Peter Thiel Is a Flawed Messenger with a Crucial Message for Tech - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/peter-thiel-is-a-flawed-messenger-with-a-crucial-message-for-tech <comment><USER2> As much as I hate to admit, I do agree with Thiel's point (barely mentioned after the first paragraph) that the vast majority of thought is being driven by politically intolerant left-leaning liberals. I am absolutely one of them, but it's amazing that in multiple major tech companies in Seattle, there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded post-Trump.

It's very difficult to make products and apps for _everyone_ , when the people making them represents only one viewpoint. And interestingly, unlike companies that localize/culturalize their products by opening local offices, I don't know of any companies opening satellite offices in Alabama/Mississippi or even conservative counties in Washington and California.

I remember when it used to be taboo to talk politics in the office. I find that doesn't even exist anymore, when everyone shares the same left-leaning mindset.

<comment><USER3> > there has been a near-100% shared liberal mentality, that has only exploded > post-Trump

This is mainly because anyone who doesn't share that liberal mentality has learned to keep their mouths shut or risk their career.

<comment><USER4> And this is kind of the problem with politics. Something I've never understood with people is why they have a desire to punish others who disagree or don't share their political beliefs.

Sadly, it is this opposing views between people that causes wars and yet on a local/individual level, it results in things like not promoting someone who doesn't share your views or limiting a salary increase or bonus.

It's really disappointing about ourselves, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So the author says Thiel's message is that there will be more regulation of the tech industry, as if that is unquestionably a bad thing. But we've all seen how the industry, like any large scale human activity, is subject to manipulations that work against the public good, and specifically the good of its own users. At this point it seems like many industry leaders acknowledge the need for regulation, and as is historically the case with other industries, are seeking to work with the government to design regulations that will (ideally) strengthen consumer protections but not create undue burdens. Thiel appears to be staunchly libertarian and so for him regulation per se is a negative development, but there are certainly other ways to view the interaction between public and private sectors. I get the sense that lots of people working in tech can see the case for why a bit more oversight wouldn't hurt.

</comment><comment><USER6> Political division in the United States is insane. People do not think for themselves. They are complete tools of whatever media outlets they happen to get their "news" from. They grab hold of catch phrases and chant them as loud as possible to drown out the voices of the "opposition". There's no rational thought behind their actions, only blind loyalty to men-as-products who they think are their friends because they have chosen to be completely ignorant to the Show-Business Fraud of modern politics.

Despite years of effort and media both fictional and non-fiction, showing everyone how politics manipulates their emotions and core beliefs, nothing has improved. If anything it's gotten so much worse. Insanity is the only way that a person can really summarize it. It's blind rabid insanity.

</comment><comment><USER7> One thing I have been wondering about lately is what kind of reputation will people working in the tech industry have 10-20 years from now. Will people working outside the industry think of us as the new banker wankers?

Unfortunately, I would not be surprised giving the social implications of much of the technology that are being introduced through companies such as Amazon, Uber etc.

</comment><comment><USER8> "That's why there is and will be an even greater pushback against the idea that a small group of companies and executives can reap vast rewards, dictate the architecture of the online, cloud, AI, and robotic worlds and maintain an insular, parochial, and narrow worldview marked by groupthink."

Slightly strange from the author of 'Zero to One'..

<comment><USER9> I think that's the author of the article speaking though, rather than Thiel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> The author can't have listened much to Thiel. He certainly doesn't speak without a filter, most of what he says he will repeat in interview after interview, for years. Every now and then he adds something new, but that thing is seldom very off-the-cuff. Thiel is unorthodox, not unfiltered.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is somewhat pedantic to the overall point of the article, but Peter Thiel is moving to LA because the Valley is a stifling cultural environment, but then goes on to name multiple tech companies that they consider part of the Valley, but physically removed.

Why would Thiel moving to LA somehow affect this equation? They start the article using it for its importance and end it with saying it isn't, and it feels so contrived for the writer to use it as a way to editorialize on other matters.

I do happen to agree with a lot of the article, but the editing here feels sloppy, and while I love a lot of Wired's content, it seems like this continues to be a problem with their articles.

</comment><comment><USER12> This thread (50 comments as of now) utterly amazes me.

I mean, I haven't seen americans with different political views talking to each other in a level headed manner for a long time. Heck, on reddit they just use different subreddits, /r/politics and /r/the_donald, otherwise they are on each other throats in no time. Ok, that's reddit, so it should be expected, but HN is not much different recently. And it's not like we are talking about war crimes or human lifes here; it's just an opinion from some wealthy VC dude. Hardly something to be mad about, no matter if you agree with him or not.

PS: I have to make a disclaimer probably. by some coincidence, I'm russian. Weather is damn cold in Moscow, thanks for asking. No, I wasn't paid 50 rubles for this post.

</comment><comment><USER13> > "Where Peter Thiel lives is of at best marginal import to anyone but him."

This is not first rate journalism. Does Zachary Karabell not realize that people go to Mr. Thiel seeking investment? It's not simply a matter of Facebook. SpaceX and Stripe each had times when they couldn't raise investment from anyone but Thiel.

<comment><USER14> It is worth questioning why they even wrote this article in the first place if that statement were true.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> For those who wants to find the "Crucial Message" quickly, I think it is hidden in the 4th last paragraph :

"That's why there is and will be an even greater pushback against the idea that a small group of companies and executives can reap vast rewards, dictate the architecture of the online, cloud, AI, and robotic worlds and maintain an insular, parochial, and narrow worldview marked by groupthink."

Or was it somewhere else?

To be fair, it is not a small group of companies, but rather clusters of companies working decades together to make it all happen, and I was hoping there was at least a tiny bit of appreciation in the article. But I quickly realized that while the author did the name dropping he had to point out Amazon is not technically in the Valley but part of the equation. I was hoping he could find companies like Western Digital is also making most of the hard drives that contribute to whatever agenda he thinks the silicon valley is doing.

<comment><USER16> This is the 'crucial message' that the author is trying to promote:

> His rationale, according to a piece in the Wall Street Journal, is that the > Valley is now a politically intolerant culture, left-leaning in the extreme > and to the exclusion of any contrarian viewpoints

And it is bullshit. Who can be found shutting down democracy via gerrymandering? Republicans. Who can be found threatening the media from one of the most powerful pulpits in the land? Trump, who seems to have the unyeilding support of the Republican party. Who runs online harrassment campaigns with the explicity aim of silencing people? Gamergate and the red- pill brigade.

The left has made some mistakes and could do a lot of things better, but they can't hold a candle to the right when it comes to insular, parochial, and narrow worldviews marked by groupthink

<comment><USER17> No, it's bullshit simply because it's prima facie bullshit.

"The Valley" (something no one here says out loud) has the same liberal bias it's had for decades. It has changed in some ways, much the same way our national politics have changed over time. There are ebbs and flows in what's liberal vs conservative, to what degree, on which issues... etc.

But "the Valley" has not suddenly become some unique bastion of intolerance (beyond the general shift in polarization that's been, again, nationwide) or 'groupthink', the newly beloved piece of mud to sling by right-y cultural agitators. It's just a large target for the current wave of culture clash and change.

Thiel is welcome to go chill wherever he feels happy. But no need to be such a baby about it really.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I don't understand the medias obsession with Thiel since Trumps election.

He's a republican. K

He's gay. K

He's critical of the Silicon Valley echo chamber. K

He's a great businessman. K

There's not really a great boogieman story to make from. this.

<comment><USER19> Him and Hulk Hogan got in a tag team fight versus the online version of a supermarket checkout aisle tabloid. And won! That's pretty cool I guess...

I agree the obsession with the guy is weird, but then the entire cult of celebrity thing never really made a lot of sense, imho.

<comment><USER20> Think it is his refusal to toe the valley's ideological line that's causing the obsession. He's pretty much the same guy he has always been but the landscape around him has changed. He refuses to change with it. That makes him confusing to those who have successfully bullied everyone else into groupthink compliance. Why won't he just submit to the hive?

<comment><USER21> I think being at the head of Palantir maybe gave him a deep understanding of what's really going on inside the federal government and he's a believer that there is indeed a swamp.

This seems to be one of the big issues that separates the Trump supporters from everyone else. Everyone else seems to think the government was run perfectly under Obama's presidency and Hillary's state department and Trump threw the whole world into chaos.

<comment><USER22> People are bad at thinking in absolutes. Humans always think in relative terms. Our perception of how well the government operates is in relation to how we perceive the change to previous governments. Obama, Bush, Clinton, Old Bush, Reagan all seemed kind of like a natural progression with some ups and downs. Trump is a breaking change . People are noticing it.

I see leftists posting articles about how normal Bush was. Do you remember Bush being Hitler just 15 years ago? I remember. It's all about comparison.

Obama was a scandal free presidency! Do you remember Obama getting a Nobel Peace Prize and then proceed to bomb 7 countries? Whatever happened to closing Guantanamo? Enabling the greatest surveillance state ever conceived? That's scandalous.

It's all normal now.

