Meet Tech Teentrepreneur Daniel Brusilovsky  - <AUTHOR> http://gigaom.com/2008/06/27/meet-tech-teentrepreneur-daniel-brusilovsky/ <comment><USER2> > Teens in Tech will be a community for teenagers who want > to start > podcasting, blogging, video-casting, and producing > all types of new media. > Users will get their own blog where > they can upload audio, video, text, > and other files to > their personalized blog.

Nothing new?</comment>


Show HN: Granim.js – Create fluid and interactive gradients animations - <AUTHOR> https://sarcadass.github.io/granim.js/ <comment><USER2> Why these things always have to be so CPU intensive?

<comment><USER3> Probably because they're calculating the offset of the gradients at each step, resulting in a lot of array calculations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Wow it looks great on my Android phone, Chrome browser. Just wanted to know how compatible it is with other browsers there on desktop and mobile...

Great work, keep it up!

<comment><USER5> Smooth as butter in Safari on iPhone 6.

<comment><USER4> Great news as lot of our target market is there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Looks great, does anyone have ideas on where they could use it? I'm trying to think...

<comment><USER7> Perhaps an elegant chatbot UI in the style of the film Her, signalling comprehension, attention or even emotions or with the gradient shift?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What's the point with web animation API now?

<comment><USER9> Gradient values are unfortunately not interpolable in Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> really nice! I was looking for something like this a little while ago and couldnt find it. bookmarking

</comment><comment><USER11> Do we really need a framework for this? It's some basic CSS.

<comment><USER12> Is it? I thought a lot of aspects of CSS gradients couldn't be animated?

Also, I wouldn't call this a "framework"...</comment></comment>


A new book says married women are miserable. Don't believe it - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/4/18650969/married-women-miserable-fake-paul-dolan-happiness <comment><USER2> > The problem? That finding is the result of a grievous misunderstanding on > Dolan's part of how the American Time Use Survey works. The people > conducting the survey didn't ask married people how happy they were, shoo > their spouses out of the room, and then ask again. Dolan had misinterpreted > one of the categories in the survey, "spouse absent," which refers to > married people whose partner is no longer living in their household, as > meaning the spouse stepped out of the room.

This has to be one of the most embarrassing, ridiculous errors in interpretation I've seen. The barriers to book publishing are startlingly low.

</comment><comment><USER3> What about the men? Is anyone married happy?</comment>


Monetize Your APIs in AWS Marketplace Using API Gateway - <AUTHOR> https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/compute/monetize-your-apis-in-aws-marketplace-using-api-gateway/ <comment><USER2> The 'API marketplace' and 'API economy' narratives are largely pushed by companies who make API proxies: Mashape, Mulesoft, etc. (EDIT: not Mashable, they're unrelated)

I've yet to hear true success stories in this space; to me it just seems like wishful thinking (on part of the marketplace and on part of API developers) about a second app boom; notably, in the hype cycle, the API boom has largely been superseded by the Chatbot boom, which is functionally very similar, although the gatekeepers are different.

That is not to say you can't make money this way. Perhaps it's useful for hobbyist-level projects, or cut-from-the-same-cloth wrapper APIs that hardly offer anything unique but at least one sucker signs up anyway -- the same as with apps, really. Is this actually a thriving market?

<comment><USER3> There was a subthread on HN not too long ago from a guy who quit his day job to scale ipinfo.io, which sells an API subscription product for geoIP lookups. He's doing fairly well.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13328971](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13328971)

So I think there is a market for services like this, especially since API Gateway takes away a lot of the kinds of scaling headaches the creator talks about in the linked post.

<comment><USER4> I'd say that ipinfo.io sells data, just through an API. Building a data set is expensive and takes time.

Pure API plays are harder, I think.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Need a US bank account to sell [1]. Not quite as restrictive as devpay's requirement for a US legal entity, but still a hassle. I think I'll stick with a free AMI and stripe/quaderno for payments/VAT for license keys to unlock premium features.

[1] [http://awsmp-loadforms.s3.amazonaws.com/AWS_Marketplace_- _Se...](http://awsmp-loadforms.s3.amazonaws.com/AWS_Marketplace_- _Seller_Guide.pdf)

<comment><USER6> Sorry, what does AMI stand for?

<comment><USER7> Amazon Machine Instance [1]. Its the name Amazon uses for the virtual machine image running on AWS.

1: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AMIs.html](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AMIs.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Despite all the complaints and open letters about Amazon's horrible work culture and bad organization, they seemed to be building great products at an amazing pace. I read somewhere that AWS deployed 1000 new features to production every week. Whatever they're doing, it seems to be working. My only complaint is that most of their UI interfaces feel like Web 1.0

<comment><USER9> Amazon's store frontend interfaces are A/B tested. Their backend stuff for developers---not so much.

The look and feel of the Amazon store looks 'web 1.0' because it has high information density, and less white space. Current web fashion is to have minimalist design with lots of white space, but that fashion not UX.

As a UX example, Amazon's store follows pretty standard practices---tables for tabular data, cards for related items that will be skimmed, vertical scrolling to support long item lists without changing the layout on browser resolution, consistent sizing/spacing/coloring for headers, control locality so clicking a button changes information near by it.

It does all of the things you'd expect a regular web app to do, but sprays it over a long-form page instead of burying it in tabs increasing scroll distance via whitespace.

Where Amazon fails is niches. Their interface is generalist, so they don't have great UX for buying clothes, or buying groceries (albeit no one really has a great interface for that).

<comment><USER10> Minimalist design is not even remotely about fashion. At least not as applied to UX and conversion flow. It's about intuition vs cognition. Amazon is blind to how extraordinarily bad their UI is probably because they are putting too much value into A/B testing and/or leadership has a belief that "everything at once" is some how more helpful to users then a directed flow.

A/B testing is a very useful tool for a very constrained problem of comparing two or more alternatives of the same thing. It cannot tell you which overall UX approach is more effective. Good minimalist design is about creating user flow which often consists of multiple simple steps. Each step avoiding cognitive overload by maintaining a context and limiting the current scope.

Actually these multiple steps happen on complex pages too. The difference is that on complex pages the user gets no help from the UX to accomplish their goal. It needn't be fashionable, it needs to be functional not in the theoretical sense, but in the actual sense accounting for real user behavior.

Amazon and people who mistakenly believe that "information density" is necessarily good, often not true, and that a "lot of words" == "information density" which is also often not true fail to realize that following a link or scrolling a pages is actually _less_ difficult then visually searching a cluttered information scape.

Even users who do not become frustrated by the UI will 'pre-filter' it once they figure out how to do the one thing they want. This has the effect of making most of the interface invisible to then from that point on. It's like driving to work, they will tune out all the visual noise around them after the first few trips. So at best the information density has no value because it is ignored, and at worst, it's adding a heavy friction to conversion.

It's bad, pre design 101 bad. Amazon only gets away with it because they already won the market long ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The API gateway seems quite expensive to me. I guess it has its use cases and mine doesn't fit into it.

I run a free API www.macvendors.com that handles around 225 million requests per month. It's super simple and has no authentiction or anything, but I'm also able to run it on a $20/m VPS. Looks like API gateway would be $750+data. Bummer because the ecosystem around it looks great. You certainly pay for it though!

<comment><USER12> curious to know your setup

<comment><USER13> From a load perspective, if the request pattern is even, 225 million req/month are only about 85 req/s (assuming ~730hrs/mo). Any $5/mo VPS running even a very heavy and suboptimal web framework can handle that.

It's likely more spikey than that (i.e., peak/off-peak times), but certain server-to-server loads have a very consistent load pattern. (For example, at Userify[1] - SSH key management -- servers check for updates every 90 seconds or so or 10 seconds for premium plans or self hosted, so the load pattern is literally a flat line.. extremely predictable. We'll probably switch over clients that can handle it to websockets and maybe hashed etags and cut that load pattern into oblivion, but for now it works and is simple/auditable code/extremely reliable, which is a very important factor in our case.)

To GP's point, spiraling costs are definitely a factor with most of Amazon's services such as DynamoDB and especially Lambda... they are sometimes an effective use of devtime, especially in the beginning of a project (and when dealing with a mature platform like DynamoDB and maybe not so much Lambda), but you have to carefully consider the cost factor as you scale. For example, Lambda is often literally several orders of magnitude[2] more expensive than an equivalent ELB. (i.e., it can be more than 100x more expensive.. for small scale or maintenance tasks, that may not matter.. for a heavy/core service, it definitely matters!) So, as they taught us in AWS SA, design for cost: use the more advanced services when it makes sense, but optimize across all axes, not just devtime.

TL;DR: most cheap cloud instances can do 85req/s.

1\. [https://userify.com](https://userify.com)

2\. [https://twitter.com/JamiesonBecker/status/802185522139582464](https://twitter.com/JamiesonBecker/status/802185522139582464)

<comment><USER12> hmm interesting. I guess I haven't really thought of this from cost point of view. It is nice knowing that I can have a Flask endpoint up on AWS Lambda + API Gateway that can scale using only my credit card. That peace of mind, once you write a code you won't have to worry about scaling seems like a pretty good deal and should carry a premium.

I'd be happy to have 85req/s hopefully by then I'd be charging lot of money.

<comment><USER13> Exactly - and don't forget about things like Elastic Beanstalk as you grow. Those automate even the setup of things like the ELB/ALB etc, trading a higher fixed monthly cost for a lower cost per transaction. Still, if your business model supports it and if it ain't broke, just leave it where it is... AWS does give you many good choices.

<comment><USER12> I just begun to look at ELB and curious to know how it's able to scale my php app straight out of the box.

