New Stripe API Reference - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/docs/api <comment><USER3> I love the new updates. As Stripe is such a developer-driven service, the docs are such a critical part of the experience. Stripe doc updates seem to set the standard for API documentation across the web and it's great to see them investing in the docs and raising the bar once again.

</comment><comment><USER4> Nice work.

I feel like APIs often accept form encoding solely because it allows you to show curl examples. However since nested objects don't always flatten nicely you end up with a special syntax or do not allow nesting at all.

In this case you can't update an invoice and it's line items at once - <USER2> seems a little odd to me. It would be the most convenient thing to do from the API consumers perspective - which is what APIs should aim for.

<comment><USER5> Thanks! It was fun to work on.

Yeah, that can be frustrating. We allow this in some places, but not others, because it can get tricky in edge cases such as when the order of objects is changed.

We do want to accept json-encoded input in addition to form-encoded input (json is nice!), though in this case the encoding isn't the limiting factor.</comment></comment>


Google Maps Floor Plans - <AUTHOR> https://maps.google.com/help/maps/floorplans/ <comment><USER2> Google are building various tools which allow users to contribute data (especially to maps). However they don't provide an easy way for users to choose to release their own contributions under an open license. I asked Marissa Mayer this question at SXSW 2011 and she said they would change it, however I haven't seen this happen. I would very much like to see Google change their policy so that by default any user generated contributions are released under a license which permits reuse without further permission from Google.

My question is at 28:30 <http://audio.sxsw.com/2011/podcasts/GoogleMarrisaMayer.mp3>

<comment><USER3> Julian - just listened to your question from SXSW last year. I was part of another discussion on indoor maps this year: <http://schedule.sxsw.com/2012/events/event_IAP100110>

One of my fellow panelists from Google discussed ways for developers to use Google's existing map tools to create their own indoor map content. This uses the Google Maps slippy map API, but doesn't require the developer to submit indoor map data to Google: [http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map- your-busin...](http://www.google.com/events/io/2011/sessions/map-your- business-inside-and-out.html)

I would also like to see indoor map data, especially for public spaces, be more freely (libre) available. There are a few contributors at OpenStreetMap working on indoor maps, but privacy/data structure/data acquisition pose significant challenges. I'm sure they'd be interested in your help!

<comment><USER4> Just curious, but why exactly do you want indoor mapping? Is finding your way around buildings really that problematic? What exactly is the point?

<comment><USER3> Yes, we can live without indoor maps, but we're suffering through a lot of inefficiencies just because we don't know yet that there's a better option.

I want indoor maps because they can help reduce healthcare costs. It costs us all money when people get lost in hospitals. While environmental signage helps, it's often not sufficient. Visitors end up interrupting doctors and nurses to ask for directions. This directly costs the hospital money (leads to higher personnel costs), and leads to a poor customer experience (affects the recovery process for patients and families). It is surprising how many people get lost in hospitals: <http://twitter.com/lostinabuilding>

In addition to navigation, there are uses for facilities management, inventory management, real estate sales, and analytics on how people use buildings. I'm a big fan of using data to improve human efficiency, and these can help save time/energy/money.

For retail environments, indoor maps present targeted advertising opportunities, which can lead to more efficient advertising spending for brands and retailers, and time savings for consumers. This is part of why Google is so interested in indoor maps.

<comment><USER5> _> I want indoor maps because they can help reduce healthcare costs. It costs us all money when people get lost in hospitals._

Really? Like how much money? Seems like it needs a huge "citation needed" sign.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A shame that all of this data is collected "free" for Google, then people are made to pay to access it for their apps in the Maps API.

<comment><USER7> There's two sides to this. There's the corporate/public-good argument, where wikipedia is probably the best OSM analog, so it makes sense.

But there's also the user generated content argument, where there are plenty of for profit companies that completely depend on content given for free by their users (youtube, reddit, etc), where the users also benefit from having better content on a site they visit and more attention to the content that they post. From that way of looking at things, it makes perfect sense for property owners to want to have their floor plans up on google maps.

In any case, I disagree that paying to access the maps API is necessarily bad...any OSM host will also charge over any trivial amount of traffic because none of them have the (free) infrastructure to handle it. I do agree with other posters, though, that there should be Data Liberation Front coverage for things like this and data contributed through map maker, and that it should have been that way for years now.

<comment><USER2> Imagine a large chain of shop sets aside an employee to upload the floor plans for each of their stores. The company would probably find it beneficial if they could download/make available the result of using the tool, so that if they wished they could also make the floor plan available to other map providers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> In the US, "Blueprints" etc. are protected by copyright and the vast majority are provided to building owners under very restricted usage rights which do not anticipate such use.

The suggestion that people just upload them is somewhat problematic in so far as it is akin to Napster's approach to music a decade ago.

<comment><USER9> The upload form clearly states _Make sure you have permission to use the floor plan you are uploading._

<comment><USER8> That's not the same as Google making sure Google has permission to use them.

Standard AIA contract language allows the owner to utilize the plans to construct their project. The author (architect) retains copyright.

<comment><USER10> IANAL but it seems to be that the layout of a particular existing building is factual information and therefore cannot be copyrighted, just like the location of streets cannot be copyrighted.

I guess it's slightly more hairy because architecture is considered to be artistic as well as functional, whereas street layouts are generally only considered to be functional, but I still think that would stand.

<comment><USER8> In the US, architectural designs can be protected by copyright, but it is uncommon.

On the other hand, architectural drawings(aka "blueprints") are automatically protected by copyright as soon as they are published.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How long until someone uses these to make first person shooter game maps automatically? (Using Google Maps outdoor mapping data for games is a great idea, like the tower defense game from a couple days ago).

<comment><USER12> Well, they'd have the plans, but what about room height, textures, furniture, and other details?

<comment><USER13> Why not take texture samples from the locational photos already provided. Even if that was the only human interactive stage where the "designer" literally only marks sections of images for the textures.

Ceiling heights can likely be extrapolated simply from photographs with the right programming. Find a photo with 5 people in it and approximate the building height from the peoples photographs.

I personally can approximate the height and width of a house simply by counting bricks and shingles, because I work in construction I need to know if my scaffolding poles or ladders will reach and you're lucky if you get a tape measure to extend past 7ft without it buckling. (a sheet of shingles is 2ft wide, so every 3 shingle tabs is 2 ft. A brick and mortar roughly make 4", so 3 courses of brick make roughly 1ft. vinyl siding is normally double 4.5", double 5" or double 6" per sheet in height, one sheet is 12' long. Concrete board is generally 3ft by 8" high. Aluminum is always 8" high, generally 12' or 12.5' wide; If I can do this without a pencil and paper inside 30 seconds, it shouldn't be difficult to make an algorithm to work this out.)

Extrapolating the interior of a building would likely be much harder, however pictures of these often come with scale references (IE people), but as with outside everything has to meet building codes and everything is made out of standardized parts. However, one great clue is handrails. First floor railings have to be a minimum of 36" high, second floor railings have to be a minimum of 42" high (standard is 42" by code for commercial spaces, regardless of height). Maximum 4" gap between vertical members, (generally made 4" on centre as a precaution), and no horizontal members between 4" in height and 35" in height as to make a railing climbable by a small child.

Turning a rendering of an entire mall level in a game into simply picking colour swatches would be huge. Yes a pro studio is going to invest more time in polish, but for the guy making an iPhone app and is never going to see a huge return on the time he invests. Then accepting a bit of 'cookie cutter' genericness in level design won't be a huge compromise if it's in a great game.

The national building codes of countries would give you all the information you need to extrapolate the size of rooms and buildings.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I submitted four floors worth of plans for a building on our campus probably close to two months ago; they are still "pending review"

There is no way to get feedback about the process and no indication on where in the queue our submissions are.

There are probably 40 buildings on our campus that I was going to submit floor plans for. However, I was using this first building as a guinea pig of sorts. I can't imagine spending the time to get the other 39, multi-floor, buildings aligned in their system if there is little likelihood they will ever end up in the system for public consumption.

<comment><USER15> Finalcut23, Thanks for reaching out—and for your feedback.

Your problem is something we are very interested in. If you are interested in solving this, please let me know by email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

Thanks again. Tom

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Taking bets on the odds of this being disallowed for places where it would be actually useful (for example: airports; municipal buildings; skyscrapers).

<comment><USER17> The competition already has this for airports: <http://binged.it/HnKPqO>

Compare: <http://g.co/maps/8e9xp>

<comment><USER7> which is weird, because in the android maps application, SFO is completely filled in with a floor plan (and actually more detailed than the bing version, which appears limited to coarsely positioned rectangles for sections of the floor plan).

Is there some poor UI incantation you need to do to get this to appear on google maps?

<comment><USER18> You might be able to see it if you turn on WebGL Maps on maps.google.com.

<comment><USER19> Nope. Still Bing has a more detailed layout.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The view to align the map is very non-intuitive. It would be simply easier to just pick where the map should overlay first and then fine tune the alignment.

<comment><USER21> agreed, the two-screen, three-point alignment system is finicky and needlessly complex. All you need is pan, scale, and rotate functions to get the job done. Much more intuitive.

<comment><USER22> What it's doing is setting ground control points that can be passed to a tool like gdal_translate[1]. That three-point alignment deal is setting three pairs of points made up of a lat,lng on the world, and an x,y on the image. Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for with just pan, scale, and rotate. The GCP jazz can.

