Rethinking GPS: Engineering Next-Gen Location at Uber - <AUTHOR> https://ubere.ng/2qLlaFH <comment><USER2> > Our approach to improving location accuracy makes a feature out of the very > blockage of GNSS signals that causes trouble for standard receivers. How? > For Android phones, the LocationManager API provides not just the phone's > position estimate, but also the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for each GNSS > satellite in view.

...

> if the SNR for a satellite is low, then the line-of-sight path is probably > blocked or shadowed; if the SNR is high, then the LOS is probably clear. The > qualifier "probably" is crucial here: even when the receiver is in a > shadowed area, strong reflected signals can still reach it, and even if it > is in a clear area, the received signal can be weak (because of destructive > interference between LOS and reflected paths, a phenomenon referred to as > multipath fading).

...

They use something called "probabilistic shadow mapping", which, as drewda mentioned, is work done at UCSB. That team moved over to Uber.

Very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> This was originally created at UC Santa Barbara: [https://tia.ucsb.edu/about- tia/success-stories/shadowmaps/](https://tia.ucsb.edu/about-tia/success- stories/shadowmaps/) I've seen talks at academic conferences about the techniques over the years, but there's just been silence from Uber. Great to see they can talk about their work more publicly now.

<comment><USER4> Apparently the research was led by Dr. Upamanyu Madhow. I wonder what he's up to these days:

[https://www.linkedin.com/in/upamanyu- madhow-7a124512/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/upamanyu-madhow-7a124512/)

> _On leave (2016-17) from UCSB at Uber_

Pretty cool when fairly technical research has immediate real-world applications.

<comment><USER5> Yes but depending on what Uber do with the technology it might be of no use to anyone else. The technology also depends on contacting servers which have information about the local 3D topology which implies that it is unlikely to be useful globally without someone wanting to be paid for the service.

As an alternative, phones might start using the dual frequency L1+L5 technology which Broadcom announced last year to detect the reflected signals without relying on an external service with knowledge of the local topology.

[https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless/gnss-gps- socs/bcm...](https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless/gnss-gps- socs/bcm47755)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15308771](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15308771)

<comment><USER6> Google and Apple have that urban topology info too. That's 99% of phone mapping API users covered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Cool! I had a similar topic for my master thesis where I predict GNSS Shadowing and HDOP Maps to plan HDOP optimal routes.

Here is a working implementation to do GNSS shadowing with GPS, Galileo, and Glonass using OpenstreetMap 3D Export of buildings and terraing.

[https://github.com/xaedes/GNSS-Shadowing](https://github.com/xaedes/GNSS- Shadowing)

It is written in C++ and has a working python binding. But the interface is extremely polished. The ideas behind it are simple though: Satellite trajectories are computed using SGP4 from publicly available TLE files. The current ones will be downloaded from cmake. Some coordinate system transformations later a simple software shadow rasterization (in layered 2D map) algorithm is performed with 3D data pulled in from .obj files that are generated from OpenStreetMap. Dilution of Precision values are calculated from visible satellites for each rasterization point. The shadow information can also be used to do shadow matching.

Maybe someone has a use for this^^

<comment><USER8> Hey, this is excellent work! Feel free to email me at iland at uber.com if you are interested in working on GNSS Shadowing at Uber.

<comment><USER9> Hi, this is a bit of a random one, but I have product that relies on GPS accuracy, and would love to hear if you guys have any ideas on how I can improve this, as well as my current implementation. Mind if I drop you an email? Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Uber gets a lot of criticism here for their business practices but from a technical standpoint this is a tremendous achievement in improving urban location accuracy. I hope they'll consider offering it as a separate API someday since it would obviously be valuable for many use cases beyond transportation.

<comment><USER11> It seems like it would be better if android would just do this for you

<comment><USER12> It also seems like the sort of thing android will eventually do for you, once it's developed & proven out. This isn't exactly old hat.

<comment><USER13> Unless you know.. patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am curious where did the Uber get the 3d map of the world.

Edit: It's mentioned at the footnote of the article: "constructed from publicly available aerial LiDAR data". That poses an additional problem - Aerial lidar data globally is very hard to come by - it does not exist for most places in the world and it's also out of date. Shameless plug: At tensorflight.com we built deep learning models for 2.5D map of buildings based on satellite imagery.

<comment><USER15> The don't need it for the world, just rich industrialised cities, this makes the amount of data much lower. Also, I'd guess "publicly available" doesn't mean public domain, but available for purchase by the public or (and its common in developed cities) generated by the government (for flooding, mapping uses etc)

Furthermore, the article does not mention a 3d model of the world from Lidar data either - it specifically mentions just San Francisco

<comment><USER16> It's also easy for them to make a very specific, narrow list of locations where the data is needed.

Just look at the raw GPS measurements and look for signs of trouble (high uncertainty, coordinates "teleporting" users around unnaturally, etc.). Maybe you only need it on certain particular streets within a city.

There are commercial LIDAR drone services you can hire, so worst case they just pay some of those people to give them 3D models for the specific areas where they have the worst problems and the highest traffic, and they get a huge improvement.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm skeptical of this approach because it seems to me that they have not defined-well the expectation of what the GPS radio hides from them. A lot of information can get lost depending on what simplifications are taken in firmware. What I mean by this is that I would be surprised if GPS radios prioritized accurate signal reports per transponder (and/or refresh-rate of reporting that signal) over battery life when a sufficient level of accuracy is reached, which means Uber could be working with bad data. If it was a professional GNSS receiver, that's one thing, but for a GNSS chip in a cell phone, power consumption really matters the most.

Doing something latency-sensitive in software better than the firmware, _over a cellular network_ , seems like a very lofty goal.

<comment><USER18> I would guess people internally were skeptical about it too, but as they demonstrated, they have an app that lets their employees see the difference due to this change: Presumably they wouldn't have deployed it (at likely significant resource costs for processing) if it didn't average vastly better.

<comment><USER17> Upon rereading, it seems to me that they're mostly looking to do this type of increased accuracy when an Uber is parked somewhere waiting for their rider, and you want to be able to show the rider _exactly_ where he is parked, rather than something that is meant to be used while in motion or anything like that.

When you limit the scope like that, I think most of my concerns go away. Very cool work here.

<comment><USER19> Also applies in figuring out the spot to pick up the rider, most people don't move much when requesting a car.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> As someone who has worked extensively with this team, it's nice to see their hard work coming to light. They are some of the most humble, intelligent people I've ever met.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is an engineering tour de force from Uber. A fascinating read. I take my hat off to the team behind this.

<comment><USER8> Thank you for the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Just want to tip my hat to the whole team behind this post—it is a masterpiece of technical writing. The post clearly underwent many revisions, sought input from across disciplines and even brought in a designer for the accompanying images. It goes into incredibly interesting detail and then zooms out into broad strokes so a relative layman can understand the challenges and innovations. Bravo.

<comment><USER8> Thank you! Having a designer replace our stick figure and clip art satellite reflection and LOS/NLOS images definitely helped. Some of the images were originally created for the company all-hands meeting, so it wasn't all from scratch for the blog post.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> First time I'm genuinely impressed by an Uber engineering post... probably because it's the first time they aren't reinventing a feature of PostgreSQL on top of MySQL and golang.

</comment><comment><USER24> This is interesting. GPSes work poorly in downtown Chicago, so hopefully this will help improve things.

If only there was some kind of mechanism like differential GPS that can be used to correct the GPS signal in some generic way. I understand this is what AGPS is supposed to do but it doesn't seem to work in downtown Chicago.

<comment><USER8> Yes, Chicago is one of the toughest cities for GPS in the US.

Here's a peek into average building heights in downtown Chicago. Anywhere red, yellow, or orange we expect to have poor sky visibility. GLONASS being more popular has made Chicago slightly less challenging, before you could have trouble even seeing enough satellites to get a fix.

[https://imgur.com/a/3bjiiRw](https://imgur.com/a/3bjiiRw)

<comment><USER24> It gets even harder streets with like Lower Wacker Drive that are one deck below street level. There is almost no line of sight to any sats.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Would more GPS receivers help to build a better consensus? If you're in an Uber, there are at least two smartphones, often more. The devices could collaborate over a local ad-hoc network, or via the Uber backend, to build a better estimate.

<comment><USER8> Yes, using measurements from multiple receivers could definitely help :)

If you're interested in working on that kind of thing please apply to the positions at the bottom of the blog post.

[https://www.uber.com/careers/list/14345/](https://www.uber.com/careers/list/14345/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Wi-Fi geolocation is very accurate (in urban areas) because there are many Wi- Fi access points which which to triangulate and their range is pretty short. I'm surprised the article didn't mention Wi-Fi at all.

<comment><USER27> Yes, and likewise, there is also UTDOA with cell signals, bluetooth, audio, RF, and even magnetic environments. There is a ton of improvement to be had using weighted, hybrid locations. But as usual, business and IP limitations will dominate over technical ones, so gathering all of these location methods into one system will be basically impossible for humanity.

<comment><USER28> >But as usual, business and IP limitations will dominate over technical ones, so gathering all of these location methods into one system will be basically impossible for humanity

This statement is so absurd that at first I was not even going to respond to it.

That didn't stop one company from doing so... cough cough Google. ([https://www.wired.com/2014/04/threatlevel_0401_streetview/](https://www.wired.com/2014/04/threatlevel_0401_streetview/))

Also, I have no idea why Uber left out the fact that they are indeed using both the driver and the users WiFi location data.

Notice that they highlighted that they only use Android users....