<comment><USER23> Believe me when I tell you that no one misremembers the Cheney Administration. We just didn't think it could get any worse.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Dear Google, make me a Phone - <AUTHOR> http://ivoras.net/blog/tree/2014/May-dear-google-make-me-a-phone.html

<comment><USER2> Why ask google if Nokia already sells it to you for $50 or so? It's called the C3-01.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_C3_Touch_and_Type](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_C3_Touch_and_Type)

It's just about indestructible (believe me, I've tried) and it lasts for many days on one charge, it is so power conservative that I tend to forget to charge it only to find that it is still half full when I finally remember to look at how it is doing.

It's _not_ a smartphone, it does not run android or iOS but then again, you did not specify that.</comment>


Why You Should Care About the Julian Assange Case - <AUTHOR> https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/taibbi-julian-assange-case-wikileaks-758883/ <comment><USER2> I think the Assange/wikileaks indictment is a misstep by the justice department/current administration.

My understanding is that it's far from clear how a case again Assange/wikileaks would play out in court. Like the article mentions, the New York Times and others have published classified information repeatedly -- how can Assange be indicted but not the NYT? Assange also isn't an American citizen and he hasn't leaked information himself, just published it. I think there's a good chance Assange would be acquitted.

I also think it's a bizarre exagerration to argue that an attempted prosecution of Assage would result in "broad new powers to put Trump's media 'enemies' in jail".

Don't get me wrong -- I don't much care for Assange. It seems to me that there's a lot of hot air coming from him and he appears to have quite an ego. Also, though I understand there is disagreement about this, I think countries keep secrets for a reason and I consider it naive utopianism to expect everything to be brought into the open. In an ideal world, sure, but the world is not ideal.

While I don't think Assange/wikileaks are necessarily "siding with Russia," I do think that Russia has made use of wikileaks. Wikileaks is heavily promoted in Russian propaganda, and it seems _at least plausible_ that Russia could obtain information and leak it through wikileaks. This is a problem for wikileaks: if you're all about freedom of information and you make public everything passed onto you, it's totally possible for state actors -- the same state actors whose behavior you find reprehensible -- to use you as a tool to further their own interests.

<comment><USER3> > Don't get me wrong -- I don't much care for Assange [...]

Why has this blase paragraph become so common? Want to defend Trump's actions on X as consistent with a past president? Include a paragraph on how you don't like him. Want to attack academia for being too much of an echo chamber ("grievance studies")? Make sure to have two paragraph digression on how you're a liberal, not one of those icky conservatives.

Why is it necessary to explain that defending an ethical norm in the case of a certain individual does not imply endorsement for all of that individual's actions? Can't we consider ethical arguments on their own merits, without regard to the underlying ideology of the speaker? Is it a garlic clove to ward off American hyperpartisanship?

It's my perception that such garlic cloves have become ubiquitous, where only a decade ago they were much rarer.

<comment><USER4> The far right and the far left are so overrepresented in the media and online discourse that it's necessary to distance yourself or be assumed one of them.

<comment><USER3> > The far right and the far left are so overrepresented in the media and > online discourse

I don't think so, no. Not on mainstream forums. They certainly have a lot of their own special forums, but on Reddit, and Facebook, and HackerNews, I find that most commenters are pretty much who you'd expect - random, middle of the road people.

> it's necessary to distance yourself or be assumed one of them

Have you considered the possibility that you only think these people are overrepresented because you assume anybody without a disclaimer is one of them?

<comment><USER5> It's more like anyone who doesn't leave a disclaimer (and some of those who do) have angry partisans jump down their throats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > "If you hate Assange because of his role in the 2016 race, please take a > deep breath and consider what a criminal charge that does not involve the > 2016 election might mean."

\--- Why? There is mounting evidence that Assange - whatever his idealistic intentions might have been with Wikileaks - has become an active conspirator in working with the Russians (and unsavory Americans) in undermining US democracy.

<comment><USER7> Please elaborate extensively on the evidence the shows Russia to be complicit in election meddling. I've been watching endlessly for some hint the Russia was a compelling force in anything related to the 2016 election. And the same goes for the alleged Wikileaks connection to Russia, because all I've seen is unwarranted speculation and conjecture in this regard.

Personally, I'm waiting until all the cards are revealed before I solidify my opinion on this.

<comment><USER8> Extensive evidence like the nearly 30 page indictment citing 12 Russian intelligence officers filed by Mueller? [1]

1: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller- indic...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/13/us/politics/mueller-indictment- russian-intelligence-hacking.html)

<comment><USER7> Indictments are merrily formal accusations and are not proof of wrongdoing, so again, please supply substantial evidence of Russian meddling.

<comment><USER6> You're asking for proof beyond a reasonable doubt, not evidence.

<comment><USER7> Credible evidence must be provable, otherwise it is just speculation.

<comment><USER6> You might be interested in what's in the headlines today.

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort- hel...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret- talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think there's a spectrum of behaviors that range from legitimate news gathering to something very much like espionage.

Scenario 1: Leaker: Hi, I'm XXX, I work for YYY and I'm witness to event ZZZ that I think must be exposed. I have classified documents to back up what I have to tell you. Reporter: I'm going to stop you there and make sure my editor, owner, and lawyers are on board with this and determine how to proceed. Please do not communicate any classified material at this time.

Scenario 2: Leaker: Hi, I'm unhappy with the general state of things and am willing to exfiltrate any secure data I can get my hands on. Reporter: Great! What do you have access to? No, better, just send me a listing of everything. Here's a secure server and software that should crawl your net and get it out without raising any eyebrows. No wait, even better, I'll send you a USB dongle that will look like a keyboard to the hw event logger with everything you'll need on it.

Not saying Assange did exactly scenario #2, but I think the press can be only so much of an active participant before they incur some liability for the removal of classified information.

</comment><comment><USER10> Can someone please explain or point to what Assange is being indicted for?

<comment><USER11> no one knows! but probably something line "publishing secrets mumble mumble national security mumble mumble"

<comment><USER12> Why the snark? I too would like to know if there's a probable reason that's more specific - you're saying nobody knows, but then you're saying there is a probable reason, but then you're apparently mocking that probable reason. But you haven't provided any substance on the probable reason or why you're mocking it.

<comment><USER11> Not trying to be too snarky, just my best guess of what the charges will be. I think "national security" is the nose in the camel's tent that's being used to shift the government in a more authoritarian direction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > An Assange prosecution could give the Trump presidency broad new powers to > put Trump's media "enemies" in jail, instead of just yanking a credential or > two

I don't understand how a prosecution of something completely unrelated to what he has done on/with wikileaks automagically translates into donald having 'broad new powers' to start throwing journalists in jail. If Assange is blamed for and/or convicted of some sexual misconduct or whatever (again, unrelated to his 'journalism' work), does the author think that all journalists are guilty of this and subject to imprisonment?

Edit: thanks for the explanations. I look forward to the incoming HN bury brigade, since I asked a question based on a false pretense. Such is the reddit^H^H^H^H^H^Hhackernews way.

<comment><USER14> It is extremely unlikely that US prosecutors are after him for any alleged "backroom talk/act". WSJ reported that the charges against him " may involve the Espionage Act, which criminalizes the disclosure of national defense- related information."[0] Accordingly, the implications on journalism are real and far-reaching [1].

[0] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-optimistic-it-will- prose...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-is-optimistic-it-will-prosecute- assange-1542323142)

[1] [https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj- conclud...](https://theintercept.com/2018/11/16/as-the-obama-doj-concluded- prosecution-of-julian-assange-for-publishing-documents-poses-grave-threats-to- press-freedom/)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is there a place for professionals to trade skills - <AUTHOR>

I have a solid amount of web app backend and Android experience.
I am currently trying to build an iOS app and I have, what I think, are some basic questions that any experienced iOS dev could easily answer.
Sure, I could post them on StackOverflow, but I feel like a good "1 hour" sit-down session with an iOS developer would be infinitely more valuable than a piecemeal Q&A format. That way I could get a more holistic view and understanding.
I was hoping there was a site where I could go to trade my skills for theirs. I will trade 1-2 hours of my backend & Android help for 1-2 hours of iOS help.
Is there such a site / app? Ideally it would allow for location filtering so, if desired, one could meet-up in person.
There are a lot of educational resources out there: - Coursera - Treehouse - Skillshare
But they are all one-way and require one to follow a specific course. I want more ad-hoc education.
Basically, scratch my back and I will scratch yours. <comment><USER2> Trading skills sounds like a nice idea, but it seems like it might limit you. Maybe someone knows iOS but doesn't really care to learn Android at the moment. Pitching it that way might rule people out who would otherwise love to help someone for "free."

In my experience, simply asking an experienced developer for help is enough – and a great way to meet a dev with different skills is to get involved in their community.

Are there any iOS MeetUps in or near your area? Or perhaps a popular iOS IRC or Slack channel you can join to meet people remotely?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great points.

I did have the thought about attending meetups - which is a good approach. My first reaction was just that I dont want people to think I'm leaching off of them - I want to give back (assuming they want what I have to offer).

