The day Steve Jobs dissed me hard - <AUTHOR> http://sivers.org/itunes <comment><USER2> All big companies spin and backtrack and screw people over, but what I think sets apple apart is their lack of communications. If you're going to screw me over please go ahead and tell me, preferably with a little notice. Don't make me stew in my stress flying my business blind. It is a lack of respect.

</comment><comment><USER3> Reading this I realized how scary Apple's reputation is, like you should expect them to do spiteful things. I hear invited to be pitched by Steve, pissed off their legal department, no answer... I would be wetting myself.

Reading this in 2003 probably wouldn't have had quite this effect.

<comment><USER4> It's Steve Jobs. He once went to a town hall meeting, just to tell them Apple has been in the city for so and so years, and how he's expanding the HQ and how things were going. That's all he wanted to say, nothing to complain about, but just reminding them who Apple is.

<comment><USER5> He obviously wanted some tax breaks for Apple for staying in Cupertino.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Lesson: pick unique price points so that you know when you are being dissed

</comment><comment><USER7> "Whatever. Fucking Apple.

We started encoding and uploading immediately."

What really struck me about this post is that he went back to Apple after being disrespected so hard. The lesson is there are times when you have to swallow a big lump of pride in order to better your business. I know I would have a hard time doing that.

<comment><USER8> I'm sure there are hundreds if not thousands of developers that could say the same of Microsoft.

Its probably the same for Walmart suppliers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Playing the devil's advocate here.

I have bought more than a couple of CDs from CD Baby and thanks to them I've been able to connect with more than a couple of wonderful artists.

However, from Apple's perspective, it must have seemed like CD Baby was simply trying to make a profit simply by guaranteeing access to the Apple Store, and therefore Apple decided not to move forward in order to protect its brand.

<comment><USER10> Except that Apple _didn't_ decide not to move forward -- Sivers _assumed_ that Apple had decided not to move forward, based on an offhand reference by Jobs in a keynote.

<comment><USER11> Exactly. I think most of this timing was circumstance, not causal.

Maybe they were just busy dealing with the bigger labels first, and put a positive public spin on their delay.

I was hanging on his every word, since we were hearing nothing else from them. So his keynote seemed to be a decision. Instead, it was just an important lesson on spin and circumstance.

<comment><USER12> The whole fiasco could have been avoided if someone had simply gotten back to you, though.

<comment><USER13> Amazing how a company with 500K tracks wasn't assigned a rep inside Apple. Has this changed?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I really don't understand everyone's reverence for Steve Jobs, but to me this shows how evil and manipulative he is ( not the first time hearing this about him). What people call timing, I call intentional to openly put it out there they want these independents, have others follow their lead and open their stores to independent artists, and then openly and publicly call every other service out there a joke because they let anyone on. Then the next day signing the contract. I highly doubt its all just coincidental.

<comment><USER15> > I really don't understand everyone's reverence for Steve Jobs

This should help clarify it:

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=AAPL+Basic+Tech.+Analysis...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ta?s=AAPL+Basic+Tech.+Analysis&t=5y)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Steve jobs may be a much greater innovator. But surely, can learn a thing or two, on integrity, from Derek Sivers.

Also this is a lesson in on how to have __only __loosely-coupled relations/dependencies with other companies (particularly, if they are big).

When need to go for tightly-coupled ones dependencies, expect it to break, and have a back-up plan.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wow. Really interesting to see Steve spin the smaller music collection of iTunes as a positive. I think this is going to make me consider his words more closely in the future.

<comment><USER18> My personal favorite: Steve Jobs Says 7-Inch Tablets Are 'Dead on Arrival'... Apparently, these devices are too small for a pleasant touchscreen experience.

I typed this from my 3.5 inch iPhone.

<comment><USER19> He said it's too small for an experience like you get on the iPad. And sure enough, apps on the iPhone are much more simplistic than apps on the iPad.

<comment><USER20> Yes. "7-inch tablets are tweeners: too big to compete with a smartphone and too small to compete with the iPad," is what he said.

<comment><USER21> Likely Steve Jobs has a 7" iPad prototype on his desk now... He can throw out a few remarks to try to stear people away from that size until Apple has that size in the market.

<comment><USER22> Nobody reads anymore... not until the iPad came out with an eReader... now reading is magical!

Steve Jobs is an absolute marketing genius. He's not exactly an unbiased observer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "I asked again, saying we had over 100,000 albums, already ripped as lossless WAV files, with all of the info carefully entered by the artist themselves, ready to send to their servers with their exact specifications. They said sorry - you need to use this software - there is no other way.

Ugh. That means we have to pull each one of those CDs off of the shelf again, stick it in a Mac, then cut-and-paste every song title into that Mac software. But so be it. If that's what Apple needs, OK."

It would take about a day for a competent programmer to figure out how to automate this process.

<comment><USER11> We had already automated it. But Apple was insisting we not use our own software or ripped files. That they had to come directly from the master audio CD.

<comment><USER24> I think you're misreading him.

If you really had lossless wavs and data, you could have emulated a 'CD' and had the apple software rip it, then put in the tags. Probably would have saved thousands of man hours compared to putting physical CDs in the drives.

<comment><USER11> Oh well. :-)

All turned out wonderful in the end. We never needed to re-rip the CDs after all. Apple took bulk-uploads the same as all the other companies. An incredibly efficient way of delivering over 2 million songs+metadata from one company to another.

A nice little collection of Ruby & PHP scripts on a stack of Linux servers & Windows encoding boxes did everything.

Unfortunately I'm not allowed to open-source that software since I sold it.

<comment><USER25> >Apple took bulk-uploads the same as all the other companies.

Wouldn't it have been cheaper and quicker to send a few hard drives with the data on by post?

<comment><USER26> It wouldn't be cheaper for Apple. They would need a lot more employes to handle these hard drives.

<comment><USER25> Really, with just music files on from known good sources in an already fixed format - I'm seeing them put it in a caddy, rip the files dumped from their app via antivirus scrubbers to a network drive or other local HDD and then [unfortunatley] chuck it in the bin. Would that be too hard?

They'd perhaps need an intern for that as a short term project. After the initial c.900000 music file (100,000 albums) then uploading would probably be more feasible.

900000 tracks of 5MB (assuming lossy compression) at 10Mbps would take over 40 days of 24-7 uploading (not allowing for errors and outages and such). 10Mbps was still quite fast for uploads in 2003 I think (faster than the current average in the US according to DSLreports). S-ATA RAID0 write bandwidth was about 34MBps at the time, roughly 27 times faster than the network in-flow; I'll assume read was faster and so this is the limit for disk-to-disk transfer. Assuming shipping took a couple of days you'd expect to finish the transfer a month quicker.

I'd be interested in how it would be cheaper for Apple for the initial round to accept uploads only, especially given this retards the lead time (to selling the tracks) by a month or more.

<comment><USER25> I'm genuinely curious as it seems I'm totally wrong on this point and HN'ers have an obvious answer to why I'm wrong, could someone be so kind as to tell me what glaring error I'm making in my analysis. Much obliged.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> A good lesson about dealing with corporate giants.

<comment><USER11> Yeah. Made me wary to tie any future business too closely to any one big company.

Also see <http://sivers.org/big-vs-little-clients>

<comment><USER28> Similar:

[http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/09/16/most- startups-...](http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/09/16/most-startups- should-be-deer-hunters/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is similar in a sense to how Adobe mishandled their "Flash on iOS" play, right from the start. They took it for granted that Apple would allow Flash- developed apps on the App Store.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm no going to defend Apple here, really, but rather to point out that Apple tends to _understaff_ , and what may read as malignancy from the outside can often be more charitably explained by too few people working too many hours.

<comment><USER22> Actually there's another guy from Apple on HN who is very clear that employees at Apple get all their core work done in 40 hours. They work extra hours to go above and beyond.

At least that's what he says...

<comment><USER30> That was not my experience. I'll leave it at that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> "Maybe you can't appreciate this now, but the summer of 2003 was the biggest turning point that independent music has ever had."

This has always struck me as interesting point from a music fan's perspective. It seems like the confluence of a lot of factor's led to expansion of independent music around this time.

2001, 2002 was around when cable and DSL prices started to drop outside of major cities. The opening of Itunes. And seemingly a lot of big time independent artists began to jump to major labels (or made major releases from smaller labels) and released very successful albums. Death Cab for Cutie, The Shines, and Modest Mouse off the top of my head.

