Show HN: Feature voting for GitHub - <AUTHOR> http://feathub.com/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting but like that one site that was bought recently (get satisfaction) this is another site that I, as a repository owner, has to track down to find customer feedback. Kinda like Gitter.im, yet another external service I have to be aware of.

It's difficult to be omnipresent so I can track all of the different pieces of feedback my project may be getting; even though it's not ideal I'd rather everyone just funnel through Github issues just so I can interact with them and be aware of any issues or requests. I don't want to miss out on any feedback should it be on an external service I do not know about.

<comment><USER3> It seems like you build off the comments of issues, parsing for the :+1:, you could functionally provide the same tooling, but in the same additive way that waffle.io does.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're not parsing GitHub comments ATM. That's a good idea though, but it would be difficult to track content. Maybe it's just simpler to track issues in one place and improvements in another?

<comment><USER3> Looking at Waffle.io, it seems to me that they don't actually store any data on their end. Everything is managed with issues, comments, and tagging.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why doesn't it link directly to issues on github?

It would get annoying having two separate lists of features (and, presumably, bugs). One on github and one on this service.

Still, if it just did voting on issues on github, I'd find it pretty useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's something we made on purpose. We believe feature requests and issues should be treated differently.

In our vision, an issue refers to a bug in the software. It doesn't need voting: it's up to the developers to figure out the gravity of the situation (or to an analytics tool that gather how many times a given issue arises).

On the other hand, a feature request refers to a new capability of said software. It then makes sense for users to vote, because, as a developer, it's hard to know which feature is the most expected.

<comment><USER4> >We believe feature requests and issues should be treated differently.

Github doesn't. Issues can be tagged as 'bug' or 'enhancement' and they're both treated essentially the same way.

>it's up to the developers to figure out the gravity of the situation

Sure would be nice if there were some sort of tool that could help with figuring that out.

<comment><USER5> Those are just default tags to a (very limited) issue tracking system. "Enhancement" could very well be (and is) used by developers for planned features, not necessarily requests from end users.

Heck, the title of the page you access that system on is called "issues".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I like the idea, but would prefer if GitHub just integrated this functionality. Otherwise, how will the developers know that something was voted on unless they use these third-party tools?

<comment><AUTHOR> They would know because they would have registered their project on FeatHub :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm surprised this feature isn't in github already ... is there a reason?

<comment><USER8> It was, long ago, but it was removed. I believe the reason was that it wasn't very useful, but that was a while back, so I could be wrong.

<comment><USER9> Huh. I've been using GH since about the first year it launched I don't recall ever seeing this. Do you mean a way to vote on things, or feature requests?

<comment><USER8> There was a little up vote triangle on issues, but it was really really long ago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is it me or this is very similar to the way zenhub.io [1] works?

Anyway, I recently also stumble upon a similar tool that enables voting for PR and even auto merges the code [2], which is not precisely the scope that feathub targets, but it is very useful and similar enough to worth mentioning it :p

[1] [https://www.zenhub.io/](https://www.zenhub.io/)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351286](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9351286)

</comment><comment><USER11> It's really hard to add features to someone else's app in such a disconnected way, for everyone in their community. Most people haven't heard of your site, and it's also hard to form habits of checking Github, as well as your page. Usability improvements ... should makes things easier!

Repo owners have control over what gets displayed on their project page (to an extent), and can drive their subset of users to your app.

If owners are having trouble seeing how many people up voted a feature, then make a bot that counts the number of thumbs up in an issue tagged "feature", then update the issue title. This would be really helpful to those people.

Also, if owners want to see the top feature requests, make an embeddable image for the README that clicks to the full list. People love embeddable widgets. :D

Those two things is all I observe your app does, plus you had to reinvent commenting, which is a huge turn off.

There are loads of popular tools out there that integrate into Github, it's worth checking them out to see how they weasel their features into Github.com!

</comment><comment><USER12> The thumb + 1 scares me, it makes me think I am going to like it on Facebook, and that I am somehow connected. Even though I know it's not.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just click the "Thumb down -1" then :-D Facebook denied it from us for so long, now's your time to take revenge :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> [https://twitter.com/mdo/status/591707867498946560](https://twitter.com/mdo/status/591707867498946560)

Mark Otto @mdo · 24 minutes ago Hey @feathub, please remove Bootstrap from your site—we've no plans to use it and it's disingenuous to imply we do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Legitimate request of course. That was a genuine mistake from our part, the service is opt-in only now. Here's the full Twitter conversation: [https://twitter.com/feathub/status/591715888782520320](https://twitter.com/feathub/status/591715888782520320)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> On this topic, can someone recommend a simple feature voting tool with SSO? Something similar to this but not tied to GitHub?

When I looked again at Get Satisfaction, User Voice, etc they're all so bloated with features and complication.

Looking for a way to direct my signed in users to a simple page to vote up a list of features we're considering.

</comment><comment><USER15> Features like these are better if integrated into Github itself. There's this long thread about implementing a +1 feature [https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9](https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/9)

</comment><comment><USER16> I've been looking for something like this for a while now but honestly if you run a non-technical service requiring your users to sign up for a github account (just to vote on features) is a pretty big ask. Integration with other AUTH services like Facebook/Google would be very beneficial.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a decision we made on purpose.

We figured out our early adopters would be on GitHub, that's why we started with GitHub login. Fell free to add a feature request on [http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub) :-)

Also, while we're at it, we could even consider anonymous voting ([http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub/+15](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub/+15))

This raises the question of the gameability of the voting, but this could be mitigated using a mixture of cookies, captchas and browser fingerprinting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The Bountysource browser extension is similar. It works with existing votes and +1's from GitHub, Bugzilla, Trac, etc.

[https://www.bountysource.com/extension](https://www.bountysource.com/extension)

<comment><AUTHOR> Shamelessly advertising your own product, heh? ;-) (GitHub seems to believe you work a Bountysource: [https://github.com/wkonkel](https://github.com/wkonkel))

Anyway, you're right, it is similar. FeatHub doesn't require an extension though, so you can just point your users to your project's voting page.

<comment><USER18> Bountysource doesn't require you to use another website though. You stick to using Github and get some added functionality.

<comment><USER19> It apparently requires a browser extension. Is that actually better? I'd rather direct my customers to a third-party site I have a relationship with than ask them to install a plugin.

(Disclaimer: I have no product or customers to worry about, just musing)

<comment><USER20> You don't need to install the plugin with Bountysource to use it - it just adds a handy button and counter to the issue list.

You can still direct users to the Bountysource page for your project if that's what you prefer.

(I'm not associated with Bountysource at all - I just think it's pretty good at what it does).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It says "See how they are listening to their users" on the home page. Does this imply that not using this tool or not desiring feature voting is the same as ignoring your users? That's some pretty unpleasant positioning IMO.

<comment><USER22> I read that as "See the way (the solution) they're using to listen to their users."

<comment><AUTHOR> That was the intended meaning :-) Do you guys have any suggestion on how to remove the ambiguity?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This is fantastic. This is perfect for an OpenSource maintainer to get insight into the users priorities on the issues. Thank you for creating this tool.

I'd like to use it for one of my projects ([https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli](https://github.com/dbcli/pgcli)). Even though I've authorized feathub to access my organizations, the repo is not listed in the drop down.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! That's weird that it didn't appear… I'll look into it.

Meanwhile, I've created the project for you. Here you go: [http://feathub.com/dbcli/pgcli](http://feathub.com/dbcli/pgcli)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you have any idea for an improvement, we would love to hear about it there: [http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub](http://feathub.com/feathub/feathub) :-)

</comment><comment><USER24> It doesn't load more than 30 projects in the dropdown menu when I try to setup my repository.

</comment><comment><USER25> I'd use a Chrome extension that let me request features for the website I'm currently on.</comment>


Silicon Valley's Vast Data Collection Should Worry You More Than TikTok - <AUTHOR> https://jacobinmag.com/2020/08/tiktok-surveillance-social-media-trump <comment><USER3> I'm risking losing a limb for saying this, but I would be much more comfortable if the EO clearly stated the main reason for the TikTok and WeChat ban is a retaliatory tit-for-tat against China's long time behavior of banning US tech companies operating in the Chinese market, which sounds like the main reason why many here support this ban.

Whether or not that tit-for-tat behavior leads to a net benefit for the US is up for debate. But the fact the EOs cite "national security", "privacy violation", etc. as the main reasons for banning makes you wonder "are those the real reasons behind this ban?" If they are, then questions raised by OP's article is perfectly legit, and makes the ban look either misplaced or hypocritical. If the ban really is tit-for-tat, what's stoping the EO from just saying so? Honestly, this whole situation makes the White House/Department of State look like they don't even believe those allegations themselves, which weakens their ground in any legitimate discussion around"national security threat" , "privacy violation" etc.

<comment><USER4> This is simply guity by association. No matter what TikTok does, just because it's created by a Chinese domestic company, then all the political will are aligned behind the idea to automatically assume guilty, with even the slight trace of proof of the claimed misconduct.

Then there is guilty by association on China/CCP, based on their association with communism. Which by all accounts is largely nothing but name nowadays. CCP itself looks more like a capitalism organization than a communism party, on the spectrum from communism to capitalism. But most time, one random netizen wholeheartedly claims that CCP is evil, just based on it having communism in the name. Then anything Chinese people doing are tainted as well. Like I was called associated with Chinese government in [2], because I stated that "五毛" is being used too abusively, and "government hired net moderator" is probably better [3].

