Five Pacific islands disappear as sea levels rise - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36255749 <comment><USER2> [http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/10/headlines...](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/10/headlines- exaggerated-climate-link-to-sinking-of-pacific-islands)

"Report's author says many media outlets have misinterpreted the science by conflating sea-level rise with climate change"

<comment><USER3> Not to mention buried in the OP article:

> However, the report stresses that the inundation does not result from rising > sea levels alone.

> It found that shoreline recession was substantially worse in areas exposed > to high wave energy, and that extreme events and inappropriate development > were also factors contributing to the erosion.

<comment><USER4> The local sea level rise due to changing trade winds and higher than normal trade winds, is also likely a result of global climate change, as noted in the linked article. This is a nuanced change in local sea levels, that is not due to global sea level rise as a result of climate change; however, it does sound like the study concludes that it is likely that other consequences of global climate change are in fact responsible for the local sea level rise and much of the other erosion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Interesting counter-argument[1] suggests 1) data was cherry picked:

"The alarmistic claim originates from riding the positive phase of the inter- annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations typical of the sea levels over a cherry picked short time window of 10-15 years, neglecting what was measured before 1994 by another tide gauge in pretty much same location, and also neglecting what has been measured in the same tide gauge since 2009.

Short records do not permit to clear the trend of the inter-annual, decadal and multi-decadal oscillations [4-8]. In the Solomon Islands there is no tide gauge long enough to infer a proper trend. However, the information available permits to dismiss the alarmist claim of 7-10 mm yr-1 rate of rise."

2) statistically not enough data for trends in sea levels:

"Also including Honiara II, starting from December 1974 the rate of rise is +2.81 mm yr-1. The time window is now 42 years long, still insufficient, but certainly more reasonable. Considering 60-70 years of data are needed to start understanding a trend in sea levels, very likely these +2.81 mm yr-1 are still an overestimation of the relative rate of rise."

[1] [https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/10/busted-claim-data- sho...](https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/05/10/busted-claim-data-shows-that- climate-induced-sea-level-rise-didnt-wipe-out-five-solomon-islands/)

<comment><USER6> Are you really comfortable citing them?

Here's a discussion of the author of that post's prior work: [https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/making-up- stuff/](https://tamino.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/making-up-stuff/)

edit: fascinating how easy it is to be downvoted simply by pointing out the lack of credibility of AGW skeptics. On one hand, you have the overwhelming majority (97-74%) of professional scientist saying (respectively) that global warming is occuring or that it's man-made and provable with existing science. On the other hand, you have people with dubious credentials, poor ethics, and/or extraordinary conflicts of interest as paid fellow at Cato, Heartland, AEI, et al.

All of this is easily verified by simple use of a search engine. Since... just about nobody here is a professional climate researcher, I think all we can go on is the credibility of sources of information. It is not ad hominem to bring someone's motivation and prior record into consideration.

<comment><USER7> >overwhelming majority (97-74%) of professional scientist saying

I've never understood this argument. What does agreement of other scientists from unrelated fields have to do with the soundness of a scientific theory? It's a thinly-veiled appeal to authority that I think really weakens non- scientific peoples' perceptions about how science works.

>Since... just about nobody here is a professional climate researcher

And neither are the majority of professional scientists that agree. Every scientist I've worked with (computational physics) doesn't know anything about climate science and (probably rightly) assumes that the people in the field know what they are doing so they agree because they trust the process. However, the approval of scientists in unrelated fields is about a relevant as the approval of a politician. So just stick with facts about the research itself.

Additionally, there have been many times where "the overwhelming majority of scientists" have believed something that is incorrect. The thing that makes science special is that it is not a democracy. Theories are validated on their logic and evidence, not on whether or not they please a particular community of people.

tl;dr. Stop bringing up how many people agree with something. It's not scientifically relevant.

<comment><USER6> If most experts in a field believe X, you should believe X unless you have good reason otherwise.

Anyway, if that was the argument in isolation, you'd have a better point. There's also the matter of the rapid measured temperature increase in 20th century, glacial retreat, mass coral die-offs, historical records of Arctic sea ice, the body of published peer-reviewed work on it, among many other things.

And... I take particular offense to "it's not scientifically relevant." There is a big difference between interpreting information and practicing science. The author of the link previously published an article with basic errors in its science and his two coauthors partially disavowed the work. He is publishing on a non-peer reviewed site with a known bias.

And if you want get specific, read the provided "rebuttal" link. It basically amounts to "The 7-10 mm/yr claim is alarmist! If you look at this other tidal gauge, it's almost 10 mm/yr from 1995 onward, but it looks like it may have slowed to 5 mm/yr since then. Also, if you go back to 1974 - 20 before the uptrend starts - it's ony 3mm/yr!"

<comment><USER7> >If most experts in a field believe X, you should believe X unless you have good reason otherwise.

True, unless a person believes the whole field is bunk. e.g. numerology, technical analysis (looking for shapes in stock charts), faith healing, etc. Many smarter people I talk to (not typical hurr-durr Al Gore sucks types) that don't buy into the global warming story think that the climate is too complex for the current modeling to mean anything.

>Anyway, if that was the argument in isolation, you'd have a better point. There's also the matter of the rapid measured temperature increase in 20th century, glacial retreat, mass coral die-offs, historical records of Arctic sea ice, the body of published peer-reviewed work on it, among many other things.

I'm not disputing global warming. I was merely critiquing using popularity as a support for your argument. The real data is so much more powerful that adding that actually detracts from the evidence.

>And... I take particular offense to "it's not scientifically relevant." There is a big difference between interpreting information and practicing science.

A major theory has never won over critical-thinking people with the argument "it must be right because X group says so". It always comes down to actual proofs, experiments, and analysis that bring it into general acceptance. e.g. it's not scientifically relevant who believed in "spooky action at a distance" from quantum mechanics, it's only relevant that it was mathematically/physically sound and eventually shown in experiments.

>And if you want get specific, read the provided "rebuttal" link.

My comment is purely focused on using popularity amongst scientists as a tool for arguments. I am fine with showing that he/she is full of shit via logical/evidence-based rebuttals.

<comment><USER8> >think that the climate is too complex for the current modeling to mean anything.

"We dont know enough, so we're sure we are correct and they are wrong" is about the dumbest reasoning I can think of, I'm sure those are really smart people you're talking to...

<comment><USER7> That's a bit of a strawman of their thinking. It's closer to, "we don't know enough, so we need to be very careful about creating policies that are economically destructive to entire industries (and subsequently industries that depend on those) that depend on cheap energy. It's not common for me to hear people claim that they are certain that the climate research is completely wrong, it's usually that the feel the evidence isn't strong enough to make such broad changes to how the world's economy functions.

It's a much easier perspective to understand when you realize how many of these peoples' lives are directly tied to oil/gas/aviation/etc. Assuming complete stupidity or malice on their part does very little to advance the argument or accomplish anything in general other than feeling good about yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> You know what's sad? I remember my right-wing geography teacher telling us students that this would happen way back in the 90s. It's sad that one of the main parties in U.S. politics doesn't think this could, would or is happening.

<comment><USER10> I think it's obvious that politicians who deny anthropogenic climate change are on the payroll of oil producing megacorps like Exxon-Mobil.

How ironic that we let these politicians commit treason (undermining American energy security is unquestionably treason), yet go after imaginary threats, justifying pervasive surveillance on innocent American citizens.

It just goes to show how rotten to the core our system has become.

<comment><USER11> How is undermining American energy security "levying War against [the United States], or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid Aid and Comfort"?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How many new Pacific islands were created by volcanic or other processes this year?

<comment><USER6> None. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_new_islands](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_new_islands)

<comment><USER13> Some were recently created in the South China sea though

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/wha...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what- china-has-been-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It's a problem that's been recognised for some time. In fact the United Nations had the third conference on this back in 2014. [http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/sustainable/focus...](http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/sustainable/focus- on-sustainable-islands.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Out of curiosity for those that don't believe global warming is human caused, what evidence would convince you to change your mind?

<comment><USER16> (1) It would help to have solid evidence that temperature was stable before the start of the industrial revolution and the resulting CO2 from human activity. So, we'd have to get rid of the Little Ice Age and the Medieval Warming Period.

(2) We would have to get rid of the big temperature changes going back 500,000+ years from the Vostok ice core data that Al Gore plotted and where the CO2 concentrations went up about 800 years after the temperatures went up.

(3) It would also help to cancel the global cooling from about 1940 to 1970 while CO2 concentrations were going up.

E.g., from these examples, IMHO, the temperature record and the record of CO2 concentrations don't support that CO2 concentration changes caused the temperature changes.

<comment><USER17> (1) You ask for us to lie? Climate is not stable, and any model that says it is is clearly broken. Instead you have to produce the best models you can that can explain both the past and project the future. Then test those models. Those models uniformly project human-caused global warming, and are passing various kinds of sanity checks.

(2) You want us to oversimplify? Climate is still not stable, and CO2 isn't the only thing that is involved. The main cause for the start/end of ice ages are orbital shifts. CO2 rise was a lagging result, that then amplified the warming.

(3) You still want us to oversimplify? Aerosols are known to cause cooling, and in that period rapidly expanding aerosol use caused a significant amount of cooling. Various countries then passed clean air acts which reduced the levels of aerosols in the air. (They also fixed a pretty major acid rain problem.) In fact one of the proposed solutions for global warming is to deliberately inject aerosols in the stratosphere.

