The most in-demand skills for designers, by level - <AUTHOR> https://cvcompiler.com/blog/do-designers-dream-of-electric-sheep-the-most-demanded-design-tech-skills/ <comment><USER2> It pains me that this is mainly a list of (well, first it pains me that this is a list at all and the idea anyone would seek to learn from it is heartbreaking) of apps that happen to be current in the field as though knowing what submenu in Photoshop contains a certain option is useful. I've been lucky to work with a number of talented visual designers and UX designers. At no point did I marvel at their ability to navigate their apps.

<comment><USER3> So true. A sign of the attempt to commoditize something by people who do not quite understand it.

Understandably, the essence is lost, replaced by easy to measure checkboxes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> These "skills" might be frequent keywords in job ads, but if you're hiring a designer -- or trying to become one -- I think the following are better predictors of success:

      1. Empathy: observing and understanding others
      2. Creativity: coming up with new ideas, often by recombining old ideas from various fields
      3. Knowledge of behavioral science: mining research and theory for useful insights
      4. Communication: discussing, explaining, and presenting designs
      5. Project management: keeping track and keeping up
      6. Ambition: a drive to be exceptional

<comment><USER5> I would add another.

7\. Problem solving: figuring out how to fulfill goals and objectives

Design is fundamentally about solving problems. It's something that gets overlooked and/or misunderstood by so many web designers today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> To get hired, a designer might need to know "UX", or maybe Photoshop, Agile or JavaScript. Is this list helpful to anyone at all?

<comment><USER7> No. This is absolute SEO garbage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Agree with the general sentiment here about the skill checklist being garbage.

However, one key take away is how the mighty is falling, and it is heart warming to see that. Adobe is one of the worst software product development company who still manages to make boatloads of annual revenue and profit.

Hope not for very long.

</comment><comment><USER9> > But what if I ask whether a person without any tech skills can become a > design guru?

Usability isn't something you just pick up, although a distinct lack of arrogance and reading some good books will get you a long way. The rest is experience, lots of. Has to be said that not having tech skills might be an advantage - from memory, the xerox parc guys when designing the Star user interface said that it was easier to take psychologists and turn them into programmers than the reverse ("the design of the star user inteface" \- very highly recommended) Programmers (like me) tend to be crap at it. At least I'm aware of that; many aren't.

You will NOT get good UI design from a junior. They don't have the experience and they rarely have the attitude (they usually think they know it all and they invest their ego into their precious creation. TBH that's a difficult trap to avoid for the best of us).

CVcompiler doesn't distinguish between UX and UI, probably because they don't know what the difference is. Yes I'm being snide but as they're the top skills that should have triggered something for the author.

Elsewhere on the site they say "This data is based on the error stats ofCV Compiler, a tech resume analyzer which has already processed about 15k resumes". W00t! I recently worked on a system that had parsed well over 400,000. But actually the rest of that part is pretty good ([https://cvcompiler.com/blog/what-happens-with-your-tech- resu...](https://cvcompiler.com/blog/what-happens-with-your-tech-resume-after- you-apply-for-a-job/)). Trouble with CVs is very much as outlined there; there's no reliable way to filter a good guy from a bullshitter. The only thing I noticed was really good people have noticeably quiet, understated CVs.

Always was amused by CVs that claimed they were "great team players with a huge passion for ((whatever))" \- dja really think anyone's going to be suckered by that? And if they are do you want to work for them? Recruiters just tune it out. My CV just lists the facts and I make sure I can back up every single one of them.

Sadly it matters little how good you are. Drop into the average company and bad management will fuck you over. I really, really valued the few good managers I have had.

<comment><USER10> > reading some good books

Suggestions for books?

<comment><USER2> Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug.

<comment><USER5> The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is one and only one skill besides having good aesthetics i look for in a designer. The ability to think.

</comment><comment><USER12> what is ux/ui as a skill ??? it's like saying programming is a skill it is very vague</comment>


Show HN: GraphQL Examples in Python and ObjectQL: I've Open Sourced My Web Stack - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/kiwi-ninja/example-projects <comment><AUTHOR> I've been working on GraphQL APIs for a long time. I was never satisfied with the Python GraphQL web stack, so in my spare time I built a new set of libraries that will let anyone put together a GraphQL API in minutes using Python.

The stack is made up of two main libraries:

* ObjectQL ([http://objectql.com/](http://objectql.com/)) An object Mapper from Python to GraphQL.

* DataRM ([https://gitlab.com/kiwi-ninja/datarm](https://gitlab.com/kiwi-ninja/datarm)) A thin layer on top of SQLAlchemy that simplifies schema definition by using typehints.

The HN submission links to load of open source examples to see how everything fits together.

I've decided to open source the libraries so anyone can use them - [https://gitlab.com/kiwi-ninja](https://gitlab.com/kiwi-ninja) and they are all available on PyPi.

Enjoy, I'm interested to hear what people think about the design!

</comment><comment><USER2> wow! this is an awesome set of libraries!</comment>


Matrix 1.0 – Are We Ready Yet? - <AUTHOR> https://matrix.org/blog/2019/03/15/matrix-1-0-https-arewereadyyet-com/ <comment><USER2> I had a pretty positive view of Matrix until I came across this post and the follow up responses from the developer behind an unofficial Matrix server implementation: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19365968)

I'd say tread carefully given their apparent hostility towards competing server implementations, which is literally the only thing that makes the protocol meaningfully "federated" to begin with.

This part in particular was deeply disturbing:

> I can quote the CEO of new vector in an argument we had about the > insecurities of the protocol and what needs to be done to fix them where he > said "good luck talking to your own federation." That reveals a lot.

Not exactly the kind of attitude I'd like to see from the stewards of an "open" protocol.

<comment><USER3> I'm the project lead for Matrix (and CEO of New Vector, the company which hires most of the core Matrix team) and can try to clarify this.

1\. We don't have any hostility to alternative server implementations; it would be utterly idiotic to sabotage the project by doing so. Instead, we promote them, even when they're written by people who for whatever reason have issues with the project. For instance, if you look at [https://matrix.org/blog/category/general/this-week-in- matrix...](https://matrix.org/blog/category/general/this-week-in-matrix/) you can see us publishing almost weekly updates on Construct (the server written by the guy who is levelling the accusations here). Meanwhile, Construct appears to work well enough to talk to the rest of Matrix in practice.

2\. Yup, there have been some security issues pre-1.0 in Matrix around federation, particularly around state resets (thinkos in the state merge resolution algorithm), event ID collision, incorrectly trusting potentially malicious DAG depth parameters, and issues around the perspectives logic. As far as we're aware, these have all been fixed now, or will be once everyone has migrated from perspectives to real TLS, as per the original article - hence us making a big noise about it with AreWeReadyYet.com. Most of the gory details are at: [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- doc/issues/1442](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1442), [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- doc/pull/1659](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1659), [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- doc/issues/1229](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/issues/1229) and [https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix- doc/pull/1711](https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-doc/pull/1711) respectively. You can also see me talking through these issues one by one on the main stage at FOSDEM, starting around [https://youtu.be/C2eE7rCUKlE?t=2035](https://youtu.be/C2eE7rCUKlE?t=2035).

3\. I can't remember the precise context where I said "good luck talking to your own federation", but I suspect it was the result of a disagreement over how federation should be designed - probably over whether DAG depth parameters should be calculated locally or proposed remotely and then validated. We chose one solution, there was a lengthy disagreement, my eventual response on giving up on the argument was "okay, if you want to do it the other way, good luck with that" or words to that effect.

For context, the guy levelling the accusations here is also responsible for maliciously exploiting the security issues on discovering them (e.g. [https://matrix.org/blog/2018/06/14/security-update- synapse-0...](https://matrix.org/blog/2018/06/14/security-update- synapse-0-31-2/)). He is also banned from our github and the core-team chatrooms on Matrix after exhibiting pretty much every flavour of obnoxious and destructive behaviour, culminating with ad hominems against me and most of the individuals on the core team, illustrating his points with hardcore porn, and asking how we're going to compensate him for not launching further exploits. He's also filled up the network with sockpuppet accounts to spam his project (despite us, for better or worse, already promoting it on the weekly blog), and I'd assume he's also seeding sockpuppets on HN too.

So, TL;DR: whilst it's true that pre-1.0 we had some security issues around federation, we believe they are now fixed (or will be, once we've upgraded all the rooms to 1.0). Meanwhile, be aware that the complaints are coming from a deeply disingenuous and malicious source.

<comment><USER4> Matrix is a fantastic project. As the technology matures and becomes more useful, I hope there will be a large push to formalize the organization and bring in other stakeholders. As I'm sure you know, Matrix will not be able to get off the ground by itself, it'll need institutional buy-in from corporations and existing tech companies. Hope there is a plan for that type of out-reach.

<comment><USER5> > it'll need institutional buy-in from corporations and existing tech > companies. Hope there is a plan for that type of out-reach.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail".

I don't see why would corporations and existing tech companies be interested in yet another IM protocol they cannot control, especially in the era of total silos and FAANGs. Doesn't sound like a solid plan to me at all.

