What is the best hard drive? - <AUTHOR> http://www.backblaze.com/blog/best-hard-drive <comment><USER2> Always love reading HDD reliability stats from Backblaze -- but this demonstrates one of the reasons why post dating is so important, especially when the information in the post is time-sensitive. Nowhere on the page does it say that the post date is today, unless you click the "latest posts" tab by the author below.

I had originally though it was a repost of the many older articles from Backblaze until seeing a reference to Dec 31 2014. While not terribly ambiguous now, the ambiguity will only grow as the year marches on.

If someone from Backblaze happens to see this: you don't need to put it in your URL, but please date your post near the top or bottom of the text.

<comment><USER3> Yev from Backblaze here -> it's an internal debate as to whether we should put dates on everything. It used to be that they were part of the URL (because of the way our blog was designed) but that is no longer the case. We decided to leave them off for a while to see if that made posts more "evergreen", but we definitely see where it can lead to some confusion. We'll keep chatting about it internally, there's likely a good middle-ground.

<comment><USER4> As a general rule, I get really annoyed when I come across a web page and I can't tell how old it is, especially if it is information that is likely to age rapidly. I don't care if putting a date on the page makes it less "evergreen", hurts someones SEO stats or makes the flowers wilt, I just want to know if I can trust what I'm reading.

<comment><USER5> Yes, dates are really important.

If anybody thinks, readers will skip their article, if the date is too easy to find, why don't you sign the article with the authors name and then let the author decide, if a date has to be added. Like "joe - Nov. 1, 2014" or just "joe".

This article certainly needs a date.

<comment><USER6> When I'm reading articles about tech, I almost always skip the ones without a date, unless they're the last or only source of knowledge on the topic I'm looking for.

An article without a date is about as trustworthy as a scribble on a bathroom stall.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been listening to the discussions of data recovery technicians for many years. As such, I took a guess at the results before the page loaded.

And I was right. Seagate bad. Hitachi best. WD almost as reliable as Hitachi.

I can recall one or two bad WD models over recent years, the one at the top of my memory is the 500GByte WD5000AAKS. There was a flaw in the WD10EACS that made it park too frequently, but at least it had a parking ramp.

Hitachi has been a good vendor since the "deathstar" glass platter fiasco blew over. Now: Deskstar 7K's forever!

On the other hand, Seagate seems to ship flaw after flaw. Lately they tend to have spindle bearings that die if the drive gets bumped. If that doesn't happen, surely a head will go bad.

<comment><USER8> It's funny how things can turn around so completely. Around the time of the Deathstar fiasco, you couldn't pay me to use a Hitachi. Seagate was the brand to buy. Now it's the complete opposite.

<comment><USER9> I still cringe a little bit when I see "Deskstar", but apparently they've turned it around in a big way. I'm still irrationally scared, though.

<comment><USER10> Me, too. I put one in my RAID, with part of my strategy is to use a variety of manufacturers and drive types so the drives don't fail all at once. This one is 50x the capacity of my cursed 75GXP...

[http://www.computerhistory.org/groups/storagesig/media/docs/...](http://www.computerhistory.org/groups/storagesig/media/docs/DS_IBM%2075GXP%20Family_20121031.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Let me start off by saying I am a Backblaze customer and I LOVE these posts and use them as my bible for buying drives for my NAS/Media Server.

With that said this is going to sound a little nitpicky but why isn't the publication date anywhere on this article? I've noticed a growing number of blogs not putting the publish date anywhere on the blog page which makes it really hard to know if what they say is still valid. In this case you can infer from the dates of the drives they tested that it was published in 2015 but a number of blogs don't have those clues in the blog to let you know when it was posted. Normally you can look at the URL to see the date but BB uses slugs off /blog/ so you can't get the date from there either.

<comment><USER12> Backblaze engineer here, the blog folks are trying to fix it right now. I also hate "evergreen" blog posts that don't include a date, I wasn't aware we were doing that. :-(

<comment><USER3> Backblaze blog folk here -> change is hard :-(

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I love the data, but I'm a little mad that Hitachi had to die as a company and got sold into pieces.

I'm not sure if I trust what you guys did, calling the old Hitachi Drives as HGST. Technically, the 3.5" drives from Hitachi got sold to Toshiba.

For example, the Toshiba DT01ACA300 is allegedly the same design as the Hitachi 7k3000.

In the following link, note that the "HDS723030BLE640" is the model number to the 7k3000 with ridiculously low failure rates in the Backblaze study.

[http://goughlui.com/2013/02/26/toshiba-dt01aca300-aka- hitach...](http://goughlui.com/2013/02/26/toshiba-dt01aca300-aka-hitachi- hds723030ble640-drives/)

I don't know if HGST drives are related to the old Hitachi models at all.

Again, I hate to criticize such awesome research that you've given away for free in your blog. But I'd definitely would like some research and clarification on the Hitachi -> Toshiba or Hitachi -> HGST situation.

<comment><USER14> > I'm not sure if I trust what you guys did, calling the old Hitachi Drives as > HGST.

> I don't know if HGST drives are related to the old Hitachi models at all.

FTA:

> _Some of the HGST drives listed were manufactured under their previous > brand, Hitachi. We've been asked to use the HGST name and we have honored > that request._

<comment><USER15> > _We've been asked to use the HGST name and we have honored that request._ //

Intriguing - that suggests some sort of advertising deal? Which calls in to question the impartiality of the report.

Who asked them? In what context? Why accede to a third parties interference in the report?

Are Backblaze getting reduced price HGST drives now?

<comment><USER16> I'm a little confused why we expect people to be hostile to friendly requests in the absence of back-room dealing... what's the harm in saying "sure" and including that footnote? And don't we expect enough human decency for them to mention if there were financial considerations in the reporting?

<comment><USER13> The "harm" is in misinformation, and damage to the brand.

The Hitachi 5K3000 and Hitachi 7K3000 are amongst the most reliable hard drives in the report. Those drives are 3 years or more old and yet have some of the lowest failure rates in the study.

Unfortunately, Hitachi doesn't exist anymore. Hitachi as a company was split and sold in pieces. It is either HGST (owned by WD) or Toshiba.

I want to buy the 7k3000 today. Which hard drive manufacturer is making the modern equivalent? Is it the Toshiba DT01ACA300, or is it the "HGST Deskstar" ??

Despite sharing the same branding, I don't think HGST Deskstar is in fact from the same factory as the Hitachi Deskstars. When you look at the HGST Deskstars, they have WD Technology in them ("Coolspin" RPM).

The Toshiba DT01ACA300 has very similar performance characteristics to the old Hitachi 7k3000 drive.

So its a confusing situation. Which is why I'd like clarification. I bet that the Toshiba DT01ACA300 is actually the super-reliable hard drive that I want, but I admit that I'm a bit ignorant on this front.

<comment><USER16> Switching factories could certainly happen without a corporate structure change, though, right?

If it's important to track this information, I think it's relevant to mention it specifically, and I'd expect an honest review to discuss important changes like this (if they're aware of them), regardless of the brand names mentioned. If HGST requested that the review not mention a change in factory or technology, or refused to answer questions about it, then yes, I'd suspect malice somewhere.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The winner of this post, HGST (formerly Hitachi Global Storage Technologies) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Western Digital. Their NAS are well rated on Amazon & Newegg.

Personally, I'm more concerned about the lifetime of laptop HDD (500GB range). Wonder what's the time frame around which I should swap it out (& what brand)

<comment><USER18> Given that you can get 512GB M2 SSDs now, I'd say go for that if you're worried about reliability. From what I've read, SSDs are more reliable unless you're trying very hard to wear out their endurance (on the order of 2PB according to [http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance- experim...](http://techreport.com/review/27436/the-ssd-endurance-experiment- two-freaking-petabytes) )

<comment><USER19> but there can be some interesting not-a-failure modes, I know because I suffered one and the recovery was a nightmare due to overly-protective UEFI. Fortunately, anything on my local SSD is only in cache and not to be worried about ;) (and I managed to put the UEFI in dumb mode so it wouldn't interfere)

<comment><USER20> For the "not-a-failure" modes, are you referring to things like flipped bits? I had that happen on a USB3 high-speed thumb drive, where several of my source code files had random capitalization throughout the file (bit 6 was flipped on) and other weird corruption that indicated specific bits got either flipped on or off. But the drive was at 98% full when this happened too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Oof. I've got a NAS with 4 3TB Seagate Barracudas, same model number as the drives with the 46% failure rate. One's already failed, and I replaced it with the same model drive.

