As oil industry swoons, tar sands workers look to renewables for jobs - <AUTHOR> https://e360.yale.edu/features/as-oil-industry-swoons-tar-sands-workers-look-to-renewables-for-jobs <comment><USER3> I hate it when people do energy related articles that aren't loaded with graphs, or at least the key contextual numbers.

Just to be of some use here are some:

The overall oil market was just at or shy of 100 million barrels per day prior to covid19. As of early April we were down into the high 60-something million barrels per day. Roughly a full one third collapse in demand.

US oil production reached a low of about 5Mbpd in 2010, and rose to last month (march) being 13Mbpd. That is overwhelmingly the fracking you hear about, specifically in the permian basin. As of last week that was already down 1Mbpd.

The top 3 oil producers in the world are the US, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. SA and RU have been floating in the 9 - 11Mbpd range for the last few years, and just a few weeks prior to covid had decided to increase their production by ~2 - 3Mbpd each.

So its very simple napkin math from there. Oil sands are effectively over until we have some kind of substantial long term recovery. At least half of fracking wells in the US are being shut off right now.

If this covid crisis drags on for 2 - 3 years globally, and if the shift to wfh/tele-whatever gets advanced quicker than otherwise, and the airline industry doesn't return to its old levels for years and years... then there's every reason to think that oil sands are simply done and (most US) fracking wells will run out their existing investments and also be done.

<comment><USER4> how much does it cost to purchase a turned off well? I mean that in the literal sense, how much would it cost for me to go pitch a tent on a capped pipe sticking out of the ground and say "this is mine"?

<comment><USER5> Starting up a decommissioned well is not simple. There's a lot of safety protocols to check and procedures to follow to ensure that it will start up properly. You also need to make sure it's linked up to crude processing facilities however small the production is. That's why a lot of american producers are reluctant to completely shut down production right now since its a headache to start back up

<comment><USER6> You also have to follow regulatory/bonding requirements to cover cleanup.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I used to work for one of the largest independent power producers in Canada. Even in 2014, they were divesting from fossil fuel based generation and pouring everything into renewables. Great ideal, but it takes time!

Small plug for [https://enviro.work](https://enviro.work) (project I built that aggregates environmentally positive job opportunities)

<comment><USER8> Why do you think Alberta has been pushing so hard for new pipelines then?

<comment><USER9> It has become ideological politics at this point. It doesn't matter if it makes any sense any more.

<comment><USER10> No, it's still the backbone of their whole economy, which has been going through a major recession for years. There isn't a meaningful number of renewable jobs to take its place, and won't be anytime soon. That's going to be the case in any country/region that has an economy built on energy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > Tar Sands

I like to read these words. The oil industry and the government of Alberta, Canada freak out when people say "tar sands" and insist on calling it "oil sands". They think "oil sands" sounds less dirty than "tar sands".

But the truth is that the stuff is really tar (oil, sulfur and sand). That's how all local people called it up until the early 2010's. Once you remove the sand it does look dirty, a dark sticky goo. They're just trying to put make up on a pig.

</comment><comment><USER12> This article just seems to be saying:

\- Jobs are being cut in the oil industry

\- Unemployed workers are looking for other jobs in energy

It's sort of broadly gesturing at the idea that this is a sign of renewables overtaking fossil fuels—something most of us would love, obviously—but it's not really a part of the article's core.

</comment><comment><USER13> I grew up in Alberta and I've been hearing this story as long as I can remember (and I'm old now). While the oil industry is definitely in decline, consumers aren't going to give up on all the luxuries that fossil fuels provide anytime soon. There's also the growing emerging world which has a big appetite for energy and goods. The virus is probably a temporary thing and life will go on. Additionally, the low price of energy will result in an increase in consumption once everything goes back to normal.

<comment><USER14> While I think the overall rate of production of EVs is frustratingly slow, once that giant industry is spun up the oil industry is going to suffer like nothing before. It can recover from this corona situation, but it won't be able to from a shift to EVs. I wish they would see this as their final warning.

It's doubly frustrating for Alberta, which has a high baseline cost of production and bills itself business friendly and talks a lot about "energy". Imagine for a sec that they used a small part of the Heritage Fund (say $1 Billion) and a set of business-friendly regulations to set up an X-Prize type competition for advanced nuclear? How much private investment could they attract? But it's not gonna happen, all their talk of "business" and "energy" just means oil, oil, oil.

<comment><USER13> Where do you think all the plastic, batteries, and energy required to run the manufacturing process for those EVs comes from? I'll give you a hint: it's not renewables.

<comment><USER14> That's a very dense question.

Plastics are a sort of byproduct of oil production and account for like (IIRC) 5% of them. You can't sustain an industry on that. If their price goes up, there'll be lots of substitutes popping up, but we should also note that. It should also be noted that plastics, by themselves, don't contribute to climate change - the carbon doesn't go in the atmosphere.

Batteries? I'm not sure what the question is. There's a lot of stuff that does into them and fossil fuels is present everywhere, for example powering the mining trucks. Except the way to get rid of fossil fuel powered mining trucks is to have EV semis, which need EV pickup trucks, which need EV passenger cars. That is, it's a virtuous cycle where more EVs cause prices to go down and more EVs to exist. You can plainly see this cycle play out over the last decade and it's only going to accelerate.

Energy? Well, this is simple - it depends on where you make EVs. Plenty of jurisdictions have very low carbon electricity.

<comment><USER13> Raw material extraction, smelting, refining, shipping and so on all depend on fossil fuels (I haven't heard of any electric ships yet). Batteries in particular are known for having a significant carbon footprint[0], though to Elon's credit he's trying to change this (but it's a long, long way off).

[0]: [https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and- iiot/article/220...](https://www.industryweek.com/technology-and- iiot/article/22026518/lithium-batteries-dirty-secret-manufacturing-them- leaves-massive-carbon-footprint)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> They might want to look at enlisting first. Cheap oil isnt going to make the ME more stable.

There's also a mint to be made decommissioning oil rigs. Lot of oil going to be washing up on EU shores as Britain sinks.

</comment><comment><USER16> If oil price goes down, demand for renewables goes down.

Lower demand for renewables means... Higher prices? Less output of actual renewable products like solar panels? Less demand for new wind turbines?

<comment><USER17> If the price of oil drops by 20% the demand for oil from marginal sources like tar sands could go down by 70%, since they were barely profitable when prices were 20% higher. On the other hand, oil (or natural gas) prices are only a fraction of the total cost of electricity or gas/diesel, so demand for renewables will probably not drop by too much. In fact, since a sudden shock in the price of oil could kill off a lot of marginal producers, the long term average price of oil could increase from previous expectations. This would make renewables even more attractive. Another factor to consider is that if marginal oil producers die out the price of labor will decrease in many places. This will also serve to make the price of solar lower, since labor costs are a decent fraction of total costs. There are a lot of cascading effects from a change in the price of a commodity as big and important as oil.

<comment><USER18> Another factor is that oil seems to be much more vulnerable to volatility than renewables. I haven't read anything about renewable sources needing continue production when it's unprofitable to do so because the cost of turning production on or off is so high.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What is up with that fall protection? Mobile fall arresters are really not meant to be used with a loose pile of rope at your feet. And is that a shock pack? From this photo, it looks like he's going to be on the ground before it gets a chance to deploy.

</comment><comment><USER20> One problem: the value of renewable energy rises and falls with fossil fuels. If oil is dirt cheap, well, solar panels aren't worth much. A few people will pay a premium for cleaner energy but most can't afford it.

<comment><USER21> ELI5: Why does renewables go down with oil? How are they linked economically?

<comment><USER22> Because oil is the competition. If I can burn oil to generate electricity very cheaply, then I'll do that. I might be willing to pay a little more for renewables, but not a lot more. If oil prices drop, renewables will have to cut their prices too or else lose their customers. The cost of making solar panels probably don't fall that much, so renewable energy companies will lose money.

Only very strict regulations could decouple the prices of oil and renewables.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Short term thinking goes nowhere. Sure, fossil fuels are cheap right now, but it'll bounce back later. One shouldn't make any long term decisions based on temporary market conditions.

Little has changed in the big picture that would not have changed anyways. Shale plays are not cash cows; shale wells have short production span, but are expensive and risky to develop.

Renewables are increasingly the real economic option; they make sense regardless of factors like politics and beliefs.

<comment><USER24> My understanding is that there's a lot of debt underpinning some of the new operation. Is it possible that even a "temporary" price reduction could cause a wave of deeper financial problems that make continued investment less likely out in the future?

<comment><USER23> > ...debt underpinning some of the new operation...

Also older. Those companies are not equal, though, the ones with the best geologists can still make ok profits with a bit of luck.

> ... price reduction could cause a wave of deeper financial problems

Of course, and shale oil hasn't been a money maker in general below $40-120, depending on geology. I guess most of it makes money at $60. Some wells might be profitable even slightly below $40.

Then again, cash flow is king. Very low prices aside, like right now, at a certain point it makes more sense to produce oil _below profitability_ just to keep the cash flowing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> _"A non-profit corporation, Calgary Economic Development, recently started a U.S. $1.1 million program to transition unemployed oil and gas professionals to jobs in digital technology, such as software development and programming"_

Might as well light that money on fire to keep warm. Retraining is such a ridiculous and naive idea, especially when you're talking about turning an oil roughneck into a developer. That's about as dumb as suggesting that displaced truckers can just learn to code. It's like whoever came up with that never thought to ask a single person affected if it would be viable.

