I'm tracking everything I read online - <AUTHOR> https://clifff.com/2014/08/17/tracking-everything-i-read-online/

<comment><USER2> Are you using Pinboard to search all the items you've read, or a different engine?</comment>


The next generation of mirrors - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/gallery/dn16585-amazing-mirrors <comment><USER3> Interesting that US law forbids curved rear view mirrors in cars. Too bad, those seem very improvable.

<comment><USER4> Does anyone know why? Just a wild guess, could it be possible that drivers might get distracted with too much visual information?

<comment><USER5> The answer to this question can be found here:

<http://forums.projektgerman.com/showthread.php?p=83238>

<comment><USER6> One of the comments in the article links to another article on how to adjust your mirrors so that you dont have blind spots.

<http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~gdguo/driving/BlindSpot.htm>

I hate the convex mirrors because I cant judge distances backing up in tight spaces.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> My first inclination would have been to solve this sort of stuff by digital manipulation.

But on second thought, once built, it's a static piece of hardware that essential does a single compose-able image transformation that requires no processing power--almost like a pre-processor. It just doesn't handle the requirement if the transformation has to change from moment to moment.

<comment><USER8> Or you can say, these mirrors do calculation by reflecting lights in specific ways---it's real-time, continuous calculation. Electronic digital circuits aren't the only way to calculate.

</comment></comment><comment> cool-RR It's really amazing, does anyone has a link to an explanation of how this works? does anyone have a theory?

Also: Does the car driver mirror work from just the driver's angle, or from every angle? It would be amazing if it worked from every angle.

<comment><USER9> They say it in the article... the mirror's curve is calculated to cause the light to be bounced more than once before being reflected to the viewer - <USER2> it's more like several mirrors, except they're built into a single physical object that looks like a mirror.

<comment> cool-RR I read that. I meant an explanation which actually shows how it's built, not just describing generally its principle of operation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Although an amazing feat, it means little if it costs something like $50,000 to produce.

Hope it can become a consumer usable good. For nwo though, there's a lot of industry uses.

<comment><USER11> 50,000 for the first. $2 for the thousandth? This is where the economies of scale really shine.

<comment><USER12> Pun intended?</comment></comment></comment>


Google Open-Sources Cardboard - sahin-boydas https://github.com/googlevr/cardboard <comment><AUTHOR> For those out of the loop: Google has gradually shut down and in some cases, open sourced their VR projects (Daydream, Mirage, VR180, Seurat, etc) over the last 6-12 months to be more focused on their mobile AR projects (ARCore, Google Streetview AR, Lens, etc). A sad day for VR.

<comment><USER2> I mean not a sad day for VR. Google is just being Google and thinking that XR is a tech problem. It's not.

The XR gap is in content, not developers, and not tech. Any VR play should be throwing money at creatives, not devs or APIs or frameworks.

<comment><USER3> I bought an Oculus Rift devkit and later the full version and loved it, but I actually have doubts about it only being a content problem. VR has some inherent problems (lack of any outside visibility, motion sickness, space restrictions) that are hard to solve and keep many people away from it. For me it only really worked in racing games where i was not moving at all and even then it is quite exhausting.

<comment><USER4> Those are pretty large problems. As an outsider it seems that the people bullish on VR think consumers, with respect to these problems you mentioned, will just get over it because of how compelling VR is. It seems obvious to me that they will not get over it.

The lack of any outside visibility is a huge problem for families. It is anti- social. Small kids can't be near you while you are using VR. Pets can't really be near you.

It's very difficult to share your experience with other people. VR streamers aren't very popular on Twitch. They probably have issues interacting with their audience since they can't easily see Twitch chat I would think.

I also question the accessibility of VR. At what severity of physical impairment does VR become unusable?

There are just so many problems with VR as a mass-consumer product that don't have anything to do with technology.

AR doesn't have many of these problems, because you can still see other people.

Google's direction makes sense.

<comment><USER2> >It is anti-social

that's why location based experiences (LBE) is the solution. Different monetization route, it's basically a theme park model (invest in cutting edge tech/high value content) and maximize throughput like a VR "ride."

Having gone through a number of the experiences I'd highly recommend them. Better than anything you can get at home, it's a fun outing with your friends, and the content is pretty awesome.

<comment><USER5> Like I mentioned in another comment, there's no quality control and testing in the wild west of VR games on Steam so many of them are terrible and cause motion sickness. My hope with LBE is that the experiences will have been thoroughly researched and tested to mitigate the sickness problem at least. The other advantage to the theme park model is that the experiences last under 10 minutes.

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately, if the Star Trek experience I saw at Dave & Busters is any indication, the QC is not there. But this has more to do with the economic structure of these companies purchasing these experiences. They sub them out to the lowest bidder, with the budget being too small to do what they want, but no willingness to compromise on the vision. It may not even be the customer's fault, I've seen first hand consultoware managers pushing projects into directions that were not in the client's best interest, but did fit their MBA trained ideas on how to squeeze money out of clients.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> For what it is, Cardboard is pretty cool technology that opens up the VR world to a lot of people that would never be able to afford the high end equipment needed for real VR. I had a couple of cheap Cardboard viewers and then upgraded to the Samsung VR goggles which are also surprisingly good for the money.The Samsung/Oculus partnership seems to still be strong, for now at least.

<comment><USER8> >The Samsung/Oculus partnership seems to still be strong, for now at least.

Gear VR doesn't support Note 10 and there's rumors that their partnership has ended.

The VR industry is moving past mobile VR because it has trouble with user retention. Oculus can abandon Gear VR and Samsung to focus on their own VR solutions from Go to Quest to Rift.

Samsung then is still working on their standalone headset and possibly a next generation Windows Mixed Reality headset

<comment><USER9> Carmack's Eulogy For The Gear VR [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfd2lNRjqH4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfd2lNRjqH4)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If open source cardboard included Daydream hardware specifications and fabrication files will be nice.

Google has already abandoned the project so it should not be an issue to release hardware and related assets under open source along with SDK.

It might allow different companies to continue daydream, instead of let it die.

<comment><USER11> Yes, then we would have an open-sourced mobile VR solution.. which is now being dominated by Oculus Quest and Facebook. I totally love the Go and Quest VR but open source competition is always good. Mozilla Hubs, JanusVR, Firestorm Viewer and Firefox Reality are all nice open VR projects but they sit on top a VR capable system which is not open source, at least not the 6DoF part. With WebVR 3DOF works, you can watch immersive videos and have limited social VR

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Blog post here: [https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/11/open-sourcing- goog...](https://developers.googleblog.com/2019/11/open-sourcing-google- cardboard.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> Is Cardboard still being used? After the death of Daydream, I'm assuming Google is pretty much entirely out of VR at this point... although I may be completely wrong.

<comment><USER14> They do have several software projects: blocks, poly, tilt brush. I also believe they have various VR divisions. Don't count them out yet- my take is that the Oculus Quest put the nail in the coffin for 'phone based' VR (cheap and solid with controllers/and soon hand tracking is just a better product) and most investment going forward will probably be diverted in that direction (whether it be competing hardware products or complementary software)

<comment><USER15> Has the Quest been a successful product?

<comment><USER16> Keep in mind the scope of the entire VR market. It has yet to reach critical mass. Anecdotally, I tried a Quest over the weekend and was blown away. The lower FPS was a bit disorienting in some conditions due to strobing, but the resolution and general responsiveness was just incredible.

And once Oculus Link is released, the Rift catalogue will be available for the Quest, and I'm considering upgrading from a Rift now that it seems like a real upgrade. I'd say a product which convinces current adopters to upgrade so soon is a success.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Anyone know what happened to NY Times VR? They shipped Google Carboard to a ton of subscribers, launched an app, had a whole section of their site... it seems to be all gone. They had a great immersive (pun) story about dolphins that I loved to revisit.

<comment><USER18> It still exists on the NY Times app. Tap the "Sections" tab, then scroll most of the way down and the content under "Immersive (AR/VR)." There's dozens of items in there.

<comment><USER19> I wonder if this type of content makes it to a library like the rest of newspaper content does, for archival and reference purposes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Google must have faced the same problems that Oculus faced when it came to user retention. Carmack reported that people tried Gear VR once or twice before never touching it again.

Meanwhile, Quest managed to have user retention solely from how seamless it is to strap on a device and get going in VR. This is opposed to the inconvenience from taking out the phone from the case and putting it inside a device.

A seamless, cordless experience like the Quest is probably the future of VR even if it has limitations now and is still too relatively expensive for the masses. The Cardboard/Daydream/Gear VR line of VR is seen as a dead end now. Daydream is dead, and Gear VR might as well be dead.

Google must have looked at what it has on the horizon for VR and decided that it now can't compete with the likes of Oculus and HTC.

</comment><comment><USER20> Oh, neat! I'd already been utilizing this and it being FOSS means only even more control.

</comment><comment><USER21> I spent $69 on a Daydream headset a month or so ago just to play with it, only to find out it didn't work with my phone. I kept it just in case. Then Google cancelled it. It'd be nice if they opened up that code as well...

<comment><USER22> You should give an Oculus Quest a try if you ever get the opportunity.

