Uber vehicle reportedly saw but ignored woman it struck - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/07/uber-vehicle-reportedly-saw-but-ignored-woman-it-struck/ <comment><USER4> I'm curious what degree of "cultural context" is built into automated cars - <USER2> feel that there has to be a lot of locale-specific techniques for driving.

For example, in NYC, there's nothing at all uncommon about a pedestrian beginning to cross the street in front of you and approaching the area of your lane where you will shortly be. Pedestrians typically then stop about a foot away from your lane, let you drive past them, and then continue walking. If a car slammed on the brakes in this situation, it would likely cause more accidents than not braking would cause.

On the contrary, in Tempe, a pedestrian starting to do the exact same thing as above is likely much more a case of them not realizing your car is coming at all, in which case slamming on the brakes is appropriate.

This isn't to defend Uber, clearly their car did do the wrong thing in the Tempe situation (though I make no judgment on who was at fault). And clearly cars need to be able to handle the variety of unwritten, localized driving quirks different regions have. But it seems like a very non-trivial problem to do this correctly.

<comment><USER5> NPR had a story about how self-driving cars in Pittsburgh wouldn't be adhering to the "Pittsburgh-left":

"Even harder for autonomous cars to master are local quirks; things like "the Pittsburgh left." That's a custom unique to the city that allows the first driver trying to make a left turn to do so before oncoming cars pass through an intersection. It's one thing that Emily Duff Bartel says Uber's fleet of self-driving cars won't be programmed to practice. "We're following the rules on this one," she says."

[https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/52...](https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/03/522099560/pittsburgh- offers-driving-lessons-for-ubers-autonomous-cars)

<comment><USER6> Is this the same as pulling straight into the middle of the intersection with live traffic swirling around you on both sides then making the left after the lights have reddened and traffic has cleared?

<comment><USER7> No, what you're describing sounds a hell of a lot safer. (It's also how people make left turns in Vancouver. The fact that it's illegal in Seattle infuriates me to no end.)

The Pittsburgh left sounds like a recipe to get T-boned by an inattentive driver. Pulling into the intersection, and making a left turn when it is safe is a much better alternative.

<comment><USER8> It is legal to pull into the intersection on green or yellow, and wait until it is clear (often when the light turns red) to turn left in Seattle. It is the correct/legal way to make a left turn. Otherwise you are just going to sit there blocking traffic for multiple cycles during busy times.

<comment><USER9> That's why you go during the yellow. Cars are stopping at the new red. You then go left before the cars getting the new green start moving.

<comment><USER10> The oncoming traffic doesn't stop until the light turns red. When the light is yellow, they're actually more likely to _speed up_ in order to "make the light" rather than stop. So when the light inevitably turns red and you're in the middle of the intersection, do you either:

a) Just sit there, in the middle of the intersection, blocking traffic.

b) Attempt to back up, hoping there are no other cars behind you in the left turn lane blocking your path.

c) Continue through the intersection.

Unless the law says "never stop in the intersection in the first place", I can't imagine it enforcing any option other than c.

<comment><USER11> > The oncoming traffic doesn't stop until the light turns red.

Wait, why? No new car should enter the intersection when the lights turn to yellow. The yellow light should last long enough for everyone to be able to safely drive off the intersection, in orderly manner.

<comment><USER12> In the states, there's often a 1-second all red cycle to let the intersection clear, because drivers treat a yellow light as a green that's about to expire. Even with this, I often see 2 or 3 cars enter the intersection after I already have a green signal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm looking forward to seeing the full NTSB report.

This hints that Uber's mindset is focused on "obstacles", not "flat road". The first job of automated driving is to drive only on flat surfaces. Doesn't matter why it's not flat. Then you worry about where to go. That's how the off-road DARPA Grand Challenge vehicles had to work. "Flat road" is a pure geometry thing. Not much AI needed.

On road, non-flat road is rare, and you don't have to worry much about going off cliffs, rocks in the road, and such. So it's tempting to focus on "obstacles" to be tallied and classified. Tesla definitely has an "obstacle" focus, and a limited class of obstacles considered. Waymo profiles the ground. Looks like Uber had the "obstacle" focus.

If you have a "flat road" detection system, things the obstacle detector doesn't understand get stopped for or bypassed. So the vehicle isn't vulnerable to this flaw. There's a higher false alarm rate, though. And a non false alarm problem. A piece of trash on the road is likely to result in a slowdown and careful avoidance, not a bump as the car rolls over it. Still, better to take the safe approach unless you're on a freeway and the cars ahead of you just got past the obstacle successfully.

The Udacity self driving car "nanodegree" trains people to build obstacle detectors and classifiers. That may be a problem.

<comment><USER14> Is another way of framing this:

"flat road" => assume you can't continue until you prove it's safe

"obstacle detection" => assume you can continue unless there is something blocking the current path

The bit of autonomous vehicle work that I did started from a set of potential trajectories that were then pruned by obstacle detection. So we always assumed you could continue moving forward unless every potential trajectory was pruned. We ignored the cliff problem as beyond our scope.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> The disturbing thing about this crash is that it's such a basic thing to test on a test track. A pedestrian walking in front at night, with nothing else unusual happening, should be on the list of scenarios to get 5 9s reliability on before taking it out in public.

The things you have to test in public are the complex real-world interactions, like these: [https://medium.com/kylevogt/why-testing-self-driving-cars- in...](https://medium.com/kylevogt/why-testing-self-driving-cars-in-sf-is- challenging-but-necessary-77dbe8345927)

<comment><USER16> > get 5 9s reliability

That's it? Humans have greater than 7 9's reliability when driving. (As measured by fatalities per time of driving, and assuming a fatality takes 5 minutes, and average speed is 30mph.)

If the cause of a fatality is 10 seconds of failure, not 5 minutes, humans have greater than 9 9s of reliability.

Math: 10 seconds / (1.13 / (30 miles/hour / 100 million miles))

Fatality rate is 1.13 per 100 million miles.

Good luck programming a computer to even _stay on_ and not crash with that level of reliability.

There's this belief that humans are horrible at driving, etc, etc. Until you run that math and realize, no, they're not. There's just a lot of driving going on.

<comment><USER17> Fatalities seems like a pretty low bar to measure failures by... I would prefer to measure reliability by reported accidents per 100k miles. This stat seems to be 183 per million miles in 2009, compared to 1.13 for fatalities per million miles. So quite enough to shave 7 9's down to 5ish...

<comment><USER18> The problem is that a lot of accidents are not reported and even injury severity can be very subjective (especially if there's an interest to do so[1]). I prefer counting fatalities because it's a hard endpoint - bodies are hard to hide.

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ogxZxu6cjM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ogxZxu6cjM)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> The question I want to know is:

Did Uber doctor the camera video to make the road seem darker than it actually was?

If you recall, there was initially a doubt that Uber was at fault because the streets appeared extremely dark, but I think they were buying time to delay the outage at incompetent Uber.

The police initially didn't fault Uber based on this video.

<comment><USER20> That was a bad call on the part of the police.

You're only allowed to drive as fast as conditions permit. If it's dark enough that you can't avoid an obstacle by the time your headlights illuminate it, you need to _slow down_.

<comment><USER21> That's not really true. Thousands of deer get killed on the road every year, because deer aren't smart enough _not_ to be an obstacle when it's dark. Do we therefore change all the speed limits at night? No. It's a driving risk taken, just like any other.

<comment><USER22> Those deer are killed because thousands of humans aren't smart enough to not overdrive their headlights so they hit obstacles in the dark. Hitting a deer is not a small thing. You will seriously damage your car, and may be severely injured or killed yourself if the deer is tall enough to come through the windshield. In open range country you can also hit a cow. In some areas you can hit a moose.

 _Do we therefore change all the speed limits at night?_

No, but we shouldn't drive like idiots either. It's not just _" a driving risk taken"_, it's reckless and negligent behaviour.

<comment><USER23> I've driven in Palo Alto near 280, and from the distance, in broad daylight, I saw a buck run across an entire field at full speed and straight across the road about 3-4 cars in front of me, and get hit by the car. There was no way the driver could see what I saw, and he had no chance to avoid it. The deer was simply acting irrationally. To say that people who hit deer are "driving like idiots" is wrong.

<comment><USER22> I should probably let this go as it's off topic, but I don't understand the description of this incident:

\- Was this on 280, or near 280?

\- If the car that hit the deer was 3-4 cars ahead and you could see the deer "run across an entire field", why was "there no way the driver could see what you saw"? I'm trying to imagine what sort of obstruction could block the drivers view but not yours.

\- How fast was the car going?

\- How long did it take the deer to "run across an entire field"?

\- Normally deer are active around sunrise and sunset and bed down during the day (source: deer hunting). It seems odd to see a deer in running in "broad daylight".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > We're actively cooperating with the NTSB in their investigation. Out of > respect for that process and the trust we've built with NTSB, we can't > comment on the specifics of the incident.

Hey look, somebody knows how to follow the script! Uber may be grossly negligent, but at least they respect the process unlike Tesla.

<comment><USER25> It's actually the rest of that statement which shocks me a bit:

> In the meantime, we have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our > self-driving vehicles program,

So they actually think they can continue to work on self-driving vehicles after this, and not scrap the program entirely. That's...not what I expected. No municipality in the country should allow Uber to test on their streets after they killed someone, almost certainly because of their recklessly fast development. That's not something you come back from by promising to Do Better, especially not when there are more than a few competitors already way ahead of you.