Having said that it's a struggle to figure out how to get Laravel running on ELB

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Teams targeting this capability ought to consider how much specific information Amazon would be able to derive: utilization and revenue growth rates. We've seen platform providers crowd out existing solutions on their platforms when a particular product becomes popular -- Twitter, and their treatment of developers on it's platform, is a classic example.

Through the lens of Twitter, AWS seems to be creating for itself the opportunity to benefit from this sort of third-party R&D on a massive scale.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, on Amazon scale you cat probably get pretty good idea about trending API services by just looking at the AWS DNS statistics (and/or some network level metrics) and Amazon Alexa stats.

<comment><USER16> Popular does not neccesarily mean profitable though. If you can easily know whats profitable in the landscape, thats killer.

<comment><USER17> "Accountant as a service. Free. Works worldwide. Select in which country you want to create your company: ..." would be a great value proposition for AWS startups ;) "We don't sell your data", it says, "we... only... use it internally."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I use Mashape for monetizing an API. They have great customer service, but it seems like their marketplace hasn't gotten a lot of love in the last few years. Instead they seem to be focused on other things, like Kong. I do however, think my customers prefer monthly plans instead of a strict per usage billing. It also helps me predict growth in advance.

<comment><USER19> Sadly, that's the only marketplace around. I have about 5 APIs there and the activity is really low.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Is there any guarantee in their terms that they're not going to check which API brings in the most cash, and make their own if it's any good?

They might not need to know the specifics, just count hits. Then they could look at the public end of any seriously popular API.

<comment><USER21> Not sure if it's true, but that's a common complaint with 3rd party sellers on Amazon. Once AMZN spots a winner, they sell direct.

<comment><USER22> And why wouldn't they? It clearly hasn't stopped sellers. Amazon has them do all the market research on their dime. Amazon then gets all the data to decide what to launch next to improve their margins, and they get paid for the privilege.

I can't say I blame them, but I can't say it does much for my trust in them either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think this is a great opportunity for back-end developers who lack full- stack skills or don't have a front-end sidekick to produce valuable software.

Unfortunately, just like the app store, you would still suffer from discovery issues so the developer must also think about upping their marketing game.

Very excited about this new development from Amazon though!

<comment><USER24> > Unfortunately, just like the app store, you would still suffer from > discovery issues

To some degree certainly quite likely, but personally I don't think it'd be as pronounced in such b2b / dev2dev contexts as it would be on today's b2c app stores, to the (hard to quantify/guesstimate) degree that users in the former more carefully scrutinize more offerings and contrast them with their actual requirements.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I highly recommend visiting 21.co. They develop for some time technology to easily charge/collect/pay bitcoin on every HTTP request in the 21 Marketplace.

They have cool (afaik opensource) technology using standard HTTP Response 402 "Payment Required" \- yeah, there is such thing :)

Nice initial set of demos and information: [https://21.co/features/](https://21.co/features/)

Disclaimer: I'm not author/founder/investor/bitcoin evangelist. I just like what they try to do.

<comment><USER26> I set up a quick "storage for btc charged per byte" server with it if anyone wants to play around/break it [http://storage.mitch.fyi/](http://storage.mitch.fyi/)

And then did a talk on the general concepts of paid endpoints: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvJpWt5gapQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvJpWt5gapQ)

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I think this is a great new addition to AWS. Amazon's pace of releasing new things is just astounding.

As an API provider I'm pretty excited to find out how this works and whether the AWS marketplace is really ready for 3rd party services.

Having tried mashape a couple of months ago I like the idea but found their implementation a bit cumbersome and confusing. I hope Amazon's approach will be simpler.

</comment><comment><USER28> The "per request" model is seriously limiting. I work in the mobile app machine learning/analytics space and per Monthly Active User makes a lot more sense for that market.

</comment><comment><USER29> "01 DEC 2016" was this just announced or was it actually announced last month?

</comment><comment><USER30> Or use 3scale or WSO2? I understand, pricing point of view, amazon will be 10 times or more cheaper. But level of effort required and limited features set, you have to decide what you are trying to do with your time & skills.

<comment><USER31> 3scale offers an integration with Amazon API Gateway, and we have the experience with billing of API usage.

[https://www.3scale.net/2015/10/new-aws-api-gateway- integrati...](https://www.3scale.net/2015/10/new-aws-api-gateway-integration- with-3scale-api-management/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Excuse my ignorance, can you tell me an example of a what kind of API would someone sell and someone else buy and why? I just don't understand what is the business model here. Thanks.

<comment><USER33> AWS itself is a great example: Most Amazon Web Services (e.g. S3, EC2) can be controlled and accessed via APIs, and Amazon charges for that API access. Here's a more concrete example --- the pricing page for Amazon DynamoDB:

[https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/dynamodb/pricing/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Would be interesting if they enabled integration with Ethereum for API monetizing. But that is probably unlikely as they would go against their own payment platform.

</comment><comment><USER35> What are the advantages of using AWS over selling the API yourself? I can think of a few:

* AWS handles the billing software for you.

* AWS markets to enterprise companies who already have billing integrated and pay a lot of money. So less hassle collecting payment, and less resistance to charging lots.

* You get the AWS brand associated with your API, so people may be more likely to trust it.

What other reasons would somebody use this?

<comment><USER36> Not having to deal with Paypal seems to be a plus

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Mashape does a good job of this but Amazon can take this to another level.

<comment><USER38> Fun fact: Jeff Bezos from Amazon was an early investor in Mashape :)

<comment><USER22> So did he just invest to get info to decide whether to launch a competing product?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> This is huge.

I work with datapower / API connect and Axway api-gateway / manager.

This will definitely have an impact on my work.

Time to learn a new tool :)

</comment><comment><USER40> I read the api gateway document. I don't quite understand the use of it.

in the end the traffic will be routed to my backend, I will still handle the requests myself. What's the benefit of using a gateway?

<comment><USER41> The idea should be that you don't have to reinvent how to authenticate users (client developer and end user), apply different quotas, charge money, detect abuse, log any of that, nor a number of other things that are common to all APIs.

Not sure how much of that does Amazon accomplish, nor to what success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've read all the docs, and I still don't see anything about AWS doing the monetization. What am I missing? Has someone else found this missing link?

Billing is mentioned in two sentences:

1\. "As I mentioned earlier, you can use Usage Plans to bill for usage and to create an ecosystem around your APIs."

2\. "You can then process and analyze the data as desired. For example, you could bill your subscribers on a per-call basis."

So I'm reading this as I am responsible for billing the customer.

<comment><USER43> Perhaps if your API is already built on top of AWS, this counts?

[edit] meaning youre already using _their_ billing APIs in there somewhere

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> What I'd like to know is: if you call an API you didn't pay for, will a 402 be returned? ;-)

<comment><USER45> For posterity: [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/api- reference/handling...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/apigateway/api- reference/handling-errors/#api-error-codes)

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> I'm not sure I really understand the pet store example given. What are some actual examples of this that people would actually use?

<comment><USER47> Maxmind does geo ip lookup, you pay for the number of queries you issue.

That sort of thing I would assume.

<comment><USER48> Also sending text messages, xml-whois api, etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Yeah right, until Amazon sees that you're succeeding and decides to monetize your APIs without you. Not a great partner.

</comment><comment><USER50> The uptake on this will be dependent on how comfortable developers feel about building completely off AWS's infra.

I'm optimistic about such an approach -- a lot of infra effort (maintaining servers & service/marketing) is expended innumerable times across all SaaS services/APIs.

</comment><comment><USER51> I believe convenience may be a huge argument for a lot of ppl. Paying to new provider takes a lot of resources, while using yet another AWS like api is easier.

</comment><comment><USER52> These aws guys are literally putting the pieces together while we're watching.

This is something I'll definitely will give a try.

</comment><comment><USER12> sounds like this will put the nail in mashape's coffin. not sure why this is downvoted, mashape's marketplace has been dead for quite some time, there are no buyers.</comment>


Thousands of Swedes Are Inserting Microchips Under Their Skin - <AUTHOR> https://www.npr.org/2018/10/22/658808705/thousands-of-swedes-are-inserting-microchips-under-their-skin <comment><USER2> Why is it that so much of the tech that supposedly empowers users makes their agency wed to a third party? Do Swedes value convenience more than freedom?

As for the implants, art speaks louder than a spec sheet:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs)</comment>


Janet Airlines - <AUTHOR> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_(airline) <comment><USER2> Makes you think about the enormous cost of the United State's defense operations if they have come to the conclusion that it is sensible to routinely fly employees for a commute. Extravagant things like this are obviously only a miniscule fraction of the cost, but still.

<comment><USER3> It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me. The whole point of, e.g., the facility at Groom Lake is that it's very remote. Accumulating a large town nearby would defeat the purpose.

<comment><USER4> > It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that > they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me.

Just a consideration: would it be cheaper to build and use an express railroad line between the remote facility and "the other commute destination" instead?

<comment><USER5> It's a hundred pretty mountainous miles from Las Vegas to Area 51. The cost of building a fast line along that route would probably pay for decades of these flights.