But I'm in agreement, their UI to set the GCPs is terrible. :-P

[1] <http://www.gdal.org/gdal_translate.html>

<comment><USER23> > Most world map projections cause distortion that can't be compensated for > with just pan, scale, and rotate.

Sort of. At the level of indoor floor plans, affine transformations are just fine.

<comment><USER22> Good call. Looking into this further, looks like you're right.[1] For the Mercator projection, translate, scale, and rotate are sufficient for the georectification of small images (read: floorplans). You'd need more of the affine toolbox if you used something like Mollweide (mostly sheer, right?), and then you might need non-affine stuff to deal with crazier projections.

I guess, then, that begs the question of why the Google floorplan submission UI uses that weird double-pane thing?

[1] [http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s- indica...](http://blogs.esri.com/esri/arcgis/2011/03/24/tissot-s-indicatrix- helps-illustrate-map-projection-distortion/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> So it's only available in Google maps on Android, not on the iphone or on the web?

If it's just for Android I'm not submitting my building.

<comment><USER3> While the technology for making indoor map content (georeferencing a floor plan) is already widely available, most smartphones do a very poor job of positioning themselves indoors. GPS doesn't work inside, leaving cell and wifi trilateration as the most readily available alternatives.

Another likely factor for Google deploying on Android only is the ability to use wifi signal strength data from the phone to do approximate indoor positioning (the you-are-here "little blue dot"). Apple chose to lock developers out of the API for reading wifi signal strength, which limits the iPhone's ability to do indoor positioning (or show you nearby wifi routers).

In Apple's defense, the indoor positioning experience on Android does not meet the high expectations that GPS has set for users. Instead of a precise little blue dot, you get a 10-30m wide big blue circle. Some of the positioning hardware announced from chipset makers like CSR and Broadcom may improve this situation in the next generation of handsets.

<comment><USER25> I wonder why we couldn't use sound as a precise indoor positioning system. Each position has a unique reverberation signature.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Ok.....now I see the Google Glasses coming together, and that video doesn't seem as fanciful 'pie-in-the-sky' as I initially thought.

If Google is able to bring it all together, this could be pretty epic!

</comment><comment><USER27> Why would this be Android only? Isn't there value at all in having this on a full computer?

<comment><USER28> Maybe, but they seem to be going for helping people find things in places like malls and such. So instead of using a directory (which can sometimes be few and far between), you find it on your phone. Also, you can probably sync with your location so you have a real-time "You are here!" icon.

<comment><USER29> This is not a particularly good reason to make it _Android_ only

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> If anyone's curious about an example, Mall of America is one of the locations mapped with this feature, here's the Google blog post: [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for- goog...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/11/new-frontier-for-google-maps- mapping.html)

It's a pretty interesting development for me to watch as the app I'm currently working on named Mashupforge (<http://mashupforge.com>) lets people easily create interactive maps out of image floorplans.

</comment><comment><USER31> Does anyone have a link to a building with floor plans already uploaded? I'd be curious to see how they've designed the interface but can't easily find one... (i.e., in 2 minutes in downtown SF)

<comment><USER2> Macy's New York, it appears flat in the web map, but works in Android, although I found it to be quite useless when actually within the store.

[http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.00...](http://maps.google.com/?ll=40.750512,-73.988344&spn=0.003979,0.00825&hnear=PRINCE,+New+York+10012&t=m&z=18)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> $1,000 says this will be featured in a heist movie in the next year. This is exactly the kind of tech I used to scoff at when the uber-skilled hacker pulls up a 3D map of the target building.

</comment><comment><USER33> What's preventing people from uploading incorrect floor plans? Plus, with no standard floor plan format, I don't see how this is useful, beyond showing another helpful picture of a location.

<comment><USER34> I actually see a benefit in uploading incorrect floor plans. A security measure, if you will.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I wonder about copyright issues. Aren't the floorplans and directories in malls and such copyrighted? Who has the right to upload them to Google?

<comment><USER36> Theoretically, businesses have the right to upload their floor plans. And, it's perfectly fine to draw your own and upload those.

<comment><USER8> [IANAL] If they draw them themselves, yes they can do what they wish.

On the other hand, in the US, using the "blueprints" is probably going to be a violation of the copyright of the design professional who prepared them.

Typical contract language restricts the Owner's use to "this project" and such rights terminate "upon completion of this project." [AIA Document B105-2007]

 _Upon execution of this Agreement, the Architect grants to the Developer- Builder a nonexclusive license to use the Architect's instruments of service solely and exclusively for purposes of constructing, using, maintaining, altering and adding to the Project or the Development, provided that the Developer-Builder substantially performs its obligations, including prompt payment of all sums when due, under this Agreement_ [AIA Document B107 2010].

<comment><USER36> Just like using AirBnB is against most apartment leases, and crossing the street when the light is red is illegal. Welcome to a new age of civil disobedience, where people freely carry around ice cream cones in their back pockets on Sunday!

<comment><USER8> That's quite a different claim from the rights based argument advanced previously.

When it comes to Google, this isn't civil disobedience.

It's simply taking advantage of the fact that the copyrights it is interested in ignoring are mostly held by many different people unlikely to have the resources to enforce them vigorously.

BTW, it's Ice Cream Sandwiches Google wants everyone to carry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> This will be very useful in airports. It would also be nice in supermarkets, but that data would be tough to keep fresh.

<comment><USER38> Which is why they're trying to crowd source the maintainership: the idea is that airports and giant retail stores will have a built-in incentive to keep their maps updated. And it might be true.

But I'm a little mixed on this. Google maps, while great and useful, isn't an open source project. The data is closed and proprietary and not useful to the community at large. I'd much rather this be done under the umbrella of OSM or the like, or if nothing else published as a separate data set subject to open licensing.

<comment><USER39> Retail stores are optimized to make you spend the most on each visit. That's why necessities are in the back and far apart from each other.

A floor plan goes against the self interest of the store.

<comment><USER38> A fair point, but it's only true in isolation. If they're in competition with another equally-well-stocked chain that has floorplans, then customers might prefer to shop at the niftier, more modern place with the fun maps. Note that big department stores have always had maps available at the entrance, it's not like they're inherently opposed to the practice.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> See:

<http://floorplanner.com>

They are a startup from my town (Rotterdam) and have been doing online floorplans longer then anyone else.

</comment><comment><USER19> This nicely correlated to their Project Glass demo where the guy asks for directions 'inside' the book store. To turn that into a reality, Google will certainly have to crowdsource this info.

</comment><comment><USER41> They are directly targeting the market that Point Inside is in. I'm curious why they did not just purchase them rather than building something that will need to gain traction?

<comment><USER3> Different business model? Google caters to highest-bidder advertisers. PointInside works more directly with building owners, like retailers:

[http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google- indoor-m...](http://www.pointinside.com/blog/2011/12/what-google-indoor-maps- really-mean-for-retailers/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I think it will be great to be able to navigate complex public locations such as shopping malls, casinos, college campuses, hospitals, etc..

</comment><comment><USER43> Does the GPS work indoors?

<comment><USER44> No. There are ways to do indoor positioning indoors: WiFi fingerprinting and supersonic marks.

Triangulation (trilateration) the way it's used in GPS will not work indoors because it's impossible to build accurate signal propagation model – model would be extremely complicated.

On the other hand signal propagation model can be learned via sampling actual signals in different spots on site. There are two ways to sample signals: 1) direct 2) indirect (via statistical models like SLAM)

Positioning can be done by comparing signal strengths from model and actual device and feeding them to some statistical positioning algorithm like particle filter or LSE. These algorithms use not only signal strengths but accelerometer, gyro and magnetic sensors for movement model. Fingerprinting techniques can provide up to 30 cm accuracy.

Huge win of WiFi fingerprinting is that it works on existing consumer-level hardware. But the downside is that you cannot scan WiFi in iOS public API.

There is less accurate way to position user indoors using supersonic marks – and it works on any existing phone.

Companies who do indoor positioning: WiFiSlam, Qubulus, WalkBase, Google, Nokia and we (applying to yc :). Some provide APIs, some are in stealth mode and Google has indoor positioning in some US and Japanese malls and airports.

Personally I think that there is huge opportunity for location-aware apps for malls, airports, parking lots, hospitals, etc and it has not been tackled much by anyone yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Most large retail outlets will probably opt out of this initiative. A big part of their revenue model hinges on the "impulse buying" which occurs as you wander throughout the store looking for your items. There is a reason why no major department or grocery chain (that I am aware of) has a store directory at the front like most malls do.

However, if crowdsourcing is allowed this could become major. I and 20 other people could all map out the Walmart (for example), upload the data, and then whatever matches in 80% of the submissions would become part of the "map".

If enough people did that it would almost force the major chains to participate, if for no other reason than to maintain control of their maps.

<comment><USER36> This is probably only partially true. If the goal was really to confuse you, they would not put related products near each other (the cheese would be with the bananas, the milk would be with the dishwasher detergent, etc.) They would also rearrange the store every week, so that you wouldn't be able to learn where items are.

Honestly, I've never seen stores arranged for impulse buying except to have certain items promoted above others. Eye-level shelves, displays at the front of aisles, etc. Otherwise, the fruits and vegetables are together, the canned items are together, the milk and cheese are together, etc. Pretty much every grocery store I've ever been in has been laid out in approximately the same way.

So I'm worried that you may be propagating an urban legend.