Anyone have a recommendation for how to replace all the drives with more reliable models without wrecking the RAID? Downtime is okay, but I don't have spare space for the contents to make a giant backup. It's currently set up as a "Synology Hybrid RAID" that looks an awful lot like a RAID 5.

<comment><USER22> Without a backup, you need a temporary, identical NAS device with the 4 new disks. Then do a file-level copy. Then put the 4 new disks in the old NAS and import the array. Do you know of a store with a very lenient returns policy?

An online capacity expansion (replacing one at a time) will mean a very long time in a degraded state, possible multiple disk failures, increased chances of data loss (power goes off, etc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> While I love these recurring blog posts, it would be even nicer if Backblaze could wrap a public API and/or pretty interface around their live monitoring.

I'd happily pay a small fee for access to an up-to-date snapshot when I'm in the market for harddrives.

<comment><USER3> Yev from Backblaze here -> Not a bad idea, though that might take a lot of work on our end. In the mean time, we're going to be releasing some raw data in the coming weeks, so stay tuned for that!

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> _The Seagate Barracuda 7200.14 3 TB drives are another story. We'll cover how we handled their failure rates in a future blog post._

I'm really looking forward to this... could it be a similar problem to the one that caused the _huge_ amount of 7200.11 failures a few years ago?

<comment><USER25> Are you referring to the botched firmware ones (I think the firmware revision was SD15)?

If so, at the time (~2008) I had an HTPC with 10 1TB-1.5TB drives with 6 of 10 affected by the firmware issues. I was able to successfully flash all my drives at the time with no data loss.

<comment><USER26> i built a pc for a family friend around that time... i'd spec'd it with a different drive, but they showed it to the IT guy at their work who recommended seagate. 6 months later the drive stopped working, and it had to be shipped to the other side of the world to be reflashed

<comment><USER25> Sadly you could only flash them if they were still working, you had to ship them if they bricked. I saw the bulletin and promptly flashed all mine before failure. Big pita tho.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Looks like Seagate drives are at a very good price point for them, enough to compensate for the higher failure rates.

It looks like Blackblaze managed to build a system with good fault tolerance, such that they can control the $-price/failure-rate ratio as they need.

In summary: \- HGST, good \- WD, expensive (in bulk) \- Seagate, we buy them despite failures

</comment><comment><USER28> I think there has never been more personal piece of technology than your full of important data hard drive, especially pre-cloud era, when now people just don't worry much of a dying hardware.

But back in the ole' days, every one of us have lost very personal data due to hardware failure at some point. And it's interesting how the opinion about brands are being formed.

For example, my first drive that died was Seagate. Surprise surprise my opinion about said company is very low now. But in most part, it's very bias opinion, especially given the fact I have never owned another Seagate for the reason of crash. I love WD and never had one failed, currently about 20 full of data. But I met bunch of folks who hate WD and had them crush and they lost important data. And they love Seagate.

It's interesting how opinions about hard drives are being formed throughout our lives.

<comment><USER29> I had the opposite issue. Bought WD Black for my first PC build. It died within ~3 weeks. Bought another to replace it. Again dead within a month. Have about 8 Seagate drives now and have not had an issue at all. Will avoid WD at all costs now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I can't load this site because blackblaze only supports 2 TLS ciphers. TLS_RSA_WITH_RC4_128_SHA, TLS_RSA_WITH_3DES_EDE_CBC_SHA

<comment><USER31> Have you tried using Google Chrome?

<comment><USER32> I think his point is that neither of those are secure.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'll try to find the URL again, but in the mean time, I've read a comment on a thread from a veteran technician saying that hard drives failures were mostly due to heat fluctuations (material expansion) and that without this information, failure rates were not valuable enough.

</comment><comment><USER34> Love and appreciate that Backblaze presents this data, but there are some obvious issues: comparing the annual failure rate of a pool where avg. age is 1 year to a pool where avg. age is 3 years isn't a great comparison.

Rather than annual rates, I'd really prefer to see failure rate after six months, one year, two years, etc. This would make it easier to answer questions like "was drive X always bad? Or just when new? Or just when old?"

<comment><USER12> Backblaze employee here - we're going to release the raw data in a couple weeks, so everybody can do their own analysis.

<comment><USER35> Can't wait for this, but it'd be great if you considered having "real- time"-ish data feed for everyone to hook into. Then we don't have to wait for the annual blog post ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The top two rows seem to be contradictory. How can you have a smaller annual failure rate AND a smaller average age?

      Name/Model	    Size    	Number of Drives 	Average Age in years	Annual Failure Rate	95% Confidence Interval
      HGST Deskstar 7K2000
      (HDS722020ALA330)	2.0 TB	4,641	3.9	1.1%	0.8% – 1.4%
      HGST Deskstar 5K3000
      (HDS5C3030ALA630)	3.0 TB	4,595	2.6	0.6%	0.4% – 0.9%

<comment><USER37> Reading the model numbers and sizes, the top row is 2TB drives, the second row is 3TB; the 3TB were launched more recently. So, they have a smaller average age. And, apparently, they also fail at a lower rate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Interesting, I built a home FreeNAS a few years ago, with Seagate 3TB drives, 7200.12 iirc, and saw 3 of them (out of 12) fail well under 2 years... at this point, I've had so many issues, it's pretty much sitting there. I put 4x4tb WD reds into my older Synology NAS and have been using that without issue.

</comment><comment><USER39> It's a shame single platter 1TB drives were not in that test.

I bet they are the most reliable because of single platter.

</comment><comment><USER40> This sums up my experience with Seagate. I bought my first Barracuda 3TB two months ago, it died out 20 days later with the notorious two-click sound.

I can't even be bothered to push warranty for replacement, terrible. Sticking with WD from now on.

</comment><comment><USER41> This same URL was submitted an hour earlier and got 4 upvotes. This one has 222 as I write this.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8923016)

Timing is everything, I guess.

<comment><USER3> Much like comedy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Dup of [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922996](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8922996) submitted almost two hours earlier.

<comment><USER43> You've posted a broken URL: "Post not available".

<comment><USER42> I guess I have Backblaze to thank for that. It was a valid URL when I posted it. _sigh_

<comment><USER3> Yev from Backblaze here -> we saw that and couldn't track it down or figure out where it came from, the post itself didn't change since we published it this morning. Sorry Notacoward :(

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> I'm super excited for the new Seagate 8tb drives @$260/each.

Please order a carton of them and let us know ASAP how they work for you!

</comment><comment><USER45> The data is not accurate. The stats are literal numbers, Which means these guys are not mentioning how many hard drives each vendor sold. But instead they are just comparing the Faulty drives numbers. If you consider the number of HGST and Seagate pieces sold then only these stats or demographics can be considered reasonable.

Punchline: This review or analysis could be biased.

<comment><USER46> They're not just comparing the faulty drives numbers. Maybe you misunderstood the way they presented the data: in the first table, the "Number of Drives" column refers to the total number of drives they studied for each model, not just the ones that failed. So they give the sample size and the rate of failure for each model.

Or are you saying that the difference in worldwide sales for each drive model somehow renders Backblaze's failure rates invalid? The size of the population is irrelevant unless the size of the sample exceeds a few percent of the total population you are examining.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Is there any idea which drives were shucked or not shucked from external enclosures?

</comment><comment><USER48> Does anyone know if HGST's 1TB hard drives follow this reliability trend?

<comment><USER7> 7K1000's are fantastic in my experience

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> Hum... I think this explain my one dying drive at home. (4 Seagate drives)

</comment><comment><USER50> The Western Digital Velociraptor is pretty tough to beat. Near SSD performance (depending on what you are doing) and reliable. For compiling code it's definitely the best choice.