<comment><USER6> It would have been a lot cheaper if the military didn't order the Tonopah & Tidewater Railway to be dismantled for its precious steel. That would be like half the line.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_and_Tidewater_Railro...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tonopah_and_Tidewater_Railroad)

<comment><USER7> It had already ceased operation before the start of the war (in the US), and would have been taken up for scrap sooner or later anyway. Even without World War II, there is exactly zero chance that the railroad would have survived long enough to be useful again. Unused rail lines don't sit for 50 years without being scrapped. (At least, they didn't in those days. Tennessee Pass seems to be headed toward becoming the exception that proves the rule.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fyi... Wendover Productions made a 4-minute about it:

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

</comment><comment><USER9> > During the turn the pilot suffered a sudden cardiac death. Half way through > the turn the airplane began a gradual descent until it impacted the ground. > The airplane broke up and burst into flames. Investigation revealed that the > pilot had violated federal policy and directives, wilfully deceived flight > medical examiners, suppressed significant medical information and ingested > inappropriate medications for a deteriorating and dangerous health > condition. The pilot had high blood pressure and failed to report it, and > denied taking medications to his Federal Aviation Administration flight > physical examiners.

[https://aviation- safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040316-...](https://aviation- safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040316-0)

</comment><comment><USER10> Reminds me of the guy who calculated that it's cheaper to commute from Barcelona to his London office than to rent a London apartment [https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24...](https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/cheaper- to-rent-in-barcelona-and-commute-to-london/)

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone else surprised to read that the fleet is all ex-Air China aircraft? That seems like a security hole.

<comment><USER12> Why? Does anyone think that those aircrafts would not have been stripped down and inspected in every possible way before going into service? Not to mention that they were purchased by a shell corporation to avoid any connection to the US government at the time of purchase.

<comment><USER11> Well sure. But Chinese intelligence is pretty ... intelligent. I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least somewhat aware of the origin of the shell corp. And the idea that one can strip a 737 down to a point that one can be certain that it contains no bugs or modifications seems unlikely to me. Doing so would certainly offset whatever discount you got by buying the 737 from a foreign source.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I bet Charles Stross could come up with a clever occult explanation of this for a _Laundry Files_ novel.

<comment><USER14> I'm sure the Black Chamber has uses for a secret airline.

<comment><USER13> Just finished _The Labyrinth Index_ on PTO this week. The Nazgul only get nastier and nastier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> So what happens if you're running late one day? You don't get to go into work? Or do you hold up the plane?

<comment><USER16> at peak times they run a jet every 20 minutes. Evenings you could get delayed for a couple hours, but even then they have flights going as late as 8-9pm. you can watch the flights on [https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAS](https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAS), look for flights starting with WWW

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> It'd be PITA when you have to go to the air port to get in the air plane to go to the work, then get back, __every__ day.

<comment><USER18> LA to Area 51 is 25m flight and their boarding procedures are probably quite a bit more efficient compared to normal passenger flights. doesn't look too bad compared to other people's commute in LA, i imagine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I still wonder at the Manhattan district and how they used trains to ship radioactive elements and people...

<comment><USER20> radioactive material in trains? Have they not learnt anything from Broken Arrow?

<comment><USER19> It was before that. The test plutonium microgramme samples being purified by Glenn Seaborg went by train under armed guard but according to Richard Rhodes would 'wander' in the foil packaging. They talk of plutonium migrating upstream against an article even.

<comment><USER21> Definite or indefinite?

<comment><USER19> with plutonium, at the time? I think indefinite.

<comment><USER21> I was being a bit snarky. I have no idea what this sentence even means:

> They talk of plutonium migrating upstream against an article even.

Migrate? Upstream? What article?

<comment><USER19> ah. now I see. autocorrect. against an airflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Why is Santa Barbara Municipal one of their destinations rather than Vandenberg?

<comment><USER23> VAFB is fairly impractical for civilian contractors and if for daily commutes. Many more contractor offices and people live near SBA.

<comment><USER24> Same reason Camarillo is on there even though it's right next to the naval/air base.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I saw one of those airliners during my last trip to LV. Sometimes when you drive on Flamingo you can get a glimpse of them.</comment>


A strong business plan is most important when investing in start-ups - <AUTHOR> http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/04/08/a.strong.business.plan.most.important.when.investing.start.ups <comment><USER2> This is misleading. It's based on the earliest business plan they were able to find, but that probably dates from the series A round.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yup:

> The first sample consisted of 50 start-ups that went public in an initial > public offering for which there was a very early business plan. The second > sample included all start-ups that went public in 2004.

They only sampled startups that went public... that's a very small sample of all the startups.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> On the same HN page, couple items a part is the link to the article "New Research Finds Business Plans Are Virtually Useless: Advice to Entrepreneurs: Perfect the Business, Not the Business Plan" (<http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/news/releases/2009/040809.aspx>).

This article said to have a larger sample size or 700 dot-com companies from the late-1990s to early-2000s boom era. Is this an example of interpretation of statistics?

</comment><comment><USER4> Where is the data supporting this conclusion? This sounds like it was written by someone theorizing about startups rather than someone living it.

I have always heard that people invest in the team. I think a poor product with a good team has a better chance than a great product and a poor team. I think this is because a good team will recognize that they have a poor product, and will change it until it is good. Where a poor team may not even realize they have a good product.

Jeremy

</comment><comment><USER5> Anyone have a link / pointer to the journal article?

It's a surprising conclusion (but hard to react without seeing the article).

My anecdotal experience: most successful startups change strategy & business plans a few times. The ones that fail are the ones that cling to the original plan in the face of changing assumptions.

My Fundamental Theory of Startups: "A startup is about staying in business long enough to get to the third version of the idea."

<comment><USER5> Found the original article here: [http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- bin/fulltext/12166052...](http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi- bin/fulltext/121660523/PDFSTART)</comment></comment>


Hugo on Netlify == speed 6 seconds from Git push to live site on global CDN - <AUTHOR> https://www.netlify.com/blog/2015/07/30/hugo-on-netlify-insanely-fast-deploys

<comment><USER2> From push to git to live site in 6 seconds... Go is so fast.. One less reason to use traditional dynamic sites. Sites made with a modern static site generator, on a properly configured true CDN, perhaps with a dynamic widget or two, is so much faster, safer, simpler to optimise, and cheaper to scale than traditional php or .net sites that for most sites it's starting to not make sense to do anything else ..</comment>


Down hundreds of staff, Weather Service 'teetering on the brink of failure' - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2017/10/26/down-hundreds-of-staff-weather-service-teetering-on-the-brink-of-failure-labor-union-says/?utm_term=.28628bdad950 <comment><USER2> > The National Weather Service Employees Organization, its labor union, said > the lack of staff is taking a toll on forecasting operations and that the > agency is "for the first time in its history teetering on the brink of > failure." Managers are being forced to scale back certain operations, and > staff are stressed and overworked.

> "It's gotten so bad that we're not going to be able to provide service that > two years ago we were able to provide to public, emergency managers and > media," said Dan Sobien, the president of the union. "We've never been in > that position before."

It makes me deeply discouraged that something so vital to life in general is almost impossible to keep staffed (mostly because of a lack of funds), yet the military's budget increased by $54 Billion this year — to a total of $639 Billion for FY2018.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States#Budget_request_for_FY2018)

<comment><USER3> The article quotes the union "understaffing is not due to underfunding"

<comment><AUTHOR> As peterwwillis points out below, a part of it is due to a direct Trump order to not hire any staff earlier this year.

<comment><USER4> Both are correct. Funding is not the issue, but the Trump order did exacerbate the issue, as well as the lack of nominating key positions in NOAA and NWS.

<comment><USER5> Both being correct does not make them both equally correct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you go to the USAJOBS site and search for National Weather Service, you get about 270 results. If you then limit that to jobs that are open to the public, you get just under a hundred jobs. So, I think both sides are telling A truth.

The NWS says there are around 270 open positions. That is demonstrably true.

The union is saying there are about 700 open positions. They might think there are vacancies for which requisitions have not yet been made.

Perhaps, therein lies the discrepancy. And it speaks to the rest of the odd financing and accounting discussed in the article.

<comment><USER5> Are union jobs like that really all open to the public on sites like USAJOBS? I was just reading an article about how many them are handed out through connections to other union members, it's usually the same group of tight- knight union workers on every public works project.

<comment><USER7> > many of them are handed out through connections to other union member

Government hiring doesn't work like that. Positions are usually open to everyone (or at least US citizens) or only existing staff.

<comment><USER8> There are many positions that are in effect only for those already in the employ of the contract. Either lateral or promotion but only for an 'insider'. This is not particular to this single contract but can be applicable for all contracts depending on many factors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Why is the headline here missing "labor union says"

The actual Weather Service seems to think they are doing just fine.

"Let me state emphatically that we would never take an action that would jeopardize the services we provide to emergency managers and the public," she said. "NWS is taking definitive steps to ensure the health and well-being of our employees through guidance to local managers on scheduling and flexibility."

<comment><USER10> Also, from the article:

> The vacancy situation has not gone unnoticed by Congress. In its 2018 fiscal > year budget markup for the Weather Service, the Senate Appropriations > Committee wrote that the "extended vacancies are unacceptable — particularly > when the Committee has provided more than adequate resources and direction > to fill vacancies expeditiously for the past several years."

It looks like Congress agrees that the Weather Service is understaffed.

> Martin said staff morale is in the tank. "Some people have been denied > vacations, because there are not enough bodies to fill shifts," he said. "I, > myself, worked a 15-hour day about a week ago. You get a lot less sleep. You > start to wonder if you're safe on the road. You don't see your loved ones, > which eats into family life."

If this is even remotely true, it definitely seems they're understaffed despite the statement from the Weather Service. Of course the Weather Service would put out a statement they're doing fine. I see no reason as to why we should take their word for it over the word of Congressional committees and actual employees.

<comment><USER9> Congress needs to take some action then. Perhaps replace the head of the organization that believes they are fulfilling their mission correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> This has wide and serious ramifications for business. Private weather data is nice, but most of it is derived from NOAA resources.