VR isn't really about the 3D effect it's about having your head and hands tracked in a 3D space and what can come from that level of interaction. Daydream never really offered this and after using a decent amount of VR I find that the most important part of the experience.

<comment><USER21> Actually, buying the Quest is what made me decide to grab a Dream headset. After playing with WebVR/WebXR demos, I thought wow, I should grab a Dream headset and see what my phone can do. This was at the end of September.

Then I realized it wasn't compatible, but figured I might get a new Pixel when they launched, so I kept it just in case... Whoops.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I played with Cardboard, and I didn't get any VR feeling from it. It was more like "a screen right in your face" experience, but I didn't get any 3D feeling out of it.

</comment><comment><USER24> I still don't quite understand why I can't strap myself to my existing phone with a couple of periscopes, run an app outputting the two images on the left and the right halves, and control it with some bluetooth joypad.

<comment><USER25> Isn't this exactly what cardboard/daydream does (daydream has a controller; cardboard doesn't, but I think a lot of VR apps will honor a bluetooth controller anyway)

<comment><USER24> Afaik they only support specific phone models—understandable due to the fixed dimensions of the headset. Not so understandable is why I don't see apps that support any phone as long as I can build a headset for it.

<comment><USER6> Largely, it comes down to Android being a bad OS for input latency (indeed, Oculus and Samsung had to perform what John Carmack described as "deep hacks" into the Android kernel to get it to a reasonable state with Gear VR), most phones not having a high-enough quality IMU for tracking head motion, and most phones not having a low persistence display (high persistence causes a smearing effect in the visual).

So while "Cardboard" can "work" on most phones, it's a pretty terrible experience, once you get past the awe factor of seeing stereoscopic visuals with head tracking. Us developers have largely stopped making anything with basic "Cardboard" support, for fear of giving people a bad first impression of VR.

As for Daydream, a lot of the point of the Daydream system was to get around those issues I mentioned. First, it required phones to meet a certain hardware profile to before they were allowed to market themselves as "Daydream Compatible". Second, it included changes to the operating system to provide much lower latency in input tracking and change display settings to reduce pixel persistence.

<comment><USER24> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> The same way they open-sourced Android?</comment>


Comcast 'blocks' encrypted email service: Reminder of why net neutrality matters - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/comcast-customers-blocked-encrypted-email-service-net-neutrality-repeal/ <comment><USER2> > According to a spokesperson, engineers investigated the apparent outage but > found there was no evidence of a connection breakage between Comcast and > Tutanota. The company keeps records of issues that trigger incidents -- but > found nothing to suggest an issue. The spokesperson did not want to > speculate further.

Net neutrality doesn't stop ISPs or admins from making weird mistakes. Is there any evidence that anything more interesting than that happened?

<comment><USER3> It's just a pseudo-story, clickbait. The nerdy version of a buzzfeed article about cheese.

<comment><USER4> Everyone wants a reason to beat up on Comcast - for reasons real or imagined.

Like, its not as if we have a shortage of real reasons to beat up on Comcast - but if our side makes up falsities, or presumes lack of good faith without any evidence - we just lost the moral high ground in the argument.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What a clickbait.

Intermittent DNS issue. Happens with any provider from time to time.

And what a great promo piece opportunity for that email service used by "hundreds"!

<comment><USER6> Hundreds of _Comcast users_ , to be clear. And that's just the article's random number, I doubt there's anything backing it up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> So, Comcast almost certainly didn't block tutanota. This looks like a regular DNS fuckup.

As you'd expect from zdnet, the writing is fascinatingly bad:

>But it's troubling, just a few months after the net neutrality rules were repealed, to see internet providers with arbitrary control over what customers can see and access

 _Truly shocking_ that internet providers are technically able to limit what their customers can access.

</comment><comment><USER8> Riddle me this:

How can you tell the difference between the government asking Comcast to block a certain site for a few days, and Comcast's normal level of service?

Without more evidence, you can't.

<comment><USER9> Occam's razor proves useful here. A more common and likely scenario is a glitch not malicious intent. Until evidence of such intent is brought to light there is very little reason to assume it exists.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't know why Comcast would do this, it doesn't seem like it would be in their best interest to block an email service. Yes I know they have their own email service, but they also don't block other competitors, like hulu. My guess is they had a request to do so from the government and may have a gag order.

<comment><USER11> Comcast owns 30% of Hulu through NBCUniversal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulu)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hanlons Razor seems apropos here.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."

Also, DNS does weird things sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER12> or why ISP competition matters

</comment><comment><USER13> It's not the internet if they don't deliver you the internet.

</comment><comment><USER14> There's an old saying: in any headline that asks a question, if any of the words are in quotation marks then the answer to the question is "No".</comment>


The asteroid hunter who put Croatian astronomy on the map - <AUTHOR> https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.20200225a/full/ <comment><USER2> The man is a true believer. Doing everything out of passion, and paid for peanuts, about 600€ a month.</comment>


Ask HN: As a foreign remote worker, how to get US visa to work onsite? - <AUTHOR> Currently I work for an American company remotely from my home country, or while traveling elsewhere in the world. I assume that my legal status is remote contractor, and I think essentially my employer just wires me money with very minimal paperwork (if any) on their side.
Let's say my boss want me to move to the US to work onsite for a year. Which visa would be appropriate for this, and how complicated the procedure is?
I know the answer depends on my citizenship, but I want to keep it quite generic, so let's say I'm from a random 2nd or 3rd world country (Eastern Europe / Latin America / Asia). <comment><USER2> The company will hire an lawyer specialized in immigration law. H1B visa seems appropriate. The US company will file a visa petition and among a lot of other paperwork have to prove they haven't found a US resident with the same qualification for the position, e.g. by pointing to job ads they ran and counting number of applications. There is limit of number of visas granted per country, I think the total is 60.000 these days. The short answer is it's complex, expensive and waiting period is years.

> my legal status is remote contractor, and I think essentially my employer

You are your own company. The US company is your client.

<comment><USER3> Agreed. I made that transition, and the question is somewhat naive. My best answer is that the company hires an immigrating attorney firm, and they will guide you through the options that are applicable to your particular situation. Expect fees to be $10K or more.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Just give up this route. Go to Europe.

I've wasted 3 years of my life trying to move to US this way and just wasted my time. US doesn't want you. Even the likes of Google and Amazon have trouble to get foreign employees and the H1B visa sucks, your husband/wife can't work, your visa is tied to company etc.

Germany has much better laws in that regard, a market that respect workers more etc.

It took me literally 1 interview to get a job in Germany and since then I've been quite successful and happy here so far. Almost 5 years and counting. Nowadays I see the US as a declining, decadent society with very sick social issues.</comment>


Ask HN: is it possible to innovate in tech without being a tech guy?  - <AUTHOR>

Most people I met that aren't engineers only seem to think features as copycat of other products. I feel that's one of the main reason you should have a tech guy as a founder in your startup : otherwise you're only going to be a follower.
To innovate you need to see what's is possible given a set of technology before it exists. Even when I try explain things to (otherwise smart ) people they only seem to grok it when they actually see a prototype.
It seems obvious said that way, but I'm only realising this right now.
What do you think ? <comment><USER2> Yes it is. I worked for two ex-bankers who built the world's biggest fine wine exchange (liv-ex) over the past ten years. That is one of the most novel approaches I've seen using the network effects biz model!

</comment><comment><USER3> innovating is impossible without execution. execution involves many non-tech components...including hiring the right tech team (read: right guys for the right job), leading development through organized motivation, and delivering on the promises of your vision. identify your weaknesses, find partners to fill those gaps. play to your strengths. carve out time to improve performance in areas of weakness. if you fail at achieving your vision, it's easier to walk away knowing you [and your team] gave it your best.

</comment><comment><USER4> of course. But the real challenge for non-technical people, is not coming up with the innovative idea; it's figuring out a way to execute that idea. i.e. recruiting engineers, funding the development, marketing launch, etc. Navigating around obstacles is the REAL innovation</comment>


Announcing Docker Cloud: One big failure. - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@andrewmclagan/recently-docker-acquired-tutum-a-container-orchestration-platform-based-around-the-docker-eco-2886740865d1#.yt2uk8vpb <comment><USER2> > Our team assumed that upon public release of the platform by Docker it would > be production ready. To that end we spent considerable time, resources and > finance integrating it into the workflow of a large project we are > undertaking.

So yes, basing your production build around something that is completely untested and untestable does carry some risk. Imagine that.</comment>


Elevator Saga: The Elevator Programming Game - <AUTHOR> https://play.elevatorsaga.com/ <comment><USER2> This is a great example of teaching coding by making a game out of it. I think maybe a hint function might improve the over all experience but still very nice....

I would like to suggest a traffic light control game with pedestrian and vehicle calls for the next game, avoiding grid lock between multiple intersections is a problem that still plagues traffic engineering departments, especially with pedestrians as people do weird things like go halfway across the road then turn around and walk back. Railways and emergency vehicles also cause troubles.</comment>


Hey, Alexa: Stop Recording Me - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/05/06/alexa-has-been-eavesdropping-you-this-whole-time/ <comment><USER2> You know... that's the purpose of the device right? You bought it, and put it in your home. Don't blame the device, blame yourself for installing it.</comment>


Old Square Discovers Psychedelic Valley - <AUTHOR> https://mondaynote.com/old-square-discovers-psychedelic-valley-e38d1ef5bc0f <comment><USER2> I keep reading/hearing about the relationship between psychedelics and Silicon Valley, but I have yet to meet that many people in real life who work in the SV software industry and use psychedelics.