<comment><USER26> > No municipality in the country should allow Uber to test on their streets > after they killed someone

This is pitchfork mentality.

Many industries have to deal with unintentional deaths. Car manufacturers sometimes have to deal with deaths resulting from hardware failure. Food companies sometimes have to deal with recalls due to food poisoning deaths. If the response to a death is to ban all further production work, eventually nothing is ever going to get done because it's inherently impossible to be perfect all the time.

It sucks that it had to come to someone's death, but the rest of the statement said:

> we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us on our > overall safety culture

so it sounds like Uber is at least trying in earnest to put the house in order.

<comment><USER27> Or a cynic could interpret that as "we've hired a crony of the people who will be judging us so he can lobby them to let us off easy".

<comment><USER26> Said cynic sounds pitchforky. Even HIPAA tries to work with non-compliant companies to get them compliant before resorting to dishing out their notoriously expensive fines.

At the end of the day, the NTSB isn't in the game of shutting down companies. NTSB would much rather see that self-driving vehicle development is happening safely since the matter of the fact is that it _is_ happening, despite all of its imperfections.

<comment><USER18> Hiring a former NTSB chair while there's an active NTSB investigations sounds a lot like a revolving door to me.

<comment><USER26> Um, to go back to being NTSB chair, he would have to be re-appointed by the POTUS...

One does not just hire this guy as if he was some sort of money-chasing sleazeball. I mean, just google the guy's bio

<comment><USER18> I may have abused the 'revolving door' term a bit, but I think you are missing the point of hiring former regulators.

You are not hiring them for their bio, achievements or abilities. You are hiring them to signal existing and future regulators that being nice to you can be highly profitable.

<comment><USER26> You keep saying Uber hired him, but where did you read that? The statement in the article said "we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart to advise us". Given how high profile Hart is, and given the focus of his career, I understood that to mean that he agreed to review safety practices and make safety policy recommendations, a topic in which he's an expert on. Unlike wording like "joining to lead a safety program", this arrangement doesn't really imply profit-driven motivation, IMHO.

<comment><USER18> I don't see any other way to interpret their statement:

> Uber, which suspended testing of autonomous vehicles after the accident, on > Monday said it was looking at its self-driving program and said it retained > Christopher Hart, a former chairman of the NTSB, to advise it on safety.

> "We have initiated a top-to-bottom safety review of our self-driving > vehicles program, and we have brought on former NTSB Chair Christopher Hart > to advise us on our overall safety culture," Uber said. "Our review is > looking at everything from the safety of our system to our training > processes for vehicle operators, and we hope to have more to say soon."

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving/uber- hir...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-selfdriving/uber-hires-safety- adviser-after-fatal-crash-wont-confirm-report-on-software-flaw-idUSKBN1I81Z4)

<comment><USER26> > said it retained Christopher Hart

Ah I see, you're talking about "hiring" as in paying a retainer fee. I thought you were saying he was hired as a full time employee, my apologies.

Assuming Reuters' wording is accurate, that actually seems fairly reasonable and in line with how I understood it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It seems like it was actually Uber who disabled the safety settings that were there to prevent this according to Volvo. "Uber Technologies Inc. disabled the standard collision-avoidance technology in the Volvo SUV that struck and killed a woman in Arizona last week, according to the auto-parts maker that supplied the vehicle's radar and camera."

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber- disa...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-26/uber-disabled- volvo-suv-s-standard-safety-system-before-fatality)

<comment><USER29> This whole line of reasoning frustrates me somewhat. The story of "Uber Disabled the Safety System" paints Uber out to be negligent for doing so. Outside of consideration of all the other facts (which unlike this one, do indeed suggest that Uber are to blame), this element of the story is not indicative of negligence. Of course they disabled the existing safety system - they were aiming to build a new, safer one that could operate without reliance on or interaction with the existing one. That (again, on its own) seems like a totally reasonable engineering call.

<comment><USER30> They are absolutely negligent for doing so. I wouldn't have made that decision, because in a safety-critical system it's ALWAYS preferable to have a backup system, especially when the system you're working with is unproven software that you don't fully understand. It doesn't matter that the old system would have interfered with the new system, and in fact if the two systems did interfere it would behoove you to understand why. The decision speaks volumes about their engineering culture leading up to this incident.

You can't just call something a safety system. You have to prove that it is a safety system by testing it, which is something that Uber hadn't done before they disabled the existing system.

<comment><USER29> So I agree that the system was insufficiently tested to be operating on public roads and endangering lives, and that lack of testing was negligent; I also agree with your comment about their engineering culture.

But those two points seem distinct from the idea of disabling a system in order to have a better understanding of what's going on. Suppose they had built a car that was safe, conditioned on the presence a black box system that they likely didn't have access to the internals of - would this be satisfactory?

<comment><USER31> Even with the red herring about the safety overrides being a black box, yes, it would be satisfactory - see my other post. Not only would the triggering of the safety override generally indicate a failure of the autonomous system, the use of failsafe overrides to catch corner cases should be a feature of the final system.

If Uber could demonstrate, through the analysis of a statistically significant number of events, that its system was actually safer without the car manufacturer's override (e.g. if all the events were false positives), then it would be appropriate to disable it at that time. That's how you do it.

<comment><USER29> Replying to your other comment here as well - the inclusion of conceptually simple safety mechanisms is important (eg I agree), as is the broader scheme of including both hardware and algorithmic redundancy to improve safety. I also agree that "live" initial testing of such safeguards is inappropriate, and as above Uber clearly failed to do appropriate testing.

However you describe the (potential) black box nature of the existing system as a red herring -> to be honest, this is what I'm most interested in. My opinion is that including a black box component into a saftey-critical system would be inappropriate. Do you disagree with that? If your answer is "probe it until it's no longer a black box and then include it", would you not consider that to be overall semantically equivalent to "don't include a black box"?

<comment><USER31> It is a red herring because:

Firstly, it assumes Volvo is not sharing the parameters of the system. It seems unlikely that Uber is installing an automated driving system into these cars without the cooperation of Volvo, especially with the agreement to ultimately get 24,000 autonomous-system-equipped cars from them.

Secondly, if Uber could instead determine what it wants to know about the parameters by testing, then the question is irrelevant, as are the semantics.

Thirdly, it is presumably safe for humans to be driving cars without knowing the exact parameters, and so should not present any particular problem for the autonomous system - if the emergency brakes are triggered, it is likely to be a situation in which it is the right thing to happen, and possibly a result of the autonomous system failing. Just as for human drivers, an autonomous system is expected to usually stay within the parameters of the emergency system, without reference to those parameters, just by driving correctly. For example, if the emergency brakes come on to stop the car from hitting a pedestrian because the autonomous system failed to correctly identify the danger, what difference would it have made if the system knew the exact parameters of the emergency braking system?

Lastly, the road is an environment with a lot of uncertainty and unpredictability. If the system is so fragile that the tiny amount of uncertainty of not knowing the exact parameters of the automatic braking system raises safety concerns, then it is nowhere near being a system with the flexibility to drive safely.

It is possible that a competent autonomous driving system might supplant the current emergency braking system, in which case the way to proceed is to demonstrate it in the way I outlined in the last paragraph of my previous post.

<comment><USER29> Thanks for answering in so much detail - I think the last two points make a compelling case for not disabling the system, even in the true black box case, and the first two are very compelling in the real world, even if they don't apply to the thought experiment of an actual black box. You've broadly changed my mind on this issue :)

<comment><USER31> I should have said that your concern is valid where two systems might issue conflicting commands that could create a dangerous situation, it is just that I don't see it likely in this particular combination of systems.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The exact circumstances of the struck pedestrian likely violated many [possibly curde] bayesian priors for what to consider a positive collision threat: A rogue pedestrian at an unflagged portion of road, at an odd time of night, on a road that doesn't usually have pedestrians, with a bike moving perpendicular across the road (instead of parallel along it). Each one of these had been learned to be a high false positive to true negative ratio.

The product of these rarely encountered events (even independently) allowed a higher level algorithm to "score" the approaching unverified object through bayesian inference, below the level of a reasonable expectation of human collision.

In a way, this system should never be expected to become overly reckless or feckless as compared with even top human drivers in the long run: close calls of this nature should be input to the system (perhaps deliberately through staged QA?) and added to the model of collision threat identification.

<comment><USER33> I am rather confused:

Should the car always respond by slow down as the mandatary response when there is object in front?

Are you implying that the algorithm would conclude that because it's unlikely that there is an object in that circumstance, it is ok to disapprove its own observation that there is some thing in front of the car? That sounds utterly nonsensical.

<comment><USER34> Exactly. I'd expect collision-prevention to have absolute priority over any other system. It should not be possible for any logic bug or combination of environmental factors to make the car run into a large object in its field of vision. There's no need for statistics here--an overriding 'don't run into stuff' rule will suffice.

If there's truly no possible route to avoid some collision and therefore the car needs to decide which collision is preferred, then the statistics can kick in, but in this Uber scenario, it shouldn't have gotten that far. From the outside, it seems like a fundamental design issue.

<comment><USER32> > I'd expect collision-prevention to have absolute priority ..to [not] make > the car run into a large object in its field of vision.

This is a good point.

But I think we've all placed our "toes over the curb" with a car hurtling towards us in preparation to cross the street as soon as the car has passed. No system can stop at each instance of this, nor can it recover past the point-of-no-return created each time this event occurs.

