Show HN: Database of 1400 farms that deliver during Covid-19 with 30+ filters - <AUTHOR> https://farmsthataredelivering.com <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN,

When we went into lockdown, my friend Jason and I started looking for meat and produce so we could eat healthier meals with our families - rather than my go- to's Chef Boyardee ravioli and instant ramen - since it was already looking like we'd be in it for the long haul. However, our delivery go-to's had limited supply (I didn't want to go out because my parents are at-risk) and a lot of meat/produce subscription box services had just started waitlisting, so we started to look into farms and found some great ones that delivered straight to our doors. Since I started buying meat from farms, I've had the best meat I've ever had in my life.

When we realized that lots of people were probably in the same boat as us, we wanted to share what helped us and started to put together a database of farms that 1) have online stores 2) where you can get meat, produce, and/or dairy 3) and deliver straight to your door.

We also have >30 filters for everything from the kind of meat/produce/dairy/prepared good you're looking for to the breed, how it was raised, where it was raised, diet, preparation method, etc. You'll find some interesting products trying out the filters: we had a lot of 2am cravings adding farms that sell lamb raised on their mother's milk their entire lives in the Rocky Mountains (I didn't even particularly like lamb - now I do), forest-raised Manglitsa pork, and cave-aged raw milk cheeses.

</comment><comment><USER2> Thank you for building this. I'm excited to make some purchased near me.

<comment><AUTHOR> Of course! We're happy to help. What are you looking for? After going through 1000's of farms, I've seen some great ones for different products that I could recommend.</comment></comment>


Kalzumeus Podcast Episode 11: Bootstrapping vs. Raising Money - <AUTHOR> http://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/02/26/kalzumeus-podcast-episode-11-bootstrapping-vs-raising-money <comment><USER2> My experience of bootstrapping vwo.com for the last 5 years has been the most phenomenal experience of my life. I've realized that constraint for our growth is not money, rather learning and understanding what matters in business and what doesn't. It's slow and gradual learning that I'm enjoying the most.

Last year, I was exploring whether funding could help us grow faster. Talking to VCs and the firms that got VC funding gave me the perspective that raising funds is RARELY a one-time thing. Once you raise funding (and dilute 25-30% of your company), no VC wants that money to be sitting in your bank and earn 0% interest. So your burn rate increases exponentially and most VCs want their funding to burn within 18 months. This means that in order to sustain the company you'd have to raise the next round and dilute another 25-30% of the company, and this keeps happening until exit/IPO where the investors typically end up holding 80% of the company and pretty much controlling its destiny. And remember it was who you toiled day and night to make your dreams successful.

Someone who had raised funding advised me - as long as things are going fine, you the founder are in control of the company. And if you're not growing fast- enough (think 100% year on year), the investors are in control. It's not that VC money is bad per-se, however, I think losing control of your company as a consequence of external funding is bad. Disruptions happen, new competitor emerges and you could be thrown out of your own company.

For us, having HQ in India gives us a good cost structure (although funding scene in India is changing that fast, salaries are getting through the roof) so we've been able to fund, reinvest profits and grow the company profitably (and have a nest egg for worst case). However, given the costs in SF / bay area, I'm not sure how would one go about bootstrapping a company for long. Would love to hear thoughts from fellow bootstrappers in high cost-of-living cities/countries?

PS: A bootstrapped company I really admire is Zoho. They're 1700 people and they say they have two IPOable products within the company. Very admirable.

<comment><USER3> What most people don't realize about VC is that:

First, there are two VC industries. There is the one that funds biotech and clean-tech and there is the bubble-centric consumer web one that gets all the press here. The first exists to fill a gap (R&D projects that the mainstream private sector is too cowardly to try) and isn't sexy because the upfront capital costs are very high, meaning VCs take a lot of the money, meaning that founders becoming billionaires is next to impossible. But on the whole, the VCs in that sector are actually pretty ethical. Obviously, they're in the game to make money, but they're trying to make it the honest way: by capitalizing good businesses. The second, sleazier VC industry-- the one with the slimy co- funding/back-channeling culture that funds a lot of stupid ideas and frat boys-- is the one that gets all the press here.

As for that sector of VC, they're in the business of taking strategies that are profitable but illegal in public markets (e.g. market manipulation, insider trading) and applying them to private stocks that are less well- regulated. They encourage (and, sometimes, demand) extreme risk taking because they don't really care which businesses go up and down, they just want volatility (for it's own sake) in the market, never mind if this leads to bad decisions and damages the careers of people they view as peasants.

The slimy consumer-web build-to-flip VC will also never leave California. Why? Because a lot of the note-sharing that VCs engage in is illegal and simply can't be done except in-person, because it would be too devastating if the phone logs or emails ever surfaced in discovery. For one of many examples, they make a lot of back-channel reference calls in deciding whether to fund someone, and it's a well-known fact of HR that the main (if not the only) reason to make a back-channel reference call is to violate EEOC provisions.

<comment><USER4> Didn't see the username and while reading the comment a thought came to mind - this seems like something Michael Church might have written. Looked up and it was indeed Michael Church

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I haven't been able to listen all the way through yet, but what a great discussion for anyone who might be considering raising their first round, especially for folks who have already bootstrapped a product to a certain point.

Jay, if you're around on this thread, I'd love to hear what sort of questions you were fielding from Naval.

<comment><USER6> It was really just the basic set of investor questions compressed down into a very short and high bandwidth discussion. I think the general idea was to see how familiar I was with all the aspects of the business and the market.

It was at a dinner, so I was two beers in, but from memory some of the questions and answers were things like:

Q: How do you get new customers?

A: The great thing about MakeLeaps (For context: MakeLeaps is an online invoice creation and management tool for Japan) is that it's inherently viral, since every customer sends tens, hundreds or thousands of invoices to other customers, and each one is an opportunity to introduce MakeLeaps, since we have a tiny "Powered by MakeLeaps" stamp at the bottom of the email. In addition, we do paid marketing campaigns such as Adwords and retargeted Facebook newsfeed ads which we've found to be effective in Japan, and a lot of content marketing. We're working on partnerships with BigCo1, and BigCo2, and integration X and Y that could also be a great new way to get in front of more viable customers.

Kind of thing. Some other questions were just general fact finding such as:

Q: How big is your team?

Q: What's your biggest challenge right now?

Q: Why are you doing this?

Q: Why don't Japanese companies already use a tool like yours?

Q: What's your business model?

Are the ones that I remember of the top of my head. Happy to field any more questions, and thanks again for listening.

<comment><USER7> You got patio11 to move to Tokyo? That's kind of amazing. Great podcast so far, still listening to it and congrats on the funding.

<comment><USER8> It's the better end of the deal, to be honest. He used to live here in Gifu, and while this is a great place to live, there are many things you have easier access to in Tokyo.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> here's my question to you guys.

the bottom of the curve is painful.

it feels like you are trying to push a boulder and it is moving by millimeters.

it does move and its not much but you just keep pushing and pushing. sometimes despair and anxiety takes over, it's never going to work, stupid, i suck, im fucking it up, find a job.

so how do you manage yourself in those situation?

The toughest problem I discovered was marketing, putting your product in front of people, getting it noticed.

Not having VC money to spend means you have to manage it yourself. But marketing I am finding out is TOUGH. In fact it is by far the most difficult aspect of bootstrapping. PPC and expensive ad buys are out of the question. So what do you have to get new customers?

Sales cure all. Selling is not a problem if you are dealing with people with the wallet and mind to buy. You just need to guide them.

But getting those people through the door, building that volume of quality leads, this is tough.

All in all I feel like bootstrapping is a juggling effort while trying to push a boulder down a hill so that one day it will start rolling by itself.

<comment><USER10> I think I'll write about this in the future, because this describes my experience with Appointment Reminder, pretty much to a T.

Do I have a magic answer to it? No. Long, slow SaaS ramp of death all the way. [http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman- constant-...](http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant- contact-how-to-negotiate-the-long-slow-saas-ramp-of-death/)

Spoiling a bit of that eventual post: one of the hardest challenges for me with AR was keeping up motivation to grind-it-the-heck-out over the years, because AR was not an intrinsically motivating problem/market for me. It would probably be 10X larger than it is right now if it had attracted the requisite effort from me over the years by being interesting-in-the-absence-of-major- growth. The next time I do a business, it will be something which will be certifiably Fun to me every day, for some value of Fun.

Incidentally: depression may be an orthogonal issue to this. Many of us in the community struggle with it. You're very not alone. Talk to someone -- me, if necessary.

<comment><USER11> > Many of us in the community struggle with it. You're very not alone.

Very much this.</comment></comment></comment>


What.cd's Gazelle on GitHub - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle

<comment><USER3> They wrote a small announcement in their forum. For anyone that can't read it:

      This is an important change for Gazelle coders. You may have noticed that gazelle/ is now redirecting to http://whatcd.github.io/Gazelle/.
      This is due to the fact that we are now hosting our public Gazelle repository on GitHub.
      The old gazelle site had become severely outdated and a nuisance to maintain.
      Luckily for us, GitHub is the perfect solution.
      You can view our Gazelle repository here—it is accompanied by a GitHub page providing a brief overview of the project as well as a wiki with important information such as installation instructions, coding standards, and API documentation.

