Ask HN: How do you stop yourself from stagnating? - <AUTHOR> Sometimes there are points during which I'm doing pretty well for myself and am wholly content with where I'm at, without any strong desire for anything different/better.<p>How do you stop such a state from stagnating you? <comment><USER2> Writing everything down and relentlessly questioning my priors.

2017 was a very difficult year, but one of the decisions I've most benefitted from was deciding to write down my goals. I spent about a month, directly putting in at least an hour a day.

I started by writing down what I already knew: I wanted to have a positive impact on the world, there are certain types of impact that I care about more than others, and that I wanted all of my decisions to operate on a long time- horizon.

Immediately I found flaws. What actually is impact? What are the types of impact I care about? How much of impact is a result of mitigating risk vs. creating something new?

When I got stuck, I would open up a new text file and write stream of consciousness until it physically hurt to continue.

After a lot of iteration, I ended with an outline of my goals and my rationale that I was relatively happy with. And then I worked backwards to figure out what I should be doing today.

It's a constant work in progress, but this workflow has been immensely helpful. It's given me a single source of truth for whether something is Actually Important, helped me prioritize, and made me realize when I was being irrationally demotivated or complacent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I try to never stop learning. Here's a couple of ways I've done that seem to work okay for me.

\- I always try something different and commit to it for a year. By the end of the year, I've become at least proficient in it.

\- I buy something that makes me do something. A few years ago, I bought a real estate investment, when I wasn't making too much money (still not making a ton). Now, I'm able to do more home improvement tasks than the year prior.

\- I try to always learn something new everyday. I don't care whether I spend 1 minute or 1 hour or 1 day. As long as I do something to fulfill this goal, I win for the day. (No Zero Days).

It's okay to be content, but it's not okay to be stagnant. A running river gives life to those around it, but still water makes for no life.

</comment><comment><USER4> What I do is to force myself to do something painful every day. Make it a habit.

It can be push ups. It can be a morning or evening run. It could be taxes or cancelling a subscription. It could be doing algorithms or reading the white paper of a random crypto.

Sometimes it's optimization. Find something you repeat a lot and optimize that. It could be doing laundry or showering faster. It could be learning to read faster, memorize better. Maybe automating daily tasks through something like IFTTT. One of the best things I did in 2017 was getting my typos for capital letters, semicolons, and brackets down by 50%.

The nice part about being comfortable is that you don't have to focus on survival and have room to do painful things.

So just work on that one painful thing for half an hour each day.

</comment><comment><USER5> There's nothing wrong with being happy where you are... but it's true that since learning is always a little painful, you need to make sure that being happy isn't due to not learning.

One thing I do: every time I make a mistake I try to figure out _why_ , and how I can avoid it next time. Then I write it up for my newsletter ([https://softwareclown.com](https://softwareclown.com)), which forces me to dive enough deeper that I can explain it.

Initially I was worried about running out of mistakes, but turns out I make them all the time :) Which means there's always a relevant learning moment around the corner.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have always at least one new habit being built. I find very useful acquiring habits as automated routines. Whenever I have a new goal, I create a process for achieving it, make it an habit, and stop focusing on the goal so much.

Whenever I feel stagnated, I review my current habits, and do either:

A) Improve/optimize an existing habit for a more ambitious goal (ex: "going to the park and do a couple pullups before work" becomes "do a small strength training routine at the park before work")

B) Create a new habit (starting small) in an area of my life that I'm not taking enough care of - even without having a clear goal for it. I found that many times, creating a process first has ended up creating an exciting goal.

By following this approach, during last year I created and sustained the following habits:

\- Review my Japanese flashcards daily (>1 year)

\- Keep a budget (>8 months)

\- Journal (>8 months)

\- Body-weight strength training before work (>3 months)

\- Working/studying in early morning before going to the office (>1 month)

The key is to start small. If a process no longer helps my goals, I kill it.

For keeping track, I use the Loop Habit Tracker for Android, which is open source ([https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits](https://github.com/iSoron/uhabits)).

EDIT: formatting

</comment><comment><USER7> Start a blog about a topic that you want to become an expert in. The continuous push to publish is a great motivator for self-improvement.

<comment><USER8> I think this is a good idea, but does anyone still read blogs?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I am currently only working in Tech Support while I learn new skills and try to break into DevOps. My employer has been dangling promotions in front of me for the past four years, but keeps indefinitely delaying them.

I keep becoming more vocal about my career development, but the company keeps having new excuses as to why I need to "wait a few more months".

I have now escalated my demands and made it clear that my career is not going the direction it needs to. I have laid out my conditions for further employment.

Now, my employer either needs to get things moving in the right direction, or one of the 50 places I applied for this week is going to replace them.

The real issue is that I am so valuable to my employer doing what I currently do that they don't want to change my role and have to replace me. Unfortunately for them, they're going to have to replace me no matter what happens.

Don't get too comfortable in the same position for too long, and don't let your company make you feel bad for needing more. If they won't give you what you need in a career, get out and find an employer that will.

<comment><USER10> > I keep becoming more vocal about my career development, but the company > keeps having new excuses as to why I need to "wait a few more months".

> I have now escalated my demands and made it clear that my career is not > going the direction it needs to. I have laid out my conditions for further > employment.

You're not going to win this one. Make your plans and walk away when you have a good offer.

<comment><USER9> Oh, I know. I have interviews lined up already. Actually got a few dream employers on that list, and callbacks from some really cool tech companies.

The sad part is that the company I'm working for now was really different when I first got hired on, but a change in management really killed everything good about the place. I miss the company that hired me and wish I could still work there, but the company as it exists now isn't worth my time.

I am still vocalizing my issues and asking for a resolution. Maybe something astounding will happen and they'll make it all right - but if they don't (and they won't), then I'll be able to walk away, and they'll know why.

Not working paycheck-to-paycheck helps a lot. I mentioned to my manager, after a pretty harsh diatribe about performance expectations that "conditional employment is a two-way street". She actually countered "We could replace you faster than you can replace us", which is a bullshit thing to say to an employee, but she certainly shut up when I told her "I can go without a job longer than you can go without me".

Tl;Dr: I should go ahead and quit for a new job, and then take the retired founder of my old employer out to lunch and tell him what a shitshow his company has turned into since his business partner took over. Also, don't let the sunken cost fallacy convince you to keep working at a sinking ship.

<comment><USER10> Wish you the best, mate. Someday you'll probably look back at this thread an marvel at how far you've come since now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Just don't let money get in the understanding of what stagnating means to you. What's fun to you in a fundamental sense? In other words: try to find motive inside you, not outside.

<comment><USER12> Try to change job or move up every three years

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I found myself that asking myself a couple of important questions each week do the trick!

These are a few questions that I ask myself every week:

1\. Are you talking to your clients enough this week?

2\. Are you making what people want and is your business going well?

3\. Did you pace check your vision?

4\. Are you measuring the outputs of your busines?

5\. Are you making money ?

6\. Are we planning enough creative stuff or just being stagnant?

7\. Is the team trying to scale itself enough ? (when you push the team, think about that -- power of leverage and all)

8\. Do you scale yourself or are you doing same thing every day?

</comment><comment><USER14> If you're happy, you're doing something right, so kudos.

To stop from stagnating, play with things. New things, old things, interesting things you aren't going to need to worry about, because you're doing great. Read about stuff, particularly from fields you haven't studied before.

It works for crows, anyway. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dWw9GLcOeA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dWw9GLcOeA)

</comment><comment><USER8> I would enjoy it while it lasts if I were you!

If you are seriously worried about stagnation though you could perhaps set some objectives to learn new skills or achieve some physically challenging or adventurous goals.

</comment><comment><USER15> I stagnate. Initially it's awesome, but sooner or later I remember how shitty it feels, and push off once again. (Starting again always sucks, too.)

</comment><comment><USER16> hobbies, there is always something interesting to learn/master, fishing for example or art collecting, - its a whole other universe...</comment>


Show HN: MeetingBar: opensource app for showing meetings in menu bar - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar <comment><AUTHOR> With a large number of meetings, it is very convenient to keep them in front of your eyes. I tried to use various applications from AppStore, but they were inconvenient and sometimes were completely abandoned.

So I wrote the application from scratch. It is free and completely open- source.

It helped me focus more at work, not to miss my meetings, and join them quickly. I hope that it will help you too. You can leave your features request, look at others' requests, offer them in pull requests, and be sure that the project will continue to develop. GitHub Support me here and on the product hunt if you like this idea. [https://www.producthunt.com/posts/meetingbar](https://www.producthunt.com/posts/meetingbar)

The latest version is here: [https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/releases/latest/download...](https://github.com/leits/MeetingBar/releases/latest/download/MeetingBar.dmg)

This is a public beta and I'm waiting for your feedback!

Thanks!</comment>


Reporter blames 'cruel' Vanuatu ban on China - <AUTHOR> https://www.asiatimes.com/2019/11/article/reporter-blames-cruel-vanuatu-ban-on-china/ <comment><USER2> > But he believes the government was most incensed over an expose filed in > July about Chinese police entering the country and deporting six criminal > suspects – four of whom had Vanuatu passports – without any reference to > local courts.

I didn't think China had gotten so brazen.</comment>


Yandex CTO and co-founder has died - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_dd&u=http%3A%2F%2Fclubs.ya.ru%2Fcompany%2F69367 <comment><USER2> Truly sad; what a brilliant guy. And a real class act... None of the money- throwing antics[1] of some of his peers. Just a brilliant, modest dude.

