HN statistics - <AUTHOR> http://labs.im/hnstat <comment><USER3> Your labs.im pitch is probably going to send you the worst freelance jobs you'll ever have. Nobody gives a shit about your situation, and your University tuition fees. Actually, this signals a red flag for serious clients: You might drop their project as soon as you get some financing.

Promote yourself as a young, intelligent and enthusiast developer with coding and design skills. Price your hourly rate at $80-100/hour; and get your tuition paid in the next couple weeks.

Edit: Quite a discussion here. I'd like to add that an important part of doing business is _trust_. Clients are going to throw lots of money that's going to evaporate on HTML and JavaScript code. They want to be sure that you are the guy who is going to give them the right result.

Tip: Make a decent lab page. Look at design agencies in sortfolio and copy them (not their design, their strategy). Build a couple more projects, and open source them on Github. Send emails to design agencies, and try to build a network.

Finally, decide if you want to do this for a living or concentrate on EE. The overhead to get a single project is the same to get a constant stream of projects.

<comment><USER4> $80-100/hour? Is this feasible?

<comment><USER5> Yes. Yes yes yes!

Did I mention "Yes"?

Look, I used to be you. And lately I've been missing me so I thought it would be fun to sit down with me and advise me on what I didn't have the guts to do years ago.

You're very worth it. Your site alone shows a combination of the following:

\- The ability to program something more than just "hello world", a linked list, or the fibonacci sequence. You'd be surprised how many so-called computer science "graduates" I've interviewed who can barely do that, and if so, ONLY that. Don't underestimate the ability to actually program. Contrary to the impression you might get from Hacker News and Proggit, where it seems like everyone and his mayor is learning to code, MOST people in this world can't. There are great people in this world who don't or can't program. They may be smart, but they aren't programmers.

\- Experience with modern Javascript, web apps, HTML5 (whatever THAT is), and all the deployment logistics that go along with those things. There are great programmers in this world who can write compilers but who never really groked the web or how to put stuff on it, let alone cool dynamic stuff that works. They may be programmers, but they aren't developers.

\- You seem to be able to make it all LOOK good. This is something I still struggle with and, even if all you did was copy something from somewhere else, your site still shows that you care about aesthetics. In this brave new world where geeky toys (read: programs) have become seen in the mainstream as actual "products" (thanks, Apple), people - even geeks - are starting to demand more from their software. They demand that it be friendly, intuitive, and look nice. This is a great advance in our industry. It finally denies us all the permission we've been giving ourselves to produce crappy-looking and crappy- acting software and then hide behind how hard it was to get it working at all. There are great developers in this world who grok the web and apps and all that and still for the life of them can't make something that looks nice. They may be developers, but they aren't designers.

\- Your site and HN submission show an aptitude for - or at the least more than a passing awareness of - the necessity, power, and effectiveness of marketing. There are great programmers, developers, and designers in this world whose creations never see the light of day. They may be all those things, but they aren't marketers.

So go back again and take stock of your marketable inventory. You seem to be a:

\- Smart

\- Programmer

\- Who likes to develop "products" as well as cool programs

\- Knowing it's important that they look as good as they work

\- And realizes that none of it matters unless people know about it

And you don't think you're worth a measly $80-$100/hour?

You know what that is? It's our traditional economic and academic systems infesting your mind with some of its most anachronistic and worthless beliefs. In days gone by, that piece of paper was a requirement to get anyone to even LOOK at you. But now?

No.

You're in the right place already at Hacker News. Here we have people who need good talent. They know it when they see it. They know how much more important a Github and app portfolio are than a "To all whom these presents come greeting..." poster on your wall. In short, they aren't pointy-haired bosses. And you don't want to work for those anyway.

So do me a favor, me: demand what you're worth, and do it before you begin to BELIEVE you're not worth it. Because then you won't be.

<comment><USER6> My thoughts....

He's just a second year student and the only project I've seen is something that any competent student at my almma matter could produce.

Now look at the marketplace. For $40/hour you can currently get an experienced developer living anywhere that isn't San Francisco or NYC.

$100/hour is $4000 a week and $16,000 a month. Now certainly someone, somewhere can command this price but lets not pretend that it is the natural fit for a student.

If you're willing to pay $16,000 then your rate is comprable to what Google/Facebook pay their summer interns for 3 months whom I assure you have just as much skill and passion as you see here.

<comment><USER7> What're you suggesting you can get for $40/hour?

You might get an "experienced developer" for $40/hr on a fulltime employed basis where that means "$80k/year". You certainly won't get the same level of talent on a contract or freelance basis at that rate.

For a freelancer, "$100/hr" is much more likely to mean $2000/week than $4000/week. Even consultants at the top consulting firms can't (legitimately) bill 100% of a 40hr week consistently.

I'm inclined to agree with other posters - if this site pitched him as a dedicated freelance web dev, I'd quite likely consider hiring him at a $100/hr rate based on the skill demonstrated in the HN Stats site. As a "please buy me some ramen and help pay my tuition" plea - I'd pass him over completely even if I needed pretty much exactly what he's demoing. Its all about perceptions and implications of trust.

<comment><USER6> I think we're using different definitions for experienced.

Junior developers are still very much more experienced than a student, and won't be making 80k/year anywhere except DC/NYC/LA.

But I find that salary comparisons quickly go downhill on HN because of the bubble that we live in here, so I'm just going to let this conversation go.

<comment><USER3> Huh, so you measured his skills by his level of education? Even worse, he's an EE student; so Web Dev is really not his game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A quick story regarding your frelance work. When I first moved to Poland, I had the mindset that since I was living in a cheap country, I should price my freelance work low as well. I'll hasten to add that this was my first attempt at freelancing, and for a PHP developer with over 10 years of experience, I was charging between $20 and $30/hour. Absurdly low prices.

Anyway, this was meant to be temporary, and I got a job for a year, before deciding to return to freelancing. This time, however, I figured that I had little to lose by attempting to charge _what I wanted to get paid_. I also switched to charging on a per-day basis.

What happened? In terms of work available, very little - there's lots of work out there. I found that I was able to spend longer on the initial discussion phase, as the cost of doing so was minimal compared to my overall day rate, and it led to happier clients - everyone wins.

My rates have continued to rise ever since, and I'm on the verge of hiring other programmers to take some of the load off me alone. I could go on and on about the charge-by-the-day option, and how everyone wins with it: clients don't worry about whether having a conversation with me will be charged - <USER2> course it won't!_ \- and it gives me the freedom to create huge amounts of client satisfaction if I do a ten-minute fix for free.

So, charge good rates, in daily increments, and do so happy in the knowledge that you're charging a fair rate for valuable skills.

</comment><comment><USER9> @nhoss2 Slightly offtopic:

Love the honesty on your <http://labs.im/> page. But you might be underselling yourself. You are saying you are willing to work cheaply because you are young and a risk.

You are capable of using node.js, you use phantomJS, you seem to have good product and ux thinking and you are able to use github. Just the last one alone puts you on the upper 50% of the worldwide freelance market. Not to speak of the first three things i mentioned.

As somebody living in UK i appreciate your modesty and i wish you all the best for your jobhunt. Projects like this are genius thing to do, continue until you find something :)

<comment><USER10> I agree, this is top-notch work. I would drop the beatup negative attitude, it's a big turnoff. You could _easily_ get a remote part-time job in the Valley for 100+$/hour — think of it, that's only 40 hours of work to pay off your tuition.

<comment><USER11> Really? Easily? I've yet to see anyone willing to hire someone to do off site work with a US company, in the Valley or elsewhere. At least not development work, or anything in the range of 100 USD/hour.

I've always found that a bit strange, but maybe you know something I don't?

For the record I'm based in Norway, and English is my second, not first language -- but even if it was just to recommend friends and acquaintances that are in a similar position as op -- I would really like to hear how you would suggest going about looking for such work?