For god's sake, I am now routinely worried my future at this country, just because I come from mainland China...

[1] [https://legaldictionary.net/guilt-by- association/](https://legaldictionary.net/guilt-by-association/) [2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494968) [3] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494950](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23494950)

<comment><USER3> "guilty by association" is easier to process mentally, for both sides. There is a case to be made that a lot of the online anti-China rhetorics could be attributed to the mentality of "because it's China", without digging into the individual allegations to see if they are on sound grounds. On the other hand, for the "pro-China" camp (no matter if you are in it by choice, or got thrown into it), it's very easy to attribute any criticism against China to "racism/they don't like China/The West is prejudiced against China" without looking into the validity of individual criticism. The great danger of the current day and age with social media, is that the mob on both sides will keep the divide deeper, giving politicians, from both side, the levers they want to achieve their own political goals, which may have nothing to do with the various issues that caused the divide in the first place. The reality is always nuanced, but sadly not convenient.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The headline seems to be getting a more attention than the content of the article; that's disappointing, especially here on HN.

It seems like the author is expressing opinions that others in the comments also hold:

> We should be worried about private companies and governments potentially > collecting data on millions of unsuspecting people and censoring content > they don't like. But those based in China represent just a sliver of that > threat.

> The answer isn't to dismiss the potential menace of China's surveillance > programs, or to cheerlead for a rival set of tech oligarchs who simply > happen to live in California and speak English.

> We should broaden the concerns and criticisms of TikTok and its relationship > to China to tech firms more generally, and push for an across-the-board > guarantee of online privacy and free speech for all of the world's people, > whether they're more worried about being tracked and manipulated by people > in the United States or China.

A bit utopian? Sure, but as so many here have already pointed out, this is Jacobin ;)

</comment><comment><USER6> This is why the US is going after TikTok. It's social media that the US can't access and a foreign government can.

The Europeans and the Indians who both have social media markets big enough to support their own should play the same game that the Chinese and the Americans are. That is, if there is any indication that foreign governments can access the information and that your own government cannot they should ban the social media application, search applications and mail applications and build their own.

Right now there are effectively two countries in the world that have big internet companies. The US and China.

It appears that China's protectionism in the internet has worked. It also appears that the US is practising similar protectionism in regard to TikTok. It's not completely unreasonable from either party.

The next step is that the other potential majors, the Europeans and the Indians do the same.

It might even make a more interesting world. European and Indian TikToks, Googles, Facebooks, AliBabas and so on.

<comment><USER7> The EU has already started protecting their citizens with GDPR.

<comment><USER6> That's a very good point.

It would be interesting to see if the NSA care about it.

<comment><USER7> Whether the NSA cares about it or not doesn't matter because the data controller can still be sued for collecting the users data if the users opt out. The controller has the motivation in this sense to comply.

My point is that if the USA is monitoring citizens from EU, it isn't through American businesses that intend to comply with GDPR.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why restrict it to silicon valley? Aren't there data collection companies all over the country? Many of them are not visible to the public as they don't offer any public facing functionality, so they get to do anything they want and there is no hope of them getting twitter shamed either. The only answer is a federal level law. To be fair, the article says this but the title somehow calls out Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER9> > Why restrict it to silicon valley?

1\. Silicon Valley is a metonym and does not exclusively refer to the companies in it.

2\. Silicon Valley is where the most important and powerful new-era data collection companies are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Nice. Tiktok playing the media to focus on american companies. Hiring ex- disney exec Kevin Mayer was the right move.

How about worrying about _all_ big government/business collecting data.

</comment><comment><USER11> I can understand a layman bashing Chinese companies for alleged spying but any engineer should know better if they're not interested in addressing similar issues in American companies and government. I think the best way would be to require all software products to be open source (the source-available flavor, not duplication), and additionally create a culture that refuses to accept invasive tracking. A more ambitious approach would be to create a corps of engineers that develop high quality open source alternatives to the current tech stack with privacy as a paramount value - at bare minimum a new OS and browser. Dunno if either would be successful but this jingoism about which country's apps are more intrusive is obfuscating the problem.

</comment><comment><USER12> I suppose that this is consistent with Jacobin's worldview, wherein the US government is morally similar to the CCP. But for the rest of the rational world this just doesn't compute.

</comment><comment><USER13> False dilemma. Both are worrisome, but the window for dealing with domestic problems is much longer.

<comment><USER14> False False Dilemma. The article doesn't present data collection as an either/or situation, the article takes the position that it's all bad regardless of origin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You never know who is going to buy who, data leaks and hacks are rampant. Over time this adds up.

So its safest to assume any digital data anywhere will eventually be in the hands of any significant actor who really wants it. Its just a matter of how long it takes to get there.

</comment><comment><USER16> Data collection by domestic companies worries me, but it's much easier to control/litigate/regulate issues domestically than abroad, especially if we're dealing with geopolitical adversaries.

</comment><comment><USER17> > they happen to be situated in Western countries

They happen to be situated in USA specifically. It's the world's traffic relay.

For Europeans, the best strategy is to arbtirage between the two poles in this new Cold war. Some data goes to the US, some to China, this is useful when either of them becomes too demanding.

</comment><comment><USER18> Ah yes, as an American, I should be more scared of Google than the benevolence of the CCP. That makes sense. Thanks Jacobin for such an unbiased take.

<comment><USER19> 1 - "China vs America AI Race" by Eric "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" Schmidt. (note: all AI requires "spying", a-la Tesla Autopilot, smart-watches etc)

2 - Eric Schmidt's Pentagon Offensive: "..through his own venture capital firm and a [$15] billion fortune, Mr. Schmidt has invested millions of dollars into more than half a dozen defense start-ups.. The former Google C.E.O. has reinvented himself as the prime liaison between Silicon Valley and the Military-Industrial Complex.

[1] [https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-versus- am...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/china-versus-america-ai- race-pandemic-by-eric-schmidt-and-graham-allison-2020-08)

[2] [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/technology/eric- schmidt-p...](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/technology/eric-schmidt- pentagon-google.html)

<comment><USER18> Could you elaborate on what your point is? I am an American and I trust the American government to look out for my interests a lot more than I do the Chinese. In fact I have no problem at all with Schmidt's efforts to accelerate AI usage in our military.

<comment><USER19> Watch "A Good American" (doco) and let me know if "the govt" (parts thereof) have citizen's best interests at heart.

AI in the wrong hands (MIC) has been a warning in countless films. Competing with China's Military by weaponizing AI is not the solution to a problem. It's "becoming what you fear".

We've seen SV employees protest the moves their corporations are making (facial recog, lethal robotics, etc) so Eric taking this out of Google into "startups" is really skirting around the perception issue (ie. PR of doing "evil").

<comment><USER18> The dichotomy here is between allowing the Chinese or the American governments access to my information. Without reservation, if those are the choices, I would prefer the former.

Perhaps competing with China in AI is not the perfect solution, though I cannot think of a better one, but it sure beats being out competed by them.

There are no absolutes here, its about accepting that we live in an imperfect world and picking the least bad outcomes we can.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Who has potentially more leverage over you? Which entity or agent can apply coercive forces to you? Worry about that person or organization.

</comment><comment><USER21> _Although there's no hard evidence, there is more than a good chance that the data TikTok collects is, at the very least, accessible by the Chinese government. As this ProtonMail report points out, not only does TikTok's privacy policy assert the right to share information with members of its "corporate group," which would include its parent company, but ByteDance's CEO has already promised to "further deepen cooperation" with official party media, on top of the ideological censorship it has already engaged in on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). What's more, a 2017 law lets the Chinese government force companies to secretly hand over data, including data on foreign citizens._

Again, because of all the places, it's most tiring to have to repeat this in HN:

 _[...] ByteDance's CEO has already promised to "further deepen cooperation" with official party media, on top of the ideological censorship it has already engaged in on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)._

 _What's more, a 2017 law lets the Chinese government force companies to secretly hand over data, including data on foreign citizens._

</comment><comment><USER22> I've been trying to figure out why there's so much heightened concern over TikTok.

Is it possible that the NSA and other Five Eyes can't spy on its messaging?

EDIT: Or maybe just that they're worried about that possibility in the future?

<comment><USER23> I really doubt it has much to do with messaging at all. It's more about the ability to disseminate and control messages the public sees, especially in a "narrowcasted" way.

Political forces in the US are constantly trying to influence facebook and twitter's content control policies. What does that look like when it's the CCP doing it?

Think creatively here, it's not just going to be Chinese flags overlaid on everything. Just amplifying stupid/criminal/vulgar/etc. content (more than the internet already does) could have a subtle but significant negative effect.

<comment><USER22> Worse than World Star HipHop?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Silicon Valley's data collection should worry most US citizens more than TikTok's, yes, totally, 100% agree, break them all up, ban all that crap, burn it all down, yes, I am with you.

... but one _hopes_ data collection concerns aren't the real reasons for going after TikTok, but instead that it's part of tit-for-tat action aimed at getting China to accept and enact more aspects of the bargain for joining the global free-market economy, rather than just the parts that help it. They've chosen "defect" for like 2.5 decades, which I'm pretty sure was basically expected to happen back when they were allowed to join the club, but _had better not_ be tolerated indefinitely.

<comment><USER9> > part of tit-for-tat action aimed at getting China to accept and enact more > aspects of the bargain for joining the global free-market economy

The President has spent his term undermining such concepts.

