What do you think of Microsoft buying sponsored posts?   - <AUTHOR> http://www.doz.com/tech/microsoft-socialchorus-sponsored-post-techcrunch

<comment><USER2> Who are the bloggers that will let their brand destroyed by this kind of posts ?</comment>


All Cameras Are Police Cameras - <AUTHOR> http://kernelmag.dailydot.com/issue-sections/features-issue-sections/11027/london-surveillance-cameras-third-wall <comment><USER2> Extensive discussion from last month:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8582985](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8582985)

Also: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8712339](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8712339)</comment>


Ask HN: do you test your product/company names? If so, how? - <AUTHOR>

Do you test your product name or do you just go with your guts? Are you asking around to see how people react just to check it doesn't have another meaning you didn't think about?
If you do test it formally, how do you do it? Do you use techniques like discussed here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3032875 (i.e. use an ad campaign to see what converts better)?
A recent post from FogCreek (http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-agonies-of-picking-a-product-name/) was talking about how little a name matters in the end if the product is good. But when you're down to a few choices, do you have a specific way to make the cut? <comment><USER2> That FogCreek post is spot on. In the end, while a great product name can really help, a products ability to engage it's users is really what matters most.

I asked a friend of mine who is a writer how she comes up with titles for her stories & books. A lot of times they start with a working title and come up with something stronger after the story has been written. Usually something relevant to the story itself that may not have been discovered during the early mapping of the story. To quote my friend "A title doesn't create a good story, but a great story can create a great title. Just remember a great story is a great story regardless of the title."

</comment><comment><USER3> Google by any other name would still be rolling in cash. McDonalds has 10x the revenue of Burger King. The Wii was mocked and ridiculed, but has shipped 60% more units than its competition. Some name choices are problematic, but what matters is to have a "good enough" name.

Here's a good article on choosing domain names.

[http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain- na...](http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name)</comment>


Lisp OS: what has been lost: Kent Pitman - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b2c0190dc30c3e5f?hl=en <comment><USER2> _Common Lisp beat out Interlisp, and maybe for good reasons but it doesn't mean Interlisp had nothing to offer--some very good ideas got lost in the shuffle and I don't pretend that Common Lisp just obviously had a better way. Java is going to beat out Smalltalk perhaps, but that doesn't mean Java is better than Smalltalk. We owe it to the losers in these little skirmishes to make sure that, if nothing else, the good ideas are not lost along with the framework. And we do not accomplish that by defining that there was nothing lost. That's both callous to those who worked hard on these other things and short-sighted to the future, which might one day care about the things that got lost._

</comment><comment><USER3> It's all true. I used LispM's in a previous life (running the MIT EE department's computing resources in very early 80's) and there's no computing environment within an order of magnitude of the power that Genera provided.

Kind of sad, really, but I suppose it's the kind of sadness that Smalltalk mavens experience when looking at modern OO systems.

<comment><USER4> After getting started with OOP with Smalltalk and doing some stuff with Actor (a Smalltalk with ALGOL-like syntax), it took me five years to seriously read a book on C++ and another 7 to want to learn it. I only did it for the money.

And I still joke to my Java-loving friends how ST-80 made Java'09 look primitive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> In 1982 the CEO and Treasurer of my company (SAIC) bought me a Xerox 1108 - definitely a great box, especially because it was back in 1982.

Lisp purists will probably slam me for this (with adequate justification) but I prefer the modern Lisp ecosystem with:

* both free/open source and commercial Lisp environments

* free deployment using open source systems like SBCL, etc. (In ancient history, I only used my 1108 for marketing prototypes and research because there was no reasonably priced deployment strategy)

* when I do want a persistent heap setup, I use SBCL and dump new images as I work. I don't often use this mode unless I have a lot of data that I am using over a long period of time - otherwise reloading source at the beginning of each work session is OK.

* emacs + slime is a good environment

If you want image based development, I would suggest that you try Squeak Smalltalk (liberal open source license) or Cincom Smalltalk (modest cost, good support and features, and a good deployment strategy). I think that using Cincom is totally free until you start making money with it.

<comment><USER3> Except--no offense--the Xerox Lisp machine couldn't hold a candle to the MIT CADR machine and its spin-offs (Symbolics/LMI) when it came to the development environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wish someone starts selling MIT Lisp Machines built on FPGAs... They would be the ultimate übergeek gift.

If someone wants to help me around with the hardware and software, I would love to help building such an animal.

I suppose the Symbolics stuff is buried under tons of patents, IP and other legal nightmares to be rescued right now.

<comment><USER6> [http://www.unlambda.com/download/cadr/cadr_orig_verilog.tar....](http://www.unlambda.com/download/cadr/cadr_orig_verilog.tar.gz)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It was a one-true-language, one-user, no-process-isolation, whole-machine IDE pretending to be an OS. With all the implied advantages _and_ disadvantages. It would have been a nightmare on the modern internet. Root it and you could rewrite _anything_.

<comment><USER8> I don't think all these cool features _require_ the system to be "one-true- language, one-user, no-process-isolation".

Besides, when you're rooted it's game over _anyway_.

<comment><USER9> It's harder for your debug environment to take apart and show the details of every object down to the OS/hardware level if you've got security to prevent it, and harder yet if it doesn't have a _very_ good idea of the specifics of the binary representation.

We'd see this problem a lot with calling conventions (C-style vs Pascal-style vs pretty much any weird thing you found a reason to do) if our gdb-based debuggers tried harder to figure out what was going on. Luckily, they rarely really bother and are wrong constant anyway about things like optimization -- they're built to do fairly little and live in constant confusion, so we don't get that problem.

And for the record, I _like_ gdb and company. But every so often I get a wet dream about being able to have a debugger that could show me useful representations of objects and what they do. Things are better in Ruby-land, but still not actually, like, good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> It's (relatively) easy to write a GUI that puts all the information in the machine "at your finger tips".

What hard and requires GUI designers _as well as_ programmers, is writing a GUI that puts the _relevant_ information at the users finger tips in a way that's understandable, that users can easily take-in.

Relevant, relevant, relevant! Understandable, understandable, understandable!

These are just two words but implementing them is a hard, cross-discipline problem. What's telling is these consideration often don't even enter programmer's discussions about GUIs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Curiosity has the better of me: What other GUI puts all the information at your fingertips besides the one noted here?

<comment><USER11> Any modern Unix Shell -- just because they're character-addressed doesn't make them not a GUI -- they have interactive screen-level features using curses. If it wouldn't work via teletype, it's a GUI.

All of the state information is available via the filesystems (including procfs/sysfs) and environment variables -- on a modern system you don't even need to _exec_.

<comment><USER6> > Any modern Unix Shell

Can I stop a Unix kernel, view + modify the line of source corresponding _exactly_ to where it halted, and resume?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > Look, I used to literally sit around in my office at MIT years ago and fuss > at people who said Lisp Machines were everything. (I used and liked Lisp > Machines but I myself didn't think they were what they were because of the > hardware--they were what they were because of the software and the ideas > behind them.) I used to ask people "What's an impossible thing to do? I'm > looking for something to do this afternoon in Teco that people say can only > do on Lisp Machines." People said Zmail. I wrote the approximate equivalent > in Teco--filters, and all that. They wanted a filter menu. I wrote that in > Teco. They wanted mouse handling. (That was tough because PDP10's didn't > have mice, but I used my imagination a little and arranged a mouse protocol > from Lisp Machines so you could telnet to the teco-based Emacs and click on > my filter menus.) They wanted Zmail init files. I wrote a Lisp compiler in > Teco so that I could use people's Zmail init files unmodified. It was about > 20K words of Teco code, btw. Code was smaller back then... sigh.

He wrote all that in TECO? _What is wrong with this man?_

<comment><USER13> I didn't understand that part of the post, but also don't know much of the history here. Was Genera + Dynamic Windows running on these so-called "Lisp Machines", or was it in competition with the Lisp Machines?

And if Kent was such a big fan of Lisp, why was he writing "impossible do on Lisp Machines" programs in Teco? They could be written in Teco but not in Lisp?

<comment><USER14> One branch of Lisp Machines originated at the MIT: the CONS and CADR Lisp Machines. If Kent was at the MIT and was using Zmacs and ZMail, those ran on the CADR already. Lisp Machines from Symbolics, LMI and TI were later based on the hardware and software from the MIT, but they used new processors and the OS was extended. MIT stopped developing the CADR and bought the machines and software from TI and Symbolics, then.

Kent said that he implemented things in TECO that people thought were possible only on the Lisp Machine. Writing software on the Lisp Machine was usually easier than, say, in TECO.

<comment><USER13> Thanks for the reply, lispm.

> Lisp Machines from Symbolics, LMI and TI were later based on the hardware > and software from the MIT, but they used new processors and the OS was > extended.

Ok, after some more reading, I think I'm getting the picture. Genera was the OS on the Symbolics Lisp machines, and the MIT Lisp machines ran some other similar OS. Genera's roots though were in the code from MIT.

> Kent said that he implemented things in TECO that people thought were > possible only on the Lisp Machine.

Right. I don't get this. If he's a fan of Lisp machines, why bother spending time implementing solutions to tough problems in TECO instead of whatever Lisp his Lisp machines were running?

<comment><USER14> Genera was Symbolics' marketing name for their proprietary fork of the Lisp Machine OS.

TECO was THE editor for years - on PDPs. Its macros look like line noise (if you know what I mean). Emacs was 'invented' as a bunch of Editor MACroS for TECO. Now comes a new generation of machines (personal workstations). Kent was young and tried to show them that with software written TECO could do stuff like Zmacs (the first Emacs written in Lisp) or Zmail (a Zmacs-based mail- reader). TECO died anyway. The Emacs for Multics was also written in Lisp and got popular among Multics users.

