Mass Hacks of Private Email Aren't Whistleblowing, They Are at Odds with It - <AUTHOR> https://www.justsecurity.org/33677/mass-hacks-private-email-arent-whistleblowing-odds-it/ <comment><USER2> Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other organized crime) emails and released them publicly.

The reality is that sometimes hacking is in the public interest and sometimes it's not, but figuring out when is not easy or black and white.

One aspect to these discussions that I find sort of befuddling is the idea that somehow those involved in "making the news" (so to speak) shouldn't have to think about what they're saying or how they're saying it unless they're "on the record," that we should expect their public face to be a mask hiding any insight into the private face behind it, and that somehow they ought to be magically protected from the potential publicizing of recordings, hacks, or eavesdropping.

Clearly the public at large is somewhat jaded and cynical, but there's still a very obvious desire to have "honest" and "open" candidates who make their goals, intentions, and ideologies clear. Of course the public theoretically wants to know how the sausage is made.

That the candidates can't recognize this and can't or won't operate as though the public might be watching without crying foul seems to me a bigger farce than pretending that one's own words are a conspiracy... but what do I know?

I guess the idea that one ought to maintain some level restraint and conviviality both publicly and privately is dated and quaint.

<comment><USER3> > Meh. While email hacks are obviously different than "whistleblowing" nobody > would be batting an eye if somebody had hacked a trove of Mafia (or other > organized crime) emails and released them publicly.

...but the Mafia are a priori criminals, while politicians are not (except in a sophomoric "all politicians are liars" kind of way).

What crime did Powell commit to have his everyday privacies exposed to the world?

<comment><USER4> What crime did the American people commit to have their digital lives cataloged and analyzed by the NSA?

<comment><USER5> I've seen variants of this argument made up and down this thread, and I don't think it holds any water. And I say this as someone that thinks the NSA's mass surveillance is morally wrong, unconstitutional, and probably ultimately counterproductive.

I'm willing to stipulate there's an avenue for civil disobedience in which leaking of private information is used as a way to apply pressure to actors within the government and private industry who might be sanctioning the NSA's practices. In other words I could see a course of action that includes widespread, comprehensive attempts to hack and leak the emails of FISA court judges, employees and appointees of US intelligence agencies, executives and board members of companies like AOL, Palantir, and Verizon who are known to have enthusiastically participated in this surveillance, and elected officials in the executive or legislative branches of the government who have supported or perpetuated this spying. The idea being that if the people who keep this system of surveillance grinding onwards experience the personal consequence of having their private info leaked to the public, they might reconsider their actions.

I could see a course of action like this and even agree there's some valid arguments for it, but it's also incredibly dangerous, and would require, I dunno, a great deal of judgement and restraint to not cause huge collateral damage to perfectly innocent people, or to end up ruining the lives of people who were only tangential participants in the system. In other words, this strategy is deeply problematic and dangerous at the best of times.

But let's not kid ourselves that that's even what's going on here. You could try to argue that Hillary Clinton, as the likely next president, is a part of this system, and so she should be on the list of people who are targeted for leaking in the course of civil disobedience. But Trump also supports this surveillance, so he should too. But the thing is, we don't have to guess at the motives of Wikileaks here, they are quite clearly making no such civil disobedience claims [1]. And if you look at whose information is being leaked—Clinton campaign staffers, the DNC—and estimate where these particular actors fall on the scale of culpability in the NSAs spying (hint: well down the list), you start to see that trying to ascribe some higher civic purpose to these _particular_ leaks isn't warranted.

[1] [https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/press- release](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/press-release)

<comment><USER4> It all depends on how you look at the overarching conflict, I suppose. To me, the privacy debate is like a cold war that's been raging for at least a decade, that began turning hot around the time of the collateral murder leaks and definitely after the Snowden leaks.

Yes, civil disobedience in this context comes with consequences. It's a fight, people get hurt in fights. Lives have already been ruined by the surveillance state. It's important to keep in mind it's a path of action people feel forced down by the actions of their government.

> you start to see that trying to ascribe some higher civic purpose to these > particular leaks isn't warranted.

You sure about that?

[https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK...](https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADKADLADiAEeAExAFbAH_AJwAKXAOWAO2)

Here's a bit of one of my comments from yesterday, "For instance, the stories about Podesta's dealings in Russia [1]. This email [2] includes an attached legal bill regarding formation of Leonidio LLC. Is that not government and business corruption? 1\. [http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/how-hillarys-campaign- chief-hid-m...](http://www.wnd.com/2016/10/how-hillarys-campaign-chief-hid- money-from-russia/) 2\. [https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/13946](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/13946)

<comment><USER3> > You sure about that? [https://wikileaks.org/podesta- > emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK...](https://wikileaks.org/podesta- > emails/emailid/22030#efmABAADK..).

Ummm.... That's _two years_ after she held any kind of public office.

How is it _possibly_ "government corruption" for someone who is not a member of government to agree to meet people in order to solicit funds for their foundation? Bill Gates does this all the time, does he not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Many, but not all, of the emails about to be released would have been subject to:

1) subpoena

2) FOIA request

So Americans (either government officials or private citizens) should have had access to them anyway.

Public servants in the US make a deal: if they want control or influence over the legislative process, then they have to be willing to release their emails.

Of course -- I dislike releasing emails for purely partisan purposes or releasing emails that don't expose any wrongdoing.

But, if we do not have some sort of punishment for people who refuse to respond to subpoenas or FOIA requests, then we open the door for these rules to be ignored.

<comment><USER7> Is the Democratic National Committee held to FOIA requests? It is a private organization.

<comment><USER8> When you have an oligopoly on government, you shouldn't be counted as private anymore. Either the major political parties become publicly-owned, democratically accountable organizations, or we need to switch to proportional representation. Or both.

<comment><USER9> When you force them to record their in person meetings, they will just have extra in person meetings that they don't record.

I don't see where else the line of thinking that we deserve to have access to their email ends up, and it's pretty easy to argue that Podesta picking the brains of people he knows is not actually official party business.

<comment><USER8> _Or_ we could just repeal all the various laws advantaging the Republican and Democratic Parties over third-parties, open up local, state, and federal elections to real competition, and then let the surviving parties function as private organizations _that nobody is forced to vote for_.

My objection is that when I walk into the voting booth this November, I will be forced to vote for a Democrat. I mean this literally: most offices on my ballot will not be contested, not even by a Republican. The _most_ competitive races will have a Republican versus a Democrat, but most _actual_ races will _just_ have a Democrat. The actual decision-making for most officials who run my life was decided in the Democratic Primaries. I voted in those too, but most of _those_ weren't contested _either_.

This happens because if you're a Republican or Democrat, your party declares your candidacy and boom, you're on the ballot. If you're not, you need a signature drive to run for town dog-catcher.

I'm just saying that I want more than one choice for every election up and down the ballot, and I want the available choices determined by public support for the movement, party, or candidate, rather than by legal privileging of particular private organizations.

<comment><USER9> _Or we could just repeal all the various laws advantaging the Republican and Democratic Parties over third-parties, open up local, state, and federal elections to real competition, and then let the surviving parties function as private organizations that nobody is forced to vote for._

I say this on HN all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> this is a gorgeously written piece. The knee-jerk reactions in here that this is propaganda without merit seem to lack reading comprehension or imagination.

The piece does not say "never leak emails ever", the piece says "only link emails that are of civil interest", which is _exactly_ the position that Snowden has been espousing for some time. It says "with great power comes great responsibility", not "all hackers are bad! obey the government!"

It doubly says that if we permit all leaked emails, governments could use this against us by leaking things anonymously. The suggestion here is that honoring anonymously leaked troves of emails without considering their civil merit is itself a back door around the fourth amendment. At some point the government will anonymously leak something to wikileaks and use it against a citizen. The danger here is that were the government to effectively coop wikileaks itself, which you _think_ is anti-government, it would become a brutal and effective trojan horse. If we put blind faith in wikileaks, it will eventually be co- opted by the institutions for which it was designed to provide oversight.

This piece is a defense of your right to privacy. I'm confused as to why it's being met with such resistance here.

<comment><USER11> The faith in WikiLeaks isn't blind. It will only take one false publication to destroy its credibility.

All that matters is whether the facts published are accurate. Maligning the source (particularly on speculation) is a pre-emptive ad hominem non-sequitor.

<comment><USER12> _The faith in WikiLeaks isn 't blind. It will only take one false publication to destroy its credibility._

So, if WikiLeaks starting dumping private emails for random people, that would be acceptable because none of the information is actually false?

<comment><USER13> That's not what they said. They said a false publication would destroy its credibility. They did not say that WikiLeaks is always in the right so long as they publish accurate information.

<comment><USER14> Correct. And the parent was asking a different question.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Were we in another era, where citizens and governments acted harmoniously in the interests of the people, I would probably agree with the author. But we're not.

We're in a cold war, not with Russia or China, but with our own government, who views the citizenry as a threat pool, even when history overwhelmingly reveals that most threats to governments come from opportunists within governments, and not from plebian revolts or terrorists.

FWIW, the DNC leaks have been rather underwhelming, at best revealing that nominating a candidate for POTUS is not much different than nominating a high school class president, i.e. it's mostly an exercise in clique formation.

The author might better spend their time and energy teaching the government how to act transparently and respect privacy than trying to convince the proles their sense of payback is immoral.

