The Beer Fingerprinting Project – how AI could create your next pint - <AUTHOR> https://news.microsoft.com/europe/2017/12/05/beer-fingerprinting-project-artificial-intelligence-create-next-pint/ <comment><USER2> Judging by most craft beer companies, the AI should just add hops, then add double that amount of hops, then add some extra hops for flavor.

<comment> 52-6F-62 _Somebody 's_ malty today

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> as a microbrew drinker, no thanks - I actually enjoy being able to try new beers, and find myself looking forward to when the taps change over and something new and interesting comes on.

Homogenizing beer, which is what I feel this will move toward, helps bring the macro back into micro, and not something I'm looking forward to.

as a technologist, the tech sounds like a repurposing of AI paintings, much like the recent AI knitting (I know I'm simplifying it), which could end up with some novel results during the initial training, but I'd still rather enjoy the experience than drink more of the end result.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't there a wine club already doing this that purchases a disproportionate amount of ads on Reddit?

</comment><comment><USER5> These algorithms can easily be trapped in local minimas and maximas because it lacks full vision. What's most frustrating is that while it can predict or find interesting cases overlooked by humans, it also tends to do things that humans find stupidly obvious as wrong.

This is why it'll just create something like a bud light, because it sells so well.

</comment><comment><USER6> I doubt there is much gain to be realized here especially when factoring in cost.</comment>


Google+ Failed Because of Real Names - <AUTHOR> http://emergentchaos.com/archives/2012/01/google-failed-because-of-real-names.html

<comment><USER2> I can't see how google+ "failed" being smaller doesn't yet mean something/someone failed. Already google+ had established its own nieche and it seems it's doing well, from this point on i belive it will only get better and better. G+ has its own strenghts and unique features like hangouts, desktop sharing, and different approach to content curation, I don't even have to mention integration with other Google services.</comment>


Review My Startup: ZestyLogos - <AUTHOR> http://www.zestylogos.com

<comment><USER2> Not to knock your website at all, I think it is really well designed, neat and I think that affordable quality logo design is a very important service that many people need and do not know where to turn for help.

Unless you are outsourcing the designs, similar to 99designs and company, I wouldn't consider the business a startup by traditional definition.

When I read the description that PG gives to what it means to be a startup it really opened my eyes and was definitely a turning point in the way that I thought about designing products.

"A company has to be more than small and newly founded to be a startup. There are millions of small businesses in America, but only a few thousand are startups. To be a startup, a company has to be a product business, not a service business. By which I mean not that it has to make something physical, but that it has to have one thing it sells to many people, rather than doing custom work for individual clients. Custom work doesn't scale. To be a startup you need to be the band that sells a million copies of a song, not the band that makes money by playing at individual weddings and bar mitzvahs."

So if you are looking to be a startup, you will need think about how you can mass produce the designs. That being said not all companies are startups, and that is fine - sometimes it's just good to know the difference between the two...I know it helped me a lot. Again, think the website is great and I don't mean this as a negative.

from: <http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html>

EDIT: I didn't mean this to be a negative at all, I think anyone who takes the initiative to create something and has the drive to actually get it started has done something great. I wish there were more people who actually did shit like this rather than just talked about it.

<comment><AUTHOR> [Updated. The first version of this comment didn't address some important points.]

Actually, I am outsourcing the designs. I've gathered a team of designers (five of them, currently) who design the logos for me on a commission basis, allowing me to scale my expenses as I make sales. The web platform I have set up allows clients to communicate with designers directly through the design process.

As this is the first version of my site, I am offering only a one-size-fits- all service to clients right now. As I work on marketing v1.0, however, I am also developing v2.0, a logo design _marketplace_.

One of the many good questions that has been raised in these comments is how to compete with established design marketplaces. Here are some of the ways I have considered.

\- Offer equivalent services with a lower fee. \- Add additional services, such as an hour of brand consulting before the logo is designed, or assistance in placing the logo on the client website/etc. \- Providing a more complete branding package with letterhead, stationery, and website design.

In what other ways could I compete? Perhaps the most fundamental question is whether this market is so crowded and has such established/successful companies in it already that I should not attempt to direct in the logo market completely. In that case, what other niches have you seen that are similar but less crowded? I am not opposed to pivoting.

An open question is how I will be able to maintain customer satisfaction and also keep logo quality at a high level, while scaling my services.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> \-- This seems like a crowded space, how do you differentiate yourself? I was looking for an "About Us" section to tell me why you're different than 99 Designs, Logo Snap, etc.

\-- The price point seems off compared to other options. For example, Logo Company offers logo, stationary and business cards at roughly the same cost. Do you offer better quality? Multiple designers? A more personalized experience?

\-- Once you get off the ground, a few customer testimonials wouldn't be a bad thing. Also, the option to actually talk to a person about your logo design throughout the process is something attractive to those of us who would like to actually interact with a human being.

\-- The site is fairly broken for me, but that is probably because I'm at work and we're forced to use IE7(!)

<comment><USER4> Just trying to help, not trying to dissuade you from doing this.

As someone who is in the market for logo design, what strikes me is this.

Currently, I if I go to 99designs or CrowdSpring or whatnot, I can get 30 something designers to submit ideas for basically the same price point. With your site, I get 6 versions from you. So roughly, I can get 5 times more submissions from other sites.

And since I don't know you (not meant to be offensive), it "feels" like I'm then paying a premium for your services, and it's not clear why I would want to pay a premium.

How would you respond? Keep in mind that lower price isn't necessarily the answer.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's interesting you use plain text for your ZestyLogos logo, yet sell a logo design service.

You could use some testimonials. Coupon for HN?

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point about the testimonials. Here's the HN offer: 60% off for 1 week (until Nov. 4, 2010). That means $100 per logo. To get the discount, use the code "HNDiscount" in the referral field of the submission form.

<comment><AUTHOR> P.S. The payments page is not equipped for discounts yet (this is an MVP, ahem), so I will send you an email with instructions for completing the payment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Copy promises scalable vectors, then lists 4 raster formats as what you get.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for pointing that out. I've added SVG. Also, is PSD really a raster format?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Ignore the stuff about this not being a startup. It's you, striking out. Good for you.

That aside, what are you going to do to promote yourself over and above 99designs and co? It looks like a crowded market to me, so how will you make yourself stand out?

A couple of questions, if you don't mind me being very intrusive:

How many $249 gigs a month do you need to be profitable?

How will you maintain your margins as you (hopefully) grow?

Best of luck though with the site and service.

<comment><AUTHOR> Good questions. How many sales I need per month to be profitable depends on how much I spend on advertising, which is my main expense. If I can find a better advertising method (I'm currently using Trada.com for PPC), then I will be able to reach profitability faster.

As far as maintaining margins as I grow, there should not be a huge problem with dropping margins, unless I have to drop my price point. I will be hiring an account manager/customer service person once I have enough sales per month to make it worth it.

Perhaps I have missed some crucial details - please feel free to point these out.

Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please don't get my review as negativity I may sound a little harsh but I'm genuinely trying to give helpful feedback.

1\. Lose the free theme. I think some 'startups' can get away with a crappy generic design when they sell a good compelling product. In your case, _your design skills are your product_. So you are giving a really bad demo right away.

2\. You're selling visuals, so go the simple visual route. Showcase your demo logos first in your page, maybe in a slideshow. Big beautiful crisp logos. Then a big, clear call to action: "Get a custom logo for $249".

3\. Are you a trained designer? Please don't take this badly, but your demo logos are not as good as they can be. Take this advice from a 10-Year designer who has come to accept that he sucks at logos. I think the problem is with the typography, it looks odd-spaced and rushed. You need to spend more time refining your type skills.

4\. Your characters and symbols are very good, though. The bear is funny and well-drawn and the cupcake is cute. I'll make a wild guess and say that's your strength. You should feature your strengths.

5\. You really need to make a KILLER ZestyLogos logo. And make sure it's very Zesty (whatever that means).

Good luck pal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestions!

1\. I'm not that great at CSS. Do you have any suggestions for where I could get help with (1)? 2\. Yes, I do need to have a killer ZestyLogos logo. That's my next priority.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> the good:

1) your opening text gets right to the point.

the bad:

1) the front page text is a little hard to read. i think the text color blends into the background too much.

2) your layout looks like a wordpress blog template. really really boiler plate. this is hardly the kind of site i want to pay $250 for a logo. you've got a todo list in the top right ("clean my deks", "feed the cat", "save the planet"), what does any of this have to do with logo design? it also takes up 20%! of the page.

3) your faq page is coming soon. either do it or get rid of it. this makes your website seem new and that's not the kind of website i want to be paying $250.

4) you have no logo yourself?

5) your order page is way too big/long. collect some small info first and then have a conversation with me that helps you answer all those questions.

</comment><comment><USER10> There are some good sample logos on the page, but the overall design reads more as a vanity site/portfolio than as a marketing page.

Make every element on the page justify its presence. "Hey, coffee-stained TODO list in the top right corner, why do you exist? How are you helping me sell logos?"