<comment><USER19> Unless you could use an SSD? (most people who compile code are valuable enough that their time warrants the fastest thing available, no?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> so on a given day, or by week, how many drives do you replace?</comment>


Ask HN: A solution for "How to recruit?" - <AUTHOR>

How many startups, established companies, and prospective employees would be interested in a new way to evaluate/recruit talent?
LinkedIn fails due to the eBay problem.  You can't publish the connection graph or text-based recommendations and maintain any sense of reporting balance.  The results are always biased and too many people are attempting to game the system.
My proposal relies on a system similar to page rank as calculated over a set of hierarchically arranged skills.  The more highly regarded the reviewer's related skills, the more certain the system is that the reviewer is a real person, and the more similar their opinions to yours, the more weight their opinion carries.  Because it's based on skills, searching for contacts is easy; you simply select the requisite skills in order of importance and can determine a minimal value.  For instance, you can look for a software engineer that is skilled in PHP, PostgreSQL, and French whose French is at least fluent.
There are a number of analytics approaches I'm considering to limit the ability of individuals to game the system.  Further, the system seeks to incorporate a "humanness" factor.  That is, each user's identity is verified as much as possible.  For instance, by validating a credit card (and checking it's name against the user's name); the charge on the card would be used to send a certified, restricted-delivery letter via USPS with a  confirmation code.
The data would use the ZKDB (zero-knowledge database) design to ensure user privacy and security and no data associated with a user and their opinion of another would be stored on our system.  This should allow the user to be confident in their assessment of an individual as being private while allowing the system to rate the opinions of "guest" accounts very weakly.  Businesses would be similarly identified.
No reporting would be available for an individual until a certain criteria has been met (number of reviews, et cetera).  Thus a user can't easily track changes or attempt to deduce who provided what review to the system.  This would help alleviate the eBay problem wherein I'm above average, you're above average, and we're all above average.
Sophisticated analytics would be employed to identify mathematical oddities which indicate gaming attempts like disjoint sets and orbits.  To be responsive, the analysis would be done in a distributed fashion on a cloud and then stored in an easily-referenced fashion.  The incentive for people to add information is basic quid-pro-quo.  You all want an easier way to hire people; the cost is simple, you must evaluate coworkers and employees.  Because the system hinges upon aggregate opinions of people and since no one person or group can significantly impact the reputation of an individual, there should be no legal concerns with libel.  We're merely rating an individual's skills on a relative scale according to the analytic system of our software.  It's the same for everyone and thus cannot target an individual. <comment><USER2> I appreciate the thought, but I'm not sure I buy it. For the content to be reasonable, the user's need to opt-in. Your pitch is that the evaluation will be fair.. ie: not everyone will be above average. What's the motivation for a potential employee to use/stay-on your site if he doesn't like his ranking?

I just can't get behind a service that figures out how to solve everyone's recruiting issues by assigning them a Better Number.

<comment><AUTHOR> Excellent question.

He doesn't. But, of course, he doesn't control his ranking -- others do. So, deleting his account doesn't do anything to remove his ranking. Perhaps people who are below average will then drop off and the cultural relevance of a rating of 5 out of 10 will adjust itself. I'm betting that enough will stay to make the site worth while -- certainly anyone for whom the system works. Also... not all companies want a 10-point programmer. Those cost money. Some tasks only require a 5-point developer.

<comment><USER3> I have been looking at the HR problem too and FamousActress has a valid point. The chicken and egg problem here is HUGE... and anything that can be a "downer" or "demotivational" will not make it.

<comment><USER2> Again, even the idea of a '10 point programmer' or a '5 point programmer' is depressing, and I struggle to believe that it could accurately convey the complexity of the value that different people have in different contexts.

Where I DO see some interesting numbers having values in this area are where the numbers aren't rankings, but rather indications of participation, passion, and relevance. For instance, I think Stack Overflow scores.. or maybe even HN karma points, might both be really valuable indicators. If I got a resume from someone with a Stack Overflow score attached to it, I'd know that this is a person who participates, is a good communicator, and knows the answers to lots of tough questions! Not only that, but I can go look at his or her posts.

I think this is where your project needs attention... What's in it for the employee? If only '10 point' employees really like your service, then I think you're wasting your time.. '10 point' employees don't have problems finding work.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly enough, 10 point "employees" can and do have trouble differentiating themselves. MIT Ph.D. admission, for instance, is rather selective. There is much research available demonstrating that there is a huge qualitative difference between consummate achievers and great minds. Unfortunately, most businesses and schools have far too many applications for employment and need some easy metric to reduce the set to something approachable. I'm not suggesting a blind hire of the top guy. I'm trying to provide a more relevant metric than current exists. Any other system I've seen in play is easy to game -- or hard to game, but in gaming it, you're becoming the opposite of what the company/school is seeking.

Further, "what's in it for the employee" doesn't enter into it. I could easily say: famousactress is rated as 8.34 for her dramatic performances but only at 5.21 in comedic roles. That has nothing to do with your willing participation. I agree that it's depressing to be considered sub-par. But, there are so many people trying desperately to stand out that they're losing their way.

Google can't hire the right sort of people because every metric they have attempted to date has resulted in honest, dependable, clean-cut, recently- shaven, knowledgeable CS graduates from top universities. Sadly, they're trying to expand a business built (like so many other startups) by the ideas of college drop-outs (or similar), who were too busy doing something interesting to go to class and get good grades. Those interesting things aren't bragging rights (level 80 character in each class and each faction on WoW appears on very few resumes).

If I attach my HN information, you might disagree with my positions and opinions. I'd miss out on the job based upon personal bias -- maybe I should. But, you'll notice my karma here is _very_ low. I suppose that seems justified since you're not on board with this concept. But, is it? Reddit is commonly gamed. If I had an outrageous karma score, would you think highly of me or consider me a karma whore?

Well, you might say, you'd simply read my posts. Great! Now, consider you have a highly coveted position and 10,000 applicants. You can only read the posts of about 20 applicants. Do you take the top 20 highest scores? What if the 21st highest was actually the best fit? Well, then you blame your metric. The reason you blame your metric is because people will game their karma scores to reduce their competition to only 20 other people who were busily whoring karma and not building necessary job skills. At the same time, you can't deal with 10,000 resumes. You need a metric that's not easily gamed and that's as representative as possible of an individual's skills.

Just like I can tag you in a photo on Facebook without your consent, this site would allow me to rate your skills as an actress and as a programmer. My opinion of your acting skill is pretty much worthless (whether it's good or bad); my opinion of your programming skill is more significant -- but I'm not going to single-handedly make you or break you.

<comment><USER2> So you want to build a FICO score for employees. Gotcha. I just think it sounds very challenging (or impossible) to get a number to reflect someone's fit for a position accurately.. and difficult to get adopted. It's complex enough to attribute a number that represents someone's ability to pay back a debt.. and that's based on fairly straightforward historical behaviors that aren't up for much debate... someone's skill and past job performance are subjective.. so you'll crowd-source it and hope that the score averages out, but that requires participation. What's the motivation to rate people? The whole thing sounds gross.

<comment><AUTHOR> It does sound gross. I'll admit that. A friend of mine, after hearing about all the gorey details, hated the idea. He said it was intrusive and ripe for abuse. Every bit of that is true. Your reservations are accurate and commendable. I'd have the very same objections.

But, I've got a few ideas about how to do some initial data mining to build a useful-yet-niched database. I'll target a specific industry and, I'm guessing, enough people will value their skills that they'll be happy to encourage their friends and colleges to rate them. The hope is that this can be done quickly enough to generate sufficiently many data points for accurate analysis without the initial dataset.

Once that happens, I'm banking on the utility of the system. If it's as good as I hope, it'll be adopted by other groups. If it's not, then it should fail.

As far as the grossness factor and potential for abuse goes; I'm protecting user information as much as is humanly possible -- at least, to the limits of my own ability. The system will be open sourced and as transparent as possible. Unfortunately, I can only guarantee so much. I can't think of a way for users to verify what code is actually running on the server -- but, they can ensure that the data they are sending to the server is exactly what they expect. But, there is no certainty that the server isn't recording their IP and associating it with the input for future data analysis. Hm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You have to talk to people to find out what they are like.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's great -- assuming your applicant pool is small. Some employers throw out any application that's not printed on resume paper with the watermark oriented appropriately and an attractive font/style, et cetera.

Are these metrics truly indicative of an individual's skills? No. In fact, many applicants might print their application on hot pink A4 hoping to get noticed (and hoping that attention is positive).

Even with this tool, I'm merely reducing your applicant pool -- not selecting employees for you. My previous company used a few personality profile tests that were very effective in identifying people who'd work well at the company and with one another. That's not really the point, though. The point is determining who is a good Java developer and who isn't. Most recruiters I've dealt with know only buzz words and can't differentiate between well-qualified candidates and those who "used Oracle 10g to port BSD to J2EE over XSLT."

If your preference for UI engineers leans one way or another, the system would make appropriate corrections to the recommendations. Rather than getting a UI engineer who needs to work closely with a back-end developer and visual designer -- one who can pretty much only manage CSS and Flash work -- you can get results that include people who are more comfortable with the MVC framework, can handle templating in various languages, hates action script, can sling javascript in their sleep, and has a keen eye for visual design.