<comment><USER25> It's not clear that this is for roughnecks, specifically. Quite a few of my old colleagues who were field engineers on oil rigs are now software programmers -- myself included. Most of us had to be above-average at windows administration just to keep our jobs and not get fired. When you're in the middle of nowhere with no ability to call/text/email and the computer on the oil rig doesn't work, it's really up to you to know how to fix the [networking]/[drivers]/[re-crimp wires].

A lot of the oil field workers hold degrees that required calculus, they should be able to transfer to entry level jobs in other knowledge-based careers quite well. Better for our economy than forcing them to be Uber drivers and bartenders. What's your suggestion for what society should do with oil workers?

I'd imagine many roughnecks would transition just fine to hands-on labor jobs like solar panel installation, wind turbine maintenance, and communication tower work. Possibly quite a few roles in datacenters as well. Several of my friends climbed towers and my cousin runs a tower modification company - <USER2> habits/skills/necessary tendencies transfer fairly well. Obviously a good degree of re-training is necessary and the workers need to understand and accept that they'll be down-leveled when they enter a new industry.

<comment><USER26> > What's your suggestion for what society should do with oil workers?

Not displace them in the first place by cutting off the supply of conflict oil, raising tariffs so the domestic labor can get paid a fair wage instead of all the profits going to billionaires and hedge funds?

<comment><USER10> "conflict oil", that's some cute PR.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Electric Scooter Company Uses Technology to Go After Dangerous Riders - <AUTHOR> https://www.kpbs.org/news/2018/sep/19/electric-scooter-company-uses-technology-go-after-/ <comment><USER2> SF General Hospital has been seeing many scooter-related injuries.[1] The chief of emergency medicine reported three scooter related emergency room visits on one Friday - two concussions, no helmet use.

Such injuries used to be tallied as "other", because they were rare. SF General has started keeping statistics on small powered vehicle accidents.[2]

The emergency medicine people are saying "helmet". They can fix most other injuries, but not brain damage.

The high-tech solution to this comes from Hovding.[3] They make an automatic inflatable helmet that inflates like an air bag if you fall. It's available in Europe and Japan, but not the US. €299. It's impressive, but not as good as a hard helmet. It fails US helmet tests.[4] Good idea, needs more work. Startup potential.

[1] [https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Injuries-are- the...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Injuries-are-the-untold- part-of-the-scooter-13219335.php) [2] [https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/08/411406/scooter-safety- ucsf...](https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2018/08/411406/scooter-safety-ucsf-doctors- track-new-injuries) [3] [https://hovding.com/](https://hovding.com/) [4] [https://www.helmets.org/hovdingcommenttocpsc.htm](https://www.helmets.org/hovdingcommenttocpsc.htm)

<comment><USER3> A large use case for scooters is that you're walking around and you just hop on and ride to your destination. Any helmet you have you bring from home. That means you have to plan your trip, and carry your helmet the whole time.

These two factors, planning ahead, and carrying the item for the entire time you're not home, still exist with a Hovding. Carrying is easier for a hovding, but the use case of spontaneous use is still not satisfied.

</comment></comment><comment> X-Istence Riders ride on the sidewalk because it's far more dangerous to ride on the street... cars are already not paying attention to bicyclists/motor cycles, are we to expect them to pay attention to scooters?

<comment><USER4> I live in a city doing a scooter pilot with a few companies including Bird. My observation has been that many, many scooter riders are:

* Breaking traffic laws(blowing through stop signs)

* Riding in the streets and through intersections without paying attention to traffic

* Riding quickly through parking lots without paying attention to traffic

* Riding unsafely on sidewalks

* Riding without helmets

Generally, being oblivious to any safety responsibility. I witnessed a guy the other day riding down the sidewalk with one of those long skinny beer packs across the deck flopping around and sliding off with something else in his arms.

It's super stressful operating a vehicle around the hot spots with this erratic, illegal behavior going on however I have yet to witness a vehicle plow them.

<comment><USER5> I definitely see where you're coming from, but on the other hand you could make the exact same arguments about cyclists. The rates vary a bit (anecdotally, scooter riders are _way_ less likely to wear helmets but more likely to stop at stop signs). I think the booming population of scooters is just increasing the number of opportunities to see the problems that exist for modes of transportation that split the difference between pedestrians and cars.

<comment><USER4> Cyclist in my area(not SF, LA, NY, etc) tend to be much more safety conscious. They typically have high visibility wear and lights in the evening, and ride in the lanes and obey traffic laws and signage(traffic lights, stop signs, etc).

As well, a scooter will casually accelerate very quickly up to 15mph which is not a casual cycling speed for most people; it's a beginner training speed and rarely seen in parking lots and other space constrained locations.

Lane splitting is not legal in my state, and scooters seem to be much more likely to zip between cars and between cars and curbs including through lights and stop signs. Typically, surprisingly, cyclists will actually full stop behind cars at lights and not go around them to the front.

I would contest, but be open to, it being a sampling biases. I would posit the scooter riders and my area are a much higher accident liability than cyclists in large part due to their own actions. Cycling is reasonably prevalent in the area I live at in my city.

I think I can sum it all up with one phrase: "Carte Blanche"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This type of thinking would do humanity a lot of good if applied to cars & rules of the road. In my opinion using a public resource (roads) you should be compelled to follow the rules

\- Speed Limits

\- Stop Signs

\- ...

<comment><USER7> While I think applying this to scooters is one thing, I do not want to live in a world where my car is artificially limited to 15mph in a 15 zone.

Yeah maybe we could reduce accidents by 0.1% or whatever. But you just know the damn thing will go on the fritz at some point or gps will be wrong and you'll be going too slow somewhere else, or you'll be a rush in an emergency and be unable to get where you're going...plus (and this May be unpopular) that world just sounds boring and crappy. I don't want my life controlled by the cloud.

<comment><USER8> "I do not want to live in a world where my car is artificially limited to 15mph in a 15 zone."

15 - 20mph is a pretty significant speed limit. At that speed a car - pedestrian collision is highly unlikely to be fatal. Much faster and the chances of a fatality increase quickly.

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

I would really like to see 20mph speed limits become much more common and strictly enforced. There's no reason we need to risk killing people just to get someplace faster.

<comment><USER9> More crosswalks, and enforcement of their use, could also reduce the risk to pedestrians. There is room for give and take here. Trying to retroactively enforce 20mph limits on fast roads is pretty silly, just design the damn roads better and it wouldn't be necessary.

<comment><USER10> Safer road design is a big part of Vision Zero.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> the goal for supporters of such approaches is not safety, but rather control. new things signal a changing of the guard (no matter how remote the possibility), and they oppose it by reflex. grousing about blocked sidewalks and people getting hit by scooters is largely the brain rationalizing the underlying instinct so as to provide ego coherence (i.e., "i am a good and safe person" rather than "i'm trying to preserve my status in the world").

many people want scooters (along with bikes and e-bikes). it fills an important missing middle between walking and driving. the better approach is to replace parking lanes on city roads with a grade-separated (from both regular roads and sidewalks) lane for these missing middle modes of transportation.

as for road safety, strict imposition of the kind of regulation noted in the article actually creates danger. the reason we have such powerful engines in our cars is to provide headroom to accelerate out of accidents (where braking out of them would be difficult or impossible).

i'd be all for much harder driving tests, where licensees show a mastery of control over the vehicle in difficult conditions, much like commercial pilots. i'd also support stricter enforcement of distracted driving laws (rather than speed enforcements). those would actually help reduce auto deaths.

<comment><USER6> great point on control and disruption, the lawmaker is probably making these statements / suggestions with uber & airbnb in mind

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Funny that they don't spend their efforts on cars that actually kill people.

<comment><USER13> Why would Bird do that? They're a scooter company.

<comment><USER14> Bird wouldn't, but the point, generalized, is a good one.

People are quick to express frivolous concerns about pedestrians out of crosswalks, scooters on sidewalks, and cyclists ignoring stop signs, examples that are side-effects of a culture that privileges a transport option that kills and maims orders of magnitude more people every year.</comment></comment></comment>


Precise measurement of proton's mass finds it 3σ lower than previous estimates - <AUTHOR> https://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.033001 <comment><USER2> Interesting. Are there any obvious implications?</comment>


Worth reading or rereading: Guy Steele's Growing a Language (PDF) - <AUTHOR> http://www.brics.dk/~hosc/local/HOSC-12-3-pp221-236.pdf

<comment><USER2> Always a favorite! There's also a video available:

<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8860158196198824415></comment>


France is using AI to check whether people are wearing masks on public transport - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/7/21250357/france-masks-public-transport-mandatory-ai-surveillance-camera-software <comment><USER2> This is plain old statistics ... when the fuck journalists are going to do their homework and misuse the word 'intelligence' ?</comment>


This is the first interesting search engine since Google - <AUTHOR> http://qz.com/129879/this-is-the-first-interesting-search-engine-since-google/

<comment><USER2> Blippex's secret sauce, the page viewed X time spent matrix, can be largely replicated by Google without having to resort to a browser plug-in by just mining their own Google Analytics database. So where does that leave Blippex?</comment>


Ruby packaging in Debian and Ubuntu: Mythbusting and FAQ - <AUTHOR> http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/blog/?p=566

<comment><USER2> If you want to run ruby1.9 and rails3 on ANY distro right now (debian, ubuntu, fedora, centos), just install ruby1.9.2 from source and save yourself tons of aggravation, believe me, I just went through this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Thanks goodness for RVM, this was a nightmare.</comment>