Just an interesting phenomena I've always been curious about. This article was eye opening as to what one of the key forces in this move might have been.

</comment><comment><USER32> "They edit!" Classic.

</comment><comment><USER33> Good on you for refunding the $200,000.

</comment><comment><USER34> congrats, really, you had an amzing spirit of humility! my admiration goes to you!

</comment><comment><USER35> oh man, I saw this too early in the morning and read it as "The day Steve Jobs _kissed_ me hard" :)

</comment><comment><USER36> This posts proves something that I feel many seem to forget at times. Despite great products, Apple is human after all.</comment>


Recreation.gov - <AUTHOR> https://www.recreation.gov/ <comment><USER2> I worked in the bot defense space for quite some time, and it's insane how much of the bot efforts were dedicated to getting camping spots. I'm happy to see this being recognized because I had many summers ruined because I couldn't just get my old favorite camp spot.

<comment><USER3> In my experience many of the best camp sites I have been to have been in federal forest land on forest roads. The tougher the road the better (limits traffic). I have found some amazing places in Colorado that you could never reserve and they don't exist as official camp sites. You find a good spot and you camp. Camp grounds with packed in sites are... good for some things. I acknowledge this is a problem for some high traffic areas, but how natural and interesting is that kind of camping. It's a shade below glamping. This does make camping accessible and of course there are edge cases, but in general I just find it pretty uninteresting. Anyway, I acknowledge the problem, but it's also not really a problem for me and many people I know.

<comment><USER4> How do you find these spots? That sounds like a great excuse to bring out the 4x4.

<comment><USER5> These days, forest roads and primitive roads are often marked on Google / Apple maps and OpenStreetMaps. So asking your phone for directions to a national forest usually works well, as long as you check the camping rules and conditions ahead of time. You'll usually just see a series of pull-outs with fire pits and cleared areas along the unpaved roads.

Lands managed by the BLM or USFS usually allow dispersed camping in at least some areas, but it's still a good idea to double-check before you leave, and you should be aware that the same lands are often used for other activities like hunting, logging, horse-riding, grazing, offroad vehicles, etc.

You can also get more specialized outdoors mapping apps which can download data like USGS topographical maps and quad sheets for offline use. If you think you might like the backcountry, a satellite messenger is a good investment and those often have companion phone apps.

Don't forget to bring a big battery if you rely on electronics for mapping, though. And you can usually get decent paper maps from local NPS/USFS/etc visitor centers once you get to the area. The people in those visitor centers will also tell you where good sites / hikes / drives / views are, but then you have to actually talk to someone.

Also, read about pack-in/pack-out policies, what a cathole is, and how to keep your food from attracting animals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Recreation.gov has been around for years and it doesn't seem to have been updated substantially recently. It's a great resource and I hope people use it to visit US wildlife areas, but I am curious why it has been submitted.

<comment><USER7> My hypothesis was that a lot of folks (myself included) have started going hiking/etc on Black Friday instead of participating in the commercial aspects of the day? Anyways, I upvoted. Our parks/wilderness are one of the really great things about America.

<comment><USER8> Outside of southern states, a lot of us are well past the hiking/camping season this time of year, except for folks well experienced and equipped for winter recreation or just heading to local city parks.

<comment><USER9> If you're day hiking (and not camping or backpacking), this time of year is still great for hiking even in the northern states. Most people I know that go hiking in the local parks won't stop doing that until a few weeks from now.

Further, it's the start of hunting season in a lot of places, which means lots of people _are_ out hiking and camping to hunt.

<comment><USER10> Ironically, there are probably just as many regular hikers that stay in because of hunting season also. Or find trails on non-hunting lands during this time of year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Former SRE for the ground up rebuild of Recreation.gov - I gave a talk at Datastax's Accelerate conference this summer about how we built this site, and briefly covered how we combated bots for a while. Enjoy!

[https://youtu.be/gGDWkkj-UDg](https://youtu.be/gGDWkkj-UDg)

<comment><USER12> Out of curiosity, is there any reason why this video is shown as unlisted on youtube?

<comment><USER11> It was recorded/edited/posted by Datastax, gotta ask them. Though, I should probably download this and repost as myself on youtizzoob.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So excited to see this on Hacker News!

Brief Shoutout for anyone who would like to see a better online experience for our National Parks System:

1\. write into rec.gov asking for a booking API!

2\. join accessland.org

3\. build apps using Rec.gov's availability API

(disclaimer: I'm involved with accessland.org)

<comment><USER14> What with all the talk about bot abuse in this thread, an API may not be a good idea

<comment><USER13> currently it's only an information and availability API (can't make a booking). This _does_ make it easier to run a bot, but it also means that rec.gov servers aren't getting hammered by bots either, which is good for them.

An advantage of an API is that keys can be revoked for bad actors, so it at least gives some measure of control where there was none before.

I tend to agree that the lottery is the way to go for popular sites instead of first-to-book; it's fair and stops older folks from never getting a booking because they don't know how to build a faster bot.

There are a few other very effective hacks that I am loathe to publish here, but there _are_ ways to get sites for the determined.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The NPS and BLM sites are also good resources for finding information about different areas and activities:

[https://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm](https://www.nps.gov/findapark/index.htm)

[https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/](https://www.blm.gov/programs/recreation/)

As for campsite reservations, peak seasons will always be terribly crowded at major campsites. It's too bad that people are gaming the system, but if you need to rush to get a spot in line, you're probably not going to feel like you're out in the wilderness when you get there anyways. So if you aren't a huge fan of crowds and noise, try going during the off-season (like right now!) Also, consider checking out smaller state forests and parks during the summer months. And many forests and parks allow 'dispersed camping' in certain areas; you can usually find plenty of semi-maintained campsites along roads in those places when the maintained campgrounds are full or closed.

And if you go to these areas regularly, an annual parks pass might save you money, even if they usually only get you discounts on federal land:

[https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm](https://www.nps.gov/planyourvisit/passes.htm)

<comment><USER15> Great point. We stayed at a lot of campsites in California a few summers ago and wrestled with the bookings.

In the end our favourite spot was a quiet campsite in Lassen Volcanic park.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Recreation.gov was recently rebuilt and runs on Kubernetes. Details:

[https://www.wsj.com/articles/seeking-happy-campers- governmen...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/seeking-happy-campers-government- offers-revamped-travel-portal-11570742343)

<comment><USER17> Has that made any difference positive or negative? Or is it new tech for the sake of new tech?

<comment><USER18> As someone who used it frequently before and after, it's not really much better or worse. The primary user impact I've noticed is that the ui is more "modern" (ie has more spacing between everything)

<comment><USER19> Ah, must be the new kubernetes.js frontend framework :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> FYI recreation.gov also has an API: [https://ridb.recreation.gov/](https://ridb.recreation.gov/)

Edit: the National Park Service also has its own API: [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/developer/api- documentation.htm](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/developer/api- documentation.htm)

<comment><USER21> As far as I can tell it doesn't provide availability information, though.

<comment><USER13> there is definitely an availability API. I helped lobby for it! We also implemented it at Hipcamp

(If you can't find a signup form on the rec.gov website just contact them directly and ask for access. I think their team was rolling access out slowly as they hadn't finished building a fully fledged login system but last I checked they do want 3rd parties being able to build on top of that data)

<comment><USER20> That's super interesting. I didn't know about that. Any links to it?

<comment><USER13> email me and I can send you what I have if you are interested. eoin - at - sfdevlabs.com

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Front and center of any website to outdoor activities should include some education about Leave No Trace ([https://lnt.org/](https://lnt.org/)). It's an absolutely laudable effort to get more people outdoors. However, people new to the outdoors aren't very cognizant of the kind of footprint they leave behind, not to mention the *holes who intentionally throw trash at public parks like they're in their own backyards. For the former type, educational efforts should be enough to get them to pick up after themselves. For the latter, hopefully seeing more people speaking out about LNT would make them think twice about throwing trash around.

<comment><USER23> And for people who follow the LNT protocol, and perhaps even carry other people trash, the next step I suggest is to destroy bushcrafters' "shelters".

They disrupt soil, more often than not made out of live cut trees (and hinder wood decomposing when not) and 9 out of 10 times, will come with beer cans/tp scattered around and it's illegal to 'build' them on public land.

