Icaro – Smart Javascript object observer, ideal for batching DOM updates - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/GianlucaGuarini/icaro <comment><USER2> Nice, I made something really similar but found it had a bunch of issues. Some of which I don't see addressed here.

When setting an object or array, it will always trigger since the equal comparison will return false even if they have the same { key: value } pairs:

        target[property] !== value

Speaking of which, sub-properties are not being listened to from the root (only if manually listened to on the sub-object):

        obj.foo = { bar: 'baz' }; // triggers
        obj.foo.bar = 'whatever'; // never triggers the base listener

The only realistic automatic way to listen to them is to add a trap for the _get_ , which will proxify the return value if it's an object or array. This has it's own set of errors and turns into a nasty set of edge cases, which is the main reason I never got to release what I was doing. I see in Icaro you Proxify it manually and adding some props on the setter, which leads to this not working as expected:

        const obj = icaro({ foo: { bar: 'baz' } });
        obj.foo.bar = 'baz2';  // Nothing triggers

</comment><comment><USER3> The array example is a little weird.

        // no events here
        arr.map(v => v + '-meh')

Since `.map` doesn't mutate the array in the first place, surely no one would expect observation events to occur anyway?

<comment><USER4> Indeed. This functionality really worries me.

Why would a non-mutation trigger listeners?

<comment><AUTHOR> you are absolutely right, map doesn't belong to the mutational methods. Fixed in v1.1.1 thank you for your feedback

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Isn't this just queuing up the actual, real work on the event loop?

Of course its faster to call setImmediate a bunch of times to defer work, than it is to actually DO the work. It is useless to compare a synthetic benchmark for what is fundamentally a task that involves drawing something to the screen, without measuring the time it takes to finish all those tasks. The actual performance will, of course, be determined by how many DOM mutations are occurring, and the relative layout complexity of each. There will be a benefit for lots of really small, expensive mutations that _could_ be batched together, but who designs their applications like that? Oh, wait...

At least, that's my understanding of looking at the source for a few minutes. Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see any real algorithm at work here, just work that is shifted around to make a benchmark look good.

A better benchmark would be to use this in a real world, non-trivial use-case somehow and measure the framerate. But I can save you the effort: It's not going to win out over a well designed application that does direct DOM manipulation. Period.

<comment><USER6> But is Icaro more on listening changes on javascript objects, in a general manner, better than just the DOM ones?

I think that this light lib could be actually a cool toy to use if you need for example to do some simple app state listened manipulations on the node backend side.

Otherwise, that is true, I would maybe still prefer to use frontend side some well-designed frameworks like redux-Rx or redux-react

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Last time I tried Proxies, their performance wasn't very good. It would be great to see a few benchmarks.

What advantages would this give you over using persistent data structures [0] with memoized selectors? When using immutable data structures, you can shift the responsibility of providing updates up to the caller. In my experience, that usually means code that's easier to debug and test.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistent_data_structure)

<comment><AUTHOR> Here you can see some bench results comparing the most popular reactive javascript libs [https://github.com/GianlucaGuarini/reactive-libs- bench](https://github.com/GianlucaGuarini/reactive-libs-bench) icaro included

<comment><USER8> Why is icaro so much more performance? It's two orders of magnitude faster than the other frameworks if I'm reading the results correctly.

<comment><AUTHOR> please check the readme file [https://github.com/GianlucaGuarini/icaro#performance](https://github.com/GianlucaGuarini/icaro#performance) there it's explained

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> If this is meant to target modern browsers, what's the use of this check and fallback for IE's obsolete API?

        if (global.addEventListener) {
          global.addEventListener('message', onGlobalMessage, false);
        } else {
          global.attachEvent('onmessage', onGlobalMessage);
        }

<comment><AUTHOR> Well that's a fork of [https://github.com/YuzuJS/setImmediate](https://github.com/YuzuJS/setImmediate) so it must be removed! Would you mind making a pull request?

<comment><USER9> > Would you mind making a pull request?

I do mind, so no thanks. I've written at length about why[1][2].

I'm not using the project, but you can consider the feedback in my last comment as a bug report if you like.

1\. [http://www.colbyrussell.com/2015/05/31/git-and-its- hubs.html](http://www.colbyrussell.com/2015/05/31/git-and-its-hubs.html)

2\. [https://github.com/colbyrussell/keeping-a-low-profile-on- git...](https://github.com/colbyrussell/keeping-a-low-profile-on-github)

<comment><USER10> I sort of understand why you want to avoid GitHub, thank you for sharing those links. All in all though to make a small pull request like the one in question, it takes about 2 minutes and three clicks to do so.

Not that you should do so if you don't want to, but this is a _good_ thing for OS projects. The barrier to entry and contribute is non-existent - if you want to fix something small just press 'edit', make your changes in the browser and press 'submit merge request'.

No cloning, no local installs, no fuss. You can do it from your phone, on a bus.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think I have a smaller one [https://github.com/albertbuchard/promets- moi](https://github.com/albertbuchard/promets-moi)

<comment><USER12> The parent one seems to handle more, nested properties and batching?

<comment><USER11> hmm not sure what batching means in this context but nested property works.

<comment><AUTHOR> ehy thanks for linking to your project it looks great! Regarding the batching strategy icaro smartly groups the object changes via setImmediate helping in case you need to change many properties on the same object for example:

obj.name = 'foo' obj.surname = 'bar'

in this case icaro will dispatch only one event optimizing the listeners to avoid unnecessary redundant events</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Death by To Do lists - <AUTHOR> http://www.victusspiritus.com/2011/02/23/death-by-to-do-lists/ <comment><USER2> I'm confused. Is it just me, or is this just a list of "Look at all the things I have to do!" Is there really any insight here? Did I really just waste 40 seconds (including following one of the links) and not find the nugget of information that will improve my life?

What have I missed?

<comment><AUTHOR> You're perception is correct.

It's a public admission of slipping and not following my own advice due to a lack of discipline in areas of interest. My apologies if there was no value added.

<comment><USER2> OK - noted. What I'd really like to see is whether you have any ideas for doing something about it.

Since I wrote "t-" [1] I've found that I've been paying attention to that list of things I've said I'll do. Probably that will fade and I'll start to ignire it, but then I'll probably spend an hour hacking another novel (to me) tool that gets me back on track.

Discipline isn't enough- it slides into procrastination. I find that novelty brings me back.

How 'bout you?

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2241491>

<comment><AUTHOR> One of the problems I've had with various to do list hacks is that task priority and completion changed over the life of the list. In addition coordinating group tasks doesn't have a natural fit with planning personal activities.

Large tasks morphed over time into long term goals, and never left the list. Actually I preferred those because they aided navigating smaller decisions on how to spend my time, without having a discrete blob for each task. "Is this task helping me achieve my long term goal, if so how and how much?" More on this later (the text file task list).

Quick history of my relationship to task lists:

When I started my first push towards a functioning product (and what I hoped would be a real company) I used p2, a wordpress blog theme for coordinating group activity.

I combined that with emails and filters by recipient to keep track of ideas that were plausible and consistent with the driving product idea (relevant ads based on social streams).

Over time my email usage as a task list grew into many different tabs (gmail) and information gathering/interests intermixed with project tasks (bad idea). I became bogged down with what I thought at the time were relevant tutorials, docs, and ideas but later proved to be of limited value or wild goose chases down implausible technical paths.

My technical cofounder (he had four years of web development under his belt in 2009, I had a few months) coordinated our product and coding activities with lighthouse milestones and tickets. Those worked fine for well defined objectives, but ended up decaying too slowly based on our understanding of project direction. Eventually we abandoned the lighthouse ticket approach to email coordination and screen sharing.

At that point I relied on a simple text file to keep track of my top handful of project priorities (and nothing else) and worked through them one a time. I could rearrange the order on the fly as specific tasks became more important (overhauling an ad widget's design, redesigning the interface to be more attractive to visitors vs. hosts). Those tasks morphed into priorities that served as a filter for irrelevant vs focused and necessary actions.

In our busiest periods (late 2009/early 2010) email and text files weren't enough. Even priority lists felt inadequate and I stopped regularly wrestling with the lists. At that point I naturally realized the idea, when it comes to startups lists there can be only one. One thing has to stand apart and be doggedly pursued until it's finished and proven valuable, or discarded and proven a false alarm or too difficult to handle with current resources. [http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/18/when-it-comes-to- st...](http://www.victusspiritus.com/2010/07/18/when-it-comes-to-startup- tasks-there-can-be-only-one/)

We tried several different ideas and Tyler has become a formidable web hacker, while I've gained some technical chops (I've coded algorithms/sims in c++ for 15 years but only recently added web development) and continue to refine my product focus and understanding of market needs. Unfortunately our product ideas and implementations didn't pan out. After actively pushing for a year without results we parted ways and are still friends.

At the end of 2010 I took a break from web development but came back to it with the new year. Since then my personal task list (and backlog of desired activities) has become sloppy.

<comment><USER2> That was actually interesting and useful. Well, for me, anyway. not sure it would make a good general interest article, but I found it helpful.