Analyse Asia Podcast #11: Ben and the Shenzhen Hardware Factory - <AUTHOR> http://analyse.asia/2014/12/27/episode-11-ben-shenzhen-hardware-factory/ <comment><AUTHOR> Episode 11 Synopsis: Benjamin Joffe (@benjaminjoffe)from HAXLR8R joins us for an interesting discussion spanning from his travels around the world to his current role to help hardware companies to incubate and scale in the Shenzhen on-demand hardware global factory. In this discussion, Ben offered a primer to how entrepreneurs from all over the world can leverage on the Shenzhen ecosystem to build an integrated hardware and software companny and scale them out to the world. He shares his story as a consultant, an angel investor (and his three notable companies: CMUNE, Gengo & Tokyo Otaku Mode), a mentor in 500 Startups and HAXLR8R and his role within the global entrepreneurial ecosystem. Of course, we have an intellectual discussion that focus on leveraging Huntingdon's "Clash of Civilizations" on messaging apps in Asia (WeChat, LINE, Kakao and Whatsapp) and Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs & Steel" on startup ecosystems from Silicon Valley to the rest of the world.</comment>


Amos Yee: What the Trial of a Teenage Lee Kuan Yew Critic Says about Singapore - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-32604122

<comment><AUTHOR> Some previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9295102](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9295102)

His blog: [https://amosyee.wordpress.com/](https://amosyee.wordpress.com/)

And the beginnings of a hagiography: [http://whatamoswore.tumblr.com/](http://whatamoswore.tumblr.com/)

I don't know what exactly to make of his unflappable insouciance. But for a society built on ridiculous order like Singapore, he surely must appear to be the devil.

I expect a caning.

However: [http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts- crime/stor...](http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts- crime/story/amos-yee-find-out-verdict-his-case-tuesday-afternoon-20150512)

He clearly has talent, it just needs to be nurtured. I hope whoever ends up counselling him engages him on the antagonism between the individual and the collective, how each needs the other to survive, and the choices Singapore has made in navigating this balance.

Good luck kid. Good luck Singapore.</comment>


Shaking Up the Dinosaur Family Tree - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/22/science/dinosaur-family-tree.html <comment><AUTHOR> "Classification is done with TNT" which "stands for "Tree analysis using New Technology". It is a program for phylogenetic analysis under parsimony (with very fast tree-searching algorithms;"[1]. Interesting classification problem.

[1] [http://www.zmuc.dk/public/phylogeny/tnt/](http://www.zmuc.dk/public/phylogeny/tnt/)</comment>


GitHub blocked my account and they think I'm developing nuclear weapons - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@hamed/github-blocked-my-account-and-they-think-im-developing-nuclear-weapons-e7e1fe62cb74 <comment><AUTHOR> I'll add in my $0.02 - the author set himself up for this.

Here's his GitHub Profile: [https://github.com/Hameds](https://github.com/Hameds)

Not only is he accessing SaaS from an embargoed country but it looks like he's forked repos which contain calls to embargoed crypto libraries. Does this mean he's doing something conceptually bad? Probably not, but he's still in violation of the embargo.

The fact that he's been able to participate in GitHub at all is basically an oversight on GitHub's part and people are wrongly blaming MSFT for this.

Does it suck for him? Yup. This guy was deplatformed by GitHub there's basically zero he can do about this. Well maybe he could defect, thats where I'd have to defer to an expert...

</comment><comment><USER2> Couldn't they have blocked it for another reason listed in their terms? Wouldn't it make the most sense to ask them in an appeal?

<comment><AUTHOR> GitHub doesn't want to be in violation of ITAR, its a bad thing to get stuck under.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Related to this other post -> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20526039)</comment>


Four Years of Initial Coin Offerings, Visualized in One Graphic - <AUTHOR> https://elementus.io/token-sales-history <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing, I'm curious to see these circles lighten depending on project activity (releases, conferences, etc).

</comment><comment><USER3> Looks very bubbly. Would be interesting to see what bubbles pop

</comment><comment><USER4> the best part of this graphic is that in mid-october 2017 there were articles about the space cooling down

such talk adversely affected some in-progress ICOs but was completely false and was based on two weeks worth of data

</comment><comment><USER5> I was expecting something more along the lines of a dumpster fire.</comment>


FluidPlay (your music, everywhere) - my latest project (feedback greatly appreciated) - <AUTHOR> http://www.fluidplay.com <comment><USER2> Design could definitely use some work. The header is off since the form elements don't actually fit into it. Make the header's height bigger. Your logo is likewise nonexistent. I don't like logos that take up an entire page, but I do like them to be prominent. Color scheme: gray, white, black = bad. Especially when you're dealing with music. Make it a bit more lively. And I agree with sri, it always looks better when the form elements line up.

Make the font size bigger as well. I think you're trying to minimize the screenspace you take up (?) but I'd rather scroll than squint. Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah, color scheme is on me. i'm not very good with graphic design so i made some thing simple. i'll definitely increase the font size as well.

thanks for the feedback!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> 2 other things:

1\. I tend to be listening to music when I am browsing the web, so it was kind of disruptive to have the playlists of others automatically load when I was looking at them. Might be better if they were stopped initially and I could choose ones I might want to hear.

2\. Id probably like to do / see a little more before I registered. I don't like to just register for any site I stumble upon. I like to get a sense of what I am getting into first. The more I can do, the more likely I will register.

Hope this helps.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks for the feedback! i will add a demo account so people can get a feel for the UI.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hmmm....looks cool. so will it be possible for me to stream my itunes music with this tool?

i see your are using rails frontend. what's the fluidplay exe written in?

(btw, i always like to keep text boxes that are underneath each other (username, password, email) -- the same length. it looks better, imho)

<comment><AUTHOR> you can stream any mp3 with this right now ... there's no support for AAC at the moment by that shouldn't be difficult. hmm i assume you mean FairPlay encoded AAC, i doubt that will be possible since it's proprietary.

it's written in Java, using Icecast as the streaming client/server for now.

about the text boxes... i think I agree with you. i designed it that way to differentiate the credentials with the email, but with three fields, it doesn't really matter. i'll make the change.

<comment><USER4> i just noticed this -- i'm logged in and i visit www.fluidplay.com, it doesn't redirect me to /sri, and i end up staring at the create form, and "sri, what it do, baby?" at the top. clicking on the "sri" (which is kinda small), takes me to /sri -- (i would consider the /sri part my dashboard, and should be redirected there if i am signed in, when visiting fluidplay.com....)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> it just occurred to me that i should probably mention that the client is windows only for now. i have it running on my mac and linux, but haven't released it yet.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> i know a lot of people probably don't want to download the client, so you can take a look at the library UI by logging in as schen/1234. thanks!</comment>


Portland sees peaceful night of protests following withdrawl of federal troops - j-james https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/portland-sees-peaceful-night-of-protests-following-withdrawal-of-federal-troops/ar-BB17pr3f <comment><AUTHOR> So what happened to social distancing and masks? Is Covid not that serious?

Some protesters are wearing masks, but it's by no means the majority.

</comment><comment><USER2> A large group of people walking down the street with random improvised weapons is not peaceful.

Neither is cutting off a pigs head, putting it on an American flag, putting a cops hat on it, and lighting it on fire.

[https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1289093614165831...](https://mobile.twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1289093614165831680)

</comment><comment><USER3> How is blocking the streets, carrying shields, and hiding your identity with facemasks a "peaceful" protest?

The article says "significantly reduced tensions", not absence.

Either way, BLM is already marked for life as a violent marxist organization, discredited by many black leaders, and rightly so.</comment>


Recursion: The Art and Ideas Behind M. C. Escher's Drawings - <AUTHOR> http://www.pxleyes.com/blog/2010/06/recursion-the-art-and-ideas-behind-m-c-eschers-drawings/ <comment><USER2> That is a kinda boring link, but here's a high-quality (and dramatic!) exposition I encountered recently about Escher's correspondence with Coxeter and the method by which one might construct figures like his _Circle Limit_ s without a computer. If you're further intrigued, there are more related links at the bottom.

[http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-circle- lim...](http://www.ams.org/samplings/feature-column/fcarc-circle-limit)

</comment><comment><USER3> Very much relevant to anybody who found this interesting: [http://www.amazon.com/Godel-Escher-Bach-Eternal- Golden/dp/04...](http://www.amazon.com/Godel-Escher-Bach-Eternal- Golden/dp/0465026567)

I found it in a used bookstore for $5 once, totally by accident. It's probably the best nonfiction book I've ever started (I unfortunately never bothered to finish, which isn't so good. It's still in my backpack in case I ever get stuck anywhere...).

<comment><USER4> Sure, you can get by in life without having finished reading GEB. But to me, a life having not read GEB is not a life worth living.</comment></comment>


The U.S. builds death traps, not streets - <AUTHOR> https://smartgrowthamerica.org/the-u-s-builds-death-traps-not-streets/ <comment><AUTHOR> This was previously submitted, but "flagged".

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492500](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21492500)

Note that "death trap" is an accurate description; nothing more.

[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deathtrap#English](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/deathtrap#English)</comment>


Ask HN: Does the color scheme in a website affect signups? - <AUTHOR>

If so, which bg/fg color pair do you think, works? <comment><USER2> After you've asked this kind of question informally, you may be interested in resources like this:

Color Harmony Compendium, A Complete Color Reference for Designers of All Types

[http://www.amazon.com/Color-Harmony-Compendium-Reference- Ann...](http://www.amazon.com/Color-Harmony-Compendium-Reference- Anniversary/dp/1592535909/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1262363702&sr=8-1)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> more common examples would be white blocks on black background vs. light colored blocks on white background.

