The Blurring of the Public and Private Markets - <AUTHOR> http://avc.com/2015/11/the-blurring-of-the-public-and-private-markets/ <comment><USER2> _...and we VCs are now facing the choice of whether to markdown our portfolios in reaction to Fidelity's markdowns or explain to our investors and auditors why we did not do that._

As expected. See previous discussion at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10549398](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10549398)

Long-term, the public and private markets are indeed blurring. Short-term, the question is whether and how this round of unicorn write-downs will impact headline valuations and the capital raising climate for companies at earlier stages. In other words, will this make it harder for startups to raise capital?</comment>


Marauder's Map: Sniffing MAC addresses in the MIT wireless network [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://courses.csail.mit.edu/6.857/2016/files/34.pdf <comment><USER2> The characterization of the adversary here being some malicious third party, though traditional, is something of a bogeyman as far as actual risk is concerned. Institutions running large mesh networks are in a privileged position to track users in this way.

At Brown University, complete connection logs for each wireless access point have been kept for no less than two years. A group of students last year were given this data and produced a (historical) map of student movement. There is no reason to believe that the University could not or is not rendering such a map in real-time.

</comment><comment><USER3> Neat idea.

As a general aside, when publishing documents that start off as LaTeX, putting them on Github (or some other Git hosting service) would potentially allow others to contribute corrections. There are a bunch of typos in the paper that would be trivial to correct, but of course there's no easy way to submit corrections to a PDF.

</comment><comment><USER4> Narry a "solemnly swear" nor "mischief managed" to be found in the entire paper. Tsk.

<comment><USER5> This is actually a draft and the final version does have both :P [https://www.dropbox.com/s/3tyuuerizap21el/6-857-final.pdf?dl...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/3tyuuerizap21el/6-857-final.pdf?dl=0)

<comment><USER4> Excellent!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have made something at least similar.

There is another post on my site about integrating live visualization with D3 as well.

I found that the metadata pertaining to signal strength to be too variable based on device manufacturer to be accurately used for a distance calculation without a lot of individual fine tuning or at the very least triangulation.

Triangulation runs into its problems though because of the inaccuracies of usb timing.

[http://www.coderecon.com/pages/post_4](http://www.coderecon.com/pages/post_4)

</comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, Apple has already started randomizing MAC addresses [1] on iOS (8?) and newer devices. Though maybe not quite as successfully as it seemed at first.

[1] [http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac- randomization](http://www.imore.com/closer-look-ios-8s-mac-randomization)

<comment><USER8> I believe this only works for broadcast packets. When you've chosen to connect to a wifi network, then your real mac address gets used. It would be a nightmare for shops that use mac filtering and other tools that expect standard mac behavior if the mac was randomized all the time. What Apple is doing is stopping broadcast packets being a unique value to track on.

<comment><USER7> Excellent point.</comment></comment></comment>


Austin's Regulations for Kid Lemonade Stands - <AUTHOR> http://ij.org/austins-regulations-kid-lemonade-stands-unintentionally-hilarious/ <comment> rm_-rf_slash I have a better idea: give the kids an option to print out a piece of paper formatted by the local government that reads:

"The city of Austin seeks to strike a balance between encouragement of entrepreneurship and safety to the consumer. This establishment is not compliant with restaurant-grade cleanliness standards. By posting this certificate, the vendor acknowledges some basic restrictions (no handling of raw meat etc), and the customer accepts the risk of consuming at an unregulated establishment. Any blatant violations to the health code should be reported to (blah blah blah)."

One printer, one piece of paper, some tape. We can do better.

</comment><comment><USER2> Soon we'll hear about how Austin is offering tax incentives to soda companies to make up for the lack of lemonade stands.

As someone who lives in Austin, many people here are absolutely delusional about Austin's attractiveness and future. Austin's once-interesting college/hippie culture is rapidly dying and being replaced by a suburban megalopolis culture (San Austonio, here we come). Historically low cost of living is going up (in no small part due to Californification of Austin politics (and I used to live in CA, so I know what this looks like)). Austin's already crumbling infrastructure cannot handle more people. Commutes are already atrocious and are getting worse.

Everything that made Austin attractive to tech workers is going away. Unless the Austin government gets out of the way, Austin's budding tech industry will die.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Government is the greatest asset and liability to any business.

On one hand, it took sweet, juicy government grants and contracts to lay the economic and knowledge foundation that was needed for Austin to grow into a tech hub.

On the other hand - and this is a particularly American tendency - people want a perfect society and a free society. What they often get is neither, and only sometimes both.

There is still plenty for government to do. No private actor has the will or power to solve the traffic problem alone. Condofication and breakneck sprawl need government intervention or else things will keep going the way they are: worse. And then you've got the perpetual rejections of mass transit plans and of course Prop 1.

But sadly I think you're most right about the Californication of politics, which will only cement the old guard against the newcomers, encourage bullying over discussion, and make it ever harder to fix the problems that grow by the day.

<comment><USER3> Uber and Lyft are a nice, private sector solution to excessive car ownership. But Austin got rid of them.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Like I said, perfect society, free society. Austinites wanted more assurance that they would be safe in Uber/Lyft drivers' cars, and rightly so. There have been enough of cases of Uber drivers committing violent acts against passengers to make people afraid and want more security. They made their opinions clear via referendum, a shining example of democracy in action.

