Zynga's Real-Money Online Casino Is Now Live In The UK - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/03/zyngas-real-money-online-casino-is-now-live-in-the-uk-with-minimum-bets-starting-at-0-01/ <comment><USER2> I used to work as a developer in the gambling industry in the UK so have a bit of experience in this field.

The UK gambling industry has done a really good job of self regulating, they know that if they are too exploitative and do dirty tricks to get more money from customers, the government would step in and regulate them.

We spent a lot of time building features to give customers some control. For example, users could set hard limits to stop themselves playing too much, or they could ban themselves from the site. If users were playing for too long, we'd also ban them from the site temporarily. We also implemented a lot of features which would stop them banning themselves and then rejoining using their spouses account.

It'll be really interesting to see if Zynga plays by the same rules.

<comment><USER3> I have no idea if the UK gambling industry has been an exemplary beacon of self regulation, but even if that is the case it is no guarantee that it will continue to be the case.

You yourself say the only reason that they don't exploit their customers more and 'do dirty tricks' is because of the threat of regulation.

How can we trust entities that make important decisions like these not based on actual care for the end user, but based on the threat of government regulation? (Which might actually be a good thing!)

What you've told me doesn't fill me with any confidence at all. You've described to me what sounds like a delicate and potentially quite volatile situation.

<comment><USER4> Could you explain your point to me please? I agree with the premise that the current situation is unstable but I am not sure what conclusions you are drawing. (Maybe something about the morality of the gambling industry?)

<comment><USER3> The original poster seems to be arguing that the gambling industry is doing 'a great job' at self regulating. I believe that statement to be pretty meaningless, and I think regulation is likely a positive thing.

The fact they've done a good job of regulating (assumption) up to this point shouldn't be a consideration when deciding if they should be regulated in the future because we inherently can't trust them, and there is no guarantee whatsoever that it will continue that way (and I believe inevitable that at some point one of them will step over the line if they haven't already)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Great just what we need.

This shows no creativity, initiative, grace or innovation. It's not addressing any lacking market demands, they are just shoulder barging their way in and taking their slice. To me this is just a cash grab. An unapologetic cash grab in the middle of a recession.

<comment><USER5> So what? Microsoft increases Office prices, Google fills the page with even more ads, Zynga ads legal gambling.

<comment><USER3> Google increasing the volume of ads does not exploit peoples addictions (of which a huge chunk of their revenues would derive from)

Zynga releasing a skinned online casino doesn't check any of HN's boxes of values in my opinion.

<comment><USER6> You're upset because Zynga is exploiting addictive behaviors? That's their entire business model, and always has been.

<comment><USER3> That sort of model doesn't sit well with me, sure. The problem is when you introduce real money gambling you've amped the entire thing up and it becomes a lot easier for individuals to damage themselves more, and faster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So what they did was add a Zynga scheme (not much besides a few colors changed) to the partypoker.com client. How is this something that will save the company? For how long have they been talking up their real-money gambling stuff with the market eating it all up...

</comment><comment><USER8> How on earth is the FarmVille-branded page of cute-fluffy-animals-with- gambling legal, or even just acceptable?

Screenshot here:

[http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/screen-s...](http://tctechcrunch2011.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/screen- shot-2013-04-03-at-07-35-52.png?w=640&h=471)

I'm genuinely shocked.

<comment><USER9> What's wrong with it?

<comment><USER8> _What's wrong with it?_

It's exploitative; the graphics appeal to small children. Encouraging those that aren't capable of understanding gambling is generally frowned upon, in the UK at least.

<comment><USER10> Firstly, gambling is illegal for minors. Secondly, have you ever seen slot machines? Players like to pick machines they feel comfortable with. This is Zynga using their own branding to diversify into another product.

<comment><USER8> _Firstly, gambling is illegal for minors._

You think making something illegal stops it from ever occurring?

 _Secondly, have you ever seen slot machines?_

Honestly, no, although I've seen fruit machines in pubs, which I presume operate on the same principle; lots of flashing lights and characterization.

I would be extremely surprised to see something branded like the FarmVille page.

<comment><USER11> The one thing to be said of online casinos is that they offer good protection against underage gamblers. Unlike a fruit machine in a pub, you can't just wander by and anonymously put money in. The payment systems generally prevent registering/depositing by under-18s. And even the Gibraltar gambling commission (of which Zynga falls under) is very strict about preventing minors from playing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Considering one of their most successful games has been Zynga Poker for a while, it's surprising it took this long.

What they do have, however, is a very captive network audience. Assuming they have the right targeting, they should be able to run interstitials driving players from their free games (especially Zynga Poker, Zynga Slots, Zynga Slingo) over to these sites at a low cost. You don't have to agree with their creativity to see that this is a no-brainer for them.

</comment><comment><USER13> Time to buy Zynga stocks?

Who is surprised by this move? Zynga was always an unoriginal and uncreative company. This seems the smartest greedy execution in this context.

<comment><USER3> By the time you start seeing comments like this, it's generally too late and it's already built into the price. People have been speculating Zynga would do this for years now.

<comment><USER6> The real question is: will they be successful at lobbying the US government to allow them to operate in the States? Buying the stock now is (in my mind) largely a bet that they will be.

<comment><USER3> The performance of the current online casino is also an important part of the equation, if it fails then going to the US probably wont be much more successful. So I think it's a gamble based on current performance and the potential of expanding to other territories.

Online gambling in the US is a much tougher nut from what I've read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does this differ to any of the other hundreds of online casinos in the UK?

<comment><USER15> Their expertise in keeping users addicted...?

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> depressing news. People don't have money to waste right now.

<comment><USER9> Do you "waste" money on entertainment? Should what you value be imposed on others?

<comment><USER3> I'd like to know how many users are actually 'being entertained' as supposed to scratching a slight addictive itch.

<comment><USER9> Most everything you do in life is chasing highs and reinforcing biological addictions or psychological habits. Going for a run? Chasing that runner's high, scratching that addiction itch. Having sex? Getting that orgasm high, scratching that addiction itch. Eating food you love? Getting that sugar high, scratching that addiction itch.

Research on slot machine players: [http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1705333...](http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17053337&show=abstract)

Utilitarian gamblers, in essence, are looking for something to do. Many are seniors, who are looking to kill time, reduce boredom, or simply get out of the house – and they are less motivated by financial rewards or excitement. Some enjoy people-watching as much as the actual slot play.

Excitement gamblers are looking for a buzz – the thrill of winning a jackpot, relaxing and having a good time. This group doesn't like progressive machines with bigger payouts because they don't pay off frequently enough to provide the excitement.

Multipurpose gamblers tend to be younger, less educated, have lower household income, and are less likely to be married and own a home. Their motivation is to have fun and win money, and they are attracted to themed games and other machines they consider "lucky" or fun to play.

Relaxation gamblers were the most educated and well-to-do, and played slot machines for the socialization and fun. However, they also like to stay within their denomination – usually 25-cent machines or $1 machines, and often look at slot play as a way to relieve day-to-day stress.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Freedcamp or something else for project management? - <AUTHOR>

My nonprofit corporation's office manager is continually finding out about new online services, and recently suggested using Freedcamp for our project management. I have previously used Basecamp by 37signals for this organization and for another organization. What's your recommendation? What features should I look for in an organization with a lot of remote working (few face-to-face meetings) and a growing online client base? <comment><USER2> I can't really answer your questions but I've been using Freedcamp for a month and I'm pretty happy with it. It can be slow sometimes or even down every once in a while but I still think it's a good deal.</comment>


1.1B Taxi Rides Using OmniSciDB and a MacBook Pro - <AUTHOR> https://tech.marksblogg.com/omnisci-macos-macbookpro-mbp.html <comment><USER2> Whenever I look at large aggregation benchmarks like this, I try to estimate cycles/value or better cycles/byte.

Take this query:

        SELECT cab_type,
               count(*)
        FROM trips
        GROUP BY cab_type;

This is just counting occurrences of distinct values from a bag of total values sized @ 1.1B.

He's got 8 cores @ 2.7GHz, which presumably can clock up for short bursts at least a bit even when they're all running all out. Let's say 3B cycles/core/second. So in .134 seconds (the best measured time) he's burning ~3.2B cycles to aggregate 1.1B values, or about 3 cycles/value.

While that's ridiculously efficient for a traditional row-oriented database, for a columnar scheme as I'm sure OmniSciDB is using, it's less efficient than I might have expected.

Presumably the # of distinct cab types is relatively small, and you could dictionary-encode all possible values in a byte at worst. I'd expect opportunities both for computationally friendly compact encoding ("yellow" is presumably a dominant outlier and could make RLE quite profitable) and SIMD data parallel approaches that should let you roll through 4,8,16 values in a cycle or two.

Even adding LZ4 should only cost you about a cycle a byte.

That's not to denigrate OmniSciDB: They're already several orders of magnitude better than traditional database solutions, and plumbing all the way down from high-level SQL to bit twiddling SIMD is no small feat. More that there's substantial headroom to make systems like this even faster, at least until you hit the memory bandwidth wall.