TECO was available for everyone who had access to a terminal that had some connection to a PDP (or similar). The Lisp Machine OS had this $100000 hardware dongle - the Lisp Machine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> A few years ago, someone made a funny picture in response to a "which operating system are you" quiz. The image showed Sir Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi, holding a lightsaber, and the caption said something like "You are OpenGenera. Far less clumsy or random than Windows. An elegant operating system, from a more civilized age." I tried searching, but can't find this image anywhere. Anyone have a link handy?

</comment><comment><USER16> Damn, I should have thought of "diff unsaved with what is on disk" a long time ago.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was linked to from a loper-os post, and I found it interesting enough for a separate post.

</comment><comment><USER17> Someone in the thread mentions a plan that seemed inevitable at that time to convert GNU emacs to the guile flavor of scheme. Obviously that never happened. Does anybody know the story?

<comment><USER6> AFAIK RMS nixed it.

<comment><USER13> Why would he do that, given that Guile is GNU's flavor of Scheme?

<comment><USER11> Guile had a bunch of intentions towards being a language-agnostic VM, a decade before that was popular.

RMS has been deathly afraid of losing total control over developer tools -- GCC's whole architecture was purposely designed to frustrate anyone trying to write out-of-tree code that handles/produces any of its internal representations (which is why companies are pouring money into llvm/clang). Imagine the bricks he would shit if emacs was a useful target for external compilers!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Thanks to the modern web browser: we'll get a second chance at re-inventing the fundamentals. As long as a machine can run webkit, even if it has to do so inside an x86 emulator, that machine is useful for most people. The problem is that to start from scratch requires a huuuuge stack of software, but you won't be able to build at all at once. Well, now you don't necessarily have to.

</comment><comment><USER19> Heh... the title's kind of amusing. It made me wonder why Kent Pitman was lost by the Lisp OS.

</comment><comment><USER20> You have to be logged in to google groups to be able to read this.

<comment><USER21> Not exactly... _if_ you're already logged into Google, _then_ they make you re-login to Groups. If you log out of Google entirely, you can read it as an anonymous visitor. In other words: they're only bugging people with login prompts who they already know.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: I have been experimenting sleep maintenance insomnia. Any recommendations? - <AUTHOR> To give some context; I have been experiencing what I think it could be called sleep maintenance insomnia.
I exercise every day, am in a good shape, watch my diet (by trying to eat the healthiest stuff I can get my hands on), and also try to have good sleep hygiene (I tend to go to sleep everyday at 11:00 p.m.). However, I regularly (almost every day of the week) wake up like 3, 4 or 5 a.m. (it depends) and cant get back to sleep. This results on me feeling like a zombie, and being unable to get done intellectual tasks (4 months aprox. without approaching coding, the way I used to).
I can deal with the physical exhaustion, but feeling my intellectual capacity diminished is becoming frustrating (there are days I barely come up with something done!).
BTW, I have read and heard about melatonin; could anyone recommend me taking it for the sake of getting rid of this problem?
Any recommendations would be extremely appreciated. <comment><USER2> Somewhere... forgot where, I heard there exists a group of people who call them selves "Doctors", crazy right?

Apparently their in to these crazy practices that involve studying, diagnosing and treating diseases and injuries of people. So fake!

More about these crazy folks at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physician>

<comment><USER3> If your advice is "see a doctor", that's fair.

That 3-word advice isn't improved by extending it to 40-plus-words with sarcasm, condescension, and misspellings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm having this same problem as well; I'm off from work today and tomorrow in an effort to recover. I have a doctor's appointment scheduled for tomorrow, so I'll let you know what he says!

<comment><USER4> He perscribed me 1.5mg lorazepam, but I've yet to observe any physiological evidence that they didn't give me a sugar pill by mistake. Just got a new perscription for 50mg trazodone. We'll see if that fares any better.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks buddy!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Consider eating patterns: do you eat when you get up? If so, defer to the time you'd rather rise. (Also: when do you last eat before going to sleep? Can that be shifted later?)

Is there light/noise/roommate/etc. which triggers the early-wake, which you could mitigate?

Do you know if you snore or have sleep apnea? (You could go to a sleep- specialist for relevant tests, one of which is a finger-mounted blood-oxygen meter you take home.)

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle-of-the-Night_Insomnia>

</comment><comment> barry-cotter Modafinil. Much, much better than coffee. You're just awake, not wired or jittery, just awake and alert. Very little in the way of side effects, doesn't interfere with getting to sleep and no contraindications for long term use either (ttbomk).

I can personally recommend sleep sometime in the middle of the day too, a nap when you get home maybe.

Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER6> How much do you get outdoors during daylight hours?

Do you have seasonal allergies, perchance?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well... regarding this I would count 1 hour/day aprox (commute time) + 1hour/day (running). This is the minimum time I spend outdoors. No allergies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> If you are working on your own and it doesn't matter when you are awake, then only go to sleep when you are really tired.

Trying to sleep at set times can cause anxiety over sleep, which makes it harder to fall asleep.

</comment><comment><USER8> try this: <http://xkcd.com/320/> and [http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=12882](http://echochamber.me/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=12882)</comment>


Believe the Hype About India and China - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03friedman.html " If you thought the rate of change was fast thanks to the garage innovators of Silicon Valley, wait until the garages of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore get fully up to speed. I sure hope we're ready. " -- Quote from the article.<p>I sure hope this turns to reality and the tide rises the rate of innovation that has meaningful social impacts on problems like poverty and disease plaguing the developing nations. <comment><USER2> Hype aside, one of the key pieces of American technology development is a very simple one.

Bankruptcy.

The legal ability for an individual or a business to fail.

Seriously.

If I don't get buried in a mountain of business debt from a (legitimate) business failure, then I am free to try again with a different business idea or different business model, and to pivot and to hone my business skills, and to see what else might work with the customers and with the investors.

Countries and regions with punitive laws around business failures and particularly around the legal exposures and debt incurred by legitimate businesses will inherently operate at a competitive disadvantage.

Carefully balancing the societal benefits and costs of non-putative bankruptcies (and of non-putative layoffs, for that matter) is critical in encouraging new business ventures.

<comment><USER3> This is a great point. The difference in bankruptcy law between the US and e.g. France or Germany creates an incentive for US entrepreneurs to take more risk since if things don't work out (and they usually don't) they can dust themselves off and try, try again without crippling long-term debts or too much of a social stigma.

On the other hand, relaxed bankruptcy laws can be taken too far as in the housing crisis since homeowners took in huge profits by flipping houses during the housing bubble but can just walk away from their mortgages if they're underwater which means the loss is eaten by the banks/taxpayer.

<comment><USER2> It's certainly a balance.

Think too about the "crippling long-term debt" on the other side of the contract, too.

Loans are built on standard contract law. There are penalty clauses and associated costs with exiting the contract, and you (from whichever end of the deal you're on) have to expect that those exit clauses might be exercised.

When thinking about these "strategic defaults", consider the responsibilities of and the systemic risks that occur on the origination. If you're originating or are repackaging what may be questionable loans or derivatives, or are incurring excessive leverage, isn't that also a systemic risk?

It's a balance.

The folks that are severely upside-down (and staying that way) won't be consumers, they'll approach indentured status. They'll be paying for the losses they've taken by not walking away, and (given that these folks are taxpayers, and if they have any money left) in taxes, and (indirectly, economically) by not being able to buy the products and services that businesses are looking to sell (meaning a slower recovery).

If this topic is interesting, here is some "light" reading out of the University of Arizona: "Underwater and Not Walking Away: Shame, Fear and the Social Management of the Housing Crisis":

<http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1494467>

And playing devil's advocate here, if you're +not+ exercising what you're entitled to within a contract (and from either end of the deal), then what does that say about the sustainability and efficiency and equality of the business system?

And yes, this sort of legal and contractual mire can bury a country and an economy. As we're seeing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think the hype is real, at least the hype about the upcoming wave of major and disruptive technology companies based in India and China. I think American startups and established technology firms will compete effectively against these companies, but the effect on other countries with a less-established startup and technology investment culture is more worrisome.

I'm particularly referring to Canada (which I'm most familiar with since I'm Canadian). Canada continues to fall behind the US in terms of productivity and technology investment. Apart from a few of the major population centres and Kitchener-Waterloo we have little in the way of a startup culture. We do have a strong tradition of entrepreneurship but it appears to me that this is mainly focused on traditional and particularly service-based businesses.

Technology firms here will also tell you that Canadian companies are slower to adopt new technologies than companies in the US, India and China.

Countries like Canada that have let innovation stagnate because they currently enjoy a high standard of living may be in for a harsh wakeup call as Indian and Chinese companies start to really come into their own.

<comment><USER5> As a Canadian developer I agree 100% and this very thought is what keeps me up at night.

We are soft. Our duvet's are too fluffy. And we can't rely on our natural resources forever.

<comment><USER6> It's not all bad: The California proposition to legalize marijuana was defeated in yesterday's election, which should help maintain demand for BC Gold dope.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Uh, exhortations to "believe the hype", phrased in exactly those words, are usually a sign of late-stage evolution of the hype, shortly before the collapse of the hype. I remember them from the dot-com bubble, I remember them from the housing bubble...

(I believe that India and China have a relatively bright future. I do not believe in the narrative whereby the United States faces problems, because we live here and can see them, but China and India must inevitably be on a smooth trajectory upwards with no bumps, because we don't live there to see the bumps and in China's case we are probably having the bumps deliberately and systematically hidden from us. Just as Japan's inevitable triumph over the entire world turned out not to be bump-free either. In fact, doesn't anyone learn from history...?)