Would be interesting to see if the accuracy of Uber services deteriorate if the privacy settings on Android were to tightened up....

Here is a useful link for WiFi access point/ cell tower location database [Big, Beautiful Data: Mapbox Visualizes Skyhook Wi-Fi Access Point Location]([https://www.skyhookwireless.com/blog/company/mapbox- visualiz...](https://www.skyhookwireless.com/blog/company/mapbox-visualizes- location-with-wi-fi-access-points-using-skyhook))

<comment><USER26> Mozilla hosts a free location service using Wi-Fi, cell, and Bluetooth network positions collected (opt-in) by Firefox Android users. The cell tower location data is available for download and is also shared with the OpenCellid project. The Wi-Fi and Bluetooth location data, unfortunately, is not available for download because it is considered personal data in some jurisdictions.

I helped launch this project back when Mozilla needed an inexpensive location solution for Firefox OS devices. It is still used for testing the Firefox Nightly channel, though the Firefox Release channel uses Google's location service.

[https://location.services.mozilla.com/](https://location.services.mozilla.com/)

Here is a zoomable world map of all the network locations:

[https://location.services.mozilla.com/map#2/15.0/10.0](https://location.services.mozilla.com/map#2/15.0/10.0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Neat! However...

The nice thing about standard GPS is that it's _passive_. You listen to the some signals, do some local calculation, and you know your position. Then, _optionally_ , you can send that position data to a third party.

Uber's approach changes that. You might not know exactly where you are, but send Uber your info and they'll figure it out.

IMO this is not the way we want things to go: various services, all with their own location-determining tech, all done out of the user's sight or control. (Uber's reputation for privacy reinforces this.)

Let's work on improving the accuracy with which a device can determine its own location. Apparently there's progress there: [https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/25/16362296/g...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/9/25/16362296/gps- accuracy-improving-one-foot-broadcom)

Once it's determined on-device, users should be able to determine the granularity at which we share our location.

</comment><comment><USER14> Another way to solve the same core problem, but approaching it from a different angle would be an ability to choose the Uber pick-up location using 3d or something like dropping the mascot in google street view or augmented reality view on top of the camera.

I have been in a few situations where 2d was not sufficient to specify the location. For example, multiple levels in the airport. Another example is bridge crossings, where one road is much higher than the other.

Another problem with 2d is that I always have to "orient" myself to verify the GPS is indeed working well. It would be easier with AR or street view.

<comment><USER30> While that would improve the location for users that do elect to select their location, I just don't see it having widespread use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is a good write up but the actual implementation is... questionable.

I put in my actual street address when booking an Uber and the app keeps "helpfully" putting the blue dot on the other side of the street.

Then the driver needs to cut across 4 lanes of traffic to get to me.

I report it to Uber, it gets fixed for a couple of weeks then breaks again.

</comment><comment><USER32> I was initially surprised they don't just do this on device. A height map of the city the user is in (say San Francisco) at only one float per square meter though is still fairly large. With a land mass of 121 sq km for San Francisco, that's 121 million floats or about 500 MB.

The actual area of interest surrounding the user is probably at most 1 km^2, but that's still 1M points or about 4MB (which can be compressed, and easily quantized with say 16-bit float instead) which I really wouldn't want some app downloading on demand. It'd be interesting to know how many map tiles they need for a good solution though. 256x256 meters with 16-bit floats is just 128 KB. That seems within the realm of acceptable, especially if it reduces the error in pickup.

<comment><USER6> The range of heights is quite constrained to architecture. So 16 bit integers in meters would save half the data over floats. Then your bitmap of heights could have compression applied. A whole flat roof or road would be very compressible. Trees would be the worst.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Picking up by Didi in China is even more frustrating than we're used to with Uber. I wonder whether their peculiar attitude to geo-data is the reason for that: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_dat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restrictions_on_geographic_data_in_China)

I don't remember any instance (out of 20-30 I've taken with friends) where the driver arrived exactly at my position. It's an usual sight where people run across the intersection to catch their waiting cab. Most drivers usually call you immediately on arrival to establish the relation the exact position. And they usually only speak some strange local cabbie dialect.

<comment><USER34> Maps allowed in China are intentionally inaccurate for national security purposes, so they are often a few hundred feet off. Accordingly, Didi is not very usable for people who can't Chinese.

<comment><USER10> Even if the maps are distorted, the raw GPS coordinates should still be accurate. Wouldn't the cabbie at least be able to see the rider's coordinates and thus their position relative to his?

<comment><USER34> Yes, it is the map that is wrong, not the GPS, which is (still mostly) American anyways.

The cabbie can only view coordinate on the map, they don't have some kind of radar to look at things relatively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I thought of snr as a trigger, and sensitive to design-- it accounts for antenna setup, thus different for every phone.

Why not use HDOP, VDOP? It's a better inidication of how off you really are (likely within CEP). Pretty much every new drone AHRS uses DOP values vs snr...

<comment><USER36> the various DOP values assume there are no local obstructions. This method attempts to take in to account the local environment and determine which satellites may be obstructed. DOPs can't help with that.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, exactly. DOP can provide an artificially rosy picture of the satellite geometry and visibility when you have clean reflections that looks like LOS satellites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Bits of me are impressed, and bits of me think "but the icon for a uber X car on my phone takes up about 30 yards of the street anyways, so i don't mind the accuracy"

I mean I have never really looked into it but how _bad_ is plain old GPS anyways?

</comment><comment><USER38> That is nothing really new. There are also patents around this, like this one: [https://patents.google.com/patent/US8912953B2/](https://patents.google.com/patent/US8912953B2/)

</comment><comment><USER39> This year, much more accurate GPS chips are expected from Broadcom and other manufacturers that also process L5 signals from newer GPS satellites. About 30cm accuracy is to be expected. Ueber's work is nice for short term, but whether it is still needed?

\- [https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/design/su...](https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech- talk/semiconductors/design/superaccurate-gps-chips-coming-to-smartphones- in-2018)

</comment><comment><USER40> Well, at least I know why my location app gives me nearest locations that are 100 meters away. I hope Uber will open this up as an API for getting more accurate readings but it probably is biased in placing you on a road which isn't as useful for what I'm doing.

</comment><comment><USER41> First time I've seen a Nigerian domain name used for a US tech company. Cool idea.

</comment><comment><USER42> It's a shame iOS just doesn't seem to provide this level of data using public APIs as far as I can tell. I'd love to be proven wrong, or for Apple to be a bit more transparent regarding how they perform similar enhancements to location data.

<comment><USER43> I'm a loyal iPhone customer who likes the fact that Apple doesn't give out API access willy nilly to apps and instead operates on a default-deny model. I'll deal with the slightly inaccurate Uber dot.

<comment><USER44> What sorts of attacks or privacy leaks are possible from the APIs used by Uber to build this on Android? Information about each individual satellite seems like nearly useless data as an attacker, unless I'm a state actor trying to figure out whether you are inside or outside a building when aiming my drones.

<comment><USER43> I can't think of any attacks now, and there may be none, but you can see the consequences of Google's high level approach to APIs in the fact that Facebook snarfed up entire call histories for Android users but not iOS users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've been logging the position and speed of my car every second for nearly a year now with a GPS receiver, so this was super interesting to me. Still on my todo list is doing something with all that data.

<comment><USER37> can you tell us more?

<comment><USER18> I have a computer running in my car that I use mostly to play music, and it also has a little GPS receiver and a display which shows the song title/artist, or speed and coordinates on my dashboard. (I intend to get into connecting to the car's CAN and the like at some point, but I have very little free time to play with it.) I use the same piece of software to control my home automation devices and interact with a couple APIs, as much as possible is designed to operate without depending on the Internet. It's less sophisticated than either the average in-car entertainment system or the average smartphone, but it does what I want, not what other companies want, so I'm kinda fond of it.

Collecting location data every second is (mostly) useless and creates a lot of excess nonsense (even Google only keeps it like, what, every five minutes?), but at some point I'm looking to figure out some fun ways to visualize the GPS and speed data table I have just endlessly growing. It'd be interesting to see like... a heatmap of where I go, or a heatmap of my average speed on given areas of a road, or whatever.

Regarding accuracy, I've found if I let my foot off the brake and move up a foot, the GPS receiver's velocity will tick upwards briefly, it seems to be pretty freaking accurate, at least in the less urban environments I drive in. But given the 4 meter accuracy GPS allegedly has, I didn't expect it even could be as precise as sometimes it is. Not sure what the receiver I'm using does in the background, may have it's own accelerometer and the like.

<comment><USER37> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Too bad you can't have an antenna array on top the vehicle. You could use that to get a azimuth and elevation bearing on the signals, using that to compensate for single reflections.

</comment><comment><USER46> Is it legal to improve the accuracy of GPS? I was under the impression that high accuracy GPS was reserved specifically for the military, so improving the accuracy _could_ be considered hacking. I guess an eventual response could be that the responsible organizations may deteriorate the civilian GPS signal to compensate. Otoh, the fact that this "hack" only works in cities at low altitudes could make it a non-issue.

<comment><USER47> It's fine, considering one can already get sub-centimeter accuracy with off the shelf equipment and post-processing (rtklib comes to mind), this is just another method to get better accuracy within the confines of more common user configurations (ie. Your phone).

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> they hire a deliveroo task rabbit to run behind every uber txting constantly to the customer where they are - bonus, can use local landmarks as way finders ;-)

</comment><comment><USER49> This is why I come to Hacker News.

</comment><comment><USER50> Uber seems like a company that doesn't really understand its place. Just do what you do.

