Show HN: Pocket - my first app ever - <AUTHOR> http://letspocket.com <comment><USER3> The site looks great! Unless you stole the layout ideas from someone else, you should be quite proud of yourself and what you've got started here.

A few pieces of input:

1\. Like others, the logo doesn't stand out. In fact, I didn't see it until I read some of the other comments and adjusted my monitor position a bit.

2\. Emphasize the txt'ing capabilities a little more. Assuming you're using something like Twilio, why use that validation code in front of the texts? That makes it highly unusable. You should be able to see what number the text is coming from and attach it to the proper account.

3\. Put in an sms reply feature. For example, I text #todo or #grocerylist and it returns my notes that haven't yet been completed with that tag. Which leads to... You've already got the ability to post notes, now retrieve them.

4\. The simplicity is totally nice, but how about putting these things into different buckets? Mark as complete, next week, etc... ? That way, you can manage the "boards" on which they go in a level beyond the hash-tag boards. Make sense?

You REALLY should be VERY PLEASED with what you've got here. I'm so impressed with the visual appeal of the app.

My guess is you're using authlogic for authentication. Is that right? If so, there are some good articles out there that will walk you through implementing password resets - in fact, I think it might be in the main authlogic page (been a little while since I've done it). It's really easy to implement.

Looks like I was your 84th user! Congrats and keep it up. I love hearing stories like this.

<comment><AUTHOR> 2\. You're definitely right about this. Before I ever started developing the app, the number one feature in my mind was always SMS capabilities. I'm not really sure why I haven't made this more prominent. Regarding the validation code - that's just there because I'm still on the free developer plan with Twilio. I guess I want to build up the SMS features a bit more before I step out of developer mode.

3\. Already in the pipeline. Will be an awesome feature, I believe.

4\. Pondering this, but it's a toughie. Trying to keep things simple, uncluttered, and easy to use while adding more features is one of the most difficult challenges I have faced.

The design and interface are completely original. What you're seeing is about the 4th major rendition over the past 2 months. As I am writing code I keep striving to make Pocket better and better (visually) and I'm pretty happy with where it's at now. We'll see how long it takes me to get bored =]

As for the authentication, I rolled my own (with the help of some tutorials) but I believe its pretty similar to authlogic. I'm sure I can add a password reset feature, but I just haven't had a chance to look into it yet.

Thanks for all of the kind words. The support here on HN is incredibly motivating and encouraging!

<comment><USER4> We can upgrade you to a full account, just email firstname.lastname@example.com. You'll keep your dev credit.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I love your site design - very cute :)

I'd definitely be interested once you got an Android app up and running - <USER2> use Evernote on Android and web heavily at the moment, and tried Springpad for a while (until it screwed up a sync and deleted all my notes, grr!)

Back when I was in Uni I used the analogue version of this: a big whiteboard next to my desk with stuff pinned to it or written in little lists, as well as using a sticky note app on my laptop. Pocket's visuals really remind me of that, in a good way, and from the teaser it looks like it would be really good for at-a-glance reminders and suchlike.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, I appreciate the feedback and support!

That's exactly what I was shooting for with pocket. I have a giant whiteboard too, and it's incredibly useful. Since I made Pocket, however, I find myself using it less and less. Guess that means I'm doing things right?

Mobile apps are in the pipeline!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice work! Do you plan to make money from this? As you said, it is a very crowded market and I would suggest you to be ready for a long PR campaign. Peldi from balsamiq has great advice: [http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup- marketi...](http://blogs.balsamiq.com/product/2008/08/05/startup-marketing- advice-from-balsamiq-studios/)

If you choose the freemium route, you could give away to bloggers and alike, free premium accounts for them and for their readers. It is a great promotion tactic.

<comment><AUTHOR> If the opportunity exists, I would absolutely love to make money from this and other future web apps. Peldi (and Balsamiq) has been a huge inspiration recently and the freemium route is exactly what I had in mind.

While building the app, I told myself that I would be satisfied if I was the only person in the world that used it (it was just a testing ground, after all). With this overwhelmingly positive response, I guess I can have a little more confidence to pursue things further.

Thanks for checking out Pocket!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been looking for something like this for a long while. Kind of a Evernote-Lite. The closest thing I've found before is Shifd.com. Just a simple cross platform notepad. Yours comes close and I love the hashtags. The only thing stopping me from using it heavily is no desktop application for Mac/Windows.

I use a Mac at work and Windows at home. I'd love to just have a simple notepad that can go there and receive texts. Yours is pretty close, awesome work so far.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the support!

Just looked at Shifd - I'm surprised I didn't come across that one in my search for the perfect tool. It's got a pretty nice interface and features.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The itch you're trying to scratch is an itchy one for me as well. I'd really like an online service that could merge my note taking habits on my computer seamlessly with my note taking habits on my phone.

However, for an app that's purported to work well on a phone, I had a terrible time trying to read the website on mine. I'd suggest looking at the site from a couple mobile browsers. Aside from that, congrats on learning to code. It's definitely empowering.

<comment><AUTHOR> > I'd really like an online service that could merge my note taking habits on > my computer seamlessly with my note taking habits on my phone.

That's what I'm shooting for - iPhone and Android apps are in the works.

> However, for an app that's purported to work well on a phone, I had a > terrible time trying to read the website on mine. I'd suggest looking at the > site from a couple mobile browsers.

I hadn't even thought about this. Sorry for the confusion, but I didn't intend for the app to be viewed in mobile browsers. Currently, it is optimized for desktop browsers with mobile app syncing planned for the future.

Thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about replacing that image of the sign up form on your first page with... The actual sign up form? It should be simple enough and also reduce friction.

<comment><USER10> And keep the sign up form above the fold. Currently it's almost all the way off my screen and therefor easy to miss.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> HN - I'd love to hear your feedback and thoughts on this app. Would you use it? What do you think of the user interface? What could be improved? How does it compare to similar apps? I'm ready for your (hopefully constructive) criticisms! For the record – all of the design, programming, and imagining was done by me =]

== Experience & Motivation

Pocket was developed to scratch a personal itch - a very itchy itch. I am the most forgetful person I know, and that sucks. I am aware that the note app space is extremely crowded, but I have been thoroughly unimpressed with everything I've seen. Here's a rundown of how Pocket came to be:

* 9 months ago: Searched for a multi-platform note taking solution to record daily thoughts and ideas. They all seemed overly complicated for such a simple task of quickly jotting down ideas. Even with a smartphone, I stuck with my pocket notebook to jot down ideas, songs to download, grocery lists, etc. At the time, I had no programming experience whatsoever so I didn't even consider developing a solution on my own.

* 6 months ago: Still hadn't found a decent note app. Began to think about how I would go about building one, and discovered Ruby on Rails. At this point, the only coding I had ever done was basic HTML and CSS, which hardly counts for anything. Briefly tried Ruby on Rails, but gave up after numerous attempts to wrap my head around the mysterious and elusive world of programming.

* 3 months ago: The list of apps I would like to eventually develop became quite lengthy and the vision for my note app was as clear as day. If only I knew how to code. Tried Ruby on Rails once again. Struggled through some tutorials and half of an ebook. Still didn't really understand it, but I stuck with it.

* 2 months ago: Sudden realization that programming would never "click" unless I jumped in and started developing. I began to hack together any code I could muster, and my vision slowly became a reality. With a spark of passion, a fire was lit that I couldn't extinguish. Although time was limited as it was my last semester in college with a heavy workload on my shoulders, I coded relentlessly every chance I could (which amounted to a mere 1-2 nights a week). Started using a rough version of Pocket to keep track of everything, including updates and ideas for the very app I was developing.

* 1 month ago: Programming was real for me. I felt like I actually knew what I was doing, and I didn't want to stop. With every tiny milestone in learning and development, I would literally jump out of my chair with excitement. The code itself was nothing extraordinary, but knowing that I could have an idea and bring it to life was quite empowering. The fire burned hotter.

* today: Pocket has reached the point where I can share it with the world. While it may not be the most technologically advanced application (especially compared to the amazing stuff I see here on HN), it does exactly what I want it to do – and that's a great feeling. I am ready to harness my newly discovered passion to develop the apps on my ever-growing list of ideas. I think there are at least a few winners on that list, so we'll see what happens!

== Known Issues

* Lack of password reset

* Lack of mobile number confirmation

* IE (9 beta): dragging doesn't work, CSS padding is occasionally funky

== Tech Specs

* Built with Ruby on Rails + JQuery

* Hosted by Heroku (Amazon EC2?)

<comment><USER11> Congratulations on shipping! Some notes:

* The logo is very hard to see. If I'm not mistaken, it's suppsoed to be pressed text on a brown background with a glow around it. It doesn't stand out nearly as much as it should.