Its funny because I feel I am quick to help others w/o any thought of retribution - but I dont expect the same from others.

Thanks for your thoughts!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> In my experience: if you go around scratching backs routinely, there will be someone to scratch yours when you need them. Start by being generous with your own time, and it'll work out in the end.</comment>


Ask HN: Resources for creating my own database - <AUTHOR> I know a lot about to how use different databases (SQL, Elasticsearch, Mongodb, etc), but I thought it would make an interesting project to create my own database.  I have an idea of where I would start, but was hoping looking for some resources to help me out (free or paid).  I tried googling around but most of the results are dominated by MS Access or SQL stuff.<p>Any links to books/pdfs/github repos would be awesome. <comment><USER2> The Red Book [1] (recently updated) is a good overview and has lots of useful references. Some might be too high-level, but this paper (really a short book!) is a good start at what makes up a database: "Architecture of a Database System"[2].

Keep in mind that the scope of a "database" can be __huge __, so you might want to start really small, e.g., writing a basic key-value store that can support things concurrent reads & write, isolation, etc. It all depends on what interests you.

\--

[1] [http://www.redbook.io/](http://www.redbook.io/)

[2] [http://www.electricmonk.nl/data/freeitebooks/fntdb07-archite...](http://www.electricmonk.nl/data/freeitebooks/fntdb07-architecture.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think I'm mainly interested in writing a graph database because there are less of them available

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The accepted answer on this post has quite a bit of information: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121653/create...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/121653/create- my-own-database-system)

I was interested in this too at one point in time and spent some time perusing the links in the above post, but after taking the database class at my university I realized it wasn't for me. :P

Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/](http://www.thethirdmanifesto.com/)</comment>


The Stutterer's Song: Remembering Bill Withers - <AUTHOR> https://thepointmag.com/criticism/the-stutterers-song-bill-withers/ <comment><USER2> Bill Withers was not afraid to try something unique with his singing. The "I know, I know, I know..." in "Ain't No Sunshine" and in "Lovely Day" he stretches out the "lovely daaaaay" to the point of craziness especially at the end.

Love his stuff. He has been sampled and a covered quite a bit.

</comment><comment><USER3> Bill Withers is one of my all-time favorite artists, which makes this a pleasure to read. This article makes some pretty wide stretches to connect the few dots within, but it's well-written.

<comment><USER4> Same. The article is well written, but I prefer to let the music stand alone, rather than try to draw a speculative connection to the artist's life just to fit a narrative.

Side note: A couple years ago I was flipping around the radio dial, and I ran across "Sweet Wanomie". I was instantly hooked, but I had no idea who the artist was. It turned out a local independent station put Just As I Am on a loop for six months, as a way of keeping the FCC happy when they had no other programming available. I became very familiar with that album.

<comment><USER5> I need to know more about this station.

<comment><USER4> It's a small town, relatively speaking. Only a few hundred thousand people in the area. Someone has a low power license, but they needed volunteers and equipment. The FCC apparently expects FM license holders to broadcast something. So that's what they did while they got organized. Now they are up and running with volunteer DJs who get to play whatever they want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sorry it's not HN related, but he had some great tracks that are less well known in some circles and deserve more recognition.

Let's Pretend - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiSmeCIi3Lo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiSmeCIi3Lo)

I'm Her Daddy - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SAke0jV-0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SAke0jV-0o)

Use Me - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprVW3gS-H4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HprVW3gS-H4)

Who Is He (And What Is He to You?) - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0bAUY6WzAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0bAUY6WzAw)

Grandma's Hands - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcW7UBHSvJ8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcW7UBHSvJ8)

Harlem - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbbwiE2GgkE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbbwiE2GgkE)

</comment><comment><USER7> I remember Bill Withers.

[https://jango-index.ml/?artist=Bill+Withers](https://jango- index.ml/?artist=Bill+Withers)

</comment><comment><USER8> I was expecting Scatman.

<comment><USER9> Then someone ought to make sure you're not disappointed :)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hy8kmNEo1i8)</comment></comment>


How to plan your trips easier - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@rodykyp/how-to-plan-your-trips-better-4b1744e93504 <comment><AUTHOR> Ddays is a simple app to plan travels with buddies.</comment>


North, Thalmic's Secret Smart Glasses Play - <AUTHOR> https://betakit.com/north-is-thalmics-secret-smart-glasses-play/ <comment><USER2> I hope this works - and I hope its in the $300-$500 price point.

I really liked google glass - but I wasn't going to pay >1k.

<comment><USER3> From your perspective, what's the killer app for glasses that phones don't do better? Is it just the way it's always immediately there?

<comment><USER4> Yeah, from the website, "texting, navigation, calendar functionality" \- I can't ever imagine wanting any of these in a pair of glasses instead of a phone.

If anything, I think there is a rising sea change in that more and more people are realizing they _DON 'T_ always want to have a life full of digital distractions, and that having that beeping thing in your pocket is bad enough, but having something smack dab in front of your eyeballs is even worse.

<comment><USER5> For consumers, navigation makes a lot of sense, especially when on foot, or on a bike. It's unsafe in many instances to use your phone, or even to wear headphones for turn-by-turn instructions.

AR translation of text is already awesome but cumbersome using a smartphone. This would improve it a lot.

Speech-to-text for hearing impaired folks would be really nice, as well as visual indicators of loud or dangerous sounds, with directional indicators. You could imprint someone's vocal signatures or a keyword so your friends could get your attention at distance.

In professional or enthusiast settings it's also quite useful to have a heads- up display for many "live" tasks. Cooking, construction, surgery, driving, sports, policing, you can even tether to a battery pack in some instances.

In short, any setting when your hands are occupied but you can benefit from some sort of data feed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Forgot about their armband:

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

<comment><USER7> So did they, by the look of it: [https://twitter.com/ThalmicDev](https://twitter.com/ThalmicDev)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wondering when they come out officially, gotta support a Canadian company

</comment><comment><USER9> Thalmic is also a YC funded company.</comment>


Ask HN: Is there a defacto "standard" for API authentication with Node? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking at building some APIs with node, but I'm not sure whether to go with some sort of OAuth library, simple token based authentication, or whatever. Is there a decent, secure solution that is used regularly? <comment><USER2> As far as I know passportjs is a famous solution [http://passportjs.org/](http://passportjs.org/)</comment>


6 Approaches to Blogging for Your Company - <AUTHOR> http://www.readwriteweb.com/start/2010/02/corporate-blogging.php

<comment><USER2> what about being an expert of the domain in which your product/service resides?

that's the most obvious (and most useful to potential users) approach in my mind</comment>


Show HN: Home-made crypto in the browser - <AUTHOR> http://requirebin.com/?gist=0651c4d15c202b3e986e764294d3b028 <comment><AUTHOR> Usual caveats for home-made crypto apply.

TL;DR - treat this as you would home-made beer from someone you don't know. You'd probably hold it at arms length, have a smell, and maybe try the taste...but you wouldn't start selling it in your hip bar without knowing anything about it!

Anyway, hope others interested in crypto can enjoy this. I am not a crypto- expert, just a moderately-talented-at-crypto-hobbyist, or somethin. Code: [https://github.com/dosyago-coder-0/dosycrypt](https://github.com/dosyago- coder-0/dosycrypt)

<comment><USER2> And the usual caveats for in-browser encryption apply. Namely that the trust model is no different from temporarily handing the encryption keys to the server.

In the latter case you trust the server to discard the keys after them being used. In the former case you trust the server to not transiently serving you javascript that exfiltrates the keys. In both cases this trust has not just to be extended once (which would make things auditable) but during every single transaction.

<comment><USER3> This is far from true. Client-side crypto at least gives you the ability to inspect outgoing network traffic. This should help to keep site operators honest.

The site operator can of course nefariously and randomly serve JS that exfiltrates keys, but users at least have the _ability_ to audit every single transaction.

<comment><USER2> That I assuming that every type network request is covered by available monitoring tools and that they are user-friendly. What if web browsers allow you to trigger DNS lookups without HTTP requests? That could already be used to exfiltrate data.

<comment><USER4> > What if web browsers allow you to trigger DNS lookups without HTTP requests?

Just include hidden links in the page, most browsers have some sort of pre- fetch optimization that does exactly that. I think they make HTTP connections on hover even.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for introducing me to RequireBin. Love the gist recognition ;)

[http://requirebin.com/](http://requirebin.com/)

</comment><comment><USER6> Another in-browser crypto project based on TweetNaCl:

[https://github.com/Spark-Innovations/SC4](https://github.com/Spark- Innovations/SC4)

SC4 has undergone a security audit.

<comment><USER7> It's also non-free (and under a license that is distinctly not made for code.)

<comment><USER6> > It's also non-free

Not true. And if there something you don't like about the licensing, it would be more constructive to begin by asking the author privately if they'd be willing to change the license terms rather than complain about it on a public forum.