<comment><USER3> (disclaimer: I work for OmniSci)

I think this is a good point. On GPUs, SIMT is effectively automatic vectorization, so our focus has been on the memory bandwidth wall (we make use of cuda shared memory in nvidia GPU mode for aggregates like the above query). Non-random access compression on GPUs also has been a nonstarter, at least historically. With more recent GPUs and more recent versions of CUDA, perhaps this is changing. But on CPUs, we have started looking into vectorization. There is a tradeoff, though -- the vectorization LLVM passes do add time to the compilation phase, and at subsecond query speeds that time isn't always worth it.

There are also a few other tricks to get closer to roofline performance. If you sort the input data on the key you're grouping by you can see small performance improvements, mostly from better cache locality. But, part of the "magic" of OmniSciDB is that you can group on any key and get good performance without ingesting, reindexing, etc.

<comment><USER4> I wonder what does this query compile to? In terms of C-code equivalent?

       SELECT cab_type, count(*)
       FROM trips
       GROUP BY cab_type;

From execution time it seems to me that this is a straight sum() of 32-bit integers. "cab_type" has two distinct values and if stored 32bit value for "green" is 0 and "yellow" is 1, straight sum of these integers will produce the desired outcome and explain performance. That said the same performance will not extend to key that has three or more distinct values.

<comment><USER5> In a naive case it compiles to a loop over all the elements and hash table prob for each element. Now the magic comes from a few observations:

\- cab_type has very few distinct values. so you can encode those values from 1 .. N and use an array of size N instead of the hash table

\- you can build a "parallel scan": split the rows evenly across many threads and each thread processes it's on chunk

\- the operation per row is very basic: you need to look up in the array and increment a value. so you can use SIMD to perform operations on multiple rows at the same time

\- using some bit manipulation magic you can do the above on "encoded values": you never need to convert cab_type bit represetation to an integer from 1..N

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the explanation Nikita. Any branching, hashing etc will increase execution time. The execution example is on laptop, which has 2 memory channels. 0.13s is absolute max that this laptop is able to muster as far as memory throughput goes. Usually 4 threads is enough to saturate memory.

I have written this piece of code: [https://github.com/questdb/questdb/blob/master/core/src/main...](https://github.com/questdb/questdb/blob/master/core/src/main/c/share/vec_agg.cpp#L147)

This sums 64bit values and using AVX2 it will sum 1Bn in 0.26s. Incrementing conditionally will not be as fast and will throw vectorization out of the window too.

<comment><USER5> This sounds about right. The query is using count and not sum which i believe can be a bit faster.

Yes. Branching will absolutely hurt. Good old x100 paper teaches how to avoid branching: [http://cidrdb.org/cidr2005/papers/P19.pdf](http://cidrdb.org/cidr2005/papers/P19.pdf).

And of course there is no branching in MemSQL for this use case. And also no hashing b/c number of groups is small and you can use an array and not a hashtable.

Finally if you compress data rather than do the sum on an uncompressed array you will have a lot more compact data representation which would allow you not hit the memory bandwidth ceiling this quickly (4 threads)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi @nikita, good to reconnect.

When you say an array and not a hash table, do you just mean a simple perfect hash table indexed by the offset of the dictionary id? We use this fairly extensively for inputs of bounded domain (i.e. dictionary-encoded strings, moderately-sized integer ranges, even binned values, numeric or timestamp), but call it a perfect hashing. Assume we're talking about the same thing but wanted to clarify.

<comment><USER5> Yes, that's it.

I'm still of an opinion that it's important to demonstrate performance on more complex queries with joins, subqueries, subselects, and clustered data movements. The count(*), group by query is a very very simple case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> For those wanting to try it for themselves, we recently released a preview of our full stack for Mac (containing both OmniSciDB as well as our Immerse frontend for interactive visual analytics), available for free here: [https://www.omnisci.com/mac-preview](https://www.omnisci.com/mac-preview). This is a bit of an experiment for us, so we'd love your feedback! Note that the Mac preview doesn't yet have the scalable rendering capabilities our platform is known for, but stay tuned.

You can also install the open source version of OmniSciDB, either via tar/deb/rpm/Docker for Linux ([https://www.omnisci.com/platform/downloads/open- source](https://www.omnisci.com/platform/downloads/open-source)) or by following the build instructions for Mac in our git repo: [https://github.com/omnisci/omniscidb](https://github.com/omnisci/omniscidb) (hopefully will have standalone builds for Mac up soon). You can also run a Dockerized version on your Mac, but as a disclaimer the performance, particularly around storage access, lags a bare metal install.

<comment><USER6> There's an old issue in your Github repo where you suggest that you may support OpenCL for GPU.

Is this on your roadmap?

<comment><AUTHOR> Unfortunately it's probably not in the cards in the near term just do to other priorities and insufficient demand (plus alternatives like HIP for AMD). I will say a lot of us here at OmniSci would kill to leverage the latent GPUs in our Macs and other places, so we'd welcome any community help towards this end (it's not a trivial thing to add, but also not particularly difficult either, just work).

We'll plan to update that issue with the above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> It would be great to understand why OmniSciDB does so well on this benchmark but seems to do far less well on others.

The ClickHouse team was (obviously!) very interested in Mark's result and tried out OmniSciDB on the standard analytics benchmark that CH uses to check performance. Results are here: [https://presentations.clickhouse.tech/original_website/bench...](https://presentations.clickhouse.tech/original_website/benchmark.html#\[%2210000000%22,\[%22ClickHouse%22,%22OmniSci%22\],\[%220%22,%221%22,%222%22\])]

Anyway, really intriguing results from Mark. Looking forward to learning more about the source of the differences.

Disclaimer: I work at Altinity, which supports ClickHouse.

Edit: Fixed bad link

<comment><USER8> Agreed. I'm also a bit frustrated that he never tuned vertica in his test of it - he just loaded the data into the default superprojection and queried it like that. Nearly all of vertica's power comes from its concept of projections - just like normal DBs benefit from indexes. I'd really like to see how it performs to these other systems once it's been tuned properly because in my experience it's always been the fastest DB I've ever worked with.

[https://www.vertica.com/docs/9.2.x/HTML/Content/Authoring/Gl...](https://www.vertica.com/docs/9.2.x/HTML/Content/Authoring/Glossary/Superprojection.htm)

[https://www.vertica.com/docs/9.2.x/HTML/Content/Authoring/Ad...](https://www.vertica.com/docs/9.2.x/HTML/Content/Authoring/AdministratorsGuide/Projections/WorkingWithProjections.htm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm almost entirely sure Litwintschik is misinformed in regards to the GPUs in his laptop.

Yes, he does have the Intel GPU he mentioned, but if he paid $200 to upgrade the GPU as he claims, he would also have a dedicated AMD Radeon Pro 5500M 8GB.

<comment><USER10> Actually, I don't think it's possible to configure a 16" MBP without a discrete GPU - they all come with AMDs. Only the 13" MBPs can be configured without one, but he says he's using a 16".

<comment><USER11> His other benchmarks of OmniSciDB that ran on systems with Nvidia GPUs, but I think he's pointing out that the in this case, the AMD GPU wasnt used by the DB engine even if it was part of the system config.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, I just checked and it appears to be a CUDA project, so neither the Intel nor AMD GPUs help here.

Still, that could have been clarified in the article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Just to clarify, most of the query engine is built around LLVM-based JIT compilation, and CUDA is not really used per say except for GPU-specific operators like atomic aggregates and thread synchronization, and of course we use the driver API to manage the GPUs, allocate memory, etc. Supporting AMD GPUs or the upcoming Intel Xe GPUs (or frankly anything that has an LLVM- backend) would not be particularly hard, it would just require adding similar supporting infra.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I once contacted the author to check out my open source package and benchmark it and he mentioned that he actually charges for the benchmarking exercise. So yeah.

<comment><USER13> I can't speak to your specific situation, but I grew up around consultants.

Consultants have a rule: "Never say No. Always say: this is how much it will cost".

It's a "no" but with a threshold.

<comment><USER14> The implication is that this article was paid for by OmniSciDB or someone with an interest. This changes the presumed context and should be noted upfront by the author if that is the case.

<comment><USER13> I don't know if I'd necessarily draw that implication -- I have no data; my broader point was more around the fact that consultants have a different way of saying "no" than most people.

People can elect to work on things voluntarily for personal reasons, but if someone asks them to fix or do something for them, then instead of saying no, they might say "how much will you pay me?" It's their time and they're under no obligation to offer it to you for free (though they can voluntarily choose to if they want).

<comment><USER14> That's a valid point. It's possible everything else was on his own time and it was just his way of saying no. I end up reading the "how much will you pay me?" as suggesting other things posted may be paid. That's not a fair read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> >The GPU won't be used by OmniSciDB in this benchmark but for the record it's an Intel UHD Graphics 630 with 1,536 MB of GPU RAM. This GPU was a $200 upgrade over the stock GPU Apple ships with this notebook. Nonetheless, it won't have a material impact on this benchmark.

