4800 Aussie sites evaporate after hack  - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/technology/security/4800-aussie-sites-evaporate-after-hack-20110621-1gd1h.html

<comment><USER3> What I find completely amazing is that business's don't have adequate backups of their websites and information and are not able to move to another hosting provider and get set back up.

I have multiple copies of my own personal websites in all kinds of different locations, stored both at home, as well as on remote servers, and backed up within the cloud.

Any eCommerce company needs to realise that their livelihood is at stake and that if they can't get back online within a day then maybe they are in the wrong business.

<comment> dorian-graph Unfortunately many if not most basic businesses who start operating online just hire 'some guy' who uses the bare minimum tools like Dreamweaver, templates and common CMSes, to throw together something like what the client wants/needs and then abandons them and moves on to their next victim.

He never tells them about correct backup handling or much else, really.

<comment><USER4> Yep, spot on. That, or they learn how to get a basic ZenCart or OSCommerce install running themselves.

I agree that if you don't know how to get your business back online within a day or so, that you don't deserve to be running a business and that you've taken that risk on by trying to cut costs/corners elsewhere. Still, my idealising doesn't stop people from doing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Customers hit the Whirlpool forums to complain that Distribute.IT had not adequately responded with information about the break-in and that the hack 'has probably killed my business'."

I'm sorry for people when their web sites are disrupted. I am astonished when it 'kills their business.' One would think that in this day and age one would 'restore from the last backup' and move on.

So is there a web opportunity to add a value "over" AWS/S3 which is the equivalent of managing a strip mall property in the real world?

<comment><USER4> > I'm sorry for people when their web sites are disrupted. I am astonished > when it 'kills their business.' One would think that in this day and age one > would 'restore from the last backup' and move on.

Having worked for a hosting company in Australia, I can say that most of the customers who suffer these problems are 1) small business owners and 2) not tech savvy.

Most of their sites are pre-packaged e-commerce solutions, and the idea of doing a weekly DB dump + /www tar is just beyond them. They would probably be better off with something like Shopify, but many of them also want local support & like the idea of "DIY". Unfortunately for them, doing it yourself means you're handling all the risks.

<comment><USER5> Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are just front ends for the underlying cloud services?

<comment><USER4> > Cool, thanks for the direct perspective. So it does sound like there is > perhaps some space for s service which a company could provide which looked > to the shop owner as a 'DIY' service but was implemented as setting up > various values in standard templates on the back end? Sort of like 'App > Engine' for small business where you "design" it but the modules you use are > just front ends for the underlying cloud services?

I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't. The sites often look horrible, have no way to track stats (conversions), etc.

What would be better is it if the hosted e-commerce players really pushed to market to these people who think DIY'ing is the better way.

<comment><USER5> "I still think many people "DIY'ing" shouldn't."

Chuckle. Agreed 100% however folks want to be independent, even when they aren't as good at it as they might think they are. From the psychology perspective if you can make a system that "feels" DIY but really isn't so DIY that the final product looks DIY, that is the value proposition in this market. You sell people the notion they can "do it themselves, no need for techno-nerds telling you how you're doing it wrong!" and then you give them a design system on rails for which the 'exit' points are all decent web sites.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As an ex-developer of a company who had servers co-located with them, I'm feeling mighty smug about using our own backup system instead of their in- house one.

As mentioned earlier, bandwidth in Australia is prohibitively expensive so the choice wasn't as simple as "use both".

</comment><comment><USER7> Just as a point of contrast between what I would consider minimum best practices, and what they were doing:

We not only back up all of our hosted websites every day, on behalf of our clients, _and_ make those backups available to our clients going back 120 days so that they can restore any files they accidentally lose on their own, but we also back up all mail accounts every hour and can restore individual mail messages if necessary. All of the backups are stored in a private location separate from all of our servers, which are scattered across the country.

To have 4000 customers and not have even a whiff of that kind of architecture is, to me, completely and totally inexcusable.

<comment><USER8> I don't think it's accurate to say they didn't have a whiff of this architecture. The hackers accessed and deleted their backups. If your employees can do this then you're vulnerable.

<comment><USER9> Having backups that are accessible if you get hacked doesn't really cut it. I'm guessing there wasn't a huge amount of data involved here, and if there was a set of tapes in a safe somewhere a lot of people would be much happier right now.

Maybe this isn't viable for budget hosting. But even the host's website is unavailable, obviously that is critical for their business and it appears it itself wasn't securely backed up. And this is hardly a totally unexpected scenario, it should have come up pretty quickly in a "what could go wrong" stage of their backup planning.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I agree completely. What they had wasn't adequate and the proof is the outcome.

All I'm saying is that from the outside it's easy to take a fairly simple view and propose a technical solution. This looks like a very malicious attack designed to take down the business, the sort of thing that doesn't happen without a reason. If this is the case here then the prolem changes from one that's purely technical to something bigger. Something that can't have a purely technical solution. (Note: I'm not part of distribute it as a may be suspected by the fact that I'm new to HN.)

<comment><USER7> You're right _but_...

IMO, anybody that decides to venture into hosting should behave as though they've just walked into a warzone with a huge red bullseye on their back, and take precautions accordingly. Yes, there are certain things that just aren't immediately feasible before you launch, but the goal should be to get basic redundancies online quickly while you're operating.

By the time you have 4,000 customers, if you don't have backups for your backups, you're being negligent. And I say that without any malice whatsoever ... my experience with a lot of hosting companies, both big and small, is that Distribute wasn't doing anything out of the ordinary.

The thing is, targeting backups isn't new at all. It's been done before, and made the news before; at this point, it's not something that should surprise a sysadmin. i.e., the thought process immediately after setting up your backups should be, "OK, now what happens if a hacker tries to hit them too?"

So, yes, this is armchair quarterbacking, and yes, this is common behavior in the industry. But that still doesn't make it excusable in the least.

EDIT: Just to expound a little more on this, the reason I have such a hard- line stance on this is that, as a hosting provider, you are effectively taking responsibility for your customers' data and, in some cases, their livelihood. Yes, ideally, every customer would have their own backups and could move themselves to another host within an hour, but the reality is that it doesn't happen that way. Customers often have websites whose only copy is on your systems, email that's stored only on your systems (because they habitually use webmail, a service that you provide which makes that problem possible). Having "not our responsibility" in your TOS is very much not enough; you _must_ be taking every reasonable precaution to safeguard your users' data, and in this case, Distribute -- along with many, many other hosting providers -- was not, because they did not have _secured_ backups.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The ignorance level of some of those comments is amazing (not the comments here, the ones on the article).

"I am a apple fan, but you can be assured that I will NOT be using iCloud for this very reason. Always have a back up and NEVER rely on cyber space."

"Moral of the storyis GET YOUR HEAD AND EVERYTHING ELSE OUT OPF THE CLOUD(S)"

"Like others on here, I feel that the rush to the "latest and greatest" IT thing of the cloud has serious implications - when you are not in direct possession or responsibility of your data, and something happens to it, what do you do?"

"This is why cloud computing is destined to fail. 'Cloud Shocks' like this will force people to rethink the whole concept and write cloud computing off as just a 'fad'. This isn't the first cloud shock and will not be the last."

The company in the article wasn't even a cloud provider...and further more, if they were a cloud provider they would have more chance of getting their data back. Some people just don't know the difference between the internet and cloud computing..

<comment><USER11> This is an article on a mainstream newspaper's website. Despite what they might think of themselves, the reader base mainly consists of people who know rather little about how computers and the internet work.

<comment><USER12> The general level of reader commentary on the SMH website is pretty pathetic, no matter what the subject matter is.

This isn't helped by the current trend for their articles to be link bait or scraped off a real tech source, rather than anything approximating journalism.

<comment><USER13> I think Fairfax as a whole is fairly lax when it comes to comment moderation.

As much as I despise The Herald Sun and News Ltd., they do the whole online community thing better and the site is better for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> "The significant data loss has raised questions from backup experts as to why Distribute.IT did not appear to have offsite backups of customer data."

Bingo

</comment><comment><USER15> I can imagine businesses evaluating hosting providers based on the 'professional' look of their website, which has no mention of security or backups. [http://web.archive.org/web/20100525225803/http://www.distrib...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100525225803/http://www.distributeit.com.au/)

Does anyone know of a security auditing service that customers could look for when evaluating hosting?

</comment><comment><USER16> In Australia I've found that businesses are still scared about having their websites hosted overseas.

<comment><USER17> It may just be that hosting overseas is inappropriate for a local audience - <USER2> connection to the USA is far slower than a connection in the same city.

For example, from my work on a fibre connection, pinging a local website takes about 2ms, and a US website about 160ms. Double that for residential DSL.

Also, national bandwidth is essentially free, and bandwidth to the USA is $$$.

<comment><USER18> Unless you are running a gaming service, latency hardly matters for 'everyday' websites. With most people on broadband of some sort, 2ms or 160ms ping times is not relevant - they wouldn't even notice the split second delay before the page started loading.