Quite fittingly, the Yandex translation is superior to the Google translate version:

[http://translate.yandex.net/tr- url/en+ru.en/clubs.ya.ru/comp...](http://translate.yandex.net/tr- url/en+ru.en/clubs.ya.ru/company/69367?nocookiesupport=yes)

1: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57442907-71/russias- zucker...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-57442907-71/russias-zuckerberg- throws-money-out-the-window/)

<comment><USER3> I wouldn't be so sure it's superior:

Google: "But he left behind a whole new generation of programmers, an entire school. And it sets the level of ethical standards for all of us." vs Yandex: "But he left behind a whole new generation of programmers, a whole school. And its ethical standards specified the level of all of us."

Google: "Tonight, he was gone." vs Yandex "Tonight he was not."

And RIP Ilya. Many people who knew him said he was a very good person. He didn't spoke in public often, did his work, supported charity and also had an active political stance. What a loss.

<comment><USER4> With zero knowledge of the source language, those two translations make me think that they were going for "Tonight, he is no more."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> UPD: Ilya is in coma with no brain activity, but not dead yet. ([http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fru.reuters.com%2Farticle%2FoddlyEnoughNews%2FidRUMSE96O03O20130725&act=url))

\--

Ilya was very vocal about his contempt for falsifications in Russian elections. He went to protests and helped develop an app for election observers. This app helped volunteers submit proofs of violations during the elections.

[http://webnabludatel.org](http://webnabludatel.org)

He adopted several children and hated the recent law forbidding child adoption by USA citizens.

He will be missed by many.

\---

Edit 1: Rephrased the first sentence per suggestion in reply

Edit 2: Added recent info about coma

<comment> guard-of-terra This sounds defamatory to his colleagues. Most of whom also watched those elections and participate in political activities. It's just that Ilya was the most brightly burning among them all.

<comment><USER5> Thanks, I didn't mean to imply this. I edited the post.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very sad news :(

Besides being a great CTO, he kept helping orphaned children [1] and taught juggling (right at Yandex office).

[1] These children: [http://mariaschildren.ru/content/view/141/96/](http://mariaschildren.ru/content/view/141/96/)

<comment><USER7> He obviously had a huge heart for these innocents. The average outlook for orphans in Russia who are not adopted is bleak, with many ending up in prison or dead within a few years after being released into society at age 16 or so.

Due to entirely unrelated political forces, the US is banned from adopting them for now, with no change in sight. There are many children throughout the world dreaming of having parents some day.

I suggest to all, when you make your hacker fortune, buy one fewer of your favorite cars and adopt an orphan if you have a heart for children.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sad news :/ Here is the press release btw (link was broken for me)

[http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/yandex-announces- death-o...](http://www.nasdaq.com/press-release/yandex-announces-death-of-co- founder-and-cto-ilya-segalovich-20130725-00043)

</comment><comment><USER9> Sad irony. Today I got an invitation to Yandex.Islands and at once recalled his presentation (video: [http://events.yandex.ru/events/yac/m/talks/816/](http://events.yandex.ru/events/yac/m/talks/816/) ). In an hour I read the news...

</comment><comment><USER10> 'May he find peace' seems appropriate considering his profession.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> [UPD]: Apparently Ilya is in coma on life support with no brain activity signs.

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/25/yandex-founder- idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/25/yandex-founder- idUSL6N0FV33U20130725)

<comment><USER11> The press release on Yandex's website says he's dead.

[http://company.yandex.com/press_center/press_releases/2013/2...](http://company.yandex.com/press_center/press_releases/2013/2013-07-25.xml)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Such an incredible person. I've met him a couple of times, and he was always smiling, inquisitive and much nicer than you would ever expect. The good go early.

</comment><comment><USER13> I misinterpreted the title and thought 2 people died.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, fixed the mistake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How sad to hear.

For those not fammiliar with Yandex check out the interview we did with the other founder, Arkady Voloz, who tells the story of Yandex: [http://blip.tv/vincent-everts/ceo-arkady-voloz-tells-the- sto...](http://blip.tv/vincent-everts/ceo-arkady-voloz-tells-the-story-of- yandex-2272959)

</comment><comment><USER15> Updated: He is in coma. [http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&...](http://www.google.com/translate?hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Flenta.ru%2Fnews%2F2013%2F07%2F25%2Fsegalovich1%2F)

</comment><comment><USER16> RIP to a young and brilliant man.

Go out there and live the day, hug your loved ones, enjoy the sun, work hard, don't think about taking over the world and being the next Steve Jobs, stay humble, you're given one life - go out there and make life proud that you are a part of it.

Memento mori

<comment><USER17> While platitudes generally go over well on hacker news, I'm curious how one can "make life proud that you are a part of it." Should one also try to "make time notice that you exist" or "make gravity work for it?"

<comment><USER18> I intend to give all these a go by buying a self winding watch and hopping to work everyday and remembering to take a moment to wish everyone I pass a good day and good health.

<comment><USER17> 10:50 status: left home 3 hours ago, almost at the train station to go to work. number of times maced: 1. number of children hurriedly pulled away from me: 7.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There are some conflicting articles suggesting he is in a coma:

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/25/yandex-founder- idU...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/07/25/yandex-founder- idUSL6N0FV33U20130725)

[http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yandex-co-founder-chief- techno...](http://finance.yahoo.com/news/yandex-co-founder-chief- technology-084834059.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Very very sad. A good reminder to do what you love. In the wise words of the modern day poet, Nas: "'cause you never know when ya gonna go"

RIP mate.

</comment><comment><USER21> Cancer killed another great IT person. Very sad news.

</comment><comment><USER22> Is there any life story about Ilya? I want to write an article in Chinese about his life and contribution to technology community.

<comment> guard-of-terra a bit here [http://ria.ru/spravka/20130725/951995567.html](http://ria.ru/spravka/20130725/951995567.html)

more here [http://iseg.yandex.ru/](http://iseg.yandex.ru/)

(use google translate or [http://translate.yandex.ru/](http://translate.yandex.ru/) )

It's not too late because "time of death" was just yesterday after several days coma.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Very sad if someone passes at such a (relativly) young age. Even more so when he made the world a better place for so many people.

</comment><comment><USER24> Until today, I had never heard of Yandex. I do have to say that their search quality appears to be very high, and I may use them as a Google alternate in the future. Is there any specific reason why they don't have much traction in the US?

<comment><USER25> Yandex was created a bit earlier than Google actually.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Rest In Peace... Really sad to hear this news...

</comment><comment><USER27> missing the black bar on top

<comment><AUTHOR> Yandex made its whole logo black.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> What's wrong with 2013?

<comment><USER29> Without death, would we be as motivated to live life?

<comment><USER30> Please. Give Einstein, John Von Neumann or Francis Crick another 50 years on this planet and tell me the world would be worse off because of it.

<comment><USER31> Maybe none of these guys would have done what they've done.

Maybe they'd never even have been born, their parents being to lazy.

Maybe we'd never have evolved from being pretty comfortable monkeys sitting around - why would we have evolved to breed, to love sex, and to make babies at all? Babies are just competition to an immortal being.

Bottom line is, none of us would be around to mourn the passing of an apparently very nice person. RIP Ilya.

<comment><USER32> > _Maybe we 'd never have evolved from being pretty comfortable monkeys > sitting around - why would we have evolved to breed, to love sex, and to > make babies at all?_

But we are here now, and we don't want to die. Death might have been useful in the past, but now it's the high time for it to go away.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Stomach cancer, unexpected exacerbation.

Fuck cancer.

<comment><USER34> Stomach cancer is extremely deadly. That's one of the worst ones to get... It's quite rare to get it very young, though.

<comment><USER35> While i don't know about this guy specifically, Russia has high rate of smoking. Coincidentally, several prominent Russian people i've checked out about recently happened to had died from stomach cancer relatively young.

<comment><USER36> The absurd amount of alcoholic beverages also help

I'm not in any way against the moderate consumption of alcohol but the russians are in another level, really

Just to be clear: I'm not implying this is the case

<comment><USER34> Well, yes, there is a strong correlation between alcohol consumption and cancer rates. I am not sure if it was ever tested on animals to prove that it directly leads to cancer, but in observational studies this is often pointed out as a culprit for high cancer rates.

<comment><USER37> I believe they did have proof that some Asians don't have the gene which helps break down alcohol, and those that had that gene were at a higher risk of cancer if they drank alcohol. No, I guess it isn't definitive proof though. Still, Russia is on the Asian continent, so this theory holds water.

<comment><USER38> It's not just for Asians. Alcohol is a known cause of cancer for humans.

From the American Cancer Society ([http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/dietandphysicalact...](http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancercauses/dietandphysicalactivity/alcohol- use-and-cancer)):

"Alcohol is a known cause of cancers of the:

Mouth Throat (pharynx) Voice box (larynx) Esophagus Liver Colon and rectum Breast"

<comment><USER34> I would take whatever is written by the American Cancer Society with a grain of salt. They have also a political agenda, since they recommend "children and teens" not to consume alcohol at all, even though there is no study or data to support that claim. In most countries around the world, teens and even children drink alcohol early in their lives without notable health effect on the long run as long as their consumption remains reasonable.

Besides, their claim on "There are many ways of reducing heart disease risk, including avoiding smoking, eating a diet low in saturated and trans fats, staying at a healthy weight, staying physically active, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol." is only partially true and just reflects the current thinking of specialists. The evidence on LDL/HDL levels is not very compelling and there was a post very recently on HN from a surgeon claiming heart disease was rather linked to tissue inflammation than cholesterol.