<comment><USER12> $100/hour is indeed very doable.

Stop and think. Suppose that you have have a $120k full-time dev. (This is by no means the top of the dev market.) Once you get through benefits, office space, HR, etc, at a typical company you cost 2x your salary, so that dev is costing you $240k/year. If that person works 50 weeks a year, 5 days a week, 6 hours a day (just because a person is present 8 hours does not mean that they worked 8 hours) the cost of that full-time dev is $160/hour. Day in. Day out.

Contractors avoid many of those costs in return for higher direct pay. And you only hire that contractor when there is a good fit between what you need and what that contractor can do. A smart contractor who knows what to ask for is therefore able to get surprisingly good rates.

And step #1 is knowing what you are worth. Step #2 is knowing how to negotiate. There are a lot of good books you can pick up on the topic. I personally picked up _Start With No_ and _Bargaining For Advantage_ a few years back. A 2 digit investment in materials, and a 2 digit expenditure in hours has easily been worth over 6 figures to my bank account. I expect it to have paid off 7 figures before I retire. Can you think of anything else with an equivalent ROI?

<comment><USER11> This is exactly why I've thought it was so strange so few companies seemed interested in this kind of collaboration, in practice.

But just a brief look at the August HN hiring thread makes me a little more hopeful :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> You're a great designer. You could get a job just as a designer.

Then you know D3. You can sell yourself as a package that can create beautiful visualizations.

Then you made it to the top of HN. This is no coincidence. You got here on purpose. You studied previous post and knew exactly what to make that would interest this crowd.

All that makes you a smart person, way above average. Go charge a lot of money.

Having said that, you're not too much of a marketer.

</comment><comment> adam-_- You should put the hire me call to action further up the page!

<comment><USER14> Yep. You deserve it !

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> A bit off topic:

I think I'm pretty much in the same situation as Nafis. I'm majoring in Electronics and have a passion for computers.

Only difference is, tuition is quite cheap here in India (around $5000 for 4 years). So, small freelancing projects help me sustain.

Though the quality of education here is questionable. One year into college, all I have learnt is * Stuff as much portions you can during the term * Write the exact things from the textbook on your exam * Forget or vaguely remember it in the holidays

That's not really what I hoped for. Hopefully, it gets better over the years...

<comment><USER16> Your education is in your hands. Identify the resources which are available to you in college for improving your skills. Don't just coast along in your classes and complain about how they aren't doing a great job, that is normal. Put in extra time outside of your coursework or you will not have an education to match your degree. Keep doing it for 4 years and you will have a great education no matter what kind of backwater you are in.

Also, be sure to pursue internships and if you have opportunities to network/get connected in areas that relate to your professional specialty, take them.

Unfortunately this thread shows very clearly that whether you get good grades or bad, and whether you learn a lot or a little, your actual (even vividly demonstrated!) capabilities are comparatively much less important than the emotional tone and images you use to market yourself. So start also to think about those things.

<comment><USER15> I'm doing all of that probably more than most of my peers but that makes me question the core values of a college education.

Low Cost, Connections, Visa stuff are a few reasons I'm still sticking on to it. All of them are not core to college. I think this is something that needs to be fixed before people lose faith.

At times, I feel I'm wasting time on coursework (around 9 hours a day) but I somehow convince myself that I'm not experienced enough to judge.

<comment><USER16> It will feel like less of a waste, and be less of a waste, when you are doing more of the steering and putting in your creative energies rather than floating along. But it is natural to float along more at the beginning. And if you don't know what you are doing then it is still better to follow the rails than to just drift for years.

Please do question what you are told are the 'core values' because they are probably nothing but marketing. Just let those ideals be questionable and plan for yourself, it's no use being upset about it.

However, college does provide a specific set of goods, even if they aren't the purported ones. Here is one way to think about your level of engagement with your education:

Level 1: They make you go somewhere, decide what to study, then give a basic schedule and incentives so you will actually do something. Meet a few friendly people, even if you have little in common. At the end you have social proof that you have a brain and did not only just smoke pot for years, know a few things, can conform, are in a certain social class. All you have to do is reliably show up and work.

Level 2: academic and social context to spark your interests and make it easier to develop them. You have to find the interesting parts and put in a little extra work above assignments to cultivate those interests and learn more. When you leave you'll find this context missing. It gets harder to start in a new field and not so effortless to meet people.

Level 3: facilities like a good library, labs, subject matter experts actively engaged in their fields, maybe some smart peers. You can make yourself what you need to be by directly engaging with the subject matter. Having access to a good adviser who believes in what you are doing is very helpful. But you have to know what you need to be and have strong motivation. You don't have to be a genius in school in order to make yourself a good emulation of one down the line.

Almost any college makes all of these possible. I think the differences are in that 'level 2'.

At a relatively bad school, you will not be very encouraged by the context, you will constantly realize that the coursework is a joke and your peers don't care, the school may take an active interest in pounding students down into conformity and just making them slog through. so most will only engage at level 1 without ever realizing there is more, and many will quit since it seems pointless. While level 3 types will make themselves excellent using available tools others do not use, regardless of what the school prescribes. And won't necessarily be noticed because they are focused on ideas.

At a GREAT school ideas become fashionable and fun; it will do the opposite of pounding you down into conformity. you will come in with a feeling of esprit de corps, everyone will push you and encourage you, your workload will terrify you, you will be actively interested in things you never thought about, you will develop cutting-edge interests related to what your peers and favorite teachers are interested in (even if they are just dumb humanities stuff), etc. And you might come out smelling like a rose. But you are still ultimately carried along by the current. At level 3, where you are already tightly focused on subject matter, you may not derive that much more advantage from a good school, except that you will not have to prove as much.

Really excellent specialized people have to engage at that higher level at some point, whether they went to a bad community college or a top engineering school.

With this "level 3" concept I am not talking about HN's 1% A-player software architect rockstars - who often enough are just guys with industry experience and connections and nice looking blogs and interests in new tools. I am talking about the few people you will meet in your entire life who are so good they define a field, like Einstein or John Carmack or something. Those people get there by being totally focused on subject matter and efficiently improving their abilities and being absolutely dedicated.

Even if you choose something smaller, if you know what you want and work toward it single-mindedly out of your own drive then you will get a real education. And otherwise you will get a sort of crap education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If you want your d3 graphs to work in IE8 you might want to use <https://github.com/shawnbot/aight>

</comment><comment><USER18> Why is activity so much lower on a Friday? Is it because everyone has lots of work to catch up on and no time for HN, or is it because people are leaving work earlier on a Friday?

</comment><comment><USER19> Hey there, Great showcase of your skills. It shows great UX, presentation, some fu with git and getting stuff out in the wild. Shows some great initiatives!

I would create a CV on <http://labs.im> rather than a text story about your situation. You should use your knowledge to create a kickass CV page.

I agree the other comments that you are going to be peppered with low paying freelance offers, you might as well register on odesk.com or similar. But I believe that your software skills are much better than that.

By the way, Some of the cities (Brisbane, Sydney & Melbourne) in Australia have a thriving startup scene, you should hit them up.

</comment><comment><USER20> A guy with nice skills like you shouldn't have '<div id="sorrow">' in his source code. Although it is funny.

</comment><comment><USER17> I hope you get the money you need to continue your education, you are very talented.

</comment><comment><USER21> Just a bug I found: your svg "data_pointer" only points "straight" to the topmost listed week on the page, and if you select any other option, it points to the bottom of the div element of the week. Reading that, you might want to try using the <date> tag instead of divs there, just to make it more html5-ey :P

It looks like it falls here:

      offset: $(this).offset().top - $('svg#data_pointer').offset().top + 18

I don't know exactly _why_ the offsets are off for all except the topmost element of the list, but they seem to be off. I don't use firebug much so I don't know how to live edit the code to figure out the problem, but I just wanted to let you know!