But democracy != capitalism; China proved that. They swung the pendulum too far, and now nobody's happy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Palo Alto too: about 10 years ago my kid tried to sell herbs from his wagon on the street by at the farmer's market (no snickering: peppermint, thyme etc). The woman who "runs" the market called the cops. The poor cop said he didn't see why he should put an end to things but that if the woman kept calling the cops he'd have to tell my kid to stop...which is what happened. Really a terrible lesson in entrepreneurship, especially for Palo Alto!

At least it did make the front page of the Daily Post, which considered it "a shocking incident" and lead with a picture of a photogenic kid looking dejected.

</comment><comment><USER5> The simple fact of the matter is that we live in a litigious society. If the City could be confident that no lawsuit against a lemonade stand (and the City) would be heard by a judge, we wouldn't need this. But that isn't the reality of the world.

<comment><USER3> The city is mainly concerned about universal enforcement of its regulations for what they think is the public good. In this case, obviously it's an overzealous and misguided concern, but minus any guidance from the voters, they'll just enforce the rules up the wazoo, as bureaucrats are prone to do.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If we were too nice to kids, adults would start using them as park salsepeople - imagine a "lemonade stand kit." I think the system of "police look the other way" actually works really well here, as it prevents anyone from building something too socially awful. Our positive sentiment would evaporate pretty quickly if every visit to a public place entailed saying "no" to a constant stream of girl scouts.

</comment><comment><USER7> There was a Forbes article that got some discussion a few years ago. Perhaps people are interested in that too? (161 comments) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3171665](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3171665)

</comment><comment><USER8> I bet no one would bother following these regulations.

<comment><USER9> I think what's more important is will police enforce those regulations? In my experience, APD is pretty tough on food distribution; even giving away meals to homeless folks is regulated pretty tightly, and in ways that are maybe counter-productive to public welfare.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash Ugh, when I was a teen I worked as a produce clerk in an ailing grocery chain that had just been bought out by a regional competitor. One of the biggest changes was that company policy forbade donations of old produce or meats, but old baked goods were ok.

Basically, a bunch of rich shareholders figured it would be all-in-all better to insulate their assets from lawsuits instead of helping feed the poor and hungry.

Threw away a lot of good food that year...

<comment> semi-extrinsic I thought usual practice in such cases was to say "sorry, rules say we can't give this away, we have to throw it in the blue dumpster out back at 11pm on thursday".

<comment> rm_-rf_slash I wish they were that cool about it. Happy ending: a few investors bought out some of the old stores and reinvigorated the old brand, and now things are...well it's no Wegmans, but the store is certainly better than when I was there. Don't know about disposal rules though...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You think Austin's bad check out the Hamptons cops. Seinfeld and his kids went to the hoosegow.

[http://www.27east.com/mobile/article.cfm//Amagansett/119742/...](http://www.27east.com/mobile/article.cfm//Amagansett/119742/No- Lemonade-For-You-Seinfeld-Lemonade-Stand-Shut-Down-in-East-Hampton-Village)

</comment><comment><USER3> Is lemonade that dangerous? If they were selling meat, I could understand some amount of concern about proper handling, refrigeration, etc. But lemonade? The acid would kill most bacteria, and the most you have to worry about is fermentation, which might kick in after 48 hours or so if warm enough.

<comment><USER7> It's pretty easy to find examples of food poisoning caused by lemonade.

[http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/foodborne-illness- outbreaks...](http://www.foodpoisonjournal.com/foodborne-illness- outbreaks/lemonade-source-of-norovirus-outbreak/)

This is "just" norovirus, but there are other more serious outbreaks.

<comment><USER3> Actually, no, it's not that easy to find examples. Yes, your single example came up in Google, but really, how many incidents of food poisoning by lemonade stands occur each year?

Norovirus usually comes from contact with stool or vomit. I suppose that's possible if a kid is _really_ dirty about their bathroom habits and so forth.

I worry a lot more about the thousands of cases of illness caused by bad sanitation at restaurants around the country. Now there you'll find lots of examples. Hep C occasionally is spread by a restaurant worker; a dozen people may catch it before they track down the culprit.

<comment><USER7> > but really, how many incidents of food poisoning by lemonade stands occur > each year?

"They" would claim that's because the regulation is working, right?

The reason it doesn't show up more is because food poisoning is very common, and so "person catches food poisoning" is not going to be reported anywhere that Google will index.

> I suppose that's possible if a kid is really dirty about their bathroom > habits and so forth.

No, and this is an important point. Most people do not wash their hands properly, and norovirus is really easy to transmit. If anything it's amazing that norovirus isn't more common.

(I agree with your points about actual restaurants btw.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There's plenty of unincorporated area around Austin that motivated parents, unwilling to comply with long-standing catch-all regulations, can map out as a potential market. Then they can pack up the car, drive the kids out, set up shop, and perform their business venture without the pesky administrative oversight and potential fiscal penalties that go along with it. Granted, I don't think cows buy a lot of lemonade, but that's a different issue.

<comment><USER9> Cows don't naturally eat a lot of corn or soy, either, but capitalism has solved that problem.