</comment><comment><USER4> Cool, it's like watching how people did PHP 4-5 years ago when there weren't many frameworks available, and people used GLOBAL variables for accessing the DB/cache.

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/classes/wiki.c...](https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/classes/wiki.class.php)

Yeah, not to be negative, but it literally has SQL and HTML in one file. Ooof.

<comment><USER4> Yes, the thing I also noted first was that it doesn't have any bootstrap/router (only 'bootstrap' is the one that's included at the top of each .php-file, wordpress-style). Development must have been pure pain. :(

I really understand why people hate PHP so much when all they get to see is purely non-optimized shit. It generally has a really bad reputation which it doesn't deserve. Especially in HN-circles.

<comment><USER5> Yes I agree wholeheartedly. There are two very fair knocks against PHP: it's not the fastest, and the API uses somewhat inconsistent standards and conventions (isset vs. is_array for instance...so frustrating). But for the slowness aspect, it's not so slow that you are really hindered by this unless you are doing something that requires very intense performance, in which case why are you using a higher level language anyway. Pretty much the rest of its bad reputation is undeserved, and the downsides are on the level of give and take you get with any other language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you want to start a bittorrent tracker but don't want to bother with all of the trouble of things like Gazelle, you might like thehighseas, a straightforward bittorrent tracker I wrote:

[https://github.com/calpaterson/thehighseas](https://github.com/calpaterson/thehighseas)

<comment><USER7> That's a different league though. Gazelle provides a lot more than just listing torrents.

<comment><USER6> Absolutely, I just thought I'd mention it in case people want to get into bittorrent but want an easier way to get started

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> This might get passed off as something for people looking do to evil/illegal/etc projects, but Gazelle is easily the best tracker front-end out there and it's super customizable (google "Gazelle tracker" and you'll likely find a bunch of screenshots of different sites implementing it differently—from skinning it to adding new features). Bittorrent is underused as a medium for legal downloads and I encourage anyone interested in a torrent site of any kind to check this out before they try to write their own.

<comment><USER9> This is my go-to example of a cool legal* website running Gazelle: [http://panda.cd/](http://panda.cd/)

If you know of any others please let me know!

* Not that the well-known ones are illegal either, really, but the point is slightly academic as they will still throw people in jail over it...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's pressure being put on Gazelle right now because Waffles and AnimeBytes are writing a replacement called Batter[1] using Django. I've also been working on a tracker in Go called Chihaya[2] that will replace Ocelot. I'm glad they finally opening things up more, but it might be a bit too late. If you're interested in working on a more modern rewrite of Gazelle's software stack that has actual software development practices (continuous integration, tests, style guidelines), check out the projects. Both projects are BSD 2 Clause, btw.

[1] [https://github.com/wafflesfm/batter](https://github.com/wafflesfm/batter)

[2] [https://github.com/pushrax/chihaya](https://github.com/pushrax/chihaya)

<comment><USER11> thanks for the links. i gotta say though, your indentation style on chihaya is crackodactyl.

<comment><USER10> It's only gofmt with lines <80 chars; there is a function call or two broken into multiple lines to meet that. I'm scrapping that limit and just going to make it as readable as possible. The real crazy thing is GitHub using 8 spaces for tabs!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Could someone explain what this is?

<comment><USER13> 'Gazelle' is the bittorrent tracker frontend developed by What.CD (For those not in the know, one of the largest music trackers out there).

<comment><USER14> So, what is a bittorrent tracker?

<comment><USER9> The tracker tells you who else has the files you want, in a nutshell.

Basic bittorrent outline:

You download a .torrent file which contains (amongst other things) a list of files, their hashes, and a list of trackers to connect to.

Your BitTorrent client connects to the tracker and says "Hi, who else has or is looking for these files"?

It returns a list of these people (aka "peers") and your BitTorrent client then connects directly to peers to download the files (and upload them to other people).

<comment><USER14> And all this time I thought a torrent file had the actual peers in it. So you don't even really need the .torrent if you have the addresses of some trackers that know where the files are that you want?

<comment><USER15> You would also need the torrent's hash (which enable you to specify to the tracker which files you want exactly). That's how magnet link [1] works - <USER2> contain the torrent's hash and optionally a list of trackers (most clients today support DHT [2], a decentralized tracker-less way to find peers).

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This code's pretty riddled with SQL injection vulnerabilities. Can't imagine anyone recommending use of this for new projects.

For a single instance, [https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/sections/user/...](https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/sections/user/user.php)

The $UserId variable, which is used throughout the queries within this file, is set by an unfiltered GET variable.

<comment><USER17> Actually they check the $_GET['id'] variable, which is used to set the $UserId variable. Check the top of the source:

if (empty($_GET['id']) || !is_numeric($_GET['id']) || (!empty($_GET['preview']) && !is_numeric($_GET['preview']))) {

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was an architect and coder on this project back at the very beginning and for a few years after launch, if you have any questions about the code then ask away :)

</comment><comment><USER18> not really sure why we're posting private trackers' projects, but here is waffles.fm's:

[https://github.com/wafflesfm/batter](https://github.com/wafflesfm/batter)

<comment><USER19> Is waffels still going, are they accepting new members?

<comment><USER7> Yes and yes, but this is not the place to ask for invites.

<comment><USER20> Why not?

<comment><USER7> Because it's against their rules and the rules of pretty much all the other private trackers too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I remember working with gazelle for a torrent site for live Phish recordings. Truly a terrifying code base.

</comment><comment><USER22> You must maintain a 0.4 ratio of pushes to pulls on github to use this repository.

</comment><comment><USER23> Ocelot, their custom-made C++ tracker is a nice piece of code. They were forced to drop out php-based and XBTT-based trackers some years ago when the server load from their became huge peer swarm became unmanageable.

TorrentFreak made a great story about this[1].

[1] [http://torrentfreak.com/what-cd-debuts-lightweight- tracker-f...](http://torrentfreak.com/what-cd-debuts-lightweight-tracker-for- its-5-million-peers-101014/)

<comment><USER24> Is the ocelot code opensource? I'd be interested in it.

<comment><USER7> Yes, it's in the repository ([https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/ocelot-0.6.tar...](https://github.com/WhatCD/Gazelle/blob/master/ocelot-0.6.tar.bz2))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not free (or "open source") from what I can tell.

      COPYRIGHTED AND PATENTED PENDING BY WHAT.CD INCORPORATED,
      DBA/AKA PROJECT GAZELLE

Which is a bit confusing, but then later:

      FOR NONCOMMERCIAL PURPOSES ONLY

<comment><USER26> It was first released under the GPLv3 [http://torrentfreak.com/gazelle- rejuvenates-the-bittorrent-t...](http://torrentfreak.com/gazelle-rejuvenates- the-bittorrent-tracker-community-080828/)

You can view a mirror of the original release here: [https://code.google.com/p/gazellewhatcd/](https://code.google.com/p/gazellewhatcd/)

<comment><USER27> Looking at your link, I see [https://code.google.com/p/gazellewhatcd/source/browse/trunk/...](https://code.google.com/p/gazellewhatcd/source/browse/trunk/COPYING.txt).

That isn't the GPLv3. That isn't even a free software license ([https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free- sw.html](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html)), since they only grant a license "FOR NONCOMMERCIAL PURPOSES".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I don't understand. Why is this on HN now? IIRC project Gazelle had been open- sourced several years ago.

<comment><USER7> Because they just started to mirror their own git to GitHub and the documentation is more accessible there than the internal wiki on a private tracker.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Advice for the aspiring? - <AUTHOR>

I'll make this as short as I can, I have a tenancy to go off on tandems.
A little background on myself that might be useful for context. Been a geek my whole life, high school was more about computer games but I built my first desktop then. Joined Navy out of high-school to work on gas turbines(ship engines, not planes), didn't as have much time to nerd as I had before obviously. Worked at a help desk the last two years I was in for a total of five years. I finished service last year February and hunkered down on studying.
It's been a little over a year since I started studying, there were a few times in the first few months that I had trouble deciding where to start and spent a lot of time reading advice columns etc... Eventually I stopped that nonsense, closed my eyes and spun the proverbial(first time using that word) globe of CS, my finger landed on Python. I don't know exactly what I want to do but reverse engineering seems like a lot of fun, it almost requires one to know computers from the bottom-up in many cases.
I read so damn much, I have some of the classic books of CS (Mythical Man-Month, C programming language(haven't touched C YET), and others by the wizards) I work on Project Euler problems, strengthen my math at Khan Academy, take courses at Udacity and now learning Ruby via Koans. I'm beginning to understanding the idea of computer architecture as a whole which has gotten me even more interested/excited.
I'm the only computer literate member of both sides of the family, don't make many friends what with my focus being elsewhere. Sometimes a family member asks me something about what I am studying, and they always regret it.
My question is, as someone with arguably less than a year experience, do you have any advice or criticisms to give?
Thank you for your time!!! <comment><USER2> Have you considered contributing to an open source project that interests you? An active project would provide you with an existing architecture, community, history... possibly even a mentor. (people in college can even apply for "google summer of code" for a formalized and paying approach)

<comment><USER3> Aiming for any real-world project sounds like good advice.