I'm not offering a one-stop, all-inclusive solution. I'm merely suggesting a method by which to intelligently and functionally reduce applicant pools to something the HR department can handle.</comment></comment>


Google April Fools - Nose Beta - <AUTHOR> https://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/nose/

<comment><USER2> Looking at the list of available smells, I'm reminded that one of the positive side effects of smoking was that it deadened the sense of smell. It should go without saying that is a bad reason to adopt that addiction...

<comment><USER3> I miss smoking so much.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I really wish some things were real.

It would be neat to trade (nice) scents.

<comment><USER5> I'm curious to why "recording" and "playback" of scent/smell is still not mainstream as sight and sound.

Why is not a part of movies or games?

What are the limiting factors?

<comment><USER6> Scents are caused by numerous chemical compounds distilled in certain portions in the air.

In order to create a scent recorder, we'd need a machine that can detect every single one of those compounds at all possible concentrations; for a scent player we'd need a machine capable of forming those compounds at the proper concentration.

Turns out, it's much harder to do than record/emit photons or record/emit sound waves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> They should make a 'dead Google product' smell, but then the stench might be overwhelming.

</comment><comment><USER8> Google always makes me laugh on April 1!</comment>


Ask HN: What are some of the untold truths of raising VC? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> They really are not your friends -- they are very good salespeople (as mentioned in the other comment).

One of the most famous SV VCs who is pretty much a household name and has the image of -> kind guy shredded our founder to pieces. It was baffling to watch but just shows how ruthless they can be in the face of adversity.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's very important to understand that once they show interest it means they need you as much as you need them. They're just very good at marketing and putting themselves in a position of "King Makers". Be confident when you talk to them ;)

</comment><comment><USER4> Assume things will be structured to favour the VC.</comment>


800 Years Of Human Sacrifice In Kent - <AUTHOR> http://scienceblogs.com/aardvarchaeology/2013/06/10/900-years-of-human-sacrifice-in-kent/

<comment><USER2> There is so much ambiguity in archeological finds. I buy the evidence here that these bodies were disposed of disrespectfully and publicly. But how do we know it was religious sacrifice? Maybe these were criminals and this was a standard punishment.

This was millenia ago in a culture that didn't write anything down. Who knows what anything was like then? To fill in the gaps we end up using our own modern biases and narratives. We like to think we're better and more rational than people in the past, so we attribute these mutilated bodies to a motive that we've moved on from (ritual sacrifice), rather than a motive we still have (judicial execution). To be fair, ritual sacrifice did happen in some cultures and was well documented, but who knows what was going on in this case?

<comment><USER3> This could also have been a disposal pit for cursed sick people - perhaps they believed that by putting them in this particular spot they could not transfer the curse to anyone? That would explain why some bones more placed there after death.

There could be a ton of reason to do this, I too don't buy that this is sacrifice.

<comment><USER4> My mother who studied archaeology told me that her professor said it once up- front that when they don't have any clue what purpose something served, it's often labelled as used for religious reasons.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> TL;DR Margate only slightly stranger 4000 years ago than it is today.

<comment><USER6> I think this site is actually in Ramsgate. I dread to think what people in Margate were up to at that time. Let alone ... _Sheppey_.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Another reminder of the dangers of religion.

I believe one day people will look back on us with the same horror for preventing gay marriage, premarital sex, etc., as we do the past for things like human sacrifice.

<comment><USER7> Being downvoted for this comment so many times is a _small_ example of PG's essay, "What You Can't Say."

[http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)

<comment><USER8> I think you're being downvoted because your comment was basically offtopic and inflammatory, not because you dared to break some kind of taboo. I'm not at all religious, and your comment annoyed me also for its obviousness and vague smugness.

Anyway, there's some schools of thought which consider religion to be a necessary evil for pre-scientific organisation, so I'm sure enlightened future scholars will be studying religion's phases from its medieval heyday through to its current last hurrahs with interest.

<comment><USER7> "Your comment was basically offtopic and inflammatory."

It was probably a bit offtopic, I"ll give you that. I was raised in a very religious family that has negatively impacted my life in a few ways. I guess I see the damage of religion in more places than most.

But inflammatory? I think that's the point of the PG essay I referenced: that just saying something "you can't say" automatically makes it inflammatory. The statement's truth is irrelevant.

"Your comment annoyed me also for its obviousness and vague smugness"

For someone who has a lot of very religious friends, I don't think this is obvious to many people. I hope I'd have the standard to not write something that is so obvious as to not benefit the majority of my readers.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Have I just developed a $60K/month-revenue baby? - <AUTHOR>

Hi.
I have just developed a very intuitive and easy-to-use team collaboration and project management tool: Collaborade (sorry I couldn't post the link because I am too new).
I have used Linux, PHP, Bootstrap, Jquery, Backbone, MongoDB.
For me it is a great product and I am aiming to reach $60K/month revenue by the end of this calendar year. But maybe I am a little biased... :-)
Do you think it is possible or am I just dreaming?
Any advice is more than welcome!
Cheers, Dan <comment><USER2> I signed up to try it out. For the lazy: <http://collaborade.com>

The UI needs a ton of work.

* Don't launch an alert() when I submit a comment. Same for completing a task. Remove all alerts. They suck.

* The search/filter box is a mess.

* When I click on a task, a modal box pops up (why?? get rid of it. Modals are just disguised alerts). At the bottom-left, there is a checkbox for "Follow/unfollow this task". That doesn't make sense. It should just be: [ ] Follow this task. (In its current form, it's like having a voting ballot say "[ ] Vote / don't vote for Barack Obama")

* In the Edit Profile settings it says "Ask your administrators if you also want to change your name or email address." I am the only user. I AM the administrator.

* Your pricing isn't good. I can get basecamp for $30/mo, unlimited users, 15 projects. Your least expensive plan is $29/mo and only allows 4 users.

Otherwise, it's looking good and something that the company I work for could actually use. Basecamp is apparently too confusing for the sales guys, so keeping collaborade simple might be your target. Good work so far, keep it up!

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

Thanks a lot for linking the website, signing up and provide such detailed feedback!

Your points make all sense - one of them is actually even a bug.

The only think I don't understand is "The search/filter box is a mess.". It looks pretty good on my screen. Can you please be more specific? Do you mean the flow and layout are confusing?

Thanks also for your encouraging words. Yes, there is still a lot to be done.

<comment><USER2> Yes, the flow/layout of that box is confusing. My eyes don't know where to look. I'm no UI expert, so I don't have suggestions on how to fix it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There are many team collaboration and project management tools available in the market (many with leanings towards ease-of-use concept). It is impossible to say how yours will fare without knowing more about your product relative to the market place?

Not to be harsh, just to be direct, does your product solve a problem that other team collaboration and project management tools do not? Or is your product in actuality a tweak on other available products?

If your product has any chance at 60k / month, you should be able to easily answer that question with a problem much more poignant than ease-of-use.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

Thanks a lot for your direct question.

For now there isn't a specific problem we are addressing - as you said, the product is more of my interpretation of easy-to-use project management software.

I am hoping with a good marketing analysis (and with the help of a marketing and sales professional), we can find some customers who prefer Collaborade over Basecamp...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Clickable: <http://Collaborade.com>

Well now that you've built it you're already 5% of the way there. I hope this isn't the first time hearing this, but you'll need an _effective_ way to reach your target market, which isn't easy.

What does your marketing budget look like? If you can't answer bcgraham's question, you're in trouble.

Also, I don't see a demo video on your site, just lots of text.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

Thanks a lot for linking the website.

You are right, I am 5% of the way.

I think I'll try to find a guy/girl very good with marketing and sales who can help to find the right market for it and target it effectively.

Dan

<comment><USER4> Best of luck. :) I hope you find it easier than I did.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot! Best of luck, too! :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see the prices are in euros by default, do you aim for an UK-only audience or worldwide?

You probably improve other things first, but maybe you could switch the currency shown (and maybe date settings, etc.) according to geolocation of the users' IP or something.

I agree with IanDrake that the site looks like a lot of text, which might put people off, and probably decrease the conversion rate.

My very first, unfiltered impression is that it's polished but not "world class".

Comparing to "Basecamp Breeze" (is that your competition?), Basecamp's has:

\- a very friendly image greeting you (I think it's better than too much text)

\- pricing clearly as the 2nd item, in US dollars

\- a link to a video

I like your Plancake start page a lot better :) , btw you need to make the images in your page (<http://www.danyuki.com/>) clickable

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks a lot, there is actually a bug in the currency detection code.