Thank you.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: A new photo sharing community in early beta. Looking for feedback - <AUTHOR> http://photographer.io

<comment><USER2> You should persevere and push this Rob, it's really great and there's a space in the market. Better single photo view pages for sharing would be high on my wish list - a la Instagram web preview pages.</comment>


Smithsonian Releases 2.8M Images into Public Domain - <AUTHOR> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/smithsonian-releases-28-million-images-public-domain-180974263/ <comment><USER2> Aw, man!

I really don't have anything substantial to say, but this is incredibly refreshing: No dark patterns, no marketing ploy, no signup, no bullshit. No licenses, no traps, no business interests!

Javascript not required, but smooth UI & UX! Just pure knowledge. API access; millions of files! Works right down to Lynx, an has a 3D previewer which is smooth and gentle to my mid range laptop.

I think this is gonna be my new example if someones says that commerce & ads are the backbone of the internet. If anyone of the responsible people happens to read HN, please continue to do good in the world!

<comment><USER3> This is a great example of tax dollars at work. The Smithsonian is part of the United States government.

<comment><USER4> It's a 501c3 which is ~half funded by taxpayers and half funded by philanthropy. Almost like it forces you to recognize the benefits of both types of funding

<comment><USER5> I think it's more complicated than a pure 501c3. Their vehicles get US Gov licence plates from the GSA.

<comment><USER6> Indeed, the Smithsonian is completely unique under US law[1].

[https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory](https://www.si.edu/ogc/legalhistory)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> [https://www.si.edu/openaccess](https://www.si.edu/openaccess) The actual thing.

> Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse > millions of the Smithsonian's images—right now, without asking. With new > platforms and tools, you have easier access to nearly 3 million 2D and 3D > digital items from our collections—with many more to come. This includes > images and data from across the Smithsonian's 19 museums, nine research > centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

</comment><comment><USER8> If you're into natural history, search the 3D models. The in-browser viewer works great.

[https://www.si.edu/object/3d/490b6301-3869-455a-ba71-a89f5b6...](https://www.si.edu/object/3d/490b6301-3869-455a-ba71-a89f5b6c482c)

<comment><USER9> Holy crap. "Works great" doesn't do it justice. I'm on mobile and I was not expecting a buttery-smooth, photorealistic, flawlessly erogonomic multitouch experience with an abundance of advanced powertools like section analysis. That thing would be one of the most impressive _apps_ I've ever seen, never mind Web Apps!

I want this as a Jupyter plugin, very badly.

(where do I find more examples? The viewer is a work of art but did I miss the hyperlink to "more cool stuff"?)

(edit: [https://3d.si.edu/](https://3d.si.edu/) )

<comment><USER10> Looking at the source, it seems like their viewer is based on OpenSeadragon: [https://openseadragon.github.io/](https://openseadragon.github.io/)

<comment><USER11> Voyager, the 3D viewer uses Three.js for WebGL rendering and a custom entity/component architecture for both the scene tree and the general architecture of the application. The UI is built using custom Web Components with the help of LitElement and LitHtml. The viewer itself is a web component and super easy to embed.

The tool suite also provides an authoring environment for annotating and editing scenes. Documentation: [https://smithsonian.github.io/dpo- voyager](https://smithsonian.github.io/dpo-voyager). Contributions are very welcome!

Full disclosure: I'm the developer of the Voyager 3D suite.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> How much time until getty start sending copyright notices on these?

<comment><USER13> What if someone created a service like "do I need a license for using this image?" \- the system search by image somewhere and return its availability in the public domain (perhaps someone already thought of this though, it's too obvious...

<comment><USER14> Not universal, but here they seem to be using iiif, you can simply add info.json after the identifier path and get the licensing info.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This reminds me of Polish National Library web site. They did the same thing some years ago. They went into great effort to scan and publish digitally huge amount of books, publications, postcards, images, etc. Some books are centuries old. A lot of Polish content but not only. Have to admit, looking at old prints is a magical experience to me.

[https://polona.pl/](https://polona.pl/) (change language on the bottom)

Edit: I can see now, both, Smithsonian and National Library of Poland are part of the IIIF Consortium.

</comment><comment><USER16> Getty's litigation department is gonna be so busy

<comment><USER17> This.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is there a comprehensive list of all such large collections that have been made available. I recall the Metropolitan Museum of Art released hundreds of thousands of images a while back.

<comment><USER18> Ah here is prior discussion on the Met release [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7781846](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7781846)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is great.

I keep a list of 'High Quality Collections of Digitized Art and Archival Finds' and will add this one.

[https://simonsarris.com/art-collections](https://simonsarris.com/art- collections)

<comment><USER18> Here is a great collection of maps you might want to add.

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

License there is CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

<comment><USER19> Thanks, this very cool.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How can we prevent sites like Getty images to claim copyright on these images and suing users who use these images ?

</comment><comment><USER21> "Releasing to the public domain" isn't something that can affirmatively be done. The best you can do, which Smithsonian did, is CCO

[https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)

Thanks to Creative Commons team for teaching the government how to do its job .

<comment><USER22> Unless you're the US government, in which case everything is public domain. A copyright cannot be claimed on USG work product.

<comment><USER23> Assuming that you _actually_ control the copyright, of course. This used to be (and may still be) a significant issue wrt. the Smithsonian itself; they host all sorts of content on their websites for which the actual copyright- ownership situation was apparently entirely unknown (to the Smithsonian themselves and anyone else).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Looks like you one needs to use a search box to view images. Though it is being provided free of cost, and one shouldn't count the teeth of a gift horse, it would have been better if there was some type of catalogue to see what exactly is in the dataset.

</comment><comment><USER25> This is awesome!

I typed in 'jazz' and got a page on Charlie Parker's saxophone, a King Super 20. It has 8 very high quality and nicely composed photos that you can download in TIFF format, some up to ~300MB in size. Each photo has a detailed description in text, as well as the dimensions of what's seen in the shot, info on when/where it was made and by whom and lots more! What a great project.

[https://www.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2019.10.1a-g](https://www.si.edu/object/nmaahc_2019.10.1a-g)

E: One of the images has already been added to the Wikipedia entry for Charlie Parker a couple of hours ago. How cool is this data set.

</comment><comment><USER26> ..and Getty gains 2.8M images they can use to send copyright infringement letters...

</comment><comment><USER27> "CC0 only applies to copyright so you may still need someone else's permission to use a CC0-designated digital asset."

So, not actually "public domain," but about as close as we get in 2020.

<comment><USER28> No that's not how I read it at all. A museum doesn't originate anything, they get donations. "You may need someone else's permission" because the Smithsonian doesn't guarantee that noone else in the world has a (good or bad) IP claim to one of the donations.

That's the kind of guarantee that you will never get unless you pay for it.

<comment><USER29> _You may need someone else 's permission" because the Smithsonian doesn't guarantee that noone else in the world has a (good or bad) IP claim to one of the donations._

That's not the intention of CC0:

 _In contrast to CC's licenses that allow copyright holders to choose from a range of permissions while retaining their copyright, CC0 empowers yet another choice altogether – the choice to opt out of copyright and database protection, and the exclusive rights automatically granted to creators – the "no rights reserved" alternative to our licenses._ ... _Dedicating works to the public domain is difficult if not impossible for those wanting to contribute their works for public use before applicable copyright or database protection terms expire_ ... _CC0 helps solve this problem by giving creators a way to waive all their copyright and related rights in their works to the fullest extent allowed by law._

In this case Smithsonian seems to have done the work to make sure they are out of copyright, and now they don't reserve any rights to the work.

[https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public- domain/cc...](https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/public-domain/cc0/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Tax dollars, invested into an institution that creates a public good, that is then made available to the public, where any entrepreneur can recycle it for profit and create more tax revenue. Beautiful fair capitalism at its finest!

<comment><USER31> What's "fair capitalism"?

<comment><USER30> Systems that encourage money to move into the hands of people that earn it, as opposed to lucky people who were born into it. Key examples of fair capitalism boosters (all be them for limited groups of people): 1217 England (Magna Carta for English lords), 1618 North America (when the Virginia Company introduced profit sharing for white settlers in the failing Jamestown), 1688 England (the Glorious Revolution for property owners), 1776 North America (where the new USA codified equitable rules for European men).

In all these cases Royal monopoly power was curtailed, allowing more people the opportunity to profit from their efforts. And there were relative economic booms as a result. But we strangle growth when we reinforce monopoly power, or when we reinforce laws that keep money in the hands of people that didn't earn it (and also strengthen the political power that money alone has).

When monopoly power is a temporary reward for innovators, it works. Anyone that seeks to extend the time limits of monopoly powers beyond the sweet spot is trying to restore one of those unfair capital systems that kill economic development. They generally don't care because for them, it is about enriching themselves whatever the cost to society.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Torrent?

<comment><USER33> I asked for a data dump via email, waiting to hear back. Ripping it all out is going to cost someone a pretty penny since it's hosted in AWS, better to ask someone to fill and ship some SATA drives. Then off to the Internet Archive!

<comment><USER34> I saw a companion AWS blog on this: [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/smithsonian-3-mill...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/smithsonian-3-million- images-smithsonian-open-access-initiative/)

Looks like its part of the public dataset program so you can probably just ask for the bucket name and get full free access to everything.