<comment><USER8> France, and many other jurisdictions, don't recognise the concept of releasing directly into the public domain, so in this case would leave you high and dry in the future theoretical of the original author changing his mind about your use of his library.

If people really want to release into the public domain, public domain with French exceptions like CC0 are the best option.

<comment><USER9> TweetNaCl-js is under such a "public domain with fallback" license, so I'm not sure what you are complaining about.

(And even if it weren't, pure use is not as critical as e.g. wanting to contribute to it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> don't the major browsers have apis to built in crypto libraries - you can basically ask for many operations from JS?

<comment><USER11> They do: [https://caniuse.com/#feat=cryptography](https://caniuse.com/#feat=cryptography)

<comment><USER12> From that page: "Many browsers support the crypto.getRandomValues() method, but not actual cryptography functionality under crypto.subtle. "</comment></comment></comment>


If you don't finish then you're just busy, not productive - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacksimpson.co/finishing-being-productive-busy/ <comment><USER2> One of the biggest Aha!! moments I had happened when I created my first company and realized how important joining people of different personalities together is in order to make them prosper. Making teams instead of solo work.

For example a very good designer or visionary could see the forest but finds it very hard to face each individual tree. There are other people that can't see the forest by themselves but are extremely efficient working on tree after tree.

You just join them together and magic happens.

It is a terrible thing that our educational system favors so much individualism, even when most important work(Nobel prices, great products or services) are done in teams.

When someone starts too many projects but finish none, for me is a symptom that he simply can't finish it alone. In my company I have gotten practice on making people finish things.

This is probably the biggest thing Silicon Valley has, there is always someone who can help you and you help her too.

<comment><USER3> It may seem that US educational system favour individualism, but there are no indications that it has any significant consequences. Google failed to find correlations between performance at college and performance at work [1].

Also there are schools where children are free to do anything during school time including entering/leaving any lecture or activity at will at any moment. Yet there are no indications that on average it makes those that attend such schools any worse in a later life [2]

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head- hunting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/business/in-head-hunting-big- data-may-not-be-such-a-big-deal.html?partner=socialflow&smid=tw- nytimesbusiness)

[2] [https://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct- Self-R...](https://www.amazon.com/Free-Learn-Unleashing-Instinct-Self- Reliant/dp/0465025994)

<comment><USER4> Fortunately there are more metrics to judge the value of an education and a life than "how productive were they at fucking google".

<comment><USER5> It's not that academics are not a useful precursor to work, but that the academy and the company are evaluating people on apparently orthogonal metrics. Which in itself is a really interesting result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I generally agree with the article.

However there is another side to the coin.

The tldr is that _Some things are better left unfinished_.

The longer version:

Some projects are just experiments and learning exercises, even though at the moment we feel like this is going to change the world (note: the world will change anyway).

The reality is that there's just too much stuff - physical products or digital applications, music or movies - it's just too much shit out there !

And not all of it is good, in fact, as with anything - most of it is crap which only adds to the cognitive noise or pollutes the environment.

Why should you contribute your half-assed idea/project/product to the ocean of useless things, apps, art that's out there ?

If during the initial phase of development you don't have a clear answer to this question, then it is OK to abandon it and move on to something else.

There's no shame in accepting that _most of the time we have shitty ideas_. By "idea" I mean not just the actual technical stuff, but the whole "build a company" ideation that goes along with it - how you're going to get rich and get invited to TV shows, write blog posts which millions retweet and shit like that. A lot of young people unfortunately bet their youth and mental health on trying to prove otherwise.

Creative energy is very similar to (if not the same as) sexual energy. It's something that just 'grows' inside us and it must be released. But not all of the sexual energy should be used for its intended purpose - creating new humans - otherwise we'd quickly run out of space on the Planet.

Sometimes it is ok to just 'vent' and waste a little bit of that energy in order to make room for fresh 'energy' :).

So it's ok to just "masturbate" intellectually from time to time without actually finishing it.

Career-wise, you probably want to finish one or two, maybe several projects in your life.

<comment><USER7> Generally I agree that it's just not worth it to release projects and code that are unfinished or not very useful but there's often gems inside these things.

How many of us have struggled with something complicated and found some golden function or bit of code hidden inside some otherwise useless project that solves the problem? Even if you don't use such code it can still be incredibly useful for understanding how things work.

I often rip out the useful bits of unfinished/unreleased projects and just paste them to gist.github.com. Some of them have received comments like, "I don't know where this came from but it's exactly what I was looking for! Thank you!"

Posting your whole useless project _can_ be helpful.

<comment><USER8> The problem with releasing useless and unfinished projects is that when people are taking your github profile as your resume, they're going to be seeing a bunch of useless, half-finished projects. It doesn't make a very good first impression.

For this reason, I'm increasingly moving my code off Github and onto Bitbucket. Despite having a worse UI, Bitbucket at least allows me to make private repositories for free, which means that I can make repos public if and only if I think it's ready for an interviewer to look at it.

<comment><USER9> Anecdotally, as someone who occasionally I never "penalize" people for having lots of unfinished projects. If they try interesting things a lot, that's a plus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I realised I was guilty of this in 2016 so for 2017 I've made a few simple changes, the primary one being how I write my "project" name in OmniFocus.

For instance, I had "Learn how to use bash properly". Well, what does that mean? When is that finished? It never is. Now, that project is called "Read 'Learning the bash shell'".

Immediately, that's attainable. When I've finished reading the book, perhaps I'll want to do more, perhaps I won't. But at least I know that I'll have _completed_ that project.

<comment><USER11> Why do you even set yourself such a goal?

Just learn to use it when you need it, or when you have a task, where you suspect that it might be faster done in bash.

<comment><USER12> Reading a book on it can give you a better idea of which tasks might be faster done that way, so that when you run into one, you're better equipped to recognize it as such than you might otherwise be.

<comment><USER11> That is actually very correct.

I remember reading a book about the Shell and bash 15 years ago. It was the only book I read about the topic, but it helped me a great deal to develop an intuition about what it can do.

Didn't prevent me though from getting sometimes lost in crafting complex scripts, where manual work or a java-program would have been faster.

<comment><USER12> Well, that's sort of the problem with bash scripting - its range of capabilities, combined with its atrocious syntax and various limitations, makes it something of an attractive nuisance, where you end up in a rabbit hole of "how do I do this in bash" while doing it in anything else would be more productive.

Maybe the most important thing to learn about shell scripting is when _not_ to use it. Alas, if the book that teaches that skill has been written, I have yet to run across it.

<comment><USER13> The shell is a tool, as is a proficiency in C, Python, Java, Golang, etc. The more tools you can successfully wield, the more you can build. Just because you're not super proficient in the shell doesn't mean someone else might be the same, so you shouldn't simply dismiss it. It is simply another tool to use and your "when not to use" question can literally be used with ANY technology.

As an exercise, try replacing bash / shell scripting with SQL or C or Python. This is the fallacy in your argument :)

<comment><USER11> [Meta: Why I think you have been downvoted]

> " _Just because you 're not super proficient [...] As an exercise [...] This > is the fallacy in your argument_ "

This assumption of missing knowledge and handing out of an "exercise" in logical thinking comes across rather patronising. Also I'm not sure where the argument was, that you found a fallacy in.

Thank you for your contribution, nevertheless. I too believe that the decision on whether to use a tool or not, depends on your knowledge about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> For learners, finishing matters because:

1\. The learning you get from going thru whole cycle is valuable for next projects. Even if you release a few turds. Say you release an iOS app as a measure of finish.

For veterans, finishing does not matter because:

1\. If you see a piece a piece of turd and not able to say no to it, you will probably be wasting valuable time finishing to save face as the author may suggest. \--- Is like in war, you need to know when to retreat, and cut losses(save your time and not finish). That's the perplexing part is when to retreat at the right time.

</comment><comment><USER15> It also depends on your own risk/reward equilibrium for personal side projects vs. career projects.

I take much bigger risks with personal projects than career projects. I don't care if 95% or more of them fail or are not completed for good reasons (cost, physically impossible, etc.).

To a great degree, I don't even tell people about the failed personal projects. In fact that's one thing I love about personal projects. With career projects, the most annoying thing to me is that you are forced to tell people (cofounders, employees, investors, customers, family, friends) what you're going to do, and then you have to try to live up to it. With personal projects you don't have to tell anyone. And because you don't tell anyone, you won't be discouraged by anyone. You can set out to build A, and end up building B, or end up building nothing and just having a good time, and you don't have to worry about leaving a bad impression.

If you built A, you say you built A. If you built B, you say you built B. If you built nothing, you say nothing at all. It's awesome. The point is I don't like _saying_ anything until I've actually built something that minimally works.

If you're motivated and disciplined enough, this is an excellent framework for exploration. In particular, the human ego/desire to _say_ something means that I'm motivated to keep at it until I have built something that allows me (under this framework) to say something.

</comment><comment><USER16> While I agree with regards to being productive and I also agree that 'finishing' things feels good, I still doubt that 'being productive' should always be the goal.

