How Surround Sound for Headphones Works - <AUTHOR> http://hajo.me/blog/2014/12/28/how-surround-sound-for-headphones-works/ <comment><USER2> i didn't submit it yet because the article wasn't 100% ready .. but in any case:

Feel free to ask me about it :)

<comment><USER3> Hajo, the article very reads well, so don't worry about it not being "100% ready".

I may have missed something that was written, but I wanted to know if you isolate the sound that is __only__ on the given channel before applying your filters? (i.e. isolation through sound inversion to silence everything but the sound that is unique to the channel)

Though it's not exactly related, Alexandre Ratchov and Jacob Meuser (and others) have built the amazingly impressive audio features of OpenBSD including sndio(7), sndiod(1), audio(4), audioctl(7), mixerctl(7) and so forth. I've got a hunch that you might really enjoy studying their work. Warning: If you dig into the OpenBSD sound system, you'll probably like it enough to never run any another OS.

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=sndio&section=7](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=sndio&section=7)

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi/?query=sndiod&section...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi/?query=sndiod&section=1)

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=aucat&section=1](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=aucat&section=1)

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=audio&section=4](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=audio&section=4)

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=audioctl&sectio...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=audioctl&section=7)

[http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=mixerctl&sectio...](http://www.openbsd.org/cgi- bin/man.cgi?query=mixerctl&section=7)

[http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20120401171457](http://undeadly.org/cgi?action=article&sid=20120401171457)

[http://2010.asiabsdcon.org/papers/abc2010-P1B-paper.pdf](http://2010.asiabsdcon.org/papers/abc2010-P1B-paper.pdf)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sndio](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sndio)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the OpenBSD links :)

No, currently I do not do any sound isolation. The reason is that I want the virtualization to be as unobtrusive as possible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Headphone surround sound (including recordings made with a binaural "head" microphone) can be very convincing until the listener moves his head.

The sounds don't change to match the head motion, and this kills the illusion.

<comment><USER2> Absolutely correct. I'm also working on real-time compensation with the Oculus Headtracker ;) but that won't be ready until a few months from now ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm sorry, but surround sound for headphones (defined as: HRTF implementations) don't work. What does work? Actual binaural recordings made with dummy head recordings.

Trying to reprocess 5.1 surround into either a) making it sound like I'm there, or b) making it sound like I'm listening to a 5.1 audio system, has never worked for me. Dolby Headphone is the least objectionable one of them, but it just mangles audio.

I wish someone would try to do Ambisonics-like calculations to try to bake 5.1 into working surround sound. I'd even pay for it (for, say, a faux passthrough driver on Windows that outputs to your default sound card).

<comment><USER6> I thought your comment was unnecessarily downvoted, but I also don't think you provide much information.

A dummy head recording has the downside that it's no longer fully suitable for playback over anything besides headphones. Also, it is dependent on the HRTF of the dummy matching that of the listener.

I'm not sure Ambisonics [1] would work for 5.1 sound. In most cases, 5.1 isn't produced by mic'ing in the directions of the ideal 5.1 speaker placement (at least for movies and music, I don't know anything about 5.1 production for video games). Typically, the L and R channels are used for directional sound, the C is used for dialog and other things that might be corrupted by panning, and the surround and bass channels are used for (weakly directional) ambient sound. So trying to 3-D pan the surround channels will probably just muddle the effect.

Really, the best thing would be to actually record or synthesize in the Ambisonic format, and resynthesizing based on the playback setup. But a 5.1 recording, even one created with a 5.1 rig, is poorly suited for this.

[1] For those who aren't aware, Ambisonics is a a format for storage of 3-D recordings, independent of the mic and speaker placements at the time of recording and playback. If the mic positions are known, you can project the raw recorded signals from multiple mics onto a neutral format. Likewise, if the speaker positions are known at playback time, the neutral format can be projected onto the proper signals for the playback setup to best simulate the recorded soundfield. Ideally, the recording and playback setups are optimized to capture the full 3-D soundfield.

<comment><USER5> What someone awhile back had suggested (and I can't find the article now) is using virtual playback of 5.1 audio and doing Ambisonic-like math to produce the proper directional cues.

As in, it wouldn't be a cohesive audiofield in of itself, it merely would be like standing in front of a 5.1 system.

I think the trick was using headphones as a very wide stereo dipole system, and just doing all the timing correctly (ie, lesser than full scale HRTF). Due to how 5.1 systems are positioned (30 degrees between L and C, C and R, and 60 between L and R), there isn't much you can do to get this correct.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, people already do that with 5.1 headphone surround sound. That's not really Ambisonics-like math, because Ambisonics doesn't attempt to do anything with the timing differences. In fact, I haven't really ever heard much about playback of Ambisonics signals over headphones. The whole idea is reproducing the soundfield in open space, which would be experienced by your head within that space.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice write up. I installed the app to give it a whirl. Admittedly I haven't tried it with movies yet, but it gives a "warmer" sound to my Spotify tracks while using my Polk ANC headphones.

I went to purchase the product, but not sure why it's asking me for my mailing address?

I'd recommend streamlining the workflow (if possible).

Ask for Email address

Ask to select Payment Type

Then, if credit card is selected:

Name as it Appears on the Card

Credit Card Number

Credit Card Expiry

Credit Card CVS

Billing Address

Billing Phone Number

If I chose to use Paypal, why do you need the mailing and phone number?

<comment><USER2> That's a good question.. and I don't know the answer myself:

The shop site is run by FastSpring because I didn't want to have to deal with all the VAT weirdness in the EU. Maybe that's why they asked you, so they can decide wether to charge you VAT or not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Just wanted to say I was looking for something like this last week and couldn't find one for my Mac. Thanks this is awesome! I'll def buy a license here soon

</comment><comment><USER7> Just wanted to pass on a note, I watched the new Peanuts trailer, and wow, what a massive improvement in sound and bass while using your audio plugin. Going to purchase a license.

</comment><comment><USER9> does it sound different? yes

does it sound 3d? no

does it sound better? no, unless you pay, then auto suggestion produces perception of better quality

meh

</comment><comment><USER10> What's obviously missing is a sample, unprocessed and processed, so that people can listen to the effect without running any os x crapps..

<comment><USER2> the dude abides ;)

Original: [http://www.hajoheadphone.com/assets/417586_hybrid_orig.mp3](http://www.hajoheadphone.com/assets/417586_hybrid_orig.mp3)

Virtualized: [http://www.hajoheadphone.com/assets/417586_hybrid_hahe.mp3](http://www.hajoheadphone.com/assets/417586_hybrid_hahe.mp3)

<comment><USER11> Think you could make one without the heavy equalizer changes? It's hard to compare apples to apples :\</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Created this for Syrian news. How could I improve it? - <AUTHOR> http://syriapolicy.com/

<comment><USER2> Its clean and simple really, for what you're trying to do I think its pretty good.

If you had the means and time it might be interesting to have a full screen map of Syria which tracks news stories and events in real time, so you can watch the map and see things unfolding as you watch. That might be difficult though or outside of the scope of what you're trying to do.

Good work though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks cup! I could start by categorizing article by the province they reference, then display them on a map as you hover over a province.</comment></comment>


Let's Move Beyond Open Data Portals - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/civic-technology/rethinking-data-portals-30b66f00585d#.6c9bktzge <comment> dj-wonk To me, the article missed the point.

The central claim of the article is: "I actually think it's time we abandon data portals altogether." I didn't find any compelling argumentation to support this claim. The author mentioned some trends; however, these trends do not suggest that source data is not valuable. Rather, they are suggesting that we need to _build on top of_ data. No surprise here!

Sure, particular applications and services may appear to be more valuable than the raw data, but this does not suggest that the raw data is not valuable. Quite the opposite. I don't think any savvy person would suggest that a data portal is the end goal -- they are just the beginning.

I'd suggest something simple and probably non-controversial: data portals make sense to the extent that they provide value over a long time frame (perhaps 5 to 20 years -- or longer).

Here is a simple way to look at how data can add value.

1\. Availability first (it has to exist).

2\. Discoverability second (people and services need to find it).

3\. Applications third (higher value can be extracted here).

(Note about me: I've worked on a now-defunct data catalog a while back. I don't have illusions about them, and I think many can be improved in key ways. Also, I know they require more maintenance than some would admit.)

</comment><comment><USER2> As long as I can get the data, it's fine. What I'd be worried about would be if apps become the only way that an end user can get access to information about their environment. That would seem like a massive step backward for all that those applications, as part of a broader context, may enhance services.

<comment><USER3> Agree. The webmasters, app developers, are free to follow the trends and pursue whatever presentation and delivery mechanisms they like. But as a backup the bulk data needs to also be mirrored on at least one FTP server and available to the public in an open, accesible file format (e.g., CSV, SQL tables, XML, JSON, etc.).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"...A good example of this is Foursquare. Beforehand you'd do everything in one app. Now there's Foursquare and Swarm. Facebook has Messenger as a separate app. Google has like 17 different apps. You're seeing this shift from just one specific application that does everything to many different applications designed for a particular experience..._

This is true in the west but is the same true for everywhere else? As far as I remember China or Japan have apps to do everything in one and no indication that this is going to change.