Does anyone like to have lots of white (ala facebook)?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> thanks guys! I was wondering if someone already made an a/b tests purely on color schemes. that would be very interesting.

</comment><comment><USER3> Yes. Hugely. It needs to be easily legible, and you need a clear call to action color.

I'd suggest looking at successful sites that serve your target market, and looking at what colors they use. I'm guessing you'll find lots of black/blue/grey/white sites, with orange and green calls to action.</comment>


Show HN: FAQ Off – Open-Source Gamebook-Style Q&A Builder to Mitigate Trolls - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/soatok/faq-off <comment><AUTHOR> I'm sure you have questions, so I thought I'd answer them (using the platform in question): [https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/public-beta/what-is-faq- off](https://faq.dhol.es/@Soatok/public-beta/what-is-faq-off)

I previously submitted this to "Show HN" a few weeks ago, but I didn't receive any feedback, and I released a new version.</comment>


Ask HN: What's a better solution for file sharing/management in a small company - <AUTHOR> We are a small team of 10 people with very mixed skills. We need to share content daily and we're frustrated with our current file sharing solution. To date, we've tried OneDrive (ok, but grinds Mac CPUs), Google Drive, drive sync also laggy / buggy / down more often than not - with these two, I'm never sure if my latest changes did really propagate, or what will happen if two people edit the same file at the same time and overwrite each others work through sync.<p>I'm seriously considering pushing the team toward managing all files in a Github repo, although expect some backlash from the sales / non-tech people. Is Github for file sharing a terrible idea?
What other alternatives should we consider? How do larger orgs manage this chaos? <comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Have not tried dropbox. Just really shocked at how difficult it is to solve the problem. Do large orgs all work from a file server on a vpn? and what about aws workdocs? would be interested to know if its worth the effort.

</comment><comment><USER2> You could try dropbox. I think your idea of github for non programmers is a worthy one though. We did something similar after hacking together something like our own version of sparkleshare. YMMV, but it has worked out really well for us.</comment>


New Clues to How the Brain Maps Time - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160126-how-the-brain-maps-time/ <comment><USER2> I've been amazed most of my life at how well some people can estimate time, distance, weight, quantity with precision and accuracy. My grandmother was able to estimate tablespoons, teaspoons, cups etc for baking and never measured anything.

I'm wondering of all these sorts of skills are active in the same part of the brain.

<comment> norea-armozel I would think so because I've read one study of monkeys and the economic concept of marginal utility where the researchers found that the monkeys would measure the marginal utility of one kind of food versus another (3 apples vs 6 bananas and so forth). So, if you can measure that I'm certain the brain can adapt to different units of measure in all conceivable categories.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Van_Deren](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Van_Deren), an ultramarathoner, had part of her right hippocampus removed to stop her seizures, which affected her ability to keep track of time and to read maps. Radiolab did a story on her a few years ago:

[http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in- running/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/122291-in-running/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I wonder what happens if you take away the reward. Neurons firing is related to energy. The reward has an associated amount of energy. Can it be something as simple as just distributing energy over time?</comment>


And now it's global COOLING - <AUTHOR> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2415191/And-global-COOLING-Return-Arctic-ice-cap-grows-29-year.html

<comment><USER2> Global cooling is an alarmist exaggeration.

The dailymail is not the most trustworthy source, but the discussion of the news reports about the subject is interesting.

Anyway, I'd like to see the scientific source. The images are interesting, are they satelite photos or some kind of simulation? I can't find the original report of the 2013 ice increase and the images.

</comment><comment><USER3> No it's not.</comment>


How to start a blog using Hugo - <AUTHOR> https://flaviocopes.com/start-blog-with-hugo/ <comment><USER2> I recently moved my blog over from Wordpress to Hugo. I think it must be a lot easier to start out from scratch than to migrate something existing; some parts of Hugo are substantially less than straightforward.

I certainly don't regret the move - much happier having a static site than WP in place - but some of this is much more complex than I had hoped it would be. Amongst other issues;

* error messages can be extremely opaque (although usually easy to google, at least) * upgrading to new versions is not always straightforward

I deploy my site via rsync, but got bitten immediately by a very odd bug with respect to file timestamps (#6161) where a bunch of my files were warped back to the 1750's.

I personally am happy with hugo. I probably wouldn't recommend it at this point though...

<comment><USER3> Similar issues from my side. Cryptic documentation, bad dissorganized forum and configuration,... I love the hugo idea but to find one detail you will get into chaos of strange wording and noise. I am using it but I try to configure as small amount as possible as I always get into some undesired behaviour. It seems like it was from begining build with idea and then continued by patch over patch over patch. Cant recomend it either.

<comment><USER4> I decided I would make a static site the old fashioned way on neocities.org and happily got started. And then I remembered all the double work you have to do linking and making lists and repeating headers/footers (or use frames) and so on. Now I'm back to looking for some simple script that can output static sites without having to spend a month learning a new tool...

<comment><USER5> It's a mess, and evokes abject horror in some people, but I'll continue to defend the merit of just writing a shell script. I moved it to hugo years ago (ironically) but my old site worked like that: [https://github.com/japanoise/website/blob/cdf728d4ebea75cbc9...](https://github.com/japanoise/website/blob/cdf728d4ebea75cbc9a03f435d5cdfc78af8f9a5/buildsite.sh)

It's not pretty to look at, but it can be read, understood, and maintained by one person.

<comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure my problem with everything I tried so far was that it wasn't me building it so I guess I just have to make some simple script to do it for me some day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The author seems adamant that blog.domain.com is a worse setup than domain.com/blog - I've seen this argument go back and forth a lot, with both sides claiming advantages and disadvantages.

I am interested to hear the consensus from HN users as to which is better, and why.

<comment><USER7> It's not a matter of one being objectively better than the other but which suits your needs.

The basic distinction, from a purely SEO perspective, is that blog.domain.com will be treated as its own entity whereas domain.com/blog will be treated as part of the main domain.com entity.

The question you have to ask yourself is whether you want to bolster the "value" of your main domain or if you want your blog to be an asset in its own right.

There is no right or wrong answer — there is simply what's best for your situation.

<comment><USER8> Objectively better for SEO - and in particular if this isn't a personal blog, but say a marketing site for your SAAS and then an accompanying blog. Having them in separate domains with very similar content hurts you

This has been fairly well beaten into the ground at this point.

<comment><USER9> I'd say objectively safer. Google is getting better at reconciling content split across subdomains as coming from a common source. Some Google experts have called it pretty much a solved problem, but I don't think the data plays that out just yet. I do believe there will soon be a time that subdomain vs subfolder won't matter for SEO. Just not quite there yet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I keep wanting to use Hugo, and I have made a few attempts. Moving away from Wordpress and its problems would be good.

I do think a few features are missing that I find valuable:

* Search (you can add it as an external service I haven't found one I trust and like yet. * Comments, there are several third-party comment providers that I can use, I tried out Disqus for a while but I didnt like nor trust them. I look at using forum software for the comments but then I have to run that and I might as well stay in WP

Then there are a few plug-ins I use and like.

The worst part of using WP is of course security. I have switched to fully managed WP hosting so I dont have to worry too much about that. I do still worry about plugins but my provider does not allow a lot of plug-ins due to issues and I can totally appreciate that.

<comment><USER11> I'm running my blog ([https://muffinman.io](https://muffinman.io)) on Jekyll and GitHub pages, and I've run into the same issues.

For search I generate a JSON array, with the name and the url to each post. Then I just client side javascript to search them. It adds a small traffic overhead, but users said they really like the search - it is instant and uses fuzzy matching algorithm.

Here is the code I use to generate the array: [https://github.com/Stanko/Stanko.github.io/blob/master/_incl...](https://github.com/Stanko/Stanko.github.io/blob/master/_includes/partials/scripts.html#L1-L10)

For comments I use staticman ([https://staticman.net/](https://staticman.net/)), and it is brilliant. Instead of having a 3rd party comment system, it will issue a pull request to your repo. You can set it to automatically merge PRs or to merge them manually (and moderate them).

The only problem is that because of changes to the GitHub API quotas, their public instance gets overloaded. But you can easily setup your own instance. I use heroku, and their free tier is more than enough for my usecase (I get more than 100k users a year).

I even wrote a short post how to set it up on heroku: [https://muffinman.io/running-staticman-on- heroku/](https://muffinman.io/running-staticman-on-heroku/)

Hope that helps, happy hacking!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> There is no lack of technical choices when it comes to starting a blog. I can start five blogs in the next 30 minutes, each one on a different platform/infrastructure.

What I _do lack_ is something interesting to write about, in a consistent manner. I have been writing code for a long time. I did build some interesting stuff. I'm currently working on a startup that does use some blog-worthy tech: any attempt ends up with very long essay-shaped posts, which are extremely time-consuming to write and frankly not so interesting.

Any suggestion on how to find a niche and consistently write about it?

<comment><USER13> This might be helpful. [https://www.perell.com/blog/my-writing- syllabus](https://www.perell.com/blog/my-writing-syllabus)

Follow David Perell for writing inspiration. [https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1213894632943296516](https://twitter.com/david_perell/status/1213894632943296516)

<comment><USER14> I also follow Perell and find him inspiring. Writing is a lifelong passion but since a big part of my work is writing, the flame has gone out. These days is all about relighting the fire.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Don't try to be clever by using a localized domain, don't use .io. .com just > gives a better impression...