<comment><USER2> I can absolutely imagine why existing tech companies would be interested if the protocol became so popular that they'd be stupid to ignore it and start from scratch with their own protocol, like XMPP was at one point.

I'd be more interested in seeing how they plan on preventing the whole Embrace, Extend, Extinguish thing pretty much every company pulled with their initially XMPP based chat apps that gained market share, turning them into back into closed silos.

<comment><USER3> Preventing the embrace, extend, extinguish manoeuvre that WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Google Talk, even Apple Push Notifications did with XMPP is indeed a tough one.

The best solutions we have right now are:

* Ensure there's enough value in the wider network (e.g. available services, integrations, bridges, public chatrooms) that you'd be taking a massive step backwards not to federate.

* Try to build the protocol to be capable enough that vendors don't feel that they have to fork and close it in order to make it do what they want.

I think it's mainly the first one that will make the difference. If there hadn't been such great content out there on the public internet, we might still be on AOL & Compuserve today.

<comment><USER6> The second point will only address the vendors that are actually interested in federation, not the ones that want to close down their silo. XMPP fifteen years ago is a prime example.

Regarding the first point, I'm not sure it will be ever possible to pull this off. The proprietary IM silos are many orders of magnitude larger than IRC, XMPP and Matrix taken together. You are doing a good job with promoting Matrix to nerds, and there will be _some_ value in being able to directly contact the French government (provided that they will allow federation from the public network, which I have a hard time imagining).

I think the only viable route today is to push for legislation (e.g. in the EU, in the context of ePrivacy / GDPR) that will force silo providers to open up their silos and to offer interop by means of standardized protocols. But even in this improbable case they will probably rather create their own rubber-stamped standards (remember Office Open XML) than follow what is already out there.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm not very much into chat apps and protocols, but isn't it possible to just revive XMPP? Ten years ago we used Adium and Pidgin, and federated chat seemed like a solved problem. I understand XMPP with its extensions and use of XML fragments might be complex, but it sounds like matrix or another new protocol isn't easier. In a way, those willing to invest time into F/OSS chat apps have done the best they could with XMPP, and creating a new community around a protocol for no good reasons seems like a wasteful thing to do. XMPP folks shouldn't stop using it just because of Google's kiss of death.

<comment><USER8> Why are people so attached to XMPP?

There was no entity preventing XMPP from thriving, if the community really wanted XMPP, we would have had XMPP everywhere.

But honestly, as someone who ran and tried to use XMPP for many years, the entire protocol was an unmaintained divided mess. And the XEPs didn't help, they felt like hacky workarounds to keep an old protocol up-to-date with the modern needs.

Matrix feels very consistent, specially in the client side. I have all the modern features one could have wanted (E2E encryption, video and audio calls, file sharing, proper synchronization across multiple devices, etc) working out-of-the-box across all my devices. This was almost impossible to achieve with the XMPP clients existent nowadays.

<comment><USER9> I have very same impression. XMPP is basing on XML where parsing is order of magniture more complex than JSON. In lot of ways very similar to SOAP mess where you could not comunicate across different software because each of them supportet different set of SOAP extensions and good luck with communicating with web client.

<comment><USER10> XML is not popular because of JavaScript developers.

Coming from .NET, I do not care using JSON or XML, because the APIs System.Xml.Linq, Newtonsoft.Json and the upcoming System.Text.Json are a joy to use. I think the lack of good native representation of XML in JavaScript made it a unwanted choice.

Regards SOAP I tend to agree to you. Beyond the Basic profile it was a hassle to interop.

<comment><USER7> XML is extremely popular with the JS crowd, they just don't know they're using it ;) JSX (React's template language extension to JavaScript) stands for "JavaScript XML" [1], and there was E4X as an official ECMA spec for XML literals before that (though admittedly not as cool as React is, doesn't have vdom and update events, components for MVC, etc). And JavaScript was indeed _invented_ for DOM manipulation, it's just that the DOM API simply sucks.

The whole XML hate thing is symptomatical for the staged this-vs-that discussion we endure in today's forums.

I guess there are those document representation schemes that everybody hates on, and those that nobody uses ;)

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_(JavaScript_library)#JSX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/React_\(JavaScript_library\)#JSX)

<comment><USER11> E4X was far more powerful than JSX. JSX is just a nice syntax for object construction. E4X could additionally query XML (think XPath but different) not to mention support for XML namespaces, etc.

I agree with the rest though.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I sincerely hope someone took the Telegram client code and add Matrix protocol to it.

Really, Telegram client is open source and the app is more usable than any other bloatware on the market.

<comment><USER13> Agreed, the Telegram desktop client is super fast.

EDIT: Someone seems to already have done this:

[https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/nheko.html)

<comment><USER3> I think nheko is a clone of the telegram UI rather a fork of it.

I agree it'd be awesome if someone took the actual Telegram FOSS clients and ripped out the TG backend and replaced it with Matrix (a bit like the Delta.chat folks did, but replacing with email)

<comment><USER12> No need to replace it, just add dual protocol support :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I hear about Matrix a lot, but I have no idea why I should use it. Can anyone explain why I should use Matrix?

<comment><USER15> \- no vendor lock-in

\- decentralized

\- encrypted/private/secure

\- open-source

It's like irc or email for private decentralized encrypted chat.

<comment><USER16> Matrix isn't really decentralized. It's federated.

<comment><USER17> Federation is a form of decentralization.

<comment><USER18> No, decentralization is invented alongside the blockchain and nothing without a blockchain is decentralized. :)

<comment><USER19> No, you don't need a blockchain for decentralization. Also, you don't need a blockchain[0].

[0]: [https://thomaslarock.com/2018/11/no-you-dont-need-a- blockcha...](https://thomaslarock.com/2018/11/no-you-dont-need-a-blockchain/)

<comment><USER20> I believe you missed a joke.

<comment><USER19> Gosh, I did miss it actually, my bad. Mild autism, I suppose, I often take words literally, esp. when there are no facial/voice tone cues.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The home page gives no clue as to what "Matrix" is. It seems to be yet another "federation" system. Is this worth any attention?

<comment><USER4> > It seems to be yet another "federation" system. Is this worth any attention?

In the current internet environment of walled gardens and a siloed and decimated internet, any federation system is worthy of attention.

<comment><USER22> Given Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have shown they're against federated messaging the more pertinent question for me is "can it work?

Will anyone other than geeks switch from Facebook, et al..

You'd probably need some legislation to force those running large communication platforms to open their protocols and allow federation before there can be significant progress. I really can't see their being political will for that at present.

<comment><USER4> > Given Facebook, Microsoft, and Google have shown they're against federated > messaging the more pertinent question for me is "can it work?

You're probably right, the legacy companies won't buy-in without a fight, but I see two avenues of success.

\- New companies: If a federated messaging system existed five years ago, Slack may have chosen to run on an open standard rather than build its own.

\- Large corporates: they may want the self-hosting, security customizeation, and lack of vendor lock-in of an open standard. For example, I know that Goldman Sachs has built their own in-house messaging service (crazy, I know). They may be a good candidate to switch to an open standard.

<comment><USER22> The lack of ability for their chat to interface with others is probably a considerable measure of control over information flow, which I imagine is good for Goldman Sachs.

<comment><USER4> > The lack of ability for their chat to interface with others is probably a > considerable measure of control over information flow, which I imagine is > good for Goldman Sachs.

A federated system can still be locked down, and made to be inoperable with other services. If you wanted to make an email service that didn't speak to other email services, you would still probably start with the email standard and make changes to lock it down rather than creating a new email service from scratch.

Likewise, a Goldman Sachs (or similar company) that wanted a locked down messaging service would likely consider an open platform that they could modify and lock down rather than using a commercial one (like slack) or rolling their own (which is extremely expensive).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> No.

But I mean that in a nice way. Here's why...

My understanding (limited, to be fair), is that a large percentage (most?) users have a matrix.org account instead of an account somewhere else. By definition, this is not federation. Certainly riot.im users get that by default.

Let's look at a different example - email. What if the inventors of email created email.org and created accounts on it. Everyone would also ask "where's the federation?". What ultimately made email really useful (note the use of the word "really"), was the ability to reach people outside your organization. So you could email back and forth to stanford.edu, ibm.com, usna.mil, and even aol.com.

What is difficult (today), is for me to go to google or yahoo, or microsoft, or stanford and get an account. Yes, there is this [0] but only one provider is on the page. Further, according to that provider [1] it's only a sub- domain, not _my_ domain. It's a start, but also a version behind from the looks of things, so therefore not truly ready.

If any of this is wrong, and I can sign up with a reliable hosting to have server.mydomain.com, I'd sign up. I don't have the time to manage updates & server security, and a reliable provider would allow me to run my own instance.