</comment><comment><USER5> Sorry...I just have to disagree with the OP. Several years ago, Socrata stopped by where I worked (a news organization) and told us of their idea to build a portal of city governments everywhere that would host datasets. They were new at the time and I just thought they were bonkers.

Now, I can't believe what you can find on the various data portals. There's a lot of shit data but that's because lots of organizations collect shit data. But for the organizations that _do_ have data, Socrata is such a huge step from what existed before.

I'll ignore the many situations in which agencies just didn't put out data at all. Dallas, Texas is one exception. It has been posting its crime data for years. Except it was on a FTP site with a convoluted structure. And it wasn't all in one file. So you had to write a script that spidered the subdirectories, downloaded the files, unzipped them, and concatenated them (and I don't think they were a straight-up concatenation).

Now, it's just all on one page from which you can export the data as bulk CSV [1]. Because Socrata's REST API is so straightforward, you can just script your data requests to hit the right end points. But not only is there the incident data, there's the narrative data [2] (which had also been on the FTP site, but required its own spidering), and there's tables I hadn't seen before, such as [3] suspects and real-time active calls [4]

On top of it, the police department has even decided to put up the data for their _officer-involved-shootings_. Mind you, they were _already_ ahead of the game, nationwide, last year when they created a parseable (via scraper) webpage with HTML tables and PDFs. They certainly didn't have to make their data even easier to get, but they did [5]

Texas has always been generally good about public records because of their broad sunshine law. But it's not that the law turned them all into free-data- hippies right away...the agencies just have a tradition of doing it -- it helps alot if you're a Texas employee and you've seen how everyone else just agrees to potentially damaging records requests, and yet no one gets stressed out.

I have to think that Socrata, just by being _there_ as an option, not just in Dallas, but everywhere, has made bureaucrats more aware of how data sharing can just be... _done_. Certainly, there are always officials who will push back, because they're power-control-freaks or because they have something to hide. But plenty of bureaucrats don't really care...they've just been told by their IT people that putting up data in an easy way would cost too much and be too much of a security compromise. Now that there's an option of a general data portal, there's fewer reasons to say no.

Just to give you an idea of how technically clueless many bureaucrats are (and I don't really blame them, but their agencies for not prioritizing tech training)...it is still not unheard of to be denied access to machine-readable data -- e.g. they _print out a spreadsheet_ and fax it to you, instead of just sending you the XLS -- because they think that if they give you the spreadsheet, you can "alter the data".

Yes, it really is that dumb.

edit: to the author's credit, he's not saying that open data portals should be closed, just that governments should move beyond them. That's a nice sentiment, but in reality, it's an idea that takes away resources from _improving_ data portals.

From TFA:

> _Now we actually give that directly to Waze, so they can reroute people > dynamically. Indeed, this is a good open data story — taking the data to > where people are —but there's something more interesting: it's a two-way > street. Not only does Waze now share pothole and road condition data it > collects regularly through its app, they went one step further. They began > to proactively collect and share data in the interest public safety._

But _that can already be done_ with the existing LA data portal and its REST API. Why does the city of Los Angeles have to give Waze anything other than the GET endpoint, from which Waze engineers can download as they like. And not just Waze, but everyone else, in equal measure. So there's nothing _wrong_ with what the author wants, he just doesn't appear to think that with APIs, developers can create far better and far more resources than what the city could do itself.

And no, the city (unless it has a magical source of revenue) can't do both building out more "human" data applications while improving their open data pipelines. The latter has much, much further to go before the city can spend IT money on building out new apps.

[1] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police- Public-D...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police-Public-Data- RMS-Incidents/tbnj-w5hb)

[2] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Bulk-Police- Narrative/...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Bulk-Police- Narrative/inke-qqax)

[3] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police- Public-D...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police-Public-Data- Unknown-Suspects/jitt-qwwh)

[4] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/dataset/Dallas-Police- Active-...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/dataset/Dallas-Police-Active- Calls/9fxf-t2tr)

[5] [https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police- Public-D...](https://www.dallasopendata.com/Police/Dallas-Police-Public-Data- Officer-Involved-Shootin/4gmt-jyx2)

</comment><comment><USER6> The faster people realize this the better.

What does the technology look like for achieving these kinds of goals?

<comment><USER7> I would say it's actually fairly simple from a technology perspective: good, well-documented APIs, as much SaaS apps as reasonable, and CTOs in government who get it.

<comment><USER8> I think the first two are, indeed, fairly simple from a technology perspective. CTOs in government (or whatever other role is responsible for making the data in question available) isn't simple or technology-related.

From my perspective -- both working with groups mandated to make data available and researchers consuming public datasets -- those responsible for making the data available DON'T get it in the vast majority of instances. It's tough to tell if it's obtuseness, incompetence, or... call it what you will, but if you are mandated to make information available that can directly assess your performance or the performance of the organization you lead, you might not have the right incentives.

A recent experience: the federal (US) government releases data regarding clinical trials conducted by drug companies and universities available for download in a format that they basically made up. OK, no problem, I've written lots of parsers. Ingest the data from the source files, but wait! There's no data dictionary or even a vague description of the relationships between the contents of the (many) files they publish. You can make pretty good guesses, but it definitely doesn't follow a well-documented API (or schema, whatever). Just a recent gripe that's stuck in my craw, but it's not an isolated case in my experience. I have come across a few that are very good and follow the best practices you note, but most I've worked with do not. I would guess that the former have your third characteristic; the latter likely do not.</comment></comment></comment>


Xz - <AUTHOR> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xz <comment><USER2> Can someone explain to me why this Wikipedia article is at the top of the front page?

<comment><USER3> LZMA2 has a better compression ratio than bzip2, according to this article [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel%E2%80%93Ziv%E2%80%93Mark...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lempel%E2%80%93Ziv%E2%80%93Markov_chain_algorithm) . Seems like it would be a good idea to switch away from bzip2/gzip to zx

<comment><USER4> The main reason to continue to use gzip is speed: it's an order of magnitude faster than bzip2 for compression / decompression, for a relatively small compression ratio hit. It's fast enough to us inline in web servers, SSH sessions, etc, and if you're just moving data around a single time, often the amount of time for compress / transfer / decompress is much faster than with bzip2.

<comment><USER5> I've found that on many types of data, xz -2 is twice as fast _and_ compresses better than gzip -9. Of course gzip -1 kicks the pants off xz but there's absolutely no reason to use gzip at its higher levels, nor to use bzip2 at all. And if you want fast, LZO does it better -- the lzop tool provides a typical unix compress interface.

Using 50MiB from a tarball I had lying around, best of 3:

         prog    time(s)   size(%)
        gzip  -1  1.703    38.7
        gzip  -9 14.670    35.1    (worse than xz -1)
        bzip2 -1  7.714    34.0
        bzip2 -9  8.035    31.4    (worse than xz -1)
        xz    -1  6.278    31.3
        xz    -9 42.445    22.7    (best compression)
        lzop  -1  0.670    46.1    (fastest)
        lzop  -9 18.144    38.0

<comment><USER6> Out of curiousity, can you run this tarball through paq (say, paq8hp12)?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAQ>

<comment><USER5> It segfaulted at the end, after taking 7m28s. I don't know how big the result was because it got truncated to 35 bytes.

<comment><USER6> Ugh. Can you try with a lighter compression level? There is a command line switch for that, and it should also show the memory requirements for each compression level.

I'm insisting because PAQ is a really incredible collection of compressors. Far more intelligence in it than in the LZ* bunch.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wrote a tool, pixz, that does xz compression in parallel to take advantage of multiple cores. It also indexes xz-compressed tarballs, so you can extract an individual file very quickly instead of needing to decompress the entire tarball. The parallel-compressed, self-contained tarball+index is fully compatible with regular tar/xz, you don't need any special tools to extract it.

<http://github.com/vasi/pixz>

The interface is still very rough, but it works. The xz utility comes with a very nice library and API, which made this a lot easier--thanks, Lasse!

</comment><comment><USER8> While we're talking about compression algorithms, here is a nice little gem called BMZ:

<http://bitbucket.org/mattsta/bmz/src>

It's is a fast compression scheme implemented using BMDiff and a Google Zippy clone (based off LZO).

<comment><USER9> I built and tried this out. I'm rather shocked to see speed and compression ratio better than gzip -9.

The results of my unscientific test (compression only):

       Compressor  Size  Ratio  Time
       gzip -1     23MB  88%     1.18s
       gzip -2     23MB  87%     1.38s
       bzip2       23MB  87%     5.57s
       xz -1       23MB  87%     5.35s
       xz -9       11MB  43%    10.58s
       bmz         13MB  45%     0.95s

<comment><USER10> It really depends on the data. For highly redundant data like web pages with lots of boilerplate header/footer, it can compress better because the bm_pack (first pass of bmz) looks for large common patterns over all the input. For typical text, it should be a little worse than gzip but faster.

