, or competitive fighting gaming.

</comment><comment><USER6> For day-to-day tasks I built Natrium[1]. Other tools can accomplish the same thing, but I wanted a couple things in particular:

1\. To have a single daily checklist that refreshes every day

2\. Views of what I did (or wanted to but didn't) broken down by goal. This makes reflection a lot faster when I can quickly see what I did every day this week for a particular goal.

For longer-term planning (home repairs/improvements, side projects) I use Trello to organize and prioritize things.

At work I tend to use physical post-it notes to track things. It might just be an odd habit but I think it helps me compartmentalize and leave work at work. It's also really satisfying to crumple a note when I finish a task.

[1] [https://natriumapp.com](https://natriumapp.com)

</comment><comment><USER7> For professional life: Pen + dot grid notepad - developed independently, but similar to the bullet journal technique. Dot grid plus pens make the whole thing ultra customizable. I can sketch engineering designs, make a calendar, track action items, take detailed notes, all in the same format. The key is to be strict with page numbers, dates, and index as much as possible.

Things I occasionally miss - keyword search (I can still look things up by date or subject in the index), multimedia inserts (think dragging video/photos/sound clips into one note), never ending space (notebooks run out of pages), easy backups (thinking about digitizing with photos or scans), team collaboration (if this is necessary I use Trello).

Things I like - no OS/tech stack compatibility issues, "it just works", lighter then a laptop) tablet, don't need to charge, easy to read, can bring into a secure area (where outside electronics are not permitted), travels well, hard to damage.

[http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/](http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/)

For personal life: add Google keep for simple lists, and then a mix of Trello and dot grid for larger projects (less strict formatting than professional life project management).

<comment><USER8> Love the link, thank you for sharing!

As a supplement, I've found the following system to be a useful way for organizing a notebook that has more consistency in categories of pages: [http://www.highfivehq.com](http://www.highfivehq.com) (for example, notes for different classes in school or a set of projects you're working on). The idea is to draw lines on the edge of your pages that are visible from some index page. You can combine it with a standard page indexing system for a super easy-to-navigate notebook!

<comment><USER9> I've seen this before but found it limited as you can only use it on pages facing away from the other pages. I have used it but do prefer the bullet journal way

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> For short-term checklist, I use Todoist. I've tried every apps under the sun for making checklist (in my pursuit of finding the perfect checklist app), but I kept going back to Todoist, especially because I can indent each items effortlessly. While Todoist is not perfect feature-wise, its UI/UX is just perfect.

For long-term, I use plain text file and edit with Vim. I want to remember what I did and when.

For projects shared with others, I use OneNote or Kanbanflow.

<comment><USER11> Almost same here.

Todoist for lists. I live off lists, I have dozens and dozens.

.txt for longer notes. Vim/Notepad.exe/DropboxEdit depending which platform I'm on. Shared Dropbox folder of .txt for shared notes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What do you mean by checklists? Like in an airplane pilot's safety checklists?

If yes, then in my current company I've learnt to _script the hell out of them_ (though not too early — only once you see how the typical pattern/path is shaping up). Good automation (a.k.a. scripting) can help a lot to reduce brittleness of deployments.

Or "TODO" checklists? If yes, then personally I use [https://github.com/jffrymrtn/temaki](https://github.com/jffrymrtn/temaki), though it has some limitations for me, so I'm trying to build a replacement/ripoff and extend it to my needs.

<comment><USER13> > If yes, then in my current company I've learnt to script the hell out of > them (though not too early — only once you see how the typical pattern/path > is shaping up). Good automation (a.k.a. scripting) can help a lot to reduce > brittleness of deployments.

Can you elaborate on how you accomplish this? I read the checklist manifesto a few years ago and started using checklists for things like checkins, code reviews, etc. I figured these kinds of lists could be automatable, but I was never able to come up with a UI that was easier than a pre-populated textarea.

<comment><USER12> Can you try to list some example of what you have on your checklist? It'd help me understand your particular trouble, currently I don't have a good idea of it. Also, haven't read "the checklist manifesto", I understand you mean the book by the title. On technical side, there are pre-commit, pre-push etc. hooks in git, and bots like Travis-CI for github.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Apple notes, seriously.

Its good if you use an iPhone, great if you use a Mac too and fantastic if you're "all in" on the apple ecosystem with a watch/ipad as well.

Organize it using a GTD like system and you'd be hard pressed to find something that is as powerful as it is while being super simple.

<comment><USER15> I fear Apple Notes, which I use religiously. The problem is, I use it to its fullest-with long notes, PDF attachments, drawings, and so on. I'm afraid at some critical point I'll hit some undocumented wall, and find that I've a usage or search limit, only to be told "you're not supposed to use it that way."

<comment><USER14> true, and I have some of the same fears. I figure worst case its a weekend of exporting the handwritten parts to PDF and copying the text from the rest into org mode, but with all things APPL going too far outside of mainstream usage is a real risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Personal stuff: Microsoft To-Do, I switched from Wunderlist only recently, and there is still a few features I'm missing (i.e. md support for item notes). I also use Google Keep for groceries list.

Once a personal project becomes too big/important (job search) or requires long-term planning (personal/professional side projects), I create a new Kanban-like board in Trello, which is adapted to the specific task at hand.

At work, I use the Atlassian suite (Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket), and I keep track of my day-to-days activity with pen and paper by writing what I expect to do during the day and note any issue I might encounter so I can bring it up during the stand-up the next day.

</comment><comment><USER17> I use Gmail's new task manager, I find it super helpful to keep my emails and task list together. It's also has a notes function which I haven't used much yet.

</comment><comment><USER18> At work: Org mode (Emacs)

Personal stuff: I just send emails to myself.

Something like: '[TODO] Do something ...' Then you can elaborate in the message body.

Pros:

\- free

\- simple

\- no apps required (or: you can use any app/web client you want)

\- easily done and accessible from anywhere

\- auto sync out of the box

\- search/filtering out of the box

\- timestamps out of the box

\- tags out of the box (via email tags/labels)

\- groups/projects out of the box (via mail folders/inboxes)

\- rules out of the box (via email rules)

\- supports files, links, code snippets, formatted text etc.

\- I can flag/unflag them, delete/restore, mark as read/unread and so on

\- most clients allow you to add a reminder/follow up for an email (hence, reminders and notifications out of the box)

</comment><comment><USER19> Taskwarrior. I really wish I could use it on all my mobile devices easily. I especially wish that I could control it using my voice and use it with all my wearables. I think a taskwarrior service with easy setup and UI through modern channels is my dream of how people change the way they get things done. Taskwarrior isn't there yet but I feel like I've got super powers when I plan with it. Unfortunately when I'm doing my plans I don't want to always have a terminal window open.