Note: I am in a vbox of Arch running Firefox Aurora 16, so I also don't know if it is a browser bug.

</comment><comment><USER22> Very nice, but missing one thing that I think would be more meaningful: averages across weeks.

</comment><comment><USER23> What is this for? Or is it just a cool way to try new technologies without any real purpose?

EDIT: I didn't mean it in a bad way. Trying new stuff is a perfectly fine reason for doing things and this looks quite beautiful. I was just looking for an answer like "this helps you see whether more karma is given on weekdays or weekends". Statistics and visualization should answer meaningful questions, I think.

<comment><USER24> Even if it is just a way to try new technologies...it's a _huge mistake_ to think that aggregation/visualization/analysis, even at this relatively simple level, is "without any real purpose." Such big picture views can be as valuable as the datapoints used to compose them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> This confirms my suspicion that the best time to post the articles I find is on Monday.

<comment><USER11> Oh, no! You're feeding the bias! ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm wondering if you could ever discover daily commenting user count or even maybe monthly active user count somehow and share with us. That would be awesome.

</comment><comment><USER27> Now I know why my post on Sunday totally tanked without generating any karma. I should be posting on Tuesdays/Fridays instead :).

</comment><comment><USER28> What could have been interesting is to know when to post on HN to maximize the chance to be in the top 10 or some insights.

<comment><USER29> I think this is what you're looking for: <http://hnpickup.appspot.com/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Would be cool to see it index further back.... I'd love to see how my best ranked post compares to others :)

</comment><comment><USER31> I am curious where is the data behind these tables being stored inside DOM?

<comment><USER32> Looks like it's being pulled from separate JSON files.</comment></comment>


Technology You Didn't Know Still Existed: The Telegram - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/telegrams <comment><USER2> The present Western Union Money Transfer is not really a descendant of the the Western Union Telegraph Company. It's more of a successor of First Data, the payment systems company. Through a confusing series of mergers and selloffs in the 1980s, involving about five companies, the money transfer business ended up with the Western Union name.

The telegram business was incredibly low-volume by modern standards. In the 1970s, I visited Western Union's international message gateway in Mawah, NJ. Most Atlantic international message traffic passed through a pair of UNIVAC computers. One woman at a CRT terminal handled all mail bounces for transatlantic traffic. About once a minute, she had a message to deal with. The computers were not heavily loaded. The tape drive logging traffic for NSA wrote a block every few seconds.

<comment><USER3> Post-Telegram, Western Union also had a business into the 1980s with the Mailgram. Mailgrams used satellite transmission to send messages to local centers, where it would be printed out and sent via US Mail.

Let's also not forget FedEx's failed ZapMail system, which was faxed documents delivered locally by Federal Express trucks.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oh! That's what caused 60 Hudson St to be, err, 60 Hudson.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/60_Hudson_Street)

A ridiculously high percentage of the Internet flows through that building, which was once Western Union's HQ.

</comment><comment><USER5> The part about Oscar Wilde reminds me of another story of attribution, relayed by Dr Jerry Pournelle: [http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view24...](http://www.jerrypournelle.com/archives2/archives2view/view246.html)

> _Someone recently asked about the origin of the description of DC /X as > "landing on a tail of fire the way God and Robert Heinlein intended rockets > should land."_

> _Although I 've used that often, it's a case similar to the time when > someone at dinner said something clever, Oscar Wilde said "I wish I'd said > that," and someone else said "Don't worry, Oscar, by tomorrow you will > have." The origin is Dr. Arlan Andrews..._

I would assume Oscar Wilde never said that either. :)

</comment><comment><USER6> India officially shut its Telegram service 2 years ago [0]. I was nostalgic and used the last day to send a few telegrams to my family and dear ones [1,2].

[0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/1018046...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10180463/India- sends-its-last-telegram.-Stop.html)

[1] [http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7GDi8oN.jpg)

[2] [http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/OmAhXoB.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> I lamented on Facebook that I regretted never receiving a telegram in my life. Having grown up watching people in movies and TV getting telegrams, by the time I hit adulthood, the age of telegrams was largely gone.

A few weeks later, I received a telegram - a friend on Facebook found a service that still does telegrams, and I got it. I think it was rather expensive, but the gesture was still appreciated :)

<comment><USER8> You can print your own fake telegram as a gift. This is an editable PDF of a classic 1930s Western Union telegraph form. [http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.ht...](http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram3.html) -also- [http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.ht...](http://www.cthulhulives.org/toybox/propdocs/PropTelegram1.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember my dad taking me to send a telegram when I was a kid in the 1980s. He told me it was paid by the word, so since he was writing in Vietnamese he'd just join them up and nobody would know any better. Can this be true?

<comment><USER10> People used to use telegraph ciphers that abbreviated common phrases with unusual words to pay less. The real words was a feature as the telegraph company was suspicious about balderdash, and there was no reason to optimize for character count as it was paid per word (or rather a fixed fee + word fee so it never got cheap).

An example: [http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/...](http://archive.org/stream/unicodeuniversa00unkngoog#page/n3/mode/2up)

where "Acceptance paid into bank, cannot be withdrawn" becomes abjectio in an early example.

More tragic (under Births): "Confined yesterday, Twins, one alive, a girl, Mother not expected to to live" becomes annexus.

<comment><USER11> Poignant example. Life use to be much, much less easy.

Excellent link as well, thanks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> If you can find somebody to deliver a telegram, chances are that you can get in contact with just about anybody other than the president by sending them a telegram.

Think about it - if you receive a telegram would you throw it away or read it?

</comment><comment><USER13> Towards the end telegrams in the USA were for classy messages. I got an admission acceptance to Stanford grad school via telegram. A couple of job offers too. Ironically the deliver was usually the post office.

</comment><comment><USER14> ` Gosh, I hope hipsters do not discover this.</comment>


N1ED: CKEditor for 2019 - <AUTHOR> https://n1ed.com <comment><AUTHOR> N1ED is add-on for CKEditor. It will add support of many widgets, File Manager, Image Editor and support of responsive content (Bootstrap 4) to your WYSIWYG editor.</comment>


New Scanners and Conveyers Could Make Airline Security Faster and Safer - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-27/new-scanners-and-conveyers-could-make-airline-security-faster-and-safer <comment><USER2> Looking under my clothes is unacceptable. I don't care if it's fast or automated.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it need to be safer?</comment>


Kids Were Terrified of Getting MRIs. Then One Man Figured Out a Better Way - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2013/10/18/creative_confidence_a_new_book_from_ideo_s_tom_and_david_kelley.html?wpisrc=burger_bar

<comment><USER2> As a brother and a parent who had went through the cancer journey. My son had bone cancer(passed away in April 2013, age 12.5) and my sister who had brain cancer (passed away 1996, age 15)

1) Open Standards: Images need to be shared from any hospital or lab to any doctor via internet! I had to go through the scan praying that there wasn't a new tumor or that the tumor was small etc... Wait 15 minutes for the CDs to be printed and my son was in pain and just wanted to go home. OR I forget and have to go through an hour or two days to get a copy BEFORE I can see the doctor. Also doctors should feel comfortable using whatever program they want to view MRI or CT scans!

2) Video: My son loved going to one hospital because they had a video player that went over his eyes! Awesome lets raise the money to get one at our local hospital. it cost over $40,000 :(. Really????

3) Open MRI systems are great. [http://www.mrispecialists.net/Equipment.shtml](http://www.mrispecialists.net/Equipment.shtml)

<comment><USER3> First of all, I'm so sorry for your losses. I can't imagine how devastating that must be (coming from someone who just lost two parents to cancer and went through treatment himself earlier this year).

