Ask HN: Review My Startup: Bookhu - <AUTHOR> http://www.bookhu.com/

<comment><USER3> First thing I noticed: "What Does It Do?" I wasn't really sure right away what it did. I found the "How Bookhu Works" box, but at first glance I thought it was an ad so I didn't even look at it.

My recommendation would be to put a small tagline below your banner. Maybe "Book reviews broken down by gender" or something.

That said I think the design is really good. I'd add some title attributes to the scores in the listings. It would be nice when I hovered over the 5 stars I could get a tooltip saying "3.4 out of 5 stars (from men)" or similar. Also the colored box with the percentage or men or women readers could use the same tooltip. At first glance I thought that was a rating out of 100. I know most people don't bother with tooltips, but do it for me?

I was on this page: [http://www.bookhu.com/breaking-dawn-the-twilight-saga- book-4...](http://www.bookhu.com/breaking-dawn-the-twilight-saga-book-4/) and when I clicked the "Select Bestseller List" it scrolled me down for some reason. I searched the source for an '<a name="menu">' but didn't find one.

One the home page with the slider, the arrows are stretching to the edge of the screen, but the slider container isn't. Here's a screenshot: <http://imgur.com/8JVjN>

When I use the dropdown to change the bestseller type, it disappears on the listing page and moves to the right side, instead of the top left. I'd keep it in the top left and put the list title right beside it.

For advertising I'd have to say that you should definitely start a blog. You've got some pretty cool data and you could run some interesting blog posts. Maybe do some queries and find the words that are likely to appear in men's favorite book titles, but not women's.

You could also do some sort of contest. I'd make it a "Men vs Women" thing to try to get people into it, and spreading it. Maybe a giveaway of a couple of books, or maybe Amazon gift cards. Maybe pit a predominantly male book against a female book and based on which one gets more votes, give the gift card to a man or a woman. I know if you put Twilight against something you'd have a chance of going viral on Digg, Reddit or 4chan. Those people hate Twilight.

Anyway, good luck with the site. It's well done.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's some high quality feedback (and bug reports) and some good suggestions. Thank you.

I like the idea of blogging the data - something similar to what they're doing over at okcupid will put my mind to it.

As for the competition - I'll have a chew on it, sounds like there might be something to highlighting the gender rivalry aspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I would make the "How Bookhu works" box stand out a little more. One thing I've noticed with all of the "review my startups" is that we have no idea what we are going to initially generally, and when we get there the first thing we want to know is - what does this site do. You explain it well enough, I would just make the box pop a little more visually so I don't spend as much time hunting around for it.

I found the site interesting enough to poke around a bit. Visually I thought it looked pretty good. I would probably make the call to action more obvious as well. Don't be afraid to tell people what you want them to do. The buy links are pretty small and not even very clear that I am buying them by clicking on them. Make them very obvious.

The "Leave a Reply" at the bottom doesn't make sense to me. What am I replying to? Is it just a spot for people to leave their thoughts on the book? Again, tell me what you want. Perhaps you could form it as a question. Try some different things and see what gets people to start submitting comments or reviews or whatever it is you're looking for there (or just take it out).

Overall thought I thought it looked pretty nice and it will be interesting to see how you do.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I submitted the same site in November last year - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=902172>. Since then I've gone through several point releases, a refactor and a design overhaul (I'm hopeful it won't be compared to a domain parking page this time).

I'd be interested in your thought and opinions. I'd also like to hear any thoughts on a marketing strategy. Looking at my stats, visitors seem to hang around on the site (as measured by avg time on site and pages/visit) for a relatively long time compared to any other properties I run and I get a fair amount of repeat visitsors. My biggest challenge at the moment is getting people to visit it in the first instance. I experimented with PPC (Adwords) in December - I'm no whizz so I ended up down, but only by a margin.

The revenue model at the moment is amazon affiliate sales.

<comment><USER5> your site looks good, clean interface but not selfexplaining , I don't know exactly what the site does either, and there's no about page where you could explain that. After sometime spent there, I then found the short description, well you yould make it somehow stand out, so when someone land on it, it doesn't feel and look like a Galerie showcase. Great Idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think you should have a longer delay on each book preview in the scrolling list of books at the top. I made it through half of one and then it switched over. 5 more seconds would be perfect.

The "How it works" box isn't very obvious to a first time visitor - maybe you can hang this somewhere off the top next to the logo?

I like the arrows on the left and right but I suspect that they would be too far to the sides on a widescreen monitor - I suppose you would know better what resolutions your visitors are using.

Otherwise I think the concept is cool, you might benefit from putting this out in the various book forums online.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm spotting a pattern here. All the comments so far suggest that I need to explain what the site does. I guess after working on it for so long I developed a blind spot. Thanks for the input.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll probably dig into it a little more later, but initially, on one of the book's detail pages, the text (and everything else) is pushed all the way to the sides of the browser window (in Chrome on OS X), so your "Feedback" side button obscures the content. See this screencap: <http://i46.tinypic.com/oixe77.jpg>

<comment><AUTHOR> ouch - <USER2>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why not move the "How Bookhu works" box to the top left? It doesn't seem like you need full width for the book scroller.

For the book scroller, shouldn't you add some functionality there inherent to Bookhu, like the ratings? It just has descriptions right now, which makes it look simply like a catalog.

<comment><AUTHOR> you're right - I should make it less generic and include some site specific detail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> A few questions (I don't mean to sound overly brief or critical - it's a nice site - but I'm at work so can't spend ages writing):

* Where do you get the data from about gender? Is it from users of your site? Is it from Amazon or something like that? I like to know where data's from so that I can make some judgement as to whether I want to disregard it. Data with no source definitely gets disregarded :)

* What am I supposed to do on your site? Just look for books and then follow links to buy them? Or can I rate books?

* Why are you basing the whole experience off of gender? I don't see why it's particularly useful to know what other men like, or what women like. I'd rather know what people like me like. i.e. like the whole Netflix recommendations thing. This just seems like a one-dimensional version of that?

<comment><AUTHOR> At the moment the data comes from amazon but I'm just about to add a module that takes review data from goodreads.

To answer your 2nd and 3rd questions; it came out of a requirement I had to be able to quickly segment/categorise books I might want for myself but I think other people also use it for gift inspiration.

I found gender was a reasonably neat line for me to be able to segment. I've also found it a little more-ish to check up on books I've read in the past and see where it lie on the spectrum.

This is not supposed to be a one size fits all in book categorisation and segmentation - it's just another tool. Some people seem to have fun doing it and find it useful - some are even clicking through to amazon to purchase.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Doesn't add value to my life. Can't really think who this'd be for.

Or is this just a tech demo?

<comment><AUTHOR> Not a tech demo but I am starting bite size with small set of features.

The bit that interests me is that there are some people who just don't like it and almost take exception/philosophically opposed to it [1]. There are others I can see from my stats who spend a baffling amount of time browsing around the site jumping from one book to the next for way longer than I originally anticipated anyone would. Most people, of course, lie in-between and don't take it too seriously.

My thoughts? It's just a novel way to browse for books (no pun intended), people like to categorise and it's fun.

1\. <http://twitter.com/debwhite/status/7202044020>

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Are you married to the "bookhu" domain name? I think you might have troubles with the phonetic aspect of it. How does someone pronounce that? _book-hoo_? _boo-koo_?

If you're totally set on that one, you might want to grab any phonetically similar ones like bookwho, bookhoo, etc.

I'm not sure how important the phonetic aspect is, but if it's too difficult to guess the domain from the sound of the name, you'll lose any possible traffic from "Hey, you should check out bookhu, I think you'd like it..."

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a perennial issue for me - I'm never sure how much weight to allocate to domain names, or how many bases to cover.

<comment><USER11> I'm no expert either. All I try to do is avoid names that are ambiguous or tough to spell. Think "del.icio.us" - Are you going to have to explain to someone every single time what your domain is, or will a casual mention be enough? Side note: this is why I think non-.com domains are almost worthless.

On my startup, DoLeaf, we got "doleaf.com" and "dewleaf.com". Probably a good thing, too, as there seems to be a decent size minority that reads "doleaf" as "doh-leef", like Homer Simpson.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Where's the data coming from? This is interesting as a sort of bookstore web- storefront, but the numbers look funny to me. _Catcher in the Rye_ readers are 75% male? _Poor Little Bitch Girl_ (by Jackie Collins) readers are 100% male?

</comment><comment><USER3> Here's a quick mockup of a possible redesign for the home page. I'd make the book thumbnail bigger than I put it at, but you get the idea: <http://i.imgur.com/Xqy7r.png>

<comment><USER13> This is a lot more clear than the current version.

Although I'm not sure if I would use this site, this version only takes 3 seconds for me to understand what it does.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> What's going on on the SEO side of things? You need to get your meta info cleaned up, running a site:bookhu.com shows that you aren't even including your meta descriptions, and you have a bunch of duplicate titles.

Additionally, why are only 46 pages indexed? Are there more indexed and I'm just not seeing them?

You stand to get a lot of really good long tail traffic because of the nature of your content, but if Google can't see it, no one else will. Get all that stuff cleaned up and that way you won't have to spend as much on PPC.

Shoot me an email if you want to discuss some of these SEO things, I can probably help you out: darrindemchuk AT gmail DOT com

<comment><AUTHOR> Much of that was probably referencing the old version of the site - I don't think Google has crawled this latest version - it only went live a couple of nights ago.

