Ask HN: What apps or tools do you use to track things about your daily life? - <AUTHOR>

I've been thinking about aprilzero.com for a while now and how I'd like to have something similar for myself.
What kind of hardware/software stack would you use to track metrics about yourself?
The ideal hardware/software would support simple scheduled export to CSV, XML, JSON, or some other format that can be read/processed.
Pedometer, Resting Heart Rate, Sleep Quality
I'm getting a Basis Carbon Steel for resting heart rate, pedometer, and sleep quality measurements. Basis does NOT offer export or an API, but there is a tool (https://github.com/btroia/basis-data-export) that works for getting your data, so it seems like a good start to me.
Calorie Tracker
MyFitnessPal is the calorie tracker everyone recommends, but does not support exporting data. https://www.designbyvh.com/myfitnesspal-export-data/#.U-L2XoCSxM0 helps you extract your data, but doesn't seem automatable.
I haven't been able to find a robust calorie tracker (for Android) that exports data.
Blood Pressure
I'm not too sure what to do about this -- ideally I'd take measurements several times a day, but it's hard to find something simple to use that I can take to work or wherever I am. <comment><USER2> I use an iOS app called, Reporter ([http://www.reporter- app.com/](http://www.reporter-app.com/)). It prompts you to answer a set of user defined questions throughout the day- Are you looking at a screen? Who are you with? Where are you? How many cups of coffee have you had?- through powerful surveys.

It also captures "background" data using the phones sensors: number of steps, temperature, volume, elevation, phone battery, etc.

Its great for lightweight tracking and all the data can be exported in CSV or JSON formats.

I wrote an article about the 500 reports I've captured over the last 107 days: [https://medium.com/p/c4454b9d8456](https://medium.com/p/c4454b9d8456)

<comment><USER3> that app actually sounds very cool indeed! You don't happen to have a suggestion for an android version?

Lately, I too have been trying to track my daily habits. Pen and paper just doesn't cut it.

<comment><USER2> I do have a suggestion! Not sure if it's any good though.

It's called TagTime ([https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bsoule.tagtime...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bsoule.tagtime&hl=en)) and pings you with random surveys similar to reporter.

Let me know if you use it and how it works out! @thomasmeagher on the twitter.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> For blood pressure (and iOS), the Withings blood pressure cuff works well. Mine has a 30-pin connector and i haven't actually checked to make sure it will work with Lightning yet, but it works fine on an gen2 iPad.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm not on that level but I put manual both measurements and endomondo readouts in a csv file, in my dropbox account. I update it daily with aggregates from the last day and seems to be working ok so far.</comment>


Trello Android App Available for Download - <AUTHOR> http://blog.trello.com/trello-android-app-available-for-download/ <comment><USER3> I really hate it when iOS developers make Android apps.

Android has AccountManager. It automatically integrates with the accounts on your device. If you _ever_ present you own UI for a login screen then you are doing it very very wrong.

What should have happened is that on start when I said I wanted to use a Google account it should have shown me the accounts from AccountManager, and then I would have picked and authorised one. No need for passwords etc.

<comment><USER4> Many many Android users are terrified of apps that ask for AccountManager- related permissions, especially the Manage Accounts permission if an app wants to use Android to store their own credentials. Developers don't want to scare away people who are unsure about certain permissions.

<comment><USER3> The widely adopted solution is to explain permissions clearly (eg text in app description or link to a web page).

In this case I wasn't even talking about the Trello apps storing credentials in AccountManager - I meant it as a client of the AccountManager to let me use the existing credentials the device already knows.

<comment><USER5> "Your antivirus software may have flagged the exe in this zip as malware. Please go ahead and click continue to enjoy the great experience we have waiting for you."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Seems OK for an initial version. I think what both the Android and iPhone apps are missing is pinch to zoom so you can expand to see multiple lists at once and drag and drop between them.

<comment><USER7> Trello dev here. The iOS version will let you pinch to zoom to view lists in a board.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> "Your device is incompatible with this software" :(

Guess I'll have to finally install some custom rom on my Desire. I wonder what features they use that would justify dropping the older API. Or maybe they just couldn't be bothered, can't blame them.

<comment><USER9> I've got CM7 on my N1, gave it new life. Trello app is compatible too.

<comment><USER8> I'm going for that one too, backing up my sms messages as we speak :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Please let the iPad version be next. Everyone at our company has embraced Trello and there are a lot of iPads floating around. You can view boards on the web fine, but lose the drag-and-drop niceties in the iPad browser.

<comment><USER11> The iPad version is on its way, but it's a bit off yet. There's a _vastly_ improved iPhone version that's going to come out first, plus...something else...that the team has been working on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I was wonderng, has anyone been using Trello for developing client projects - not in house products, but web applications services. I would really like to know about your experiences with Trello vs more traditional style trackers like Redmine/Trac etc.

Edit: Just to be clear, I am not talking about a feature comparison. I understand Redmine has features like Wiki etc which are not in Trello. I am talking only about the Trello vs issue tracking feature in Redmine/Trac/Others .

<comment><USER3> We abandoned Github issues for Trello and also use it for project management amongst other things.

The single most useful thing is having all items in one place, be they features, administration work, bugs etc. It is trivial to reprioritise and trivial to see what is going to be done and has been done. You can also assign more than one person to a card which is handy sometimes.

The problem with most trackers is that they are project based and you often end up with your backend, frontend, Android & iOS apps being different projects. But often issues and planning span the projects, so you end up with arbitrary information and issues all over the place.

For wikis we've mostly ended up using Google Docs. Having people learn yet another syntax hasn't been helpful, and again you end up with cross project issues and linking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Sorry I might just be missing something but is there a way to create a new board from the app?

Or is it only to continue working on boards you've started already?

<comment><USER7> We haven't added board creation yet, but it is very high up on our next up list.

<comment><USER13> Great, thank you. Excellent app otherwise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The app looks pretty good, but it would be cool if there was a way to see an overview of your board - from what I can tell you can only see one list/column at a time (even if it was only w/horizontal viewing). It would make dragging things back and forth a little easier.

</comment><comment><USER9> Both this and the iPhone app are nice for a 320px use case, but for tablet, the web app is much nicer. It would be great if the web app supported touch- based drag and drop (jQuery UI touch punch?). Or if the native apps (which do use draggable elements) were multi-col.

<comment><USER11> I'm not on the Trello team, but I've spoken to them about this, and the short version is that it's tough as nails to do this in a sane way that also works across a wide-enough cross-section of browsers to be worth the dev time at the moment. As far as I grok things, that's part of why they're focusing on native apps. I'll hope someone actually on the team, like hamidpalo, responds with more details.

<comment><USER9> Thanks, I still love the app, and I really don't use it outside of desktop (during development), but on a touch-enabled device I just instinctively want to start dragging my cards around. And the native app is nice as-is on a phone (draggable between screens).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> For WP7 users out there, there is a FOSS app, Trellizzo, that works pretty great.

<https://bitbucket.org/JakeGinnivan/taskboards>

[http://www.windowsphone.com/en- US/apps/8d58efa1-1852-461c-80...](http://www.windowsphone.com/en- US/apps/8d58efa1-1852-461c-8072-c22477ed4298)

</comment><comment><USER16> Anyone using Trello for GTD. What's your workflow?

<comment><USER17> I do, sort of. I'm just getting off the ground, but I have these cards: Inbox/Unsorted, Next Actions, Waiting On, Ideas, Reference, and Done.

I haven't yet, but I think a lot of people use labels extensively to further organize (e.g. is this to do at #home, #work, an #errand...? will this action take #5mins, #30mins, etc).

<comment><USER16> I like Zendone. It connects Google Calender and Evernote. But it is still in private beta.

<comment><USER17> Thanks, just signed up— although I'm wary of moving my GTD life off of Trello. Still, open to it... and I have to say, the Zendone website is beautiful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Very nice and snappy interface. I hope the login screen will eventually get away from a web view (if possible), but overall loving it.

<comment><USER19> Really? Rearranging cards seems quick, but I find the list transition animation rather slow and choppy.

Running this on a Gal Nex with Jelly Bean.

<comment><USER7> I worked on this app and that is the same device and OS that I used, and I am in agreement with you. I think there still might be some performance wins here to make the scrolling smoother, so future releases should be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It seems the same as the mobile browser version, except you can move left/right between categories.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is this a native app or web app?

<comment><USER3> I took it apart using apktool to have a look.

It looks like a reasonably well structured Android app - <USER2> manifest, lots of activities, uses resources in preference to assets etc.

They use numerous 3rd party libraries:

* ACRA for crash reporting

* objectweb's asm for an unknown reason

* json-smart for json

* ActionBarSherlock as pretty much every app with an ActionBar does

* Google analytics

* Google cloud messaging (aka c2dm)

* Handmark's pull to refresh library

* <https://github.com/iPaulPro/aFileChooser>

* <http://ormlite.com/> presumably to cache information to a local SQLite database

* <http://loopj.com/android-async-http/> for http

* <http://ocpsoft.org/prettytime/> for time formatting

* <http://viewpagerindicator.com> for tabbing interaction

When searching for webviews I only find them used for the login.