From these examples, it looks like your mind is made up. You don't even want to _find out_ what the science says. Instead you engage in a game of oversimplification and gotcha to convince yourself that what they are saying doesn't make sense.

<comment><USER16> > You ask for us to lie?

No. I was just responding literally to the question. Or, for a more socially acceptable response, the Vostok data has me have trouble with the idea that humans are causing climate change.

> Those models uniformly project human-caused global warming, and are passing > various kinds of sanity checks.

The data I have on that indicates that essentially all the models ("uniformly") are wildly wrong. They predicted that by now the temperature would be much higher.

Some of that data is reviewed in

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020430140457717...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204301404577171531838421366.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#)

The way too high predictions are plotted in

[http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic- fail-73-clima...](http://www.drroyspencer.com/2013/06/still-epic- fail-73-climate-models-vs-measurements-running-5-year-means/)

> Those models uniformly project human-caused global warming

Not all the models. There is a model that fits the data much better -- at least since the last ice age: The model claims that the variation in rates of sun spots causes the temperature changes and that CO2 has essentially nothing to do with climate.

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas -- it absorbs in three narrow bands out in the infrared and, thus, absorbs some of the infrared radiation from the Planck black body radiation of the surface of the earth warmed by the sun. But according to the model I am mentioning, this effect from CO2 is tiny. Instead, again from the model I am mentioning, overwhelmingly, the main driver of global temperature since the last ice age has been just clouds, and they have varied with the sun spots. Just why is a longer argument made clear, e.g., in

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg)

So, that is another model that needs to be tested. For now, that model seems to fit the temperature data much better than the CO2, greenhouse gas, Navier- Stokes, atmospheric diffusion, etc. models.

To me, the CO2 models fit the data so poorly we have to reject CO2 as relevant to climate change and look elsewhere for the significant cause(s) of climate change. For now, to me, the best model is the one I mentioned here based on sun spots -- you didn't mention sun spots.

<comment><USER6> Doesn't it worry you _at all_ that you have cited no academic literature in journals? You have an OpEd piece, a youtube video (the producer of which is known for replying to an email critiquing his use of data with "You're a big daft c*ck"... people can google Martin Durkin and make their own conclusions about him), and the blog of a creationist who refers to those he disagrees with as "global warming Nazis"?

<comment><USER16> Not really.

I have other things to do.

The Al Gore, IPCC arguments look bad to me, just from what I wrote, that the temperature record and the CO2 record convince me that CO2 has little or nothing to do with temperature.

There is a biggie point: The Al Gore crowd has a claim about CO2 that would have us shoot in the gut much of current civilization. There are at least two ways to respond:

(1) From a lot of really good science, find a better answer.

(2) F'get about finding a better answer or even any answer but just debunk the Al Gore answer by finding holes in its argument.

Then for (2), one way is really simple, just look at the temperature and CO2 record back through the Vostok data 500,000+ years ago. I've basically done that and concluded that from the records we can reject the Gore claims about the effects of CO2 on climate. That Vostok data is what Gore gave as his main evidence that the higher temperatures were from higher concentrations of CO2. Alas, the CO2 concentrations rose about 800 years after the temperatures rose.

Another way to do (2) is just to use one of the main criteria of science: Can it make accurate predictions? Well, from some of the references I gave, apparently not. That is, by the CO2, Planck black body radiation, Navier- Stokes, etc. models, the temperature should be very significantly higher now. Well, it's not. So, in science, we reject the prediction and the modelling that made it.

So, as in (2), we don't find a good answer but just debunk and reject the Gore CO2 approach. Finding a good answer might be really difficult science, but debunking a proposed answer need not involve much science at all. That rejection is likely just what we are all supposed to do and maybe not publishable. So, we don't look for an academic record of it.

For the references I gave, right, they are not primary, but they do give some pointers to primary references. E.g., one of the graphs does name all the models. If that graph is all hogwash, I'd be among the first to want to have good information on that.

For that graph with results of the 70 or so models, I just found a link to the graph. I have the graph on my computer from years ago, but I didn't have a link to it on the Internet (I confess -- sloppy record keeping). So, I just took a long gibberish string left over from when I downloaded the graph, pasted it into Google, and let Google give me a link to the graph. I don't know where the graph came from originally (it may say but I haven't looked at that graph in detail for years) but likely not the Web page of the URL I gave. Sorry 'bout that, but I just found a way for you to see the famous graph.

<comment><USER6> Who the shit cares about Al Gore? When did he become a climatologist?

<comment><USER16> Good point.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Gary Dahl, Inventor of the Pet Rock, Has Died - <AUTHOR> https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/obituaries/2015/04/05/gary-dahl-inventor-pet-rock-dies/Nja94bB0cAk3jblIFmdpUO/story.html <comment><USER2> Seeing this, today's startups all of a sudden don't seem so innovative any more. After all, this one is a useless proposition that people actually paid money for. Ah, the power of a fashion meme!

<comment><USER3> Remember when we used to just call them "fads"? =)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> :'(

Brings the film 'Office Space' to mind:

Michael Bolton: You think the pet rock was a really great idea? Tom Smykowski: Sure it was. The guy made a million dollars.

<comment><USER5> Let's not jump to conclusions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Please consider donating to the Gary Dahl Shelter for Abused and Abandoned Pet Rocks.

You can help rocks like these guys: [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/6083373/il_fullxfull.33098...](https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/6083373/il_fullxfull.330989265.jpg)

[http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VfZY2-oweVY/maxresdefault.jpg](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/VfZY2-oweVY/maxresdefault.jpg)

[https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2779/4366733762_036cbf79f7.jpg](https://c1.staticflickr.com/3/2779/4366733762_036cbf79f7.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER7> I used to have a pet rock called Trevor. I lost him in a house move years ago. I deeply miss Trevor. I regret taking him for granite.

<comment><USER8> Don't be sad. He meant a lot to you.

<comment><USER8> (Wondering if the down-voters saw the pun and didn't like it or if they missed the pun and felt it was a pointless comment.)

<comment><USER9> Pun threads are not appropriate to HN.

<comment><USER8> I dunite why you'd think that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The silver lining in all of this is that when he is laid to rest, he'll be surrounded by his pets.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is just sad news for the rock industry.

</comment><comment><USER12> Jacksonville, Oregon. Nice area to retire to. Bruce Campbell also lives thereabouts.</comment>


Codecademy - HTML Fundamentals - <AUTHOR> http://www.codecademy.com/courses/html-one-o-one

<comment><USER2> Voted up, because I wish users would submit the link to the content instead of enriching Mashable or TechCrunch. This should be on the front page instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> I very much agree with you!</comment></comment>


Stop Living for the Approval of Women - <AUTHOR> http://artofmanliness.com/2010/07/18/stop-living-for-the-approval-of-women/

<comment><USER2> Interesting, but, would the first hut (abode) have ever been built without men needing to impress a woman? Perhaps that was the proverbial byte of the apple? ;)</comment>


Attacked from Within (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://atdt.freeshell.org/k5/story_2009_3_12_33338_3000.html <comment><USER2> It's a well written article, but it's wrong.

> The bottom line is that no active moderation system, no matter how many > users are empowered to rate each other and each other's comments, can > preserve community in the face of the multiple identity syndrome inherent to > online forums.

This isn't true. Depending on what you want to design against you can use both social signals (downvotes) and a web-of-trust _for singular identity_ and another one for dealing with spam / trolling and you can keep anonymity, you can keep good content, you might get some bubbling at the extremes, but you know what? I don't want to listen to Alex Jones idiots anyway, and with the proper graph analysis techniques you can filter out the Alex Joneses while keeping in the Bill Kristols.

Also, a poor mans web-of-trust is the invite only ban both model. If you invite me in, and I get banned you get banned too and anyone else you invited has their remaining invites revoked.

We have the science to tackle shitty online behaviour. The problem is that it destroys metrics for social networks. There are not 335 million people using Twitter a month, even if there are 335 million "active accounts".

<comment><USER3> > We have the science to tackle shitty online behaviour.

Can you point me to some extant services that leverage this science?

<comment><USER2> I'll do it for you for a reasonable bill rate. I've done it elsewhere including at a Andreessen funded social network where I was a CDS.

<comment><USER3> "point me to" means "please give me a public access point for the service or code repository for such a service so I can inspect it and see how it works."

<comment><USER2> It's hard to service that request because social networks are closed source and most research into webs of trust is academic. Take email; there's an ad- hoc web-of-trust out there, but it's federated amongst a number of actors. I agree we need something open, but the incentives to make one don't exist.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> What computer algorithm can be used to code up "...front page position should be determined by quality of conversation not voting"? Are we talking about sentiment analysis?

<comment><USER5> Arguably, the HN flamewar detector is a crude and limited algorithmic approach to exactly that problem.

It's obviously not a _complete_ solution, as it seeks neither to address all quality dimensions nor to replace voting, instead being a factor alongside voting, but still...

<comment><USER4> Do you have a link to how the HN flamewar detector works?