I've have tried to be a little better on the SEO side of things, I've included some structured meta in the header of each book detail page. The honest truth is I haven't made it a top priority - you're right, I think I probably should.</comment></comment>


The new Mollie - <AUTHOR> https://www.mollie.com/ <comment><USER2> Old logo much better than new logo. Website looks not special like every website. older website better.

</comment><comment><USER3> this feels like an advertisement and should be removed</comment>


Why study Economic History? - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@antonhowes/why-study-economic-history-ef747767be25 <comment><USER2> Economics is endlessly fascinating, IMO. Mixed with history and does it get any better? TFP.</comment>


Grocy: web-based, self-hosted grocery and household management - <AUTHOR> https://grocy.info/ <comment><USER2> This is exactly what I needed and was thinking about building a similar app. But to be really useful and automated, there's a bit long way I'm afraid. The biggest deal breaker is the time spend for the data entry and updates, leaving a pen-and-paper / notes solution still the most easy to use and just visiting local groceries and shops. I was collecting receipts and playing a bit with scanning of these, but the amount of noise in the data and inconsistencies between shops were a bit pushing away (unless you want to dedicate time cleaning the data and training own tailored information extraction models).

One of the options to solve the data entry could be: \- good quality automatic scanning of receipts (not only individual barcodes) from shops using OCR possibly supported with image recognition for double-checking (can happen that products will be mis-labelled or without quantities, etc) \- when ordering on- line, the receipt should be available, so should be also much easier Yet, not always one will have a meaningful receipt available...

Solved the data entry and being able to predict own's supply needs would be also great to have a up-to date management of the inventory. Here are even more challenges on the tracking of the available goods at home, where these are and how many items (and in what state, expiration date, etc) would require most probably implementing different solutions from IoT (connected cameras, sensors, etc.).

Then, having a connected home with own groceries supplies under control, one can then automate further the shopping process with feeding-back the information about own's demand to on-line groceries one is subscribed to. This can enable customer subscription plans, and for retailer keeping a possible continuous flow of goods. This could be really really useful especially for upcoming months, when it seems like we are expected to spend a bit more time at home rather than usual, hopefully not fighting in the local shops for the last rolls of the new white paper gold.

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agree with everything you've said. I had dreamed of a Libib[1] for my kitchen, but knew I would have to do all the painful data adding and it was too much of a bother.

The other big challenge I never resolved was how you'd account for e.g. using 1/4 cup of flour out of a bigger volume. Or taken to its extreme, cooking oil. How do you know how much your 'splash' is? You can't predict the remaining volume without a lot of fiddling to measure it and that defeats the purpose.

In the end, I opted for manual databases too, but they're pain to keep up-to- date. I still think there's a lot of value in a database for all-or-nothing style ingredients, but it was enough to deter me. I'm glad someone is less lazy.

[1]: [https://www.libib.com/](https://www.libib.com/)

<comment><USER2> > The other big challenge I never resolved was how you'd account for e.g. > using 1/4 cup of flour out of a bigger volume. Or taken to its extreme, > cooking oil. How do you know how much your 'splash' is? You can't predict > the remaining volume without a lot of fiddling to measure it and that > defeats the purpose.

Definitely. Or, even, just taking some snacks to another room, and later placing it back to an 'intelligent' cupboard, let's say. In extreme cases, one may need be under a constant tracking at home.

But, simplifying, another option may be to use an improved voice assistant when cooking. One would need then to interact with the VA to note and confirm the stuff used. Improved VA, in essence, would try to 'understand' the activities and interact, instead of being a passive one (as most of currently are), that one needs to say commands. This would require adding it access to camera and maybe other sensors available at 'smart' home. Definitely a lot of interesting and challenging problems to tackle not forgetting too about the user privacy part.

<comment><USER4> My naive solution, assuming a sufficiently "smart" home, would be to have each shelf be an accurate scale. If it's sensitive enough, it should be able to detect the weight of what was consumed.

<comment><USER5> A shelf for each item?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love the _idea_ of this, but in reality I can't imagine the time and energy required to scan and keep everything up-to-date is offset by the benefits. Perhaps a current user can prove me wrong?

<comment><USER7> You've hit exactly the downfall.

I've always liked the idea of this sort of thing, but the benefits of using something like this almost never outweigh the costs as compared to just eyeballing the pantry and winging the meal planning on short timescales. The system starts to become the point of the effort rather than just a tool to better achieve household goals.

Unless you're dealing with a substantial household or some sort of communal living environment (lots of roommates, half-way house, dorm) or doing a lot of entertaining, the benefits vs. the effort just leave these things as interesting experiments.

And I do see value in experimenting this way. I am an implementation consultant for actual ERP systems and data entry compliance is a real problem in the corporate world, too. There tends to be benefits to the data entry problem there, but the benefits tend to accrue a few degrees of separation from where the entry work takes place... so those that do the work often don't understand the need or importance. So if you solve some of the data capture problem in a small, low risk household environment, you may be able to apply the lessons learned to larger business systems. For example the more you could capture the data "in flight", like cameras capturing the information as you're putting recently bought groceries away or pulling them out to cook, do that well enough and now the benefits start to be larger in the home... but maybe you can see avenues to reduce the data entry burden in the warehouse, or the data entry processing desks, etc.

But on it's own, using the same old data acquisition patterns as boring old corporate ERP, you're better bet is probably just pen and paper.

<comment><USER8> > I've always liked the idea of this sort of thing, but the benefits of using > something like this almost never outweigh the costs as compared to just > eyeballing the pantry and winging the meal planning on short timescales. The > system starts to become the point of the effort rather than just a tool to > better achieve household goals.

Sounds a bit like GTD and other systems :/.

<comment><USER9> I think that GTD can actually eliminate overhead, but honestly it all depends on how good the ad-hoc system you are coming from was.

<comment><USER8> Well, so do I ; it was a gentle jab to people over-thinking their GTD or todo system ^^. My choice of words was quite poor.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow I'm so happy to have found this. Have you considered clubs, restaurants, cafes etc as a target market? If you wanted to start earning some revenue to host it I think there could be an opportunity more so than home users.

We had started down the track of building a basic version of this for our ski club using MS "Power Apps". Our basic process is: 1\. Pre-season: estimate requirements based on previous years and do a few large orders with various suppliers for delivery to coincide with the annual food lift (we can't drive all the way to our club). Primarily this is meat and non perishables such as tinned/packaged items, toileteries and cleaning products. 2\. Every few days during the season: perform a stock take of what's on-hand in the club. Send to the catering officer. 3\. Catering officer orders according to his/her assessment of requirements. Mainly this will be perishables such as fruit/veges, eggs, bread, milk but later in the season may include other items 4\. Items are delivered to common stock room and carried up the mountain by club members. Items are checked off the order list provided by the catering officer and added to various storage areas (fridges/freezers, store room, kitchen pantry etc).

Based on a quick run through the demo system I think grocy will meet our requirements for managing consumables.

Additionally club members staying on a particular night are assigned duties by the lodge leader e.g. breakfast dishes, vegetable prep, cooking dinner. We may be able to use the "Chores" function to help with that.

Personally for home use I would not use this because it would not be practical for our family.

Regarding an additional feature: I would recommend looking at Cozi which we use for a shared family calendar which is really valuable for us. I imagine it would be fairly trivial to add that feature to Grocy.

I'll let you know how we got on with the club. Thanks and hope that helps.

<comment><USER11> I mean no offense, but the consumer version (as OP linked) strikes me as FOSS's answer to the IoT Fridge, a wholly unnecessary device itself.

I'm all about freeing mental bandwidth, but if you can't remember whether or you bought a piece of salmon yesterday, or if you can't be fussed to read the expiration date on a milk carton--adding "extreme attention to minor details" and "tedium" to the mix is not going to help.

The right idea here is optimizing restaurant workflows to minimize food waste/deal with seasonal availability/delivery schedules/etc./etc. Take that and slap a nice frontend + tier 1 tech support on top of that? Baby, you got a stew going.

Personally, as a pedant, I actually find this really useful for my current, home situation. :| thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I appreciate the community effort but this thing is waaay too unfocused. Batteries, chores and a todo list?

I've been using an app called Cinnamon to handle grocery shopping. The general idea is similar: define a bunch of things you want to keep in stock in your pantry. Every two weeks before a shopping run I do a sub-five minute scan. The app groups by category, which usually helps keep it fast. Anything I'm low on swipe left and it's on the buy list.

In the grocery store, swipe left again as you buy and it's in the cart. Swipe right for 'next time.' (After a certain amount of time, anything in your cart is presumed to have moved back into the pantry, and anything in next time moves to buy list). For multiperson households, you could split the buy list construction from the acquisition.

I guess the key realization here is that data entry is simpler if you only check before planned grocery store runs, and if you can predict how much you need on hand to last between shopping runs. For toiletries its a pretty quick 'do I have an unopened one still?' For food I know some people use meal planning but I just keep stuff on hand and wing it -- spices keep for quite a while and meat freezes fine.

<comment><USER13> I guess you're not understanding the scope.

It's not like an overkill of shopping list, it's more of a small scale inventory management.

<comment><USER12> To what end? If the data you collect cannot change behavior, it has no purpose.

<comment><USER14> To manage your home inventory of regular consumables...

<comment><USER12> 1\. 'Manage' is meaningless verb in this context. If you do nothing, you've managed poorly, but still managed. 2\. Chores / task management doesn't fit that bill.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This feels like booking a flight to get to my local supermarket within walking distance. I guess it appeals to a certain type but I don't even need a written list to go grocery shopping.