Either look for something that interests you or where you think you can learn from :)

An internship could be an opportunity too.</comment></comment>


France offers each cyclist €50 for bike repairs once lockdown ends - <AUTHOR> https://www.cyclingweekly.com/news/latest-news/france-offers-each-cyclist-e50-for-bike-repairs-once-lockdown-ends-455140 <comment><USER3> People in this thread are getting really hung up on the idea that someone with a bike == cycling enthusiast. In Europe a huge amount of people just own a bike. Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market or bike shop and use to commute or meet friends. Maybe it's fallen into a state where it's unrideable. The €50 is just a simple nudge for all those people to get it roadworthy so they can start using it again or sell it to somebody who will use it.

<comment><USER4> > Often some beaten up thing they probably paid €30-200 for at a flea market > or bike shop

In Belgium, Belgian people buy mostly new ones in the range of 500-1000. People who don't earn much or students, buy the cheap/used bikes you mentioned.

Electrical bikes are > 2000 € and pretty popular.

In general, a whole family can bike together and it's very popular during the summer. We can bike were-ever we want during Covid as long as it's in the 25 km. range.

I actually have 2 bikes ( 1 normal and 1 race bike) and a bike lending subscription when friends come over ( 1 € / bike / 24 hours for 12€ / year)

<comment><USER5> One thing confused me about this. In major American cities bike theft is incredibly common, to the point that the police won't help at all.

I've had bikes repeatedly stolen out of locked garages at home!

I'd never buy a bike that was worth any reasonable amount of money, my commute pre-covid was a good candidate for an electric bike, but no way would I spend more than a 2 or 3 hundred dollars on something that will get stolen within 3 years.

Is bike theft just less of a problem in Belgium?

<comment><USER6> When I lived in Sweden, on average one bike would get stolen per year. My experience in California is similar.

Once you accept that, it's not that much money. The bad part is that you can never buy that Really Nice bike you'd really want.

<comment><USER7> I'm from Sweden and biked NY to SF a few years ago. During the two months it took I never locked my bike (didn't brought a lock at all). Just a related a anecdote ;)

<comment><USER8> Did you pass through many major cities? In suburban and rural america, you can absolutely leave a bicycle unlocked and expect it to be there when you return.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> People are focused on the relatively small amount here, and that's valid, but I suspect that some of the incentive here is to keep momentum in cycling going (from people avoiding transit, enjoying temporary bike infra, etc.) and trying not to lose that progress. There might be a lot of people for whom that €50 means a tuneup that gets them to take the bike out when before it would've just rusted.

I mean, data would be nice, but that's the hope (I'm guessing)

<comment><USER10> Bikes tend to degrade slowly over time if you don't do regular maintenance. Most people don't notice the slow decline until it's quite bad when suddenly it feels like an unreliable POS.

Giving people who are just a little frustrated with their bike might go a long way to helping keep people from getting to that point at least once.

<comment><USER11> This doesn't get enough attention in cycling promotion. One of the absolute biggest reasons that people aren't on their bikes is maintenance. Wheels go out of true, shifting gets wonky, and it starts to look like an unreliable form of transport.

Sturdier commuter bikes help a lot with this, but every commuter seems to think they need a bike with super-light wheels and a thin, weak 12-speed chain.

<comment><USER12> This is the _only_ reason I don't ride anymore. I don't get why my complex car full of caustic liquids and burning them to drive a bunch of parts super fast can go tens of thousands of miles with nothing but oil changes and nothing breaks or doesn't work almost-like-new unless I run over a nail, but bikes? Ugh. Every time I go to get on it, _something 's_ broken. Flat tires constantly. Changing them sucks and takes forever (rear one, mostly). All the gear combos that ought to work never quite actually seem to. Something'll come loose during the ride, creating a safety hazard. And so on.

Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time or at least makes it super-easy and super-fast to fix any parts that do, and doesn't cost like $1,000 (why the actual hell should a decent one cost 1/20th as much as a lower-end car?! Think about what goes into both! How does that make any sense? 1/100 seems more reasonable, and for one that _does not_ suck just like the $20,000 car probably does not suck remotely the same way a low-end bike does or it'd get lemon law'd away) and I'll go back to bike riding.

<comment><USER13> _> Give me a bike that doesn't break all the time_

What you need is a 'commuter bike' with an aluminium frame, Shimano Nexus 8-speed hub gear and Schwalbe Marathon Plus tyres. Should cost less than $500.

You'll need to pump up the tyres every 3 months, and have a bike shop service it every 2000 miles or so. But I've been riding this configuration twice a day for 5 years and had maybe 3 punctures in that time and no problems more severe than that.

<comment><USER14> Make sure to get disc brakes also! Preferably hydraulic but not necessary if you are on a budget.

Those old caliper brakes need constant replacement, constant adjustment, replacing them requires even more calibration, and tiniest little wobble in your wheel or dent in your rim will make the brake very erratic and wear quickly. I get bad shivers down my spine every time i see such brakes, knowing how much time and frustration I've wasted on maintaining them in the past.

Quality of bike components have gone up past decades so don't be hung up on old experiences. Build quality matters a lot so make sure to get a reputable brand also, not something from the corner of the hardware store, doesn't have to be their top of the line model though, something like 400-800€ should give you a good one.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > The French government is slowly bringing its lockdown to a close from May > 11, with cyclists allowed back onto the roads for the first time since > March.

To clarify, this is somewhat inaccurate: biking is permitted, and has always been permitted, during the French lockdown, as a judgment (in French) recently confirmed: [https://www.conseil-etat.fr/actualites/actualites/le- gouvern...](https://www.conseil-etat.fr/actualites/actualites/le-gouvernement- doit-indiquer-publiquement-que-le-velo-est-autorise-durant-le-confinement).

Cyclists were just subject to the same restrictions as anyone else -- these restrictions were the same no matter the transportation means.

And yes, these measures should change by May 11, but the details are not confirmed yet.

<comment><USER16> The french "interior ministry" lied about cycling on twitter, saying you weren't allow to go out for your daily 1h by bike. The law never said that. All the newspapers relayed this lie without checking this fact.

<comment><USER17> then one can expect that the population also believed it and social pressure enacted it?

<comment><USER18> it's more like the police actually gave fines for it, and fighting a fine is a hassle. (in particular now, I don't think really can, probably have to wait fo re-opening).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Let's be honest, 50 Euros per person is a drop in the bucket compared to the subsidies governments give to other modes of transportation.

<comment><USER20> > Let's be honest, 50 Euros per person is a drop in the bucket compared to the > subsidies governments give to other modes of transportation.

And that's largely sufficient. Having a bike doesn't cost a lot per year: according to the FNAUT (Fédération des associations des usagers de transport), on average, bikers spend ~€0.21/km. An air chamber costs €5; an air pump (one- time purchase) is €10.

<comment><USER21> Don't buy cheap air pumps. Those things need to be strong to last. They handle a lot of pressure. A 10€ air pump will break at the first fall and most have small bases so they tip easily. And when they break you must buy a new one.

If you really use it, a 25€ pump will cost you way less over as little as 3 years.

<comment><USER22> If you need to put 8 bars in your quick speedy bike? Absolutely.

For a simple urban commuter bike? No difference, you aren't going to put in more than 3,5 bars in those fat tires anyways.

<comment><USER14> Commuting with 8 bars is way more convenient than 3.5. Having the right pressure is much underrated. On my way to work i roll by lots of other struggling commuters without even pedaling, looking at their poor almost flat tires.

Bike pump is one of those items where you will be happy you invested a few extra bucks, a good one lasts a lifetime and you will enjoy it every time you use it, instead of being frustrated to have something that is just barely good enough. I used to have a bad one and it was so frustrating i only pulled it out once the tires were desperately flat, got a good one and now i regularly pump up my tires because it's so effortless.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> People seem motivated to keep their bikes maintained if they don't have to pay for it themselves from my experience.

In Canada I've volunteered at free bike tune up stations for many years, they are usually set up at popular summer events or at community centres.

We get a lot of people who aren't confident enough to do basic things like adjust brakes, gears or even change a flat tire. Most of the time they've simply rode their bike and dealt with poor performance or issues until it becomes a problem or they feel it is unsafe to ride.

For these folks getting someone to do extremely basic yearly maintenance would keep them happily riding for a long time.

</comment><comment><USER24> I don't think TCO is an issue with bikes.

I would estimate the TCO of a bike to be somewhere between €15 and €50 a month†. That compares favourably to cars which would be somewhere up at €350 to €700 per month, so that's an order of magnitude off.

