What's a condition system and why do you want one? - <AUTHOR> http://axisofeval.blogspot.com/2011/04/whats-condition-system-and-why-do-you.html <comment><USER2> Conditions are brilliant. This is something I wish more languages would copy from CL. Having said that, this [1] is a better treatment of conditions, what they can do and why you'd want them.

@Total_Meltdown Conditions are just that: _conditions_. Not necessarily errors or exceptions. Exceptions are a subset of conditions ("exceptional" is a condition). So if X is an error for your application you can unwind the stack if you want to. Or you can try to fix the error in-place without trashing the rest of whatever the program was doing. And yes, conditions allow one to establish protocols between lower and higher levels of code.

The insight of conditions is that the code that detects the error may know _ways_ of dealing with it but only higher level code can know what should actually be done. There are other ways of dealing with this (e.g. passing delegates) but all of them are much more clumsy than this system [2].

[1] [http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling- co...](http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/beyond-exception-handling-conditions- and-restarts.html)

[2] Passing delegates was mentioned as a means of passing the condition handling code, but the issue is that the code may be 20 layers down the stack. Is every called method going to pass this delegate? Wont they have some failure conditions themselves?

</comment><comment><USER3> This seems like a solution looking for a problem. There is a whole class of code smell around using exceptions to direct logic flow. The only thing this does that can't be done with if statements and delegates is lower the importance of exceptions from "definitely an error" to "maybe an error, maybe normal behavior". Maybe there are less contrived examples that better show off what this feature could do, but it still smells fishy to me.

Edit: I realize that Java doesn't have delegates, but I would say that's a point against Java, not a point in favor of this method.

<comment><USER4> Maybe you think Null Object Pattern or Maybe Monad are better ways to deal with the article's motivating example problem. What about dealing with network errors by exponential backoff and retry? What about the ask-the-user-what-to- do policy the author mentions?

I'm not sure what you mean by delegates, but it sounds like you're saying that you don't need special syntax for conditions when you have first-class functions and simpler control-flow primitives. True, but sugar is nice sometimes; I'd often rather have a list comprehension than a pile of gotos and assignments.

<comment><USER3> Yes, first-class functions are what I mean. (I come from a lot of C# development, where functions-as-variables are called delegates.)

As for sugar, I agree that it's nice sometimes, but I disagree with extending exception handling specifically. Exceptions are for errors, such as sending data over a closed stream, or indexing an array out of bounds. This "condition system" pattern encourages using exceptions for logic flow. Because why pass a function all the way down the call stack when you can just throw an exception to request that data from higher in the call stack, right?

Exceptions are errors, and they should be treated as such in all cases.

<comment><USER5> >Exceptions are errors, and they should be treated as such in all cases.

This sounds an awful lot like a semantic argument.

If you have resumable exceptions, and can raise an exception deep in the stack to ask higher-stack callers for more information then that's an _query_.

If you raise an exception in non-exceptional circumstances then that's a scoped _announcement_.

The mere fact that in some languages they use the same run-time hooks as exceptions is irrelevant.

Exceptions, where I first learned of them in Smalltalk derive from a prototype class that isn't named Exception, and I've seen all manner of uses of the same machinery in stack-twisting.

After all once you have full closures, and full control over your stack and context why _shouldn't_ you use it for higher order abstractions involving the stack-context?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Unless I'm getting the wrong end of the stick, this appears to use dynamic, rather than lexical scope for the special non-stack-unwinding exception handler blocks.

To me non-lexical scope is quite confusing, especially if you're proposing adding it to a language (eg Java) which is otherwise lexically scoped.

IIRC lexical scope is generally preferred these days by language designers, and Common Lisp is one of the few languages which supports dynamic scope alongside lexical.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it isn't lexical scoping, it's dynamic, but that is the same way as exception handlers are scoped currently.

<comment><USER6> Are they though? in which language?

I was under the impression that the traditional 'catch' block has the stack unwound for it back to a frame with the same lexical scope as the associated 'try'...

<comment><USER7> Dynamic bindings are characterized by being bound not by the nearest preceding code at compile-time, but by the nearest preceding code at run-time.

Therefore, the way I understand it, the important bit is not the relationship between a _try_ and a _catch_ , but between the _throw_ and the _catch_. You could imagine _throw_ as a call of the function _last_catch(Exception e)_ , which is dynamically bound by one of the "parent" functions (functions below on the stack).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm still not 100% sure what the answer to the second question is. I think a more compelling example is needed.

<comment><USER9> I agree his example is a bit convoluted. But I can see how it is useful, for example if you want to be able to retry operations after an I/O failure.</comment></comment>


Regarding SOPA; Other Examples of Free Tools Taken Away From Us? - <AUTHOR>

Are there other examples of us going back in time due to public policy? To this degree?... People in Countries that are other than Democratic have had this happen, but what about a modern, Western Democracy? Has this happened before?<p>Edit; I know I am painting with some pretty broad strokes here- but I feel there are already a ton of threads all over the boards dedicated to the finer elements. <comment><USER2> DHS sent a letter to Mozilla earlier this year to take down the MAFIAA Fire add-on that redirects the seized sites to the new domains. Mozilla refused and DHS didn't follow-up on that because it got public.

</comment><comment><USER3> Try to buy a "junior chemistry set" that provides real chemistry. Or a Pyrex flask, for that matter.

</comment><comment><USER4> Drugs and guns. Everything that has ever been banned by decree was once a free tool.

The types of chemistry sets popular in the mid-20th century have been banned for being too dangerous to children.

The democratically-elected governments of Turkey and Venezuela have effectively outlawed opposition parties from owning television, radio, and newspapers by alleging unpaid taxes in amounts that would bankrupt the companies if they paid, and having partisan judges hand their assets to the government. Media that echo the party line do not face these charges.

In the early 1990s, the Anti-Defamation League was caught using a private investigator to collect information on neo-Nazis. They were prosecuted and forced to stop collecting information on racists as a condition of a plea bargain. Collecting information on one's political opponents is now a standard practice of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Your right to use a courtroom is being taken away. If you are lucky enough to have a job, did you read your contract? If it contains the word "arbitration", you have given up your right to sue your employer for any cause. They can decide not to pay you this month or demand sexual favours from you or your spouse, and you cannot take it to court. You can take it to a private, for- profit judge who is paid by your employer to rule in their favour, and they can order you to pay your employer's court fees for daring to challenge the situation. If you don't like it, you can quit; good luck finding a job in this economy. And people say there's no need for a union in the tech industry...

Specific to computer technology, the DMCA made it illegal to tell people how to crack access-control schemes. The two guys who cracked Cyber Patrol and published its list of blocked web sites were sued and had to surrender the copyright to their work. Warez and porn BBSes were shut down in the early 1990s; this is fairly equivalent to seeing warez sites shut down today.</comment>


GnuBio launches as open-source genome sequencing startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2010/05/31/daily32-GnuBio-launches-as-open-source-genome-sequencing-startup.html

<comment><USER2> From the article: "The company [...] has licensed a suite of intellectual property from Harvard that, together with other intellectual property[..] enables the company's business model." "Company's name[...]was chosen [...]because it is a term that is asociated with shareware in Linux."

Sic, I think there is a confusion here.

</comment><comment><USER3> > But the hardware is just the first step. Boyce says the company will > approach institutes with an enticing offer. "We will sell you these cheap > systems, or sequence your samples ourselves, but there is a catch. After a > certain time period has elapsed, you have to give us those samples for our > open source database."

Awesome. Their license requires you to release your sequence data to them. It's as if by using GNU/Linux, you had to release your documents and music publicly.

Although generally I support freedom of genetic information, this has to be done at the level of the IRB and with informed consent from the people giving you the DNA. As an aside, the article grossly misstates what a biomarker is.

</comment><comment><USER4> Boy, as the Free Software Foundation, I'd be displeased with their GnuBio name.</comment>


Western Australia's Fastbrick robot building home in three days a 'world-first' - <AUTHOR> https://www.perthnow.com.au/business/construction/was-fastbrick-robot-building-home-in-three-days-a-world-first-ng-b881021385z <comment><USER2> Real (non-CGI!) timelapse of the robot bricklayer:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YcrO8ONcfY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YcrO8ONcfY)

It seems like a cool concept. The real example is slightly different to the CGI mockup, so I think they still have a bit of work to do.

Best of luck to them! This could potentially bring down huge construction costs. Keen to see more automation in the construction industry.

<comment><USER3> And it will change little as long as the bottleneck is land and permits. And that the profits on each units are to be maximized.

I also wonder about reliability of such houses - that remains to be seen.

<comment><USER2> Disclaimer: I know nothing about construction.

I think it'd be great to have some sort of automation in place for the simple & repetitive stuff (bricklaying), but it _feels_ like we're a long way off from fully automated on-site house construction.

Possibly solved with prefabs?

> And that the profits on each units are to be maximized.

Wouldn't this benefit the construction company, since it brings costs down? (i.e. wages, insurance etc

<comment><USER3> Yes, it would, but it will not solve the actual problem of availability and affordability.