</comment><comment><USER16> We've been using the amazon hand scanner for a while (feeding into AnyList) and it works pretty well; apart from the minor element of pulling out your phone instead of pressing one button this looks significantly superior. You might look at that combo (well AnyList) to look for opportunities for additional features. Grocy seems to have a lot of other useful functionality.

I'm surprised that Amazon hasn't exposed more of their ERP to the consumer. For example: they know what they have shipped me, so they could manage the expiration dates for me ("subscribe and save" is a much more blunt instrument). They could combine scanning when something needs to be reordered with scanning as you cook to manage recipe, nutrition, and supply levels all at once. If they know you buy diabetic strips they could change recipe recommendations or what macronutrients are reported.

</comment><comment><USER17> Grocery management solution for my home? Maybe in some poor family with 10 kids and bunch of adults it might make sense (really doubt it) but the last thing I want to do is use computer to figure out if I need to buy something.

</comment><comment><USER18> Do not make the same mistake as regular ERP. If APIs are available, try to integrate to sources of data people actually use vs direct user input.

<comment><USER18> Kroger has an API for some things:

[https://developer.kroger.com/reference/](https://developer.kroger.com/reference/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Am wondering if there are people that are going to use that for more than a week-end. I mean, it's great to know what you have, but in real life, this is just not maintainable.

Not too mention the amount of features.

And the design seems like 10 years old.

Sorry, dont' want to be rude. But... I'll pass.

I'll come back when every single pasta am eating will be automatically tracked and re-ordered by a camera "à la" Amazon checkout-free store. Or when everyone in the house will have a chip in the throat and know everything we consume in the house.

</comment><comment><USER20> I have been contemplating to build a solution based on an rpi with infrared hand scanner and a touch display attached to our fridge.

Now, I use a combination of Todoist, IFTT and google home. "Hey Google, groceries, add Milk". Done.

Perfect while cooking. No phone, scanner or any other input device needed.

<comment><USER21> Our family does the same, but with Google Home + Google Keep. Shared Costco List, Amazon List, Home depot list, and Grocery list between me and spouse. "Hey Google, add Milk to the Shopping List" "Hey Google, add Eggs to the Costco List" No need for third party integrations too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> These days you can't get much more than a few mandarins, a bottle of orange juice. I haven't had a home-cooked meal since last Saturday only been eating takeaway as the supermarkets are always empty. It's getting ridiculous here in the UK.

<comment><USER23> Same in my city in the US.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The main challenge (as other pointed out) is in the data entrey (and update). I see the options as:

Grocery Input (easiest):

\- _Receipt Scanning and OCR_ \- Easiest as people don't change supermarkets and groceries too often, so identify once the item in the receipt and it will be always recognized.

\- _Bar Code Scanning_ \- Also possible but too much work to scan each item, and some items don't have a code.

\- _Visual Recognition_ \- Video Camera or periodic photos of the grocery storage, hard to do.

\- _RFID tags and portals_ \- I dream that one day barcode will be substituted by RFID tags, then it would be feasible to have a portal wherever you keep your groceries.

\- _API_ \- If any supermarket offers that sort of thing for receipt data

Grocery Update/Usage (Hardest):

\- _Recipe usage_ \- By the estimated usage of every recipe you make (like Grocy tries to do), but that doesn't cover everything that is not on recipes (like cleaning products)

\- _Visual Recognition_ \- The same as above, if it can recognize groceries going in, it can recognize groceries going out

\- _RFID tags and Portals_ \- The same dream as above

\- _ML_ \- By the frequency of your product purchase, a machine learning model might be able to predict when you should buy a new item.

<comment><USER25> All this solution only solve one half of the problem, which is input. But there's also the other half which is marking them as you use the items. Yet another part which also needs to be considered is the separate input for the expiration tracking. The latter may be solvable if you approximate lengths for each product in a database, and you assume that the product you bought is starts at 0.

But yeah, even if you can simplify the first part as your post describes, there's still a lot more work to maintain the data beyond that.

<comment><USER24> I did mention the update there. My formatting was not good enough to highlight it. It's the second list.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I'm quite surprised that big grocery companies are not doing this kind of services: If you get this working, one could argue that the "commitment" to "automatically" keep ordering from same shop and brand would be quite high - because it would be so easy. This, with home delivery would bring quite many new hours to a normal week/month.

(Personally working with "out of home" logistic solutions.)

Edit: mistypes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've been writing such a web-based self-hosted grocery and household management system for the last 6 (and depending at how you look at it - 20) years. It's a tough problem but well worth it. I share my system (which is very difficult to actually release) here in the hopes of giving people ideas, or if anyone wants to work with me. Just fixed a bug in the home inventory component, and am dreading working to integrate purchase management with shopping receipts (both online and local) with inventory. Very tough problem indeed:

[https://github.com/aindilis/free-life- planner](https://github.com/aindilis/free-life-planner)

[https://github.com/aindilis/free-life-planner#a-few- screenca...](https://github.com/aindilis/free-life-planner#a-few-screencaps)

</comment><comment><USER28> I imagine a future evolution of this could be embedding it on a raspi with a USB barcode scanner, and putting a control screen in your pantry.

<comment><USER29> You can read barcodes with your phone camera. No additional hardware required.

<comment><USER30> Specialized hardware reads barcodes faster and more accurately which really makes a difference when you using them a lot

<comment><USER31> In addition, lasers scan extremely well in low light conditions due to the intense light a laser outputs which illuminates the barcode so the sensor can read it, even in the dark.

Just imagining the frustration of trying to perfectly angle your camera to scan a can of beans in your dark cupboard makes me want to toss my phone against a wall.

<comment><USER32> Phones have flash now. Except budget phones.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Do you ever feel like you wont have enough toilet paper for your next shit?

Introducing Grocy: easily find a missing product in your fridge,bathroom or an underground bunker. Always know what's expiring next.

</comment><comment><USER34> I've known about this project for a while, but the coronavirus lockdown led me to install it. Unfortunately, the JavaScript-based UPC/EAN barcode scanning is unusable. Too slow, even on a 2018 Mac Pro, sometimes only scans a partial barcode, and asks for permission to access the camera for every scan. I've ordered a USB bar code scanner, I'll see if that makes it more usable.

I used to have a really neat device called the Hiku. It was essentially a WiFi-enabled hockey-puck sized scanner, with a microphone for voice recognition for items without bar codes, and a UPC database. Sadly they went out of business a few years ago but their app still works (not sure if new users can sign up for it), and is great for shared shopping, e.g. yesterday I was shopping and I could see my wife add items to the list in real time, as well as cross them out.

My main challenge is that I downsized to a much smaller apartment, and a lot of our dry groceries have to go in plastic bins that are shoved in dark corners, so it's hard to know what we have or don't have, leading to duplicated purchases and also wasted food when it expires.

One challenge is the absence of a good universal UPC/EAN database. I tried one with one item from the bin (a box of some obscure knock-offs of Meiji Chocorooms), and when the phone scanner finally managed to get the item right, the online DB identified it as a Disney Princess doll, so it seems UPC/EAN is so badly managed they can't even avoid duplicate codes.

Finally data entry of expiration dates is going to be too cumbersome. A better approach would be to have some sort of of statistical model that estimates the shelf life from the product descriptions, e.g. 2 years for canned goods. Less precise, but more manageable, it could show alerts like "check how much longer this can of tuna has left", and if still has some ways, you could enter the precise date only then.

<comment><USER34> I have a workflow for books that is quite efficient, using the Mac app Delicious Library, a Microvision RoV Bluetooth scanner supported by the app (sadly discontined):

[https://blog.majid.info/organizing-with-delicious- library/](https://blog.majid.info/organizing-with-delicious-library/)

Sadly I don't have anything that streamlined for groceries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> If I didn't have to do the input myself I would subscribe to this for life.

</comment><comment><USER36> I dont see usecase even for a family of five, because this is solved with authority/responsibility and habits, and it works good enough most of the time.

However this could be useful for Airbnbs management, open-spaces with kitchen, and also that new trend of young independent people living together but sharing a kitchen. All these cases need more accountability.

</comment><comment><USER37> My wife and I have tried several systems and applications at this point. We go grocery shopping together, just us, no kids. For us, the shopping experience is important. It's got to be fast and synchronize quickly.

My favorite app is listhero. [https://listhero.de](https://listhero.de) Fast, simple and secure. Each list can easily be managed for adding new items, checking them off the list or recovering an item from a "recent items" (done/purchased). There's nothing too fancy here. The great feature is how fast the spa is.

But the list app is just where we share the info. It's our shared process which works best for us.

Everything on the list is grocery shopping related except for three lists: 'meals', 'pantry' and 'freezer'.

Could it be fancier? Could managing our meals automatically add items not in Pantry to our list? Maybe but those systems always seem too complicated and we've tried several (most recently 'plan to eat' which we paid an annual subscription). Getting the shopping right is paramount for us. Raw speed of the UI is the best feature of ListHero.

The Meals list is the heart of the process. We have 23 meals on there. If it's time to shop we can quickly decide on a few meals, check the pantry and freezer and then just add items we need to baking, grocery, meat, etc..., almost always by clicking an item from the 'Recent Entries' section.

If we were feeding larger groups of people with a restaurant or a college meal coop where we shared the cooking and managed volume orders I'd want something fancier that managed meals and ingredients and shopping a bit better.

But for my wife and I this relatively simple works great. Most of the recipes are in our heads. The list app helps us to manage a shared mental model. We enjoy our kitchen heartily.