BMZ = bmpack + lzo by default and can be combined with lzma if necessary. It's not really a BMDiff and Zippy clone, as I've never had a chance to see Google's implementation. It's based on the original Bentley & McIlroy paper: "Data Compression Using Long Common Strings", 1999. Even the two pass idea is from that paper. It was really a wacky experimental implementation (with a lot of room for improvement) to satisfy my curiosity. I'm a little surprised that the 0.1 version has been stable for quite a few people compressing TBs of data through it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The only reason I stick with gzip over bz2 or 7z (lzma) is that gzip is everywhere. In reality, nobody has a file compression utility that can handle LZMA (even though I do, I never use it).

<comment><USER12> Interestingly, file(1) can't identify lzma(1)-compressed files (they show up as data), but unlzma(1) reassuringly knows the difference between LZMA and random data. This came up once or twice in DEFCON CTF quals ([http://www.vnsecurity.net/2010/05/defcon-18-quals- writeups-c...](http://www.vnsecurity.net/2010/05/defcon-18-quals-writeups- collection/)).

<comment><USER13> That's why you should use xz instead of lzma (they're not the same thing) — the XZ format has a magic number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The specification ( <http://tukaani.org/xz/xz-file-format.txt> ) reads like this format allows the application of a chain of compression "filters". Perhaps the most interesting, and least portable is the filter that modifies code to make compression easier. (Section 5.2.3) Is this mainly for intel architecures?

</comment><comment><USER15> I use 7-zip 9.15 beta - it supports LZMA2 compression and available to download here:

<http://www.7-zip.org/>

</comment><comment><USER16> Also notably, slackware has shifted it's packaging format to a xz tar since the last two releases. This validates xz as a good replacement for gz/bz2.

</comment><comment><USER17> Xz appears to use the same algorithm as 7zip.

Here are some comparisons between the big 3 compression algorithms (taken from <http://blogs.reucon.com/srt/tags/compression/> \-- he used a 163 MB Mysql dump file for the tests):

      Compressor 	Size 	Ratio 	Compression 	Decompression
      gzip 	        89 MB 	54 % 	0m 13s 	        0m 05s
      bzip2 	81 MB 	49 % 	1m 30s 	        0m 20s
      7-zip 	61 MB 	37 % 	1m 48s 	        0m 11s

<comment><USER18> So bzip2 and 7-zip are way, way slower than gzip, then?

Bandwidth is cheap. Stick to gzip.

<comment><USER19> _So bzip2 and 7-zip are way, way slower than gzip, then?

Bandwidth is cheap. Stick to gzip._

It's not as simple as that. Which one is better depends on the use case. If you're sending a one-off file to somebody, sure, gzip is better. But if you want to distribute a file to a large number of people (like Linux distributions do with their packages), the extra CPU time is insignificant compared to the bandwidth saved over the course of thousands of downloads.

<comment><USER20> It's very annoying to wait minutes to decompress big files. In particular installation times.

<comment><USER21> Decompression is more often limited by disk I/O, in my experience, particularly when the source and destination are the same disk. I can often get large improvements in decompression and installation speed by putting the source file and / or temporary installation files on a different disk.

<comment><USER20> It's not always I/O speed. You can notice when installing CPU usage goes to 100% (or fans kicking in) for BWT/LZM* and not for the DEFLATE (unless you use -9 or something like that.) While you install something at least one of your cores is unavailable for anything else.

This affects energy consumption, too.

And think about both mobile and servers. Those systems are usually more sensible to high CPU load.

I have a draft blog post with analysis of different protocols with valgrind and other tools. But it is so much data to present and graph I never get around to finish it :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Tried to apt-get it (on Ubuntu 9.10) but got scared when I gotta a warning about lzma getting uninstalled and possibly breaking my dpkg.

Looking good on ubuntu 10.4

Same folder compressed in 1/2 the size as with tar cvfz, sick.

<comment><USER23> xz is backward compatible with lzma. It can both create and decompress lzma archives, and it has a tool with the same command line options.

lzma is depreciated by its author in favor of xz.</comment></comment>


Market Leaders in India's Solar Industry - <AUTHOR> https://mercomindia.com/2018-market-leaders-indias-solar-industry/ <comment><AUTHOR> In 2018, India was again the third largest solar market behind China and the United States with 8.3 GW of solar PV capacity installed in the year. Mercom's newly released India Solar Market Leaderboard 2019 report reveals the market leaders that emerged during a challenging year for the solar industry. The report covers market share and shipment rankings across the Indian solar supply chain in 2018.

According to the report, the top 10 solar PV project developers in the country accounted for over 60% of all large-scale project installations in the 2018 calendar year. There were over 300 utility-scale project developers in the country with projects of at least 5 MW or more in operation. Currently, there are around 80 large-scale project developers with a pipeline of 5 MW or more in India.

"Much has changed in the Indian solar industry over the last year. There was some re-shuffling when it came to suppliers after the imposition of the safeguard duty while others have consolidated their positions," said Raj Prabhu, CEO of Mercom Capital Group.</comment>


Ask HN: Practice code review on me? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I am currently studying & implementing different classic data structures and algorithms. I was wondering if someone who wanted to practice doing code reviews would be interested in doing a code review of what I have so far (Lists in Java, Merge Sort in Python).
Link to code: https://github.com/michaelrbock/data-structs-and-algos
Email: michael AT michaelrbock DOT com
Thanks. <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if you got any feed back on this but I would advise you to check out:

[http://codereview.stackexchange.com/](http://codereview.stackexchange.com/)

I would personally love to do it but I probably need someone take a second glance at my work too ;)</comment>


A pre-Facebook project by Mark Zuckerberg that ended up on Slashdot in 2003 - <AUTHOR> https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/04/21/110236/machine-learning-and-mp3s <comment><USER2> Be careful. It's really difficult to back out of that link (at least on mobile).</comment>


Is Your Computer Stable? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.codinghorror.com/is-your-computer-stable/ <comment><USER2> I had a six year old Windows 7 PC running with an uptime of 335 days.

...Then, no joke, it lit on fire. Burned a couple of PCI cards, but the motherboard is still okay!

<comment><AUTHOR> A moment of silence to your PCI cards. I don't often put my Windows PC at uptime for more than a week...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Funny this comes up now. I was just cleaning malware off a laptop. I eventually found and did the factory reset, but I decided that I had enough when it still kept crashing hard every 5 minutes into doing something useful.</comment>


Got big company on-site interview, no CS/EE bachelors, should I feel good? - <AUTHOR>

Being a little vague, since the NDA suggests I can reveal I have interviewed, not that I have an interview upcoming.
Since I don't get any real feedback on my performance unless they hire me, and they hire maybe 1 in 4 of those who make it to the onsite, that means I am left to ponder how good of a programmer I actually am if they don't.
When I am feeling good, I feel like I am, maybe, a programmer.
It's not like getting an on site is something I can put on my resume; that would be horribly crass. But I figured I could ask here and maybe, hopefully, not be mocked horribly for feeling insecure.
I love programming, and I want to be good. I'd like to feel good about the interview. Like I am making progress, and shouldn't give up and try to work doing something else.
At the same time, I can't help but feel like I might end up being walked out halfway or something because I say quick-select is O(N) instead of O(log N), or I haven't memorized Boyer-Moore or Fisher-Yates or some clever algorithm, or I just freeze.  Maybe they are only interviewing me because I'm in driving distance from Mountain View.  I have other people tell me that I am a good coder, but I find it hard to believe them. If I was good, I'd have a full time job, right?
Sometimes I feel really confident, like just after I get payed by someone for freelance dev work.  This isn't one of those times.
I guess I want to know, does getting an on site make me good enough, for some value of good enough?  Feel free to be brutal, or just ignore this.  Or wish me luck, I guess. <comment><USER2> Getting on-site means you're at least better for the position that the ones who weren't invited on-site, so that's a start. And you definitely don't need a CE/EE Bachelor's to be a good programmer - especially since it sounds like you're not completely green (having at least done freelance development work and, more importantly, being paid for it!).

Do your best to present yourself as humbly confident in the interview. Good luck :)</comment>


New to software development, but doing my own startup. Best language to use? - <AUTHOR> So quick background: I'm a recent CS graduate, and have some limited experience working on projects in school, but not much outside of that. I'm planning to start my own startup, essentially it would be an "AirBNB for ---", meaning it would be a platform for a type of peer to peer service. What do you guys think is the best language and framework for this purpose? I was going to start with Python because that's what I/we used for a school project, but I wanted to get some suggestions from more experienced developers before I commit. <comment> dimitri-gnidash Python is a wonderful language where the speed of development and maintainability is concerned.

Django is a great framework for getting your web application and/or APIs built. The library support is also phenomenal (looking at Django Rest Framework for API development)

It is also unlikely you will outgrow Python/Django stack as Instagram and Pintereset are doing fine. [https://engineering.instagram.com/what-powers- instagram-hund...](https://engineering.instagram.com/what-powers-instagram- hundreds-of-instances-dozens-of-technologies-adf2e22da2ad#.nq4iq5lms)

Rarely does the stack matter to startup success, why not pick up Steve Blank's The Startup Owner's Manual about building THE RIGHT thing? Building the wrong product is the number one killer of startups why not focus there?