<comment><USER5> Not guaranteed to be current, but the "Controversy" section addresses it:

[http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking- really...](http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really- works.html?m=1)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the excellent link. Quite a good read. From the article: [In order to prevent flamewars on Hacker News, articles with "too many" comments will get heavily penalized as "controversial"....] Ok, that isn't exactly even a slightly sophisticated method that could be extended to decide some comments are "high quality". In theory if you wanted to implement article ranking you need a method that ranks articles based on comment quality. Without a automated method you are really just using humans to do the ranking.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Stackpath CDN experience - <AUTHOR> Does anybody have any experience with the Stackpath CDN ( https://www.stackpath.com )? They have recently gotten a lot of traction by acquiring not only MaxCDN (in the summer of 2016), but also Highwinds last month. This move easily makes them one of the top competitors in the CDN space, and the merge went through pretty much unnoticed on Hacker News.<p>This makes me wonder whether somebody here has any experience with Stackpath CDN or can share some information regarding their service quality. Are they really as good as their pricing (0.02$ - 0.06$ per GB) promises? <comment><USER2> I remember this from a while back:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158174](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12158174)

&&

[https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/25/security-as-a-service- star...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/25/security-as-a-service-startup- stackpath-nabs-180m-4-acquisitions-including-maxcdn/)

I have no experience with the Stackpath CDN itself, but I can only guess it's exactly like MaxCDN, which are apparently the cheapest and fastest. All these CDNs are more or less the same in terms of speed and availability though. Since it's such a competitive space, I don't really mind what CDN I use, as long as it's cheap compared to others and it has a decent amount of PoPs (Point of presence) scattered around the globe.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am wondering whether the prices will go up if the Highwinds acquisition is finalized. But true, generally speaking all CDNs are relatively similar.</comment></comment>


Show HN: The easiest way to get emailed from your site - <AUTHOR> https://emailme.chat <comment><USER2> It's cheaper to do the 6 months plan for a year than the yearly plan?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I just saw this. Thank you for pointing that out, I've fixed it ;)</comment></comment>


What if a million people stopped paying their taxes in protest? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlasphere.com/metablog/819.php

<comment><USER2> what if i had a gold plated unicorn?

we can play this game all day. not only is this not hacker news, it doesn't even qualify as regular news.</comment>


Find Out How Many People Share Your Name - <AUTHOR> http://howmanyofme.com/search/

<comment><USER2> For me, it said there were less than one with my same name. However, I know of at least two in the US, and two around Vancouver alone.</comment>


A new Japanese magazine about construction workers - <AUTHOR> http://ignition.co/460 <comment><USER2> Construction works in Japan are fascinating. I've been in Tokyo some years ago and while strolling along the palace we came by an construction site for a new skyscraper there.

We had to take break to watch this perfection. [http://imgur.com/a/IFMDl](http://imgur.com/a/IFMDl) Those workers open the gate just in time for the next truck to come in and open as well as direct the traffic on the 3-lane road for the time the truck needs to get out. All this takes few minutes. There is no jamming up of traffic. The frequency of trucks coming in and leaving was astonishing. There must have been dozens of trucks on the roads of Tokyo at every moment.

I would have loved to see how that works inside.

I live in Germany. A country that is know for their efficiency, accuracy, etc. but if what Germans do is efficiency then what those workers did was something completely different and superior.

<comment><USER3> Heh, it's good to know I'm not the only one snapping shots of construction sites in Tokyo. I was surprised by how well they dampen the noise so as not to bother the surrounding areas. Also, every site had those same white perimeter privacy walls. I wonder if that's mandated for all projects.

<comment><USER2> Oh yes. The noise. Especially in this area: [http://i.imgur.com/fuz85Fu.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/fuz85Fu.jpg) Also the marginal dirt traces on the road. Fascinating. I wish I could have photographed the site for a longer span of time.

There is a blog idea ;)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Title should be "Some guys start a magazine about construction."

There's Engineering News-Record. And tons of trade magazines, from Tunnels and Tunneling International to Structure Magazine. There are lots of Discovery Channel specials on construction jobs.

The New York Metropolitan Transportation Agency has a good Flickr feed documenting their construction projects.[1] The East Side Acccess project is impressive. They have built another level of train station underneath Grand Central Station, without interfering with anything above it.

[1] [https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/](https://www.flickr.com/photos/mtaphotos/)

<comment><USER5> Agreed. Why do I get the sinking feeling that titles and articles like this are the next step in the evolution of clickbait?

<comment><USER6> We changed the title to something more neutral. If anybody suggests a better title, we can change it again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's refreshing to hear soundbites about Japan opening up to foreigners as opposed to the narrative that Japan is building robots so they don't have to let foreigners in.

</comment><comment><USER8> Love it. Many are unsung heroes with amazing stories.

</comment><comment><USER9> Excellent. More of this. The builders of the modern world are the underappreciated stoic heroes who help link the generations together.

</comment><comment><USER10> a shortage in construction workers -> wages per capita goes up -> disposable income goes up -> and hey, would you look at that, all of a sudden there are magazines celebrating the demographic and using the word 'culture' to sell them things.

</comment><comment><USER11> That's an unusual take on a trade magazine.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Node.js the right platform? - <AUTHOR>

I have need to create an app that does three things-send bulk emails, bulk SMS and bulk voice calls. I am going to use Twilio for voice, one of the SMS providers and SMTP for emails. That data is delivered from an Asp.net web app.<p>I am wondering if I Node.js based service type app would be the best choice as I would like the service to be non-blocking and scalable. <comment><USER2> I have to agree with the commenters. You should ultimately build on whatever you're comfortable with in order to get your product out the door. If you have to worry about optimization and scalability later, then you will have to cross that bridge when you get to it, but it is a good problem to have. Aside from that, I can say that Node.js is an ultra fast, low footprint platform. The amount of throughput that you can get out of node is pretty incredible.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're probably worrying too much about scaling right now. Worry about supporting a few users with a minimum set of features first. Then go get those users. Then scale.

That said, node.js is awesome, and good for what you are looking for at least because it is very simple to set up and I hear it's quite scalable as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> The hard part of scaling initially isn't the technology, it's getting the users at all. Build it on whatever you know today, and then if you're very lucky whatever choice you make will become a problem later.</comment>


TV Stations: Get a Clue About Adobe Flash - <AUTHOR> http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/tv_stations_get_a_clue_about_adobe_flash/ <comment><USER2> > During the recent fires, checking the news with my iPad, I was often > confronted with a notice that I needed Adobe Flash to view a video. Now when > it's in the course of everyday technology kerfuffles, it's an annoyance. > However, I can see how a family, trying to view local news and weather in an > emergency, when confronted with such a notice, would be outraged.

Maybe it's time to mandate that mobile platforms support flash, since it _is_ so vital in emergencies.</comment>


Why testing is hard - <AUTHOR> https://pasztor.at/blog/why-testing-is-hard <comment><USER2> Nice writeup! I especially liked the subsection "Getting rid of global state".

Personally, I regard a programming language's ability to conveniently express sets of test cases an important indicator of its usefulness. Also for this reason, I find features such as Haskell's list comprehension and Prolog's built-in backtracking very attractive. Haskell also provides the QuickCheck framework for automated random testing. However, at least in my experience, systematic exhaustive testing is preferable, and provides stronger guarantees.

</comment><comment><USER3> Nice writeup!</comment>


Autonomous Robot Surgeon Bests Humans - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/robotics/medical-robots/autonomous-robot-surgeon-bests-human-surgeons-in-world-first#.Vy_WyXgg3Vo.hackernews <comment><USER2> FTA:

Inventor: "We programmed the best surgeon's techniques, based on consensus and physics, into the machine"

Third Party: "While in a technical sense, semi-autonomous suturing is a 'grand challenge' problem of surgical robotics, clinically much suturing and bowel anastomosis is done by staplers which can do the whole thing in seconds," he wrote in an email. "Clearly the task they chose does not justify the elaborate equipment they used."

So, they used machine learning to perform a limited part of a surgical procedure, but with freedom of motion and adapting to tissue changes.

At the end of the article they talk about self-driving cars and how we have lane-assist and the next level is taking over. The inventor likens this technology to current lane-assist technology, but it seems more involved than that.

Personally I do not want any machine learning consensus algorithm with control over a surgical procedure in my body. I think the DaVinci type systems (tele- operation, but without autonomy) are awesome -- they allow superhuman precision in delicate surgical tasks.

However, until AGI is a solved problem I do not want an automated algorithm making decisions with a knife to my organs.

Let the automation algorithm highlight portions of the screen or anticipate the next viewpoint, but keep it away from the controls.

<comment><USER3> I feel completely differently. As soon as someone shows me a table that says

Human Surgeons Mortality Rate : 1% Computer Surgeon Mortality Rate : 0.5%

I'll be sold on the automated surgeon. And I think this will happen WAY before AGI is solved.

<comment><USER4> I'm with you. The sheer amount of human error in the medical field that causes death and injury is astounding [1], and I would gladly put my life in the hands of a capable machine instead of a fallible human if given the choice.

[1] [http://www.futurity.org/medical-errors- deaths-1157152/](http://www.futurity.org/medical-errors-deaths-1157152/)

<comment><USER5> But then again the software in those machines will be written by humans and will most likely have bugs - which might influence the outcome of the operation. So the questions is whether you trust more the surgeon or the engineers of that machine.

<comment><USER6> As a software developer, I am inclined to trust the surgeon more.