Consider finding someone to do a thorough edit of your marketing copy. Lots of good ideas in there, but it's uneven.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1)i don't like the fact that you use a plain text instead of a AWESOME logo for your own brand ...

2)you are probably using (i bet you are) a stock theme, from somebody that supposed to sell me a unique logo i expect him to be capable to design a nice site ...

3)I liked 3 of the logos (candice jane cakes , bad news bakers , twarket) the rest didn't looked amateurish

</comment><comment><USER12> I think you need a more neutral website, with a very professional logo to attract clients. The current style is very niche,

</comment><comment><USER13> Where is the Zesty Logos logo?

</comment><comment><USER14> Looks interesting although I like a more minimalistic design. Great logos!

</comment><comment><USER15> And if I don't like any of the 6 concepts you create? I'm just SOL?

</comment><comment><USER16> You have some great talent! ... fav. logo: Undropped.com.</comment>


A few things to remember while coding in Python - <AUTHOR> http://satyajit.ranjeev.in/2012/05/17/python-a-few-things-to-remember.html <comment><USER3> It's worth explaining why mutable defaults are bad.

The problem with mutable defaults is that they are evaluated once only when the function is defined. Each time the function is called you'll be using the same mutable variable that was created during function definition.

<comment><USER4> > It's worth explaining why mutable defaults are bad

They can also be good. Here's an example from the Reddit discussion, showing how a mutable default can be used to very neatly and cleanly add memorization to a function:

       def fib(n, m={}):
          if n not in m:
             m[n] = 1 if n < 2 else fib(n-1) + fib(n-2)
          return m[n]

<comment><USER5> Is that clean and neat, or weird and inscrutable? Will it be clear to /anyone/ reading that code what it's doing?

<comment><USER4> I'm a Python newbie, and that code was immediately clear and obvious to me when I read it.

I won't say it would be clear _anyone_ that reads it, because we live in a world where people who claim to be programmers can't do fizz buzz.

<comment><USER6> I'm a Python veteran, and, if you do it like this, I'll shoot you.

Add a @memoize decorator and do it there, you need to always be as obvious as possible. Compare:

        @memoize
        def fibonacci(n): pass

        def fibonacci(n, memory=[]): pass

You don't even need documentation for the first example.

<comment><USER7> Starting from Python 3.2 there is a builtin decorator: [http://docs.python.org/dev/library/functools.html#functools....](http://docs.python.org/dev/library/functools.html#functools.lru_cache)

<comment><USER6> That's fantastic, thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Generally most use this:_

        freqs = {}
        for c in "abracadabra":
            try:
                freqs[c] += 1
            except:
                freqs[c] = 1

If this is really the common idiom, I'd say this is a sign that professional programming has yet to fully mature as a field.

 _Some may say a better solution would be:_

        freqs = {}
        for c in "abracadabra":
            freqs[c] = freqs.get(c, 0) + 1

Okay, so I understood immediately what was going on with the 2nd bit of code.

 _Rather go for the collection type defaultdict_

        from collections import defaultdict
        freqs = defaultdict(int)
        for c in "abracadabra":
            freqs[c] += 1

As a non-pythonista, the 3rd bit of code, I had to Google "defaultdict" to figure out. It's only a couple of seconds to Google, and a professional should know this tidbit, but it seems like premature optimization to me. This brings to mind this post:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3995185>

As a programmer, one's most valuable resource is brainpower. Supposedly, a programmer's most important goal is writing clear code. Look around at what goes on in our industry. There's a lot of our most valuable resource spent on showing off our cleverness, not directed towards the clearest code. To me this is like spending money to show one can spend money or playing an instrument to show off dexterity instead of producing gorgeous sounds.

(I think this starts in school and other environments where one is motivated to show off one's coding chops.)

Most of the complexity in our field accrues like litter: a bit here and a bit there. I think it says something about the culture of the folks who live there.

<comment><USER9> I agree with the spirit of your argument.

In fact, I almost came here to write a parallel comment: I'm really not sure that reversing the list 'a' with 'a[::-1]' is better than 'reversed(a)', which usually effectively does the same thing, but whose meaning is much more obvious.

But, while I agree with your general point, in the specific case of 'defaultdict', I differ.

I use 'defaultdict' all the time and I'm glad its there. It feels cleaner than 'freqs.get(c,0)'. I define the default value in one place, and then the interface to my datastructure is simpler; hence as I continue writing, I can spend more of my brainpower in the problem domain.

Its a small detail, but its one less thing to think about when writing a complex algorithm.

<comment><USER10> reversed(a) and a[::-1] are _not_ equivalent. The former produces an iterator over the given list (with all the mutability dangers that come with it), while the latter produces a copied list. For plain iteration, you're correct, reversed() is better (similar to how xrange vs. range was back in the day); however, for reversing something and keeping it around, the slice syntax is better.

        >>> reversed([1, 2, 3])
        <listreverseiterator object at 0x107265650>
        >>> [1, 2, 3][::-1]
        [3, 2, 1]

To clarify your point, list(reversed(a)) and a[::-1] are equivalent. It's a slightly subtle point, but _extremely_ important if you're keeping the result of reversed() around for any length of time. If you're just iterating at the moment that you use it, yes, they're effectively equivalent.

<comment><USER11> list(reversed(a))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Overall, this is a nice post. There are two quibbles though.

1). For the most part, "c = collections.Counter()" is almost always better than "c = defaultdict(int)"

* Counter only supplies missing values rather than automatically inserting them upon lookup.

* The Counter version is much clearer about what it is trying to do. The defaultdict version is cryptic to the uninitiated (understanding it entails knowing that it has a __missing__ method to insert values computed by a factory function and that int() with no arguments returns zero).

* The Counter version provides helpful methods such as "most_common(n)".

2). An ellipsis in Python is normally used in a much different way than shown in the article (it's used for an extended slice notation in NumPy).

<comment><USER13> Unfortunately, Counter is not available before 2.7, so for many people it's a bit too early to require it.

<comment><USER11> Two years old is a long enough.

<comment><USER14> OSX 10.6.8 still has Python 2.6 as the system Python.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15>
        halve_evens_only = lambda nums: map(lambda i: i/2, filter(lambda i: not i%2, nums))

I still find it rather silly that python doesn't supper a nice list map/filter; it could be so much nicer

        nums.filter(lambda i: i%2 == 0).map(lambda i: i/2)

If they did, even including the annoyingly long-to-type "lambda". List comprehensions are cool and all, but do not really scale visually (i.e. get rather messy) when you have more than one map and filter step.

These arbitrary break-away from OO method style into module+data style (len(L) is another!) are one of the things I hate most about Python. There are some reasons for doing so, but a pure-OO (like Scala) or pure-method+data (like F#) would have saved me many a runtime error.

<comment><USER16> the D language supports that kind of syntax

nums.filter!(i => i%2 == 0).map!(i => i/2);

<comment><USER17> To elaborate, this is because of D's Uniform Function Call Syntax (<http://www.drdobbs.com/blogs/cpp/232700394>) - any function that takes an object as first argument can be called as though it were a method of that object; "map" and "filter" are actually functions in the std.algorithm module. It's a pretty neat trick and although in principle it could make things harder to reason about I haven't had any problems with it so far.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Another handy one I saw recently:

      varname, = [x for x in l if predicate_with_single_truth_value(x)]

The comma after varname is an implicit assert that the list comprehension only contains one element.

<comment><USER19> Trailing commas are really easy to miss. When reading this line of code, I did not notice it immediately; I originally assumed that varname was being assigned a list.

This sort of code would be very confusing when I'm just quickly reading through a procedure trying to find the potential bug.

<comment><USER20> Agreed. It could be written much more clearly in my opinion like this:

        [varname] = [x for x in l if predicate_with_single_truth_value(x)]

<comment><USER21> I had to check that on the REPL. I'm surprised that even works and I can't think of a good reason why should list syntax be allowed as a lvalue, in addition to tuple syntax.

<comment><USER18> It's called destructuring assignment. It's been around for a while.

<http://dunsmor.com/lisp/onlisp/onlisp_22.html>

<comment><USER21> I mean why would you want to allow _both_ list and tuple syntax for exactly the same semantics, when either of them would be enough.

<comment><USER20> I just wish we had destructing assignment for other types as well. And maybe a proper pattern matching!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Till now I had never seen Ellipsis. It seems very similar to slice notation [:]. Found an StackOverflow comment [1] that has more details about usage of Ellipsis in slicing higher dimensional array numpy.

[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118370/how-do-you-use- the...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/118370/how-do-you-use-the-ellipsis- slicing-syntax-in-python)

<comment><USER23> Here's a rare example of obfuscated python, deceptively called "Python's Ellipsis Explained": <http://blog.brush.co.nz/2009/05/ellipsis/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> There is a builtin function called `reversed`. You'd better remember that than the "useful" [::-1] idiom.

The recommendation on `iteritems` had better be generalized to include `iterkeys`, `itervalues`, and other opportunities for using iterators rather than building lists. A note that the 'iter...' versions are removed in Python 3 (because iterator behaviour becomes the default) would be appropriate here.