</comment><comment><USER16> Let's say we want a society where civil disobedience is tolerated, but we also want to live under rule of law. To engage in civil disobedience ethically, I think one must be prepared to bear the personal consequences of breaking the law. However, when the consequences for military / intelligence community leaks are anything up to and including life in prison, or death by hanging, this forces an extreme ethical dilemma. If we value civil disobedience as a society, maybe we ought to give it some protection under the laws. Obviously we can't allow disclosure of secrets based on subjective intent. But we could offer a sort of safe harbor where, if the leaker only discloses information that pertains to government actions or policies that he or she has a bona fide belief are illegal or immoral, then the penalties are limited to X years in prison. Would this tend to encourage leaks? Yes. But, it would still require a person to make a difficult personal decision before breaking secrecy laws.

</comment><comment><USER11> >As Steven Levy has observed, this sort of leak is a digital counterpart to what had been sought by the Watergate burglars by bugging the offices of the DNC — occasioned through hacking, rather than breaking and entering. Watergate thus looms not only as an example of a cover-up that was revealed through whistleblowing — the covered-up burglary was itself a roundly-denounced, and criminal, attempt to procure a political rival's private conversations.

I'd never heard that the Nixon team planned to release their recordings to the public.

<comment><USER17> Is any invasion of privacy okay as long as the results are released to the public? I think to many people that would be even worse than only having the government snoop at their private email.

The point of whistleblowing is that you reveal actual crimes, not just sharing private conversations.

<comment><USER11> The US has a prohibition on government snooping. There is no such prohibition on private intelligence gathering; in fact, the publication of such intelligence is specifically protected.

<comment><USER18> Strange - in my state, recording a conversation without notifying the other party is a felony.

<comment><USER11> Sounds like a seriously repressive state. If the law were used, it could be invalidated as it is in violation of a person's right to make records of their observations and, especially, their right to publish those records.

<comment><USER18> Eleven states require the consent of every party to a phone call or conversation - California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington.

I've no doubt that there were plenty of constitutional challenges to the statutes, none of which were successful.

<comment><USER11> Do you know of a person serving a felony sentence for violating such law?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> One problem with selective leaking is that it tends to reduce the credibility of the leaker. If I filter the information I disclose, then inevitably it passes through the lens of my own biases and agenda. Whereas if I dump it all on w.l., that sort of signals that the info is not skewed. (This does not solve any of the ethical or moral issues raised by the author, mind you, but is a practical impediment to effectiveness of selective disclosure.)

</comment><comment><USER19> Elected officials treat honesty even in Senate hearings as optional. If we trusted them breaching their privacy wouldn't be necessary.

</comment><comment><USER20> <deleted>

<comment><USER21> That's a thread on terms of use for Tesla autopilot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Thinly veiled propaganda.

Until our government actually starts being transparent these hacks are the only insight into the actual thoughts and motivations of our world leaders.

<comment><USER6> The government reads Americans emails: "Deal with it."

Americans read the government's emails: "This is an outrage!"

<comment><USER23> You do realize that gov't emails are supposed to be public, right? That's the law.

<comment><USER6> Of course -- through FOIA and recent subpoenas -- which is why the outrage over the release of these emails is even more hypocritical

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> "But to anyone who sees civic and political participation as the most important way to advance democracy, and to beat back any capture by special interests, this is not medicine. It is poison."

Nonsense. The mass hacks have shone much-needed light into formerly dark places. It's a bit late to think civic and political participation has a chance against sentiment like this:

"And as I've mentioned, we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry", from [https://wikileaks.org/podesta- emails/emailid/3599](https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599)

<comment><USER5> I don't believe the passage you quote from supports your assertion in any way. Here it is in full:

"I'm certain the poll-directed insiders are sure things will default to policy as soon as the conventions are over, but I think not. And as I've mentioned, we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry. The unawareness remains strong but compliance is obviously fading rapidly. This problem demands some serious, serious thinking - and not just poll driven, demographically-inspired messaging."

To unpack that (along with context from the rest of the email), Podesta's correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics has begun to be covered as entertainment and celebrity gossip. He suggests that any hope that things will take a turn for the better after the election is misplaced, and that there's a larger issue: "we"—and by this he clearly means media elites, people in public office, and in general the milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy cabal of which he is a member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an informed and skeptical citizenry. He suggests that misguided attempts by the media to keep people compliant and docile have started to wear thin, but that in the absence of information and understanding all that anger is liable to attach itself to a demagogue like Donald Trump.

In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed civic and political participation! This is a perfectly anodyne line of thinking, and I don't really see what cause is served by stealing and leaking this person's private correspondence. And who is this dark and Machiavellian correspondent? This guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey)

<comment><USER24> "To unpack that, Podesta's correspondent is bemoaning the fact that politics has begun to be covered as entertainment and celebrity gossip."

I thought he was saying they've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and conspire to produce a compliant and unaware citizenry. That's what he says.

"He suggests that any hope that things will take a turn for the better after the election is misplaced, and that there's a larger issue: "we"—and by this he clearly means media elites, people in public office, and in general the milieu to which he belongs rather than some shadowy cabal of which he is a member—have not upheld their duty to help keep an informed and skeptical citizenry."

Except he says 'we've all been quite content to ... conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry', exactly the opposite meaning.

"He suggests that misguided attempts by the media to keep people compliant and docile have started to wear thin but that in the absence of information and understanding all that anger is liable to attach itself to a demagogue like Donald Trump."

Indeed.

"In short, he is advocating the exact thing mentioned in the article: informed civic and political participation!"

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.

"And who is this dark and Machiavellian correspondent? This guy: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Ivey")

So, a close confidant of the Clintons (Bill made him Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts) and with strong connections to the current Dems (team leader in Arts and Humanities for the Obama transition).

<comment><USER25> You're still dismissing the actual context of these comments and projecting your own read-between-the-lines ambiguous alternative universe in its place.

I don't think it could be much more clear that this guy thinks that media coverage has "been" (and I quote him saying "been" because he's talking in the past tense) 1) sub-par, trivialised entertainment rather than thought- provoking information 2) needs to _be_ something better in the future.

The author of this email writes books about policy and how to improve it! He's particularly interested in improving cultural and civic life. We can see quite clearly the context of his comments, and the broader context of who he is and why he's engaging in this dialog.

Or we could ignore all that and whip up a bizzarely contextless fantasy constructed around misreading the word "we" and ignoring pretty much everything else. Oh wait, I just said "we" in the previous sentence yet I don't mean myself - gee, how about that?

Worse still, I think you're actually guilty of the very problem he laments. Rather than having a dialog around politics of careful debate and fair analysis, we (again this "we" does not include me) are content to dismiss the facts, stir up fake controversy and peddle conspiracy theories and other attention-grabbing but ultimately misleading soundbites.

<comment><USER24> I don't know how it could be clearer: an academic and long-time confidant of the Clintons emails the Chairman of the 2016 Hillary Clinton Presidential Campaign and says "we've all been quite content to demean government, drop civics and in general conspire to produce an unaware and compliant citizenry." It's sparkling clear from his tone, content and personal history that he's an insider and adviser to the campaign and that this is just a run-of-the-mill email to the Chairman with his thoughts on strategy.

I don't see anything abnormal in this exchange at all: grizzled old adviser shares his thoughts on the entertainment-cum-revolution that is the Trump campaign and ruefully admits that the Dems need a rethink. And I'm not the one tying myself in angry knots trying to spin this as an innocent email encouraging greater civic participation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> this is a very good point. these e-mail leaks are really just lowering this election even further into the mud. and nothing is really gained. it's not hard to see how shitty both candidates are. this reeks of spite and frustration, like a kind of revenge-porn motivated by the frustrating situation with these candidates. while the frustration is totally legitimate, this is just mudslinging.</comment>


Show HN: Visualize a users mouse movements - <AUTHOR> http://mousejs.com

<comment><USER2> Why should I need to create an account? Just show me a demo.

<comment><AUTHOR> Working in it</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you find motivation to write blog posts? - <AUTHOR> When I'm in a discussion or commenting on an article, I always think to myself, I should write a blog post around this... but I never end up doing it. Does anyone have this problem? Any advice? <comment><USER2> One thing that bewilders me is the time commitment to writing a blog article. It seems like a lot of these high-profile developers are churning out blog posts. It takes a lot of time to write anything meaningful and coherent. It requires research and experimentation. The time to do so just isn't easy to materialize out of a busy and occupied schedule.

I would love it if developers that wrote blog posts wrote, "Don't worry, if this seems magical, it isn't. I spend weeks figuring it out and writing this all out took several days!"

My advice, to myself and you is, just open textedit/notepad, and start writing! Add a little bit and keep revising until it's publishable. It will take weeks/months but I don't think anyone will care.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _" It seems like a lot of these high-profile developers are churning out > blog posts"_

So true, the art of blogging has literally become an industry, where monetisation and consistency is valued over quality.

> _" "Don't worry, if this seems magical, it isn't. I spend weeks figuring it > out and writing this all out took several days!""_

This would be an honest depiction of a technical blog article. People don't realise how much time goes into formulating code samples, diagrams and simply making it fun to read!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you're always able to come up with topics to write on, that itself will become an excellent motivator to write more. Maybe take a step forward and imagine how you'd feel once you publish the post—the exhilarating feeling. Awesome, right?

Initially, I used to think it's not a good idea to blog if you're not saying something new. So I tried hard to come up with topics to write on, and that process consumed most of my time. And I ended up not writing anything at all.

Later I changed the way I thought about blogging.