<comment><USER7> How about a surgeon that's been up for 36 hours, hungry, with a splitting headachy, and some family problems on the mind. A human surgeon might be awesome and can still make a ton of mistakes for reasons unrelated to their medical abilities. Meanwhile, while a programmer could easily make a mistake, other people and tests of the code could spot a lot of mistakes that could be corrected before the system reaches its first patient.

<comment><USER8> I'm going to take a different tack: How about we stop hazing medical professionals at the beginning of their career and only ask them to work 8 hour shifts with an appropriate amount of time off until their next shift?

<comment><USER4> Along with lmm's comment, where would all the extra doctors come from? You can't cut hours worked in half (or close to it) without doubling your staff to meet the demand. US hospitals (especially ERs) are already running over patient capacity in many US cities

<comment><USER7> Simple, make the hell of residency go away, and allow more foreign doctors to come in to US and practice after going through a reasonable residency program. I have known very smart and competent Russian and Ukrainian doctors who work as lab employees because they are not allowed to practice medicine here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The book Complications, by Atul Gawande is a fantastic account of medicine as an imperfect science that I would recommend to anyone interested in the field.

Things like this make me hopeful about perfecting medicine and surgery to avoid common human mistakes--even if that is still decades away.

<comment><USER10> in an almost the same vein, i would heartily recommend 'the medical detectives' for bizarre accounts of medical mysteries and once 'debugged' almost 'obviously that's how it would have happened' explanations of those incidents...very cool :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > In about 40 percent of its trials, the researchers intervened to offer > guidance of some sort—as in the GIF above, where a human hand is seen > holding the thread. In the other 60 percent of trials, STAR did the job > completely on its own.

</comment><comment><USER12> Did the robot open the patient? Did the robot locate and section the organ? This is a surgeon as a sewing machine is a tailor. It's a tool. To call it a surgeon is very misleading.

Look at this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci_Surgical_System)

<comment><USER13> The robot did something that previously took a very highly trained person to do. It's a huge accomplishment and not misleading at all.

You may not have read the article because it explicitly mentions the system you linked to:

> The current state-of-the-art robot for soft tissue surgery is the da Vinci > system from Intuitive Surgical, but it's not automated at all. The da Vinci > is a teleoperated system, in which the surgeon sits at a console and > manipulates controls in dexterous maneuvers that are mimicked by tiny tools > inside the patient's body.

<comment><USER14> I agree with the GP, calling this a surgeon is misleading and looking for hype. Yes, it's a great accomplishment. No, this is not a surgeon.

You can start calling it a surgeon when it can autonomously perform an appendectomy, including handling common complications (excessive bleeding, situs inversus, etc) during surgery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a programmer who used to work with the development of training simulations for surgeons, I find this tremendously exciting.

The company I used to work for focused on using computers to improve the state of surgery, primarily laparoscopy, by using virtual reality to train surgeons. This is an alternative approach, teaching the computer to perform the procedure itself, rather than to evaluate its performance.

As a side note: I actually spent a fair bit of time exercising with modules for suturing, including specifically for the small intestines, and it's definitely quite fiddly work.

</comment><comment><USER16> Oho! Stop the press:

 _> > Its vision system relied on near-infrared fluorescent (NIRF) tags placed in the intestinal tissue; a specialized NIRF camera tracked those markers while a 3D camera recorded images of the entire surgical field. Combining all this data allowed STAR to keep its focus on its target. The robot made its own plan for the suturing job, and it adjusted that plan as tissues moved during the operation._

 _> > The researchers trained STAR only on how to perform this particular intestinal suturing procedure. "We programmed the best surgeon's techniques, based on consensus and physics, into the machine," Kim said._

So it's a combination machine learning - expert system robot. Machine learning (I assume Convolutional Neural Networks) for vision, some planning algorithm for the suturing job and expert knowledge for the surgical techniques.

That's the shit I'm talking about! Let's see more of that! Don't just end-to- end train some deep net and try to have it learn to do _everything_ from scratch. Use background knowledge! Combine techniques! Be smart, dammit!

Edt: btw, this sort of thing, systems with hard-coded expert knowledge besting human experts, that's age-old stuff. It's how it used to be done before the last winter ( _AI_ winter). Nice to see it back.

Edt 2: Apologies for the ex!cla!mation! marks! but I'm so! excited!

<comment><USER16> Ho-hum. After reading the paper, they didn't use anything like machine learning or expert knowledge. They just kludged the whole thing step-by-step into the robot. Its "planning" was to draw a line between the NIRF tags on the surface of the pig gut.

So it's not even properly autonomous- they're just misusing the term to mean that nobody was remote-controlling it.

Meh. All those exclamation marks in vain :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> CDC recently stated that medical errors are the third leading cause of death.

If this technology would improve the rates, I'm for it

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2016/0...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your- health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of- death-in-united-states/)

</comment><comment><USER18> When they came for the surgeons, I was not a surgeon so i did not speak out.

<comment><USER19> Then they came for me - and there was no one left to speak out for me. We rejoiced: work had been abolished.

EDIT: [http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/video/2016/f...](http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable- business/video/2016/feb/17/last-job-on-earth-automation-robots-unemployment- animation-video)

<comment><USER20> Yeah. There have been spontaneous demonstrations of joy and gratitude for our happy new way of life. Said no-one who's job just got automated. Automating work out of existence may or may not be a laudable goal. Assuming it is we've yet to see a roadmap presented that doesn't brick the economy somewhere in the middle of the gap between now and full automation.

<comment><USER21> Do you long to return to the time when more than 50% of the US labor force had to work in food production? Thanks to automation, less than 2% of our population is employed to feed us all, freeing the rest of us to develop software or drive trucks.

<comment><USER20> Or suffer through chronic unemployment. Or work for starvation wages at a McJob.

<comment><USER8> Funny that you mention starvation wages. 50 years ago, you would have had to spend twice as much on food and you wouldn't have gotten anything at the level that's available today. I'd encourage you to read some of Megan McArdle's posts on how we look back at historical food preparation with glasses that are extremely rose colored.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-30/friday- foo...](http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-10-30/friday-food-post- the-economics-behind-grandma-s-tuna-casseroles)

<comment><USER20> 50 years ago is only the 1960's. Food was more expensive then in no small part due to the fact that production was mostly by family farms. The economies of scale that have wiped out rural communities around the country had only just begun to develop in earnest. This meant small family farms were still competitive in the market and could enjoy a high quality of living. I welcome an explanation of how driving family farms out of business with vanishing margins and concentrating what little profits remain in the hands of massively capitalized corporate farming outfits is a net win for society. Note: cheap food is ripe for all of the standard criticism normally aimed at trickle-down economic theory so plan accordingly.

Also, define "food", because we can certainly devote some time to discussing processed foods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Once very very small step closer to the dream of Larry Niven's "Autodoc".

<comment><USER23> As long as virus scan doesn't start during the procedure :)

<comment><USER22> "Hmmm, the headache is gone, but I seem to have a few more limbs than when I started..."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The thing that everyone seems to be missing is that this will lead to parallelism and miniturisation. One day we will get to the point where pinpoint sized cameras and auto suturers will be able to stitch up incisions without scars. And maybe a few decades after that we will get surgery at the cellular level. Imagine a robotic surgical tool that only cuts tumour and can avoid non cancerous cells and membranes.

"Intel Inside"

</comment><comment><USER25> > a bot stitched up a pig's small intestines using its own vision, tools, and > intelligence to carry out the procedure. What's more, the Smart Tissue > Autonomous Robot (STAR) did a better job on the operation than human > surgeons...

I'm curious if they took into account how a person will do a better job when said job is important/risky to themselves. I. E. stitching up a human where a mistake has dire repercussions vs stiching up a bit of desposable flesh.

Was the pig even alive?

<comment><USER26> Professional pride, along with "this is unusual and I am being graded on it", can be a significant motivator. I'd actually be more worried about the surgeons being tested being under _too much_ stress, not _too little_ stress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Posed human vs computers, like other topics, but I'm starting to see reputation as more important. A quality company is better than a dumb one, regardless of internal mechanism. Some ai-based orgs will be ome the fast food of their industry. And your choice won't be ai vs human but you will shop reputation/quality vs price. And like our diets accomodated automation, so will all our choices.

</comment><comment><USER28> This is another thing, where a sort inverse domino effect exists. The more the machine learns, the less training the human gets, the faster the conversion spreads. Same as why you trust a machine to fly you more by now then a human.

</comment><comment><USER29> Don't worry everyone, we won't be seeing robotic surgeon's anytime soon, until the next time insurance companies look to enact cost cutting measures. Best guess, in the next few years. If you can still afford insurance then...

<comment><USER13> The horror of getting stuck with a cheaper and better robot!

<comment><USER30> >>cheaper and better

Those two adjectives don't often belong together.

<comment><USER31> Really? Today's computers are cheaper and better than computers were in the eighties.

<comment><USER30> You are missing the context. Advancements in computer technology were a result of research and development, not someone ruthlessly cutting costs.

<comment><USER32> These are symbiotic. The research and development pays off because somebody else is willing to ruthlessly buy the new, cheaper/better option instead of the safe traditional choice. Mainframes gave way to minicomputers which gave way to microcomputers which gave way to laptops and now to mobiles.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Doctors next in line after truck drivers...got to say I didn't see this one coming.

