Show HN: JSONP - enable cross-domain requests to any JSON API (w/ AJAX) - <AUTHOR> http://jsonp.jit.su/

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could make a signup with Stripe or Paypal or something so that people could pay $5 or $10 per month to use it.. that way you would have enough money to at least pay for the server(s) and a reason to maintain it and come up with a way for it to automatically scale.

I mean do you have something like a load balancer or proxy or something that will allow it to scale horizontally in case a few people really take advantage or it becomes popular?

It seems like leaving it totally free would probably end up with it just not being worthwhile to maintain.. but if there is a little money going in and at least one well-known service starts using it then I would totally consider using it.

<comment><AUTHOR> It was quick for me to make and it doesn't really require maintenance - <USER2> free to donate to the EFF in honor of the project.

In terms of scalability, the app is doing very little processing so it's really just a matter of how many concurrent connections Node can handle in & out, but I've read it's capable of hundreds of thousands or more. Let me know if you are seeing high latency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How reliable is this service trying to be?

While I think it is a cool service if a person is just hacking around, it is not something I would use with any revenue generating project.

<comment><AUTHOR> feel free to download the source to reimplement or host your own

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just recently did something similar: <https://github.com/jostylr/cors-lite>

It was to give a JSON API for <http://bootswatch.com>

It would be easy enough for anyone to host it on something like nodester.com or cloudfoundry.com and have it just for your own JSON data.

<comment><USER6> I simply have to commend your choice of project title here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Obligatory: <https://github.com/oyvindkinsey/easyXDM>

</comment><comment><USER8> cool service, I hope it remains up so we can depend on it.

Currently you can accomplish the same thing using Yahoo's YQL, if you'd rather trust a big company to stay up. Here's an example: <http://y.ahoo.it/b7rnO>

I'm using it on my website to parse my project's history.json file: <http://ruhoh.com/latest-updates/>, check the source on that to see how it works.

Be warned that YQL transforms arrays containing one element into strings =/, terrible I know but it works.

<comment><USER9> Trust Yahoo! to keep a service running?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> CORS is more secure than JSONP. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross- origin_resource_sharing>

<comment><USER11> More functional too, but it requires complicity from the remote server.

<comment><USER12> JSONP requires complicity from the remote server too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I tried this once with a proxy script and it eventually lead to inconsistencies. I've settled on using an apache reverse proxy when I need to do cross-domain json posts (typically for dev work).Just put this in your vhost config

ProxyPass /api/ <http://destination.com/api/> ProxyPassReverse /api/ <http://destination.com/api/>

</comment><comment><USER14> One things these services often lack is the ability to change the user agent before making the request. For awhile, if one wanted to make use of Pinterest's API, they would just need to change the user agent to mimic the iPhone app. (Recently Pinterest has made using the API more difficult so such a technique is no longer sufficient.)

</comment><comment><USER15> I thought this was going to be about <https://github.com/jaubourg/jquery- jsonp> but apparently not. I wouldn't trust it, personally, though I see its uses.

</comment><comment><USER16> Well, based on the comments it sounds like you've exposed a need. People want it to be stable and don't seem comfortable with the idea of it being your hobby. Make them pay for it before someone else decides to.

<comment><AUTHOR> point taken. as long as nodejitsu provides free hosting, though, im happy to keep it free.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> or you could use <http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/>

</comment><comment><USER18> :P sweet

</comment><comment><USER19> While useful, there are a few implications

1) security

       a) I won't trust you with my API keys

       b) If you get hacked, ANY javascript can be executed on my pages

2) scalability - how much traffics can you handle?

3) I can implement your service with a 3-line PHP script. Why would I use your service?

<comment><USER14> 1a -- you aren't just trusting this site, you are trusting everyone since the API keys can be found within the source.

3 -- it is even simpler than that; the source can be found on github. At the very least, services such as this are useful as you are still developing.

For the viability of a commercial version of this project, I think the biggest question is: why would somebody use this instead of Yahoo's YQL?

<comment><AUTHOR> 1a) not all API calls require a secret

<comment><USER14> True, but irrelevant.

Note that I was responding to "I won't trust you with my API keys"

On a tangent, while this is a problem for this particular website, the issue is solveable. (See YQL.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NSA to store yottabytes of surveillance data in Utah megarepository - <AUTHOR> http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/11/01/nsa-to-store-yottabytes-of-surveillance-data-in-utah-megarepository/

<comment><USER2> Did anyone read through to the article NYT review? (<http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23231>) The yottabyte quote is:

"As the sensors associated with the various surveillance missions improve, the data volumes are increasing with a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (10^24 Bytes) by 2015."

Note the qualifiers and the future time date; also, this is talking about _raw_ sensor data. It is not uncommon for raw data to be reduced by a few orders of magnitude via aggregation, compression, and simply discarding irrelevant sensor readings before hitting permanent storage (e.g. look at the LHC).

</comment><comment><USER3> Some quick math:

With 2TB drives, that means 500m drives spinning in the building, assuming no redundancy, fs overhead, OS data, etc. (but then again, who the fuck has this sort of production capacity? Definitely not WD or Seagate or any of the major players)

If you store then akin to a Sun X4540 server, you fit 12 drives per U of space. In a 50U rack, if you take away 2U for networking, that's 48 _12=576 drives per rack.

If we throw back in some redundancy, that's about 1m racks.

Each rack takes up about 10sf of space (~19"_6', accommodating for clearances), so that's 10m square feet of datacenter space, not accounting for any sort of power, cooling, or logistics space.

Throw back in the extras and you're looking at roughly a mile square of datacenter space.

Wow.

So, we all understand this is bullshit journalism, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> To put it in context. A square mile has 27,878,400 square feet in it. The Empire State Building has 2,158,000 square feet of usable office space.

But this also assumes they're going to use HD as standard storage devices. They would probably be using a different technology. It's clearly not possible with current HD capacity.

They could also be building for the eventual capacity and not going to immediately support that much data. The comments on the article page makes this and other good points.

<comment><USER4> > They would probably be using a different technology.

not even the NSA can get a yottabyte of some new technology manufactured without it being all over the news.

<comment><AUTHOR> The data doesn't have to be actively online. Tape technology is one option to reduce the amount of hardware and space needed.

<comment><USER5> and that process is fairly routine at most national labs and supercomputing facilities. Not highly available, but not sure these data need to be.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> 10^12 TB is a lottabytes and, also, a yottabyte.

This reminds me of being in college not too long ago when a CS professor said "Keep this under your hat but the main server is going to have ONE TERABYTE in storage as of next month" and I got chills. 10 years ago it was a Big Deal that a major research institution had a machine with a whole terabyte attached to it -- not quite a supercomputer, but man, it had a TERABYTE, what else could you want?

These days teenagers routinely have access to terabytes, some fairly small companies deal with petabytes, and major government organizations have to go up a few orders of magnitude when they let their imaginations run wild about future needs.

</comment><comment><USER7> Am I the only one who actually thinks this is plausible? First, I don't think all the storage will be on hard drives constantly spinning and requiring electricity. Imagine huge tape spools like in the old days but with 10,000x more data on them and miles and miles long.

Also, every conversation, every satellite image at full res. There's a lot of data out there. Every website with every update. every database. every conversation, in every country.

They didn't say they'd be at a yottabyte next year, but no doubt, there will be that much information to store and the NSA doesn't work on startup timelines.

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm actually glad the comments here are a debate on the technological aspects and there's little commentary here on whether this is right or wrong. This kind of commentary is exactly where HN should be and often is, I'd like to take the time to point out to everyone who regularly bemoans HN is turning into reddit: it clearly isn't!

I find the CG rhetoric to be aged and irrelevant. The paranoia is so prevalent they sound like two kids smoking up in a dorm room, they use no explanation and cite no information for the paranoia than 'its the man'. It's pathetic. It's a tech website and there's barely even a passing mention of the technological feasibility of this project, and what examination of the feasibility they have is very weak and based on poor assumptions.

The assumption that the NSA will have thousands of HDD permanently running is absurd. Quite literally 1 cubic meter of 50GB blu-ray discs easily stores ~2.75 petabytes of data at an expected lifespan of 10-100 years (this is based on pure physical dimensions alone, and not storage dimensions). A single 100 disk stack of 50GB BR discs should store ~4.8TB of data. This makes the mass storage solely dependent upon write capability rather than size requirements.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> My math shows they can store 126,419,753,08,641 hours of uncompressed 640x480 video. This is based on 1 hour of video taking about 79GB of data.

Using basic compression can take the number of hours stored much higher.

<comment><USER9> Which is only about 1 billion years of video. Presuming they wanted to video every person in the United States (let alone abroad) you'd fill up that many hours in a little less than 4 years.

Now, you do get a nice multiplier from compression (10-100x, depending on the video and the quality) but that only brings it up to 100 billion years of video, max. What if you wanted to store all the video ever recorded? Bear in mind that the amount of video being recorded is currently in the exponential increase growth phase.

<comment><USER10> Depending on your goal, one doesn't need to store every single frame of a video in order to capture its plot.

<comment><USER9> Right, definitely not, but this is leaving aside all the other kinds of data you might want to save, and there's a _lot_ of that too. I'm just pointing out that the quantity of hours we're talking about is not nearly as absurd as you'd think at first.

<comment><USER11> But clearly they want to track everyone and everything everywhere. Scares the crap out of me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 _There is talk of the NSA shutting down altogether or being rolled into another agency,_

Seriously?

<comment><USER12> Nah, they're thinking of the CIA.