The construction company has little incentive to drop costs by much.

As for prefabs, they are already widely used. What do you think those bricks are, or the big chunks of concrete used for roofs? Or perhaps the components used for balconies?

If you mean to make even more complex patterns, the trouble becomes applicability. Not everyone wants to live in the exactly identical house and most deployments have a quirk or few to adapt.

<comment><USER4> > Not everyone wants to live in the exactly identical house

Sure, what about when it costs 5-20x less?

At least in boat building you can either have:

A. Boat designed and built by someone random in a shed.

B. Boat mass produced by a company of hundreds of years of tradition and knowledge.

With some rare exceptions, you'll always want the second option. The bugs have been worked out, everything is ergonomic and safe. Easy to find parts even if they are of inferior quality.

I really don't get why houses have such a special attention. It's the most expensive possession people can have and they wanna build in a way that it's even more expensive and prone to error. Imagine if everyone built their own car...

<comment><USER5> Construction costs are pretty low, it's the land that is expensive. Ao if you reduce the construction cost by 70% it probably reduces the total cost by only 10/20%, and you get something generic instead of something made for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> By this sample residential construction schedule for a 6,000 sq-ft custom home[1], it looks like they've theoretically managed to cut a 9-day job down to 3 without addressing the negotiation of foundation imperfections, plumbing, electrical, rebar reinforcement, air gaps, structural arches, and random site obstructions to name a few. Cool tech and surely a step in the right direction, but if we're still talking about affordable (patented, proprietary blocks?), sustainable (mortar substitute reliability?) housing that meets code, color me unconvinced.

Heimo Scheuch, CEO of Wienerberger AG: _In times of digitalization, high demand for affordable housing and the prevailing shortage of skilled workers, the construction industry is facing major challenges._ [2]

Prevailing shortage of skilled construction workers??

[1] [https://www.b4ubuild.com/resources/schedule/6kproj.shtml](https://www.b4ubuild.com/resources/schedule/6kproj.shtml)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qcyvoCtZB0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qcyvoCtZB0)

<comment><USER3> There is no shortage of workers, but a shortage of workers who want to do heavy physical labor for almost free and storage of training for free.

Nobody wants to actually invest in work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Brick work and framing are two of the easiest and fastest steps in building a house. They are using an expensive system to do the cheapest steps. Essentially, they are answering a question no one asked.

The expensive and time consuming parts are everything else; something this system does not address.

<comment><USER8> Actually, I think this may be a real time-saver for quick builds where you need an extra building like a garage or extra storage space.

As others have pointed out there are some flaws in the wall in that article and it might not be optimal for housing, but for quick and dirty jobs it will most likely do fine. Construction as a service! :)

<comment> semi-extrinsic The timber frame itself and the exterior cladding for a traditional garage is extremely easy to build. Two relatively untrained guys with a stack of planks, a mitre saw and a nail gun can build that even quicker than this robot. The expensive and time consuming parts are the foundation work and the roof, which this doesn't address at all.

<comment> barrow-rider Also the utility work, no? Unless you're in a pre-planned subdivision or demolishing existing builds (brownfield stuff), water, phone, and power are often non-trivial.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Their system uses some custom adhesive as do some of the other systems around.

The catch is how will this adhesive hold up in 30 years and are you brave enough to be that it works well on your house compared to the saving of using conventional systems?

This is why innovation in building is slow.

Fail fast is not possible. And there are often side effects. Just ask people with a metal framed house that creaks when it expands and contracts.

<comment><USER10> Australia has extremely strict building regulations, codes and inspections. (My brother just built his own house there...)

I feel extremely confident this has been tested thoroughly, and it would not be allowed if it has not passed all tests.

<comment><USER3> The regulations do not handle reliability, only registration of detected failures.

Most building methods that are not known to fail catastrophically are allowed. (Including among others fires, water handling, short term structural collapse and invalid administration as well as cheating on plan vs implementation.)

So it is mostly bureaucracy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Perth on the frontpage of HN, womders will never cease...

Cool idea if it works though, especially for disaster events and rapid construction

</comment><comment><USER12> So this is their video from 2 years ago : [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bW1vuCgEaA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bW1vuCgEaA) and they are a penny stock (3.5 cents to over 20 cents on the news). The video on the web site doesn't work for me but I would be interested in seeing a video of this thing building an actual house.

<comment><USER13> There is a more interesting video if you look at their channel.

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfK41aTB7_VI2DHTJy2l-yg](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfK41aTB7_VI2DHTJy2l-yg)

But why would you want a robot like this? Why not prefab the parts of the house and assemble on site?

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately that block wall it built looks quite sloppy if you really inspect the interblock spacing and vertical alignment between layers. And these are dry blocks with no mortar to let them slip and slide. Stand at the corner of a a block wall built by pros and look down the plane of the wall. You're going to see perfection. I do it any time the opportunity strikes and amazed at the consistency.

No doubt a well supported robot with appropriate sensors and placement techniques could exceed the accuracy of a human, but this doesn't appear to be that robot quite yet.

<comment><USER15> They are using glue instead of motar. It is being added just when then brick come out of the arm and then gravity is doing the rest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No photos of the house, a broken video, and zero details on things like roofing, plumbing, in-wall wiring, etc. Oh wait, it's a penny stock? Color me surprised...

<comment><USER17> I'm not sure what you mean by the broken video - most likely you have an ad blocker enabled.

<comment><USER18> the ad video works fine, the content video just spins

<comment><USER17> Strange, I'm not seeing that in Firefox 63.0.1 on macOS 10.13 once I disable AdBlock Plus. Though to be honest, you're not missing anything, it's clearly a company supplied video.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Maybe we can actually start building housing now.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is there an option to deactivate Javascript in browsers? - <AUTHOR>

What are the reasons someone would have their Javascript permanently disabled in a browser? There is also an option to disable Images, why not CSS? <comment><USER2> You must look at the history of it. Disabling images was _very_ important when accessing web over a 9600 bps modem. Disabling Javascript overall was also convenient as practically no useful content was brought by Javascript but a lot of annoyance, and some exploits always existed.

I still browse with JS disabled by default, however I turn on JS for the selected sites, only if I'd believe that they are worth it. Opera allows me to be selective, it has Javascript block configurable per site.

Why not CSS? Well, Opera can set a user css per site too. It's very convenient for some of the sites that are unreadable for me by default (i.e. small white letters on the black background or even picture background). It still can't explicitly disable HTML5 videos per site, AFAIK.

</comment><comment><USER3> For security reasons? I feel like that too obvious an answer. Maybe I'm missing something.

Javascript can be potentially harmful because it's code running on your system, albeit sandboxed to some degree. You can also embed code in images, but I don't think that's why people disable images. It's probably either because third-party sites can track your web usage through images or simply because they want a simpler browsing experience.

<comment><USER4> Having an option to disable running code on your machine seems a good choice, especially considering that this came up in a time where most Javascript wasn't exactly essential.

Also, there's the annoyance factor, just like with images. Back in the days, having ads, animated torches and sparkling mouse pointers disabled was a pretty good choice. Also: Popups and silly messages (alert("Welcome to my Site!") ridiculously common)

Let me adjust the onion on my belt and tell you the story of a magical place called Geocities…</comment></comment>


Show HN: I will execute a startup thinger in this thread - <AUTHOR>

I'm forever looking at random objects I come across and criticizing the way they are designed. I figure that there  are a lot of engineering minded folk in the world who do the same.
Yesterday I had the idea to make a website where we could get together and come up with the perfect design for everyday objects such as chopping boards, keyboards etc.
It's nearly Christmas and my head is melted from working on my real startup so I will be working on this for the next few days. I've been coding for about 6 hours in total so far. I will update my progress in this thread, a bit like a real-time weekend project.
Link: http://www.designtheperfect.com/
Github: https://github.com/dtuite/designer
My Twitter: https://twitter.com/dtuite <comment><USER2> I love your idea. The way I see it in my head is a somple dribbble-like site where users can post these "everyday" designs. Can't wait to see this live!

Cheers, Shahed

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Link: <http://www.designtheperfect.com/>

</comment><comment><USER3> Wow, I could totally see this evolving into a great collaborative design suite.</comment>


A Whirlwind Tutorial on Creating Really Teensy ELF Executables for Linux - <AUTHOR> http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htmlK <comment><USER2> HN tells me this link is: [http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htm...](http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htmlK) \-- htmlK? I removed the K at the end and it works fine...</comment>


Ask HN: How do I share a hard drive with my friend? - <AUTHOR> Hi HN.
I have over the years ended up with a bunch of old windows systems and ended up with a network which is great.
I want to also enjoy these benefits outside of my home with a friend.  Over the years I have collected dozens of physics toy tech demos and i'd like to share my drive. It's a mess of zips, dlls, and all sorts.
I don't want to use a service.   I want him to go to like "Fifer82" and just see a windows explorer disk without all of the garbage of say torrents, file sharing services, individually sharing file-by-file via some attachment system.
As I ask this question, I don't know if I am stupid, since Dropbox, IRC or just whatever.... begs to suggest that there is no way to do what I want, but then the question is, why??
If I know someones network somewhere else outside my home, can't I just "let them at it" through standard windows mechanisms?
Thank you. <comment><USER2> 'sshfs' would do the trick, if I am understanding what you seem to be saying. (WinSCP, IIRC, if you're using Windows.)