Their idea of winning SV fame, got a lady killed and will add government regulation places it isn't needed.

<comment><USER51> A possible distraction from the unpopular headlines? I hate thinking this way, but I am growing ever more skeptical...

<comment><USER50> Definitely. I don't think it's necessarily pessimist to know that when you see headlines about companies it's almost always directly related to someone manipulating stock prices on way or the other.

Getting a good PR firm at work really opened my eyes to just how manipulated everything is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> It would be nice if Uber could even get basic GPS right first. Most drivers don't even use their app anymore for directions. They switch over to google maps.

<comment><USER20> Please don't conflate gps with navigation. They are entirely separate problems. I urge you to look into problems and familiarize yourself with the challenges therein before commenting.

<comment><USER52> While that is correct. I don't know what they do to mangle the GPS coordinates because that is barely functional. And even the drivers complain about it. I've taken multiple Uber pools in the last couple days where the drivers flat out called the person three blocks away because the precision is that terrible

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> oh good another article where I get to read about people doing more interesting things than I will ever get to do.

I hate my life.

<comment><USER54> You have an interesting response. Others in your position might use this as inspiration to work hard, get hired by a company that might sponsor a work visa, study about career advancement and aim to find a way into an Uber like company one day.

Instead you've taken an attitude that guarantees your continued misery.

<comment><USER53> I've spent years working for 2 of the biggest tech companies on the planet. Tons of cool stuff going on.

I don't get to work on it. I'm tired of that.

<comment><USER54> Kool. Then you are much better off than I assumed. Find a mentor or career coach to help you get to where you want to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Sorry if this is off-topic, but I hate the trend of needing to "read" the TLD.

        ubere.ng

To me, that reads as some company called Ubere from a country code I'm not familiar with. Took a minute to read it as Uber Engineering.

<comment><USER56> To be fair, it's a link shortener. The actual domain is about as normal as it can be (eng.uber.com)</comment></comment>


Why did Google remove Palestine from maps - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Maybe because there is no country called "Palestine". There is the "Palestinian Authority" that rules over the Westbank and used to rule over the Gaza Strip before Hamas took control over it.

<comment><USER3> If that is the case, why don't Palestinians have representatives in the Knesset?

Why do Israelis claim Israel is the "only democracy in the Middle East" if only Jews living in the West Bank can vote?

Israel can't claim it has autonomy over the West Bank _and_ that Israel is also a democracy as well. It is one or the other.

<comment><USER4> You're taking a complicated issue and trying to turn it into a soundbite.

Why does the US claim it's a democracy if Mexicans can't vote in the US, even if they live there? It's because they're not citizens. Similarly, Palestinians living in the West Bank are not citizens of Israel. Other people, including many Arabs, that _are_ citizens of Israel, _do_ vote.

I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong btw - there's a lot of valid questions around whether it's OK or not that Palestinians are not citizens of Israel even though Israel controls their land (e.g. right of return, the idea that Israel should've annexed the land, etc). I'm just pointing out that what you bring up as a rebuke of Israel really isn't.

<comment><USER3> Comparing an 80 year old Palestinian in Nablus whose family has been in Nablus for centuries with a Mexican who moved to the US five years ago is silly. Also, there was a 2000 amnesty bill, so it is Mexicans who chose to move to the US within fifteen years in that category. Also, a Jew who moves into a settlement next to Nablus can vote.

You can say Palestine is another country - but then why are settlements and the IDF there? Why does Israel fight UN bills saying Palestine is a country?

<comment><USER4> My point wasn't to make a direct comparison to Mexicans in the US - my point was that it's citizenship that makes the difference, not physical location. As long as they're not citizens, it makes sense that they don't vote. There's a totally valid discussion around whether they should be citizens, but that's a separate discussion.

"You can say Palestine is another country - but then why are settlements and the IDF there?"

Well, I think the official position of Israel is that it isn't a separate country, it's a territory that's occupied by Israel, but that Israel chooses not to officially annex. I don't love this arrangement, and I certainly don't like that there continue to be settlements there, but like most people, I don't have an easy solution to this situation. Annexing the lands and turning the Palestinians into citizens means effectively destroying the entire point of Israel's existence (a country for the Jewish religion/nationality).

I think the majority of people today consider a two-state solution the only true option - make it actually another country, at which point, as you point out, there can't be settlements there and the IDF would have to completely stay out. But while this is probably a desired situation, it's not the situation _now_.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh, man.

I used to work at Lonely Planet a few years ago. This sort of thing came up all the time.

Depending upon jurisdiction, there are even legal requirements about where borders lie, what you call different territories, etc.

And of course these requirements vary between jurisdictions. So a map that you can put in a book to sell in country X will have to be replaced with a different map in order to sell in country Y.

The Persian Gulf is the example that springs to mind, but IIRC there were many others too.

</comment><comment><USER6> According to [http://opennews.kzhu.io/map- disputes/](http://opennews.kzhu.io/map-disputes/) servers in different countries may see different maps based on geopolitical disputes. To be fair, Google should respond to queries from IP's in the state of Palestine with a map that has Palestine properly labeled.

<comment><USER7> Arguably not only IPs from Palestine, but IPs from any other State recognizing the State of Palestine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> They didn't.

[http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/digital/2016/08/09/Onl...](http://english.alarabiya.net/en/media/digital/2016/08/09/Online- outrage-after-Google-wipes-off-Palestine-from-its-map.html)

</comment><comment><USER9> it's simple

Google is USA corporation, Israel don't recognize Palestine, Israel is USA ally on middle east.

<comment><USER10> USA don't recognize Taiwan, though...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> At least google maps has a dotted line between west bank and rest of Israel. Similarly for Gaza and Western Sahara. But interestingly I don't see any word labeling the West Bank region of Palestine.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm not a regular Google maps user, so I'll ask: does someone have screenshots of what Google maps used to display for occupied Palestine? I'd love to see a side-by-side.

<comment><USER6> [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Palestine/](https://www.google.com/maps/place/Palestine/)

<comment><USER6> on the left side of screen has:

"Quick facts The State of Palestine, also known simply as Palestine, is a de jure sovereign state in the Middle East that is recognized by 136 UN members and since 2012 has a status of a non-member observer state ...Wikipedia President:Mahmoud Abbas Capital:Ramallah Prime minister:Rami Hamdallah"

The map is centered around East Jerusalem. No label of "Palestine" on the actual map. But there is a label for "Israel" and "Gaza". And there are dotted lines between Israel proper and the West Bank & Gaza.</comment></comment></comment>


Axel Rauschmayer made a list of small bugs in Apple's products - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/rauschma/db82384aa8184c172ff476ee058bf2f5 <comment><USER2> These are not bugs, these are the things people come up with when they are incapable of seeing the full and complex picture and the tradeoffs made and required.

You could probably write a book worth of complexity about "why not escape illegal characters under the hood" alone.

<comment><USER3> Most of them are bugs.

And you have to admit that it's not very satisfactory for an OS to have issues with filenames that include not-so-unusual characters like colons.

This is 2020, not 1975.

OK, something something backward compatibility. But even so.

And there are more bugs - for example the image view in Finder ignores the window frame. Instead of making all the previews fit in the window frame ready for vertical scrolling, it dumps them off to the right where no one can see them without horizontal scrolling.

The drag-and-drop autoscrolling in Finder is annoyingly random if you want to drop something into a folder that isn't currently visible.

Dragging the left divider of a file preview in Finder doesn't resize the preview - it just moves it to the left or right. There are very few use cases where this is the most useful behaviour.

There's no obvious "expand width to make filenames fit" option for the dividers in Finder. (You can double click on the divider. But if there's a setting to make the width auto-size by default, it's well hidden.)

Exporting photos from Photo won't let you save a photo with a custom name. You can pick a folder, which is nice, but no "Grandkids Christmas 2019.jpg"

Time Machine often doesn't work.

And so on. These are all avoidable irritations. They wouldn't take long to fix, and they all add up to create the impression that Apple doesn't really care about core software quality or UX.

<comment><USER4> > _And you have to admit that it 's not very satisfactory for an OS to have > issues with filenames that include not-so-unusual characters like colons._

It's not satisfactory to go plug in my phone charger next to my bed and see that all of the four wall outlets are taken. However, it is not a bug in the apartment that there's only four outlets. It's a conscious design decision.

<comment><USER5> Now this feeble attempt at justification is just clutching at straws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think a lot of these can be better characterised as "poor design or implementation decisions". For example, I would say "The settings of an app are separate from the app" or "Intrusive warning dialog when you are offline" are just bad design, rather than bugs.

<comment><USER4> Most of these could be classified as "gripes".

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is pretty weak. Just a list of feature requests. I'd be interested in an actual list of bugs since there are surprisingly many.

<comment><USER3> There's a list of comments all saying the same thing, and I don't accept that these are not bugs.

From the user/UX POV, they absolutely are. They may not trash your file system or set your Mac on fire. But _the UX is the public face of the product_. If it has issues and causes unnecessary friction, that reflects badly elsewhere.

<comment><USER4> "I disagree with how it works" ≠ "It's a bug"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Most of these are just feature requests. "You can't share iCloud folders via the web." is not a bug.

</comment><comment><USER9> Almost all of these really stretch the definition of a "bug". Functionality that is intentional, but displeasing to you, is not a bug. Missing features are not a bug.

</comment><comment><USER10> I have a way better list of Apple gripes in my head. I should write them down and get a whole bunch of hacker news traffic.

Heck, I have a small list of real bugs I wish they'd deal with too.

</comment><comment><USER11> How about performance in Reminders since iOS 13?

