Show HN: Nightchamber, a slow-web social site - <AUTHOR> http://nightchamber.com

<comment><USER2> You could actually convert this into some kind of social network. Just enable people to follow each other in some sense, i.e. their messages appear in your feed with higher probability or so. It's nice and somewhat artistic to follow other persons only based on what they say/said, not based on who they are.

<comment><AUTHOR> We think alike, that's been on the todo list for a while :)

Thanks for the input!

<comment><USER3> Along those lines: people's handles could be more memorable but still random. Maybe something like the github repository name recommender. "Oh, great, another post from ice-badger-weasel-fox, I love those!"

<comment><AUTHOR> Good call, I like it!

<comment><USER4> I would caution you not to go for the cutesy, "random" aesthetic that github does with their name generator. People may not wish to be addressed in that way.

<comment><USER5> They'll never know if they are, and if they do -- they'll never know by who.

If that's still a problem, I humbly suggest that those people might not be the right audience for a socnet that lets one post only once a day.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi HN. I made this over the last few months.

The idea is to have an activity feed which is randomly generated, and only refreshes once every 24 hours.

The auth system incorporates some ideas discussed in this thread (The God Login): [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8861800](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8861800)

I'm happy to answer any questions!

<comment><USER6> I'm confused about why a person would want to use this? If I only get a random "tweet" every 24 hours that lacks context, I don't see myself coming back often.

Two suggestions: 1\. Allow the user to configure how often they get new thoughts. 2\. Allow voting so that hopefully the random thoughts that are actually worth reading propagate out and people are reading something worth reading.

<comment><USER7> I actually really like this as a reaction against Twitter. You only get one thing to say per day, so you want to make it count. And I don't want another site to visit 50 times per day, once is enough.

Kudos to the creator, this is really neat.

<comment><USER6> I like the idea of only being able to post once a day, but I think the solution would be more fun if you could read as much you want.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Neat exploration of a solution - but I wouldn't consider this a complete product - more of a test of auth-less logins for a randomized guest book.

There is a lot more that would be needed before people used this. I can almost guarantee that random posts will be worthless and I have no feedback on the messages I personally send.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the comment, and I agree, it's very bare-bones right now.

In an ideal world, what would a product like this look like when fully fleshed-out?

<comment><USER9> Not quite building off of your current system, but I've long wanted a service where I could log-in and be approved to participate ___anonymously_ __in conversations that are still somewhat moderated. "? _& %$#?#$&_?", you ask.

There are a lot of sites that I participate in that allow you to rate and flag other users (e.g. HN). I actually really like this ability. But frequently I want to make many posts to such site, but I don't really want all my comments to be able to be tied together

For example, there's an HN post about BFE, Idaho and I mention that's my hometown. In another post, it's relevant to the conversation, so I mention I'm Italian. In another post it becomes clear that I have extensive professional experience in underwater basket weaving. Put these three facts together and they can quickly undermine any anonymity (i.e. I'm the only Italian born in BFE, Idaho that has a career in underwater basket weaving).

So having a log-on system that allows me to be held accountable (i.e. If I make a comment on HN that gets downvoted, my HN rating still goes down) but where I can still be anonymous (i.e. no one can aggregate my comments). From a service perspective, I'm thinking of something like a Disqus plug-in architecture where I could log-in to the primary service, and only that service would ever know that I'm a singular entity. That service would provide an api that other sites could use set and grab general reputation data.

For example, I log into Service as 'yaddayadda'. I navigate to HN, and log-in. The Service reports to HN that I'm an authorized user currently known as 2051013165142 (new, random user id each time I visit HN). HN polls the Service API for my current user id. The Service reports back that my identity has earned a total of _X_ HN submission up votes, _Y_ HN comment up votes, and _Z_ HN downvotes. HN can then do what it does to calculate my reputation. When I subsequently make a submission or comment and am rated, HN reports those points back to the Service, which aggregates them into 'yaddayadda's' HN totals.

<comment><USER10> Quite a few brain (and cpu) cycles have been spent on 'author identification' software that allows to tie together pieces of text at various points in time to a single author.

<comment><USER9> I believe most of them still require sizable amounts of work. For example, this individual comment might be able to narrow me down to native U.S. English speaker with higher education, but not much beyond that.

I have played with gender-identification software[1], which has such a limit. Frankly, the identification seems to be more topically sensitive than it is gender sensitive. For example, if I put in my writing about robots it will id me as male, but if I put in my writing about cooking it will id me as female.

Combining the 'author identification' software with known identities (such as we have here on HN) will certainly make them more accurate. Hence, my desire for a system that limits such computations.

[1] [http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php](http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Novel. I like it.

Has me thinking about a 'slow' messaging app: basically email but in daily digest format. E-mail, but with the latency of physical mail. You may reply at your convenience. Your message will be received at the time of the recipient's choosing, along with the rest of the day's correspondence. Optionally including weekly days off.

Probably not great for business. Between friends it might encourage more long- format replies which might be more enjoyable; an alternative to short, frequent messages.

<comment><USER12> You can just do this with your friends! Send long emails and establish an expectation of reply-at-your-convenience. It's a tricky norm to get started but once it does it's quite rewarding.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Love the concept. I would love for this to go big.

But I went to the site a couple of times and "I love turtles." was the most coherent message I received.

Take that as you will.

</comment><comment><USER14> This is cool, but I kind of see the use case a little different. I'd like to be able to receive a message like this on my phone once a day, just as a notification, at a time of my choosing. It would still be a random anonymous message, but it would be interesting because everyday I would receive some random/hilarious crap from someone elsewhere in the world.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nice idea,

It could make a nice companion app for the site actually.

<comment><USER14> Hit me up if you ever get around to it, would make for a fun project I could maybe help you out with :)

email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I like this. I think a good length for a 'daily' one-shot update might be a bit longer than a tweet though. The layout makes it look like you're expecting tweets right now. Have you experimented with longer-form posts to see how they feel?

<comment><AUTHOR> I was intending for long-form posts to be encouraged on this site, but I do agree that the current layout may not be the best for that.

I'll take your suggestion and experiment with longer content and find a layout that makes it pleasant to read.

Ideally I'd love to see short-stories or poetry being shared on the site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Interesting idea. Appears that whitespace is not preserved by the editor though; another vote for supporting medium-to-long-form posts.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm actually working on a fix for that just now :)

Will be deployed shortly, pending tests.

EDIT: and it's deployed to Live. Enjoy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Don't share your identity with anyone else.

Maybe implement HTTPS then?

<comment><AUTHOR> Deploying HTTPS is next on the todo-list for today :)</comment></comment>


Hyperledger Fabric: A Distributed Operating System for Permissioned Blockchains - <AUTHOR> https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v1 <comment><USER2> I have done significant development work using hyperledger platform and aside from the fact that private blockchains are essentially pointless, this is (or at least recently was) pretty unusable, with very bad tooling and support.

<comment><USER3> I took a course on this whole thing on edx and I walked away with the same feeling.

<comment><USER4> Out of all the Ethereum contracts people have come up with so far, I still haven't found anything _truly_ useful. Closest thing is just the ability to create "stock" like entities.

<comment><USER5> Fabric isn't Ethereum-based. It's the next most active smart contract platform, but way behind in developer interest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If you prefer to have a immutable database that is anchored to a blockchain, rather then a permissioned blockchain, I suggest looking at the Politeia toolkit. Time stamping the sum content of any data repository makes it censorship resistant.

[https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/](https://blog.decred.org/2017/10/25/Politeia/) [https://github.com/decred/politeia](https://github.com/decred/politeia)

</comment><comment><USER7> There is no point of having a private blockchain or distributed ledger. Full stop.

Nothing there was no possible before Bitcoin and what they are trying to achieve is some kind of API 2.0 where different companies can integrate within the same technology. This problem is political rather than technical and the blockchain is not a solution by itself.

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't go quite that far, I think in terms of simplifying your architecture and for providing sandboxing of third party code in a mission critical system there could be some modest benefits in a private blockchain.

However, these are not the reasons why people are usually interested in private blockchains, which as you say revolve mainly around political problems where blockchains can't help much.

<comment><USER9> I'd be horrified to discover an architecture that could be simplified by adding a blockchain to it.

<comment><USER8> I agree that for MOST use cases adding blockchain tech just makes things more complicated

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The text read like total mumbo jumbo. I have heard about hyperledger multiple times, but I still don't get what's the value prop. Maybe it is just a trap for banks so they waste their time and resources on that, while the real blockchain stuff moves forward elsewhere?

<comment><USER11> [http://hyperledger- fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...](http://hyperledger- fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html) You can easily build a dapp! Not entirely without solidtity but you can use different projects because they are managed by a specification!!! [https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth](https://www.hyperledger.org/projects/sawtooth) Is my favorite! It is written in python! It is sponsored by intel and you can easly get started with aws images or docker images or you could even setup everything with Ubuntu!!!!!!

<comment><USER12> I can't tell whether the ludicrous ratio of exclamation marks to sentences (11:4 or 11:5 depending on how strictly you define sentences) is sarcasm or enthusiasm.