</comment><comment><USER38> It would be great to solve this problem but I'm afraid the overhead work needed to keep this system up to date would be too high or too high for some family members to be worth it, e.g. maybe a member of the family uses up the last butter and you are unaware of this so you miss to buy it resulting in that the recipe for the evening is not possible anymore

</comment><comment><USER39> If anyone wants a light-weight version of this, I made a Coda.io template last week and have been using it with my family. Easy to extend/modify as your needs change.

[https://coda.io/@kenny/perishable-food- tracker](https://coda.io/@kenny/perishable-food-tracker)

</comment><comment><USER40> I'm wondering if something like this exists, at a larger scale.

For example, say five or six neighboring households decide to distribute the shopping chore. One person goes to the grocery store, or COSTCO, returning with staples for multiple households.

<comment><USER41> Is this a scenario that you encounter often? I have heard of 'buy together' being common / widely used in some Asian countries but not so much in US metropolitan areas.

Disclaimer, my info is purely anecdotal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This is a cool concept, but in addition to all of the concerns other people have voiced, I have a very specific problem: I've been trying to go "zero waste" and reduce packaging as much possible. This means there is no package to scan, I'm just buying in bulk and putting stuff into bags/jars. There's also no clear expiration date, which is actually somewhat troubling these days, but so far I haven't had bulk stuff go bad b/c I wasn't stockpiling/prepping it.

We'll see what happens during the pandemic, that's definitely thrown a wrench into my low-packaging shopping.

<comment><USER43> Another thread showed his project that printed labels with QR codes that might be a good fit if you're willing to compromise sticker labels in your zero waste goals.

[https://www.thingybase.com/](https://www.thingybase.com/)

I use frog tape and a sharpie. After a year+ I'm still on my first roll of frog tape.

If you really want to go zero waste you could with a some sort of color coding system like bread clips use.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> So we found an approach that works well for me and my wife. We use the builtin Notes app on iOS and have a shared note where I ask siri to add whatever I'm missing to the list, then every time one of us goes grocery shopping we just pull the list.

</comment><comment><USER45> Wow! I have been struggling to find exactly this for maybe years now. Other software always felt too limiting or specific, this is just about perfect.

I want to give this a go and see if I can do better than I do with spreadsheets.

</comment><comment><USER46> I freaking applied for HN with this idea and was rejected.. years ago.

Called "standard pantry"

<comment><USER47> This doesn't validate the idea, if that's what you're implying.

To be necessarily negative, this sort of product has appeared _countless_ times. It fills a need that people just don't have. I have four kids, a wife, a dog, a skinny pig and a bearded dragon. I can internalize shopping lists, as does my wife. It is incredibly rare that we even send reminders to each other of things. The idea of creating _and managing_ an inventory system is just a complete non-starter.

<comment><USER48> Furthermore, the idea of then tracking each thing I use/consume (just to keep the inventory count right) sounds mind-numbingly tedious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> This is awesome, I've thought about building a home stuff crud app to streamline and minimize the stuff we buy. This gets pretty close to what I have in my head.

Is there a way to set up lists for different stores and different households? For example we live in a building with mostly retirees who are not going out. So we're doing their grocery shopping and delivering it. Managing receipts from different stores, keeping lists separate and then doing the math later to see who owes what is a pain.

It's not a long term pain, but thought I'd ask. :)

</comment><comment><USER50> One thought to reduce data entry (for some people): parse freshdirect (etc) emails, with a default expiration date put in. (The pie in the sky version uses machine learning to make better guesses.)

<comment><USER51> Just from trying the demo, there are default "shelf life" numbers for the vegetables. But it expects best-by dates for the other stuff. It looks like defaults could be entered in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> As other commenters have pointed out, the manual data entry this requires makes it pretty onerous in a home kitchen, but I wonder if there's something similar for commercial kitchens? You could possibly integrate with the POS system to track how much of each ingredient should have been used given the dishes sold in a day. Wouldn't be perfect for stuff like flour where you need to adjust based on humidity, but it could give you a general idea of when supplies should run out.

</comment><comment><USER53> I think this software would be useful for a live in maid or nanny. I just can't imagine anyone willing to put in the time to make this work, unless they were paid. I have a friend who's parents are billionaires and have a lot of house help and a very big house with people coming and going frequently. This software would provide a lot of value to them, but not that much to most regular people.

</comment><comment><USER54> Hi, app author, if you're reading here.

Is this app compatible with Mono on macOS? It seems like it's Windows/Linux only which rules out using it at home :(

</comment><comment><USER55> Thank you very much for creating this, whoever you are. I know others have raised issues with the data entry aspect but at least there is something to build on. More relevant for me is that I can now have something to study with regard to the database design, backend/frontend stuff. bravo!!

</comment><comment><USER56> Amazing tool. It'd be nice if the default configuration included some basic recipes and required items or if there was a way to import recipes. Even nicer would be a parser tool that would accept a URL from any recipe website and import that recipe with its image and all the items and their location in grocery store isle, etc

</comment><comment><USER57> Very cool. What information is automatically imported to your list when scanning a barcode? Is it just the name of the product?

<comment><USER58> Seems only product name [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YH6IJFnfc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5YH6IJFnfc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It would be helpful if sell-by or best-by dates were encoded into the next generation of UPC or NFC or whatever.

</comment><comment><USER60> This reminds me of the Honeywell Kitchen Computer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell_316#Kitchen_Computer)

</comment><comment><USER61> I started writing a similar app in 2005 using Ruby on Rails. I called it Grocs and even registered the domain name grocs.com. I dropped the ball but I'm glad to see that someone else built it! Downloading now.

</comment><comment><USER62> Love! I've been struggling with a way for my virtual assistant to know what needs to be ordered, and the manual workarounds I've thought of don't save much time. Thanks for making this!

</comment><comment><USER63> What problems are you trying to solve with respect to groceries?

I think you need to start with that and there has to be incentives built in as well as full 2 way integration with the major online grocers.

</comment><comment><USER64> Love the concept but the spacing on Mobile is really off and driving me mad

</comment><comment><USER65> This looks cool :) Don't want to be a Debbie Downer in a time of crisis but I feel like you could use Google Sheets + IFTTT in order to accomplish much of the same thing. Would be especially useful if you could auto-tie this into grocery delivery services like Instacart.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think it'd be possible to build a client which would GET /objects/shoppinglist from the grocy API[0] to retrieve the shopping list items, which currently have the following schema:

      {
        id integer
        product_id integer
        note string
        amount number
        row_created_timestamp string
      }

Do you know if there are clients for Instacart (and/or other food delivery services) available?

[0] - [https://demo.grocy.info/api](https://demo.grocy.info/api)

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> I just remembering jinyang scanning into his smart fridge.

</comment><comment><USER67> Seems like overkill for something that only a couple of decade or so ago, we used to use our own memory (albeit inefficiently, but most of us will be okay with not doing this with too much efficiency).

</comment><comment><USER68> Who wants this? People who ask themselves, "Y'know, if I only had an ERP system to manage my refrigerator and batteries"? This seems very poorly conceived.

<comment><USER69> I think pretty much every developer has tedious tasks in their life that they "just know" they could improve via an app. Meal planning, kid's chores, financial budgets, you name it - many have considered for 2 seconds building their own. Most of us don't have time. Needless to say, I think this is infinitely more valuable than another meme generator.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> Cool product but... This is wayyy too much much. To need an ERP for this problem? And to deal with self-hosting, teaching everyone how to use it.

</comment><comment><USER71> It building an app with form entry is that's needed google and amazon would have done it a decade ago. That's not the need here.

</comment><comment><USER72> Pronounced like grossy

</comment><comment><USER73> I'm able to get on remarkably well with grocery shopping without the use of any technology. Feel blessed.

<comment><USER74> Me too. I want to express my deep gratitude to those who sustain myself and others. I show up at the grocery store and encounter a cornucopia of nourishing foods - how lucky am I. This is your time to shine farmers, truck drivers, food processors and grocery store workers. Thank you!</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do I start keeping a schedule? - <AUTHOR> Do you use any apps to stay disciplined/keep to a schedule? Looking for advice on how to become disciplined.. <comment><USER2> Time block every of your interactions into 30 min slots in Google calendar.

Write them like this : Source | action | unit | preposition | Target | Example : I | get | dollars | from | my client Example 2 : | I | take | packages | at | Restaurant</comment>


The Ultimate Collection of Emacs Resources - <AUTHOR> http://batsov.com/articles/2011/11/30/the-ultimate-collection-of-emacs-resources/

<comment><USER2> Something I think which is worth adding under "Emacs Squires" is Rick Dillon's "Hack Emacs" series of videos.

<https://www.youtube.com/user/rpdillon/featured>

</comment><comment><USER3> Emacs Golf should be in it (derived from VimGolf)

Golfing is trying to create/modify some data in the smallest keys sequence possible. It's fun and uber efficient to acquire knowledge about editors (and also other people workflow/habits)

A set of videos <http://vimeo.com/timvisher/videos/page:1/sort:newest>

Some blog article <http://irreal.org/blog/?p=293>

Google returns a few more links, suit yourself.

</comment><comment><USER4> Haven't found Emergency Elisp by Steve Yegge there, and it's a good hands-on intro to Emacs lisp.

</comment><comment><USER5> Good list, every time I look at other configurations or options for Emacs I learn something new :). Does anyone know if there's been any news on Emacs and Guile?