He lost me here...I get that it doesn't matter, but come on, if you don't know that your computer has a GPU other than the integrated graphics (that you admit you paid more to upgrade) then what are you really doing...

<comment><USER16> Another comment suggested that he got this information from the "about my mac" popup, which only shows the dedicated GPU when connected to an external display or when using an application that uses the dedicated GPU.

If he ran his benchmarks and then checked his hardware while writing this article then the author might've gotten confused by that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17>
        COPY trips
        FROM '/Users/mark/taxi_csv/*.gz'
        WITH (HEADER='false');

> _The above managed to complete in 31 minutes and 40 seconds. The resulting > import produced 294 GB of data in OmniSciDB 's internal format._

I'm really curious how a simple import (no indexes or data typing) into SQLite would compare. But I don't have 700GB of free SSD space to spare.

<comment><AUTHOR> Mark did a benchmark of SQLite using its internal file format a few years ago ([https://tech.marksblogg.com/billion-nyc-taxi-rides-sqlite- pa...](https://tech.marksblogg.com/billion-nyc-taxi-rides-sqlite-parquet- hdfs.html#comparing-to-sqlite-s-internal-format)), clocking the import at 5.5 hours. It looks like this was done though on a spinning disk, so given a proper SSD, and a newer version of SQLite, it might be much faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> For a list of benchmarks by the same author.

[https://tech.marksblogg.com/benchmarks.html](https://tech.marksblogg.com/benchmarks.html)

Caveat: these benchmarks only test the simplest of operations like aggregation (GROUP BY, COUNT, AVG) and sorts (ORDER BY). No JOINs or window operations are performed. Even basic filtering (WHERE) doesn't seem to have been tested. YMMV.

<comment><USER18> Wow click house is right up there.

<comment><USER19> They're all on different hardware. Are they really that comparable?

<comment><USER20> No, but I think each piece of software is put in a proper context, to match what most would commonly use in that particular use case. For example, the Clickhouse benchmarks are run against typical modest cloud instances.

<comment><AUTHOR> To be fair, the c5d.9xlarge instances are $1.728 each per hour, or $5.18 for the 3-server cluster (looks to be about $3.06/hr for reserved 1-year pricing). Even with reserved pricing, that's $26,806 a year, or 6.5X more than a $4K laptop that likely will last for years and would be bought anyway (or at least a cheaper variant, which would also run these queries nearly as quickly). Of course that's very apples-to-oranges, so another way to look at this is that OmniSci would probably see significantly better performance on a single c5d.9xlarge than what we saw on this Mac (would need to benchmark, but informally I can say that OmniSci was 2-3X faster running on CPU on my Linux workstation compared to my Mac).

Disclaimer: No disrespect to ClickHouse here, it's an amazing system that I'm sure beats out OmniSci for certain workflows.

<comment><USER21> The biggest loss for omnisci was the in-memory limits. The highest end GPUs have 32GB, while you can find CPU servers with multiple TB. As soon as you spill out of that you take a big performance hit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Side note: you can see a cool demo of OmniSci at [https://www.aidemoshowcase.com/2020/07/08/omnisci/](https://www.aidemoshowcase.com/2020/07/08/omnisci/)

</comment><comment><USER23> I wonder why nobody uses -C and --strip options of tar. It handles those stuff automatically.

        mkdir -p application
        tar --strip=1 -C application -xf archive.tar

For example installing NodeJS from archive when composed with curl:

        OS=$(uname -s)-x64
        VER=12.16.1
        curl -#L "https://nodejs.org/dist/v${VER}/node-v${VER}-${OS,,}.tar.gz" \
        | sudo tar --strip=1 -xzC /usr/local

IMHO thats probably the reason why most apps are having proprietary installers :)

</comment><comment><USER24> Follow-up: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990844](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23990844)

</comment><comment><USER25> > [https://tech.marksblogg.com/omnisci-macos-macbookpro- > mbp.htm...](https://tech.marksblogg.com/omnisci-macos-macbookpro-mbp.html)

Is this what a keyword-stuffed URL looks like? This is terrible! This does nothing at all to communicate semantic meaning about the post's content

</comment><comment><USER26> Data does not fit in Ram so i guess in the end its about file formats and minimizing disk access, thats why some of the competition benchmarksbare terrible no?

</comment><comment><USER27> I wonder how it compares with a similar pandas instance?

</comment><comment><USER28> Someone shout put 'analytic' in the title. It make no sense to me right now.</comment>


Da Vinci's String Organ - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2013/12/01/247543086/da-vinci-s-string-organ-must-be-heard-to-be-believed

<comment><USER2> This is very, very cool - one can only imagine Da Vinci's delight had he known this thing would actually be built and played all this time later!

Sadly, the demo video is incredibly useless. Not only is it an obnoxiously cut-together collage of song fragments, it also never shows how the organ actually works. They do show off the room it's standing in, the pianist, and the audience in detail, but not the instrument nor do they do an acceptable job at providing a good listening experience. One can only assume this is by design, since the article is pretty vague on the inner workings of the organ as well.

Still, the project itself is very neat. I'm looking forward to hearing more from the _viola organista_.

<comment><USER3> the keys when hit lower the strings on the constantly turning wheels. this video has some short footage on how the instrument works: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9c76V4RDE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xS9c76V4RDE)

<comment><USER4> There's an interview here which includes more detailed video of the instrument. Just be sure to toggle the subtitles. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOrn_z9m9lU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOrn_z9m9lU)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate to be that guy, but Leonardo didn't really innovate here: the hurdy- gurdy had existed for a long time by the time he sketched out this instrument, and it had rosined wheels turning against strings, the different pitches being selected by a crude keyboard of buttons. Sure, this is more refined, but all the important elements were present in an existing instrument.

Still, though, it makes a pleasant, musically useful sound. I wonder how hard it is to keep in adjustment; it seems like it would be touchy (just like the hurdy-gurdy).

<comment><USER6> First off, I didn't know the hurdy-gurdy was an instrument, nor did I know it preceded this. Guess I really didn't pay attention to Donovan's lyrics…

I'm even more curious now. I want to know why this couldn't or wouldn't have been built before.

<comment><USER5> Similar things _were_ built. If you read German: [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geigenwerk](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geigenwerk).

<comment><USER6> I don't. The English version [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geigenwerk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geigenwerk)] suggests the a hurdy-gurdy wheel is in constant contact with strings, while the viola organista allows for a large number of strings to lower on to the wheel, so individual notes strings and notes are played.

This seems like he moved technology forward, no?

<comment><USER7> The hurdy-gurdy has 4 drone strings and 2 for melodies, so it's a rather similar concept to bagpipes with regards how it plays.

Also interesting is the origin of the hurdy-gurdy, the Organistrum: [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organistrum](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organistrum)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The work of Zubrzycki is impressive. For having studied acoustics quite a bit, I'm very impressed by the fact that the sound manages to have both a very short attack an a very good sustain (thanks to the wheel). Controlling the vibration of a bowed string must have been extremely difficult... For the interested reader, there's a more detailed article here: [http://tygodnik.onet.pl/zmysly/the-da-vinci-tone-in- english/...](http://tygodnik.onet.pl/zmysly/the-da-vinci-tone-in- english/qw5s9)

</comment><comment><USER9> Here's someone from Japan who's been making Geigenwerk and Streichklavier for the last twenty years. Neat videos.

[http://obuchi.music.coocan.jp/Geigenwerk/index-e.htm](http://obuchi.music.coocan.jp/Geigenwerk/index-e.htm)

</comment><comment><USER10> Super cool. In both sound and musical capabilities, it seems like it shares a lot with the viola da gamba, especially as they both compare to modern stringed instruments; gambas, being fretted, can't achieve vibrato in the same way that modern strings can, and so depend a lot more on ornaments (trills, mordents, etc.) for emphasis. They also lack dynamic range as compared to modern strings because of their simpler bows, meaning dynamics were often achieved by adding or removing voices in ensembles. This new instrument is similar: vibrato and dynamics probably aren't easily achievable, so it seems well-suited to gamba repertoire.

No surprise, then, that in the Polish-language video linked elsewhere in the comments here, he plays a couple of M. de Sainte Colombe pieces, as he was a master gamba performer and composer.

<comment><USER11> Having played a gamba in college, despite its obvious limitations due to the frets, you could play wicked multi string chords not possible on a cello. Sadly due to the gut strings it did not like air conditioning. Because it had frets I as a guitar/bass player could actually learn to play it reasonably well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> The Brazilian ensemble Uakti plays another take on the bowed string and wheel instrument. Hauntingly beautiful. Can't get enough of Uakti. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yZijDmnLuY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yZijDmnLuY)

</comment><comment><USER13> Much better article, interview, and video here (watch the bottom one with CC on): [http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/11/viola- organista/](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2013/11/viola-organista/)

</comment><comment><USER14> Sounds amazing!

