Ask HN: Best strategies for finding a living space in the valley? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for any resources you guys may have to finding decent living spaces, that can also be used to work out of. Currently down in San Diego, finishing development on a project and looking to find seed capital, to get situated and launched. Any resources or information you guys have would be awesome, thanks! <comment><USER2> Unless you know people up here then your best bet is look for temporary housing for a few weeks while you drive around and look for places via craigslist/similar. Areas are notorious for having very high housing prices for crappy places that just have a fresh coat of paint on them, so looking on internet only without site visits is not a great option. I spent one month looking for a place in Mountain View and found that renting a condo from an owner turned out to be better all around than trying to find a suitable apartment complex. Another problem is that decent housing is super competitive here, a reasonable rental purchase will get replies almost immediately, so owners will prefer to deal with local people than those farther away to close the deal.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the info! I was thinking of doing a 15-30 day Couch-surfing venture to scope out the lay-of-the-land. I just want to get the best sense of what I will be walking into before I actually get there. Any tips or tidbits will be duly noted!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I live in Santa Clara for a bit so I think I have an idea on this, honestly it can be rather appalling how much housing goes for there, one of the main problems there is that the geography of the bay area makes for a lot of bottlenecks when commuting so it can be rather hard to commute very far on a daily basis, I've never lived somewhere before where even the surface streets would be completely clogged during rush hour. If you're open to renting a room in a house or townhouse that may be your best bet to keep the cost reasonable, even a half decent apartment starts at like $1400</comment>


Ancient Egyptian pregnancy test survived millenia because it worked (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://science.howstuffworks.com/life/biology-fields/ancient-egyptian-pregnancy-test-survived-millenia-because-it-worked.htm <comment><USER2> > Researchers currently poring over the papyri in the Carlsberg Collection are > finding that medical information discovered in ancient Egypt didn't > disappear when the Library of Alexandria burned

That's because almost nothing was lost when the library at Alexandria burned. Because there was almost nothing there to burn at the time. The library had long been in decline by this time period, and there were many other great centers of learning in the world which had extensive libraries. Why does this myth still persist?

<comment><USER3> Probably because I've never heard anyone contradict it until just now. If you have some reliable references, I'd be happy to learn from them!

<comment><USER4> Alexandria also mostly had copies, they were famous for stealing books from arriving ships in order to make copies for a while there.

<comment><USER5> Incoming ships got searched for books because there was a law in place made by one of the Ptolemies that any ships coming in would be required by law to lend any books on board to the library to make copies. Sometimes, the scribes would keep the original and give the copy back because they would be hard to distinguish.

<comment><USER6> Since we can probably assume the copies of these books were made without the consent of the original author or publisher, would that make these pirate ships?

<comment><USER7> No, but it would make Alexandria the pirate bay.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The paper in question: "ON AN ANCIENT EGYPTIAN METHOD OF DIAGNOSING PREGNANCY AND DETERMINING FOETAL SEX", Ghalioungui et al 1963 [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034829/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1034829/)

I'm mostly surprised that they cite two previous experiments by Manger (1933, "Untersuchungen zum Problem der Geschlects diagnose aus Schwangerenhamn" [https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/1933-manger.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/1933-manger.pdf) ) and Hoffmann (1934, "Versuche zur Schwangerschaftsdiagnose aus dem Harn" [https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/1934-hoffmann.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/biology/1934-hoffmann.pdf) ). Who knew? Truly an example of Cowen's second law.

<comment><USER9> The main results of the experiment in the first paper is:

They used 48 samples

* 2 male -> no grow

* 6 non-pregnant females -> no grow

* 40 pregnant females -> 12 no grow | 5 poor grow | 23 grow

Mi guess is that in the press article they calculate 28/40 = 70%.

<comment><USER10> So no false positives? That's probably why they kept on using it - if it grows, you can be sure that you're pregnant.

<comment><USER11> I can imagine it might be easy to optimize this test a bit...

By repeating the test every few days, and looking at the patterns of grow/no- grow you would probably get a much better result.

<comment><USER9> With only 6 (8?) cases, the naive bound of the false positives is ~15% and if there is some statistician nearby the bound will be much higher. (I guess close to ~25%, but I'm too lazy to look up the correct calculation.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Kind of a tangent (but potentially useful and little known) is the "baker's method" of male contraception.

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

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat- based_contraception](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat-based_contraception)

> It has long been observed that men who work in professions that expose them > to heat in the nether regions: bakers, cooks, steamworkers; have had a hard > time fathering children. Interestingly, men in these professions were > observed to start having children after retiring or finding a new job. Based > on these observations, Dr. Martha Vogeli [ _sic_ , her name ends with 'e': > Marthe] ran a long set of experiments starting in the 1940's in India. After > trying all possible combinations, Dr. Vogeli found a consistent method for > inducing temporary infertility in men by a series of hot baths. In short, > men who sat in hot water for 45 minutes a day for 3 weeks were protected for > at least 6 months.

~ [https://www.dontcookyourballs.com/heat-based- contraception-n...](https://www.dontcookyourballs.com/heat-based- contraception-natural-birth-control-for-men/)

<comment><USER13> I am wondering if my MBP on my lap was the root cause of my fertility issues. I can't believe I didn't google this before.

<comment><USER14> That's why you should use a Linux Laptop with Libreboot firmware and arch linux and not an emasculating MBP.

<comment><USER15> Or just a plastic-body laptop with the heat vent off to the side.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> A similar method, that is detecting hCG in urine, was used in the early 20th century by injecting into xenopus frog.

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2211252/pdf/brm...](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2211252/pdf/brmedj04228-0010.pdf)

Another recent article: [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/doctors- used-to-us...](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/doctors-used-to-use- live-african-frogs-as-pregnancy-tests-64279275/)

</comment><comment><USER17> I always like to think about the first person who thought of this. "Hmm let's pee on some wheat and barley, I wonder if this will prove if the woman is pregnant".

<comment><USER18> It's probably something more like the wheat and barley was waste and they peed in the same area they dumped their waste.

One family noticed their barley was sprouting, while another's didn't. Shortly after, the family with the sprouts had a baby. It could have taken generations for this to be actually used as a pregnancy test.

<comment><USER19> It's also possible that there was some theory behind it that was wrong but happened to lead to an accurate technique.

<comment><USER20> I was going to suggest this. The Romans for example took a lot of medical interest in urine.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Is there a link to the study where they got the 70%? If they used a group with a 50% of pregnant women then 70% is not too much. Also it would be nice to know the number of women to estimate the error in the 70%. *If they had 10 women in total and they get the right result in 7, it is not impressive at all.)

Also, the weeks of pregnancy are important. This test is useful proably in before the week 6, but I think the homones level change with time.

<comment><USER21> I'm trying to picture a bunch of archaeologists deciphering some Egyptian papyri, and then going to some hospital (or maybe university) to enlist women who would be willing to pee in some bags with wheat and barley. In order to assess the accuracy of an ancient wives' tale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> There's more about this in an Atlantic article:

> One of the oldest descriptions of a pregnancy test comes from ancient Egypt, > where women who suspected they were pregnant would urinate on wheat and > barley seeds: If the wheat grew, they believed, it meant the woman was > having a girl; the barley, a boy; if neither plant sprouted, she wasn't > pregnant at all. Avicenna, a 10th-century Persian philosopher, would pour > sulfur over women's urine, believing that the telltale sign was worms > springing from the resulting mixture. In 16th-century Europe, specialists > known as "piss prophets" would read urine like tea leaves, claiming to know > by its appearance alone whether the woman who supplied it was pregnant.

[https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/history-h...](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/06/history- home-pregnancy-test/396077/)

</comment><comment><USER23> 70% is 20% better than random, don't buy that crib yet.

<comment><USER24> Would need to know how the sample was chosen for that test. If you sample women of reproductive age at random, there's decidedly _not_ a 50/50 chance that she's actually pregnant: by rough estimation it should be about (1.75 [fertility rate] * 9 months [duration of pregnancy] / 30 years [reproductive lifespan] = 4-5%). If you give all of those woman a wheat/barley test and 70% of the positive tests were truly pregnant (implying about 6.25% test positives) that's actually pretty good, roughly 8x better than a coin flip. If you take a sample that's known to be half pregnant and half not pregnant and only 70% of the pregnant women are identified, it's decidedly less good.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> We should back up Wikipedia in stone tablets and bury them in various places on earth and on the dark side of the moon, just in case our Library of Alexandria gets burned by an EMP during a nuclear war.