I have discarded many 'side projects', but the lessons learned from those projects have made me a lot more productive in my job. For most projects I don't even feel bad about the time I spent doing them since I had fun figuring out how to implement some of those things.

Take playing sports for example. I like to play football, the kind played with my feet and a ball, not the one played with one's hands and a oval leather air container. This is never 'finished', but doing so I exercise my body, clear my mind and most importantly, I have fun. I see a parallel for one game of football with figuring out how to test some external API in a side project. After discarding the side project (a few games of football) I still know how to test external APIs. Just as playing 1 game of football won't get me any closer to winning the champions league, my condition (skills) are better and I had fun (fun) along the way.

Stop being so hard on yourself.

If you DO want to create a serious company out of your side project it probably IS a good idea not to let yourself get distracted by other fun projects along the way though. Especially if you are juggling a full-time job along side of it.

</comment><comment><USER17> > What is the minimal state of completion this project needs to reach for me > to consider it a success and having been worth my time?

I used to think like that, but this is a moving point. As long you finish a list of things that you deemed important, many others will replace the old ones and the list actually will never be empty. This feeling of fulfillment will never come.

So I'm doing differently this time in my startup (that was also my side project for a while). I created a funnel and measured everything. I cannot develop anything on top of my head (We, developers, are creative by nature, and it's easy to find a myriad of interesting new features). The new feature needs to come from data and user feedback only. No exceptions.

The funnel is completed and has being measured, then the project is completed. Everything beyond that is just optimization. This was a shift in my mind and I feel much better because I finished the project, instead of constantly open. And of course, this is not a mind tricky. The project is actually completed.

<comment><USER18> > user feedback only

This reminds me of the quote by Henry Ford when he said if he had asked people what they wanted they would have told him "faster horses". Sometimes users don't know what they want till you give it to them.

<comment><USER19> That is valuable feedback. It tells you horses are too slow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just redefine what it means to finish, and voila, you're productive.

<comment><USER21> Today I aim to post on HN.

Get in!

<comment><USER22> Today I aim to write my first ever comment!

Done.

<comment> L-four Today

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As a prolific non-finisher I have to disagree to make myself feel better. My laptop is littered with half-done projects but so what ? They're simply sketches, explorations, they were never intended to be anything great. You explore a path and see where it goes...sometimes it fizzles out and that's fine. I've got some projects I've been revisiting on and off for like 8 years and they'll probably never amount to anything, but they help me learn about a particular aspect of coding or maths.

</comment><comment><USER24> So, to summarize, he's writing blog posts about finishing things instead of writing his dissertation.

<comment><USER25> He finished the blog post. That can already be a motivating factor as the list of finished things has increased.

<comment><USER24> Or it can be a demotivating factor, as the list of things he's finished has increased but he's not a single step closer to finishing. I've seen lots of grad students invent plausible reasons to do things that aren't finishing the dissertation, and this blog post fits that description.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I drop projects that seem interesting at the outset or in abstract when they stop being rewarding. It is better to move on to the next project, because you could learn something substantial about the world around you while your head is up. Eventually there will be a project that you cant shake and you execute fully on it.

</comment><comment><USER27> Is 'not finishing' an inherent problem of being a coder and a coder's reward system?

When I look at myself, coding is great when I learn new things, new APIs, can glue stuff together to create new systems which haven't been there before. Once I master a technology or have to do stuff which was done million times before it gets boring. Then, I rather seek for the next kick, the next API, the next language/framework/lib.

So, having ongoing novelties seems to be an important part of a coder's reward system. This hurts finishing and going the last mile, the most difficult part of a project that is not about facing steady novelties. Often it even means to abandon the shiny new tech and rebuild stuff in some proven tech.

However, the bad is you never finish, the good is you learn all the time. Better than checking Facebook, Instagram and your smartphone 24/7.

<comment><USER28> I find this as well. My motivation for new projects is 100x compared to my motivation to finish existing ones, and I feel part of it at least is because on the existing ones I've reached a point where I'm not learning anything from finishing them. The flipside is that I have a lot less work that I can point to having done, compared to how much I've actually done. Having 5 completed things to show is better (for "achievement" purposes) than 20 projects at 80%, but the rewards as you say favour the latter.

This year I'm thinking about only working on projects where I'd actually use the outcome for something. If it's a project for the sake of learning library X, I won't do it. If it's a project to solve problem Y for myself, I'll try and work on that, learning anything I need along the way.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> In my experience being productive is more a matter of setting a clear scope of goals on which I'm going to focus on the next X months. Other than the strict necessary tasks that might interrupt activities related to these goals, no extra goals may be added until one is finished. After that, at the beginning of each day I decided what micro-tasks I want to do (write paragraph X of paper, fix bug Y in project Z) and I don't go home until I am done. Everyday it seems like I am only doing small tasks but after time these tasks add up and I finish big projects. Big projects/goals are not finished over night, you need time. It's easy to get demotivated when there are big tasks ahead. The key is to chop them into do-able, reachable tasks and you hold yourself accountable to fix these tasks no matter what.

</comment><comment><USER30> This has been true in my academic career also. The ability to say no is important.

</comment><comment><USER31> I also learned this the hard way recently. I have always been extremely busy. But finishing a large project, such as a PhD, forced me to learn that one needs to check at least 1 or 2 of these boxes on the todo list in the evening. Otherwise there has been no progress and, even worse, I will go home frustrated and have burned a lot of energy. Oh yeah, and ask a doctor about ADD.

</comment><comment><USER32> "Finish what you have started before starting / working on new projects/tasks." \- My boss

Following the GTD methodologies (it's been a long time habit), a lot of small things get to the bottom of the list while new ones keep coming along, properly prioritizing tasks is the key.

After all, most people can only work on 3-5 tasks in parallel in real life.

</comment><comment><USER33> I think if your goal is launching you've got to make sure the work you're doing is enabling that to happen sooner. Once you start prioritizing as little as possible into pre- and as much as possible into post- launch bad ideas start filtering themselves out during the wait.

I think one of the big traps is convincing yourself part of 'make x to do y' always includes 'learn a new stack' that will be 1% technically-better but 800% slower than what you used last time. Pretty crap optimization if you goal is to launch anything.

I think for developers on HN it's also very easy to build something with the expectation we'll want to discuss it 2 - 3 times a week on the front page for them to get users, neatly solving the business side in advance!

</comment><comment><USER34> To sum it up:

An unripe fruit attracts no birds, they only come when it becomes sweet. -Ghost In The Shell 2, Innocence

</comment><comment><USER35> "Under that system, things like polishing and refactoring my code (which can be a valuable use of your time, but I would frequently use them to procrastinate), counted equally towards my goals for the day, even if I wasn't actually making any real progress."

...so set the goal before you start your Pomodo task.

That's what I do.

I choose something I can get done in say and hour and start the task for an hour and try and get it done during this time. This also gamifies my time, and I have to keep redirecting my focus on the goal. I get shitloads done during this. During my 10 minute break in between, i'll reflect on the task, decide next goal, etc. And repeat.

</comment><comment><USER36> i have 2 counter points: \- people with focus issue do their best to finish before the focus slips \- people with depression tends to not finish, some shrinks thinks it's ok, because it's at least being active and it's a sign of seeking a path.

</comment><comment><USER37> "You call it procrastination, I call it thinking", that's a quote I heard in a TED talk :)

Leonardo da Vinci seems to be one of those who procrastinated/thought a lot.

</comment><comment><USER38> Is it just me or is the title sentence difficult to parse? Is this a correct interpretation of the author's intent:

> Having a habit of not finishing your side projects means you are a busy > person; not an unproductive one.

The author never came back to the word "productivity" or what that means to him in relation to side projects so I don't feel like I can say with convection that my re-wording is correct.

<comment><USER39> I interpreted the headline as saying if you don't finish your projects, you're not productive but busy.

<comment><USER38> So which is it is saying:

> You are both unproductive and busy (both bad)

> You are both unproductive and busy (but busy is okay)

> You are productive but also busy

> You are unproductive because of your busyness

This is hard for me because productivity invokes delivering value. Busyness invokes behaviors that take up time but deliver less value. Conflating these two with out really going into any of their virtues and how they interact with each other seems glossed over.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Agile, MVP are all designed to cope with that, i.e. deliver from the start, and grow along the way.

</comment><comment><USER41> I don't have problems finishing but I find it exhausting, I guess it's the effort of forcing myself to complete all the tedious details required at the end of a project. I usually need a few weeks at least before I start the next project.

</comment><comment><USER42> People often work with a personal trainer in the gym for the same reasons. The trainer's knowledge is useful of course, but obligation and teamwork is a major success factor as well.

</comment><comment><USER43> the secret to finish a project is to set a realistic goal</comment>


Crownstone, the smart power outlet that recognizes you and your devices - <AUTHOR> https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dobots/crownstone/description <comment><AUTHOR> From the description on Kickstarter: The Crownstone is a power outlet for both the European and the American market, that uses Bluetooth Low-Energy to establish your presence through your smartphone. Moreover, it recognizes devices by very accurate current and voltage measurements.