When looking at the localisations there are quite a few languages present, but it turns out they are from the library components above. For example if you use Czech the app will be include except the pull to refresh component which will use Czech.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> And what does it do?

</comment><comment><USER23> Just installed it. Compared the IOS version and Android version side by side. Some views look really nice on Android as compared to IOS. For example list view for each individual board- I felt that Android version does a better job of showing the relevant content. On IOS the same view has 40% of screen for content rest is covered with options, paddings and bottom bar button.</comment>


Bug 1387254 – Update Firefox Nightly Branding - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/commit/0e4a2a4a5234c21a023df4d5d9e4f17e4e0382c1 <comment><AUTHOR> I'm especially fond of the tail on the new logo. Much less jagged-looking than the current Firefox logo design, while still retaining that nice 3D-looking asymmetry in the lower right.</comment>


Podcast app Castbox raises $13.5M, launches its own original programming - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/25/podcast-app-castbox-raises-13-5-million-launches-its-own-original-programming/ <comment><USER2> Someone would do well to interview the "PodFather" (inventor of podcasting) Adam Curry -- email@example.com -- and ask him to recount his experiences with PodShow/Mevio and why he continues to insist that podcasting cannot be monetized in the same way radio or print media can be.</comment>


Yii PHP framework 1.1.18 is released - <AUTHOR> http://www.yiiframework.com/news/133/yii-1-1-18-is-released/ <comment><AUTHOR> Nine years since first Yii version was released 1.x reached EOL.</comment>


PBS: Secret history of the credit card - <AUTHOR> http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/credit/more/rise.html <comment><USER2> Credit cards are exploiting holes in our rationality: classical, well known rational choice failures like irrationally valuing x dollars now more than 2x dollars some time in the future - experimental economists found this, but I can not retrieve references right now, my googlefoo is failing. This is a textbook case for regulation. A similar case is car insurance : your (irrational) choice is to not buy it. However, as this increases the cost on society, and (I think) on yourself in the long term, regulation is imposed - in the form of compulsory insurance.

<comment><USER3> Except, when you get credit cards, you get screwed. When you don't get insurance, everyone else is screwed. That's why credit cards are a classical case for information, not regulation. It's a sad sad slope that regulation is incresingly used to protect people from themselves, rather than each other.

<comment><USER4> What other product can you purchase, and have the price change after you purchase the product?

What other form of loans/credit can you purchase and then have the interest rate changed without your knowledge and without informing you because of a missed or late payment on a different loan?

What other form of loan can increase your interest rate (cost) based on an increase in the balances on accounts with completely different companies?

I've meet well educated Md's and people with Master's degrees who've gotten screwed by credit card companies. It's not a matter of education, IMHO. It's a matter of deceptive business practices that people don't really get wise to until they've gotten burned badly. Have you ever tried to read through a credit card agreement? I'm a well educated man, and I can't make heads or tails of those agreements.

I'm sorry, but even an industry needed regulation, its the credit card industry.

<comment><USER5> Student loans, personal loans other than credit cards, business loans, preferred stock, corporate, municipal and government bonds (from the issuer's perspective) all change price/rate in response to missed or late payments on other obligations. (In the latter case, often dramatically so.)

Why shouldn't a lender be a able to offer a contract that allows them to increase their fees when the borrower shows themselves to be a less than ideal credit risk at some point in the future? The borrower signed the terms; if they didn't like them, they could have not signed them, or they can pay off and close the account now. Those are the two (non-bankruptcy) avenues for them to get out of the contract that they now don't like having signed.

<comment><USER6> Bond's don't change rate when the company get's into trouble the cost of new bonds goes up.

Student loans are normally fixed interest rate loans and they only charge penalty's when your late in paying them.

The problem with increasing rates when people get into trouble is it tends to force more people over the cliff. Let's say you owe 20k at 10% and make 50k/year. You get hospitalized for 5k and your old and new rate becomes 33%. You have gone from a 2k /year to 5k/year when you need to borrow 5k more. If the company lending you 5k wants to charge you 33% interest that's fine you can focus on paying them back first and get free of debt but when everyone starts raising your rates while your in trouble it's almost impossible to get out of the hole.

PS: Not to mention demonstrating a lack of good credit is an ill defined concept. Loss of a job reduces credit worthiness even if you make all your payments.

<comment><USER5> Concede the point on bonds held to maturity; you're right.

Private student loans are variable interest rate loans, many at the whim of the providing company. (I'd agree that private student loans are much closer to evil than revolving credit, and that more education is due on both topics to consumers of both types of debt. But I'm still not in favor of restricting the availability of a financial product that might not be in any given consumer's best interest, so long as it is in the best interest of _some_ consumer.) Govt-backed student loans are as you describe.

As to the over the edge "problem", that's a problem of the consumer's making+, and a creditor acting in their own best interest probably OUGHT to tighten credit for borrowers that it identifies, even on an acturial basis using information unrelated to the direct consumer<->creditor interaction, as being a higher risk.

\+ - Debtors who are not in over their head generally don't face these problems.

<comment><USER6> My point is I am not in debt over my head in part because I am considered a low risk. My car loan is at 4.9% and my CC debt is at 9%. If my interest rate where to grow to 12+ on the car and 33% on my credit card I would have far less slack.

Edit: Ok, running the numbers it would not be that bad but I would become far more focused on having zero debt.

<comment><USER5> For your long-run personal wealth, do you think you would you be better or worse off focusing on having zero short-term debt?

<comment><USER6> Edit for clarity: My CC debt is at 9% which is a little more than investing in the stock market on average, but I am trying to build up better credit so it seems like a good idea to keep money in the market and take a little hit vs. paying off my CC debt.

Not that the last 3 months suggests the idea is without risk but it's not enough money that I really care. However, if I had less in the way of assets an my rate where to spike I would quickly start caring.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'd really love to see an explanation of the structure of the credit card / payments industry in terms of what roles different corporations play, who are the major players in each role, and how they make money. I understand there are networks like Visa, which seem to basically administer account number namespaces and perform some role in clearing payments between banks and merchants. There are also payment processors, who contract with those networks and provide services (card scanners, online payments, etc) to merchants. And there are lending banks, who pay the merchants (via their processors, I guess) and bill the consumer as they would for any loan.

My guess is that at one or more levels of this industry, there is an effective cartel: if you want to offer a credit card that's better for merchants, or consumers, or just run more efficiently, you're unlikely to be able to buy your way in. It does seem ludicrous that 1% to 3% of your purchases (or, from the merchant's side, revenue) goes somewhere into Visaland instantly; this seems like a massive privatized tax in return for administering an electronic payments system which might not be that difficult to replace today.

</comment><comment><USER8> This suggests an opportunity for a credit card startup that:

* Charges no fees of any kind

* Charges a rate that is determined by a publicized equation where the _only_ variables are the amount borrowed, time (in, say, days), and the rate.

<comment><USER9> Or in the words of Mr. Kahr:

"You know -- 'transparency card,' 'rock solid card' -- whatever it may be. I don't believe that that would succeed."

<comment><USER8> That's great validation, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke:

> If an elderly but distinguished expert says that something will be > successful he is almost certainly right, but if he says that it won't, he is > very probably wrong.

<comment><USER10> You'd need a huge bankroll to get started. Financial startups aren't as easy as a social media web 2.0 site.

Look at prosper.com. Regulatory costs are astronomical. Between state and federal auditors and Sarbanes-Oxley and CRA, etc, you'll have your hands full.

Also, why would investor capital flow to you? You'd make a lower return with no upside of lower defaults, etc.

But yes go ahead. Start a low rate credit card company. I might sign up for your card!

<comment><USER11> More importantly, you'd have to cover lobbying costs for 5 or 6 years just to break into the tight oligopoly.

<comment><USER12> Discover finally settled a suit with Visa and Mastercard over anti-competitve practices: [http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFinancial/idUSN2735065...](http://www.reuters.com/article/bankingFinancial/idUSN2735065420081028)

FYI, Discover's been around since 1985 (introduced during '86 Superbowl), suit was filed in 2004 (along with a similar one by AmEx) and finally settled in October for $2.75 billion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Mr. Kahr, for one, makes no apologies. "If someone is riskier, he should be paying a higher rate,'' he said. "It's more economically sound. It's fairer for riskier people to pay a higher interest rate, higher fees, whatever it is, than less risky people._

Interesting. What he is really saying is 'what's fair got to do with it? Free markets dissolve the concept.

 _"If there was a demand for a credit card product that never changed its terms and rates and stuck with the customer no matter what, I'd be running around telling people 'Let's market this wonderful fairness card,'" he said.

"You know -- 'transparency card,' 'rock solid card' -- whatever it may be. I don't believe that that would succeed."_

<comment><USER5> "What he is really saying is 'what's fair got to do with it?"