<comment><USER12> "You won't believe this one drink that turns any cow into Kobe beef."

<comment><USER13> Japan hates them

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Austin sucks. Don't move here.

<comment><USER14> It's really hot, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Whatever you do, don't try to start a lemonade-sharing service...</comment>


Ask HN: How much do you lie/exaggerate in your CV? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently applying for jobs and I'm wondering how much people on HN lie or exaggerate on their CV.
I'll admit I've exaggerated how much experience I have using some technologies, but only because I believe I should be able to learn quickly enough for it to not be obvious if I got the position.
Is this a bad strategy? Some roles seem to ask for experience in technologies that would take a few hours to learn at best. I feel like in these situations it can't hurt too much, but could help a lot with pre-selection of my application. <comment><USER2> If it takes a few hours to learn it, learn it. If I interview you and you say you're an expert in X, and you have a blank look when I ask you about X, you've lost the job, even if you're otherwise brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER3> > [...] I'm wondering how much people on HN lie or exaggerate on their CV.

Not even the slightiest bit. If anything, I tend to leave things out, the ones that are unimportant compared to rest, that are very old, or that I don't want to admit I know.

> Is this a bad strategy?

It is. It can very easily backfire. You don't know in advance which parts of the requirements are critical (and thus they'll ask you about them), and if you'll get caught lying, you're done immediately.

> Some roles seem to ask for experience in technologies that would take a few > hours to learn at best.

You either look at the wrong job posts or heavily underestimate what does it take to be competent with those technologies.

As pixeloution said, if you think it only takes few hours to get proficient with a tool, try doing so. If it was easy, then you have some justification to put some knowledge about the tool in CV.

<comment><USER4> > You either look at the wrong job posts or heavily underestimate what does it > take to be competent with those technologies.

I disagree, a job "requirement" may not really be one. the people who write the requirements sometimes don't understand them and what the context is to their business. someone just says, they better know python. but when you talk to them, you find out that one dude ten years ago wrote a python script that we need to continue to support. you don't need to be an expert to handle that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't lie. I make sure my resume speaks the lingo though. W

What's the lingo?

At the highest level, it's corporate speak. Slightly below that it's industry specific terminology, below that it's position specific concepts/terminology.

I customize my resume to the job, i make sure to mention concrete, quantifiable, and relevant achievements [1]. I make sure to mention typical problems for the position and how i've solved them [1]

[1] Knowing what these and having them ready is the hard part. I built an app to help me do it. [https://jobrudder.com](https://jobrudder.com)

</comment><comment><USER6> I think this is a pointless survey. People are going to claim to be honest and will encourage you to be honest, even if they aren't actually honest themselves. You are basically asking people to publicly admit to wrongdoing and out themselves as frauds in a forum that can potentially make or break their career.

I would not lie on my resume. But I also seem incapable of getting anywhere professionally -- for a variety of reasons. So, I wouldn't extrapolate anything from that about what works or doesn't work.

</comment><comment><USER4> i wouldn't lie, but rather i try to balance it towards what the company says they need. it's not an exact science, because companies sometimes have no idea what they need and or have misleading posts about what they are looking for. (ie: we want a senior developer, oh you don't know how to run .net api from aws lambda which posts to mailgun which emails my mom and then she forwards the message to pete who then prints it and runs it over to gloria who then scans it and emails it back to the me so that i can print it out and recycle it)

it's a crap shoot at best, but truth is your biggest weapon as you can bank on being comfortable when you talk about what you know. you can always tailor in the cover letter if you want to high light silly "requirements" such as "gmail" or "outlook".

</comment><comment><USER7> Whether it's a good strategy or not, it's a matter of integrity, which I consider to be something much more than just another stat on your character sheet used to get a job.

From my experience, most people lie at least a little bit.</comment>


Ask HN: Self-hosted customizable dashboards - <AUTHOR>

I'm asking this here because a few hours of searching Github, Google, and asking around in other places has turned up absolutely nothing usable.
What i'm looking for, in a nutshell, is a self hosted version of something like Leftronic. It's a flexible dashboard framework that supports ingesting data from various sites and services.
I've got a few JSON-based web services internally that I'd like to be able to throw up and display on a board for my team.
The difficulty is that every single implementation that I've found so far is a cloud hosed, pay-by-the month type deal. For various security and internal political reasons, this is not acceptable; the solution I'm looking for requires that data not leave the building and ideally not require an ongoing subscription.
There would be no problem with paying (potentially substantial amounts) for the right piece of software as long as it's a one-off. Also acceptable would be FOSS software with rough edges - we have engineers who know their way around code :) - Though ideally there would be a somewhat user-friendly UI for technician-level users to look around if need be.
Is anyone aware of such a project? <comment><USER2> [http://shopify.github.io/dashing/](http://shopify.github.io/dashing/)

[http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-alternative- to-...](http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-alternative-to- Geckoboard?share=1)

That's where I started finding some. I've not implemented one yet as my ToDo list at work is just huge.

Also highcharts, a basic eye for design and some simple javascript will get you 95% there. Most of those squares are just a big font with a red down or green up arrow next to them.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've actually been to both of these links already, but thank you :)

The problem with Dashing is that it seems like it's a really low-level framework, i.e. we'll need to basically suck the data out and render it ourselves down at the JS level, instead of saying "Here's my web service, here's how the data is delimited, show me a table".