<comment><USER35> I can confirm that this dataset is indeed part of the AWS Public Dataset Program. We were finalizing some details, but this dataset is now listed in the Registry of Open Data:

[https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open- access/](https://registry.opendata.aws/smithsonian-open-access/)

Enjoy! I'm personally very excited about this dataset, and couldn't be more impressed with the people, mission, and, well, everything at the Smithsonian.

Source: I work on the AWS Open Data team / had a small role in this (normal lawyerspeak caveats apply that my views and opinions are my own)

<comment><USER33> Thank you!!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Oh, cool. They have a search API. I'll plan to add this as a source to canweimage.com.

<comment><USER8> OT- Neat, have you considered incorporating non-Wikimedia Commons images in your public domain-only search? Flickr in particular has a surprising amount of quality highres images that the authors have released into the PD.

<comment><USER23> > Flickr in particular has a surprising amount of quality highres images that > the authors have released into the PD.

Arguably, such images should be mirrored onto Commons ASAP (if they plausibly have educational value and are PD in most of the world). It is unwise to rely on a single profit-oriented company like Flickr to keep hosting this sort of stuff for the foreseeable future, whereas Commons is independently supported and specifically intended as a host for permissively-licensed media content.

<comment><USER37> there are bots that patrol Twitter, upload permissive content with the correct attribution and link back to the source. See more here: [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Flickr2Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Flickr2Commons)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> While there, think of subscribing to their mail list as well! Unbelievably good!

<comment><USER39> The si.edu list or the smithsonianmag.com one? Maybe I'll try both just to be sure. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Using these images may not be so easy on established media platforms. Amazon, for instance, screens ebooks for PD content.

</comment><comment><USER41> How many 'Library of Congress' datasets is that?

1 LOC = 15 TB according to google

</comment><comment><USER42> Inverted Jenny ... flex much? (J/K - awesome gallery!)

</comment><comment><USER43> The search feature seems to be getting a hug of death.

<comment><USER44> API is handling well, give it a go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> CC0 license on assets, which is pretty great.

</comment><comment><USER44> The API is great.

<comment><USER46> Link to the API docs? I can't find them.

<comment><USER47> [https://edan.si.edu/openaccess/apidocs/](https://edan.si.edu/openaccess/apidocs/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Very cool

</comment><comment><USER49> Until Getty starts suing people for using them!

</comment><comment><USER50> > _for patrons_

<comment><USER51> I don't think that means anything like "for people who have physically visited the Smithsonian" or "for people who pay us some sort of subscription"; if you use their website then you're a patron in the relevant sense.

Their webpage says "Welcome to Smithsonian Open Access, where you can download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian's images—right now, without asking." And everything's CC0-licensed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> > and forbidding commercialization

It's nice to see the Smithsonian get over their distaste of the market economy in the US.

<comment><USER53> Well, not quite.

> the Smithsonian is featuring less than 2 percent of its total collections in > this initial launch. Much of the rest may someday be headed for a similar > fate. But Kapsalis stresses the existence of an important subset that won't > be candidates for the public domain in the foreseeable future, including > location information on endangered species, exploitative images and > artifacts from marginalized communities.

> "The way people have captured some cultures in the past has not always been > respectful," Kapsalis says. "We don't feel we could ethically share [these > items] as open access."

If they don't trust you to think the right things about their artifacts, they're not letting you use those artifacts.

<comment><USER23> > If they don't trust you to think the right things about their artifacts

It's not about you or us, it's about anyone who might complain that the Smithsonian Institution is (as they see it) "endorsing" unethical practices by releasing that particular content (a minor part of what they currently hold, since "much" is in fact up for release) out in the open. Whether people "think the right things" about the Smithsonian's actions can have real consequences, so it makes sense for them to care quite a bit about that.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: ReadBoard – Change the Way You Converse on the Web (Private Beta) - <AUTHOR> http://www.readboard.io <comment><AUTHOR> And here is the link for HackerNews community to directly sign up.

[https://www.readboard.io/signup/hackernews](https://www.readboard.io/signup/hackernews)

I really appreciate your feedback and support.

</comment><comment><USER2> The price, my email address, is too high relative to the value the site provides...which is at this point consists solely of demanding an email address.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> I understand your reluctance to give the email address. Did you check the video?

<comment><USER2> No.

When the first priority of a site is to collect my email, usually I'll have spam to manage for anywhere from a few weeks to many years. Whatever reason I have for visiting a site, it's pretty much never because I want to receive emails from it.

[generically] Email harvesting is a red flag _for me_. Watching the video before signing up, doesn't change that. It just means investing more time in a site that doesn't prioritize on it's users.

Some bars are worth paying a cover charge. Most aren't.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> You can also directly sign up using following link.

[https://www.readboard.io/signup/hackernews](https://www.readboard.io/signup/hackernews)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So what is it? Some kind of sentiment analysis helper or a link service?

<comment><AUTHOR> ReadBoard enables meaningful contextual conversations on the Web amongst colleagues, friends, family, and web users. The conversations are public-by- default.

The mission of ReadBoard is to bring all the conversations happening on the Web at one place so to become the default destination for millions of people looking for interesting content on the Web everyday.

The vision is to build the largest community of like-minded readers and thinkers on the Web.

[https://www.readboard.io/about](https://www.readboard.io/about)

<comment><USER4> So what is it?

<comment><AUTHOR> OK let me put this in other words.

"ReadBoard is the best place to find the most interesting conversations on the Web right now."</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Equal Pay for Equal Work? Not Necessarily - <AUTHOR> http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/15/equal-pay-for-equal-work-not-necessarily/?src=twr <comment><USER2> I'm both the youngest and highest paid employee in my office. I negotiated a large initial salary and asked for raises often. I think several of my coworkers are undervaluing themselves, but they won't be reaching pay parity without asking for it.

I lucked out and learned the importance of knowing your value at around 13 years old. A family friend asked if I wanted to make some cash clearing stones from a residential construction site. I took the job but when he asked how much I wanted to be paid I just shruged. He said "Always know how much you are worth. Never forget that." and promptly punched me in the chest.

Certainly burned advice into my mind.</comment>


The Second Amendment and the Insurrection Myth - <AUTHOR> http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin-classics-jefferson-rifle.html <comment><USER2> I really like this essay, but it shows its age. Some remarkably 'under armed' rag tag militias have done a lot of damage to professional soldiers in Irag and Afghanistan.

I don't support the insurrection hypothesis but recognize that in an encounter where small numbers of individuals can (and do) cause more damage than they 'cost' the economics are not as clear as they were in the early 70's when this was first proposed.

<comment><USER3> I think it's doubly true in the age we've just entered - The age of 3d-printed firearms. Truth is, you can't 3d print a full firearm yet, but I'm certain that the NRA will have gigantic stockpiles of all the parts you currently can buy, and the one that you can't can now be printed.

I'm not a fan of the idea of armed insurrection - I believe that it's distasteful at best, and more than likely a sign of a gigantic malignancy left unchecked. However, I can't help but point out that at least once in the past it was responsible for changes we hold dear.

<comment><USER4> > I'm not a fan of the idea of armed insurrection - I believe that it's > distasteful at best, and more than likely a sign of a gigantic malignancy > left unchecked. However, I can't help but point out that at least once in > the past it was responsible for changes we hold dear.

Revolution is supposed to be a last resort. But -- as the article points out -- the mere fact that it's a possibility serves as a balance against an oppressive regime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Service Unavailable.

Google cache link --- [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ODAU_WF...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ODAU_WF0nowJ:davidbrin.blogspot.com/2007/01/brin- classics-jefferson-rifle.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk)

</comment><comment><USER6> Are there any start ups currently looking into disrupting the NRA?</comment>


Apple: 35 years and still a startup - <AUTHOR> http://vallettaventures.tumblr.com/post/13511424526/apple-35-years-and-still-a-startup

<comment><USER2> This whole "fad" to call 100 million dollar let alone billion + dollar companies start ups is pure reality distortion.

Not to mention the title is link bait.</comment>


Slackware merging PAM (pluggable authentication modules) at last - <AUTHOR> http://www.slackware.com/changelog/current.php?cpu=x86_64 <comment><USER2> Interesting. Does anybody know why Slackware hadn't used pam before (apart from general dislike of bloat)? I mean being RedHat's first original contribution to Unix AFAIK it's rather old at this point, and even RedHat now focus on enterprise cloud (open shift, cri-o, podman, buildah, etc) where supposedly "container" auth based on OIDC and authz is preferred (but not sure actually since they also advertise sssd to route pam requests to hosts).</comment>


Case Studies in Freemium: Pandora, Dropbox, Evernote, Automattic and MailChimp - functional-tree http://gigaom.com/2010/03/26/case-studies-in-freemium-pandora-dropbox-evernote-automattic-and-mailchimp/ <comment><AUTHOR> I didn't understand this quote in the first line: _only charge for things that are hard to do_

I've found this to be absolutely untrue. Don't let implementation difficulty factor in the decision whether to charge for a feature or not. The only exception to this is when choosing not to do something altogether because it's too hard.

On Obsidian Portal, we charge for some of the simplest things (like the ability to send e-mail notifications of changes), while giving away some of the hardest things for free. In my opinion, it's about providing a useful product for free, while constantly presenting a premium product that would be more useful. The decision about what to charge for should only be made in terms of how useful it is to your users, not how hard/easy it is for you to do.

<comment><USER2> "The decision about what to charge for should only be made in terms of how useful it is to your users, not how hard/easy it is for you to do."