</comment><comment><USER8> I'm glad to see EKO (<http://eko.co.in/index.php>) making some solid progress as this post tells. It's nice they have started to make a profit.

I should tell that they have been trying this since last few years and one of the reason why the idea worked is that this startup reached out to people personally. The same is the story of Red Bus ([http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/yes-you-can-build-a-web- com...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/24/yes-you-can-build-a-web-company-in- india-here%E2%80%99s-how/)) which reached out to the bus companies.

The trend I am seeing is that IT companies in India have bigger challenge in making people adopt the technology than marketing or anything else.

<comment><USER9> <http://www.obopay.in/mobile_obopay.html> and <http://www.yesbank.in/mobilebankingpayments.htm> have a pretty straight forward solution.

<comment><USER8> It's not about better solutions. It's about getting customers by reaching out to them even if the solutions are not perfect.

There are many companies in this niche but they won't succeed until they reach out to these people who are not literate to begin with.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> You see, it's very easy to turn this story around, just alter the caption.

"It takes an American executive to disrupt cumbersome Indian banking", "With globalization, Americans go on to innovate overseas", "U.S. education is the driving force of innovation in modern India" and so on.

Note: they could probably do just fine with local education and an Indian COO. Point is you should be cautious with extrapolations from a single story.

<comment><USER11> The COO is italian, not American. They all used to work in America, that's all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> To me India seems as precarious as it is promising. Against all this entrepreneurial spirit is the possibility that northern India will drain its aquifers and its rivers dry, and that climate change will make refugees of the entire nation of Bangladesh.

</comment><comment><USER13> Yes it is an achievement. Even a beggar owns a mobile phone. As an Indian what really bothers me is, you can get free sim card but to get a decent meal you have to spend 50-90 Rs (1-2$). Again most of the worker's daily wage is (3-4 $). The food prices are keep on increasing. Are we missing something?

<comment><USER14> Just wondering, were do you live in India? A 'decent' vegetarian meal (the kind I have everyday) costs Rs 25 from a restaurant. And possibly Rs 10-15 ($0.2) if I cook myself.

<comment><USER15> His numbers are a bit on the high side (I'd probably spend that much for a meal in the food courts at some SEZ), but the basic point is valid: I believe we still see a >10% inflation rate here. For basic food commodities, the rate may be even higher.

<comment><USER16> The Times of India reported food inflation last week to be at 15%. That's clearly not sustainable as worker's wages rise significantly slower.

<comment><USER17> Not in the IT sector. For the last several years we've seen 20-30% salary increases annually. I would argue it's more due to market conditions and the hiring practices of the big consultancies than inflation, but probably a third to half of that is an inflationary response.

<comment><USER16> Sure, but the vast majority of Indians are not in the IT sector. These salary increases in IT are great for engineers, but they also work against India as an offshoring destination because of the rising costs.

<comment><USER17> Yes, exactly. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next 3-5yrs if salary inflation doesn't slow down or reverse and external investment is similarly reduced.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Besides the line regarding Mt. Everest may relate to China, the rest of the post is about India.

What is really the truth is that the wealthy nations are unheard of the situations in poorer countries. What is obvious in our community (banks, credit cards) is not at all in some areas in the world. It's rare to see the problems when the problems are not in front of us.

The good thing about cheaper technologies is that, they are more accessible, could improve the conditions of people faster and have more impact.

<comment><USER19> Mt. Everest is in Nepal, which is a country between India and China. Although IMO, it's more like India than China.

<comment><USER18> It would be a political debate whether how to account for that. To me it is too hard to say so, as the border is actually cutting the mountain in half. However technically the peak of the mountain is within the border of China.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> May I suggest reading "Fortune at The Bottom of the Pyramid" by C.K. Prahlad "

This is an excellent guide for innovation for India and much of developing world. Companies like EKO etc. have taken these lessons and are building upon those ideas.

</comment><comment><USER21> China has its own problem now. The inflation is really which drives the living cost and labor higher. Lots of companies are trying to seek cheaper labors in countries like Vietnam. But one thing is true that mobile is really big in Asia. With great infrastructure, you can have signals anywhere including in the subways which drives mobile consumption.

<comment><USER22> The company I used to work has closed their "software factory" in ShenZhen, and expand the other one they have in Manila, because of the higher cost in China.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Don't believe the hype. I sincerely hope the BRIC countries do well, but you can't assume they will grow at the same rate for the next 20 years. There are Earth shattering events every few years which could derail any of these countries. Politics, war, natural disaster, tech revolutions, etc. The US can adjust to change faster than anyone.

</comment><comment><USER9> Truth != Hope != Hype

</comment><comment><USER9> 836 million Indians survive on less than Rs. 20 (less than half-a-dollar) a day. <http://goo.gl/OUJ5F>

<comment><USER24> Is there a way to flag users?

This is the umpteenth time that this user (known) has literally copy pasted the same responses every time any article with India as a focus comes up on HN .. caste this, less than $1 that, etc etc.

Wish there was a way to ban trolls ..

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> India has a 5000 years old hidden dark side viz <http://goo.gl/K8Pg>

There are 17,000 cults aka castes in India.

They're destroying India because they literally hate each other.

To strengthen India, it is better to give autonomy to FC/BC/SC/ST/Minority regions with a single passport and currency across these regions viz <http://goo.gl/A8F6>

<comment><USER25> > They're destroying India because they literally hate each other.

I am from India, and I assure you I dont hate anyone based on their caste.

<comment><USER26> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Riots_in_India>,

This is a list of communal riots in india. Go figure who hates whom

<comment><USER9> If Caste == Religion, then there is no Hinduism.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> China prospered without India's dummy democracy and casteism.

Indians are brainwashed to believe that (voting in elections == democracy) and a solution to all problems.

<comment><USER27> You wouldn't believe it does only happen in India, would you?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> India is a dummy democracy. Only 84,000 Indians out of 1,173,108,018 have the courage to vote their conscience. <http://goo.gl/jNi1r></comment>


A Beginner's Tutorial to Robotic Process Automation - <AUTHOR> https://mailparser.io/blog/a-beginners-tutorial-to-robotic-process-automation/ <comment><USER2> > Robotic Process Automation or RPA is a software robot that emulates and > performs monotonous human tasks without manual intervention

Sounds like something we used to call a macro recorder, which I think I first encountered in Win3.1. Did I miss something...?

eg. From this (random site I just googled):

> Macro software is a tool that helps record your repetitive actions on your > computer like, mouse movements, clicks, keystrokes, etc. for playback later. > While it helps you record your basic automating tasks, it also lets you > perform a complex task like, writing your own refined macro script for > playback. [0]

[0] [https://merabheja.com/17-free-macro-recorder-tools-to- perfor...](https://merabheja.com/17-free-macro-recorder-tools-to-perform- repetitive-tasks/)

</comment><comment><USER3> RPA software isn't cheap, and from what we saw did not deliver much in the way of value that can't be solutioned with vba and selenium.

<comment><USER4> This industry feels like a giant hypescam tbh. I blame the presence of the word robotic.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Have you folks seen more RPA rollouts in production environments?</comment>


The brutal, exaggerated death of the form factor phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/24/the-exaggerated-death-of-the-form-factor/

<comment><USER2> This is pretty relevant to me because I am one of the few who loves phones with physical keyboards. Why? Because I really wanted a small computer that I could work from if I had to vs a phone. If I have to type in complex commands or do anything remotely non-textmessagey it takes forever and is riddled with errors on a non-kbd phone. If they stop making hot kbd phones with Android, I guess I'm going to the BBerry...</comment>


We're making an open-source $30 GPS/mesh radio, would like advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.meshtastic.org/ <comment><USER2> Howdy, as the founder of the Serval Mesh adhoc networking protocols and hardware, what I would look for in a new radio is: 1\. True packet radio mode, that doesn't hide the radioness of the link etc, but lets the programmer use it's strengths. 2\. UART link, ideally using 3DR/RFD900 compatible connector (then we can include it directly in our existing systems, and so can others). 3\. Field-flashable, but with robust protections on the boot loader, as it is not uncommon for a radio to be on the boot serial interface, on hardware that has only one serial port. 4\. Support 434, 868 and 905-935MHz ISM bands. 5\. Use advanced interference tolerant wave-forms, like Chirped Spread Spectrum or even something better. 6\. Fully open chipset/firmware design, so that it can be truted. Anyway, poke me at firstname.lastname@example.com if you would like to talk further about it. Paul.

<comment><USER3> Upvoted for the deep knowledge shared here- but as a consumer, I don't know enough to care anything about any of that. I think a mesh radio that keeps us all together on a hike, festival, or emergency situation sounds pretty cool, and being open and extensible makes it even better.

<comment><USER4> As a fellow consumer who doesn't have the knowledge to contribute to this space, I really wish I could offer something to help out with these efforts.

The idea of a secondary low bandwidth Internet being robust to interference from goverment and disasters? That stuff is true cyberpunk to me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi ya'll, so we've spent a few weeks making device software and an android app to convert a $30 chinese gps/radio into a long range mesh radio for hikers. It is working fairly well now (though still an alpha) and we'd love more people to try it and/or have fun coding on it.

We got about 30 users (and some devs from this hackaday article) but we'd love more users and devs to join this happy-happy project:

[https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with- off-t...](https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with-off-the- shelf-hardware/)

I'm happy to respond to any questions or comments...

<comment><USER5> What frequency band are you using? ISM is the only one that permits store-and- forward / automatic operation, as the gotenna people found.

You say a few miles per node - I am having trouble seeing how that's possible without elevating all the nodes

<comment><USER6> He's gotta be assuming the nodes have clear line of sight and fresnel zone. The maximum distance for the link budget in a perfect situation. In practice it probably cuts off at the nearest rise in the ground or depression.