In relation to collections, itertools is a great module to get familiarized with. I import * from this module. I consider functions there as if they were builtins.

"Conditional assignment" is a weak and misleading name. "Conditional expressions" is more descriptive. There is no assignment in

      print "yes" if some_condition else "no"

as the article acknowledges later.

Using Ellipsis for getting all items is a violation of the Only One Way To Do It principle. The standard notation is [:].

I commend the good intentions of the writer, but I'm surprised that this article got 144 upvotes in HN.

<comment><USER24> list(reversed(xs)) to make a copy rather than a view, though

</comment></comment><comment><USER25>
      Generally, most use this:
        freqs = {}
        for c in "abracadabra":
            try:
                freqs[c] += 1
            except:
                freqs[c] = 1

Who does this?!

<comment><USER26> Not only is it overly-verbose and ultimately unnecessary (as shown by the alternative that follows in the article) but this mechanism is actually broken. For instance if "freqs" were data given to you from somewhere else and "freqs[c]" happened to have a type that cannot legally have 1 added to it, you'd want to see this error. The "except:" however will absorb any and all exception types and respond to all of them by setting the value to 1.

<comment><USER18> Also, raising exceptions used to be quite slow, which could hurt for a sparse counting set. Don't know whether that's still the case.

<comment><USER27> Also Exceptions should be used in "exceptional" circumstances and not as part of normal flow.

<comment><USER28> One exception (teehee!) to the rule: file operations and other things where atomicity matters. Example code:

      if not os.path.exists("foo"):
          os.mkdir("foo")

That introduces a race condition. If foo does not exist on the first line but is created by something else on the second line then this will raise an exception. The proper code is:

      import errno
      try:
          os.mkdir("foo")
      except OSError as exc:
          if exc.errno != errno.EEXIST:
              raise

That doesn't have the race condition.

(Yes, that's wordy. Eventually they plan to add to Python 3 a fancier exception hierarchy described at <http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3151/> , which lets you filter at a more fine-grained level, as below.)

      try:
          os.mkdir("foo")
      except FileExistsError:
          pass

<comment><USER26> It's good to point out the race condition.

To solve this particular problem in future code more compactly however, note that Python 3.2 (finally) adds an "exist_ok" Boolean keyword parameter to the multi-directory variant, os.makedirs(). In other words, calling os.makedirs("mydir", exist_ok=True) will silently ignore existing directories and only raise if other errors occur.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> My only complaint with this list is conditional assignments. They make it harder for me to understand the code. I am used to the if being at the start and when it isn't it takes more time for me to parse what the real meaning of the line is.

<comment><USER30> One of the reasons Python stopped being my favorite programming language was the appearance of what seemed to me to be Perl envy. I hadn't seen conditional assignments before, but they don't exactly make me regret that choice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Probably best not to use iteritems, in python 3, it won't be there, "the dict.iterkeys(), dict.iteritems() and dict.itervalues() methods are no longer supported."

<comment><USER32> The iter* methods appear in Python 3, just without the iter prefix. Therefore it is good to use them in Python 2 because that makes it possible to translate the code automatically with the 2to3 script. Otherwise possibly superfluous list conversion might get added, e.g., list(d.keys()).

<comment><USER33> .keys(), .views() and .items() in Python3 return a memoryview which happen to be iterators but do far more.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Satyajit Ranjeev:

Since this is posted by the you as the author, I'll comment here: some JavaScript is running on page load that blanks the entire page in Safari and iCab on iPad, making the page turn white except for the bullet symbols, and making the article unreadable.

I was able to read it only by disabling JavaScript or parsing it with Readability. (Both disable my ability to comment about this bug there.)

</comment><comment><USER35> There is one slight mistake there - saying that [::-1] is a special case. An empty value in a slice implies the beginning or the end, and when the stride is negative, the beginning is the last index, while the end is 0 - <USER2> [::-2] for example start from the last element and go down in jumps of two.

</comment><comment><USER36> You should think of adding the use of `with` context managers.

</comment><comment><USER37> isn't items more efficient than iteritems when you are going to go over all the items for sure on a short list?

<comment><USER18> No, never. The items method generates an intermediate list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> PHP: Facebook.

Python: ?

Ruby: ?

<comment><USER39> Python: Reddit.

Ruby: Twitter.</comment></comment>


Head asleep, body awake - <AUTHOR> https://alvinalexander.com/misc/head-awake-body-asleep-hear-myself-snoring/ <comment><USER2> Not exactly the same, but I've gone through sleep paralysis 4 or 5 times in the last 10 years and it remains one of the most terrifying things I've experienced. It happened upon waking up from a short nap, and always while I was on my back (I usually sleep on my stomach or side at night).

The first time I went through it I had no idea what was going on and for the ~60 seconds that it lasted I went from thinking if this was really happening to whether I would be able to tell my family I loved them again. The subsequent 3 or 4 times I experienced it (after extensive research following the first episode) I repeated the thought that this was temporary and would go away soon forcefully until it in fact did after 60-90 seconds.

I know this is an evolutionary defense mechanism our brain/brain stem have developed over time, but wow is it awful if you ever go through it.

<comment><USER3> Did you have the sense that someone was in the room? Reports of an ominous presence often go along with sleep paralysis.

<comment><USER4> I've had a whole range of hallucinations from it, visual, physical and auditory, eventually I tended to get the paralysis part less and less but still have the hallucinations.

Things like the feeling of someone on your back grasping you and talking into your ear while trying to fall asleep. Sitting up awake in the morning and seeing fully formed objects floating in the room like a floating filing cabinet, fully formed person in the room not a "Shadowperson". Auditory ones usually happen as you're falling asleep and its all voices you know sorta talking gibberish sentences.

Around the same period of time it started I also began having lucid dreams too, generally always had a bit of trouble sleeping.

<comment><USER5> Ah crap, I only had it once and that Shadowperson was too close to my ear, whispering gibberish. I felt warmth of its breath, I think it was literally the fear which woke me up..

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, Richard Feynman recounts a similar "drifting" of the location of the ego while in a sensory deprivation tank:

"I tried and after a while I got my ego to go down through my neck into the middle of my chest. When a drop of water came down and hit me on the shoulder, I felt it "up there," above where "I" was. Every time a drop came I was startled a little bit, and my ego would jump back up through the neck to the usual place."

[https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg](https://pastebin.com/42YhjjYg)

<comment><USER7> Thanks, a nice read.

There are commercial versions of these around in various places; we have one here in Portland, Oregon. I haven't tried it yet but it seems like a very interesting experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I used this state for lucid dreaming quite a bit. It's actually the opposite: the brain is starting to dream but hasn't forgotten where it is yet. So you can 'get up' slowly and walk around while your brain imagines the perceptive inputs. I can't do this in any 'normal life' state, only when isolated in strange places (military deployments).

</comment><comment><USER9> So weird -- when did we all decide to start saying "I was laying in bed" instead of "I was lying in bed"? I have noticed this shift over the past few years.

Laying has always been past tense "That day I lay in bed for hours" or transitive "I lay the books down". Chickens also could be laying in bed, if eggs are coming out of them. Lying has always been intransitive "I was lying in bed". But nowadays, "I was laying in bed" is almost all I see.

<comment><USER10> You should be putting punctuation inside the quote when it ends a sentence.

Single quotes, not double quotes, should be used in your comment since you are not completely and directly quoting your source.

You should not be capitalising the first letter of a quote when it occurs after the beginning of a sentence.

These are just some of the grammatical errors you've made in two paragraphs. I've probably made some too. It's pointless to discuss these things outside academic contexts as long as the text can still be understood.

<comment> lone-commenter Those are _typographic_ eccentricities, to be pedant :)

And they're not even that uncommon on the Internet and amongst tech people. (See the Jargon file[1], for example.)

But I get your point: pedantry is often needless, and sometimes even lacks proper justification (see taejo's comment). But it's difficult to stop seeing errors when you see them, so I would forgive the parent for being _that Hacker News guy_.

[1] [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing- style.html](http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/writing-style.html)

<comment><USER10> No, it's English grammar. (EDIT: Actually it's not. See, there are mistakes everywhere. It's not typographic either though.)

There's nothing to forgive. My comment was instruction on being a better reader/listener.

Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and you will absorb more information.

<comment> lone-commenter > Focus on the things people are saying and not nitpicking their delivery and > you will absorb more information.

I agree. Form is not so important.

<comment><USER10> It's something poor students/learners do. You spend all your time looking for minor errors in instruction or text so you can 'win' while missing the actual lesson or overarching idea. I am definitely not innocent of this as a former high school dropout lol. Cheers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I did some things in Alaska before where I used yoga techniques to very > slowly fall asleep, and I was able to stay awake while my sense of hearing > and sense of touch went away

I would love to be able to "sleep" while preserving consciousness. Willingly losing consciousness terrifies me. It's like death. You are physically unable to observe the moment you transition from consciousness to unconsciousness, because observing inplies consciousness. Sleeping is basically leaping into the void.