<comment><USER20> [https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA](https://youtu.be/zl68asL9jZA)

This video from a recent Linux.conf.au has got my brain buzzing on using Taskwarrior, but I'm yet to embark on the journey.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> [https://culturedcode.com/things/](https://culturedcode.com/things/)

<comment><USER22> I use Things on my phone. I love the app, but the price of the full suite (iPhone, Mac, iPad -- even though I don't have an iPad) is too high for me so I don't use it often enough :(

<comment><USER23> Same. Mac $50, iPad $20, iPhone $10, Too much for what is essentially a fancy list-keeping app. You can use the iPhone version on an iPad though, which I do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I use a private github repo. I create issues there and take notes in the wiki, also have a pile of scripts and things in the repo itself.

<comment><USER25> Are the scripts related to daily tasks? If so, I'm curious what you've written scripts for, if you don't mind saying.

<comment><USER24> I use the git repo as a "scratch pad" of sorts and toss anything in there that's relevant to my issues but not yet "fully baked" so it has a bunch of crappy ad-hoc scripts, config files, patches, etc. They'll all related to the issues in my private repo and only live in there long enough to get cleaned up. Anything long-term moves into a configuration management repo, my personal dotfiles repo, a repo of it's own, or upstream.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Pad of paper and a pen next to my keyboard.

At the end of each workday, I write down the (predicted) todo list for my next workday.

It's a carry-over from my early days of using the Franklin-Covey system.

</comment><comment><USER27> There's a missing be-all, do-all, external brain app that I've always wanted in this space. Something that aggregates data from the internet offline; something that stores all my projects and info; something that stores tasks in a useful format; something that exposes lenses on that data (calendars, task lists, mind maps); something that ties into my browser to let me store new things and find existing things (imagine if your awesome-bar searched your external brain before heading off to Google!); something that bookmarks things; something that stores all my notes. There've been a few attempts at the be-all/end-all PIM, but nothing's achieved enough of it to stick, IMHO.

In the meantime, for daily stuff I slap things into a text file in Sublime Text, for longer term stuff I schedule things into my calendar so that I'll remember to slap it into the textfile for the day on the day. I've tried so many TODO managers, paper notebooks, etc. -- nothing seems to stick, because I always get frustrated at how small the scope is and tack things on the side until the house of cards collapses.

<comment><USER28> Might see if this helps (I wrote; desktop-only; does that for me). Details elsewhere on this page, and at the web site:

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm late to the party, but I heavily use a tool I wrote (after trying org- mode, collapsible outlines in other tools, etc). It uses postgres, and I hope that "sharing" data exchange features are coming (though it already does export to org-mode-like text, and to html). Best code is that in github, though a downloadable .jar is available. Currently keyboard and desktop-only (text-oriented). The most efficient/effective thing I have found for notes/lists/details of _all_ kinds, and should be easy to learn to use, as all the essentials are on the screen. There is a tutorial.

By marking things done or "archived", it also provides a journal feature or personal log, of entries created or archived in any date range (defaulting to "yesterday and so far, today", to help with daily standup reporting).

[http://onemodel.org](http://onemodel.org) (AGPL)

</comment><comment><USER29> org-mode

[https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html)

* TODO Organize party [2/4] \- [-] call people [1/3] \- [ ] Peter \- [X] Sarah \- [ ] Sam \- [X] order food \- [ ] think about what music to play \- [X] talk to the neighbors

</comment><comment><USER30> This is a similar conversation with the same confusion about checklists versus ToDo lists: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15799539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15799539) For ToDo lists, Google tasks has everything I need. There is a good app and very simple web interface: [https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig?pli=1](https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig?pli=1) Adding a date will make a reminder show in Android notification bar and show in Google calendar. I have it organized into lists: Today (should be cleared out daily), Queue (pull from this list when bored), Projects (collections of tasks for long-term), and subject-specific lists like Music, Home, etc.

</comment><comment><USER31> Depends on the type of checklist.

If it's something like a grocery list, etc I tend to use Google Keep.

If it's code specific then one of GitHub's project boards.

If it's going to require managing a team, keeping up on tasks, generating productivity reports and something akin to virtual scrum / kanban / post-it's on a daily, weekly or monthly basis BusinessDay [1]. I chose it because of recurring tasks, aging of cards and private lists.

This goes into the process behind it [2]

[1] [https://blog.businessday.io/](https://blog.businessday.io/)

[2] [https://blog.businessday.io/2016/09/04/quick-start-for- accou...](https://blog.businessday.io/2016/09/04/quick-start-for-accounting- teams/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Daily taks but also reminder related like "monthly patch kernel on systems {...} ,do checklist [a,b,c...] For this group manually after."

Businessday seems excellent,I will demo it.thank you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> [https://nozbe.com/](https://nozbe.com/)

It's a software built on top of GTD methodology and I love its way of managing TODO lists.

First of all, the tasks are grouped by the projects, so you can dive deep when working on one the projects.

You can mark some tasks as "Next actions". All the next actions across all the projects will show in a"Priority" view, it's kind of a "mission control".

GTD advises you not to assign a due date for tasks unless it's essentially required (like in an appointment) and that works perfectly for me.

Another important piece of GTD is a weekly review when you plan what to do in an upcoming week. So whenever I'm in a mood to do something, I check what's left for this week.

</comment><comment><USER13> Papier[0] for my daily checklists. It's convenient because, as a web developer, I spend all my time in chrome.

I'm still working out a system for managing longer term checklists/goals/plans/etc. To that end, Natrium[0] (which I just found out about in this thread) looks interesting.

I'm also still working out a system for managing activity-based checklists for processes like checkins, code reviews, etc.

[0]: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafpl...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/papier/hhjeaokafplhjoogdemakihhdhffacia?hl=en)

[1]: [https://natriumapp.com/](https://natriumapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER33> We use Zenkit to keep track. It´s our own tool and simple to use. You can use the Checklist-feature in every data view. To get back to your question, we normally use the Kanban View and assign team member to each task. Once a week we meet and go through the tasks - What is done? Do we need a follow-up? What do we have to do now? Priorities? And so on... You can think of it as a mix of the methodologies of Kanban and Scrum.

For more instructions, you could have a look at our templates or the documentation: [https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com)

</comment><comment><USER34> [http://quip.com/](http://quip.com/) \-- It works everywhere except, unfortunately, the terminal. What I like about quip's way is that it doesn't differentiate checklists from notes -- which is exactly my style. And you can even embed a spreadsheet if you suddenly need more power.