\- Blind posts. What's obvious to you isn't obvious to others. No matter what it is about, keep writing.

\- Writing is thinking. It's the best way to become aware of your biases and ignorance. A sure shot way to improve the way you think.

\- New knowledge. What was the last thing you searched on the internet? Can you write about that?

Here are a few essays that have helped me get past my 'writing lethargy':

[https://sivers.org/nod](https://sivers.org/nod) [https://sivers.org/7](https://sivers.org/7) [https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the...](https://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/06/the_day_you_bec.html) [http://paulgraham.com/useful.html](http://paulgraham.com/useful.html)

I hope this helps. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks mate,

These are all great points, I especially like the " _What 's obvious to you isn't obvious to others_", seems like a great way to write about something is to write about immediately after you learn it, especially if it wasn't obvious before learning it.

Cheers

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Try break it down to smaller pieces, a 3000-words long blog post can be intimidating, you can try breaking it down to multi part or until tweet- length. Tweet each part first then slowly stitch them into a blog post

</comment><comment><USER5> I "blog" extensively on Facebook, but not a personal blog as those are too bothersome to set up.

What I do is simply write down notes around a problem and solution and them dump the notes on a post as briefly as possible. Usually the blogging itself is minimal effort.

Another method is just "scaling" up a conversation. People often talk frequently about the same topics, like tips on how to start freelancing, how to scale up a startup, and the answers are often the same but take minutes to type up each time. For this, it's useful to just write it once and then expand in full in a blog.

I recommend not trying to keep to a regular schedule of blogging, because this will force you to write sloppy, unless you're doing constant experiments on a topic and want to post updates.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is interestingly _against_ what people usually recommend. Usually people say _" create you own blog"_ and " _keep to a regular schedule_ ", I suppose that's to grow an audience for monetisation strategies... which isn't everyone's top priority

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think there's four things I suggest you consider.

1\. Writing is thinking [1][2][3]

There are a number of articles that explain this concept better than I can here, but assuming you understand the idea, I'll continue.

The next time you're thinking about some problem, try to write your thoughts and reasoning down as notes. Your writing should be an extension of reasoning, and help formulate and refine your ideas. Whether your notes are on paper or by pixel shouldn't matter, but just get your ideas down. Next, order these ideas by logical progression: maybe one concept leads you to the next, so order them in that progression. Finally, make sure the links between each idea are not leaps in thought but rather fluid and clear progressions. Fill in the gaps as necessary.

Now you should have an outline for your article. At this point, I've found it's more or less a matter of expanding on and explaining each idea more thoroughly. Of course, the hook and conclusion are less well-defined.

For me, if it's really something I care about writing a post about, I've found I've already done the note-taking part at least. After that, the post seems to write itself.

If you don't already take notes or use writing to help you think, I recommend taking this as a first step to helping you write your blog posts. I personally prefer pen and paper, since I can still keep the mistakes around!

2\. Write for yourself

Assume no one is going to read your article, at first. Write the article that you would enjoy reading, had you found it on the internet. If you chase external gratifications like writing for others' approval or maybe view counts, your consistency and follow-through will suffer. If you write for your own satisfaction, regardless of whether or not anyone will ever read it, you probably have a better chance of finishing the piece. Because it's what you really want to do! Try not to think about how many hits your article will or won't get, or whether or not people will like it. That stuff comes later.

When you write something for yourself, the care and attention you give it will definitely show. I'm sure you've heard of the idea that internal motivation is generally stronger than external kinds.

Once you've come up with something you're reasonably satisfied with, send it to your friends and family to read over and edit. Maybe ask people you respect (and trust) in the community to help you edit your posts before publication (if correctness about your ideas is something you're really worried about). Just because you wrote something for yourself does not mean it's perfect and exempt from criticism.

3\. Write the poetry later

If you struggle as I do with making each sentence "perfect" before moving onto the next, know that you're not alone. But sometimes it's just best to write the ideas down, get the meat of the content written out and explained, and then come back later to frame it as a story. Maybe this is a matter of 'do as I say, and not as I do' ;)

4\. Consistency is a consequence of planning

If you don't set aside time in your day to write or do your thinking, kiss your chances goodbye. Treat it like a side-project, or better yet your job, to write this blog post. Set reasonable goals for yourself, just like you would with a software project. Start small, by writing your thoughts down and ordering them like I mentioned above. Always keep in mind why you're writing the post in the first place!

I hope that helped in some way.

[1] [[https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/writing-is-thinking- an...](https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/writing-is-thinking-an-annotated- twitter-thread-2a75fe07fade\]\(https://medium.learningbyshipping.com/writing- is-thinking-an-annotated-twitter-thread\))

[2] [[https://boz.com/articles/writing- thinking](https://boz.com/a...](https://boz.com/articles/writing- thinking\]\(https://boz.com/articles/writing-thinking\))

[3] [[https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with- confidence...](https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with- confidence/\]\(https://blog.stephsmith.io/learning-to-write-with- confidence/\))

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks so much for the detailed response. That's all great advice.

I especially like " _1\. Writing is thinking_ ", I've always thought of blog posts to be like story-telling, but for many technical blog-posts story- telling doesn't work. I guess just explaining the idea logically is a much better approach... (I can't believe how obvious this sounds)

<comment><USER7> Simon Peyton-Jones expands on the GP's 1st point – that you don't afterwards write up your 'research' (i.e. anything you are thinking about/learning/doing etc), but before, during, after - the writing guides, informs, directs what you learn, every step of the way:

 _How to Write a Great Research Paper_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK51E3gHENc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VK51E3gHENc)

Most of that applies to all kinds of non-fiction writing I think. A lot of it's common-sense principles that sound obvious, but most people don't actually follow, so their writing isn't great. If you loved that, you'll also like his _How To Give a Great Research Talk_ [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT_- owjKIbA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT_-owjKIbA)

Also.. Sacha Chua's wonderful _No-Excuses Guide to Blogging_ is wise and inspiring. [https://sachachua.com/sharing/pdfs/2014-02-14%20A%20No- Excus...](https://sachachua.com/sharing/pdfs/2014-02-14%20A%20No- Excuses%20Guide%20to%20Blogging%20-%20Sacha%20Chua%20v4.pdf)</comment></comment></comment>


1 in 3 Facebook users spending less time on the site - <AUTHOR> http://asia.cnet.com/1-in-3-users-are-tuning-out-facebook-62216195.htm

<comment><USER2> Curious choice of title since it doesn't really tell if Facebook is doing better or worse (although the tone hints worse). It could as well mean 70% of users are using it more.

From the article we see that the actual results are: \- 34% use FB less than year ago \- 20% use FB more than year ago \- around 50% use as much as before</comment>


The Internet Freedom Amendment: Open Source Legislation - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/zorzllc/InternetFreedomAmendment

<comment><USER2> For one: _linking should not be a crime_ , under any circumstance, even if we're dealing with child pornography. If that's the case then their job should be to actually catch the people making child pornography, and not just take down their website, which would be easy to move anyway.

<comment><AUTHOR> good point, adding to the readme.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> This should be about telecommunication in general, rather than just the internet. Imagine if they passed a constitutional amendment that only regulated telegraph machines.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm trying to word it for the Internet + other stuffs :)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Please use comments in reply to this one to discuss the actual text of the amendment and how to get it moving if you are interested :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Just added a first draft of the amendment.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I've just picked up OpenSourceLegislation.org & .net so this can have an official home.</comment>


Tesla confirms having produced its 300,000th electric car - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/02/14/tesla-delivered-300000th-vehicle/ <comment><USER2> I know we can't and shouldn't compare Tesla's production to traditional car production, but just to put the numbers into perspective:

Toyota produces that many cars every 11 days. VW is about the same. Not electric cars of course, but I don't have numbers for these.

<comment><USER3> I think the point is that Tesla has the potential to grow its sales much faster than Toyota or VW. Tesla will probably never be a brand like VW or Toyota. If they succeed they are more likely to be like BMW. And to put this into perspective, they have sold as many cars as Rolls-Royce would in 100 years.*

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls- Royce_Motor_Cars#Sales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls- Royce_Motor_Cars#Sales)

<comment><USER2> Good point, Tesla doesn't need to be the next Toyota to be successful. I still think they have a long way to go to even get into BMW range. 300000 cars takes BMW (including Brilliance) only 39 days.

100% agree what you said about sales, especially because of Tesla's own dealerships which let them avoid entrenched distribution channels.

Nice find about Rolls-Royce, by the way.

<comment><USER4> Cars sit idle 95% of the time, and 17.2 million new cars are sold every year.

If self driving comes sooner vs later, do we need 17 million new cars a year? Probably not.

<comment><USER5> the wealthy will likely want the creature comforts a personal vehicle affords.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It will be interesting to see the long-tail on Tesla production and sales. If they can get through their ramp up difficulties on Model 3 and get to making a profit per vehicle sold they might have incredible staying power over the long term, and they'll only get better at production over time.

Their strategy of branding their cars primarily as the model (i.e. S, X, 3) vs 2018 Tesla Model S makes them fairly timeless.

</comment><comment><USER2> The page shows an ad[1] that says:

        Tesla referral code
        Use it to buy Tesla's Model S or Model X

[1] [https://weinzierl.keybase.pub/2018/tesla- referral.png](https://weinzierl.keybase.pub/2018/tesla-referral.png)

<comment><USER7> People have bought billboards in SF for this: [https://www.instagram.com/p/9fu3Adr-0o/](https://www.instagram.com/p/9fu3Adr-0o/)

<comment><USER8> I like the poor quality English: "Save $1000 off."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This doesn't break out US sales vs foreign, but if we assume 2/3 of the vehicles are sold in the US, that means they just hit their 200,000 car limit for the tax credit, or are just about to.