</comment><comment><USER2> Python is great -- I've built a bunch of stuff in it over more than a decade. Readability and ease of use are the most important for something new IMO -- you can optimize for speed in another language if your thing gets huge, but you may not even have to -- youtube and plenty of other sites still run Python as their main frontend at larger than you're likely to get scale.

</comment><comment><USER3> Rails framework is best if you want to develop sass application , web application .

</comment><comment><USER4> Python and/or Clojure because they have the best communities and libraries</comment>


The Postal Service's Death by a Thousand Cuts - <AUTHOR> https://newrepublic.com/article/158804/death-postal-service-workers-american-instiution <comment><USER2> Send a postcard to the Board of Governors, 475 L'Enfant Plaza SW, Washington DC 20260-0004. Fill their inbox with a demand to take action to save the Post Office.</comment>


Show HN: Terminal based Git interactive rebase editor written in Rust - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/MitMaro/git-interactive-rebase-tool <comment><AUTHOR> Author here, I started this project over two years ago when one of my friends challenged me to write it. It was based on [https://github.com/sjurba/rebase- editor](https://github.com/sjurba/rebase-editor) , but does not require NodeJS/JavaScript. I and several others have been using it almost daily for over a year, so it is ready for general use.

It's written in Rust, but as I only occasionally get a chance to work in the language, development has been slow. I would very much welcome PRs to make improvements and add functionality.

</comment><comment><USER2> This is the kind of tool I've always needed without realizing it. I didn't even know git could use specific editors for rebasing.

I rebase every day and although I enjoy practicing my vim strokes, the rebase editor is the last place I want to make a mistake. So this looks really useful. I'm going to install it. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> No problem!

Git does a fair bit as files under the covers, so it makes tools such as this very possible.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, I've always known you can use a custom editor for commits etc, but didn't know git config had enough granularity to use a custom tool for rebasing. Very cool!

Btw, requests:

\- Please publish a homebrew package

\- Mention any git version requirements in the README (or if this will work with nearly any version of git?)

<comment><AUTHOR> I am not a Mac user anymore, but when I was I used Homebrew a fair bit. A Homebrew package would be great and there has been an issue [1] for it for a little while.

Adding the Git version to README is a great idea. I will have to do some research on when the `sequence.editor` option was added. An initial check [2] makes me believe it will work with Git > 1.7.8, which was over 7 years ago.

1: [https://github.com/MitMaro/git-interactive-rebase- tool/issue...](https://github.com/MitMaro/git-interactive-rebase- tool/issues/33)

2: [https://github.com/git/git/commit/821881d88d3012a64a52ece9a8...](https://github.com/git/git/commit/821881d88d3012a64a52ece9a8c2571ca00c35cd)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I've used this occasionally and I am a fan! Very intuitive.

</comment><comment><USER4> I've been using this daily for a while now, super useful!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Great to hear you find it useful!</comment></comment>


The Engineering of the Drinking Bird Toy [video] - <AUTHOR> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UCKC-QVcVn0 <comment><USER2> If you haven't watched all of Bill's videos, you should put them on your list right right now. His early stuff was a great mixture of goofy humor and fascinating explanations of the engineering behind various everyday objects.

His more recent stuff has (unfortunately, in my opinion) dropped most of the comedy, but really stepped up the overall quality.

Some highlights:

His series on Faraday's Chemical History of a Candle lectures: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrHnLXMTOWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrHnLXMTOWM)

His series on Albert Michelson's Harmonic Analyzer (a century old device that can mechanically perform Fourier transforms)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsM30MAHLg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAsM30MAHLg)

I'd also really recommend his book on R101, the last great British airship. [http://www.engineerguy.com/airship/](http://www.engineerguy.com/airship/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Insanely great hack, not surprising it came from a Bell Labs specialist in manufacturing.

For easier search, from the video: U.S.Patent 2,402,463 , Miles V. Sullivan

(P.S. reminded me of Claude Shannon, also from Bell Labs and dabbling in toys ... [https://www.google.com/search?q=claude+shannon+toy](https://www.google.com/search?q=claude+shannon+toy) )

</comment><comment><USER4> Bill has a series of incredible videos. Definitely work watching them all!

</comment><comment><USER5> Always wondered how does this toy work. Great video

</comment><comment><USER6> Please add [video] to the title.

<comment><USER7> Done.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A curl frontend for imgur - <AUTHOR> http://curlgur.tk

<comment><USER2> Are you using all of the ANSI color combinations? There doesn't seem to be quite enough in most of the images returned.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think I need to keep tweaking the colors which map to them. Which image was not so good?

<comment><USER2> In the example image you provided even, there's a few areas that could do with colors.

In all you should be able to use the three semi-transparent blocks (25%, 50%, 75%) in combination the 16 foreground and 16 background colors. There's a lot more shades than you'd think — <http://i.imgur.com/OCrg5FZ.png>

I never got around to dithering or mapping half blocks when I attempted something similar a few month back, but with enough colors in the cable things started to look (almost) smooth — <http://i.imgur.com/18T6QoY.png>

<comment><AUTHOR> If you have a chance, try it again I added a lot of inbetween colors!

<comment><USER2> Now that's looking better.

        $ curl curlgur.tk/4YO6ZFm.png</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The problem with Metro: it's boring. - <AUTHOR> http://www.riagenic.com/archives/889

<comment><USER2> Computers are in a state of maturing right now. No longer is it the rush to get the fastest, the best, the one that does the most. People are rushing to get the one that does what they want, that's easy to use, that has the features tailored to them. That's why people are buying the iPad over a new Core i7 machine.

Similarly, don't you think it's time for interfaces to mature? You claim it can't evolve, that we're going to see the same interface forever. Is this a problem? There were some wacky car designs in the early 1900s before you ended up with clutch on the left, brake in the middle, gas on the right, shifter in the center of the car. People wouldn't call that boring, they'd call that mature and standardized.

No one points to the iOS interface and says " _That's_ fresh! That's exciting! That's evolved!" It's not, it isn't, and it hasn't. iOS is exactly the same as every interface that came before it. So your implication that the iPad is king because its interface isn't boring... I'm not buying that.

<comment><USER3> _No one points to the iOS interface and says "That's fresh! That's exciting! That's evolved!"_

That observation works better as a criticism of Metro than a defense of it.

Microsoft was clearly trying to come up with something strikingly fresh, exciting, and evolved when they cooked up Metro. If (as I'm inclined to agree) they didn't need to do that in the first place, then with Metro they didn't just miss the target, which would have been forgivable. They missed a target _that they shouldn't have been shooting for in the first place._

<comment><USER2> It stands out to me every time someone brings up their opinion that Metro is awful. It stands out to me every time because that opinion is expressed so rarely, and is a very unpopular opinion. Almost universally, people love Metro [1]. The most criticism I hear is that people don't like Metro on their desktop; this is sometimes expanded by those people saying then that Metro is awful in any circumstance. The first statement is common, but it's rare that the expanded opinion is any more than a childish backlash against a new interface. There's nothing better on phones and tablets.

Regardless, Metro is the idea that the interface should not distract you from the information, that the GUI doesn't overshadow the content. At a quick glance, you can easily tell exactly what you want to know. You might call it boring, others call it useful.

What would have been more boring in my opinion? Another interface full of static icons aligned to a static grid. What's a little different, a little more exciting? Dynamic icons that don't make me enter the app to know what the weather forecast will be, that don't make me open Facebook to see what someone wrote on my wall, that show random pictures from my phone in a slideshow, that show me my stock performance without needing to open the app.

Desktop shortcuts circa 1994 are boring. Metro is far from boring.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29#Re...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_%28design_language%29#Response)

<comment><AUTHOR> I use a WP7. I like it, its quick and usable. Some parts of the OS really work - eg the messaging app. But generally it is quite boring and visually sparse. On top of that the interface has a lot of rough edges. Simply, it needs a more polished visual style, with more colour, detail, and life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What, exactly, is boring about it? I actually think it is, so not asking to prove a point. More - what is it about Metro that causes it to dull so quickly?

P.S. Fluoro pink on a black background with flashes of white will date faster than strawberries in the sun.

<comment><USER5> I think that the term "Airport lavatory signage" is quite fitting.