I have no idea why or how, but adding an item to a list introduces a painfully noticeable delay/lag.

Like, what is even happening? As a software dev maybe understanding might alleviate some of my grief. It's just a list.. adding a new item to the list. Drawing it on the screen! How can you screw up the simple ToDo app?

Happens consistently on my iPhone 6S Plus, and my wife's iPhone 8 Plus. Existing lists and brand new ones too.

</comment><comment><USER12> macOS not having an alarm clock is a "strategy tax" to get people to buy iPhones as alarm clocks? Am I meant to take that seriously?

<comment><USER7> That made me chuckle when I saw it

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hey, I found someone worse at classifying bugs than our QA department.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, I would call that title total clickbait.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Syncing is much slower than, e.g., Dropbox.

> You can't access deleted files or older versions of files

> Macs have no alarm clock and timer

Was he drinking when he was making these?</comment>


nCino S-1 - <AUTHOR> https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1566895/000119312520174870/d828449ds1.htm <comment><USER2> A $billion+ fintech unicorn nobody has ever heard of. This just reminds me that opportunities abound, especially to focus on particular workflows that are sometimes buried in the b2b world...

<comment><USER3> Not every tech company needs to be some obnoxious, loud weirdo pretending to be the second coming of Jesus Christ. Some people just want to make money.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > nCino is a leading global provider of cloud-based software for financial > institutions. We empower banks and credit unions with the technology they > need to meet ever-changing client expectations and regulatory requirements, > gain increased visibility into their operations and performance, replace > legacy systems, and operate digitally and more competitively. Our solution, > the nCino Bank Operating System, digitizes, automates and streamlines > inefficient and complex processes and workflow, ...

<comment><USER5> It's built on Salesforce. They serve mostly mid-size regional banks. It's honestly super cheap for what it is -- its no wonder they're gaining as much traction as they are.

<comment><USER6> I'd never consider this until I could self-host. Way too much regulatory "scaries" when dealing with money.

Remember that admin permission clearing command accidentally committed in Production last year that killed hundreds of SFDC orgs last year?

What I'd do to listen to that bridge call..

<comment><USER7> > Remember that admin permission clearing command accidentally committed in > Production last year that killed hundreds of SFDC orgs last year?

Oh! Can you provide more pointers, please? A quick search doesn't seem to be showing anything worth useful on this item.

<comment><USER6> > [https://hub.packtpub.com/salesforce-suffers-major-outage- > pro...](https://hub.packtpub.com/salesforce-suffers-major-outage-providing- > data-access-irrespective-of-the-permission-settings/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having been part of the Wilmington, NC startup ecosystem for some time at Untappd [1], I'm fairly certain that nCino is a spinoff of Live Oak Bank [2][3]. Also, another spinoff from Live Oak was Apiture [3][4].

[1] [http://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/technology/2020/06/19/whats_nex...](http://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/technology/2020/06/19/whats_next_for_next_glass/20522)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2016/01/10/fast- grow...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyfeldman/2016/01/10/fast-growing- ncino-sells-banks-software-to-simplify-the-loan-process-and-a-whole-lot- else/#2d2b6af34d77)

[3] [http://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/banking_and_finance/2020/06/22/...](http://www.wilmingtonbiz.com/banking_and_finance/2020/06/22/wilmington- based_ncino_files_proposed_ipo/20538)

[4] [https://www.starnewsonline.com/news/20180502/tech-company- ap...](https://www.starnewsonline.com/news/20180502/tech-company-apiture- opens-wilmington-headquarters)

</comment><comment><USER9> nCino is headquartered in my hometown, Wilmington, North Carolina. Even here, they keep a very low profile.

Within the local entrepreneurship community, they're recognized as being very successful, but most people who live here don't even know who they are.

They've done a nice job, and they deserve this. Congrats team!

<comment><USER10> As a former resident of Wilmington, this is incredibly pleasing to hear. The community has been striving hard for the past decades to move away from the concept of "just another beach town". I used to use the phrase "You get to live at the beach, now earn it" to motivate my students.

While not as prominent, Wilmington, NC is also home to Castle Branch [1], which initially started as small background checking company; GigSalad [2], which allows you to book various performers; and Lapetus Solutions [3], which uses facial recognition for health insurance purposes.

Also, hi Sam, don't internet stalk me.

[1] [https://discover.castlebranch.com/](https://discover.castlebranch.com/)

[2] [https://www.gigsalad.com/](https://www.gigsalad.com/)

[3] [https://www.lapetussolutions.com/](https://www.lapetussolutions.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Hey this is where I've worked for the last 4 years. Hands down the best company I've ever worked for.

<comment><USER12> I can imagine that intense financial client needs (not to mention working with the confines of SFDC) could easily give this type of company a much less positive culture. Are there specific things leadership have done culture-wise that have made it such a positive place?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> There's some discussion in this thread about the less-sexy corners of the market that are getting eaten by software. What I'm wondering about is whether these corners yield the incredible levels of profitability that we've seen in the past from the tech industry. In other words, with something like Facebook, once the basic product was operational, every additional million of users came with negligible acquisition costs. With something like SAP, every new customer requires a gargantuan integration effort.

So what I'm curious about is this: It might be true that there is a long tail of industries that remains to be eaten by software, but do we expect the software in those industries to be as scalable as it has been in "tech"?

<comment><USER14> I doubt it. If you look at nCino S1, their professional services revenues are not growing as much as their subscription revenues.

PS revenues: 2018 20,094 2019 27,076 ~35% 2020 34,915 ~27%

While subscription revenues almost double every year since 2018. This is also highlighted in their risk factors.

What this indicates is that the deployment of such software still needs significant human touch.

Based on the services revenues and the sales expenses, I am hazarding a guess that nCino is a high touch businesses requiring significant sales professionals.

Which is why, it is key to understand customer retention in such businesses. From what I see, they have a 147% subscription revenue retention rate. That might be a proxy to customer retention but I'll try to get their actual customer retention numbers to be on the safer side.

Overall, yes this is no Facebook or Google. The risk section of S1 is very good and the founders are pretty candid about what the investors are up for.

<comment><USER15> Two comments about the PS revenue numbers:

1) The growing divergence between the subscription and PS revenues strongly imply that a "land & expand" model is prevelant (2018 1.9x, 2019 2.3x, 2020 2.95x) where they are able to push subscriptions up 21-28% post-deployment.

2) PS margins were 9%-10% in 2018 and 2019, and then dropped to 5.4% in 2020. Good to know that management continues to view PS as a sales enabler that pays for itself (i.e. break even or at least single-digit margin) executing their primary mission to drive high-margin subscriptions.

<comment><USER14> Valid points. Land and expand is a great moat to have. Couple of other interesting points

Their contracts are non-cancellable 3 to 5 year contracts. So retention is almost guaranteed and in banks, beyond 5 years no one bothers to change the status quo. So this is a significant factor when it comes to predicting future revenue potential and profit potential.

On the costs front, hey have to pay a part of the subscription revenue to Salesforce. However, this cost grows linearly in proportion to revenue. The ratio has remained same throughout 3:1 (almost)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> We're living in an age where twitter rants on Apple draw more attention than the entire lifespan of a quite fintech unicorn.

</comment><comment><USER17> The Co-founder/CEO holds only 1.6% of the common shares!?

<comment><USER18> It happens. Enterprise SaaS takes a lot of capital, there were probably ups and downs, and between all of that you can take a ton of dilution. Just the cost of the enterprise game with its highly predictable revenue streams.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Sorry if this is a dumb question but why is nCino built on top of Salesforce? Would they not be better off as a standalone system?

<comment><USER20> Nah. Salesforce is the Trojan horse into Enterprise. It's a very symbiotic relationship.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> They are super loss making, which is unusual for a tech provider (and that too, running on Salesforce).

Is this because of the Salesforce tax ?

<comment><USER22> The reference to dependence on system integrators tells you all you need to know.. they will never have some 5-click signup process. Probably each new customer presently involves a fuckton of multi-vendor custom engineering over stupid timescales.

I've never heard of financial software that didn't suffer from this, so it will be interesting to see if they manage to eventually streamline it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> wow. This makes hanging out on HN worth every minute. I will certainly sink some money into this company once they IPO. Their retention rate is astounding and in a B2B or enterprise sales business this is one of the governing predictors of growth.

It's very rare to find humble low profile founders who just want to build businesses that make money. Ticks off most of my Warren Buffett filters.

</comment><comment><USER23> Can someone explain to me why this is important? Not trolling, I'm serious.

<comment><USER24> Banks were one of the first businesses to digitize. Big banks in the 1950s. Small banks in the 1980s. Many remain stuck on the technology of their specific era of digitization.

nCino is one of a relatively small number of players turning the complex process of operating a certain kind of bank- of which there are thousands in the US- into turning the crank on a SAAS-delivered machine.

With a new platform come capabilities for new products and services around money- not payments, as has been the hotness for quite some time, but deposits and lines of credit, for individuals and small to mid sized businesses.

And for nCino, having thousands of customers each of which has thousands to hundreds of thousands of customers, each of which has deposit and line of credit accounts, each of which has lots of transactions, and through which their survival as a business is managed- that's a really nice data set to do some really interesting analytics on.

So, yeah, important.

<comment><USER25> If you've heard the need for Cobol programmers, often times it's for banks. When they digitized circa 1960 with the original computers, IBM mainframes, they operated using batch computing, which is why, even now, bank websites sometimes have hours of operation. Moving away from mainframes and modernizing that stack is, quite apparently, a lucrative business - if you don't mind working with bankers. There is an intentionally onerous amount of regulation in that industry that things operate under, most of it not relating to tech, but the tech does need to work under it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> As an enterprise SaaS person, you really love to see it. I spend a good amount of time in the enterprise b2b world, and I had literally never heard of them. Boring businesses kick ass.