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

Executable script that I use - (actual names replaced)

        #!/bin/bash
        # mount remote directory on local machine
        #

        RDIR=$1
        MOUNTPOINT=my_local_mountpoint_folder
        USER=username_on_remote_server
        REMOTE_HOST=remote_servers_name

        if [ "$1" = "" ]; then
                echo -e "\nMounting remote home directory. If other remote directory"
                echo -e "desired, usage is $0 <absolute or relative directory-name>\n"
        fi

        #
        sshfs ${USER}@${REMOTE_HOST}:$RDIR $MOUNTPOINT

</comment><comment><USER3> Get two routers capable of acting like an IKEv2 VPN server & client. Set yours up to act as a server and his as a client, make sure the internal IP addresses don't overlap (if yours is at 192.168.0.x, his should be at 192.168.1.x). Once the two networks are reachable from either side you can access a shared folder by typing the computer's IP in Windows Explorer like "\\\192.168.0.1" (name discovery might not work as I believe that works via layer 2 and IKEv2 is layer 3).

<comment><USER4> In Windows this was the traditional way of having two networks connected by VPN before there were the modern commercial VPN "services" (forwarding services) which solve a different problem.

Often a small business would get a Firewall/VPN-Router in each location when they got broadband, and that was all that was necessary to put as an interface between each established LAN and the internet, as VPN endpoints, so you could connect offices by tunneling over the web. The routers would be programmed with the desired port forwarding, matching confidential encryption keys, and between them the router hardware alone would handle the secure VPN part of it as they communicated with each other across the web. Access to shared folders and drives was according to each separate LAN's further enablement & Windows security settings, which could sometimes be confusing, but in this case Windows does not handle the VPN itself.

Your VPN-Router/VPN-Server just lets authorized outsiders into your network but you have to make sure your Windows file archive PC is configured to share exactly what you want to with the desired remote user who will be logging on to your PC.

If you do it right they can see your shared drive in their File Explorer and you can even give them as much as full access to only that drive or certain folders if you want.

You can even go further giving them a full Remote Desktop but that's not necessary for them to just access a shared drive or folder.

In the newer Windows 10s you may now need to enable SMBv1 in Windows Features before you can share a Windows folder with an XP or non-Windows client. Previously enabled by default but now regarded as less secure than earlier updates.

Then you get laptops that want to log in remotely from random locations, that's when Windows itself on the laptop needs to handle its end of the VPN; when it's calling home to the office's VPN-Router, but when you don't have a matching VPN-Router at the laptop's end. Dynamic DNS is also real helpful on the laptops, so the home VPN will recognize the laptop from every location it tries to log in from, and for offices too if they don't have a staic IP.

This could be an even more confusing OS configuration effort with the laptop depending on Windows version, but after that the laptop can communicate directly over the VPN to the home endpoint, using the laptop's own Windows built-in VPN endpoint (after being enabled & configured to match the home office VPN-Router) therefore not needing a matching VPN-Router at the laptop's remote location.

But if you only have one Windows PC on each end and you want to link them by VPN, you don't actually need the VPN-Routers if each user just has access to do the port forwarding settings on your personal non-VPN routers. You can share the keys and current web IP or DNS addresses over the phone with the remote user for manual entry into each Windows configuration. Enabling each of the Windows' built-in VPN endpoints to do the handshake (without a VPN-Router at either end) and communicate more directly with each other over the encrypted web tunnel. Without needing to store the keys or pass unencrypted trafic within any routers either.

In Windows 10 you get going something like this:

[https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-10/how-to-set-up-the- window...](https://helpdeskgeek.com/windows-10/how-to-set-up-the- windows-10-built-in-vpn-service/)

Looks a lot easier now.

Note that it still addresses dial-up which works about the same way when the laptop and Windows home server each had land lines available and telephone modems for alternate access to the same LAN. Dial-Up Networking from a laptop by phone modem could be accomplished by directly calling the office PC's private phone number (if not busy handling faxes or being on dial-up internet or something). Or if long-distance phone charges could apply, logging onto a local dial-up service like AOL to get on the web instead so you could get access that way when your office was online itself.

Once hooked up it's a breeze to use, even was on dial-up.

Actually FAT32 volumes had one less obstacle in the form of permissions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I do not know if I did understand clearly but, I was thinking about that for a startup idea, I think is definitively possible.

There is way to have a hard disk on your wifi and get it from an app but only for video/photo. And there is a way to connect to a distant linux/window server.

I think it my be possible, but need some technical skill more than juste website development

<comment><AUTHOR> This does get at the heart of it.

But my problem is that, surely Windows itself has this service providing "somehow" that I can know where in the world the computer is, and from there, make it some kind of network drive?

Like what I do between the kitchen and the bedroom only, 30 miles away. As the user, I see `C:/` `D:/` `fifer82:/`. Unless it is literally that easy, it won't happen.

<comment><USER6> No, you can't do that, because Windows allows you to share on a local network, but not the entire world.

And sharing that drive on the open internet would be a really, really bad idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you, so in the very end, you must go through a service of some kind to make this possible? Not arsed about security.

<comment><USER6> Yes, this feature is not available in a standard Windows installation for a number of reasons.

You'll need to use some kind of 3rd party tool to configure and maintain such a setup

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think this will solve your problem:

[https://www.zerotier.com/](https://www.zerotier.com/)

It should be able to up a VPN bridge between your LAN and your friend's LAN. (Or, at least a "LAN" between two machines.)

</comment><comment><USER8> You could use something like TeamViewer, set up a separate box (important!) with the files you want to share, then let him have at it! Just be aware that opening up your network (even to friends) is a security risk.

</comment><comment><USER9> [https://syncthing.net/](https://syncthing.net/) [https://pydio.com/](https://pydio.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> my scheme is this:

subnet a router; place a webdav capable server on one of the subnets; port forward request at the wan side of the router to the server. you will need a static public IP or else, update the public IP to a domain name [DNS]

the effect is someone can go to your server using a browser that can "speak" webdav

the subnetting is for security if you share the router with the rest of your network, or you can just use a dedicated router for your server to live in.

</comment><comment><USER5> The real question is: do you want just to let someone get into your computer or create a service to make that happen easily?

</comment><comment><USER11> What about an Explorer-like GUI SFTP client?

</comment><comment><USER12> mm.. RDP?</comment>


A new way to review pull requests on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://colinjfw.github.io/prhero/?owner=deliverybot&repo=deploybot&pr=24 <comment><AUTHOR> Ever struggled reviewing a large pull request in GitHub? PRHero is an open source alternative UI for reviewing pull requests.

I'm playing around with a lot of ideas here, feedback welcome.

<comment><USER2> Documentation might help people recognize the ideas reflected in the application's design. As another comment notes, it is hard to grasp what I am looking at when looking at the app (beyond the things I already familiar with like green highlights for addition).

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I'm not really sure what this is, because it just shows a list of files bigger than my phone's screen, which can only scroll a few pixels up and down.</comment>


Please Stop Sending Terrifying Alerts to My Cell Phone - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/please-stop-sending-terrifying-alerts-to-my-cell-phone/ <comment><USER2> My solution was to, as one of the setup steps when initializing my phone, go into setup and disable every alert that the phone would let me disable (which, thankfully, was all of them other than the 'presidential alerts').

The problem is that those in these agencies who gain an easy 'alert channel' fail to remember and learn from the fable of "The boy who cried wolf". Too many alerts, or too many low value alerts, and no one wants to hear any of them, diminishing the usefulness of the alerts system.

<comment><USER3> I took it one step further -- I use a ROM that simply doesn't support those alerts in the first place.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Any one in NH want to meet up? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a nontechnical founder of a small web app start up. Things have gone well and we are gaining traction. I'm in NH and was wondering if any fellow NHers would be interested in trying to meet up? The tech scene here seems to be lacking. This may be because I just dont know of any existing events or networks. I'm looking to meet people in the start up scene, share ideas, gain advice, learn, ect. It'd be nice if I didn't have to go to Boston to gain some inspiration/education. <comment><AUTHOR> anybody?</comment>


CDC issues quarantine for first time in 50 years to Wuhan passengers in CA - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/31/cdc-quarantines-wuhan-passengers-in-california-under-federal-order.html <comment><USER2> The way this virus passed among three generations of contact in a German office, with no symptoms among any of them during the transmission, is particularly alarming. This thing is super contagious. (asymptomatic parents pass to daughter, who flies to Germany, passes it to two colleagues, flies home, and her colleagues then pass it to other colleagues, all before symptoms appear with anyone).</comment>


Working with Vercel and AWS SNS - <AUTHOR> https://nathancahill.com/vercel-sns-integration <comment><AUTHOR> We're releasing the integration we've been using internally for Vercel and AWS SNS (Simple Notification Service). Here's a brief post about why we built it, and how it might help you if you're using SNS with Vercel.</comment>


Is artificial-womb technology a tool for women's liberation? - <AUTHOR> https://aeon.co/ideas/is-artificial-womb-technology-a-tool-for-womens-liberation <comment><USER2> >>> artificial wombs would eliminate a crucial condition that currently ensures women's oppression by neutralising the heavily gendered process of reproduction

Beyond the speculation regarding liberational aspects, or even the foetus- gestator divide, there are other compelling arguments why a host of "reproductive tech" should be considered

Formost is the idea that we may require at some point, a rapid re-population of the human species. Due to unforseen catastrophe. Or expansion into space colonies.