<comment><USER24> I'd say his actions on Chinese trade have been the closest thing to a coherent policy he's had on anything whatsoever, actually. His other trade actions have been, uh, scattershot, to put it very nicely, yes, and I doubt you could come up with an assessment of his presidency as a whole negative enough that I'd disagree with it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't this obvious? What's China going to do with an American's data? Mine it and store it. What can the US do with the data it grabs from US companies? Land you in jail or worse. What can other US entities do with that data? Raise prices. Blacklist you. Sell it to other companies to do the same. Sell it to the government to put you in jail. Unless someone has ties to China or lives/visit China, the Chinese can't do shit. They could have a data breach as can anyone, but I bet they have better security practices and worse consequences for disclosure (so nations can't get proof of the data collection) than any US entity. This should all be quite obvious.

</comment><comment><USER26> Geez, people are really going the extra mile trying to justify something that 100% happened because Trump heard about how the TikTok Teens ruined the Tulsa rally.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Trump's latest gambit to distract from his monumental mismanagement of the pandemic response"

This is why I don't read articles like this. 2nd sentance in and we're bashing the president for what purpose exactly?

</comment><comment><USER28> While I don't trust silicon valley or China with my data, there's a big difference between US corporate interests and that of communist China.

<comment><USER4> What are the differences then?

And why do you think CCP has control over TikTok?

Edit: What are you implying here?

Some CCP members are having party activities inside a private company.

Are they plotting a plan to force Mr. Zhang Yiming to spy on US teenagees?

Or are they just doing the typical CCP "study" activity to learn the retheroic from Mr. Xi?

Who are these guys, are they senior executives in the company? Or random employees who are CCP members.

In the end, what do you want to get from the picture, depends a lot on your prejudice.

<comment><USER16> RE: Why?

[https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1291879371461...](https://mobile.twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1291879371461070849) for example.

"More than 130 employees at ByteDance, the Chinese owner of video-sharing application TikTok, are part of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committee embedded in the company. Many of the employees work in management positions, an internal document reveals."

[https://m.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/tiktoks-parent- company-e...](https://m.theepochtimes.com/mkt_app/tiktoks-parent-company- employs-ccp-members-in-its-highest-ranks_3451561.html)

<comment><USER4> Again, what do you want to derive from the fact?

Associating CCP is a crime?

Note that there is only one party who claims to be totally devoted to serving people. That's CCP.

Can I claim that these CCP members are helping bytedance to better serve it's customers, and help curbe the greedy capitalists from infringing Chinese citizen's privacy?

Or are they finally granted power over the bytedance company? I.e., are they organized to study Mr. Xi's thoughts, or trying to dictate the company's policy etc.

<comment><USER16> I was answering the "Why do you think CCP has control over TikTok?" question. Epoch Times article provides enough information to make someone _think_ that CCP _may have_ control over TikTok.

My position on associating with CCP is irrelevant for the original question, but since you asked now, - yes, associating with a communist party (Chinese or otherwise) while not a crime, is not a good thing either. I'm an immigrant from ex-USSR and I've seen first hand what "party who claims to be totally devoted to serving people" means in the real world. You can associate with whom you want, but I wouldn't want any entity associating with a communist party touch any aspect of my life, let alone my data.

<comment><USER4> Have you been China and take a look at how it's like today?

CCP still do horrible thing, like Xinjiang concentration camp.

But it's major part is different than USSR, at least it practices market economy, with private sector as it's main economy driver.

I want people to understand how China works in its reality, not illusion created by media.

<comment><USER16> Sorry, but this comment is ironic on multiple levels.

First off, it's exactly the same logic that communists used in USSR. "Look at these beautiful Moscow Subway stations!" (nevermind the gulags); or "Hey, citizen! Go ahead and celebrate and march for the International Workers' Day!" (nevermind the fallout from Chernobyl is peaking).

Second, in the context of the article we're discussing (who is more worrisome from data collection perspective - CCP or SV), why me - the foreigner - <USER2> have any illusions of being treated better than China's own citizens (Uyghurs)? Granted, I won't be put into the camp, but to think that my data would be treated with any respect, is to be naive.

<comment><USER4> > the same logic that communists used in USSR

I dont think it's the same, at least not to what I understand.

You have plenty of means to travel freely inside China. As long as you don't engage obvious news reporting activities. That can be proved from numerous videos on Youtube.

Second, you are again making the associative thinking, which I painstakingly trying to point out. Of cuz context matters, and time changes; even today, the concentration camp is less brutal than it was a few years ago. And again, Chinese government has not been actually caught on spying foreign citizens. It certainly spy on its own citizens, which is bad. But you cannot just say that because they might be doing that, then they _must_ be doing that...

Should you be worried that your Tiktok usage data be spyed by Chinese government? Of cuz, I dont use any of bytedance apps, I dont use any FB apps, I never discuss sensitive information on Wechat.

But does that warrant that we can ban the company without legal process? No...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> When Google starts to have any inclination to put a bag over my head if I search the wrong thing, sure.

When Google starts having an interest in being able to blackmail people to get them to spy on their country or give up IP, then sure.

When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then sure.

When the tech companies actually start censoring aggressively and hunting people down(rather than just removing enough to satisfy angry people), then sure.

One problem is the data. The other (larger) problem is how each controlling entity wants to use the data.

Google wants to sell ads. They don't care about your porn preferences, whether you have a mistress, or whether you do drugs. Maybe the ads approach is obnoxious, but that is all it is. They want to sell stuff, not take over the world.

The Government of China wants power. They want influence. They want information. They want control. And no Chinese company is allowed to refuse its pursuit of those.

And even if both countries required the same absolute cooperation from their tech companies, governments In the West are very limited in their ability to take the kind of actions against their citizens that the Government of China can.

The US Government isn't even allowed to tax a newspaper excessively, yet alone throw the editor in jail for running critical content.

<comment><USER30> Comments like this demonstrate a severe lack of understanding around how intelligence today in the US works, especially in a post-Snowden world. Our government routinely performs dystopian forced mass-surveillance of citizens accompanied by gag orders.

> _When Google starts to have any inclination to put a bag over my head if I > search the wrong thing, sure._ > _When Google starts having an interest in > being able to blackmail people to get them to spy on their country or give > up IP, then sure._

The CCP could have all the data they want on you but there is almost nothing they can do about it because an ocean and a military separates you, outside some fringe cases.

The NSA, however, can and will use data they collect on you against you. The US government is no stranger to this, where COINTELPRO [1] used the results of domestic spying to try to put an early end to MLK and the Civil Rights Movement.

The US has caused demonstrable harm to citizens via surveillance yet you seem to support it compared to the less dangerous alternative out of some misplaced sense of patriotism.

> _When the US Government can unilaterally demand security cooperation from > Google in any way, shape, or form like the Chinese government can, then > sure._

Have you not heard of PRISM? The NSA? National Security Letters? The US routinely can and does force companies to give up information on citizens in the form of dragnet surveillance. One way to do this is a National Security Letter [2].

> _Google wants to sell ads. They don't care about your porn preferences, > whether you have a mistress, or whether you do drugs_

And neither does the CCP. Neither does the NSA, actually, unless they want something from you and to force you to do something.

> _The Government of China wants power. They want influence. They want > information. They want control. And no Chinese company is allowed to refuse > its pursuit of those._

Welcome to participating on a global scale. The US isn't the only country allowed to be a superpower. It's probably not good if China surpasses the US, but the US also doesn't have anywhere close to the moral high ground w.r.t. domestic surveillance as you mention.

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

[2]: [https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security- letters](https://www.eff.org/issues/national-security-letters)

<comment><USER29> > Our government routinely performs dystopian forced mass-surveillance of > citizens accompanied by gag orders.

With nowhere near the same implications.

> The US government is no stranger to this, where COINTELPRO [1] used the > results of domestic spying to try to put an early end to MLK and the Civil > Rights Movement.

The big difference being that COINTELPRO was not done with the authorization of Congress and instead lead to a Congressional investigation and later the Senate Intelligence Committee to provide oversight [1]. The airing of those abuses culminated in additional oversight of domestic intelligence activities.

In China, the airing of those abuses would end with the journalists being censored/bagged.

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

> The CCP could have all the data they want on you but there is almost nothing > they can do about it

Oceans are a great shield against blackmail...

> One way to do this is a National Security Letter

A National Security Letter is hardly an absolute order. They can be reviewed by a judge. They cannot include requests for content like messages. Those require a warrant. They can be beaten in court. They are not a broad tool that the NSA can apply as they wish for whatever ends they wish. Not only that, citizens are allowed to oppose it and elect legislators to repeal them.

> And neither does the CCP. Neither does the NSA, actually, unless they want > something from you and to force you to do something.

Except there is a massive difference in what each wants from you.

> but the US also doesn't have anywhere close to the moral high ground w.r.t. > domestic surveillance as you mention.

The lack of prisons full of political dissidents who committed thought crimes on the internet puts them head and shoulders above. The existence of an independent judiciary does as well.

<comment><USER31> > A National Security Letter is hardly an absolute order.

What % of NSL has been turned down ? FISA warrant rejection rate is like 12 for 30,000+ warrants. For all intents it is absolute order if the Courts hardly reject it.

> The lack of prisons full of political dissidents ...

Your prisons are fuller than any other large developed country more than 3 million people are in prison, your judicial systems are racially and economically biased . In a country embodying capitalism, is this not worse than putting dissidents in prison? At least they actually have to dissent before being put in jail, here the system is rigged such that poor hardly have a vote or voice, rich keep paying lower tax than middle class, and gets exploited and still _happily_ vote for the people robbing them blind.

Perhaps you have better rights as a citizen, the rest of us around the globe not so much.