<comment><USER12> lookup WILD (wake induced lucid dream) it's basically the practice of remaining conscious while falling asleep - techniques for dipping your toes in the void instead of leaping in head first

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I turn into a zombie when nearly asleep. You can help me stand up, order me to do things and I will obey with no memories of it happening. If you order me to go to another room (e.g. the bedroom, as my girlfriend does), I will be very confused next morning.

<comment><USER14> Confused that you woke up in the bedroom? Do you not normally sleep there?

<comment><USER13> Confused how I appeared there - even though I can deduce it now. It's a very strong feeling of missing information that does not go away even after she tells me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I have a weird experience sometimes when waking up. It's not sleep paralysis, at least I don't think so, it feels more like a deep meditation.

The only way to describe it is that I (my mind) is working at two different levels. At one I am dreaming or thinking of something and at another level I am observing the dreams of the first "I".

Really hard to explain. Does anyone else have this happen or know the phenomenon?

<comment><USER7> I think I've had something similar a number of times, like daydreaming while another part of me is disengaged, although in my case not really observing in any active sense just half asleep in a different way :/.

I think this may be related to altered thalamus activity (less relaying) during sleep and meditation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I have noticed that the senses detach when I'm sleeping with hands on my chest too. In our community, it's believed that demons possess you if you sleep with hands on chest. Probably its because of this kind of feeling. Weird, indeed.

<comment><USER17> For me it's vision and hearing that seems to go; I'm aware that I'm still awake, but my mind has drifted off elsewhere and isn't processing any visual / auditory things anymore. Mostly if I'm dozing off in front of the TV.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've had my body fall asleep while my mind was awake before, but not the opposite. It's a very odd sensation feeling your body snore of it's own accord, with your breathing rate slowing down, hearing sounds in the environment. This happened a couple of times while I was trying to learn how to move from the waking state into the dreaming state (WILD technique in lucid-dreaming parlance). I managed it once, but it was a lot of work for me (lots of others can do it much easier than I can).

</comment><comment><USER19> Objectively you can only hear through your cochlea. You can sense vibrations through your skin but that is very different to hearing yourself snore. My guess is that the author's ears were in such a position that it appeared to his brain that the sound was coming from above their head. Combined with knowing that snoring comes from your mouth/nose and with the author's eyes closed his brain could be tricked into thinking it was "hearing from the body".

<comment><USER20> i hate feeling my own heartbeat or a situation when i realise that I'm actually breathing, Cause when that happens I'd attempt to maintain my breathing rate manually it's awful asf.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Sleep paralysis is quite useful for lucid dreaming, as once you're in that state, you can transition to a lucid dream easily.

</comment><comment><USER22> It's fascinating to me how the author describes this as a wondrous and curious experience. I feel like that's something that many people, me included, would imagine in a nightmare. Being awake but not in control, cognizant of your own self and body. That's something straight out of philosophical horror stories.

</comment><comment><USER23> I'm not sure what it's called, but I once experienced being trapped in the dream. I knew I was dreaming and had full control over my actions, but I just could not wake up. I was very young then, and remember I resorted to jumping of a high fall. That woke me up, and I was happy it was only a dream.

<comment><USER24> Sounds like a lucid dream. I've had it a few times, last week I had one where I was really stressed about losing my backpack, and in my dream I said to myself "I don't want to be stressed about this, it's just a backpack, and I'm in a dream anyway", it was at that point where I realized I was dreaming so said to myself "so...if you don't want to be stressed about this, just wake up then", and upon waking, I was laughing at myself over how silly the experience was.

It's quite fun, if you've done it once before, maybe you want to try it again?

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Mr. Robot vibe.

<comment><USER26> Mind awake, body asleep.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wonder if this may have to do with the "second brain" that scientists claim exists in the gut: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second- brain/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Learning to astral project is worth the effort.

<comment><USER29> "astral projection" has no basis in objective reality

<comment><USER30> I'm curious about the 'objective reality' concept. Care to explain?

<comment><USER29> The onus of explaining is on the person claiming astral projection without any proof of basis in reality, not on the person being skeptical of those claims. It's called the burden of evidence.

<comment><USER12> astral projection is just oobe and "experience" implies subjectivity w/no claim of objectivity and no corresponding onus or burden or anything</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When do you need to get incorporated? - <AUTHOR>

I want to sell a virtual product (ebook, templates, etc) or a web service. Is it a bad idea to start out just selling it under my name, or do I have to get incorporated and have an official company first?<p>Also, at what point is it a good idea to pay for lawyers to do whatever necessary things they do (maybe write a terms of service, etc?) <comment><USER2> Formation of an entity, whether a corporation, partnership, or LLC, is usually driven by three concerns:

1) liability protection; 2) tax compliance and structuring; and 3) establishment of ownership.

1 - Whether the first factor is a major concern for you is going to depend on where you live and work, where your customers reside, and the nature of your business. Compared to a trucking company, manufacturer, or other brick-n- mortar business, the need for liability protection is likely to be less if the primary product is a web service. Of course, if your ebook is titled "how to build a rail gun in your back yard with toothpicks and electricity" you might want a little more liability protection :)

2 - Tax advantages are very individualized decisions and you'd probably want to consult an accounting or tax professional in your area to determine how this affects you. But in general, if you plan to start out small this will be a less important consideration.

3 - Establishment of ownership is crucial when you have more than one founder. But if this is just you, the concern about structuring ownership is reduced.

Ultimately, it's a personal decision as to whether the benefits of having a formal structure are worth the cost in time and money to have one prepared. But if any of the factors listed above are important to your business, then you'll want to at least consult an attorney and weigh your options.

<comment><USER3> I just want to put in a pre-order for "how to build a rail gun in your back yard with toothpicks and electricity"!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You may find this post that I wrote helpful -- Choice of Entity for Entrepreneurs: <http://bit.ly/btQa0F>. Cheers, Scott (@ScottEdWalker)

</comment><comment><USER5> I would say, if you're selling a pure product and not a service, you could wait to incorporate. Liability is more of an issue if you're working directly with clients or have a product that is intrinsically more risky.</comment>


Show HN: My 2-Weekend project, KungFu To-Do. Free for first 20 HN visitors - <AUTHOR> http://kftodo.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is what I've been working on the last two weekends.

Why another to-do app? Because all the other ones are too complicated. First 20 visitors from HN get a free upgrade to a premium account by visiting this URL while logged in: <http://kftodo.com/hackernews>

I'd love to hear your feedback. I built this for my own use, so it has the features I want (and don't want), but there's gotta be other people that have similar preferences to me. Yes, it's built mostly by assembling components like jquery, stripe, and twitter bootstrap. But how else am I supposed to build something like this in my spare time in a couple weekends?

Please tell me if you like the UI and the simplicity, and if it has a shot of being useful to you.

</comment><comment><USER2> Well, it's certainly simple that's for sure!

I didn't like that I couldn't order my tasks, I think even a "simple" to-do list should be able to do that.

I honestly can't imagine any one paying $14.99 for this either. Why would I use this instead, for example, Evernote?</comment>


Digital pregnancy tests have an internal paper test - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1301707401024827392 <comment><USER2> Going over the conversation here I'm a bit surprised by how many people seem to prefer an unnecessarily complicated and obfuscating solution to the straight-forward one.

The Twitter thread clearly points out that the electronics serve strictly as an intermediary layer between the paper test and the user. They just binarize the paper reading. This in turn gives a false psychological sense of security ("it's the computer that says it, not me"), without any credible benefit.

Why should I trust the people who calibrated the electronic device more than my own eyes?

More generally, why are people so eager to discount the reliability of their own senses? You have eyes and a mind which are the product of billions of years of evolutionary refinement. If you're not sure whether it's || or |+, pee again on a different test and compare; or wait a few days. If the lighting in your bathroom is bad, take the test in natural light or a better lit room.

My personal instinct is to rely first and foremost on my own mind and senses. It's of course important to defer to expert knowledge, but we need to use our critical thinking when deciding if something is the result of expert knowledge, or simply a marketing gimmick.

<comment><USER3> I actually saw this last night and initially had the same reaction but had some time to think on it. Remember, for a lot of people taking a pregnancy test is incredibly stressful. Reducing the complexity of reading by outputting a less ambiguous result has a lot of value to some people.

<comment><USER4> But as a society, do we want to generate additional waste for a bit of comfort ?

<comment><USER5> Society wants -- through its observed behavior -- that very much. Is it good from an intellectual perspective? Likely not, though this is a very low impact scenario compared to mass plastic convenience packaging for near daily use items. YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pregnancy/Motherhood groups are swarmed with the same "can you read this, I think I see a faint line" \+ photo question every single day because of the cheap tests. The strip results are NOT easy to interpret, because you may still see a faint line on the paper when not pregnant, and it's kind of an important emotional question as some couples have been trying to get pregnant for years. Your OB does you a mercy if they tell you "just buy the digital one".

<comment><USER7> Well yes but the digital test does not give your better info. They translate a non binary result to a binary one.

What I did when "we" were doing these tests (got 2 types both paper stips, one high sensitivity and one of the cheapest one) simply compare a unused strip and the one with pee.

It's not hard and the manual in the ones I got were really good. Like color pictures and lots of examples.