[0] - [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/hosting](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/hosting) [1] - [https://www.modular.im/](https://www.modular.im/)

<comment><USER3> modular does support custom dns (at no extra charge) - eg webchat.kde.org is hosted on it.

there are a bunch of public servers you can sign up on rather than matrix.org - see [https://www.hello-matrix.net/public_servers.php](https://www.hello- matrix.net/public_servers.php).

our hope is to turn off matrix.org sooner or later (or at least disable signups) to prevent these misconceptions.

<comment><USER23> Thank you!

As a side-note, someone should make that link a bit more visible on the matrix.org site.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> When is the kickass Riot UI remaster that y'all showed off at Web3 coming to town?

<comment><USER25> The future is now [https://medium.com/@RiotChat/the- big-1-0-68fa7c6050be](https://medium.com/@RiotChat/the-big-1-0-68fa7c6050be)

<comment><USER26> I don't want to knock the hard work the Riot developers have put into their application, but I just don't understand: why does 'modern' web design seem to require wasting so much white space? Looking at the screenshot on that blog post, the actual chat transcript is somewhere in the middle of the screen (sandwiched between giant sidebars on either side).

Compare to irssi (or any other console IRC program), which uses just about the entire width of the terminal to print chat messages.

Is this really just a side-effect of developers all having large, high-DPI monitors, making the white space look smaller to them? Because on my tiny little Chromebook, no more than 50% of the screen width is actually used to display chat messages.

<comment><USER27> Why would you want messages to span the entire screen?

[https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the- be...](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/108801/what-is-the-best-number- of-paragraph-width-for-readability)

<comment><USER26> Because: window managers!

[http://i.imgur.com/4K0pa6m.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/4K0pa6m.jpg)

That said...I must confess that irssi uses a non-trivial amount of margin space as well!

<comment><USER28> I think some developers either only have one window open at a time, or always use fullscreen/maximized windows. There are so many things that are just difficult to use when windows are tiled to fit ~4 things on one monitor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I think Matrix is brilliant. I run a synapse home server and updating/maintaining it has been a breeze.

That said, on a couple of occasions (once a while ago, and once with Riot 1.0) I've tried migrating from my free Slack org to Matrix and it still falls short for the feature set I want.

Specifically, I want a community whose members can create rooms for that community that are automatically visible and private to the community. Currently the community features in Riot make that a difficult task.

If anyone has had success doing this I'd be more than happy to hear about it!

</comment><comment><USER30> OK, you want XMPP. But without the many XEPs, something with a monolithic specification. And you like to use the latest trendy hipster stuff, like JSON over HTTP instead of XML. Then you get:

Monolithic, Awefully Trendy Re-Implementation of XMPP (M.A.T.R.I.X.)

Which is also a dedication to XMPP, which has been invented in 1999, the year of the Matrix film.

</comment><comment><USER31> I made a seq2seq chatbot with Matrix/Riot, the python-api implementation ([https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-python-sdk](https://github.com/matrix- org/matrix-python-sdk)) and [https://github.com/tensorlayer/seq2seq- chatbot](https://github.com/tensorlayer/seq2seq-chatbot):

Here it is: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCggOcKZn-c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCggOcKZn-c)

(There's a fun interaction at 25:52)

<comment><USER32> That triple nested if is horrible though…

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Off-topic, but Whatsapp provides E2E for groups upto 256. Matrix can apparently provide E2E for bigger groups. Did they do scaling better?

<comment><USER3> yup. we layer megolm on top of olm (double ratchet) to scale to ~1000 or further.

<comment><USER34> Looks like every device still has to establish an olm channel with every other device in the group. Does that scale?

<comment><USER3> you're right that that's the slow bit (typically about 50ms to set up each channel, so across 1000 devices that's 5s to establish the initial mesh), but the important thing is that having established the channels, they are only used to sync key data for the megolm layer which sits on top. megolm keys typically rotate every 100 messages or every day (whichever comes first), and this uses the existing olm channels. In turn, the olm channels themselves only resetup when conversation changes direction (or if they stall).

[https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2019/03/10/a-look-at-matrix- orgs-...](https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2019/03/10/a-look-at-matrix-orgs-olm- megolm-encryption-protocol/) is quite a good overview of this (from the XMPP perspective!), as is [https://www.uhoreg.ca/blog/20170910-2110](https://www.uhoreg.ca/blog/20170910-2110) (from the Matrix perspective).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> I don't know about Matrix, but Riot, the default frontend, certainly isn't: [https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/7062](https://github.com/vector- im/riot-web/issues/7062) Copy/paste is a pretty fundamental feature.

<comment><USER36> This only applies to text with embedded formatting, like bold and italic

<comment><USER35> It doesn't have to have any explicit formatting, it just needs to be rich text. If you try pasting _anything_ from a web browser or WYSIWYG editor it will break.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> How does Matrix's encryption compare to Signal? I've heard they are supposed to be very similar but I'm doubtful

<comment><USER3> [https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2019/03/10/a-look-at-matrix- orgs-...](https://blog.jabberhead.tk/2019/03/10/a-look-at-matrix-orgs-olm- megolm-encryption-protocol/) is quite a good comparison.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I'm tempted to spin up a Matrix homeserver.

Anyone know if it runs well on Docker via træfik?

<comment><USER25> You might find this to be helpful [https://jonnev.se/matrix-homeserver- synapse-v0-99-1-1-with-t...](https://jonnev.se/matrix-homeserver- synapse-v0-99-1-1-with-traefik/)

<comment><USER38> Thanks for that!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Lets Encrypt has been enabling bad behavior quite a bit lately. Here Matrix says they will no longer accept federation from peers that self sign their certs. Why? Because Lets Encrypt exists. That's the entire argument. They do not address the problems of centralization this creates.

<comment><USER3> no, the argument is that Let's Encrypt is doing a better job at trustworthiness than our previous attempt at using Perspectives to vouch for self-signed certificates, and so at least self-signed folk can have a fairly seamless upgrade to LE if they want.

However, if you want better trust, you can always use a CA you trust more than Lets Encrypt (including a private one, if you're on a private federation, of course).

<comment><USER40> Could you please point me in the direction of someplace where this problem is better explained? I'm struggling to understand, how the certificate choice of the peer X should be a problem, given you send them only the information directly related to the peer X, so it seems like you shouldn't care if the traffic between you 2 is encrypted using X's key or MitM's key, because it's only their part of the network that potentially gets compromised. If so, it should be the choice of every given node, if they trust that part of the network they are connecting to, and, conclusively, if they want to accept a certificate they see for the first time, no matter if it's signed by any common CA or not.

<comment><USER3> [https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/blob/master/docs/MSC17...](https://github.com/matrix- org/synapse/blob/master/docs/MSC1711_certificates_FAQ.md#it-used-to-work-just- fine-why-are-you-breaking-everything) is the best explanation. You can't just make it a per-node decision otherwise everything would splitbrain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Can't Check my federation, only seeing the square next to the textfield animating the sh*t out of itself :-)</comment>


Founders at Work p. 402 "If I got married tomorrow, I'd probably be worrying about a code issue during the ceremony and deliver my vows in Python." - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> Livingston: Can you tell me about any of the challenges you've faced?

Ross: One thing is just time. Whenever I'm doing something now, I feel like I should be doing something else instead. If I got married tomorrow, I'd probably be worrying about a code issue during the ceremony and deliver my vows in Python. It's a nonstop state of stress. ...</comment>


No, Really, the PC Is Dying and It's Not Coming Back - X-combinator http://www.wired.com/2015/03/no-really-pc-dying-not-coming-back/

<comment> X-combinator OH BOY!!!! I can't wait for the future where I do pro photography editing on an iPhone!

 _chucks PC out the window_

There are people out there who literally get new smartphone every year. I've had the same PC since 2009 and have upgraded parts as needed. It's way more powerful than when I got it and I can actually do productive things on it. Sure there are people out there who are entirely consumers of content, but don't try to speak for everyone. There will always be a PC market unless in the future you can plug in your tiny smartphone into a monitor and literally do all the same stuff a full size PC can do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Amen.

<comment><USER2> I'd agree with you but,

What makes a producer PC, vs. a consumer tablet/smartphone, is actually the physical user interfaces. Namely, the keyboard and the big display (and accessorily, the mouse, since it's hard to keep your arms up to touch the screen).

Smartphones have displays that have the same resolution as desktop, namely 1920x1080.

The logic board of the latest MacBook is no bigger than a smartphone.

There are PC-in-a-keyboard such as the OneBoard Pro+ that include an Android system.

If you hook a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to your tablet/smartphone and project the display to a bigger screen, then you can make it a perfectly good producer computer. (granted, easier done with Android than with iOS, given the silly restrictions on software production on iOS).

Also, you may consider a 20+" desktop tablets such as the Toughpad 4K Tablet, running MS-Windows, you cannot say that you cannot produce on MS-Windows. With it, you don't need a mouse, since the tablet is flat on your desk.