I'm a SWE who has spent over a decade at various large companies in SV.

I know one fellow SWE who has used it at Burning Man.

Several other SWEs gave me a neutral or negative reaction when I mentioned using psychedelics.

If there is a side of Silicon Valley that involves using psychedelics to enhance your work, it's either a lot smaller than the media makes it out to be, or I'm in the wrong place.

<comment><USER3> Perhaps it's not something folks feel comfortable discussing--were these neutral or negative reactions from acquaintances and coworkers, or from close friends?

<comment><USER2> I obviously didn't flat out ask others if they had tried it. I either mentioned that I had tried it or played dumb and asked if they knew anything about e.g. microdosing, as if I had only heard of it.

Anecdotally...

1) Friend from college working in machine learning space who just moved back to SV from Asia, saying that the tech culture in Asia suffered from a lack of creativity. In the same conversation I brought up having used psilocybin and he freaked out, thinking it was going to damage my brain.

2) Another friend from college who's a hardware engineer. who found it strange that I didn't want to drink whiskey with him but regularly use psilocybin. He also warned me about brain damage.

3) Friend from work whom I knew socially. After he quit working, I chatted with him and suggested that if he wanted to try psychedelics now would be a good time, before he decides whether to go back to working. He seemed to be surprised, and just made a comment about Steve Jobs to cover up the awkwardness.

4) Another coworker I worked closely with and had a good opinion of me because of the work that I had done, who had gone to another company. I asked him if he knew anything about microdosing while having lunch and he said not to try that stuff because it would mess up my head.

5) The Burning Man guy was someone I'd worked with before. He told me about his recent BM psychedelic experience after I told him about having used ayahuasca recently.

Point is, my experience of sampling people I know in SV both socially and professionally hasn't yielded anything close to "yeah I have used psychedelics to help my work" even when I didn't ask them straight up if they had used it, and instead volunteered my own experience first.

I worked in large companies in South Bay, not SF-based startups. That probably had something to do with it. Still, all the press about SV and psychedelics gets tiring when it seems not to take into account the likely uneven distribution between South Bay vs SF and large companies vs startups.

<comment><USER4> Your problem is big asking people at big companies. Most people who do psychedelics wouldn't like to work for a big company. Also in my experience as a contractor inside many companies people who work for a long time at the same big company are unlikely to have tried anything except alcohol.

In terms of the Big 5 personality traits:

High openness -> open to new experiences -> try psychs. High openness -> need for creative expression -> small company.

Low openness -> closed to new experiences -> don't try psychs.

Low openness -> closed to new experiences -> stay in same big company

You don't need some personality model to get that though. Just to have met enough people.

<comment> saiya-jin World and people are a bit more complex than that. I am perfectly fine staying at big banking corp, and in the same time tried shrooms maybe 10x, salvia extract few times (quite similar but 10-15 minutes only), weed & hash all around the world.

Some of us get fulfillment in their lives from stuff we do outside of work (adrenaline sports, mountains, travelling in my case), and we have work just to sponsor this, and other pursuits in life. Even if its quite creative software dev work.

But overall you are maybe right, more career-oriented folks in big companies who have less open mind, like to just follow the rules from above (alcohol ok, other drugs will kill ya all) etc.

<comment><USER4> Yeah it's a model, there will be exceptions because reality is more nuanced. My problem with working for a big company despite it allowing more time for doing stuff outside of work is that I just don't connect with the people there. Because on average more people are low openness I find we don't see things the same way and don't have the same sense of humour.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> On _Crime Pays But Botany Doesn 't_ 6 months ago. [https://youtu.be/RHRgY8fZNv4](https://youtu.be/RHRgY8fZNv4)

The often dyed-black bark, overwatering, and climate of mixed-use commercial/residential developments in the Bay Area provides the perfect habitat for psilocybin mushrooms.

Happy accidents of potential supply and demand, minus DEA licenses.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just now discovered psychedlics, yet founded Be Inc. Interesting.

</comment><comment><USER7> I think there's some funny context here given his ... fraught relationship with Steve Jobs, who was — famously — a fan of LSD.

</comment><comment><USER8> In this context "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" by John Markoff is pretty much a compulsory read for it's story of how the history of the valley is rife with experimentation with psychedelics.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nobody is designing chips anymore. We're microdosing LSD and getting excited about our opinionated web frameworks. The Bay-Area-innovation knows no bounds.

See y'all at Burning Man.

<comment><USER10> Keep 6' or an Osman apart please.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/27/reg_standards_sovie...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/27/reg_standards_soviet_social_distancing_measure/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Will someone please bring this person some mushrooms?

<comment><USER6> Or, Jean-Louis could simply watch his countryman's 1973 Epic: Fantastic Planet (La Planete Sauvage).

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwrip4d1JFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwrip4d1JFc)</comment></comment>


Cloud Server Reboots - <AUTHOR> https://status.rackspace.com/

<comment><USER2> Those of you who are good at sysadminning don't need this advice, but for the fellow people who are only borderline competent in the room, pay _particular_ attention to this reboot if you recently did "apt-get update" or similar to take care of the bash problem. I've shot myself in the foot before and accepted new updates to e.g. mysql that caused the existing config file to raise a hard error on load, which was only discovered the next time the server was restarted. As you can imagine, inability to boot the database has unpleasant consequences for web apps connected to it.

<comment><USER3> Sounds like it'd be a good idea to perform a deliberate reboot during off-peak hours and preemptively fix any issues.

<comment><USER4> You would think so (and I won't say it isn't), but if you're just one guy handling a few servers for your hosted SaaS, it's easy to fall into the "don't disturb the dust" trap -- especially once you've had a routine maintenance reboot or upgrade completely bone you.

Not too long ago I had a 36-hour straight marathon sysadmin session when a routine update happened to break my particular stack without advance notice on a web server used by a bunch of customers. I think my eye still twitches when I think of it.

Usually the next thing people say is, "you should set up x, y, and z tools for better redundancy / failover / load distribution / backups / sysadmin management / etc." Again, they're not wrong, but none of those things directly makes you more money, and making time for them can be difficult, especially since so few of them can be set up as easily as they claim on the box.

<comment><USER5> Don't disturb the dust is actually a fairly good heuristic.

It sure would have helped those guys working at Chernobyl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The timing of this announcement stinks. 2130 PDT on a Friday night, long after most folks have gone home. Making it even more painful, Rackspace is providing _1 hour_ advance notification. For those of us hosted in the US, there's a rolling reboot window that starts at 0400 PDT on Sunday morning. So, if you're a Rackspace customer and care that your app shuts down cleanly and restarts properly, you get to wake up at 0400 PDT and check your email and stay near your laptop and internet at least once an hour, every hour, until (potentially) 0400 PDT on Monday morning. Hooray, my Sunday plans are fucked!

They suggest taking backups/snapshots of your instances before the reboot window. Given the throughput required to push multi-hundred GB images from public cloud servers to Cloud Files for storage, I am willing to bet that the backup network is maxed out and will stay maxed out until the outage.

I wonder if Rackspace found out about the rumored Xen exploit from the same people that told Amazon, or if Amazon told Rackspace but waited a little bit to make it more painful for Rackspace's customers...

<comment><USER7> Sorry but in this case your application should have been tested to withstand all possible failure scenarios and restart scenarios so I have little sympathy. It genuinely sounds like you don't trust it to come back up which is not something I could sleep on. Things fail, sometimes violently.

Even with our company which has in in-house ops team and our own colocated kit, we expect process failures and restarts and plan accordingly. No sleep is lost even when something explodes at 2AM (other than for the ops team, who in this case you contracted out).

<comment><USER8> You're missing his point, and it's condescending/naive of you to assume that his app hasn't been tested to withstand it with no information to tell you that. My app has been thoroughly tested to withstand reboots; however, I have 22 machines with rackspace and (a) I've never tested all 22 going down at random times, and (b) I STILL want to be awake in case anything happens unexpectedly. The pain here is the timing and announcement window for those of us who want to monitor their machines for problems.

<comment><USER7> Well when you contract out your infrastructure that really should be part of your DR plan. Analysing failure conditions is really priority one when you put your stuff on someone else's turf as you have little control over this, despite contracts etc. You did do a DR plan right and did check your contract with RackSpace?

I want to be woken up if something doesn't come back, not if it does or even if it has gone into limp mode.

Seriously you're looking at the wrong end of the problem.

<comment><USER9> Jesus christ dude, we get it, you're a perfect sysadmin who has clearly covered _all_ possible bases.

But others are not like you. Systems are not always 100% foolproof, people don't have comprehensive DR plans.