</comment><comment><USER12> Keep in mind, it is not just your weather channel and your little Weather Widget on your iPhone that is at stake here.

They also provide forecasts that your airliner uses to plan safe flights.

</comment><comment><USER4> _" the National Weather Service had 216 vacant positions it could not fill due to a governmentwide hiring freeze imposed by the Trump administration, according to a recently released document."_ [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- ene...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/the- energy-202/2017/09/27/the-energy-202-trump-s-hiring-freeze-shrunk-national- weather-service-staff-before-hurricanes-hit/59cabf8330fb0468cea81c01/)

 _" The Weather Service's head count finally stabilized in 2016 [...] But the staffing dip resumed in 2017, falling from 3,425 in December to 3,368 in August,"_

 _" Staffing had declined so much that the Government Accountability Office wrote in May that employees were challenged in their ability "to complete key tasks.""_

 _" "There's no question that the hiring freeze had an effect," said Dan Sobien, NWSEO president. "But really it was the straw that broke the camel's back." He added, "The camel was already weighed down to the ground."_

 _" The National Hurricane Center, a Weather Service division, has been led by an acting director since May. An acting career official is heading NOAA until President Trump nominates and the Senate confirms a permanent replacement. Trump has waited longer than any other president to fill that role."_

 _" In either case, the vacancies at the Weather Service were numerous enough, even before Trump was inaugurated, for the GAO to audit the agency's hiring practices."_

 _" In July, the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote in a report that lawmakers are "very concerned with the continued number of employee vacancies" even though Congress has provided enough money to fill them."_

</comment><comment><USER13> Wonder where The Weather Company fits in here- after all, they seem to have no trouble hiring at a rapid clip- I assume most people get their weather from the Weather Company but I live in Atlanta where it's located so it's a given here.

I'm guessing the private sector pay is better, wouldn't be surprised if they were poaching NWS employees.

<comment><USER14> I wonder if TWC uses NWS data in its forecasting.

<comment><USER15> NWS runs the preponderance of weather radar in the US.

They probably run all of it, I'm just not sure if there are any independent ones.

<comment><USER16> They don't run all of it. Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams. That's not to say I don't think the NWS is an essential government function.

<comment><USER17> > Many city news channels have their own radar and forecast teams.

While this is true, it's probably also worth pointing out that those forecasts likely depend on NWS data in some fashion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> i live in Woodinville, a suburb of Seattle, and have noticed over the last couple years that the weather forecast is getting really bad. Often (maybe once/month) showing 0% chance of rain when it's actually pouring rain. The temperature forecast also seems suspect, but I don't own a thermometer so can't provide numbers there.

</comment><comment><USER19> We still need humans for weather forecast?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, very much so. Computer models are not forecasts, and it would be a terrible state of affairs if we did not have human forecasters to make forecasts.

<comment><USER20> Why are computer models _not_ forecasts? Why would it be a terrible state of affairs not to have human forecasters?

More specifically, what role do humans play in digesting the output of the computer model and producing the forecast? What adjustments or corrections are made to what the model says is going to happen, and based on what reasoning? "My gut tells me the tornado is going to move east, even though the computer says it will move west with an estimated 98% likelihood"?

Are the humans doing more than creating a human-consumable verbal summary of what the computer model says will happen -- explaining the severity and location of the predicted weather in human terms?

<comment><USER21> Computer models certainly produce forecasts, but humans are needed to interpret these forecasts.

At each National Weather Service office, forecasters typically use model output to guide their daily forecast products, such as temperatures and precipitation probabilities. However, these forecasters are aware of smaller- scale nuances of their forecast area, such as topographic influences, land-sea interactions or urban heat island effects, which models may struggle to resolve. Human knowledge of model limitations helps to produce a better forecast.

A further example would be hurricane forecasting, where National Hurricane Center forecasts typically outperform most models (see [http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml](http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/verification/verify6.shtml) for starters).

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the details.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Given that government employees -- not to mention political appointees in transitory leadership positions -- are increasingly enjoined, mandated, and coerced to tow the party line (of the party in power), I'd pay a fair amount of attention to what the employees' union has to say about the matter. A voice with substantial political clout of its own, as well as some "anonym-ization" from individual comments subject to punishment including career termination.

There is separate reporting to the effect of staff becoming extremely stretched and overworked with the combination of hurricanes and fires that recently hit.

There are the reported proposed cuts to NOAA/NCAR budgets of 15+%. Cuts threatening to cripple current data collection efforts and ongoing innovation and developments in same. At a time when year-upon-year environmental and weather circumstances make increasingly clear that we need a better and more detailed understanding of what is going on (and of how we might deal with it).

U.S. Government weather services provide the backbone upon which private, commercial forecasting builds -- when they are not simply repackaging and repeating the government-provided information.

Those services are also critical to the ongoing management and execution of many commercial sectors within the U.S. economy. Agriculture, shipping, transport, even the "dirty old fossil fuel" sectors. Forecasting was wrong one one of our recent winters experiencing extreme cold spells particularly east of the Rocky Mountains, and propane supplies that had not been bolstered ran extremely low, leading to dramatic price hikes and shortages and considerable economic distress downstream not just to households but to businesses, i.e. other productive sectors.

These services are vital to a planful, productive execution of our economy.

But, as in many cases, the "government is bad" people refuse to acknowledge this.

Look at the EPA. Those folks now can't speak publicly without "official sign- off" of a political leadership. Politics before science.

Where present, set your sentiments about "unions" aside and look at why this may be the primary or only route via which you are hearing about problems, from the people in these institutions.

P.S. I forgot to mention: While I have mixed feelings about over-doing the "soft skills" aspects of the following, part of the head-count concern right now includes expanding efforts to translate data into communication that will make people take pro-active action to minimize their own risks. For a burgeoning emergency, making it clearer where may flood and what that will look like, so that, for example, people evacuate before they are stranded and at imminent physical risk necessitating risky and costly rescue. Reassessing and better communicating environmental risks for specific areas, to spur more pro-active zoning and other regulation as well as individual actions such as seeking flood insurance (before an uninsured person ends up needing a government-funded bail-out).

<comment><USER23> I would think it would be "toe" the party line ;-)

<comment><USER22> I stand corrected. I hesitated over that, but was moving too fast and too tired to get it right.

I also seem to be making more keying mistakes in my comments, recently. "that" as opposed to "than", for example, IIRC from another recent comment.

Maybe be a medication I started a couple of months ago...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> .... according to it's union.</comment>


Papers on virtual memory and working sets - <AUTHOR> http://denninginstitute.com/pjd/PUBS/Workingsets.html <comment><USER2> This paper touches on some similar ideas:

[http://www.terzarima.net/doc/taste.pdf](http://www.terzarima.net/doc/taste.pdf)

though I personally think (you need to read the paper to get what I'm saying here) that his forward pointers want to be from the vnode forward so they handle the page cache.

And the biggest vnode? Nothing has changed in 30 years, it's gonna be the swap vnode because that's what backs all that malloc-ed memory. There really should be a swap vnode per process, structured in a directory tree like /swap/$process_group/$pid so you can page the whole process group out together.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can anyone recommend papers/chapters about locality specifically in OOP/managed code ?</comment>


The earth in real time - <AUTHOR> https://events.google.com/io2015/schedule?sid=f858a197-b6d4-e411-b87f-00155d5066d7#day1/f858a197-b6d4-e411-b87f-00155d5066d7

<comment><AUTHOR> Google maps including live satellite feeds of the Earth... death of privacy, or really awesome thing?

<comment><USER2> Depends 'how live' it is I guess.

I doubt it'd be a good thing to be able to track vehicles in real time with number one eyeball. Though I can probably think of a number of applications of live streaming satellite info that would appeal to law enforcement.</comment></comment>


QArt Codes (2012) - <AUTHOR> https://research.swtch.com/qart <comment><USER2> Original source is no longer available.

[https://github.com/search?&q=qart](https://github.com/search?&q=qart) for a few different implementations, and some advancing the theory.

[https://github.com/vitrun/qart](https://github.com/vitrun/qart) \- cloned from original source

[https://github.com/chinuno-usami/CuteR](https://github.com/chinuno- usami/CuteR) \- picture with a bit of data dither

[https://github.com/scola/Qart](https://github.com/scola/Qart) \- Android app

[https://github.com/kciter/qart.js](https://github.com/kciter/qart.js) \- javascript version, browser or NPM</comment>


Aussie inventor's $445m Microsoft windfall wiped out - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/aussie-inventors-445m-microsoft-windfall-wiped-out-20090930-gc77.html

<comment><USER2> _"It was never about the money. It was about the ethics of it ... winning a court case is not winning the lottery."_

Haha, bullshit. Nice to a see judge make a reasoned decision.

This site The Age is also absurdly biased in favor of this patent troll. They even play up a "small guy taking on big bad business" angle. What a journalistic joke.

<comment><USER3> Publishing is not immune to parochialism. Everyone is a hero in their hometown paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This appears to be the patent:

<http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5490216.html>

From the abstract, you'd think this guy could sue every software company that uses a license key or registration number.

</comment><comment><USER5> The patent would certainly be considered obvious nowadays, but that's not the point. The guy did show his work to Microsoft, they said "Nice idea, yoink". He did indeed have a patent on the idea. He won an appeal based on the fact that the judge did not listen to a jury's opinion on the case. So they got a jury, and the jury voted in favour of Richardson.

And the judge again ignores the jury. What the hell, man?

<comment><USER6> > The guy did show his work to Microsoft, they said "Nice idea, yoink".

That's his version of the story.