This was a lesson it took me a bit of time to learn. As a contractor/consultant I needed to figure out what to bill. I started out thinking in terms of how hard something was; if I had to bust my ass, then I was going to charge for it, and if something is easy, how can I justify a high rate?

Which, as it happens, is idiotic.

The real metric is, How much value am I providing?

Realistically there are some constraints, such as what are competitors charging (a concern if you don't want to chase potential customers away), but personal effort is not a main factor.

There's a belief that hard work should be rewarded, but that just encourages people to work hard regardless of the end value of their efforts. _Valuable_ work should be rewarded. If you can do it with out breaking a sweat, more power to you.

You're kind of screwed if you go about thinking that because you worked hard on something that people will ultimately find it valuable and reward you. That only happens in some politician's stump speech fantasy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Here's my problem with Freemium.

There is the mindset that you'll win the lottery, get bought out, and become rich. It's all about users, not revenue. It becomes a lottery, where a few get very wealthy, and the rest make nothing. That's not Freemium, of course, that's "free", as in twitter, facebook, etc.. However, to me, Freemium is almost as bad a bet.

With Freemium, I end up burning so many resources with scaling issues, trying to service all of these non-payers, hoping I'll "win the lottery", by getting enough actual payers to finance things. The examples they gave were good cases in point of services that struggled under the load of the non-payers for a few years.

I would like to just charge from the get-go, and avoid the scaling issues that freemium implies.

<comment><USER4> I think there's a fine line between freemium success and profitable failure.

If you give away too much, there's no incentive for users to pay for upgrades.

If you don't offer some sort of free account, it can be hard to get traction.

In the case of dropbox, it seems a lot of users are content with 2GB for free.

What would happen if they dropped that to 256MB. Would they get more conversions? Or would users simply move to a 2GB freemium competitor?

Hard to know what's best.

<comment><USER5> I wonder what would happen if they offered a 10-15 GB option at half the price of the 50GB option. I know a few dropbox users who keep hitting the 2GB limit, but don't want to upgrade because they think 50GB is more than they need and they'd feel like they're paying for something they're not using.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> All I read from these case studies is that unless your product is targeted at the masses, you should avoid Freemium. 0.5% ratio of premium users is simply too low.

<comment><USER7> A ratio for 'freemium' as a whole isn't really all that informative and you shouldn't make any decision based on it. I think you can expect completely different results depending on your specific case. 30% & 0.03% are both possible in different circumstances.

Also, since the definition of 'user' is pretty loose, you can't really use these numbers to make any assumptions about the cost of serving them. If a free user stops using a service, he doesn't cancel his subscription. A paid user does. Freemium users are also hard to distinguish from trial users since the two are often amalgamated.</comment></comment>


Both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica Threatened to Sue Journalists - <AUTHOR> https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180318/00111439443/both-facebook-cambridge-analytica-threatened-to-sue-journalists-over-stories-cas-use-facebook-data.shtml <comment><USER3> Not sure why people are so hung up on the "breach" vs "not a breach" debate. The issue is this: taking a random personality quiz online is old news. We've been doing these since the 90s. The _problem_ is that when you log in with FB, your real name, and all of your metadata is attached to that quiz.

It's not just "IP 12.342.32.1 is chaotic neutral" but "'Bob Smith, with a degree in X from Y, that likes A, B, and C and is newlywed' is chaotic neutral." The issue isn't really the quiz (and it's not even CA tbh), it's Facebook giving out real names, real pictures, etc. every time you "Log in with Facebook" on any random website or app.

<comment><USER4> But this is how these sorts of OAuth schemes have always worked. It's always been explicit, too. You grant these apps access to this information. What exactly is the issue here? That this time it was used in a way people don't like? There's a reasonable debate to be had about how to deal with all this data, but to blame Facebook as if they made some error or leaked some data in an unauthorized way, or did _anything that we didn 't all know was possible this whole time_ is just totally disingenuous on the part of journalists and regulators.

<comment><USER3> Yeah I agree. There's a price for the convenience of one-button logins, and we're paying it right now.

<comment><USER5> Well, fwiw, these quizzes weren't even on a separate website where you need to login using OAuth, but they were part of Facebook's "apps" ecosystem. And they were popular, so everyone was doing it, however harmful (and as has been said, even if you're not doing it, if your friend is doing it, the app can also see your information as your friend's connection). Add to that the tragic permission scheme where Facebook does say "This app can see this information..." without offering an option to allow/deny sharing of some things (I think they've changed it so you can give granular permissions).

Granular permissions are also a pain point for me on Android phones. They were possible with apps on BlackBerry phones in the late 200x's, but on Androids before version 5 or 6? No, it's either give the app permission for all of requested functionality, or don't install it...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Sincere question: this article in the last paragraph says "Facebook threatening defamation against the Guardian for calling this a data breach is ludicrous and Facebook should be ashamed and apologize"

\-- does this conclusion hinge on the fact that Facebook should have realized earlier that the app is harvesting data? If the creator of the app said that he is doing it for academic purposes only then how should have Facebook known? Not trying to defend Facebook, but calling this a breach is at least a little bit gray area, no?

EDIT: concise wording

<comment><USER7> How would that not be a breach? Their system allowed a malicious entity acting in bad faith to gain large amounts of data under false pretenses. If they got the data by pretending to be an employee and social engineering their way into the data that way facebook would 100% call that a breach. Is this that different?

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's so clear. Two things happened:

(a) Users were duped into giving up their data under a false pretense. This alone cannot be called a breach.

Also, one of the following occurred:

(b.1) Facebook was duped into letting a fraudster install an app on their platform. If this happened, it was a breach.

or

(b.2) Facebook knew all along that the academic research was only a cover for duping users into giving up their data. If this happened then it was not a breach, because Facebook themselves effectively sold the data.

So what Facebook appears to be saying is: There was no breach. We sold the data!

[Edit] Judging by what this man says, it was probably b.2: [https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook- data-c...](https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/20/facebook-data- cambridge-analytica-sandy-parakilas)

My conclusion is that there was no breach.

<comment><USER9> A small point, but one that FB uses in its defense: it does not charge for API usage

<comment><USER8> Because they know that apps make money through Facebook ads and they do charge for those. If Facebook knew about the true purpose of this sort of app, then they also knew that they were going to make a lot of money off of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is a really weak-sauce dictatorship, come on! In a real autocracy, Facebook would simply suspend all involved journalists' and editors' Facebook accounts for 6 hours with a message that Big Brother is watching and the suspensions will be formalized if they don't drop their story.

Any editors or journalists that don't cooperate should have their Facebook, Whatsapp, or any other service suspended. (If any other service starts gaining network effects, Facebook can just buy it when it has < 100k users - this is how a monopoly works under network effect)

Anyway Mark Zuckerberg, my message to you is if you want to be remembered as one of the worst autocrats who ever lived, you are really going to have to step up the retaliation. Maybe introduce targeted executions of journalists?

Just some thoughts.

</comment><comment><USER11> This is fun to watch. The most evil company I can think of is being exposed for its core purpose. Are people going to realize what a monster Facebook is?

<comment><USER12> > The most evil company I can think of is being exposed for its core purpose.

• Nestle

• Every cigarette maker

• Gun companies

• Mosanto

• Pharma companies who charge astronomical prices

• Private prison companies

<comment><USER13> I downvoted you due to the doublethink of providing an out for good pharma companies to exist, while calling all firearms companies evil. I can see having a problem with IMI or other state funded companies that are a part of a Nation's greater military industrial complex, but on what grounds do you consider Glock or Remington evil?

<comment><USER14> A pretty obvious distinction is that pharma companies make tools for saving lives, while consumer gun companies make tools for taking lives.

(And yes, I'm aware of the theory that consumer guns are for taking lives in self defense. But in 2012, there were 33,563 gun deaths in the US, only 259 of which were justifiable homicides, so it's at least reasonable to think think that whatever the intent of gun companies, it's not working out like one might hope.)

<comment><USER15> The main reason for the second amendment is deterring authoritarianism. It works, regardless of force proportion. Occupying Afghanistan was a pain that was ultimately not worthwhile for anyone who tried it.

Regarding self-defense, there is also a benefit in deterrence - look at relative crime rates in the most heavily armed per-capita states.

<comment><USER16> > The main reason for the second amendment is deterring authoritarianism. It > works, regardless of force proportion.

No. It's delusion. In doubt, feds will fuck you over and shoot your corpse when they're done. There is no such thing as stopping the police, short of welding yourself shut in a tank, but you're bound to run out of gas, air or food/water. Or being blown up with an RPG, if you do enough damage.

The only thing that works as a deterrence to authoritarianism is masses - <USER2> you really need MASSES, as in hundreds of thousands of people, not a couple hundred neckbeards with guns. Hell, G20 Hamburg was in the upper 5-digit range of protesters with a decent amount of experienced and willing rioters and it got royally screwed. I don't nearly see any protest coming near that range of numbers soon... except, maybe and hopefully, if Trump decides to be a totally ignorant idiot and fires Mueller.