No, the problem is not the hardware, is the shortsightness of Apple that restricts its system and the applications it allows on its hardware too much. There's also the problem, present both on iOS and Android (even if less in the later case), that the system restrict access to files by the applications. So it is harder to write different tools manipulating the same files on those platforms than with usual systems.</comment></comment></comment>


The Sorry State of Android Fragmentation: An Example to Understand - <AUTHOR> http://www.xda-developers.com/the-sorry-state-of-android-fragmentation/ <comment><USER2> The fragmentation of Windows and Linux desktop must be ever worse. This is a problem that can be solved with proper OS support and truly abstracting the fragmentation away at the SDK level. Google just seems to be much worse at this than the rest of the major platform vendors.</comment>


LinkedIn Shares Tumble After 'Lockup' Expires - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-11-21/linkedin-falls-to-lowest-level-in-five-months-after-lockup-period-expires.html

<comment><USER2> Misleading headline. At the moment, LinkedIn is down 2.78%, the dow is down 2.11%, and Google is down 2.54%, not a huge difference.

This headline could be "Google Shares Tumble After LinkedIn Lockup Expires" and it would be just as accurate.

<comment><USER3> I am not sure that Financial news headlines try to be rigorous about causality. If you monitor news stories on Bloomberg from 15 minutes before the market you can often see the causality bounce around all over the place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A big fall after releasing millions of shares to the market isn't surprising, particularly given the small initial float at IPO.

I guess we'll see what LinkedIn's real market valuation is because though its definitely worth something, $10B it is not. And if the overall market continues to decline, tech companies such as LinkedIn are going to get hammered the most as investors start to really ask themselves what companies will make it through the mess the best (probably the big blue chip ones).

</comment><comment><USER5> (Disclosure: I used to work for LinkedIn)

The stock closed down 2.78% while the market as a whole dropped 2.11%. How is that considered a tumble?

Cherry-picking the lowest price of the day seems misleading.

<comment><USER6> The article was published at 1 pm CT. The stock was down over 7% around that time[1]. The article didn't cherry-pick the days lows since it was published at the days lows. Still, this is a great example of how intraday market commentary is often invalidated in a matter of minutes.

[1] <http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=lnkd>

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wonder whether the stock is still overpriced, even at $70? seems to have rebounded a few bucks since the article. This might even be a good time to buy, if you think the company went down too much.

</comment><comment><USER8> It is a common misconception that lockup expiration day typically means a large drop in a stock's price. While there is certainly additional selling pressure, the affect of expiration is usually already priced in to some extent.

This article perpetuates the myth since as many have pointed out, after an initial artificial drop, the final close was about the same as markets overall.

<comment><USER9> Misconceptions maybe about the magnitude of the drop, but not the existence of it. The gap down at the open, not to mention declines the previous days, was textbook.

<comment><USER8> Not really: [http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=LNKD+Interactive#symbol=l...](http://finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=LNKD+Interactive#symbol=lnkd;range=5d;compare=ebay+yhoo+goog;indicator=volume;charttype=area;crosshair=on;ohlcvalues=0;logscale=off;source=);

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Three whole percent?! Zzz.

<comment><USER9> The real story would be the ~30% decline in the past month, but that maybe that would be a less-sensational headline.

[http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=3m&s=LNKD&l=on&z...](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?t=3m&s=LNKD&l=on&z=l&q=l&c=xlk&c=%5EGSPC&c=%5EIXIC&c=%5EDJI)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> The whole market got hit pretty badly today. This is nothing more than an unfortunate coincidence. Boo! Misleading! I call bullshit on this story. Let's see what happens on a day where things are fairly stable for the markets.</comment>


React profiling component to measure the "cost" of rendering - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/bvaughn/rfcs/blob/profiler/text/0000-profiler.md <comment><USER3> It doesn't look like this gives more information than the built in profiling tools[0] React already has.

So it looks like an interesting project to learn the component lifecycle and some React internals, but if you need to make your react apps faster you should probably use the provided profiling tools.

[0] [https://building.calibreapp.com/debugging-react- performance-...](https://building.calibreapp.com/debugging-react-performance- with-react-16-and-chrome-devtools-c90698a522ad)

<comment><USER4> The current debugging tools use the User Timing API, which according to the post have large overhead, and don't account for 'yield' time when async rendering is enabled (this is kind of the TL;dr for the whole proposal).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Everytime a project is reimplemented via react, it's much worse then before. A recent example is Reddits redesign.

Is using React always bad for the user or are there any examples out there, not behind a login, that show a good usecase for React?

<comment><USER6> Twitter Lite and Airbnb are obvious examples not behind a login.

I'm sure there are countless good examples in this list: [https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Sites-Using- React](https://github.com/facebook/react/wiki/Sites-Using-React)

But React and other SPA libraries will always excel more for more complex UIs, those sorts of things tend to be behind logins.

<comment><USER7> The claim that Twitter "Lite" is an improvement is a collective delusion of the web development community, spread by Google and Twitter PWA evangelists. By every measure, except 'shininess', it performs worse that both Twitter.com and the old legacy mobile.twitter.com (which can still be accessed if you set your user agent to something like a Blackberry).

Even from a warm cache, Twitter Lite takes longer to display your timeline compared to desktop Twitter. Compared to the legacy mobile twitter site, the PWA version is 15x slower at showing your timeline [1]

And this is all the while ignoring the UX annoyances of the PWA version. When loading the timeline, you're presented with about three different loaders, all flashing about the screen.

[1]: [https://twitter.com/joshhunt/status/980769162770485249](https://twitter.com/joshhunt/status/980769162770485249)

<comment><USER8> Yep, first load is slower. But loads of any click you make are faster. That's the trade-off.

<comment><USER7> But first load (and repeat loads of the first page you visit) is the only thing that matters. The primary use case of Twitter is the timeline - <USER2> you've made displaying that slower, you failed to make a faster site. You blew it.

Of course I know nothing about the complexities of Twitter internally and technically, but I don't understand how they managed to make it slower than the Desktop Twitter, and claim that they built a better experience when they clearly haven't.

\---

Edit: I just did a tiny bit of by-the-eye comparisons between Desktop Twitter and Twitter Lite, and loading Notifications seems a bit faster on Twitter Lite. Loading Profile might be the tiniest bit faster on Twitter Lite, but I suspect there's a lot of DOM jank that slows displaying the next page. Showing DMs is slower on Twitter Lite compared to Desktop Twitter.

But even so, what does this have to do with the PWAs that Google+Twitter evangelise? My understanding is that PWAs are all about speeding up the warm- cache 'first load' [1], and once that's loaded, there's not really much that the PWA technologies will do for you. Both Desktop Twitter and Twitter Lite are Single Page Apps that fetch views from API calls - there's nothing inherently different about Twitter Lite's approach that will make it faster at that compared to Desktop.

[1]: 'First load' seems to be the wrong name to call this, but unsure of a better, more concise phrase.

<comment><USER9> >The primary use case of Twitter is the timeline - if you've made displaying that slower, you failed to make a faster site. You blew it.

It's not at all clear this is true. Does explore get a lot of traffic? Comments? Maybe interactions are more valuebale than pageviews?

What if I'm in the elevator, and I want to check my twitter feed?

Obviously I know none of these things, but those are assumptions I wouldn't make easily.

<comment><USER10> > Maybe interactions are more valuebale than pageviews?

They are, to Twitter. Twitter is driven by engagement, not by user needs.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


What's the meaning of "That's the exception that proves the rule?" - <AUTHOR> http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/731/whats-the-meaning-of-the-expression-thats-the-exception-that-proves-the-rule

<comment><USER2> I'm not so sure I agree. I think it is saying "if you have to think hard, and can only come up with one counterexample, there is pretty much a rule"

It isn't for things like provable facts, it is for things like "only men win best director oscars". If you gotta dig to come up with a couple counterexamples the statement is pretty much right.

<comment><USER3> This is how I've always understood it a well. Additionally, often the nature of the given exception shows what great lengths one must go to in order to break the rule.

Example: "I never run into traffic on my way home. Except for that one time when the bridge collapsed."

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In this case, the "exception" is not an exception to the rule. It's an exception of the object to which the rule applies.

Let's say we have a rule that is said to be valid for all mammals. To prove the rule ("make it more likely" to be strict) we should check it for exceptional mammals like the whale (a huge mammal that lives in the water). When the rule applies for these cases, the rule is more likely to be true cause people that make rules tend to overlook exceptional/extreme cases.

</comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps it means that it is impossible to create a rule that applies to a category without exception, real life is much more nuanced than that. So if you think you have such a rule, that is always valid, as people often do, we know it's a bad rule. A rule only becomes a good rule once the exception is found because that means it is a rule that has a hope of succeeding in an ever evolving real life.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think Nassim Taleb's Black Swan book gives examples of the exception proving the rule a few times. Unfortunately I don't have the book to hand to provide a direct quote.

</comment><comment><USER7> prove used to mean test. Hence, that's the exception which tests the rule.

in fact, that meaning survives in the phrase "proving ground"

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a masterful parody of sophistry.

</comment><comment><USER9> There are no even prime numbers, except for 2.

<comment><USER10> And 2 is very odd.</comment></comment>


Bottleneck at Printers Has Derailed Some Holiday Book Sales - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/23/books/paper-printers-holiday-sales-books-publishers.html <comment><USER2> The pro-ebook comments here are surprising.