My only disappointment: they have a fancy name. Always love it when under-the- radar enterprise companies have ultra boring names, there was a missed opportunity here to call themselves "eBank Technologies" or "Transfer Networks" or something equally mundane.

<comment><USER26> I'm fairly convinced that names don't matter. In most cases, companies make the name with quality, consistent execution and success (or imploding failure, as with WeWork). Names don't make the company.

<comment><USER18> Yeah, that's why I love it when companies are named, like, "Computer Business Partners."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Sounds like pokemon

</comment><comment><USER28> How common are their losses for a fintech IPO?

</comment><comment><USER29> This is the first time I've heard of nCino. I haven't seen it mentioned on HN before. Yet it's probably more successful than many of our own ventures might be. A good reminder to stay humble and to always keep business fundamentals in mind.

<comment><USER30> Relevant: [https://tinyseed.com/latest/measuring-the-depth-of-the- softw...](https://tinyseed.com/latest/measuring-the-depth-of-the-software- industry-iceberg)

(Disclosure: yes I wrote it)

<comment><USER29> I <3 MicroConf / TinySeed / you guys!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Oh, look, yet another company founded by an immigrant.

<comment><USER4> Is there some idea you'd like to share?

<comment><USER31> Immigrants are a net positive for the economy!

<comment><USER32> Indeed. A.S. G^2P was meant to chide the current administration for the (clearly very political) travel bans [0], temporary (??) suspension of visas (incl. H1-B) [1], and general racist isolationism.

[0]: [https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/proclamation...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential- actions/proclamation-suspension-entry-immigrants-nonimmigrants-persons-pose- risk-transmitting-2019-novel-coronavirus/)

[1]: [https://www.npr.org/2020/06/20/881245867/trump-expected- to-s...](https://www.npr.org/2020/06/20/881245867/trump-expected-to- suspend-h-1b-other-visas-until-end-of-year)

<comment><USER33> For what it's worth H1Bs were being misused by indian tech companies who got the majority of them [1] because the salary requirements haden't been updated for decades [2]

That meant the ability to undercut american workers.

I don't think there is anything racist about that.

[1] [https://www.economist.com/united- states/2017/02/09/h-1b-visa...](https://www.economist.com/united- states/2017/02/09/h-1b-visas-do-mainly-go-to-indian-outsourcing-firms)

[2] [https://alj.artrepreneur.com/h1b-visa- crackdown/#:~:text=Cur...](https://alj.artrepreneur.com/h1b-visa- crackdown/#:~:text=Currently%2C%20to%20qualify%20for%20an,a%20minimum%20of%20%24130%2C000%20annually).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ...

<comment><USER35> Please don't do this here.</comment></comment>


Show HN: HN Hired – Serverless and searchable "who's hiring" - <AUTHOR> https://hnhired.com <comment><AUTHOR> gh repo is here for anyone that's curious: [https://github.com/gadogado/hn- hired](https://github.com/gadogado/hn-hired)

</comment><comment><USER2> Shouldn't that work the other way around? Who's asking?</comment>


HN Replies - <AUTHOR> http://www.hnreplies.com/ <comment><USER2> Congrats on getting something written and launched -- always a challenge, always tricky.

I was wondering, what is the differentiator between this and HNNotify?

[https://hnnotify.xyz/](https://hnnotify.xyz/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Original Show HN [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11080539)</comment>


Noam Chomsky on Where Artificial Intelligence Went Wrong - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/noam-chomsky-on-where-artificial-intelligence-went-wrong/261637/1 <comment><USER2> Previous submission with more than 100 comments:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4729068></comment>


Mars Opportunity Rover: Driving the Jet Propulsion Lab's Mars Rover, Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/we-drive-the-mars-opportunity-rover-review <comment><USER2> Let's analyze the units in this article.

We have: (1) miles, (2) a paragraph about JPL's consistent use of the metric system, (3) several paragraphs translating JPL's data into feet, pounds, feet- per-minute, mph, Fahrenheit, pound-feet, and inches.

Madness, I tell you.

<comment><USER3> Indeed.

> We're JPL. We're on the metric system.

I wish the article had adopted that, too.

Instead, my hair stood up to a length of 3+4/7 Royal Hangnails, my head swelled to a volume of 5+2/3 Princely Bladders and my sanity went out at a speed of 17+3/5 Regal Farts.

<comment><USER4> > Indeed.

I get so sad when I read stuff like:

> At 1982 pounds (...) 494 pound-feet of torque (...) just 0.02 inch thick > (...)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It doesn't say if they drove the base model or the well equipped one. =)

<comment><USER6> Well equipped; it's got 2 moon roofs.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Buttery, a DSL/runtime for defining HTTP APIs - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/evinism/buttery <comment><USER2> I'm a heavy user of Open API Spec. I do have issues with that project, so I'm certainly hoping something better will replace it, but that said:

What motivated you to build this instead of just using OAS?

Why did you create a DSL when you could've used, say, TypeScript? Using an existing language allows you to rely on widespread, well-understood, efficient tooling, so a DSL is sometimes an extreme choice that implies a forceful rejection of existing languages.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm not sure any answer other than "I felt like it was a good choice" is gonna be 100% accurate, but a few things, some of which are speculative, some of which are reactionary.

(I'm sadly not very familiar with OAS, so it's very possible that OAS supports many of the things I'm going for!)

\- This takes very heavily after protos, which use a DSL.

\- This rejects protos because of a few reasons, not the least of which is that every field in proto3 is optional. While it makes sense for google, I don't think it makes sense for everybody.

\- gRPC is non-http, and I was unhappy with gRPC-web

\- I wanted it to be a terse specification, such that just glancing over the definition file gives you a sense of what the API consists of.

\- I wanted a solution that handled websockets/server push as a first-class citizen, and not as a secondary add-on

\- I wanted to provide library-level validation of request / response shape.

\- I wanted to extend it beyond typescript, notably into python (and hopefully beyond)

\- I like the idea of generic structs and oneofs (which I'm going to implement in some future version). I think if we had an easy way to define generics in cross-language APIs, we'd probably use it a fair amount.

\- I like the idea of having an extensible language, e.g. be able to provide a JSONLogic type. Imagine a field `priceCalculation: JsonLogic<string, number>`. That'd be pretty cool!

<comment><USER2> Let me preface this by saying that I use OAS because it is the most widely- supported HTTP API spec. I don't love it, but as of version 3, it handles all of my use cases and has good tooling support. This prevents me from having to edit the spec as raw text -- I can typically get by using a GUI (recently been happy with Apicurio Studio).

That said, I do wish there were a better format for it than YAML/JSON, and I think some of their design decisions were strange.

Note that a lot of OAS's strengths and weaknesses were inherited from its parent project, JSON Schema, which is also widely supported.

> _I wanted it to be a terse specification, such that just glancing over the > definition file gives you a sense of what the API consists of._

OAS specs in YAML (as opposed to JSON) are pretty terse and easy to scan, especially if the spec is kept fairly DRY by defining/refusing object schemas.

> _I wanted a solution that handled websockets /server push as a first-class > citizen, and not as a secondary add-on_

OAS fails this one.[1]

> _I wanted to provide library-level validation of request / response shape._

This is something all the major formats (JSON Schema/OAS, RAML, Blueprint, etc.) do. It's probably the first thing people want to do with an API spec. OAS has great support for validation in most languages, although implementation of the spec can be spottier with less-popular stacks like PHP.

> _I wanted to extend it beyond typescript, notably into python (and hopefully > beyond)_

One of my projects uses Spot[1] to define its API. Spot has CLI tools that translate it into a plain OAS file (.yaml format), and then there are more CLI tools that generate code (models, validators, controllers, and even servers) from that spec file.

If you don't mind a polyglot toolchain -- and I think most of us have one at this point -- then the Spot => OAS => Python process works fine and is easy to set up. You don't even need to start with Spot, of course.

> _I like the idea of generic structs and oneofs (which I 'm going to > implement in some future version). I think if we had an easy way to define > generics in cross-language APIs, we'd probably use it a fair amount._

I agree that this is super important. OAS supports it, although it can be hard to read a lot of branches inheritance trees in that particular format.

You can split your definitions into separate files to make it easier (in both Spot and in plain OAS itself).

> _I like the idea of having an extensible language, e.g. be able to provide a > JSONLogic type. Imagine a field `priceCalculation: JsonLogic <string, > number>`. That'd be pretty cool!_

This makes sense, but at the end of the day, "JsonLogic<string, number>" is just a text format. With OAS, you can define a regex to validate inputs and outputs, which has been "good enough" in my experience, but definitely falls short of what you want.

What about GraphQL? That seems to have some of the features you're interested in, although the GraphQL paradigm is so different from HTTP (and has some tradeoffs) that I'd understand not even considering it.

1\. [https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI- Specification/issues/523](https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI- Specification/issues/523)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, GraphQL certainly has many of the features that I was looking at here too, and I figure that it's the rough direction in which webdev seems to be going.

I just... like RPCs.

