Show HN: Just launched our landing page, looking for constructive feedback.  - <AUTHOR> http://kuhcoon.com/index/home

<comment><USER3> The tool seems geared towards beginners, but there are very few beginners that would be exposed to it naturally without some kind of super value add that experienced tweeters would find useful. I would refocus the marketing, branding, and product towards them so that they start sharing how useful the service is (for more powerful features) and keep the beginner stuff for when actual beginners find out about it.

<comment><USER4> I agree, although it seems there is a weird mix of copy appealing to beginners and then a bit of copy geared towards power users. Its a bit of a disconnect.

<comment><AUTHOR> The thing is, it's both.

Our goal is to provide a free platform for non-typical users who are just starting to understand the power and influence of social media. These people are average joes. Small business owners between the ages of 30-60. Because social media changes so much on a monthly basis it's hard for them to keep up. Youtube videos are outdated, and social media consultants are essentially snake oil salesmen charging hundreds of dollars to create a basic Facebook and Twitter page for the business owner.

On the other end we have our Pro tool. This tool will be a powerful marketing tool for social media community managers and enterprise marketing teams. We plan on utilizing the data from our free users to offer optimal posting times, key words, phrases,customized analytics, and targeted marketing on an enterprise level.

<comment><USER5> Usually the free product gives you a taste of the premium one. It sounds like your idea for a free product is totally different (if I'm understanding your point correctly). Something to consider..

I do like the idea of a codecademy for social media as a way to generate future paid users, you just may need to reconfigure the flow. The social media tutorial piece of this is great for buzz, but ultimately it sounds like your main product is the one for community managers, and those are the people who will bounce the second they think your site is going to teach them how to create a twitter account.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well it's not just codecademy for social media. The lessons aren't the main aspect of the platform, just a really cool free feature we offer.

Look at it this way: Facebook rolls out new product updates all the time. Where do you go if you are a non-tech savvy person to learn how to use these new features? If you're non-tech savvy you won't be reading mashable or hacker news.

The lessons are just a cool way to entice our free userbase into using the platform. The actual platform itself is meant to be considered an all-in-one tool that recommends new people to follow, offers insight and feedback on content the user is publishing, and also has an awesome free database of knowledge for reference.

Essentially the free tool is a dumbed down version of the Pro tool. This will make a lot more sense when we go live with our 2nd round of beta testing in April. We could use all of the feedback we can get, so signup for our beta and we'd be glad to take your input. We are finishing up iteration on our first beta test now and will be ready to go in mid April.

Thanks for the feedback!

<comment><USER5> I think what's throwing me (and possibly others) off is the first example on the features page. I know what you're saying, but "dumbed down social media tools" and "here's how you sign up for an account on twitter" are pretty different. I've signed up for a beta invite tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Other people have commented on highlighting the call to action, so I'll try to give some design feedback if you're up for it.

The monotone greyscale makes it difficult for me to get a sense of the page hierarchy. Instead of seeing 4 distinct horizontal stripes on the page I see a lot of floating objects on a grey background. For me that translates to a sense of busyness and I don't know where to look.

I think just a few tweaks with colors and contrast would go a long way. One option would be to darken the top nav and third row (the 50/50 split) while lightening the video stripe. You could probably also get rid of the tagline stripe and just go straight to the footer. The increase contrast would put the focus on the video strip and de-clutter the page. My two cents.

Also, why do I need to click the video twice (once to load popup, once to start it) for it to play?

</comment><comment><USER7> Business Guy/Director of Marketing here.

I LOVE THIS… OR WHAT IT COULD BE.

If you had a method of creating a company account and sending out invitations to employees to hook up their social media (or create new profiles) - <USER2> could provide a project management platform for submitting new content/social communications.

Right now we email everyone our new blog posts with a quick checklist of things they can do to help. I don't see this being helpful for any individuals because the individuals who will find it know what social media is.

I see it being powerful for sending set-up/usage instructions to other people. Sometimes if you don't live in California you deal with people who aren't on top of all the new social media tools

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly!

That's the point. Most of us who are tech savvy sometimes have the misconception that "everyone knows how to use social media." This is far from the truth. This tool can be used in companies to train employees, it can be used by small business owners who can learn to market their business, and it can even be used by students to learn a new skill and help them find a job by leveraging their social network.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> ivyirwin's comment is pretty spot on. His points about having to click the video twice and there not being enough contrast were something that jumped out at me too.

I think the second block (the one with the three features, button and video) needs to be emphasized. Instead of being overshadowed by the top nav and the content below, it should be the opposite. Make the font size for the features bigger and change the icons to something more relevant (I would not necessarily associate those icons to those ideas by themselves). And, as mentioned before, the video should play once the play button is clicked.

Another thing that caught my attention is the difference in font sizes and how they don't necessarily make sense. Your headlines are smaller than the nav text which doesn't make sense in theory. I'm guessing you want people to check out the links in the nav but as mentioned before, contrast will do the trick. Also, you use two sans-serifs and I don't see the purpose in doing that.

The "What can Kuhcoon do for you" section needs a lot more whitespace and that headline needs to be bigger and clearer. Also, you should make both of those clients section entirely click-able, I think.

Finally, I get the image and the "Transforming everyone into social media butterflies!" text but somehow that whole block seems out of place: it might be an issue with the shadow above and the fact that a lot of the colors on the page are very similar.

</comment><comment><USER9> Looks clean, but my eyes aren't drawn to any one place, as hobonumber1 mentioned. I would take a different approach, and place the tagline underneath the logo, so that I actually know what the company that runs this website does.

Once I know that, I'll move on to reading the bullet points - if they adequately outline some interesting features of the product relating to the tagline, I'll watch the video.

Only after the bullet points or video, though, will I be looking for a 'click to join' button.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insight!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks like a really cool product - put one clear call to action at the top, instead of your three sub-points. Look at <http://www.mixpanel.com> for some inspiration. They have the best landing page I've ever seen (and the funny thing is that it's probably always changing).

<comment><USER10> Rapportive is perhaps my favorite - <http://rapportive.com/> \- it also has a single call to action, but I think the way they show off the feature in-page is even better.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I see too many numbers, it's not immediately clear what for. Maybe create a 5 second test to really help optimise it. <http://fivesecondtest.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the tip! We will check it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I like the colors, especially the buttons, but I would suggest changing the background of the top-section on the landing page, perhaps to a black, to draw my eyes more to that spot.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the feedback! We want to keep everything really simple and clean, maybe we will go with a darker shade of grey up top.</comment></comment>


Pordio is a fast, beautiful and fun way to share your stories with the world - <AUTHOR> http://www.pordio.com/ <comment><USER2> I am super tired of software developers describing their shit as "beautiful." Seems to have become a trend two or three years ago.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Are there any writers out here?</comment>


An underrated feature in Python 3 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ionelmc.ro/2014/08/03/the-most-underrated-feature-in-python-3/

<comment><USER2> What I don't understand about Python is why it's not printing the str() of the variables in the corresponding lines of the traceback. About 95% of all debugging starts with adding prints or logging messages before the lines mentioned in the traceback. Or am I doing something wrong here (since 5 years...)?

<comment><USER3> I typically will throw in a debugger instead of a print statement if I'm debugging locally.

import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace()

Then I'll explore the context variables and figure out what the hell is going on.

<comment><USER4> I think 99.9999% experienced python devs do this.

Why can't PSF make it default?

At least some kind of commandline switch to break to last traceback context by default. e.g.

python --debug my_code.py

<comment><USER5> they did: python -m pdb my_code.py

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> To be honest. As cool as this feature is in the 1% of cases where I wanted it, so annoying is it in 99% of all other cases. Tracebacks on Python 3 became a lot more complex because very often exceptions are intentionally swallowed to be reraised differently and they just mess up the traceback now.

For instance any custom collection that acts as a decorator will now generate very large tracebacks.