</comment><comment><USER15> Da Vinci was certainly the hacker :)</comment>


Vysor:  View and control Android devices on computer - <AUTHOR> http://www.vysor.io/ <comment><USER2> Used this last week for a huge demo for a project I'm managing. Worked flawlessly to get things up on the conference room screen through my computer. Recommend turning on the tap indicators in the accessibility settings so others can see what you're doing to trigger app actions.

</comment><comment><USER3> been looking for something like this to control Nvidia Shield and my Android phone from the laptop. Teamviewer seems to be popular, was hoping Splashtop would offer something.

Will give Vysor a go - is it tethered only?

</comment><comment><USER4> So, this is basically VNC?

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been using this for a while now. It works.

</comment><comment><USER6> slightly sluggish but still very cool</comment>


AeroFS - Unlimited P2P File Sync - <AUTHOR> http://www.aerofs.com/learnmore.html <comment><USER2> well this is an unexpected but pleasant surprise :)

I suppose this is a good opportunity to let you guys know that the project IS very much alive and kicking still, and we've just released a new set of invites today (which I suppose is why we got posted to HN today, thanks!)

We've been very busy with coding and work, which is why we haven't really been updating the blog, but if you have any questions I'll be happy to continue answering them here

edit: FYI, the original discussion is at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1538731>

<comment><USER3> Do you support automatic versioning like Dropbox does?

Can we set up our own "cloud" server? I assume that would be as simple as getting a server somewhere and running the software on it. Related: Do you have a CLI alongside the GUI?

<comment><USER4> To me, the cloud server is the biggest feature. I'm one of your alpha users and while I am impressed with the potential of the project, Ubuntu is not really a server OS. I would love to be able to throw it on a Red Hat box I have in the data center and have my own private cloud.

<comment><USER5> Well to follow that thought, I actually do run Ubuntu in the datacenter ( _we'll have to debate that one another time_ ) but last time I checked the Ubuntu package for AeroFS was GTK/some other UI based package and I couldn't see any command line mechanisms in the package to let me manage things on server.

Would love to see that tided up because then this becomes a mechanism for distributing files to the cluster super easy for my "normal end users", plus the cloud benefits illumin8 is referring to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is still in invite-only phase, and while I do have an account, I'm not actively using it yet for my primary files because there are still some features it lacks over Dropbox, namely:

* can't choose where local files are cached, it assumes where you want them

* no way to back up more than 1G to their "cloud", ie, no paid plans yet, which I would really like to have at least for my most unreplaceable files

* no way to share individual directories with other users, you must share entire "libraries" as they call them, which are basically top-level folders on your aerofs drive

* no way to make files publicly available for download

Other than those points, I think the service is a fantastic idea, and I do eagerly look forward to being able to switch from Dropbox for my photos, documents, etc. However, the above limitations mean that I can really only use it for a few extra things that I don't have room for on my Dropbox account, eg, music.

<comment><USER7> actually all of them are on our todo list--three of the four are already implemented but yet to be exposed to the user :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> How will you be licensing and pricing it once it reaches 1.0? Any plans for making it available under a free software license, dual or otherwise? I know quite a few people who'd be inclined to pay for and contribute to a solution of the kind you provide and Dropbox and Ubuntu One don't (very decentralized, secure, fast, works local-only) with the condition that it's free-as-in- freedom.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting/cool product.

One thing that threw me off - the term 'Aero' (for me) implied Windows only... No real easy solution there as I don't expect (or even think you need) to change the name, but maybe adding something like 'cross-platforming file sync without servers'.

Awesome none-the-less though!

<comment><USER10> As another datapoint, it didn't for me. It implied storing things in air.

<comment><USER11> I was vaguely aware of the Windows thing, but to me Aero == bubbly chocolate

<comment><USER10> I could go for some Mikado...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> According to this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size#Asymmetric_algorithm_k...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_size#Asymmetric_algorithm_key_lengths), their choice in using 1024 bit keys might be a bit short-sighted.

<comment><USER7> thanks for pointing this out! we'll investigate this further and may increase the key length as necessary.

<comment><USER13> can you my own key?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I've been waiting for someone to create this.

Since libTorrent was released, I figured someone would do something like this. No idea if Aero is using libTorrent, but the idea was a natural evolution.

This looks well executed, thanks. Can't wait to see the next steps.

</comment><comment><USER15> SSH and rsync? Or even better, use hg/bzr/git to maintain a version history of the files and then just sync across devices (it's uber easy with Mercurial, not sure about the other two). I personally use the latter (Mercurial).

<comment><USER16> Or use unison, which is similar to rsync, but works 'both ways'

<comment><USER17> Unison is unfortunately no longer under development.

<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/status.html>

<comment><USER18> true, though the devs still use it and release bug fixes.

Theres nothing to rule out folks taking active ownership of dev work on the project, eg take the time to go to their svn repo [http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison//svn- instructions...](http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison//svn- instructions.html) and eg run hg/git/darts import on the repo...

Also, if you look at the svn repo, its been touched with as recently as the past 8 weeks. thats pretty good for a project thats not active

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _even behind your pesky office firewall_

Curious - can you sync between two such locations (nat/default deny/no udp)? i.e. will you bounce connections through your host or does one side have to open an inbound port?

<comment><USER19> It would seem perhaps that our impressions of "pesky office firewalls" are a bit different :(

<http://www.aerofs.com:8080/signup>

 _Oops! Google Chrome could not connect to www.aerofs.com:8080_

<comment><USER7> Just fixed. It's now <https://www.aerofs.com/signup> instead :)

<comment><USER19> aww, thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hate to say it but I would use this if my peers were just my Facebook friends. not that I don't trust 1024 bit encryption, I just don't like my info on strangers boxes even thought it is encrypted

</comment><comment><USER21> Is my disk space on used to store data for others in the p2p network?

<comment><USER2> not unless you've explicitly invited those people to share/collaborate on files with you!

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been using Wuala for last 2 years, and I am very happy.. I sotre there all my important data.. private documents, projects and stuff I want to share.. all my data is encypted and reduntantly stored in the web and peers, atomatic sync, sharing, p2p.. its even better than dropbox because I can trade space so I have about 10 GB for free and my data si truly encrypted so even the provider cant acces them.

<http://www.wuala.com/en/learn/features>

</comment><comment><USER23> How is this different from Wuala?

<comment><USER24> I am guessing it's different by giving you full control over whom you are sharing your disk space with. And, perhaps, by having less blurred focus as an app in general and not trying to be social disk/file collaboration sharing/discovery/you-name-it everything like Wuala did.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I remember talking to one of the devs some months ago when first signing up. Fun guy, great product.

It's a shame that I never got an invite, can't wait to get my hands on this :)

</comment><comment><USER26> What will your TOS be - what if something like a Wikileaks mirror is done across your system?

<comment><USER19> <http://www.aerofs.com/tos.html>

they are certainly covered if they wanted to prevent it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there a way I can use this to replace Unison, which I lean heavily on but am unhappy with?

<http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/>

</comment><comment><USER28> I love the top image. Check out the file "How to earn HN karma"

I think you found out :)</comment>


99% of These Sea Turtles Are Turning Female - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/01/australia-green-sea-turtles-turning-female-climate-change-raine-island-sex-temperature/ <comment><USER2> "The Future Is Female" takes on a new meaning.</comment>


Robots Get Flexible and Torqued Up With Origami Wheels - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/robots-get-flexible-and-torqued-up-with-deformable-origami-wheels#.U58z8gFJ76U.hackernews <comment><USER2> Incidentally, the large rear wheels in drag racers is an example of a variable torque wheel design:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ug6w4ZjwVo#t=55](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ug6w4ZjwVo#t=55)

</comment><comment><USER3> The automatic, passive adjustment is interesting, but these could just as easily use a conventional mechanism instead of origami. Is there some advantage to the origami aspect?

<comment><USER4> Potential for manufacturing processes, which are great at depositing in flat layers at very small scales. Structures manufactured flat can subsequently be folded into 3D shapes. It's a candidate method for making very small machines.

Wood's group (and possibly others - not my field) have even shown that pre- stressed parts can be built into the layers that cause the structure to 'pop- up' into it's 3D shape, or nearly, when released from its manufacturing scaffold. Neat.

Examples along with more nice things at [http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/research.html](http://micro.seas.harvard.edu/research.html)

Another sometimes-cited motivation for folding robot parts is fitting planetary rovers neatly inside their spacecraft, or inserting robots into nuclear reactors through small service pipes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just a thought: Would it be possible to scale this technology up to the level of a car using folded graphene to act as the wheels?</comment>


Obama Becomes First President to Write a Computer Program - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/12/obama-becomes-first-president-write-computer-program/ <comment><USER2> This is actually a big deal. Obama's code wasn't very useful or complicated but that obviously wasn't the point. The point here was that a 53 year old african american man sat down and learned to write a program, any program. It's much more unlikely than it sounds. Do you know what it would take to convince my mother to write a program that draws a square on a screen? We're talking moving heaven and earth here. If I suggest booking tickets on expedia instead of calling her travel agent she's like "What am I, some kind of nerd?"