If you happen to see one, destroy it, you'll be doing well for the environment. In fact, USFS and NPS often do just that as part of their job.

Here is one guy who's work on that field inspires others: [https://douchepacker.com/2018/07/09/destroying- buschcrafter-...](https://douchepacker.com/2018/07/09/destroying-buschcrafter- shelters-a-how-to-guide/)

<comment><USER24> Not knowing anything about this topic, I'm curious about why this comment is downvoted.

<comment><USER25> They might be reactive downvotes over the domain name.

<comment><USER26> Geez, there are threats involving boobie traps and explosives in the comments. Some people...

My guess it's downvoted because maybe some readers here are offended that they're being called out.

Anything to _feel_ superior I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> They REALLY need recaptcha on park reservations, or some sort of other automation. I'm 90% sure that botting is the only realistic way to get campsites in some high demand areas (such as lower and upper pines of Yosemite).

I'm convinced the only reason there's not MORE scripts around to do it is because their API/web framework is impossibly ugly and not intuitive.

<comment><USER28> Why don't they run a lottery rather than first-come-first-served on a website?

<comment><USER29> That doesn't really obviate the need for a captcha, since the number of bots can be scaled arbitrarily high fairly easily.

<comment><USER30> Phone number deduplication is an easy way to increase cost on the spammers

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is fantastic. The search RP displays parks and sites in the increasing order of distance as well as the price from the input zip code, and pulls together places from different government agencies like Fish and Wildlife Service, NPS, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, etc.

They also seem to have a nice collection of KB articles under the 'Help' link [0] in the header.

[0] [https://recreationonestopprod.service- now.com/external](https://recreationonestopprod.service-now.com/external)

<comment><USER32> I can't be the only one who's not a fan of being served close to a megabyte of JavaScript for some support articles (site is useless without JS).

To add insult to injury, the landing page has a 2118x1415, 2.6MiB background image.[1] Doing a `-quality 70 -resize 50%` conversion to JPEG results in a mere 176KiB.

Although, having experienced service-now.com in other settings, it definitely could be worse.

[1] [https://recreationonestopprod.service- now.com/83f45a56dbbbab...](https://recreationonestopprod.service- now.com/83f45a56dbbbab009bf57d0e0f961946.iix)

<comment><USER33> Luckily the movement towards a sanity of legible, functioning websites seems to be picking up steam. Let's just hope it continues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It pisses me off when I see "All rights reserved" on a federal government page. The copyright for publicly-funded works should reside with the public, free for use by all.

<comment><USER35> The US Government asserts a copyright to its works in other countries. It's only with respect to US federal law that government works are not copyrightable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Exactly 6 months from today is last day of US Memorial Day holiday weekend. Lots of camping areas in the US require reservations within 6 months, making the today and the next few months the best days to get a reservation for popular summer US camping areas. Also note, recreation.gov is only for US Federal parks, many state and local parks will their own websites, apps or other systems for making reservations.

</comment><comment><USER37> Has anyone ever been able to make a reservation on that site? Anytime I look at locations they're either closed, or booked, or you have to plan a half year in advance.

<comment><USER22> The popular sites are booked within minutes of opening up. [Thus the complaints about bots.] That said, many of these sites have a limited number of spots reserved for walk-ins. So, have a couple of back up options if you're going to try your luck at a popular site.

Sites that don't have electric or water hookups may be easier to get since they're less popular with RVs. And the folks with RVs are experts at campsite reservation.

That said, go off the beaten path. Less people make for a more enjoyable experience. Some of my best car camping experiences have been on the side of a forest service road, especially one accessible only with a high clearance 4x4.

Sites that are accessible only by foot, even a half a mile in, are usually not that crowded. But you'd have to backpack in everything you'd need for the stay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Lol at the copyright notice at the bottom.

I notice the app is made by Booz Allen Hamilton. It's a shame we have to farm this stuff out to contractors and not use the USDS or 18F.

<comment><USER39> How can a federal government site be copyrighted? And, copyrighted by a domain name nonetheless.

I worked on a project once with the national park service. Their Office of General Council or whatever its called didn't want to agree to make their metadata on [https://npgallery.nps.gov](https://npgallery.nps.gov) available to use with a CC0 license for use in [https://dp.la/](https://dp.la/) . Sure, the images might not have been taken by federal employees, but why try to assert copyright ownership in the metadata? Eventually they agreed for one collection, but they have lots of cool content on there from California parks we would like to put on [https://calisphere.org](https://calisphere.org) .

The stuff they have up at Clemson has CC0 metadata, and the rights info for the content is pretty clearly marked [https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn- rights/](https://openparksnetwork.org/about/opn-rights/)

<comment><USER40> Work done by private entities under contract to the government is copyrightable.

<comment><USER38> To whom though? The contractor? That's fucked up if true.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Government websites are improving steadily, this website is top quality.

</comment><comment><USER42> The launch this year was a bit rough for the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) permits here in Minnesota. They limit permits to lakes, and the holiday weekends go fast, so I'm one of those who makes the Labor day plans (etc) in January.

Mine worked. Lovely site, knew exactly what I was headed to, and got my permits. Seems others had issues if they had to search around. Entire thing sounds like it shook apart later that morning. They canceled the reservations and did a second 'launch', which was the right thing to do. I don't know of anyone who thought they had booked, canceled, and could not get a permit later. Successfully turned a terrible kickoff into something OK.

</comment><comment><USER43> Are the maps failing to load for anyone else?

<comment><USER44> The map doesnt load and it's missing many camping sites in my area

<comment><USER45> I think something is wrong with the map or some sites' coordinates, because some POI are in the Atlantic, west of Europe.

Also the Netherlands memorial is located in Belgium, but in the "How to get there" instructions it is said to be east of Maastricht.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> I've used this site many times without any issues, which is all I can ask for from a government funded service. I've even had a good experience resolving a refund. The campground maps are valuable for booking tent camp sites. It helps to know where sites are relative to bathrooms and other common areas.

</comment><comment><USER47> What agency are they under? Couldn't find it on site, just who they partner with. But who are _they_?

<comment><USER13> recreation.gov was contracted out to Booze Allen Hamilton via RFP from the National Park Service.

Disclosure: I don't work at Booze but did collaborate with them loosely when integrating rec.gov's API[0] into Hipcamp.com

The previous contractor was Reserve America. If you're interested in some fun reading on open data advocacy that led to everybody being able to access public parks data via API check out accessland.org

[0] [https://ridb.recreation.gov/](https://ridb.recreation.gov/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> So these camp spots, is this just like a general area where RVs can hook up to power? I don't quite understand why camping spots are so desired that people are writing web scrapers and even selling on a secondary market? Sounds like a whole new world I've never heard of.

<comment><USER49> There are usually different types of spot, from RV with hookups to a simple campfire for a tent. As someone who likes camping, this issue regularly rears its head for me. There are sites that I have only been able to visit twice in four years due to lack of availability for me, despite frequent checks.

It's not really all that hard to understand, it appears on the face of it to be supply and demand. There are a lot of people throughout America who love camping and not all that many sites at the popular locations relative to that demand. Has been this way for many years. I imagine the problem is likely particularly acute in places such as the Bay Area given the population density and climate, as well as the more popular National Parks like Yosemite, Yellowstone etc. If you haven't recently visited one of the major NPs at peak season you might be genuinely surprised how many people cram into these places.

I've taken recently to just booking whatever I can get - I often don't have much choice but to take what I can find that's actually available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> But why the government have to do it? Isn't it a profitable business in itself?

<comment><USER51> IMHO, this type of sites should be developed and owned by the government. It's OK if someone finds a way to monetize this, but the directory itself should be public.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> which country is this for?

<comment><USER25> The US government runs .gov and only allows registration by governments inside the country.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Not reCAPTCHA, please. It's horrendous in any environment that blocks any real amount of tracking. Rate limiting would solve the bot issue without inconveniencing regular users.

<comment><USER54> As someone with lots of anti-anti-botting knowledge - both are ineffective.

Even if it's a "global rate limit" I'll find out the value (never ran into someone randomizing it) and jump on the web request faster than anyone else RIGHT as it comes up.

With CAPTCHAs I'll bypass with a solving service and/or computer vision if it's easy, or even just get past the noCAPTCHA solutions with primed browser instances from credible networks.

But don't kid yourself - that would not solve botting _at all_.

<comment><USER55> > But don't kid yourself - that would not solve botting at all.