It is quite pleasing, does the job, but does not excite anyone. People like it, but do not love it. Just like the old Android design, before Holo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Without regard to Metro being boring, Microsoft wanted to make its business plan be the world to use THEIR commodity, and now it has. Which leaves it not much place to go.</comment>


Artists can now sell downloads directly thanks to this startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.businesshackers.com/2007/07/29/artists-can-now-sell-downloads-directly-thanks-to-this-amazing-startup/ Let me tell you about a startup artists have been waiting for a long time: DiscRevolt <comment><AUTHOR> Sorry for posting this. When I first skimmed it, I was concentrating on the idea but after re reading it, the grammar and spelling is so poor it probably shouldn't have made it up.</comment>


Flying insects in hospitals carry 'superbug' germs - <AUTHOR> https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2019/06/22/Flying-insects-in-hospitals-carry-superbug-germs/6451561211127/ <comment><AUTHOR> Original study: [https://academic.oup.com/jme/advance-article- abstract/doi/10...](https://academic.oup.com/jme/advance-article- abstract/doi/10.1093/jme/tjz086/5514158)

Abstract:

> Insects are efficient vectors of bacteria and in the hospital environment > may have a role in spreading nosocomial infections. This study sampled the > flying insect populations of seven hospitals in the United Kingdom and > characterized the associated culturome of Diptera, including the antibiotic > resistance profile of bacterial isolates. Flying insects were collected in > seven U.K. hospitals between the period March 2010 to August 2011. The > bacteria carried by Diptera were isolated using culture-based techniques, > identified and characterized by antimicrobial susceptibility testing. A > total of 19,937 individual insects were collected with Diptera being the > most abundant (73.6% of the total), followed by Hemiptera (13.9%), > Hymenoptera (4.7%), Lepidoptera (2.9%), and Coleoptera (2%). From Diptera, > 82 bacterial strains were identified. The majority of bacteria belonged to > the Enterobacteriaceae (42%), followed by Bacillus spp. (24%) and > Staphylococcus spp. (19%). Less abundant were bacteria of the genus > Clostridium (6%), Streptococcus (5%), and Micrococcus (2%). A total of 68 > bacterial strains were characterized for their antibiotic resistance > profile; 52.9% demonstrated a resistant phenotype to at least one class of > antibiotic. Staphylococcus spp. represented the highest proportion of > resistant strains (83.3%), followed by Bacillus spp. (60%) and > Enterobacteriaceae (31.3%). Diptera were the predominant flying insects > present in the U.K. hospital environments sampled and found to harbor a > variety of opportunistic human pathogens with associated antimicrobial > resistance profiles. Given the ability of flies to act as mechanical vectors > of bacteria, they present a potential to contribute to persistence and > spread of antimicrobial-resistant pathogenic bacteria in the hospital > environment.

<comment><USER2> Flies are a health hazard, is that news?

Although I can't say I've noticed True Bugs (Hempitera) around, perhaps I'm just not looking right.

What we need are spiders to catch the flies...

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The funniest sight I've ever seen in the hospital was a fly in the operating theatre, being chased by half a dozen scrub nurses with disinfectant spray

<comment><USER4> We had fruit flies in an OR once. A colleague of mine did a ton of digging to find the source. Turns out the fruit flies were breeding in the basement laundry holding area where a staff member was pouring out dextrose and saline into a floor drain. There was a service elevator near the drain that lead up to the 9th floor where the ORs were. The flies were taking the elevator up then flying to 15ft or so into the OR.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> So... bug nets? (Not sure what they'd put them around, though. Beds? Open ingress points like windows, ala the way the CDC seals up areas with plastic air locks?)</comment>


More states are forcing students to study personal finance. It's a waste of time - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/04/23/more-states-are-forcing-students-study-personal-finance-its-waste-time/ <comment><USER2> If you want people to save you have to: (1) pay people more, and (2) make sure the extra pay is not eaten up by housing and health care.

<comment><USER3> That is necessary but not sufficient. The American way is to spend, spend, spend...</comment></comment>


The fastest Web Server is TrustLeap G-WAN - <AUTHOR> http://trustleap.com
 15x faster than Apache
3.5x faster than Rock (webspec's 2008/2009 winner)
  4x faster than Microsoft IIS 7.0 and ASP.NET.
400x faster than PHP, 200x faster than Python <comment><USER2> Well performance looks impressive.

The webswite looks horrible; I know it's shallow but that puts me off it a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> But does your website look much nicer? This can be discussed: <http://www.errant.me.uk/>

As Abrose Bierce said: "Outdo: make an ennemy".

So, if you outdo all...</comment></comment>


Delight.io (YC W10) Lets Developers See What Beta Users Are Doing In Their Apps - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2012/07/05/delight-io/

<comment><USER2> This unfortunately sounds like something that can get people into a lot of trouble. It's a lot like the Carrier IQ debacle last year, where diagnostic software was left on some cell phones, and everyone went apeshit over it.

All it takes is for a single customer to leave the software on there and have it get distributed to their customers, and it might turn into a big privacy scandal all over again, with not only the customer but this company being dragged in front of Congress.

I would suggest adding code into your library that either forces a pop-up or gives a message saying that the app is currently using your software, so that it warns developers using your code that it's still activated, before they send it off the the App Store. The last thing you want is for this to get accidentally installed by unsuspecting end-users.

<comment><USER3> This happens all the time on the web as best practice. Don't see how mobile is different, especially when they seem to have the privacy options built in.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure recording a video of the user going through her private data on an app is the same as seeing where she clicks on your website though. As far as i know services like Clicktale will record mouse interaction but not the actual data on the screen which makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Watching people use the app in person is super important for design decisions. You can see their reactions, ask them questions, and generally just get way more information than you could from a video capture.

I could see tech like this being useful for submitting with bug reports or something? It's a hard sell though, seems a bit like overkill. You need to have decent testers that will use it, gotta deal with big video files, their's privacy concerns and capturing video will eat up cpu/resources and slow down the app.

So again, potentially useful, but I don't think they've made a good case for why it's worth the hassle.

<comment><USER6> We're implementing Delight in addition to usability groups and testers (and all the usual analytics). I won't replace having people give you their qualitative feedback, but being able see where real users get stuck in your UI is incredibly valuable...

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for a solution like this for usability testing and the only comparable solution I found was screen recording that was restricted to jailbroken iOS devices which lead me to believe screen recording was one of those areas that was restricted by Apple.

If this feature or a similar one was added to an app (turned on via user consent or otherwise), would Apple approve it? This is limited to one app and essentially another analytics plugin.

Of course, this isn't a big deal if you're only testing a beta in restricted sessions (and the headline explicitly mentions beta users) but the potential for this in real world testing is huge.

<comment><AUTHOR> Current version of Delight uses all public API. There are already a few apps shipped with Delight.

And we agree with you that being able to see real user interaction gives us tons of insights.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This would be very much illegal in Europe if used beyond just the test phase of an app. And even during testing it could only used with active consent of the tester probably.

</comment><comment><USER8> I can see this fly when troubleshooting bug reports. But I would like to see a way to turn it on/off with user action. If a user emails me a bug report, I would like him/her to follow up steps to turn video 'on' so that it can capture the experience and turn it 'off' once done. And may be also include the user's identification so that I can filter out on the dashboard... congrats though!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!.

That's a great idea. It is possible with starting and stopping Delight manually. ([http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting...](http://www.delight.io/api/Classes/Delight.html#task_Starting%20and%20Stopping%20Recording)) You can also use [Delight setPropertyValue:forKey:] to include custom property to the recording so you can access them thru search on our dashboard. Custom property is any key value pair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Love this. I've been doing more and more "experiential retailing" stuff with iPads (and giant perceptive pixel panels in openframeworks/c++), so this would be awesome to see actual app usage happening in-store. How does it deal with recording iPad 3 retina size? Is there any impact to performance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We always resize before recording. Yes there is some performance impact but users shouldn't see any noticeable UI impact as all capturing and encoding are done on a background thread.

<comment><USER4> Does this mean your not limiting use of delight to the testing phase but also allowing it to be used 'in the wild'?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Here is a sample recording of Delight in action: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWv4iOF3-3Q>

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm genuienly curious how many beta users would actually agree to being recorded this way? Unless it's founder's mom and best friends.

<comment><USER11> People do this all the time on the web - see CrazyEgg or Inspectlet.

<comment><USER12> and even more relevant is ClickTale.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> does anything similar exist for native mac apps? i'm building a music player and would love an integrated solution for tracking activity, crashes, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> Not that I know of. There is <http://silverbackapp.com> but it does not do remote recording.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> great UX comes from feedbacks of test users. this definitely helps the designers to learn user behavior and make changes accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER15> love it, even works for unity -> ios projects!</comment>


Mike Pence Official Website Hacked - <AUTHOR> http://www.officialmikepence.com <comment><USER2> No it wasn't.

[http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/no-mike-pences-website- wa...](http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/08/no-mike-pences-website-wasnt- hacked.html)</comment>


Ask HN: What new tech skills are you learning in 2019? - <AUTHOR> Curious to hear what people on HN are learning outside of work these days. <comment><USER2> Quantum programming is getting more relevant and also more accessible. I suspect in the next decade there might be some need for it. Qiskit and Q# are both pretty prominent ones, I only have experience with Q# but I know Qiskit is pretty popular. It's pretty fun. A completely different way of thinking, that's why I enjoy it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Serverless, AWS Lambda/Amplify/Cognito, React,</comment>


Billionaires Fund a 'Manhattan Project' for Nutrition and Obesity - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/09/19/161444045/billionaires-fund-a-manhattan-project-for-nutrition-and-obesity

<comment><USER2> Is there a Manhattan Project for aging?</comment>


Are the Best and Brightest Still Coming to Silicon Valley? - <AUTHOR> http://techonomy.com/2013/12/best-brightest-still-coming-silicon-valley/

<comment><USER2> Also, worth reading their next segment that answers the following related question: So why do people still come to Silicon Valley? Visit: [http://techonomy.com/2014/01/people-still-come-silicon- valle...](http://techonomy.com/2014/01/people-still-come-silicon-valley/)</comment>


Expanding the Passive Income Experiment - <AUTHOR> http://www.patrick-wied.at/blog/expanding-the-passive-income-experiment

<comment><USER2> Heya, good luck with the new site.