There's also a vague sense of "buttery should work well for multiple services in a way that other methods might struggle to do so." The fact that RPCs are grouped into services means that a load balancer can shift RPCs to different backends based on which buttery service they're talking to. I'm not sure how that actually compares against common solutions, but it IS interesting :)

Thanks for taking the time to think about all these things! It's very helpful for me.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Aid burst lifts people out of extreme poverty - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/aid-burst-lifts-people-out-of-extreme-poverty-1.17560 <comment><USER2> This sounds much more involved than GiveDirectly's simple cash drops. It would be nice to see a comparative analysis of the two.

I'm also curious how this scales. Give one family in an area money/support and they can escape extreme poverty. If you give the same boost to every family in an area, do you get a bigger impact, or smaller? And is there a point where having n% of the people in an area boosting out of poverty leads to the other (100-n)% being _worse_ off? Or are they all better off?

At any rate, this is really exciting. Both that they did RCTs to test it, and that it worked really well.

</comment><comment><USER3> One of the many costs of poverty is the inability to suffer any opportunity cost whatsoever. Another is the lack of slack in both time and money: any shock is tremendously destructive.

This totally makes sense.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is that title right? It improved their situation 5%. That sounds like noise. Certainly they were still in extreme poverty. Its arguable that the statistics show aid does almost nothing (5% change), and better methods should be tried.

<comment><USER5> The article says:

"Overall, one year after the intervention stopped, the experiment produced a 14% increase in assets and a 96% increase in savings, compared with similar groups of people not enrolled in the program,"

And the paper abstract says:

"This shift, which persists and strengthens after assistance is withdrawn, leads to a 38% increase in earnings."

Where are you getting 5% from?

<comment><USER4> Oh! That's different article from the one I saw posted elsewhere. I read one that was much, much longer.</comment></comment></comment>


What the new Gmail looks like - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/12/heres-what-the-new-gmail-looks-like/ <comment><USER2> What has it been? 10 years since the last refresh? Looking forward to this, but leery of the new features.

<comment><USER3> 7 years. [https://googlesystem.blogspot.de/2011/07/preview-gmails- new-...](https://googlesystem.blogspot.de/2011/07/preview-gmails-new- interface.html)</comment></comment>


Quantum fluctuations can jiggle objects on the human scale - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2020/quantum-fluctuations-jiggle-objects-0701 <comment><USER2> Link to the paper referred to in this article: [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2420-8](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2420-8)</comment>


Bank of America SiteKey man-in-the-middle attack demonstration - <AUTHOR> http://www.phishcops.com/sitekeyMITM.asp

<comment><USER2> The argument the demonstrators make is that the SiteKey protection is useless. I would counter that this is not the case. Their demonstration does illustrate that the man in the middle attack can work for a small number of phishing attacks.

The attacker gives up something in order to pull the man in the middle attack off that they wouldn't otherwise need to. The server that is running the attack has to actually make an http request to Bank of America in real-time. It need not be that exact server, but some server has to do this.

If it is a real web server, Bank of America could do interesting things if they are suspicious of the login, for example probing port 80 (in real-time or asynchronously). Or, keeping a database of ip addresses that are known to be ISPs versus datacenters (presumably the demonstration was done from an ISP ip address).

If the attacker somehow re-routes the request through a real ISP in real-time, it becomes easier to track the attacker in the real (legal) world. Now all of the sudden the ISP knows the address of the attacker, can track down the machine doing the attacking, etc.

In either case, Bank of America can detect the attack very quickly because of a large number of unique connections from the same IP address.

If the attacker goes one step further and re-routes the sitekey requests through a botnet, then bank of america loses alot of defenses. The botnet is on real machines on real ISPs and always a different IP address. But this makes it much harder for the attacker to pull off because they have to set up a botnet.

<comment><USER3> The referrer might also give the phishers away, although maybe you could combine the MITM with clickjacking so that the referrer would be correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Ha, I sent three different online banks emails about this crap over a year ago, telling them that their stupid images and placing logins and passwords on separate pages were nothing but annoying.

Unfortunately, even if they watch this video demonstration, they will do nothing about it. Those images exist only to make customers feel more secure, because we've all come to equate security with annoyance.

</comment><comment><USER5> While this is a good demonstration of a phishing, it's not very technically challenging.

Approaches to preventing phishing attacks relies on SSL certificates, phishing filters, and browsers making it hard for inexperienced users to make silly mistakes.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why not client certificates? I'm pretty sure that's what my bank uses, they've got a java-applet that talks to a small binary file in my homedrive. The technology is simple (to implement) and well proven, guarantees security end- to-end.

What is BoA trying to accomplish? Easierness?

</comment><comment><USER7> pretty cool..

just highlights how incredibly stupid 99% of internet users really are though - to not even check the address of the site they are on.

<comment><USER8> it isn't about stupidity. if we can all use the latest technologies when we're 60 years old w/o getting a little confused then i'll be impressed, and we're not stupid.</comment></comment>


BeagleBone: Blinking an LED (node.js + cloud9) - <AUTHOR> http://www.gigamegablog.com/2012/01/05/beaglebone-coding-101-blinking-an-led/

<comment><USER2> Very nice article comparing how to use the BeagleBone to the way you'd use an Arduino.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's awesome how the IDE and compiler is just accessible over HTTP straight on the BeagleBone. It's taking bootstrapping to a whole new level.

</comment><comment><USER4> Error establishing a database connection

<comment><AUTHOR> [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fgiHs41...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fgiHs41mhDcJ:www.gigamegablog.com/2012/01/05/beaglebone- coding-101-blinking-an-led/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)</comment></comment>


More on Lithium Batteries - <AUTHOR> http://shkrobius.livejournal.com/425638.html

<comment><USER2> "It is all here

[http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406274e](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406274e) [http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406273p"](http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jp406273p")

(click)

"Your current credentials do not allow retrieval of the full text.

Purchase This Content Choose from the following options: $35.00 for 48 hours of access Members, log in with your ACS ID to see your reduced price."

Every. Single. Time. I have ever tried to read a scientific paper, this is what happens. It's complete crap. The research was done in a national laboratory, under public funding. I should be able to read this.

Fortunately, I am now a university student so I will see if the library can help me with this.

<comment><USER3> There should be the equivalent of wikileaks for scientific papers- a site where you can anonymously post them and their abstract. While I understand someone has to pay for hosting, archiving, validation- people should be allowed to view things like this freely. Otherwise, what is the point of research you wish to share with the public? Even viewing the paper as images with watermarks would be better than nothing.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about _anonymously_ \-- why not just the centuries-old library model? We pay for an organization; the organization licenses the works; the organization lends out the works for free.

<comment><USER5> The current problem being that subscribed to an institution which has a library with the funds to pay for these things is currently either expensive or hard to get oneself affiliated with without lots of requirements and quirks. :/

I have access through my home institution, but I'm already dreading being suddenly cut-off from all of this information when I leave :/ \- the idea that upon leaving the institution my ability or willingness to read existing content and contribute back should disappear is bothersome, to say the least.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > When computational chemists got involved, their theories (surprise, > surprise) provided support for these hand waving models. These folk "knew" > what they needed to obtain - and they tweaked their models until they got > it: the models are complex; there are lot of knobs to tweak. Incredibly, > even on rare occasion when they got it right they dismissed their own > results, ascribing discrepancies to model imperfections...

This is stupid. My research is molecular dynamics and ab initio studies of novel carbon anodes in lithium batteries. We don't "tweak" the model until it fits; if you did that you would be 1) an idiot 2) not a scientist.

All models describe reality only to an approximation. How well this approximation works depends on how good your model is. In computational science, we have algorithms that can almost _perfectly_ match experimental carbon anodes. The only problem? These techniques (short of someone inventing a quantum computer) take essentially infinite time to run on a classical computer. So you cut down the computational complexity of your model by making approximations (e.g. removing electron-electron correlations) until you get something that can run on today's best supercomputers.

But you don't stop there! You have to actually assess these models and figure out how well they work! For instance, there's probably 20 or so MD models that describe water (TIP3P, TIP4P, etc...) Each model can accurately predict _certain_ properties of real water, but is also very poor at predicting other properties. In other words, your model needs to fit what it was designed for and you will get good results.

It seems to me that most people who bash simulations nowadays are experimentalists that aren't up to date on the state-of-the-art algorithms that provide very good agreement with reality (for some situations at least).

<comment><USER7> To be honest, what you're saying is that to get a 'good model' \- you have to 'tweak' these approximations it so they work well "to fit what it was designed for". Maybe you don't like the word 'tweaking' \- but your entire post sounds that it is exactly that, make your model match (certain properties of) reality as close as possible.

I'm not saying that in a dismissive/judgmental way - it is probably the most realistic way of doing a lot of things - but it pretty much is exactly what the original post says (although he is dismissive/negative about this). I don't know enough about chemistry in general to comment on this, but we do have batteries and they do improve over time - so some people must be doing "something" right.

What surprises me more are his claims that we don't even understand (or understood) even the basics of lithium on a chemical level? Is this even true? What could be the impact of this paper on future battery development? Could computational models be improved using this data?

<comment><USER6> > but it pretty much is exactly what the original post says (although he is > dismissive/negative about this)

The difference is that he is implying scientists tweak their models to get what they _want_ to see; i.e., they have a hypothesis and then manipulate the model until it gives them results that confirm their hypothesis. This is bad science. What I'm saying is that scientists (should) create their model to fit _reality_ for only the specific situations where it is provably applicable. If the model then confirms the hypothesis, great. If it doesn't, no big deal; it just means your hypothesis was wrong and you probably won't get a paper out of it (in an ideal world, we would publish papers about negative results because that is science as well, but I'm afraid those papers don't garner near the attention or interest that positive results do).

> What surprises me more are his claims that we don't even understand (or > understood) even the basics of lithium on a chemical level? Is this even > true?