Which is fine for initial setup I suppose, but it's not something we really have time to maintain and tweak on an ongoing basis. This is more of a "would be nice" type deal instead of a very pressing business need, so securing resources to code something together would be tricky.

<comment><USER2> They're honestly not that hard to bang out, a quick custom query and at the very basic level a javascript SetInterval.

It's a bit like shell scripts or build scripts or starting to use a new source control system, once you've done one any more takes no more than an hour.

It's just that first one that takes a day.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, but if you're not familiar with SCSS and JS, it reads all like greek, takes a good deal of time, and is a bit annoying that you need to know 5 separate languages (JS, CoffeeScript, S/CSS, HTML, and Ruby) just to render some data on a page in a somewhat aesthetically pleasing way.

If you're a web developer, I bet this is really easy. If you come from a systems programming/admin background like me, this looks like a great deal of work for little payoff.

I'd like to think someone, somewhere has come up with a dashboard framework that's user friendly and doesn't require forwarding proprietary data outside the company.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask Sama: Any advice for startups talking to big companies? - <AUTHOR>

I need some bizdev advice and figured I'd go straight to the source. How should a small startup approach a big company? Is there anything you've learned in your experiences that you'd like to share?<p>I guess the best thing to do is starting sending emails and making phone calls, but I don't know much about bizdev. Are there things to avoid or things that we can do to maximize our chances of getting a meeting? <comment><USER2> One of the most important things you can do is appear credible. Most big companies forget that they did their most interesting things when they were just a few people with an uncertain future. When a big company wanted to visit us in our early days, we got a bunch of our friends to come hang out in the office so we looked bigger than we were. Along the same line, an introduction is much better than a cold call. (What big co? I'll help if I can.) And find a way to convince them you'll be around for awhile (we had to have our investors call a ceo once).

Getting a meeting, by the way, is about 10% of the work. Big cos often have difficult political landscapes and multiple decision makers. You have to figure out who wants what and convince them all they will get it. Also, big cos often except a discount for 'taking a risk' by working with a startup.

</comment><comment><USER3> Biz dev is one of the areas in which you can actually find top quality people who will work for little or no salary in exchange for equity. Is that a possibility here? In my limited experience, the BD folks who will work for low/no salary in exchange for equity can do so because they've been quite successful at BD so far...

Outside of that, networking through the warm market works best but sometimes you're going to need to cold call. Walking into the company, asking the receptionist for the name of someone with a specific job title and asking if you can leave them a packet of information can work as often as 20-30% of the time. Knowing the name in advance and having a custom packet would be even better.

</comment><comment><USER4> Could you clarify the question? How should a small startup approach a big company _for what_? What's your objective?</comment>


The Future of Education Is School as a Product - <AUTHOR> https://goodbetterbest.substack.com/p/write-of-passage-and-packaging-inception <comment><USER2> > I've already learned most of the curriculum from engaging with so much of > his free content.

This is how I feel about a lot of these online course offerings as well. You aren't paying for the content, they make that available for free. You are paying for the accountability. If you are a high-agency person, you will figure out how to use the free stuff to accomplish the same thing.</comment>


Truth is a lost game in Turkey. Don't let the same thing happen to you - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/15/truth-lost-game-turkey-europe-america-facts-values <comment><USER2> Old media have tried to bury truths all the time, I personally think the new media with people commenting stuff on twitter is more truthfull than the old new coverage.

Read the article by: Cringely "News we aren't supposed to know", [http://www.cringely.com/2016/12/15/news-arent-supposed- know/](http://www.cringely.com/2016/12/15/news-arent-supposed-know/) which descibes old situations where the media did not report anything about events which had big impacts.

This Guardian article is more like a flame war from someone who does not get to deicide what the media agenda is no more. The alternative media, was much better at covering Erdoğan power takeover than main media in my opinion.

<comment><USER3> I don't doubt that the ability to have the average man on the street report on things and upload them to twitter etc. is a force for good, but the potential for miscommunication due to the lack of structure surrounding such uploads is a weakness that traditional media does not experience given that all work must pass editors in those cases. I know that doesn't stop all BS stories but its a check/balance at least that doesn't currently exist at all on social media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The game for truth was lost long ago in the MSM. I wish they would turn into their Turkey counterparts, at least the average citizen would be less likely to blindly trust it.</comment>


On the horizon: T-Mobile with no contract - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57572226-94/rumor-t-mobile-to-move-to-no-contract-model-soon/

<comment><USER2> I was planning to switch from verizon to tmobile value for a while now. Even with ETF on verizon it is worth it. Now the only concern I have is network quality, which as I've heard is not that great even in big cities (opinions welcome).

But I really want this model to win, so I think I will switch regardless.</comment>


India opens its first center for human spaceflight - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/03/india-opens-human-space-flight-centre/ <comment><USER2> So exciting to see the pieces moving around the chessboard for another space race.</comment>


End-to-End CoffeeScript (slides from RailsConf) - <AUTHOR> http://www.slideshare.net/TrevorBurnham/end-toend-coffeescript/

<comment><AUTHOR> Slides from a talk I gave at RailsConf 2011 yesterday morning.