But the most urgent is that this sort of thing is still decades away from becoming viable. So if it comes to pass that we do require it. We will have the capacity at the appropriate time.

<comment><USER3> >there are other compelling arguments why a host of "reproductive tech" should be considered

...and also why it should be heavily regulated or restricted. Right now, the primary means of ensuring that no one person (political leadeer, cult leader, corporate owner, random wealthy person) can form their own personal army of followers devoted to them are the facts that followers are people and people are both independent and protected as such (or should be) by laws.

Freeing women from the "oppression" of having to bear children also means freeing men (who have a different reproductive strategy altogether) from the need to control or hire women to bear their children.

If artificial womb technology becomes available even at a high price, it becomes possible for one very wealthy man to purchase eggs from fertile women, fertilize them with his own sperm, and then produce hundreds or thousands of children in private without legal oversight. Said children can be indoctrinated in a cult, built into an army, sold as slaves, or farmed for organs.

Decoupling human reproduction from the need for two or more humans to be involved will also decouple it from the numerical limits imposed by natural reproduction. The risks of doing that are immense and far more impactful to our species than eliminating the "oppression" of women.

<comment><USER2> >>> heavily regulate and restrict

I appreciate the point, Accujack (and so elegantly argued)

You are wise enough to foresee the perils. So you certainly possess wisdom enough to predict all counter-arguments

There is little political or moral will extant today to stop a tyrant from enacting any such doomsday scenario with unlimited white slavery and surrogacy and pavlovian indoctrination

Truly, if democracy gives way to "technocracy". Hermit Kingdoms become the New Normal. And such "repro tech" will indeed have contributed mightily to mass misery and bondage

But discovery of this magnitude also ripples with improving after-effects.

The electric light bulb doesn't just provide light. It renders streets safe at night. Extends hours for quiet contemplation. Projects films to magnify collective dreams (and nightmares)

Leave it to the ethicists, then. The centers for study of existential risk. To quantitatively assess whether on balance it should be abandoned or merely postponed

I for one remain eager for a dawning age of "Open Source WetWare" ;)</comment></comment></comment>


Want Your Personal Data? Hand over More Please - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/technology/data-privacy-law-access.html <comment><USER2> _Make sure you are looking happy or joyful and try again_

This strange phrasing is a red flag that the data is being exfiltrated to a non-English-speaking country.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Apologies for the paywalled link. Interesting article by Kashmir Hill. Kash wrote some cool stuff about giving up social media a while back. Informative.

<comment> m-p-3 Made an IPFS copy using 2read

[https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRZ66CkuDYq3xbJUssAQkUt4rGaAujXwnCKsGD...](https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmRZ66CkuDYq3xbJUssAQkUt4rGaAujXwnCKsGDEpVaN4G/)</comment></comment>


Never Use HTML Tables, Ever! - <AUTHOR> http://collaboradev.com/2014/07/07/never-use-html-tables-ever/

<comment><USER2> The article recommends that developers avoid tables altogether and re-create table functionality with <div> tags and CSS rules. Don't do that. _Do_ use tables for tabular data - that's what they were designed for. Tables provide important semantic data about the data they contain. _Don 't_ use tables for layout - otherwise tables are fine.

<comment><USER3> Don't use tables for layout.

Why not?

<comment><USER2> It's a long-standing debate in the web design community. With most coming down on the against side. Not going to rehash it here, but this SO thread is a good place to find arguments for/against:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83073/why-not-use- tables-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/83073/why-not-use-tables-for- layout-in-html)

I've written plenty of table-based layouts. However I can't remember anytime within the last 5 years where I've needed to use a table layout.

My main complaint against table-based layouts would be styling. The order of elements in a document determines where on screen a table cell renders. A position floated div/section/aside can be changed with a single float rule, or clear onto it's own line. I find responsive/adaptive designs easier to implement and maintain when avoiding tables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand the motivation for this. The author blithely says to google for something... I must not be using the right keywords. You'd think he could at least link to a few examples.</comment>


Show HN: A simple python network benchmark tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ljishen/pyben-nio <comment><AUTHOR> You can implement your own way of how to read a local resource before sending it to the network.</comment>


Star Trek's Captain Kathryn Janeway, Startup CEO Role Model - <AUTHOR> https://www.wework.com/magazine/inspiration/star-treks-captain-kathryn-janeway-startup-ceo-role-model/

<comment><USER2> She wasn't as inspirational as Kirk.

<comment><USER3> I think the point of the post was to get at what is required of a Startup CEO, and it's more then just inspiring people. Granted that is definitely a big part of it. In the context of Janeway, its a restless and overarching goal of getting voyager and her crew home, and nothing, no matter how dire the circumstances, will stop her. As well as all the roles, and challenges she, and her crew faced in achieving their one true goal.

I 100% that Janeway is the most akin to a Startup CEO, and their expectations and requirements they have along the way.</comment></comment>


I, for one, welcome our robotic waffle-stacking overlords - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/06/i-for-one-welcome-our-robotic-waffle-stacking-overlords/?ncid=rss&utm_source=tctwreshare&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&sr_share=twitter <comment><USER2> I, for one, think it's time to retire the "I, for one, welcome our X overlords" device.</comment>


Yi: An Editor in Haskell for Haskell (2008) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/local_72549.pdf

<comment><USER2> Yi is awesome but it's just hard to beat the critical mass that Emacs or Vim have.</comment>


Ask HN: How can you help kids focus? - <AUTHOR> Given all the devices and distractions in this modern day, it seems more challenging for younger people.
My child has lost some of her focus since starting school.
If you have kids, what have you do to help them improve their ability to focus? <comment><USER2> Do you ask your kids to read a "real" book for 10 to 20 mins every school day? Our school "requires" parents to do so and it does seems to help with my kids time on task and focus. Note: "real" in the sense of not screen based. Anything with a screen is going to come with built in opportunities for distraction.

As a family, we also play games like "Exploding Kittens" and "Hearts". My youngest has asked about what it was like to play "D&D" and I think that they will be ready for something like The Princess Bride RPG. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toyvaultinc/the- princes...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/toyvaultinc/the-princess- bride-roleplaying-game)

Really, any thing that encourages engaged thoughtful imagination rather than passive entertainment is probably going to help.

<comment><AUTHOR> My daughter regularly reads real books. We try to encourage this.

We play games like Monopoly or Scrabble on the weekends. It seems since starting kindergarten, she has lost some of her focus.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Cut down their screen time. Tell them more stories. Keep them busy with chores.</comment>


PaJes, Simple JavaScript Templating Library for generating HTML - <AUTHOR> http://saroskar.github.com/PaJes/

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the examples from the documentation to give HN readers a quick idea:

var model = [ {name: "Lisa Simpson", id: 1}, {name: "Bart Simpson", id: 666} ]

DIV( {id:"demo-div", width: "60%"}, OL( {style: "list-style-type: upper- roman"}, forEach(model, studentDetails) ) ).display(out); out.flush();

function studentDetails(index, value) { return LI( value.name, A( {href:"/student-details?id="+value.id}, "details "+(index+1) ) ); }

<comment><USER2> Thanks for making this also work in nodejs. I've tried Mustache and hamljs, and I'll have to give your code a whirl as well.

(btw: Is it possible to call within a namespace, i.e. pjs.DIV( .. ), as opposed to DIV(..) ? Your examples seem to export the tags and forEach as globals).

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if you use PaJes-CommonJS.js you can use use namespace by using standard require() construct.

For example,

        var pjs = require('PaJes-CommonJS');
        pjs.DIV(pjs.forEach(...));

This requires CommonJS module system to be in place (that is, function require() being implemented to be specific).

Alternatively, it would be trivial to make non-CommonJS use namespace too by modifying PaJes.js. Do you need namespace in non-CommonJs setting?

Thanks for trying it out!</comment></comment></comment>


Why I'm leaving Kubernetes for Swarm - jonathan-kosgei https://gist.github.com/jonathan-kosgei/dac620fed9d9aeec35050bcc0a146647 <comment><AUTHOR> I agree that Swarm is easier. But will it work in production? And will they break the API again? Just from 1.12 to 1.13 there are pretty big changes..

<comment> jonathan-kosgei On my part I'll be able to give you a detailed answer after a few weeks of running a couple of my apps with decent traffic on swarm :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> There's a lot of misleading information here. Pretty much all of his examples use a more difficult solution than needed, making Kubernetes seem like it's a lot more fiddly to use.