Is it _that_ hard for you to understand why someone may want to be up when there is a reboot? Like seriously?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> And this is why live migrations (VMware vMotion, but also done by Google Compute Engine) are so awesome. Migrate VMs from server X to server Y, then patch and reboot server X. No VM downtime.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, Xen supports live migration as well (at least, libvirt supports live migration of xen backends: [http://libvirt.org/migration.html](http://libvirt.org/migration.html)). I would be interested in hearing why the big providers aren't apparently using it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I envy the AWS users who enjoyed the rolling reboots (which were AZ aware!) across a small minority of the EC2 fleet. (~10%, yeah?)

At some point on Sunday, I'm going to be picking the pieces of our entire stack.

Rackspace doesn't even offer anything like availability zones.

The last major maintenance they scheduled was over the July 4th weekend -- wasn't happy with that one either.

<comment><USER13> Re: availability zones; while technically true, I'm not sure that's a fair comparison. Rackspace provides uptime guarantees for the internal network per monthly billing period, and they do actually organize the DC in cells (and yes, they do the roll-outs cell-aware). Those cells are simply not end-user visible (AFAIK).

<comment><USER14> if the "cells" aren't visible in such a way that you can distribute your application across them, it doesn't really matter that they exist.

<comment><USER13> How so? It seems like a sufficiently smart comp^H^H^H^Hservice could figure out how to distribute machines across them, even if the user doesn't know they exist.

Turns out it's a moot point anyway, because cells _are_ client-visible, and have been contributed upstream to OpenStack as a Nova extension.

<comment><USER12> It's not a moot point. Just because cell info is in Nova doesn't mean it's publicly visible.

The only way we find out about cell locality is when our account rep gives us an updated spreadsheet. We've inquired about this several times.

If you happen to actually use the Rackspace public cloud and know a specific API call we're missing, I'd love to hear it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> the Xen vulnerability must be something severe if they are all doing this. [1] [http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/](http://xenbits.xen.org/xsa/)

<comment><USER16> just imagine what all those ISPs and hosts who are not on the private list but who use Xen are thinking. They must be crapping themselves, hitting F5 on the announcements page, ready to pounce and fix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> With AWS and shell shock, it's an interesting time to have just started working for a managed hosting company, nothing like being thrown straight into the deep end of being on call!

</comment><comment><USER18> Well that is a service I won't use then.

First of all you communicate all details so I know how I will be affected. Secondly you don't shut down my service ever, for any reason, other than lack of payment.

If you can't do those things you don't get to claim to have excellent support.

<comment><USER19> I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation. It's a choice between rebooting Xen hosts or having them (and you) get owned when the exploit is made public.</comment></comment>


The Power of Oral History as Journalism - <AUTHOR> http://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/the-opposite-of-writing/ <comment><USER2> Excellent article on the oral history form of reporting and story telling. Of course every person's first person narrative contains bias, but the bias adds a richness that the journalist cannot achieve.</comment>


Fear and Greed Index - <AUTHOR> https://money.cnn.com/data/fear-and-greed/ <comment><USER2> Fear and Greed do not seem opposites so having them as opposing ends of a scale feels odd.

Is this a convention used in markets commonly?</comment>


Full Circle: SecondMarket Raises $15 Million From Former Facebooker - <AUTHOR> http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/02/secondmarket-raises-15-m-from-socialcapital/

<comment><USER2> At this period, the public markets are a scary place. Tech companies that embody the new economy and have room to grow are going to become an increasingly interesting asset class.

It is strange, however, to see the same folks who were recently selling their shares on this market now becoming its backers. SecondMarket makes the market for FB stock, which Mr. Palihapitiya may still have quite a bit of.

</comment><comment><USER3> at this point, i only trade in privately held companies. public markets are for losers.

<comment><USER4> Have you checked out <https://www.aceportal.com/> ?

You can use it to get access to private placement deals.</comment></comment>


TV Backlight Compensation - <AUTHOR> http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/tv_backlight_compensation.html <comment><USER2> Not nearly as cool, but about 12 years ago I did a poor man's idea of room correction by recording my own tone sweeps and then creating an EQ profile by hand for my ALSA soundcard via a LADSPA plugin on my HTPC. I couldn't believe the difference, especially how much quieter I could listen to the system and still hear everything. Nowadays this is of course built in to most receivers.

<comment><USER3> Any chance you have a write up on this?

<comment><USER2> Sorry for the late reply, but here is a write up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290466](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22290466)

<comment><USER3> Thanks! Great little read, thinking about trying out something similar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> First of, really cool article. I love fun hacks like this.

There's a few things I don't get. The first one is why he's using the same global scalar values for gain and offset for the entire image, instead of pixel-wise values. The pattern isn't uniform, so why is the correction?

The second is why the optimization is just randomizing new values instead of using a better algorithm like gradient decent. This kind of stochastic search seems really wasteful.

The third is why it needs to be an optimization problem at all, why not just look at the blob image? Each pixel is supposed to be white, but we see (R_max, G_max, B_max), where both G_max and B_max is < R_max, making the pixel red. So just remap the green and blue channel for each pixel to [0, R_max] instead. Then each pixel will have the same gray value of (R_max, R_max, R_max) when displaying white. This should be really straight forward in a shader.

<comment><USER5> The correction is not uniform, he passes the blob image to the shader as a texture.

<comment><USER4> Yes, ok, it's not fully uniform, but gain and offset is the same for the whole image.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Nice. Colorspace profile management across the distribution pipeline is still a disaster. It would be nice if:

0\. The full stack of end-user display down through distribution, editing, and "film" camera applies faithful color management.

1\. Every scene contained a hidden color calibration frame that was recorded on-set holding a proper calibration sheet that the end-user's display could apply dynamic color-correction to produce color calibrated to the average lighting conditions that existed on-set.

2\. The end-user can choose whether to apply just 0. or also 1.

There is another problem: in filming or editing, by applying color filter "looks" there is currently little in the way of assurances that downstream will faithfully reproduce what was intended. Colorspace profiles were and are a great advance, but they need to be measured, calibrated and validated all the way down so that they're useful.

PS: This article also reminded me of an attack that could reproduce almost an entire image from diffuse reflections of old-style scanned CRTs/TVs, e.g., that ghostly blue glow of TV watching visible from outdoors, but also that imperfect reflections of CRT computer monitors could reveal their contents.

<comment><USER7> Did the diffuse reflection reconstruction rely on high speed photography? Or a special geometric setup of the reflector? Trying to think of how this could work.

<comment><USER8> It sounds like "Dual Photography".

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1186822.1073257](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/1186822.1073257)

"We present a novel photographic technique called dual photography, which exploits Helmholtz reciprocity to interchange the lights and cameras in a scene. With a video projector providing structured illumination, reciprocity permits us to generate pictures from the viewpoint of the projector, even though no camera was present at that location."

I recommend watchign the video from the paper for good explains and demonstrates the technique. It's very impressive work.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5_tpq5ejFQ)

<comment><USER9> Ok that trick with the playing card was cool. I'm impressed by the math that is behind this concept and all I could think about while watching it is every cheesy crime show calling out "enhance"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> BTW, I doubt very much that what you are seeing here is backlight uniformity problems. This is actually an issue with the LCD element, the liquid crystal itself, and, possibly, to some extent, the optics. We used to manufacture advanced displays where uniformity and color accuracy was super important (think being able to identify healthy vs. cancerous tissue during endoscopic surgery).

As incredible as LCD manufacturing is, the eye is amazing at being able to pick-out differences under the right conditions. All kinds of corrective work had to be applied to the displays in order to achieve uniform, repeatable and reliable color and image rendering performance.

</comment><comment><USER11> Love that idea of just photoshopping for the ideal ground truth.

Instead of white target, could even map a desired digital video file into the ideal target. For more general distortions you could obviate the 'blob' image and instead just optimize a gain and offset for every pixel independently. Seems ambitiously high dimensional but I was able to get this kind of thing to work effectively using SPSA ( [https://www.jhuapl.edu/SPSA/](https://www.jhuapl.edu/SPSA/) ). Also basically the algorithm of evolutionary strategies in AI: [https://openai.com/blog/evolution- strategies/](https://openai.com/blog/evolution-strategies/)

</comment><comment><USER12> I've always assumed that LED backlight TVs have this kind of correction built in and must be calibrated at the factory with a similar jig (calibrated camera looks at screen, screen shows sweeps through black->(red|green|blue), inverse mapping is recorded to correct colour and intensity).

Nice hack to do it with a webcam. :)

<comment><USER13> OLED phones, TVs, and other OLED products do this kind of uniformity correction with factory calibration. On some, the calibration data is stored on Flash or EEPROM on the panel itself and applied in the Display Driver IC. In others its stored and applied at system level by a Display Controller or SoC. I'm aware of some LCD-based products that do this as well, but I'm not sure if TVs are among them. It's a great way to improve uniformity though, and almost always cheaper than tightening manufacturing tolerances (i.e. decreasing yield).

<comment><USER14> Exactly right. Apple does this for every LCD. In the LED display industry calibration can be per LED, per PCB, per module, or per display. Some of them store the calibration data on each individual LED PCB, and some store it in the send box (Brompton).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me that you should frequently calibrate your display's color profile if you ever work with photos or video. There are commercial products that help you do this essentially by the process that the OP uses. They don't do a whole screen, just a section of it. And it seems that the new MacBooks have some kind of calibration thing that responds to ambient light. But it would be nice to be able to do this as a standard thing on all displays.