<comment><USER38> > there was a post very recently on HN from a surgeon claiming heart disease > was rather linked to tissue inflammation than cholesterol

I believe the "surgeon" you referred to is Dwight Lundell. His claim is just that, a claim. Suffice to note that he has his medical license revoked because of "unprofessional conduct":

[http://www.casewatch.org/board/med/lundell/order_2008.pdf](http://www.casewatch.org/board/med/lundell/order_2008.pdf)

> reflects the current thinking of specialists

That means their recommendation reflects the current medical consensus. Of course American Cancer Society is going to make their recommendations based on current medical consensus instead of some wild claim made by someone who has his medical license revoked. To do anything else would be irresponsible.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Natural Language Processing and Text Mining API - <AUTHOR> http://esapi.intellexer.com/ <comment><USER2> Does anyone tried this service? I'm curious about feedback of actual usage</comment>


Google Alerts is now with Material design - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/alerts

<comment><USER2> Have they also made the alerts work reliably?

</comment><comment><USER3> Eh, I don't think so -- and no PR related to it mentions Material design principles. The only thing about it that looks "material"-ish is a single- column paper card sort of thing and the bold color at the top. There are no animations, no reactive layouts, no shadows.

</comment><comment><USER4> My issue with Google Alerts is they seem to only send me a few hits once in a while and when I actually search for my keyword phrase (which is long and has unicode chars in it), I find more and newer exact hits.

<comment><USER4> Oh, and the language selector is broken for me on OSX Chrome 35.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the ability to get alerts via an RSS feed has gone.. I've gotten less and less email alerts over time I honestly thought this would be something Google had on the deadpool list

<comment><USER6> It's there. When you edit and show options, you can deliver to email or RSS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I feel like it was a rushed job - absolutely no attention to the motion work that is most of what Material design is about: [http://paulstamatiou.com/design-provide-meaning-with- motion/](http://paulstamatiou.com/design-provide-meaning-with-motion/)

<comment><USER8> What particular aspects, interactions in this app make you feel like it was rushed? How could it be improved?</comment></comment>


Show HN: Screenshots as a Service API, Free for Open Source - <AUTHOR> https://capture.techulus.in/ <comment><USER2> one question: why?

wkhtmlto(image|pdf) is a thing, as is PhantomJS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Because it easier using just a url rather than phantom JS or wkhtml.

<comment><USER3> One of the keys to B2B sales is considering the economics of risk.

From a business standpoint, I'd be concerned about taking a dependency on a web service with the business model I see here. Free for open-source means it will be harder for the company to make money and the harder it is for the company to make money the more likely it is to disappear. If the company disappears, a business taking a dependency on the service is in worse shape than if it bets on a slightly more difficult to implement alternative.

In addition, a large number of non-paying users creates a support load that requires resources that could be used to develop a paying customer base. This also makes it somewhat less likely that the business will be sustainable.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a valid point and there are chances of that happening. As of now, I do not expect a huge load from open source projects, but only time can confirm that.

Thank you for the valuable feedback.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data (2009) [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35179.pdf <comment><USER2> Tons of posts, but not many with comments: [https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Unreasonable%20Effective...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=The%20Unreasonable%20Effectiveness%20of%20Data&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0).

Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532884](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=532884).

<comment><USER3> NLP seems to be a blind-spot on HN.</comment></comment>


Lost my bet: the PC isn't dead… yet - <AUTHOR> http://lemire.me/blog/2016/02/28/lost-my-bet-the-pc-isnt-dead-yet/ <comment><USER2> _" What holds us back to the PC is the keyboard. There is simply not a good substitute for the keyboard right now. We could do away with the monitors."_

I don't think we can do away with monitors. I can't imagine someone who spends the entire day writing e-mails or memos or marketing literature, or working with spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations (i.e., a large percentage of office workers) wanting to use a tablet-sized screen all day. A large monitor mounted at eye-level has vastly superior ergonomics. (Also, the ability to read tiny text on a tiny screen diminishes with age.)

It doesn't seem like the author of this article is very familiar with how computers are used in the corporate world. If he wants to extend his bet for another three years (i.e., "PCs will be dead by 2018"), I think the odds would still be against him.

</comment><comment><USER3> Content consumption is a good use case for mobile phones and tablets. And this is exactly what is happening(or happened), as people primarily use it for content consumption.

Content creation on the other hand, especially programming/development and any serious video,audio and image editing are better suited for a PC.

The precision of the mouse and the speed with which the mouse and keyboard can be operated cannot be achieved on a mobile phone or a tablet.

The PC is going to be around for a long time to come even if the PC market might shrink(as it is happening now) as it's integral to the process of content creation.</comment>


Show HN: First Draft (beta) – distraction-free writing for first drafts - <AUTHOR> http://beta.firstdraft.io

<comment><USER2> Just wrote my first blog post using this and it was actually a nice refreshing experience. Much easier to write I found.

My one gripe is when I export to Google Docs for further editing, it has some weird formatting. The words don't get wrapped, and adding new lines of text pushes everything down a new line, not sure how to get rid of that.

<comment><AUTHOR> That is odd. Working on it.

<comment><USER3> Probably because you inject   (no breaking spaces) instead of regular word spaces — so lines can't be wrapped.

Also, the editor does not accept accented letters (Ä Ö Ü ä ö ü etc.), no Greek (Δεν Έλληνες), in short no Unicode, and not even full ASCII (common punctuation marks like — –).

It seems the app is listening to keys and basically re-implementing the whole typing input — which means you'd be in for some very heavy very low-level stuff (support for all of the 128k Unicode codepoints)…

I guess you'd had to do such a workaround to wrap the lines yourself, and move them up steps-wise, one line at a time (instead of the native scrolling behaviour). Though I really like the typewriter effect, one could ask if that isn't at a very big expense (both in implementation effort and multi-language support).

The idea of the app (and it's adequate name) is nice, though: stripping down even the most basic editing features (cursor moves) effectively forces one to focus on the writing at hand. Love it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Google Docs works now — you pinpointed the problem exactly.

It was a huge pain to recreate a textarea, but worthwhile in that I could finely tune the editing experience. I started out with a textarea, but as I tried to disable certain parts, it just became very apparent that I couldn't hack it to death. Better to start over and fake it. It was very interesting learning about the logic behind word-wrap!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I like the idea quite a bit. Though I would like to be able to look back at what I've done more easily, even if I can't edit it. If I'm writing something longer I may need to go back periodically to refresh my memory (yes, even as I am writing). It messed with my flow to have to go up and use the menu button thing at the top.

<comment><AUTHOR> I like the idea of being able to scroll up but not being able to edit. Thanks for the feedback.

For now, I've added a cmd-L or ctrl-L shortcut to open up the last page view.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> My screen is vertically oriented, having only a dozen lines visible is a huge waste. I understand your purist design decisions but that feels bad for me.

Another note, line endings and text handling is somehow broken in the final google docs.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I built this for myself, for two different reasons:

1) I wanted to learn Common Lisp. CL does indeed rock.

2) I wanted a way to finish my first drafts, usually for short stories, but also for novels.

<comment><USER6> Ctr+A and then Backspace doesn't seem to be working. Ctrl+ArrowKeys and Ctrl+Backspace doesn't work they way it usually works either.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Ctrl-A, along with many of the other typical editing shortcuts, have been disabled in order to keep me from editing. All you can do is backspace one letter at a time, for minor annoyances like spelling and such.

The idea is that I'd like to dump the words out with as little editing as possible. If I can do that, I'll have a better chance of actually finishing the first draft.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Actually, I really like the simplicity of this - will give it a try! It would (of course) be nice to save locally thought.

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be a nice feature. If there's interest in First Draft, I have a desktop version based on nodewebkit that I can release.

Right now, it can export your file to Google Docs, and from there you can save locally.

<comment><USER5> That would be awesome! I tried the online version, feels good as a writing tool, like an old fashioned typewriter.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What can we do (individuals and community) to stop war with North Korea? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to see Trump and Kim meet in neutral territory, in person, and form a personal relationship.
I'd also like to see all the rich entrepreneurs in the tech community stand tall and use their money to prevent war.
Everyone stands to lose a great deal if this madness is not cooled down.
I can't think of a war since WW2 that anyone won.... including the U.S.
What else can be done? <comment><USER2> Probably nothing. The good news is that Steve Bannon was correct when he did that interview a month or so ago. North Korea already has the capability to kill millions in Seoul so if MAD holds, no one will do anything.

</comment><comment><USER3> I would bet money that North Korea will not first-strike, and the US military will not fulfill a first-strike if directed.

My premises are that North Korea is a rational actor, and their overwhelming priority is preservation of their regime, and they know without a doubt they can't win a war against South Korea - let alone South Korea and its allies.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think North Korea will try some scare exercise, mess up, and that's when war will begin. They alone are the authors of their destiny now.

<comment><USER5> and I think that's what the US secretly hope happens (as perverse as that sounds). so they have a reason to attack

<comment><USER6> Technically, North Korea fired a missile at Japan and this could have been a good enough reason but wasn't. North Korea could erase life in South Korea, at cost of its own desintegration, but this wouldn't be good to anyone. NK is climbing as higher as it can to get the best deal available, which probably is keep their nuke capacity and the lifting of the sanctions. Other than attacking, I don't know if the US has other option than accepting NK demands.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Sending non-mass emails? - <AUTHOR>

Ok, so I know HN likes MailChimp for mass emails...
But what do you guys use for single email sends?  I'm talking about stuff like email verification emails, or notification/unique emails that are sent to a single user through normal web use?
I have dealt before with setting up my own SMTP server, configuring the different anti-spam configurations different recipients like (SPF, etc). Then going through hell with blacklists and a-hole sys admin policies in order to get the emails to go through.
A small site can use something like a gmail account to send outbound emails, but I figure Google is going to get pissed off and block the account soon.
So what does HN do for this task? <comment> lost-theory I have been using Mailgun. I like their API.