But they're still cool and I still want some for non-hiking applications. With the very low power idle and low cost they could be set up with solar panels in the tops of trees or in similar high height above terrain positions.

<comment><USER7> 915 MHz goes a lot farther than 2.4 GHz.

At very low bit rates you need very little SNR.

There is probably very low noise out in hiking environments.

Yes, attenuation due to terrain is going to be a killer, but my experience with non line of sight 900 MHz links blasting through trees leads me to believe it would be workable for low bit rate data between a series of hikers along the same trail.

It is sending only location and text messages so intermittent link status or re-tries due to temporarily terrain/foliage obstructions will not cause degradation in service that you would experience trying to watch netflix over this mesh.

<comment><USER6> You're wrong. It's a mistake to treat terrain and foliage as the same thing. I have extensive experience with 3 completely different, narrowband and wideband, 902-928 MHz radio data systems as well as just playing around in the range with my software defined radios (hackrf, rtlsdr, etc).

902-928 has almost no advantage over 2.4 GHz when it comes to line of sight issues with terrain. In fact, it's more problematic due to the increased size of the fresnel zone. Sure, it does better through trees but a slight rise of ground is just as much of a problem for 915 and 2400. The freq here isn't helping much. It's the chirp and LORA modulation helping the link budget. But no line of sight is no line of sight.

<comment><USER8> This stack overflow question has some nice pictures of the LoRa "chirps". They use rising/falling frequency modulation to allow operation at startlingly low signal to noise ratios.

(Also, the hardware they're using is fairly generic, and pretty much all the vendors selling them offer them in 915/920MHz and also 868MHz and 433MHz variants. I've seen claims of over 10km range with 433MHz LoRa gear without special antennas or clear line-of-sight...)

<comment><USER9> LoRa has very peculiar modulation scheme that in the end is not CDMA-ish spread spectrum but an interesting way how to extend straight FSK into spread spectrum modulation with respectable processing gain and interference rejection.

<comment><USER8> I recall reading that part of the design was so that not only was it good at rejecting interference, but that it also caused little interference to other users of the spectrum.

If someone else's ISM radio is using a specific frequency (perhaps with CDMA or TDMA), a "chirp" that's spears over about a hundred kHz and -20db or so down in the noise is unlikely to bother them, but is quite useable/reliable for the LORA gear to detect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Really cool.

Seems like an open-source mashup of something like Lynq [https://lynqme.com/](https://lynqme.com/) \- and Gotenna [https://gotennamesh.com/](https://gotennamesh.com/)

I've never liked Gotenna's requirement to be paired with a cellphone for tracking, so I've been watching Lynq's development for a while. But, I'd much rather have an open-source solution than one that depends on the fortunes and whims of a single compnay. Particularly if there was easy-to-use commercial hardware available with the open source software.

The other downside of Lynq is that it doesn't use mesh networking, e.g., every Lynq unit can only communicate with other units it can connect to directly. That means if you have a group of 3 people all in a line, separated by 3-miles, only the person in the middle will be able to find the location of the entire group, and the people at the ends of the line would be invisible to each other.

Anyway - all that to say - I'm super-excited for your project and wish you all the best.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, that's what we thought also. Also, the phone is optional for our case (though you need it for sending texts - if you don't have one the display still shows rxed texts and headings/distance to members of the channel)

<comment><USER11> In my case, only the Heltec boards were easily available, and they lack the GPS that's in the TTgo boards. So I hope there's a way for the phone's GPS to participate!

(Or, since the esp32 has bluetooth, recognize a bluetooth GPS puck? That's extra work and they're quite rare, so maybe nah.)

Otherwise I'm totally fine soldering another GPS onto some random GPIO pins, I have a whole bag of those. I'm just not sure what it would take to get it recognized.

<comment><AUTHOR> also, adding support to dynamically probe for a GPS attached to GPIOs would be very straightforward (almost identical to the tbeam case). If you're interested in this ping us on the devchat and someone will help talk you through it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Note that there are limits to how large a mesh network can scale, it's likely to start running into problems with several hundred users. You can scale larger by limiting data to short text messages, but you'll probably never be able to handle more than 10,000 users, unless you can find a way to create high bandwidth backbone links between clusters of users. There has been a lot of research on this in the wireless sensor network research community and in the WiFi mesh network research community also. A concert going crowd could easily cause a mesh network to become un-useably slow if everyone was trying to use it at the same time.

<comment><USER13> That's true in practice with current radios, but it was a beautiful discovery in 2006 that it's not true in theory! In a world where radios are perfect and nodes cooperate to do decentralized beamforming, the capacity-per-node of a random mesh network scales as the number of nodes increases. See Ozgur, Leveque, and Tse, "Hierarchical Cooperation Achieves Optimal Capacity Scaling in Ad Hoc Networks," IEEE Trans. Info. Theory (2007) ([https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0611070](https://arxiv.org/abs/cs/0611070)).

(Also worth reading: Tim Shepard's Ph.D. dissertation from 1995 ([http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Timothy...](http://groups.csail.mit.edu/ana/Publications/PubPDFs/Timothy.Shepard.Thesis.1995.pdf)), which predates a lot of the "information theory" interest in this subject.)

<comment><USER12> Interesting. I wonder how well it would work in practice though. They assume uniform randomly distributed nodes, whereas people don't tend to distribute themselves randomly. They don't address practical concerns either, like how narrow the MIMO beamwidths need to be and how easy that is to achieve. Still a nice theoretical result.

<comment><USER14> This seems like it requires point-to-point communication; and with accurate MIMO configuration my intuition for the endpoints is that it's like they are communicating with laser-like narrow beams but in RF. But AFAIK multihop communication is still stuck at sqrt(n) scaling, i.e. not viable.

This is all pretty theoretical though, for a small number of nodes like up to 100 it should work pretty well like in the OP application.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> 15 year old High School sophomore noob here. We (crazily) are attempting to put up a CubeSat (shameless plug www.seakingspace.com). Using the Lora SX1268 433Mhz we tested the Semtech transceiver across the Catalina channel. 25+ Miles SF factors 7,9,11 at 125 BW. Worked great. We did a link budget and should work over 500KM line of sight no prob. The SX126X is the new improved version of the Lora chip. Im sure a verion with it will come out shortly.

<comment><USER16> LoRaWAN® distance world record broken. 766 km (476 miles) using 25mW transmission power. After almost 2 years, the world record of 702 km (436 miles) has been broken.Aug 14, 2019

25mW, imagine what you could do with 1/2 a watt.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Not an expert by any means, but I'd suggest looking at the Dash7 protocol/ firmware as a reference for the mesh, security and positioning. It's been around a while and seems robust.

Open source, royalty free, low power, high range (several km even in urban areas), medium bandwidth, runs on several lora boards.

[https://dash7-alliance.org/](https://dash7-alliance.org/)

<comment><AUTHOR> ooh. That is great advice! We used the RadioHead mesh solution but it is super non optimal for us and we plan to switch. I'll definitely do some reading on DASH7.

<comment><USER17> Firmware available at: [https://github.com/jpnorair/OpenTag](https://github.com/jpnorair/OpenTag)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Maybe resubmit this post so the link works. I would love this for music festivals. They have some solutions but they are hundreds of dollars. If people in the group could put this on a backpack it would be a game-changer. Music festivals also have a big problem with internet access. If they could put host a few powerful repeaters in the middle with electrical and have 5% of attendees (staff) with these they could probably cover the entire place. Send out lineup changes or emergency notices.

<comment><USER19> Solutions of hundreds of dollars? For what exactly?

Reminds me of the movie Hackers where they used buzzers. And why not? The only thing you gotta do is use pre-planned keywords/acronyms.

I went to several (music) festivals, big ones between 2002 till 2004 with a few smaller gigs later until 2009 or so. Back then we just used SMS or phone call. I didn't even always have a plan during the mentioned years. Especially outside the country (and NL is small) it was always a surprise to get the next phone bill (one time I paid something like 30 EUR per megabyte, in Serbia). Within the EU, these work with your normal plan nowadays.

I don't know how it is nowadays, but back then on large festivals providers would put up extra (mobile) GSM antennas at the location. I assume they still do that. I can imagine there's a lot of smartphones up in the air to record the magical moment (and ruin it for the people behind you). That alone is a reason why I wouldn't wanna go.

A dumbphone seems still clever if you go outside the country. A rugged one goes for say 30-50 EUR or so. It won't contain or give access to your whole life if it gets confiscated, no social media means you can focus on your stay, and you can still contact authorities or friends if required. Just make sure you add the personal information of those you need to contact (should be on your SIM, though possibly that's too much info as well). Oh, and the screen won't break or get damaged (if it does /care), and who cares if your dumbphone gets stolen. I suppose people generally take the risk, but I got burned once (got a digital camera as birthday present worth ~300 EUR in 2004 and it got stolen after I had it for less than a week). You can always give it away or sell it afterwards (like a real burner) or reuse it for the next journey.

Now, back when I went to music festivals, you'd sortof stay together cause you could find each other but it was a bit annoying. If you could automate it, like you can give your position with WhatsApp, then that'd be great. However, with WhatsApp you decide who can access your location, while with this solution its available to all. That might not be what you want.

Other sports like hiking, skiing I can imagine to use this technology. Even people who live "In The Wild" could meet up with other total strangers, if that's your thing. I mean imagine using this in some huge forest in Canada, or on Greenland where you suddenly notice another life form.