Yes, you are right - probably the homepage needs some re-thinking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I can't find how to link tasks to other tasks. Can you tell me which features make this better than Basecamp?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi.

That is not possible to link tasks (unless you just copy and paste their URL).

That's a very good and important question. For now, I think the only thing that differentiates us is that we are even simpler than Basecamp.

I haven't found a killer feature yet, though.

Thanks for your help!</comment></comment>


Computer program to take on 'Jeopardy' - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/technology/27jeopardy.html?hp&pagewanted=all

<comment><USER2> Very interesting application, but I think they'll have a hard time attempting to approximate the amount of information a human competitor would have (assuming they want to limit the machine's knowledge to better represent human memory).

I would rather have them give it access to Google's entire cache, since the real feat is processing and understanding the questions and then giving an appropriate answer. In theory, if the machine has 100% question recognition and can research an answer as fast as Google serves its pages, it should wipe the floor with the human contestants.

I do hope they find a way to keep the contest competitive and interesting.

<comment><USER3> The problem that Google solves and the problem that Watson solves are completely different. Sure, there is some overlap, because you might be able to type a Jeopardy question (answer?) into Google, and, _as a human_ , quickly and easily find the correct answer. This is a side effect of very well-tuned retrieval algorithms that search for just the right words in your query, take into account user click-throughs for similar queries, and rank information based on billions of documents and eleven years of experience.

The Jeopardy problem is concerned natural language processing and knowledge representation as opposed to a tumult of data. I would wager that Watson's internal database is structured more like a single ontology than a highly distributed grid. The challenge here is mapping key parts of the question to this ontology and returning a single, highly precise result.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > The way to deal with such problems, Dr. Ferrucci said, is to improve the > program's ability to understand the way "Jeopardy!" clues are offered.

After that statement I agree with Norvig's comment. This is pretty much a toy problem for IBM's language processing software - being customized for a specific application - although very elaborate.

</comment><comment><USER5> I was prompted to login at NYT, but not if I went there from Google search results:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=Computer+Program+to+Take+On+%...](http://www.google.com/search?q=Computer+Program+to+Take+On+%E2%80%98Jeopardy!%E2%80%99&);

<comment><USER6> That's because of Google's anti-cloaking policy. Webmasters are not allowed to show a different screen to visitors than they show to the GoogleBot; they get banned from Google's index if they do. So several sites will waive registration requirements for visitors coming from Google, because otherwise they'd never show up in search results.

There's always BugMeNot, which is probably an easier and more long-term solution.

<comment><USER7> _That's because of Google's anti-cloaking policy. Webmasters are not allowed to show a different screen to visitors than they show to the GoogleBot; they get banned from Google's index if they do._

Unless of course the site is a scholarly journal. Google lets them go wild with cloaking.

<comment><USER6> Scholarly journal with a useful abstract. There are rules even for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wonder how they'll treat the race to ring-in, which in the human game begins just after Trebek finishes reading the question. (Apparently there's an in- studio light indicating to contestants when ringing-in is possible.)

The program might want to make its ring-in decision based on a snap decision of whether the question is likely to be amenable to its analysis, even if the exact answer isn't yet know -- human contestants do this, and then take a second or two to cogitate before giving their actual answer.

<comment><USER9> The computer has the opposite problem than humans have. It has all the information available instantly but it can't understand the question. Parsing a question can be very quick, the problem is being sure that it was understood correctly. If it was, the answer will be known instantly and the computer should ring. If it wasn't, it shouldn't.

My guess is that the computer will ring either when it knows the answer beyond a certain confidence threshold (faster than a human being can hit a button) or not at all.

<comment><USER8> I suggest there may be ways to predict "this is the kind of question I can usually parse and answer" long before a confident parse-and-settled-answer could complete. Thus it could make sense to ring in before any potential answers have been formulated or ranked.

<comment><USER3> I agree. As an example, if it is using traditional natural language parsing techniques, then it should know whether there are less than ten syntax trees or less than one thousand syntax trees by ring-in time. In this case, the former can be determined with a much higher degree of confidence. Even short phrases can have a multitude of possibilities, the canonical example being, 'Time flies like an arrow.' Of course, I have no idea how they're actually approaching this problem, but the point is, heuristics can be used in the process of question-answering to indicate enough of a confidence level for ring-in.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to write your name on the moon - <AUTHOR> http://canonicalmomentum.tumblr.com/post/86342049687/how-to-write-your-name-on-the-moon?r=s <comment><USER2> I think the calculations are extremely wasteful, since the writing being discussed would actually be visible from much of the solar system, while we only need it to be visible from Earth. The Earth subtends 1.2 millisteradians as seen from the moon, which is about 1/5000 of the whole half sphere. So if you place a mirror on the moon which throws a sunspot on the Earth, you can be 5000 times as efficient in emphasizing that patch of ground as if you simply paint it completely white (the reflectance of the moon itself is only 12%, and of course its light is diffuse and not concentrated on Earth).

Going with his surface area of 500,000 sq. kilometers, we would only need about 100 sq. kilometers of mirrors, spread randomly through the area to be emphasized, to produce a readable message on Earth. This is actually doable, although hard, and the message would only be visible at one particular angle (say, full moon directly overhead edit: depending on how much of the Earth you cover and how well, it may not need to be directly overhead), unless you want articulated mirrors.

In fact, I read, long ago, an article about a guy that performed this hack on Earth during the fairly early days of satellite photography. He drove around the desert in Southeast US, and placed small reflectors at angles calculated to reflect sunlight into a passing satellite. This resulted in huge overexposed letters in the satellite image, since each reflector exposed a very large pixel/grain of the fairly low-resolution satellite. I can't seem to find this article anywhere, although I remember it pretty clearly. If you can find it, I promise to upvote your submission!

</comment><comment><USER3> You don't need big craters to create a shadow. Plough the moon, turning over the dust in 20 cm wide and 10 cm high piles. At a square km per machine per week (I'm making that up, but it is less than a hectare per hour, and the world record is over 4 square km/day ([http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/ploughing- area...](http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/records-1/ploughing-area-covered- in-24hrs/)), likely on way better ground, but not nuclear-powered, either), that's 'only' 10,000 machine-years. Turn 10,000 nuclear warheads into crude nuclear engines, and you can do it within a few years.

I might help spending time choosing an area where you can avoid deep craters and have enough dust to form the piles.

</comment><comment><USER4> It seems like it would be much easier to finally make some self-replicating bots, or just self-repairing bots, or even just a small factory that can produce bots... And leave it there for a couple of decades with the task of writing that 'hello' message.

<comment><USER5> Cellular automata sent to billboard the moon would be a great concept for a sci-fi short story.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Given the low reflectivity of the moon, can't we "just" lay down a lot of mirrors in the shape of the letters we want?

Build a rocket ship that makes a flyby of the moon, drops some mirrors and returns. Maybe it could rendezvous with the ISS to get a fresh supply of mirrors and we send the mirrors to the ISS by conventional means.

And when I say mirrors, I am thinking of really thin ones. Really, just giant sheets of aluminium foil. I suspect they'll naturally drift around and degrade over time, giving people something to think about as a poignant metaphor of some artistry thing.

</comment><comment><USER7> You know how the moon looks HUGE when it is low on the horizon? That is just perspective, but you should write on the moon then. Your brain does this built in Zoom thing when it has something to scale against, and you could use that to your advantage.

Rather than smoothing the surface to reduce shadows, Why not write in a color other than black? I'm thinking a laser in Green would work well and would contrast against black and white quite well.

More authoritative, and fun [http://what-if.xkcd.com/13/](http://what- if.xkcd.com/13/)

</comment><comment><USER8> Fantastic!

As a side note: I wasn't aware how _little_ surface damage nuclear weapons actually inflict. I was always under the impression that a nuke would level entire cities + surrounding suburbs.

<comment><USER9> They do more damage when detonated in the air above the target, where the shockwave can do most of the work.

<comment><USER10> In this case however, no atmosphere = no shockwave.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> How about writing on the moon while it's dark? Reflect enough sunlight onto the dark side to make it about as bright as the light side. That would give a good contrast.

You would need an array of mirrors about the size of France in orbit about the earth. Thin film mirrors would be a lot lighter than asphalt. Precisely aiming the mirrors would be the challenge.

</comment><comment><USER12> For those interested in the laser bit (hey, who isn't?), there's already a laser being fired at the moon from the Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico, measuring the earth-moon distance. Bonus cool photo: [http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140418.html](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap140418.html)

</comment><comment><USER13> If we really has the ability to write on the moon, what will most people agree to write? hm....It's a difficult problem.