China does not kill by drone extra judicially outside their country. I don't have to be afraid of clear skies.

I don't have to as afraid that I will be grabbed by Chinese Intelligence to a black site like Guantanamo bay with no legal course or judicial oversight.

I need to be lot more worried of U.S. funding and meddling in local politics than of China. Every single time U.S. has engaged in covert/ overt meddling in ME/Lat Am , Far East etc, it has always lead to lot of death and suffering.

For citizens of the world there is no protection, If I do business with FAANG outside the U.S. and even if keep my data outside, still U.S. courts have full rights to grab my data, against my country laws under which the tech giants supposed to operate in my country .

For all your rights and amendments against surveillance and wire-tapping _on paper_ , the rest of the world has none. Your security agencies can legally monitor at anyone at will without _any_ oversight.

U.S. companies have and continue to backdoor / frontdoor everywhere in the world as they please, and suffer no consequences.

Privacy and basic human rights should not be just American right, I hope rest of us get treated as humans too in your system.

Does it make China better? of course not! it is not whataboutism. _Both are bad_.

For rest of us, the U.S. has already done lot more damage. China will do lot more damage in the future no doubt, but today U.S. is in no position to talk .

<comment><USER32> >At least they actually have to dissent before being put in jail,

I mean, can't you say the same about the US? All you have to do is not commit crimes.

edit:

>China does not kill by drone extra judicially outside their country. I don't have to be afraid of clear skies.

A few comments down: [https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared- china-r...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/03/29/the-disappeared-china- renditions-kidnapping/)

<comment><USER33> There are hundreds of thousands sitting in US prisons who haven't been convicted because they can't post bail. There are judges being paid in the back by private prisons to convict and send innocent people to jail because it's good for business. US prison and justice system is completely broken.

<comment><USER34> Over-incarceration is big problem yes, but a red herring to the direct targeting and silencing of all political opposition.

<comment><USER33> They are taking people off streets in unmarked vans for protesting against police brutality and for BLM in the USA. If that isn't "being targeted for political opposition" Then i don't know what is.

<comment><USER32> At least you can plausibility make the case that they've committed some sort of crime (eg. property damage). Also, AFAIK no one had been "disappeared" (ie. they were released one or two days after). To be clear, the administration's actions were despicable and may be unconstitutional, but they're nowhere close to the actions that the CCP takes against dissidents and journalists. We haven't seen trump kidnap journalists from the "mainstream media" that he hates so much, for instance.

<comment><USER31> Those things are _illegal_ in China . Every country has its own idea of laws and freedoms . We may not like it , but according to their laws it is a legal action

For example , It is hard for me to see why drugs are criminalised so much in the U.S. a little weed could get you 10 years in prison till few years back ,civil forfeiture, abortion laws or why laws in your country all horrify me.

To understand guns laws , I will have to understand the rationale of second amendment the long history of gun ownership.

Similarly to under China today , there is 2,000 year history you will need to keep in context .

Again not defending China , it is important to see how we see things coloured by our own biases.

<comment><USER32> >Those things are illegal in China . Every country has its own idea of laws and freedoms . We may not like it , but according to their laws it is a legal action

Oh please, give me a break. There's no rule of law in China, only rule by law. Just ask the Canadians that _just happened_ to break some law _right after_ Meng got detained in Canada.

Also, "damaging property" as a crime and being detained near the scene of a protest turned violent is way more universally accepted as illegal than whatever trumped up charges of "spreading false rumors" that the Chinese legal system levies against dissidents.

<comment><USER35> > There's no rule of law in China, only rule by law.

There's an epidemic of extrajudicial killings in the US right now. Indefinite detention without trial and torture have been normalized under three presidents, and one can't expect change there under Biden, so we're looking at a quarter century of these policies at a minimum.

The danger of whataboutism is that the US doesn't have a leg to stand on anymore.

The most recent execution of Canadians in China have been on drug charges. They had trials, it's crime and punishment by the books. Sure, it's politically motivated, but is it worse than a drug dealer getting shot dead while running away from a police officer?

And when we look at the history of criminalizing drug use and possession, who's responsible? China started cracking down because the British demand for opium was harmful to the Chinese people. The US started, and continues to wage, a "war on drugs" which was really a war on marginalized populations and an excuse to exercise imperial power in the middle east and south america. Rule by law, indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Whoever the author is, I hope that he doesn't have a Uighur relative in Xinjiang in jail trying to get reformed and a friend in Hong Kong trying to free the country.

If you were in China, you couldn't even write an article criticizing Tiktok like here the author here is writing an article criticizing SV. Have some perspective.

</comment><comment><USER37> Great, now we have Jacobin articles pushed to the top page of HN. Breitbart next?

<comment><USER14> Do people consider Jacobin to be far right? If so that's a hilarious misreading

<comment><USER38> They're self declared socialists. And not medicare for all type socialism. They hold just as disgusting an ideology as breitbart.

<comment><USER33> Really like what? Any links to a disgusting article?

<comment><USER38> Admiring obituary for the founder of National Bolshevism.

[https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/eduard-limonov- obituary](https://jacobinmag.com/2020/03/eduard-limonov-obituary)

They're a propaganda piece, not a news outlet. Just a propoganda piece promoting murderous ideology, and it's even named after murderers who teamed up with slave owners.

<comment><USER39> And they operate in a country founded by slave owners

<comment><USER38> That certainly doesn't help things does it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The fact that the US press is willing to carry water for the Chinese Communist Party worries me more than Silicon Valley data collection, TBH.

<comment><USER41> This is Jacobin Magazine, an openly socialist publication. You shouldn't take their position as an indication of anything with regard to typical media.

I don't value much of what Jacobin has to say, but I would be more worried if there weren't voices able to say these things. You won't see an analog to this in China.

<comment><USER40> Mainstream press is quite willing to carry water for the CCP as well: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chinese- ambassador-c...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/chinese-ambassador- cui-tiankai-blaming-china-will-not-end-this- pandemic/2020/05/05/4e1d61dc-8f03-11ea-a9c0-73b93422d691_story.html)

<comment><USER41> I have no love for most of our media and find it deeply corrupt, but that is an opinion piece and is clearly labeled as such. Not saying your wider point is wrong by any means though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Jacobin Mag worries me more than silicon valley.

</comment><comment><USER43> These US is just as bad as China hot takes are so stupid.

<comment><USER39> I don't think "as bad" is the point. It's not a moral discussion, who is doing the spying is irrelevant.

The article literally says "Oppose It All". "Silicon Valley and the NSA would love us to think that it's who does the spying, not the spying itself, that's the real problem."

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Its really simple: Silicon Valley makes the US a shitton of money and keeps the US a superpower.

You will not get Americans to give it up. You will not get any US politician to slay the golden goose.</comment>


China's telescope on the moon - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28323-china-has-had-a-telescope-on-the-moon-for-the-past-two-years/ <comment><USER2> Not that it's not a cool project, but what possible reason is there to place the telescope _on the surface of the moon_ as opposed to say, in geosynchronous lunar orbit? As the article notes, the environment is much more extreme and the imaging base much less stable, and I don't see any particular benefits.

<comment><USER3> Off the top of my head:

\-- Trivial pointing; no need for active pointing stabilization (aside from thermal drifts).

\-- If you can do it on the earth-facing side of the moon, you can do it on the dark side of the moon, escaping stray light from the earth.

\-- You can watch one target for a very long time. Earth-orbiting telescopes have to be very careful about keeping the earth out of the frame. Even geosynchronous systems will point near the earth (for some azimuths) once a day. This will come near the earth and sun once a month (each).

\-- No need to maintain orbit. Can't hit anything, either.

\-- It's really cool.

Edit: Here's the wiki page: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chang%27e_3)

\-- You can look at Earth trivially.

\-- The UV imaging system is one of many instruments on the lander. Why not get a free ride to a great vantage point?

<comment><USER2> 1\. This doesn't change versus a satellite in geosynchronous lunar orbit.

2\. If you are on the dark side of the moon you can't transmit imaging back to earth for significant periods of time. Spacecraft computers need to be primitive as crap to deal with radiation and probably aren't packing gigabytes of storage outside the Van Allen belt. Also, I don't think stray light from Earth would conceivably be a problem except when the terminus is near the axis of the telescope.

3\. Also true of satellites in geosynchronous lunar orbit.

4\. I think this is more than outweighed by the environmental conditions.

5\. Agreed. And on further consideration cost is probably a concern. eg China is sending a moon probe, would you rather have a telescope on the surface of the moon or none at all. A telescope in hand beats one two in the bush, and all.

<comment><USER4> geosynchronous lunar orbit is basically just a satellite sitting at the same distance from the earth. It's so far away from the moon that it's basically pointless to put something there unless your are observing the surface of the moon.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L4_diagram.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:L4_diagram.svg)

<comment><USER2> It's actually not, the L4 Lagrange orbit is something totally different from a typical satellite geosynchronous orbit. Consider the following link.

[http://freemars.org/l5/aboutl5.html](http://freemars.org/l5/aboutl5.html)

Just intuitively - think about the rockets you need to get a satellite level payload to geosynchronous orbit vs what it took to get space probes to lunar orbit (let alone exolunar or returning a craft to earth). Bear in mind that staging is an exponential problem, the more mass and the more total delta-V you need, the problem gets exponentially worse. Small satellites can be launched what amounts to a SRBM and a small kicker, to get even a small probe to lunar orbit you need an ICBM plus a pretty decent kicker to handle translunar injection and lunar orbiting. To get a spacecraft there you need, well, a Saturn-V plus a decent kicker plus a small rocket for everything else.