Huh? People who are "riskier" paying higher rates and fees _IS_ fair. Would you lend your (presumably hypothetical) deadbeat, drug-addled uncle your entire $100,000 retirement nest egg at the same rate and terms that you'd lend the US government?

Why the hell not?! He's family, and these big mean credit card companies are profit-seeking arms-length lenders, and you would expect them to act morally better (by your standard, not mine) than you would to family? (I would neither expect, nor as an investor, wish for them to do that.)

<comment><USER4> I'm sure that paying a premium to borrow money once you are a credit risk would be considered "fair" by many. But, the example that you've posed is a straw man. Of course you'd charge a drug addict higher interest than the the US government.

The problem with credit card companies is that they loan the initial money at one price, and then adjust the price dependent on changing credit scores, insurance claims or whims.

And, a large percentage of a credit card companies, profit isn't in the initial interest rate. The profit is made in late fees, over limit fees and credit rate increases. So, they have a vested interest in the customer defaulting, being late in their payments or in going over their limit. And, when those fees are assessed, the customer generally has little recourse.

<comment><USER5> I agree with you vastly more than I disagree, but will observe that if you manage your debt reasonably, you have the ultimate recourse when your CC company changes your terms: Fire them. Pay that debt off, possibly by borrowing from another company willing to extend you terms more to your liking.

I agree that people to whom no one will lend more money are at a great disadvantage. I don't see any way to fix that, as preventing CC companies from offering variable APR offers in the future will likely make things worse for marginal customers; it will just make the companies completely unwilling to extend them credit. Embargoing consumers who are already suffering doesn't help them in the short term.

<comment><USER14> Unfortunately, if you "fire" your credit card company by paying off your balance and canceling the card, you also reduce your credit score, leading to potentially _worse_ terms for your next loan.

As stated in the original article, the second-worst kind of credit card user from the issuer's POV is the one who immediately pays down their balance each month, without ever incurring interest or late-payment fees.

This is possible only because of the altogether too-cozy relationship between the credit rating agencies and card issuers. I think any regulation of the lending industry should start with the credit rating agencies, and move on to the banks only after they've established effective oversight and consumer protection in that space.

(Incidentally, my disgust with the normal lending practices in the credit card market is the reason that the only one I will carry is a small-limit emergency card issued by my local credit union. Since they're a member-owned not-for- profit institution, I have far more trust in their desire to serve my financial needs, rather than trying to screw me over for a buck.)

<comment><USER5> Pay the balance down to zero, and because of the strange quirk in the FICO scoring system, stop using it, but don't close the account. "Problem" #1 solved.

<comment><USER15> That strange quirk in the FICO scoring system sounds a lot like coercion to participate under threat of financial harm, i.e. extortion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> "The industry also got an unintended boost from President Carter. In 1980, as part of a short-lived effort to tame inflation, the White House imposed a freeze on soliciting new credit card accounts. The freeze only lasted for a few months, but it was long enough for credit card companies to introduce a new concept -- the $20 annual fee -- without inciting mass defections."

So this is an oligopoly, and behaves accordingly. Of course it charges sellers extra, charges high interest rates, and all that other shit; they don't allow more entrants into their market.

</comment><comment><USER16> Many of us would love some digital money/payments/savings/loan fair system. There has to be some way for a startup to turn bigger than Google just with that.

</comment><comment><USER17> What it boils down to is that Kahr is just a great businessman. He understood what people wanted, gave it to them and tied in a great revenue model that didn't scare people away.

He did this by truly understanding his target customer and their risk/expense threshold.

</comment><comment><USER18> Credit Cards shouldn't be allowed in this world.</comment>


Cutting through the smog: making an air quality bot with Haskell - <AUTHOR> https://engineering.linecorp.com/en/blog/cutting-through-the-smog-making-an-air-quality-bot-with-haskell/ <comment><USER2> I've been working on a side project related to the air quality too, for a few months now. However, the technology stack is less impressive than Haskell: plain PHP7 + MySQL. I just wanted to have a single page presenting the air quality stats [1], fetched from the DIY detector Luftdaten [2], that can be hosted anywhere (so other people can grab the code from github [3] and use it too).

Then, people started to requesting new features and I had ideas for new features and it was no longer a single-page project.

Then, people started to reporting issues with their PHP hosting accounts, so I was spending time debugging problems in their deployments.

Then, I thought it may be easier to introduce multi-tenancy so I can just support a single environment, the one that I own. So I added registration, dashboard, maps, Let's Encrypt, etc.

This way I ended up owning a small, open-source SaaS written in PHP7 and MySQL [4]. If I knew how my single-page app will grow, I'd choose something more suitable, like Rails or Dropwizard. On the other hand, it works, is usable and maintainable, so maybe it's fine the way it is.

[1] [https://smolna.aqi.eco/](https://smolna.aqi.eco/) [2] [https://luftdaten.info/](https://luftdaten.info/) [3] [https://github.com/trekawek/air-quality- info/](https://github.com/trekawek/air-quality-info/) [4] [https://aqi.eco/](https://aqi.eco/)

</comment><comment><USER3> I recently wrote something similar to pull data from Kaiterra Laser Eggs (also in Haskell!) -- [https://github.com/ford-prefect/laser- egg/](https://github.com/ford-prefect/laser-egg/)

</comment><comment><USER4> On a related note, I've been looking for a good sensor that is hopefully plug & play and reliable for integration with home assistant. Is something like [https://www.banggood.com/Geekcreit-Nova-PM-Sensor- SDS011-Hig...](https://www.banggood.com/Geekcreit-Nova-PM-Sensor-SDS011-High- Precision-Laser-PM2_5-Air-Quality-Detection-Sensor-Module- Tester-p-1144246.html?cur_warehouse=CN) really the best way to go about it rather than an Awair? Would be keen on VOCs and CO2 as well.

edit: Looks like esphome with the following low-cost sensors is the way to go: * MH-Z19 for co2 (or CCS811 CO_2 for VOCs as well) * SDS011 for particle counts

<comment><USER5> This looks like an interesting project: [https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/enviro-plus- and-l...](https://learn.pimoroni.com/tutorial/sandyj/enviro-plus-and- luftdaten-air-quality-station)

This sensor also looks good: [https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/adafruit- sgp30-air-qualit...](https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/adafruit-sgp30-air- quality-sensor-breakout-voc-and-eco2)

<comment><USER4> Thanks for the link, already ordered the other sensors. Looks like SGP30 isn't quite as easy to use with ESPHome right now, so something to upgrade to within a year. Its really amazing how great the ecosystem is with ESPHome, I was always a bit scared buying the chips and getting really DIY with the likes of Arduino but this is no more difficult than most other tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know it is hard to strike a good balance between academic and technical focus, especially when writing about haskell, but I think starting out with language extensions and imports without writing about what and how we're going to do it, makes for difficult reading.

The smaller parts with the types and small implementations should be at the top and only at the end all is easily combined.

And I highly doubt that the author went about writing the chatbot by writing out all the language extensions and imports first (which makes the coding- along line at the and a bit cynical).

Edit: This sounds so negative. I think the article is good and shows how the small pieces work together but I think the order is all wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi, author here. I agree that straight away throwing a bunch of language extensions without an explanation of why we need them at all wasn't a good idea. The original blog post was written in literate Haskell, that's the reason why the code is organized that way.

I will think about rearranging the code blocks or add more explanations to make it all fit more naturally. Thanks for your feedback!

<comment><USER6> When I teach or write about Haskell I try to break down the parts in a way that the parts can be tested using ghci and just composing it at the end.

I think there are quite a few parts in there that one can easily "try out on their own".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A good article! I agree with another commenter that explaining the language extensions would have been good.

I liked the comment at the end:

>> It's the same bot as we have detailed in the tutorial with the exception that it uses PostGIS instead of a transactional variable to store users.

I am not a Haskell expert (I use Haskell a lot but I consider myself a student) so this is probably horrible advice, but recently I have started using embedded SQLite for transactional data instead of TVars. In some sense it is the same thing since the Simple SQLite wraps the SQLite code in an IO. I always try to minimize impure code. I write as much pure code as I can in a REPL and then study/research how to handle the impure parts.

</comment><comment><USER8> I hope I never have to move to a place where I want to monitor the air quality at all.

<comment><USER9> With the way things are going, you might not have to — the bad air quality moves to you.</comment></comment>


Show HN: My first swift app to track daily expenses - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daily-expense-log/id997294002?ls=1&mt=8

<comment><USER2> looks cool!</comment>


Prediction: YC's IPO is in the works. - <AUTHOR>

While we all waiting  for the next YC startup to go public or get acquired, we forget about YC itslef as a company. I think there is an IPO somewhere down the line.
<comment><USER2> _"... I think there is an IPO somewhere down the line. ..."_

Evidence? So why bother going to the market for more capital, less control & greater risk?

\- more employees? (you can't scale pg, jl with more employees)

\- more money? (yc spreads the risk by using micro-capital & attracting top candidates)

\- more advertising? (thats how the internet and successful candidates demonstrating product).