I would have much preferred if the reraising with old traceback would have been a feature you can enable per site where you raise.

<comment><USER7> I don't understand what are you talking about. AFAIK, you don't have to reraise the previous exception:

        In [1]: try:
           ...:     raise Exception('Something is wrong')
           ...: except Exception as e:
           ...:     raise
           ...:
        </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
        Exception                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
        <ipython-input-1-ef6cea2fccac> in <module>()
              1 try:
        ----> 2     raise Exception('Something is wrong')
              3 except Exception as e:
              4     raise
              5

        Exception: Something is wrong

        In [2]: try:
            raise Exception('Something is wrong with RERAISE')
        except Exception as e:
            raise e
           ...:
        </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>---
        Exception                                 Traceback (most recent call last)
        <ipython-input-2-c6729aaebd3d> in <module>()
              2     raise Exception('Something is wrong')
              3 except Exception as e:
        ----> 4     raise e
              5

        <ipython-input-2-c6729aaebd3d> in <module>()
              1 try:
        ----> 2     raise Exception('Something is wrong with RERAISE')
              3 except Exception as e:
              4     raise e
              5

        Exception: Something is wrong with RERAISE

<comment><USER6> > I don't understand what are you talking about. AFAIK, you don't have to > reraise the previous exception:

Correct, and also you can explicitly suppress the other traceback now (3.2+)

I just wish it was the default unless you opted in. If I catch down an exception and raise another one _I do not want the old one_. Only in very rare cases am I interested in what lead to it. I have lots of hacks in Jinja2 now to hide useless tracebacks that would only confuse users.

For instance a jinja context tries different dicts through a chain in __getitem__. The naive implementation on Python 3 generates two nearly equivalent tracebacks that are very confusing.

<comment><USER8> If you don't want the older exception, why are you giving it to the constructor of the new exception?

Just raise SomeErrorType("error message"), and it will not polute your traceback. Raising SomeErrorType(anotherError) is there for when you care about anotherError.

<comment><USER6> > If you don't want the older exception, why are you giving it to the > constructor of the new exception?

Exceptions are chained automatically through the stracktrace and not because they are passed to the constructor. By raising an exception from an exception handler you automatically chain them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I don't understand Python exceptions that well. But it's great to have the pattern of maintaining the stack trace when re-raising an exception. Thanks OP!

(In case anyone missed it)

        except foo.FooException as e:
            raise BarException, BarException(e), sys.exc_info()[2]

</comment><comment><USER10> Had the pleasure of working with the author (Ionel) a few years back on some Django projects. Always love reading his Python posts. Really inspiring developer.

</comment><comment><USER11> Actually passing the exception is not required. Even if "e" is not an argument to BarException, the behaviour is the same.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why is the current title ("An underrated feature in Python 3") neither the original source title ("The most underrated feature in Python 3") or a title more descriptive of the content (e.g., "Exception chaining in Python 3").

If we're going to get title changes, can we at least get _useful_ title changes?

<comment><USER13> >If we're going to get title changes, can we at least get useful title changes?

No. If the title changes were useful, what would we discuss on HN?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can a moderator de-hype the title, please?

[Edit: thanks!]

<comment><AUTHOR> What title would you like ? What's exactly hyped ?

<comment><USER14> "The most underrated feature" is total hype. It's exactly the sort of thing the Guidelines link at the bottom of every HN page says to remove.

Maybe, "Python 3 exception-handling improvement."

<comment><USER15> Hmm, it's just a figure of speach. "The most underrated feature" -> "I really like this feature and think it deserves more attention."

Just like "the best programming language ever" -> "a programming language I am really excited about, that fits my needs very well".

The hyperbole is not the problem IMO, it's the nondescriptiveness. I think the title should have something about exception handling in it.

The enforcement of the Guidelines has been pretty arbitrary, and quite often good (editorialized) titles have been turned back into something nondescript. Or now the other way around, the original title is editorialized to be less interesting. I think the most important criteria for a title are: does it get across the topic of the link, and the target page author's intention?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Fluid Simulation for Unity - <AUTHOR> http://www.musiubar.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Just a heads up, you need DirectX 11 support since the demos use Compute Shaders.

</comment><comment><USER2> Very pretty!</comment>


Anil Seth: Your brain hallucinates your conscious reality - <AUTHOR> https://www.ted.com/talks/anil_seth_how_your_brain_hallucinates_your_conscious_reality <comment><USER2> Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily merrily, merrily, merrily life is but a dream.

A dream with _error correction_. When error correction is faulty due to being irrational, or asleep, or on certain drugs, all sorts of strange things appear.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr8s-K_TPCU#t=22s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pr8s-K_TPCU#t=22s)

</comment><comment><USER3> "Consciousness" is used to mean lots of different things. The video talks about how we perceive ("are conscious of") the world and ourself.

I suspect that if we saw that a cat perceives the world and itself in much the same way as us, and acts on its observations, we would not hesitate long to believe it was conscious.

However, a computer can also be taught to perceive the world and itself, and act on its observations, and we would not call it conscious, because we think that it's still not aware that it's doing all that. But then we could teach it that. Etc. It's hard to formulate what's missing, but we humans feel conscious in a way that's more than just observation and introspection.

I suspect that once we no longer understand computers, we will eventually start to think of them as conscious too. Whether they really are will probably be impossible to know. [1]

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Consciousness](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room#Consciousness)

</comment><comment><USER4> His lecture at the Royal Institution is better and more in depth.

[https://youtu.be/xRel1JKOEbI](https://youtu.be/xRel1JKOEbI)

Worth a watch if you have an hour to spare.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's not a whole lot that has changed in our theory of consciousness between the the establishment of French existentialism, via Husserl, and this video.

</comment><comment><USER6> Isn't this just representationalism?

I mean, I get that this presentation is based on more empirical grounds and on material which is more fleshed out than the speculations of long dead philosophers. But unless a person is unfamiliar with indirect realism, there isn't anything inherently mind-blowing about the idea of a "controlled hallucination". And this is what this TED talk is about.</comment>