Geosynchronous satellites started in 1963 (Syncom 1) but the Lunar Orbiter program didn't start until 1965. That doesn't make sense if geosynchronous orbit was beyond lunar orbit. And if geosynchronous orbit was an equal distance, it would be trivial to put satellites into trailing orbits and cover the lunar blind spot. Lagrange points are a different (but very useful) orbital equilibrium. Particularly the Sun-Earth LaGrange points - these are indeed very far from Earth and have a very useful vantage point for all sorts of things. So far it's mostly been used for things like solar observatories.

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the info, but I wasn't talking about geosynchronous orbits. I was talking about the term the GC used: 'geosynchronous lunar orbits'. i.e. an orbit synchronous to the rotation of the moon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article is not particularly useful. I like space and space tech, but this article just declares something to exist and doesn't go into any interesting details. I might as well read a press release from the chinese space agency.

<comment><USER3> The link at the bottom links to their arXiv preprint: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01435](http://arxiv.org/abs/1510.01435)

Plenty of goodies there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> in 5 years from obscure and forgotten article at arxiv.org we shall all know that China has had geology probe successfully operating on Mars since 1999.</comment>


Apple v. Samsung: More Unredacted Documents Surface - <AUTHOR> http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20121004050859829 <comment><AUTHOR> Groklaw has quite a lot of detail about the jury foreman and his bankruptcy.

It's really rather unsavoury, drawing all sorts of implications and making a number of unpleasant semi-accusations.

That's disappointing. A stupid patent case is stupid and there is plenty to discuss there, without dragging someone through the mud for something they did in their past.

<comment><USER2> Groklaw brings up these points because they're relevant to the case, not to "drag him through the mud." The prosecution needs to convince the jury beyond a reasonable doubt, WITHOUT preconceived notions of any kind. This jury foreman had history with patents that he brought to the jury which influenced their decision. That, by definition, is not a fair trial.

<comment><USER3> Which does place a lot of questions with what Samsung's legal team was doing during the jury selection. One of the questions asked of him was whether or not he had obtained a patent. He answered in the affirmative, and that should have been enough for Samsung's team to consider him a potentially biased witness. I've personally seen potential jurors thrown out for less of a reason when I had jury duty.

<comment><USER4> He lied (or at the very least was not entirely truthful) during jury selection. Samsung can't account for that.

<comment><USER5> Well, under the standard oath, to which people are sworn when offering testimony, not providing the whole truth counts as lying. It's cases like this that justify the wording of the oath ("the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth").

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sorry but didn't Samsung have a legal team at this trial as well? I'm not sure why all the hate for Apple in this post . Their legal team did their job. Its Samsung's legal team's job to parse the statements correctly for the Jury (I really don't know, but do they still have access to the guy who wrote these emails?)

<comment><USER7> If you've been following the case, there were several times when Samsung was unable to file responses due to some sort of time restriction. I have no idea if that's because Samsung fucked up or not -- it was groklaw's interpretation that the judge was being much more strict than is the norm on these matters.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I thought there were going to be some analysis of some documents, then it veered off into discussing how much the jury foreman made and how his wife didn't work and what he spent on what...

<comment><AUTHOR> There's a bit of analysis at the end of the post but the stuff about the foreman is unpleasant.

<comment><USER7> I would say there's more than a bit of analysis. It's a long post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Now I can say I vomit at groklow's general direction without any reservation.</comment>


Quora is down? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Gives me a 503 page every single time I try.. [http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.quora.com/](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/http://www.quora.com/)

</comment><comment><USER2> Who cares? I've never found Quora compelling or useful...</comment>


Making Games Better for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NGe4dzlukc <comment><USER2> The irony (hoping I'm not doing an Alanis here) of he being an audio only video is excruciating.

Again: I am super done with 5+ minute videos that would be faster to read and more universally available as an article or slideshow.

I can't comment on the content because I'm not somewhere I can listen, and I don't want to spend 20 minutes listening.

<comment><USER3> > The irony (hoping I'm not doing an Alanis here) of he being an audio only > video is excruciating.

The video has accurate subtitles. The content is also fairly well matched to the narration; it shows lots of great examples of what to do and what not to do.

<comment><USER2> The video takes 13 minutes, so the subtitles also take 13 minutes (that's why I explicitly mentioned time).

So even if I did read it at the extraordinarily slow rate of spoken word, it would not contain information that could have been conveyed in an article that took 13 minutes to read.

As for "lots of great examples": I have literally no problem with videos in an article, that's one of the big advantages articles on the web have over printed pages. I suspect that with a textual summary on each clip and the detailed body article the actual value of the example would be much better.

I think a good way of assessing the time/value of a video like this would be to copy out the transcript, and then put the appropriate clip at each point in the article. If you do that you'll find there is way less information than warrants a 13 minute video.

[edit: it's 13 minutes, not 20. Who knows how my brain got there, but that will teach me for not verifying numbers before posting them :)]

<comment><USER3> > The video takes 20 minutes

It's a 13 minute video and at 2x, I watched and read it in less than 7 minutes. This was a comfortable reading pace for me and I'm not sure I could have read it any faster had it been an article with pictures or embedded video (probably slower, since I'd have to interrupt my reading to play the videos separately).

Even at 1x speed, I'm not sure where the other 7 minutes to make this a 20 minute video are coming from.

When I originally read your comment, I assumed the "irony" was that it was all audio about being deaf/HOH-friendly -- especially since you said "I'm not somewhere I can listen" \-- but since it had subtitles, I just wanted to add that information to ensure that other people weren't similarly misled.

<comment><USER2> Haha, my bad for not checking the time - I'd swear I read 20, but I'm also fairly certain no one edited and reposted the video in the intervening time :D

The irony was that the value proposition benefited people with hearing over those with limited or none.

I'm going to try and just list very simple issues with your "read the subtitles" vs my "write an article" desire:

* reading a subtitles is slower than reading block text, both due to implicit blocking that most people use while reading (vs explicit blocking of trained speed readers). * reading is outright harder due to the text being on moving backgrounds (this is probably limiting your comfortable reading speed). * the video is meant to be providing relevant examples, but this means you are forcing the reader to try and do two visually demanding tasks at once: reading the text, and watching the video, and by default the text is overlaid on top of the video. This also further contributes to the slower than normal reading speed. * bandwidth: to read the subtitles I need to be watching, and therefore downloading, the video, and the audio. Also it means I'm downloading video content that I have literally no need for: the graphics that fill in the time between examples.

Note I'm not attacking the content, but rather than presentation of that content.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> another great example is patapon, a rhythm game that's still quite accessible thanks to the border visual cues about the beat to follow, i.e.

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

</comment><comment><USER5> Very interesting video! Thanks for the share! It's a point I'd never considered...

<comment><AUTHOR> You're welcome! I also hadn't thought much about this topic before, which is one of the reasons why I shared this video. I _did_ hear about the Minecraft subtitle/closed caption initiative back when development of it was active, but sooner or later forgot about it again.

<comment><USER5> And I guess that's the whole point, these types of accessibility issues keep being left as an afterthought rather than the standard</comment></comment></comment>


A Startup That Could Actually Change The American Education System - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/clever-y-combinator-student-information-systems-2012-8

<comment><AUTHOR> Clever is YC S12, and we're hiring: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4450796></comment>


ConvNet-Based "End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars" - <AUTHOR> http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.07316 <comment><USER2> Very impressive! The video from the paper is worth a watch: [https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9raQzOpizn1TkRIa241ZnBEcj...](https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B9raQzOpizn1TkRIa241ZnBEcjQ)

From the paper: "We have empirically demonstrated that CNNs are able to learn the entire task of lane and road following without manual decomposition into road or lane marking detection, semantic abstraction, path planning, and control. A small amount of training data from less than a hundred hours of driving was sufficient to train the car to operate in diverse conditions, on highways, local and residential roads in sunny, cloudy, and rainy conditions. The CNN is able to learn meaningful road features from a very sparse training signal (steering alone)"

Wow!</comment>


Netherlands teen legally euthanized due to 'unbearable' pain - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2019/06/04/netherlands-teen-raped-as-child-legally-euthanized-due-to-unbearable-pain/ <comment><AUTHOR> This turned out not to be quite true!</comment>


Bay area to Hawaii: Southwest Airlines offers Hawaii flights - sahin-boydas https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/southwest-airlines-hawaii-fare-sale/index.html <comment> sahin-boydas Southwest Cards

[https://www.southwest.com/html/rapidrewards/partners/credit-...](https://www.southwest.com/html/rapidrewards/partners/credit- cards/southwest-airlines-rapid-rewards-cards/index.html?clk=GSUBNAV-RR-VISA)

I have a southwest priority card, and I am pretty happy about it.

</comment><comment> sahin-boydas It is from San Jose and Oakland airports.

Amazing tips from the points guys [https://thepointsguy.com/guide/southwest- flights-to-hawaii/](https://thepointsguy.com/guide/southwest-flights-to- hawaii/)</comment>


The (Unspeakable) Ultimate Machine - <AUTHOR> http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/the_unspeakable.php

<comment><USER2> A software equivalent could be a GUI program which steers the mouse pointer to the close-button in the window's title bar and synthesizes a click there.

</comment><comment><USER3> The tricky part seems to be retreating the arm into the box after switching the machine off.

<comment><USER4> Use a latching relay or something. Not too tricky.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay#Latching_relay>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just love this thing. It's completely perfect and perfectly complete.