</comment><comment><USER6> Great list. I use most of the resources listed there, but really, the Emacs wiki usually answers most of my questions.

</comment><comment><USER7> we need one for vim. I always feel there's something new to learn.</comment>


Bay Area is long overdue for a major earthquake - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/19/us/california-earthquake-scenario-trnd/index.html <comment><USER2> What is with headline writers?

> The last major tremor on the Hayward Fault was a magnitude-6.8 event that > happened in 1868 -- exactly 150 years ago. So the region is almost overdue > for another one.

"Long overdue" is not "almost overdue." But it probably gets more clicks.

</comment><comment><USER3> There is no such thing as being "overdue" for earthquakes, if they ran on predictable schedules things would be a lot simpler, they don't.

<comment><USER4> But they aren't Poisson processes either. (A Poisson processes has an equal probability per unit time, regardless of how long it has been since the last one.) With earthquakes, the probability increases over time as strains build up across faults, until they are suddenly released.

<comment><USER3> Yup, but you do not know whether the strain will be released in a big quake or many smaller quakes. You could be at a state where a lot of strain has built up and a megaquake could seem immanent but then a smaller quake relieves some of the stress and "resets the clock". And then are you still "overdue" or not?

The way things work over very long periods of time is that some faults exhibit some degree of periodicity in terms of large quakes. But simplifying that periodicity into the concept of being "overdue" for a big quake is intellectually irresponsible.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't live in an earthquake-prone area, but this is a good reminder to fill up my water jugs and prepare a small stash of supplies.

I have a friend who watches the earthquake reports. He's pointed out how gravitational vectors lining up make big quakes more likely. It's something about the times the moon is closer to the earth [0], new moons [1] (when the moon is between the earth and the sun), etc.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_(astronomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_distance_\(astronomy\)) [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_moon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_moon)</comment>


Interactive Tutorial of the Sequent Calculus - <AUTHOR> http://logitext.mit.edu/logitext.fcgi/tutorial

<comment><USER2> I learned tools like this (and Karnaugh maps) when designing hardware logic, but they work just as well for software. I'm amazed that many CS programs don't teach these techniques.</comment>


How to be a genius - <AUTHOR> http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125691.300-how-to-be-a-genius.html?full=true

<comment><USER2> > _Pete Sampras didn't possess more talent than Andre Agassi, but he won 14 > grand slams to Agassi's eight because he worked harder and more steadily._

And how many hard-working tennis players failed to match Agassi's eight?

Also for all the talk attempting to downplay the importance of intelligence, the article did say:

> _"Studies of chess masters and highly successful artists, scientists and > musicians usually find their IQs to be above average, typically in the 115 > to 130 range, where some 14 per cent of the population reside"_

Coincidence alone couldn't explain such a concentration at the high end... and yet from the rest of the article, no concession whatsoever is made to this fact. It's very hard to put much faith in the conclusions the author came to.

</comment><comment><USER3> _So is the ideal of innate genius dead? If not, should we kill it? Certainly a clear-eyed analysis shows that "genius" is really a set of exceptional skills cultivated through disciplined study. We should probably shelve the notion of genius as an innate, almost irrepressible gift and speak instead of expertise, talent or even greatness - terms that hint at the work underlying supreme accomplishment._

Perhaps we should kill the notion of genius, although the author seems to consider genus soley as someone who achieves the highest heights, while the traditional understanding of a genius is someone who is exceptionaly intelligent, regardless of their achievements. I do not know is such people do exist, however there are individuals with a very low intelligence hence perhaps it is safe to assume that there are individuals with a very high intelligence.

More importantly however, the author seems to disregard intelligence and emphasise work, while in truth both of them are needed as much. In the crem dela cream, most of those people got there by working very hard and putting in the hours, as most of them have this passion therefore, the winner will be the one who has a slightly higher intelligence.

Not in any way to undermine the effect of the environment, but the environment is something we can control as such it is a good bet many other people are on an equal level "nurture" speaking, but as we can not control our innate ability, then the winner I suppose is the one who has a higher "intelligence.</comment>


Will Classical Music Survive the Future? - <AUTHOR> http://www.intellectualpornography.com/2010/01/one-oclock-daily-will-classical-music-survive-the-future.html <comment><USER2> As a dedicated concert goer I can tell you that the difference between a recording and a live performance is enormous. There is a sense of excitement and danger about a liver performance, a rough edge that never appears in a recording.

It's the difference between television and the cinema, or a driving game and driving for real.

Perhaps it's less true for orchestras, but I have exquisite recordings of chamber music, and I will _still_ pay to go to live performances.

It's different.

<comment><USER3> Agreed.

Have you seen the Berlin Philharmonic's Digital Concert Hall? <http://dch.berliner-philharmoniker.de/>

<comment><USER2> Bookmarked - thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Will Michelangelo's David survive the future?

Oh you mean the Classical Music _business_. Yeah, it will, because as RiderOfGiraffes says, no recording can capture the ambiance or immediacy of live performance. On top of that, few great concerts are recorded. They could fix that if they wanted to: you can go to archive.org and get decades of Grateful Dead concerts.

Will the diamond-encrusted concert halls with their $150 tickets to hear old warhorses over and over survive? No. At least, not if the middle-class keeps getting decimated by our Great Leaders.</comment>


Fertility by region in Europe - <AUTHOR> https://jakubmarian.com/fertility-rate-by-region-in-europe/ <comment><USER2> Turkey is not in Europe, it's in Asia!

<comment><AUTHOR> Is a transcontinental country. A club that includes for example Spain (Europe + Africa), Egypt (Africa + Asia) or USA (North America + Oceania). Turkey is in Europe and also in Asia

One interesting example in the group could be Portugal, that is European but also has two islands placed in the same tectonic plate than New York so in some sense could be seen also as a N American country. Another extreme case is France, that extends its territory for Europe, North America, South America, Oceania, and Africa</comment></comment>


Show HN: CoinSpy - Get alerts on bitcoin transactions on any number of addresses - <AUTHOR> http://coinspy.io/

<comment><AUTHOR> With the holidays, I had some free time for a weekend project. Let me know if you think this is useful or if you have any ideas for improvement. Thanks for looking!</comment>


Turnspit Dogs: The Rise And Fall Of The Vernepator Cur - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/05/13/311127237/turnspit-dogs-the-rise-and-fall-of-the-vernepator-cur <comment><USER2> This happened before neutering and spaying became prevalent. While the turnspit breed might no longer have been curated, the dogs themselves likely mingled with other breeds and have various mutty descendents today (or perhaps they have become part of certain pure breeds!).

What's interesting to see here is how ephemeral the results of centuries of selective breeding can really be. A very specific and specialized form of dog disappeared almost overnight once the artificial selection maintaining it was removed. It's a testament to the ability of genes to repair themselves given the least bit of diversity to work with. The incredible variation in dog breeds is really due to relatively small amounts of mutation, and here we see how rapidly those mutations can be repaired. It's humbling to realize that humans have altered the genes of dogs far less than their forms indicate.

<comment><USER3> > What's interesting to see here is how ephemeral the results of centuries of > selective breeding can really be. A very specific and specialized form of > dog disappeared almost overnight once the artificial selection maintaining > it was removed. It's a testament to the ability of genes to repair > themselves given the least bit of diversity to work with.

That's a pretty weird way to look at it. 'Repair'? No one is shining x-rays at turnspit dogs. What happened is that the selection pressures changed, and as quickly as they adapted to the turnspit niche, they adapted to the alternative niches like being mutts or lapdogs. Selection is fast, artificial or 'natural'.

Which incidentally suggests that we're wasting a lot of potential. (Like dogs which can sniff cancer; why aren't we trying to breed dogs to do that better?)

<comment><USER2> One of the cornerstones of selective breeding is systematic _inbreeding_. This brings out recessive traits and encourages the accumulation of what we would normally consider mutations and errors. By selecting individuals that have desired traits, this engine of change is harnessed to produce the desired end results.

Consider how we would view humans who had been selectively bred long enough to change their form as drastically as some dog breeds have been changed! We would be _horrified_ by them. However, the deformities accumulated by this population, when reunited with a larger population, would soon disappear. No doubt we would would view this as repairing the damage done to their genomes.

As for breeding dogs with the ability to sniff cancer... First, you have to get your hands on the raw materials. i.e. Find dogs who already can smell the stuff. Then you have to hope at least some of their offspring will have that trait. Next, you need to figure out how to reliably train dogs with the ability to smell cancer to actually do so and communicate the results, and you're probably going to have to do this with dogs you don't necessarily know actually have the ability. Also, you will need to be around people with cancer on a routine basis so you can test/teach your dogs. I'd be willing to bet few oncologists will say things to their patients like, "Gee, you're absolutely riddled with cancer! How would you like to help out with our cancer-sniffing- dog breeding program before you snuff it?". Finally, you have decades or even centuries of work ahead of you before you'll have a breed on your hands with greater ability than random gifted individuals in the greater dog population.

The fact that some dogs can smell at least some forms of cancer suggests that there is a mechanism for detecting cancer to be discovered. It would be much faster and far more useful to determine how dogs detect cancer and develop instruments directly based on that method. The state of modern science is such that breeding animals just takes too long.

<comment><USER3> > One of the cornerstones of selective breeding is systematic inbreeding. This > brings out recessive traits and encourages the accumulation of what we would > normally consider mutations and errors.

It may bring out recessive traits, but why would it increase the mutational load? Those are no more useful in a turnspit dog than in a sheepherding dog. If your dog is growing 3 eyes because of a particularly nasty de novo error, that's going to be selected against both by the breeder and by other pressures.