Tell HN: Ideas sharing - <AUTHOR> I've had these ideas saved up for over 3 years now, I add new ones every now and then but I haven't gone back to remove ones that exist now. Anyway, since I doubt I would have much time to work on them, I figured I would share them here.
@-- ideas and scribbles
twitter app to plot tweets by the number of followers (x) and following (y) a person has
-- bar graphs, scatter graphs, pie charts -> compare number of tweets for search term 1 against term 2
-- -- weight the tweets by the number of followers a user has
-- -- -- those tweets have a higher chance of being read by more people
music app to generate good musical flow based on trends that someone likes
-- analyze a selection of songs: the tempo of each one, the different instruments used etc.
-- -- recreate new songs based on users selection
-- -- -- new songs will hopefully be good for the user, they can rate song
-- -- -- -- this helps improve the algorithm
using css3 or html5 or something, find out how to make text appear as if it's flying towards you
-- similar to stars in space screensaver, except with text, make a whole webpage just from that
-- -- users will watch the text fly towards them and read it
-- -- -- if people can use mouse to zoom in and out of the text that would be good
a smile goes a long way, but how far?
-- a web app where people post a picture of themself smiling
-- -- all pictures will be geo-tagged, try get location via app if picture is not geo-tagged
-- -- -- allow people to view a global map of where the smile has gone, maybe circular pixel growth
-- -- -- -- app could be applied to other things, not just 'upload picture of smile'
-- -- app will auto crop and zoom in on smile via algorithm (maybe)
-- -- -- only allow a limited number of links that can upload a picture
-- -- -- -- once someone uploads a picture they gain a new link to share
-- -- -- -- -- this link is now the new link to upload a picture
twitter app game - complete the tweet
-- the app will grab tweets from the public timeline and then display them to the user with words missing
-- -- the user will have to select the correct word from a list of 4-5 different words to complete the tweet
-- -- -- the app would randomly remove 1 or 2 words and then use a theasaurus to display similar words in the 'pick list'
-- -- -- -- the app should ensure the tweet length is no more then 140 chars long with each word from the 'pick list'
-- -- -- -- -- else it will display different words in the pick list or remove a different word or select a different tweet
-- -- -- -- -- -- app will never pick a tweet with a link inside it, or with rude words (unless people tick adult-version)
social public ideas website
-- allow people to post ideas with some sort of "open-source license" attached to each idea
-- -- maybe allow different types of licenses
-- -- -- hopefully, more ideas posted = more people stepping up and changing the world
-- -- -- -- simple interface, people should be able to post an idea as easy as it is to tweet
-- -- -- -- -- add trends and stats for different idea topics
relationship match - facebook app
-- grab a users friends and get the relationship of each friend
-- -- if a user is single - add to singles list, if not - add to not single list
-- -- -- check each day and update the singles list
-- -- -- -- show recent singles (past X time) in a display area
-- -- -- -- -- might be fun for people who want to hookup over facebook
data visualization tool - allow users to input data set and add rules to how they want it displayed
-- for instance a user could input various numbers and set the output as a 2D graph
-- -- then add rules where each odd number divisible by X must show up green
-- -- -- or each number that repeats itself more then once must start to become larger
-- -- -- -- or for each number that follows a number larger then itself
-- -- -- -- -- must have a line that connects with the preceeding number
-- -- -- -- -- -- the possibilities could be endless but also quite pointless
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- however could be fun to view random crazy visualizations
twitter tool to analyze when a user should tweet to get the most coverage/views
-- take the users' followers and analyze each follower to find out the average time they tweet
-- -- take all times and find out the best time the user should tweet
-- -- -- certain followers could influence the time if those followers have more followers then other followers
-- -- -- -- or if a users' follower interacts more often with the user, then this could have a larger effect on the time to tweet
dream job maker - website
-- users would log on to the site, input what they like/don't like in a job
-- -- then input where they would want to work
-- -- -- input as much details about the dream job as possible
-- -- -- -- then the service would analyze everything and work out whether the dream job is feasible for that person
-- -- -- -- -- it would provide the likely chance of gettting 'that dream job' and provide the best location for pursuing the job
using sound to draw
-- depending on the pitch, level, or even recognition of the sound - the application would draw something
-- -- it would draw in a certain direction, with a certain brush, with a certain size, and even a certain shade of colour
a fun infographic generator
-- so maybe you drink a lot of coffee and drive a lot, then write a lot of code, and eat
-- -- what if you could just fill in a weekly schedule and throw in a few times when you went somewhere on holiday
-- -- -- then the tool will generate a large picture with small images of how many coffee you've drunk this year
-- -- -- -- and how many miles you've driven (with a simple "equivalent to driving to moon and back" or something)
-- -- -- -- -- it is aimed to be fun and presented in that way
-- -- -- -- -- -- users could save the image and post it on facebook
the smart TV remote
-- software that records when a user switches channel
-- -- from which channel to which channel
-- -- -- which time and date
-- -- -- -- then learn the user and automatically switch channels after completing the learning process
turn last.fm artists into facebook likes
-- don't want to like each artist you listen to on facebook, then use this tool to import all of your artists
-- -- tool would simply get a last.fm user account and get the artists they listen to
-- -- -- then take a facebook account and for each artist
-- -- -- -- find artist on facebook and like
-- -- -- -- -- if not found - skip and warn user at end
music powered energy - tweaking the learning experience for a new instrument
-- link a piano to a device which is set to throttle your electricity in a certain room (i.e. kitchen)
-- -- the more you play the piano notes correctly according the current selected song on the device
-- -- -- then the more electricity is allowed to pass through into the kitchen to cook your meal
-- concept could be used for other things like throttling the broadband for the next 2 hours
-- -- or you have to correctly play a song to be able to log into your computer
what would text look like in a graph - simple web app for fun
-- take each characters' hex code and map it to a 2d or 3d point on a graph
-- -- each point could be coloured to show the direction of the text
-- -- -- multiple instances of the same character could show as a larger point
thesis generation type web application
-- generate aims/thesis titles using a set of noun-verb-verb-noun algorithms
-- -- app would randomly select different words and generate the title
-- -- -- it could be improved with AI by reading titles from ACM, IEEE etc. <comment><USER2> Here are a couple that I'm not likely to do anything with, and encourage people to steal.

BookNotice.com -- Ideally, this site asks for your Amazon login, looks at all your past purchases, creates a table of the authors you read, and then notifies you when new books by those authors comes out.

Revenue model is simple -- email with affiliate link. "We saw that you've bought 3 books by George R. R. Martin. 'A Feast of Crows' comes out next month. Click here (affiliate link) to pre-order."

Ideally, it could also recommend me other books as well using a Netflix-type recommendation engine (or Amazon).

I have the name 'booknotice.com', and would happily donate it to anyone who built this.

\</comment><comment></comment><comment>----

Google sites for event sites. Djangocon has a website, and only actually updates it a little before and a little after the event. They don't have anything particularly demanding for a generic web service, but there are things that an event needs that no other site does.

Ideally, it needs to handle the irregularity of the event. Last time I looked at the Djangocon site to see when Djangocon was hitting next, all I saw was details on the event that had already passed. I want that stuff to be preserved, for sure, but I don't want to be confused in thinking that I can book tickets to last year's Djangocon. I want the '2013' page to show up, even if it just says "Event details coming soon" after the 2012 event has already passed. It needs to have an archive where I can see who spoke at last year's event, or the event two years ago, and the presentations should be preserved for posterity.

Revenue model could be simple monthly hosting costs, or a cost+markup on EC2 compute cycles or something. If this were done by an established company (say, Heroku or Dotcloud), they could be de facto event sponsors for every event and drive revenue to their core products that way.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Paparazzi - Like an FPS, but you have a camera and you have to take a famous person's photo. Each level is quite short, because the famous person is travelling. You're not on rails (someone else mentioned Pokemon snap, which is sort of close to this). I'm not sure if this is a cross between a puzzle game (best place to take photo from + best combination of lenses) with an FPS, or just a not great idea.

2) Cat Detective - Sound isn't used very much in games. You get a bit of ocarina in some Zelda games (which hadn't come out when I first had this idea.) and there's a bit of sound use in Enemy Zero[1]. Rhythm games don't count. This idea is something like "Cat Detective" - you're a cat, and a detective. You have a crime scene. You have cat colleagues, and cat suspects, and cat witnesses. You have to walk around investigating crime. You have to talk to other cats. You use careful manipulations of the analogue sticks (also new when I first had this idea) to create "cat talk" sounds. The better you talk the more information you get or the quicker your colleagues work.

3) Freeform Markov Chain Generator - Very simple to use markov chaining software. The user drags a file for input; selects a delimiter (if needed) and whether they want to work on individual letters or whole words or sentences; selects how many levels (I forget the terminology) they want (2 being more different from input text; 4 being more similar to input text.) and how much text to spit out. This does exist in various forms, but not all in one place, and it's not idiot friendly.

4) Truchet tile screen saver - draw a bunch of truchet tiles, then change one at a time at a given rate.

5) Alcohol Awareness Game - (I'm teaching myself Javascript and I'm going to do this but I'd really like to see how other people do it) EASY VERSION: a multiple choice quiz of glasses of wine, with "how many units[2]?" as the answer. HARDER VERSION: Have a wine bottle and a glass and ask user to either pour one unit of wine or to pour what they'd normally drink and guess how many units that is.

I have about a gajillion more.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_Zero>

[2] Units is a UK concept to promote alcohol awareness. It's not great because people don't really know how many units they drink; alcohol has got stronger since units were introduced; etc. 125 ml of wine at 8% ABV is one unit.

<comment><USER3> 6) Convert the game XFigure to modern environments. Maybe licensing would be tricky?