What constitutes "the curb" is subjective when it's not a raised sidewalk. Surely you don't have to be "on the grass" of a multilane high speed road but merely somewhere on the shoulder to claim expected pedestrian lane status. But that (may!) also imply you're an 'awaiting street crosser' not an 'engaged street crosser'. That's where the high level stats comes in.

<comment><USER34> The toes over the curb thing is a _potential_ collision threat. It's fine to statistically categorize and prioritize these, as they're everywhere. But as soon as it becomes an imminent threat (i.e. is directly in the vehicle's path), avoiding the collision should immediately become the overriding objective. If the collision is truly unavoidable (this should _very_ rarely be the case with an AV), then it should still be slamming on the breaks and doing everything possible to lessen the force of the impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think that I am qualified to say that cost-effective testing is and will continue to be the barrier to self-driving car adoption.

A big part of the solution to this problem is design-for-test; and the adoption and tight integration of a wide range of (quite conventional but sadly often overlooked) testing and systems engineering standards and processes.

</comment><comment><USER36> Anybody still want to defend the police's claim within a day of the accident putting the blame on the woman that got killed?

<comment><USER21> Yes. They said "preliminarily" the Uber driver was not at fault. Judging from the footage, that was reasonable. You can't put the blame _off_ the woman, you can't just cross a road at night like that and expect to be noticed.

Accidents like that happen all the time, it's only because of the self-driving car that this is newsworthy.

Imagine if there wasn't any dashcam footage and this was a normal car with a distracted driver, without any other witnesses they would likely be off the hook.

<comment><USER36> A distracted driver has the option to tell the police they were distracted. Or are you of the opinion that since the woman was dead it didn't matter anymore?

<comment><USER21> First of all, in this scenario, the woman would have at least shared _some_ of the blame.

Second of all, what are the odds that a human who just killed a woman would admit even to themselves that _they_ were the one to blame in such an accident? Practically zero. Cognitive dissonance won't allow it. In their minds, they weren't distracted, at least not enough to take any of the blame.

<comment><USER37> > Second of all, what are the odds that a human who just killed a woman would > admit even to themselves that they were the one to blame in such an > accident? Practically zero.

As a paramedic who sees fatality accidents? Hardly. "Oh my god, I've killed someone!" is a fairly common statement, or paraphrasing.

<comment><USER21> "Oh my god, I _accidentally_ killed someone" is something quite different from "Oh my god, _my willful negligence alone_ has caused a fatality and I'm ready to take full responsibility".

While not entirely impossible that the latter happens, it's highly unlikely. What's much more likely is that these people are saying this because they want to hear "Oh, but _it 's not your fault_" from somebody else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Uber's ultimately at fault because it was their car. But the woman driving should be arrested for vehicular manslaughter. Uber knew its cars weren't autonomous, that's why they had a driver to take over when the car screws up. But she was texting while she should've been ready to take control of the vehicle and hit a pedestrian any driver that was paying attention would've easily avoided.

<comment><USER39> > Uber's ultimately at fault because it was their car.

Uber while hiring should've specifically looked for people who can pay attention for hours on end. Basically like a train driver. Further, they should review if people pay attention and have a system in place.

She was employed by Uber. If you make a huge error while working for someone, often it's the employer who is responsible. There's way too much which should've been done which wasn't to just blame this driver.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Is this a binary decision? I normally slow down when I see a something at the side of the road.

</comment><comment><USER41> If I understand it right, this is the biggest blind spot of all the automated driving systems. The software just ignores stationary objects because the sensors don't have the resolution to determine whether they are in front of the car or on the side of the road. And if it didn't ignore stationary objects the car would come to a halt at every garbage can, mailbox, and bush along the road. Until they can work lidar into the system this will not be preventable. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the vast majority of accidents that were the fault of the self-driving car happened because it hit something stationary in the road (or off to the side of the road, in one case I recall).

Since I've learned about this blind spot in these system I no longer trust them. I think everyone with a self-driving car should understand this. But maybe it's not in the interest of the manufacturer to explain it, or people would demand they fix the problem, which they cannot do just yet.

<comment><USER42> That wasn't the case at all for this collision. As the article says, the sensors had detected the woman but the information had been disregarded. And the moving object thing is exclusive to radar, vision systems don't suffer from it though vision systems have their own problems.

<comment><USER41> The article linked mentioned "B was the problem", meaning it ignored the sensor input. Another article(1) about it mentions that Uber had reduced the number of LIDAR sensors from five to just one rooftop sensor. The president of the company that builds the sensors even said you would need side sensors to see pedestrians, especially at night. But LIDAR is expensive. So it seems that, like Tesla, they were trying to rely on radar for that kind of thing. But that does leave the blind spot(2) I mentioned.

Given that I don't see how this case is so different.

Though I still don't understand how, specifically, that blind spot problem works. They say when the car in front of you changes lanes and a stopped truck is now in your lane you'll hit it. What if no car changed lanes in front of you? Would you still hit a stopped truck in your lane? The guy whose Tesla hit the bridge column seems to tell me yes, but I'm not sure.

1\. [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_de...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/28/uber_selfdriving_death_may_have_been_due_to_lidar_blind_spot/)

2\. [https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash- radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/)

<comment><USER42> I haven't worked with automotive radars but the way it works in aeronautical radar is that you apply frequency binning in the electronics and ignore returns that have the wrong Doppler shift at the waveform level, long before step A in the article. If you didn't do it this way your computer would be overwhelmed considering every tree and house you can see but only moving objects like airplanes.

It's the same principle as the way your eyes only report things that move over your retina as your eye moves, letting you filter out imperfections in the lens of your eye and your blind spot.

Similarly, I assume that the computers in a car would be overwhelmed by the task of taking the returns from every single post on a guardrail and sorting them into distinct objects before deciding to ignore them due to relative velocity so I'm fairly sure that a similar mechanism is at work within the hardware of the radar unit the Uber car.

So given that the woman showed up on Uber's sensors she would have been detected by the camera system or the lidar. And apparently she was detected.

<comment><USER41> Thanks for the explanation. I hadn't heard of frequency binning(1) before. It makes sense that stationary objects would be filtered out before they even reach the signal processing software.

But Uber did seem to be relying more heavily on radar than the other sensors. From an article I linked in another comment "the number of LIDAR sensors were reduced from five to just one – mounted on the roof – and in their place, the number of radar sensors was increased from seven to 10. Uber also reduced the number of cameras on the car from 20 to seven." And for LIDAR this "results in a blind spot low to the ground all around the car."

They had to know radar wouldn't detect stationary objects. So the signal processor should be prioritizing camera and LIDAR reports of anything stationary in the road. If it really was programmed to ignore such a signal it seems like gross malfeasance to me. If not, then the speculation in the linked article is incorrect and it's the same problem Tesla's system has.

1\. [https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1278779](https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1278779)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> i haven't read much about the observation that driving = communicating. aka : whenever you drive, you send and receive information from all the environment and human, establishing sometimes what could be similar to a dialogue.

Doesn't this implie that autonomous driving won't be solved until we're able to have "true" personnal assistant ?

The message in driving are simpler than with a regular voice communication, but the objects and concepts visually present seem just as diverse.

</comment><comment><USER44> Didn't that car also have a builtin automatic braking system that was disabled?

<comment><USER45> I think so. But I'm not sure why that would be a bad thing. The Uber built system was designed to fully replace such systems.

<comment><USER46> As long as Uber's system logged which automatic brake was triggered - <USER3> simply failed to log that its own braking system stepped in - it could have saved a life without impacting the data gathered.

They didn't put a tarp over the windshield; why get rid of other proven safety features?

<comment><USER47> You don't generally want multiple autonomous control systems in a single vehicle competing with each other for control. There are scenarios where the less-sophisticated collision avoidance radar could do the unsafe thing where the self-driving system has a more holistic plan.

Basically, there's no reason the self-driving tech shouldn't have been way more effective than the collision avoidance radar other than Uber royally screwed up. The LIDAR and other sensors should have (and by this article, likely did) detected the woman long before the vehicle was in striking distance, much longer range than the forward radar.

<comment><USER48> That argument applies equally to human drivers competing for control of a vehicle with automated braking systems. Are there not also scenarios where the less-sophisticated collision avoidance radar could do the unsafe thing where the human has a more holistic plan? If not, why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Sorry for the snark, but there's a joke in here about:

"Uber business development saw but ignored laws it broke."

<comment><USER50> Snark aside, false-positive rejection will be an aspect of any lawful autonomous vehicle.

Incorrect false-positive rejection will be a reality, and will have to exist within lawful operation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> > This puts the fault squarely on Uber's doorstep, though there was never much > reason to think it belonged anywhere else.

Are you kidding me? At least 80% of the comments I saw online the following week were blaming the woman.

It seems to me like Uber's self-driving system is absolute trash. But they were in a hurry to "go live" with it, because they _need it_ so that the company can become profitable ASAP. And thanks to the deregulation bill from last year (which was almost universally praised online), they could actually do that, too.

<comment><USER52> It's still the biker's "fault" in some sense. That same video would have 100% exonerated a human driver. There's no way that was a safe crossing. The fact that there was a clear automation fault _also_ doesn't change the fact that traffic safety is everyone's job, including but not exclusively the computers.

<comment><USER53> You mean the video that showed the safety driver staring at a cell phone for 6 full seconds right up until nearly the moment of impact? Maybe that would have exonerated the driver, but only to prove how perverse our driving laws are. But in my state the driver would have been convicted.