Surely capatcha's and rate limiting raises the bar for people botting.

It couldn't make it any worse right?

<comment><USER56> If it doesn't make it any better, then captcha makes it works for real humans

<comment><USER54> Yep - and as someone who's ran a lot of conversion-based online solutions this is 100% true. Even when you account for automated sign-ups etc. the inclusion of a CAPTCHA will ding your rates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> Why was this submitted here and how did this even get to the top?</comment>


What is a Proof? - <AUTHOR> https://samidavies.wordpress.com/2016/07/29/what-is-a-proof/ <comment><USER2> > Near the turn of the 20th century, some important advancements were made in > mathematical logic. Principia Mathematica was an attempt to report the > axioms and inference rules needed to prove any mathematical truth. 20 years > later, Gödel's incompleteness theorem proved that such a goal could never be > accomplished.

This part fascinates me. As I understand it Gödel's incompleteness theorem states essentially that "in any formal axiomatic system large enough to contain arithmetic there will be true statements that cannot be proven". But doesn't that apply to the less formal "natural language" proofs of mathematicians as well...? When I read sections like the above (in many different places) I sometimes get the feeling that the authors think that "Gödel proved that formal proofs cannot prove all mathematical truths, so we mathematicians switched to informal proofs instead (to get around Gödel's incompleteness theorem and continue on our quest to prove all mathematical truths)". Can someone confirm that this is _not_ the intended meaning? :P

As I see it, let there be sets of mathematical statements A, B and C such that A are all true statements, B are all statements that can be formally proven and C are all statements that have a beautiful proof (from "The Book"); then C must be a (possibly equal) subset of B, which must in turn be a (possibly equal) subset of A. Right? :)

<comment><USER3> This is not the meaning of the incompleteness theorem. We still ostensibly work within the formal framework of a theory (usually Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory with axiom of choice a.k.a. ZFC) that cannot be proved consistent. We usually call these theories a "foundation" for mathematics. The (relatively) informal nature of mathematical proofs is not an attempt to run away from this, since truly informal reasoning is even more susceptible to contradiction (e.g. Naive set theory and russel's paradox).

What Godel's theorem actually restricts is proving "absolute" statements. Whenever we prove X in most mathematics today what we know to be incontrovertible is that "within ZFC X is provable" (assuming there aren't any immediate errors within the proof). Since we can't prove that ZFC is consistent, this might turn out to be a very boring statement indeed (since if it is inconsistent we'll have 2+2=5 too). Godel won't let us sneak off and find some super-foundation that can be proved consistent inside itself and then find out the "absolute truth" of mathematical statements, so we're stuck with this state of affairs.

Mathematicians generally look at the consistency of foundational systems a bit like a physicist looks at a physical law. It's possible that we're working within an inconsistent system and all our proofs are meaningless, but we've been looking really hard for a long time, and a lot of the axioms we were once worried about (e.g. Excluded middle and choice) can be conclusively shown to not lead to a contradiction (via independence proofs) so we're probably okay. Also virtually none of mathematics is tightly bound to our particular choice of foundations, so few believe that even in the case of such a crisis that we'd have to throw out all mathematics. We would likely just need to rebase it a bit.

As a result, we've mostly continued on as we did before Godel's result, except we've developed the meta-theory of our mathematical foundations to try and root out any problems. We've also stopped talking about axioms being "true", and just started looking at them as rules in a game.

<comment><USER2> Thanks so much for the answer! :D

But are you absolutely sure that my brief characterization of Gödel's incompleteness theorem is so off...? Wikipedia phrases it "no consistent system of axioms whose theorems can be listed by an effective procedure (i.e., an algorithm) is capable of proving all truths about the arithmetic of the natural numbers. For any such formal system, there will always be statements about the natural numbers that are true, but that are unprovable within the system." [1] In what way is that (materially) different from my characterization?

On Gödel's _second_ incompleteness theorem, that "the system [as defined above] can not demonstrate its own consistency", I think we agree. The logical consequences of that which you bring up all seem very reasonable to me.

But the real question as I see it is why you guys have abandoned Russel's ambitions to formalize all of mathematics. Why is his efforts so often described as more or less hopeless, in light of Gödel's results? As I see it (and as I interpret your answer) all of mathematics can be formally proven within ZFC, in machine readable/checkable form. Why not do it...? Or, perhaps, rather, why characterize it as "hopeless" in any sense?

1\. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6del%27s_incompleteness_theorems)

<comment><USER3> Sorry I wasn't clear, but Godel's theorems have not made the formalization (in the sense of writing machine-checkable, or at least fully explicit proofs) impossible or undesirable. The reason we don't write up the proofs in mathematical papers as Coq files or something equivalent is purely practical: doing so for most mathematics is exceedingly tedious with our existing tools. In addition, proof assistants have a steep learning curve even for mathematicians, as they are designed by mathematical logicians who have a very specific kind of mathematics in mind.

What these theorems made hopeless is the formalization of the concept of "the" natural numbers. Previously, it was taken for granted that our definitions of the natural numbers entirely fixed the truth of all of the statements you could make about them. However Godel showed that we have to pick a particular formalization, which will necessarily leave some facts about the natural numbers undetermined. Even simple theories which formalize the natural numbers and nothing else (e.g. Peano arithmetic) suffer from this problem.

This results in things like non-standard arithmetic[1], which no axiomatization of the natural numbers can possibly avoid entirely. Most of mathematics is not about the natural numbers directly, but virtually all mathematical structures can be used to model the natural numbers with addition and multiplication in some way (e.g. Dimensionality of vector spaces) so similar restrictions apply here too. But none of this gives us any reason to avoid formal proofs; if a mathematician feels that an informal proof truly omits an important step or is missing full justification of a statement then they would regard the proof as incomplete (at least until the issue is clarified).

[1]: [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- standard_model_of_arithm...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non- standard_model_of_arithmetic)

<comment><USER2> Ok, thanks, that makes sense. So I can sleep well at night knowing that at least my (purely assumed) understanding of Russel's dream is alive and well: we have found a formal system with axioms and inference rules (ZFC) within which all mainstream mathematics can (hopefully and in principle) be formally proven. Gödel however tells us 1) that there are mathematical "truths" (statements that always hold) which cannot be proven within ZFC, and 2) that ZFC could be inconsistent. The practical consequences of that are however limited. :) Is that a reasonable summary? :P

<comment><USER3> Yep! It's even rosier than that actually; we have quite a few foundational theories that appear to be able to handle the vast majority of mathematics pretty well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> > Technically, a proof communicated in spoken language is an informal proof, > and this is how nearly all proofs in mathematics are conveyed.

That doesn't sound right. Nearly all proofs are communicated in a written formal language. That's completely different than spoken language.

Am I missing something?

<comment><USER5> Formal == Machine verifiable, and means the proof is written in a language with a well-defined syntax and semantics.

Formal here is not "Mathy and jargony and with a lot of greek symbols" as is understood normally.

<comment><USER4> > Formal == Machine verifiable, and means the proof is written in a language > with a well-defined syntax and semantics.

Right. That's the formal I'm also referring to.

<comment><USER6> Mathematical papers are seldom written fully formally. This is in no small part because the most commonly accepted foundation of mathematics (ZFC atop first-order logic) was only designed to make formalization possible "in principle". It's precisely because of this that researchers in formal verification are looking for systems that make formalization actually possible in practice, such as various flavors of type theory.

<comment><USER4> Got it. This is what I was missing. Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To me, a proof would have to be a Turing complete procedure for verifying a theorematic result. Often times, proofs, however, only amount to convincing arguments (convincing to adepts, that is, who have not yet discovered a flaw in the proof). Furthermore, yes, I truly believe that proofs provided through computational analysis are perfectly legitimate, even if mere humans can hardly cope with them.

</comment><comment><USER8> Terrible title for a great blog about proof assistants imo

<comment><USER3> Care to explain?

<comment><USER9> After Gentzen introduced the idea of a the sequent calculus and the idea of a Turing Machine was shown to be a complete answer to the idea of what a "computable function" is, I think the answer to the question "what is a proof" is really something along the lines of: a proof is a kind of computable function. Trying to spell out what kind of computable functions they are is a big part of one of the main outstanding problems of mathematics known as the P v NP problem. In other words, you recognize these drawings as "proofs" when you are trained to see them but nobody really knows how to define a general procedure that will output all of the correct drawings correctly (using whatever symbolism or notation you prefer). Hence the digression on proof assistants. I mean: you encounter the overall idea of producing logical drawings that demonstrate mathematical truths in elementary school geometry and then try to make those concepts more precise (as David Hilbert did) all the way through to research level mathematical logic and even then, after learning concepts that take years to master, you will still never quite know how to answer the question posed in the title of the blog post.