<comment><USER45> Jon,

Thanks for the interesting perspective. I've actually opened, run, and sold a retail store before (mobile phones and accessories) so, while the type of layout logic I referred to in my comment above did not apply to my store (because it wasn't large enough) I did read ALOT on the subject and was part of the local Chamber of Commerce so I can assure you that impulse buying considerations are a big part of why stores get laid out the way they do.

There are even consulting firms that make a tidy income by advising stores on product placements within the store for maximum sales.

<comment><USER36> Sure, but how does a map defeat the measures stores take to get you to buy impulse items. If you want to buy milk, there are two possibilities. The first is, you know exactly which brand of milk you want to buy, and you will seek it out explicitly. Or, you don't care, and will pick whatever's easiest. That's the area for optimization: pick the highest profit milk and make it the first one the doesn't-care-about-milk consumer sees. Put lots of impulse items on the way to the milk. And so on. A map on the phone does nothing to prevent impulse buys.

On the other hand, why even bother going to your store when groceries can be ordered online and delivered? Then you don't need a map at all.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask News.YC: You have an idea for a start-up. Now what? - <AUTHOR>

How do you bring an idea to conception when you have little technical expertise but a lot of interest in the idea? I've fleshed out my web application in mock-ups and hundreds of pages of notes, but won't be able to take the idea further unless I figure out where to go from here. I'm just curious about the right way to handle this situation. <comment><USER2> There are some threads on this in the Ask YC Wiki - <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive>.

As lbrandy says, if its a very technical idea you'll probably have to look for a technical cofounder. If it seems manageable, start learning how to hack and get coding. Its not as hard as it seems, most web apps don't require advanced CS knowledge or anything, especially for a rough alpha release.

There are lots of threads about where to start with that (languages, frameworks, etc) in the Ask YC wiki linked above.

Even if you do go the route of finding someone technical to help you, I'd learn to code anyways. It will only help you in this startup and any more you end up doing. Any knowledge of it will help you choose a competent cofounder as well.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> It depends alot on the technical sophistication required to implement your idea.

If it requires a good deal of technical sophistication, you are going to have to locate a good technical co-founder and that's going to be relatively difficult. This is a good place to start and maybe craigslist when you get more serious.

If you really want someone to come on board, with no prior personal connection, you are going to need to be really open and up front with your idea, what you are offering, what would be required, and what works you've done, and plan to do. Such a technical co-founder would need to be convinced that you can handle any and all non-technical things completely.

And if you can pull off a sale like that, you'll probably make a great non- technical founder :P

</comment><comment><USER4> This sort of thing comes up on here a lot and I'm sure there's plenty of answers if you search news.yc via www.searchyc.com

<comment><USER5> Or <http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/>

[http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi- bin/search.cgi?...](http://www.ycombinator.search.xirium.com/cgi- bin/search.cgi?p=0&q=ask%20yc%20learn%20hack) would be a good start.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> One thing that will help regardless is hanging out with technical people. Go to where they hang out. If you're in college, take some technical classes and get to know your classmates. Go to meetups, and depending on where you work, figure out how to meet techies in the workplace.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify things, I've been involved over the past six months in designing a web application. I want desperately to bring the idea to conception, but the process of seeking out others with technical expertise seems fairly aimless.

<comment><USER7> Well theres alot of people with technical expertise reading this. Give us a summary of your idea, or maybe a way to contact you.

<comment><AUTHOR> contact me at email@example.com if you're interested in helping to develop this web application:

I wanted to create a site for wanderlusts - people who want to use the internet to find exciting places to see and things to do. Contact me if you're interested in seeing some mock-ups.If it's not overly apparent, I haven't refined my pitch yet.

<comment><AUTHOR> I want to organize the world. I don't want to organize the world's information - as Google does, but simply the places and venues that make up our world - amusement parks and museums and baseball fields and movie theaters. I want a user to be able to go onto this web application and find out where the best skate park within twenty miles of his or her new house in Portland, ME is. I want a user to be able to come back from a vacation and create a list of the places where they went. I want to make the world more active, taking users away from their computers and into the thick of things.

It's sort of like a real-life Delicious.

<comment><USER8> AKA yelp.

edit: or judysbook or (to a lesser extent) citysearch

<comment><USER9> No. One way in which we differ considerably from Yelp is that the venue itself produces the initial content. The profiles are fuller and more meaningful because the venues are building the initial product rather than users. Very few Yelp pages, for example, have any photos. When a venue is paying for inclusion in this service, they are more attentive to the page than a user.

Every venue on our web application has people behind it, working at the venue, who are reading the user reviews, adding content, creating announcements, writing a short description of the place, uploading pictures of products or services they offer, and describing their venue using up to fifty tags.

Users can do many of these things, too, but the initial set of content is created by the venue.

<comment><USER8> that's a good way to guarantee slow growth. yelp is so popular because they made it a competitive sport to review new places and add in new information (with the reward being elite yelp status and access to special elite parties.) a lot of yelp's paying customers _do_ have dates and times and photos and menus and such. in fact, afaik, the only way to get some of the info on there is to pay yelp.

i wish you the best of luck, but i hope you have a bigger differentiator than placing more of a burden on small businesses.

<comment><AUTHOR> My pitch is ill-defined and I realize now how similar it must seem to Yelp. However, I would like to elaborate on this point that you made about "slow growth" with a question:

Would Facebook be as popular if anyone could create anyone else's page? They would upload basic information - maybe a picture or two, a few interests, add a few friends, hardly ever write in the blog.

When the person writing content for these pages has a personal investment in the business or venue, the page becomes much more vibrant. Users on Yelp are given points for adding and reviewing places, but the number of pictures they upload, for example, is a non-factor in their user ranking.

Thus, I respectfully disagree with your assessment that this will slow growth.

I'm planning on starting with a small and well-defined geographic reach - say, one small area like a city or a state. Once that user base is satisfied, then I'll work to expand the application's reach.

One more thing, though - I would not be quick to call the profile creation on this web application "burdensome." Most venues, including several branches of a national chain, have difficulty reaching their customer base. The chain "Chili's" for example, has a Web site for their national chain, but few if any (I couldn't find any on a recent search) of their individual venues have Web sites. That means there's very little interchange between the consumer and the venue.

This web application was initially created so that people could not only organize their places, but shape them to some extent. If enough people complain in reviews of an individual Chili's venue that the cash registers are understaffed, that venue will take notice.

<comment><USER8> I may well be missing something, but you still haven't differentiated yourself. Companies _can_ upload photos to their yelp page, if they pay.

The people can also put their info in google base or other directories.

What I want to know from you is: Why are ou going to beat yelp? Why are you going to beat citysearch? Why did judysbook and insiderpages fail? How do you compare to americantowns.com ?

I wish you the best of luck. Really, i do. I am in the minority of people who go to the internet for everything, and hope/expect that everything is going to be on there. if there was more than just the hipster-overridden yelp, then i'd be a happier man. I just don't see the business case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> probably reading gettingreal from 37signals would put you in right mood to start looking for things- you need to do on priority, now

</comment><comment><USER11> You have an idea for a start-up? Now work!</comment>


Introducing Qool CMS. A New Open Source CMS - <AUTHOR> http://jeez.eu/2009/09/28/introducing-qool-cms-a-new-open-source-cms/ <comment><USER2> About frikin time someone made a PHP based CMS. /s

<comment><AUTHOR> lol. PHP is one of the best languages to do this.</comment></comment>


How Can I Start Getting in Shape in 20 Minutes a Day? - <AUTHOR> http://lifehacker.com/5888041/how-can-i-start-getting-in-shape-in-20-minutes-a-day

<comment><USER2> Run</comment>


Dropbox employees to work from home for the next 2 weeks - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/drewhouston/status/1235747829307437056 <comment><AUTHOR> What I like about this (because a lot of other companies are doing it too, but maybe for different reasons), is that their main motive isn't just not their employees getting sick, or it spreading inside Dropbox, but rather to make their tiny contribution to it spreading less in the world in general. If everyone in the world that could would just work from home for a while and limit physical contact, then the trajectory of the spread would be much different and maybe we could nip it in the bud.</comment>


Music-related startups apply for SXSW Music Accelerator by Dec 10 - <AUTHOR> http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator/enter

<comment><USER2> Interesting. I just started a bootstrapped Dallas-area musician forum to help promote networking and live performances - <http://musicdfw.com/>.

Does a forum/calendar make it in their terms do you think?