I love ebooks, but they have some real drawbacks: you can't lend them, you can't switch platforms easily, their layouts are usually pretty limited, and they often screw up diagrams, etc.

I wish we could solve the problems associated with ebooks, rather than having weird tribal wars about them.

<comment><USER3> I don't know about anyone else but I always remove DRM from my eBooks, which is trivially easy and solves two of your problems.

Not sure if it's permitted to link to it here but it's pretty easy to find the tool that does this.

<comment><USER4> This is missing the point. Can I expect to _always_ be able to remove DRM from any ebooks I might want to buy in the future, no matter what the platform vendor does? Obviously not - that's _not_ a "trivially easy" operation in any real sense. "Just remove the DRM" is _always_ a band-aid and a last-resort, not a real solution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As we have seen Apple (and to a lesser extent its direct competitors) bury its old-fashioned record label competitors, I think the print media industry is due for a similar (if smaller) revolution.

There's probably nobody more frustrated by these sudden book shortages than the books' authors themselves. Being out of stock during the sweet spot of this year too often means the book sale will never be made.

I'm working on a microbindery, which involves ultracheap one-off book runs in tiny distributed shops around the country, the operative idea being that instead of waiting six weeks for the next containerload of today's bestseller/tomorrow's pulp, whatever's out of stock can simply be knocked out in three hours and either picked up or mailed a short distance.

Making a book (a real book) takes more than your $39 Deskjet, but it's not hard, or all that capital- or even labor-intensive.

A single command line argument could convert a PDF to a perfect-bound novel or textbook, indistinguishable from the factories that produce books by the containerload but in massive MOQ's and haphazard sales and proof processes.

Even if it costs $15 instead of $12 to print bestseller copy number n+1, that's still plenty of money left on the table if you're at the mercy of a massive 20th-century pulp mill in a different time zone, who can't be bothered with your last minute business.

<comment><USER6> PDF is a file. Books are anything but. That's a lazy alternative that did not succeed in 30 years. Why would that happen now?

<comment><USER5> PDF came out 25 years ago.

Replace "PDF"/"Books" with "PNG"/"Photographs", or "MP3"/"Recordings", and you'll see how well that argument went over. One should make the argument via YouTube to double the irony.

A group of hipster book snobs jealously guarding their century-old first editions are welcome to their hobby, but the mass media will blow right past them as soon as the economics are favorable. What's remarkable is how much more sophisticated 35mm film and vinyl are versus the old staid book.

Why now? Consumers are getting fussier (I want what's hot now, not in 8 weeks), and production equipment is getting way cheaper. Laser printing costs (even quasi-consumer-level) have plummeted to the point where equipment manufacturers have to resort to gimmickry to keep their margins positive. While all the paper textbooks you've read to date probably originated roll-to- roll, I see laser (and the flexibility it offers) finally breaking into that market.

<comment><USER6> Youtube did the job right for sure, I agree with you there but not with a similar jest for PDF/books equivalence. Youtube killed cassettes, CDs and all other offline forms of video: on plastic and also over a format file saved on a disk. PDF is like those .wmp Windows Media Player video files that no one has the time or interest to download and then read on.

Sure it works among techies because a good alternative has not existed but the real market of book doesn't consume PDFs or ePubs. They don't understand those, and don't appear to care because it is bad un-relatable experience to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The most interesting tidbit from this article: paper sales are up, ebooks are down.

"Publishers' revenues from hardcover sales rose 3.5 percent in the first 10 months of this year, while revenue from digital books fell 3 percent in the same period, according to the Association of American Publishers."

<comment><USER8> Ebooks leveled off at around 30-35% of sales a few years ago and are in slight decline. I work in libraries with ebooks and though our trend is still upward, that's more about unmet demand and the curve has leveled in the past two years. I think the market for ebooks will slowly grow as the technology improves, but it's a long way from overtaking the physical book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> dead-tree books? good. i hope those printers die permanently. those dead-tree books are a lose-lose deal either way for America. we're stuck on expensive old tech at the cost of trees, arable land and residential space when there is no longer the need to do so.

</comment><comment><USER6> printer of dead-tree books died? that's good news! i sincerely hope we get rid of rotten pulp industry completely. it leads to expensive books unnecessarily, bad legislation and terrible copyright laws and keeps modern America on its knees with its outdated technology.

imo, web should be able to handle distribution and consumption both.

<comment><USER9> Our brains are wired to treat processing information from a physical unchanging object very differently than from a slab of glass with ephemeral content on it. Words on a printed page do stick in your head better than content flowing past on a screen. I am so looking forward to the day we have some form of electronic book though! A series of e-paper pages that will make my brain feel like it's holding a 'real' book will be that day I switch. p.s. I want an electronic paper map I can fold up and stuff in a pocket, that requires little energy and still allows me to do all the pinch/zoom and tap tricks I can do on a tablet.

<comment><USER10> > Our brains are wired

Any time this phrase appears in an argument it's a good indication that I can ignore the argument.

Our brains are not "wired." They are pretty malleable and adaptable, and while a lot of that happens during childhood, they do remain fairly malleable throughout life.

While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written information. Books have only existed for a couple thousand years, but originally were quite expensive to produce and only available to the wealthy; mass market production of books has only happened for a couple hundred years.

There are probably reasons why many people prefer physical books to e-books, but to make a claim that it's based on some kind of "wired" preference in our brains rather than practical factors like battery life, compatibility issues, screen refresh rates, or any of a number of other simple, practical explanations is a bit extreme, and would need to be backed up with some kind of evidence.

I personally don't consume much in e-book form, but the reasons are because of DRM, ecosystem lock-in, poor formatting in e-books, and the like. I actually consume a lot more content electronically than I do in dead-tree form, but it happens to be web pages and DRM-free PDFs.

<comment><USER11> > While there are neural structures that are specialized for certain tasks > genetically, it is incredibly unlikely that the form of the book has had any > significant evolutionary effect that would lead to some genetic > predisposition for a book compared to some other form of conveying written > information

It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the book. The book is better because it evolved for us.

The key difference between books and e-books is that books are 3D objects giving us a sense of location for the information contained therein that varies in a consistent, logical manner as we progress through the information. This allows us to use our spatial memory, which yes, we are hard-wired to have, to help remember the information in the book. We evolved for this kind of memorization and are good at it.

Here's an interesting article on this: [https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember- this-a...](https://www.fastcompany.com/3009366/you-wont-remember-this-article- or-anything-else-you-read-online-unless-you-pr)

Some papers:

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S088303551...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0883035512001127)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002253717180066X)

[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144929830891447...](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01449298308914479)

<comment><USER10> > It's the other way around. The book isn't better because we evolved for the > book. The book is better because it evolved for us.

But computer interfaces are evolving for us as well.

I'm not arguing that they are currently better; just that there isn't much about the form of the book that we are "hard wired" to prefer, but rather some inadequacies in both human interface as well as some other practical issues of e-book distribution.

The first paper you link is the only one that I would say really supports your point, but it only compares one way of reading on a screen (a PDF) against paper for a short document, and it doesn't probe very deeply into why reading comprehension was worse on the screen than paper. Is it the spatial location, is it the fact that you can spread out pages and see more at once on paper, is it the reduced eye strain from reflective vs. backlit presentation?

These are all things that could be relatively easily compared; provide paper with a scrolling interface rather than letting you turn the pages by hand, provide a paginated interface for the screen, use an e-ink display rather than LCD for the e-book case.

The second is about spatial memory of information on paper, but doesn't compare with a computer screen, and you can have a memorable spatial arrangement on a computer as well.

The third one compares paper to screen for proofreadig, but is from the 1983 and using white on black text on an Apple II. I think the differences in screen technology and UI design, along with the subjects having to learn a special purpose UI for copyediting on the screen, make that not all that relevant simply for the comparison of reading a book.

So anyhow, while there is some research on a screen being not as good as paper, it doesn't look like it goes into very much depth as to the reason for the difference, and whether it's based on spatial memory, deficiencies in UI on the computer, eye strain due to backlighting, or some combination.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Mitch Hedberg and GIS - <AUTHOR> http://njgeo.org/2014/01/30/mitch-hedberg-and-gis/ <comment><USER2> It's deliberate:

"Between February and June of 1969 ... no more full-service properties were planned ... difficult to control quality with in-house restaurants ... All inns built after La Quinta #505 were built ... at locations with area available to build a restaurant ... which would be leased to a major restaurant chain for management."

"June, 1969 ... La Quinta #507 ... Restaurant on the premises was leased to Denny's."

[http://www.business.txstate.edu/users/jb15/MGT4350/how_la_qu...](http://www.business.txstate.edu/users/jb15/MGT4350/how_la_quinta_began.htm)

<comment><USER3> I noticed the same thing with Noah's Bagels and Jamba Juice. Apparently there is also a connection between the two: [http://breakfastatepiphany.blogspot.com/2012/06/noahs-new- yo...](http://breakfastatepiphany.blogspot.com/2012/06/noahs-new-york- bagelspeets-coffee.html)

<comment><USER4> A rap duo from Brooklyn noticed the same thing with Pizza Hut and Taco Bell... [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ8ViYIeH04](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ8ViYIeH04)

<comment><USER5> The reason for this would be that both, Pizza Hut & Taco Bell (as well as KFC) are owned by the same company: Yum Brands.