> "one docker-compose.yml file ... as opposed to the countless files covering > everything"

The author seems to think that a Kubernetes manifest can only contain a single declaration. You can actually stuff as many declarations as you want into a single YAML file, like so (and you should!):

       apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1
       kind: Deployment
       [...]
       ---
       apiVersion: v1
       kind: ConfigMap
       [...]
       ---
       apiVersion: v1
       kind: Service
       [...]

Put it in myapp.yaml and do "kubectl apply -f myapp.yaml". Exactly the same as Docker Compose.

Also, don't use "kubectl create" — use "kubectl apply". It will create or update as needed. It even supports recursing through directories.

> How to use volumes in Kubernetes :(

It's only sad if you use persistent volume claims, which is the "advanced" option which I don't think Swarm even has. I'm not sure why the author felt they needed to use them.

Kubernetes supports ordinary volumes that don't require that you predeclare anything else. For example, on Google Cloud Platform:

            containers:
              [...]
              volumeMounts:
              - name: pgdata
                mountPath: /var/lib/postgresql/data
                subPath: pgdata
                name: pgdata
            volumes:
            - name: pgdata
              gcePersistentDisk:
                pdName: some-disk-i-created
                fsType: ext4

This will mount the persistent disk "some-disk-i-created", and automatically format it as ext4 if necessary.

Persistent volume _claims_ are for managing pools of storage: You create one volume, then let pods carve out pieces of it. So you create big, generic volumes and let Kubernetes handle allocation, as opposed to setting up dedicated, named volumes for each container.

There are pros and cons to both approaches, of course. PV/PVCs obviously require that they're defined first. That said, once you've created a PV, it's actually less work to _use_ it across multiple pods, because Kubernetes will handle the gritty details of allocation.

> the fickle beast that is Kubernetes Ingresses ...

In my opinion the ingress system is the weakest part of Kubernetes right now. That said, once you create a controller (nginx-ingress-controller is great, and covers most needs), setting up new ingresses is dead easy, and certainly easier than managing your own load balancer using something like HAProxy or Nginx.

(For simplicity's sake I recommend keeping a single ingress file for your entire system, as opposed to spreading them out among different YAML files. Easier to manage.)

But you don't _have_ to use an ingress or a managed load balancer. It's just a convenience. The way to do it is to use a NodePort, then run your own load balancer that points to it. I don't think this is any different from Docker Swarm. To spread the load across a cluster of containers, you need, per definition, a _load balancer_. You can also run a Kubernetes-aware load balancer such as Traefik.

> Realising that to use paths i.e. example.com/path ...

The Nginx controller doesn't use physical paths for the ingress endpoints that it proxies. I don't know what he means by this. I have not had this issue.

<comment> jonathan-kosgei Hi :), I did give mention to putting it all in one file in Kubernetes

> You can define everything in one file in Kubernetes but it won't do much for > readability.

My emphasis was on how much less config I have to go through to grasp the details of my setup in entirety given a single dense kubernetes config file vs a single compose file.

You mention using kubectl apply to deploy >Also, don't use "kubectl create" — use "kubectl apply". It will create or update as needed. It even supports recursing through directories.

It is indeed better than kubectl create, however I would point out that if you use it with the intention of running it recursively within a directory, you will have little control over the order of creation of resources, and you will run into errors if one of your resources depends on another resource which has not been created yet.

Before I continue :) you believe that I am using Kubernetes in the most complicated way possible and thus making it seem harder to use than it actually is, however I'd point out that I was porting a "production" cluster to Swarm, and for deployment on dedicated machines and not a generic cloud provider. I therefore had been using whatever advanced options I had at my disposal to make my setup as robust as possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Kubernetes 'on prem' is hard and stuff

</comment><comment><USER4> Have fun, see you when you come back :)</comment>


Are JavaScript comments useless? - <AUTHOR> http://www.zsoltnagy.eu/are-javascript-comments-useless/

<comment><USER2> Time and time again the argument against commenting is that "good code is self-documenting," which makes perfect sense for those experienced enough to document the code in their heads but I don't think holds the same value for developers who do not have the experience to understand what they're reading.

If you throw junior\graduate programmer into a complicated and mature code- base it will just stiffle their learning.

I'd rather take some time to leave a comment and explain how a method operates, particularly the complicated ones, then block a junior dev (even if it should be obvious after a few minutes of reading for someone else.)

</comment><comment><USER3> I can say, after 20 years that only twice (iirc) have JavaScript comments every been useful to me. Comments, in general, have not shown to be too useful except in very specific problemspaces. The idea that TODO comments "tend to stay in the code" is GOOD. That's the point of a TODO, rather than putting it in the commit message where it will definitely be forgotten. Where there is a passing reference to "cleaning up commits", if your commits are being viewed by anyone else, TODOs tend to get maintained correctly. I'm really not sure where this author is coming from on that.

</comment><comment><USER4> They help to compensate the lacking type system.</comment>


World's first head transplant volunteer could experience "worse than death" - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencealert.com/world-s-first-head-transplant-volunteer-could-experience-something-worse-than-death <comment><USER2> HN has an odd fascination for this surgeon's claim, with over 30 posts to it over the last two years, when the surgeon's claims first made the news. [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=head%20transplant&sort=byPopul...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=head%20transplant&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story) .

This proposal is unethical. To show why, consider Christiaan Barnard, who did the first heart transplant.

His first operation failed. So did his next. But his first 50+ attempts were on dogs, and were eventually successful. Only then did he do a heart transplant on a person. (Yes, I find it easier to kill dogs to save the lives of humans than to kill humans for the same reason. Don't mistake that for thinking I find it easy to kill dogs.) That operation was a success, though the patient died 18 days later due to pneumonia as he was taking immunosuppressive drugs.

Where are the dogs with a successful head transplant? Or rats or monkeys or other mammal?

One of the links a couple of years ago was to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972171) :

> Jerry Silver, a colleague of White's [who did monkey head/body transplant > experiments in the 1970s] and the neurosurgeon behind the rat spinal cord > experiment [where a rat's severed head was reconnected with its own body], > objects to the entire notion of a human head/body transplant. "It's complete > fantasy," he said in an interview with CBS News. Reminiscing about the > psychic torture that he believes White's original monkey patient suffered, > he added, "I remember that the head would wake up, the facial expressions > looked like terrible pain and confusion and anxiety." He dismissed > Canavero's theory as "bad science." Given how controversial the monkey > experiment itself was, it's highly likely that Silver is one of many.

I like jessriedel's comment in the HN discussion from 647 days ago at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972171](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5972171) :

> There are plenty of crazy doctors out there who make nutzo claims not backed > up by evidence in their field. One neuroscientist chosen at random is > probably reasonable and competent, but a neuroscientist chosen conditional > on publishing an astounding claim that isn't shared by any of his colleagues > is almost certain to be cray.

<comment><USER3> By reading the article, looks like the guy is going to die pretty soon ?

But they didn't specify where would they find the body (it should be fresh, right?) ?

<comment><USER2> If it's unethical, why does it matter where the body comes from?

<comment><USER3> Being unethical doesn't remove my curiosity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This seems simultaneously wonderful and horrifying -- how many deaths could be avoided if you could simply get a "body transplant" when things go south with your heart, liver, whatever? Neuroscience would gain a new level of importance for sure.

And does that bring to mind for anyone that weird movie about where you have to purchase minutes of life to stay alive? Anyway, creepy, considering how real the illicit trade in transplant organs is already.

<comment><USER5> Even better if you could held a head alive without the body for a long period of time. Then you could attach head to a robot or something like that.

<comment><USER6> Futurama Heads in Jars [http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Heads_in_Jars](http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/Heads_in_Jars)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> If the whole thing is about disability, wouldn't the best solution be in stem cells research?

PS: At least in Shadowrun you only get 6 units of Essence.

</comment><comment><USER6> [Frankenstein mode=ON]</comment>


Name, DOB, email & phone of 73,000+ X-Factor audition contestants leaked - <AUTHOR> http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6372763

<comment><USER2> Sad, double tragedy for those with playstation consoles.</comment>


Head To Head: Siri Vs. Google Voice Actions - <AUTHOR> http://searchengineland.com/head-to-head-siri-vs-google-voice-actions-96998

<comment><USER2> What about asking Google Voice Actions to send a text message, read your messages, when the birthday of a contact is, set a timer for you, remind you of something when you leave home, play a track, etc. They compared only questions Google VA could handle and left out 90% of what makes Siri awesome.

<comment><USER3> You can send text messages, set alarms, and play music via Voice Actions, but it's not as polished as the Siri experience. I can't get it to read emails or SMS for me, and geofencing is nonexistent.

<comment><USER4> using 2.3.4, i can't _really_ play music. i can say "play the beatles" and it will offer to search youtube for the beatles, but it won't search the music on my phone.

<comment><USER5> You got to say "listen to [song/artist/album]". Which, of course, shows one place Siri's got the advantage currently, but I am sure Google is working on that now.