<comment><USER3> > a proof is a kind of computable function

It's weird to me to identify proofs with a computable function that generates the steps in a sequent calculus proof. Why would this be more fundamental than the steps themselves? Even in mathematical foundations where computable functions are very important (e.g. intensional type theories like CoC) we have proof terms that are not functions (e.g. existence proofs are of sigma type, not pi type).

> Trying to spell out what kind of computable functions they are is a big part > of one of the main outstanding problems of mathematics known as the P v NP > problem. In other words, you recognize these drawings as "proofs" when you > are trained to see them but nobody really knows how to define a general > procedure that will output all of the correct drawings correctly (using > whatever symbolism or notation you prefer).

P vs NP has little to do with what computable functions we consider to be proofs, if we decide to go that route at all. All proposed general mathematical foundations (ZFC, ETCS, MLTT, various HoTTs) have polynomial proof checking[1], so yes a P=NP result will mean we can check the truth of a mathematical statement in polynomial time (in the size of the proof at least), but this magic algorithm will just spit out the same form of proof that the NP verifier takes as input. This has nothing to do with what we decide to consider the format of a proof to be.

> I mean: you encounter the overall idea of producing logical drawings that > demonstrate mathematical truths in elementary school geometry and then try > to make those concepts more precise (as David Hilbert did) all the way > through to research level mathematical logic and even then, after learning > concepts that take years to master, you will still never quite know how to > answer the question posed in the title of the blog post.

For particular mathematical systems, this is very much a solved problem since we have verifiers for a variety of mathematical foundations including ZFC. If you mean "what does a proof for any suitable logical system look like", we would generally require that it be some class of input that can be put into a _particular_ computable function that is the verifier, but there is no reason to require the proof itself to be a computable function.

[1]: Yes, there are type theories with undecidable type checking but at the proof-theoretic level we would generally require the evidence that our proof term type checks to be part of the proof of a statement so this doesn't make much of a difference here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Alan Perlas, Dick Lipton, and Richard De Millo addressed this question in their POPL3 paper, _Social Processes and Proof of Theorems and Programs_ , [https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf](https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/social.pdf). It is still a good read.</comment>


How Caffeine Can Cramp Creativity (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/how-caffeine-can-cramp-creativity <comment><USER2> > creativity is notoriously difficult to study in a laboratory setting

I'm really looking forward to the day when technology can more _directly_ measure the effects of various substances on the body, rather than the inexact observation methods used today.

Take SSRIs, for example. Here's how it works. Patient tells doctor "I feel depressed". Doctor prescribes medicine. (A few weeks or months go by.) Doctor asks, "Well, how do you feel?"

We need to be able to say: "Over the course of your treatment, you ingested X milligrams of Zoloft, with an average concentration of Y in your bloodstream. Here's the 1-month graph. Your avg levels of serotonin were Z% higher than usual during this time. Your cortisol (stress hormone) level was C% lower. You slept an average of S hours per night, with E% improvement in deep sleep efficiency." etc.

At some point, the former is going to sound quaint and old-timey.

<comment><USER3> Totally agree. Science is the art of measuring things and we don't even approach what's easily possible _today_ in scenarios like yours.

Some day we'll look back on our methods of prescribing and follow-up with the same horrified face we make when we look at Civil War amputations.

<comment><USER4> On the other hand, continuing scientific advancement requires an exponential amount of resources and I think we may see a high watermark where we have to come to terms with the unsustainability of objective progress in terms of perpetual growth.

We already look back at the early 20th century futurism's optimism as comical, but if we manage to hold our civilization together for another century or more I suspect we'll look back at today's faith in the practical power of data science as equally naive.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The shock value of this article does not magically turn in into convincing science. Like everything else dietary related (within the limits of reason), you should test for yourself and see how your body reacts. Changing your habits to best suit your expectations. Just because some article says Caffeine _may_ make you less creative doesn't mean it will. Also the net benefit of drinking Caffeine may outweigh the loss of some creativity in your personal case.

<comment><USER6> This exactly. Try for yourself. Personally I find myself more creative when I don't use caffeine - being slightly tired may even help a little. However, being slightly tired does not help with my more normal, non-creative, work.

A former coworker was just the opposite - put a few espressos in him and the creativity almost oozed out.

<comment><USER7> Studies show you're more creative when tired.

<comment><USER8> Do you have any references to support this? I find the idea fascinating.

<comment><USER9> Here's one I know of: [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546783.2011.62...](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13546783.2011.625663)

The idea is that some types of problems are best solved with the focus you can provide at your peak times of day. However, "insight" problems might benefit from the reduced focus you have at non-peak times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Caffeine is an amazing substance that has helped drive society forward. For example, coffee houses in England are where the ideas of the Enlightenment were discussed and from where the London Stock Exchange was originally based (Jonathan's Coffee-House[1]).

Caffeine is a central nervous stimulant that increases alertness, reaction speed and short-term memory, not necessarily creativity. If you want increased creativity you are looking at the wrong type of chemical and may be more interested in an area like nootropics or entheogens.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan%27s_Coffee- House](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan%27s_Coffee-House)

</comment><comment><USER11> I thought it was well-known that when you want to come up with zany ideas you should drink a beer, and when you want to execute on them, grab a coffee.

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm finding that water > coffee...

<comment><USER13> water ⊂ coffee

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> A small side of Ganja with your coffee may help alleviate the creativity killing side effects....

(disclaimer, not a doctor)

<comment><USER15> Amen. I've often wondered how many developers partake in this little green herb.

<comment><USER14> second disclaimer...

Although I partook very much in my younger years I no longer indulge. Not that I'm against it... I just have too much to remember at this stage.

but to your point... I suspect lots.</comment></comment></comment>


Bill Ackman Scored a 10k% Return Amid Coronavirus Market Meltdown - <AUTHOR> https://observer.com/2020/03/hedge-fund-bill-ackman-profit-coronavirus-market-crash/ <comment><USER2> Let's not jump to conclusions before we can see the losses on his portfolio which he will have to net off. After all it was a hedge...</comment>


Folding and remembering. Getting more value out of a business card. - <AUTHOR> http://www.lagesse.org/folding-and-remembering-getting-more-value-out-of-a-business-card

<comment><USER2> _If I am talking to a current customer, I bend over the upper right corner._

Maybe I've been living too long in Japan, but this made me cringe.

<comment><USER3> Noone (in US or UK) is bothered when I write notes on business cards I receive, so I get the impression folding would be fine too.</comment></comment>


The former US congressional intern behind Venezuela's cryptocurrency - <AUTHOR> https://nypost.com/2018/03/19/the-former-us-congressional-intern-behind-venezuelas-cryptocurrency/ <comment><USER2> Apparently he's been working on this in Venezuela since 2015. Just being honest, this article actually gives me a little bit of hope that the petro may have some good intentions and most importantly local community buy in - whether they're manifested remains to be seen.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed. I think the geekery behind the project (Jiminez and Co) have their hearts in the right place and the govt sees a chance to profit.

Fingers crossed.</comment></comment>


Covid-19 Outbreak Tracker - <AUTHOR> https://www.cassandracapital.net/covid-scenerio-tracker <comment><AUTHOR> Posting this in the hope someone can critique the methodology.

It all looks sane but it's not my field. The CFR and r0 are absolutely terrifying however so I'm interested in hearing opposing points of view.</comment>


Bloomberg's Big Push for an Applied Sciences School in NYC - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/27/nyregion/bloombergs-big-push-for-an-applied-sciences-school.html?_r=1

<comment><USER2> This is a waste of resources on the part of the city. Both NYU and Columbia are top notch institutions and it would make far greater sense to expand their programs.

Beyond that, the formula of what makes for a thriving tech community isn't entirely clear anyhow. The Valley has Stanford and VC's (and great weather), but there is also little else in the area competing for talent beyond great tech companies. So throwing in a new college/university into Manhattan isn't going to be enough to change things.