 _...it approached the point where there was no substantive difference between the Library of Congress and the Central Intelligence Agency. Fortuitously, this happened just as the government was falling apart anyway. So they merged and kicked out a big fat stock offering._

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> quote from the article's source, itself quoting a non-online source: "a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (1024 Bytes) by 2015"

vapor.

</comment><comment><USER13> source: <http://www.metafilter.com/86293/Yotta-vote-against-this>

question: via moore's law, if it can hold up, what year can i hope to get a yottabyte on my netbook? thx

<comment><USER14> Assuming your netbook has a 32 GB SSD, and that drive capacity doubles every two years, 2099. Assuming that SSD prices drop dramatically and you have a 512 GB SSD (still this year), 2091.

In other words: not for a long, long time.

The real question is: how could you possibly generate a yottabyte of data?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All in one place?

</comment><comment><USER15> This seems like a hugely un-necessary thing to do; I imagine the next headline on the news will be "NSA rescued from 2 square mile apartment filled with 8000 cats and pizza boxes to the ceiling".

I honestly can't think of any technology that is stable enough to support this magnitude of long term storage.

Dealing with the amount of bit rot alone leads me to boggle at the notion.</comment>


LG Revolutionizes Personal Clean Air with Puricare Wearable Air Purifier - <AUTHOR> http://www.lgnewsroom.com/2020/08/lg-revolutionizes-personal-clean-air-with-puricare-wearable-air-purifier/ <comment><USER2> Technology has brought much meaning to the lives of many technicians.</comment>


Most beautiful introductory explanation of deep learning and self driving cars - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@mngrwl/everything-about-self-driving-cars-explained-for-non-engineers-f73997dcb60c <comment><USER2> Great reading.. Thanks..</comment>


Emirates Says Bookings to the U.S. Fell by 35% After the First Travel Ban - <AUTHOR> http://fortune.com/2017/03/09/emirates-bookings-fell-35-after-first-travel-ban/ <comment><USER2> I guess I added to that 35%. I'm a brown guy(Indian) with a beard amd often mistaken for middle eastern. I live in the US. I put off International travel plans because of all the craziness going around. They weren't essential travel though. I would've, but now I saved up some money before I move out of the US permanently in July ;-)

<comment><USER3> So... which country earned your respect? Out of interest in people's perception of human rights.

<comment><USER2> Moving not because I don't respect the opportunities in the US, or that the country has treated me so badly that I wanna escape and go somewhere. But because I had to make a choice between settling down in the USA vs settling down in Denmark. Current political climate and the prospects of this administration didn't do much to convince me that USA was any better.

If anything, I'm thankful to the USA for many things in the last 6 years I lived here. Most of it for the awesome friends I made here. But, my Visa always reminded me that I'm just a visitor, and the ~10 year wait for a green card doesn't really make the USA attractive to me anymore.

<comment><USER4> How did you get into Denmark? I heard they shut down their Green card scheme.

<comment><USER2> Haven't gotten into Denmark yet. My girlfriend is Austrian and we're moving there together. AFAIK, I get a residence and work permit as we're moving together and that she is a EU national who would be working as a Asst.Professor there.

<comment><USER5> That sounds weird. It's pretty easy to get those if you want to marry, but her being your girlfriend shouldn't help outside of the formal letter of invitation.

<comment><USER6> One doesn't need to be married in order to be covered by the EU rights in question. Straight from the source:

"The following family members of an EU/EEA citizen or Swiss citizen, who is exercising his/her right to free movement in Denmark, or of a Danish citizen who is exercising or who has exercised his/her right to free movement in another EU/EEA country or Switzerland, has the right to have a visa application processed in accordance with EU regulations:

* spouse

* cohabiting partner aged 18 or over <\----

* ..."

See [https://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-us/coming_to_dk/visa/visas- unde...](https://www.nyidanmark.dk/en-us/coming_to_dk/visa/visas-under-eu- regulations.htm).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can imagine that. I am a permanent resident of US but for the fact that I am brown, I am avoiding all unnecessary trips.

Going through TSA is a very uncomfortable experience.

<comment><USER8> Brown like Indian or Brown like Arabic? Does it even make a difference?

<comment><USER9> Decidedly anecdotal: Not the OP but I am brown like Indian with a non-Muslim name and have never had any extra scrutiny at security, except for one "random" screening on my boarding pass that involved some TSA swab check. I am a citizen, but I haven't heard of any non-citizen family friends or relatives that have expressed anything out of the ordinary.

<comment><USER10> _and have never had any extra scrutiny at security, except for one "random" screening on my boarding pass that involved some TSA swab check._

Interesting. I'm a white guy and I've gone through secondary screening (swabs, detailed questions, etc) probably half a dozen times over the past 2-3 years.

And I have a US passport!

<comment><USER11> White American here. In the past 3-4 years (probably a couple dozen flights) I have gotten some level of patdowns and hand-swabs literally every single time I go through one of those millimeter-wave machines. Every time, without fail.

My belief is that it's because I had gone through some pretty substantial weight loss in the past, and so my body skin/muscle/fat density is all screwy around the midsection, and thus it sets the machine off.

<comment><USER12> My white buddy got stopped and frisked traveling around Europe with me every time. He has a legit beard. They even asked if they could put their hands inside his pants (inside the waist band). Beards are suspect these days no matter what your background.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> As a nation of immigrants steeped in commerce this is catastrophic mismanagement of some of humanity's greatest resources.

</comment><comment><USER14> I would like to see SV leaders stand up to this garbage. Make public statements saying that you will be moving more jobs out of the US because of Trump's actions.

I don't know why people have down voted this. Trump has all the markings of a fascist. Fascists must be dealt with... you don't just tiptoe around them.

<comment><USER15> Pretty sure that's a terrible idea.

Like the law or not, that's who your nation voted for, and the government has the power to make life very difficult for corporations.

Also, let's be real here. The travel ban doesn't affect these SV companies. How many employees are going to be coming from Syria, Iran or Yemen?. Are the positive optics worth the difficulties? The public is already weary of corporations becoming too powerful, this will only feed into that distrust, and possibly alienate ~50% of the population.

Political statements in either direction are almost always a losing proposition for corporations.

<comment><USER16> > the government has the power to make life very difficult for corporations

If we're at the point where companies need to fear arbitrary punishment by the government for partisan reasons, the rule of law is dead. I'm not ready to concede that point.

> Also, let's be real here. The travel ban doesn't affect these SV companies. > How many employees are going to be coming from Syria, Iran or Yemen?. Are > the positive optics worth the difficulties?

You may be interested to learn that a slew of companies signed an amicus brief in Washington v. Trump[1], including:

> Airbnb, Uber, Twitter, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Dropbox, eBay, > GoPro, Lyft, Spotify, Yelp and Levi Strauss & Co

So, in their estimation, the answer appears to be "yes."

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_v._Trump#Amici_curi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_v._Trump#Amici_curiae_and_proposed_intervenors)

<comment><USER15> > If we're at the point where companies need to fear arbitrary punishment by > the government for partisan reasons, the rule of law is dead. I'm not ready > to concede that point.

Trump has already stated his desire to apply tariffs to companies that operate outside the US, assuming he follows through, moving employees outside the US for spite is a losing proposition.

> You may be interested to learn that a slew of companies signed an amicus > brief in Washington v. Trump[1], including:

Look up the definition of "amicus curaie".

Anyhow, legal avenues are fair game. But actively hurting the American economy to prove a point will only turn public perception against them. Americans (heck, even those on HN) are already weary of how much power companies like Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, Uber, etc... have over them...

<comment><USER16> > Trump has already stated his desire to apply tariffs to companies that > operate outside the US, assuming he follows through

And he'll need lots of luck getting both Republican-controlled bodies of Congress to pass those tariffs.

> moving employees outside the US for spite is a losing proposition

It doesn't have to be spite. Doing so out of practicality (see, e.g., companies' increasing their presence in Vancouver) is a more effective statement, anyway.

> Look up the definition of "amicus curaie".

Is there anything in particular you want me to learn?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> As an Australian resident, but of sub-continental descent, I am re-evaluating travel plans to visit the US again. Love the place, have friends and colleagues there, but just not wanting to put up with the risks & hassle involved.

It is interesting that a Middle Eastern carrier is reporting a drop like this. It would be a good exercise to compare the ME->USA travel statistic against their other routes. I know that Emirates is a popular carrier here (Australia) to get to Europe etc. Also would be interesting to corroborate against statistics from Qantas, Cathay Pacific etc. as well as other ME carriers like Etihad.

</comment><comment><USER18> I do get that websites need advertising to survive, however 100% volume autoplaying ads with dubstep, I could seriously live without. (and I like electronic music.)

</comment><comment><USER19> I just don't want to have an algorithmic test handled to me at the border and risk deportation if I don't get the answer "right". Canada is fine.

</comment><comment><USER20> Honestly I cannot see why anyone would want to visit the USA these days. It sounds like you're "welcomed" with an intrusive interrogation and if you get through that you have to endure:

* the world's crappiest food, and too much of it

* loud, raspy, nasal voices

* constant risk of being shot

OK the country looks beautiful but you can get stunning natural scenery elsewhere on the planet with added culture

<comment><USER21> you might try actually visiting and finding those aren't truthful :)

Most people I've found who think that are young and poor or left, how perspective changes once you escape that!

<comment><USER22> "Or left"...