If they are clever they'll try to make car 200,000 roll out just after April 1, to push it into Q2, giving them six months more of the credit.

But it definitely means that a lot of Model 3 buyers are gonna get screwed as they push the delivery of the cheap model 3 out to 2019, as those are the people who were most likely counting on the $7,500 when they pre-ordered.

<comment><USER10> Tesla just started to ship the Model 3 to Canada - probably to time hitting the 200.000 car limit in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I have a feeling that Tesla isn't going to move towards a four day work week :-(

</comment><comment><USER12> This article doesn't include numbers for the Roadster.

<comment><USER13> They built about 2,500 Roadsters.

<comment><USER14> The roadster was a lotus elise based kit car they electrified</comment></comment></comment>


Fab 2011 Timeline - <AUTHOR> http://betashop.com/post/14922552391/fab-2011-timeline

<comment><USER2> Like the passion and openness from Jason & team, great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone spot the miracle function?

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm not crazy about how this site requires an email address simply to see what's on offer. But they do tend to have good stuff, and Mailinator works as always.

<comment><USER5> Likewise, though their mobile app appears to let you see the products without signing in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big Like for the fastest growing company ever. Great passion and emotions...gotta love them</comment>


More startups are opting for "second" seed rounds - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/956517/silicon-valley-startups-are-rediscovering-the-benefits-of-being-profitable/ <comment><USER2> Article seems to have little relation to the title.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. But it's hilarious anyway.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I can see the flip side to that argument when you're pitching which is that if you're profitable, then you're probably not investing aggressively enough in growth/bets. Consider public companies that pay dividends; that's basically excess operating profit that they couldn't think of a better way to use (capital investment, etc.).

</comment><comment><USER5> literally just a filler piece surrounding a chart.

</comment><comment><USER6> "money" \- turns out it's not so bad; who knew?

</comment><comment><USER7> The title is a bit misleading. The article discusses the notable increase of 2nd-stage seed rounds, as the bar for Series A funding is getting higher.

In some sense, reminds me a bit of academia, where in the past couple decades it has become common for aspiring faculty to complete a second post-doc position because of too many rising post-docs competing over too-few open faculty appointments.</comment>


How a movie changed one man's vision (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120719-awoken-from-a-2d-world

<comment><USER2> >"It turns out that the one-eyed view of the world is deceptive," says McKee. If you ask people with normal stereovision to close one eye and judge the position of objects along the line of sight, they are terribly imprecise, even if they shake their heads to create motion parallax.

Wouldn't you expect people to do better with the vision strategy they've used their entire life? Isn't it better to compare people with normal stereovision and people who are stereoblind?

It's like complaining that rifles aren't accurate, because expert archers hit more targets with bow and arrow.

</comment><comment><USER3> "According to the Nobel Prize-winning research from David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel in the 1960s, the brain may only have a short window of opportunity in which to develop binocular vision. These doors close early – at the end of childhood – after which people are locked into a two-dimensional world."

What factors would prevent someone from developing 3D vision? The article mentions overlapping images, but how would this manifest itself?

<comment><USER4> One way this can happen is due to strabismus, which is a condition in which one's eyes can't converge on the same gaze point. It's often caused by problems with the extraocular muscles, which move the eyes.

This reduces the brain's access to parallax information contained in image pairs that have the same gaze point in common and differ mainly due to the displacement of each eye from the other.

Hubel and Wiesel showed that depriving cats of stereo cues during a critical period prevented development of depth perception based on parallax info. It may be similar for humans.

<comment><USER5> Lack of certain kind of stimulation can cause that. After 15 years of trying to play music I "tangibly" perceive harmonies I didn't even knew were there before.

Also had a similar shocking sudden brain change in october 2013.

I wish I had an MRI on my head during that month.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book "Fixing My Gaze" by Susan Barry details her journey to to gaining stereo vision for the first time at age 50.</comment>


Game Theory and the Startup Valuation Game - <AUTHOR> http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/200/Lessons-from-MIT-Game-Theory-and-The-Startup-Valuation-Game.aspx <comment><AUTHOR> Answer can be found at this URL: [http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/198/Game-Theory-and- Sof...](http://onstartups.com/tabid/3339/bid/198/Game-Theory-and-Software- Startups-Part-II.aspx)

While I'm not sure that I buy the author's advice, I have been thinking about ways in which founders can think outside the box in attracting funding and signaling as part of negotiating a funding round - if they want to go the VC route.

Obviously a huge part of getting the highest valuation and the best terms out of a VC round rest on how the founders can directly sell investors on the prospects for their business by talking about the technology, market, financials/projections, etc...

But negotiating a funding round is still just that - a negotiation. Professional investors are well-aware of this and are strategic negotiators. From the founder side, I see much less of the type of strategic negotiation thinking than I do on the investor side.

Curious if other agree or disagree.</comment>


The Persistence Layer with Spring Data JPA - <AUTHOR> http://www.baeldung.com/2011/12/22/the-persistence-layer-with-spring-data-jpa/ Persistence with Spring 3.1 and Spring Data JPA. Focuses on removing the DAO implementation, manual and automatic custom queries, transactions with Spring Data and configuration. <comment><USER2> I'm currently using spring data jpa for data access nd am really loving the vastly reduced boilerplate code that needs to be written. Would highly recommend to anyone who needs to implement a repository and is using spring and jpa.</comment>


WikiLeaks Won't Tell Tech Companies How to Patch CIA Zero-Days - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/wikileaks-wont-tell-tech-companies-how-to-patch-cia-zero-days-until-its-demands-are-met <comment><USER2> The failing Vice was ordered to make WikiLeaks look bad and this is the best they could do. They're essentially saying don't whistleblow unless you also provide a solution. They're really grasping at straws here.

<comment><USER3> > failing Vice

Is that a tongue-in-cheek jibe at Trump? It's hard to know if Trump is for or against wikileaks now. They were BFFs, but now wikileaks has been accused of treason by Fox news. Or does that mean they're still in Trump's good books because he hates the CIA? It's all very confusing.

>They're essentially saying don't whistleblow unless you also provide a solution

No, they're just reporting the facts that tech companies have been promised details of the hacks, but haven't received anything yet (other than demands).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Damn YOU Wikileaks!!! My stove stopped working AFTER you released that report about sub par manufacturing procedures that may cause goods to fail prematurely, and showed that this was intentionally orchestrated by the top officials of the company that made the stove! WHY DID"NT YOU FIX MY STOVE FOR ME!!!!</comment>


Microsoft to pay out 'billions' as part of Nokia deal - <AUTHOR> http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9209259/Microsoft_to_pay_out_billions_as_part_of_Nokia_deal

<comment><USER2> The assumption is that people who have purchased Nokia phones in the past will continue to purchase Nokia phones with Microsoft software on them.

Marketing will sell a few. Brand loyalty a few more... but if MS fails to deliver compelling software or Nokia fails to deliver compelling hardware, they aren't the third horse in the iOS / Android race. They are nothing.

Combining two companies that have failed to prove themselves in the smartphone market doesn't make a great smartphone.

<comment><USER3> I don't want to say neither Microsoft or Nokia can deliver a top-notch smartphone experience. I am, however, highly doubtful they will, for both have been trying to do it for quite some time now and without much success.

The fact is neither has much to show. Why would someone believe that, together, they can pull this off is a mystery to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Microsoft really needs this to work. As mobile phones get more powerful, they have the potential to replace desktop and laptop computers. Imagine using a dock to use a full monitor, keyboard, and mouse on your mobile phone. Why would most people then need a Windows computers? They wouldn't.

<comment><USER5> I really don't understand how easily everyone discards laptop computers. Do you think I will write code on ipads/mobile phones using the virtual keyboard whenever I step outside my house? No thanks.

<comment><USER6> You wouldn't, I wouldn't, but we are at the extreme right end of the spectrum. Most people don't have nearly as high requirements as we do, nor do they have the same skills we have.

So don't base your guesses for the future on what you need. Base them on what your mother needs (unless she is Admiral Grace Hopper).

<comment><USER7> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVMPd0zl-_Y>

This sums up the average computer user. If iOS can handle their email/office needs there isn't anything stopping them from using a blue tooth keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I don't think Elop was speaking about actual money changing hands when he spoke of "monetary value".

Check the Reuters news report: [http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/13/us- mobile-fair-nok...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/02/13/us-mobile-fair- nokia-money-idUSTRE71C2B220110213)

<comment><USER9> I take that to mean that MS bought Nokia as a WP7 OEM with an added Maps service without buying through normal means of company assets, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I am wondering how different it would have been if Nokia went the Android way. I don't think Google would have offered the billions to Nokia though!

</comment><comment><USER10> It's a buyout! Without having to involve those pesky governments!

</comment><comment><USER3> I would use WP7. It all depends on how much would Microsoft pay me for it...</comment>


Five.js gives you five - <AUTHOR> https://five.js.org/ <comment><USER2> Please can you make the async version return a Promise. It's 2017 for cryin' out loud!

five.asPromised?