<comment><USER16> This never made sense to me in the LCD era, and I suspect it's a rule-of-thumb that has been inherited from older CRT technology.

CRTs use distinct phosphors for each color, which slowly fade over time, and at different rates.

LCDs typically use color filters, which in most cases tend not to fade. In fact, most LCDs are so consistent that you can use the calibration done by someone else with the same panel model and use it yourself just fine. (The rare exception to this would be LCDs exposed to _direct_ sunlight. Strong UV light can make just about anything fade)

OLEDs fade, much like CRTs, but are very rarely used as PC monitors.

This is why it annoys me that LCD panels don't simply report their ICC profile to the operating system. It would be 99% accurate 99% of the time. This is a vast improvement over the current status quo, where color reproduction outside of premium televisions is basically random.

<comment><USER17> My experience here is that the OSes are the problem. They provide an API that looks like "please display the following (r, g, b) tuple". Unfortunately, that isn't enough information to accurately display a color. To turn an (r, g, b) tuple into a color, you have to assign it a colorspace, and that's where everything is broken.

For example, when I last punished myself by using a better-than-sRGB monitor, I learned that browsers will properly color correct images that have a colorspace tag, but they do not do it to CSS. So if you have an image with color #abcdef and then you set a CSS color to #abcdef, they will be different colors!

Applications that want to properly display color have to hack around things. They need to ask the OS for the display's colorspace, then they have to figure out the image's color space, then compute a transformation that will yield an (r, g, b) tuple that when transformed by the OS (using the monitor's profile) will display the right color. This is horrifying but does work; so at least things like Photoshop can typically show you the right color.

It would be nice if we could use more than 24 bits for color and just stored everything as a CIExyz color. People have known that that is the right solution for decades but nothing has happened, so I'm not holding my breath. Realistically, I think we have to agree on a new set of primaries and gamma, and start assuming that a (r, g, b) tuple is in that colorspace. I guess this is what DCI-P3 is. It is the same problem all over again, but might at least get people better colors soon.

<comment><USER18> Throw "rendering intent" into the mix then it all gets pretty messy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Nice. It was a bit simpler in the CRT days. I remember my first after-school job when I was a wee teen, fixing TVs and degaussing them.

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

<comment><USER20> I miss degaussing screens. Ones with the button for that were great, and it was very satisfying to do. I don't miss the low resolution, the heat and the feeling of sunburn after looking into one for too long.

<comment><USER21> I don't know, I'm beginning to think modern LCDs are worse for the eyes because in the quest for more contrast they have become too bright to be healthy.

Maybe OLED will fix that. Whenever affordable OLED monitors show up...

<comment><USER20> I agree that screens are too bright. A part of my job is calibrating screens and the brightness they can achieve is alarming. Regulation in radiology requires a minimum luminance and the spec is vastly in excess of what I would use and far above what anyone sets when given the chance.

Wickedly high contrast ratios seem to be encouraged too and keeping the ratio down gets frowned upon. Some of the screens come out the box at close to 1000:1, which is too high but happens with a high luminance screen. The first thing I usually do with a screen I use is dim it, and I long for iPad and iPhone screens that are dimmer. The lowest settings are too high.

<comment><USER21> High contrast is good; problem is on lcd displays you can only achieve it by having high brightness overall, because black isn't really black.

On CRTs you could set a black background, turn your brightness way down and happily code with enough contrast. Even with black on white text you could turn the brightness down somewhat because the black was... black.

Hopefully when OLED becomes usable for something between wall sized TVs and watches, this problem will be gone because there is no backlight so black is again black.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Bonus points if you put this on an FPGA that decodes, modifies, and re-encodes HDMI.

</comment><comment><USER23> Do you want MCAS?! Because that's how you get MCAS!

EE in me died a little reading this, while programmer loved the hack :). Personally I would just replace the backlight, discoloration is most likely sign of impending failure anyway. Btw we already do something similar to a lot of electronics by design. For example camera sensors have defect lists, pristine ones are extremely expensive, think highend microscopes and satellites.

</comment><comment><USER24> Oof this is a very interesting and underexplored topic. I haven't heard of calibrating display uniformity before. I hope something like this becomes integrated into OS level caibration at some point.

</comment><comment><USER25> Curious about using three picture average and then gaussian blur to reduce moiré effect as the author did in third picture. It clearly worked, but i'm not sure how?

<comment><USER26> I suspect he moved the camera slightly in between taking pictures, this would create different patterns which then reduces the amplitude of the distortion when you average these different patterns

<comment><USER25> Makes sense, thanks! I just tried doing it in photoshop and observed that to remove moiré grid with single picture i'd need much higher blur radius -- not ideal for a ground truth image. (Note that its a far reaching guess).

I'm gonna add it to my fictional image analysis toolkit for next time when i'll need it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like you made this correction in sRGB space rather than physical (un gamma corrected) colorspace, which is unlikely to be correct...

<comment><USER18> Per-channel gain settings remain correct as long as the full workflow was in sRGB and you approximate sRGB with c^2.2 (where c is the channel value). Most other arithmetic is horribly incorrect in sRGB, I agree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> In LED jumbotrons sometimes you see a bad pixel or group. I always thought they should come with feedback cameras that could detect and correct for the bad pixels the sane way the author is doing.

Free idea, go do it!

</comment><comment><USER29> This is awesome (both the idea and the writeup) but I missed the bit about object recognition? It must have been necessary to detect and extract the rectangle representing the TV screen from the captured webcam image (even if the framing/positioning of the webcam were perfect, most webcams are 4:3 aspect ratio), but was a skew transformed performed to correct for any perspective issues? Assuming such a transform were written, wouldn't it have been trivial to throw up a white sheet of paper next to the tv and have that represent your neutral as a white point reference?

<comment><USER30> He showed how he did this. He said he took an image with the camera, and edited the tv to be perfectly white and used that as the target: "After some fruitless attempts at simple image statistics, I realized it's possible to edit a camera picture by hand and use that as a ground truth."

<comment><USER31> This is true. So the answer is that there was no object recognition since it wasn't necessary.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This is really cool, nifty hack - kudos!

</comment><comment> 1970-01-01 What make and model TV?

<comment><USER12> Make: Panasonic

Model: Clunker :P

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Superb

</comment><comment><USER34> This is quite the technical accomplishment but I can't stop feeling like buying a new TV would have cost less than the value of the time spent on this impressive solution.

<comment><USER35> This makes sense if this was an office, and the TV was linked to productivity and lost revenue. For a curiosity project, the value of the time spent experimenting, learning and documenting for and teaching us is priceless.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Statsify – Visualize Interesting Stats about a Web Page or Website - <AUTHOR> https://www.statsify.us <comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN!

I'm Alan, a high school tech enthusiast here with my first-ever product "launch." I created Statsify as a fun tool to learn more about the sites that I visit, and I thought that some of you might find it interesting as well.

I'm open to any questions or feedback that you all might have. Thanks!</comment>


Facebook promised to fix political ads on its platform. It hasn't - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/01/tech/facebook-election-ad-problems/index.html <comment><USER2> In 2014 there was a mini scandal in Sweden about Facebook allowing a page titled "Vitmakt neger slakt" (roughly translating to "White power nigger slaughter") dedicated to what you expect a page with that name, with absolutely no irony attached, be dedicated to stay up despite multiple reports of hate speech [1]. A spokesperson from Facebook Sweden had to explain himself and he said that the reports were sent to a team in Dublin to be reviewed. When asked if the page was viewed by any Facebook staff who can read Swedish at any time during the review process, since it is clearly hate speech to anyone with half a brain, he couldn't say. The page was taken down a few hours after media ran the story.

I have a hard time feeling sorry for Facebook about all this work they have to do now to make sure the political discourse on their platform isn't bonkers. They're killing off a lot of media companies and now they're shocked, _shocked_ , that all those ethical demands people made to the media industry is being directed at Facebook instead. What the hell did they expect?

[1][https://www.metro.se/artikel/facebook-plockar-inte-ner- neger...](https://www.metro.se/artikel/facebook-plockar-inte-ner-negerslakt- sida-trots-anm%C3%A4lningar-xr)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wouldn't expect them to fix anything. When you have the ethics of a company like Facebook it's much easier to claim you're going to fix something and then keep doing it. You can't cut off the money faucet if that's all you care about, especially when you know you're not actually going to get in trouble for it.

<comment><USER4> Exactly. The past couple years have been an exercise in the inadequacies of the honor system. There are no consequences; we can't expect either industry or government entities to self-regulate out of basic human decency. Their efforts to fix the problem amount to nothing more than a cynical PR move. They halfheartedly assuage doubts until the news cycle shifts again. There are no consequences for anyone.

<comment><USER5> I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates. There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

The media just wants to spin the story so people will stop looking at FB and Google for news and pay their subscription fees.

<comment><USER6> > I guess you haven't heard about the fees and penalties levied against > companies who fail to conform to FTC regulations and government mandates. > There's plenty of regulation. It's simply a hard problem to solve.