<comment><USER17> Here's a post by someone in AU demonstrating the effects of latency on web traffic - 10x slowdown.

<http://mike.bailey.net.au/2010/07/latency-is-a-killer/>

<comment><USER18> Fair point Steve - I was a little too broad brush in my response. Yes I agree latency matters - but I was replying to your response in the context that you proposed that business was hesitant to host overseas due to latency issues.

My reply was in line with the parent post that the (implied) reason that Aussie business are reluctant to host overseas due to ignorance of options, perceived issues around support etc. From my dealings with Aussie business (of the sort that would host at lower tier hosting firms like the one in the article), they are ecstatic just to have a website. Issues such as latency don't even come into consideration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's absolutely terrifying that there exists in the world the type of individual who would plan and carry out such vast and permanent destruction of unique information. I can't imagine a motive that would rationalize something like this.

At least hold the data for ransom or something.</comment>


6 Reasons the Removal of the Register of Copyrights by New Soros Backed - <AUTHOR> https://thetrichordist.com/2016/10/24/6-reasons-the-removal-of-the-register-of-copyrights-by-new-soros-backed-librarian-of-congress-should-terrify-creators/ <comment><AUTHOR> Title edited to fit 80 characters. Real title: 6 Reasons The Removal of The Register of Copyrights by New Soros Backed Librarian of Congress Should Terrify Creators</comment>


Show HN: Docker for Ghost - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/livebytes/docker-ghost Hi everyone, I made a Docker for Ghost (www.ghost.org), wanted to share that with everyone as a first contribution! <comment><USER2> I've added some comments in an issue: [https://github.com/livebytes/docker- ghost/issues/1](https://github.com/livebytes/docker-ghost/issues/1)

Other than that looks pretty good :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Cool, fixed the issues!</comment></comment>


Wittgenstein: The Young Man One Hopes For - <AUTHOR> https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n22/jonathan-ree/the-young-man-one-hopes-for <comment><USER2> >His methods were in keeping with his approach to philosophy: he did not lay claim to any special authority and instead of expounding facts and theories he asked his pupils questions and left them to work out the answers for themselves. When Hermine happened to see him at work she marvelled at his capacity to hold their attention.

It sounds that he, quite before anyone else, had discovered the secret of teaching. Frederick Wiseman, a famous documentarian, produced a couple documentary films titled High School and High School 2. The first documented a typical suburban high school in the US. The second documented an experimental high school in an urban, low-income, predominantly Latino neighborhood. The second school was notable in that it went on to produce the largest proportion of students to not only attend college but to finish and acquire 4-year degrees in the nation. The 'experiment' they were trying was quite simple - every single class, regardless subject, was centered totally around critical thinking. No teacher taught by fiat. They served instead to aid and guide students as they explored the concepts being taught through relentless questioning, all including the teachers bound to the rational method.

It's unfortunate that this method of teaching demands a tremendous amount of integrity and knowledge on the part of teachers. I don't know that it would be particularly difficult for someone invested in the endeavor, but for a teacher used to ruling like a mini dictator and able to punish students for questioning their edicts it must be intolerable.

</comment><comment><USER3> Wittgenstein's Tractatus is one of the most accessible pieces of philosophy ever written. I recommend it.

For an even more accessible view into Russell and Wittgenstein, and well, life the universe and everything: logicomix.com

<comment><USER4> This must be satire. It's one of the most cryptic, least comprehensible pieces of philosophy ever written. The most brilliant philosophers of his time didn't properly understand it, according to Wittgenstein himself.

<comment><USER5> Not satire. I have a copy on my desk at work and used it within the last month to explain truth tables (section 4.31) to a developer.

Try looking at it again through the lens of designing a domain specific language. It forms a robust framework for rigid and controlled communications or interactions.

The reason it was supplanted by Philosophical Investigations is that it was overly strict in defining the logical foundations of language and meaning.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As this is HN: Wittgenstein was the guy who invented truth tables.

He is my personal favorite philosopher along with Quine. Wittgenstein is IMO underappreciated. First he kind of described what is possible with philosophy with regard to the physical world in the Tractatus. And then he explored the "virtual world" in his writings about games. To me his writing style is a bit of a hindrance to get to his concepts. But I think I know, what he is getting at (prove me wrong).

More "mystic" philosophers were obviously pissed and have been bad-mouthing him ever since.

<comment><USER7> Mystic is probably a misleading word to use, because Wittgenstein is considered to be something of a mystic himself, especially when it came to things like aesthetics and ethics. The philosophical/religious definition of mysticism is a bit different than the everyday one.

[https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was- wittgen...](https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/was-wittgenstein- a-mystic/)

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mysticism)

<comment><USER6> I put it in quotes, because I couldn't come up with a better word. What would it be ?

<comment><USER8> If you're the later Wittgenstein, you might just call them "philosophers." (Rorty certainly might argue for that!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> During WW2 he gave up his post a Cambridge and went to work as a porter at a hospital.

"Wittgenstein, however, detested Cambridge academic life, and urged his pupils not to become academic philosophers, but to do something decent with their lives. When the war began he was eager to be involved in war work and to be, as he put it, 'where the bombs are falling'. In September 1941, through Professor John Ryle of Guy's Hospital (brother of Wittgenstein's friend the philosopher Gilbert Ryle) he began work as a porter at Guy's."</comment>


Hyperlapse, Instagram's new video stabilization app - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2014/08/hyperlapse-instagrams-new-app-is-like-a-15000-video-setup-in-your-hand <comment><USER2> It's weird that they called it Hyperlapse two weeks after Microsoft Research published a paper on the exact same topic, with the exact same name:

PDF here: [https://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hyp...](https://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/paper/hyperlapse.pdf)

Examples here: [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hype...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/)

It's even more weird that the WIRED writer didn't mention this. It was major news all over the place two weeks ago. Good PR folks at Instagram / FB.

<comment><USER3> I'm confused. So is this the same technology/project, or are they completely different?

<comment><USER4> Very different.

Microsoft Research was manually computing a motion map using heavy image- processing techniques that they then used to decide which frames to use and how to align them. Their work can do things like throw away a series of 'noisy' frames that wouldn't fit the overall scene motion. For instance, if you had a head mounted camera and were riding around on your bike, it could throw away the moments where you look both ways before crossing the street.

Instagram's technology utilizes extra sensor data to make their frame corrections. As far as I can tell from the brief article, the technology doesn't do much besides stabilization. That's not to belittle it, as it's a really neat application demonstrating the benefits of mobile sensor integration. And you might be able to create a similar motion map using the gyroscope data that the folks at Microsoft create through their image processing techniques!

<comment><USER5> A "motion map" ? I think you'd better read the paper again. They compute a full 3D reconstruction. Much much more computationally expensive. You would not "be able to create a similar motion map using the gyroscope data".

<comment><USER4> Oops, good point! I forgot that they calculated the geometry and stitched the images to create novel frames.

The gyroscope data most certainly would not allow one to do the same.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Mike from IG here. Here's the direct App Store link while it propagates: [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id740146917](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id740146917)

<comment><USER7> I was wondering why you didn't link an Android version until I read the article. :(

Apps coming in iPhone first is by far my most frustrating experience with Android.

<comment><USER8> The article was pretty hand-wavy about the API issues. Why aren't the Android gyroscope or camera APIs good enough?

<comment><USER9> They're getting better. But unfortunately due to the way Android phones receive updates many phones have different, older, API levels which don't support many of the features.

So while they could likely make and release an Android app, expect only the flagship phones from the last 12-24 months to be supported, nothing a day older (and even a lot of phones within that window still lack the latest API updates).

<comment><USER8> I'm pretty sure it's not a fragmentation issue. They said the APIs required changes.

<comment><USER10> Phone Mfg's will sometime release manufacturer-specific API's for Android that will only work on _their_ phones.

I've always been disappointed at how/why Google allows fragmentation.

It certainly seems to me that they have the power to force a _reunification_ in Android (and that if they did, the world would cheer).

Why not tell Samsung that Google must determine the update schedule, not Samsung? And if Samsung adds non-standard hardware, they must provide working updated code by _this_ schedule.

And if Samsung doesn't like it, they are welcome to move everything over to their Tizen OS.

Even if Google cannot fix the past, why not do this going forward?

<comment><USER8> Google doesn't control Android after they release it. It's open software (which is why Samsung gets to "skin" it the way they do) and Samsung could add anything they want or even rip bits out. It's not Google's decision.

Edit: this is a lot of downvotes for no comments. What's wrong with my comment?

<comment><USER11> The downvotes might be because you're slightly mistaken about the level of control that Google possesses. While the code base of Android itself is open source, that means little because Google apps such as the Gmail, Maps and the all important Play Store are not part of AOSP code base. If a manufacturer wants to include those (and lets face it, they have to) they need to agree to several onerous terms and conditions that Google stipulates.