Rockefeller University is in the city, and it has fantastic researchers and great educational programs in the biomedical sciences - but you don't see biomedical companies popping up all over Manhattan because of it.

<comment><USER3> I'm an NYU grad student and I think putting city money into my school would be a greater waste. NYU is a distracted and sprawling bureaucracy. Getting two weeks of summer funding required a long series of confusing email exchanges which finally resulted in having to sign 5 identical forms (each given to a different administrator). The elevators in my building break on a regular basis, and attracting the attention of maintenance workers requires forms and requests from "higher up". They've started closing the math building at night (a night guard is too costly) but find enough money/resources to expand into Abu Dhabi and Poly. It's a mess!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Another issue that needs to be considered for this initiative to meet its goal (which I assume is to install a professional engineering/applied sciences base in NYC) is where these people will work once they receive their educations. Tech is on the rise in NYC, no doubt, but it's too soon to call it a long-term trend. Fin Services will continue to consume the majority of the talent for the distant, yet foreseeable future. Academia alone won't make this goal a reality.

</comment><comment><USER5> When I read the headline, I thought it was for a public high school but was disappointed to find out it was for a university. Seriously, who cares about that when the public school system is in need of such major reform?

There are plenty of options for those looking for a good college. What NYC and the rest of this country needs is a better K-8 and high school system.

<comment><USER6> > When I read the headline, I thought it was for a public high school but was > disappointed to find out it was for a university. Seriously, who cares about > that when the public school system is in need of such major reform?

It may be that Bloomberg thinks that he can make a difference with "yet another university" and can't make a difference in the K-12 system.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Has a patent you were named on ever been used by patent trolls? - <AUTHOR>

If so, I'd be very interested in hearing your thoughts at the time of the application, during the litigation, and any general insights you've learned since. <comment><USER2> That has to be such a very rare thing. Out of millions of patents, only a few dozen are being used by patent trolls. And most of those were "invented" by the person/company doing the suing.

I am listed on a patent through a former employer, and I am waiting for the day when some company implements this technology that is patented. Will be curious if that employer decides to sue and will I be entitled to any money from that?</comment>


Ask HN: Would someone pay for managing their FB/Twitter feed? - <AUTHOR>

Customer Research: We are planning to launch a service for managing the  FB and twitter account for users. With preset goals we will find most relevant content from around the world and post it on your FB and Twitter to keep your users engaged.
Yes similar to Social media Management companies- but we intend to offer this service to SMEs and starups who are busy finding their next customer.
Price bands - 10$ per week (X posts on FB& Twitter)
              25$ per week (2X posts on FB& Twitter- with 1 blog post every month)
Would someone pay for this? <comment><USER2> I don't understand. What makes you think marketing agencies and existing SM management companies aren't targeting SMEs and startups? I've met plenty of people (and companies) who do this. I don't see what would set you apart from existing services.

<comment><AUTHOR> Price point? there are plenty of services but none of them have a package designed for the minimal need and budget of SMEs and starups. I might be wrong in my understanding and thats the whole point of asking here. :) Please tell me if I am missing some market intelligence.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> At $10/week, how much time are you going to put into a unique post on my wall?

Is there time for introspection? Will it be clever? Relevant to my friends?

Someone will pay for this, but it's going to cost a lot more to deliver a quality product (unless you've got some very special software). There's a whole industry on Madison Avenue that specializes in doing exactly this.

</comment><comment><USER4> I don't understand your question. Hundreds of companies around the world currently pay media and advertising firms to manage their social media and run campaigns. I know several people who do this (manage social media for companies) as a full time job. How are you different to anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER5> If this was really well done, sure, I think there is room for this. Something where you really make an effort to understand the company and its market. I'm not sure this is what you are offering though. I mean proper market and company understanding and great content curation.

Anyways, how is this different from the companies that offer up blog posts ala [boilerplate + a mild dose of something special]? (Something which always end up being of little or no value?)

(To turn the idea on its head, I'd love for someone to "find most relevant content from around the world" that I am interested in and filter it to me.)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would. But I'm very doubtful any (semi-)automated service can lick the boots of a competent and engaged Community Manager and bring anything but irrelevant noise on my social channel.

If, by some magic you've concocted, it works extremely well, I have no doubt you'd have many customers at even higher price points.

And, if it's not automated, I don't see you bringing any new value to already established business spheres.

Also, Social Media Management companies now do far more for the money paid, most powerful part not being news feed management, but entire online ads campaign handling.

</comment><comment><USER7> I'm pretty sure there's a market for this, I was in talks with a major Chinese company hiring to achieve a similar service for brands on Weibo (Chinese Twitter/Tumblr mashup). But it sounded kinda scummy to me and I dislike social media so I bailed.

They seemed to have a pretty manual system already up and running and were working on automating a lot of the churn, not sure how well that would translate to English markets, but I'd bet some companies would pay for it to save themselves hiring 'that social media guy/gal'.

</comment><comment><USER8> I am going to be so happy when this whole social media bollocks blows over and all of the companies who make a living off of it slide off into the great beyond.

In the meantime, make hay while the sun shines, I suppose.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like you but I hate you :) Peace .. lets just make hay while the sun shines

<comment><USER8> :)

Not much to do in the meantime otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> 100$ for one blog post... plus X FB&Twitter posts? I wonder how you plan to make this scalable/sustainable unless you have some secret algorithm that does all the work for you (which I assume would generate pretty low quality content given the current state of AI). Otherwise, you'll likely need a pretty big team in India or the Philippines and your service is then again probably going to be pretty low quality. Care to share your secret with us or some representative blog posts?

<comment><AUTHOR> This message has been targeted as a Customer Research. And your response brought me to the belief that 100$ a month is not so high for this service and that people might be ready to pay me more. Thats good news.:) My back of the hand calculation shows at 100$ a month I would be making money enough for coffee. Would surely tell you the idea I have in mind- will DM you on twitter :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, people pay for his stuff. Just make sure to not post the same thing across the board. It kils engagement. The way to do it is to simply hande the content and create content around that content. Then simply run the meta content through templates and post them up. People will go inthrough your content and you can sell advertisemet there too. You will be professional content spammers. Though your pricing is cheap.

</comment><comment><USER11> Already do pay someone for this, but they do a dozen other things too, and they are intimately familiar with the company and product.

</comment><comment><USER12> See elance.com / article writing sections. There is a market. The offshore teams are there already.

</comment><comment><USER13> Sure! There are already companies offering this to StartUps. Even remote workers are doing advertising for managing social media channels. But most StartUps just have a student for this job.

</comment><comment><USER14> I clearly would be willing to pay for this, but what is also important for me is to respond also to mentions+DM ( now we don't have them )

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Let me make a landing page and see if any one signs up. Would do it tomorrow. Special Discount for HN :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Sure, managing a FB page or Twitter account is one of most impotent marketing strategy today

</comment><comment><USER16> How would this be different from the stuff they offer on Fiverr and other services like it?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Comments & suggestions desired :)

<comment><USER17> Do you plan on creating the content yourself? You could integrate with a content service API and have it generated almost automatically. <http://www.textbroker.com/us/client-api.php>

<comment><AUTHOR> yup- My system does the work while I sip coffee listening to (justin bieber :P ) john lennon

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think you're aiming at a rather crowded market.

I think the reverse startup would sell much better. Instead of advertising to the public, act as a spamfilter for the public. Its about the same tech, but a different customer base.

I think $10 week might be pushing it, but I'd spend $10 a month for a social media spamfilter that just passes important stuff on to me. May as well aggregate twitter and FB and G+ and all that into one "relevant" feed for me.

For example I want to know if someone important to me dies, gets married, publishes a new book, major life change or illness, that's pretty much it. I don't want to hear about idiotic memes, cat pix, bible verses, political spam, sports, bragging about vacations, pop culture (perhaps with certain exceptions).

For about six months I tried to track/log what I got out of facebook vs what it cost. Its fairly expensive, roughly between a prime time TV show addiction and a daily soap opera addiction. I didn't get very much out of it, and nothing that improved my life long term, but it was extremely expensive, like 20-30 hours invested per "important" thing. I'd pay for a decent filter. G+ had a better rate of return and higher actual information flow rate, although it depends what you're looking for...