[https://gohugo.io](https://gohugo.io) \- Hugo website

> My suggestion is to avoid subdomains completely.

[https://themes.gohugo.io](https://themes.gohugo.io) \- Hugo themes

[https://discourse.gohugo.io](https://discourse.gohugo.io) \- Hugo forum

Hmm

<comment><USER16> It's a shame there we are so whipped to .com

<comment><USER17> These days nobody types an address into the search bar so any TLD that's not country based should be fine. I say that because your home country is a fluid concept.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone looking for a static blog but that wants a decent interface for editing, check out forestry.io. once setup, it commits to GitHub for you, your user is none the wiser. If the service ever goes away, you still have your blog in GitHub. And you can deploy anywhere (s3, netlify, etc). I use this setup for my non technical wife.

<comment><USER19> I think this is just what I was looking for, thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hugo is super, but the official docs make it look a lot scarier than it is. It's a solid static site builder with a lot of power under the hood.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is there a web-based editor that can be used together with these static site generators?

This editor should be small, self-contained and secure and could be located in a separate access-restricted area of the site.

<comment><USER21> I set up a small charity's site I maintain to use GitHub pages and Jekyll. The in-browser editor for markdown is good enough for the non-technical users, and GitHub pages takes care of rebuilding the site. The revision history is handy in case someone does something weird and we need to undo it.

I believe that GitLab pages offers something similar that also supports Hugo, but I opted to use GitHub+Jekyll as I personally find it significantly easier to custom-build a website than with Hugo (I really struggled with on some basic stuff, e.g. I had a lot of blank pages at dir roots (e.g. /something/goes/here would have blank pages at something/ and something/goes/ etc)). Hugo feels over-complicated to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And if you want to do it from inside Emacs/using org-mode, see: [https://ox- hugo.scripter.co/](https://ox-hugo.scripter.co/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been using Hugo for a few years. I like it generally, but I have mixed feelings about using Go for templating. Compilation and generation is blazing fast, which is great for short edit-compile-debug cycles.

On the other hand, Go's lack of generics makes working with collections harder than it should be... and much of templating involves working with collections.

To give a concrete example, I wanted to create a page where I group categories by post count. Hugo has methods to group _pages_ , but not categories, so I rolled my own imperative grouping code. It wasn't difficult, but it would have been simpler to do declaratively in many other ecosystems (say, .NET with LINQ).

</comment><comment><USER24> I used hugo for a while, but found myself struggling against it more often than I liked. I have since moved on to using other options.

<comment><USER25> What other options?

<comment><USER26> I've been using Pelican¹ with m.css², it does math, sitemaps, RSS feeds, code, graphs and a lot other things very nicely for me. Other blog platforms are far from as powerful, what I've tried, with so little hassle.

[1]: [https://docs.getpelican.com/](https://docs.getpelican.com/)

[2]: [https://mcss.mosra.cz/](https://mcss.mosra.cz/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I moved from WordPress to Hugo last year and dont regret it. If you search for some configuration examples for multi-language blogs and some shortcodes for image generation and so on, feel free to check out the blog post about it. [https://blog.kovah.de/en/2019/static-blog-with- hugo/](https://blog.kovah.de/en/2019/static-blog-with-hugo/) Source is available on Github: [https://github.com/Kovah/blog.kovah.de](https://github.com/Kovah/blog.kovah.de)

</comment><comment><USER28> I like the idea of static blogs. However, I didn't accomplish to find a great workflow to use hugo from my android phone while traveling. Using git on a phone is a pain

<comment><USER29> Yes this is where I got blocked on this too. I like using the WP Android app to upload photos when travelling. Obviously a static site by its very nature cannot interact with a phone app, so this seems like a difficult/intractable problem.

<comment><USER30> I have the same use case and have been wondering about solutions too. I'm hosting on Netlify, and when I push to my gitlab repository, Netlify's CI fetches, builds and deploys the site. I've wondered if I can run a script somewhere that periodically checks a private Instagram account (so not my main one), and when it sees a new post, it would download the photo and caption, creates a Markdown post and pushes everything into the git repo.

<comment> jl-gitlab You could potentially use a regularly scheduled pipeline in GitLab CI to do this. You'd need to use a user token instead of the pipeline token since you want to push back into the repository, but this should be possible. Then, when GitLab CI updates the repo, Netlify CI should jump in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've a few sites on Hugo. If you're not an active developer (like me) you can deploy a site from a Netlify template and tweak from there. So pretty much the opposite of "zero to deployment" \- gives you something working to start with.

[https://templates.netlify.com/template/hugo-starter-blog- the...](https://templates.netlify.com/template/hugo-starter-blog-theme-kaldi/)

</comment><comment><USER32> Very nice and detailed tutorial! I like also other content on your page and bookmarked your blog :)

I created a similar post a while ago, might be interesting for some who want to use GitLab instead of GitHub + Netlify:

[https://tkainrad.dev/posts/using-hugo-gitlab-pages-and- cloud...](https://tkainrad.dev/posts/using-hugo-gitlab-pages-and-cloudflare- to-create-and-run-this-website/)

</comment><comment><USER33> > It's too easy to get trapped in making things perfectly like you want, but > the important thing is the content.

Where's the fun in that :)

</comment><comment><USER34> I've been using Hugo for a few years now. Pretty long to set up if you want to addapt one of the available templates to suit your needs, but then it's really great!

I would not advise it to a non-programmer/tech savvy person though.

</comment><comment><USER35> Those using static site generators - how do you handle search?

<comment><USER23> Outsourcing it to a search engine is pretty easy. I do something like the following for DuckDuckGo:

      <form id="search" method="get" action="//duckduckgo.com/">
        <input type="text" name="q"/>
        <input type="hidden" name="sites" value="mywebsite.com">
      </form>

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> When comes to static site, I found that MkDocs[1] is easier to use. I like when I use it with Material theme[2].

[1]: [https://www.mkdocs.org/](https://www.mkdocs.org/) [2]: [https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs- material/](https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/)

<comment><USER37> MkDocs is great for what it was built for, documentation. I also use the Material theme myself.

For a blog though, it would be a terrible format. They meet very different use cases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I use Hugo for my website too! Highly recommend.

I also put together a video tutorial of how I set up my CI/CD pipeline to deploy to AWS using Terraform.

[https://devbrett.com/videos/2018-07-22-static-website- terraf...](https://devbrett.com/videos/2018-07-22-static-website-terraform/)

The whole site costs me about 50c a month on S3 + Cloudfront.

</comment><comment><USER39> I run my blog [https://www.lewis8s.codes](https://www.lewis8s.codes) on AWS Amplify. It connects to a GitHub repo and builds it every time there is a commit to master. Uses CloudFront on the backend too.

Costs me around $0.01 per build which isn't bad. Just easier than writing my own script.

</comment><comment><USER40> Off-topic: Any advise on how to migrate a Jekyll blog to Hugo?

Is it practical to keep the rendered HTML as static pages, and just use hugo/markdown for new posts?

Migrating the markdown files to hugo looks like a pain. Header files need to be migrated. Also jekyll plugins will obviously not work.

Might be better to just leave the old stuff as-is...

<comment><USER41> We did that on our project were using markdown in jekyll and kept it in hugo. Hugo has its own plugins, not that hard really.

EDIT: Hugo has a plugin to import a jekyll project, you can check maybe it will do most of the work for you. Link [https://gohugo.io/commands/hugo_import_jekyll/](https://gohugo.io/commands/hugo_import_jekyll/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Hugo is a great tool. I use it with my small project's websites for easily changing the content and getting hosting for nearly free.

Just adding new posts, push the repo and let the build and deployment scripts do their thing.

And - don't forget - the less dynamic your site is the less attractive it becomes for the bad guys.

</comment><comment><USER43> Shameless plug: I built [https://typehut.com](https://typehut.com) as a simpler alternative to classic blog and publishing systems. It's super easy to get started and it has some nice things like email subscriptions built-in.

If anybody tries it out let me know!

<comment><USER44> FYI, I ca'n't reach your site! If it works will check out!

<comment><USER43> Hmm, works on my side. What's the error you're seeing?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Are Hugo really substantially better than say pelican or Nikola or all the other 'established' SSG?

<comment><USER46> Yes, it is, specifically in ease of use of the static site generator itself, especially compared with a Python or Ruby one. (Node things tend to be more amenable to easily reproducible builds.)

From experience, I say that installing Python or Ruby static site generators (Hyde and Jekyll specifically I have in mind) starts out markedly harder, and tends to get steadily harder over time, particularly if you don't ride the upgrade treadmill¹, whereas the likes of Hugo (Go) and Zola (Rust) are a single binary that you just download and run, and it'll continue to work forever, and when you switch computers you can just copy or download the binary again and it'll still work.

This difference concretely saved substantial quantities of time for redoing Fastmail's website last year in Zola: once it genuinely _was_ just "download Zola 0.8 from such-and-such a location and run `zola serve`", a few people that would have given up on setting up a Jekyll or Pelican or similar environment, and instead gone with a longer "try modifying it, deploy it and see what happens" or "ask someone else to do it" approach, instead _did_ just download the single binary and use it, because it genuinely _did_ Just Work™.

If it's hard (here probably meaning "takes longer than five minutes of effort") to get an editing environment going for your blog or website or whatever, you _will_ abandon your website sooner or later, for a cause that you wouldn't if you were using one where it was easy.

So I say: prefer a single-binary for your occasionally-updated website, so that it's _your_ fault when you abandon it, rather than the SSG's!