<comment><USER13> He has two other comments in this thread, albeit with slightly more judicious use of exclamation marks, yet I'm still just as confused as you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Latest version [https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2](https://arxiv.org/abs/1801.10228v2)

For me the takeaway message is: "Fabric is the first blockchain system to support the execution of distributed applications written in standard programming languages"

</comment><comment><USER8> Now you have to deal with all the issues of the traditional IT world (devops, cloudflare, vpns, containerization, cloud hosting configuration, load balancers, dns configuration, etc) AND all the issues of the new blockchain world (contract security, gas fee metering, block limits, replay attacks, etc)

...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least most of the traditional IT issues go away.

<comment><USER10> > ...the saving grace of a "real" blockchain architecture is that at least > most of the traditional IT issues go away.

All the work done related to blockchains I know of, involves lot of IT issues, both traditional ones and new ones.

Quite often work tends to become more complex as time passes on... In the past we had to deal only with fiat currency, now we have also to deal with cryptos, but fiat isn't going away as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Hyperledger Fabric: Not a Blockchain

<comment><USER16> I see it as a way for technologists to satisfy non-tech people that "yes, we use blockchain now" when in reality this is just an immutable BFTDL with configurable consensus (perhaps similar to what aircraft have been using for many years).

Full, PoW/PoS blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum is hard to justify in an enterprise. Decentralization is rarely part of a viable business model.

<comment><USER17> BFTDL?

<comment><USER18> Byzantine Fault Tolerant Distributed Ledger

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Why is it called a distributed operating system? Not sure if it can help deal or orchestrate with distributed resources?

<comment><USER11> It uses blockchain technology like the EVM and adds a layer of abstraction so you can easily make applications untop of it. It is also funded by companies and is lead by the linux foundation! [http://hyperledger- fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/bloc...](http://hyperledger- fabric.readthedocs.io/en/release-1.2/blockchain.html)</comment></comment>


Patent troll claims it invented the Windows 8 and Windows Phone "tiles" - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/10/patent-troll-claims-it-invented-the-windows-8-and-windows-phone-tiles/ <comment><USER2> It sounds like SurfCast owns some pretty valuable intellectual property. Good for them!

Of course, I wonder if they've been paying taxes on that property. If not, then Maine Revenue Services might be interested in the fact that a local corporation has been evading their taxes.

On the other hand, if SurfCast is willing to attest to the Maine Revenue Service that their property has no value and should not be taxed, then I'd like to see Microsoft introduce that into court as evidence that SurfCast can't have suffered financial harm.

So which is it: is SurfCast filing a baseless lawsuit over valueless property or are they tax evaders?

<comment><USER3> Are you suggesting that IP owners owe (real estate) property taxes?

<comment><USER4> That would have some interesting consequences. Could I suddenly owe lots of taxes if I get a really great business idea that I think is worth a lot?

<comment><USER5> Only if you patent it, granting you exclusive right to that idea.

<comment><USER4> What if I copyright something?

The text I am typing right now is under copyright by default, if I write something particularly brilliant here, can I expect to owe a good deal of taxes?

If not, why not? Both are intellectual "property", and both _clearly_ can have very real value. Why should unpublished books be any less taxable than un- implemented patents?

<comment><USER2> Good question. Why not, indeed? If you're stating that a property has a cash value, such as by selling it or suing for that amount in real damages, then why shouldn't you have to pay taxes to the government that protects your right to copy it?

Ideas aren't a naturally limited resource. It takes government intervention to declare that an idea is owned by one specific party. It seems only fair that the beneficiary of that intervention should be expected to support the government that makes it possible.

By the way, I have no problem whatsoever with property rights. Although I think software patents are BS, if the government says they exist, then they exist. I just don't think it's fair that these non-practicing entities are paying their fair share to support the system that's netting them a paycheck. Why would I have to pay taxes on a rent house that I lease out, but they don't have to pay taxes on a patent that they lease out?

<comment><USER4> I don't think that claiming damages implies a worth that should necessarily be taxable. If I am in an automobile accident and my spine is destroyed, I don't think anybody would suggest that since my spine is worth something to me that I should have been paying taxes on it.

Paying taxes to ensure copyright protection would basically have the real world effect of pealing back default copyright. No works would be protected unless the creator went through the trouble of registering^Wpaying tax for that work.

I don't think society would be better off without default copyright, so copyrighted works must remain effectively untaxed "properties".

The problem I am having here is that you are conflating physical property with intellectual "property" just because you want to go after patent trolls. What you are proposing would not be limited in effect to the people _you_ dislike though.

If Bob Handyman were to invent a new type of, say, catalytic converter, in his garage, this would be of immense value to the automotive industry. This would therefore be an _incredibly_ "valuable" patent. (And Bob would of course have to patent his new invention, unless he were a fool.) ..But under your proposal he would then be responsible for a _massive_ tax that he could _never_ dream of paying. And if he didn't pay this tax, automotive companies would then be free to use his invention without giving him anything?

That is crazy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There was a piece of DOS software in the late 80's called HyperPad which had tiles and used them to display status and launch applications. I can't find a single screenshot of it though unfortunately.

I'm sure that is probably slightly "more prior" art.

<comment><USER7> <http://www.atarimagazines.com/compute/issue115/406-1.jpg>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _Never shipped a product, only started describing its tech as "tiles" in 2011._

The word "tile" is used prominently in the patent.

</comment><comment><USER9> I think we all agree that software patents just gotta go (specially the ones regarding UI). The real question is how to make that happen. Perhaps having a big player like Microsoft targeted by a troll will help.

<comment><USER10> They have been targeted many times, and paid quite some millions (billions?) over the years [1] [2]. The thing is, the big players like Microsoft all have large patent portfolios and are using them to keep up the oligopoly, they have no interest in abolishing the system.

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/10/company-that- won-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/10/company-that- won-585m-from-microsoft-sues-apple-google/)

[2] [http://www.inquisitr.com/112717/microsoft- loses-i4i-patent-l...](http://www.inquisitr.com/112717/microsoft- loses-i4i-patent-lawsuit-supreme-court-awards-290-million/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Prior art: Windows 1.0.

Microsoft even once gave a demo of how fast QuickBASIC compiled code was by writing a program that split the screen into quarters and showed different real-time data displays into each quarter. You could call that prior art, even if it weren't for Windows 1.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it possible to sue a patent troll for time and legal fees if you win the original case?

I know they are basically shell corporations, but it would be great to see these patent cases incurring some risk for the trolls.

<comment><USER13> What is the risk to a company whose only asset is the patent which, should they fail to win their case, is probably useless anyway?

<comment><USER14> Welcome to the problem of limited liability corporations in general. You think it's irksome to win a judgment against a shell that has no assets in the patent troll context, imagine it in the environmental damage, shareholder fraud, etc, context.

<comment><USER15> On the other hand, imagine losing your house, car and savings because somebody finds a bug in your product and sues you...

<comment><USER14> Presumably if you're designing products that could cause that much damage if they malfunction, you can buy insurance against any resulting problems. Limited liability is a public subsidy for big business--it reduces the cost of inherently risky business activity by shifting those costs to the injured public rather than to the business owners. It's really arguable whether such incentives are needed and whether liability insurance wouldn't be a more appropriate measure.

<comment><USER13> Most LLCs have assets and thus require liability insurance anyway.

The tech sector is a small slice of the business space. Lets phrase it another way - you get a bad shipment of chocolate from a supplier, and your cookies send a handful of kids into allergic shock from the peanuts tainting the chocolate. One of them dies. You're likely going to be sued, and your liability insurance is likely a drop in the bucket (enough to cover your business assets). Do you still deserve to lose your house?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For those interested in the actual patent here is a link: <http://www.surfcast.com/images/pdfs/US6724403.pdf>

I particularly find the following quote interesting from the last line on the first page: "The present invention is intended to operate in a platform independent manner."

<comment><USER17> In that they are interested in suing as many platform developers as possible?

<comment><USER16> No, in that a claim can be so specific and so vague at the same time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Amusingly, they use screenshots from Windows Explorer in their patent drawings.

See Fig. 1 in the first patent (pg 3) <http://www.surfcast.com/images/pdfs/US6724403.pdf>

The pictures has some funny Drive names: Bambam, Fatbelly, Bigboss, Hulk.

</comment><comment><USER18> Gee, waiting until Windows 8 releases before filing a lawsuit rather than before hand when the damage to your "company" could have been avoided. I wonder why that is...

Seriously though, even disregarding any previous prior art, Microsoft already did stuff like this back in 98 when it was called Active Channel.

</comment><comment><USER19> I am glad that a patent troll has directly attacked one of the software giants. Now hopefully Microsoft with its deep pockets and legal team can crush this troll.

<comment><USER20> Microsoft lose in such cases surprisingly often. Smart Tags in Office, onclick activation of plugins in IE...

<comment><USER21> Yup. Fuck, they lost their right to use "Metro" to describe their now "Modern- UI style." MASSIVE fuck up in my opinion. Microsoft should have raided the coffers to protect using that term.