Does not compute. What makes more sense is to bust open the VC market using less capital, less people creating the best VC coy. that grabs the cream of an untapped market. Sort of an iteration of the startup pattern applied to a different, but related industry.

</comment><comment><USER3> IPOs accomplish two things: they raise money for the company, and give the founders a way to sell some of their shares. We don't want to raise money or sell any of our YC stock, so there would be no point.

But it's misleading even to answer as if it were an option. You need massive revenues to go public, on the order of $100m/year, which we are nowhere near. It takes 4 or 5 years on average for startups to generate returns. The only money we make now is from random early acquisitions. We can't even guess how much we'd make ongoing.

<comment><USER4> True but the companies you fund only get better and better. And it would be hella nice to cash out. Everyone does fawn over YC and we'd all buy in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> An IPO wouldn't make any sense at all for YC. An IPO, just like venture capital, allows a company to convert equity into liquid cash; but YC has no shortage of cash. Instead, YC is limited by the supply of good candidates and by how much time pg et al. have -- neither of which will be affected at all by an IPO.

</comment><comment><USER6> _sarcasm meter explodes_

perhaps more importantly, what do you guys think about the long-term viability of the YC model? are we going to get to a point (i.e. post-Web 2.0) where there just aren't any more opportunities for lightweight web companies?

</comment><comment><USER7> That doesn't make any sense to me - why do you think that? It seems like taking in a lot of cash from wall street would put pressure on them to become more like a traditional VC.

</comment><comment><USER8> The thing I hate the most about people's conception about businesses is the goal of IPO. I really don't understand it.</comment>


Rebuilding RIM - <AUTHOR> http://mobileopportunity.blogspot.com.ar/2012/04/rebuilding-rim.html

<comment><USER2> A lot of people that I see use Blackberries use them because the company pays for it or they are in a contract or addicted to the keyboard. What if Blackberry carves out a niche of users who love the keyboard and trackball.</comment>


The oil and gas we have already tapped will take us past 1.5°C - <AUTHOR> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2106758-the-oil-and-gas-we-have-already-tapped-will-take-us-past-1-5c/ <comment><USER2> Probably going to get slammed for saying this, especially in a time where downvoters decide for the most part what is allowed and what isn't, but here goes anyway: even though it affects many things, I simply do not care one iota when people talk about rising temperatures and melting ice caps. Why? Because to me it feels like "just stuff that can happen". And I'm insignificant too, unlike these big corporations and factories that cause most of these problems without caring about anything but how to avoid paying taxes and so on.

I'm not a guy who throws random stuff out on the street. I do use my car sparingly because of emissions and I do donate a lot to animal and environmental protection funds. So like every other healthy person I do care about nature, and it breaks my heart to hear about rain forests being cut or burned down, whales and dolphins being killed, and seals being clubbed to death. I eat to live, not live to eat, and I am protective of my environment.

But whenever I read stories about stuff like rising temperatures, I just could not care less. They're just stories in my mind, with a lot of political, societal and economic interests, that make sure you will never really know the truth at all, and they play on guilt and blame. So I became totally uncaring about rising temperatures and all that stuff as a result.

<comment><USER3> That sounds a really long way of saying "I am apathetic to the problem" (or blunter still, "I don't care"), which while being a perfectly valid position, doesn't really add anything to the discussion.

On the flip side, I agree with you, but that doesn't really help anything or anyone either, except to provide some comfort that you're not alone?

<comment><USER4> It's also hard to not get a little cynical when some of the people who pontificate on the subject don't look like they are making many sacrifices.

<comment><USER5> Why? Individual action is utterly irrelevant for any global problem, and the pontificators know it. What can help is changing the incentive structure for the consumption of millions or billions people; i.e. carbon taxes, power plant tax incentives, new solar/wind tech that makes it cheaper than oil.

Given 95 million barrels of oil being burned every day, it matters not an iota if a rich guy sets fire to an entire barrel of oil - but it matters massively whether he lobbies for a carbon tax or whether he uses his influence to spread lies to prevent one.

As an aside, the same applies for taxes - I am not a hypocrite if I make use of a mortgage tax deduction while at the same time arguing that it is a nonsensical and highly destructive tax.

<comment><USER4> I have celebrity environment activists in mind who regularly fly in private jets to faraway resorts and live the high life while being ambassadors for climate change action on the other. The context is different but Paul Theroux's quote on Bono sums it up:

"THERE are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment"

[http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/the-rock-stars- bur...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/opinion/the-rock-stars- burden.html?_r=0)

<comment><USER6> Fortunately the message can be true regardless of who says it?

<comment><USER4> They choose a celebrity because they think that the little people are more likely to listen to them.

But when the messenger has the whiff of hyprocisy about them, it's natural to be cynical. No one likes being patronised.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> So much of this is the fault of oft-ignored local zoning boards. Everyone complains that Americans don't want to give up their cars. Well, of course they don't. In 99.9% of the US, it's illegal to live within reasonable walking distance of your job or your grocery store, and it's illegal to build densely enough to make public transportation practical. So of course everyone drives everywhere, they have no other choice.

<comment><USER8> I'm not sure zoning is the issue when you take a look at Houston, a sprawling car-centric city with very lax zoning rules.

<comment><USER9> Ah, but Houston has rules designed to force urban sprawl in myriad different ways. They just refuse to call it zoning.

Case in point - my old apartment was 2 bedrooms and had no offstreet parking. It was near a number of excellent bars with no parking. Fortunately it was easy to walk between them! Houston has rules forcing people to live far from said bars, and forcing both their home and the bar to have parking (which spreads things out even without density maximums), and makes it harder to patronize those bars without driving intoxicated.

[https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond- zo...](https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2016/04/14/sprawl-beyond-zoning/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Yes, while the masses are starting to come around to the idea that climate change is real, people still seem to think we can stop it. Even if we stopped all CO2 production immediately, temperatures would still be expected to warm for several decades. We are already in a situation where we have to choose between "bad" and "worse."

<comment><USER11> I just hope there's enough ressources spent into figuring out atmospheric engineering - we may only have one shot at this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I can't fathom how to actually keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees C in a political climate where people profess concern about the environment but wail and gnash their teeth if gas goes up by a nickel. At least, not in a world where the people with means to purchase large amounts of fossil fuels primarily live in democracies.

<comment><USER12> I wish the oil/coal/gas price would go up... That would make solar so much more competitive and discourage people from buying combustion engines.

<comment><USER13> I wish we would elect leaders that introduce a carbon tax.

<comment><USER9> Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote against any such tax. Of course, it's kind of a prisoners' dilemma problem, since country A passing a carbon tax (and reducing consumption accordingly) makes fossil fuels cheaper for country B.

There are ways to address this, like adding import duties on products from countries who dump their garbage in the atmosphere, but those are fairly unpopular too since people like being able to buy cheap stuff from China.

<comment><USER14> > Thus the democracy problem. So long as people feel they benefit more than > they suffer from over-exploitation of the common resource (in this case, the > atmosphere, which we use as a dump for our emissions), they will vote > against any such tax.

We don't actually get to vote for individual taxes. The world would be an interesting, and quite different, place if you provided the voter with an accounting summary and asked them to choose line items, etc. etc. People currently have little idea how their money is spent and little say in how to change it.

<comment><USER9> But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax. Grey Davis was crucified politically by Schwarzenegger for a supposed increase in the "car tax" when in fact he was letting a previous discount on the vehicle registration fee lapse due to the state's serious budgetary issues.

The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending civilization as we know it". Though, cynic that I am, I worry that most drivers would prefer billions dying to paying more for fuel. Maybe that's just because I spent too much of my life in southern California, though.

Gas prices are one of those issues people vote on emotionally rather than logically. While I'm not crazy about his approach to personal finance, I'm always reminded of something Dave Ramsey said (I had a coworker years ago who listened to him on the radio). "You guys complained about gas to no end when it was expensive, but now that we're at a buck a gallon do you feel rich?" The point being that the importance of fuel prices are overestimated in the average person's budget.

<comment><USER14> Good points about gas prices. It's also silly the way people assume oil prices are all a matter of government policy, as opposed to the business cycle. So much about being perceived as a successful politician at the national level is about entering at the right moment, when the economy is on the upswing, or about to be.

> But people do vote on particular pet issues like a carbon tax.

California's rather unusual. At the national level, which is what matters most, we don't do taxation by referendum. I'm not advocating that, either. The current system would work fine if people put a little more effort into understanding the budget and pressing their candidates to form positions.

> The candidate who says "we need to increase the cost of fossil fuels so you > use less of them.." won't even have an audience listening for the second > part - "...to save the planet from pretty much boiling to death and ending > civilization as we know it".