The Crowstone is a multifunctional product that simultaneously brings you comfort and reduces your energy bills.

There is no need to turn off every device or lamp when you are going for groceries! The Crownstones are nice gadgets. However, they are more than just nifty products, they are a first step to make your home aware of you and your presence. The Crownstones become the eyes and ears of your home to optimally cater to your needs.

</comment><comment><USER2> Getting towards a real "smart home": Adding anti-theft, child safety, energy conservation, easy control and fun into every power outlet of your home!

<comment><USER3> How does this add child safety?

(Perhaps this is a cultural thing. I live in the UK which has _very_ safe sockets already.)

<comment><USER4> You can define that a socket and thus a device cannot even be turned on when you're not in its proximity. So, it won't even be possible for a child to use the microwave when you're not present.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Will we be able to make our own apps for this or is it limited to what you guys are building?

<comment><USER4> This is Anne from DoBots.

It is definitely possible to create your own apps. We will make consumer apps for everybody. But if you like to program yours, there is a BLE API available.

And different from most projects, even the firmware is open source! Check [http://github.com/dobots/bluenet](http://github.com/dobots/bluenet). This means you can really hack your power outlets.

<comment><USER5> Cool, I'll take a look!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great that you guys added a US plug right from the start! And where will it be produced, in the States?

<comment><USER4> It is a Dutch design from the famous school of Dutch design: straightforward, beautiful, and useful at the same time.

We will ship from the US, so US backers have a big advantage right there. Moreover, my wife is American so if this kicks off in the States, I have all the reasons to start a spinoff in the US as well. :-)</comment></comment>


Japan's Abe is the world's best leader right now? - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-06-11/japan-s-abe-is-the-world-s-best-leader <comment><USER2> > . The result: Japan has escaped deflation. The stock market is up, growth is > way up and even wages are finally starting to rise.

where?? Wages have not moved up at all. But hey, my shopping list's total price has gone up by 30% in the past 6 months, and Uniqlo has just announced that for the first time in like 20 years they are going to raise their prices in Japan, because hey, a weak Japanese yen makes commodities more expensive and they just can't continue like that anymore.

But yeah, Abe's the _Best Ever_!

What a joke of an article.

<comment><USER3> Where do you shop? My prices have gone up by about 5%. Groceries have mainly remained the same for me. The consumption tax has also been raised, do not forget. I believe Uniqlo planning to raise prices does not reflect a failed fight against inflation.

<comment><USER2> I've since increases since the sales tax went active that have nothing to do with a 3% increase, more like a 10-15 % increase in prices. Milk has gone up from 170 JPY where I shopped to 200 JPY in a matter of weeks. And that's just one item, I can give you dozens of examples like that. Anyone who's claiming there's no inflation is clearly blind or refusing to see the truth out there. Most of the time, these people happen to the politicians in power. Strange coincidence.

<comment><USER4> A lot of businesses used the consumption tax increase to raise prices. I attended an expo for English language school owners last year and most said they were planning to raise their prices and hope no one would notice.

As I drove by a barber shop on April 1st, they were changing their sign from 2500 yen for a haircut to 2900. A tad more than 3%.

The clinic my wife works at raised one of their monthly services from 7000 yen per month to 12000 yen!

<comment><USER5> > A lot of businesses used the consumption tax increase to raise prices.

That. And the government encouraged it. In 2004, a law made it obligatory to display prices with consumption tax included (税込み). That obligation was lifted 6 months ago. Guess what happened as a result. Displayed prices didn't change. Products at 1000 yens tax included (税込み) are now 1000 yens without tax (税抜き). 1080 yens out of consumer pockets, instead of 1029. 8% increase instead of ~3%. The flip side is that this makes for better margins for businesses.

Even businesses that did absorb the tax increase now claim to do a bigger favor than they are actually doing (that is, their 1000 yens service is still 1000 yens, but they advertize it's 1000 instead of 1080)

I haven't seen much of the kind of prices increases you describe, though.

<comment><USER4> Ah, I didn't know about that. When I came to Japan it seemed every price was always tax included. I have noticed recently that some places have tax being extra. Now I see why.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've been interested to see how Abenomics has played out - it certainly started with a bold vision, but most of what I've read (and that's not a lot, I'm no expert) seems to have indicated that it hasn't really worked.

So this article excited me - I love to see a grand vision being implemented and the goals coming together. A quick look at the comments, however, (including ekianjo's immediate response here) seems to indicate that rather than demonstrating Abenomics success, all this article does is demonstrate that the author doesn't have a grasp on the facts. Oh well.

<comment><USER7> > but most of what I've read (and that's not a lot, I'm no expert) seems to > have indicated that it hasn't really worked.

Well, the primary goal was reflation, so by that measure, it's been a resounding success so far. Growth, exports, and consumer spending have been boosted a lot, too. I'm a little worried that the sales tax increase will reverse this trend, but we will see.

<comment><USER2> You don't measure success in economics over a single year. Already companies are starting to revise their forecasts since they are starting to face expensive commodity prices (coming from the weaker yen) and the whole domestic economy is hurting because of the rising Petrol price.

Yeah, a _resounding success_ by all measures!

Let's reconnect in 5 years and see such policies transformed Japan for the best.

<comment><USER7> Re-read what I said:

Well, the primary goal was reflation, so by that measure, it's been a resounding success so far.

Notice "by that measure" and "so far". Please do not distort my words.

But yes, you're right; it could end as an unmitigated disaster economically. We just don't know yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This article sounds like a paid advertisement for Abe.

Let's see, earlier this year, he was campaigning for companies to use their piles of cash to increase wages. What does his government do? He cuts salaries for teachers.

Also, living in Japan as a foreigner, his foreign policy stances worry me. He is antagonistic. He was the first PM to visit the infamous Yasukuni shrine in 6 years provoking China and Korea. He also is currently trying to reopen the constitution so that Japan can support it's own army which will further destabilize relationships in the region.

Sure, he's cutting the corporate tax rate but he raised the consumption tax 3% a couple months ago and will go up another 2% next year. Prices are already very high in Japan and the government already receives a staggering amount of revenue. There are so many taxes and licenses and import controls here it's unbelievable.

The linked article said base pay increased 0.1% from a year earlier. Hardly an indicator that his policies are working. Plus factoring in the consumption tax increase, it means people have less disposable income.

My wife works as a homecare nurse and she has countless stories of families that are struggling to get by. A large percentage of the population is elderly and live on very fixed budgets. Abe wants to increase inflation but has no policies on addressing how to support these people during the transition. 25% of the country is already over 65 and this will keep increasing. Recently coverage for prescription drugs also went down meaning seniors need to pay more for their medicine.

<comment><USER8> Furthermore, iirc there have been longstanding talks to delay the "retirement age" (and thus the start of state pension payments) form 65 to 68.

For as long as I can remember, said state pension has been under water, and current 20 year olds are expected to be paid something like $200,000 less than what they put into the system.

The country has some good things going, but it is also littered with numerous time bombs.

<comment><USER4> This is a good point. The pension system, as it stands now, is just basically another tax.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> >In other words, unlike everyone else in the world, Abe listened to Milton Friedman, and the results are looking good.

This is absolute horseshit. Japan has been following Friedman's proscriptions (QE forever) for the last 20 years! Look where it got them!

Abe has actually continued in these footsteps with one fairly minor difference - he's mixed in a 25% Keynesian spending kick with the QE. This has propelled a bit of inflation and wage growth, along with the business-as-usual propping up asset prices.

Now this author is trying to claim that this was thanks to cutting corporate taxes and QE. These are the policies that Japan DIDN'T change with Abe. Furthermore, these are the policies that are causing the Japanification of the West's economy.

Abe's plan would have been a major success (instead of a dribble of success) if he just cut the Milton Friedman inspired bullshit QE entirely and printed money and spent it on employing people until inflation and wage growth were up to normal levels.

>Boy, was I wrong. I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

He's still wrong, wrong, wrong.

<comment><USER7> > Japan has been following Friedman's proscriptions (QE forever) for the last > 20 years!

I would say that Japan has been following Friedman's prescriptions _until now_. The major difference between monetary policy before Abe and after Abe is that Abe has made it clear that he won't jack up interest rates as soon as there is life in the economy. Past governments made it clear they would take away the punch bowl as soon as there was a hint of growth.

Basically, Abe has convincingly promised to be irresponsible. And so far, it has worked to beat deflation. Many other indicators are looking better, too, but it'll take some time before we know if it really works. (Hyperinflation? Wages? and so on)

<comment><USER9> Abe committed to continue doing what Japan has been doing for the last 20 years anyhow. That is not a change in monetary policy. That is not a commitment to being irresponsible. That is just business as usual. No inflation was caused by that.

The _only_ difference is that he mixed in a BIT of stimulus spending to the mix.

That actually had a real inflationary effect on the economy, although the stimulus wasn't that big so the effect wasn't that big either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > Japan's top social problem is the role of women.