An example of such a condition is that if a manufacturer makes any phone that includes Google apps, they must not manufacture a phone that runs without it. This is why Amazon had such a hard time finding a manufacturer for their Fire tablet/phone. As for skinning, Samsung can only do that because Google explicitly allows it.

Lastly, I feel that someone should have pointed this out instead of downvoting you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I have a category in the back of my mind labeled 'Stuff Apple should do to prove that they can do it without Jobs." Top of that list is an iOS laptop. But just below that is getting back to their tradition of being a popular easier to use option for professional and prosumer media/art.

Stuff like this should be coming from Apple. For example, it would be awesome if they created prosumer software for filming with a wireless multi-camera setup and edit it all live on a macbook. would love it if upstart young-Turks like web shows could get closer to the production quality of TV talk shows.

Something that makes the right people go wow.

<comment><USER13> Apple seems to not want to get into the prosumer market because it is a tiny fraction of the size of the general iPhone/iPad/Beats consumer market. The buzz about future Apple products seems to be about things that could achieve that sort of scale. (TV, watch, something video game related, etc)

<comment><USER14> Their prosumer computers essentially only exist so that developers can enrich their mobile platform. Growth is essentially flat on the Mac line, whereas iPhone sales have grown steadily since launch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Getting a bit of hyperbole out of this (shocking, I know).

Stabilization is not something that costs $15k, at least at this quality. Yes, it's interesting on a technical level (both with Instagram and MS), but there are low-tech solutions that handle this aptly.

So in essence we're talking about a video accelerator (and presumably decelerator)? This doesn't exactly wow me, but then again Instagram was founded on applying filters to photos, so I should recognize the value of hype (and subsequent audience size).

<comment><USER16> I think the $15k references a gyro stabilized camera rig. The stabilization is the hard/novel/neat part, not the playback speed.

Playback speed is the UI feature people notice, but it wouldn't be interesting if the image weren't stabilized.

<comment><USER15> Um, that's what I was saying. Stabilization (at least at this level) is still not a $15,000 investment. Prosumer ones start in the $500 range.

Software stabilization obviously also supplants hardware cost, which makes even that # moot. Then there's the acceleration, which can be done by low- level video prod software already.

I'm seriously not trying to just poo-poo this, it's just very underwhelming as a total package.

<comment><USER17> but with this you don't have to fit your phone into a rig, you can just keep it in your pocket

<comment><USER15> Sure, but this is sort of like saying adaptive blurring replaces a $2,000 SLR lens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think that the MS Research project probably has a few advantages over this although I've only looked at Instagram's example videos on Vimeo so far.

The main advantage I see for MS Research is that they enable the full dropping of multiple frames to remove large camera motions such as having a head mounted camera and briefly looking from side to side.

In the Instagram examples, the camera stays on a fixed subject and their Hyperlapse algorithm reduces the shake. I suspect that if there were large camera motions, they would be translated into the final product which could detract a lot from the appeal of that video.

<comment><USER19> For me the biggest advantage of the Microsoft project is that it has the potential to be stand-alone software.

I'm not interested in using something that's a part of Facebook's ecosystem or sharing it with my friends on Facebook.

<comment><USER6> Hi Colin, all Hyperlapse videos get saved out to your Camera Roll, and no FB or IG account is needed to use the app (there are sharing options for those two in the app, but they aren't a requirement to using it)

<comment><USER20> Wow, so does all the processing happen on the phone itself? That's impressive! I thought it was sent on a server to be processed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> For the curious, this is a video rendered with my iPhone 4S, and the road was very very bumpy. This is the quality you get with an old phone and with zero setup / art direction.

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/i2w18xh31aixmhv/Video%2026-08-14%2...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/i2w18xh31aixmhv/Video%2026-08-14%2019%2000%2046.mov?dl=0)

<comment><USER22> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA)

<comment><USER21> Lol sorry i totally didn't think of it while shooting

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> "What was once only possible with a Steadicam or a $15,000 tracking rig is now possible on your iPhone, for free."

This statement is undeniably false.

</comment><comment><USER24> Cool project, but if you want the same cinematic smoothing without the time lapse effect, I highly recommend Steady[1].

1\. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048413](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8048413)

Edit: Hyperlapse can do this too. Thank you Wang.

<comment><USER25> Hyperlapse can be used to only steady but not accelerate videos as well.

<comment><USER26> I don't see any example video on 1x though. Will it be as good as their accelerated ones?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It looks like the Midnox team (YC W12) has been busy at Facebook! [http://midlux.us/](http://midlux.us/). Great work.

</comment><comment><USER28> Hm, Instagram a little quicker on the draw than Microsoft? [http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hype...](http://research.microsoft.com/en- us/um/redmond/projects/hyperlapse/)

<comment><USER29> The approaches are completely different.

Microsoft:

"Our algorithm first reconstructs the 3D input camera path as well as dense, per-frame proxy geometries. We then optimize a novel camera path for the output video (shown in red) that is smooth and passes near the input cameras while ensuring that the virtual camera looks in directions that can be rendered well from the input."

Instagram:

"... Smartphones didn't have nearly enough power to replicate video-editing software, but they did have built-in gyroscopes. On a smartphone, instead of using power-hungry algorithms to model the camera's movement, he could measure it directly. And he could funnel those measurements through a simpler algorithm that could map one frame to the next, giving the illusion that the camera was being held steady"

<comment><USER30> Wow. I would never have guessed that this would be possible to do by analyzing the gyroscope data. It must be sensitive enough to detect small / tiny jerks in your phone as those seemingly tiny jerks can often translate into enormous motion in your camera lens especially if a subject is far away.

<comment><USER31> Well, you can do stabilization as well for those, I guess.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Great app.

On a side not it's kind of depressing / scary / crazy that it's now just common place to release these apps for free.

Indie development if not suffocated already on the App Store has little hope competing going forward.

</comment><comment><USER33> I just tried it. The result is really better than an un-stabilized video. But I found it a bit blurry.

I can't wait until someone copies it on Android.

</comment><comment><USER34> Nice!

Non-timelapse but related - I wonder how long until mobile phone manufacturers start using in something like this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VphxfCXu984](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VphxfCXu984)

Post stabilisation is good but it's so much better to get it right in-camera

<comment><USER35> Nokia's higher end phones include optical image stabilization. It adds thickness which is probably why iPhones don't have it yet.

<comment><USER34> Ah of course, Nokia, should have guessed. Interesting video on their stabilisation technology - on the 925 it doesn't seem to add that much thickness, that one is only 8.8mm thick, vs 7.7mm for iPhone 5. They should have licensed their camera tech to all manufacturers. Wonder how much of it will pop up in iPhone 6 now that they snagged one of the main PureView engineers.

[http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/09/25/how-nokia-lumia- op...](http://conversations.nokia.com/2013/09/25/how-nokia-lumia-optical- image-stabilisation-is-revolutionising-imaging/)

I think the earlier 1020 etc were thick because of huge sensor size.

I have OIS dSLR lenses but none of them are quite as good as that Sony's Optical Steady Shot linked above - it's almost as good as some brushless gimbals I'm using on drones, which are rock steady. Sony claim it's 13 times more effective than their previous stabilisation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> The tech demo from a few weeks ago was much more impressive.

<comment><USER37> The ability for the general public to _use_ this _today_ without _weeks_ of rendering time is pretty impressive in my book.

<comment><USER38> "soon, but that will require changes to the camera and gyroscope APIs on Android phones" is not nearly the same as "can use this today".

<comment><USER37> You probably can't use it on a flip phone or Nintendo DS, either, but it _is_ available for use to the general public.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting it can be done real time on the phone (I assume).

Personally I've been using free video stabilizer Deshaker for 10 years with similar (or better) results. The downside is two-pass rendering. Upside is that it is fairly configurable and can stabilize existing videos. You can get ok results with fairly terrible source video.

[http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm](http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm)

</comment><comment><USER40> I was excited to download and try it, but honestly it didn't seem like it was stabilizing the frame at all...the camera shaking was still in the video...

</comment><comment><USER41> So it's basically a very simplified Luma Camera (acquired by Instagram a year ago) with a speed slider?

[http://vimeo.com/lumacam](http://vimeo.com/lumacam)

</comment><comment><USER42> It's available in the app store. You find it by searching Instagram then clicking 'related'. I couldn't find it with normal search.

<comment><USER43> [https://itunes.apple.com/app/id740146917](https://itunes.apple.com/app/id740146917)

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I might be wrong here but I thought 'Hyperlapse' (functionality) was builtin on the iOS 8 Camera app?

Am I missing something here?

<comment><USER45> iOS 8 has timelapse, implemented as a series of photos taken a few seconds apart and then stitched together. This appears to be a video stream that is then smoothed and then (optionally) sped up.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Looks like it only has native share options for Instagram and Facebook. Seems a bit petty not to offer Twitter. How about let me decide where I want to share?

From an implementation point of view, this app doesn't use UIActivityViewController, but instead one they've rolled themselves.

They could in fact have added Instagram to the built-in share view controller but decided not to. This also takes away options of Twitter, SMS, email.