One thing I think may help you out is to spend a bit more time editing your copy. I've noticed that a lot of the wording comes off awkwardly to me (I'm a native English speaker), and I'm guessing that with better copy you'd generate a lot more sales.

Also: the new site seems a bit wordy. For instance, half-way down the page I'm greeted in big letters by the sentence: "Welcome we hope you like our themes".

Since at this point I've already familiarized myself with the content of the site, seeing the 'welcome' message there seems odd, and draws my attention away from the themes.

Lastly, you should have more screenshots of the themes. I found myself really having to look closely at my monitor to see what the themes actually looked like, since I couldn't find a way to make them larger.

Anyhow, best of luck with your new project.

<comment><USER3> Great honest feedback! You were not rude or on a high horse like some commenters can be.

I believe with comments like these people like Patrick can continue torwards their goals.</comment></comment>


Content Sites Bracing For 50% Revenue Slowdown - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/30/content-sites-bracing-for-50-revenue-slowdown/ <comment><USER2> Advertisers brace for dirt-cheap inventory. Break out the party hats!

 _spent $6,000 on AdWords in 2008_

</comment><comment><USER3> so techruch is 50% off ? :)</comment>


Free vulnerability scanning for web apps - <AUTHOR> http://trainofthought.segfault.gr/2010/07/13/get-a-free-vulnerability-scan-for-your-web-application/

<comment><USER2> I'd suggest the author of this tool also test against generic installs of common web applications (and extensions). Trac, Joomla, Redmine, Mediawiki, Bugzilla, Wordpress, phbBB, etc. He also might get more responses if he asked others to download the code to test themselves instead.

<comment><USER3> Well the code is of course available and at the project's page I encourage people to test it and give me feedback. <[http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/arachni/>](http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/arachni/>);

However I disagree with your remark. I doubt that many people would put in the effort of testing a framework that's under development or even make sense of the debugging messages it'll output or to do a thorough test of all it's features.

So I figured it'd be better if I did all the work instead and inform the candidates of any vulnerabilities that Arachni may uncover.</comment></comment>


Hall is Hiring a JavaScript Hacker - <AUTHOR> http://blog.hall.com/post/34770818214/hiring-hackers-javascript-ios

<comment><AUTHOR> Would love to chat if you're interested. Our office is in Mountain View, directly on Castro Street.</comment>


Show HN: I created an alternative to Crowdfunding for devs, programmers etc. - <AUTHOR> https://crowdsourcer.io <comment><USER2> How do you (or who does) quantify a "a fair share of the profits based on their contribution" ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's based on a bounty system for tasks, each of which have a value. With value localised to every project, the value can be a function of anything (though likely time and difficulty) as long as it's consistent throughout the project's life. When people are content with the amount of value a task will reward, they can begin working on it and as they complete these tasks and they're peer reviewed and accepted, their value in the project grows.

Hope that goes some way to explaining it. Let me know if it needs more clarification.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thanks for sharing this, I'm hoping it gets some traction on HN. It seems like a great place to not only vet your idea but to also build a diverse goal- oriented team and I look forward to posting my side-projects on it.

I'd also recommend cross-posting it over on ProductHunt and BetaList.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thank you kindly for this. I hope so too! I need to do a relaunch on Product hunt actually, did one a while ago and it kind of flopped. Need to get into that routine of constantly launching (rather than doing just one big launch.)

If you ever do decide to post a project on there, get in touch and I can try to help out where I can.

<comment><USER3> Did you ever think of dogfooding your project? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)

<comment><AUTHOR> I'd considered it and partially done it. The issue is that we don't really fit our own criteria. Without a widget to sell quickly or relying on growth to make profit, it's a big ask to expect that contributors will wait potentially years for a payout. I see it being a valuable route to take once we've matured a bit though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What is the advantage of crowdsourced.io over Kickstarter?

<comment><USER3> I'm not the creator but I think I can answer this.

With Kickstarter you are trying to raise funds usually in exchange for a product or aesthetic cause. With Crowdsourcer you are actually trying to acquire the talent to launch a software project.

<comment><AUTHOR> Back of the net :)

<comment><USER3> I threw together a quick ProductHunt profile which you should be able to update by logging in with your Twitter profile.

[https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crowdsourcer](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/crowdsourcer)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh that's awesome, thank you. I shall take a look at this when I'm home. That was so good of you :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Awesome idea and execution!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks :)</comment></comment>


The syndrome impairing astronauts' eyesight - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/the-mysterious-syndrome-impairing-astronauts-eyesight/2016/07/09/f20fb9a6-41f1-11e6-88d0-6adee48be8bc_story.html <comment><USER2> It will not prevent travel to Mars. It's effects can likely be countered. Perhaps by artificial gravity.

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

<comment><USER3> Not everyone is ready to admit it yet, but IMO there is no long term future for us in space without something like artificial gravity.

I remember back in the 1970s one of the Skylab astronauts came to my college to give a talk. I had read about some problems, so I asked him about the effects of prolonged weightlessness. He was very dismissive, he vehemently denied that there could be any problems at all.

As they say, denial isn't just a river in Egypt. And the denial has been going on for many many decades.

<comment><USER4> Artificial gravity is easy. You "just" spin things.

The tricky bit is being able to launch enough mass to build something safe and comfortable to spin; there's a limit to how small you can make your spinning habitat before the difference between "centrifugal force" and gravity is too pronounced for our long term comfort. That's part of why making it cheaper to launch per unit mass is so important. If we could put ten times the mass in space for the same price, the ISS would probably look quite different.

I'm of the same opinion as you in general; what spending years in zero-g has proved is that it's not long-term viable. There's too many ways in which it is not viable to expect us to be able to fix all of them, when indeed it's not clear we can fix _any_ of them with drugs or anything short of massive genetic engineering. We don't know how much gravity is necessary, though I'm inclined to guess closer to .5G than .05G. Once you get enough mass in space, though, that's not really that difficult.

<comment><USER5> Now all your space vehicles need to be able to hold together under 1G of force. That means a lot more structure and mass and the cost goes way up.

<comment><USER6> How about sleeping in a centrifuge? No need for the entire spaceship to spin.

<comment><USER7> If it was possible to build a gravity sleep chamber, it's very possible that exposing the human body to gravity and zero-gravity on a daily basis would be put more, not less stress on a body than zero-gravity alone.

<comment><USER6> That's just a random guess. We already lay down for 8 hours and stand up for 16. My random guess is, our fluids would recover with at least some artificial acceleration and why not when sleeping?

<comment><USER8> If you intend to replicate the effects of standing, you'd need to sleep standing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Studies going as far back as the 80s show that people in submarines develop myopia:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7457562](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7457562)

The leading theory is that being in a confined space causes the eye to adapt to viewing things up close rather than at a distance.

<comment><USER10> Anecdote: I saw an article about Native Americans, using a technique of quickly focusing from near to far and back as a means to increase their eyesight range, when I was around twelve years old. Called Eagle Eyes, or something. I have been practicing regularly for eighteen years now, and my eyesight has only improved. I have been looking at computers and books at least a third of my time since. Am I actively preventing myopia? Interesting.

<comment><USER11> That's really interesting. What were your prescriptions before/after?

<comment><USER10> I was 20/20 in both eyes before, 20/15 in one and 20/10 in the other now. The last measurement was two years ago.

<comment><USER12> Are you over 40-45, or under?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "The only proven methods of measuring intracranial pressure are invasive: the spinal tap or drilling a hole into the skull."

Sounds like we need to test/prove something new. I did some searching for a wireless intracranial pressure sensor and didn't find anything, but I bet you could make one. The sensor could be a pair of capacitor plates on the inside of a sealed cavity in a flexible material, with an antenna attached, such that the capacitance changes as the cavity is squeezed by the pressure around it.

To make a measurement, you'd use an external antenna to hit the sensor antenna with an impulse, which would cause it to ring at a frequency proportional to the pressure it's monitoring.

Very simple, no batteries, could be made very small...

[edit] Oh hey, they mention implanted devices. I guess I should have finished reading the article before posting.

</comment><comment><USER14> So what I'm hearing is that we should send myopic people into space to fix their vision!

<comment><USER15> Only in theory. The induced hyperopic shift from axial length reduction of the eyeball would likely be reversible after the patient's intracranial pressure is brought back down under control. Moreover it is nearly impossible to find the sweet spot for just the right amount of hyperopic shift to negate preexisting myopia, not to mention that astigmatism cannot be corrected this way.

The more important and irreversible side effects include elevated intraocular pressure leading to glaucoma risks, and poor blood perfusion to the optic nerve leading to non-arteritic anterior ischemic optic neuritis (as mentioned in the article inflamed optic nerve), both result in permanent loss in parts of the visual field. The choroidal folds are unlikely to cause any change in vision though.

So all factors considered, it's really not a great way to correct myopia.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Could overhydration cause similar eye issues, since it also increases intracranial pressure?