Open standards would be awesome. I thankfully went through treatment at an integrated system so everything was just "in the system" for all of my doctors, but if I were hopping around between systems that would be extremely useful.

As far as the video thing, the only reason I can imagine is because MRIs are basically huge magnets so they have to build the whole thing out of non- ferrous materials. Plus the customary medical equipment mark up, but still that can't actually be $40k.

<comment><USER4> Wouldn't it be simpler to just project the film on a screen on top of the kid?

<comment><USER3> The giant rotating ring of magnets is about 8 inches in front of your face when you're getting a head MRI so there isn't much room to get things focused properly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> MR tech here. MR scanners could sure look better for kids. A few observations. If the kids parents are fine and not bothered by the scan (or act like they aren't bothered) the kid usually does fine. If the parents are begging for sedation from the moment they hit the front desk, it goes badly even with sedation (we don't do any GA where I work). Claustrophobia is a funny thing and females seem to deal with it better than males. Females seem to tell us earlier in the piece and can then be coached though it. Males say nothing then freak out, and flat refuse to come back. I have worked at scanners in very poor areas and very wealthy area. The scanners in poor areas seem to have far fewer claustrophobic patients. The sicker people are, the less claustrophobia seems to stress them out. These observations may only apply in the areas (NZ) where I have worked.

<comment><USER6> I've been getting MRIs every four months for 9 years now. (I had a very rare type of cancer.) My admittedly anecdotal experience is that most places seem to be getting worse at administering them. I suspect they are being prescribed for diagnosis much more, and the techs are somewhat harried by the stricter schedules. GE's Adventure Series is certainly a good idea, but I think it's easy to forget how important it is for the techs to administer them well, and how an overworked problem may exist for them.

As for the noise (that other people were flippantly dismissing), it really can be jarring. Cover your ears with your hands, with your fingers pointed towards the back of your head at about at 45 degree upward angle. Then, repeatedly bang your head with your middle fingers while your ears are still covered. That's roughly the a quieter version of one of the more unsettling sounds.

I'm quite used to it -- to the point that I always ask the tech to tape my head in case I fall asleep and move -- but still. That sound is not just the rhythm backing a techno song; it's the sound of parts swirling around you with massive energy.

It maybe safe, but so are roller coasters. Yet, while you go on a roller coaster looking for a thrill, you enter an MRI machine with the very real fear that something could be very wrong with you. That's not going to make for a pleasant experience. And, it's not surprising that that underlying fear might be projected elsewhere.

<comment><USER7> I agree, I got a CT for something they could have stuck a camera or mirror in my mouth to see. They also billed me directly instead of my insurance. I can't help but think it had more to do with them making money than treating me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Any sane person would be afraid of them.

Lay in this tunnel. You're immobilized and can't move. Oh and no one can hear you call for help because of the loud jack-hammer like sounds. Wear these head-phones and we'll blast music into them so you'll feel better. Squeeze this little thing if you panic and we may come and help you.

<comment><USER9> _You 're immobilized and can't move. Oh and no one can hear you call for help._

Do you also avoid sleeping?

<comment><USER10> You can move whenever you want you are asleep (you just usually don't want to), and people can hear you call for help.

<comment><USER9> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_paralysis)

<comment><USER11> But sleep paralysis is terrifying.

<comment><USER12> I can't imagine anything more frightening than a sleep paralysis episode in one of those machines.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Academia struggled with this problem for a number of years. When I started in 1999 it was typical to toss 50% or more of data from kindergarteners. Then around 2002-2005 I saw a few independent groups take this tact. Some gave stories to kids (e.g., about a spaceship or giant camera). Another group used head-mounted motion tracking to train children to lay still while watching movies.

I don't know from this story when Doug had his epiphany. But by 2005 it was becoming increasingly common to skin the MRI and even whole rooms. It became clear that you could get better results with a friendlier room and machine. But the bigger difference was an explicit training session. Kids are seldom told to lay absolutely still and for no apparent reason. The challenge was understanding that as the problem to be overcome. The design helped wrap the experience and the memory.

</comment><comment><USER14> If the kid was young enough, they could give them the story of their lives by telling them it was a transporter and change the room from one color to another or something (via lighting) and move furniture while they were in there.

Then when they came out they might really believe it and be thrilled. This would help for the next visit. Though it might be disappointing to figure out years later.

<comment><USER15> It's a cute idea. Unfortunately (and I mean that sincerely in this case because it's a nice idea), deceiving children is unethical.

In medical school I worked with a pediatrician who had a patient brought by her mother, a foreign physician. She had told her daughter she was taking her to visit "a friend" to help reduce the time that she would worry about shots and other unpleasantries.

The physician, upon hearing her ruse, explained the ethical landscape in the United States and referred the family to a different doctor, feeling that he would never be able to restore the bond of trust that the mother had frayed.

<comment> chris-allnutt I don't think this is on the side of deceiving a child. This is really a imaginative aid to a normally traumatic experience, the child knows its not a pirate or spaceship, that's rather obvious even to a 2 year old.

I do agree with the example you give tho, that truly is a blatant deterioration or trust. I don't feel that this is on the same level of destructive misrepresentation.

<comment><USER16> I think he means the idea of pretending it's a transporter. I would be against that too as I would feel bad deceiving kids.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There's more to this than just painting the machine -- one of the primary concerns of hospitals (and thus medical device makers) is whether the equipment is easy to clean. So just slapping some paint on there isn't enough -- the design has to be embedded into the plastic (which commonly has silver ions in it to help kill germs), or as a single plastic decal that has similar properties.

To reduce the noise, I wonder why they haven't investigated active noise cancelling like the engine mounts used by some auto makers. The computer introduces waveforms that are the inverse of the frequencies they want to reduce. Or at least added mass to panels that conduct noise, using material like Dynamat eXtreme (common in car audio).

<comment><USER18> The environment around the machine is a pretty hostile one to most technology.

I do think that active noise cancellation is a brilliant tool for solving many repetitive noise issues ( I explored its use in a server room, dual purpose was, if anything was 'wrong', I could hear the room get louder as the fans lost sync with the inverse waveform. )

However given the sensitive nature of the machines, I wonder if there would be any issues caused by projecting loud inverse waves into the room the machines operate, since it would be very strange if these equipment manufacturers didn't explore the active noise cancellation technology as a way to mitigate the ear splittingly loud noise they produce.

<comment><USER17> The car makers use two kinds of active noise reduction. One is the injection of inverse waves into the car's stereo, to reduce road noise and body panel vibration. This is controlled by a microphone in the cabin (probably the same one used for hands-free phone calls).

The other one is in the engine mounts, where they have a liquid inside the rubber mount that can stiffen up on command (maybe magnetorheological[1], maybe some other kind), and this is used to counteract the vibrations the engine would transmit to the body/chassis. This is controlled by the ECU because it knows when the engine is on a power stroke and can thus apply correction on a timing basis.

I would think the latter would be what the MRI makers would want to investigate -- they've got a huge spinning mass[2] with components that vibrate. Much like an engine. :)

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

[2] At work, so can't post a video link, but if you look for "cover off mri" it's really scary/impressive how they work.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's not just kids who are reassured by cosmetic changes. MRIs used to be called NMRs. People freaked out because of the word 'nuclear'.

</comment><comment><USER20> I never got why MRIs are scary for anyone.

I've had two MRIs when I was a child. For some reason the "thunks" are relaxing to me and I fell asleep during both procedures. I even pressed the "panic button" by mistake when I had a sleep spasm! MRIs are nap time for me :)

<comment><USER21> "The outcome of this MRI will determine whether your surgery is go or no-go, the surgery can leave you with a colostomy bag for the rest of your life."

Add to that feeling very ill and weak and having a headache. The thunks are equally likely to be experienced as a pleasant rhythmic music or cause your head to spin and make you throwup.