<comment><USER7> Well, that was pretty common form for MS during the 90's. There's dozens of companies who's work MS stole blatantly, often under the pretence of 'That's a great tech you've got. let's work together on it'

<comment><USER6> So far it sounds more as if someone came to you with "newly-discovered" bubblesort algorithm, you said "uh nice" and proceeded using quciksort, then got sued.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> alternate title: patent troll fails at attempted extortion

<comment><AUTHOR> _"... patent troll fails at attempted extortion ..."_

when you mention _patent troll_ I think Nathan Myhrvold (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Myhrvold>) not Ric Richardson. Ric actually builds stuff and to characterise him as an extortionist is opinion only.

 _"... To me, the money is important only in so far as it allows me to further my ideas. ..."_ ([http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technology/how-the-man- in...](http://www.theage.com.au/news/home/technology/how-the-man-in-a-van- outsmarted- microsoft/2009/04/19/1240079538770.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1))

To me a patent troll is someone who buys patents then threatens the alleged infringer with profit in mind. That describes Nathan Myhrvold ([http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1731257/Intellectual-...](http://yro.slashdot.org/story/09/09/08/1731257/Intellectual- Ventures-Patent-Protection-Racket?from=rss)) and Intellectual Ventures. (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_Ventures>) The fact that Nathan is a former Microsoft CTO also hints at the culture of Microsoft.

Where does that leave Uniloc? Just how do companies who create strategic technology with an entrepreneurial eye approach potential buyers without being ripped off? Microsoft has prior form ripping off competitors (<http://www.google.com/search?q=%22microsoft+ripped+off++*%22>) and Uniloc another victim. Ric Richardson has form for building stuff. Lets see who continues to be the troll?

<comment><USER2> No, sorry. His patent is ridiculous. It's trolling – cast a wide net and set the cruise control. Sue and hope you get lucky. You might make a buck off the broken system! Blatant example of why software patents should be abolished in general.

<comment><USER9> can you explain what happened to me: the only story I read is that he showed MS his patented tech in 1993 and they turned it down and re-implemented it themselves.

Im guessing that is in no way the full unbiased story from what your saying; got any good links?

<comment><USER2> He had a patent granted in 1996 that covers: product activation, shareware, and machine ID locking. There's not really much else to say, it's idiotic. The Age has no idea of how much damage this would have done to an already battered set of affairs, had the ruling been let to stand. It's shameful they're propping this moron up onto a pedestal.

<comment><USER9> Cool thanks.

I totally agree with you. Though I wonder if there is the argument that he is using this patent right... if he _did_ show his specific work to Microsoft and they subsequently implemented it themselves would you not agree he was ripped off by them?

Now, if he had this patent and was suing any old company left right and centre I would join you in calling him a moron (he could well take that approach in the future - then he would be a moron). Right now I am seeing a tiny sliver of validity in his claim (if what appears to have happened is true).

I'd argue in this case the patent is doing what it is supposed too (though the outcome didn't go quite right).

<comment><USER2> It doesn't matter who he targets with it, it's completely wrong. It sets the wrong precedent in every way. Why should it be "ok" for him to target Microsoft with it, but not some smaller developer?

There's no validity to his claim, this "news report" is totally biased. He patented stuff that had been going on since the 80s and then immediately turned to sue the biggest company he could find, hoping to win a payout. The jury sided with the "little guy" and the judge threw out the verdict based on their bias. (I think that's what happened, anyway.) I'm assuming he can appeal, but I hope it he doesn't fare any better this time.

<comment><USER9> Im confused; dont you think he has a right to feel cross Microsoft screwed him (if that is what happened)?

The rest of what your saying is irrelevant (I agree: patents used in a broad way are evil) because it appears he has a specific complaint against a specific company :) not a general attempt to enforce his/a patent?

I get the impression you haven't read the background? It does appear MS might well have done an injustice by him in '93. If that is what he is trying to right; then I guess I support him. If he is, as you suggesting, just trying to sue his patent all over the place (which I see no evidence for yet) then I am with you totally.

I worry that the patent trolling leaves cases like this, where there seems the makings of a reasonable complaint, out high and dry :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I believe Uniloc's so-called invention is nothing more than a rehash of much older ideas and technologies that already existed.

Firstly, the whole try before you buy idea was popularised by Bob Wallace in 1983 with the release of his shareware software PC-Write, a word processor that you could trial for free and register if you liked it. (see [http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/archives/v2/2_4_html/...](http://computersandcomposition.osu.edu/archives/v2/2_4_html/2_4_08_Waddell.html)).

This concept was adopted by hundreds of software authors in the 80's, and quickly evolved to include time limits and activation keys long before Uniloc. Users enjoyed the ability to try a fully functional product before purchase. However, even Wallace acknowledged he got the term shareware, which embodies the whole try before you buy idea, from a computer column that appeared in Infoworld magazine in the 70's.

Secondly, software protection schemes that relied on hardware to generate security keys were common-place in the mid 80's. Australian software company Pittwater Distributors developed an application called Cashbook in the early 80's which used a plug-in hardware dongle (a small hardware key) in order to secure the application. Other companies such as Alpha-Micro and Sun- MicroSystems used serial numbers stored in the physical hardware of the computer.

I personally worked on a software encryption and protection systems in 1984 for game publisher Electronic Arts which relied on keys derived from the physical software media (a tape or disk). This approach was extremely common- place at the time.

In short, software trial mechanisms and protection systems were obvious, common-place technologies and marketing models long before Uniloc.

I agree with the judge.

</comment><comment><USER11> [http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/180587.asp?from...](http://blog.seattlepi.com/microsoft/archives/180587.asp?from=blog_last3)

> The technology in question included the use of a software activation key to > keep users from installing licensed software on more than one computer.

I have no love for stupidly obvious patents, but what the judge did seems like an abuse of power.

</comment><comment><USER12> I was going to weigh in, but a number of comments already spelled it out.

> Richardson's patent, one of many under his name, relates to work he did in > the early 1990s and covers a software registrations system that allows > software makers to create try-before-you-buy versions of their work.

There's a lot of asinine software patents - like Apple has patented the specific touch screen motions used on the iPhone. They're pretty intuitive motions - there's only so many ways to move your fingers on a screen that make sense. Patents were made to protect inventors and stimulate innovation - patents on obvious evolutions in technology do the opposite.

<comment><USER13> Blackboard is one of the worst offenders.

edit: correct link <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackboard_Inc>.

<comment><USER14> They're gradually losing their patents. With any hope universities may have decent software one day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The "little aussie battla" (he aint little) nationalism is embarrassing, doubly so coming from ppl wouldn't even know what a software patent is... or how stupid they are... or that we are stuck fuskin things in exchange for selling wheat under the USA-AussieLand free (preferential) trade agreement... blood boils</comment>


Keras Implementation of Alpha Zero for Chess - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Zeta36/chess-alpha-zero <comment><USER2> In the repo, they suggest that you instead go support another project. Namely, [https://github.com/glinscott/leela-chess](https://github.com/glinscott/leela- chess)

<comment><USER3> Oh man, it's like BOINC. (In fact, perhaps one could incorporate it into BOINC.) I wonder if, after a while, the most powerful ML platforms in the world will be volunteer-run distributed systems. That would be an interesting situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anybody is interested, you will find ~300 millions PGN to train your NN models on chess games here : [https://database.lichess.org/](https://database.lichess.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> One interesting thing about the 'zero' approach is that it learns through self-play. So you can use a database to bootstrap the learning, but in principle you'd only need the game rules and enough training time.</comment></comment>


Help Iranians Fight Their Dictatorship by Providing Pied Piper's New Internet - <AUTHOR> You might have heard about it in the news (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-protests-specialreport/special-report-irans-leader-ordered-crackdown-on-unrest-do-whatever-it-takes-to-end-it-idUSKBN1YR0QR).
The Iranian Islamic regime has killed about 1500 people in the last month while the world was in absolute silence. Why? Because the first thing the regime did was to shutdown the internet access.
They shutdown the Internet not only to hide what they're doing to the people form the world but also to prevent people from joining the protests by knowing what's going on and prevent organizing protests using the Social networks, etc.
However, they kept the Interanet online. So the services hosted inside Iran were available to people.
Now my question is, what are the available solutions to provide people a secure and reliable communication channel (probably through the same Interanet)? Something like Pied Piper's New Internet?
I was thinking it should meet the following requirements:
- Should be easy to use for non-tech users - It shouldn't be centralized (like Git, https://beakerbrowser.com/ or https://zeronet.io/) - Should be secure (everything encrypted p2p) - As long as it provides highest level of availability the latency doesn't matter (e.g. A newsletter or website that can be updated by getting a file via Bluetooth) - Should work on mobile devices 5. (Nice to have) should provide some other network physical channels (Wifi Adhoc or whatever, satelite, p2p via phone/modem, etc.)
There might be other stuff that I'm missing like making sure that the bridges (or/and servers provided by users) are not going to reveal the users' identity. <comment><USER2> That's a great question, and I hope you find some relevant solutions.

I would discourage you from using the "pied piper" metaphor to describe this. In the original legend from Germany, the pied piper uses his magic powers to steal the children of the town, and they never come back!

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

It's easy to imagine Internet censors _loving_ this metaphor for uncensored Internet access: the thing that controls young people's minds and steals them away from the society.

So you may want to use a different legend as your metaphor for describing what you're looking for.