___

¹ For example: I used Hyde for the previous iteration of my personal website, and last time I tried to spin up a fresh build environment for it, I _genuinely failed_ —I knew what I was doing, but a couple of packages in there would no longer build. Admittedly Hyde is abandoned and you're not likely to have quite such trouble on an actively-maintained project, but still: treadmills, and processes that you can't be _confident_ in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> I am currently moving from WordPress to Hugo, so your tutorial arrived just in time. Are your posts part of the content of your ebook series? Just asking in admiration of your frequency of daily new posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> Great to hear! I'd say the biggest difference with WP is that you don't worry about plugins, updates, server, etc. Maybe 50% of the posts I write are included in an ebook, I try to write them as a series, so they have a double purpose. One to help if you're searching specific information, the other more organized in an ebook where I explain something from the beginning with a clear structure. Making a series that ends up in an ebook also helps with ideas of what to write about, because I define all the topics beforehand. The other 50% of the posts are individual pieces, maybe an explanation of a problem or task solved while coding, or just a description of something new I'm learning :)</comment></comment>


Solar-powered plane crossing Pacific: Live telemetry - <AUTHOR> http://www.solarimpulse.com/widget-energy <comment><USER2> I was talking to a friend recently about technology and its progression on a 10-100 year scale, someone who isn't as used to this class of thought experiment as the average HNer but has a background in math & physics.

Anyway, the upshot was that there are a few things to really keep your eye on, known unknowns more or less. One is any process with a long term trend of improvement, like GDP growth, computation growth and anything that seems to be following such a trend. Another is energy sources.

It used to be popular to think of technological progress as a history of energy sources. Human power followed by beasts of burden for agriculture and transport. Charcoal for smelting followed by coal. The old wind and water powered mills followed by the coal fired mills, steam engines etc. Oil, combustion engines. Each energy source enabled a sort of technological revolution. I think this model of tech-history was at its giddiest when nuclear seemed to hold more promise (the 50s?). Nuclear Power, the space age energy.

Any feats of energy sources are worth keeping an eye on.

<comment><USER3> Efficient energy storage for renewables is an area that may provide sudden and significant change. One recent project based on flexible flywheels with digital dampening seems interesting: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340066560/velkess- ener...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1340066560/velkess-energy- storage)

 _I spent the rest of the spring designing and developing this new damping approach. Basically it amounts to a very sensitive array of sensors that are all hooked into a computer which is able to watch the data streams in real time to diagnose these phenomena. The computer is then able to apply precisely timed forces to the apparatus at key locations to get rid of these vibrations. I got the idea by reading an article on identifying and eliminating the vibrations that happen in the beams of big particle accelerators like CERN and the Large Hadron Collider._

Now entering commercial production as [http://www.velkess.com/VelkessLDatasheet.pdf](http://www.velkess.com/VelkessLDatasheet.pdf) and [http://www.velkess.com/VelkessADatasheet.pdf](http://www.velkess.com/VelkessADatasheet.pdf)

<comment><USER2> Cool. Energy storage certainly counts. It's a nicely left of field concept, as a bottleneck remover.

If energy storage can get onto a rapid improvement path, all sorts of options might suddenly be feasible. But I have to say that the idea of a flywheel storing enough energy to power a house sounds scary, never mind anything bigger. What happens if the stabilisation fails somehow?

<comment><USER3> Allegedly from a comment during development on their kickstarter, an experienced fire engineer helped to design the four layer security system - running the flywheel to breaking point never damaged any layer except the innermost. However, this is yet to be seen in production, so YMMV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Site apparently does not work in firefox...

</comment><comment><USER5> why is it going west now?

update: there's a bad weather front on the way to Hawai, so the pilot is holding his position.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's the explanation for that large directional spike in the Sea of Japan and also the 14k ft altitude spike?

<comment><USER7> The altitude increase coincides with the batteries reaching 99% capacity. The decrease coincides with nighttime and the batteries draining.

In other words it's another form of energy storage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Even more impressed after I saw it's carrying a pilot + batteries to continue flying through the night.

<comment><USER9> Well what's more impressive is that this is a 1 week non-stop leg. This is about 7 times longer than any previous flight they've attempted.

<comment><USER8> That is impressive -- 1 week would make it the 2nd longest flight endurance in history (for a manned, non-refueled airplane): [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_endurance_record](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_endurance_record)

<comment><USER10> Is it really non-refueled? Solar probably needs to be its own category.

The refueled endurance record is crazy. 65 days in a Cessna, refueling from a pickup truck.

<comment><USER11> An article about the flight: [http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All- News/2008/March/1/End...](http://www.aopa.org/News-and-Video/All- News/2008/March/1/Endurance-Test-Circa-1958)

<comment><USER8> picture: [https://rollandjennison.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/enduranc...](https://rollandjennison.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/endurance- test.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The telemetry doen't seem to work, not in any browser I tried at least.

I'd love to see all the instruments during the scheduled 14:00 UTC landing.

<comment><USER11> Telemetry is back up. Yay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The flight was from Nanjing to Hawai.. Still to cross the entire Pacific Ocean, not being pessimistic but the title is misinformation..

</comment><comment><USER13> > Solar-powered plane _crossing Pacific_

Looks like they're actually attempting a trip around the world...

</comment><comment><USER9> This is now the longest and most dangerous leg in their flight over 9000 KM and over the pacific.

</comment><comment><USER14> If only Malaysian airlines (and all the others) had this! It's clearly possible. Why don't they?</comment>


Show HN: Use Emojis to find and rate places - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/yobo-app/id1132262995?ls=1&mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> We want to reinvent and simplify the classical city-/local-guide app by using nothing else than photos, emojis and lot of AI. We basically changed the classic rating system using stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ into just using emojis. The emoji-ratings are displayed in an emoji-cloud at each place: The bigger an emoji the more relevant it is. The app works like a hyperlocal Instagram: Users share photos of locations and tag these places using up to 3 Emojis – call them Happy Places. Those Happy Places are then compiled into other user's individual recommendation feeds based on their current location. Using ML (reinforcement learning) the app learns autonomously your individual local taste. Works in Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, NY, LA and Miami.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> If you dont use an Iphone, here´s how it works: [https://youtu.be/8RfJ5k83haw](https://youtu.be/8RfJ5k83haw)

</comment><comment><USER2> Sounds super cool.</comment>


I'm a developer, and the community scares me… - sad-dev https://email@example.com/i-m-a-developer-and-the-community-scares-me-91b92e1d982c#.tqo0m1ty2 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm a developer at a startup in San Francisco. I'd be willing to bet a large sum of money that the _vast_ majority of developers are so-called 'dark matter developers'. Contributing to open source projects, writing helpful blog posts, and participating in hackathons is going above and beyond the norm. Heck, even reading HN and proggit regularly and staying on top of new trends is probably going above and beyond the norm.

That said, it does sometimes seem like there is increased cultural value in being busy with lots of things — going to conferences and meetups, writing blog posts, contibuting to any and all open source projects. This kind of seems at odds with the old programmer ethos of laziness as a virtue.

I'm tempted to say that a lot of this 'engagement' with the community is cargo culting.

In any case, thanks for writing this anon. I've had similar thoughts and it's always reassuring to be reminded that I'm not the only one.

</comment><comment><USER2> For what it's worth, I've been working as some role in IT for 25 years, published a book and written some heavily used pieces of software and feel the same way. It helped me to start sharing those thoughts with others I respected in the community to get their feedback and to help fight that negative voice in my head. I think those thoughts are common and when they are (now) shared with me, I confirm to the person that to tell themselves that it's crazy talk; sometimes my brain wants to keep me isolated even though that's the opposite of what's healthy for it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you considered therapy? It sounds to me like your issues with getting out and networking with developers don't have much to do with the developers in particular. Rather, your social anxiety within you is holding you back from putting yourself out there.

I'm no expert on these things, but I did used to be primarily introverted. Extrovert tendencies did not emerge until I started working to fix the parts of my personality that would always hold me back from new possibilities and opportunities, and you can't fix what you don't understand.

Throw something out there. Send a pull request or message. See what happens. You can't gauge your worth based on failed attempts to elicit feedback.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would recommend you think about therapy. Getting professional help might get your feet on a way to long term betterment.

What I was wondering is why you should be want to be seen. Do you feel the need to be recognised. Do you miss appreciation?

I would really, really recommend professional help. This is not something to be taken lightly.

</comment><comment><USER5> While I am not sure whether you are on medication but that can really help. Besides anti-depressants you also need to look for a good psychotherapist. Therapy would certainly help you, too.</comment>


HN, What are you willing to be arrested for? Seriously, what does it take? - <AUTHOR>

Rights are won -- never given.  If you're not willing to defend them, they're not your rights. Which leads to the next question -- what rights are you willing to fight for? And by fight I don't mean bitch about on the internet -- but actually getting of your ass and willing to go to jail for (ex, non-violent civil disobedience).
In the advent of SOPA/PIPA/NDAA/Enemy Expatriation, it's time to make a game-plan. Parties are grappling for the right to censor our information, cut off our communications, declare us enemies, revoke our citizenship, and imprison us without trial in secret. This is no longer tin-foil territory. We can all disappear because someone stands to profit.
The only rights you have are the rights you're willing to defend. So I ask again. At what point is enough enough? <comment><AUTHOR> Relying on documents such as the Constitution to guarantee our freedoms has become a thing of the past. The government has been hi-jacked by corporate interests, and the opinions of lobbyists has greater influence than the public.