<comment><USER17> The case for deterring authoritarianism is not G20 protests, it's

(a) groups like Deacons for Defence ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice)) where the presence of weapons serves as a deterrence, or if you want to turn to more grim times, (b) events like Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Ghetto_Uprising)) where the concentration of weapons counts for forcing an oppressor to suffer casualties instead of just rolling over the unarmed opposition. That is what the quote you are responding to alludes to.

Finally, weapons also serve as deterrent for the out-of-control forces, e.g. (c) 1992 Los Angeles Riots ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_riots)) when the government is not acting directly or indirectly against a group but is simply not acting at all during critical time

All of these has happened before, and all of these will happen again, during our lifetime.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Anyone else thinking these are very similar behaviors coming from Facebook execs and the White House?

Threaten lawsuits, fire/demote people that don't agree with you, etc.

<comment><USER19> You left out "espouse noble ideals" \- "connecting people" or "making America great again." It's behind these public "facades" that the litigating into submission and threatening into silence is done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There needs to be serious discussion in society and the legal community, about the deliberate "weaponization" of legal actions. Where the purpose is not to pursue a legitimate and balanced complaint, but rather to cow another party into compliance/cooperation by threat to destroy them through legal actions rather than the outcome of a legal process.

The threat of forcing the other person to spend themselves into bankruptcy, for example.

Standards need to be defined and enforced, where such activity is grounds for punishment up to and including disbarment.

To the extent such already exists, it is clearly proving insufficient.

Law should be about justice, first. Not just another field of unfettered warfare.

Also, to that end, sealed records and confidentiality should be more severely constrained. The judicial system is a public system; everyone should be able to see what you're up to in it, for better and for worse.

Protecting clearly threatened victims, sure. Defined legitimate, critical secrets, for defined limited periods of time, ok (real national security, trade secrets). Beyond that, not so much. Not at all, maybe.

</comment><comment><USER21> Ongoing discussion at: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626318](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16626318)

<comment><USER22> The NYTimes article you link to doesn't contain the word "threat". This piece appears to contain a new bit of information about the ethically challenged behavior of FB and CA. It deserves a separate conversation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> One thing I don't understand, at one hand you are supposed to keep digital data for X amount of years ( I think 7), and on the other hand the company cannot make use of it, why would it be sitting on servers, might as well make use of it.

</comment><comment><USER24> so, this is effectively two solid admissions of guilt, in hand. why bother suing journalists if there isn't a truth that you don't want to get out?

needless to say the idea that they want to suppress journalists is egregiously illiberal and warrants our unanimous excoriation of these businesses.

zuck's silence (terror? or destroying more evidence, as they have already done?) is very telling. if we organize, the bell will toll for facebook. it is long overdue.

as a bonus, zuck's presidential run is ruined, hopefully.

<comment><USER25> > why bother suing journalists if there isn't a truth that you don't want to > get out?

Defamation, per TFA.

<comment><USER26> Defamation/libel is interesting; since only the already wealthy can afford it, more often than not a defamation lawsuit is a sign that someone is trying to suppress true facts.

There have been several high profile cases when politicians sued for libel, won, the facts were established as true, and the politician jailed for perjuring themselves during the trial.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1424501.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1424501.stm)

[https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/jun/08/uk](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/jun/08/uk)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow- west-12059037](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-12059037) (but see [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow- west-17909946](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-17909946) )

<comment><USER27> Since truth is an absolute defense to libel, defamation lawsuits are a particularly poor method to suppress provably true facts.

<comment><USER26> No, they're extremely effective in the "SLAPP" sense, because you have to be able to prove the truth in court against perjuring witnesses, and you have to be able to _pay_ for it.

To take a justified example where a ""journalist"" really did defame someone: [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/katie- hopkin...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/katie-hopkins- libel-case-appeal-lose-jack-monroe-food-blogger-daily-mail-sun-a8155661.html)

"This includes £24,000 in damages to Monroe and £107,000 to her lawyers to cover court costs." Hopkins is now selling her house to cover costs.

Most people fold immediately when threatened with a convincing libel suit, because apologising (even for the truth) is a lot cheaper than a settlement which is in turn a lot cheaper than losing your house.

Another high profile example of effectively suppressing true facts: Trafigura [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/s...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2009/sep/17/trafigura- libel-laws)

Note that a litigant doesn't necessarily have to suppress facts _forever_ , a few years while the case proceeds is often enough to turn the original issue into a historical curiosity.

<comment><USER28> That's because libel/slander law is very broken in the UK (in my opinion -- not to libel the UK!).

When you look to silence someone, you venue shop for the best place to silence them. The UK is a decent place to stop them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Information and data are good as long as the right people have access to it.

</comment><comment><USER30> delete your facebook account. It feels sooooo good!

<comment><USER30> Downvote the above hard to confront your withrdawal symptoms then make your posts with your contact details announcing you are going to leave facebook, a few reminders then do it.

Life is better without them. They really haven't got you, you can break free just by deciding to do it.

(Apologies for mentioning up/down voting)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> might be time for Zuckerberg to consider resigning. house of cards is falling.

<comment><USER32> This will blow over, Facebook is far too entrenched and without serious competition. Some people will use Facebook less and replace it with Whatsapp and Instagram, but Zuckerberg has that base covered

<comment><USER33> Facebook is entrenched because the culture allows it, but I sense a major kumbaya moment for Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millenials that could upend this culture. Finally, the younger generations can see in practice why many of their elders were intuitively resistant to social media.

<comment><USER34> > younger generations can see in practice why many of their elders were > intuitively resistant to social media.

The idea that "their elders" were "intuitively resistant" because they understood the decade-later implication of algorithmic user profiling being weaponized to undermine public thought and democracy is.... generous.

They didn't understand computers or why anyone would give a shit about seeing your lunch. Both fair. But let's not repaint them as wise prophets of some future data apocalypse.

The real kumbaya moment you're talking about is both self-deprecating and metacognitive: "I am not so much an individual as one of fewer-than- you'd-think archetypes, and my beliefs about the world are malleable based on cute pictures placed in front of me for pennies. I should take time out of every day of my life and spend it working to double check that the things i think are true, and the people I hate are the thing I think they are. Whole organizations of much smarter people than I will abuse me at every chance they get to take as much money from me as they possibly can. Most things that feel good on the internet are designed to turn me, somehow, into money."

This is a painful, stark realization that lots of people never get to. Whole industries rely on people never coming to the realization that all of us are "basic bitches" and not anomalously unique or intelligent.

I'd love to believe you that there is a multi-generational awakening to the idea that people are herdable animals, but don't bet the farm.

<comment><USER35> > The idea that "their elders" were "intuitively resistant" because they > understood the decade-later implication of algorithmic user profiling being > weaponized to undermine public thought and democracy is.... generous.

Intuition doesn't require explicit understanding. Many of my elders certainly had the instinctive sense that we're oversharing and that it will, somehow or another, bite us in the behind. And many of my peers assumed they were paranoid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The next step is for Facebook to go after individual dissenters, and train their AI to do so.</comment>


Show HN: Shipharbor – a tiny router, that runs in browsers and in Node.js - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/herber/shipharbor <comment><USER2> I'm sorry, why would you want a network device that runs Node.js?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not a network router, but rather an http-router. It routes uri's like `/home` or `/user/username`.</comment></comment>


Linux users contribute twice as much as Windows users - <AUTHOR> http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/05/Linux-users-contribute-twice-as-much-as-Windows-users

<comment><USER2> Hope someone in the game industry sees this and realises that linux gamers are a viable demographic. Not many companies apart from id have released AAA linux titles offlate. Initial efforts to create linux gaming companies (like Loki games) shut down and I am afraid the wrong lessons were learned - that linux gamers wont pay for games. Hope this post changes some of that, at least for indie developers.

<comment><USER3> I don't know, what I see is that you can make over twice as much on a Windows platform. Even if the users won't pay as much, there are still so many that it more than makes up for it. Distribution costs are low if you distribute online so the total revenue is the main factor (as opposed to per unit price). I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly substantial as well, not to mention the additional support costs.

Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).

<comment><USER4> What I see is you ignoring a significant chunk of the market, and entering a market with more competition, and more fierce competition to boot, from bigger dev houses. If anything it makes more sense to go for Mac + Linux instead of Windows (for indie devs anyway), and in that case since you've written things in a cross-platform manner you can ship for Windows anyway and win even bigger.

> I imagine the development costs to port a title to Linux are fairly > substantial as well

If you target OpenGL instead of a proprietary MS platform then there is no porting (or little porting). Existing games don't have the luxury of choice, but new ones do.

(I have ignored things like differing sound APIs, but not a huge upfront cost if you simply intend to be cross-platform from day #1)

> Besides, I doubt Linux users would be happy about paying $100+ for a game if > translated to normal game prices ($50-$60 or so).

Well yeah, if you just jack up the price on the Linux game and leave the rest at $50-60 of course they won't be happy. The point is that people say Linux users won't pay for software, and that's clearly false.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If you look at the top contributors in the stats area (<http://www.wolfire.com/humble#statistics>), there's a guy that contributed $FF under the name 'unsigned char'. Brilliant.

</comment><comment><USER6> Why windows user might be paying less: 1\. They have loads of choices for cheap games compared to the other platforms and hence are used to paying less for most games but big titles (Oblivion, street fighter) 2\. They have gotten ripped off often with people promising the best software/game in the world and ended up buying a dud.