<comment><USER4> it still won't play my music. i get "complete action with [youtube|subsonic]", but no option to actually play the music on my phone, using the stock music player.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think it worth pointing out that Siri's achievements beyond google should be credited to the startup that created it. It's popular and fun to give Apple all the credit, and they made a great purchase.

But this is not a story about Apple the innovator. This is a story about a startup that won big. That they were bought by Apple and integrated instead of remaining a strong new company is more a reflection on the current state of the software business than anything else.

All credit to the Siri team and the projects that it is derived from. The funding for this includes government (DARPA) as well as several academic institutes:

 _"Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Massachusetts, the University of Rochester, the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, Oregon State University, the University of Southern California, and Stanford University, as well as from SRI."_

References:

[http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_stealth_startu...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_stealth_startup_siric.php)

<https://pal.sri.com/Plone/framework>

</comment><comment><USER7> Siri's personality does one thing Google Voice Actions doesn't: develop an emotional connection with the user. I fully expect Siri to impact the number of people switching to Android. It would be less like switching phones and more like firing you personal assistant.

<comment><USER8> I guess it depends on what type of person you are. I'd rather not pretend to be having a real conversation with an electronic device and would rather give simple voice commands when needed.

That being said the more conversational style, with the emotional connection as you put it, could easily be added into the Google Voice actions as well I'm sure.

<comment><USER9> It's been my experience that Siri responds equally well to curt commands as to colloquial phrases, which is how voice commands should be (and how voice commands to real assistants work, somewhat.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has anybody seen a comparison of actual speech-to-text capabilities, preferably done in a proper manner (using speech recordings of different accents, etc)?

</comment><comment><USER11> > You just say "search the web for..." and Siri initiates a Google search.

How disappointingly verbose. Does Siri not know that "google" is a verb?

<comment><USER12> It does.

<comment><USER11> Cool. Thanks for checking. It would have been a silly omission had it not. I guess the author is the needlessly wordy one.</comment></comment></comment>


Apple is developing satellites so the iPhone can skip wireless carriers - <AUTHOR> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/12/report-apple-is-developing-satellites-so-the-iphone-can-skip-wireless-carriers/ <comment><USER2> Well, it's not the spectrum management solution that I'm looking for, but at least it could be a genuine attempt to offer at least one alternative to the horrible wireless carriers.

Who Owns Your Wireless Service? Crooks Do.

[https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/08/who-owns-your- wireless-s...](https://krebsonsecurity.com/2019/08/who-owns-your-wireless- service-crooks-do/)

</comment><comment><USER3> This falls in the same realm as the self driving car that they have been working on for years. They are big enough that they have the resources to investigate many areas of interest but nothing says anything will come of it. I'll wait to get excited until I see iRockets begin to launch.</comment>


Where Brexit Hurts: The European Nurses and Doctors Leaving London - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/21/world/europe/nhs-brexit-eu-migrants.html?type=new <comment><USER3> There was a TV programme the other night about an employment agency in SE UK that could not find enough British workers to do the work it had on its books, and how Brexit had made things worse as many immigrants the agency was previously placing in work had returned their home countries. My thoughts on this were: those jobs were not paying enough to attract labour from the local market, but immigrants were prepared to accept lower wages; thus, the jobs were actually not viable without cheap foreign labour. This looks like a ponzi scheme to me. Does it ever end? Is the plan to continue with immigration for ever? Going by the arguments of the pro-immigration side that immigrants are net contributors then surely we should aim to have the entire population of the world living in the UK? What population do we want in the UK - 80 million? 100 million? 500 million? I would like an answer - I've noticed you never ever get one from a Remainer, because the truth is there is no plan, and whilst in the EU the UK had no control over immigration.

If ending the ponzi scheme and paying enough to attract British workers means we have to get a bit poorer, so be it, I am happy to do so to hold the forces of globalism at bay just a short while longer. I like diversity, and I want it to remain - how dull and disappointing it would be to live in a world where every country is made up of the same undifferentiated global populace and culture.

Or we just continue the ponzi by attracting more workers from outside the EU, e.g. Commonwealth countries, with which the UK has strong historic ties - <USER2> just get to choose the highly skilled and temporary labour we want, rather than having no choice over who comes, as is the case whilst the UK remains in the EU.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I wonder how telemedicine can change and help situations like these; whereby medical providers are more accessible through telecommunications.

<comment><USER4> We already have a version of this, it's called NHS direct. You explain your symptoms and the person at the other end of the line runs through a set of scripted questions.

Real life example: I phoned once when a friend of mine thought he was having a heart attack. Some of the questions were pertinent, some not (such as: could your friend be pregnant?).

After 10 minutes it was decided he wasn't having a heart attack and should make an appointment to see his GP.

I believe it is possible to escalate the call to a medical professional if you know the system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for sharing. Did you interact with a human on the phone? Is 10 minutes too long a time for a possible emergency condition like that?

<comment><USER4> Yes it was a human but she obviously had no medical training, just asking scripted answers.

Ten minutes is far too long. If someone thinks they are having a heart attack this should set a red flag for immediate professional attention?

Having a professional always dealing with these calls would be the ideal but, I guess, you get back to the shortage of qualified staff problem.

Also, maybe, making access easier will also encourage people to use the service more often - maybe for trivial issues too. So you end up making things even worse?

I am 52 and when I was a child my parents could call our doctor at any time, even if he was at home in the middle of the night. He would come out straight away, no question. The assumption was if you had taken the trouble to call it must be serious. Often it wasn't but with children you can't take chances.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: The Legend of Trykon, a 3D Zelda-like exploration/puzzle game - <AUTHOR> https://trykon.itch.io/the-legend-of-trykon <comment><USER2> Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for sharing your One Game a Week project. I've been following along with your articles and I find them to be pretty interesting and helpful. I've been learning Unity the last few months and I've come across the same issues as you a couple of times. Your games are a lot of fun, too -- Curious Castle is probably my favourite one so far! Looking forward to following along with the rest of your blogs:)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks very much! I'm really happy to hear you've found some of the blogs helpful. I've been trying to find my voice from a technical perspective in these blogs -- I want my articles to be helpful for people who have some game development experience, but I also want them to be accessible to a broader audience. So I really appreciate the feedback!

Thanks also for playing some of my games -- to be perfectly honest, I think Curious Castle might be my personal favorite so far as well :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Nice, fun. Looks well crafted. Thank you for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! One of the great joys of doing One Game a Week this time around has been making a more deliberate effort to share my work. I appreciate the kind words :)</comment></comment>


Couple wins millions using lottery loophole - <AUTHOR> https://www.msn.com/en-xl/northamerica/top-stories/couple-wins-millions-using-lottery-loophole/ar-AACEewY <comment><USER2> _The paper 's reporting revealed that two groups were dominating Cash Winfall: the Selbee gang from Evart, Michigan, and their competition, a syndicate led by math majors from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. These were kids young enough to be the Selbees' grandchildren._

 _Incredibly, the MIT group bet between $17 and $18 million on Cash Winfall over a seven-year period, earning at least $3.5 million in profits. Almost the exact same rate of return as the Selbees._

A nice illustration of the fact that there is only one mathematics, and it's equally available to everyone!

<comment><USER3> Based on the numbers alone, that's about a 20% return for the MIT group, for an annualized return (not considering compound interest) of less than 3% per year. Does this suggest that those trying to game the lottery should just turn to investing in the market? It's amusing to see that the market, which is less structured in probability and more volatile, outperforms the lottery in this aspect.

<comment><USER4> That doesn't mean they had that amount of capital under investment.

If you bet $10 every week, and every week you win $11, at the end of the year you've bet $520 and made a profit of $52. But you never had more than $10 "invested".

If that $18 million was evenly spread out over 7 years, it would be close to $50k/week, or $215k/month. Those are probably more accurate amounts of working capital for calculating ROI.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the way the article phrased it, I have a feeling this is a useless statistic like the sum total of all the money spent on tickets.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To all the folks saying, "how did the State not know the odds?", a lot of gambling games come out without anyone running the odds. A great example is blackjack switch [0]. The game was invented by an ex-gambler and he never really knew the odds of the game. He just convinced some casinos to try it and would advertise what their average take was. Because most people are bad at math and wouldn't play well, it was always bigger than the actual house advantage anyway.

It was only years later that someone finally ran the numbers and figured out the actual house advantage of the game [1], but no one cared because everyone who had a table was making money on it. Even with regular blackjack, the casinos always make way more than the statistical house advantage because people play poorly.

It was probably the same deal here. The State didn't care what they actual odds were, they just cared that they were making money on it.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_Switch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackjack_Switch)

[1] [https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/switch/](https://wizardofodds.com/games/blackjack/switch/)

<comment><USER7> I work in the gambling industry and live in au. From my perspective this is super strange. By law vendors have to publish the odd (and on some games the EV).

<comment><USER8> Publishing the odds is common. Doing the math on those odds apparently is not.

<comment><USER9> But in order to publish the odds, you have to know the odds. And the only way to know the odds is to do the math, correct?

Unless you're making a distinction for determining the odds during optimal play (which makes a lot more sense to me).