<comment><USER47> It saves to your video roll, use any number of apps to upload from your video roll. The decision is yours!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I would be surprised if this couldn't be done with FFMpeg.

Google for "ffmpeg" "image stabilization".

</comment><comment><USER49> Wonder if they considered charging for this? Looks impressive enough that people would pay for a quality app.

</comment><comment><USER50> This is one of the first major reasons why the 128 GB iPhone will be important.

</comment><comment><USER51> It's 2014, can we get Android and iOS versions at the same time? Starting to feel tired of all this "Android soon".

<comment><USER52> What does the year have to do with it? 2014 isn't the year Google fixed Android fragmentation. It isn't the year it managed to get OEMs and carriers to start shipping timely OS updates. It isn't the year Android users started actually buying stuff. I'm an Android user, so I'm just as frustrated by it as you, but it's a problem inherent to Android, not to the developers.

<comment><USER53> I think a significant part of this problem is that it's hard to know when choosing an Android device exactly what tradeoffs you're making. How many reviews include information about the quality and calibration of the gyroscope, motion sensor and magnetometer systems? Other than perhaps some test shots, how much do you really know about the camera quality? Are all the relevant APIs implemented, and how good a job are the drivers doing?

It's great the Android offers so much choice in terms of features and price, but the upshot is that you're not buying a device with an android sized slice of market share from the point of view of app support, for many purposes you're buying a device with a that-device sized slice of market share.

In the old PC days the exact spec of a machine didn't usually matter much. However for mobile devices, the plethora of advanced sensors they come with and the complexity of software capabilities that take advantage of them has made fragmentation a much bigger issue, but really only if you're interested in the most advanced features.

For most phone users it doesn't make that much difference, but if you're interested in cutting edge features the quality of hardware and software integration and application support has become critical. Samsung almost has enough critical mass to establish a stable platform for advanced Android applications, but the problem is it just doesn't have the vision and discipline to do so by actually establishing a stable baseline for the features and software in it's phones.</comment></comment></comment>


Sentry, The (Now Profitable) Bug Tracker Gets A Huge Makeover - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/05/sentry-the-now-profitable-bug-tracker-used-by-disqus-pinterest-rdio-path-more-gets-a-huge-makeover/

<comment><USER2> I'd be curious to hear if any HN readers are using Sentry and how they like the service. We started as primarily Python based, so it's especially interesting if you're using it for another language/platform.

<comment><USER3> We're using it at <http://sprint.ly/> . In general, I like it.

I wish...

      - I could search w/ meaningful results
      - I could group by exception type.
      - I had a better method of seeing the different input data that caused the exception (without next/next/nexting).
      - there were lots more information around my source code.

I could probably come up with a few more if I were pressed to. All that said, we'll continue to pay for the service b/c its useful to our business.

<comment><USER4> I second the need to have a view that shows the exception group and displays the differences between input data. I use it extensively with other log levels and treat it as a log aggregator (especially for INFO). However, it's really hard to view the _variables_ within the input data which is necessary for any entries that are not one-off exceptions. Otherwise it's a wonderful service.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> We use the Sentry open-source edition

> "The cost of running and deploying your own server just to monitor the > errors maintenance in your application for a lot of users isn't really > practical – there's a lot of and cost involved with maintenance and upkeep"

I don't really understand this, we just stick it on our app/db servers alongside our other applications. The cost is $0 and it takes about 5 mins to set up, it's just a Django app.

<comment><USER2> It quickly becomes expensive if you're routinely sending a measurable amount data to it.

Disqus has two physical servers dedicated to it. Both of them are larger than any of the web/worker machines getsentry.com runs. On top of those costs, they also have the upkeep cost of running those servers, doing software upgrades, and, if anything goes wrong, debugging things.

Obviously Disqus isn't a great example, since we built the software and know how to run it, but companies much smaller than Disqus don't really have the reason to invest the money or time into setting up infrastructure to support it.

Delicious is using Sentry on their new JavaScript-centric site, and for the amount of data they're sending, they'd be spending a lot more on hosting costs and infrastructure maintenance. It's not ideal for everyone (some companies push a lot of data through Sentry), and we don't necessarily aim to serve someone who may be sending millions of events in a day.

What we typically see is that most people are sending somewhere between 5,000 and 50,000 events, which is right about the size where it's not practical to host the instance yourself. It definitely beats maintaining RabbitMQ, Redis, Memcache, Celery, WSGI, Postgres, and soon, Elastic Search.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've played with the hosted service as well as hosting Sentry myself. I only played with the latter version for 20 minutes but I didn't know how to get it up and running such that I could actually use it in the same way the getsentry.com was. (this was last week, before the UI redesign)

Is there something obvious I was missing?

This all being said, I'm very impressed with exception reporting at getsentry.com!

<comment><USER6> Got it working now

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How does Sentry compare to Bitbucket or Github's bug tracking experiences?

<comment><USER8> It's not a _bug tracker_ , as in tickets. It logs exceptions and debug messages from your application.

<comment><USER9> The term _bug tracker_ initially threw me as well. For me at least, this term is safely ensconced as equivalent to 'ticket management' in the domain of software development.

I'm not sure what the best term for this other kind of "bug tracking", but almost certainly it should be something else.

Maybe something like "live bug analytics"?

<comment><USER2> Agree completely. Hard to editorialize something very well when it's on TechCrunch :)

We'd also rename service to platform, as an example

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is there a demo somewhere to play with? I'd like to give it a look.

<comment><USER2> There's not, but you can check out this public event from our JavaScript client:

[https://app.getsentry.com/sentry/sentry-js- test/group/323091...](https://app.getsentry.com/sentry/sentry-js- test/group/3230916/)

(This was recorded before we annotated sourcemap data, but the original error here was actually in a minified javascript file)

Also, of note, there's some things that don't fully function when you're viewing a public event without full access. One of those things happens to be the graph on that link.</comment></comment>


'Don't Be Evil': Google Uses Its Power Justly, But We Should All Be Afraid - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/markrogowsky/2014/08/05/dont-be-evil-google-uses-its-power-justly-but-we-should-all-be-afraid

<comment><USER2> It's a free email service. It will (by definition) come with strings.</comment>


Fastpages from Fast.ai - <AUTHOR> https://fastpages.fast.ai/fastpages/jupyter/2020/02/21/introducing-fastpages.html <comment><USER2> Hi all! Please let us know if there's anything we can do to help make fastpages better/easier/help solve your needs.

Disclosure: I'm David Aronchick and I work with the team that launched this.</comment>


Deep in New Zealand - <AUTHOR> http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/10/27/deep-in-new-zealand-going-bush/ <comment><USER3> New Zealand is great, and Wellington is a wonderful city. I've even seen a little Maori before in the museum and recognized the style even if I don't know the words. But. I have no idea what I just read.

This excerpt from the publisher's site might help, though I didn't take away the same meaning personally:

> Going Bush

> Kirsty Gunn

> Kirsty Gunn meditates upon her childhood in New Zealand, revisiting in > writing the landscapes she once explored through sight, sound and touch. > Struggling with the stifling norms of colonial society, the young girl > becomes fascinated by 'the bush' – that fringe of sodden, savage vegetation > bordering the town's tidy gardens and parks. Both threatening and > irresistible, the bush becomes a powerful metaphor for the wild, with all > its contradictions: marginalised but intrinsic, feared but desired. > Interweaving essay, memoir and narrative, Gunn explores the influence of > this disquieting presence on her early life and how it was able to provide > her sustenance during the painful years of growing up.

<comment><USER4> I just happen to be on vacation (sorry, "on holiday") in NZ right now, and I just did an 8km hike or so on Urupukapuka Island, barefoot. And I found it amusing that the only thing I encountered that was the least bit painful was when walking on a manicured patch of lawn at my pickup spot - <USER2> growing under the grass was kind of stabby.

The lack of snakes and relative lack of nasty spiders did factor in to my decision to go barefoot, fwiw.

<comment><USER5> > Urupukapuka Island

I've just went sailing two weeks ago up there. Just like the rest of New Zealand, it was gorgeous. The beauty of this country is impossible to describe. I don't think there is any better place in the world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat off topic to the article, but if you ever get the chance to go deep into New Zealand Bush, do. There's nothing quite like it, the air is thick and wet, it has an incredible smell. Stuart Island is particularly good.

<comment><USER7> Is the NZ fauna as bad as Australia's? I have spent a lot of time walking in North American forests, and I feel pretty safe in them, even with possible bear presence (I was in Alaska twice and it was majestic). I'd be scared to walk in a forest/bush in New Zealand or Australia.

<comment><USER8> NZ and Australia have very different fauna. They might look close on a world map but the distance from Sydney to Auckland is over 2000 km.