<comment><USER54> Do we know what she was looking at? I haven't read anything conclusive of that.

What would the driver have been convicted of? Would you be willing to get second opinions from prosecutors in your state as to whether or not they would have persued a conviction of that crime?

<comment><USER53> It was pretty clear in the video.

I myself was charged for a much lesser distraction a while back involving a crash in which I was the only one at risk and for which the other driver shared equal blame. If I had run down a pedestrian I have no doubt the charges would have been severe.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I'm wondering how much more attentive the emergency driver would have been if they were one of the developers. Sometimes I worry about how much trust non- developers assign to software (in all sorts of areas)

</comment><comment><USER56> "Saw" doesn't seem like the right word. Granted, apparently, the sensors picked something up. What it failed to do is recognize and categorize; and from there properly take action.

Given the failure of the recognition + categorization system, it would be interesting to know what it thought it saw. Was it filed under IDK, a plastic bag blowing in the wind, what?

</comment><comment><USER57> ISTM that HN policy would replace TFA with the link cited in TFA:

[https://www.theinformation.com/articles/uber-finds-deadly- ac...](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/uber-finds-deadly-accident- likely-caused-by-software-set-to-ignore-objects-on-road)

...although, there is a paywall, so maybe not.

<comment><USER58> Not just any paywall either. It's $40/month.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Um...if I as a human see a plastic bag on the road ahead, I slow down to be able to carefully ascertain if it perhaps is a plastic bag full of nails. I don't drive full tilt over it.

</comment><comment><USER60> i wonder how this info got out. i thought (learned this from tesla) that companies are not allowed to release info about accidents under NTSB investigation. which this one is.

</comment><comment><USER61> Sounds like the departments are fighting over the responsibility of the accident. Correct me if I am wrong.

</comment><comment><USER62> What's worse, it saw it but misinterperated or sensors has a blind spot and missed something?

</comment><comment><USER63> Ethical dilemma, should a vehicle swerve to avoid an unavoidable pedestrian and potentially killing more people or should it ignore that person (not saying that what happened)

Should a autonomous vehicle also prioritise it's own passenger over the safety of others, aka head on collision with a people carrier.

</comment><comment><USER64> it's dramatic but it's also a good reminder that "modern" "recent" wonder tech doesn't comes free. It needs proper examination. This will surely push toward more serious work.

</comment><comment><USER65> > This puts the fault squarely on Uber's doorstep, though there was never much > reason to think it belonged anywhere else.

> This is not good.

The state of journalism saddens me.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there any non-web-development jobs out there? - <AUTHOR>

After I saw three "Who's hiring" threads, I recognize that startup companies are mostly looking for web developer that relates on back-end front-end development, RoR, Scala, Hadoop, Javascript, CSS, LAMP stack.
It totally makes sense since most of the startup companies are building their websites now.
I was just wondering if there is anyone hiring for a non web developer position which only requires knowledges in basic CS (algorithm, memory, etc) and basic programming in C, Python, Java, C++, etc. <comment><USER2> First off, let me put on my grammar-nazi hat and say that it should be "Are there any..."

Second, where do you expect to apply your "basic programming" skills? Pretty much the only other option out there is to write desktop or mobile apps, which in today's world probably interface with the web in the end, so knowledge of web development is crucial anyway.

</comment><comment><USER3> There totally are, and while it seems like a good idea to be versed in web development there are still plenty of industries hiring folks to develop software very removed from the internet.. For instance, in my town (San Diego), there's a ton of embedded firmware positions that usual require solid CS fundamentals and experience with C.

</comment><comment><USER4> We're hiring at Splunk: <http://www.splunk.com/view/careers/SP-CAAAAGG></comment>


Bill to the government the ability to shut down the internet - <AUTHOR> http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-s773/show

<comment><USER2> I think the key phrase in the summary is _"without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access."_

Why is it necessary for the president to be able (by himself, from what I understand) to shut down entire networks without regard to law? Don't the other two branches exist to write and decide laws? What is the point of a check and balance if this action can be taken without regard to law?

Also, why aren't the security policies of the network providers good enough? If the US were under a serious cyber-attach (which actually happens a lot), wouldn't the providers just shut down the offending IPs? Why is it necessary for entire networks to be at the mercy of the government? Perhaps I don't understand the internet well enough. Would someone be able to enlighten me?

Note: I am neither a political scientist or an internet engineer. If any part of what I said doesn't make sense to someone who understands these issues better than I do, please correct me.

</comment><comment><USER3> At first I wasn't seeing backed up claims for "shutting down the Internet"... I read that over one time and I thought, okay, they're talking about (new) cybersecurity applications for already existing Federal and Department of Commerce systems and implementations. So I thought, okay - providing more security for governmental systems is a good thing, right?

Then I read it through a second time: "The bill also calls on the Department of Commerce to establish and maintain a clearinghouse on information related to cybersecurity threat and vulnerability information to public and private infrastructure deemed "critical" by the President. The Secretary of Commerce would be given access to this information "without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access." The bill would also give the President new authority to "declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.""

''deemed critical'' ? I welcome your opinion, but to me that seems like too much power for one person. I'd say Google is quite critical... so let me get this straight, Rockefeller wants to allow the President to be able to shut down anything (like Google) he feels is necessary? pfft I think I'd like to recommend these old fogie Senators to actually use the Internet - don't attempt to interfere with something you don't understand.

<comment><USER4> Look at it from the context of the recent Russia-Georgia conflict <http://www.defensetech.org/archives/004363.html>

My tin-foil hat's as big as most (and bigger than many), but let's look at both sides of this equation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't see this being technically feasible... the entire design principle behind the tcp/ip stack is to route around damaged/missing network links. You would have to completely isolate the US to do this, unless I'm misunderstanding modern routing protcols. Even leaving one link open would allow (slow) traffic outside of the US...

Granted, systems like the great firewall of China tend to work, but that's because there is infrastructure in place to handle it, it didn't just pop up one day.

</comment><comment><USER6> Our government is obsessed with the word "cyber", honestly does anyone use that word besides the government and internet porn sites?

<comment><USER7> Some "artists" do as well. I like Ted Nelson's take on the word...it adds nothing and the only word with cyber in it that does mean something is "cybernetics".

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to be "that guy," but can a moderator please make the title read "Bill to _give_ the government..."? I keep reading this title and thinking we can now charge the government for internet downtime.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ya, sorry about that. I should have proofed my title before I submitted. :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Good if it ever happens I will get a good night's sleep!

</comment><comment><USER10> Good luck enforcing that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Ya think they can't shut it down now?</comment>


Finite state machines with Akka - <AUTHOR> http://codurance.com/2016/05/10/finite-state-machines-with-akka/ <comment><USER2> Worth noting that Erlang also has a new gen_statem in R19 coming in June. It looks like a big upgrade to gen_fsm!

<comment><USER3> Not only that but ssh protocol in R19 will be implemented as a gen_statem, providing a real life usage example for it.

I also liked that Ericsson engaged with the community and considered input and updated code accordingly as they worked on it.

You can see the whole process and discussion in:

[https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/960](https://github.com/erlang/otp/pull/960)

<comment><USER2> Awesome, I'll definitely have a play with the :ssh module then, even if only from the Elixir side of the fence.

Just been to ElixirConf here in Europe and was super impressed with Erlang Solutions guys and the general quality of the Erlang and Elixir people. Lots of interesting chats!

:-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What about Kafka's at-least-once semantics ? Is that being dealt with ?

<comment><USER5> Your question is hard to understand.

[https://kafka.apache.org/08/design.html](https://kafka.apache.org/08/design.html)

"So effectively Kafka guarantees at-least-once delivery by default ...."

Edit: Downvote if you want. I was trying to help you.

<comment><USER6> GP asked how this system deals with Kafka's at least once semantics. Pointing out that Kafka has at least once semantics is redundant.

What GP was asking: what happens if Kafka delivers the "item added" event twice, but the "item deleted" event only once? Do you end up with an invalid/unrecoverable state?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Akka is good, the only thing I don't like is that with actors sometimes type safety is lost, or at least takes some effort to enforce at compile time.</comment>


Monner - Monitor CPU, memory and network whilst running a program - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/colinhowe/monner

<comment><USER2> Useful idea. I sometimes use time [1] to print stats at the end of the program's run, like so.

        /usr/bin/time -f 'user=%U system=%S maxrss=%M ins=%I outs=%O" PROGRAM

Seeing stats while the program is running is nice though! Also, cumulative monitoring of an entire foreground process group would be super handy (a long build, for instance).

Drop the --target-output option, you don't need it. Same thing can be achieved with:

       monner.py sh -c 'exec 1>/dev/null 2>&1 $0 "$@"' PROGRAM

I also agree with the other commenter that monner should be the parent process.

[1] Note, time(1) is not the same as the shell builtin of the same name.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point! Changing it now :)

<comment><USER3> I personally prefer strace's options:

        -f -- follow forks, -ff -- with output into separate files
        -o file -- send trace output to FILE instead of stderr

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> what does "memory" mean here? it would be nice to have more details (eg virtual v physical). also disk io (with paging separate) would be good. and maybe files opened (like /prod/PID/fd/*)

it would be really nice to have something that shows all this for a single process (and perhaps also for other processes that are "top" in some category). at the moment, when i am trying to balance code to run as well as possible within given hardware constraints, i have to juggle various monitor programs - this is a good first step to using just one...