</comment><comment><USER3> why the $150 fee? lol

<comment><USER4> <http://sxsw.com/music/accelerator/faq/>

Bootstrapped startups may be able to lower the fee.</comment></comment>


Chart Shows Who Marries CEOs, Doctors, Chefs and Janitors - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/ <comment><USER3> If anyone wants to improve the usability, data files are:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries- whom/job-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/job- name.csv)

[http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries- whom/pair...](http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-who-marries-whom/pair- count.csv)

<comment><USER4> I sorted the data by which occupation marries within the same occupation the most:

         13.9%    Physicians and Surgeons
         10.7%    Textile Winding, Twisting, and Drawing Out Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
         10.1%    none
          9.7%    Farmers, Ranchers, and Other Agricultural Managers
          9.7%    Lawyers, and judges, magistrates, and other judicial workers
          9.5%    Miscellaneous Personal Appearance Workers
          9.3%    Veterinarians
          8.8%    Dentists
          8.5%    Miscellaneous agricultural workers including animal breeders
          8.4%    Postsecondary Teachers
          7.6%    Software Developers, Applications and Systems Software
          7.6%    Health Diagnosing and Treating Practitioners, All Other
          7.5%    Optometrists
          7.3%    Chiropractors
          7.2%    Pharmacists
          6.7%    Elementary and Middle School Teachers
          6.4%    Food Service Managers
          6.2%    Agricultural and Food Scientists
          6.1%    Physical Therapists
          6.1%    Gaming Services Workers
          6.0%    Upholsterers
          5.9%    Communications Equipment Operators, All Other
          5.8%    Air Traffic Controllers and Airfield Operations Specialists
          5.8%    Physical Scientists, All Other
          5.8%    Nurse Anesthetists
          5.5%    Chief executives and legislators
          5.5%    Real Estate Brokers and Sales Agents
          5.4%    Clergy
          5.2%    Marine Engineers and Naval Architects
          5.0%    Psychologists
          4.9%    Lodging Managers
          4.8%    First-Line Supervisors of Retail Sales Workers
          4.7%    Miscellaneous Managers, Including Funeral Service Managers and Postmasters and Mail Superintendents
          4.7%    Medical Scientists, and Life Scientists, All Other
          4.6%    Secondary School Teachers
          4.0%    Textile Knitting and Weaving Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders
          4.0%    Podiatrists
          4.0%    News Analysts, Reporters and Correspondents
          4.0%    Sewing Machine Operators
          3.9%    Bailiffs, Correctional Officers, and Jailers
          3.9%    First-Line Supervisors of Personal Service Workers
          3.8%    Tailors, Dressmakers, and Sewers
          3.8%    Economists
          3.8%    Musicians, Singers, and Related Workers
          3.8%    Environmental Scientists and Geoscientists
          3.8%    Property, Real Estate, and Community Association Managers
          3.7%    Insurance Sales Agents
          3.5%    Agricultural Inspectors
          3.3%    Butchers and Other Meat, Poultry, and Fish Processing Workers
          3.2%    Morticians, Undertakers, and Funeral Directors

<comment><USER5> Looks like there's a correlation with long hours and isolated work environments away from other peer groups.

Doctors for instance are well known for pairing up during the residency grind since it dramatically drops their interactions with anyone outside of their residency program and also occurs during their late 20's. A perfect storm.

<comment><USER6> >Looks like there's a correlation with long hours and isolated work environments away from other peer groups.

Doctors are prestige seekers who see marrying a software programmer as a step down.

<comment><USER7> I've lived with two medical doctors, both of whom referred to me, with a doctorate in particle physics but now a software engineer, as the 'real doctor'.

<comment><USER8> Which for me really highlights the point that, despite using the same title, the word doctor implies two completely different but equally important types of experience.

<comment><USER9> In Chinese, the common words for medical doctor (大夫 and 医生) are totally different from the other type (博士).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Most interesting connection I saw: "Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs" <-> "Unemployed, with no work experience in last 5 years"

<comment><USER11> EDIT: Nevermind, some commenters further downthread pointed out that the visualization was adjusted to always show same sex lines.

For me it was some of these jobs not having heterosexual lines in both directions. "Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers", "Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters", and "Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Workers" don't have any female -> male lines at all if I'm reading the charts right, just male -> female and female -> female. "Miscellaneous Office Support Workers", "Receptionists and Information Clerks", and "Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers" are the reverse.

It makes sense given that gay people are more likely to be gender nonconforming and all of those jobs are gendered very strongly, but still interesting to see the extent of it.

<comment><USER12> > the visualization was adjusted to always show same sex lines.

We went back and forth on this a lot. Just showing the top relationships by number would result in omitting all same sex relationships, which didn't seem right. Their inclusion seems to have caused lots of confusion though - <USER2> it should have been called out more prominently than in the methodology. Even better would have been to have a toggle to show the more distinctive relationships.

<comment><USER13> Yes, a toggle to filter for homosexual relationships, or even for each of M->M, F->F, M->F, F->M would be ideal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Is it me or the visualization is very hard to follow?

E.g. if you highlight the 'Dancers and Choreographers' section, it's not at all clear that more female dancers marry male welders.

<comment><USER15> You're not wrong, this is incredibly hard to parse.

<comment><USER15> As far as I can tell most groups seem to marry Elementary school teachers

<comment><USER16> Part of the problem is that each profession isn't scaled to how many people are in it. "47-5031 Explosives Workers, Ordnance Handling Experts, and Blasters" had a total employment of 7,970 in 2012, but there were 1,353,020 people employed as "25-2021 Elementary School Teachers, Except Special Education"

[http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes475031.htm](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes475031.htm) [http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252021.htm](http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes252021.htm)

<comment><USER17> Yeah it says male software developers are most likely to marry female teachers or administrative assistants, like practically every other majority-male profession. Would be more interesting to show trends relative to males in others professions rather than in absolute numbers.

(edit: replace 'male' with 'majority-male' as I didn't mean to sound 1950s, just meant the left side of the chart)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Doesn't seem to be normalized? Lots of folks marry mostly teachers etc. Perhaps because there are lots of teachers out there?

<comment><USER19> Was going to say exactly this; the data needs to be normalized by population of the professions to really show us anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I guess I should stop using Tinder/OkCupid, and start going to teacher meetings

<comment><USER21> Its really weird but it does seem like most of my peers either married other people in software development or teachers. No idea why.

<comment><USER22> Teachers have very, very predictable schedules compared to practically everyone else. They're part of a reliable industry. They have a very clear career progression ahead of them. They have holidays, maternity leave, etc. It's very conducive to marriage and raising kids.

There are two things to consider from that.

1: people who want a stable married-with-kids life are likely to also want a stable, predictable career

2: People who happen to be in a stable, predictable career find it easier to say yes to marriage and kids

<comment><USER22> As for marrying other people in software development, that's a really easy one: proximity, physical presence, similar backgrounds, shared group of friends, etc, etc. Dentists marry dentists. Military folk marry military folk.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Agricultural workers marry each other a lot. Also lawyers and judges marry each other. Software developers too. But apparently we also like to marry nurses, middle school teacher and accountants. But male and male marriages for software developers are somehow with recreation and fitness workers.

Meter readers don't marry other meter readers too much. Guess,once you define something so narrowly it would present a different picture.

Education related professions seem to marry other education-related professions but in administrative positions (or "other instructors") and somehow also marry various "managers"

And truckers apparently are fond of bartenders, just like dentists seems to like to dental hygienists.

</comment><comment><USER24> Business Insider has run several articles of the urban college female "problem". With 30% more females obtaining college degrees currently than males plus that males generally dont marry up, there is a surplus of 20-something college females in all metropolitan areas except San Francisco and Washington DC. Good news for guys then.

One silly article tried explain the success of hookup apps is that more desperate females are willing to put out in this environment.

<comment><USER25> Males generally dont marry up?

Couple things come to mind. Throughout my time, I've seen that women have their fair share of not wanting to marry down either. You want to say generalizations generalizations. Sure, but I think the age old stereotypes do have a hint of truth to them and the Bloomberg page here also states, "High- earning women (doctors, lawyers) tend to pair up with their economic equals, while middle- and lower-tier women often marry up."

You say problem in quotation marks and I don't know why that is? If people are not finding their partners, that's a huge problem.

Here's the anecdotal: My sister and her friends are all pretty educated women. Unfortunately, their standards have really gone up since receiving said education. I'm not saying this to bash, it's simply my observation. These days, they're all still single and reaching/past 30 and no man can scratch their itch. The whole thing is problematic.

<comment><USER26> Of course you'll find some males that "marry up", but the data proves what many of us have known forever - as a man, you should strive to be elite in _something_ , preferably something useful and sexually attractive. Otherwise you're just another brick in the wall.

Where this is all going to blow up in society is the fact that women are now better-educated, and will soon make more money than their male counterparts, who are slowly getting more discriminated against (see Yahoo lawsuit) and less engaged in the proverbial rat race.

A case in point is looking at highly successful black females. They have a rough time in the dating scene, and this is extremely well-documented. Over the course of the next generation, I see this spreading to other females as well.

What effectively is going to happen is that you'll see more men dropping out of the marriage pool, the pareto principle in dating will become stronger than ever, and reliance upon the nanny state to help single mothers raise their children will likely go up too.

Hate it all you want, but these are three extremely well-established trends and I don't see them getting any better. Tinder is the canary in the coalmine. This is where we're heading.

A country needs strong, highly-engaged men who act as leaders. America is losing that more each and every day, and it saddens me.

<comment><USER27> Regarding your point about black women:

At least in North America, Black females, like Asian men, have a harder time in the dating scene partially due to their gender/ethnicity combination. Both sets endure media representation and stereotypes that play against their sexual desirability. I'm sure people here will profess that they are immune to any images cultivated by the media and I'm not going to discount their experience. However, I think it's naive to believe that images we consume on a daily basis, such as the gender/ethnicity makeup of desirable lead characters or negative representations in the news don't unconsciously affect us. Anecdotally, I have met more black men who said they would never date a black women and Asian women who said they'd never date Asian men compared to white people who say they'd never date a white person. Online dating stats from eHarmony, okCupid, and coffeemeetsbagel reinforce that observation.

On top of that, people generally have a statistical preference for those within their own race. And if black men have a higher tendency to be imprisoned than other men, that puts black women at an additional disadvantage to finding a partner.