P.S.: They also don't like Firefox for some reason (it works ok, but it works better in Chrome). Now that Salesforce bought them, I don't have my hopes too high that it is going to change...

</comment><comment><USER35> Depends on the checklist.

At work, auditable, is online control function checklist and needs to be filled out at multiple times during the day plus weekly and monthly various check-points. Saved to a database with timestamps for any submission. Non- editable.

At work, non-auditable, a huddle board with post-it notes and quite fluid, small tweaks mean it might be the same board day-to-day but never the exact same board month-to-month. What stays constant is it's always always visible and mainly pen-based.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anyone use the Eisenhower Matrix? A few really productive people I know seem to use it to great effect. Was wondering if anyone here has any tips with their experiences.

</comment><comment><USER37> Todoist for personal tasks. Google Keep for checklists (like list of things to pack). Pen and paper for stuff at work. Overall I'm quite happy with this setup.

</comment><comment><USER38> Tet ToDo on Android [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan.tet)

for simplicity

And D Notes [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dvdb.bergn...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.dvdb.bergnotes)

for longer time horizone checklists

Both free

</comment><comment><USER39> [https://www.taskade.com](https://www.taskade.com)

Very flexible and cross-platform. Works for personal checklists and team projects.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I like this,cross platform is important for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> I made a little pocketbook thingy based on a weekly "sprint" with a max of six tasks per day, to progress towards weekly goals: [https://vimeo.com/252014662](https://vimeo.com/252014662)

I find keeping to-do items separate from my phone distractions works well.

On phone/web, I find trello is as good as anything, especially across devices. Decent checklist function.

</comment><comment><USER41> As an ex-Pivotal employee, the best tool for the job is Pivotal Tracker. It is all about how you write the stories though (methodology). Their documentation is quite good too: [https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/](https://www.pivotaltracker.com/help/articles/quick_start/)

</comment><comment><USER42> Post-its and a pen.

<comment><USER43> Me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I've used many different apps over the years, until ultimately settling on todo.txt. It's a standardized format similar to taskwarrior, but it's simply a text file that apps interact with and is open source.

You can get it in a terminal, mobile, web, vim plugin, etc.

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

</comment><comment><USER45> Google Inbox reminders. Swipe them away when they're done or have them appear in a few days if I'm not ready yet

</comment><comment><USER46> [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/) which I strongly suspect was inspired by Emacs Org-mode [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMVtkNrquU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qPMVtkNrquU)

</comment><comment><USER47> I've been using YouTrack from Jetbrains for tracking my personal life. It's been the single greatest improvement to my overall life.

Need to buy something? Throw it on the backlog. Oooh this looks cool and I should learn it. Throw it on the backlog.

Schedule things out every two weeks.

</comment><comment><USER48> I'm using TickTick ([https://ticktick.com/](https://ticktick.com/)). The only thing missing is the dependency of the task on other tasks. Is there such a thing anywhere?

</comment><comment><USER49> Zim.

It's offline, and supports, among other things like a full-blown personal wiki and LaTeX input via plugins, also easy creation of checklists. The wiki features are useful to store progress & notes as one processes the checklists.

</comment><comment><USER50> [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-3/id904237743?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/things-3/id904237743?mt=8)

Things 3, powerful but not bloated.

</comment><comment> c-smile I've created Notes app for that purpose too: [https://notes.sciter.com/](https://notes.sciter.com/)

It allows to insert check list in any note (that is HTML under the hood)

</comment><comment><USER9> On the computer I use treesheets: [http://strlen.com/treesheets/](http://strlen.com/treesheets/)

Out and about (mobile) I use a notebook and pencil.

</comment><comment><USER51> Notion[0], hands down the best tool for keeping track of everything I need to do/remember.

[0]: [https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)

</comment><comment><USER52> A notebook on my desk for my working list - what's on today plus any ad-hoc items that come up.

Calendar for tasks tied to a specific date - Outlook for work, Google for home.

Jira for projects.

</comment><comment><USER53> taskwarrior. command line todo list, has a sync server for sharing tasks across devices. I like it because i can just type `task` in the shell and see what i need and keep working, then if i finish something it's `task x done` it does burndown charts and stuff too, all from the shell. nice api for plugging into and of course because it's in the shell it's already very extensible.

</comment><comment><USER54> Orgmode in Emacs.

</comment><comment><USER55> Me the coder,

\- Evernote for tasking my daily activities \- Firefox for my bookmarks on internet \- Google drive for finances

</comment><comment><USER56> OmniFocus, Google Keep, pen and paper.

</comment><comment><USER57> I just use a Google Doc for my daily planner, no todo app is flexible enough. Trello for projects.

</comment><comment><USER58> OneNote works pretty well.

</comment><comment><USER59> Telegram messages to myself. Super fast and always available.

</comment><comment><USER60> Pocket notebook and small mechanical pencil.

</comment><comment> trevor-e dynalist.io is the best I've found and has some programmer features like code snippets.

</comment><comment><USER61> simplenote. It's awesome. I have even offered to pay the company.

</comment><comment><USER62> Google Keep</comment>


Towards a Vim-like Emacs - <AUTHOR> http://nathantypanski.com/blog/2014-08-03-a-vim-like-emacs-config.html# <comment><USER2> Most of your customization can be achieved using spacemacs!</comment>


Lilliputian Nectar - USB 55000mWh fuel cell - <AUTHOR> http://semiaccurate.com/2013/01/08/lilliputian-systems-makes-a-fuel-cell-on-silicon-wafers/

<comment><USER2> 7.5w of heat output -- too bad we can't use a peltier/seebeck device[1], or a stirling engine[2], to generate additional electricity from this.

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirling_engine></comment>


UCLA grads more likely to be Founders than Stanford grads - <AUTHOR> http://blog.topprospect.com/2011/02/test/

<comment><USER2> UCLA grads on Top Prospect are more likely to be founders than Stanford grads, which may or may not be a representative sample of the population of founders.</comment>


Google+ scores your relationships with your friends - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115843262251226261497/posts/d9e2HvPBB44?tab=yX

<comment><USER2> It's not curious that the scores are not commutative; they shouldn't be. For example, I guarantee you that pg is more interesting to me than I am to him.

<comment><USER3> Assuming you're not personal friends with pg, the "friend score" between you and pg should be low. This shouldn't be an "interest score," since presumably the goal is that Google+ users would establish strong 2-way relationships.