* "Keep your ideas on a personal dashboard" has a "Learn more" with an arrow. I tried to click the arrow unsuccessfully. It looks like you have to click the post-it-note. Make the arrow clickable too.

* The idea of texting a note to myself is very appealing but when I click the post-it-note it takes me to something that doesn't really talk about it. I expected to be taken to a blurb about how that works. What number do I text? How are they delivered to me? Etc.

* Essentially the same comment as above for the other post-it-note, Access from anywhere. Is there an app I need to download? Does it work on Android? Etc, etc.

* Don't make me click through to sign up. Instead of an image of your sign up form, put your sign up form on the front page.

Hope that helps. Keep plugging, it's looking good!

<comment><USER12> At the wrong angle on my MBP screen, the logo is completely invisible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Passwordless signup or guest mode would be good - I want to try your app however I do not want to commit yet by creating a nother password. Perhaps link it to ip + username and once logged in have the option to enable any other ip using a password?

<comment><USER14> another way you can go about it is just store things locally on a client machine.. although you may need to explain that unless they sign up their notes will not be saved globally.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a great idea and would segway nicely into porting this as a google chrome app. Any tips for storing notes locally? Haven't looked into it just yet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> As a marketing heads-up, the site name, letspocket.com , may raise negative connotations. See for instance definitions 21-23 here:

<http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pocket>

<comment><USER16> What are you referring to? I don't see how the word pocket has any "negative" connotations. It's a little confusing in how it relates to note-taking, but that isn't really negative to me.

<comment><USER17> I think he mean's the phrase "lets pocket" could mean "let's steal/take/grab". That use of the word is a little British...

<comment><USER5> Heh - this Brit didn't notice the possible alternative use at all. I thought the domain was slightly Japanese-English style - cute and quirky.

<comment><USER18> eg "Let's pickle!"?

<comment><USER5> Exactly :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks great and I liked it, but the late notice on the 140 character limit is annoying.

I had to type out a list of projects for my week of vacation, so start typing away, click Create, then doh! 140 limit? Select all, cut, open Stickies, new sticky, paste, quit.

Would be great if larger stickies could be created. Or if you are going to have a 140 limit, have a character counter there somewhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> You're totally right about the 140 char limit. I should explain that beforehand somehow. Added to my Pocket #todo list.

Thanks for checking out the app!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> random first second thoughts:

as i scrolled down the page, I lost the text to image connection. where does the text belong to, the image above or below.

does not show the mobile interface. or is it just a website that you call "app"?

<comment><USER21> Agreed, I found myself staring at pictures and text more than once because I wasn't sure which went which. I think the top of the page is also being underused. It's the first thing a new user landing on your page will see, so it should be what grabs them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I used Evernote on Android to take notes. In the end, I just Gmail myself. It has two advantages: 1) Sends next time I have WiFi connection. 2) The email acts as a reminder to follow up.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have gmail on my phone and I used to do the same quite often. The problem was that I'm kind of an "inbox-zero" junkie, so I would always archive my ToDo and reminder emails. Not a great way to get stuff done, so that didn't last long! :) I said to myself "if only there was a way that I could text notes to myself..." It's faster, easier, and the notes would stay there forever (or until I got them done)".

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Privacy policy? About info? People must trust you to sign up. Link to them in the footer.

Not signed up yet, but it looks professional! :)

(On Ubuntu with Chrome 10.0.634.0 the homepage rendering is OK)

<comment><AUTHOR> I've been so involved with the technology and design side of things that I totally skimped on that stuff. To be honest, I really didn't expect the app to be received as well as it has been, so I guess I should probably start filling in the gaps.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> I just started working on a similar project for the exact same reasons!

I think your site looks good, but I would definitely try to make the Pocket logo stand out a bit more. Pocket is your brand, be bold with it. Second, I would replace the "Sign up now!" button with the two actual forms needed to sign up. Not having to click through could dramatically increase registrations.

I'll leave more comments once I've had time to use the application.

</comment><comment><USER25> Looks nice, I'm willing to give it a spin. Reminds me of <http://corkboard.me> which was posted on HN not too long ago, but I've never found a use for ownerless apps like that.

</comment><comment><USER26> Loved your app. I've created something similar to myself only, not a webapp, a desktop one. Congratulations!

Oh and on your madebyloren.com website, did you intentionally left the title untitled or was that some lapse?

Cheers & thanks for the notes andre

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for the kind words =]

The title on madebyloren.com has not been set yet because I'm still working on development. Madebyloren is my second attempt at a Ruby on Rails app. I figured building a blog engine from scratch would be a good exercise and not very difficult (plus highly customizable to my needs), so I went ahead and did that instead of wordpress or another premade engine. Considering I only worked on it for a few hours one day (designing and coding) I think it turned out okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Love the simple interface. One UX issue that comes to mind is, when I delete a tag that's present on only one note, just redirect me to Dashboard instead of saying there are no notes left and providing a link to Dashboard.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just added a note on my own dashboard to look into that issue =]

Thanks for checking out Pocket!

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Good work!

On the side: the HN community never ceases to positively surprise me: for every one or two grumpy comments and for every one or two unfair downvotes,

you find tens or even more of extremely detailed and constructive well-meant suggestions.

</comment><comment><USER29> This is inspiring to me as a designer who can't code, although I want to learn and have many ideas for projects. Well done for learning to program and actually building and shipping your idea!

</comment><comment><USER30> Nice design.. like the others i think you should work on your logo. Ar u sure u just started designing/programming, it was really good.

</comment><comment><USER31> How would you differentiate yourself from notespark.com? This is what some of my friends use.

</comment><comment><USER32> Make an API and or import/export options?

<comment><AUTHOR> I wouldn't even know where to begin with an API. I'm brand new to developing, so that could be a ways away.. unless it's pretty straightforward?

<comment><USER32> Depends how you wrote the application and such I've never written an API but I've consumed enough of them to know that you should try and comply with OAuth as its implemented in libraries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Good work! Well executed and simple.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice work - I like it!

</comment><comment><USER35> if you want help developing the Android version, reply here and I'll get back to you. I really like the idea (free)</comment>


Jammy_: dedicated_eclipse_perspective_for_competing Google code jam - <AUTHOR> http://faylixe.fr/jammy <comment><AUTHOR> I am currently looking for feedback and bug tracking on differents platform, so please do not hesitate to throw issues on the associated repository :)</comment>


Ask HN: Working part time and focusing too much on money? - <AUTHOR> I work part-time and would like to stay with this workload.
Therefore, in my spare time I focus strongly on projects that might bring in money. But I am not really productive. I have trouble getting anything done at all because I think, oh, this project doesn't bring in any money. I don't do many projects that are really fun.
Yes, I want to earn more, but I don't want to do stupid projects where I just get bogged down.
Do you have any advice for that?
I'm stuck. <comment><USER2> I started to really think about each purchase I make: have i bought a similar product and not used it? Can I repurpose another thing I have already to do the job? Can i just forget about it and find something else to do?

For example, my living room PC (my old desktop) died yesterday, so I can't play video games on it and i don't have a suitable replacement. Instead of spending money fixing it it replacing it, I'll just try my hand at guitar again since i bought a guitar and never used it.

Think about if you really need more money or if you might be able to reduce your costs. That'll make you happier than just working more for more money.

</comment><comment><USER3> Find a partner and work on one thing.</comment>


Using Z: Specification, Refinement, and Proof [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15819/zedbook.pdf <comment><USER2> This pdf of the textbook is linked to the course page at CMU:

15-819: Specification, Verification, and Model Checking "Spec and Check!" [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15819/](http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~15819/)

I wonder when this course was taught? I like Z but it has gone out of fashion. The course schedule page lists a Mon Jan 10. The most recent textbook, Logic in Computer Science, appeared in 2004. Jan 10 last fell on a Monday in 2011 and 2005, according to [https://spu.edu/ddowning/percal.htm](https://spu.edu/ddowning/percal.htm)</comment>


Ask HN: How to insulate an iPad in warm environments? - <AUTHOR> Hi,
I have to perform a live stream with an iPad(latest models) in a very warm environment (temperature is 120F/48C). Duration of the live stream would be around 2 hours. According to Apple, recommended temperature range for iPads is between 32F-95F/0C-35C.
Has anyone tried to do some custom thermal insulation for iPads or other similar devices? I'm also thinking the color is important; so gold or silver would probably perform better than space gray. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you! <comment><USER2> It's going to crash. Lived in similar conditions (desert), and no iPad or iPhone can handle streaming in ambient temps of 110+ F.