</comment><comment><USER6> Reversing the arrow of time on this kind of thing has provided intellectual entertainment for ages ... Nowadays, the most frequent answer seems to be "In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded" - which may be true but is obviously unsatisfactory to brains addicted to pattern-matching and causality- finding.

Flipping the arrow forwards again, there's the "immanentize the eschaton" angle.

Thanks for the link/article. Shannon is on my "people I admire" list, and I've read some of his papers and looked around in the AT&T site, but this titbit had escaped me before.

Do check the link in the article, <http://www.research.att.com/~njas/doc/shannonbio.html> (and there's more links in that page): "the man who invented a rocket-powered Frisbee and who juggled while riding a unicycle through the halls of Bell Labs." Ha!</comment>


Stick to Your Minimum Monthly Payment When Buying a Car from a Dealership - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5872919/stick-to-your-minimum-monthly-payment-when-buying-a-car-from-a-dealership <comment><USER2> I'm not sure I get this? Putting down more up front, and paying more per month, means you'd pay the loan off faster and will pay _less_ interest overall, right? So you'd come out ahead. Why is that bad?

<comment><AUTHOR> I believe they are suggesting staying with the minimum so that you have the _option_ to pay it off faster when you can. Which, yes, you should. But otherwise, if you're ever in a bind and you let them pick a higher minimum, you may resort to, say, higher credit card payments to make up the difference.

It's just slightly riskier to have a higher minimum rate, especially when you could easily prevent it.</comment></comment>


Time to ditch that soda.. - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-12597970

<comment><USER2> Does anyone know if this is peculiar to HFCS in soft drinks? The study came out of the U.S., where HFCS has a stranglehold on the sweetener market due to government subsidies, yet HFCS has several side-effects that sucrose ("table" sugar) doesn't.</comment>


Shor, I'll do it - <AUTHOR> http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208 http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208 <comment><USER2> Wonderful article, but link entered into text field rather than URL field. <http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=208> (clickable version). Beautiful explanation of the Quantum Fourier Transform and some practical aspects of quantum computing without any domain-specific math.

</comment><comment><USER3> Unfortunately he did not credit Feynman for the 'clock' analogy, who I believe originated this way of describing quantum processes.

</comment><comment><USER4> I know I just read something amazing, but my head hurts.</comment>


Show HN: Connecting travelers with local hosts over coffee - <AUTHOR> https://zojuba.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey, creator here.

Our goal is to be the 2016 version of guide books and online reviews - travelers grabbing coffee with local hosts who have years of local experience and knowledge. It's a great way for travelers to personalize and plan their adventures in a new land - food, entertainment, activities, nightlife, history - with a local host who shares their interests.

Would love to hear your thoughts and whether you would use Zojuba as a traveler.</comment>


Psychedelic drugs may transform mental health care - <AUTHOR> https://fortune.com/longform/psychedelic-drugs-business-mental-health/ <comment><USER2> Non-paywalled version on MAPS:

[https://maps.org/news/media/8046-fortune-business-gets- ready...](https://maps.org/news/media/8046-fortune-business-gets-ready-to- trip-how-psychedelic-drugs-may-revolutionize-mental-health-care)

<comment><AUTHOR> Turning on reader mode in Firefox removes the paywall for me in the original article, but thanks for posting the link to that organization, looks useful.</comment></comment>


The top GitHub projects per country - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hoffa/the-top-github-projects-per-country-92c275e19409? <comment><USER2> Why remove top 75 and not choose the most disproportionately starred project per country instead (as compared to some global avg)?</comment>


Getting Over Uber - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/backchannel/getting-over-uber-fdf75faf7f6e <comment><USER2> Very Interesting response to this from Tim O'reilly:

[https://medium.com/@timoreilly/getting-over- taxis-79849b3a42...](https://medium.com/@timoreilly/getting-over- taxis-79849b3a4282)

<comment><USER3> I very much agree with Tim's points here. Susan's points in the original article seems to boil down to some kind of... nostalgia... for what taxis once were or could be.

The fact of the matter is that taxis tend to suck. Bad cars, poor technology, expensive fares, rude drivers. It's only recently that I _haven 't_ been routinely hassled for cash because of a "broken meter". The only benefit to traditional taxis is that I can hail them on the street or find them at a taxi stand (downtown).

We as a country and a people need to crack the "gig" economy for other reasons, but there's no denying that Uber is a breath of fresh air.</comment></comment>


Farewell to Node.js v5, Preparing for v7 - <AUTHOR> https://nodejs.org/en/blog/community/v5-to-v7/ <comment><AUTHOR> Standard Node.js, Javascript, and npm vitrol aside, I think this post covers an interesting topic of balancing progress with stability. I'm sure everyone has their own opinion on what is too fast (breaking things) or too slow (lacking modern language features and engine improvements), but the model they describe seems to do a pretty good job of appeasing both agile and inertial clients.

Still, a rapid release cycle for the engine could wreak (and to some extent _has wreaked_ ) havoc with the npm module ecosystem not keeping up.</comment>


OpenStreetMap gets new, easier to use in-browser editor - <AUTHOR> http://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/08/23/id-in-browser-editor-now-default-on-openstreetmap/

<comment><USER2> iD developer here. I did a series of posts on the architecture of iD that folks here might find interesting:

[http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/26/id-architecture- part...](http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/26/id-architecture-part-1/) [http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/27/id-architecture- part...](http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/27/id-architecture-part-2/) [http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/28/id-architecture- part...](http://www.mapbox.com/osmdev/2013/02/28/id-architecture-part-3/)

<comment><USER3> I've been following iD development on github ([https://github.com/systemed/iD/](https://github.com/systemed/iD/)) since last year, and I honestly think that reading through its source is the single best case study I've come across for application development with D3. It's pretty phenomenal. Perhaps I'm a bit biased since I work on map stuff as well, but I think pretty much anyone thinking about using D3 to build anything larger than one-off visualizations would do well to see how it's put to use in iD.

Hats off to you guys, great work!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The iD editor is _really_ slick. Glad to see this is becoming the default editor on openstreetmap.org. It deserves it.

For the impatient, here is what it looks like: [http://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/id_...](http://blog.openstreetmap.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/05/id_animated.gif)

<comment><USER5> Unrelated .... but did you create that animated gif on a mac? Which tool did you use?

<comment><USER6> FWIW...

        $ ffmpeg -i input.mp4 -r 30 -f image2 frame-%5d.jpg
        $ gm convert -delay 20 -loop 0 frame-*.jpg output.gif

Ffmpeg is probably able to convert a video directly into gif, but I couldn't get it to work from a single Google search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Since I obviously have some OSM developers in the room, can somebody point me to the right place to query against OSM mapping data? That is, if I want to get all one-way streets and stop-lights within my area, how do I do that? I've tried the various tools that send you a subset of the map (they don't seem to work) and the "download the whole OSM map and play with the XML" seems like a good way to choke on the data... Anybody got pointers?

<comment><USER8> If you're wanting to query the data importing into PostGIS is a fairly straightforward way to do it. And you don't have to download the whole planet in one go.

<comment><USER9> +1 to this. Metro Extracts: [http://metro.teczno.com/](http://metro.teczno.com/) along with osm2pgsql: [http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql](http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Osm2pgsql) is the way to go.

<comment><USER10> Be aware that those extracts are squares around the cities - they're not exact city border outlines. This means that you can't just use the data without concern for whether the things you're gathering are actually within the city or not.

I haven't found a very simple way to get everything within exact city borders, yet. This is the process I've been going with so far: [https://github.com/JamesChevalier/cities#cities](https://github.com/JamesChevalier/cities#cities)

<comment><USER8> That is a very useful resource; thank you.

Some cities make shapefiles available for urban growth boundaries and city limits. It's worth enquiring. But be aware that some cities city limits are not simple polygons; depending on local ordinances you can see islands, internal voids and peninsulas attached with zero width stems.

<comment><USER10> True! Like Houston, TX ... which looks a little like the flying spaghetti monster ... [http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=3675...](http://nominatim.openstreetmap.org/details.php?place_id=3675649666)

The poly files that you get from the process outlined in the readme file will include islands/voids. It's pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> s-phi-nl Note that this is partially a result of the Knight Foundation grant to Development Seed that was reported a couple of years ago. [http://www.mapbox.com/blog/knight-invests- openstreetmap/](http://www.mapbox.com/blog/knight-invests-openstreetmap/)

Nice work!

</comment><comment><USER11> Nice. In the older editors, I always had trouble figuring out how to categorize points of interest. For example making a node a restaurant/bank/etc was always a hit or miss operation. Most of them wouldn't stick, if they even had one that made sense. I hope that's been fixed.

<comment><USER12> Sure has.

iD has large number of built in presets and also transparently queries [http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/](http://taginfo.openstreetmap.org/) for the more eccentric stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> BTW if anyone is looking for an area to dive in, please feel free to help me map Andhra Pradesh [http://freyfogle.tumblr.com/post/57007174879/mapping- andhra-...](http://freyfogle.tumblr.com/post/57007174879/mapping-andhra- pradesh)

</comment><comment><USER14> Is it easy to add a roundabout yet? I've wanted to make a whole bunch of improvements to OSM and keep getting stuck when trying to turn an intersection into a roundabout.

<comment><USER15> You need to draw a circle and mark it one way, and tag it junction=roundabout

<comment><USER14> And then do I have to bisect the existing roads and rejoin them to the circle somehow?

Why can't I just change an intersection into a roundabout, perhaps with a slider to select the diameter?