</comment><comment><USER5> How does this compare to Instruments?

<http://goo.gl/BFWEv>

Its advantages are not obvious to me..

<comment><USER6> It's multiplatform for one.. not everyone uses OS X especially in production

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not just fork the subprocess rather than forking the monitoring process?

<comment><AUTHOR> The monitor is stopped as soon as the target process finishes - which means that the very last reading emitted will only contain information from during the run of the target.

If it were done the other way around then we'd have to poll for the termination of the forked target process. Either the poll duration would have to be really small or the monitor would contain readings for some time after the end of the target.

This isn't so bad when running with an interval of 1 second... but for an interval of 1 minute (or longer) it can start to give odd readings.

To be honest, I'm thinking of removing the very final reading anyway. Or, at least documenting that the final reading may be slightly misleading.

<comment><USER7> Ah. I was mucking around in the subprocess module at one point, and IIRC it already forks the subprocess that it launches, even if you're just doing something like subprocess.call().

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nice!

Would be ace if you could add i/o to it (eg maybe through iotop?).

<comment><AUTHOR> Added!

<comment><USER9> Even more awesome would be to add metrics for inbound and outbound network packets per second! ;)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've made it easier to start adding more metrics... could you pop this one in a github issue? I'll be able to actually remember to do it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> htop will solve all your problem. Why even bother Monner?

<comment><AUTHOR> htop is nice but it's not so usable for generating output that you can graph up and use for comparing things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What is the minimum python version required to run this?

</comment><comment><USER11> Does this work on child threads?

</comment><comment><USER12> What is all this methods-starting-with-an-underscore crap? That's a pretty shitty way to namespace methods. /ruby guy

<comment><USER13> "Use one leading underscore only for non-public methods and instance variables." [1]

[1] [http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#method-names-and- in...](http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/#method-names-and-instance- variables)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I'm an SRE. What's My Path to CTO? - <AUTHOR> I've worked in IT operations for around 5 years and currently work as a Site Reliability Engineer for a small company (120 people). I have a degree in Business Administration, but never really used it. I love technical work and feel that I'm a little above average as far as understanding technical concepts and applying them. I feel that I have broad vision for long-term improvements.
Now I'm looking toward the future (10 years out) and trying to determine which path to pursue. The CTO route seems rather appealing, but I don't know enough about it. I'm interested in continuing to work for small businesses (100 - 500 employees).
- Do I need more formal education?
- Do I need more well rounded experience? (e.g. development, sales, etc). - What can I do today and tomorrow to move my career in the "C-level" direction? - What responsibilities and challenges does a CTO have that I might be overlooking when considering this path? - Has anyone here followed such a path? (from IT operations to CTO)
Thanks in advance! <comment><USER2> The internal path is probably winding and not guaranteed. Also if you're good at your job as SRE you won't likely become the CTO, you're too valuable as SRE. The people I've seen do it move around or leave to start their own thing, appoint themselves CTO or CEO, if the business succeeds, they sell the business and then can join some place next time as CTO because they've clearly already been one. If the business fails same thing.</comment>


How Woodstock 50 Is Shaping Up to Be Fyre Fest 2.0 - <AUTHOR> https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-woodstock-50-is-shaping-up-to-be-fyre-fest-20 <comment><USER2> If you get stranded in Watkins Glen however it is not so bad. On any given weekend people show up to watch cars go around and around the track and hope that a wheel comes off or something.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not the same as the fyre festival. They straight up lied. This is like a a battle over a brand. Of course losing the name might lose the acts associated with it.</comment>


Picking the Right Metric - <AUTHOR> http://blog.sigopt.com/post/112537066668/picking-the-right-metric

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the founders of SigOpt here, I'm happy to answer any questions about this post, what we do, or anything about SigOpt. I'll be around all day!

<comment><USER2> After reading through your page I'm still not really sure what you do.

Let's say I run a mobile game (multiplayer, online, players can interact). What can you do for me and what do I have to give you to do it?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We're constantly trying to iterate on our landing pages, trying to make the trade-off between being technical and accessible and we'll use this to iterate again.

There are two ways to use us as a mobile game developer.

1\. For optimally tuning the machine learning models you may have for predicting user engagement, churn, etc. We wrote a blog post on this last week [1]. More information can be found on our machine learning page [2].

2\. For A/B tests of various in-game parameters [3]. Instead of doing exhaustive search (or binary search, or local hill climbing, or intuition) to decide what parameters to try in your tests you can use SigOpt to optimally suggest what to do next, given the historical data already collected. Example: if you are trying to find what the best properties a specific new unit should have in your game (cost, build time, etc) we can guide you to the global optima for the metric you care about automatically and optimally.

We do all of this by wrapping cutting-edge design of experiments research behind a simple API [4] and web interface. You tell us what you have tried in the past (if anything) and we tell you what is optimal to try next.

Any other feedback is greatly appreciated! Feel free to shoot me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com any time!

[1]: [http://blog.sigopt.com/post/111903668663/tuning-maching- lear...](http://blog.sigopt.com/post/111903668663/tuning-maching-learning- models)

[2]: [https://sigopt.com/cases/machine_learning](https://sigopt.com/cases/machine_learning)

[3]: [https://sigopt.com/cases/ab](https://sigopt.com/cases/ab)

[4]: [https://sigopt.com/docs/overview](https://sigopt.com/docs/overview)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ObiKey – Scan and Login to Webpages (100% Open) - <AUTHOR> https://www.obikey.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I'm studying MSc. with the specialization topic Network Security. I believe we need to create the authentication system of tomorrow. This is an early stage proof-of-concept, there are many things I want to change, but I wanted to see what people think first :) Make sure to watch this short(2:30) video, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYLwQmcSwqk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYLwQmcSwqk)

</comment><comment><USER2> I definitely like the idea, but don't you think that it will be hard to get your app installed on end-users devices ? IMHO You'll have to use a completely different vocabulary on your landing to convince them to download it on an app store.

Nota : couldn't download the app from the website (latest chrome, OSX)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! sorry, wrong version was cached on cloudflare, should be working by now.

First I thought this as a way to let websites their users login easier, but this requires wide-spread of the app as you said.

Then I thought this as a password vault + chrome extension, that every security-aware person can use, regardless if website supports it.

But on mobile websites since you can't have browser extension, the website developers may implement this natively. But that would be version 2.0</comment></comment>


Windows Phone Unlock Tool Goes Official - <AUTHOR> http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/windows-phone-unlock-tool-goes-official-44945 <comment><USER2> Another officially sanctioned option for developing WP7 programs without going through the developer program is to use TouchDevelop.

Although far more limited in terms of speed and access, it does offer the advantage of providing an IDE designed from the ground up to run on a WP7 device.

[<http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/touchdevelop/>]</comment>


Ask HN: Please review my web app to help startups get free PR - <AUTHOR> http://prmanna.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> A bit of backstory: I signed up for <http://www.helpareporter.com/> back when it was a huge mailing list sending out tons of PR requests every day. I liked the service, but got tired of digging through 200 requests every day, so I built 95% of this awhile back. A couple days ago, I decided to finish it up and launch it.

Unfortunately, I took a look at HARO today and they've apparently launched something very similar, rather than just the old mailing list that I was competing against. So what do you think of this? Should I just drop it or should I add features to make it more valuable? Alternatively, is there something else I could use it for?

<comment><USER2> I have been thinking about this same problem. I get the HARO newsletters, but 3 times a day is just too much to sift through when 9/10 there is nothing remotely relevant.

I want something half way between google alerts and HARO. I monitor a few keywords and whenever there is a reporter asking for something that includes that keyword, I get an email.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, and keyword alerts is one of the next features I'll be adding. I skipped for launch for simplicity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This is pretty cool. If you're afraid you can't compete with HOAR, maybe you could aim for a specific niche?

I'd work on scanability on the home page. I'd make the unordered lists larger, with a bolder font to draw my attention to them. I'm having trouble coming up with good copy for those areas, but you should see if you can reduce the text. There's that rule from "Don't Make me Think" that goes "Get rid of half the words on each page, then get rid of half of what's left."

I think it would be nice to have some more categories and/or subcategories. I see that I can subscribe to requests for "Technology", but I know nothing about hardware, or phones. It would be nice to only get requests for "Web Design" or "Web Sites".

The UI is pretty plain at the moment. Nothing really wrong with that, but it looks a certain professional polish.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the feedback! I really appreciate it. I do plan on adding keyword alerts at some point, so that you can just follow super targeted stuff, as well as search. I may add some more granularity in the categories, but I don't want it to get too overwhelming to post or subscribe.

In terms of a niche, I haven't spent much time thinking about it, but when it comes down to it, this is essentially a general anonymous message board like Craigslist, so I'm sure there are tons of niche applications. I'd love to hear more ideas from folks.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about your "social" position on the web, or better in the real world. But if you can link some known great engineers, angels, VCs, entrepreneurs, and _independent_ journalists with non-backed (not funded only) startups, that will be great. Perhaps linking a startup with a strict small group of top people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> How are you going to get journalists to discover and pay attention to this?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fantastic question that I don't have the full answer to. I figured I'd use it myself, ping bloggers and journalists I know, post in here, leverage Twitter, maybe do some Facebook ads. I'm open to suggestions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I went to checkout prmanna, and was turned off by the lack of design and the slowness. You mentioned in another comment you enabled caching, however, I don't see enough on the front page to require caching at all...Toss this comment aside if you are just testing the waters on a personal machine or something.