Just one example: Australia has a wide variety of mammals (mostly marsupials, e.g. kangaroos). NZ has very few native mammals, but it does have a huge assortment of unusual native birds. (Indeed, birds fill a lot of ecological niches that mammals normally do.) In fact, there's an ongoing effort to get rid of all non-native mammals: [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big- kill](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/12/22/big-kill)

Finally, the "all the Animals in Australia want to kill you" idea is popular and kind of amusing, but hugely overblown. Yes, there are deadly animals but you typically have to be doing something unusual or silly to encounter one in a dangerous way. Plus there's no poison ivy...

<comment><USER9> We do have this though - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendrocnide_moroides)

<comment><USER10> True story - during WW2 when US soldiers were stationed here, some clever larrikans told the yanks that particular leaf made good "toilet paper".

I am surprised we are still allies.

<comment><USER11> The relationship during WW2 wasn't always great: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brisbane](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Brisbane)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Interesting tidbit: in Maori, the 'wh' digraph is pronounced like an 'f', so e.g. 'Whakarewarewa' sounds like 'Fakarewarewa'

[http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/learn-te-reo- maori/whakahuat...](http://www.tetaurawhiri.govt.nz/learn-te-reo- maori/whakahuatanga-pronunciation/)</comment>


Stephen Wolfram on Personal Analytics - <AUTHOR> http://www.technologyreview.com/news/514356/stephen-wolfram-on-personal-analytics/ <comment><USER2> I'm not sure if this is a good idea for everyone. I think Steve gets a little lost in his world and think that what works for him will work for everyone.

A lot of people will find this type of technology a solution in search of a problem. This type of analysis may even distract from peoples lives.

Would the knowing that you do a certain thing a certain percent of the time almost become self fulfilling?

This is the type of technology that can make you into a productive cold robot, the thing is many people are not interested in becoming like this.

Maybe I'm wrong and we all now need personal analysis to squeeze the most out of life.

<comment><USER3> Wow. Doesn't seem to be big into serendipity, does he?

In general, I don't see the point of doing all that analysis. Or, at least he doesn't provide many good reasons (in my opinion) for doing it. This is the only one I could see:

> Very early on, back in the 1990s, when I first analyzed my e-mail archive, I > learned that a lot of e-mail threads at my company would, by a certain time > of day, just resolve themselves. That was a useful thing to know, because if > I jumped in too early I was just wasting my time.

Now, this seems like a genuinely useful insight. But, in my mind, this isn't personal analytics. This is email analytics. See mailstrom - <http://mailstrom.co/>

<comment><USER2> I agree, finding useful things is good, I missed that one about the time of day.

It comes down to time invested in analyzing and useful data out.

I'm on the fence about it. If truly useful information can be obtained without having to set up anything then that's a good thing. However a lot of personal analysis would happen away from the computer too. How to record real life away from PC data?

Maybe Google glass could automatically detect what your eating?

Its all about time. Do you want to spend x amount of time time analyzing/setting up instruments/inputting real life data into a computer/iPhone, to potentially save y time? and risk saving no y time and losing x time?

I think some more people doing this and showing a clear positiveness would be a good thing.

Also another aspect is some people will enjoy collecting data and others won't. Some people take a thousand photos on holiday, others 10. I think this type of personal data aggregation will appeal to some and just seem daft to others. Which is the beauty of humanity I guess.

<comment><USER3> > However a lot of personal analysis would happen away from the computer too. > How to record real life away from PC data?

Good (and thought-provoking) point. This approach implicitly encourages a tech/gadget-heavy focus in one's life - which makes me queasy. And what would be the end-result of this analysis? More-efficient, but deeper-ingrained use of technology? If the result of the analysis were people putting down their smartphones and, instead, have face-to-face conversations with other people - or people no longer playing Candy Crush Saga and, instead, putting that time toward a cause that improves the world, I'd be all for it. But, I don't see that happening.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"Don't collect data. If you know everything about yourself, you know everything. There is no use burdening yourself with a lot of data. Once you understand yourself, you understand human nature and then the rest follows."_ \--- Kurt Gödel

I have no need for the the notion that my act of living constitutes an object ("my life")... that would be burning down the village in order to "improve" it.

<comment><USER5> Couldn't agree more. (I am satisfied with your training, Cat.)

<comment><USER4> Likewise! :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Read the article and I'm still not sure why I should measure and analyze my life. How will it improve my life?

I just try to enjoy life. So I don't feel the need to worry about data or memories.

</comment><comment><USER7> Being a data nerd, I can see where Stephen is coming from but I don't think we need a software or dashboard to analyze our personal life, the last thing we want is a society which is obsessed with "why I did that and what it could had been" kind of questions.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Augmented memory is going to be very important." I don't work for them or even use the product anymore, but CloudMagic (<https://cloudmagic.com>) came to mind when I red this.

It goes some way to augment memory and is fast & easy to use.

</comment><comment><USER9> I use Fitocracy to track my fitness, MyFitnessPal to log every bit of food I eat and <http://askmeevery.com/> to email me once a day reminding me to rate things between 1 and 10, like health, happiness, productivity. These all don't take much effort really, and they give me some interesting history. I'm hoping to do things like correlate what I eat with how well my workouts go, or how healthy I feel in the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> This reminds me of Quantified Self. <http://quantifiedself.com/>

<comment><USER11> Yes, but I think it's at best a partial QS, almost a degenerate parody of QS; I've argued ( <http://www.gwern.net/Zeo#what-qs-is-not-just-data-gathering> ) that Wolfram here is exemplifying for us how _not_ to do QS - he is gathering an enormous amount of data, but failing to _do_ anything with it besides visualization.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When the Singularity comes we will get our analytics and instructions for free.

</comment><comment><USER13> Wolfram stopped being relevant years ago.

</comment><comment><USER14> Dude... let go :)</comment>


The Empty Storefront Crisis and the End of the American Dream - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/nyregion/nyc-immigrant-small-business.html <comment><USER2> >Few may mourn the fur industry when and if it does disappear. But what will come instead? What will happen when all the Greek diners and Yemeni convenience stores and Middle Eastern pet shops can no longer sustain themselves? Who will be inspired to come here and take their place?

Hopefully no one will come. We should embrace a contraction, our lands cannot sustain an ever increasing population and it seems like a sin to say we should look after ourselves and perhaps downsize to a more sustainable model of society and living.</comment>


What's the Most Concave State in the U.S.? Using R to Solve a Geography Puzzle - <AUTHOR> http://news.rapgenius.com/Atodd-whats-the-most-concave-state-in-the-us-using-r-to-solve-a-geography-puzzle-lyrics

<comment><USER2> Fun stuff, especially if you're a U.S. geography nerd (states with the largest coastlines, states that border the most states, all that good but mostly arbitrary stuff)

Pedantic, I'm sure, but from the title before I clicked on it I was trying to think of the state whose shape might independently be considered the most concave (though that may be much harder to define). This version of concavity depends largely on the shapes of the states around it (e.g. if Nevada split into 6 horizontal states, suddenly California would be the winner).

<comment><USER3> That was what I thought it would be at first as well. My definition of "most" concave: pick two points at random in the state. What is the probability the segment connecting them leaves the state? In this case the hard part is defining what to do about water. As an example, I live in Maryland. It is easily the most concave if you don't treat the Chesapeake Bay as part of the state. If you do, not quite as concave. See maps in the link for the shape of MD if you are not familiar with it.

<comment><USER4> I was going to go with "Divide the land area of a state by the area of its convex hull. Which is the lowest percentage?"

<comment><USER5> My first thought was to go with the length of the state's boundary that is on the convex hull divided by the length of the whole boundary.

So...we've got at least 3 ways so far to assign a measure of convexity/concavity to a state, and they give quite different results.

For instance, your method and the method in the comment you responded to both would assign a low concavity to a state that is almost a square, except that the boundary has a high frequency, low amplitude sawtooth pattern imposed on it. Mine would score that has a very high concavity.

<comment><USER3> I was interested in this and did a very quick google search. Measuring concavity/convexity of a generic 2D surface object doesn't seem to be a very common operation. The one reference I found seems to do what you describe:

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7945702](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7945702)

Although I don't have PubMed access so I can't be sure.

This is an interesting problem.

I chose the "random points" method because it seemed easier to me to get an approximate answer for a generic shape rather than try to figure out areas. Lengths didn't occur to me though and seems interesting, although the shape you describe doesn't "feel" concave to me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Any idea whether this depends on the projection used to get the map in the first place? I mean, the "straight lines" are really curves that lie in the boundary of the Earth's surface, unless I'm missing something major.

<comment><USER7> It doesn't matter. He's counting the number of times a continuous curve C on the surface of the Earth crosses other continuous curves (state boundaries). A crossing is a property of the curve and its embedding onto the Earth's surface. While a (continuous) map projection can deform both C and the state boundaries, it cannot create or destroy crossings.

To _draw_ the crossings, however, he needs to pick a projection and project both C and the state boundaries, which I guess is why he included some PROJ.4 calls.

<comment><USER8> It does matter - he only considers continuous curves that are projected onto straight lines, which is a property of the projection.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Aaaaannnd now I'm playing FTL again. Lining up those 5-room beam strikes is just too much fun!