If that payment can be an effective incentive to use the bike more that's nice, I guess, but I'm not sure it can. Infrastructure would be the most important (and also most expensive) driver of bike usage if I had to guess. That's not easily or quickly changed.

I mean, for us the cost factor definitely is relevant. We can save so much money by not having a car and there are so few situations where we would need one (if we really need one we can rent one once a year). So sure: Sometimes a car would be practical or nice to have but for that little tiny benefit it is too expensive. So, yeah, TCO does play a role – but I don't think €50 per year change that calculus significantly if you have already decided that a car is worth it for you.

—

† Between €500 and €1,500 for the bike (used for five years), between €100 and €300 per year for repairs.

<comment><USER25> That's for a fancy bike, not that there's anything wrong with it. You can get by with a tenth of that if you get a "beater", which may or may not be sufficient for your urban transportation needs.

<comment><USER26> Also, the annual repair costs are probably assuming you have someone else do them. I think that's a reasonable expectation for most people, but it can be quite a bit less if you can do some of them yourself. I'm pretty sure I average less than $50/year for all maintenance costs for about 2000 miles of commuting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Since this isn't just a €50 windfall direct deposited into their bank accounts, as in the IRS stimulus, it seems like the best approach towards getting people on bikes.

If you are skeptical about whether or not this is a waste of government money, consider why you have not yet begun commuting by bike. The French just bought €300M worth of new bike highway and they want it to be used. What costs could outweigh better air quality and healthier people?

<comment><USER28> It does not get anyone on bikes since it targets people who already have bikes.

It is bizarre to think that people who have bikes were waiting for a €50 windfall before actually riding them.

<comment><USER29> When you own a 200$ second hand bike, their is a weird psychological pressure to not spend 30-50$ on repair because it is 15-25% of the actual cost of bike.

I have definitely experienced it myself.

<comment><USER28> Well it only means that these 'repairs' are not required for you to ride the bike. Or you don't plan to ride at all.

Either way, the point is that this is windfall spending but does not change anything to the actual daily use of bikes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Do most people really need $50 for bike maintenance? I think I've spent about $15 on my beater bike over the last couple years, just to buy a new tube and maybe some wd40. For the vast majority of people I would imagine that they don't maintain their bike at all, modern bikes hold together pretty well.

<comment><USER31> Your calculation assumes one never needs to replace brake pads, chain, tires; it also makes no allowance for lights, tools, incidentals, or the occasions one might need professional repair. Incidentally, WD40 is not a good substitute for lube.

<comment><USER30> Personally, I've very rarely needed to replace those consumables, and I ride my bikes very hard. Only time I have needed a new chain and cassette is when I let my bike rust because I rode it all winter without washing it. And I've got like one set of brake pads in the last 5 years for my 2-3 bikes, since disk brake pads last pretty well forever as long as you don't foul them with something. I do go through a lot of tubes though, but no tires yet. As for tools all my bikes need for maintenance is a couple of allen keys and a phillips screwdriver.

I could see people spending that money bringing it to a mechanic for a tune up though. Personally I think that is a waste of money since it's super easy to tune up bikes yourself, but I do know lots of people who spent years with their bike shifting like garbage when it would take just a couple minute tune up to fix.

<comment><USER32> I doubt your story. Disc brake pads do wear out, especially if you ride very hard. The same is true for chain and cassette.

<comment><USER33> Everything wears out of course, but I've had mine for 7 years going back and forth to work every day and never replaced my breaks or chain or cassette. Maybe you experience a quality issue if it's a frequent issue?

<comment><USER32> If the motor is in the hub, then I can believe wear on the chain and cassette is minimal. And if you use brakes very sparingly, they could also last for a long time. I'm interested in the brand of your pads, I need those! I have to change mine every 1000 kilometres.

<comment><USER33> > If the motor is in the hub,

Is this referring to motor as in an electrical bike? I am not using that.

<comment><USER32> Sorry, I mixed up with a different comment indeed. On electric bikes with the motor in the wheel hub, the transmission sustains little effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Pete-Codes Wow, really cool scheme! Would love to see it in Scotland.

A friend nicely lent me his bike and I've been going for rides every day during lockdown. Really got the cycling bug now and a scheme like this would be great.

<comment><USER34> It is so easy to do: just ask your government to increase the taxes by 100 pounds and then give you back 50 pounds. Your loss, but you will be happy for the 50 pounds you get from the government, not thinking where the money come from.

<comment><USER35> Wait until you hear about 'free' parking.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Adoption of cycling would require more serious actions like improving the road system for the bicycles so that cyclist are safe from the cars. The cycling should be also a pleasant activity so that people can do it naturally, without being forced.

I am in France and I am enjoying now the reduction of car traffic and the improvement of air quality but this is going to end as soon as the confinement is over.

<comment><USER37> Same here in London. We still can enjoy relatively car free roads, but this is definitely going back to "normal" where cycling becomes quite close to a Russian roulette type of activity... I'd like to commute on a bike, but I'm not that suicidal (I've clocked in 20k km on London roads commuting, but now it's too far, too dangerous).

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> "we want the bicycle to be the queen of deconfinement"

I'll bet that sounds really beautiful in the original French.

<comment><USER39> « Nous voulons que cette période fasse franchir une étape dans la culture vélo, et que la bicyclette soit la petite reine du déconfinement en quelque sorte » [1]

I think the English version is nicer. More succinct.

Edit: ah, ok, my rudimentary knowledge of French meant that I missed out on a pun as another reply to your comment points out. I take it back: a pun trumps all brevity.

[1]: [https://fr.news.yahoo.com/d%C3%A9confinement- plan-20-million...](https://fr.news.yahoo.com/d%C3%A9confinement- plan-20-millions-deuros-222230740.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Other similar government initiatives always lead to the providers hiking the price of all repairs and maintenance work by €50...

I'm not sure quite why, since presumably market forces should still work to make people go to the cheapest bike shop to get as much value as possible for their €50, but that never seems to happen...

Example: grants to give discounts of ~£300 to install EV charging points in people's houses simply led to the price of installation rising by £300 overnight.

</comment><comment><USER41> The region around Paris decided to give a 500eur subvention for ebikes and 600eur for ecargos. One per adult person if you live in Île de France. Great (waiting for the check right now) but I'm not sure it didn't jack the prices up a bit :-\

</comment><comment><USER42> The US used to have a similar program, created during the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and subsequently removed by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018.

Maybe it will come back as part of a new stimulus in 2020?

</comment><comment><USER43> I am a bit late to the game, so maybe someone already said it in this thread. I am asuming this is intended to have people cycle to work instead of taking public transport once the lockdown is lifted. There is just one problem:

As a cyclist in locked down London, the few times I needed to get to the office on almost empty(!) streets, I noticed how much more difficult social distancing on a bike is. Not while moving, but while waiting on a red light. It is usual to wait in front of the queue in the cycle waiting area just in front of the traffice light. A few times when I waited there more cyclists or scooters with open helmets would join me there, not respecting social distancing at all (pedestrians are much better at this).

I think if the direction is going into pushing people into using bicycles much more than before, an education campaign needs to start that tells cyclists and scooters how they should behave on red lights. Not sure what the best solution will be, as I am sure there wont be much space. I guess most people really would prefer to take their car that naturally enforces separation to others. So I really expect the roads to become very full in the next weeks.

<comment><USER44> > I am asuming this is intended to have people cycle to work instead of taking > public transport once the lockdown is lifted.

No. It literally says in the subtitle, and then again in the first paragraph that this is about keeping pollution levels down.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> In holland you can buy a bike for 50 euros.

<comment><USER46> And in France as well (leboncoin.fr), I guess the idea here is to encourage people who needed a push to fix their tires or breaks to make the move and use all those bikes left collecting dust.

<comment><USER47> The price of second hand bikes increased massively during the transport strike, I'm not sure if they've come down yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> jerome-jh French and cyclist and only discovering this :)

Cyclists in France are mostly middle-upper class. Lower classes have been excluded from town centers at distances where it is difficult to commute by bike. And their work is typically in another suburb, where bike infrastructure is poor or non existing.

I'm not impressed.

</comment><comment><USER34> So France is taxing people to give them money back; with the costs of the overhead (processing taxes and these rebates) one can safely assume it is overall a bad deal, the tax amount is higher than the rebate so the taxpayer is on the losing end, but happy for the "free stuff".

There is no free meal.

<comment><USER48> > So France is taxing people to give them money back;

Yes, that's generally how governments work.

You're right. Obviously the better solution is for everyone to remember the dozens of tax credits for which they're eligible so they can receive their reimbursement months afterward.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Could I put this toward a new innertube for my electric unicycle?

JK. I live in New York City - curious if anyone else in cities have been increasing use of their personal electric vehicle (PEV) or electric unicycle during the whole Covid 19 shutdown?

</comment><comment><USER50> I bought my neighbor a bike for 50€ in 2015, and rode more than 5000km a year (50km to 100km week) on it ever since (commuting to work, shopping, week-end long rides now that I work remotely)

</comment><comment><USER51> That's a very innovative angle for handing out benefits. I like it

</comment><comment><USER52> I'd like to see other cities doing something like this. Although a typical annual tune-up costs closer to $100.