A major theme of the conference was rediscovering JavaScript (in part by using tools like CoffeeScript that make the language more palatable to Rubyists). I wanted to talk about what may be the next stage of that: Running the same code on both the front end (in the browser) and the back end. I gave an example of using this technique for form validations, which is great when there's complex validation logic that you don't want to write twice in two different languages.

The example project can be found at <https://github.com/TrevorBurnham/EndToEnd></comment>


20,000 Satellites for 5G to Be Launched Sending Focused Beams: Intense Microwave - <AUTHOR> http://healthimpactnews.com/2019/20000-satellites-for-5g-to-be-launched-sending-focused-beams-of-intense-microwave-radiation-over-entire-earth/ <comment><AUTHOR> "Stationary equipment such as Wi-Fi hubs in homes and offices will be permitted to use microwave beams that are 15 times stronger (300 watts) than the signals from 5G phones or 150 times stronger than 4G phones."

Really? I'm a software developer, can someone help explain the above quote, given this regulation:

[https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/30.202](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/30.202)

</comment><comment><USER2> This piece is full of misinformation. Clearly they know little about RF or radio.</comment>


Sharpie reinvents the pen with liquid pencil - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/sharpie-reinvents-pen-with-liquid-pencil/ <comment><USER2> I don't have any need for this in particular, but for some reason this is the most exciting thing I've read all day.

</comment><comment><USER3> What's the difference between these and Pilot's FriXion pens and highlighters? They have been out for 1-2 years and I've been using them for over a year now. They are truly erasable by friction with the included rubber tip (not like previous "erasable" pens that leave the inks permanently if it's not erased immediately). You can get them at major stationary stores in US like Office* and Staples. But it's a shame since they are not promoted like they do in Japan (not to mention Japan sells the latest ones in different styles and colors and writes a little better than the older ones in US).

<comment><USER4> Turns out that the FriXion ink is still there after being erased, but it's on the other side of some kind of (reversible!) phase transition. Any kind of heat makes it go away, and cold makes it reappear, as this video shows:

<http://www.jetpens.com/jetpics/?p=172>?

Very cool ink.

<comment><USER5> I discovered the re-appearing part when I left my notebook in a place where it froze. All my corrections came back. It was a little disconcerting to see erased ideas pop up like ghosts behind the new ideas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For the record, the papermate erasermate worked with any eraser, not just the one on the end of the pen itself as the article describes. It would get harder to erase after a while, but not this dramatic, so kudos to sharpie, this is an improvement!

<comment><USER7> But the ink would also rub off onto the facing sheet of paper, I have a whole high school worth of unreadable notes from this (not that anyone wants to read my high school notes after 20years!)

<comment><USER8> and hands, especially if you're left handed

<comment><USER9> I had a lot of illegible writing in high school exactly for this reason. Teachers demanded writing "in pen" for the sake of contrast/readability and I gave it to them, but I wasn't about to deal with the hassle of a non-erasable method. But being a left handed writer, the side of my hand inevitably ended up blackened as I rested it on old text and smudged it in the process. So my works in erasable pen ended up less readable than the ones in pencil.

<comment><USER10> As a sinister southpaw myself, I've never understood why fellow left-handers grip the pen in an unusual curled-round fashion such that their hand rests on what's just written.

I hold it like a right-handed person would. <http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/hand-holding-pen.jpg> But mirror-imaged. Is it because these left-handers are set on the wrong path by right-handed teachers who don't know better?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So does anybody still use pen and paper outside of school? It seem to me that the entire school supply industry is propped up by old school methods of education.

<comment><USER12> I use Moleskin notebooks (go through about 1 a month) full of ideas, drawings, notes, just about anything. I also keep a stack of 4x6 notecards to hash out ideas on paper (1 step below talking them out loud to people).

Try it, it's incredibly effective.

<comment><USER13> Moleskine user/lover here too. I carry a pocket-sized Moleskine, pen and iPhone almost everywhere I go. It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes in the notebook than in my iPhone (the latter increasingly freezes with iOS 4.0 and even without that has lots of annoying UX quirks), and I can easily go back and forth between text and doodles/diagrams, unlike the iPhone (built-in apps anyway, admittedly.) If you just want the cheapest paper possible, Moleskine is a bad choice. But if you want the best experience as a writer/reader/geek, Moleskine is a no brainer.

<comment><USER14> I have switched from Moleskine to Piccadilly brand (I think this is the house brand of Borders Books). Half the price, almost the same quality.

The problem with Moleskines is that they got too popular, so they keep switching around the source for their paper; while earlier (circa 2005) Moleskines had paper that fountain pens wouldn't bleed through, later ones of the exact same type do have paper that fountain pens will bleed through.

<comment><USER15> I love fountain pens. I have bunch of Parker 'Vectors' in a diversity of line widths and ink colors.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Vector>

The only disadvantage is that the ink stays water-soluble after it dries.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one who wants a pen which writes like a pencil, not vice-versa, maybe I'm crazy...

edit for typo.

<comment><USER17> As in, varied shades? Try a Bic, you can actually sketch pretty well with them. I don't know what they do differently, but they're the only pens I've found with this quality.