<comment><USER6> Correct. It is even possible to find restraints that are dual or triple restaurants, serving food for all three.

<comment><USER7> Which is what the song is about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of this classic article on a business strategy of opening a coffee shop across the road from a Starbucks - [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_m...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/hey_wait_a_minute/2007/12/dont_fear_starbucks.html#page_start)

<comment><USER9> Even Starbucks are doing it

[http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/01/06/i.spy.ste...](http://edition.cnn.com/2010/LIVING/wayoflife/01/06/i.spy.stealth.starbucks/)

<comment><USER10> I always thought it was funny that for a while Starbucks operated two shops on opposite corners of the same intersection at Robson & Thurlow in Vancouver.

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-123.12482,3a,75y,229...](https://email@example.com,-123.12482,3a,75y,229.43h,88.21t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1swLc1XkJNahMG2XeLfYQWZg!2e0)

One of them has been closed since this Street View image was taken in 2012, but they were both there for some time (I had worked in the area in 2008 and they both were definitely there then).

<comment><USER11> I would think that's somewhat similar to two gas stations on opposite corners. You can get in and out of one of them fairly easily from any direction and going back out in your desired direction.

You're not invested (usually) in going to a particular Starbucks when you're getting your coffee on the go. This lets them increase the throughput for the area, while also capturing traffic (foot traffic in the case of this setup it seems) from more directions. You want coffee, but it's on the opposite corner then you have to cross two roads two times each? That's inconvenient. You have to cross, in the worst case, one road twice to get coffee in this setup. (Note: I don't think people analyze their behavior to that depth, but ease of access is at least an unconcious factor in determining whether to visit a place.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "So, only 3.4% of the La Quintas out there live up to Mitch Hedberg's expectations...Update:...This yields 49 pairs (or 5.8% of all La Quintas)"

Brings to mind:

"Humor can be dissected, as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind" \- E.B. White

</comment><comment><USER13> One thing missed here is this sort of thing is a lot easier (to read and code) using the built-in earthdistance module.

The query doesn't need the added "shape" column unless you want it for indexes, and becomes simply:

        SELECT d.city, d.state, earth_distance(
                        ll_to_earth(d.latitude, d.longitude),
                        ll_to_earth(l.latitude, l.longitude)) as distance
        FROM dennys d, laquinta l
        WHERE distance <= 150
        ORDER BY 3

No more magic numbers or confusing function names.

Note I don't mean this as a slight on the article - I purely mean it to educate postgres users that they can do this sort of thing easily without downloading/installing PostGIS.

</comment><comment><USER14> Almost no comments about the amazing comedy of Mitch? I hadn't known about him until today ... The kinds of observation he makes are hilarious. Any fans?

<comment><USER15> Mitch Hedberg is amazing

"Dogs are forever in the pushup position" ~ Mitch

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> It looks like this comedian died in 2005. So I am wondering what the percentage was when he was alive and making this observation.

</comment><comment><USER17> > contains the locations of the chain's hotels in JSON. Using a regular > expression, I converted the hotel data into CSV.

wat.

<comment><USER18> And here is the reason I will never post code I write.

<comment><USER19> Why? If other people do something differently it's a great way to learn something new. Don't take it personally.

<comment><USER20> I think its more that the "wat." comment wasn't a chance to learn anything new. It was just snark.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Digg Tries to Regain Its Momentum - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/technology/19digg.html <comment><USER2> So, it's interesting they say their traffic died down due to lower Google ranking.

One aspect that I don't know has been mentioned anywhere is the loss of traffic from blogs/news sites. As a news site owner, I stopped using Digg to try to promote stories when Twitter started rising in popularity.

Digg's "Digg button" was very much a web1.0 "top site" pyramid scheme type promotion. Where you send your traffic to Digg, in the hope that you boost your rank and get traffic sent back to you. For digg, it worked for a while because Digg's aggregate traffic was greater than yours.

What ended up wearing on me was the all-or-nothing effect of digg. Either your story made it, and you got a burst of traffic -- or it didn't, and you had nothing to show for sending them a bunch of traffic.

Meanwhile, promoting your stories through Twitter has an incremental effect. Every re-tweet has some small value. There's no all-or-nothing to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Accessible only to members of NYT. Any other way to view it ?

<comment><USER4> Clear cache try again. It happens from time to time - usually glitch and nothing sinister :)</comment></comment>


Bird Navigation Breaks Entanglement Record - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23748/

<comment><USER2> Interesting article.

I wonder about parts of it:

> Various scientists have pointed out that photosynthesis and bird navigation > must rely on quantum effects ....

After looking at the 2 linked articles (links are just after the above sentence in this article), I would say the word "must" above is incorrect. In both of the linked articles, researchers are _speculating_ on quantum effects in bird navigation & photosynthesis.

Also, it seems odd to talk about "rely[ing] on quantum effects". If quantum mechanics is the way the world works, then _everything_ is a "quantum effect". It's not like the universe has quantum parts and classical parts (is it?).

EDIT: Let's make that a more serious question. _Is it?_

<comment><USER3> They mean that they way it works couldn't work in a non-quantum world.

<comment><USER4> Considering we live in a quantum world that just means you can approximate the same thing in a non-quantum world. It might not seem like a big deal, but thinking about earth's orbit in a pure Newtonian world is still wrong. As is friction and wind resistance.

What I am trying to say is when someone says it works in a non-quantum viewpoint, they just mean you can approximate the first few decimal places without looking at QM. But, saying it works is not accurate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hope they don't start to make computers from bird's eyes now.</comment>


Android: Liberté, égalité, fraternité - <AUTHOR> http://blog.morrildl.net/2008/03/from-certain-perspective-theres-nothing.html <comment><AUTHOR> This guy works at Google as one of the Android "developer advocates".</comment>


Ask HN: Should I Ask for Promotion? - <AUTHOR> I am happy and fully charged to work for my current employer. As a PM, I am tasked to create new products/services and responsible for their growth. I feel I am working more than my title prescribes. So, do I ask my manager to promote me? Or do I keep working with the same energy and let the performance "speak"? <comment><USER2> In my experience, _you don 't get what you don't ask for_. In other words, your work/performance rarely "speaks" for itself. If you believe your work is representative of a promotion, then you should absolutely talk to your boss about it. Even if they say "no", you can follow up with "what do I need to get there?" and demonstrate a willingness to grow and level up in the organization. That can kickstart a process where your boss is _actively_ helping you get a promotion. (Assuming they're a good boss...)

For now, I recommend compiling a list of achievements and work that you've done that illustrates your growth. When you have this conversation, your job is so sell yourself as worthy of a promotion. You can't just say "I'm working more". That won't fly. But you can say "In the last 6 months, I've accomplished X, Y, and Z. I proactively identified problems M and N, and recruited Joe and Sally to develop a solution, then implemented it within six weeks. This solution saved/made the company $A, and increased productivity by B%." Numbers and data generally speak more than words.

Another piece of advice that a former boss told me is "don't ask, tell". I'm not sure I'm 100% on board with this, but the idea is that you go in with something like "I've done all of these things (see above), and it's time for me to move up to the next level and get a promotion to Senior Whatever." This shows confidence and assertiveness, which is generally a good thing the more senior you get. I'm not 100% convinced this works, but it has worked with me for the last few bosses I've had, so... YMMV.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great piece of advice. I like the "don't ask, tell". The reason I got a little disappointed in "asking" is that in previous 2 attempts the promotion got delayed because of stupid reorgs, the managers changed. I took it upon me to build the case again. That took time (at lease a year), and eventually I thought maybe it makes no sense, rather just wait till someone realizes. But I get your point. Thank you :)

<comment><USER3> Piggybacking on this (slight point on semantics but still important in terms of framing the discussion)

Don't tell them, SHOW them. The advice about displaying all of those things, almost like metrics or hitting a benchmarks is key.

There is some obvious psychology at play here - for some bosses it might be more effective to present everything in one fell swoop so you build an ironclad case with no room to argue. Another might be to either build up this proof over a course of a few weeks and mention another point and another project. With deeply held beliefs, it takes time to change one's mind and seems like a rare thing to convert someone instantly. (The question is here, how deeply does the boss believe OP does NOT deserve a promotion)

Another critical point is the company structure and finance. Is there bureaucracy the limiting fact and there simply isn't an open position? Or is the company small enough they can simply make one? To me this would be the biggest obstacle to find a way around/through.

</comment></comment></comment><comment> a-saleh It depends?

I.e. when I worked at a fairly large multinational (around 10k headcount), the only time I got promoted was when I explicitly started asking along the lines: "I like the sound of 'senior engineer', how do I get there?"