<comment><USER26> [http://longnow.org/](http://longnow.org/) This organization is dedicated to that endeavor.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> If I order a bag of whole grain to use for food, is there a way to determine that it has not suffered such indignities? (besides reliance on the plastics industry)

<comment><USER28> Hmmm.

From plant to combine/harvester, to wagon, to bin, to truck, to elevator, to railcar/barge, to mill, to bag should be an approximate path. I'd say that someone peeing on the bag is most likely to be a problem and you'd notice that. In all other cases, a single person peeing on a couple tons of grain isn't very likely to matter. The ground up dead rats probably affect it more.

IOW, there are bigger things to worry about.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ambient temperature is important. Seeds are more likely to sprout at certain temps, and women are more likely to conceive in certain seasons (spring, for instance... not due to biology, but rather due to cultural/farming/religious cycles.)

</comment><comment><USER30> Isn't 70% accuracy too close to random (50) to say it works?

</comment><comment><USER31> Not a fan of the patronizing tone the author uses to describe ancient Egypt. Reeks of chronological snobbery.

<comment><USER32> Lol, go out and take a walk, we live in pretty good times compared to the rest of history (and civilizations btw). Is it wrong now wrongthink to think that we have it better or at least we've had some material and slight social progress since that era?</comment></comment>


Introduction to JavaScript for Fortran Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~jwp/MSO/newMSO/lab/JS/

<comment><USER2> This is wrong about so many things.

It presents JavaScript as only available in the browser, and therefore not able to do any file I/O (wrong). It also says that Javascript doesn't run in an interpretive environment (wrong). Calling it "sequential, procedural" is misleading (asynchronous programming anybody?), and calling it "object- oriented" is definitely wrong (although OO is one style of use, it is neither required, strictly enforced, nor exclusive).

There are so many WRONG oversimplifications and subsequently flawed extrapolations that I think it's shamefully misleading about the nature of JavaScript (ECMAScript, but the author probably doesn't know the difference anyway). It's like they don't understand the distinction between a language and an implementation of the language, and they definitely do not understand the (important) nuances of the language.

JavaScript is not just Fortran that can run in a browser. It is a distinct language with distinct programming paradigms.... SO DO YOUR READERS A FAVOR AND PRESENT IT AS SUCH! You don't do them any favors by misleading them.

<comment><USER3> I assumed this was written back in the dark ages of javascript (way, way before node) and was presented here as a historical curiosity. I made this assumption based on their style of writing JS (make a variable called 'X'? Why not, just remember it's different than 'x'!) and because of the use case they seemed to have envisioned for it (document.writeln etc).

<comment><USER4> Yeah, seems like it was last updated in 2005:

[http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~jwp/MSO/newMSO/lab/](http://www.see.ed.ac.uk/~jwp/MSO/newMSO/lab/)</comment></comment></comment>


Ice-making submarine would pop out bergs to help fight climate change - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/ice-making-submarine-would-pop-out-bergs-replace-dwinding-sea-ncna1039561 <comment><USER2> Freezing _some_ water makes the rest of the water hotter. And that's apart from the energy wasted in running the freezer's machinery.

But go ahead. Get back to me in 10 years and let me know how well you've done.

</comment><comment><USER3> And in other news, I invented a new perpetual motion machine to sell you!

I think we just hit peak climate change.

Sad.

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure about the idea but it doesn't strike me as stupid as a perpetual motion machine.

An iceberg has part of the water it's displacing above the water level, so transforming a given volume of water into one should lower the overall line even without carrying it on land... Also the iceberg is white and won't absorb heat as much as the raw ocean. It's not clear to me if it's possible to create this machine using less energy that it's offsetting by the albedo change.

<comment><USER3> Displacement doesn't work like that at all.

<comment><USER5> I think this article explains the general idea of why it might work, theoretically: [https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20050801_floatingice.html](https://nsidc.org/news/newsroom/20050801_floatingice.html)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


BREAKING NEWS Steve Jobs Stole iPhone Idea from Lawnmowner Man 2 - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2012/09/16/the-worst-movie-of-all-time-also-inspired-the-iphone/

<comment><USER2> How is this breaking _or_ news?

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a joke of course.</comment></comment>


The Brilliant Way To Negotiate In Three Easy Lessons - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/19/how-to-negotiate-in-three-easy-lessons/ <comment><USER2> What a weird way to start off an article.

He tells the beginning of an interesting story not related to the article title, cuts it off, switches to the main topic, and then ends the article saying the original story is for another time.

<comment><USER3> Got you to read the story to the end, didn't he?

<comment><USER4> Read the article but didn't enjoy the writing style. I read many things only to conclude that they are rubbish.

Even the content seemed pretty surreal - jumping from one bizarre story to the next. If getting me to read one article was the nefarious plan, then kudos. If getting me back to read the blog again in future was... I hope he doesn't hold his breath.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Just read this:

[http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Power-Negotiating-Roger- Dawson...](http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Power-Negotiating-Roger- Dawson/dp/1564144984)

Altucher is describing "The higher authority gambit" and "Nibbling". There are many more great negotiating tactics. Even if you don't use the techniques in Dawson's book, they will help immunize you against them.

Ever notice how salespeople are very quick to try to determine if they're talking to the "decision maker"? It's to avoid the higher authority gambit.

To avoid getting nibbled, define all the parameters when you're at the stage where Altucher was agreeing to the revenue multiple formula. Don't agree to the "formula" until you have the other parameters. Once you've settled on a price, call the other guy's bluff if he tries to nibble you once you appear to have a deal already done.

</comment><comment><USER6> I ended up jumping straight to the 3 points and loved them. Having said that, I think negotiation is a skill that is cultivated over a long period of time through experiences (and making tons of mistakes) and just knowing the tactics doesn't make you good at negotiation. I think its important to understand your personal values / temperament / thought process, and come up with a way to negotiating that you can be good at and leveraging these and other points. Mark McCormack's "On Negotiating" is brilliant on this topic - [http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Mark-H- McCormack/dp/078710...](http://www.amazon.com/Negotiating-Mark-H- McCormack/dp/0787102954)

</comment><comment><USER7> [http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/osama-bin-laden- stockpi...](http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2010/12/osama-bin-laden-stockpickr- and-everything-i-know-about-negotiation/) for a different version of this

</comment><comment><USER8> Sounds like a lite version of my blog post [1], which is, in turn, a lite version of the book.

[1]: <http://www.korokithakis.net/posts/secrets-power-negotiating/>

</comment><comment><USER9> That was confusing as hell.</comment>


Launch HN: Dinesafe (YC S18) – Crowdsourcing Food Poisoning Reports - <AUTHOR> My name is Patrick Quade, and I'm the founder of Dinesafe (https://dinesafe.org) and Iwaspoisoned.com (https://iwaspoisoned.com). We crowdsource food poisoning reports, and help detect and prevent outbreaks.
I launched Iwaspoisoned.com after experiencing a brutal bout of food poisoning from a deli in my hometown of Tribeca, NY. Out of concern for other consumers I called the deli to try and explain what happened and they hung up the phone. That inspired me to create a crowdsourcing platform to allow people to report. The idea was that if it was easy to discover if others were also sick after eating there, that would be useful information not just for other consumers but also for the deli owner.
Foodborne illness sickens 48 million consumers, and kills 3,000 every year in the US, according to US Center for Disease Control estimates. The financial burden is also significant. The total national cost of foodborne illness is estimated at $55 to $92 billion per year. and the impact on companies can also be significant, Chipotle lost $10 billion in market cap from its peak to its lowest point after it's series of food safety missteps, and the founder and CEO was forced to step down.
We built a mobile responsive website with a simple form that allows consumers to report when they believe they have food poisoning. We moderate every report, with both a back end review, and front end/human review of each submission with the goal of eliminating malicious and inauthentic reports. We then geo analyze the data in real time, allowing us to pinpoint clusters of reporting associated with a single store, looking for multiple independent reports associated with the same store or location in the same time frame. We also store and analyze historial data. We developed an index and benchmarks that enable us to identify brands with negative and positive trends.
With our data, we predicted that Chipotle would have food safety issues ahead of their series of outbreaks, and we detected several of their outbreaks, and many others in real time.
Our business sells data intelligence to industry, focusing on enterprise clients in the restaurant industry. We offer daily alerts, intraday (outbreak) alerts, benchmarking, and secure messaging, plus an API service. We have also had interest in custom email branding/messaging, and "Dinesafe Certification" for those brands that rank consistently well in our analytics.
We now provide daily alerts to over 25,000 consumers, sending over a quarter million emails a month. We partner with and provide daily surveillance services to public health agencies in 6 countries. Within the US we partner with over 350 public health agencies, covering 90% of the US by population. We also provide services to the food Industry, primarily restaurants, but also producers, the grocery and convenience sectors and more. We have over a third of the top 50 restaurant chains in the US on our platform.
We are delighted to be on Hacker News, and look forward to hearing insights from the community. Thanks for your time. <comment><USER3> Just because someone gets ill after eating at a restaurant doesn't mean that the restaurant food was the cause. There may be several causes including food the sickee prepared for himself/herself earlier in the day.