<comment><USER9> You have to look at the issue from the organizer PoV and not as the event goer. You need to have some kind of reliable communication channels for the staff. The result of 10 years of experience of trying to cause that is for me that analog UHF radios work, wired VoIP phones work and just using whatever smartphones the staff works and combination of these three technologies gives you the SLA level you need. DECT is meaningful solution of the same problem, but the handsets are expensive and even more so if you want some broadcast/PTT capability and ideas like "well, we have bunch of Nokia S60 handsets that should in theory support wifi as LTE/CAE radio layer" is pure nerding-out that does not solve any kind of real issue and instead creates new ones

<comment><USER19> That does make sense. I did not see it from the organizer PoV indeed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Looks like you have already written a lot of low-level code for your device already ([https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32)) but have y'all considered taking a look at the Nerves project ([https://nerves- project.org](https://nerves-project.org))?

You might uncover some really cool stuff in the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem for doing mesh communications.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! alas, I think that is a bit to big for what we have to work with in our ESP32s. We started our sw design based on what off the shelf hardware we could find and worked from that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> How is it offering 'private' communications on the 33cm band? Does this band even offer good performance in hilly or mountainous terrain? These would be short range line of sight only type devices, correct? I'm still fairly new to amateur radio so I could be off. I don't see the advantage of this over something like APRS on 2M, with the exception that you don't need a license.

<comment><AUTHOR> encryption is allowed for low duty cycle digital usage on that band.

I'm also a ham and really into APRS. But not requiring a license is a big plus, also the way these chirping radios achieve their long range with a super high noise floor so the battery life is amazing. i.e. a TTGO TBEAM will run for about eight days on (including the GPS/radio and CPU). And $30 for that board.

<comment><USER22> I was going to suggest that you look into some of the patents that were the basis for the old Ricochet Networks stuff as its the basis for most of the smartgrid meter tech, but apparently many of them are more recent than I expected and still under the 20 year mark... also might want to post it to /r/amateurradio for feedback... 73 om!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I worked on a similar project for Motorola and it had limited commercial success.

Very dense topologies need to aggressively handle broadcast storms such as ARP storms. Very fragmented topologies need to handle delay tolerant networking.

In any event, search for "Mobile Ad-hoc Networks" will show work that has been done previously.

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks! yes, we are very delay tolerant and a typical text message (or flooded location update) takes a few seconds to get across our likely max # of hops (which is only three, due to our u[https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/d...](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/docs/software/mesh-alg.mdsecase))

We initially used the RadioHead mesh router (which seems to be a variant of DSR), but we are switching to something else soon. Misc notes here: [https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/d...](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/docs/software/mesh-alg.md)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> XBee it's already at an $30 and $15 price point, I think to 'disrupt' you would need to be profitable at a -10x price point. This is my opinion. I'm usually wrong. But you asked.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. This is a full circuitboard with GPS+battery+lora+CPU+oled screen for $30. So I'm not trying to compete with a $15 radio devboard that someone has to solder into their project, but more something that 'just works'. And open source, for fun, so not selling it at all ;-)

<comment><USER16> Maybe you could persuade M5Stack to do a version of hardware that suits.

Looks like maybe they do already for $40 if you combine a base and LORA unit -

[https://m5stack.com/collections/m5-core](https://m5stack.com/collections/m5-core)

[https://m5stack.com/collections/m5-module](https://m5stack.com/collections/m5-module)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Not sure if this is "good" advice, but this would make for a very appealing kickstarter: cool gadget with very useful functionality for popular activities (music festivals, hiking, skiing) that could even help in an emergency. It hits a lot of the right notes.

Possible that when you're further along you can have a kickstarter for a commercial version that's officially created by the open-source project. The more (mutually compatible) devices out there, the better the mesh, right?

<comment><AUTHOR> There are already a couple of companies doing similar kickstarters I think. But we want this to be a non profit open source project for fun.

We are using a GPL license, but if someone wants to eventually sell devices (as long as they obey the GPL) with our code we think that's great.

<comment><USER26> The ESP32 draws quite a lot of current when running BLE (without Wifi), unless that's been fixed recently. IIRC, the TTGO boards have poor low-power design that will kill the 18650 battery in a few days, no matter what you do, that could perhaps be fixed with a small modification though.

I have a hardware design that might be an interesting starting point. It's based around nrf52 (Cortex M4F with BLE and nice SDK), 400mah battery, microphone, speaker, 3*4 RGB LED matrix, gyro/accelerometer, NFC. Very small device, 35mm across. Can extend the top of the PCB, add a small OLED screen and a LORA radio. Hitting $30 price point shouldn't be a problem. Email in profile :-)

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/qUyrRYDrtu2SHsHR9](https://photos.app.goo.gl/qUyrRYDrtu2SHsHR9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Gotta love ESP32s, huh? It's great to see more affordable "commodity-style" boards with some extra radios built in.

This looks like a very cool project - I might pick up a few of those 'T-beam' boards and see if some people want to try taking a hike with them. Thanks for sharing!

<comment><AUTHOR> no worries. if (when ;-)) you encounter problems just post on our gitter channel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> That's an awesome project. I was interested in LoRa for the same reason. I'm an iOS dev and paraglider myself so I can help you with the iOS app. Let's chat

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh would love to! Would you mind posting on our devchat and we can talk more? [https://gitter.im/Meshtastic/community](https://gitter.im/Meshtastic/community)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> I can see why you're using these boards, but the ESP32 is an incredibly power hungry device. For battery/solar power it's not the best choice.

For devices in the field I'd use one of the many available low power ARM controllers.

<comment><AUTHOR> we are careful to keep the esp clock-gated almost all the time (esp calls this light-sleep), in that mode the power draw of the ESP is on 1.5mA. When the radio (or button press) receives a packet it wakes the main CPU, which then services everything (turning on bluetooth as needed) and then goes back to sleep. If you are curious for more details we have a power consumptions spreadsheet in our docs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm interested, but we'll see how it goes. This is a non-trivial endeavor.

I've been trying to write an open-source Apple driver for goTenna units, and have been unable to get them to help me out by providing their BLE spec.

That's a shame, because I write _really nice_ SDKs. Even if my driver was open and free, it would provide significant brand reinforcement. Win-win.

I believe that this tech is important, as it can provide service in disasters. I'm also big on open-source.

But I cut my teeth on RF stuff, and know that it's a real black art. Software can get complicated, but is child's play, compared to RF tech.

You have your work cut out for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> The current alpha works pretty well. (I'm sort of retired now, but my old job included writing software for these sorts of radios).

If you'd like to play with this project we'd love your help (and we have a documented ble api).

Here's an issue where various iOS types are ideating on possibly making an iOS app: [https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/issues/14](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic-esp32/issues/14)

<comment><USER30> I'll probably look at it in a few days.

I'm actually in the middle of creating a Web-based instruction series on writing Core Bluetooth SDKs for Apple platforms (not just iOS).

Once I get that done, I may look at adapting this project:

[https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_GTDriver](https://github.com/RiftValleySoftware/RVS_GTDriver)

For it. It started as a goTenna project, but they never got around to helping me out, so I gave up on them, and made it an OBD driver.

The infrastructure is still there for all kinds of stuff, so I could probably do something.

BTW: If that works out, it would be an SDK that would afford ALL Apple platforms; including Watch and TV.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The idea of these radio mesh network things is great. The reality is terrible because radio waves need line of sight unless you've got a repeater. This is completely impractical when hiking, or in a city filled with buildings. They end up with crazy short range between devices and you need an implausibly long string of them to get from a person off the grid to a mesh point on the grid. The only exception to this being someone high on a hill with no bumpy bits of other hills between them and whoever has the other mesh point that happens to be on-grid.

Gotenna couldn't make this work with all their $$ because of the simple physics of radio waves. Yes they sell devices that technically do what they claim, they just fall flat on their faces when they encounter hills, or buildings... or anything that isn't flat.

I think if you want to make something that actually works, you should drop the "consumer" and make having a ham radio license a requirement. Then use the GPS to find the closest public repeater. Their locations are pretty well mapped at this point.

Use the most appropriate of the many ham radio digital packet systems for whatever wavelength you're broadcasting on and choose the appropriate part of the spectrum that is designated for digital packet use.

Also be a good radio citizen and try other frequencies if the current one is in use.

I understand that the ham license is pretty much a deal breaker for adoption BUT it's what's required to use the decent frequencies and access to repeaters. As this seems to be an open source kind of project and not a "hey lets sell bajillions" kinda thing, that seems like a plausible option.

<comment><USER32> Dunno, I think one of the biggest weakness of various ham related technologies (and yes I have my general) is the assumption that everyone is online all the time. Trying to communicate with a few dozen people is very inefficient with amateur radio in general. It's usually voice, usually assumes everyone is doing nothing but listening, is listening continuously and has perfect reception. God forbid someone is driving, hiking aggressive terrain, or a group of 10 people is online only 60% of the time each.

Most of the cheap ham stuff assumes a perfect repeater already to do the heavy lifting, which is nice when you have it, but very frustrating when you don't.

I do wish that ham or consumer devices supported digital modes, peer to peer, store and forward, push, pull, query, etc. Js8call supports this, so you can do things like ask when someone was last seen, leave messages on 3rd parties, ask 3rd parties to forward, etc. So even if each radio is online part of the time, and parties that want to talk can not directly hear each other things work just fine. It's amazing to even think about, communicating several magnitudes below the noise floor, power levels so low that hams are proud when they get less than 1 watt per 1000 miles!

Imagine standing on the west cost of the USA, shining a 5 watt flashlight at the sky, having it bounce off the sky, to land, and again into the sky, and again to the last to someone 1000s of miles away... and they can decode your signal. Amazing stuff.

I do wonder what the smallest package you could fit a 1 watt bluetooth connected HF radio in to enable any phone to talk js8call.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I guess my only advice is make sure the software keeps to the duty cycle limits of the license free band. And note that different countries may have different regulations on what is allowed on the frequency LoRa uses, if using it is even allowed.