<comment><USER10> Lotteries are required to publish the odds of matching x out of y numbers. Once the design is fixed, this figure does not change.

The expected dollar value of a winning ticket, on the other hand, changes every week depending on the number of tickets sold that week as well as the amount of any unclaimed jackpot(s) rolled over from previous weeks. I won't be surprised if state lotteries are not legally required to publish these figures every week. Nobody wants to be held responsible for a precise amount published on Tuesday when a snowstorm on Friday causes ticket sales to plummet.

Many states do publish estimates of the jackpot, of course, for advertising purposes. But they're only estimates, and I've never seen estimates of anything other than the jackpot. The Selbees took advantage of smaller winnings that usually go unnoticed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Previous discussion a year ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494280](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16494280)

On this submission:

[http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto- winners...](http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/lotto-winners/)

<comment><USER12> This is a MUCH better writeup than this recently submitted link. I remember reading it at the time, very well done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wish lotteries handed out many $1M prizes instead of giving $250M to one person. People understand what to do with $1M (I think) but most people are ruined by $250M.

<comment><USER14> Everywhere, people _say_ they prefer lotteries where there are more prizes with smaller wins, instead of one winner with huge jackpot. But also everywhere, their actual _bahaviour_ is that when there is one big jackpot, they bet more.

And those who arrange lotteries do know their business.

<comment><USER15> That's probably true. They should try to educate people that if there are 250 times as many winners that your chances of winning a significant amount of money is much higher.

<comment><USER16> I think if you could educate people on their expected return from a lottery ticket purchase, they wouldn't play at all.

Telling people that they have a 95% chance of winning nothing at all is not a good way of selling lottery tickets.

<comment><USER17> I think it's naive to value a lottery based solely on your monetary expected value. The value of money doesn't increase linearly, and isn't the same for everyone. $20 could have an inconsequential effect on my quality of life, while winning say $2 million could be a total life changer.

Likewise, the difference in impact between winning $0 and winning $2 million is likely a _lot_ larger than the difference between winning $2 million and winning $4 million. So a straight EV calculation doesn't really tell the whole story.

There's also the entertainment value of participating in the lottery to consider, even when you win nothing.

<comment><USER17> Personally I like to think of lotteries as a binary thing - either I win enough money to retire now, or I don't.

<comment><USER18> I think there's more nuance than that. Winning enough to pay most of your house off wouldn't necessarily let you retire but it'd make you a lot more comfortable, for instance.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> When I read this kind of stories about US lotteries (and there seem to be several of this kind of stories going around), I always wonder how on earth it is possible for so many cases of failed lottery rule design to exist in the first place, and for those clear failures to persist for so long.

Did no one notice that the lottery always lost huge sums of money during the Rolldown draws, while it gained money on normal draws (as it should always be the case)? No one noticed that certain convenience stores suddenly sold hundreds of thousands worth of tickets in these draws, while most other stores sold a normal amount?

<comment><USER20> I think the irony is that from the organizer's point of view, it's essentially working as intended. The "windfall" mechanic was supposed to make rollovers more enticing by increasing the payout amounts for everyone. The only reason to make a lottery more enticing is to sell more tickets.

So they sold more tickets, and made more payouts on lesser tickets. Exactly as they planned. The lottery doesn't actually lose out - it's just emptying the pot (which was filled in previous games) in return for increased sales.

It's the old adage "the house never loses" \- if 50% goes in the pot and 50% goes in their pockets, it doesn't matter who wins the pot - their 50% doesn't change. If a mechanic creates an incentive for more sales, their take increases. Fantastic. But if popular perception becomes that the game is rigged, less people buy tickets - and their take decreases.

(We had an office draw that'd run for months at a time, until someone eventually won. But we wouldn't take new players until the pot had been emptied, as someone joining for the last 2 rounds and winning everything, lost us more players than we gained. That is essentially the long-term risk here too. 10 people paying in until one of them wins, feels fair. 10 people paying in until the 11th wins, doesn't. And when the game stops feeling fair, you start to lose the feeders that fill the pot in the first place.)

<comment><USER21> I don't understand why this is an issue since each drawing's odds are independent. Perhaps I don't understand how these pools work.

<comment><USER20> That's the disconnect. Each draw's odds are independent, but each draw's winnings aren't.

So there's a collectivism that goes into a growing pot. This is the only thing that really makes a "rollover" enticing to players. If each draw was an isolated incident, the "windfall" mechanic the article describes would be in place for every draw. So a collective pitches in, and the pot is distributed amongst the collective's members (the players) according to how successful each ticket is. So if there's no 6-number winners, there's more left in the pot for the 5-number winners. If there's 5-number winners, there's more left in the pot for the 4-number winners, etc.

(Either that, or the house makes out like bandits. State lotteries are usually regulated to keep a distinction between the pot and the profit, hence such pot-emptying mechanisms.)

But if the pot rolls over - it's not distributed, but added to the pot for the next draw - you now have more than one collective. One collective that's contributed to the pot (over n draws), and one collective that participates in the winning game (over 1 draw). And if there's a significant disconnect between the two, then yes - as one commenter put it, sour grapes. It's the difference between feeling like you've lost a fair game, and feeling like you've been hustled.

Technically it makes zero difference. But if it makes people less inclined to play in future, then it's bad for the long-term health of the game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> They were featured on 60 minutes twice, including last night. The rendering on Microsoft News is off!

You can see the entire video here.

[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerry-and-marge-selbee-how-a- re...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jerry-and-marge-selbee-how-a-retired- couple-won-millions-using-a-lottery-loophole-60-minutes-2019-06-09/)

</comment><comment><USER23> Love hearing stories like this where people gained because of some loophole. Does anyone know if there is a compilation somewhere of these?

See also:

[https://www.businessinsider.com/us-mint-ends-the-dollar- coin...](https://www.businessinsider.com/us-mint-ends-the-dollar-coin-scam- for-airline-miles-2011-7?r=US&IR=T)

<comment><USER24> There is a story similar to the dollar coin gig to earn reward miles. A long time ago when plastic gift cards were first a thing, stores didn't have a way to update the balance. The scheme would be to buy a $100 gift card from Walmart using your credit card (getting the miles). You would then use the gift card to buy a $0.35 pack of gum. Since the store couldn't update the balance, they would give you cash as change. You could then just deposit the change to your bank and pay off the credit card. Rinse, repeat.

So for $0.35, you could get $100 in equivalent reward miles. Now stores have changed, they can now update balances on the card and therefore won't issue cash as change.

<comment><USER25> To expand, this still goes on, it's just a lot more convoluted and has become quite the cat and mouse game. It's been very interesting watching how manufactured spending has evolved.

<comment><USER26> I know people used to do this by buying the $1 coins from the US treasury, and then just take the coins to the bank and depositing them in order to manufacture spending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> $80 BILLION a year in lottery spending, that was shocking to me. Only 30 some countries have bigger _yearly_ budgets. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget)

<comment><USER27> Remember that you can look at a lot of data on the US like this and come up with seemingly shocking figures, simply because of the huge population of the USA and their higher than average disposable income. I bet if you looked at other things like total amount spent on other optional/nonessential items - chewing gum or fabric softener, for example - you'd end up with a dollar value in excess of what many governments spend :-)

<comment><USER28> The chewing gum market is a bit smaller (but impressive nonetheless), 110-ish countries have revenues comparable to sales in North America:

[https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/13098-chewing- gum-...](https://www.foodbusinessnews.net/articles/13098-chewing-gum-sales- estimated-to-hit-4-billion-in-2018)

[https://www.statista.com/topics/1841/chewing- gum/](https://www.statista.com/topics/1841/chewing-gum/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> A wonderful account of this is given in Ellenberg's "How Not to Be Wrong": [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Not_to_Be_Wrong](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Not_to_Be_Wrong)

I highly recommend the book; it is a popular mathematics book, written by a real mathematician, discussing some real mathematics, with an engaging style.

<comment><USER30> Video: [https://youtu.be/kZTKuMBJP7Y](https://youtu.be/kZTKuMBJP7Y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> The title of an article I would _never_ have clicked on if it were not referenced via Hacker News...

</comment><comment><USER32> "That was satisfactory."

I love that this guy, who is probably, what, 80? 81? pulled off this huge math heist after probably a lifetime spent doing math running a convenience store.

I bet it feels great to have that sense of, like, ease with himself in old age, having made a mark on the world in a way that hurt no one and helped a lot of people.

He stuck the landing

<comment><USER33> He hurt all the lottery players he beat.

<comment><USER34> They bet money on a game that somebody else played better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Can anyone explain the strategy like I'm 5? I'm confused by his answer.

<comment><USER36> Even weirder is the statement that the State that organized the lottery made more money thanks to them buying massive amount of tickets ( or maybe it was the publicity around the first newspaper article that triggered more interest, and so more participant in general ?)

<comment><USER37> I understand the opposite: the State didn't _lose_ any money, (but didn't make any money from these people winning, either); it made money from lottery as usual, but not from these people. (There's an implication that more people _in general_ bought tickets, didn't win, and so the organizer made money from _those_ \- but it's not entirely clear.)