Surely from a metadata point of view it makes more sense to store the describable facts rather than a bunch of road segments that emulate a circle.</comment></comment></comment>


Why Most Published Research Findings Are False - <AUTHOR> https://www.dropbox.com/s/7qdg3lswkmq9pzz/Ioannidis%202005%20Plos%20Med.pdf?dl=0 <comment><USER2> Not new (2005), but certainly still newsworthy. Too many scientists, too few first-rate problems to attack, and too many small studies of marginal topics whose statistical basis is more questionable than the attention they get from a breakthrough-hungry popular science press.

</comment><comment><USER3> I find the premise depressing, and maintain that this doesn't happen in hard sciences and engineering except anecdotically, and also know of researchers in biomed who are irreproachable and would find the gross generalization taken as far as here simply untrue. It's not that the research activity is perfect, but serious debate needs to be more sophisticated than 'most restuls are false'.</comment>


Your Genes Won't Make You Rich - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/your-genes-wont-make-you-rich/

<comment><USER2> They will if your parents are wealthy.</comment>


Ask HN: How to ping a specific user on Hacker News? - <AUTHOR>

How do you ping a specific user on hacker news to ask them a question?<p>Gracias <comment><USER2> Click their username in the post, usually you'll see in the 'About:' section an email address.

</comment><comment><USER3> if they want to be contactable, they'll put that info in their profile.</comment>


Valve's Steam Controller Assembly Line [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCgnWqoP4MM <comment><USER2> Modern assembly lines are truly beautiful.

Something that's unique about this video that I don't think I've seen in any other assembly line video is the actual build phase (starting at 0:17), really neat! The line itself looks fairly simple and modular. Would be interesting to find out how much equipment is off-the-shelf vs custom built for their needs.</comment>


The Xerox Star: A Retrospective (1989) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www-lb.cs.umd.edu/class/spring2008/cmsc198G/Handouts/XeroxStar.pdf <comment><USER2> Go Terps! UMD has a lot of experience with Xerox Stars.

When Mark Weiser [1] was at the University of Maryland, he talked Xerox PARC into donating a huge pile of Xerox Star workstations, printers, file servers, software and money to the University of Maryland CS Department, so even the secretaries could use them to make posters announcing the annual CS Department picnic.

So when we eventually got our hands on a 512K "Fat Mac", it was kind of a disappointment that seemed like a tiny slow little low resolution one-button Xerox Star without any networking or hard disk.

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

<comment><USER3> Well the Xerox Star was $16,000, the Mac $2,000. And the Mac did have localTalk, a super cheap 232 kbps office network that worked really well.

When the Mac was released, the Xerox team actually had a much different reaction than yours. Notice the screen shots in the PDF, every object fits in a rectangular area. The original Mac supported non-rectangular regions, making it's graphics far more advanced than the Star, despite the much lower power hardware. Xerox engineers were flabbergasted the Mac could do that.

<comment><USER4> Indeed, one of the big reasons for the Mac's early success was built-in networking.

GUI + standard networking + laser printer = revolution of graphics design and production

<comment><USER5> And may be providing Apple an inside track with MSM to this day...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I wrote microcode for the Dandelion (we used the internal names for the machines at PARC). You could boot it into completely disjoint worlds: Smalltalk, Mesa, Interlisp (this is what I used) or the Star environment -- they weren't simply apps running under a common OS.

After the Alto, all of PARC's custom workstations (Dolphin, Dorado -- an ECL machine!, and the Dandelion) were generically called D-machines.

</comment><comment><USER7> The Xerox star: so far ahead of its time, it's still ahead of its time.

</comment><comment><USER8> The Xerox Star alongside Mesa and Tajo/XDE development environment was a great system, with type safety, developer and user productivity in mind.

<comment><USER9> Interesting to see that GUI essentials have not changed that much.</comment></comment>


Snowden's advice – encrypt everything - <AUTHOR> http://www.cso.com.au/article/540162/nsa_setting_fire_internet/

<comment><USER2> It's the right advice. If routine communication and storage were encrypted, the value of dragnet surveillance would be degraded, perhaps to the point of losing all practical value.</comment>


Google disputes Android botnet spam claim - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18734852 <comment><USER2> The fact that Yahoo's mail app allows session hijacking over open wifi seems like a much more plausible explanation than an Android botnet that is weirdly geographically limited.

Or if there actually is an Android botnet, the problematic history of (in)security in Yahoo's mail app combined with the fact that the spam is using it suggests that that is where attention should be focused.

</comment><comment><USER3> "He added that it was 'entirely possible' that the spammers had faked the message formatting to make it look like it originated on a phone.

However, he added, there was no doubt that the number of malicious programs written for Android was on the increase. Given that he said: 'The reason these messages appear to come from Android devices is because they did come from Android devices.'"

Sorry, what? "It's possible I'm wrong, but because people are writing malicious programs for Android, I'm actually right."</comment>


Eat your own dog shit - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fray.it/post/31976587915/eat-your-own-dog-shit

<comment><USER2> I'm not quite sure what the phrase means to the author after reading the post. Is he/she referring to the standard (and less vulgar) software engineering concept of eating one's own dog food? If so, it seemed that the article went off in a bunch of other directions after that, amounting basically to the main idea that startups should work hard. If not, a definition of the term would be helpful to know the lesson to be learned from the article.

<comment><USER3> The lesson is "mix a well-known concept with some profanity to produce a vaguely intriguing title that will get your shitty startup attention on Hacker News".

<comment><USER4> Can't upvote this enough ... Blogs and "news" sites are publishing headlines that are more and more abrasive and controversial in hopes of getting clicks.

It's apparently working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Don't you mean dog _food_?

<http://catb.org/jargon/html/D/dogfood.html>

<comment><USER6> But that wouldn't make sense either, the post isn't about them using their own service in any manner.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> " The team realized that users had insufficient thoughts around what Fray was about in general."

Dear author, The reader of this blogpost also doesn't have a clue what Frey is about...

</comment><comment> SG- I have no idea what Fray is and i looked and tried clicking on a few things to take me to their app or product page and couldn't find it...

<comment><USER8> Well apparently:

> Fray is a mobile-based buyer-powered commerce marketplace that connects > offline businesses and individuals to global consumers. We revolutionize the > supply chain into a peer-to-peer exchange and empower users to create micro > enterprises.

But I'm still no more enlightened. And yeah, www & fray.it both redirect to blog.fray.it. So no idea where their actual app/product page is...</comment></comment>


Michael Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article1698.asp <comment><USER2> That was my bible when I was a kid, I spent so much time reading and pondering over it... It really is a great book although it's getting to be a bit outdated, a lot of the concepts and ideas can still be very useful.

<comment><USER3> _"... That was my bible when I was a kid ..."_

John Carmack learned from Abrash reading his graphics and assembler articles Dr.Dobbs ~ <http://www.firingsquad.com/features/carmack/page7.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've read this book some time ago, it's definitely a must-read, however I'm not sure how valid the assembler-tuning tips are on current processors.

Somebody should write a new edition of this book which takes account of multithreading optimizations and best practices.

<comment><USER5> I know that the classic SHL instead of multiplication has been out dated for a number of years. My Intel IA32 manuals confirm that this is now slower than the multiply operation in most cases.

<comment><USER4> That is pretty interesting, how can a shift operation be slower than a multiplication?

<comment><USER6> Maybe he means that things like reducing (a * 5) to (a << 2 + a) are now obsolete.

<comment><USER4> Where the latency of the (integer) multiplication is 3 clock cycles, of (integer) addition is 1 clock cycle and of (integer) shift it is also 1 clock cycle (according to the Intel® 64 and IA-32 Architectures Optimization Reference Manual [1]). Therefore the shifting is still faster than multiplication, however an optimization for 1 or 2 clock cycles doesn't make sense anymore...

[1] <http://www.intel.com/products/processor/manuals/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> IMVU is proud to be (one of the last?) users of Pixomatic, Michael Abrash and Mike Sartain's commercial software 3d renderer. Even today there's a surprising demand for software 3d rendering, especially in the laptop/netbook space: many (potential) users out there have terrible intel graphics accelerators but fairly fast dual core systems.</comment>


Redditors are outraged at r/news moderator's handling of Orlando shooting news - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailydot.com/politics/reddit-news-orlando-shooting-response/ <comment><USER2> The way the entire thing was handled was deplorable. I got shadowbanned for posting a link to a BBC article on the shooting, which I only did because I thought it was weird as shit that it seemed like no one had done so yet.</comment>


Applying Principles of Entrepreneurship to Your Life - <AUTHOR> http://mindfulentrepreneur.com/blog/2007/08/24/apply-entrepreneur-values-to-personal-life/

<comment><USER2> I don't mean to be a downer, but how many times can these principles be re- worded and written about by different people?</comment>


I made an app that randomises things. What would you use the app for? - <AUTHOR> https://randomise.me <comment><USER2> I wouldn't use it, but I did try it out. I've thoughts, but I'm not your target audience.

Put a pointer indicator on the right side, to indicate where success will be. (Eg, like [https://cms- assets.tutsplus.com/uploads/users/1557/posts/289...](https://cms- assets.tutsplus.com/uploads/users/1557/posts/28913/final_image/screenshot- preview.png) , though that's at the top.)

De-randomize your RNG so it doesn't have the same animation two times in a row.

Stop the animation after 5 seconds or so. If people want to see it again, they'll hit randomize a few times.

The rocking wheel is a nice touch. Have it rock once or twice more.