Obama is leading by example. He and his biggest supporters are people who never in their lives imagined that they would ever write a computer program or anything close to it. There's a cultural barrier that's hard for most of us to see, a clear demarcation between most people's daily lives and the idea of writing even the simplest program. Crossing that barrier is hard, real hard, and I am surprised and encouraged that Obama took the plunge.

Code literacy is important, not so that the average person can become a 10X engineer but so that they can understand what's happening in the world around them on another level. It's the same reason that people should learn physics or chemistry or biology. Because these processes control our world and a basic understanding of them, even if we don't use it professionally, can help give people valuable context. Hopefully this kicks off more interest in learning the basics so that in ten years the sales guy won't think that coding a full featured CRM from scratch will take you a couple of hours over the weekend. We're moving toward a more automated world and the value of understanding it is increasing exponentially.

<comment><USER3> > 53 year old african american man

How is his "race" (as you guys call it) relevant?

<comment><USER4> The same way his age is relevant. Fewer African Americans code, so he has to overcome not just his age, busy schedule, and probable fear of computers, but societal stereotypes as well. It makes it even more of an accomplishment. The same way it would if he had learned ballet instead (this time for gender, rather than racial stereotypes.)

<comment><USER5> Is it really a stereotype? I see plenty of African American and I was never surprised of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's somewhat amazing how far, in 2014, people can get without any tech expertise at all. It's not just Obama and other prominent politicians. There are countless incredibly successful business people that are lucky to turn on a computer.

When I was barely out of high school, I briefly consulted for a guy that had built a net worth in excess of $100 million from scratch with a very successful chain of auto body shops. I was first introduced to him after his son told me that a few days prior, his father's computer came up with a message box saying that a program had "performed an illegal operation". He yanked the power cord out of the wall and began contemplating what he would say to the police when they came.

Last year, Steve Wynn, billionaire casino mogul, was accused of threatening the life of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis via email over a $2 million gambling debt. Steve won a defamation lawsuit, with his primary argument being that he couldn't possibly have done it because he had never sent an email in his life.

While technology is an integral part of our world, the most crucial skill for leaders isn't being able to code or necessarily even operate it. It's being able to identify what needs to be done, then building and managing teams that can get things done. If you can do that, you can accomplish almost anything.

<comment><USER7> > It's somewhat amazing how far, in 2014, people can get without any tech > expertise at all. It's not just Obama and other prominent politicians. There > are countless incredibly successful business people that are lucky to turn > on a computer.

I know of a CEO of a major American company that has his secretary print out all of his hundreds of daily emails and manually sort them for him. He then dictates his replies into a dictaphone and has her type them out.

<comment><USER8> Someone recently told me the exact same story about a company at which they used to be employed. They didn't tell me the name of the company, but they referred to it as a "financial institution".

<comment><USER7> Interesting. The individual I am referring to oversees a pharmaceutical company.

<comment><USER9> Oh ya, not financial institution, but pharmaceutical company. And the first letter in their name is in the front half of the alphabet..?

edit s/pharmacy/pharmaceutical/ edit2: this is a joke. I don't know who this is, am trolling

<comment><USER10> AstraZeneca?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> He implemented bubble sort:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4RRi_ntQc8)

<comment><USER12> "we have some spies", funny :)

<comment><USER13> ha funny in a kind of sad but true way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A little dissappointed they didn't link to the code. Here's Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny's Hour of Code work:

[http://studio.code.org/sh/32532000](http://studio.code.org/sh/32532000)

([http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/39544-wit2014](http://www.siliconrepublic.com/innovation/item/39544-wit2014))

<comment><USER15> Here it is:

> moveForward(100);

[https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-one-line-JavaScript- that-...](https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-one-line-JavaScript-that- president-Obama-wrote-as-part-of-the-Hour-of-Code-2014)

<comment><USER16> He must support the "use semi-colons in javascript" camp.

<comment><USER17> Good on him, he's already using best practises.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Clearly most people are not going to spend a lot of time learning the rigorous theory behind CS, or how to write really high quality software that's meant to be reused.

However, I suspect that coding will become the new literacy. It's becoming an essential life skill, but only a few people need to be really good at it; most people just need a basic functional knowledge.

<comment> aaron-lebo I disagree. It is great if more people learn it, but it is nothing like literacy. The ability to read and write is something that can help you in every aspect of life, which is why a lot of people pick it up (they use it over and over again). Keep in mind even with this being the case functional literacy is often quite low for many people and true illiteracy is still an issue. Even math past basic arithmetic isn't well-developed, people simply don't use it, despite required schooling.

Are computers everywhere and do people use them every day? Yes. But mechanical ability isn't the new literacy and just as many people interact with engines on a daily basis and would be helped by it in daily life. I think it is much more useful to think of programming like woodworking, leatherworking, sewing, soldering, etc. Very useful skills which can improve your life, but not at all necessary, and "only a few people only need to be really good at it" as you stated.

<comment><USER19> I would be satisfied if people were simply able to identify tasks that can and should be automated. There are many, many, many people / organizations that have weekly or monthly manual tasks that could be automated if the individual or organization could recognize it - and hire someone to address the automation.

Stupid alert: I briefly worked at a startup that did push to production by remote desktop to the server and manually restarting the IIS server after copying things into place. They didn't automate it - because "it's the way we always did it." (Yes, they're out of business now.)

<comment><USER20> You've probably seen [http://www.xkcd.com/1205/](http://www.xkcd.com/1205/) \-- if you're doing it monthly and it takes less time than an hour, you can't spend more than three work days trying to automate it, or you're wasting more time than you're saving.

<comment><USER21> Meh. Automation in the software industry isn't just about saving a certain amount of wall-clock time: that's the perspective of a bean-counter without broader perspective. Having highly skilled people frequently spend time on boring drudgery has other costs. The cost of the interruption, for instance, or the annoyance factor alone...

Automation also has the potential to make a task less error-prone and its output more consistent. A botched or forgotten manual task can be difficult to clean up after, so there's risk management too. For instance: in one incident, a coworker at a former employer accidentally ran the "send thousands of people email about how much we're about to pay them in a few days" script on input from the wrong year because January had just ended and he had to input a value containing the last day of the month (e.g. 2013-01-31) by hand.

<comment><USER22> Way to completely miss the point. The point isn't to try and avoid automating things. But to realize that you can't just dream up benefits in complete isolation to the costs.

That is, if the benefit is worth the costs.... do so. Otherwise, reconsider.

And few things make as glorious as a mistake as an automated job going out of control. There is a reason one of the most important questions you should ask on any automated task is "how do I make it stop?"

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> > "everyone should learn how to code"

Why not "Everyone should learn how to fix a broken pipe" or "Everyone should learn how to cook" or whatever?

Here is mine: "everyone should follow his own passions"

<comment> babl-yc I'd assume the majority of modern workers are behind a computer all or at least some of the day, and chances are part of their job is repetitive and could be automated. Having the ability to build software for those tasks, or at least recognize what could be automated, would be very beneficial.

I don't see how learning to fix a broken pipe would be as globally applicable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is there an editor on staff at Wired?

>Obama wrote his code part of event today organized by Code.org, which brought brought 20 middle school students from the South Seventeenth Street School in Newark, New Jersey, to the White House, where they met the president and worked on Hour of Code tutorials.

>Last year, Obama delivered a YouTube speech last year[...]

<comment><USER6> Are these fluff pieces even worth editing?

<comment><USER25> If they're worth printing under your masthead, then yes.

<comment><USER26> If people read this shit even without editing, then, who cares...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is it open source?

Maybe we should fork it and turn it into a bigger project.

"President's work gets forked".

<comment><USER28> Just like he already did to RomneyCare.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> But did he use Vim or Emacs?!

<comment><USER30> Come on, he's not going to get mixed up in those politics...

<comment><USER31> You never know, Goldman Sachs might be a staunch emacs shop.

<comment><USER32> We aren't.

<comment><USER31> EVIL emacs shop then?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I wouldnt be surprised if a president had written VBA before. Excel is everywhere.

<comment><USER20> Your candidates are Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The youngest one graduated from school in 1991, and none of them are accountants or scientists.

I'm thinking not.

<comment><USER34> Helping their kids with homework, you never know.

<comment><USER26> As if they help their kids, and not an army of nannies...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> That encourages programmers to become a president.

<comment><USER36> I like the inverse challenge: let's try to replace as much of government as we can with software/hardware. And the simpler, cheaper and more open, the better.

Not even kidding.

I'm already confident I can replace most/all of the IRS, Treasury, and all the welfare/safety-net type programs with fairly simple, hard-to-abuse software/hardware system. Given that the laws were significantly different and simplified. (And snowball's chance in Hell they'd allow that. Although there are alternate law/tax/welfare configurations which are both physically possible and theoretically sustainable.)

<comment> vertex-four And I'm confident I can write a program to solve world hunger. Provided that we re-define solving world hunger to mean something simpler.