<comment><USER4> Everything that I am getting from trying out google+ is pointing to it being a Twitter killer not a Facebook killer; the lack of things like private messaging (yes you can post with only one person able to view it, but it's pretty unlikely that they would ever notice that you wrote it). The whole system is geared towards 'share to group' rather than 'communicate with individual x'; even the video chat is. I don't think it's correct to say that they care about strong 2-way relationships.

<comment><USER5> Isn't GMail a sufficiently powerful "private messaging" feature? You can send a message from anyone's profile if they've enabled the "Send mail" feature. Plus GMail already supports a federated protocol, so you can use this profile "send message" feature with any other mail system you want.

<comment><USER4> Maybe it's just me, but email just feels way more formal and personal. I would have no qualms writing quick one-offs like "That was fun last night, we should do it again soon" on facebook, but I would never send an email like that.

<comment><USER6> Maybe, however, Google is trying to change that. E-mail is a perfectly fine choice for the protocol for such messages, but the UI has to change. Look at what they've done in the other direction, brining Talk and Buzz logs into Gmail inboxes, for instance. Why not reverse that and export certain kinds of mails received in a Gmail account out to the Google+ UI?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My top two relationships are two different accounts for my brother, and they have the same score. I wonder if it knows they're the same person.

<comment><USER8> That is certainly an interesting idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Facebook also does this, for example by analyzing which pictures you and a friend are both tagged in. Probably there are other signals like wall posts, likes, and profile views.

You can see the result of this by the order of friends in the search box.

<comment><USER10> But Facebook doesn't expose this anyway. Google has at least shown signs that it has or will use this data (I'm thinking of the 'Did you mean Dave' or 'Did you forget Dave' feature in Gmail). Thats where the really cool stuff can happen. Especially if they let you auto-add people to Circles.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The scores seem to be in the same order as people are shown in the top-right corner, and on <https://plus.google.com/circles>

I only saw 5-6 different score values there, so most people are ranked the same.

<comment><USER12> I noticed the same ranking too. The people in my top 5, I speak with on Google Talk frequently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> It'd be awesome if Google+ also tried to suggest ways of organizing your friends into circles (similar to how Gmail suggests people to add to emails).

In general, I think the Circles dataset will be really interesting, as I don't think anybody else has this kind of labeled groups data. (Have people actually been separating their friends into different Circles?)

</comment><comment><USER14> Am I the only one getting a 400 error? Based on the posts, it seems it was working only 30 minutes ago.

<comment><AUTHOR> I removed some parameters from the request out of privacy concerns. You can see those scores if you use a tool like firebug while loading the homepage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This seems to indicate that the score has been around for a while because it is closely tied to GMail+GChat instead of Circles usage.

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who can't figure out how to retrieve this? Is the underscore supposed to be replaced by my user ID? In that case I get only gibberish when I wget the page.

Edit: Nevermind that, figured it out through Inspect.

<comment><USER16> Looking at the file, it strikes me that it doesn't seem to be quite what you think it is, namely a "relationship score" between Google+ users. People that I've never communicated with on Google+ but mailed previously have a score (and the people I've mailed most frequently have the highest scores), while people I've only communicated with on Google+ but never mailed don't have one (the fields are empty). Organizations that I've mailed also have scores, and they obviously don't have Google+ accounts.

It looks more like a "relationship score" for GMail that doesn't take into account Google+.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. Maybe it's due to the fact that I'm not a native English speaker, but I never meant to insinuate otherwise (after all, Google+ is very very young and the score should come from somewhere). I just wanted to share the fact that Google+ makes this score available.

<comment><USER16> Sorry for misinterpreting you. For the record, I'm not a native speaker either, which might be a source of confusion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It appears that they use gmail and/or gtalk data (frequency?) as input factors; as some of my top scored friends I chat/mail with frequently but are yet not on Google+.

<comment><USER18> The annoying thing about this is that I was forced to sign up to G+ using a GMail account that I don't use for anything except Picasa. I use my Google Apps account for everything else (email, chat, contacts, etc.), but G+ doesn't support GApps accounts yet...

So the end result is that G+ really has no idea how to rank my relationships with my friends.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> The same scoring data is used for the "Sort by Relevance" option on the Circles page.

</comment><comment><USER20> My mother was #4. Zed Shaw was #7. The guy I worked on HNOfficeHours with is #1.

</comment><comment><USER21> Not sure if this is an appropriate place to ask, but here it is anyway. If anyone has an invite, please send me one. I really dislike Facebook and want to give this a whirl.

<comment><USER22> Why do you dislike Facebook? Never understood that

<comment><USER21> I had an app with over 2 million monthly users. One day I got an email saying that one of the ad networks I was using had violated their ToS and I needed to replace them. The email said I had 3 days to do this. The cautious person I am, I turned off the ad network within 10 minutes of the email being sent.

Five minutes after I turned off the ad network, Facebook shut down my app. Users trying to visit my app saw a Facebook 404. Facebook refused to give an ETA for bringing my app back up. When it finally came back up 4 days later, its traffic was utterly crippled. Facebook never apologized or admitted any wrongdoing. They have NO respect for developers on their platform. Their platform is unstable, and if their comments at Velocity Conf 2011 are to be believed, they are _proud_ of this fact ("we move fast and aren't afraid to break things").</comment></comment></comment>


MakeCode Arcade: Retro Gaming, Modern Programming - <AUTHOR> https://makecode.com/blog/arcade/01-18-2019 <comment><USER2> > "You can also save screenshots of your games while playing. We call these > cartridges, since they contain the sources of the game, hidden > steganographically in magical pixels. Once saved, anyone can drag these > cartridges to the editor to load them. You can use it for emailing of > projects, or sharing them on forums."

You had me at hello.

<comment><USER3> Interesting -- I wonder how this would work for sharing on social networks, given that they often recompress images. You could also hide the data in a proprietary PNG metadata chunk, but this also might not survive recompression.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's an interesting direction to go in. I like the proliferation of toy machines that the Pico-8 has spawned.

I'm making one going in almost the polar opposite direction to this. I 8-bit avr based with asm (and C,pascal and anything else the avr ecosystem supports)

It's slow going (current work in progress in-broswer emulator+assembler at [http://fingswotidun.com/avr/AvrAsm/Testbed/](http://fingswotidun.com/avr/AvrAsm/Testbed/) ) Still have to make a website for sharing cartridge images.

Also this caught my eye in the linked article.

"TypeScript is compiled directly to machine code - there is no interpreter or JIT-compiler involved." There's a Typescript to native compiler about? Where?