<comment><USER22> Agreed it was a massive SNAFU. Metro AG is a huge corp, based in Germany, that wasn't interested in licensing the 'Metro' trademark to MS in a settlement. I don't think any dollar amount was mentioned for continued use of Metro.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> at-fates-hands I know there has been a spat of these recently, but I always think about Robert Kearns and his lifelong battle against Ford for his intermittent windshield wiper patent.

As much as we hate patent trolls, once and a while, there is an exception to rule which proves us all wrong.

<comment><USER23> Is an intermittent windshield wiper really worthy of a 20-year monopoly?

<comment><USER24> Depends on how much you have invested in it.

<comment><USER25> And even then, I could spend the rest of my life on digging holes and refilling them.

I might have _invested_ countless hours in such effort, but that does not grant it any inherent value.

<comment><USER24> Did Ford try to infringe on your patent for hole digging?

<comment><USER23> The value of a patent is not in whether it is infringed, but whether it is both novel and non-obvious. Many software patents are neither, as evidenced by the recent spate of lawsuits over patents that largely amount to "regular expressions, but _on a PHONE!!111_."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have now realized that anything can happen in the world of ...

</comment><comment><USER27> I am REALLY pissed off. Idiotic patent trolls. GAH

</comment><comment><USER28> I thought this was an article from The Onion.

</comment><comment><USER29> Stop the madness</comment>


Pulley Logic Gates (2014) [video] - <AUTHOR> https://vimeo.com/93042377 <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824588](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7824588).

</comment><comment><USER3> But can you play Doom on it?

<comment><USER4> Yes, but the framerate is horrendous.

</comment></comment><comment> gene-h Of course this technology is old, the Aprahulians used similiar techniques to build quite large digital computers around 850 CE[0].*

Of course on problem with such pulley logic is the difficulty of building signal amplifiers. Without signal amplification one must pull the inputs quite hard such that all tension is provided to all stages. The Aprahulians were believed to use elephants for this task.

[0][http://robert.surton.net/cs271/apraphulian.pdf](http://robert.surton.net/cs271/apraphulian.pdf) *it is important that readers take careful note of when this article was published

<comment><USER5> Calling in your bluff, no such people "Aprahulians"</comment></comment>


How to make sure the fish we eat is safe - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190425-making-sure-fish-is-safe-to-eat <comment><USER2> > Uniting the siloes of modern food supply chains is one of the best examples > of a real-world problem that only blockchain can solve

If this is the first large quote on the page, then it's really hard to take the rest of the article seriously. Microplastic both in the sea and subsequently in fish is a very serious issue, tacking on buzzwords isn't going to help highlight it, though.</comment>


Show HN: Hover Play – Chrome extension that plays live streams on hover - <AUTHOR> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hover-play/dnmbfaacpfllgeejebipebofdhndnnma <comment><AUTHOR> Hi, developer here. The extension adds a preview to the page with the live stream when you hover over a video thumbnail. It currently works with Twitch, YouTube and Facebook. I plan to add more sites soon if people like it :)

Demo video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJED9leVPs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRJED9leVPs)

</comment><comment><USER2> This could be kind of cool to use. I'll have to check it out in more detail and see how it works.</comment>


How Does Contributors' Involvement Influence the Build Status of an OSS Project? [pdf] - <AUTHOR> http://gustavopinto.org/lost+found/msr2017b.pdf <comment><USER2> Dude, I'm the lead developer and maintainer of an OSS project with roughly 120 kLoC in Scala, and I probably break the build more often than not. (Of course commits don't make it into master until they're green.) In fact, I'm typically surprised when a PR passes the CI on the first try! There are way too many configurations to test locally (a PR triggers around 10 hours*CPU of tests on our CI servers), so I only test a single config before submitting a PR. Uncovering the impact on the other configs is left to the CI servers.

So yeah, I'm not surprised by those results.

</comment><comment><USER3> My summary: "Commits from casual or infrequent contributors are no more likely to break the build."

Not super exciting, unless you need ammunition when arguing against some kind of non-benevolent project dictator.

</comment><comment><USER4> Interesting that this is something of interest and research since anyone who does active development in Open Source could have given the answer without it.

The majority of PRs tend to not affect the build status.

The rare cases (4-5%) where it does, is a complex architectural reason, or the tests are variable. Which doesn't even factor into this research... Such as tests that rely on timestamps/external requests/etc that randomly fail, yet are still a part of the test suite (pretty common).

The places where people are afraid to contribute generally tend to have overly complex contribution guidelines, rules, and acceptance criterion where you must sign a waiver, agree to their code of conduct, submit some form of a RFC... rather than the CI.

</comment><comment> awinter-py I wonder what % of casual contributions are CI / build improvements? The most serious contrib I've done as an outsider was build instrumentation.</comment>


Artificial Intelligence: What's to Fear? - the-enemy https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/10/08/artificial-intelligence-whats-to-fear/ <comment><USER2> "The sea makes people feel as if they are in a whirl of action ... But this is wrong thinking, We say waves "cause" a ship to break up ... but the wave itself is passive and without the power to act."

Nope, the wave is energy transmitted, from the sun, to the wind, to the sea ... to the ship.

In the same way a mind is a wave, constrained and channeled by it's neuron substrate, and by external stimulii.

The article is nonsense to me, there is no such thing as passive - <AUTHOR> universe is all active, seething.

<comment><USER3> I think main point is that "wave" does not have any agenda, it does not have any purpose. By itself atoms cannot "decide" to cause chain reaction. All of this is just "programmed".

This kind of topic is taken on by Stanislaw Lem in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invincible)

Really liked this book.

<comment><USER3> To add to previous comment. "What's to Fear", if author would read that book, he would notice there is still a lot to fear. Synthetic life form, without even mimicking humans could be dangerous. The same as waves in the ocean, even if those waves have no agenda to kill us all, if it is 10 in Beaufort scale you better stay away from those waves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Grrrr. This could have been interesting if Umberto Ecco was arguing semiosis, instead of this poor exercise in semantics. As a concrete example, consider "The AI therapy app is not a mind. It cannot emote. It cannot feel the warmth behind its praise or the sense of urgency behind its criticism. It is passive." Yah, no. I can also do sentiment analysis on the users comments, and the behavior of the system can be driven by a goal to change that sentiment analysis, so I've got me an active participant in a feedback loop - yes, there is no their there, its just a numbers game - but this article is still complete twaddle

</comment><comment><USER5> > Even lovemaking is at risk, as artificially intelligent robots stand poised > to enter the market and provide sexual services and romantic intimacy.

This perfectly encapsulates why I'm so skeptical of AI alarmists. They tend to boil down the human experience to such coarse terms that it undermines their legitimate issues.

> AI is a collection of passive silicon and metal. It does not speak. It has > no mind. Like an ocean wave, it forms part of an ordered sequence of passive > realities moved by an agency not its own

No, AI is a series of numbers. I just wrote about this misconception the other day [0]. It would be great if people stopped anthropomorphizing AI just because it has the word intelligence in it and humans are said to be intelligent

[https://medium.com/ml-everything/artificial-general- intellig...](https://medium.com/ml-everything/artificial-general-intelligence- as-a-modern-day-spiritual-conjuring-963dd80377ce)

<comment><USER6> It's not clear to me from your post or essay whether you are saying the current state of AI is absurdly overhyped and is not even remotely close to producing actual intelligence (I agree strongly); or if you are claiming it's not possible with computers _even in principle_ because "numbers", in which case I don't understand the justification at all, as it implies a mystical quality to human intelligence you rightly dismiss in the current hype.

<comment><USER5> Definitely your first point.

As for the second point, I don't think there is a mystical quality to human intelligence. I guess its mystical in the sense that no one really understands consciousness just yet. But I think something else is going on other than the brain being a rote inefficient chemical cruncher. I find the whole AGI, singularity, and AI hysteria reductive

<comment><USER6> Yeah I'd agree with most of that, consciousness (as opposed to cognition) definitely fascinatingly different to ponder.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This article completely misses what I see as the biggest problem with intelligence in machines: Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot. Inhumane practices? Sorry, we are still "working" on our artificial intelligence since you know it's very difficult.

Where most people see mysterious advanced help in day to day tasks, some corporations are seeing obedient, unaccountable and un-auditable workers. They are already starting to use them to perform their dirty deeds, and hiding behind the black box nature of these complex algorithms.

<comment><USER5> > Corporations can use them to be unaccountable. Insider trading? No, that was > our "algorithm". Racist policies? Oops, sorry that was just our bot.

I would say the opposite. Insider trading? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm. Racist policies? No, here are the inputs to our algorithm.

<comment><USER8> "Our" algorithm ? I was under the impression that AI were generating their own algorithms.

<comment><USER9> In a sense you are building an algorithm but with different means from the usual ones. It is built trough compilation of a large amount of data using the well known machine learning algorithms. Tbh and especially in this case these are vocabulary terminations we should not but stuck on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This was an absolutely fascinating read...

> An atomic bomb is a frantic explosion. Yet none of these phenomena is > active; they are all passive. They lack the power of cause.

To me it's completely incomprehensible that an obviously intelligent and well educated (MD PhD) person can think like this... How is it possible to deny that a thermonuclear explosion can cause... a lot of things...?