Things that appear trivial and insignificant can cause a great deal of discomfort for people. I actually felt anguish because of a cracked ceiling for example (you're stuck looking at it for days).

<comment><USER20> I might have worded that wrong.

I get why people might be scared, but I just don't, and can't see the scary in MRIs. I can fear the outcome, but not the procedure itself.

I'm just curious about what's scary about it. Perhaps fear of the unknown? I knew why that machine was making those noises (my dad was cool and he taught me the basics about MRI machines). Or is just a personality trait, just like fear of cockroaches?

<comment><USER21> I knew the basics of how the MRI machine worked at the time as well, but its discombobulating for one. Also, you can rationally know a dark cave is empty but still something about it can be foreboding.

Its why they are called feelings and not thinkies. :) You're ill, it makes it sucks more somehow.

This decal idea in the article takes the drama out of it I suppose is the best explanation I could offer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't think it is how they look.

MRI machines are incredibly loud and "thunk" repeatedly.

<comment><USER22> This is addressed in the article; the "thunks" get incorporated into the MRI "adventure".

<comment><USER23> After dating a nurse and finding out about a bed that was just a bit too close to the thing getting sucked in.

Yeah, MRI's aren't exactly risk free "adventures".

<comment><USER10> Fortunately, most humans don't spontaneously generate ferrmagnetic materials.

Only Wolverine is at risk in that regard.

<comment><USER23> The only problem is if you are in between a metal object and the MRI machine however.

Unless you're planning on augmenting yourself like in Deus Ex I agree its not a big deal. But a big thing coming at you at high speed would ruin your day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Glad they were able to frame a scary experience as a voluntary adventure. Gamification has great potential for solving motivational problems.

I see opportunities for gamification quite often. If we took any tedious or daunting task and broke it down into a fun, easy, and simple problem for everyone, society in general would benefit from a harvesting a lot of wasted productivity.

Instead of seeing dozens of people on the subway playing Candy Crush, if they enjoyed answering questions on StackOverflow just as equally, how much faster could we advance our knowledge and solve unique problems?

</comment><comment><USER25> This is a great example of somebody closing a broken feedback loop.

One of the worst things about web-based businesses is that the people working on them are cut off from a vast amount of data about their users. It's a giant broken feedback loop, and I'm glad that user-centered approaches like this are getting developers to realize that great benefits come from reconnecting with their users.

</comment><comment><USER21> I actually had the same idea while laying in an MRI machine as a child. Problem is, nobody would take me seriously. And I still don't work for GE, so nobody would take me seriously suggesting this now -- hospitals are frustrating places.

<comment><USER5> As great an idea as this is, GE would do better if they made their scanners work. Their software is a dire mess, buggy as hell and the image quality is low. I use their flagship scanner 750w 3T.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Slightly off topic: This title made me think of a scene from Futurama.

[http://futuramarama.tumblr.com/post/92077790/ooh-whats- this-...](http://futuramarama.tumblr.com/post/92077790/ooh-whats-this-ah-is-x- ray-eye-see)

On topic: His solution was pretty smart. One of those elegant solutions that seem obvious in retrospect. Hopefully it helps make the process a lot less stressful for some kids.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wasn't afraid the first time I got into one. But I did have to fight some low-level emotional terror creeping up on me once I was inside.

It's a tight space, and the device is noisy. Pretty much designed to trigger these emotions, even though I knew it wasn't dangerous.

Second time I almost fell asleep.

</comment><comment><USER28> I don't know who thought binding the arrow keys to change articles was a good idea. I'm still reading on my netbook and instead of scrolling the page so I can fit the text on the screen, it decided that what I actually wanted was to flick articles. No thanks.

</comment><comment><USER29> Here is a video discussing the process, the actually gets very emotional talking about it. [http://vimeo.com/28420510](http://vimeo.com/28420510)

</comment><comment><USER30> I am afraid of pirates.

<comment><USER31> Probably because you have at least a semi-realistic view of them. Pirates have now been _thoroughly_ neutered for children, which you may not realize if you don't have children of your own right now. Disney has a popular show "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" in which the maximum threat level from the bad pirates is that they might _briefly_ steal your lunch, but only briefly, because you'll have it back by the end of the short episode.

It's like dressing up as a witch for Halloween, you know; there's a lot of horrifying history if you know about it, but if you don't, it's a black cape, a pointy hat, and lots of strained cackling, and little more.

<comment><USER32> This is why I recommend "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stephenson every chance I get. They're all "Walk the plank, me hearties" but they're also blood-thirsty scumbags.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Are you ready kids?!

Aye, aye Captain!

</comment><comment><USER34> I couldn't even get a chest ultrasound when I was a kid.

Medical equipment looks way too scary to children. It's all cold, white, sterile, and aluminum machinery. The smell of latex and alcohol don't help, and overall, the hospital seems like a very scary place. Heart monitors beeping every minute, weird blipped lines on EKG machines, and electrodes attached to your chest: is this a healing center or a torture prison?

Sedation is the problem with healthcare exemplified. Instead of creating a hospitable (no pun intended) pediatric environment that's comfortable for kids, knock 'em out and bombard them with EM radiation. That's sure to make the kid and the parents more comfortable.

Hospitals need to be designed with a human factor. The way they're designed right now makes them seem like robotics factories.

Huge props to Doug for trying to change the medical landscape to make it more comfortable for younger children. I was hospitalized several times as a young child, and I used to be terrified every single time. I know I would have appreciated this level of attention to design. I know many other children who need medical attention will too.

</comment><comment><USER35> If you're afraid of MRI, you can always try JRuby or Rubinius! :)</comment>


Java – planned obsolescence? - <AUTHOR> http://www.infoworld.com/article/2987529/java/insider-oracle-lost-interest-in-java.html#tk.twt_ifw <comment><USER2> Please do not rewrite article titles unless they are misleading or linkbait.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Maybe this is a good thing. Maybe, the community can take it back. It's unfortunate that it won't have a strong internal identity though.

</comment><comment><USER4> so oracle's purchase of mysql was the best thing that happened for postgress. does this mean that go/c# might be postgress of programming languages ?

<comment><USER5> Wouldn't the "Postgress (sic) of programming languages" need to be something sponsored by an independent organization?

Doesn't C# (Microsoft) and Go (Google) have the same risk that Java did? Or are the license differences enough to differentiate them?</comment></comment>


New York Venture Summit - SCAM - Phone call w/ Adam Negnewitzky - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aasCQvGG-no <comment><USER2> Could be a miss-communication. I read the emails that guy posted and it looks to be very one sided and not the entrepreneur's fault.

Tricky wording on the Venture Summit's part.

Good post.

</comment><comment><USER3> I upvoted this without watching the entire video (shame on me).

However, upon review of the entire video, I would take my vote back if I could. It seems neither party communicated well.

No offense intended. Miscommunication happens when people aren't thorough.</comment>


How Good Are You At Programming - <AUTHOR> http://science.raphael.poss.name/programming-levels.html <comment><USER2> Been programming for 30+ years, [ _can solve any problem_ ] in computing, have saved companies millions and invented new ways of doing entire processes for thousands and thousand of people

-> I have no idea what most of those matrices were on about. I think I'm a shit programmer.

Edit: [ _have never come across a problem I couldn 't solve given time (as I think is the case for most of us)_] - fair enough jafaku

<comment><USER3> I read five or six of those boxes and then just snorted in disgust. It looks like a great slide to show suckers if you're a productivity consultant. A sane chart would be less verbose, and more depressing. You can code your whole life, and still have struggles with pointers, threads, algorithms, new languages, etc. The majority of coders wouldn't even rank in the first column. I'm not a complete dummy but it took me a year before I could instinctively avoid "off-by-one" errors in loops, and almost ten years just to learn to name variables in a relatively self-documenting fashion.