> Consider how we would view humans who had been selectively bred long enough > to change their form as drastically as some dog breeds have been changed! We > would be horrified by them. However, the deformities accumulated by this > population, when reunited with a larger population, would soon disappear.

There's plenty of physiological variation among humans; are we really horrified by Pygmies?

> First, you have to get your hands on the raw materials. i.e. Find dogs who > already can smell the stuff.

Not that hard, since they've already been reported, implying that they're not so rare as to not exist.

> Next, you need to figure out how to reliably train dogs with the ability to > smell cancer to actually do so and communicate the results, and you're > probably going to have to do this with dogs you don't necessarily know > actually have the ability.

Solved by animal trainers eons ago: rewards for correct selection. How do you think drug dogs are trained?

> I'd be willing to bet few oncologists will say things to their patients > like, "Gee, you're absolutely riddled with cancer! How would you like to > help out with our cancer-sniffing-dog breeding program before you snuff > it?".

Culture cancer in dishes or something. Somehow, getting cancer samples doesn't seem to be a huge existential problem for cancer researchers.

> Finally, you have decades or even centuries of work ahead of you before > you'll have a breed on your hands with greater ability than random gifted > individuals in the greater dog population.

Decades is completely ordinary a timeline in medical research, so not a problem. And I suspect it'll be on the former rather than latter timescale: you only want one thing, and selection can act very fast. Consider how long the Russian fox experiment took, for a much more trivial goal.

> It would be much faster and far more useful to determine how dogs detect > cancer and develop instruments directly based on that method.

Oh, and how well has that worked so far...? Perfect, meet better... Really, you're making this all out to be much harder than it'd actually be.

<comment><USER4> "There's plenty of physiological variation among humans; are we really horrified by Pygmies?"

Have you ever seen more than one dog? There's a huge variation (just for example, my dog is 13 pounds, my brother-in-law's dog is 130).

also: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ota_Benga) and: [http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001](http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5001)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Here we have an example of not just a job being displaced by technology, but an entire (sub?)species being deprecated and going extinct for it.

</comment><comment><USER6> Here is Lucy Worsley (as mentioned) with turnspit:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxghA4uXM8A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxghA4uXM8A)

You can see how poorly 'any old dog' does at the task. 'Coco' (the dog in the clip) just wasn't focused, disciplined and able to take the job seriously.

Given that society was <1% of landed gentry types and 99+% 'poor' in these days before the industrial revolution and or the rise of merchant types, and, given that things like plagues had decimated the population, you do have to wonder how many stately homes there were for these 'specialist' hamster-wheel dogs. Personally I think that once the hot coal is thrown into the wheel, any dog would be well motivated to perform adequately. So I would be surprised if there ever really was a 'Crufts' grade dedicated breed rather than a generic mongrel that, given a certain size and personality, could be called a 'Vernepator Cur'.

</comment><comment><USER7> Progress marches on in Greece:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d4mcIopE-k](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4d4mcIopE-k)

</comment><comment><USER8> To be honest, this reads like something from The Onion. I knew nothing about it; there's so much grand "history" to study that simple mundane things aren't discussed.

It's astonishing to me just how much progress mankind has made in a (relatively speaking) blink of an eye. E.g. less than 100 years ago Gandhi battled against "the British salt monopoly". And not much more than 100 years ago even soap was a luxury good.

We've gone from that to jumbo jets and iPhones.</comment>


Which language wins in terms of salary/demand (July 2014) - <AUTHOR> https://msgooroo.com/GoorooTHINK/Article/16191/Which-language-wins-in-terms-of-salarydemand-July-2014/14105#.U-h7-IBdVId

<comment><USER2> I didn't notice C++ on that chart. I wonder how that ranks.

<comment><USER3> Haven't had a chance to look into the C++ data as yet. According to the jobs data analysed, a "C++ Developer" earns around $86k (USD) on average [0].

As for "C", it sits quite close to C# and Java, but is certainly not ahead of JavaScript. It's in that leaders group though.

Disclaimer: I'm the author of the original post.

[0] [https://msgooroo.com/browse/career/CPlusPlus- Developer](https://msgooroo.com/browse/career/CPlusPlus-Developer)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is there really any value in this sort of data? Surely what you do is far more relevant to your salary than what language you do it in.

<comment><USER5> Agreed.

If you've been developing for about 10 years (and hopefully should have used (at the very least) 3 languages by then), you would have realised by now it does not matter on the language/library you use - you will achieve average proficiency sooner than 2-3 months.

There are also those of us, however, who have spent the past 10 years coding the same crap, and learning a new technology would be like starting from scratch.

So, I speculate that you can work out the ability of a developer in an unknown language by multiplying the number of known languages by the total experience time. Roughly, as there are many other factors.

Recruiters (and their clients) do not know this.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Review my startup - getupp: location-based commitments - <AUTHOR>

Website: http://www.getupp.com
iPhone app: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/getupp/id416103537
getupp is a location-based commitment app that helps you motivate yourself and stick to your goals.
With getupp you can commit in advance to activities that require your presence at a specific location at a certain time, like going to the gym after work, studying in the library on the weekend or getting home in time for dinner. getupp verifies whether you keep your commitments and will share the results with your Facebook friends.
It works like this: Using our website or mobile app (currently iPhone only) you create a new commitment with a category, description, location and time. If you wish, you can let getupp announce the commitment on your Facebook wall and allow your friends to vote whether you'll be able to keep your commitment. To complete a commitment, you need to open the mobile app at the agreed location and time, so that the app can verify via GPS that you're within the target area at the right time. While you can choose whether you want to share a successfully completed commitment on your Facebook wall, broken commitments will always be announced on your Facebook wall. Think of a big red "FAIL" stamp on your Facebook wall, or a shiny "DONE" badge.
We are a young startup based in Hamburg, Germany. Our vision is to leverage social media to help people achieve their personal goals. getupp is our first take on this vision.
We'd love to hear your feedback on getupp. How do you like the general idea? How do you like the website and the app? What features are you missing most?
Thanks <comment><AUTHOR> This is a clickable link: <http://www.getupp.com>

And for the app: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/getupp/id416103537>

</comment><comment><USER2> I like the site and idea. I remember seeing a site that was similar but for things like quitting smoking. The location based part of this definitely adds an interesting twist on the standard "Rob was here" location based services out there. The site is well done and I like the logo. I agree that an Android version would be nice, but that can definitely come later. Thanks for sharing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your feedback.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> WOW that gave me a good IDEA!!! Feel free to take it. Promises ;) Who keeps them and who breaks them!!! Scratch that personal commitment stuff -- I'd rather know whether someone will keep their promise! I'll take 2.5%, thanks ~ JB

<comment><AUTHOR> ;-) Deal. You'll get 2.5%, but subject to a vesting clause: come back with a successful MVP for the promises variation, then you'll get your equity. Thanks for the feedback.

<comment><USER3> Anytime. Hahaha for the MVP, I'll take 50% if you want it from scratch or 30% if we can use your existing codebase! No, really, I think there could be potential there. Best of Luck. Nice Site BTW. JB

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Great idea. This would be awesome for people who are chronically tardy, and commit themselves to being on time somewhere. Connect this with Facebook events to automate it maybe?

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. That is one of the strategic decisions we face now. Integrate deeper with facebook to rely on functionality provided by FB or complement Facebook with our own functionality?

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Great design on the site. I love the theme and layout, props for that. I can't comment on the app though because I only have access to an Android atm.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the compliment. The Android version of our mobile app is a top priority for us.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Angular, Backbone, React. Help Me Choose - <AUTHOR>

As I get more serious in building web applications, I can't seem to decide between Angular, backbone, and React. What's your experience?<p>edit: specifically for someone who's hasn't done a whole lot of MVC dev work. <comment><USER2> I only have experience with Angular & Backbone.

I _much_ prefer Backbone, because there's much less boilerplate code, less "magic" and it's not nearly as opinionated as Angular. You can bend it to your use, rather than bend your usage to it's preferred way of doing things.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have experience with Angular and Backbone. Backbone will definitely give you more control, but you have to make more choices. Angular is definitely generating more buzz, but Backbone has a sizable community too, and is more mature and battle-tested. That's a big deal in the Javascript framework space, where the scenery can change drastically month to month. If you're doing something small, or you have a little extra time, it's worth getting familiar with React, Angular, and Ember too. TodoMVC is a nice way to get a sneak peak at the various idioms of each framework without investing a huge amount of time.

</comment><comment><USER4> My preference is Backbone. Angular is very popular especially in this place but many say it's super complicated without a reason and I agree.

</comment><comment><USER5> To give you more choices, I have been really enjoying Meteor.</comment>


Easy Qt Cross-Compilation on RaspberryPi with Qtrpi - <AUTHOR> http://www.qtrpi.com/ <comment><USER2> Wow literally looking for this exact thing just now and gave up to browse hn for a bit an voila. It's quite confusing with all the devices × compilers× qmake version combinations that could go wrong.</comment>


Ask HN: How to Vlog properly? - <AUTHOR> I just started vlogging https://youtu.be/dC-1OQ-3fb8
 and I'd love tips and advice on editing and recording properly! <comment><USER2> Lighting! I can't stress that enough. A simple ring light works wonders for your image. Your editing is decent, you have plenty of energy. Light!