<comment><USER8> They don't give you _more_ info, but I think you could argue it's better info. Sometimes less is more, filtering noise is valuable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm not too sure why this is supposed to be surprising. When chemical reactions are involved, you often need chemicals.

A significant portion of digital meters used for servicing swimming pools require servicing/replacement of strips/chemicals (reagents) within the device.

Yes, there are also digital meters that work without chemicals per se, and have special electrodes that measure electric current. However, this approach quite simply doesn't work for all chemical reactions.

<comment><USER10> It's surprising because the electronics are essentially useless. Most people would expect the electronic version would have some type of advantage, because those electronics cost extra money to produce.

<comment><USER11> The advantage is the UX.

On a regular stripe test you are responsible to conduct the experiment and interpret the outcome which can be intimidating.

"Is there a line? I think I see a line? But it's fainter from the last time? What does it mean?"

This is replaced by an algorithm that's written by people who know what are they doing to save you from analysing a chemical reaction and have a straight answer.

 __ _edit:_ __Just Google for "Is this pregnancy test positive" to see how many people are having trouble interpreting the results.

Here is an example from Reddit: [https://www.reddit.com/r/TFABLinePorn/comments/4pxghm/confli...](https://www.reddit.com/r/TFABLinePorn/comments/4pxghm/conflicting_pregnancy_test_one_positive_faint/)

Ironically, on this example the commenters claim that the inaccurate one is the digital one and the tester confirms. Anyway, the point stands: It is hard to interpret the outcome of chemical reactions.

<comment><USER12> Your link actually shows you why there is no UX advantage.

OP is only two cycles into their pregnancy. A paper test can pick up on this tiny HCG measurement and show something. A digital test cannot because it's going to pick a higher threshold if it only wants to give you a binary result. A digital test will tell you that you're pregnant when you're far enough along for a paper test to be obvious.

There are so many "can someone interpret this paper test?" questions not because paper is inferior but because they are trying to interpret results 0-2 months into their pregnancy and paper can actually give you a faint reading here.

A digital test could support that by showing "possibly pregnant" which is back to the same UX, and showing "not pregnant" during this time isn't much of a win either.

<comment><USER11> A digital test can be tuned to a better sensitivity.

The UX advantage comes from giving a definitive answer. The answer can change at later times when the body starts giving stronger signals. You can simply indicate that you need to wait X number of days to detect the pregnancy and problem solved.

This is much better UX than learning biology and chemistry to be able to read a test result. What does a faint line means? Probably means you need 4 years degree in a related field to have an educated guess. To have a definitive answer you need a to have a career in it.

Realistically though, it means you will need to ask someone who already have the degree, which means what good is the test for?

The digital test does guide you how to get to the right answer. Yes, if the threshold is too high and you test too early it can give you a false negative but this is a simple problem that can be solved by recommending a second test in few days.

<comment><USER13> It should just show the value and have the definition of them written on the box, UI should not be a concern at all if you have to have electronics in this case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This kind of makes sense in a strange way. Inexpensive red LED's have relatively narrow spectral line half width (~20nm) and you can set detection thresholds against measured values. This is much better than "I think I saw something in a dimly lit bathroom". This means that in the readout part (UI) it is hard to get wrong results ("Is it one or two?").

Then again it is a wasteful and overpriced product that can leave wrong impression of superiority to the customer.

<comment><USER15> > it is a wasteful

On one hand, what a marvelous thing it is. On the other, what a waste, single use of silicon, battery and LCD that'll go straight to the landfill.

<comment><USER16> And a lithium battery nevertheless! So so wasteful and toxic! I can't believe this is legal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> At the end of the teardown, after all those CPU datasheeets and speculation , my favourite was

[https://twitter.com/gparker/status/1301711548193230849](https://twitter.com/gparker/status/1301711548193230849)

@gparker: @DelMurice @Foone Congratulations! When is the endianness reveal party?

</comment><comment><USER18> I saw the beginnings of this on Twitter last night; not surprised it wound up here. If anyone here isn't already following @foone, I highly recommend it. Their teardowns are fascinating.

One of the more interesting comments:

"This thing [the chip in the device] is probably faster at number crunching and basic I/O than the CPU used in the original IBM PC, and this one is in something you pee on and throw away."

(Unfortunately, "...there's no reprogramming this chip to run other programs. We can't run Doom on this pregnancy tester, I'm sorry.")

</comment><comment><USER19> While the waste is lamentable, perhaps it's also worth considering this as a UI/UX problem. How many people mis-read the paper test vs how much extra error % does the circuitry introduce?

<comment><USER20> Would it be possible to make a paper one have words (such as pregnant/not pregnant) instead of one/two lines?

<comment><USER21> Have an app that uses the phone camera?

<comment><USER22> I suspect it is difficult to get the 'raw' output from a cell-phone camera so you are dependent on the phone's processing (contrast enhancement etc), which might vary between models. Not impossible (e.g. having control lines) but needs thinking about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "Pregnancy tests are 99% accurate in the lab, 75% accurate in the wild due to misreads- mistakes which are highly dependent on education and socioeconomic status. No, it is not stupid or wasteful to use a hardware interface to help women with this."

[https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/130178603213683507...](https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1301786032136835072)

<comment><USER24> That thread (by someone injecting racism) says nothing about the accuracy of machine tests in the wild, nor whether the errors are false positive or false negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> So It's basically like the blood sugar testers diabetics use, except they want you to buy a new reader with every strip.

There is now an opportunity for one of the manufacturers of pregnancy tests to make a reusable reader. The add could be like "We know you're going to test more than once, we won't force you to buy a reader every time." or "instead of asking the strangers if they see a line (cut to forum posts of tests) , let {product name} be your second opinion" Or even "Don't wait until you've missing your period, test every week for an entire year for less than the cost of 3 of the competitors digital tests"

<comment><USER26> Pregnancy tests and blood sugar tests have pretty different usage patterns. Blood sugar tests will (should) be used every day by diabetics; the cost per test matters a lot. Women on the other hand go through pregnancy tests much less frequently, and care much more about accuracy than cost. The impact of a false positive or negative from a pregnancy test can be _massive_ , and even the perception of increased accuracy is good marketing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> The issue here is that paper tests require the user to read and properly understand instructions. Teenagers in a panic can and will misread and misunderstand, as people often do when under duress.

It may seem "pointless", but making the tests more user friendly and less prone to user error is super important.

<comment><USER28> I wouldn't say super important. I'll probably get down voted for my opinion, but if we had proper sex education for everyone and valued women's health care than this wouldn't be an issue.

<comment><USER29> I don't think that sex education and accessible abortions stops people from being emotionally invested in finding out if they are pregnant. This can be a stressful question whether you want a child, don't want a child, or don't know!

<comment><USER28> Teenagers were specifically mentioned in the comment. Good sex education helps because reproduction is now not some mysterious process. They will then be able to make good choices when they decide to sex. Having access to abortion services helps because having sex shouldn't ruin someones life.

<comment><USER29> I don't think that anyone was arguing those points. simply that they wont eliminate the stress associated with test taking, which is the purpose of this device.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I like the part where it uses the conductivity of pee as the power switch.

[https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1301709777383292928/photo/1](https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1301709777383292928/photo/1)

<comment><USER30> I also like the part that it has as much CPU power as the original IBM PC but it's literally something you pee on and then throw away!

<comment><USER31> And then it sits in a landfill for eternity! Imagine how many millions of tiny computers (and batteries - oof) are just sitting in dumps right now. That's the most egregious part for me: this test is exactly the same as the analog one, but it generates eWaste.

<comment><USER32> If there is an engineer afterlife, then we got some serious hell to pay for how wasteful we are collectively.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> People often have the idea that a digital readout implies a more precise measurement. I see this often in scales, thermometers, etc.

<comment><USER33> It is often more precise, not necessarily more accurate. People often don't distinguish between the two.

<comment><USER34> Not a native speaker; I think I understand your point, though I fail to see a distinction between these two words: if the output is a number to the nth decimal, but it is not "accurate" (ie. the numbers are actually wrong), can it still be said to be "precise" ?

<comment><USER35> Precise means lots of fine-grained information; accurate means close to the truth. If the weather is 20° exactly and one thermometer reads 20.2° and another 20.562° the first can be described as more accurate and the latter as more precise. Hence the expression, "precisely wrong".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My 3rd world country has pregnancy tests[1] available in almost all vending machines, but unfortunately they're the paper kind. Obviously we managed to get them evenly distributed, but utterly failed to provide the future.

[1] For the convenience of both those hoping for positive results and those hoping for negative. I'm guessing there are more of the latter than the former, because they're invariably located in the slot next to the condoms.

<comment><USER37> The street finds its own use for things eh

<comment><USER36> TIL Tally Isham doesn't have an insta but image search does turn up some of her titles.

Thoughts from a not-as-fictional Rikki: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24349454](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24349454)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Reminds me of that juicer which basically just squeezed a packet and costs hundreds of dollars.

Thank god for hackers exposing these shenanigans!