</comment><comment><USER2> I use and like mailjet.com.

You can also checkout the following pdf table which provides a comparison of transactional email delivery: <http://www.ombud.com/asset/3000>

</comment><comment><USER3> I use <http://www.bulkmailapp.com> with SendGrid and it works fine for me, I can even now and then use GMail SMTP servers for outgoing mails

</comment><comment><USER4> I've heard good things about sendgrid

</comment><comment><USER5> You can't get much cheaper than Amazon SES. I find it's just as good as SendGrid, MailGun, etc.

</comment><comment><USER6> I like Postmark: <http://postmarkapp.com/>

<comment><USER7> Seconded - they've been great.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sendgrid</comment>


XPath Expression Editor for Your Browswer - <AUTHOR> https://xpath.app/?f=hn <comment><AUTHOR> Can also share your xpath expressions.. for instance, this is an xpath expression for links/hrefs on the frontpage of hackernews [https://xpath.app/xpaths/5b1014495650a](https://xpath.app/xpaths/5b1014495650a)

<comment><USER2> Is there a reference to xpath expressions?</comment></comment>


AWS Transfer for SFTP – Fully Managed SFTP Service for Amazon S3 - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-aws-transfer-for-sftp-fully-managed-sftp-service-for-amazon-s3/ <comment><USER2> There are a handful of services out there that do this, I know because I've needed it on multiple occasions. It's nice that Amazon is providing it in house now, but it just reminds of me the last time I went to re:invent and walked through the vendor area and thought about how many of these companies are four dev cycles away from Amazon producing a baked in competitor.

Hard to make a B To B Amazon tool these days.

<comment><USER3> That's quite literally AWS's playbook. Fill the vendor hall with tech, learn it, see what sticks and then crush it.

This is why I'm bullish on cloud agnostic tech. These practices don't typically fair well in the enterprise space. This is why companies like MSFT are interesting to me. They partner and rarely kill. Amazon is the complete opposite.

<comment><USER4> You can't even sell merchandise on Amazon without significant risk they will like your numbers enough to muscle you out:

[https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/b?node=10112675011](https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/b?node=10112675011)

<comment><USER5> I've found anything more complex than an adapter or cable to be of inferior quality with Amazon Basics, and rarely buy those options anymore.

<comment><USER6> The mini condenser microphones are actually REALLY good and on par with Yeti and other $100+ mics.

[https://smile.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Desktop-Mini- Condenser...](https://smile.amazon.com/AmazonBasics-Desktop-Mini-Condenser- Microphone/dp/B076ZSRVFQ/)

<comment><USER7> According to reviews that's a lowly electret microphone capsule ($1) in a big housing. For podcasting you want a directional microphone. In defense of electrets, they sound great, but pick up everything.

The shape of the microphone suggests it's a directional microphone (and if you read the reviews, people think it is directional). That's perhaps not a scam, but certainly deceptive.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> An alternative to doing file based SFTP is to just treat SFTP like an API.

A company I work for implemented an SFTP service where every operation simply translates to some SQL DB lookup. And a file download kicks off a larger SQL query and generates the report on the fly, streaming the result straight through to the SFTP client.

Works great! SFTP can be an API just like HTTP. Under the hood the protocol is reasonably contained and doesn't require a filesystem backend at all.

Depends a lot on the usecase of course.

See [https://github.com/pkg/sftp](https://github.com/pkg/sftp)

<comment><USER9> What if you open an SFTP handle, and then write 5 bytes halfway through a 20 GB file and close the handle? How do you translate that?

<comment><USER10> From parent: "Depends a lot on the usecase of course."

The usecase that I see most often of SFTP (and hinted at in the parent's problem description) is generating one-off reports for third parties, or passing data to vendors who are stuck in the 90s, like financial services companies.

It's almost always read only (or read and delete), in which case implementing an API like this is pretty straightforward. Log unsupported commands perhaps and decide if you want to implement them later.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Enterprises will love this. There are so many legacy app flows kicked off via sftp/scp file drops. Being able to hook into those via lambda events on the associated S3 bucket will create a whole ecosystem of enterprise spaghetti for years to come.

<comment><USER12> The only downside is whitelisting but not on the SFTP server-side. Many enterprises restrict egress SFTP (usually for security reasons) so you need to provide IPs and they can't frequently change because it can take enterprise network admins quite some time to deal with all of the bureaucracy and change control.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if modern networking gear can handle CNAMEs but there's no guarantee that they're using modern gear or if they are that the questionable outsourced team even knows how to deal with the modern capabilities.

This will certainly help a lot of use cases though.

<comment><USER13> It's less whether the gear is modern and more about the layer that it operates at.

A network firewall doesn't see the DNS name that an internal system looked up in order to make an outbound connection. It just sees the source/destination IP/port. Processing a rule based on source/destination IP or CIDR and port is very fast, and all happens locally. Trying to make that device handle rules by IP address is pretty tricky. Does it do a reverse lookup on the destination IP? That may not give a result that's even remotely like what the client used, especially for cloud-hosted destinations.

For a lot of applications (probably including this one), a proxy is a good approach, because DNS resolution can be delegated to the proxy, and therefore the proxy can easily apply DNS-based rules as well as IP/CIDR-based rules. However, proxies tend to make people unhappy because they generally require at least some configuration on the client side. Microsoft used to sell a product[1] that made this transparent for Windows clients[2], but obviously that doesn't help for most modern shops where a lot of the systems are Linux, MacOS, etc.

[1] Internet Security and Acceleration Server ("ISA"), later renamed to Threat Management Gateway ("TMG"), now deprecated and approaching EOL.

[2] It hooked into the network stack and rerouted requests based on a proxy routing rule table. Imagine a centrally-managed proxychains, but with the system configured to default to check the proxychains config file for every outbound TCP connection.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if you could use the DNS resolution cache itself to do the reverse lookup. As long as the DNS cache lasted at least as long as the TTL, it should work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'd be curious how this handles all the posix cases not well suited to object storage.

Renaming a folder than has a million files/folders inside is a single operation in SFTP, but 2 million operations on S3.

Does it handle writing at arbitrary offsets within a file? Does it download the file first then let you start writing?

What about just writing a few bytes at the beginning of a large existing file and then closing your SFTP handle?

How about 2 users accessing same file via SFTP at the same time?

<comment><USER15> I don't work on the S3 team so I can't answer all these questions but relative to the "2 million operations on S3" question I can point out that S3 now has batch operation support: [https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2018/11/s3-batch-...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats- new/2018/11/s3-batch-operations/)

<comment><USER16> I think the point being that when a filesystem the mv is atomic and just updates an inode but on S3 those operations can take place on thousand of different machines.

<comment><USER14> SFTP is not a filesystem, though; to get a rename to be atomic, you must pass SSH_FXF_RENAME_ATOMIC, and the server can return SSH_FX_OP_UNSUPPORTED.

<comment><USER9> Nearly any SFTP client would assume a rename would be a near-instant operation on the server, and would probably fall-over if it took an hour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Charged by the hour... pay for an instance.. Tsk tsk..

The thing I love about S3 and cloud services in general is when I pay per request and can scale through the roof.

Whenever a services is meter by number of instances my interest fades, and I look for other solutions..

S3 has this very handsoff feeling to it :)

<comment><USER18> AWS should investigate a new concept called serverless.

<comment><USER19> That would never catch on, its obvious there has to be a server somewhere, people ain't stupid.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> We currently pay $250/month through some small vendor for hipaa compliant sftp hosting (that we transfer a whopping 50kb on a weekly basis). I always felt like it was a rip off, but azure/aws didn't have their own version. And I'm loathe to manage a VM. PaaS is my sugar bear.

My eyes lit up when I saw this. We're an azure shop, but I'm not afraid to use AWS for limited cases. Then I saw - $.30/hr (so, $214/mo). Really? REALLY?

Wouldn't it be comically easy to just the add SFTP as a protocol option for S3? Why does this need a dedicated VM to run it? (Yes, I know this is PaaS and you don't manage the VM, but they're essentially pricing it that way)

<comment><USER21> HIPAA compliance, even on AWS is extremely expensive. I believe the best vendor to get HIPAA (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is to go with Google Cloud. Last time I checked did not charge any extra for HIPAA BAA signing.

Edit: I stand corrected on this, AWS no longer requires dedicated hardware for BAA HIPAA: Sorry I didn't look this up, I had old information.

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/aws-hipaa-program-update- re...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/aws-hipaa-program-update-removal-of- dedicated-instance-requirement/)

<comment><USER20> We're on Azure and they definitely don't charge for a BAA. And it doesn't appear that AWS does either.

<comment><USER21> AWS requires you to use single tenancy hardware to be covered by that BAA.

OH I stand corrected:

[https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/aws-hipaa-program-update- re...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/aws-hipaa-program-update-removal-of- dedicated-instance-requirement/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A tonne of our (enterprise-ey) customers had such trouble trying to integrate into our S3 flow that we started launching VPS for each that abstracted it away into simple SFTP upload/download, which they were used to.

Although this is much more expensive than Lightsail, the man hours saved will make it worthwhile.

<comment><USER23> Can you elaborate? I mean a plain CentOS server running SFTP, S3FS seems about as set and forget as it gets.

And each? Surely chrooting users would let you consolidate all of those servers into one (or one cluster for HA I suppose).