You will need to cool the device down, there's no way to avoid that. Either put it inside a cool environment or attach a massive heat sink/cooler to it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Insulation wouldn't help since the iPad generates heat. Unless you mean something else by "insulation" than what I am thinking.

Active cooling would be the way to go, but beware of the noise fans will create in the mic.</comment>


Twitter and Facebook are shields against future genocides - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/24/shervin-pishevar-twitter-and-facebook-are-shields-against-future-genocides-tctv/ <comment><USER3> Let's not overplay this. Twitter and Facebook played a part in what happened, but in both countries the internet was either shut down or heavily restricted during the key phases of the uprising.

The thing which stopped the worst abuses of power against the people was the presence of the global media in countries where the west had significant financial and political interests.

The broad sweep of technology available these days (from reporters with satellite phones to twitter, to the ability anyone has to send photos across the world in seconds) may present future genocides, but Twitter and Facebook are just one small part of the picture.

But does anyone believe that Twitter would have stopped Darfur? People know what's happening there and it's still happening so I'm dubious as to how a communication tool would have changed that.

<comment><USER4> > _Let's not overplay this. Twitter and Facebook played a part in what > happened, but in both countries the internet was either shut down or heavily > restricted during the key phases of the uprising._

The fact that governments shut down the net is evidence IN FAVOUR of the net's importance in revolutions.

> _The thing which stopped the worst abuses of power against the people was > the presence of the global media in countries where the west had significant > financial and political interests._

Not really. The West has significant interests in China and Libya, but that didn't prevent the Tiananmen Sq massacre, or Gaddafi's recent massacres.

The most important factor is whether the army will fire on the people. They refused to obey orders to in Egypt, and Mubarak's rule was no longer viable.

<comment><USER3> It's in favour of the potential but the fact that the relevant networks were shut down by the governments in power shows that ultimately they can be relatively easily counteracted.

That of course will change as the cost (to business and vital infrastructure) of disabling the internet and cellular networks increases.

For instance in the UK police use the regular cellular networks for mobile data, shutting them down would impact both police and protesters.

China's a special case - they're simply too powerful for the west to control and have been for some time. Libya is run by a madman who isn't open to reason. So yes you're right but the interest in and importance of the country to the west is a factor, even if it's not the only one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is ludicrous. It's the people making a stand, not social networking sites. The oppressed could be using Twitter/FB to talk about entertainment, sports, or other frivolities. The tools in any revolution, regardless the century, are of minor significance.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why couldn't the social graph also be used to aid in genocide?

Imagine if Hitler knew all about the "impure" friends you had.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why do we take what Shervin has to say seriously at all? One thing I do not understand is this community's (not just HN) tendency to give instant validity and credibility to those like Shervin who are running successful companies. The guy runs a successful startup in one specific niche market -- how does that lend any credibility to his opinion on the workings of genocide? It doesn't.

This became really evident whilst watching the Launch conference. Companies were getting hammered left-and-right by entrepreneurs who have never ventured into said companies' markets. Being successful =/= insight to all of the world's issues. Kevin Pollak knocked one of the startup founders for the _shoes_ he was wearing, and a major blog picked up the pitch calling it a complete meltdown.

Stop and think for just a second. Shervin runs a gaming company, not a government.

</comment><comment><USER8> I remember the stories coming out of Rowanda, Bosnia, and more recently Darfur were well publicized without much intervention. While I think facebook and twitter are tools of political change, I sadly don't think we've seen the end of genocide.

I very much hope I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER9> One might wonder how the Berlin Wall fell without those antibodies. And examples like Libya and Iran demonstrate that social media will not save you from a regime determined to mow down unarmed civilians with automatic weapons.

</comment><comment><USER10> Oh, if only this were true. In fact, the exact opposite is a serious concern for the spread of the internet in the third world.

A key characteristic used in defining genocide is the use of popular media to carry out orders. I don't mean the use of propaganda, but the use of new media forms to carry out orders of genocide. In Rwanda and Bosnia radio was used to this effect.

Unfortunately I can't find it now but there was an article (either in the Atlantic or economist) suggesting this idea.

</comment><comment><USER11> Whilst I agree with statement concerning the recent events in Egypt and Libya, there are still some things to consider:

1\. For any country to harness the social media offered, they should have access to knowledge and technology (computer literacy, access to internet).

2\. Residents of a country should realize that it is still up to their resolve to act and stand against tyranny and oppression. No amount of technology can move the motivation of being freed from an evil regime.

<comment><USER12> Case in point WRT #1, it's not having much of an impact in North Korea.

<comment><USER13> North Korea is a lost case. We can't liberate it because it would destroy Seoul and the people are either too brainwashed or just plain too hungry to help.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> What the world needs is cheap satellitte based internet that can't be 'turned off'. Or someone should figure out a low tech bridge... Ham radio-to-twitter or something.

</comment><comment><USER15> The claim is a stretch, even in areas of high internet penetration. It might be a shield, in the same way as a sheet of cardboard is a shield. You can hold it up in front of someone pointing a gun at you, it might make them miss your vitals, and it will slow the bullet, but not by more than a negligible amount.

The lion's share of people under threat of genocide (e.g. the 70 or so uncontacted tribes in the Amazon, that get in the way of gold mining, logging, and oil exploration), are not in areas of high internet penetration (zero, in the case of the Amazonians).

</comment><comment><USER16> Umm no, journalism, real active journalism are the true shields. After the internet was cutoff in Egypt this non-Egyptian could only talk with my other non-Egyptian friends about what was going on. But I knew exactly what was going due to the journalists on the ground (S/O english.aljazeera.net) who had access to satellite relays.

</comment><comment><USER17> Social networking sites and the Internet have shown many people the way they could (and should) be living. Even if the Internet is blocked, people always find a way to get around it. Dictators of the world should be worried, because they can't hide the truth from their people forever.

</comment><comment><USER18> We wish.

</comment><comment><USER19> Pretty doubtful. We've seen lots of photos of blown-up people from various war zones, and they do very little to spur intervention. You've seen these:

<http://mindprod.com/politics/iraqwarpix.html>

but no one stepped in to stop the U.S. from killing well upwards of a million Iraqis. Don't dream that future massacres will be stopped. I would tend to argue the other side: due to individuals being numbed to the grotesque, they are less likely to be shocked by images and videos coming out of future conflict zones and thus less likely to want to "do something".

</comment><comment><USER20> When twitter first came out , I tried to figure out how the novelty would not wear off. How could it have use. I thought about B2B and M2M uses for it - <USER2> found them limited.

Recently, though, I have realized something about Twitter; it is like a sense, or an extension of a sense.

While I am not a heavy user of the service, I see that it is invaluable in being able to provide, quickly and easily, an alert to millions about what is happening in places far and wide.

The tweets serve to alert and attract attention - the attention can then driven to deeper dives of information, articles, videos, news etc...

This alone makes it valuable - because it provides the simplest, most accessible method for anyone, anywhere to be able to drive massive amounts of human attention instantaneously.

To be able to have created such a service is quite a feat. I don't think that "indoor plumbing" is the right analogy for what it is to the web, I'd almost more liken Twitter to the seratonin of the web.</comment>


Turkish Casino: Gambling of the Future [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://jeffmeyerson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/TurkishCasino.pdf <comment><USER2> I like the general idea — gamblers can do useful work for society — but one area that needs improvement is the kind of things that the participants will be betting on.

"IBM wants to offer the minimum amount that the candidate will accept," however the gamblers are not asked to figure that out, instead the "entire wager pool is awarded to the Turks who had the closest answers [to what IBM actually offered]".

Thus the smart gambler tries to figure out not what the candidate would accept, but what IBM is likely to offer. At this point the prediction market does _not_ predict what the candidate will accept, but what IBM will offer.

One might be able to construct a prediction market where the gamblers incentive is to identify the lowest number the candidate would accept, but this is not it.

<comment><AUTHOR> The bets are contrived for sure, but that was for the purpose of simplicity.

I believe the LinkedIn profile betting example is something feasible in the future, that we can't imagine very well by today's mores.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I know where the name comes from but still, the word Turk being used as the name of the unit workforce while making automation by using mass manual labor is a bit inconvenient. We already have an ambiguity with the name of our country in the English language, give us a break :)

<comment><USER4> I thought you were just being a stickler referring to Mechanical Turk, but then I saw the PDF, and it didn't actually refer to a casino in Turkey. Wow, this is some next level confusion right there. What were the authors thinking?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was thinking it is a catchy name.

You are turning a casino into a nexus for mechanical turks. What is complicated about it?

It's also not meant to be offensive, if anything it is a compliment to Turkish people. They are good at solving problems with no definitive solution.