<comment><USER19> Doctors and lawyers are the top paid professions in the United States: it would make sense to automate their jobs sooner rather than later.

<comment><USER34> If you eliminate all the good-paying jobs, what are you left with?</comment></comment></comment>


The shocking toll of hardware and software fragmentation on Android development - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/mobile/2012/03/30/the-shocking-toll-of-hardware-and-software-fragmentation-on-android-development

<comment><USER3> This article is obviously biased toward extolling the advantages of iOS's uniformness, yet the best example it takes to argue against Android's fragmentation is an application that fails to support only 7.8% of the Android market! How is this a proof that fragmentation is causing a "shocking toll"?

For the curious, I decompiled this "Temple Run" app. It requires Android 2.2 or higher, because its AndroidManifest.xml declares the use of OpenGL ES 2.0 which was introduced in that version of Android. (And the app's minimum API level is Android 2.1.) The app also needs android.hardware.sensor.accelerometer and android.hardware.touchscreen.multitouch, but virtually all Android 2.2 devices have these capabilities.

So, effectively, Temple Run works on any Android 2.2+ device, which represents 92.2% of the devices in the wild: [http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- ve...](http://developer.android.com/resources/dashboard/platform- versions.html) When the developer says they support 707 of the 1443 unique devices on Android Market, this means that these 707 devices represent 92.2% of the market, whereas the article tries to present this as "only half the market is supported".

Yet another article written by an iOS fanboy trying to unfairly depict the state of the Android ecosystem... Nothing to see here.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that a lot of Android devices that claim to support these specs do so in buggy and inconsistent ways. GL shaders, for instance, sometimes have to be tweaked for individual devices.

<comment><USER5> GL shaders have to be tweaked on every platform, and every device. The only thing that's consistent about them is that they're inconsistent _everywhere_. For example, certain drivers will reject shaders using integer literals where floats are expected, others won't; different GPUs will also behave different with respect to precision, or with how they handle a NaN in math.

<comment><USER6> And iOS has a smaller set of GPUs, and a common compression scheme (PVR)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Yes, Android is a free-wheeling mess. But I am not concerned.

I see this as a replay of the 1980s. Apple was the dominant player with a premium option on nice hardware, a consolidated set of software options, and facing fragmented opposition. (Then the PC/Windows landscape. Now Android.)

Then Steve Jobs was yanked from the picture (then by being fired, now by dying), Apple lost its focus, and the fact that so many people were on the messy platform caused it to win in the marketplace.

There are big differences. Tim Cook is hopefully not as incompetent as John Sculley proved to be. Google is not Microsoft reborn.

But we've seen this before. The rule of thumb in computers for decades has been, "the commodity always wins". And Android is better positioned to be that commodity than Apple is.

<comment><USER8> > I see this as a replay of the 1980s. Apple was the dominant player with a > premium option on nice hardware

No they weren't. In Job's first stint at Apple he was beaten by Commodore.

Commodore were vertically integrated. They owned the company who designed the chips in early Apple computers. They focussed aggressively on price, and they won the battles with the Vic 20, C64 and early Amigas. After a bunch of crazy decisions at the end of the decade they eventually lost the war and died a death in the mid 90s.

As they say, it's the winner of the war who gets to write the history books, and in Cupertino they're done an excellent job at it.

<comment><USER9> For those interested, On The Edge by Brian Bagnall ([http://www.amazon.com/On- Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/On-Edge- Spectacular-Rise-Commodore/dp/0973864907)) does a good job recounting the life and death of Commodore. The management of that company was definitively rocky.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This article is overblown.

In Android you don't have to support any device you don't want to, just exclude it from being shown to those users. Same with the OS version, if you don't want to support 1.6 you can make it unavailable to those users.

Most apps don't have fragmentation problems unless you're doing something tricky and hardware dependent, like trying to do fancy things with the camera. I've released several semi-popular apps with few bug complaints.

If you look at Temple Run in Play you will see it is very highly rated and it has over a million downloads. [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imangi.tem...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.imangi.templerun)

Finally, the author's link to one badly voted Reddit comment with little discussion made me think he was just out to write an Android bashing article as link bait.

<comment><USER11> _In Android you don't have to support any device you don't want to, just exclude it from being shown to those users._

This will: 1) Be quite tricky due to the sheer number of devices making it difficult to test everywhere. 2) Only supporting those you know to work isn't viable due to the amount of fragmentation.

 _Most apps don't have fragmentation problems unless you're doing something tricky and hardware dependent_

How about reading from a zipped resource on storage? (10x slower on Galaxy S, in some circumstances, due to filesystem bugs) How about doing an SQL query with a JOIN? (100x slower, in some circumstances, on pre-2.3 devices due to a query optimizer bug in the SQLite version they ship) Showing a splash screen? (Top cut off on Samsung devices running Gingerbread, nowhere else. Still tracing the reason)

 _Finally, the author's link to one badly voted Reddit comment with little discussion made me think he was just out to write an Android bashing article as link bait._

That's a valid criticism. The author found _one_ person that didn't want to pay a dollar, and a few hundred calling him out on being stupid.

Can we get more income comparisons between popular apps on iOS and Android? That's the real data.

<comment><USER12> Fragmentation is not that bad of a problem because the distribution is far from even: you can still support most (as in 90%+) with just a handful of types. You van also restrict support by limiting the minimum OS version. The 707 devices supported cover more than 90% of the devices used.

The article is linkbait. And less than stellar journalism. Looks like someone had to fill the weekly quota of articles and took the easy option.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I really, really hate supporting an app on Android. This is a big part of the reason for that.

As an example, at one point it apparently would simply refuse to start on the Droid X, despite running great on the original Droid I had to test it with, and the VM I set up to emulate the X. Without access to a physical Droid X, it couldn't be debugged. The app doesn't require anything from the hardware besides a GPS, so I was at a loss for what would cause this.

Because it's a huge pain to properly test new versions, I tend not to keep the Android version up to speed with the iOS version of the same app. As a result of that, I get a lot of complaints from Android users that feel short changed and bad reviews from people who feel like the app isn't keeping pace with the alternative apps (mostly they use the web app as reference).

It's just a really crappy situation. I've thought about dropping Android support, but then they would just complain that the iOS crowd get an app and they don't, so that wouldn't be much better. At least I wouldn't have a low star rating publicly attached to my brand, though.

<comment><USER14> > As an example, at one point it apparently would simply refuse to start on > the Droid X, despite running great on the original Droid I had to test it > with, and the VM I set up to emulate the X. Without access to a physical > Droid X, it couldn't be debugged. The app doesn't require anything from the > hardware besides a GPS, so I was at a loss for what would cause this.

What ended up causing that problem?

<comment><USER13> It seems to have fixed itself since then, so I never figured it out.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think it's very valid criticism and it can't really be compared with Windows. There's many differences:

\- Windows has a lot of APIs and hardware abstraction levels. Microsoft has always been known to change things very, very slowly, and keep backward compatibility.

\- Hardware makers don't mess with Windows nearly as much as they do with Android. They will install a Norton trial and that's it. They don't remove the UI and put their own.

\- Microsoft acts as a gate to what innovation hardware vendors can bring in, even more so today with driver testing and signing. Remember back in the day when an OEM did something crazy you'd get BSODs from bad drivers. Now that doesn't happen anymore, because everything is so much more robust. Android is still no where near that, and Google isn't doing much, relying on the open community.

<comment><USER16> _There's many differences_

None of your differences are really the differences you think they are.

Android has a lot of APIs and hardware abstraction levels. Of course it does or it wouldn't work across over a thousand devices with a pretty high degree of success.

OpenGL ES 2.0 _itself_ is an abstraction that has allowed for lots of triple-A (relative to mobile) iOS apps to painlessly get ported to the NDK on Android.

To get the market and the Google apps -- to be a Google sanctioned Android device -- the maker has to pass the Android compatibility tests. Should they be more stringent? Absolutely, but they exist and have done a good job.

The linked article is _terrible_ , and horrendously biased, using exaggerated language at every turn. It makes completely unsupported claims at every turn. What Android has accomplished is _amazing_ , and the level of compatibility is incredibly high, but yes with over a thousand devices, not all of which are certified, hundreds of millions of users, and hundreds of thousands of apps, you _will_ find problems. Big surprise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What I'm curious about why it is fragmentation is such an issue on mobile devices, when it was never this big a deal on desktops. Outside of cutting- edge 3D games, Windows developers don't need to have 100 laptops to test all the different hardware permutations for their software.

<comment><USER18> > What I'm curious about is why is fragmentation such an issue on mobile > devices, when it was never this big a deal on desktops.

Stable APIs and abstractions, better renderers, ability not to go fullscreen and nobody caring about dpi. Resolutions changed very slowly, especially before the 00s and 3D games. Also culture, somewhat, probably: if the game does not work due to a bizarre combination of drivers it's the users problem.

And it's definitely not true that "it was never this big a deal on desktops", stable hardware target is regularly mentioned as a reason to go console by developers.

<comment><USER19> Heck it was never a big deal is factually incorrect. IT is STILL a big deal:

Fragmentation means your ATI card not working one day, or your novice user having to go dig through pages of support to figure out how to debug a faulty driver.