</comment><comment><USER3> I see and completely understand the need for having, let's say, a decentralized (from the Iranian) Internet. However, this requires resources, time and most likely money. I don't think you will be able to bypass/piggyback the Iranian Intranet or their Internet firewall, it will also make it easier for the Iranian government to track you if you try. The way I see it is trying to find your own Internet access. That sounds easy, but I can definitely see it not being the case. Maybe through satellite, maybe someone living close to a border and being able to use an Internet line from the neighboring country, there are more possibilities, I'm sure, but these come into my mind at the moment.

Let's say you manage to get independent Internet access, now you will have to find a way to get this Internet to all the people that want to use it, setting up the necessary network for that and keeping it hidden is another major task, will you risk using WiFi? If not, how will you get cable to necessary hubs? Can you trust all the people involved in setting this up or will someone inform the government because they love the current regime so much?

That being said, I'm sure that with enough money, motivation and maybe mobilization of help from people you can trust it is in theory, difficult, but doable.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment. I wasn't clear enough so I added a reply since can't update the original post.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> ADDITIONAL UPDATES \</comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>--

To be clear this secure network doesn't have to be open to the world. As long as it provides a network for the people and especially activists inside Iran to communicate and be aware of the news (there are many independent and fair reporters who are sharing the news from inside Iran targeted Iranian audience). It just needs to be secured from the government. Think of it as a Git repository that can be updated either p2p, offline using patches (via anything let's say even Bluetooth) or using the government intranet. This repository can give the activist a platform to share the news and probably lead the protests without being revealed or shutdown.

About a decade ago videos were going viral the same way, using just Bluetooth. So if in the worse case government shuts down even the Intranet, then people can switch back to that old way of sharing.</comment>


SQLite: The art of keep it simple - <AUTHOR> http://www.codergears.com/Blog/?p=2392 <comment><USER2> 'Keep it simple stupid'

... proceeds to use Bloatware Studio for examples.</comment>


Command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com and other video sites - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl <comment><USER2> /methinx most people would be more interested in

[https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=frontend+for+youtube- dl](https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=frontend+for+youtube-dl)

For convenience, you know?

</comment><comment><USER3> Top tip: it'll fairly regularly stop working, because Youtube have changed the website.

If you encounter this, there'll almost certainly be a new version which fixes the problem.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you are learning about the existence of "youtube-dl" then…

Congratulations! You are one of today's lucky 10,000 [1]

[1] [https://xkcd.com/1053/](https://xkcd.com/1053/)

<comment><USER5> I really like you for reminding me of this wholesome attitude to people (re)discovering old stuff!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> shhhhhhhhhh.</comment>


Is the Universe Conscious? - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/universe-conscious-ncna772956 <comment><USER2> Are we part of the universe? Check. Are we conscious? Check? (probably yes). Does that make the universe transitively conscious? Partially at least, I suppose, yes it does. As far as the universe as a whole being conscious: Latency is problem, but when you're the universe I imagine you've got a lot of time on your hands.

<comment><USER3> Is there a universe outside of our consciousness? This cannot be proven, so if it is to be believed, it must be a matter of faith.

Consciousness is the only thing we can be certain of.

<comment><USER4> Can we be certain of consciousness? How can we be certain that what we perceive as reality isn't some demon feeding sensory information to our brain?

<comment><USER3> That would still be consciousness--or call it 'perception' if you like. But yes, objectively speaking, this is as likely to be the case as any other explanation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Similar discussion from some time ago: [0]. TL;DR a galaxy is too big for letting any sort of meaningful intelligence develop. The latency of signals would severely limit the complexity of the "brain".

Edit: moreover, on a less serious stance, there is always [1], which reassures us that the answer to such a question would inevitably be "no", when the question is posed as part of an headline.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11395585)

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

<comment><USER6> Octopuses are an interesting argument against this view. Octopuses do not directly control their own arms. And their arms even have reflex reactions completely independent of their brain. In other words, it may be that nature itself discovered centralization is a pretty bad idea beyond a certain scale.

<comment><USER7> In other words, the universe is Cthulhu?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Given that I am conscious, and I am part of the universe, I conclude that the universe is conscious.

Or, at the very least, the universe cannot be entirely unconscious, since I am part of the universe and I am conscious.

<comment><USER9> In the same way a room becomes conscious the moment a person walks into it.

<comment><USER8> A room and a person in it can be considered separate. But nothing in existence can be considered separate from the universe, since the universe is everything in existence.

So, to use your example, a room with a conscious person in it, considered as one whole, is at the very least partially conscious, since the person in it is conscious. Whether the room itself is conscious we don't quite know.

But this leads to the question: does the notion of "partially conscious" make sense?

<comment><USER9> So,

1\. a room and a person in it are separate

2\. nothing is separate from the universe

Therefore, there are two things that are not separate from the universe but separate from each other.

<comment><USER8> Separation is a matter of perspective. A room with a person in it can be viewed as one whole, and saying that this room-person is only partially conscious is equivalent to saying that, because my teeth are not conscious and my teeth are part of me, I'm only partially conscious.

<comment><USER10> > Separation is a matter of perspective.

Indeed separation is matter of consciousness. If we believe that the universe is more or less a frothing foam of energetic particles, the only thing that differentiates my teeth from my gums and me from the room _is my recognition and identification of them_. There is matter with or with out me, but there is no room, no tooth, no me without my consciousness.

<comment><USER9> "[...] the universe is more or less a frothing foam of energetic particles [...]"

"Particles" is plural, implying separation. It that, too, a "matter of consciousness"? Sounds a lot like "consciousness" is being used to do a lot of passing of the proverbial buck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Oh, Penrose. He comes up with weird theories of consciousness every once in a while. His basic argument is that for some reason consciousness in a deterministic universe runs into undecidability, and therefor consciousness must require some quantum phenomenon to work.

It's a big jump from "some stars emit jets that seem to move them in a non- random direction" to "consciousness".

</comment><comment><USER12> Assuming that c is really the speed of causality, then no, there's a limit to large scale structures or operations in an expanding universe.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't the inflation theory contradict this? If expansion (or contraction) of spacetime can occur faster than the speed of light, then it could theoretically enact causality faster too right?

Or even more theoretically, isn't it also possible that distant regions of our universe could be adjacent in other dimensions? Perhaps in some higher (or lower?) dimension, every particle in the universe is right next to each other, having never separated after the big bang.

Not that any of this is particularly likely, but since we don't understand the core mechanisms of consciousness very well, it seems possible they could be operating on levels of physics that we also don't understand yet.

<comment><USER12> _Doesn 't the inflation theory contradict this? If expansion (or contraction) of spacetime can occur faster than the speed of light, then it could theoretically enact causality faster too right?_

There is no theoretical limit to the rate of metric expansion, but unfortunately metric expansion doesn't allow for FTL communication. Let's put aside issues of lightspeed in an expanding universe though because we don't even need to go there to address this basic issue of why you can't have a brain past certain limits.

At some point limited by the speed of light even in a static universe, your "thoughts" would be incredibly slow. What would it mean to have a neuron the width of the galaxy? Would you be particularly intelligent just because you had a lot of individual parts from a certain distance? There's probably some theoretical upper bound on the optimum size for a computing body in a universe bound by c, based on the total amount of entropy which could ever be contained in a given region and the rate of signal transmission.

As to adjacent dimensions and that kind of thing, who knows? In current physics that would be like magic, and magic can be whatever you want it to be after all.

<comment><USER3> M-theory (which posits additional dimensions) is obviously not observationally proven by any stretch, but it's based on mathematics and scientific principles and is respected by many prominent physicists, so I wouldn't call it the realm of magic. It does make falsifiable predictions--the problem is developing technology capable of falsifying them.

An Alcubierre warp drive[1] would be capable of enacting causality faster than light, no?

1 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive)

<comment><USER12> The Alcubierre drive might or might not work on our universe; it requires something which may not exist. If it did work, it would also be a time machine, and so far causality has been a safer bet. M-theory is engaging and fascinating, filled with great math, but there is no indication that it describes our reality. Worse, M-Theory flirts with unfalsifiability. All told, when looking at things like the original question raised by the article, we have to look to established theory backed by observation.

<comment><USER3> Sure, I'm not trying to say that this stuff is very plausible. My point is that we do have some reasonable indications that some of our hard and fast laws might be more slippery than is commonly thought, and given the strangeness of consciousness, how it works could be pretty slippery as well.

Imagine that human civilization survives and progresses for 100 million years. Do you think that they'll be able to look back on any of our "laws" without laughing?

At that point we'd likely be far beyond Dyson spheres, harvesting large quantities of antimatter, solar system scale particle accelerators, artificial black holes, quantum supercomputers, etc., etc. Whatever would be discovered is almost guaranteed to be unimaginable by us.

<comment><USER12> I think that to the best of anyone's ability to tell, the speed of light is ultimately fixed and represents the speed of causality. I think that we can do a _lot_ within those limits, much of it beyond belief today. That said, I truly doubt that we're going to exceed the speed of causality, create time machines, and that kind of thing.

For the artificial black holes, Dyson spheres, antimatter, quantum computers, and giant accelerators to actually work, the laws of physics they're based on can't be _that_ wrong. They can be incomplete, requiring their place within a greater theory, but not simply wrong. There is observation consistent with the notion that the speed of light has been constant for the last ~14 billion years, everywhere we can see.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Strange coincidence, today I was thinking about the same thing in the opposite way while walking next to a highway.

Humans are not 100% rational like elementary particles in quantum physics, and they were all in cars moving in a predictable way like H2O molecules in a river. And it made me wondering if there is a possibility of consciousness that we try to describe with physics laws but will never be able to totally understand because of an underling consciousness.