<comment><USER8> Also which of the ISM bands are valid in which country. (We sold off the bottom half the 915 band here to telcos, so only the upper half of it is available in .au)

<comment><AUTHOR> ooh. good to know. here's what we are doing now for the regions we know. Someone is sending in a PR soon for the extra 440ish band in EU soon.

[https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/s...](https://github.com/meshtastic/Meshtastic- esp32/blob/master/src/MeshRadio.h#L12)

<comment><USER8> If you'd like some reference:

[https://www.acma.gov.au/step-2-show-your-product- complies](https://www.acma.gov.au/step-2-show-your-product-complies)

Says:

(2) The 900 MHz ISM band within Australia is 915–928 MHz. 900 MHz ISM devices working outside of this range cannot be operated in Australia (that is, ISM devices that use the frequencies 902–915 MHz are not authorised for use within Australia).

(3) Using the frequency range 902–915 MHz would interfere with Australian mobile telephone networks. Severe criminal penalties, including fines of up to $255,000, exist under the Radiocommunications Act 1992 for interfering with radiocommunications services.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> You can try to contact those Russian guys at [http://stratonautica.ru/](http://stratonautica.ru/). They were making a project __exactly__ like this, with LoRa (with modifications?) but for location tracking.

And if anybody is interested, I'm actively trying to cook up a neat solution with DMR radios - it just works better than the LoRa ones so far :).

Into amateur radio, Digital voice, DMR, SAR, Location tracking and really looking up to [https://www.sartrack.co.nz/](https://www.sartrack.co.nz/).

<comment><USER34> Also, am Russian and [https://lizaalert.org](https://lizaalert.org) volunteer. Would be happy to see you on the bands if you've got a call, come over to TG 250661 GMT+3, daytime. 73s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> This is a great idea, especially for tracking kids. I'd love to leave one of these in my kids backpack and know where they were without depending on a cellular-device/service-plan/charging/etc

</comment><comment><USER36> It's not a new idea, but it's really a cool project, it just seems difficult to democratize.

Problem #1: if users need a custom antenna, it's already a barrier. /me dreams about the IEEE people designing standards that would enable smartphones to use mesh networking... I guess a tiny antenna that can be attached to a smartphone could also make it viable. If the antenna is not bigger than the phone, it would certainly be marketed.

In my view, mesh radio could possibly compete with traditional ISPs, for certain uses, so this kind of tech might not be funded for obvious reasons.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is awesome! It looks like it could do several things for which I wanted to have a device.

Offline GPS tracker with very long run time for hiking. I'd like up to one month run time. On the other hand I only need low time resolution, one waypoint each minute. It also does not need to send the location anywhere, storing it local is fine.

Offline/Online GPS tracker for paragliding. Battery for one day, but also high resolution tracking, about one waypoint per second.

Long range communication extender for my mobile phone that does not require infrastructure like base stations. (For the prepper in me)

<comment><USER38> This Garmin device in Expedition mode might work for you. It seems to have configurable GPS logging and inReach satellite coms.

[https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor- recreation/inreach/f/gpsma...](https://forums.garmin.com/outdoor- recreation/inreach/f/gpsmap-66i/214719/gpsmap-66i-battery-life-i-m-on-the- fence)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> This looks promising.

Some form of Repeater/Server or similar feature would be great. A small webserver that the phone can use as a backbone would be really useful. I might even try to help with developing one.

</comment><comment><USER40> This is awesome, thanks for sharing! I'm considering using this for a project where I need to measure distance between two nodes. Couple questions:

1\. You mention "location and distance" between member nodes. I assume this is based on the LORA RSSI? How precise is the reading?

2\. Do you support the "TTGO LORA32"? Your Github Readme mentions it, but Pages does not.

3\. Will the TTGO LORA32 and Heltec LoRa 32 measure distance without being connected to a phone?

<comment><USER41> If the nodes have GPS it's fairly straightforward to calculate distance and bearing.

<comment><USER40> Right, and accuracy of ~9m makes sense for this application. The smaller supported ESP32's, however, don't have onboard GPS. Does it use RSSI or need to be paired with a phone?

Not that it's really relevant here, but I'm wondering if the LORA RSSI can be used to determine distance inside 9m.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is very similar to FLARM devices ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLARM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLARM)) for ultralights, gliders, etc. This is already broadly deployed (at least in Europe).

You could check for any lessons learned there. I think you can discount any flight users, because they would like to be seen too by other airplanes.

<comment><USER43> FLARM is very bad example especialy for DIY community. They have proprietary chips, firmware and are running non opensourced protocol. Also they are actively trying to prevent reverse engineering with cryptography and killing old/diy devices with protocol timebombs...

<comment><USER42> Yes, I am also not enthusiastic about the crypto part, but then if it prevents people from spoofing signals, it is probably a good decision.

The wikipedia suggests they use standard hardware components?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Make the mesh affordable, keep making the drivers and interfaces clean and reasonably easy to maintain.

In mass adoption, you want to keep the price right - so have a bulk pricing upfront. Also, keep one access protocol you can access from a phone / PC / most popular devices.

You're doing everything right. Try to get one great customer who can benefit from this today.

</comment><comment><USER45> Very cool.

There is a general fear in the backcountry Skiing community that any RF devices might impede or negatively impact the use of search and recovery beacons to locate buried partners in the event of an avalanche. Any documentation/speculation on any potential interference?

<comment><USER46> I dabble in both backcountry and skiing and wireless devices, but I'm not an expert on either.

My take on this: these devices should be safe to carry provided the hardware is verified to not produce spurious harmonics (via FCC certification or other means). The 900Mhz band used (in the US) by these radios will not interfere with 457KHz signals used by beacons.

I wouldn't carry it in the same pocket as my beacon, but I would use this device--definitely excited to watch the project's progress.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Would be great to have LoraWan redundancy, say with the things network, if in range. From my experience, 8 days battery life with TTGO-beam is unrealistic, unless sleeping for most of the time, or with some hardware modifications. Great project, I will test it out!

</comment><comment><USER48> Go have a look at [https://www.project-owl.com/](https://www.project-owl.com/) when you have a moment. They're tackling similar problems but from a different angle. Doesn't mean there isn't room for both!

</comment><comment><USER49> Sounds promising, but as someone who tramps a decent amount, I love as much range as possible without needing a sat phone. I've got 2 gotenna, and they're not so great, very short range. Maybe 1km in hilly areas.

</comment><comment><USER50> It seems the website is down. I somehow wonder if it is from the Hacker News crowd.

<comment><AUTHOR> yeah - I was a dumbass when I typed the URL. the correct url is www.meshtastic.org.

<comment><USER51> Which means the post made it to the front page without a single person clicking on the link. Classic.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> How will you make sure your customers will be in compliance when operating the device? GoTenna used to have a nice photo gallery of people breaking the law, i.e. using their earlier MURS-band mesh devices abroad.

</comment><comment><USER53> This looks neat.

How does this differ from disaster.radio? More portable?

I ask because I really think these are important projects and I'm not sure which to contribute my time towards.

<comment><AUTHOR> We're working with those guys and might share the same protocol stack. Discussions underway.

The difference is: disaster.radio is targeted as a "just in case emergency radio build on custom hardware, that joins a mesh with other folks who bought the same emergency radio."

This is a $30 radio (with built in GPS+radio+CPU+battery+OLED screen) already available from a chinese mfg. Then you put our app on it and have a group navigator you can use with your friends while skiing or hiking, instead of buying a $100 closed source kickstarter (and it will run eight days on a charge)"

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> We have (local ad hoc social networking) software that would be very useful to run on your mesh networks. What's the best way to contact you?

<comment><AUTHOR> sure! either chat on our gitter chat (link at www.meshtastic.org) or send me an email at firstname.lastname@example.com.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Nice, I just picked up two of the TTGO T-Beam boards.

<comment><USER8> I have four on the way from China. I'm not holding my breath waiting for them though...

<comment><AUTHOR> tell me about it. I have a box of 5 I ordered before CNY. Still sitting in china.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> What's the reasoning behind the $30? Seems pretty high considering the hardware platform.

<comment><USER57> He didn't make the hardware, the higher end board with GPS, the TTGO TBEAM is about this expensive if you also add a oled screen.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> Please get a newsletter up - would purchase this in a heartbeat.

<comment><AUTHOR> you can buy it now if you wanna guy a radio from aliexpress (not from us). see our website for info.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> Has anyone here discussed the avalanche rescue as a use case?

</comment><comment><USER60> Anything like this out there for ethernet networks?

<comment><USER61> you want 1kbps?

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> and I'm a dumbass and put a typo in the url. correct is www.meshtastic.org

<comment><USER62> [https://www.meshtastic.org/](https://www.meshtastic.org/)

<comment><USER63> Fixed. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm just curious why my comment regarding patent was deleted ? Yes we developed a device that implements this same idea of sharing GPS data over mesh (868 ISM) network and patented it in 2014. The patent is still valid and supported. If someone is interested in further development of this idea, please contact me, we would be happy to sell this patent along with schematics and source codes for fair price.

<comment><USER65> Your post said nothing about the patent itself, and simply stated that this open source project should be paying you. It's not exactly the best approach on a site like this.

How about outlining the specific patent claims you feel are being violated here, along with links to the patents in question? That approach would feel a lot more helpful and a lot less like a shakedown.

If you've somehow managed to get a patent on sending GPS coords over LoRa I think a lot of people in this space are going to be interested in that. Nearly every LoRa application in the field is going to find themselves in violation.