<http://imgur.com/CGaRA>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I bet it feels good getting all of this out of your head :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Now I have space to think of newer ideas ;)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Ahh! :( I had new-lines and spacing set out but it doesn't show up above... trying to fix now.

EDIT: Updated the quad spacing to --, seems OK, complain if otherwise.</comment>


The Fatal Flaw of Deeplinks and How to Fix It - <AUTHOR> http://jasonlbaptiste.com/featured-articles/the-fatal-flaw-of-deeplinks-and-how-to-fix-it/?utm_content=buffer2d378&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> Are you envisioning cards as widgets that leverage the API of a partner app or are they just re-formatted mobile web views embedded within another app? For example, Uber wouldn't have worked unless they also built all of the payment and user account/rating functionality into an embeddable mobile web view. Once you're there, you might as well support mobile web.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you ever tried to read your site on a phone? As soon as I scrolled, a thousand things blocked the content to get me to subscribe or share. I reward that sort of behaviour with an instant close.</comment>


Why Kale Is Actually Terrible for the Environment - <AUTHOR> http://www.thinkfundamental.org/why-kale-is-actually-terrible-for-the-environment/ <comment><USER2>
        So if you give up eating meat, but your grocery bill is the
        same because you're eating lots of salads and kale
        smoothies, then you haven't really done the environment any good.

If you're buying more food that has less "calories per $" you're either eating less calories or you live in a magical land where mathematics is for losers.

        (in a footnote) It doesn't take into account externalities that occur while producing food.

Oh, so the author lives in that magical land, that's sorted it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Author here. My point is more that most people are missing the forest for the trees. Sure, animal based food has externalities. But how do the externalities of chicken production vs kale production make up for chicken using 18x less resources per calorie of food produced?</comment></comment>


Patent US6368227 - Method of swinging on a swing - <AUTHOR> http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6368227 <comment><USER2> To be fair, the patent was filed by a five year old whose patent-attorney father was trying to educate on how the patent process works. [http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/business/patents-patent- of...](http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/13/business/patents-patent-office-faces- huge-backlogs-extremely-technical-inventions-absurd.html) Perhaps he taught his son even more than he expected.

<comment><USER3> It's also expired due to nonpayment of fees.

<comment><USER4> Confirmed; the US Patent Office says "Patent Expired Due to NonPayment of Maintenance Fees Under 37 CFR 1.362".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is disgusting. It's disgusting that just the other day I saw kids probably no older than 6 violating this very patent in a public playground of all places. Six year olds violating patents, what has society become? They were smiling and giggling with their friends swinging on the swingsets, hopefully the criminals responsible for violating this patent are dealt with to the full extent of the law.

In all seriousness though, it's patents like this that are the reason the patent system is as broken and messed up as it is. You can patent anything if you use enough convuluted words in a couple of paragraphs it would seem.

<comment><USER6> This patent is for side-to-side swinging. IANAL, but if they were doing the traditional forward-backward swinging they should be okay.

<comment><USER7> It will however require the services of a competent patent attorney at a cost of around $1mm and approximately 3 years in a court in Eastern Texas to prove that they are in fact "okay".

<comment><USER8> Don't worry, we can start out by getting a judge to enjoin the probable infringement. We'll make sure no kids are allowed to attend elementary school during those 3 years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a tongue-in-cheek troll, and a beautiful one at that. Someone filed this on behalf of his/her son. Check out the last lines of the application, with emphasis added:

\-- snip --

Lastly, it should be noted that because pulling alternately on one chain and then the other resembles in some measure the movements one would use to swing from vines in a dense jungle forest, the swinging method of the present invention may be referred to by the present inventor _and his sister_ as _"Tarzan" swinging_. The user may even choose to produce a Tarzan-type yell while swinging in the manner described, which more accurately replicates swinging on vines in a dense jungle forest. _Actual jungle forestry is not required._

 _Licenses are available from the inventor upon request._

\-- end snip --

edit: formatting

</comment><comment><USER10> There is nothing patented in this patent. Note that "Claims 1, 2, 3 and 4 are cancelled". That's all of the claims.

<comment><USER11> Wait, where does it say that?

<comment><USER12> Last page.

<comment><USER11> Ah, I didn't realize it'd gone into reexam. That seems like a silly waste of money.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I rather like this one. Though to be fair, it was probably correct to award it: it's definitely inventive, and I doubt there is prior art.

<http://www.google.com/patents/US3216423>

<comment><USER14> I don't know a better word to describe that except to say it is _disturbing_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's a mock patent.

I worked for a company whose on-staff lawyer was friends with the person who authored this patent. He too was (is?) a lawyer and he filed this application to demonstrate how ridiculous the patent legislation was. It was never meant to be a serious patent.

</comment><comment><USER16> I cannot help but think this patent and others like it would be good test cases for a summary reversal mechanism. I would use them as follows:

1) Create a policy whereby a patent can be identified as being 'issued in error' (to be clear the case is made that at the time of filing the patent basis was already unpatentable)

2) Provide a framework for describing the unpatentability and the evidence standards for elements in the framework (so you have to show it was obvious for example and have other indpendent inventions at a similar time, or prior art, etc)

3) Establish what rights the patent holder has in defending against this allocation (what rules of evidence are needed, what standard does that evidence need to meet)

4) Establish an appeal process, if any, and its rules.

5) Establish a way of introducing these disallowed patents as evidence of unpatentability in current office actions.

Then start with patents like this one and run them through that process.

Part of the problem here is that the challenge process is really broken and it needs to be fixed in order to balance out the inevitable human failings on the approval process.

</comment><comment><USER17> What I want to know is why does is this patent referenced by a Microsoft patent that is completely unrelated?

<http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US8181265>

Does Microsoft think the patent system is a joke?

<comment><USER18> I went through both Samsung and MSFT patents that 'refer' to this patents. This patent, in both cases, is cited by the examiner. So, my idea behind that is the examiner either didn't like his job or had a good sense of humor about whole patent process!

<comment><USER19> Or it was a form of protest. Those patents are now tied to absurdist humor forever.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> When you think about it, patent examiners make industrial policy that affects the entire United States for up to 20 years. To be fair, the USPTO takes that responsibility pretty seriously. Still, examiners are human --- and a lot of them aren't experienced enough to have signature authority: their actions must be signed by their supervisors, who have to oversee multiple junior examiners. In many fields, the examining corps is pretty buried by the workload and doesn't have the time or other resources they'd like to have. [EDIT: In response to 'dkhenry, I agree, there's no excuse for the patent being discussed here.]

This examiner burden is exacerbated by three things:

First, patent examiners' performance is graded in part on the basis of a "count system," which provides at least some incentive for examiners to allow at least some claims [1].

Second, the statute mandates that a patent be issued unless the examiner can demonstrate that the application is _not_ patentable.

Third, there's no requirement that a patent applicant conduct any kind of patentability search. An applicant and his patent attorney must disclose any "material" prior art _of which they're aware,_ but the applicant need not do any kind of literature search. [EDIT: When you apply for a patent, you pay filing fees in part to help cover some of the cost of having a patent examiner do a search.]

Just imagine if a PhD candidate wasn't required to do a literature survey as part of her dissertation work, but instead her advisor and thesis committee were required to approve her degree unless _they_ and their TAs could affirmatively demonstrate that her research was insufficiently novel. That's not unlike the way it works in the patent system. And now think of how much more national impact can result from the issuance of a patent compared to the issuance of a PhD degree.

Inventors and patent attorneys tend to fiercely oppose any proposal that patent applicants be required to conduct prior-art searches, on grounds that it would increase the cost of a patent application. But if an inventor wants a national industrial policy to be made in his favor that will last for as much as 20 years, it doesn't seem _per se_ unreasonable for society to require him to do some due diligence first.

(Of course, as long as the law is what it is, patent applicants, including my own clients, will quite properly abide by the law as it is and not as some might think it ought to be.)