I've lately come to realize that there is much more variation in how people see the world and reason than I thought possible. I would genuinely like to understand those "modes of thinking" that are most far removed from my own. Can anybody explain how this particular worldview works or point me to something I can read?

<comment><USER6> I think the author is distinguishing between intent/agency/free will in the case of mental action and the empty, meaningless quality of material "causes".

For causality and the slipperiness of it, read Hume.

<comment><USER10> Hume the empiricist... yea, I find this philosophical view incredibly difficult to understand. I naturally gravitate to the hypotetico-deductive way of thinking, and find it very hard to break out of.

I don't think going straight to Hume will be very meaningful for me. Is there anybody who has explained empiricism from a more hypothetical-deductive perspective?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> _Yet not only does AI win at cards now, it also creates art, writes poetry, and performs psychotherapy._

Those are shockingly broad claims that are not even close to being accepted by even a minority of people.

<comment><USER12> AIs can absolutely do all those things. The question is if they can do it well enough to be of any value.

<comment><USER11> i believe this is a category error. AI is not sentient or aware, it defintionally cannot "do" anything.

<comment><USER13> I see no reason why "doing something" requires sentience.

<comment><USER11> [https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/E...](https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD09xx/EWD936.html)

here's the relevant djikstra. To be the agent of an event requires agency. We have it, principal component analysis doesn't.

I'm firmly of the opinion that anthropomorphization of code is a category error and a bad idea.

<comment><USER13> > To be the agent of an event requires agency. We have it, principal component > analysis doesn't.

Agency remains undefined, just like "sentience" from your other post. Unless you actually define it, how can you possibly know that we have it and principle component analysis doesn't?

Even if we take a connotative definition of agency, ie. that it is some quality or behaviour that humans exhibit, then it remains to be shown that code _cannot possibly have agency_ in this exact sense.

Certainly not all code will have agency, just like all code does not have a "sorter" property exhibited by sorting algorithms. I also agree with you that current forms of AI don't have what we recognize as agency, but I don't think we're as far off as some think, and I definitely don't see how it's a category error to talk about AI in this fashion. Whatever qualities you think humans have that grants agency, it might not be nearly as complicated as you assume.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My problem with these articles isn't that they overestimate AI, but that they underestimate humanity. Yes, many millenials have a serious electronics addiction, but many Gen Z kids are really good about managing their screen time, and try to make face-to-face communication happen more and more.

tl;dr: Humanity is really good at adapting to coexist with technology. Stop Panicking.

<comment><USER9> What about all other thechnological controversy ? Everything is not about Screen-Time.

<comment><USER14> I'm using a specific example of a panic to point out that the panic is often unfounded.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I waited for something insightful at the end but didn't find anything there. Just a bunch of "metal and silicon isn't intelligence." Ok, fine, but a whole article without any reference to the Turing test? That should have been the starting point.

</comment><comment><USER16> Sure, let's dive into the philosophy of causation and completely butcher it. Very clear article /s

</comment><comment><USER17> steam engine - what to fear ?

combustion engine - what to fear ?

computer - what to fear ?

internet - what to fear ?

robots - what to fear ?

artificial intelligence - what to fear ?

?????? - what to fear ?

Maybe there is not point to fear ?

</comment><comment><USER18> I have a few thoughts about doomsday level AIs:

1\. We _will_ eventually crack "general intelligence". If nature is able to do it with 9 months of build time and a few pounds of meat, there's no physical reason we can't do it on silicon (or whatever substrate is next)...

2\. When we finally develop a half-way decent general intelligence, much like human intelligence, we're not going to have any idea how it works.

3\. It will probably end up employing a lot of the same cognitive shortcuts that humans use (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases)). And in doing so we're likely to end up with a general intelligence that, on the whole, is capable of much greater calculation, but ultimately will be a disaster as it will suffer from the same sort of psychological flaws.

Human survival is probably going to come down to humanity trying to talk a super-intelligent AI out of some crazy ass conspiracy theories. It will be like the ultimate Thanksgiving with your crazy uncle.

<comment><USER19> Our Tower of Babel _will_ eventually reach heaven.

<comment><USER18> And mankind will never be able to soar like the birds.

 _shrug_

We've seen this play out many, many times before...

<comment><USER19> To "soar like the birds" would mean to be able to fly at will and land at will, wherever and whenever you desire, as effortlessly as walking. You're absolutely right, mankind will never be able to soar like the birds. Even if we could figure out the technology, it would be a privacy/safety/liability nightmare and they'd make laws against doing it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Handmade Rails Authentication - <AUTHOR> http://kswope.wordpress.com/2010/08/06/hand-made-rails-authentication/ <comment><USER2> Personally, I feel authentication is one area where it's best to have "many eyes". Sure, rolling your own is easy enough but have you really thought of every edge case, every security exploit? It is also one area where most applications are extremely similar and there's (not usually) any business advantage gained by rolling your own.

Still, always good to see how others approach authentication code (personally, I use Clearance).

<comment><USER3> This is one of my pet peeves. I can implement some basic authentication in something like 25 lines of code. AuthLogic: 2500 LOC. Devise: 2200 LOC. Clearance: 690. And yet, both times I tried to use AuthLogic, it actually didn't work for my case–login and password in different tables–without some weird hacks, at least not back then. My own custom authentication code can do that by simply modifying an existing LOC, and I know what is going on. There's no way I am going to ever feel comfortable with e.g. AuthLogic's code, simple because I can't justify spending time getting comfortable with it, when I can write it myself in 15 minutes.

It's the same issue I have with RSpec, actually. Too much code.

<comment><USER4> I actually kind of agree. Rails Auth isn't a hard problem. As long as you're not rolling your own password hash and you're not rolling your own session store, I'm comfortable saying "authentication code in Rails is just glue; do the simplest thing that can work".

Now, authori _zation_ is a radically different story; unfortunately, though, there's no good Rails solution for getting "off-the-shelf" access control and permissioning, so you may be kind of stuck anyways.

(Pet peeve of mine? Mixing up authorization and authentication.)

<comment><USER5> I hear, "Don't roll your own session store" frequently, but I wonder, is there any way to not roll your own session store when you are creating a single- sign-on application across multiple server technologies (PHP, ASP.NET, Rails)?

<comment><USER4> Nope. Be really, really careful. This is one of the top game-over problems that happens to smart dev teams.

<comment><USER3> Can you elaborate on that?

<comment><USER5> Go back and read through Thomas's comments here regarding attacks on encrypted passwords.

Try this: [http://www.google.com/search?q=bcrypt+tptacek+site%3Anews.yc...](http://www.google.com/search?q=bcrypt+tptacek+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en- US:official&client=firefox-a)

Find all his warnings, and don't make any of the mistakes he mentions, and I'll bet you will be fine.

<comment><USER4> I'd be more worried that:

* The session token you come up with will be insecure, like PHP's have been as recently as (I think?) this year

* That you'll end up reinventing session fixation vulnerabilities

* That you'll screw up session timeouts and logouts and succumb to "permanent" session hijacking flaws

* That you'll try to encode encrypted information into the session cookie itself, rather than just an opaque random token, and open _that_ whole kettle of worms.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> auto_hash is an inferior password hash; use bcrypt or scrypt instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't really understand your phrasing, "auto_hash is an inferior password hash", its a rails plugin that uses SHA2 (256). If you mean "auto_hash" uses an inferior password hash, could somebody please point me to some info on why it shouldn't be a good enough option for almost all websites? I really don't want to go imposing an obscure hashing algorithm on users of the plugin, especially with hashing algorithms that deliberately impose a speed penalty for extra security.

I'm not interesting in changing the world of password hashing with my trivial rails plugin by using anything other than the most secure of the common hashing algorithms, SHA2. I'm also under the impression that SHA2 is now the most widely recommended security hash.

<comment><USER4> There's no such thing as a "security hash". You mean to say "secure hash function". The term "security" refers to the integrity of the hash itself; SHA256 is "secure" against attempts to cause collisions (and several other attacks).

None of that has anything to do with the security that SHA256 provides _to your application_. SHA256 knows how to take care of itself. It doesn't know a damn thing about passwords. SHA256 isn't a secure password hash.

You already know that, because you're not just using SHA256; you're also adding a random salt to it. That's because if you didn't do that, attackers could just aim a precomputed dictionary at your database rows and smite it. So your hash _isn't_ SHA256; it's a construction called "salted SHA256" (or "SHA256 with a nonce").

Nonced SHA256 still sucks, though, because SHA256 is lightning fast. Attackers can't throw precomputed dictionaries at your password hash, because you randomized them. But they can take each hash in turn and run a large dictionary against each hash. This is a brute force attack, but it's not a brute force against the 256 bits of the hash; it's an attack against the (low) entropy of the passwords themselves.

This is how _all_ password cracking got done in the '90s, which was a bit of a golden age for password cracking. It's how John the Ripper (the most famous password cracker) works. John the Ripper is extraordinarily fast against Unix password hashes, which are _slower_ (by a lot) than SHA256. Incremental crackers tear through naked SHA256 hashes like a knife through butter.