On a kinda of related note, I looked around and saw your other site, mightybrand, which caught my interest. However, it takes alot of trust to giveup a credit card before you ever see the product you might end up purchasing. I'd recommend you allow free trials without a credit card, and then once someone is hooked or reliant on the product, cripple the account and ask for money. At least this lets people try it! I walked away from the signup form the moment a credit card was requested. Don't follow this example with your prmanna site, if you do decide to go paid with it.

</comment><comment><USER7> Possibly OT but I knew I recognized your username around here and a glance at your profile reminds me you run <http://mightybrand.com>

I'm genuinely curious what makes you (and others) start new projects when I would think you have (or should have) your hands full with seeing how far one can go? In other words why and how do you feel your time is better spent starting a new project as opposed to improving/optimizing your current one? Is it a matter of burnout and just needing something _different_ to think about? I guess I've always thought that running a business entailed hundreds of hats as it is, and optimizing different areas of your business would always leave you with something _different_ to do.

Genuinely interested on your motivations if you don't mind.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a fair question. It's partly some burnout and needing a new challenge. It's partly that this took me a weekend or two to build (and most of it was built before we started MightyBrand, to be honest), and I hated the thought of throwing it away without seeing what kind of response it would get. And if I'm honest with myself, part of it might be a mistake on my part. I'll have to think about it some more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Well to be quite honest it's a bit slow and the design is basically nonexistent right now. Stuff like this shouldn't occur: <http://prmanna.com/requests/list/1>

I dig the idea though, but getting people to respect it will be a challenge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Guilty as charged on both accounts. I just turned on caching on the homepage, so hopefully that'll be a little snappier. Caching for the rest will need to wait until tomorrow. I'm not a designer, and I didn't want to wait until the design was perfect before launching. Hence, it looks like does :) I have some plans for the design, but it didn't seem likely to be a show-stopper at this point.

Agreed on the "empty pages" problem. I want the browse categories page to be a lot more informative, and show number of open requests in each category + 1-2 recent requests for that category.

Isn't getting people to respect any new web app a challenge? :) Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER9> Holy Yikes! Are you saying that this little web app, seeing maybe 2k visitors from a Wednesday-evening hackernewsing, with nothing but a few test entries in the database is actually slowing down to the point that you need to implement CACHING for the homepage?

What technology in combination with what $5/month hosting company could you possibly have used to achieve such terrible results?

<comment><AUTHOR> I do have this on a pretty crappy host at the moment, as I didn't expect to get much traffic (it also got picked up ReadWriteWeb today). I'm using CakePHP, which is great for rapid development but does unfortunately have some overhead, so I turned on caching, which entails changing one setting, and the homepage is then served almost as a static html file (there's still a few lines of PHP in there). It helps a little, and I didn't see any reason not to do it. Really appreciate your supportive attitude, though :)

<comment><USER10> Most of the CakePHP are slow complaints are more issues of not knowing how to use it. Suggest if you really think CakePHP is being slow set $recursive = -1; in all of your models and use Containable to only fetch related model data when needed. You should be able to hit tens of thousands of unique visitors per day without caching no problem.

Remember that you will need to add indexes to the database manually. Cake won't screw with your database by adding them itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've done xdebug profiling and cake does add some non-negligiable overhead. However, 90% of the issue here is that the host is _really_ crappy, and the latency on the db is bad, so view caching is helping. It'll be moved to a new host in 48-72 hours.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The "send me feedback" area took all my first attention. Maybe it would be beneficial to reduce its attraction a bit ?</comment>


Ask HN: Advice on acquiring clients for private beta? - <AUTHOR> We have built a solid MVP SaaS product (targeted to SaaS companies) but are struggling to obtain private beta clients.  We are targeting 30-100 employee SaaS companies.  Recognizing every situation is different, what successful approaches have you used to obtain private beta clients? <comment><USER2> You're usually better off starting with people you have relationships with -- SaaS owners that fit the bill. And depending on the relationship, you can see if THEY have relationships with others that might be interested and leave an open invitation to get in touch with you.

Have you parsed out your own target audience at all? Have you made a list of SaaS companies you would like to approach? Are you attempting to reach them through cold email? What have you tried that's not working, or are you having trouble segmenting your audience in general?

</comment><comment><USER3> Approaching as a "partnership" may be useful. You can always increase pricing after your initial customers.

Also, be careful thinking you have a solid MVP.</comment>


How Tree Trunks Are Cut to Produce Wood with Different Appearances and Uses - <AUTHOR> https://www.archdaily.com/894449/how-tree-trunks-are-cut-to-produce-wood-with-different-appearances-and-uses <comment><USER2> If you shop at Home Depot or Lowes the only cut you'll find are from flat sawn logs.[1] Even at lumber yards most will be cut this way.

Because I don't have a planer, and don't want to spend megabucks on furniture- grade hardwood for my learner projects, I have to spend a considerable amount of time picking through pieces, whether dimensional construction lumber or squared project pieces, checking the grain to find those pieces cut near the middle, but not directly through the core. And then of course checking that it's not otherwise too warped or twisted. See

      https://wortheffort.com/wordpress/archives/142

I think the only places you'll find lumber cut using those other patterns are lumber yards selling high quality lumber for furniture or architectural pieces, often sourcing from boutique mills. Or places selling reclaimed lumber from the days when lumber was harvested from old growth forests and it was cost effective to setup a large mill using different patterns. The trees from modern farms don't get big enough to use the other patterns; at scale the only cost effective method is flat sawn and letting downstream purchasers sort through the mess.

[1] The exception may be the poplar and oak project boards, but they're so expensive at the big box stores I don't even bother looking. I think poplar is pretty stable so they're probably flat sawn, too.

<comment><USER3> I have to get my project wood from a small local mill, I can get it cut any way I want, the downside is I can't just pick a few boards of different types out of a stockpile like a hardwood supplier. But it is cheap enough that I can buy it an entire tree's worth at a time and keep a decent stock going. The prices for a hardwood board at a normal lumber store are absolutely criminal so it is worth it a dozen times over to get it from a mill or drive to a hardwood supplier's warehouse. Plus with a mill you can bring them any tree you want cut up, I got a few black walnut trees that will probably get me a decades worth of material for next to nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I know a physicist, who now works for the world-leading saw-mill manufacturer applying machine learning to this problem...

</comment><comment><USER5> Ha HA that's my job.

<comment><USER6> I'm curious, how did you discover HN?

<comment> GuB-42 That's fitting for a woodworker to come in a forum called "hacker news". After all, they are the original hackers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do sites have to hijack my scrolling wheel? Seriously who thinks that's a good idea?

<comment><USER8> What do you mean? I don't see any scroll wheel hijacking.

<comment><USER7> Scrolling is slowed down for me. I.e. I have to scroll 10 times as much as usual.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why drawings, and no photos?

</comment><comment><USER10> I wonder if those wood cutters ever talked to Sir Roger Penrose. I have the feeling there is room for some optimizations.

<comment><USER11> I'm curious why you think that. It's all these mills do all day, for thousands of years. Reducing waste by more efficient cuts is literally free profit, which is why they've had automatic scanners and optimized for years[1, 2000].

I've done a little woodworking, but it's enough to realize that wood is complicated and tricky and there are definitely pros & cons to the various cuts. I'm sure if they could get more high quality cuts from a given log they would - it is more valuable down stream.

[1] [https://www.vision- systems.com/articles/print/volume-5/issue...](https://www.vision- systems.com/articles/print/volume-5/issue-11/features/timber-analysis/machine- vision-analyzes-lumber.html)

<comment><USER12> Modern mills are impressive! SCA Tunadal does 200 meters logs per minute. With multiple laser/xray scanners for optimal cuts.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y81eWz2YqZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y81eWz2YqZM)</comment></comment></comment>


Why you should start a company in.... Seattle - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcompany.com/article/why-you-should-start-company-seattle?page=0%2C0

<comment><USER2> _...[among investors] I think more and more people in the Bay Area are going, "Wow! It's super competitive down here..." So I'm seeing more Valley firms actually coming up here because they're seeing really good companies forming._

Read that, "Seattle looks more capital starved and has lots of good startups looking for funding which would have already been funded in the Valley". Heaven for investors, sure. I really wish it weren't true, but the Valley is better for entrepreneurs.

<comment><USER3> As Jeff Bezos likes to say: Frugality breeds innovation.

The availability of money changes how you go about doing business, but not your chances of success. In my experience Seattle entrepreneurs are much more focussed on building a serious business, while Valley entrepreneurs are focussed on building the most awesome toys in the world (we'll make money eventually, right?). Consequently, valley companies have fanboys, while Seattle companies have fancorps. Both can make a lot of money. On the short run I would put my money in San Francisco since the boys can be very excited. On the long run I would put my money in Seattle since the corps won't lose interest over time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> He forgot to mention that all the rain means you'll stay indoors and do more work.

<comment><USER5> Seattle gets less rain than NY.

<comment><USER6> True. According to the USGS, New York gets 45.4" of precipitation yearly, while Seattle gets 37.2".

That said, I'd like to find out how to compare the number of days with rain in both places. Seattle gets drizzle. The year I moved here we had 86 days of continuous drizzle and no sun sightings. New York most likely gets its precipitation in the occasional downpour -- not to mention snow -- and probably has more overall sunny days during the winter. (Just a guess, though.)