I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic/White/Asian women face.

<comment><USER28> I have seen and experienced this, from the inside.

I'm an educated black man (MS Degree) with a good job (Fortune 500 company) and my female relatives, many of whom are also educated and successful have difficulty with establishing and maintaining relationships.

Obviously not all, but many black women have unrealistic expectations. As other have already pointed out, women are adverse to marrying "down" so when a woman reaches a certain level of education/career advancement, it's extremely difficult to find a mate that meets her criteria. Lists of things, like Over 6 feet tall, lots of muscles, Bachelor's degree or higher, Churchgoing Christian, no children, good relationship with his mother, not domineering but not too passive, earning at least 6 figures and other wish-list type stuff. There are women who won't give a man the time of day unless he meets all of them. They, as you can well imagine, are lonely.

There are cultural taboos against black women becoming romantically involved with non black or hispanic men. I have only personally known one black woman who was involved with an asian man(his family came here from Vietnam and he grew up in "the 'hood") and only a few who are involved with white men.

I have never been in a relationship with a black woman. A date here and there. A fling here and there but never a relationship. Where I live, a video game playing, Dungeons and Dragons fan, comic book collecting, politically active guy doesn't tend to get much romantic interest from black women. Then, there's also the phenomenon of the black women who don't want anything to do with you getting upset because you're dating outside of the race.

I have also noticed that as we approach and pass 40 years of age, these women with their stratospheric standards are forced to carry on alone and bitter or drop their standards. Some of them get rid of them entirely just to get a man. I have even heard a fair bit of professional women getting involved with street dudes.

 _I guess my overall point is issues black women face are very different and unique to what Hispanic /White/Asian women face._

Agreed. Some of the issues are cultural, some are societal and some are of their own making.

<comment><USER28> Re-reading this a couple of days later, I can see how a part of it could be misinterpreted so I wanted to clarify.

I should have said that _many of my female relatives_ have these problems.

In retrospect, it looked like I was saying all of them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I don't see homemaker (i.e. housewife, stay at home dad, etc) on there. I wonder if it's because it doesn't rank high enough or just wasn't included in the data set. I'd imagine that the higher paying jobs would lean more towards a single income household.

<comment><USER30> Probably because that's not tracked as a profession beacuse it's not really one. You are tracked by what you actually learned. People become stay at home mums/dad in the relationship, not before.

<comment><USER29> > Probably because that's not tracked as a profession beacuse it's not really > one.

Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it entails. If you consider a couple as a single unit, it's simply optimizing by specialization. When you look at the cost of baby-sitting/nannies it makes a lot of sense too. Why make $40K extra if I'm going to spend $35K on a nanny?

> You are tracked by what you actually learned.

No you're tracked by what your current position is. I'm pretty sure that office assistants who studied literature are still tracked as office assistants.

> People become stay at home mums/dad in the relationship, not before.

Exactly and this data represents a set of married people, not a set of jobs. If it doesn't include homemaker as an option then you've excluded all married single income households.

<comment><USER31> > Anyone who thinks being a homemaker is not a profession has no clue what it > entails.

Or just has one of the many common definitions of profession, for which homemaker doesn't qualify. E.g., the first definition in most dictionaries tends to be something like this "a paid occupation, especially one that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification."

Homemaker is not, generally, a paid occupation, nor is it an occupation that requires prolonged training and a formal qualification.

I think the desire to characterize it as a "profession" is that the social perception of the social value of professions has led to a desire to characterize any vocation with perceived social value as a "profession", and a perception that a judgement that something is not a profession implies that it is not a worthwhile vocation.

> If it doesn't include homemaker as an option then you've excluded all > married single income households.

No, it doesn't. Its possible to have a married single-income household where neither partner is a homemaker. (Single income households where homemaking tasks are either shared or contracted out, and the non-income-earning partner devotes their bulk of their time to tasks that are neither income-earning _nor_ homemaking exist -- my perception is that they are _more_ common among higher income groups, but that's not the result of any systematic study.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The number of professions that connect to registered nurses seems really high. Especially in the gay male community. Huh.

 _looks at Facebook_

Wow. I _do_ know a lot of gay male nurses.

Disclaimer: I don't know of any stereotyping around that, but if there is, I'm certainly not trying to contribute to it.

</comment><comment><USER33> I guess it's not much of a surprise how often Truck Driver comes up considering it's one of the largest professions in the US.

<comment><USER34> It'll really suck for them when we have driverless trucks.

<comment><USER35> It won't. They'll simply shift to another job. It's not like they're absolute idiots, they can learn a new trade.

<comment><USER34> Like what? Driving a taxi/Uber? No, that'll be automated too. Working at McDonald's? No, that'll be automated too. Becoming a software engineer? If they were any good at that, they would have done it already.

The fact is, all these low-education jobs are going away in the near future, to be replaced by robots and automation. We're not going to need hordes of poorly-educated people to work any more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I find it interesting that many of the IT/Engineering/Tech jobs have a high degree of connectivity to elementary/middle school teachers. So the high salaries are helping to balance out the crap salaries.

<comment><USER37> Hmm, or maybe to balance out the lack of pensions and retirement healthcare after the techies burn out :-)

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Software developers seem to be incredibly endogamous to me.

<comment><USER38> I love what these conclusions entail: female programmers are either lesbians, or so turned off by their male colleagues that they'll marry _anyone else_ with a spread so wide to be statistically insignificant.

<comment><USER39> Or maybe the males are marrying anyone..

Oh, right! Now I realize the chart doesn't really show "other". It would be interesting to calculate entropy from the distribution for each profession.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> TIL There is an occupation called 'Gaming Cage Worker'

<comment><USER41> It's the person who works in the "cage" in a casino, i.e. exchanges money for chips and vice versa.

<comment><USER42> It seems odd that there are enough of them to warrant their own classification as opposed to a general gambling or even recreation classification.

<comment><USER38> I expect it's a legal thing. Most people involved with the gambling industry have no qualifications whatsoever, but the act of dealing cards is extremly formalized (for obvious reasons), so there is probably a specific designation in law for dealers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> At first I found this fascinating -- "data shows that CEOs marry assistants" is a good narrative about gender attitudes towards marrying. But as I played with it, I was kind of bummed to learn: most male professions tend to marry assistants, since there are a lot of married female assistants (second only to teachers for females).

I did a quick search for who male Programmers, Executives, and Janitors marry (tried to pick a diverse set), and then filtered out the top five female occupations in this data (Teachers, Assistants, Nurses, Misc Managers, Salespersons). The remaining results were: male Programmers marry female Programmers, male Executives marry female Executives, male Janitors marry female Janitors or female Maids.

So I whipped up a script that, instead of measuring the absolute frequency, normalizes the data set against how often the target occupation gets married to. ie instead of just counting common pairings, it measures "how much more likely is profession X (compared to the general population) to marry profession Y?".

For male CEOs, the result is: they marry other CEOs. Male CEOs are 12x more likely to marry a female CEO than males in other professions are. They are also 12.6x more likely to marry embalmers! 7x more likely to marry Announcers, 5.3x more likely to marry "Dancers and Choreographers", and 4.9x more likely to marry "Public Relations and Fundraising Managers". They are only 1.2x more likely to marry a Secretary than other males are.

For male programmers, it is similar: male programmers are 20x more likely to marry female programmers than other male occupations are. This is because only 0.2% of men marry female computer programmers, but 3.4% of male programmers do. Male programmers also marry female Materials Engineers (20x more likely), Information Security Analysts (13x), "Surveyors, Cartographers, and Photogrammetrists" (10x), and "Architects, Except Naval" (8x).

I also picked one final way of slicing it: "how many more of these marriages did we see than expected" (expected based on the relation frequencies of the two occupations). This is another way of removing "well we would expect a lot of these marriages", but in a way that is less geared towards low-occurrence matches like CEO-Embalmer. For CEOs, the results are: CEOs, Misc Managers, Elementary and Middle School Teachers, Secretaries, Accountants and Auditors. For Programmers, it's: Programmers, Misc Managers, Other Teachers and Instructors, Software Developers, Accountants and Auditors.

Anyway, this isn't to say that these other ways of looking at the data are any "better", they're just answers to different questions.

I threw up the code in a gist -- sorry it's messy [https://gist.github.com/kmod/ee6ac3c029641b39d0b6](https://gist.github.com/kmod/ee6ac3c029641b39d0b6)

<comment><USER12> This is great, thanks for writing up what you found!

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> An aside: This visualization's UX is rather poor but I'll let Bloomberg slide this time around because their 404 page is incredible: [http://www.bloomberg.com/404](http://www.bloomberg.com/404)

<comment><USER45> Eh, I'm a snob, I know, but I think the UX for both this and the 404 page is poor.

For the dataviz, I noticed many nits, but for brevity I'll say this:, I think the visualization falls way short of communicating patterns in the data, or indeed illustrating any relative significance of a given match set over others. The design and the narrative need some work. I can see the gender matches are illustrated, but it isn't communicated why that is important. The D3 development work is adequate, but within that, there are some behaviors that could use some tweaks finesse (for example on desktop, when hovering across multiple items to a specific, the experience stalls slightly while calculating the graph updates for each item).

The 404 page shows some personality for sure, so that's cool, but a 1.6meg choppy animated gif isn't exactly awesome, and the repeat-x doesn't add anything either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I wonder what difference between "Software Developers" and "Computer Programmers" causes the former to marry mostly within themselves and the latter to prefer nurses, teachers and secretaries.