People are not political opinions. Not to get into a debate here, but neither of you are providing evidence for your claims, and relying on confirmation bias is not a good way to prove something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Know who really cares? Not Emirates or airlines. Talk to Disneyworld. Talk to real estate agents who are seeing middle east buyers heading to Vancouver and London rather than New York. Emirates delivers the people but the real loss is to those doing business with those people once they land.

<comment><USER24> Is Vancouver really in the class of london and new York? (I've lived my whole life in a Vancouver suburb, and I'm curious how the world views us)

<comment><USER23> It depends. The city isn't great for locals, but the overseas investor sees different things. They look for stability and ease of entry. A good airport, reasonable immigration and stable house prices. Even the local efforts to stabilize prices through the new taxes are seen as safe in that they reduce the chance of a bubble burst. If you are looking for a place to park money in real estate, Vancouver is on the short list. If you are a local looking for work or wanting to start a business, that is a totally different story.</comment></comment></comment>


Even rally drivers have co-drivers. - <AUTHOR>

Why don't we pair program more often? From my own anecdotal experience, I feel as though the resulting code is more concise and contains fewer bugs. If programmers want to live up to the hot shot reputation, they should accept that professionals always want someone covering their back. <comment><USER2> It depends on the person or project, I think. I personally work badly with someone over my shoulder; it somehow gets me totally out of the problem- solving/coding zone and makes me extra self-conscious. Same for writing text, actually--- some people can collaboratively write articles or books while sitting at the same computer, or live online in something like Etherpad, but when I've co-written things, it's always worked much better if I could write some bigger chunks on my own, at least on the level of paragraphs, before trading edits/etc. with my collaborator. Partly perhaps it's because I use the text-editor (in both cases) to externalize work in progress and brainstorm, often typing stuff that's clearly wrong and not the final product, before I get to rearranging/editing/fixing it, and it feels weird to have someone in real-time reading my scribbles as I'm working something out, when it's not yet intended to be anywhere close to done / ready-to-review.

On the other hand, I know other people who love people watching them code, and people who work really well writing English collaboratively too.

<comment><USER3> We've done pair programming before. It's great for when two programmers are introduced to something new. As they progress, they become independent. It's not so much a binary choice, but a when.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> In the three fastest formulas all the pilots are solo : Champ Cars, Formula 1, MotoGP.

Two person vehicles are available but they are for the experienced pilot to give the novice passenger a thrill.

So use logic, not metaphors.

<comment><USER5> Those are all "go fast, turn left" racing, with relatively little navigation load on the driver, and almost no way to get off track. Memorize the course, plan your strategy and tactics, and run the course over and over. (Not to trivialize the skills required.)

Rally and programming have lots of chances to go off into the weeds or get off course.

<comment><USER6> "go fast, turn left"?

Are you confusing Nascar with F1? Seriously?

<comment><USER5> No, just that the track is limited and easy to navigate.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Find a mentor, Become a mentor - <AUTHOR> https://mentii.com <comment><USER2> I've been a mentee, and I now mentor.

What I want when I see web sites like this is to see an understanding that mentoring isn't Q&A, and it's not "a chat over coffee".

The most successful mentoring arrangements I've seen have always had a clear agreement between mentor and mentee, a mentorship contract with specific goals and hopes outlined over a specified period of time, and a clear commitment to meet and stay on topic, discussing what needs to be discussed.

Training for mentors is therefore critical, giving a clear guide to them as to what they should and should not do (knowing when _not_ to give advice is important, a mentor shouldn't feel they need to fix someone's life).

For mentees, who generally enter into this from the cold and with little experience... having a good mentor matters. And that is far more about having a person who is able to shape and manage the mentorship process rather than just a specialist in a field.

I would suggest going beyond just match-making, and helping to give online training, advice, and a mentor's forum so that they have a support network... such that you can really offer a strong benefit to mentors, and as a result have such high quality mentors that this becomes a key selling point to the mentees.

It is much harder to find mentors than mentees after all, so building an attractive proposition to those wanting to give time is critical.

PS: As an example of what mentors go through, I've uploaded the notes that were the outcome of the last training session I attended: [https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9c832pvsz2tn4j/zAEgACdZ8_/Mentor...](https://www.dropbox.com/sh/a9c832pvsz2tn4j/zAEgACdZ8_/Mentoring%20Tips%20and%20Notes.pdf) . I think online training for mentors, education for them, would enhance the offering... it becomes clearer to them that they can do it, and will be shown how and have support to do so.

<comment><USER3> I couldn't agree more, and to expand: what I've found so far on the path to finding a mentor is that initial contact is simply awkward and too much pressure is put on you in the first five minutes.

Finding someone who you think "yeah, I could totally put my faith in this person to give me advice and not me a jack ass" is pretty hard from a two paragraph introduction and a list of all the jobs they've ever had.

It's a great idea from a site but it could fail under the insurmountable challenge of making people feel comfortable around each other for that initial encounter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> 1) How it looks on my monitor: <http://i.imgur.com/iSjP8ae.png> \- might not want to repeat that title image like that.

2) I would really like to see if there are any mentors relevant to my interests before I have to make yet another account on yet another website.

3) I really think mentorship is the best way to really become good at a skill. Hope it goes well for you.

<comment><USER5> come on, 1) is not a big issue... Not big enough to put it first anyway!

<comment><USER6> It might be because it was the first thing he noticed, not the most important thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the idea. Yours is the first social network style site that I have joined. I do however, have a couple of comments and thoughts about the site.

Firstly, when I sign up and am filling out the form, I didn't see any warning that my profile and request were immediately going to be published on the front page with no apparent way to edit the request. I spent some time clicking around trying to find out how to edit my advice request with no luck. In my case this was not an issue (except for those who were subject to my whimsical filler posting), but I can imagine that it could come as a nasty shock to some. The distinction I am trying to make here is the fine line between making available and broadcasting to all. There may be no practical difference, but there is a world of emotional difference between the two.

This leads me to my second point; I note that the stream of requests is awfully repetitive. I would think you either need to encourage people to put more thought into there requests for help, or have awfully good analytics for those who are looking to be mentors, otherwise you are going to quickly run into the bane of dating sites everywhere. The race to the funniest/quirkiest profile as the myriads of potential proteges compete for the few mentors, leading to a situation where the only way to win is to already know the person, or to be highly manipulative and socially astute, which sort of defeats the purpose of the site to my mind.

Lastly, the site was very slow to load, worse it had appeared to load but the bar with advice requests, browse people etc. had not loaded, making navigation initially very confusing. Once this bar loaded things became much clearer, though why this element failed to load is not clear to me as other assets from the same source seemed to load? Mysteries.

Lastly congratulations on building and shipping such a cool idea and getting so many awesome people to sign up. Best of luck.

<comment><USER8> Thanks for the thoughtful comments! A bit of oversight on our part about the advice requests. We'll fix the flow for posting it.

We will clean up and categorize the advice requests. You are absolutely on point on discoverability. We are experimenting with the concept of affinities, where based on your affiliations, you get more or less access to mentors. Trick is in defining these affiliations correctly.

Thanks so much for the encouragement! Look forward to interacting more. (p.s. drop me a message at Mentii so I know who you are -- <https://mentii.com/mentor/sumit.suman>)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Within a couple hours of creating my profile, I've received three emails from recruiters, all for positions unrelated to my actual field.

I love the idea behind mentii, but this kind of thing could tank it early if it gets out of control.

<comment><USER8> Jayson - thanks for the feedback. We will have to tackle the spam / irrelevant messaging problem soon.

We would love to reach out to the recruiters who messaged you, and understand their need better -- could you send us more details at support @ mentii.com

<comment><USER10> I'd love to sign up... but recruiters should be hellbanned from this.

<comment><USER3> I think the most effective _short term_ way would to to provide a tertiary recruiter type account and have users be able to opt in or out of messages. Some people who are actively seeking work would be able to get the content they were after on your site and the recruiters would be able to pick from applicants who _most importantly wanted to receive their messages._

For recruiters who take the method of making a normal account and using it to recruit to people who have opted out you could have a report ticket based system, even algorithmic-ally limiting the account abilities of people who repeatedly break the rules should they have a certain comment/report ratio.

<comment><USER8> Thanks Shane -- quite a neat idea!

In the very immediate term, we are also tracking the recruiter's activity and engaging them 1-1 on community rules.

<comment><USER3> Don't mention it - your application seems pretty great, I wouldn't want to see it's grand opening on HN marred by recruiters and spammers.

Also, make sure you plan for longer term - 1:1 engagement rarely scales with explosive growth. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As part of the team behind the now-defunct <http://mentor.im> AngelHack project, I wish you luck, and would love to hear how it goes! I love the concept.

<comment><USER8> Jordan, thanks! This is Sumit, another founder of Mentii. We had heard about you guys! Would love to catch up and get your thoughts -- emailing you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Congrats for sticking with your startup idea even though lots of people probably told you "Another social network?!" : )

Here's a feature I'd love to see.. A way to ask a question and let people answer it. Results could be ranked in term of "top mentor", or other people could vote on it.

The idea is that it's hard to filter through lots of mentors.. trying to find one that match your needs, then go after him/her, etc. Something way more organic would be me asking a question and people interested in my problems could help me solve it. And, as you help others, you get a better karma too.. which put your questions in front of mentor with good karma..

Personally, I'd love to see a feed with lots of various startup questions from all kind of entrepreneurs.. be able to see what famous founders are asking. Could be anything really. From "Which is the best landing page?" to "Anyone knowing a good UX in <city>".

Anyhow, congrats again on the launch, hit me up if you want to chat about it.