<comment><AUTHOR> You got it! I'll find a ring light ASAP!</comment></comment>


The Impossible Burger - <AUTHOR> https://www.wired.com/story/the-impossible-burger <comment><USER3> They serve this patty at Umami Burger in SF. We tried it a few weeks ago and everyone was really disappointed. It definitely doesn't bleed. It's cooked well-done and can't be ordered any other way. The taste is similar to a well- done beef patty.

I'd love to try the burger they're describing here. Maybe the product is difficult to work with and Umami is unable to get these results? Or maybe they're describing some version 2.0 Impossible patty that isn't available yet?

<comment><USER4> > The taste is similar to a well-done beef patty

Isn't this basically the goal?

<comment><USER5> Are you interpreting "well-done" to mean tasty, high quality, etc?

It means overcooked to the point the meat is completely gray. Highly undesirable to many (though preferred by some).

<comment><USER6> Just to be clear, it's far less safe to eat ground beef rare than a steak. With a steak, potentially harmful bacteria are all on the outside, which you sear. So the interior can be practically raw and the steak will be safe to consume. If you grind it up, the outside is now mixed into the inside.

One cool trick to get around this is to cook the beef sous vide. Beef can be pasteurized at as low as 130 F as long as it's held at that temperature for long enough. That's basically medium rare.

<comment><USER7> less safe, but not far less safe. since 1998, there have been less than 400 deaths from foodborne illness in the united states. 12 of those were from ground beef. Your risk is utterly negligible.

<comment><USER8> These numbers do not come from the CDC:

"[https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html"](https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html")

<comment><USER9> Don't put urls in quotes!!

[https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html](https://www.cdc.gov/foodborneburden/index.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The fact that they argued that leghemoglobin is safe because it is similar to other globins is kind of weird. A chemistry professor once told me that the chemical Thalidomide is a medicine that can be used to treat morning sickness, but if you only reverse the chirality it can cause birth defects.

In case you don't know, if you reverse the chirality of a molecule it is essentially what the same molecule would be when viewed in a mirror, with all it's directions reversed.

source: [https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Chemistry/Chirality](https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Organic_Chemistry/Chirality)

<comment><USER11> If you look into the superfamily of globulins, globular proteins you can even find the highly toxic ricin.

Also wikipedia states about non-human globulins that "these proteins can cause allergic reactions if they bind with human IgE antibodies." [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulin#Nonhuman_globulins](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globulin#Nonhuman_globulins)

<comment><USER12> I would expect these are broken down by enzymes in the mouth/gut long before they have a shot at entering the bloodstream to bind with any antibodies.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Read all the stories about this burger, they made it sound so amazing. So when I heard it was available in SF I called my sister who has been a vegan for 35 years and asked her to try it.

She had a high degree of anticipation but said afterward it wasn't that different than other alternatives. In fact she said the company was better at marketing hype than any real breakthrough.

So the impossible burger is coming to Detroit. Next time I'm in the city think I'm going to try the new Shake Shack instead.

[https://detroit.eater.com/2017/9/15/16313768/impossible- burg...](https://detroit.eater.com/2017/9/15/16313768/impossible-burger- michael-symon-b-spot-burgers-restaurants-midwest-expansion)

<comment><USER14> But why would someone who's avoided meat for 35 years be interested in something that pretends to be meat?

I've not had milk-based ice cream for more than 5 years. There's a great variety of non-dairy frozen treats and I've eaten most of them. But I would not be a good person to ask which would be most palatable to someone who loved real ice cream -- I can't even remember what that tastes like.

<comment><USER15> Because they don't usually avoid meat because they don't like the taste - <USER2> do it for morale reasons. And sure, in 35 years a person may forget what that taste is, but if you make the best tasting plant-based burger then all sorts of people will be interested.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I reeeeeally want to like the impossible burger. But the one I tasted at Jardinerre is SF tasted... like sloppy joe taco meat. So, meat, I guess?

<comment><USER17> That's honestly a big upgrade though. When was the last time you had a veggie thing that tasted remotely like beef? I haven't had the opportunity for an impossible burger yet but I've never found any veggie product to be remotely close to meat imitation.

<comment><USER18> For what it's worth, I don't want veggie burgers to taste like beef. I want them to taste like a veggie burger. The ones that try too hard to taste like meat (save for this one perhaps), taste weird at best and terrible at worst. Beets, oats, and beans make for a pretty good meal.

For health reasons I don't eat much beef these days, so a veggie burger is the way to go at a lot of stands (or Chicken if I'm eating meat that day). I'm pretty happy deciding between the two instead of choosing one instead of the other.

I can appreciate the ideal of a marketable plant based product that tastes like beef but from a culinary standpoint I think it makes sense to just enjoy it for what it is. No one is trying to make Falafel taste like pulled pork. It's good as it is.

<comment><USER19> This burger is not for you, then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Who is the audience for this burger? I was a vegetarian growing up and to this day I prefer a balanced veggie burger (made of beans, grains, and veggies) to a beer burger. I would be horrified to eat something made of plants so desperately pretending to be meat... or which "bleeds".

Why don't we just raise and slaughter cattle humanely instead?

<comment><USER21> Meat eaters that don't want to give up the "taste" of meat to become vegetarian (e.g. for environmental or animal ethics reasons).

This is a "10x" sort of product -- for every 1 person who is willing to give up food that they think is delicious to become vegetarian, there are probably 10 people who wouldn't mind switching because the reasons are valid, but don't have the willpower or desire to give up burgers and fried chicken.

<comment> et-al Following this line of thought, imagine the reduction of cow slaughtering if all the fast food chains started serving Impossible burgers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> That Chrome update that won't auto play videos can't come fast enough.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've eaten this. Aside from the weird crispiness around the edges, it's pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER24> I like this video of Adam Savage trying the Impossible Burger at Jardiniere, from kitchen to table. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TF9bf9uKQQk)

</comment><comment><USER25> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3opRTD6nHWg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3opRTD6nHWg)

even jezza the orangutan wasn't fooled.

More broadly, I, an omnivore, would be overwhelmingly more likely to eat a good vegetarian meal than an ersatz meat-containing meal. Be honest with your ingredients and your food will be tastier.

</comment><comment><USER26> Impossible Foods' lab and tech is very impressive. It's like they are the company Hampton Creek pretends to be.

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder when people will realize that not all the land used by animal agriculture is particularly suited to high-yield crop outputs. I'd be less concerned with the portion of land being used for animal agriculture and more concerned about the amount of crop land being used for animal feed.

<comment><USER28> Is the implication here that meat-reduced diets are less ecologically sustainable in your opinion? Considering that biomass transfer efficiency typically sits around 10%, it's likely still better to eat the majority of our crops directly.

<comment><USER27> Red-meat reduced diets are likely much more efficient, especially grain-fed cattle. Animals that graze well on rocky, nutrition-poor land like goats or that can be raised in small plots lots goats, chickens, and crickets can have far less impact.

Primarily, though, I'm saying that the biggest impact isn't the raw amount of land being used by animal agriculture. It's the amount of productive cropland that's not being used for human crops but for animal feed. If your goal is to eat the crops directly, then feeding the same grains humans eat to cattle is counter to that goal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Should I try this? I tried the Beyond Burger and was unimpressed... I found the existing vegetarian patties tastier. Is this any better?

</comment><comment><USER30> Who the fuck wants their burger to bleed? Seriously, why is this a thing? If it were real meat, I'd be even more concerned if it were bleeding, because undercooked ground meat is one of the worst things you can put in your food- hole.

<comment><USER31> Ground meat is only dangerous if it's been sitting. Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it's been ground the day of serving. Personally I think medium is the absolute minimum, not because safety concerns, but more because burger falls apart more easily the less it's cooked.

<comment><USER32> > _Beef is perfectly safe to serve at rare if it 's been ground the day of > serving_

Why would that be the case?

The reason we can cook and eat steaks rare is because dangerous bacteria form on the outside surface of the steak, and cooking the outside while leaving the inside rare destroys the bacteria. Grinding the beef mixes the surface of the beef with the inside, meaning you should cook the inside to 165F as well.

That's my understanding at least...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm still skeptical if veganism suits everyone. I don't think we lived 100% off plants at any point in history. There isn't much evidence that plant based protein is superior or equivalent to animal based(grass fed).

Also, agriculture itself isn't blood free. So many animals die while procuring the land for agriculture or even while growing crops on an agricultural land.

<comment><USER34> > There isn't much evidence that plant based protein is superior or equivalent > to animal based(grass fed).

Where do you think the animals get the protein from in the first place? (hint: you already mentioned it)

<comment><USER35> Don't cows get protein from the gajillions of microbial creatures that digest the grass they eat, rather than from the grass directly?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting that vegetarian types that are so obsessed with food purity and GMOs would eat a frankenfood like this.

<comment><USER37> Vegetarian means you don't eat animals, not that you don't eat GMOs...

<comment><USER38> You know very well what they meant. The same 'type' of person is more likely to be into 'cleansing' and yoga and other middle class nonsense that others don't have the time or money to think/care about and will freuquently deceive themselves. "I don't eat meat or any of those fake GMO's! _Oh look, a non beef burger!_ " in the same breath.

<comment><USER29> How many vegetarians do you know and what fraction of them fall in this category?

<comment><USER39> I can say I don't fall into such a category and I am vegetarian. Definitely have no problem with GM foods :).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Very hot drinks 'probably cause cancer', UN health agency announces - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/very-hot-drinks-probably-cause-cancer-un-health-agency-announces-a7082991.html <comment><USER2> Anything that causes your body repeated strain/injury can result in cancer, as the more likely an error the more repair that's done.