That you don't know any of this --- and I say this respectfully --- tells me that maybe you should be using someone else's password hashing library instead of reinventing your own. But you're welcome anyways for the quick and dirty lesson in password hashing.

<comment><USER6> Short version (you almost got around to it, but didn't explicitly state it :)) -- Don't use straight hash functions because they are _made to be fast_. Even if you salt/nonce them, you can generate private rainbow tables quickly.

Use a password hiding method that's slow to compute (slow being "this operation isn't implemented in hardware or optimized assembly") which is what bcrypt or scrypt provides.

Differences in speed/effort are mentioned at <http://www.tarsnap.com/scrypt.html> \-- _scrypt enc is approximately 100 billion times more than the cost of cracking the same password on a file encrypted by openssl enc_

<comment><USER7> Actually, slow in this case does not at all mean "this operation isn't implemented in hardware or optimized assembly".

The slowness of an algorithm like bcrypt is a tunable property of the key expansion algorithm. A step in this process will be repeated 2^n times, where n can be configured by the user.

If a password function was only slow because it wasn't implemented in assembly on your server, an attacker would obviously just go implement it in assembly for his brute-force crack.

<comment><USER4> Actually, the major contribution in Colin's scrypt work is to find primitives that don't admit as well to hardware acceleration; his hypothesis is that one of bcrypt's weaknesses is that even though it's very slow in software, it might be possible to massively accelerate it with FPGAs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What, no salt?

<comment><AUTHOR> Its one of the things that is the "auto" in "auto_hash".</comment></comment>


Ask HN: How do you think about our service name "AppDorks"? - <AUTHOR>

We're working on a social recommendation for iPhone/iPad apps on top of facebook. http://appdorks.com/
How do you think about our service name "AppDorks"? Is this ok or attractive for you?
I'm not a native american but I understand the word "dork" means negative. Some of my English-native friends advised me to use "dork" because it may work as "geek" or "nerd". <comment><USER2> Personally I don't like it at all. I would never share something called "AppDork" with my friends. Why not? It sounds too geeky/dorky.

And just a heads up: you mention that you are not a "native american" in your post. The term "Native American" refers to a person of American Indian descent, not someone from/born-in the USA.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your advice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> You do know "dork" originally meant "penis", yes? <http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=dork>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I didn't know....

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I think it's a cool name. It would be even cooler if you let users create subdomains like znt.appdorks.com.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! We'll enable subdomains when we start outside the facebook. (Currently it's a facebook app.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I hate it, so given my relationship to the cultural norm you will probably make a million bucks.

</comment><comment><USER6> I think the transition from "p" to "d" is clumsy. DorkApps would be better imho.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's not bad for the purpose you describe.

<comment><AUTHOR> thx!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://appdorks.com/>

</comment><comment><USER8> FYI: Dork does not really work as a substitute for geek or nerd. It has the same connotation of someone who has no social skills but it in no way implies intelligence. It suggests someone who is both socially inept and generally stupid, not someone smart but socially challenged.

Definition from a website:

 _USA pejorative slang for a quirky, silly and/or stupid, socially inept person, or one who is out of touch with contemporary trends. Often confused with nerd and geek, but does not imply the same level of intelligence._

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dork>

Edit: I will add that the connotation of "silly" might work fine if your apps are for entertainment purposes. Just so long as you realize this in no way suggests "weird but brilliant", instead it suggests "weird and silly/dumb".

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I think we need to consider changing the name seriously.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Testing the market before manufacturing the product? - <AUTHOR>

In the 70's, shrewd book publishers would take out ads in the back of magazines for books they had not written. If they got more than 300 orders, they would write the book in a week. Otherwise, they would mail back the checks and say: "Sorry, it's out of stock."
This is according to Marc Andreessen, when he was on Charlie Rose, (http://bit.ly/marca).
You have an idea for a physical good that you think a sufficient number of people would be interested in. How do you perform the analogous process on the internet, when selling a physical good? Step 1. Mock up an image of it, and set up a website. Step 2. ... Step 3. Take pre-orders. Step 4. PROFIT! (or, return everyone's money if there aren't enough orders) Step 5. Manufacture.
What is Step 2?
What merchant solution should you use to take pre-orders? Can you use PayPal for this sort of setup? Or someone else?
How do you promote this product? Besides Google AdWords, what are other cheap promotion methods for testing the market? Trying to get a link on digg.com? <comment><USER2> I think there was a post on Mixergy about this recently. Let me dig it out for you...

Here you go:

<http://blog.mixergy.com/direct-marketing-techniques-launch/>

I didn't actually watch it, but it appears to be a step-by-step guide to what you're asking.

<comment><USER3> I think that interview will answer your questions.

If it doesn't, Chance, the guy I interviewed, offered to write up a detailed answer to my readers' questions.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tim Ferris goes into this, along with a lot of other interesting ideas, in his book "The 4-hour Work Week": <http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/> The book is entertaining, but be sure to have your reality-check filter turned on.

</comment><comment><USER5> Eric Ries at startup lessons learned has also written on this topic.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with or improve software development estimates? - <AUTHOR> Estimating software development work is hard. There are typically many reasons for that, but this is something that we, software development professionals, have to live with. But thankfully there are ways to improve this process (e.g. breaking the project down into smaller pieces, staged delivery, conducting pre-mortems, regular status checks, etc.)<p>What are some techniques/approaches you've successfully used to improve software development estimates? Any recommended reading on the subject? <comment><USER2> No, estimating software work is _impossible_. I refuse to do it. If pressed insistently I will "estimate" four hours.

I've encountered situations where I was told, "That's unacceptable." My response was, "OK, two weeks." Need I say that that was also "unacceptable". My point is that any "estimate" is nothing more than a guess, and irrelevant in any case. A given feature/bugfix/whatever is gonna take as long as its gonna take.

Estimation is a shibboleth.

<comment><USER3> I hope you never get any work done on your house.

"I've given you the architects plans for my kitchen. How long do you think it will take?"

"It will take as long as it's gonna take. Please sign this blank cheque."

<comment><USER2> There's a world of difference... People have been working on houses for... a couple of thousand years?... there's not much that's unknown about house building. Software building? Not so much. It's almost always all unknowns. New libraries, new programming languages, new requirements never before dreamed of, new everything. Your parallel with housebuilding is a false one.

<comment><USER3> If you can't give at least give a order of magnitude estimate, or an estimate with documented assumptions, you don't know your job well enough.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Pay attention to how long things actually take. Then, when you're estimating, you can say "This is about like X, and X took a month, so I'll estimate this as taking a month." That gives you a pretty decent estimate - as long as everybody remembers that it's an estimate.

That assumes that you can find a good previous example. If you can't, you can't use this technique.

One place that gets me is porting software. How long is it going to take? Depends on how many issues we find. How many will that be? _I have no idea._ Neither does anybody else. We'll know we're done when we're done.

</comment><comment><USER5> I have been frustrated by the lack of resources on how to estimate software tasks for the past 8 years and had essentially come to agree with micro2nd that estimation was impossible. I was, however, searching for some method which would turn it from [impossible task that I had no idea how to do or how to learn how to do or how to ask how to do] into merely difficult work.

However, this past summer, I got a new manager who has had a goal of introducing estimation into the team and I've been working with him. The biggest thing I've learned so far is that if you're estimating by asking "how long will this take?" then you're asking the wrong question. To estimate, ask instead "What are the mile-markers?"

The work of answering this is to go through the research process of determining what the task involves. This takes significant time and so it is still important to stand firm and resist the urge to give a number when someone asks you during a meeting if you haven't prepared. It also is still fallible and I'm honestly not all that practiced at it yet. However, at the end of it, you'll have mile-markers which provide the three pieces of real value from estimates:

1) A rough intuition for the level of complexity of the task.

2) An opportunity to notice when you can cut down the scope of something or when you should prepare for something by doing a small refactor.

3) A way to judge your velocity as you are doing the task.

The third one is particularly important and can make guessing a number an actually-somewhat-useful activity. Why? You can guess numbers for the individual mile-markers and then, if after a while of working notice you are falling behind or moving faster, you can communicate with stakeholders.

\----

When I've asked for advice on estimation, I've often been told "just gut-check yourself and multiply by 3. The important thing is to communicate when you think you might not hit the estimate." But if right after producing a single number and saying it, the alarm starts blaring in your head saying "I'm not going to be able to make that estimate." well... you'd feel silly "It will take two weeks. Oh I think its going to take longer than two weeks." and so you never have a point where it makes sense to raise a flag. But if you have mile-markers and a regular habit of checking yourself against them, then there _is_ a defined point where you can raise an alarm.

</comment><comment><USER6> Practice, and follow a process that enables engineers to internalize the design as well as communicate it.

For example FDD encourages creating an agile model that the team agrees to, and then creating a 3 level WBS for the next 3 months, with estimates.

Give it a go, and then when you realize your team didn't do well the 1st time, call it and then try again. By the 3rd time you'll have built enough skill to start getting within a reasonable ballpark.