<comment><USER39> What's the shenanigans? Lots of lab tests run on paper, the skill is in interpreting the result.

<comment><USER38> > What's the shenanigans?

I think pricing a 20c device for $12, to trick people that since it's digital/more expensive it is more accurate is the shenanigans.

<comment><USER39> I just checked on cvs.com, a 2 pack of CVS branded "blue line" style pregnancy tests cost $13.99, a 2 pack of "clear blue" digital tests costs $17.79.

You can buy bulk strips for around 50 cents each, but many people would rather pay for the convenience of peeing on a stick than peeing in a cup and them dipping a test strip in it.

<comment><USER40> You could also pee straight on the paper.

<comment><USER39> Many people are squeamish enough about their own urine to not want to hold a 2" long test strip in the stream, a 6" plastic device gives more clearance.

But in any case, test strips vary in how they work - some require a couple drops of urine in a specific spot on the strip, some say to dip in the urine cup until a dye mark appears. Is holding the test strip in the stream going to give the same result? I don't know.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> So there we were... expecting a + or - on the test...

we got a vertical bar |

and a 2 day wait because we were in the middle of nowhere... Yellowstone.

Sproutlet is 14 now. 8)

</comment><comment><USER21> I wonder if there is an opportunity to make a mobile app that interpreted the results from these tests in a similar manner and sell tests that are app enabled.

<comment><USER42> Might as well charge 3x more since it's "wireless".

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> As pointed out on the twitter thread.

If a digital test is wanted, there's no reason it couldn't accept exactly the kind of disposable strip it contains.

That way the part that is going to become ewaste could at least be re-usable.

<comment><USER44> You'd have to make sure the diodes were exactly lined up with the strip in order to avoid false negatives. That doesn't seem like a risk worth taking to save a few bucks. Maybe some sort of cartridge system could be developed.

<comment><USER45> That's what the control strip is for. Use that for registration. What you really care about is the relative intensities of the control and test.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is basically the definition of plastic waste.

<comment><USER47> And are people supposed to tear it down and dispose of the battery separately? (the battery is hazardous and has markings indicating it is not to be thrown away).

<comment><USER48> I'm confident that kinda thing happens at the waste processing plant. But that's making assumptions about waste disposal.

<comment><USER49> No one is digging through trash looking for tiny batteries embedded in disposable electronics. The dump truck gets unloaded straight on top of a landfill and bulldozers spread it around in the majority of the US.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Ouch, that's pathetic.

I've noticed companies that build medical devices have followed the lead of big tech companies like Apple. First it was devices with non-replaceable batteries, and now: subscription services.

It's crummy.

<comment><USER48> Yup, or adding bluetooth and connect with an app just because they can then charge a premium.

I mean it's a toothbrush, come on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> still better then toads

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_test#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_test#History)

<comment><USER52> Or rabbits! (I'm old enough to remember people joking by saying "the rabbit died" to mean they have an unplanned pregnancy)

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> such a waste of resources

<comment><USER54> Not your resources

<comment><USER55> What do you mean? They're our resources collectively as Earth-dwellers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I didn't find it mentioned here or in the Twitter thread, but the digital test also keeps track of previous results and alerts you when the scores are ramping up. Of course you could do this manually by keeping all the strips and comparing them but the device makes it a bit easier.

<comment><USER40> There might be some that can do this, but how would this version possibly be able to do that if it only has one paper inside?

<comment><USER56> Whoops I thought this was a digital ovulation test. They have multiple strips and you test one each day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> what did the guy expect to find inside? I didn't expect otherwise. It's just that an excited or horrified human is really bad at reading faint lines.

The rule is (afaik) if you see the second line AT ALL, even if reaaally faint, it's time to get some bed rest because you'll need it in a few months

</comment><comment><USER58> Idea: Make image recognition app that does the same. Market it as environmentally friendly solution.

You are welcome.

</comment><comment><USER59> very much enjoying a bunch of men argue about how easy their pregnancy tests were.

</comment><comment><USER60> people can't believe others would use this, and go on using their GUIs instead of terminals

</comment><comment><USER61> Reminds me of this bic stick lighter image (yes, there's a disposable bic lighter insider) [https://i.imgur.com/3eGaQZT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3eGaQZT.jpg)

Edit: replace Reddit link.

<comment><USER62> Non-reddit link: [https://i.imgur.com/3eGaQZT.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/3eGaQZT.jpg)</comment></comment>


How tweets reveal where you're from - <AUTHOR> http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/01/07/5786357-how-tweets-reveal-where-youre-from

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, but would be 10X so if it were a persistent service instead of a one-off social science project.

Also, I doubt strongly they could determine my origin. (I'm from the US, but I don't think they could figure out much more than than using my stream.)</comment>


Show HN: F.lua, a functional Lua extension library - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/shakna-israel/f.lua <comment><AUTHOR> Obligatory code:

        f = require "f"

        local fibonacci = function(n, acc)
          if isnil(acc) then
            acc = 1
          end
          f.elif(x <= 1,
            acc,
            f.recur()(x - 1, x * acc)
        end

The first question I can imagine coming to mind when seeing my work on this project is probably "Why?".

Building a functional library in Lua seems to be something many newcomers attempt [0].

There are a few differences, and they'll probably get spelled out in the README when I become satisfied with the overall coverage of the project.

Firstly: Completeness.

Some libraries give you cons and friends, others give you operators. The feature-list for f.lua is certainly longer than most.

Functions like let and cond simply haven't been in the other libraries I've seen, and tend to be out of scope for them.

Secondly: Lua is incredibly flexible.

It's near-Lisp levels of flexibility, even without going to something like Metalua. Seeing how far I can push it whilst still remaining fairly close to the spirit of Lua is an awesome challenge.

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to hit those barriers. No immutable values unless your assigning to globals, so far as I can tell. [1][2] (Though they might make it into f.let, because of the strange way that function works.) A good prettyprint function actually takes a decent amount of code to implement, especially because of self-referencing, and the ability to override __index.

\---

Anyways, I'm happy enough with it, that I thought it was ready for others to play with.

[0] [http://lua-users.org/wiki/FunctionalLibrary](http://lua- users.org/wiki/FunctionalLibrary)

[1] [http://lua-users.org/wiki/ImmutableObjects](http://lua- users.org/wiki/ImmutableObjects)

[2] [https://github.com/shakna- israel/f.lua/issues/10](https://github.com/shakna-israel/f.lua/issues/10)</comment>


Ruby Warrior: Coding game designed to teach Ruby and A.I. - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/ryanb/ruby-warrior/tree/master

<comment><USER2> I have the urge to fork this, modify the score coding to give a smoother gradient between total failure and pure success, and then solve the game with a genetic algorithm.

Except I'm at work, so I can't do it. So I'll just post my idea on Hacker News and settle for the idea that someone, somewhere, might.

</comment><comment><USER3> One alternative is to just use nethack (or a variant like crawl) as a testing ground for your AI agent.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's using the file system as UI! The only place I've seen this before is version control systems, and I'm now sold that it's a great paradigm.

A game like this would be a great way to get children into programming.</comment>


CrisisCommons and CrisisCamps: Tech projects for Haiti and others in need - <AUTHOR> http://crisiscommons.org

<comment><AUTHOR> I found this via a NYT article last night. If any other HN members in the Northwest would like to organize a camp and hack on a project, I'd be interested.</comment>


New World Drugs in Old World Mummies? - <AUTHOR> https://ahotcupofjoe.net/2019/05/new-world-drugs-in-old-world-mummies/ <comment><USER2> An interesting question is that if there were plants containing cocaine in Africa, why were they not cultivated and selectively bred like in South America, and subsequently driven extinct?

Answering my own question, I guess that would possibly by due to the prevalence of coffee. Coca leaves on their own are about as stimulating as caffeine.

The main advantage that Coca leaves (and hence cocaine) have over Coffee beans and caffeine is that large doses of cocaine don't cause the same negative effects as large doses of caffeine. You can rack lines of caffeine like coke, and they do wire you up, but the anxiety and nausea makes it really not worth it.

<comment><USER3> The Romans had a widely used spice that went extinct. We only have textual descriptions. It couldn't be transplanted and local people had an interest in having sheep, which ate it.

There are probably interesting plants vanishing in ecosystem destruction at a quicker rate right now than in the last ten thousand years.

<comment><USER4> that's laser, or silphium

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a great comment on r/askhistorians about this topic: [https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t6htu/was_t...](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4t6htu/was_there_tobacco_in_eurasia_before_the_columbian/d5fckte/)

 _In summary, the preponderance of evidence (and lack thereof) strongly indicates that the presence of these New World drugs in Egyptian mummies is the result of contamination in museum and other contexts from the last two centuries. The chemical analyses are hardly smoking guns, and the complete lack of any other evidence for such exchange across the hemispheres (or in any goods other than coca and tobacco) means that trade is a fairly preposterous explanation for the presence of these drug compounds on the mummies._

<comment><USER6> So the explanation is that people were doing lines off of these mummies and severed heads?