I've heard plenty about them. The fees and penalties are often so small compared to the revenues of the companies they're levied against that they seem more like a cost of doing business than a punishment that could actually change behavior.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can't they just make money while selling 0 political ad space? The whackamole infrastructure and the toll it takes on literally everyone and everything involved has got to be worse then not selling political adspace at all. Imagine a Facebook where you didn't have to feel rage at your stupid uncle sharing some dumb, over-simplified text graphic. Might actually be a net positive.

<comment><USER5> Facebook is a platform where you can promote your business or political agenda and still reach a large amount of people regardless of your budget. The media doesn't cover all of the good that digital advertising does for people who are trying to make a difference and wouldn't be able to afford an ad in a major news paper.

<comment><USER8> The person you are responding to was talking specifically about political advertising. Your response is defending all advertising?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> As somebody who left Facebook several months ago and has been skeptical about its public utility for longer, I honestly wonder if this problem is simply too large.

Even if they have some super duper fake news detection mechanism, surely it will generate false positives due to the sheer volume of political ads?

CNN is claiming neglect. They are probably right. But I think FB is overwhelmed too. Especially now that they have news vultures like Vice dunking on them post-Cambridge Analytica.

<comment><USER10> >I think FB is overwhelmed

Then perhaps they should stay out of political advertising.

<comment><USER9> I agree.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Until these corporations are properly held accountable we can expect the same old.

</comment><comment><USER12> It is indeed a hard problem to solve.

I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well. Who knows if every single ads on their site is not problematic, or if their reporters are not secretly sponsored by problematic sources

<comment><USER13> _I guess more traditional news media are not free of such problem as well._

Traditional media is more hands-on and face-to-face. There are salespeople involved, and better money trails. This is largely because the salespeople get a cut of the money spent.

Since Facebook decided to cut the salespeople out and automate the ad buying process, there are no gatekeepers. There is no salesperson wondering why an ad buy for a local congressional race is paid for with a check from a Russian bank.

Facebook and others are trying to build makeshift gatekeepers through AI. But AI, while very interesting, is still not up to the task.

<comment><USER5> The traditional media also pumps out loads of fake news, FUDs, and Ads by super-pacs. The only thing the traditional media isn't doing is selling enough ads to have a world scale impact, because they're a dying form of media compared to social networking and the search.

When I'm on twitter I see a nice mix of utter crap and useful information. When I read the NYT it's just a carefully curated selection of total crap.

<comment><USER13> _When I read the NYT it 's just a carefully curated selection of total crap._

Based on that statement, I have to believe that you don't actually read the New York Times. You read a very small subset of NYT articles, probably online, that appeal to your anger response.

If you actually read the entirety of the New York Times, you'd feel differently. Or at least foolish for making such a sweeping statement.

<comment><USER12> I think it's equally problematic if you simply trust everything you read on New York Times (or any other media)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Expecting a company to self-regulate itself to stop a certain sub-population of potential customers from buying its services is, not surprisingly, ineffective.

<comment><USER5> It's not self regulation. You're misinformed. There are millions to billions in penalties that the FTC and other agencies can give out to organizations for all sorts of crap.

<comment><USER15> > billions in penalties

And yet, Facebook is still solvent, because surprise, surprise, the non-self regulation isn't happening.

Self regulation is all that's left, and it is, not surprisingly, ineffective.</comment></comment></comment>


Restoring YC's Xerox Alto, Day 6: Fixed a chip, data read from disk - <AUTHOR> http://www.righto.com/2016/09/restoring-ycombinators-xerox-alto-day-6.html <comment><USER2> So impressed with the progress.

When I was a lad I spent 2 and a half days without sleep debugging an intermittent logic problem in an IBM 3033, a machine the size of a room with massive looms of trilead cables running between the frames. I remember the terror of having to do some bodgy fix like the one described when the guys file the notch out of the extender card, while an angry data processing manager a few decades my senior cursed and glowered behind me and the bank's check processing center stood idle. Perhaps the scariest experience of my life.

Hats off to anyone who fixes old computer hardware.

<comment><USER3> Seems to me that these times its worse.

With hardware you have a known good state to test against.

<comment><USER2> I prefer software! With hardware you have to think about ringing circuits and intermittent faults that you eventually find are due to the cleaner bringing in a vacuum cleaner with bad motor brushes that injects electrical noise into the mains. Most software bugs are nothing compared to tracking down that sort of thing.

<comment><USER4> It's not black magic; systematic troubleshooting is the key to either environment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I just wanted to say thanks for the work that has gone into, not only the restoration process, but the videos and accompanying articles as well. Computer history has always been a favorite topic of mine. I was only 7 when my father gave me my first computer (an IBM 5150), so there is a lot that I simply wasn't around to experience. These videos and articles give me a taste of that. Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is looking good. Disk returns data, CRT lights up, CPU almost working. It's good to hear that data is coming in from the disk. Looks like they won't have to build something to emulate the disk drive.

</comment><comment><USER7> I really enjoy these. Having brought a number of MicroVAXen back to operating condition it is really fun to have such a complex system suddenly back in operation. Understanding a problem at the chip level is so much more satisfying than saying "well I swapped this board and it works now."

</comment><comment><USER8> Wow, seriously impressed by the regular progress on each step. Great "documentary".

</comment><comment><USER9> Maybe a dumb question, but why dead-bug the existing 7414 instead of dropping in a new one?

<comment><USER10> We didn't have a new 7414 handy, so we hacked the old one. We'll replace the chip with a new one next session.

<comment><USER11> That was a particularly nice little angle, I felt .. when I showed my kids this video, I had to explain how the chip contained multiple gates, and it was likely that one of them was borked, so you hacked over some wires to use one of the other gates - and my kids tuned into this right away .. "you mean that not all the features of these chips are used in the original?" .. typical engineering lesson, in a few seconds of video. :)

<comment><USER3> That's why Woz's boards were so crazy, he found ways to make use of every last gate and such on each chip he put in.

<comment><USER12> Fascinating thing I saw recently in social media, though I don't have a URL: Woz woke up one night in 2014 with the thought of a way to knock a chip off the Apple II's design. I haven't looked at the details but of course this was very endearing to me, the pure love for that design that Woz has always felt.

[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.apple2/iiLg...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.sys.apple2/iiLgD-7INtE%5B1-25%5D)

<comment><USER11> Thanks for that, great read. . .

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Thank you for this series! Its a real education and fun walk back in time to see how the Alto was made and how it operates.

</comment><comment><USER14> Since it wasn't mentioned in this update, I assume the memory parity problem from last week remains?

<comment><USER10> Near the end I mention that the parity errors from last week have disappeared. There's no obvious reason for them to go away, but memory appears to be working okay now.

<comment><USER14> Oh, I missed that sentence, thanks! Since it was such a big part of last week's debug, I thought there'd be more followup coverage.

<comment><USER15> Problems which go away alone tend to come back alone, so maybe a followup comes next week :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I watch these videos all the time on YouTube. Thanks for documenting the work!!

</comment><comment><USER17> Why not proactively check all the chips to make sure all gates are working on each chip, rather than try to debug when something breaks?

<comment><USER10> Checking all the chips would be very, very time consuming. Not to mention we'd need to build some sort of test setup for each chip. It's more likely we'd cause a problem (e.g. bend a pin) than fix a problem.

<comment><USER17> But wouldn't it be fun to build a raspberry pi based chip tester!

<comment><USER18> We used to have an old EPROM (the UV-erasable kind) programmer in the lab. I remember it also had a mode for testing 74xx series logic. I don't think it was ever used in that capacity though.

<comment><USER19> I actually watched a YouTube video the other day where someone used a similar programmer to test all the logic chips in his ZX-80: [https://youtu.be/qqUxXrh_xgM](https://youtu.be/qqUxXrh_xgM) (Spoiler warning: it didn't find the failure.)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Serverless eBook Using Gitbook, GitHub Pages, GitHub Actions, and Calibre - <AUTHOR> https://devops.novalagung.com/en/cicd-serverless-ebook-gitbook-github-pages-actions-calibre.html <comment><USER2> You can also make a serverless ebook from any web page by clicking print to pdf

<comment><USER3> The reading experience for PDFs on most devices is really poor, and most sites aren't designed with printing in mind to begin with, making it even worse. Standard ebook formats tend to work a lot better.

This post seems specifically to be about rendering your documentation both as html and also as an ebook, which is something I can definitely get behind. The experience of having a structured ebook instead of HTML is really valuable especially when doing things like learning programming languages, where precise formatting tends to really be important for legibility. I recently encountered this when perusing Rust's online books, some of which did not seem to have ebook equivalents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is a nice tutorial, but I'm a little sour on gitbook because their project really pushes their service, that seems really expensive to me.

<comment><USER5> In case you are looking only for a web app you can check out this open source starter - [https://github.com/hasura/gatsby-gitbook- starter](https://github.com/hasura/gatsby-gitbook-starter) (Made using Gatsby and MDX).

You can write markdown with added benefits of React components and this Gatsby starter will render a GitBook theme documentation site. Self host using Docker or build the static bundle and deploy to Netlify :)

Disclaimer: I maintain this starter.

<comment><USER6> This is really nice. Great work!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It's a nice tutorial about Github action and Gitbook. But this has little to do with the Serverless. Or just "Server less".

</comment><comment><USER8> Serverless has to be the dumbest term in the tech industry.