<comment><USER47> If it's self-described, that's maybe even more interesting.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I think it's funny to notice how people are saying "If you want to get married to a (some profession) then you should work as a (other profession)." We shouldn't think that the correlation implies a cause. This data doesn't track what people's professions were before they were married, or how the professions change over time.

It would be interesting to see how people changed their profession as a result of getting married. For example, when people get married they're probably less likely to have jobs that require a lot of travel.

</comment><comment><USER49> There is a job called "Computer operators"? Isn't that just, Everybody?

<comment><USER50> Think blue collar IT. In the old days, the grunt who watched mainframe batch jobs and fiddled with printers. If you see grumpy old people wearing overalls or non-khaki pants in a government or bank datacenter, you've spotted the operators.

Sometimes help desk types get categorized this way.

<comment><USER51> My guess was data entry people.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> I am particularly amused by the thick line between "Proofreaders and Copy Markers" and "Dispensing Opticians".

</comment><comment><USER53> So disappointed. Was looking for the connection that shows who super models marry, so that I may plan my career like wise.

<comment><USER54> My guess: Talent agents & managers, sportsmen, actors, photographers, male models, musicians.

<comment><USER55> If I'm reading the viz correctly, it's actually truck drivers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Changing the font color to black helps usability a lot. Just enter this snippet in the url bar

javascript:jQuery('.job-text').css('color', 'black');

With chrome, you might have to re-enter the 'javascript:' part.

</comment><comment><USER57> Non-software engineers are really strange:

Mech engineers marry registered nurses

Elec engineers marry teachers

Civil engineers marry teachers

Chemical engineers marry secretaries

Mining engineers marry teachers

Nuclear engineers marry teachers

With the exception of chemical engineers, there's basically no marrying inside the field.

</comment><comment><USER58> Software developers (men) marry Recreation and Fitness workers (men). Maybe we should use this data to incentive gay men to become software engineers! At least would bring some diversity to my profession.

<comment><USER59> Most of the non-straight people I know are in software. It really doesn't seem to lack diversity orientation-wise.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Female Models, Demonstrators, and Product Promoters partner with:

Truck Drivers Miscellaneous Managers Retail SupervisorsLaborersRetail, SalespersonsIndustrial, and Refractory Machinery Mechanics

<comment><USER55> Yeah, the model-truck driver connection is a real head-scratcher. It doesn't seem like they would often be in the same social circles.

<comment><USER61> I wonder how broad the term 'model' is in this case.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This is absolutely brutal to use. I'd like to search for something specific but can't ctrl-f, and visually searching is useless. Very cool in concept

<comment><USER63> Type your search into the search box labeled "Select a job..."

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> Nice visualization! Maybe they should have limited the colors to just the primary ones. I had a hard time figuring out the gradients in the middle.

</comment><comment><USER65> I once knew a male high school teacher who was married to a Yale dropout, after 1 year. He told me she had gone to Yale to meet someone to marry well. Apparently common that time, 40 years ago.

Although it didn't quite work out well for her. He was a great msn husband but not a doctor or lawyer...

</comment><comment><USER66> That's funny, I always got the feeling that almost every civil engineer I know were married to nurses, mid school teacher or childcare worker (and the occasional psychologist). Seems confirmed.

</comment><comment><USER67> Someone please explain to me Emergency Management Directors (men) --> Probation Officers (women), overwhelmingly beating out teachers and secretaries. wat.

</comment><comment><USER68> This reminds me of how it seems celebrities can only marry other celebrities. One exception is women celebrities can marry billionaires.

</comment><comment><USER69> Explosives Worker -> Librarians

I guess opposites do attract.

<comment><USER70> Maybe it's survival bias. Explosive workers who spend a lot of time reading up on the latest industry literature after work survive longer than those who hit the bar after work? (Yes, if the death rate made a measurable difference here, OSHA would step in.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER71> Strangely I find this more usable on my Android Phone where it presents a list than their fancy annoying graph.

</comment><comment><USER39> So Software Developers marry mostly within their own group? How does it stack with the gender imbalance?

<comment><USER72> Most software developers stay single?

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Interesting, but sort of suffers from a few dominant trends:

\- white men without a college degree marry secretaries \- white men with a college degree marry teachers

It'd be more interesting to know how occupations shift choices away from other demographic factors.

</comment><comment><USER74> I would have guessed Fence Erectors would be most likely to marry Republican Presidential Candidates, but I guess I'm wrong.

</comment><comment><USER75> Visualization is very terrible

</comment><comment><USER76> This chart is massively unusable.

As a guy, what occupation do I need to be in to increase my chances of marrying a woman CEO?

<comment><USER77> It tells you in the introductory paragraph. You need to be a CEO. So better improve at reading the executive summaries.

<comment><USER76> I interpreted it differently. If you want to marry a male CEO, you have to be a woman CEO.

I'm asking the reverse.

<comment><USER77> No. The article says _In other words, female CEOs tend to marry other CEOs; male CEOs are OK marrying their secretaries._

This means that female CEOs want to marry other CEOs. Male CEOs are happy marrying secretaries. If you want to marry a female CEO, you're best off being a male CEO.

<comment><USER76> Its official, I can't read. I swear it has to do something with that typeface they used, it just doesn't want to render well and my brain won't just come out and admit to this fact, so I keep trying to read it as if there is nothing wrong.

Why do web developers do this?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER75> The visualization is horrible

</comment><comment><USER78> the people behind this are no Mike Bostock..

crap visualization

</comment><comment><USER79> The usability of the page is pathetic. First, the fonts are too small. If you enlarge then you can't scroll horizontally to see the rest of the titles because the lines get in the way. Didn't anyone think to make the graph clickable instead of just mouse-over. And on top of everything we have the heading of the site that floats and gets in the way. Fucking hell. Someone saw the graph and said, wow let's just use it because it looks awesome. Sure it looks awesome if you have a couple dozen labels, not a gazillion of them

<comment><USER12> > Someone saw the graph and said, wow let's just use it because it looks > awesome.

Close to what happened! The magazine graphic ([https://twitter.com/adamrpearce/status/697844614754123776](https://twitter.com/adamrpearce/status/697844614754123776)) was finished before I started on the web version, and I just had a couple of days to make something that could go online. I initially tried a more sort of 538/scatterplot/analysis approach, but wasn't making a ton of progress. I started just sketching out different ways of putting all 500 jobs on the screen at once. The grid of jobs with lines showing up on mouseover was the most fun to play with and being pushed to finish before valentines day, I went with it.

Sorry it was hard to use!

<comment><USER80> I thought it was creative, entertaining and different than the usual boring charts. It's not perfect but I still liked it!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER81> We clearely need quotas for female truck drivers. What an absurd disparity!

</comment><comment><USER82> Surprisingly many of the comments here have a boorish, misogynistic tone. Please be respectful. This is Hacker News, not r/RedPill

<comment><USER83> Surprisingly many comments accuse others of misogyny without pointing out any specific instances or providing any argument whatsoever.

It turns out that "sexist" is also a commonly used tactic for shutting down discussion.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> Yoga instructor is missing. That's pretty much the ideal wife (lots of free time, unreasonably fit), and I'd like to know what job to obtain in order to be pursued by yoga instructors.

And DJ is missing. Which prevents us from confirming the hypothesis that DJ's do better than JD's.

[http://longorshortcapital.com/short- jds.htm](http://longorshortcapital.com/short-jds.htm)

 _Most men seek the JD to "make a lot of money" which is really just a euphemism for "power over women." This means you sign up for four years of college and four years of college debt, ... then three years of law school with its accompanying three years of law school debt...

Over the entire course of this process the person who sought the opposite designation, the DJ, will be pulling more strange each night than the JD will in his entire life, all with a designation he obtained at no cost.

DJ is the actual opposite of a JD as not only are its letters the reverse of JD but it goes before someone's name not after. It comes at virtually no cost, requires almost no talent or taste, and lends itself to sleeping in and having anonymous sex with women who not only are not wearing sweaters but likely do not even own sweaters._

<comment><USER85> > Most men seek the JD to "make a lot of money" which is really just a > euphemism for "power over women."

The first sentence is so wrong, I can't even bother reading on.

<comment><USER86> Don't bother, it only gets worse. The level of misogyny and sexism in this thread is way beyond what I expect from HN. What happened to professionalism and treating others with respect, guys? When our female colleagues complain about sexism in tech, stuff like this is (part of) what they're complaining about.

<comment><USER83> Where's the misogyny and sexism in what he said!?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Agrippa, A Book of the Dead - <AUTHOR> https://www.filfre.net/2018/09/agrippa-a-book-of-the-dead/ <comment><USER2> I remember reading about this project some time ago, but it was before HN...

A small phrase from the article that most fellow HN readers will appreciate: "A hacker always takes the path of least resistance," said Templar years later. "And it is a lot easier to 'hack' a person than a machine."

</comment><comment><USER3> The encryption scheme, for those curious: [http://www.crackingagrippa.net/submissions/robert_xiao.html](http://www.crackingagrippa.net/submissions/robert_xiao.html)

</comment><comment><USER4> I've followed this story off and on since the book was originally published (and read the poem a number of times), but I learned quite a bit of new information from this article. I'd recommend reading it even if you think you're already familiar with the story!