[http://countrystudies.us/united-states/weather/new- york/new-...](http://countrystudies.us/united-states/weather/new-york/new- york.htm)

[http://countrystudies.us/united- states/weather/washington/se...](http://countrystudies.us/united- states/weather/washington/seattle.htm)

<comment><USER7> We don't do the drizzle sh*t in New York; we go big. When it rains, it pours. It also doesn't stop us from going outside. We don't care - we've got things to do, places to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Here goes... Seattle is a fantastic town, water everywhere, gorgeous vistas and when the weather cooperates (August) there's no better place (I've found) in the entie-ree world.

That said, I just moved my teensy company from Seattle to Austin (after nearly, gulp, three decades in the SEA). Ms. Rich's article reads like the 'impressions' of one who's never, umm, started a company in Seattle.

5 reasons I left (and won't be headed back):

\- traffic is abysmal. Not NYC/LA abysmal, but for a town of its size, truly awful.

\- weather is grey/overcast and misty (most years) for 10 months.

\- it's hard to attract/keep talent with families -- home prices near good schools, within short commute of downtown (or eastside) core are high. Wages are somewhat high, but get eaten up fast if you buy a home.

\- business taxes, fees. State/county government is bloated and seems very willing to sacrifice job creation for revenue (read: more taxes on the way).

\- did I mention the weather? Went back for thanksgiving - culture shock. Weather was overcast and I was struck by how dark it is. Light at 9am-ish and starts to get dark at 3:30.

There's a reason Seattle runs on caffeine.

(edit: thought I had this bulleted list thing down - alas, no)

</comment><comment><USER9> Those are terrible reasons. I have a better one:

The state employment security department is having a hell of a time keeping up with the unemployment rate. There's a disproportionately high number of people who need work.

I should know. I'm one such programmer.</comment>


Microsoft Admits Normal Windows 10 Users Are 'Testing' Unstable Updates - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2018/12/12/microsoft-admits-normal-windows-10-users-are-testing-unstable-updates/ <comment><USER2> just like being a Google suit user.</comment>


To Beat the Coronavirus, Raise an Army of the Recovered - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/to-beat-the-coronavirus-raise-an-army-of-the-recovered/ <comment><USER2> Queues the covid party's In 3, 2, 1. Start with a group hug followed by a round of beer pong. Hangover Next week will be killer though

</comment><comment><USER3> This is an extremely disturbing description of a dystopian future.</comment>


Wired for War - <AUTHOR>

"Wired for War" Seminar by Peter Seeger now today at 1:30 pm EST at http://science.dodlive.mil/ <comment><AUTHOR> Chucks, it has been cancelled due to the snow here. Sorry about that ...</comment>


Anyone looking to hookup in China? - <AUTHOR>

Anyone around in China interested in either a hackers meetup or interested in working on some projects together?  I am currently in Guangzhou, but don't mind going to other places around China such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Beijing.   Let's get a yc community going here in China!  Anyone here working on projects in China currently? I'd love to hear about them.  This is the small fun project I am working on now: http://sanbit.com <comment><USER2> In the US, it's relatively easy to start a corporation and trivial to start a company. In much of Europe, there are significant fees and/or capitalization requirements to start company. What barriers are there to starting a corporation in mainland China? Can you be based out of Beijing but incorporate in Hong Kong? I would guess that incorporating in Hong Kong is like in the USA but incorporating in the mainland is more like incorporating in Europe.

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a Chinese passport its easy to setup a company in China but if you have a foreign passport then you need to have a lot of money in a Chinese bank before they allow you to register a company, I think about $100,000 US. I've heard Hong Kong is simpler, but I haven't tried. One situation I recommend if possible for you is to setup 2 companies, one in the US (or wherever your homebase is) and one in China. I dont think China is currently very startup friendly, but I hope that will change.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm in Hong Kong, if you're in town we can catch up with a couple other startup folks... email me simehome at gmail com</comment>


Scientists have put human brain genes in monkeys - <AUTHOR> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613277/chinese-scientists-have-put-human-brain-genes-in-monkeysand-yes-they-may-be-smarter/ <comment><USER2> > "Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you > put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of- > the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to > dry." (Thief of Time - Sir Terry Pratchett).

That's a quote that I find myself thinking about at least once or twice a month.

<comment><USER3> This is also why I hypothesize that at least one human clone is likely to exist or have existed. Cloning technology exists, and humans have therefore probably tried it somewhere.

<comment><USER4> Cloning primates is difficult because the proteins that guide chromosomes during cell division are not scattered throughout the cell like for other mammals, and this causes problems when the nucleus of an egg cell is replaced[1]

Researchers only reported successful cloning of monkeys in January 2018 [2]. (So _if_ cloned humans exist already, they were likely born in the last few months.)

[1] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2003/04/problem-cloning- prim...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2003/04/problem-cloning-primates)

[2] [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01027-z](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-01027-z)

<comment><USER5> That is an interesting issue. However, there is another technique to create cloned mammals that has is used industrially to create non chimeric mice from embryonic stem cell cultures. A donor blastocyst is used as a host. At a particular stage of development, implanting a number of ES cells from the desired clone into the center of the blastocyst induces the donor blastocyst to develop into the placenta, while the ES cells continue development as the fetus. This allows for engineering of the ES cells independently, without failure prone nuclear transfer. It would be interesting to know if this would work in primates. It may be difficult to maintain the ES cell cultures. It might also be riskier in some sense. I'm curious what others know about this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There have been a few attempts to create a human/chimpanzee hybrid: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanzee)

<comment><USER7> Found this in an old version of the page, after it was referenced in one of the citations. [https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Humanzee&diff=pre...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Humanzee&diff=prev&oldid=424824150)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > "The draft regulations, issued by the National Health Commission on 26 > February, state that gene editing in any type of cell _that will end up in > humans_ , including embryos, will need the commission's approval, as will > other high-risk biomedical procedures."

First loophole in the proposed regulation[0]?

[https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00773-y](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00773-y)

<comment><USER9> So any gene editing of a cell that ends up somewhere else, but with human components, is good. I guess you can learn a lot that way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Sounds like a good idea."

"Because... everything is a great idea...?"

"Exactly!"

</comment><comment><USER11> Am I the only one thinking of Planet of Apes?

</comment><comment><USER12> More complete article: [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613277/chinese- scientists...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613277/chinese-scientists- have-put-human-brain-genes-in-monkeysand-yes-they-may-be-smarter/)

<comment><USER13> Thanks, we've updated the link from [https://www.brecorder.com/2019/04/11/488194/scientists- put-h...](https://www.brecorder.com/2019/04/11/488194/scientists-put-human- gene-into-monkeys-to-make-them-smarter-human-like/).

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "Planet of the Apes" is not part of the title.

<comment><USER13> Thanks! Removed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It doesn't sounds like an _smart_ move.</comment>


Enterprise Software Lessons:If you are Going to Pick Up a Fight, Hit the Big Guy - <AUTHOR> http://jrodthoughts.com/2012/07/02/enterprise-software-lessons-if-you-are-going-to-pick-up-a-fight-hit-the-big-guy/

<comment><USER2> These are the good things about Enterprise software, but what about the bad? Just want to make sure we paint a realistic picture of the enterprise here. Just a couple of note to consider:

\- Good products that have superior technology and end-user benefit, must take a long-tail approach (i.e. many small customers first and then big boys next)

\- In general it requires large amount of sales teams and long sales cycles.

\- Remember who is buying the software. It's most likely not the end-user. (this is wildly different from selling a photo-sharing app) They normally have long standing relationships with IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc. and value their relationships sometimes largely more than pleasing their end-users.

\- It hurdles are usually a pain. It requires getting sign off by not only a large number of stakeholders but through a vigorous set of checks. This also means you might need to shed out extra money for certifications, etc.

There's lot more and I'll be writing a blog post about this in case anyone is interested.

<comment><USER3> _Remember who is buying the software. It's most likely not the end-user. (this is wildly different from selling a photo-sharing app) They normally have long standing relationships with IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc. and value their relationships sometimes largely more than pleasing their end-users._

This is absolutely true. Many "enterprise" buyers are showered with free meals, conference tickets, drinks, and simple brown-nosing by their sales reps. They don't want to give that up for your software that your earnest salesperson tries to sell on actual value propositions.

Furthermore, once a decision is made, the decision-maker becomes defensive. Changing software is admitting they made the wrong decision with the first product. Nobody in an enterprise organization likes to admit they were wrong about anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> There is this requisite: if you have a solid product or service Then you can go directly after enterprise customers. Now one just needs to come up with a way of building solid enterprise products without customers in the first place.

<comment><AUTHOR> Absolutely, but that might not be enough to get over the initial inflection point. Tapping into a customer community that has been nurtured by your bigger competitors is always an interesting strategy.