</comment><comment><USER53> This seems like a really cheap way to get the desired outcome, more people exercising

</comment><comment><USER54> But first you'd have to get to France...

</comment><comment><USER55> This is a very bizarre headline.

</comment><comment><USER56> Is there some reason to think this has any kind of predictable outcome?

I'm all for good incentives but not if there is no apparent benefit.

</comment><comment><USER57> Is it only me or a gov that during a pandemic that will cause a lots of lost jobs giving back 50 euro to bicycle owners is a new level of rudiculesness?

</comment><comment><USER58> Really why not just spend the money on community bicycles and docking stations, increased racks or similar efforts instead of maintenance? I don't object to promoting bicycling at all but the means puzzle me a bit.

<comment><USER59> > community bicycles and docking stations,

I have yet to see a place where those have worked very successfully - <USER2> seem to very quickly fall apart and into disuse. In China, it is even worse.

<comment><USER60> We have those in Dublin. Seems to be working mostly ok and pretty cheap to use. A 20€ yearly membership and your rides are free if they last less than 30 minutes. Which means free for most folks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> This €50 subsides is a fantasy from Cycling Weekly. No announcement was made by any local or national public authority, and no sign in the French news about this. Love from Paris anyway.

<comment><USER62> If you want a reputable French source : [https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2020/04/30/un-plan- go...](https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2020/04/30/un-plan- gouvernemental-de-20-millions-d-euros-pour-encourager-la-pratique-du-velo-au- deconfinement_6038198_3244.html)

<comment><USER61> ok my bad

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Instead of €50. The government could make €70 tax relief. Then there would be no need to transfer (€50 x millions of bike owners) through the government's hands and to waste peoples effort on serving the whole operation.

The only reason why it is not like that is because politicians like to have our money which gives them power and makes the state bigger and bigger.

<comment><USER64> The US used to have a small tax relief for bike commuters. I agree there'd be less overhead, but the proposed system will get people to fix their bikes and ride them.

Tiny tax rebates just get lost in the wash and result in an over-complicated tax filing process. The govt isn't trying to make cyclists relatively a bit richer, it's trying to reduce air pollution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's a nice gesture but hardly solves a problem. If the payment is for a mechanic to perform some "service" on your bicycle to make it roadworthy again, and from it you gain neither the tools nor the knowledge to perform two simple, necessary tasks for a cyclist; replace a tyre/inner tube, or replace a chain; what's the long term benefit?

How about put 50 euros per cyclist into a tool kit, a dozen inner tubes and some education (YouTube videos even?) so they can continue to cycle long after the 50 euro one time service has passed?

<comment><USER66> > to perform two simple, necessary tasks for a cyclist; replace a tyre/inner > tube, or replace a chain

Never had to do either of those things, driving a bike almost daily throughout the city to school, hobbies, friends,... The few times my tire went flat, a short visit to a mechanic cost alsmost nothing

<comment><USER67> What total mileage do you have? In my experience, it will start skipping on some gears after 7000 or maybe 10000 km and then you need to change the entire drivetrain, because it got destroyer by the heavily worn-out chain.

Learning to fix the flat myself was good because I can do it immediately in 10 minutes without having to walk the bike to the shop (which are closed during evenings/weekends) and wait.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is one of those of those proposals that allows the pats in the back to go round, but which are in fact completely useless because in effect it is just a windfall for people who did not ask for anything and who did not need any help.

<comment><USER68> because most people who bike are rich?

<comment><USER28> That's beside the point.

If you have a bike and puncture a tyre, you do not wait for the state to give you money before you repair it. France is one of the world's richest countries so I'm thinking that the French were not saving up to change their bikes' tyres...

They've been given free money to spend on bikes, so they will spend it on bikes (repairs or not, let's be honest, because it's ridiculous to think that the French are in desperate need of bike repairs). This is just a subsidy for bike shops and bike accessories companies and it allows to spin how green the government is.

<comment><USER69> > France is one of the world's richest countries

Not even in the top 20.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_\(PPP\)_per_capita)

<comment><USER70> While I don't agree with the original discussion points, I don't think this counterpoint has much merit. While France may not be "one of the richest" verbatim, there's no denying France is a rich first-world country. In the list you linked to, it ranks 25 out of 187 by the IMF estimate and similarly in other listings.

<comment><USER28> This was not a counterpoint point at all. More like bike-shedding meets strawman.

There has not been any counterpoint to my comments yet, actually. My guess is because people have an emotional and ideological take on this: Cycling is good so giving money to fund repairs of bike has to be a positive measure as well. Except that it is not based on any economic or rational reasoning. I'm pretty certain that the only result will be to fund superfluous purchases or upgrades because that the standard effect of windfall subsidies.

<comment><USER68> How? they aren't even giving people the money. It's literally just for repairs. If anyone here is having an emotional/ideological take it would be you.

<comment><USER28> That's not an argument...

"Just for repairs" is exactly my point.

This is what makes it quite obvious that it won't do anything regarding uptake of cycling. It's a windfall, people will obviously be happy and may take the opportunity to upgrade to more expensive parts, but that's about it. If they needed repairs they would have had them done anyway.

This is a political measure that has no practical value.

There was a public transport strike in France recently and that caused an uptake in cycling.

I expect the same after the end of the lockdown because people may still be wary of public transport.

This subsidy brings nothing.

<comment><USER68> What expensive parts are you getting for 50 euro?</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


VW Solves Quantum Chemistry Problems on a D-Wave Machine - <AUTHOR> https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/computing/hardware/vw-tackles-chemistry-problems-with-a-dwave-quantum-computer <comment><USER2> ... and couldn't get the correct answers for LiH. Interesting that the article didn't mention this.

From the paper:

> For lithium hydride, LiH, we were not able to reproduce closely the ground > state energy with the currently available hardware. When accounting for 3 > orbitals and using a scaling factor of r = 4, we already had to use 1558 > qubits, which is a large fraction of available qubits. To summarize: the > investigated method in general works, but it might be difficult to apply it > to larger systems.

<comment> jf- Presumably because that's just a matter of scale. The calculation didn't turn out wrong, the machine just isn't powerful enough to calculate it. All of this work is proof of concept for more powerful devices down the road, the point isn't that it's better than a classical computer right now.

<comment><USER3> Is there any evidence it will ever be better than a classical computer?

<comment><USER4> For the record, the concept is called Quantum Supremacy [1]. So far, there is no demonstration of quantum supremacy, but it seems like it may just be a matter of time.

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

<comment><USER5> It's related, but quantum supremacy is about asymptotic speedups rather than actual speed differences.

Additionally, it's worth keeping in mind that D-Wave machines aren't true quantum computers in the sense that they can't perform Grover's or Shor's algorithms.

<comment><USER6> It's not clear what "true quantum computer" means. There are many different types of quantum computers, and quantum annealing, what D-wave does, is one. It's just the least interesting of the bunch...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > The researchers did not run a similar algorithm on a conventional computer > system to see whether the D-Wave computation was faster.

<comment><USER8> Standard quantum chemical methods for this sort of problem would finish in a fraction of a second on a Raspberry Pi. Calculating the ground state energy of a tiny system like LiH was tractable way back in the 1960s. I'd need to see their actual numbers to determine when a conventional computer first reached their level of accuracy on LiH but I'm sure it is several decades back.

EDIT: according to the paper, the initial energy at each point was found using the Hartree-Fock method with a minimal STO-3G basis set. This is one of the simplest and oldest approaches to this sort of calculation on a conventional computer. For these starting calculations they used Psi4 [1] by way of OpenFermion [2]. For the H2 molecule, their additional DWave calculations improved the accuracy of the distance-energy curve over the baseline Hartree- Fock/STO-3G calculations. For LiH, there was no improvement (Figure 3). The total runtime of their approach was therefore that of the conventional approach _plus_ an additional series of calculations that did not yield improvements in the case of LiH.

[1] [http://www.psicode.org/](http://www.psicode.org/)

[2] [https://github.com/quantumlib/OpenFermion](https://github.com/quantumlib/OpenFermion)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I appreciated the rudimentary presentation of the capabilities and limitations of the machine and calling out the connectivity of the qubits versus a universal quantum machine which would have full connectivity between all the bits.

I'd be curious is there a simple formula for calculating the "effective universal qubits" of the D-Wave?

2,048 indeed sounds like a lot of qubits based on my extremely limited knowledge of quantum, but with only ~6k connections versus fully connected which would be n(n-1)/2 = ~2mil is it just a marketing gimmick?

Why is it useful to push the bit count so high if the connectivity is so limited?

<comment><USER10> It's important to note here that the current gate-based quantum processors also suffer from the connectivity problems. It's not just annealers suffering.

In those architectures, the limited connectivity enforces usage of SWAP gates, which increases the circuit depth.