<comment><USER64> Don't get me wrong, I'm not a patent troll, neither I want to sue anyone - that is against my attutude (I consider myself an old time hacker rooting from late 80s :)). I'm just a co-developer and co-holder of the patent for a device that does, among other things, exactly what topic starter described. We began developing it back in 2011 and proceeded for several years, we had been spending our free time and "pocket" money on it. In case you are interested it took us to route and assemble 22 versions of PCB prototype of the main board and 5 prototypes of a radio. We even exhibited it at one of the electronics show in Moscow. As we failed to find sufficient investment to push it to the market, we decided to freeze the project in 2015. In my initial comment that was silently and shamefully deleted, I proposed to aquire our patent, that's what might have any value today, as schematics and hardware are all outdated. As mentioned above, discussing patent details on public is not any good idea, that is why I simply pointed that I can be contacted on these matters.

I understand that hackers are strictly opposed to any sort of patents or copyright. But it is not avoidable topic once you are into business of settling or growing your own company (or a startup). And this is a startup place, isn't it ?

<comment><USER65> You sound like a reasonable person and I have every reason to believe you're acting in good faith. Your website suggests a patent pending in Russia. I am completely unfamiliar with Russian IP law which might be the source of my misunderstanding. Having said that, is there a reason you won't provide the specific patent(s) in question? I would presume they are a matter of public record when they were issued.

<comment><USER64> The site had not been updated when the patent issued, sorry about that. Patent # RU 2559714. Exchanging GPS data is just a part of the device, btw.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


My Facebook App: iGot, what Beacon should have been. (Let me know what you think) - <AUTHOR> http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=5908324398

<comment><USER2> Actually, I think Beacon is what Beacon should have been. The problem with apps like iGot is that it takes effort and time on the part of the user. Beacon is effortless. Yes this can result in privacy issues, but if the user is worried about privacy s/he can easily change the settings.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, but simply putting my face in a news feed next to a product doesn't mean I like it, it just means I bought it. If you really want to know what I think about something you need to hear what I have to say. iGot let's you tell your friends to stay away from a product just as easily as it lets you tell them how much you love something. I think that's an important distinction.

<comment><USER3> How often do you buy products you don't like?

Anyway, this is more of a product/service review application than a notification system like Beacon.

<comment><USER4> I've bought some product, mobile phone accessories for one example, that have worked okay for a while but after while have become completely useless. I wouldn't want Beacon to advertise them, especially not until I've used and tested them for quite a while, which is unfortunately exactly what Beacon would do.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Beacon's job is to suggest products to other people, just to notify them that you have made a purchase. I wouldn't consider someone buying something as an endorsement for the product, but I do think it's an interesting, though useless, thing to know.

<comment><USER4> It gives that manufacturer and product publicity though. And that publicity is linked to your interpersonal relationship with your friend. Although that isn't explicit endorsement, I would argue it's implicit endorsement, and nevertheless that affects your propensity to buy a product and your view of that manufacturer.

I have no problem with iGot's explicit endorsement, but Beacon's implicit endorsement appears to leverage your interpersonal relationships for marketing benefits, and I'm not keen on that idea.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's the distinction I was going for, with iGot you have choice to endorse a product or not. Maybe it would be good to combine the two. If you allow Beacon to post your purchases you could then use iGot to tell your friends what you actually think about that product.

I don't think Facebook makes Beacon data available to App developers but it would be interesting to play with.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Code on the Road: Laid off? The one thing you absolutely need to do on the first day - <AUTHOR> http://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2008/05/laid-off-one-thing-you-absolutely-need.html

<comment><USER2> This is my plan too.

I read "C With Assembly Language" by Steven Holzner as a kid... he wrote that he works 6 months and travels for the other 6. It has been my dream since. It should work out this year.

If you are planning, reading "The Four Hour Work Week" might help.

<comment><USER3> Oh yeah, highly recommend the book, a lot of his ideas seem controversial, but there are a few points worth taking away from the book. There's also a nice podcast on his website.

<comment><USER4> I couldn't find the podcast on his site. Could you post a URL? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> AFAIK there is no podcast. May be he means all the YouTube videos?

<comment><USER3> umm, I registered on his website and that gave me a link to the podcast. See if this link works for you: [http://2007.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2007/03/19/the_4_hou...](http://2007.sxsw.com/blogs/podcasts.php/2007/03/19/the_4_hour_workweek_secrets_of_doing_mor)

<comment><USER4> Thanks - it's a recording of his presentation at SXSW, not an ongoing series, but I'm looking forward to listening to it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I went to Africa after burning out at my first startup (which spectacularly imploded 9 months later). I recommend travel, but taking time off is not necessarily a panacea. In particular, be realistic about how much money you have and will spend. Otherwise, when you come back you have to scramble to find a job, which isn't an optimal position. In retrospect, the time could have been better spent figuring out a startup of my own.

</comment><comment><USER6> This is one of the coolest articles I've seen on YC in a long time. Thanks for helping me de-stress!

<comment><USER7> Agreed. This is pretty much the greatest article ever. The funny thing was I've been thinking about going to Thailand this summer anyway, so this article pretty much clinches it. I get my diploma in a couple weeks (I failed twice at dropping out) so this is the time to do it.

<comment><USER8> Wow, thanks! It's amazing to compare the reception of this article here versus Reddit. Over there, 700 people voted it DOWN, whereas here I'm being offered free beer.

I think I'll stick around!

<comment><USER9> You travel a lot. Are there any cheap places left in the Caribbean? I've thought of buying a sail boat and floating around there for a few years.

<comment><USER8> Check out the coast of Honduras and the islands nearby. It's still plenty cheap and there are un-touristed beaches to be found. The little slice of Guatemala that touches the Caribbean is good too.

Good luck!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> i'm actually going to be doing just that. my employer (10-20 employees) was nice enough to grant my request to let me telecommute from brazil for a few months.

how's that for relaxed management?

i could not agree with this article more. people need to loosen up and go see the world much more than they currently do. farecast is a great place to buy plane tickets and couchsurfing is a great place to find a roof.

go out and enjoy yourself!

<comment><USER11> Yeah, this is the way to do it. Instead of quitting your job and traveling, travel while you have a job. Someone I work with routinely travels around the world and lives with friends for a few weeks. As long as there's the Internet, you can get plenty of work done, and have plenty of time to enjoy the world. Why sit at home and chat on IRC when you can just go live with other programmers for a while. (We work on a lot of open source stuff, so it's always good to hang out with the other contributers. If you don't have a lot of hacker friends, this approach might not work.)

Anyway, I liked what I saw :) so I'm going to Tokyo tomorrow for this purpose. It counts as work, and will be quite fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've been putting off buying a house or making any big commitments like that for precisely this reason. Doin' the startup thing right now, but there's no reason why that can't happen from wherever I happen to be too. Working on a plan to free myself geographically sometime in '09!

</comment><comment><USER13> This is my plan precisely. It'll be Ghana for me. A surprising amount of the third world has a decent internet connection these days. If you can get that plus a decent hotel room for a few hundred bucks a month, why not give it a shot?

<comment><USER14> This is why I hope to be earmarking half a million for a trip around the world in a few years. I may only end up using a tenth of that, but I don't want to limit myself in terms of activities: scuba diving, mountain climbing, safaris, maybe a few expensive hotels, foreign clubbing, etc.

All with a laptop at hand.

<comment><USER2> Do it once as a pauper and then as a prince.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I went to Thailand when I was 23 (I'm 27 now). Stayed at the Khao San Road, traveled a lot. It's a great place to get away from it all. Cheap too, and I earn Mexico wages.

</comment><comment><USER16> I leave Canada for Australia in a few weeks. Though not the 3rd world it's a new base of operations which will allow us to easily travel around Asia. Though I plan to work the odd consulting gig to help pay for it mostly we'll be living as cheap as possible and moving as often as possible for the next year or 2.

</comment><comment><USER17> Go to Amsterdam! Tulips, pickled herring and lot's of fun :-)

<comment><USER2> We have tulips too (Seattle).

<comment><USER18> He probably meant the other tulip.

<http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tulip>

<comment><USER2> Wow! Thanks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Spend more money right when your income is in highest jeopardy? Most of us wish.

I'd suggest just going in the summer while you're still employed and office activity has slowed anyway. My plan, anyway.

<comment><USER16> The point is that you are free to stay as long as you want and not have to rush it. A few weeks in a new place is rarely enough to get a real feel for it and experience everything that place offers.

Besides you'll probably be spending less traveling in 3rd world countries than you will living in a tech centre in North America or Europe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is a great article and timely because my friend just asked me yesterday if I'd like to go to Thailand with her this Christmas! But I'm going to Nigeria so I guess this article is spot on.

<comment><USER21> Good luck buying anything from Ebay while in Nigeria :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Wow... I want to do this.

Any ideas on living / working in these areas? How can you get online?

<comment><USER8> It's funny, but internet access is a lot easier to find in the developing world than it is in the US or Europe. In the States, it's all private and corporate DSL with the occasional unsecured wireless router to be found.

In rural Cambodia, it's a little building in the village with public terminals. These get used by the locals since they can't afford a machine or connectivity of their own, and by tourists who are happy to pay the equivilant of a dollar an hour to check their email.

Generally, they don't mind if you push the keyboard out of the way and plug the ethernet cable into the back of your laptop.