On topic, though, this is pretty cool. Rivers and coastlines seem to be the best way to get appropriately jagged borders. It's interesting to look at states across the map from east to west and see the shapes get simpler and more geometric over time.

</comment><comment><USER10> Cancavity has a simple definition, its measure is: area of the region divided by the area of its convex hull. Most concave is value nearest to zero. You can't just make up definitions.

<comment><USER11> Well, actually the point of definitions is that you can just make them up, but if you're using a non-standard one you really need to say so. I do find the definition in the article pretty pointless (aside from the fact that it has way too many points).

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is an odd definition of concave. It would make more sense to me to require that the line joining two points on the state's border does not cross in and out of the original state when determining the number of other states it crosses... This doesn't really capture concave as a geometric concept either but more aligned with the idea that it is a local property.

</comment><comment><USER13> I would have thought concave meant in the Z dimension. Find the state with the highest elevations on any two sides with the lowest relative elevations in between.

</comment><comment><USER14> Pretty cool. But why is this posted on RapGenius?

<comment><USER15> In anticipation of their launch for GeographyGenius. Social map annotation, which state is the dopest, etc.

<comment><USER16> ...I would actually love social map annotation.

<comment><USER17> Isn't that basically what Foursquare does?

<comment><USER16> I'm thinking of people (geo nerds) who like to _look at maps_ and remark about things. Not people who want to tell the world they're at Starbucks.

<comment><USER17> Have you used Foursquare recently? While it originally focused on broadcasting one's location, it's more about social recommendations now, which really isn't far from "social map annotation" in practice. Especially when you have people leaving notes in parks and bridges and buildings telling you about neat features and not just "the denver omelette is amazing here!"

<comment><USER16> I have not, that's pretty interesting. Looks like I have some browsing to do between Wikimapia and Findery.

Thanks, guys/gals.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This reminded me that I want to finish reading the book 'How the States Got Their Shapes.' [http://amzn.to/16zBxBo](http://amzn.to/16zBxBo) There are some crazy reasons some states have their strange borders.

<comment><USER19> [Insert discussion here on the propriety of hidden affiliate tags in short URLs.]

<comment><USER20> It doesn't matter to me in this case. The book is relevant to the discussion and the poster is a human.

But I can certainly understand some people here may want to draw a line in the sand (to use a metaphor from the linked book's description) to prevent spam.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It appears that the author makes a mistake in his attempts to simplify the problem, because although he is correct that he only needs to look at points on the edges, he goes on to suggest that he is looking only at corners of the polygon, and not at any of the (infinite number of) points between the corners.

</comment><comment><USER22> Interesting. But an odd definition of concavity. Surely a better definition would be the state whose area relative to its convex hull is smallest. I'd guess Hawaii or Florida off the top of my head.

</comment><comment><USER23> It would be neat if the algorithm found the most illustrative solution for each case (e.g. maximizing minimal distance in each state). Especially the Arkansas one is obviously the edge case.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is this a clever way of recruiting data engineers?

<comment><USER25> "We have enough venture funding to pay people to work on non-core parts of the business. We are not under that much pressure to make money. The normal work of the business is not sufficiently rewarding so we bribe employees with pet projects."

([http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2013/02/20/wha...](http://blog.prettylittlestatemachine.com/blog/2013/02/20/what- your-culture-really-says/))</comment></comment>


Nintendo's WiiU "hacked" day one - <AUTHOR> http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=500411 Apparently every console has access to the admin interface of the online component. One user accessed it by mistake. <comment><USER2> This has nothing to do with the Wii U being hacked, at least not in any sense that anyone here would care about. It appears this guy was able to accidentally access an admin account of their Miiverse Wii social network that seemed to let him moderate posts and possibly users, and that Nintendo shut it down before he revealed how (which probably spared them having their first day being dominated by news of what 4chan did with those abilities).

He didn't "hack" anything (he just happened to press 'x' while hovering over the exit button), and it wasn't hacking the Wii itself in any sense that you might refer to the hacking of a console.</comment>


All-New Kindle Oasis E-reader – 7" - <AUTHOR> https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XD5YCKX/ref=fs_ods_fs_eink_cc <comment><USER2> Kindle Oasis 6" is still the lightest (without case, that is). The now available firmware 5.8.11 offers more font weights. Supposedly, also audio via bluetooth will be available. [fixed typo]</comment>


Reports: The New York Marathon Has Been Cancelled - <AUTHOR> http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2012/11/marathon-cancelled-fox-news-thinks-so/58658/

<comment><AUTHOR> I have a friend who lives in NYC and has run it for the past six years and she just let us know on Facebook. NBC News confirms:

[http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/02/14880084-new- york...](http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/11/02/14880084-new-york- marathon-canceled-bloomberg-says)</comment>


Amazon finds an alternative workforce of people with disabilities - <AUTHOR> https://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-finds-an-alternative-workforce-through-northwest-center-seattle-nonprofit-helping-people-with-disabilities/ <comment><USER3> When i was younger I had a summer job of working in a paper recycling plant. It was soul crushing boring work. I'm talking pick up a spent roll of newsprint, saw it length wise, put the paper in the paper feed, the roll in the cardboard feed. Good job that was ~30 seconds. Repeat for 8 hours.

We had a bunch of mentally disabled people on our team (think low IQ / down syndrome). These guys loved their job. They felt like they were doing cool shit all day. They cheered and smiled when the food truck would roll around 11AM and they'd spend what seemed like 1/2 their earnings on snacks and drinks. They smiled nearly every moment of that job.

Good for them and good for the plant manager understanding this reality and making a good for society out of a relatively bad situation (boring ass work, people having a disability few of us could handle).

<comment><USER4> I worked at Food Lion(Southeastern US Grocery Store) as a teenager and they hire people with mental disabilities as baggers. They loved the job and never complained, I was a cashier and bagger and let me tell you it sucks rounding up carts when it's over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but those guys were just happy to be working and around people who accepted them. And anyone who talked down to or badly about them didn't have a job for long.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Quick question: can anybody, with a straight face explain why I as a quadriplegic software developer, Hacker, public speaker and all round pain in the arse earn less than everybody else? I'm asking because more than one person in this thread seems to think it's okay.

I haven't replied to anybody specifically because I don't want to start a flame war, but I am genuinely interested.

Slightly off topic, but I had to start my own company because finding a job when you are quadriplegic is richly impossible. Granted, quadriplegics can make terrible employees in that it's difficult to say you will definitely be at a certain place at a certain time. But it just takes a little tweaking and a little flexitime to get around the obstacle for instance.

<comment> barry-cotter Sure. It boils down to "No one owes you shit." and "Life isn't fair."

I have high anxiety, less than perfect social skills and noise processing issues and I still spent five years teaching kindergarten. I dealt with the noise and the stress from starting a new job and then every year discovering exciting new things to stress out about as my responsibilities changed.

No one owes anyone a job and no one is owed a job. Very few people are going to hire anyone unless they think that they can make money by doing so, businesses aren't charities. Minimum wages make hiring large numbers of people unprofitable so those people don't get hired. The higher the minimum wage the greater that number will be. See France. The argument generalises to any cost, very much including what lawyers would call "reasonable accommodations". If the government wants to ensure working people get paid a certain amount there's no reason the income tax can't go negative, subsidising lower paid, presumably low productivity workers, as with the US earned income tax credit. The same logic applies to accommodations. If employing someone is unavoidably more expensive and the government wants them employed they can either employ them or subsidise their employment.

You've internalised all the costs of employing you and now as far as employers are concerned you're just another contractor. If the costs are borne by the employer then they'll attempt to avoid them. See the drop in disabled employment following the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act[1].

[1] Consequences of Employment Protection? The Case of the Americans with Disabilities Act

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires employers to ac- commodate disabled workers and outlaws discrimination against the disabled in hiring, firing, and pay. Although the ADA was meant to increase the employment of the disabled, the net theoretical effects are ambiguous. For men of all working ages and women under 40, Current Population Survey data show a sharp drop in the employment of disabled workers after the ADA went into effect. Although the number of disabled individuals receiving disability transfers increased at the same time, the decline in employment of the disabled does not appear to be explained by increasing transfers alone, leaving the ADA as a likely cause. Consistent with this view, the effects of the ADA appear larger in medium-size firms, possibly because small firms were exempt from the ADA. The effects are also larger in states with more ADA-related discrimination charges.

[http://economics.mit.edu/files/17](http://economics.mit.edu/files/17)

<comment><USER6> I chided another commenter for leading with that dimissive cliché "life isn't fair", as if the OP wouldn't know that far better than either you or I do. "No one owes anyone a job and no one is owed a job" is more of the same. Comparing your anxiety to quadriplegia and advising the OP to be more like yourself seems even more patronizing. I don't mean to belittle your achievement there—it's awesome that you did that, and I'd love to hear more of the story. But as an answer to the OP's question, it's belittling in its own right.