<comment><USER5> Yes, there is one, it is part of the MakeCode project.

[https://makecode.com/language](https://makecode.com/language)

"Microsoft MakeCode: from C++ to TypeScript and Blockly (and Back)"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGhhV2kfJ-w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGhhV2kfJ-w)

<comment><USER6> This is the github repo: [https://github.com/Microsoft/pxt/tree/master/pxtcompiler](https://github.com/Microsoft/pxt/tree/master/pxtcompiler)

<comment><USER7> PXT's underlying programming language is a subset of TypeScript (leaving out JavaScript dynamic features).

The main features of PXT are: [...] an ARM Thumb machine code emitter

<comment><USER8> In fact there is more dynamic features in now, including accessing arbitrary fields through 'any' type and typeof expression. What's missing is mostly eval and prototype inheritance (instead we use classes). There's also a precise GC now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I've been using Pico-8 for about a year now, and I really enjoy what these "fantasy consoles" have to offer. For making a quick game or visual effect, it does an amazing job.

There are now a number of projects of a similar vein to Pico-8 out there, including this one, but I think this can fill its own niche. To my recollection, this is the first one that I've seen using blocks.

</comment><comment><USER10> This looks really cool. It reminds me of writing gamemaker games back in the day, which is how I first learned how to program. I'll have to give it a try

</comment><comment><USER11> Is it me, or does their blog not support RSS/Atom? Trying to add it to feedly and it's not recognizing any feeds.

</comment><comment><USER12> Also see: [https://scratch.mit.edu](https://scratch.mit.edu)

</comment><comment><USER13> You can deploy games created to actual handheld game console.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lp7W9_jtJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lp7W9_jtJ8)

</comment><comment><USER13> You can deploy games created to a handheld console, awesome!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lp7W9_jtJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lp7W9_jtJ8)

</comment><comment><USER14> Those microcontroller mini consoles are so cool! Having an in editor sprite animation creator that instantly inlines to js array is nice. Quality tooling even for the more advanced student ;)

</comment><comment><USER15> Why the downgraded graphics obsession?

As an artist, I want my games to be 1080p with unlimited colors and animation. These old systems don't work.

Pixel art looks like stitching. When will everyone grow up?

<comment><USER16> > _As an artist, I want my games to be 1080p with unlimited colors and > animation._

For an artist you don't seem to understand artistic intent, statement, the power of limitations, and stylization.

> _Pixel art looks like stitching. When will everyone grow up?_

Again, this is not an "artistic" judgement, and it would be laughed off in any actual artistic school. Artists choose their tools and impose all kinds of stylizations and restrictions on themselves.

There's nowhere in aesthetics that says "more X = better art".

That would be like talking down on people playing americana music because we now have Techno and EDM and modern tools...</comment></comment>


There Are No Nuclear Airplanes - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/01/elderly-pilots-who-could-have-flown-nuclear-airplanes/580780/ <comment><USER2> It is hard to deal with the waste heat of an external "combustion" engine. Steam powered airplanes have been made but probably have not caught on because power per weight is much worse than the worst offerings from an equivalent internal combustion engine.

Subs can be huge and heavy. They also have the best heatsync, cold ocean.</comment>


Ask YC: how to best make money on the side? - <AUTHOR> The need to earn money is once again weighing down on me. Realistically I don't see any of my projects support me financially in the near future. The obvious choice seemks to do consulting, but my experiences were not so good. I usually don't manage to work on my own projects in parallel with consulting jobs. Typical contracts for me took several months, and afterwards felt like a waste of time (except for my bank account being happy). Small web design contracts usually don't pay very well, and don't require much programming. I am not a designer, so I would have to share the deal with a designer, which makes it economically uninteresting. <p>What kind of arrangements have worked for you? <comment><USER2> Consulting can be a rewarding experience. You have pointed out all the bad parts, and I agree. But where else can you see how so many businesses are run? Every company that is paying you to do technical work has already provided enough value to their users that they can afford to pay you. That means they must be doing something right. Learning how they provide value, how they decide to fund or de-fund IT projects, learning how it's easy to hack a small system but not so easy when you've got 12 thousand coders and a huge legacy base -- these are all lessons that you'll need to know if you want to start a business that is going to grow.

Plus the money is good, no?

<comment><AUTHOR> I learned a lot through my consulting work, and I met interesting people and some new friends. It is just that it is taking up too much time. Even 3 months, which might be a kind of a minimum contract, is almost 1% of the productive time I might have left in my life, if I consider another 30 years in the workforce. I hope to be productive longer than that, but who knows.

I wish I could find more interesting contracts, but I am pretty much pigeonholed into Java Web Applications.

Today I finally received the "Collective Intelligence" book in the mail, it is so much fun (I always wanted to do things like that). Perhaps if I focus my projects on doing stuff like that, I could acquire different kinds of contracts. So far most of my own projects are also just "normal" web applications, because I try to make money. Mistake? I believe in the "do what you love and you will be successful" mantra, but in reality I still tend to make compromises with the projects I choose (because of the money scare).

<comment><USER2> I'm a married guy, so I feel a little better about "selling out" and doing some consulting. I've also moved up the food chain from development into strategic technology management consulting, so when I say "consulting", it's probably a little different than when you say it.

It all has to do with risk profile -- how much risk are you comfortable with? You always hear these stories about founders who made it work just running on credit cards and family loans until they took off. But what happens if you don't take off? You can only max out your cards and family loans every so often. So there's short-term risk like "let's live on noodles and saltines for the next six months" and then there's long-term risk like "I'm going to go bankrupt, lose my house, and my wife is going to leave me". If you're single without a lot of commitments, go for more risk and chase your dream. But remember that even if you get your dream, life is always about compromise.

But if you decide to go to some kind of hourly-rate consulting for a while, take my advice and stretch your skills some. Instead of just Java Web apps, be a team lead for project, or an architect. I think as nerd we focus on the technical aspects of a project, but there are all kinds of good business lessons in there that can help you with your startup, if you go looking for them. YMMV

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't want to demean consulting at all, I guess I just haven't managed to get into the fun consulting jobs yet. But I also feel the "family pressure", I am certainly not the "gamble away your family" kind of risk person.

<comment><USER2> I've had consulting gigs that basically made me team leader of a 5-person startup team.

Now how is that different than being a cofounder? I got paid more, and I was able to move on to other contracts without a lot of fuss.