Richard Stallman once asserted, in testimony at the USPTO [2], that:

\--snip--

 _Some years ago a professor I know patented Kirchoff's current law, which says that the electric currents flowing into a junction equal the currents flowing out. He did this to confirm, privately, his suspicion that the PTO could not handle the field of electronics. He never tried to enforce the patent which has since expired. I will disclose his name if you give assurances that he and his lawyer will not get in trouble for this._

 _Kirchoff's laws were formulated in 1845. If the PTO couldn't understand electricity after a century, how can we expect it to understand software in another decade or two._

 _(applause)_

\--snip--

[1] [http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/02/26/usptos-new-examiner- cou...](http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2010/02/26/usptos-new-examiner-count-system- go-into-effect/id=9310/)

[2] [http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/software/sanjo...](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/hearings/software/sanjose/sj_stallman.html)

<comment><USER21> If you were commenting on a patent on a complex technical subject then fine, this is on swinging. There is nothing other then gross negligence that can explain why this was approved.

<comment><USER22> Claim 1 states:

"A method of swinging on a swing, the method comprising the steps of: a) suspending a seat for supporting a user between only two chains that are hung from a tree branch; b) positioning a user on the seat so that the user is facing a direction perpendicular to the tree branch; c) having the user pull alternately on one chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward one side, and then on the other chain to induce movement of the user and the swing toward the other side; and d) repeating step c) to create side-to-side swinging motion, relative to the user, that is parallel to the tree branch."

Now go find prior art for this where it shows steps a, b, c, d. Not easy anymore is it?

Obviously, common sense should have played a huge part. But common sense by it self is not patent law. You still need evidence to support your common sense.

dctoedt is right. Humans make mistake.

<comment><USER23> > Now go find prior art for this where it shows steps a, b, c, d. Not easy > anymore is it?

Go out side. Turn left. Walk to the park. Look at the 11-year-old boys on the swingset.

<comment><USER24> Even ignoring the tree branch I'd be surprised if you found a single one of those 11-year-old boys employing the method described within.

<comment><USER25> Can I be considered prior art? Because I did that very thing as a kid over twenty years ago. In fact, I would say the method in question was common knowledge on the playground. Parents didn't like it because if the kid next to you did it then you stood the chance of bumping into each other unless you could get a matching rhythm going.

I also "discovered" that if you use your feet to twist the ropes around each other as you sit in the swing you eventually can cause a spinning motion in the opposite direction by lifting your feet from ground. Is there a patent for that? Did I miss my chance?

EDIT: oh wait, it seems the patent was either not granted or lapsed due to non-payment. I guess I don't have precedent for my twisting swing patent idea after all. Feel free to try it with my blessing.

<comment><USER26> > Can I be considered prior art?

Short answer: yes.

Longer answer: yes, but only if the one single examiner handling this patent at the time had known of you, known how to contact you, and been able to obtain any information from you (and mind you, he/she likely could not have told you why he/she wanted the information).

The other problem is that while you did this over twenty years ago along with the others on the playground, where did any one of you publish anything describing your alternate swing method? Because to make a rejection stick, the patent examiner has to find some publication by you or one of your playground mates from twenty years ago disclosing to the public your new swinging method. This is because the position of the courts is that an applicant deserves a patent __unless__ the us patent office can prove otherwise (and "prove" pretty much means "prove to the level of a civil trial in court").

If the system were reversed, i.e. that applicant did not deserve a patent unless they (the applicant) could prove it was sufficiently new to deserve a patent, there would be far less of these "swinging on a swing" type patents.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> The patent it self is so simple and basic, that mind as well be someone teaching exercise into the patents world.

What it is making me "uncomfortable" is that patents from Microsoft (Secure machine counting) and Samsung (transistor substrate) refer to them...

<comment><USER18> No they don't. In both cases, this patent is cited by the examiner, who probably had good sense of humor.

<comment><USER20> If a patent examiner cited the swinging patent in an application involving actual technology, I would guess the examiner might have intended the citation as a red flag, a signal to future judges and juries that the examiner regarded the application as bogus but couldn't prove it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I find it hilarious there is even a debate in these threads about this. I think it's pretty well established the patent system is entirely screwed. Alas very rich people have a good reason to keep it screwed. To stay rich.

The only thing that suffers is inovation. There is also a trending story floating around lately were some one posted a bogas story created by SciGen to a spammy security magazine. Look at the person who filed these patents... TL;DR just skim them... [http://www.google.co.uk/search?tbo=p&tbm=pts&hl=en&#...
One would almost think he used the equivalent type script but for patents. HA!

</comment><comment><USER12> Look at the last page. The claims are "cancelled". I'm guessing that makes the patent invalid.

</comment><comment><USER29> Apparently the burrito (or is it a canoli?) was invented 12 years ago: [http://www.google.com/patents?id=YlkIAAAAEBAJ&printsec=a...](http://www.google.com/patents?id=YlkIAAAAEBAJ&printsec=abstract&source=gbs_overview_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)

<comment><USER30> Don't worry. The EU recently standardized Pizza Napoletana[1]. Among some of the regulations are:

* The flour used has to have a deformation energy between 220W and 380W

* The dough has a pH-value of 5.87 and a density of 0.79g/cm³

* The salt has to be applied with a spiral motion on top of the tomatoes

* The olive oil has to be applied with a spiral motion as well, totalling at 4-5g of oil with an allowed error of 20%

* The baking time is 60-90 seconds. The dough has to reach 60-65°C

That's not just a patent. This is a legal ordinance. This is law. This is taxpayers money at work!

EDIT: edit for formatting and source

[1] [http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=0J:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=0J:L:2010:034:0007:0016:DE:PDF) (German)

<comment><USER31> I'm not sure what your point is. TSGs exist and are useful, as are PDOs etc.

([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_tr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_traditional_specialities_\(EU\)))

([http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2...](http://eur- lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:034:0007:0016:EN:PDF)) (English).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Are we allowed to discuss this without violating Patent number: 6715762

<http://www.google.co.uk/patents/US6715762>

Maybe this is a way to avoid parking tickets, who knows, anything is viable with the right lawyer these days.

</comment><comment><USER33> IIRC this was a joke patent that they put forward just to see what they could get away with.

<comment><USER34> Or maybe not so much a joke as an absurdity used to prove a point? I actually wish there were more patents like this as it would lead to tighter examination.

I also don't think it's an accident that the inventor and filing attorney have the same last name. It's hard to justify the cost of doing this unless you can get the lawyer for free. It's not the filing fees that are expensive so much as the rest of the process.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Have you seen this patent on 'refreshing a bread product by heating ...':

<http://www.google.com/patents/US6080436?hl=en>

<comment><USER36> To be fair, that patent claims:

      b) setting the temperature of the heating elements
      between 2500 F. and 4500 F

So it is using light bulbs to heat the bread. Which is somewhat imaginative compared to using an oven.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I spent a lot of the day yesterday doing patent and publication searches and I've come to the conclusion that patents are written both by and for retarded monkeys.

</comment><comment><USER38> Even better: <http://www.google.com/patents/US4022227>

</comment><comment><USER39> So let me ask this totally noob question. Is this where one could claim "prior art" or does that no apply in this case?

</comment><comment><USER40> I looked at costs of filing a patent awhile back. Seems relatively cheap to file, if you do as much work yourself as possible, however the maintenance fees they require you to pay at 3.5 yrs, 7.5 yrs, and 11.5 yrs, to keep the patent in effect, get progressively steeper.

I wonder if this guy has paid any of the maintenance fees?

</comment><comment><USER41> I actually never realised that a swing could be used like this. I always just went forwards and backwards.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> and here's another one. Wheel patented (in Australia) as a "circular transportation facilitation device" [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented- in-...](http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn965-wheel-patented-in- australia.html)

<comment><USER42> The Australian Innovation Patent isn't really a patent. When an application is filed a formalities check is completed, but no prior art search is conducted. Also, the inventor and assignee of an AIP can't litigate. If one wanted to, the Australian Patent Office would need to examine and issue an allowance as a standard patent.