<comment><USER36> that's rude. shame on you. that type of comment is too common on HN. poisons the community

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I can almost bet Angela Merkel has written some FORTRAN code before entering politics. Her job is, however, "Chancellor".

<comment><USER38> The president of Estonia, Toomas Ilves, can code.

> _Ilves moved to Leonia, a borough of 9,000 people a short trip over the > George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, when he was three years old. He > grew up there and learned computer programming at Leonia High School. Ilves > graduated as valedictorian in 1972 and went on to receive degrees from > Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. (...) Ilves credits > the programming classes he took at Leonia High School with his work to turn > Estonia from a country that essentially had no communications infrastructure > after independence to what is now a European Silicon Valley of sorts. The > most notable example? Skype was created in Estonia._

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- politics/wp/2014/09...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post- politics/wp/2014/09/03/estonias-president-came-to-tallinn-by-way-of-the- jersey-turnpike/)

<comment><USER39> Estonia is moving forward quite a bit on getting people to learn to code. Much better efforts than what we are doing in the US.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Only 15 years since the first president to send an email! [http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/laptop-used- clinton-...](http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/laptop-used-clinton- first-us-presidential-email-auctioned-60667-222031.html)

</comment><comment><USER41> You don't suppose jimmy carter wrote code? He was a nuclear engineer.

</comment><comment><USER42> When we started to learn robotics, our first assignment was to teach the robot to draw a square.

Its actually a good "hello world" exercise: [http://youtu.be/RmfP2rHV7io](http://youtu.be/RmfP2rHV7io)

</comment><comment><USER43> I bet his inbox is already filled with tech recruiter spam.

<comment><USER44> He drew a square on a screen? UI developer position now open.

<comment><USER45> He drew a square on a screen? "I'd like to introduce you to a fast-paced global-initiative multipowered startup looking for a full-stack Rails on Ruby rockstar."

(I actually had a guy yesterday try to recruit me for this company, working on "dot JS node".)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Bloomberg never learned to code, despite his tweet.

</comment><comment><USER47> Hmm..hope he will be using his night time to write open source code rather than thinking of war policies that don't work.

</comment><comment><USER48> I have a feeling that moveForward(100) might become a new meme... ;-)

<comment><USER45> He is a _progressive_ politician, is he not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> That's a Chromebook he's doing it on! Acer 11" CB3.

</comment><comment><USER50> I would like to see his code in github

<comment><USER51> I guess it's something like this:

          drawline(0,0,0,1)
          drawline(0,1,1,1)
          drawline(1,1,1,0)
          drawline(1,0,0,0)

and here we are crazy of his great achievment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Gore woulda coulda shoulda been the first. But let's not go there... He definitely got the internet thing, too.

</comment><comment><USER53> I hope this is not true and that other presidents gave it a go.

</comment><comment><USER54> Next up: PutinOS

</comment><comment><USER55> This is the first step towards outsourcing the presidency

<comment><USER56> Underrated comment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57>
      10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD"
      20 GOTO GUANTANAMO BAY

</comment><comment><USER58> That explains what happened to healthcare.gov

</comment><comment><USER59> Yawn.

</comment><comment><USER60> Bummer: "It was a very simple program—all it does is draw a square on a screen—but that's the point, says Hadi Partovi" I don't want lawmakers that think imperative programming is all there is to it. That seems to be how they make laws - if you don't like something make it illegal, if you like something offer incentives. They never try to create a simple system with a more emergent behavior.

</comment><comment><USER61> I expect a publication like Wired to be able to distinguish between writing code and writing a 'computer program'. If this is the bar then I wrote my first 'program' when I was in 3rd grade in the 80s doing LOGO.

Don't get me wrong, making programming a core competency is a novel goal and everyone should do it like everyone should do some chemistry in high school or do a physics project (I for one built an awesome bridge of balsa wood). It is an important skill that people should be exposed to at some point but the idea everyone should 'learn' to do it is a misnomer.

<comment><USER62> > I expect a publication like Wired to be able to distinguish between writing > code and writing a 'computer program'. If this is the bar then I wrote my > first 'program' when I was in 3rd grade in the 80s doing LOGO.

Of course you did. Why isn't your 3rd grade logo code a program? Even "Hello world" is a program!

<comment><USER8> I wrote my first program when I programmed the radio in my parents car to change the station. I reached out, turned the knob, and instructed the machine what to do via instructions that are understandable to "human beings". Programming is easy.

Bitter sarcasm put aside, I have often, existentially, wondered "what is programming?" The word "programming" obviously carries a lot of colloquial meaning, but I'd be interested in hearing where others draw the line between programming and, er..., data entry.</comment></comment></comment>


ABUSE: A curious 1995 platformer with a homegrown (& hackable) Lisp game engine - <AUTHOR> http://abuse.zoy.org/ <comment><AUTHOR> It can be tried out here: [http://playdosgamesonline.com/abuse.html](http://playdosgamesonline.com/abuse.html)

This game was one of those "oldies but goodies" that I didn't want to disappear, so I'm posting it here hoping it gets some love. My tech-nerd friends and I were huge fans of this game when I was young and being able to hack around with the levels (and Lisp code) was a fun and educational formative experience</comment>


Moving Away From Google - k-mcgrady http://www.kieranmcgrady.com/2012/7/20/moving-away-from-google

<comment><AUTHOR> As someone who vehemently hates G+, if you have GAFYD setup you can rid yourself of the scourge in the domain control panel by disabling the service.

I'm not of the "move everything from Google services" crowd (yet?), though their insistence of shoving G+ down my throat at every turn is pushing me closer to that every day.

</comment><comment><USER2> Google provides services in exchange for personal information. I see this as a fair trade considering the great quality of their services and the value of my input to their systems.

I would struggle to replace their services with products from other vendors.</comment>


The End of the Taxi Era - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2016/01/yellow_cab_in_san_francisco_is_just_the_beginning_uber_s_war_on_cabs_is.single.html <comment><USER2> When Uber is forced to recognize its employees as employees, it's game over for their business model. That is the elephant in the corner of the room.

<comment><USER3> The weird thing about the whole Uber affair is that as long as the drivers can't set their own prices that's a very strong piece of evidence that they are not independent operators, whereas that very same fact about Uber setting the prices is the biggest bulwark against a race to the bottom, which is very much to the advantage of the drivers.

Sooner or later Uber will have to let this go to enhance their position that drivers are independent and then suddenly Uber won't be nearly as interesting to work with/for and the quality will plunge.

<comment><USER4> Uber's biggest risk will come from competitors or co-ops eating into their 20%-25% profit margins.

There are a lot of regions that like the concept of ride sharing, but don't like how an American silicon valley company is capturing wealth locally and sending it to Silicon Valley.

That's why I'm convinced we will soon see efforts to make co-op versions of Uber that copy its technology, but return 95%-99% of the money in each transaction back to the driver.

<comment><USER5> "There are a lot of regions that like the concept of ride sharing, but don't like how an American silicon valley company is capturing wealth locally and sending it to Silicon Valley."

I live in China, and enjoy cheap rides with Uber. I'm pretty sure the money is flowing the other way, and investors are subsidising local drivers and riders.

<comment><USER6> "I live in China, and enjoy cheap rides with Uber. I'm pretty sure the money is flowing the other way, and investors are subsidising local drivers and riders."

For now. When the local market is won then the taps reverse and the money will flow the other way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think they'll both survive (uber types and taxis). They fill different needs. When I'm at an airport, I really don't want to have to search the crowd of cars for my particular Uber driver - I just want to hop in a cab. When I'm home and need to get to the airport, I like to use Uber to get there because they reliably show up.

Of course taxis are decreasing in numbers because they've been trying to fill both roles. But there will always be a demand for hailing a car in dense cities. No reason why we can't have both.

<comment><USER8> Getting to the airport is actually the one time that I still use a local car service, because you can actually _schedule_ them. I can say that I want a car to JFK at 5am tomorrow, and they will reliably be outside my door.

You can't schedule an Uber, and just hoping that one will be available at the time I need one (or else I miss my flight) is scary.

<comment><USER9> Scheduled car services are a pretty different business from Uber. When I schedule a ride to the airport, I'm paying a premium to have a highly reliable on-time pickup. And, coming home, I'm paying for a highly reliable pickup where I expect my service to do their darndest to work around flight and flight schedule changes. (There's also basically no Uber out where I live.)

<comment><USER8> The car service is actually cheaper than Uber for me - I don't do it on the way back because there's reliably 100 Ubers hovering around JFK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> There's a certain sense of schadenfreude and cosmic justice knowing that Yellow Cab probably could have saved itself by pivoting their business model years ago like DeSoto did. Instead they tried to fight change with legislation, and this is their reward.

Having said that, I do worry about this contributing to Uber's growing monopoly...

<comment><USER11> How is it a monopoly? There's Lyft and if anything, we see how easy it was for technology to inflict serious harm to these publicly protected cartels. Incumbants will have to innovate or perish.

<comment><USER10> Eh... I suppose Lyft is technically a competitor, but at an order of magnitude less marketshare, it might as well be non-existent.