Or its your printer not working on XP, but working on 7 || your games being unplayable on one set up and working on another without a hiccup || any of a massive set of issues that people take for granted when they have to deal with PCs.

Fragmentation is an issue, its just that people have gotten used to it and familiar with it.

Fragmentation IS a problem and remains that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you are a mobile software developer who refuses to deal with Android under the pretext it is "fragmented", you will simply be obliterated by your competition. The Android market is so large, and becoming larger every day, that other developers will gladly do the work you refuse to do. And they will succeed, just like the desktop/server software development world has learned how to cope with "fragmentation" in the Windows/Linux ecosystem by supporting the various OS versions, editions, service packs, distributions, locales, etc.

It does not matter what you think about Android fragmentation. It exists. Deal with it.

<comment><USER20> The point about the market being 'large' is the very thing that fragmentation undermines. What matters is how many paying customers can receive a good user experience from your app, and what this costs to provide.

You also assume that Android will continue to outpace iOS in terms of growth - i.e. the trajectory will be like the PC rather than like the iPod.

It matters very much what you think about Android fragmentation. Dealing with it has been a costly mistake for some developers, and could be for you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Stop complaining about fragmentation and define yourself which devices you support!

It's crazy to think that a common OS among such a wide variety of phones is enough to achieve perfect portability. Let's take an analogy: Your Windows PC runs an OS very similar to the ATM across the street (I'm not even mentioning the wide array of platform Linux runs on). Do you really expect your app to run on all Windows machines flawlessly?

The real issue is that Google is only too happy to brag about number of Android users, or apps in their market (what's the proper naming convention now? Play?). Corporate bullshit meant to appease shareholders and attract developers.

You can sit all day complaining that Android isn't the developer paradise it was advertised, or you can be more pragmatic, restrict yourself to fewer devices and achieve quality.

But we, as developers, are greedy and pretentious. We want our apps to run on every machine possible, and be featured on top of their stupidly competitive "market".

I blame Apple for the broken model (but hey, it works for them), and Google for not knowing better.

<comment><USER22> _Do you really expect your app to run on all Windows machines flawlessly?_

By and large, yes, people expect that and developers largely achieve that. But of course Windows is a much more mature platform than Android.

<comment><USER21> I think you missed the part where I mention that Windows _runs on an ATM!_ I'm not crazy enough to suggest that Windows apps running on your Dell laptop would run on a Toshiba laptop. After all, they're both clones of the same machine (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pc_clone>)

<comment><USER22> I've programmed ATMs, and dendory has it exactly right: those are completely regular stock PC hardware running a completely regular copy of Windows. The only thing special about them is that they're physically secured and have some very unusual peripherals and assorted drivers.

<comment><USER21> Honestly I never did program on an ATM so I may be wrong. But I'm willing to assume that unusual peripherals and drivers are analogous to the portability issues across android phones. Genuinely asking, not claiming to have the truth.

<comment><USER22> There's actually a standard for ATM hardware interfaces originally developed by Microsoft (WOSA/XFS, now CEN/XFS), which is a major reason _why_ ATMs run Windows.

When I worked in the industry 10 years ago, there were lots of ambiguities in the standard and the drivers were pretty flaky, so the situation there may actually have looked like Android does now.

But ATM-specific hardware and software is a niche market with few customers paying lots of money each, so the pressure to eliminate incompatibilities is not as strong - you can just throw people and money at fixing issues as they crop up.

The situation is completely different with mass-market PC hardware and software though, and I'd say that it should be possible for Android to get there as well, since it's also a mass-market product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somehow thousands of Android developers still seem to manage fine. Some parts of the article made me quite suspicious that it was really an Apple marketing piece.

<comment><USER20> Android developers are incurring higher costs for less revenue.

That may be 'fine' but it's still a disadvantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Our experience supporting both iOS and Android versions of our app for 18 months (>1M daily users) is that Android users are much less satisfied. We are twice as likely to get a support request from an Android user and those requests tend to be more complex (and qualitatively more grumpy).

For example, take push notifications. C2DM only works on 2.2 devices with a logged-in Google account, so you need a fall back push mechanism. Even with C2DM you must struggle with various challenges surrounding power management and wifi sleep. In comparison, APNS just works.

Also, Android aggressively deprecates. With ICS there's a brand new Fragments API, which to be sure has a backward compatibility library, but now you are faced with the choice of rewriting your app to fit the new UI style (and potentially confusing existing users), limping along with the old Android styles, or supporting both and making your life miserable. Hey, and don't forget landscape mode and multiple aspect ratios!

I could go on, but I'm getting negative.

</comment><comment><USER25> The first sign of trouble is:

" A previously (very) successful game on iOS, it was brought over to Android in order to take advantage of the huge number of devices that run the OS."

Right. A game with graphical assets designed for a couple of fixed screen sizes and resolutions is going to have problems on a system that forces developers to handle multiple screen dimensions and resolutions.

Shocked. I'm shocked.

The one thing Android "fragmentation" (meaning whatever it means in which ever context) hasn't caused for applications that were developed for Android is compatibility problems. Android apps are remarkably compatible on hardware that they were never tested on.

There is plenty to hate about OEMs' craplets and "enhancements" - <USER2> comprise the more commonly held definition of "fragmentation" - but they have had very little effect on application compatibility.

</comment><comment><USER26> This very "hard" problem was solved long time ago by releasing your product along with a free demo (or shareware, or whatever). As a developer you simply have to make sure your product works on the most popular platforms, or whatever kind of platforms you want. Before the user buys he tries it, so there will be less complaints that the app does not work for them. Hardware and software will always be fragmented in a free market, and that's ok.

</comment><comment><USER27> the article is link bait..

How do I know? Because the same fragmentation exists on iphone but smaller in quantities..to say it is not there on iphone is a bit somewhat lying like republicans..

Now lets see someone be honest about this on both platforms or STFU

<comment><USER28> I run a 10-person development team, split 50:50 Android / iOS, under a digital agency. We build apps for carriers (account management apps), brands, etc.

From my own personal experience, which having built apps since the first iOS SDK and Android 1.6 is hopefully fairly reliable, the QA and testing burden on Android apps is _considerably higher_ than iOS.

That in itself isn't totally surprising, because there are far more handsets on the market. But that's not the real issue: say I'm writing an app for a network carrier. Carriers typically want their apps to run on all hardware they've sold for the past two years (ie, everyone who's still under contract).

On iOS, that's iOS 3-5. Very soon, it'll be iOS 4-5 - 4 was released in June 2010.

On Android, that's 1.6, 2.0, 2.2, 2.3, 3.0, and 4.0. Because the _key difference_ is when Apple release a new version of iOS, they stop selling the old one. But that's not the case with Android. Even today there are still phones on the market running 2.1.

When you say "the same fragmentation exists on iPhone but smaller in quantities" - I don't really think you know what you're talking about. If you're developing an app now you can pretty easily support iOS 4.3 upwards, which would cover all handsets being actively sold by Apple for the past 21 months or so (the 3GS onwards, or three phone models and two tablets)). How many Android phones running how many versions have been released in the past 21 months? Far, far more.

This doesn't inherently make Android a bad platform: lots of people choose to develop PC games even though there's a much higher testing burden that consoles (in terms of the varying environments and OS versions). I think Android is great: I'm not arguing against developing for it. But I think you'd be very hard pressed to find someone experienced with both the iOS and Android platforms who'd disagree with the notion that fragmentation on Android takes up a lot more time to deal with than iOS.

<comment><USER29> Apple's major versions come out once a year, while Android's about twice per year. In this case Android 2.1 (early 2010) is even newer than iOS 3.0. Are you saying nobody has an iOS 3.0 iPhone anymore?

I don't think _phasing out_ versions is a big deal for Android. It happens about as fast as for iOS (~3 years). What is a bigger deal is how fast the _latest_ OS/API gets adopted. iOS can push out the new version in _days_ to at least 50%-75% of the users, while for Android it takes about a year to be on 75% of the devices (that's how long it took for Gingerbread).

And the issue with that is that users don't get to take advantage too much of the most cutting edge software, until months after release, when (or if) they get their upgrade, while on iOS they can do that just days later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If you are a developer thinking about choosing between iOS or Android, well after reading this article the decision is easy.

<comment><USER31> Which part? The fragmentation or the bit about the Android version hitting "1 million downloads in just 3 days"?</comment></comment>


Online Tool to request info on who actually owns your Mortgage - <AUTHOR> http://action.seiu.org/page/speakout/wheresthenote?js=true

<comment><AUTHOR> Zerohedge discussion here : [http://www.zerohedge.com/article/here-your- chance-check-if-y...](http://www.zerohedge.com/article/here-your-chance-check- if-you-are-victim-mortgage-fraud)

</comment><comment><USER2> site is a on SEIU's site! Flagged</comment>


Successful People Start Before They Feel Ready - <AUTHOR> http://jamesclear.quora.com/Successful-People-Start-Before-They-Feel-Ready

<comment><USER2> I'm reminded of Emerson's "Self Reliance." Successful people are always already successful, even if you have never heard of them. Could be this is why they act before other people might think they are ready. Here's a passage that came to my mind (though the whole thing is genius):

"Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself[.]"