From the perspective of the US patent system, the AIP is more like a provisional patent application than anything else.

[http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/get-the-right- ip/patents/types...](http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/get-the-right- ip/patents/types-of-patents/innovation-patent/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If anyone fancies suing the Whitehouse to make a point, here's a picture of what appears to be a relevant violation:

[https://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_image_pages/0519-090...](https://www.acclaimimages.com/_gallery/_image_pages/0519-0907-3019-0022.html)

<comment><USER44> No. This patent was for sideways swinging.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> I think the original swing patent is pretty interesting. It is different from just a piece of wood held by two ropes / chains. Heck, there seems to be a lot of different types of swings that got patent protection. Must of been a competitive field.

</comment><comment><USER21> The real question is why do Primary Examiner: Kien T. Nguyen and Attorney: Peter Lowell Olson

Still have jobs at the patent office ( if they do ). We should be able to demand the termination of public servants who do not do their jobs.

<comment><USER46> _Inventor: Steven Olson

Attorney: Peter Lowell Olson_

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Of note is the Microsoft patent (US8181265) that cites it for "Secure machine counting"

<http://www.google.com/patents/US8181265>

I assume as joke or hidden egg.

</comment><comment><USER48> in one of the water cooler rooms in the canadian patent office, we have a wall of shame for patents like this. I remember one patent for a stick, and another for patenting the patent process.

</comment><comment><USER49> I'm waiting for the self-referential patent "A method to defend against patent lawsuits" that patents patenting the act of filing patent lawsuits in order to defend against patent lawsuits.

</comment><comment><USER50> More patents should reference Underdog:

 _"Young children often need help to climb onto a swing and may need a push (sometimes even an "underdog" push) to begin swinging."_

</comment><comment><USER51> Startup idea: crowd sourced prior art search?

I remember performing this swinging procedure as a child. Surely there is some video evidence of someone doing it somewhere.

</comment><comment><USER52> I'm going to patent See-Saw balancing on a tree stem. That's just the beginning, I'm headed to Children's Park to get more ideas now...

</comment><comment><USER53> A great collection of patents - <http://patently-useless.tumblr.com/>

</comment><comment><USER54> Has nobody noticed there is no issue date? You can file any patent you want, but if it's actually issued, that's another problem.

<comment><USER5> Better prepare yourself, on the left hand side there is in-fact an issue date, "Issue date: 9 Apr 2002" which is beneath the filing date "Filing date: 17 Nov 2000"

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Upon re-examination, all the claims for this patent were cancelled (see the last page.)

</comment><comment><USER56> This gives me hope that my patent for "Going to the Bathroom" is going to be approved!

</comment><comment><USER57> It's been a while since Albert Einstein worked in the patent office, eh?

</comment><comment><USER58> I wish I was a troll with a law degree.

</comment><comment><USER59> This just made my day!</comment>


Tradey – Social Network for Stock Traders (NEW) - <AUTHOR> Hey YC community. I just launched Tradey.com with dozens of cool features. Here's are the top 10...
Stock Games Buy or short up to 100 symbols per game. Test your trading strategies with real market prices in a risk-free environment. Games start daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. Play now, and get your trophies with our next release.
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Market Movers See the day's most active stocks, and the biggest gainers and losers.
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Symbols & Logos Easily find and follow familiar companies by seeing thousands of logos.
Improved Trader Profiles Your profile never looked so good. Follow traders and symbols to build your news feed.
Follow Symbols Follow your favorite symbols so you can stay on top of related events.
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Improved Symbol Profiles See competitors, stock quotes, and more.
Please send me your feedback.
Thank you,
email@example.com
https://tradey.com <comment><AUTHOR> I'll take your comments, good or bad. Thanks.</comment>


Redesigning TechCrunch: We Picked This Logo Just to Piss You Off - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/redesigning-techcrunch-we-picked-this-logo-just-to-piss-you-off/

<comment><USER2> The logo truly is a horrifically bad design, so much so that I just don't buy the claim that it is intentionally bad. That's just an attempt to save face because it is bad.

Glad to hear they are working on the speed problem. I solved it a while back by installing every ad blocker I could find.

edit: oh gosh, it's worse than I thought. The small squares of the 3 size grid on the right are a slightly different size than the 4 size grid of the logo. You can't convince me that is intentionally bad, that's just bad, sloppy, terrible work.

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks like a ripoff of Linode's logo, topped with a bit of Minecraft texture.

<comment><USER4> there's so much Tetris goin on there too. Also, cue logo design (mis)trend of late 2011 - the pixelated fade. ala..I think it was MS stuff/Windows back in like....turn of the century?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amount of hollow marketing speak in this post suggests it's a rationalization after the fact. Which usually indicates the original criteria was mostly a matter of "ooh, that looks pretty".

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the need to rationalize intuitive decisions with BS phrases like "It's a design that breaks more news than its competitors, that loves the code junkies working 22-hour days to build world-changing products." makes me want to barf.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are the black boxes instead of images on purpose?

<http://imgur.com/fw52e>

<comment><USER7> Apparently JavaScript must be enabled if you want to see the pictures.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm not a fan of the overall design, but the way the logo disappears into the top bar (scroll slowly) is pretty darn cool.

</comment><comment><USER9> It's really not that bad. I hated the new Facebook layout before liking it again. Who knows how I'll feel in a few weeks.

It's all about metrics anyways. If this layout raises activity on site or visits, then good job. If not, I'm sure they'll do edits.

Why do we just bash TC like no other?

</comment><comment><USER10> And a follow-up post, _A Copy-And-Paste Hatemail Template_ [http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/the-techcrunch-redesign- a-c...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/11/the-techcrunch-redesign-a-copy-and- paste-hatemail-template/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Here's an extension to remove it :)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enejibegbgfghbnanp...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/enejibegbgfghbnanppenmkjenhjjdmn)

</comment><comment><USER12> Another great reason to ignore the site.

</comment><comment><USER13> Good thing I only read TC in a feed reader. Then I don't have to actually visit the site anymore.

</comment><comment><USER14> Impressed. Looks pretty good. But those titles with the green remind me of The Onion.

</comment><comment><USER15> Why do I think of Breitbart every time I think of TechCrunch?

</comment><comment><USER16> Why does loading TechCrunch take me 9 seconds? What exactly are they doing to cause such a slow load? Why does a page load for them require 330 requests?

<comment><USER17> I'm going to say without looking that's it's for ads. Oh and I'm sure that blocky logo isn't compressed at all, (same effect could have been done with the logo at 50x50 scaled up ;p)

<comment><USER18> Some browsers blur scaled up images so you don't get that nice blocky image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Mission Accomplished.

<comment><USER20> I LOL'd to that. Ah Bush. I should put that on my resume.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> and facebook comments too</comment>


If You Traveled Far Enough Through Space, Would You Return to Your Start Point? - rising-sky https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2018/10/12/if-you-traveled-far-enough-through-space-would-you-return-to-your-starting-point/ <comment><AUTHOR> In cosmology, there's a parameter called "curvature". If the curvature were slightly less than 1, the topology would be "closed", meaning it would be finite, and traveling in a straight line ends back where you started. This is like the surface of the Earth, but in 3 dimensions instead of 2. Triangle angles add up to greater than 180 degrees. If the curvature were equal to 1, the universe would be "flat", meaning it would be infinite and triangles would add up to 180. If the curvature were greater than 1, it would be "hyperbolic", meaning it would be infinite and triangles would add up to less than 180.