It took the entire internet protest just to slow down _ONE_ piece of tyrannical legislation. And in the end, it didn't even matter because they shutdown Megaupload anyways. Is this a system we should rely on for safety and security?

</comment><comment><USER2> It's hard to say. I'm getting closer and closer to my breaking point with every passing day. The problem is, not enough people care (yet) about what's going on. So if if a few of us drop the non-violent approach, we probably only get to be martyrs for the cause. But maybe that's OK.

The other problem is, even if we had enough people who were totally fed up with our corrupt, evil government, and if we pulled an Egypt and took down the existing state, the question remains "what would replace it?" And, more to the point, "how do you know it would be better?"

What we really need in this country is an intellectual / cultural revolution, a fundamental change in the way people thing about things...a renewed emphasis on the idea that individuals _have_ rights and a deep-rooted commitment to the idea of inalienable rights. Until that happens, I'm afraid that if we did replace the current State, it would be - at best - a wash. And things might even get worse.

That said, one situation that I know would get me arrested, would be if I were present at an event like the infamous UC Davis "pepper spray ordeal." Or, really, any situation where cops are beating somebody down or abusing their power and hurting somebody unnecessarily. I don't think I could stand back and watch... I'm pretty sure I'd grab the first pipe or tree branch I could find, or go in empty handed if I had to, and just start wailing on one of them.

I tend to be a bit of a hot-head at times, and those situations piss me off to a degree that I can't even put into words.</comment>


Reversal of hair greying following adipose mesenchymal stem cell transplantation - <AUTHOR> http://www.hoajonline.com/stemcells/2054-717X/2/3 <comment><USER2> This journal is not indexed in MEDLINE or PubMed and so would not generally be considered a legitimate part of the biomedical literature.

The publisher (Herbert Publications, Hyderabad, India) is also on Beall's List of "Potential, possible, or probable predatory scholarly open-access publishers":

[http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/](http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Reversal of hair greying is definitely possible. I'm in my early 30s, and I have a few grey hairs. Sometimes I find one that started growing as grey and turned back to brown at the root. I've never heard of this happening to anybody else. I have a few saved as proof.

<comment><USER4> Happens to me, too.

<comment><USER5> Me too! And my partner.

<comment><USER6> Same here. I guess it's not that uncommon.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The level of evidence here is not really believable in my opinion. It seems to essentially consist of two kind-of blurry sets of before and after pictures.

I'm not a stem cell biologist by any means, but I'm also surprised their IRB approved this... IV mesenchymal stem cells for supranuclear palsy? Hope they are following them for neoplasms...

<comment><USER2> > The trial was conducted as per Guidelines given by Indian Council of Medical > Research (ICMR). Approvals for clinical trials were obtained from > Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) and Institutional Stem Cell Research > Committee (ISCRC).

Given that that none of the authors are at a recognized _institution_ , I would really like to know which committees they are talking about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It is amazing how much more people care about their hair and skin in comparison to, say, their blood vessels when it comes to aging.

Some more on the topic of hair and stem cells in the papers and publicity materials linked below. Note that first generation stem cell transplantation in most cases appears to work largely through signaling. The transplanted cells don't stick around for long, but suppress inflammation and oxidative stress, encourage regeneration, etc, by changing the behavior of native cells. Oxidative stress reduction seems a plausible mechanism for reversing graying to some degree as a result of stem cell transplants.

[http://www.fasebj.org/content/20/9/1567.abstract](http://www.fasebj.org/content/20/9/1567.abstract)

Oxidative stress is generated by a multitude of environmental and endogenous challenges such as radiation, inflammation, or psychoemotional stress. It also speeds the aging process. Graying is a prominent but little understood feature of aging. Intriguingly, the continuous melanin synthesis in the growing (anagen) hair follicle generates high oxidative stress. We therefore hypothesize that hair bulb melanocytes are especially susceptible to free radical-induced aging.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18573711](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18573711)

"Hair graying is one of the prototypical signs of human aging, but its mechanism is largely unknown. To elucidate the mechanism of hair graying, we investigated gene expression related to melanogenesis in human hair. The key molecules in melanogenesis, microphthalmia-associated transcription factor-M (MITF-M), Sox10, Pax3, tyrosine related protein-1 (TRP-1), and tyrosinase, were absent or greatly reduced in the bulbs of white hair compared to black hair. Melanocyte stem cells (MSCs) or melanocytes express markers for neural crest cells, Sox10, Pax3, and MITF-M. Taken together, our data suggest that hair graying is caused by defective migration of MSCs into the bulb area of hair."

[http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/foas- gha05031...](http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/foas- gha050313.php)

"People who are going gray develop massive oxidative stress via accumulation of hydrogen peroxide in the hair follicle, which causes our hair to bleach itself from the inside out. The build up of hydrogen peroxide was caused by a reduction of an enzyme that breaks up hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen (catalase). Hair follicles could not repair the damage caused by the hydrogen peroxide because of low levels of enzymes that normally serve this function (MSR A and B). Further complicating matters, the high levels of hydrogen peroxide and low levels of MSR A and B, disrupt the formation of an enzyme (tyrosinase) that leads to the production of melanin in hair follicles. Melanin is the pigment responsible for hair color, skin color, and eye color. The report shows that this massive accumulation of hydrogen peroxide can be remedied with a proprietary treatment developed by the researchers described as a topical, UVB-activated compound called PC-KUS (a modified pseudocatalase). What's more, the study also shows that the same treatment works for the skin condition, vitiligo."

<comment><USER9> > It is amazing how much more people care about their hair and skin in > comparison to, say, their blood vessels when it comes to aging.

It is amazing, but not surprising. People are vastly more reactive to the things that provide immediate feedback.

What we see, hear, touch and taste provide feedback that is simple for people to process and understand.

Appreciation of long term future loss or damage is not programmed into humans particularly well. We are biologically designed to worry about the present, we dwell on the past (far too much), and the future is something that might never happen (the old adage; you might be hit by a bus).

We see this every day with people that smoke cigarettes. Every single smoker knows that smoking is going to put them in an early grave, but they still continue, because the short term pleasure to the senses, outweighs the perceived long term risk.

<comment><USER10> > Every single smoker knows that smoking is going to put them in an early > grave, but they still continue, because the short term pleasure to the > senses, outweighs the perceived long term risk.

Hits home.

Quit 5 years ago, knew all the risks, evidence etc none of that worked, my mum a heavy smoker ending up in the cardiac unit at 54 was what finally did it (turned out to be nothing serious), I stopped on my 30th birthday and never touched another one.

Had my mum not ended up in hospital the week before my 30th birthday (which does make you take stock) I think I'd still be smoking today.

<comment><USER11> True except there is not really short term pleasure with cigarettes smoking, just a temporary relief of craving.

<comment><USER12> I don't know, even after smoking for a few years I could still "feel" it, beyond just the cessation of craving; it's the same feeling I get when I use nicotine lozenges sublingually for focus (which I do at most once a week to avoid tolerance)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Interesting that the study was done in India.

<comment><USER14> I'd say it was a warning sign.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had a grey hair once but I changed it back to normal through sheer force of will.

</comment><comment><USER16> Hacker news is definitely not the best place to engage in discussions about medical papers.

<comment><USER17> This is a biology paper, not a medical paper.</comment></comment>


EBay vs CraigsList Complaint Released - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/30/ebay-vs-craigslist-complaint-released/

<comment><USER2> For the lazy, Craigslist says that they can dilute ebay's share because ebay launched Kijijijijijiji, which is a direct competitor for craigslist.

I just went and checked out the Kijiji site Ebay launched. Its totally lame compared to CL. Its weird how I now prefer the non-newness of CL's look. CL is so clean and fast, that Kijiji just looks awful and cluttered. Not to mention it uses Flash, which immediately gets minus points.

Yay for CL. I have gotten so many awesome things through it.

<comment><USER3> _For the lazy, Craigslist says that they can dilute ebay's share because ebay launched Kijijijijijiji, which is a direct competitor for craigslist._

Sorta. Though Kijiji seems the motivating factor, the actual legal maneuverings are a lot more subtle, even tricky.

In fact, there's a curious provision apparently adopted in 2004 when EBay first got their stake. It said that the other shareholders had a right-of- first-refusal (ROFR) to acquire EBay's shares, but that if EBay started competing, that ROFR in EBay's share would expire. That's odd because the ROFR is not for EBay's benefit, but the company/others... so letting EBay unilaterally increase their freedom to sell their shares by _competing_ with Craigslist seems backwards. (Instead, I would have thought the competing party would lose _their_ ROFR to the others' shares.)

But I guess someone was thinking a few moves ahead, because it looks like Craig+Jim used the expiration of the first ROFR (in 2007 because of Kijiji) as rationalization for the creation of a new mutual ROFR. For agreeing to this new ROFR, the agreeing shareholders (Craig+Jim) would get bonus shares.... such bonus shares being just enough to dilute Ebay below a 25% ownership share, unless they also agree to the same new ROFR. 25% turns out to be a crucial threshold for electing a board member or preventing other operational changes.

Did Craig+Jim agree to the 2004 ROFR-expiration clause, knowing it would provide a rationale for a later new-ROFR-justified dilution? Or was the 2004 agreement just broken, and now they're trying to recover from something which gave Ebay too much freedom to both compete and sell their shares to anyone? I hope Craigslist's filing(s) clarify things.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Funny that they appear to be alternating between docstoc and scribd for embedded documents.