Yeah, it's true. That's why me (and a whole lot of other people) are doing research in this area.

As for the paper, I'm not sure what its impact is. Research becomes very narrow in fields like this, and I don't study electrolytes (I study carbon anodes). So I can't comment on that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > their theories (surprise, surprise) provided support for these hand waving > models

> These folk "knew" what they needed to obtain

If I hadn't seen the resemblance between the username and the first name on the linked publications, I would have closed the page and written it off as a pseudo-science blogger fighting big corporate interests. I just wish the user info page had his real name on it, for confirmation.

<comment><USER9> What sounds pseudo-science about the first main paragraph, "It turns out that...electrode."? I don't understand your reaction to some complaints about _non-tested_ models.

<comment><USER8> After reading too many blogs trying to substantiate their claims by quoting science out of context, I never consider the first paragraph as proof of anything. The second paragraph turned from promoting an idea to almost accusing others of bias or misconduct, in a way that almost mimicked a conspiracy theory. I can understand the complaints about inadequately tested models, because that happens. (And, as there are a lot of russian language posts in the blog, perhaps it is a cultural language style I am unfamiliar with.) But, if it wasn't for the username looking similar to the name on the paper, I would have written it off.

<comment><USER9> Still, I think pseudo-science would use a quote as a springboard into something nonsensical, it wouldn't just say "these guys didn't do their job properly", it would do something like accuse them of actual conspiracy, or say that the answer was _obvious_ because [inane blather].

<comment><USER8> "Nonsensical" and "inane blather" are relative to your personal knowledge and experience. Science and technology, to people outside of those fields, sounds like a string of nonsense jargon and technobabble. (That is one of the reasons why phys.org, university press departments, Congressman[1], and Fox News[2] can get things so very wrong.) My lack of a background in the detailed inner workings of Li-Ion batteries, or chemistry in general, prevents me from directly validating his statements. So, if it wasn't for the username looking similar to the first name on the paper, I would have written it off.

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

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6378495](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6378495)

<comment><USER9> The point is that he didn't make _any_ statement there. So you don't need any field knowledge to realize he didn't springboard into blather, because he didn't springboard into anything at all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So, in essence, most scientists today are busy writing papers or pushing bits around in computer simulations rather than doing real experiments?

<comment><USER11> Well, that's true.

Experiments are usually so expensive that you want to get the most out of them, so most people work discovering what experiments they should do, and what they do with the results, instead of just jumping in the lab and doing the experiments.

Then, sometimes, people with that culture face a problem just like this one, where blind experiments are the fastest, simplest, cheapest route to understanding something. Except that nobody knows it beforehand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is great stuff, and I want more! Any other good blog posts about it? Or overviews? How are people reacting?</comment>


Ask HN: Has anyone tried using one of those posture-improving wearable devices? - <AUTHOR> I saw one on aliexpress for $4 and I'm wondering if this would be a cheap way to prevent or reverse back injury over time stemming from sitting at a computer. <comment><USER2> I asked my physiotherapist this question, the answer was "no", better to do exercises to strengthen your shoulder/back muscles. Start with low-impact exercises if you're not used to it yet.

</comment><comment><USER3> I've heard mixed reviews. The core of the issue is that it doesn't help you strengthen weak muscles. Better to put some kinesio tape on your back to remind you to correct your bad posture.

<comment><USER4> How does kinesio tape help with weak muscles? Just correcting your posture occasionally won't do any good in the long run, either. This might "pull you into place" but no muscular strength is gained. If someone picks up a good routine to strengthen their weak spots, an improved posture will appear soon enough.

<comment><USER3> Sorry should have clarified. Some people use kinesio tape to remind them when their posture has sagged forward. It doesn't really help with strengthening anything but this is as opposed to posture corrector things that just forces your body into place. As you mentioned, strength training is the main requirement to fixing the core issue.</comment></comment></comment>


Try Ubuntu 10.10 Server in Amazon EC2, entirely on our dime - <AUTHOR> https://10.cloud.ubuntu.com/ <comment><USER2> The beauty of this is that it's a way for them to let people try Ubuntu Server quickly and easily. While I don't remember the articles, we've all seen the ones talking about how demand isn't linear. Lots of people will try something free that won't try something that costs even a cent. So, Canonical will pick up the 2 cent tab (the cost of one hour of a Micro instance). Many will try it. Heck, if a million people try it, it will cost Canonical $20,000. That's a lot of exposure for a small amount of money. Companies are paying way more than 2 cents per click in advertising. Booting up an instance to try it out is a lot more engagement and investment in the process than an ad click.

Canonical is getting smart people to engage with their product for several minutes (if not the whole hour) for a mere 2 cents. That's one of the best campaigns I've seen and far more effective and cheaper than AdWords for what they're doing.

<comment><USER3> I was provisioned a Small instance (with the 1.7GB ram). Did everyone else get a Micro?

Unixbench 5.1.2 gave me a score of 133.5 on the one I booted. Anyone know if this is pretty much par for the course on a EC2.small?

BTW, I've gotten excellent unixbench numbers (around the 500 mark) on one of lsc's smaller Xen instances(512M from prgmr.com)

<comment><USER4> 150.9 here.

<comment><USER5> It is important to normalize those numbers by accounting for steal time.

[http://3spoken.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/cpu-steal-time- the-n...](http://3spoken.wordpress.com/2006/12/10/cpu-steal-time-the-new- statistic/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 55 minutes... you better have a pretty good idea of what you want to try before the clock starts ticking.

The options are:

* Base Install

* Wordpress

* MoinMoin

The announcement "pre-configured applications to choose from (such as Wordpress and MoinMoin)" implied there were more options. Sorry, no.

<comment><USER7> Agreed. I signed up, installed ruby and sinatra for a quick test environment before i realized i had no clue what the public ip was, or maybe you need to configure something for aws.

The ip you are given to ssh in with seems to not be open on other ports, or maybe its a different ip for common web ports – i don't know.

So, plan well .. (or treat it simply as a cli test).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wondering how they deal with abuse issues (or rather how AWS is OK with them doing this).

Usually to get an EC2 account, you give out an email and a credit card and also do an SMS message confirmation. Any abuse issues will be tracked to you (unless you figure out how to get around source packet provenance). And you're either at fault or your VM was infiltrated and you have a venue to explain yourself.

I realize that is not foolproof or anything but it is a higher bar than just needing an email confirmed and getting right down to it.

<comment><USER9> What are people going to do in 55 minutes, send spam and brute-force ssh servers? Yeah, this is already so prevalent that nobody cares anymore.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Cool: the web app itself is written in Django, and the source is available: <https://code.launchpad.net/awstrial>

</comment><comment><USER3> Fun Things to do when the timer hits the low digits:

Start 'sudo rm -rf' ing twigs, branches, trunks of your filesystem.

I took a chance on /var before losing access to the instance. That was fun.

</comment><comment><USER11> Do I only get to use it once?

<comment><USER12> I don't believe so, and if even so you're free to create another account.

This service looks to be just to get people into trying it out- the downloads are entirely free, too.

<comment><USER11> I'm learning Amazon Web Services and I have already used two hours in the process. I certainly see the need to use it for at least several more hours for learning. I will try Ubuntu this way, too - to see how it goes.

Creating another account, or ssh key, or whatever is certainly not worth the price and feeling unclean for cheating - even for me, unemployed student from the 3rd world. Because prices for instances start with 2 cents/hour. Good move for Canonical, anyway - 'free' is attractive, even if the usual price is 2 cents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Didn't work for me. At least not with ssh-key based auth, don't know what user name to use. too bad.

<comment><USER3> If you don't have a RSA key stored in your Ubuntu SSO account, they will provide a temporary password, that you have to change immediately after login.

<comment><USER13> I did have the key stored, told them about my problem, they said it was a bug and let me have another go. Took me almost one hour to get Drupal 7 beta running and I turned that into a blog post:

[http://blog.eike.se/2010/10/intalling-drupal-7-on-fresh- ubun...](http://blog.eike.se/2010/10/intalling-drupal-7-on-fresh- ubuntu-1010.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I already run Ubuntu server, so I'd rather not charge Canonical.

<comment><USER15> Nice!

<comment><USER14> I don't really know why I said that, just, you know, don't cost them money if you already know Ubuntu Server. Support Ubuntu by not using this!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> wow - $0.085 for free!

they better give Ubuntu 10.10 public AMI ID.

<http://alestic.com/> still doesn't list one.

<comment><USER17> [http://uec-images.ubuntu.com/query/maverick/server/released....](http://uec- images.ubuntu.com/query/maverick/server/released.txt) has the AMI IDs for all the maverick server images, including the released ones.

<comment><USER11> But I do have to pay for launching instances with these IDs on my own, do I?

<comment><USER18> That's how EC2 works. Canonical didn't say they are just going to pay for all your servers now.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Karma uses MQTT to manage their growing fleet of mobile WiFi devices - <AUTHOR> https://blog.yourkarma.com/how-we-use-mqtt-at-karma

<comment><USER2> There's mention of open source, but it looks like MQTTParty is itself closed source? (The phrasing "It's an MQTTParty and you're all invited" seems misleading here: I interpreted to mean "we made this and everyone can use it.")</comment>


Principles for smooth web animations - <AUTHOR> https://blog.gyrosco.pe/smooth-css-animations-7d8ffc2c1d29#.ra51rwso4 <comment><USER2> The most important principle for current technologies is #1, "Don't change any properties besides opacity or transform!"