<comment><USER14> my sister's mom makes $174/hr by writing on the moon. She has been out of a job for ten months but last month her check was $16431 just posting ads on the moon for a few hours. look at this web-site....

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> You just have to invent a way to change albedo of a surface using only local resources. You also need to think how exactly you're going to cover that territory of France - how heavy should be robots doing that, how many of them, how they'll withstand harsh environment - and require replacements...

</comment><comment><USER16> OK, why are we making it darker? Can't we just LED the place up - sure, it'll require ongoing power, but it must be cheaper and more flexible.

Imagine you did this on Earth and how much you could save over nuclear bombing the place with paint. In fact, we already did it, as a side effect.

</comment><comment><USER17> Great read. I thought that maybe it would be even more impossible to project the text on the moon with a geostationary moon projector. I heard that making a geostationary moon satellite is tricky, adding to the benefits of this solution.</comment>


The Human Driving Manifesto - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/opinion/18952/this-is-the-human-driving-manifesto <comment><USER2> Where is the middle ground? In the self-driving car debate, I only see the extremes of the positions. Surely it will end in a compromise.

I own two classic cars (well, one of them will be soon enough). By virtue of their age, they are obviously not self-driving and never will be. But I hope to have them in my possession 30-40 years from now, because I like them very much.

I believe I like driving, because I only do it for fun. I either take the train or bike to work, depending on the weather, so I am not beholding to my cars. Hence why I don't own a modern car.

I recognise that my position is unique, but I would sad to lose my ability to drive my cars on the road (and my collection may grow in the future). I understand people's desire for self-driving cars, and I'm glad if they get them. As long as I can drive my old-timey cars.

Indeed, once there are more electric cars than petrol powered cars on the roads, getting petrol will be harder. But that's OK, as long as it's still possible.

My position is; I may not personally need self-driving cars, but I respect others' desire to want them. But articles like this make me cringe, I hope I don't need to explain why.

<comment> Spartan-S63 The ideal, here, is that once self-driving cars reach a level where they are demonstrably safer than human drivers, the issue of liability discourages continued use of human-driven vehicles.

The way I see it is that once self-driving cars are safe and viable, anytime an accident involving a human and a self-driving car happens, the human is automatically assigned fault. It doesn't restrict your freedom to drive the car, it just makes you think twice since liability is against you should an accident happen.

This of course, assumes that self-driving cars are capable of driving perfectly within existing driving laws. If that is true, there's no way a self-driving car could legally be at-fault for an accident.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> "Manifesto" talk aside, this is the same discussion about automation styles: Ironman vs. Ultron.

I'm a huge fan of Ironman automation method - augment, not replace the humans - since it takes the boring and error prone parts away, and utilizes humans for the edge cases. There's a lot of potential for huge wins for low costs. And, absolutes aside, that's in line with this article.

The alternative Ultron method - take the humans out entirely - is simply too expensive and error prone. It's absurdly common to watch entire automated assembly lines grind to a halt because of corner cases that have to be fixed by humans. We're seeing the same thing with automated vehicles - when corner cases are hit, they pull over and signal for human intervention.

So, I guess I agree with the author, though in a less stylish way. Please make me a better driver; don't remove me from the seat entirely. Just imagine that fancy VR simulation they showed from the Waymo cars made available as HUD data for a regular driver. How much would that alone help with safety on the road?

<comment><USER4> Where does the Vision fit into it all?

<comment><USER3> Probably somewhere around the time we can directly connect our brains to computers, Ghost in the Shell style.

Which, by the way, I'm all for. Keyboards, steering wheels, touch screens... they are all just too limited for proper human-computer interaction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't like driving, and I'd rather read the news, read a book, or type out an email, play the guitar, or for that matter, sip on my favorite cocktail. And seeing as how many drivers can't put away their cell phones while operating a motor vehicle, my guess is most people would rather be doing something else too, at least most of the time. Self-driving cars is my dream come-ing true.

I'm fine with reserving the right to manually operate a vehicle; too many situations in which an autonomous vehicle will just not understand what needs to be done.

I'm rather more concerned that without needing to operate the vehicle, and the design modification of the car to be more conducive to social activities, riding in a vehicle will become an even more attractive leisure activity, clogging traffic while people netflix (& chill) in their pleasure barges.

</comment><comment><USER6> I doubt such a lobbying effort will be necessary. You can still ride around in a horse-drawn carriage on most public roads. It seems far-fetched to think human-powered driving will be made illegal, it's far more likely that most people will just opt-out of it.

I also expect once autonomous vehicles are the majority of cars we'll see stricter enforcement of speeding laws. When everyone is speeding because that's the norm, you don't stand out. When every other car is self-driving at the limit and you're going 20 over in your Corvette, you stand out like a sore thumb. The UK already uses average speed cameras. I think the only reason they aren't widespread elsewhere is simply because many people speed.

<comment><USER7> >also expect once autonomous vehicles are the majority of cars we'll see stricter enforcement of speeding laws. When everyone is speeding because that's the norm, you don't stand out. When every other car is self-driving at the limit and you're going 20 over in your Corvette, you stand out like a sore thumb. The UK already uses average speed cameras. I think the only reason they aren't widespread elsewhere is simply because many people speed.

No, we'll see speed limits that reflect the speeds people actually travel and probably dynamic speed limits based on the 90th percentile rule (or whatever best practice rule we come up with to supersede that) instead of our current system by which speed limits are the max of what the various stakeholders will ok.

AITaxiCo and AIDeliveryCo are going to lobby the living hell out of reasonable (where reasonable is not a circular definition involving the current speed limit) limits because they don't want following the letter of the law to put them at a competitive disadvantage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> > From my cold, dead hands.

This makes the whole thing sound like a NRA-style clickbait article and nothing more.

That said, I am not exactly a fan of how autonomous vehicle scene is unfolding with lot of investments being made by ride sharing companies. And these guys have signed a "Shared Mobility Principles for Livable Cities" [0] which states:

 _WE SUPPORT THAT AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES (AVS) IN DENSE URBAN AREAS SHOULD BE OPERATED ONLY IN SHARED FLEETS. Due to the transformational potential of autonomous vehicle technology, it is critical that all AVs are part of shared fleets, well-regulated, and zero emission. Shared fleets can provide more affordable access to all, maximize public safety and emissions benefits, ensure that maintenance and software upgrades are managed by professionals, and actualize the promise of reductions in vehicles, parking, and congestion, in line with broader policy trends to reduce the use of personal cars in dense urban areas._

[0]: [https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/](https://www.sharedmobilityprinciples.org/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Ugh, no. Human drivers kill about 1.3 million people per year. Since the second world war, human drivers have killed more people than all wars and genocides put together. This is personal for me: human drivers have murdered far too many of my friends. I can't wait for the world to be rid of them.

Oh, wait, at the bottom of the article, now we're saying that we need an NRA- style lobby for human driving? As in: an ideologically blinkered death cult beholden to narrow corporate interests (in this case, rather than gun manufacturers, car manufacturers dependent on personal ownership of vehicles for their business model) with zero scruples about what sort of body count it facilitates? Is this a parody then?

</comment><comment><USER10> The thing that scares me about self driving cars is that you won't be able to own one. You will have to buy a "plan"/"subscription" or some such nonsense. Then under the guise of safety they will out-law manual driven cars in order to increase their market share.

</comment><comment><USER11> How do self-driving cars restrict your freedom? You can still tell it where you want to go at any time and it will take you. I'm very confused what freedom I'm losing? Is it to drive over a riverbed if I want to? Never done that. Not sure I'd want to.

<comment><USER3> Should give it a try - it's a lot of fun.

To generalize: your lack of interest in an activity is not a good reason to remove that activity opportunity from everybody. I'm sure you have a lot of freedoms that you don't take advantage of - should they be removed as well?

<comment><USER11> If I tried it, I wouldn't try it with the same car I drive to work with every day. I'd use a car built to drive over riverbeds. Most people aren't saying that self-driving cars should take over every kind of vehicle with wheels. I think the main purpose is to give commuters and truck drivers another option, not to remove options from people.

<comment><USER3> > I wouldn't try it with the same car I drive to work with every day.

Most people who do this do indeed use their daily drivers. Most people can't afford to own a second $30,000 vehicle they can take out only on the weekends.

> I think the main purpose is [...] not to remove options from people.