<comment><USER24> > Can you elaborate? I mean a plain CentOS server running SFTP, S3FS seems > about as set and forget as it gets.

Think about the operational costs: someone needs to manage keys, logging, security updates, when S3FS coughs a lung and hangs you need to catch that problem and remount it to restore service, etc. This service reuses the existing authentication systems so you don't need to spend time configuring and managing integration with your customers' LDAP/AD infrastructure, etc. If you deal with anything which hits PCI, HIPAA, etc. you need to be able to certify that your custom design meets those requirements as well.

That's not to say you can't do it yourself but for many places there's a fairly significant amount of work where the cost of doing it yourself is greater than 5+ years of managed service costs.

<comment><USER22> Exactly this. If sticker cost is your leading factor then these kinds of services can seem crazy, but when you factor in the real cost of self-hosting then it quickly becomes a no-brainer.

We're more interested in what happens when things break (and who's responsibility it is) than minor cost savings in calm waters.

<comment><USER24> One other area which tends to get ignored is opportunity cost: if it's the only thing you do there are many things which aren't that hard to operate but if they're not a primary function the cost of having to pull someone off of other projects to handle problems, security updates, etc. is more than the direct service costs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> We use Cloudgates for our FTP/SFTP to S3 interface: [https://cloudgates.net/pricing](https://cloudgates.net/pricing)

They're cheap, stable and dead simple to set up. This offering from AWS looks attractive, but at $.30/hour for the server makes it $219/mo vs $25/mo.

edit: just a satisfied customer

</comment><comment><USER26> So, how do I make sure my connection isn't MITM-ed? There is no server host key anywhere to compare. No CA certificate support. Doesn't look like ed25519 is supported either.

Somehow people don't use self-signed certificates all over the web but for sftp it's "fine" apparently.

<comment><USER27> For SSH (+SFTP) you are expected/obligated/etc. to have some way to verify the correct host key. There is no relationship to the clusterfudge of public CAs. Nor are there x509 certs.

<comment><USER26> But you can't verify it since there is no host key published for sftp service (at least in AWS console).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is why AWS is so far ahead: survey the landscape, find the things they don't already cover, and come up with a managed service for it. It's usually not perfect, but it almost always just works.

</comment><comment><USER16> This would mean that rsync now works with S3 as it has an sftp target... correct?

<comment><USER29> You should try the mirror sub-system of lftp [1]. It can replicate rsync behavior on a chroot sftp server. No idea if that works on Amazon, but I use it all the time on my own chroot sftp servers.

[1] - [https://tinyvpn.org/sftp/#lftp](https://tinyvpn.org/sftp/#lftp)

<comment><USER30> lftp is fantastic. The mirror function has a "reverse mode" too

For regular tasks you could also look at "rclone" which is like rsync in many ways but can upload to s3, backblaze b2, sftp and any more directly. Without remote support.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> So, I spent a couple days a few months ago building exactly this on an ec-2 instance. I have an SFTP service running on an Ubuntu box, it has jailed homes for users, it's ssh-key-only, uses s3fs to persist things to the correct buckets, etc.

My only problem with the managed service (which I'd LOVE to switch to tbh) is I can't for the life of me get it to actually connect and upload a file. I suspect I'm doing something wrong in IAM, but the tutorials suck and it looks like IAM isn't even ready for this service yet. I can get a user authenticated, but it's like it's trying to figure out where "home" is and crapping out, connection closed. Nothing helpful in the verbose output, either. Bummer.

<comment><USER31> And to emphasize, the process of simply adding a user to this thing SUCKS. In my homebrew instance, it's just a matter of generating the key pair and dropping the public key into a folder on S3. Cron job reads the bucket, creates new users/homes/etc for anything new, all pasted together using bash scripts basically. But at the end of the day it's ridiculously simple. I'd hoped a fully managed solution would actually be simpler (instead of simply more stable because it's managed, after all).

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Ah this would've been so useful 18 months ago. I had to spend MONTHS to convince a vendor (government) to use S3 to upload (keybase-encrypted) files instead of SFTP.

And they finally budged. This would've been so much easier.

<comment><USER8> One can also implement SFTP on top of anyting just like HTTP apis if you make your own backend, e.g. [https://github.com/pkg/sftp](https://github.com/pkg/sftp)

<comment><USER33> Here's an example:

[https://github.com/moriyoshi/s3-sftp- proxy](https://github.com/moriyoshi/s3-sftp-proxy)

No FUSE. Pure Go so it's low on resource usage and high in platform compatibility. No OpenSSH. No screwing around with Linux users or whatever. Just a single declarative configuration file. You can run this baby in a Docker container with some adjustments to the host if you want this on port 22.

I had to sourcegraph GitHub a bit to find this thing. SEO is so bad on this implementation. I don't know why.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> We ended up implementing a REST API endpoint for SFTP to provide an easy way for web apps to transfer content without having to speak the FTP protocol: [https://kloudless.com/products/file- storage/](https://kloudless.com/products/file-storage/)

I can see this being valuable for apps to get user content into S3 more efficiently from the server-side rather than funneling it through hosted servers. The one caveat is programmatic user management, which I'm sure is possible.

</comment><comment><USER35> > SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol)

It's SSH File Transfer Protocol. When you say Secure File Transfer Protocol many people think about FTP over SSL if you don't emphasize it's about SSH.

<comment><USER36> > many people think about FTP over SSL if you don't emphasize it's about SSH

Huh? Sure there's always potential for confusion but every time I heard anything about FTP over SSL (which no one seems to actually use) it's been called "FTPS"

<comment><USER35> I agree FTPS is the right acronym for this but I had to correct people about this all the time. So many people actually have no idea SSH does more than just letting you execute command line programs on a remote server and FTP is not the only/best protocol to access remote file systems over the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems there are no web-hooks / callbacks, so you don't get notified when a new file is uploaded (or someone downloads a file).

Another issue is that if your have to support a partner with SFTP data transfer requirements you may have to support one with FTP/FTPS requirements as well. At this point you will have to go to a dedicated FTP server (or outsource it to another company) anyway, and AWS SFTP service will be redundant in this scheme.

<comment><USER38> You can set a lambda to be triggered on a file upload, at work we do this for creating reports.

Lambda dumps mongo data to an s3 bucket which triggers another lambda to create a csv.

<comment><USER37> I see. Lambdas are more fussy though, I can't just trigger an action in my server, I have to write code that does that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Unless I'm missing something, this functionality has been on the AWS Marketplace for a while. We've already used an SFTP Gateway straight out of the marketplace. This is a tough news for these folks, and generally speaking, if you're making good enough money off the marketplace, then you're possibly on the collision course with Amazon's "new" roadmap.

</comment><comment><USER40> OMG this will save me so much time if it works. I wish they had this feature a few years ago!

</comment><comment><USER41> We use a number of AWS LightSail servers for SFTP today, which mostly sit idle.

Will definitely adopt this!

<comment><USER42> The AWS pricing page for this service says it costs about $225/month for a lightly used instance. I implemented the same kind of thing on AWS using a nano-sized instance for about $10/month. The instance is managed with an Ansible Role for automated SFTP server management. I connected it with an off- the-shelf AWS Lamda function which listens for S3 PUT events and copies files to the SFTP server as needed.

My solution took a little more human-time to setup than the AWS service might, but once setup, it saves about $200/month.

<comment><USER43> $200 a month is nothing for a business. Anything that we don't have to manage ourselves or worry about reliability, scalability, and we can just use our AWS business support plan is a win.

<comment><USER44> In large business, sure. In small business and education, a $200/mo commitment could easily require approval by the owner or the department chair.

<comment><USER43> The alternative is developer time. Nothing about managed services is ever less expensive if you don't account for developer/Devops/netops time saved.

A small company has even more of reason to want as many managed services as possible. You can avoid hiring netops if you both have a third party managed service provider to manage your network and you have developers/architects who know enough to fill in the gaps.

<comment><USER19> > Nothing about managed services is ever less expensive if you don't account > for developer/Devops/netops time saved.

I literally can't parse this.

<comment><USER43> Let me try again.

Baremetal vs Cloud hosting -> resource for resource baremetal will almost always end up being cheaper.

The only way you save money on managed services is the cost of _management_. Meaning every hour that someone doesn't have to spend maintaining infrastructure is a cost savings to the business. Every minute saved by allowing someone else to do the "undifferentiated heavy lifting" is money saved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> If your into plain vanilla SFTP and don't have large storage needs, [https://cloudbuddy.cloud](https://cloudbuddy.cloud) takes less than 1 minute to setup.

</comment><comment><USER46> Very interesting considering that it enables to make legacy applications work with S3 basically.

The price is quite high for small projects though: $0.30/hour > $216/m > $2592/y

</comment><comment><USER47> This incurs per-hour charges to run the VM that runs sshd, same as running a micro instance with FUSE S3 would, although with slightly less admin attention required.

</comment><comment><USER48> Presumably this will handle large file uploads with aplomb? Multipart upload with s3 can be a pain (when you want someone else to be doing the uploading).

</comment><comment><USER49> I'd love to see something for plain vanilla FTP.

Many enterprises still use it, would love to see AWS support that as well.

<comment><USER50> please no. ftp is a security nightmare.

<comment><USER51> Yes that sounds kind of like "loaded guns for young children as a service"...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> somewhat late to the commenting party but apparently WinSCP can communicate with S3:

[https://winscp.net/eng/docs/guide_amazon_s3](https://winscp.net/eng/docs/guide_amazon_s3)

</comment><comment><USER53> Anyone know if this can be used directly from CloudFormation?