What confidence indicators are you presenting to the public so that a report can be flagged as possibly unreliable?

<comment><USER4> I agree; I had a friend who would regularly drink cases of beer on the weekends and though he said he never got hangovers, oddly he often reported experiencing food poisoning and would attribute his malaise to wherever he ate last.

<comment><USER5> In one of P.G. Wodehouse's stories, a man explains his hangover as charcoal poisoning, from the powdered charcoal used to color inferior caviar. I had never heard of such an explanation outside his fiction before.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I guess I have two sets of concerns.

The first is regarding DineSafe.org: I don't understand how the model works. I see that people can "report incidents", and I see that businesses can subscribe to get analytics on reports. What I don't see is the link: what incentive do people have to report incidents? What makes the particular types of people who report perceived foodborne illness to your website a trustworthy cohort to sample from?

Regarding "Iwaspoisoned.com" (which: I think get a better name?): it looks like what you're doing is scraping public food inspection reports (Everyblock used to do that too), and then allow people to submit their own reports that run alongside them. If that's what you're doing, it's deeply misleading: food inspections are (1) an authoritative source of information and (2) not usually reports of actual foodborne illness! The net effect is to blur the lines in both directions: to create the belief that restaurants in your area are routinely shut down due to foodborne illness problems, and to present the alimentary concerns of randos as equivalently authoritative.

For what it's worth: my concern wouldn't be that reports would be "malicious" or "inauthentic" (I'm sure there are reports like that, but I also agree that you'd probably be able to keep up with them). Rather: my assumption is that you'll have an even worse version of the Yelp problem, where people write simultaneously authentic and _bad, poorly informed_ reports. Short of "our party of 4 ate at this restaurant and all 4 of us came down with severe GI symptoms" \--- which is rare --- I don't understand how you could take any report at face value. Meanwhile: your "iwaspoisoned.com" site runs firsthand reports where people simply take photographs of their food and say in effect "this looks poisonous".

<comment><USER7> What incentivizes people to report every possible detail of their lives on Twitter and Facebook? You know how I confirm if Instagram is indeed down? You go on Twitter, and everyone breaks out the "I go on Twitter to check if Instagram is down" meme. DSL Reports, and various others have come before this idea. People love yapping about things. ESPECIALLY when it's something negative to say.

The real question is if anyone really cares enough to support a niche site like this. The biggest problem is that food poisoning isn't something that happens daily for anyone.

<comment><USER6> Sorry, I wasn't clear: if you look at the DineSafe.org site, there's no feedback loop for reporters. There's an enterprise analytics application businesses can buy, and what looks like a blind report form for consumers, but no link between the two.

By contrast: if I report a hotel on the Bedbug Registry, I am participating in a resource that is open to everyone, not just people who pay for the enterprise app.

<comment><AUTHOR> Iwaspoisoned.com is the site i think you meant to look at. It shows the reports etc, this is the consumer facing site.

<comment><USER6> Are "reports" on IWASPOISONED.COM part of the data set for DINESAFE.ORG?

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes. Dinesafe.org sells data and data intelligence from iwaspoisoned.com

<comment><USER8> Dinesafe sounds way more serious. I'd be happier to report there (but with some of the characteristics of iwaspoisoned).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I had the pleasure to attend an epidemiology doc's lecture about how difficult sourcing food poisoning actually is. Part of the problem according her-- most cases require some amount of incubation time (2-3 days and several meals). There are some exceptions, but most of the time it's not the last meal eaten, even if the symptoms began within hours. Could I suggest you encourage users to report their last few meals prior to illness? You could also try to codify user import-- things like symptoms and ingredients. "Temperature > 101.5*? Nightsweats? Abdominal pain? Diarrhea?"

<comment><AUTHOR> There are three main types of contaminants that can occur: physical, chemical, and biological. Epidemiologists tend to focus on the last one. We are not biased toward any of them, we welcome reports from anything that can harm consumers. With chemical contamination the onset can be within minutes, and even with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus (commonly just called Staph) onset can be as soon as 1 hour.

Further, in the spirit of our partnership with public health - attribution - while beneficial - is not the only benefit from our site. Simply knowing that you have a cluster of people in your county exhibiting norovirus like symptoms is important, especially when you have their contact information.

It gives public health the opportunity to follow up and conduct surveys including a food history, to try and determine attribution, but it also allows education, and prevention. Many people don't realize that if you have norovirus, you can be contagious for up to three days after recovery. So if you are a food worker, or work in a hospital, or daycare this point is critical to communicate to prevent further spreading, especially given how virulent norovirus is.

Besides all that - we have detected outbreaks of cases with longer incubation periods such as E. coli, so while some amount of misattribution is real it doesn't preclude us from achieving positive outcomes.

Thanks

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> On the report box, each of the checkboxes on the "Send Report To" should have a mouseover that explains exactly what each option is.

I also don't understand the star rating. I don't think I have ever had "5 star food poisoning," but it sure does sound nice!

<comment><AUTHOR> Great point about the hover, and information popups for mobile, thanks for the reminder. We had those in the past, they were not well used, but I still think it's great to have them, especially for the 'Send Report To' \- that's a newer feature. Star ratings is something new we are trying out, some people want to rate, and as wonderfully suprising as some people are, some want to rate well. I think its' an offset to them 'feeling bad' about reporting a place, especially if it's a place they frequent, and usually like. Not sure.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I launched Iwaspoisoned.com after experiencing a brutal bout of food > poisoning from a deli in my hometown of Tribeca, NY. Out of concern for > other consumers I called the deli to try and explain what happened and they > hung up the phone.

Wow, sorry this happened to you. When I was at university, they served Thai food with nuts and didn't have a "Contains nuts" sign even though it's protocol to have one. I ended up puffing up and the manager took absolutely no responsibility and said "tough luck", I don't think he even cared whether or not I was sick. I had to run back to my dorm room and ruffle through my roommate's medicine to find some Benadryl -- overall one of the worst experiences I've ever had.

Crowdsourcing is very tough because of quality control, but this seems possible and I really hope this works out for you guys. Best of luck!

<comment><USER4> As someone with celiac, I have given up trying to eat at any restaurants other than places that specialize in serving customers with allergy/intolerance/gluten issues. I have had incidents and many have stories of negotiating a safe gluten free burrito or whatever, and then they accidentally served a normal one. Like you say, when they screw up we have no recourse, but unlike an allergy, the effects may not be apparent for hours, but lasts for days. The restaurant and the individuals responsible are generally unaware of the severity and insulated from the effects on the victim. I could be out of work for a week or more due to one slip up.

Now that we mention special needs, there are a couple websites that collect celiac-oriented reviews for restaurants, such as [https://www.findmeglutenfree.com/search](https://www.findmeglutenfree.com/search)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm skeptical that this will be effective.

There are obvious cases of food being unsafe for consumption (ie. A food truck got 150+ people sick at a fair [https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/contaminated- cronut-b...](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/contaminated-cronut- burger-cause-of-150-illnesses-at-cne-1.1327286)). In these cases, your website is kinda useless; everybody knows if a restaurant serves bad food, it will make the news.

But one time I got sick after eating out at a restaurant. My colleagues eat there all the time and have never gotten sick. But one day I did, much to the surprise of my coworkers who joined me for lunch and were completely fine. Was it the food? Did I wash my hands? Maybe I touched a door handle and put my hand in my mouth after. Maybe it was something at my desk when I got back to work? Maybe it was something in my breakfast?

I think you're just giving a soapbox to people who have no ability to determine whether or not their illness was food poisoning. And better yet, what's the purpose of just putting these claims out there for everyone to see? It makes much more sense for me to spend my time with the local health regulator, explaining my concerns to them, rather than complaining openly. Perhaps your service would be better if it was billed as a way to contact food regulators rather than a yelp-but-food-saftey.

</comment><comment><USER13> Earlier this week I was WRECKED by something. I was genuinely praying for a higher power to take me from this planet. I called my hotel to see if anyone had reported an illness from breakfast... they were surprised by my call. It got me thinking "something like this has got to exist" ... what a coincidence! Glad to give this a trial run based on my recent experience and hope it grows to become more popular.