      Cheers,

       JR</comment></comment>


How to do what Kirby Ferguson said at the end of Everything is a Remix? - <AUTHOR>

On 3/20/13, the Register of Copyrights announced to Congress: "Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the state of our copyright law. The law is showing the strain of its age & requires your attention. Authors dont have effective protections, good faith businesses dont have clear roadmaps, courts dont have sufficient direction, & consumers & other private citizens are frustrated. The issues are numerous, complex, & interrelated, & they affect every part of the copyright ecosystem, including the public. Congress should approach the issues comprehensively over the next few years as part of a more general revision of the statute. A comprehensive effort would offer an occasion to step back & consider issues both large & small, as well as whether & how they relate to the equities of the statute as a whole. This Subcommittee has an opportunity to do what its done before, to put forth a forward-thinking framework for the benefit of both culture & commerce alike."
jnazario announced Harvard Law School's (HLS) free MOOC on copyright to HN.
Based on this free HLS CopyrightX MOOC & the Copyright Register's 3/20 testimony, I see now as the best time in the last 50 years for people who are deeply affected by copyright to begin to work together on reforming that law.
Kirby Ferguson's closing words: "The common good is a meme that was overwhelmed by intellectual property. It needs to spread again. If the meme prospers, our laws, our norms, our society, they all transform. That's social evolution & it's not up to governments or corporations or lawyers… it's up to us."
There is a SE (eg. StackOverflow) community proposal called CopyrightX that could be a very effective means of democratically implementing copyright reform to put the common good back at the forefront of copyright law.
Any thoughts you all might have on ways to raise awareness?
http://copyrightx.org <comment><USER2> Maybe use the knowledge accumulated in the charity sector to raise awareness. Present personal stories, with cases that people can relate to. Help people understand how copyright laws affect individuals, not corporations, or this vague notion of culture. And, aligned with the common good premise, try to tell stories of very diverse individuals.

And, please, go find real individuals actually affected directly by these laws, not generic stereotypes.</comment>


LESS: Stuff & Nonsense - <AUTHOR> http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/blog/about/less <comment><USER2> I read it so you may not have to. Hardboiled Web Design author Andy Clarke started off disliking, being disappointed, and highly skeptical of the 'need' of preprocessing in regards to CSS in modern websites. After having used Twitter's Bootstrap solution, he's been won over. To quote:

> "Whenever someone talks about tools like LESS or Sass, the conversation can > too easily turn to which tool is best. I'm not interested in that. What > matters is that we find tools and workflows that work well for us. LESS > works for me. In fact, it works so well for me, that I can't imagine working > on a project without it."

Result: we all win. Those who use an like LESS, SCSS, and their like save time. Those who don't use them remain just as capable as they've ever been.

</comment><comment><USER3> "If your code in C is complicated enough to need pre-processor, you're fucking doing it wrong!"

Guy lives in the Stone Age and he is progress proof.</comment>


Ask PG: What's The Most Points One Submission Has Ever Received? - <AUTHOR>

Ask PG: What's The Most Points One Submission Has Ever Recieved on Hackernews? What Was The Article? <comment><USER2>
        > (with (topi nil topscore 0)
            (each-loaded-item i
              (when (and (astory i) (> (realscore i) topscore))
                (= topi i topscore (realscore i))))
            (list topi!id topscore))
        (459289 521)

<comment><USER3> In django, this might look something like this:

      s = Stories.objects.order_by('-num_votes')[0]

<comment><USER2> The query I did was much more complicated. The Arc equivalent of yours is

        ((sort (compare > score) stories*) 0)

<comment><USER3> Just in case it isn't clear, that order_by actually digs into the database layer to do the sorting there. It's a query that returns an iterator that gives you stories in that order one at a time.

To sort an existing list, over a particular member, it would be

      Stories.sort( key = lambda x: x.score )

That lambda has certainly confused a lot of people I know. Probably because they used the word "lambda" and not "function".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Under the lists section of HN there is a best category with the top submissions.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/best>

<comment><USER5> It counts only recent submissions as far as I can tell though

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> <http://top.searchyc.com/submissions></comment>


Ruby Tools Roundup, reviewing 10 tools that can make your project better - <AUTHOR> http://devver.net/blog/2008/10/ruby-tools-roundup/

<comment><USER2> I need to work tools like these into my development habits</comment>


Example of matching MD and Data science skills - <AUTHOR> http://merqur.io/2015/11/25/redrawing-a-brain/ <comment><USER2> Title: Redrawing a brain with Bokeh

Article on the first attempt adds a lot of context: [http://merqur.io/2015/10/02/drawing-a-brain-with- bokeh/](http://merqur.io/2015/10/02/drawing-a-brain-with-bokeh/)

Bokeh: [http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/](http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Title: Redrawing a brain with Bokeh

Article on the first attempt adds a lot of context: [http://merqur.io/2015/10/02/drawing-a-brain-with- bokeh/](http://merqur.io/2015/10/02/drawing-a-brain-with-bokeh/)

Bokeh: [http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/](http://bokeh.pydata.org/en/latest/)</comment>


Visualizing US Foreign Aid with D3.js - <AUTHOR> http://www.euphonious-intuition.com/USForeignAidVis/

<comment><USER2> This is awesome. I've been playing around with d3 and the mercator map, but haven't been able to get this kind of interactivity. Great work!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! It was a lot of fun to work on, although I admit to several "bash head against wall" moments trying to get things working correctly.

D3 is pretty awesome to work with, but it isn't shy about exploding when you don't know what you are doing =)

<comment><USER2> Completely agree, I can get simple ones like bar graphs to work, but the maps always bow up on me. I'll definitely be going through your code and trying to figure out how it's done properly!</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Getting a developer job as self-taught programmer - <AUTHOR> Background: I am a mostly self-taught programmer with a CIS degree. I have done independent development work in the past in C#, PHP and java but nothing on a large enterprise scale. I have no idea of how to assess my programming skills either. I recently moved back to the US(NYC) where I did my college degree and would like a job as a developer/programmer. I worked desktop support before leaving the US. A colleague I worked with just contacted me with a Desktop Support position with the company he works with. It pays very well and I need a job soon.<p>Question: Should I hold out look for a programming job or jump on Desktop Support position? The only thing I have to show for my programming is a side project I recently put on Github https://github.com/garybethel/BitShuffle <comment><USER2> "It pays very well and I need a job soon"

Do it! Do it quickly without hesitation.

You can always make a change next year after you have secured something.</comment>


Facebook Acquires Blue Bottle - <AUTHOR> http://suyashs.com/facebook-acquires-blue-bottle

<comment><USER2> To the article.. I doubt they are gonna close it down. My guess is it's a social experiment of some kind. Not sure what kind.

Would love to know the actual story behind this.

<comment><USER3> Someone overheard a conversation on MUNI who had never heard of Gowalla before. Plus, it was loud, so their brain just came up with the closest rhyming company name they could think of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Any other sources to back this up?

</comment><comment><USER5> Doubtful this is real. Only source is this blog?

<comment><USER2> Agreed. What's next google acquiring four barrel?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Those with small side projects, where did you find part-time talent? - <AUTHOR> I'm just curious where those with small side projects (w/ some cash flow) are finding talent to help with operations (sales, marketing, dev, etc...).  Are people still using Elance/Upwork? What else is out there? <comment><USER2> I've bought logos and some other design stuff on Fiverr - have had mixed results, occasional good stuff.

I've also hired a couple of people to do work through Upwork (when it was oDesk) - I did have some good work done but I was not convinced that the same person was always doing the work, it seemed to me that it was being farmed out from one account that had good ratings.

The best result I have had (but the most pricey thing I have paid for) was design work done by a local agency ([https://weare2ndfloor.com/](https://weare2ndfloor.com/)). I spent a lot of time googling, looking at portfolios etc before getting in touch with them, but in the end it was worth it, I am very pleased with what they produced.

</comment><comment><USER3> I tried fiverr a few times, but the quality is so unpredictable.

I also tried working with a team I met overseas, but that did not turn out well.

My current approach was to find someone local to New York area.</comment>


How to solve a maze using shaders (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GULy4vtkw6w <comment><USER2> Is "shaders" a name that doesn't work anymore? I always perceived them as after effect functions to apply to a scene to do stuff. Ie. Shading. But they seem to be little programs you can run in your GPU? I see more and more examples of using shaders to do stuff that really isn't about taking an output scene and making it pretty.

Or did shaders always have this extended role?

<comment><USER3> There was never a time they weren't turing complete (e.g. you could always just run the same NAND shader iteratively on the same pixel buffer and compute whatever you like using pixels as binary storage) but once GPUs moved away from fixed pipelines it became easier to do whatever you wanted with them. Nowadays there are also compute type shaders which are kind of what you are talking about, running little functions on the GPU with no intention of actually shading anything with it or even working with graphical entities for that matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I purchased Shadron as another shader program to play with since Shadertoy was web-based, and I wanted something small and local. I have had great fun playing with it especially while taking lunch at work. I don't code for a living, so this is a true diversion for me during the workday.

</comment><comment><USER5> The first comment is about the constant Tau.

I never heard of Tau so I had to look it up and came across this: "pi is a confusing and unnatural choice for the circle constant."

So now I am confused.

If a cicle has a diameter of 1 the circumference is pi.

Can someone explain in what context pi might be confusing?

Because the sinus/radians always relates to the radius instead of the diameter?

<comment><USER6> The main arguments are that a circle is defined by its radius, not its diameter, and that in most cases when you reference Pi in mathematics/engineering you actually use 2Pi.

From the horse's mouth: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN- AiU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hhjsSN-AiU)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Animations at 5:00 and 6:00, explanation at 1:00.</comment>


Machine that keeps lungs alive outside body tested - <AUTHOR> http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/08/17/machine-that-keeps-lungs-alive-outside-body-tested/14177099/ <comment><USER2> [http://wednesdaysheroes.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/10156...](http://wednesdaysheroes.com/wp- content/uploads/2014/02/1015621-md0510080compv001finaluncompressedhdvdf8.0341-1200.jpg)</comment>