</comment><comment><USER14> Ignoring the whole "speed-of-light delays make galaxy-brains impossible" thing, here's a different argument I'm fond of:

A conscious mind has an at-least-somewhat-coherent preference function, yes? (Under modern predictive-processing models of the brain, the experience of being a mind is the experience of focusing on things that allow you to make reward-biased predictions, to further drive embodied processes like movement to "unify" those biased predictions with the environment—i.e. to seek the reward state. So you need a preference function to focus, and thereby to have a train of thought.)

So, the Earth might be conscious. Despite seeing ourselves as different from e.g. spiders, or algae, or bacteria, every preference-function of Earth-based life is actually rather close-together in possible-preference-function-space. You could say that the Earth—i.e. everything on Earth that thinks—"wants" to spread carbon-based life through mitosis and meiosis. If the Earth was a starship, this would be its mission.

The universe, on the other hand? Maybe if we're the only life in it. Otherwise, there's probably a [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer](https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer) somewhere with a very different idea of what the universe "wants", that can't really be coherently combined with our own.

If such a universe had a brain, it would necessarily be one with split-brain syndrome; it wouldn't be able to both "be" Earth-based life and "be" a paperclip-maximizer at the same time, and still have consciousness in the sense we define it. So, not "one" consciousness, no.

<comment><USER15> If it's possible for the Earth to have "one" consciousness while containing both the Cheetah and the Gazelle, the universe can reconcile us and a paperclip maximizer.

<comment><USER14> If you assume that the Earth has a consciousness, then individual beings on its surface are more like cells in a body than like separate minds. The minds of the individual components aren't "part of" that consciousness, in the way that mental schema are a part of a brain; they're more like neurons, or other nerve cells elsewhere in the body, _literal_ parts of the brain. You wouldn't derive your idea of what a brain is thinking from what an individual nerve cell "wants" (cells "want" ATP, mostly); you'd only derive it from what that cell does in response to stimuli from other cells, and how that maps to thinking at a larger level.

A human being _wants_ things that often involve the destruction of its various cells. We _want_ to drink alcohol sometimes, for example. This is possible because our preference-function has no factor for the preferences of the individual cells killed in the process. They aren't a _semantic_ part of our mind. They're just a literal part of our bodies.

A hypothetical Earth-Mind wouldn't have a preference-function derived via coherent extrapolated volition of all Earth-life. Its mind would simply be the set of preferences the Earth seems to have if you're an alien trying to interact with "the Earth" as a coherent being, on some scale where the actions of individual cells (e.g. humans) don't matter as much as the actions of the biosphere as a whole. Maybe with action-and-reaction observed over a time- scale of billions of years, for example.

That preference function might be observed to be, for example, "install replicating carbon-based life onto anything that comes into contact with it." Or "capture solar radiation into ongoing surface chemistry." Note that these are coincidentally things that some of the individual _cells_ also want, but again, the cells in existence at any given moment and _their_ wants aren't anything you can use to deduce the preferences of the mind. It's more what cells are _kept in existence_ and _given more resources_ over time—especially in response to specific stimuli—that allow you to make educated guesses about what a multicellular agent is "trying" to do. (With the proviso that those cells shouldn't also be clearly fighting the rest of the organism in doing so; a model that predicts that animals _want_ to get cancer is a bad model.)

Presuming humans terraform the planet completely, the preference-function of the Earth as a whole might seem to end up as "transform all raw materials into structures, items, and cells suitable as inputs to sustain the life of the 'human' cell-line." This is a _higher-level_ thought-process that could be found, but it wouldn't erase the lower level; the Earth-Mind would still look to have those other desires, because humans are still carbon-based life and still do carbon-based life things. Just like our own brain cells, despite being the "dominant cell-line" of our bodies, still function as cells in a body. Humans are "embodied" by our biosphere just like our brain cells are "embodied" by other cell-lines. And so it still makes sense to talk to a human by talking to _its body_ , rather than directly to its brain—and it still makes sense to talk to "the [terraformed] Earth" rather than talking to humans.

On the other hand, the "observed mind" of a planet with a paperclip-maximizer on it wouldn't look anything like a natural-biosphere or human-driven- biosphere. It would just look like the single paperclip-maximizer's mind. A paperclip-mamixizer isn't part of a biosphere; it's a monocellular culture, the preferences of the whole identical to the preferences of the individual entities. And those preferences are completely orthogonal to the preferences of a biosphere.

If Earth came into contact with a paperclip-maximizer, their interaction wouldn't look like a coherent mind at work; it would look like two minds each blindly attempting to achieve their own goals with no greater purpose in their collision.

The point I hold out on is that, if you interact with the _Universe_ as a whole, on a scale where things like biospheres are the "cells", and attempt to ascertain _its_ preference-function, you won't get anything sensible out. Unlike Earth, where both the Cheetah and the Gazelle "serve" to tree-search a set of biological machines that started with Earth's first carbon-based replicators, an interaction between the Earth-Mind and the Paperclipper-Mind doesn't serve to "do" anything. The behaviour of the interaction wouldn't throw off byproducts that would be of use to anyone trying to predict anything. The Universe, as an _experiment_ containing multiple orthogonally- preferenced agents, is purposeless; unlike Earth itself, there is nothing from which an alien standing outside of it could infer the hand of an intelligent designer—a mind at the Universe's scale that found it useful to set its "cells" in motion in the way the Universe has been set in motion.

Which makes sense, I think; the "intelligent designer" of the Earth-Mind was the first carbon-based replicator, but there was no equivalent process that "took over" the Universe as a whole to infuse it with a self-similar cluster of optimization-processes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> > Penrose sums up this connection beautifully in his opus "The Road to > Reality": "The laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex > systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can > then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of > physics that gave rise to it."

This circular thinking breaks down at "mathematics can encode in a succinct and inspiring way the laws of physics". The laws of physics are partitioned into _at least three_ different sub-theories, none of which have been successfully encoded with another sub-theory using mathematics, i.e. General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and the laws arising from the directedness of Time. (That last one could include the Theory of Consciousness if entropy causes brain memories, and memories cause consciousness.)

Perhaps _because_ physics produces consciousness, and consciousness produces mathematics, mathematics can never describe a united theory of physics.

</comment><comment><USER9> "As I have argued there and elsewhere, naturalism cannot in fact be salvaged. It either collapses into Rosenberg-style eliminativism, which is (hard as Rosenberg tries to make it work) ultimately incoherent; or, in order to do justice to the aspects of reality that even many of Nagel's critics acknowledge to be irreducible, is either transformed into the panpsychism of Whitehead, Chalmers, and Strawson, or entails a return to an essentially Aristotelian-Scholastic philosophy of nature [...]"

[http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/06/mind-and-cosmos- roun...](http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2013/06/mind-and-cosmos-roundup.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Yoga and Hinduism have always been preaching this. The universe and for that matter, even a stone is a living entity. There is a higher cosmic intelligence and consciousness that is capable of taking macro/micro decisions.

</comment><comment><USER18> By some definitions, proving this would objectively prove God exists.

<comment><USER19> by some definitions the converse would not be necessarily true: if God reveals her/himself to you, she would still need to prove that he controls the whole universe. unless you believe them.

<comment><USER20> The definitions that the parent are referring to are the basis for pantheism, i.e. that God is everything. Some people call it Gaia, or Brahman.

<comment><USER18> correct

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are may ways to argue for panpsychism.

So far I have solid and interesting arguments only from David Chalmers. Most others, like Penrose, make basic errors or hand wave too much to my taste.

<comment><USER20> Would you please link to some of the Chalmers pieces you like?

<comment><USER21> His all papers are here: [http://consc.net/all-papers-by- date/](http://consc.net/all-papers-by-date/)

Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism. Amherst Lecture in Philosophy, 2013. [http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf](http://consc.net/papers/panpsychism.pdf)

The Combination Problem for Panpsychism. In (G. Bruntrup and L. Jaskolla, eds.) Panpsychism. Oxford University Press, 2017. [http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf](http://consc.net/papers/combination.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I like the idea on some level, but could consciousness be separated from biological motivations like pleasure and pain?

That feels more like the idea of universe-as-computer than in the examples of conscious, living celestial bodies.

</comment><comment><USER23> "The Spirit by which all this universe is pervaded, is indestructible. No one can destroy the imperishable Spirit. \- Bhagavad Gita Chapter 2 Yoga of Knowledge Sankhya Yoga Verse 17" searchgita.com

</comment><comment><USER24> > to Carl Sagan intoning that "we are made of star stuff"

I like how Carl Sagan's most famous quote is him just dumbing down the lyrics of a Joni Mitchell song so that his audience could understand it.

</comment><comment><USER25> I see consciousness as a way to describe the reinforcement learning process for an agent in an environment. Thus I try to see if a universe consciousness would have the characteristics of an RL agent.

What would such a conscious universe be conscious of? Would it need to feed, mate, learn and defend itself? If there is no utility, no purpose, then why would it be conscious?

At least in biological life, there is an internal purpose - that is - to live and self reproduce. The consciousness of the universe would not have such needs, and with their loss, it would lose all that evolution achieved.

</comment><comment><USER26> It sure is, and no less than several billion times over, at least, depending on how you count, and that's just on this planet alone.

</comment><comment><USER27> "Is the Universe Conscious?" on nbcnews.com has to be some sort of cultural milestone.

<comment><USER28> Yeah the NBC News article, from June 2017, someone "recently published a paper" \-- in July 2016 (I suppose on a cosmic scale...). At the risk of...ad- hominism, the site they linked doesn't inspire confidence. For one thing, the peer-review process: [http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/about/editorialPolicies#peerRe...](http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/about/editorialPolicies#peerReviewProcess) is basically two editors from the same company, and eventually one or more of a group of "advisors" ( [http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/about/displayMembership/3](http://jcer.com/index.php/jcj/about/displayMembership/3) ), 7 out of 17 being "Independent Researchers".