<comment><USER4> Haha - the older I get the more I agree with the catchphrase about variable naming being one of the hard problems of programming. Get that right and so many other problems never even arise

<comment><USER5> I would agree with you if you are talking about halfway decent programmers. I have seen some really poor code that naming conventions wouldn't save.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This one is much better: [http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency- matrix/](http://sijinjoseph.com/programmer-competency-matrix/)

It provided me with practical, straight-forward and helpful advice on where to focus to improve my programming skills.

<comment><USER7> These kinds of checklists tend to reveal the bias of their authors.

If I were authoring one I'd have a bunch of stuff in there about understanding the hardware, performance, caching, power consumption. How the compiler produces the instructions that actually run on the machine. A bunch of the how's and whys of the various OS designs and how that affects the problem in front of you might go well in there too. And so I reveal my bias and I'm probably overlooking something quite important that's your particular strength that makes you really great in your programming niche. At least I'm aware of it, which neither of these guys seem to be.

<comment><USER6> I agree. I should have said: "This checklist helped me a lot, after getting a masters degree, as a starting point listing the general aspects to get to know in the particular professional path that I'm currently following". If CS was my world, that checklist would be a map of the country I'm living in at the moment (or even better: a travel guide).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I read it and thought that must be written by an academic. Searched for the "about" page and wasn't disappointed. So as a fair warning for non-academic programmers: Read it with a grain of salt. That being said, I don't know how well the matrix applies to academic programmers.

</comment><comment><USER9> Odd that there's nothing about writing tests in the troubleshooting section

<comment><USER5> You can test without writing automated tests.

I generally find this far more efficient use of my time, though my work is an in house app, with a user base of around 50. I get informed about errors very quickly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> How many Project Euler problems can you solve?

<comment><USER11> As great as Project Euler is for learning programming, it's definitely not a good measure of most aspects of programming. It measures a very small subset of the required skills. This chart gives a more complete and nuanced way of evaluating one's skills.

<comment><USER5> I agree, its like the "algorithms and data structures" stuff I was taught at University. In real life, organization of large code bases, picking an appropriate abstraction, and general knowledge of OS's are far more important for most jobs. Never had to implement a linked list in 11+ years of coding.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Such nerd link-bait.</comment>


New data show that joining the 1% remains unsettlingly hereditary - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21715735-new-data-show-joining-1-remains-unsettlingly-hereditary-skipping-class?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/ed/skippingclass <comment><USER2> Well if you consider all billionaires and not just the top of the top, the trend is the opposite. Billionaires who inherited their wealth were 55.3% in 1996, 41.9% in 2001, and 30.4% in 2014.

[https://piie.com/publications/wp/wp16-1.pdf](https://piie.com/publications/wp/wp16-1.pdf)

<comment><USER3> Sure, but when the King changed, the hereditary aristocracy gets left in place. 1% == current aristocracy.</comment></comment>


China Mandates Fibre For All New Homes - <AUTHOR> http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2013-01/09/content_16099801.htm <comment><USER2> From the article:

 _The standards will take effect from April 1, 2013, and will also require residences to offer equal connections to services from various telecom companies allowing customers to choose which service they want._

Amazingly, this means that China is now ahead of the U.S. regarding net neutrality.

Now, if they'd just do something about the Great Firewall..

<comment><USER3> It is seductively powerful being a dictatorship. You can do things like this. Its not all its cracked up to be living with it though.

<comment><USER4> Pretty sure you could make this a legal requirement even in a democracy.

<comment><USER5> Not without people screaming about the danger of government meddling in industrial policy and wrangling over it for the better part of a decade.

<comment><USER6> That's capitalist democracy. You could have a democracy where the government does control (or has significant influence over) industry.

<comment><USER4> And not allow the government to be the scapegoat for corporate-driven changes and rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, not _all_ new homes - homes in neighbourhoods where fibre is already available. The article says that China is aiming for 40 million households to have fibre connections by 2015, which is just under 10% of the total households (if you go by Wikipedia's figures).

</comment><comment><USER8> Doesn't this just make homes unnecessarily more expensive?

<comment><USER9> It depends what you mean by unnecessarily. Public policy has multiple goals and stakeholders. If your policy priority is high bandwidth to large portions of the educated population for the long term economic benefits - and if you feel that this dramatically increases your global economic competitiveness, thereby increasing income and living standards for all, then you probably don't consider the small marginal additional cost per unit as unnecessary.

<comment><USER10> I'm with the original commentor. The first question we should ask if not "does this provide value to the individuals in a specific group?" but what are the unintended consequences for everyone in the economy?

This is explored very well in the book "Economics in One Lesson": <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_in_One_Lesson>

<comment><USER9> Questions we ask are not going to influence policy in China which runs by a different set of rules.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I live in Redwood City, actually Redwood Shores and just two days ago I saw one of the neighbors driving by with a new Tesla Model S. In my home I have AT&T and the fastest speed they can offer is 1.5Mbps. I keep looking for U-Verse here in the heart of Silicon Valley, but it remains a dream.

For my start-up I travel every 2 months to China, Shanghai area. Every time I go there and visit different places I am just astonished the internet speed many homes have there and the hotel I stay typically has 25M-30MBps. To me it does not sound like this new ruling makes them move ahead, I feel like they are already ahead.

<comment><USER12> On the contrary, I lived in Shanghai for many years, and just spent a month there. Internet speeds, at least for accessing any sites outside China, are notoriously horrible, as anyone living there will tell you.

Using a secure proxy is often necessary not only for circumventing GFW, but to get usable speeds to western internet services.

Did you return from the future?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> So now China will build unbelievable numbers of uninhabited homes in uninhabited cities with fiber internet access...

</comment><comment><USER14> What speed does this actually mean? 100/100?

<comment><USER15> It means it feels ridiculously fast for websites inside the GFW.

speedtest.net results just run now (I'm in Shanghai, it's saturday morning, no VPN):

Shanghai-based server: ping 27ms, down 15.33Mbps, up 0.54Mbps

Beijing-based server: ping 31ms, down 17.49Mbps, up 0.55Mbps

London (UK)-based server: ping 270ms, down 6.17Mbps, up 0.56Mbps

I live in an older compound, my building has 12 floors, most of the others have 6, so this is not a new compound by any means, but we already have fiber, they're rolling it out gradually throughout the city.

<comment><USER14> > down 15.33Mbps, up 0.54Mbps

That doesn't seem that fast to me. I get better speeds out in the Midwest in America, where internet is supposed to be super shitty.

Particularly, I was expecting a symmetric connection.

<comment><USER16> This is actually pretty good for inside the GFW; keep in mind links are typically overloaded to the resource you are accessing, its not just about your final leg speed. So fiber really only fixes one part of the connection, Amdahl's law still applies.

Oddly enough, I actually sometimes find sites outside the GFW are a bit faster compared to some domestic Chinese sites inside the GFW. The internal Chinese internet just has lots of problems that they haven't worked through yet.

<comment><USER14> > keep in mind links are typically overloaded to the resource you are > accessing, its not just about your final leg speed. So fiber really only > fixes one part of the connection, Amdahl's law still applies.

Is the last mile not the bottleneck in China? It is in America, AFAIK.

<comment><USER16> Not when you are watching "Gangnam Style" on Youku. Anything video will be blocked in America anyways, so its Chinese sites only for that. It is true that I can't really do Apple to Apple comparisons.

<comment><USER14> > Not when you are watching "Gangnam Style" on Youku.

Why is this? Do the ISPs not have caching systems in place?

<comment><USER16> For streamed video? I don't even think that is possible. But please correct me if I'm wrong.