<comment><USER3> Yes, please, it's 2017, nobody wants to block all I/O waiting for an int.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> So, I realize this is a joke, but there's a small silver lining here IMO. This is potentially an interesting way to illustrate to new or non-programmers just how many ways there are to slice any problem. If 5 can be creatively represented so many ways, imagine how many ways a more complex business problem can be implemented?

</comment><comment><USER5> I did not know you could get an [https://<your-project>.js.org](https://<your- project>.js.org) address for free, thanks! `high ${five()}!`

<comment><USER6> You could have used five.high() here ;)

<comment><USER7>
        five.tooSlow();

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Finally, a worthwhile JavaScript library.

</comment><comment><USER9> related:

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji- anchor](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-anchor)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-100](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-100)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji- clap](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-clap)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-badminton-racquet-and- sh...](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-badminton-racquet-and-shuttlecock)

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-black-left-pointing- doub...](https://www.npmjs.com/package/emoji-black-left-pointing-double- triangle-with-vertical-bar)

...I'm sure you get the idea

</comment><comment><USER10> I know some people who write excellent JS libraries, submit their work on GitHub, post their work on HackerNews and others and get either unnoticed or collect a handful of stars. It's sad to see that five.js has more than 800 stars on GitHub and it's documented like if it was of any value

<comment><USER11> It's got 800 stars because it's funny. And it's documented seriously because, if it wasn't, it wouldn't be as funny.

<comment><USER12> You are right. People tend to think of these unfunny things as funny. That's why 9gag and other services are crowded with people making and sharing mostly idiot jokes.

<comment><USER13> >People tend to think of these unfunny things as funny.

Humor is entirely subjective. If someone thinks it's funny then, by definition, it's funny.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> "Elvish" is Quenya; Sindarin is unrepresented. This must not stand.

[https://github.com/jackdcrawford/five/pull/332](https://github.com/jackdcrawford/five/pull/332)

</comment><comment><USER12> Ok, this is a joke. But why? Why would someone waste so much time just to make a stupid joke like this? The left-pad as a service joke at least had some context.

<comment><USER14> IMO you don't need a reason for something like this, it's just fun. We all spend a lot of time solving problems with software and I believe most of us neglect that you can make stuff just to make stuff. I wrote an angular directive that prints out ascii butts: [https://www.npmjs.com/package/pw- butts](https://www.npmjs.com/package/pw-butts), I doubt anyone will use it for anything, but I enjoyed making it and it's fun that it exists. If it helps, think of it as "Art".

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Are there Typescript definitions?

</comment><comment><USER16> How come

      five.english() // Five

But

      five.french() // cinq

(lower case)?

</comment><comment><USER17> I'd name it a polymorphic five?</comment>


Today's college kids lack empathy - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37399539/ns/health-behavior/

<comment><USER2> Well, they've been raised by a generation that doesn't understand the concept. How is this surprising?</comment>


Things I've Learned About How to Build Good Product - <AUTHOR> http://peternixey.com/post/60271073987/things-ive-learned-about-how-to-build-good-product

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a hell of a slide deck, the dumping of serious amount of experience, there's some great nuggets in here too.

The only thing I would long for when decks are this long is a page that is a bit like a transcript, that lays out all of the key points.

I do like consuming things slow so that they sink in, but then I also like being able to search them quickly in the future.

<comment><USER2> Thanks David. I agree (esp about the nuggets obv ;) It's a slog going through slide decks and on the few occasions that people have uploaded videos it's hard to make the time to watch them. Is there a "Pocket for Video"?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Contract or not to contract? - <AUTHOR> I currently have a permanent web developer job which pays £2.3k per month after taxes (£37k per year before taxes). I have never done any contracting and not really attracted to setting up my own company, however I heard about possibility of working under an umbrella company. By my rough estimate I think I could get a job which pays from £300-£350 per day, and after calculating Net pay on some of the umbrella websites it looks like I could get something from 3.6k - 4k.
Can somebody who has been in a similar situation advice, whether I should jump ships? I know this is quite abstract question, but I have no idea what questions should I ask in order to help myself to decide whether I should start contracting or not.
Thanks <comment><USER2> Setting up a limited company isn't that hard, and only costs a few hundred quid. Get something like FreeAgent and the book-keeping is fairly straightforward as well. You'll also need an accountant.

If you apply for a contract role, you can wait until you get accepted before creating your company etc. You can typically turn that round much faster than the typical company's contractor onboarding process (i.e. less than a week).

I started contracting about 4 years ago after 15 years as a permie and I love it. Greater variety of roles, much better money, no crap like appraisals or objectives etc etc.

</comment><comment><USER3> HMRC sees umbrella companies as potentially dodgy. Wikipedia has a good overview here: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Umbrella_company)

You don't just jump ships, you build your business on the side, then decrease the number of hours at your full time job.

Don't forget pension contributions.

</comment><comment><USER4> The rule of thumb was if your earnings are over £30K per annum, you set up your own company. Otherwise you stick with an umbrella company.

Finding a good accountant is the first thing you should do if you go by setting up your own company. They know the tricks and pitfalls, and are worth every penny.

</comment><comment><USER5> as others have said, earning 300-350 per day sounds great, but you need to factor in any "perks" your fulltime job has that contracting can't offer - pension contributions (start making your own) hardware (buy your own machine + software etc), training, paid holidays etc.

You will also find that some contracts are working on fucked projects where contractors are hired as a last resort/scapegoat and the work will be "get this done fast" rather than any quality product being delivered. Not saying it's all like that, but prepared to be jaded if you do this long term

</comment><comment><USER6> I've had both good and bad experiences contracting.

Good Experiences:

* Variety of work. I've done contracting work from writing sophisticated parsers to financial computations to high-precision arithmetic libraries.

* The pay can often be better. Dollar for dollar, I've made as much as 75% more by contracts.

* If you're an excellent worker, you can develop many good connections.

* Contract work can sometimes lead to very good full-time positions. Sometimes known as "contract-to-hire", an employer might decide they want to keep you on board. (Unfortunately, your pay will almost surely decrease in exchange for stability.)

* Often you can work in the comfort of your own home on mostly your own time. Usually you're under no obligation to work a specific set of hours during the day at a specific location. All of my contract work has been remote.

Bad Experiences:

* Often don't feel a part of the company you're working for. Often feel excluded.

* Time tracking (if hourly based, which it often is) is annoying. Some services make this a lot easier, but it's still a pain to clock in and clock out every single time.

* Short to medium term contracting means you need to constantly be on the lookout for work. This, in turn, means you need to dedicate a good portion of your time applying for places and seeing who wants you.

* (In the USA) Have to deal with taxes. You might be getting paid $X but you must remember to reserve a portion of that to pay off later.

* Typically no benefits, like health insurance. This may be less of an issue outside of the USA.

* Not all employers are as nice as they seem. I have had my contract work terminated a month early because I finished a month ahead of time. They said I had no other work I could do to bill them for. Depending on where you live, a month of unexpected loss of life support can mean a lot. For me personally, it about drained what I saved up during the term.

* Short term contract work can sometimes look poor on your resume/CV. Even though any reasonable person understands what contract work is, seeing many companies on one's resume can often give the impression of lack of loyalty and lack of determination.

The Bottom Line

For me personally, I prefer full-time work, only because it is much more stable and I don't have to seek out work later. If you have significant delays between contract, and depending on where you live, your money supply starts depleting fast. While it's enticing to get paid, say, $6000 a month, if you have a 3 month delay between contracts, and each month you have $3000 in expenses, then your effective annual income is decreased by $9,000.

<comment><USER7> I contracted for over a decade and I think this is pretty spot on.

I'd also note that there is no career progression. You can contract and grab lucrative low hanging fruit immediately, or work perm and build a career that may be more rewarding in the future.</comment></comment>


Stables and Volatiles (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/#:~:text=Volatiles%20believe%20Stables%20are%20fat,company%20or%20product%20be%20damned. <comment><AUTHOR> I feel this is an interesting and a rather stake on the innovation / startup aspects.

I got reminded of this Rand's blog post after PG's blog post and its comments, and also after the why companies stop innovating article.

It seems that there is a contradiction between people who are very high on openness (the personality traits) and people, who are very low on openness and also high on risk aversion and orderliness (as pointed out in Rand's article).

I feel it's still less about good vd bad, but more about explorative vs optimizing & conforming tendencies as in Rands post. The same topic has been also discussed multiple times before, once with pioneers, settlers and town planners article.

While there are obviously risks in the conformism going wild / aggressive, in general it strikes me that Rands is right in the sense that you need both 'explorers' and 'optimizers' in any successful organization.</comment>


A Visit to a Synthetic Cadaver Factory - <AUTHOR> http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/syndaver-labs-synthetic-cadavers-tour <comment><USER2> > SynDaver employees like to create monsters from dried out, damaged parts in > the finishing room.

This sounds like a fun place to work

</comment><comment><USER3> They might as well start making their tissues functional, and, bit by bit, build towards synthetic humans that can be used as very lifelike robots. Or why not grow actual organs and put them in?

<comment><USER4> The need for all the support "machinery"? Lymphatic system to dispose of waste, vascular system to pipe food and oxygen, oxygenation for the blood, glucose production, hydration, temperature regulation... These are hard to implement because the scale from the macro to the micro - from inches in diameter to microns.

<comment><USER5> woah there, why don't you slow down on the hard science and just let me enjoy West World over here?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> So these have to be kept in water when they're not being used? Isn't that messy/inconvenient?