But most of the time, selling yourself by the hour (or day or project) sucks. You're always making somebody else's dream come true instead of your own. Having said that, money is a good thing! And over time you can get better and better at your skills. I guess there is a difference between honing your skills doing stuff for other people and honing your skills doing stuff for yourself. Sure, I'd much rather work for myself, but there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bath water.

<comment><USER3> _selling yourself by the hour (or day or project) sucks. You're always making somebody else's dream come true instead of your own._

Another (potentially big) problem is IP ownership, if your paying client tries to claim that the work on your own project is really theirs.

<comment><USER2> That's a really good point. If you're moving back and forth between startups and consulting, be sure you know where all o the IP landmines are. I know I have a three-page IP disclosure sheet I include with all of my consulting projects, plus I make sure that my continuing work on my startup is noted. Even then, it can get tricky. I couldn't take a consulting gig in the same industry that the startup was in unless we had a lot of legal input. And that gets expensive.

The problem is that if you're writing Web 2.0 apps then really _anything_ could be considered close to anything else. Writing a 3-D chat program for E-Bayers? Any business with a web site might could use a chat program, and if you have access to their site and their plans, who's to say what parts of your ideas you're getting from them and what parts you're coming up with yourself?

<comment><USER4> Your comment about the IP disclosure sheet is good. I'd like to see more discussion on this board about how to handle IP disclosure before taking on consulting projects. I don't have the answers but the question is very relevant to me and, I suspect, a lot of other people here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have a sweet deal now, where I choose my own consulting hours. The company I work for puts up with it because they feel like, because of my start up, I can keep them on the edge of cool and now. If I did not have that freedom, then I would not be able to keep in tune.

On the flip side I am always telling my self that each hour I spend on consulting, is one that I am not spending on my company.

For now, we are trying to think of ways to increase our day one revenue for our company so that we can stop consulting sooner.

We have considered other options too like offering a sliding pay rate depending on the number of hours per week we are consulting. At less than 20 hours per week, we might charge 50$ per hour, where hours over 20, we might charge 150$ for those impatient customers. Hours would be pre-booked. We have yet to try it, but WE ARE STRONGLY considering it.

Something else we have thought about, is having a consulting division to manage our time, our rate, and to increase our marketability as a group. As a company we might be able to bill out of the gate at 150$ an hour, vs. as an individual we might be able to bill at 50-75$ per hour. This would also give us a way to charge for custom features.

Some thoughts on our side, now that we did not get into YC, we need to figure out how to stick around long enough to turn a profit.

We also got an offer from a local marketing company, that is interested in what we have, but we do not yet know how to productize what we have for them and licence it.

</comment><comment><USER6> The only way I have figured out how to do both is by dedicating each day to one or the other. For now: Monday and Wednesday: consulting. All day Tues, Thurs, Fri, Sat, Sunday: my startup. I don't even bother trying to work on my startup on Monday or Wednesday night. Any user requests from my clients are held until Monday and Wednesday. I even have them trained to email me: no more interruptions.

This way I get the best of both worlds. Try it.

<comment><AUTHOR> What kind of consulting work do you do? It sounds as if you can work from home? I usually work on site. There were some projects where I could work from home, and I liked it, but they tended to be the smaller ones that yielded less money.

Edit: anyway, good advice, I will try it ;-)

<comment><USER6> I do contracting programming for local small businesses on their legacy systems. Has nothing to do with my startup, but is great experience anyway. Things come up that I could never envision, but I'll remember, so my software won't ever have these problems. I can dial up from home or work at their office. One client even gave me my own cubicle. I usually work at their site for several reasons: makes up for the loneliness of the other days, some projects have to be done on site (printers, phones, network, etc.), and, most of all, I want to see and hear their employees all day long. Can't get that from any book.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I had side projects and consulting opportunities on the go but I shelved them all to concentrate 100% on my startup. Luckily, I live at home so I dont have the pressures of some people but I think outside "consulting" is not sustainable in the long run.

I have noticed since I have been 100% on my startup I have not only worked harder, Ive worked smarter. Save up from consulting and hit the startup....

Full Time

</comment><comment><USER8> My question is this: where do you find your consulting gigs? Do they come to you entirely word of mouth, or do you actively pursue postings online and in papers and such?

<comment><USER9> I was going to ask this same question. I'd love to do consulting but I don't know anyone. What do I do exactly to find gigs?

<comment><USER2> I started by working through the temp services. Usually they have some general-purpose programming gigs. Once I got a few projects under my belt (and did some freelance programming work in the area) I went online and started spamming all the resume sites. Then the gigs come to you. Ideally you want to move into a word-of-mouth situation, but sometimes it takes a bit to work up to that.

<comment><USER9> What kind of resume sites? Like monster.com, or special ones for freelancing?

<comment><AUTHOR> Special ones for freelancing. I had good results with Jobserve, but I am not sure how popular they are in the US? I did not upload my resume on Jobserve, only contacted a few agents who were searching. They took me on file and that was it. I uploaded my CV on Gulp.de, and got one contract from there, but it took a while.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I always did IT consulting, when I needed some spare cash.

Serious Linux nerds are in high demand and low availability almost everywhere I've ever lived. But, if you're not well-equipped for IT, that might not be the way to go. Tech support is also the highest stress technical career (there was a study about it a couple of years ago, and if I weren't lazy I'd look it up), so you don't want to do it for long if you haven't the patience of Job. But billing $100/hour is not at all difficult, so you only have to work three or four days a month to scrape by...don't underestimate the time spent on paperwork and such, though...some companies make you work an extra day for every couple of days you work, in dealing with expense forms and other assorted crap. I much preferred working for small companies, where one person made the decisions and when he or she said to the accountant, "Write Joe a check", it would be in my hand before I walked out the door.

But, IT has the advantage that you're generally working on small jobs--things that can be fixed in a few days, or a couple of weeks, tops. They are well- defined, like, "We need to move our web servers to a new data center", or "our mail server isn't filtering spam and it's letting viruses through". You know when you're done with this kind of project, generally.

That said, startups are kinda like a marriage. Having a little something on the side isn't likely to turn out good for the startup. Have you considered raising a little money to get you to launch and revenues?

<comment><USER11> Could you elaborate on what you mean by "serious Linux nerds" in this case? Do you mean someone who uses Linux every day or a system administrator in a former life?

<comment><USER10> There is no "system administrator" college degree...so you pretty much get to decide when you're equipped to be an IT consultant, and what your time is worth. Of course, repeat business is the only way you'll make decent money, so you'd not want to exaggerate your accomplishments. But, "serious Linux nerds" means people who are capable of setting up mail, DNS, web, users, LDAP/NIS/Samba, NFS/CIFS, and hooking it all up in such a way that it can operate without you present (I always used Webmin for this aspect--it has great ACLs so you can give as much or as little privilege as your customer needs to be able to create/manage users without breaking anything, for example).