Well, they do have something of an audience, but that audience is somewhat diminished by the brain-damaged nature of the American public when it comes to understanding science. But it's not as if messages of self-sacrifice for the common good _always_ go unheard.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One major perspective this and similar articles do not consider is all the non energy uses of coal and petroleum. Burning petroleum for ebergy is hardly it's only use. Look around you at all the plastics. Even coal has great promise as a building material. Think carbon fiber and, well all the different permutations of materials that carbon rich ore can be made into.

<comment><USER16> Pretty sure just burning it is an order of magnitude more than other uses. Coal for building sounds exciting though?

<comment><USER15> No doubt it is now. I was speaking as to future uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> And here we are poised on the threshold of a whole new fossil fuel technology: Methane Hydrate. Centuries of reserves, simpler to harvest, and here's the kicker: more dangerous if it escapes unburned than if its burned! So spills will be directly catastrophic to the atmosphere.</comment>


Ask HN: How to file tax returns in United States - <AUTHOR>

Does anyone know, what the simplest procedure is to file tax returns for a US incorporated company. It has income of about 2-3000 USD in the year 2013. <comment><USER2> When you say "incorporated company", what _type_ of company is it? This is a consequential difference in the US, as C-corps are treated differently than S-corps and LLCs, which might be pass-through entities.

If you have a C-corp, and it has US-source income, you need a tax professional, and you will likely spend most of that income on their services. Sorry.

If you have an LLC, the pain-minimizing steps is to fill out a personal tax return with a Schedule C-EZ attached to it. Write the revenue number on the schedule C-EZ. Normally you'd calculate expenses for the business and subtract them, but understating your expenses is not a crime, so save yourself the hassle and just write 0 for all of them. I'm assuming you're asking this question because you're not physically in the US and this company is your sole US-source income, so when you flow that number to the places the Schedule C and 1040-EZ tell you to put it, you'll find that you have 0 tax due. Sign return, mail in, keep copies of the return and documentation of that income number for 6 years.

If you don't want to have to read instructions, TaxAct is fairly decent SaaS for uncomplicated returns, and should be able to handle a simple LLC filing. I used it for rather substantially more complicated returns for 7 years prior to getting a real accountant. I think it will run you about $15.

Depending on where the company is incorporated and how it earns its income, you may have to file state income taxes. You may also have to pay state/local taxes or fees. If any of this is news to you, talk to an accountant.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you. We are a C-Corp registered in Delaware. Would you have any recommendations on some service which can help with this.

<comment><USER3> Do you have non-employee shareholders (ie investors)? If not, it might be cheaper to elect S-Corp status and file as an S than it will be to continue doing your taxes as a C-corp.

(I'm almost certain that filing as an S-Corp is cheaper than as a C-Corp, but not as clear on the conversion cost, which might be trivial or might not.)

You need to talk to an accountant. Don't put this off. Being in the hole on taxes really, really sucks.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If the business is incorporated (not sure if that applies to C corps or S-corp also), you have to hire a licensed accountant. You can't do it yourself, even if you can fill out the forms correctly. (and you still probably should check the work of whoever you hire)

That's one advantage of not incorporating until your revenue is greater than a certain amount. If your business is not incorporated, you can do a Schedule C yourself.</comment>


Ask HN: Could you limit all or most emails to five sentences? - <AUTHOR>

Because of the screen limitations of the Blackberry and iPhone and the deluge of email most people receive, is it feasible to set a hard limit on the length of your emails or would your boss or coworkers give you a hard time?
I would like to adopt this policy, informing people by way of an email signature that all of my responses will be under 5 sentences, but am not sure how it's going to go down in a professional setting.
Has anyone tried this?
Did people give you a hard time?
http://five.sentenc.es/ <comment><USER2> Most business emails I receive are under five sentences, easy (and by 'most' I mean 'probably 95%'). People generally don't like typing, so the ones that are long are usually long for a reason.

I also don't see screen size being an issue, at least I read a lot of multi- page content with the iPhone and it hasn't bothered me at all.

Besides, what you propose would discourage inline responses (you know, when someone asks a few questions, you respond in context, under the question), and I for one think not enough people respond inline when it's appropriate.

<comment><USER3> If only more people would reply inline! It's the one huge downside of graphic email, most people never acquired the habit of line quote/answer.

I find it incredibly rude to get a 200k email where I have to keep scrolling up and down to older stuff to see what's being referred to, when inline quoting would be so much more efficient. the worst demographic are older (>35) users who came to email late. Younger people are more succinct and early adopters of email are still efficient.

Oh well, get off my lawn.</comment></comment>


Image Processing with Go - <AUTHOR> http://www.esdrasbeleza.com/2015/04/27/image-processing-with-go

<comment><USER2> Not quite the same thing but anyone else interested in the field may want to check out Halide [0]. It's a handy library for highly optimized and very straightforward to write image processing on a variety of platforms.

They have examples for CUDA, Android, iOS, Native Client and GLSL (which I believe can run on WebGL) among others [1].

Doesn't seem to be well known but seems very interesting so thought I'd share it.

[0]: [http://halide-lang.org](http://halide-lang.org)

[1]: [https://github.com/halide/Halide/tree/master/apps](https://github.com/halide/Halide/tree/master/apps)

</comment><comment><USER3> See also: gift (Go image filtering toolkit), and its command line tool:

[https://github.com/disintegration/gift](https://github.com/disintegration/gift)

[https://github.com/ajstarks/gift](https://github.com/ajstarks/gift)

</comment><comment><USER4> In a similar vein I've written tools to get me the average of a set of images [0] and to find duplicates in a set of images [1] even if they're different sizes, and a simple tool to load mpo images (multi-jpegs) [2].

[0]: [https://github.com/donatj/imgavg](https://github.com/donatj/imgavg)

[1]: [https://github.com/donatj/imgdedup](https://github.com/donatj/imgdedup)

[2]: [https://github.com/donatj/mpo](https://github.com/donatj/mpo)

</comment><comment><USER5> The example in the post reminds me of High-dynamic-range(HDR).

</comment><comment><USER6> wow. also seeing some other great libraries listed. got any more of them that I can check out and try?</comment>


Missouri bill redefines science, gives equal time to Intelligent Design - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/02/missouri-bill-redefines-science-gives-equal-time-to-intelligent-design/

<comment><USER2> The statute as described by the submitted article is plainly unconstitutional and will not survive court challenge.

What I recommend to my friends who think that "intelligent design" is a superior explanatory framework to biological evolution is to read up on the evidence for evolution

<http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/>

and think about that for a while.</comment>


Ask HN: HCI Careers at Google/Disney/Microsoft? - <AUTHOR> I'm currently working as an iOS / OS X developer, but my main passion and interest (which includes my MSc work), lies in Human-Computer Interaction. I'd love to work at places like Google ATAP, Disney Research, or Microsoft Research in the HCI field. Do careers like this require a PhD? Does anyone have advice on transitioning from software development to HCI research? <comment><USER2> I can't speak to Google ATAP or Disney, but getting a job at MSR almost certainly requires a PhD. HCI is an incredibly broad field, though: do you have more specific interests? Did you do any research as part of your MS? Broadly speaking, a PhD is only going to help you to the extent you want or need to participate in the academic community, for example by publishing papers. That would be the case at MSR and other research labs, but not so much in the majority of industry jobs.

(I'm an HCI PhD student at Stanford.)

<comment><USER3> How difficult to get admission in standford for HCI? and What requires to get in standford Just want to know. Thanks for help

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm really not an authority on this, but to answer the question of "do I need a PhD", my view is that it depends on which 'part' of HCI you want to do.

Do you want to work on Project Soli at ATAP? Which part, the actual hardware / Radio antenna design? Then a PhD in analog design might be required to be qualified. Do you want to do the signal interpretation / analysis to detect gestures? Maybe a strong background in signals, filtering or even machine learning may be required.

HCI work can involve a lot of specific specialization which often requires these research / industry giants to demand a strong testament of your qualifications. Although not required, a PhD is often an easy way for them to see that.

If it is the more 'high-level' stuff, I'm not sure, as sometime a 'PhD in HCI' itself may be required (although I don't know too much what a 'PhD in HCI' entails)

Source: Experiences with HCI PhD's at UC Berkeley

</comment><comment><USER5> If you can, the best way to get into research might be to go get the MS or doctorate. Disney research is made up of multiple labs, several of which are university programs that Disney sponsors, and full of people going for PhDs. In the internal labs most of the core researchers do have PhDs. There are ways to get in, it doesn't require a PhD, but it might take a demonstrated history of commitment to research, or willingness to take a job that is supporting or doing something tangential to core research. I have a friend who worked doing core research for both MSR and Disney research who doesn't have a PhD, but he published heavily and demonstrated he didn't need the degrees by being smarter and harder working than most researchers.

</comment><comment><USER6> I have no advice for you (sorry!). I'm just interested in hearing what you like about HCI and why you are moving from dev to HCI research?

I had one class in it. I didn't mind it but I didn't love it either.

<comment><AUTHOR> I would say that the reason I'm passionate about HCI is that I want to work toward better ways for people to interact with the digital tools they use. If I can research, design, or implement something that makes the "digital experience" better, I would be happy.