<comment><USER4> What's complicated is that a "mechanical Turk" isn't a person from Turkey, and a "Turk" isn't an anthropomorphic automaton. "Turkish" means "from Turkey", not "a place where mechanical Turks operate".

It's like calling Wikipedia "wiki". A wiki is already a thing, using the word for the set to refer to an element is confusing, although I guess this is the opposite, and would be a bit like calling MoinMoin a "Wikipedia".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If one can make this work this would be huge. One could offer casino style games at a house edge of 0% (house edge = the amount that the house wins on average on every bet). This would not only be a super compelling value proposition to gamblers, it would be a huge step towards eliminating problem gambling: A gambling addict that plays at a 0% house edge would not loose money in the long run.

I run a small bitcoin casino called fastbets.io. We should talk to see if there is a potential for a collaboration (feel free to email email@example.com).

<comment><USER6> > A gambling addict that plays at a 0% house edge would not loose money in the > long run.

This isnt true because the house edge is the average return. the individual players can have a positive or negative edge depending on their skill. this would be like playing poker without a rake.

<comment><USER7> Yep. Also this: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gambler%27s_ruin)

<comment><USER5> Alexjikim, you are 100% right. I was thinking about classic casino games that are pure games of chance (where my statement would be correct). However, the OP crablar wants to offer games of skill where alexjikim's analysis is spot on. Would still be a huge improvement over the status quo though.

I find that Wikipedia article on "Gambler's ruin" pretty misleading. What is not mentioned there is that in a 0% edge game, the party with the higher bankroll has a lower chance of loosing it all, but she'd be losing a lot in that case. If she wins (very probable) she'd only be winning a small amount. That's still a fair game.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The hard part is making work into a game. I think Michael and Jane Banks would agree this is the foremost reason they prefer Mary to other possible nannies.

</comment><comment><USER9> Something like this could be extremely valuable inside an organization. A lot of very valuable knowledge is locked up by employees with no incentive to reveal it.

</comment><comment><USER10> Turning the world's casinos into massively parallel crowd-sourced processing centers is a great idea.

<comment><USER11> And even more wasteful then a Turkish HR department!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> > These solutions provide no value to anyone.

They provide entertainment value sometimes, and for winners they provide monetary value. This is like saying watching a movie or playing football has no value. The particularities of the game may create the value. E.g., poker is a well balanced game.

<comment><AUTHOR> Entertainment is not mutually exclusive with the utility.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The first organization to figure out how to make a proper free-market prediction market platform will make a killing.

Casinos seem like a perfect way to make it happen as they already have special regulatory exemption for a transaction type BB doesn't like.

</comment><comment><USER14> Something similar but without the gambling aspect has been done before:

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

</comment><comment><USER15> One potential problem is that instead of assessing problem objectively, since the payout is based on "most popular" answer, people will choose which answer they expect to be most popular, rather than the one they necessarily believe in. This drives down the value of the crowdsourced data - because it's not real "insight", is already tainted by the very gamification you're looking to monetise!

<comment><AUTHOR> There is certainly a metagame but there is also metagame between spam and spam filters.

It's a dynamic equilibrium that can be accounted for.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> BTW, Casinos are forbidden in Turkey.

</comment><comment><USER17> Theoretically, is this idea possible?

1) Make a casino with slot machines/etc. Connect slot machines to a stock market day trading system that acts at random on each lever pull (I.E. buying and then selling 10 seconds later, when the price is a bit different)

2) Gamblers will gamble as they usually do, but since the stock market grows on average by 7% a year, they should theoretically come out ahead.

3) Casino can take 3.5% for setting everything up.

What would make this impossible?

<comment><USER18> The whole appeal of a slot machine is that you might put in a dollar and get back a thousand. The prospect of a huge payoff is what keep s people pulling the lever.

Since that would essentially never happen on a 10-second buy/sell action on a real stock, I doubt any actual gambler would care to participate.

<comment><USER19> You can make payout tables similar to what they are now but instead of having a 1% house edge there's actually a small player edge. The house then covers the player edge and makes money by the stock investment.

The issues would be

1) If you assume a 7% annual return, the return on the 10 second investment would be extremely small. 7 percent / 250 working days per year / 8 market hours per day / 60 minutes per hour / 6 ten second periods per minute = 9.7e-6 percent return every 10 seconds. On a billion dollars play through in a year you'd be looking at a $97 return.

2) I don't know what commissions are like on the volume of small, short trades you'd be doing but I imagine they would be more than $0.0000001 cents per trade which means you're losing money.

<comment><USER20> You would have to be your own broker and/or build your own HFT system.

It's been a while since I used it, but API trading for laymen was somewhere between $1-2/trade at the bulk packaging.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Programming Sucks - <AUTHOR> https://www.stilldrinking.org/programming-sucks <comment><USER2> Hilarious article, until it hits a bit too close to home and you realize we're all part of the problem and there's probably nothing we can do to stop the hell train.

Truth is, I've come to terms with the idea that this ridiculous situation is somewhat acceptable, not great by any mean, but simply a reflection of the state of the real world and fleshy humans. Society itself is pretty much an amalgamation of obscure traditions and questionable decisions, held together by myriad of band-aids with hair stuck on them, and every generation tacks its own clean band-aids on it only for somebody else to violently rip them off or rub their dirty shoes on them, or worse.

Programmers are humans, and no matter how logical we like to think we are, we're subject to the same pitfalls as everybody else. But because of that "logical" trait of ours, we like to think everything is fixable, or worse, that everything needs fixing, and when that isn't possible, we lose our shit, we get depressed, we only see flaws and we just accelerate the pace. We constantly attempt to identify the bad in everything, when in reality nothing is inherently good or bad, it's just mostly chaotic.

So yes, we're the architects of our own nightmares, but not necessarily because of the evergoing snowballing clusterfuck we all contribute to, and perhaps simply because of our own warped expectations.

</comment><comment><USER3> I teach programming. On the fist day of class every semester I want to say "you have no idea what you're signing up for".

Some days I wish I had studied medicine instead.</comment>


Bing versus Google, some observations - <AUTHOR> http://jacquesmattheij.com/Microsoft%27s+Bing+versus+Google%2C+some+observations

<comment><USER2> Jacques suggests that this is all about those 9 results that Google was able to "force" into Bing's index. But -- unless Google are simply lying about this -- the point isn't really those 9 results; they are just the clearest evidence Google has of shady behaviour by Microsoft.

Google claim that they saw lots of (less obvious) evidence of Bing mining search results from Google before they began their sneaky test, and the point of the test was simply to confirm that Microsoft is doing what they thought.

This is not about whether Bing is easy to "game" -- whether Google can get nonsense into Bing's index by sneaky means. It's about whether _real_ Bing searches commonly derive their results from Google.

Imagine that I think you're reading my email and using the information in it to play the stock market (maybe I have secret insider information about some companies, or something). So I do a test: I arrange to be sent a bunch of email that, if you acted on it, would make you buy particular companies' shares that you'd otherwise have no reason even to have heard of. And, lo, you do that for 10% of the companies involved. Would anyone, looking at that, say that the real news is that I was unable to "game" your stock market transactions effectively, and that your spam filters caught 90% of the junk I tried to inject into your information?

<comment><USER3> If Google think they have other evidence, let's see it. The burden of proof is on the accuser, I think.

BTW, that's not necessarily about whether they are "lying". The other evidence they think they have could be convincing to them (because, e.g., they already have a strong predisposition to believe that they are inherently far better than anyone else, and therefore anyone building a competitive search engine could only possibly be copying them - this is a caricature, but you get the idea) but not necessarily convincing to others.

<comment><USER4> Why should Google show other evidence? The evidence they have provided is enough for me to be suspicious: How could Bing possibly come up with the same odd spell correction without copying from Google?

Yes, it could be a side effect of some machine learning algorithm. But Bing never explained that, which would have been very easy if it was the case.

<comment><USER5> Because they did not prove Bing specifically targets results from Google.

<comment><USER3> This is also true, but is sort of tangential to the point we were discussing. (Personally, I think they probably were special-casing Google, at least insofar as it was one of a list of set URL patterns it knew how to parse.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I find the thought interesting, that Microsoft may have google-specific code to filter out redirects, I don't like the notion that Google should not complain because it allegedly ignores copyrights.

I see a difference between aggregating content and presenting it _and mentioning the source_ and just plain copying (such as spell corrections) with no mention of no source.

<comment><USER3> I also think there's a big difference ("ethically" - I'm thinking more in terms of an artistic/creative idea of originality than an academic or legal definition) between using content from a blog (or whatever) to make a search engine, and using content from another search engine to make a search engine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mentioning the google redirect is a point I haven't seen yet and extremely valid. "Anonymous click data", as Bing said, can't account for what was seen.