Even if you're not an expert at all of these things, if you know what they're for and can read the documentation and make all of them work in an afternoon, then you're well-equipped (better equipped than many Microsoft "certified" techs) for the job. Most small businesses don't even know what they need, much less how to set it all up. So, when you go in, you'll find that they have no idea what you're doing, why you're doing it, or how it all fits together. How you explain it is more important than how you implement it when it comes to whether you're called back or recommended to other businesses. It has to work, of course, but as long as you're explaining the job clearly and in simple terms, the customer will remain happy (try to look busy, as well...sometimes you'll be waiting for installs and such...do something else during that time, even if it's busy work).

Note that I'm not necessarily recommending this path. IT support sucks. It's a very stressful field, where the only time you hear from people is when there's a problem. In fact, the only time you hear from people is when there is a problem so severe that they can't get work done (people are so afraid of computers, and of thinking about technology, that they'll ignore trouble signs until the breakage is complete). Thus, your customers are almost always stressed out. I frequently worked for a company that had a quarter million in daily revenues, and so a day with all of their people off-line cost them significant sums of money. I have great respect for the fellow who built and owned the place, as he kept his cool like a champ, no matter how tight the downtime schedules were...but some of his employees (and share holders) did not.

Oh, yeah, you'll also work a lot of nights and weekends, because that's when companies can afford to be completely off-line.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was actually considering looking for a front desk job in a SF condo. The guy in my building has a desk with a comfy chair and just sits at the front desk every day from 9 to 5 and surfs the net with his laptop, and occasionally accepts packages from time to time. Thats time that I could be hacking! I know from the HOA that I pay that he's paid quite decently. So what more can you ask for? A cushy, decently paying job in SF with a desk, chair, and internet. Perfect for hacking.

<comment><USER13> I've considered the similar approach of getting a job as a late night security guard on an industrial site. I've heard of the unending hours of doing nothing, and I think of the hacking potential.

I wonder if anyone has ever created anything notable while working that sort of job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is always Starbucks.... Work 30hrs/week so you get health insurance and other benefits. The job will be like some brainless activity that programmers really need time to time.

Bonus: You get to meet/interface with lots of people, and maybe you can score some hot chicks on the side.

Sucks: Pay. 8/hr or 10/hr is not really much, but I guess enough to buy lots of ramen noodles for a starving programmer.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would actually be interested in working in a cafe for a while, just for the social experience. But I just can't justify it economically. Except perhaps when thinking it gives me a minimum income for peace of mind. Then again, consulting for the same amount of time would buy much more time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Have you tried getting paid ads on your sites, especially the porny (er, "erotic") one?

<comment><USER3> I'm not being facetious: one of the O.P.'s web sites is "<http://3boobs.de/>" or, as he himself defines it "erotic games".

Porn-ish sites like that _do_ attract advertisers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Traffic attracts advertisers, porn-ish alone doesn't do anything. Or why would advertisers be interested?

<comment><USER3> It seems that the affiliate ad model for "dating" sites pays well: [http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2...](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/business2_archive/2007/04/01/8403370/index.htm) (note the paragraph which starts "To expand without investment capital...").

It's also interesting to see that when AdBrite loses an adult advertising partnership, it's an important loss for them: [http://valleywag.com/tech/online-advertising/philip- kaplans-...](http://valleywag.com/tech/online-advertising/philip-kaplans- adbrite-loses-porn+ad-network-290865.php)

AdBrite is private, though, so we don't know what percentage of adult ads account for revenues, but they do have an entire other site -- BlackLabelAds.com - dedicated to adult ads.

Anyway, it was just an obvious suggestion, given the 3boobs site you'd already created.

Best of luck to you, whatever you do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> don't--you can't do a startup on the side, it won't work.

you have a finite amount of (creative) energy. it's all or nothing.

<comment><USER16> Full-time effort >> part-time effort. However, there are cases where part time is good enough.

It varies on how much (smart and well funded) competition there is, barriers to entry, your own personal ambitions. In general, larger and stupider the competition, the more likely you can do ok with part-time effort.

Joel's post on being a Ben and Jerry's vs. an Amazon can give some insight on this topic: <http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html>

<comment><USER6> Part-time effort always > no effort

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think that you can leverage your position into the fetish market. Buy a camera. Bootstrapping sells.

check out Paul's early work at pg13bootstrapping.com [nsfw] [login required].

</comment><comment><USER18> 14th and Broad St. $20 for a handjob.

<comment><USER14> Lol....</comment></comment>


Viclm/Hosts: Hosts switcher for osx - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/viclm/Hosts <comment><USER2> Watch Justice League Movie Online Free [https://www.facebook.com/events/304007890105860/](https://www.facebook.com/events/304007890105860/)</comment>


Senate takes a close look at Bitcoin - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/18/technology/bitcoin-regulation/ <comment><USER2> It's amazing how an overall positive hearing (see: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6756968)) lasting several hours with nuanced testimony can get shot down by this third rate news agency. This article reads as if the author didn't even watch the testimony, and would rather grab headlines with SEO-friendly newswords like "criminals" "child porn" and "assassins" \-- because bitcoin is obviously great for hiring assassins after _one guy did it and was caught_. I'm worried there are people who will get their primary summary of today's hearing from this trash.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd rather Bitcoin take a close look at the senate.

</comment><comment><USER4> ... and so the great Eye atop the Tower of Barad-dûr (i.e. the Federal Reserve) perceives and is curious. Tolerate a rival currency when its $ underpins the planet? Doubtful.</comment>


Users Around the World Reject Europe's Upload Filtering Proposal - <AUTHOR> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/11/users-around-world-reject-europes-upload-filtering-proposal <comment><USER2> OK.

At this point. How the fuck are we even supposed to stop shit like that?!</comment>


The Hunter Becomes The Hunted - <AUTHOR> http://www.esquire.com/print-this/iraq-terrorist-hunter-0311?page=all

<comment><AUTHOR> _You don't know his name, and you've never seen his face. But this year, as America leaves Iraq for good after eight years of war, we also leave behind a man believed by our military and intelligence agencies to be the best terrorist hunter alive. He's still there, hunting. And so are the terrorists._

I know, it's off-topic. Still, this is such a fascinating profile of a guy that surely is among the most driven I have ever read about.