[http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/24/lyft-vs- ube...](http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/05/24/lyft-vs-uber-just- how-dominant-is-uber-ridesharing.aspx)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > It's old news by now that taxis are struggling to compete...

Er...not competing at all.

</comment><comment><USER13> Unless you want to pay cash.

</comment><comment><USER14> Once upon time in a far away country, workers were slaves or serves. Rich were getting richer, poor poorer because a very authoritative stupid king thought that colonizing countries that did not belong to him was a good idea. So the country indebted itself (notably to bribe the enemies and build fortifications that were over-engineered and would be delivered 150 years to late).

The riches refused to pay the taxes, especially the church that would have 10% of everything for relieving the poors ... ecclesiastics.

Workers were owned by life long renting contract by which they would belong to their bosses.

Then a revolution happened.. asking for fiscal equity, that given the obstruction after month of status quo and a famine due to something weired in the weather made people change the system.

Slavery disappeared syndication were prohibited, workers wishing to work less than 12/7 wished to make a point and made a demonstration. They took refuge in a church and Napoleon had them shot. A book to follow the movement of the workers was created to control them. "The identity papers". Napoleon was the friend of the bankers he created the fed bedore the fed. A private bank used as a way to control the public money.

Then, capitalism got wild. Kids were working, the contracts stipulating and hour worked was an hour paid stopped to be respected. Security conditions were not respected especially in masonry. But it was no problem, companies not only were not paying they were not liable legally neither for harms nor financial. And the army would shoot the vehement workers.

Blood was spilled. A lot of it. In mines, in textile industry ....

Masons proudly broke the noses of their bosses refusing to pay for the death resulting in their work. Social security appeared at first as an arson. Masons were proud stupid people not caring about the law and pretty well organized.

A company noticed diminishing returns after 40hours/week, 12h/day so they tried to make more money. But, other companies were not agreeing.

WWI happens. In another country far away (UK) strategist discover fire arms kills less than explosive and explosives with tired workers persons tends to kill the wrong soldiers. UK as a country at war does everything; producing, healing, fighting. They force the companies to respect working norms because accidents and defects don't worth the costs. A discovery is made: human can suffer from fatigue.

WWII happens, in France wealthy people like the nazi regim and the idea of suppressing unions. Weirdly enough the army have problem fighting because of weird orders. The country higher instances collaborate and not a name of wealthy people will appear amongst the one who saved the jews.

On the other hand in the population some people would fight against the bad guys. Commies, foreigners, jews, armenians, soldiers, and one general in London that was gifted in politics. This general did not like very much these commies, and foreigners ... but they helped won and whitewash the reputation of the country when USA were preparing the total replacement of the administration and money.

War kills blindly. Skilled workers were killed. The companies had to accept to negotiate and improve work conditions.

Also commies were accepted in the government and had the right to put in motion commies laws like : protection of the youth, respect of the contracts, an hour worked is an hour paid, bosses are legally responsible for the harm coming from their decisions.

Cold war happened. USA was scared of commies, so with the help notably of mafia, henry kissinger created fake commies-real terrorists groups to make people vote right. People were killed, assassinated.

A race to the arms ruined almost every countries in the world, but everybody made great expensive useless equipment creating huge debts ....

And we are back at the social inequity square (companies not paying their taxes), penal irresponsibility, an hour worked is not paid ...

So, since history repeat itself, what is the next step?

A bloody revolution that could worsen the situation or a war in which resources instead of being used for the improvement of life will be diverted to make the miserable kill each others (and resulting anyway in skilled workers killed alike)?</comment>


Lenseless glasses all the rage in Hong Kong where many are myopic - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203699404577044020959385832.html?mod=WSJ_hps_RIGHTTopCarousel_1

<comment><USER2> I was wondering when this would happen... Glasses have transcended practicality into fashion. They are now no different from shoes, belts or watches. In that case, lensless glasses are an eventuality. US hipsters are already doing this, but not to the degree that HK is doing it.

I admit, there are many days where I wish I could wear my contacts _with_ my glasses.

<comment><USER3> Watches I agree are basically jewelry, but shoes and belt?

Belts still serve real functions for 99% of their users (I wear a belt because I don't want to wear suspenders and an elastic waist-bands on my pants don't dry well)

Improperly fit and ill-maintained shoes are often a source of back pain and numerous alignment issues.</comment></comment>


Lisant.io - searchable full text bookmarks & feed reader - <AUTHOR> https://lisant.io

<comment><AUTHOR> lisant.io is a lightweight full text bookmarking service and a feed reader.

The full-text bookmarking works via a bookmarklet that snapshots the DOM of the current page and uses a heuristic content extraction engine to clean up the content.

lisant.io provides a full-text search feature across all your bookmarked content and feeds that you subscribe to. For feeds that don't provide content within the feed itself, the search is limited to article metadata.

Also, any tweet that you favourite that contains a link will be added to your bookmarks.

lisant.io is a premium service with a short (1 week) trial. There's no free plan. This is absolutely intentional: we're bootstrapping this with our own time and money we don't want to support a free tier.

We take your data seriously:

\- at any time, you can cancel your plan and you can download an archive of all of your bookmarks and subscriptions.

\- we take nightly backups of the entire database.

lisant.io also works just great on your mobile!</comment>


Apple Working on a Thinner MacBook Pro Design - <AUTHOR> http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2011/10/apple-working-on-a-thinner-macbook-pro-design.html <comment><USER2> I would be very surprised if this is true. Optical drives are for the most part following the floppy disc and the 8-track as a media of preference long ago. I'd be surprised if Apple kept the Pro's around for much longer at all.</comment>


Consumer Health Care Startup Wants You - <AUTHOR>

We want to hire you, if
- you brush your teeth with grep
- you floss with sed
- you are a (perl|python|lisp|arc|php) webapp hacker
- you build and tear down centos boxes for fun
- you are production ready
We are
- Stanford PhDs and Scientists
- Hackers who have founded $100m+ companies
- Funded to pay you in cash + stock
- About to change healthcare
send resumes to
healthcarestartup at google's email service.com <comment><USER2> Does your business model break down as fast as the personal grooming theme in the post? :-)

Just kidding... it had me going and then I was left hanging after the flossing. Good luck to you.

</comment><comment><USER3> Are you going to make it affordable for the entrepreneur/hacker?

</comment><comment><USER4> if it wasn't consumer related i'd be interested

</comment><comment><USER5> > send resumes to > healthcarestartup at google's email service.com

The irony of this is beyond comprehension. You're a healthcare startup about to revolutionize the industry that USES Google mail, and Google, too wants to get in on your market at the exact same time!

Who will win, the PhDs and Scientists, or the company that has so much money that they keep PhDs and Scientists on payroll "just in case" they need them in the future ...

"Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's giiiit it awwwn!"</comment>


Court Finds Sheriff's Raid to Find Blogger Who Criticized Him Unconstitutional - <AUTHOR> https://theintercept.com/2016/08/26/sheriffs-raid-to-find-blogger-who-criticized-him-was-unconstitutional-court-rules/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised that the original warrants were signed in the first place.

And who the hell approved a raid? What happened to two police officers knocking on your door? Why are all suspects considered felons (the only offense class I can conceive of that could deserve a raid) for the purpose of serving a warrant? Do police pay for damages in cases where a raid is excessive force?

<comment><USER3> > I'm surprised that the original warrants were signed in the first place.

No, no surprise there.

Cops/Sheriffs are not the only corrupt arm of the criminal justice system. The whole system is messed up.

<comment><USER4> It's a lot easier to get rid of a cop or a sheriff, than a judge too; no shock that the rot really sets in on the bench. Then, there's the reality that many judges are political appointees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Unconstitutional, but I would rather them have declared it outright illegal. Unconstitutional means the evidence gathered cannot/probably will not be used in the case against the blogger. It means that the inevitable civil rights complaint will have more teeth. But the people who did the raid are not in handcuffs. The court is not identifying a criminal act, nor really is that their role.

The FBI, state, or some other higher agency will have to investigate at their leisure, if they even want to get involved. Such decisions have consequences in an election year. I would rather allow judges to initiate prosecutions, or at least have them force the prosecution's hand where the wrongdoing of law enforcement is so obvious.

</comment><comment><USER3> > On August 15, Larpenter was supposed to be honored for his service to the > community by being inducted into the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame.

That says it all!

and this one instance is the only one we know of that Larpenter overstepped the bounds of his authority.

<comment><USER6> Note that he's still scheduled to get the award. It was rescheduled due to flooding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I wish it was the neighbor using their wifi because it was a wep based setup and that's the ip AT&T gave so they raid and screw up the wrong guys house. But one side it happens all the time.

Seems like more questions should be asked during this whole thing. I want a warrant for a ip of a Facebook user / why ? / because he said mean things about me./ oh he's not a real threat and didn't really break the law...no.

</comment><comment><USER8> Sunshine, light, and visibility -- one of the best disinfectants out there.