The bar is so incredibly low for food safety. Restaurants, especially really popular ones, get away with a lot of really bad behavior. At some point data like this will be as paramount as their yelp score.

</comment><comment><USER14> FYI: the name of this project collides with the City of Toronto's own food safety program:

[https://www.toronto.ca/health/dinesafe/index.htm?show=detail...](https://www.toronto.ca/health/dinesafe/index.htm?show=detailid=96103)

> DineSafe is Toronto Public Health's food safety program that inspects all > establishments serving and preparing food. Each inspection results in a > pass, a conditional pass or a closed notice. Find out more about the > inspection system.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, Their consumer facing platform does not have the URL , but we do share the name. I have since met the guy who built and runs that program, we are all ok with it, since our Dinesafe is strictly a B2B platform. We actually partner with them, and send them data.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> How do you weed out false positives?

<comment><USER16> Bingo. It seems pretty easy for one restaurant to file reports about a rival.

I'd be happier with a site that aggregated food poisoning reports from various government health departments, but I'd worry about Joe Random telling me he died eating someplace.

But then it wouldn't be crowdsourcing, which is the point.

<comment><AUTHOR> We do a pretty deep dive on every report in the moderating process. Someone with malicious intent could get one report past us. Getting multiple reports past us would be do-able but harder. Getting them actioned by public health would be close to impossible. Rolling reports off after 30 days hopefully de- motivates trolls, if their hard work is gone so fast.

<comment><USER17> This wasn't much of an answer to "how", just restating that "we have a way to do it, we promise!". Could you give some explanation as to why it would be close to impossible to create enough reports to have them actioned? What markers do false reports have? It seems you only collect some free form text, and I can't imagine any way you could tell a good fake from a real report. So to a business, driving out a competitor out may very well be worth the cost of a few unscrupulous internet warriors.

<comment><AUTHOR> From us the data to goes to the governing public health agency. Each spammer would need to individually re-present their case to that agency including a 72 hour food history, and potentially bio testing. The next steps can include epidemiolist, site visit, lab testing and more. The likelihood that everything could be falsified including lab tests with all these government officials is low, and it is only when a case passes through this process that a health agency will consider making an announcement such as "Restaurant X is the source of X pathogen causing X people to be sick"

We collect more than free form text.

Thanks

<comment><USER18> So if I went out to eat and got sick, I might think I'm performing a public- service by reporting it.

Then you come back to me and say "Hey your report was weird, go get some lab- tests done"? That seems like a situation which would deter most reporters.

<comment><AUTHOR> Once we receive and moderate your report. It will go to public health. There are many paths it can take from there. We don't require lab tests, that is just a potential scenario, most common where there is either an important (deadly) pathogen potentially involved, or if it appears to be potentially a larger outbreak, and it is a pathogen that can't be detected in the facility. It's not necessarily ever a requirement. What we offer to consumers is that if you speak up there is potential that your report can make a difference.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> So protection racket as business model. As a food lover,I personally hate this, it will potentially add unnecessary burden and stress to food seller.

</comment><comment><USER20> A useful trick for reducing the chance of food poisoning with take out is to re-heat the food in a microwave.

You do have to get the internal temp of the food pretty high to do a good job, like 165+, but for many foods it works great.

Won't eliminate the risk from all pathogens but it's not a bad precautionary measure.

I like the idea of Dinesafe. There's not nearly enough effort on enforcing health codes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks. Yes is is true, many state and city health agencies are under difficutl budget constraints, in some cases having as few as a third of the people needed to meet inspection targets

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> This is an interesting tool. I can probably name a few that are probably already on your platform. I imagine chick-fil-a & dominoes are already on that list, they are IMO always one step ahead in technology over their competitors.

One of the fastest ways for a restaurant to die off is social media and foodborne illnesses. Only big corporate clients, naming those in the 300+ chain stores would be looking into this technology. My question to you is - <USER2> you intend to eventually work down to growing chains and smaller independent restaurants as wel?

While these smaller chains do not have as much money, we are seeing an overall trend towards SaaS solutions in this market. Things like yelp, google, etc are already being heavily used. Do you intend to penetrate this larger but lower revenue market? If so, how would the offering be different at all, in terms of pricing? It seems like right now you are using a quote by quote basis which 100% makes sense.

Regulation. How can I, as a normal end user, trust your reports though? I see you mentioned how you are validating this information, but how can I really trust it? Also, do you intend to notify users based on a specific mile radius of their home/work address (e.g. 25 or 50 miles out). I wouldn't want to get spammed with places I don't go eat out a lot

Do you intend to do any partnerships with Tripadvisor, and or yelp, or google(for reviews) to subadvertise in the same medium? Because that is generally what most people look up when eating at a restaurant if they are picky about what they eat.

Next, what's stopping your company from pulling a yelp? E.g. predatory business 2 business practices, by hiding negative reviews etc. How do you intend to combat this, if at all, or big corporations trying to buy off bad social media if this scales upward?

In addition - do you at any point intend to remove outbreak data past a certain point? E.g. an outbreak 10 years ago at a restaurant might not be relevant today - they might have changed ownership, etc. How do you intend on combating this?

I wonder as well, if you intend on targeting smaller clients eventually (restaurants) would you also be targeting foodtrucks too & or caterers?

What big data analytics did your model use to "predict" chipotle's outbreak? I am curious about case studies.

Did you also at advertise yourself at the chicago NRA show as well. If so, what was the general reception of both small, mid, and potential big clients

<comment><AUTHOR> 1\. Yes we intend to offer intermediate levels of service, eventually moving all the way down to a self serve option for a single restaurant.

2\. We are still working on pricing for the smaller participants. The offering will likely be slightly different, but this scales very well, so we still think they can get access to quite a few of the features, just needs to be low /zero touch on our end, and the pricing needs to be right for them to ge involved.

3\. We have geo-fenced notifications for users, we eventually will allow users to set a custom radius, and frequency and sensitivity, all pretty easy stuff to do, just need to get to it.

4\. We are open to partnerships and have been approached about this. Yelp's business model is somewhat predicated upon 'Eating out is great' so hosting disparaging information may be less interesting to them. I think as our service continues to become more normalized and understood and expected, there will be a lot more great opportunities for partnerships

5\. While I am sitting in this seat, we will not allow companies to buy away reports. Trust is everything, and I think consumers can figure this out really fast, and once you lose trust, you don't have much, especially with what we are doing, there is much more at stake than a normal review site. I thnk the companies don't want this either. As what we are doing continues to become more normalized, if our service started to become corrupted, then consumers lose trust, and another medium will pop up, and it may be a more adversarial organization. So in the end I think the large brands understand that, and should want us to continue to be the leading platform in this space.

TBC

<comment><AUTHOR> 6\. We roll data off our site after 30 days, to combat harming restaurants where the circumstances may have changed. We think this is one reason restaurants should actually prefer people report on our site vs twitter, or yelp, or facebook. Our site is not intended as a permanent public record.

7\. Yes we have had interest from theme parks, music festivals, caterers, airlines, gas stations, big retail that also sells food. We would go all the way down to food trucks, we get data for all of these, and welcome everyone taking advantage of it.

8\. What big data analytics did your model use to "predict" chipotle's outbreak? The relative volume of data we received from Chipotle consumers was staggering - and this was prior to their first outbreak when they were still considered 'high quality' we did not need quants or data scientists for this one.

7\. I speak at a bunch of events, but not yet at the National Restaurant Association, they are still fighting transparency on restaurant ratings! It will take them a second to warm up to us. We have started and had some great conversations with them, but it may take a little longer for them to get involved. When I have spoken at restaruant associations or other more broad events (like the Food Safety Summit, or International Association for Food Protection, which has a lot of industry participants) there are two camps. The tech forward companies who embrace data, even where it's imperfect, and are really interested. The remainder is a mixture, when I hear from the critics among these I typically point out 1) people are already reporting on social media 2) What I'm doing was bound to happen 3) Given how responsibly we are running this service, they ought to be glad it is me who is running it. They usually get these points.

<comment><USER21> didn't expect you to answer all my questions but I would feel more confident using your product now. Personally I don't eat at sketchy joints anyhow, I'm a picky eater myself although I tend to eat anything in front of me

7\. I have not been to the food safety summit or internatiionalist association of food protection, but those are tailored more towards corporate clientelle anyhow. The NRA show is just a slog of everything so you would have a response more skewed towards the smaller but larger number of potential clients I mentioned. You are correct in that the adoption process would be much more difficult on this level, but it is also a better way to get your name known just in general among the growing franchisee/franchisor community.