And I quote: "Google had long distinguished itself from other companies for committing to the development of a true robot car without a steering wheel or pedals."

[http://www.businessinsider.com/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik- self-d...](http://www.businessinsider.com/waymo-ceo-john-krafcik-self-driving- wheel-house-bill-2017-9)

<comment><USER11> So you want to limit my freedom of owning a car without a steering wheel so that you can protect your freedom of owning one with a steering wheel? That doesn't make much sense to me. Just because one company makes a better mouse trap doesn't mean that everyone is subjected to only buying the new mouse trap. Welcome to free market capitalism.

<comment><USER3> That's the thing about removing controls: if they are there, you don't have to use them. If they aren't there, you can't ever use them.

The US hasn't been purely free market since, well, ever. What's to stop car companies from buying legislation to force people into subscription based vehicles? They already force the use of dealers for buying cars...

<comment><USER11> It's still legal to drive horse and buggies on roads, even though it is 10x more dangerous for the people driving them. Why haven't they forced us into stopping horse and buggies? Should someone have forced cars to not be invented because they didn't have horses and if there aren't horses, you can't add horses later? I've heard horse and buggies are a lot of fun to ride over riverbeds too, after all.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This entire article is clickbait, where the author wants you to believe he is being persecuted or something.

> Despite a storm of clickbait media reports, there is still little evidence > that self-driving cars are safer than humans.

This is the central thesis, but the author made up the idea that we are supposed to already have these cars that are safer than humans. Nobody thinks this. _Nobody._ These cars will hopefully exist and hopefully be a lot safer than humans but they certainly don't exist yet.

The author thinks that killing 30,000 people per year is a-okay and worth it for the 'freedom'. I disagree. It's not even freedom you get from driving yourself. You still have to stay on the roads and use a seatbelt and use your turn signals 100% of the time, etc. I would place a large bet that when the author drives, he breaks 10-20 safety laws each drive. Everyone does.

We should aim for 0 deaths per year and do everything in our power to get there. Taking the epic weapons away from people is not a reduced freedom. Self driving cars do not take away your freedom just as not owning an AR-15 does not take away your freedom.

The goal of self-driving cars is 0 deaths/year. If that is not your goal of safety without self-driving cars, then you don't care about safety period. The selfishness exhibited in "I don't care if more people are dying on average, I want to drive and you can't take it away from me" is insane.

> If our safety was the experts' first principle, the billions invested in > self-driving cars would have gone to subsidizing free professional driving > school, raising licensing standards, and making critical safety technologies > like seat belts, airbags, ABS and automatic emergency braking (AEB) standard > as soon as they were invented

No that is _not_ what they would have done. They would be building self driving cars if they cared about safety.

People are not going to be better drivers if you give them more classes. They will still get drink and kill 5 innocent people on their way home from the bar.

<comment><USER13> Sorry, I disagree.

If you want to stop 30,000 people from dying on the roads every year, don't allow multi-ton vehicles on the road.

If everyone was using motorized bikes, you would have almost no road deaths. Furthermore, people die choking on food every year. Please don't mandate us to use self-chewing teeth.

<comment><USER12> > If you want to stop 30,000 people from dying on the roads every year, don't > allow multi-ton vehicles on the road.

Okay, but the idea here is to drop the deaths _without_ impacting the economy so much that it will tank. Yes we could remove all large vehicles, but then people would starve and die anyway because they wouldn't get food to grocery stores fast enough, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


30 - <AUTHOR> http://thew.me/writing/30

<comment><USER2> I like this idea of modern proverbs, and look forward to finding more in the HN Comments. Here's what I'll provide:

No story survives contact with the players: they will always outsmart you and come up with a novel solution to your best-designed traps. You must learn to be gracious when this happens and improvise a satisfactory result. Characters on a page are a little easier to control, but will also push back when you write them.

My parents adopted two of my brothers. People refer to adoption by saying they're "not really your" kids: I am not sure why. They really and truly are my brothers.

You cannot choose your immediate emotional responses but you can choose your overall outlook. Your overall outlook colors those emotional responses; a peaceful mind handles stresses and uncertainties much better than an anxious one. Thus, don't assume that there exists only one perspective on truth, but search for the perspectives that make life easier.

The now is all there is. You can't daydream your life away in the past or the future. In that sense: really experience this moment. However, all of your ideas have been done better by geniuses in days long past, in histories which did not become our particular present. In that sense, the present is overwhelming you with details which are not essential. So don't forget to practice history and have an outlook on the future. Just don't live in those places.

If I ever find myself frustrated with someone else, it's usually because they are doing something which I myself am guilty of doing. I think we often get mad at our own sins seen in other peoples' acts. Adopt this stranger as your brother, and that stranger as your sister.

You have a thousand bad _____ which must come out before the good work will start coming out. Fill that blank in with paintings, songs, poems, programs, thrown frisbees, approaches to management, whatever. Be skeptical when anyone speaks of talent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I take serious issue with this: "Placing a ripe, soft avocado in a refrigerator will extend its life by two days, give or take." I've actually found that it can extend the life of an avocado for a week or more, depending on the avocado and when it is placed in the fridge :)

<comment><USER4> Fun fact. Placing a halved avocado in a bag of water will save it from oxidation overnight, as will face down on a plate with oil (olive, veggie, etc) creating a seal. #AvocadoHacking

<comment><USER3> Nice tip! I only learned about refrigerating avocados recently and it's awesome to not have to consume a whole bag of avocados within a couple of days :) I'll definitely try the avocado in water trick.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > Every photograph and video you take at a concert or other live event will > probably be terrible. Just enjoy the moments, don't feel pressured to > document them.

I've changed my mind about this one because of a service called Timehop. Every day it grabs any photos, social media updates etc. from 1 year prior and stuffs them in an email (or push notification in the app). It's a great way to remember, and appreciate, what you've been doing and where you've been. A shitty little photo from a concert will take 15 seconds from "the moment" but give me that enjoyment back down the line, sometimes tenfold. (Since the additional marginal enjoyment of those 15 seconds is small, but the marginal enjoyment of reliving that experience a year later is much larger.)

Overall though I really liked the post.

<comment><USER6> And the aggregate affect of a crowd full of people instagramming just about every moment of a concert means I basically watch live shows through the screens of other people's phones these days. Throw in a dozen crummy LED flashes going off for most of the show and the experience is pretty much killed for me.

If there's one development in concert-going over the past decade that I really loathe, more than the consolidation of ticket sellers, the subsequent rise in ticket prices, the steady increase in the cost of beer, my own age and sore back after 4 hours, everyone else's insistence that they _need_ to photograph (or worse, VIDEO) a show has got to be the top of the list.

And while I appreciate your edge case here that Timehop provides, most of those photographs are just being uploaded to Facebook to show off how vastly interesting they are to everyone who's not there. Cultivating other people's FOMO.

Ok, enough of my old man kvetching. I genuinely do think it's cool that Timehop let's you relive those little moments as much as I genuinely regret the loss of my enjoyment of living those moments at the time they are happening.

<comment><USER5> > most of those photographs are just being uploaded to Facebook to show off > how vastly interesting they are to everyone who's not there. Cultivating > other people's FOMO.

Too true. I guess it's also a bit of a tragedy of the commons. I don't feel like my 15 seconds of keeping a phone in the air is all that problematic for those around me - but it quickly gets out of hand when the entire audience feels the same way. (And doing it much longer/more frequently than just a single snap once or twice a show.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Love posts like this that find their own way of delivering a broad spectrum of advice from a unique life.

Something I've learned:

Everyone is the main character in their own story. Once you understand this, peoples' motivations make a lot more sense. Let people be their story's hero. Be your story's hero. But don't be other story's antagonist. Try to be the ally in other stories. You will end up with a lot of trusty sidekicks.

</comment><comment><USER8> Not really a HN-worthy comment, but I just wanted to point out the humor in his first piece of unsolicited advice to the internet at large: "Try not to give unsolicited advice". :)

</comment><comment><USER9> This is nice despite being extremely subjective ("know" is not something I'd apply to most of these things; "believe" is strong enough _and_ correct), but some of them are questionable, and -- assuming the author didn't actually follow them in his younger years -- could've resulted in things being worse.

Prime example: _If given the opportunity, people will surprise you. Leaving yourself open to these surprises is a kind of risk. Taking that risk is how you believe in people._

Yes, they certainly will, and yes, it's most definitely a risk. Unfortunately, that surprise, when it does come, is rarely good. Also, taking that risk too often can lead you to believe in people if you're lucky in your acquaintances; it can just as easily (if not more so) lead to the exact opposite if you're unlucky.