I think you could automate this pretty well. How hard is it to rub posts up against every version of the bible and tag anything that matches 95+ %? How hard is it to rub all the picture up against some stock cat photos and tag 95%+ match as "cat photo". Ditto some other pointless stuff, like any post with sports teams, players, and some random digits is spam. Anything that looks/smells like a news story from any source on news.google.com, tag it I already read it. Here's a OPML of all the RSS feeds I read, you can assume I read everything in that feed, anyone reposting the news I already heard about, just squelch it so I don't have to see the same thing 10 times. Filter all that garbage. On the other hand "I'm getting married next March" well OK pass that one along to me, its probably actually important.

I lived a long time without social media, and "missed posts" already have elaborate social procedures around them, so false positive filtering is probably a (edited: smaller) problem than false negative filtering of spam.

If no one has started selling this as a product, I'm not sure why (maybe the platforms would be furious at the advertising blocking nature of it?).

What happens when two people on social media collide who both use an "agent" or "assistant" service like this is probably a big problem. Two "imposters" trying to carry on like they're both the real deal.

<comment><USER19> You sound so pg in this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Incremental database snapshots? - <AUTHOR>

Hey Everyone,
            For us its very easy to backup and restore a full database. It seems extremely hard to create snapshots of a database. I was wondering if anyone had any experience working on incremental database snapshots, that can later be applied in order to restore a full database. We use mysql most.<p>Thanks in advance <comment><USER2> xtrabackup (<http://www.percona.com/doc/percona-xtrabackup/>) is the way to go in my opinion. you can create full and incremental backups...

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you.</comment></comment>


Advertising Age: The post-advertising age - <AUTHOR> http://adage.com/article?article_id=115712 <comment><USER2> These are the precise questions that my startup, Knowitall.tv, is trying to answer. What will advertising look like as video programming and advertising dollars shift to the web? Where are those advertising dollars going to go, who will decide on the content these dollars will fund, and who will provide this content?

I think the most important thing Garfield notes in this article is the huge shift in power has occurred with the advent of dvr and web video. People don't have to sit through flashy, in-your-face ads that shout 'buy me!.' These ads can be fast-forwarded or deleted. On the web, the attention span of the viewer is drastically reduced by the sheer volume and choice of content. Why would I watch an ad when I don't have to on this site over here? The audience is no longer captive. The student has become the teacher. We are in charge.

Advertising and networks are not doomed in any sense. However, traditional, 'flashy' ads will have to be replaced by more informative, interactive, gentle, pull advertising content. Think product placement, contests, video games, informational videos... Ad content will also be interactive-the best way to extend the short-attention span of the average web user. Just because networks are reeling in costs does in no way mean that they are 'over.' Yes, traditional purveyors of advertising and large networks should be concerned, but only if they do not adapt to this huge shift in power. These networks and ad companies became successful because of innovation and I am sure they will temper the storm. However, who should be taking close note of this market shift is ambitious independent producers and content providers. There is a huge gap in the market for a few companies to sneak in and make an absolute killing.

To summarize: Because the viewer is in charge, ads in the future will inform rather than entertain, engage rather than impress, so really, the only question to answer is, what do the end users want to know and from whom? I believe local expertise and endorsement to be the untapped goldmine of this 'new' advertising.</comment>


We do not want your job - <AUTHOR> http://founderb.com/2011/12/14/we-do-not-want-your-job/

<comment><USER2> You could have rewritten this as "we want to work for a finished product." I don't think everyone shares that sentiment.</comment>


Show HN: Wryte – a dictation software for bloggers - <AUTHOR> https://bitbucket.org/marco_rockiger/wryte/src <comment><USER2> I am an advocate of dictation, but it would be great if the readme answered the following:

1\. Avg error rate on a sample set 2\. Trainability 3\. Average error rate on sample after n hours of training

The alternative to this is Google, Apple, and Dragon, so it would be good to know what is in here.

<comment><USER3> This seems to be using Electron's text-to-speech so presumably, it's a wrapper around Google?

<comment><USER4> The screenshot indicates that it is indeed a wrapper around Google Chrome's speech recognition capabilities.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome! Would be great if one could use the keys ", ., ,, ;, and maybe p or [ENTER] for newline.

Another cool thing would be to prepare a voice recording (3 minutes) and play it on the same speaker to: (A) google voice in speech input in docs API, (B) apple's dictation, and (C) this app, and compare the accuracy. I bet the Mac speech API will do best, but Wrythe won't be far behind...

</comment><comment><USER6> Don't know if I agree with the utilizing the whole "spell the word differently so it looks cool" naming scheme in this use-case...

<comment><AUTHOR> sorry, it was the first that came to mind.

"WRite like You Talk e" The main idea is, that it is easy to google.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I haven't written anything with electron... how do I install/run it?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are downloads: [https://bitbucket.org/marco_rockiger/wryte/downloads](https://bitbucket.org/marco_rockiger/wryte/downloads)</comment></comment>


Google Launches Chrome Extension to Block Websites from Search Results - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2011/02/14/google-personal-blocklist-chrome/ <comment><USER2> Google should have launched one for Firefox too. Anyway the likes of experts- exchange etc will take a hit now.</comment>


Ask HN: Why does my startups conversion sux? - <AUTHOR>

I launched my startup 12 weeks ago (www.mypropertytracker.com.au) - and I'm struggling to get traction or conversion.
The problem I face is all the feedback from users in my startup is 'positive' - yet it is not converting into many paid subscriptions.
So far my google adwords have a low conversion rate to free trial accounts. Meanwhile my free trial accounts have a low conversion rate into paid subscriptions.
I've currently tried: - Landing page with call-to-action - Free trial accounts with no credit card - Startup wizard (per Patio11 suggestions in his blog)
Things I'm about to try: - A/B testing - Patio11 lifecycle email course
But I was hoping members of HN might have a quick look and see if there are any areas that could be improved? <comment><USER2> Talk to the people who should be using this, find their #1 pain point with property management, put THAT front and center on the website. "This thing you already do... online!" is not a compelling sales point to non-geeks.

"View Features... we think you'll love them" is 180 degrees from user psychology which will work. a) Show them benefits b) absolutely _anything_ is more credible than you saying it. Your customers, especially prominent customers or ones they aspirationally want to be like, are 100x more credible. Media is credible. The user is the most credible, so if you can figure a way for them to make the connection themselves (highly non-trivial) you win.

This product may require non-trivial sales off the website, btw.

Lose the auto-rotate of platforms. Auto-rotate is distracting and screenshots generally don't sell software. I'd use the space to highlight the benefits, which you mention lower on the page in gray-on-black text that begs me not to read it.

Link big screenshots to your signup page. Many users will click them to see what is up.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks patio11 - I'll do all of that.

What do you mean by "non-trivial sales off the website"? I tried to google it - but didnt find anything?

<comment><USER3> He means you might need to sell to this market directly, with sales account managers and inside salespeople dialing for dollars, instead of hoping that your market will seek out your website. What indication do you have that anyone is searching for this kind of product?

<comment><AUTHOR> Theres a good volume of google keyword searches that target what we do. The topic also comes up in property magazines and property forums.

My 'traffic' to the website is ok (kind of what I hoped for) - but the conversion is way way below expectations.

<comment><USER4> _My 'traffic' to the website is ok (kind of what I hoped for) - but the conversion is way way below expectations._

maybe it's the wrong sort of traffic

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> First - UI and UX are great, well done. perhaps you just need time, and move out of the .au domain and do it globally?

to the other things:

I guess just that the title "TRACK YOUR PROPERTY PORTFOLIO ONLINE." is a bit lackluster

try something like

"Handling your leased property is a headache? Not anymore!"

"Try now for free and in 5 minutes you'll get started"

See how we helped X property owners stop worrying and start saving money.

something like this...

oh, and get rid of the long domain, and get a .io or .ly short URL, and make it global, not just for Australia

AND, add a video

Explain to people how they save money and time

Use analytics to see how your product is being used (mixpanel)

Another point is, are you really solving a problem? perhaps people with lot's of properties just pay someone to take care of it, and people with just one don't have enough headache?

sometimes it is what it is...

p.s. if you add ability for people to pay rent directly via you using their credit card, you'll make millions (send me a check when it happens)

update:

a few more

\- try our features, we think you'll love them? show some confidence, of course you'll love them!

\- font's too small, too much information, contrast is bad (dark text on dark background)

\- all in all a bit "gray" I miss to understand what exactly are you saving me

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks erantion - I'll work on all of that. I appreciate the detailed reply

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I started writing a long-winded response with ideas after looking at your sales site, but realised that it was mostly dancing around to not sound confrontational - these are just some thoughts in no particular order and aren't intended to be negative.