<comment><USER38> The state makes money from every ticket purchased. The lottery simply pays out a fixed percentage of ticket revenue. More ticket sales means more money to the state, regardless of whether those tickets, when purchased, had an expected positive or negative return.

<comment><USER39> If the ticket has an expected positive return for the buyer, then the state must be losing money.

<comment><USER40> I feel like mathematically, you must be right. One of the sides must be calculating their expected value wrong.

For example I can offer to pay a $3 jackpot (split across winners) for a $1 game for guessing heads or tails. If more than 3 people play the game, I make money. For each player, the naive way to calculate expected return is $3 * 0.5 + $0 * 0.5 - $1 = $0.5. So the players also think they are making money. But once you account for jackpot splitting, that "expected value" isn't positive anymore. To calculate this correctly, the player (who has less information) need some way to model the distribution of the number of other players.

<comment><USER38> > mathematically, you must be right. One of the sides must be calculating > their expected value wrong.

He isn't right. The state doesn't work with expected values in any way. Money comes in via ticket sales, some of it goes into the state budget, the rest goes out as lottery payouts. There is no element of chance in any of that.

As you point out here and I point out elsewhere, the expected value of a ticket for the purchaser depends on the total number of tickets sold, which has been mostly elided from the discussion. In fact, it's mostly irrelevant as to this past event; at the actual ticket volumes, returns really were positive on the days in question.

<comment><USER40> It's a zero sum game. If one side is positive, the other side must be negative.

If jackpot isn't paid out, state gets (ticket_sales), players in total gets (-ticket_sales).

If jackpot is paid out, state gets (ticket_sales - jackpot), players gets (jackpot - ticket_sales). The winning players get ((jackpot - winning_ticket_sales) / num_winners) each, the rest gets (losing_ticket_sales).

Either way the expected value for an individual player is always the opposite sign of the expected value of the state.

The interpretation that people might be using is that: when the tickets sold is low, it's positive expected value for the players. When sales cross the jackpot, it's positive expected value for the state. But then it becomes negative value for the player! There's no point in time where both sides are winning.

(And of course that interpretation is pretty meaningless because you don't want to calculate the expected return based on the _current_ number of tickets sold. You want the _forecast_ of the eventual number of tickets sold. The state never really loses, even at the start because they have a pretty good idea of what this number will be in the end)

<comment><USER41> It's a zero-sum game, but there are 3 parties: the state general fund, the prize pool, and the players. By regulation, a fixed percentage of each ticket sale goes to the state general fund and the rest goes to the prize pool. Also by regulation, all the money that goes into the prize pool must eventually be paid out to players.

The unpaid prize pool getting too big can cause problems for the operator: there may be accusations by the regulator that it'll never be paid out, or it could be stolen or mismanaged leaving the operator insolvent because they no longer have the funds they are required to give to players.

A rolldown event is the operator choosing to increase the payout schedule to an expected win for the purpose of reducing their liability of unpaid prizes; tickets having a positive expected value is the entire point.

<comment><USER42> Swarming the rolldown day would just have the effect of diminishing the prize pool faster, and therefore a longer delay before the next rolldown day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> I was wondering how both these syndicates and the state we winning. I think I understand now.

Lotteries are zero sum games so no extra money is being created. All ticket purchases either go to the state or the winners. So if the players have a positive return how can the state also be winning?

The players have a positive return only for the rollover round. The players have a negative return for all other rounds, where the state makes its money, and the syndicates don't play.

So the people who lost are all the suckers who played in non-rollover rounds.

</comment><comment><USER44> Every decade or so some "lottery loophole" like this is discovered, exploited, publicized, and rules are updated to close it. I'm curious to see if another loophole resulting in a massive rework of the lottery system will ever present itself, or if the laws and rules have finally prevented that after the last few.

</comment><comment><USER45> I really enjoyed this story! The best part is people like to think this loop hole is easy "profit". No one pointed out the fact that they would go on 10 day benders buying/sorting/etc. to get the profit! Even this loop hole for easy profit was incredibly arduous in manual labor.

</comment><comment><USER46> Great story.. but extremely shitty interviewer in my view.

</comment><comment><USER47> Great story. Now they should go make another million or two selling the movie rights!

</comment><comment><USER48> Good for them! Thinking is rewarded.

</comment><comment><USER49> I just wonder, do you have to think very high about yourself to play such a game and enjoy it? Or very low? I just can not imagine myself feeling good about this.

Of course, the feeling dumbs a bit: compare the feelings you had after using your first illegally copied floppy disk or mp3 track and the later ones, but still.

<comment><USER50> Why would you feel bad? What woukd you have down that was wrong? You aren't taking money from anyone else.

<comment><USER51> You are taking money from the prize pool, i.e. payouts for future winners.

<comment><USER50> You, and everyone else. That is the rule of the game. You aren't doing anything wrong. By that logic, any money winner is taking payours from future winners.

<comment><USER51> > You aren't doing anything wrong.

That's debatable. Lotteries are supposed to be completely up to chance. If by your own ingenuity you exploit a weakness then you are tipping the scales in your favor, which is unfair to less clever players.

It's basically the tragedy of the commons; everyone has the same chance of winning, but only you know you can safely risk more and win more, lessening the winning of others.

<comment><USER24> He didn't have insider knowledge though. He used the games own rules to play an advantage. Those rules were available to everyone, everyone could have done the same.

<comment><USER52> The rules are available to everyone, but having enough cash to purchase that many lottery tickets certainly isn't. Unfortunately this is yet another system that enables the already rich to get richer on the backs of the poor.

<comment><USER53> Perhaps if the poor didn't spend so much on lottery tickets their station might improve? If they know they are playing a losing bet, why keep doing it? And these folks that were winning were hardly hedge-fund managers. If the "poor" wanted to play to win, perhaps they could get everyone on their block to chip in to buy shares just like the old couple did? They could get all of their friends to save what they would have spent in the lottery over the course of the year, put that fund into the "pot" and then win, reinvesting it and repeating the process.

It's hard to be sympathetic to people that make bad decisions as a habit. For example, if it's a 1/5,000,000 chance of winning and they still keep playing, that's on them. The have very little sympathy for losing lottery players. If people choose to spend their money like that, that's their business, but that doesn't invite sympathy when it doesn't work out. It isn't like they are being defrauded or even cheated. They have access to the same rules of the game and they have access to math just like everyone else.

<comment><USER52> > _Perhaps if the poor didn't spend so much on lottery tickets their station > might improve?_

I agree, and indeed this is a good argument for prohibiting lotteries. They're a form of predatory gambling that relies largely upon irrationality, addiction, and desperation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I first read about these people a year or so ago so CBS "news" has finally caught up.</comment>


How to make a conspiracy out of nothing - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/10/03/narendra-modi-was-speaking-in-code-when-he-visited-america-heres-what-he-was-really-saying-to-his-hindu-nationalist-base/

<comment><USER2> The title of the story is " Narendra Modi was speaking in code when he visited America. Here's what he was really saying to his Hindu nationalist base" Don't editorialize titles when submitting.</comment>


Ask HN: Anyone need (free) mobile UX design? - <AUTHOR>

I'm an experienced graphic designer and currently freelancing. I'm now moving my focus to mobile UX/UI design. While I'm slowly working on my own app, I'd like to get other projects for the portfolio, too.
If you need a design for a mobile app - whether you only have an idea, want a redesign or a mobile version created - email me (email@example.com) and describe your project or idea and we go from there. I love working from user research to concepting to final designs, but am of course flexible. Here's my portfolio: http://be.net/essisalonen
And even if you don't need design help, I'd really like to hear about what kind of design services you've seen lacking from the market, or what you think could be interesting to you in the future. <comment><USER2> Welcome to Hacker News (I see you just joined). I don't need a free design but I was curious about your own app. Can you share details on what you're working on?

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi,

Thanks for the offer....

Could you please email at email@example.com

Thank you

</comment><comment><USER4> Upvoted and good luck. I'm sure you'll find someone looking for help. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> E-mail sent!</comment>


Ask HN: How can I help my clients to be better project managers? - <AUTHOR>

I run a small web design company. We have great processes in place, but these processes are constantly being held up or not followed by our clients.
I feel that if we could help to make our clients better at project managment and understand time managment better, then the projects would run much smoother.
Of course I know there will always be little things but can't help but feel things could be better managed. <comment><USER2> You're not being specific about your problem here. Project management is a big field. Can you give some examples of problems you've faced?

<comment><AUTHOR> specifically we are held up at the final sign off.

For example, we have a set process in place from initial wireframe through to website launch. We are typically held up during the final sign off process where endless design changes are requested. Some the same element being changed back and forth.

This is despite the fact that we have gotten sign off at the both the initial wirerfaming stage and then again at the design concept phase (this is the PSD version of the website, so what they see in the PSD is what will be converted to a website)

I point to the fact that they are making changes to a design they have already approved, to it becomes difficult to draw a line for what are further changes and need to be charged, and what are small changes that one would assume come with the initial website design?</comment></comment>