Says who ? Of course there are women who are aspiring for a career and this may be a problem for them, but then, most women in Japan are actually fine to leave work and go on with a life at home taking care of the children. I've seen several colleagues of mine who graduated from Tokyo University and had good jobs (with responsibilities similar to men's) and who left their career because they wanted to focus on kids instead, and had no regret doing so.

<comment><USER10> About four years ago I was waiting for a plane in London and struck up a conversation with a former American Nissan exec who had spent a long time working at HQ in Japan.

He told me the story of countless meetings in which the senior female exec (there were very few) was expected to get up and leave the meeting for a period of time to retrieve and serve tea. He personally was disgusted and said that that was only a single example. IIRC he said in response to my question about why Japan had struggled to get out of their depression: "Employing only half their labor force might have something to do with it."

<comment><USER8> Ugh I really hope this anecdote is from the early nineties at the latest but I have serious doubts...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Abe is certainly making a difference. But a bastion of liberal democracy? Hardly. For instance, look at the man he parachuted in as the head of NHK:

[http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-25901572](http://www.bbc.com/news/world- asia-25901572)

And there's a large stretch between trying to boost the economy by encouraging female labor force participation and feminism. By that standard, Saddam Hussein might have been called a feminist in some periods of his reign.

Opinion is sharply divided over whether Abe's economic policies make any sense. I'm in the "they're insane" camp. I've likened Abe to the captain of a ship who, seeing an iceberg looming, calls out, "Full steam ahead! We're going to smash our way through." But all observers agree on these two points:

1\. Abenomics will be a disaster without large-scale structural reform.

2\. The reform we've seen so far isn't nearly enough.

Optimists believe that this reform is just round the corner ... that even as we speak Abe is busy quietly building the necessary consensus in key organisations, because that's the way reform is done in Japan.

The pessimists want proof.

Finally, there is a terrible, terrible paradox at the heart of Abe's economic policies. This is a complex matter, so forgive me for skipping most of the details and implications.

No matter how you measure it, the Government of Japan is up to its neck in debt, and is still sinking. The only reason it can keep going is because it pays remarkably low interest rates. But the first "arrow" of Abenomics is to push up inflation, and you can be sure that this arrow will meet its mark because they can always "print" more yen. One of the iron laws of economics is that, when inflation goes up, so do interest rates.

Now, to cut a long story short, it looks like the government's going to get out of this bind by directing the Bank of Japan to print even more money to buy it's debt at below-market prices. In fact, if you follow the bond market news, it's clear that this is already happening. And that, my friends, is a recipe for collapse in confidence in the yen.

Speaking for myself, as a Japanese resident, I believe that the yen is an increasingly risky asset to hold. I make a point of keeping at least 50% of my savings out of yen, and away from the Japanese financial system. When the shit hits the fan, I don't want my money to be stuck behind Iceland-style capital controls.

\---

EDIT: Changed "recipe for inflation" to "recipe for collapse in confidence in the yen" in response to comments below.

<comment><USER12>
        No matter how you measure it, the Government of Japan is up to its neck in debt, and is still sinking.

Thing is, you need to measure the dept against some measure of economic activity ( or actually against some measure of pay back capability), and then the funny thing is that the higher the dept, the easier it is to get to sustainable levels by deficit spending. So dept goes from D to D + d and GDP goes from G to G + x d, solving for a critical multiplier x0 where the ratio stays constant,

        x0 = G/D

So the more dept you have, the less productive need your stimulus program to be to reduce dept. Additionally, for this you can replace the measures by inflation adjusted measures and you get the same result, with some dependence on the real interest rate. ( Which can be negative.)

Additionally it is surprisingly hard to get hyperinflation, just printing a few percent of GDP in new money per year will not do the trick. ( Try occupation of a major industrial region, after the end of price controls plus a lost world war.)

<comment><USER13> Not to be pedantic or anything, but what do you mean by "dept"? It's an honest question. Are you referring to debt or is it a different concept I'm not familiar with?

<comment><USER14> It seems like a typo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is my response to this article:

"Hahahaha...far from it."

<comment><USER7> That doesn't provide any value. Would you like to articulate your arguments?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Graffitly - Anonymous Public Messages - <AUTHOR>

Hi HN, About two months ago, I was inspired by the events that began to unfold in Tunisia, Egypt, and then elsewhere, as everyday people started using the internet to organize revolutions against despots.  I was amazed at their courage, using sites like Facebook which forces them to use their real name, or twitter which uses an account that can be easily tracked back to them.  I thought that if there was a way they could use a site to communicate with a large audience, anonymously, they might be a bit safer.<p>Graffitly is my attempt at that site.  It's my first ruby on rails app, and there is still a bunch left to do (and redo).  While it doesn't offer true anonymity on the internet, it would make it much harder for someone to figure out who posted and sent a message.  I've been very encouraged by the fact that the vast majority of messages are coming from outside the US.  I'd really like to get some feedback from this community, especially about:<p>- Should I focus on improving the "anonymousness" of the site, by removing all the 3rd part features (like Disqus) that put a cookie on the users's computer - or move the site more towards a fmylife.com-type site where anonymity isn't really important, but spreading the word to a vast audience is?<p>- I'm not great at design, I know this, and would appreciate any helpful tips. <comment><USER2> Cool.

One small observation for the About page:

> With that said, here's more about what mean regarding privacy.

Should be:

With that said, here's more about what _we_ mean regarding privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think anonymity is far more important for the uniqueness of your product but is only really valuable if you can provide a very anonymous process.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://www.graffitly.com></comment>


Ask HN: What blackhat/ greyhat ad-tech were you surprised to learn about? - <AUTHOR> Coming from the security industry I was surprised to see the level of persistence ad networks implemented to track users across the web. What might technical folks be surprised to learn about the online marketing and ad-tech space? <comment><USER2> That "US cell carriers are selling access to real-time phone location data". Some know, but most probably do not. Most non-technical people would also be surprised by this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17081684)

The top comment expands on the situation:

"It's not just your cell carrier. Your cell phone chip manufacturer, GPS chip manufacturer, phone manufacturer and then pretty much anyone on the installed OS (android crapware) is getting a copy of your location data. Usually not in software but by contract, one gives gps data to all the others as part of the bill of materials.

This is then usually (but not always) "anonymized" by cutting it in to ~5 second chunks. It's easy to put it back together again. We can figure out everything about your day from when you wake up to where you go to when you sleep.

This data is sold to whoever wants it. Hedge funds or services who analyze it for hedge funds is the big one. It's normal to track hundreds of millions of people a day and trade stocks based on where they go. This isn't fantasy, it's what happens every day.

Almost every web/smartphone mapping company is doing it, so is almost everyone that tracks you for some service - "turn the lights on when I get home". The web mapping companies and those that provide SDKs for "free". It's a monetization model for apps which don't need location. That's why Apple is trying hard to restrict it without scaring off consumers."

</comment><comment><USER3> SilverPush

Use ultrasonic inaudible sounds for tracking you

Your TV ads could play these beacons to which your phone is actively listening.

Or websites and physical places could play them.

See: [https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/silverpush-audio- beacons/](https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/24/silverpush-audio-beacons/)

</comment><comment><USER4> Phorm.

It was a while ago now so younger HN readers might not know about it, but Phorm was an ISP level deep packet inspection product that invaded users privacy on a _massive_ scale, all just to market stuff to them. Thankfully it's now dead and gone.

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

<comment><AUTHOR> All the companies providing infrastructure support to ISPs should be suspect.</comment></comment>


The math behind visual hallucinations - <AUTHOR> http://intothecontinuum.tumblr.com/post/19754693526/visual-hallucinations-and-form-constants

<comment><USER2> Try staring at that spiral honeycomb animation for 30 seconds and then look a white wall. Bet what you see isn't what you expected.

</comment><comment><USER3> I showed this to a friend of a friend and he attested it to be amazingly accurate. Also it would make an awesome app if you could apply these transformations to a videostream of your phone, augmented reality style. So you can experience the visual aspect of consuming hallucinogens without any drawbacks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> A follow-up that deals with how the mapping was derived from the structure of V1: [http://intothecontinuum.tumblr.com/post/19813076775/did- you-...](http://intothecontinuum.tumblr.com/post/19813076775/did-you-choose- this-coordinate-transformation-at-random)

</comment><comment><USER4> yes! when I close my eyes I usually see something like a checkerbord spiral, only not rotating, and there are several of them centered around different points and intersecting.</comment>


Mechanical Laser Show (2017) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtBUiaAqRE&feature=youtu.be <comment><USER2> At the other end of the complexity scale: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2bf8L7G6WE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2bf8L7G6WE)

<comment><USER3> Mind blown. Any idea where I can see something like this in person?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Recently came across this DIY laser projector vid - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xszp5UQLB2g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xszp5UQLB2g). It's all mirrors and motors in there with some manual controls.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is so damn cool my question is, why is this type of shit so damn rare?