<comment><USER54> New services rarely launch with CF support, if you want to programmatically create SFTP servers TODAY you could write a Lambda that uses the SDK and reference that Lambda with a CF Custom Resource.

<comment><USER53> > New services rarely launch with CF support Yeah I'm slowly learning that.

Thanks for the tip, at least it's a step in the right direction.

<comment><USER54> FWIW I talked with one of the CF devs at re:invent and he said their team's goal is to have day-one CF coverage of new major offerings going forward, so we'll see. Maybe next year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Not a single mention of WebDAV here, sad.

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone became extremely annoyed by the constant "breathing" of Amazon Polly?

</comment><comment><USER57> 1tb for 40,- dollar?

What? Did i just became stupid?

</comment><comment><USER58> Sftp is natively supported by Linux. I'm surprised this is a thing.

<comment><USER59> it isn't to my knowledge. You need an ssh client that supports sftp.

<comment><USER58> Unless you disable it in the sshd_config, it's supported by most Linux distributions. Yes, you'll need a client, but any modern client supports sftp. The only tricky part is chrooting the users.</comment></comment></comment>


A Closer Look at Fractals: Part II - <AUTHOR> http://blog.fract.al/post/77707498200/a-closer-look-at-fractals-part-ii <comment><USER2> Actually, some of these "weird" things are due to the fact the he isn't using a bignum library, or not using it correctly, or doing insufficient iterations.

He's really seeing floating point artifacts. For example, the main antenna IS straight, due to the fact that the Mandelbrot set is symmetric around the real axis. The non-straightness is due to floating point artifacts in his Mandelbrot generator.

<comment><USER3> Shame too, since he goes on about a deep "revelation" about nature after finding out the fractal is not straight.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I wanted to make a joke to the effect that if you've already looked at fractals once, you don't need a closer look, har har. But in fact that's the point of the article: "The kind of 'infinite self similarity' just does not hold true after a few orders of magnitude." Whether that's true or not is another question.</comment>


Before Google, Who Knew? - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/theprotojournalist/2014/12/20/371851621/before-google-who-knew <comment><USER2> I'd say that before Google, "AltaVista knew". In my experience, it was AltaVista that transformed the web/Internet from a collection of disparate sites to a single place that you went for answers to questions.

Before AltaVista, I used to write the URL for any useful web and ftp servers that I found in a logbook, so I could find them again. Getting an answer was a matter of looking up the logbook, deciding which website might have the required information, then typing the URL into my browser. After AltaVista the logbook fell into disuse, as locating information was a matter of typing a few well chosen keywords into AltaVista and visiting a few of its top hits.

Google took over from AltaVista, but at the time it felt like Google was a "better AltaVista" than something completely new.

<comment><USER3> Maybe I didn't know about Alta Vista at the time, I can't remember the search engines I was using back then, but what I remember is that every single search was returning thousands of porn results.

Google was a revelation, it actually found things !

<comment><USER4> So did AltaVista.

And, AltaVista actually showed you a clustermap of results keywords that you could refine.

So, if you typed in "python" you would see a clustermap of results that included a bunch of herpetology in that cluster and a bunch of computer science in that cluster, etc.

I _still_ miss that.

<comment><USER5> Here you are: [http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=...](http://search.carrotsearch.com/carrot2-webapp/search?source=web&view=folders&skin=fancy- compact&query=python&results=100&algorithm=lingo3g&EToolsDocumentSource.country=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.language=ALL&EToolsDocumentSource.customerId=&EToolsDocumentSource.safeSearch=false)

<comment><USER4> You might not want to spread that one around yet. 3 links about Burmese pythons hardly qualifies as a cloud around herpetology.

I think they should avoid using this as their tech demo.

Not being as capable as a 15 year old search engine running on significantly less powerful hardware is kind of embarrassing.

<comment><USER6> The technical capability can't be inferred from the used capacity. The comparison is unjust.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One thing that this article fails to point out is how often librarians were wrong before Google. In 1986 there was a study[0] that showed that across the board reference librarians were only correct about 55% of the time.

I think most people today would consider a query answering system that had an accuracy of 55% to be an interesting curiosity, but certainly not ready for real-world application.

It's funny how frequently we measure machine learning performance of an "easy for humans" task and fail to compare it to human accuracy on the same data. We just assume humans would do perfectly on it. I'm sure there are a few MNIST digits that I would get wrong.

[0] P.Hernon, C McClure "Unobtrusive Reference Testing: The 55 Percent Rule," Library Journal, 111 April 15,1986

<comment><USER8> But why were people asking reference librarians questions?

When I spoke to librarians in the mid-90s, they'd just point me towards sources that could have an answer. It was up to me, the reader, to ultimately find the answer.

<comment><USER9> Depends on where you were and who you were asking.

At several large research university libraries, I found the reference librarians could be downright obsessive in tracking down some questions. It would depend on workloads and other factors, I suppose.

<comment><USER8> This was mostly for pleasure or K-12 assignments. The sort of questions that were very fact based.

"Do snakes poop?"

"How far away is Mars?"

That sort of thing.

<comment><USER9> I was specifically thinking of uni-level questions.

<comment><USER8> At the uni level, aren't they more supposed to help you find the appropriate database rather than find the answer for you?

I might ask a librarian how to access back copies of a journal, but I wouldn't expect him or her to do my lit review for me...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm a bit confused by this article because Google can't actually answer the complex questions that the librarians have received. Google's "knowledge graph" can answer simple questions, based on scraped Wikipedia data, and the core part of the site (the search engine) presents users with a semi-random set of links, basically telling them to find the answer on someone else's site. It's like a librarian that knows a little bit of info (but not quite enough) who then tells you which part of the library to go to find a book that may or many not have the answer to your question. A site like Quora is better for answering complex questions.

IMHO, the "knowledge graph" actually shows that Google is very poor at determining the implied questions people are asking, and exposed the failures of alogorithmic search in general: [http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black- hole/](http://newslines.org/blog/googles-black-hole/)

<comment><USER11> The article doesn't even mention the Knowledge Graph. It's using just referring to the fact that Google is still the first place you go to ask those questions. Usually, the answer resides somewhere in the first page of results.

I asked Google "will a poisonous snake die if it bites itself?" Results include Quora, Yahoo Answers, a Youtube video of a snake actually doing it, and HowStuffWorks. So no "Google" doesn't know, but I'm going to ask Google when I want to answer a question.

<comment><USER10> >Usually, the answer resides somewhere in the first page of results.

And that's the business opportunity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was channel surfing on TV yesterday and flicked onto one of the Harry Potter films, to hear Hermione saying she researched something in the library and couldn't find a single reference - my immediate thought before moving on a channel was that (assuming I don't have her magical skills), I would have no idea how to research something in a library without either the internet, or asking other people who might know where I could find the answers.

(I say no idea - obviously on a basic level it wouldn't be hard to start by finding all books on the rough topic, reading them, etc.... but to do it with any sort of efficiency as opposed to so slowly that I'd end up beating myself to death with a hardcover.)

<comment><USER13> That's a fascinating perspective.

When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, we were taught how to use a card catalog and later, microfiche for finding stuff in the library. While I was still in university up until the earliest 90s, I was still using microfiche for research.

<comment><USER12> I was born in 1990 - I spent my childhood in libraries for fiction, and I guess occasionally for extremely basic "research" for school projects, but at an age when "research" was enough to look up a book on the topic I needed to know about, that probably was at least partially a picture book, then borrow that and go home with my mum...

Have fond memories of both card catalogs and microfiche, but only really for finding novels I wanted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> _Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it? Answer: We couldn 't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)_

This has a strong odor of trolling to it - one wonders how many questions directed at librarians were genuine vs. mischievous. I'm also struck by the failure to provide an answer rather than suggest a method, eg 'use a calipers to make precise measures of physical objects. If it is too difficult to measure a single stamp, measure a block of multiple sheets and divide your result by the number of sheets.'

<comment><USER15> The other question that jumped out like that one was in a trolling context, though probably was real in that timeframe was "And there was this typewritten note found on a cataloguing card:

Telephone call mid-afternoon New Year's Day, 1967: Somewhat uncertain female voice: "I have two questions. The first is sort of an etiquette one. I went to a New Year's Eve party and unexpectedly stayed over. I don't really know the hosts. Ought I to send a thank-you note? Second. When you meet a fellow and you know he's worth twenty-seven million dollars — because that's what they told me, twenty-seven million, and you know his nationality, how do you find out his name?"

I do not feel even Google today could handle that.

<comment><USER8> Sounds like a question for Dan Savage.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As a librarian-programmer, I continue to find it interesting how interested HN is in libraries/librarians.

I wonder what that's about? Seriously, I'm not entirely sure and wonder. Some kind of nostalgia for the 'information technology' of pre-computing society?

(Personally, while I still work in libraries, I share btipling's [[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8781169](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8781169)] general lack of optimism about the future of libraries, alas.)

</comment><comment><USER17> > "Can you tell me the thickness of a U.S. Postage stamp with the glue on it? > Answer: We couldn't tell you that answer quickly. Why don't you try the Post > Office? Response: This is the Post Office. (1963)"

Haha!

An inexpensive caliper gauge, available in any specialty tool outlet, could yield an instant empirical answer to within about 10 microns.

<comment><USER18> I suspect the inter-stamp variability might be a little bigger than that.