The rest of your comment seems to include relevant details to the OP's question. I haven't read them closely enough to understand them, but from a moderation point of view your comment would been much better if you had stuck to that sort of answer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Not mentioned - that they can pay far less for these workers by dint of the much lower minimum wage for disabled persons.

The NW Center has been cited in the past for such underpayment. [https://patch.com/washington/seattle/nonprofit-underpaid- dis...](https://patch.com/washington/seattle/nonprofit-underpaid-disabled- workers-seattle-labor-office)

<comment><USER8> I was going to say. It's good to provide opportunities and accomodations for disabled people, but to expect this to be altruistic on the part of Amazon is naive. They've done the math and think the accommodations won't counteract the gains from being able to pay less, and get some PR.

<comment><USER9> How did you make the jump to concluding that Amazon is doing this because of some greedy or nefarious purpose? Is it possible there could be management anywhere at Amazon who cares about this segment of the workforce?

I guess - without any further information, why spread this negativity?

I don't understand the agenda here. My personal experience with shopping Amazon and AWS has been generally really good. Even if you're has not been good, how do you extrapolate to Amazon people all being part of some evil conspiracy?

<comment><USER8> I wouldn't call it nefarious, but corporations operate on greed. As another comment points out, it's probably a good thing that society can get this greed targeted towards improving the situation for people who might otherwise be marginalized. I'd say my agenda would be to encourage a healthy skepticism of every good thing you hear about a corporation. Amazon has had bad press regarding how they treat warehouse workers. If we're too busy praising them for this, are we missing out on places where the greed leads to bad things?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> A recent point of comparison: Walmart quietly eliminating the "greeter" position, which is often filled by people with physical or developmental disabilities:

[https://www.npr.org/2019/02/25/696718872/walmart-is- eliminat...](https://www.npr.org/2019/02/25/696718872/walmart-is-eliminating- greeters-workers-with-disabilities-feel-targeted)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251858](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19251858)

<comment><USER11> Tbh greeters seemed almost like a waste, as they were not directly creating any output.

<comment><USER12> Imagined or not, there is/was a notion that greeting people helps for loss- prevention purposes. (i.e. if you say hello and make eye contact with someone as they enter your establishment, they are less inclined to steal from you.)

If Walmart is removing those positions, they may have found it to be a misconception. [edit: it seems like Walmart is not removing greeters, just making it harder for disabled/elderly people to hold those positions and expanding their responsibilities.]

<comment><USER13> They're also calling them hosts, which is annoying, because they aren't anything like a host at a restaurant, because going shopping in a giant big box retailer isn't anything like dining at a sit-down restaurant. I can see why they would use an overblown title, because they call their employees _associates_ to say that they consider them partners, when in reality there are over a million employees and there's no way they could all be partners.

<comment> crooked-v They seem to be changing the positions from being generally at the door to instead being staff generally designated for welcoming but also helping people with requests, in which case 'host' makes sense as a distinction from other staff intended to focus on stocking, cleaning, checkout, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I have chronic pain fortunately I manage and can work full time as SE. However, I know others who could not transition from physical field into something else.

Most people with disability genuinely want to work, but they usually get fired due to missing days or jobs that lack flexibility and cannot accommodate doctor visits for example.

Many are just as good if not better than healthy employees. I thought about creating some kind of non-profit to help connect disabled employees and employers(have not researched the market, not sure if that already exists). I think if people had clearly defined limits employers would be more likely to hire them. In western nations, with disability often comes feeling of not being worthy, as worth is often attached to work. Ability to work remote and flexible hours could really put many people back to work.

<comment><USER15> What does SE stand for? Software engineer?

What kind of chronic pain do you have and why do you have it? How common is this?

<comment><USER14> Yes, software engineer.

I have widespread tendon pain caused by a severe reaction to a popular antibiotic. I generally am pretty normal just get pain. Some medical professional label my symptoms as "fibromyalgia", however, this has been causing a lot of problems to finding the actual cause.

Here is a link if you are interested on the subject: [https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/referrals/quino...](https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/medicines/human/referrals/quinolone- fluoroquinolone-containing-medicinal-products)

Currently, most doctors in the US are not aware of the issue and nobody wants to speak up. It has been an odd experience for me.

<comment><USER7> A fluoroquinolone by chance?

<comment><USER14> Yes, I am really surprised you were able to make that guess.

<comment><USER16> The first google hit for "antibiotic nerve damage" is [https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20130826/fda-strengthens- fl...](https://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20130826/fda-strengthens- fluoroquinolone-warning)

It is perhaps under-recognized, but it's not obscure.

Looks like IVIG is the most promising treatment currently: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5833158/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5833158/)

<comment><USER14> Very interesting I have not heard of IVIG previously! I will bring this up with an MD.

The biggest issues are doctors just very skeptical and often refuse to even look at studies. I have to walk a fine line between being educated and appearing like I'm self diagnosing.

<comment><USER17> A good trick is to tell doctors your in-law (or something) is a doctor and recommended asking your regular doctor about treatment X. They're more likely than not to start considering that option seriously.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> "We have a really big problem with attrition and retention and absenteeism in our sortation centers"

Is this perhaps a sign that you have terrible work conditions? Or perhaps you aren't paying enough?

Seems more likely than "the people we hire are usually terrible workers".

</comment><comment><USER19> Very skeptical that this is due to Amazon's generosity and not just because they can tap into an underpaid and underemployed workforce. They don't seem to be giving these people access to the jobs that actually make money at Amazon. I'm very wary of feel good stories about employing people with disabilities in low paying jobs with lots of repetitive manual labor. Often it's a way to get cheaper and more easily exploited labor that you can get your PR team to spin as charity.

<comment><USER20> That's good though isn't it? The more employers start seeking competitive advantage in hiring disabled people, the narrower the pay and employment gap will become.

<comment><USER19> It's more likely that they use it to depress the wages of abled workers. This sort of unskilled labor isn't exactly scarce enough to cause meaningful competitive pressure like you describe.

<comment><USER21> This worldview almost always ends up creating no jobs rather than any jobs for a greater amount of people. Always in the name of 'good intentions'.

Having a job and financial independence vs nothing at all is the real world reality for the vast majority of these people.

Just because Amazon makes these jobs available is _not_ taking other well paying jobs away from them. That's not how this works.

Wether or not there should be more high paying jobs to capable disabled people is a different question.

<comment><USER19> The US is the wealthiest country in the history of the world. If we want to make providing disabled people with fulfilling jobs that pay a good wage a priority, we are entirely capable of accomplishing that.

<comment><USER21> This statement is so full of naivety. The type of stuff I might have thought when I was 16 and didn't know how a country becomes (and stays) wealthy in the first place.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> If they hire people who have colostomy bags they won't even have to worry about micromanaging their bathroom use.

</comment><comment><USER23> Amazon's PR team really gave this story the green light? Seems a bit shameless trot out the fact that you hire disabled people as a feel-good story. What's next, a story about how Amazon is saving puppies?

<comment><USER24> What has your company done to enable workers with a disability?

<comment><USER25> Any company that allows for remote work likely enables a whole class of workers with various disabilities.

<comment><USER4> You'd be surprised, in my experience, most jobs aren't flexible on schedule or understanding when you have regular doctors appointments. Chronic medical conditions and disabilities can require many regular appointments. I have 2-3 appointments a month and that doesn't include any physical therapy I might have. My Dad has multiple appointments per week usually. Luckily I found a job that let's me work my schedule around my appointments.

<comment><USER21> Really? You've had jobs where going to the doctor a few times a month is a deal breaker for the company?

This type of thing could easily be negotiated early on in all the startups I've worked for. Even non dev employees.

Even worse for a remote job?

<comment><USER26> You have been lucky and have had few low-paying jobs. Most jobs I've worked in the US are like this - you are fully expected to be there 100% of the time the company thinks you should be. All else should be done on your own time around the company time. This is even more true for low-paying jobs.

It sucks for anyone with health problems and sucks for anyone with children. People lose jobs because their children are sick and because they wind up with a major medical thing that happens. FMLA only covers large medical stuff - <USER2> you've worked full time for a year for a large enough company.

Some of this could be fixed with laws that protect employees and things like that. I'm generally thankful I don't have to deal with the lack of worker protection in the US right now - it meant that breaking my elbow while working a seasonal job didn't mean I was out of an income, for example.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


The Rise of Micro Startup Acquisitions - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/04/15/rise-of-micro-startup-acquisitions/

<comment><USER2> _" Recent news of Pinterest acquiring a two-person startup was probably a head scratcher for most of you."_

so is the market wising up to buying startups earlier taking earlier cheaper risks OR founders selling out quicker?</comment>


Most Americans Say Parents Do Too Much for Their Young Adult Children - <AUTHOR> https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2019/10/23/majority-of-americans-say-parents-are-doing-too-much-for-their-young-adult-children/ <comment><USER2> > most Americans (64%) think young adults should reach [financial > independence] by the time they are 22 years old... Census Bureau data finds > that, in 2018, 24% of young adults were financially independent by age 22 or > younger, compared with 32% in 1980

This divergence is symptomatic of a broken society. It's easier to divide a bigger pie. The pie was bigger in 1980 and now we are dividing up the crumbs, so it's harder to get enough.