<comment><USER4> Wikipedia also mentions that this account has been questioned:

> However, according to a dissenting account by hacktivist and MindVox co- > founder Patrick K. Kroupa, subterfuge prior to The Transmission elicited a > betrayal of trust which yielded the uploaders the text. Kirschenbaum > declined to elaborate on the specifics of the Kroupa conjecture, which he > declared himself "not at liberty to disclose".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here's a direct link to the text of the poem, which I have always enjoyed.

[http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/source/agrippa.asp](http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/source/agrippa.asp)

</comment><comment><USER6> Aghhh, what I wouldn't give to have experienced this :-) I don't know how many were ever "printed", but it doesn't seem like any resurfaced online - I guess that makes sense, given the nature of the thing!

<comment><USER7> [http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/](http://agrippa.english.ucsb.edu/) seems apropos. Includes an emulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always loved this thing, and enjoyed the first encounter I had with it.</comment>


Tech job scene--NYC vs SF - <AUTHOR>

I'm trying to decide where to move and am asking for characterizations of New York and San Francisco in terms of their tech scenes.  For example, New York seems to be dominated by finance.
I have a good network of friends in both cities and think I would be happy with either choice.  My decision hinges more on where I might get to work.
Brief about me:  I'm into the startup culture, but I'm not interested in working 80 hours a week on some website that rates laundromats.  Most of my experience is with the MS stack (I know C# very well, F# pretty well, very strong in MSSQL, okay in other dbs). I've dabbled in a lot of the popular languages, though I avoid Java.   Finally, I tend to prefer back-end work to the presentation layer, meaning I don't consider myself a web developer, so I'm wondering if my skillset might not find a good home in SF. <comment><USER2> Most of the devs I know out here in SF are working on front-end, web or mobile apps. The folks I know who aren't in that category are working at much larger companies (MSFT, GOOG). MySpace is a .NET shop, but they're one of only a few companies I know of that's using a MSFT framework.

But if you're a good engineer, there's work to be had out here. You should come visit and check out the scene a bit more for yourself!

</comment><comment><USER3> I would say that NYC is known for finance but the reality is that its pretty large in other areas too, media, design, boutique etc.</comment>


Plain web text offenders: sending my location over HTTP when HTTPS was possible - <AUTHOR> http://blog.jgc.org/2015/04/plain-web-text-offenders-sending-my.html <comment><USER2> 'Perhaps "This app would like to use HTTP for its API" should be a permission that the user has to explicitly give.'

Good idea.

<comment><USER3> I suspect it is unlikely that the average user would understand the ramifications of agreeing to that request though. How about "This app would like to send your location to its API insecurely"?

<comment><USER4> The OS does not know what data the app is sending to its API, so it couldn't provide this specific of a warning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One issue is that HTTPS is one more thing to manage (no, it's not a complex thing to manage, but it is _something_ ). It's too easy for certificates to expire; it's psychologically irksome to pay the CA tax. I've seen many, many SSL expirations over the course of my career; far more than there should be, of course. Somehow we've ended up with a business culture which can track the number of left-handed albino Eskimos in middle management positions, but can't track certificate expiration dates.

I don't know off the top of my head if it's possible to package _two_ certs into one, so that one could have a certificate signed by one's own trusted root for one's own API client to trust, and a certificates signed by a CA for web browsers to trust, but that might make folks feel better about using it for an API endpoint: the own-trusted-root might have a different expiration period (risky), or an automatic renewal, or whatever. At the least it'd be self-managed to the point that the technical staff could handle it, rather than having to work through purchasing.

<comment><USER4> This is a problem because the certificate handling is not in the hands of process managers, but in the hands of the sysadmins, who do not generally work on a rigorous business-cycle type of schedule, and who don't already have tools in place to keep track of such things, and have a hard time justifying creating a tool that would, assuming they just have one or two certs to manage, be used only once every two years (and thus would probably take four years to troubleshoot, by which point something about the assumptions would have changed, meaning the reminders/warnings would probably fail and the cert will get overlooked).

It does make me wonder, though... why don't web servers have options to warn their admins (via logging or email or what-have-you) that the certs they are using are near expiration? Or do they?

Alternatively, some good samaritan could set up a service to scan the known SSL web for near-expired certs and email webmaster@ or other scraped addresses of the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm sure that there's quite a few companies who can do the same using only your IP address (hence also via https) and getting your location at the accuracy of real world coordinates.

And no, I'm not talking about using geoip information, I mean using data bought through 3rd parties selling location data collected through $yourfreeinstalledapp.

</comment><comment><USER7> Humble opinion: It is easy to block apps from sending sensitive information over the internet by running your own DNS cache and root along with a packet filter.

Humble opinion: If someone really wanted to send sensitive information over the internet, they could do better than HTTPS. Moreover, in the event the user is curious what is being sent, doing an experiment like the one here with a proxy becomes unnecessarily more complicated when the app is using HTTPS.

Humble opinion: Anything that makes it more difficult for the user to see what information an app is sending is not in the user's best interests.

Fact: Are there any alternatives to the scheme used by HTTPS for transmitting and receiving sensitive information? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NaCl_(software) works pretty good and the code can fit in a Tweet. Suprisingly, its use seems to be spreading; unlike SSL, it does not encourage reliance on untrusted commercial third parties such as SSL cert vendors, "secure" content delivery networks, etc.

Fact: Incidentally NaCl compiles without using make. It requires only /bin/sh and (opinion:) the short scripts are easier to edit than makefiles.

<comment><USER8> SSL doesn't require relying on any third-parties, any more than NaCl does - you can use a pinned self-signed certificate, and you don't need any CDNs.

CA issued certs are only used in websites, because you don't have a secure channel with which to transmit the pinned cert, but they're redundant for apps.

<comment><USER7> "SSL doesn't require relying on any third parties"

The word "require" was in quotes for a reason. I have changed the sentence to say "encourage".

In practice many people using SSL do rely on third parties. In my opinion this is where many problems arise.

My opinion is that most people are not aware SSL can be set up without using third parties, and even among those who are, the whole scheme is so cumbersome and error-prone that such persons are content to pay untrusted vendors, or to allow browser authors, to manage their "security".

"... they're redundant for apps."

OK, that's a fair point. My comments on third party vendors are only applicable to websites. My comments on the other problems with OpenSSL apply to both apps and websites.

<comment><USER9> TLS and NaCl are entirely different beasts. NaCl is a nice piece of technology, but TLS isn't just a technology solution; it's fundamentally a policy solution. TLS solves (or tries to, at least) both the "who am I talking to" problem and the "are we talking securely" problem.

NaCl can only replace the second one, which is a nonsensical idea to propose because it's not an issue (and it's the easier problem to solve anyway)

<comment><USER7> The first problem can be addressed by the CurveCP prototype, which uses NaCl.

tinysshd (see tinyssh.org) coupled with curvecpserver is a working example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This does not mean that SSL is available for the app. It means that the app currently happens to have an HTTPS endpoint that appears to work. This could be an accident on the BBC's part. As in, the app team requested HTTP and got a confirmation of HTTP, and due to a deployment quirk, also got HTTPS, but can't rely on that since next deploy might "fix" it.

Possibly.

</comment><comment><USER11> Submit to [http://plaintextoffenders.com/](http://plaintextoffenders.com/) maybe ?

</comment><comment><USER12> You blacked out your location in the Charles Proxy screenshot, but not in the chrome screenshot. Just an FYI.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> If the location is passed as part of the url get request, wouldn't it still be visible if the request was through HTTPS? I mean it's in the url, isn't that always going to be public, just not the resulting data returned?

<comment><AUTHOR> No. That's not how HTTPS works.

<comment><USER13> Could you elaborate - I genuinely don't know the process involved. When an HTTPS request is processed, does the client first directly contact the host and negotiate the secure session, THEN pass the URI request along?

<comment><USER14> Exactly. TLS is, as the name implies, at the transport layer (TCP). (TLS is the same thing as SSL, the "S" in HTTPS, unless someone wants to be pedantic.) Everything that is at the HTTP level gets encrypted. The only exception to this is (sometimes) the hostname through a process call SNI (Server Name Indication), which sends the hostname as part of the TLS setup before an encrypted session is setup so that the server knows which website's certificate it should be using. This is the only way that you can host more than one website on a single IP address (unless they all share the same wildcard certificate or a single cert has an alt-name for each).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using sysdig to troubleshoot - <AUTHOR> http://bencane.com/2014/04/18/using-sysdig-to-troubleshoot-like-a-boss/

<comment><USER2> >To install sysdig via apt we will need to setup the apt repository maintained by Draios the company behind sysdig. We can do this by running the following curl commands.

[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=743819](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi- bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=743819) is the ITP for Debian, the package should at least be in Sid now.

[http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=all&searchon=names&k...](http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?suite=all&searchon=names&keywords=sysdig) shows it hasn't been imported into Ubuntu yet.

[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=fedora-r...](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=fedora- review%20sysdig) means it isn't in Fedora yet, either - although finding out about packaging seems to be really tricky.

</comment><comment><USER3> Great write up!</comment>


Google+ reportedly passes 43 million users - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/google/2011/09/22/google-reportedly-passes-43-million-users <comment><USER2> 1 1/10 (less actually) the users of Facebook. Still, impressive as long as the growth continues.</comment>


How the 'hoverboards' took off in spite of laws against them - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-34053740 <comment><USER2> "All of them should be allowed on the pavement, because people aren't stupid, they will get out of the way if they see one coming."