<comment><USER8> > _A way to ask a question and let people answer it. Results could be ranked > in term of "top mentor", or other people could vote on it._

Right now, we are using the advice requests to encourage 1-1 interaction. A public discourse, with voting could be interesting but we erred on the side of assuming that many won't be comfortable with having their career questions publicly discussed. We will revisit this assumption.

 _Re: karma_

Mentor karma is coming soon. Interesting possibilities there.

Thanks for the wonderful feedback, emailing you for more 1-1 time.

<comment><AUTHOR> And to add to this .. We have some karma already in place and its called "Respect". Users can go to profile of others and give them Respect (by clicking on the Respect button) which helps in bubbling up engaged mentors in the community.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not to nitpick, but if your tag line says "Get career guidance from your future self", it shouldn't probably sit on top of an image of an older man talking to younger woman :)

<comment><USER14> If I were an old man I would be delighted to find that my future self was a young woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Awesome work! This could be huge in terms of overcoming the gender/race barriers to finding great mentors within traditional corporate structures (and even within the super meritocratic startup world).

</comment><comment><USER3> Just putting it out there that my account on mentii is <https://mentii.com/mentor/shane.armstrong> and I'm seeking a mentor.

</comment><comment><USER16> On seeing the name Mentii, my first association was with lying rather than mentoring because "menti" in French means "lied" (as in _"j'ai menti" -- "I lied"_ ).

That aside, great service!

<comment><USER17> Same for Portuguese.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh wow .. never knew that. Thanks for letting us know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Fantastic. I really like startups like these that help people become better and build meaningful connections.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot for the encouraging words. Would love to see more of you on Mentii! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> congrats, this would help me on finding a mentor. it seems its harder to find one on a developing country.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Cross border mentoring is a great usecase for Mentii! Hope we can be of some good help to you.

</comment></comment><comment> cupcake-unicorn Wow, I couldn't even send you a message through the site to ask you to delete my account due to a bug :(

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry about that. Drop a mail at support @ mentii.com and we'll remove the account right away. Do tell us briefly as to what exactly happened.

Best, Nitin

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Great platform. I already got someone to guide me. :)

Is there any difference between the normal messages and the "Request Meeting" feature?

<comment><AUTHOR> The request meeting sends 3 specific times for the other person to accept one, thus making it easier to setup a meeting with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like this. I've wanted this. If you guys need help bringing this to DC please let me know.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! Sumit (my cofounder) is sending you a mail. Lets connect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It is an excellent idea. Congratulations Nitin/Sumit and all the best!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot ! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is there no way to delete your account?

<comment><USER8> Andrew -- email us at firstname.lastname@example.com and we will delete it right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> That's very cool! Congratulations :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Why can't I delete my account?

<comment><USER8> Dan - drop us a line at support @ mentii.com and we will delete your account.

<comment><USER25> You should let your users delete their accounts through the service. I'd also like you to delete all of my data.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Nice work Nitin!

-kris

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks Kris! :)</comment></comment>


Digital Sharecropping and Social Media - <AUTHOR> http://voltagecreative.com/articles/digital-sharecropping-social-media/

<comment><USER2> The important questions are how much value is derived from: \- Privacy \- Limited Sharing \- Unlimited Sharing for both Facebook and the user. This can then be counterbalanced by the costs experienced by the user and Facebook, such as loss of privacy or spam from applications or adverts (a cost of attention/time)

If you do not derive a greater value from sharing your information than the cost, then do not share. It doesn't really matter to this whether Facebook is deriving value, only if you are incurring costs greater than the value received. I don't see how this is sharecropping.</comment>


Is This Inscribed Stone a Forgery – Or the Answer to America's Oldest Mystery? - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/05/lost-colony-roanoke-virginia-eleanor-dare-stone-mystery/ <comment><USER2> (autostart video)</comment>


A realtime, platform-agnostic error logging and aggregation platform - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/getsentry/sentry

<comment><USER2> FYI, there is another fairly well-known open source project called Sentry:

[http://sentry.incubator.apache.org/](http://sentry.incubator.apache.org/)

Are they close enough to be considered a proper name clash? Not sure, but it's worth thinking about.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well they're spelled exactly the same, but don't come close to doing the same thing:

[https://getsentry.com/welcome/](https://getsentry.com/welcome/) \- An error logging & aggregation platform

[http://sentry.incubator.apache.org/](http://sentry.incubator.apache.org/) \- A system for enforcing fine grained role based authorization to data and metadata stored on a Hadoop cluster

Picking a unique open source project name is getting to be about as hard as picking a not-yet-reserved domain name :-\

<comment><USER2> _Picking a unique open source project name is getting to be about as hard as picking a not-yet-reserved domain name :-\_

Very true. Too bad projects don't come with tld's.

Sentry.hadoop

Sentry.logging

or something like that. :-)</comment></comment></comment>


Searchable PPP Loan Data - <AUTHOR> https://pppreport.org/ <comment><USER2> So many complaints here. Based on the comments I think there is some misunderstanding about the nuts and bolts of this program.

These are loans. They are two year low interest loans. They have to be paid back unless some or all is forgiven. Forgiveness requires documentation on employees retained, wage history, and is capped at $20k/employee maximum. And of course a piece of that comes back to the government in terms of payroll taxes. Just because a company took a 1M loan, doesn't mean it will be 100% forgiven.

For those complaining the companies don't "need" the money - I know many households who received $4k+ in stimulus checks that didn't need it. Should they not have taken it?

And anyways, the whole point of this program was to get money to businesses quickly. Means testing takes time. Sure there are going to be some questionable loans. Some fraud too. But overall our government has spent a lot more money and gotten worse returns than the PPP.

<comment><USER3> > Should they not have taken it?

I seriously considered not cashing my stimulus check until I talked to _multiple_ well off people that cashed their dead relative's checks. There just isnt a cultural expectation in the US that you wouldn't take what you're given.

EDIT: Rethinking my comment I'm giving myself too much credit. Since I never got a physical check, I couldn't have "not cashed it" if I wanted to.

<comment><USER4> >' cashed their dead relative's checks.'

Unless there is some weird allowance (widower/widow inheritance, etc.) wouldn't this be straight fraud?

I know in some countries people don't report their relatives' deaths in order to keep receiving their benefits, but obviously that's illegal too.

<comment><USER5> Short answer is likely yes. Long answer is that depending on individual bank policy regarding depositing 3rd party checks, relationship with tellers/branch manager/what have you, or whether person verifying exceptions for remote deposit is sleepy that day, it may very well end up being undetected. And thats checks. ACH is a whole different can of worms.

In a sense, I am glad it is getting some scrutiny as clearly people who did not need the money benefited ( likely at the expense of people who really needed it - the currently public fraud cases are pretty amazing already ), but I am worried that this kind of scrutiny will make people hesitant to apply in the future just to avoid the headache.

<comment><USER4> Doing some of that could get people into lots of trouble. Not sure if they could get them with wire fraud if it's a physical check but at least financial fraud, impersonation, faking a signature, caching someone else's check, etc...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Without this program, my employer would have had to either lay off a large group of employees or we would've gone under.

As it is, out of a group of about 50, we furloughed 8, who continued without pay, qualified for unemployment benefits, but retained 100% health coverage. Two have returned to work already and we anticipate being more or less normal again in time to meet the loan forgiveness criteria.

It's good to have the database open to see -- and, hey, to double-check that we actually got it.

<comment><USER7> So will your employer be paying the "loan" back?

<comment><USER8> Most of the loan isn't designed to be paid back. So what are you getting at?

<comment><USER7> Some people - and the companies they operate - will, given the option, on principle, not take money which they have not earned.

In the event that they did/do accept said money they did not earn, and that money was applied effectively and literally saved their asses in an emergency that they were not properly prepared for - they would never forget it and do whatever it took to repay this money that saved their life because they are grateful.

These examples do exist, I know personally know of some and maybe you do too...or not? But that's what I am getting at: everyone has different morals and values. Further, it's helpful to know what those are (when manifested into the form of a corporation) because then we get to make informed choices about who want to work for and with based on value systems. We vote every day with our feet, our dollars, and our attention.

Would I rather work for an employer who did what it took to navigate the Covid shitstorm on their own dime or the one who needed a lifeline and didn't even have the decency to pay back what was never theirs to begin with? Obviously.

Why do you think people are so interested in this data set? Many are acting on this intel in more ways than you think!

<comment><USER6> We're VC backed, dude, that "money we haven't earned" ship sailed a loooong time ago.

On the flip side, the way you "pay it back" to your Noble Investors is to keep the ship afloat and deliver a ROI with a healthy and competent team.

Increasing shareholder value and also doing the right thing and coming up with a way to give our furloughed teammates health benefits during a pandemic was, I suspect, an easy decision for senior staff to make. I'm a lowly scientist, I don't get to make those calls -- but you won't hear me complaining about this course we chose, either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm working on a dashboard to map each of these loans geographically: [https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/sbaloans](https://www.quiverquant.com/sources/sbaloans)

It's a slow process (as I've been respectful of the rate-limit on the reverse geocoding API I'm using), but I finished mapping four states and hope to complete the other 46 by the end of this week.

<comment><USER10> Wouldn't you just end up with a population density map?

Cool project though.

<comment><USER9> My goal for this map was a tool to search for PPP recipients within your own neighborhood.

You're right that it would be interesting to do analysis on population- adjusted loan amounts for different regions... maybe something like a loan $ per capita map?

<comment><USER11> I was thinking the same thing about the author from above as well.