</comment><comment><USER17> Damn, as a guy in OCT research, working with the ATM most advanced OCT imaging systems there are (which we develop ourself) it's been itching me to get one of our systems up there for research. There's currently a Heidelberg OCT on board the ISS, but this thing can do only 2D scans in high resolution. And with our stuff we can do 3D scans in high resolution and even markerless angiography.

</comment><comment><USER18> Though this comment comes days late -- if the effect cannot be countered, perhaps sending farsighted astronauts to Mars would allow them to arrive with fully-corrected vision.

</comment><comment><USER19> Gosh, if only we'd been willing to pay for research to tell us if this effect arises in the low gravity of Mars or the Moon as well as in microgravity.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Modu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module)</comment>


Most coworking spaces don't make money; how they can adapt to survive - <AUTHOR> https://levels.io/coworking-space-economics/ <comment><USER2> It's a poor article, with a few questionable points of data interspersed with padding.

But I'll say that I've looked into co-working spaces and what the author said about being productive for a few days and then it's jibber jabber all day is what i expect and why I've not pulled the trigger.

I like the idea of networking and meeting people, and working in a work environment instead of my bedroom. But at some point I need privacy and limited distractions for most of the day. A co-working space where I can put walls around my desk when needed is what I really want.

</comment><comment><USER3> Really a poor article all around. I'm reminded of that TEDx talk from a few years ago where the guy attempted to showcase some kind of fancy quantum physics with interesting-looking spirals but ended up saying absolutely nothing.

The conclusions seem to be drawn from:

A) a single Google search of questionable repute

B) the author's posterior

</comment><comment><USER4> I can never have the time back.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is that a buzz feed article? #images #randomConclusions</comment>


Google Has Spent $21 Billion on Data Centers - <AUTHOR> http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/09/17/google-has-spent-21-billion-on-data-centers/ <comment><USER2> Headline is wrong. 2 data points that the article is based on: 1) Google has spent 21 billion dollars on Capital Expenditures since 2006 (presumably gathered from SEC filings) and 2) "Google says the majority of its capital investments are for IT infrastructure, including data enters, servers, and networking equipment." (source unclear)

So, Google has spent at least 10.5 billion on "data centers" since 2006. There are notable disclosed expenditures that are clearly not "data centers" mentioned in the article, including 2 billion spent to purchase NYC office space. Still a huge number, but off by many, many billions.

<comment><USER3> Didn't they spend 2 billion buying the 111 Eighth Avenue office in Manhatten at the end of 2010? I believe that is data center realestate.

<comment><USER4> Why would they put a data center in Manhattan? Don't these things usually go where the space is relatively cheap?

<comment><USER5> Latency. Putting things far away from your customers means response time goes up.

<comment><USER6> True, but populous though Manhattan is, it hardly warrants its own data center. If latency was their prime concern they would build the data center in the middle of the population density. For North East US, a location between NY and Washington DC would make more sense.

It could be for transatlantic latency, but this would just be between the US and European data centers anyways.

In short, no, I don't think latency would be a big deal here. Correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER5> When you're Google, 10ms makes a difference. In my own personal experience, a decrease of 100ms in my response time results in a 20% increase of traffic.

Latency matters that much.

<comment><USER6> Yes 10ms does matter, but building a data center in the middle of NY vs 20 miles outside is not going to create anywhere near 10ms latency, its not even going to create 1ms, on the Google network at least. Your cable provider is a far higher source of latency.

<comment><USER5> Depends on where the Meet-Me centre of the city is - it might even be that building.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My question is if google spent 21 billion, why did microsoft spend > 15 billion on its datacenters. How much datacenter resources is each microsoft customer using? It can't be from just office 365, Azure, and Bing. So is the majority from just software updates/downloads?

<comment><USER8> Technet, Windows Update, Xbox Live, Hotmail, Bing, Skydrive and so on.

<comment><USER9> I often wonder what the bandwidth for Windows Update (and MS Download Center for OS patches) is. I would love to see some details on it if it has ever been discussed by MS engineers?

<comment><USER10> [http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc627316.aspx](http://technet.microsoft.com/en- us/library/cc627316.aspx) gives 500 Gbps for Windows Update in 2008. (2008 announcement: [http://blogs.technet.com/b/mscom/archive/2008/04/11/announci...](http://blogs.technet.com/b/mscom/archive/2008/04/11/announcing- the-launch-of-the-microsoft-com-engineering-operations-techcenter.aspx)) I can't find recent update.

<comment><USER9> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Does any one know the relative costs of hardware vs building and cooling? If I had a cool billion to spend, how much would I spend on building/cooling/power/generators vs servers and networking hardware?

<comment><USER12> Yes, and they aren't particularly relative :-)

But to answer your question you can get pretty close by translating into units of watts and remembering a couple of simple rules.

Rule one is you only use 80% of the provisioned power (this is a safety rule with respect to things like circuit breakers and infrastructure, it keeps random surge events from destroying everything).

Rule two is that your power use efficiency (PUE) ratio determines how much cooling you need.

So lets say your PUE was 1.3 (that means total power / computer power = 1.3, the extra going into cooling) and you were building a 10 Megawatt data center. Well you have 8 Megawatts of actual power (80%) and 8/1.3 or 6.15 Megawatts for machines. Going by 750 watts per server (the PSU label [1]) you can put 6.15/.00075 = 8,200 servers into that data center. At 500 watts/machine you are 12,300 machines. So to make the math easy lets say it is 10,000 machines.

If you servers cost you $5,000 each then you're at $50M in server hardware for a 10MW install. Network switches are $100/port (assuming you're not doing 10G ports) and cable is way more expensive than it should be adding another $20 per port to connect it to the switch, so another $1.2M there. You need to hold them in something and rack solutions go from the less expensive (4 post) to the more expensive (fully enclosed) with a range of $500 - $2500. How many you can put in a rack will change your per machine rack cost up or down, but its somewhere between $25 - $125 per machine so another $1.2M so lets be generous and say our $55M for your 10,000 machines which are going to consume 8MW of your 10MW provisioned power.

Building the data center though, especially if you include land acquisition, that is going to be pricey (of course you can write it off over 27.5 years but still) If we start with the fact that a data center is really just a big warehouse with a cold box inside, we can look at building a warehouse [2] and some folks have some priced out [3] which put it about $50 - $75M range, and that is before you add cooling, back up generators, and pay the local utility to run a 10MW power line into your building. I got some estimates from Crane for a 'pocket' data center project I was looking at (about 3MW) and those extra costs are probably going to exceed $100M (split 33/33/33 into cooling, back up power, and secondary construction).

So back of the envelope 3:1 construction costs over equipment cost. And maybe $20M per constructed MW of compute.

[1] This isn't what you would do since machines don't consume that much, they can only not consume _more_ than that, but whatever.

[2] [http://www.reedconstructiondata.com/rsmeans/models/warehouse...](http://www.reedconstructiondata.com/rsmeans/models/warehouse/)

[3] [http://www.mohavedevelopment.org/media/docs/One%20Sheets/Moh...](http://www.mohavedevelopment.org/media/docs/One%20Sheets/Mohave- County-DC-Construction-and-Amortization-Costs-2012.pdf)

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the informative post. Are you aware of any non-proprietary tools for doing procedural generation of data-centers?

I'm imagining a generate-and-test cycle given estimates for the various component prices.

<comment><USER12> I don't know of any off the shelf ones, but there are "data centers" like Google and Microsoft and Amazon build for their "gear" which they resell as "services", and there are "data centers" which are built by Real Estate Investment Trusts which are designed for 'unknown' gear and 'unknown' services.

It is more expensive to build the latter since you cannot know ahead of time what gear to support. Whereas if you're building a box full of Open Compute servers you're in a much better space.

The "services" data centers are really much closer to building sized servers than they are hosting facilities for rack mount servers.

I expect like other specialized facilities part of the 'value add' as a construction agent is both procedural generation tools and experience with various cost trade offs which really only comes from building several of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> So they should use Hadoop?

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure if you're posting sarcastically, but Hadoop was built based on whitepapers Google released about MapReduce and the Google File System. I think they are covered in this department!

<comment><USER16> They're posting in reference to [1] I believe. It's supposed to be a funny comment. They are pretty damn well covered in this department, I agree.

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6398650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6398650)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What if you were trying to start Google today (assuming it didn't exist), and you had to bootstrap with maybe only $500 available to spent per month? How would you guys do it?

<comment><USER18> I presume you're talking about hardware budget. You probably wouldn't get very far with such a low budget, but I think your question is how to get the most bang for your buck. The answer is with dedicated hardware, especially for computationally expensive apps. $500/month dedicated hardware will beat the pants off of $500/month of EC2 instances for example, but it comes with the cost of being less flexible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> is that all? that's only $10k per machine if they have 2M machines (which I'd guess is a conservative estimate)

NOTE: I'm not being snippy - that seems very efficient given the building, HVAC, networking, and the fact that they have probably had a lot of machines fail.

</comment><comment><USER20> How much of it was subsidized by NSA?

[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism- costs...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech- companies-paid)

<comment><USER21> Nearly nothing considering your article mentions "millions" for the whole program and Google has spent 21k million just on its own. Google makes more on interest from its cash on hand than it has received from the NSA.