<comment><USER7> You can do that as an iOS developer too right? E.g. things like pull to refresh were designed by lone developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm in the same boat as you, except that I lack a degree.

Although I would love the opportunity to work at Microsoft Research, I accepted the fact that I likely never would.

Lately, I've been considering to join and/or create a distributed research team. The most challenging part has been to find people whose vision align with mine.

Feel free to contact me if that's of interest to you.

<comment><USER9> How do I contact you? Your profile doesn't list any contact information.

You can email me at firstname.lastname@example.com with your vision. I saw your other post re: the singular app / OS that does everything. I've been working on that and would love to have another person onboard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> You can work at MSR as a research engineer (basically, you make software to help the researchers). You're a support role, but can still do some of the research under the direction of someone with a Ph.D.</comment>


So HN just changed it's theme or what? - <AUTHOR>

I never saw a thread about this so is it okay if I ask, what's going on with the new theme? <comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963766](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963766)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963760](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6963760)

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh alright, thank you :)!</comment></comment>


Greetings from Beautiful Mountain View, Calif. - <AUTHOR> http://www.greetingsfrombeautifulmountainview.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> For all you start up founders who are working on Sunday...

<comment><USER2> We need one for Palo Alto, too!

<comment><AUTHOR> Civic pride required me to do Mountain View!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow, Mountain View looks exactly like my home town.

</comment><comment><USER4> That brought a tear to my eye.

From Los Angeles, Le Dominator

</comment><comment><USER5> Greetings from balmy and insipid Atlanta, GA, home of precious little of interest to the tech industry, especially compared to CA. But it's good for telecom - that's why I kick around.

</comment><comment><USER6> Hello from a very hot conference room somewhere off Sand Hill rd...

</comment><comment><USER7> is that "Raptor Jesus"?

</comment><comment><USER8> Beware the lovely mountain view police department, the primary reason I'll never live in this city again

</comment><comment><USER9> I am moving there soon to start a new job. I have been an east coaster all my life but I can't wait.

<comment><USER10> Mountain View is boring. Strip mall architecture at its best (or worst). Nothing to do there except work, and I hope you like driving, b/c you are going to do a lot of it. At least in the biggest east coast areas (nyc/boston/w d.c.) you can get fine without a car, and public transportation gets you almost everywhere.

Sex life will suck ass (if you are a straight single guy). When you introduce yourself to girls, you are yet another engineer as the other 100 she met last month.

I guess there is a real reason that post card has a dude in front of the computer. That's how your life is going to be.

I there is really nothing romantic about Mountain View. I honestly think weather is the best asset of the area.

<comment><USER9> Yes I have heard Mountain View is boring but I am more looking forward to the working part of it. I have several areas to choose from that are more fun e.g. San Francisco. The companies out west are far better for someone like me though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently moved from Campbell to San Diego. I miss Silicon Valley. :(

<comment><USER12> Listening to the Boston T rattle past my new apartment, I feel the same way.</comment></comment>


Worst Ed-Tech Debacles of the Decade - <AUTHOR> http://hackeducation.com/2019/12/31/what-a-shitshow <comment><USER4> While I understand I only met a small fraction of the people trying to "disrupt" education, my experience with Ed-Tech was that the absolute wrong people were behind it.

I interviewed at Coursera in 2012, and much of the interview focused on my academic background. Every round I'd sit down with an interviewer and they'd look at my transcript and say, "hmm what happened here!?" as they would point to my C+, the _only_ grade that was below a B on an overall 3.7GPA history. Every one of them had a Stanford-or-similar background. The juxtaposition of cliche-academics telling me they were disrupting academia was really something to behold.

<comment><USER5> A C+ is a reasonable thing to ask about.

<comment><USER6> Maybe im just mediocre but it doesnt seem like a big deal. Sometimes you get a shit teacher and check out. The kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all A's is real alarming

<comment><USER7> > The kind of ass kissing and begging that I saw among my peers that got all > A's

My technique was to learn the material :-)

<comment><USER4> If it was like the other students I knew who got 4.0s, the time it took them to go from 3.6 to 4.0 was at the expense of other much more enriching opportunities in life. There's hugely diminishing returns in perfecting ones report card, with regard to actual personal educational growth.

<comment><USER7> I decided early on that my goal was to graduate with honors. I knew how much work that entailed, did that, got the grades, and graduated with honors.

I made the right decision, it worked for me. I didn't do any begging or ass kissing, and still had time to enjoy the other pursuits being in college afforded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I spent years working in ed-tech, at more than one company on this list, and know people at many others.

There were two overarching lessons I took from my experience.

The first is that a successful educational product needs to deeply and intimately understand pedagogy and materials -- teaching and learning techniques and how they vary between students, and what kinds of materials are suitable -- _deeply_ , I mean like at a postdoc level.

I've seen so many products fail because the engineers and designers didn't have the slightest idea how students actually learn, think that algorithms could make up for crappy materials, or have zero understanding of what teachers actually do.

And creating good teaching materials with good pedagogy is _very_ expensive. You have to hire educational+domain experts. They don't come cheap. There just aren't that many people who can clearly explain complex concepts gradually, relatably, and accurately in a simple manner.

For some reason, because we all went to school, so many of us think we understand teaching and learning. It's pretty humbling to discover you don't _at all_.

The second lesson is that education software isn't sold to the kind of market you're probably familiar with. It's not bought by consumers, or even the kinds of enterprises you might be familiar with. It's bought by school districts (or universities), _each_ of whom have _incredibly_ extensive needs for customization -- for interoperability, for the curriculum, for whatever -- and each of whom expect to be given _lots_ of individual attention for a long time before they sign.

Your company will be primarily salespeople, not engineers.

But because there is a _ton_ of money in EDU, you actually only need a handful of school districts or universities to sustain your company. Which then turns into a problem, because it means _everyone_ is using different products, and so much is custom-built. So standards and interoperability don't emerge -- or when they do, they're just, well, really bad.

It's a complicated space. The only other space that feels similarly insanely complicated to me is healthcare.

<comment><USER9> In my opinion.. Ed-tech will never truly be successful if it is B2B and focused on teaching.

The real problem to be solved is LEARNING. The goals of teaching and learning are not the same.

Focusing on efficient learning means getting away from outdated methodology like tests, long-winded lectures, and more.

<comment><USER10> Learning isn't really something that the provider can force on the student. Learning is like weight loss-there isn't a trivial one-size-fits-all solution, and it requires a ton of work that no one else can do for you.

Tests and lectures aren't outdated, nor even particularly ineffective compared to anything else. I don't know when it became popular to hate the way school is run, but it usually traces back to the mistaken belief that school should predict professional performance (which is not now—nor ever was—the primary purpose of school).

In both cases, my work with Ed tech has convinced me that the key problems are _social_, not technical.

<comment><USER11> Technology can help reduce the impact of those social problems....for example make college courses cheaper to deliver and so on.

<comment><USER10> Sure, but I'm arguing that the things technology can influence are very limited vs the core social problems that are the primary inhibitors of learning. Making it cheaper to deliver lectures or easier to deliver them is less important than making sure that the people receiving them are well fed, well rested, want to be there, etc.

I wouldn't invest in an ed-tech company whose product depends on learners changing their behavior (e.g., any of the platform companies like Udacity, Coursera, Pluralsight, etc.) unless it was a bet on their enterprise product.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article does point out a lot of things that have failed this decade - <USER2> fair points. But in focusing on failures it fails to capture that casual education (not formal, school education) has fundamentally shifted this decade.

Today, I can learn almost anything I want for free on the internet.

\- I can get a world class mathematical education from 3Blue1Brown (seriously this guy's videos are just out of this world good).

\- I can get incredible guitar lessons on any song I want from youtube (I've taught myself guitar this year through it!).

\- I can find scores of language education podcasts to help me learn Spanish (I use coffee break spanish).

\- I can get world class SAT prep from Khan Academy (for free!).

\- I can get awesome yoga classes online for free (did this also this year).

Seriously the wealth and quality of information available to us today is insane - it's the Library of Alexandria a search bar away.

As someone who enjoys learning, there's no way I would ever go back 10 years in time.

<comment><USER13> How do you decide which of the free resources are authorative? Maybe you learn some bad habits from that popular youtube video?

* Case in point there is a popular ML guy on youtube who is also considered a bit of a hack.

* When Khan was starting out some of his original videos were also critiqued when they were out of his area of expertise.

* My friend learned Spanish from a teacher from Basque area. He has an intriguing accent now...

* There are zillion Python videos on Youtube and many are not quite good.

The problem was pointed out in 1970 Future Shock by [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alvin_Toffler) .

It is much easier to spend time choosing an authoritative educational institution(online or offline) than individually choosing each teacher.

You let the school do the curating for you.

There will be bad teachers even at good schools but your meta cognitive load is lessened.