<comment><USER7> Compared to real cadaver labs? No, not at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about the intricate cellular dynamics of tissue growth? Wouldn't the "proprietary formula of salt, water, and fibers" fail to replicate a set of some [at least observable] macroscopic effects, thus limiting the overall experience deepness for the practioner?

</comment><comment><USER9> > I can't tell you how many investors have insisted that we start making sex > dolls

I wonder if they could at least sell components. The artificial skin in particular sounds like it could be worthwhile on its own, though maintenance could be tricky.

</comment><comment><USER10> _At first glance, the price seems prohibitive compared to a real cadaver_

That was not my reaction. But then, i guess i haven't gone cadaver-shopping recently. What's the going rate?

</comment><comment><USER11> ...going to be useful on Halloween!

<comment> m-p-3 A "little" above my budget ;)</comment></comment>


Airtable raises $185M and launches new low-code and automation features - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2020/09/14/airtable-raises-185m-and-launches-new-low-code-and-automation-features/ <comment><USER2> How does Airtable compare to Notion? What are the features that they have in common?

<comment><USER3> Airtable is a glorified spreadsheet. Notion is a glorified wiki.

<comment><USER4> What's Coda, by these analogies?

<comment><USER5> Glorified markdown

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> $2.585 billion for a spread sheet company? yikes

<comment><USER7> Definitely used as a 'better spreadsheet' by some, but also used as a no/low code app builder by many

[https://blog.airtable.com/airtable-platform-launch- automatio...](https://blog.airtable.com/airtable-platform-launch-automations- sync-apps/)

<comment><USER8> Still lackluster compared to excel + powerapps + powerautomate</comment></comment></comment>


Traveling to the Sun: Why Won't Parker Solar Probe Melt? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2018/traveling-to-the-sun-why-won-t-parker-solar-probe-melt <comment><USER2> Towards the end, it says:

> "After launch, Parker Solar Probe will detect the position of the Sun, align > the thermal protection shield to face it and continue its journey for the > next three months, embracing the heat of the Sun and protecting itself from > the cold vacuum of space."

What a phenomenal piece of engineering! The article was not only fascinating to read as a non-astronomer/lay person, but it also makes it all look like child's play, the way they decided what materials to use and how.

> "And to withstand that heat, Parker Solar Probe makes use of a heat shield > known as the Thermal Protection System, or TPS, which is 8 feet (2.4 meters) > in diameter and 4.5 inches (about 115 mm) thick."

So is someone going to be bothering someone else about TPS Reports [1] over the expected seven year span of this probe? Sorry, I couldn't resist making that reference! :)

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

<comment><USER3> Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't space actually not cold at all -- there's barely any matter there to have a temperature?

<comment><USER4> Good question. How does heat radiation work in space?

Seems the answer is that you don't need matter for heat radiation.

<comment><USER5> Convection doesn't work in space, so you only lose heat to radiation.

Space is cold, but it doesn't feel cold.

<comment><USER6> (Natural) convection doesn't work in free-fall. That includes the Vomit Comet[1], the ISS, the Apollo capsule between the Earth and the Moon, and so on.

Fans/blowers can drive covection artificially, though.

Convection (natural or artificial) doesn't work in the absence of a convecting fluid, even when not in free-fall.

Definitely not space: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdJwG_9kF8s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdJwG_9kF8s) from about the 3 min 40 second mark.

(FWIW, the slinky stuff is also really cool; weight -- in the contact[1] sense but not in the _mg_ sense -- is dissipational, and it's nice to see that demonstrated, so I'm glad your comment caught my attention.)

> space does not feel cold

If any part of you which you expose to space (if it's shielded from solar heating, etc.) is moist -- your skin, your eyes, your tongue, the insides of your nose -- you will feel that part getting cold very quickly thanks to evaporative cooling, which works very well in free-fall and in the absence of a convecting fluid.

\- --

[1] [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Weight/whatIsW...](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/Weight/whatIsWeight.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not a rocket scientist, but this article is very well written for an audience with a minimal understanding of Physics and Chemistry. Articles like these help high school students realise that what they're learning now is not really a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER8> Dad joke: "They'll go at night"

But really, it's cool that they're using carbon-carbon protection similar to that which was originally developed for the leading edges of the Space Shuttle. And I really want to know how they built foamed carbon for the interior.

I'm guessing that they're using white ceramic paint on top instead of a reflective foil shield (like the Webb uses) because the foil would be shredded by the solar particles.

<comment><USER9> I'm curious about the foam, too. Normally, foam contains a lot of air. But that kind of foam will blow itself apart in a vacuum. How do they make foam where all the air pockets are replaced with vacuum? Is vacuum-filled foam a better or worse insulator than air-filled foam?

<comment><USER10> _Normally, foam contains a lot of air. But that kind of foam will blow itself apart in a vacuum._

In the video, Thermal Protection System Engineer Betsy Congdon says it's 97% "air."

I can't say whether it's actually air, or she's simplifying things for the general public or not.

She also says twice that "water" is used in the radiators. But I'd have to believe that NASA's using something that absorbs/dissipates heat a little more efficiently. Perhaps whatever it is will end up in desktop gaming rig cooling systems eventually.

<comment><USER11> They used deionized water, not unusual for gaming rigs either.

The temperature range is about 15C to 125C, at high pressure this is most ideal for use with water and water itself is a rather good coolant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The part of the answer here that NASA always seems to skip (perhaps because it's not as fun as talking about all the cool heat-resistant technology) is that the vehicle is in an orbit that will only take it into the corona for a short time. While the closest approach is _very_ close, its aphelion is (at closest) about the orbit of Venus. This gives it time to cool down after each corona encounter.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMNQeCWT09A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMNQeCWT09A)

<comment><USER13> Thank you. I was wondering just this.

Heat resistant material will eventually reach equilibrium where the back side is almost as hot as the front side unless it's cooled somehow.

<comment><USER14> Also, the cool side of the craft will stay cool by radiating its heat away into space.

<comment><USER15> Is there a limit to the amount of heat a body of space can transmit via black- body radiation? I wonder if the performance of the heat transfer is going to be a useful measurement for science on this mission. I would think so. I just can't help but wonder how much heat an area of space near a star can have added to it. Is it infinite? Is the limit so high that it's far beyond even the atmosphere of a sun? And are there special areas of space where the heat limit has reached its maximum and if so what does that mean for the properties of that space?

<comment><USER12> The limit is based on your radiators, how much "empty" sky you can point them at, and how hot you can get them. Those are all fairly finite. Space being vacuum, there's no particular "amount of heat" it can hold, when you radiate heat it just goes away. But there is a difference in bodies that can send heat to you.

In space, most of the environment is "cold" in that there's not much energy coming from it, so if you show the distant stars a hot radiator, it'll cool off pretty well, because it's all send and no receive. But nearby bodies are different: Earth is approximately room temperature (and in low Earth orbit takes up quite a bit of the sky); the Sun is pretty hot, for a much smaller portion of the sky (depending on your distance.)

If you're not near a planet, and you can reflect away most sunlight, you get pretty cold. See James Webb Space Telescope or anything else with sun shades, including the PSP.

The corona will change this a little, because it's a somewhat denser plasma than usual, but not by much. It'll still be a question of radiator size and heat, which is fairy easy to calculate.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> >This all has to happen without any human intervention, so the central computer software has been programmed and extensively tested to make sure all corrections can be made on the fly.

I'd love to get some deeper insight into how NASA writes and tests software, I can only guess it's a million miles from how most of us work. Anyone know of any good talks, articles from engineers there?

<comment><USER17> The part that I find the most intriguing is "corrections can be made on the fly".

I can see how you would ensure reliability through proper requirements specification, a good software development process, separate independent implementations and extensive verification.

However, every time I read a popsci article about space flight software, they talk about this capability to push new code to the spacecraft while it is in flight.

I'm really curious to learn what this looks like in practice (technical details). Do they really have the ability to do an "ad-hoc" upload and execution of arbitrary code on these systems? If so, how are the ad-hoc programs tested and verified?

<comment><USER18> There is usually a piece of software running on the machine which basically just does this - allows you to command an image upload to the SSD, do a checksum of the file, then install it if all goes well. There is also usually a simpler version of the software on a redundant SSD or partition which the onboard computer will install if it detects that the software that is currently installed is malfunctioning.

My understanding is that some spacecraft launch with beta/alpha equivalent software. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the rovers do this, with simple software installed first, then more complicated versions installed once they know everything is working.

It's somewhat similar to updating your iphone, but instead you use a huge dish to do the transmission and the bitrate is pretty horrendous.

I'm going to need a definition of "ad-hoc" here; no-one "deploys straight to production" on a spacecraft. Any patches have to be thoroughly tested on simulators and models of the spacecraft on earth before they are transmitted.

<comment><USER17> Thanks for the reply! So what you're saying is that it's just a "normal" over- the-air software update. I.e. you add some new functionality and then do a full system test of all functions of the software before replacing the entire image?

That makes sense, but is almost a bit disappointing. After all, that is exactly how it works for the boring systems here on earth. From various wired & co articles I had the impression that there was possibly something more; a mechanism that would allow users to send elaborate "commands" to the spacecraft to perform "ad-hoc" tasks at runtime. (What I mean by "ad-hoc" tasks are tasks that are unknown at the time of validation/testing of the software.)

<comment><USER18> Yes, we can send commands to the spacecraft once it's up there to do thing like modify memory or hard drive contents directly, turn on/off or command payloads and equipment. The full list is pretty exhaustive - anything you could want to be able to do, you can command manually. These things aren't 100% autonomous (though they have autonomous elements in the software).