But I think the author focused too much in the "9%" part. Who knows what Google did with the other 91%? Maybe they were trying different approaches, which actually would be the most sensible thing to do.

<comment><USER7> > _"Maybe they were trying different approaches"_

That is sensible, but can easily slide into an ends justifying the means. In other words, we know that the engineers were tasked with proving that Microsoft was copying Google. That's a different task than figuring out what the Bing toolbar does with data from the Google search page.

Given the low success rate, it is not implausible that the engineers pushed whatever ground rules there were (if any) in the pursuit of evidence. It seems to me that is the most plausible explanation for the uncertainty about whether it was 7, 8, or 9 cases.

To go beyond what is easy for the media to report, it is reasonable to expect that a company in Google's position has twenty or more full time engineers analyzing their competitor's products. The story about "torsoraphy" really only makes sense if Google has such a program. Seriously, is anyone surprised that Google and Bing analyze each other's engineering?

[WildSpeculation] One or more Google engineers tasked with analyzing the competition discovered "torsoraphy" connection and identified its correlation with the Bing toolbar - however, keep in mind that Google has not claimed that the "torsoraphy" naturally occurred in the wild. [/WildSpeculation]

[GoogleClaim] Based on the "torsoraphy" discovery, one or more Google engineers hard coded web pages - presumably with permission from senior managers since a leak that it was done casually has such serious blowback potential - twenty Google engineers armed with laptops were tasked with creating top keyword rankings.The project was at least active for two weeks over the traditional Christmas Holiday[/GoogleClaim]

[WildSpeculation] The Google engineers, surprised at their initial lack of success tried increasingly diverse and aggressive methods as time passed despite the diversity of IP's they used as they traveled over the Christmas Holidays. Being good hackers some even tried exotic techniques perhaps even creating manipulating existing web pages to influence the search rankings. On advice of lawyers, Google is not comfortable accusing Microsoft of copying in these cases.

A month later, Google plans to announce the Android Marketplace while Apple is going to proclaim that Rupert Murdoch is the future of journalism. Google is going head to head with the reigning PR champion of the world. They turn the experiment into a torrid story and release it on February 1.

Larry Page knows the difference between a Founder from Stanford and a former IBM'er from a cow college in Alabama. It's no match. Binggate drowns out the traditional eve-of-event Apple adulation. On the day of the events, the mudslinging is far sexier than "and it has a hundred pages" for the tech press.[/WildSpeculation]

How bad was it yesterday for Apple? Stories about Apple's triumph with _The Daily_ didn't make the front page of HN. The tech press even found Microsoft more interesting than Apple yesterday. Binggate was Googles attemt to kill two birds with one stone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Jacques brings up an excellent point about how Google regards copyright. Here's IP of Microsoft directly from Google:

[http://books.google.com/books?id=-ANomF3oARkC&printsec=f...](http://books.google.com/books?id=-ANomF3oARkC&printsec=frontcover&dq=microsoft+press+books&hl=en&ei=hb9KTbyLEoPGlQezx9Ep&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book- preview- link&resnum=5&ved=0CFcQuwUwBA#v=onepage&q=microsoft%20press%20books&f=false)

<comment><USER4> Google shows only 50 pages out of about 300 and provides several links to buy that book, including to Microsoft Press.

So that 'excellent point' only shows that Google even promotes products of its competitor. I don't think it says anything about Google "ignoring" copyright. Heck, you could even look into that book at Amazon for free: <http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/0735622841>

Along your reasoning, every library or friend that shows you a book is ignoring copyright.

<comment><USER7> Google's allegation is that Microsoft shows one of several search results.

<comment><USER8> Okay, Google links to pages to buy that book. Revenue goes to Microsoft. You can see clearly all over the place that it's a Microsoft book. You can browse where it came from originally.

Microsoft "copies" the results. Does not say where they came from and presents them as their own. In this context, that would be copying all the text from that book, removing all the branding and creating a new book saying that Google wrote it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I seem to be the only one that keeps scratching his head thinking ... what is the problem here?

I have no issue whatsoever with Bing analyzing the data sent by _opt-in users_ that is further processed to help increase its search relevancy results.

I would not care if Bing even sent Google synthetic and organic search terms directly, to analyze and make use of the results.

Remember, Google uses you (the searcher) as a _product_ that is sold to the real customers: the adwords and adsense clients.

Google scans the net of content _that they do not own_ , and makes an enormous amount of profit in return.

Google owns nothing. You owe Google nothing.

<comment><USER4> It's clear that search engine use user 'feedback' to improve their search results.

But if " _Bing even sent Google synthetic and organic search terms, to analyze and make use of the results_ ", I would suggest they add 'powered by Google' to their search result page.

Further, I don't think it makes a difference if Bing is querying Google directly or using opt-in users to do so. In any case, their copying search results efforts from Google.

<comment><USER9> "copying" and "making use of" are not the same thing.

Again, I don't see why it's an issue for Bing to analyze and make use of the behavior of Bing toolbar users that opted in.

So what if their Google search behavior holds good weight as a metric?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A long, long time ago I decided to build a machine to pass the Turing test. Part of this involved giving 1000's of people microphones to record the questions they asked and responses they received in normal life. This data was streamed directly to my machine. I then programmed my machine with a complex algorithm that used this data, along with data from many other sources, to attempt to produce human like responses to questions it received. Unfortunately, a group of friends who applied for the microphones decided to ruin my attempt to pass the Turing test by grouping together and repeatedly asking a friend, Jim, 100 different nonsensical questions to which Jim, who was in on the trick, gave pre-determined responses. When I finally finished I put my machine in a box and asked the public to ask it questions. It was doing pretty well for a while since no one could distinguish it from a human. Then Jim and his buddies turned up. They asked it the 100 nonsensical questions, to which, for 7 of them, it gave the same response as Jim had. Jim got very angry. "This machine is copying me!" said Jim.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting point that Microsoft may have special code to filter out google redirects.

On the other hand, do we know the percentage of searches that actually get redirects as results? The 'honeypot' was rather small, so the redirects just might have been too little to appear as a signal in Bing.

</comment><comment><USER11> I'm just glad to see I'm not the only one who's been led to think: if Google can demonstrate that Microsoft is picking up search correlations from the Google site, and Microsoft just explained that, no, it's just that we pull in clickstream data, then couldn't one feed synthetic clickstream data to Bing as a blackhat SEO technique? That seems like much less work that setting up content farms or botnet clickfraud.

</comment><comment><USER12> If I were building a toolbar that followed tracked people's clicks, I would take some measures to have it record the 'final' URL loaded by the browser and not the naive link from the DOM. There are all sorts of redirectors in use and not working around them generically would give distorted results.

The lack of google redirects in bing's results doesn't look like proof, or even a smoking gun to me.

</comment><comment><USER13> For your second point, what evidence do you have that all click results that point to google redirects aren't simply discarded?

<comment><USER14> In fact, he suggested that that might be what's going on: "It is also possible that the 91% that didn't 'make it' was actually because they were pointing to google rather than to the target. Of course Bing does not like to link to its competitor and filtering out www.google.com/url can't be that hard."

(Answering for Jacques, since he said he won't be here anymore to answer for himself: [http://jacquesmattheij.com/Tell+HN%3A+So+Long+and+Thanks+for...](http://jacquesmattheij.com/Tell+HN%3A+So+Long+and+Thanks+for+all+the+Bits) )</comment></comment>


Japan is embracing nursing-care robots - <AUTHOR> https://www.economist.com/news/business/21731677-around-5000-nursing-care-homes-across-country-are-testing-robots-japan-embracing?fsrc=scn/tw/te/rfd/pe <comment><USER3> A lot of Japan's embrace of robots is not so much due to what robots do, but due to what they represent: modernity, luxury, precision, etc.

For a nursing care facility, being able to tout a robot nurse is great for marketing. Whether or not the robot is useful is almost secondary.

<comment> rm_-rf_slash It is my understanding that Japan has a horrific birth rate and ratio of elderly to working-age adults, necessitating nursing care robots.

In many Western countries, the answer to these problems has been immigration. However, Japan is famously insular; a prospective immigrant cannot hope to naturalize as a Japanese citizen they way one could in, say, Canada or Germany.

So Japan is otherwise stuck with three options: let the elderly wither and die with little care or dignity, commit a vast portion of Japan's relatively scarce workforce to take care of its elders, or robots.

Japan picks robots.

<comment><USER4> I don't understand why you excluded immigration as one of those choices.

In fact, nurses have been trickling in from Philippines and elsewhere. This program could be expanded considerably soon, as we have already seen with retail, construction and other sectors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _Many of its firms see great potential in "carerobos" that look after the elderly._

I'm skeptical, and it's not just because of the long history of western news organizations reporting on supposedly transformational public-facing robotic inventions in Japan that fail to pan out (1).