On another note, its important to think of restaurants not as venues of just places where they serve food. Really these big chain stores are in reality real estate companies putting investments into their properties. Wawa and McDonalds are both great examples. Smaller companies generally do not have this mindset so bear that in mind.

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

question - whats your plan for marketing to end user?

For larger marketing efforts towards the general public, what is your plan here anyhow? The success of any software largely depends on its users sending in reports (e.g. people eating). Are these people going to find your site purely based on google searches?

For instance, if I imagined myself in the shoes of people reporting. If I got sick from a restaurant, I would potentially as well go on a ranting spree and google things like "how to report restaurant for ecoli/sick/__insert term__/etc". And find your site

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

question - How do you plan on using social media instagram / twitter / facebook / email / etc to end user?

I'm curious how this will work. For instance, there's the end users social media(s). The restaurant businesses social media(s) and regional socia media(s). Your company's social media and possibly regional levels of it too.

You said you will be using SMS to alert end user, but have you tailored a strategy laying out all edge case scenarios?

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

question - if I search "X restaurant name" would I see a domain name link to dinesafe.com/restaurant_name?

I have a question regarding this. Obviously corporations are going to have a big social media presence, but smaller restaurants (should you most likely be targeting this avenue) have a weaker social media / google presence.

I can see if your service were to really take off, it might inadventely affect businesses negatively. For instance I might search "XYZ restaurant name" and out comes a list on the 7th or 10th listing about a food safety illness report on google.

I know you mentioned earlier you have no intention for businesses to tamper with data entered from their clients. But, what about giving them a 2nd chance? Unlisting the report directly on google, but leaving the report intact on the site. Have you considered recourse on this angle as well?

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

question - mobile users - webapp or native iOS / android app?

Reporting seems to be a one off thing I can't imagine someone frequently reporting items. Do you, or do you not intend to make a native app? Possibly for searching through reported areas, etc

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

question - how do you gauge how much a corporate client will pay for your software?

I'm just curious how this works. You don't need to answer this or be very specific I am not entirely familiar on how marketing analysis is done to give an accurate quotation estimate for how you quantity the "risk" they avert and therefore potential revenue savings.

From a salespoint, it sounds interesting and sometimes hard to convey. Its like selling just general IT services - some people will question a year down the road "why do we need IT if they sit around doing nothing and not make us money" mentality. Either through a change of leadership down the road nearing the start of the next fiscal year, etc.

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I probably don't have any more questions just curious if you had thought of the above cases

<comment><AUTHOR> Good! glad to hear it :)

Thanks for the tip re the real esate perspective, I had not thought of it that way. The publicly listed companies definitely have a larger group of participants who care about the outcomes, in their investors. \</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-----

question - whats your plan for marketing to end user?

Earned media has been helpful to us here, search, and social media have also been helpful. Google search "food poisoning kfc" (or any brand) and you can see we do reasonably well at that. With more resources we can do a lot better at all of these, and there is a virtuous cycle for us of identifying more outbreaks = more press = more awareness = more reports = identifying more outbreaks.

We are also pretty close to roll out languages - we have active users and reports in most countries, and public health as well, but improving languages will help that.

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

question - How do you plan on using social media instagram / twitter / facebook / email / etc to end user?

There is a ton of work to do here, and a lot of upside for us when we get to it. In terms of the best strategy - this is a work in progress, and as we pull more brainpower in to help us with that we have a high degree of confidence we will get it right.

question - You said you will be using SMS to alert end user, but have you tailored a strategy laying out all edge case scenarios?

We have not ironed out all the edge cases as yet. Our email subscription is the most popular, there is demand for our app as well, but that is down the road. There are some interesting opportunities with SMS and messaging, they need more work.

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

question - if I search "X restaurant name" would I see a domain name link to dinesafe.com/restaurant_name?

I have a question regarding this. Obviously corporations are going to have a big social media presence, but smaller restaurants (should you most likely be targeting this avenue) have a weaker social media / google presence.

I can see if your service were to really take off, it might inadventely affect businesses negatively. For instance I might search "XYZ restaurant name" and out comes a list on the 7th or 10th listing about a food safety illness report on google.

>> Yes this does happen, there are some cases where we do rank higher than the companies own website. Not our intent, we are thinking through this.

question - I know you mentioned earlier you have no intention for businesses to tamper with data entered from their clients. But, what about giving them a 2nd chance? Unlisting the report directly on google, but leaving the report intact on the site. Have you considered recourse on this angle as well?

>> We offer the restaurant the opportunity to secure message with the complainant (anonymized complainant information). Fast, and positive response to customers can often result in review retractions, and even stronger brand loyalty. If a customer wants to take a review down we do it. We encourage this route. Given we roll data off our site after 30 days we feel like we are doing a lot already, but we are open to refine our solutions on this point.

<comment><USER21> By the way Patrick if you ever need input or feedback I am very well acquainted with the industry in many different angles. Feel free to reach out to me, I am interested in seeing how your company progresses

I have my contacts on my username

You can always search through posts comments I've made here on hackernews to get an idea of what my background knowledge is in.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! I will do that. I appreciate it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> >We moderate every report, with both a back end review, and front end/human review of each submission with the goal of eliminating malicious and inauthentic reports

Humans don't scale. How do you plan on _reliably_ doing this when you get larger?

>With our data, we predicted that Chipotle would have food safety issues ahead of their series of outbreaks, and we detected several of their outbreaks, and many others in real time.

Not to sound pessimistic, but I'd also like to know if you had any false flags? Where you predicted an outbreak and it never happened? As you can imagine, falsely publishing something like this could be hugely detrimental to a company's reputation.

Cool idea, just curious about certain aspects of your operation :)

<comment><USER8> A single human doesn't scale, a work force of multiple humans can.

With something this sensitive I would be very wary of machine classification.

<comment><AUTHOR> Agreed, I expect we would use it to supplement but not supplant human reviews.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Do you plan to offer an API or a app which show venues where food poisoning was detected?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, yes we have an API service. We have had interest in an app, and do plan to release one, we are beta testing right now for IOS and Android.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> The cynic in me is screaming that this site is simply a lawyer referral intake front. There are a number of websites that try to brand themselves as public service tool but it's basically attorney advertising except more clever.

That's their monetization. They don't have to sell advertising because the submissions are worth real money alone. I do a fair amount of work in the legal space and these deceptive tactics are really disappointing to see. I'd name some of the top offenders of this but I rather not give them anymore traffic and signals for google. If you're funded by lawyers or are a lawyer yourself please just say you are without the fog of a non-profit community driven platform.

If that's not the case with these sites (no way to really know what sort of handshake deals were made but I'd be surprised) I wish you the best of luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha. ex-finance guy, nothing to do with law. Thanks for the well wishes. As fyi - I have been approached by law firms for lead generation, but I think only twice ever. As I understand it, succesfully litigating a foodborne illness case can be relatively difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I can't see any way this will be abused.

<comment><USER26> I'm curious if it will have a commercialization model similar to Yelp! - a la "extortion as a service", wherein the business owners have to pony up to defend themselves against potentially false allegations.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are not attacking them, nor are the public health agencies, so hopefully they do not feel the need to defend. Also given we roll reports off the site after 30 days we believe there is less of a concern from that perspective. We are not a permanent record like Yelp or other platforms. Naturally they do have to pay if they want to get any of the features and services we offer to help strengthen their food safety program, but we are presenting ourselves as a partner not an advesary.

<comment><USER25> Yes it's not extortion. It's protection.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. This is one topic where everyone is on the same page, people don't want to get sick, restaurants don't want to make them sick. We are helping restaurants to do better on their most important core objective.

<comment><USER27> Woosh. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Berkeley Physicist Confirms Global Warming - <AUTHOR> http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/skeptic-talking-point-melts-away-as-an-inconvenient-physicist-confirms-warming/

<comment><USER2> Most of the deniers were never about if global warming exists, it's the cause.