If you mean erasability (sp?), that's pretty un-pen-like in its very nature, though they exist.

If you mean something else, you've got me intrigued: can haz illumination, plz?

<comment><USER16> I don't do any drawing actually, I just don't think there is anything as fluid for taking notes, diagrams, mindmaps, etc.

<comment><USER17> Probably not. I'm also a pencil fan, though I've fiddled with other tools, and have a decent Wacom.

The Wacom _could_ replace most other tools... if there were any decent high- volume + organization sketching applications out there with proper tablet support. It's very nice, and I'd love to have all my notes in my computer, but things don't keep up or they look like crap or they have no tablet support or they provide zero tools for _sketchers_ who use sketching as a form of memory.

<comment><USER18> > decent high-volume + organization sketching applications

What makes for 'decent' in your terminology?

Obviously the primary organization tool is going to be the timeline, but what other organization tools do you feel a need for? tags? contacts? would it need to be able to pull text out of a sketch?

You mention high-volume; what do most sketching apps you've met do that limits the speed and volume of creation?

<comment><USER17> I've poked around with a number of the Big apps (from Adobe, Alias, etc), and at least a couple dozen smaller attempts.

The big ones _usually_ keep up with my drawing speed, have nice pressure sensing, mediocre-to-decent pencil emulation (Adobe is particularly good, though struggles to keep up at times), and overall proper support for a tablet. They also come with _squat_ for organization: you're basically just dealing with files in folders. I can do that in any application; I'm looking for something which myself and artists would actually _use_. The vast majority of people I've seen using applications like these launch the files from Explorer: utter failure of the application to organize the files better, in other words.

The small ones come in all sorts of flavors, but thus far they've all failed on the organization front _entirely_ if they support tablets, and are fairly weak attempts in ones that don't. For instance: I know of _one_ which lets you browse larger thumbnails with more detail and a more dense display than I can manage in my file browsers. I know of _none_ which support both tablets and tags. Heck, I'd settle for a cover-flow-like interface if it loaded quickly, but the only place that exists is in Finder. Surely a specialized application can do better and show more relevant info, given that it can make cached data.

Text in a sketch is, yes, very important, and has the upside of making it searchable: but again, I have yet to see one which lets you search across (a) folder(s), much less any other method of organization.

Thumbnails are uniformly full-'page' thumbnails: not informative at all for brainstorming sketches, as they're usually lighter and have more sparse info.

Usually, it's a large break in one's flow to create a new page to draw on; Alias' Sketchbook Pro did this decently, if I remember correctly. But no others do, unless they're super-restricted sticky-note clones. They're all: file -> new -> dimensions + background color + alpha channel + color system + would you like a goat with that? Surely this can be chosen post-mortem if it really matters (unlikely for sketchers). Default to a transparent sketching layer + a background color layer, so it can be separated if I decide I want to copy my drawings but not the background. There are a couple decent infinite- canvas programs out there, but I have yet to see them in any pro-user apps, just for the low end of amateurs who _want_ something restrictingly simplistic (nice, sometimes, and some of them are _excellent_ , but then we're back to file management).

Tools are often Photoshop clones: tiny, fixed position, and require you to go across the screen to change basic properties. They also take up _space_. We've got gestures on our _trackpads_ , but extremely few drawing applications make use of _any_ kind of gesture (a few radial menus, but usually they're "dumb" with poor feedback and zero adapting for slightly off / too far / too short aim, especially ignoring pressure with a tablet). Which is particularly strange when you consider all the gesture tools for _mice_ , and then squat with a _tablet_.

\-----

I should write a blog entry / post some of my more-developed thoughts on this. I'm a little bitter :) I'm also an application-testing-extremist, and I'm very likely reaching 10k applications across two OSs (many short-term, yes, but I've been at it for 15 years), so large-scale oversights / annoyances across entire genres which are solved in others bug me.

If you know of any sketching / drawing applications, I'd be more than happy to try them out, I've been away from them for a year or two and have no doubt missed hundreds I've never heard of.

<comment><USER19> Definitely write up something more specific. Sketching programs (and graphics in general) contain some of the most interesting challenges imho, but there's very little benefit to going up against Adobe / Autodesk. I expected this reply to be longer, but I'd say write up a lead for one of the many hackers here and Reddit to jump off of.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> alok-g I love this! I frequently annotate books I am reading, and often have to use eraser for correcting typos etc. With (non-erasable) pens, downside is that I cannot erase. With pencils, downside is that I can erase anytime. Almost never do I have a need to erase something two days after writing. Would be buying shortly.

</comment><comment><USER20> The real question is whether it actually feels as smooth as a pen. The erasable pens were not pleasing to write with.

<comment><USER21> The erasers tasted really good, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> apart from this, is'nt a pencil almost unequivocally better. Assuming you have a soft-enough lead and with the right thickness, a pencil is almost always better than a pen.

Is marketing and sex appeal a large part of the charm of a pen ? For example there is no "Mont Blanc" for pencils...

<comment><USER23> I have a feeling if you spoke to some artists/draftsmen you'd hear about the "Mont Blanc" of pencils.