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> a "dominant" theory of consciousness is a bit of a misnomer

that is to say,

\- most scientists would hesitate to say they have a clue

\- philosophers have all kinds of ideas but all with epistemological issues

\- your average joe would probably equate consciousness with the "soul"

</comment><comment><USER30> Yes?</comment>


Evacuated Tube Transport could take you around the world in just 6 hours - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McpWcn-1RZU

<comment><USER2> The problem here is the "evacuated" part. It's hard to hold a vacuum in a large vessel: think of how few giant vacuum chambers exist. Most of them were built for the Apollo program, and just get maintained. How hard is it to maintain a meaningful vacuum in thousands of kilometers of tubing? Every weld, every seal, have to be spaceship-quality.

Then there's the tube itself. To hold off sea-level collapse pressure, you'll need a relatively stout tube, probably with ring-stiffeners every so often to keep any buckling from ruinging a continent-long length of tubing.

So, pumping the tube system, the tubes themselves and the valves, seals, and welds, plus ongoing intensive inspections. This is like jetpacks, helicopter taxis and fusion power: always at least 10 years in the future.</comment>


JSON in Postgres and Node - <AUTHOR> http://j0.hn/24

<comment><USER2> Actually, Postgres does have a JSON datatype. The only extra thing it does is ensure the data is valid JSON, but it is still technically incorrect to say that there is no JSON type.

[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/datatype- json.ht...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/datatype-json.html)

<comment><USER3> > The only extra thing it does is ensure the data is valid JSON,

Even that's actually not quite fair, it has special syntax for queries within the JSON (->> etc), and a bunch of functions: [http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/functions- json.h...](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/functions-json.html)

<comment><USER2> These functions can be run on datatypes other than JSON, but yes, you are correct.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In related news (here: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5589593> ), the Opa framework which is based on Node.js just released support for both MongoDB and Postgres from the same application source.

</comment><comment><USER5> The plv8x project ( <https://github.com/clkao/plv8x> ) adds convenient JSON and JS/LiveScript selector operators: [https://speakerdeck.com/audreyt/pgrest- node-dot-js-in-the-da...](https://speakerdeck.com/audreyt/pgrest-node-dot-js- in-the-database) covers the basic usage and the motivation, as well as the ongoing PgREST work ( <https://github.com/clkao/pgrest> ) that builds a MongoLab REST API server that resides within the database, so they can be queried over a pg connection as well as through HTTP.

</comment><comment><USER6> Wouldn't it be a lot nicer to just use a schema and serializer? I know that's not really the point of this article, but if you're trying to get a SQL db to operate like a NoSQl store, it feels like a lot of hand-waving.

<comment><AUTHOR> It really depends on the data structure. If you've got something that can have an unknown amount of variables in it and you're already serving up JSON, then I think using JSON is the way to go.

Another use-case: We've got hundreds of clients that send health statuses for a ton of different metrics every 10 minutes. Stuff like Wifi strength, exceptions caught/uncaught, various errors and crash reports, blah blah. Anyway, we need a flexible store for all of this stuff because we're always adding more metrics. Whatever the clients send as their request body gets added as a JSON object.

We also want to dynamically display all of these metrics. We can literally grab the data as JSON and make the keys table column headers in an html view. Adding new metrics can automatically be reflected in both the database and in our html views. We can query against new fields without changing schemas or business logic.

<comment><USER6> If it were up to me, I would create a schema for each metric and then if you need all on one page, create some nice /client/client_id/metrics/all route.

Although if you're dealing with metrics, you probably want to have a good defined model of your data (schema), because statisticians want to know what they have to work with, and saying, "bunch 'o JSON" is not acceptable. Plus there's things like null values to deal with. Yuk.

For my startup, we find the common denominator of social media data. For example, a tweet is very unique so it's itself. But then there's more generic types like photos. So then we look at photo services like flickr and instagram. We then evaluate the data available and look for common denominators again to hone in on as much similar data as possible. The result is a model of photo data from a wide range of sources, but are now unified. We could have just used instagram json and flickr json and tossed in the db, but because we defined a schema/ models to get data from, we can sleep soundly knowing the data we send to the frontend is fast and always valid.

<comment><USER7> Until you have 20-30 joins for a single query, and it takes _forever_ to return simple results against what should be a really simple query/search.

<comment><USER6> This is very true, however it's a problem with your schema/ db types design/ caching. My main argument is using a random data blob is suicidal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why would you want this over a NoSQL store? How does Postgres even index an hstore?

<comment><USER9> Personally, I'd like the ability to make a transactional update to records in different tables.

<comment><AUTHOR> THIS. Exactly why Mongo fails (though I love mongo). No freakin' transactions!</comment></comment></comment>


E-Learning Company Blackboard Bows To The Growing Power Of Openness Again - <AUTHOR> http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111027/03201816536/e-learning-company-blackboard-bows-to-growing-power-openness-again.shtml

<comment><USER2> In other words, they're no longer going to charge you for letting other people see the material that you've created. How generous. I'll believe that they're "embracing openness" when they let you export your entire course in some type of usable, standard, documented, non-encrypted, non-DRMed format. Bb is a "course motel". Content checks in, but it doesn't check out.</comment>


Is your CDN intentionally hurting your performance? - <AUTHOR> http://calendar.perfplanet.com/2012/is-your-cdn-intentionally-hurting-your-performance/ <comment><USER2> Most CDN's are CPU bound, not network bound, compression is a huge hit. It also destroys zero-copy-socket performance, by eliminating it. Assuming that Akamai is charging based on pre-compression bits when they do gzip, would be unwise. Gzip is also pointless for video or pre-compressed data, which is a big chunk of what people do over CDNs anyways.</comment>


Apply HN: Fringe- Simplified Scheduling for Groups - <AUTHOR> Problem: 1) Scheduling a dinner with a group of friends is a nightmare. 2)It takes 30-50 texts for 3 or 4 people to decide on a time. 3) I hate polling apps...it's a spreadsheet that shows all my guesses of when I hope people are free.
This is where Fringe comes in. It takes less than 5 taps to know when you're group of friends (6 or less) can ALL go to dinner. We are in a public beta so please we need beta users and tons of feedback.
How it works:
You pick the friends, location We'll suggest the best times that work for EVERYONE.
It's sent to your friends like a paperless post with a personal note from you.
Fringe is like an automated doodle and the personal touch of paperless post.
Would love any and all Feedback!
to download: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fringe-simply-get-together/id1093362316?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><USER2> Great idea! I'm no UX expert, but here are some nit picks

1\. The font on the verify screen with the numbers made my eyes spazz out. Keep the numbers horizontally aligned

2\. The little icons above the event details would probably be better suited with initials. My 4 letter name got cut off after 3.

3\. At the bottom of the event details it says "Will wait 1d 13h 25m for". What does that mean?

</comment><comment><USER3> How do you plan to make money?

<comment><USER3> Also: how are you going to make this app _the_ way people do group scheduling?</comment></comment>


Wow. Such Weather. - <AUTHOR> http://dogeweather.com/

<comment><USER2> Would be good if you could enter your location - mine got Esquimalt, which is a neighborhood about 5km from me. Apparently it's foggy there, but it's bright and sunshiney where I am.

</comment><comment><USER3> The cloud cracked me up.

Paris weather though? No IP location lookup?

<comment><USER4> It uses some API which I think fails.

[https://github.com/katiaeirin/dogeweather/blob/master/_weath...](https://github.com/katiaeirin/dogeweather/blob/master/_weather.php)

<comment><USER3> I'm also on a corporate connection with a static IP. Typically location works, but I'm probably still some sort of outlier.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can you explain how you built it? Thanks!

<comment><USER4> [https://github.com/katiaeirin/dogeweather](https://github.com/katiaeirin/dogeweather)</comment></comment>


SocialShare.com domain name can be yours - <AUTHOR>

This domain is on auction at Sedo.com
Auction ends Thursday at 12:52pm EST
http://sedo.com/auction/auction_detail.php?auction_id=141953 <comment><AUTHOR> Link: <http://sedo.com/auction/auction_detail.php?auction_id=141953></comment>


The Primordial Gound - <AUTHOR> http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-primordial-gound/ <comment><USER2> I don't know Kant well enough to clearly see the edges of the game being played here, but this species of game is delightful, and this, despite my confusion, is an enjoyable instance of the form.</comment>


How Pastor's pay is like a Ceo's pay - <AUTHOR> http://www.texasenterprise.utexas.edu/2011/12/01/leadership/incentives-finance-and-church

<comment><USER2> Being a former assistant pastor I say this is correct in about .1% of pastors. 90% of churches are below 100 person and only a VERY small percent are above 500 person churches. I worked in one church over a 1,000 attenders and I can totally say that I had zero experience with incentives with money. Most people that work in a church do so for the love of the work and the people regardless of the pay. Though some pastor easily clear more than $100,000 from a very large congregation. Which in my city any one of the 62 principles of my city's schools make every year.</comment>


HubSpot Acquires Marketing Automation Company Performable - <AUTHOR> http://www.hubspot.com/blog/bid/16943/HubSpot-Acquires-Marketing-Automation-Company-Performable

<comment><USER2> As a HubSpotter I am pretty psyched about this. We have admired (and competed with) Performable for a while and it is great to combine forces.

<comment><AUTHOR> as a performabler (?) i'm really really happy by this too.</comment></comment>