<comment><USER7> Many antiquities like mummies were (are?) commonly smuggled. The connection seems an easy one. But I enjoy your hypothesis.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Re: the points about the Egyptians neither having boats suited for cross- Atlantic travel nor bragging about traveling across the Atlantic: could they not have traded with someone else who _did_ have the means to reach the Americas? Or perhaps who in turn traded with someone else who had that access?

</comment><comment><USER9> The Madagascar origin doesn't make sense since the island wasn't settled until 500 CE (intersting fact: and that too was by Austronesians. Africans didn't settle Madagascar until later)

</comment><comment><USER10> This is my new favorite site. With so much of this stuff it's hard to find real info outside of the insular circle of crazies.</comment>


Linux Desktop Environment Face-Off: Which GUI Is Best - <AUTHOR> https://www.tomshardware.com/news/linux-desktop-environment-face-off <comment><USER2> gnome has taken some heat lately so i feel obliged to share some love for it. it's a great DE in that it stays out of my way when i want it to and it offers subtle help to things i need it to (window manage, multitask, etc). i think in 2020 it beats them all (including macos and win)

<comment><USER3> There's lots to like about GNOME. I would say its one of the most polished desktops with lots of first party apps for it. It definitely has the best search of any DE. But I would have a hard time recommending it to most people I know (at least vanilla GNOME). It just breaks too many workflows.

They removed desktop icons which I don't use but lots of people do. The removed the minimize and maximize buttons meaning you either have to close apps or move them to another desktop. The most annoying one for me is that they removed the system tray which just straight up broke a bunch of apps (mostly sync clients like Dropbox).

Now, all of those features can be added back with extensions (which may break in a future release) but I don't thing most people want to deal with that.

Thankfully there are distros like Ubuntu and Manjaro that patch GNOME and add back in missing features.

<comment><USER2> grab gnome tweaks (some distros include it). it exposes many of those native settings for you (desktop icons, min/maximize buttons, etc)

<comment><USER3> Cool, I didn't know desktop icons was an option in Tweaks now. I'll check that out next time I use Fedora.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Xfce is undoubtedly my favorite, but it's gradually adopting all the trendy crap they're strongarming into gtk. Expect full client side decorations and super huge widgets in the next release.

<comment><USER5> I love the fun configurability of Xfce. And that it stays lite even with all the goodies installed. Recently been appreciating Cinnamon for kinda the opposite, in that I don't think about tweaking much, it's just simple and standard for my old brain; balanced, like this article says.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> What concrete advantage does a desktop environment offer me over just running a window manager like dwm? I've tried it both ways, and all the desktops seem to do is take up resources while offering little in return. Can you describe a significant way that your desktop improves your computing life?

<comment><USER7> Good defaults

<comment><USER6> I've asked this question several times, and this is the best answer I've seen yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Which is the best? I don't know.

Which should you use? The same as most other people, so we can get some actual work done. Right now thats gnome.

Having a crazy efficient setup that only you in the office understand isn't good for collaboration.</comment>


Ask HN: Fastest server log analyzer tool you use? - <AUTHOR> Hi!
We are working on a blazing fast log analyzer tool for servers written in plain C.
I am wondering:
1. what are the known solutions you are using or are aware of in the industry?
2. what features/capabilities are a must have?
3. what features/capabilities are you missing and would like to see? <comment><AUTHOR> OP here: we are focusing on aggregations/calculations, search query to find matching logs.

</comment><comment><USER2> what do you mean specifically by log analyzer as this is a broad term. Parse the logs? Index the logs & do some aggregations/calculations? Do a search query to find matching logs?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good question: we are focusing on these: aggregations/calculations, search query to find matching logs.

<comment><USER2> Just curious why do you want it to implement it from scratch? Have you looked into this [https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic](https://github.com/valeriansaliou/sonic) if it helps?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Sorry to hijack the thread, but why did you choose C instead of D? You can adapt your C program into D using a few find-and-replace searches, and you can #include arbitrary C headers (even Linux kernel headers) using DPP.

<comment><AUTHOR> Technology familiarity. We know C and we are totally satisfied, we don't know D at all. :)</comment></comment>


New York Times APIs - <AUTHOR> http://developer.nytimes.com/docs

<comment><USER2> From their FAQ:

11\. What do you mean by "commercial purposes"? Here are a few examples of what we consider commercial purposes:

1\. Selling New York Times content or data in any application. 2\. Charging a subscription fee for any New York Times content or data. 3\. Selling any application built with one of our APIs.

If you are making more than 5,000 calls per day (via an application or any other method) to an individual API, we will notice that and assume you're using our API for a commercial purpose. Please contact us if you have hit that limit but do not think you are using the API for a commercial purpose.

\</comment><comment>---

It looks enticing but I'm not entirely sure if these limitations negate the purpose of the API existing (aside from internal use and hobbyists using it for personal purposes).

<comment><USER3> What do view as the purpose of the API existing?

<comment><USER2> It just seems like a blanket ban on any commercial applications without some kind of payment and a very small request limit (5000), limits people who will even consider experimenting with it. It seems more geared for web applications/sites that have no native phone apps.

<comment><USER4> Make the API requests from your server and serve clients yourself?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We're living in an exciting time for the media industry. Traditional companies, with their origins in paper-based news distribution, have no choice but to change their business models. The content supply chain, fundamentally, must look something like this:

NYT[ journal -> write -> edit -> publish -> distribute]

Content has to be produced, and it has to be distributed. In general, any piece of content will flow along that chain.

Before the Internet, the "old guard" of media -- _The_ Times, _The_ Post, etc. -- held a monopoly on the entire supply chain. They found the sources, wrote the articles, and even delivered them to your door, printed and ready to read. It would have been difficult for an outside company, or industry, to encroach on any part of the NYT business. Why would the NYT surrender part of such a valuable supply chain? By controlling content from production to distribution, they were able to charge higher prices for it.

But now, the distributive power of the Internet has broken the supply chain in half, resulting in new economic specialization. Buzzfeed beats the NYT in distribution, but the NYT beats Buzzfeed in production quality. Now, the supply chain looks more like:

NYT[ journal -> write -> edit -> publish] -> [distribute]BUZZ

It seems that there is a place for both Buzzfeed and the NYT on the supply chain. One can control, and should specialize in, the production of content. The other can distribute it.

Old media companies are finally "waking up" to the threat of content distribution experts like Buzzfeed. The Guardian, WaPo, and the NYT have fantastic tech departments forming a smart digital strategy. They recognize that yes, Buzzfeed is taking part of their supply chain, but no, Buzzfeed cannot compete with the NYT on journalistic integrity. As long as the NYT employs the staff that it does, with writers of decades of experience and connections in the industries they cover, there will be a demand for NYT content. Some of that demand may come from end-consumers, and some may come from distribution companies like Buzzfeed. But the fact of the matter is, the NYT can still own the production part of the supply chain, and it makes sense to mitigate the threat to their distribution models by selling production "wholesale" to distributors.

This move from the NYT is a great milestone for their digital strategy. They're recognizing that content, like any product, has a supply chain and production process. They know they own the production process, but the Internet has enabled new companies to own downstream parts of the supply chain. So by releasing API's to their raw content, they are providing access to their raw product for any company who might want to sell it.

<comment><USER6> If NYT specializes in the production of content, others would have to value their content over others. I think that's part of the problem. The kind of content the NYT produces is not that valuable. Investigative journalism, which is the hardest and most expensive part of what they do, is valued only by a very small number of people.

<comment><USER7> I think this comment vastly underestimates the value of something, placing it only within a marketplace context. Investigative journalism, by actual journalists and not bloggers, is a cornerstone of what we need in a society. Otherwise institutions simply continue unchecked.

The API is the same as anything. NYT specializes in content, Google Translate specializes in machine translation of text. You pay for what you need.

We should be able to come up with some pretty cool uses for nyt api considering the insane amt of content it provides access to. the OP is just one.

<comment><USER8> This is sort of the crux of the problem though. Top ten kitten lists of the kind Buzzfeed specializes in, are a much better deal in terms of eyeballs/dollar although they have a much lower social utility than say, a well reported piece about the war in Syria or the spread of Ebola.

The NYT and the Guardian are trying a bunch of different approaches to improve their income. Honestly, a world where even a world class newspaper like the NYT struggles to be profitable is a scary place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's a pretty nice set of apis. I wrote an app that overlays the events feed onto google maps for geo eventin goodness.

[http://nyevent.in](http://nyevent.in)

Source: [https://github.com/jasonmoo/eventin](https://github.com/jasonmoo/eventin)

</comment><comment><USER10> The Guardian also has an API: [http://explorer.content.guardianapis.com/](http://explorer.content.guardianapis.com/)

<comment><USER11> This is really cool. I think these news APIs are really under appreciated

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I occasionally use about three of their APIs. Really good stuff.

Take a look at the semantic API that provides NYT's controlled vocabulary for entities.

</comment><comment><USER13> They don't tell you what the limit is:

"12\. Is there an API call limit? When you register for an API key, you'll receive information about limits and other Terms of Use. If you approach a limit, a warning e-mail will automatically be sent to you."