But there was a process. Maybe you don't have a process.

W.r.t. 'having your performance speak' I would suggest looking at it as 'building your case' rather than 'I am working a lot, right?'

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. But whenever I try to build a case, my mental model tells me that its not the right time. I think of all counter arguments (company revenue is down, my product is still in infancy,etc.), and I tend to postpone it. Why can't it be discussed as a process (e.g. regular review session likes hey, I see you are very close to be promoted to senior manager, let us discuss it in details the next meeting). I mean that my manager should be as aware of it, as I am.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Doing lots of your current job != exhibiting you will succeed at the sorts of tasks if you were promoted, which is why if you are great at a certain job you can get stuck doing it, especially if you're a bit understaffed which I guess you are if you're doing a ton of extra work to keep up.

Can you pick up / start doing work that'd make it clearer you could be a leader (assuming that's what the next step looks like) without dropping the ball?

</comment><comment><USER5> If you can actually repeatedly and successfully create and grow new products and services, I would start your own company.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am working on that, too ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Like a-saleh says, about 'building your case', you want to position yourself such that it's undeniable you are producing more value with your time. Point out that there has plainly been a shift in the value of your time for the organization.

</comment><comment><USER7> You can probably ask for anything you want. I would doubt, however, that anyone would give you anything unless they a have reason to do so.

Like an outside offer.

Why would I, as a company, promote you and give you more money when no one else wants you? I have no incentive to do so.

I'm sure wouldn't do it out of the good of my heart. That doesn't exist. People may try to make you think like such thing exists and you might get a promotion from time to time but that is a fraction of what you would get if someone else was interested in you.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes, make people say no.

That said, switching jobs is generally the best/easiest way to move up.</comment>


Mapping Yelp Reviews Across San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@steventang/mapping-yelp-ratings-across-san-francisco-c0460e864f21

<comment><USER2> Wait, the Yelp API has a limit of 40 entries, regardless of how finely-tuned you set the geographics. (Which is why I had to switch to the Foursquare API for that purpose)

What is your sample size? If it's large, how did you get past the API limits?

<comment><AUTHOR> I sent a separate request for each bounding box area and limit to only the top 10 restaurants in the search response. Each bounding box is small enough where I'd say that the top 10 restaurants are a good gauge of how well-reviewed the area is.</comment></comment>


How GPU came to be used for general computation - <AUTHOR> http://igoro.com/archive/how-gpu-came-to-be-used-for-general-computation/ <comment><USER2> Now I'd like to know more about what general uses there are to these beasts. I see the point for simulating fluidsn etc., but out of climate researchers and aerospace engineers, who needs these sort of tools nowadays? sincerely wondering.

<comment><USER3> I've used it to make my conway's game of life implementation, and make it run really fast with a naive brute force approach. <http://vimeo.com/9516535>

So add toy programs to that list :)

<comment><USER4> Very nice! I would love to mess with that if/when you're ready to release source.

<comment><USER3> Done, MIT license knock yourself out :) <http://github.com/xenthral/Conway- OpenCL> You need opencl-enabled drivers, SDL library and OpenGL.

I suppose this is my first open source project. hurray for me (:

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is a good introduction. I'm interested in finding articles that speculate about just how aligned the design requirements are between graphics, and most matrix-based scientific and data mining computation.

For instance, Nvidia has introduced double-precision support and L1 cache, which has marginal value in traditional graphics. This is going to hurt their profitability on the Fermi chip compared to the simpler ATI alternatives.

I am gonna enjoy watching how all this plays out.

<comment><USER6> I was puzzled how that can impact data mining or machine learning as a whole, too. The difference between data mining algorithms and image processing/string matching algorithms is huge. It requires more data to get some meaningful intermediate results on one computing kernel. For example, a typical scene in my research is to compare the performance of many proposed features (tens of thousands) against large volume of data, and pick the best one. It is an embarrassing parallelization problem, but the data throughput is huge. On supercomputers, it is easy since every computer can have a local copy of either feature set or data set. But for GPGPU, there is no way for each core to have a local copy of either set. Thus, to compare against each other, GPGPU must go back and forth to its shared memory, and the limited bandwidth may harm the performance badly.

Disclaimer: I am not very experienced in GPGPU field, so my worrying may be proved wrong.

<comment><USER7> it's horribly hard to accurately predict what will work and what not, and they do have some caching ability (what would cache a texture map when rendering an image).

but what you are perhaps missing is that it's ok for gpus to read memory, as long as you have enough threads. they can switch context _very_ quickly, so one set of threads can request memory (hopefully a contiguous chunk) and then drop into the background and let another set of threads do some work (on the same processing unit). this is critical to their efficiency and is very different to a cpu, which instead relies on cache and "sits doing nothing" if it needs to read data from "afar" (obviously there are trade-offs - there's only so much local memory for state, for example).

i worked on a problem that was not as "nice" as you might hope - the memory access was unpredictable to some degree. but i still got a speed up of "tens" on a cheap ($200) graphics card, compared to a meaty xeon. it's more robust than you might expect.

<comment><USER6> That's true, it is hard to predict. But I really interested to see what is the most optimistic prediction for my particular problem to work on the GPGPU. In this case, I don't think LRU cache will do much help since it has a uniform access pattern (every piece of data has to be examined to every proposed feature). However, you do remind me that may be load-ahead fashion of caching strategy will help. And if the needed data is load to cache with some synchronization method to guarantee all current running kernel will use the piece of data to its examining feature, the performance gain may achieved. Actually, I gonna spend this weekend to try out.

<comment><USER7> i don't really get what you're doing, but have you considered making one dimension of your work vary over feature? if you arrange that correctly then you only need to scan the memory once (all features read the first byte of memory; then all features read the next...)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Anyone know of any Industrial Design Jobs? - <AUTHOR>

I started a company around a little web app while I was working, I have since lost that job due to cut backs. To keep my start up growing I need to get another job and was wondering if anyone out there knew of any ID jobs? I have a 4 year BFA from RIT and have some experience with in the soft goods industry.<p>I scan coroflot all the time, but if anyone has some connections I'd appreciate it. Emails in the profile <comment><AUTHOR> and thank you in advance to anyone who responds!</comment>


Exploring the Worst Case Complexity of Quicksort (2015) - <AUTHOR> https://tyler-davis.com/post/quicksort-randomize-worst-case/ <comment><USER2> I wonder if the author is aware of antiqsort

[https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/aqsort.c](https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/aqsort.c) and [https://github.com/matslina/qsort/blob/master/antiqsort.c](https://github.com/matslina/qsort/blob/master/antiqsort.c) ...

</comment><comment><USER3> The textbook solution is to use this pivot selection algorithm:

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

In practice it is not really worth it.

<comment><USER4> No matter how clever you are with an algorithm, somebody wrote a paper on it in the 70s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The light grey text with the white background, seems to be a popular design choice. But I have trouble reading this page do to the lack of contrast.

</comment><comment><USER6> This was just as ridiculously nerdy as it was when friends of mine from school and I did it in 1981 -- in basic on the trs80 though :D

<comment><USER7> Was that Level I or Level II BASIC? ;)</comment></comment>


DHH's Coding is Googling thread - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/tdierks/status/835912924329836545 <comment><USER2> That is an example of someone not retaining some mundane bit of data about a language that they know they can look up at any time and know where to look. Retaining this information would make them faster by the accumulated minutes to go get the answer and return to what they were doing, but it's hard cause you might use a lot of languages over a career.

The other kind of searching people do is mixing up stacks a lot every project, more like being perpetually stuck in beginner classes nobody showed up to teach. Sometimes it will be worth it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Previous discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739329](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13739329) (33 comments)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13740949](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13740949) (9 comments)

It was also submitted another time, but there has been no discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13743772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13743772)</comment>


Hong Kong Is Fast Becoming an Also-Ran - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-08/hong-kong-kept-economic-status-quo-as-rival-shenzhen-surged-ahead <comment><USER2> Personally, I think a China would be very happy if Hong Kong just faded away to nothing and Shenzhen took its place on the stage.

I would not be at all surprised if that was the actual goal since the handover.

So, what, if anything, is Hong Kong going to do about that?</comment>


Now, I can see wifi signals - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/gallery/jdNA6 <comment><USER2> Neat. The phenomenon is called Rayleigh fading, and is well known, but I've never seen it mapped as clearly. Rayleigh fading is often viewed statistically, and some article even call it "random". As shown here, it's not random at all; it's deterministic and repeatable. It's determined by the position of transmitter, receiver, and reflective and absorbent objects in the environment.

This is why most WiFi devices have two antennas and a diversity receiver.

Spread-spectrum systems are resistant to Rayleigh fading, because multipath nulls are frequency-specific; the two paths have to be half a wavelength different in length to get cancellation. So it seems surprising at first to see this with WiFi, which is a spread-spectrum system.

There's a reason for that. Cancellation becomes less of a problem as you get further from a spread spectrum transmitter, because the phase difference is related to the product of the frequency change times the number of wavelengths along the path. (This really needs pictures.) Once you're far enough away that the spreading moves the nulls at least a half wavelength, the effect is that a fixed percentage of data is lost, and error correction deals with that. In this demo, transmitter and receiver are very close, so the nulls are strong.