If I recall correctly, currently the best measurement of the curvature is 1 +/\- .02, so it's probably flat. What's interesting is if the shape was flat and the universe were truly infinite, there would be an infinite number of perfect copies of Earth, the closest of which would be within 10^10^23 meters, as noted by Max Tegmark (source: [http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html](http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/crazy.html))

<comment><USER2> Think about a torus-chess-board [0]. While it is locally flat, it is finite, unbounded and you would travel back where you started. Curvature cannot give a sound argument as to whether the universe is finite or infinite.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_chess#Horizontal_Cyli...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_chess#Horizontal_Cylinder_chess_and_Toroidal_chess)

<comment><USER3> The better term related to curvature would be if it's bounded or unbounded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Per Brock et al, 2000, yes: the universe is shaped exactly like the Earth. If you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were.

<comment><USER2> Do you have a link? I cannot find your reference.

<comment><USER5> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxSExvJ2L0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGxSExvJ2L0)

"The Universe is shaped exactly like the Earth, if you go straight long enough, you'll end up where you were."

Isaac Brock is the lead singer of Modest Mouse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No.

If you could there would be a few galaxies which would be about equidistant from us along both paths. Therefore we would notice a few double copies of the same galaxies. It would be similar to standing in the middle of two mirrors. IIRC scientists have already ruled out a universe with a "radius" less than some ridiculous number (like billions of light years).

There. Just saved you a click. This is old and well know. Why is Forbes writing about it now?

<comment><USER7> Nope. Our visible universe is bounded by the expansion of space that happens at the speed of light. That means we can only see a subset of the universe at any time.

<comment><USER8> But if you travel at less than the speed of light you'd never pass that anyway

<comment><USER9> If you traveled at the speed of light, you'd still never make it to the edge of the universe. The edge of the observable universe is moving away from us faster than the speed of light. [1]

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


A Brief Explanation of Facebook's Scary New iPhone Bug - <AUTHOR> https://gizmodo.com/a-brief-explanation-of-facebooks-scary-new-iphone-bug-1839808127 <comment><AUTHOR> It appears to just be a legitimate bug that opened the camera preview. Gizmodo does seem to love clickbait headlines recently.</comment>


Supreme Court won't hear dispute over Sherlock Holmes - <AUTHOR> http://www.bostonherald.com/business/media_marketing/2014/11/court_wont_hear_dispute_over_sherlock_holmes

<comment><AUTHOR> Previous discussions:

310 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6972411](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6972411)

89 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8139669](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8139669)

</comment><comment><USER2> Glad to hear this but it shouldn't have been necessary in the first place. The outcome was obvious.</comment>


Show HN: Satellizer – Authentication for AngularJS - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/sahat/satellizer

<comment><USER2> This is a very nice solution and API for the front-end. It took me a couple part-time months to put together a similar (not modularized) solution for a rewrite of Plunker. There is quite a bit of juggling of information to do to pass around the appropriate information between client, server and auth providers that seems to have been nicely abstracted.

There were three major challenges for me in my implementation and I'm wondering how these could be addressed with Satellizer:

1\. Anonymous content creation that can be attributed to a user upon sign-up or sign-in. On Plunker, anonymous users can create 'plunks' that will then attributed to them if they decide to register. This is important to allow streamlined user acquisition.

2\. Account merging when someone accidentally creates two different user accounts with different social identities. This gets weird when anonymous content creation is involved since someone could create content while signed out and would need all that content re-attributed when they sign in.

3\. Multi-provider authentication. In Plunker, certain features will only be available if the user has linked (for example) Dropbox. This means consumers of the api need to be able to add / remove social identities to / from users.

Hope to hear how you might attack these problems with something like Satellizer (or other people's approaches that have worked).

<comment><USER3> The account merging part is something your server should handle.

In my app I maintain a users table that has columns (google_account_id, facebook_account_id, twitter_account_id, etc), pointing to individual rows in a separate accounts tables (e.g. google_accounts, facebook_accounts, twitter_accounts etc). When a user adds an existing account_id, I take care of merging the two different _users_ rows, populating appropriately the account_id in one of the rows, then deleting the extraneous _users_ row. I also migrate the existing data referring to the to-be-deleted user row to the one I plan on keeping.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the reply. That is the approach I take. Users have one or more identities which seems to be the logical way of handling this regardless of the physical structure used to store the association.

While you gloss over it a bit, the 'migrate the existing data' part is a challenge of its own because it means that suddenly the auth component needs to either know every place where a user<->content association is made or you need some sort of queue set up to publish user merges to all parts of the app in a reliable and durable way so that they can process the migration themselves.

I would say that this is also a UI concern and therefore something that a service like this would need to handle because it should _not happen automatically_. When a user conflict is detected, the user should be able to make a decision via appropriate UI. We would not want two accounts being merged simply because of some degenerate case where someone logged into their account on a borrowed computer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I built something similar that's gained a bit of traction:

[https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/ng-token- auth](https://github.com/lynndylanhurley/ng-token-auth)

ng-token-auth comes with a Rails gem, and it's configurable to work with almost any API.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is a very, very nice project -- almost enough to pull me back from ReactJS back to AngularJS. Almost.

One question: they say it can be adapted to any Oauth1 or 2 provider, but doesn't the Oauth 2 provider have to support the Implicit Flow for this type of client-side app to work?

If so, is it true that Github doesn't support Implicit flow? (this is what I've read, and I've not found much on the web otherwise about what exact oauth flows Github supports)

<comment><AUTHOR> Satellizer gives you an illusion that you're doing an implicit grant flow by opening a popup and then magically you are signed-in. But authorization process is handled on the server: [https://github.com/sahat/satellizer/blob/master/examples/ser...](https://github.com/sahat/satellizer/blob/master/examples/server/node/server.js#L208)

I just implemented a GitHub sign-in and it took me only 8 minutes because on the server it was mostly copy-&-paste of the Facebook sign-in and on the client it's just:

      $authProvider.oauth2({
        name: 'github',
        clientId: 'xxxxxx',
        url: '/auth/github',
        authorizationEndpoint: 'https://github.com/login/oauth/authorize',
        redirectUri: window.location.origin
      });

Thank you. I like React too so perhaps someone could implement something like Satellizer that integrates with React.

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the explanation.

>I like React too so perhaps someone could implement something like Satellizer that integrates with React.

Indeed. And such a project could still make use of the server code of Satellizer, I'd imagine.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This looks neat!

It looks like there is a good amount of config for handling different providers. Have you check out OAuth.io and its opensource core oauthd?:

[https://github.com/oauth-io/oauthd](https://github.com/oauth-io/oauthd)

[https://github.com/oauth-io/oauth-js](https://github.com/oauth-io/oauth-js)

It's a simple node app and js sdk that lets you handle providers in a standardized way.

I created a ruby omniauth strategy that simplifies multiple provider support on the backend. A similar approach could be applied to any language:

[https://github.com/jgrowl/omniauth- oauthio](https://github.com/jgrowl/omniauth-oauthio)

</comment><comment><USER7> I really wish this had been around a month ago. I guess I learned a lot about angular by building it myself.

</comment><comment><USER8> I may be paranoid, but is there any security concern about doing authentification on the frontend ? Wouldn't the user be able to see exactly what is going on and intercept some sensitive information ?

<comment><USER9> Client-side token based authentication is pretty well used and tested. It's even being standardized as JWT (JSON Web Token):

[http://self-issued.info/docs/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web-token...](http://self- issued.info/docs/draft-ietf-oauth-json-web-token.html)

Additionally, there are quite a few benefits to using Token auth over cookie- based auth as well, such as not having to worry about CRSF protection:

[https://auth0.com/blog/2014/01/07/angularjs- authentication-w...](https://auth0.com/blog/2014/01/07/angularjs- authentication-with-cookies-vs-token/)

I'd say cookies have a greater risk of being intercepted and hijacked than a token-based system.

But every implementation has flaws even if the underlying concept has been vetted. But if you're protecting sensitive information, it's always good to hire a security expert to test your systems.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> It seems like a nice start. Who will do the security review?