</comment><comment><USER7> Earlier this year, I wrote these tips to improve estimation: [https://blog.amirathi.com/2018/02/05/science-of-software- est...](https://blog.amirathi.com/2018/02/05/science-of-software-estimation/)

I will summarize it here:

\- It's not just about code. New developers typically don't account time for testing, documentation, data migrations, backwards compatibility work and such

\- Spend a few hours to discover unknowns. Unknown unknowns can rattle the estimation big time whereas known unknowns can be factored into estimation with some upfront research.

\- Have a deeper conversation with product owners. Often you realize that some nice to have use case is taking 80% of the time and can be decoupled from the core feature. Win-Win.

</comment><comment><USER8> Get 3 engineers to do estimation on the same work. Not only helps to get better estimations, but also helps to understand people's strengths and weaknesses on tasks as well as inform more people of a project specifics. Also PERT: [https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-consultant/use-pert- tec...](https://www.techrepublic.com/blog/it-consultant/use-pert-technique- for-more-accurate-estimates/)

</comment><comment><USER9> It depends a LOT on what you're estimating.

Estimating a CRUD line of business app is very much doable. On the other hand, estimating an innovative product using unproven tech or novel methods requires a proof of concept before even knowing feasibility.

I worked with major consultancies, and the most serious gave you order-of- magnitude estimates, with iterating improvements on the estimation itself until you reached a +/\- 15% estimation that was the best they could do.

Very similar to: [https://www.construx.com/software-thought- leadership/books/t...](https://www.construx.com/software-thought- leadership/books/the-cone-of-uncertainty/)

In those cases, it was a very reasonable estimate because they'd done very similar things before.

One of those consultancies used an tool and they had measured their teams' velocity and were very confident on their estimates.

For one of my own projects, we had to estimate a rewrite of an existing app (with slight improvements), which is as easy as it can get in regards to estimation. We used several approaches, the one that ended up being closest to reality was Steve McConnell's tool Construx Estimate (no longer available but you can find a mirror here: [https://web.archive.org/web/20170920093850/https://www.const...](https://web.archive.org/web/20170920093850/https://www.construx.com/Thought_Leadership/Books/Survival_Guide/Resources_By_Chapter/Construx_Estimate/) )

</comment><comment><USER10> The first thing to keep in mind is that reasonable accuracy might never be achieved because of the nature of the problem. Social causes and bad process contribute to bad estimates. It's not only the difficulty of guessing the unknown. Biases, guesses taken as deadlines and stakeholders trying to influence the estimation results contribute to worsening the problem.

This article [https://www.infoq.com/articles/software-development- effort-e...](https://www.infoq.com/articles/software-development-effort- estimation) written by a researcher at Simula Research Laboratory is one of the best summaries on the estate of software estimation.

Simula has excellent research on estimation. I found particularly interesting the different biases that might affect us: the scale used, how the question is asked (introduces an anchor to your estimate), the size of the task estimated previously, etc.

However, we can improve on gut feeling estimates and training on a personal level can reduce the uncertainty. A few highlights:

\- On a team level, planning poker is known to improve estimates.

\- Checklists (common forgotten activities) and historical data (% of time spent on unplanned or project management) tailored to your current project improve estimates.

\- Avoid early estimation based on incomplete data. Avoid exposure to irrelevant, misleading estimation information.

\- Break specs in tasks and estimate those tasks. Keep historical data on your estimates and final times and review them periodically. Automated time tracking tools for developers like [https://www.codermirror.com/](https://www.codermirror.com/) can help in removing the burden of tracking coding times.

</comment><comment><USER5> One thing just occurred to me: the most successful estimation exercise I've gone through so far actually involved me pair-estimating a project with my manager. I think this is generalizable: If you aren't sure how to do an estimate, the steps are:

0) Stand up straight and chamber your courage in order to be honest responding to the person who just asked you for an estimate.

1) Say: "I don't know how to produce estimates. I'm going to get a more senior engineer to pair with me on breaking down a project and producing an estimate for you."

2) Email your team lead about who would be a good person to sit down with you and go through the process of estimating the task.

Tell her that you are going to do #3 Say you are looking to both answers the question you were asked and to talk you through the thought process so that you can learn to be good at producing useful estimates. Book like 30 minutes in the senior engineer's calendar.

3) Write your own draft where you first take the definition-of-done and make sure it is clear, then you turn the task into bullet points of what _you_ can think of are the subcomponents of it. Don't produce times yet.

4) When you have the meeting with the senior engineer, be clear that you want to learn the thought process. If they say "I just go with my gut and multiply by 3" then say something about how their years of experience with estimates allows their intuition to be highly trained, but you need a more rigorous process to follow until your gut is similarly well-trained. (tip: read Thinking Fast and Slow) Ask if they can use their experience to help you think through your breakdown, spot missing subtasks, and put numbers on things.

I've not actually tried steps #1 and #2, but I have done steps #3 then #4 together and they worked well.

</comment><comment>=

If you think you'll get pushback on the idea of taking some time to go away and do the estimate, imagine yourself calling up an auto mechanic and saying "Hey, my 2010 Peugeot Ion is making a noise like a coffee grinder when I accelerate. Can you give me a quote for how much that costs to fix?" Then imagine refusing to let them take a look at it before they give you a quote.

</comment><comment><USER11> 1\. For estimates to become effective (in software) you need to estimate a lot of tasks' sizes/complexities and then record how long they took.

2\. You need familiarity with the _type_ of system you're working on (whether it's new development or sustainment doesn't matter, you need to know the system). If the work is new, you will need to work on it for a period of time to learn how to estimate it.

3\. Initially, your estimated sizes and times will be way off. Accept this.

Record the estimated task size, record the final time taken (at least to the number of days needed). Run this through a stats package: You should see clusters, each size category should take around the same amount of time. If you see a size "small" or "1" taking as long as a "large" or "100", work on your size estimates.

Once you get better at estimating the size, you'll be able to (more easily) estimate the time (within some confidence interval).

I discourage estimating time directly ("Here's the task, I think it's 10 hours of work.") because you really don't know it. And everyone in my office that does the above and insists on estimating time (versus size/complexity) ends up using a multiplier against their time estimate after a couple years! That is, their time estimates become sizes after all. They keep calling it "100 hours" but then double it or halve it based on the statistical analysis above. Better to just call it a "10" and have the stats package spit out 200 hours or 50 hours or whatever is appropriate, eliminate the confusion.

</comment><comment></comment><comment>

For estimating longer term projects (not just tasks), you can do the above if you've worked with similar systems (or the system being maintained) for each of the tasks/features/bug fixes. String them together using a PERT chart (illustrating dependencies between these tasks and the path to your objective). This will give you a reasonable estimate for the overall project time.

</comment><comment></comment><comment>

Finally, because you're using stats and know your standard deviation, you don't give a precise target (100 hours). You give a range (100 hours +/\- 10 hours). The more you (or your team) does the same kinds of work or work on the same systems, the tighter your bounds should become on your estimates.

</comment><comment><USER12> Lie:

Tell management it will take twice as long as you think.

Tell your staff they have half the time you feel they need.

<comment><USER13> I agree with afarrell that lying is not advisable. Lying is a very bad thing. Convincing someone else to do a bad thing is even worse.

The method I used when I was Software Development Manager was to ask one of the programmers how long he thought it should take (or estimate it myself). Then I told management that it would take 3 times that long. We usually could make that deadline but it was often close and sometimes a little late. I have since learned that it will take PI times as long as you think.

Telling the programmers that they have half as long does no good. They will not write code any faster. It may even distress them and a distressed programmer produces less code causing it to take longer.

FYI

Consider carefully what I say; my first computer program compiled and ran in the summer of 1967. I have typed in a program while both Bill Gates and Paul Allen watched over my shoulder. I'm retired now but still work daily on a subgame for minetest.</comment></comment>


When selling up becomes selling out  - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/aug/07/research.netrich

<comment><USER2> _It's easy to feel righteous and indignant and shake our fists when the people behind our favourite startup sell up earlier than we wanted them to._

If the notion of feeling righteous and indignant about that perplexes you, you might have just discovered the difference between an average Guardian reader and those of us who are sane.

<comment><USER3> My thoughts exactly. My sense of wonderment grew as I read along and slowly realized that the author wasn't using the word 'blackmail' in jest.

W... tf?</comment></comment>


Why This $4,000 Renault Is as Disruptive as the Tesla Model 3 - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/amp/amp.timeinc.net/thedrive/new-cars/12579/why-this-4000-renault-is-as-disruptive-as-the-tesla-model-3%3fsource=dam <comment><USER2> >You couldn't give a Model 3 away in Chennai or Bangalore.

If anyone would like to test that theory, please contact me. I will gladly unburden you of your Model 3.

Indian roads and traffic conditions aren't the greatest but vehicles survive. There are many people throwing money at premium vehicles.

The bigger issue is power. Both Chennai and Bangalore are plagued with energy issues.

<comment><USER3> Not mention the tariff. The amount of power consumed might put you in the industrial consumption category.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please replace URL with actual story URL? [http://www.thedrive.com/new- cars/12579/why-this-4000-renault...](http://www.thedrive.com/new- cars/12579/why-this-4000-renault-is-as-disruptive-as-the-tesla-model-3)

<comment><USER5> Sure, but then it would just be a repost from two weeks ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807222)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's a freaking coffin. Only reason it can cost $4000 is because safety regulations in india are non-existent.

Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807222](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14807222)

</comment><comment><USER7> Crash test:

[https://youtu.be/a3Xiw-xP3HA?t=15](https://youtu.be/a3Xiw-xP3HA?t=15)

No airbags, no crumple zones. It's a suicide car.

For $4K you can buy a used Toyota that will likely outlast that garbage.

<comment><USER5> Wow, I thought gt565k was being hyperbolic when he called it a coffin. I didn't know it was legal to sell a car without airbags or crumple zones anywhere on the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Peter Thiel very clearly talks a lot about the difference between distruption (making something new) and globalization (making something that works in western countries work in poorer countries). This article clearly doesn't get the huge difference between the two.

</comment><comment><USER9> > Among India's 1.3 billion, the most popular form of transportation is the > moped. Traffic fatalities here are among the highest in the world, with more > than 200,000 people killed in 2015.

Wow.

</comment><comment><USER10> What's the safety like relative to other options in that price range for a place like India?

</comment><comment><USER11> It's a Geo Metro

More or less

Brilliant</comment>


Show HN: Octal, a Hacker News App for iOS - <AUTHOR> https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal/id1308885491 <comment><USER2> I'm using this app right now (the paid version). I'm pretty happy with it.

The only gripe that happens regularly enough is that I can't seem to be able to report comments in the app.</comment>


This low-cost device may be the world's best hope against account takeovers - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/12/this-low-cost-device-may-be-the-worlds-best-hope-against-account-takeovers <comment><USER2> Good article hiding behind an awful clickbait title.

</comment><comment><USER3> Is this different from yubikey etc?</comment>


Universal Basic Income Fixes the Housing Market - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/human-capitalism/universal-basic-income-fixes-the-housing-market-639523c22b14 <comment><USER2> Low morgage rates has the effect of pushing up asset prices and rent has to cover those costs.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. I don't mention this in the article, but UBI also allows the Fed to raise interest rates. We'll see mortgage rates increase if we get a high enough UBI.</comment></comment>


Brexit is the greatest fraud ever perpetrated in British politics - <AUTHOR> http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-referendum-alternative-facts-brexit-bill-white-paper-european-union-a7558886.html <comment><USER2> I don't think blaming "fraud" is really helpful.

If the majority of leave voters failed to investigate the facts that seems like a bigger issue with referendums in general.

</comment><comment><USER3> > a significant number of those who voted Leave told the media ... they did it > as a protest against ...

> An irate local farmer told me he voted to leave as a protest against ...

Speaking in general, _not_ particularly about UK, I wish people stopped voting _against_ and started voting _for_ something. Voting _against_ is like crying in fear because the doctor is going to give you an injection. Voting _for_ is the mature adult who thanks God that an injection is going to cure him.</comment>


Victoria Police cancel hundreds of speeding fines after WannaCry virus attack - <AUTHOR> http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/victoria-police-cancel-hundreds-of-speeding-tickets-after-wannacry-virus-attack-20170623-gwx7na.html <comment><USER2> No mention that this security hole has been kept secret by US government and leaked with devastating consequences around the world.

You can't imply that it's the sole customers' fault by saying that it's "the easiest thing to do - update operating system" without mentioning NSA not cooperating with Microsoft to patch the hole.

Many setups require certification which is void after modifications which may include system updates so it's not "the easiest thing to do". It needs to go through the certification process again.

Even without certification requirements it may not be as trivial as it looks at first to "just update OS" on every device.

The "easiest thing to do" is for the government to report holes just like everybody else does.

Isn't it kind of strange that the only ones that fail to report security issues are a) criminals and b) government?

<comment><USER3> Why is a comment like this always at the top of one of these HN threads? Does everyone here actually believe that the NSA shouldn't hoard vulnerabilities? I find it hard to believe that people here would collectively be that naive and simple-minded in their thinking. The NSA hoards vulnerabilities for the same reason the military has guns. Because other countries have guns too. This is too obvious a point to be lost on the readers here. So, i'm left wondering who it is that's upvoting these things.

<comment><USER4>
      The NSA hoards vulnerabilities for the same reason
      the military has guns.

Vulnerabilities are fundamentally unlike guns.

Because vulnerabilities can be independently discovered or accidentally released, then reproduced in vast quantities and used against the public and civilian infrastructure of both us and our allies - largely with impunity.

If wannacry was a gun, it'd be a gun that fired backwards and sideways at the same time as forwards, and you can't stop it firing once it's started, and sometimes it starts firing on its own.

<comment><USER5> Correct me if I'm wrong but WannaCry used vulnerabilities that already had patches. How does reporting these vulnerabilities earlier instead of keeping them fix this situation? You'd still have the problem of slow updates regardless.

<comment><USER2> Reporting them would trigger normal processes, Microsoft would have time to work on patches during which time bad guys wouldn't be writing WannaCry.

Normally full disclosure happens after about 45 days (I'm not an expert, I don't know exactly) but in special cases the time is extended.

This would probably be considered as a special case as Microsoft exceptionally released updates to unsupported, old versions of Windows and the hole itself was critical.

Please note that WannaCry hit in mid May - not that long time ago.

Shadow Brokers Group public disclosure of stolen tools from NSA happened in April.

<comment><USER6> Microsoft pushed out fixes in March, so WannaCry occurred two months later.

There would have been even less time if this was indeed a security researcher using a 30-45 day time period.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why do so many commercial embedded devices use Window OS, and generally old versions like NT or XP?

Do vendors get a kickback from Microsoft to use Windows in systems that don't even have a display?

Otherwise I don't see why they would license Windows instead of using a no- cost BSD or Linux derived OS.

<comment><USER8> I have a oscilloscope which you can regularly find on eBay at a fairly high price. It's an awesome scope that runs XP and will always run XP because the vendor has moved on and no longer supports it. Given the age, it's unrealistic to expect that if they would have used a BSD or Linux kernel that wouldn't be vulnerable to any number of attacks. Thus, I would suggest the question isn't why are manufacturers using Windows, but rather, how can we get to a point where vendors either support their products for the anticipated life of the device or allow end-users to upgrade the kernel and related packages themselves?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> And what about having a firewall on the devices? I could understand slow patching, crappy or processes and all. But if the cameras are networked, why is there no firewall on them?

<comment><USER10> They might not be networked; could have been infected while an operator was collecting photos. But probably networked.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Every cloud has its silver lining.

<comment><USER12> Indeed, that's too funny for words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I am completely failing to see how Wannacry could have affected the operations of those devices AND at the same time leave some data "good enough" to produce the fines.

I presume that essentally it is a photo taking device that superimposes a date/time and detected speed (and maybe also OCR's the license plate).

More or less three or four pieces of data:

1) picture

2) date/time

3) speed

4) (maybe) OCR'ed liense plate number

If any of these items were encrypted it would be evident, and the following step (looking in a database for the ownere of the license plate number) would have returned a null result.

The only way for this to actually work (creating a wrong fine) would be if ONLY the license plate number was encrypted by Wannacry AND the encrypted string matched another existing license plate number.

</comment><comment><USER14> I wonder if it has infected any critical military infrastructure at US? and any real way to know about it?

<comment><USER15> Critical military infrastructure isn't connected to the Internet, so it's unlikely as part of this regular epidemic.

<comment><USER16> [serious] wasn't the Internet basically invented to _support_ critical military infrastructure? Or do their have their own parallel thing?

<comment><USER6> Not "parallel" but a few networks.

NIPR - Unclassified DoD internet plus powerful defensive capabilities when traffic goes between the intranet and public internet.

SIPR - Private "internet" for military and defense contractors and such to allow for handling SECRET and below. Dedicated circuits.

JWICS - Like SIPR but for TS and SCI channels.

Then other dedicated networks for international partnerships which run on dedicated circuits and using sats.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> King-Aaron _Oh no_

</comment><comment><USER17> "I cancelled the fines because I think it's important the _pubic_ has 100 per cent confidence in the system" [emphasis added]

o_O

<comment><USER18> The Age is giving the Graudian a run for its money. There is almost nobody left working at Fairfax outside of management that was born last century.</comment></comment>


The Jetbrains cookie popup is a terminal - <AUTHOR> https://www.jetbrains.com/datagrip/ <comment><USER2> I've seen quite a few sites use this, years ago even. Funny at first, but it gets old. I'd rather just click once.</comment>


New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs - <AUTHOR> https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/news/2017-19 <comment><USER2> > Many stars have companions

Most stars.

Many years ago, i downloaded a copy of the Gliese star catalogue, and set about generating some star charts of nearby space in VRML (which should give you some idea of just how many years ago that was). Multiple stars are listed as multiple entries in the catalogue, and i realised that if i drew markers for each one, they'd overlap and look terrible. Never mind, i thought, there will only be a few of them, and that's alright for a first version.

Not so! The majority of stars were in multiple systems (although the majority of systems are not multiple), and the chart looked even more shonky than i had anticipated. I had to go back and tweak my generator to merge multiple stars into single entries.