PS I am a bit biased since I teach at various non-profit and profit institutions (I also stream on youtube but privately)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> The author (Audrey Watters) is a truly great journalist, and her work provides a candid — and harsh, if needed — look at the education world. She's a must- read for anyone working in edtech.

EDIT: I found her work on the incestuous world of edtech funding and media (e.g., EdSurge) to be especially illuminating. Because she is not an edtech founder, she was able to point out these relationships/issues without worrying that she was going to anger VCs on whom she might someday seek funding.

<comment><USER15> I worked in edtech for many years and read her work regularly for most of those years. At a certain point though she started to feel more like a restaurant critic who took too much pleasure in roasting whoever the latest target was. Did she write a Best Ed-Tech Success Stories of the Decade? Cus that I'd be interested in.

<comment><USER16> Also worked in edtech for many years and while I understand Audrey got the reputation for saying the negative, someone had to do it. The general media is so uncritically positive (for example of Knewton which was always snake oil). She had to be the voice of reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Overall, I agree that the promise of tech in education never manifested, or at least hasn't yet, and the last decade was full of half-baked or poorly conceived ideas. But I'm worried there's some baby in that bathwater...

I started my career in K-12 education, first in the classroom, then as an administrator, and thanks to a coding bootcamp, am happily pursuing another career as a software developer. I have plenty of friends who've done the same. Will it be a long-lasting model? I don't know, some are clearly already out of business (the one I did, Hack Reactor, is still going though). But it may be the first wave of upending having to spend six figures on accreditation / skill acquisition.

And while a lot of the flipped / personalized tools never panned out specifically, a lot of the concepts were helpful in bringing in new structures to instruction. The ideas helped us move away from simply "I do, we do, you do" lessons to units where students could get some material up front and then do more exploratory or self guided lessons, and teachers could work with individual students who needed attention.

Education needs innovation. Instructionally, the major changes won't come from software but from restructuring how school operates at different grade levels. Given the different needs of 7th graders from 3rd graders, it's interesting that their days are still structured so similarly, not to mention that we're still not really developing skills that are useful for the kinds of jobs that exist today.

That said, there is a place where there's a desperate need for high quality software in education: operations. Follow a school office manager for a day and you'll see exactly what I mean. The number of systems that are still either paper-based or involve manual processes that can quickly be automated are incredible. As with any public enterprise, there are lots of reasons that these systems haven't been updated, but streamlining operations for schools will actually make much bigger impacts for student outcomes than almost all the edtech software out there.

<comment><USER18> As someone who is heavily interested in the EdTech space (I've had the unfortunate luck of being a student for far too long and experienced how woefully inadequate the education system is), I was thinking pretty much the same sentiments.

Initially, I agreed with most of the failures Audrey listed. Though I started wondering if such a lengthy list could be sustained, and lo and behold, about halfway through the article I sensed a large drop in quality, with the author seeming more focused on rhetoric and being "right about others being wrong" instead of providing an objective and insightful perspective.

Some examples: #52. Virtual Reality - I think her gripe is with VR being hyped too early, but from her writing, it sounds like she thinks the entire field is already dead and buried for education. Which would be ridiculous. The friction with VR right now is the technology; it is too physically limiting for the benefits > the cost of change. For anyone with an open mind who has tried VR, however, I think it's obvious that it will be the future in some shape or form. Whether it's this decade, or the next, or in 2040 who knows but dismissing an entire field like this really reduced the author's credibility in my eyes.

#49. Yik Yak - Never used it myself, but from what I've heard it was anything BUT an ed-tech app..?! It's listed as a defunct social media and chat app... Guess the author was clutching at straws here.

#48, #38, #6, etc. - Author seems to have a completely unjustified pessimism toward any sort of coding that isn't related to the traditional CS pathway. I can only speak for myself, but as someone who made poor decisions out of high school and is now a (pretty decent) self-taught developer, I find the author's conclusions totally wrong. Learning to code was the single good adult decision I've made - I've found a lasting passion, and I can make positive contributions to society. Without it, I'd still be sitting around depressed all day.

#25. Thiel Foundation - FWIW, I'm not a fan of Thiel at all but I do agree that we are in a college bubble. Audrey's snarky comment "Here's one look at what some of the past Thiel Fellowship recipients are up to. Yawn" seems totally unjustified here. I haven't been through the list, but IIRC Vitalik Buterin (creator of Ethereum) was a recipient of the Thiel Foundation. Regardless what you think of crypto, Ethereum has had an enormous impact on the blockchain landscape. Whether or not Eth itself is successful, it's unjustified to write it off as "meh" if only for the downstream effect it has on other areas of innovation. I think money is a terrible indicator of "success", but if we're going down that route, Eth currently has a market cap of $14.5 mil+, which would make Thiel's investment a good one (though I don't believe he had a stake).

#13. Blockchain Anything - It's sad to see the author's piece decline from what were some really valuable insights earlier in the article down to this Buzzfeed-esque drivel again dismissing an entire field. I'm not saying blockchain will or won't be successful. However, for any new & poorly understood technology, it's easy to just google "reasons why technology X sucks", link to the first 5 articles, and win over readers who don't know better.

Again - it's a shame the author appeared desparate for filler material as the list grew longer. It's particularly a disservice to herself because she made some great points at times. Adopting a more balanced tone would have been desirable. This way it'd be clearer to see that EdTech really does have huge potential for an industry that desparately needs a total remake; it's just been executed very poorly for the most part. P.S. Lol at the author downplaying the impact of YouTube on EdTech. I'm not a huge fan but half the material for my course these days are links to YouTube videos. There is a slow but clear shift to tertiary education that is 100% online.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> As a university professor, I'm struck at how few of these I've heard of -- and, of those which I've heard of, how little I care.

I just don't feel like I have problems which I'm itching to have solved by technology.

As an example of this, I've graded thousands of calculus exams in my career. It's time consuming, it's painful, and it's unpleasant. But it's also inevitable. Looking at my students' work, engaging with their mistakes, seeing what they do and don't understand -- helps to build the connection between myself and my students, helps me understand what is going on in my classroom.

You can't automate that away.

<comment><USER11> Khan Academy already automated that. I know their math curriculum is pretty decent.

[https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus- ab](https://www.khanacademy.org/math/ap-calculus-ab)

<comment><USER20> Did you even read OP's comment? They specifically mentioned the need to engage with students' work to survey their (mis)understandings.

The link you posted to Khan does not automate that delicate balance between teacher and student. It's a bunch of videos of Khan describing the Chain Rule. The "practice" sections are mundane - multiple choice questions or fill in the blanks. You simply cannot (as an educator) see the (mis)understandings of students like this. You need to pour over their work. Take note of where patterns occur and address them next class. Iterative. Do you honestly think Khan has "automated" that?

This thread is full of asinine comments like yours that demonstrate just how much people in tech _don't_ understand what it's like to teach. Hence the original link to 100 fuck ups by engineers, product people, and VCs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> What's worked in Ed-tech—ever?

Bank street writer. It kept nascent computer classes from killing typing and made grading _so much easier_ , saving the writing careers of many with poor handwriting.

Logo: tens of millions of people have a lever to learn functional abstraction from "repeat 360 [fd 1 rt 1]"

Project Athena. Frankly, I still want that ability to log in anywhere and have my setup ready to go. Project Andrew, too!

1:1 programs. For all the reasons we want a workstation per engineer, a workstation per student makes a qualitative difference in how it can be used.

Wikipedia. It's safe for my children to use unsupervised and amazingly comprehensive.

What else?

<comment><USER22> I'd say Lynda.com was hugely successful.

Or is that not considered Ed-Tech?

<comment><USER23> I suspect vocational training is considered old hat and boring. I get Lynda through my company and it can be pretty good. But it's not really _that_ different from the sort of online training courses I've had access to in one form or another for ages.

<comment><USER11> Lynda became successful because companies gave it to their employees to boost up their skills...which I think might be an untapped potential market for ed tech. How about making very high quality courses that aren't sold to students. They're sold to companies which in turn make their employees take the courses and so on.

<comment><USER23> A lot of these companies are realizing that _is_ the market. A lot of companies put a lot of money into their internal ed programs and, in the scheme of things, adding some more general purpose ed to flesh out their offerings is cheap.

Getting an employee or hobbyist to pay even $100 of their own money for a course. Or making them jump through reimbursement hoops? Not so much.

Actually reminds me I should map out some Lynda courses to take in the new year.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > _85\. The Teacher Influencer Hustle_

This. I've been pitched by teacher-influencers and librarian-influencers who want to do sponsored posts about my edtech startup. Such posts are generally not marked as sponsored, and I have always declined their offers.

I understand teachers need to make ends meet (my wife, mother, and grandmother work/worked in education), but that doesn't justify this sort of business practice. It's unethical and also pretty clearly illegal per FTC regulations.

</comment><comment><USER24> Instead of buying more/better equipment, teachers, or technology why hasn't anyone tried to buy a better student? I'm fairly certain that if you paid elementary students cash for better grades you would see a huge jump in achievement for the average student. A small amount of money to us feels like a huge amount to a kid, and there are plenty of studies showing that rewards increase performance for basic and mechanical skills.