There is also a way to send pre-programmed task lists to them which are executed sequentially, with delays if necessary.

That kind of thing is in the hands of operations, so it's not usually the job of the software team to test in the normal manner.

<comment><USER17> Very interesting! Is this kind of command capability (e.g. ability to modify memory contents) something that is usually only available on "non-critical" subsystems, or would you generally expect to also find it on critical components, like the communication or navigation modules?

<comment><USER18> The ability to modify memory contents is pretty much universal; you can modify things like eeprom contents, the RAM, hard drive, etc. There is no differentiation between critical and non-critical; it's all just fairly critical.

Ground won't send telecommands to a spacecraft to modify a piece of memory without knowing exactly what they're doing first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > If Earth was at one end of a yard-stick and the Sun on the other, Parker > Solar Probe will make it to within four inches of the solar surface.

91cm and 10cm, to save anyone else doing the conversion. Also, it seems to understate the closeness: Closest approach is 6.1 million km, which is 1/24th of 1 astronomical unit, but four inches is 1/9th of a yard-stick.

</comment><comment><USER20> >Another challenge came in the form of the electronic wiring — most cables would melt from exposure to heat radiation at such close proximity to the Sun. To solve this problem, the team grew sapphire crystal tubes to suspend the wiring, and made the wires from niobium.

are these wires on the outside of the spacecraft? but what about the silicon of all the electronic stuff that this thing must be keeping? The cooling surface would also get a bit hot (it would always get some more energy at some rate), so how does the coolant transmit any heat away from the probe?

<comment><USER21> Melting points: sapphire - 3,722°F (2,050°C) niobium - 4,491°F (2,477°C)

<comment><USER22> Importantly, they likely have very different thermal conductivity and and specific heats. They probably also need to have reasonably similar thermal expansion coefficients so heating and cooling cycles do not cause them to strain and break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> As I understand, temperature is a measure of how fast atoms and molecules are vibrating, and not a measure of how much energy per unit area of contact can be transferred in a unit time.

<comment><USER24> Exactly. Stick your hand into an oven at 100 celsius ...OR... Stick your hand into into a pot of water at 100 celsius.

The difference is that the water molecules are more tightly packed, than the air molecules in the oven. In space, they are quite far apart.

<comment><USER25> > Stick your hand into into a pot of water at 100 celsius

..and: please don't! :)

<comment><USER26> Fast reflexes will prevent major damage. It won't prevent pain though.

<comment><USER27> As someone with extensive scarring on one arm from a water burn I'd prefer it if you didn't put things like this out there.

Fast reflexes won't help your hand to recover from a bad burn, they won't prevent it either, your hand is _much_ too large to be immersed fully and retracted before substantial damage will occur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Previous discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569741](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569741)

</comment><comment><USER29> They have a nice theory that the spacecraft won't melt when it gets close to the sun, but do they really know for sure? NASA doesn't succeed on every mission. It is possible something will go wrong, and the probe will melt.

</comment><comment><USER30> [http://earthsky.org/space/heat-shield-parker-solar- probe](http://earthsky.org/space/heat-shield-parker-solar-probe)

It appears the heat shield is a carbon sheet sandwich. At first I was guessing some form of tungsten-carbine, but that is the traditional material of NASA heat shields.

> Why is the solar wind a breeze closer to the sun but a supersonic torrent > farther away? Why is the corona itself millions of degrees hotter than the > surface?

I suspect the answer to all those questions is simply _gravity_ , but it will be nice to verify such things with data.

<comment><USER31> "Why is the corona itself millions of degrees hotter than the surface?

I suspect the answer to all those questions is simply gravity, but it will be nice to verify such things with data"

Can you explain your hypothesis a bit?

<comment><USER32> Not GP, but here's an article that talks about it. Note that this is relatively recent. It's not something that was thoroughly understood in ancient times exactly.

[https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sounding- rockets/strong...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sounding- rockets/strong-evidence-for-coronal-heating-theory-presented-at-2015-tess- meeting)

<comment><USER33> > [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sounding- > rockets/strong...](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/sounding- > rockets/strong-evidence-for-coronal-heating-theory-presented-at-2015-tess- > meeting)

It explains the temporal heating behavior at some scales. But it doesn't give a mechanism of heating. It could be electron beam target heating. But it could also be mediated by plasma waves.

The electron beams need acceleration and the most common suggestion is x-point magnetic reconnection providing up and down voltage gradients due to changing magnetic field. But the amount of electrons needed is unphysically large; the entire electron contents of the relevant volume of the corona.

There are plasma wave models that don't require unphysically large parameters.

These two (and a couple other) options aren't clarified by the observation of heating profiles. With the launch of Parker Solar Probe and the DKIST (diffraction limited solar telescope) the two models above will finally be testable. Spectroscopy of ion species by DKIST will tell what kind of heating is happening and Solar Probe will be there to measure the input from the corona.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > Particles may be moving fast (high temperature), but if there are very few > of them, they won't transfer much energy (low heat). Since space is mostly > empty, there are very few particles that can transfer energy to the > spacecraft.

That explains why energy is not transferred by conduction or convection to the spacecraft. But what about energy (heat) transfer by radiation? Why won't the spacecraft get all the energy from radiation and have its temperature shoot up?

<comment><USER35> Radiant shielding

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> A key sensor (Faraday cup [1]) for studying the solar wind, outside of the shield, was constructed of not one but apparently four varieties of _unobtainium_ : Titanium-Zirconium-Molybdenum alloy, acid-etched tungsten, sapphire crystal tubes, and niobium wiring. All together these could make a fascinating engagement ring.

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

</comment><comment><USER37> The article makes it sound like there is no possible way for the probe to melt. Is this actually the case? Is there no possibility that manufacturer defects or a solar anomaly that could cause unexpected problems?

I don't want to downplay the good design and engineering that went into this, but should we be so confident without actually having done something like this thousands of times?

<comment><USER38> > Is there no possibility that manufacturer defects or a solar anomaly that > could cause unexpected problems?

There sure is. At least two of the systems (positioning and water cooling) are active systems that could fail.

> but should we be so confident without actually having done something like > this thousands of times?

"we" are confident enough that we rely on it to protect a > 1 billion USD probe. What's the use in adding a lot of ifs and maybes to some piece of marketing/explanation?

If it fails, adding some ifs and maybes to a marketing video won't really change anything.

<comment><USER37> Doesn't it undermine the credibility of NASA if something goes wrong? The public who is the audience for this article is also paying the bills (through taxes). I'd settle for just changing "won't melt" to "shouldn't melt". I think that appropriate for something that's never been attempted.

<comment><USER39> Either way we're chucking lots of money at the sun so if it fails we still learn something, not to mention developed a lot of technologies along the way.

<comment><USER37> For sure, but it would be a shame if NASA lost confidence and trust (and possibly funding) with their stakeholders (the public), because they weren't more upfront about the potential risks. As a scientific organization that has experienced significant (and expensive) failures before, I expect better.

<comment><USER40> It seems like you want to discredit NASA now ("shouldn't melt") vs some imagined possibility("won't melt" but it does). With the amount of design, analysis, testing, and independent review and verification of the systems, backup systems, triply redundant systems, and autonomy, we can be as sure of it not melting as we can be sure of anything. And we certainly spent a large amount of money on this (about 1/10th of the World Cup), but in performance and value per $, it's a great deal.

<comment><USER37> Not at all. I expect NASA has done as much due diligence, planning, testing, and verification as possible. I just don't think they are being upfront as they should be about the possible risks for a previously unattempted scientific endeavor. We've had massive failures (including NASA itself), in environments that are much better understood and with systems that have actually had exposure to those environments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Any reason why they're using water for cooling? There's no other liquid with lower density and perhaps better thermal properties?

I imagined they would try to save weight in some places if it allows them more freedom in others. Although I have no idea how much water is used in the first place so it might be a moot point.

<comment><USER42> > The coolant used for the system? About a gallon (3.7 liters) of deionized > water. While plenty of chemical coolants exist, the range of temperatures > the spacecraft will be exposed to varies between 50 F (10 C) and 257 F (125 > C). Very few liquids can handle those ranges like water. To keep the water > from boiling at the higher end of the temperatures, it will be pressurized > so the boiling point is over 257 F (125 C).

<comment><USER41> I just imagined that for an object sent _to the Sun_ they'd want to... overdo it a little. Go for something synthetic that would behave even better or would save 1/2 Kg.

I'm just the inquisitive type. Explaining that something is used always makes me wonder "why not something else" :).

<comment><USER43> Water has a higher specific heat than most substances, and probably the highest of anything that's a liquid across the operating temperature range for the electronics.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> It blows my mind to think that we DO have materials that can withstand such temperatures, even after understanding the part about heat transfer.

I hope that kind of materials can be mass-produced on the short term future to be used as insulation for homes!

</comment><comment><USER45> With 200km/s deep orbit we should have probably brought several tons of fuel to do Oberth burn say for a piece of the probe which would then pass by the Vojager in a few years and be on track to get to alpha centauri in several thousand years :)

</comment><comment><USER46> The article and the videos it contains are amazingly clear. Cannot wait for the first results of that mission! I'm always amazed by NASA great endeavors, and how these scientists can be so sure their probe are not going to melt...

</comment><comment><USER47> This mission is also very cool in the sense that the period from launch to first interesting data is short. There is going to be a Venus flyby on 28 Sep, and a Sun flyby on 1 Nov.