<comment><USER3> oh wow .. VRML. That does take me back

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For some background, a little under half of all stellar systems are binaries. About 40% are single stars, and about 10% are triple systems. The remainder (perhaps a few percent) are higher-order systems like quadruples and quintuples.

</comment><comment><USER5> Could Jupiter have been a failed pair?

<comment><USER6> Well what do you know, Jupiter doesn't actually orbit the sun! Not properly anyway

[http://www.iflscience.com/space/forget-wha-you-heard- jupiter...](http://www.iflscience.com/space/forget-wha-you-heard-jupiter-does- not-orbit-the-sun/)

<comment><USER7> This is silly semantics. Jupiter and the Sun both orbit the center of mass of the Jupiter-Sun system. The article is making the point that for Jupiter and the Sun this point happens to be just outside the surface of the Sun.

It's much simpler to say "Jupiter orbits the Sun" than "Jupiter and the Sun both orbit the center of mass of the Jupiter-Sun system". You can think of the former as a shorthand for the latter.

<comment><USER6> But doesn't this show that the main players of the solar system are the sun and Jupiter?

Apologies for the source, and my clear lack of knowledge in astronomy.

<comment><USER8> All planets orbit the centre of mass of themselves and the local star, modulo interactions with other planets. The position of the centre of mass relative to the surface of the star is completely immaterial.

NB for smaller bodies, Jupiter _is_ involved in perturbing or capturing their orbits to a great extent -- but we could conceivably have several very large planets contributing to that dynamic. Yes, Jupiter is the largest planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Mostly unrelated, but Nemesis, one of Isaac Asimov's lesser known novels, was one I personally found a good read.

</comment><comment><USER10> The article says "egg-shaped cocoon" half a dozen times. Does it really mean "elliptical"? It would seem odd for one end of the gas cloud that forms binary systems to be larger on one end. If so, they don't explain why or how.

</comment><comment><USER11> I read this initially as "paris" and the title took a strange turn when I clicked it

<comment><USER12> Glad I'm not the only one. I wonder if someone thought that would be a catchy title for this reason.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I know this really isn't the place for religion but somehow the Quran talks about these things:

51:47-49 47\. We constructed the universe with power, and We are expanding it. 48\. And the earth—We spread it out—How well We prepared it! 49\. We created all things in pairs, so that you may reflect and ponder.

And that the universe is actually expanding is something that wasn't known at the time of Mohammad.

<comment><USER14> I think that's just confirmation bias (might be another fallacy) because when you have enough source material, it's trivially easy to find those types of references predicting the future or describing something we only prove later. You also end up ignoring all the times the source material was wrong and focusing on the instances it was seemingly correct. See also, Nostradamus and the Bible for a similar type of phenomena.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> So we lost our partner? So sad.... ;) I remember reading, nearest proxima century is also a group of stars.

<comment><USER16> It would be Nemesis:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28hypothetical_star%2...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_%28hypothetical_star%29)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> If all stars are born in pairs where is our suns sister sun and earths sibling planet?

<comment><USER18> From the article:

Based on this model, the Sun's sibling most likely escaped and mixed with all the other stars in our region of the Milky Way galaxy, never to be seen again.

<comment><USER19> is it possible that it's just on an extreme orbit and we may one day reconnect?

<comment><USER20> We would easily detect a star closer to the Sun than our known stellar neighbours. Any former sibling star further away from us than that would be affected by the gravity of other stars more than by the gravity of the Sun.

<comment><USER21> How far could the star have travelled in 200 million years? I find it hard to think it could be more than a dozen light years away. And the list of stars within, say, 20 light years, is finite.

<comment><USER20> I think you may be confusing the age of the Sun with the time it takes to complete one galactic orbit.

The sun is more than 4 billion years old while 200m years is a bit less than the period for one orbit of the Galaxy (225-250 my). The Sun has completed more than 20 orbits in its lifetime. Even a 0.1% difference in galactic orbital period between the sun and it's twin would put them 3,000 light-years apart by now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I read that as Paris. On the plus side it makes more sense now. Should probably go to sleep...

<comment><USER23> I also read Paris, and thought "stars" referred to celebrities. Oops

<comment><USER24> That is literally the exact thing that I thought too. Its interesting that a sentence like this can be so easily misinterpreted by multiple people in the same way.

<comment><USER25> Isn't it the capitalization of the first characters of each word which causes the confusion?

 _New evidence that all stars are born in pairs_

versus

 _New Evidence That All Stars Are Born in Pairs_

I've never understood the rationale of capitalizing headlines this way anyway (is it the American way?)

<comment><USER26> Yes, titles of things (including but not limited to visual art, written works, songs) are generally all capitalized except for small words

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> I read it 'Paris'. I need some coffee.

<comment><USER28> Same here.

I believe the effect is similar to that of a garden path sentence[1] except instead of discovering a grammatical inconsistency and having to backtrack to re-parse, the grammatical context misleads the lexical level so much so that we "see" 'Paris' where 'Pairs' actually exists. I suspect that the 'P' being capitalized further supports the 'Paris' misinterpretation.

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

<comment><USER29> Also, the weird English custom to capitalize most words in titles, but not in normal sentences, adds to the confusion here.

<comment><USER30> US-English, I think. British-English headlines are less caps-heavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> _We 'll Always Have Pairs_

<comment><USER32> Yes, there will always be a Paris... city of light!

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> LeBron James and Steph Curry were born in the same Akron, Ohio hospital, 39 months apart, so I buy the theory.

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early- lead/wp/2015/05/28...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early- lead/wp/2015/05/28/lebron-james-and-steph-curry-were-born-in-the-same-akron- hospital-39-months-apart/)

</comment><comment><USER34> _Adds kindle to Nibiru fire_</comment>


Ask HN: What would use an automatic print-and-snailmail system for? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
I'm planning a service that puts content on paper and then sends it using snailmail. Read a short intro about it over at http://eiman.tv/blog/show_article.php?id=34
What do you think about the service in general? Can you think if a better use for it than I can? Feedback wanted! <comment><USER2> I can't find it, but there was a guy doing the same thing (but with .doc as well as pdf) about a year ago on here. I think he had some sort of monthly subscription option as well as a 'per-use' fee. Try finding out how he got on.

[edit] This is apparently going to extend into Sweden: <http://www.freepostit.com/Home.aspx>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the link! The web page design is _horrible_ , but I'll read through it and see what they offer and how it compares to my ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_letter>

<http://www.mailaletter.com/>

<http://www.netgram.com/>

<http://www.flydoc.com/>

<http://l-mail.com/>

<http://www.ezgram.com/>

<http://www.postful.com/>

<http://www.postalmethods.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the overview. Seems like the price is roughly the same everywhere (as would be expected), but from a quick scan they don't seem to go beyond the easiest application. That means I should go worldwide with my additional services, after I've proved their worth here in Sweden!</comment></comment>


Router that anonymises Internet activity raises $300,000 on Kickstarter - <AUTHOR> http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/oct/14/anonabox-router-anonymous-kicktstarter-privacy-internet-activity#comments

<comment><AUTHOR> Apparently they haven't designed it from scratch: [http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2j8kyo/tor_route...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2j8kyo/tor_router_raises_300000_on_kickstarter_in_48/cl9irll)</comment>


Linked from Penny Arcade - PA Day 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.aisleten.com/2009/01/28/linked-from-penny-arcade-pa-day-2009/ <comment><AUTHOR> My startup got a link from Penny Arcade, and boy was it a wild weekend :)

<comment><USER2> I rememeber that for a while, PA made a point to send out warning notices to people they were going to link in their news posts.

Did they happen to send one your way, or did you find out when your site's traffic spiked like a champion volleyball player?

<comment><AUTHOR> I found out when an old friend sent me an email:

subj: Holy Shit!!!!!! body: You hit the Big Time!!!!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on the link, glad to see a gaming web 2.0 site begin to really rock it. I'll also be looking into your site for my own gaming use.

<comment> jim-greer Congrats are definitely in order, they are not easy to please. I love PA but they still haven't linked to us at Kongregate...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> hey micah -- is there a reason why the demo video on obsidian portal's homepage is an image and not the actual embeddable?</comment>


Luke Iseman talks about hardware at Y Combinator [audio] - <AUTHOR> http://www.theamphour.com/268-an-interview-with-luke-iseman-of-ycombinator/ <comment><USER2> This was a great interview. I should plug this podcast. It's well produced, informative and entertaining. Recommended.

I found many of the observations relevant and lucid. I sure wish there was a bit more information on the "non billions" of potential buyers type, B2B hardware startup.

Lots to think about in this one, IMHO

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey, thanks for the kind words! We're a very niche podcast but we talk about what we like :-D

<comment><USER2> You are welcome anytime. I found you guys with the Chuck Peddle interview. Awesome.</comment></comment></comment>


The One Ingredient Required to Get into Venture Capital - <AUTHOR> http://blog.semilshah.com/2018/04/01/the-one-ingredient-required-to-get-into-venture-capital/ <comment><USER2> I'll save everyone the time of reading this article that just runs around in circles. The one ingredient you need is money. Your own money. That's it.</comment>