<comment><USER14> Of course it's possible: [http://netequalizernews.com/2010/10/26/enhance-your- isp-offe...](http://netequalizernews.com/2010/10/26/enhance-your-isp-offering- with-youtube-caching/)

 _> To ensure better performance, my Internet provider keeps a local copy of the popular YouTube content (caching), and when I watch a trending video, they send me the stream from their local cache. However, if I request a video that's not contained in their current cache, I'm sent over the broader Internet to the actual YouTube content servers._

I have no doubt that the vast majority of American ISPs have cached Gangnam Style. In the US at least, Google/YouTube likely assists in this process.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've got optical fiber here (20 Mbits) and my parent's ADSL connection back in France feels faster.. The GFW makes things very slow for any connections out of China and in China bandwidth for servers is insanely expensive (a lot of companies offer by default 5 MBps dedicated bandwith only when hosting), so a lot of servers are saturated...

</comment><comment><USER18> No one mentioned a possible reason for this regulation: get rid of the mess with cables.

<comment><USER19> By adding more cables?

<comment><USER18> One fiber can carry many more lines than one thread of copper, right?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Just like solar panels (Made In China), I hope that this significantly brings down the price of fiber optic cable.

<comment><USER21> Fiber is cheap. Hiring Americans to pull it through the ground (/tunnels/on power lines/whathaveyou) is not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Unfortunately, China is not ruled by law.

</comment><comment><USER23> We need to do that here as well!

</comment><comment><USER24> they may reach 50 million way earlier than 2015. nice! Good for us, at least, the global prices would come down a notch :)

</comment><comment><USER25> More bandwidth for all that spying</comment>


Apple removes Scratch from iPad/iPhone/iTouch - <AUTHOR> http://computinged.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/apple-removes-scratch-from-ipadiphoneitouch/ <comment><USER2> IMHO, this should cause more outrage than all the developer related policies.

Apple has always been a world apart, with a strong philosophy and its own priorities. But the culture around its products was all about fostering creativity.

I used to say to friends: get a Mac if you want an hassle-free computer to make things (music, graphics design and even programming. Does anyone remember HyperCard, which at one point was bundled with every mac?).

The argument that the iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch is not a computer is really myopic. It's the culture that has changed.

<comment><USER3> Build for free software platforms like Linux or the Web and these issues go away. Being outraged at Apple policies when the web is free is like being outraged at your employer when you are free to start your own business.

<comment><USER4> "Free" is a term that always benefits from definition. How free am I to start my own business? Well, that depends on relative power, and how precarious my financial situation is, my debt load, my family responsibilities, and other things. It's not just a simple question of "is it physically possible?"

I'm not sure how directly applicable that critique is to the analogy, except to say that I am well within my rights to be outraged at my own employer for many reasons, whether or not I have the opportunity to start my own business. "Love it or leave it" is generally a cheap argument for dismissing folks who are pushing for progressive change in a system.

<comment><USER3> > Build for free software platforms like Linux or the Web and these issues go > away.

Is this statement true or false?

> Being outraged at Apple policies when the web is free is like being outraged > at your employer when you are free to start your own business.

Does this statement say you are not entitled to be outraged at Apple or at your employer? Or does it merely say that being outraged at Apple when you have alternative target platforms is _like_ being outraged at your employer when you can start your own business?

Making money from the web _appears_ to be more difficult that making money from iPhone software. Starting your own business appears to be more difficult than working for yourself.

Don't these statements support the simile?

I support your choice to push Apple for "progressive change." But just as you may choose to push them to change, I choose to push developers to change. I hope you accept the direct comparison I am drawing.

<comment><USER4> Excellent rejoinders. They do support the simile.

I think I did jump to reading it as a "love it or leave it" argument, though recognizing you are more on the "come and join us on the outside". But maybe you can see it was easy to ready it as "it's a waste to get riled up about this".

Anyway, I'm quite sympathetic to the build-alternative-institutions as opposed to work-within-the-system approach. I rewrote this response a dozen times and then realized I hadn't figured out what really rankles me about this whole conversation (the larger one).

I think it's that Apple makes really good stuff, when so often it's the people making marginal or crappy stuff that are making regressive moves like these. So I get torn, because there are real efforts being made on their part to make technology human, to meet people where they are, efforts that have gone further than a lot of others. And I can't see any basic link between the closed approach and that success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Now THIS really got my attention. I was holding my nose lightly through all the flap so far, and I'm quite sympathetic to Apple's desire to keep Flash off the platform, but disallowing educational software just because it's running a Smalltalk interpreter?

A polite but forceful email to Jobs is on the way...

<comment><USER6> I'd hate Apple more if they published a policy, and then cherry-picked when to enforce it for their best PR benefit.

<comment><USER7> Didn't they do essentially that by allowing apps for magazines from larger publishers (Sports Illustrated, Playboy, for example) that contained certain content while nixing other apps on the grounds they had exactly that sort of content?

[http://www.cooltechzone.com/2010/02/23/apple-loves- playboy-s...](http://www.cooltechzone.com/2010/02/23/apple-loves-playboy- sports-illustrated-hates-other-sexual-apps/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> From the article: "Why? Discussion on the Scratch forums suggests that it's because Apple wants to focus on consuming media using these devices, not producing media. Want to be truly computing literate, where you write as well as read? There's no app for that."

No, it's because (as far as I can tell) the Scratch iPhone app was acting as a Scratch interpreter which is explicitly not allowed on the App Store to begin with.

The authors of the iPhone app (<http://www.mobilewikiserver.com/Scratch.html>) made a nice post in the developer forums (<https://devforums.apple.com/thread/46425>) pleading their case for any you with access to the forum and an interest in digging deeper.

<comment><USER9> That post really puts the "C/C++/Obj-C" thing into much starker relief than the "wish I could use lisp" discussion. Geeks can get around 3.3.1 if they're clever enough; replacing a democratizing technology like Scratch, on the other hand, may be impossible.

That said, if their app really was an interpreter, I'm surprised it made it into the store in the first place. And if anything, the typical Scratch output of a crayon-drawn animation designed by a 13-year-old only bolsters Jobs' point about cross-compilers bringing down the average app quality. But I'm very impressed that they had Scratch working on the platform and I hope Apple can find a way to incorporate that educational mission into their world- domination strategy...

<comment><USER10> They built it on top of Squeak. That thing is one of the most straightforward VMs to port. The runtimes execute bit-identical. Years ago they were on 40 different platforms, and I've lost track. It's an incredibly elegant architecture.

<comment><USER9> That's cool. Should have said "happy" instead of "impressed" -- knowing nothing about the technical side, I was imagining the impact of letting kids program ipods/iphones. They must have loved that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is not exactly what Alan Kay hoped for when he talked about the iPhone foreshadowing the iPad:

"When the Mac first came out, Newsweek asked me what I [thought] of it. I said: Well, it's the first personal computer worth criticizing. So at the end of the presentation, Steve came up to me and said: Is the iPhone worth criticizing? And I said: Make the screen five inches by eight inches, and you'll rule the world."

Source: [http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet- apple-...](http://gigaom.com/2010/01/26/alan-kay-with-the-tablet-apple-will- rule-the-world/)

The iPad is no Dynabook: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynabook>.

Perhaps a better name would have been:

-UndynamicBook

-iStade (See: <http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/stade> )

<comment><USER12> Could you please elaborate on what is exactly 'disrespectful to history'? Dynabook concept was out there since 1968, not patented as far as I know - anyone could have 'borrowed' it and reaped the benefits.

The fact that Apple has provided a particular implementation of the concept, even with all the software restrictions etc., is a step in right direction. Competition will certainly follow.

<comment><USER11> The last paragraph came across much stronger than I intended. I've removed it for now until I articulate what I intended better(or never).

<comment><USER11> I agree in general with what I take to be your stance, that people who actually get it out there into the mainstream and do it well should be rewarded. And that open markets will always create competition so therefore some strict control is ok if it gets us there.