<comment><USER9> It's not great, but I haven't heard a decent replacement yet. One that captures "you don't have to manage servers or infrastructure" in a single word.

<comment><USER10> "Stateless" is closer to the truth than "serverless".

<comment><USER9> Not really though. There is plenty of state. Configure files, databases, blob storage. These are all part of the serverless ecosystem.

<comment><USER10> There are plenty of servers as well!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> No writeup, but have published a 'serverless' Kindle dictionary using a similar method. This is for reading the Game of Thrones books to improve the x-ray feature. Instead of Gitbook it's just a Jekyll site with some Liquid templates to generate the files needed for Amazon's kindlegen program. Builds happen in Travis and it's hosted on Pages.

\- [https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict](https://github.com/wjdp/gotdict) \- [https://gotdict.wjdp.uk/](https://gotdict.wjdp.uk/)

</comment><comment><USER12> Isn't a serverless ebook just an ebook?

<comment><USER13> Nooo, because the server would be your reader! What kind of primitive stack are you promoting?

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How do I have Serverful eBook?

<comment><USER15> O'Reilly subscription, probably?

Turn the book into HTML, serve the HTML on demand and BAM, Book as a Service!

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> how in the world is this serverless?

<comment><USER17> It's not your server.

<comment><USER18> "Serverless" is the new "Cloud"

<comment><USER19> and "Cloud" is the new "Web"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> That's a cool website. Book != [website, file, blog] though.

<comment> crooked-v > and it will not deploy only the web version, but the ebook files as well (in > .pdf, .epub, and .mobi format).

<comment><USER20> i know. that is great! but all of those options are file formats. books != files. books are cool, files are ugly. which is also why 99 of 100 people still prefer to buy the dead tree books over tech jazz called files.

<comment><USER21> What a weird hill to die on. Books are long written compositions, their format (whether it's on dead trees, computer, or spoken out) is completely irrelevant.

<comment><USER20> it always sounds weird until it isn't. the container is the most important characteristics of a book. to pass it off as irrelevant is not only intellectually dishonest but also just plain wrong.

<comment><USER22> No, it's not. Some of the oldest books are written on bamboo stripes, and others on clay tablets.

<comment><USER20> > Some of the oldest books are written on bamboo stripes, and others on clay > tablets.

exactly. there used to be physical scrolls too before the romans invented the paginated codex. all of those older tech died later because it was hard to beat direct access, referential accessibility and format-ability of the modern physical codex book. our current tech emulates the physical scroll too and is therefore not able to compete with dead tree books.

<comment><USER23> Merriam Webster:

      book noun
      \ ˈbu̇k  \

      Definition of book (Entry 1 of 3)
      1a: a set of written sheets of skin or paper or tablets of wood or ivory
      b: a set of written, printed, or blank sheets bound together between a front and back cover
      an address book
      c: a long written or printed literary composition
      reading a good book
      reference books
      hardcover and paperback books
      d: a major division of a treatise or literary work
      the books of the Bible
      eaccounting : a record of a business's financial transactions or financial condition —often used in plural
      the books show a profit
      f: MAGAZINE sense 1a
      g: E-BOOK

      [...]

Cambridge Dictionary:

      book
      noun
      UK  /bʊk/ US  /bʊk/

      A1 [ C ]
      a written text that can be published in printed or electronic form:

      [...]

You're entitled to have your own rigid definition if you wish, but it's pretty silly to go in a public forum and try to browbeat others with it.

<comment><USER24> I would say he is not entitled to any such thing, as he doesn't own the language.

<comment><USER20> Ah, the overflowing privilege of handing out entitlements? Your brethren doesn't own the language either, you know that right?

<comment><USER25> The situation is in no way symmetric, as only one party is claiming a non- standard limitation on valid uses of the language. The other parties are claiming both a standard and more permissive use.

<comment><USER20> This is a classic flat earth argument.

'Because people are saying so...'

Proper definition is the only definition that there is. Improper definitions may be valid uses in colloquial speak, but that doesn't work for accurate description of products at hand. Success of physical books, as in the data, is a proof of proper usage. I rest my case. Time to go back to work.

Edit: Response to the child comment below:

You're going in the wrong direction.

That 'books are not files' is a plain fact. It has nothing to do with popular opinion or liberal usage of words. Although, if you were to look at it liberally through the lens of popular usage alone then also the usage and growth of dead tree books over the shallow market of files masquerading as ebooks will reveal the same plain fact.

<comment><USER25> > _This is a classic flat earth argument. 'Because people are saying so...'_

No. Again you reason by false equivalence. The shape of the earth is not determined by popular opinion. The meaning of words is determined by popular usage.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


A list of everything that goes in the head of your document - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/joshbuchea/HEAD <comment><USER2> Solid list. Operating several sites today, modern search engines do not require keywords or description tags for content to be effective. So if you operate a blog, or custom site don't put much effort or time into it. If you are looking to cut down on dev time in real world sites, the most important thing are [1] title, [2] http-equiv, [3] charset, [4] canonical, and [5] viewport. Those first 3 will be sufficient for most purposes, i.e., MVP websites.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slightly off topic, is there really any practical reason to setting the DOCTYPE and all that? I just write  and get going. I know supposedly browsers will switch modes and stuff, but is it really important to set the mode if I don't even know what mode I would want?

<comment><USER4> It's mostly for two reasons:

1\. Old browsers. Some browsers had two modes, 'standards mode' and 'quirks mode'. The former had pages render as close to the spec as they could get it, the latter had them render in a way that let deprecated markup or browser specific hacks keep working. Some made it even more confusing with what the Wikipedia article calls 'amost standards mode', which mostly followed standards except for one specific quirk in regards to images inside table cells.

Doctypes had the browser switch between these modes, and lacking one often had it fall back to 'quirks mode' in old browsers.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Quirks_Mode_and_Sta...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Quirks_Mode_and_Standards_Mode)

2\. For markup validators to figure out what spec to validate the document against.

Edit: So yeah, important if you want your page to render half decently in old browsers or you're validating your HTML in some online tool.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I must say this is quick guide and really useful</comment>


Education vs. work skills: what do employers really want? - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/02/education-vs-work-skills-what-do-employers-really-want/?utm_content=bufferdf7ac&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer <comment><USER2> > He called that "problem number one" in the disconnect between academia and > the working world.

No. The problem number one is the disconnect between what the working world _wants_ and what academia was _deisgned for_ , what was _suited for_ , and what _should be doing_ , all at once. Academia should not produce manufacture- skilled workers. Manufactures (now called "the industry") should teach the students how to work, as they have the skills, the environment, and the projects that show how one should work in the industry.

Academia uses half-a-year semesters, which is too short to see any of the long-term effects the IT industry experiences. On the other hand, the semesters are totally adequate to teach plenty of fields today's graduates haven't ever seen, but which would broaden the graduates' minds.

If IT companies want to see any skilled workers, they should invest in training them themselves.</comment>


OK Bye – Co-live large in exchange for 3hrs/day agency work - <AUTHOR> https://no-lick.com/okbye/?ref=ih <comment><AUTHOR> The story: I'm a remote dev, it took me a while to get where I am now, working for fun brands on challenging projects, while also working on my own side- projects.

A while ago I watched a James Bond movie, and thought "I want to have access to that kind of luxury, but would be embarrassed to keep it to myself". I came up with the idea to set up a network of talented devs + designers, and to give them access to perk-filled mansions all over the globe, in return for a few hours of fun agency work a day. The idea would be to live a stress-free life, since running a start-up is stressful enough by itself.

I personally love the idea of having a few bases in this world, always surrounding myself with talent.

A few weeks ago I got a fun job in for Red Bull Music Academy, and was wondering if I could shape this into a try-out for the idea. Red Bull gave me permission to post this here, and are excited about it.

I'd love to hear what you guys think + I'd love to involve people I haven't worked with before. What would it take to make this project interesting for you as a potential member?</comment>


PayPal Starts Banning VPN and SmartDNS Services - <AUTHOR> https://torrentfreak.com/paypal-starts-banning-vpn-and-smartdns-services-160205/ <comment><USER2> "PayPal informs the affected business(es) that their accounts have been permanently limited and that this decision can't be appealed."

This is the scary thing about some of the services that we rely on: they can ban you for no reason and there is no appeal.

Amazon does this too. I had $10,000 in sales when they banned my account 5 years ago. No appeals, automatic replies, and no phone number or support line.

I was making Amazon thousands of dollars/month in marketplace fees and they perma-banned me and destroyed my business in an instant.

Before this happened, I noticed that Amazon was using my sales analytics to compete and undercut any of my most profitable products.

I never found out why I was banned. I had 100% feedback, fulfilled all returns quickly, and always answered customer questions.

The basic customer support I was able to contact told me that my banning was proprietary in nature and they couldn't disclose any information about it and that any future messages related to this banning would be ignored/trashed.

My money was held for 120 days. This should be illegal.