Speaking as someone who sometimes puts his back out and spends a few days hobbling slowly about, I shouldn't have to quickly get out of someone's way if I see them coming and they shouldn't be allowed on pavements.

<comment><USER3> It's not practical to design everything in the world with the very slowest people in mind. The efficiency losses would be huge. Imagine if every pedestrian crossing light went for five minutes. Vehicular traffic would grind to a standstill.

That said, I see no reason why the people riding these things couldn't just move around other people. I rarely have problems with people on bicycles, because we can mutually avoid each other.

<comment><USER4> Bicycles aren't allowed on the sidewalk, either.

<comment><USER5> How fast do these go compared to a bicycle? I saw a few of them on the street and they didn't seem to be moving faster than a brisk walker.

My impression was that bikes are generally banned because they move fast enough to cause serious injury yet are silent enough that pedestrians don't hear them coming.

<comment><USER6> I've seen a few of these in London they aren't really faster than a fast walking speed which makes people who use them look very silly.

They are quite often laughably used in shopping centers or and super markets mostly because allot of the pavements in London are horribly uneven which probably doesn't provide a very good surface for those. I've seen 2 guys on those things at Westfield last weekend arguing with a bunch of confused staff that didn't knew how to treat them.

I don't really get this device it doesn't help you to commute any faster, it doesn't increase your pedestrian commute range if you aren't fit to walk you won't be able to use one of those (they got quite a stringy weight limit, and require quite a bit of effort to balance yourself on) anyhow.

It's a bit funny to see fit and young hipsters pretty much using a 500$ mobility scooter...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To be clear, with most of the celebrity adopters, they're often given the device and sometimes paid to use it.

Here in Toronto, I've seen marketing teams of people handing out this device and rolling around Yonge-Dundas square (sometimes cast as times square in feature films) in a guerilla marketing push.

It doesn't mean they're not cool and fun, but the breathless articles about how cool, hip, and trendy people are "suddenly using the device" are often coordinated.

<comment><USER8> No surprise there, as one of the objections mentions is the "stare" factor. That is, how much do you like to be stared at while doing something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's fascinating to me is that now, 14 years after the Segway failed to take over the world and became indelibly associated with upper-middle-class nerds, similar technology is now 90% less expensive, has found a more socially- acceptable form factor, and is actually becoming associated with celebrity tastemakers.

It would be quite the irony if the breathless hype about the Segway circa 2000 ended up being realized a decade and a half later, without the Segway.

<comment><USER10> A humorous and insightful PG post on Segway: [http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/segway.html)

<comment><USER11> I've thought about that a lot, and I think new tech adoption relies more on the social framework that's in place around it than we think. Simply put: if it makes you look/seem like an asshole then it's not gonna happen unless it's too good to ignore.

Smart watches and bluetooth headsets are great examples: they work fine but they make you look like a tool because of the social frameworks we have in place (it's rude to check your watch while in a conversation, it makes people feel weird when they think you are talking to them but you are just on your bluetooth.) Smartphones didn't deal with this friction because there's a long history of social rules around reading in public, and smartphones are essentially the same thing. We know when it's rude and when it's not, we know how to handle somebody reading next to us in the train, etc. In short, using a smartphone didn't make you look like a tool, it was just the next logical step from reading a magazine.

I definitely think Segway fell victim to this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The funny thing is all these "hoverboards" are the same exact device from China. You can get them off alibaba for $200 or spend $1,500 for some American branded version that is the same exact thing.

<comment><USER13> Link for the curious?

<comment><USER14> You can try Alibaba or Aliexpress usually:

[http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB...](http://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20151014073139&SearchText=hoverboard)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Boosted boards are still the best "hoverboard" for my money:

[http://boostedboards.com/](http://boostedboards.com/)

The price is prohibitive, but the market now has something like 7 or 8 brands competing, so I expect the price will come down in the next year or so.

<comment><USER14> I happen to have a Yuneec E-Go, but recently there's been some cheaper knock offs appearing.

Honestly I'm not sure what order they came in, but the Magneto electric board has several look a likes that are in the ~$300 range:

\- Magneto: [http://magnetoelectricskateboard.com/](http://magnetoelectricskateboard.com/) \- Alternatives on Alibaba: [http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/electric- skateboard.html](http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/electric-skateboard.html)

<comment><USER8> Hmm, off-road boards...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > American rapper Wiz Khalifa claimed on Twitter that he was handcuffed by > customs and border patrol officers at LAX airport because he refused to > disembark from his transporter.

I don't know whether the officers were justified in ordering him to get off the transporter (I tend to side with civilians), but this is kind of dumb. What was he expecting to happen? I can understand getting arrested intentionally to make a political point, but is this really the political stance he wants to take?

Either he was too dumb to know he was going to get arrested, or he's making a pretty irrelevant political point.

<comment><USER17> He's a celebrity and this got his name in the news. Isn't that more than enough of a reason?

<comment><USER16> You're right, I understand his motivation now, and I hate society a little more.

<comment><USER17> Well, it's not that different from writing blog posts in the hopes that they show up here. Humans are social and connections even asymetric ones are valueable.

<comment><USER16> My objection is that Wiz Khalifa's bid for attention _worked_ , despite the fact that he had nothing of value to say. I'd hope that if someone wrote something of no value it wouldn't make it onto the front page of HN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not sure the ban on public use is a bad thing. I imagine they'd become a nuisance if a lot of people were using them. There's quite a difference between someone walking into you and someone crashing into you at 14mph on a 10kg set of wheels. Bicycles are used on bike lanes and on the road for a reason.

<comment><USER19> >I imagine they'd become a nuisance if a lot of people were using them.

My image of them was already soured by just one guy in an airport a couple weeks ago doing a lazy slalom in front of me while I was trying to get around and to my flight.

<comment><USER20> Yep exactly.

I saw one pile into the side of a bus stop going flat out. Smashed the glass. That's a nuisance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have one of things. Bought off Alibaba for about ~$300 shipped.

It is fun, but you have to be very careful about stepping on. It is one of those things where the more you panic the more something goes wrong as you overcompensate. I fell when I tried to step onto one on concrete and it was way faster than I was use to so I overcompensated for the pressure my foot was causing and landed hard around my tail bone. And by that point I was pretty experienced getting on (just not on concrete).

Snowboarders seem to have a pretty easy time with it. But again, getting on without help is probably the most difficult step.

</comment><comment><USER22> Let's not call them hoverboards until they actually hover.

<comment><USER23> I believe the correct term is "swegway".

<comment><USER24> hmmm, can I call it a smegway?

<comment><USER25> smugway

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Why do people insist on calling these things hoverboards?

It's 2015 Marty McFly would be extremely disappointed.

<comment><USER27> Completely agree. I don't see any hovering going on. Of course, I'm still on the losing side of the battle against the "sharing economy" phrasing, so I might as well accept this one too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> How does these compare with the single-wheel versions?

[http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/airwheel-carbon-limited- editi...](http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/airwheel-carbon-limited-edition/)

<comment><USER29> I'm guessing, the larger single wheel gives you a smoother ride? They're easier to pick up and carry like a briefcase, too. But I imagine, harder to ride.

<comment><USER30> They also have a double wheel version that also uses large wheels which seems like a better idea.

[http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/q3black340wh/](http://www.theairwheel.com/buy/q3black340wh/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Don't want to sound like a killjoy but those seem absolutely pointless. If you made one so small it would fit in a sole of a shoe I'd reconsider but in their current form they're just as inconvenient when not in use as a bike and infinitely less useful when riding.

</comment><comment><USER32> Was going to say it appears that the Segway patent has run out. But then:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9330361/segway- hoverboard-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/9/15/9330361/segway-hoverboard- patent-hovertrax-lawsuit)

I was working on iBot cost reduction stuff back in 1999 when that patent was filed. I was under the impression the company (our customer) had a lot of balancing machines running around at the time and figured the patent must have been a few years old at that point. Guess not.

</comment><comment><USER33> Well, as long as people are willing to risk life and limb in the pursuit of fun and thrills, I can't really talk down on them.

Also I can't wait to get some more traction in my side project so I can get my "recreational personal flight device" into a prototype and testing stage. Think of it as akin to JetMan, version 2.0, and not needing a helicopter.

</comment><comment><USER34> Have been riding one of the single wheel versions of this. Incredibly difficult, but fun none the less.

</comment><comment><USER35> Is there any open source for the control system? It's not rocket science but from what I understand getting a control system running with dynamic feedback is not trivial either? Anyone experience with the theory? Any books/papers you can suggest?

<comment><USER36> Try starting by looking up "PID loops" (Proportional Integral Derivative).

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Are these the real life version of conveyor belt sidewalks the scifi autors wrote about?

<comment><USER8> Reminds me that a design company was pitching the conversion of the London underground into a network of conveyor belts.

5 lanes, 3 speeds, so that the ones closest to the edges were just about walking speed, while the innermost was somewhere close to a jog (or perhaps even a run).

<comment><USER38> Take that and multiply the width by a couple of times and you've got Heinlein's rolling roads.

<comment><USER39> Or Arthur C. Clarke's "moving ways" (Against the Fall of Night / The City And The Stars)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> It's way more conspicuous than those sneakers with the wheels on the bottom and those sneakers really took off in some parts of the US. Did they cause a lot of problems for people?

I don't know, but these hoverboards probably won't be as popular as those sneakers.</comment>