<comment><USER22> It's really disappointing that you're responding to what is the #1 comment. The NSA noise just overshadows much of the meaningful discussion on HN.

<comment><USER16> It is quite disappointing. I'm personally very tired of how widespread and acceptable the conspiracy theories have become, everyone's wearing their tinfoil hats and running around screaming like the government's taking away their first born child. I can't say I care anymore. But that's like, my opinion man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> And I have spent tens of thousands on rent.

</comment><comment><USER24> Has anyone dug in and figured out how these #s are impacted by MMI?

</comment><comment><USER25> They do have 100% uptime, right?

<comment><USER26> Google had a 5 minute outage this August, where global internet traffic dropped by 40%.

[http://www.fastcompany.com/3015942/most-innovative- companies...](http://www.fastcompany.com/3015942/most-innovative- companies-2013/a-brief-google-outage-made-total-internet-traffic-drop-by-40)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how much money Google has spent per user. $10? $50?

<comment><USER28> ...and did they improve the fortunes of their advertising client base, or merely suck the wind out the prevailing sail without offering anything in return?

<comment><USER29> It is a valid question. As a 'brand building' advertiser, I never felt like most of the google products delivered as much value as they claimed; they all seemed to be targeted at products people will buy after the first impression (which is... not, generally, how products in my sector are sold. People buy because they have heard of me. The 'hearing about me' is important, not the last click.) and the tracking mechanisms all seemed... naive. (now, that last part might just be the effect of them dumbing it down to the point where a small business owner, like me, can understand whats going on, but man... in that case, we advertisers trust google a lot.)

Of course, I'm small, cynical, stupid, and don't spend much effort on advertising, so it's possible my impression is wrong.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> google doesn't throw her money away !! I'm positively sure that they will get it double a triple :) they don't do charity

<comment><USER31> Google actually does a lot of charity

[http://www.google.com/giving/](http://www.google.com/giving/)

<comment><USER32> Publicly traded companies even if they do "charity", they do it expecting good PR in return. Any other kind of charity (i.e. done without publicity, only to make the world a better place) would be against their duty to the shareholders.

<comment><USER33> You're just bringing up the tired thought experiment about whether "true altruism" exists. Is it really corporate "charity" if the company expects good PR and eventually profit as a result? Is it really individual "charity" if the person gets a really good feeling as a result?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stack Overflow's "Food and Cooking" site is in public beta - <AUTHOR> http://cooking.stackexchange.com/

<comment><USER3> Could we please have less Stack Overflow submissions? That is unless you actually have something new to show us. This site is no different than the Gaming site that was submitted to HN about a dozen times last week. They look the same. They function the same. Like the Gaming site, the Food and Cooking site is lonely and branded poorly. Nothing about the UI says food --- except bland.

<comment><USER4> Joel Spolsky has blogged about the process for launching these sites, and there is a sort of trial period to see whether it will fly or be closed. He has also said that each site will have its own logo, branding, etc. Maybe this one hasn't gotten it yet because it hasn't proved itself to be viable yet? It does say "beta."

I'm not saying this is a unique submission, but the UI may not be final.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's a classic programmer fallacy to think "Ah, I have some technology, let's change the logos and roll out the same code for 101 different sites!" without investing serious time into branding or community building.

It feels like a firehose of users - mostly from the developer community - <USER2> being aimed at cookie cutter sites and a lot of wishing for the best is going on behind the scenes.

<comment><USER6> They're at least trying to address this issue by requiring substantial commitment up front before building out a site: <http://area51.stackexchange.com/> . Whether the thresholds they've chosen will work remains to be seen but they at least know about the issue.

<comment><USER5> You're right. I just don't think that's a healthy way to build a community. It reminds me of those high end "planned communities" in places like Florida, Dubai, and around the Med. You get interest and deposits, build a "perfect" environment, and people come in and enjoy their holiday homes without really forming a "community."

Most good communities, online or off, build organically and over time. See HN, Reddit, MetaFilter, Digg, or even Stack Overflow itself (in its original form). Getting hundreds of users to "commit" to forming a community on day one is a recipe for disaster and will end up in a place people dip in and out of rather than truly care for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I am curious about how many NON-programmers are using these StackExchange sites. Are they attracting new users or just the subset of StackOverflow users that also like X (cooking, gaming, etc)?

<comment><USER6> The end goal is probably to get into google results. There may be an advantage against something like Yahoo Answers by having a committed community for a particular topic and drawing experts to that community (haven't seen much expertise on Yahoo Answers beyond what you could find with basic google skills).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's already a Stack Exchange-based site for this: Recipe Labs. <http://ask.recipelabs.com/>

I'm partial to it because it has a cheeky alternate URL: <http://steakoverflow.com/>

</comment><comment><USER9> How do they market these sites? I'm sure the idea is that SEO will kick in as their content gets deeper, but I don't see how they'll get any content at all without promotion by people as prominent in the Gaming/Foodie/etc. communities as Joel and Jeff are in the software engineering world.

<comment><USER10> I'm very sceptical whether the site will appeal to foodies.

SO is a great place, and a completely amazing resource - but people who code are generally quite unique in their ability to rise through the ranks of pedantry. The ability to see things logically, and keep things on topic is essential for software development .. but I don't think it's wise to translate these requirements to a food site.

I think debates over 'is this a question' and 'shouldn't this be closed' and 'move it to community wiki' are all ridiculous. I believe cookery is very much an art - not a science. There's aren't correct single answers for a lot of things - because different things work for different people.

I honestly think putting a bunch of coders in charge is a huge mistake.

<comment><USER11> Would love to ask you a few questions about that in private but there's no contact info on your profile. Mind a few questions? If not, please email me: email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I eagerly await the public beta of Stack Overflow's "What Should I Start a Stack Overflow Clone Site About?" site. Seriously, this is getting silly. Some forms of knowledge are not best organized in a sprawling question-and-answer format.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've already witnessed the classic 'is it a question' debate. Brilliant.</comment>


In politics, height matters – voters are influenced by candidates' stature - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/02/19/in-politics-height-matters <comment><USER2> Doesn't bode well for Bloomberg...</comment>


How To Demo Your Startup - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/08/09/how-to-demo-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> "There is only one Steve Jobs and there is only one Apple. You're never going to build something as cool as Steve, and as such there is no need for you to talk about your product for five or ten minutes."

What a ridiculous statement. I don't want to get into the "power of positive thought" or something but seriously does anyone actually limit themselves like that? "I'll just plug away and hope to develop something mediocre that takes off.."??? If you aren't shooting to make THE coolest thing you can imagine why bother? And if you are why limit your imagination to be up to but not greater than some other persons imagination? Other than paying the bills etc. etc. but you get my point (but at that stage get a corporate job or make porn sites, seriously).

Also I disagree with the point that demoing google would have been as simple as "enter text press enter - wow results." Surely they would have had to demo WHY their results were more correct/ranked etc. to differentiate themselves from yahoo, lycos and who ever else was floating around in the search engine wars.

<comment><USER3> _Also I disagree with the point that demoing google would have been as simple as "enter text press enter - wow results."_

Exactly. Everyone's a retroactive genius on this one. But what would a cynical elevator pitch look like for Google in 1998? How about "We've built yet another search engine, in a market that has never shown even the potential for profit. Now give us some money."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Peter Cohan also offers a good overview in this webinar [http://www.glance.net/custom/Webinars/PeterCohan_20080711/We...](http://www.glance.net/custom/Webinars/PeterCohan_20080711/Webinar.html) that's appropriate for enterprise / office 2.0 applications. He has a number of good articles on preparing for and managing the demo/sales process on his website at <http://www.secondderivative.com/>

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone else here apply for TC50? We did, although our 10 minutes was with Heather Harde, not Jason.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, we demo'd to Jason. Haven't heard yet about round 2, though I suspect the long silence means bad news. Based on his article, at least we got most of the basics right, though I think we failed on the crucial one, of getting across why our product is really interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm scoring this at about 55% good material, which gets an upvote.

The problem, in my opinion, is that some of this advice is simply broiler plate, motherhood, and apple pie goodness.

Yes. Google can demo their product with one screen and a text box. Got the next Google? Then don't worry so much about your demo. Writing the next Space Shuttle flight system? I'd like to see more than a screen with flight numbers on it. (Probably take a lot longer than 5 minutes too). Sure -- write succinctly. Have a great opening screen from your software that draws the viewer in.

Don't show trivial bits? Hey, that's great advice. Care to tell me what's a trivial bit? I've been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into this puppy: everything is important. Once again, the general point of reduce your depth of presentation to important points for the listener is all goodness. But you'd better know the 2 or 3 little things that's going to put a twinkle in the eye of your viewer. Guess what? It's different every time.

I liked the article overall, though.

One of the best questions was in the comments. Is it okay to use pre=canned video to show your app? Suppose for pacing purposes you want to record your demo and then put it inside an annotated powerpoint. Anything wrong with that? I know I've tried that during training sessions on a couple of occasions and it actually went very well -- freed me up from doodling with the keyboard and let me focus more on my audience.</comment>