Maybe "greatness" and success are apples and oranges. (It depends if the latter has a purely mercantile meaning, which is boring and temporary, in my own view.) But I'd agree that the truly great innovators -- whether in poetry, programming, painting, music, business -- they don't worry about failure. They may not like it but it doesn't stop them. Greatness may be aided by fortune but it doesn't ask for permission. It may be forgotten or overlooked in its own time. But like Emerson and this author, it's hard to dispute the central tenet: "success" requires action combined with talent, and a deeply held conviction that now is always the right time to act.</comment>


Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/14/opinion/sunday/should-we-all-take-a-bit-of-lithium.html

<comment><USER2> There are already 60 comments at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8314188](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8314188)</comment>


Show HN: Bloom Filter JS - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/sacert/Bloom-Filter <comment><USER2> i think you need to update the description for this or leave a comment explaining where to find your bloom filter library (i'm curious!)

<comment><AUTHOR> Think is pretty embarrassing. I forgot to add the link when posting this thread! Is there a way to delete a post? haha

<comment><USER3> No problem, we've updated the story with the link.

<comment><AUTHOR> Merci!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Nice Security Mindset Example - <AUTHOR> https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/04/nice_security_m.html

<comment><USER2> Real link: <http://blog.tanyakhovanova.com/?p=277>

<comment><USER3> You're right. Khovanova is the original author of the point, and Schneier added nothing there, so the Schneier link is blogspam.

<http://ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html>

<comment><USER4> > _blogspam_

Given his expertise, Schneier acts as an excellent curator/aggregator. Also, by cherry-picking relevant excerpts and framing them with an apt title, the added value is subtle yet significant enough. Here, the focus in his post is markedly different than in Khovanova's.

That's why I follow his RSS feed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Oh dear. In one of Schneier's previous posts, he mentions graduate students learning the security mindset though analysing everyday products. One of these products was 24/7 video monitoring for elderly care... and the CEO of that company took offense to the security of his product being questioned, eventually pulling the security-through-obscurity card [https://cubist.cs.washington.edu/Security/2008/02/10/securit...](https://cubist.cs.washington.edu/Security/2008/02/10/security- review-quiet-care/)

Many of the other products such as OnStar have similar responses - security- through-obscurity requires the eternal vigilance of constantly googling your product + "security" ;)

<comment><USER6> If you're in the infosec business you should have a small army of bots looking for new results on google searches of "your-product security/exploit/..." and monitoring sec forums, exploit databases and other things as well, regardless of whether you do security properly or not. A 12hrs difference between someone finding news of an exploit and the info getting around to your client or you finding out 12hrs earlier from your bots and be already working on a fix or have it fixed might be the difference between being in and out of business...

<comment><USER7> Can you give some info on how to setup some of these?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think it's a better example of flawed analogy, but it's still an entertaining anecdote.

<comment><USER9> The post has nothing to do with one-way functions. The point was that its very difficult, if not impossible, to consider all the possible attack vectors in a system, even for someone with a lot of experience, even for a very simple system.

(also, its important to get as many eyeballs as possible to examine the system)

<comment><USER10> > (also, its important to get as many eyeballs as possible to examine the > system)

More importantly, it's important to get eyeballs that don't have any old knowledge or assumptions.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> People say that the smart 8th grader used social engineering, but who knows, maybe it was an example of hard core information engineering. He might thought: "The white pages book is only one representation of the algorithm, this information may be available somewhere else. Eureka! Rainbow table exists in the field!"</comment>


You Should Be Logging Shell History - <AUTHOR> http://www.jefftk.com/p/you-should-be-logging-shell-history <comment><USER2> Instead of overriding PROMPT_COMMAND, you can also use _trap_ to intercept signals, e.g.

      trap '[[ "$BASH_COMMAND" != "$PROMPT_COMMAND" ]] && pwd' DEBUG

[http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners- Guide/html/sect_12_02.htm...](http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners- Guide/html/sect_12_02.html)</comment>


Plex client for the Raspberry Pi - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/15/plex-client-project-for-raspberry-pi-gets-a-fresh-update-and-its/

<comment><USER2> Hmm, so after trying this I'm not exactly impressed. The menu visibly lags and it just sits and... well, either does nothing or the screen goes blank when I try to play a relatively simple video. This is with a preexisting plex setup that works fine.

I'm running on an original B, but the site mentions nothing about the split - so maybe it only works on the 512mb models (I really wish they had changed the name, though the site says "A Raspberry Pi mini-computer" is required, and I doubt it works on the A, so they don't seem to be explicit any way).

<comment><USER3> This is still in Alpha, we are working on making the experience smoother.

Make sure you are running 0.1.27

As for the black screen, currently a known issue that seems to occur before caching is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Certainly interested in trying this, but FFS - give us an obvious image download link (there is one, but buried behind layers of "Buy this!" and "Run this script!").

I appreciate the (presumable) desire to make it easy for people to burn the image onto an SD card, but when I see this:

> Please re-run this script with root privileges, i.e. 'sudo ./getrasplex.py'

without any kind of explanation, or justification, just a "do this!" instruction, the answer is "NO".

<comment><USER3> In response to your comments, I have updated the download page, and will change the installer.

<http://rasplex.com/get-started/download.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Obviously it is early days for the project. It is currently very laggy and playing even SD videos is temperamental, but the project has huge potential and I'm sure with this much interest things will improve quickly. I look forward to seeing how things progress. The team has my support. Thanks for doing this!

<comment><USER3> SD videos should be fine after caching is complete. See FAQ

I have a better solution for caching being cooked up but it's at least a few weeks away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Thanks for putting this together. Running TVMOBILI on the rev. 2 pi after some head scratching not free and by no means perfect. I'm very interested in this project and will be watching carefully. I'm thinking to pair this with an SSD, clearly that would soak up much of the 'lag'.

</comment><comment><USER6> Many Thanks for your good job. Still following you ! Please be fair to the Alpha version ! I use it every day in the bedroom. Quiet slow but working like a charme. Let's Plex :D

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm happy that people like misnome are posting their opinions - criticism is good and productive. I'm happy to make changes, but can't do it if no one complains ;)

</comment><comment><USER7> This is fantastic exposure. I am so excited to see this reach its first Final release. Please keep up the great work.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is the RasPlex project, at <http://rasplex.com/>

<comment><USER8> Thanks for putting this together. The timing couldn't be better. Broke my ankle and this gives me something else to do while I'm laid up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice.</comment>


Amazon Is Poised to Unleash a Long-Feared Purge of Small Suppliers - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-28/amazon-is-poised-to-unleash-long-feared-purge-of-small-suppliers <comment><USER2> I have mixed feelings on this... on the one hand, I don't like Amazon abusing their market position. On the other hand, counterfeit products are the bane of commerce right now.

<comment><USER3> Do you think amazon has a financial interest in not policing counterfeit products because this strengthens their AmazonBasics brand?</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can I buy for my fiancé's fussy father-in-law's birthday - <AUTHOR>

More specifically, does anyone know of any cool Kickstarter-type products that would be ideal for an older man of around 65 who's interested in the market, economics and lives in Australia? <comment><USER2> How about a book written by some famous investor? Buffett, Lynch, Klarman (supposedly rare), etc? Binded printout of all of Berkshire's annual letters?

<comment><AUTHOR> I like this idea, thanks! Will have to chat to the misses and see what she thinks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> A subscription to _The Economist_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Will consult the misses to see what she thinks. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Interested in market/economics as in he's a professional (or extremely serious individual investor), or interested as in he's a hobbyist who likes reading finance news and occasionally making "cool" investments?

<comment><AUTHOR> He's an ex-economics teacher (now retired) that does pretty well in the market. I'd say he's in the category of hobbyist who likes reading finance news, too.

Thanks!

<comment><USER4> So I'm probably getting blinded by availability bias bc you said finance, but these T-shirts look solid. I can't really think of anything etsy-like that would fit. I'd assume he's a fairly cynical guy:

www.zazzle.com/financial_adviser_banker_investment_broker_gear_tshirt-235389425685067728

[http://www.zazzle.com/rated_aaa_tshirt-235431658033842966](http://www.zazzle.com/rated_aaa_tshirt-235431658033842966)

Alternatively, screw the finance part and just go for something cool. How does he feel about drones?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If he enjoys getting outside, maybe you could get him a nice metal detector so he can hunt for gold.