Circuit depth, with imperfect qubits and gates, is currently the limiting factor - we don't have practical error-correction for the chips of today's size. Hence one can only perform a certain number of operations before his computation decoheres and becomes useless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.05256](https://arxiv.org/abs/1811.05256)

</comment><comment><USER12> >For beginners, he says, an actual D-Wave device isn't even necessary.

I find this somewhat surprising.

If you think of AI code designed for GPUs, there I can see "yeah you can practice on a CPU". It'll suck but it'll work.

For quantum tech the entire sales pitch is that it's fundamentally different...doing what's near impossible on conventional hardware.

Yes I realise he's talking about the library so annealing on a CPU I guess but still seems like a very strange comment in this context.

<comment><USER13> If I understand correctly (which is a big if given it is quantum mechanics), any quantum algorithm can be stimulated on a non-quantum computer, but doing so has an exponential penalty.

<comment><USER14> Exactly right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> What's the business motivation of this research, for VW?

<comment><USER16> Batteries? Fuel efficiency? Better catalytic emission filter?

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> VW also does science ? Nice to know. Is it related to battery technology etc ? Or such companies usually invest in fundamental research ?

<comment><USER18> They do. As an annecdote, the professor who formerly held the "Machine Learning" course at TU Munich left for VW's AI research group ([https://argmax.ai](https://argmax.ai)) a few years ago. Whether that qualifies as "science" may be debatable, but the larger players in the automotive space are definitely invested in this kind of research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wouldnt these potential customers of D-Wave be better off just buying a HPC cluster with lots of CPU's, GPU's, and FPGA's? Probably more opportunities for hardware reuse, too.

</comment><comment><USER20> Curious to see Aaronson's criticism.

<comment><USER21> Aaronson is unfortunately in a sunk-cost position when it comes to D-Wave - he's been so against them for so long that even if they start to produce good results his bias is going to make it difficult for him to fairly evaluate them, especially if it means reaching different conclusions about their past work than he did previously.

Probably better to look to other commentators on this one, at least until he has enough time to emotionally process the situation and come around to it. It's not so easy admitting you're wrong in the shtetl.

<comment><USER22> Your first paragraph is fine.

But your second says "process the situation and come around to it" as if they've already proven anything.

Nobody has ever seriously claimed that the machine can't _calculate things_. Proof of it doing a calculation doesn't change the status quo.</comment></comment></comment>


DIY control pedal on Linux - <AUTHOR> http://blog.rogach.org/2015/09/diy-control-pedal-on-linux.html <comment><USER2> IT is actually possible to build a very simple pedal yourself. You can tape two tinfoil "electrodes" on cardboard and fold it so that they touch when it's completely folded. Then also put some sponge between the folded cardboard so that it releases reliably. If you connect a mono audio cable to the electrodes you have a working pedal. This worked in a pinch for an electronic drum set and it is also much quieter than a real pedal.

</comment><comment><USER3> I did something similar once, entirely in hardware, by soldering a normally- open foot pedal switch to the keyboard's controller chip.

In most keyboards, a keypress is registered during the connection of two conductive pads on two separate membranes, each of which contain a trace back to a controller chip. You can take a keyboard apart, look at where the Ctrl key is, then visually follow the traces back to their respective pins on the chip. Soldering a switch to those two pins will register with the keyboard _exactly_ as if that key were pressed.

</comment><comment><USER4> That's a neat, different way to do it. Nowadays I think most people would go straight to building something with Arduino (e.g. [http://apcmag.com/arduino- project-usb-foot-operated-mouse-sw...](http://apcmag.com/arduino-project-usb- foot-operated-mouse-switch.htm/)), but that's not always necessary.

<comment><USER5> That's what I was thinking when I was reading this, an 11$ teensy uC could do the job very easily, it's got a keyboard emulator built in. I love the teensy uC, it's completely replaced the arduino for me. So much cheaper and more capable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Cool, low budget hack requiring almost no additional hardware! The author states that "the signal is too strong for our input and goes off-scale, making it almost impossible to reliably detect pedal press/release events". Since the two waveforms are visually quite distinct, it is probably possible to correlate the incoming signal with reference on and off waveforms to detect a state change reliably without using hand-crafted heuristics.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that's what I tried - but there was a case when next press or release happens while signal is already off-scale from previous event, and I failed to find any sane way to solve that case. Also, the scale on the images is 500ms per one red square, so you can see that waveforms extend over hundreds of milliseconds - thus there will be unbearable latency with that approach.

<comment><USER6> Thanks for elaborating!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> On the one hand I cringe at using the audio input for effectively a DC signal, but on the other hand it is probably sitting there unused on a lot of machines so it isn't like you're losing a capability. As with many folks I'd probably use a small uC and have it emulate a keyboard (maximal re-use of known interfaces) but hats off to the creative use of pulseaudio.

</comment><comment><USER8> The troll of the day:

> How about using ViM?

Thanks for sharing, this post made my day.

<comment><USER9> Emacs people...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I needed a programmable USB foot pedal for my Linux system, as I wanted a hands free way to give a presentation, so I bought one from [https://www.delcomproducts.com/webpage.asp?id=32](https://www.delcomproducts.com/webpage.asp?id=32) for $40.

</comment><comment><USER11> this project is great! after a quick research, it seems that esd might be a bit outdated now [1] and that more recent sound API could be used. it seems however to do the job just fine.

[1] [http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/esound...](http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/programming-9/esound- client-programming-57017-print/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, if people say that esound was already outdated by 2003, then by now it should be very much dead. But I was more focused on completing this project than on researching sound APIs, thus I simply took whatever Xoscope guys used.

After all, we simply want to read voltage level from simple input - why should we need to invent new library for it every 3 years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Is anyone using a pedal in addition of a keyboard on a daily basis? Do you really think this could be a significant help when typing code?

<comment><AUTHOR> I use it exactly for that, and it really helps me when navigating in Emacs (holding Ctrl with pedal is much easier than holding it with your pinky). Your experience may vary, of course.

<comment><USER13> VIM users may also benefit: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4141410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4141410)

<comment><AUTHOR> That project was my inspiration for this hack :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now this, my friends, this is a hack.

</comment><comment><USER15> Obligatory complaint about Blogspot breaking back-button functionality; cmd-[left arrow] does nothing, cmd-[right arrow] takes me to the next article.

Who thought this was a good idea?

<comment><USER16> At least they are consistent and break the back swipe on mobile as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Pedantic, but that's not a TRS connection.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, you are right - I got confused with mono/stereo distinction. It is TS connection, right?

<comment><USER18> I just call it a phone plug and then don't have to worry about how many Rs to list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I see an iKKEGOL USB foot control switch on Amazon for $13.99. Can't you hook that up to any software?

<comment><USER20> Some of those cheap USB foot pedal switches have a disturbingly custom software architecture. When I bought one off Amazon, it turned out to not even be HID - it needed special drivers and everything. Even the ones that are HID- compliant usually demand some custom software for initial setup ("which key do you want me to pretend to be?") that invariably only speaks windows. Which is annoying, because this really should be just a full-hardware solution that speaks USB HID and uses a set of DIP switches on the back for the desired scancode.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Would a voltage divider help the overvoltage problem?

<comment><USER22> This was my immediate thought, but then I got confused. Where does the pedal get it's voltage to generate the signal to begin with? From the audio jack itself? If that's true, why does it return a signal too high for the sound card to handle? Is there some sort of voltage amplifier in the pedal that can be bypassed?

<comment><USER23> If the voltage comes from the audio jack, it is the DC used as the bias voltage (for electret microphones). Typically 1.5 volts, which is likely way higher than the AC signal range of the input (likely to in the order of <100 mVp-p).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I remap LALT to CTRL so i can hit it with my thumb</comment>


Visualizing Python Package Downloads Using Google BigQuery and Apache Superset - <AUTHOR> https://preset.io/blog/2020-08-04-google-bigquery/ <comment><USER2> Sorry but this is just a totally useless promo. No useful content. You should have waited until you actually had the material completed for doing what you advertised in the headline. Saving the rest of you a click...</comment>


Mini Cannon Firing and Destroying Targets - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxHW-QGMuZ4

<comment><USER2> No amount of Internet fame would motivate me to intentionally break a glass next to my desk. Glass is pain to clean up, and when you miss a tiny shard, you will know it... someday.

Also, how does this compare to a BB gun?

<comment><USER3> I thought the same thing... also shooting at the egg right next to his computer, not a good idea, what if it splattered on the keyboard.

Also, where do I get one?

<comment><USER4> The egg splattering on to the keyboard would not happen because there is not enough kinetic energy in that small bullet to make it splash back very far, the lightbulb though for sure put some fragments in to his keyboard because the shards bounce off each other and will cause some shards to go in the opposite direction of where the bullet came from.

See here for some more 'bullet impact' video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QfDoQwIAaXg>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I wonder how the mass adoption of 3D printers will increase the availability of guns. I mean, you can just download and print one (if the material used when printing is strong enough, of course).