Caring for patients requires several skills that robots cannot handle well, including manual dexterity and interpersonal communication. Yes, these things will surely get better over time but it won't be soon enough for the demographic crisis now facing the nation.

I think the biggest potential for transforming nursing care in Japan and elsewhere lie in technologies and inventions outside of robotics - <USER2> drugs, mobility tools and prosthetics, treatments and devices to improve vision and communication, and monitoring systems.

1\. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2009/may/08/1](https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2009/may/08/1)

</comment><comment><USER6> The types of robots used in Japan are very diverse. HAL Lumbar Support is an assistive device that helps caregivers to lift patients / objects more easily (it is also being tested in other areas such as construction work). Paro is a seal "stuffed animal robot" with minimal sensing and actuation, but it's very cute nonetheless (if you ever visit Tokyo, go to Miraikan in Odaiba, you can touch it there). Pepper (made by a French subsidiary of SoftBank) is a humanoid shaped robot on a wheel base that is mostly good for voice/gesture communication.

</comment><comment><USER7> Katsuhiro Otomo[1] explored the idea of robots providing elder care in the 1991 animated movie _Roujin Z_ [2].

(for a short overview of the movie and the issues it explores, I recommend this[3] essay by _Pause and Select_ )

[1] most well-known for writing the manga "Akira"

[2] [https://myanimelist.net/anime/2000/Roujin_Z](https://myanimelist.net/anime/2000/Roujin_Z)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufiv4U_Lczg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ufiv4U_Lczg)

</comment><comment><USER8> The dystopian Halo Ice Cream ad immediately comes to mind: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IFNKYmLa8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4IFNKYmLa8)

</comment><comment><USER9> Children's Hospital Los Angeles is already using VR to help train hospital staff. As automation coupled with new technology increases we will see an increase in the health related verticals adapting to new cutting edge tech. [https://latechnews.org/childrens-hospital-la-vr- technology/](https://latechnews.org/childrens-hospital-la-vr-technology/)

</comment><comment><USER10> So they are already starting to use automation to address the labor shortage from a decreasing population.

This should be the way forward rather than importing foreign populations, because a gradual decrease of human populations is necessary for preserving more our natural resources.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder how the lack of human social interaction will impact the the well being of the ones taken care of.

<comment><USER12> Might be better than the current state of affairs in which a growing number of elderly die of neglect alone in their homes. Cleanup of these situations is a growth business [1].

[1] [https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/07/21/national/cleanu...](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2010/07/21/national/cleanup- after-unnoticed-death-now-a-growing-industry/)

<comment><USER13> Sadly, can confirm. I've seen or overheard far far far too many conversations where someone was in pain and neglected, or verbally abused by nurses.

If Im lucky enough to feel old one day, I'll take an impersonal robot over real life versions of online trolls.

I haven't seen how it's handled outside of the US, but I would love some examples of nursing care done right, but it's just a tough situation all around. I wish there were some way to align all of our incentives.

Edit: In relation to the comment, I meant that to mean that neglect is happening in both obvious neglect, but also abandoning people at nursing homes, without realizing that this can take a fragile person's mental state from "holding on" to completely broken.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Javascript paywall? I disabled javascript through the development console and could read the article. Maybe a bit off-topic, but this could be solved better.

<comment><USER15> Some marketing person probably forced a front-end developer with no back-end permissions to create a paywall on a short timeline.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Rather than make robots, why don't they import millions of folks from Central America to Do The Jobs That The Japanese Won't Do?

<comment><USER17> SEAsia have Indonesia and the Philippines as their equivalent. They have tried Philippine nurses, but they tend to complain they don't pick up their culture well enough.

<comment><USER5> Japan also has very strict licensing requirements for certain health professions, most of which require fluency in Japanese.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> [http://archive.is/z9iUE](http://archive.is/z9iUE)</comment>


Texas Governor's call for $10,000 bachelor's degrees stumps educators - <AUTHOR> http://www.statesman.com/news/texas-politics/perrys-call-for-10-000-bachelors-degrees-stumps-1248814.html

<comment><USER2> Colleges don't give a damn about tuition costs. Students don't give a damn about tuition costs. The cause of all of this is the federal subsidies of student loans.

If the direct result of a university raising tuition by 10% is that 5% of the student body drops out because of costs they would damn well find a way to make schools cheaper. As it is right now the incentives lie in making fancier student housing and more expensive programs to compete with other schools funded, ultimately, with federal money.

On the other hand, if the main costs are salaries it might not be so simple. Good people are expensive.

<comment><USER3> I had to choose between MIT and the University of Iowa when I graduated high school.

My tuition was paid by a small amount of scholarship and a combination of Pell Grants and student loans. I could have gone to MIT and ended up with a massive debt, but decided that I didn't want to be saddled with that.

You better believe I gave a damn about tuition costs.

<comment><USER4> >I had to choose between MIT and the University of Iowa

You had to choose between MIT and UofIowa? Most of the people I know who are at MIT also got into other great schools. Did you get into anything better than UofIowa? What is your major? Did you graduate? If so, do you regret not going to MIT? Don't you think it would have made a difference in the long run to have graduated from MIT? This is really really interesting.

<comment><USER3> U of Iowa is also a great school. One of the things I would say is actually better about U of I than MIT is the diversity of programs that it is great at.

Iowa has the world famous Writer's Workshop, one of the top medical schools in the country, the largest Dada art collection outside of Zurich, and an amazing media school, just to name a few.

The issue was one of cost, but I'm glad I chose the school I did.

I was in Boston last weekend, and spent the day at the MIT museum. It was inspiring, and I'd be lying if I didn't say I felt a bit of regret, looking at all the accomplishments of MIT students.

When I was a kid, I must have read Steven Levy's "Hackers" half a dozen times. To me, the MIT hackers spending days on end cloistered in a basement with Chinese takeout and soldering guns was about the most exciting thing I could imagine. That's what I wanted to be.

I started out majoring in mathematics, but I was drawn to the equipment in the media department. I ended up with a major that I created with my advisor (Iowa was starting to experiment with customized majors) which combined communications with multimedia art.

In my junior year, I started a 'zine, thanks to the computer lab with its desktop publishing software and scanners. By the end of the year, it was making money, and my best friend and I had started a store. We both dropped out, and I went on to publish the magazine as an actual business. It lasted long enough to get me into web design in 1995, and my career took a completely different turn. I'm now the national head of a UX department for a large agency based in New York.

I wish I had been able to go to MIT. I imagine that I would have been someone like Jeff Han or Marc Andreesen, but the reality is that going to MIT wouldn't have been an automatic ticket to brilliance. It still would have been me, with my lack of focus and direction at the time. Jeff Han and Marc Andreesen didn't go to MIT, nor did Steve Jobs, or Woz, or Dean Kamen... it's all about the person, not the school.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> They can't think of any way how?

Maybe they could cut back on the resort like environments?

If these educators lack the ability to imagine how it's possible, maybe they shouldn't be teaching.

Here's one idea of many. Average time to graduate is in excess of five years now. We also read that most college students have to take remedial classes. We also read that 1/3 of college students learn nothing before they graduate, not because they already knew it, but because they learned nothing. OK, stop accepting students that need remedial classes. If you can't add two fractions together or write a 5 paragraph essay at a sixth grade level, you should not be in college end of story. Just stop accepting these people. But do write down the names of the schools they went to, and shut down those schools if there are more than a certain number of these illiterate people graduating. Or why not just return to some vocational education. It's absurd to think that the entire public is college material and people are some sort of uniform robots that can be programmed to do high tech work. A lot of people are not so smart. That's just the way they are. I am tired of having to fix my own plumbing because I can't find a good plumber because there is no vocational education! Plumbing pays $100 an hour if you have your own truck! That's 12 times more than most PhD grad students make.

Huge amounts of resources are wasted at college dealing with people who should not be there. No college in the US should have a class in basic arithmetic or writing. Those classes should not exist. If you need those classes, go to an adult education center that services the homeless and ex convicts. Not college.

</comment><comment><USER3> I went to college at the University of Iowa in the 1990s. In-state tuition came to about $2,000 per year.

Even adjusted for inflation, that would be maybe a little over $3,000 a year today.

The costs of higher education are out of control.

<comment><USER6> How much of subsidy is the state government providing? Utah also has very low in state tuition, but only because the state income tax subsidizes it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> While this seems to be mainly a headline grabbing talking point that is lacking any path to implementation, Rick Perry (or at least one of his speech writing advisors) seems to have some interestingly disruptive ideas about using technology to make education both better and cheaper. The call for a $10,000 bachelors seems to hinge mainly on utilizing web based technologies and distance learning.