All in all, it's about 1000x easier than trying to find a pub in England with functioning Wifi.</comment></comment>


Dennis M. Hope Has Owned the Moon Since 1980 Because He Says So - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/yv574m/ive-owned-the-moon-since-1980 <comment><USER2> This guy bases his claims on the following "So I went to the library, looked up the 1968 Outer Space Treaty and, sure enough, Article 2 states: "No nation by appropriation shall have sovereignty or control over any of the satellite bodies." Meaning it was unowned land" Later in this scheme, learn, "In 2001, I had 163,000 emails from customers asking me that. The conclusion we came to was to set up a democratic republic nation called the "Galactic Government." It took us three years to write the constitution and we put it online in March 2004, when we had 3.7 million property owners and 173,562 votes for ratification. So now we're a fully constitutionally ratified sovereign nation." So, first he says, it's cool because sovereign nations cannot stake a claim. But after decades of selling property, he formed a sovereign nation that claims ownership on the property he sold. Does this not strike everyone as contradictory and makes all claims of this Galactic Republic as null and void?

</comment><comment><USER3> But no law specifically says he can claim ownership, does it? I mean why not just claim ownership over all air on the planet if no law prevents it.

</comment><comment><USER4> Next, he'll sue Earth for cutting off his solar power 11 days ago.</comment>


I'm Sure Someone Can Explain This to Me - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/03/06/explain-this-to-me

<comment><USER2> The issue in this dogfight is not that both contestants are dogs, it's the size of one of the dogs.

This reminds me of a Cold War joke about the difference between communism and capitalism: in communism, it's dog eat dog. In capitalism, it's the other way around.</comment>


'I Have Billions in the Bank': A Sex Worker's Life in Animal Crossing - <AUTHOR> https://kotaku.com/i-have-billions-in-the-bank-a-sex-workers-life-in-anim-1844458927 <comment><USER2> "I have billions of bells in the bank."

Of bells.

Bells.

[EDIT: Bells are an in-game thing in Animal Crossing. Different from real- world dollars, just so you know.]</comment>


Flash Boys Raise Volatility in Wild New Treasury Market - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2014-11-18/flash-boys-invade-treasury-bond-market-in-new-era-of-volatility.html

<comment><USER2> I find this article pretty void of content.

The title is a bit of a give way - to people who work in the space the "Flash Boys" book is easy to see as atrociously inaccurate.

I recommend considering the detailed rebuttal to this type of article, as well as that book in particular: "Flash Boys: Not so Fast" [http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective- High-F...](http://www.amazon.com/Flash-Boys-Insiders-Perspective-High- Frequency-ebook/dp/B00P0QI2M2)

<comment><USER3> I also thought the title was pretty much click bait. The FT, WSJ and others have more nuanced articles on the event. Most of the evidence seems to point to falling liquidity setting up the conditions and the jitters around the end of QE3 being the trigger. As for why there is falling liquidity it seems to be multiple reasons including dealer banks rising aversion to risk, the fact that market makers on private platforms aren't obligated to take volume, and investors may be allocating away from fixed-income hedge funds. None of those reasons point to some sort of "Flash Boys" HFT conspiracy, just the normal ebb and flow of global markets.</comment></comment>


Everything You Need to Know on Tor and the Deep Web - <AUTHOR> http://www.whoishostingthis.com/blog/2013/12/17/tor-deep-web/

<comment><USER2> This is completely wrong. TOR sites are a tiny fraction of websites. The "deep web" includes data in various databases that aren't indexed as web pages. TOR has nothing to do with it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web#Deep_resources](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Web#Deep_resources)

</comment><comment><USER3> Article confuses dark web with deep web, claims dark web is 500x size of web. :(

</comment><comment><USER4> Bitcoin wasn't even around in 2006.</comment>


Inkscape 1.0 - <AUTHOR> https://inkscape.org/release/inkscape-1.0/ <comment><USER2> This version had a major discussion 3 weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22855357](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22855357), as well as 6 months earlier: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21001969](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21001969).

It's true that this is a new announcement, but that's a distinction without a difference for HN threads. Since this issue shows up frequently about project announcements, I'm going to post a detailed explanation of how and why we moderate these, with the intention of linking back to it in the future, and maybe also from the FAQ.

When new releases of a project get submitted, the HN discussion is invariably about the project in general. That's totally fine, there's nothing wrong with that at all. If we're lucky, there may also be some discussion of the new features—nothing wrong with that either. The problem arises when the same discussions keep getting repeated. HN is for curiosity [1]. Curiosity withers under repetition, and frontpage space is the scarcest resource the site has.

On HN, we handle this by treating submissions of the same-ish story as dupes for a year or so, then allowing reruns after that. What decides whether a follow-up counts as same-ish? Whether or not it contains significant new information (SNI), meaning whether or not there is enough new information to support an interestingly different discussion. On HN, what counts as interesting, basically, are diffs.

That is the general rule. Now let's apply it to the special case of project release news. What are the things the thread will discuss? The project in general, for sure, and maybe, if we're lucky, the features in this version. Because those things don't change a particular release goes through its life- cycle of status updates, the status updates don't count as SNI.

If we allowed this, threads like "Foo 1.3.2 Beta 1" would be on the front page all the time, then "Foo 1.3.2 RC 1 is out" a couple months later, and so on. People come to HN to escape repetition—except of their favorites, of course, which they love to see repeated. But everyone's favorites are different, so allowing this in general would guarantee a cranky community. Since most projects aren't your favorite, it would guarantee a cranky you as well, even if you don't feel that way at the moment because you do like Foo.

Of course, there is ceremonial value when a release becomes official. Ideally the discussion could wait (on HN there is no harm in waiting) until the release was ready, and then we could all have a big thread about the release, plus bonus rejoicing. But that won't work. For popular projects, submitters submit the same release every time it gets a new label, and commenters who like the project (or don't like it—that also works!) want to have a thread each time. Since the official release comes at the end of that sequence, it's also the most anticlimactic moment for thread purposes; that's when the odds are highest that the release will already have been discussed. At least for popular projects, the hivemind's preference is clear: it would rather have the pleasure of an early peek than the joy of a feast at the end.

There's one more important aspect: in most cases, there isn't SNI when a project goes from "Foo 1.3.2" to "Foo 1.3.3" either. If it sounds like I already made this point, look again—I haven't, and believe me this is the sort of distinction that users care passionately about, especially with their favorite projects. This part doesn't apply to Inkscape 1.0, but it does to the majority of incremental-release submissions that HN sees, and we see a ton.

The reason that "Foo 1.3.3 is out" doesn't usually count as SNI is _not_ that it isn't significant new information for the users—and especially the developers—of Foo. That's one reason I'm using a silly acronym: SNI! — to convey that it's a specialized use of those words. When we say things like "this is not significant new information, so we're treating this post as a dupe", or even the gentlest, most watered-down and tiptoey version of that language, there are always people who feel aggrieved on the project's behalf, as if we're putting it down or belittling the hard work of its devs. This explanation is for those readers.

Obviously Foo 1.3.3 being out is new, and significant too. But most of the time, in this somewhat odd sense—looking through the specialized lens that we need to use for HN moderation—the diff between Foo 1.3.3 and the last time Foo came out is not enough to support an interestingly different discussion. Especially for popular projects, commenters will flood into such a thread not to discuss Foo's 1.3.3-ness, but rather their favorite pros and cons, likes and dislikes, about Foo in general. There is nothing wrong with that—it's great! But there is a problem with repeating it too often. At a certain point "wow! cheesecake again!" becomes "i don't feel so hot right now".

The above is mostly about popular projects. For obscure projects, the situation is usually different. Often they're lucky to get any attention at all, for 1.3.3 or 2.15.7 or anything else. Sometimes, in fact, 2.15.7 gets posted when the project itself has never been discussed on HN before. In such cases, we sometimes use a reverse tactic: we'll swap out the incremental release announcement with the project's home page and invite the community to discuss the project in general—which is what the thread would do anyway. Those are fun moments because they happen so rarely. HN gets the juiciest of all diffs to sink its teeth into—the diff between nothingness and existence—and no one is unhappy with the mods.

Previous versions of this explanation (is that ironic?) are at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857809](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22857809) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19103247).

[1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> As a note (I think you're aware, but others might not be): that was the release candidate, this is the final release.

Most importantly: some people back then reported performance issues on OS X. Inkscape stated that that was a blocker for release, so presumably that's fixed now: [https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165](https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/103993588384088165)

<comment><USER3> I came here exactly for this reason - to find out details that may have changed from RCs, and specifically for impression on the mac version, which I would install in a heartbeat if the concerns that were blocking RC have been eased.

We could also talk about how the servers seem flooded and what that means about the popularity and future of Inkscape.

To see totally relevant discussions killed like this is disheartening.

<comment><USER2> I hear you, and I'm sorry. I'd like it if my post upthread could at least convince you that it is a structural consequence of how HN was designed—the very constraints that make it good at some things make it bad at others—but maybe that's too much to hope for.

There are past explanations of this phenomenon—not the project release issue, but the disheartening part—at [https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment) if you or anyone cares to look.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just since you took the time to update your previous comment: I think the current situation is not that bad. People who particularly care about this release might end up on this page anyway (e.g. because they submitted it themselves), and can still discuss it, see the relevant links posted here, and discuss the diff against the RC.

Thanks for the moderation work.

 __Edit: __Also, I hadn 't seen the comment update you posted the last time:

> That makes this post a duplicate by HN's rule (see [2]). I won't bury this > one, but when this comes up again in a few weeks, let's not have a third > thread.

I wasn't aware of this, or I wouldn't have reposted. Sorry!

<comment><USER2> Actually I think the points you're making in this comment here are good ones, so I'm glad you did post it. "Let's not have a third thread" really just means a major thread on the front page. HN has quite a lot of non-frontpage slots :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Release video: [https://inkscape.org/release- video-1-0](https://inkscape.org/release-video-1-0)

Release notes: [https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0](https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/Release_notes/1.0)

As they mention on Mastodon:

> If the download link doesn't work, check back a little later. The files are > being propagated across our CDN.

[https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/104111521799426605](https://mastodon.art/@inkscape/104111521799426605)</comment>