Parents helping their children longer in life is really the only solution. It's basically like, those who achieved financial independence in 1980 did so by taking from future generations, their own children, and are now being chastised for giving some of it back.

It's nonsensical to admonish parents for helping their children overcome the burdens society has placed on future generations by having already taken too much from the planet.

Let's just look at the burdens:

      College education costs are soaring
      Housing costs are soaring
      Healthcare costs are soaring
      Jobs are diminishing
      Salaries are flat

Of _course_ parents have to help their children longer.

</comment><comment><USER3> At the age of 28, I still receive help from my mother. She buys me food periodically and has given me well over $1500 this year to help survive.

That being said, I grew up in an abusive household, followed up by one that was incredibly unstable. I was incarcerated from most 16-21, with very little time out in the real world during that time.

Another person responding to this mentioned that parents "either pay for it now or later."

I find that to be incredibly true. I think that my mother helps me so much now because she sees how much I've struggled and how some of that struggle is inevitably due to her choices. I don't blame her, but(and this may sound incredibly entitled to some)I don't think she has too much of a right to throw me to the wolves so to speak. I can't remember a time I've been stable outside of the past 2-3 years and even now, I'm actively using IV opiates. A large chunk of my life seemed very much outside of my hands at a younger age and I don't necessarily know how much more I could've done for myself other than get to the point I'm at now.

I think a lot of people are messed up and need a lot of help. I think that if you make the decision to bring someone into this world, you don't stop being responsible for them after an arbitrary amount of rotations around the sun.

</comment><comment><USER4> I'm pretty sure 90% of my friends and peers in the 21 - 25 cohort receive financial help from their parents. This is due to the fact that they're either still in school, which is increasingly expensive, or that they can't find full-time jobs in their chosen fields, or that they've chosen to live at home to save money.

</comment><comment><USER5> The past 30 years have been marked by the Great Recession, rising inequality and stagnant wages. What a surprise that the current young adult generation needs more financial help than their forebears!

<comment><USER6> As opposed to say the prior generations who lived through the Great Depression, WW2, the decade long stagflation of the 70's.

We like to think we do, but we don't live in unique times.

<comment><USER3> I would've loved to go to college and buy a home during those time periods. Please don't act like it's the same as nowadays. Sure, there were struggles but the dollar was simply worth much more, education was much cheaper, and a house cost way less than it does now.

<comment><USER7> Not to mention healthcare costs!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> As a parent of a 24 year old, it's easy for me to see how it can be hard to determine when it's time for your child to become financially independent.

Our decision making was made easy by a child who happily entered our least expensive state school, didn't mind living with us during school, and interned while in college straight into a stable job/career the day after graduation.

In rocketry terms, we had a good main engine burn to put him in GTO, now he's the ignited second stage, and we had a nominal launch.

Subtract any of the above (ideal) values, and I can see how a parent/child group can devolve into a possibly unhealthy situation.

Even with a plan for independence, the vagaries of life can easily lead the parties to want to alter the deal in light of adverse events.

<comment><USER9> sounds like you did a good job with yours. I'm 26 now and had a very similar path to independence.

provided the family can afford it, I think it's perfectly reasonable to help your offspring with stuff like food, clothing, and housing until they start making enough money that they can reasonably handle it themselves. my parents supported me enough that I never had to worry about making ends meet for essentials on top of my coursework, but it was modest enough that I was able to increase my standard of living quite a bit when I got my first full-time job and became independent.

I knew a couple people at college that would get $1000+ deposited in their account at the beginning of every month. they had a meal plan and a dorm on campus so this was just straight disposable cash. those kids had a really hard time adjusting to life after graduation. I honestly doubt they're actually independent (financially) even now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> As the parent of a four-year-old, I'm especially aware of what's happening among parents and children. And as a 50-year old, I've seen several generations grow up. What this situation involves is: pay now, or pay later. Doing everything you can and giving your child 100% when they're young and growing and learning is the time to teach them to be independent and confident. Not when they're 20+ years old. It's too late; you missed the train. And what parents say they do vs. what they do in reality is quite different. I watch it at playgrounds, kids' events, and each time I go with my daughter to a place with a lot of kids and their parents. The parents likely are looking at their phones or talking to one another, taking a "break" from parenting. I see parents bring their little kids to playgrounds, and they'll stay in their cars, and let the kids go run around with the playground and want me to push them in the swings and play with them, because their parents are in the car on their phone, smoking weed, listening to music, or just "taking a break." I see it all the time. And if that's the encouragement and attention they're giving them in public, it's likely even less back at home. But when they grow up to be helpless and have no coping skills and all the rest of the many characteristics that need to be instilled into a human to be a successfull adult, they scratch their heads and ask "what went wrong?" And usually try ot find fault with society, government, or some external factor that's responsible. They blew it.

<comment><USER11> So you are saying that the problem with young adults not being independent enough is that they were too independent of their parents as a child?

That doesn't sound right to me.

<comment><USER12> It might be that the skills involved in being independent (e.g. good habits around money / food / exercise / socialising / working) don't just come naturally but need to be inculcated from an early age at the cost of significant parental investment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Most Americans don't know what humans need to thrive, believe in Independence over interdependence, and think denying children their needs is what's necessary.

My mother in law thinks we're raising a self-centered child because we immediately meet their needs. She's ignorant of trauma and the effects her parenting style had on my partner. She's only now learning about body autonomy. We had to ask her not to make our child the butt of jokes, especially those that play on our kid's lack of understanding or difficulty communicating clearly.

Our child only just turned one. I'm pretty sure the grandma who insists on investing in Bitcoin despite its environmental impact to further her own wealth is projecting a lot of nonsense.

That's what happens when someone raises a child to deny reality and believe in their own projected judgments: you get a confused old person who is unintentionally advising others to harm children by denying their needs.

There is nothing new to me about how she thinks. It's the norm for almost all the adults I grew up around.

<comment><USER7> > Our child only just turned one. I'm pretty sure the grandma who insists on > investing in Bitcoin despite its environmental impact to further her own > wealth is projecting a lot of nonsense.

How does this relate to your point about parenting?

<comment><USER14> I suspect it's intended to speak to self-centeredness.

<comment><USER13> Right. Her perspective has no basis in the reality of our family. She has no evidence for it aside from old notions of "spoiling" children by giving them what they need, which she conflates with extraneous desires.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I mean, I wasn't financially independent from my family until I was 25. Living with my parents for free and using the savings to afford college was the only reason why I was able to get a college education and become a developer.

I think the idea of kicking people out the moment they hit 18 isn't realistic anymore. Wages are not even high enough to be self-sufficient, let alone afford college without taking out exorbitant loans. Most of my college experience was spending hours past-class completing projects and doing extensive homework, so fitting in a job along with taking care of my disabled parents and trying to manage depression would've been a herculean effort. I already had to sacrifice quite a bit of my personal health in order to gamble on my college education leading to a good career.

</comment><comment><USER16> Am I the only one to notice the questions in the graph don't have a logical correlation? If you translate them, most _older_ adults think most _younger_ adults should be independant, while most _younger_ adults aren't.

This is just the complicated version of "youths are lazy". I find it intellectually dishonest to put the two questions in the same graph, as if one generations expectations _should logically_ influence or be informed by the other's actions.

</comment><comment><USER17> Middle-class parents are desperately trying to obtain a middle-class life for their kids, in the face of a shrinking middle class. Many of them will fail. They'll blame themselves, or their kids.

Some of the kids are on the track from career to job to gig to homelessness. Or jail.

</comment><comment><USER18> Maybe those same people shouldn't have voted for politicians who gutted public education and unions and made it impossible to build housing near any desirable jobs.

</comment><comment><USER19> I actually think most twenty-somethings should live with their parents as I believe that is a particularly perilous age range.

<comment><USER9> I don't know about that. I lived with my parents through most of college and commuted 20 miles to campus. it made a lot of sense financially, but you definitely miss stuff commuting.

students who live on campus tend to make plans very spontaneously just based on who's around. I would often get invited to do stuff fifteen minutes before driving home, and I would decline a lot of the time since I knew my parents were already halfway through making dinner. it's hard to have full agency in your social life when you live with your parents.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> In other news, old man shakes fist at cloud!

</comment><comment><USER21> Americans have a very weak sense of family. We think our children should be independent the moment they turn 18 and then put our parents in homes instead of taking care of them ourselves.

</comment><comment><USER22> If you're in your mid-20s and still get help from your parents then you really need to figure out what's going wrong. A parent's responsibility is to give a child the tools to succeed on their own as soon as possible. But most people are lousy parents who think their method doesn't suck and those flaws survive from generation to generation.

<comment><USER23> Turns out the tools to succeed are just called _money_.

I hate to post low content but 'surprise_pikachu.jpg'</comment></comment>