<comment><AUTHOR> He doesn't enjoy getting outside too much but thanks for the suggestion anyway!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> setup a EVE Online account for him? a bitcoin/litecoin miner asic, and help him set it up, with mining pool and coin exchange accounts? or sort of both if instead of the asic its a gpu litecoin mining setup..can play EVE with it..</comment>


Startup idea with marketing from top pool players guaranteed - <AUTHOR>

Due to some luck, I have a cousin who is a top 9 ball pool player and his friends are all the top 10 in the world e.g Effren Reyes, Rodney Morris, Mika Immonen, Ralph 'The kaiser' etc.
He confirmed that they are interested in an iphone app and they would support it and market it assuming someone is actually capable of building it and not damaging their reputations.
He asked me if I could manage it. I can't, I'm working on a startup and even though it's a no-brainer, we are launching and it's too late for me.
These guys play pool, they don't live in the startup world. They don't imagine that someone would sit there and take the risk to build the app and so I explained how it can work.
The concept I have in mind is something very simple and addictive for pool players like 'staircase dismount', 'angry birds' 'fruit ninja' etc - but in a pool setting
Pool players are currently in a situation that, due to anti-gambling laws in the USA, they can't make as much money as they want and the prize money has gone down since then but they still have huge followings.
If anyone is interested, get in touch with me. These guys are willing to fly out and meet with you to talk it over. In fact, I think they'll insist. Work out your own percentage split with them and your own contract and the terms for the marketing.
You'll be building a product with an agreement, in advance, of marketing guaranteed. Just make sure you get what you want and they get what they want.
We launch our product on friday, I have limited time for this but I've also promised to get it moving.
If you are interested, then I suggest you go via the y-combinator route to make it happen. I'll put you in touch with them and you can go to y-combinator with a guarantee of having it marketed. I don't want to manage it and unless I'm wrong, Y-combinator processes startup idea's.
Stats: everyone plays pool at some point in their lives and there is a hardcore following of millions. My cousin quoted a worldwide following of 130 million, for some countries, it's a national sport. Current pool apps might be good but they are not addictively simple as it does not have to be playing a full game. Personally, i think the first version could be as simple as 'maximum break' with bonus points, flashing lights and an addictive feel.... just get that right and then build more apps to sell in the future.
my email is email@example.com for urgent questions, although best if you post here and we'll work out next steps. Work together, form a new startup, whatever it takes. My cousins name is raj hundal of www.rajhundal.com he's got a sizeable facebook following and so have the others. He mentioned wearing the app symbol on their t-shirts when they play pool on tv... so you get my drift? It's an opportunity no-one seems to have put together properly yet. <comment><USER2> I may be able to offer some assistance here. I am currently working on a billiard scoring application (for pool leagues) with another developer friend of mine in our spare time. We are developing the app for iOS and Android devices currently and we are hoping to release it early next year. I would be happy to discuss ideas with you about your proposed project. We both generally love pool and building apps :)

Preview of the billiard scoring app for league players we are developing: [https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=11KO5WoWQJewm75cuoY...](https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=11KO5WoWQJewm75cuoY3tSYfKQKUMrsgDjf2Wv11ME0k&authkey=CJWV764I&hl=en#)

Isaac Wooten firstname.lastname@example.com <http://www.levid.com>

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool and potentially brilliant as my cousin mentioned APA and he understands that system well. I just recall that there are 500,000 odd members in the usa paying monthly fees. I'll pass this along to him. They are currently in New York prepping for the USA Open. If you are in New York or wherever the USA open is, then get in maybe you can meet them!

I initially suggested 2 things to him 1\. A very very simple / addictive app 2\. Go for the big picture - an app where there are ladders/leagues connected all the way to the major players i.e. you keep score in local pool halls and the best play the best till they then meet these top players.. That would involve a well organised and funded company (probably)

I'll forward this to him and see what he thinks.

<comment><AUTHOR> just looked it up. they are in new york for a few days training and then they head to virginia for the 17th

<comment><AUTHOR> I just looked through that google doc properly. You guys have really done your work and I think you've hit this stage because you are users yourself fixing a problem you understand. Great work.

I was looking through the current top pool apps on iphone and while I only looked through the top 10 or 20, this is just another level. I guess the simple fact that someone stands in a pool hall with a mobile computing device this entirely possible now, when it was not previously (pre smart phone mass market)

You can make your name in the USA but in vision, this is a lot bigger. The USA is a good start though :) Get funding, go full time!

<comment><USER2> Thank you for the kind words, this idea was definitely born out of frustration with playing in the league for several years and having to keep score each week. Sometimes frustration can lead into something very positive for everyone :)

We hope to release both a pro version and a lite version so people can at least download it for free and test it out before they decide to join the league. Once they join the league they would just pay a small subscription fee to be able to use the scoring features, manage their team rosters, see ongoing match stats & history etc. We would really like to implement live scoring as well. When playoffs come around each team could keep tabs on the other teams they are in contention even if they are in different locations. This could add a very interesting dynamic into league play and possibly affect the strategies used in posting matches based on an opposing teams current score.

Just some ideas, and I would love to get some funding to be able to work on this more often. The Japan APA reps were very into it, but I haven't heard back from them or the APA national office since I demo'd it in Vegas several months ago. My colleague and I will attempt to launch it on our own early next year and perhaps they will take notice when the league operators start receiving lots of automated score sheets :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I can imagine it's hard getting the message through to APA reps although it should be a no-brainer for them. Well, it's definitely worth talking to Raj. I've forwarded on your information to them and they'll get back to me after the Virginia open. Meanwhile, it's launch day for us, so i'm going to be distracted :) Actually, you might be interested in our site too, as I was also talking to raj about how, one thing it can do, is show you who is playing pool right now and where. It's not built for pool players but all groups e.g. singles, expats but it can work for pool players as it gives each group it's own location based social network. You have friend finders on Foursquare and on our site, it's group finder. <http://www.likeourselves.com> You can create your own network e.g. APA league pool players and whenver they check-in somewhere, you can see who is there. Anyway, if you are interested please take a look</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Sign to throw in the towel? - <AUTHOR>

I have been mulling over an idea for an app for the past few months.
Obviously enough of an enthusiast to be an avid HN reader, but my eager attempt at learning to code turned to be a very, very humbling experience, fast.
My idea was to use augmented reality to virtually show DIY interior design and move around furnitures in your room.
I've been trying to network as much as possible and attend hackathons as sounding boards for my idea - is the idea even feasible? But the usual enthusiasm met in the beginning ends with lackluster non-commitals.
Low on cash, even lower on skills. Not much luck on elance, guru and sites of the like either. I've had responses by people who seem to be able to execute parts of the project but no one seems up to the challenge for the hard part.
Is me not being able to find a partner/team sign of bad idea? I've always been a biz dev/client relations person. If my team can build it, I know I can market it.
Your advice? Is this a telling sign to throw in the towel? <comment><USER2> > My idea was to use augmented reality to virtually show DIY interior design > and move around furnitures in your room.

It doesn't sounds like you understand the scale of the technical challenge here. You're talking about developing a product based on a technology that is in its infancy! Meeting the type of dev that can execute on this at a meetup is going to be...dicy, at best.

Secondly, okay you have an idea. What else do you have? The only things you mention here are your "idea" so...can only assume not much else.

Thirdly, and directly to your question: it doesn't sound like you have the chops to execute on this idea, nor do you know enough about technology to build a business in any capacity, frankly. Join another startup, learn more about how software is built and how it works, then find something that you _know_ is marketable. I mean, for Christ sake, this should not be hard for you --it sounds as if you have basically 0 invested here...

Tangentially, this is one of those posts that makes me wonder: What is it with non technologists that makes them want to do something in software? Why would you want to work in a space that you don't understand or care enough to learn to understand? These types of people view software as a means to an end, which isn't inherently bad but seems to not fit in the patterns of success I have seen in the software world.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) I think a lot of people have had this idea. It's kind of "obvious" IMHO.

2) There's a big technical challenge, but...

3) There's an even bigger content challenge. Where is this furniture content going to come from? Are manufacturers going to create 3d models? How/why? This is an industry that still seems to love to function using showroom catalogs.

4) What exactly is the business model?

If you think you could sell it if it was built, then just pretend it's built - and why not try pitching it here? Not just describing the UX but describing the end to end function of the business, content pipeline, sales cycle, and how it's going to generate appreciable amounts of revenue.

</comment><comment><USER4> Dude, I have 7+ years as a highly technical mobile developer and experience writing augmented reality apps that businesses are using in the app store. I would place your idea in the 'very hard' box ... Picking this as your first project to learn development is insane. Augmented reality is in its infancy and what you're trying to implement is darn near impossible. Don't throw in the towel altogether, but time for a different project? Yes.

<comment><USER5> I've started building AR prototypes recently and would very much like to chat with someone who's been at it for 7 years. If you'd be amenable to letting me pick your brain, I'd very much appreciate it. My email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Have you done anything else ? Any track record doing things ? Have you even done an app ? If you are not really a developer perhaps you are missing the fact that some of the technical bits may be tough to implement.

I would go for two options 1) Can you do something small on your own to test the market, or test the technology 2) Jump in with another technical team's start-up, and do their biz dev, and get your start that way. Maybe after idea is done they may need a pivot idea.

If you are having trouble starting, and you don't have cash (esp. from investors) then I'd personally drop it until I was in a position to either do it myself or had a team.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good ideas may not necessarily be good ideas for you. It seems like you don't really have the resources to execute on this idea properly. From your short description, you come off as a random person with no interior design experience, limited money, limited contacts. It's a tough spot.

If you're serious about continuing, then try building out the storyboard and wireframes. Then you have a concept you can pitch and sell to clients. If it's easy to get clients and purchase orders, then you know you have something. If you can't, then the product / market fit needs some work.

FYI, there are a couple startups doing very similar things already.

</comment><comment><USER8> "If my team can build it, I know I can market it." Come up with something that solves a problem and is easier to build. Then use your skills to market it better than the competition. Many business tasks can be simplified with nothing more than a simple database app.

</comment><comment><USER9> "augmented reality to virtually show DIY interior design and move around furnitures in your room"

A major pain point for me and i m sure many others. If you can build this, i will pay.

</comment><comment><USER10> check out: <http://www.snapshopinc.com/solutions/></comment>