This goes to show just how insanely much one driven person can accomplish - which is just as applicable in terrorist hunting as in entrepreneurship.</comment>


Uber driver arrested, my 76yo dad left on the street at 1am - <AUTHOR> Ask HN: Called Uber for my 76 yo sick father, the driver got arrested for suspended license. My dad was left on the street at 1am. Had to rescue him. Their response: trip refund. Any way to publicize this incident? <comment><USER2> Why not call another Uber or Lyft?

"Their response: trip refund. Any way to publicize this incident?"

Sorry, but you sound like the kind of person that would start acting like your spine broke from a minor bumper to bumper accident, and try to sue for all kinds of crazy things.

Call 'em as I see 'em!

<comment><AUTHOR> Father had two cancer surgeries. Would be no big deal for me

<comment><USER2> Still doesn't change the fact that another Uber / Lyft would have showed up in minutes. I still don't understand your reasoning for wanting to publicize this.

There's nothing to publicize.

<comment><AUTHOR> He called totally disoriented, not knowing where he was. I had to figure that out, had him to take pictures of the street signs, before I could call another Lyft. The drop-off was incorrect on the app. I think you have not dealt with sick elderly people enough.

<comment><USER2> ok, I suppose if he was dropped off at a random location, it is a bit concerning.

I think the police should have handled this though, it's not really Uber at fault here.

Why didn't the police help your dad? Just left him stranded...

<comment><USER3> You really don't think that Uber should do any background check, such as whether their drivers have suspended license?

<comment><USER2> The license could have been suspended after the driver had passed Uber's background check.

I don't believe you expect uber to run background checks every week/month on tens of thousands of drivers.

<comment><USER4> And most states don't have an API to run periodic driver license checks

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You could write a gripping, detailed blog post, post it to HN, hope it makes the front page. It worked for Susan Fowler (though I don't know if she posted her own writing here -- probably didn't -- and that is no doubt a very flippant, somewhat inaccurate framing of what happened with her blog post, which likely got a lot more traffic than just from HN).

If you do choose to publicize this, be aware that a lot of people will want an extremely good justification for why his family wasn't there for him to begin with before they will care what Uber did or did not do. Wanting publicity can be a case of "be careful what you wish for."

<comment><USER6> Just email a journalist from BuzzFeed, send him/her some proofs, tweet him, and it might be a big story there. Go Google to see if anyone has written Uber-related stories there

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I totally understand your concern. But, what did you expect Uber to do instead? A driver driving with a suspended license was the driver's fault. Not Uber's (if it was recently suspended). Not yours, but Uber/anybody could expect that you checked if the license of the driver was valid before starting the trip, but that's pretty uncommon.

If your father was sick and if he's 76 and has cancer, you could have as well accompanied him, right? Or had someone accompany him. Even if you publicise, there's a higher chance that it would be seen as you being careless.

<comment><USER8> I don't really have a dog in this race but it would seem reasonable for there to be a process whereby if a driver cannot continue there is an automatic way for uber to pick the passenger up and take them to their destination as part of the service. I would probably expect such a thing simply because it feels like the most reasonable thing to happen next.

<comment><USER7> > "if a driver cannot continue there is an automatic way for uber to pick the > passenger up and take them to their destination"

Agreed! This makes me think there are also other reasons for a driver to stop a trip in the middle — especially when there's emergency. This shouldn't be a one-off issue. Just wondering why Uber hasn't thought about allowing drivers to mark an emergency. Not sure if the driver app has it already.

<comment><USER9> > _Just wondering why Uber hasn 't thought about allowing drivers to mark an > emergency._

They do on the customer side, automatically. I had a driver stop me slightly short of my destination (too much traffic for the next two blocks, he suggested we end the ride to save a bit of money), and the Uber app prompted me with a big dialog "Is there a problem with your ride? Please tell us if you require immediate assistance." Completely different from the 5 star rating screen - the tone was clearly a way to discreetly report a serious issue with the driver via one or two taps.

Maybe the app has changed since then (that would have been mid-2016), but I do remember being impressed by that part of the Uber app.

(Edit: I can't find screenshots of this feature anywhere. I'm certain it happened to me, but since I can't provide proof, feel free to regard this as just a random pro-Uber anecdote from someone on the internet.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think that the part about your father is an unfortunate event that ended well. Therefore, with all due respect, I don't think that's a story.

On the other hand, the media is frothy about Uber, and when the media covets a subject, editorial discretion often changes a little.

Consequently, you might have a story about Uber drivers driving around with suspended licenses. If you found a few journalists with a history of being hypercritical of Uber, you could pitch a pretty solid "what if" story.

For example, how do cab companies deal with suspended licenses? Do they have a greater (or lesser) burden to keep their drivers properly licensed?

Or, what happens if an Uber driver with a suspended license causes an accident that leads to injuries? Where is liability? What is an injured party to do? Is there any way that the Uber passenger could have liability?

The short answer is:

If you really want to publicize this you likely can because the media is frothy about Uber now. If an Uber executive had bad gas, you could find a reporter who would salivate for the coverage.

To publicize it:

1.) Zero in on a good story. The media does not want to be your personal hit squad.

2.) Research two or three reporters with a history of negative coverage about Uber.

3.) Write a personalized pitch to each reporter. Reference past articles that he/she has written. Don't use the word exclusive unless you know what that means. (Hint - if you send a pitch to three journalists, it isn't exclusive.)

4.) Be prepared for this to get way the fuck out of control.

<comment><USER11> > If an Uber executive had bad gas, you could find a reporter who would > salivate for the coverage.

Ain't that the truth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You mean the police just left your sick old dad on the side of the street? Heartless Bastards.....You think they would have called him a cab.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sounds more like a police screw up than Uber! Also you probably shouldn't entrust incapacitated people to an uber you're calling for them. (ie. you are partly to blame here.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I have zero love for Uber, but it seems to me that this one is on the cops more than Uber.

</comment><comment><USER15> Hire a writer to write a heart-breaking blog post and post it on HN, then hope it gets to front page. If it happens make sure to delete this post.

Rest will be done by itself.

</comment><comment><USER16> When Uber isn't in the news for sexual harassment or for conflict of interests with companies like Google, it usually fights against cities, countries and governments. Their CEO is on a forced 3 months leave he has been kicked out.

It sad to say but your incident is invisible.

</comment><comment><USER17> Just curious why I can't downvote the comments on this thread?

</comment><comment><USER18> What do you expect?

<comment><USER19> Police chase. Ridiculous that they would let a fare go unfinished when they fully realized they would be arrested if they pulled over at the first sign of flashing lights.</comment></comment>