</comment><comment><USER3> Whew. That makes me feel better.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you prepare and do a technical talk? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> BTW I have found an awesome software for presentations by Scott Chacon called Showoff: <https://github.com/schacon/showoff>

<comment><USER2> In case you want to use syntax highlighting on code in Keynote I've found that using <http://gist.github.com> to highlight and then copying the code into a text field in Keynote will retain the syntax highlighting and is a simple way to get syntax highlighting across a wide variety of languages.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Research, outline, develop code samples and slides, repeat until satisfied.</comment>


Lodash 3.0.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://lodash.com/docs

<comment><USER2> Changelog here (for anyone else trying to figure out what's different):

[https://github.com/lodash/lodash/wiki/Changelog#v300](https://github.com/lodash/lodash/wiki/Changelog#v300)

</comment><comment><USER3> Lodash is amazing and fwiw, I consider it essential for any js script > 100 lines.</comment>


The Anatomy of a Tweet: Twitter Gets a Style Guide - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/the-anatomy-of-a-tweet-twitter-gets-a-style-guide/?hp <comment><USER2> The fact that a "Twitter for Dummies" book is actually being written (or already written) brings me great sadness. Is it really that hard?

<comment><USER3> The publishing of these books has nothing to do with a need for information about Twitter. It's a ploy to make money off all mainstream people who hear about "that Twitter thingy" in the media.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> _"This is a new genre of writing," said Mr. Sagolla. "A new form of literature, in some ways."_

Fortunately, literature has never been defined by the people who would claim anything to be a new form of literature.

Perhaps I'm biased, since I still see Twitter as a silly tool and wonder why individuals would find it at all interesting.

</comment><comment><USER5> <http://www.textism.com/favrd> : Read Favrd for a few days and you should get the hang of it. If you need a book, you're doing it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER6> I find it strangely fascinating that someone wrote a book about how to write 140 characters.</comment>


Software developer salaries - <AUTHOR> http://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/software-developer-salary-SRCH_KO0,18.htm

<comment><USER2> Interesting. Because in Latvia you can get best of the breed software developers for only 66 000 USD a year. And that includes all possible and impossible taxes! (without taxes it's about 32 000 USD a year)

By the way, I'm a freelancer - feel free to drop me a line at email@example.com.

Sorry for the spammy note. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> In Malawi, the average salaries of good developers is 14,400 USD (22% of that of Latvia). Lord have mercy!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ugh, sign in to view more, no I don't think so.

/clears cookies

<comment><AUTHOR> Hahaha!</comment></comment>


Unfit for Work - <AUTHOR> http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/?wpisrc=nl_wonk

<comment><USER2> Interesting article. We had a similar issue with the previous government in the UK that tried to "hide" unemployed people by allowing them to go on disability benefit instead.</comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with a lot of spare compute hardware? - <AUTHOR> Due to a project I was working on no longer needing the resources, I currently own several servers with up to date hardware. In aggregate, there are:<p>- 160 vCPUs, Xeon v4 2.2 Ghz<p>- 512GB RAM, DDR4 2400 Mhz<p>- 10 TB SSD<p>- 196 TB HDD<p>I'd like to hear suggestions on how I can direct these resources for the most impact. This could mean a new project or an existing project/organization. But it has to be something noncommercial, not a new business idea. <comment><USER2> Experiment with free versions of enterprise software? For example Nutanix [0] or setup a Openshift/OKD cluster [1]. Install a Hypervisor [2][3] and start rolling out virtual machines for smaller projects, use a devops approach automating everything with Ansible for example (Infrastructure as Code)... And many more possibilities, or donate the hardware to me so I can use it to do all this ;)

[0] [https://www.nutanix.com/products/community- edition/](https://www.nutanix.com/products/community-edition/) [1] [https://www.okd.io/](https://www.okd.io/) [2] [https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free- esxi6](https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi6) [3] [https://www.ovirt.org/](https://www.ovirt.org/)

</comment><comment><USER3> Find yourself an open-source project in need of build infrastructure. A Linux distro or one of the BSDs would certainly be grateful if you were to help them build and distribute packages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Start a cloud service, provision a bunch of VMS and let HNers rent them for electricity cost, and they can decide how best to put them to use.

</comment><comment><USER5> Find a startup that has growth but not the computing platform. Host them in exchange for equity.

</comment><comment><USER6> Are you in London? I'll buy them.

I need them for computational chemistry hobby of mine

</comment><comment><USER7> Start a small cloud service provider business.

</comment><comment><USER8> What brand/model are those servers?

</comment><comment><USER9> sell it</comment>


Ask HN: Is it worth it to join a great company in a "lowly" position? - <AUTHOR>

Say I get an offer to join an awesome company. Problem is, I'm overqualified for the position, but the reason I applied was to see if I could get in, and then grow within the company. I'm hoping if this will open doors long-term (having, say, McKinsey on your resume is essentially a rubber stamp to success in your future career path), but I'm also worried about the short-term implications.Have any of you been in this position? <comment><USER2> Is the position "lowly" in a relative sense or in an absolute sense?

The most important part of career development is making sure that you're being challenged and learning new things wherever you are. Sometimes that means taking a bottom-rung software engineering position at Google, and sometimes it might mean being CTO of a startup. The answer depends a lot on what you've already done before, what you want to do in the future, and what specific skillsets you've identified as needing practice.

I've found that in general, it's harder to blaze a trail than it is to follow in other really smart people's footsteps. OTOH, there's something intrinsically educational about that difficulty itself. A lot, too, depends on whether you find yourself stagnating because you can't identify areas where you could do better (a big problem for big-fish-in-a-small-pond) or whether you find yourself stagnating because you're too overcome with inertia to change your behavior (a big problem for small-fish-in-a-big-pond).

BTW, I've also noticed that many people who think they're overqualified for great companies when they get their offer find that they're not overqualified at all once they get in. The public face of any great company is a tiny fraction of everything that goes on inside of them...that's how they got to be great, after all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Relative sense.

While I'm at a somewhat decent level at my current position, I don't see growth opportunities, at least in the way I want to grow. I'm wondering if starting again at a lower rung, but hopefully, in the right path, would be worth the "demotion" so to speak.

I hope you're right about the "find that they're not overqualified at all once" bit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Take the job and attempt to grow within the company. Best case: you reach the position you want at a great company. Worst case: you leave in ~ 1 year and you have a great company on your resume.

<comment><USER4> "So, why did you leave Great Company"?

A better option might be to take a higher position/pay at a lousy company. At least then he will have a savings cushion to fall back on. There is no sense in trying to "climb the ladder"; some positions are so low that you can't possibly climb out of them. Try to grow from testing into lead dev, if you don't believe me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> It depends on how lowly. For example, I would never think it would be worth it to be a secretary at Google over a programmer somewhere else. However, coming in as a regular developer when you've normally had senior or lead roles is fine. People do it and if asked about it later they will understand why you took that step, in order to get experience within that company.

Most of all, talk to the people giving you the offer. Make it clear that in a career sense this is a step down but you are considering it because that's how much you want to work for the company. Ask specifically what the growth path is or growth opportunities are for you there. I wouldn't expect them to make any guarantees but you can phrase it as: if I were to perform exceptional, then... You just want to make sure they know they aren't hiring a low level code monkey who will be happy doing the same thing 5 years later.

</comment><comment><USER6> Per nostrademons, shoring up your skillset by going into related areas (whether of technology or ops environment) is a good way to secure your career. However, it could also work against you if you ever intend to start your own company. Broadening your skillset helps to make you a master technician (a la Gerber's E-Myth) but often does not prepare you for higher levels of management. This isn't to say "don't do it" but to manage your career by a goal instead of letting things happen by accident.

</comment><comment><USER7> Take it. Find interesting problems and challenges to solve so that you expand your responsibilities over time. People will notice, and with the right networking, you should be able to move up/ be promoted.

Edit: a job, even if below you, allows for savings and retirement matching, both of which allow you greater flexibility in the future.

</comment><comment><USER8> Yes! The hardest part is getting in the door. Once in, it is easier to move up. But be realistic.. you're being hired for a specific role and aren't going to be promoted to CEO in one week.

</comment><comment><USER9> I'd like to here how you got in and at what post.</comment>


Fordson Snowmobile 1929 Concept Reel [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fo31_3UzTTY

<comment><USER2> Similarly, Russian ALL TERRAIN military vehicle drives on snow: [http://youtu.be/RbDe5dEu07I](http://youtu.be/RbDe5dEu07I)

</comment><comment><USER3> That horserider should get a taste of his own medicine.</comment>


San Francisco police raid home of journalist to find who leaked Adachi report - <AUTHOR> https://www.sfexaminer.com/the-city/san-francisco-police-raid-home-of-journalist-to-find-leak-in-adachi-death/ <comment><USER2> Really, breaking down the door of a journalist with a sledgehammer with guns drawn and then holding him in handcuffs for 7 hours because he reported on something they didn't want released? He's not even the person who leaked the report. I'd call it that overkill. I wonder what they told the judge who signed off on this waste of resources. You'd think SF had more crime issue that could be dealt with first.