</comment><comment><USER48> Some of the most incredible astronomy shots I've seen are of close(r) ups of the sun - I can't wait to see what Parker sends back as it closing in on the Sun.

</comment><comment><USER49> Can we use same probe to travel to Earth's core?

</comment><comment><USER50> go at night...

</comment><comment><USER51> Inches? A yard stick? Millions of degrees Fahrenheit?

I'm American and I'm embarrassed by this. This is science, make it easy for people to understand. Use SI units, please.

<comment><USER52> It's written for a general American audience so it makes sense to use those units.</comment></comment>


Modeling with distance functions - <AUTHOR> http://iquilezles.org/www/articles/distfunctions/distfunctions.htm <comment><USER2> this is very elegant. thanks!</comment>


Please review my Startup: PacsDrive - Medical Image Archiving - <AUTHOR>

http://www.pacsdrive.com
Medical imaging is not like the JPGs you shoot with your camera. It uses a specialized format and transfer protocol called DICOM. DICOM compatible backup systems cost a lot of money ($25k on the low end, or $3 per exam).
We've created a cloud service that is more cost effective for small to medium sized health care providers and gives the simplicity only the web can offer.
We applied to the summer round for YComb, but I pulled the application because I felt we weren't quite ready. We're hoping PG and co will take a look later this year.
What do you think? <comment><USER2> I am somewhat familiar with the PACS situation (quick summary: frustrating as hell if you're used to open/commodity style technologies).

I was about to suggest some kind of plugin for OsiriX, but then I looked in your Help section and saw that one is already in the works...

What is needed is more open source options for PACS, especially servers, and your service may play a role in making things reasonable. OsiriX is very nice but unfortunately OS X only.

Also, it might be interesting to integrate this with remote image reading applications used by consulting/remote radiologists, since the images will already be "in the cloud".

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, yes, and yes :)

We feel there is a lot of room for feature growth, and much of what you mentioned is being considered.

Mind dropping me your email? dmillar at pacsdrive.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I like the look of your site but that's probably because, to me, it looks almost exactly like CampaignMonitor. Very clean and well layed out but verrrrry similar.

Your information and what you do is very clean and easy to grok although it's not really a field/area I can comment on much.

You may want to consider adding your site to my latest endeavor, <http://www.launchly.com>. Launchly is all about getting your new site the feedback you need to succeed. Launches are free for the time being.

One other comment, I tried to contact you via your site's contact us page but your app 500'd on me and I got the "Rails Screen of Death" (RSoD???)

</comment><comment><USER4> I see a couple of problems here: 1) I don't see the word "Twitter" mentioned anywhere in your marketing copy, 2) there doesn't seem to be an option for adding cute little PacsDrive characters to my Facebook wall, 3) bad idea to charge money for this -- you should be giving everything away for free, 4) I don't see a jobs page advertising open reqs for ninjas and/or rockstars.

</comment><comment><USER5> You might offer a way for users to get backup of their images on some media. They might feel more secure knowing that they can get hard copy of their data by courier if they wish.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do offer hard drive or DVD restores to be shipped.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> From a design point of view, I think it's polished. From a "is there a market for this?", I can't say. Can you list off any competitors for comparison?

<comment><AUTHOR> Any PACS vendor is potentially a competitor. However, a PACS is a much larger solution that this. Really PacsDrive is just the 'A' in PACS (picture archiving and communication system).

Of course, data warehousing companies like Roark Data are competitors, but they provide an in-house and large scale solutions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This looks good and promising!! Most importantly, it is solving a problem. I think you have a great chance of getting accepted. Good luck!!

</comment><comment><USER8> How do you propose to gain the market's attention when competing (albeit indirectly) against mega corps like GE and McKesson?

<comment><AUTHOR> GE and McKesson's market are hospital corporations. Our customers are small clinics and imaging centers. The minimum price to setup a DICOM compliant archive is about $25k and that is not counting required support personnel. We do it for $99/month, and we are about 10,000x more accessible than either of those companies for customer service and support.

I do worry about marketing, however. I am hoping this is where we can garnish advice from people like PG (et al). How do we penetrate a market that is so difficult to change? I've seen first hand health care facilities choose more expensive solutions that were inferior products.</comment></comment>


Building a Software Development Workstation - <AUTHOR>

I'm planing to build a developer workstation (in contrast to a highend gaming or graphics rig) with the following constraints:<p>- minimal power consumption 	- minimal hardware price 	- triple display (3 x 1920x1200, 22"-24") 	- shuttle pc case 	- 2 internal 3.5" sata drives 	- DVD drive, internal 	- 64 bit cpu, 4 cores, 4-8 threads 	- 16-32 GB ram, 	- host OS: minimal GNU/Linux (64 bit) 	- virtual machines for work: Windows XP (32bit), Ubuntu 10.04(32bit) 	- virtualbox<p>Any experiences with such a setup? Recommendations? Anybody interested in specs when finished? <comment><USER2> I have seven machines in my office. My most recent system build was a year ago when I ordered from NewEgg these principal components:

Noctua NH-D14 120mm & 140mm SSO CPU Cooler (too big for shuttle case but very, very quiet) $89.99

GIGABYTE GA-P67A-UD4-B3 LGA 1155 Intel P67 SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard $189.99

XIGMATEK PTI-G4512 thermal grease with gold grade thermal matrix filler particles $9.99

Intel Core i7-2600K Sandy Bridge 3.4GHz (3.8GHz Turbo Boost) LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 3000 $314.99

Kingston HyperX 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 Desktop Memory Model KHX1600C9D3/4G $183.96 ($45.99 ea)

I bought an Antec 300 case, a 1 TB disk drive and USB DVD drive - for OS install - from my local Fry's store.

I overclocked the 4-core CPU to 4.2 GHz turbo mode. The motherboard does not support the built-in Intel video, so I used an ATI 5770 board that I bought on eBay for about $120.

I am considering upgrading the memory to 32 GB RAM using four 8-GB DIMMs.

I run Lubuntu without virtual machines for Java AI software development. I put two monitors on this graphics card. If you use the big Noctua cooler, it blocks one of the PCI-e slots on the motherboard, so you might need an ATI card that supports three monitors, or use a smaller video card for the third monitor.

I like the Antec cases because they can stack, have quiet big fans, are easy to open, and assemble/access. I build/upgrade a system about once a year and I am waiting for the 28nm Intel CPUs before upgrading one of my four Antec-based boxes - the three other machines in my office are laptops and not otherwise upgradable.

I dedicate the machines for various purposes: (1) primary dual-monitor software development, (2) continuous integration / subversion repository server, (3) windows compatibility, (4) simulated production. The seven machines are networked using Samba. I have monitors, keyboards & mice for each one and have arranged my office to easily observe five monitors so that I do not have to switch virtual desktops on my centrally located software development monitors in order to see notifications - e.g. email.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanx for the specs. sounds like quite a setup. what do you think of matrox triple-head-cards? ...and hell what is the overall power consumption in watts?

<comment><USER2> I have a 750 watt PS but typically the system case uses 150-250 watts. I overclocked the CPU turbo-mode only because most of the time my system idles below 2 GHz. Software development also has very low utilization of the video card.

I am not familiar with Matrox video cards. I believe certain ATI cards support 3 monitors.</comment></comment></comment>


How I built Hopper in a week, without internet - <AUTHOR> http://notes.unwieldy.net/post/22325833009/how-i-built-hopper-in-a-week-without-internet

<comment><USER2> The font is really hard to read in Chrome on Windows 7 [0]. A bit better on Firefox/Win7 [1], but horizontal strokes are still very thin (look at H, L).

Please, everyone, test your web fonts on multiple platforms. It's not WYSIWYG.

[0] <http://imgur.com/53Z5m>

[1] <http://imgur.com/MoLUI>

</comment><comment><USER3> Until you needed the internet, and then you connected to the internet... from your phone.

This article should just be titled "How I built X in a week" or "Working in a distraction-less environment made me more productive".

</comment><comment><USER4> I've discovered this same process surfing several cross-country flights. You've just convinced me to try it more consciously in the future... At the office!</comment>


Remindo for the iPhone. Reminders by SMS and email, like magic. - <AUTHOR> http://remindoapp.com/ <comment><USER2> When do you plan to launch?

Would it be better to hold off until the 3.0 release for push notifications, thereby freeing you from creating the infrastructure for SMS and email?

</comment><comment><USER3> Sorry about the powerd. That's why you shouldn't make a site at 12 am and not proofread. We should be sending out betas in two weeks in some form.

<comment><USER4> One small typo. Your site asks for beta testers to enter their iPhone UUID. I think you mean their UDID.

Looking forward to the beta test.

<comment><USER3> Actually, we need the iPhone's UUID to get a beta to a person. Apple requires this when signing the code.

<comment><USER5> e1299a9c9a6db4a6eae9bcd66f18784c3b975e31

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> We will be releasing Remindo Push, but since it requires us to setup an infrastructure to push notifications to apple, it will be a monthly service (using the subscription payment api's from apple).

Since 37signals graciously offers us free accounts that provide sms and email reminders, Remindo standard can be a pay once work forever kinda deal.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hey there,

Nice looking application :)

One small suggestion - "Powered" is misspelled in your title ("Powerd [sic] by Basecamp"). I hate to be pedantic but it kinda jumped out at me - being a title, and all.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> oh, to be clear, this is a myobie app. just saw it and thought some folks here would be interested. :)</comment>