<comment><USER25> The question then becomes is that the type of student you want to create? Any elementary school teacher who frequently rewards students with candy can tell you horror stories of what this sort of system leads to. Every task becomes a bargain of 'what will I get for doing this?' as opposed to building an innate desire to learn.

Education is broken, but going this route won't fix much. Fixing standardized tests, or scrapping them, along with eliminating things like the SAT would go a long ways is creating better learners, instead of better test takers.

<comment><USER26> You just need to bootstrap the learning far enough for them to see the big picture where the learning provides concrete value to the student!

... you'd also need that last bit to be true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Glad to see LA Unified's iPad disaster as #8 on the list. Tablets in general have been a... fiasco? disaster? Catastrophe? Especially for younger learners.

<comment><USER11> Tablet is useful but the problem is there is not enough ed tech software out there that really takes advantage of its potential. Best use I've seen is interactive kid's reading books. Teaches the kid to learn how to read and makes it fun.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Off topic, but... Does anyone know of a community exploring transformative improvements in science education _content_?

Perhaps discussing topics like: Using pre-K content to inoculate against misconceptions, instead of engendering them.[1] Using industry-derived orthogonal sets of adjectives for describing perceptual properties of materials, instead of the usual adhocery. Rough quantitative description. Teaching scale down to atoms in early primary. Teaching atoms emphasizing quasi-classical nuclei balls, instead of wacky electrons. Atoms-up introduction to materials, and nanoscale emergence of bulk properties. Rough- quantitative introductory biology... in primary. The Sun is too hot, deep space is too cold, and the Earth is doing a BBQ roll between them (the space and roll bits are generally neglected).

Discussions bottlenecked as much on science expertise as educational expertise.

In some sense it's unhelpful discussion. Many ideas are currently undeployable, or their value is uninterestingly limited without the synergy of implausible dependencies.

But personalized AR education seemingly has the potential to alter the constraint space. With a lot of work to be done, if it isn't to be merely "the usual wretchedness, now in AR".

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1Q_q4f-hQ)

</comment><comment><USER29> Honestly, I just briefly skimmed the list. I thought OLPC was too low and there was some politics thrown in there at the top... anyway...

Personally, the greatest ed-tech was when my parents bought me a C-128 which came with thick manuals, one of which was a Commodore BASIC programming manual.

IMHO, education is throwing a wide and open experience to a kid and guiding and helping them learn to learn. Everyone is different in what they like and enjoy, and that's a very good thing.

</comment><comment><USER30> The interactive whiteboard story I have:

My school system decided to introduce those interactive whiteboards into every classroom. Including the computer room. Where all the computers ran Linux or Solaris [1], which operating systems the software couldn't support. Without the computer to run it on, those things are worse than regular whiteboards since you can't even draw on them with real markers.

[1] Sun had yet to be bought by Oracle at that time.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand, what's the point of writing such an article? It doesn't seem to add any value, it might even contribute negative value with spreading cynism and pessimism.

A lot of things have been tried in education, and although some of them were probably just people trying to make a quick buck, I believe that most of them did it to genuinely improve something for others.

<comment><USER32> That was my reaction too. Is there a different market where the ratio of bad ideas to good ideas is better than in education?

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> It's truly fascinating how people quickly join echo chambers and often neglect thinking critically about the opinions they propagate. In computer programming, as an example, 1970s and 80s research points to many problems and dangers of wishful thinking guiding the inclusion of programming on early stages of the school curriculum. To this day, many efforts bypass these alerts and focus on engagement rather than learning or facilitating learning - <USER3> claiming benefits in learning

<comment><USER34> I'd like to hear more about dangers of including programming in early stages. Can you comment or link to something about it?

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I agree that smart boards are a joke. They suck down scarce dollars and add de minimis educational value. Then they break and become really really expensive whiteboards.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's interesting to read some of the companies and initiatives (ignoring the story lines) and see how many seem to be linked to a sort of random pitch or anecdote that ... solves nothing ... or if it does is hardly the basis for a business or changing any given approach.

Meanwhile traditional educational research continues, but doesn't get the same attention / doesn't turn into an online product.

<comment><USER37> If you're just skimming the titles, you should know that occasionally the title is not actually the bad thing, it's something about/from/done with that thing: e.g 32 "Common Core State Standards" isn't saying the standards are bad, but the rollout of them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The author seems to miss the boat super hard on

> 6\. "Everyone Should Learn to Code"

Her argument seems to be that teaching more kids to code, will result in more people ending up in a toxic tech industry. This may be true. But the tech industry will never, ever change until we expose more kids to engineering as a choice. If we can cause a greater number and diversity of children and young adults to consider engineering as a career, the industry will be more diverse. this seems like a bit of a no-brainer.

Also the reaction to the Hour of Code makes me question whether or not the author has every lead or observed one in a meaningful way. Having led literally hundreds, almost every single one that I was involved with resulted in at least one student saying "I didn't think that this was for me / for people like me, but I really liked it". That makes it worth it. Hearing that one single time, makes every single HoC ever worth it in my opinion. I know a lot of teachers that would agree. Nobody on earth thinks kids are making significant progress towards mastery of programming from an hour of code -- it's about exposing every child and letting them know that they are capable of a career that is often, for a variety of reasons, seen as "not for them".

<comment><USER18> Completely agree. The author glosses over the fact that half of coding is just pattern recognition derived from seeing something written a certain way many, many, many times over.

It's not far-fetched to consider that exposing kids to an hour of code daily could make transitioning to a programming career much more feasible in their later life (whereas without this exposure, programming might seem like untouchable black magic). Heck, I think the reason my own transition to being a dev was relatively smooth is because I was obsessed making HTML websites as a kid. Despite not touching it for ~15 years, even that exposure proved invaluable in picking up the skills relatively fast

<comment><USER34> I think it is broader than that. Maybe it is becoming a cliche already, but I think being able to code is a new literacy that everyone should learn even if they are not going to become software engineers or computer scientists. It's just such a useful skill now and more so in the future. I think the author doesn't get that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> One time offer here (@dang and co, if it isn't relevant enough my apologies):

I am for hire in the ed-tech space. My background as a teacher+psychology / programmer+cs hybrid is highly relevant.

My focus is on people who want to learn at university and coding bootcamp level.

My profile has a bit more (perhaps outdated) info.

I will be reading this topic intently for side project idea inspiration.

</comment><comment><USER40> Ed tech is mostly a set of tools for administers and banks to get between teachers and students. Often they charge the students (or their parents) for it too!

Anything more than sftp, a spreadsheet calculator a pdf reader and something to do basic word processing with is probably "Ed tech" you don't want.

</comment><comment><USER41> I spent several years working on one of the top-10 issues in that list. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say: the responsible party deserved every bit of criticism that came it's way.

</comment><comment><USER42> The focus should be to find a proven curriculum that fits the Ed-Tech format and experienced educators to adapted it.

</comment><comment><USER37> 66\. "Someone made an educational video game called "Slave Trade"." Wow.

</comment><comment><USER43> #0: the fact that a significant percentage of people, including myself, doesn't have the attention span to read a 100-item list of debacles anymore.

(yes that's not Ed-Tech, but it's a huge Ed debacle and possibly Tech related...)

</comment><comment><USER44> _animations and lessons about "growth mindsets," "grit," and "mindfulness."_

Dear God. We have growth mindset and grit here at this regional institution. There are students who take General Chemistry 1 (read: 10-th grade chemistry) three times with three different instructors, everyone with a different teaching philosophy, and they still don't give up. Wow. That's some grit there. This time they failed, but they can always pay more tuition, and try again.

Now if their schoolteachers actually exposed them to difficult material and let them experience that with some effort they could overcome those difficulties, that would foster "growth mindset" and "grit". But instead the students want solution strategies and problem classification that takes away all the joy of discovery, and their teachers indulge them. Once I got bad student evaluation for handing out word problems with more than one step and having them figure out the solution themselves. The poor things.

We'll have to wait for different teachers and especially different students.

<comment><USER45> I've been a CS course instructor and you brought up a great point. There is always a balance between not to discourage students who could achieve, and the reality that there are those would be much better off doing something they can actually succeed in and feel much better about themselves as a result, instead of repeatedly trying and failing. I stopped teaching a while ago but I heard that this has become more prevalent ever since the "everyone can code" propaganda.</comment></comment>


How To Talk About Programming Languages - <AUTHOR> http://lionelbarrow.com/2014/06/15/how-to-talk-about-progamming-langauges/

<comment><USER2> I think there is a missing evaluation category here. That is, does the programming language enable me to perform the task efficiently and effectively? If the language doesn't, I'm not using it, even though I might love it...

<comment><AUTHOR> Yea, I went back and forth on making sort of "effectiveness" into its own category. I think it makes more sense to think of overall effectiveness as the combination of the other three categories rather than its own independent thing.</comment></comment>