Like why don't we see more instances of cool, low cost, big value hackery? Is it just too creatively difficult to summon these types of ideas idk

<comment> bitwise-evan Thank you so much for the kind words. I am the creator and love these kinds of projects. Check out another project I created along the same lines: TheArtBot.com

If you are asking why not many people do these types of projects- you sounds like an excellent candidate to do one yourself! I have list of project ideas on my phone that I will add to at random times. Next time you think of a cool idea write it down and make it a reality!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Great explanation of the math, made it very easy to follow. And the joke at the end was a nice touch, I was totally waiting to hear about his SAAS startup...

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, that is clever.

I love when the parts have been around for a decade or so and then suddenly....

I tell my daughters, "Nothing new under the sun," all the time.

I could be wrong from time to time.

<comment><USER8> You should say something else. There is lots left to discover and invent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> That is beautiful work.

It may even be possible to set it up so that the movement has a more constant velocity along the path.

<comment> gene-h Well if you want the laser to produce better images then one needs to use the dark art of cam design. As it turns out, simply determining cam geometry necessary to go through all those points is not enough, one must also take into account the velocity, acceleration, and even jerk profiles(the derivative of acceleration). If one does not take these into account the follower being driven can't spring back fast enough and the follower does not follow the intended profile. Most automobile cams must be produced to very high tolerances in order to achieve low vibration. The fact that CNC machine tools move in discretized distances can cause problems in some cases.

<comment> bitwise-evan Yes- just like you are saying, the intention with the Mechancial Laser Show was not to maintain a constant laser speed, but accelerate and decelerate the laser gently. You can see the mechanism by which that is done by pausing the video at [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtBUiaAqRE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dtBUiaAqRE)

Since the time taken to travel to each next point is constant, closer points together mean slower speed and spread out points mean high speed. You can see that the laser will slow down for taking the corners and speed up for the straights. There was no math behind this- I just eyeballed it but you could write software/math to help you determine the perfect spacing/acceleration.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> bitwise-evan Hi. This is Evan, the creator of Mechanical Laser Show. I am planning to present it at the upcoming Maker Faire in SF for a day so feel free to come by and check it out.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask here.

</comment><comment><USER10> See also a recent submission: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16273170](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16273170)

I wonder what's the story behind it, is it real or fake, and is there an original (non-gif) video.

<comment><USER11> There is indeed: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgIZrSlPuko](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgIZrSlPuko)

It was a show called LaserMan -- part of ElecTRONica, a nighttime event at Disney California Adventure promoting the release of TRON: LEGACY.

Creator's site: [http://www.theodari.com](http://www.theodari.com)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Aren't all laser light shows technically "mechanical"? As far as I know solid state optical beam steering is not a thing yet.

<comment><USER13> If you google "non-mechanical laser beam steering" you can find some interesting work being researched (I don't think anything is commercially available, though).

<comment><USER14> > An alternative to an acoustic-optic modulator is the electroptic deflector. > There are a few types but the readily available type uses a quadrupole > electric field on a lithium niobate crystal. This generates a linear > refractive index gradient in one plane that can be adjusted on a ultra fast > time scale. This gives the ability to change the deflection angle of a > suitably polarised beam propagating down the quadrupole axis. With fast > pulse generators the deflection speed can be good enough to achieve > deflection by several diffraction angles in perhaps 10 ps.

This sounds like something Geordi LaForge would say.

<comment><USER12> >This sounds like something Geordi LaForge would say.

Precisely why optics is the coolest shit ever</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Programming Problems for Plane Rides - <AUTHOR> When I have been on flights recently without Wifi, I've been passing the time by doing programming problems I find online before the flight.
A few times now I've found myself scrambling before a flight to download some random CS course PDF or digging around recruiting sites for hiring challenges that don't assume I have an Internet connection.
Does anyone have a good recommendation for a big page or site full of interesting problems that I could download locally? Generally problems that take from 30min - 2hrs to complete? <comment><USER2> I often do this on flights, and in addition to solving "puzzles" you can always try to build a well-defined system from scratch. For example:

      - A JSON parser (bring the BNF from http://json.org/)
      - Simplified Lisp interpreter
      - Forth compiler (for example: https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Four.Ps)
      - Emulator for a simple CPU or MCU (6502, 1801, etc- bring a datasheet)

Projects like these are not "practical", as everything here has been done before, but great learning experiences.

<comment><USER3> The <http://norvig.com/spell-correct.html> code was written on one flight, for another example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> More for the mathematician than programmer, <http://projecteuler.net/> offers a nice collection of challenges, some of them very tricky.

</comment><comment><USER5> I recommend trying to implement a classic game (e.g. tetris). If you download the documentation for the graphics library, it's surprising how much you can do in two hours. Even without knowing the library from before.

(Unfortunately, we just got internet on trains here in Norway, which have reduced my train-productivity noticeably)

<comment><USER6> I love doing this.

I suggest programming Snakes (on a plane).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you're up for challenge, I'd try "Ed's Programming Contest Problem Archive" at <http://www.karrels.org/Ed/ACM/>, and the Baylor archive at <http://icpc.baylor.edu/Past/PastProblems.html>.

Both contain problem sets from the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest.

</comment><comment><USER8> Take a look at <http://codingkata.org/>.

Best suited for playing around in a new language, but could perhaps inspire exploration of a language you are fluent in.

<comment><USER5> And lets not forget the original code kata site: <http://codekata.pragprog.com/>

It's a shame Dave Thomas stopped making these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You can download the SPOJ problem set as a PDF or PS file.

<http://www.spoj.pl/problems/classical.pdf>

</comment><comment><USER10> [http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp;jsessionid=0B6696CAD77A7898...](http://www.ioi2009.org/index.jsp;jsessionid=0B6696CAD77A789846D13C10D25C1CD8?ln=2&id=363)

This is the International Informatics Olympiad 2009's page. They have PDFs. Problems range in difficulty, but it does take a lot of thought and time to solve each of the problems.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gah! But how would I complete a programming challenge without Google!?

<comment><USER12> I once tried to accomplish a variety of tasks with nothing but an Ubuntu liveCD. It's actually very helpful and complete! It teaches you a lot about what tools you have on hand, which I now realize are much more helpful (if you know what you need is there) than the ad-ridden internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> You could always download earlier topcoder-contests (<http://www.topcoder.com>), specifically single round matches for algorithms. They have a time limit on 75 minutes for 3 exercises, and should keep you busy for roughly that amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER14> If you are looking for algorithmic puzzles you can browse the archives of topcoder.com : <http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=MatchList>

These usually require less time and less math skill than the already mentioned projecteuler.net problems.

</comment><comment><USER15> One of my professors has a large collection of previous ACM programming contest problems (with solutions) on his web site, along with problems from the contest he runs: <http://math.nmu.edu/~apoe/>

</comment><comment><USER16> For short puzzles, you can try out our newly launched site puzzlenode: <http://puzzlenode.com/> | Only 4 problems there now but there will be at least 4 new ones added every two months, hopefully much more often than that.

These problems also serve as entrance exams for Ruby Mendicant University. We release our RMU exercises as well, but they're more open ended and likely take more than two hours in most cases: [http://university.rubymendicant.com/resources/learning_mater...](http://university.rubymendicant.com/resources/learning_materials.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Slightly off-topic, but I'm actually disappointed by the spread of Internet access to things like planes and trains. One of the things I enjoy the most about flying is that I feel disconnected from the rest of the world, and I try to take advantage of this to focus on a book or programming problem for the duration of the flight, without worries or distractions. I haven't yet been on a flight with wifi, but I suspect that the illusion of isolation would be broken for me, and my ability to focus would suffer dramatically. Hopefully, most airlines will see it as another thing they can charge me for.

<comment><USER18> I am wholeheartedly in agreement with you, to the extent that I took a 36 hour train ride a few months ago partly to disconnect from the normal flow of life, and from the 24/7 Internet access that I am accustom to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I always like to do something practical, not a mere exercise. So my first choice is actually building something with a full-stack framework like web2py. You can easily create a db-driven web site in 30 min - 5 hours.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not sure about sites that let you download all their problems in one go, but look at my list of sites of programming problems here: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697615/are-there-any- sit...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4697615/are-there-any-sites-that- do-python-programming-challenges-similar-to-projecteuler/4697635#4697635)

</comment><comment><USER21> [http://sixrevisions.com/resources/10-puzzle-websites-to- shar...](http://sixrevisions.com/resources/10-puzzle-websites-to-sharpen-your- programming-skills/) and recently I came across dropbox challenge as well! <http://www.dropbox.com/jobs/challenges>

</comment><comment><USER22> <http://programmingpraxis.com/>

</comment><comment><USER23> Look up the Informatics Olympiad. Some awesome theoretical puzzles: <http://www.olympiad.org.uk/problems.html>

</comment><comment><USER24> [http://cemc.math.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests.html#cc...](http://cemc.math.uwaterloo.ca/contests/past_contests.html#ccc)

</comment><comment><USER25> built by a couple of guys I know: <http://www.coderloop.com/>

</comment><comment><USER26> "bus scheme" is cute: <http://technomancy.us/98>

You could do "airbus scheme".</comment>