<comment><USER10> Your history of negative experiences is a nice anecdote, despite being extremely subjective.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> "If you drink beer, drink the absolute best beer available, even if that means you can afford fewer beers."

A lot of good points in this post, but on this we must respectfully disagree. Yours truly, an almost-36-year-old with Miller High Life by the gallon.

<comment><USER7> A man after my own heart! Good day, Sir!

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Usually, posts like this make me gag a little on the cheesiness, but this was well done. There's some really good advice in here. I especially like:

"Let people leave your life when they need to. Leave a light on for them in case they ever decide to return. Collect those lights and regularly remember why you keep them lit."

</comment><comment><USER13> In addition to

> Every photograph and video you take at a concert or other live event will > probably be terrible. Just enjoy the moments, don't feel pressured to > document them.

I would also add that while singing along at concerts certainly has its time and place, actually listening to the artist singing is better.

<comment><USER14> I think it depends on why you are attending the concert. I don't attend as many as I did in my teens, but back then it was more about community than music. In hindsight, the music those bands played wasn't particularly good. The real draw was getting together with a bunch of like minded people and just "having a good time." That often included singing, dancing, and generally not paying attention to what happened on the stage. If you truly want to enjoy the music, odds are that it can be done easier and cheaper from the comfort of your own home. The same applies for most other live events, whether they be WWDC sessions or sporting events.

<comment><USER13> That is very true, but there's something to be said for experiencing music live rather than at home with a nice set of headphones.

Also, I was fairly miffed when I went to a concert a while back and had the singer drowned out by five guys singing along really loudly right beside me. (We were quite far back from the stage.) It's great that they're having a good time, but they probably could have had just as good a time going to karaoke or something. Although you would lose the feeling of "being there".

<comment><USER14> That is a good point about interfering with other people's enjoyment of the concert. I was generally referring to the audience as a collective unit. The issue becomes more complicated when different groups in the audience want to enjoy the event different.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > If you drink beer, drink the absolute best beer available, even if that > means you can afford fewer beers.

If you're thirty it's time to pick a dark liquor and drink it straight. You can still drink beer, and yes you should have moved beyond beers that don't advertise what type of beer they are by now, but when out with other adult company drink a dark liquor (but no more than 2 or 3 drinks, "getting wasted" is not something adults do).

<comment><USER16> _"Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up."_ ~ CS Lewis

My favorite drink is Diet Coke with peach schnapps.

<comment><USER17> Nice quote.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "Own fewer things..."

I turned 30 ten days ago and have thought about this one a lot recently. It's an interesting transition, because when you enter your 20's you typically have no stuff and thus everything is valuable. Your parents old couch, your roommate's spatula he left behind when he moved out, ect. Getting out of that mentality took me longer then it should.

<comment><USER19> My corollary to this is buying the best thing you can reasonably concieve of affording.

My prime example is a guitar. Once you move from the starter knockoffs, you should start investigating the more expensive models to find what you like. Don't wander through life buying mediocre.

(This isn't to say you can't find more affordable quality or satisfaction, but at some point may wish you had ponied up for that PRS or Gibson after having purchased numerous used guitars whose sum exceeds the value of what you really wanted :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Several people have pointed out a possible irony in Item 1, "Try not to give unsolicited advice." Be that as it may, I have a different issue with this item. The vast majority of the unsolicited advice that I have received in my life was useless and annoying. But then practically all of the truly valuable advice that I have received was unsolicited.

</comment><comment><USER21> Fun list, but morning people do love to spread their belief like a gospel. :-) Some of us quite enjoy staying up late.

<comment><USER22> As a nighthawk myself, the thing about morning people that I've come to realize in my 38 years is that they are 100% right. Life is much, much better with an extra hour or two of time _before_ the day than an extra hour or two _after_ the day.

I've tried, and tried and tired, but I can't do mornings. I hate them for it.

<comment><USER16> I'm (usually) a night owl too but lately, for some unknown reason, I've been waking up at 6-7 every morning feeling fine, and I agree. An hour or two of time before the day is an hour or two when you're still fresh, so I find it easier to use this time to work on a personal project, play music, or some other productive/enriching thing. An extra hour or two at the end of the day is usually just eaten up by pointless things (e.g., entertainment after I'm already 'fully entertained').

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> >Kindness, and the strength to display it in all situations, is the single most admirable quality that people can possess.

I totally agree with this. The people I admire the most are the kindest people I have ever met. I really aspire to be one of them.

</comment><comment><USER24> "Other people cannot always see your intentions, they can see your actions." - so true, so important to understand.

I would add exercise to the list for sure. The energy and cognitive boost absolutely required to be at your best as you age.

</comment><comment><USER25> Don't do anything you'll regret. Yes, you have that choice.

Don't regret anything you did. You did it in good faith (see above) with what information & resources you had at the time.

<comment><USER26> Let me slightly correct this (I turned 30 in November).

The things you'll regret are the things you didn't do. I might not be proud of some of the things I did do, but I don't regret them. Never regret something you did; at one point its what you wanted.

<comment><USER27> _Never regret something you did; at one point its what you wanted._

At times in my life I've behaved like a completely immoral asshole. Are you seriously suggesting that I shouldn't regret these times, just because I _wanted_ to be an immoral asshole at the time?

If you act like an evil bastard, you most certainly _should_ regret it. You were bad, and you should feel bad. That feeling bad is part of what keeps you from doing it again.

<comment><USER28> This depends on your personality, I think. Bold people tend to be assholes and timid people tend to avoid both the things they should have done, and the things they shouldn't have. Some people, like me, have a little of both.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Seems fitting that #30 is the best advice on there.

</comment><comment><USER30> I'm assuming #1 is supposed to be a joke/irony?

<comment><USER31> > #31: Once in a while, when you feel strongly about it, break a rule.

Also, it's not unsolicited when people are voluntarily reading what he wrote.</comment></comment>


Kinko.me – easy to use PGP encryption – starts indiegogo campaign - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/kinko-me-pretty-easy-privacy/x/4253161

<comment><USER2> What an exciting project. This solution sounds like a great answer for my less tech savvy friends who want email privacy.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the thumbs-up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wish you guys good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Sounds very interesting!

</comment><comment><USER5> How does it work?

<comment><AUTHOR> A super-simple description is:

\- we sync emails from IMAP account to an individual's device, decrypting email in the process

\- when sending email via SMTP thru the box we encrypt email accordingly

\- the box provides SMTP, IMAP, and webmail access

\- all email encryption is done via GnuPG, so no lock-in: recipients can use a regular PGP plugins

I hope this gives you a first impression of what's in the box.</comment></comment>


Bouncing Beholder: JS1k winner explained - <AUTHOR> http://marijn.haverbeke.nl/js1k.html <comment><USER2> _At the start of the program there is a for/in loop that goes over the properties of the canvas context, and adds a new property, with a shorter name, for each of them. It took some experimenting to find an abbreviation algorithm that doesn't have clashes on any of the methods we use---I ended up using the first letter of the name plus the the 7th letter, if any. So lineTo becomes l, and quadraticCurveTo becomes qt. I can then use these short names to actually access the methods---without ever having written out the full name._

Clever.

</comment><comment><USER3> Not a bad choice, methinks. That's an _amazingly_ polished experience for sub-1k. I do wonder if some of the arguably-better submissions were excluded for bugs, though I think I'd do the same in a competition. Readily-apparent bug = disqualified.

<comment><USER4> The chess entry doesn't support a fundamental game move (castling). I'd consider that a bug but last time someone pointed that out they got blasted on HN.

Anyway, it's a remarkable chess-like game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The top three: <http://twitter.com/z0va/status/25525821627>

</comment><comment><USER6> I'm struggling to understand how the hell this is done. Is the whole thing generated in code (as in the imagery/graphics) or are they external elements that are loaded into the application and manipulated in the code?

<comment><USER7> everything is generated in code. this is what makes it so hard

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can't help but say that I think that there were more deserving demos, in terms of how impressive/fun they were compared to the winner, though I'm glad to see the chess one up there. Not to knock the winner though, it's also a good demo and probably won because of better cross-browser compatibility or something.

<comment><USER9> Did you read the explanation? I thought the context method abbreviations was brilliant.

The chess one got second place. I like it too, but it was not really a "playable" game, more a demo of some cool hacks.

I DID however find it interesting that none of the top three were the visualization demos which seemed to make up a majority of the entries.</comment></comment>