<comment><USER3> I am curious: why are police reports confidential? Of course they could be very damning to a large number of people if they were public but I am wondering why they are not public records searchable in a database? What is required to make them public? Are they just available for trial after what I presume is a subpoena or some form of discovery?

<comment><USER4> Maybe they are confidential because they can corrupt a jury before the information can be presented in court? Just a thought.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> > A San Francisco Police Department spokesperson defended their action in a > statement Friday, saying that the warrant was granted by a judge and the > raid was "part of an ongoing criminal investigation into the leak of the > Adachi police report."

Remember this when they try to sell encryption backdoors, saying it's okay because it'll require a warrant.</comment>


Ask YC: Some feedback before we launch NewsCred publicly - <AUTHOR>

Hi guys. As always, coming to HN community for some feedback for new features that we're pushing out on NewsCred soon. There's a sneak preview live on http://www.newscred.com now for you guys to take a look.
Please let me know what you think. Specifically, we've added the concepts of 'Topics', which can be people, events, places, companies and organizations.  We have automatically generated  'Topic' pages, as well as breaking topics within each category page (business, world etc).
My favorite: clicking on any article, we can tell you what related topics are discussed in the article.
Also, we pushed out search, and we now offer search on articles and topics, as well as figuring out related topics to your search.
Would love to hear what you guys think. As always, thanks so much... <comment><USER2> Two small things I found:

1) The javascript scrolling for the top articles is not always reliable; I was able to break it by clicking furiously. Also, the scrolling can be distacting; I would vote for a simple hide and appear, along with a distinction that you have selected a particular article, like on Yahoo's front page (Featured, Entertainment, Sports tabs).

2) In the "buzz" section, the tinyurl's are not linked: <http://www.newscred.com/topic/show/name/barack-obama>

Overall, I love the idea and applaud you and your team on your work. Site looks great, easy to get to the content and understand. Great work!

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) Very clean design, though wordy. Some things like cred/discred could be better expressed as icons or illustrations.

2) I hope you have a very good maths background. Calculating cred is a much harder problem than it appears.

3) Best of luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> I like the nice clean lines - above the fold anyway, then I think it gets confusing as you scroll down and the main articles move left, and what I think are less popular articles (thinner items) move into the center.

Your eye doesn't go smoothly down the page.

Also, as you probably know, most people won't customize the news sources, so maybe do that as an accordian or something like that. That would also make the 'people in the news' section move up the page nicely.

It may also be more interesting if you could add images to the article listing.

Good work, and good luck.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should add, my least favorite part is the slowness. We are working on memcaching now...

</comment><comment><USER5> How do you calculate credibility? Right now it seems to be a simple average...

</comment><comment><USER6> how are the articles added? RSS? or by editors?</comment>


Do long in the tooth programmers get drawn to neuroscience? - <AUTHOR>

I've been a professional programmer for 13 years and studied electronic engineering at uni. In the last few years I've developed this urge to learn more about the brain and neuroscience even though biology and medical sciences have never interested me in the past.<p>I think after programming machines for a long time the natural extension is to want to learn more about the "computer" inside one's head. Is that a common feeling or just me? <comment><USER2> What does it matter if your interest is common for people with your background or not? I would be just as happy if I knew I were the only one in the world that was interested in something, or if I were one of millions with the same interest. Trust yourself and your own mind.

Having said that, I know or have heard of several people that have gone from EE/CS into neuroscience. One of my friends is a programmer and EE graduate like you. He spent quite a bit of time studying neuroscience and taking biology/chemistry prereqs as a grad student recently. Jeff Hawkins (Palm, Numenta, wrote a book called On Intelligence) is yet another person that fits the pattern. Does this mean anything important? I don't think so, _unless_ you're contemplating changing careers. I think it's just that this is a relatively new but promising field (I know it's over a century old, but bear with me), just like molecular biology was the hot thing to get into during the 50s if you were into physics.

</comment><comment><USER3> 13 years == long in the tooth?</comment>


Google is ending integration between Google Photos and Drive - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/12/18662946/google-photos-drive-ending-integration-syncing <comment><AUTHOR> I agree that is confusing. I actually liked to be able to share a folder from my Photos inside Drive, with other people. But after the Backup and Sync I think it got even more confusing as for example if a picture would go to a file folder or Google Photos folder. Anyway, my most expected feature is 1080p 60 FPS and 4K.

</comment><comment><USER2> In theory, this would have been great. In practice it was not. So, no big loss.</comment>


Writing an MMO with Web Actors - <AUTHOR> http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2014/02/13/web-spaceships/ <comment><USER2> I'm currently writing an MMO.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1xa9rj/i_have_be...](http://www.reddit.com/r/roguelikes/comments/1xa9rj/i_have_been_writing_a_pseudoroguelike_mmorpg_with/)

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/1x4ycd/i_have_been_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/1x4ycd/i_have_been_writing_a_pseudoroguelike_mmorpg_in/)

I am intrigued by actor models, but I can't get my head around what that would mean in terms of architecture. A game loop is easy to understand, especially for functional programming. You just make the world at tick n+1 a function of the world at tick n.

For one thing, this makes server load easy to evaluate. It's just a percentage of simulation tick duration spent in calculation. How would I evaluate that in the actor model?

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, with (concurrent) actors there are no ticks – just like in the real world, and every actor has its own loop.

This game also computes an FPS rate. Whenever an actor completes an update, it atomically increments a counter. Every N increments, with N being the number of actors, we say a frame is done. But this is unnecessary.

The best way to estimate load is by looking at Quasar's internal execution queues. Also, every actor in this game has a loop of 30ms, i.e. it immediately responds to messages it receives, but if there are none, it updates every 30ms. If you miss that deadline, namely your current run is over 30ms from the previous one, you know the server is overloaded.

Of course, the main advantage of working like that is that you get really good parallelism. In a previous blog post where I discussed the standalone simulation[1], I mentioned that you can run it still using actors and still in parallel, but in lockstep using a Phaser. After each cycle, every actor waits for all the others to complete. This gives you "classic" predictability, but you're not making the most out of your hardware as all cores basically become idle after each step, and then you have to start them up again. When the actors run asynchronously, all cores are busy all the time.

[1]: [http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2013/10/16/spaceships2/](http://blog.paralleluniverse.co/2013/10/16/spaceships2/)

<comment><USER2> _The best way to estimate load is by looking at Quasar 's internal execution queues._

Yes, but then how do I break things down in specific terms? With the game loop, it's easy for me to just take milliseconds timestamps before and after each subroutine. For example, I can just time how long it takes for me to run (prepopulate-monsters).

 _Also, every actor in this game has a loop of 30ms, i.e. it immediately responds to messages it receives, but if there are none, it updates every 30ms. If you miss that deadline, namely your current run is over 30ms from the previous one, you know the server is overloaded._

So then, I have to aggregate the loop running-times for every entity, or take a census of entities overrunning?

 _Of course, the main advantage of working like that is that you get really good parallelism._

I've always understood this part. However, consistent game ticks are useful for various aspects of simulation and game AI.

 _but you 're not making the most out of your hardware as all cores basically become idle after each step_

A laudable goal, but what if one is prioritizing "never lag" over efficiency? My game is to have some of the same "a-life simulation with a game attached" quality that Dwarf Fortress has. To ensure that such calculation never interferes with player responsiveness, I was planning to put such background processing on an entirely different instance, then import the resulting evolved monster species into player instances. How would this be architected differently using actors?

<comment><AUTHOR> > With the game loop, it's easy for me to just take milliseconds timestamps > before and after each subroutine. For example, I can just time how long it > takes for me to run (prepopulate-monsters).

Well, you can do the same here, for each actor's loop. With a single loop you're letting your hardware go to waste and limit your scalability.

> So then, I have to aggregate the loop running-times for every entity, or > take a census of entities overrunning?

You can do both. Whatever makes sense for you.

> However, consistent game ticks are useful for various aspects of simulation > and game AI.

Well it's a tradeoff. I think that given the current state of hardware, you need to use all your cores.

> A laudable goal, but what if one is prioritizing "never lag" over > efficiency?

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. How will you achieve "never lag" if your single thread can't perform all the computation in time?

> My game is to have some of the same "a-life simulation with a game attached" > quality that Dwarf Fortress has.

Sounds like a perfect fit for the actor approach.