Interesting thoughts: 1\. Age distributions: My guess would be that a linux demographic would have a much different age distribution than the windows user. If a 10yo is trying to dl the package he might be susceptible to paying less. 2\. Gender distribution etc.

</comment><comment><USER7> It probably depends on the revenue model. If you charge the same amount for your game on Linux as Windows, then the fact that Linux users donate more cash is meaningless to you.

On top of this, I would bet that they have so many Linux contributors precisely because no-one releases AAA games to Linux, so their sample size is disproportionately represented by Linux users.

<comment><USER8>
       On top of this, I would bet that they have so many Linux
       contributors precisely because no-one releases AAA games
       to Linux, so their sample size is disproportionately
       represented by Linux users.

That's the point tho - if you're an indie developer it might be worth your time to develop a cross platform game even tho not that many people use linux & mac compared to windows (since you care about people who buy your game not people who run that particular OS).

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> My guess on this is Linux users are more grateful when games are made for their platform and want to send market signals to encourage more of this.

</comment><comment><USER10> Interesting to note that since posting donation averages on the front page, each average has increased by 10 to 20 cents. There's probably a dozen psychological studies on this sort of thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> There's the possibility that the average Linux user is a supporter of donating (to open source software, and the like) and so is more likely to contribute to packages such as these.

</comment><comment><USER12> Having written code myself makes me more appreciative of the amount of effort that goes into building good software. Compared to Windows users, more Linux users probably interact with code in one form or another.

</comment><comment><USER13> My guess is that it is simply regression to the mean. There are more Windows contributors than Linux contributors, so their average contribution is likely to be smaller.

</comment><comment><USER14> I paid $5. Why did I pay? Because I approve of their marketing style. Why didn't I pay more, am I a cheapskate bastard? No; I probably won't ever play a one of those games.

Point: There are so many things going on here, it's hard to draw clear conclusions from the numbers we're getting.</comment>


X-Ray Vision for Robots: Seeing Through Walls with Only WiFi - <AUTHOR> http://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~ymostofi/SeeThroughImaging.html

<comment><USER2> I can't see much difference between this and applying the standard CAT scan algorithms to signal strength received through structures. Can anyone tell me why this is particularly special?

I agree it's clever, but I'm not seeing how it's much of a breakthrough.

<comment><USER3> I cannot speak to their specific implementation.... but typically when one looks at classic tomography (eg. CT and MRI), there are tight tolerances or control over the relative pose of the transmitter and receiver. This is required for the deterministic radon transform equations.

For a robot system (especially a dual robot system), you could imagine a lot of pose uncertainty (especially angular). Eg. if using laser rangefinders and AMCL localization, you'd typically find ~10cm and ~5-deg of non-gaussian pose uncertainty indoors. I could imagine this causing complications. I'd be very curious to see some form of probabilistic extensions to tomography (not that they don't exist; I've just not researched the topic).

<comment><USER2> Really useful reply - thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Really cool stuff. I wonder how well this would work with a pair of drones, or even a larger group of coordinated drones so you could "image" a multi-story building very quickly.

Wi-fi radios are pretty small these days. Even relatively small quad copters could probably do this.

</comment><comment><USER5> Looks like the smaller but less accurate version of this: [http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/100395-mit-can-now-see- th...](http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/100395-mit-can-now-see-through- concrete-walls)

</comment><comment><USER6> Am I missing something or is this research a waste of time? Impressive, but why waste time using Wifi when much better results are coming from structured light projector/scanner setups?

<comment><USER5> Light projection doesn't go trough walls...</comment></comment>


How technology could kill the art of lying - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2015/07/08/how-technology-could-kill-the-art-of-lying/ <comment> vezzy-fnord Whatever you lose in the capability to lie for immediate personal merit you gain in the ability to stroke the political and emotional biases of people through distortion and disinformation in self-serving echo chambers that they have no desire to escape from.

The use of statistical learning to create targeted user experiences will only exacerbate this. It works because one generally doesn't read because they like to learn, so much as learn what they like to read.

The web is a formidable vehicle for sowing confusion and ignorance, as much as it is a place to obtain knowledge.

<comment><USER2> People don't want to hear the truth. They want to hear they already know the truth.

<comment><USER3> I often wonder why that is so.

Perhaps there is some real cost to changing your opinion. What is that cost, and how can it be lowered? Or raised, for that matter?

<comment><USER4> Socially: Admitting you were wrong makes you look incompetent. If you were wrong then, why should anyone listen to you now?

Physiologically: Changing ingrained opinions on which many others are formed probably requires a good deal of brain re-wiring and may require solid plasticity. I'm unsure how much of a problem this is for the brain.

I guess there are a lot of other costs, but I can't come up with more.

<comment><USER5> > Admitting you were wrong makes you look incompetent.

It certainly makes you _feel_ like you look incompetent. I wonder how much it makes others judge you as incompetent. Perhaps this issue has been researched? (I'm guessing that it might matter a great deal _how_ one was wrong; there are different ways to be wrong, and different levels of wrongness.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Interesting article. If anyone hasn't read it, James Halperin's Truth Machine (1997) is still one of my favorite books. It is an interesting take on technology which can reliably determine veracity and what could happen if it has a backdoor.

</comment><comment><USER7> Or it would make pre-planned lying easier. "Check my fit bit. And my phone. And my watch. I was lying in my bed, not participating in high-speed autonomous car racing." EDIT: "That traffic camera has my twin"

</comment><comment><USER8> Lies will just take a different form, such as with rhetoric and statistics.

Technology is not the be all, end all solution to universal connectedness, agreement, and consciousness. Technology is a means of communication, it is the stone tablet in an age of oral storytelling.

</comment><comment><USER9> Many people in power lie with impunity all the time, even though there's abundant evidence against those lies. No one seems to care.

Technology could have killed lies long ago. It didn't. Why would it start now?

<comment><USER10> Technology won't kill lying. Despite there are clear and distinct punishments in society for those who murder, people still don't resist their impulses or think they're can out smart the system (some do, some don't).

Technology will never stop those who have retaliatory power from lying. Janitor catches CEO lying about making a specific sales deal go through versus CEO catching janitor lying about when he clocked in. Strong intra-team asymmetries exist.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So the article talks about how technology is making it harder to lie which I think in some ways it's true but in others it's making it easier to bend the truth and sometimes it even makes it easier to lie. For instance many of the folks that are against vaccinations will regularly quote "studies" that are published in "journals" that are all made up to sell someone a book or some natural remedies. Even worse is all of the information out there about GMOs with some of it being good science, some bad and some places where they mix it all up. Of course a normal person who didn't grow up to become a scientist isn't going to be able to separate between all of the good and bad information every time (especially since even scientists themselves can't always separate it if it's in a different field).

I have to wonder if an ultimate goal will end up being similar to Peter F Hamilton's Gia Field idea in his books where it essentially links people together in a way that's not easy to break and it forces you to feel everyone's emotions around you. So if you are trying to lie to someone, hurt them or steal their stuff it's going to be obvious not only to the victim but everyone around you and the perpetrator will feel his victim's emotions. Naturally this is a pretty crazy idea that's probably over 100 years away from being able to happen but still the article kinda reminded me of it.

<comment><USER12> > For instance many of the folks that are against vaccinations will regularly > quote "studies" that are published in "journals" that are all made up to > sell someone a book or some natural remedies.

I think one of the pressing necessities for the future is a way to categorize the "quality of science". This is seriously lacking at the moment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I definitely miss the days in which I could convince people that Walt Disney was frozen in a secret compartment at Disney World without somebody Snopesing me on their iphone.

<comment><USER14> Just explain that Snopes was set up specifically to quash the truth about Walt, all the correct things on the site are there just to lend credibility to their cover-up of Disney's cryogenics.

<comment><USER15> That's .... brilliant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The availability of the truth has had very little impact on what people choose to believe.

"Chemtrails", global warming, evolution, historical events, etc.

</comment><comment><USER17> This article specifically focuses on lying, but it really should be focusing on privacy. At least, that seems the underlying theme to me.

</comment><comment><USER12> I can't wait for this to happen. I cannot stand lying, and it's my belief that a good majority of issues people face in their lives come down to lying or deceit (lying by omission).

How refreshing it would be if everyone was utterly sincere to each other.

<comment><USER18> Judging by those with Aspergers I know, they are as close to that as you'll get.

It leads to dysfunctional behaviors because people don't want to earnestly told that their face is ugly when they first meet someone and every time after that.

Honesty can be brutal.

This also leads to another issue: when the data is centralized like this, those who oversee it can never be held to the level of accountability they hold others to.

<comment><USER12> > people don't want to earnestly told that their face is ugly

This says more about society than honesty. If we collectively quit valuing physical beauty (you know -- something you're born with and can't control), that kind of statement wouldn't be an issue. Say "I'm bad at basketball" and no one cares. Say "I'm unintelligent" and everyone does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _And, of course, your fitness tracker could betray you: If you tell someone you 're heading to the gym, but end up laying around watching bad reality television instead, the data it collects will reflect your laziness -- or, as the Pennsylvania case suggests, perhaps even more serious deceptions._

The whole reason you gave your friends access to your fitness tracker data was so they could help motivate you. That's not a betrayal. Additionally, the Pennsylvania suspect voluntarily gave her username and password to the police, without which they would not have had access to intra-day historical data.