To clarify, I wouldn't expect an academic to patent his work. He wants his works to be freely available to everyone. It's Steve Job's/Apple's right ethically and legally to leverage that. I meant it more lightly that it felt disrespectful that years later Jobs isn't paying homage to the source of inspirations.

I love Apple, they are killing it out there. I don't take nearly as much issue as everyone else does with most of their controlling terms. I come from the game's industry where Apple seems like the most gracious host compared to Nintendo/Sony/Microsoft and their approval process.

But as a Tools/Interface developer it's so frustrating to not be allowed to commercialize say an IDE that utilizes multi-touch to make software editing/navigation more efficient or enjoyable.

<comment><USER13> >But as a Tools/Interface developer it's so frustrating to not be allowed to commercialize say an IDE that utilizes multi-touch to make software editing/navigation more efficient or enjoyable.

There's no reason why you can't implement an IDE on the iPhone/iPad. The only restriction is that you can't compile arbitrary code. I don't want to say too much here because I'm working on a similar idea, but there's really no reason why the current iPad can't be used for development work.

<comment><USER11> You are right, I hadn't thought of it all the way down. You could still have a code editor/navigator client that remotely accesses code, or locally stores it. But the code is run else where.

This would work fine for say editing a web app's code and then hitting refresh on each save. Until multi-tasking is released in iPhone OS 4.0 this will really require another device with a browser to view the updated code in a browser.

But again, this isn't what I'd call an IDE, it's more of a code editor. No debugging, profiling etc, unless you are connected to a runtime else where. But again this is far less desirable than being able to run/test code without a good networking connection or any connection at all.

Many other interactive environments other than squeak would be possible without these constraints, such as the Code Bubble IDE project: <http://www.cs.brown.edu/people/acb/codebubbles_site.htm>

<comment><USER11> Wow, I just realized: The only code you can edit and test locally without a connection will be web code. (Due to being able to run Javascript and use the built-in webkit browser)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Next up "Etch A Sketch"-like iApps will be banned since the viewers will interpret de data from the server and display other users' sketches.

God forbid you use JSON to communicate with the server in your app and parse it yourself, that's too close to Javascript-parsing and you can only use the approved Javascript interpreter for that.

It's starting to look a bit like a joke.

Yeah, of course, typing this on my MacBook Pro... It's a weird love-hate thing with Apple these days.

<comment><USER15> It just occurred to me you officially cannot make an iPhone app that displays PDF documents - because rendering a PDF involves interpreting a program written in the PostScript programming language (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostScript#The_language>).

<comment><USER16> No. PDFs only uses the PostScript imaging model, not the PostScript programming language.

<comment><USER15> Ah, interesting - I always though PDF was just a superset of PostScript, but it looks like you are correct: <http://www.adobe.com/print/features/psvspdf/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> So again the question arises - why would you develop for a platform where the rules can change arbitrarily in a way that invalidates your work and possibly cuts into your income stream?

<comment><USER18> Because you get money while it lasts. If you're fully aware of problem and its consequences - why not just stop worrying and love the bo^W appstore. I'm not sure why would any hobby developer do that though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Want to be truly computing literate, where you write as well as read? There's no app for that._

On some level, the iPad isn't really a Turing Machine.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's out only from the store. There are other ways to install it! Legal ways.

<comment><USER20> Why am I getting downvoted?

If you want Scratch for your students, you can use ad-hoc install for them? Buy a $99 dollar account, sponsored by the school, and install it for them? What is the problem?

I understand, and I wish Apple did not put such restrictions, but they've put them. Yet, still there is a way.

It's not like with Sony and the latest Ps3 firmware, where even if you want to pay (And I've already paid $69 for YellowDog support) I can no longer get it, or I can't use the Sony Service...

<comment><USER21> Is the code freely available to use to install it? If it's not, then this won't work.

<comment><USER20> <http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Source_Code>

<comment><USER21> Cool, thanks. I am currently in the developer program so I'm going to install this on my phone and play with it!

edit: this isn't the iPhone source...

<comment><USER22> The Scratch iPhone viewer was developed by a 3rd party not associated with MIT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Kept waiting to hear this was a joke, but apparently not. Depressing.

</comment><comment><USER24> > Of course, they can take all the hate from developers because the mindless > Apple legions will still love them.

So true.

</comment><comment><USER25> My first problem with scratch was that it was client based and the "player" is java based. It absolutely needs to be web (not flash or java) based. I actually had a good portion of a jquery/drag and drop code editor written a few years ago when I was stuck at a 9-5 programming gig. I am going to dig it back up as the time seems right to move forward with it.

<comment><USER26> Please do!</comment></comment>


Show HN: Neeto, a secure code box for developers - <AUTHOR> https://neeto.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> Neeto is a place for developers to store their commonly used commands and useful code snippets. It has a high emphasis on privacy while also making it easy to publish your content.

Snippets are encrypted server side before being stored. In addition, local encryption can be enabled so that snippets are encrypted before being sent over the wire. I also don't use Google Analytics, which tracks your web usage to serve you better advertisements.

You can share groups of snippets or an individual one. I've created a "blog" group and am using this to publish my blog currently:

[https://neeto.io/mo/blog](https://neeto.io/mo/blog)

You can also publish individual snippets anonymously: [https://neeto.io/JGefSCx9](https://neeto.io/JGefSCx9)

<comment><USER2> This is just a style nitpick, but there a are a lot of extraneous scrollbars ([https://0x0.st/LT1.png](https://0x0.st/LT1.png)). It looks like this was designed on a Mac, where overflow: scroll works the same as overflow: auto and scrollbars take up no extra space in the layout, however on non-Mac, overflow: scroll always draws a scrollbar, even when it isn't needed.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ah interesting, thanks for pointing that out. It was indeed designed on a Mac. Will get that fixed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Your nginx is serving default webpage on port 80

</comment><comment><USER4> This is a great idea. If you'd like some help with branding or UI, let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> How can I contact you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Any chance this is open source? Neeto seems super awesome, and, well, neeto!

It's not that I don't trust you, it's just that I trust me more.

<comment><AUTHOR> You shouldn't trust anyone ;) Which is why Neeto has local encryption. But I would like to make it open source, I'm just not sure how that would play out, especially if I want to monetize it.

<comment><USER5> IMO, release a version that doesn't do as much. Don't include the account system, and the local encryption.

I've shown it to a few friends and they said they would pay, even if it was open source.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm assuming you'd like it open source to verify its security? But in that case, how would you know the live neeto.io site is running the same code you see on Github?

<comment><USER5> Actually, no. For security, I assume your using something like SJCL (please correct me if I'm wrong). I'd just want to run my own version.

I would trust you to use the same code in both places because I'd be paying you so I guess there'd be some sort of accountability?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've went a step further and decided to build this as an open protocol. See [https://standardnotes.org](https://standardnotes.org).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Goldman Sachs are open sourcing the Alloy modelling framework and Pure language - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/20/goldman-sachs-is-giving-away-software-to-wall-street-for-free.html <comment><USER2> Anyone with insider info on what PURE is based on? Did they roll their own compiler?</comment>


The Basics of Readability - <AUTHOR> http://www.webdesignfromscratch.com/basics/readability/

<comment><USER2> "Verdana is specifically good for body text, because it's a broad a spacious font"

Apparently Verdana isn't readable enough to guarantee proof-reading by webmasters.</comment>


You Don't Need Staging Environments - <AUTHOR> https://capsule.click/posts/you-dont-need-staging-environments.html <comment><USER2> I've tried using things like netlify/zeit before for sharing websites, and they're super nice except that they only work for static sites or JAM stack sites.

This seems nice for sharing single pages on sites</comment>


Blender Movie is out: Sintel - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRsGyueVLvQ

<comment><USER2> Incredible! This is a perfect example of the power of collaboration. Thanks for the post.</comment>