</comment><comment><USER3> That is _slick_. The wavelength of 2.4Ghz radio being 125 mm and 5Ghz being 62.5mm it looks like he is imaging standing waves in the 5Ghz spectrum. (if the cube is 360mm x 360mm it would have ~6 waves of 5Ghz and ~3 waves of 2.4Ghz RF energy. There is an experiment to see the standing waves in a microwave using chocolate - [http://morningcoffeephysics.com/measuring-the- speed-of-light...](http://morningcoffeephysics.com/measuring-the-speed-of- light-with-chocolate-and-a-microwave-oven/) which demonstrates the same sort of thing, but frankly I think this is much cooler.

<comment><USER4> He does mention that explanation for explaining the distance between "features" in his visualization, however this does not explain their particular shape, nor their general irregularity. It would be nice to see this repeated outdoors in the desert to reduce reflections and possibly interference.

<comment><USER5> It would also be nice to see the chocolate experiment repeated in other desserts.

<comment><USER6> only if you extract the Theobromine. (hi don)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is a beautiful hack.

Because terrific work causes us to think of additional questions, I'd add: The only thing I found missing is that there is more than one polarization. So to accurately map the field, you'd need to perform multiple scans, with the receiving antenna rotated 90 degrees for each one.

<comment><USER8> > Because terrific work causes us to think of additional questions,

I'm gonna steal this line.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Really cool, but I wonder how much his big metal testing rig is interfering with the signal.

<comment><USER10> Not only the metal testing rig, but also the 60kg RF-absorbing sack of water holding the device in the earlier experiments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Awesome. I'm not sure how to make this argument precise, but I think you could sample the intensity function only every 12.5cm (wavelength at 2.4 Ghz), since waves of a given wavelength are restricted to resonate and interfere at small multiples of it's wavelength.

For reconstruction there should be some ideal interpolation, maybe a 3d sync filter?

Another random interesting fact: if you capture not only the intensity but also phase of only a 2D slice, and have some environmental information (i.e. know how the signal propagates in your room), you can reconstruct the full 3D intensity.

<comment><USER12> A naive application of Nyquist sampling theorem will say you have to sample at twice the frequency of whatever you're trying to reconstruct - so for 2.4Ghz you need to sample at at least every 6.25cm. The reason why you can't just use the base frequency is cause... well, for example, imagine you have the worst luck ever, and only ever sampled the nodes of the standing wave - it would just look like no signal.

In practice... I have no idea. RF is too much for me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Unlike heat, E&M is a vector field, so the author should have rotated his antenna at every point :-)

</comment><comment><USER14> This was done in a pretty spectacular way by Luis Herman a little while back:

[http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/luis-hernan-digital- ethe...](http://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/luis-hernan-digital-ethereal)

<comment><USER15> Also see: [http://www.nearfield.org/2011/02/wifi-light- painting](http://www.nearfield.org/2011/02/wifi-light-painting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Why is there so much variation in strength from such a small change of position?

<comment><USER17> Signal variance is nothing new. I remember personally noticing it in late 90's that with my GSM (900MHz) phone, moving it on table just for about 5 centimeters could bring it down from full signal to no reception at all. Of course with analog radios you also notice how easily signal changes with location. If you've been ever playing with TV antenna in in bad reception and so on. Moving your hand in other room might block TV signal or make it crystal clear even if you would make there's no connection what so ever. With 2.4GHz people often forget that interference from other sources can significantly contribute. So signal quality and signal strength aren't same thing at all. Getting to the root all these things require professional, which I'm not. So one type of measurement defined as "signal strength" probably misleads you badly. Is it a good idea to select a wifi channel that doesn't have any other wifi boxes? Well, the reason might be that the channel is totally overpowered by local wireless CCT or phones. That's the reason why nobody's using it for WiFi and then you think it's a great idea to select a free Wifi channel? Radio stuff is (truly) really tricky. With higher frequencies it's just like light. Why some things are in shadows and some things are well lit?

<comment><USER18> I'm in a relatively large appartment building.. I can see about 20 other wifi options in my area on my laptop... fortunately, my signal quality is significantly better (higher end asus, with shibby tomato) spent a fair amount of time tweaking the settings a bit that seem to work very well for me... I can keep signal on my phone across the parking lot (I'm facing the pool, which is adjacent to outside parking) ... no wifi really gets into the garage though, but cell phone signal does...

It's really wild how a foot or two difference could make all the difference in the world...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm curious if combining this with Google's Project Tango for accurate 3D pose estimation would be useful for doing a handheld 3D mapping of an area. Add an additional camera to the tablet, have it point at an array of these sensors, and use it to sweep out regions of space quickly.

</comment><comment><USER20> Pretty cool! Would be cool to add some sort of position sensor on, I guess GPS wouldn't be ideal though. Maybe hack a roomba to map signal strength in your house!

Anyways, reminds me of this: [https://vimeo.com/20412632](https://vimeo.com/20412632)

</comment><comment><USER21> Reddit comments: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/prec...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/precise_3d_mapping_and_visualization_of_wifi/)

The author had a nice summary here: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/prec...](http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/2vuvhf/precise_3d_mapping_and_visualization_of_wifi/col4he6)

</comment><comment><USER22> What is this measuring? RSSI, MCS level, observed throughput?

<comment><USER23> I'd assume RSSI

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> What about beamforming? Wouldn't signal strength depend on locations of connected wifi clients?

</comment><comment><USER25> Strap it onto a quadcopter and you have a portable solution to map every room you could imagine.

<comment><USER26> There was a project several years ago to map a University's wifi using a self driving RC car with a wifi detector on it. The goal was to identify weak spots in the signal. I can't remember the name of the project and its not popping up on google, anyone else remember this?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here's a cool animation (supposed showing the "propogation" of wifi signal):

[http://gfycat.com/ImportantSafeBlackmamba](http://gfycat.com/ImportantSafeBlackmamba)

</comment><comment><USER28> This is brilliant, I wish it'd get more upvotes and attention. Wireless waves are such nebulous, hard to understand things. It's great to see a visual representation!

</comment><comment><USER29> Awesome. A while ago somebody did something similar but with really hard math: [http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/mapping-wi-fi-dead- zo...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/08/mapping-wi-fi-dead-zones-with- physics-and-gifs/)

It's always nice to see multiple approaches to the same problem.

</comment><comment><USER30> I have often wondered what Jordi's[1] vision would really be like.. Maybe this is a peek into his world.

Imagine all these things, wifi, FM/AM Radio, iBeacons, cell towers etc.. It must be so noisy in the radio spectrum..

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

<comment><USER31> There was a Next Gen episode, I think, where Jordi's visor was displayed on the main viewer on the bridge of the Enterprise with Picard commenting.

<comment><USER32> Argh why are you both spelling his name wrong!? It's right there in the URL!

<comment><USER31> True. Oops. Wasn't thinking and just copied the other guy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Very directional antenna, fast scanning servo gimble, oculus rift... hmmm.

</comment><comment><USER34> This with the hololens could be rather nice to debug.

</comment><comment><USER35> That is really cool. It would be cool to put it on an indoor UAV, and have it fly around, mapping wifi signals around a building

</comment><comment><USER36> Write a paper!

</comment><comment><USER37> I was really hoping this was going to be an AR hack for seeing WiFi, but this is cool too!

</comment><comment><USER38> Nice, I didn't know about this board. It looks pretty interesting.

<comment><USER39> It's a real nice tinker toy for only a few pounds/dollars.

The default firmware uses modem-style 'AT' commands for control, but there is an Open Source LUA implementation, and you can cross-compile in C.

[http://www.esp8266.com/](http://www.esp8266.com/)

[https://github.com/nodemcu](https://github.com/nodemcu)

[http://l0l.org.uk/2014/12/esp8266-modules-hardware-guide- got...](http://l0l.org.uk/2014/12/esp8266-modules-hardware-guide-gotta-catch- em-all/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> The most top ranked comment says; "PATENT THIS MOTHERFUCKER NOW, DO IT BEFORE APPLE FIND OUT AND STEAL YOUR IDEA." Hope neither this will get patented or Apple will steal it.

</comment><comment><USER41> Can I come over to your house and play?

</comment><comment><USER42> Yeah, I went there. And no, I'm not sorry :) [http://imgur.com/9bnvWRm](http://imgur.com/9bnvWRm)

</comment><comment><USER43> Now do it with my piece of shit Shaw router.

</comment><comment><USER44> Neat hack but aren't there free tools to do this with a laptop and its wifi adapter? [http://www.ekahau.com/wifidesign/ekahau- heatmapper](http://www.ekahau.com/wifidesign/ekahau-heatmapper)</comment>


Hackers need healthcare too - <AUTHOR> http://www.truprice.healthcare <comment><USER2> Founder here, no ties to health insurance. Free market for the win

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you guys tied to health insurance?</comment>