<comment><USER19> That's how you can tell someone was trolling the library, decades later. Because the stamps came in boxes, so a box of 10K consisting of 1K sheets was 8 inches thick so 8/1000th of an inch (all made up numbers). My wife is the daughter of a postmaster and by osmosis she knows these things, life in a rural post office isn't always as exciting as a Bukowski novel so this kind of thing has been discussed. There were spools of stamps at various times so that might be a puzzling math problem.

On the table in front of me is 1000 sheets of laserprinter paper in two packages about 4 inches thick so 4/1000ths of an inch for letter size 20 pound paper.

<comment><USER14> Ha, I came to the same conclusion about it being a prank before spotting your comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I am one of those programmers who doesn't have a computer science background. Instead I have an MLS (and an undergrad anthropology degree) and thus though myself am not a librarian have some idea of the value librarians provide.

For one thing librarians try to satisfy the information need of a patron. This is different than answering the question asked, which even now search engines can't really do well yet. Google search is powerful but you're searching an unfathomably large index and your query is a key. What librarians do is try to understand the exact thing you want to know, which you may not even know when you asked the question. Often a librarian will respond to a question with a question.

A librarian will also continue to help until the problem has been solved for the patron. They'll encourage a patron who might feel discouraged. Librarians treat people as people, not as queries.

Librarians are also staunch defenders of privacy and information freedom. In America, librarians are professionals with a code of ethics, which is codified by the American Library Association. Librarians are taught the complex issues involving privacy, the chill effect. Librarians are not in the business of collecting your personal information or selling you advertising. Librarians fight censorship, and they fight to protect your privacy.

Librarians are supremely excellent at curating. Go to a Barnes & Nobles and look at the selection of children's books. Read some of them. Then go to your local library's children's section and read some of those books. It's night and day. Libraries are filled with amazingly valuable books that, especially in the case of children's books, address important issues, are beautiful and beautifully written. They're not stories about Barbie rescuing a fashion show, they're about relatable and enjoyable characters that discover the world around them, learning to understand themselves.

Having said all this there are considerable problems in the American librarian profession which turned me off to it.

Librarians were slow to react to digital content, which put them at a disadvantage on digital rights management issues. Walking into a public library can for some be like a time warp to 20 years ago, with volumes of books filling shelves everywhere. There's a reason for that, books can be lent out. By sticking to books librarians haven't been the force they should have been in fighting DRM and copyright laws that would enable access to digital information to more people. Libraries spend considerable amounts of money for highly protected digital content like JSTOR.

Librarianship as a profession is also one dominated by time in service type of seniority. I wanted to be a programmer at a library. I was a programmer at a library as an undergraduate student and there were librarians who programmed to manage the library's website and library. But coming out of MLS the unfortunate reality was that programming jobs are jobs that go to librarians with seniority. I would have had to man a reference desk for a decade. And that kind of advancement, where it isn't skill, but time spent warming a seat that gives you political power is just not for me.

Finally, it's not clear what the future of libraries will be. Fewer and fewer people are reading books. Libraries are very popular places, especially for children, but in many cases libraries are just places that have a computer or a meeting room. Public librarians don't seem to have an answer for what's to come.

<comment><USER16> I'm also a programmer with an ML(I)S, and while I do work in a library, I tend to share your negative analysis of the 'industry' and it's future.

But I'm curious what year you had trouble finding a job due to seniority things. In my experience from the late 2000's to now, programming jobs in libraries are not very hard to get for interested and qualified people. If you can make a good impression, are a programmer, and actually have an interest in working in libraries (with or without an MLS), and are willing to move (there are only so many jobs and might not be one in your city), I think you could find a job in a library. (University more than public; public libraries still don't really put much resources into in-house development, which is sad, I think).

Whether you'd _want_ to or not is another question. The pay probably won't be competitive with the private sector, and, as you know, the work environment may or may not be entirely dysfucntional.

I love the idea of libraries. I don't think actual present day U.S. libraries are succeeding at achieving their potential in a post internet world. Before the internet, libraries and librarians were pretty much the experts at 'information retrieval', and I love the idea of "civil society" non-profit agencies that are experts at collecting, finding, and preserving information -- something society could use now more than ever. I don't see actual libraries meeting the challenge though, sadly. Perhaps it's unfair to expect to them to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's nice to see DuckDuckGo mentioned at the end as on-par with Google, Siri, and OnStar. I'm a little surprised they mentioned DDG in the first place, as it doesn't have nearly the name recognition as Bing or Yahoo search.

</comment><comment><USER22> So wouldn't the world be a better place for everyone if all the librarians in the world posted everything to a searchable quora/stackoverflow shared knowledge base? Instead of having knowledge fragmented and buried deep in places where people would have trouble finding.

<comment><USER23> _The better to obsolete you with, my dear._

The challenge of every "knowledge management" system ever invented, including Google Answers, which paid (!) for answers.</comment></comment>


Things Made Simple: Stelum helps you understand anything. It works like magic - <AUTHOR> http://stelum.com <comment><USER2> So... what is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://twitter.com/StelumHQ](https://twitter.com/StelumHQ) #WhatIsStelum [https://www.facebook.com/StelumHQ/](https://www.facebook.com/StelumHQ/)

<comment><USER3> Cool</comment></comment></comment>


dm-cache: new caching method that operates within the Linux kernel - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mingzhao/dm-cache

<comment><USER2> It's not exactly new, development started in 2006.

<https://lwn.net/Articles/211246/>

dm-cache is the project Facebook's flashcache is based on.

<https://github.com/facebook/flashcache>

I'm not sure if there's ongoing work to merge dm-cache or flashcache into the upstream linux kernel. With bcache there is.

[http://www.redhat.com/archives/dm- devel/2012-July/msg00155.h...](http://www.redhat.com/archives/dm- devel/2012-July/msg00155.html)

<comment><USER3> Yes, dm-cache is not new, but it just had a major new release. It now has a feature to allow many vms to share one cache.

I can't speak for the flashcache team, but I do know that one goal of the dm- cache team is to get it into the upstream for the linux kernel(I know this b/c I worked with dm-cache team last year).

<comment><USER2> That's great to know! Hopefully one of these projects will make it into the kernel soon, since this is obviously a very useful feature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to spam, but hopefully this information is useful for some HN'ers. Our startup, <http://velobit.com>, provides caching as well.

Alas, it is not open source, but it does have some differentiators over bcache/dm-cache. The primary pro's of those two are that they are FOSS.

Major downsides are they they are kernel patches. DM-Cache is a little more difficult as well, in the sense that it is in the DM layer, so you're creating a new device when you apply caching. Contrast with our startup, where we insert ourselves directly into the existing devices (so no need to modify fstab, etc..). Of course, I like to think we have other major differentiators as well, but I won't go on and on about them here..

That being said, this caching (especially SSD-as-caching) space is huge right now, even though it doesn't get much attention in the hot-tech startup world.

<comment><USER5> There's also hot tracking RFC patches floating around for the VFS layer. bcache seems quiet nice, there are block layer refactorings going on right now in order to get it merged.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think bcache is supposed to be _much_ faster than dm-cache. <http://bcache.evilpiepirate.org/>

<comment><USER7> bcache is specifically for using an SSD to cache something with much higher latency, usually a hard drive (or RAID array), but possibly also a network block device. Because of that, bcache is tuned to take advantage of the strengths of current SSDs, and to avoid write patterns that lead to excessive wear of the SSD, and to distinguish between random accesses (where SSDs excel) and sequential (where a RAID5 might be faster). This makes bcache better than the more generic dm-cache for the right workload, but it also means bcache is more complex - at best, it is months away from making it in to the staging area.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Also worth looking at: hot-data tracking in the VFS layer. [http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIwM...](http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTIwMzY)

Should help btrfs catch up with ZFS.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Additional info: [https://www.cloudvps.com/blog/cloudvps-activates-linux- ssd-c...](https://www.cloudvps.com/blog/cloudvps-activates-linux-ssd-caching- with-dm-cache/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Solaris has had this for years now with the L2ARC. I'm glad it is finally coming to Linux. Now when is Linux going to get a better page eviction algorithm, like ARC?</comment>


Can filming one second of every day change your life? [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20937759 <comment><USER2> I recall a Nova or something on PBS several years ago where an MIT student had built a contraption that did essentially that. The thing that struck him when analyzing the data was how much every day was more or less exactly like the other.

He wasn't particularly philosophical about this fact, but I remember thinking this could be very depressing to some people - and jostle others into doing more with their lives. Still, as the narrator of the linked video says, "trying to make the best documentary of my life" seems to take an odd third- person perspective of one's own existence.

In another vein entirely, I've always felt there was something bordering on the "sacred" about memories. They're as personal a thing as you can have. Being able to rewind and see everything that ever happened to me would take something away from that for me. As with many technologies, you'd gain something, but lose something precious too.

<comment><USER3> Not clear what you lose. Your brain probably still has whatever memory of these moments it would have without the video, and you can choose not to watch the video. All I think you lose is the time you spend taking the video. But if the moments you spend taking the video are just moments you would spend simply observing, the difference is very little.

<comment><USER4> Your brain doesn't have a cinematic memory of every moment. It's very malleable and memories will probably degrade more as you rely on this kind of thing more. Net effect may well be worthwhile, but it's definitely a downside to consider.

<comment><USER5> I agree with mmahemoff, your mind will be weaker to the extend you don't use it. Just like math -- if you start using a calculator, then when you don't have one, it'll take longer and harder to do it in your head.

Every moment of your life is recorded in your mind with full perceptions and a time tag and is /potentially/ accessible.

Dianetics posits it's pain and unconsciousness that obscures memories, and if you contact and discharge them, memories return (<http://www.dianetics.org>).