Start spinning on down-press, and don't start the slowdown until release.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for taking the time to use and your feedback.

I'll ask some other people about the Pointer Indicator and see how others feel about it? But I what you are saying.

Yeah, I reduced the time it takes to spin. I should just get to the point :)

I think I'll add some more gif from giphy.com. Any good ones you guys recommend?

Have a great and thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Feedback would really help me improve the app. I use to save meal plans.

</comment><comment><USER3> Deciding dinner plans with this is cool by allowing a larger chance of something occuring. Decided my dinner tonight. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> It makes me so happy to hear that :) The app saves the list to your cookies so you that when you come back the app it remembers your dinner ideas. You can also save the list to your google spreadsheet if you really like your list.</comment></comment>


Rackspace makes node-elementree (JS XML API) open-source - <AUTHOR> http://www.rackspace.com/blog/node-elementtree-node-js-library-to-build-and-parse-xml-documents/

<comment><USER2> Sadly the parser is fairly synchronous. I would be nice if they took the SAX- ish approach of firing events (which I guess you can on top of this). Then again, I suppose there are already a couple of SAX JS implementations.

</comment><comment><USER3> Someday, someone will implement the W3C DOM API in node so that it's possible to parse XML with the same code on both the client and server. Until then, I guess I'll keep serving with xpcshell.

<comment><USER4> Some day was two years ago:

<https://github.com/tmpvar/jsdom>

<https://github.com/andreasgal/dom.js>

<comment><USER3> jsdom is great if you want to parse HTML and don't care about speed. The last time I tried it (which was <1 year ago), jsdom didn't have full support for namespaces, so it's not so great if you want to parse non-trivial XML. I haven't tried dom.js, but until recently, I don't think it would run under node at all because it needs proxies and WeakMaps.

Even for HTML, jsdom is too slow to use in production, at least for our use cases. (My tests run at least one order of magnitude faster in xpcshell. I can easily download HTML faster than jsdom can parse it.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> rackspace is doing a lot these days in OpenSource</comment>


Google Maps mashup for post earthquake services in NZ - <AUTHOR> http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/canterbury-earthquake/4104685/Graphic-Post-quake-services

<comment><AUTHOR> Big aftershocks still causing damage this morning: [http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/canterbury- earthquake/410573...](http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/canterbury- earthquake/4105730/Quake-Major-aftershock-hits-Canterbury)

The map isn't really groundbreaking but I was surprised to see it, I still have low expectations of technology and our media here.

</comment><comment><USER2> also relevant is <http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/> which plots quakes over time based on GNS data

<comment><AUTHOR> It looks like it's being bombed!</comment></comment>


Normal Mapping / Metal Detecting Camera Extension - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/REj9a <comment><USER2> This is an amazing project - excellently well done!

And the BOM is a lot more reasonable than the writeup suggests, too: a Nikon D40 would've run $800 new with a lens kit, but it's over a decade old now - you'd be getting ripped off to pay more than a C-note for a NIB one today. You'd get higher resolution with a newer camera - 20-24mp vs. the 6mp of the D40 - but for this application I'm not sure how much value that'd bring.

One thing I'd note is that the lens, an 18-55 similar to one of mine, doesn't appear to have its zoom ring fixed in place. I'm not sure that is intentional, and if (as seems likely) the camera FOV is a term in the depth calculation, it'd be worth either fixing the zoom or reading the focal length from the images' EXIF data to use as an input to the calculation.

One other note - the Nikon D-series cameras also support an electronic cable release, with shutter triggering done by simply shorting a pair of pins on the connector. While the bare plugs aren't available so far as I know, there are many third-party cable releases available for just a couple of bucks, and it would be easy to cut the cable off one of them, trim it to length, and switch the shutter with a transistor. Might save effort and improve reliability over the IR method. (I do use an IR remote release with my D5300, but only in cases where the cable release presents risks, as for example long-exposure effects with a Tesla coil - I've seen it couple enough EMI into the release cable to trigger the shutter and even reboot the camera. But it's occasionally tricky to trigger the shutter via IR, so I prefer a cable release when I can use one.)

Again, an excellent project, and one I'm glad to see here on Hacker News!

</comment><comment><USER3> Brilliant, though the metalness maps seem more like low-threshold specular maps (you can see metallic spot readings on the strictly dielectric material [bakelite?] on that handle).†

The way to correctly detect metalness would also involve checking for coloration of the reflected light (which is not present with specular dielectric materials [but may be confused with subsurface scatter coloration]).

Update: † Looks like he knows this, and just hasn't gotten around to implementing it yet.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, it would seem if you're simply looking for the difference between images with and without polarized filtering, you'd pick up all manner of smooth reflective surfaces--water, glass, plastic, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> OK, I love a good build story like any other geek out there, but I'm not sure what the purpose of this is? The article says to detect metals? Or capture 'textures' of fine grained surfaces?

Any clarifications would be welcome!

<comment><AUTHOR> Normal maps are a technique used in 3D graphics to emulate surface details on a mesh (3D model). Think of a brick house - if you want to render a detailed close-up view of the wall, the naive approach would be to include the seams between individual bricks in the wall mesh itself and render that. But that takes a lot of effort for the modeler and greatly complicates the mesh in terms of how many polygons it consists of. Alternatively, you can use a flat mesh and specify a normal map - an additional 2D image that, when applied on top of the wall texture, encodes which parts of it are protruding/depressed compared to the base level of the mesh. This way you can model a bunch of buildings using simple boxy meshes and then implant details to the walls using a combination of textures and normal maps.

The project above automatically creates normal maps of metallic surfaces using a camera extension. This is useful for 3D modelers, since they no longer need to have special normal maps manually created for each surface type in a scene.

<comment><USER5> OK, I am familiar with normal maps, now I get what the use case is. Thanks for the clarifications!</comment></comment></comment>


In Colorado, a Rebranding of Pot Inc. - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/fashion/in-colorado-a-rebranding-of-pot-inc-marijuana.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LargeMediaHeadlineSum&module=photo-spot-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news <comment><USER2> _"There is a huge untapped market here," said Ashley Picillo, a 26-year-old former teacher who runs a cannabis events agency and was the fair's co- organizer. "It's about reaching nonconsumers. Women. Young people. Business professionals. Grandmothers and soccer moms. People like me."_

Leave no leaf unturned, I suppose.

All that hard work and all those jail sentences for this for decades, just so some admen and adwomen can turn a buck. Fucking disgusting.

<comment><USER3> I really don't get the issue you have with this. Why do you think it is a bad thing that some people are trying to remove the stigma of cannabis consumption and make money doing it?

<comment><USER4> It sounds like your parent is pro-drug-war.

"We tried so hard to stamp it out, and now we are just going belly-up and some adman is trying to sell it to your grandma"

<comment><USER2> Quite the opposite.

The annoying thing is that there are people serving sentences for--and still being arrested for in other states!--possession of cannabis and cannabis accessories. That's awful.

Worse, though, to me is this McDonaldsization of the substance now that prohibition in Colorado is over. Read my quoted piece again: "Hurf durf untapped markets...let's got after soccer moms who never considered _trying_ the stuff! Let's go after kids, now that cigarettes are uncool!"

At least with the stoner culture there's well, _culture_ , there...dank and silly and stupid and fried, but it's a thing. This is just a bunch of sharp entrepreneurs looking to turn this whole thing into another suburban mass- produced targeted-advertised _thing_. No soul to it, no suffering, no risk, nothing but trendy dress codes and careful phraseology.

It _cheapens_ it somehow--a feeling like when I heard Lou Reed being played in a fucking Chipotle. Does that make my position clearer?

<comment><USER4> I would understand, if only I felt like there was depth to be cheapened in the first place. There is nothing deep and meaningful about drug culture that I'm aware of.

You make it sound like stoners were brave pioneers, facing risk and danger and suffering for a higher purpose. (Pun not intended?) But I never saw that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > "We're weeding out the stoners," ... "We want to show the world that normal, > professional, successful people consume cannabis."

In other words, pot for elitists. It's not enough to just open a different kind of store, the marketing has to establish a hierarchy. And people will eat it up too, who can resist the opportunity to signal that you're better than some other group of people?

<comment><USER4> Pot has an image problem. Are you unwilling to accept that?

Realistically, it can't be BOTH the property of countercultural rebels, AND completely legal. Pick your poison.

<comment><USER6> Tattoos are both legal and fairly counter culture.

<comment><USER4> I don't mean that "anything legal will become mainstream".

Cannabis though almost certainly will (or at least a step below- general acceptance but not universally used)

Its illegality was an obstacle to widespread acceptance that is being removed.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask YC: In exchange for giving up a 5% stake, would you accept $25,000 today or $50,000 6 months from now? - <AUTHOR>

Assume it's just money being offered, no experience, contacts, etc. <comment><USER2> I'd get a signature on the $50k 6 months from now, take that to the bank, and sell it to them in exchange for $48k today.

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on what my current needs/values are. If I was in the fashion industry and I knew that it was either have a booth at the Big Fashion Expo in September or wait until next September, I would opt for the $25,000 now since I could get started now - the $25000 would be more valuable to me now than $50k would be in January when we don't have any buyers.

</comment><comment><USER4> (need_money==now) ? "Yes" : "No";

</comment><comment><USER5> 6 months from now. Looking at it from a purely economic standpoint, a depreciation of anything from 1.4% to 6% a year is expected, depending on who you ask. The higher the figure, the less future money is worth.

But even at the top end, 6%, that 50,000 in 6 months is worth $48,500 today, so yes, i'd take it!</comment>