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried implementing a token-based authentication system, and it worked fine for a while. Then we added a subdomain (login.mysite.com) for registering, and it all went to shit. They don't share the same localStorage, so keeping the tokens in sync can be tough.

<comment><USER12> Does it have to be a subdomain? Few people pay attention to whether they're logging in to login.mysite.com or mysite.com/login The few times I've tried to guess a web page's login address, I've tried both a login subdomain and a login directory.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Not working for me - got a 404 for [http://rawgit.com/sahat/satellizer/master/lib/satellizer.js](http://rawgit.com/sahat/satellizer/master/lib/satellizer.js)

<comment><USER14> I was wondering why the demo site wasn't working.. it 404'd on the js file.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How easy is this to use without AngularJS? Additionally, if not, does anyone know of any alternative JS (or perhaps Python) libraries for what Satellizer does?

<comment><AUTHOR> Satellizer is tightly coupled with Angular so I don't think there is much sense in using it without Angular. You can certaintly take server-side examples and re-implement satellizer.js in pure JavaScript but that is going to be a lot of work! The closest non-Angular alternative that I know of would be Torii ([https://github.com/Vestorly/torii/](https://github.com/Vestorly/torii/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I tried logging in with Twitter and wasn't redirected back to your app, so I wasn't able to log in. (Latest Chrome on OSX)

<comment><AUTHOR> I forgot to change the redirect url on dev.twitter.com from [http://127.0.0.1:3000](http://127.0.0.1:3000) to [http://satellizer.herokuapp.com](http://satellizer.herokuapp.com). It should be fixed now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is very helpful. How about handling validation and errors (e.g. unique account)?

<comment><USER2> It seems like a lot of this heavy lifting is left to api / backend implementors and is not explicitly addressed. I don't think that is a short- coming of the module but perhaps some additional documentation on best practices could be helpful.

<comment><AUTHOR> @pingburg @filearts You are right, unique account validation and error handling belong to the server. What Satellizer can do is catch an error through the $auth.authenticate().catch() promise and display it to the user. I will definitely update the documention very soon. The README of [https://github.com/sahat/hackathon- starter](https://github.com/sahat/hackathon-starter) could fit on a screen when I first posted it on Hacker News earlier this year; it is now 1300+ lines long.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I wonder: why Java and Spring? Do you consider other Java implementations?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have considered Play Framework and Dropwizard. Play it seems is better suited for Scala language and I don't know much about real-world usage of Dropwizard. Between Struts and Spring, Spring seems to have a more active community. I haven't done anything with the Java example yet so Spring can easily swapped for something else if you think that other framework is better. I am not a Java developer so I need someone's help on this one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Were was this a month ago. Had to do this for Play!, great work.

</comment><comment><USER20> Wow, this is pretty handy. Awesome work!

</comment><comment><USER21> Good work +1

</comment><comment><USER22> So, how would this work if I'm using Python-Social-Auth as the provider as an interface to Django?

Most sites implementing social auth don't do it in the client directly, but as an interface to the oauth and then just trusting that authentication as canon, while simultaneously invoking a non-oAuth login() method at the tail end of the oAuth login. Not sure how this relates directly.

That said, this is a FANtastic, and very necessary module, and hopefully it covers what I think is the most common use pattern.

<comment><AUTHOR> Satellizer is designed to be used without auth libraries such as Passport (Node), OmniAuth (Ruby). On Python-side all you need is the requests library. It is so by design to avoid relying on third-party libraries. Additionally, if I were to implement it with a server-side auth library there is no choice but to use full page redirects, i.e redirect to Facebook, authorize the app, redirect back to the app.

<comment><USER22> Thanks a million for the response. I think that's appropriate, but I've found sort of a hybrid solution that I was already working on before satellizer came out, incorporating a fix that looks vaguely like this:

[https://github.com/omab/python-social- auth/issues/68](https://github.com/omab/python-social-auth/issues/68)

That said, I'm working through piecing that together with satellizer, and I wanted to give you a huge thanks for including the server examples in so many languages, which ought to be of use.</comment></comment></comment>


Sparklines in OpenOffice.org Calc - <AUTHOR> http://extensions.services.openoffice.org/project/eurooffice-sparkline

<comment><USER2> Could somebody please submit this to the Patent Office? This seems to represent parklines in a spreadsheet" patent.</comment>


For Deaf Tennis Player, Sound Is No Barrier - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/sports/tennis/deaf-player-lee-duck-hee-south-korea.html?mc_cid=80af5b2eb3&mc_eid=a93f16eea4 <comment><USER2> I am deaf in one ear and played college tennis. I happen to be half-Korean also. I have known for a while that due to my deafness my balance is worse than the average persons and that is one scenario that is not mentioned in the article. I fail conventional balance tests where you close your eyes and have to stay up. I never thought about the sound of my opponents ball meaning anything as I couldn't decipher it clear enough to learn anything from that, but that might be useful. This article has made me realize that perhaps being deaf helped me with tennis. Perhaps it helped me read the game well as I had to rely on my vision and perhaps it resulted in me having better reflexes than I would have had if I wasn't deaf. I did have the best reflexes on the team fwiw but that's a small sample size (12 players). I struggled to hit overheads well compared to players at my level. I would feel disoriented when the ball was in the air and I was looking up and would be praying that my smash would go in lol. I felt I had less control over that shot compared to the people I was playing. I hope you might find my thoughts insightful on a small level :)

<comment><USER3> Not all people who don't hear well have a problem with balance. Of course because the mechanism for the balance sense is co-located with the hearing sense in the vestibular organ, medical difficulties in the vestibular organ often affect both senses. But this is not always the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> A long, but interesting article about a deaf tennis player excelling in a sport that puts a value on hearing. I can certainly understand how hearing is an important part, as described by Andy Roddick in the article, "that his first reaction to an opponent's shots comes from his hearing, as does his initial information about the shot coming toward him." But I agree with the author that this may be a case of the majority of players and coaches being able to hear and thus the sport puts more value on that then being able to predict (based on visual cues) where your opponent is going to hit the ball.

Kudos to Lee Duck-hee changing the sport.

>>People who were born deaf or hard of hearing may have a stronger sense of intuition in general, and tend to see subtle clues in a person's face or body language better than people with normal hearing," Stringer said. "They are more visual, because when one sense is compromised, other senses are heightened to compensate. If my hypothesis is correct, people who are deaf or hard of hearing may have an advantage in tennis because they can pick up visual cues faster and better as to their opponent's plans, and may have better reflexes because they see things sooner.

<comment><USER5> Being unilateral deaf, I completely agree with your second statement.

There is one simple situations, where most of my hearing friends understand it: Traffic. Most people rely on their hearing heavily to navigate through cities. I don't. For me there is basically changing nothing with the upcoming electric cars. But I often grasp hard into my friends clothes, when there is an electric car coming and we're crossing roads. Meanwhile, I just say: "Oh, a Tesla." (which is not that common on European roads) and people stop. Way easier, than grabbing as much people as possible. Which is usually only two of the group.

Same for sports. In road racing, I'm very well at anticipating attacks and movements in the peloton. Often not only split seconds earlier than others, but whole seconds.

Besides these small upsides, I would give a lot to be hearing. There are more (socially) tough downsides to it [1].

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateral_hearing_loss#Profou...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilateral_hearing_loss#Profound_unilateral_hearing_loss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> > In an era of increasingly physical competition, only one player in the ATP > top 50, 21st-ranked David Ferrer, is as short as Lee.

What a funny way to describe Ferrer, who was easily the best non-GOAT-level player on the tour for a large part of this century. Most players would kill have his game. All is not lost if you are 5'9.

</comment><comment><USER3> Being Deaf myself I add that Deaf people often «read» people. I imagine that Lee just reads his opponents - for example the way how one swings the racket can be perceived much earlier than the sound of the ball hitting the racket.</comment>