Personally, I found this to be true. It's very interesting (and pleasurable) to recover a "forgotten" experience in a Dianetics session, which you can do by twinning up with another person that's read _Dianetics_ , or by getting a free intro session at a local Scientology organization.

[http://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental- Englis...](http://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental- English/dp/140314446X)

<comment><USER6> Ah you're a scientologist - that explains your aversion to psychologists. Scientology is the worst, most evil organization I've ever had contact with. Just disgusting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The key line for me was at the end, when he says "trying to make the best movie possible is making me live the best life possible". If this is nothing but a trick to make one more introspective and aware of one's own life, I applaud it.

<comment><USER8> "a trick to make one more introspective and aware of one's own life"

Meditating is one of the most introspective activities, but might not make the best film. If people make a 1 second film for themselves then I think this could have a really positive impact.

If instead people make films for others then this might not be very positive because you are living out entertainment for someone else.

<comment><USER9> Instead of focusing on the tool we're using, the specific path we're following, look at the job for which you chose the tool, the destination toward which you're moving.

Introspection is a very useful way of analyzing the patterns our thoughts and actions take. Some people like to think while driving, others find ocean waves to clear their mind. For some it's their children, or a jazz song. Don't begrudge others for how they get there, just be happy you've both arrived.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I've always been inspired by the story of Jamie Livingston, who took a Polaroid everyday from 1979-1997. The photos follow his life as a circus performer and photographer/videographer in NYC. He was killed by a brain tumor, and his photos follow him up until his last day in the hospital (his friends took the photos for him). Incredibly moving to see his life unfold in thousands of "in-between" moments.

<http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1>

More on Jamie: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Livingston>

</comment><comment><USER11> I doubt it was only the act of filming 1 second per day that changed his life. It was the discovery of the method and the process of refining it that lead to a life changing experience.

I don't think you will experience that by downloading an app. Come up with an own idea on how to reflect upon your life.

</comment><comment><USER12> The article doesn't say a lot about the app. But, for people with a "creativity through technology" mind, the current tech climate is great for these sorts of ideas. Documenting is something we can do more of. It's valuable. It can be fun. Maybe all we need is better tools.

How about better ways of documenting your children growing up. Documenting yourself getting old. If we want to get really into it, maybe there are ways of finding lessons in our life that can be passed on.

I've heard interesting anecdotes about taking a picture of all food before you eat it leading to much healthier eating.

There have always been great diarists. Sometimes their benefit could only be seen years later. Maybe we can do it beter now with apps and web and video cameras in every pocket.

<comment><USER13> My intention was to make a similar app as a side project but he's way ahead of me. It was still very inspiring though. This whole idea of using smartphones as a documentary and creative tool and improving people's lives through unlocking their creative side seems very attractive to me.

<comment><USER12> Don't give up. I reckon that for someone with a mind that works that way, this is a great space to work at. Its also something "we" need to experiment at to get right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This reminds me of an Android app I wrote a while back. It's called PhotoChron (free! - [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photochron...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.photochron&hl=en)) and lets you take a photo a day to join into a video.

I've used it mostly for recording my kids growing up (e.g. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Nr7pw-I0g> ). It's amazing having a chronicle of them imperceptibly turning from newborns into kids and I recommend it for any new parent. Apps like Everyday ( <http://everyday- app.com> ) do a similar thing on iOS.

</comment><comment><USER15> I'm surprised no one has linked to this: <http://noahkalina.com/36/44#1>

He's been taking pictures every day since 2000.

<comment><USER16> Or this chap, who took a polaroid a day until the day he died: <http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/1979.htm#1979/1>

<comment><USER17> That looks pretty cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I've started doing something similar this year. But instead of video I take one picture that represents the highlight of that day. I also take a picture of myself. Then I'll write a small program that will combine the image, self shot, title and a map into one image and finally generate a video from those images.

Combining this with my OhLife daily diary I hope I'll have a pretty good overview of my life and a treasure of memories (I'm very bad at remembering things from my past).

edit: I've now realized that this man was the inspiration for my project (I've seen this before new year) :)

<comment><USER19> OhLife is interesting, but I feel weird sending my personal info to OhLife. Thanks for this suggestion though, I guess I could always just forward the answer to my own address instead of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Reminds me of another cool "picture every day" project -- this guy took a photo of himself once a day for 6 years with the lens cap on -- [http://www.mrwillvincent.co.uk/Two-Thousand-One-Hundred- and-...](http://www.mrwillvincent.co.uk/Two-Thousand-One-Hundred-and-Ninety- One)

</comment><comment><USER21> > Everyone will probably have a different experience with their videos, he > says, but he says self-reflection is never a bad thing.

People's infinite capacity to forget things is both a blessing and a curse.

Be prepared, when reminiscing about the good times, to be reminded of some equally bad times.

<comment><USER22> "The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining it its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age." -From the opening paragraph of 'The Call of Cthulhu', H. P. Lovecraft

<comment><USER23> Love how Lovecraft's writing is weirdly relevant to today's interconnected world. If he was born today he would probably be working on pattern recognition and machine learning to "piece together the dissociated knowledge to open up terrifying vistas of reality".

<comment><USER24> Or writing angry posts on StormFront.

<comment><USER23> Could write books about all that was wrong with him... Yet he would probably get bored with StormFront faster than with actual science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> This girl takes a photo daily: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgxxxKwlra8>

</comment><comment><USER26> ROOM for thought is a similar app that asks you to make a photograph every day at a random moment. The app (iOS-only for now) is free:

<https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/id585556618?mt=8>

<comment><USER27> Really cool idea. The descriptions in iTunes are all in Dutch, though…

edit: actually, even the app itself is mostly in Dutch. :)

<comment><USER26> Oh well, you might learn a new language as well ;)

<comment><USER27> Heh, actually as a speaker of Norwegian, English and German, (written) Dutch is surprisingly easy to understand. I kept the app, at least for now. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I thought a video of 1-sec clips would just be glitch and confusion, but it's actually pretty cool. I bet if it were my own life it'd be really fun to watch at the end of the year. This year I'm doing a phone photo a day at least.

</comment><comment><USER29> This brings to mind Lifelapse (<http://www.lifelapse.com/>) -- you hang your smartphone around your neck and let it take snapshots of your day. I always thought it was a fun idea but never got to try it. Probably a great thing while traveling.

I used to do this with my desktop using TimeSnapper (<http://www.timesnapper.com/>), it does provide an interesting view on where your time goes throughout the day.

</comment><comment><USER30> A one-second video is seldom going to show more than a single photograph. Sure, there's a little motion, but the quality is worse and if you want to stop and take a look you have to pause the video. I'd stick with taking one photo a day.

I know there are counterexamples. But for those things, you'd probably want to take a longer video anyway. What kind of events is a 1-second video the best way to capture, anyway?

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm considering trying this. It seems like the bias of choosing the second to record would be mean that it wouldn't actually represent your day well. I'd be interesting if someone made two videos from two seconds from each day: one they chose and one taken after they were prompted by a random timer. The videos would probably be completely different.

<comment><USER32> Mostly, id would show the inside of my pocket (or the floor in front of me, if you activate it with usage :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> One screenshot every day.

<comment><USER34> I have inadvertently being doing this for the last three months due to the proximity of the print screen and backspace buttons on my keyboard.

It also acts as a fallback version control :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Any way in which you can record bits and pieces of your life now will most likely come in very valuable later on when you have children and grandchildren. You don't have to record everything, of course, but having a nice overview of each year with a few pics here and there with stories to tell is very cool.

</comment><comment><USER36> This is an interesting idea, but how did he decide which one from 86,400 sec in a day that's worth to keep?

<comment><USER37> Indeed. He mentions he is living a better life, but it takes more than a second to record something to remember a day by. He must be taking quite a lot of clips. And then sitting down and chosing and combining. Could get a little onerous.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> That would be an awesome app! BUT, I think 1 second is WAY too short. It's actually annoying to watch such a video, and you don't really get something out of it. I think 5 seconds is already a better number.

</comment><comment><USER23> Anybody knows if the app is available yet? A search for ""1 Second Everyday" on the Apple App Store doesn't return anything.

<comment><USER39> It seems to be a Kickstarter project ([http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarkuriyama/1-second-e...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cesarkuriyama/1-second- everyday-app/)) to get the app out.

<comment><USER40> "Pledge $1 or more (7525 backers) For just $1 the iOS App is yours!"

The iTunes store doesn't actually have a mechanism to achieve this, does it? Other than making it free for everyone for quite a while (months?) and using promo codes to fix up any backers who didn't download it in time. Promo codes are limited to 50 per release, I believe.

<comment><USER41> They could always have an in-app purchase item that can be bypassed with a code.

<comment><USER40> I assume that isn't allowed by Apple. EDIT: It appears that it might be (or something functionally equivalent) -- see the post by bhaak.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I am reminded of Betteridge's law of headlines:

>"Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

</comment><comment><USER43> I jus downloaded his app - I will try doing what he says for 1 month for starters and check the result.

</comment><comment><USER44> Tout is the twitter of video apps in that its supposed to be 15second vids.

I think 1 second is a little too short...

</comment><comment><USER45> Quite a bit in common with Memoto...

</comment><comment><USER46> no it really can't</comment>


MapSwipe – fast satellite image classification on mobile devices - <AUTHOR> http://mapswipe.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> Fast, as in it's fast for users to classify areas. Crowdsourced solution with a gamification mechanic. Unfortunately it doesn't work on my old android phone, but it looks promising.

There's an audio interview on BBC Radio from the creators here also: [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p040g4qr](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p040g4qr)</comment>