Also, you might find such a thing here: <http://www.penciltalk.org/>

<comment><USER22> But I am not talking about draftsmen - the "Mont Blanc" exists _per se_ not in some specific demographic.

I like penciltalk, because the other site which I have seen - davesmechanicalpencils - has good reviews, but invariably all the pencils look uncool. I am sure it's not the poor bloke's fault - rather that companies dont make pencils with sex appeal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Although the effort from Sharpie is great and will ultimately purchase a few, I think a lot can be said about a geek by their pencil. My fave at the moment is Pentel Kerry. Amazing mechanical pencil that feels phenomenal in hand, what is everyone else rocking?

<comment><USER25> Pencil? What's that?

Seriously though, I don't really write any more except very rarely. I've been trying to get rid of anything paper based for the past 5 years and I think that I am slowly getting there.

So what does that say about me as a geek?

<comment><USER26> Nothing at all. Differences in personal preference are as vast as the options available.

For example: I don't _write_ anything, but I sketch out interfaces and ideas all the time, usually with a pen. Lots of people (my past (and maybe future?) self included) prefer pencils because they can be erased or just feel better in their hand/on paper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> As someone who commented on the original article stated, I'd like to know whether or not the device works on scantrons.

If so, that would be a high school / college godsend.

This is also awesome.

<comment><USER28> The office depot ad says the pencil is #2 equvalent.. so I'm thinking it does work on scantrons..

<comment><USER27> Oh baby.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I was struck by the parallel with blue-black ink (chemical reaction for permanence + dye to see what was written in the meantime).

</comment><comment><USER30> I've been using pen-tech liquiphite pencils for nearly a year now. How are these different?

<comment><USER17> Do they go permanent after X period of time (in this case, 3 days)? That seems a pretty important feature if it's trying to be a pen, methinks.

(haven't used those, don't know if they do or not)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The best pen I've ever used is the Pentel RSVP BK91 Medium point. I love them so much I buy them in bulk, both to save money and to ensure I have a large supply in case they ever stop producing them. They are that good.

And I don't care that they can't be erased. I can always linethough/overwrite, and I'm not an artist, just a writer/notetaker.

</comment><comment><USER31> Shame it's more plastic to end up in an dead albatross' stomach in the Pacific Gyre.</comment>


China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html <comment><USER2> Most Deep Learning papers related to tracking human pose, identifying abnormal behavior, detecting crime from video feeds etc. have Chinese authors. Literally bleeding-edge stuff used to subdue people. Can't wait to see some western politicians to hop on the same train once this tech is cheap after China beta-tests it and irons out all the quirks.

<comment><USER3> There are also plenty of less dystopian uses for pose tracking, including games, cashless convenience stores, VR/AR applications, and driverless cars predicting pedestrian behavior.

<comment><USER4> The key is that said "less dystopian" uses commoditize the technology that the governments can use to spy on its citizens without even spending any major amount of r&d investment. Hell, Alexa in a TV and you have a 1984 system - _willingly_ installed by consumers, no less. A 1984 system that for all intents and purposes can be converted into a surveillance system per secret court order.

The recent crackdowns on TOR darknet services are also frightening. While I'm not shedding tears for child porn distributors, the inevitable message that comes across with the monthly takedown press releases is "we can even get those with the best experience in using cryptography and hiding tools, how do you expect to organize resistance in case government goes the China way?"

Maybe parts of the US could provide resistance given that many people have enough private firearms to make sure any kind of government intrusion will result in unbelievable bloodshed, but disarmed populations like many European countries? They will have no way to voice any opposing thought anymore. We already see this in Hungary where Orban's friends have all but eliminated free independent press or in Turkey where tens of thousands get arrested for "terrorism" charges.

<comment><USER5> I've always heard that the US stands out from other Western countries due to the number of guns in its civilian populations. Is the ability to stand up to mass surveillance states something that people who want to take away guns take into account? In my time in the US I've only heard the argument of the US becoming a bad actor towards its civilian populations be dismissed. I also wonder if civilian populations have access to weapons in areas like Caracas. It'd certainly be terrifying to fight the military there, but the military is already mowing down protesters that are wielding sticks and stones.

<comment><USER6> That line of logic towards gun ownership made sense when the constitution was written, and the musket you owned was not far off from the musket a soldier was issued. What is your ar15 going to do to an unmanned drone six miles in the air? Or a missile launched from a battleship hundreds of miles off the coast? We've long passed the point of the second amendment. The only reason guns arent't totally banned now is because how entrenched the arms industry is in american politics.

<comment><USER7> I was wondering that too, so I researched and the counterargument appears to be:

\- Vietnam won a war with primitive weapons against highly equipped American military

\- while the government can mass murder people with tanks and rockets, it is unlikely to do so. If in 2019 there was an armed uprising against let's say Trump, it could succeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Subdue? Not sure of that. But this is ironic on a number of levels. First, China's crackdown on Xinjiang followed a prolonged (multi-decade) period of low intensity guerilla resistance to their occupation that essentially garnered no international reporting. Second, everywhere else in China has suffered deep and substantial cultural losses in the rush through socialism to modernity as well, with religion, festivals and local languages and dialects front and center. Third, China only really stepped up its efforts in Xinjiang right after the US made "terrorism/national security" the catch-all political excuse de riguer in the noughties, post 911. Fourth, the Islamic presence in Xinjiang literally corresponds to a complete cultural genocide against a range of multicultural (but predominantly Buddhist) kingdoms so effective that we are still piecing together how to read their (significant) literature today. Fifth, a $290M CCTV contract is nothing versus daily US military-industrial spending. Sixth, modern China's main push against peoples in this region began as early as the 1940s based on a joint China-Russia opposition to nomadic tribes in the region, documented in the book _Kazak Exodus_. [http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak-exodus/](http://pratyeka.org/books/kazak- exodus/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Why is this topic so popular on HN? I'm just curious because there are so many social problems and actual politics news in the world but somehow this is always up here.