I've done similar things in a more enterprisey property management space, and the amount of data that you're managing on a single property (or 2 or 3 properties) with a single user doesn't look like enough to really justify $234/yr, and all of the things that you've listed involve trying to sort out a product issue with a marketing/business solution (which works, but only to an extent), so you can A/B test all you like, but if people don't think your product is worth it, they're never going to get started _or_ pay for it.

From a pricing perspective, I'd rethink the bottom level plan, the pricing timeframe, and if possible the price-point (maybe shift to something that scales more with use, eg resources or features, rather than something inelastic like # of properties). Be more upfront about pricing - the "try it free" should have the pricing list - you're selling a financial product to people who are presumably good with money, but hiding what it'll cost in the features page. Having a "forever free" plan that's severely limited (/ad- supported) will help with your initial conversion.

For conversion to paid subscriptions, you need to convince them that you're better than a folder on their HDD, excel for financials and their contact list/calendar on their phone. At the very least you need to look at interop between MYOB/Quicken/CSV/whatever's the rage these days. You can focus on how computers crash so a doc library is better, or you can add a feature (versioning, archival of email, I don't know) and use that to sell the document library. If you're targeting the guy who's got 1 property, maybe get some boilerplate forms or checklists and put them up there somewhere. If you're targeting the guys who have 10+ properties, focus on exposing what reports can do. Definitely do allow users to, at the very least, download excel / other spreadsheet versions of their transactions (and if you do this, specify that you do it on the features page).

</comment><comment><USER7> Stop giving equal emphasis to your call to action for signup and your "view features" button. View features should just be a link in the menu at the top of the page, or maybe just include it directly on the homepage.

Your landing page should have one single call to action, one single activity you want your visitor to do.

<comment><USER7> Also, your landing page is perfectly setup to drop in a large, beautiful image of a house or condo or something. As it stands right now, your product feels...Mathematical? Technical? Engineer-y? It's the graph paper/checkers and the lack of anything tangible beyond the tablet devices.

Throw a picture with some grass in it on there. Make it real.

<comment><AUTHOR> I see what you are saying - thanks very much. I'll a/b test the text, and then I'll a/b test the graphics.</comment></comment></comment>


Li-Fi: The Future of Internet - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/acmvit/li-fi-the-future-of-internet-e573eab6bd0d <comment><USER2> 5G home routers do this next year.

I don't think Li-Fi has much change except on specialized applications.</comment>


Millions of Americans' Medical Images and Data Are Available on the Internet - <AUTHOR> https://www.propublica.org/article/millions-of-americans-medical-images-and-data-are-available-on-the-internet <comment><USER2> It sounds like the underlying cause in this particular case is a piece of software is running an open port that a lot of people don't even realize is there, and for some reason is exposed outside the firewall.

Take the case of "Offsite Image" as an example;

> _The company referred ProPublica to its tech consultant, who at first > defended Offsite Image's security practices and insisted that a password was > needed to access patient records. The consultant, Matthew Nelms, then called > a ProPublica reporter a day later and acknowledged Offsite Image's servers > had been accessible but were now fixed._

> _"We were just never even aware that there was a possibility that could even > happen," Nelms said._

That sounds like to me that they build a custom front-end to serve the images which was doing password authentication and billing, but failed to notice the underlying image server software was exposed and responding to queries with no authentication.

I'm guessing somewhere there's a configuration file which has a default IP binding of 0.0.0.0 and a blank password field.

<comment><USER3> There's an entire industry of consultants who will help your business pass a PCI audit, and everyone who handles payments requires a PCI audit annually.

There should be equivalent standards and audits and consultants for private information of all sorts, including healthcare info.

<comment><USER4> There is HIPPA

<comment><USER5> No, there's HIPAA, but it is actually weaker than lots of people think (in part because of required regs that the executive branch simply has not bothered to develop, in part because the regs that do exist have big gaping escape-from-liability holes in them.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Finally I could see my raw records without going through the beuracratical shenanigans.

</comment><comment><USER7> It _sounds_ like these are DICOM servers being exposed to the internet. DICOM is the standard file format for medical images, and there's also a DICOM server standard. Medical equipment sends images to DICOM servers so your ultrasound (or whatever) can be archived and stored in your medical records. The generic term is a PACS ("Picture Archiving and Communication System") but since equipment speak DICOM, they're always(?) DICOM servers.

DICOM servers are often not very secured, so if you allow the internet to talk to them, you're in for a bad time.

<comment><USER8> Most of the DICOM providers I've worked with assume that the clinic will be handling security, as the images are stored on a local DICOM server, though lately there's been much more emphasis on setting up a VPN between the clinic and the PACS/DICOM provider's cloud-based system.

<comment><USER7> It makes sense. You can't exactly update dicom clients easily so really there's no universe where the data should be passing over the internet without wrapping it all in a VPN. There's not much point in trying to secure it since that might just encourage people to expose it to the internet...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nothing scares me more than my medical records on internet. I have close to zero confidence into any of the hospitals or medical companies to implement their IT securely.

<comment><USER10> I've met people whose job is to put honeypots on hospital networks to detect ransomware installation attempts. They supposedly have a very short response time SLA, like "if there's bad network activity, we will call your administrator within 5 minutes." It's interesting that job exists, since the ransomware mostly uses old exploits that shoulda been patched anyway.

<comment><USER11> One of the problems is that many of the medical devices on hospital networks have badly outdated software, that runs proprietary applications. There should be a better job done by vendors to clean that up, but no-one seems interested in supporting this once the sale is made.

Sometimes the IT staff simply have their hands tied, and network isolation is the best they can do, at least for medical devices.

Billing and file sharing vendors should on the other hand have active maintenance contracts to prevent exactly this.

<comment><USER8> > There should be a better job done by vendors to clean that up, but no-one > seems interested in supporting this once the sale is made.

Working in healthcare IT (and I should note this is my personal opinion _only_ ), it's actually a little more complicated than that. Healthcare software vendors are generally building their software to meet certain certifications (because the clinics are demanding that), as well as fixing security/patient safety issues, and lastly adding in features the clinics want

The problem comes in that not every clinic cares about the certifications, and the software they have "works fine." So there's no incentive to upgrade to a newer version that has security fixes.

It's important to remember that, with a few exceptions, doctors are not IT, and many clinics are small enough that they outsource their IT. If that IT group doesn't force the clinics to upgrade, the clinic will continue using the version that does what they want, as long as it isn't obviously broken.

Clinics are generally risk-averse, which in many cases is the correct mindset. Unfortunately, that affects their perception of the benefits of updated software.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> jkao-propublica Hey folks -- Jeff Kao at ProPublica here.

What was most frustrating to me while reporting this story, was that a researcher had written about this exact problem (after scanning ipv4 for the port) back in 2016. HIPAA is one of the only federal data privacy laws w/ teeth, and this type of obvious insecurity is pretty inexcusable.

Thanks for reading. If you think there's something we should look into, we'd love to hear about it. :-)

P.S. As a fast.ai student -- thanks Jeremy for posting!

</comment><comment><USER12> If my images are on the internet, then I expect crowd-sourcing of doctors and scientists to tell me everything that is breaking / broken in my body. ;-)

</comment><comment><USER13> Sooo HIPPA lawsuits any body?

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm shocked Jeff Larson is back at ProPublica after the debacle he and Sue Gardner caused by removing Julia Angwin as editor in chief at The Markup earlier this year.

I'm guessing he might be freelancing or contracting, but he does have a ProPublica staff page.

I'd love for anyone with knowledge about this to chime in.</comment>


Orbital Mechanics, and Specifically Lagrange Points - <AUTHOR> http://datagenetics.com/blog/august32016/index.html <comment><USER2> This is a really nice page!</comment>


Can Data Be Human? The Work of Giorgia Lupi - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/can-data-be-human-the-work-of-giorgia-lupi <comment><USER2> I've seen Giorgia Lupi speak at Eyeo Festival (which is happening now, actually). If you're interested in her work, you might also find the work of other artists at Eyeo interesting too: [http://eyeofestival.com](http://eyeofestival.com)

(I'm not affiliated with Eyeo btw, I just think Giorgia's work is beautiful and the only collection of similar creatives is at Eyeo)</comment>