What I think would be much more interesting is to see what businesses have physical B&M locations. In other words, cross reference Yelp/Google Places with the legal entity's address. Or maybe cross referenced against unemployment numbers by state/city (if that data exists).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Peripherally related, but this tweet by @dataeditor at the Washington Post was amusing ([https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1280278987797942272](https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1280278987797942272)):

>Philadelphia, to its own credit, is spelled at least 57 different ways in the PPP loan data

(an image is included, with various items, such as "PHIADELPHIA", "PHILADELPHIA,", and "PHILLY")

Pretty well sums up data science. He also notes that Chicago is spelled 31 ways ([https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1280277322596311041](https://twitter.com/dataeditor/status/1280277322596311041)).

<comment><USER13> Data's all sorts of messed up in this. My friend's company is in this and 3 columns are flat out wrong and different from what he submitted. There's only 7 applicant submitted columns!

But remember where it came from: thousands of lenders hand keying this stuff in with minimal guidance.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Per [https://pppreport.org/company/y+combinator+research+inc](https://pppreport.org/company/y+combinator+research+inc)

> We found 1 loan(s) for Y Combinator Research Inc meeting or exceeding the > public reporting minimum of $150k.

> Loan Amount Range $150,000-350,000

> Business Name as Filed Y COMBINATOR RESEARCH, INC.

Is YC Research an entirely separate entity from YC core?

<comment><USER15> Why is it listed as a Non-profit?

<comment><USER16> Because Y Combinator Research is a non-profit[1].

That said, it's apparently no longer associated with Y Combinator, and goes by OpenResearch now[2].

[1] [https://www.guidestar.org/profile/81-0861414](https://www.guidestar.org/profile/81-0861414)

[2] [https://ycr.org/](https://ycr.org/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I love that an official SBA/federal release can have a file titled: "PPP loan data key things to keep in mind FINAL- Sunday.pdf". Nothing says "over-it" like all caps "FINAL-Sunday".

Also, maybe even funnier, is that the "Ayn Rand Institute" applied for a loan... that's the best thing in the database I've found so far.

<comment><USER18> It doesn't say "over it." It means it's the final revision. This is very common terminology among people who prepare documents like journalists, editors, public relations, etc...

<comment><USER19> Also, working on a government project on a Sunday is very common for people who probably do not like their job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Here's a Youth Baseball group which received 5-10 Million: [https://pppreport.org/company/lafayette+youth+baseball+assoc...](https://pppreport.org/company/lafayette+youth+baseball+association)

edit: [https://www.naics.com/code- search/?naicstrms=814110](https://www.naics.com/code-search/?naicstrms=814110) "Private Households"

</comment><comment><USER21> One thing to note is there seems to be a lot of errors in the data. For instance, Bird is in the 5-10M range but claimed it never actually applied.

[https://www.axios.com/paycheck-protection-program- disclosure...](https://www.axios.com/paycheck-protection-program-disclosure- problems-1b1b8f81-b3de-4ec8-bacc-5312ac6d53f3.html)

</comment><comment><USER22> I really think we should not call these loans, as that obscures what they are. Like it or not, the vast majority of these will be forgiven. We could argue that it was a good use a stimulus funds, or a bad use, but it was basically fre money funneled through businesses in a fairly un-transparent way.

Of particular reference here - startups that laid off employees and /then/ applied for a PPP loan

[https://layoffs.fyi/2020/07/06/these-startups-received- ppp-b...](https://layoffs.fyi/2020/07/06/these-startups-received-ppp-bailout- loans-but-still-laid-off-employees/)

<comment><USER23> >Of particular reference here - startups that laid off employees and /then/ applied for a PPP loan

Aren't these exactly the companies that SHOULD have received PPP? They were clearly struggling and without the money were reducing head count already.

<comment><USER24> Why should taxpayers have bailed out businesses that couldn't keep employees on payroll though?

There is no end in sight to either corona virus or the economic downturn, so it's just throwing 8 weeks worth of taxpayer money into bad investments. What's going to happen within 8 weeks to ensure these employees won't just be let go again?

<comment><USER25> > Why should taxpayers have bailed out businesses that couldn't keep employees > on payroll though?

Because those same taxpayers voted in a government that prohibited many of those businesses from operating.

> There is no end in sight to either corona virus or the economic downturn, so > it's just throwing 8 weeks worth of taxpayer money into bad investments. > What's going to happen within 8 weeks to ensure these employees won't just > be let go again?

The purpose of the funds isn't to prevent future unemployment. It's to funnel funds to individuals who would otherwise be unemployed. The funds can only be used for payroll to be forgiven. So this is an unemployment payout by other means, in addition to the federal unemployment benefits that were expanded.

<comment><USER24> Taxpayers owe businesses nothing, if a business can't survive 8 weeks without a taxpayer bailout then it's a bad investment and at this scale it is a fundamental weakness of the entire economy that should be fixed not propped up with taxpayer money.

> The funds can only be used for payroll to be forgiven.

That an odd way to say up to 25% of the loan can be used for non-payroll expenses like business rent...why are businesses getting loans to pay rent if it's about employees? Employees didn't get money for rent.

If it was truly about "funneling funds to individuals" they could have just done that, not given it to businesses first with a 25% extra for non-payroll expenses.

<comment><USER26> No business can survive under those conditions and that is not a valid critique of their viability under a range of ordinary conditions.

Tax payer do own businesses due process under law and a respect for private property rights. In America, the government can't seize a business without compensation. Mandatory shut downs, in the absence of financial assistance, is arguably a "taking" under the constitution and a violation of basic inalienable rights we as citizens each have.

As far as 25% being spend on other things. It's kind of pointless to pay employees but not pay rent, get evicted, and have no place for them to go...kind of defeats the point. A restaurant kind of needs its physical location to operate and offer people jobs.

This isn't about "funneling funds to individuals" that's what unemployment insurance and stimulus checks were for. This was also about saving businesses so we don't enter a depression.

<comment><USER24> > Mandatory shut downs, in the absence of financial assistance, is arguably a > "taking" under the constitution

False, government does this to businesses all the time and compensation isn't due. Take hurricanes in Florida and mandatory shutdown/evacuation orders, there is no promised compensation.

Besides under imminent domain cases, I'd like to see some case law to support taxpayers bailing out businesses.

<comment><USER26> Actually there is promised compensation in hurricane emergencies in the form of SBA EIDL (economic injury disaster loans).

The existence of imminent domain proves my point, there are circumstances where tax payers owe An obligation to property owners and their actions are restricted by that obligation. Now we can argue about whether this specific act is a taking but I destroyed your blanket argument that tax payers don't own business anything.

Own a business with a plot of land, tax payers want to expand a road and tear down your office and take the land? Can't do it without paying.

<comment><USER24> In imminent domain if your property is taken you receive compensation, here many businesses closed and didn't get PPP money, the government picked winners and losers.

Again feel free to cite any law supporting your argument: 1) the shutdown orders were a government taking of private property; And 2.) compensation for a temporary taking.

You missed the entire point of hurricanes, before any damage occurs governments order shutdowns and evacuations, there is no taking and there is no compensation for those shutdown and evacuation orders.

<comment><USER27> > You missed the entire point of hurricanes, before any damage occurs > governments order shutdowns and evacuations, there is no taking and there is > no compensation for those shutdown and evacuation orders.

The time between evacuation order and landfall is at most four days. The economic damage from that phase is minor.

There are businesses in some parts of the US that are in their fourth _month_ of being forcibly closed. The situation is not in any way, shape, or form comparable to a hurricane evacuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Kinda funny seeing how investment management firms [0] (mis)use this [1].

[0]: [https://pppreport.org/company/gerber+kawasaki+inc](https://pppreport.org/company/gerber+kawasaki+inc)

[1]: [https://www.naics.com/code- search/?naicstrms=441228](https://www.naics.com/code-search/?naicstrms=441228)

</comment><comment><USER29> There are a remarkable number of sketchy blockchain companies in this list-- many for larger $5 to $10 million dollar ranges.

I wonder how many of them were sitting on millions or tens or even hundreds of millions of deceptively obtained ICO funds at the time they obtained these 'loans'.

E.g. I see at least one that raised over 100k BTC in ICO funding just couple years ago.

<comment><USER30> Although ICO purchasers like to imagine they have investments in "not- securities", proper accounting of token sales from the issuer is revenue, and payroll goes to employees.

So if they had that revenue and also paid payroll to employees in 2019, they would be eligible.

The 2018 ones were screwed though, too far back. They probably exhausted a lot of their runway on marketing and extortionate exchanges.

Blockchain community is unique in that they treat $5-10 million raises as "forever money" for an indefinite time period, when even Series A tech companies would not be expected to last more than 15-18 months.

So there are a lot of misalignments in that sector, which are poorly understood by both the people in the sector, as well as critics outside of the sector.

The issuers themselves often have good legal help and proper accounting, as it is a tricky regulatory environment to begin with, which exacerbates these misalignments with their purchasers and psychological investors.

<comment><USER29> > often have good legal help

That hasn't been my experience, instead my experience is that many of these companies went through large numbers of lawyers who told them what they wanted to do would be likely found to be illegal before finding some that would sign off on it.

> "forever money" for an indefinite time period

For the most part this is because they don't deliver anything useful, so they won't get any more (at least not until they spin up a new operation under another name).

Some of the companies I see in that database have principals who are on their third or more failed blockchain/ico and hey have become exceedingly efficient at it.