<comment><USER10> Well, we're a crowd of mostly technology enthusiasts, developers, and scientists.

This is very related to the topic of HN - we're witnessing the (worry- inducing) birth of an oppressive technology-fueled dystopian society.

<comment><USER11> But it is strange that there is a lot of discussion about the slippery slope of what happens when this tech falls into the wrong hands. Meanwhile there is relatively little discussion about things that get us closer to the government actually being the "wrong hands".

<comment><USER12> _But it is strange that there is a lot of discussion about the slippery slope of what happens when this tech falls into the wrong hands._

Not strange at all. One can already see a lot of abuses of such technological power in the US through the exploitation of political affiliations or connections. We've already slipped down the slope, and we've already seen the fingerprints of those hands.

 _Meanwhile there is relatively little discussion about things that get us closer to the government actually being the "wrong hands"._

The government has checks and balances. Though those are imperfect, they can be used as tools to check the overstepping of power. There are also laws against the government censoring speech. The popular refrain among technologists is that it only pertains to Free Speech if the government is doing it, and it's just private businesses doing their justified activities when tech giants do it.

What's wrong in principle is still wrong, even if laws and societal wisdom are lagging technology. Large swathes of the populace feel their voice is being stifled against their wishes, and many can't even spend their money to support who they wish to without overcoming barriers put in place by powerful corporate actors. That's not people losing/winning in a free marketplace of ideas. That's willful manipulation of the free marketplace of ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> > "The digitalization of police work has achieved leap-like growth in > Xinjiang," Zhang Ping, a counterterrorism officer from Jiujiang, a city in > southeastern China

Sounds ironic. Xinjiang is now the only province in China to register a recession after eighties

<comment><USER14> "Xinjiang is now the only province in China to register a recession after eighties" Where is the source?

<comment><USER15> I'd be interested in that, too. I was under the impression that even the central government can't get reliable economic data on its provinces, because the numbers are fudged at every level, so they have to estimate them indirectly e.g. using electricity consumption. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Keqiang_index)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This apparatus of surveillance is functionally identical to what has been commercially deployed in the U.S., except that we are considerably ahead of China in areas like in-car monitoring and always-on home microphones.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not just for home use. China is also exporting their surveillance and social credit technology to Venezuela, Cuba, NK, and even Australia. Those white crowd control vehicles used by Maduro forces to run over dozens of protestors a few weeks ago? Another tailor-made export.

[https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit- syste...](https://nypost.com/2019/05/18/chinas-new-social-credit-system-turns- orwells-1984-into-reality/)

<comment><USER18> Could you provide a source for your final two statements? The page that you have linked doesn't make the same claim.

<comment><USER17> 1) Crowd control exports:

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela- politics/venezu...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela- politics/venezuelan-official-says-chinese-riot-control-gear-averts-casualties- idUSKBN1990YR)

[https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20170913/106398/HHRG...](https://docs.house.gov/meetings/FA/FA07/20170913/106398/HHRG-115-FA07-Wstate- EllisR-20170913.pdf)

2) Running over of protestors (NSFW):

[https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation- world/world/americas...](https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation- world/world/americas/venezuela/article229853509.html)

[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics- base-v...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-politics-base- vehicle/venezuela-national-guard-vehicle-runs-over-protesters-in-caracas- reuters-tv-idUSKCN1S61ZB)

<comment><USER19> China also makes NYPD uniforms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> journalist's thread:

>Three years ago China's leading maker of military electronics, CETC, came to Xinjiang with a vision: bring the tech of battlefield management to control and surveil all aspects of the lives of Uighurs. This is our attempt to walk through how it works.

…

>That shows how important the power of the Chinese state is in creating such a totalizing surveillance system. But it also shows how powerful readily available commercial technology has become and how easily it can be made into the basic ingredients of a police state.

[https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1131360852429266945](https://twitter.com/paulmozur/status/1131360852429266945)

</comment><comment><USER21> There is nothing in this article that the U.S. hasn't been doing via technology exported out of the Acela corridor _forever_. Both are bad, but it will likely take China another 50 years to match what our MIC has done. Just this morning I was reading about how the notorious Azov Battalion of Ukraine ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion)) got much of its military training and weapons from the U.S. amongst others.</comment>


The sexual behaviour of undercover police fits the definition of rape - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/28/sexual-behaviour-undercover-police

<comment><USER2> Well effectively this is state sanctioned covert sexual liaisons, some yielding offspring. One can find many examples of this throughout history, and yes they are termed (the past examples) as rape.</comment>