<comment><USER3> The length of time the money was held could have been to make sure the payments didn't receive chargebacks that Amazon would later have to foot the bill for. Pure speculation but it's something to consider. Even if you had never received a chargeback on an order that would likely be the standard policy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Run your own VPN in your favorite cloud provider. This is an "oldie but goodie" [http://envyandroid.com/setup-free-private-vpn-on-amazon- ec2/](http://envyandroid.com/setup-free-private-vpn-on-amazon-ec2/)</comment>


Intro Etiquette - <AUTHOR> http://startupped.me/post/79221210061/you-suck-at-intro-etiquette <comment><USER3> same comment I left on the post:

This is missing a HUGE aspect of intro etiquette - DOUBLE OPT-IN, almost all the time (and if you aren't sure, then it's ALL the time). If you want your contacts to be worth something, be respectful of them.

Here's my "workflow"

1\. Intro request comes from Bob who wants to meet Jim

2\. I review Bob's email, make sure it's short and to the point, and includes WHY it's a request. If I don't think it hits the money, send feedback and recommend edits to Bob. Wait for acceptable email - which must be its own, NEW & clean email. [edited for clarity: i inform Bob that I will send him whatever he writes to Jim, thus allowing him to position himself/his need/the opportunity in his own words]

3\. I forward Bob's entire good email to Jim, which includes _MY_ take on the matter (I think Bob's a great guy, or I am not familiar with Bob's company, but we've worked together before and he's worth meeting, or whatever).

4\. If, AND ONLY IF, I get a reply from Jim agreeing to the intro, do I continue forward. But if Jim says he doesn't want the intro, I politely decline back to Bob.

Personally, I hate it when someone dumps an intro in my lap - it just isn't courteous or respectful in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> So it's respectful to forward someone's entire email verbatim without their permission, to talk about said person behind his back, and to spread a simple email introduction over four time-consuming emails instead of two? But it's NOT respectful to just, like, quickly and painlessly introduce the people and assume if it's unwanted it will be ignored like all unwanted email?

I'm not saying your technique is definitely WRONG, but I _am_ saying you shouldn't assume it's superior.

<comment><USER3> chill - i _inform_ the person I'm introing that i will be forwarding it, they are very aware.

and no, unwanted email coming from someone i value the relationship with carries negativity and tarnishes my relationship.

<comment><USER3> when did i "judge others"? seriously? before this becomes some weird ad hominem thing, let's leave it with: go do your intros however you'd like, and good luck in life, i really don't care that much about this yet still feel i'm entitled to my opinion, thanks.

<comment><USER4> The judgy bit was "it just isn't courteous or respectful."

Of course you're entitled to your opinion, where did I say otherwise?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing missing here: Ask the "target" person before lobbing an introduction into their inbox.

Intros aren't always welcome - the target could be busy, traveling or have a conflict of interest. They may not be in a position to give that person time, however helpful they would like to be. When the supplier assumes the introduction is okay, they can put both sides of the intro in a tough spot.

<comment><USER6> I disagree with this in 9/10 cases. If you're so busy you can't take 15 minutes to chat with someone who comes from outside your network, you're doing something wrong. Get over yourself, take the intro and try to be classy about it.

The 1/10 case would be intros to people who are either in a position where they likely receive dozens of emails from folks they don't know every day (e.g., VCs) or folks with enough name recognition to be in that same spot (e.g., famous people you might know).

You might jeopardize your relationship with the person in that case, but for most of your friends and pretty much anyone reading this comment, you're better off being open instead of self-important.

<comment><USER3> couldn't disagree more. introing someone without checking in is disrespectful of the other person's time. at least 9/10 times.

<comment><USER6> This perspective asks too much of everyone. If I want to make an intro to you, it's because I think it's helpful. It's the opposite of disrespect.

To then place the additional burden on me of checking in with you first is, in my mind, just cocky. Not my job to know your schedule, and how about respecting the fact that I'm trying to help?

People who insist on pre-introductions are vastly overestimating how much others should be thinking about them or "respecting their time," which is actually no one else's business. Responsible adults can handle the additional burden of someone trying to help.

<comment><USER3> OK, so I'll add some context, you tell me what you think. I have almost 20 years experience in 2 very niche fields (consumer electronics and TV technologies). As a result, I've built up a lot of domain expertise and a lot of industry contacts. Again - no judgement here on whether I'm _good_ or not, just stating some facts.

I frequently get emails from people introducing me to "Bob" who is starting a hardware startup and really wants to learn how to bring a gadget to market. For me, this is fun - I _love_ to talk about this stuff. I've mentored/nurtured/consulted for dozens of these startups, and continue to do so to this day.

BUT - I'm also running a startup and have a family at home. Which means I have much, much less time available than I used to. So every "Fun" activity I choose to take takes away from either my work time or my personal time. This is fine - as long as I can manage it. Which I do. Until requests show up uninvited. Which now puts, as I've said, a burden in my lap.

I can choose to either (A) reply and take on the intro, (B) reply and decline (as politely as I possibly can), or (C) ignore it. So I never do (C), as I feel it's rude, but I can guarantee you that every time I do (B) I create a negative perception about myself.

I don't like being put in a position where I have to tell other people - <USER2> genuinely could use my help - that I am too busy for them. But what else am I supposed to do?

Whereas when my colleague asks if I'm up for an intro, and I can say no to someone who I already have a relationship with, _and will understand me_ , is fine to me.

Maybe you think the above is wrong, but I don't...

Looking forward to your reply.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Well, I guess I have some terrible flavor of social anxiety or something, because it often takes me half an hour or more of ugh to compose even a short reply if I'm introduced to someone, so this ends up being a huge boulder in my todo list. I suppose if people take this attitude in response the situation will simply resolve itself.

<comment><USER8> I used to feel that way sometimes but I ended up fixing it by mechanizing the process to a significant extent (note: I still write each one out completely by hand without any template but I know the main points I want to hit).

Whenever an intro comes in, I divide it into one of a few buckets and immediately send a mostly rote email back quickly:

* Highly interested - schedule a F2F or phone meeting within in the next week, suggest two dates to discuss more ("Wow, that sounds cool, would love to catch up in person to discuss more, are you available X or Y? I'm based in A but willing to travel anywhere around B")

* Kinda interested, being polite - suggest a phone meeting and strongly time box it ("This sounds potentially interesting. I can do a 15 minute call at X before my next appointment)

* Non-commital - Ask for more info, put the onus on the other party. ("Hey, would love to hear more about this, can you forward me X & Y so I can get a better understanding of how I can be helpful?")

* Useless - Polite brushoff ("Hey, I took a look and I don't think I'm the right person to help you with this for X & Y reason. Maybe you could try A & B? Thanks")

I think the key was to not put so much onus on the next step. By the end of the intro, I barely have any info, my main goal is to gather more to make a decision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> 1 - Double opt-in like jtoeman says is key

2 - "but if someone I intro doesn't reply before the intro-ee does, they're going to have a hard time getting another one from me. Ever." I've _never_ heard this before, and am not even sure it's remotely reasonable.

<comment><USER10> Agreed on #2. My rule of thumb is to respond within 24 hours. If the intro-ee responds quicker, no biggie.

On the flip side, when I'm the intro-ee, I don't really care. I'm almost never the one to reply first, but if someone takes a week to respond, whatever.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> YES! A thousand times yes.

This is, far and away, the cleanest and most useful summary of what I believe to be perfect intro etiquette I've ever seen. If everyone did this, the startup world (at least) would be a much better place.

[EDIT] I do, however, agree with this: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7380538](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7380538)

</comment><comment><USER12> "Intro replies need to be timely. If you're the one being introduced, it's your job to reply, and now. If the person you're being introduced to replies first, you've lost the game."

So true. Don't half ass it. If you are being introduced to someone then most likely their time is valuable. Why would they bother with you if you don't show them you value them?

</comment><comment><USER13> Too much of intro etiquette is about personal taste, and there have been dozens of posts on this subject. Ultimately, I just with the author had led with the conclusion, which I believe is the most important part:

"Overall, just be timely, use proper grammar, and don't abuse the intro supplier's generosity and you'll be head and shoulders above the majority."

</comment><comment><USER14> I love the contrast between the super informal language of the intro and the apparently tremendous potential social cost the intro implies. It's like covering an M-16 with Hello Kitty stickers. Has anyone written a novel of manners for Silicon Valley?

</comment><comment><USER15> I agree with this post on all fronts.

What I find most interesting is that this reached the frontpage. I've never actually had people (a) not respond to intros quickly, or (b) not been appreciative.

Have you guys had issues with this?

<comment><USER16> I actually wrote this because I've given several intros in the last month where the person I introduced never replied. Then I get an email from the person I introduced them to a few days later saying "What's up with that?".

Just embarrassing.

<comment><USER17> If it's laziness on the part of the person being introduced, then it's pretty bad and you should stop doing favors for that person. However, I've had situations where the person being introduced simply didn't realize the ball was in their court. A quick message to that person should do the trick; "Hope this helps! You should follow-up with John as soon as you can."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The only thing worse than not responding is giving a weak or half-ass intro. If you're going to intro someone, give them something strong to stand on.

</comment><comment><USER19> Yeah, I never understand why it takes so long to respond to an email. Just a one line of "Hey, got this, will chat soon" would suffice.

<comment><AUTHOR> Outrageous - Someone sticks their neck out to give you an intro and you effectively lop it off when you fail to respond.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> 100% true on all fronts.</comment>