<comment><USER30> ICOs are very expensive and the exchanges extort via listing fees, requiring market makers that want the issuer to post liquidity in both their token and multiple negotiable assets, continually, and then the market makers passing commission costs from the exchanges onto the ICO team.

This is continued because nobody can talk about it as they will immediately get delisted, the community will point fingers at the project team, AND the regulators will view the issuer as promising liquidity which further moves their asset into unregistered securities land, opening them to sanctions for the sale and promotion.

Ultimately the token traders and critics have no clue what's going on and think the founders have to be married to a software project with a runway that lasts forever because software development shouldn't be that expensive.

Yes selling tokens is a viable revenue event, but not a recurring revenue event for that project. So launching new projects is the only way to do that, and prior experience is more important to the actual investors providing the bankroll who make a lot of money putting these together. Many people are buying them for the wrong reasons, and there totally could be a market of the same size of people buying them without an expectation of profit.

It is an entirely viable business to make a website with one button that says "purchase button tokens to vote on the CSS color of this button by staking!", which I think should be recognized.

Even the concept of "failed" is misaligned and more often related to exchange rates and volume of the token, more than whether the team did anything.

There is a whole other market of investors bankrolling the parent organizations that are churning out ICOs, because all they see are highly scalable revenues and a multiple of that.

The people buying them need to be more discerning if they want a different result. Token issuance is primarily a game of entertainment and placating a community, and it should be put in that category. Or the community should be an active participant in making the token more useful and valuable.

They certainly do have employees and would be eligible for PPP. If they lied and are in a game of chronic fraud, now featuring the US Treasury, that's pretty risky!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> My kids' private school recently sent out a $500 per student tuition credit (about $650K for the entire school). I see now that they got a multi million dollar PPP loan (which will be forgiven). Their revenues were unaffected by the epidemic (full enrollment for next year and no plans to rollback the tuition increase).

<comment><USER32> My kid's private school also got a PPP loan, but I don't begrudge them that at all. They applied for the program according to the rules and they're using that money to pay for necessities. While our school also hasn't (yet) lost much in the way of enrollment, their finances _are_ worse now:

\- more costs for financial aid

\- more costs for cleaning and retrofitting facilities

\- more costs for experts on reopening safely

\- more costs for online education programs (software, training, etc)

\- refunds of after-school programs, field trips, etc.

\- fewer donations from alumni

The only thing that's really improved is maybe utilities? They 100% would have laid off teachers if they didn't get the PPP. It's ludicrous that people are begrudging schools for using this program exactly as intended.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Just looking through my home town for businesses I know about... A fair number of them I know carried on with business as usual and had no financial problems (one I used to work for). Seems wrong when there are lots of people in the same town lining up outside the unemployment office every day...

<comment><USER34> Not sure why this comment is being downvoted.

I just searched my local city and noticed that our (for profit) ambulance service received a loan:

> DIAZ MEMORIAL AMBULANCE SERVICE INC

I definitely don't think they saw the number of ambulance rides go down. And also don't think their profits suffered.

<comment><USER35> With all elective surgeries cancelled? I dunno but I'd be careful making assumptions.

<comment><USER36> I agree with not making assumptions. However I don't think you'd take an ambulance for an elective surgery since it's not an emergency.

<comment><USER18> Ambulances aren't only used for emergencies. They're used to transport people who can't otherwise get around, or who need medical equipment with them, or who are recovering from surgery, or to move patients from hospital to hospital, and a hundred other uses.

I wouldn't be surprised to learn that emergencies are a small portion of what ambulances are used for, but I don't have access to that data.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Of all types of institutions, why should we be giving the banks the right to decide which businesses should be recession proof or not? Personal opinion but I would have required the applicants of these quasi-forgiveness loans to give up 35% of their businesses to the state/county/federal inclusive of all assets and investments non-dischargeable by bankruptcy.

We have 100,000 people dead in this country, million dollar hospital bills for those on vents, and yet the stream of cash continues to flow to those too stupid to save a few months of operating expenses/payroll. What a trash society the US has become.

<comment><USER38> I don't think you realize just how perilous the economic situation was in mid- late march. Money had to reach Businesses very quickly, regardless if some of the money would end up wasted. Only banks have the manpower, infrastructure and knowledge already in place to reach even small businesses across the entire country. There was absolutely no way for any governmental agency to be able to manage such a huge program in such a small timeframe.

Again, I can't stress how important time was. I study and work in financial engineering, and from what I've seen and directly experienced in the depth of the crisis, we were days from total seizure in the financial system. The only part that was still doing ok was banking (due to what happened after 2008). Adding to that, since it's much harder to just give millions of dollars of loans to anyone who demands than it is to give 2000$ per person through the IRS, you had to have a system to vet, check and analyse claims. That's exactly what banks were able to do almost immediately with minimal adjustments.

I agree that it is far from ideal for the private sector to such a big influence on a public program. But perfect is the enemy of good, especially considering the incredible human misery that failing could've led to.

<comment><USER26> Great response. I wish all of the people criticizing these efforts would actually try to design a better program. Even the thought exercise would show how difficult it would be. Easier to crap on the work of others than actually do it yourself.

I also wish they would think about the consequences of no action. They probably don't realize that cascade bank failures and supply chain disruptions happen fast and become permanent. In March there was a realistic possibility of systematic seizure of finance and the supply chain grinding to a total halt due to lack of financing. How do you stock groceries when they can't buy inventory?

<comment><USER37> I remain unconvinced that so many companies were on "thin ice" that a do nothing approach would have caused a collapse. Any evidence of this?

I would've been okay-ish with the arrangement if there was some narrow qualification criteria like being in the grocery business or medical supply chain, etc.

Fine dining restaurants: not essential Summer camps: not essential Non- profits: not essential Law firms: not essential either!

And yet we paid them millions... _why?_

I picked a random company from the 150k list. A pizza place, around the corner. Been in business since 2007. They received $150,000-350,000. So a place deemed essential by the governor and that's permitted to operate curbside and takeout delivery after being open for 13 years is eligible for 150k? What kind of drugs are we on?

<comment><USER38> Yes, but the vast majority of the money is going to salaries. I'd even argue that there is absolutely no problem in funding even most of the "non essential" businesses. And to say that businesses were on thin ice by april is an understatement by the way: revenue disappeared overnight, lending froze almost overnight, liquidity became almost impossible to access. Even by early april half small businesses could not afford to pay rent, much less salaries. The financial system has never seen anything like what happened to march, I can't stress enough that almost _every single_ "pipe" that make up systems we all depend on was collapsing. Programs like these took aways tons of uncertainty and deep fears of a recovery that would take a very, very long time. Things got much better when government support boosted confidence and guaranteed that people will still have money to spend.

Now I've heard people argue that compensation for lost salaries should've been paid directly to the employees if they lost their jobs. But to put it mildly, recovery and return back to normal would have been extraordinarily harder if most of the non essential parts of the economy don't exist anymore.

The price of letting everything go bankrupt only to reopen from scratch later is enormous and would amount to incredible waste not only of money but also years of work. The 150k may have been way too much for a local pizzeria, but it's better to overshoot than to aim for much better money allocation and risk losing precious time. You have to keep in mind that not only do businesses have to pay back the loans (if the money didn't go to salaries) but also that we will have ample time to take a closer look at each individual claim and punish fraud retroactively. The process is already starting as we can see with the linked website.

At the end of the day, we just couldn't afford to have a better PPP program because no matter how much money we lose on fraud and waste, the alternative would have always been more expensive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Hmm, right at the top, 4 loans to 4 different businesses through 3 different banks to a residential address, including "venture capital" and "investment empire".

[https://pppreport.org/location/CA/CAMPBELL](https://pppreport.org/location/CA/CAMPBELL)

Most of the rest here look pretty legit as far as I can tell. The carwash got 3 loans which seems a little fishy? but to be fair they are a very busy one with a lot of employees.

</comment><comment><USER40> I was surprised that O'Reilly had a loan for $5-$10 million.

[https://pppreport.org/company/o+reilly+media+inc](https://pppreport.org/company/o+reilly+media+inc)

They seem like a company where most people can work from home.

EDIT: I totally forgot about their conference business. That makes more sense.

<comment><USER41> Their conferences business took a huge hit.

<comment><USER42> Huge hit is a bit of an understatement... they've cancelled all future conferences, likely permanently

<comment><USER43> Why permanently?

<comment><USER44> The people who built it up are now gone

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is great! I wish it was searchable by bank though. I heard that a local bank was making some interesting choices about who they helped through the PPP program and I'd love to pull up all the results by Lender.

<comment><USER40> You can download the CSV and search it yourself: [https://sba.app.box.com/s/wz72fqag1nd99kj3t9xlq49deoop6gzf](https://sba.app.box.com/s/wz72fqag1nd99kj3t9xlq49deoop6gzf)

Linked from this page: [https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance...](https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance-for-small-businesses/sba-paycheck-protection-program-loan- level-data)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> You can get a $5-10 Million loan for 14 employees at a nail salon?

[https://pppreport.org/company/snappy+nails+s+p+a+9+inc](https://pppreport.org/company/snappy+nails+s+p+a+9+inc)

Damn.

<comment><USER47> Worth noting that they will owe this back unless they can show it was used for payroll purposes.

How they got that much money in the first place is a definite mystery though.

<comment><USER48> What if they go bankrupt after generously paying employees?