During the recent election he also advocated replacing elementary school textbooks with laptops. The laptops could be used to provide students with electronic copies of textbooks that were more up to date, cheaper, and able to be supplemented with educational games and multimedia. (<http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9EUFAVG0.htm>)

Then again if they come from Rick Perry those laptops might have several gigabytes of creationism along for the ride.([http://salon.glenrose.net/default.asp?view=plink&id=1312...](http://salon.glenrose.net/default.asp?view=plink&id=13125)).

</comment><comment><USER8> This whole idea of "let's move to online learning and AP classes as a substitute for learning at an actual college" is going to seriously shortchange students. AP classes are nowhere near as educational as taking a college level class (even if you ultimately 5'd the exam), and I'm skeptical about online learning because I feel like a lot of what I learned in college I learned outside the classroom.

<comment><USER5> Well, maybe it is useful for a lot of people, but not everyone. I went to one of the best universities (famous west coast one) and was really looking forward to it. I had dropped out of high school to go to community college where I did learn many good things like calculus and physics.

At the big name university though, I learned almost nothing in the classes.

Partly this was because I had been programming and designing and inventing for years, reading journal articles, participating in conferences, selling my software, freelancing, etc. The classes were really backwards and a waste of time.

But it was also because the professors at research universities are really lousy at teaching and don't give one whit whether they are effective, assuming they can even be bothered to show up for lecture rather than send their pet grad student/slave boy.

Did I learn things outside of classes, like you mention? Absolutely! And I would have learned those things outside of classes by not enrolling in the first place at all.

All in all I wasted a bunch of money and a few years of my life that I should have spent starting my next business earlier rather than stalling out while my competitors advanced.

Now I am not saying it is useless for everyone.

But something like engineering, come on, that stuff can all be learned faster and deeper from practicing it rather than listening to BS from guys that have never released a single finished product in a usable state in their entire lives. What the hell do they know.

Medicine, sure, people should go to medical school.

Languages? Move to that country. History? Library. Engineering? Build and invent things; then try to manufacture, market and sell them. It goes on and on.

When books cost more than a years salary in the middle ages, university made sense.

Now I can buy books for $10 on the net that have more info in them than the $200 college textbooks, and I can participate in discussion groups and mailing lists with professionals to learn more of any craft, and I can send emails to the greatest experts in the world and get a response back within hours.

The internet community has replaced college. Universities are obsolete. Going into debt for that stuff is just for dumb people.

OK, I got a bit off topic there. Let me get back to the post I started with. I absolutely 100% agree that any sort of online learning community that you have to pay for or that is associated with these obsolete institutions called universities will be a substandard way to learn things and should be avoided. I totally agree with that. However, that doesn't mean that online access to community doesn't work. It does! It's just that so-called educators nowadays can't possibly succeed at educating on line when they can't even do it in person. Non-organized independent learning communities, whether they are called that or not (they aren't called that) are in fact a fantastic way to learn and far superior to modern institutions. As learning communities of equals, they are closer to the universities of ancient times when people actually became educated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think that rather than just throwing out numbers, what they should do is evaluate what the actual cost of education would be and remove all the useless excess courses added to the curriculum unnecessarily.

Blindly raising tuition and charging more than necessary isn't good nor is it smart to just slap a blind number like $10,000 and ignore all the economics at play. While I think the four year rule is somewhat good for commitment, I also strongly believe the education system needs a major makeover instead. Not all degrees are the same and should not all fall under the same timeline as each other. Everything should be restructured to make the best of each person's education instead.

<comment><USER10> "what the actual cost of education would be and remove all the useless excess courses added to the curriculum unnecessarily."

couldn't agree more.

i am currently in college, and i have to take 3 engineering electives (classes, outside of my engineering major), 2 social science electives, and i get to take 3 "any/free" electives.

one could make an argument that it broadens the educational experience or whatever, but from experience, half these classes are BS, and almost all of these just suck up a lot of time, which could be better spent focusing on one's chosen field of study/ or other interests.

<comment><USER11>
      one could make an argument that it broadens the educational experience or whatever

While I tend to agree with your point, the truth is that undergraduate study is not about specialization. There is a trend in that direction, but in my mind it's a bad thing, not a good thing.

In a perfect world you would take comprehensive classes specific to your chosen field, but those classes would take a more holistic approach, and would draw course material from a multitude of sources.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Remove the non-profit status (i.e. make 'em for-profit) of all educational institutions and the problem will sort itself out within a generation.</comment>


Django and Webpack - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/owais/django-webpack-loader/

<comment><USER2> The ReadMe should start with an abstract explaining what the project does and how I can benefit by using it.

Right now I have no clue what it is. Perhaps a clone of django-pipeline?</comment>


Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule (2009) - <AUTHOR> http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html <comment><USER2> Thread from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16922147](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16922147)

2015: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10658187)

2012: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512023](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4512023)

2009: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=718279](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=718279)

<comment><USER3> Yes, but there's always new people popping up, and it's a useful concept to keep in mind, especially if you manage "makers".

<comment><USER2> Oh yes. As the other repliers explained, the intent behind linking to past discussions is just to satisfy curiosity. Otherwise we'd mark the post [dupe] and bury it.

I wish I could find a brief way to signify this when making such a post. It would be tedious to spell the intention out every time, and yet without it, a lot of readers mistakenly think that it's about shaming the submitter for reposting; exactly the opposite of what we mean!

<comment><USER4> I don't know what you've tried, however calling them 'archives' or 'archived threads' may increase contrast with this thread.

Finishing with a (somewhat forced perhaps) positive note may encourage this one eg "I'm looking forwards to today's insights".

Then again, this could just be fixating on the little problems!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Sourcegraph CEO here. I came across a product here on HN that is helping with the problem of being a maker at a company with meetings. It's called Meetter ([https://www.meetter.app/](https://www.meetter.app/)) and it lets you block off a specific hour each day/week for meetings instead of making your entire day open to scattered meetings. I am just speaking as a happy user and customer, I am not affiliated with them in any way.

<comment><USER6> I am on-and-off conversing with the team at meetter ever since we started using it for some of our meetings. They are very responsive and helpful.

The concept is solid but it takes a cultural shift which can be hard. I am all for less but better meetings and condensing the schedules.

If someone would ask me to describe what meetter is I would say "An automated team assistant that tries to make sure that all topics of your org can get focused meeting time in one or multiple big blocks"

"Good" orgs will push for a commitment that everyone is available at the _same_ time slots, say 2 hours every Mon, Wed, Fri. Meetter (and well created topics) will do the rest and nobody needs to juggle.

Prerequisite is having enough meeting spaces or being more remote as the number of _parallel_ sessions (formerly called breakouts) is dynamic.

Edit: also the slack integration is great, makes creating topics a breeze and helps transparency.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have a similar "partition" but it's forced on me by laws of physics: I live on a tropical island a bit less than half-way around the world. By force of everyone else's schedule in the US, my "business time" goes from about 5 am (about as early as I can bear to take a meeting) to about 9 am when everyone on the west coast is wrapping up their day. Then I attend to my work in the lab where I can sit down to the first "maker" part of my day, diagnosing cancer under the microscope. After dinner I usually have a second "maker period", reading papers, working through a computer science text (I never got a formal computing education but was lucky that physics proved to be "close enough"), planning experiments, and writing long-form business documents.

</comment><comment><USER8> We built a tool around this essay to help better coordinate across maker and manager time: [https://www.getclockwise.com/](https://www.getclockwise.com/)

At the core, it defragments your calendar, but it also provides a suite of utilities to help you better organize your time (color coding, Slack status, personal calendar sync, auto travel time, etc.). PG's essay has been a consistent point of inspiration for us.

Engineering teams at teams from 5 – 1000 use us. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

<comment><USER9> Thanks for building Clockwise. Our entire team uses it, and it's quite useful for blocking off chunks of time.

The one part where we run into trouble is: we give our Calendly links a ton to external folks to schedule meetings.

Now either we mark our Clockwise blocks as "busy" in which case it's very difficult to schedule a meeting with us via Calendly, or "free" in which case people can schedule meetings with us at any point during the block in which case the block usually gets broken up.

Something that would be great is the ability to allow meetings in eg the first 45m or last 45m of a Clockwise block >2hrs long.

Whether you accomplish this by fragmenting blocks (45m free / 1 hr busy / 45m free), or some deeper integration w/ Calendly is immaterial, but this sort of thing would be immensely helpful!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This also called process orientation vs goal orientation. Goal orientation looks good on paper but its largely a disaster. It's good to be both but err on the side of the process. There's a reason why great mangers are programmers. Shit managers are in it for the money or status and are likely the types to yell out - why isn't it done yet.