And it doesn't stop there. A friend of mine is a transhumanist philosopher at Oxford. He ranks home made viruses as the number one threat to mankind this century.

Anyway, cool video.

<comment><USER6> So far as I know, no plastic guns exist, our plastics technology just isn't there yet. Even if it were, it wouldn't be the same sort of plastic you feed into a 3D printer, or at least any off-the-shelf one.

I too have wondered about this. I also wonder about machinists moonlight as arms manufacturers :P

relevant plastic guns article:

[http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1202/is-it- possible...](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1202/is-it-possible-to- make-an-undetectable-nonmetal-gun)

<comment><USER7> Not all 3d printers use plastic, there are processes for most metals including titanium. They work by depositing layers of metal dust and fusing it with lasers. The resulting parts can be very strong depending on the process.

<comment><USER6> Sounds ridiculously expensive and incredibly entertaining. Thanks for alerting me to something I need to read about :)

<comment><USER4> The amount of extra material needed because of the structural weakness of sintered/deposited materials as opposed to machined materials would probably make such a gun fairly bulky, unless you are willing to take the risk of the breech portion exploding when firing the gun.

You could offset that to some extent by using less powder in the charges or you could use the gun for what they're used most for anyway (threat, rather than use).

Some companies are very far now in the production of single units or small series of parts for prototype or one-off purposes, every year the field moves ahead steadily and it is very impressive what can be done, but there is no substitute (yet) for a single properly treated chunk of steel machined to the right dimensions.

Parts made like this are rapidly replacing machined parts in places where strength is not such a big issue, you'll find them in just about anything that has a mechanical component to it. But they are not yet able to compete with machined materials for the most demanding applications.

Especially tensile strength is rather low, and pieces tend to be brittle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why is the ball going up?

<comment><USER9> Maybe he didn't drill straight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> When I saw the title of this post my brain brought up mental images of 'minigun' and 'autocannon' and sort-of combined the two, and as such this really wasn't what I was expecting... neat, though.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'd be cagey about building one of these; that little charge of gunpowder may well be enough to inject that little ball a nontrivial distance into me.

<comment><USER12> Sounds like a good reason to be cagey about _firing_ one of these.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I wonder what how/if the ATF classifies these. I want one.

<comment><USER14> I was wondering that same thing myself. As the technology gets better the chances of being able to "download" a gun and print it out become higher.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Heavy smoker?</comment>


Team for Hire - <AUTHOR> We are a team of 4 full-stack engineers who have worked together successfully and would like to continue to do so as we transition into either a new company or contract.
We have a history of delivering software into production in fields requiring performance, scale, and correctness including finance and medicine.
We are comfortable handling all aspects of the development process including design,
frontend, backend, data and devops.
We're currently located in Amsterdam, and are willing to work remotely or travel part-time. Please reply below if this is something you would be interested in. <comment><USER2> You should check out Elevator ([https://www.goelevator.com/](https://www.goelevator.com/)) - this is their model and they've successfully placed many teams into excited roles and companies together.</comment>


REST in peace, SOAP - <AUTHOR> http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/10/15/rest-in-peace-soap/

<comment><USER2> duplicate of <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1795107> which already has some comments.</comment>


Delta is reducing how much seats recline to protect personal space - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1595318/delta-reduces-how-much-passengers-can-recline-their-seats/ <comment><USER2> I approve this change. However, sometimes the recline isn't _about_ the recline, per-se.

So, as a tall-ish person, I hope that these seats have adequate head and neck support (eg. headrests that extend upward) in lieu of reclining those extra two inches.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm tall and this is biased against tall people.</comment>


Keystroke Recognition Using WiFi Signals (2015) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.sigmobile.org/mobicom/2015/papers/p90-aliA.pdf <comment><USER2> Some business ideas from the 2.4GHz dystopia:

* Using wifi in a movie theatre to build a Google Analytics equivalent for movie studios. Total heartbeat and respiration data for every individual "user session" across all screenings. Devices like Roku could do this too and sell the data to Netflix.

* Amazon Echo could notice your heartrate is becoming elevated due to the start of flu - Amazon stages your go-to remedies in the nearest DC and pushes appropriate ads on the site.

* In store movement tracking. Why bother with phone beacons and hassle-some devices randomising their MAC addresses when you could just power up a wifi blanket and track bodies with precision.

I guess the lab setting of the above research wouldn't apply to these situations - but I imagine with more research and some specialised equipment a movie theatre could be made conducive to this kind of tracking? Would there be legal implications? Wifi is everywhere already...

<comment><USER3> Almost like a video camera running face recognition... which almost sound like a lot easier to do.

<comment><USER2> I agree it's definitely easier to do - and obviously already happening in this context. Also billboards that use Kinect CV to record emotional response. [1]

I was just intrigued by the perceptions around this - people often have an instinctive strongly negative response to the idea of pervasive face recognition but I'm not sure they would feel as unnerved by the presence of a wifi network with this sort of "surveillance" traffic running through it. Maybe they would.

[1] [http://theconversation.com/now-advertising-billboards-can- re...](http://theconversation.com/now-advertising-billboards-can-read-your- emotions-and-thats-just-the-start-45519)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How worried should I be about this? The paper doesn't mention any mitigation strategies and kinda makes it sound like anybody with a wifi router ("Free Wifi") could get me.

<comment><USER5> The tests were conducted in controlled environment - real world is another thing entirely. And if you are worried about this, then you should probably shield your computer because normal PCs emit lots of data in form of electromagnetic waves. But unless you are concerned about state-sponsored three-letter agencies spying on you (individually), I don't think there is much reason for concern.

Obligatory XKCD: [http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/)

<comment><USER6> I agree on this point. A controlled environment is different from real world. It's not the first paper on this types of attacks: I remember one where the microphone of an iPhone was used to register the sound of keypressed on a keyboard [1] and another one where the vibrations on objects were used to infer the oral communication inside a closed room [2].

The main consideration is that it largely depends on who is your attacker. If you think about regular people, you should be fine; state-sponsored attackers know way too many techniques for you to be safe, unless you get very paranoid. Also keep in mind that these attacks (AFAIK) do not scale and are not automated, so a state attacker should be explicitly targeting you.

Finally, you should consider that modern computers and mobile phones have so many security issues that using these advanced physical-world attacks is not necessary.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_cryptanalysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_cryptanalysis) [2] [http://news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from- vibr...](http://news.mit.edu/2014/algorithm-recovers-speech-from- vibrations-0804)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To deploy this in a real world scenario seems implausible to me. You would need specific models for every person, laptop and router combination, as the physiology of the hands, the gestures when typing, and the location and power of the laptop's and router's antennas can all be different.

The only relevant attack could be to train on a specific target (person+laptop+location) for a given amount of time to achieve high accuracy, but to do this you already have to know what the person is typing...

<comment><USER8> i imagine people tap things like "the" quite regularly. its a simple transposition cypher.

<comment><USER7> Assuming they are continuously writing English text is quite the assumption.

<comment><USER8> i guess if we are hacking wifi, we probably know approximately which continent they are in. but even if they are typing say pinyin, theres a spacebar between each word, and three characters per word, seems like an obvious heuristic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In a controlled environment this would work, just like any number of other theoretical attacks. In the real world you have to consider people walking through the room, user shifting their computer or tilting the screen. You also have to account for other WiFi transmissions from other devices, and probably a number of other things I can't think off right now. Plus, it would require you to make keystroke maps for all kinds of laptops, since it wouldn't work in a universal way. Every laptop would have it's own pattern.

If you have enough control over the environment and enough information about the subject to make this effective, wouldn't it be easier to simply hide a camera in the room? That said, it's a really cool idea!!! I wonder what kind of other data could be pulled from a laptop by looking at it's EM emissions.

</comment><comment><USER10> Sounds like an updated version of van eck phreaking, however this seems to be much more easily deployed on a wider scale. I think one issue of van eck phreaking was the time it took to accomplish as well as the requirement that you had close proximity to the monitor you wanted to read from.

</comment><comment><USER11> The motion tracking method appears to be WiFi Channel State Information (CSI) time series analysis using only a built-in WiFi NIC.

I wonder whether you could use the same technique to implement a Leap-Motion style controller without any specialized motion tracking hardware.

</comment><comment><USER12> They still can't recognize æøå. Muhehehahaha!

<comment><USER13> Probably because none of those symbols are on a keyboard to type?</comment></comment>


How an infuriated mom chased revenge-porn lime-king Hunter Moore offline - <AUTHOR> http://boingboing.net/2013/11/22/how-an-infuriated-mom-chased-r.html

<comment><USER2> I think betraying someone who trusted you with nudes is totally despicable.</comment>


The History of the TRS-80 (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/182224/games_from_the_trash_the_history_.php <comment><USER2> The history of one of the software companies mentioned, Big Five Software, can be found here:

[http://www.bigfivesoftware.com/](http://www.bigfivesoftware.com/)

They produced some excellent arcade games. They also sold adapted Atari joysticks which could be used with their games.

</comment><comment><USER3> The Living Computer Museum in Seattle has one of these set up if you want to play some of the old classics.