<comment><USER49> That would be considered "mala fides" and the court would likely hold the officers/directors liable for the loan amount. Also, prior to filing for bankruptcy any attorney worth his spit will advise his client to fully repay or continue paying obligations to the US government. US government-backed loans are very difficult to completely discharge in a bankruptcy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> [https://pppreport.org/company/ayn+rand+institute+center+for+...](https://pppreport.org/company/ayn+rand+institute+center+for+advancement+of+objectivism)

<comment><USER51> [https://newideal.aynrand.org/we-took-ppp-funds-and-would- do-...](https://newideal.aynrand.org/we-took-ppp-funds-and-would-do-it-again/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> simonw published a searchable copy of this via Datasette: [https://sba-loans- covid-19.datasettes.com](https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com)

You can filter by state, city, zipcode, bank, business type, and search by employer name, e.g. [https://sba-loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/fo...](https://sba-loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/foia_150k_plus?_search=Ayn+Rand&_sort=rowid)

</comment><comment><USER53> The purpose of the Paycheck Protection Program is to keep people off of unemployment. The type of company taking the loan really doesn't matter. Revenues don't matter. What matters is that they have the employees (salary) to justify the funds. Forgiveness will be granted when they demonstrate they've kept their staffing levels the same. The whole thing is designed to prevent even more job losses. That's it.

</comment><comment><USER54> I have a Datasette running of this here: [https://sba-loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/fo...](https://sba-loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/foia_150k_plus)

You can run your own SQL queries against it. Here's a query I wrote that shows the most common NAICS codes (industry categorization from the census):

[https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus?sq...](https://sba- loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus?sql=with+counts+as+%28select+NAICSCode%2C+count%28*%29+as+num_loan_recipients+from+foia_150k_plus+group+by+NAICSCode+order+by+num_loan_recipients+desc%29%0D%0Aselect+counts.NAICSCode%2C+counts.num_loan_recipients%2C+naics_2017.name%2C+%27https%3A%2F%2Fsba- loans- covid-19.datasettes.com%2Floans_150k_plus%2Ffoia_150k_plus%3F_facet%3DCity%26_facet%3DState%26_facet%3DRaceEthnicity%26_facet%3DBusinessType%26_facet%3DGender%26_facet%3DVeteran%26NAICSCode%3D%27+%7C%7C+NAICSCode+as+view_them+from+counts+join+naics_2017+on+counts.NAICSCode+%3D+naics_2017.id)

You can click through from there to get faceted search of e.g. every loan made to a dentist:

[https://sba-loans-covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/fo...](https://sba- loans- covid-19.datasettes.com/loans_150k_plus/foia_150k_plus?_facet=City&_facet=State&_facet=RaceEthnicity&_facet=BusinessType&_facet=Gender&_facet=Veteran&NAICSCode=621210)

I have full notes about how I built this here: [https://github.com/simonw/sba- loans-covid-19-datasette](https://github.com/simonw/sba-loans- covid-19-datasette)

</comment><comment><USER26> I think PPP saved the economy. We can scapegoat and find problems. But don't ignore what would have happened in its absence. Companies would reduce spending at the very least or go out of business at the worst. We would have entered a self reinforcing cycle of reduced spending and purchasing creating a depression.

<comment><USER55> "I think PPP saved the economy."

You ain't seen nothing yet.

<comment><USER26> Only if people criticize these initial attempts and prevent more assistance. Yes. This is going to get worse, but government support could continue.

<comment><USER56> That's pretty much what people describe when they say "privatize the profits, socialize the losses", isn't it?

And you're already preparing to shift the blame towards the people critical of that approach.

<comment><USER26> Privatizing profit and socializing losses is better applied to more ordinary situations where ordinary business risk is shifted to the public. Here we are taking about the total possible social loss caused by a pandemic, not ordinary business risk. The point is that in society will be more harmed by inaction than supporting businesses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I like this better: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/sba- pp...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/business/sba-ppp-data/)

</comment><comment><USER58> I live in Nashville, and a lot of the places as to be expected are bars and restaurants.

[https://pppreport.org/location/TN/NASHVILLE](https://pppreport.org/location/TN/NASHVILLE)

</comment><comment><USER7> How interesting it is...not even through the A's yet in my major city and I am seeing peer companies on here reporting more "jobs retained" than they even employ...if that doesn't indicate what a scam this whole thing is, what would it take to make that clear?

Edit to add: further down the list I am seeing tech co's that actually laid off large % of employees that received millions still.

They probably were not counting on this information becoming public (though it obviously is/should be by default)...any respect I may have had for them is no more. Disgusting behavior.

</comment><comment><USER59> I made a graphical map of this PPP data. Here [https://www.dannysalzman.com/2020/07/07/map-of-ppp- funding](https://www.dannysalzman.com/2020/07/07/map-of-ppp-funding)

Full screen - [https://www.dannysalzman.com/files/ppp_map_v1](https://www.dannysalzman.com/files/ppp_map_v1)

Warning - large file download (128mb) doesn't work well on mobile

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> For some more digging, here is a list of S.E.C. registered companies loosely matched to the dataset using the company name: [https://pppreport.org/sec.php](https://pppreport.org/sec.php)

-list contains any company with a ticker [current/previous OTC stock or other]

-likely to contain many false associations, but still full of surprises

       $NTN, $6.3m Market Cap
       $TRNF, $22m Market Cap
       $FAT, $40m Market Cap
       each received 1-2 million in PPP

</comment><comment><USER60> Where is this data sourced from?

Edit: I tried accessing some common endpoints like /about to see if there are any unlinked pages, but could not find any. Hence why I asked the question.

<comment><AUTHOR> About page is a work-in-progress. Data source is: [https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance...](https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance-for-small-businesses/sba-paycheck-protection-program-loan- level-data)

<comment><USER61> As long as you have Excel, Sheets, Numbers etc, it's a lot more pleasant to navigate the original csv, with filters, sort, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> I have a question that somebody more knowledgeable can answer.

My company, a recruitment agency, took 2 to 5 million in these loans and kept me hired . But since my main client kept me hired , the recruitment agency kept paying me. So did this recruitment agency just make 2-5 million in free money - just by proving that they ran my payroll- which they did. because the client kept me hired anyway.

</comment><comment><USER63> So, what if a business was successful, not impacted by covid, and wasn't planning to lay off any employees anyway? Say, technology consulting company with 100 employees. Took out a PPP "loan", which will be promptly forgiven since they keep the staff, who gets to keep the money? Something tells me 100% goes to business owner and 0% to employees.

I think there are quite a few companies like this. Hence "money goes to those who least need it".

<comment><USER64> You are exactly right. In fact, I know of a few businesses that actually had MORE business (wholesalers), and the CEO of one told my friend that he was just going to use the money to buy his wife a new Porsche. This is anecdotal for sure, but there is no reason why firms wouldn't rely on free money as long as they are amoral enough.

If I had implemented the plan, I would have just created a program where the program only covered a % of the wages (say 80% instead of 100%) and mostly only for people who were not able to work. Of course, that brings other problems, but there is a middle ground somewhere in there.

<comment><USER63> And I know a business owner who is shopping for a new house after getting a PPP "loan". Sure, PPP money is supposed to be used for payroll. No problem, one can indeed use PPP money for payroll 100%. But then use the business revenue, 90% of which would normally be used for payroll, to take out a nice bonus and buy a house.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's a little surprising how many are banks. A few random searches showed about 80% of the companies are banks.

On reflection, though, not so surprising.

<comment><USER66> Huh, I didn't really see that. I did some cursory searches and haven't found a lot of banks.

Maybe you're thinking the lender field is the category of the company?

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> This is great intel for those who will phish the recipients. There's a point where transparency causes risk...

</comment><comment><USER68> Something I find amusing is the amount of miss spellings for some bigger cities. San Francisco is spelled around 10 different ways. You think people would spell check the city they live in before asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars or more...

</comment><comment> j-c-hewitt Anyone who saw these offers and did not expect the strings attached in terms of government meddling and/or decentralized witch-hunting for taking the money offered was foolish. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

</comment><comment><USER69> Does anyone know the requirements around getting these loans? For example, if employees were furloughed without pay (but kept healthcare) are they still within bounds of the loan if they indicate they retained the jobs listed?

<comment><USER70> You don't get forgiveness for wages you don't pay.

<comment><USER20> Is there any penalty for increasing wages after receiving the "loan" ?

<comment><USER70> Increasing whose wages?

<comment><USER20> Those who are having their Paycheck Protected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> There are several scenarios that frustrate me.

Examples like law firms or physicians' offices. These are relatively small firms with very wealthy principals. They are asking for taxpayer money to maintain their wealthy lifestyles, so they don't have to sacrifice their Bentleys to pay staffers. Examples: Thomas J Henry in San Antonio.

LLCs and franchisees that probably have millions of dollars in holdings and cash, but act under the guise of "small business" because they operate fast food or something.

Religious organizations. It's one thing if something like a local YMCA gets funds, but a church outright getting funds without proving it is going to public services (why don't we just have better public services?) is not proper. Churches already don't pay taxes.

<comment><USER72> Those things only frustrate me if they aren't loans, which they would be, right?

<comment><USER73> No, they're not really loans, they are basically free money.

They only have to be paid back if you end up firing the workers you were supposed to keep employed with the loan. If they stay employed then your "loan" is fully forgiven.

<comment><USER72> That's what I mean. You have to explicitly use them for payroll within 2 months of acceptance, and retain 75% of your staff, and a lot of companies are not bothering with that and just taking the low-interest loan. A loan is still something, but it's not even in the same area code as a grant.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> I'm wondering why Saas companies like "CODA PROJECT INC" are on that list. I would have assumed they are not effected by the corona crisis. I thought they would benefit from it.