It doesn't take a whole lotta imagination to come up with world-changing and ambitious goals.

<comment><USER11> > _This also called process orientation vs goal orientation._

A.k.a. "Goals vs. Systems":

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

<comment><USER10> Exactly! Thanks for the link.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Deep work by Newport expands on the same idea and provides some practical tips also. Highly recommended.

</comment><comment><USER13> If you haven't read the book Peopleware, I recommend it. It clearly defined to me, as a maker in Paul grahams terminology, what was and wasn't working on my team and why.

</comment><comment><USER14> You should really check out woven.com (calendly meets google calendar meets doodle). One of the most under-hyped startups in the productivity space this year.

It's been a gamechanger for blocking off parts of my calendar while creating "templates" for different styles of meetings that are only available at certain days/times (for example: client calls, board meetings, or coffee meetings).

It's completely changed how I organize my time and one of the main levers for me doubling my productivity this year.

<comment><USER15> Are you affiliated with woven?</comment></comment>


If Web APIs are so simple why do we need SDKs? - <AUTHOR> http://www.apiful.io/intro/2016/06/10/why-apis-need-sdks.html <comment><USER2> I agree with this post. I very rarely consider using a service's API without a client library. Taking the load off authentication and marshaling is incredibly valuable in my development workflow. Granted, sometimes simple REST endpoints are OK if they are public / don't need complicated authentication.

I think the major benefits of client libraries is the ability for a developer to stay within their programming language / business domain and not stray into the fun of HTTP and JSON.

Curious how much burden this makes for providers though and what people have done to streamline the testing of the various client libraries with different versions of the service.

<comment><USER3> > _Curious how much burden this makes for providers though_

If those providers document their APIs using the Swagger format, there are tools that will automatically generate SDKs in tons of popular languages. The burden is nearly zero.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does that count as an SDK? - simple code generation out of a spec? - Most SDKs exist because the provider is hiding some ugly code or making a number of primitive API calls to assemble the response. Aren't we falling back into the old "software" practices and now have to maintain code for anyone that users our service? - wasn't it supposed to be a service?

<comment><USER3> > _Does that count as an SDK?_

A lot of big companies publish what they call an SDK, which is really just a thin, idiomatic wrapper on top of HTTP calls. Most of the AWS SDKs are like this, and sometimes the wrapper is way too thin (see: the disastrous mess that is the Dynamo JS library).

Should SDK mean more than that? I don't know. Is that kind of SDK useful? Definitely! HTTP is untyped, slow, and potentially tricky to use (like with OAuth 1.2), so it's nice to have some native code that abstracts that stuff away.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Lifetime free Pro accounts to developers - (SmugMug) - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.smugmug.com/don/2007/04/20/lifetime-free-pro-accounts-to-developers/ <comment><USER2> I use smugmug for all my photo needs. You send them email, you get a real human response. Great service, great prints, great people, great looking site.

This is a very cool program, it's worth building something simple to get the account!</comment>


Google rumored to replace 2-factor with 'Advanced Protection' keys - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/29/google-rumor-says-advanced-protection-will-replace-2-factor/ <comment><USER2> You can already use a U2F key with a Google account, such as a Yubikey 4 or other generic key.

[https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6103523](https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/6103523)

<comment><USER3> Only with Chrome. Safari is a no go, for example.

Also, Yubikey U2F (e.g. Yubikey Neo) doesn't work on iOS devices [1].

[1] [https://www.yubico.com/support/knowledge- base/categories/art...](https://www.yubico.com/support/knowledge- base/categories/articles/can-use-yubikey-ios-device-ipad-iphone/)

<comment><USER4> This is actually the reason I switched back to Android for my primary phone -- complete lack of auth token support via USB or NFC.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: How to get better in advanced SQL - <AUTHOR> How to get better at indexing? How to get better at joins? How to get better in SQL optimization?<p>Must to know things about SQL and maybe relational databases? <comment><USER3> Since you ased about indexing in particular, here is my site about indexing:

[https://use-the-index-luke.com/](https://use-the-index-luke.com/)

You might also want to follow my other project:

[https://modern-sql.com/](https://modern-sql.com/)

<comment><USER4> One more vote for use-the-index-Luke. Clear, concise and comprehensive - <USER2> used this quite a bit when studying for interviews or optimizing database performance. Great resource!

<comment> frosted-flakes His book (SQL Performance Explained) is also very good. The book is not too long and not too dense. I'd buy it again (in fact, I probably will, because I left my copy with a former employer because they paid for it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ask HN: What is the best online resource to learn advanced SQL? _(Jan 2017: 448 points, 97 comments)_

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13417326)

</comment><comment><USER6> Search for a copy of the DB2 SQL Cookbook. Lots of good explanations and examples. It's free and no longer updated as I guess it is just too darn useful...

One of the problems with advanced SQL is you get into how the vendors implement advanced features. In Oracle you will get familiar with ORA-xxx and coding around those. DB2 throws different error messages and so does SQL Server. I have had to rewrite SQL going from one implementation to another because of these differences.

</comment><comment><USER7> Just by doing advanced exercises. For example take a look at the SQL homework for one of the CMU courses on databases:

[https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2018/homework1/](https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2018/homework1/)

While doing the exercises you'll be doing some research and looking at question in stack overflow.

</comment><comment><USER8> What worked well for me was getting a job in a small industrial business with a lot of IOT sensors. This brought a lot of SQL queries to optimize...

Using tools like MySQL WorkBench or dBeaver is essential to try queries in a friendly interface (tools that show time spent on queries & better tables than command line). Ideally, you should also search for database normalization.

If you don't have a database to practice with, you can analyze a small business need (ex.: managing employee salary, address & tasks), then create the schema. Then, you should generate tons of fake data to have a substantial time difference when optimizing queries. Try selecting all employees and their tasks, with different sorts. Try finding all employees with an address that starts with 4. Find all employees with a "i" in their name and where the task name is "plumber", etc.

Also, read about rails/laravel migrations, as they are the best methods I know to manage database versions.

</comment><comment><USER9> I've found the leetcode[1] database problems have helped me quite a lot - especially to see different ways of solving problems and how to do things in SQL that you didn't know you could.

1\. [https://leetcode.com/problemset/database/](https://leetcode.com/problemset/database/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I would reccomend this book:

[https://www.amazon.com/Art-SQL-Stephane- Faroult/dp/059600894...](https://www.amazon.com/Art-SQL-Stephane- Faroult/dp/0596008945)

</comment><comment><USER11> "SQL for Smarties", Joe Celko -- an excellent resource

<comment><USER12> link?

<comment><USER13> [http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780128007617.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780128007617.do)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Start generating and reviewing explain plans for your queries. There's a ton of information available about how the engine is implementing your queries, and learning how to think like the database engine will really help you level- up the way you think about SQL.

</comment><comment><USER15> For SQL optimization, learn to use window functions and/or Common Table Expressions if available in your variant of SQL. For joins, others have mentioned EXPLAIN: you can use that command to see the "query plan" for any query, which is sort of the equivalent of assembly code. You should learn which of your SQL variant's "join algorithms" at the query plan level are the most performant, and aim to use those types of joins in your queries.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you'd like to gamify the process, I recommend CodeWars[0]

They give you challenges that progressively get harder. You can choose from many different languages but SQL is one of them. I'm not affiliated with them, but I used them for a few months to get incredibly good with Ruby.

[0]: referral link: www.codewars.com/r/EbsMWQ

</comment><comment><USER17> It depends a lot on the database flavor. My suggestion is to search for "tips and tricks" for your particular DB.

</comment><comment><USER18> Learn relational algebra. Learn relational calculus. You'll probably want to read a book or take a class on DB theory; blog posts won't cut it.</comment>


Ask HN: What antivirus do you use? - Pi-ena What antivirus (if any) do you use for personal/enterprise devices, and why? <comment><AUTHOR> Linux</comment>


This is why we have Stuxnet - <AUTHOR> http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2016-March/028762.html <comment><USER2> I'm hoping/wishing that Peter will name and shame.

The installation process he just described was acceptable in the late 1990s but things have moved on since then.

<comment><USER3> > The installation process he just described was acceptable in the late 1990s > but things have moved on since then.

Not in the industrial space they haven't. Plant managers don't understand or care about anything other than keeping their lines operating.

<comment><USER4> The issue is that it needs to be explained in terms that they can understand: ... or part of your line will fail, randomly, and may take over a day to repair, IF your maintenance procedures are current, if not, you'll lose 4-5 days of line time.

Note: not one mention of "security", or good neighbor, or infection, only cutting to the point.</comment></comment></comment>