[http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/](http://www.livingcomputermuseum.org/)

</comment><comment><USER4> One of the first computers I used was a TRS-80 Model 4P.... wow that thing was great... I mean.. you could actually carry it around! (potential back problems notwithstanding...)

</comment><comment><USER5> Got my start on a Model III. Upgraded it to 48k and floppies running LDOS.

<comment><USER6> Model I here. Started out with the base 4k and cassette storage. Over time, my dad invested in the expansion interface, 48k, the lowercase character- generator, and eventually four floppy drives, and LDOS (which I remember loving). He really sacrificed to give me a head start. Miss you, dad.

I used to drool over pictures of the Model 4 in the catalogs.

<comment><USER5> In the late 1990's, I briefly worked with one of the founders of Galactic Software, the firm that created LDOS. I commented to him that after nearly 20 years LDOS still felt more powerful than MS-DOS.

He agreed with me, and explained how many Unix type features such as pipes and a real shell they had implemented.</comment></comment></comment>


Automate Your Life: Sending Emails - <AUTHOR> http://david-bieber.tumblr.com/post/45294395663/automate-your-life-sending-emails

<comment><USER2>
      These are joke examples — I strongly advise against automating discussions with
      your mother — but they aren't so farfetched

A friend of mine did something like this. Rather than a nightly or weekly phone call, he'd send out an email every morning to his parents. Eventually he turned it into a cron job when he realized he was sending almost the exact same thing every day, but then he went home for Christmas. So Christmas Eve, family all together, 'bing' an email to the parents.

<comment><USER3> I did the same for a short while. Mom loved it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like the idea of this then you will also like this one. It goes a bit further, still on my todo list for interesting fun projects.

[http://smarterware.org/6172/hilary-mason-how-to-replace- your...](http://smarterware.org/6172/hilary-mason-how-to-replace-yourself- with-a-small-shell-script)

Hillary Mason

Substitute yourself by some small scripts Document classification

Just stumbled upon a YouTube clip of one of the best Ignite presentations I've seen, by Hilary Mason, a computer scientist at Bit.ly. Mason wrote a series of scripts that auto-respond to email with particular content, and auto-nag folks she's emailed but hasn't gotten a response from yet. Hit the play button to hear more. She says once the code's fit for sharing she'll put it up on GitHub. Cannot wait.

<http://www.hilarymason.com/blog/ignitenyc-the-video/>

<comment><USER5> As far as I checked, today is 2013...

<comment><USER4> Ah sorry for the misunderstanding the paragraph was just copy&pasted by me from my old notes file.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Speaking of "Don't Repeat Yourself", tools for these problems already exist.

Namely Google Calendar for those "personal alerts" and ifttt.com for reading a feed an emailing you or whatever.

Not that it's a bad idea to use this, it's just not everything needs to be programmed from scratch, there's quite often a decent tool to do the job already.

<comment><USER7> Indeed, and if you want to stick to the command line... Use `mail` and script away.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I came here to say the same thing. For all the people running some Unix variant with local mail, the Python script seems pointless, versus just calling mail.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> or cli via <https://github.com/dcadenas/gmail_sender>

create ~/.gmail and the post's example is:

       gmail -t firstname.lastname@example.com -s "Automate your life: sending emails" -c "Why'd the elephant sit on the marshmallow?"

plus you can have a default receiver and

        sha256deep -rl / | gmail

also useful is filtering via <https://github.com/antifuchs/gmail-britta>

</comment><comment><USER10> Is there a limit on how many emails you can send through this?

Edit: I should add that I use Google Scripts to automate a lot of responses to frequent support emails I get. These are really well categorized so that if the program doesn't understand what the user wants, it goes to another folder where I personally review it. Works great so far but working with Python I may be able to build something more powerful.

</comment><comment><USER11> Um, are you not inviting an email bomb in your inbox?

<comment><USER12> Great way to harvest programmer email addresses ...

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> if you have cron configured correctly, anything that a cron job prints to STDOUT will be emailed to the configured email address.

this is how we did newsletters back in the day.</comment>


Apple is still trying to sue the owner of an independent iPhone repair shop - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/9kxzpy/apple-is-still-trying-to-sue-the-owner-of-an-independent-iphone-repair-shop-louis-rossmann-henrik-huseby <comment><USER2> > At issue in the case is the definition of what makes an aftermarket part > "counterfeit." [..] the court decided that because the logos were not > visible, Apple's trademark hadn't been violated,

Am I to understand that if a company plasters its logo in enough places so that hiding it is impractical, they can make an end-run around resale and user rights, and just call anything you do with their parts 'counterfeiting'?

<comment><USER3> Correct. This is a common abuse of intellectual "property" law.

Check this one out: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omega_S.A._v._Costco_Wholesale_Corp).

Corporations abuse these laws to restrict trade in goods already manufactured.

What you can see here is Apple's legal declaration: You do not own the device. Apple does. Apple has the right to refuse sale of the device and you have no recourse.

What you see is a fundamental attack on the notion of ownership. Do you own an Apple device? Apple decides what you may do with it. Apple even apparently decides who you may sell or give it to. Do you really own the device?

Even "buying" something doesn't really give you ownership of it, the corporation still controls it. You are a serf. This is the how of the danger of these intellectual "property" laws being misused against the public.

<comment><USER4> See also Tesco vs Levi's:

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1403156/Tesco-loses- battle-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1403156/Tesco-loses-battle-to- sell-cheap-Levis-jeans.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think smaller entities should have the capability to repair smartphones, but that (technically) is not the legal question here. Apple isn't claiming the shop doesn't have the right to repair iPhones, it is claiming it sells counterfeit screens.

Reading the text in that light, I have some questions:

 _"The screens are also not sold as an original but used as a refurbished, compatible screen"_

For me, "refurbished" implies "original, but not new", and "compatible" implies "new, but not original". What is it?

If the first, the shop should be able to show how it obtained refurbished screens or old screens that it refurbished itself.

If the second, why do these screens have Apple logos on them?

(my _guess_ would be that they have Apple logos because they 'fell of a truck' near the factory that makes them for Apple, making them either _"100% original counterfeit"_ or _"didn't _quite_ pass quality checks counterfeit"_ )

 _"and were never advertised as official Apple parts and were thus not counterfeit."_

I don't think that 'thus' holds. "Official Apple part" can also be (somewhat) implied, for example if the seller calls himself an iPhone repair shop, and never explicitly states the replacement screens are third party, or if the shop

<comment><USER4> From the article:

 _His lawyer, Per Harald Gjerstad, said that the screens Huseby imported were made of both original Apple parts and refurbished, non-Apple parts. The glass, for example, is aftermarket._

So largely Apple parts, likely scavenged from broken phones, remanufactured into working spares but using non-Apple parts. Doesn't sound like counterfeit to me.

<comment><USER5> For me, that doesn't make things clearer. _"refurbished, non-Apple parts"_? Why wouldn't the non-Apple parts be new?

I repeat: I'm all in favor of the right to repair, but this case is about whether these parts are counterfeit, and, possibly on whether parts like these can be counterfeit at all.

 _"largely Apple parts, likely scavenged from broken phones"_

That, IMHO, would change things, but I cannot find any statement that the screens were _largely_ Apple parts, or that they were scavenged from broken phones.

If either were true, I would expect the lawyer for the defense to explicitly state that.

Disclaimer: It is hard for outsiders to make a good judgment on such cases, as the devil is in the details, so you would have to read all the evidence, and jurisprudence of similar cases. I didn't even watch the entire video in this article.

<comment> proto-n probably the glass was replaced but not the lcd, making the part "refurbished" and no longer "apple" (as part of it is now aftermarket)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> " Apple logos on the screen were painted over, and wouldn't be visible anyway to anyone who used a repaired iPhone "

what is perhaps more important: those Apple logos were printed by _Apple itself_, because those are original refurbished screens. Apple accuses you of importing counterfeits when you import ANY original Apple part.

</comment><comment><USER7> Fuck Apple

</comment><comment><USER8> Shame on who?

Apple? Or the customer for buying a product they can't use without braking apples rules?

Who is committing the evil?

<comment><USER9> "Who is committing the evil?"

Whoever enforces such stupid laws. How many tailors have been sued so far for repairing a top brand suit using normal cotton spools?</comment></comment>


NOPRODUCT – accepting money now - <AUTHOR> https://noproduct.io/ <comment><USER2> This is art. It reminds me a 2004 french projet called "la Poudre Verte" (Green Powder)

[http://www.poudreverte.org/](http://www.poudreverte.org/)

> THE SOLUTION FOR ALL YOUR COMPUTER PROBLEMS. The exclusive process of the > green powder guaranties permanent and stable information systems.

</comment><comment><USER3> Funny idea but VERY uncreative otherwise.

How about a pushbutton to generate a company name, smart ass hipster description (some SaaS thing), valuation, 'featured on ...', founder names and pictures, etc. To give a VC value for money: something to talk about :-)</comment>