<comment><USER75> If their customers have significantly reduced income due to the pandemic, SaaS companies will get hit as well, even if they work from home, and their immediate customers (other businesses) do so as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> OP, could you add to the About page the total amount of loans issued where the loan amount was $150k+? It would provide a lot of context for this data.

</comment><comment><USER77> I was working on a similar website :) [https://ppp-loan.info/](https://ppp- loan.info/)

</comment><comment><USER78> I hate billionaires not spending this pocket change but depending on government for such loans. But to play devil's advocate, aren't these most/all companies set up as limited liability, and therefore these billionaire owners are absolved of any responsibility to take on such bailouts? So is this moral problem or more a structural problem on how the enterprise is being set up?

<comment><USER32> "Billionaires" (or the much, much more common millionaires and hundred- thousand-aires who own most companies) wouldn't "spend the pocket change", they'd just lay people off or furlough them. This program was designed to keep businesses afloat _and_ to keep them from laying off employees. It's a nice idea to think that all these companies would just altruistically keep their employees around doing nothing while they're shut down, but that wouldn't happen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> Just so you all know, Twitter's going crazy with the apparent rampant inaccuracy of the database.

<comment><USER80> Is the complain about the DB of the website or the raw data is inaccurate?

The former I can shrug off as insignificant, the latter is mildly terrifying and makes you wonder how the hell we can trust anything the government does when they can't even take care of keeping track of triple billons of dollars of other people's ... namely, people who did not get any stimulus ... money.

But I guess the bureaucrats and kleptocratic government must have been ramping it up after the billions upon billions they "lost" in Iraq without a trace. This is probably going to turn into politicians and bureaucrats throwing up their hands when companies claim that the information is inaccurate and they owe nothing and the government cannot prove anything, a la, housing fraud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER81> Definitely missing some, one of my companies is not listed (sub-$100k loan).

<comment><USER20> It only includes loans over $150k.

edit: I swear I can type

<comment><USER82> > It only includes loans up to $150k

Do you mean "over" $150k? Parent's loan was <$150k.

<comment><USER20> I did, my mistake.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> What do the letters next to the loan amount mean?

<comment><USER20> I am guessing that it was the letter code entered on the application form.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Anyone know the reasoning for the $150k cutoff?

<comment><USER85> The raw data for loans under $150k seem to be here: [https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance...](https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/cares- act/assistance-for-small-businesses/sba-paycheck-protection-program-loan- level-data)

[https://pppreport.org/about.php](https://pppreport.org/about.php) > Details for loans under $150,000 remain mostly private, though industry codes and issuing bank details are available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> Admire the transperancy.

</comment><comment><USER87> Not a good look for the Ayn Rand Institute lol

<comment><USER29> [https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social- security/](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ayn-rand-social-security/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER88> This great. This is going to really bring out some interesting facts.

Looks like even Adult Entertainment businesses got money through Paycheck Protection Program. Example: [https://pppreport.org/company/11000+reeder+l+l+c](https://pppreport.org/company/11000+reeder+l+l+c)

<comment><USER89> They have had to completely shut down in many places. They are legal businesses like any other, so why shouldn't they get PPP funds like any other business?

<comment><USER90> They were initially ineligible.

[https://www.natlawreview.com/article/federal-courts-side- str...](https://www.natlawreview.com/article/federal-courts-side-strip-clubs- opposing-sba-s-ineligibility-rules-paycheck)

<comment><USER89> I remember that, and it was wrong to keep them out. The courts got it right.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Did Inmarsat Deduce Possible Flight Paths for MH370? - <AUTHOR> https://www.siam.org/news/news.php?id=2151

<comment><USER2> This recent article casts some doubt on the Inmarsat analysis.

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/why- th...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/why-the-official- explanation-of-mh370s-demise-doesnt-hold-up/361826/)

I've skimmed both article but haven't had a chance to focus on either and form any kind of opinions on the analysis. More data would certainly be nice to have, finding the aircraft would be even better.

The presentation linked in the siam.org article dives into the math involved.

[http://www.utdallas.edu/~zweck/MH370_UNM.pdf](http://www.utdallas.edu/~zweck/MH370_UNM.pdf)

<comment><USER3> > More data would certainly be nice to have

From an interesting research standpoint yes but from a circus standpoint for the investigation probably not.

People like Duncan Steel who aren't actually on investigations like these would love for everything to be open sourced but never consider the negative consequences like suddenly companies and countries are much less forthcoming with information they don't want in the public domain and all the wackjobs that come out of the woodwork with nonsense distractions {How's that Boston Marathon bombing investigation going reddit?}.

They also overrate their own abilities, if the NTSB and AAIB need help with the physics I'm sure they would ask for it directly from their pick of world class experts -- people every bit as good as any of those who are lobbying for the investigation to be crowdsourced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Been looking for something like this for weeks. Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> Me too, you're welcome. I still want to see map showing probability contours. It would be good to know just how uncertain the final location of this thing really is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't believe all of these articles haven't posted this: Where do THEY think the plane is?</comment>


Solar panels not for roofs, but for driveways, sidewalks, highways - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailyjournal.net/view/story/53033fd2f20e4928a5b2955111715b43/US--Solar-Roadways/

<comment><USER2> [http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible- idea...](http://jalopnik.com/why-the-solar-roadway-is-a-terrible- idea-1582519375)

[http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183130-solar-roadways- pas...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/183130-solar-roadways- passes-1-4-million-in-crowdfunding-just-short-of-the-56-trillion-required-but- not-bad-for-a-crazy-idea)

<comment><USER3> Wow, this is really the money quote:

"The current state of the design appears to depend on the placement of a one- foot-square grid of large bolts in the roadway. I've installed bolts into concrete, and it takes me several minutes to mark the hole, drill it, clean it out and pound the anchor into place. A mile of 30 foot wide roadway would have 150,000 bolts to install. Whee!"

Unless these plates are as damage-resistant as military-grade armor plates, there's no way that they'll ever be anything but a novely.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This idea is dumb on a lot of levels.

Asphalt is a really great road surface. It's hard, cheap, and durable. Paint is great for road markings. You can see it during the day and it consumes no electricity. Let's take a look at "Solar Roadways".

Glass as a road surface. Not just glass, but glass that must be optically clear in order for the cells to work. The two most important things for a road surface, traction and durability, just went straight out the window.

LEDs as road markings. Sorry, but this is one of the dumbest things I have ever read. There's no way you could see LEDs under thick glass at the angles you would be looking at them while driving in broad daylight. Not to mention, the cost to power these LEDs on a major highway would be enormous.

Their site includes a video of them driving a light tractor on a short stretch of tiles, in order to prove durability. I'm sure the tiles would hold up just as well with a year's worth of fully loaded tractor-trailers unevenly weighting and unweighting each tile as they travel across this multi-trillion- dollar slippy slidey glass road.

How exactly do they propose to transport the feeble amount of electricity generated which isn't used by the LEDs that no one can see?

There's many other things wrong with this. I'm pretty distressed to see this on the top of Hacker News, and even more distressed to see that they've raised over 1M in funding.

<comment><USER5> _The two most important things for a road surface, traction and durability_

Solvable problems. Hard, yes, but solvable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I want to see what happens when one of those things breaks. There is absolutely no dispute that they will break in practice, but if they leave glass shards all over the place, they'll be entirely unviable.

I'd also like to know if they will be able to with-stand super-high-load traffic, like the transporters used to carry big things like the space shuttle around.

</comment><comment><USER6> [http://youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds](http://youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds)

EEV blog on the feasibility of solar roads

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not place a bunch of solar panels in the desert or, indeed, on roofs, instead of covering highways with glass? This makes no sense at all.

<comment><USER5> Because there isn't a desert next to my house nor state.

The problem is finding a large flat surface that shadowing won't harm. My roof may not be large enough for enough power via solar cells (and I'm really not keen on climbing on that steep a surface that high up), I don't want to cover the lawn with panels, and I'm not cutting down my forest ... but my driveway (and street) gets a lot of light - given a solar panel tough enough to _drive_ on, that would reclaim sunlight-rich surfaces with zero further impact.

This "road surface solar cell" solves the problem of "solar strip mining" whereby sunlight is denied en masse to an area that otherwise needs it (lawns, deserts (yes, light-needing stuff lives there)). Paved areas have _already_ completely destroyed anything living there, and are not likely reclaimed for any life or activity other than driving. Good to dual-use a road rather than lay waste to even more square mileage of land.

(I'm skeptical of the durability of these things though. Roads, even mere driveways, are an awfully harsh environment.)</comment></comment>


Can webassembly push output to JavaScript? - <AUTHOR> Say I have a program that is running in webassembly in my browser and I want to take input that the user puts in that program and have it output to other parts of my program. For example, say I want to make a really graphically fancy input box in unity (not that this would ever be practical but just as an example) - can unity take this input that I type in the input box and then output it through webassembly? I could see this as being very cool for custom components, but all the webassembly demos I've seen only take data in to the compiled program (a la flash player or similar).
Thanks!
PS I've asked on SO too, but this is a more open ended question that I think would move we'll with the community here. General webassembly discussion for n00bs also is cool! <comment><USER2> yes, please read

[https://kripken.github.io/emscripten- site/docs/porting/conne...](https://kripken.github.io/emscripten- site/docs/porting/connecting_cpp_and_javascript/index.html)

also debug this project and see how it controls html via c++

[https://github.com/mbasso/asm-dom](https://github.com/mbasso/asm-dom)</comment>