Hopefully everyone will start copying the approach Servo uses in its WebRender engine which is basically treating the browser rendering as though it were a game, using the GPU for rendering _everything_ ; therefore guidelines like this become obsolete.

This applies to a slightly lesser extent with #2, "Hide content in plain sight." #3 is also obsolete in Servo, as is #7, mostly.

<comment><USER3> Even if everything were GPU based, this would still be a good suggestion no? The biggest reason I see to use "transform: translateX(n)" over "left: n" is the transform doesn't make a call to reflow the content around it (unless that's what you're going for). Even with GPU acceleration, transform will still be more performant than standard positioning/sizing.

I've always followed this rule: Use transform unless you need reflows, then use top/left/height/width.

<comment><USER4> The thing is, reflow is not why using left is slow. If the element is position: absolute, you don't reflow the whole page anyway.

CSS transform is used because render is slow. With Servo-like GPU acceleration, render is not slow. Your suggestion would not be a good suggestion because using transform would be an unnecessary premature optimization then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is rather disappointing that with the current state of technology we need to go through such hoops to get smooth animations.

Also, there is completely no handle on keeping the animations smooth as webpages become more complicated and do (perhaps unrelated) updates while animations are running.

</comment><comment><USER6> #11: Your user's browser has the final say in all matters of timing. Whatever you do, ultimately, if the browser decides that something has to be computed on your main JS thread while you are trying to hit frames and timings, you're screwed. Source: Making multiple HTML5 games with the intention of having them render at 60 fps and not missing a single frame.

<comment><USER7> The reason why transform & opacity (via CSS animations) are always recommended is because they can be done completely on the compositor thread without going back to the main thread.

If you need to run every frame of animation from JS then, yes, you're screwed. At least until [https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink- dev/Y...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/d/topic/blink- dev/YlG2OvHgVaQ/discussion) & [https://github.com/flackr/compositor- worker](https://github.com/flackr/compositor-worker))

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the explanation. Yeah, I noticed that the hard way. I now moved off JavaScript and went back to classic C++ game programming. I like it much more at this lower level with fine-grained control.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> OK, so _now_ I know why tweening's called that, and I feel like the biggest idiot in the world :-/

<comment><USER9> There are so many of these, even in basic English. Like "discover" = un-cover.

<comment><USER10> "another" = "an other"

<comment><USER11> no-body, no-where, interrupt-able, etc

<comment><USER12> "no one" is two words.

Edit: corrected. But I can't delete? Oh, I have replies :)

<comment><USER11> Thanks, replaced it with a better example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google's Material motion guidelines are also great material for people looking to use web animations.

[https://material.google.com/motion/material- motion.html#mate...](https://material.google.com/motion/material- motion.html#material-motion-what-makes-a-good-transition)

<comment><USER14> this is literally in the article

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Wow i just went and logged in to [https://gyrosco.pe/..](https://gyrosco.pe/..). Too many animations. Its making me wait for content to show up, lots of animations everywhere causing a lot of congnitive load. And an options to delete your account is not there.

I think animations are very much over used on that site. The article is fine. But dont do too much animations! Keep congnitive load small!

</comment><comment><USER16> The article was awesome. I am not sure, however, the heavy animation helps gyroscope.pe's user experience, though.

</comment><comment><USER17> Off topic... but what are you using for JS animations these days?

I've been using GSAP for almost a decade since the Flash days.

</comment><comment><USER18> Speaking of smooth animations, the blog post is hosted on Medium, and I've always admired Medium's image zoom thing because it's so smooth!

</comment><comment><USER19> The smoothest animation is the one you don't do.

In the best case, web animations just cause bloat and burn through your battery. In the (common) worst case, they stutter or break or cause things to on the page to hang while they load.

Just don't do it. Your website doesn't need to look like a mobile app.

<comment><USER20> This is just patently false. Animations can give a sense of continuity and context for the effect of your actions. For example, let's say that you have an alphabetized list of people, and you want to add a person to the list by putting their name into an input box above the list. If when you submitted the name it just disappeared and appeared somewhere down the list, you would likely not know what happened. If, however, there was a transition where you saw the list adapting to the new data, you would be able to understand that you added an item to it.

Sure, there are good and bad instances of animation, but to state that at best it's a battery drain is just patently false.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Very very nice article</comment>


Gore-Tex Under Siege from Waterproof Fabric Newcomers - <AUTHOR> http://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/Insane-in-the-Membrane.html

<comment><USER2> I recently completed a 1 week hike through Tasmania. It gets very wet down there, and the exertion of hiking leads to a lot of sweat. So I knew I needed Gore-Tex jacket or something similar to keep the water off me while allowing my skin to breathe. But I couldn't find a way to pay for a Gore-Tex jacket. They are insanely expensive. I opted for a generic microfibre jacket, which wasn't cheap, but was about a third of the cost of a Gore-Tex branded one. To my surprise it was fucking excellent. Didn't get wet and I didn't get any sweaty condensation building up inside the jacket.

<comment><USER3> I bought a GoreTex jacket recently for $189. It was originally ticketed at 560 or something ridiculous.

I'm not sure it was even worth what I paid; time will tell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Competition in this market would be great for motorcyclists. GoreTex is the trick that makes replacing a car possible -- riding in the rain is no problem as long as you have waterproof gear. But a full, water-tight GoreTex riding suit is _insanely_ expensive.

</comment><comment><USER5> Before working online I was a manager in a specialty outdoor retail store. I spent a lot of time talking outdoor tech with company reps.

Gore-Tex is not the most expensive because it is the most breathable fabric. There are plenty of others out there that are more breathable--heck Lowe Alpine was beating Gore-Tex breathability with their Triple Point Ceramic coating 15 years ago.

Gore-Tex is the most expensive because they pay attention to ALL the details.

For instance, as a membrane, Gore-Tex has to be glued to its face fabric. Coatings like polyurethane do not; they self-adhere. The type of glue, and how it is applied, makes a huge difference in the durability of a membrane-based waterproof fabric. Gore spends a ton of time and money on R&D around the gluing, which is why Gore garment manufactures must use Gore-approved seam taping machines. It's also why Gore can guarantee the fabric for life directly to the consumer.

Gore also reviews and tests the design of every single piece of clothing or footwear that ships with the Gore-Tex hang tag. Every company who makes a Gore-Tex jacket must send copies of it to Gore, where it gets tested in rain chambers etc. If it does not past muster, the manufacturer has to make changes until it does. As you might imagine, this adds cost. But it also makes sure quality is high.</comment>


How do you guys nowadays find cool things online? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> Before the web surfer, there was the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flâneur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flâneur) , and before that were peripatetic philosophers.

Link clicking is easy mode surfing. Level up by using search engines. The [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraph_(literature)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epigraph_\(literature\)) is the next harder mode link to follow, but every noun phrase, and sometimes also other textual constituents, or even images, provides a potential link to traverse.

Those are direct associations. We can also generate new search terms from old. After we know at least two distinct topics, we can search for instances of what they have in common. After determining how they differ, we can see what we get if we apply that difference to yet other ideas, etc.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game#The_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game#The_game)

<comment><AUTHOR> Stumble Upon made Flaneur, wandering in internet cool again

Thanks for recommendations!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://home.mcom.com/home/whats-cool.html](http://home.mcom.com/home/whats- cool.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> cool list, bookmarked!

thanks

<comment><USER3> My post was more of a joke and should have include a sarcasm tag or emoticon; not sure if you got it.

Context: when you asked about "what's cool" it reminded me of the old "what's cool" link from the netscape homepage that used to load on many peoples' start page. That site is a copy of it from 1994 but all of the links I tried didn't work since it is quite old. Also, some (all?) of those things would no longer be considered 'cool'.

A more serious answer - think of something you do or are interested in that you don't regularly read up on the web. There could be an interesting subreddit with a wiki or FAQ.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really miss StumbleUpon

<comment><AUTHOR> oo man -.- i found happiness there

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I have found a bunch of interesting links on reddit/hackernews but nothing garners my interest more than books, to be honest.

<comment><AUTHOR> On Twitter I often find really good book recommendations, cool threads too

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Follow people on Twitter that don't look like me.

<comment><AUTHOR> I thought that I follow too many interesting people on Twitter until I saw Marc Andreesen

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I diversify my interests, get interested in new things I'd never considered before. There's never enough time to plumb every rabbit hole. There's always something I've never given the time of day before.

But to unask your question, maybe we don't need to be spending more time online, but less. Maybe let the internet be boring.

<comment><AUTHOR> I bought Kevin Kelly's, cool tools and put on table's living room to wander offline

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Honestly, there's a lot of cool stuff on here. Other than that, twitter responses from people you're interested in

<comment><AUTHOR> sometimes it bugs me the xp of site but yeah you're right

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> here you are

</comment><comment><USER10> Scroll through the top 10 products on Product Hunt on a daily basis.

<comment><AUTHOR> I used to do this since it was launched, now I don't find it interesting

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Following</comment>


A Better Way to Learn AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkster.io/pick/51d287681e4b9c9098000013/a-better-way-to-learn-angularjs

<comment><USER2> I guess it's finally time to learn Angular.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cool project.

</comment><comment><USER4> Can't wait to learn angular!

</comment><comment><USER5> Really cool!</comment>


Silicon Valley Reels After Trump's Election - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/10/technology/trump-election-silicon-valley-reels.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> I think this article combined with this analysis: [http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger- where...](http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-was-stronger-where-the- economy-is-weaker/)

is well worth reading. This is especially true for any tech people here that believe the future is routine jobs being automated with Government sponsored basic income being provided to everyone.</comment>