</comment><comment><USER3> The headline should be phrased: Repeatedly Blazing Your Mouth Could Cause Cancer</comment>


AWS Elastic Block Store issues in one AZ in us-east-1 - <AUTHOR>

The Tarsnap website went offline at 1:05 PDT and attempts to launch a new instance in the same availability zone have failed.  I'm also seeing the EC2 Management Console getting very slow -- possibly because lots of other people are logging in to investigate their failing systems.
As of 1:40 PDT I'm seeing EBS requests served and the Tarsnap website is back online.
Amazon's status page reports:
1:22 PM PDT We are investigating degraded performance for some volumes in a single AZ in the US-EAST-1 Region
1:29 PM PDT We are investigating degraded performance for some EBS volumes and elevated EBS-related API and EBS-backed instance launch errors in a single AZ in the US-EAST-1 Region.
RDS and ELB are also now (1:40 PM PDT) showing "investigating connectivity issues".  Sounds like there was a core networking outage in that AZ.
2:21 PM PDT We have identified and fixed the root cause of the performance issue. EBS backed instance launches are now operating normally. Most previously impacted volumes are now operating normally and we will continue to work on instances and volumes that are still experiencing degraded performance. <comment><USER2> It used to be when EBS wiped out it didn't respect the boundary between availability zones. Every AZ in a region would be lost in tandem.

If they have managed to keep this incident confined to one AZ without trashing the whole region they have made significant progress.

<comment><USER3> or maybe it just wasn't as bad as previous incidents :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the kind of thing you're susceptible to when you use AWS products that start with E: EBS, ELB, etc..

<comment><USER5> At a minimum, you should use at least two availability zones if you care about high-availability on AWS. The vast majority of issues (including the current EBS hiccup) tend to be limited to one AZ.

For us, today's outage triggered a bunch of alerts, knocked 1/4 of our USE attribution servers offline (we're in four zones there) but otherwise caused no impact. Mostly just acked alerts and twiddled thumbs waiting for situation to resolve.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you care about uptime you should really get off EBS (and services that depend on it like ELB and RDS). Having a network between your disks and your CPU make outages like this one inevitable.

<comment><USER7> What do you recommend as an alternative for hosting large DBs on?

<comment><USER8> Joyent. Your compute and disks are colocated. Separation of compute and disks is a sure way to cause pain.

On failure:

[http://www.joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and- amazons...](http://www.joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons- elastic-block-store/) [http://www.joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the- cloud-deli...](http://www.joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud- delicious-but-deadly/) [http://www.joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when- abstract...](http://www.joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-abstractions- fail-us/)

<comment><USER7> I can't easily get a feel for Joyent's pricing. Is it comparable/cheaper than AWS or?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> This is currently causing Heroku to have issues too. [https://status.heroku.com/incidents/548](https://status.heroku.com/incidents/548)

<comment><USER10> Now reporting as resolved... Except that my database is still down. Sigh. And it's not just me -- a few others have tweeted at @herokustatus.

<comment><USER3> Hi, we usually track individual database issues via outbound support tickets opened on your account. The exception is for widespread outages, but this one was actually fairly small in scope.

If you didn't receive a support notification, please contact email@example.com so we can figure out why.

<comment><USER10> Thanks. I've now done this and referred some others to this comment.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is Instagram still on Amazon servers?

<comment><USER12> Yes.

<comment><USER11> I wonder if this outage will encourage them to migrate over to Facebook's servers.

<comment><USER13> doubt it, since they probably properly set up their infrastructure with multi- az setup

<comment><USER14> I was getting ngnix 504's on their site consistently during this outage time, perhaps coincidence, but seems likely to be related.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Anyone using one 4K TV/monitor for both television and software development? - <AUTHOR> My wife and I (both software developers) live in a small apartment and we'd like to upgrade our ten-year-old TV. I've been thinking that I might like to get a large 4K monitor for software development on a MacBook Pro and Dell 15. (currently use a 27 inch iMac). I'm wondering if I can kill two birds with one stone by buying something like a 55 inch 4K TV and use it for both software development and watching movies.<p>The questions I have are:<p>* Which device? Must take both a DisplayPort signal for the 4K 60Hz but also have enough HDMI ports for the Apple TV etc. (or I could use an HDMI switcher)<p>* How to arrange seating? We'd like a couch for watching TV but a chair and tabletop for software development.<p>* Any hardware issues with the laptops I should be aware of? <comment><USER2> I have been using 55" 4K as a monitor and for netflix/movies/games. Works great. Good luck finding one that has a display port input though. For software dev a display port to hdmi adapter at 30hz works fine.

I am thinking about getting an actual 4K monitor with display port inputs though. Mostly because I want fast turn on times, intelligent on/off detection, and better color.

My TVs are several years old.

To code on a 4k screen you will have to be within 4ft of it. Even at 55".

</comment><comment><USER3> Depends on your eyesight. I find reading text on the TV difficult. So I tend to edit code, read articles on the MBP and browse web sites using the TV. When working from table and chair, I tend not to use the TV. Working from the couch is good, but the cable tends to get in the way to the other occupants. I have tried ChromeCast, but it is too laggy for my taste - so I tend to only use it for YouTube, etc.

I use a 4 port HDMI switcher. The signal quality is OK, but the dinky remote control is a bit of a pain.

<comment><USER4> There would not be a cable -- I would be using a wireless keyboard and mouse.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You probably want to go bigger if you want to code from the couch. I have a computer hooked up to a 56in 1080p TV in my living room for games. If I am browsing the web I normally zoom in quite a bit in order to read things easily. My couch is fairly close to the TV ~5ft away.</comment>


First made-at-home integrated circuits using litography - <AUTHOR> http://sam.zeloof.xyz/first-ic/ <comment><USER2> Comments moved to [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955549](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16955549), which is currently at the top of the front page.</comment>


Human eye protein senses Earth's magnetism - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13809144

<comment> daniel-cussen IANAD but I met someone who had migraines when she was exposed to electromagnetic radiation in certain frequencies. This was two years ago and while I thought it was plausible, (EDIT: she had a bit of a crackpot vibe).

It took her a long time to figure out what it was, and when she did, she got a house in a neighborhood in a suburb in the hills, a good distance away from cell towers, with no wifi, a toaster oven (i think) instead of a microwave, some special arrangement for the phone (might have been wireless, don't remember), some filters (forget which) on the screens of her computers, little trays to put between the laptop and the lap, and so on. She owned an instrument to measure the She was even getting paint designed for stealth planes (it absorbed electromagnetic radiation) to paint her house.

She had a hard time with doctors for a pretty long time, and showed a friend and I a presentation about the regulation and health risks surrounding certain parts of the spectrum (I think from ultraviolet on). My notion of her problem was that she had a genetic condition that made some part of her nervous system malfunction (or hurt for no reason) when exposed to too many of the wrong photons. I don't know if she had a good sense of direction but she could, apparently, sense if she was getting a lot of certain frequency radiation because her head hurt.

<comment><USER3> I am sorry for your friend's psychosomatic illness. Cell towers, wifi, microwaves, wireless phones, etc. all operate at frequencies _below_ infrared, not above ultraviolet. There are "regulation and health risks" for parts of the spectrum above ultraviolet because that contains X-rays, gamma rays, and other forms of nasty ionizing radiation. Things below ultraviolet are non- ionizing and will do no more than heat you up... very very slightly too, unless you're standing in front of a microwave transmitter, thanks to the inverse square law.

<comment><USER4> There are a bunch of people claiming to be sensitive to things like cell towers and wifi. I know the radio-wave science makes most of these claims far- fetched.

But it also seems it would be simple to test those claiming the effects in a controlled trial. ("Is the Wifi Access Point you can't see or hear transmitting now, or not?")

Does anyone know if such tests have been done and documented?

<comment><USER5> > I know the radio-wave science makes most of these claims far-fetched.

The radio wave science specifically says:

\- wifi - 2.4 GHz , ie. 5in wavelength. A well-formed conducting channel in the body of 1.25in length makes an antenna. The channel can be blood vessel, nerve connections, etc... Some voltage and current will be generated - <USER2> just the hard science. How much of the current and voltage, how (and whether) it will be felt depends on how its all connected, its biology defining electric characteristics, etc...

<comment><USER6> A DC magnetic field like Earth's magnetic field is so different from a 2.4 GHz EM field, I honestly don't even know where to begin to explain the difference to you. If you didn't listen to your high school science teacher the first time s/he explained it, you probably won't listen to anyone here, either.

<comment><USER5> you're hallucinating, right? If not, please explain what connection you see between my post and "DC magnetic field like Earth's magnetic field".</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Chinese credit ratings agency: Chinese sovereign debt safer than US - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-12/china-wins-higher-rating-than-u-s-in-first-ranking.html

<comment><USER2> This may have something to do with Chinese businesses having a nasty habit of screwing foreign investors. E.g., you, as a foreign investor, come into the office one day and discover that your jointly owned company is now entirely under the ownership of the Chinese partner.

</comment><comment><USER3> though it's never good to compare to the worst :)</comment>


Java coming to App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/overview.html <comment><USER2> Nice! This supports the usual war file formats... which most likely means it can support running JRuby/Rails & Clojure/Compojure.

The one thing that does is slightly annoying: you can't create threads, no executor pools, etc. You can do scheduled jobs, but no background ones.

</comment><comment><USER3> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=552183></comment>