<comment><USER9> Autoclaving is said to be the best of disinfectants; warrantless wiretapping the most efficient policeman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> All great and dandy, but I can't help to think what the continued fallout is going to be.

If someone is willing to smash your door down because you called them out on their dealings or perceived dealings, then that person is a threat to your safety.

</comment><comment><USER11> > On August 15, Larpenter was supposed to be honored for his service to the > community by being inducted into the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame. The > ceremony was rescheduled because of flooding.

Makes me wonder what the criteria are.

<comment><USER12> It's Louisiana. No surprise. [1]

From Huey Long to Ray Nagin, and now this guy, there is a lot of filler material in between to help anyone grasp what corruption in public officials looks like.

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2412634/Louisiana- to...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2412634/Louisiana-tops-list- countrys-corrupt.html)</comment></comment>


I was kicked out from TEDx event for saying water-fuelled car is a scam - <AUTHOR> http://svedic.org/skepticism/i-was-kicked-out-from-tedx-event-for-saying-water-fuelled-car-is-a-scam <comment><USER2> _because Ivan Jakobović with all his profitable international inventions was working at low-level technician at high school for agriculture. Don't worry, he is not teaching, because he never finished college._

Jakobović seems like a crank, but is this criticism really necessary? "Not finishing college" or "low-level technician" should never be reasons to put down someone. People such as Jobs (college dropout, former fruit picker), Wozniak (once a low-level engineer), Einstein (patent clerk) and others are recognized as great contributors to science and technology. Quick show of hands: How many people on HN didn't finish college or have dreary day jobs while working on something exciting or innovative on the side?

There are already many reasons to condemn Jakobović. Not having the right credentials and background shouldn't be included on the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> > "Not finishing college" or "low-level technician" should never be reasons to > put down someone.

You are completely right, education or job are not the reason to put down anyone. I wanted to point out that if someone approaches you with the biggest inventions in the century but has no credentials, you would be skeptical, wouldn't you? However, you are right, I could said that point much better.

<comment><USER3> A college degree is not really more than a vetting credential, at least not in the last 15 years. Most people I went to college with were idiots, all a degree says is that they are persistent idiots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This isn't the first time this has happened, shoddy "science" at a TEDx event. How long until people start saying that TEDx is the actual scam?

It's a shame because I love TED itself. They've tried regulating better, but I just can't see a way out for them except closing TEDx down completely and coming up with something else. The TEDx reputation is already destroyed.

<comment><USER5> What _could_ be done is closer curation of TEDx events, rather than simply leasing out the name & format to whomever. This would decrease the number of TEDx events you could hold, and probably also make them more expensive to host- but maybe that could be a good thing.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, but that's what I thought they were doing after the whole Randy Powell incident - look it up, embarrassing...

I hope they try harder to audit the TEDx events. The main TED events are usually so inspiring, it's a shame to have it tarnished like this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> TEDx events get kicked out of TED all the time for this.

</comment><comment><USER7> Why not just let TED know about this? Like you say, if there are pseudo- science talks at a TEDx event, TED will want to know and get involved.

<comment><USER8> I've always thought TEDx were entrepreneurs/inventors hawking their own stuff anyway, so I never bother watching any of their videos. This example just made it more obvious that TEDx is mostly a waste of time.

<comment><USER9> Every couple of weeks there'll be a new TEDtalk that I'd previously seen on TEDx. Definitely worth a look there.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "We need to protect speaker reputation..."

...followed immediately by list of glowing adoration that ends up dancing from point to point. While the True Believer has been been known to make posts like this, it really has more of the feel of a /salesman/.

"Nobody was reading Wikipedia links, organizers were only seeing that I am calling 'their' speaker a scammer."

Many true believers (at least from my experience) will _look_ at the links, and initially make up some sort of defence, which often takes the form of arguing why those references suddenly don't apply or don't are excusable. It's only after they realize they can't argue against it that the entire subject becomes taboo.

The used-car salesman, however, will suddenly find new ways to not talk about that Big Defect even though they know all about it.

These organizers are on the take, or at least profiting form the situation personally in some way. It's possible they don't even realize it.

Fortunately, given the comments about TED shutting down similar situations, it looks like this particular problem is not going to persist. Even better: if the talks are "water engine" quality, refunding your ticket was probably a blessing.

</comment><comment><USER11> I wonder if, at the end of the day, TED has some objective or at least repeatable method of determining whether a talk constitutes "pseudoscience." Obviously, the speakers themselves won't consider their own talk to constitute pseudoscience, and neither will the speakers' supporters, so does it just come down to a numbers game? Or does TED defer the judgement to a list of sources (perhaps people or journals) which is considers "legitimate science"?

<comment><USER5> TED has very little involvement in TEDx. The TEDx organizer, who is NOT a TED representative, is responsible for screening.

Which has always kind of surprised me, because I always suspected that kind of arms-length involvement would wind up with TEDx running the TED name into the mud.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting that a Tedx event in Zagreb this Friday is still being touted on Ted.com, with a link to an Ivan Jakobović "water engine" video.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for noticing. I took the screenshot: [http://svedic.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/TEDxPageWaterEn...](http://svedic.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/09/TEDxPageWaterEngine-1024x770.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The event organizer sounds like a real fampoonza.</comment>


In Search of America's Best Burrito - <AUTHOR> http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/in-search-of-americas-best-burrito/?ex_cid=awesome

<comment><USER2> Although I was pleased to see my favorite taco shop's burrito represented, I'm upset that a place like Cancun or Farolito has a higher rated index.

</comment><comment><USER3> Livin the dream.</comment>


How to Be an Indie Game Developer - <AUTHOR> http://www.mode7games.com/blog/2012/06/12/how-to-be-an-indie-game-developer/

<comment><USER2> I'm 6 months into an independent game studio. Right now it's just me and some freelancers.

I'm in the process of finalizing all of the paperwork for the business and hope to have our game in testing by the end of the month. The bottom line is it's way more work than I anticipated. I'm not inexperienced either, this my third company.

I've been running a software business since the beginning of 2011. The amount of work in one game dwarfs the amount of work in a utility app. There's just no comparison. I'm confident we're making a unique and fun game (iOS first, later Android) and I am paying a lot of attention to promoting the company and our game, but I really don't expect to make much money this year on it.

Two years before the company is paying off seems about right. My first company (bricks and mortar) took around two years before we were out of crisis mode. I think the app stores give people a false impression of what it takes to build a business and see your hard work turn into something meaningful.

The upside is there is _incredible_ upside potential in the video game market, especially if you're running a lean shop. Having said that, I'm not doing it for the money as much as I'm doing it to build something that I'll be happy working on 5 or even 10 years from now.

I don't think people should approach it (unless they are just hobbyists) because making games is fun. It's not really fun after the initial conceptualization is done. It's mostly just hard work. Dull, repetitive, never-ending work. I get through it by exercising religiously and paying attention to my diet. I also take off at least every other weekend to relax and hang out.

[promo] If you're interested in hearing about the game's progress, please follow us at twitter.com/rapidfirestudio [/promo]

<comment><USER3> Same here! I'm about 6 months in and working alone, but inexperienced on the biz end. It turns out that my simple project is way more work than I realized up front. Definitely more than the last ruby on rails web app I built, and that was moderately complex. Luckily with experience in code, art, animation, and music, I can avoid major costs up front.

But the black art of game design is a little new to me (other than from playing and observing other games), and really it is the trickiest part, it's the glue that binds everything together. This could end up a lifelong obsession, and one could easily spend a lifetime tinkering to master it.

I have a similar tactic for combatting the crazy amount of work: more vegetables and long walks. I think it works...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How To Be an Indie Game Developer:

\- Make a game, release it

How To Stop Being an Indie Game Developer:

\- Procrastinate, ever

\- Let the marketing "take care of itself"

\- Have poor version control, then "take a break"

\- Finish only one game, ever

\- Let someone else handle your finances and shield you from the sense of urgency you should feel as you approach the end of your runway without taking off

\- Fail to realize that games are mostly a hit-based market, and plan accordingly

\- Sell your one non-hit game for 99¢

\- Never update your one game

Anyway, an anecdote is just useless data with a sample size of one, but I'm pretty sure I read this story plenty of times before I went and lived it myself.

Still, in my case it's kind of nice that Blizzard left my name in the Diablo 3 credits. I can pretend I spent the past year being a part of something productive!

</comment><comment><USER5> Up to where I read, this is excellent advice. Especially the "Unpaid volunteers will, more often than not, give up when things get hard. They may also not tell you that they've given up and waste a vast amount of your time." is something I burned myself with many times.

But way too long as a blog post: I would would suggest to break it into many posts, or even publish it as a free ebook and just link it in the blog.

</comment><comment><USER6> Awful article, brilliant advice but I value content over style. The density of specific advice and tips is impressive.

"I believe it will take a skilled person with a strong work ethic starting from scratch a minimum of two years to get any kind of significant financial return from making indie games, probably longer."

I know it's impossible but I'd love to see actual statistics for this. Especially on the average time and not the minimum time assuming all the planets align correctly.</comment>