> To ensure that such calculation never interferes with player responsiveness, > I was planning to put such background processing on an entirely different > instance, then import the resulting evolved monster species into player > instances. How would this be architected differently using actors?

Well, you could always still use a single-threaded loop and offload computation to actors. But a better way would be to split each entity to two actors. One for sending feedback to the player, and one for slow computation. If you want to ensure little interference, you can run the different kinds of actors in different Quasar schedulers, each using a different thread-pool, and control the number of threads in each of the pools. Quasar also supports distributed actors, so you can place the slow, computation-heavy ones on different machines, just as you have planned.

<comment><USER2> _I don 't think the two are mutually exclusive. How will you achieve "never lag" if your single thread can't perform all the computation in time?_

My plan is to determine the max number of players supportable in each instance, which I call an "interaction pool" and basically ensure no instance exceeds this number. All players will be in the same world, but can only really interact within the same instance. I think this will be okay since the shared world is huge and not every player will be interacting. (And I will write my way out of the sticky details. When players have to change instances, they will experience a "phase storm")

Let's say I want to move my Clojure code on top of spacebase, how would I go about it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Ha! I clicked on this expecting it to be how to make a story-driven MMO game in which the actors are all non-union/guild actors making a living off of webepisodes. Considering that even guild actors get paid beans for what they are used to in commercial/tv/film work, I was interested in what cost-savings might have been actually attained. But the actual material of the OP is even more interesting :)

<comment><USER4> I had a similar thought, my guess is that the "next generation" of MMOs has humans playing the 'Boss' in dungeon scenarios. This makes re-playing the content interesting (the talent of the boss can change) and off sets a fairly large technical burden (scripted encounters). Of course it adds issues with potential collusion, balancing difficulty, and continuity (you need someone online as the 'boss' for the encounter to happen).

I sketched out an update for WoW that would allow RBC's (remote Boss characters) to be statues in game, until someone logged in and "inhabited them" where upon there would be an in-game effect (like 20 - 30 seconds of a glowing around the statue) and then 'wham' the boss comes alive. Until either dead, or they log off and the return to being a statue.

Its a complex mechanic but it has the potential of providing a lot of quality game play for the subscribers. I'd need an economist though to get through the models of expected subscriber return value vs cost.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> This looks super interesting, a great example of functional programming and an implementation of websockets.

However, whenever something like this comes up, I always wonder about the new Java implementation of Web Sockets / actors. Do you have a comment on the difference between using Akka for your web interface instead of comsat WebActors?

I guess if this is a proof of concept for the comsat classes, it works quite well.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think the main difference is that Comsat (which runs on top of Quasar) has true lightweight threads, just like Erlang and Go. This means that actor code can block, you can have simple selective receive, and all-in-all the code is simpler and easier to follow.

Also, web sockets are not directly related to actors. Comsat's Web Actors simply let you write HTTP and WebSocket using the actor model.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The demo barely works at all, with sub 100 players, hits won't register, flying is jerky.

I get thats is only a demo but its not a very convincing one :/

<comment><AUTHOR> Flying is jerky because we do no client-side processing. A real MMO will use dead-reckoning etc.

At the top left of the screen you can see your network latency. Obviously, it depends on where you are. The server is a single US-EAST EC2 instance. So this is entirely a network issue. I can tell you that the server isn't starting to feel the load yet, and is currently running at 32.5Hz (pretty much the maximum rate). This is a much higher rate than most MMOs that run at 4-10Hz.

<comment><USER2> I have to concur with Ryan, but for slightly different reasons. For me, the biggest scaling concerns are not with efficient use of hardware, but with guaranteeing user experience. I can see how the actor model can ensure efficient use of hardware. I can also see how it could be leveraged to give responses to user input almost as fast as network latency will allow. I'm not yet sure that it will make performance monitoring or understanding performance bottlenecks any easier or that it won't make such activities more complicated.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't think it will make identifying performance bottlenecks easier, but I can't see why it would make it harder, either. Modern software systems are complicated; they're built on complicated middleware on top of complicated OS, on top of complicated hardware. There are tools to help you find your bottlenecks, but handicapping your application just so you'll understand it as we used to understand performance in the 80s and 90s seems like the wrong choice. If you want to have a simple mental model of your application's performance, just run it on a 386. With instruction-level parallelism, multiple cores with MESI coherence protocols, optimizing JITs, automatic memory management and more, the days of running the code in our head to find problems are long gone. You have to measure with the new tools and learn to trust them.

<comment><USER2> _I don 't think it will make identifying performance bottlenecks easier, but I can't see why it would make it harder, either._

Well, in the example of your demo, the system can detect individual actor-loop overruns. How do I know that this will result in a graceful degradation? What if all of the overruns happen so close together in time, the system has insufficient time to mitigate and keep out of the notice of players? If having game loops on individual actors is more efficient but otherwise semantically equivalent to having a game loop, I would like to know more about this. However, my understanding of the actor model is that it comes with built-in indeterminacy.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Unbounded_nondeterm...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model#Unbounded_nondeterminism_controversy)

 _Modern software systems are complicated; they 're built on complicated middleware on top of complicated OS, on top of complicated hardware. There are tools to help you find your bottlenecks, but handicapping your application just so you'll understand it as we used to understand performance in the 80s and 90s seems like the wrong choice._

A system one can analyze is always preferable to a system that's potentially more efficient but less understandable.

I'm not trying to shoot down your architecture. I considered it for a couple of weeks, but I turned it down because I couldn't understand the risks involved. You can leave this as "an exercise for the reader" but we both understand this isn't going to win most people over. (Maybe that's your goal?)

<comment><AUTHOR> > A system one can analyze is always preferable to a system that's potentially > more efficient but less understandable.

Yes, but analyze how? In your head? If that's the case, then the last hardware+software architectures you could analyze in your head were about ten years ago. If that kind of performance is always enough for you then fine. But no one is able to _mentally_ analyze complex software performance on modern OSes and hardware any more[1]. On the other, there are tools that analyze performance for you.

Because game developers are among those who care the most about analyzing performance, and because they like working close to the metal, they like to continue using that approach, but it's no longer viable. There is no more "close to the metal" when the CPU itself is so complex it's almost non- deterministic. Unless your game runs on a console, there is so much interference from other processes, that even believing you understand how your code works in a vacuum is not good enough to guarantee real-world behavior.

What I'm trying to say is that writing single-threaded code, combined with network calls and queues for asynchronous processing is not really more understandable. It's just similar to 90s code so people have the illusion they can understand performance as they did back in the 90s.

For example: suppose your thread is now idle. What do you do? sleep or spin? If you sleep you're at the mercy of the OS scheduler; if you spin, modern Intel CPUs can actually decide to power down your core. In either case you'll have increased latency when waking up.

[1]: forget virtual memory and multi-level caches. There's ILP, TLB, core boosting and power management, SSDs, modern thread schedulers and more and more.

<comment><USER2> _Yes, but analyze how? In your head?_

Of course not. But I can work out how the software tools for performance measurement are going to work in my head. I can also work out if the performance degradation of a game loop will be gradual with some degree of reliability and also know how the measurement tools to verify that are going to work.

 _There is no more "close to the metal"_

Long time Smalltalker and Clojurist here. Preaching to the choir you are. However, to minimize risks, one should still understand what one is doing as well as they can beforehand. I'm not saying that your architecture is bad. I'm trying to explain my decision making process with regards to it. Furthermore, if I had more information about how to implement pragmatic performance guarantees or at least a high probability of gradual degradation, and if I knew enough about performance monitoring in the actor architecture, I would probably change my assessment of the risks involved in trying it.

 _Unless your game runs on a console, there is so much interference from other processes_

It's probably going to run on a dedicated server.

Basically, what I've been trying to get across in these threads is: Your architecture sounds really cool but I don't quite have enough information about it to make me want to try it.

Or to put it another way:

"It's really great because of Z!"

"Yes, but I also really need X and Y and I don't know how it would be with X and Y."

"Yeah, you should be able to work all that out, and can't you see that it's really great with Z!?"

"Yes, it's great with Z, but..."</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Business Decision - Why I use Django and not Ruby On Rails - <AUTHOR> http://www.hopelesscom.de/2012/2/19/business_decision_-_why_i_use_django_and_not_ruby_on_rails.html

<comment><USER2> Interesting perspective.. I agree, however, every time I read Ruby code.

Yeah, it's probably as fast or faster, but Python's a clean, beautiful, efficient language with a huge community. It does what I need, and with Django there is virtually no upkeep. It just works.

As for the IDE, I use PyCharm from JetBrains.com. It's pure awesome-ness.</comment>