</comment><comment><USER4> But wasn't Ebay always competing with CL even before Kijiji. The use cases are not very different, CL just does it through free listings and Ebay has auctions</comment>


PhotoMath – Smart camera calculator - <AUTHOR> https://photomath.net/ <comment><USER2> They pitched at TechCrunch Disrupt yesterday. Here's the video [http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/20/microblink-launches- photoma...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/10/20/microblink-launches-photomath-to- solve-math-equations-with-a-phone/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Great idea, really surprised Wolfram alpha hasn't done some OCR problem solving. Any ideas what solver is powered by and how good it is (or any other open source ones out there)? I only know of SymPy.

</comment><comment><USER4> What is the use case for this? It's hard for me to see anything other than K-12 math homework (or early college, in some cases). Even graphing calculators have broader applicability than that, and that's saying something.

I'm _tempted_ to go one step further and say that it's hard to see it as much more than a "do my homework for me" app, but I know that's too harsh. Some wise users might turn to it only to check their answers, or to get a hint about the next step if they're stuck. But as a professor, I've seen just how easy it can be for even strong students to come to over-rely on "Help, I'm stuck!" opportunities if they're available, and that _doesn 't_ assist with learning. (In one memorable case, that opportunity was me in my office, and I eventually had to limit my supply of helpful hints.)

<comment><USER5> I will admit, as a once ardent anti-math student, I appreciate how frustrating it is to sit down, stare at a problem for 10 minutes and advance no where through feeble attempts.

When I began taking Calc 2 (as an adult who's worked and gone back to school), I found wolfram alpha's integral solver to be INCREDIBLY helpful for working through practice problems (to your point, I was using it as a check/next step assistance). I ended up with an A in that class because of Wolfram's ability to help me work through a problem regardless of the hour, or day.

I think if this (or a similar app) helps students work through problems and recognize errors they're making, it can absolutely be beneficial. I would concede with respect to the homework solver aspect, but hope that teachers could some how incorporate this into their classes, something along the lines of an account management system that shows the teachers which students are requesting which equation.

<comment><USER6> It seems like a failure of the course/teacher if you are asked to solve a problem in which you can't identify the requisite steps and make progress?

In my mind the reason for problems is to practice the techniques taught until you can: a) avoid common pitfalls b) recognise common patterns c) minimise calculation errors with sense checks

However, when this problem set is marked and impacts your results obviously the incentives change from learning by doing to getting 100%. Once you have an app like this for "checking", it takes decent appreciation of the long term outcomes to avoid using it for "solving" and then going off to play some Frog Fractions.

<comment><USER7> Some problems have several steps or techniques that need to be applied. It's not always obvious which way to go at first. Near the end of a course, or in higher-level courses, there could be hundreds of possible "next steps" that you've learned. Recognizing common patterns doesn't help in uncommon cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> this was one of the coolest things i've seen recently. Lots of interesting stuff going on in the OCR space. A buddy of mine has an app that translates chinese and japanese to english in realtime using the camera. [http://www.waygoapp.com/](http://www.waygoapp.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I am at once both amazed and saddened. Mastering fraction reduction and later simple algebra when I was a kid was one of the most empowering experiences of my life. This is like having an app run a marathon for me - it's easier, but I'm not changed through the work.

<comment><USER10> I mean, isn't it basically a homework aid? While it's definitely cheaty, I can understand why it would appeal to kids who just want to get their homework done fast, or people who are stuck on exercises and want a hint.

<comment><USER11> The value of doing homework isn't measured in how fast you finish it:

> This is like having an app run a marathon for me - it's easier, but I'm not > changed through the work.

<comment><USER10> That analogy is misleading, because you don't have to run a marathon to get a high school diploma.

I'm not advocating that students use this to cheat on their homework. I'm just pointing out that most people reading an algebra textbook aren't in there for self-improvement. They just want a good grade.

<comment><USER9> I think the impressiveness of what these guys made is the best argument for what a mistake that is. The effective 0% unemployment rate of engineers in SV shows what you get when you're not willing to be "bad at math." I know you're not advocating for that attitude, it just drives me nuts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Seeing this reminds me how frustrating searching in the app store is. I saw this story on my computer, and picked up my iPad and went to the app store to download it. Searching for "photo math" yields a few hundred goofy photo editing apps [1]. Searching by the correct name "photomath" yields 0 results. I ended up going to their website to get the link before figuring out that my default search is for iPad compatible apps only, and that this won't show up unless I search with iPhone Only selected.

[1] fat face and look like a zombie are the most popular, but I was most impressed with Abs Booth

edit: the developer should also note that searching by name does not work unless you add the app name as a keyword. I have submitted bug reports for both issues (18735078 and 18735109)

</comment><comment><USER13> Man, I wish I had this (and cellphones) in high school. Would have made cheating so much easier!

<comment><USER14> When I was at school I had one of these: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psion_Series_3)

And got in trouble for writing programs in OPL to solve math problems.

I reckon I deserved extra credit for initiative. The experience of learning to program has certainly turned out to be ultimately more useful than learning to do math without a calculator.

(Not that I think that learning to do math without a calculator is useless, mind you.)

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

<comment><USER15> Wrote a very simple genetic algorithm engine in OPL... my fitness function was just to optimize toward a specific 32-bit pattern. But I got familiar with the technique, along with quite a few other explorations.

Then I dropped it on a steel deck, broke a hinge and the power lines from the battery case. Never have pulled it apart to rebuild, but it's in my closet still, 15 years later :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> cool idea, but the reddit thread appears to be populated with complaints that it's barely functional

<comment><USER17> I tried it out. Barely functional is pretty accurate unfortunately :(

I was using it on screens though as opposed to paper.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wolfram|Alpha for iOS suports image input from camera[1] and has a TextRecognize function[2]. Has anybody tested it?

[1] [http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2012/03/14/wolframalpha-app- for...](http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2012/03/14/wolframalpha-app-for-ios-adds- image-as-input/)

[2] [http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/TextRecognize.html](http://reference.wolfram.com/language/ref/TextRecognize.html)

<comment><USER19> `TextRecognize` is clearly not for equations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> A colleague at my office gave it a test drive.

* [http://youtu.be/jDbTKgWoufw](http://youtu.be/jDbTKgWoufw)

Results: As of now, it can only solve some linear equations. It did successfully solve one quadratic but it couldn't decide if the variable was r or e (the variable was x). It was largely unable to solve handwritten problems, even simple arithmetic.

note: This is a copy/paste of a comment I left on reddit /r/math and /r/windowsphone.

<comment><USER19> I don't know why you'd expect it to solve hand-written problems. Handwriting recognition of text is barely solved, let alone maths.

<comment><USER20> Truthfully I did not know what to expect with regards to hand written problems. Out of curiosity, I wrote my very neatest and gave it a try and it solved one of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> There are some startup in China providing similar apps, basically they are using deep learning to search problem photo in a problem set(middle school, high school problem sets and exams). Like this one: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wenba.bang...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.wenba.bangbang)

</comment><comment><USER22> I'd be more interested if it could provide the LaTeX code for the scanned equation. Then you could write equations by hand and simply scan them in.

I'm halfway through a thesis, so it's too late for me, but others could have a notorious learning curve eased somewhat.

<comment><USER23> While it's not as full as OCR, there's an app called DeTeXify that will do almost exactly what you describe.

Android app link here: [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=coolcherrytree...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=coolcherrytrees.software.detexify)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> This reminds me of [http://webdemo.myscript.com/#/demo/equation](http://webdemo.myscript.com/#/demo/equation) which recognizes handwritten equations. Also has an option to send to wolfram alpha to solve!

</comment><comment><USER25> I have yet to see an app support trigonometry. Is recognizing graphs too hard?

<comment><USER26> That would be a fun project. If you can digitize the graph reliably, you can then take the discrete Fourier transform of the data, apply some denoising/thresholding to extract the main components. This would tell you if you're looking at sin(x), cos(x), cos^2(x), etc. If you have a training set, you could maybe start picking out more complex functions like abs(x), 1/x, etc.

<comment><USER25> I am referring to problems like this

[http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/799790/simplest- know...](http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/799790/simplest-known- solution-to-worlds-hardest-easy-geometry-problem)

I don't think it's easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Doesn't this defeat the purpose of the exercises?

<comment><USER28> Yes, it does.

<comment><USER29> No, it doesn't. It all depends on how you use it. Many people like to verify that they have done correctly before moving on to the next problem. Often no solution is given, which makes people unsure and nervous about continuing. And if you're stuck this can show you the steps and you can learn something.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This is a GREAT idea.

</comment><comment><USER31> Reminded me of "The Lenwoloppali Differential Equation Scanner" from The Big Bang Theory

[http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lenwoloppali_Differe...](http://bigbangtheory.wikia.com/wiki/The_Lenwoloppali_Differential_Equation_Scanner)

<comment><USER32> I'm more surprised, that nobody did this earlier. The episode was around for a few years.

<comment><USER33> I'm pretty sure this app doesn't solve differential equations ...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> Yeah, if people were not already lame enough to try to understand maths in a right way.

btw, suite of similar apps will follow in chemistry and physics now

</comment><comment><USER35> It is frustrating - why is it free? Please, do not dump the market...

<comment><USER36> You're fighting a losing battle, getting exposure is valuable for a startup and free is often a good route to get initial users.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I think this will produce lazier students. This will encourage student to expect instant answers to math problems rather than encourage them to learn to seek answers by understanding the questions, equations and formula.

<comment><USER38> This is true of all inventions.

When I was learning math we had to draw out equations in sand, with roman numerals. Digits make students lazy. Instead of actually visualizing the numbers geometrically, all they need to do is play around with numbers.</comment></comment>