[http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/faq#6](http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/faq#6)

<comment><USER14> It varies by API, and is specified when you register for keys.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Nice, what abou a Ruby wrapper for this API? Like this [https://github.com/rodrigoalvesvieira/NYTimesAPI](https://github.com/rodrigoalvesvieira/NYTimesAPI)

</comment><comment><USER16> Newswire API has great potential! It would be a good resource for creating alerts for specific type of news.

<comment><USER14> IFTTT did just that, and more, to create a number of the triggers in the NYTimes channel (all powered by our public APIs)

[https://ifttt.com/nytimes](https://ifttt.com/nytimes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> What's new about it? Just saw I have an app there that dates back to 2008.

</comment><comment><USER18> What is the pricing structure once exceeded the daily call limit?

</comment><comment><USER19> Nice, good to see the NY Times adapting to newer technologies.

</comment><comment><USER20> the API is a great idea.

So I tried signing up for an account. Their on-boarding process - prehistoric. Nope.

<comment><USER7> I think it'd be totally worth reaching out to them with recs on how to update the on-boarding process.

<comment><USER14> Hi there, I'm on the team responsible for the public APIs -- and we'd absolutely love to hear more :)

Some people love the single sign on (our developer registration is tied to the normal NYTimes.com registration) and some people hate it -- but we're always listening for direct feedback about what's wrong with the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> coooool

</comment><comment><USER21> coool

</comment><comment><USER22> setLimitsPublicDiscourse() worshipGovernment() provideIntellectualLeftistAirOfAuthority() makeBrokenWindowFallacy() scrambleToStayRelevant() winPulitzerAndOrNobel()

<comment><USER23> I've seen a lot of broken window fallacy recently. I've heard it a lot in the past few days, mostly with respect to Syria.</comment></comment>


How to Teach - <AUTHOR> http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/teaching.html <comment><USER2> I liked Joni Mitchell and Abba, much more than Joan Baez.

I can keep your dream alive by telling you tales of europe vs's USA. You can keep your dream alive by subscribing to local television. Unless you're canadian, in which case fuck you.</comment>


Show HN: Mirage – a social, lighthearted, storytelling-focused roleplaying game - <AUTHOR> https://playmirage.io/ <comment><AUTHOR> This is a little hobby project I'm working on, and I'm really proud of how it turned out.

Mirage is a lighthearted, social, easy to learn roleplaying game, focused on storytelling, improvisation, imagination and creativity. Your goal is to make up and play out a fun story. You will go on adventures, complete quests, find treasure, slay dragons, and gain awesome powers.

Mirage is made for the people who, like me, enjoy the social/creative aspects of Dungeons and Dragons, but don't like the countless arguments over the intricate rules, the painfully slow combat encounters, and all the tedious arithmetics.

It's perfect for people who want to get started with roleplaying but have no experience, and it's great for getting your non-gamer friends or kids into RPGs. It's great for improvisers and storytellers who want to focus on playing a fun long-form improv game, without the rules getting in the way.

It's rules are very simple, but deep and interesting enough for the experienced players to play over a long period of time.

You can play it in-person or over discord. It's super fun, and I hope you guys enjoy it!

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow, this looks really cool! I love the idea of a distillation of DnD down to just the fun bits at the core.

I enjoyed skimming some of the adventures, but I'd really like to see a play- by-play account of an example scenario. It would be great to see the procedure of gameplay, and the GM and each player's thoughts and decisions, to solidify how Mirage works in practice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for replying!

You can see the playtests of some of our adventures here:

[https://youtube.com/channel/UC0TtjWQpHurgQMpLxMrWUsQ/videos](https://youtube.com/channel/UC0TtjWQpHurgQMpLxMrWUsQ/videos)</comment></comment>


Phusion Passenger 3.0.0 final released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.phusion.nl/2010/10/18/phusion-passenger-3-0-0-final-released/

<comment><USER2> Best new features for me:

* No global lock while spawning new instances

* Ability to specify Minimum instance of 1 to stop startup lag for infreuqently hit websites

</comment><comment><USER3> Great work guys! Phusion Passenger has been allowing me to easily deploy rails apps to Apache for years in a reliable and manageable way. Especially with capistrano. It's very reliable software, and great documentation!

<comment><USER4> Ditto, on nginx. Before Passenger -- when one waded through a morass of complex and fragile recipes for Ruby web deployments -- I had to think much more carefully before implementing things in Sinatra or Rails.

Some helpful new options here too -- I'm particularly glad to be able to turn off passenger_friendly_error_pages for non-HTML-serving web apps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great work. First thing I did at my current gig was get the app on to Passenger.</comment>


3 Startup Payments Predictions for 2011 - <AUTHOR> http://techcocktail.com/startup-payments-predictions-2010-12 <comment><USER2> Regarding the comment on interchange, while the proposed 12 cent debit interchange cap may be revised upward, it's not likely that Durbin Amendment supporters and the Fed are going sit idly by if banks/card associations either overtly encourage consumers to shift to credit cards or widen the gap between debit and credit interchange rates.

Seems far more possible that if Durbin survives the new incoming congress a reduction in credit interchange will be proposed.

Couldn't agree more about mobile payments being hot in 2011, though.</comment>


Ask HN: Is it illegal to crawl Google search results? - <AUTHOR> And scrape a particular website for verification purposes? (I wont be re-posting the data so that I won't become their competitor). <comment><USER2> Maybe a violation of Terms of Service, you'd need to check. But Google has anti-scraping measures and will block you if it detects bot-like behavior.

</comment><comment><USER3> Illegal? No. Immoral? Also no. Will they try to stop you? Probably.

If you can figure out how to beat their Captcha, you're golden.

</comment><comment><USER4> There's certainly no law against it.

</comment><comment><USER5> No</comment>


Nokia N8 to be final Symbian N Series device, all MeeGo from here on out - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/23/nokia-n8-to-be-final-symbian-device-in-n-series-all-meego-from/

<comment><USER2> Also from Engadget, here's a look at the MeeGo tablet UI:

[http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/22/meego-for-tablets- gets-a-...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/06/22/meego-for-tablets-gets-a-pre- alpha-video-demonstration)

It's looking pretty slick for an alpha. But then again, they're building on a solid base with all the lessons learned from Maemo/N900 combined with the cutting-edge UI framework development happening in Qt.

</comment><comment><USER3> If they can continue the path they took with the N700+ series, this is maybe the most interesting piece of news in the smartphone area since I can't remember when (maybe the Palm stuff).

Android/iPhone are nicely iterating and improving, but this news shows a change of strategy which can reinvigorate the competition with another strong "open" player.

On the long run I would bet on Nokia against Android, because they can do the iPhone on the mass market (they are a mass market by themselves) without the fragmentation problem of Android. If well done and if Apple keeps the big brother like control on the apps etc. the iPhone would slowly go back to a super profitable niche market and keep doing an insane amount of money, but in a niche market.

<comment><USER4> Nokia have displayed incompetence for the last 3 years.

What makes you think they're going to change that now? :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember being really excited that this would happen around 2005 when the N700 and N770 were released.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, it has been something of a long wait with Nokia on these things.

Speaking of the N770, it is really weird to think that only recently have the popular pocket computers caught up to the old 770 in screen quality.

That Meego pre-alpha demo video in the other comment is looking very nice. And they have proven they can put out a nice little tablet a few times now. It feels like they only have a few details to fix, then scale to a few form factors. But it has felt like that for a while and meanwhile iPhones, iPads, and Androids have pulled ahead, and the full flock of Android tablets seem likely to beat a super dreamy N1000 or Nwhatever to market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> This sure makes me want to buy an N8. It's deprecated from the start!

<comment><USER2> Don't be silly. Symbian is simply moving down-market. It will become Nokia's main offering in the mid-range category, which is currently dominated by "featurephone" operating systems.

For a historical comparison, think of the old Symbian as Windows 3.1 and MeeGo as Windows NT.

In this analogy, the new Symbian is like Windows 95: it's a low-cost solution that catches up to the state of the art in the UI department while also providing API compatibility with the same vendor's high-end operating system.

(Symbian^3 and MeeGo are compatible on the API level because both use Qt. The next version of Symbian will throw away the old Symbian UI layer entirely in favour of a new one that's built entirely in Qt.)</comment></comment>


Poll: What does the name pug.lu sparks in your mind? - <AUTHOR> http://pug.lu

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, I am doing a sentiment analysis on the name pug.lu. Could you please share what comes to your mind when you heard the name pug.lu. Share here or vote in the poll on the site.</comment>


Sent: The Gmail iOS App Google Should Have Made - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/11/19/sent-is-the-amazing-gmail-app-for-iphone-that-google-should-have-made/ <comment><USER2> It's a nice-ish looking app in the screenshots, but what's amazing about this?

Looks like an attempt to bring Gmail on Android to iOS, without all the functionality.

Plus, why anyone would give their Google account details to any third party app is beyond me.</comment>


Live feed from Microsoft's underwater data center - <AUTHOR> https://natick.research.microsoft.com/ <comment><USER2> Projects and things like this are things that make me like Microsoft more and more these days.</comment>