<comment><USER20> While I'm running I often let me brain wander in all sorts of directions to pass the time. One thing I came up with was a detective/murder story where the murderer used their fitness tracking application as an alibi, by convincing someone else to run their regular route and discreetly swapping/attaching their tracker to that person. They then do the murder while the other person creates the alibi unknowingly by running their regular route and creating a digital signature of the running.

The case is solved by a brilliant detective combining with a precociously smart computer guy who downloads the raw data from the gps tracker and determines that while route and speed are typical, the data betrays it was someone else because of the difference in gait, recorded by the accelerometer that was built into the device for an upcoming feature not yet released by the tracking company. This is either proved in a courthouse scene where the accused has to run across the room, or by deception by secretly tagging both the accused and their unsuspecting alibi runner and comparing the data.

Or something like that, anyway.

<comment><USER21> Columbo pretty much did that, with a toll road camera and a face mask.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Reminds me of this post on Medium from a while ago: [https://medium.com/funny- stuff/the-fine-art-of-bullshit-c09f...](https://medium.com/funny-stuff/the- fine-art-of-bullshit-c09f7bbb391e)

</comment><comment><USER23> Without reading the article very carefully, I have to say, lying has arguably become even more prevalent in some areas. Internet communities, even small ones that hold together like a family, are plagued by trolls who would create alternate accounts, turn people against eachother and spread rumours. The most talented of those people can break entire communities apart. I've seen enough of that. No, lying is bound to stay.</comment>


Automatic Database Normalization? - <AUTHOR>

Lately I've been working on projects that were started by someone else and the databases tend to be a mess.  For example, instead of having a separate Members and Organizations table (like for a user participating in politics), the members are repeated over several rows, with the Organization Name field set different on each row.  Then if the member's street address is updated, the SQL UPDATE changes the Address field on all of the rows.
At first glance this seems horrible, and I'm tempted to make a table to store member-organization entries.  But unfortunately there are several hundred queries in the app and this is nontrivial to write, much less exhaustively test.
So it got me thinking, why is this the programmer's responsibly?  Why not just make a database where you can do anything you want, and the contents of each field would be stored once uniquely, with the duplicates represented by pointers or hashes under the hood?  Then run in a mode that guarantees atomic updates over any number of rows.
Then the database could infer relationships by the queries that are executed instead of how the data is organized.  It would generate the relationship graph automagically so the programmer just has to sign off on it.  It could even run in a mode where if the code tries to execute an operation that breaks the graph, a notification could be sent to IT or whatever.
So this isn't really nosql, it's more like unstructured or self-organizing SQL.  Has anyone heard of something like this?  I googled a bit but all I found were these unhelpful links:
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/login.jsp?tp=&arnumber=4564486&url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fxpls%2Fabs_all.jsp%3Farnumber%3D4564486
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4477257/is-there-any-software-that-can-normalize-data-bases-tables
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/07/maybe-normalizing-isnt-normal.html
Thanks! <comment><USER3> Lots of homegrown dbs look like this. They started life as a doc, then a spreadsheet, got sucked into Access, and now are living in SQL Server or Oracle dbs. I have seen this a bunch in research environments where the tech is a "one-off" to support the science. I usually do a little data cleaning and maybe try some data warehouse-style restructuring so that you can report on the existing data.

You might have luck replacing your current table mess with views (with the same name as the tables) while you fix the structure to a more normalized schema. But you might be better starting from scratch and migrating to a new "version" of the app while moving the data along to the new version.

As to your self-organizing data idea, I have wondered if something kind of cool could come out of probabilistic graphical models, but haven't dug into the theory of that (and there is the free cousera course I think) enough to say.

I am going to guess that what is going to get you in trouble with self- organizing data is that contextual relationships in the data that are currently interpreted by your end-users (and are important/critical to the user) will get lost in any algorithmic attempt to clean the data.

You might also want to investigate the social sciences data scene - <USER2> folks do lots of statistical/data hacking on qualitative data that involve weirdness about coding "grey area text answers" into quantitatively tractable code numbers. It looks and sounds like hell to me . . .

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hey thanks for your comments, views sound like the way to go for now.

I can see how to go from normalized data to views, but what if there was a way to go the other direction? So like, the SQL that generated the view could be used in reverse, so when you run an update on the view, it would know which fields to update in the original pure data.

If someone got all of that working, then I really question why database organization matters. I know it's important for seeing relationships and all that, but in reality, data just exists. The relationships are a level above that. I really think that someone could make a database that works more like a zip file, where it wouldn't matter how you laid it out, for the most part it would just look like a spreadsheet and each entity would just have all of the data in one row. This is how "regular" folks view things.

Also this is a bit off topic, but automatic normalization has a lot in common with the semantic web. I just don't think it's all that difficult of a problem, but waiting around for humans to do it manually is never going to happen. I guess I'm just naive but, all the semantic web needs is iteration and the relationships will refine and converge quickly. I don't understand why it's not happening.

</comment><comment><USER4> I read the title of this, and I thought this was going to be asking about automatically creating normalized schemas given the information.

Yes, you can eventually do it yourself, but I only ever have to create database schemas once every 6 months or so. If I could plug in the information using some higher level language, and it can crunch out the tables for me, then that would be pretty cool. I know enough about databases to check to see if the schema is right, or compare it to my constraints.

Or in the OP's case, this system would take the existing tables, and give you some sort of migration scripts to get the data in normalized form.

</comment><comment><USER5> _and I'm tempted to make a table to store member-organization entries. But unfortunately there are several hundred queries in the app and this is nontrivial to write, much less exhaustively test_

It is possible to normalize the database and still present the denormalized form to the app using MySQL views (I'm assuming MySQL here). You have your member table, organization table, and a member_organizaion join table with all your foreign key constraints, and you create a view as a select join.</comment>


Show HN: What's My Aircraft? - <AUTHOR> https://whatsmyaircraft.com/ <comment><USER2> This is kind of cool but there are other good tools for it, as commenters mentioned. (Seatguru, FlightAware.) I think the missing feature there is simplicity and "so what?" Tell me why my a321neo is so cool, how to tell it apart from other planes when I see it on the tarmac, when it was designed, how many are out there, which airlines operate lots of them. Others will beat you on feature richness, but I just want an app I can use to teach my kids about planes, and geek out on them myself.

<comment><USER3> Isn't this just a tool to know if you were going to be on a 737 Max?

<comment><USER4> Not since it's been effectively grounded worldwide

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is great. An idea: make the aircraft names link to corresponding wikipedia pages or other sources of info on the specific planes.

<comment><AUTHOR> That'd be awesome. BTW, some flight tracking services do show detailed information about the airplane, like service time (age), etc... I might give it a try

<comment><USER6> If you know the flight number and name of airline and aircraft make -- do you also get the Aircraft (ID?) -- such that you can see ALL the routes . this plane has flown over the last N period and know how many flight hours and miles it has under its belt for some period?

You could then calc the downtime that the planes get for maint/cleaning/etc...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Nice! Found one small issue: I can't search for a flight number with less than three digits. Example: [https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH1](https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH1)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you for reporting this. I didn't know there were Flight # that short!

I'll fix it.

<comment><USER8> When talking of short flight numbers, Speedbird 9 is what jumped to mind ... at least for me.

> Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small > problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get > them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress.

British Airways Flight 9, from London Heathrow to Auckland, 24 June 1982.

<comment><USER9> That is one of the most engrossing Wikipedia entries I've read; thank you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Virgin Australia is not on the list, i assume they dont make that info available?

I dont really know flight numbers off the top of my head[1], it might be helpful to add a top 10 searches or pick of the day type feature. Some way to see something without knowing specific information.

[1] i can't be bothered to google flight numbers, but i will spend 10x the time writing this comment.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for letting me know. I'll add it to the list.

Yes, the app is only useful when you have the flight number at hand.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Certified commercial pilot speaking here and I assume this comes out of the 737-MAX issue.

Obviously, you're ridiculously safe on any given airplane. Even as someone in the industry I can't believe the safety numbers myself at times.

<comment><USER11> All you need to think about is how many flights were flown around our planet last night alone.

Around 100,000.

You'll be ok.

<comment><USER12> Roughly 300 737max. Roughly a year in operation. Roughly 100.000 airplane days. Two accidents. The 737max has a safety record that is equal to two accidents per day in global air traffic. Or 700 crashes per year. With roughly 150 seat filled roughly a 100000 dead per year. There is a reason she is grounded and people are concerned.

<comment><USER13> Not saying it's the case here but randomness is clumpy not uniform.

Also new models unfortunately sometimes have problems. They'll get it sorted out.

<comment><USER14> I suppose flying a recently introduced plane is a bit like being operated on by a young and inexperienced surgeon. Someone's got to do it or else the plane will never get a billion hours of service history / the surgeon will never be 45 years old with 15 years plus of experience and steady hands and sharp eyes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> It's good to know that you pick up different aircraft types for the same flight on different days in the recent past or the near future. For certain flights, they might usually be on an Airbus A-320, but sometimes they might be on a Boeing 737-800 or 737-900.

However, I'd like to see the option of choosing a date or date range, if that was possible. I might want to go back further than just one or two weeks, for example.

<comment><USER13> They might also change with very short notice, I would think? In case of a delayed inbound flight, or mechanical problems with the scheduled aircraft that require substituting a different plane.

<comment><USER16> Short notice type changes are rare - as well as needing different pilots, the seating layout is different (requiring a re-issue of all boarding passes), and cargo restrictions and capacity is different so all the cargo would need reassigning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Nice. This is certainly handier than trying to catch a glimpse of the tail number before boarding and then navigate the FAA's registry website on my phone. I suspect many people don't even know the significance of that big number starting with N on the tails of most aircraft. However, I'd wager that most people boarding a plane know their flight number and the name of their carrier.

<comment><USER18> > I suspect many people don't even know the significance of that big number > starting with N on the tails of most aircraft

'November' is US-Centric.

<comment><USER19> Even the assumption that it's a letter followed by numbers is US-centric... for most European countries at least, the tail 'number' is actually all letters; and there are many countries whose identifying prefixes contain a number.

<comment><USER20> And usually they aren't on the tail!

'Registration' is more accurate and is understood globally.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is really cool! It'd be nice to be able to maintain a logbook of the different aircraft I've flown on, maybe grabbing the tail numbers of the planes as well if possible?

On top of that, some airlines like Qantas name their planes (e.g. you'll have an A330 named Cradle Mountain). I'm not sure that the mappings are publicly available but maybe it can be crowdsourced.

<comment><USER22> Check out flightmemory.com. It isn't automated, but it does have a thriving community around saving and analyzing the information you mentioned.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I like it.

Yes, other sites have been providing this, but I think this stands a chance of ranking well in the future when people search for what their aircraft is, and with good reason: it does that one thing without distraction. Especially on tiny phone screens, minimalism is a huge feature. Bonus points for reacting quickly to a media hype.

</comment><comment><USER24> Why not allow a hash location to be passed, and update it when you do a search?

E.G. [https://whatsmyaircraft.com/#UAL123](https://whatsmyaircraft.com/#UAL123) \-- would immediately load the data for UAL123.

<comment><USER25> I think you need the date of the flight as well?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> seatguru.com has provided this for a while, with seat-level detail

<comment><USER27> Your point? Sometimes people just want to build things.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Why is there a need to pick an airline? Fight numbers, that I know of, are unique.

<comment><USER29> They're not. DL (Delta) has a 2180 as does WN (Southwest).

 _Tail numbers_ are unique; _flight_ numbers are not.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I think they meant "flight number including two-letter prefix". But even those get reused from week to week (even day to day?) so might be different models.

<comment><USER28> Yes, that is what I meant. For example, EK202 is unique to Emirates. Even if they change the airplane, the flight number remains constant.

<comment><USER30> EK202 is just short hand for Emirates flight 202. EK is the IATA code for the airline, and 202 is the flight number.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Interesting the flight number I'm on next week is wrong. I guess you need a way to change the date.

United.com says UA 2190 is a Boeing 737-900.

Right now UA 2190 is from Chicago to Palm Springs.

Next week it's from Houston to San Antonio.

<comment><AUTHOR> This could be the case where the airline reuses the same flight number for different routes. AFAIK Southwest does this a lot.

The schedule you see is originally created by the airlines with some days in advance

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hi Eddie - well done putting this together, it works really smoothly. I'm going to assume this is a fun project just for learning or to show off your skills, rather than something you're hoping to grow up to serious scale or even monetize. The reason I say that is, speaking as a frequent flyer, this is not something I would categorize under the YC mantra of 'build something people need'. True, the choice of aircraft is important to me, but Google Flights tells me that information when I'm searching for tickets, before I've even booked. It's true, as someone else noted below, that sometimes the same airline/flight number on different days will be flown with different equipment. And speaking as someone with a strong preference for Airbus over Boeing that matters when an airline like Cathay Pacific (one of the airlines you're missing, btw) will fly a B777 one day and an A350 on another day between Hong Kong and Melbourne (for example). If it's a holiday, where the exact day doesn't matter, then yes I am one of those people who might pick a different date because I prefer that kind of aircraft.

But even if Google didn't tell me that immediately before booking, I wouldn't be able to get it from FlightAware data (via your site or otherwise) because airlines don't seem to post it there more than a few days in advance. And besides, since I'm a plane geek I tend to look stuff up directly on FlightAware or FlightRadar24 all the time (I live right under the final approach to a very busy airport so I often go there just to see where the planes over my head have come from!), so I'm not sure what value you're adding by giving a tiny subset of the data that is available there for free anyway.

But still, as I said, I think it's great work if this is just for learning or demo purposes, well done. If you wanted to provide a bit of a usability improvement, I would second one of the comments below that suggests you shouldn't need to ask for the name of the airline if people supply the full flight number, i.e. with the letter prefix. That's the format that people will have on their tickets/booking emails etc, and it's actually a tiny cognitive load to mentally convert "OS264" into "Austrian Airlines" dropdown followed by "264" without the prefix; the clever part, for you of course, would be to convert the airline prefixes as used in ticketing and airport displays (OS, LH etc) to those that are used in the routing data (OS->AUA, LH->DLH etc).

Now if you could make an app that tells me exactly where to find free water refills at any airport after going through security, then I'd be happy :-)

<comment><USER30> As a frequent flyer, I appreciate the tool because it's surprisingly hard to tell exactly which model is being flown. Google will tell you it's a 737, but not which variant of 737. Many airlines don't break it down either. And

I have ExpertFlyer for that, but that's a paid subscription. Or I could fiddle with FlightAware's crappy UI. But having a neat tool that tells me immediately is cool.

As for why I care? Different planes often have different seats and in business class it can make a world of difference. Fly United's 777-300ER with the Polaris seats, or 777-200 with the "coffin seats" and you'll get a sense for why knowing the `-300ER` suffix makes a huge difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Nice site, really useful. I'd love if you were able to directly input smaller numbers e.g Emirates 88 instead of having to input Emirates 088.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now accepting Flight # of length > 1

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm currently at the airport waiting for my flight. Unfortunately Air Asia is not in the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just added AXM to the list.

<comment><USER33> Great!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> 1978 Grumman Tiger

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm not flying soon so I don't have a flight number to put in. I wish I could see your app! Maybe you could show a feed of random flights or the longest flights of the day or something like that that I can click on.

<comment><USER36> Just guess one! [Airline]1 is usually a flight. Is it usually the 'flagship' flight I wonder? I know Qantas is Sydney - London (and QF2 is the return).

<comment><USER37> try Qantas 001 or 002

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> There are only a handful of airlines on here. Where are the rest?

<comment><AUTHOR> I just found this large dataset [1] of airlines on github. It contains more than 6k records, with their ICAO and IATA codes.

[1] - [https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/blob/master/data/air...](https://github.com/jpatokal/openflights/blob/master/data/airlines.dat)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Minor point but I'm seeing a lot of rectangles in a few places where presumably I don't have the right font to display the icon.

</comment><comment><USER40> Cool idea. FYI I couldn't find jetblue in the list.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. I've added JetBlue Air (JBU) to the list.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Pretty cool. Where do you get the data?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, Thanks!

Data is coming from the FlightAware API.

<comment><USER42> I feed ADSB data I collect with an antenna sticking out the attic window to FlightAware and a handful of others. Not sure why I do that, maybe the attic is an escape from my ol' lady, but I'm glad to learn it's going toward a good cause!

Speaking of grounding the 737 MAX, I should probably ground that antenna...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> which API you are using?

<comment><AUTHOR> The Flightaware API.

I tried other services, including: \- [https://aviation-edge.com/premium- api/](https://aviation-edge.com/premium-api/) \- [https://developer.flightstats.com/](https://developer.flightstats.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> seatguru.com

</comment><comment><USER45> This is great to avoid all flights with Boeing 737 MAX.

<comment><USER17> Since the 737 MAX has been grounded, I don't think that needs to be a consideration.

<comment><USER6> ...today...

but in the future.

<comment><USER46> In the future, the 737 MAX will only permitted to resume passenger flights once the safety issue on the plane has been fixed.

The 737 MAX is still likely to become one of the most common planes in the world for many years to come, as it's predecessors in the 737 line have been. If you are planning to permanently refuse to fly on the 737 MAX because of this incident, you may wish to be aware of the safety records of... well, every other plane:

Older 737s, well, the predecessors of the 737 MAX have had their share of losses: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Boeing_737#737_Next_Generation_\(737-600/-700/-800/-900\)_aircraft) (Scroll up from there to see how many losses took place on even older models as well.)

And if you're thinking Airbus is going to be your savior here, there's a pretty solid list here too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incident...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_accidents_and_incidents_involving_the_Airbus_A320_family) (Yes, it's much shorter, but the A320 series is a twenty year newer line.)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Export $LD_LIBRARY_PATH  - <AUTHOR>

what's better than export $LD_LIBRARY_PATH for including library on path in linux?? <comment><USER2> Check out ld.so.conf or ld -rpath.</comment>


Linux/Clang/Modern C++ on Travis-CI - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jbcoe/Travis-CI-cpp14-clang-on-Linux <comment><USER2> The about section starts with the premise "Travis uses Ubuntu 12.04 which has old C++ headers". You can set `dist: trusty` in the `.travis.yml` file to get Ubuntu 14, isn't that half the solution?</comment>